#265 - Andy Mowat, CEO Gated - on creating a movement

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to each of us full control of our email inbox. My guest is Andy Mowat, CEO of Gated. Andy has spent his career building sales and marketing engines for world-beating companies. He created and scaled a customer success operations team to drive operational improvements for all post-sale services at Box. And in May 2017, he became the Vice President of GTM Operations & Growth Marketing at Culture Amp, where he drove 10x growth in ARR.  He's completed an MBA at Stanford and has a BA degree in International Economics from Princeton University. In June 2021, he co-founded Gated, which he leads as its CEO. Their mission: to fix digital overload for both buyers AND sellers.... and to do some good for the world.  And this inspired me, and hence I invited Andy to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way they use email and social channels. Andy explains his vision of how he can give everyone control back and make real communication happen. He shares the big lessons learned on taking Gated from zero to where it is today -growing at 20% per month. He elaborates on his approach to monetization, to keep the tool free for those that get the most value - and how that creates network effects. Lastly, he talks about crossing the chasm and what big lessons that told him.  Here's one of his quotes There are 10,000 tools helping sellers and marketers pummel buyers. We are not building the 10,001st tool. We're building the first tool for buyers.  Building a trusted brand is a tremendous opportunity. I believe that the world needs what we're doing, especially when you think about ChatGPT and how more and more emails are sent every day. Imagine a world where, instead of 100 emails getting sent and two replies, 10 emails get sent and five replies. It's a world that's better for everybody. During this interview, you will learn four things: What remarkable solutions we can create when we take the viewpoint of the underserved receiver of your service outputs? Why you cannot start early enough thinking about building virality in your product How to build a movement around your startup Why it's critical to cast a vision that doesn't lock you in - and how to go about that.  For more information about the guest from this week: Andy Mowat Website Gated Subscribe to the Daily SaaS Reflection Get my free, 1 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe here Yes, it’s actually daily. And yes, people actually stay subscribed (Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say) My promise: It’s short. To the point. Inspiring. And valuable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices