Co-Founder & CEO Charm Industrial, Peter Reinhardt: “All That Matters Is What the Customers Are Telling You”

Before Peter Reinhardt started his current company, Charm Industrial, he was the CEO and co-founder of the customer data platform Segment, which almost died in its first year. Why? He was afraid to ask customers to pay more than $10 per month for it. A savvy sales advisor pressured him to raise the price by 1000x, which worked wonders. By early 2022, Segment — now owned by Twilio — was commanding seven-figure contracts.

In this episode, Peter and Joubin discuss the hierarchy of majors at MIT, building telescope arrays, the disastrous first demo of Segment, why founders sometimes forget to eat, the problem with the straight-A student mentality, playing ping-pong with the security guard, evaluating a potential acquisition partner, shedding anti-sales bias, the shortcomings of nature-based carbon offsets, and starting a “reverse oil company.”

In this episode, we cover:

• The thing that makes Peter happiest: Solving all kinds of problems, from accounting to noise to carbon dioxide (08:50)
• How leading a startup has narrowed his emotional band (13:58)
• “Freewheeling curiosity” and the breakthrough idea that led to Charm Industrial’s existence (15:47)
• Segment’s origins as a classroom lecture tool and an analytics tool (19:18)
• The disagreement that almost broke up Segment’s founding team, and unlocked the company’s potential (26:36)
• “You have to raise your price by a factor of a thousand” (31:31)
• The packaging issue that nearly derailed Segment’s growth, and Peter’s initial problematic mindset (35:15)
• Why Peter sold Segment to Twilio: “All that matters is what the customers are telling you” (43:32)
• Why great sales looks like great problem solving (47:41)
• Being vulnerable and honest about hard things (53:19)
• The power of Charm Industrial’s mission & finding a better carbon capture solution (57:15)
• The “massive profit engine” that needs to turn over to avert climate disaster (01:03:35)

Links:

• Connect with Peter
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
• Connect with Joubin
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com 
• Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
• This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm