Ep. 224: Alex (@aebridgeman) is joined by Godard Abel (@GodardAbel).
My guest is Godard Abel, founder and CEO of G2, an enterprise software marketplace that helps software buyers find the right software for their companies and key problems. G2 is the third company he has led as CEO, the first two being BigMachines, founded in 2000, and SteelBrick, founded in 2014.
We talk about lessons learned building all three companies, challenges he’s currently facing, picking the right industries to build in, hiring talented people, and what trends in software and AI he’s excited about today. There were also some fantastic books, blogs, and concepts mentioned in the podcast so be sure to catch those in the show notes.
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Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/
Links:
G2
Godard on X
"Who" by Geoff Smart
"Behind the Cloud" by Marc Benioff
V2MOM
Dreamforce
Topics:
(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:04:27) - Sweating the details
(00:06:11) - Alternative data points to focus on
(00:08:05) - Measuring momentum
(00:13:11) - What extra data point do you want today that might be more challenging to get?
(00:14:55) - Are there legal issues in obtaining pricing data?
(00:17:32) - How do you pick what industry or market you want to build a company in with regard to enterprise software?
(00:21:25) - What trends are you paying attention to today?
(00:24:54) - How did you improve on your processes when building G2?
(00:29:46) - What have you learned from CEO peers of yours about maintaining cultures with large headcounts?
(00:32:23) - Are there any ingredients from your time at Salesforce that you apply to G2?
(00:34:22) - Are there more systematic ways to screen for culture and values in hiring?
(00:38:40) - What challenges do you have as you scale?
(00:42:13) - If you weren’t running G2, what business would you be excited to run?
Think Like an Owner 