GTM 59: Weekly Active Users Up 33% by Making the Hard Decisions Faster with Melanie Fellay
Sep 5, 2023
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Melanie Fellay, CEO and Co-Founder of Spekit, discusses the importance of hiring smart individuals. They also emphasize work-life balance and the benefits of being a solo founder. They talk about their integrated solution and the sacrifices of building a brand. Additionally, they highlight the significance of a strong executive team and making quick decisions.
Building your personal brand as a founder can drive brand awareness and pipeline.
Fostering collaboration within an executive team leads to higher-level problem-solving and decision-making.
Making timely and difficult decisions sets the tone for organizational progress and success.
Deep dives
Importance of Building Your Brand as a Founder
Building your personal brand as a founder is not a waste of time, despite what some may believe. While it is important to focus on the business, spending time on building your brand can drive brand awareness, thought leadership, and ultimately, pipeline. Establishing yourself as a credible and influential figure in your industry can have a positive impact on your business and help you build valuable relationships.
Focus on Executive Team Collaboration
Spending time figuring out how to work well together as an executive team can have a significant impact on the overall success of your company. By fostering an environment where challenging discussions and collaboration are encouraged, you can address challenges and solve problems at a higher level. This prevents issues from getting delegated to less qualified individuals and ensures that important decisions are made by the right people.
Making Hard Decisions Faster
One key piece of advice is to trust your gut instincts and make the hard decisions faster. Delaying decisions can have consequences and hinder progress. Whether it's hiring, product roadmap, or other strategic choices, making timely decisions can set the tone for the rest of the organization and allow for more efficient and effective progress.
Finding Balance and Prioritizing Personal Life
It's important to acknowledge that you can't do everything at once and that life is meant to go through different seasons. Being intentional about where you invest your personal time and finding balance between work and personal life is crucial. Recognize that sacrifices may need to be made, but also give yourself grace and focus on what matters most at any given moment.
Refocusing on Product Fundamentals and Remodeling
Refocusing on product fundamentals and taking the time to improve the core aspects of your product can have a significant impact on overall success. By addressing customer feedback, rebuilding core features, and ensuring product quality, you can generate internal momentum and win over customers. This process may require making tough decisions, but it can drive increased adoption and usage.
Melanie Fellay is the CEO and Co-Founder of Spekit, a just-in-time platform that is transforming how we learn at work. Spekit meets reps with the process guidance, enablement and knowledge they need, right when they need it, in their flow of work to help them be more efficient, drive more revenue and eliminate the friction of change.
She’s a Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient, Top 100 Female Entrepreneur to watch (Entrepreneur) and has been featured across Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Business Insider and more. Mel co-founded Spekit with Zari Zahra to solve a simple challenge: how do we make sure employees know what they need to know, when and where they need to know it. Hundreds of the world's most innovative companies, including Uber Freight, Snowflake, Southwest Airlines and Invesco, rely on Spekit to empower their employees with real-time knowledge and training, without disrupting their day-to-day workflows.The company has raised $60M in venture funding from notable investors Craft Ventures. Felicis, Operator Collective, Matchstick Ventures, Renegade Partners, Foundry Group and Bonfire Ventures and more.
What You Will Learn:
Narrowing the playing field and going where people aren't as a founder.
Always be strategic and intentional when you go wide.
The importance of customer-facing as a founder.
Making hard decisions faster will only benefit your team's success long term.
Product momentum comes from working well as an executive team.
Highlights: (2:40) The importance of allowing your mind to rest.
(9:37) Mel’s founder journey that inspired her to build Spekit.
(15:44) How to go-to-market with a tool that tackles multiple categories.
(22:33) Customer-facing as a founder shouldn't be overlooked.
(24:10) How Mel ended up having to step in as Spekit's CTO during the pandemic and her experience sitting in the engineering seat.
(34:08) How Mel took the mental strength to show up for her team when things were difficult.
(39:38) What Mel would tell her 25-year-old self.
(42:06) The importance of networking and building your brand as a first-time founder.
(46:44) Figuring out how you work best as an executive team to increase product momentum.
The GTM Podcast The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Scott Barker, GTMfund Partner, featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.
Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.
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