On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Matt Hulett, CEO and President at PetMeds, and Author of Unlock: 5 Questions to Unleash Your Company's Hidden Power. Previously, Matt was the President of Expedia and Rosetta Stone.   Whether you're starting a new business or bringing an existing one to the next level, it can be daunting.   Instead of wasting months and large sums of money on an extensive strategic planning process, join Matt as he walks through his five-step strategy to determine how to unlock value in a company and drive growth.   In this session, Matt shares:   1:04 - How he got into company building and investing 5:37 - Why every business can't be a star 6:14 - 5 key questions: TAM, Timing, Track Record, Plan, and Momentum 11:04 - Timing, the most difficult thing to get right 14:40 - The science around growth 18:53 - Assessing your competitiveness 26:41 - Keeping up momentum as a company 35:15 - What are the key traits of a company that attracts capital? 39:15 - What are key indicators of product market fit? 42:42 - What are the essential key hires that you need in order to scale? 44:56 - What key traits does a good product manager have? 49:42 - The priorities of a CEO, day in and day out 52:55 - Keeping everyone across the company aligned with overall strategies and goals during scaling 59:25 - Matt's book recommendations   Learn more at https://tractionconf.io Get Matt’s book, Unlock: 5 Questions to Unleash Your Company's Hidden Power at: https://startupwhisperer.com    Connect with Matt Hulett: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthulett/   This episode is brought to you by:   Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses. But the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process, enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don’t get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI.   Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6,000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa, visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca    Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline its podcast production. Learn more at https://contentallies.com

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Gina Gotthilf, Co-Founder at Latitud.   PR can be a game-changer but for many startups, PR begins and ends with receiving a nod from TechCrunch. While TechCrunch is a great publication (and a mention from it is no small feat), there’s a lot more that goes into a winning PR strategy.   Gina shares how you can use PR tactics with no budget to grow your business. Previously, Gina led growth at Duolingo, where she helped grow the organization from 3 million to over 200 million users. She also led partnerships, communication strategies, a/b testing growth sprints, as well as having other responsibilities in an ever-changing startup environment.   In this session, Gina covers:   2:24 - Why she started Latitud 9:31 - What is PR? 12:06 - Why you should care about PR 13:52 - The playbook at Duolingo 20:32 - Controversial PR advice 30:04 - Choosing between doing PR in-house or using an agency 33:04 - A brief PR exercise with a template 39:47 - Adding an interesting fact to an intro pitch 40:42 - When is the right time for PR? 42:22 - PR for crowdfunding hacks 43:00 - FOMO in the context of PR 46:09 - How do journalists respond to outreach from a CEO versus an agency? 49:10 - Do you recommend having a press kit ready for journalists? 51:16 - How she got a photo with Obama   Learn more at https://tractionconf.io   Connect with Gina Gotthilf: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ginafrombrazil/ Learn more about Latitud at https://www.latitud.com/   This episode is brought to you by:   Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses. But the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don’t get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI.   Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6,000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa, visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca    Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline its podcast production. Learn more at https://contentallies.com

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes John S. Kim, Co-Founder and CEO of Sendbird.   Sendbird is the world's no.1 chat API, serving over 100M monthly chat users across leading companies such as Reddit, Delivery Hero, Yahoo!, Rakuten, Paytm, Accolade, Livongo, and DHL.   John shares the four techniques that enabled his company to become a billion-dollar company at breakneck speed.   Specifically, John covers:   2:37 - Career pivots from software engineer to gamer 4:35 - What made him start the company 8:33 - Why he applied to YCombinator 11:18 - How he acquired his first customers and found market fit 15:21 - Things he learned to help sell better 21:06 - What it means to become a platform company 23:39 - Deciding when is the right time to add additional products 25:00 - The four techniques founders should apply to business and life 35:38 - How to transition from individual contributor all the way up to executive 40:03 - Helpful lessons in creating autonomy for the team 42:02 - The Human Capital Framework 44:48 - Emotional capital, cognitive empathy, and the trade-offs of agreeableness 52:11 - Empowering your teams to be more and more autonomous 59:55 - Key steps to making successful hires 1:01:54 - The order people should be hired in 1:04:28 - What he wishes he did more of and less of 1:01:18 - Navigating his biggest fear as a leader 1:11:36 - Top KPIs that leaders should measure   Learn more at https://tractionconf.io    Connect with John S. Kim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/doshkim/   Learn more about Sendbird at https://sendbird.com/   This episode is brought to you by:   Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process, enabling companies to get more money, faster, without the paperwork and audit risk. We don’t get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI.   Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6,000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca    Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline its podcast production. Learn more at https://ContentAllies.com

Annie Pearl, CPO at Calendly, discusses keys to PLG success, virality in non-viral products, transitioning to PLG, leveraging a flywheel, UX best practices, measuring customer outcomes, freemium strategies, feature prioritization, company building tips, VP vs. CPO roles, and achieving hyper growth without burnout.

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Mark Roberge, Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital. Previously, Mark was the CRO at HubSpot seeing it from the earliest stages through post-IPO.   “When to scale?” and “How fast?” are two mission-critical questions for start-ups, yet most entrepreneurs lack a rigorous approach to answering them.   After peeking inside the go-to-market machinery of hundreds of start-ups over the last decade, Mark Roberge shares a scientific, data-driven approach to go from zero to billion fast.   In this episode, Mark specifically covers:   2:39 - How he met the founders of HubSpot 5:16 - How his role evolved from selling to running sales at HubSpot 7:17 - Moving from being an individual contributor to a manager 14:37 - The time it takes to understand retention 19:34 - Why he doesn't enjoy starting upstream in a company in the early stage 25:17 - When are you ready to scale? 31:20 - How fast should you scale? 37:35 - The different aspects of the go-to-market system 42:12 - Where specifically do you scale? 48:22 - Where's the line on unhealthy growth? 51:21 - Key hires to make during each stage of growth 54:40 - Key traits of a sales leader and when to bring them on board 58:45 - When to go global 1:01:12 - The process for assessing disruption risk for pricing 1:06:09 - How much to spend on marketing   Learn more at https://tractionconf.io    Connect with Mark Roberge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markroberge/   Learn more about Stage 2 Capital at https://www.stage2.capital/ This episode is brought to you by:   Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don’t get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI.   Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to Seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 Billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca    Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline their podcast production. Learn more at ContentAllies.com

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI features a talk by Sarah Tavel, General Partner at Benchmark from the IRL Traction Conference in Vancouver. Sarah started her career at Bessemer Venture Partners, and invested in Pinterest when it was a small five person company with about 30,000 registered users. She loved the company so much that she joined Pinterest to become their first product manager. Sarah led product at Pinterest through a period of hyper-growth, and when she left the company they had 100 million monthly active users.  In this session, Sarah shares the framework to build iconic businesses covering: Hierarchy of engagement Growing engaged users Retaining users once you've brought them in Building mounting loss and accruing benefits into your product Making your product self-perpetuating with virtuous loops Learn more at https://tractionconf.io Connect with Sarah Tavel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahtavel/ Learn more about Benchmark at http://www.benchmark.com/ This episode is brought to you by: Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don’t get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI. Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to Seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 Billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca  Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline their podcast production. Learn more at ContentAllies.com

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Oji Udezue, Product Lead at Twitter (and former CPO at Calendly) and Michael Litt, Co-Founder and CEO at Vidyard.   The most successful IPOs and fastest-growing private companies of the past decade all started with a freemium, self-service product. Zoom, Atlassian, Slack, Dropbox are just a few.   But building a freemium, self-service product when you already have a successful enterprise business can seem like a daunting task.   There are a million questions: “Will it cannibalize my sales efforts? Do I need to build a new product? What mindset and skills do I need to have on the team?   In this session, Oji Udezue and Michael Litt join us for a masterclass on how to build a freemium, self-service offering to go from sales-led to product-led to drive massive growth. They'll be covering:   10:30 - The greatest risk to execution for a company 17:45 - Nuances and tactics involved in building a PLG strategy 24:20 - How to transition from sales-led to PLG 32:32 - How do you structure your product team? 43:42 - The concept of crossing the chasm 47:41 - The thought process of carving out a specific feature of functionality 50:01 - How to add virality, network effects, and viral loops to a product that isn’t necessarily viral 54:46 - Things Oji has done to create virality 57:29 - A good place to draw a line for paid versus free services 59:10 - How to create friction-free onboarding 1:05:09 - When is the right time to contact a customer? 1:09:00 - How to prioritize features with feedback from thousands of people 1:13:40 - Tips to empower customers to become ambassadors to grow your business 1:16:54 - Tools being used, from enabling to tracking Learn more at https://tractionconf.io   Connect with Michael Litt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaellitt/?originalSubdomain=ca   Learn more about Vidyard at https://www.vidyard.com/   Connect with Oji Udezue: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ojiudezue/   Learn more about Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/ This episode is brought to you by:   Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don’t get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI.   Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to Seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 Billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca    Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline their podcast production. Learn more at ContentAllies.com  

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Jason Lemkin, Founder at SaaStr, and Justin Kan, Co-Founder at Fractal.is.   Justin co-founded Kiko Software, a Web 2.0 calendar that pre-dated Google Calendar by four years; Justin.tv, a lifecasting platform; Twitch, a live streaming platform for esports, music, and other creatives that was acquired by Amazon for almost $1 billion. More recent roles include Partner and GM at Y Combinator and CEO of Atrium, a software-powered law firm for startups. He is now a general partner at Goat Capital as well as his work at Fractal.   Jason co-founded NanoGram Devices: nanotechnology to dramatically enhance the performance of power sources for implantable medical devices, which was acquired for $50 million just 13 months after founding; EchoSign, the web's most popular electronic signature service which was acquired by Adobe; and now SaaStr, the world's largest SaaS community and $70+ million SaaS venture fund.   In this session, they'll share “sage advice” that VCs give startups and deconstruct the biases.   Specifically, they discuss: 2:10 - A warm intro to investors - what if you don't have one? 3:37 - The type of cold emails to write 5:20 - Why now is the best time ever to raise money  8:45 - Giving up control of a company 10:59 - The biggest issue that founders face 13:09 - The consequence of having no accountability 14:55 - How many investors till it's considered to be too many 19:38 - Big funds writing small checks 23:37 - Why you should update your investors regularly Learn more at https://tractionconf.io   Connect with Jason Lemkin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmlemkin/   Learn more about SaaStr at https://www.saastr.com/   Connect with Justin Kan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinkan/   Learn more about Fractal.is at https://www.fractal.is/   This episode is brought to you by: Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don’t get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI. Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to Seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 Billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline their podcast production. Learn more at ContentAllies.com

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Matt Harris, Partner at Bain Capital Ventures.   Want the key to unlocking the next unicorn? Today, more and more companies are embedding finance (payments, lending, insurance, etc.) into their products — not only to drive growth and revenue but also to stay competitive.   Starbucks has the second most used payments application in the United States and they’re not a bank. Analysts estimate Shopify’s payments revenue to grow faster than their Subscription & Services revenue stream. Toast, a $2.7B restaurant management platform, launched Toast Capital in 2019 to provide its customer base with access to fast, simple, and flexible funding.   In this session, Matt discusses the key components of the FinTech ecosystem and how to embed FinTech into your products to drive exponential growth.   Specifically, Matt covers:   1:34 - How he initially got into investing 6:07 - What does FinTech mean 10:01 - Why every company will become a FinTech company and examples of embedding FinTech into products 34:36 - The additional value of embedded lending 44:50 - How does the rise of crypto and decentralized finance play into FinTech? 51:41 - How should founders think about fundraising and valuations in this environment? 59:54 - One piece of unconventional advice founders ignore but shouldn't Learn more at https://tractionconf.io Connect with Matt Harris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattcharris/ Learn more about Bain Capital Ventures at https://www.baincapitalventures.com/   The Fourth Wave Part 1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewharris/2019/11/19/fintech-the-fourth-platform-part-one   The Fourth Platform Part 2: https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewharris/2019/11/22/fintech-the-fourth-platformpart-two    This episode is brought to you by: Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don’t get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI. Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to Seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 Billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca  Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline their podcast production. Learn more at ContentAllies.com  

On this episode of the Traction podcast, I welcome Wade Foster, Co-Founder & CEO at Zapier. This episode is moderated by Arjun Chopra, Partner at Floodgate VC..   Before he was Zapier’s CEO, Wade played saxophone in a blues and jazz quartet. Started as a side project in 2011, today Zapier boasts more than $100 million in revenue & more than 3 million users. All this with ONLY a $1.2 million seed round in 2012.   In this session, Wade shares his top secrets in taking Zapier from a side project to a unicorn on a bootstrapped budget.   Specifically, Wade shares: 0:16 - From playing the sax to dominating a market in SaaS 3:53 - The process of validating the idea, picking the first few apps to integrate, and getting to product market fit 7:30 - Initial product pricing and how it's evolved over time 10:15 - Philosophy around fundraising and budgeting 14:05 - Growing the team with no offices 17:11 - Zapier's go-to-market approach 20:24 - What Wade wishes he did less of, in hindsight   Learn more at https://tractionconf.io Connect with Wade Foster: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wadefoster/   Learn more about Zapier at https://zapier.com/   This episode is brought to you by: Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don’t get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI. Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to Seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 Billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca  Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline their podcast production. Learn more at ContentAllies.com