Adrian Grenier wears several hats: conscious celebrity, actor, musician, director, and producer. But he’s also the Co-Founder and General Partner at DuContra Ventures, an impact fund that aims to create a yield beyond money. At DuContra, Adrian is focused on making meaningful, holistic investments that will help the Earth and the people living here. In today’s episode, Adrian talks about why we should move away from the hopeless view that the world is ending. He also discusses how taking responsibility for our actions can lead to a life full of purpose. Press play to hear Adrian’s thoughts on…Empowering Humans to Build More Impactful Businesses“The concept is that if we can empower human beings, individuals, and give them the tools and the ability, the health of wellness, so that they can make the best possible decisions. And then bring them together with other humans, communitas in collaboration, empower them with the tools of finance so that they can go out and build the world. They're going to make not only better choices, better businesses, better consumer products for us as consumers, but also for the world in the future.”Why We Need Meaningful Connections Now More Than Ever “I think certainly we're in a content craze and technology just made it more accessible and in many ways to a negative degree, being forced upon us with all the algorithms, getting inside of our heads. So I think now is an opportunity to try and solve for that. How do we give people more rich, meaningful experiences? How do we serve up content that actually empowers people and give them the tools to not just sit at home and watch Netflix?”

Why are companies like Zoom, Calendly, and Slack so successful?According to Blake Bartlett, partner at OpenView Venture Capital, it comes down to three little letters: PLG or Product-led Growth.Blake coined the term “product-led growth” in 2016 and continues to be a thought leader in this community. In today's episode, Blake, shares his insights about PLG and discusses leading investments in companies like Highspot, Calendly, Expensify, Postscript, and more. He also talks about the ini tial discovery of PLG and how it has changed how companies structure themselves in this increasingly digital world.Press play to hear Blake’s thoughts on…Discovering PLG for the First Time“What's at the core DNA of these companies? They lead with product as it pertains to growth, so that sounds like a good name for it: product-led growth. We put it out there in mid 2016 and started talking about it a lot, really until we were blue in the face for a number of years. In 2019, a lot of other folks started to join the conversation and it became apparent that it wasn't just us that saw this shift happening in the market.”Salespeople being the Sherpas of the PLG Experience“Instead of sitting on the opposite side of the table from the customer trying to convince you to buy, you've already bought, you're already using it. You just wanna buy more. And so we actually have the same shared goal, which is you using more of my product. And so how can I be on the same side of the table as you as a sales rep? And act more like a Sherpa.”Determining Product Market Fit in a PLG Environment“Even if there's no monetization, you can still be highly confident in product market fit because of the number of users you're acquiring, the rate at which they're activating, the rate at which they're continuing to use the product, the rate at which they're inviting new users, whether that's in their organization, on their team, or external folks they're collaborating with to the product, the rate at which they're swiping the credit card and converting. And so looking at it through this more freemium-oriented customer journey at the early phases of a company, I think that's where the special sauce is for determining product market fit in a PLG environment.”

If you adopt a product-led growth model, will that take jobs away from your salespeople? The answer may surprise you. Today’s guest, Todd Olson, says that a PLG strategy and optimization will allow space for salespeople to become much more effective and efficient. Todd is co-founder and CEO of Pendo, a platform that accelerates and deepens software product adoption. He’s also the author of the book, “The Product-Led Organization: Drive Growth By Putting Product at the Center of Your Customer Experience.” In today’s episode, Todd says when companies utilize all of what product-led growth has to offer, then they will become much more efficient, communicative, and better at adapting to the ever-changing digital landscape. Press play to hear Todd’s thoughts on…Creating a Holistic User Experience“Within a product team, there needs to be really, really good communication because the last thing you want is like some growth team trying to drive people top of funnel in and convert them while another team is trying to do self-service and somehow they collide and they're just constantly messaging users all the time and just confusing them. So there needs to be this more holistic kind of user journey idea to make sure that whatever the user's seeing is just an overarching stitched-together experience.”Keep Experimenting Until You Nail It“If it's a feature in your product that is very differentiating, that you believe sets you apart from everyone else and you believe it's one of the core reasons that people use your product, that's one where I think there's really value in driving a lot of experimentation. There's value in collecting feedback. There's value in not only shipping it, but then leaving space in your roadmap for what we call fast feedback or follow up work, where we iterate for potentially sprints, months, quarters, until we feel like we've nailed it.”

How did our guest Joe Lonsdale go from high school chess champion to super successful VC? His diverse network and a wide variety of interests to start. Joe has been a part of founding more than a dozen mission-driven companies, including Palantir, Addepar, OpenGov, Affinity, Epirus, Resilience Bio, and 8VC. In today’s episode, Joe talks about how he’s been able to build such strong teams over the years and why even in a remote world, human connection is key to building a strong foundation.Press play to hear Joe’s thoughts on…Developing a Company Culture“You have to have a really clear vision of where the company's going. You have to have really clear values that people share and they talk about, that they put down together. And a good way to talk about values is to talk about scenarios, things that could come up and how you deal with them.”Hiring Great Engineers“Elon Musk says, ‘Cost of cost is much less than the cost of time.’ So great engineers figure out how to like manage the scarcity of time and to get things done very quickly as well, to attract others and to know how to measure other talents and use other talents and inspire other talents”Bring in the Adults“When you're building these companies, you want the highest IQ, brightest, hardest work, working innovators early on to kinda iterate toward prototypes and customers, fresh product market fit and really get there. And then once things are working a certain way, you still wanna have the innovative part of the business and you wanna nurture it, but you also wanna bring in adults who know how to run processes.”

In the season finale, Daniel Saks is joined by Renee Bergeron, General Manager of AppSmart to reflect on Decoding Digital season one. They discuss key insights and lessons learned from some of the great tech minds, business leaders and digital transformation experts featured in the season. Listen to hear Daniel’s take on why endurance is vital to survival, how to effectively drive digital transformation, and what really makes a digital hero.Press play to hear Daniel Saks’ thoughts on…The Problem with Complexity“Steve Jobs said ‘simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.’ Especially in B2B business and digital enterprises today, it's so easy to add scope creep and to talk about all the features and the underlying capabilities and to drive a lot of complexity, not only into your marketing message, but into the way you operate. It's super, super difficult to break things down and make them simple and intuitive.”Building Trust“It takes a long time to build trust, but only seconds to degrade that trust. In the digital world, building trust is much more difficult, because you don't necessarily always have the human-to-human interaction and experience… having faces, and names, and experiences behind your brand is super powerful.”Living Your Values“Instead of just being words on a wall, the values can become the way that you hire, the way that you promote, the reason why you let people go... Integrating your values into the fabric of who you are is going to ultimately differentiate values-based cultures from those who aren't and enable you to endure and scale seamlessly in this digital economy.”

If one thing is clear about digital transformation, it’s that people power drives it. But how do you inspire, empower, and cultivate these key changemakers?Authors of “The Transformation Myth: Leading Your Organization Through Uncertain Times”, Dr. Gerald Kane, Boston College Professor, and Rich Nanda, US Monitor Practice Leader, Deloitte Consulting, join this episode to share their insights. Listen to hear their thoughts on what leadership and culture characteristics enable digital heroes to thrive and how to start a transformational flywheel.Press play to hear their thoughts on…The Advantages of Legacy Companies “I think traditional legacy companies have several inherent advantages. They have scale, they have supply side advantages locked in. They have long-term customer relationships to build upon. They have IP that's been developed over years. But the key is that the shelf life of those ideas isn't as long as they used to be in a world that changes so often.” —Rich NandaThe Near-Term Future "The next three to five years are going to be among the most exciting and disruptive periods in our lifetimes. Companies who have learned to innovate and are rethinking the workplace are going to unleash new competitive capabilities. We ain't seen nothing yet, to quote the phrase."—Gerald KaneThe Importance of Vision  "It's a myth that technology is some kind of silver bullet. People think that, buying fancy technology, partnering with the cool tech companies, all of a sudden change is going to happen. But one of that's possible without the right purpose and vision."—Rich NandaClick here to download The Digital Hero Mindset: The Traits People Need to Innovate in a Technology-Driven World

Digital transformation looks different for every business. Sometimes that transformation happens on a personal level, as well as professional. Former Microsoft CTO and Principal Owner of Digital Future Consulting, Jennifer Byrne, joined this episode to share how Microsoft navigated a tough period by being more transparent and how digital heroes at all levels play a key part in digital transformation success.Press play to hear Jennifer’s thoughts on…Finding the Digital Heroes in Your Organization“The true heroes in my mind... are the folks who did the quiet work of ushering that transformation through a company. ... [S]omebody has to hold the hands of a lot of people who are trying to learn a new skill who are going to be adversely affected by this. They get no credit. They're the note takers in the meetings, but they're the people who are the lifeblood of transformation, in my opinion.”Creating a Culture of Learning“When there's a culture of learning, and where companies do it well, is where executives take that to heart. ... There is no shortcut. You have to do it also because your employees will watch. You've got to be in the boat with your people.”The Future of Work"It behooves you to think about the technology that's already encroaching in your space. Think about the job that you do today. If you go to work every day and you know exactly what your day's going to look like, you have a fairly automated, repeatable set of processes that you do. And that's actually more likely to be automated than somebody who goes to work saying ‘I have no idea how this is going to go.’"

Should start-ups target consumer or enterprise markets first? Former entrepreneur turned investor and Managing Partner of Upfront Ventures, Mark Suster, joins this episode to give his guidance to entrepreneurs looking for investment and growth. He discusses how to engineer product-led growth for your market, how to secure investment, and the dos and don’ts for start-up entrepreneurs.Press play to hear Mark’s thoughts on…Understanding Product-Market Fit “I would rather you have no influencers. I would rather you have no hype. I would rather you raise less capital and obsess with what is the product feature that's really going to resonate with a group of people, like the raison d’etre. What is it that they're waking up every day to use your product, to do and why your product and not other stuff?”The Value of Sales and Marketing“At the end of the day, sales and marketing really matter. And it turns out that people buy products for reasons other than, this is the absolute best product in the market. They buy products for the perception that this is going to help them improve.” Committing to Being an Entrepreneur“We're looking for people who want to go on a 10- or 12-year journey with us. We're not looking for people to go on a two-year journey. So you've got to want to do this. This is your career. This is your livelihood, your life, and your mission. And if you're successful at it, you're going to be hugely financially and emotionally rewarded for doing it.”

Tech hasn’t just disrupted the wellness industry ­– it’s revolutionized it. Long before the global pandemic forced health and fitness businesses to pivot to virtual experiences, Mindbody was a key player in enabling wellness organizations to thrive through tech. Mindbody CEO and founder of Booker Software, Josh McCarter, has more than a decade’s experience at the forefront of digitally transforming the wellness industry. He joins this episode to share how the vertical ecosystem connects the world to wellness.Press play to hear Josh’s thoughts on…The Necessity of APIs“You kind of hope that if you build it, they will come. And that's really where you start out in the early days, but without having the APIs and having that ability, nobody's ever going to come, right? Nobody wants to partner with somebody that has a closed ecosystem and is really difficult to interface with.”Going Beyond APIs"So it really requires an end-to-end thinking, it's not just, 'hey, we're going to go develop and publish APIs that everybody's going to write to, and that's going to be the end of it.' There's always some component of partner management and technical integration work that's going to be there." Satisfying User Expectations"What we see, especially in the SMB segment is that most of these customers look almost like consumer users, right? Like they want it to be as simple as using an iPhone or using their iPad. And so we have to adapt our technology to where the current users are."

What does it take to compete against digital giants? The Founder, Chairman, Principal Analyst, and CEO of Constellation Research Inc., Ray Wang, joins this episode to reveal the key takeaways from his latest book, Everybody Wants to Rule the World: Surviving and Thriving in a World of Digital Giants. Ray discusses the current landscape of digital transformation, what the challenges are, and how to follow in the footsteps of today’s digital giants. Press play to hear Ray’s thoughts on…The Need for “Digital Artisans”“The last piece is the digital artisans. They blend the right brain left brain pieces that are out there. They understand that hard science is important, but you also have to understand the humanities and your role in playing out what the implications of that change is going to be, not only just on your employees, but also your other stakeholders.”Building the Business Graph“The business graph is like the social graph, the social graph in social networks that tells you, 'hey, this person's connected. This person here, their actions, there's what they're going to do.' The business graph is a stakeholder, a customer employee, a supplier, or a partner. And how do I connect that stakeholder to an action with an object? And what do we learn about those patterns? And that becomes the competitive mode.”Creative Acceleration“Creative acceleration actually happens with a common set of ideas, the density of ideas and the random collisions that occur. That's kind of how this technology innovation has been built. It's just these networks of networks that get passed on.”