Hunters and Unicorns

Welcome to Hunters and Unicorns; The Founders Edition. Today we welcome Pavel Dolezal, CEO and co-founder of Keboola. Our anticipation is high to learn more about the remarkable initiatives they are pursuing. Pavel's story is quite unique; although many companies typically originate from the West Coast or places like Tel Aviv, Kaboola's roots trace back to Eastern Europe. Join us as we delve into the beginnings and shed light on the evolving market dynamics, highlighting the emergence of companies like Keboola from that particular region.   Key Takeaways: 1. Pavel recounts his entrepreneurial journey, highlighting three ventures, including internet portals in the late nineties. He emphasizes the need for venturing beyond local borders and seeking co-founders with aligned moral and ethical values for a long-term commitment, emphasizing the importance of building a client-focused company. 2. The co-founder selection process involved identifying co-founders with a shared vision and technical capabilities. The motivation for founding Keboola stemmed from a desire to simplify data usage for businesses by integrating and orchestrating tools in a modern data stack. 3. Pavel emphasizes the need for hands-on understanding through customer interactions and initial implementations, debunking the idea of a sophisticated framework for startups. The two approaches to startup initiation are outlined, either addressing a specific problem within a familiar vertical or identifying a broader market need. 4. Initial efforts focused on reaching out, organizing events, and engaging with potential customers. Key customer, Tomas Chopra, provided crucial insights and challenged them to simplify complex processes for end-users. 5. They recognized a niche in retail, combining physical and virtual elements, and further explored industries like fast-food operations and banking. The validation process involved focusing on customers with large CRM and logistics systems. 6. They tested and refined their hypotheses, targeting different market segments and industries to understand market positioning. Bootstrapping helped in building a strong culture and a committed team, allowing them to adapt and scale when the time was right. 7. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the digital transformation, aligning with their market positioning. They emphasized the importance of understanding when to sell a finished product versus involving customers in the product development journey. 8. Hands-on involvement from the leadership is seen as crucial for rapid adaptation in a rapidly changing environment. 9. Different methodologies like Agile, Six Sigma, and Lean are selectively applied based on the development stage and requirements. 10. Olli Krebs, Keboola’s advisor, helped them refine their deal lifecycle and introduced a structured approach to evaluating deals, improving efficiency. They realized the importance of understanding who excels in what aspect and how to effectively utilize individual strengths within the team.

🎙️ Insights from Olli Krebs: Navigating 30 Years in Sales 🌟 In our latest Playbook Universe episode, we had the privilege of speaking with Olli Krebs, a sales veteran with three decades of experience. During this time, he achieved notable milestones including 15 President's Club recognitions, involvement in five acquisitions, participation in one IPO, and membership in two Chairman's Strategic Advisory Council (SAC) circles. Notably, Olli was an integral part of the initial Blade Logic crew and was among the earliest hires in the European market. Here are some key takeaways from this enlightening conversation: 1️. European Expansion: European software and SaaS companies are making waves in the US market, challenging Silicon Valley's dominance. Innovation hubs are emerging across Europe, fostering tech growth. 2. Value of European Investors: European investors offer guidance and experience, beyond capital, to startups. 3. Cultural Adaptability: Sales strategies vary due to cultural differences, emphasizing adaptability and understanding local markets. 4. Sales Training: Sales training should emphasize mastering the craft and understanding the company's ethos. 5. Managerial Transition: Transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager requires a delicate balance of relationships and authority. It's complex, requiring guidance and coaching to lead effectively. 6. Understanding 'Why': Emphasize understanding the 'why' behind methodologies, focusing on collaboration and individuality. 7. Sales Fundamentals: People buy from people; honesty and integrity are paramount in sales. Align with customer needs, provide solutions, and build strong relationships. 8. Key Traits: Confidence and adaptability are vital for sales professionals, especially in dynamic markets like cryptocurrency. Olli's wisdom underscores, that sales, at its core, is about understanding customer needs, offering solutions, and building lasting connections. It's a journey of evolution, from traditional relationship-focused sales to a consultative approach, especially for enterprise solutions. Success lies in embracing change, upholding ethics, and embodying confidence. Thank you, Olli, for these invaluable insights! 🚀 #SalesLeadership #BusinessInsights #HuntersAndUnicorns

The Hunters and Unicorns session with Anant Bhardwaj, Founder and CEO of Instabase unveiled an extraordinary journey, starting from humble beginnings to becoming the visionary founder of a groundbreaking AI company, Instabase. The emphasis on developing applications around real-world use cases struck a chord, highlighting the need to identify broader relevance beyond a specific scenario for achieving impactful market fit. Key Takeaways; 1. Early Life and Education: Grew up in a rural part of India called Nalanda, Bihar, without modern amenities. Initially struggled adjusting to a city environment due to a shift in language and educational medium to English. 2. Career Aspirations: Initially wanted to join the Army like family members but was rejected due to colour blindness. Had an interest in literature, poetry, and writing but was discouraged from pursuing it as a career. 3. Academic Journey: Accidentally got into computer science during college in India and discovered a passion for programming. Moved to the US for a master's at Stanford but felt pressure to start a company during this time. Pursued research projects at MIT, one of which was Data Hub, exploring abstracting complex data for diverse applications. Faced challenges with visa status and legal issues but was supported by MIT during this period. 4. Formation of Databricks: Founded Databricks without a clear commercial application but had an academic focus initially. Initially targeted academia, providing free products to professors and students at various universities. 5. Discovery of Commercial Use: Identified a commercial use case with companies like Zenefits and Lending Club needing data extraction from diverse sources like PDFs and images. 6. Product Development and Market Fit: Iterated the product based on market needs and feedback, eventually finding a product-market fit in data extraction and analysis for various industries. Emphasized a fearless and experimental approach to adapt to new opportunities and discover viable product uses. 7. Key Advice from Martin Casado: "Use cases precede the product; product precedes the platform; platform precedes the ecosystem." Don't build a product without understanding the use case it solves. Don't build a platform without a real product. A platform allows value creation by someone other than the creator. 8. Discovery of Product-Market Fit: Understand the key drivers and drags for customers; drivers are critical to why they buy. Find the one or two core drivers that make customers want to buy your product. Prioritize features that cater to these key drivers and address critical pain points. 9. Approach to Product Development: Engage in parallel experimentation to find both the use cases and the right product. Engage early customers to help validate and define the product, ensuring it addresses their needs. Focus on problems applicable across a wide range of industries to have a broad market impact. 10. Building a Platform: Allow customers to create value by building their own apps on your platform. Separate the product from custom services and prioritize building a scalable product. Be open to iterating and adjusting the product based on customer feedback and use cases. 11. Ecosystem Building: Move towards creating an ecosystem by enabling third-party developers to build on the platform. Aim for apps built by one entity to be usable and valuable for another, promoting a broader ecosystem. 12. Early Growth and Funding: Achieved significant growth from $250k to $5 million in a year, gaining investor interest. Raised funding at a $1 billion valuation in 2019 due to perceived strong product-market fit. 13. Challenges in Scaling Sales: Initially, sales were handled by the founder, but transitioning to a sales team required careful planning. Incorrect hiring and lack of understanding of sales dynamics led to a wasted year in scaling sales. 14. Building an Effective Sales Team: Hiring salespeople requires careful consideration of ramp-up times, quotas, and net new revenue targets. Defined sales process stages: first meeting, technical deep dive, proof of value, success criteria, business value, commercial and pricing, legal. 15. Sales Process and Experimentation: Focused on identifying and repeating successful use cases to drive sales effectively. Employed a small growth team for experimentation and exploration of new use cases and verticals. Launched a self-serve product (iHub) to understand the market, not focusing on specific deal sizes initially. 16. Sales Velocity and Incentives: Emphasized velocity of feedback and signal collection over deal size to learn from a larger customer base. Experimenting with sales team incentives to encourage high-velocity growth and learning from a diverse customer set. Episode 3 of 'The Founders Edition' is not to be missed!

Jeremy Burton, dynamic CEO of Observe Inc., reshaping the Observability landscape, discusses strategies for disrupting established markets, prioritizing product development for mass appeal, winning customers before the product is fully cooked, the interplay between sales and marketing, and making the first marketing hire. Get ready to unravel the technology-value conundrum and discover how a seasoned campaigner successfully transitions to embrace the founder's grind.

The podcast explores the success of AppDynamics in sales execution, the importance of advisors for scalability, and the evolution of sales process. Jyoti Bansal shares his journey as a multi-unicorn founder, emphasizing the value of sales parity with product strength and the significance of forecasting for success.

Dan Miller, GTM Advisor at Loft Lab and Observable, discusses his career-defining moments at prestigious companies such as Splunk, Nimble Storage, Sumo Logic, and SignalFX. He shares insights on closing a deal worth just short of $100m, the importance of allies and mentors in the GTM community, identifying early-stage companies, impactful sales metrics, and sales as a science. Dan also shares the inspirational story of Mark Cranney and his journey in driving a $1.6 billion sale to HP. Don't miss this episode!

Welcome to Hunters and Unicorns: The Playbook Universe.    We’re here to showcase leaders within the Playbook Community and explore their formulas for success.   We aim to uncover:   Why the ICE formula is imperative.  The criticality of the Economic Buyer.  How to elevate your Execution whether that be selling consumer side or enterprise software.     Today we are joined by Chris Mahoney, SVP for the Worldwide Sales Team at LaunchDarkly.   In this Hunters and Unicorns podcast, Chris shares his professional journey with us including examples of his application of the Playbook.  He also discusses how he’s building the global sales team at LaunchDarkly with rapid scale. You don’t want to miss this exciting episode with one the industry’s titans!  Chris has consistently operated within the elite playbook space, with experiences at prestigious companies including ServiceNow, BMC Software and Phase 1.   Amongst his plethora of achievements, he was the most successful Solution Sales leader at ServiceNow, he lead the first product line from under $50M to more than $1B, scaled teams from less than 10 to over 650 and helped grow the market capital from £12B to a  staggering $125B.   Whilst at BMC, Chris built the number one performing sales team globally and at Phase 1, he went through 27 mergers and acquisitions in consumer software.   Prior to enterprise software, Chris spent 10 years in consumer software working in operations and sales.   Under strong leadership and immersing himself in absorbing as much knowledge as possible, Chris navigated the enterprise software space with cadence and agility.   He thrived in learning not just the solutions but also the processes. Chris discusses with us the role of the Beginner’s Mindset and how maintaining a strong degree of curiosity throughout your career will directly contribute to success.   Chris also discusses times in his career where the focus was not on performance and numbers, but in fact on character and drive.   Hunters and Unicorns loved hearing about Chris’ formidable career, accented with pivotal conversations with the likes of A-players such as Tom Schmidt, John Donahoe, Frank Slootman, Andy Byron, Keith Butler and Bill McDermott.  Make sure you tune in! 

Welcome to Hunters and Unicorns: The Playbook Universe. We’re here to showcase leaders within the Playbook Community and explore their formulas for success. We aim to uncover: • Strategic Pipeline Principles • Lessons derived from the Customer Engagement Model • The role of Culture. How does an environment which nurtures learning directly facilitate tangible success? Today we are joined by Seth Olsen, Country Manager for the Northern European region for MicroStrategy. His role includes leading GTM teams for six countries with focussed disciplines including sales, marketing, partner and business development. Seth champions the MEDDPICC playbook and also focuses on PG and net-new focus. In this Hunters and Unicorns podcast, Seth reflects on his pinnacle moments at high calibre playbook-centric companies such as MicroStrategy, Snowflake and Birst. Don’t miss it! Seth is a renowned and proven leader, with successes as both an individual contributor and as a senior leader. When discussing his journey as an Account Executive, Seth shares with us his average attainment of over 200%, including his best year which saw him achieve over 470% of his target. Seth also touches upon closing large seven-figure deals - The largest in excess of $4M! As a Senior Leader, Seth discusses how he rebuilt an underperforming region - over just three quarters, he transformed the results from 30% of the quarterly achievement to 210%. The period of transition between being a SDR for EMEA to being a Leader for the EMEA and APAC regions was a space for exponential learning and growth for Seth. He shares his lessons regarding people strategy, business tactics, quotas and targets whilst also making an impact on peoples’ careers. Seth also discusses his quest for operating in an environment where he can continuously learn more. Amidst numerous seven-figure deals, it was his thirst for knowledge that kept propelling forward his phenomenal career. In this insightful episode, Seth discusses what the future looks like for him at MicroStrategy. From a product perspective, with new products released moments ago to more coming out imminently, to their evolved GTM global strategy, Seth discusses the sophisticated style MicroStrategy will continue to add huge value to their clients moving forward.

Join Jason Eubanks, CRO of Harness, as he shares his rapid rise in sales leadership within the Playbook Community. Explore his journey from BMC to Meraki and the invaluable lessons learned along the way. Discover the art of aligning sales leadership with business executives, the importance of feedback iteration, and the key to harmonious growth and success in the industry.

Welcome to Hunters and Unicorns: The Playbook Universe. We’re here to showcase leaders within the Playbook Community and explore their formulas for success. We aim to uncover: · The Importance of value selling within the sales motion · How to focus more on real growth · The skills required to excel in the sales space Today we are joined by Pete Agresta, CRO at Nasuni. Pete is responsible for growing and scaling the revenue-generating organization for Nasuni including worldwide Sales and Solution Engineering, Channel Sales and Strategic Business Development. His notable achievements include being Vice President of Enterprise Sales, Americas for Pure Storage. Whilst there, Pete led a team that more than doubled the business to over $1B during his 4-year tenure. Prior to that, he was CRO for LookingGlass Cyber, where he helped recapitalize the company, acquired and commercialized a threat intel platform, and grew the business over 50%. In this Hunters and Unicorns episode, Pete shares with us his journey including the earlier stages where he spent a decade with Cisco Systems, which was pivotal in his career. He recalls fondly working closely with John Chambers and on some of the largest deals within the space at the time. As CEO of the company at the time, John’s influence on Pete was hugely significant. Stemming from his inherent curiosity, Pete also shared his chapter whereby he embarked on a career in Wall Street and how he transferred his sales skills into this different domain. Upon his return to the GTM space, Pete thrived at LookingGlass and then transitioned to Pure Storage. Pete shares with us the enterprise and business solutions lessons learned along the way. In this exciting episode, Pete also discusses the fantastic opportunity which presented itself with Nasuni and how his role contributes to the company innovating and disrupting the market.