Uncharted Podcast

Andrew Davies is the CMO of Paddle, a payments infrastructure platform for high-growth SaaS companies serving over 3000 customers. He has more than 20 years of experience in start-ups ranging from leading global demand, advisory and consultancy, and even teaching.

Tony Barbagallo is the VP of Marketing at DuploCloud, a company that automates the most tedious tasks of DevOps. Prior to DuploCloud, Tony served as the CEO of Caringo where he was previously spearheading marketing. Prior to that, he held a variety of roles across startups and large enterprises in product management, sales, marketing and engineering. A graduate of Syracuse University, Tony currently resides in the Bay Area.

About our speaker: Shensi Ding is the co-founder and CEO of Merge, a company that offers a unified API to add hundreds of integrations to your product. Prior to founding Merge, Shensi served as the Chief of Staff at Expanse (acquired by Palo Alto Networks) and worked in investment banking roles at Credit Suisse and Silver Lake. A graduate of Columbia University, Shensi currently resides in and works out of New York City.

Our speaker this week is Sean Ericson, where we discussed the following, the founder of Abloom GTM, a sales development advisory firm that architects SDR and RevOps motions. Before Abloom, he provided foundational consulting services for 30+ startups like Clearbit, ConductorOne, Semgrep and Dolby.io as a Partner at InsideScale, and was a founding SDR at Talkdesk. Sean holds a Master's in International Development from the London School of Economics and is currently building a SaaS product for nurses. This Week's Episode is Brought to you with Netsuite. Get a personalized demo at Netsuite.com/Scale - that is netsuite.cm slash scale.

This week's guest is James Evans, the co-founder and CEO of CommandBar, a user assistance software company that powers chat and proactive help interfaces for hundreds of software businesses and millions of end users. Before CommandBar, he worked in private equity investing at Bain Capital and studied CS at Princeton. Here’s a summary of the key points from the interview with James Evans on the Uncharted podcast: Introduction & Background: James Evans is the founder of Command Bar, and he shares an interesting fact about his past: he played bass in a heavy metal band in high school. He has an impressive educational and professional background, including attending Princeton and working at Bain before founding his company. Family and Personal Drive: James mentions his parents are immigrants (his mother from Iran and his father from the UK) and both are business school professors. He didn’t feel typical immigrant pressure to succeed but did feel a self-imposed pressure to do something meaningful as a founder, influenced by his upbringing and his parents' careers. Path to Entrepreneurship: James’s first job was in finance, but he always aspired to be a founder. His first startup was an early-stage crypto company, which didn’t succeed, leading him to start Command Bar. He emphasizes the importance of choosing to work on something meaningful rather than starting a company for the sake of it. Challenges and Pivots: James talks about the challenges of knowing when to pivot or move on from a project. He shares his experience pivoting from his first startup to Command Bar and later adjusting Command Bar’s strategy post-Series A funding. He advises founders to be adaptable and willing to reassess their strategies, even after raising funds. Mindset and Resilience: James discusses the importance of resilience and the inevitability of facing highs and lows as a founder. He notes that experiences that seem devastating in the moment often feel less significant over time. He emphasizes that the only fatal mistakes in a startup are giving up or running out of money. Command Bar’s Market Position: Command Bar operates in two categories: B2B chatbots and digital adoption tools, and they are exploring the creation of a new category called "user-assisted software." James highlights the balance between creating new categories and fitting into existing markets for buyer recognition. Sales and Enablement: The company focuses on empathy and genuine curiosity in sales, prioritizing understanding customers’ problems over simply selling products. James discusses the challenges of sales enablement in a multi-product context and the importance of storytelling in sales. Advice to Young Entrepreneurs: James advises making decisions quickly and not overthinking minor details. He believes the best action is often to make a decision and move on rather than getting stuck in analysis. Conclusion: The host and James discuss the importance of taking decisive action and the value of having conversations with more experienced entrepreneurs to avoid getting stuck in decision-making

On this episode we delve into the inspiring journey of Tim Schumacher, the CEO and co-founder of SaaS Group. Tim shares his entrepreneurial adventures, from coding games in his teens to scaling successful companies and becoming a key player in SaaS. Discover his insights on making acquisitions founder-friendly, the importance of long-term vision, and his passion for climate tech. This conversation is filled with valuable lessons for anyone interested in entrepreneurship, investment, and sustainable business practices.  

Karl Sun is co-founder and chairman at Lucid Software, a leading provider of visual collaboration software. With Lucid’s products—Lucidchart, Lucidspark and Lucidscale—teams can turn ideas into reality, clarify complexity, and collaborate visually, no matter where they're located. Prior to Lucid, Karl spent several years at Google, starting and leading business development at Google’s China office, opening Google’s patent department and setting patent strategy, and leading Google’s investments in advanced wind and battery technologies. Karl holds a B.S. and M.S. in EECS from MIT, an M.S. from MIT in Technology and Policy, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He has been honored as a Utah Business CEO of the Year and EY Entrepreneur of the Year. Connect with Karl at https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlsun/ This week's episode is brought to you with the support of Netsuite.

This Week's Episode is Jim Yu, Founder and Chairman of BridgeEdge. Jim is the founder and exec chair of BrightEdge. As CEO of BrightEdge, Jim helped create a whole new category in digital marketing software and built BrightEdge into the enterprise market leader with $100M+ in revenue, profitable, and 500 employees. It is used by 57% of Fortune 100 companies and nine out of the top ten international digital agencies. BrightEdge is backed by Altos Ventures, Battery Ventures, Intel, and Insight Partners.As the global leader in enterprise organic search, content, and digital automation, it empowers marketers to transform online content into business results, such as traffic, conversions, and revenue. It is powered by a sophisticated deep-learning engine and contains the industry's most extensive data set. Its all-in-one platform provides vital market insights and business intelligence based on secure, compliant, and robust sets of first-party, real-time, and historical data.Jim is a founder, digital marketing expert, and speaks at conferences such as Share, Dreamforce, Adobe Summit, as well as Search Engine Expo and Search Engine Strategies worldwide. In addition, Jim is an industry pundit with featured columns in Entrepreneur, Fortune, ClickZ, Search Engine Land and Huffington Post. Jim is widely recognized as the driving force behind enterprise content performance marketing technology, having built the largest and most widely adopted platform which is in use by over 20,000 digital marketing professionals across 8,400 brands around the globe.Jim holds an MBA from Stanford University, a Master's of Engineering from the University of Virginia, and a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science from the University of South Dakota.

Experienced entrepreneur Poya Osgouei shares insights on common mistakes when scaling into the US market, emphasizing documentation, automation, and the immigrant mindset. Practical tips include using free tools, seeking feedback, and persisting through challenges.

Sid is the Head of Studio at Forum VC, a venture studio with a goal of building 8 AI companies per year. Prior to joining Forum VC, Sid started Broca, an AI software that generates ad copy and other forms of marketing content. He has also helped dozens of SAAS companies with their growth. Some companies he has worked with include Thinkific, LemonStand, Gorgias, Plato, Typeform, and ClickUp This episode is brought to you with the support of Oracle Netsuite, learn more at netsuite.com/uncharted