Revenue Execution: Defining the Standard for Revenue Excellence

In this week’s episode of Founder’s Journey, Ross talks to Bar Geron, co-founder of Balance, the B2B eCommerce checkout platform. Bar met his now co-founder, Yoni Shuster, when they were both working at PayPal. Since he wanted to learn how to build things, Bar began (and ended) a couple of startups before he and Yoni landed on the concept that would become Balance – with the goal of turning the online B2B payment experience from painful to delightful. Listen to the full episode to hear about Bar’s insights and advice, including the importance of relationships between your founding team, getting it right before you scale & add new channels, and feeling comfortable with thinking long-term. About Bar:  Bar Geron is co-founder & CEO at Balance, YCombinator alum, and a proud Israeli. 🇮🇱 Balance was built to make B2B payment awesome for the B2B eCom space. Prior to Balance, Bar founded Q.AI, a data infrastructure company to solve bottlenecks to see a physician, and spent 4+ years in fintech including PayPal and high-growth startups.

In this week’s episode of From Vendorship to Partnership, Ross talks to Lisa Wallace, co-founder of Assemble. Assemble is a compensation management platform that enables companies to make strategic, equitable compensation decisions. Lisa started her career at a couple early-stage cybersecurity startups, where she and her now co-founder, Enrique Esclusa, were struck by how difficult it was to manage compensation even at a small company, and to ensure that everyone was being compensated fairly. That led them down the path to starting Assemble together. Listen to the full episode to hear about Lisa’s journey with Assemble. About Lisa: Lisa Wallace is a Co-Founder of Assemble. Assemble is a compensation management platform that helps companies make systematic compensation decisions to attract, motivate, and retain employees while eliminating inequitable pay. Prior to founding Assemble, Lisa served on the executive team of Abnormal Security where she was the first business leadership hire. She started her career as the first business hire at Expanse (acquired by Palo Alto Networks) and holds a B.S. from Stanford University.

In this week’s episode of From Vendorship to Partnership, Ross talks to Job van der Voort, CEO and co-founder of Remote. A neuroscientist in his past life, Job eventually landed as VP of Product at GitLab, which was ahead of the game in working fully remotely. He experienced firsthand the challenges that come with hiring employees around the world, and that led to him launching Remote as a solution. Listen to the full episode to hear about Remote’s fast growth and Job’s learnings along the way.

In this week’s episode of From Vendorship to Partnership, Ross talks to Kris Rudeegraap, CEO & co-founder of Sendoso. During his time as a salesperson at Talkdesk, Kris wanted to differentiate himself when building rapport with prospects and customers. He’d send handwritten notes and quirky gifts from Amazon, and his prospects loved it – but it wasn’t scalable. So he set about building a solution himself. Sendoso is now the leading sending platform and integrates with dozens of marketing, sales, and operations tools. Listen to learn about Kris’ journey building and scaling Sendoso, including: Validating the MVP How he got his first “real” customers The importance of recruiting early

In this week’s episode of From Vendorship to Partnership, Ross talks to Gil Allouche, the founder of Metadata! As a software engineer turned data-driven B2B marketer, Gil’s technical background fueled his idea of using AI and data to laser-target marketing. After sharing the concept with a group of CMOs who then all wanted to work with him, Gil knew he was onto something. He officially changed his LinkedIn title to “Founder” and Metadata was born! Watch the full episode to learn: The importance of building & selling in tandem Why founders should sell Metadata’s growth & what comes next

In this episode of From Vendorship to Partnership podcast, Ross interviews Pete Kazanjy, Founder of Atrium, a data-driven sales management platform that empowers sales managers to improve team performance. After Pete’s previous startup was acquired he assumed going to a larger company that they’d have sales and GTM processes fine-tuned and instrumented, but realized that wasn’t the case. After many conversations he realized the problem was widespread: there wasn’t an easy way to use data to build a scalable GTM process. There was too much math and manual setup required, and sales leaders were relying on sales ops or other departments to collect that data. With passion for early stage GTM, he started Atrium. In this episode Pete and Ross chat about: How to win your first 10 customers and the importance of customer interviews Tips and resources for great customer discovery and building a customer advisory board The problem with NPS and looking at product usage to help provide a more holistic view of customer experience

In episode 3 of the From Vendorship to Partnership podcast, Ross interviews Alexa Grabell, CEO and Co-founder of Pocus, a product-led sales platform. Pocus helps sales teams harness product usage data without relying on engineering, so they can prioritize the best opportunities. Alexa saw a need for something like Pocus while leading sales strategy & operations at DataMiner, where she built DIY solutions internally to provide sales with the data they needed. Then, while at Stanford’s business school, she dove deep into the customer discovery process, and Pocus was born. This is a great episode for very early-stage founders or those who are just getting started with their idea! Alexa and Ross discuss: The importance of customer discovery How to prioritize what you build Those critical early hires Enjoying the journey, not just the milestones

In this very first episode of the Vendorship to Partnership, Ross interviews Scratchpad CEO and Co-Founder Pouyan Salehi. A serial entrepreneur, Pouyan draws on his deep expertise sharing what he’s learned from starting two companies creating software for sales teams. Pouyan and Ross cover a wide range of topics about the world of building a B2B SaaS company: ✔ How Scratchpad sourced their first batch of customers ✔ Why they opted measure user market fit before product market fit (and the difference) ✔ The evolution and nuances of product market fit ✔ Transitioning from doing everything yourself to letting go and working ON the business

In the second episode of the From Vendorship to Partnership podcast, Ross interviews Reprise Co-CEO and Co-Founder Bryan Stevenson. Throughout Bryan’s two decades of experience as a software engineer, leader, and co-founder at several startups, he struggled with the same problem: a disconnect between what is needed to sell a product and what is needed to actually satisfy customers. So he started Reprise, a tool that enables sales and marketing teams to easily create interactive demos and product tours. Now, a year and a half into the Reprise journey, Bryan and Ross talk about: Identifying the right early objectives for your startup Obsessing over finding product-market fit What’s happening at fast-growing Reprise Advice to Bryan’s younger self (maybe he shouldn’t have shut down that startup…)