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"When You Take VC Funding, the Clock Often Starts Ticking" Entrepreneur Jack Smith on Exiting Vungle

"আপনি যখন ভিসি ফান্ডিং নেন, ঘড়ি প্রায়শই টিক টিক শুরু করে" উদ্যোক্তা জ্যাক স্মিথ এক্সিটিং ভাংলে

„Wenn man VC-Finanzierung annimmt, beginnt die Uhr oft zu ticken“ – Unternehmer Jack Smith über den Ausstieg aus Vungle

"Cuando se obtiene financiación de capital de riesgo, el tiempo a menudo empieza a correr" El empresario Jack Smith habla sobre su salida de Vungle

"Lorsque vous prenez un financement en capital-risque, le temps commence souvent à tourner" L'entrepreneur Jack Smith à propos de sa sortie de Vungle

"जब आप वी.सी. फंडिंग लेते हैं, तो अक्सर समय की गति बढ़ने लगती है" उद्यमी जैक स्मिथ ने वुंगल से बाहर निकलने पर कहा

「VC から資金を調達すると、時間が刻々と動き始めることが多い」起業家ジャック・スミスが Vungle からの撤退について語る

"VC 자금 지원을 받으면 시계가 똑딱거리기 시작하는 경우가 많습니다." 기업가 Jack Smith, Vungle 종료

“Quando você recebe financiamento de capital de risco, o relógio geralmente começa a contar” Empreendedor Jack Smith sobre a saída do Vungle

«Когда вы берете венчурное финансирование, часы часто начинают тикать» Предприниматель Джек Смит о выходе из Vungle

Girişimci Jack Smith, Vungle'dan Çıkış Konusunda "VC Finansmanı Aldığınızda Zaman Sıklıkla İşlemeye Başlıyor"

"Khi bạn nhận tiền từ VC, đồng hồ thường bắt đầu tích tắc" Doanh nhân Jack Smith khi rời khỏi Vũngle

“当你接受风险投资时，时钟通常开始滴答作响”企业家杰克·史密斯谈退出 Vungle

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and His Powerful Billionaire Friends

মার্কিন সুপ্রিম কোর্টের বিচারপতি ক্লারেন্স থমাস এবং তার শক্তিশালী বিলিয়নেয়ার বন্ধুরা

Clarence Thomas, Richter am Obersten Gerichtshof der USA, und seine mächtigen milliardenschweren Freunde

El juez de la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos, Clarence Thomas, y sus poderosos amigos multimillonarios

Clarence Thomas, juge de la Cour suprême des États-Unis, et ses puissants amis milliardaires

अमेरिकी सुप्रीम कोर्ट के न्यायाधीश क्लेरेंस थॉमस और उनके शक्तिशाली अरबपति मित्र

米国最高裁判所判事クラレンス・トーマスと彼の強力な億万長者の友人たち

미국 대법원 판사 클라렌스 토마스(Clarence Thomas)와 그의 막강한 억만장자 친구들

O juiz da Suprema Corte dos EUA, Clarence Thomas, e seus poderosos amigos bilionários

Судья Верховного суда США Кларенс Томас и его влиятельные друзья-миллиардеры

ABD Yüksek Mahkemesi Yargıcı Clarence Thomas ve Güçlü Milyarder Arkadaşları

Thẩm phán Tòa án Tối cao Hoa Kỳ Clarence Thomas và những người bạn tỷ phú đầy quyền lực của ông

美国最高法院法官克拉伦斯·托马斯和他有权势的亿万富翁朋友

So, you realized that “equity and capital” fundraising consultants tend to charge WAY less than almost any broker-dealer you could find (the industry average is around 1-4%) but they won’t take a percentage, and they request substantial upfront payment without any guarantee. If you’re thinking, “Why can’t I just give them a piece of the pie? It’s better money for them, and I can pay if we close; no strings attached. Everyone wins!” Then you’re not alone. For the finance nerds that find their way here: Fundraising consultants in equity, debt, real estate, and other securitized spaces can’t do it, ethically, at least for transactions in the United States or transactions involving US-based investors, FINRA member firms, or US-based fiduciaries. For those not immersed in the depths of finance jargon: Simply put any form of contingency-based payment, commission, finder’s fee, success fee, cut, “slice”, referral bonus, or other names for a “piece of the pie” is off the limits for fundraising consultants—save for those with valid FINRA membership and the corresponding FINRA Series License(s). If you are caught taking that piece of the pie by FINRA or the SEC, they will (likely) make an example of you. Securities don’t just mean tokenized assets, equity, or derivatives. Debt-based funding rounds are still considered securities in many cases—debt is MORE LIKELY to be considered a security if the term of the loan or note exceeds five years, further increasing at the ten-year note mark. Who Determines What Makes It a “Piece of the Pie?” Ultimately, the ecurities and xchange ommission ( ) and ancial egulatory uthority ( ) work together to make these determinations. For a simple litmus test, your consultant may be at risk of taking a piece of the pie if: S E C SEC FIN R A FINRA They don’t have a for your efforts other than a percentage of the transaction. stable, realistic cost basis They or closes successfully. only get paid if the funding reaches a certain milestone This is commonly referred to as “ Basis” Contingency They that you raised. only get paid based on the amount of “Attributable Funding” They on “commissions”. only get paid They before any checks are cut. only get paid a small portion of your price You OR offer to pay them “out of the first check” They if the event isn’t successful. offer a refund or guarantee that you will receive a refund For any reason, except something like on their part. gross negligence Expert fundraising consultants know that generally speaking, any terms like the following may put their neck on the line with regulators in the US: “ ” You only get paid if… “I want a or you will offer us a refund…” guarantee that you will get us funded “I can pay you a small percentage upfront, but I want to know that .” you have skin in the game “ the first check is cut.” You get paid after etc. As a result, most (legally operating) equity, securities, and capital , generally based on the amount of time, effort, and specialized knowledge needed to do the job. fundraising consultants normally charge flat hourly fees or a per-project basis Larger raises often mean more moving parts and added complexity. Some SEC registration exemptions actually won’t allow businesses to raise more than a specific dollar amount per year. For example: ulation ( ) Reg A Reg A Tier 1 ($20m limit per 12-month period) or Tier 2 ($75m limit per 12-month period) ulation rowd unding ( ) ($5 million per 12-month period) Reg C F Reg CF A lot of questions ultimately boil down to the question: Are Fundraising Consultants “Unregistered Broker-Dealers”? The answer is: No, not within a normal scope of work. We provide due diligence for the investors. don’t We manage transactions. don’t We meet with investors on your behalf. don't We fiduciaries or escrow providers (though ethical consultants follow fiduciary best practices, generally speaking). aren’t Why Can Broker-Dealers Charge Success Fees While Fundraising Consultants Cannot? Broker-dealers have special licenses, strict protocols, and specific bookkeeping requirements to ensure that no information falls through the cracks. They also have personal information, bonding insurance, and other things at risk when they are managing transactions. That means there are specific standards and rules they have to follow in order to be broker-dealers. In fact, (including registration-exempt transactions, such as a Reg D issuance) from the time an investor sends it and the moment the receiving party claims it will need special licenses. any party that touches the money from securities transactions . Following the “Silver Leaf Decision,” brokers cannot pay out referral fees if they are contingent on a deal closing. These fees will be considered “transaction-based compensation” and subject to regulation under Section 15 of the Securities Act of 1934, with very few exceptions National Adjudicatory Council (NAC) on June 29, 2019 Complaint No. 2014042606902 “ ” The Silver Leaf Decision “The Hearing Panel also found that Silver Leaf paid transaction-based compensation to nonmember brokers, and failed to establish and maintain a supervisory system reasonably designed to prevent those payments.” This basically means that brokers aren’t allowed to share their success fee with anyone who is involved in the transaction. The SEC has since proposed a series of potential exemptions, based on the concept of “Finders” but has not published any concrete guidance yet. Here’s for “Tier 1” and “Tier 2” Finders. more information about proposed exclusions To be clear, Fundraising Consultants aren’t “Finders.” They may participate in investor relationship management via chats or emails but do so with a clear disclosure that they are working on behalf of the company they are engaged with. Finders are expected to be people that are outside of the company in most cases. It’s not uncommon for larger companies (Series B and so on) to hire an interim CEO or CFO to lead fundraisers. These folks are “insiders” and are expected to lead investor meetings and often take a small piece of the pie. They are also limited to raising with ONLY ONE company per calendar year. This is a special exemption used by companies that are looking to raise and can afford to pay a full year’s executive salary PLUS an equity-based compensation bonus. Fundraising consultants that engage in practices such as charging success fees or requesting other “transaction-based” compensation packages are taking actions that risk placing themselves in the category. “Non-member broker” At best, this can trigger cease-and-desist orders from FINRA. In the worst case, the consultant and their client may be at risk of a civil action or criminal action (in the case of fraud or other criminal activity.) Clients that have raised funds, in exchange for success fees that are paid to nonmember brokers may also be forced to rescind their offering. This requires the “issuer” to repay all investments from all investors 100%. In many cases, businesses have been forced to rescind an offering and ALSO pay interest on the funds. Banks (specifically bancorps) often hold “money transmitter” and “Money Service Business (MSB)” licenses on a state-by-state basis—usually alongside other requirements. If you’ve heard about crypto projects getting regulated in the US, it’s mostly been about them getting approved for money transmitters and/or MSB licenses. Broker-dealers have several more stringent restrictions on what they are able to do, as compared to fundraising consultants. For example, a private placement transaction may be exempt from SEC filing requirements ( ) A broker-dealer will still be subject to certain parts of Section 15 of the Securities Act of 1933. you still have to file Form D under Regulation D exemptions. It’s worth noting that only a select few circumstances will allow a fundraising consultant to legally participate in connecting investors to businesses. Part of these circumstances include: In most cases, broker-dealers are bonded to an investment banking job. They normally require a minimum term commitment in order to accept the risk and vouch for Series 7 hopefuls. You (Series 7, etc.) without a FINRA-regulated firm backing you. cannot even for becoming a licensed broker-dealer take the tests Interested parties without having the backing of a FINRA member firm. The SIE is a prerequisite for all Series exams. are able to sit for their Securities Industry Essentials (SIE) exam Series-Licensed Broker-Dealers (BDs) Licensed Broker-Dealers are involved in structuring deals, as well as the range of services provided by fundraising consultants. A few added responsibilities include specialized marketing channels and relationships with investment banks. BDs may also pre-purchase and sell a client’s securities (unless they are restricted securities.) Most of the time, BDs come from an investment banking background, meaning that, commonly, they have a Rolodex of potentially relevant contacts. Most BDs are also limited to selling general securities. The term “General Securities” typically covers corporate finance instruments such as: Equity Corporate bonds (debt) Mezzanine Financing (debt with equity-based collateral) Etc. Other relevant licenses include the licenses. If you’re in doubt about whether or not they have legit licenses, use FINRA’s BrokerCheck site. Series 7 and Series 24 FINRA Number (CRD Number): Central Registration Depository FINRA BrokerCheck If they aren’t listed or don’t have at least one of the following licenses, be aware that they may not know they are working outside the bounds of the law. Series 7 Series 8 (these are no longer issued) Series 9 & 10 (This combination has replaced Series 8), or Series 24 Equity and Capital Fundraising Consultants: Scope of Work Fundraising consultants have a specific limitation on their scope of work. They can assist in creating collateral, reviewing materials, and conducting investor outreach & relationship management activities. Fundraising Consultants can NOT commit to any deals or offers on behalf of their clients UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Further, fundraising consultants or investment advisory activities, such as recommending their clients’ offerings to non-accredited investors, outside the scope of any related exemption, such as Reg D 506(b/c). should not be present in due diligence activities Many fundraising consultants prefer to maintain exclusivity by involving accredited investors in their clients’ raises. only Here are a few things that bar fundraising consultants from taking their piece of the pie: Securities Act of 1933 Section 12 (Broker-Dealers, Control Persons, Registered Persons) Section 15 FINRA Rule Section 2000 For example, (Payments to Unregistered Persons) Rule 2040 (Transactions With Customers) Subsection 2100 (Suitability) Rule 2111 (Communications and Disclosures) Subsection 2200 (Communications with the Public) Rule 2210 In short, between the steep pitfalls that come with accepting any form of performance-based bonus, fundraising consultants generally prefer to stick with hourly-based or per-project compensation structures. So Why Would Anyone Hire a Fundraising Consultant? We often come with more deeply specialized skills, tend to communicate more effectively with the C-level, and seldom send associates (that we don’t have) to do the work for us. Beyond the skills or preferences you may otherwise have, fundraising consultants are, generally, MUCH cheaper to collaborate with. You might pay a fundraising consultant $25k-100k per month, but they tend to rely on much faster workflows and lines of communication. The deal is usually done in 30-90 days. If you raise a Series A at a normal $2-4m deal against a $10-$20m valuation, expect to pay a broker-dealer: 4-8% of funds raised (1-4% is normal on deals that exceed $5-$10m raised); AND 1-3% of offered equity, whether outright or as “warrants” at a steep discount. That 4-8% may amount to $160k-$320k in addition to the equity you paid to “sweeten the pot.” Deals can also take up to a year or more to close. Fundraising consultants are very similar to BDs in their scope of work, but generally for a much more modest payoff and in a much shorter timeframe. Fundraising consultants usually step away once the contracts are closed for your raise, so you only pay them for the term of the engagement.

What The F*CK Do You Mean Fundraising Consultants Can't Take a Percentage?

F*CK আপনি কি বলতে চাচ্ছেন তহবিল সংগ্রহের পরামর্শদাতারা শতাংশ নিতে পারে না?

Was zum Teufel meinen Sie damit, dass Fundraising-Berater keinen Prozentsatz annehmen können?

¿Qué diablos quiere decir que los consultores de recaudación de fondos no pueden tomar un porcentaje?

Qu'est-ce que vous voulez dire que les consultants en collecte de fonds ne peuvent pas prendre de pourcentage ?

एफ * सीके क्या आपका मतलब है कि धन उगाहने वाले सलाहकार प्रतिशत नहीं ले सकते?

The F*CK とは、資金調達コンサルタントがパーセンテージを取得できないことを意味しますか?

F*CK 기금 모금 컨설턴트가 일정 비율을 차지할 수 없다는 게 무슨 뜻인가요?

O que diabos você quer dizer com consultores de arrecadação de fundos não podem obter uma porcentagem?

Bağış Toplama Danışmanlarının Yüzde Alamaması Ne Demek İstiyorsunuz?

Ý bạn là cái quái gì Các chuyên gia tư vấn gây quỹ không thể lấy một tỷ lệ phần trăm?

F*CK 你是什么意思筹款顾问不能拿百分比？

BUENOS AYRES AND ST. FE

The has long been considered a fairly light and simple solution for developers to use to create robust and creative web applications. In fact, that’s as true now as it has ever been as the past few versions of PHP have made the language more appealing than ever. PHP programming language Like many other languages, PHP has the ability to take advantage of the power of , and it’s actually a pretty simple and straightforward process. MariaDB But talk, text, in this case, is cheap. So to demonstrate this I’ve created a called to manage contacts. simple PHP web application Rolodex In this article, I’m going to highlight, from a high level, some of the fundamental details of using PHP to connect to and communicate with a . Everything I’ll be exploring is based on the code for the application, and if you’d like to dive into the code you can check it out . MariaDB database Rolodex here Preparing the Database Before jumping into the PHP code for the application it’s important to note that it uses a single database called . rolodex CREATE DATABASE `rolodex`; The database contains a single table, , that is used to store basic information. rolodex contacts CREATE TABLE `rolodex`.`contacts` (
  `id` INT(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `name` VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
  `age` INT(3) NOT NULL,
  `email` VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
  PRIMARY KEY  (`id`)
); The SQL necessary to run the Rolodex application can be found in the . schema.sql file If you don't have an instance of MariaDB up and running yet you can find more information on how to get started in this . MariaDB Quickstart Guide Configuring the Application To facilitate the use of a MariaDB database within the Rolodex PHP application, I’ve created a new file called that contains the configuration settings and database connection object that can be reused across PHP pages. Connecting to and communicating with an underlying MariaDB database is facilitated by the . config.php mysqli PHP extension <?php
// Basic connection settings
$databaseHost = '<host_address>';
$databaseUsername = '<user_name>';
$databasePassword = '******';
$databaseName = 'rolodex';

// Connect to the database
$mysqli = mysqli_connect($databaseHost, $databaseUsername, $databasePassword, $databaseName); Within the config.php file I’ve started by defining variables that hold the host address, username, password, and default database that are used to create a new , which contains a variety of configuration options that you can use to tailor to your environment. mysqli connection object Executing SQL Using, and reusing, the connection within is as easy as including it within a PHP code block on another PHP page. mysqli config.php <?php
// Include the database connection file
include_once("config.php");
...
?> Then, with an established connection, you have the ability to use a plethora of capabilities from the mysqli extension, including executing queries using . mysqli_query Selecting data <?php
// Include the database connection file
include_once("config.php");

// Fetch contacts (in descending order)
$result = mysqli_query($mysqli, "SELECT * FROM contacts ORDER BY id DESC"); 
?> Selecting contacts using mysqli_query Or, in the case that you need to handle dynamically inserted parameter values, you can use . mysqli_prepare Inserting data $stmt = $mysqli->prepare("INSERT INTO contacts (name,age,email) VALUES(?, ?, ?)"); Inserting contacts using mysqli_prepare Updating data $stmt = $mysqli->prepare("UPDATE contacts SET name=?, age=?, email=? WHERE id=?");
$stmt->bind_param("sisi", $name, $age, $email, $id);
$stmt->execute(); Updating contacts using mysqli_prepare Deleting data $stmt = $mysqli->prepare("DELETE FROM contacts WHERE id=?");
$stmt->bind_param("i", $id);
$stmt->execute(); Deleting contacts using mysqli_prepare As you can see, getting started with PHP and MariaDB is easy, but we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible. If you’d like to see for yourself what else is possible with PHP and MariaDB, start by checking out the full source code for the Rolodex application in the new . PHP Quickstart GitHub repository Learn More And if you’d like to learn even more about what’s possible with MariaDB be sure to check out the and the new . There you can find much more completely open-source content just like this spanning a variety of other technologies, use cases, and even programming languages. Developer Hub MariaDB Developer Code Central GitHub organization You can also dive even deeper into MariaDB capabilities in the . official MariaDB documentation And, as always, MariaDB is deeply rooted in open-source and would be nothing without their awesome community! If you’d like to help contribute directly to MariaDB you can find them on , send feedback directly to their Developer Relations team at , or join the conversation in the new ! GitHub developers@mariadb.com MariaDB Community Slack Happy coding! Also Published Here

How to Quickly Get Started With PHP and MariaDB

This article is for all my friends and acquaintances, co-workers and aspiring product managers, mentees and anyone else who has ever asked me — “How do you get your speaking engagements?” — with the implicit inquiry around how can they get the same. What people don’t realize is that to get invitations to speaking engagements or to sit at panel discussions or to get requests for interviews does not happen overnight (Disclaimer — I’m not tooting my own horn here; I’m not even a tiny speck amongst the people who earn serious money out of these engagements or get invited to the most talked-about events & conferences in the country). Just as you don’t ask a surgeon how did they manage to snag a free parking space in the most competitive garage at the hospital, so too you don’t want to sound ignorant by asking someone point blank on how did they get invited to a give a talk at an industry [ ]. insert : event, conference, meetup, workshop .. For getting invited to these engagements is a secondary outcome of painstakingly building a personal brand over several years. My Medium blog is a prime example of this brand. Hence the correct question to ask is — “How do I build a Personal Brand just as you have?” And I’m more than happy to answer that. When I started writing on Medium about technology and product management primarily, I didn’t really have any experience of writing “business” articles beyond the business case studies, pitch decks, presentations and user stories I used to create at my job. I was still learning about product management back then after being a product manager for a couple of years. I started following various product leaders who had had an early start in their product careers, who were very good at their jobs and had built a following of readers/collaborators by extensively writing articles about product management and various other topics. They shared their learnings and insights over the years, especially things that they learned at their jobs, analysis on industry trends, deep dives into their favourite products, reviews about the recent books they’ve read or their journey through an MBA program. And over the years, they had inadvertently become leaders and experts in their fields. Organizers wanted them to come speak at their conferences, hosts wanted them to grace various podcasts and students wanted them to deliver talks at schools and colleges. And I understood. It was not about how do I get to be the next interviewee on a podcast or a key note speaker at an industry event, but about how do I build my personal brand, sustainably, around things that I love to do, enjoy and share. Write (or create content) Thus I started writing. Also because writing was one thing that came naturally to me. There were people out there who built their personal brand through networking, talking (eg. starting a podcast, short videos), volunteering or channeling other hobbies such as photography and film (eg. YouTube videos). However, I’m an introvert, and I wanted to share my story, my findings and my work through words and sentences. I thoroughly enjoyed Product Management, and I thought why not write about it? I even wrote a about the psychological void (and the resulting frustration) between engineers, designers & product managers in 2016. controversial article It began slowly, initially with little or no attention, with one article here, another thought there. However having consistently written over a period of four years now, I guess I’ve accumulated a mass of thought material that helps me to pitch ideas quickly, point potential stakeholders to my “portfolio” or showcase my wares on social media to get some eyeballs. I’m speaking at the this fall because one of their organizers came across my ‘ ’ article and wanted me to get involved! Re-Work conference Ethics of using AI in the Financial/Banking industry Thus began my journey towards building a personal brand. And there were a host of other things that helped me along this tumultuous journey (by the way, my personal brand is still a work in progress even now) — Finesse your story The first item in my agenda was to create my brand story. Just as the curiosity of an Atlantic pharmacist led him to experiment with a distinctive tasting soft drink which got baptized as Coca-Cola, so too I had to tell (and believe) my story around my multi-geographical experience across India, Dubai, Singapore and North America, how serendipity plucked me from a marketing role at a financial betting startup in Malaysia to a product role at a publishing house in Singapore, and how the failure of my fledgling P2P startup company (that connected expats and home-chefs with home-cooked meals) led me to migrate to Canada. This brand story not only helped me control my narrative in my job interviews, but also helped me craft a compelling value proposition for myself — adaptable across work cultures, quick learner in fast paced environments, curious to learn and absorb, fearless to conquer new horizons. My talk on was the result of me reflecting on my story, finessing it over the years and spouting it pat down whenever the need arose. Fearless Product Management Network Networking makes me anxious. Being an introvert is another major reason for me not wanting to be around large groups of over-eager people. However networking is a two way street — you’ll receive as much as you’re ready to give. I had networked a bunch during my B-school days, however hadn’t really cared to form new connections after that. Until 2016 that is, when I tagged along with my friend to a major networking event —pure networking, no talks nor panel discussions— filled with confident people schmoozing with their small shrimp cocktails and martinis, overstuffed in straight cut jackets, balancing on stripy sandals, talking tech, finance, venture capital, investments and the next big startup. I was overwhelmed. I sat at a stone deck feigning nonchalance, deep down dearly wanting someone to come and talk to me. It wasn’t the best night for me as you can guess (my friend had conveniently left me to pursue his own networking agenda), and there have been other sub-par networking nights where I just didn’t want to speak to anyone, expend time and energy on small-talk. However there have been other events where I’ve made an effort, introduced myself, listened to what the other person had to say, smiled more, made some connections (even though networking was the last thing on my mind; I’d have rather got home and curled up with some comfort food on a cold winter night) and added some relevant contacts to my digital rolodex. Networking has helped me experiment with my brand story and narrative, test it in real life and meet some amazing new people who’d potentially invite me to collaborate on a project — I started on my with a person I met at a networking night and received an invite to speak at an through someone I met at a social innovation networking event. sustainability project event My articles on networking & . here here Ask Networking is a substantial part of building your personal brand, however shamelessness is another. The number of times I’ve asked organizers if they wanted any speakers at their events (at the start of my brand building journey) is hilarious. I got a few breaks early on, which were disasters — one was a product talk about innovation at a local tech event and another was a product pitch at a local startup competition. I was nervous, maybe not prepared enough, didn’t know how to coolly talk to the audience and laugh at myself if I stuttered a word. However that ‘asking’ became less frequent as I moved up my career ladder, gave more talks (even internal company ones) to build up my confidence and started getting invited upfront for speaking engagements without me having to ask. Find your Niche I had a personal (Blogger) blog on travel and lifestyle way back in 2013. It was all about the 10 things you need in your bag, my travel story to a secluded beach in southern India, the delish chicken rice meal I had in Malaysia and how I celebrated the Hungry Ghost festival in Singapore. It was fun and carefree, but after sometime, it felt too personal. When I started writing again in 2016, I wanted to create content around what I was an expert on and what I found comfortable sharing with an audience. I chose product management and technology since I was living the job day in and day out, and much later segued into finance, AI, leadership, innovation, team building and more. I’m still trying to find my niche and evolve as I learn new things, however my holistic content around technology, product & innovation, I believe, has found a small audience or has the potential to a future large audience! Creating content around your niche works wonders because that’s what you enjoy doing, are passionate about and get inspiration from. And that’s how you build an audience who might want to hear you speak on a stage because you’ve built a community around you on mutually relevant subjects, themes & topics. Fill up those speaker forms I still fill up those speaker forms on conference websites and there is absolutely nothing wrong about that! One conference (amongst several others) that has alluded me year over year is the annual Women In Product (WIP) conference. The kind Elizabeth Ames (Founder of WIP) sends me a long sincerely apologetic email every year, informing me about how she truly appreciates me applying to speak at her conference and about how it was a damn tough choice, but how my proposal was not a fit for the programming for this year’s conference. I do God hope this is just a generic email blast to all the non-invitations ( ). NOTE : I’m just being a prat! What that long winded rant really meant was that I love WIP and I so want to speak at your conference! Building your personal brand has it’s own charm — you get to showcase your abilities, your vulnerabilities, your authenticity and your story. So don’t worry about those speaking engagements, create your trademark, and let those gigs come to you.

Get More Speaking Engagements By Building Your Personal Brand - Here's How

How to Launch and Sell a Fintech Startup in Less Than 4 Years —Interview, Ankit Singh

Every product or company goes through a similar set of steps on the path to success. In previous posts, we’ve looked at different aspects of going to market — from launching to building and measuring a funnel to pricing — with some ideas about how to measure things and know when you’re off track. In this post, we’ll take a step back and walk through all the stages of GTM that you’ll typically experience. Programming notes: this post is n in a series of indeterminate length on GTM topics mainly for startup people, mainly leadership, mainly coming from non-GTM backgrounds. There’s a list at the end. Going To Market What did you make? Who is it for? How does it make their life better? How do you find them? How do they find you? What will get them to try or buy? How much do they have to spend on you? How will you sell it? How many deals do you need to close or users do you need to acquire in a month, a quarter, a year? What is your (real and desired) sales motion? < — All your answers to these questions are only put to the test and can ultimately (for a while) only be arrived at by going to market. Going to market is the sense mechanism of your business. It’s how you know whether you even have a business and provides the only relevant* input to developing that business. Everyone thinks it’s great, but no one wants to pay for it? That’s not a business. A niche of users in the 100s loves it and will pay a small amount for it, but no one else cares? That’s not a business. A niche of users in the 100s loves it and will pay a very big number for it. That might be a business. Millions use the free version and 10s of 1000s pay for premium features such that revenues are growing faster than costs? That might be a business. * Raising money from VCs is not a substitute for going to market. Someone’s, even an expert’s, opinion of whether you might have a business is not a substitute for the market reacting to your proposed business by giving you money (or growth) or rejecting you. Stages of Going To Market What follows is from a B2B angle. B2C is analogous, but the mechanics can be wildly different depending on whether you’re growth and indirect revenue (like from advertising) predicated or direct revenue (user = customer) predicated. There are many models, but this one is mine. :) Discover Problem There’s something out there that’s broken, someone who’s needs are poorly or not served, or just something that could be so much better if someone just built ___. This is where it all starts. And it’s usually . You have the issue yourself or someone you know does. personal Validate Market Ask some people if it’s true. Talk to experts and specialists and the people who would be the users, influencers, and buyers. Maybe do some research, see if anyone else is already solving the problem and how. Find out how big the market might be, how many users on earth or just in your country might exist. Or not. Just solve a problem that you have on the presumption that you represent a set of users or customers big enough to sustain a business through revenue or data or users to sell to advertisers, eventually. Product Build the thing.* *Once you start, you never get to stop. Product Market Fit [Price Discovery] See if the people you built it for like it! If it does the thing you expected. If they want it. If they’ll — signing up, changing something they do, paying some money — to get it and keep it. overcome some friction At base, this is Product Market Fit*. A core function of PMF in products that are supposed to make money is discovering what price your market will bear, or is competitive, for the value you provide. *Depending on who you talk to, PMF requires GTM Fit [see below]. Network Sales Sell it to people you know, people your staff knows, people your investors know. 1–2 degrees away with warm intros. Some companies only ever do this and build solid businesses this way. Growth in the hockey stick sense happen this way.* does not *A lot of sales and biz dev hiring in ye olden days — and more often today than anyone would admit — is simply buying access to a person’s network and the positive disposition of that network towards them. This is not materially different from an advertiser buying eyeballs. You’re paying for at-bats. Novel Customer Acquisition Novel, because it’s not based on your existing rolodex. Now you’re doing lead gen work that exposes new people to your product and costs real money, either in hard currency or in paying for staff/contractors. This includes: sponsoring events, speaking at events, running ads on podcasts, SEM, buying contact lists and emailing them, hiring SDRs to contact people, running meetups, investing in content marketing for inbound search driven traffic, etc. Natural Market Limit Discovery There is a point early in your company at which you will fall off a cliff of diminishing returns on making sales or acquiring users. This will manifest as lead gen effectiveness failing or increased effort to convince prospects who fit a given profile to give your product a shot or poor conversions rates at the middle and bottom of the funnel regardless of what’s happening at the top or any general stalling of growth that seems impervious to the marketing and sales you’ve tried to date. You are discovering the bounds of your Natural Market*. Natural Markets consist of: Have the problem and know they have it, or so close that if you point at it they know they have it Want to solve it Will pay to solve it Have the authority and responsibility needed to spend their own or their team’s or their company’s money to solve it or the influence over such a party to cause it to happen Who you can reach If this happen, you are on a rocket ship — right product right market right team. In which case, your biggest (only?) risk is success. does not *Natural Market is an idea that I got from Tae Hea Nam of Storm Ventures in a board meeting. It is the single most useful thing I’ve learned from a VC. CAC Ramp Usually you don’t know you’ve hit your Natural Market bounds. It will just seem like you’re experiencing the normal diminishing returns of a particular marketing tactic(s) or marketing strategy or playbook or GTM strategy. Most teams will start with the assumption of a fading marketing tactic and try others. Whether you layer on more tactics, like adding display advertising on top of search ads, or out more resources on an existing tactic, like going from one big event sponsorship every six months to one big one every quarter — this inevitably results in more $$$ per customer acquisition.* *This is separate from the fact that CAC is rising for everyone in general due to the sheer number of products and services vying for people’s attention that all ultimately arrive at a small set of channels to do it. This is a secular trend. Tactical Experimentation A kind of flowering of marketing and sales tactics, including potentially larger GTM bets like sales partnerships, takes place in response to the challenge of rising CACs. In the B2C world, if you’re experiencing outstanding user growth, there’s an infinite appetite on the part of investors to fund that growth. Even with rising CAC. Strategic Instability Usually in parallel, you will start questioning your marketing and sales strategies. Maybe the entire GTM model, including core things like who your customer is and is this even the right product. Example: If you thought you had an inbound, inside sales business, you might start playing around with field marketing and outside sales. GTM Fit Exploration Do you have a GTM model that can be executed and scaled sufficiently to get you from where you are right now to your next stage of growth? Then you have GTM Fit. The hallmark of GTM Fit is having predictability in terms of resources in, like marketing dollars or AE headcount — and results out, like users or logos or dollars. *GTM Fit is an idea from Tae He Nam and Bob Tinker. It’s best summed up in this video . I agree with every last thing Tinker says in this talk and have found it to be true both at startups and when shipping new products at places like IBM. Playbook Scaling When you’ve locked into a GTM that works, you’ll pour resources into it to achieve maximal user or rev growth. Diminishing Returns [Again] Just like running into the limits of your Natural Market, you’ll eventually find the a peak in yield from a playbook. This will tend to look more like a slow decline than falling off a cliff.* The market will saturate, at least for you, as you hit max possible penetration and fight harder for smaller gains. Sales and marketing tactics will become less effective. Etc. *If you’re pouring millions+ of dollars and hundreds+ of people on the fire of a working playbook.. it’s more likely that you’re going to fall off a cliff. Operational Discipline If you have great GTM Fit, you’re scaling incredibly fast and just trying to stay one step ahead of your own success. In this situation, everything you’re doing in marketing and sales is massively inefficient and your funnel is leaking everywhere. It just doesn’t matter because growth is so rapid. When you start to hit post GTM Fit speed bumps, all of a sudden people will start caring about operations, analytics, process, and discipline. This is severely normal. Bloomberg didn’t have a formal marketing function until it was 1B+ in rev. New Relic didn’t have an enterprise sales team until many years after it was a tech household name. Most CFOs, CROs, and CMOs of startups in spitting distance of an IPO could not tell you what their sales efficiency is or what the conversion rates are for their funnel stages with even the slightest bit of confidence or accuracy (ask them!)*. *If you don’t have great GTM Fit, if you’re way early with a product the market is not ready for yet, or if it’s just a grind in the way that enterprise businesses are — then you’ll often end up with a great grasp of what to measure and optimize for and the resultant operational discipline much earlier, because you had to in order to survive. Market Expansion You have gotten all you can get out of a particular GTM, so it’s time to expand who you sell to, what you sell, or both.* New channels, such as distribution deals with a partner or being bundled with another product or being sold by consulting companies into accounts/geographies you don’t have access to or leverage in. New segments, such as going after enterprise where you had only been selling to SMB. New verticals, such as selling into Financial Services where you and only been selling to CPG. New products you build or buy that can be sold into your existing markets and/or give you access to new markets. Companies that you buy, get bought by, or merge with to give you access to new markets, or new products that you can sell to your existing markets or new markets, or that you effectively buy revenue streams or users or eyeballs that you can add to your own. *All attempts at Market Expansion basically start a new cycle of GTM with its own Product cycle. I’ve left that out because depicting interacting loops in a serial text format is damn near impossible. Exit or GTFO Eventually, most people want to Exit.* Your early investors want liquidity. Your employees want liquidity. You want liquidity. You might just be tired and ready to dissociate from the thing you’ve spent years and years building. Exiting is a GTM stage because, regardless of how you exit, you will have to hit specific GTM measures around costs, revenues, and growth to do it. *If you don’t want an Exit, you might have a lifestyle business. Or something bootstrapped you want to do forever. Or you’re going to buy out your investors. Or you’re going to take on some private equity (not necessarily PE) investors who get dividends. Or etc. More power to you. Final Note The road is winding and often non-linear. Posts in this series (and templates) Marketing 101 for Engineers: A Functional Introduction Marketing 102 for Engineers: Roughing Out a Funnel Marketing 201 for Engineers: Messaging & Positioning Marketing 202 for Engineers: Launching Marketing 203 for Engineers: Sales Enablement Marketing 204 for Engineers: Generating Demand Marketing 301 for Engineers: Strategy & Planning Marketing 302 for Engineers: Hiring Marketers Marketing 303 for Engineers: Pricing Frame Marketing 401 for Engineers: Stages of GTM Marketing 402 for Engineers: Diagnostics & Troubleshooting Sales 101 for Engineers: A Functional Introduction PR 101 for Engineers Analyst Relations 101 for Engineers Basic Messaging Template [Google Doc] Basic Funnel Metrics Template [Google Sheet] Basic Launch Timeline Template [Google Doc] Basic Battlecard Template [Google Doc] Detailed Battlecard Template [Google Doc] Basic Marketing Calendar Template [Google Sheet] Basic Marketing Ladders Template [Google Sheet] Reading List and Resources Bob Tinker’s GTM Fit and Talk Slides Tomasz Tunguz Tren Griffin Startup Marketing Playbook First Round Capital: PR & Marketing Magazine First Round Capital: Sales Magazine Max Olson: Advantage Flywheels Go-To-Market Fit: The Missing Link for Enterprise Growth HubSpot: Top 10 Sales Methodologies Image credits [in order] Photo by on 2Photo Pots Unsplash Expensify Value Proposition Diagram from Tom Tunguz Bob Tinker on GTM Fit and Talk Slides Using Price & Demand Curves from Tom Tunguz

Marketing 401 for Engineers: Stages of Going to Market

My "Tough Love" Talk To Founders Who Are Struggling To Raise Capital We have over 1,500 startups raising capital on , and in any given week I talk or text with dozens of them. Often, it's when the Founder is frustrated because his/her fundraising has stalled, or is going slower than expected. Foundersuite It's at these moments I give my "tough love speech." In short, it goes something like this: fundraising is brutally hard, you're going to get rejected constantly, and the stress falls solely on your shoulders. Deal with it. You're asking people to give you money, so suck it up and push forward. - Yoda "Do or do not; there is no try" Here is the longer-form "tough love" talk: I do a monthly "Funding Hacks" talk where I start off setting some context: when I raised $1M for Foundersuite, I pitched over 200 investors and ended up with 1 seed VC and 10 angels. 1. Rejection is the norm (not the exception). Do the math– that's a 5% conversion rate, or put another way, This is the reality of raising capital – these results are pretty typical. The remedy? Make sure your "funnel" or list of potential investors is sufficiently large (2-300 for seed/pre-seed, 30-50 for Series A/B). I was getting rejected 95% of the time. I was (and still am) a solo founder, and I tend to have a strong independent streak – I like to get the job done myself. (Side note: this might be one reason I'm an entrepreneur... I have a hard time working for others :) But when the time came to raise money, this "DIY" mentality needed to go out the window. I called in favors from... literally... EVERYONE. I was struggling to raise the round, but I made a pact with myself that I would not quit until I had turned over every stone, tapped every angle, and leveraged every contact in my rolodex. 2. No one does it alone. The cool thing is, people are actually pretty awesome when you ask for help. This is especially true with fellow founders, but also some investors and service providers will go out of their way to open up their rolodex and make introductions... there's a "pay it forward" + "return the favor" mentality, often since those founders invariably got a lot of help when they were raising money. A direct corollary to the point above is that while people can be surprisingly, incredibly helpful, you can't outsource this job. It's 100% your duty to move it forward; no one is going to raise the capital for you. One vibe I pick up on – especially from "frustrated founders" – is that they expect people to work on their behalf. This is a huge turnoff. If someone makes an introduction for you, treat it as a blessing and be exceptionally grateful. But no one owes you anything. "Entitled" founders don't get funded. 3. No one is going to do it for you. As an example, it's your job to build out the target investor list. This is tedious, hard work. To put it in perspective: prior to launching Foundersuite I spent 10 years as a fractional CFO and funding consultant, and I would often get hired to help build the list. It would take upwards of 50-100 hours of research across multiple databases (Foundersuite, AngelList, CrunchBase, VentureWire, etc.) and then another 20-30 hours on LinkedIn mapping connection paths. But in the end I knew exactly who we wanted to target and how we were going to reach each person. In contrast, many founders start by asking everyone they know... "do you know any angels you can connect me with?" It's a logical approach. But it's lazy. As SF-based VC Hunter Walk tweeted: Fundraising is driven by momentum, and investors can "sense" if a deal has heat, or if it's turning stale. When you strip away everything else, your job as CEO is to generate momentum for your deal. A deal with momentum gives you leverage – it allows you to set the timeline and terms and to pick which investors will join you on the cap table. 4. You have a single job: get momentum. If your deal is getting stale or never really catches fire, you're either not going to get funded, or you're going to be forced to accept a unfavorable term sheet, or take money from investors you don't want. So how do you get momentum? You hit the funding trail with a good (fundable) team and product and a killer pitch, then you build a funnel and "run a process." You treat fundraising like a full-time job and put in the blood, sweat, tears and hustle. You get 'er done. (For more on running a process, check out this blog post.) fundraising tactics That's basically it. I give them the talk, give them a little kick in the pants, and send them back on the fundraising trail. And more often than not, within a few weeks they come back with a term sheet (or two) to show for it.

Fundraising: No One is Going to Do It For You

( Photo by Josh Calabrese on Unsplash ) Navigating hiring tradeoffs We’ve spent a lot of words in this series talking about understanding and operating marketing functions, but almost none on people. The common challenges with startup marketing [and sales!] hiring look something like this: No go to market strategy →No scope for a role, which looks the same as too much scope for a role →No sense of the kind of person to look for →No clarity in job descriptions or in direction to recruiters →No standards by which to evaluate candidates that connect to actual business goals In this post, we’ll talk through what it takes to hire the right-est marketer for your company in your market serving your users and customers. Programming notes: this post is n in a series of indeterminate length on GTM topics mainly for startup people, mainly leadership, mainly coming from non-GTM backgrounds. There’s a list at the end. Marketers go to market All marketing exists within some go to market [GTM]. What are you selling? Who is going to use it? How will it make their lives better? Who are you selling to? What industry are you selling in to? What is your intended sales motion? Who are your competitors? What will your funnel look like? Is it low-cost-entry, bottoms-up, land-and-expand or is it open-source, community, usage-growth, commercial-support or is it..? If you don’t have answers to these questions, you haven’t gotten to the part of building a company where you actually go to market. And you really should not be looking for a marketer unless you have a ton of money and are hiring execs before you launch OR you’re very clear about finding someone who can help you answer all these questions and then execute on the answers [rare!]. Why? Because the person you hire to come up with or execute a for GTM A will not be the same as for GTM B. The same holds for sales. marketing strategy Example! If you’re selling enterprise software into hospital groups that costs $250k a year at its cheapest and takes three months to pilot and get through HIPAA reviews with an additional three months to integrate and successfully onboard a customer with the help of sales engineering or professional services once they’ve signed a contract — you will have a marketing strategy (and tactics) compared to a freemium product for ISRs selling into unregulated industries with initial buy-in for a paid tier of $100 a year with a 14-day free trial and self-onboarding guided by docs and in-app tutorials that takes on average less than 30 days. very different Anecdata! Notice how much turnover there is in sales and marketing at startups: early when they are trying to figure out product market fit, later when they’re trying to figure out go to market fit, later when they pivot the product or the GTM or at different stages of growth ($0–5M, $5–20M, $20–50M, $50–100M, $100Ms). Whenever there’s a material change in GTM, Marketing and Sales have to be reworked. Marketing and Sales people, for better or worse, tend to be single track operators and are not effective across different go to market models and industries.* *Note: This is definitely not true for all sales and marketing professionals. But it is true often enough that crossing boundaries, like going from B2B → D2C, is extremely difficult for sales and marketing professionals. It can be easier to change careers altogether than to get someone to give you an opportunity to do that. Define the role Do you want one marketer who will design, builds, and maintain a static website using Github and Hugo while designing a logo and visual identity and figuring out how what your demand get strategy is while running email campaigns out of mailchimp and traveling to events every month to give talks or run your booth while developing your product messaging and helping sales position the product against customers while researching keyword inventory and running search ad experiments while writing press releases and building relationships with tech journalists while interviewing customers for case studies and some other things too? This is not a thing. You might find someone who will do all of this for you, at least half of it poorly, and burn them out in short order. But you won’t be happy. Neither will they. In the : words of Arielle Jackson Most marketers who aren’t new to the field specialize in either the so-called “soft” or “hard” sides of marketing, focusing more on brand and communications or growth, analytics, and channel optimization. “Even CMO-level candidates typically tilt more heavily in one direction,” she says. “I’m not sure where this desire to have it all in one package comes from — you wouldn’t expect an engineer to be amazing at front-end and back-end, but unfortunately this expectation exists for marketers.” So you have to decide which things are more important to do most well for this role right now: product marketing, demand gen, pr/comms, or brand. At an early or pre-growth startup, say <100 people and pre-C, the answer to this is almost Product Marketing or Demand Gen. From First Round’s: So You Think You’re Ready to Hire a Marketer? Read This First. Know your GTM B2B enterprise SaaS product with an inbound events-driven funnel and land-and-expand inside sales? D2C high-end design-forward travel gear with an inbound social-media-and-influencer-driven funnel and self-service sales? Three-sided marketplace connecting chefs to kitchen-having-venues to private-party-holding-people with an inbound SEM-and-brand-sponsorship-and-referral-driven funnel and inside sales? B2B IoT sensor-and-SaaS package for civil engineering with an outbound relationaship-based-rolodex-calling funnel and top-down-whale-hunting field sales? This is key for recruiters, for your network, and for putting at the top of your job description. Stack rank the functional work Organize what you think they will have to tackle by immediateness and impact and then write it out. Is growth of usage for your free tier more important than revenue? Is brand recognition more important than usage? Is getting into a magic quadrant more important than technical blog content? Example! Campaign Strategy and Execution: Develop, this coordinate, and drive execution of demand gen campaigns with a focus on SEM, social ads, and influencer marketing Operations: Select and build out the marketing stack, develop reporting to evaluate the performance of marketing activities Leadership: Recruit and hire a marketing team to run growth Advice! Any set of priorities has a half-life. Typically, your primary goal is to hire someone who will get you from PointA, where you are right now, to Point B, whatever the next big business milestone is — for example from 0 to $5M in ARR. You’ll look for someone who’s done that and also the next stage of growth after that in the same or a similar GTM context. The danger with this person will be that they will simply repeat what they did at their last job at your company without employing any critical thinking or consideration of the specific challenges with your specific GTM. More Advice! Make sure everyone who’s screening or interviewing candidates totally understands the jobs to be done and weights a candidate’s attributes and abilities proportionally. Passing over a great candidate just because they don’t have experience in a low priority skill for the role for now is an unnecessary mistake. Figure out the non-functional work Now that you know what the person needs to do in the role, what do they need to be able to do that on team? functionally your Is this an individual contributor [IC] or manager or manager of managers role? Is it a combination of IC and management? Will the role start at one level of contribution but transition to another in the expected future? Will this person set strategic direction, decide on the tactics, create all the plans, and also run/do all the execution.. or some subset of that? Do they need to hire and build a team? If so, what’s your ethos about management styles and team structure and what are you expectations for a new manager to conform to those? How involved do you want to be in managing this person? Will you set direction and leave them to their own devices or do you want to be intimately involved in the details at the functional strategic or tactical level? Is this person an exec? Will they be in board meetings? Will they be expected to collaborate, and tangle, with execs? Are there existing ICs or managers that will report in to this person? Who will they work most closely with? What are the personalities and work styles involved? What’s the right kind of complementary style? Do you intentionally want to introduce someone into the mix to shake things up or cause a little hopefully productive friction? Will this person be external facing? Will they need to interact with leads, customers, partners, press, analysts, or investors? Will they be developing and giving talks at meetups, conferences, and other events? Will they need to interact with or manage contractors? Will they be expected to travel? Will they be expected to be in the office every day? Just like your functional requirements, these too have to be stack ranked and clearly articulated both internally and to recruiters. Most of these things will never make it into a job description, but the ones that will help someone self-select . That includes: details about seniority and management, expectations about being external facing, and travel vs distributed vs office time. should Looking for good people You want a person who has some experience in your sector with a company at your stage and maybe the next one, who can competently and effectively execute against the top items in your stack ranked priorities for the role while meeting the non-functional requirements you think are necessary for success in your specific go to market with your specific challenges. It’s highly unlikely that such a person exists that you can afford them that they will work for you. and and So, trade offs. Be very explicit about which items on the list are absolutely necessary, which are highly desirable, and which are only nice-to-haves. Make sure everyone in the hiring process knows. Advice on seniority tradeoffs! The more junior the role, the less experience and record-of-previous-work you will have to go on. Which means more weight has to be given on how fast they’ll climb the learning curve, how well they might perform, and how well they can grow to be successful in your particular environment. Advice on recruiters! If you’re working with recruiters who don’t ask you the details of your needs and priorities and acceptable tradeoffs for a role, those recruiters will not find you the people you need. Recruiters who do dig in are generally expensive. Write good job descriptions A job description should have everything a candidate need to self-select in or out of talking to you about the role. Look at it the same way you do copy on your website or in ads or on the side of a bus. It’s part of your top of funnel and you want qualified leads who are good fits for the role and your team to self-select in. What’s the job? What’s the essence of the company, product, and market? What value will the role deliver to the company? What value will the company deliver to the person in the role? What are the expectations and requirements? Which things are deal breakers and which aren’t? What kinds of people will be successful? Where is it located? If you’re hearing from or receiving candidates that are all wrong, the problem is with your job description, your choice of recruiters, or how you’ve trained recruiters on the role. In other words, . it’s your fault Understand the language of marketing seniority Marketing roles and responsibilities vary quite a bit as companies get grow and deep specialists become more highly valued over generalists. Here’s a very . basic ladder in a template that you can copy and modify for your company On “Assignments” If you’re asking anyone to do material work that you might put to use, pay them for it. Otherwise, everything should be doable within the context of an interview or interview time. Examples! Put up a website or walk through some slides in a pitch deck and ask them to reverse engineer the messaging, personas, and GTM strategy Ask them to critique a product page on a competitors website Ask them what their favorite app or product is, then to sketch out a cold outbound email to a prospect pitching it Have them rough out a social media plan for a new feature launch Have them rough out a product launch timeline Sketch out a funnel with volumes and conversion rates with a clear problem, then ask how they would go about debugging the funnel Interview by being interviewed The more senior the role, the more likely it is that you are being interviewed and not the other way around. The kinds of questions the candidate asks and what they choose to dig into are strong indicators about how they approach the role and where their interests or expertise lie. Examples! These are the lines of inquiry I expect from senior roles: What does your funnel look like today? What do you want it to look like? The more detail they dig into the better. Who do you position against in your marketing? Who do you compete against in real life? They should ask about some key metrics like lead volumes, sales cycles, ACVs, CAC They should ask about lead sources and channels, what’s known to work and not work so far They should ask about the sales motion and model, better if they ask you to be specific like is it inside or outside, land-and-expand or big deals on day one, small teams or entire departments, etc What are you go to market gaps, or what risks do you see on achieving the business results you want? What do you want this role to accomplish in year one? What’s the structure of the marketing team today? What’s the structure of the sales team today? How is that expected to change over the next year? What’s the runway/burn? When are you going out to raise again? What do you need to show in order to raise and what’s the gap between today and that? What are the keys to success for this role? What are the risks, or what would cause someone to fail? Final Notes The things I’m looking for in any hire are: Do they have the chops or can they learn on the job fast enough Can they think about all the parts of the work and how it intersects with other teams Can they bring structure or do they need to be provided structure, and how much Are they able to condense, explain, and talk about things in the forms necessary to effectively communicate to different audiences and drive a desired action What is the mix of experience, competence, potential, and management overhead? And finally, specifically for external facing roles: how well can they work a room and be an effective communicator in person or to an audience? Posts in this series (and templates) Marketing 101 for Engineers: A Functional Introduction Marketing 102 for Engineers: Roughing Out a Funnel Marketing 201 for Engineers: Messaging & Positioning Marketing 202 for Engineers: Launching Marketing 203 for Engineers: Sales Enablement Marketing 204 for Engineers: Generating Demand Marketing 301 for Engineers: Strategy & Planning Marketing 302 for Engineers: Hiring Marketers Sales 101 for Engineers: A Functional Introduction PR 101 for Engineers Analyst Relations 101 for Engineers Basic Messaging Template [Google Doc] Basic Funnel Metrics Template [Google Sheet] Basic Launch Timeline Template [Google Doc] Basic Battlecard Template [Google Doc] Detailed Battlecard Template [Google Doc] Basic Marketing Calendar Template [Google Sheet] Basic Marketing Ladders Template [Google Sheet] Reading List and Resources First Round: So You Think You’re Ready to Hire a Marketer? Read This First. Kelly Watkins: How to hire your first head of marketing Josie King: Scaling Product Marketing at a High-Growth Startup — Product Marketing Summit Tom Tunguz on marketing

Marketing 302 for Engineers: Hiring Marketers

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