Verocel Inc., a leading independent software verification company serving the global safety-critical software industry, announced today it has signed an agreement with GMV, to develop the safety computer platform for the Southern

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Bell released a study on the state of cybersecurity in Canadian businesses today, highlighting new data that security leaders can use as they strategize to protect their organizations, with particular focus on securing the

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Lookout, Inc., the data-centric cloud security company, today announced enhancements to its Lookout Cloud Security Platform that are designed to help organizations better discover, assess and protect their data as it moves across any network,

Lookout Increases Strategic Investment in Data-centric Cloud Security

Salesloft, provider of the first and only global AI-powered revenue workflow platform, today announced performance metrics for sellers who have adopted Salesloft Rhythm, which launched in June 2023. Powered by a proprietary,

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OneShot.ai believes its technology platform can help businesses achieve much better results from outbound sales campaigns. It has raised $2.2 million of funding so far

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To create its dashboards and reports for businesses, Spontivly’s software integrates with more than 120 tech tools and apps.

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“This gentle thaw in capital indicates a potential resurgence in the investment space,” said Shila Nieves Burney, managing partner at Atlanta’s Zane Venture Fund. Georgia VC firms have raised record amounts for the state this year, according to PitchBook, anchored by one major deal from Suwanee-based Cloud Toronto Venture Capital.

'Gentle thaw': Georgia startup fundraising returning to pre-pandemic normal

With established connectivity to sales engagement platforms such as Outreach.io and Salesloft, and marketing automation juggernauts like HubSpot, our latest integration pushes the envelope even further for what's possible with AI-powered selling.

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Saleo Inc., creator of what it says is the first live demo automation platform for software-as-a-service providers, announced today it has closed on a $13 million fundraising.

Live SaaS sales demo automation platform Saleo raises $13M in funding

Salesloft

salesloft

, the Creator of the Modern Sales Engagement Platform, is a 6 year old company headquartered in Atlanta, GA. SalesLoft is growing over 100% YoY in revenue and has doubled its employee base in the last year. With such rapid success and growth, different challenges come up along the way. In the new world of Cloud and based everything and empowering employees to use the best resources possible to get their jobs done, SalesLoft SaaS it is harder than ever for an organization to know exactly what software is purchased and in use across the entire business. Cynthia Hancock, Revenue Systems Manager at SalesLoft, is responsible for operations across the Marketing, Sales and Customer Success teams. Part of her job is to track if the technology purchased is being used, ensure new team members have access to what they need and ultimately, keep track of everything from new software purchased to new challenges that need software to solve them and the ROI from each application. With Zylo, Cynthia and her team have a single SaaS system of record to solve big challenges at SalesLoft, including: SaaS spend and vendor management, SaaS utilization measurement and SaaS license optimization. SaaS Spend and Vendor Management . Zylo discovers all of the Cloud and SaaS applications purchased across the organization via accounts payable and employee expense transactions. Zylo associates each SaaS application to its category and function(s) to enrich the data from a catalog of over 6,000 SaaS applications. The SalesLoft team no longer uses complex spreadsheets and a shared folder for SaaS contract and renewal management Zylo discovers all of the Cloud and SaaS applications purchased across the organization from a catalog of over 6,000 SaaS applications. It used to be challenging to track down and manage the SaaS vendor contracts from the various departments and keep track of when new users were added mid-way through a contract term because of the fast growth. Based on this information, alerts are configured for proactive renewal management. Now, Salesloft uses Zylo’s Concierge service to gather important contract detail and store the contract inside Zylo for future reference. “With a single SaaS system of record that includes all spend, contract and utilization data for our SaaS applications, our team no longer has to search for contracts or manage the details on a static spreadsheet,” Hancock explains. SaaS Utilization Measurement SalesLoft uses Okta’s Single Sign On and Identity Management Solution, but the Revenue Operations Team did not have access to this data or the ability to see it in an actionable way. With Zylo, now the utilization data from Okta is paired with the spend and contract data in Zylo to provide a clear picture of the value each SaaS application provides SalesLoft. SalesLoft is expanding the number of applications behind Okta to capture the rich data set for future ROI analysis and decision making. “SalesLoft is a data driven company, so being able to determine the ROI of our SaaS applications is a huge win for our team,” Hancock comments. SaaS License Optimization In a company growing so fast, teams are expanding every quarter and new team members need access to the technology that SalesLoft uses to run its business. Adding more licenses or adjusting contracts happens at the departmental level when needs arise. Zylo alerts the Revenue Operations Team when new expenses occur for SaaS applications, so now it is possible to adjust the subscription terms and maintain an up to date, single SaaS system of record. Powered by direct integrations into SaaS applications like Salesforce, Zylo provides the intelligence needed to manage and optimize SaaS applications throughout the year. In addition, if users are not actively logging into their applications, Zylo makes it easy to determine what employees may no longer need a license to certain applications or determine if an application is no longer being used by anyone. Collaborating with the departmental leaders around unused licenses allows the SalesLoft team to right-size their SaaS subscriptions in real-time. “We’ve already created savings opportunities with data from Zylo. Our Customer Success team came to us with a challenge they wanted to solve via software, but didn’t have budget and we realized we already own three SaaS applications that could do the job needed. We evaluated each solution and one is perfectly suited to do the job and we realized we didn’t need one of three the applications all together,” Hancock explains. The SalesLoft team achieved 100% ROI on their Zylo investment from quick wins identified in the first month with additional larger scale opportunities in the works. The Future at SalesLoft As SalesLoft continues the rocket-ship growth it is experiencing, the technology stack it uses will continue to grow, but also be a competitive advantage. Analyzing the SaaS applications that high performing sales reps are using and using that blueprint to train other sales reps is just one of the ways in which Zylo will impact the team’s effectiveness. “Zylo gives us the data and platform to showcase the value of the SaaS applications to our executive team and justify the budget needed to support our world-class team,” Bush adds.

A Single SaaS System of Record Creates Visibility and Increased Efficiency for the SalesLoft…

‘This has happened before’: early stage startups and now well-established companies are looking for low-budget tools for getting media coverage amidst the economic downturn and the era of new valuations. Trying to decrease burn rate, startups are jumping from one paid channel to another aiming to report growing numbers to their VCs. However, PR with media coverage and organic traffic it provides is still the most effective, however one of the most difficult approaches to master. Cutting the marketing budget entirely and hiring a PR manager (which could also be a costly and fun adventure if you don’t understand how PR works and what to expect) is not an option, but knowing some PR tricks will help in getting media coverage prior to your next fundraising. In my previous op-ed basic PR mechanics and such tech solutions as Linguix, HARO and PRGuy which are still useful low-budget but very decent alternatives to create and land a pitch. we talked about In this article, let’s find out what new and cool AI-powered tools are available to help out a busy-with-fundraising founder and their PRs. AI-powered Pitch Creation Assistants Except ChatGPT there are plenty of NLP tools available, such as Copi.ai, Jasper, and their alternatives. While they can provide some inspiration and really help with SEO-optimized blogging and social media posts by saving your time, they are completely unreliable in terms of preparing a media pitch or press release (yes, this is not the same). “ChatGPT may not always be accurate”, Mira Murati, OpenAI's CTO said in an interview with Time magazine. In other words, the service is notorious for making up facts and quotes. Even though this could be used as an example where you can put some stats and your thoughts on the matter, there is a chance you can miss such parts and send faked numbers or references. Today not any of those platforms is capable of producing complex, nuanced content with comprehensive market and competitor analysis, which is a must when you pitch a tech or business journalist. Mostly all of them generate content using pre-existing templates, which may result in content that is not entirely original. Pricing-wise, usually these platforms are subscription-based that can be expensive for small businesses. However, if you need just one pitch or press-release, some of them do provide freemium models with 5-10 posts per day creation including the templates. Copy.ai even has a free plan. PRGuy charges you per template or ready-to-go pitch and it keeps providing a human-editor review. AI-powered Outreach Platforms Finding journalists’ contacts has always been and still quite a time consuming activity. Nowadays, buying email databases for “spray-and-pray” and the subsequent distribution is considered to be bad manners and an experienced PR specialist would never do so. Neither will they ask a colleague to share their media base Google spreadsheets. There are a lot of platforms available for businesses to automate marketing cold outreach efforts like SalesLoft. There are even platforms like SellScale that pull data from public internet sources to craft “hyper-specific” outreach. But this looks creepy and none of those will help with the media outreach. And again, nothing is low-budget about them. There are two options available for founders and PRs who want to automate the outreach and at the same time don’t spend a fortune: OnePitch and House of Pitch. Both are free of charge. OnePitch is a free version of Mack Ruck and other costly platforms. It suggests journalists based on your pitch and allows distribution within the platform. The House of Pitch in turn asks you to pick the most relevant journalists (or VC scouts!) according to their beats (industries of interests) prior to the distribution of the pitch. But there is one feature it has that is dope–you get a clear Yes or No response each time you reach out to a journalist. The pitches you send on HoP are Tinder-like cards that journalists sort Connect or Reject and you either meet with a reporter in an email or will get a “sorry, not a good fit” notification. Conclusion More tools aiming to help with marketing appear every month. However, only a few of them fit the PR needs. The most successful outreach efforts are still those that are personalized, targeted, and backed by genuine human interaction, not GPT. I won’t rely on AI-powered writing assistants, if you have a success story when you pitched to a journalist completely generated text, please share it with me.

Top PR Tricks and Free Tools for Startups in the Era of Decreasing Valuations

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Remember the good ol’ days, when artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies were still in their infancy? Interest was split between tech enthusiasts and skeptics, because many were afraid they might lose their jobs to the robot overlords. As time went on however, it became clear that if anything, it helps people do their jobs better. ** ** In the case of sales automation tech—these solutions are a total godsend. They free up the time of sales reps by taking over the administrative and reporting-related elements, all with greater efficiency than their human counterparts. That gives sales reps the freedom to focus on the more meaningful and impactful tasks to really drive up sales. ** ** According to , early adopters of sales automation tools “...consistently report increases in customer-facing time, higher customer satisfaction, efficiency improvements of 10 to 15 percent, and sales uplift potential of up to 10 percent.” There is a wide array of sales automation tools available, covering most every aspect within the sales realm, from presentations, to lead management, to churn prevention, and more. McKinsey ** ** Here’s a list of the top five sales automation startups that have made headlines in 2022 for their unique take on sales automation, which are certainly worth keeping an eye on. : Interactive and insightful product demos Walnut Upon their launch in mid-2021, Walnut achieved and maintained a degree of virality within many sales circles for being a codeless platform that enables B2B companies to fully customize, manage, and optimize their sales demos—all with zero downtime, or loading time issues. Its early adopters include the likes of Adobe, NetApp, Treasure Data and People AI. The Walnut platform itself also collects deep insights on the team and prospects demo usage, to help improve the sales process. : Sales pipeline management Dooly One-stop-shops in which insights can be viewed in a glance is always a good thing, and it is exactly where Dooly shines. This sales pipeline solution allows sales reps to manage all their deals at once, with one-click updates from a centralized view. This always keeps them ready for their next pipe review, and also saves them from hours of time that would have been spent making manual updates on Salesforce. Some of the heavy-hitters currently using Dooly include Figma, Asana, and BigCommerce, which explains why the solutions raked in a slew of distinctions through the course of 2021. : Sales revenue intelligence Gong Anyone who is anyone in sales has heard of the beast that is Gong. The Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform delivers insights to customer-facing teams that are based on customer interactions. The insights help revenue and go-to-market teams make better informed business decisions to help achieve greater profitability and scalability. Thousands of big brands, such as Slack, Shopify, and LinkedIn use Gong for the intelligence that is gathered from contact to close, and its AI coaching recommendations. : Sales qualifying, routing, and booking software Chili Piper B2B sales and revenue teams worldwide crown Chili Piper as the most advanced scheduling and routing software. They have a range of solutions under their umbrella, which collectively helps teams double their inbound conversion rates, increase customer satisfaction, and reach new levels of productivity. Twilio, AirBnB, and even Gong are amongst the high growth revenue teams that are turning to Chili Piper to qualify and turn leads into meetings. : Sales engagement platform SalesLoft Sure, there may be many sales engagement platforms out there. However, what sets SalesLoft apart from the rest is their Modern Revenue Workspace™. That solution enables sales teams to seamlessly execute their digital selling tasks, in addition to communicating with buyers, all while gaining insights on what needs to be done next to further ensure success. Salesloft is trusted by numerous companies from GrubHub and Square, to legacy brands such as IBM and Cisco, to exponentially increase their revenue. ** ** From consumer trends and expectations, to elements of business processes—there is much that has changed in the sales realm in the post-pandemic world. Thankfully, sales teams can easily rely on their tech counterparts to do a lot of the heavy-lifting to increase efficiency. The solutions featured above do just that, so sales teams can do what tech cannot: adding the human touch to the sales process.

Top 5 Sales Automation Startups To Watch In 2022

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By some estimates, investing in the IPOs of the 75 or so SaaS companies would have netted you 5x in less than 5 years. That’s the kind of math that makes even the world’s best investors drool, and considering the target for most private market investors is 3x, and that do in any liquid security, it makes this all the more interesting. Common wisdom dictates that recurring, and predictable, revenue streams is what makes these cloud companies more interesting for investors. Another argument is that the investments are particularly downturn proof, since the sales have been done long ago. Private vs public markets — a size differential And yet, the sizes are still a fraction of the larger enterprise companies, compared to not just Microsoft, but SAP, Oracle or even Salesforce. In the original SaaS wave, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Workday surfed the wave to build giants in the field, and its finding and exploiting exactly those types of mega waves that’s necessary for the next generation of mega companies to emerge. Within the world of evolutionary biology there’s a fact. When an ecosystem is less exploited, when a new niche opens up, there is a rush to fill it. And there emerges large species who take it over effectively! But when an ecosystem is crowded, when availability of niches is lower, you see high levels of competition within its constituent species, the outcome is that no individual species gets to huge anymore. And that’s as apt an analogy as exists in this new enterprise ecosystem universe we find ourselves in. The paradox here is one of having a consistent worldview. Never has it been easier to create private unicorns, or even decacorns, because of the combined trends of capital availability and push for efficiency from every part of the corporate value chain. And conversely it’s also much tougher to build something that’s much larger. The law of small numbers applies here of course, but any time a company threatens the dominance of the true giants of the technology world, they get outcompeted or bought. So in fact what we’re seeing is a divergence. In the private markets, these companies are even more attractive, because now there’s ample evidence that you can create a decacorn through exploiting one (or one plus a couple adjacent) niche, and that’s a large enough exit potential that it trivialises the factor. But at the same time if you are a late stage investor or a public market investor, it looks much harder, since it’s tougher to see where the 5x upside could come from if you can be bought/ copied by a large software house to bring the tech and product inhouse. There’s a reason quasi-public investors bring multiple billions to bear in the private markets. This liquidity is more a sign of cash seeking yield and being forced to look at unfamiliar instruments, led by the fact that since you can’t wait for the IPO and invest in the best companies then, you have to invest earlier. How long this will last is another question, but the fact that private companies are being forced to mature faster creates a whole new market dynamic that enterprise companies, for one thing, are taking advantage of! Considering the barrage of public offerings coming our way including IPOs, direct listings, SPACs and more, its worth having a look at whether the potential for public market IPO investing still holds! All of it to say come on now that the Covid situation has been exacerbated around the western world, and the economy’s effectively shut down for close to a quarter, it’s worth looking at what some of those IPOs are likely to bring. Case in point, Zoominfo. ZoomInfo teardown ZoomInfo provides go to market intelligence for sales and marketing professionals. They provide named account reps, including emails, direct phones, org charts, technology charts, location, and biographies. They’re primarily focused on the SMB segment, though they have had some traction within larger enterprises as well. The biggest competition for them is still LinkedIn, whose Sales Navigator product is of a similar size, though it only provides a smaller proportion of the overall functionality. Essentially if you work in sales or marketing, and want to get information about your prospective customers or competitors, then they’re the main place to get that. Zoominfo S1 The market is supposedly $24 billion TAM, so there’s plenty of room for growth left.! History Courtesy Nathan Latka Blog DiscoverOrg paid around $750m for ZoomInfo, which had in turn been acquired just a year and few months ago by Great Hill Partners for $240m. The valuation multiple was 8.6x TTM revenues. The biggest competitor is of course LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which also has $350–400m in revenues and growing. Metrics The saas metrics seem strong — 10x LTV/CAC, >90% growth seen in Q1 reaching $102m, 30 day sales cycle, 109% net revenue retention, c.10% operating margin. However a big point to note is that the growth has come from inorganic growth, with the biggest boost coming from the DiscoverOrg/ ZoomInfo acquisition. Without this the growth is much lower in the 40%-50% area, which is still good considering the scale, but not necessarily spectacular. Zoominfo S1 In 2019, ZoomInfo had $334.6m in revenue and $36 million in operating profit. This is a pretty hefty multiple of 47x annualised sales, and if they hit the end of the year plan it’ll still be a very high 31x multiple They’re primarily a long-tail focused company, with 14k+ customers, though with renewed enterprise focus they now have 580+ customers who pay them >$100k ACV, and 18 customers paying >$1m ACV, including DocuSign, SAP and Zoom They only started their enterprise sales team properly in 2018 <10% of revenues come from outside the US IPO Not only did they end up pricing it at $21 a share, the range originally was $16-$18, then moved up to $18-$20, and the price ended up beating it. The shares opened north of $40, and settled at $50 now, giving it a $19B market cap. In typical valley fashion, the IPO doesn’t provide any voting rights however, and the company has $1B+ of debt load it’s sitting on. There’s also a relatively low float too it looks like, with 44.5 million shares compared to 393 million total. Despite the woes, the IPO market for SaaS companies is pretty solid. A look at the US broader IPO market shows the growth metrics and the market interest, shown in the day one trading pop of 48%. Courtesy Renaissance Capital Sales motion DiscoverOrg, according to an interview done a year+ ago, has 100 sales development reps. Each day they dial with Frontspin, use Outreach and Salesloft as email automation where data flows from DiscoverOrg into Salesforce and then out to these tools. Each day these 100 SDRs have 80–150 accounts they must dial, split as outbound, inbound and SWAT teams. Target is 20 completed demos per AE, and 5 AE and 5 SDR are grouped together. They also have a dedicated learning and development team who focus on training the customer, then pass on the Customer Service Managers who have a quota on upsell (115%) and prevention of churn (min 90%). Challenges to growth Data accuracy is incredibly important, but harder to ensure at scale — it seems like the toughest one to continually scale without consistent investment in quality assurance, and keeping data up to date Low product stickiness — it’s a category wide problem in that switching costs are not that high for most use cases The competition whenever companies focus on broadening their access is LinkedIn Sales Navigator obviously covers a much broader range of people/ companies, though their product is less fit-for-purpose Growth through acquisitions — iProfile, Rainking, Komiko, Neverbounce and the biggest ZoomInfo. They now cover 14 million global businesses and 120 million professionals — how much longer can the streak continue … They probably will have to go into adjacencies in order to build a bigger moat and justify their market cap. How much of this can continue to happen depends on whether they can continue their profitable growth trajectory driven by smart acquisitions, and the ability to increase penetration into the $24B market. For now, it seems expensive for what it is, a solid saas company without growth driven through inorganic avenues, and without significant enough product differentiation.

SaaS IPOs and a Zoominfo S1 mini teardown

Originally published at www.Tintup.com/casestudy — April 13, 2016 #getunstuck is sales video micro-mentorship at scale and it launches today. The largest campaign of its kind: by thought leaders in sales & business, for the new generation of the aspiring best. The movement empowers millennial salespeople to #getunstuck and share their own story. The Challenge of salespeople today: One traditional perception of salespeople is that they are solely money-motivated and just doing whatever it takes to close deals. Sales as a profession is shifting — the reality in the current business landscape is that salespeople are constantly seeking fulfillment to better themselves by honing their craft. Despite popular perception, sales is a very complex discipline and can be a very solitary lifestyle filled with obstacles. Perception vs. reality: It’s challenging to find quality content amongst the vast amount out there. Salespeople want the feeling of having a mentor, someone who shares gold nuggets of wisdom with them, but as they do the sales grind day in and day out, it’s not easy to find that valuable insight. We are providing this mentorship at scale by bringing together an unprecedented number of the brightest minds and gathering all their distilled wisdom in one place. Mentorship at scale: internet Salespeople aren’t seeking out long form articles to better themselves. The way we consume content has changed — we chose the 60-second format to truly suit the millennial audience. How do millennials consume content? The Solution: To raise #getunstuck awareness and engagement with TINT’s web display solution. To initiate the campaign, we reached out to the top sales thought leaders and have already begun receiving community submissions on . www.getunstuck.club The companies participating include SalesLoft, Marin Software, CenturyLink, Influitive, SAP, Fastly, Tint, Hubspot, Salesforce, UC Berkeley Extension, LeanData, HackerRank, HireVue, Dyn, TalentBin, Reward Gateway, Birst and more. As well as our favorite thought leaders from Predictable Revenue, A Sales Guy, Score More Sales, Sales Pro Insider, Heinz , Sales Trainer, Sales Hacker, Harris Consulting, Creation Agency, Sales-Shake and more. Marketing To amplify engagement, we’ll be facilitating a #getunstuck daily tweet discussion from @getunstuckdaily around the featured videos of the day. “TINT has enabled us to unite top sales leaders to share wisdom for the next generation of salespreneurs.” — Branko Cerny, CEO/Cofounder of Immediately TINT has allowed #getunstuck to: Identify and increase engagement with members of top sales communities on Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Aggregate and curate authentic video content to be shared and reshared on social media and participants’ social channels. Unite sales leaders around the world and to empower salespeople by joining the movement on www.getunstuck.club How #getunstuck used TINT: In order to use TINT, #getunstuck had to upload collected videos on an Youtube playlist called ‘getunstuck’. To connect the Youtube content, we utilized TINT to aggregate the private playlist and chose to we made them public. Controlling when the videos go live are valuable because a movement does not take place overnight. In order to create a movement, we had to command the release of the videos in a timely and strategic fashion. manually approve posts before Personally, I’ve been using Tint since 2013 and it has helped my projects save a total development cost of over $50k. TINT helps our project treat every social post like royalty W e’re excited to share the results in a follow-up post after the campaign is over so you can learn the best strategy! Join the movement today by uploading your community videos on @getunstuckdaily. Tell us how you #getunstuck in your day to day sales process. Twitter

TINT case study hacks — Sales Millennials’ #getunstuck campaign launches today

The Garage under SQ5 is outlined with a rectangle Disclaimer: This work was done as part of a class assignment for Georgia Tech’s CS4464/6465 Fall 2016 (https://github.com/jacobeisenstein/gt-compj-class/). The opinions expressed here, if any, are solely those of the students working on this assignment and not of the Instructor or Georgia Tech. Startup Exchange Startup Exchange held its first meeting of 2016 at The Garage under SQ5. People from all over the Georgia Tech community were invited to start the semester off with light refreshments, industry talks, and entrepreneurial workshops — and of course to see what Startup Exchange has planned for the coming weeks. What is Startup Exchange? From their : website Startup Exchange is the entrepreneurial community that empowers students to support and inspire each other to build their dreams and live an alternative lifestyle. To be less hand-wavy, Startup Exchange is a club run by Georgia Tech students that aims to connect people interested in entrepreneurship and to help them hone their craft. , a student at Georgia Tech studying Computer Science, said “The club offers a space for members to socialize and learn from the other members. The club brings in guest speakers with a wealth of experience who can provide guidance. Most important, the club puts you in contact with other students who have similar goals and aspirations which facilitates finding the right people to grow your startup.” Brett Garcia As for why people come to these meetings, — another Computer Science student at GT — says it’s about “the motivation and wisdom of the people that attend the sessions”. He continues: “They say in order to better yourself, you should surround yourself with people that are better than you but have like-minded interests — that’s exactly what I’m attempting to do.” Naveen Chandran The club hosts weekly meetings where attendees can share their ideas, stories, and struggles in the space. Startup Exchange Logo. Source: https://www.facebook.com/StartupExchange/ The Event The 2016 inaugural event kicked off with attendees introducing themselves to the crowd. Each person stood up, was given a microphone, and answered the prompt: What is your name? What is your major? (If you’re still in school) Why are you here/why are you interested in Startup Exchange? If you have a startup, pitch it to us in 60 seconds. If not, what is your favorite startup? Of those in attendance, a vast majority were current students at Georgia Tech. Others were recent alumni or people who worked in and around Tech Square. Surprisingly, only about 1 in 5 people shared that they were currently building a startup. Unsurprisingly, the unanimous answer to “Why are you here?” was something along the lines of learning more about entrepreneurship, finding a place/people to bounce ideas off of, and connecting with people who are also interested in creating their own company. The Keynote “Whatever you do, do the shit out of it” After the introductions, , the CEO of , took the stage. Kyle is a GT Alum (MGT-2004) who started out under the College of Engineering before jumping on the M-Train. He told his story of evolution from living the college life party to party to CEO of a company rated by the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Kyle Porter SalesLoft #1 best place to work for midsize companies Along the way, he shared some advice that he’d gained in his time building his company such as: “Whatever you do, do the shit out of it” Enmesh your core values into your business at every level Figure out what you’re good at and partner for the things you aren’t Have a clear vision of what your business’ purpose is, how you’re going to accomplish it, and why you’re going to accomplish it. The Alumnus The next speaker to take the stage was Hunter Rosenblume, CEO of Cosmos Labs and past director of Startup Semester at Georgia Tech. He began by saying he was part of the crowd listening to speakers talk at Startup Exchange just a year ago and now he’s CEO of his own company. Hunter shared his own advice about being an entrepreneur: “Be around people doing cool shit all the time.” “Pickup side projects you don’t have time to do”, especially those that look cool or that will make you learn a lot. The Garage The Garage The last speaker to take the stage was , CEO and Co-founder of Sandbox Communities. Around Tech Square, he’s most known for the Atlanta division SandboxATL — a company that “connect[s] you to events, media content, and collaborative spaces at the heart of Atlanta’s tech scene.” They host events at various tech spaces around the city that encourage members to mingle and share ideas. Scott Henderson The Garage’s location. Source: http://startupexchange.gatech.edu/ The Garage is a new event space under the Square on Fifth (SQ5) tower that is run by SandboxATL. Scott pitched it as a clubhouse for “people creating the of tech.” The space is aptly named, evoking a no-frills, functional vibe with exposed concrete walls, bare wood, and metal components. future It’s split into two levels. The top floor has three medium-sized areas with desks along the railing overlooking the bottom floor and stage. Along the interior wall, it sports a few break-out rooms furnished by a small desk and door, providing some privacy in an otherwise communal space. The bottom floor has an open floor plan with an overhang under the cover of the second story as you first walk in. The check-in desk sits nestled against the stairs that curl up to your left. Further in, the space opens up around the stage — a raised platform where audience seating (accommodating up to 250 guests, according to the ) can be arranged. website Startup Academy The last piece of programming for the night was the first instance of Startup Academy. Startup Academy is the educational offshoot of Startup Exchange that provides workshops and other interactive activities for club attendees. ever The first lesson was on Ideation — or the process of coming up with ideas for start ups. It involved a short presentation introducing the concept followed by an interactive portion grouping people into teams to brainstorm and categorize on the fly using of sticky notes. lots Startup Exchange meets weekly on Fridays from 4–6PM at The Garage with Startup Academy directly after semiweekly. Hamilton Greene is a current student at Georgia Tech studying Computer Science. If you liked this post, consider clicking the heart icon or following him on Medium. For more info, visit his website at http://sirhamy.com .

The Garage hosts Startup Exchange in 2016

One of my heroes is Gary Vaneychuck. His book blew my mind and I just finished reading . This guy is a legend and I am glad he is coming to my hometown of Atlanta for the in March. I’m stoked to finally meet him and see some raw passion. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook Crush It Rainmaker conference hosted by Salesloft For those who are not familiar with Gary, and here are his top 5 quotes that will get your blood pumping and out of your seats. Say these quotes out loud and you will know what I mean. These are truly powerful words which he says with so much passion that you gotta feel it. watch this video Get off your ass and get noticed. Look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, what do I want to do every day for the rest of my life? Do that. You didn’t grow up driving. You figured it out. You can market your ass off, but if your product sucks, you’re dead. It’s easy to dream about it, but much harder to execute it. Work! I love the enthusiasm that Gary projects and the #HustleMuscle he has to do big things. As I finished reading something big happened. My company, , an account-based marketing firm based in Atlanta, hit $1 million in ARR, and we did it in just nine months! We are now in the works to make a 3x run (as they say in the world) to triple our revenue in 2016. Crush It , Terminus startup Here’s how we did it and the story of our #HustleMuscle. In any startup, it’s a given that you will work crazy hours pouring your life and soul into your company. You’ll wear more hats than you even knew you could wear. You love it and hate it at the same time. But no matter what, you have the greatest influence on the success or failure of your company, and that’s what keeps you going. Because you want to succeed, you’re thinking about your startup while you are drinking, eating, and even sleeping. This lifestyle now seems perfectly normal, but after the past year, it begged a question… Are you crushing it or crushing yourself building a startup? As I reflect on 2015, it was a year some great teamwork and lots of hustle. Heck, we helped build an , , and probably the most important accomplishment is hiring 24 new rockstars on the which really feels like a real family. ABM category with G2Crowd did three massive #FlipMyFunnel conferences with over 1,000 attendees Terminus team So, I tried my best to look at each and every team member of Terminus and came up with 10 reasons why I feel that we are simply #CrushingIt and thankfully not crushing ourselves in the process. 10 Ways to Know You ’re #CrushingIt Building a Startup , employee #3 at Terminus, ran events for the state government and wanted to switch careers. worked in financial accounting before coming to Terminus. They are now rocking our sales development team setting a record number of demos every week with big smiles on their faces as if they have been doing this for years. It’s about doing something you’ve never done before. Amanda Faillo Brad Wilkerson and on our Customer Success team won’t go home until they have done everything to make sure each and every customer is happy. These ladies rock. We call them “Team Kydney” because we can’t live without them. It’s about giving 2,000%. Sydney Smith Karen Topham , who left Salesforce Pardot to head up our sales development team, comes in before anyone else gets in the office to set an example, especially for our new hires and . It’s about coming in early. Lucas Ulloque Kirby Oscar Geoffrey Hanan on our marketing team is all about building a to help innovative B2B sales and marketing professionals learn everything they can about account-based marketing. I joke that her title should be Director of Funnel Flipping. It’s about building a community. Nikki Nixon #FlipMyFunnel community , our sales leader, is so focused on building a kickass team to grow revenue. She took a step back and realized she needed help managing both the sales account executives and SDRs, which is why Lucas came on board. Now, her awesome team of AEs including , , and are laser-focused on driving the company forward to hit our 3X revenue goal. It’s about taking a step back to take 10 steps forward. Tonni Bennett Stuart Maron Chris Reene Zach Patterson is helping me write the . We’re so excited will be out on April 18, and she’s already getting a plan together for building our content library for sales enablement in Q2. It’s about getting to the finish line then running another lap. Lauren Patrick first-ever book about ABM Account-Based Marketing for Dummies , our recruiter and culture evangelist, is finding new ways to make the onboarding process for new “Terminators” smoother and giving every employee an amazing first week and beyond. It’s about dedicating time to do the right things. Kipp Ramsey and on the engineering team started a club for our company! We have several people in our company who are reading the book, along with their spouses, and getting together each month. Talk about a #WorkFamily. It’s about building a great culture. Stevie Vines Brandon Cummings book Our interns — , , and — are so far beyond the stereotypical interns who just print pages and pickup lunch. They are doing real work helping our company grow and solving real problems at a fast-paced startup while shaping their futures forever. It’s about helping build careers. Josh Fowler Adam Perlow Jeff Ronpirin Terminus CEO and co-founder, , always knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur. Our CTO and co-founder, , knew he wanted to build an amazing product. And that’s just what we’re doing while challenge the status quo of the B2B marketing and sales industry. It’s about doing something you always wanted to do. Eric Spett Eric Vass I’m curious to know what other startup founders think about building a business from the ground up. In my next post, I’d love to share more about how to not crush yourself and focus having a great time working and living your dream at a startup. How’s your startup experience? What does #Crushingit mean to you? Originally posted on LinkedIn Pulse

Are You #CrushingIt or Crushing Yourself Building a Startup? A Story of Raw Passion

In my previous article, I explored the evolution of Point of Sale (POS) and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services, focusing on how these options influence customer choice. That discussion was from the customer's perspective. Now, let’s look at it from the viewpoint of businesses, specifically merchants.This article will explore what’s most important for merchants when they integrate financial solutions like POS and BNPL. We’ll look at how these solutions enhance the customer experience and boost sales.Both POS and BNPL services operate in a B2B2C (Business-to-Business-to-Consumer) model, where merchants play a key role in connecting the service provider with the end customer. In this model, merchants are not just the middlemen — they are vital to attracting customers and increasing sales. By offering flexible payment options, merchants create a smoother purchasing experience, which in turn increases customer satisfaction and conversion rates.From a technical perspective, the better the integration between financial services and merchants, the more appealing the product becomes to customers. This includes not just competitive terms, but also the speed of processing, ease of use, and how quickly issues are resolved.The success of POS and BNPL services depends not only on how appealing they are to customers, but also on the willingness of merchants to adopt and integrate them. Without strong partnerships with merchants, these services wouldn’t reach their full potential. So, what exactly matters most to merchants when considering these financial solutions?Flexibility and Customization Square is a great example of a company that offers flexibility and customization to merchants. Square provides a range of payment solutions that can be tailored to fit the needs of businesses of all sizes. For instance, Square’s point-of-sale system is modular, allowing merchants to choose and pay for only the features they need. This flexibility extends to their financing options, where merchants can offer different payment plans to customers based on their preferences. Square’s ability to adapt to the specific needs of a business—whether it's a small café or a large retail chain—has made it a popular choice for merchants looking for customizable solutions.On the other hand, Oracle’s legacy POS systems have been criticized for their lack of customization options. Many merchants found that the system couldn’t be easily adapted to their specific business processes, leading to frustration and even abandonment of the platform. When systems are too rigid, they can prevent merchants from optimizing their operations, which ultimately affects both their business and customer satisfaction.Merchant and Customer Support A good example of strong merchant and customer support comes from Shopify. Shopify has built its reputation not only on its eCommerce platform but also on the extensive support it provides to its merchants. Shopify offers 24/7 customer support through various channels such as chat, email, and phone. They also provide comprehensive online resources, including tutorials and webinars, to help merchants fully utilize their platform. This type of support reassures merchants that they can resolve issues quickly, reducing downtime and ensuring that their businesses run smoothly.On the flip side, eBay faced criticism for its slow and ineffective customer support in the past. Sellers on the platform complained about long wait times and unhelpful responses, which led some merchants to switch to other platforms like Etsy or Amazon. This example illustrates how poor support can lead to a loss of merchant confidence and ultimately, business. Competitive Rates and Terms Klarna, a leading BNPL provider, is an excellent example of a company offering competitive terms to merchants. Klarna charges merchants a fee per transaction, but these fees are often offset by the increase in sales that Klarna helps generate. Klarna's flexibility in structuring merchant fees based on volume or other business-specific factors has helped them win over large retail clients like H&M and ASOS. These competitive terms are appealing to merchants because they see a clear return on investment through increased sales and customer retention.In contrast, PayPal has been criticized by some merchants for its high fees, especially for international transactions. This has led some businesses to limit their use of PayPal or seek alternatives like Stripe or Square, which offer more favorable terms depending on transaction types and volumes.Speed and Ease of Integration Stripe is often cited as one of the best examples of a payment processor that offers fast and easy integration. Stripe’s APIs are developer-friendly, and their documentation is comprehensive, making it easy for businesses to integrate payment processing quickly. The simplicity and speed of integration have attracted major clients like Lyft and Slack, allowing these companies to focus on their core business operations without getting bogged down by complex payment integrations. This fast setup enables businesses to offer Stripe’s services to their customers without delays, preventing any potential sales loss.On the other hand, SAP’s complex ERP solutions have been known for their lengthy and resource-intensive integration processes. Many businesses, especially smaller ones, have struggled with the time and cost of integrating SAP systems, which can take months or even years to fully implement. This example highlights how a slow or complex integration can deter merchants from adopting a solution, even if it offers other benefits.Ongoing Merchant Support A great example of ongoing merchant support comes from Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS provides extensive resources to its clients even after initial setup, offering regular updates, analytics tools, and personalized account management to ensure merchants are maximizing the platform’s potential. AWS also hosts events, webinars, and workshops to educate users on new features and best practices. This constant engagement helps merchants grow and adapt, fostering long-term loyalty and improving the merchant's overall experience.In contrast, Facebook has struggled with ongoing support for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) using its ad platform. Many SMBs have complained about a lack of communication and support after their ads were flagged or accounts were suspended, often without clear explanations or resolutions. This lack of ongoing support has driven some businesses to other platforms like Google Ads, which provides more proactive assistance and account management services.These real-world examples illustrate the importance of flexibility, support, competitive terms, fast integration, and ongoing assistance in maintaining successful merchant partnerships. Companies that excel in these areas, such as Square, Shopify, Klarna, Stripe, and AWS, foster long-term merchant relationships, driving mutual growth. In contrast, companies like Oracle, eBay, PayPal, SAP, and Facebook have lost merchants due to a lack of customization, poor support, high fees, slow integration, or inadequate follow-up assistance.In a future article, I’ll dive deeper into the technical aspects of integration, exploring how a seamless connection between merchants and financial services can drive further growth. if you ever want to get in touch with me Tg: https://t.me/LinaI LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lina-ivanova23/ In my previous article , I explored the evolution of Point of Sale (POS) and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services, focusing on how these options influence customer choice. That discussion was from the customer's perspective. Now, let’s look at it from the viewpoint of businesses, specifically merchants. This article will explore what’s most important for merchants when they integrate financial solutions like POS and BNPL. We’ll look at how these solutions enhance the customer experience and boost sales. Both POS and BNPL services operate in a B2B2C (Business-to-Business-to-Consumer) model, where merchants play a key role in connecting the service provider with the end customer. In this model, merchants are not just the middlemen — they are vital to attracting customers and increasing sales. By offering flexible payment options, merchants create a smoother purchasing experience, which in turn increases customer satisfaction and conversion rates. From a technical perspective, the better the integration between financial services and merchants, the more appealing the product becomes to customers. This includes not just competitive terms, but also the speed of processing, ease of use, and how quickly issues are resolved. The success of POS and BNPL services depends not only on how appealing they are to customers, but also on the willingness of merchants to adopt and integrate them. Without strong partnerships with merchants, these services wouldn’t reach their full potential. So, what exactly matters most to merchants when considering these financial solutions? Flexibility and Customization previous article Flexibility and Customization Square is a great example of a company that offers flexibility and customization to merchants. Square provides a range of payment solutions that can be tailored to fit the needs of businesses of all sizes. For instance, Square’s point-of-sale system is modular, allowing merchants to choose and pay for only the features they need. This flexibility extends to their financing options, where merchants can offer different payment plans to customers based on their preferences. Square’s ability to adapt to the specific needs of a business—whether it's a small café or a large retail chain—has made it a popular choice for merchants looking for customizable solutions. On the other hand, Oracle’s legacy POS systems have been criticized for their lack of customization options. Many merchants found that the system couldn’t be easily adapted to their specific business processes, leading to frustration and even abandonment of the platform. When systems are too rigid, they can prevent merchants from optimizing their operations, which ultimately affects both their business and customer satisfaction. Merchant and Customer Support Merchant and Customer Support A good example of strong merchant and customer support comes from Shopify. Shopify has built its reputation not only on its eCommerce platform but also on the extensive support it provides to its merchants. Shopify offers 24/7 customer support through various channels such as chat, email, and phone. They also provide comprehensive online resources, including tutorials and webinars, to help merchants fully utilize their platform. This type of support reassures merchants that they can resolve issues quickly, reducing downtime and ensuring that their businesses run smoothly. On the flip side, eBay faced criticism for its slow and ineffective customer support in the past. Sellers on the platform complained about long wait times and unhelpful responses, which led some merchants to switch to other platforms like Etsy or Amazon. This example illustrates how poor support can lead to a loss of merchant confidence and ultimately, business. Competitive Rates and Terms Competitive Rates and Terms Klarna, a leading BNPL provider, is an excellent example of a company offering competitive terms to merchants. Klarna charges merchants a fee per transaction, but these fees are often offset by the increase in sales that Klarna helps generate. Klarna's flexibility in structuring merchant fees based on volume or other business-specific factors has helped them win over large retail clients like H&M and ASOS. These competitive terms are appealing to merchants because they see a clear return on investment through increased sales and customer retention. In contrast, PayPal has been criticized by some merchants for its high fees, especially for international transactions. This has led some businesses to limit their use of PayPal or seek alternatives like Stripe or Square, which offer more favorable terms depending on transaction types and volumes. Speed and Ease of Integration Speed and Ease of Integration Stripe is often cited as one of the best examples of a payment processor that offers fast and easy integration. Stripe’s APIs are developer-friendly, and their documentation is comprehensive, making it easy for businesses to integrate payment processing quickly. The simplicity and speed of integration have attracted major clients like Lyft and Slack, allowing these companies to focus on their core business operations without getting bogged down by complex payment integrations. This fast setup enables businesses to offer Stripe’s services to their customers without delays, preventing any potential sales loss. On the other hand, SAP’s complex ERP solutions have been known for their lengthy and resource-intensive integration processes. Many businesses, especially smaller ones, have struggled with the time and cost of integrating SAP systems, which can take months or even years to fully implement. This example highlights how a slow or complex integration can deter merchants from adopting a solution, even if it offers other benefits. Ongoing Merchant Support Ongoing Merchant Support A great example of ongoing merchant support comes from Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS provides extensive resources to its clients even after initial setup, offering regular updates, analytics tools, and personalized account management to ensure merchants are maximizing the platform’s potential. AWS also hosts events, webinars, and workshops to educate users on new features and best practices. This constant engagement helps merchants grow and adapt, fostering long-term loyalty and improving the merchant's overall experience. In contrast, Facebook has struggled with ongoing support for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) using its ad platform. Many SMBs have complained about a lack of communication and support after their ads were flagged or accounts were suspended, often without clear explanations or resolutions. This lack of ongoing support has driven some businesses to other platforms like Google Ads, which provides more proactive assistance and account management services. These real-world examples illustrate the importance of flexibility, support, competitive terms, fast integration, and ongoing assistance in maintaining successful merchant partnerships. Companies that excel in these areas, such as Square, Shopify, Klarna, Stripe, and AWS, foster long-term merchant relationships, driving mutual growth. In contrast, companies like Oracle, eBay, PayPal, SAP, and Facebook have lost merchants due to a lack of customization, poor support, high fees, slow integration, or inadequate follow-up assistance. In a future article, I’ll dive deeper into the technical aspects of integration, exploring how a seamless connection between merchants and financial services can drive further growth. if you ever want to get in touch with me Tg: https://t.me/LinaI Tg: https://t.me/LinaI Tg: https://t.me/LinaI https://t.me/LinaI LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lina-ivanova23/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lina-ivanova23/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lina-ivanova23/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/lina-ivanova23/

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