Billion Dollar Tech

"'Why you?' is the multi-million dollar question," Sean Paulseth, SVP Partnerships at WedgeHR, says about getting your company noticed in a sea of other, often bigger, competitors. Incentive programs can pay off big time and this is an area where you can get creative with offers, including schwag, referral rewards, contests, and paid-for trips. Of course, deciding this depends on several factors like, knowing the market segment you're targeting, and the size of the enterprise. Larger companies love their own "ecosystems" Sean explains, and will prioritize their established partner programs and keep the promotion on-brand.

A huge component of this, and of getting a business off the ground in general, is facetime. Sean emphasizes the importance of in-person events, networking with both investors and customers. Even in the tech space, the business world is still very relationship driven. When there are several similar products, often the one who gets chosen is the one with the most memorable person attached to it.

On this episode of Billion Dollar Tech, how to be strategic networking, why storytelling is crucial particularly in small business sales, and why reading is an underrated pastime for sales people.

Quotes:

"Within the tech landscape, and in SaaS generally, partnerships seem to be crucial, particularly from a customer-centric capability, you're going to have to do the best of the breed. (3:42-3:56 | Sean)

"It's the smaller markets where you have to get a lot more creative on how to budge them." (15:07-15:13 | Sean)

"Starting with the most relevant channel partners and/or your integrated partners that you may need just to get your feet on the ground is going to be super important."(24:06-24:20 | Sean)

"Having a general sense of curiosity is crucial in sales."(37:47-37:51 | Sean)

"A top-down approach is always going to be important, particularly if you're smaller. But if they're not budging…what's going to be the best incentives for their teams at the end of the day."(13:03-13:33 | Sean)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Sean Paulseth:Website: WedgeHR: https://www.wedgehr.com/LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/sean-paulseth Check out Sean's top recommended books:Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316478526 The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781101912379 Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780679728757

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"It's a story mechanism that's baked into us as humans," Brendan explains on this solo episode of Billion Dollar Tech. "Every story has to have a villain." For so many billion dollar companies, so often the villain in their pitches is not a competitor but the old way of doing things. People need to be taken out of their resistance to change.

There are eight elements in total to a billion dollar pitch, and Brendan reviews them in this episode. They include the "promised land," "the simple promise," and "reason to believe."

On this episode, he explains what a good villain looks like, why they are effective and examples of villains that do and do not work, and examples of each.

Quotes:

"Change is hard. Most people don't like change." (2:07-2:10 | Brendan)

"Your biggest risk is not alienating your audience, it's being ignored altogether." (5:38-5:42 | Brendan)

"They said 'Slack is killing email,' and everyone paid attention. By the way, Slack does not kill email. Everyone still uses email. But it made waves." (6:18-6:27 | Brendan)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

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Rose Punkunus has learned a lot about what it means to optimize growth in her impressive career thus far. She worked for AppleTV as one of its first data scientists and analysts, and then for Uber where she saw the first incarnation of UberEats, and now as the founder and CEO of Sudozi, an IT Services and Consulting firm that streamlines and optimizes spend for finance leaders and operators.

It seems achieving growth is about balance. Balancing the needs of customers and colleagues with your own goals, balancing stepping out of your comfort zone and taking risks, with being strategic and observant.

In this episode, Rose Punkunus offers advice on how to navigate the rough terrain of the approaching financial situation, her advice to anyone starting a new business, and why being face-to-face with people is the best training for any job.

Quotes:

"As you grow, you do want to stay aligned. And it's harder to stay aligned as the company gets larger." (8:31-8:36 | Rose)

"As you're going to market, as a new product in an existing company or a brand new company, really find that middle ground between your incentives as well as your partners incentives, and ultimately the customers' incentives." (13:12-13:27 | Rose)

"You have to take a bet. You have to launch with something. You have to bet with what you think the market wants, launch with it and then, and iterate from there, both on the operations and on the product." (21:53-22:04 | Rose)

"Think about where to use your promotion dollars in the smartest way, and who to bother and who not to bother, to get those incremental growth and objectives."(31:36-31:46 | Rose)

"Jobs that get you maximum exposure to people are valuable in many careers, particularly founder careers."(40:03-40:09 | Rose)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Rose Punkunus:Website: Sudozi: https://www.sudozi.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosezhong/ Check out Rose's top 3 recommended books:Both/And by Huma Abedin: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781501194801 My Life in Full by Indra Nooyi: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780593191798

The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780399592096

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"There is a common misconception that seed valuations are going to be related to traction, but this is not the case," Brendan says on this episode of Billion Dollar Tech. It actually has more to do with the market in which you're operating. Here, he walks us through an article written by Henri Pierre-Jacques, a managing partner at Harlem Capital, which breaks down the math of seed stage valuation.

According to the article, the most important metric is how much is being raised in the seed round. The round size varies according to three factors: who the primary investor is in your business, founder experience, and market and industry. Brendan expounds on these factors and other major points within the article.

Tune into this episode of Billion Dollar Tech to find out why previous experience matters, what the hot markets are, and a quick overview of how venture capital actually works.

Quotes:

"Price is baked into the consensus of everything that we buy." (1:21-1:26 | Brendan)

"Majority of most seed rounds are 2 to 6 million." (5:07-5:10- Brendan)

"If you are an early stage founder, this is what determines your valuation." (8:27-8:31 | Brendan)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Link to Henri post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6932740171637415936/

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"Imagine if you could measure what people love," poses Scott Brown, CEO of Immersion. "And now, we can measure what people love second by second. When you know that, you can do incredible things." Scott's career began on stage, and so he understood from the artistic side what it meant to influence someone's feelings. The doctors whom he would eventually team up with at Immersion, provided the scientific explanation. Immersion made great innovative strides in research of the brain chemical oxytocin, the hormone responsible for bonding. The hormone binds to your heart rhythm, which changes in response to things that you like.

These heart rhythms are measured by devices like FitBits and Apple Watches and downloaded enough that they become a reliable predictor of human behavior and desire. Immersion helps brand leaders and insight teams listen to what is not being said or searched for by their customers, allowing the companies to make decisions accordingly. It's also used in a number of other industries like call centers, and car ride-alongs.

On this episode, Scott explains how to frame complex problems, the importance of switching out of jargon when pitching, and how everything you need to know about life, business, and relationships is written in Shakespeare's "Hamlet."

Quotes:

"My first career was as an actor. So, that ability to stand on stage and influence how people feel is important to me. And it was something that was meaningful in my early life growing up. And then as an entrepreneur, I felt that I leaned into those skills a lot, in selling and helping to communicate a message and tell a story about a business." (18:10-18:38 | Scott)

"Does the insight correlate? Do you feel engaged the same way the device says you're engaged? Do people understand themselves well, or might you say you were engaged, but the data says you were taking a nap?" (20:17-20:36 | Brendan)

"We believe, as humans, that we know what our brains are doing because we have language. In reality, we have no way to actually know what our subconscious brain is doing. I can no more tell you what my brain is doing than I can tell you how my liver liked the lunch I just had." (20:42-21:00 | Scott)

"Immersion is unique because we get rid of all that bias and we just go right to what your brain values. Oftentimes that's uncomfortable, and sometimes it's incredibly powerful." (22:35-22:45 | Scott)

"Nobody gives a shit about you as a founder. They only care about, 'Have you built something that can help me?'"(41:29-14:33 | Scott)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Scott Brown:Website: https://www.getimmersion.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/immersion-neuroscience/ Twitter: @sbrownCheck out Scott's recommended reads:Hamlet by Shakespeare: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780451526922 Reboot by Jerry Colonna: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062749536 Trust Factor by Paul J. Zak: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781531867737

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When you analyze the pitching and narrative creation of billion dollar companies, there are a handful of timeless principles that always seem to emerge. Multi-billion dollar VC firm Sequoia lists their ten principles of effective pitching in the article, "Writing a Business Plan from Team Sequoia." Here Brendan unpacks each item, adding examples from various businesses' success and from his own book. Not surprisingly, the first principle is defining, very clearly, your company's purpose.

As we continue down the list, the common theme seems to be specificity. When pitching, you must convey precisely what customers' problems and needs are, just how your business can provide the solution, and why customers should choose you over your competitors.

Brendan provides good and bad examples of the 10 principles of pitching, so you can hear the difference between a simple message and a vague message, he discusses what change in the world is causing a systemic shift in the global market, and one of the critical mistakes many founders put right at the top of pitches.

Quotes:

"Unique and compelling is important here. Especially if you're going to be using this kind of narrative where you're really problem-solution focused. Because there are many people that are often trying to solve similar problems." (4:48-4:59 | Brendan)

"Most of us default to skepticism, and the easiest answer to any individual investment is 'No.' So, people are going to be looking for reasons why the thesis may have holes in it." (5:55-6:07 | Brendan)

"Everyone has competitors. It's a complete lack of understanding of the market to say that you do not have competitors." (7:11-7:18 | Brendan)

"No one expects you to have a crystal ball, and no one expects you to have all the answers." (7:43-7:46 | Brendan) Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Sequoia's Pitch Recommendations: https://articles.sequoiacap.com/writing-a-business-plan

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"There are tons of times throughout the course of the day when you're looking for a good person, and how do you find that person?" says Jamie Grenney, Head of Sales, Marketing and Customer Success at Connect the Dots, a professional networking platform. What separates Connect the Dots from similar platforms is that it sources from users' email banks, determining, based on the level of interaction within the emails, how well two people within the same network might know each other. For an employer trying to narrow the search for a hire, or a shy young person looking to make inroads into their industry, this provides enough context to make a warm introduction, increasing the chance that both parties find what they're looking for.

It's a venture that's been years in the making, and yet is more timely than ever. Connect the Dots' CEO Drew Sechrist, who worked with Jamie at Salesforce back in the early 2000s, had no major connections when he first started out. So, by ghostwriting emails which colleagues and acquaintances then sent out on his behalf, he managed to make his way into the network of Salesforce's CEO Marc Benioff, which changed the trajectory of his career. Now Connect the Dots provides users with a welcome screening process, as they sift through an ever-increasing amount of inbox clutter, and change course away from the cold contact models and software.

Tune in to this episode of Billion Dollar Tech to find out what advice Jamie would give to young entrepreneurs, what author Robin Dunbar's writing on human relationships tells us about our networking habits, and the result of Jamie's resolution to make 100 connections in 100 days.

Quotes:

"When someone does make the introduction, you follow through, and represent yourself well. That's the other key to success." (5:47-5:57 | Jamie)

"That's one of the real differences: using email you get a lot better signal about how well people know each other and you can always go back to that original message to see how you were introduced."(8:27-8:37 | Jamie)

"Asking is good. We've got nothing to lose by making the ask, the key is to make sure there's the context there, or the why, and you make it easier for the other person to say yes." (14:03-14:16 | Jamie)

"Now we're at the point where, everyone has access to your contact data, everybody has automation, so that's increasing the volume of stuff that I'm receiving, and so people have begun to tune it out."(17:33-17:45 | Jamie)

"It's becoming harder and harder to get through and so the best way to filter through that noise is when people respond to people in their inbox that they know and so if they see a name that they recognize they're far more likely to open that and far more likely to respond than if you're going in cold." (17:51-18:08 | Jamie)

"Everybody is basically scanning to delete, they're not scanning to read." (8:15-18:17 | Brendan)

"Running fast is important but you want to avoid rework. You don't want to be in a spot where you've thrown too much away." (28:45-28:53 | Jamie)

"Nothing is more important than growth. Growth solves all problems." (31:12-3:15 | Jamie)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Jamie Grenney:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/jamiegrenney Twitter: @JamieGrenneyhttps://www.ctd.ai/ Check out Jamie Grenney's recommended resources:Friends, by Robin Dunbar: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781408711736 Accidental Superpower, by Peter Zeihan: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781455583683

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Peter Fishman's resume has its fair share of disparate data points. "I was once considered the world's expert in video rental," he explains. "This is essentially the world's worst skill." He spent a decade as Chief Bacon officer of Bacon Hot Sauce, a company he co-founded with Dan Silverman. He even describes himself as a "failed" academic, despite earning a PhD in Economics from Berkeley. Fittingly, he eventually streamlined these career data points into Mozart Data, another company he co-founded, with Silverman. Mozart Data is an all-in-one modern data platform that allows anyone to—without the need for engineering resources–organize, centralize, and analyze their data.

Even outside of the data space itself, knowing the statistics of consumers and investors is crucial to launching any successful enterprise. Fishman admits that the relationships and reputation that he and Silverman formed from all of their previous years in business helped them launch their platform with unusual speed, as their first customers were investing in 30 years of accumulated trust.

On this episode of Billion Dollar Tech, you'll learn the value of a data pipeline, what major change in the data space has Peter excited, and the crucial difference between customers and friends.

Quotes:

"B2B companies were not developing like consumer companies. They would sell to a CIO and magically whatever the CIO decided, that's what the company had to adopt. (5:54-6:07 | Peter)

"You started to see that in the software space, you started to see teams that would make decisions about what software they were using to basically make themselves move quicker." (6:27-6:37 | Peter)

"What has happened in enterprise or B2B in the last almost two decades has been this shift from exclusively a top-down sale from somebody with a fancy title making a decision on behalf of the whole company, to a more natural, bottom-up motion. What do you prefer and vote with your credit card." (9:05-9:31 | Peter)

"It's very hard to raise money without either a product, a vision, or traction. If you have all three of them, you're in the driver's seat." (11:48-11:57 | Peter)

"The reality is 99.99% or entrepreneurs don't end up on a rocketship to Mars. They end up toiling for many years in a really challenging environment." (15:03-15:17 | Peter)

"We were selling a product, not ourselves as a service, that said the buyers trusted our names. This is about 30 years of trust we had built with these three customers." (17:58-18:12 | Peter)

"So you mentioned the word data pipeline. What's a data pipeline?'(25:54-26:00 | Brendan)

"You have to understand some of the nuances of your data, what's generating your data. What's the mechanism?" (35:56-36:01 | Peter)

Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Peter Fishman:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petefishmanv Twitter: @peterfishman https://www.mozartdata.com/ Blog: https://www.mozartdata.com/blog Check out Peter Fishman's recommended resources:Moneyball by Michael Lewis: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780393324815 https://fivethirtyeight.com/https://www.linkedin.com/company/mozartdata

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In this excerpt from Brendan's upcoming course, "How to Create a Billion Dollar Sales Pitch," you'll learn about the two key cognitive biases that you should keep in mind as you prepare a sales pitch: anchoring bias and groupthink bias. Anchoring bias essentially describes the way people will cling to the first piece of information they receive about a topic, and filter all subsequent information through this initial, embedded belief. Groupthink bias is the tendency of people to adopt the beliefs of the group to appease those around them.

Recognizing these biases means realizing how hard it is to change someone's minds from their first understanding of a product or service, and how advantageous it is to present your product as a category leader, so that enough people will buy in that they sway even reluctant buyers. Understanding these two biases is highly beneficial not only to salesmanship, but to developing market strategies and investor strategies.

In this episode of Billion Dollar Tech, you'll hear a highlight from Steven Novella's lecture "Your Deceptive Mind," the true origins of the famous line "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM," and a quote from Steve Godin that sums it all up.

Quotes

"Let's take Covid that's going on right now, as we're recording this. Is it a conspiracy, or is it a real thing? Much of how you think of this is anchored on the first piece of information you got." (1:47-1:56 | Brendan)

"People so over-index on the first piece of information they're given, it's almost impossible to change people's minds." (2:46- 2:52 | Brendan)

"That's what you're trying to do: you're trying to say that people who adopt a similar identity to that of your ideal buyer do things like this, by what you sell." (3:49-3:59 | Brendan) Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

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"An effective price helps you capture fair value for the value that you're delivering to customers," says Dan Balcauski, who specializes in B2B SaaS, which stands for business-to-business Software-as-a-Service. Balcauski is the Founder and Chief Pricing Officer at Product Tranquility, a business consulting and value creation firm, where he helps businesses optimize their pricing models. This includes dispelling a number of myths.

One of these myths is the "freemium" pricing model, where users are offered basic features of a product or service for free while they are charged a premium for higher-tier features. Dan explains that as tempting and seemingly effective as these models may be, they are almost never a good idea. Constantly churning out new features takes a toll on a company's development team, and creates an illusion of free growth.

In this episode of Billion Dollar Tech, you'll learn the four pillars of a successful SaaS package, the three Cs of pricing, and the subtle but crucial difference between value metric and price metric.

Quotes:

"In terms of a company's objective, I believe that an effective price maximizes the company's long term profitability." (1:04-1:10 | Dan)

"When it comes to SaaS pricing, most executives think that what you charge will determine your success, in fact, who and how you charge determines your success." (4:09-4:14 | Dan)

"Without a product manager there to be the voice of all the stakeholders inside the building and the voice of the customer when the customer's not represented at the table, it's hard to make decisions in an efficient manner to move the conversation forward about what should be built and when." (11:36-11:48 | Dan)

"With segmentation you really have two fundamental directions that you can start with: you can start with who customers are or what customers want." (15:48-15:54 | Dan)

"When I think about value drivers in jobs to be done, there's three categories of value drivers: the economic value drivers, (or economic function market value drivers), there's emotional value drivers, or there's the social, or community value drivers." (23:50-24:07 | Dan)

"For most B2B, you have to do research. So that's talking to customers or doing surveys. Testing your pricing and packaging is highly problematic." (35:54-36:05 | Dan)

"Software is what economists call 'an experience good,' which means my perception of value changes as I use it." (49:28-49:36 | Dan)

Connect with Brendan Dell:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell

Instagram: @thebrendandell

TikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926

Connect with Dan Balcauski:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/balcauski

More about Dan: https://www.producttranquility.com/home-extended/about-dan/

Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts!

Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm