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Founder’s Corner: An Open View into Mattermark with Danielle Morrill
Danielle Morrill, co-founder and CEO of Mattermark, shares the story behind her company’s vision and her tips for making it through the transition from early-stage startup to achieving rapid growth.
This week we’re kicking off a new series in which we’ll be interviewing SaaS founders and CEOs to share their stories and insights behind what it takes to build and grow a great SaaS company.
We were excited to confirm Danielle Morrill as one of our first guests, since — like many people in the tech world and investment community — we’re regular readers of the Mattermark Daily newsletter. Danielle was kind enough to let us interview her for the podcast below. Tune in to learn more about her strategy behind Mattermark’s content, her thoughts on women and salespeople in tech, and her advice for entrepreneurs and VCs.
This Week in the Founder’s Corner
“People complain about lots of things. That’s usually a really good sign, because it shows investment on the part of those people to tell you these things and trust that you’ll do something good with them.”
— Danielle Morrill, CEO at Mattermark
Listen Here
Subscribe to Labcast
Key Takeaways
On utilizing content to build brand awareness and drive growth
* Write about the things others are afraid to talk about. It’s the unspoken things that people actually want to dig into.
* It’s not about the brand you’ve already created, it’s about what you actually have to say. It’s important to take stances and work hard to provide truly valuable content.
* No one is reading that post you wrote two years ago. Too many VCs assume they can cover a topic once and every entrepreneur will see it.
On metrics
* What to focus on: It all comes down to revenue. But you can’t just look at revenue, because it’s a lagging indicator of how you’re doing.
* Obsessing over one metric can be dangerous. You may be looking at it out of context and miss out on a bunch of other things.
* Look at your funnel. Then figure out the best lever you can use. Focus on that.
On delegating and managing a team
* Balancing the bigger picture and day-to-day: Make sure individual goals have a clear connection to high-level company goals, but also make them something a team member can act on immediately and see results.
On how VCs can help entrepreneurs
* Be more transparent and share basic knowledge. There are a lot of opportunities to help founders feel like they’re on a level playing field in terms of information.
On the old startup mentality of “making something” vs. “selling something”
* Learning to embrace sales and marketing: Ultimately, you do have to sell something and it’s just a question of how early are you going to get good at that?
* Growth hacking: The truth is that sales and marketing actually are metrics-driven and they never weren’t.
* Founders are more experienced and business-minded. I think there’s just better quality founders now. And that trickles down to everything else.
Transcript
Announcer: This is Labcast, insights and ideas for the expansion-stage senior manager, hosted by OpenView Labs.
Jonathan: Hi, everyone and welcome to Labcast. This is your host, Jonathan Crowe. This week, we’re kicking off a new series, in which we’ll be interviewing founders, hearing their stories and getting their insights on the challenges and best practices of building great software companies.
View all episodes
Danielle Morrill, co-founder and CEO of Mattermark, shares the story behind her company’s vision and her tips for making it through the transition from early-stage startup to achieving rapid growth.
This week we’re kicking off a new series in which we’ll be interviewing SaaS founders and CEOs to share their stories and insights behind what it takes to build and grow a great SaaS company.
We were excited to confirm Danielle Morrill as one of our first guests, since — like many people in the tech world and investment community — we’re regular readers of the Mattermark Daily newsletter. Danielle was kind enough to let us interview her for the podcast below. Tune in to learn more about her strategy behind Mattermark’s content, her thoughts on women and salespeople in tech, and her advice for entrepreneurs and VCs.
This Week in the Founder’s Corner
“People complain about lots of things. That’s usually a really good sign, because it shows investment on the part of those people to tell you these things and trust that you’ll do something good with them.”
— Danielle Morrill, CEO at Mattermark
Listen Here
Subscribe to Labcast
Key Takeaways
On utilizing content to build brand awareness and drive growth
* Write about the things others are afraid to talk about. It’s the unspoken things that people actually want to dig into.
* It’s not about the brand you’ve already created, it’s about what you actually have to say. It’s important to take stances and work hard to provide truly valuable content.
* No one is reading that post you wrote two years ago. Too many VCs assume they can cover a topic once and every entrepreneur will see it.
On metrics
* What to focus on: It all comes down to revenue. But you can’t just look at revenue, because it’s a lagging indicator of how you’re doing.
* Obsessing over one metric can be dangerous. You may be looking at it out of context and miss out on a bunch of other things.
* Look at your funnel. Then figure out the best lever you can use. Focus on that.
On delegating and managing a team
* Balancing the bigger picture and day-to-day: Make sure individual goals have a clear connection to high-level company goals, but also make them something a team member can act on immediately and see results.
On how VCs can help entrepreneurs
* Be more transparent and share basic knowledge. There are a lot of opportunities to help founders feel like they’re on a level playing field in terms of information.
On the old startup mentality of “making something” vs. “selling something”
* Learning to embrace sales and marketing: Ultimately, you do have to sell something and it’s just a question of how early are you going to get good at that?
* Growth hacking: The truth is that sales and marketing actually are metrics-driven and they never weren’t.
* Founders are more experienced and business-minded. I think there’s just better quality founders now. And that trickles down to everything else.
Transcript
Announcer: This is Labcast, insights and ideas for the expansion-stage senior manager, hosted by OpenView Labs.
Jonathan: Hi, everyone and welcome to Labcast. This is your host, Jonathan Crowe. This week, we’re kicking off a new series, in which we’ll be interviewing founders, hearing their stories and getting their insights on the challenges and best practices of building great software companies.