In this episode Ross and John sit down with Rory Kelly. Rory Kelly brings a wealth of customer experience knowledge to the table, his worked across media agencies and more over in HubSpot as start off, very much on the customer success side bringing forth value to customers and avoiding that dirtiest of dirty word ‘churn’ to really help customers become their own rockstars.

He's been able to navigate through the very early insertions of HubSpot here in EMEA.

Growing that team and leading that team to its success.

We start by discussing Rory Kelly’s career journey, what brought him to where he is and what led to those decisions.

Rory shares why sales leaders should invest in customer success.

He further tells us about phrases created at HubSpot and how it becomes part of their language.

We then touch on how he replicates passion and leadership.

Lastly, Rory shares some anecdotes and elements of “crack”.

In today's episode Ross Lauder speaks to Liam Morley, Head of Talent Acquisition at Rasa, they supply infrastructure around conversational AI giving tools really to the developer community to provide better and more usable products that are based around superior customer experience. They are hiring incredibly fast at the moment and growing to scale. They have been funded $26M in Series B. Keen to understand more about their culture, value and their product set and why it's disruptive in the market, where that's taken them and what they’ve learnt.

To kick off we ask Liam to share his story, what brought him to Talent Acquisition and why his so excited about Rasa of course:

We ask Liam to explain, hiring at scale with a functional place older, and hiring at scale with a functional place but with a vision and mission, how does he see those two scenarios playing out and how do you maintain the candidate experience?

We then have Liam tell us how they identify a rock-star candidate?

We get deeper into the technology and ask Liam to tell us more about it, what about it is so exciting and where he sees it going? This leads us to disruptive banking.

Next we ask Liam to share stories or anecdotes on transformational customer experience and what are his thoughts on people not wanting to talk to people during customer experience.

We dive into culture and ask Liam what he believes it is and what is important for him when hiring the right person. And what is a “must have” question in an interview and what does Rasa view as leadership:

In today's episode we speak to Alan McGlinchey, Vice President of Emerging Growth Companies at IDA Ireland. Everything European Expansion, we’ve had IDA mentioned in every podcast so far, so why would we not engage these guys and have them tell the story about what they do.

We kick off by asking Alan, for those who don't know, what is the IDA and what do they do?

We have him tell us what are some of the pain points that these businesses experience and why does Ireland win?

We ask Alan to tell us what benefits do US companies bring to Ireland when they land?

We know that the IDA is very big on trips and site visits etc, how have you been able to cope with that during this pandemic?

Then we ask Alan what are his views on the implications from the new world “work from home” and he believes companies will take advantage of it and what new challenges come with it?

Alan tells us what tech advantages he sees and what big things should we expect?

In today's episode Ross and John speak to Kevin Baum, CEO and Co-founder at AgriWebb. AgriWebb is transforming global cattle and sheep production, farming management software that delivers profitability, provenance and sustainability across the supply chain. Focused on building software for livestock farmers, AgriWebb is Australia’s market leader and rapidly expanding across the globe in multiple markets namely South Africa, New Zealand, UK, US and Brazil.

We begin with Kevin telling us about his background, career and journey that led him to this point and his story in-between:

We ask Kevin to share with us why some Silicon Valley businesses get more funding and touches on the investor community.

The planet is going to need 56% more food and reduce greenhouse gases by 75%, how are we tracking this as humans, where does Kevin feel we are headed?

Kevin elaborates on what the tech world looks like in the near future for farmers:

Then we have Kevin telling us how he engages and finds his target audience, farmers.

Finally we get to pick Kevin's brain on what the “perfect” customer looks like, what kind of financial model is used and how it adds value. Anything that shocked farmers?

Lastly we find out from Kevin what his leadership style is and what he believes is “culture”.

In today's episode, Ross and John speak to Eugene Levin, Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer at SEMrush. They are the authority in online visibility. Plenty of organisations talk about tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of users that they have, they’re able to boast 6M users across 20B keywords.

We start with Eugene telling us more about his career thus far, his previous experience with Venture Capital and the journey that brought him to where he is today, SEM Rush.

We ask Eugene how he would best articulate what SEMrush is to a consumer or a small to medium business owner.

Eugene further explains what keeps him busiest and which part of the business takes up most of his attention.

Later we discuss how Eugene navigates through some big personalities, some logical and some not.

We move on to discussing what analytical frameworks.

We then ask Eugene where he thinks the majority of opportunities are online going forward in the new world.

We’ve heard Eugene previously talk about how searchable audio is going to impact podcasting, we ask him to elaborate on that.

Lastly, we ask Eugene what he thinks is his super power, and what he believes is his contribution to the culture at SEMrush.

In this episode Ross and John speak to Brendan Noud, Co-Founder and CEO at LearnUpon.

Brendan founded the company over a decade nearly at this stage, having had a decade of experience in the space. With a simple belief that a platform in the LMS and learning  environment should be simple and quick to set up which is also backed by exceptional 24/7 customer support today. They boast over a 1000 customers worldwide with offices in the US, Australia and two across Europe. They are an indigenous Irish company that are winners of multiple awards and just announced a significant funding round of $56m.

Brendan tells us about his drive, did he know he would be this successful and what major gaps did he see early on.

He further explains whether he has sleepless nights about their software becoming too complex and how they have improved their digital customer experience.

We then discuss how clients drive strategy and how he has structured sales and marketing to allow sales guys to engage with qualified buyers.

We find out from Brendan what excites him and what gets him up in the morning. Brendan shares what he believes are his super powers.

Lastly we chat about what the future of learning looks like.

In today’s episode Ross and John speak to Henrique Aragão, VP and GM EMEA at G2. G2 is disrupting B2B tech buying by connecting buyers and vendors based on authentic customer driven reviews in real time. This allows organisations to get their validity of user interaction out to the marketplace.

We kick it off with Henrique sharing his background and experience as well as how he got to this point of his career.

Henrique talks about his philosophy and key things you need to know to be successful in sales and how he best defines it.

We touch on how important it is to hire the right people and how Henrique discovers the “rockstar” candidates.

Henrique then tells us about what he sees is the latest trends in the tech market place right now.

Lastly Henrique shares his sentiment on culture, what are people doing when leaders are not around.

In this episode Ross and John speak to Louise Walsh. Louise knows SaaS and Hyper growth with experience at Google, HubSpot, Atlassian and Mathspace. Additionally she’s worked across multiple cultures, languages and countries while juggling everything been thrown at you in a hyper growth scenario. Louise shares her storey on how to deliver while scaling.

Louise walks us through where she started her career and where she is today. Also, telling us about her passion for recruitment and where it began.

She tells us how clear she was on profiles, and how pushing through the hard times with motivation is key.

Louise shares some anecdotes and stories around going the extra mile to get some of that class talent on board.

Louise explains how to sell people on a hyper scale culture.

Lastly Louise tells us how she prioritizes candidates, what help she uses and how she manages that process. Also vetting agencies and vendors.

In this episode Ross and John speak to Raj Sabhlok, CEO of Pipedrive. Raj is a seasoned software executive with a successful track record of guiding global technology companies who are competitive by nature. He gets excited about winning. He is a public speaker in SaaS and Cloud Computing and contributor to Forbes.

Raj starts with breaking down his career, from the beginning and where those early-stage decisions took him.

He further explains what his “rockstar” candidate looks like and how he goes about finding them.

We then talk about how Raj ensures his message resonates within the business and the team. And are people born with a high IQ?

We move on to discuss some of the data that is available to sales reps and how it powers them.

Lastly Raj shares what his key advice is for new CEOs; where to begin and how.

In today's episode Ross and John speak to Luke Freiler, CEO of Centercode. Centrecode is a leading customer validation solution for gathering and prioritizing customer insights so that teams can deliver market dominating products.

We kick off this episode with Luke introducing us to his career and describes where he began and the journey his working life has taken him on. He also touches on how work life has changed due to software.

Luke explains the importance of knowing what problem the product is solving.

He further talks about what he believes is his super power and we talk about the hits taken because of the pandemic.

Luke tells what a great candidate or talent looks like and how to identify it.

Lastly Luke tells us who inspires him and what his winning routine looks like.