In this, our 7th growth story, we speak with Michael Litt, Founder and CEO of Vidyard.

A veteran of Ycombinator and with over $60m of investment raised, Vidyard is one of the North-American SaaS companies you should be be taking note of. They’re helping their customers use video to tell the narratives behind their business - across the full funnel.

We speak with Michael about the power of video and why it’s so powerful - and how that’s being fuelled by the changing demographic of the B2B buyer.

We talk Gen Z, their reliance on mobile and how businesses need to start seeing them as the B2B ‘buyers’ now. As they enter the B2B landscape, how they want to communicate now comes into the equations too. A generation that grew up with video at its core (Insta & Snapchat) - we need to take this into account.

Video can tell passionate stories and they can help you connect with people as a human - humans love story telling. Selling is two people interacting and many, many businesses forget that.

In our sixth episode of the Grow North podcast, we chat with Bassel El Koussa, the co-founder and CEO of the tech platform (and logistic provider), Quiqup.

Born in London, Quiqup enables consumers to order from any retailer and have items delivered straight to them. It's empowering consumers and retailers - as well as taking on giants like Amazon prime.

One of the first themes to come out of the conversation is Bassel's idea of facing his fears by taking control and using complete focus - he's talking about a fear of flying, but it rings through in some of his 'why' around co-founding Quiqup.

Being the master of his own destiny, authenticity and freedom (symbolised by dogs and Nerf guns in the office)are all part of the drivers in co-founding a business that has grown through multiple rounds of large scale funding.

What is interesting about the early days of Quiqup is that as well as being the people who built and serviced the products, Bassel and his co-founders also used the app. Placing an order and then collecting/delivering them themselves, to themselves. Being both customer and provider gave them incredible insight into how the end user perceives the service but also how it could be developed to better meets the needs of retailers.

Bassel's tips on growth? Listen to the market. Listen to the customer and understand what they need. Be as close to your customers as possible. It’s easy to listen to your customers, the trick is understanding them. There’s always a why and there are always multiple layers of what's driving a need. Understanding your customers allows you to understand the market trends and pivot where needed.

And remember, even when you’re creating s market, you are still addressing a need or fixing a problem.

We hope you enjoy the podcast and as ever, we'd love to hear your thoughts.

Brought to you by https://www.sixandflow.com

Show notes:

Quiqup: https://www.quiqup.com/

In the fifth of our Growth stories, we have Charlotte Pearce, CEO & founder of Inkpact.

A company with the strap line of “be unforgettable”, Inkpact is on a mission to help businesses to be more human in their approach. We explore why that is and where the driver for that comes from.

Charlotte is passionately curious about how people work and the psychology of why they do what they do and how that now feeds into her business. Her energy and passion are palpable.

Charlotte explains why we should have a thirst to learn from others, but still allow ourselves space to cut our own thoughts as we lead our businesses. She also explains why we should be dropping the corporate BS and treating each other as humans in B2B and B2C.

This is a captivating interview with one of Forbes magazines 30 under 30’s giving real insight into her growth as a business leader and inspirational tech entrepreneur.

In the fourth of our growth stories, we have Jack Tang.

Jack is the CEO of the high growth tech platform Urban, connecting consumers with the alternative therapy market. Think on-demand massages.

What’s interesting about Jack’s story is how the idea was spurned, how he saw a need and a way to address it, and Urban Massage was born.

Now, rounds of funding and thousands of users later, Jack discusses how and why they pivoted the brand - not to find more growth, but to find the right growth.

Being mission focussed with core principles driving the company forward, Jack talks us through balancing the growing community with the needs of investors. With investment comes expectation but where does long term value outweigh short term gain?

This is an open and honest review of some of the challenges faced by a growing startup turned scale up. Everything from navigating the age old chicken and egg scenario of users or suppliers to being honest with yourself and not believing your own hype.

Jack is insightful and honest about his experience with growing Urban - we hope you find his interview as interesting as we do.

In our third interview of the Grow North Podcast, we catchup with the energetic, customer centric, Bostonian, Julie Hogan, VP Customer Success at Drift.

If you work in marketing and sales and you haven’t heard of Drift, you are surely living under a rock. It’s the Boston born start-up, turned scale-up that has created its own category of marketing, a movement, if you will - conversational marketing.

Drift is the toolset to enable you to humanise sales and marketing through your site. But Julie explains that a lot better than we can. To summarise their meteoric growth, in the last 12 months they’ve tippled in size, and have now raised over $100 million dollars in investment.

And, Julie, she sits at the centre of that. Drift is customer centric and brand lead. The customers needs and challenges sit at the core of what they do and how they work.

Julie talks us through how the customer has become the nucleus of the brand at Drift. How her experiences in services industries have fuelled the passion to deliver great service and the reason the decided to look outside of the tech space to build their team.

One of the interesting themes to come from the interview, knowing when not to take advice. As a woman in tech, Julie is wants us all to have an open dialogue about the ways woman can take amazing opportunities, rather than the reasons they shouldn’t.

Drift was an opportunity that she couldn’t let pass her by. A chance to help shape what has become one of the pillars of the Boston SaaS scene. But, being a mother of two young boys a lot of the people she turned to for advice told her she was crazy to take on the challenge. We’re glad she didn’t listen.

If you are looking for someone to inspire the ways you should engage with clients, Julie is undoubtedly that person.

Drift: www.drift.com

Six & Flow: www.sixandflow.com

With our second interview of the Grow North podcast, we spent some time with Rebekah Valero-Lee the Head of Marketing for what is probably the largest recruitment firm you’ve never heard of, Morson.

With a global footprint in the recruitment industry, the 50 year old Mancunian business has gone from a single founder to nearly a £1 billion in revenue, all while holding their core values centric to the growth of the organisation.

Our conversation with Rebekah takes us from her decision to focus on moving away from external agency support to her desire to grow a team of ‘360 marketers’. We discuss their focus on inbound marketing, a push into chatbots, speaking a language the board understands and also her aspirations to become the first female on the Morson’s board.

Morson’s growth over the last 50 years has been nothing short of impressive and to see a business with Northern roots epitomise success while maintaining its original value is refreshing, encouraging and great growth story.

Morson Group: www.morson.com

Six & Flow: www.sixandflow.com

In the first of our brand new Grow North interviews we interview Pete Caputa, a man with an appetite to challenge convention, the CEO of DataBox and the ‘godfather’ of the HubSpot partner program - now over a $100 million sales channel for the marketing tech giant.

Pete walks us through his personal growth journey from joining HubSpot as salesperson number 4, how he test his theory (and then the data) of using partner relationships to challenge internal thinking, his relentless pushing on the senior team to open up a new channel and his eventual success in getting his way. Effectively dramatically changing the course of HubSpot’s growth and building a network of global well supported, nurtured agencies.

We speak to him about that appetite to challenge convention, his work ethic driven by his hard working parents and his journey into his role as CEO at DataBox, a tool that has fast become integral to the agency community.

Pete goes on to give us insight into creating the growth platform driving over 2,500 monthly sign ups on DataBox and their plans moving into the next six months - well, some of his plans.

This is a fascinating interview with one of the leading figures in the SaaS community.

Mentions of note during the interview:

DataBox: www.databox.com

HubSpot: www.hubspot.com

Pete’s Twitter: @pc4media

BOOK | Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross