BUILD with Blake Bartlett

By OpenView Venture Partners

What's BUILD with Blake Bartlett about?

It takes 3 ingredients to build a software startup in today’s wild market: people, product and growth. Easier said than done. BUILD is here to help by featuring conversations between venture capitalist Blake Bartlett and the smartest folks in software. OpenView is a VC firm that invests in amazing companies like Datadog, Expensify and Calendly. Visit ov.vc for more details.

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BUILD with Blake Bartlett episodes:

05.17.2023
Alex MacCaw (Clearbit Reflect): Everything I’ve Learned as Startup Founder
pAlex MacCaw is the founder of Clearbit and Reflect, and his journey with each company has been wildly different. Clearbit took more of a “classic” startup approach—raising VC money, hiring hundreds of people, and working from an office in SF.nbsp;/ppbr/ppIn...
05.10.2023
Alex MacCaw (Clearbit & Reflect): Everything I’ve Learned as Startup Founder
Alex MacCaw is the founder of Clearbit and Reflect, and his journey with each company has been wildly different. Clearbit took more of a “classic” startup approach — raising VC money, hiring hundreds of people, and working from an office in SF....
02.24.2023
Patrick Campbell (ProfitWell): Work-Life Balance for Founders
pPatrick says work-life balance is the wrong framework. It’s more about work-life fit and finding what suits you best. This is especially true for startup founders, where your work is often all-consuming./ppbr/ppEpisode Highlights/pulli[00:32nbsp;-nbsp;02:30] Thoughts on work/life balance/li/ulpbr/ppstrongMentioned in this episode:/strong/ppa...
02.22.2023
Patrick Campbell (ProfitWell): What’s the “Right” Culture for Your Company?
pCulture at a startup is always tricky, but there’s one common mistake founders should avoid at all costs. It’s the desire to make everyone happy all the time. Patrick says this leads to a “culture of accommodation” which ultimately ends...
12.02.2022
Ryan Carlson (ex-Wiz, Okta): Category Creation is Overrated
pEvery startup wants to create a category. This is often a mistake. Or at least it’s prioritized too early by many founders and marketers. Ryan Carlson, longtime CMO at Okta, explains why this falls flat with customers and what to...
11.30.2022
Ryan Carlson (ex-Wiz, Okta): Company Values = Marketing Message
pOkta’s CMO for 5+ years, Ryan Carlson, says marketing’s guiding light should be the company mission and values. Marketing’s job is to tell the story of the company, not to merely promote the product or drive leads into the top...
11.18.2022
Raj Sarkar (ex-1Password, Atlassian): PLG Data Infrastructure
pRaj says that most of the PLG advice out there today is missing a key foundational point: data. Many PLG companies still rely on traditional sales amp; marketing software that keeps data in silos. The key to winning in PLG...
11.16.2022
Raj Sarkar (ex-1Password, Atlassian): B2B Brand Marketing
pB2B marketers usually overlook brand in their marketing mix. Brand marketing is only for CPG companies, right? Raj makes the case that brand marketing is not optional, if you want to win your category./ppbr/ppBut brand marketing isn’t just buying a...
11.04.2022
Chris Degnan (Snowflake): VP Sales vs Founder/CEO Relationship
pChris was Snowflake’s first sales hire, and he built the commercial business from $0 to $1B+ ARR. What is the optimal relationship between a VP Sales and the Founder/CEO during this journey?/ppbr/ppMany sales leaders solely focus on hitting their number....
11.02.2022
Chris Degnan (Snowflake): Selling in a Recession
pChris is CRO at Snowflake and has been leading sales there for 9 years. He’s helped grow from $0 to $1B+ ARR. He’s clearly a software sales legend. So how is Chris coaching his reps and leaders during today’s recessionary...
10.21.2022
Alex Su (Ironclad): TikTok for B2B
pToday’s shorter episode is a follow up to my longer conversation with Alex Su, Head of Community at Ironclad. In that conversation, we talk about his TikTok channel @legaltechbro and how he developed a personal brand strategy that compliments Ironclad’s...
10.19.2022
Alex Su (Ironclad): Personal Brand + Community Playbook
pAlex is big on TikTok under the handle @legaltechbro. He has quickly become one of the biggest influencers in the entire legaltech industry. How? 15 second video skits poking fun at the legal profession. It’s a counterintuitive strategy on its...
10.13.2022
Mark Roberge (Stage 2): B2C Growth vs. B2B PLG
pMark is now a VC at Stage 2 Capital, and also teaches a class at Harvard Business School called “Decoding Growth in Silicon Valley.” It focuses on applying the best practices from B2C growth to B2B GTM playbooks. Today on...
10.05.2022
Mark Roberge (Stage 2): How HubSpot Became PLG
pMark was CRO at HubSpot for 9+ years. He built the successful sales-led GTM playbook that helped the company scale to nearly $100M ARR. Then he shifted gears and helped pioneer PLG at HubSpot, effectively disrupting the original GTM playbook...
09.23.2022
Katie Burke (HubSpot): How Should Employees Navigate Today’s Macro Environment?
pKatie shares the advice she’d give a friend or family member who is deciding to stay in a role or recruit for a new one. Most of the advice today is focused on leaders and companies. Katie’s advice for you,...
09.21.2022
Katie Burke (HubSpot): Leading Hiring People in a Recession
pKatie has been Chief People Officer at HubSpot since 2017. She has helped the company grow to thousands of employees globally. Katie outlines her top priorities in today’s uncertain macro environment — both for existing employees and for recruiting new...
09.09.2022
Krista Anderson-Copperman (Asana): What is a Chief Customer Officer?
pKrista was CCO at Okta for 6 years, and held a similar role at Salesforce before that. But this is a relatively new role at large software companies. What does it mean exactly? And what makes for a good CCO?nbsp;/ppbr/ppConversation...
09.07.2022
Krista Anderson-Copperman (Asana): Today’s Team vs. Tomorrow’s Team
pLet’s face it. Statistically, your current team is not likely to be your future team. It’s incredibly rare for any single leader to stay with a company through multiple phases of growth. As a board member and advisor to companies...
08.26.2022
Kyle Poyar (OpenView): How I Do Content
pKyle is a one-man content machine. If you follow him on LinkedIn or subscribe to his Substack, you know this is true. How does Kyle approach content? What is his personal brand strategy? How did he win at Substack?nbsp;/p
08.24.2022
Kyle Poyar (OpenView): Top of Funnel for PLG
pPLG breaks traditional SaaS top of funnel. Why? Trusty channels like content marketing, email nurture and in-person events don’t translate to PLG. Kyle has identified what works for PLG leaders like Zapier, Figma and Calendly, and shares a new top...
08.12.2022
Harini Gokul (AWS): The Importance of Range for Leaders Today
pEveryone today claims to be an expert in their social media profile. But truly being a world-class expert requires extremely narrow focus. Harini argues that range and breadth is just as important, but often overlooked today. /p
08.10.2022
Harini Gokul (AWS) Customer Success as Offense
pHarini leads customer success at AWS, which is arguably the most important enterprise technology vendor today. She says customer success needs to play proactive offense more than reactive defense. By starting with your customer’s customer, you can align your strategic...
07.29.2022
Martin Gontovnikas (HyperGrowth): What PLG Means for the CEO
pA lot of PLG talk is focused on operational strategies and tactics. But what does PLG mean for the CEO of a company? What should your mindset be? How do you address common objections you might hear from your team...
07.27.2022
Martin Gontovnikas (HyperGrowth): Why You Should Embrace a Community Strategy (and How to Do It)
p“Community” is a major buzzword today, and for good reason. Community creates leverage, and lots of it. Gonto ran marketing and growth at Auth0 for 7 years before the $6.5 billion acquisition by Okta. He cuts through the buzzword noise...
07.15.2022
Cliff Weitzman (Speechify): How to Learn Anything
pCliff has a secret learning strategy: recruit the best people in the world at a skill to personally train you. It’s easier than you think. They’re just a DM away. Check out this quick pro tip and try it out...
07.13.2022
Cliff Weitzman (Speechify): The Value of Building a Personal Brand and Audience as a Startup Founder CEO
pCliff is the Founder CEO of Speechify. He’s also a “full-time” YouTuber, with an awesome channel that features startup advice, life hacks, and self-improvement philosophy. He explains the why and how behind his personal brand strategy on YouTube, and we...
06.24.2022
John Eitel (Canva): How PLG Founders Can Avoid Common Mistakes in Adding a Top-Down Sales Motion
pAdding a top-down sales motion is a make-or-break moment for PLG companies. If it’s done right, it can make you the next big thing in your category. If it’s not done right, it can break your team and ultimately compromise...
06.22.2022
John Eitel (Canva): Bottom-Up + Top-Down
pJohn built the global sales team at Canva, which allowed the company to expand further into the enterprise. He walks us through everything a PLG founder needs to know about adding a top-down motion to a bottom-up, product-led foundation. When...
06.10.2022
Annie Pearl (Calendly): Career Growth in Product Management
pA product professional’s role changes dramatically over time as a company and product scales, and as the individual develops additional skills and experiences. Annie says you need to “product manage” your own career as a PM in this highly dynamic...
06.08.2022
Annie Pearl (Calendly): Building Enterprise Products
pEvery PLG business will eventually have to build for the enterprise. Why? Bottom up adoption can indeed go “all the way up”...to the C-level of large organizations. But to get that 6- or 7-figure contract, you’ll need to beef up...
06.01.2022
Andrew Gazdecki (MicroAcquire): Founder M Mistakes
pFounders often shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to running an Mamp;A process. Andrew points out the most common mistakes he’s seen, and how to avoid them./ppbr/ppstrongKey Takeaways:/strong/pp[0:23] The Biggest Mistake Founders Make Selling Their Business/ppbr/ppstrongMentioned in this...
05.25.2022
Andrew Gazdecki (MicroAcquire): How to Sell Your Startup
pThere is a dearth of good advice on how to sell or exit your startup. Most people use outdated slogans like “companies are bought, not sold” but offer little practical advice to navigate a daunting Mamp;A process. Andrew has sold...
05.18.2022
Yaw Aning (Malomo): Productizing Services
pServices-based startups are often dismissed as unscalable “body shops.” But agencies and consultancies are often where product ideas hatch. Yaw reveals his pro tips for how to identify *which* product ideas are worth building as an agency./ppbr/ppstrongKey Takeaways:/strong/pp[0:08] Advice for...
05.11.2022
Yaw Aning (Malomo): Services Founder vs. SaaS Founder
pMany SaaS startups are launched out of services companies. Yaw was running an agency building apps, and kept seeing a consistent pain point in his ecommerce clients’ workflows. So he built a SaaS product to address the need, and boom
05.04.2022
Peter McKay (Snyk): The CEO’s #1 Job
pA company is only as good as its people. And if a company is growing fast, then it’s only as good as the last hire. CEOs should set the tone by striving to be the top performing recruiter at the...
04.27.2022
Peter McKay (Snyk): Leading Through Hypergrowth
pHypergrowth is hard. Sustaining hypergrowth is even harder. Leaders need to constantly bring new talent into the organization to avoid plateaus. The tricky part? New talent almost always entails changing roles for existing team members. Peter says the answer is...
04.20.2022
May Habib (Writer): AI Primer on GPT-3
pGPT-3 is a deep learning language model from OpenAI, and it has taken the developer world by storm. May Habib is the Co-Founder and CEO of Writer, an AI writing assistant for teams, and she unpacks what GPT-3 is and...
04.13.2022
May Habib (Writer): Why Founders Should Focus on Distribution
pFounders often obsess over product, and for good reason. It’s hard to have a good business with a terrible product. May Habib argues that is only half the solution for founders. It’s equally important to obsess over product distribution. After...
04.06.2022
Alex Bilmes (Endgame): The PLG Funding Boom Explained
pPLG companies are raising larger rounds than ever, at higher prices than ever. Seeing this prompts two BIG questions. Why is this happening? What are these companies going to do with all that cash? Alex works directly with these companies...
03.30.2022
Alex Bilmes (Endgame): Product-Led Sales
pProduct-led sales is selling to companies that already use your product. How hard can that be? Very hard, it turns out. PLG companies need to think about sales in a fundamentally different way in order to succeed. Alex has dedicated...
03.23.2022
The Bottom Line on PQLs
pPQLs are a hot topic, but they are very tricky to define and implement correctly. Jesus helps clarify and illustrate the role of PQLs in a broader PLG analytics stack./ppbr/ppstrongMentioned in this episode:/strong/ppa href=https://openviewpartners.com/newsletter/#.YfRAM-rMIuU rel=noopener noreferrer target=_blankSign up for OpenViews...
03.16.2022
Jesus Requena (Figma): PLG Data Analytics
pPLG changes the customer journey. A customer advances by taking actions directly in the product, which means product analytics are paramount to PLG success. Jesus Requena tells the story of how he built the PLG analytics stack at Unity, and...
03.09.2022
Devang Sachdev (Snorkel AI): The Story of Your Product
pYour product’s story is really the story of your customers. Listen to Devang’s straightforward framework for successful product storytelling./ppbr/ppstrongMentioned in this episode:/strong/ppa href=https://openviewpartners.com/newsletter/#.YfRAM-rMIuU rel=noopener noreferrer target=_blankSign up for OpenViews weekly newsletter/a/ppa href=https://www.linkedin.com/in/devangsachdev/ rel=noopener noreferrer target=_blankDevang Sachdev, Vice President of Marketing...
03.02.2022
Devang Sachdev (Snorkel AI): Platform GTM
pEveryone wants to be a platform, but be careful what you wish for. Platform go-to-market is radically different from application go-to-market. It requires a whole different framework and a special focus on solutions. Devang describes the platform GTM frameworks he...
02.23.2022
Beth Steinberg (Chime): Talent Development Is Crucial Today
pCareer paths today look less like a ladder and more like a checkerboard. You go somewhere to acquire a skill, even if it’s a non-linear move on your resume. This is especially true for Gen Z. Hear how to leverage...
02.16.2022
Beth Steinberg (Chime): Scaling Your People Talent
pMost startups and VCs focus on headcount growth. Success is often measured in how many times your headcount has multiplied. Scaling your people and talent deliberately requires balancing four factors: culture, structure, talent acquisition, and management systems. Hear how Beth...
02.09.2022
Jordan Walker Justin Mitchell (Yac): Product as Marketing
pYac started as an agency side project. But after winning a big Product Hunt hackathon, investors started tweeting at them. In a few days, Justin and Jordan were now startup co-founders, and those tweets turned into a $400k seed round....
02.02.2022
Jordan Walker Justin Mitchell (Yac): The $400k Tweet
pYac started as an agency side project. But after winning a big Product Hunt hackathon, investors started tweeting at them. In a few days, Justin and Jordan were now startup co-founders, and those tweets turned into a $400k seed round....
01.26.2022
Sara Varni (Attentive Twilio): Leading in 2022
pThe Great Resignation is scary for many companies. But Sara sees it as an opportunity, not a threat. Hear her advice for how to lead your team in 2022 and beyond./ppbr/ppstrongMentioned in this episode:/strong/ppa href=https://openviewpartners.com/newsletter/#.YfRAM-rMIuU rel=noopener noreferrer target=_blankSign up for...
01.19.2022
Sara Varni (Attentive Twilio): PLG x Marketing
pWhat does marketing look like in a PLG model? Marketers know that PLG changes things, but does it change everything? Sara makes the case for finding the right balance between novel strategies and long-standing best practices for PLG marketers. /ppbr/ppstrongMentioned...

What's BUILD with Blake Bartlett about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

BUILD with Blake Bartlett episodes:

Alex MacCaw (Clearbit Reflect): Everything I’ve Learned as Startup Founder

Alex MacCaw (Clearbit & Reflect): Everything I’ve Learned as Startup Founder

Patrick Campbell (ProfitWell): Work-Life Balance for Founders

Patrick Campbell (ProfitWell): What’s the “Right” Culture for Your Company?

Ryan Carlson (ex-Wiz, Okta): Category Creation is Overrated

Ryan Carlson (ex-Wiz, Okta): Company Values = Marketing Message

Raj Sarkar (ex-1Password, Atlassian): PLG Data Infrastructure

Raj Sarkar (ex-1Password, Atlassian): B2B Brand Marketing

Chris Degnan (Snowflake): VP Sales vs Founder/CEO Relationship

Chris Degnan (Snowflake): Selling in a Recession

Alex Su (Ironclad): TikTok for B2B

Alex Su (Ironclad): Personal Brand + Community Playbook

Mark Roberge (Stage 2): B2C Growth vs. B2B PLG

Mark Roberge (Stage 2): How HubSpot Became PLG

Katie Burke (HubSpot): How Should Employees Navigate Today’s Macro Environment?

Katie Burke (HubSpot): Leading Hiring People in a Recession

Krista Anderson-Copperman (Asana): What is a Chief Customer Officer?

Krista Anderson-Copperman (Asana): Today’s Team vs. Tomorrow’s Team

Kyle Poyar (OpenView): How I Do Content

Kyle Poyar (OpenView): Top of Funnel for PLG

Harini Gokul (AWS): The Importance of Range for Leaders Today

Harini Gokul (AWS) Customer Success as Offense

Martin Gontovnikas (HyperGrowth): What PLG Means for the CEO

Martin Gontovnikas (HyperGrowth): Why You Should Embrace a Community Strategy (and How to Do It)

Cliff Weitzman (Speechify): How to Learn Anything

Cliff Weitzman (Speechify): The Value of Building a Personal Brand and Audience as a Startup Founder CEO

John Eitel (Canva): How PLG Founders Can Avoid Common Mistakes in Adding a Top-Down Sales Motion

John Eitel (Canva): Bottom-Up + Top-Down

Annie Pearl (Calendly): Career Growth in Product Management

Annie Pearl (Calendly): Building Enterprise Products

Andrew Gazdecki (MicroAcquire): Founder M Mistakes

Andrew Gazdecki (MicroAcquire): How to Sell Your Startup

Yaw Aning (Malomo): Productizing Services

Yaw Aning (Malomo): Services Founder vs. SaaS Founder

Peter McKay (Snyk): The CEO’s #1 Job

Peter McKay (Snyk): Leading Through Hypergrowth

May Habib (Writer): AI Primer on GPT-3

May Habib (Writer): Why Founders Should Focus on Distribution

Alex Bilmes (Endgame): The PLG Funding Boom Explained

Alex Bilmes (Endgame): Product-Led Sales

The Bottom Line on PQLs

Jesus Requena (Figma): PLG Data Analytics

Devang Sachdev (Snorkel AI): The Story of Your Product

Devang Sachdev (Snorkel AI): Platform GTM

Beth Steinberg (Chime): Talent Development Is Crucial Today

Beth Steinberg (Chime): Scaling Your People Talent

Jordan Walker Justin Mitchell (Yac): Product as Marketing

Jordan Walker Justin Mitchell (Yac): The $400k Tweet

Sara Varni (Attentive Twilio): Leading in 2022

Sara Varni (Attentive Twilio): PLG x Marketing