The Scale Up Show

Jordan Hauer is the co-founder and CEO of alt-tech company Amass Insights as well as co-founder of crypto-enabled marketplace Big Data Protocol. Jordan was one of the pioneers in email transaction data, a lead technologist at a multi-billion-dollar equity fund and was identified as one of New York’s top CEOs in the analytics space!

Jordan joins The Scale Up Show to talk to Ryan all about his unique perspectives and alternative ideas on leveraging and developing data as well as the growth and expansion of data science in his lifetime and career.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Jordan’s experience in the hedge fund industry taught him to build personal, strong face-to-face relationships and this is something he has translated into his businesses.
• Attending events is a strong way to build industry relationships as well as asking to be introduced and referred by colleagues.
• Amass Insights try and develop a detailed understanding of all the data providers that are out there in the world and decipher which are valuable for an investor.
• Amass Insights are currently looking into how to use invoice data to predict sales and trends.
• After working in a traditional hedge fund company, Jordan began to ask himself why they weren’t using the data available to them in the ad or marketing space. This question is what started him on his entrepreneurial journey and on to eventually co-founding Amass Insights.
• Getting to this stage of his entrepreneurial journey wasn’t easy. Jordan co-founded two start-ups previously and had to deal with a lengthy and costly lawsuit after creating the second but it helped him build resilience and he learnt a lot of lessons from this low point of his career.
• A new concept of Jordan’s to build growth is ‘Alternative Data Happy Hour’ which is a live industry event aimed at potential customers, utilising existing relationships and connections.

BEST MOMENTS

“Just know the right person, they don’t care who you are, as long as you can make a decent case for your data set”

“I was the real brains behind the operation and I was not getting compensated for that”

“I realised for me to get where I wanted to be in both life and career I needed to have full control over how the company was operated”

“We can’t be trying to capture a piece of every single deal, we need be connectors and known as the people who have all these relationships and know where the data is”

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanhauer/

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Paul has been in the AI space for over 12 years now and in this conversation with Ryan he talks about all things AI, from the tools you need for your business to how to capitalise on AI in the most innovative and growth-focused ways.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Marketing AI Institute is a media and education company that focuses on building an audience that can be monetised
• They focus on a SAAS-like model for their education arm of the company, built around subscriptions
• Paul knew he could uniquely offer a marketing AI solution, the landscape was very different in 2015 but he recognised the gap in the market.
• It’s important that all companies working with AI consider the ethics and the implications these have for the business.
• Take the time to aggressively assess your own platform and think about what it would take for someone else to build and create a better and smarter version of it? What could AI do to improve your platform?
• There are three main areas to consider when contemplating AI use to increase revenue: intelligent automation and repetitive tasks, personalisation and enhancing creativity and decisions making.

BEST MOMENTS

“It’s all about building an audience that can be monetised”

“The ethics side is really critical”

“Could someone come along and 10x productivity [with AI] -vs- human rules?”

“You’re basically going through existing workflow and asking where can AI help me”

“The future of business is AI or merged-AI or you become obsolete”

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulroetzer

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Muhammad Younas is the CEO and founder of VFairs, a software for events business which he bootstrapped from zero to $30 million. Muhammad talks to Ryan about leveraging customer service, chat GBT and referrals to create both a premium for his product and exponential growth!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Word of mouth has always been at the forefront of vFairs marketing and growth strategy
• Muhammad takes the hospitality side of events seriously, he has always recognised the importance of everything being perfect for his clients because even small things can’t go wrong at large events.
• Muhammad and his team have a wealth of experience in creating and running events themselves which put them in the best place to create products that work for their clients
• VFairs are powering event promotion and content through the power of AI. Muhammed states that the most important thing when using AI in your business is to constantly ensure it is the best solution for your customers.
• The continued focus for vFairs is to offer services for businesses that are forward thinking and to anticipate their future needs.
• Muhammad and his team are systemising word of mouth by always having the customer's end goal in mind when creating their products.
• Customer service and happiness are something vFairs prioritises, they overspend on their customer support but never pass this extra cost onto their customers, creating positive experiences that result in recommendations again and again.
• VFairs clients see them as an extension of their own team, providing a service that helps them run their events in a whole host of different ways.
• The VIP experience, customer support and unique services vFairs offers, allow them to charge a premium over many of their competitors.

BEST MOMENTS

“As much as it is a software business, it is also a hospitality business”

“One has to be a forward looking organisation to be able to do a virtual event”

“We overspend on our customer support and we do that happily”

“They see us as an extension of their team”

“I just want an acknowledgement from that customer that they love our service”

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/younas/?originalSubdomain=ca

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Jon Darbyshire is the CEO and co-founder of SmartSuite, a b2b, no code, data management programme that competes with the likes of airtable to become the number 1 tool for business!

Within the first week of launching, Jon and his team brought in over 400 paying customers and growth has continued on this trajectory for the next 3 years. He talks to Ryan all about how he made this happen and the steps you can take to leverage his knowledge and replicate his success.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Jon previously founded Archer Technologies which he then sold for $200 million cash buyout! He then retired but couldn’t stay away from the start-up world for long and that’s how SmartSuite was born.
• SmartSuite doesn’t have a single marketing person on their team, their growth has simply been down to virality, mainly through videos that existing customers have created.
• SmartSuite is a no-code platform that helps businesses manage any process or project inside their organisation.
• Jon and his team took a partner and affiliate model approach to marketing and growth. This is due to the experience Jon gained from running his previous software company.
• SmartSuite receives a lot of leads from freelancers and small firms and although each of them only produces a few leads each, the volume overall is very high. SmartSuite are now focusing on the higher-level clients to try and replicate this lead gen on a bigger scale.
• SmartSuite is so confident in its product that they don’t ask clients for exclusivity, they actively encourage clients to use its competitors.
• SmartSuite spent 3 years developing their core product, focusing particularly on millennial and GenZ workflow, so they could compete with the big competition already out there.
• One of SmartSuites challenges is with their free users, they had to carefully think about how to incentivise them to more to the paid plan by creating the right amount, but not too much friction with the free service whilst also understanding why they might not be switching.

BEST MOMENTS

“Over the last three months you have had 3000 customers”

“We basically become a work management system for businesses that help them manage activities across all their different employees”

“A lot of the times we were selling to an account but also communicating and selling to a partner that was also going to be doing the implementation”

“The freelancers and small consulting firms have created a lot of leads on the SMB side”

“That’s ballsy man, I love it”

“Our number one goal is to get people's hands on a keyboard so they can make up their own minds”

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondarbyshire/

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

 

 

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Ryan is joined by Jamie Shanks, the founder and CEO of Pipeline Signals, a sales enablement platform. In his time, Jamie has trained over 250k sales and marketing people on social selling and he talks to Ryan about this as well as the unique ways he found to bootstrap his own business and build a marketing machine at a very low cost, delving deep into how to create a cost-efficient team and what it really takes to make it happen. He also gives his thoughts on the future of sales enablement tech in the next 3-5 years!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Bootstrapped founders living within their means that are scaling towards profitability this year
• Pipeline identifies customers on the move, sales intelligence that is routed into a company's CRM to track engagement. They then allow sellers to turn these into leads.
• Pipeline utilises teams offshore, to allow them to cut costs but still have high-quality talent. They see this as the future of growth and great operating leverage.
• Anything that can be recreated easily, via a standard operating procedure is a perfect candidate for an offshore team to handle.
• controlling their own destiny is one of the key focuses for Pipeline: where they have happy customers, provide great service and have great net retention so they create revenue.
• Sales intelligence comes in a variety of contexts, from product usage to job changes.
• Pipeline are finding data sets that the customer can’t find themselves, to give them unique prospects and opportunities.
• Net-retention revenue is now the gold standard and the human experience in sales matters, slowly big tech is starting to take notice of this.

BEST MOMENTS

“It’s training an implementation as well as the automated process”

“Controlling our own destiny is most important”

“Social selling outperforms cold calling”

“Technology companies in the boom times didn’t have to look at their CEX process and their enablement process with great scrutiny as customers had the money”

“We’re investing heavily on the enablement side so that in the future of acquisitions companies will say I NEED to have people hand-holding our customers”

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jamestshanks_signals-pipelinedevelopment-pipelinecreation-activity-6987812140699041792-RCEQ/?originalSubdomain=ie

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

On today's show, Ryan talks to Matt Swalley, Co-Founder & CBO of Omneky. A company that is doing amazing things by leveraging generative AI for marketing. Matt went from being a fortune 10, chief of staff to a first-time founder and leading a company that finished in the top 20 out of 1000 at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Steve Cody is the founder and CEO of Bunking which is a marketplace for shared living and travel.

Alex Quilici is the CEO and founder of YouMail. Before that, he co-founded and sold Quack to AOL for over $200 million. To grow YouMail Alex pivoted multiple times, going from B2B to B2C, before creating a unique dual approach business model which has enabled the company to gain traction and grow at a phenomenal rate.

Christian Kletzl is the founder and CEO of UserGems, which runs an AI-driven prospecting solution that enables companies to drive effective growth and prevent churn by keeping track of job changes for key contacts and accounts. Enabling them to create a bigger pipeline and faster sales cycles. He was also a leader in Google´s product group and has held important positions at McKinsey and Microsoft.

Christian talks about the experience of starting out using Y Combinator funding and pivoting multiple times. Including how he managed while nearly running out of money several times over 5 years, before breaking through and experiencing 10x growth. Using the data, he has built up across a large sample size he dives deep into how the current market conditions are impacting the way decision-makers buy. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Sales and marketing have to be highly orchestrated to be effective.
• Pipeline anxiety is an issue that can be avoided.
• UserGems was bootstrapped before becoming funded. In the episode, Christian explains why he did it like this.
• It is possible to develop product and business ideas fast. Put together a regular timeline then ask yourself what can I do to launch in just 2 days? Doing this forces you to innovate, think about crazy options, and greatly accelerate the idea to launch timeframe.
• Work efficiently, so you can avoid having to seek further funding.
• When a buyer/decision maker leaves a company, you need to know where they go, so you can sell to them there. As well as know who is replacing them, so you don´t lose a customer. In the current market, retaining customers is rightly seen by business owners as vital.
• AI enables you to identify who the stakeholders are, as well as what type of contact/conversation you need to have with each one, and when.
• The future of sales and marketing tech will be more about orchestrating the individual actions of who is who and reaching out to them in the right order, at the right time, and in the right way.

BEST MOMENTS

“Instead of looking at how you could double over the next year, ask what you would need to do to multiply yourself x10”

“Just because a customer is asking for it, doesn´t mean they will pay for it.”

“It's about reaching out to the very same people with the very same message at the same time across all the channels you can.”

“Over the past 3 or 4 months all of our conversations are focused on actual churn prevention.”

 

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

EPISODE RESOURCES

UserGems website - https://www.usergems.com/

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/christiankletzl

Email – [email protected]

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business, or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?

Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEOs, and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom, and mindset.

This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Maarten Verwaest is the founder and CEO of Limecraft, which takes technology, automation and AI to help media companies manage their workflows and include clients such as Associated Press.

Not only has Maarten founded 3 SaaS companies, but he has also facilitated 2 successful exits and in this episode talks about how he initially created capital for a $ 3 million MVP as well as shares the knowledge that saved him from closing down; instead adding 10% growth month on month!

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Initially, Limecrafts primary go-to-market strategy for growing revenue was trade shows due to the high trust base and network-heavy industry of media. But since their surge in demand in 2020, they have started to focus on content marketing in-house.
• Limecraft gives companies the gift of time, they automate repetitive work allowing companies to focus on the true creative elements.
• If you eliminate repetitive tasks and focus on high-value ones, you also increase your ability to scale and grow.
• Focusing on the retention of existing customers and referrals is one of the ways Limecraft has been able to grow at the rate they have.
• It took a lot of trial and error for Limecraft to get to the successful pricing model they have built today. They learnt the most from their early clients and their thoughts around what pricing fit and worked for them.
• Limecraft got its competitive advantage by listening to the difficulties and pain points their industry and clients were struggling with and addressing them. When it came to scaling, they knew exactly what to do and what they needed to focus on solving.
• Creatives and the creative industry don’t generally care about the ins and outs of technology, they just simply want it to work for them, so this is what Limecraft focus on.
• Mainstream AI is not currently well adapted for video content. Maarten feels like it’s his duty to make people understand and recognise this.

BEST MOMENTS

 “We automate repetitive work”

“Our net revenue retention is 25% without having to do any additional sales”

“If you’re developing a SaaS company you need to filter out the good early adopters, they will challenge you, they will help you figure out what pricing works”

“Creative people don’t give a shit about technology, they just want it to work”

“90% of the text it recognises is plan bullsh*t it’s nothing to do with the video”

Do You Want The Closing Secrets That Helped Close Over $125 Million in New Business for Free?"  Grab them HERE: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets

Ryan Staley

Founder and CEO

Whale Boss

312-848-7443

[email protected]

www.ryanstaley.io 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maartenverwaest/?originalSubdomain=be

ABOUT THE SHOW

How do you grow like a VC-backed company without taking on investors? Do you want to create a lifestyle business, a performance business or an empire? How do you scale to an exit without losing your freedom?
Join the host Ryan Staley every Monday and Wednesday for conversations with the brightest and best Founders, CEO and Entrepreneurs to crack the code on repeatable revenue growth, leadership, lifestyle freedom and mindset.
This show has featured Startup and Billion Dollar Founders, Best Selling Authors, and the World’s Top Sales and Marketing Experts like Terry Jones (Founder of Travelocity and Chairman of Kayak), Andrew Gazdecki (Founder of Micro Acquire), Harpal Sambhi (Founder of Magical with a previous exit to Linkedin) and many more.

This is where Scaling and Sales are made simple in 25 minutes or less.

Saas, Saas growth, Scale, Business Growth, B2b Saas, Saas Sales, Enterprise Saas, Business growth strategy, founder, ceo: https://www.whalesellingsystem.com/closingsecrets