Ever wondered how an engineer transforms into a sales leader? Join us as Mike Molinet, Co-Founder of Branch and Thena, shares his incredible journey from coding in the trenches to spearheading go-to-market strategies in 2024. In this candid conversation, Mike dives deep into the challenges and triumphs of founder-led sales, offering invaluable insights for entrepreneurs and tech enthusiasts alike. Whether you're an engineer curious about the business side or a founder looking to sharpen your sales approach, this video is packed with real-world advice and inspiration. Don't miss out on Mike's firsthand experiences and tips to navigate the evolving landscape of tech sales!
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Mike:
I think back in 2014, outreach was a thing, right? But everything was very manual. People writing sequences, people sending them out, mostly over email. LinkedIn wasn't as popular, believe it or not, as like a sales channel for folks. And in order to scale Sales, you basically needed to scale your sales team, your SDRs, BDRs, and then your EEs. And it's very formulaic, right? Like fast forward to today, and we don't even have like a BDR, SDR, Athena, but we have a bunch of automations that are running. We use AI to like automatically pull in information, enrich it about somebody that's visiting our website.
Andy: Today we're sitting down with Mike Mullinette, the mastermind who co-founded Branch.io and scaled it to a $4 billion valuation with over 500 employees. Now, after that billion-dollar success, Mike is not slowing down. He's now two years into his latest venture, Thena. From unicorn builder to startup founder again, Mike's got the inside scoop on scaling B2B companies from zero to one. We're talking 10 years of go-to-market strategies, startup roller coasters, and the secrets behind seven-figure deals. Dude, so how's Thena going? How's everything going?
Mike: It's good. Been a busy summer, building a lot of product.
Andy: Yeah. You stressed out? No.
Mike: No, I, uh, I think that's fortunately one thing that I've been able to, to build up over the years has been a higher tolerance for the ups and downs of startup life.
Andy: Yeah. And how dude, so how long ago did you start branch? It was a lot like 10 years. Was that like 10 years at 24, 10 years ago. And I want to chat with you on like, now you're starting Thena or, you know, Thena Thena's early in its journey. Right. And how has it changed from building on the go-to-market side from 10 years ago to today?
Mike: Well, we're selling into a different market, but I think even despite that, I think there's definitely seeing a lot of differences. The, I think back in 2014, when we were kind of getting up in, by the way, the context here is I'm not a sales person. I would never, never did sales, never thought I was going to be doing or running sales or sales teams. And then with branch, that just kind of became my role, right? I was COO and I oversaw all of go to market and all of GNA. And so I just kind of had to learn on the job, but back then it was very much, you know, outreach was a thing, right? But everything was very manual. People writing sequences, people sending them out, mostly over email. LinkedIn wasn't as popular, believe it or not, as like a sales channel for folks, but it was all email. And in order to scale sales, you frankly, you build more products and that would make you more efficient. but you basically needed to scale your sales team, your SDRs, BDRs, and then your AEs. And it was very formulaic, right? Like you've seen this. It's like, okay, cool. We want to double. That means we need twice as many, twice as many AEs. We also need the pipeline to fill, um, for every two AEs, we need an SDR, give or take. We know there's going to be some attrition, but it was, it was a formula. Once you figured out the formula, you could just rinse and repeat. Fast forward to today and we don't even have like a BDR, SDR, Athena, but we have a bunch of automations that are running. We use AI to like automatically pull in information, enrich it about somebody that's visiting our website. We know whether or not they've clicked on something that we've sent them before. And then you can obviously outbound or automate messages to other folks, automate LinkedIn connections to other folks. So the automations is one. And then the second thing is just how much is happening on social channels, but specifically LinkedIn. Yeah. Huge difference compared to like 2014. Um, basically what's happening is everyone's getting bombarded with a lot of emails that isn't, you know, isn't really relevant to them, but they, they'll follow people they like, or they know, or they're connected to them. So they naturally see their content. And it's not about like pitching them or selling them, but rather just following them. And you see it kind of throughout of, you know, six month journey. And then one day you're in a meeting and somebody brings up a challenge, you're like, Oh, wait a minute, I know of a company that solves this. Yeah, then, then like, then you get an inbound, right. But the inbound is because of all that work that you've done over the prior six months, just staying on people's radars, but not really selling to them. But that that's so like my LinkedIn following in the last two years went from like, I don't know, 2000, which was mostly connections to, I don't know what it is today, 14,000, 15,000, still relatively small in the grand scheme of things, but material enough that I can actually see the impact. And that's like with minimal effort, right? Like barely doing anything. So with dedicated focused effort, there's even, I think a lot more that we can do.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and I, I have been seeing your team get super active on LinkedIn. I think like your growth guys on LinkedIn, who's kind of doing, I know we chatted with him in the past, right? Yeah. Jerry. And then you mentioned the AI part, like what do you, and this is, I love hearing what people are doing. So what are you guys doing for the AI stuff? You mentioned they're going to your website. So you're using an RB to B from Adam, I'm guessing. Right. And then you're automatically based on. You're using clay, I'm guessing, or using clay in the middle.
Mike: There's a bit of clay in there. And then we use this log growth machine thing for, it's a company out of France, if I recall correctly, small company. And that does a bunch of automations in terms of LinkedIn. And there's other tools that do this too, right? But like LinkedIn connections, LinkedIn messaging. based on that other information, based on RB to B and clay and the stuff that's coming in.
Andy: Oh, what's that called?
Mike: Law growth machine.
Andy: Law growth machine?
Mike: Law growth machine. Yeah. But there's other, there's other tools out there that do similar things, right? We just kind of packed this together over time. So we've built, we've, we're bought kind of like individual products.
Andy: Oh my God. I love, they must be out of Spain or something. It's got this, this Latino vibe. And so I'm like, Ooh, anytime I see something like that growth machine, that's great. Um, yeah, at first I heard it. I'm like, that sounds like Spanish. And then you said it. I'm like, yeah, they're trying to do like the, that kind of vibe in here, which is, which is awesome. Um, okay. I'm going to check this out. And then, dude, and then, okay, so another question I have for you. So it's changed. And I was talking to Wes and Gordon, you know, where the outreach, you know, co founders recently, and we were having a conversation. And I asked him the same question. I was like, How do you think go to markets change? And you know, they were co founders outreach. And they were like, it feels like we're basically starting from zero, like, like, we've never done this before. From a go to market side, right? Like, it's just completely different from how it used to be. You're at they said the same thing. And I think it's predictable. We can't just plug in 100 emails, and now we're gonna get three responses. And then from those three responses, one deal, you know, so it's definitely changing, you know, from every other founder that I've spoken to. And then something interesting on that is, I get a lot of questions as well from my newsletter of like, Hey, what's like, if you were to do one thing, what's the one thing you do right now? And I say, LinkedIn content, like everything is, people are discovering services at they're discovering them from the social channel, right? Like that's where it's starting. And then what I'm telling people is in the magic is, and then pairing that with the cold email, right? So that, You do the most important thing, which is not your subject line, not what's in your body. It's the name that it's coming from, right? That is the most important part of it. And that's what I'm telling people. And what I'm saying is if they don't know the name it's coming from, they're not going to respond because. if my grandma were to email me, I don't care what the subject line is, right? Like, I'm going to open it. I'm going to respond, you know? And so I know that's the, you know, the highest example, but still I get responses like this all the time. So I use instantly. Right. And then we do, you know, the, the inbox rotation, all that crazy stuff. And when I do it, I swear 50% of my responses are like, Hey, I'm responding because I know you from LinkedIn. Right. And that's not me tooting my horn. But it's just like, okay, keep doing the LinkedIn thing. Because then when I go off of LinkedIn and target my ICP, I'm talking about my ICP content on LinkedIn. So then when I email them, they're like, Oh, shoot, this guy's emailing me. Yeah, I'll respond. Right. And so it goes back to that founder brand thing, which I think a lot of these people are skimming the surface because they think it's just posting social content, but actually it's this whole channel that is intertwined. Cold email to then email marketing from the founder to then… It's all intertwined. It's almost like the founder is becoming the whole marketing engine. In a way. Right. And it's like, how do we plug in the email marketing from the founder? How do we do the live sessions from the founder? And it's actually like a whole loop. if I wasn't building Distribute, I would probably build a service that was like a whole done for you founder brand service versus just like the LinkedIn content, you know? Cause it was like, I think it's more a whole loop thing, but I don't know. What do you think, man? Am I just like sounding crazy? No, I think it's spot on.
Mike: And you mentioned the whole loop and this is exactly where we see the best results, right? Like it's, you can't just do one thing. That's why it's funny. We're working with, we're doing some analysis recently and one of our existing investors was asking us, like tell us the split between inbound and outbound of all the deals and your current pipeline and I'm like the problem is it's nuanced right like we can give you a last touch attribution like what was the last thing that got the meeting the first meeting that turned it into an opportunity but like most of these there's multiple touches along the way and yeah like one of our one of our customers that signed recently that I can talk about publicly is launched darkly and like yeah they inbounded but they inbounded after connecting with me on LinkedIn, some of the folks connecting with me on LinkedIn six months ago, seeing my content, then us doing some outbound messaging, them seeing that. And then they were talking about the problem in a meeting. And then somebody said, Oh, we should go check out Dina because they solved this. We got an inbound demo from them, but it wasn't inbound. Like, yes, it was inbound, but it was LinkedIn content. It was name recognition. It was the outbounding that we'd done. It was building relationships with multiple people at the company so that when the time was right, it made a difference. And so it's this like there is no like one thing. If you're just doing one thing or expecting one thing to work, it's not going to work and you have to do it all. In today's world, it's about finding the things that are highest impact. And for us, it's like you said, that LinkedIn content can go a really long way building that brand, the founder brand, which then leads to the company brand goes a really long way. And then all the other stuff kind of assists with it, content, outbounding, et cetera.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. And you, you guys have done it. And how do you get your team? So what you're really good at is like you're posting, but then your team is doing that, right? Like your team is posting. Are you pushing that? Like, Hey, we need to be all on LinkedIn or like, is it just because it's a top down thing and they're saying, Oh, because Mike's doing it, we're going to do it ourself.
Mike: Not even cause I tried that at branch, uh, at branch, like, you know, we, 550 employees of the go-to-market team was, you know, between sales and CS was easily 100 plus people. And I tried to get people to, like, do that stuff and tried to automate it, even connect systems to be like, we'll post on your behalf, which people didn't like. I think that what's different at Thena, besides we're smaller, so it's easier, but just showing the impact made the difference, right? So they kind of took it upon themselves. It's their initiative. to go do their own posting and to want to publish things because they saw the value. If they don't believe, if they don't see the value firsthand, no matter how many times you tell them, you could just try to force people to do it, but it's not going to be consistent. It's not going to be organic. Or if they do it, they're just going to like reshare what you posted. It doesn't work. So I think you need to ideally show people the impact, show people that like, hey, look, we got this deal. because they saw this post on that makes a bigger difference. Yeah, exactly. So you can show the value, show the impact that's going to be more likely now at the end of the day, like whether people do it or not, it's up to them. But I think the best salespeople especially know that like, this is a new channel and just like, a decade ago, even if they hadn't, like if you're a sales, if you're an AE and you have an SDR doing prospecting, but you're not doing your own prospecting, I think you're doing it wrong. Like your job is not just to close. You got to build your own pipeline as well. And today in today's world, if you're a salesperson and you're not, you know, generating content and posting on LinkedIn and engaging on LinkedIn and doing that sort of stuff, depending on your role in the company and the types of buyers you're selling to. But in a lot of cases, B2B SaaS, at least you got to be on LinkedIn. And if you're not, you're just sitting there waiting for inbound leads.
Andy: Good luck. Dude, that's what I'm saying. Like, I, this is so funny. Um, because, um, people used to think I was crazy, like, like four years ago when I started like posting every day. Right. They're like, dude, you know, people would make fun of me at outreach, right? Like, even Mark Cosiglo says, he's like, dude, I would make fun of you and be like, why is me more spending his time doing that? Right? Like, and then he tells a story. He's like, it started to not get deals, because you can't control who sees everything. Right? So he was like, it wasn't getting deals just for him. He was getting deals for the whole team. Right. And so that's when I was like, Oh, these he's on to something, you know, and I didn't have a magic wand where I'm like, Oh, I can see the future. And this is, you know, I know some people will say like, I knew this was going to happen. It's like, No, I just was like, Okay, I did it. And I saw the impact as you were mentioning, right? I saw like, holy crap, when I post stuff, And I'm not being salesy and I'm not saying, Hey, go buy outreach. But if I post stuff and it's useful, people then come to me and say, Hey, you post about this stuff. I have a question on it. Can you help me? And then once you do that, they're like, Oh, by the way, we were thinking about checking outreach. Let's chat. And then I'd be like, Oh, I can't chat with you. Here's your rep or whatever. Right. But it was kind of that like reciprocity thing where people start to see you as like, okay, this source of knowledge, and they'll come to you. And then you build that trust. And then once you build that level of trust, you when they're ready to buy something, you come to mind. And there's always this like, there's this chart that I write a post on, I need to post about it again and repurpose it. But it's like, it's like that large market formula where it's like only 3% of people are ready to buy at one time. Right? And then 97. Yeah, if you remember seeing that, dude, I think that's the biggest sales lesson in 2024 that people need to understand, right? Going back to what you were saying, which was like, If 3% of your target market is ready to buy, what do you do with the other 97%? You got to nurture them. And you mentioned LaunchDarkly, who is a customer. Like that's exactly what happened, right? They weren't ready, like the day you started posting, but then when they had the conversations that, Oh, we had this issue who self solved this issue. Oh, I know this Mike guy from Thena and they do, you know, basically help you manage support and Slack. Let's go and try that. So. What I tell people is like, you're not in sales, you're in nurturing. And the best way to nurture these days is with content because no one's gonna like, what else, what's the other channel to nurture people?
Mike: And it used to be like, your nurturing was email and it'd be like, hey, we just released this case study with one of our customers, thought you might enjoy it. Like that was your nurturing method. Like people aren't, a lot of people aren't reading emails these days. Yeah. Exactly. Or at least not emails from sales reps. Um, they're just like so bombarded and like, they're living in different places. And for us, like it's, they're living in Slack, right? A lot of our customers are living in Slack and Microsoft teams. So we nurture on LinkedIn and we also do a little bit of nurturing in, um, in places like Slack, just sending them information over time. So, um, but yeah, your, your tactics have to change, but that nurturing, I love that, that perspective, which is you're not in sales, you're in nurturing. I think it's so true.
Andy: Yeah, and it's like everything like the one where when I'm thinking of creating systems right now. It's like, how do we create systems to nurture people the best, right? Like, okay, if we have a discovery conversation with them, and they're not ready to buy now, like, what do we do to keep up with them and automate that? You know, the one way is like connect with them on LinkedIn. Yes. But like, what can what can we do via email? It's not just like, hey, here's a case study. But I'm actually thinking through that right now. Like, maybe in a month, we send them like a free gift offer. Or like, we you know, what do we do to just basically stay top of mind from when they're ready? Because I have a bunch of people now. Right? When you start doing sales, they're like, Oh, not a fit. But then you get a DM on LinkedIn randomly one morning. And it's like, Oh, hey, now we're thinking of it. And it's like, holy shit. Okay, great. Let's chat. You know, it's like crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah. And the other thing I don't know how, who's your biggest competitor right now, Mike?
Mike: I think there's a few, there's like early stage startup competitors and then there's like the incumbent solutions. The incumbent solutions would be like, if you're talking for our ticketing product, would be like Zendesk and Intercom, those ones. But we also partner with them too, right? Like, so we also help, we have customers that use both Vena and Zendesk and like, we'll make the system better together. So it's, it's kind of like a multifaceted relationship. Yeah. Like, I mean, you've got competitors kind of all over the spectrum, anywhere between brand new early stage startups all the way through public companies.
Andy: And how are, so how are you thinking? Cause one thing that I'm like trying to wrap my head around right now is I just want to make sure that anytime anyone is looking at one of my competitors, I'm in that freaking conversation, you know? And so like, I have, um, I have a couple of deals right now where it's like, they were talking to our competitor and they're like at the final stages. And like, I got them luckily at the final stages, but now we're playing catch up, right? And I'm like, shoot, how did we not get in front of them earlier? Like, why didn't we come up? Like, am I not doing enough content? Am I not doing like the right content? Like, what the heck is that? So how have you thought about that? Like, I don't know if you have a solution or if it's kind of one of those things.
Mike: I think it's just one of those things. There was some stat that I read a while ago and I can't remember exactly what it was, but it's like some like obscenely high percentage of deals go to the first company that's in there, right? The first one that's being evaluated. And it's, you know, let's say it's 70 or 80%. I can't remember exactly what the number is. Like, if you're coming from behind, it can be really hard to take over and catch up. It doesn't mean you can't do it. But the way I think about it is, as hard as it is for me, at least, if I'm coming from behind, I might give it a little bit of an effort, but I'm probably better suited to spend that time and energy on going and finding a new op. than trying to fight our way into the conversation. It doesn't mean it can't happen, but if I have to do that five times in order to win one of those deals, is my time better spent actually just being like, oh, you're like cool. You're deep in with a pilot with, you know, whatever, XYZ. Not really worry about that, but go find a new op. Like you said, If you're working in a big enough market, arguably there's no shortage of opportunities. The only constraint is just finding them, right? Uncovering them, getting to them. So it's about whether I think you fight that competitive piece or you just try to go find somebody that is fresh. I like finding people that are fresh and I'd rather spend my time
Andy: Really interesting. Interesting. Yeah.
Mike: I don't like, I don't like, I don't like the fighting over somebody just knowing that if you're second in, in the evaluation, the likelihood of, of you winning that is, is lower.
Andy: Yeah. Well, if you're, yeah. I mean, if you think about the odds, they're, they're not stacked in your favor, like statistically.
Mike: Like if this, if this was a, if this was a casino, And you get a you get a hand and like you only have a 20 chance of winning it Could you win it? Yeah, but do you want to keep putting money into the pot? Not necessarily you have limited chips. You might be like i'm gonna fold this hand and i'll play i'll use my chips on the next hand That's the way I can think about it. Um doesn't mean you won't win but you it might be a little bit risky and on the In over a long enough time horizon, it shouldn't matter Right. Yeah. For me, I try to think about go after markets that are big enough that that deal, a few of those deals won't matter unless there's, it's a strategic account for some reason. Right. Like if it's super important for a certain reason, um, then maybe try a little bit harder.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. And that's it. You know, this is bringing back PTSD for me because like outreach versus sales loft, you know, was like one of the, one of the OG, like go to market, like, head to head kind of like battles. Now you're freaking competing with a thousand other tools, but right. Like it was, you know, we were the first two in every single deal was like a competitive deal. So we had to get really good at like in, in the products were pretty much the same, right. You know, Manny's going to kill me for saying that, but you know, like the products are pretty much the same now. Now they're even more similar these days. Right. So like, It was, we got really good at really trying to differentiate and, you know, talk about our ethos and our perspective and how we're different versus better, right? Because at the end of the day, when we were competing, if we were competing and saying we're just better, people were like, Wait, that's BS. Cause they have exactly that same thing. Like, how are you really better? Right. So what I, what I actually learned there was we had to compete based on, you know, the, the term in B2B is positioning, but it was really like our perspective on how you should do sales and like our opinion, right? Like we just said, here's how our opinion on what you should be doing is different. Um, they think this, we don't think you should just load a bunch of people in the sequence. We think you should determine ICP and do it this way and dah, dah, dah. So kind of like our thinking behind the process was different. Um, and then I was talking to Udi on the pod, you know, Udi from gong a couple of weeks ago and Udi actually, he had a great statement. He's like, it's, it's, uh, what was the quote? Cause we were talking to somebody similar. He was like, it's, it's better to be different than better. All right. It's rather than being better. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, basically something like that. It's better to be. It's better to be different than saying you're better. Right? I don't know. I need to go look up the quote. But it was just like, okay, cool. Like, especially in the saturated market right now. Like, you know, there's so many software tools, people can spin things up with Claude and like, you know, a quick second. It's just and so Not that they're great products sometimes, but it creates more noise. That's the problem. And so how do you get through the noise, right?
Mike: I love that. And I think about it a lot because regardless of whether you're better, people are busy and people are way too busy to dive, to do a deep analysis and dive into the nuances and specifics about why you're slightly better or worse than your competitor. And instead, I think people buy, people take shortcuts. I take shortcuts all the time. I'll buy simply because it was the first one that came in the door or I'll buy simply because a friend referred or I'll buy something because, um, I don't know, some random thing that I saw on LinkedIn. I'm like, okay, whatever. Good enough. I'm not going to go spend six hours doing a deep dive analysis on the comparison between two different tools that are, you know, it's going to cost me $5,000, $10,000. It doesn't matter. People are busy. People are not going to care about or get to those nuances or specifics. And I like the perspective of, but if you're different and they'd be like, Oh, I really like your perspective on that. Or I really like your, the way in which you approach that. And they'll, they'll, I think people buy, I know I do.
Andy: I will. Yeah.
Mike: Um, yeah, yeah.
Andy: Really? Like you, you agree with their, their, yeah, their opinion on things, right? Like if you look at, um, The classic example today, the cliche is like liquid death, like they're selling water, dude, like, like, the water is the same water you can get for free out of your faucet. But people are choosing that. Why? Because it's completely 180 from any other water you've bought before. You're like, okay, it's, it's, it makes you feel something. You know, and, and it makes you feel something and it's like, okay, this is different. Like it's water, but it's different. It's, it's hilarious. Right? Like I saw their marketing or I saw the funny ad. I have never seen any water company or, or, you know, a commodity company, like a water company sell like this or like do marketing like this. And yeah, so that, that for me is what's on my mind right now is like, how do we, how do we do this in our sales conversations and the way we do pilots and the way we do all this fun stuff is like, how do we make sure that we're like pushing them with like our perspective and that it's that perspective that like is different, but they would agree with, right? Because you don't want it to be so different where it's like, they think you're crazy. You know, they're like, this guy's wild out of his mind, but like, how do you, how do you make sure that it's just memorable, I guess, is another way of thinking about it too. Yeah.
Mike: I, I, I think that's right on. Like, you got to be different, not too different, like you said, within some window. Yeah. You want to be different to be memorable. And also I think people just, like I said, shortcuts and people just, they just want to know what are you like? I, I use like, think about the analogy of cars, right? Like people buy Toyotas because they're reliable. People buy BMWs because performance, they buy Mercedes for comfort, they buy Volvos for safety, right? Like cars at the end of the day, you put like four of them side by side and you're like, the performance generally is, you know, close enough. in a lot of those different ways, but then you're looking for one thing that's different. Like for me, I recently bought a Toyota because I was tired of my last car that was like giving me a lot of issues. I'm like, next car is going to be Toyota because I just don't want to have to think about it. I don't want to have issues with my car. But before that, I had a BMW, like loved it when I wanted it, the performance. But then when it has issues, then you're like, maybe I'll get the Toyota. Because I was just looking for something different, even though at the end of the day, like the cars are very similar. Same thing with tools, right? Like products. So if you can find whatever that thing is that makes you different, and carve that out, then you're the tool. You're the Toyota that's safety, or you're the Volvo that's safety, or Toyota that's reliable.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which in, in, which in some scenarios, that's where if you're in a deal and they want like the big name or whatever, they're going to, it's just, you're going to lose. I feel like sometimes if what they want is the big name and their jobs on the line. Right. And that's like the other thing to think about, like is, as you know, in like this go to market process, like, okay, if we look at the, this company, they have all the big name products or the small fish, like, and we're competing with this other big dog, who's going to win. Uh, their culture probably says that they're going to just go with the big product because, you know, like again, if we were to gamble, I would probably say, Hey, if nine of the 10 products they are using already are the big name ones, they're probably going to go with the big name one. Cause that's just what they've done. Right. Um, at outreach, we do this. Well, I would do it actually, which is like, and it worked really well. And I would tell my team about this and I would say, I'd call it like the trio. Like if they had Slack, if they had Zoom and if they had Gmail, I was like, our odds are very good. But if they had Outlook. and they had Microsoft teams and they had for both chat and you know, whatever, that deal is probably going to take you a year and you are probably going to spin your wheels. Right. At that time, because you look at just the buying, we talk a lot about like sales skills and buy, you know, like what to say, what not to say, but you also have to look at the company culture and their buying habits in the past, just because you have a champion that might not mean much, right? Like, Sure. It's great. You definitely need one, but also look at the whole company as a culture and see if they bought the latest, greatest product before, you know? And so like even today, like in my filtering, like if they don't use outreach or like a sales loft or something like that, I'm like, they're probably not in like the forward thinking kind of, you know, mindset to buy like the latest and greatest sales tool. So we're probably not going to even try and go after them to be quite honest. And that's how I measure my ICP. Right.
Mike: I love it. And I think that's so important because if it's easy to get like stuck, sucked into the trap of just trying to win a deal for. For any reason, and yeah, it's easy to spin your wheels for two years, just like, you know, it seemed like a good op. And even if you win it, the problem is then are you able to actually serve that customer, make them successful? I remember a branch I worked on. a deal with an AE, we closed a quarter million dollar deal with a like a big insurance company. The problem was the person that was buying was not going to be the person that was implementing and using and the people that were implementing and using really liked kind of like old school tools. And this this other person was like the young go getter trying to show that they're bringing bringing modern solutions to the company. But this is a big insurance company. They didn't want modern solutions like they bought it and spent a year I think actually they renewed So they spent two years basically, we spent two years after closing the deal, spinning our wheels, just trying to get them implemented. And they never did. And then eventually they churned. Right. So like, yeah, we got half a million dollars out of them, but it was wasted that for, it was a big churn. It like, there's a lot of pain through it. And I think if we'd instead taken that time and energy, put it towards more, more of an ICP customer, we could have avoided a lot of that pain, but it was, the writing was on the wall. Like we could see clearly that it wasn't going to go well. But we still did the deal because we were desperate, not desperate, but like we wanted the money.
Andy: So yeah. And, and it's such a good point. And let me ask you this. Are you so you mentioned you're working on a deal with the AE. Are you today still doing like a lot of like founder led sales?
Mike: So Athena? Yeah, so that deal, by the way, was that was a branch, but it doesn't branch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're, you know, we're still early, right? Like we're a couple years old as a company. So yeah, in a lot of deals, although my, you know, my salesperson, he, he runs things very independently. So he, and he, I think he likes doing things pretty independently. So I'm always there to help. Like I view my job as, um, kind of developing pipeline and doing whatever I can to assist in deals. But yeah, it's kind of running. I would always push on, um, sales folks that branch to like, use me, use me in whatever way I will show up to any meeting to do whatever you want. But like, sometimes people just want to come in, they want to hear the founding story, or they want to hear like, You know, something specific in, in terms of my perspective on things, or even just sometimes sending them, call them trumpet emails, trumpet notes, where you basically like, it's just an email from me to the leadership on the other side, not asking them for anything. Just being like, I'm like one of the founders here, our teams are working together. Let me know if I can ever be the help with anything. Right. That little stuff went such a long way. Um, so that's, that's as a founder, that's, it's less about me doing individual deals, which I'll still do, but like. So where can I be most impactful? And it's like those things that it's hard to replicate or it's hard to copy. Like if an SDR were to send that trumpet email, it wouldn't get any traction. It has to come from me or at least my inbox, right?
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. It's like the status game at that point, right? I like the name. We never have a name for it, but that's yeah, a good tactic. And what, dude, you're super humble because And this is a lesson for people that listen to this, right? Which is like, if you're a founder, like, dude, you've already started a unicorn company did well, you're starting a new company, and you're still involved in all the sales, right? Whereas I see a lot of people that are like, Hey, I'm too good to do this. I already did it before or whatever. And it's like, and I personally think that's the wrong approach, right? They're like, Oh, I'm going to hire salespeople. And just now it's just their job to generate the pipeline. And Whenever I see that happening with like some of these newer companies, I'm like, you know, if I was to bet on the on the stock, I'd be like, no go, you know, like, on that, because it's, even when you're huge, right, like, even when you become a company, I've seen it with 1000 employees, like, you're still going to want to bring in the CEO and like the execs, because you're going to need to sell the executive other side. And the unfortunate hard truth is that execs don't want to talk to reps most of the time, right? Like they want to talk to other leaders and hear their perspective, right? And kind of like do a status match is what I call it. So like, you know, it's, it's just, I think that has to be more important than ever, especially for founders. It's like stay involved in the process. Yeah.
Mike: Yeah. I think that's right on. And it's like, I don't like it. I don't, I don't like the fact that that's the way the world works. Right. Like that people kind of like to have this status matching thing and people like, they want it. They don't want to talk to rep. They want to talk to the, the VP or the founder of the C-suite on the other side. Yeah. I'm an engineer, right? So like the way my mind works is it's like, everything should be logical and rational and humans unfortunately are not that way. They're the opposite. They're irrational and they're illogical and they're driven by ego and emotion, right? And like that for me going from engineer to working and go to market has been one of the hardest shifts and it's still sometimes like I know the game now. It took me a few years to figure out that if I know the game now I can play the game. I don't like it. I don't like that aspect of the game, but I can play it. And once you know that, once you know those levers, once you realize people are driven by ego and emotion and these types of things, then you can take advantage of it and then you can match it and then you can use it to your advantage. regardless of whether or not you agree with it and human psychology. But I think human psychology is like a really interesting, I never studied it, but like, I'm really fascinated by it. And like, if you're in any sort of customer facing role, if you've studied psychology, I think it gives you an advantage because you understand cognitive biases and you understand the kind of what motivates and drives people. And I think that can be a really, really key lever.
Andy: Dude, you just mentioned two things I want to, I want to talk about, and I know we're just jamming here, which is, um, The first thing is I was an engineer too. I studied electrical engineering, you know, right out of college, I was doing engineering and physics. And, you know, like, so my brain also worked like that. And then at outreach, I started more on the technical side. And then I went over to, you know, the sales side and you're right. Like people, I had to get through the, like, and I'm a, I'm a very passionate person. So I had to get past the point of me being like. telling people like, use your brain, you know, like, why would you not do this? Like, this is the like, I've just told you why a equal plus B equals C. Like, why are you questioning this? Right? Like, it's, it's just, it's, it's facts at this point, you know, and, um, I had to get over that, right? Because I had to get over like, okay, telling people it's logical. Cause as you mentioned, even if I scream it at them, it's probably not a good idea, but you know, like they don't, that's not how they make decisions. Right. And it's just not how you have to play the status games. You have to play the emotional games. You have to make them feel important and you have to make them basically feel like this is going to help. I boiled it down to one thing. You have to make them feel like it's going to get them a promotion someday. Yeah.
Mike: That's one of the simplest heuristics. Yeah.
Andy: Yeah. It's a heuristic that I just live by is like anything I ever start or, you know, sell like, you know, other companies or whatever. My last company Taply, I was like, okay, when you were talking to people, it's like, how can you make them feel like this is going to get them a promotion? Right. Because like, I think intuitively that's the heuristic that everyone's thinking is like, they want to do something not for fun because they think it's going to progress their career in some way. And so if you can sell something, like make sure it's something that's going to help people feel like that. You know, um, that that's just the way I break it down. Whether, you know, am I completely wrong in that? I don't know, but I feel like it's helped me along the way in that thinking. And then the second point you made. Shoot, what was the second point? Now I'm totally forgetting. Last thing you said, not about the… I totally forgot, man. I spaced.
Mike: I was talking about human psychology and people's lives based on emotion.
Andy: This is coming down to like, I think it's more important now than it, like in the past 10 years, it's more important now, this psychological, psychological thing, because everything that you see from a content perspective, which is where we get discovered is like a quick dopamine hit. Right. What's going to give people that quick dopamine hit and. I'm kind of working backwards here, but how you do that is through human psychology. The way that I've kind of learned, I think more payment psychology than anything is studying copywriting, believe it or not, because you study these. I read like every copywriting book because you know, I was like trying to get good at content and all that fun stuff. And so. You study it and you're like, oh, you study hooks and you study why certain hooks work. And then there's like certain formulas that work when you're writing a piece because they're, you know, pay Ned state solution. Like they've been using this formula for hundreds of years, you know, like, so you kind of start to realize like, oh, this is how people think. Right. And so now everything I see is like, all right, what's the hook to this? Okay. After the hook, how do we keep them, retain them? Right. And then after you retain them, how do you get them to do the thing you want them to do? And honest, I feel like from copywriting, you'll learn more than any psychology class, like in the world, which is like crazy. So I tell all my friends, like I send them all a copywriting book and they're like, dude, why'd you send me a copywriting book? And And they're like, did I tell you I wanted to learn like copywriting or something? And I'm like, read it. Cause you'll learn more about humans from that book than any psychology book you've ever read.
Mike: Yep. I love that. That's so good.
Andy: Yeah. And they think I'm crazy, but then they read it. Uh, the Boron letters is one of them that I'll send. Right. And they're like, it's basically, this guy was in prison, but he was a great like copywriter. And you go through it and you read it and you're like, he basically talks about why he writes in certain ways and it helps you understand humans. You know, it's like the craziest thing. Yeah. That's cool. And yeah. Yeah. So yeah. I always tell people learn from copywriting man, study it. And like, I've become obsessive with it because it kind of leads to everything leads to how you position things, how you think, right? How humans interact with content, how I think it teaches you a lot of that stuff. So yeah, I've learned to become like, super interested in it, like, studying, you know, I'm a nerd, because I like my wife's like, you just go on Instagram and look at ads and like read the whole ad. Like you're the only guy that like reads ads. And I'm like, no, I do that. Cause I'm curious. I'm like this ad, it's got a bunch of likes, it's doing well. I want to see like why it's doing well. Right. And kind of like, look at that. And then dude, I've like written so many like good pieces of content just because of these ads are like, Oh, this is working as an ad. I'm going to use this as a piece of content on LinkedIn. And it's like clockwork, dude. It's, it's, it's fascinating. It's like a mind blowing to me. Yeah.
Mike: Um, yeah, the short, the shortcut is if you, if you pose in a Speedo, then you don't even, I see those ads do well too.
Andy: Yeah. You know, it's funny as we all went to, um, we went on, it was my wife's birthday. So we took like a week trip to Italy last week or whatever, like really quick, you know, trip and her friends came and all my, you know, our friend groups came. And when we showed up, I had a bunch of Italian Speedos waiting for the dudes. And they're like, what is going on here?
null: So that reminded me.
Andy: I was like, guys, we're in Italy. You know, you got to wear Speedos and we're in Italy. So they're Italian Speedos. Why not? Perfect. Yeah. So maybe I'll get some ad content from that man on that. But Mike, man, this has been great, dude. Last thing I want to ask you before we head out is what are three things you're experimenting with right now on the go-to-market side?
Mike: Yeah, I just want to hear three things that you're experimenting with. I'll just kind of think of these on the fly because we're always testing various different things. I think one is playing around a lot with pricing and packaging and like how we're pricing like the actual units. where like we originally did channel-based pricing and now we're testing seed-based pricing and there's like different variations there. That's more just like a general, it's not even go-to-market, it's more just like some of our sales stuff. Second is, I don't know, it just feels, I don't know if we're really experimenting as much as just like trying this new motion, but Doing a lot on still doing a lot of like LinkedIn, but also directly connecting with people like you do a demo with somebody connecting with the people around them and then just like Maybe engaging with them. Maybe not like not don't even send them a message just kind of like let them see your content over over time That's like that's like pretty much it that we're testing right now or that we're experimenting with but there's it reminded me of one other thing that we started one point that I want to make which is different than this you asked me earlier or you mentioned earlier about Founders doing, yeah, like me as a founder doing a lot of sales calls. I got a question recently about, you know, our self-serve onboarding and that sort of stuff from an investor. Right. And they were like, yeah, how much of this is, how many of these are you talking to versus not talking to? I said, I talked, we talked to every single one. I said, why? Like at this stage, so we're, you know, relatively early stage, two years old as a company. I think it's actually I think I think one of the one of the things I found is founders I've had this moment myself to they want to build for scalability too soon. And what happens is you start to. become disconnected. You're like, Oh, like we've got, we've got these inbounds. Let's like build a good self-serve motion so that we don't even need to talk to them. You're thinking about scalability and efficiency. And I think there's a benefit there. The problem is if you do that too early, you start to lose connection with what people are actually talking about. So I told this investor, like I talk, we talk like me or Jared talks to every single person that wants to inbound. We actually closed off the ability to completely self-serve because we wanted to talk to people because we're learning so much through every single one of those conversations at this stage of the company. When we have, you know, so many inbounds that would be impossible to do so cool, like we can take that and build more of a self serve motion, but I love talking to everybody because it just helps us make sure that we're still building the right things building the right products and focusing our messaging. based on what people are telling us. Because if you actually talk to everybody, you learn so much from the market versus if you just get half your people to self-serve, then you're only hearing from a segment of the market. So I just wanted to leave with that little tidbit because I thought it was relevant. And I think it really is something that some people miss.
Andy: Yeah. And I'm pulling up here. Someone asked me this the other day, an investor, they're a great investor, but they were like, I pulled this stat. and they thought I was crazy. And you're actually an investor in Distribute, so I actually wanna show this to you, which is how many meetings and people I've met with over the past, since beginning of this year? Take a number of how many people I've messed with. Yeah, me, me.
Mike: Oh, okay, hang on. Hang on. This could be like sales meetings, demos, podcasts.
Andy: No, just potential like, just, just, just cut like distribute related meetings, not podcasts, not podcasts.
Mike: Okay, okay. So distributed related meetings, I would say, you'd probably want to be like, like, my favorite peak was 25 a week. Right. So like, that's enough that I feel like I was talking to enough people, but also had enough time to do other stuff. You might be doing more because I know you and you might be doing even more than that. But for me, 25 a week times, how many weeks into the year are we? Like 30? So yeah, 750.
Andy: You're close. 619. Yeah. And they're like, why are you talking to so many people? And I'm like, because I talked to as many users as I can, as many director plus people that I was cold emailing. And they're like, why are you talking with so many? And I'm like, because I know that I, I believe here's my thought process. Again, my perspective and my opinion is that I will beat out every single competitor because I will understand the customer better than all of them. Yeah. Right. And I will build the best things. And that's how we early at outreach, what I was doing, right? I was talking to more customers than anyone, like what was needed, right on the product side, what we needed to build, why we needed to build it. And I was like, I will always do that because they're literally telling me what to build. So if someone comes to you and is like, Hey, I can tell you my perspective on why I built something. And that you don't listen to every person, but you build an average. Right. And you can say, well, I heard these things from these four people or these 37 people all said the same thing. So I should probably do that one thing. Right. And so that for me was like, going back to what you were saying is like, yes. And I've kind of gotten away from that the last like two months. And I'm like, Nope, got to bring it back. Got to bring it back. And I even like, I'm closing up an experiment that I'm running is I'm closing up the self signup, as you mentioned, and I'm drawing, I'm driving everyone to a WhatsApp group and they have, I'm literally making it so freaking easy, dude. And I'm like, some people are like, well, I'm not in WhatsApp. I'm like, well, you gotta get WhatsApp, you know, like you gotta get WhatsApp. And it's kind of interesting. Cause with that friction actually makes people want to use the platform even more, which is super interesting. But then in there, I'm getting them in there. And I did kind of a beta group initially, but like, now I'm going to actually do it for real for everyone. And people are chatting in there. And it's just a simple freaking group. I'm like, Hey, how do I do this? Hey, how do I do this? How do I do it? And as they communicate about how to use the platform? Oh, well, that needs to be easier. This needs to be easier. Right. And so like, um, People think it's crazy, but I'm like, no, dude, like this is just how you get access now. Like you have to be in the group, right? Like you have to be in the, what's out here, unless you're an enterprise customer. That's different, but like individual signups, right? Like my PLG, let's call it like it's, it's WhatsApp enterprise. Yeah. We're setting up a pilot, you know, manager workshop, you know, rep workshop, all that fun stuff. But like that is, um, I think I've toned it back from like thinking that you need to just like let everyone in every time possible. Cause sometimes they'll come in, they don't know what to do next. They need some handholding. but one of those people could be like a huge influence in, you know, it's a testimonial or case study, who knows. And like, it just took them a little bit of handholding initially to get them there. Right. So anyways, that's what it takes.
Mike: I love that, man. I love that. Yeah. I think that's right on. And yeah, you're, you're gonna, you're gonna hit a thousand this year. You're at 690. You got to pick up the pace a little bit. But, uh, I'm very close. You're very close to pacing to a thousand. Yeah, I know. That's my ideal. Like my ideal is to do, and this could be prospects, existing customers. It doesn't matter. My ideal is 20 to 25 meetings a week externally with a prospect or a customer. Um, just because you learn so much, like you said, there's a lot of noise. You're not going to listen to everybody, but then you find the signal within the noise. When you have 20 conversations, 25 conversations a week and 10 people ask about a feature that you don't have. And you're like, apparently this is a thing. And then you go build that. Like you wouldn't get that if you weren't talking to that people.
Andy: Yeah. And, and like, I could send out a survey to the user base. Like, it's like, what's that going to do? Like, you know, I've tried that. And it just, there's nothing like having the conversation with someone that You know, you just, dude, even one conversation sometimes I'm like, shoot, I don't feel like doing this, but then I'll have it. And then you're like, holy shit. That just changed my whole perspective on this. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Mike: Sometimes it's those ones for sure.
Andy: Yeah. And you just never know which one it's going to be. But then, and it's sometimes like the smallest thing too, is it's not always this big grand feature that you have to build. It's like this small thing that you're like, shit, I didn't even know people were having that issue. And then you kind of start asking more around that. Like, Hey, what do you think about this? Someone mentioned it. And they're like, Oh yeah, dude, that drives me nuts. And you're like, Oh my God. Like had no idea, you know, um, so.
Mike: And what's interesting about it is too, like, you don't, depending on what your business is, you don't need to get on the phone with people. Like there's other ways to do it. Like one of the other things that we started doing recently was founders at Athena are going to take once a week, uh, like a four hour support shift. Right. We take the support people off, like you go do something else, go work on old tickets or whatever. Founder basically gets all of the inbound flow for three or four hours. But you're talking to customers, you're hearing what they're asking about, complaining about, where their friction points are. And since we also are a ticketing tool to some degree, we're also dogfooding our own product. But that's a way to talk to customers without getting on the phone So like you can do, if you're like in a B2C business, consumer business, like, okay, don't get on the phone with customers or consumers if you don't want to, but go man, the support queue for half a day, you'll learn.
Andy: Yeah. Yeah. That's someone else. Uh, V from smart, the founder of smart elite. I had him on and, uh, he was, he has something related to that. Um, I forget exactly what it is, but it's that everyone on the team has to do support. Basically. Like there's like a, like a mini quota. It's not like anything crazy, but it's like at least two hours a week or something, um, to see what customers are asking for, what issues they're having, what, um, you know, all the issues basically that are occurring. And then he has support under engineering. So it's like direct line of communication. I'm like, Oh shit. Like, I think that's the move. Like always, you know, cause it's like, is it success? Is it engineering? It's like the exact issues. Let's just get them fixed.
Mike: I see that increasingly happening.
Andy: Yeah. Support living under engineering. Yeah. It's really, yeah. Yeah. And it's one other thing that I've been thinking about lately, um, is someone recently asked me and they said, I said, I'm going to build the best, like I talked to, it was about talking to a lot of people and I was, I'm going to talk to most people cause I'm gonna build the best product. And you know, and when I say the best product, I want to people, probably people love, let's just say that. And they go, well, how do you know, like you have a great product? And I go, well, that's going to be subjective. But the way I think about building a great product is getting my support ticket number to zero. And that's never going to happen. Right. Is that that would put you out of business. So we don't want that. But that is like for me, like a guiding North Star. How do we make it so intuitive in such a great product that you don't need to submit a support ticket to understand anything? Yeah. Right. And because we're a workflow tool. Right. So just like you are. And so when you're creating these digital sales rooms, how do you make it so intuitive where they're like, I get it. I don't, I don't, I don't really question a lot of it. Right. And so like, how do we, and every time we release something, I'm like, I asked the team, I go, what, what tickets, the engineers, I go, what tickets do you think people are going to submit because of this long, because of this, that we're launching. And I actually go through that exercise with every new thing. And it makes them think like, oh, shit, what's the worst case? And dude, I tell you that little trick prevents so many issues that we've had, because they're like, oh, well, when I was building, I was thinking about this. And, you know, my first reaction used to be like, well, why didn't you bring it up? You know, if you thought that was gonna be a thing. But now it's like, Oh yeah, I did think about that. But now that we're talking through it, I'm gonna get it fixed. Right? And so it kind of builds this like culture of like, how do we eliminate tickets and like, make it so intuitive, right? And so I think that's one thing I've built in that's like, holy shit, it's a small question, but it can make people think, you know, like, you know, like, like, like, like, Oh yeah. Like as I'm building too, I should probably bring up some of these things that may later on cause me even more of a headache because then we'll have 10 other features on top of it. And then you'll have to fix all those things before you can fix this thing. You know, you've all the tech debt shit, you know? So anyways, man, that's something that going back to support your side of the house is like, that's, that's one thing that I've always been thinking of or recently been thinking about. So I love that. Yeah. Yeah, man. Well, dude, I, you have to run. I'm sure I have to run Mike. We're going to get this pot out. I'm going to send it to my editor. Um, right now, dude. And then I'll, I'll plug it on the, uh, we'll, we'll put like presented by Athena or something on there too. I'll give a little shout out to Athena and then we'll, uh, we'll shout you guys out and then I owe you an update too on distribute. But, um, yeah, we're, we're, we've, we're in like four pilots right now. We've closed an 11, 12 K deal like last week. Um, so yeah, dude, we're starting, like it's happening. We're starting to kind of like get people interested in all that. Um, So yeah, so it's in the products, like in a super solid spot right now. So stellar. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, man. Well, I need to update you on this. Yeah, it's fun. It's crazy, man, as you know, but like, it's just, it's the unknown is always a fun experience. So yeah, man, well, I'll talk to you soon, Mike, and thank you so much, man, for many things. Appreciate it. Believing in Distribute, believing in me early, and then dude, anything I can do to help you, freaking, I'm always here. So there we go, man. All right, man. Cool. I'll chat with you soon. Good to see you. Later, bro. All right. Bye. See ya. Bye. Have a good one, man.
