Startup Hypeman: The GOAT to Market Show

The key to growth for nearly every startup is the ability to unlock distribution at scale. But in this pursuit, most companies don't look beyond the assets and properties they already own. In this week's episode, I have a conversation with a different type of startup doing things a different way. The Elite Amateur Fight League (EAFL) is an MMA league that's grown a fanbase by getting on TV network...

What are the low to no-cost tactics and strategies we can come up with, that drive major long-term growth and awareness? That's what Engagedly's CEO Sri Chellappa asks his marketing team on a regular basis. As a bootstrapped startup, Engagedly has figured out creative ways to build their brand without breaking the bank. And it's worked — they've made it to $5 million ARR and counting. This week on...

Science On Call isn't your typical startup. Which is why when they originally founded, they didn't even entertain the idea of investor capital. But that narrative changed when they stopped thinking of their company as a restaurant IT consultancy, and started thinking of it as an IT platform for restaurants. This shift came with a business model change and a redirected vision. A vision that could b...

2 times a month in the Startup Hypeman newsletter we share a list of upcoming pitch competitions taking place. Why? Because pitch competitions are a great way to fund your startup in the early days — if you can win. No one understands how to execute this better than Dapo Kolawole. He came to me a few years ago when his first startup, Citispoon, was getting off the ground. We worked on his pitch an...

It's a brand new season of Startup Hypeman: The Podcast! Can you believe we're on our 17th season now? This season we're featuring exclusively past and present clients from the Startup Hypeman portfolio. Kicking off our first episode is Searchspring's CEO Peter Messana. Within 2 months of taking over at Searchspring, the company merged with it's top competitor, Nextopia. It's not easy to show up a...

700 customers, including Hubspot, Linkedin, and PayPal. $68.1 million in funding. 200+ employees. Next-level brand awareness. Category leader. Do you think all that happens just from direct selling? Think again. Gong has produced, in my opinion, the BEST content in the game. And it's reflecting in those numbers you see above (and oh yeah, nearly all of their content itself gets hundreds and thousa...

Most conversations in B2B sales are about how you sell to the person you're speaking with. Ask them the right questions, learn their pains, needs, and goals, give them pricing, send them proposals, etc. There is A TON of content in this area. The oft-overlooked part is how to navigate a multi-stakeholder deal. Most enterprise, and many non-enterprise, sales include a main point-of-contact, influen...

We are gearing up for Season 17, but in the meantime, enjoy one of our favorites from Season 15! Every leader has a job to not only make decisions for the company, but enable employees to make decisions for themselves. To pave the way but avoid getting in the way. To handhold but not handcuffed. Many leaders struggle with this, especially as more and more responsibilities get delegated. So how do...

3 words: Fill. The. Gap. Traditionally you think of massive companies like AT&T or ADT Security having resellers. But what about for a company on the come-up? At only 5 years young, less than 10 employees, and 200+ customers (including United Airlines and Chic-Fil-A), PeopleVine stumbled into a situation where a customer opportunity led to a partnership, and that partnership evolved into a ful...

We are gearing up for Season 17, but in the meantime, enjoy one of our favorites from Season 14! You know to ask about budget. You know to ask about timeline. You know to ask about what they are looking for in a solution. But when you're selling your product, do you know how to go beyond these surface area "100-level" questions? If you can, you've opened the door to learning about your prospect's...

We are gearing up for Season 17, but in the meantime, enjoy one of our favorites from Season 12! As marketplace startups become more and more popular, the strategy to capture the market becomes increasingly important, AND nuanced. After raising a $400k angel round to begin 2019, Melbourne-based wellbeing marketplace Avaana focused the year on owning the B2B side first -- to the tune of over 1,200...

You've heard it before: A Founder talks about the great idea they are building, and then when you ask them how it will work they reply with zeal, "MARKETPLACE!" Now, I'm not saying that's inherently a bad idea, but many companies are inherently misguided in their building of a marketplace. We're seeing the long-term business model viability of companies like ClassPass, DoorDash, and others get tes...

There's a distinct difference between selling a product that everyone and their mother has heard of (think SEO or payroll software) versus selling a product that virtually no one has heard of. The former starts with a baseline understanding of what the product offers, how it typically behaves, what the pricing guardrails are, etc. The latter there is no baseline understanding — of anything. So wha...

Most people believe deals are won or lost at the proposal stage. But that's only true if you've done a poor job managing your sales process. In reality, deals are confirmed or revised at the proposal stage. This is something I fundamentally didn't understand when I was a rookie salesperson. Then I hired Joe Micallef, President of GrowUp Sales, as my first sales coach to teach me how it should be d...

After you win a customer, do you let them run wild with your product and never speak to them again? If you actually care about your customer's success, then you not only don't let them run wild, but you also make their success a part of your overall business strategy. Part of helping ensure success is to have a CSM team that knows how to spot the right opportunities for expansion revenue, because...

Pop quiz - if you heard that someone started a business when the pandemic hit, and the customers of said business were RESTAURANTS, would you say that business would still be around a year later? We've all heard before that you shouldn't enter certain markets because they don't have budget. Or maybe even in your own 1-on-1 selling, you've chalked up a lost deal to 'no budget'. But are we letting '...

Yes, you read that right. lemlist had a $30 million investment offer waiting to be signed, and they turned it down. There isn't much else to say other than listen in as their CEO G. Mobeche explains how it all went down, why they said no, and what advice he has for companies raising capital. Find G online: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/-g-/ Find lemlist online: https://www.lemlist.com/ Plu...

Most companies fight to win on product. The best companies win on brand. Sure, your product has to be good, but to become a truly successful company, there must be more you bring to the table than an interchangeable piece of technology. Your brand is the image you portray, the value system you project, the community you build, and more. And when you have a solid brand, you don't just get customers...

The generally accepted practice in revenue department at scaling organizations is a career roadmap of SDR > Account Executive > Senior Account Executive, etc. But why then do so many SDRs fail to succeed when they become AEs? And what role do companies play in setting them up for success? Christina Brady has seen the good, the bad, and the ugly as a former Head of Sales at Groupon and Glassd...

Everyone wants to grow and scale, but not everyone is necessarily ready or prepared to do so. Growth tends to happen before you realize it, and before you've had a chance to put real processes or structure in place. It requires vision, direction, and buy-in. The collateral damage? Losing team members along the way. Jackie Hermes has grown the SaaS growth marketing agency Accelity from her taking c...

One of the best things your company can do to grow is hedge your growth levers against one another. Otherwise known as "Don't put all your eggs in one basket". That's why you never see successful companies rely on just one marketing channel. But what about on the sales side? Sure, you can have a team of salespeople, and even divide teams by region or account type, but isn't it still ultimately a o...

There's this weird obsession with hustle culture, where you're made to feel that if you're not working 70 hour weeks, putting in time on weekends, and skipping holidays that you must be doing something wrong. But that lifestyle simply isn't sustainable and you either end up burning out or making really bad personal decisions. What if there was another way? And not just from a mindset perspective,...

The journey to product-market fit is just that — a journey. Many companies think they have it, when in fact they don't. Others struggle to really break through. Naveed Iqbal's startup Dolr helps people to get $0 student loan debt faster. They operate as both a B2C and B2B model, targeting organizations to offer Dolr as an employee benefit. With multiple target audiences they've had to make sure th...

Not all customers are created equal. Not all revenue is created equal. This fundamental understanding determines whether you’re chasing distractions or chasing growth. Indifit CEO Cheryl Kemp realized as the company gained traction that even though its customers could all be categorized within the fitness industry, they needed deeper segmentation to improve their offering, focusing on a specific s...

Every leader has a job to not only make decisions for the company, but enable employees to make decisions for themselves. To pave the way but avoid getting in the way. To handhold but not handcuffed. Many leaders struggle with this, especially as more and more responsibilities get delegated. So how do you empower your team to perform their best every single day? Teamworks Sales Director Larry Long...