Startup Hypeman: The GOAT to Market Show

Time and time again, entrepreneurs and sales leaders convey the importance of communicating value to their teams. Typically what they mean when they say 'value' is ROI. And if they don't mean that, their team autotranslates value to mean ROI. This paradox of confusing value for ROI leaves money on the table, according to Sell The Way You Buy author David Priemer. He joins me in this week's episode...

Part 2 of our discussion transitions into both the internal and external work and practices businesses can get started with. NOTE: If you have not yet listened to Part 1, go back and start there in order to have proper context for Part 2. Find Levi online at: IG: @mysterybaer Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/levibaer/ Find Chicago United for Equity online at: https://www.chicagounitedforequit...

Like many, I've been deeply shaken up by the recent murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and most recently George Floyd, as well as the ensuing protests, riots, and varying levels of responses from community, business, and governmental leaders. To help everyone better process and figure out how to move forward from here, I invited my close friend Levi Baer back onto the show for a 3rd time. L...

Buyer Experience is all about making it as easy as possible for the buyer to make a purchase decision. Typically that comes with the territory of optimizing the best parts of your sales process and over-providing value. For ClearCover, a company that has raised over $100 million and has 150+ employees in just over 3 years in business, it's a different story. They identify the point of failure with...

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...

There are free trials. There are proofs of concept. And then there are Proofs of Value. Proof-of-Value is a newer term emerging as a method of customer acquisition that requires the company selling to do more upfront work without payment. That might seem like a losing scenario, but if executed correctly it can lead to much bigger long-term contracts. Not only is it a great way to acquire customers...

Arguably, the best story your company can tell is the story of customer success. But the key is that it's a STORY. We're back with a brand new #HYPEsession -- this time with The Case Study Copywriter, Kate Porfilio. Kate writes case studies that turn your clients’ successes into irresistible stories that sell. She has distilled 17 years as a marketer, copywriter, and designer to create her Case St...

Question: Would you rather sell to a company with one decision-maker, no procurement process, and zero outside influencers to the decision, or a company with multiple stakeholders and influencers to the decision, and potentially procurement gets involved? The common logic answer is to pick the first company. But should you? Sales Engagement Software Autoklose originally sold to independent busines...

It's quarantine season. There's widespread fear, the market is tanking, people are tightening up their wallets, and tons of uncertainty in the air. If you're like me, then your sales have been affected in some way. So what do you do about it? Do you cower in fear? No -- you dive in headfirst and figure it out. Todd Caponi is the author of the best-selling book The Transparency Sale, and Managing D...

You're out to change the world. Disrupt society. Flip an industry upside down. Shatter a stereotype or create a new norm. You're MISSION-driven. But what does that really look like on a day-to-day basis? And how do you build long-term support for your mission while still gaining customers today, without scaring them away? Alyssa Cairns Cofounded momHIVE, Western Michigan's first all-female coworki...

Most often when we think of customers we think about acquiring them. The less sexy part to think about is what happens after you acquire them -- retention. Retention is arguably just as, if not more important, and one ticket to reduce churn dramatically is to build an internal culture around retention. In 4 years, Penji has bootstrapped their way to the Inc. 5000 with over 1,000 customers (includi...

I often say the holy grail to achieve with either your product or your marketing is that it creates such a good experience that the person CANNOT SLEEP until they tell someone else about it. Well, one of the ultimate versions of that is when 'cannot sleep' means your own customers actually go out and market on your behalf. Sydney-based Bonjoro has 24,000 users with 9% MoM growth and $1 million rai...

Growth happens in stages for every company, but especially marketplace companies. First you have to get into a single market, then figure out your next markets, and from there find a scalable repeatable process to flood the market. Deskpass gives entrepreneurs, freelancers, and remote workers to the best co-working spots in their city for one monthly membership price. Over the past 4 years this ma...

This is the episode I never, in my wildest nightmare, thought would happen. Kobe and Gianna Bryant's deaths have affected me in a way I couldn't possibly imagine. From the moment I heard about it I felt sick, sad, confused, and generally heartbroken. For someone I never met, it's amazing how impacted I am. I think this feeling is shared by many. I wanted to share my thoughts and reflect on Kobe's...

Your company is growing. You're scaling. You're hiring. Look around -- does your team look, think, and act just like you? Did you build a team of mini-me's? If you're not hiring with inclusion in mind, you WILL fall behind very soon. Peoplelift Founder Tim Visconti joins me this week for an invigorating discussion about how it's so easy to get this wrong, the key bias signals to look for in yourse...

As much as online ads and click-bait might try to convince you, customer acquisition is NOT one-size-fits-all. In most cases it takes a little trial and a lot of error to get it right for your specific industry, market, product, and use case. Zinda.xyz Founder & CEO Deepa Kartha is my guest this week to talk about her SaaS company's current road to product-market fit, and how they've completel...

Want to wow your customers, your newest hire, or even your family member? Alex Kurkowski's company Tellinga lets you share a mini-story via custom comic-book style greeting cards you can send anywhere around the world. Think of it like a handwritten note on steroids. He joins me for a lightning chat in this week's #HYPEsession to share the goods. Alex shares: How you can use Tellinga to make a gre...

Regardless of your industry, product, or target market, at the end of the day you should be in the business of PEOPLE. That means even though you have projections and numbers you want to hit, you keep the human element at the forefront at all times. I first met aSweatLife CEO Jeana Anderson Cohen back in 2015 and I could sense immediately this was her mantra. In the time since, the media company h...

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 practitioners now onboard. Avaana is a Startup Hypeman client and in my conversation with Rohan,...

Want to increase your trial-to-paid conversions? Aaron Krall has become a LEGEND in this game and he steps up to the mic for a lightning chat with me in my newest #HYPEsession! Aaron shares: Where most SaaS's experience user dropoff Capturing the Moment of First Value How he's building a community of thousands around this topic Enjoy, and remember, #HYPEsessions are available here, and simulcast i...

Take a look at your potential customers. Now look again. Are you really looking at the total available market, or have you fixated on one subset that has the biggest names but is the hardest to reach? Sometimes your best customers are the ones you're not paying attention to. This week on the show I welcome Startup Hypeman client, and my friend, FanFood CEO Carson Goodale. FanFood combines concessi...

Hey startups -- want to pitch the Chicago Bulls?? In my latest #HYPEsession I sit down with Navin Goyal, MD, Cofounder & CEO of LOUD Capital. They recently partnered with the Bulls to launch the first ever Chicago Bulls Venture Pitch Competition where the winning company takes home a $50k investment from LOUD! Application deadline is December 16th. Tune in to today's #HYPEsession for full deta...

As a sales-minded founder myself, a part of me cringes when I talk to other entrepreneurs who consistently avoid getting in front of customers themselves in favor of their other responsibilities. That's why I was excited to welcome PJ Taei, Founder & CEO of the VOD platform Uscreen on today's episode. Uscreen has 30 employees, has never raised outside capital, and amassed over 1,000 paying cus...

You've seen the videos, read the blog posts, and heard all the buzz about Y-Combinator. But what's it really like to get into a YC cohort and go through the program yourself? In today's podcast I chat with Shruti Kapoor, Cofounder & CEO of Wingman who shares her firsthand experience at the hailed Silicon Valley accelerator. Hear the big lessons and takeaways she learned, the changes her compan...

Our second #HYPEsession features BJ Lackland, CEO of Lighter Capital. Lighter Capital is the most active revenue-based financing provider in the United States. In this chat BJ shares: What exactly is revenue-based financing and when does it make sense versus traditional VC or angel money, or bootstrapping. A look into Lighter's existing portfolio and the amount of funding they typically provide. W...