Traction Podcast

On this episode, Shadi Rostami , Senior/Executive VP of Engineering at Amplitude discusses the tell-tale signs companies should look for before expanding their product suite and three major considerations before doing so.   Expanding beyond your first-ever product offering is a huge moment for any company. Unfortunately, it is also a moment that is very difficult to get right.   Specifically, Shad...

On this episode, Kate Ahlering , Chief Revenue Officer at Calendly shares best practices for implementing a highly effective revenue strategy to improve the funnel and accelerate bottom-line growth across your organization, as well as insights into how her team is applying a combined PLG-SLG strategy to acquire more customers upmarket.   Specifically, Kate covers:   Why joining Calendly was the ri...

On this episode, Edith Harbaugh , CEO at LaunchDarkly and Jonathan Heiliger, Partner at Vertex Ventures discuss the highs and lows of entrepreneurship from bootstrapped to billions.    Taking that first step to being a founder is the first difficult decision for many. After that comes decisions about hiring your teams, picking your partners and investors, and creating a scalable product for a cate...

On this episode, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Anu Bharadwaj , Chief Operating Officer at Atlassian .   Anu believes building connection and engagement in a distributed world is Atlassian's best strategy for growth and retention.   Too many companies are wasting resources on navigating return-to-office strategies instead of investing in employees and improving their ways of working.   Anu...

On this episode, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Sara Hicks, CPO at Mailchimp.   Developing a product strategy starts with understanding the customer problems that your business can solve–which, in turn, creates a long-lasting competitive advantage.   A compelling product strategy prioritizes key initiatives that will have the biggest impact for customers and the business while also navigat...

On this episode, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Anu Muralidharan, Chief Operating Officer at Expensify.   Expensify is one of the few profitable, multibillion-dollar tech companies out there, and went from 0 users to IPO by staying true to its vision.   Anu shares how she stepped off the well-traversed path along with Expensify to create her own rocket launcher by ignoring detractors, chal...

On this episode, host Lloyed Lobo at Boast. AI welcomes Anne Dwane, Co-Founder & Partner at Village Global.   Most investors spend only 1-3 minutes looking at a pitch deck, so how can you make sure that your pitch deck stands out from the crowd?   It all starts with a great startup story when delivering your pitch. It isn't just a marketing tool: your company's startup story is—your mission, your...

On this episode, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Jim Morris, the Founder of Product Discovery Group.   There's no point in creating something that no one wants, yet so many teams skip the product discovery process.   Even the most efficient process can’t make a bad idea good. Building untested ideas is risky and can cause lost time, wasted money, and low morale.   Jim presents concrete tech...

On this episode, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Henry Schuck, CEO & Founder at ZoomInfo.   Over the past five years, ZoomInfo has grown 10X to more than one billion in revenue with over 3,000 employees and 25,000 customers.   Today, Henry joins us to share lessons from starting and growing the company from his dorm room to global scale.   Specifically, Henry dives into: 2:32 - ZoomInfo's b...

On this episode, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Udi Ledergor, CMO at Gong.   With massive shifts and uncertainty in the markets, most companies are working on defensive plans such as reducing spending and increasing cash.   Defensive strategies might help companies survive, but in order to exit the current climate in a market-leading position, companies must learn to play offense.   Udi sh...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo welcomes Jason VandeBoom, Founder & CEO of ActiveCampaign.   ActiveCampaign has managed to build a big business by taking some less-than-obvious paths.   Jason shares his take on traditional growth strategies. He tells us why they don’t always make sense and gives a breakdown of the lessons learned from scaling the unscalable into a long te...

On this episode, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Eric Siu, Chairman of Single Grain and a serial entrepreneur, author, podcast host, investor, and advisor to many companies.     In his youth, Eric was not academically or socially successful, but he was a serious high-level eSports and poker player. He ultimately found how to convert his focus and success in gaming into a very successful car...

On this episode, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Max Lytvyn, Co-Founder, Head of Revenue, and Board Member at Grammarly.   Since 2009, Grammarly has grown into one of the most successful bootstrapped companies on the web. More than 30 million daily active users rely on its AI-powered digital writing assistant to help them communicate more clearly, effectively, and mistake-free.   Today, Max...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, I welcome Daniel Saks, Co-Founder & Co-CEO at AppDirect.   As more and more enterprises put employees in the driver’s seat to pick the right tools for their organizations, you need to balance between designing for both end-users and the IT department to stay competitive.   Daniel shares tips on how to transition from a traditional sales-led model to a produ...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Yinon Costica, Co-Founder and VP of Product at Wiz.   Explosive growth is every startup’s dream but it’s not easy. It’s rarely ever a linear path.   Mistakes are inevitable. They can make or break your business’ success while you’re scaling your teams, troubleshooting your product, and onboarding your first clients.  ...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Andres Botero, Chief Marketing Officer at BlackLine (Nasdaq: BL).   A successful customer advocacy program turns loyal customers into spokespeople for your brand, making it one of the most effective forms of marketing. According to Gartner, more than 75% of B2B buyers consult three or more sources before they make a pu...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of  Boast. AI  welcomes Craig Nile , VP Sales at Codat .   With experience helping grow some of the biggest names in SaaS, such as Salesforce and Slack, Craig shares the playbook for building and scaling enterprise sales teams from zero to a billion.  Specifically, Craig covers: 1:47 - The backstory behind the journey into sales 7:25 - When...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Chandar Pattabhiram, Chief Marketing Officer at Coupa Software. With so much attention on Product-Market fit, many startups forget about Go-to-Market fit which is crucial for long term sustainable growth. Chandar discusses how to drive what he calls “speedboat marketing,” sharing strategies and hard-earned lessons from...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Mada Seghete, Co-Founder at Branch. Driving growth doesn’t always mean hiring a big team and spending a lot of money. It starts with prioritizing activities that have the biggest reach and impact at the best ROI and moving towards your goal with high velocity. In this session, Mada shares the growth playbook that took...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI features a talk by Leah Solivan, General Partner at Fuel Capital and Founder of TaskRabbit from the in-person Traction Conference.   The idea for TaskRabbit came about in 2008 around the time the iPhone first launched, while Leah was living in Boston and bootstrapping the company.   In the process of bootstrapping, the entire t...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Waseem Daher, Founder and CEO at Pilot.com.   Fundraising is never easy, but the right preparation can make all the difference.   Waseem joins us to share the KPIs and questions that investors look at during various stages of investment.   Waseem is a three-time founder with two successful exits (Ksplice acquired by Or...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Sahir Azam, Chief Product Officer at MongoDB.   Sahir shares how MongoDB transformed from a traditional software company—sales driven, longer cycles, etc.—into more of a consumer-style self-service model.   Overseeing the growth of MongoDB’s Atlas, Sahir shares his learnings (the good, the bad, and the ugly) about buil...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI welcomes Mar Hershenson, Managing Partner at Pear VC.   There is a lot of confusion among founders as to the right approach to raising a series A because each industry, whether it’s e-commerce, consumer, SaaS, or marketplace, has a different set of rules and tactics.   In this session, Mar Hershenson, Co-Founder and Managing Pa...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI features a talk on Product Positioning by April Dunford, Founder of Ambient Strategy and Author of Obviously Awesome from Traction Conference 2019.    Positioning has an impact across all key product decisions, from roadmap to pricing. Buyers need context to understand new innovative offerings. Businesses that figure out how to...

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast. AI features a fireside between Ryan Smith, Founder and Executive Chairman at Qualtrics, and Jason Lemkin, Founder at SaaStr from the in-person Traction Conf in San Francisco.   Ryan shares his journey from a bootstrapped startup to a multi-billion dollar company and the challenges and learnings along the way.   In this session, Ry...