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Welcome to Opfocus’s podcast RevOps Rockstars. Join hosts David Carnes and Jarin Chu as they interview RevOps professionals and explore the challenges they face today. Throughout the show, we dive into how guests got started with their careers, their best tips and tricks, and what excites them about the future of the industry.
Mandy Cole: I would go into a company and the first thing I'd ask for is a bunch of data and get access to their CRM and I can pull up data myself.
But also I want to, you know, I want to listen to calls. I want to see, show me what your team's using. I want to see, and lots of folks had like gone, but we're never using it. And it's like, well, either use it or why are you paying for it?
Jarin Chu:
Today's guest on the podcast is a lauded leader and venture capital partner. We're excited to interview. She's a visionary results driven go to market exec and sales ops expert who excels at building multi channel teams and has built companies. that have exceeded over 700 million in revenue. Today, we have the partner at Stage 2 Capital, Mandy Cole.
Mandy, welcome to the podcast.
Mandy Cole: Thank you so much. So glad to be here.
Jarin Chu: Mandy, right off the bat, we love getting into the maybe contentious, but definitely juicy question. And in this case, we want to hear from you, having worked with so many portfolio companies. What do you wish RevOps teams in your portfolio would stop wasting time on?
Mandy Cole: The biggest thing I've seen lately and, and keep in mind, our portfolio companies tend to be a little bit on the earlier side since we invest their Cedar A, um, so we're typically working with companies there, you know, through B. Is traditional outbound. I still see companies struggling with, you know, trying to do outbound the way we were doing it two or three years ago, which is like, let's go get a database.
Let's get, you know, and build a bunch of sequences and just. Prioritize quantity over quality, and it just doesn't work anymore. The return on that has really gone down, um, and now, you know, we've got these new tools, um, coming on with AI that can do a lot of that work for you and really help, you know, take ABM strategy one step further.
Um, and so we're really trying to work with our companies on how can we prioritize, uh, quality first. And, and getting those personalized messages to the right person at the right time and the right ways to follow up with them, um, to be able to continue to build, um, your pipeline.
Jarin Chu: I'm really resonating already with what you're saying because here at OpFocus, you know, we're a small team. Also, we've experimented with different kinds of BDR, STR type activity, and it's really been an uphill struggle in the last couple of years, just with the amount of inundation. I think the overwhelming amounts of email and just general, um, unpersonalized unpersonalized outreach.
I've been excited recently to see vendors like Sixth Sense incorporate, um, AI powered sort of BDR functions. You mentioned wanting to improve on quality over quantity. What are some specific ways that you recommend your portcodes, um, to be able to improve quality while not sacrificing that conversion rate that's required, uh, in terms of quantity?
Mandy Cole: Yes, great question. Um, I think it starts with really understanding your ICP and your buyer journey. So we work with them closely on that and making sure that they're not doing the still approach of, we want to go after everybody. at one time that we're really focusing on, you know, who is our ICP? What is the buyer doing?
And let's really map the buyer journey and understand when they want you to engage with them. But what type of content are you doing initial, initially when they're just, you know, awareness and that awareness factor and really leveraging more content strategy and then using intent data or understanding when they do interact with your content, that that's a good time to Start those kinds of activities because you're just going to get more reception from them again.
Like the, I just asked this actually at Saster, um, when I was walking through how to build your first go to market playbook. And I asked, you know, I had a room of a hundred people and said, how many of you have recently bought something where somebody reached out to you cold and you had not done any research on it at all?
And I think only two people raised their hands. Because we just don't buy that way anymore. And so, I'd much rather our team spend time thinking about how do we... orchestrate that process and what types of tools do we need to do that versus let's just go get a huge list from ZoomInfo or Apollo and let's send these mass email campaigns that aren't, as you just mentioned, Darren, that aren't personalized and see what we get back.
Jarin Chu: Before we move off the topic, I'm curious if you can comment on how you've seen kind of the ratio between BDRs and SDRs to sales change over time and how you advise your portcodes to think about structuring their teams today.
Mandy Cole: Yes. And it's certainly something I think that, um, I do believe this is an evolution. I believe that going to market is going to change. in the next two to three years and a lot of, and the roles in go to market are going to change. And, um, I feel like BDR is the first one that's going to change. Um, you know, we used to have, in some cases, people would have one to one if your ACV was high enough, right?
Or you were going after enterprise and it required touching a lot of people during that. We're now, and then it became two to one. And now we're seeing, we just had a port code that actually took their whole For five reps, took their BDR team down to one because they're testing a productivity tool that uses AI to go out, um, and they narrow down their ICP and this productivity tool goes out and finds, you know, builds for A much smaller group for that finds the right accounts, builds the profile, those accounts, builds all of the personalized sequencing and does the outreach and they're seeing much better success leveraging that.
So, um, so I feel like that role, you know, we're going to, I feel like we're going to see more of that, more of the BDR role changing to really be able to follow up on more of those, but we're just not going to need as many of them. And in some cases. Depending on if it's an S& B or mid market, I think we're going to see some companies going back to a full cycle AE supported by this type of tool.
David Carnes: It's just so fascinating thinking about the shifts in roles and how, uh, uh, these, uh, you know, HR assets are deployed, uh, within the companies. Um, Mandy, I'm curious, tell us about Stage 2 Capital and how your approach is different from other, uh, investors.
Mandy Cole: Great question. So we are the first go to market venture capital firm, um, which means that we, our superpower is helping companies scale. That's why we typically invest in a seed or a round. It's when there is a product in market and the founder has enough. Customers and revenue that we can start to see patterns and both the retention and the usage of the product.
And at that point, we know, okay, there seems to be a product market fit here. Now we can bring in our. Basically, all of our expertise around go to market to help scale and that, um, expertise, a lot of that comes from, we're very fortunate to have over 300 go to market executives who are investors in our fund.
And so, they do actively help our portfolio companies. Um, and so being able to leverage that expertise has been amazing for our founders. Um, and then internally as partners, um, we are. Six partners, half of us, including myself, have a go to market background, and the other half come from investing, and we work together as teams with founders.
So they get the expertise on both sides of the table, which has been really helpful as well.
David Carnes: And we've certainly seen from among the companies we've worked with over the years, uh, amazingly talented executives who are part of that investor group within stage two. So it seems like you've pulled together an all star cast.
Mandy Cole: Yes. And it's, I mean, I'm, I feel so fortunate because when I'm working with my portfolio companies and something comes up and we just had this, um, you know, we were just talking about outbound. We have a company that a lot of them have been reworking how that's going to work. And one of them wanted to try intent data.
And they said, Hey, can I talk to a couple people that have used intent data? And, and find out, you know, how to implement it, what I should be looking for. And right away, we were able to get three LPs that not only had a lot of experience using that, but also selling similar sales cycle, similar decision maker.
So they were very relevant conversations.
David Carnes: Oh, that's so exciting. When considering an investment or when leaning into help a portfolio company, what do you look for, uh, in a successful RevOps team?
Mandy Cole: We, um, well, first of all, I'm excited if they do have a RevOps team, because sometimes they don't at our stage. And then if they do, I'm looking for someone that, um, That isn't just focused on growth, but also on retention. We do consider retention and looking at leading indicators of retention and product usage, really the North Star.
And so finding somebody that's been already looking at that and measuring that and thinking about how to manage CS outside of, um, outside of more. Qualitative, like, oh, I did a, you know, I had quarterly check ins and so, and they said things were great, so they must be going to renew. You know, we're looking for more data driven approach to that.
Um, the other thing that I love to see when, when, um, we're working with RevOps is that on the growth side that they are measuring. The pipeline in terms of not just dollar amount but also number of qualified opportunities because we really feel and I personally feel that dollar amount can be very skewed if you've got a couple of whales in there.
And we've all seen that happen where you think that it's going to close, it doesn't close, and all of a sudden you haven't been putting enough into your pipeline to be able to make up that. So we want to see that that's being measured in both by what we need to put in the pipeline. And when you're doing it that way, the other benefit is that usually you're aligning marketing and sales.
So they're partnering on how many opportunities, qualified opportunities you need in a month and a quarter, where they're coming from and what you're creating. And it's a shared goal, um, to try and eliminate that finger pointing.
David Carnes: I think it's a perfect segue to the next question. I agree with you on measuring the quantity of, of deals as opposed to just the dollar amount of the qualified, uh, deals. Um, what other ways do you measure RevOp success across the portfolio?
Mandy Cole: We look at, I mean, I, I consider RevOps to be, you know, Obviously a key point, at LivingSocial in 2010, I created a RevOps team before there was RevOps, just because we had so many, we had to coordinate all this across a big sales team of almost 800 people, and I, their success was measured on the same things that my sales leaders were.
Um, and marketing leaders, you know, are we hitting our goal and are we hitting our KPIs? So we backed into that in very much the same way. Um, how many opportunities were we getting at the top of the funnel and how many were we getting down to the middle and closing? Um, and that was a shared goal across both, you know, marketing and sales and rev ops.
So. Not only was it the dollar amount, but we really looked at the process as well. Um, and then on the CS side, the NRR. Um, around, um, goal, and they shared those same goals, um, across the organization.
David Carnes: So given the early stage, you've seen every permutation of, uh, possible, uh, talent set within the, within the companies. I'm sure whether it's hands on director or... Uh, you know, uh, strong go to market background in CRO plus more junior, uh, RevOps, uh, talent, all these variations. Um, I'm curious, what actions do you, do you, um, encounter that the RevOps teams don't get around to, that you'd love to see them get to?
And it may be because of the, the staffing level, or maybe because of the mix of technology, is there anything that they just don't get around to that you, you want them to?
Mandy Cole: Yes, so I, the first one is probably going back to retention, making sure that we really have a data driven way to measure retention and hold CS to that. Um, so one of the things we like to put in place first, that usually nobody has, is a leading indicator of retention, where we say, like, what's the usage of the product?
If we go and do an analysis. of how people are using the product, and we look at, you know, what's a key action that you expect them to be taking, and how often do they need to do that, and which of those are correlating to people actually renewing, so that we could then have something where we can run it on a, you know, monthly basis, and it's a green or red.
Checklist, right, for a CS. So, usually folks aren't doing that and we help put that in place, you know, outside of NPS scores or checklists on QBRs and things like that. So that's one. Um, I think having a, um, the other is. Really leveraging your CRM as the, uh, and, and, or, and I guess orchestrating your CRM, um, so that it is the, the record, right?
Like if it's not, we used to always say, I used to say internally, if it's not Salesforce, it didn't happen. I don't want people to tell me, oh, I really had this many meetings or, oh, I did talk to the decision maker. So I even like to. You know, tell work with our portfolio companies on after we create the buyer journey and we then align our stages and our CRM, we create, I want to see buyer driven, um, actions that are the reason that have to be completed before you can move to the next stage, not sales rep driven actions, because then we can remove a lot of the fool's gold from the forecast and we can have a very clean.
Um, pipeline. And so building that into the CRM, whether you're using Salesforce or HubSpot or something else, you can usually build that on the opportunity or deal page. But I want to know, you know, did the decision maker attend a demo? Did you have a, did you, the, the buyer respond to the mutual eval email?
Did the buyer attend a proposal call? Did, because of those things aren't happening. I mean, we've all been on a call where. The buyer says, Oh, sure. Send me a proposal. And we know that that means, and don't ever call me again. I'm just trying to get you off the call. But yet a rep will move them to proposal stage, and they're, or negotiation.
And they're not in negotiation. They're actually dead. And that's where, that's the second thing, long winded answer to your question, David, of really running the buyer driven process and incorporating that into the CRM. So you can build pipeline reports and quickly see if they're qualified or not.
Jarin Chu: I am really tickled by your answers, Mandy, because as a RevOps podcast, um, first of all, uh, you mentioned in your first answer, the importance of holding CS With a data driven measurement. And the fact that you're talking about CS at a Series A or even C level company is so encouraging because CS has kind of felt like the stepchild of RevOps, right?
It's supposed to be marketing, sales, and customer success. And yet most RevOps teams, and even many of the guests that have come on this podcast, talk about it more as marketing and sales, right? CS up until I think this. year, maybe last 18 months, with the need of increasing, uh, customer lifetime value and the challenges with acquiring new customers have just kind of been an afterthought.
And so the fact that Mandy, you're encouraging your portcos to think about CS in this way, in such a mature way, so early on, um, seems like a really great Just foundation that you're setting for them. And even around your comment, uh, with having the source of truth in Salesforce, um, the buyer driven actions.
I think that's also what we're seeing as why these intent platforms, uh, at the top of the funnel are getting so much traction because it's no longer just based off of, well, I'm going to, you know, fill out a contact us form so I can get some pricing. It's actually based on a holistic conglomeration of different activities, is it across one person or multiple sets of people that really create this complete picture of what that buyer is trying to do.
Mandy Cole: Absolutely.
Jarin Chu: We've been talking a lot about your portfolio and how you've been advising them. I'm curious to learn from you, Mandy, How do you personally measure success in your role?
Mandy Cole: Yes. So we. measure success. Um, I mean, ultimately my success is measured by returns to our investors. That's my job. I work for our investors and it's, um, our job to find, you know, pick and help scale companies that will be successful and have a return. Now, the reality is there's no, not one venture capital firm out there that has been able to do that with a hundred percent of their companies.
Um, but. My success is measured and the company's success and being able to, um, continue to grow the company, continue to get either additional investments or get to profitability and have a successful outcome. Um, and so, but given that that's a 7 to 10 year horizon, typically, we can look at that, um. More in the same way that we would advise a company to, Hey, this is your annual, you know, plan, but let's look at how many, let's look at your pipeline and what you can actually get in your pipeline and let's look at your leading indicator retention.
We look at those same things around, you know, is our companies are companies hitting. They're both their revenue goals and their, um, NRR goals, but also being able to generate in a pipeline and hit their leading indicator of retention. And then my success is measured on, um, the ability for the company to do that.
David Carnes: I'd love to dig into due diligence for a moment, if that's okay.
Mandy Cole: Sure.
David Carnes: Is there anything that's a red flag within RevOps when you're doing due diligence?
Mandy Cole: Yes. Um, and I know I sound like a breaker record, but I'll go back to retention data. If there's no, Oh, we haven't even thought about it. We're really just looking at growth. Um, and also still. You know, popular in 2020 anymore. It wasn't ever as popular for us, but certainly for a lot of folks, you know, if it still is not really focused on efficient growth either, we're just throwing everything we can at it, um, and burning a lot to get there.
Um, and there's no thought around that. Um, then that's, those are red flags for us. Um, we do still want to see, and good companies still be at the stage where investing should still be growing. You know, at least doubling year over year, um, but we'd much rather see just double, not triple at an efficient rate and that they're being thoughtful internally on how, um, they're doing that.
Um, and that the RevOps team is being thoughtful too around building out the right process. And, um, reporting to measure that.
Jarin Chu: If it was a year ago, I don't think I would have expected someone in venture capital to say that they want their portcodes to just double and not triple. Um, but I think that reflects the recent market conditions. And, uh, you know, some of what I'm hearing you say kind of, uh, in different ways is the importance of increasing that efficiency, just making sure it's smart, scalable growth.
I want to take the conversation to technology a bit because so much of the tech, you know, our conversation earlier, we talked about AI driven BDR functions, for example. What is the kind of technology or any tech stack tools you've been seeing that has impressed you the most in terms of helping improve that kind of efficiency and helping Teams do more with less given the economic conditions we have right now.
Mandy Cole: Yes, I think it's a great time to, and this is one thing we're encouraging, and I know it only gets more and more as companies get bigger for teams, especially now that we're going into, um, planning season, to really take stock of what are we using. If we're using a tool, For one tool for sales, one tool for marketing, and one tool for CS that does roughly the same thing, is there something that actually we could use that either works for both of them, or is there something we could use that actually brings all this data together so we're not still trying to Working in silos and then having to try and clean the data up, or we're not talking to each other.
So I'm seeing more companies looking, um, at that, like taking a step back and saying, and also taking a step back and saying, how's our process changed? Are we doing something? We've seen more companies testing PLG or testing. Um, a different, an ABM strategy versus the outbound we were just talking about, or, you know, testing, driving more inbound, um, but through intent data with content.
So, if you think that, if you're seeing success, and you think that that's where you're going to focus more next year, then making sure your tech stack aligns to that, and that you're actually using all those. Um, there's a lot of times where I see people, um, especially when I was consulting, um, before I joined, um, stage two, where I would go into a company and the first thing I'd ask for is a bunch of data and get access to their CRM and I can pull up data myself.
But also I want to, you know, I want to listen to calls. I want to see, show me what your team's using. I want to see, and lots of folks had like gone, but we're never using it. And it's like, well, either use it or why are you paying for it? Um, I think it's an incredible tool, but I think that you need to actually think about how you're going to work it into, are you, are you showing a call every week on your team?
Are you actually going in and listening and giving them feedback to calls? Are you using the data from your calls to determine why things are getting stuck in the pipeline? Um, so that's where on the inventory I'd go through. Um, and make a list of, you know, how are we using each of these? Are we getting our ROI?
And then, look around. There's a lot of new tools that have come out. Is there anything, or as you mentioned, some people have added AI, like 6th Sense, into their process. So, is there anything new that we could be doing, um, that we could actually leverage across all three of those teams?
Jarin Chu: I want to dive a little bit deeper into your answer because what we're seeing with a lot of these platforms, be that the intent and ABX platforms, or the data platforms, is they're starting to... Expand into each other's territories, be that Zoom info, purchasing, the intent side of things, um, be that Sixth Sense purchasing, um, kind of the AI piece or demand based expanding, you know, it's what we saw with marketing automation, something like that.
15 years ago, where they started with specific functionality, and now they're trying to do everything else. So when you say that, you know, tech stacks are, you know, getting really big, they're getting siloed by department, how do you advise your port codes when it comes to evaluating the tech? To say, do you want to buy best in class for each of these functions, or do you have Vendors as possible, but with as many function areas that multiple departments might be able to use, knowing that some of those acquisitions may not be as good as, um, their original bread and butter.
Mandy Cole: Yeah, and I, I think that you don't want to sacrifice, um, usability and, and I guess you don't want to sacrifice being able to, to the ability to really use it in the way it is if you're seeing success for consolidation, um, because, you know, there are several tools that have acquired. pieces and, um, like not to pick on Salesforce, but I don't really know any companies that use Pardot.
Like they use other tools because it's just not a best in class. Productivity tool and, um, and, you know, so I think that's 1 example where I wouldn't recommend. Yeah, let's get rid of, you know, your productivity tool and let's use that. I think what I would say is, is the productivity tool that you're using the best.
And now that there are ones that, um, that do put AI in place, um, like there's a tool that, um, we have a couple of portcodes testing called Octave. And it does work for CS, um, AEs and marketing, because what they do is they go out, they look at all of your customers that you already have, and they build profiles, and then they go out and say, like, here's a bunch that look like these, and by the way, here's the value prop for these.
And here's all this emails, but also all these other tools you can create using. So it really aligns, um, everyone across go to market on the value prompts for each of these companies. And they can all pull tools from the same place. So that's an example to be, uh, if you're using a few different things to do that, and that works for everyone.
And it's not, you know, a heavy integration, then that might be a place where you could. Level up, um, and use one tool.
Jarin Chu: Yeah, great nuanced answer. I really like that and cool to hear about tools like Octave. My last question before we... Dive a bit more into your background, Mandy, is, are you seeing portcodes taking on certain types of RevOps initiatives that are kind of maybe too complicated or too big for them, and they get themselves into trouble?
Like, are there types of initiatives where you're like, A, be cautious, take caution. And B, make sure you reach out, let your operating partner team know, let your investors know, uh, you know, go to a trusted consultant so that you're not doing it on your own.
Mandy Cole: Yes, I think, um, getting to, so there's a, there's a, I guess, and this is where it's funny because I'm saying, like, you need to really be focused on your ICP, but then we see people that try and do get to, focus on different tiers too fast. So, you know, we've got an ICP, but now we're going to break it into four different categories.
And we're going to go after mid market and enterprise and SMB at one time. And that's really hard, right? Those are usually three different sales motions, three different go to market, three different top of funnel motions. And that's where then you're really spreading your RevOps team thin because they're trying to.
To focus on, okay, what's the right process on this? SS and B, we're gonna have this self-serve p l g motion. But then, you know, mid-market, we've got, um, an intent outbound and enterprise and some inbound and enterprise is all like intent outbound. And, and then you're trying to customize all of your tech stack for three different motions.
And usually it's too soon. And we recommend that folks, you know, put a really get. focus on one, if mid market is where you are, like, make sure that you've got some repeatability and mid market first, before you start moving upstream to enterprise. And that can be tough, because frankly, investors like companies to move up to enterprise.
Because the dollar size, right? When you put all that into a spreadsheet, it comes out much nicer to sell half as many companies and have, you know, get the same amount of revenue. But the reality is, and we know this, um, from the execution is just different and harder. And I've certainly been in a place before where we started moving up motion.
And it was a very expensive way to, to figure out that also the product wasn't ready for it. Um, we were losing customers because we just didn't have some of the product fit. And so we really work with our companies on how do you test that from both a sales, um, motion and a product standpoint. Um, and you test that in a way that doesn't.
Um, I think it's really important that you have a plan for your, your, what you're doing right now, um, before you're ready to make a move on that.
what we recommend that our companies don't do, which is like, go and try and do these big implementations by themselves, or once they're ready, if they're transitioning from HubSpot to Salesforce, because typically what happens is you've got somebody, they, have a jack of all trades.
RevOps person who's never done that and they go and create all this custom fields and this whole like they do it wrong and it becomes, you can't get the right data. I'm always like, just get somebody to come in that actually knows how to do that.
David Carnes: seem to recall Mark Roberge talking about that same topic at one of the SASTers a few years back about that move up toward enterprise and. Uh, some of the risks associated with it. So, interesting.
Mandy Cole: Yes. I mean, and it can work. It just needs to be done, right?
David Carnes: So, we'd love to talk a little bit about you now. Uh, you are based in the Bay Area, the beautiful Bay Area. You did a BA in Communications at UNC Chapel Hill, incredible part of the country. You were founder of the Rise Accelerator and have held a number of board positions and so many interesting positions.
I'd love for you to take us back. How did you get into early stage investing of SaaS companies? Um, maybe starting from where you studied or starting from any point in your career. Just curious about that journey for you.
Mandy Cole: Sure. Yes. I think if you would have told me, you know, 10 years ago that I was going to be on the dark side of venture capital, I never would have, I would have laughed. Um, I, it really, for me, came from, um. From initially, you know, one of my first jobs, well, my first job out of college was selling, um, phone systems to small businesses door to door.
So that's totally dating myself, I realized, um, in North Carolina in the middle of summer when it was 100 degrees. So there's no better way to get thick skin and cold calling than doing that. Um, but then I joined an early stage startup, um, called CitySearch, which was, um, before Yelp was around and, um, you know, was on the first sales team there and we were selling websites to small businesses, um, back in the late nineties.
And I loved that. I loved being at that stage of company. Um, You know, I was one of the first 50 employees and, um, grew with that company for five years and was such an amazing learning experience. I loved that the harder I worked and the more success I had, the more opportunities that they were willing to give me.
And, um, I, I think from that, it just really cemented my love for, you know, seeing this vision and then seeing how that can, how you're solving a problem for someone, somebody hasn't solved yet and how that can grow. Um, and so I, you know, when I was in house, I worked for five different founders and five venture backed companies.
And, um, And then when I left, um, I, the whole reason I started my consulting firm was to help founders because I kept having investors from companies where I'd been in house calling me saying, Hey, I invested in this company. You know, the founder is usually a tech background or product background. Um, And want some advice.
Can you talk to them, um, or are you, can they hire you? And I realized that there was just this missing need for, you know, a lot of founders have a great product, but then they're ready to take it to market and they're not sure what to do. And so being able to help them was really exciting for me. I had a business doing that for five years before, and Mark and I have known each other, um, for.
15 years now before Mark reached out to me and said, Hey, we're actually doing that too. We're just doing that. You know, when we invest in companies, would you be interested and learning more? And so that's how I got to stage two.
David Carnes: It's an amazing journey, and I love that it started in sales. So you've got that street cred when it comes to making suggestions around how to build the go to market team, which really is ultimately focused around producing sales. And that's super cool that you did it in 100 degrees. Hopefully, you didn't have to lug around too many of the, uh, uh, the phone equipment pieces, uh, with you in the, in the heat.
Mandy Cole: Just one, luckily it was just one briefcase. With one system, if I could get an appointment, then I'd come back with the full suitcase.
Jarin Chu: Mandy, you're coming up on, I think, is it your four year anniversary in October, um, with Stage 2 Capital?
Mandy Cole: Yes, it probably is coming up. It seems like it's going fast.
Jarin Chu: If you were to look back on day one, uh, having, you know, now advised, is it dozens, is it hundreds of startups? What would be advice you give yourself on day one of your current role?
Mandy Cole: That's a good question. I feel like I've learned so much just my whole career of things that in fact, it's something I tell founders, like I made all the mistakes internally. I made them so you don't have to. My whole part of my job is to, to help you reduce go to market risk. Um, and so I think particularly at stage 2, it would be, um, continuing to, to trust my gut on the data.
Um, one of the things that's unique about us, um, and we hear this from portfolio, from companies all the time, is some that we ask for. The types of data we ask for a lot of times other investors don't ask for. They don't, you know, the types of pipeline, but by opportunities or, you know, some of the analysis we're running to see, um, that.
how many opportunities they're creating and moving forward or the retention is, um, something that a lot of other folks haven't been asking for. And I can look at that and know the, I sometimes put my lens on my CRO lens back on and think like, is this a company I'd be excited to go to? Is this something that I look at from a sales leader perspective and say, wow, there's something here.
Like they're solving a real problem. Because to me, that's the most fun part about sales is being able to solve somebody, it's solve a problem. And when you can see that, and you are excited about having that conversation with people and really digging into what their challenges are, how they're trying to solve it now, and knowing you potentially have something that could really work for them.
Um, You know, it's super exciting. And so I think, you know, a little bit when I came on board, I probably lost that a little bit because I was trying to, to really understand what a traditional investor does, um, without continuing to make sure that I was leveraging something that makes me unique as an investor and combining those two things together.
David Carnes: So, Mandy, given the intensity of what is undoubtedly a lot of research, due diligence, investment choices, handholding with portfolio companies, and, and so on, what do you do to unwind?
Mandy Cole: Well, I have three kids. So There's a lot of unwinding ends up being going to lacrosse games and softball games and soccer games, um, and those types of things, but, um, but I do love to travel, um, and we do travel a lot as a family. We just went to Southeast Asia for 2 weeks over the holidays this year. And then we went to Tahiti for spring break.
Um, so we try and go a couple of places. Um, I think we're going to Japan next. Um, for Spoon Break next year. So we try and take our kids to see other things that they haven't seen. Um, which is really fun. And then my husband and I try and do something with non kids once a year. Um, I love to cook. I love to read.
Um, I love to hike. We're very fortunate here in the Bay Area. We have hiking just outside our back door. I have three dogs. So we do a lot of that too.
David Carnes: Well, that, that sounds amazing. I think we could have a whole follow up episode on travel and cooking and hiking and stuff like that, but we'll, we'll, we'll save that for another time.
Mandy Cole: I know I feel like those are very boring answers. They're very status quo.
David Carnes: No, it's great. We could talk about traveling, honestly. I think we probably have a hundred, you know, over a hundred countries visited across, uh, across us. It sounds like.
Mandy Cole: probably.
Jarin Chu: Last but not least, We've been sharing a lot about your experiences, you know, how you draw upon your prior roles, learning, making mistakes, coaching now startup founders and advising RevOps teams on how they could do better. Are there any go to RevOps or go to market resources you recommend to your portcos, and are there specific people out there, RevOps leaders, thought leaders, that you think might actually be a great fit for this podcast, uh, in our subsequent season?
Mandy Cole: Yes, I know there's a RobOps leader, um, Andrew Bennett, um, that we, he's an LP and Stage 2, and we use him a lot in diligence, um, just because he is, um, he's, he's got some great experience too with PLG, um, as well as traditional, um, a lot of the different, um, go to market motions. So, It's very helpful, especially when I'm looking at tools that are made for RevOps or that are go to market tools to get his perspective on, hey, is this something, is this a pain?
Are you seeing this? How are you solving it now? Is this something that you would use to, um, solve it? Um, so he's one. Robops leader in one of our portfolio companies, Greg Coquino, he's at Order, um, is another person. He was former HubSpot, um, that I utilize the same way. Um, so he's a little bit earlier stage.
Oh, I guess they're Series B now. Um, but. You know, they're trying to tackle a lot of these things, too. So he's somebody on my short list that I'll go to and say, Are you guys seeing this as a problem? Or what are you using for this? Or what do you think about this tool? Or how are you guys solving this? I'm getting questions from my earlier stage portfolio companies.
What are you doing? So both of those folks have been, um, tremendously helpful.
Jarin Chu: Great. It would be awesome to, um, try to have Andrew or Greg join us for a future episode. And certainly if they have postings on LinkedIn, uh, for the audience to be able to follow them. Are there resources, uh, communities that you're a part of where you'd recommend RevOps leaders to join, to follow, so that they can kind of keep their RevOps learning up to date?
Mandy Cole: I, um, I feel like most of the ones, when I ask them, I feel like Modern Sales Pros comes up a lot. Um, you guys probably have heard of them too. And then I feel like they're still trying to find, I mean, I, I, I think there's, I know in the Bay Area and I'm not gonna, I can't think of the name that there's like a RevOps community here that a lot of local Bay Area folks go to.
So I'm not sure if it's, um. I think it's separate than Pavilion and Pavilion may have something for RevOps leaders as well. Um, so I feel like that's a little bit more disjointed and more of that's coming together and, um, then maybe like marketing forums.
Jarin Chu: Got it. What we'll definitely do, Mandy, is we'll connect with you after to, uh, get a few of those names and links and we'll make sure to put them in the show notes so that our audience can check them out after the podcast airs.
Mandy Cole: Great.
David Carnes: So, uh, Mandy, where can people find you, uh, perhaps on social media?
Mandy Cole: I'm, um, probably the easiest way is on LinkedIn. Um, you can search for me. Um, and I think it's my back. It's Mandy H. Cole. Um, also the same on Twitter at Mandy H. Cole. Um, and then Mandy at stage2. capital.
David Carnes: Well, that's great. And how about the Stage 2 Capital website?
Mandy Cole: Yes, stage2. capital as well. And we've got a go to market blog. Well, we both love, we both, um, have a lot of great advice from our LPs. We've put out a lot of advice and we are going to be launching a go to market resource center, um, in Q4 this year.
David Carnes: Well, we'll certainly keep our eyes open for that. That sounds great. Mandy, it's really been a pleasure having you on the podcast today. You've shared so much. It's been great to hear you talk about retention and the need for a data driven way to hold CS to that. Your focus on leveraging CRM, your focus on the ideal client profile, and more.
It's really been a pleasure. Thank you so much for being with us today.
Mandy Cole: Oh, thank you both for having me, David and Jaren. It's been awesome. I always love to talk shop with folks that are in the trenches as well.
Jarin Chu: And I know that, uh, even in the short conversation we have had today, we could probably talk RevOps, geek out about RevOps for hours and hours. So I'm looking forward to crossing paths in real life. And certainly, um, I want to thank our audience for tuning in for. 30 some episodes. We're wrapping up our season very, very quickly.
So glad to have you, Mandy, as one of our final guests on this season of Rev Ops Rockstars. If, as an audience, you've learned something today, you found our conversation with Mandy to be enlightening, interesting, thought provoking, podcast wherever you pick up your podcasts. Thank you again, Mandy, for being on the show.
Mandy Cole: Thank you and congratulations on your season.
Jarin Chu: Wonderful. And this has been another exciting, enlightening episode of Roblox Rockstars. See you next time.
David Carnes: Stay classy, Rockstars.