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Welcome to the GTM Mastery Podcast, hosted by Alexander Kohler. Delve into the dynamic world of Go to Market strategies, tailor-made for Founders and Go to Market Professionals.
Join insightful conversations with industry experts, uncovering successful tactics and navigating common challenges. Stay ahead of market trends, refine customer engagement, and chart your path to triumph.
Tune in to amplify your strategic prowess and become a Go-to-Market Master 👑
Alexander (00:00.366)
Hello, Björn!
Hey, very, very nice to meet you. Really, really cool that you're here on your LinkedIn. I read growing from 0.5 to 5 million ARR with other system can be risky and expensive. And you help companies to grow faster and more efficiently. So really, really cool that you're here. You're from Zurich. And today we are talking about, yeah, basically the gearing of product and...
go to market. Very, very cool again that you took the time. And before we dive into the topic, it would be very, very cool if you could tell the people a bit more what you're currently doing besides podcasting with me and doing your own podcast, of course.
Björn (00:49.8)
So first of all, a warm welcome to everyone out there and thanks so much for inviting me, Alexander. So you did your homework. So what I do for a living is supporting early stage startups scaling fast and more and more efficiently. So why 0.5 million to 5 million? It's where normally you have product market fit and then due to the fact that cash is getting more and more expensive, you have to...
focus on or to have to find the sweet spot between scaling and efficient growth and capital efficiency. And I find it super fascinating because I had the big, big honor to support urban sports during the hyper growth phase from almost zero to more than 20 million, adding up kind of more than 50 people in six countries. But that was a different time.
And now I'm fully focused on B2B ZARS doing investments in B2B ZARS companies in Perl. So that's, that's my sweet spot.
Alexander (01:56.494)
Yeah, exactly. And also you're of course doing, coming with it, a lot of angel investments. And I think you have started in sales 2004. Is that right?
Björn (02:09.32)
I started, actually I started earlier. So the funny story is when I started doing sales, it was in 99. So it was kind of after my A levels, I got kind of accidentally into sales. And yeah, I started as a sales guy for Telco company. So selling mobile contracts back in the days.
Alexander (02:36.91)
Cool, cool. And basically, why did you start in sales or how did you basically, yeah, slipped into the role?
Björn (02:42.024)
I was one of the worst soldiers of Germany, I would say. So I was really, really getting bored. And then I stopped by this tiny little telco store and said, okay, I have still some time left. And back then I had no mobile whatsoever, no nothing. And it was kind of in this crazy dot com bubble.
era where everyone was waving to get the mobile, everyone was waving to buy the first internet stocks. And yeah, I spent some time selling to nearly everyone and learned a lot about people, about sales. So it was fun back then.
Alexander (03:28.334)
Yeah, cool. Yeah. Very, very cool pleasure again that you're here. I think it's always interesting when you have somebody that has seen the dot com bubble, the housing crisis, uh, the yeah, 2010 to 22 hyper growth. And now again, uh, yeah, um, a bit of a profit, um, first time. So really, really cool. Excited about your insights. Um, yeah, let's dive into the topic. So the topic today, the gearing of product and.
Björn (03:38.984)
I'm getting old. I'm getting old.
Alexander (03:57.87)
go-to-market. So could you maybe explain to the audience what you exactly mean by that? Because we had a pre-podcast phone call where you basically said, hey, I think this is a topic that I could give a lot of input to. So what is the relationship between product and go-to-market strategy and maybe also in an early stage? And yeah, just an overview of what we're talking about today.
Björn (04:22.376)
Yeah. So, um, in a nutshell, so I think that when you look at go-to-market or basically let's talk about, um, the, what is the, the, the main goal, what is the overarching goal of a, of a startup of a company is kind of to, to generate revenue and ideally to grow. So, and when you look at the components, the main components in B2Bsars is product and then how to advertise, how to sell it, and ideally how to expand it.
So when you look at traditional departments, let's say, okay, we have product, we have marketing, top of funnel, we have sales, and then we have custom success and expansion. And the most fascinating part is that a lot of, in particular, early stage founders, they are either from the product perspective coming and say, we have an amazing product, so we have great technology and people will love it.
Or you have more the kind of commercial guys, but it's quite often that these two fundamental views and or areas are not that synced and not that aligned, but it's fundamental for efficient growth.
Alexander (05:38.286)
Absolutely, very, very interesting. In general, what did you say in this specific area? Why is understanding this interaction so crucial, especially in the early stages?
Björn (05:57.)
So if we go to the basics of what is the foundation for a proper product market fit or problem solution fit, it's that we discover that we find customers who have a problem which we can solve with our services, product, services, what's there. So this is the starting point for everything. And due to the fact that in SaaS,
that you can iterate that fast. For example, if you have an agency business or you have a consulting business, you have much more flexibility in terms of, okay, I discover some needs, some pains, and I can instantly react to them. In B2B.SaaS or SaaS, you have a technology, you have use cases, you have functionalities serving these needs that you basically have to find the sweet spot between, this is what the customer demands, this is what the customer needs.
This is basically the need where the customer is willing to pay. And it doesn't stop. Because even if you get them signed, then churn might come, or positively, you expand. And therefore, especially for early stage, you have to navigate through finding these product market fit initially, but then double down in kind of repeating.
use case by use case, ideally segment by segment, to really grow up to 1 million, 2 million, and so forth ARR. Does it make sense? Or is it too?
Alexander (07:34.606)
Yeah, absolutely. It absolutely makes sense. And I think I personally have a very, very, yeah, clear view of how this should look like. So in my opinion, when you're an early stage founder, you're ideally at the forefront. You're ideally have a technical co-founder. If you're the co-founder who says, okay, I'm taking over sales and you're ideally at the phone talking to customers, making cold calls, and then putting...
the product or sending the feedback directly to your co-founder and he's building the stuff based on what you heard in the calls, in the customer interviews that you've done. But yeah, I think that basically is why you are existing and what you are doing all day. So in your opinion, because you do not always have this ideal state where you have a technical co-founder and somebody who says, okay, I'm doing sales and I'm really good at it.
calling, calling, calling before we're even building. So in that case, what are the most common mistakes you see when companies starting out and how is your ideal vision of this and how should companies do this?
Björn (08:53.544)
So the hard truth is there is a lot of theory about product market fit, and then there's reality. So what I say, and that's why I do post-product market fit, because the early days, it's super, super tough to navigate through to really get the right product with the right amount of people and the right timing. It's super, super complicated. Of course, you can do a lot of.
things right in terms of value mapping and jobs to be done and try to understand and really find iteratively a fit but Going to product market fit is I think one of the toughest phases whatsoever It's still tough afterwards, but to really finding some traction in reaching roughly half a million in AR is is extremely hard work and
It's entirely different because what I, after product market fit is what I call product segment fit is that you then in this kind of still very chaotic range of customers, because it won't be perfect in the, in the first place, all the use cases won't be right in the first place. But the more and more you convince people, the more and more of course, the, the product is getting better. It becomes at least a little bit clearer. What
kind of core value proposition, what kind of core segment is the ideal fit for your company? And this is where I come in and say, OK, let's double down on one, two segments, double down on two use cases, and really get this repeatability. And if we talk about efficient growth, also this kind of scalability in terms of healthy, unique economics.
Alexander (10:40.302)
Yeah, absolutely. And maybe before we go deeper into this, when would you say a company knows they have product marketed because there are also a lot of different opinions on that?
Björn (10:57.192)
We have a little delay. I think you have to repeat the question. I'm sorry.
Alexander (10:59.374)
Okay, yeah, my question was, when do you know companies have product market fit?
Björn (11:06.6)
Oh, that's a lovely one. So no, because I'm writing a book right now and I am reading a lot and it's such an important phase and it's still super fuzzy because, and I'm curious to hear your opinion about that, because if you ask people, so some say, yeah, you know, when you have a product market fit, yeah, you get better reply rates, you get better traction, you get better pipeline. And I said,
Come on, that's still super fuzzy. And I'm a huge fan of Mark Roberge, former CIO of HubSpot, nowadays one of the founders of Stage 2 Capital. And he's talking about leading indicators of retention. And to give you an example is, for example, Slack. So they found out when in a certain time period after using the product Slack.
when you reach 2,000 messages within more than 20 people, you have a really good chance that retention rate is still high. So it means that with the dedicated use case and the actual usage combining some parameters, you get more confidence or conviction that this is the right type of customer, which is churning less and ideally expanding.
in your cohort.
Is it too complicated?
Alexander (12:41.582)
Yeah, so I think I understood it, but I have a more easy hypothesis and I'm also curious about your thoughts on it. I think if you just have a certain customer base at a certain size, that obviously depends on what you're selling. But I think there's a hypothesis and I think it's quite valid that if 40% or more or 60%, I think, of your customers say, if tomorrow...
our product wouldn't exist anymore, they would be very very disappointed.
Björn (13:13.)
Ah, lovely. So may I challenge you on this one? Because I don't believe in asking clients directly. So what is happening? So Sean Ellis, great guy, the one you were referring to. But what is the reality? And I'm kind of provocative in that. So if I'm asking you, it strongly depends on the relationship you have to the client. And there are a lot of friction about what
people say what kind of social pressure they might fear to say in your face that they would be highly disappointed or not disappointed if you have a wonky service. So I believe in data. And that's why I look at usage, I look at time to value, it, I look at cohorts and percentage reaching this kind of data milestone.
And of course, I'm talking to customers and there are a lot of questionnaires, but I find it extremely risky to rely on. We asked the customer and we have a misalignment between product usage and commercial interest. And this is, I think the perfect example for our topic today is if data is not coming from product in
backing our hypothesis we are making with our initial sales, then the entire go-to-market motion, including product, is flawless or flawful.
Alexander (14:47.566)
Yeah. So like, what do you say then? Because you said usage. Yeah. What do you then say? Because like, I think it's that the answer is always it depends. Yeah. So the answer to product market fit with your hypothesis is always it depends. So you would say there will never be a generic rule of thumb that I have no product market fit. It's impossible, in your opinion.
Björn (15:03.016)
course.
Björn (15:16.68)
No, no, no, no. That's not what I'm saying. So for example, just picking up the leading indicators of retention, they said a cohort of 70% is indicating that you have done your job right and that if you find this leading indicator, for example, let's say usage within a period of time, then you have much more confidence that this product is serving its needs, it's getting sticky, and then you can check.
Alexander (15:17.134)
or in your view.
Björn (15:45.224)
How fast is, for example, the time to expansion?
Alexander (15:49.518)
But for example, I have an objection. For example, I'm currently helping a startup that we bootstrapped to for the KMR in like nine months. And it's like basically a software that removes copyright infringements. So basically you don't use the product, but it's very, very crucial for e-commerce store. And you just get an email, hey, we removed X amount of your product. We saved you so much revenue of copycats, for example, or creators.
you cannot track basically usage, but the product is very important. So for example, how would you track product market fit there?
Björn (16:28.168)
But what is working? So in the background, your product is screening websites.
Alexander (16:34.894)
scraping websites and deleting products with the Google DMCA agent.
Björn (16:40.456)
Exactly. So what I'm, what I'm saying is the product is working and you could reverse engineer and say, okay, there is at least some indication that we are serving our customer needs. And even if you do not have the event, so this is, I think this is an important one because ideally you have a
an error I calculator or error I calculation and you type it in. And after three months, you know exactly what kind of error I. So that would be the ideal world, but let's face it. It's not. It's rare, but nevertheless, I am a firm believer in terms of a defensible. You need to track some leading product usage, some product data, some, like in your example, some activities of your product.
To get a better idea, is this supporting the use case and the value proposition I propose to my customer?
Alexander (17:42.606)
But then it doesn't, so for example, if I say, hey, I removed 1 million products of you and then the client says, okay, fine. It's basically, they can say, okay, yeah, you removed now a million products, but I would only need 100 or I only need this one. So it's very, very difficult to track, isn't it? You know what I mean?
Björn (18:01.352)
Yes and no, because at the very end, it's so maybe it's it sounded too sophisticated in early stage startups. But what I'm saying is you have a value proposition you starting in marketing and sales. And at some point, you have to justify this value proposition with the real usage of your product and your customers. So and therefore, you need some data points, ideally coming from the product.
ideally enriched by your customer to really understand if you are delivering what you are saying and providing true value.
Alexander (18:42.222)
Okay, yeah, that makes sense now. That makes sense now. It's a bit harder to figure out, but yeah. I think that you have a valid hypothesis. Yeah.
Björn (18:53.576)
Exactly. And I give you just to picking up on the topic because the key, and this is why I find it so fascinating, is about the link between go-to-market, some call product, including go-to-market, but either way about the commercial part and the product part. Because I recently had Tobias from AWork on my podcast, and he was talking about how product and product marketing is driving expansion.
Because what they elaborate is based on hypothesis and say, OK, if we develop that feature, if we extend that and that, if we create a new product category, what is the uplift? What is the hypothesis on we reduce churn because we're getting more and more pressure from a competitor x, y, z? Or we are pushing for expansion. And this is where it becomes super, super fascinating.
And the base or the foundation is what we talked about that you need at least some understanding of how to serve your customer.
Alexander (20:03.758)
Yeah, and I think that is a very interesting topic. So basically you're saying that you have one component of product development where you really look, okay, I'm going to build the features that probably my customer, my competitor has so that my people won't turn. And the other thing is, okay, I'm building a new feature so that I maybe can open up new markets. Right. So what did you say? Because I think that is a very interesting topic, especially in the early stages.
How do you really figure out what features do you really need? And how do you maybe split it up between, okay, what market do I now want to tackle? And where do I really build a feature that my current customers want?
Björn (20:48.808)
So again, it's kind of the initial. Let's keep it simple or simplify it and say, OK, we have some traction in the market, but we still have a hypothesis that if we develop feature X, Y, Z, we would increase our win rate and or we would reduce our sales cycle. Because what I've seen is, A, it starts with a proper.
a drop down list of why do we lose deals? Because if you ask sales and kind of talking all about the prejudices, a lot of sales wish for endless features and they would say, yeah, we need everything to close that calyre. So, but there is definitely a part of truth in that. So it starts with a proper discovery in terms of what is
the customer intend to do, is that a repeatable use case we have seen with other comparable clients already, or is that something where we definitely lack in our product serving similar clients even better? And what we then can do, and I've seen it with some companies, is that you, because you, at some point of that discovery, you have already an idea about the value
deal on the new customer side. And if you collect this for, depending on your sales velocity and, of course, your lead and demand gen, if you collect these data and say, OK, this is a feature request nominating to XY of potential pipeline, then the discussion with the product roadmap owner starts in terms of saying, OK, this is what we see in terms of our own roadmap and vision.
This is what we get from existing customers. And this is what we get as direct feedback from potential clients.
Alexander (22:52.302)
And who tracks that? Who is the DRI for that?
Alexander (23:02.446)
So my question was, who tracks that? Who is the DRI for that?
Björn (23:07.016)
Um, so.
It's aggregated together because the part of what kind of pipeline do we lose or what kind of pipeline creation do we lose is a sales responsibility. And to justify and basically prioritize the product roadmap is product ownership. But again, it's, and that's why I love working with early stage startups. I care less about the
Is it sales? Is it marketing? Because at the very end, what do we want is we would like to grow faster and more efficiently, and then you have to decide, okay, is, are we losing on a, on the market potential because now we have the, the momentum and this could be fixed easily and converted into, into real revenue. Or do we pause that for another quarter? Because we see that on our existing customer base, we have a lot of
people kind of risky on churn, because some things need just to build first.
Alexander (24:19.086)
Yeah. Okay.
Björn (24:20.488)
But this is kind of, even if it did sound, it might sound complicated. I think what is the alternative? It needs to happen. And then I love working with companies and it would encourage every founder to create this kind of transparency because I believe that if you have a bunch of smart people heading to one goal, you will sort it out.
Alexander (24:27.374)
Yeah, it's true.
Alexander (24:45.102)
Absolutely. So Björn, I am a big fan of lean stuff. I like very lean, easy businesses. What do you think of R&D? Do you think research teams, is this even necessary or can you really build your go-to-market engine in a way where you have such a good feedback loop that go-to-market product is where, or go-to-market easier research team?
Björn (25:11.752)
That's a good one. To be fair, for early stage startups, I'm a big fan of pragmatism and real customer data. So R&D sounds, so maybe let's clarify R&D, because for me, it belongs in terms of, so what is the innovation bet in terms of product? But if I got you right, you also mentioned kind of market research and.
potential service, et cetera. So because I would distinguish between, especially in early stage. So I'll show you.
Alexander (25:40.878)
Product research, exactly. Yeah.
Björn (25:50.6)
This is a tricky one, but frankly, I haven't building up companies myself, investing in and supporting them. I think I've never invested a significant amount in an external market research provider. Internal, it's kind of a side function. And I think it's good to have at least kind of to check
Alexander (26:08.558)
Mm-hmm, nor internal.
Björn (26:20.072)
kind of with trending reports, et cetera. So, but overall, I would say the biggest, the most valuable and the, the direct feedback you get from prospects and your customers working with your product, because even if you look at market trends, this is so general that I would dare to challenge the explicit implement.
implications on your dedicated product or service.
Alexander (26:52.846)
Yeah, yeah. So you would say, especially in the early stage, so until 5 million ARR, don't hire or just let sales or customer success be your research team. You would say.
Björn (27:10.568)
Yeah, I would be of course, bearing in mind the percentage, but I would, overall, I would be very careful in these kinds of central functions, overhead stuff. And then I've seen it because then out of the sudden you have kind of a, I think it starts with a founder associate and then you have a kind of, you have an entire team to the CEO and the founders and you have a founder's office. So I've seen everything.
Alexander (27:22.606)
Yeah, me too.
Björn (27:40.616)
But the other thing, just picking up on your question, what I would be more willing to invest is, so of course it depends on whether you are product led, et cetera, but I would dare to invest much more in terms of R&D on the product technologies side, for example, AI. So I think it would be stupid not to explore AI capabilities in your core product.
And I've seen it with one investment. So they have a core product without AI, it's working well. And this is kind of R and D for me that they have dedicated projects and some, some resources, not extensively, but some bets into the future on technology.
Alexander (28:26.958)
Okay, okay, I understand. But would you say like, especially in an early stage, you should know if AI is even a use case for you? And if not, I think there will also be products in the future without AI. So of course you should always think, hey, what is the impact on my product of AI? But would you really say, hey, I need to put AI into my product to raise 2 million more?
Björn (28:50.856)
That's a nice question, but it's a different one. Because one thing is coming from the market, do you need this? And so how I would kind of structure it. So A, is my customer caring about AI? So generically, probably not. So maybe it's a hype topic in our little bubble, but does it change the use case for the customer fundamentally, yes or no?
is one of the key questions I would investigate in. And the other thing is, and it's never linear, it's always complex, is how is my narrative in terms of investors changing if I have AI or not? But that's a different topic, because coming from serving customer needs, probably you would have a different decision. Then, OK, let's.
go with the hype and have it as a fundamental piece of our upcoming investment story.
Alexander (29:54.382)
Yeah. Yeah. But like what I was referring to is like, um, often you have in Berlin, we call it Berlin AI. So it's basically working students. So that's the Berlin AI. Um, yeah. Then like you are now an AI company. So everyone's an AI company. So that is like what I think you need to be careful about and not like really just stay with a rational mind and just like Hausverstand you say in German. Um, but yeah.
Björn (30:01.416)
Hehehehe. Nice one. I haven't heard about that. Okay.
Björn (30:21.544)
Yep, I like that.
Alexander (30:23.982)
Yeah, but anyway, what I really want to know is, so let's say now you are a go-to-market advisor, as you are, and yeah, your founder comes to you and says, hey, we give you full, all resources you have, we give you full, you can build it up from zero, so how would you ideally build up a feedback loop between product and go-to-market?
How does it look like? In what frequency do people talk to each other? And yeah, what would be the steps at scale? So what would be the step at zero ARR? What would be the step at one million, at two, at three, or five, at which steps are there? So a long question, but a lot of freedom in answering it, I think.
Björn (31:11.304)
And a huge one. I think just for this topic, I could write a book about. But I try to make it digestible. So how I see it, let's start at the very, very basic foundation. So I think what the first thing needs to happen in terms of how do we create our value proposition, taking the capabilities of our product
Alexander (31:20.558)
Yeah.
Björn (31:39.208)
use cases and value propositions for our customers. So in that regard, and make it somehow measurable. Because I know if you ask a product guy, product marketing, product engineer, whoever in the sales guy or marketing guy, you will get, they get lost in translation quite quickly. So the first piece of is, how do we align this kind of understanding in terms of key capabilities, what is needed by the market, what is getting attraction, and how do we create pipeline?
So I'm not just talking about lead gen, but I'm talking about a pipeline with some discovery framework, band sugar. I've created my own one, custom one. So to really get in common understanding in terms of, OK, we have a customer need and or pain. This is how we bring this solution to the table or how we translate it with our capabilities in this is a relevant solution for the customer. That would be the first milestone.
If you started from scratch, it needs some, I would say, basic setup. But at the very end, if it's kind of getting more in swing, then I would, I'm a huge fan in terms of there is one single source of truth, whether it's your BI system and or your CRM. I would really measure it with the proper segmentation in terms of verticals and or use cases in terms of what is happening in terms of lead gen.
demand gen, and I would also look at the cost per SQL, for example, to just have an idea how is it moving. Then, of course, we have this, and I think this is super powerful, and we touched already on this, is the deal, lost deal analysis, and see why are we losing deals, and or why aren't we, what are the hypotheses that we could move faster? And there again.
I've seen regular check-ins in really kind of pipeline review on the weekly, bi-weekly and monthly basis in early stage startups.
Alexander (33:51.822)
So you would say that... No, I think... So just like continue but on the early stage part. I would say an early stage... Yeah.
Björn (33:54.632)
Should I continue or would you like to jump in?
Björn (34:02.92)
All right, and then.
Björn (34:08.552)
So, OK. And then I would then, once the kind of contract is sold, then I would kind of follow the same kind of approach and say, OK, look at the speed of onboarding. Look into what is happening in adoption. Really double down. And this is kind of getting more and more into product range. Really understanding user behavior on features, what they actually do with the product.
But I would also look into discussable, but time to value impact and expansion. Because at the very end, this is also a big part is, I call it there is an automatic expansion in SAS where it's smartly built in the way of product creation. So for example, usage, or you have some limits where you have you're starting with light, and then you go for standard, and then you go for premium.
gently built-in expansion. And of course, you have different motion. The more and more you become sales led or sales assisted, is we start with a POC POV. We have to start with one use case. We start with one country. But again, this strongly ties with how do we align product strategy and sales strategy to how to get into the account and how to grow the account.
Alexander (35:40.174)
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Björn (35:40.616)
And then it doesn't stop because this is kind of where, and that's why I'm writing about a flywheel, because all the information, they go back to, what is my ICP? What are my core segments? What are my core use cases? Do I have one, two, three segments? Are we adding a new use case? Are we adding a new segments? Are we adding a new geography? It never stops, but this, hopefully it will get a good framework how to align.
product and commercial.
Alexander (36:11.918)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So me personally, I think that you should approach it in kind of a McKinsey way. Yeah, I'm a huge McKinsey fan. I'm a McKinsey-nerved, my listeners know it. I always mention McKinsey books. So I think especially in the early stages, it's just important that everyone tracks the information somewhere and it doesn't need to be a spreadsheet where you have categories already.
So it just needs to be somewhere in the CRM or somewhere written down as soon as you hear a feedback about a feature. And then somebody needs to go ahead and build a structure around it. So for example, then you try to build categories and then I would say it's smart to just like, yeah, mutually exclusively build it up and then build categories as you said it, for example, then you say, okay, retention versus expansion. And
Yeah, that is how I would approach it, especially in the early stages. I think in a later stage, it would be too complex because I'm not a big fan of recurring meetings in general. And I think if you just like have a meeting and it's just for the sake of, yeah, you're 50 minutes check in and talk about clients, you don't have a structure in general. So I would say it's really better to frequently check in, frequently review it, so it would be like a frequent all review where you...
monthly, I don't know, put everything into a structure and then everything else adds up to the structure each month. And I think that would say, yeah, that would build up a more clear picture. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense?
Björn (37:51.08)
Yeah, I'm just thinking out loud because yeah, it makes sense. What I would add and I totally totally resonates. I'm not a big fan of recurring meetings either. So because so on the flip side, what is happening in early stage startups? So there is a lot of.
wouldn't call it chaos, but there's a lot of noise. And at least if you find a...
Alexander (38:14.734)
I think Chaos is quite exact.
Björn (38:17.32)
Okay, let's call it chaos. So, but if you, because I'm a big fan of making sure that everyone is on the same page, because I've seen so many dashboards, so many reports, so many numbers flying around and at the very end everyone is confused, but just a few people are saying that they are not sure at what numbers to look at. So really make it super simple. This is kind of the narrative, data-driven narrative on whatever recurring meeting you have helps a lot.
The second thing is, and therefore I love go to market because at the very end, you have just two or three components. You have, are we pushing more resources into a dedicated area? How do we improve conversion speed? And how do we increase ideally the kind of ACV or the revenue attached to it? And how do we reduce friction in terms of?
we, one department might go into this direction or that direction. So it's basically simple math or mechanics to kind of speed multiplied by the ACV or the volume, the force minus the friction. And that's why I'm a big fan of, if you have a recurring meeting, turn it into what are we getting out of it into an agile sprint. So what is the?
What are the actions? What are the kind of either the bets for the next, for the next sprint kind of combining with OKRs or whatsoever, because some things need to be done now. And you will see the impact just in two months, three months. And the other thing is kind of a line on quick wins. And then you get this kind of nice momentum within the company.
Alexander (40:05.486)
Cool. Yeah, very, very interesting. As one of the last questions, I would like to hear, because when you look at UCV, I think you have been at so many, so many startups, you have viewed so, so, so into so many companies. Could you maybe tell us about one or two real-life examples where you say they really mastered this gearing, they went up to speed, they found product market fit.
so quickly, it was like a miracle. But what led to this miracle and what did they do right? So what is top of quanta startups? What are they doing? Yeah, and why are they successful?
Björn (40:45.128)
Yeah, I had the true honor to have Tobias Hagenau recently from AWork on my podcast show. And he is a kind of serial entrepreneur. He sold his first company with his co-founders to PE. And then they started the new one. And he said, due to the fact that unfair knowledge of their past startup, they found another niche.
where they basically could build a product with a lot of conviction, knowing that this is already pretty close to product market fit. They copy paste all the performance marketing stack and all the learnings and basically spend a lot of money and conviction to really prove that this product market fit.
And you and the listeners can check there's some public data on their case, what funding round, et cetera. And this would be, so in terms of success, the second part, why I love this insights on that podcast episode so much is because we dived into what are the basically fundamental pieces, of course, unfair knowledge of the market. But
Another point was transparency along the entire company. So there, there was, they are sharing extremely, I think they are sharing everything. So, and what, what happens is that all these smart people, they look
end to end and or they really figure out what is the next move based on ideally all the data available. And if you would just do it and I think this is a perfect loop example for if you would just make a decision on just the commercial data without product, you would probably get not the best decision done or shortened on your list.
Björn (42:59.176)
And this is kind of a very good example in terms of how to find and navigate through product market mid, but also building up the foundation in terms of transparency. And then use this for giving a lot of ownership to people making their own decisions, have access to all the information, and then building strong hypotheses with a very dedicated execution follow-up.
Alexander (43:25.326)
Yeah, thank you so much. I think that's about it. Björn, thank you so much. We often said I'm a big fan in this podcast. I was a big fan of this podcast as well. So yeah, to the listeners, thank you so much for listening. Björn, thank you so much for being here. If you have any questions, Björn, he's writing a book. So follow him on LinkedIn and then read his book, buy his book. I will definitely.
Björn (43:43.688)
Thank you.
Björn (43:52.904)
You get a copy, that's for sure.
Alexander (43:55.31)
Yeah. Cool. Thank you so much. And yeah, if you have any questions, follow me, follow Björn, give the podcast a rating and then yeah, see you in the next podcast episode.
Björn (44:06.152)
Thanks a lot. Bye bye.