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What else can I be doing to drive revenue? How do I optimize our go-to-market strategies to ensure effectiveness and ROI? If questions like these keep you up at night and occupy your thoughts by day, have we got a podcast for you.
Welcome to Market Mastery presented by The Bridge Group, the podcast where sales professionals learn to advance their careers. Join host and revenue expert Kyle Smith as he talks to elite B2B sales and revenue experts about the strategies they're using to win in the market.
From cultivating a killer company culture to navigating compensation questions, we'll provide you with the insights, education, and strategies you need to thrive.
For more from The Bridge Group, visit www.bridgegroupinc.com.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:00:00]:
Teachability is kind of more important than like a resume for us. Like, it's very easy to understand when you get on the phone with someone, are they bullshitting you? Are they very open to learning? Are they going to be adaptable? Are they able to work really fast and change and pivot really quickly? All of those are more soft skills that can all be taught, so I think it's really like having that foundation and then understanding if they can, they can operate that way.
Kyle Smith [00:00:27]:
Welcome to Market Mastery, the podcast dedicated to uncovering revenue driving strategies for sales leaders in B2B tech. On today's episode of Market Mastery, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Melissa Rosenthal, who is the Co-Founder of Outlever and used decades of expertise across marketing advertising to now create a company that helps or organizations change the way that they think about marketing by owning their story and engaging in a much more meaningful way with the target organizations that they're hoping to sell to. Talked about how that can be leveraged at the top, middle, bottom of funnel and then even dug into how Melissa's thinking about designing and building out her own organization, so great episode. Give it a listen.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:01:14]:
The majority of my career has been building media companies and news companies. I was very early BuzzFeed and I then went to go help start a company called Cheddar. And the reality was we were building these credible, authoritative voices, but really just to sell that to advertisers so that we could lend them this credibility. And that credibility was often flighted. You know, it's not always on and it's very expensive and it's very premium and the company really doesn't get much value from that over time. It's sort of like, you know, you set it and forget it. And then there's no, like, you know, there's no growth as a result of that.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:01:52]:
Great, like you've done a partnership with Cheddar or BuzzFeed. Maybe it helps for like a very immediate period of time, but there was always this like, idea of like, wow, there's so much trap value in the fact that companies can't own this narrative themselves. They can't be these media publishers. And you know, the timing wasn't right for that because just, you know, there was a lot of credibility and authority in building media brands, but today that isn't the case. And then kind of flash forward over to my time in B2B SaaS. I went to ClickUp. Brand marketing there for four years and our TAM was so big that it was really hard to have the conversations that we wanted to own as a company at scale and then also be able to talk about the things that all of our ICPs and customer sets cared about on a daily basis.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:02:36]:
Just very resource constraining to have to try to have those dialogues and those narratives going at all times, so it's kind of the culmination of my career, which you know, is today where media companies are just, you know, they're not what they used to be. The credibility is pretty lost. It's much harder for companies to get any sort of press within the remaining authoritative news sources. And at the same time on the B2B side, companies are really struggling with how do we produce more content, we can't do it in house, how can it be great and how can it tie to all the things that we actually need to measure ROI on. So combining my world for the past 13 years, it made a lot of sense to figure out the solution of how do we bridge the gap between how can companies actually own their narrative, own the voice, own the credibility, build that and have it grow for them organically over time and also be able to do it so horizontally that they can talk to the things that are in their customers worlds every single day and not just the day that they're, you know, hopefully buying your software. So it's just a bit about, you know, kind of the culmination of all these different worlds like matching up over time and being the person, you know, to be able to solve for that. Because of my experience.
Kyle Smith [00:03:49]:
And that's what you felt like. I can understand the problem statement, but then why did you want to actually found the company?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:03:57]:
Because I don't think anyone else would look at it the way that I can with my perspective of having built media, you know, empires and Having taken a SaaS company from series A to series C with brand and authority and credibility and understanding how we can do that for other people and also just like understanding how broken the existing outbound sales motion is and how, you know, we're, we're stretching it in a way that we never have before with AI and you know, we're crappifying it in a way where like it's a race to the bottom and I think there's another way to, to solve for that and that's going back to the things that worked before, which is relationship building. Sales is all about relationships and providing value and how do we do that through content. And I think that, you know, was also uniquely position to be solved by me in some weird way. I think no One else would come up with quite the idea and the angle of how we could do this, and then understanding how to scale it, understanding how to build it for others, and then understanding the kind of mix of these two worlds. I mean, I don't know anyone else with my exact experience, and I think that makes me uniquely positioned to solve for this.
Kyle Smith [00:05:02]:
That's awesome. So how's it been nine months in?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:05:06]:
It's crazy. It's really fun. I mean, you know, there's a lot of things people tell you about building a company, and they're all true. It's so funny because you see these cliches when you're not a founder on. On LinkedIn all the time, and you're just reading them and, oh, they're 100% true, but it's been really exciting. I mean, I think the most. The best thing about it for me is, like, how much I enjoy actually, like, being in market and talking to other marketers.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:05:28]:
That was such a small part of my job at ClickUp because I was so in house and, you know, focused on building the brand and building everything that the amount of time that you spend talking to external peers and parties and groups and teams is so small. That's like a benefit when you can do it. You meet up maybe once a. Once a quarter on a zoom meeting with 20 other marketers and you talk about your challenges, but this is me talking to marketers every single day, so just seeing, like, in real time, the challenges, the future, what people are struggling with, and understanding it has been really amazing. Obviously, like, being in market helps you shape your own product, but just. Just to see being on the forefront of, like, where people's heads are, I really, really enjoy that. I'm on the sales and marketing growth side.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:06:12]:
My co-founder's on the technical side and product side. He's the. He's the product architect, but, yeah, it's crazy. I mean, you know, there's a lot of the things that you don't understand until they happen, happen, and then you're just like, all right, well, I know how to solve this. It doesn't make it less painful. You know, like, I like trying to give tangible, like, examples. You know, there's the whole, like, don't build for one customer.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:06:34]:
And I've been there many times on my professional side, whether it be at media companies where we're, you know, rolling out the red carpet for one advertiser that we're trying to onboard and we're doing things that are horrible margins and bad for us. As a company, but we do it to just get the money. And then on the SaaS side, it's the same thing. It's you're building for, let's just say, you know, you're mid market and SMB at the time and a big enterprise says, well we'll go with you. If you just build these 25 different features for us and this permission set that you're not focused on and then you pivot all your resources to focus on that one customer and it eats you alive and kills your business.
Kyle Smith [00:07:10]:
When people talk about it, I understand why you shouldn't do that, but that's really easy to say when you're not staring at a deal that you're like, well if we get this deal, we could hire four more people in this area and then we could do this and then, and you get excited about the idea of what that revenue realization would do for the business. That's still a really hard decision. The logic is sound, the emotion is difficult to actually say we're not going to actually pursue this at this time.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:07:36]:
I think it becomes a lot easier when you see your long tail scale being affected by one customer that could churn. It's different for us. It's a, you know, we, we can service seed to enterprise right now. Cause it's not, it's not based on permission sets but it's more just like expectations I think and like what we're seeing the majority of our customers actually need and want versus maybe a few that we onboarded early that wanted the moon, the stars, the sun. And it's just not what the majority of our customer set even needs. And you know, we're struggling to build for, for a few people when reality is our business is not headed in that direction. Which maybe makes it easier because it's not just like oh my God, like this one deal is going to save our company, but at the same time it just never works out well.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:08:25]:
It just never does. I mean it's highly emotional, you know, because regardless of what that deal is, you know, there's a, there's a reason why it's important, you know, especially as an early startup, so those are a few fun things that you have to deal with every day and they're tough.
Kyle Smith [00:08:41]:
Yeah. And aside from you and your co-founder, do you have employees?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:08:45]:
Yeah, we're a team of eight going on ten by the end of this week.
Kyle Smith [00:08:49]:
Where'd you hire first?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:08:50]:
VP of Eng. We needed a really strong engineer that could, you know, really build out the architecture of what he envisioned for product, and he's the best hire we've ever made. You know, he's built our infrastructure. He's absolutely incredible.
Kyle Smith [00:09:04]:
So can you tell me more about that? So you say you're not looking for, like, this cookie cutter. Like, give me a content marketer with this pedigree, with this set of experience, or give me somebody in digital who's done whatever ads and has optimized for Google or something. Like, you're not looking for, like, this perfect cookie cutter. Go look at 20 job descriptions that line up with that title, and you're going to find something close to what you're looking for. What has been the challenge for you in finding, like, these unique roles?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:09:30]:
The role that we're looking for is sort of this combination of a salesperson, a journalist, and a great interviewer. And how do you find that? We know what we need, and we're like, if we could only find this person. And the reality is, like, our strongest hires have been, like, BDR SDRs that have dipped their toe in podcasting, actually, because they understand the sales angle of being able to reach out to people. And they're doing it, you know, because I think, like, at the very core, like, BDR SDRs are kind of journalists. Like, they're doing a ton of research to be able to reach out to these companies to hopefully listen in a response, right? And I think at the very core, like, journalists, like, we have journalists on staff, they serve a very specific function, but the actual, like, interviewing of the people that we go out and we get commentary from, we need to approach it more from, like, a sales motion and an angle motion than actually a journalist motion.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:10:22]:
So we've structured our journalists to be able to write our content, but our team of, you know, SDR BDRs who do the interviews have that background. It's like a sales mix with podcasting background, which has been really good. I mean, it definitely is the right mix that we need for sure. Like, we 100%, but think about how hard it is to hire that person at scale. It's hard.
Kyle Smith [00:10:43]:
So the BDR, SDR be able to reach out, engage in a meaningful way, ask intelligent questions. That piece makes sense. Where's the journalism aspect of it come in? If you have a specialized role of journalists, why do they need that skill set?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:10:56]:
Because they're better at interviewing. Salespeople are actually better at interviewing. They're. They're more thorough. They're thinking about it from a very different lens. And that's the lens we actually need them to Think about it from the journalists are much better at writing the content. Like, they can do it very fast. They understand beats, they understand how to do that.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:11:11]:
But the SDR, BDR role, it's not really that, it's like an interpretation of that, but they are able to understand industry angles very fast. Journals are not actually like, I think they're very, they're very used to sticking to their beat and their beat is their beat and they're good at that. Like, that's great. Like industry, subject matter, expertise, awesome, but to be able to triangulate across a world of like 20 different industries, one story, and how that story relates to those different industries and who we should talk to. Journalists aren't doing that.
Kyle Smith [00:11:45]:
What's the information they're actually trying to tease out? So what's the output? Why are they reaching out and doing these?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:11:52]:
We create trade publications on behalf of our customers and we allow them to own the narratives that both they care about in the news, but also that their customers would care about, so for instance, we take both mainstream news stories that are bubbling up, but then also kind of things that we find as signals that should be news but aren't just mainstream enough, but are great news stories for specific industries. So one example would be like, okay, the port strike, like, how does that apply to our entire customer set? So that person has to be able to say, okay, this news story, how does this apply across the lens of our entire customer base? Okay, it doesn't apply to this company, but it applies to these companies. What is the angle and what would they want to talk about? Then you have to create sequences to actually elicit the responses to the people of the subject, of the SMEs within that space, know, the C suite people that would actually respond to that, to talk about that angle. So it's like literally this like real time, like domino of like, how do you elicit a response and talk to the right people about the right story for the right customer with the right angle? It's like a lot of like mental leaps that need to be done very quickly. And that sales mentality is very good. Especially someone from a background that's worked at companies that are extremely horizontal because they have like a very horizontal tan. They always are thinking that way anyway.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:13:07]:
So now they're just basically translating content thought processes into that world, which works.
Kyle Smith [00:13:13]:
And then your customer gets the content that they can use to fuel sales and marketing.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:13:19]:
Yeah, we build everything for them. It's basically a, you know, full scale trade publication where we are, you know, Commissioning lots of thought leadership from prospects, existing customers, subject matter expertise on a daily basis, so it's like, you know, we're populating, you know, now 30 newsrooms effectively.
Kyle Smith [00:13:36]:
If we were to think about like interest rates that swap interest rates for port strikes interest rates. How do interest rates affect VC funding? How does VC funding affect go to market strategy and B2B SaaS companies.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:13:51]:
Yep. And then we reach out, I mean for interest rates. It is a huge story and we say, all right, this should actually become like 50 different articles based on the perspectives of the people in the different, like know VC companies, SaaS companies. It's pretty widespread who we'd want to talk to for that story, so when you think about the news at scale, that story can become 20 different stories if you wanted to write it that way.
Kyle Smith [00:14:11]:
And one of the things that I read on, on a post of yours is this pull to like personalize it and make it self serving either too quickly or just like it's so transparently that you're no longer actually delivering any value with the way that you're creating and pushing content. And so now I'm connecting the dots between how you just described what your team does to that post and it makes perfect sense.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:14:36]:
The challenge that companies also have when they're maybe not working with external tools and platforms and people is that the mindset is like so self serving to your point. It's like, how do we talk about our product, how do we talk about our features, how do we talk about our solutions? That's not the reality of like what you need to be talking about like 24 7. It's how do you insert yourself and hijack the conversations that are already relevant within your customer said, and that's what we do.
Kyle Smith [00:15:02]:
What I think about our content strategy for direct ROI or like this perfect straight line between, oh, we produced this podcast and released this episode, then somebody messaged me on LinkedIn and fast forward a month and now we have a consulting engagement. I just don't think about it that way. It's just put good stuff out there and build the brand of like being a voice of people who speak intelligently about certain topics. The deals just come like through a hundred different ways. I don't need like this perfect tie or attribution.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:15:33]:
You know, it is the reason why a lot of people start podcasts. Like what we're doing is effectively a podcast at enormous scale when you think about it, right? We're talking to people and having interesting conversations, but we're doing it via text Via journalism and in a very newsy way versus, you know, scheduling a recording for a podcast, but we're doing the same thing. We're getting on the phone with people for 30 minutes and we're talking about everything. So yeah, I mean it's, it's pretty kind of even to what that is.
Kyle Smith [00:15:57]:
Definitely. And so for growth for you, do you have actual professional sellers at this point or holding on that?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:16:06]:
It's just me. I mean the beauty of our motion is we should actually never ever have to have a seller.
Kyle Smith [00:16:11]:
Why do you say that?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:16:12]:
Because maybe it's a junior me that just like fuels inbound, but our entire motion, our outbound motion to get commentary is an inbound machine. So between my founder led growth playbook on LinkedIn and our motion as it stands, it works for us. It's like the best marketing machine you could ever ask for. Companies are like, wait, you're reaching out on behalf of this other customer because you've built them a news desk to talk to us. Because we're your ideal subject matter expert for this article. Oh, that's interesting. Can we talk to you about working together? Like, I mean it really, it happens like that all the time. It's product led growth through this motion of doing what you're doing at best, pretty much.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:16:56]:
It's nice because it's not like the optimization of that isn't like, you know, like loops and optimization of an A B testing of campaign pages and XYZ and putting the pricing bar lower and changing. You know, it's none of the heavy, resource intensive ways that you'd have to do PLG if you were like a SaaS company and like a self serve platform. So it's like a hack almost. It's PLG through, through like a motion where you don't need to constantly optimize it over a team of 20 people thinking about it every day.
Kyle Smith [00:17:27]:
Are there particular industries that you think are better suited or have have a higher need for what you all provide?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:17:35]:
We can kind of work with everyone. I think industries where it's highly competitive, this is definitely a true differentiator. Like we can't do this for everyone in every industry. If you think about the way that we're like we can't build the dream trade publication for every single company within every single industry. It doesn't work that way, so there's definitely a finite amount of companies within every industry we can work with, so there is a level of exclusivity there. One that like I've dealt with my entire Career, but I don't think SaaS has ever seen before.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:18:01]:
So it's been kind of interesting. They're like, wait a second, so you can't do this with everyone. Like, how does that work? Like, I don't think the mental framework is like, for me, in news company, like we did this all the time. There's exclusivity. It was, you block out your competitors, you do this, there's a bidding war against this asset. SAS doesn't really operate that way. So I think it's kind of the first time some of our prospect customers are seeing a model like that, which is, you know, both exciting to them and I think nerve wracking and also like helps us sell very fast.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:18:29]:
But yeah, I mean, we're very well suited for very highly competitive industries. You know, I think everything is super competitive these days. Product parity is at like a point where people can build the same product that it took them five years and four months. So it's tough out there. Differentiation is really hard. Everyone's competing on pricing. So we work really well within highly competitive industries. And then the other side is really niche industries that are really hard to market because you almost have to tell your prospect customer what the problem is, like they don't even know.
Kyle Smith [00:19:05]:
What's an example of one that you would put in that category. I was just trying to think about.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:19:07]:
A company that does the digitization of factory floors, of old school factory floors, like Heineken and Coca-Cola, so you're trying to reach the manager of that factory floor and convince them that digitization of it is the answer for them and then have to teach them what that solution is because they probably don't know. It's tough and they don't know how to market. They can't use the playbook, the SEO playbook that every other company uses.
Kyle Smith [00:19:33]:
It's a completely different playbook. You're selling to a completely different profile of individual who thinks in a very different way. So it is, it's very different. Yeah, that's a good example.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:19:43]:
So for us, having a 30 minute call with this person, that isn't a sales call, it's an interview about what they're dealing with and then kind of giving them back the ideas and it's a conversation. That's where we shine.
Kyle Smith [00:19:56]:
When you make the problem more real, which is what you get to do, it's a lot easier to effectively engage with those people versus if you take like the shift supervisor, whatever, director of operations for the manufacturing company at Heineken, and you Say don't you want to automate the process of inventory management? And you're like, that sounds like a word salad of something that like I don't actually think about, but wouldn't it be better if every single time a crate came in it was RFID scanned and automatically populated in your ERP so you know exactly how much inventory you have and where specifically it is. Rather than having somebody on every shift walk over with a clipboard, count manually where they are, walk back over to a terminal and then type it all in. And then you have all these errors. Like when you actually break it down to what physically happens on the floor. All of a sudden your sales messaging becomes incredibly impactful in the way that you market changes fundamentally 100% and by having these conversations you start to really understand what they're dealing with. It's like running a focus group without having to run a focus group.
Kyle Smith [00:21:02]:
Yeah, 100% that makes sense. And I think to me it seems like top of funnel is a no brainer. Like that makes sense. Like you, you drive more people and more attention to your brand, but do you see people thinking about utilizing what your team produces in the middle of the funnel to show.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:21:17]:
Bottom, bottom of funnel.
Kyle Smith [00:21:18]:
Yeah. Okay, I figured we take lead lists.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:21:21]:
We're, we're targeting accounts. The top of the funnel is great. Like I think it, it's very valuable. Top of the funnel, you're owning an entire category and in many cases you actually can become that trade publication because it doesn't exist or it's going out of business, but it's very bottom of the funnel. I mean the goal for us is for our, have our customers be able to sell on this. Like there's no reason if we're not, if we have someone that becomes a recurring source for us that's a C suite executive at a company that shouldn't translate into a business relationship like this should be the best experience they've ever had and this should organically grow into a relationship pretty fast, which is actually what we're seeing. So yeah, this is definitely like a bottom of funnel product.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:21:57]:
Like we are, it is demand gen. We're optimizing more targeted lead lists. We're going after people that like they want to speak to from a business perspective, but we're elevating that person from a thought leadership perspective.
Kyle Smith [00:22:09]:
Do you execute the service that you sell to your customers for Outlever?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:22:15]:
We actually thought about doing that to start. My co founder before I kind of came on board and I was like, I'm Doing this full time. He wanted to do that as the go to market motion. And I was like, that's not going to work, but it's a good idea. I was like, that sounds cool. It's like a nice vanity like thing to be able to do, but no, it actually, it's so much more valuable for us to be doing, focusing on this for our customers and not doing it for ourselves. Again, like our, our inbound motion is through our outbound motion for our customers.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:22:45]:
The benefit of us doing it for ourselves doesn't really make much sense, but yeah, we did think about that.
Kyle Smith [00:22:50]:
Where are you going to hire next? So you don't think that you're going to need professional salespeople? Where's the next need gonna be for you?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:22:56]:
I mean we just need to scale up like editorial and interviewers and sequencing and all the, all the fun stuff and being able to really visualize like the ROI of this, like, you know, data is a huge part of this. We get a lot of like really amazing soft data from these interviews that we're having and being able to like translate that into buying signals and figuring out like what that actually looks like when we translate it and we make it the most actionable that we can when we're sending it over. And also just like, you know, we're triangulating the world of this customer's entire buying ecosystem. We want to show them what that looks like. So just really getting very ingrained within like data visualization, know metrics, reporting. That's definitely like a focus. Like how do we go go even further. How do we like create the craziest visualization you've ever seen based on the way that this is operating? So very excited about that.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:23:46]:
But yeah, scaling up editorial is obviously very important. We need more journalists, we need more people doing, conducting interviews. We need more great people doing outreach. We have other products we want to build, so you know, scaling tech and scaling engineering is definitely huge focus. I mean the laundry list of things now that we want to build and what we want to become ultimately is very exciting. It's like, it's like, wow. Oh, this is very clear, like where the path is, where the opportunity is, what we can eat overnight. And yeah, I mean obviously like we're in a rush to do it, so that's sort of the answer.
Kyle Smith [00:24:19]:
Do you see any geographical like concentration of talent that fits that really unique profile that I'll exclude engineering or the technical team, so for the non technical team members, are you having really a ton of success in any Particular region, or are you just hiring people wherever you can find them?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:24:36]:
Wherever we could find them? I mean, we have someone in Mexico City, someone in Georgia, someone in Florida, someone in Colorado. Being a remote company and looking for a very unique skill set is very, you know, aligned, right? Like, I think if we were, like, trying to find a concentration of people with this very unique cookie, like, skillset that we're trying to cherry pick, and we say you have to live in and work in San Francisco, be pretty tough. So there's definitely, like, a benefit of being remote when you're looking for things that are very unique and you just can't find very easily on a resume. It's more about, like, mindset way that someone can think than it is about, like, that resume. The resume helps us get to that point of, like, okay, these are the things now that, like, this person is touting that they've had podcast experience, they've been a seller at a bdr. Okay. Like, they've written content before.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:25:21]:
Great. Like, all those things, like, sort of add up and then you need to talk to them and understand, like, how they actually think. And then then obviously it's very easy to tell, but, you know, I think we're looking for mindset overall. Like, can they learn this? Like, this isn't something that everyone is doing. So teachability is kind of more important than, like, a resume for us. Like, it's very easy to understand. When you get on the phone with someone, are they bullshitting you? Are they very open to learning? Are they going to be adaptable? Are they able to work really fast and change and pivot really quickly? All of those are more soft skills that can all be taught.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:25:55]:
So I think it's really like having that foundation and then understanding, if they can, they can operate that way.
Kyle Smith [00:26:01]:
I understand you have to do what's right for your business because you have an entire team of. Especially, like, you're similar to us. You know, we're whatever, eight, ten people. We're right in the same world. So a bad hire has a significantly higher impact than if you were 100 people, so it's not just about finding the right person who can do what you need them to do. It's also about being so respectful of your team that you're not going to bring a bad apple into the bunch.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:26:24]:
But I've also made bad hires in my career, and I know how detrimental that is to, like, everything that you're doing. It's bad for everyone, right? So I think it's to your point, it's like, I'm not just looking out for myself. And like, it's the team and it's our growth and it's the culture that we've built and the mindset. It's not only are we looking for this very unique skill set or person or mindset, but we're looking for people that are still very passionate about things. And I think some people have gotten so burned that they've really lost their passion and they're desperate to get a job, which is, it sucks. Except that that's the environment we're living in.
Kyle Smith [00:26:56]:
How do you think about funding? So you're self-funded, bootstrapped, but you have like crazy good growth goals. How do you think about it?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:27:04]:
Will we take funding eventually? Maybe. There are some pretty aggressive revenue goals that we want to hit before then. And we want to have our ROI and the product very solidified and our focus on the vision, on the future very understood and very cemented. And I think once we have that, maybe we will take funding, but the reality is that not taking funding, it's a blessing and a curse. I think it's actually more of a blessing because the decisions you make, every decision is so important, right? You are tasked with such creative problem solving because we are not just throwing money at the problem. We are like, we're not going to do that because that would be the easy way out here. And we can't take that.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:27:47]:
It's painful. It can be very painful, but I think it's made us better ultimately. Like, if we want to achieve what I think we can, we will, we will take funding, but we will take funding for a very clear reason. And it won't be to establish product market fit. It'll be to take the majority of the market share that we know that we now can take. Because we've already proven that through our initial product, we have product market fit. It works.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:28:11]:
And we now want to scale it and really take the rest of the market away from everyone else doing it. Like there's a lot of market out there, so it would be for a very specific reason, which I think is great. Like if I envisioned myself as a founder, I mean, originally when everyone was raising VC money, it's like, that's what you do, but now I'm, I'm so much more in the, the camp of that's what you do when you know exactly what you need the money for and you don't dilute yourself to hell because you already have 10 million bootstrapped and you're taking it For a very specific reason. And you're able to achieve that next wave of growth through VC money rather than like giving up 50% of your company and having to answer to a board that doesn't really understand what you're doing and you know, maybe makes you make the wrong decisions very quickly because they're you know, operating on last set of data rather than holistic vision. And I've seen that happen so many times. Like you know, companies over hire and then they fire everyone because of advice from investors and like I don't want to have to have that right now.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:29:16]:
Like we, we know what we're doing, we know what we're doing better than any board could tell us. And we're going to grow the way that we're going to grow. Like if it works out that way, great. Like I think the idea is big enough ultimately that we could, but we don't need to grow and compete like every other self service SaaS company right now. We don't need to because I think it's much more important for us to establish really clear product market fit at the highest level of what we're doing and then we can scale that to the self serve parts and that's when we would take money. There's no way we could build like a scalable self service business without taking money, but we're not there yet.
Kyle Smith [00:29:52]:
Given what you just said in the vision alignment and like a board who doesn't quite get it or pushing you to do things that don't make sense even when you do hit that point. When you want gas on the fire in the form of capital, would you be more apt to take debt financing instead of VC?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:30:10]:
Maybe you know what VCs want is they want a multi billion dollar exit. And like maybe that's not where we get to, maybe we get to a half a billion dollar exit and that's great for every single person at our company except those investors, so yeah, I mean we're going to explore I think all kind of angles of how we would want to fund this company, but I don't, I don't necessarily think VC is the only way. I think it's either debt financing or we find a group of angels who are very invested in the space and we go that way. I mean VC is just only sexy for a very specific reason. And I think companies that need that fuel and that growth at all costs and like burn fast or burn out and win or die, that's not really where we want to head. Like if we have a Half a billion dollar exit at some point, like, that's going to be great for everyone.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:30:56]:
So to think that there's only like, do it, like, get to the billion or die, like that, that's not, that's not the business we're building, which, it's so funny because I think that's, like, I'm seeing that a lot lately. Like, I think a lot more companies and a lot more founders that they can do it are like, oh, this is a better way to grow for us. 99% of companies that take VC money shouldn't take VC money.
Kyle Smith [00:31:18]:
Yeah, I mean, it's really cool. Like, the pressure looks good and, and you get really excited and enamored with the idea and then the reality hits and you didn't like, you don't like it so much anymore.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:31:29]:
There's real pressure, there's real decisions you have to make.
Kyle Smith [00:31:32]:
And decisions that you don't agree with, but it's not your voice anymore. It's your voice. Isn't the, the strongest in the room at that point, which.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:31:39]:
Yeah. And no one, no one can unseat us from our company because we own it. And like, that's, I think, the most important thing of all. Like, the fact that you've given up enough control to other people that they can unseat you from the very thing that you founded because they don't agree with the way that you're taking the direction of it.
Kyle Smith [00:31:54]:
Even more frustrating, if it's not an idea and it's a spreadsheet, you have that conversation. They're like, your idea is wrong. Because my spreadsheet says this.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:32:03]:
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, also, if you're trying to change the way people think about things, a spreadsheet isn't, isn't going to be complimentary to that vision, right?
Kyle Smith [00:32:12]:
I'm with you, but unfortunately, that's the way a lot of those conversations end up.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:32:17]:
Which is why it just wouldn't work for us. I mean, first of all, like, I don't even know if we would have gotten funded, but doesn't matter. I mean, like, if we had, you know, $5 million that we raised, would it be easier for us? Could we just scale? Sure, but actually, some of the learnings that I think we have had from operating in a very strategic, bootstrapped, smarter way have been very key for us. And now I, I'm like, this is a way better way of operating. We just don't make any decision based on, like, infinite money. We make every decision based on, like, does this really make sense to be able to scale this efficiently. I don't want to grow this into a 300 person company, like absolutely not.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:32:58]:
Which is great because I don't think we need to, but if we had money to throw at it, we might have done that.
Kyle Smith [00:33:02]:
Well, thank you so much. This was super helpful. Where can people find you, get in contact with you, hear more of your thoughts and opinions and expertise?
Melissa Rosenthal [00:33:09]:
Yeah, I'm very loud and on LinkedIn all the time like everyone else, but yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm very responsive. I believe in like responding back in like five minutes, so if I don't respond back in five minutes, there's an issue. Maybe you should try again.
Kyle Smith [00:33:22]:
Perfect. Thank you so much again.
Melissa Rosenthal [00:33:24]:
Thank you for having me.
Kyle Smith [00:33:26]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Market Mastery brought to you by The Bridge Group. If you're a revenue leader in the B2B sales space or know someone who is, connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget to subscribe to stay updated on future episodes.