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Forward Thinking Founders is a founder podcast where we interview high potential founders from networks like Y Combinator, The Thiel Fellowship, Product Hunt, Twitter, etc. and brings to light what they're building for the world. Think of it like the opposite of How I Built This, where we interview founders before they are successful, then if they are, we have a moment in time we can look back on in the early days. Does the model work? Look at our early interviews and you'll have your answer.
Mat Sherman (00:01.4)
All right, we are recording. Welcome everyone to what will likely be the first episode of How I GTM. Today we have Marty Rienlein with us, which I'm really excited to have him on, because if you just take a second and look into either his website or his LinkedIn or his background, this guy's literally everything in the world you can do in the startup world.
He's started companies, exited companies, he's invested in companies, he's been LP'ing funds, he's raised, he's designed, he's kinda done everything. And the thing with startups is that there's one ingredient that you absolutely have to be able to nail if you have all that success, which is figuring out growth. So on this podcast, we're gonna talk about all things GTM with Marty. Marty, welcome to the show, how you doing?
Marty Ringlein (00:52.203)
Hey man, thanks for having me. I'm exhausted after hearing that intro. It's been a long 20 plus years, but it's exciting.
Mat Sherman (00:59.716)
Yeah, totally. I think where I want to start is, you you've done a lot, like lots of logos, of portfolio companies, lots of companies. So I think I'll start with like, is there a phase in your career where you feel like you cut your teeth the most when learning how to grow a product or grow something, whether it's not your first company that was acquired by Twitter or maybe what you're doing now at a degree.
Like, when did you cut your teeth in your career, when you feel like you kind of got a grasp on, I kind of know how this stuff goes, and you're able to kind of replicate it?
Marty Ringlein (01:39.885)
Yeah, so I don't think I'll ever really have the answer to that question because I the thing that frustrates people most when they pull me aside to a one-on-one and they're like hey you've done some interesting stuff over the last 20 years can I pick your brain can I get some advice and the hard thing is that
It's not about like my outcome. Hey, I had an exit and you want an exit or I worked at company X and you want to work at company X It's the time in which I did it and then the world was different then and the world's always going to be different So right now everyone's like hey, it's all about AI and how does AI change things? But in the grand scheme of things like nothing's changed We have this same conversation when the internet was just coming out in the early to mid 90s, right? It's like all the internet's a thing It's gonna change everything and then with the iPhone and mobile is gonna change everything and then
with the app store and then social media. So we've always been having some iterations of this conversation, so that's a constant. But the way in which I think you go to market or you position yourself to be unique or to stand out, that's ever evolving. And I think there's probably some core foundational things which you and I might end up getting into. for me, if I go all the way back to the first time that my eyes were just like.
Whoa, that's, that blew my mind. I'm undergrad, so this is, know, in the late 90s, because I'm old now, because you can't have that LinkedIn without a bunch of gray hairs. I was in a design class, and I'll skip the whole lead up to the story just for brevity, but.
There's this competition and it's the best designers on campus in one of us. I think there's like 40 in this class. One of us is going to have our logo used by Nike. So this is a big deal, right? This will be game-changing for any one of us because the first time we'll have one these big logos in our portfolio and this thing's going to be like printed on Nike swag. you know, obviously you know where the story is going to go. I won. But I am objectively not the best designer in that cohort.
Marty Ringlein (03:37.709)
not by far, maybe top 10 if I'm lucky. But these two women who are awesome, like I've been admiring them the entire class, looking up to them, you just, you feel like you're 10 steps behind every time they walk in the door and they show their work.
One of them, at the end of this, when they announced the winner, walks up to me and she looks mad. She's just full force coming at me. I'm just ready to be reamed out or I don't know what's gonna happen. But she just looks me dead in the eyes and she says, Marty, you know what? I don't think your design was better.
I think you articulated it better. I'm just like, my gosh. My entire next 20 years of my career comes flashing. You see your light flash before your eyes. I actually saw the inverse. I saw the flash forward. was everything is sales. I realized that like, wow, I wasn't a better designer to her. No argument there, but I was a better salesperson. And at that moment in my, you
like 21, like I didn't make that connection so two years later that I realized she was talking about sales but like I was a better storyteller, I was a better narrator, like I understood how to connect my work with their objectives and then I realized and I won't spend the whole pot on this but like recruiting is sales right if you're building a company, pitching investors is sales, going to market is sales, getting your first user, your second user, your first paying customer, those are all sales. Some of them literally sales but others it is this and so I think from the spirit of your question
That's where it all started, that one woman's comment, that one moment where she needed to connect the dots for me. And then I just started doing that. Like, I don't want to be the smartest person in the room.
Marty Ringlein (05:14.241)
I think it's dangerous if you are, because you're in a room full of dummies. But I want to be the most creative and clever person in the room. And so kind of foreshadowing this conversation between the two of us, that'll always be my position when talking about go to market. How can I just out clever, out creative everybody else for no other reason than I want to stand out, right? I want to win the
Mat Sherman (05:35.502)
Yeah, well, feel like when I kind of came across you online on Twitter, you were and still are promoting, you know, what you're doing now, which is is agree.com. And I kind of want to dive deep into some of your thoughts around how you've
kind of taken that to market and how you've done it in a pretty, in my opinion, effective and in some way the guerrilla marketing way. You're just kind of just like, banging the drum every day and you're doing it in public and you're putting signs on trucks outside of conferences and stuff and it's like, it feels random but it's obviously working really well. So let's talk about Agree.com. First question for those that don't know about what you're doing with Agree.com. Can you tell everyone what is Agree.com?
And before you started it, before you paid a cent in marketing, before you did anything with bringing it to market, how do you just think about, okay, I'm doing this company, maybe it's called agree.com, how do I wanna take this to market? What was that conversation in your head?
Marty Ringlein (06:44.533)
Yeah, so agree is it's like the easiest way to describe it. It's like a DocuSign, but better. And for everyone listening, the best part is it's totally free, but with integrated invoicing and payment. So it's e-signature, but at the end of the most important signatures, somebody has to usually pay somebody money, but the process to do so is completely disjointed. So you can go from signature to invoice to payment all in one. It's specifically designed for anybody that moves the majority of their revenue through a contract. So this is mostly sales teams, but anyone listening?
If you've got an NDA, an LOI, doesn't matter. A pulse and a signature we always say. You're welcome to come to Undegree. You'll love it. It's totally free. And then for marketing, I think it starts with...
with that word, agree. It wasn't agree.com out of the gate. Obviously I didn't have that. I have some nice fun domains like marty.com, but I did not own agree.com at the time. But we knew it had to be called something that was going to invoke trust, right? Because we're talking about digital acceptance, right? You're signing a legal document and we're signing it because worst case scenario, we gotta take this thing to court, right? So this is a big deal, right? And so you've gotta be able to trust this thing. And then I'm also asking some of these users, hey, move your rev,
through the platform. That's also a big deal. It's a big ask of people. So that you have to have trust. So we wanted a name and a word that made sense to the product value, can invoke to that trust. And then until we were dead set on agree was the best word. Like let's agree to agree. There were a lot of plays on it. And then eventually we found the owner of the domain. It wasn't being utilized in the way that we thought it should. And we kind of came to an agreement.
to sell to us and then we became a green and we became a green.com which again I think helps with a very early stage company that's coming right out of the gate because
Marty Ringlein (08:30.221)
We do a lot on the payment side. So, you we have to go up against Bill.com. We even have to go up against Stripe, which I think just as a startup founder feels like a terrifying statement to say out loud because Stripe can do no wrong. They're awesome and they're wonderful at everything they do. But DocuSign, right? 22 year old incumbent. Their market cap's like $30 billion now. They're the market category definer. And it's kind of become a verb. Matt, if you and I are going to do a deal, then I'm like, send me the DocuSign. I have to fight that. so the brand...
like really matters and so something we can take to market. What's really fun right now, know, time will tell but if you go to docuSign.com right now the word they lead with is agree and so we know that we've picked the right kind of noun verb combo.
Mat Sherman (09:15.492)
What was your thought on getting, well not even your thought, what was your action? Did you get Agree.com before you did any meaningful push on the company and the product and bill it? Or did you do a lot of things in stealth before you had the name? What came first really? And would you say that entrepreneurs should follow that same path or does it depend on the company and what they're doing?
Marty Ringlein (09:40.129)
Yeah, I love your question because I'm gonna not answer it, but I'm gonna answer it. Because now you've made me realize that probably the number one piece of advice I wanna give to any entrepreneur, especially first timer, the answer to these things, there's no binary. There's no you do one, then you do the other. You should be doing a multi-
attitude of things in step with each other. And so there isn't like, go buy the domain, build the brand, and then go build the product. Right? mean, I'm a builder. That's what I do. So that's how I think, but I'm also a creative.
To get excited about building, I have to have a name and a logo. So that's my own process. This is gonna be your process. But I knew it was agree, but honestly in the beginning, I don't know, it's like, let's agree.io or something. It's horrible. We still have it, I gotta go look it up. But it's embarrassingly bad. But it's 99 cents on GoDaddy and it shouldn't be the thing that holds me up. I shouldn't be spending months trying to find the best domain. It doesn't matter, just get something up, because the odds are, probability, like most of us, our idea or our thing we're going to gonna go nowhere. So, so.
Let's accelerate going nowhere. Let's not spend two years to go nowhere. figure out the name, the brand. I need a logo. I need to start making a marketing site because it's the constraint that helps me. Think about your average marketing site, big headliners, subtext, three little value props, and a CTA call to action. What are those three value props? And agree, can only do, I have a long list of awesome features which make us so cool. We haven't talked about how we use AI, but I don't get to do all
I get to say three things, right? I do signatures, invoicing, payments. I gotta narrow it down. That process helps me do that. Also, for anyone that wants to raise venture capital, think start making a pitch deck earlier. Not that you're gonna use it or send it to anyone, but the constraint. You gotta do it in eight to 12 slides. You gotta have your title slide, your team slide, you gotta have your TAM slide. Going through that mental exercise, I think helps you better understand what product you're gonna build. And then go build the, we all know about the MVP, but go build the simplest thing, the simplest.
Marty Ringlein (11:43.567)
version of this right so for me no payments no invoices right out of the gate you just got to do signature because in my process if you're gonna sign send and get paid you can't do any of that unless you sign first so order of operations why would I spend all this time on the payment side if I never end up building the signature sign so signature first order of operations so build a small prototype build something you can use a small cohort of your own network can use you know if you're first I don't want to talk ever about first first user first ten users I mean those better be like mom dad your friends right like they're not going to
use it, no one else is to use this thing. So go build for them. Obviously that doesn't work for everything you build in all contexts, know, if we're talking like aerospace or space tech, but for most of us, 98 % of us, go, those should be your first 10. That's your prototype. What can those first 10 use? Then you're really talking, and I think you and I will talk more about this, but going from 10 to 100, 100 to 1,000, 1,000 to 10,000, and then, you know, to the moon.
Mat Sherman (12:36.676)
Yeah, well that was actually going to be my next question, is this may be the wrong order. can correct me if you can. But at some point, you raised, a pre-seed round of, I think, $3 million. You can check me on that if that's wrong. cool, I got the thumbs up for those listening in the car. But.
You know, when you raise your pre-seed round, as you know, you're also an investor, you're also an LP, it's kind of like the starting bell for a race, the race of getting in the market and growing very quickly and getting to an exit in seven to 12 years, different opinions, but generally that range. What did you do after you raised? The money's wired, it's in your account.
Now what? How do you allocate it? How do you know what channels to go for? You know, what's going through your brain at that point?
Marty Ringlein (13:32.161)
Yeah, another great question, because I just think there's so many embedded entrepreneurial advice moments in these questions.
Again, not binary. me, as an investor, I don't want to invest in you if the only reason you're going to do this or bring this to fruition is because you raised the capital. You're doing this no matter what and nothing will stop you. I want to invest in that person. So Will and I, my co-founder, we have this mantra that we say quite often to ourselves, go forward as though you're right, prepare as though you're wrong. So I'm going to go forward as though I'm going to close that round and I've got all the preparations. I've got the team in place, the people I'm going to hire, I've got all the features I'm going to build.
you
If every investor looks at us and says, hey, you're bad shit crazy. Now I want to listen to people. if they have like, if I'm hearing patterns, like, hey, maybe this actually is a really terrible idea. I shouldn't go forward with this. Yeah. Pivot away or pivot to something new. but if I, if it just, couldn't raise for a number of other reasons. One, let's just say I'm a first time founder. have no experience. I have no revenue. I have no product. You get a lot of no's going for you. Go get those yeses, right? Go find the easiest path of least resistance to yeses. Go get them and then like fundraise again. but don't stop. I only want to invest in founders. I only want to be a founder that won't stop.
And I think the other really important part of your question is there's only one thing that really matters and that's speed of execution. So I actually, again, I like the phrasing of your question, but it's not how I look at it. It's not the money came in and like you're off to the races. I was always off to the races. just, my momentum either accelerates or decelerates. And so when an investor asks me, and I actually hate this question because it feels a little amateur, but like, what do you need the funds for? I only ever need the funds for one thing, move faster. Right?
Marty Ringlein (15:09.715)
in the spirit of their question, what they're really asking is, in which areas are you gonna move faster? Are you gonna hire a bunch of salespeople, hire a bunch of engineers? So I just don't like that it's so vague. Like, what are you gonna use it for? Like, let's get really tactical here. What other piece of advice I'll give, because we're going through the fundraising process now. Oftentimes, an investor asks you a question, I actually don't think they care about the answer to the question, because there is no right answer. They just wanna know that you have an answer. So often they're looking for like deer in the headlights. Like, why do you need $3 million? And if you're just like...
give you three million dollars right so like have an answer be quick notice have conviction I think with everything you do
Mat Sherman (15:45.112)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's great advice. And for you, for the tactics that you're willing or able to share, of the capital that you allocated to Grow Agree, like...
What are some channels that you tried at? Is it one of these things where you just run a bunch of experiments? Is there a certain sales force that you're hiring? Are you holding a lot of that money until it's proven out more? Just walk us through how you think about actually getting to, what's your, is your goal 20,000 right now, then you're at 100,000? You keep having these milestones online. So how are you allocating the capital to continue to push the button and make the execution happen?
Marty Ringlein (16:27.799)
Yeah, yeah, so great question. I look at it like, again, never binary. I also think you want some kind of like North Star, some really big, they always say like hairy, audacious goal, but like something that's gonna be really hard to achieve. If you're in the fundraising game, these kinds of metrics are already there. You need some kind of vanity metric that people are.
You need a metric first of all, if you're going, if like a, if you're post revenue, so a really big seed, early stage A, these days it's minimum three million ARR. You gotta have three million of revenue coming in through the platform. Old days it was a million, but like inflation. Right before revenue, you you need some optics number. You know, if you're doing a consumer play, like first million users, right? If you're doing more B2B SaaS, like I can get away with a smaller number. 10,000 is the number I anchor on now, but it's
But it's 10,000 over a very short period of time because no one actually the 10,000 users in four months people like light up like That's that's interesting didn't know that many people you know cared about e-signature Candidly, I didn't know either we hit that number way sooner than I thought we would but what really matters to them is in that September 14 to October December August 14 to December 14 because now we're actually gonna hit the 10,000 number like on this call. We're at like 9,998 I'll hit refresh right before we get off
Mat Sherman (17:46.606)
Cool, let's go.
Marty Ringlein (17:50.207)
maybe we'll just celebrate. So it's happening real time.
Mat Sherman (17:50.221)
Yeah, I do it.
Marty Ringlein (17:55.597)
that's 200, average 200 % month over month growth. Cause we started in the private beta with like 250 users. Like that's the number they care about. Cause then it's like, okay, 200 % month. Now that's not going to be sustainable forever, but like, Hey, we've got a repeatable pattern here. Cause we're doing that almost consistently. And now there's, there's some months where, you know, Matt, were like, Hey Marty, you got to launch this thing on product time. And I was thinking like, I love product time. Like, will that be a great audience for me? Will that make sense? I was like, yeah, you know, it's free to post on product time. Why would I not? Like.
great idea, but in that three day period when we got product out of the day, which was awesome, but in that three day period, we got 1,000 users in those three days. Before that, it was like a week and a half, I was getting about 1,000 users, and I was celebrating that, I was like, that's astronomical.
But then, like the week after, obviously it's gonna slow down, but we did end up getting product of the week, which was awesome, but it was like a week, and then we got, I think it was like six days exactly, we got another thousand users, and I was like, okay, this is awesome. And I look at it as like market validation. Hey, like that user base is really interesting, they care about new and emerging products, but the fact that they care about e-signature, like, cause I'm going up against like really cool AI tools, like AI for like digital streaming and influencers, I'm like, how am gonna beat these people?
Fred.com, we were on Product Hunt that same week, I'm like, I can't beat, like, they paid $1.8 million for that domain name. That's way cooler than Agree.com, but that was refreshing and nice to see.
Mat Sherman (19:21.664)
I thought your, I think with product time, effort matters a lot. And I feel like you put up together a nice plan with your team and you were hyping it up all day. And that matters, honestly. I think the more you care and the more you get your community and team involved, the more people will see that and want you to win and root for you for that day and then week, which is cool.
Marty Ringlein (19:43.693)
It's part of your earlier question, I...
I by no even 20 years plus in by no means think that I know everything. I don't know how to quote unquote win product time. So I just went on looked at anyone who won product of the day and that we're kind of the same category as me like V2B SaaS. Because my instinct is that would be harder to win against some of these really cool like consumer plays which like everyone can be a user of. And I just found the founder and I pinged them. It's like hey if you have any like tips or tricks. And there's a lot of people that do that because now I get pinged. It's like hey so I you won product.
Do you have any tips or tricks for me? And then same, think you asked about like marketing. I like the sales sides of things, but I'm not a natural like.
academically trained marketer. And so like I don't know how to master LinkedIn or Google Ads but I understand the fundamental basics but when we're ready and we've done a few tests on our own and we kind of know directionally where we're headed, I bring in someone that knows their stuff. So there's this woman who's like awesome she's a fractional CMO but I've known her for years on Twitter and she's worked at some places that like I put it like really high pedestals like public.com but her name is Katy Perry and like she just knows her stuff and like she's just an awesome person to work
with. As soon as we were building this, just took a leap. was like, hey Katie, like we've actually never even met in real life, but we've tweeted back and forth. So I called DM her, any chance you want to partner up on this, any chance you want to help us out. And she's like, Marty, I freaking love it. I'm in. She's a big help. She's gotten our Google cost of customer acquisition down to like three bucks, which is awesome. So attributes for about a third of that 10,000 users these days.
Mat Sherman (21:23.588)
That's wild. And that brings up a question I wasn't planning on asking, but I think is an interesting one that I'm curious about, which is I feel like a lot of founders, including myself, think that as we grow...
You know, we have to just learn new things and figure out new skills to get to the next level on stage But what I'm hearing from you is that like you you know when you realize that you needed to get to that next growth level Instead of you learning like a whole new trade something I wasn't maybe not something Supernatural to you you found the person who's an expert of that and just like brought them in and said hey like You do the thing that you're great at so I can keep doing the thing that I'm great at
Like, is that a natural, like, is that easy to recognize when it's time to bring someone in when it's still all very early? Or how do you know the time to bring someone like Haiti in?
Marty Ringlein (22:10.701)
Yeah, at first I do want to kind of like do it yourself. Don't pay someone to run a Google app. can do it in Google. Sign up for Google Workspace. You're going to get like $500 to $1500 in credits. Use up the credits. Get all these credits. Use them up. Learn. So like even just doing it out of the gate, like I optimize on a few keywords because I followed the competition. I use them as a comp. So like what are they doing? What keywords are they running against? And I think we were doing like, it was horrible, but it was like $6.50 customer acquisition. And like we ran that by Katie and she's like, that's ridiculous.
We get that down. I don't even think she knew she get it down to like three bucks and change So that's been awesome to do I think same thing with like, you know building your marketing page I go to go to Wix go to framer like get a template get one that looks good Don't don't over index and then hire your first designer and then get like a custom landing page You know, I think even with your prototype I think with your prototype you can outsource it you can bring in some engineering teams But I think as you're gonna build your actual scalable product and you want to minimize tech debt every time like have a core engineering team But with people like Katie
I always tell my co-founder, Will, that's more, you know, she's one of the best at what she does based here in New York. you know, just, can presume that she's not going to be like the cheapest option in town. But, it's like,
Again, I want to think about, we're going to learn from her. We're going to get like a marketing MBA in a box. I'm not going to just put her out there and just say, go. And she comes back with results. I want to know like, what tools is she using? How is she using them? Like when we get on our weeklies with her and she runs us through kind of the metrics and the numbers, like I really want to walk through strategically. Like why are we using HubSpot over any other platform? Why are we using Intercom over any other platform? How are she doing these re-engagement campaigns? When she's doing like SEO and she's thinking through
through like, you know, blog content. How is she generating that? Like, what AI tools are she using? Cause like, she's obviously not writing, you know, 500 word blog posts every single week. So she's using some AI tools. Like, okay, how are you doing that? What prompts are you putting in? And so I'm going to walk away. I'll never be Katy Perry, but I'm going to be like, Hey, I've got a degree in the Katy Perry Marketing University after spending a year with her. And that to me will have value. I baked that into the cost.
Mat Sherman (24:21.186)
that that's a great answer. So changing gears slightly so away from agree is you know you've done several companies you know I think five most of them if not all of them exited and were acquired and you like like I mentioned in the beginning like you invest in tons of companies tell me are you able to
When you invest in a company, you may have ideas on things they can do differently, potentially, based on your experience as a successful operator and founder. But as an investor, it's not your job to do things. It's your job to just support the founders. Even if you know things could be different if they did X, Y, or Z differently, how do you think about that as an investor? are you hands-on in helping them with founder things? Or are you hands-off? Or what's your kind of ethos on that?
Marty Ringlein (25:17.101)
Yeah, so as an investor, I've made the investment, I've made the decision, I've wired the money. I only really want to invest in founders that don't need me to do the really basic stuff, don't need my guidance there. Now, if they do need it and they ask me for it, I'm there, 100%, right, because I'm here to support you. But again, I want to believe that they're making some kind of decision for some kind of reason that I don't see or I'm not aware of yet, and I'm gonna learn.
We're both going to learn. They say you either you win or you learn. You don't lose. And so, OK, well, turns out they made the wrong decision. And we do have folks in the portfolio that had to shut down. We have other folks that have gone on already in the short period that we invested in them, returned almost the entire flood. Beehive in New York has just gone explosive, like wild. And there's other ones that unfortunately aren't around anymore. Our take is, though, especially in the early stage, you've to give the founder room.
to sort of breathe, grow, learn, explore, experiment. And so we take the position of like, don't slow them down. I think the way you slow them down is you get them on Zooms and you respond lengthy emails. You're just there to be support. You read their investor updates. You look at the asks and like if you can truly contribute to one of those asks and jump in and jump in quickly, do not be the bottleneck. Doesn't matter if you're on vacation or what. Like jump in right away.
So I look for those things. And then with folks that I haven't invested in yet, because we mostly all do early stage, we get a lot of first time founders. And so I have to find out quickly, because I want to be respectful, are they looking for validation or advice? I feel like that's the two camps. If you're looking for validation, I'm already not your guy. But if you're truly looking for advice, then I will articulate where I think
you might be going down, or you could go down a better path. And I'll walk through sort of the steps in order of operations and things I've seen in my past. And then if they, I don't want someone who completely pivots their entire roadmap, because it's something I said, that's kind of a red flag for like, don't want to invest in them, but I do like founders where you can tell they're coming at it for advice, not just looking pure for validation.
Mat Sherman (27:25.22)
Cool. One more question for you before we get into our rapid fire. In the history of me doing podcasts, I've done a ton. I don't think I've ever done a rapid fire series, so that'll be fun. But before then, is there anything else from your journey in the last two decades, whether it's Agree or companies you sold to Twitter, Eventbrite, that you think would be interesting for founders or early stage growth people to hear?
Coming from someone that's been in the in the arena for two plus decades
Marty Ringlein (27:59.437)
Yeah, so two things I'll give on this one so we can get to the rapid fire. First is constantly build your network. I think that's probably the most valuable asset we have. And you hear this a lot, like, I've had 20 years in. What I really mean by this is if I go back 20 years ago, some of the most valuable people to me, and I don't build relationships because I'm looking to extract value, but you know.
It's kind of the context of what we're talking about right here, growing our businesses. Some of those people, started out as the people that like, right now you're thinking, I wanna build my network with Mark Andreessen, A16Z, me too. But like the person who you're discounting because you think that they're not as important, like just give it time.
Like in 20 years, that person is now the VP of design at Uber or at Twilio. They're gonna get you in when you're trying to sell a SaaS contract to your big enterprise customer. That person is now the general partner at a fund that does a half billion in AUM and you're gonna go pitch them. Like a lot changes in 20 years. I had an intern that eventually went on to start a startup that got acquired by Twilio for $3 billion. It was the intern.
Luckily, I'm a really good intern boss, but imagine I treated him like garbage and made him get my coffee. was just a horrible, he's like, you're just a fricking intern. No, me that dude are really good friends. And he invested in our fund, which was awesome. And he supports us in everything we do. He makes introductions whenever he can. So I think that's one really important step. And then the other thing, and even with your competitors, I remember early on we took a meeting with Kevin Hartz at Eventbrite when we were building.
At the time, what I would call publicly an event-brite killer. Kind of a bold thing to say, first of all, with it for Kevin to invite us into San Francisco, to his office. But that relationship obviously over time turned into an acquisition. so take all the meetings you can. I don't like this, like a lot of people will tell founders, cautious of your time, don't take your best. No, take them all day long because don't take them when you need them. Take them, build the relationship. And then when you do need them, you're just following up on a relationship that you've already made. I think that's easier. And then the last thing I'll say on this, just with respect to sort
Marty Ringlein (30:06.703)
how we think about a great, actually I've already lost my train of thought, so I don't remember the last thing, but those first two were pretty good.
Mat Sherman (30:11.748)
They're very good. mean that's everything your point on like your fret your peer today Could be you know the the leader of a certain company or the leader of a fund in 10 20 years is so important I've seen I'm about 10 years into my tech career and It's true. I mean I Quick 20 second story, then we'll do rapid fire and we'll call it a day is
When I was back, my last company, PubLoft, we were backed by Jason Calacanis. We were up in Silicon Valley for his accelerator. And I was Twitter DMing with this guy, Alex, who had this fun contractor payment company called Deal, and they just raised their like $2 million pre-seed. And like we're in his apartment, we're hanging out, like just in his apartment. And he's like, we just pivoted, like, I don't know, like, you know, and I'm like, yeah, like.
XYZ and what is it? Is it five years later? They're now, I mean, don't know how big they are. think like five, seven, eight billion dollar company. And of course, I them on the podcast, which is great, but it's like, you never know, right? You never know who's going to be the person.
Marty Ringlein (31:14.949)
absolutely. I have a portfolio company that got acquired by Deal. And so now I'm on the Deal cap table, which is awesome. It's such a small integrated world. learn that really quick. I remember the last thing I was going to say. You asked for advice for founders marketing GTM. One thing I've learned with Agree, again, in hindsight it just seems so obvious, but it wasn't to me until I faced it head on. There's some brands, if you have the luxury of going against a brand that
Mat Sherman (31:20.29)
Nice. Nice.
Mat Sherman (31:26.531)
Yeah.
Marty Ringlein (31:41.517)
people kind of hate your, because I think as entrepreneurs we're all going up this uphill battle and then we all have this boulder to push. Some of us are boulders bigger, heavier than others. Your boulder gets much smaller and less heavy if you go up against what I call a villain brand. And there's some where I just say the name and you're immediately going to get a visceral reaction. Jira, Microsoft Teams, Ticketmaster, the IRS, the DMV.
One of those just happens to be DocuSign. And people were just like, and I kind of looked into it. It's like, I don't know, I like to poke fun at them, but it's not that bad. It does the job. You send it, they sign it. Like no one's ever had a failed DocuSign. why are they in this group of filaments? And it turns out, and then we use this to our advantage, that the reason people don't like them is they don't think there's a value there. They don't think to sign something electronically, should be paying you thousands of dollars a year because I know that I can just
do it with pen, paper, and a stamp. Again, it takes longer but the convenience isn't worth it. So we're like, okay, that's interesting. So we started leaning into that a lot and I don't always advocate calling out another brand but when you're young and you're hungry and it opens the door to more sales because they don't care what I say. If I just go to you in a sales call and I just say, do you hate Jira? Like they're just like...
let's talk more. It's like, okay, so I'm selling banana bread, right? But it's irrelevant because I hate Jara. But for me, I guess I am selling an alternative to DocuSign, but there's not one door that doesn't open the second I say like, you know, is today the last day you pay for DocuSign? Do you think DocuSign's over expensive? Do you want an alternative to DocuSign? It's always yes, yes, yes, yes.
Mat Sherman (33:22.916)
Totally. I think that's super smart. Cool. Well, rapid fire time. This will be interesting. So the rules here is I'll say something, and it'll either be a question or you can pick one or two options. And your answer has to be in under, call it five seconds. Up to 10 seconds, but pretty quick. OK, here we go. X or Twitter?
Marty Ringlein (33:41.293)
Cool.
Marty Ringlein (33:50.75)
Twitter, 100%, because I'm old school with Slaughter Credit, Twitter will always be Twitter to me, always Twitter.
Mat Sherman (33:55.67)
Okay, new Jaguar branding or old Jaguar branding?
Marty Ringlein (34:00.317)
I hate the new branding. think the new branding was built for an era that never came. So I think it was from a previous era and they thought the world was going to change and it didn't go that direction. But pre-Ford acquisitions, so like Jaguar pre-2002.
Mat Sherman (34:11.582)
one tip you would
Mat Sherman (34:18.429)
One tip you would give a founder who wants to launch on product time.
Marty Ringlein (34:24.457)
you know what I thought was really interesting I didn't know about? Your category matters. Especially if you think about like product of the week, product of the month, you might not actually win the product of the month holistically, but you can win it for your category, like if you were B2B SaaS or FinTech. so category is really important. And I don't know if you want to game it this way, but you could potentially pick a really obscure category and almost guarantee you. I don't know if gaming it that way works, but I didn't realize category, no one had mentioned that to me, that category was an important.
selection.
Mat Sherman (34:55.33)
If you weren't working on Agree and you had to work on something else that was interesting to you, what space or what high level thing would you be working on or space would you be intrigued in?
Marty Ringlein (35:07.169)
Yeah, I mean, this is a little obnoxious because it's like, you know, AI. But I think when the GPT-3 beta came out in 2020, it was AI plus what? And so we did AI on top of OCR on locks what? And that's how we got to agree. But there's a lot of spaces where nothing has changed in almost the last two decades. And one of the ones that we get most excited about is CAD. We still use CAD software and CAD, that name still persists as a brand. so I think generative AI on top of CAD is going to fundamentally change how we think about architecture and prop tech. And so I'm pretty excited about that space. then, sorry, the last one just happened.
say is like, we're just gonna live longer. Someone through this Gattaca-like reference on Twitter, they're like, dude, thinking about having a kid in the next two years, I think I need to wait, because I think the distance between when you can genetically ensure that they're gonna be a little bit smarter, faster, live a little bit longer, get rid of some genetic things that might crop up later in life, why would I wanna have one kid now and another kid two years after that, and that kid's just gonna be so much more superior? That's dystopianly creepy.
weird like work
Mat Sherman (36:09.316)
Totally. And for the last rapid fire question, do you think you will implant a neurolink in your brain in the next 25 years?
Marty Ringlein (36:17.549)
Yeah, yeah, because this is like, you're reading this, you're listening to this and you're thinking, that's, that's where, because there's so many pessimists in technology and technological advancements. Just ask me in 1999 if I would put a supercomputer that tracks my every movement in my pocket where I was so addicted to it. It had to be the first thing I opened at night, or in the morning, last thing I opened at night. Be like, no, why would you ever do that? Right, it'd be such a black mirror thing. I'm so hooked to this thing that I take it to the
with me and so hope no one wants to talk about it but we actually pick it up and open it where you're sitting on the toilet and you all know you do it so don't judge you would have answered no and that would have been the most ridiculous thing you would have said it was dystopian no and so yeah am I putting you know the beta version in my brain no way and so you know I like to think I'm an early adopter I did not buy the first iPhone in know 7 I waited for V the second version in OA with the app store in 3G and that was it was a much superior advice the first version it's only like
Jubilee a better Blackberry but the second version 3G 100 times faster internet app store where you're uber square like billion dollar business built overnight that was the game changer so I think same thing with Neuralink because I look at this in business the question isn't should your business do something
or should Marty get the, my question is what happens if my competitor does it? And I think this was true when AI, generative AI came out. like, should we have an AI strategy? I don't give a shit if you think you should have an AI strategy. I wanna know is your competitor gonna have an AI strategy? What is it and how will that impact you? So I don't wanna, if I'm like 17 right now, I don't wanna be the only one going to undergrad and all my classmates got a neuro link in their head and I don't. Like you're just gonna be left behind.
Mat Sherman (38:01.816)
I agree and we'll end it there. Marty, thank you so much. like your checkout agree. What's your website, Marty? What's a grease?
Marty Ringlein (38:04.865)
You agree.
Marty Ringlein (38:09.786)
Agree.com! Hey, tell all your friends never pay for DocuSign again.
Mat Sherman (38:14.468)
Thank you so much for coming on to How I GTM and I'm excited to watch Agri grow to the millions and billions in the next several years. Thanks for coming on. Let's go, let's go. Do you want to refresh real quick? Did you hit it yet? Let's see, let's see.
Marty Ringlein (38:22.815)
Yeah, 10,000 baby, 10,000. This is exciting.
Let's do it, let's do it.
All right. All right. Somebody go sign up real quick. I'm one away. We're one away, man.
Mat Sherman (38:33.764)
okay. Well, someone, someone will sign up and you'll hit it. Maybe, maybe, maybe it'll happen in a few seconds. Maybe it'll be a podcast listener. Thanks for coming on and we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll keep chatting on the Twitter's. Have a good rest of your day. Bye.
Marty Ringlein (38:36.491)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
Alright, take care, man.