← Marketing Against The Grain
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- [00:01]
A
If you're thinking about starting a business or working to scale your current business, this is the show for you. We're going to talk with Erica Wanger who is the founder and general partner at Park Rangers Capital and she is giving us the detailed sales and marketing playbooks from the front lines of the startup world. What are the best and fastest companies doing to grow and build remarkable businesses? It's a great episode. Let's get to today's show.
- [00:29]
B
Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book with most of the pages torn out or paying for a coffee. That's 1/5 full. Point is you miss a lot unless you use HubSpot. Their customer platform gives you access to the data you need to grow your business. The insights trapped inside emails, call logs and transcripts, all that unstructured data that makes all the difference. Because when you know more, you grow more. Visit HubSpot.com today.
- [01:09]
A
Well, Erica, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. You are somebody who has deep expertise and deep conviction, which is something we were just talking about before we started the show in what's happening in the world of technology, marketing and sales AI. We are probably at this peak of this crazy cycle and I wanted to phone a friend, you're my friend. And get a report from the front lines of what's happening in the fastest growing companies that are out there right now and who are building on the kind of cutting edge of technology. So maybe just to start like give us a state of the state of what's happening in the world of startups today.
- [01:47]
C
Absolutely. So this is something I spend a lot of my time thinking about. So I'm excited to ramble for a sec. I think at a really high level if we zoom out, software is getting easier and easier to build by the day. You know I always say VCs used to get five decks with the same idea about a decade ago. Now they get 50 decks with the same idea. So I just like people to understand the scale of the difference. And what that means is now that 50 people are building with the same idea, the type of person that's building looks very different. So we used to have think of like the Fang engineer, very technical building in stealth behind the scenes, you know, needed to have all the warm intros to get the in to build the great company. Now what you have is actually a lot of non technical folks using a lot of AI tooling to build early MVPs. Obviously they need engineers to build out their products, more often building in public, building their own distribution, often building solo, not as much in teams. There's a lot of these very interesting trends we're seeing and the quantity is just absolutely exploding. And so, you know, some people say it's harder for a VC to pick the winners because there are so many. My point of view is you've got to come up with a creative thesis of of the 50 now, who's going to win? Because the technology and the software isn't the moat any longer. That's the beauty of AI and no code tools. That's also the hard part of it. And so again, I'm drinking my own Kool Aid a little bit because I do really believe in my own thesis. But I think what we are seeing is that the very best companies that are rising above the rest don't just have great products and great software, but they also have a really interesting distribution advantage. And that can look like a lot of different things. That can look like really brilliant growth hacking strategies, that can look like they're a content creator themselves or community builder in a very specific niche, that can look like they've built a company before in a specific space and they're building again in that space. So they've got like a decade plus of connections and relationships that they can lean into. But what you're seeing now is this very interesting shift where it's a little bit less about the software and a little bit less about the product and a little bit more about the distribution in the go to market. And I think that's really fun for people like us who spend all day, every day thinking about this stuff. But it certainly means underwriting looks a little bit different and will only continue to.
- [03:52]
A
Okay, so distribution go to market is getting more important. Technology is still going to be important, but it's becoming more accessible and that is creating a lot more competition. And with competition creates the need for better distribution, better sales, better marketing, etc. To kind of build on this before we go down some of the paths is what are some examples of companies, whether you've invested in them, you just think they're awesome, what have you. I don't care that have some unique distribution mechanisms because we've got a bunch of viewers here who are want to go look at them and understand what it is they're doing and how did they figure that out and maybe give us a couple examples and maybe if you've got one you really like, unpack.
- [04:30]
B
That a little bit for us.
- [04:32]
C
Totally. So there's A lot to choose from. I'll talk about Beehive because that's a company that I've invested in. Some people might know Tyler Dank, he's the founder of Beehive. You know, he's got a few distribution advantages, which is why I like to mention him. So the first being he was at Morning Brew before. So he knows the newsletter space and specifically like the newsletter creator space very well. So he had that kind of in his back pocket. He knew the inner workings of it and he had a lot of connections. And then he decided to go where a lot of the newsletter creators are, which is Twitter and where the journalists are, because they're doing some really interesting stuff actually in like the future of media space and build in public, talk about his journey, talk about how quickly ARR is growing. He himself now has a very successful newsletter. So not only is he like talking about newsletters, he worked at a newsletter. He's actually using his own product day in and day out. And so I think that's Tyler. They're doing a great job. Something else that I think we don't talk about enough that I've been spending a lot of my time thinking about that. Beehive does very well is actually employees as a distribution channel. I think this is like a very underrated side of Go to market. And I actually think, Kip, you do a great job of this with HubSpot. Like, you yourself have your own brand. I mean, you're the cmo, so like, maybe that's expected. But you know, what Beehive has done, which is very interesting, is like their partnerships lead, their growth lead, like all these different. Their social media lead. They encourage them all to post on social media about what they're learning while they're building. Not just about Beehive, but about that specific lane within the company that they are in. And that gets extra eyeballs. And it's all organic, it's all free, right? Because I mean, sure, you can incentivize your employees, but it's not paid ads, you know, it's not paid stuff. So totally Beehive's in a really interesting job of that. And so I've seen, because I know a lot of the operators at Beehive, of course I've seen how well that has worked for them in terms of like, you know, not only like growing customers, but also like getting top hires and getting investor interest. And there's so many other benefits of having employees as a distribution channel. So Tyler, I think, is a great example because he has A lot of different distribution edges he's building in and he's very bought into the same thesis that we have as a firm.
- [06:35]
A
You need multiple distribution channels in this new world. You can't have just one thing that you just pound and pound on because it's just things have fragmented too much, first of all. Then the second thing here is you're right that we live in, in a more like, influence, focused, personality, led society. So if you're Tyler and you're that entire crew, you can have way more influence than somebody who's head down building by themselves. You know, you say you would expect me to do a podcast and stuff, but it's like very few heads of marketing are out there doing podcasts. You know, like, it's mostly like kind of consultants, frontline contributors, that type of thing. And so I think one of the core themes we've talked about is the shift to like building in public.
- [07:21]
C
Yeah.
- [07:21]
A
Because, you know, like the podcast we do and you know, if you guys are watching it, you know, it's like we're testing ideas and we're building stuff live on the show and we're doing demos and it's like, I don't know how you can succeed not doing that in today's world.
- [07:36]
C
I mean, I completely agree with you and I think that there's a reason why TikTok has taken off the way that it has. There's a lot of reasons behind it, but one of them is people are craving authenticity and they're craving human connection. And like, the Duolingo owl is like the perfect example. There was that young killer social media manager who was quirky and fun and thoughtful and really helped explode Duolingo's growth. And I think people are really craving connecting with a human, not just a brand, of course. So we spend a lot of our time thinking about that. But what is really complicated, and this is something that I don't yet have a good answer to. I think it, it requires a lot of introspection and brainstorming and testing and experimenting is every go to market strategy that does well is inherently going to be creative and different and unique from everyone else. So, like, one of our portfolio companies is called Clay, if you're familiar with it, Clay will. Yeah. So they've done an incredible job obviously of helping people and specifically go to market teams sort of quickly experiment using a lot of really exciting AI tooling, obviously. And you know, what they always talk about is the importance of like bringing play and fun and creativity into go to market and how the best go to market strategies are not listening from this podcast and then copy and pasting it yourself. It's really thinking about, hmm, okay, that's a great idea. How can I now apply that and tweak it for my own business? And I think a lot of people don't know how to tweak. They try to copy and paste what other people are doing and that's never going to work. The whole root of this building public movement is, is authenticity. So what works for one company isn't going to work for another. What works for one founder isn't going to work for another. But it's figuring out the go to market that's going to work for you and that's going to work for your company and it's different for everyone.
- [09:13]
A
Yeah, I completely agree with that one. Like, the half life of a marketing strategy has never been shorter.
- [09:19]
C
Yeah.
- [09:19]
A
Because, you know, I can go out there with Comet or Atlas and look at somebody's strategy, get the full technology breakdown, reverse engineer the entire thing in like 20 minutes.
- [09:29]
C
Yeah.
- [09:30]
A
You know, and obviously like, I know what I'm doing. If you're a novice, maybe it takes you like an hour, but you're still going to get there. And that is exceptionally powerful. So it just means everybody is going to copy that. And the more people that do something, the less effective it is. That's one of the all time rules of marketing. Just so everybody's clear and so you have to have this differentiated strategy. One of the things that I force myself to do is if we're having a strategy conversation, I force myself to use the phrase this might be crazy multiple times in that discussion because I want to make sure that I am doing something so different outside of the norm that everybody in that conversation might think I am legitimately insane in saying it. And I would say about like 70, 80% of those things, like they get dismissed pretty quickly because they get chalked up. Oh, Kippy's crazy. But the other 20% are mostly the most successful things we do.
- [10:24]
C
I think that's the root of it. I mean, even like going back to the Tyler example, like he was sharing his ARR metrics, like, that is crazy. That is survivally insane. If you are a VC backed business, you should keep that all behind closed doors just for investor updates. No one should know if you're struggling for a little bit. If you're crushing it. You're exactly right. I think those crazy ideas are the ones that really work. I mean, there was an interesting stunt just pulled here in New York City with Ramp and they hired Kevin from the office to basically be, you know, uploading receipts. It was so creative, it was so thoughtful and it really was memorable. And I think also part of it, and I'd love to hear your take on this, part of it is like empowering your teammates to do things that they find fun and exciting. Like I honestly think that whole Ramp thing, same with Saquon Barkley. In the super bowl ad, which Ramp did, it was honestly just a lot of employees that thought it was a fun idea and just like wanted to have a good time with their team and was like, let's do this crazy bold thing. And they were so passionate about it and so excited about it that it actually really worked. And so I think that's so much of it too. It's like listening to your team and understanding where they're excited. Everyone has a different pulse and leaning into things that they want to spend 247 on because they think it could be a good idea. And if it works, it really works.
- [11:38]
A
I think you're hitting on a very important part of marketing, especially modern day marketing, which is it's so easy to do stuff now. Like you can take activity and you can just do things non stop. The question is, are those things like actually going to work? Are they actually going to have an impact? And what I have found, even pre AI just building and scaling HubSpot, is there's a direct correlation between how excited the person is who's doing the marketing to get the thing out to how well it's going to work. The more exciting they are to get that thing out the door, the, the better that campaign piece of content, what have you is going to work. And the example you gave with Ramp around, a couple of the things they've done. It's exactly that. There's like, hey, this is cool. I'm excited about this because it has like a couple of things. It means it's different and interesting. If you're excited about it, you tend to do a better job on it. So like the quality, the execution is much better and then it's just going to fundamentally just like different and resonate out in the market. And that just works. I don't know how to say it, but like most people who do marketing today are just like punching a clock and they don't get excited about the work they're doing and they don't create the forcing functions to do really great work. Like Tyler, in the example you gave from Beehive about working in public, working in public is just a forcing function. It's like you. You have this external accountability of things you have to talk about because you shared this information that forces you to have to think differently and act differently because that information's out in the world. I believe the more you hold to yourself, the less accountability you have and subsequently, like, the worst you're going to do as a marketer or as a.
- [13:20]
C
Business, a hundred percent. I think your point about energy being transferable is so true. Like, if you're excited about something, other people will be excited about it. This is something that I always try to challenge myself to do better and better job of. Like, I'll give you a fun example. I. On my podcast now, we have a few sponsors. And, you know, there's a few of them I think when I do my ad read, I'm very excited about. And then there's maybe one that I'm like, I don't get as excited about. And I spoke to the, you know, head of marketing at that company, and I was like, let's find a way to make this more exciting because I want to be able to scream from the rooftops these sponsors that are so wonderful in supporting us. And so, you know, last week we had like a jam session and I was like, okay, what is, like a really novel, creative thing that we could do as a partnership that, you know, we feel that as a venture firm is, like, really new and interesting no one else has ever done before. And you as a company feel like, wow, this is like an interesting use of our technology that no one else is really doing and coming up with sort of this, like, shared partnership and collaboration. So that to your point, I could hop on this ad read and be like, you guys wouldn't believe what we came up with. We're doing this brand new thing. It's so crazy. Please try it. Let us know. And so I think that's essential. I run very energetic and enthusiastic. Everyone always says that to me. They, like, they'll meet me in person. They're like, oh, wow, you are just like, as exactly as I thought. And I think that that is something that, like, when we strip out all the marketing lingo and all the business lingo, like, it's just important to be energetic and enthusiastic about things. And that in and of itself is going to take you so far. If you are like this ramp box in Flatiron, this person is going to be doing, it's going to be insane. You have to be part of it. That kind of just makes people believe it Even if it's a terrible idea. And so I think if people take like nothing else away, like don't underestimate the value of energy and like everything else is learnable. But I do completely agree with you. I think that that's so important on the marketing front.
- [15:13]
A
If you don't believe it, nobody else will.
- [15:15]
C
Yeah, 100%.
- [15:17]
A
And there's a bunch of people who put stuff out there that they don't believe. And that's fundamentally the problem. If you believe it, you, you can get other people to believe it. And that's kind of one of the secrets of all this.
- [15:29]
D
Look, most startups nail the product, but completely botch distribution. That's why we built the distribution moat builder. It's a research backed GPT that helps you figure out the actual distribution strategy for your product. So you can have a killer product and distribution plan if you want it. Scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now let's get back to the show.
- [15:52]
A
Okay, you're on the front lines of startups. You're seeing this AI revolution happen in real time. Can we maybe play like, give me a handful of things in the AI and tech space right now that are overhyped and maybe under hyped or like really good, like where you're like, oh, wow, I don't know why we're talking about this that much because it's not that awesome versus like we should be talking about these other things more.
- [16:15]
C
What I think is not quite there is a lot of the generative images. I'm trying to make this relevant on the marketing front too. But please, I'm someone where I love poking around with that stuff. I'll try everything under the sun. And I find that things get hallucinated and especially when you try to add words in there, it just never comes out perfectly. And so I think that there is so much potential. As a VC, I am paid to think 10 years in the future. So I know in 10 years from now it's gonna be able to spit out perfect images. But today it's not really there. And maybe the argument is like, you need to be better at prompting, but I've tried a lot of things and.
- [16:50]
A
You have to be a pretty advanced creative professional to make it pretty good. Yeah, that's the challenge.
- [16:54]
C
And I think also from like a cost standpoint, like a lot of the free tooling is what's accessible to everyone. I mean, everyone pays like 20 bucks to OpenAI. But in terms of all these other, you know, making music and Making art and all that. No one wants to pay like a bunch of money for every single platform. So I think in terms of free tooling, that image generation just isn't totally there yet. I would say that's overhyped in terms of underhyped. I am like a big transcript granola fan.
- [17:20]
A
Oh yeah? Are you granola user? Is that your number one?
- [17:22]
C
I am, I am.
- [17:23]
A
People are die hard granola fans out there, man.
- [17:26]
C
And you know, like, they haven't charged me yet. And I'm like, you guys could be charging me a lot of money. Okay. I don't know, I must have been grandfathered in or something.
- [17:33]
A
They just like it.
- [17:34]
C
But for me it's so helpful. I spend so much of my time context switching, so like the job of a vc. I try to be better at this in terms of time blocking, but you know, I'll meet with one of my LPs and then I'll do two founder calls in totally different sectors and then I'll hop on with like my publicist and then maybe I'll have a long strategy session with our venture partner. It is so much context switching and it actually is quite difficult to remember all the little details from every call. And so for me, I love that. And I can honestly sometimes like I'll grab a transcript, I'll toss it in chatgpt and just be like, they mentioned this one article, can you find it and remind me? And just little things like that goes a very long way. So yeah, I would say overhyped generative images under hyped, all the transcript, the transcription, note takers. Yeah, incredible.
- [18:18]
A
What I would say generally for everybody watching that, the unstructured data, the information from those notetakers, your email, any live conversations, all that stuff is magic in the world of AI in the way that just wasn't a few years ago.
- [18:31]
D
And.
- [18:32]
A
And so I think you're going to see that unstructured data of all sources take off. I'm on the other side of that. I've just been addicted to voice dictation now that it's actually good. I'm a big Willow voice user and like I cannot get enough of just like not having to type as much anymore. And that is like to me, very underhyped. You don't talk much about that. They released voice dictation as a feature of the Claude app recently, so it's like starting to be in a bunch of different places. But people are not taking advantage of that in the way they should to actually just save themselves, like literally an hour a day. So.
- [19:02]
C
So this is something that we haven't launched yet. So I can't say too much, but I'll hint at it here a little bit. I want your take. So I totally agree with you on the voice front. I love dictation and I think we can obviously get a lot more words per minute out when we speak than when we type. I get a lot of cold inbound now. Companies might be getting this on the customer support front. Maybe content creators are getting this on like the partnerships front. I get this a lot from founders pitching me. Email isn't really built for any ingesting into a lot of this AI tooling. It's just not, you know, you can't really like export all your emails easily and upload them and say which are the most important? Which should I be flagging? You still at this point kind of need like an EA to run through it themselves and sort of pull out and read every single line. And so I actually think there's some really interesting opportunities around people reframing what was once an email strategy into a voice phone strategy. And I think there's a lot of really exciting startups now in this sort of like voice space that are able to ingest data from your voice and aggregate it and organize it and export it in a much easier way and flag opportunities that email just isn't built for. Because I think a lot of people are stuck in the Gmail world, like, I'll speak for myself. You can talk about Superhuman, you can talk about some of these others, but like, for the most part we all experience and use email in the same way. And I'm sure at HubSpot too, you guys have systems that you can't really change in terms of email. Sure, but, but voice, there's a lot of really exciting things you can do to funnel new customers, current customers, and then therefore collect a lot of data from them versus sort of the complicated email setup today. So we're actually working on something right now which I'm very excited about. No venture fund has done it before and I think it'll be really bold and different, but, you know, that's what we like to do.
- [20:43]
A
I love it. Yeah, Look, I'm always a fan of your launches because they're actually interesting and at some point that's what we just want. We just want stuff to be interesting.
- [20:52]
C
Thanks.
- [20:53]
A
And even if some of them, and I don't say this about you, even from anybody, if some of them aren't good, that's okay. Just try I'd rather like somebody have like a 50 hit rate and 50 be awesome and 50% be terrible, but like they're at least out there trying 100.
- [21:07]
C
And I think also it's really fun to timestamp your ideas. So this is something too that I'm like obsessed with. And this is why I do a lot of long form writing is like, I want to look back and say, no, no, I was doing this before everyone else talked about it. It's just like, it's like an ego thing. Like, honestly, there's a little pride of.
- [21:23]
A
Being right in this for you.
- [21:24]
C
100%. I'm like, look it like you're all talking about it now. Two years ago I wrote an essay on that. Look it up. You know, I launched this thing before everyone else did. There's something to be said for that. So, you know, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. But I think in our business you gotta be early and ideally. Right, but you've gotta be early. So yeah, I'll fill you in on that more once we launch, but it's something we're iterating on right now.
- [21:43]
A
Please, please. As somebody who does a podcast twice a week to document all of his ideas, I can't say that I'm any different than you. Right. It's like have this treasure trove of the things we thought in the moment and can kind of go back and know where we were at on them, which I think is super important. I want to tell you about a podcast I love.
- [22:01]
B
It's called Creators are Brands. Hosted by Tom Boyd. It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Creators are Brands explore how storytellers are building brands online. From the mindsets to the tactics to the business side. They break down down what's working so you can apply that to your own mission. They just did a great episode called why your perfect content isn't working. Do this instead with Courtney Johnson. It's a great show. Listen to Creators are brands wherever you get your podcast.
- [22:34]
A
Okay, so we've talked a little bit about what founders and businesses need to do to kind of get distribution in the new world. We've talked a little bit about overhyped underhype out in the tech world today. You just talked about long form content. One of the most viral long form content that you've done is an essay about what great companies look like. And maybe you could break down for everybody here what the core elements in that essay were so that folks who are Building a company or working at a company can know what they should be aiming for.
- [23:06]
C
Absolutely. Before I do that, can I ask for your overhyped AI tool? And then I'll answer. You said Willa voices the underhyped. Can I be overhyped? Because I got to know your answer and then I'll answer your question.
- [23:16]
A
The AI video stuff is still a little overhyped. It's very expensive.
- [23:19]
C
Yeah.
- [23:20]
A
And it's very expensive to do anything at scale with. If you're a really great creative, I think it's probably properly hyped. But for the average person, AI video is just not quite there yet. So that's my overhyped and my underhyped is AI voice. It's like everybody should be using AI voice dictation. Just like a no brainer. I don't ever want to get voice memos again. Voice memos are, oh my God, they're cool. They're a violent, blunt object of our society that should no longer exist.
- [23:47]
C
Yeah. Marc Andreessen tweeted something like that. Like yesterday it was something just absolutely hysterical about how voice memos are just like the worst invention of mankind. I got a 10 minute voice memo once and I literally just replied being like, this will not be listened to.
- [23:59]
A
A ten minute voice memo.
- [24:00]
C
I didn't know that it was humanly possible. And I was just like, this is the fact that you had the audacity to send. This is a lot more about you and our friendship and we must reevaluate what you think. I can.
- [24:11]
A
The longer the voice memo, the less you care about me as a human being.
- [24:15]
C
Direct correlation. Direct correlation. Anyway, I'll answer your question about the essay. So I appreciate you bringing that up. Yes. So I was in the early stages of thinking about starting a fund and you know, I'm someone where. And I've it turns out this is a good thing for Venture, but I certainly do things my way for better or for worse. I have a lot of opinions and I thought, I have these ideas on what companies I think will actually be successful, but if I share them, I don't know how it's going to be handled. Because a lot of how Silicon Valley runs is the obsession with the unicorn. You know, I remember I was at a previous firm and we had really advertised a lot of the unicorns we had backed. And I remember thinking, huh, a lot of these companies are doing so hot, you know, and I won't name names, but you know, just because you're a unicorn does not equal success. Especially when you're in a bull market. And so I thought there's got to be other traits that we should admire that will make companies be more likely to be worth way more than a billion dollars. Because I'm in the business of making money. I wouldn't be in VC otherwise. So I just kept thinking there's a lot of other traits actually that I think make up these great companies. And not all of them are unicorns just yet. They're like in the early innings, but the metrics are a lot more durable. And so I spent a lot of time iterating and thinking on what this was. And I decided we needed a new animal icon. Because people, you know, in venture, they love like an icon or a phrase to grab onto.
- [25:34]
A
Sound bite, love a metaphor.
- [25:36]
C
And we love like an anti, you know, that's classic marketing. Who are you against? So I said, you know, it's not about unicorns, it's about elephants. And I published this essay called Elephants Not Unicorns and it went totally Viral. I got DMs from partners at very tier one firms that said, this is exactly what I think, but I can't talk about it publicly. I had people saying, this is exactly what I'm building. I'd love for you to invest in my company. And so it just totally exploded. And that's the basis of our firm today. Now, to answer your specific question about what is an elephant company? So an elephant company is sort of connected to this trend we talked about at the start where software, so commoditized distribution is the only moat. That's something that I think a lot about. And I think the companies that have that figured out will do very well. So they're very distribution obsessive businesses and also very culty businesses. So a lot of the elephants we back are in spaces like longevity, like faith, like certain vertical AI software companies where they're very obsessive culty niche followings. And then elephants have three traits. So they are community obsessive. Like I said, they're in very culty spaces. I like to say the customers refer to themselves as members. And people are like, wait, what? If you look at the website, you can look at the language, that's good. And people, you know, they say like, you're a member of our community, of our company. It can be consumer, it can be B2B. But they treat the people that are part of it as a participant, an evangelist, a member, not just a customer. It's, it's much less transactional. The second core trait of an elephant Company is, it's purpose driven. So it's really trying to change an industry. It's not like, you know, an enterprise software business that's got one new feature and then there you go, it's a brand new company. No, no, no, no, no. Like they have to build a real cult following. You need to be changing something in an industry. Something's gotta be so, so wrong to that you are tackling and you are doing it in a completely novel new way. Often in this purpose driven bucket we see really unique brand identity, really unique design because people are really trying to evoke something, evoke a feeling out of the people that are working for them that are using the product. So we see a really interesting branded design element in that second bucket. And then the third bucket of an elephant company is building in public. So this is something we talked about earlier. One of the founders is often the face of the brand. Sometimes they are a content creator in their past life, but they are very well known in the sector that they are building in. And there's sort of this like sub piece around like employees building in public as well that we found has done very well with our elephant thesis. But it's this idea that we want to be a lot more public facing and open and authentic than private and stealth scared. And so it's more of like an ethos within the company. And so those are the elephant businesses. And so, you know, for us, we back very, very early stage software elephant companies and they think about company building and specifically go to market in the ways that I laid out.
- [28:17]
A
And if somebody's out there like, hey, I'm running a company or I'm an executive at a company and I want to be more like that. I don't want to just be that feature function. I don't want to be the next, you know, watered down version of Oracle or what, whatever it may be. Like what are some questions they should ask themselves? Give us like the next level down of like, if you're like, oh, I'm actually serious about doing this the right way, like what would you do differently?
- [28:40]
C
Yeah, well, I think what a lot of people don't ask themselves enough is do I have true founder market fit? And we hear this phrase thrown around all the time in venture. We hear product market fit, we hear narrative market fit, we hear founder market fit. What that means is are you the person who should be tackling this issue? I hear all the time in venture and again, these businesses get funded and they do okay, but someone, you know, maybe their background's in health care and now they're building a legal tech startup. Or maybe they're really passionate about climate, but they see this really interesting opportunity in fintech and fintech and crypto has nothing to do with climate. So that you've got these people that sort of pivot and adjust and they're building things that do not align with who they truly are, what their background shows, who they have a unique advantage to hire, what they could talk endlessly about on a podcast. And so my what I would tell someone like that, that's an executive that doesn't want to build something that already watered down version of Oracle, let's say, you know, what you should ask yourself is, is the thing that I'm thinking about building really the very best thing that I could be building based on my background and my passions? I think a more fun question is like, could I talk about this for an hour at Thanksgiving and not get tired? I mean, for better or for worse, I could talk about my fund's thesis for five hours and still be like energized and ready to go and be like, no, no, no, lucky you're family. No, like, I feel bad for them. Like, my fiance's like, trust me, she can talk about it a lot. But I mean, really, people can spitball questions back at me and like, I always have something to say and if they challenge me, I love it because it makes me think more thoughtfully about it. So I think you have to really pick the thing that gets you so energized and you can talk about endlessly on a podcast. And then also there's the realities of look at your own background. Do you have the background? Because I get pitched all the time by these people and I'm like, I'm so sorry, why are you building this? Like, I just don't, I don't see the connection at all. And so I think we need more people that are like, care about that authenticity because there's no world you're building in public. There's no world you're recruiting top talent. There is absolutely no world that you're going to change an industry if this isn't like oozing inside of you. And there's no world that you're going to be the one of 50 with that idea that's going to win, maybe with the one of five. A decade ago you could have been the winner because you had great execution and you really had, you know, the most funding. But now there's just, it's just too hard. I don't see that happening.
- [30:55]
A
I think those are great reflections to ask yourself whether you're in the right spot for yourself either as a founder, as a leader in a company. Like, you can kind of adapt those in a bunch of different ways. But I think what you're really hitting on is like, you can only go so far if you're just doing something you don't love, that you don't have a bunch of very deep experience and passion around. And if you don't have the unique skills that make that customer happy. Right. That you can't actually do the thing that you know they need and that you have this like burning desire to solve this problem out in the world.
- [31:33]
C
Totally. And I think you have to just tell yourself that there's more competition now than there's ever been before. This is not a new idea founder market fit. It's not. It's been around and, but it's infinitely more important today and it'll be infinitely more important tomorrow than it has been ever in the past. And so I think you just have to ask yourself, where are things going? There will only be more builders, there will only be more companies. You really have to make sure that you have that authenticity thrown through with the idea you're solving.
- [31:57]
A
One of the things that you said earlier was that, like, it's my job to see 10 years in the future.
- [32:01]
C
Yeah.
- [32:01]
A
And I think that's a really interesting thing. Cause I look at that a lot about my job too. And you're talking a lot about this kind of creator, first founder, first build in public model of doing marketing. And it's working great. And it's exactly what you should do. What happens when everybody does that? You know, like we're really drawing the line out, like in three, four or five years. What does it really look like when this is just like now, the status quo. What's your take on that?
- [32:27]
C
Yeah. So I have a couple of thoughts. The first is you need someone like me on your cap table who could be your thought partner that's predicting these things. Okay. Because I am thinking 10 years ahead and I always am thinking about what's getting overly saturated and what are the new ideas. So my advice is find someone who can be like a go to market thought partner that's obsessed with this the way that I am. Because you're totally right. You could be very deep in build mode and think that this is a strategy that works. Oh, turns out everyone's now doing it. That's the first thing. The second thing is, you know, part of me thinking 10 years ahead is also thinking, this is where we're going to be in 10 years. But here's what I know for sure for the next three. And really being mindful of what's coming up in the pipe. And so I'm really a big fan of Union Square Ventures. They're a firm here in New York. They have incredible returns. And one thing that they do that I really respect is each fund, they put their stake in the ground. We picked up our heads after three years of deploying, and this is sort of our reoriented thesis for the world. And then they commit to that strategy for the next three years based on their 10 year vision. And then they pick up their head and they say, okay, our next fund, we've looked, we're looking at the next 10 years. This is what we want to do for the next three.
- [33:31]
A
And.
- [33:32]
C
And so they kind of have this like, they look 10 years ahead, but then they're planning for the next three, and they allow themselves the flexibility to adjust based on how the world has changed. And that's a philosophy that I very much take and I do myself. So this Elephant's Not Unicorns thesis was like, my 2023 stake in the ground. I look 10 years ahead, and this is how I'm going to invest for the next three years, fund two. You know, I'm going to do the same exact thing. We'll be in 2026. I'm going to look around, I'm going to see what's working, what's getting saturated, what's not. I'm going to look 10 years ahead. And then we say, okay, how should we invest for the next three years knowing what we see in 10? And so I think what's very important is, you know, if we think 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, that stuff is so far away, you got to get tactical today. And so I think you have to really focus actually in smaller increments and give yourself the flexibility to change your mind. You know, strong opinions, loosely held. That's my point of view, 100%. So what I always joke with people is, you know, my firm's called Park Rangers Capital, so we can operate in this, like, national park brand world. You know, we invest in elephants. My podcast is called Trailblazers. We have a lot of, like, brand elements.
- [34:34]
A
I hope you like to hike, because that would just break the whole thing.
- [34:37]
C
I do.
- [34:37]
A
Okay, good.
- [34:38]
C
Imagine if I hate nature. No, I do. But I'm like, fun too, I might say. Actually, it's no longer elephants. It's giraffes and here's why. So fun too is all giraffes and fun too I might say. You know what, it's actually, it's not elephants. It's specifically African elephants and this is why. Or it's not animals, it's actually trees. And so I give myself the flexibility to adjust. Still keeping that 10 year vision in mind.
- [35:00]
A
Okay, well everybody on YouTube is going to yell at me if I don't do a follow up and be like, you know, your job is to have a really strong opinion on the next three years. So in the next three years of go to market for really successful, high growing companies. What do you think that looks like?
- [35:17]
C
So I'm still in my elephant's phase. So I'm die hard. On all the things I've been writing. I would say my first piece of advice is read our blog and look at what I talk about. There's so many different things I think what I talked about with Tyler, a lot of the different strategies he's doing is really thoughtful. One thing we didn't touch on that I think is really important that I have written about as well is the importance of understanding daily active users versus daily authentic users. And so this is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about as a lot of the activity on the Internet is not human driven, it's actually technology driven. You're going to get really clear on who your actual customers are and who the humans are on the other end and who actually is. It's just technology and AI bots driving all the traffic on the Internet. So that's one thing that I would encourage people to think a lot about. Again, take this ideology of like daily active users versus daily authentic users and paste it to your own unique business. How can you sort out the difference between that? How can you tell if there's a human on the other end? But in terms of strategies like the build in public one, I believe in completely. I think you should be building in very culty spaces. We've been doing a lot of stuff in vertical AI because we see that is really working out well for us. The consumer tech bets we are making are in extremely. I mean there's one that we just invested in. I'm so excited to share. It is in like the cultiest of culty spaces. I've been waiting a very long time.
- [36:29]
A
What does it mean to be a culty space? I want to know what.
- [36:31]
C
Yeah.
- [36:31]
A
What's it mean to be a culty space?
- [36:33]
C
Okay, so I'll make It very simple. Your members, some people call them customers, use. We call them members. Your members are spending a lot of their time every single day on your platform. And that's one thing. So you can see it in the data. Two, it's a really big part of their identity. So one thing I like to say to people is, are you going to mention that company in your Instagram bio?
- [36:51]
A
Oh, okay, I like that.
- [36:52]
C
Are you going to mention it? You know, the obvious example is like, I'm a Nike runner. You know what I mean? I'm a superpower ambassador, right? I'm a beehive creator. Is that. Is it, you know, the webflow developer, right? Like, we were early investors in webflow at my last firm. Like, that's a perfect example. Is it a company that you say, this is actually part of me and this is part of who I am? You know, there's some interesting stuff happening in the faith and religion space, right? That is something that, for a lot of people, religion, that is a core part of who they are. It's something that they'll mention in their bio. So, you know, I think that culty spaces, it's a combination of, like, actual metrics. How often are they using this, you know, product, Are they excited about, Are they referring other people? It's like sort of the nitty gritty there. And then it's the fun question of, like, is it in your bio if you're sending out, like, you know, your annual holiday card and you're one pager to the family, does it get mentioned in there? You know, does it show up in ways that are extreme and dramatic for a company that you're kind of like, hi. I mean, I guess you can find community within a company, but I think of that usually as like, a nonprofit or your local support system. Oh, no, no. This company is making you feel connected to something bigger than yourself. That's when it's culty. There's a lot of strategies, but I would say, like, read our writing. Figure what works for you and your unique company, and don't be afraid. Do not be afraid to share your ideas with the world. I can't tell you how many people I speak to that feel like everyone's going to steal their idea and that, you know, they're. They're. They're just, like, paranoid and.
- [38:14]
A
Good luck, man. Come on.
- [38:15]
C
Good luck. And it's, it's honestly, like, part of it's like getting customers, but a lot of it's about hiring top talent, which is a whole thing. We didn't even get into. But like it's essential.
- [38:25]
A
It is everything. I joke with everybody. I'm in a meetings, I recruiter when I retire because I love hiring more than anything else in this world. And yeah, it is something where like repetition really matters. Maybe we'll do a whole, whole show on hiring at some point in the future. Last question before we go. There's a bunch of folks who are listening to the show, probably who are, you know, maybe they're operators at a company and they're thinking about starting a company or they're just like getting started and how the heck should they think about like raising Money, talking to VCs? I get this question all the time from a lot of people. And you're a venture capitalist. So like tell us what they should do.
- [39:02]
C
Yeah, totally. So my advice is to start talking to customers, AKA members. Figure out what they want, make sure you know what they're excited about. You should be talking to customers way before you're talking to VCs. I can't believe I even have to say this, but what matters is that you're building something people want. Yeah, the VCs will come once they see that there is something exciting. That's the first thing. The second thing is this is a bit of a hot take but if you are listening to this and you're saying, huh, how should I raise vc? You probably shouldn't raise VC and the people are like oh my gosh, that's insane. No, no, the people who raise venture capital often are multi time founders for the most part or they like went through a very specific accelerator path with the network of VCs who can help them and they already know who they're going to raise from. They already know the partners that they want and those are the people who have the easiest time fundraising and sort of get the quick markups and build something exciting and get all the resources. So if you are listening to this and let's say you are like some brilliant VP of Eng at some really exciting scaling tech company, I think that's amazing. I think you 100% should start something. I think you should go build something that is really exciting and not go raise VC out the gate. Show early traction, early metrics and then consider raising. But if you out the gate do not know who you're going to raise from, do not already have a network of VCs that shouldn't be your first step because you're just going to struggle to raise and it's going to hold you back from actually Doing the thing that you want to do, which is building product and talking to users.
- [40:24]
A
I love that. And it also comes back to one of your core points today. It's like if you're building in public and you're that engineer and you are starting to get traction and you're communicating that traction, everybody's going to come to you. It's not going to be a problem. You're going to find thousand percent. You're going to be like, hey, talk to me.
- [40:37]
C
I'll be DMing you. Listen, if you are building something in public and there's clear traction and people are excited and you're getting a lot of likes and you're getting a lot of, you know, enthusiastic customer comments, you know, I saw you hired a great person. Oh, I'm in your DMs. I'm in your DMs. Let's talk with me. I'd love to learn more. I love what you're doing. So, yes, I agree with you. I think that's a great strategy too, is like, consider building the community around the idea you're solving. It doesn't have to be the exact product that you're building, but it can be like the problem, the movement, the industry, and then the people will come find you.
- [41:06]
A
I love that. That is a great way to close out the show. Erica, thank you so much for chatting with us today and sharing all of your knowledge from, from the front lines of the startup world. And we'll see everyone next time on Marketing. It's the grain.