Brian Kershon

👉 Attention Pacific-Northwest founders ✅ Are you building in B2B SaaS/AI? ✅ Have you raised less than $250K? ✅ Had one-too-many VCs tell you you’re too early? I’d love to chat. The Pacific Northwest is home to two of the magnificent seven, the birthplace of some awesome companies (Slack, Outreach, Remitly, Redfin, Auth0 to name a few) and a magnet for great AI/technical talent. Forum Ventures, will be doubling down in this awesome ecosystem and writing more checks into B2B SaaS/AI founders for $100K+ admission to our pre-seed accelerator. Our pre-seed program is highly personalized - not your generic startup school. Here’s what you can expect: 🤝 Hands on GTM and Sales support to get you to $200k+ ARR 🌎 A community of B2B founders who have raised $1B+ in follow-on funding 🚀 An awesome Managing Director who will work alongside your team as a fractional senior operator / co-founder. They’re all former founders and have lived 0-1. 💸 No-bs investors who will help quarter back your seed round and show up through the good and the bad. 👋🏻 PNW founder? Pitch us here: https://hubs.ly/Q02tdP_r0 🙏 Not a founder? Please share with your network or tag a founder below ⬇️ cc Simon Chou Dominic Lau Richard Kerby Casey Van Maanen Ryan Holmes Adarsh Pallian Paul Irving Scott Barker Sara Lindquist John Eng Sarah Studer Jacob Laes Marius Ciocirlan Chris DeVore Brendan Wales Sheila Gulati Jen Haller Kirby Winfield Andy Liu Matt Wang Sanford W Spivey Amy Sallin Erik Benson Annie Luchsinger Lauren Glatter Bryan Hale Brian Glaister Kristopher Alford Jeffrey Manner Julian (Jay) Rhind Connor Edwards Daniel Baraghoush Kaylee Lieffers (Astle)

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Work at a natural pace. In Cal Newport's new book "Slow Productivity" he walks through 3 components to accomplishment without burnout. 1. Do fewer things 2. Work at a natural pace  3. Obsess over quality Working at a natural pace is an area I'm focused on as I transition to whatever is next in my career. Most of my career's natural pace was driven by anxiety, coffee, HIIT workouts and more caffeine - which I'm pretty sure isn't what he means. In my late 40's though, that just doesn't work anymore. Nor do I want it to. It's a tricky philosophy though because if you're in the startup world I don't know how you build something meaningful and work at a natural pace. I've never seen it happen. It appears this is a philosophy that needs to be applied to a specific time and place vs. everyone, everywhere. Anway, I don't have the answers, I'm just exploring different questions. What I do know is working at a natural place seems to be more appropriate for where I am today. 

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Employee terminations: they're a topic no one wants to discuss but that every company has to navigate. Thankfully, Melanie Naranjo and wonderful Ethena advisor (& Gusto's former People Leader) Jess Yuen are tackling this tricky topic for the next Ethena webinar. Register if you want to learn more about these topics: How to pressure test whether or not termination is the right course of action Best practices for communicating termination decisions How to minimize risk and choose the best course of action when things get tricky Critical pitfalls to avoid

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Unpopular opinion that many people are afraid to say because it seems to go against the grain or sounds politically incorrect, or risks a uproar. Remote doesn't work for most of the companies by definition. Company is a group of like-minded people working towards a common goal as a company, it requires teamwork, discipline, shared vision, drive etc that can only be maximized when people are physically together. The illusion that remote seems to be working is only because it is practiced in a large company that already has a solid footing and the demtiment to competitiveness will not manifest in short term. Disagree? Try remote with a startup that is still on borrowed money. Remote works only in very specific context or for specific role, which again is rare and not representative of most companies that make up the backbone of the ecomony.

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Another day, another app out in the wild! 📲 🌱 The new Clear Choice mobile app allows Washington residents to shop from 2 of their stores in Tacoma & Bremerton, from the comfort of home or work. -Search for specific brands and locate which store has it on stock. -Fun in-app shopping - not your mobile website mirrored on your app -Engaging rewards -Order tracking & more Check it out on the App Store today. 🌱 #clearchoice #newapp #custommobileapps #washington #digitalawesome

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When You’re Starting, Just Sell. What do Google, Salesforce, the U.S. Department of State, and the Athena Grill in Santa Clara (California) have in common? They were all clients of e-Nor, the firm that I cofounded in 2003. It’s probably not hard to guess which of these came first. When you’re starting out in business, just sell. Don’t worry too much about pricing or about the stature of the companies that are willing to work with you. Even if you’re positioning yourself as a premium service provider and your hourly rate target is high, it’s OK to offer deep discounts to the first clients. Until you’re established, you basically need to do whatever it takes to close those first deals and get those first “logos” onto your website and into your marketing materials. If you can get the clients to provide testimonials after the discounted deals, all the better. Each logo and testimonial should be a stepping stone to the next. As you build a client base, you can feature the higher-profile logos. And you can gradually climb to the hourly rate that you were originally targeting. Working for free In these two instances, it could be strategic to even work for free: - to impress a prospect who could become a large client - to enter a new market For free work, limit the scope. You could offer a sample audit or another micro-sized service that would allow you to demonstrate your expertise while avoiding a big time commitment. And run away from anyone who directly asks you to work for free. They’re not your kind of client, and they’re not going to help your business. Giving back Since we’re discussing pricing, I’m compelled to point out a case in which I do unequivocally advocate providing your services for free. If you know me at all, you know I’m a big fan of giving back. Even if cash flow is slow and your budget is tight, you can always offer your services, expertise, and insights for free to causes and projects you find meaningful. Whether it’s a local nonprofit or a national advocacy group, countless organizations could greatly benefit from your expertise but may not have the means to afford it or even seek it out. The benefits are the rewarding feelings you’ll receive from contributing. Always give expecting nothing in return; it always amazes me how much comes back when you give freely.

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I flew to Seattle this weekend to attend the Pacific Northwest Dental Conference. I was half expecting it to be a complete waste of money. Here’s what shocked me: - SaaS businesses are booking (on average) $1-2M ARR through these conferences - These dental practice owners and DSOs come to buy - When I asked people what applications AI could have in the dental industry, the overwhelming majority said “identify and assess dental conditions” - You don’t need to buy a booth at a conference to sell Dental leaders were genuinely mind-blown when they learned that their front office could use AI to optimize profitability and appointment scheduling efficiency. They were even more mind-blown when they got to try Rondah. In fact, they were so in awe that three of these leaders made Rondah AI (Techstars '24) a focal point of their seminars and lectures during the conference. People left highlighting Rondah as the most exciting and interesting part of those seminars. Here’s the thing — I didn’t purchase a booth at this conference. I bought a $210 ticket meant for receptionists (cheeky, I know) and cold approached individuals. The result? Meetings booked that can translate to $1.1M ARR, 3 seminars that educated people on AI and Rondah, and a great time exploring Seattle. As legacy SDR-led spray-and-pray GTM strategies die, I’ve realized that things like conferences can be a good approach for some SaaS companies. At the very least, it’s a good strategy for me.

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Watch Samsara CEO Sanjit Biswas on the Logan Bartlett Podcast and hear about his journey as a CEO, the lessons he’s learned along the way, and what the future could have in store for Samsara: 

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How are other organizations preparing for the future? The UC Irvine team generously shared all their hot tips and expertise in this insightful webinar. From not overlooking “silent skills” and empowering employees to manage their careers there was lots of great advice! Learn more about why UC Irvine chose Fuel50 to help grow their people and ultimately their organization too. Carve out an hour and watch here: https://hubs.la/Q02BQFx50 . #Fuel50 #TalentMobility

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Last week, some incredible experience design minds gathered at the House of Yes in Brooklyn for the World Experience Summit organized by WXO - the WXO - World Experience Organization. The “Experience Revolution” Takes Center Stage in NYC What was once a movement pioneered by visionaries has shifted mainstream. As an OG instigator, the event felt like an reunion of so many incredible pioneers who have been working for years to create meaningful impact on people’s lives. Justin "JB" Bolognino , Emilie Baltz, Jacob Marshall, Ida Benedetto, Jeremy Boxer, Dave Rife, Gabe L., Kae Burke & Anya Shopnakova. I remember many early Windmill Factory pitches where people looked at us like we had three heads! We had to invent a collaboration method, The Pollination Process, just to get buy in from our clients which would walk them through baby steps to explain an interactive installation for a public park or an immersive theatre experience at a conference. It feels now we could simply say the word “interactive or immersive” and a client would get excited! It’s very affirming to see this industry blossom into a global phenomenon and James Wallman and the WXO - World Experience Organization are doing a great job bringing us together. Are experiences the new luxury? I predict with the AI content explosion real interactions with humans will be the new currency both URL and IRL. A new currency in a world filled by content overload and overstimulation and passive consumption. People crave meaningful, multi-sensory journeys that spark joy, connection and transformation. Experience Design Pioneers have answered this call, creating installations and adventures that ignite the imagination and awaken the soul. From art exhibitions that dissolve the boundaries between physical and digital to immersive theatrical spectacles that transport audiences on fantastical journeys to spas and wellness experiences, theme parks, corporate meetings, retreats and festivals, interactive social games… the possibilities are literally limitless on what we’re calling “an experience” these days. Let’s trade static screens for kaleidoscopic dream worlds, trade passive scrolling for full-body engagement and create works that challenge each other. Excited to be welcoming the WXO - World Experience Organization to NOWHERE to continue these connections and conversations year round. #technology #immersivetech #immersive #events #virtualcollaboration https://lnkd.in/d_64CfMh

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This week DevHub executive team gets together to close out the 2nd quarter and align on 3rd goals, priorities. Since late 2022 when the decision was made to work with #franchise brands directly it’s been freeing, hard - all the feels. We went from a company that ‘took orders,’ from partners to a company that truly provides real results, knowledge from the 17+ years, hundreds of brands and millions of websites migrated. Chances are before 2022 you did not know that DevHub was behind many of the leading #martech players from listings providers to paid ads vendors to review management platforms. We saw the commodization of tools and watered down services of many who offered ‘websites, local pages, store finder, franchisee sites, landing pages,’ to capture more of a brands business for the sake of revenue and many more that tried to shove every brand into the same box 📦. We are not in that rat race. We are exceptional websites, and we will continue on that path. These next few quarters are the pivotal moment of us, our customers as brands launching with devhub have to understand the value of/ difference of devhub…this is the time we show up. As always…will share here #linkedin See you 🔜 Rachel Berman Flanagan - COO Jennifer Koen - CCO Kimberly Kanber - CFO Daniel Rust - CTO Eunice David - CRO #eos

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🔥Join Jessica Z., COO of Talentful, and Matt Bradburn, CEO of People Collective, for a workshop on designing people experiences like a product leader at Pando Horizons. Register here 👉 https://bit.ly/3V8U6yd Learn how to treat the development of your organization's culture and employee interactions as a product, applying business-side strategies and metrics to retain and optimize your talent. What You'll Learn:  ✔️ How-to apply product development principles to the employee lifecycle ✔️Tactics for aligning teams and programs to business metrics and outcomes ✔️Strategies to continuously improve your people experience programs #peopleops #hrevents #hrtech #agile #eltv #peoplestrategy

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It's been Product Vision week at Metro Retro this week. Here's a screenshot of "the middle step" that we're currently at. This is the step between: "WTF are we making, who for, and why are we making it?" and "Hello target audience, here's why you should buy Metro Retro for your team." This week's workshops all expertly marshalled by Steven Moseley, in probably the most neatly-organized boards I've seen in a long while 👏 (I'll probably get him to make these as templates for Metro Retro users, they're that good). From this process we will end up with a tighter product roadmap and better-positioned marketing.

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What should a product detail page (PDP) for a wine shop look like? 🍷 The Shopify team at Especial recently redesigned the online shop for Pieroth. Pieroth is famous for their first class wine tasting experiences and wine products. For the PDP, we thought about what makes Pieroth's wine really special. We think one of the core USP of Pieroth is their wine knowledge. E.g. they have a offering where you can find out about your very personal wine profile and can give recommendations based on that. So, besides the usual best practices like payment/shipping/price information and a large product image, we added several features which you can see in the video: ✅ Colourful tags to show which wine profile and properties apply to the product ✅ Icons+Text to show the most important facts about this wine like its type, region, country etc. ✅ "Wie schmeckt dieser Wein?" ("How tastes this wine?") section showing the flavours and very detailed taste attributes of the wine ✅ Description of the region the wine comes from ✅ Information about the brand of the wine and the vinery ✅ "More suitable products" section which can be both editor's choice or Shopify's AI based recommendations ✅ Section about the Pieroth Platin loyalty program ✅ Section about Pieroth's participation in the fight against climate change Want to see it in action? Visit https://lnkd.in/eV6Fwdgr Want to chat about a redesign or optimisations for your E-Commerce store? Send me a message or comment with "PDP" and I'll get in touch. #shopify #pdp #design #digitaldesign #ecommerce #commerce #d2c

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The NY Times just ripped me off. Ok, ok. That’s not entirely true. Actually, it’s not even remotely true. But seriously, did I not post about this last week? Retail *vacancies* are at a two-decade low. In other words, retail spaces are full. How can that be if there’s a retail Apocalypse? What’s taking up all of the retail space? 1. Entertainment and Retailtainment: -Pickleball Courts -Cannibis stores (Good heads up Robert Cogan.) -Ax Throwing -Topgolf 2. Ethnic stores, particularly serving: -Middle Eastern -Hispanics -Asians 3. Hot Retail Chains: -Nordstrom Rack -Harbor Freight -Dollar General -Ulta Beauty -7-Eleven -Walmart -Target -Aldi Yes, times are challenging. But there’s still a lot of buying. It just looks different. So if you don’t want to be in a retail apocalypse. Maybe play into the retail that’s growing. ——— 🔹Driving retail velocity in Kroger, Whole Foods, Albertsons, Costco, Walmart, Sprouts, and More 🔹DM me or book an appointment for help! #ecommerce #retailmedia #retailvelocity #retail #cpggrowth #instacart #cpg #tradespend #shoppermarketing

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It was an awesome time in Portland representing MintPass with Melissa Leventhal at TravelCon! 🙌 Here are a few takeaways after 3 days of chatting with travel creators of all kinds ⬇ ⬇ ⬇ 1️⃣ Making it as a startup travel creator is TOUGH 😓 And why wouldn’t it be? Getting paid to travel the world is the dream. The reality is that platforms are now saturated with this content vertical, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to separate oneself such to break through the noise and grow a following. 2️⃣ The game is skewed toward those who have already made it 🏆 The travel creator landscape is quite top-heavy heavy where those who were there early to build an audience continue to do well with guaranteed brand deals. Smaller creators long for unique, alternative tools to even the playing field and aid in community growth outside of the usual social platform algo hacking. 3️⃣ The new way to get attention is to niche down 🔎 Less is more in community growth when your community is hyper-focused on a particular niche. As the landscape becomes more and more competitive, travel creators are focusing more on finding their unique content vertical to differentiate themselves. We talked some cool ones across areas of geography, wellness, budget, luxury, family, solo, and so many others. 4️⃣ Web3 doesn't matter 🤷‍♂️ This one was obvious, but I’m reminded again that our means for delivering value is arbitrary and rather the value itself is what matters. Most of those with whom we chatted were not web3 users, but they were intrigued by the value that our web3 platform can deliver. Value = Adoption. Go figure.‍ As we aim to build MintPass into a tool for travel tastemakers, it was awesome to chat with and get direct feedback from the creator persona who often has the best recs to share, but lacks the proper tools for sharing and building a brand off of that credibility. 🤝 Thank you to all who provided insights for us. ❤️ Back to work. 👷‍♂️ #traveltech #startups #creatortools‍‍‍

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Now that we’ve delivered custom workforce management solutions for a few contractors in California, I’ve had a chance to really see the folks in the field and the management issues that trace back to the days when laptops were a luxury thing. (I’m talking about small to mid-sized organizations here.) It turned out to be quite a conservative vertical, with many still relying on outdated stuff. Challenges Faced by Field Service Businesses: A survey by Verizon Connect highlights the most challenging issues: - Customer satisfaction (56%) - Profit margins (48%) - Talent acquisition and retention (47%) Other challenges include: Technology Alignment: Many companies use multiple outdated technologies that don’t integrate whatsoever. Operational Cost Increase: Dispatches generate revenue but also generate crazy overhead. Talent Pool: Poor technology frustrates field staff, leading to higher turnover. When it comes to field service management, some industries are particularly notorious for poor management. The top five industries that struggle the most with FSM are: Telecommunications: Companies in this sector often face challenges with scheduling, dispatching, and maintaining the vast network infrastructure, leading to delays and inefficiencies​ Utilities: The management of services like electricity, water, and gas supply is complex, often plagued by outdated systems and equipment, leading to frequent service disruptions and customer dissatisfaction​ Healthcare: Field service in healthcare involves the maintenance and repair of critical medical equipment. Issues here can severely impact patient care and safety due to delays in service and equipment downtime​ Construction: Managing field services in construction is challenging due to the dynamic and fragmented nature of projects. Poor coordination and communication often result in project delays and increased costs​ Manufacturing: This industry deals with maintaining machinery and equipment both in-house and at customer sites. Ineffective FSM can lead to prolonged downtimes and significant productivity losses​ TBC

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