Saumil Mehta

Building Products in Startups: Lesson #2 As entrepreneurs, we often gravitate towards what we naturally excel at or enjoy. Not everyone is a born salesperson, but until you've heard "NO" enough times, you haven't really tested your product and your own resiliency. Resiliency is especially important when you are prospecting for potential clients. In short: EMBRACE THE "NO" TO FIND THE "YES" — AND NEVER STOP SELLING YOUR PRODUCT. Building a startup also means pushing boundaries. As founders, many of us aren’t trained sales professionals, but here's the truth: selling is a muscle you need to exercise regularly. Each "no" is an opportunity to understand your market better, refine your pitch, and find your path to "yes." Here are some additional observations to date: Learn to Love Objections. The tough questions from potential clients are golden opportunities. They force you to think critically and refine your product's value proposition. If you only hear praise, it's time to dig deeper.  Praise makes me nervous! Stay in Sales Mode. No matter who joins your team, founders should remain close to customers and drive top-line sales. Relying solely on others to sell your product can be risky. Keep Iterating on Your Sales Pitch. Don’t settle for a pitch that works once. Iterate, adapt, and evolve.  Don’t Delegate. You may be tempted to delegate sales to a 3rd party who has “access” and “special sauce” - do it yourself at first. Refine Your Ideal Customer Profile & Buyer Persona. Do this until you hit on a conversion rate within the accepted range for your industry segment. By the way, even if you dream of a product that sells itself (and that should be the goal), the reality is, few products do. 🤷‍♂️ Whether you're a natural salesperson or not, selling is a fundamental skill in the startup world. What sales challenges and lessons can you share? Happy Selling! 🚀 #StartupLife #StartupLessons #Sales #CoffeeIsForClosers 

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I’m fortunate to spend time with a small group of people whom I consider to be the next generation of startup c-level executives. These folks have a lot in common. They’re often in VP level roles, have crazy high ceilings, and they’re perpetually looking to take their game to the next level. They’re running hard. Really hard. Oftentimes, they’re running just as hard at home. In many cases this career apex seems to coincide with having a young family. Sometimes, they run until they crash. I find this comes up a lot in our conversations. I’ve been there. I’ve seen good people leave good companies simply because they’re tired. Longevity is about maintenance. I'm into maintenance. Here are five maintenance strategies that have worked for me; 1/ Align time and priorities. In startups workload exceeds capacity so you need to decide when you work and what you work on. This is a life decision, not a business decision. 2/ Develop a maintenance process to increase longevity. What are you doing daily, weekly and monthly to ensure you’re operating in easy mode? 3/ Understand the power of identity. Exercise caution if what you do is who you are. Startups are volatile and high risk. Detach professional failures from failures of self. 4/ Play the infinite game. Understand that the game you're playing has no finish line. The goal is to keep playing and find joy in the pursuit. 5/ Build a personal board of directors. Startups may be for pirates and romantics, but that doesn’t mean you have to face the world alone. Building a network around you will help commiserate and think through difficult problems. More here, On Longevity: https://lnkd.in/duMCPtSV

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I could talk about product positioning all day. Good product positioning makes it easy for buyers to see themselves, their routines, and their goals reflected in what you're offering them. Sometimes it's shifting your product positioning from "what we do" to "what we do for you". What a dream getting to meet and talk with Daniel Murray of The Marketing Millennials podcast about: ➡ Creating product positioning that resonates (and how we think about it at Recharge ➡ Sustaining brands in the routine economy ➡ Why your first marketing hire should be a product marketer, and more Check out the full episode ✨

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Are you working in experimentation / conversion optimization? Come to the flagship industry event Experimentation Live (formerly CXL Live), Oct 10-11 in Austin TX It's an event designed mostly for networking and peer-to-peer sharing, but also has a killer lineup: — Diana Jerman, Director of Product Experimentation at Disney Streaming — Stewart Ehoff, Head of Experimentation at RS Group — Luke Mortensen, Senior Director of Experimentation at Capital One — Chad Sanderson, CEO at Gable — Melissa Weiss, Director of Product at Eventbrite — Lukas Vermeer, Director of Experimentation at Vista — Sidhant Bakhru, Director of Growth, Product, Marketing, and Experimentation at Hulu — Shanelle Mullin, Experimentation and Analysis at Shopify Even the workshops (on the day before) are rocking: 1 — Ron Kohavi: Advanced topics in practical A/B testing (P-values misconceptions, power and false positive risk, why give positive results a haircut, when and how to correctly peek). 2 — Various practitioners: Application of AI in experimentation (how to use AI for ideation, hypothesis, problem statement and exploration, discovery). Early bird tickets end this month. Get 35% off early bird coupon — 'earlybird35'.

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In our latest episode of Cloud Four Fourcast, I sat down with Tammy Everts to talk about Google’s recent change from FID to INP and what it means for website owners. Tammy breaks down the jargon and provides recommendations for what companies should do to address the change, improve performance, and tie performance to the metrics that matter for their business. Check it out and pass it along to anyone struggling to understand what INP means for them. https://lnkd.in/gjm86gU8 #webperf #seo #webperformance #inp #corewebvitals

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Thank you for joining us, Danny Schonfeld! Your insights were incredibly valuable during our podcast session. We truly appreciate having you share your expertise with us! What is the BIGGEST advantage for RevOps? Cross-functional collaboration 🚀 Danny Schonfeld, VP of RevOps at Glia, says that fostering strong partnerships with each function is necessary, because: 1️⃣ They can get a different perspective from like-minded people 2️⃣ They can assess the impact of one function’s project on the others Danny also talks to Mike Groeneveld (Everstage) about: ✅ Mastering the art of prioritizing tasks ✅ Significance of cross-functional collaboration ✅ 3 skills every great RevOps professional must have Head over to the link in comments to listen to the full conversation 🎧

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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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Wanted to share some exciting news from Typeform! Growth is always hard; but growth in a tough and uncertain economic backdrop like today is even harder. Typeform is launching "Typeform for Growth" - a whole suite of capabilities to help capture, qualify, and convert leads. They are tackling new whitespace with this approach and if you're looking for a tool to increase customer conversions - it's worth a look!  https://lnkd.in/gyzFga66

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Today: This is going to be a remarkable conversation! Alondra Nelson is joining us for the inaugural episode of the Glitch Speaker Series, where we talk about the hardest problems that coders and product teams face *outside* of the actual code. The first topic, no surprise, is going to be talking about AI. Most devs agree the tech is pretty interesting, but that the most extreme hype is... not as interesting. So how does a thoughtful person navigate balance? Who better to help answer the question than a brilliant thinker and academic who helped catalyze the creation of the AI Bill of Rights while at the White House. Join us live, or watch the stream replay here: https://lnkd.in/emGfJvi2

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The pendulum is always swinging between 'best of breed' and point solutions across software categories. It has remained hard for buyers to find and evaluate options that meet their needs. To differentiate, software providers tend to resort to making promises they can't keep. They mystify their solutions with hard to understand language. Buyer research is now largely done independent of sales reps using peer networks and online resources. Sadly, the systems the world uses to evaluate software have remained as they were decades ago. A quadrant, review or executive forum presentation are imperfect representations of nuanced needs . The return on these investments cannot be quantified, but it's easier to justify a spend on something labeled 'visionary'. This has proven ineffective in industries where unbiased information is hard to access for the majority of companies that most need it. Cypher is our attempt to fix how buyers and investors make decisions, beginning with cybersecurity. Thanks to Taylor Soper and GeekWire for their writeup on our work. https://lnkd.in/gfVYNQ6j cc Sachin Goyal

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If you do ONE thing differently today, choose to watch this NoCodeOps conversation with the sublime thought leader, that is Jessica D'Oliveira founder of Mission Citizen Like that moment I can’t ever forget when Vivian (aka Julia Roberts) walked into the shop on Rodeo Drive in the Pretty Woman movie to give the sales staff a piece of her mind & says: “Big mistake. Big. Huge.” To not recognise that CHANGE is here, right now, would be just that. We are ALL globally experiencing disruptive changes, not just software related, instead they allude more to the psychology of change! Thanks to Jessica, my new mantra is: “Look at your FEAR as Adventure!” (FEAR: Face Everything and Rise). This time is all about being willing to change your mindset. Both as a Business Leader, and as a Potential No builder or even Citizen Developer. This is way more than hype words like no-code, AI & automation. This is about how Business as usual is changing. This modern tech movement is already creating new jobs {check out the NoCode Ops Job Boards for tangible proof 😉} Guys, Every few years, change shakes things up. I mean, not that long ago, careers like mobile dev’s or social media manager’s were unimaginable. Kevin Kelly explains it best, that technology, or the "Technium," is an extension of us. We create it, and it shapes us 🔥 He is spot on. The ONLY question now is, “How will you respond?” P.S Can’t wait to hear more about “HireKit” Jessica P.P.S Such Special hosting as always Claudia Cafeo 🏳️‍🌈 #NoCodeConversations #LetsChatAboutChange

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Nicholas Daniel’s path to become the CPO of Etsy was far from linear. In our conversation, he shares the valuable lessons of why practicing humility is not just important when building new products, but also when building your career. “[it’s] a way for me to take all of what I've learned working on a bigger portfolio, focus all of that on a smaller footprint of the product to make it even better than it was before. I don't get too hung up on titles or the box that needs to be ticked to get to the next level. We're here to build wonderful products”. Nick’s ability to reframe setbacks and “de-center” himself from the equation enabled him to forge ahead and focus on breaking new ground at Etsy with great innovation. On this week’s episode of my podcast Building One, Nick shares many great insights into his career and how they build at Etsy, including:  • How to establish a new & differentiated marketplace • The unique challenges & opportunities that come with competing with an e-commerce giant like Amazon • The limits of using single performance metrics • When to compete with (and when to ignore) industry norms • And what does “special takes time” mean… Listen and follow for more insights: 🎧 Apple: https://lnkd.in/eTVqg285 🎧 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/e-dkkf5H

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Our monthly Daft Contributor’s Sync is tomorrow: Thursday, April 25th @ 12pm PT (Add to your calendar! https://lnkd.in/gmUMPY5T) Lots of work has been going on the past month, and we’re excited to share it all with you! We’ll be exploring: ✨ ✨ ✨ What’s New? ✨ ✨ ✨ 🌐 Brand New Website: Explore our revamped online presence! 🔎  SQL Support & read_sql: Dive into our SQL integration. 🔢 Numeric & String Kernels: Explore functions like round, sign, sin/cos/tan, and string manipulations such as str.match(), str.replace, and more. 📚 📚 📚 Deep dive: Data Catalogs 📚 📚 📚 We’ll be going deep into Data Catalogs to explore what they are, how Daft supports them, as well as future work we’re putting into Catalogs. And of course, we’ll have plenty of time for Q/A. Hope to see ya’ll there! #datawarehouse #datalakehouse #apacheiceberg #daftdataframe #dataengineering  

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Jay Nathan and I's first podcast interview! I'll share clips and more details tomorrow. Check it out on your favorite podcast player 👇 #saas #enterprenuership #podcast

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👉 Building up a new podcast is *already* been an enlightening experience. Have had a chance to chat with some amazing folks, got some incredible feedback, and have a ton of ideas for how this series will proceed. I will say, the most exciting part of my recent podcast, "Building Products with Generative AI", is that there is a narrative that is building throughout each episode. I'm not going to reveal what that is just yet, but if you watch each episode, you'll start to notice a solid pattern!

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Not knowing how your customers are interacting with your product can lead to churn and a subpar customer experience. But that doesn’t have to be the case. Join us June 27 to learn how HubSpot & Pendo.io are unifying product and CRM data and empowering customer-facing teams to better fuel customer success. Product data 🤝 CRM data = 😍 📈 🧡 Register here: https://lnkd.in/evUWwqeK

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The discussion with Jason Fried, Co-Founder and CEO of 37signals, during a recent ProducTea with Leah episode (#42) was great. A particular one-minute segment (~14:20) really stuck with me. When asked about failures, Jason states: 🗣 “I don’t really think about failure. How does evolution work? Evolution is not sitting there using energy thinking about the wing shape that didn’t work. The wings that worked let’s make them even better...What’s working? Let’s do more of that. Let’s evolve.” This aligns perfectly with the concept of “slightly better problems” from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. It’s a never-ending upward spiral. The key takeaway? Don’t ignore failures, but don’t dwell on them either. Focus on what works, refine it, and evolve. This approach ensures continuous improvement without getting bogged down by setbacks. #ProductManagement #Leadership #ContinuousImprovement

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My key takeaways: - hire intentionally, engineering talent doesn't need to be never-customer-facing - build & grow with customers you love to work with - never hoard your insights, democratize that customer voice and everyone wins - at Voxpopme, product and engineering are in the same org, that might not work for your organizational structure, but at Voxpopme it makes engineering closer to customers & product closer to technical solutions Andy Barraclough - thanks for the shoutout!

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