GUEST BIO

Itai Sadan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Duda, the leading web design platform for web professionals, agencies, and SaaS platforms that serve SMBs. With more than $100 million in funding, Duda has over 18,000 customers worldwide and hosts over a million active websites. Itai has been featured in several publications, including Forbes, TechCrunch, and Entrepreneur, and is a regular speaker at industry events. He holds a BSc in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Ben Gurion in Israel.

MAIN INSIGHT

You can always gain a deeper understanding of your ideal customer profile (ICP). Clarifying your ICP helps everyone in your company become more focused.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Understand your data – look at different slices of your customer base, e.g. the company size, revenue size, industry, pain points
2. Identify how those different segments perform over time in order to understand which segments are your best customers
3. Make sure this slice of the market is big enough to build a business off of
4. Look for customer segments that are going to grow with your company over time and continue using your product. E.g. they will be repeat users, or the segment as a whole is growing, or there is a trend in which more of that type of company will purchase from your product category
5. Build features and craft your messaging towards what is helpful for your best customer segment.

MORE FROM DUDA

Duda is a great platform for marketers or marketing teams who need a website builder, including for creating landing pages and microsites. Duda also offers a white label format, which has proven to be useful for several SaaS customers who integrate with the platform to offer websites to their customer base. Learn more at https://www.duda.co/ or reach out to Itai at duda.co via email.

GUEST BIO

Sandra Iđoški is the CEO of Collabwriting, a startup whose main purpose is to help content marketers and creators create better content. We do this by simplifying two key things – research and teamwork around it. Sandra previously worked as a CCO at Teodesk, an innovative IT company that aims to resolve business inefficiency within the Telco industry. Their content marketing strategy at the time set them apart and helped them reach new markets. She considers her biggest accomplishment to be helping scale Teodesk from the local Serbian market to the US, UK, and EU markets.

MAIN INSIGHT

Know the industry insights before you start building your product.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1.  Share your in-house values widely in order to stand out and attract your audience
2. Find the intersection between topics based on your company's unique value and your company's target audience
3.  Start tracking everything you do when posting content – e.g. the time, day, hashtags used when posting on LinkedIn. Use automation to extract data about the best practices for your own company.
4. Filter your user feedback to ensure that you're prioritizing the most valuable improvements to make to your products. The book “The Mom Test” has good insights on how to figure out which feedback is coming from real, consistent users and which feedback is just coming from people who like to hear themselves talk.

MORE FROM COLLABWRITING

Collabwriting is a web-based tool that allows users to create highlights, leave comments, and organize content around topics on any website, making the research and data collecting process easier. Learn more at https://collabwriting.com/

GUEST BIO

Steve Benson is CEO and founder of Badger Maps, the #1 App in the App Store for outside and field salespeople. Steve is also CEO of Badger Sales University. After receiving his MBA from Stanford, Steve joined Google, where he became Google Enterprise's Top Sales Executive globally in 2009.

MAIN INSIGHT

Focus your time and energy on revenue from the beginning. Sell the product you think you'll sell even before it's done.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. The founder should be the first salesperson in the company. Craft the product around the insights learned from customers.
2. Hire the first two salespeople before bringing on a Sales VP, and create a customer success team as early as possible.
3. Listen to prospects early on – determine what it would really look like to solve this problem for them.
4. Study users throughout the weeks and months after they start using the product and make sure they stay engaged. Hop on calls and message them; take notes to figure out exactly how they're using the product

MORE FROM BADGER MAPS

Badger Maps, the #1 Route Planner for Field Sales, has helped sales teams to increase their sales by 20-25%. Learn more at https://www.badgermapping.com/

GUEST BIO

Nick Ezzo is the head of corporate marketing and demand generation at Auditoria, with over 20 years of experience in technology marketing. Prior to joining Auditoria, he provided digital marketing and demand generation leadership at Sage Intacct, Host Analytics, and Equilar. Nick has also held marketing, business development, and consulting roles at companies such as Aspect, Home Box Office (HBO), and Nuance Communications. He holds a bachelor's degree in Communications Systems Management from Ohio University and has a patent for web-based marketing.

MAIN INSIGHT

If you're not measuring data ahead of time, you can't report on it.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1.  Look at the closed-won opportunities you have over the most recent quarters. Determine how long it took to close the deal, what actions you took, and where it came from. Use that to figure out what metrics to capture
2. Have the CEO get sales reps to all capture data in the same way and in the same format. 
3. Think through the way metrics are captured to make it simple to input and informative for reviewers. For example, have a required “Date” field where sales reps input the day they had a sales call.
4. Replicate the process of what was successful in closing those customers
5. Refine the sales process – figure out what's working, and if something isn't working, remove it and combine it with another step.

MORE FROM AUDITORIA

Auditoria.AI's SmartBots can streamline communication with key stakeholders by automating tasks and capturing documentation. By connecting to systems of record and shared email inboxes, SmartBots can prioritize and assign tasks, reducing friction and task repetition. Learn more at auditoria.ai

GUEST BIO

Pratik Thakker is an Indian-born digital and tech entrepreneur based in Israel. He is known as Israel’s tech ambassador to India and has a strong social media presence with over 180K followers and 200+ million views. Pratik is the Founder and CEO of Webzoly, a company that helps global businesses hire remote talent. Additionally, he is a co-founder and COO at Testlify, a talent assessment platform that uses AI and deep analysis to help companies find the best talent in a precise, automated, and impartial way.

MAIN INSIGHT

Make sure each employee is connected to the mission and culture. Be an employee-driven company.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Set expectations for the role, mention the salary range, and ask pre-qualification questions. This helps candidates understand whether it's worth their time to invest in applying
2. Use a pre-screening process
3. Communicate with all applicants, whether or not they were hired

MORE FROM WEBZOLY AND TESTLIFY

Learn more about Webzoly or Testlify by visiting webzoly.com (global remote hiring platform) or testlify.com (AI talent assessment platform). Pratik is happy to offer one-on-one demos of both of the platforms. Reach out to him directly via LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/pratik-thakker/

GUEST BIO

Ernesto Gaxha is a co-founder of SplitSpot, an innovative rental platform that has served thousands of residents in several cities in the US. He is a Harvard/MIT grad who started his career as an institutional investor before entering the world of startups.

MAIN INSIGHT

Craft an initial pitch that differentiates your brand within the first 60 seconds of speaking to a prospective customer.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Look at your competitors' messaging. Determine the features of what you're offering and how it's different from existing products in the market.
2. Brainstorm ways that your company is different. Put yourself in the shoes of people receiving the message — what was it that caused them to give you the time of day?
3. Create a 60-second pitch or less that explains who you are, what you do, and how your product is different from what's typically out there.

MORE FROM SPLITSPOT

SplitSpot is a platform that helps make the process of renting easier for residents, landlords, and property managers. They aim to provide a solution to some of the challenges presented by the current housing crisis. If anyone has properties that they think could be a good fit or has an interest in discussing the issue, they can reach out to Ernesto by email at his name at splitspot.com.

GUEST BIO

Adam Tank is a seasoned professional with over 10 years of experience in the water industry, specializing in innovation, software, and business development. In his current role as Chief Customer Officer at Transcend, Adam is responsible for the success of the clients and marketing initiatives related to the Transcend Design Generator and automation of preliminary engineering activities. Before joining Transcend, Adam served as the North America Smart Cities Director at Suez and led a robotics spin-out of the General Electric corporation, which focused on cutting-edge potable water pipe rehabilitation techniques. Adam received his undergraduate degree in microbiology from Kansas State University and his M.B.A. from the University of Arizona. In addition to his professional career, Adam is an avid water blogger and podcaster, foster dad, long-form author, and an advocate for volunteer organizations such as Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.

MAIN INSIGHT

Involve customers and continuously gather feedback throughout the product development process to ensure that you are building the right thing.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Start by having an internal discussion with your company to understand what your ideal future for the company looks like.
2. Create a minimum viable content piece or product mock-up to show customers what the future will look like.
3. Get feedback from existing and potential customers in real-time to see how they feel about the concept.
4. Continuously get feedback as you build the product or service.
5. Set up touchpoints or checkpoints with initial interested customers.
6. Try to have sales conversations with customers to understand what they are willing to pay.
7. Keep getting feedback to ensure that you are building the right thing.

MORE FROM TRANSCEND

Transcend Design Generator (TDG) is an intuitive, online generative design platform that enables capital planners, project developers, and engineering professionals to rapidly generate preliminary engineering designs for critical infrastructure, including the Water & Wastewater treatment and Power Sectors. Learn more at https://transcendinfra.com/

GUEST BIO
Katherine Wells is the CEO and founder of Serenity, a network that allows aging service providers, older adults and their loved ones to care together. She created the company out of her direct experience of silos in senior care. Katherine's own experience of caring for her aging parents, who were not expecting to need care, inspired her to launch Serenity, which gives providers an easier way to communicate and collaborate with family members in a secure, digital way.

WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT
Katherine advises marketing executives and founders to grow or promote their businesses by implementing the product with a small test group of users, getting them set up, having them share it with everyone in their organization, and giving them a quick and easy way to connect with other companies or service providers they are working with. Then, a sales conversation is initiated with those other companies.

Katherine emphasizes the importance of building a viral product when it comes to growing or promoting a business. She suggests focusing on solving one problem in a particular industry or company, measuring the results, and de-risking the experiments. She also encourages entrepreneurs to have big visions, lead in a way that allows others to follow, and to communicate the results of their experiments in order to grow their product.

MORE FROM SERENITY
Serenity helps streamline communication in the senior care industry and provides a digital channel for people to communicate with one another. Reach out to Katherine at serenityengage.com, and to attend their event, Collaboration in Aging, to discuss the issues faced by seniors in the industry.

GUEST BIO
Graham Sawrey is the CEO of Pixel True, a design agency that works with SaaS companies. Graham has a background in managing companies in various industries such as content marketing, affiliate marketing, design, animation, copywriting, and Web3 software. He got into building businesses because of his interest in the online marketplace and the attractive multiples for investing in online businesses. Graham believes that having a cohesive brand across all assets is crucial for most companies, especially SaaS companies, to grow.  Pixel True works with a number of SaaS companies at all stages and has grown in the last year from 13 employees to nearly 100 today.

WHAT WE DISCUSSED
Graham discusses the importance of unifying a company's brand identity across all its pages and social media accounts. He mentions that this can help with simplicity and the creation of content faster. However, he mentions that it is difficult to determine specific results because there are many intangibles and variables involved, such as the effort the company puts into promoting its brand, the amount of content produced, and the design elements used. He notes that SaaS companies often have a similar aesthetic and that it can be challenging to stand out in a crowded marketplace. He suggests using brand and visual identity to differentiate from the competition.

Graham explains the steps to building a cohesive brand across a B2B SaaS company's website pages and social media. He suggests the following steps:

1. Research – this includes going through your competitor's websites and social media to see what you like and don't like. Make detailed notes and try to understand their process. Get insights from others as well.
2. Create a database of research – having a database of research is invaluable as it can be used to share with a design team or anyone working on the brand.
3. Execution – focus on what needs to be done based on the time and resources available. He suggests focusing on social media as a starting point.

Graham emphasizes that doing the research is the most crucial step and will lay the foundation for the rest of the work. It's also important to put in the work when it comes to creating a cohesive brand across platforms and websites. He cautions against shortcuts that may result in an inconsistent and confusing user experience. Graham also offers advice on striking a balance between research and execution, and suggests reaching out to Pixel True for help with design services.

MORE FROM PIXEL TRUE
Pixel True provides an experienced design team that works with you everyday to create high-quality design assets to help grow your business.  Learn more at https://www.pixeltrue.com/

GUEST BIO
Eric McHugh is the Chief Growth Officer and co-founder of ShopX, a Web3 eCommerce platform that utilizes ENFTs to create a new revenue channel for eCommerce brands without diluting their brand value. Eric previously worked at Snap as a bankruptcy consultant and helped found a social commerce platform. He was drawn to the world of cryptocurrency and entrepreneurship, which led him to the ShopX team in 2017. They started a side project, CartRev, a social commerce platform that replaced affiliate links and had over 100 brands using it. The team then transitioned back into ShopX, which is now a blockchain-as-a-service platform for e-commerce brands. Eric is excited to be working in the technology space and is proud of the team's efforts in ShopX.

WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT
ShopX is a technology platform that provides a new way to sell products using NFTs (non-fungible tokens). A famous dog on Instagram, Husky Jackson, used ShopX's NFT technology to launch a reserve pass before releasing his product. The reserve pass allowed him to get funding for his product in real-time and prove that customers were interested in it. ShopX is also partnering with a TV show for a one-time pass for a one-time product, such as a makeup kit. The use of NFTs makes it more secure and easier to prove ownership, and also allows for future royalty options for the brand. The biggest insight from ShopX is that this technology is in demand, despite people not being familiar with crypto and NFTs.

In this conversation, Eric is discussing the importance of being authentic and incorporating personal values into one's personal brand and content. He shares how he incorporates things such as his interests in discipline, spiritual pursuits, and pop culture references into his communication with others. He mentions how he sends playful emails referencing TV shows like Parks and Rec and incorporates the phrase “please and thank you” due to his love for the show. Eric believes in having a team that is on the same page, energetically aligned and with the same values, and this attracts the right people to work together.

Eric discusses his product launch and the strategy for connecting with potential clients and investors. He mentions that the approach depends on the content and that some people prefer to engage with the content at their own pace. Eric also mentions the importance of being authentic but having a thick skin as some people may not like it.

MORE FROM SHOPX
ShopX unlocks the power of Web3 for brand loyalty and growth. Learn more at https://shopx.co/