TIMESTAMPS

00:52 – Introduction of how he entered the start-up world

02:35 – How Photon Commerce Started

04:05 – Where is Language Monetizable?

10:38 – Difference between marketing and sales

12:09 – How do you find your market?

18:15 – Success in finding the right people/customers

19:37 – How do you know when to adapt your messaging based on the feedback you are getting

GUEST BACKGROUND

Michael Young is the founder & CEO of Photon Commerce. Photon accelerates customer acquisition for fintech leaders using instant payments and invoicing through AI and is supported by a venture firm funded by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. After dropping out of a Stanford PhD, Michael led advanced R&D programs funded by the Department of Defense, created hundreds of jobs, raised $50M across his venture-backed startups, and took them to acquisitions.

MORE FROM PHOTON COMMERCE

Photon Commerce’s financial AI platform empowers fintech leaders to instantly process B2B payments, invoices, statements, and receipts. Photon's intelligent platform understands and harmonizes data, down to even line-item purchase analytics and prediction. Learn more at photoncommerce.com

Reach out to Michael at linkedin.com/in/michaelyoungphoton

MAIN INSIGHT

Sales and marketing should blend together, especially for an early-stage startup, so you can learn more about your customer and find a product-market-fit fast.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Marketing is all about communicating the problem you are solving to the world
2. Marketing is a job of story-telling amazing stories to your team, your investors, your customers, and the world
3. Experiment and try different things to see what will work for your company
4. Content should be optimized for SEO and engagement, and repost
5. Look for a direct marketing strategy
6. Distributing content and getting more traffic is as important as producing content
7. Treat every single market conversation as unique
8. Test your messages
   1. Create different landing pages
   2. Utilize email marketing
9. Visual thumbnail and title are two of the most important components of your content
10. Engagement is as important as creating content
11. A/B test your content

PRACTICAL STEPS

1. Find the biggest problem that is worth solving
2. Identify your WHY for solving this problem
3. Share your why to your team and customer to inspire and motivate them

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Understand what tools you should use
2. Test your websites and landing pages
3. Use Hotjar to see heatmaps on your website and the behaviors of your users
4. Encourage your marketing team to be analytical and technical
5. Don’t hesitate to share some of your content directly and add a personal touch to it
6. Timing on presenting the content is also important

TIMESTAMPS

00:52 – Introduction of how he entered the start-up world

02:35 – How Photon Commerce Started

04:05 – Where is Language Monetizable?

10:38 – Difference between marketing and sales

12:09 – How do you find your market?

18:15 – Success in finding the right people/customers

19:37 – How do you know when to adapt your messaging based on the feedback you are getting

GUEST BACKGROUND

Michael Young is the founder & CEO of Photon Commerce. Photon accelerates customer acquisition for fintech leaders using instant payments and invoicing through AI and is supported by a venture firm funded by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. After dropping out of a Stanford PhD, Michael led advanced R&D programs funded by the Department of Defense, created hundreds of jobs, raised $50M across his venture-backed startups, and took them to acquisitions.

MORE FROM PHOTON COMMERCE

Photon Commerce’s financial AI platform empowers fintech leaders to instantly process B2B payments, invoices, statements, and receipts. Photon’s intelligent platform understands and harmonizes data, down to even line-item purchase analytics and prediction. Learn more at photoncommerce.com

Reach out to Michael at linkedin.com/in/michaelyoungphoton

MAIN INSIGHT

Sales and marketing should blend together, especially for an early-stage startup, so you can learn more about your customer and find a product-market-fit fast.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Marketing is all about communicating the problem you are solving to the world
2. Marketing is a job of story-telling amazing stories to your team, your investors, your customers, and the world
3. Experiment and try different things to see what will work for your company
4. Content should be optimized for SEO and engagement, and repost
5. Look for a direct marketing strategy
6. Distributing content and getting more traffic is as important as producing content
7. Treat every single market conversation as unique
8. Test your messages
   1. Create different landing pages
   2. Utilize email marketing
9. Visual thumbnail and title are two of the most important components of your content
10. Engagement is as important as creating content
11. A/B test your content

PRACTICAL STEPS

1. Find the biggest problem that is worth solving
2. Identify your WHY for solving this problem
3. Share your why to your team and customer to inspire and motivate them

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Understand what tools you should use
2. Test your websites and landing pages
3. Use Hotjar to see heatmaps on your website and the behaviors of your users
4. Encourage your marketing team to be analytical and technical
5. Don’t hesitate to share some of your content directly and add a personal touch to it
6. Timing on presenting the content is also important

TIMESTAMPS

00:30 – How creativity and curiosity about human behaviours make Kathryn love marketing

01:10 – Why there is no silver bullet in marketing

04:35 – Kathryn's experience and why you need to be brave in testing data

07:15 – Why everyone is a marketer

10:35 – The power of story for marketers

14:25 – The moment when you can say “job done” as a marketer

20:50 – The groundwork before doing any marketing campaign

25:05 – How to create a customer persona when you’re targeting large businesses

MORE FROM APPFOLLOW

AppFollow is on a mission to help teams working on mobile apps to turn insights from reviews into new product experiences that users love. Learn more at appfollow.io

GUEST BACKGROUND

Kathryn Lye is the Global Head of Marketing at AppFollow. She has more than 20 years of experience in marketing and scaling B2B tech businesses, and she understands how to help growing startups overcome their unique challenges. Kathryn has helped businesses grow from almost no revenue to multi-millions.

MAIN INSIGHT

Using different sources to augment data helps you to look at a bigger perspective on all your marketing efforts.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Don’t assume that your team has the same knowledge as you
2. You need to be creative and brave in testing data
3. Always look at the perspective of all your marketing channels combined
4. An anecdote can be a data point

PRACTICAL STEPS

1. Never assume
2. Start asking questions to your team, founders, and potential buyers
3. Understand if there’s a gap in your information
4. Start thinking about how to get that information either by test, experiments, advisors

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Doing any marketing campaign without knowing your customer is setting yourself up for failure
2. Talking to buyers is massively underrated for marketers
3. Look outside in and not inside out

TIMESTAMPS

00:30 – How creativity and curiosity about human behaviours make Kathryn love marketing

01:10 – Why there is no silver bullet in marketing

04:35 – Kathryn’s experience and why you need to be brave in testing data

07:15 – Why everyone is a marketer

10:35 – The power of story for marketers

14:25 – The moment when you can say “job done” as a marketer

20:50 – The groundwork before doing any marketing campaign

25:05 – How to create a customer persona when you’re targeting large businesses

MORE FROM APPFOLLOW

AppFollow is on a mission to help teams working on mobile apps to turn insights from reviews into new product experiences that users love. Learn more at appfollow.io

GUEST BACKGROUND

Kathryn Lye is the Global Head of Marketing at AppFollow. She has more than 20 years of experience in marketing and scaling B2B tech businesses, and she understands how to help growing startups overcome their unique challenges. Kathryn has helped businesses grow from almost no revenue to multi-millions.

MAIN INSIGHT

Using different sources to augment data helps you to look at a bigger perspective on all your marketing efforts.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Don’t assume that your team has the same knowledge as you
2. You need to be creative and brave in testing data
3. Always look at the perspective of all your marketing channels combined
4. An anecdote can be a data point

PRACTICAL STEPS

1. Never assume
2. Start asking questions to your team, founders, and potential buyers
3. Understand if there’s a gap in your information
4. Start thinking about how to get that information either by test, experiments, advisors

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Doing any marketing campaign without knowing your customer is setting yourself up for failure
2. Talking to buyers is massively underrated for marketers
3. Look outside in and not inside out

TIMESTAMPS

03:01 – Why you should focus on one single growth channel

14:59 – How to choose a marketing channel as a bootstrapped startup

17:33 – Journey of a bootstrapped company from 0 to 4000 customers

22:34 – Understanding Google and SEO

33:53 – How to create a product for link building

GUEST BACKGROUND

Kalo is the co-founder of Encharge.io – a marketing automation platform. Encharge launched in 2019 and Kalo and his team bootstrapped it to 4,000 customers as of today. All of its growth has been gained through organic search traffic.

MORE FROM ENCHARGE

Encharge was created in 2018 as an alternative to clunky unusable marketing automation tools. They believe that automating your SaaS marketing should be more enjoyable.

Learn more at encharge.io

MAIN INSIGHT

If you are a bootstrapped startup, focusing on one marketing channel and testing it for 6 to 12 months is the best path to go rather than spending your small resources on different channels.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Find a marketing channel – founder fit
2. If a marketing channel is producing good results then it’s a good indication to focus on that channel
3. Do not underestimate the learning curve in trying to find a marketing channel fit
4. Focus on the bottom part of the funnel if you want to validate if the marketing channel

PRACTICAL STEPS

For finding a marketing channel:

1. Find a marketing channel founder fit
2. Validate the channel
3. Focus on running your marketing for 6 to 12 months
4. Find other channels to test your marketing efforts

For growing and building your SEO marketing channel

1. Focus on the bottom of the funnel topics and keywords
2. Look at the smaller competitors who are doing well
3. Write content with SEO-rich keywords and topics
4. Start link building
5. Hire more content writers

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Do your best to create a product on link building
2. Focus on one part of the funnel at first
3. Do everything in a micro-test

TIMESTAMPS

03:01 – Why you should focus on one single growth channel

14:59 – How to choose a marketing channel as a bootstrapped startup

17:33 – Journey of a bootstrapped company from 0 to 4000 customers

22:34 – Understanding Google and SEO

33:53 – How to create a product for link building

GUEST BACKGROUND

Kalo is the co-founder of Encharge.io – a marketing automation platform. Encharge launched in 2019 and Kalo and his team bootstrapped it to 4,000 customers as of today. All of its growth has been gained through organic search traffic.

MORE FROM ENCHARGE

Encharge was created in 2018 as an alternative to clunky unusable marketing automation tools. They believe that automating your SaaS marketing should be more enjoyable.

Learn more at encharge.io

MAIN INSIGHT

If you are a bootstrapped startup, focusing on one marketing channel and testing it for 6 to 12 months is the best path to go rather than spending your small resources on different channels.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Find a marketing channel – founder fit
2. If a marketing channel is producing good results then it’s a good indication to focus on that channel
3. Do not underestimate the learning curve in trying to find a marketing channel fit
4. Focus on the bottom part of the funnel if you want to validate if the marketing channel

PRACTICAL STEPS

For finding a marketing channel:

1. Find a marketing channel founder fit
2. Validate the channel
3. Focus on running your marketing for 6 to 12 months
4. Find other channels to test your marketing efforts

For growing and building your SEO marketing channel

1. Focus on the bottom of the funnel topics and keywords
2. Look at the smaller competitors who are doing well
3. Write content with SEO-rich keywords and topics
4. Start link building
5. Hire more content writers

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Do your best to create a product on link building
2. Focus on one part of the funnel at first
3. Do everything in a micro-test

MORE FROM MAZE

Maze helps you create truly customer-centric products by empowering your entire product team to collect actionable insights anytime, anywhere.Learn more at maze.co

GUEST BACKGROUND

Bozena is the VP of Marketing at Maze and previously led Product Marketing at Typeform and TravelPerk. She enjoys the ups and downs of working at a high-growth startup — from building strategy and collaborating cross-functionally to scaling a fully remote team. She's currently based in Barcelona but considers herself a world nomad.

MAIN INSIGHT

Building an advisory council no matter what level you’re in can help you mitigate your blindspots, be confident in decision-making, and fast-track your learnings.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. An advisor can help you identify if your strategy is working and if you need to tweak your strategy
2. Advisors will not tell you the exact answer but they will give you another point of view and another lens so you can come up with a conclusion
3. Advisors affect your decision-making, tactics, prioritization, strategy and team growth
4. Find the right advisors that fit your culture

PRACTICAL STEPS

1. Identify the challenges you’re facing
2. Go to your networks, such as your investors or other executives to find advisors
3. Qualify the advisor to ensure it’s the right fit
4. Prepare a list of questions and documents before jumping into the meeting
5. Filter all the guidance and advise as you see fit for your company

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Do a self-assessment to identify where you lack experience and areas you’re truly confident to make decisions before getting an advisor
2. Seek conversation with people in your field and learn from their approach, experience and previous results

MORE FROM MAZE

Maze helps you create truly customer-centric products by empowering your entire product team to collect actionable insights anytime, anywhere.Learn more at maze.co

GUEST BACKGROUND

Bozena is the VP of Marketing at Maze and previously led Product Marketing at Typeform and TravelPerk. She enjoys the ups and downs of working at a high-growth startup — from building strategy and collaborating cross-functionally to scaling a fully remote team. She’s currently based in Barcelona but considers herself a world nomad.

MAIN INSIGHT

Building an advisory council no matter what level you’re in can help you mitigate your blindspots, be confident in decision-making, and fast-track your learnings.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. An advisor can help you identify if your strategy is working and if you need to tweak your strategy
2. Advisors will not tell you the exact answer but they will give you another point of view and another lens so you can come up with a conclusion
3. Advisors affect your decision-making, tactics, prioritization, strategy and team growth
4. Find the right advisors that fit your culture

PRACTICAL STEPS

1. Identify the challenges you’re facing
2. Go to your networks, such as your investors or other executives to find advisors
3. Qualify the advisor to ensure it’s the right fit
4. Prepare a list of questions and documents before jumping into the meeting
5. Filter all the guidance and advise as you see fit for your company

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Do a self-assessment to identify where you lack experience and areas you’re truly confident to make decisions before getting an advisor
2. Seek conversation with people in your field and learn from their approach, experience and previous results

MORE FROM OTTER

Otter empowers your team with real-time, accurate notes that are stored in one central, secure, and searchable place so you can be more engaged, collaborative, and productive.

Learn more at otter.ai

Reach out to Chang at linkedin.com/in/ccchangchen/

GUEST BACKGROUND

Chang built and led the team at Otter.ai for both B2C and B2B growth & marketing. She scaled the ARR from tens of thousands to double-digit millions and grew the individual user base from 20k to several million in 10 months.

MAIN INSIGHT

Prioritize the native growth loops in the product before investing in external marketing channels. That way, your customer will promote your product and increase retention.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Optimize your growth loops before doing traditional marketing (paid ads, content marketing, etc.)
2. If you do traditional marketing without enhancing your growth loops, you’ll end up with a leak in your funnel that will make you lose customers
3. Identify the type of users that will likely promote your product to other people
4. The users should be able to build and contribute to more networks and users

PRACTICAL STEPS

1. Stay focused on improving your product and optimizing growth loops before going to other marketing tactics such as paid ads, content marketing, etc.
2. Look into the product and see how you can design the growth loops to be embedded into the users’ flow while retaining enough friction to encourage them to upgrade their plan to a paid plan
3. Add more growth loops, such as:
   1. Not interrupting the user to keep the user’s trust
   2. Give them the NEED to share your product
   3. Identify the “AHA” moments of your users and make sure that they get and share those benefits
4. After optimizing your growth loops, it’s time to accelerate and get more traffic using traditional marketing

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Understand user behavior and how you can give enough value without interfering with the existing user behavior while maintaining a proper amount of friction so users upgrade their plan
2. Give before you ask

MORE FROM FONS

Fons help small businesses grow by streamlining scheduling and billing, putting your administrative tasks on autopilot. Learn more at fons.com

Connect with Eric at linkedin.com/in/eric-branner-6a113b13

MAIN INSIGHT

Building a community is a grind when you’re just starting out, but if you continue to provide value, your customers will be your best salespeople.

GUEST BACKGROUND

Eric Branner found himself spending upwards of ten hours a week on administration alone which cut into his earning potential. He knew there had to be a better way – so he built Fons.

Fons simplifies and automates two things that every business owner needs – scheduling and payments. It helps business owners earn over 20+ million dollars and is still quickly growing. On average, professionals who use Fons earn up to 25% more each month because their busy work has been totally eliminated.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Happiness can only be found once it’s rooted outside yourself
2. Customers are your best salespeople
3. A marketer should be motivated by a customer’s success using the product
4. Create a product that will solve a problem
5. The goal of building a community is to get people to believe in your product or idea 

PRACTICAL STEPS

1. Research your target audience or people
   1. Do an interview and ask them what keeps them up at night
2. Choose a platform where you can find your audience
3. Identify the key metrics on that platform
4. Focus on building your community on one platform before moving to another one 

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Invest in your success
2. Promote positivity in your community and not competition
3. Focus on one marketing platform or channel before moving to another