Tech Entrepreneur on a Mission Podcast By cover art

Tech Entrepreneur on a Mission Podcast

By: Evergreen Podcasts
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  • Summary

  • Welcome to the Tech Entrepreneur on a Mission podcast. My name is Ton Dobbe. I am the founder of Value Inspiration and the author of ‘The Remarkable Effect’. I envision a world where every B2B SaaS business succeeds because they're creating software their customers would miss if were gone 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆: Research consistently shows 90% of all startups fail. That's bad. What's worse however is that +75% of SaaS Scaleups fail - companies that are supposed to have product-market-fit. Far too few Scaleups create the traction they aspire for and fail for the wrong reasons I believe this should stop - and hence I started my business and this podcast The goal I have with this podcast is two-fold: to inspire new forms of value creation by sharing compelling ideas and stories about the potential we can unlock when technology and people blend in the right way. Share experiences from tech entrepreneurs like you about what it requires to create a remarkable software business and how to overcome the roadblocks to do so.
    All rights reserved 2022-24
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Episodes
  • #316 - Zach Barney, CEO Mobly - on taking on a forgotten market in sales automation.

    #316 - Zach Barney, CEO Mobly - on taking on a forgotten market in sales automation.
    Jun 5 2024
    This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to solve a global challenge: helping field sales sell more and faster. My guest is Zach Barney, Co-founder and CEO of Mobly. Zach Barney is an experienced SaaS sales leader and entrepreneur. He has been building and leading SaaS sales teams since 2010 at companies like Vehlo, Nearmap, Teem, and HireVue. Over his career, he has personally closed over $4 million in ARR, and his teams have closed over $40 million. In 2023, he co-founded Mobly to reduce the high percentage (+25%) of sales activity that never gets logged into CRM systems. Their mission: To redefine lead capture and qualification for event marketers. And this inspired me, and hence I invited Zach to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the lead generation process at in-person events. Zach explains his journey with Mobly to solve this problem - and elaborates how this fits in a much broader vision. He elaborates on the big lessons he learned around gaining traction and using pricing as a lever for growth. Lastly, he elaborates on how he's building a moat around his product. Here's one of his quotes We learned that we needed to change our pricing model. Our first handful of customers we were grossly under-charging them and it was largely due to the fact that we were pricing based on the number of seats. Somebody would openly tell us 'Yeah, well this person can share the license with this person.' So, we realized 'I guess we made a mistake on how we price this because this should be like a $20,000 contract and you're telling me that you're gonna pay 2000…' During this interview, you will learn four things: How he and his co-founder managed to get very comfortable doubling down on building a product without hardly spending anything. What he changed to his pricing strategy to increase average deal-size AND make grow each customer account from there onwards. What strategic choices he made around phasing his product strategy to ensure they got traction as early as possible - and keep growing it. Why he's decided to build defensible differentiation around data and not features. For more information about the guest from this week: Zach Barney Website: Mobly Subscribe to the Daily SaaS Reflection Get my free, 1 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe here Yes, it’s actually daily. And yes, people actually stay subscribed (Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say) My promise: It’s short. To the point. Inspiring. And valuable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    42 mins
  • #315 - JJ (Projjal) Ghatak, CEO of OnLoop - on challenging the status quo.

    #315 - JJ (Projjal) Ghatak, CEO of OnLoop - on challenging the status quo.
    May 29 2024
    This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to outcompete everyone in the category. My guest is JJ (Projjal) Ghatak, Co-founder & CEO of OnLoop. JJ (Projjal) is a tech entrepreneur on a mission. He held business leadership roles across technology (Uber), management consulting (Accenture Strategy) and corporate development (Essar Capital). Besides that, he's a proud naturalized Singaporean, SMU Scholar, Stanford MBA, and awarded World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer 2022. In 2020, JJ founded OnLoop in an attempt to solve a problem he'd experienced throughout his career: How hard it is for managers to turn high potential individuals into high performing teams. Their mission: Convert every manager in the world into a great manager. And this inspired me, and hence I invited JJ to my podcast. We explore the broken world of employee & team performance. JJ shares his journey of solving this problem by driving everyday habits and feedback rather than mere documentation. He shares his biggest lessons on creating product market fit, demand generation, and how to strategically prioritize your focus as a CEO as your company evolves. Lastly, he elaborates on his approach to challenge the status quo and outcompete established players. Here's one of his quotes Most enterprise software is built as a System of Record. So if you look at employee engagement software, what it is, is a quarterly survey, which is then creating dashboards and data. And so it's a System of Record, not a System of Action. What you need to drive behavior is a System of Action. So if you think about it from another analogy, people understand is, you don't get fit by doing an annual health checkup every three months. You get fit by going to the gym. And actually 10,000 steps is the best thing that happened to fitness because it made it very easy to drive a system of action. And we think about team health and team performance in the exact same way During this interview, you will learn four things: The framework JJ is using to help him ensure he's focused on the most impactful priority on his list - every day. That founders should focus on creating value, and salespeople on capturing value. And why it will hurt you if you mix this up. His perspective on identifying their ideal customer segment to capture value and scale revenue in a predictable, repeatable way. His first principles when it comes to building remarkable products. For more information about the guest from this week: JJ (Projjal) Ghatak Website: OnLoop Subscribe to the Daily SaaS Reflection Get my free, 1 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe here Yes, it’s actually daily. And yes, people actually stay subscribed (Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say) My promise: It’s short. To the point. Inspiring. And valuable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    42 mins
  • #314 - Jon Gillham, CEO, Originality AI - on solving a global trust problem

    #314 - Jon Gillham, CEO, Originality AI - on solving a global trust problem
    May 22 2024
    This podcast interview focuses on the entrepreneurial journey to win the global content plagiarism battle. My guest is Jon Gillham, CEO of Originality AI. Jon Gillham is a tech entrepreneur on a mission. Before he started his SaaS business, he ran a content marketing agency. Having been one of the earliest adopters of generative AI through his agency, he understood the wave of plagiarism problems that was coming, even before Chat GPT and GPT-4 were released. That became the founding idea behind Originality AI - a company he founded in November 2022. Their mission: help Web Publishers be sure they are producing Original Content and can hit publish with integrity. This means: publishing unique, Human-Created content ... the kind Google and we, the readers wants! And this inspired me, and hence I invited Jon to my podcast. We explore the growing challenge of AI-generated content -and how this impacts trust. Jon shares the challenges he's faced on his journey to solve the problem. He also explains why he decided to focus on a very specific niche and not education, while he was offered contracts with brand names as big as Harvard and Purdue. Lastly, he elaborates how they are able to build extremely competitive products with just 1 simple organizational tweak. Here's one of his quotes We built and ended up launching the weekend before Chat GPT launched. And when Chat GPT launched it kind of blew things up. We had people coming from all different parts of the world. Academia was coming our way. User-generated sites were coming our way to say - this is now a problem that we need to wrestle with. During this interview, you will learn four things: What to do / not to do when you want to create defensible differentiation with your product. Why he turned away very big sales opportunities - and why that was a critical, but right choice. How he maintained a good work-life balance (and what he learned from that in hind-sight). How to outperform all your competitors on review sites. For more information about the guest from this week: Jon Gillham Website: Originality AI Subscribe to the Daily SaaS Reflection Get my free, 1 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe here Yes, it’s actually daily. And yes, people actually stay subscribed (Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say) My promise: It’s short. To the point. Inspiring. And valuable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    42 mins
Leadership Economics
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