How This General Manager Transformed a Failing Startup by Breaking Down Silos and Building Trust

Sure, Brandon. I would love to share with you the example of my 1st 3 months at my last startup where I'd joined them as head of marketing and um this was a very particular situation, right? I'd gone in with the new board that had just recapped the company. Um, uh, a new CEO who had stepped in two weeks prior to me starting out, and I thought my job was gonna be marketing and I would have my hands full with it, given the turnaround nature. But as I went into the job in the first couple of weeks it became, you know, uh, very clear to me in through my conversations that I had an opportunity here to shape uh the company during this turnaround in areas that were far beyond marketing whether it was, um, building, uh, what was essentially broken trust. Between different parts of the company going through uh the major changes that they had or whether it was helping the customer success organization think about itself in a different way or even the product organization thinking about itself in a different way um. And um uh so I'm happy to share with you more about uh you know everything that I ended up doing but uh this is uh my the closest example I can think of where I didn't see any boundaries around what my role was supposed to be and sort of jumped, ran straight to wherever the fire was, um, within marketing but also outside of marketing to help the CEO.

Um, I'll pick the people dimension because it's a dimension I did not expect to be as broken, you know, so just to paint the picture a little bit, uh, this is a company, uh, which had been in business in Redwood City here in the Bay Area for about 6 years, gone through about 45 million in funding, and had a, a lot of, uh, staff both in the East Coast as well as, uh, in, uh, in India. And when I walked in, the first problem I noticed was that uh trust was really at an all-time low, you know, like when you have those all hands when everybody's silent and nobody's excited about the new CEO, nobody's excited about the new investors, even though there's $10 million on the table in the lease of life. And, um, so what I, what I really did was I first, uh, tried to understand how bad the situation was, interviewed, uh, practically every member of the leadership team. And it became clear to me that our grand plan of, uh, going to visit our New York offices and our India offices in a quarter after we settled down in headquarters was not gonna work. Um, the more time I spent with our data science teams, our AI teams, and our engineering teams out in India, which is, by the way, 70% of our staff, it became clear to me that we had a burning issue on the ground and if we didn't address it directly, you know, putting ourselves out on the line with the, you know, the new CEO and the new leadership. Um, we would lose the trust and faith of a lot of the folks who genuinely felt that in the past that we've made, made promises that weren't kept, um, you know, to kind of fast forward in those 1st 3 months, I focused on building an operating model that would allow us to be, uh, we used, uh, the V2 mom structure from Salesforce and then adapted it a little bit to, uh, suit our needs, but created an operating model that allowed us to actually measure what we were doing. Um, uh, created a new vision and direction for the company which, um, took us in a very different category but also became a rallying cry, um, for the company itself, um, and, uh, then I traveled, I traveled within the 1st 4 weeks of. Joining the job, racked by CEO and I said, look, we gotta do this, we gotta go to India, fix the trust issues, um, and so by the time the the 1st 3 months got over, you know, there's always a slide you put in front of the board, right, which shows like what you've actually done on revenue pipeline and bookings. Um, while we were able to show the right direction on that slide, there's also always a hidden slide on people, and what I'm, uh, what I'm very glad I was able to contribute to and that there was, there was reception to, um, my, um, you know, my approach of, uh, taking a very people. centric approach to how to go about a turnaround, it really helped us with, uh, stemming our attrition and more important than anything else because our employees felt we had the trust, um, in those 1st 3 months, which was, which is when every competitor was going after us hammer and tongs to take away our competitor, our customers. We didn't lose a single customer.

Um, when I stepped into the role in week one, I had that first meeting with the, with the board and the new CEO, and, uh, you know, it, it became clear to me that, uh, what we were up against, um, was a multifaceted problem. You know, so, uh, the board's message to me was actually very clear. I mean, we think you have a great product. Just add water, turn the marketing back on, and everything should start flowing, right? I mean, you guys, you got to do a bunch of other things. So

And by the way, nobody had told me. When I walked into the job that the previous marketing team and the CMO had actually left the building 3 months back, I thought that there was gonna be a little bit of, you know, that handout, but basically what I got was a page and a half of passwords, and, um, uh, you know, the previous team felt a little bored for various reasons, but to, to kind of what triggered even triggered this idea, it was. In that meeting as I'm sitting down and hearing what the board's actually asking the CEO to do and by the, by the way, this is the first time CEO as well, um, I realized that while I had to uh get all those marketing metrics running everything else that we needed to do to make the company successful, not losing our customers, having a compelling product vision that the market felt excited about, um. It went down to tapping into the capacity of an existing team which was operating on a 2.5 out of 5 glass door rating to be, you know, to be very direct about it. And so as I started looking around and saw the magnitude of the ask and the actual capacity we had, which is, you know, we had some good people, we had some OK people, we had a whole bunch of people on the fence. I realized that the, the number one thing that I could address in the short term at least. You know, in 6 months I knew that I could bring on better talent, but in the next 6 months we had to keep our talent and we had to basically get more productive capacity out of them. And um the, the number one thing that triggered me to this problem being a lot deeper was when I spoke to the guys on the US side, they started throwing shade on the India India guys and when I started talking to the heads of India, they started throwing shade on the US and I said, OK, wait, um. It feels to me that I'm dealing, I'm flying a little bit blind. I haven't even seen these people I'm working with, and if I can address this productive capacity of this team in the next 3 to 6 months, then we actually have a fighting chance. Otherwise we're going to have this situation where all the new people are bought in. But all the old people are gonna publicly agree but privately sabotage things, um, and so it was really kind of looking at a combination of data and uh my personal conversations within the first few weeks after that board meeting and so.

what

You know, fundamentally, it's about ownership for me, Brandon, right? So when I, when I was in my last role in an AI startup just prior to this role, uh, you know, they, they gave me the responsibility for kind of running marketing, and I knew what I was able to do with marketing. It was a slightly different story, uh, because it was a more hockey stick journey. There was none of this, uh, you know, uh, breaking of glass and kind of past history as I did here. So when I walked into this role, part of the reason I actually chose the role after discussing this with the board and the and the new CEO was I said, you know, um. I, uh, bring a whole body solution to what I do, you know, I've got a marketing background, but also prior to that I have a product background, you know, I'm a little bit of a Swiss knife of skill sets from the work I've done in my life. Um, is this what you like? I think this is what you need in the role, but is this what you're ready for? And they were like, absolutely, we want you to come in and um fix marketing. So I, I said, OK, you know what? I. If I, if I'm taking ownership, I have to look at um a way that I can one, keep the board off my back, keep them happy, but also start addressing this. So I actually, my, my fundamental psychology, Brandon was, uh, was rather simplistic. It was like if I fix this bigger problem, then I will also not just be able to make the board happy one quarter, but make the board happy multiple quarters, um, because, you know, in the first quarter I knew what they wanted. They wanted an exciting product which. They wanted to know that the tap, uh, you know, uh, to that water analogy that there was water being added, and they wanted to know that the market was receiving this new direction well. I knew I could address that um with my regular playbook, but the problem I anticipated was that in the 2nd quarter and the 3rd quarter now, you know, we're pushing our people to deliver more on the product we're trying to get um every single data scientist to start writing blogs so that we can get more content and so on and so forth. I, um, I made a bet. That if I focus on this other problem and actually help the CEO, uh, who was a very revenue focused operator, right, he, he, he was like, listen, you don't like my way, get out of the door, and I was like that's not gonna work in this environment. I gotta be the soft, the soft shell around him if you will, um. Uh, eventually we managed to keep the board happy in the 1st quarter, but as the 2nd and 3rd quarter hit and, you know, when COVID hit, which was basically in our 3rd quarter, I think as a team making that investment was the right bet because we were just so much more ready for what hit us after COVID and in fact we ended up using COVID, um, you know, to sort of survive and thrive a little bit better than our competitors. Um, uh, so I, uh, you know, maybe, maybe just one other thing I can add to this is that, uh, I've. I felt that running towards the fire, uh, I wasn't always this guy, you know, 10 years ago when I worked in larger organizations like Yahoo and others, I was like, well, you know what, just stick to your knitting, but, um, in this role, I, I really felt that if I didn't do it, nobody else would, and that's the mindset I woke up with and I said I'm gonna take this ownership and keep running towards the fire till somebody stops me and when they stop me, we'll have that conversation.

One of the biggest obstacles I faced was with the incumbent leadership that uh in certain functions had been around for 6 or 7 years. So one specific example is, uh, you know, we had a really good head of customer success who've been in the role for like 7 years through basically 3 CEOs, right? And his, uh, mindset was that look, um, we can only, we only wanna change at a certain pace. I know our customers pretty well because I've been here since, you know, day 7. Um, and, uh, everything you're doing, love it, but I started getting these vibes right in the beginning that, you know, um, there was a little bit of a territory that this person had carved out over time and, you know, a set of relationships that, that, that built up. So as I started, uh, moving in their direction and, you know, bringing some of these best practices that I've seen in other organizations, uh, to help customer success become more expansion focused, more revenue focused, you know, more NPS focused and just really. Becoming a more measured customer success machine versus a firefighting customer success machine, I immediately encountered resistance. I mean, it actually came to a head in one of our staff meetings where. Uh, sort of the, the tone from, uh, this leader to me was essentially, look, I love everything you're doing, but you're coming too close to kind of telling me right now, kind of what to do. So what I did is I, you know, I took a step back. I knew that we had to inspire confidence of the new leaders and the old leaders both. And then I did, did a series of things over the next couple of weeks, you know, taking this person out for lunch, really trying to understand what their concerns were. Zeroed down on understanding that they basically felt like I was gonna give them through my charter, I was gonna give them more work. Without necessarily giving them the support and once I could convince them that everything that I'm, uh, I'm asking you to do to help with our customer marketing, I'm gonna be here to support you and I have a team that I'm hiring to support you, then things eased out a little bit, but I would say customer success and that relationship with marketing was one of the biggest barriers I faced in the first six months as I went about, you know, uh, poking my nose around, uh, uh, in my, in sort of my this, you know, the other part of my role outside of marketing.