Creating Sales Growth at your VC backed tech start-up

I have now been part of the Marketing teams of several start-ups that have proliferated and achieved phenomenal success, including:

Visual IQ, a Marketing Attribution Software provider (founded in 2006), was acquired by Nielsen last year for $2 Billion. 

Zscaler (founded in 2008), a cybersecurity software company, just had its IPO. Zscaler is currently valued at $50 Billion on the NASDAQ.

I have learned from being part of these successful teams and from previous experiences in the start-up ecosystem.

Hot Software businesses like Fintech and Cyber Security need marketers with smarts, training, experience and drive who can take a business to 'the next level'; whether that means faster growth, more sustainability or more significant revenue, or higher profits. 

Angel investors, VC funds and private equity investors demand individuals skilled in conducting market research, and strategy and who understand all marketing areas, including lead generation.

Here's my 7-point plan to create a promising start-up Marketing Strategy and then execute it:

1. Ensure that you are on the same page as the person who has created your marketing strategy or, even better, create that Strategy yourself. So many problems occur when CMOs and CEOs or Investors do not agree on this. See 'Why CMOs never last.' 

2. Data; explore this and find out what is going on. Don't just rely on the facts you see. Talk with people and establish whether the data you see on paper matches what you are hearing. 

I have dealt with either no data or data that doesn't match reality. Don't devote hours and resources to creating complex models using lousy information. 

Even a fledgling Start-up will inevitably have had many failures already, and you can use this information to avoid making mistakes and model successful behavior. “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” —Michael Porter (See Porter's 5 Forces)

3. Targets - start thinking about what you are trying to accomplish. 

• Is the problem that you have a weak brand? 
• Is it that no one outside your core user group really understands your products? 

• Do your competitors have an iron-grip in certain Regions or markets? 
• Is it that you have weak growth? 
• Are you sinking resources into the same old Marketing investments getting diminishing returns? 
• Are you accurately measuring your Marketing investments? 

Establish what that core problem is and then drive solutions to that.

4. Create a plan around that. For example:

a. If the problem is that your sales team is not converting your good leads, then bring in added Business Intelligence. A remarkable tool for this is Discoverorg , which has a team of researchers calling companies and finding information that will enable you to identify opportunities quicker and more effectively.

Additionally, if you are not lead scoring already, I suggest you start doing this. This works because your sales team will immediately get alerted automatically when a lead reaches a specific 'threshold' score. 

So let's say that score is 100, then a lead from a company with $1 Billion revenue that has requested we contact them, is 'BANT' qualified and is the right target company and job title, that would automatically become a 'hot lead' at 100 points in your CRM system. 

A lead from a company on our target list would immediately be a 10. A Lead from a company that could be a target would be a 5. When that lead downloaded 3 critical reports in the last week, it became a 30, and so on. 

If the problem is that you need more leads to start with, then lots of high-quality gated content will generate more contacts for your database. 

Google Display and search ads are effective for inbound leads. LinkedIn lead generation campaigns are good value as you can get more highly targeted. Ensure you target your prospect audience (maybe with the 'matching' tool).

Inmail campaigns work very differently from sponsored content on LinkedIn. So, figure out what combinations work best for your business.

I would also work with the Marketing team to create compelling content, from videos to infographics, from case studies to white papers.

Below: Forrester 'Wave report' on Marketing attribution with my company 'Visual IQ' in the top right-hand quadrant.

In the past, we've created great content with Gartner or Forrester or, failing that, some other well-known research firm, like IDC. These are high-value pieces of content that your prospects will 'trade' their contact details with you to gain.

One idea that we have done very successfully in the past is an 'Industry report' based on surveys we send out. Usually, I use SurveyMonkey, which I was familiar with at Business School in 2006. 

CMO survey-backed report we ran every year at Visual IQ

Check out this Survey-based report on the State of in-video game advertising in 2022, that I created with Content strategist Damien Seaman. It's the first report of its kind created (check Gartner, Forrester, or IDC). It's based on survey responses from hundreds of thought leaders in Advertising, Ad Agencies, and Video Game companies.

Everyone is interested in what their colleagues are thinking about and sending these surveys out can also be an excellent way to reconnect with customers and prospects.

 'The Money Show', Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas, where I ran an event for our Financial trading software tool.

Another highly effective area of Marketing I've managed over the last eleven years has been events. 

I have had some great successes in this regard, from the Money Show at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas, to the Adobe Marketing Conference in Salt Lake City, to the biggest Cyber Security event in Europe, Infosec, in London, UK. 

Not all companies employ rigorous financial analysis of the results here, so I have created an edge in this way. I write more on this subject here. 

We've had events that have generated thousands of leads, and business meetings that have created millions of pounds/dollars in sales.

Content from blogs can be effective. Ensure you optimize the content with important keywords to draw search traffic to your blog. Post on social media and wait for your blog's referral and search traffic to come to your site.

You need plenty of exciting content for this 'awareness' part of your content; think more about great ideas than flawless execution.

Also, your prospects value authenticity and originality. Keep blogs authentic and exciting. People know when they're simply being manipulated to buy something.

I have put together Ebooks, webcasts, industry reports, case studies, and infographics, all of which can be good sources of leads.

5. Ensure that everyone is on board with it. If the management team is not, then discuss it, and get to the bottom of the problem. 

Once you have agreed on the plan, then execute it relentlessly.

6. Analyze your results regularly, at least once every month, and pivot if they are insufficient. If it's not working, be honest and try something new.

The beauty of digital marketing is that you can A/B test continually to optimize all your metrics.

A typical A/B test 

Look at Key financial metrics, like ROMI - Return on Marketing Investment (NPV, IRR, Payback period, Customer Lifetime Value, Cost per Click, and Transaction conversion rate).

Monte Carlo simulation for a new product launch*

*Mark Jeffery Data-driven marketing Using Oracle's Crystal Ball' predictive analytics software with a random number generator, showing many possible variations of profit/loss for a marketing investment.

7. Finally, and most importantly, encourage criticism and make your entire company a safe place to share information and mistakes.  You must make mistakes to take critical, calculated risks. But without listening to, and acknowledging criticism, you can't learn from your mistakes either. Go to my website. or learn more about B2B SaaS sales & marketing here

House of Lords Cocktail Party

My friend and Law School classmate, Joanna Mcdwyer, formerly Head of government affairs at HSBC Bank, who is now Development Director at Newnham College, Cambridge.

Lord Maurice Saatchi, the founder of Saatchi & Saatchi and MC Saatchi, told us He only applied to one University. His message on the evening and now the world's shortest poem was 'LSE made me'.

In my case, I did apply to other colleges since I didn't assume I'd get into the LSE, particularly to study Law, which was highly competitive.

LSE now require significantly better A level grades, than when I applied, at least three A's now. But I'm not sure if that's because the students are higher calibre or because of the grade inflation everyone's been talking about.

Maurice Saatchi got a first at LSE, back when getting a first was very rare. He is also one of the greatest minds in advertising, author of the Iconic 'Labour isn't working' Campaign that ushered Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party into power in 1979.

As Maurice said himself, 'I left LSE with my first-class honours degree in economics. They did say to me that I possessed what they called "effortless superiority", and that has always worked very well for me'.

Here's a good piece about how he started in Marketing, working for Michael Heseltine, at Haymarket.

                                                       Lord Maurice Saatchi, below

                    

There were prominent MPs, Peers, Academics and Executives from organizations like JP Morgan, HSBC, Fidelity Investments, Barclays Bank, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, AXA, Zurich, Wells Fargo, BP,  Mckinsey, PWC, and Accenture, at the event, to name some...

On the river outside the reception, from the House of Lords 

Me, outside the House of Lords

-

Head of Linkedin UK about 'Coming out' at work

Joshua Graff, Linkedin’s UK Country Manager

I often attend events at my college, LSE, and sometimes bring colleagues or friends along.  I attended one such event at the LSE called 'An Audience with Linkedin’ with Joshua Graff, UK Country Manager & VP EMEA & LATAM.

I thought that Josh’s talk was particularly appropriate for June, which is gay pride month since Josh is a vocal and active supporter of LGBT rights as well as being an openly gay man in the workforce.

Initially, Joshua Graff talked about his vision for LinkedIn. Linkedin’s mission statement is to create economic opportunity for the entire Global Workforce. Of the 780 million Professionals worldwide, already 610 million have LinkedIn accounts, and that number is increasing rapidly.

Joshua then elucidated some of the more specific aims of the company which revolved around creating value through their talent solutions business (60% of Linkedin’s revenue), Marketing Solutions, including sponsored content (20%) and of course Premium Subscriptions (20%). 

All this is going to drive the company forward, particularly now that LinkedIn is part of Microsoft ($26 Billion acquisition by Microsoft of LinkedIn in December 2016).

Joshua moved on to a discussion of values. 50% of employees would not consider taking a job at a company unless they had visibility into its culture and what it stands for, so obviously this is important. LinkedIn espouses compassionate management, which is not necessarily empathy, but rather being able to imagine what it's like to do your colleague's job.

Josh said that empathy might debilitate you if you feel too much. However, understanding what, for example, your team members are going through will enable you to manage them much more effectively. As he put it, it's the valuable insight of 'walking a mile in someone else's shoes'.

Equally, he talked about Linked in’s culture of transparency. His discussion of this value was the most potent part of the talk for me since He shared his own deeply personal story of coming out as a gay man in the workforce.

When He first came out to his parents, he immediately went back 'into the closet'. 60% of Millennials and Generation X's in the workforce do precisely the same. On LinkedIn, He finally published a piece talking about his homosexuality and embraces that in the workforce today.

This value inspired me. According to research, workers who are more transparent about who they are, end up as more productive, more engaged and happier. I know that I'm more comfortable and more productive at work when I can be myself.

You can find his most recent article, 'Are you out on LinkedIn?’

 here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/you-outonlinkedin-joshua-graff/

As well as the first article he wrote on this subject 'Coming out accelerated my career trajectory.'

 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/coming-out-accelerated-my-career-trajectory-joshua-graff/  

The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe

The Euro: How a Common Currency Threatens the Future of Europe by Joseph E. Stiglitz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I went to see Professor Stiglitz talk at the LSE a few months ago and that's when I purchased this book, which I also got Joseph to sign for me. I've enjoyed quite a few of his books before including 'The Roaring 90's' about the boom in the Economy in that decade.

This is compelling reading. He shows that even the Success story of the European Union, Germany, has only had fairly anaemic growth since the European monetary union was formed. You can see this demonstrated here, with this chart of German GDP growth over the last ten years: 

source: tradingeconomics.com


At the other end of the spectrum, you have crumbling economies like Spain, Portugal and particularly Greece that according to Stiglitz are being decimated by the austerity measures imposed on them by the EEC and heavily enforced by member states like Germany.


It also went some way to explaining some of the Economic struggles the EEC has gone through since the Euro was introduced 17 years ago; That the EURO has shackled a lot of Economies that may need the financial independence of their own currencies to perform to their highest potential.

He also questions the fact that an unelected body is imposing budgets on countries that their own people have rejected, for example in the case of Greece, which actually voted against these measures but had them imposed upon them by the EEC nevertheless.

This may be the reason why tax revenues have fallen significantly in some of these countries. 'No taxation without representation' was the rallying cry of another well-known revolution.

In addition, the Economics Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz raises the question of Currency manipulation and who really benefits from the Euro. Much is made in the News about China artificially reducing the value of the Yuan in order to make their exports cheaper so that they operate with a trade deficit.

However, Professor Stiglitz shows that actually, German has a larger trade surplus than China. It's entire Economy relies extremely heavily on exports. This is the deeper issue at play here. Even the UK has operated in the EU with a trade deficit of about one hundred billion dollars (the EU sells $100 billion more products in the UK than the other way around). With countries like Spain, Italy and Greece, this will be far higher.

In February Germany's trade surplus--or the balance of exports and imports of goods--increased to 252.9 billion euros ($270 billion), which marks the highest surplus since records began after WWII. 

Because all the weaker Economies in Europe bring the value of the Euro down, Germany ends up with a currency that is 15% undervalued; thus creating their imbalance.

Conversely, countries like Greece, Spain, and even France, operate with a currency that is too high for their exports to be competitively priced; Hence their poor economies, high unemployment, lower exports and trade deficits (as opposed to Germany's surplus).

It seems counter-intuitive, but Professor Stiglitz believes that the only hope of saving the Euro in the long term is for Germany to leave the European Economic Union. 


View all my reviews

-->

The Economics of Persistent Slumps

This week I went with a friend to the Philips lecture  at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) with Professor Robert Hall of Stanford University, originator & author of ‘The Flat Tax’   & one of the founders of Macroeconomics (author of one of the first books on the subject and now the standard University textbook on Macroeconomics )

The gist of the lecture was how productivity has declined in the USA. Areas of concern included the rapid fall in the Labour participation rate, which has now started to affect women (who previously were increasing in the labor force quite rapidly) too.

The biggest surprise here is that almost all of the decline in the Labour force is in the top levels of income and education.

Professor Hall speculated about a number of reasons for this. One rather novel one, was that fifty or sixty years ago, there was very little in the way of entertainment. If you chose not to work, even with a high income, life could be quite dull. These days there are a variety of interesting pursuits, that can occupy people all their life, without them having to work.

It would be interesting to pull a chart of video game use in the last thirty years and match it with the fall in work participation rates for high-income youth.

Another interesting chart to look at would be the increase in benefits and the fall in the work participation rates. My suspicion is that a lot of people claiming benefits are not truly unable to work.

I myself had a medical condition, that was classed as a disability for seven years. I could have claimed disability benefits for it. Fortunately, I worked through it and now I'm healthy again.

The toll on one's self-esteem of claiming money for doing nothing is rarely considered when debating the government benefits system.

Almost all the Labour participation shrinkage in the US Economy is from the richest and most highly educated sectors

 Professor Hall calculated that US GDP would be approximately 15 percentage points higher if this and a few more minor issues were addressed. He was only covering the US in his lecture. However, I'd imagine these issues with productivity will only be worse for some of the other developed countries if you look at this chart below. 

Current GDP per hour worked, G7 countries 2013 and 2014

We rounded off the night with dinner at The Delaunay.

-->

Has Venture Capital finally arrived in Europe?

Now that I'm back in London after 10 years working in the USA, it's fortuitous that my office at Zscaler is a stone's throw away from my Alma Mater, The London School of Economics.

They have regular lectures, and recently I decided to go back to attend one on Venture Capital in Europe. The LSE Finance Department invites me to these from time to time.

There was quite an exciting bunch gathered in the Conference room, including my neighbor, a Consultant at KPMG specializing in due diligence accounting for Venture Capital.

The host of the evening was Ulf Axelson, the Group Professor in Finance and Private Equity at the London School of Economics. LSE has just started a Master's degree program in Private Equity.

Byron Deeter, the managing partner in Bessemer's Menlo Park, California Office, was the most interesting speaker. He focuses on investments in cloud computing, mobile, and internet sectors which is exactly my area of expertise.

Bessemer's 10 Laws of Cloud Computing and SaaS

He was the founding CEO of Trigo Technologies, acquired by IBM. Byron is the co-author of "Bessemer's 10 Laws of Cloud Computing and SaaS", the BVP cloud index, BVP's cloudscape and BVP's next cloud unicorns. He was the principal investor in Criteo, France's most successful IPO of recent years.

Bessemer's Ten laws of Cloud Computing

Felda Hardymon, a senior partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and the Class of 75 Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, was also very interesting. 

His investments have included Parametric Technology, a product cycle-management software provider; sporting-goods chain Sports Authority; office-supply company Staples; and Axis Networks (acquired by ACE), a 4G, wireless-remote radio head supplier.

Also on the panel was Saul Klein, who most recently co-founded Kano and Seedcamp and the co-founder and original CEO of Lovefilm International (acquired by Amazon). He was also part of the original executive team at Skype (acquired by eBay). 

Skype is one of my favorite companies. It enabled me to cheaply and easily stay in touch with friends and family in Europe when I first moved to the USA in 2005.

11% of US businesses are venture-backed companies, which makes up a whopping 21% of the US Economy. So it's apparently crucial to US business. 

This article was referenced at the beginning of the talk. 9% of US Venture-backed companies have IPOs versus only 4% in Europe. While 28% of US companies are bought out versus 20% in Europe.

Some of the theories on why Europe is behind the US in Venture financing include:

1) Venture Capital is a younger business in Europe. It only really got going in 1999, while in the US, it started in the late 1980s. I would have to partially disagree since Sir Ronald Cohen founded VC firm Apax partners in the UK in the early '70s.

2) There is less of a network of VCs and support organizations (Law firms, Consultants, etc.) in Europe than in the US. Part of this problem is caused by employees not moving around enough in Europe. 

In the US, it's far more common to change jobs quickly than in Europe. This change accelerates the size of the networks, which is crucial to building successful tech startups.

3) Financing - in the US, the entrepreneur is the star. Funding plays the second fiddle. In Europe, it's the other way around.

4) Fear of failure - some discussion of the idea that Europeans are more risk-averse than Americans?

5) Regulatory problems - Byron Deeter talked about the difficulties he had trying to set up Criteo in France. Though a French company, Criteo chose to have its IPO in the US on the Nasdaq 

Although the 50 square miles of Silicon Valley creates more companies than the rest of the world put together, this talk did leave me feeling optimistic; now is the time for new companies to take off in Europe.

Share of global venture capital markets by country

As you can see from the chart above, the UK is the dominant recipient of Venture Capital funding for startups in Europe, and Globally, the USA is dominant (50% of the entire global VC funding).

Skype, founded in Denmark (and now owned by Microsoft), is a great template for aspiring European Entrepreneurs.

In the UK, startups are booming. The entire sector has been growing rapidly, well over 10% each year.

• Last year UK startups generated a record $15 Billion in Venture Capital Funding.
• 672,890 startups were founded in the UK in 2018/2019 tax year
• 57.6% of companies that started up in 2013 were gone 5 years later
• 89% of companies founded in 2017 survived the first year
• 65% of UK employees want to start their own business

Below: The European Venture Capital Event at the LSE

Go to my website.

Dinner with the founder of Justgiving

Bela Hatvany was in town, He comes to Boston a lot since He has family and Business interests here as well as some history (although He now lives in the South of France). He's an ancient family friend who has known my parents for almost fifty years. 

I actually went on holiday with his family when I was a child and even lived at his house in Kensington Park Gardens (featured in the film 'Notting Hill') for some time. My parents had just taken him out for dinner in London, so this time, dinner was his treat.

We ate at a Spanish Tapas restaurant where I used to live in Newbury street when I was taking my MBA. Bela's a fascinating guy. His dad lost his fortune in Hungary during the war. So his father came to England & made another fortune as a bridge player, Buyer of art & backer of racehorses. 

His father actually got so good at betting on racehorses, that the betting agencies and bookies began to pay him not to gamble.

Bela told me a great story about when He was at Harvard Business School. He was asked by IBM to complete a data/software project at the end of the first year of his MBA.

IBM told him it would take fourteen software programmers a year to complete. Bela explained that He figured out a way to do it much quicker - He actually completed the project alone, & in only twelve weeks. After that, he was in quite a lot of demand.

Here's one of his other companies, Silverplatter, which He sold to Wolters Kluwer for $113 Million in 2000. These days He invests in a whole host of new companies, such as Justgiving, which he started and which has grown immensely as a business.

I remember clearly Bela telling me about his idea to set up this online giving site back in 2000. I was more than a bit sceptical at the time since the internet was still at quite an embryonic stage plus there had just been a major 'dot.com crash', which took shares in my wife's company, Akamai, from $400 a share to $1 a share.

However, his idea was spot on, and they got the first-mover advantage in the market, so everyone knows the Justgiving brand now. Looking back, I realize that this did teach me a valuable lesson; to be more open-minded about start-up ideas. By the way, Bela also invented the touchscreen back in 1982.

Since then, many of the start-ups or early-stage companies I have worked at have been successful and proliferated.

One of them, Visual IQ, was acquired by a Multinational, Nielsen, for two billion dollars. Another, Zscaler, the cybersecurity company, just had an IPO which now gives the company a Market Cap of $50 Billion. - not bad for two companies that are both just ten years old.

Bela Hatvany recently sold Just Giving for £95 Million. This was a company Bela set up as a project after he had 'retired', to do some good in the world.

Newbury Street, in Boston, USA, where I lived as an MBA student, 2006-2007