In startups there are 3 types of people:
1. Ankle Weights - They actively fight performance culture, ambitious goals, and accountability. They fight to make things go slower and worse.
And they ALWAYS have great reasons.
3. The Pace Setters - These people come into any situation and immediately the bar is raised, the pace is quickened, and everyone feels their presence and the pressure to keep up.
There are 3 levels of "excellence" to achieve as a startup employee.
1. You execute exactly what is asked of you, on time and well done.
Strict orders ---> Strict Execution
I have 2 tickets (on row 2) for the Jazz game tonight.
I want to give them away.
I'm going to give them to the person who shares the best "Utah is boring" picture in the comments.
Utah LFG!
If you’re driving through Silicon Slopes you’ll notice the Divvy billboard looks different.
You won’t see our logo but you’ll see our support.
War is terrible and we pray for the people caught in its path. 🇺🇦💪
2. The Adapters - These people will generally adapt to whatever the current culture. So if someone else is pushing they push, if someone else is chilling they chill.
Few can offer as much value to founders
- no one builds trust like tyler
- no one cares as much as tyler
- no one will get as in the trenches as tyler
- no one will tell you the truth like tyler
Win for
@Pelion_VP
, win for
@thogge
and win for the founders he will invest in
Utah LFG!
Utah has the 2nd highest number of unicorns by state BARELY behind California
When you look at it by $100B of GDP.
For every $100 billion of 1990 Gross State Product (GSP, a measure of state-level GDP):
California: 68
Utah: 64
Massachusetts: 46
Washington: 29
Lot of Brex news today
Some thoughts having competed with them while at Divvy:
1. They did some things better than I've ever seen. Fundraising, PMF, and PR come to mind.
2. They have some of the smartest most capable leaders I've ever known.
3. They advanced fintech amazingly
You think the day will never come.
But eventually it always does.
Divvy was pretty much all I thought about for many years.
Our customers. Our team. Our goals.
Now it’s time for me to move on to the next opportunity.
I’m a massive fan of what
@agazdecki
is building over
@microacquire
.
Microacquire supports the bootstrapped companies that often get ignored.
So we’re proud to highlight them and their fundraise today on our billboards.
Yesterday I was teaching a class at BYU.
I told the early
@Divvy_HQ
story of the day we got 700 inbounds demo requests in one day.
We had 200 by 8am
and 300 by 9am
Ended the day at 700
How:
Utah LFG!
How many years after graduation do people found startups that go on to become unicorns?
One school does it faster than all the rest.
On average, it takes 11 years after graduation.
It takes less than six years for BYU founders.
Early days at Divvy we had a challenge.
The founders had created a product and business model that was completely new (and brilliant.)
But the challenge was, how do we talk to the market about it?
1. When I joined I wrote 20 different digital ads every single day.
In the last 2 days Utah VC firms have announced over $600M.
I'm sure we're going to hear about more in the near future.
Now we just need more great companies to get started :)
If you aren't following
@agazdecki
and what he's doing with
@microacquire
you should
They champion bootstrapped businesses and provide a platform for them to exit. It's AWESOME
So we teamed up with MicroAquire to show bootstrapped businesses love on our
@Divvy_HQ
billboards
If you've read "The hard thing about hard things" by
@bhorowitz
then you know Mark Cranney
He's our 5th guest
@mdcranney
is without hyperbole one of the best Revenue leaders to ever carry a quota
From farms in Idaho to working w/
@pmarca
. You need to listen to this GTM legend
I think it’s a huge miss when CEOs (especially early stage) outsource recruiting to a search firm.
I think top talent responds so much better to outreach from a CEO than a search firm.
Best recruiters I know?
@blakemur
and
@adamedmunds
Episode 2 is officially live!
@rabois
by any rational standard is on Mount Rushmore of both the investor and operator worlds.
Selfishly I learned more from this convo than any other I’ve had this year.
Enjoy and please leave feedback.
As I thought about what came next after Divvy I had a few main criteria:
1. I want to work with the most talented and best people.
2. I want to be building and improve my abilities as a builder.
3. I want to help the Utah ecosystem.
4. I want to chase excellence.
As we continue integrating
@Divvy_HQ
into
@billcom
I'll be taking on a new role.
Working with the Divvy Revenue leaders was the honor of a career.
I'm proud of the way we aligned Marketing - Sales - Implementation - Customer Success - Support - Rev ops under one roof.
Here’s a Utah story we don’t talk about nearly enough.
Whitney Wolfe Herd is the co founder and CEO of an 8-year old startup called Bumble.
She’s led them through an IPO and a current market cap over $3.2B.
@thogge
Wrong good sir.
1. Imagine the incentive issues with taking someone’s parental status into sentencing.
2. She did real damage to lots of folks. Not just investors but folks who relied on those blood tests.
3. She’s a great con.
4. 11 years does seem excessive.
Latest episode is live!
Our chat with
@GeoffLewisOrg
was fascinating.
- He's invested in (in my opinion) the top 2 Founders in the world,
@parkerconrad
and
@sama
.
- He regularly zigs when everyone zags (increasing Bedrocks fund size when many are funds are reducing theirs.)
It’s hilarious to me that both Surveymonkey and Qualtrics were bought on the same day.
Surveymonkey: $1.5B
Qualtrics: $12.5B
Lots of lessons to be learned here. Lots.
Also…. Utah LFG!
Founders are special
They're bold and crazy enough to believe they can create something from nothing
They're willing to take on the world to make it happen
We had to throw the
@getweave
team and founders Clint Berry,
@brandonrodman
, Jared Rodman on a billboard to celebrate
Got to spend the week in London at
#SaaStrEuropa
.
I’m constantly impressed by the caliber of the content and people that
@jasonlk
and team bring together.
I got to share “Top 6 GTM models we used at Divvy to go from $0 to a $2.5B exit in 4 years”
Had a blast.
You can never put more pressure on an "A player" than they put on themselves.
So instead of pressure they need:
-Support (they're hard on themselves)
-Resources (make sure they have what's needed)
-Thought partnership (thinking out)
- Road block removal (let 'em cook)
Welcoming
@nwalkingshaw
,
@gilbertglee
, and the
@torusrev
team to our billboards.
We're also welcoming
@epic_ventures
to the billboard. They were the Utah firm who proudly backed them.
Building is hard, so from all the builders here in Utah we say:
"Thank you for building"
The people I end up admiring the most have something weird in common.
They opt in to hard things in order to find out who they really are.
Constantly curious about what they’re capable of.
In the early days of Divvy I spent a lot of sleepless nights thinking about what
@samdblond
was doing.
Competing with him taught me so much, it was fun to get together and share those learnings.
One of the worst things that happened to startups:
They became convinced that selling their business to investors (raising money) was more important than selling their product to customers.
Prioritize selling to customers and making a real business and the rest gets easier.
Story from the early Divvy days that got us thousands of customers and earned us the loyalty of SMBs everywhere.
Story starts in March 2020, dark days.
Covid shutdowns are in full effect and uncertainty is the primary emotion.
I found all 4 in a role at Pelion Venture Partners.
Happy to announce I'm joining Pelion as a Venture Partner, and I'm beyond excited and thankful, specifically to Blake Modersitzki, Chris Cooper, Benjamin Lambert, and Chad Packard
Excited to find/fund/help more unicorns.
How did
@billcom
's Divvy drive to a $2.5 Billion exit, and end up being one of the big winners in the category?
@brexHQ
@tryramp
A deep dive with CRO emeritus
@sterlingmsnow
here
And see everyone for 100s more incredible session like this at 2024 Sep
Just talked to one of the CEOs on Utah's Mount Rushmore.
Said he boiled down what makes great CEOs to one thing.
Intensity.
Intensity above all else.
He's right, nothing can replace it and everything that matters flows from it.
I disagree with Biden on plenty of things.
But no one is rooting harder for him to be EXCELLENT today than me.
Hopefully, everyone feels the same, we need him and other world leaders to rise to the occasion.
@stoneyybaloneyy
Each chapter of humanity has been better than the last. And it’s on us to make sure that continues to be true. Having kids is a huge motivator to make it so.
Exclusive: Aspartame, one of the world's most common artificial sweeteners, is set to be declared a possible carcinogen next month by a leading global health body, pitting it against the food industry and regulators
In the simplest terms I know:
- selling new deals is hard
- retaining customers is hard
- developing amazing software is hard
- managing finances is hard
- onboarding customers is hard
It’s all very hard.
So who tends to do well at startups?
People who love hard.
People tend to think burnout is caused primarily by 1 thing.
Being overworked
I actually think all these things contribute more to burnout:
- lack of alignment (rowing in opposite directions)
Humbled and excited to announce I've been promoted to the Chief Revenue Officer here at
@Divvy_HQ
It’s been an incredible journey so far. Tons of learnings and no doubt tons more to come.
LFG!
Overall even though at the time I hated them with every fiber of my being, I'm thankful.
Thankful because competition is sacred. They make you better.
And I'm better for Brex.
Utah LFG!
Congrats to
@nwalkingshaw
and the Torus team today on the official public launch of the Torus Staton.
Such a big problem the team is tackling.
Thank you for building!
If you don’t have a culture that celebrates taking risks, you will learn that over time the riskiest thing you can do is to take no risks.
Applies for companies, teams, and individual careers.
.
@sterlingmsnow
of
@Divvy_HQ
has made a name for himself with the 'Utah LFG!' rally cry. Now he's pivoting that meme into a philanthropic organization guided by some of Utah's most energetic young tech leaders.