"We do have to hire to some extent ahead. And that's a bit of a bet. But again, when you've developed the conviction that you're onto something big, then we haven't waited. We move forward pretty forcefully building teams."

Arthur Bellamy talks with DTC's Scott Darling about scaling Exotec to a global company with more than $1B in systems sold. They dive into sales strategies behind modernizing warehouse technologies. Arthur shares actionable tactics for entering new markets, how to hire the right sales leads for $10M+ system installs, and the importance of being able to show potential customers -- not just tell them about -- your product lines.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Overview of Exotec
05:32 Origin Story of Exotec and the SkyPod System
09:25 Scalable Product vs Customized Designs in Material Handling
10:26 Expanding Internationally/Coming to America
16:29 Scaling the Sales Team and Hiring Ahead of Growth
21:17 Navigating Channel Relationships for Success

What's it like to be the first communications leadership hire at a hypergrowth, IPO-bound startup? In this episode of The DTC Podcast, Ronda Scott talks with Lindsay McKinley, the first comms hire and director of communications at Samsara. She shares advice on how to swing for the fences when you're at a resource-constrained early-stage startup and how to hit the ground running when you join a fast-growing company to take it all the way through an IPO.

Key Takeaways for Comms Success

• Do the work to understand how comms can best serve current business priorities.
• Develop close relationships and trust with key stakeholders by managing expectations.
• As you build your team, hire for skillset spikes and balance of egg breakers and diplomats.
• Understand the invaluable leadership comms plays throughout the entire IPO process.
• Embrace the challenges and opportunities inherent with comms at every stage of a startup.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
04:06 Getting scrappy and successful at 15-person edtech company ClassDojo
12:15 Joining the hypergrowth team at Samsara
15:00 Three tactics to thrive in your first 30 days
18:42 Building a world class team
28:06 IPO experience through the communication lens

In this episode of the DTC Podcast, Deepak Jeevankumar interviews Slavik Markovich, co-founder of Sentrigo, Demisto, and Descope. Slavik shares lessons learned from his previous startups and discusses the acquisition of Demisto by Palo Alto Networks. He also talks about his current venture, Descope, which focuses on authentication and authorization. Slavik emphasizes the importance of solving real problems for customers and offers advice to founders. He predicts that AI (of course) and consolidation across cybersecurity vendors will be key themes that follow the 2024 RSA Conference.

Takeaways

• Solve a problem that matters to you and your customers.
• Identify and build a team around you with complementary skill sets who have the same vision of solving the problem for your customers.
• Maintain transparency and open communication within your team.
• Focus on execution and customer satisfaction while maintaining a position of strength as the company grows. Acquisition opportunities will come.
• Consolidation and AI will be prominent themes following the RSA conference.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and initial challenges in founding companies
08:17 Lessons learned from building multiple startups
10:34 The journey of scaling Demisto and the acquisition by Palo Alto Networks
21:59 The importance of solving real problems for customers
31:17 Maintaining a strong company culture and open communication
33:30 Looking forward: challenges and opportunities in cybersecurity