#01: David Cancel, CEO of Drift, on the importance of brand for startups in 2019

Drift is a company that we've been intrigued by for a long time. In this episode, David Cancel (also known as the uncle, D.C., or the GOAT) gives us his learnings from his 20+ year career as a serial SaaS entrepreneur. He's had five companies acquired (BuyerZone, Compete, Lookery, Ghostery, Performable), he served as Chief Product Officer at Hubspot, and now he's building Drift into one of the fastest-growing SaaS businesses of all-time.

In four short years, he's acquired over 150,000+ customers, grown his team to 250+, and created a new category in the process: conversational marketing. David has a lot of opinions on SaaS, growth, product, and team-building — and if you haven't already gotten the picture, he knows what he's talking about. In this interview, you'll hear about why DC thinks you should avoid in channels that don't scale, why you should throw NPS out the window, and how to create new business categories rather than waiting for the market to catch up. We'll cover brand in-depth and the idea of customer-obsession as it applies to both Drift and Proof.

This episode is packed with juicy content, and we're excited to share our full conversation with the #ScaleOrDie nation. Before you leave, be sure to leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, post a comment, or share with your friends! Tune into more episodes at useproof.com/scaleordie and read more stories at blog.useproof.com. Follow Dave & Proof on Twitter — @DaveRogemoser and @UseProof. We publish episodes every week so be sure to check back often for more interviews with the internet’s best minds in growth!