focal podcast

Pascal Unger
  • 5.0 (1)
  • 创业

Pivotal early lessons of today's best startups. Welcome to the focal podcast where we go deep with some of today's best founders and operators on ONE crucial lessons from their early days. This podcast is not the usual "highlight reel" startup podcast that goes one inch deep across 20+ topics. Rather, we ask the questions you’d ask if you were sitting across from them. No fluff, just the real, actionable insights you’d get if these founders were mentoring you 1on1. We cover topics including: - What worked and why. - Costly mistakes and how they fixed them. - Frameworks that truly made a difference. - Tactics to move faster. - What they wish they’d known sooner. - And much more! "Only a fool learns from their own mistakes. The wise learn from the mistakes of others."

  1. How Pump became one of the fastest growing YC companies | Why D1 Athletes Win at Sales | Why Experience is Overrated in Early-Stage Hiring | The 4:30am Cold Call Strategy | Paul Russo, Sales Leader at Pump.co

    5小时前

    How Pump became one of the fastest growing YC companies | Why D1 Athletes Win at Sales | Why Experience is Overrated in Early-Stage Hiring | The 4:30am Cold Call Strategy | Paul Russo, Sales Leader at Pump.co

    Pump.co is one of the fastest growing YC companies. They got there partially by building an incredible sales team, stacked with talent that was overlooked by many. In this episode, Paul Russo, a sales leader at Pump unpacks a sales-hiring system built for aggressive, early-stage growth. You’ll hear how to source elite junior talent, pressure-test them with mock cold calls, and ramp them into technical AEs who still outbound hard. He also shares promotion gates, call quotas, and the culture required to chase incredibly ambitious goals. Our guest Paul Russo is employee #1 and a sales leader at Pump.co, the company that helps startups save up to 60% on cloud costs - for free. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 05:09 - The “weird” target formula forcing 20% month-over-month revenue growth. 07:48 - Do individual-sport athletes outperform team players in enterprise sales? 09:10 - Outbound-first: hire technical AEs over “been-there enterprise” veterans. 11:22 - Why we prefer scientists over business majors for AWS selling. 11:43 - Recruit “future founders” and frame the role as founder school. 13:24 - Scale with hungry rookies led by seasoned pod leaders. 15:24 - YC Bookface + Top-20 schools: an elite sales-athlete pipeline. 20:02 - Cold-call candidates with traction—sell the unicorn vision first. 23:10 - COO screen routes talent; extroverts go sales, introverts to ops. 26:01 - Mock cold calls, no context: test grit, tone, coachability fast. 29:09 - Demand real conflict stories—“I never fight” is a red flag. 29:52 - Assess disciplined routines: 4:30am calls require athlete-like habits. 31:10 - Explain FinOps simply: reserved instances are leases, not compute. 35:39 - Cultural bar: 12–16-hour days, aiming for a 2028 IPO. 37:48 - Onboarding: Pump University, daily mocks, Nooks-powered 750-call days. 40:36 - Two-month ramp; PIPs are coaching tools, not pre-firing. 43:04 - Promotion ladders with hard gates; AEs still dial 250/day. 47:08 - Friendly pod rivalry + “rebuttal ball” spreads best practices. 53:41 - First sales hire playbook: top-school hunter, athlete, founder-aspiring—equity-heavy.

    57 分钟
  2. Why "Don't Invest in Marketing Until PMF" is Fatal Advice | Why Production Quality Doesn't Matter | Why Brute Force Beats Strategy in Growth | Why Channels Take 90-120 Days to Work | Serial Founder Paul Veugen / Founder of Detail

    9月22日

    Why "Don't Invest in Marketing Until PMF" is Fatal Advice | Why Production Quality Doesn't Matter | Why Brute Force Beats Strategy in Growth | Why Channels Take 90-120 Days to Work | Serial Founder Paul Veugen / Founder of Detail

    Most founders wait too long to invest in marketing—and by the time they realize their mistake, they've already lost the race. That’s why Paul Veugen challenges the conventional wisdom that marketing should wait until product-market fit, arguing that building your growth engine from day one is the only way to achieve predictable, scalable growth. Paul Veugen is a serial entrepreneur and investor currently building Detail, a video creation platform that enables everyone to share their story faster. He previously founded and led Human to an acquisition by Mapbox, and Usabilla which sold to SurveyMonkey for $100 million in 2019. He also led product and go-to-market at Color, which has raised close to $500 million from top-tier investors. In Today's Episode We Discuss:02:01 - Why "don't invest in marketing until product-market fit" is terrible advice for founders03:37 - How marketing experiments are actually customer discovery in disguise07:26 - Why cold outbound is dead and founders need to build momentum before reaching out13:27 - The brutal math: You need 20% month-over-month growth to hit $1M ARR in 12 months19:05 - How to brute force your way to finding winning marketing channels26:05 - Why marketing channels take 90+ days to show results (and most founders give up too soon)34:13 - Overcoming the fear of looking stupid in public when building in public40:58 - How positioning drives product decisions, not the other way around47:44 - Why AI features are attention grabbers, not value drivers49:18 - The messy middle: Why channels feel broken before they explode55:05 - How being an investor makes you a better founder (and vice versa)57:58 - The problem with MVPs and why testing individual ingredients is useless01:02:23 - Why building a startup is an endless expedition, not a sprint

    1 小时 8 分钟
  3. Why Your Lowest Performer Sets the Bar | How We Fired Half Our Team and 10x'd Performance | Why You Must Fire Faster | Why Reference Checks Matter More Than You Think with Cat Noone, CEO & Co-founder, Stark

    9月15日

    Why Your Lowest Performer Sets the Bar | How We Fired Half Our Team and 10x'd Performance | Why You Must Fire Faster | Why Reference Checks Matter More Than You Think with Cat Noone, CEO & Co-founder, Stark

    If you don’t enforce the bar, you lower it. This episode tackles the uncomfortable line between being humane and looking out for employees while also being a high-performing organization - and what a real culture reset looks like when you’ve let it slip. Our guest is Cat Noone who went through such a major reset herself with the company she co-founded, Stark - which is trusted by over 50,000+ companies and >$10M raised from Uncork and us at focal. In Today's Episode We Discuss:01:46 - How being hell-bent on mission while avoiding "bro culture" backfired03:54 - The early warning signs that performance was drifting at Stark04:14 - Why I stopped doing reference checks and paid the price08:38 - How the lowest performer sets your company's bar, not the best09:17 - When busy work replaces real productivity in remote teams12:32 - You can't have s****y input AND s****y output - pick one15:01 - Why founder insecurity about being "employee friendly" kills companies18:28 - The brutal emotional cost of firing people you've worked with from day one25:00 - How to communicate layoffs to survivors and rebuild momentum29:39 - Why urgency beats speed for maintaining quality standards33:38 - Demo Thursdays as quality control checkpoints, not show and tell37:06 - The four-day work week experiment and why Fridays aren't free40:01 - Why most startup principles are worthless wallpaper44:12 - If you're going to cut deep, cut deeper - don't play it safe45:58 - Move fast and break things is an excuse to ship shit48:34 - Get an executive coach before you think you need one

    51 分钟
  4. Why Every Startup Should Separate Vision from Product Pitch | Why Customers Nodding Doesn't Mean They'll Buy | The Hidden Danger of Broad Positioning Too Early | Brutal Truth About Building What Developers Want | Simon Rohrbach, CEO & Co-Founder at Plai

    9月8日

    Why Every Startup Should Separate Vision from Product Pitch | Why Customers Nodding Doesn't Mean They'll Buy | The Hidden Danger of Broad Positioning Too Early | Brutal Truth About Building What Developers Want | Simon Rohrbach, CEO & Co-Founder at Plai

    Stop pitching the end state. Sell the smallest step that proves you can provide value. This episode dives in on how to decouple a north‑star company vision from a scrappy, testable product pitch that customers can adopt today. You’ll learn how to use positioning as your lever - choose sharper category language, cut scope to true table stakes, and listen for unsolicited buy signals- to move from zero traction to real pull.  On top, you’ll learn what the slowest, costliest way to validate an idea is; how to identify table stakes; and the signals that tell you when to broaden your ICP.  In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 01:35 - From “Stripe for Support” to reality: what we missed03:48 - API‑first exposes every seam; validation speed plummets07:59 - The worst enterprise pitch: “engineers, please write more code”11:23 - Name your category—or wear Zendesk/Intercom’s handcuffs16:06 - Set true table stakes; timebox the MVP ruthlessly21:02 - Buy‑now signals: users volunteer payment without a hard sell23:49 - Ethical pre‑selling: describe the future, then sprint to it25:12 - Turn case studies into copy—speak customers’ exact language27:38 - Vertical → use case → market: DevTools → Technical Support → B2B30:54 - Outrun feature spreadsheets with a customer collaboration thesis40:41 - What collaboration means: Slack escalations, issue trackers, shared context47:15 - Map features to FRT, CSAT, retention—not “shiny UI” claims50:34 - Homepage discipline: kill vanity metrics and shortcut bragging52:21 - 70/30 rule: discovery + founder conviction against higher‑order shifts

    57 分钟
  5. The Science of First Call Exceptionalism | Why SDRs Matter More Than Ever| How Champion Empowerment Determines Close Rates | The Rule of Threes That Closes Enterprise Deals | Greg Costigan, Sales Leader at Box, Zuora & Zenefits

    9月1日

    The Science of First Call Exceptionalism | Why SDRs Matter More Than Ever| How Champion Empowerment Determines Close Rates | The Rule of Threes That Closes Enterprise Deals | Greg Costigan, Sales Leader at Box, Zuora & Zenefits

    You have to be so much better than the incumbent if you want to have even the slightest change. This episode is a tactical masterclass on early-stage B2B sales. You’ll learn how to nail the first meeting, architect modular demos, multi‑thread like a pro, and turn proposals into “Champion Empowerment” decks that actually close. We also cover ROI modeling, executive sponsorship, outbound strategy, and the exact behaviors that separate A‑players from everyone else. Our guest is Greg Costigan leads the sales team at Performica and has built and led GTM organizations at Box, Zuora, Zenefits, LearnUp, Hone, and MindGym. He’s closed complex enterprise deals, championed award‑winning programs (e.g., Pinterest’s Brandon Hall–recognized L&D initiative), and specializes in taking startups from founder‑led sales to scalable processes. In Today’s Episode We Discuss:01:33 - Sales process is a science—ditch gut feel for repeatable rigor.04:51 - Stop skipping steps—credibility beats the ‘one‑call close’ myth.07:01 - First meeting playbook: GGGA, pre-read, ruthless prep.10:57 - Lead with a hypothesis—change the buyer’s frame (Challenger).13:32 - First-call exceptionalism: come in hot and create momentum.14:51 - Yes, demo on call one—and land a clean close.19:44 - Multi-thread fast: champion texting, exec sponsors, rule of threes.22:19 - Demo excellence: send agenda early, close BANT/MEDDICC gaps.23:59 - Modular demos: tailor admin, user, integrations to stakeholders.27:51 - End every demo with a scoping or proposal—never ambiguity.34:14 - Turn proposals into a Champion Empowerment deck that sells itself.36:54 - No exec sponsor? You’re at risk—fix it before forecasting.38:20 - Build a simple ROI model—finance will ask, be ready.54:49 - Outbound isn’t dead—SDRs matter more than ever.

    1 小时
  6. Why Going Up Market Too Early Kills Startups | Why New Categories Cannot Do Traditional Sales | Why "Sell to Pain" is Terrible Advice for New Categories | The Hidden Truth About Box, Asana & HubSpot's Growth | Matt Harmon, GTM Advisor & Former Box/Asan

    8月25日

    Why Going Up Market Too Early Kills Startups | Why New Categories Cannot Do Traditional Sales | Why "Sell to Pain" is Terrible Advice for New Categories | The Hidden Truth About Box, Asana & HubSpot's Growth | Matt Harmon, GTM Advisor & Former Box/Asan

    Moving upmarket, the right way When should a startup go from SMB to enterprise - and when should you not? I break this down with a former revenue leader at Box, SurveyMonkey, Asana, etc - Matt Harmon (ex‑Box, Asana, SurveyMonkey). We discuss the real signals for enterprise readiness, why security/compliance readiness matters, and why “we’ll build it if you buy it” kills confidence. We also compare playbooks for existing vs. new categories, the land→expand reality, and how to balance self‑serve revenue with enterprise ambitions. In Today's Episode We Discuss:1:42 Why the “go upmarket” conversation starts early4:53 Company readiness: security, compliance, SEs, forecasting shifts10:57 Signals it’s curiosity-only vs. a real enterprise opportunity16:45 “Is it someone’s KPI?” and the need for true pain/need18:36 Existing category = one path to buy (ripping/replacing)22:52 New category upmarket: shared services & proving uniqueness28:28 Land→expand and product-led reality33:08 Don’t force a model—map the customer journey first37:57 Positioning and intellectual honesty at ~$1M ARR40:00 Category creation vs. innovating in an existing one45:07 Why not to fear SMB/self-serve revenue47:15 Don’t over-index on “sell to pain” for new categories50:15 Founder advice: embrace ambiguity and EQ52:25 What great VCs do: back leaders who can hire leaders

    56 分钟
  7. Building Without VCs Until $10M ARR | Why Most Popular Startup Advice is Dead Wrong | Why Titles Will Kill Your Startup | The $20M Series A That Changed Everything | How to Survive Burning $2M/Month When Markets Crash | Duncan Weatherston, CEO of Smile

    8月18日

    Building Without VCs Until $10M ARR | Why Most Popular Startup Advice is Dead Wrong | Why Titles Will Kill Your Startup | The $20M Series A That Changed Everything | How to Survive Burning $2M/Month When Markets Crash | Duncan Weatherston, CEO of Smile

    Bootstrapping to $10M ARR was easier than raising the first $20M. This episode is a masterclass in founder decision-making: choosing (and parting with) co-founders, bootstrapping to real revenue, then raising at scale - without losing the plot. Expect frank takes on titles, burn, investor selection, and the moral weight of taking other people’s money. Duncan Weatherston is the co-founder and CEO of Smile Digital Health, a leading healthcare data platform company. He and his team bootstrapped to ~$10M ARR before raising a $20M Series A, and are now well past $50M in ARR. 01:40 - Why start with co-founders vs going solo in healthcare SaaS06:27 - How to vet co-founders: proof of execution over chemistry06:58 - The #1 mistake: trusting claims without validating capability09:39 - Early-stage stars rarely scale—how roles must evolve12:25 - Title inflation trap: why early VP labels backfire later12:47 - Be mercenary with misfits: fairness to the team > feelings16:56 - Create IC ladders: don’t “promote” top engineers into management18:27 - Founder vesting: avoid dead equity with 5–6 year schedules19:46 - Why they bootstrapped first: expertise, low burn, paying customers22:40 - Would he raise earlier today? Services-led product tradeoffs25:47 - The $20M decision: buyouts, tailwinds, and scaling delivery34:04 - Taking VC creates a moral obligation—here’s what that means36:56 - 2021 mistake: “spend aggressively” and adapting too slowly45:59 - The do-over: fix org design, roles, and accountability sooner46:25 - Popular advice he rejects: don’t contort your playbook to fads48:41 - PMF obsession: identify your repeatable sales unit before scaling51:03 - Best investor advice: hire actual A-players, not just roles

    54 分钟
  8. Why Demand ≠ Product Market Fit | How to Kill Your Golden Goose Before It Kills You | Why Pessimistic Founders Win | The $100M Pivot That Defined Arc's Future | Basile Senesi, Chief Revenue Officer at Arc

    8月11日

    Why Demand ≠ Product Market Fit | How to Kill Your Golden Goose Before It Kills You | Why Pessimistic Founders Win | The $100M Pivot That Defined Arc's Future | Basile Senesi, Chief Revenue Officer at Arc

    When every YC batchmate wanted their product and investors threw money at them, Arc made the unthinkable decision - abandon the business. Learn the framework for identifying false product-market fit that saved Arc from the fate of their now-struggling competitors. Basile Senesi is the Chief Revenue Officer at Arc, the financial operating system for growth companies. He's built multiple YC companies including Phonebox (raised $500M+), is a prolific angel investor, and owns Chateau Pavo winery in Sonoma.In Today's Episode We Discuss:02:17 - How Arc originated $100M in loans then killed the product07:25 - The warning signs that made them abandon massive revenue growth10:49 - Why unit economics matter more than investor expectations14:16 - How to convince investors to kill your fastest-growing product16:38 - Pivoting from lending to cash management during market chaos19:05 - Why do the hard thing first in fintech22:14 - Everything is a funnel: validating ideas without building27:34 - Building operating models before you have revenue34:50 - Why startups need pessimistic salespeople37:00 - How to know when you're building the wrong business40:14 - Not all revenue is created equal in venture43:11 - Hire for the long haul, not the next milestone46:54 - Tactics equal strategy in early-stage startups50:49 - Learning what not to do is your competitive advantage

    55 分钟
查看全部 18 集

关于

Pivotal early lessons of today's best startups. Welcome to the focal podcast where we go deep with some of today's best founders and operators on ONE crucial lessons from their early days. This podcast is not the usual "highlight reel" startup podcast that goes one inch deep across 20+ topics. Rather, we ask the questions you’d ask if you were sitting across from them. No fluff, just the real, actionable insights you’d get if these founders were mentoring you 1on1. We cover topics including: - What worked and why. - Costly mistakes and how they fixed them. - Frameworks that truly made a difference. - Tactics to move faster. - What they wish they’d known sooner. - And much more! "Only a fool learns from their own mistakes. The wise learn from the mistakes of others."

信息

  • 创作者
    Pascal Unger
  • 活跃年份
    2025年
  • 单集
    18
  • 分级
    儿童适宜
  • 版权
    © 2025 Pascal Unger