Scale Or Die

All week, I’ve been telling our team, “The Board Man gets paid!” I love that quote. But what does it mean? Kawhi Leonard is an NBA player that just took the Toronto Raptors to the Finals and won the world championship, knocking off Golden State. He’s a total freak, and I read an amazing article this week breaking down who he is and how he operates. It has inspired the heck out of me, and I pulled 6 hilarious stories out of it to share with you to inspire you and your team to greatness. Kawhi is a Board Man. Let’s all be Board People. Liking Founder Friday? Have an idea for a topic you'd like us to cover? Tweet at Dave — or shoot him an email at Dave@UseProof.com & tell us your thoughts! We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. 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 pub

Are funnels dead? David McClure's famous AARRR funnel framework has been the guide book for growth strategies for years — the problem is McClure's funnel framework is nearly 11 years old! Are loops and flywheels the new thing? Making the transition from thinking about growth strategies from funnels to loops and flywheels could be the key to drive growth for your business in 2019 and the years to come. Listen to Brian Balfour, Founder/CEO of Reforge, talk about his experience with growth VP of Growth @ Hubspot. Then we'll cover his journey along the way to scale his new growth masterclass business. Learn from Brian's extensive knowledge gained from countless hours studying 100s of SaaS companies. 0:00 — Introduction 1:48 — How Brian helps companies at Reforge 3:24 — Brian's journey from Hubspot to Reforge 4:42 — Funnels versus loops? Funnels versus flywheels? What's here to stay? 11:08 —Learn how growth cycles play out at Reforge 14:31 — Where do you think paid traffic plays into startups? 20:00 — Examples of

Customer.io is a SaaS product that allows companies to create, manage, and send all of their messages between their apps & their customers. The software solves a common headache by providing a no-code-required solution for product teams — one in which you can pipe in events from platforms like Segment and then drag and drop automated email messages. Since their launch in 2012, Customer.io has grown rapidly — to 41 employees and more than 1200+ customers ranging from SaaS to lot and beyond! In our conversation with Colin Nederkoorn, the CEO & co-founder of Customer.io, we’ll cover the origin story and how he powered early growth through directly talking to customers. Then, we’ll dive into why word of mouth has been such a powerful growth method for their brand. Finally, our conversation dives into how Colin is approaching the development of paid & partner marketing, fundraising, brand, and remote culture. 0:00 — Introduction 3:25 — What is Customer.io? What’s the origin story behind the company? 4:

If there’s a company that knows the playbook for Growth, it very well might be Hubspot. In 13 years, they’ve scaled to one of the biggest names in marketing & sales and joined the ranks of successful tech IPOs. Kieran Flanagan, VP of Marketing and Growth, is charged with three of the most important parts of Hubspot’s flywheel: acquisition for the Sales product, the Freemium funnel, and the global web strategy. In his career, he’s worked for some of the biggest names in SaaS including Salesforce and Marketo. Plus, he’s helped many startups implement the strategies that power larger businesses. In this episode, we’ll talk through how startups differ from scaleups, the inbound growth engine that has powered Hubspot’s success, why the funnel is dead, and the reasons more companies should invest in Customer Success. 0:00 Introduction 1:10 useproof.com/personalize 3:35 Kieran's career path to Hubspot’s VP of Marketing 4:23 Why the mission matter for SaaS 5:33 Scaleups are great when you want a new challenge eve

Building great product is everything. Get it right, you'll win beyond your wildest dreams. Get it wrong, and life is painful. I've experienced both. One thing that's been a huge learning lesson as we've built Proof has been how to structure and run our product teams. We've iterated on this cycle quite frequently, and after a lot of failures, we've figured out some great systems to build product quickly and effectively. As a customer-obsessed company, we also have put systems into to place that makes us focus on our customers every day. In this episode, we'll cover everything product — from how we structure our teams to our philosophies on building great, customer-focused software. Liking Founder Friday? Have an idea for a topic you'd like us to cover? Tweet at Dave — or shoot him an email at Dave@UseProof.com & tell us your thoughts! We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. Before you leave, be sure to leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, post a comment, or share with your friends! Tune into more epi

Casey Armstrong is the CMO at Shipbob, an end-to-end fulfillment solution that brings the same 2-day shipping you know and love from Amazon to a wider array of businesses. Previously, Casey was the VP of Marketing at BigCommerce, an eCommerce platform with over 50,000 SMB clients. He has consistently acquired millions in net ARR, managed millions in spend, and driven billions of organic pageviews. In short, he knows how to grow a business. Our interview takes a deep dive into the BigCommerce funnel, covers why marketing is symbiotic with other parts of the business, and talks about why partnerships have been critical to his success. As a leader in the B2B marketing world, Casey also provides great insights on how to think about building out a marketing team. During our interview, he was in the early stages of building out his team after his arrival at ShipBob and he walks us through his mindset. 00:00 Introduction 4:27 Inside the funnel at BigCommerce 5:33 Testing customers vs stock images in paid ads 6:40 Mo

At this year's Traffic & Conversion Summit in San Diego, Dave sat down with Garrett Holmes, Director of Content at Digital Marketer to discuss Proof's growth to date. This episode includes their full conversation — covering everything from our transition from agency to SaaS to how we used two strategic advisors to power viral growth. The episode is raw, conversational and full of life lessons from our company's journey. Hope you enjoy! Liking Founder Friday? Have an idea for a topic you'd like us to cover? Tweet at Dave — or shoot him an email at Dave@UseProof.com & tell us your thoughts! We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. 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

Dave is an avid reader — powering through about a book per week. In this episode, he'll chime in with his favorite reads from the last year and how they've affected his thinking at Proof. Plus, as a special treat, he'll share his 3 least favorite reads, so you don't have to waste your time. Liking Founder Friday? Have an idea for a topic you'd like us to cover? Tweet at Dave — or shoot him an email at Dave@UseProof.com & tell us your thoughts! We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. 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!

Instapage started in 2012 as a SaaS solution for easily creating landing pages at scale. Today, they are a company of 170 employees with 4 global offices, 15k customers, and a whole host of offerings to help advertisers increase conversions through post-click experiences. Tyson Quick, CEO and Founder of Instapage, has been critical to the success of the business. In this conversation, he talks with Dave about the origin of Instapage and how he grew the company into a leading name in SaaS. Our conversation turned more interesting and actionable as he specifically discussed the strategy he used to shift towards Enterprise customers. These high-value customers have been insanely powerful for revenue growth and the long-term outlook of the business. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did. Audio times: 0:00 Introduction 2:47 The origin of Instapage & where the company is at today 3:46 Transition from landing pages to a post-click optimization solution 5:01 How did you get your first customers? 6

In this episode, Dave is joined by his first guest, Ben Johnson, the wizard behind Proof's content to discuss the launch of this very show. They'll talk through the concept of the show, the goal of the show, the equipment we use to film, how we book guests, our production process, our editing cycle, our launch strategy, and the methods we've used to scale the show. If you've ever thought of producing your own podcast — or if you're just curious why we do this every week — this show has all of your answers. Equipment mentioned during the episode: Canon EOS C100 camera Canon 6D camera Audio Technica ATH-M30x headphones Aputure Light Storm COB 120B lights Sennheiser EW 112P microphones Cayer BV30L tripods Set from Article.com Zoom.us for video recording software We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. 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. F

In this episode, Dave reflects on the key reaons Proof has achieved $200,000+ MRR, raised capital through the top startup accelerator Y Combinator, and has built a business he loves with his best friends all in under 24 months. Key 1: have a technical co-founder Key 2: pre-sell your product Key 3: laser focus on niche influencers Key 4: get advisors to open doors Key 5: build a moat with brand and design Key 6: establish market leadership Key 7: move to a place good for business and family Also, stay tuned at the end of the show for a new weekly segment: things I like, things I hate, and the product I'm loving right now. We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. 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 inter

Sujan Patel is one of the biggest names in the growth and content marketing world. For the past 13 years, he has led digital strategy for clients such as Salesforce, Mint, Zillow, LinkedIn, and several Fortune 500 companies. Plus, he's also an entrepreneur himself — founding WebProfits, ContentMarketer.io, Narrow, Quuu, and Mailshake. By working with a variety of clients over the years, Sujan has a variety of growth strategies that can take a company from startup so scaleup. In this episode, we’ll deep dive with him on brand, user experience, and customer obsession. We’ll cover pivoting a company, buying businesses, and his decision to run a SaaS billboard in the middle of Iowa. Plus, during this episode, we host a recurring feature, Which Test Won? 0:01 — Introduction 5:24 — Sujan chimes in on trends in growth; “it’s harder than ever to stand out” 7:00 — Buying remnant billboards 7:55 — How to build a brand to stand out 9:15 — Which Test Won? 17:32 — The story of MailShake’s growth 18:22 — Failing to hit PMF

In this episode, Dave gets vulnerable. He reflects on the biggest leadership and company mistakes he's made while growing Proof — blunders in growth, communication, hiring, product, strategy and more! If you're an entrepreneur or manager, learn from our missteps and don't make the same errors as you grow your business. Also, stay tuned at the end of the show for a new weekly segment: things I like, things I hate, and the product I'm loving right now. We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. 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!

In this episode, Dave covers First Principles Thinking in-depth and how he's used it over his career as an entrepreneur. This is a strategy employed by Elon Musk, Ray Dalio, and others — and it's led to many of the biggest breakthroughs of the past decade. After explaining the concept, Dave focuses on exactly how this line of thinking has impacted Proof. We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. 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!

Have you ever tried to save an email to Evernote? Fire a Google Calendar from a Slack message? Getting programs to talk to each other without direct APIs used to be a nightmare. And then came Zapier. Zapier is the solution to help companies set up powerful workflows and make nearly any software program integrate. With their service, you can connect over 1300 apps (and growing) without a custom built hook. The service originated during a hackathon weekend, and it has quickly grown into one of the largest software companies of the decade. In just over 7 years, Zapier graduated YCombinator, has grown to $35 million in ARR, and recently they were named #53 on The Forbes Cloud 100. It’s also notable to mention that Zapier is structured a bit differently than most businesses. Zapier is a 100% distributed team of 170 individuals scattered around the globe — and they are strong through leaders around remote work culture. In this episode, Wade Foster, CEO & founder of Zapier, talks with Dave about the strategies h

In this episode, Dave opens the door on Proof's experience at Y Combinator (Proof is a YC Winter 18 grad). He'll talk about why he decided to apply to the notorious accelerator, why Proof didn't get in the first time around, what the day to day at YC is actually like, common misconceptions about the program, and more! If you're thinking about applying to YC or just are curious for an insider's scoop on the program — this episode is for you. We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. 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!

The Internet has changed a great deal over the past decade, and it's about time for marketing to catch up. In this episode, Dave continues his talk from last week on why Marketing 3.0 is an era in which every person has their own unique funnel. He explains how his team has used the concept to increase demos and trials at Proof. Plus, he'll give a preview of the new software project Proof has been working on for the last few months. This is part 2 of 2. Part 1 originally aired 2/22. We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. 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!

After going through TechStars in 2014, LawnStarter Lawn Care has scaled into the leading online name in lawn care. Ryan Farley, LawnStarter's co-founder and CMO, has led the company's massive growth — scaling the business to over 10,000 customers. How has he done it? On this episode, Ryan will cover the growth channels that have worked for him, why he experimented with biphasic sleep for a period of time, how to adjust for seasonality in a business model, and the shocking insights he's had over the past few years as he's sat at the epicenter of growth marketing. We'll also do a deep dive into his customer acquisition funnel, and walk through exactly why he's built it in the way he has. This is an actionable episode — we hope you enjoy! Get ready to #ScaleOrDie... We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. 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.

The Internet has changed a great deal over the past decade, and it's about time for marketing to catch up. In this episode, Dave chimes in on why Marketing 3.0 is an era in which every person has their own unique funnel. He explains why businesses that embrace "online experiences" will win in the long run: higher conversion rates, greater revenue, happier customers... This is part 1 of 2. Part 2 goes live next Friday, 3/1. We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. 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!

As Proof has grown from 3 friends working out of a basement in Maryland to a company of 15 working in downtown Austin, Texas — Dave has had to change the way he thinks. It's no longer a situation where he can work in a silo, he's had to develop systems to better manage and lead a team. In this episode, he deep dives on the books, strategies, and actions he's taken to make the shift from marketer to CEO. We're excited to have you along for Season 1 of #ScaleOrDie. 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!