focal podcast
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."
Episodes
Most founders get sales rep productivity wrong - and it kills their growth.
If you’re thinking about hiring your first sellers - or wondering why the ones you hired are struggling to hit their numbers - this one is for you!
In this week’s focal podcast, I unpack in detail how to build a repeatable sales playbook that actually works with Russ Thau who drops the sales productivity formula he used to scale multiple companies pa...
What got you here won't get you there - the brutal truth about scaling from $1M to $50M in revenue.
If you keep doing what you were doing to get to $1M ARR, you won’t get to $3M ARR. What got you to $3M won’t get you to $10M, what got you to $10M won’t get you to $20M, and so on. The hard truth about rocket ship startup growth is that you have to reinvent yourself at every major revenue milestone you reach. But unfortunatel...
How to nail partnerships from Day 1
Get insights into the counterintuitive playbook that defies conventional wisdom about when startups should pursue partnerships with Natasha Ratanshi-Stein, Founder and CEO Surfboard, who nailed partnerships as their main GTM channel almost from Day 1 and eventually generated 55% of revenue through partners.
Surfboard is a workforce management platform for customer service teams. After rai...
Most startups die between $1M-$10M ARR because they try to reinvent the wheel.
A lot is written about the $0 to $1M ARR journey. A lot less about the $1M to $10M journey - even though that’s where lots of promising companies die. Most of what it takes to get to $10M ARR follows established patterns. Yet, too many startups try to reinvent the wheel and die as a consequence.
In this episode, Guillaume Jacquet walks us through...
From cold LinkedIn DMs to nailing customer discovery and design partnerships to eventually raising $23M from Tier 1 venture firms.
Learn why most startups do customer discovery so poorly, why they fail at design partnerships and how Pocus CEO Alexa Grabell cracked the code by embracing skeptics over enthusiasts. Learn the counterintuitive approach that led to building a category-defining product in the crowded sales tech sp...
Mastering the pivot playbook after 14 months of chewing on glass.
Han Wang, Co-Founder and CEO of Mintlify, knows pivoting better than pretty much anyone. Mintlify pivoted 8 times during their first 14 months before finding Product-Market-Fit and eventually raising > $20M from a16z, Bain Capital Ventures, and YC.
While those 14 months felt like “chewing on glass”, Han learned a lot of valuable lessons he shared with me du...
Most founders waste months validating ideas with pats on the back instead of credit cards.
Our guest, Santiago Suárez Ordóñez reveals how he went from zero sales experience to closing over 100 customers by treating revenue—not compliments—as the only signal that matters. This episode breaks down the exact playbook for transitioning from "advice calls" to actual sales.
Santiago Suárez Ordóñez is the CEO and co-founder of Mome...
Austin Hughes is the co-founder and CEO of Unify GTM, a platform powering warm outbound for growth, marketing and sales teams. Previously, Austin was an early growth leader at Ramp, where he helped scale from a few hundred to over 12,000 customers in just two years. Unify GTM has raised over $30 million from investors including OpenAI, Thrive Capital, and Emergence Capital, as well as founders from Ramp, Flexport, Box, and...
Popular Podcasts
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.
Latino USA is the longest-running news and culture radio program in the U.S. centering Latino stories, hosted by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Maria Hinojosa Every week, the Peabody winning team brings you revealing, in-depth stories about what’s in the hearts and minds of Latinos and their impact on the world. Want to support our independent journalism? Join Futuro+ for exclusive episodes, sneak peaks and behind-the-scenes chisme on Latino USA and all our podcasts. www.futuromediagroup.org/joinplus