Creating Signal Not Noise/Melissa Rosenthal - The New PR, Driving In-Bound, Listicles ~ Spark of Ages Ep 26 - Spark of Ages

Episode Transcript
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Rajiv Parikh (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to the spark
of ages podcast today.
Our guest is Melissa Rosenthal,co founder of Outlever, a
platform she's building tocounter the frustrations she's
dealt with throughout her careeras a brand builder with a deep
passion for value creation.
Melissa is driven to empowerbrands through content at scale.
And in building Outlever, she'sopening a net New marketing

(00:28):
and sales channel for ROIfocused B2B and B2C brands.
Melissa's career has been arocket ship where she's held
significant leadership roles,including the chief creative
officer at ClickUp, chiefmarketing officer at Insight
Timer, chief revenue officer at.
Cheddar and vice president ofGlobal Creative at Buzzfeed,
her achievements have beenrecognized by Forbes 30 under

(00:51):
30 business insiders, 30most creative people under
30 and Digiday change makers.
I'm still hopingfor, you know, I'm,

Sandeep Parikh (00:59):
I'm banking on I'm that I'm gonna get
50 over 50 50 over 50.
So that's what I'm,that's I'm gutting for.
Alright.
There you go.
You're on the path.
You're on the path 80 of Brady.
I don't know.
So I'm going to get on a list.

Thousand under a hundred.
Some of the key takeaways youcan expect from this episode,
outlevers cutting edge strategyfor cutting through media
noise, what an expert in scalinggrowth for media and technology
companies like Melissa focuseson and go to market for her
own startup and how yourcompany can step up their
creative game in the age of AI.
So Melissa, welcometo the spark of ages.

Melissa Rosenthal (01:33):
Thank you so much for having
me, very excited to be

here.
Yeah, so glad to have you.
I know you're, you've gone frommany cycles in your career from
early stage, all the way to,to, you know, mega startup to,
uh, really good size companies.
And now you're on your next one.
So.
We have so much fun stuffto talk about because I love
talking to fellow marketers,especially entrepreneurs.
Um, in your opinion, what'sthe biggest problem you see in

(01:58):
content marketing and creativeadvertising in terms of how
brands connect with customers?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a,
like, marketing is changingdramatically, like, there's
seismic shifts happening.
And I think that there's,you know, there were
these traditionalplaybooks that worked,
you know, many years ago.
And I think there's a lot ofmarketers that are still kind
of sticking to these playbooks,although the distribution and.
Consumption and contenthave all evolved quite, you

(02:26):
know, quite dramatically.

Yeah.
So there's a need fora fundamental trend,
uh, transformation.
I know, uh, just in thelast year, last couple of
years, especially in theB2B tech side, there's been
a huge issue with companieshitting growth walls, right?
They were growing at20, 30 percent a year.
And then all of a suddennow it's like single digits.
You know, CFOs are looking atthem saying, why am I investing

(02:49):
so much on sales and marketing?
Your sales to marketingratio to new to new
revenue is really high.
It's great if you're growingfast, but it's not, if
you're, you know, it's not,if you're not getting the
growth and so many of thetraditional methods aren't
working like they used to.

Yeah.

And so is that what you were thinking
with how you were startingup this current company?

The reason why we are where we
are is I think we did a lotof bad, naughty things to
software during the pandemic.
We assumed that.
You know, 50 100 percent growthyear over year was just the
new norm, and that we would beable to raise infinite amount
of money to support that.
And that profitability anda lot of other retention

(03:32):
metrics didn't matter.
And it was literally thisgrowth at all costs model where
nothing mattered except growth.
And the reality of thatis it's just not real.
Like growth cannot be 50100% Year over year for most
companies and you can't hireand spend marketing dollars
to be able to support that.
So where are we now?
Uh growth stopped becausepeople realized that they

(03:53):
had they were, you know,first of all Duplicating
the amount of software thatthey needed Companies, even,
even ourselves at ClickUp,

many times over.
Right.
I mean, you look at these,they would show off these
incredible, at leastCMOs would show up these
incredible marketing stacks.
Right.
And they have million,like 25 logos as if
that was a great thing.
And I would sit there going, howdo you operate all this stuff?
How do you make allthis stuff work?
I mean, I'm a marketer.
I love technology, but come on.

You know, the reality was that
we were like, you'd findpeople in the company using.
Miro and others using likeother whiteboard tools.
And it's like, wait, so wehave 1, 500 people in the
company and we're using 10different tools for whiteboards.
That makes zero sense.
So there's no priceefficiency there.
You're not getting any sort oflike, you know, growth model

(04:44):
baked into purchasing, um, andthen you're, you're having.
10 different people using 10different tools and they're
not collaborating on them.
Um, so, you know, a lot of thatbad behavior within consumer
between pack buying stops.
And we had to face therealities of what that
kind of new normal meant.
And like the trickle downfrom for every company
meant that a people werelooking for consolidation.

(05:06):
So they were looking fortools that could do multiple
things and not just one thing.
Like, why would you buy a toolfor whiteboards when ClickUp
has whiteboards within it?
Um, so they were lookingfor efficiencies within.
Existing operating systems andwith existing tool sets, um, so
all of these, like, you know,the kind of siloed companies
that we saw, like, um, like loomand all these, you know, that

(05:27):
they were valued at what, like,60 billion dollars or something.
I mean, maybe not 60, butlike, 20 billion dollars.
And it's like, howcan a video clip.
Make it has

a picture of my, it has a picture of me.
It has a little bite mein a circle in the middle.
That's massivetechnological innovation.

Melissa Rosentha (05:47):
And it's free.
Um, so, you know, I think itwas just like a lot of like,
we just built that internallybecause we're like, why
would we spend money on loomwhen we can, you know, and
it was costing us like 20.
Like that's crazy.
Uh, so I think every companykind of did what we did.
And we looked internallyand we're like, what
are we using that we caneither build ourselves or
consolidate to like, whoneeds to actually use it?

(06:08):
Also, not every single personat the company needs a Figma
license, which I think likewas another thing, they would
be giving these licenses toout to the entire company.
And then we really startedto constrict who actually
had access to the licenses.
So that's a long way ofsaying just like the, the
ecosystem of how we boughtsoftware and Who got to access
to it and what that lookedlike was just not reality.

(06:29):
And I think that thatshifted the entire market.
And then I think we went intothis weird, like, you know,
out of the growth of all,out of all costs, we kind of
shifted like a complete one80 into this like efficiency,
which I say this on a lot ofpodcasts, but like efficiency
isn't a growth strategy.
It's an operationalstrategy that should just
be baked into your, yourmodeling as you spend.
And as you think aboutthings, but Efficiency

(06:51):
doesn't lead to growth.
Efficiency just leads to,you know, constriction of,
of things that potentiallyyou need to grow.
Um, so I, I think thatthere's always just kind
of this weird thing wherepeople are like, you know,
we're focused on efficiency.
Great.
Like, you should always befocused on efficiency, like,
but that doesn't mean thatefficiency equals growth.
Um, so I think that therebecame this very, Big battle

(07:12):
for marketing budgets for like,we're not spending any money.
We're not doing this.
And then it's like,but we're not growing.
And you know, then there'sthis like battle of like, well,
you can't have it both ways.
If you're not spending anymoney, like let's, we want
to prove the marketingis actually working.
We'll stop spending moneyand then see what happens.
Um, same thing withlike outbound sales.
You know, I think a lot ofthese companies were like,
Oh my God, we need to harnessthe power of outbound.

(07:34):
So they built a, a 500 personsales force doing outbound.
With no signals attached,just doing these like
terrible outbound sequences.
Um, and now with AI, we'reeven seeing like kind of the,
the, the, the crux of likewhat that has become, which
is just like saturation ofshitty, shitty, uh, outbound.
Um, and that's not working.
And then companies are like,well, outbound doesn't work.

(07:55):
So we're going tofire that old team.
Anyway, I only

want, I only want inbound content.
I just want inbound now.
Right.
That's what everybody says.
Right.
But, and it is hard.

And the thing is, like, I do believe
in a lot of these things.
I just don't believe in, like,we haven't, like, evolved as,
like, a, as an, as a, as aindustry, like, especially in
software and especially, like,tech, we just, like, haven't
evolved our thinking into,like, what we need to be doing.
And that's why, youknow, I created Outlover.
Um, I, before SAS,I was in news media.

(08:28):
And I, I saw things that workedlike in terms of like getting
people's attention and I builta lot of those things and I
felt like we never appliedor maybe some companies I
worked at we did, but like,the industry as a whole, never
fully applied the methodologyof understanding, like, why
people connect to content.

(08:49):
And why people care aboutthings to their actual
marketing strategy.
So they just startedproducing shit.

Like

just, I

need content.
So just produce a bunchof garbage articles.
Nothing drives me crazierthan when I, when we ask for
content and we just get likea Wikipedia style article.
Yeah.
So bland, so boring,no examples, no story,
nothing to attract you.
But it's like, Hey, this, thisdoes well because the search
engines will pick it up.
Well, maybe, but nobody'sgoing to read it.

(09:17):
For more than twominutes, two seconds,

Melissa Rose (09:19):
a hundred percent.
I think there's also like,we're, we're dealing with
this also, this problemcalled the internal
like back, uh, back pat.
And the internal backpad is like when people
sit in a room and they'relike, yeah, we love this.
We created this video andit's got Mikey from the, you
know, like Mikey on the techside, Mikey's hilarious.
And like, Mikey does this thing.
And then we, we do this andit's like, It's nothing.

(09:39):
It's just like, maybe that'sfunny to your company or
maybe that like is greatinternally, but like that should
never see the light of day.
Um, so people just likeproduce a lot of like stuff
because they think like theylike it, but like, that's
not the reality of like whatmarketing actually is, you know,

there you go.
And so that led you to say,let's go start up, let me
start up my own, you know, thiscompany out lever, uh, it's
about building better contentfor the B2B brand or B2C brand
for any brand, but it's todo a much better job of it.
Okay.
Uh, when I go to your website,I see a, basically just a very
simple landing page and I goand say, get, get me a demo.

(10:15):
Is that because everyoneknows who you are and
they want to talk to you?

Kind of.
We will be revamping thewebpage just for, I'm just

being playful, by the way.
I'm sure you're right.
I

mean, we will be revamping and just
like, there's a bunch ofreasons now, like what you
need to actually see when youget there and like what it
should, what it should actuallylike who we're speaking to.
Um, but yeah, the realitywas that when I launched.
A hundred percent of myinbound, a hundred percent of
our demos came from inbound.

I'm sure.

And that was our entire marketing
strategy to start just inbound.
Um, we are likeinundated with it.
So it's like a littlebit now kind of just like
building, building the method.
I mean,

it's a great way to figure out who initially, if
a lot of people know, yeah, alot of people know you already,
you're trying to figure outwho you're doing your design
with your initial designs with.
We have, you want topick the right people.
You don't want to go off inthe wrong direction, right?
So you don't want to be toobroad about what you're saying.
Just pick, this is part ofthe initial start, right?
Like let's, let's do myinitial set of designs
with the right people.
And so let them call you,you can filter them out

(11:14):
and then you go wide.

So, so just, sorry, as, as the, uh, not
as the non marketing brotherhere, can I just ask like,
exactly what does Outlever do?

Yeah, um, out lever turns companies into their
own dream trade publication.
So effectively, they are theirown tech crunch, their own, um,
their own kind of trade, yeah,their own news company, their
own trade publication wherewe're publishing hundreds of
stories a month, new stories,and we're talking to the people
in their ICP customer set.

(11:44):
That can give perspectives onthe things that we're talking
about that matter to them.
So it's less about peopletalking about themselves and
it's more about talking aboutthe things that their customers
care about, giving them aplatform, think about it.
If you had a podcast at extrememassive scale, where every
day you were talking about 20to 30 different news topics
that affect your industry.
That's what we do.

Okay.
So everybody who doesn'tknow marketing, well, ICP
is ideal customer profile.
I

knew that one.
I've done enoughof these podcasts.
So we can get out

with you all about the history
of where that came from.
I think it came fromstrategic selling back
in the late eighties.
Anyways, now I, if I, if I signup with Outlever, I now can.
Uh, take the things that Iknow about my industry and
myself and literally have lotsand lots of quality content
coming from me as the brand.

Yeah, exactly.
And that, and

I don't have to write it all.
I don't have to,

Melissa Ro (12:35):
I don't need an army

of writers, an army of,

that's like every company is resource
constraint, um, constricted.
So we, we do it a hundredpercent for, uh, the
companies that we work with.

That's great.
Do you have someinitial, you must have
some initial customers.

Oh yeah.
We have 20 customers with abunch that are about to close
and a bunch of them are alreadylive publishing every day and
talking to a lot of people andcreating conversations and, uh,
the motion's really working.
It's really great.
Same.

Wow.
That's amazing.
So, yeah, so I'm, I actuallydid, uh, before this
call sign up for a demo.
So I'm all excitedabout doing that.
We would have made you do alive demo here, but that's okay.
We'll talk, we'll talk about

the company and then showing some examples.

Awesome.

So you're getting that.

So we're kind of doing that.
We are doing a live demo.
So, and you've said you'reusing writers, not just
building with, uh, AI, right?
And, um.

Quality is really important.
Um, and we want it to be stillfrom a journalistic lens.
Like, why are we covering this?
Why does it matter?
Why should you care about it?
Um, what are the sourcesthat we're quoting?
What are the quotes look like?
Who are we speaking to?
There's a lot of like nuancesto decision making that
need to come from people,but the tech can be built
to enhance those decisions.
Um, and that's what we've workedon over the past year, building

(13:56):
that product, the product thatallows a team of journalists to
make these decisions faster, tounderstand what they're writing
for, to understand angles.
Um, because you know, what's,what's interesting is like,
it's, it's not, Super nativeto a journalist's mind, who
was written for the New YorkTimes, how B to B angles
apply to each other andhow there's triangulation

(14:18):
across customer sets andlike, how all of that works.
It's a very, like, nuancedskill set, um, and understanding
of industry as at scale.
So the expectation forjournalists to have that.
It's just unrealistic.
Uh, so the tech helps a lot with

that.
I see.
So the tech helps thejournalists identify what
I, what are good angles?
What are good signalsto write about?
I'm, you know, I, cause a lotof times for companies, when
you're in the company, youfeel like you have, you have
some things to talk about andhopefully the, the capabilities
you're offering, allow themto expand that palette, right.
Of things.
Yeah.

Like on, you know, there,
there are things that arehappening every single day.
It's like this biotech companyjust raised X amount of money.
Then you have to go in and say,okay, how does this apply to
a larger trend within biotech?
What does this actually meanfor industry as a whole?
And then how does it connectback to this customer?
You know, there's a lot ofdecisions and a lot of thought
processes that need to takeplace to, to be able to,

(15:12):
um, understand that and thenwrite, write a journalistic
article from that perspective.
So.

It's like almost like PR at scale in a way,
that's what your PR firm istrying to do is trying to get
people to write about you.
I

believe that this is the new PR, like
trying to get like a New Yorktimes or a Forbes, which I
don't believe in anymore.
I know it's 30, butlike Forbes has lost all
credibility in my mind.
Um, but trying to get likean, like a, like a, uh, like
a published piece in Forbesor wall street journal or fast
company, that's a sniper shot.
Like if you're payinga PR agency, 30, 000 a

(15:43):
month to like try to geta couple of those, like.
There's a lot better uses foryour money and one of those is
like an entire brand strategy.
Like why don't you justbecome the news that you
want to be featured in?
Like that is our entirepositioning statement.
It's like stop trying to findor pay a middleman because their
voice is more authoritative.
Now if you get a New York Timeslike full page piece, Awesome.

(16:04):
Well, that is fantastic.
I'm

not

knocking that.
I think that has a lot ofvalue, but who gets that?
Like, yeah.
And

I think if you're doing enough of these
doing enough high qualityjournalistic style articles,
you're more likely to getpicked up by New York times
or Wall Street Journal or be

able to jump on something that is
actually like topical enoughthat the perspective featured
in the stuff that you'recovering is applicable to that.
And I totally agree.
I mean, it, but we are in aworld where even if you raise
a hundred million dollars,like that's not worthy of.
Okay.
So, like, what is, you know,I, I think it's like doing
something really naughty, like,you know, if you're Elizabeth
Holmes or like something that'slike really bad, it gets picked

(16:42):
up in press and then somethingthat's just like, you know,
you're, you're a lot or, youknow, like, it's very, it's
very, um, Um, like kind ofpolarizing what's picked up.
It's not everything anymore.
So I think you needto become the news.
That's

it is really hard now, right?
Like, like a lot of folks areusing, there are a set of folks
like Elon that are using to saywild and crazy things as a way
of getting picked up and heard.

Brands don't want to do that.
Yeah,

that's very uncomfortable.
I I've, by the way, I'vehad folks say, yeah, I'll
get, get more known, saymore controversial things.
And I'm like, yeah,that's just not my brand.

Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, like.
I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a risktaker and I'm not risk averse.
And I do believe in an elementof that, but I do not believe
in like, you know, taking itto the level in which he does.
Um, and

I'm surprised actually you just in saying
about, I don't know if youwant to talk further about
it, but, um, Forbes, right,Forbes used to be a great
business magazine and then theybasically opened themselves
to anyone writing articles.
And so now, you know, you said,I wrote an article for Forbes
and before that was amazing.
And now you're like,well, it says, well,

Melissa Ro (17:49):
they're, they're new models even for a while.
They, um, what they do isthey reach out to people
saying, Hey, we want you towrite an article or we want
to write an article with you.
And then they tell them thatthey're going to have to
pay to write that article.
That's right.
And then what they do isthey sell that article to
a company to sponsor it.

Yep.

Melissa Rosen (18:06):
That's so broken.
That's so broken.

Yep.
So there's nothing like sincereabout that whole experience.
There's nothing that'ssort of Who's reading that

Melissa Rosent (18:14):
and trusting it?
It's a contributor that'sbeing paid to write, that is
paying to write that article.
That is then another company ispaying to sponsor the article.

Everyone (18:26):
Yeah.
What is that?
Yep.

I don't even know what that is.
Like, what am I reading?
Like,

it just seems like a bunch of people making
money and providing no value.
Yeah,

Melissa Ro (18:35):
yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.
And you can see that in thequality of the article, right?
When, when you, when youknow enough about that, every
time you see that, I see anarticle from them, you wonder,
is this, is this the, youknow, well written business
article, or is this the.
The

clickbait, honestly, used to be able
to really easily sniffout the clickbait, right?
Or, or be able to say thatlike, uh, or you'd see,
Oh, this is from the NewYork times, or this is from
this, this trusted source.
So it's, it's, thiswon't be clickbait.
But now I feel like That youdo don't you don't get that
sense anymore and you're like Ican't tell if this is or or or
a paid sponsored Article ratherthan it being a real article.

I was like someone that raised a
significant amount of moneyfor like a series a and They
posted a write up about theraise And I read the writeup
and I'm like, what is this?
It was just like AI copyand pasted paragraphs
that just repeatedthemselves over and over.
And I'm like, I can'tbelieve that someone is

(19:35):
like promoting this article.
Like this is really crazy.
Like it, this isn't even likehidden that it's just like chat,
GPT, copy, paste contributor.
So it's like a contributorwrote it, but then they
just plugged in the chat.
I'm just like, wow.
Like there's such anopportunity of that.
The bar is so, so, so low.
Right.
I mean,

the person probably said, he probably
wrote a paragraph and said,make it a hundred, you
know, make it 300 words.
Right.
It just became repetitive.
The

bar is just so low and we're
trying to raise it.
Like quality is definitelylike a big piece of this.
Um, that's why I don'tlike, Over, over endorse
the fact that like we use AIbecause it's really human.
It's like in the AI again, itmakes people more productive
and more like able towrite faster, edit faster.
But like quality is ournumber one priority.
Like companies don'twant shit coming out of

(20:24):
their, out of their brand.
Like it's really important.
Um, we want to talk aboutthe things that matter in
a really intelligent way.

To me, it's like, it makes the
research part faster.

Yeah, it does.
At least

that, you know, it just collates and collabs
and collects everything andpresents it in a way that I
can then parse as the writer,you know, more cleanly than,
you know, search engine stuff.
So, yeah.

Exactly.

So now for, for Outlever, is
your buyer, the CMO?
Is it the head ofcorporate communications?
Is it the,

yeah, it's kind of all of the
above it's, it's a CMO.
It's the, you know,corporate comms person.
It's some of the salespeople, cause there's an
outbound motion as well.
That that's attached to it.
Um, it's a lot of differentpeople like a lot of different
people can say yes and alot of different people like
want to have a stake in itbecause it's interesting to
them and it kind of shakesup any sort of traditional
model that they've been doing.
I mean, every piece of feedbackis like, holy shit, like, you're

(21:18):
thinking about a everythingthat we've tasked our team with
doing internally that we didn'tknow how we were going to do.
And be a lot of the thingsthat we were struggling with
that sort of you kind of putinto a nice box of the bow
that you're able to do for us.
So that's sort of theresponses, which have been
really great to say, like, it'sgreat that it's resonating.
It's great that like, I'msolving a problem that

(21:40):
I struggled with myself.
So.
I feel like uniquely positionedto be able to build it and
talk about it and sell it.

So, so are you, so would it come under, right?
There's multiple budgetsthat this comes, that
this could come under.
Would you put this under the,the brand building, corporate
marketing, put my messageout, but budget, or would
you put it in your, a lot ofcompanies will have the demand
gen or performance budget.
Where would it go?

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely like a
mix of like, probably, I mean,companies, it depends on how
big their pockets are, like,some are just like, oh, well,
this could easily just come outof our comms budget, um, a mix,
usually a mix of like, comms,marketing, demand gen, kind of
that, that three, uh, trifecta,we see, uh, a lot of marketing
and a lot of comms for sure.

Well, are you seeing any, you feeling any, I
know it's early, um, are thesetypes of companies, there's
always a challenge, right?
It's something youhaven't thought about
when you first started it.

No surprises.
I think just more opportunitythat we are seeing, like,
there's just so much, like,I think I mentioned this,
but like companies arecreating so much internal
collateral that like theydon't know what to do with it.
And they're spendinga lot of time.
There's been a lot of money,a lot of resources on it,
and they don't know how tolike get legs out of it.
So we've kind of createdthis like octopus method of
let's take everything thatyou're creating internally

(22:53):
and create it into, you know,what, what is the new, what
is newsworthy about that?
Like, how do we actuallyturn that into news?
How do we give that legs?
How do we allow it to havea life outside of a PDF or
outside of a white paper?
Because like, That'slike, that's one and done.
Like you spent all thistime, all this money, five
months creating a campaignaround this white paper
and then like, that's it.
Um, so we, we really arejust seeing like massive

(23:15):
opportunities to triangulate.
Like a lot of the thingsthat companies are already
working on internally, um,and leveraging that within
our strategy as well.

So how do you measure success?
Like what is the, there'sa, what does the client say
for their, their KPIs arefor Like, yeah, I create,
I created this white paper.
I created this campaign,I got it out there.
So there's a checkboxusually for that.
But then at the end wesay, well, did it drive,
did it drive leads?
Did it drive opportunities?
Did it drive sales?
A lot of times content doesn'tget put in that bucket.

(23:42):
It gets put in more of ashare a voice kind of bucket.

Melissa Ros (23:46):
I mean, it's, yeah.
How many conversationscan we get open?
How many unique piecesof content can we create?
Create out of it.
How many unique angles, howmany industries does it touch?
How many C level executivescan we get talking about it?
How many people canwe talk to about it?
Like there was a thousandKPIs that we can get out
of that, that are justmuch more meaningful and
real and authentic andlike true to a actual.

I'm curious about, you know, scaling
your company, it's, it comeswith a lot of challenges
scaling obviously.
What's like been a surprisefor you so far with
Outlover compared to sayyour other experiences at
BuzzFeed, Cheddar, ClickUp?

Well, we definitely don't want to be
like a 1500 person companyand we want to be profitable
and we're fully self funded.
So, you know, this isdefinitely like, I'm everything
I've grown up with hasbeen this model of like VC
backed growth, hyper growth.
And our goal is notto do that at all.
It's like, how do we getto 10 million ARR and then

(24:44):
decide what we want to do?
Um, so that comes with alot of like, I think much
more strategic thinking.
And careful thinking aboutlike how we leverage different
pieces of the puzzle tobuild a very lean, efficient,
profitable, and you know, goodrevenue per employee model

(25:05):
where we are not inflatedand our growth is amazing.
So I think being forced tothink that way has like changed
my perspective entirely.
I'm just like, this isa good way of growing.
Um, maybe for us, maybe, youknow, not for something where
it's like, You know, you,you are competing in a CRM
market or a work managementmarket or a cyber security
market completely different.

(25:27):
I think where we are, um,this is absolutely the right
way of doing it becausethe decisions that we're
forced to make now are goingto make us very powerful
and, um, very successful.
Smart and strategic abouthow to actually grow this
efficiently and make ourtechnology even better.
So like, it's just a veryinteresting thing when I
think about scale and thinkabout growth, like, you

(25:49):
know, do you want to be thatfor, did I want to be like a
company that maybe could beworth, you know, a billion
dollars with five people?
Yeah.
Maybe that's not thereality, but, um,

you're the next Instagram.
There you go.

What's the next billion dollar,
you know, billion dollarcompany with two people.
Now, I don't think that's goingto be us, unfortunately, but
like, I do think that we aregoing to be leaner and more
efficient and more profitableand grow faster than if we
had venture backed money.
And I think that there'sa reason it's just, you're
forced to make decisions.
And

so you're, so you're not taking as
much capital this time.

We didn't take any capital.
I self funded theentire company.
My capital,

um,

which makes you very careful
about how you deploy itand how you think about it.
And I think all of thosedecisions that you're forced to
make when you're self fundingsomething, just make you more
valuable later on becauseyou're thinking strategically,
I'm like, what can the techoffset so that we can make
people more efficient, moreproductive, but we have to lean
on the tech because we can't,we don't want to hire 25 people.

(26:50):
Um, Until we hit X amount,like you're just thinking
about things in likesuch a different way.
First, like we got to growand it doesn't matter.
So we're just going to hire.

Yeah.
So typically with VCs, right.
When they, when theyput money in for them,
they have money, right.
They have plenty of money andthey want to put it to work
and they want to get, you wantto get an outcome within a,
with a circumscribed period.
Right.
Where, where you, if itwas your money, your money,
like out of your pocket, youmight say, well, I want to
make certain decisions andI want to wait until some

(27:20):
of those decisions play out.
The venture firm, theventure firms like, no,
no, I want to get somewherein three to five years.
Let's pour in the money today.
Let's spend on that.
Let's, Crank up that team,like you were talking about
before, with let's hire allthose people in outbound, right?
Yeah.

Let's create content that's lesser
quality so that we can do more.
And like there, there'sdecisions that we would be
making that wouldn't be in thebest interest of our customers.
They wouldn't be in thebest interest of our product
or our long-term growth,whatever that may be.
And they would wannareturn in three years.
And maybe our path to growth isin three years we take a round
and we do that strategicallybecause there's m and a we

(27:54):
wanna do, but I, there needsto be for us, like a strategic
reason to take that money.
Not because we need to get ourcompany off the ground, like
that just isn't the model forus, but you're exactly right.
Like there, there are, Ithink there's sacrifices
that you make when you takeVC money that I don't know
if you realize until there'slong term, like, you know,
repercussions of what that is.
You're like, I didn'tbuild the company.

(28:15):
I want it.
I didn't build the product.
I want it.
I made all these sacrifices.
And that used to bethe only way forward.
And I think if you can handleit and you can do it and you
can sell fun, like obviously,you know, I, I'm taking a bet on
my company here and on myself,but I'm doing it in a way that
I am in control of what that,that is, um, to, you know, to
the extent that I want to be,and I feel that I need to be.

(28:37):
It's

like, it's like when you spend, when you
spend your own money on it,you, you, the decisions are
obviously more personal andthen you are also, they're also
more strategic and you get toknow your own products better.
You get to know the, the,the business itself better.
Yeah.
Um, because of that, that's,that's really, yeah, it's,
it's really, uh, yeah.
I mean,

certainly, you know, like in venture
companies, you, you hirea lot and then you sort of
like create this bureaucracyand like, we don't have
room or time for that.
You have to hire operators andsoldiers and people that are
like, Just passionate about whatwe're doing, getting the job
done or passionate about growthand what we're building here.
And, and that's it.
Like there's, there's nolevels of bureaucracy.
We can't have that.
We're too lean and too small.

And I, and I think because you, like you
were talking about, becausewe have, uh, this, this whole
new level of technology, thegender of AI capabilities and
other kinds of tech, um, wedon't have to pour tons and
tons of people in and, and wecan make, we can make a lot of,
uh, uh, I, I'm finding this inmy own company, like we're able
to play with so many differenttypes of software and so many

(29:36):
different types of outputs.
Yeah.
You know, we do contentmarketing from firms.
We put out ads acrossvarious channels.
We are building web environmentsor app environments.
There's so many tools nowthat we can play with those
tools and get answers in a waythat we couldn't get before.

Everyone (29:53):
Right.

So you can make decisions now or get signals
from the market so thatyou can do a better job of.
Right.
Of steering the companywithout burning a ton of cash.

Yeah.
And I, you know, it'sreally interesting.
Like what we see in everyday, like my co founder sends
me articles and it's likecompanies that are raising 50
million that are doing likea micro fraction of what our
product is actually doing.
And it's just like,it is really wild.
I'm like, wow, like, they'renot thinking about this the way
that we're thinking about it.
Um, We're sort of this likeAI company that's like human
first in a way of our approach.

(30:23):
Like we are like, we'retrying to humanize like
what AI actually is in away of like, making it just.
More, more efficient forpeople to do things at
scale, but we're not tryingto retrofit AI into our
modeling and into our product.
It's sort of built intothe like ecosystem of
how we built the company.
So it's just like, it'sjust very interesting.
I'm seeing like all thesethings that I'm like, Oh my

(30:44):
God, this is like kind of wild.
Um, so hopefully you're solving

a problem.
So let's go back to youra little bit of Your
background and roots.
So, you know, you were sittingthere, uh, you've, you've
had amazing success across somany companies at a young age.
And so did you always knowthat you were going to work
in technology background?
I know I I've heard that,you know, your dad was
an experiential marketer.
Um, so was that your thing?
Like I'm going to go startup, run scale companies.

Um, be very cool.
If like I came out of the wombbeing like, yeah, hypergrowth.

Yeah.
Your first words were

no, uh, I kind of fell into my
passion was like, Disruption.
Like, I think I was reallyexcited about like, like
killing the dinosaurs.
If I were to say like, youknow, like, there's just
a lot of people that havelike existed and I think
we're seeing this now.
Right?
Like, there's, there's, there'sa weird, like, I talk about this

(31:47):
all the time with people, butlook at the wealth transfer.
Right?
Like you have like boomersand Gen X and like, they have
money from just like livingand existing and like, like
just sitting in a career.
Right.
For like 20 years andthey've made money and
they've bought assets.
And like our generation, likehas never had that opportunity.
Like we were like, I cameout of college, you know,

(32:09):
during, you know, 2008.
So no one had jobs and, andcompanies were going under.
That was a

terrible time to come out for

me to be like, okay, I have to like,
think differently about whatmy career path is going to be.
Just like from that very onset,I was Well, I wanted to go
into the music industry andI'm working at this, like,
music company and they're dyingbecause the internet's killing
them and these people thatwere sitting at the top, like,
you know, making tons of moneyare now just like panicking.
Um, so I saw like a,just sort of a reset of

(32:38):
a mind mindset, like thatI had during that time.
I was like, okay, like.
My career has to looka little bit different
than like what this is.
And it was like, what canI go into that challenges?
What this way of thinking is.
And it was really just likethe mindset of disruption.
And that's sort of howI landed on Buzzfeed.
Um, I was using the productevery day as a, as a consumer,

(32:58):
as like a community member,and I thought their technology
was like fascinating, firstof all, they were trying to
solve a really interestingproblem, which is, or
discover kind of why peopleshare content, um, and.
Um, little did I know thatthat would, like, kind of
transform my entire career,but just like the notion of,
like, understanding and turning,like, this thing that was
considered an anomaly, like,virality into a framework and

(33:19):
a blueprint was really, forme, um, just like an enormous.
Kind of unlock, I think, like,okay, if we can productize
virality and create aframework that then can be
applicable to do it againand again and again, anything
can be done, like, that'sjust like something that is
considered such a rare anomaly.

(33:40):
Like, it's a thing thatjust a moment, you can't,
like, actually prioritizeit or even describe it.
And I'm like, oh, ifwe can do this, like,
everything is possible.
So that's what got me reallyexcited about just disruption.
And, um, I started as an internat BuzzFeed and I raised my
hand and just grew within thecompany really fast and took
on all these challenges becauseno one had done it before.

(34:02):
So I was up against likenothing, like, you know, it
was me versus like the wildrather than like me versus, you
know, Johnny, who had sat atthe helm of a, you know, Music
company for 25 years and knowsbetter because he's been had
the experience like I was justup against like myself really
and like not knowing what Ididn't know and what didn't
exist like we had to basicallytransform an average of the

(34:24):
entire advertising industry intounderstanding that like social
content was something thatthey should put budget towards
versus banner and display ads.
Like that's whatI was up against.
I was up against that.
I was up against, you know,Linear distribution of going
to a newsstand and purchasinga newspaper at a magazine and
having a newspaper dropped offat your door early morning.
So I was up against likelegacy ways of operating versus

(34:46):
people and I think that's whatwas really exciting to me.
It was like, all right, great.
Uh, this is a new way ofthinking and I can come in
here and everyone is opento it because we were about
embracing the future, nottrying to save ourselves
by sticking to the past.

Right.
So there's a wholewide open field.
You saw it, you saw thisthing that you, you actually
recognized that, um, uh,virality was not just
something that happened andyou're catching a moment.
There was, there were corecapabilities that you could
harness and build over andover and, and then you didn't
have, um, what you have ina lot of big companies where

(35:22):
there's tons of competition forevery role and the company's
growing so slowly that youhave to, You know, pay your
dues and make your way youhad wide open fields to go.

And I think like we're in, in most
cases, like when you're, whenyou're like a new challenger
type of mind or thinker, likeyou're up against fear and
insecurity of the people thathave come before you that
don't know how to operate orthink the way that you do.
And they just are afraid.
So they try to like.
They try to sabotage you,you know, like it's, it's

(35:52):
just the reality I think of,of like how people operate.

Sure.
I mean, you're, you have alot of competitors, they're
all trying to figure out howto make their way up the next
level and you're actually, youdon't have that, you just have,
let's grow this business, let'sgrow this capability, then
you went from there and thenyou went to Cheddar and then
eventually to ClickUp, justmultiple transformations, right?

Yeah.
I mean, Cheddar was kind ofthe new, the next wave of like.
Hey, I want it to like beeven more at the ground floor.
It was me and John,like, you know, basically
starting the company.
And I believed in,um, I believed in the
consumer habits changing.
Like we took a bet on peoplecutting the cord with cable
years before it was happening.
Like now it's like, who has a.

(36:34):
Fucking keep thesubscription, right?
Like, but that wasn'ta thing when we first
started the company.
It was like, we're goingto take a bet that this
will happen semi fast.
Um, and that streaming willbecome the primary means
of consuming content, um,via over the top and OTT.
And yeah, that wasn't a thing.
So we took a beton that very early.

(36:55):
And then we took a bet onre imagining what like.
People want to actually watch,which is like in terms of
news, which is, you know, youngpeople telling them about what's
happening in finance and techand a cool and innovative life.

It's pretty amazing.
It's pretty amazing.
And then you wentto ClickUp, right?
Where this was more ofan, this is actually more
software, enterprise software,well, I wouldn't, yeah, it's
enterprise software actually.
Right.
It's, it's when you'retying all the parts of
the company together.
On a collaborative platformwith project management and
ability to build workflowsand dashboards and all that.
That's, it's like, what are youdoing inside of the business?

(37:28):
So you had the, you hadthe view of what consumers
wanted, and then you tookit to inside of, uh, inside
of what businesses wanted.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm doing this huge,
like, pretty big documentaryof LinkedIn about my career
and about this, like, moment.
I think it comes out next week.
So

Everyone (37:45):
maybe

this will be after this, hopefully.
Um, but yeah, about, like, kindof this moment in time where I
realized that, like, the digitalpublishing industry, um, was
going to have, like, an issue.
Which, um, and the issue wasthe fact that no matter how
great, um, the content is thefact that you're still on the
rails of distribution channelsthat control your destiny.

(38:07):
It's just not a good model.
Um, especially whenyour entire monetization
is like, tied to that.
So that's why I went to tech.
Um, I really wantedto be able to.
Live and breathe a productthat was tangible, that we had
control over people's abilityto use it and feel it and
touch it and the content andthe marketing supported it.
It wasn't the product.

(38:27):
So

Everyone (38:27):
ClickUp

was just like everything I could have
wanted as a pivot into tech.
It was a bright, bold challengercompany up against like, you
know, Goliath, a 50 billionmarket cap companies where
the CEO and the foundingteam were young, non.
Tech people that believedin a vision and a legacy
and a challenger mentality.

(38:49):
And it was like everythingthat connected me from my old,
you know, world of operatingand publishing to, um, to this
new way of, of what I wanted.
And it was just like a perfectkind of marriage of like my
skill set and where I wantedto be and the team over there.
Um, and they allowed meto do some amazing things.
It was like, I builtan incredible team,
um, full of like, just.

(39:10):
Really smart, talented peoplethat were wanted to challenge,
you know, the, the industry andchallenge the kind of status
quo of what was being done.

What's one thing that you might've bought that
you borrowed from your moreconsumer experience that you
took to ClickUp that turnedinto a successful campaign.
I'm sure you have many, but I'mgoing to ask you to pick one.

It wasn't one.
It was like the entire mindsetof how I thought about.
Content marketing, um, likethat kind of going back to
what we were chatting about,like my entire belief system
on being able to templatize andcreate frameworks on virality
and shareability of content.
I then applied to to enterprisesoftware, because the reality
is your empire, like, we are,they're people like, I buy

(39:54):
enterprise software now, like,You know, I don't know what we
think, like, we think they'rejust like some guy sitting up
on the 50th floor in a suit ina corner office and he doesn't
look at anything and peoplebring things to him and he's
like, I don't want to laugh,you know, I don't want to, it's

like, it's also, it's a
consumerization of it, right?
Like, so before you werebuying, you didn't really have
access to it as a consumer.
So you're really buyingit as a business.
So the interfaces didn'thave to be as good.
It could be, there's a, youcould force people through a
bunch of bureaucracy throughyour tools and technology.
Yeah.
Now you're like, well,frick, I got this phone here.
I can do all these cool things.

(40:29):
The software better, thesoftware and the interface
and the environment betterbe as good or better.

That's it though.
Like you're, you're, whenyou're, when you say enterprise,
you're selling enterprisefeatures and enterprise
capability of your product.
Like enterprise is notagain, like a marketing
strategy enterprises.
Do you have admissions andpermissions and is it, you
know, SOC to compliant?
And like, it's not, it's notlike a marketing strategy
to be enterprise ready.

(40:54):
It's a, it's a feature strategy.
It's a, can we supporta 5, 000 person company
because we have the, wehave the features and the
abilities within the product.
Does it run fast enough?
Does, is there no downtime?
There are no bugs X, Y, andZ like that's enterprise.
Um, so yeah, I mean, wejust kind of like approached
it like enterprise.
Buyers are people withindepartments of companies that
consume content and find thingsvaluable and let's relate to

(41:17):
them and create things that,that resonate, like the problems
that they're dealing with.
Why don't we just do like,like full on, like problem pain
point marketing to its fullestextent and make it humorous.
And we, we've focuseda lot on that.

And I think that's amazing.
That's a great way of puttingtogether your whole, you know,
all your experiences in lifeand then applying it, applying
it to a, to a different,seemingly different industry
or seemingly different world.

Yeah.
I'm lucky enough to like,be able to have made that
connection and have the,the toolkit that I developed
and in media and beingable to apply that to,
uh, to a software company.
Well,

now Sunday, we are going to.
Um,

yes.
Uh, so we do a little gamein our, in our show here.
Um, and so, uh, be preparedto shift gears, Melissa,
as you are about to enterthe spark tank, uh, where
two, yes, that's right.
Uh, yeah, it's very scary.
Where two marketing mavensenter and one has their LinkedIn
profile permanently switchedto seeking opportunities.

(42:38):
Uh, today's game will befocused on listicles and
their surprising history.
Uh, so, uh, yeah, thisshould be good for you.
Melissa, in one corner, wegot Melissa Rosenthal, co
founder of Outlover, uh, andthe Buzzfeed brainchild, she,
and, and on a listicle herself.
Forbes 30 under 30.
Uh, and then we have, uh, inthe other corner, my brother,

(42:58):
Rajiv Parikh, uh, the CEOwho has more confidence
than a clickbait headline.
Uh, you two are about togo head to head in a battle
of wits and lists, okay?
So, this is like, it's gonna bebasically two truths and a lie.
Okay.
Um, I'm going to readyou three statements.
Two of them are true.
One is the lie.
You've got to pick outwhich one is the lie.
I'm going to countdown three, two, one.
You're both going to show youranswer at the same time so that

(43:20):
you can't cheat off each other.
Okay.
One, two, or three.
All right.
Round one focuses on thepsychological principles behind
why listicles actually work.
All right.
So statement number one, oddnumber listicles do better
than even number listicles.
And this is because of.
Anchoring bias, where a listlike seven or nine sets an

(43:42):
initial expectation that feelsmore unique or specific than
an even number like ten, okay?
Number two, the patternrecognition reward that our
brains in fact release dopamine,a pleasure chemical when we
recognize patterns such asthe predictable structure
of a listicle leading toa feeling of satisfaction.
Number three, the zag, thezygarnik, the zygarnik effect

(44:08):
explains that we experience asense of relief and satisfaction
when we complete a listiclebecause it eliminates the mental
tension of an unfinished task.
So two of these are true.
Two of these are real.
Uh, one is false.
So one is the anchoringbias, where odd number
lists are, are better.
Two is the pattern recognitionreward, which states that

(44:30):
our brain releases dopaminewhen we recognize a pattern.
And three is the Zegernikeffect, which is the
relief when we Uh, whenwe eliminate the mental
tension of unfinished tasks.
So which one do you think iscorrect or which one do you
think is false in 3, 2, 1.

(44:51):
Okay.
Rajiv has chosen numberone, the anchoring bias.
Melissa has chosen number three,that probably because I cannot
pronounce the Zagornik effect.
Unfortunately,you're both wrong.
It is number two was the,was the lie here, the, the
completely made up, uh, one,uh, that yes, in fact, uh, the

(45:11):
anchoring bias is, is legit.
And so is the, the effect,uh, that when you complete a
listicle, it eliminates thismental tension, whenever you
have something unfinished.
That got me.
I thought pattern recognitionwas just so satisfying.
I mean, it's like kind ofexists, but it's not really

I was gonna say all three are true, but

yeah, uh, well, we can fight
about it afterwards.
Okay.
Number two.
We're still tied.
Melissa.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Please sound off in thecomments if I'm wrong.
Uh, round number two.
Okay.
These are three differenthistorical list of
goals that have existed.
Well, two of them have existed.
See if you can sniffout which one is false.

(45:54):
All right.
Number one, a listicle ofmedieval Japanese courtly rules,
which include proper fan foldingtechniques and discreet sneezing
etiquette, which were essentialskills for navigating Heian
period court life in Japan.
Number two, GalileoGalilei's shopping list.

(46:15):
So the astronomer hada grocery list which
included the essentials,wine, rice, anchovies,
and very specifically,two large artichokes.
Number three, Mozart's secretsto composing a hit opera.
This document was foundwithin the Marriage of Figaro
manuscript and reveals Mozart'ssecrets for writing catchy tunes
and securing a good librettist.

(46:38):
So which of these listiclesactually did not exist?
Is it the two?
Number one, theJapanese courtly rules.
Number two, the shopping listfrom Galileo, or number three,
Mozart's composing, uh, secrets.
Here we go.
Three, two, one.
You both said three andyou both are correct.
Well done.

(46:59):
God, that was too obvious.
Wasn't it?
Well done.
You're both on the board.
Why would he giveaway his secrets?
No, no, no, he's notgoing to do that.

He thought of it that way.
I just, I just figured hejust, I compose because I am,

yeah, right.
Right.
Yeah.
It makes sense.
Galileo has to shop and eat.
So he's, he, ofcourse, he made a list.
They made a list.
He already chose

Melissa (47:22):
like a hundred percent.
Yeah.

Yeah.
You need to, all right.
Round number three.
These are items in.
Lists that exist.
Are these actual items inthese lists that do exist?
And again, this is historical.
So the Malleus Maleficarum, amedieval torture device list,
which includes the iron maiden,the pair of anguish, and even

(47:45):
a form of tickle torture.
Number two, Captain JamesCook's instructions for his
voyages, which includes alisticle item of a dozen
pair of thick woolen socks.
Or number three, BenjaminFranklin's 13 virtues for self
improvement includes chastity.
So which of these is false?
The Milus, the medieval torturedevice list including tickle

(48:07):
torture, uh, James Cook'slist including thick woolen
socks, or Benjamin Franklin'slist including chastity.
Alright, your answerin three, two, one.
Two, one.
Okay, Ranjeev has picked theMedieval Torture Device, uh,
and Melissa has chosen JamesCook's Instruction for Voyages.

(48:30):
One of you has just won thisgame, and I regretfully inform
you that it's my brother.
I'm so sorry.
Yes, uh, this is disappointing.
He's actually on a streak now.
This is gonna be insufferable.
Melissa, I was reallycounting on you.
Ugh, gosh.

Everyone (48:43):
I can't fight alone.

Sorry, Melissa.
I never win, so sorry formy excessive celebration.
I'm on a streak.

Number one, you sounded so ridiculous
that I was like, it has to bereal, you know, usually you
pick the one, like you throwthat in there to throw me off,

but

I,

I did in fact do that to throw you off.

Honestly, the tickle torture thing,
like sounded prettylike on point, right?
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's

the one I'd be the most scared of.

Well, let's see what you get to the
tickle torture, tickletorture is not a thing.
I don't

know my list.
As well as I, I should, I couldgo back to listicle stool.
. The funny thing is I'vecreated thousands of listicles,
but you know, it still game

it's a thing.
Yeah.
You know, that's the thing.
This game is constructed to, uh,to be anybody's game, you know?
Yeah, yeah.

Um.
If even I can win.
So that's, if I canwin, then it's obviously
for the any person.
Awesome.
So, so glad you playedthis game with us.
So I was just, I had acouple more questions.
Um, is there like a favoritetechnology or innovation that
you're excited about that hasexcited you over the years?

AI.
Um, I mean, like, howcan you not say that?
I think it's the, the, like,most revolutionary thing
we've come across that'ssuper tangible and real,
and we can all touch itand feel it and enhance our
work every day right now.
Like, I, you know, I've alwaysbeen kind of stuck on things.
And I think the things that,like, I get stuck on are, I
mean, I'm sure when cryptoeveryone was talking, right?

(50:22):
And I would talk to every singleperson I could talk to about it.
And I'd be like.
Okay.
I have FOMO because everyoneknows what this is and what
the practical application isand how it's being used and how
it's going to better the world.
And I just couldn'tunderstand it.
And I was like, everysingle person would be
like, explain it to me.
Like I'd go to dinner parties.
I'm like, tell me, tell me whatyou're excited about that web
three and about DAOs and NFTs.

(50:43):
And like, tell me, like youjust spent 300, 000 on this NFT.
Like, tell me why.
And it never made sense to meand I was like, okay, either
like I'm stupid and I'm missingsomething or like this isn't
as real as people say it is andit turned out to be the latter.
Like, like, there's nota mainstream practical

(51:03):
application for blockchainthat has been the one yet.
Maybe in the future.
Great.
Like, but it's just not.
So, like the fact thatAI is real and it's.
Already changing our world andeliminating jobs, which is real,
it's really happening and peopleare getting more efficient
and they can utilize it.
And we're at likeday zero of it.

(51:25):
Oh, I mean,

what, what, what about the, like, just to,
to throw a blockchain, a littlebit of love, like, what about
the idea that like, it will be.
Like the only thing thatwill help us authenticate
in a world where AI canproduce so many fakes and

like there are already ways to Authenticate
like I don't know if blockchainis the answer to that Maybe
maybe blockchain meets AIis the perfect combination
of this but like right,you know, I I haven't Seen
that like, I mean, do you,

do you need to have watermarking as part of
a distributed ledger, right?
So that's the question to provethat a watermark is a watermark.
Do you need to have itin a distributed ledger?
And I think you can, I'dlove the techies can argue
probably both sides of that.
Cause you could have acentralized database.
That's a, that's aauthoritative one.
And then, but then you canargue well by distributing

(52:11):
it, then everybody has it.

Yeah.
Then everyone has it.
Exactly.
So, I mean, potentially like.
Yeah, maybe, but, but also thatwasn't an application when,
when blockchain versus, right?
Like no, it

was more about, uh, board apes, uh,
which I think you might beright that that did not turn
out to be the, as, as, as,uh, imbued with much utility.
I didn't buy any

more, but I, Spent the board eight
money on my own company.

All right.
Another question at thespark of ages podcast.
We're big believers in theidea that teamwork is critical
to taking your individualwork to the next level.
So for you, one of thoseindividuals, who's a major
part of your team and yoursuccess is your husband,
who's your co founder.
I can relate to that.
Having started a company withmy wife years ago, can you
share what it's been like tohave such a deep partnership
with someone who's not justin your day to day life,

(52:59):
but also in your business?
Has it, Changed anythingabout your life?
Um, has it brought outsomething different that you
didn't think about before?

Um, well, we work 24 seven now come together
Someone that like you'remarried to and you're in
the same room with and likeyou're actually like still
you're building it together

Your work husband and life husband are together

He's been in the background of my
career for the past 10 years.
So he's seen allthese things happen.
He's seen me go through allthese transitions and for him
to like, you know, have beenkind of productizing the way
that I think about things hasbeen really like incredible.
Like I, it's a secret weaponto like what we've built
together because I'm able todo something that he can't do.
And he's just, he's like,Brilliant with products and

(53:46):
tech and like he's able toactually build something that
I wouldn't have been able tobuild myself So yeah, I mean,
I think like it's just kindof like we're we're very like
kind of dynamic duo like he'sbeen my secret weapon and like
being able to like Rationallythink about productizing
the way that I think AndI couldn't have done that.
Um, so it's been amazing.
Like, it's really cool to havea partner like that where it's

(54:07):
very complimentary and there'snot like fighting because of
like overseeing different,um, you know, aspects of the
business, like our roles arevery defined, but he also
challenges me to think, um,you know, in a product capacity
and in times when I'm like,I, you know, product is not
my, the core skillset, butunderstanding how he thinks
about things and how he breaksthem apart and like, How he

(54:29):
comes, like, he comes up withhis best ideas in his sleep and
in the shower, which I, like,don't really fully understand.
He'll come out of theshower after an hour
and be like, I got it.
And I'm

Everyone (54:37):
like,

I don't know what that
is, but congratulations.
Um, but yeah,it's, it's amazing.
Like, I learn from him and Igrow every day because of him.
And I think he feelsthe same way about me.
And it's just really fun.

Yeah, I think, I think it helps when, when
you have a relationship ofmutual respect and trust,
so you don't have to worryabout trusting whether their
thoughts are on or off,especially if you've divided
up the company appropriatelyin terms of what you did.
My wife was the technologist,I was the business person.
It was much easier tojust simply trust that she
knew what she was doingon the technology side.

And listen, like, I mean, there are plenty
of companies that are not likemarried co founders and like,
I think there's like prosand cons to that as well, but
you know, there's also like.
We are always on the samepage or communicating that
we are and I think the keyto any good marriage or any
good relationship businessrelationship is communication
and, you know, I don't haveto worry that, like, there are

(55:31):
outside external parties andsources kind of, um, in his
ear, like, you know, Having anysort of influence over how he's
thinking about our company andlike, same thing with me, it's
like us making these decisionstogether always, um, and not to
say that that like happens, butif you have, like, you know, if
you have a co founder and thatperson's married and you're

(55:52):
married and they have their ownnetworks and their own ways of
thinking and everything likethat, and they're, they're not
communicating and it's like,oh, you're, you know, the co
founders not building this rightor this or that, or, you know,
there's, there's other chains ofinfluence that I've seen come in

Everyone (56:04):
when.
Yeah.

You're not as tightly knit
in the same like way.
Um, that we don't reallyhave to deal with, but you
know, I mean, there's prosand cons to everything.
There

is, there is.
It's just, it's agreat life experience.

I think it's, it's right
for us, like for sure.
Like the way that ourrelationship is and the way
that we've grown togetherand, and who we are as people.
Um, this is, you know, we havea lot of, Odd similarity is
just in the way that we've been,we've grown up and who we are.
And, um, yeah, I think itmakes it like the perfect
kind of perfect thing forus to be doing together.
Yeah.

All right.
That's great.
Last question.
Do you have a favorite lifemotto that you come back to
often and share with friends,either at work or life?

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's kind
of written on my arm.
It's a, it's impressyourself and it's something
I try to do every day.
I think it goes to that,like, 1 percent growth
mentality and it's every day.
Like, after I've completedthe day, like, have
I impressed myself?
Like, have I.
done something where I feel goodabout the path and the growth
that I'm making because lifeand, and decisions and big steps

(57:07):
and big rewards and successall come from these like micro
moments, these micro decisions.
Did I show up on this podcasttoday and be the fullest
Melissa that I can be andlike bring everything to it?
Did I like half ass it?
You know, like, I think it's allof these small little things.
And I believe in that.
So, so like deeply that I try toshow up and be the best version

(57:27):
of myself and every small thingthat I do so that that compounds
over time and I grow and I foundthat that like really does work.
It's like if you put everythinginto the smaller things like
you will find success and Ithink it's just really about
that showing up as the bestversion of yourself wherever
you can every day, even how, youknow, no matter how small the
moment is or, or the task is.

I love that.
I think that's a greatway of looking at the
world and looking at life.
If you bring.
Bring it, bring a little bitextra and remind yourself
of that all the time.

I'm sure we deal with people that
like, you just don't see that.
You don't see that.
I'm gonna use your podcastname in this, but like, you
don't see that spark in themin anything that they do.
Not you guys.
I'm just saying, you know.
Um, no, we love the fact that

you spark, I, I'm just like,
yeah, that's great.

I just like, I'm always just shocked, right?
Like, I'm shocked at thelack of curiosity, the
lack of spark, the lackof like, passion in people
and like, it's depressing.
So I try to take that andlike channel it for myself
and allow myself to like bewhat I don't see, I guess.
Yeah.

Oh, I love that be the change you
don't see in the world.
That's a differentway of looking.
Well, look, I'm Melissa.
You've certainly impressedus, uh, in this podcast.
Um, so thank you somuch for, for joining
us on the spark of ages.

Yeah.
Such a thrill to talk with you.
Thank you so much.

I'm still mad about losing
the game, but thank you.
This is awesome.

Hey, that was really fun.
It was great tochat with Melissa.
I always enjoy talking tocreatives and marketers and
especially folks who comefrom consumer backgrounds
and go into B2B tech and thengo build their own business.
I think it's a reallycool combination.

For sure.
I, you know, Ijust love that she.
Came in with this, uh, orat least how she left us
with this idea of impressingyourself and just being your
most, most audacious self.
I've been thinking aboutthat a lot for me personally
lately is, uh, like what'sthe most audacious version
of myself, uh, you know,and, and then how do I just,
how do I bring that to life?
Um, to whatever it is I'm doing,whether it's stand up or, or

(59:34):
pitching or, or this podcast.
Um, and so, uh, you know,um, she's super impressive.
That was, that wasa great interview.
It's

that, it's that notion of atomic habits, right?
You increment every timeas opposed to trying to
do one big, massive thing.
And so I think she brought thatalive as, as the way she closed.
And I, you know, I,I actually, it was a
little unexpected for me.
I was, uh, thatoutlever is really.
Truly her own businessthat she's building from

(01:00:01):
scratch, taking all of herlearnings coming from more
VC, either public or VC typesof environments, which are
very hyper growth based.
And now she's getting to.
Almost like weave togethera business that really
is an embodiment of her.
Yeah.
I mean, it's literally,it's literally her baby

Sandeep Parikh (01:00:21):
because it's her and her husband together
to create this, this brainchildof theirs, uh, pretty,

Rajiv Parikh (01:00:28):
pretty

amazing.

And it's about content with quality with
humans of all things, humanquality, human writers.
That's just really fantastic.
So great lessons for all of us.
Thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed this pod,please take a moment
to rate it and comment.
You can find uson Apple, Spotify,
YouTube, and everywhere.
Podcasts can be found.

The show is produced by Sunday Perique and
Anand Shah production assistanceby Taryn Talley and edited by
Sean Maher and Aiden McGarvey.

I'm your host, Rajiv Perique from position
squared, a leading AI andhuman based growth marketing
company based in Silicon Valley.
Come visit us at position2.
com.
This has been an effinfunny production.
We'll catch you next time andremember folks be ever curious

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Creating Signal Not Noise/Melissa Rosenthal - The New PR, Driving In-Bound, Listicles ~ Spark of Ages Ep 26

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Creating Signal Not Noise/Melissa Rosenthal - The New PR, Driving In-Bound, Listicles ~ Spark of Ages Ep 26