Never Too Early

About Never Too Early

Welcome to Never Too Early, a YouTube series focused on unconventional talent insights for founders. I’m Lauren Ipsen, Talent Partner at Decibel. At Decibel, we invest in founders at the earliest stage and help them scale by connecting them with rising stars and industry experts who have scaled seed stage companies all the way to a successful exit. In each episode we will answer the top 5 commonly asked questions by founders who are building their organizations for the very first time. It is never too early to learn from the best! nevertooearly.substack.com

Publisher

Lauren Ipsen

Category

business · business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

15 May 2024

Latest episode

31 Jul 2026

Latest episodes

19 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   31 Jul 2026

   Building B2B and B2C Communities People Actually Join with Mallory Contois

   Lauren Ipsen, talent partner at Decibel talks with Mallory Contois, founder of The Old Girls Club and current community lead at Lovable, about community building in tech and AI. Mallory explains why B2B and B2C communities aren’t as different as they appear and why the strongest B2B communities form around shared problems and beliefs rather than a product. She and Lauren discuss how to choose a clear goal for your community, use superusers and early experiments to uncover your ICP, and build trust through a distribution format that feels natural to the founder.

2. 

   24 Apr 2026

   AI-First Org Design: Talent Density, Agents, and Measuring Real Impact

   Lauren Ipsen, talent partner at Decibel, hosts Hemal Shah (formerly OpenAI, Atlassian, and Root) to answer common founder questions about enabling AI for the first time. Shah argues AI isn’t just an individual productivity tool; it exposes organizational bottlenecks like slow coordination and alignment, shifting the focus to designing systems where humans and agents work together. They discuss how AI changes talent density by reducing roles centered on status coordination and information transfer while increasing the value of high-agency, system-thinking builders with strong judgment and product sense. Shah describes moving from “smart text box” to workflow participants, suggests delegating execution to agents while humans focus on prioritization, and recommends redesigning workflows like status reports, meeting notes, decision logs, FAQs, and incident reporting. To measure impact, he favors workflow-specific metrics such as concept-to-prototype speed and automation rates over token usage or licenses.

3. 

   25 Feb 2026

   Adam Hall

   Lauren Ipsen, talent partner at Decibel, hosts an episode of Never Too Early featuring Adam Hall, who runs strategic marketing at SentinelOne and previously worked at Microsoft, Google, Headspace, and Aurora. They discuss what product marketing should own, emphasizing the role as a cross-functional discipline spanning product, marketing, and sales, and noting that the first PMM is typically a generalist. Adam explains that PMM success ultimately ties to pipeline and revenue, and clarifies how PMM supports demand generation by translating product value into messaging, content, and assets that fuel the demand gen engine. They cover when it may be too early to hire a PMM, how founders should transition from founder-led marketing to a scalable product marketing function, and why “healthy friction” between founders and PMMs can improve translation from technical founder speak to customer outcomes. Adam outlines an ICP process: start from the product thesis and uniqueness, understand customer urgency and willingness to pay, then narrow targeting by attributes like company size, vertical, and business model, with a focus on ruthless prioritization. They discuss domain expertise, arguing it’s often less critical than strong PMM fundamentals and curiosity, with exceptions in highly technical practitioner-led fields like cybersecurity. Finally, they address how PMM scope and reporting lines vary by stage and personalities, but Adam’s long-run view is that product marketing should sit in marketing as part of a “three-legged stool” with product and sales. Adam suggests founders be clear about whether they want a broad multi-discipline product marketing function or a narrow messaging-focused role, and notes he can be reached on LinkedIn.

4. 

   4 Nov 2025

   Mastering Video Content Creation and Distribution with the CEO of Descript, Laura Burkhauser

   In this episode, Lauren Ipsen hosts Laura Burkhauser, CEO of Descript, to discuss the intricacies of video content creation and distribution. Laura shares her journey from working at Twitter to discovering her passion for content creation, recently becoming the new CEO of Descript, a comprehensive video editing solution. They chat about the pressures of content creation in the digital age, the role of AI in video tools, and strategies for founders to maintain consistent and authentic content. Laura emphasizes the significance of understanding your audience, focusing on long-term engagement over going viral, and leveraging multiple distribution channels for maximum reach. The discussion also covers practical tips like using AI for content ideation and various workflow strategies for busy professionals.

5. 

   8 Aug 2025

   Founder Therapy with Ash Devata: From Coconuts and Rice to Tech CEO

   In this episode of Never Too Early’s “Founder Therapy” series, Lauren Ipsen, talent partner at Decibel, sits down with Ash Devata, the CEO of GreyNoise Intelligence. Ash shares his unique journey from growing up in a small village in India to becoming a cybersecurity leader. He reflects on his career transitions, challenges faced while moving from large corporations like Cisco to leading a 55 person startup, and the importance of understanding and nurturing a company's ecosystem. Ash provides insights into maintaining relationships with founders, making tough decisions, and constantly adapting to changing market conditions. This episode is filled with valuable lessons for first-time CEOs and anyone interested in leadership in the tech startup world.

6. 

   2 Apr 2025

   Founder Therapy with Jonathan Schneider: Pricing and Packaging

   In this episode of 'Never Too Early,' host Lauren Ipsen is joined by Jonathan Schneider, founder of Moderne and US Army alum. They delve into topics crucial for business leaders and operators, such as multi-year deals, pricing strategy, and knowing when to fight versus fold. Jonathan shares his journey from Netflix to founding Moderne, his insights on pricing models, challenges with enterprise deals, and the importance of aligning incentives with customers. The discussion provides valuable advice for founders, including the idea of 'planning to lose' and being prepared for rejection.

7. 

   14 Feb 2025

   Founder Therapy with Maria Zhang: The Journey from Big Tech to Palona AI

   In this episode of 'Never Too Early,' host Lauren Ipsen, Talent Partner at Decibel, welcomes Maria Zhang, former VP of Engineering at Google and other major tech companies, who recently launched her startup, Palona AI. Maria discusses her new venture, her transition from corporate roles to founding a startup, key insights from talking to over a hundred customers, and the importance of building for the buyer. Maria also shares practical advice on building products, recruiting early teams, and navigating the complexities of go-to-market strategies for first-time founders.

8. 

   31 Jan 2025

   Founder Therapy with Matt Peters

   In this episode of Never Too Early's Founder Therapy Series, Lauren Ipsen from Decibel sits down with Matt Peters, the former Chief Product Officer at Expel and now a tech entrepreneur. They discuss his journey to becoming a founder, including his early career experiences, the challenges of building his company Fixify, and the learnings from product development to managing investors. Matt shares invaluable insights on the importance of understanding customer needs, building a strong team, and maintaining emotional resilience in the startup world.

9. 

   10 Jan 2025

   Founder Therapy with Navrina Singh

   Navrina Singh, founder and CEO of Credo AI, shares her journey from Microsoft to startup founder, offering essential advice for new founders and insights into AI governance and successful venture partnerships.

10. 

    18 Oct 2024

    Hiring Your First Contractors with Amy Kim

    In this episode of 'Never Too Early,' host Lauren Ipsen from Decibel engages with Amy Kim, the Chief Revenue Officer at A.Team, discussing the strategic use of contractors for early-stage startups. Amy provides insights into the evolving gig economy, emphasizing the paradigm shift towards output-driven organizations in a rapidly changing workforce landscape. She discusses the benefits of hiring contractors, such as flexibility and cost efficiency, while addressing common concerns and misconceptions about their investment and reliability. The conversation also covers A.Team's rigorous vetting process for high-caliber talent, differences in contractor versus full-time employee compensation, and the importance of cultural fit and regular feedback. Amy shares her perspective on when it is optimal to hire contractors, stressing function over company stage, and encourages founders to overcome traditional stigmas associated with contract work as they build agile, impact-focused teams.

11. 

    3 Oct 2024

    Never Too Early: Building Your First Design Org w/ Sally Carson

    In this episode of 'Never Too Early,' Lauren Ipsen, Talent Partner at Decibel, hosts Sally Carson, an experienced design leader with a background at LinkedIn and Duo Security. Together, they explore the top five questions founders have about building their design organizations from scratch. Key topics include the timing and type of first design hires, the roles of product and brand design, introducing user research, and the benefits of hiring generalists versus specialists. Sally also shares her personal experiences and offers practical advice for effectively growing a design team in a startup environment.

12. 

    12 Sept 2024

    Building Your First Product Organization: Insights from Docker's CPO Giri Sreenivas

    In this episode of 'Never Too Early,' host Lauren Ipsen, Talent Partner at Decibel, interviews Giri Sreenivas, Chief Product Officer at Docker, about essential strategies for founders building their product organizations for the very first time. The conversation addresses when to hire your first PM, the importance of founders remaining involved in the product vision, and the pros/cons between hiring a CPTO versus two different leaders. Giri shares his experiences from being a founder to building products at scale, offering valuable advice on hiring, managing product teams, and achieving product market fit. Key takeaways include understanding the optimal time for bringing in a PM, the roles of product leaders, and practical tips for maintaining a balance between founder oversight and effective delegation.

13. 

    22 Aug 2024

    Tips for a Happy Cofounder Marriage: Insights from Exabeam's Co-Founder and CEO Nir Polak

    In this episode of Never Too Early, Lauren Ipsen from Decibel talks with Nir Polak, co-founder and former CEO of Exabeam, about selecting a co-founder and productive co-founder dynamics for new founders. Nir comes from 18 years of information security experience. He shares the importance of complementary skill sets, and maintaining open communication and a “no-ego culture.” Lauren and Nir also discuss the significance of founder agreements, handling equity splits, and navigating conflicts and decision-making. The conversation offers practical advice for founders to ensure a successful partnership.

14. 

    8 Aug 2024

    Growth Tactics for Founders with Yuriy Timen

    In this episode of Never Too Early, host Lauren Ipsen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-ipsen-6a5a84113) from Decibel interviews growth advisor Yuriy Timen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuriytimen/), former global head of marketing and growth at Grammarly. They discuss actionable insights for founders on topics such as establishing a growth engine, balancing growth with profitability, the importance of leaning into organic growth before paid channels, and when to bring in fractional advisors while also touching on his professional journey and a unique personal anecdote. The episode provides valuable advice for early-stage founders looking to scale their organizations effectively. 00:00 Introduction to Never Too Early 00:19 Meet Yuriy Timen: Growth Expert 01:38 Question 1: How do I find my growth engine as a founder? Yuriy emphasizes the importance of exploring product-led growth, SEO, and natural virality before experimenting with paid growth levers. 06:02 Question 2: How do I vet new growth opportunities? Yuriy shares his systematic approach to vetting growth opportunities and optimizing new channels. 09:39 Question 3: How do I balance growth and bottom line? Lauren and Yuriy talk about the importance of aligning with your board on your growth strategy. 12:25 Question 4: What are some examples of different growth tactics that may have worked for one company but not another? Yuriy talks about his personal experience working at Grammarly in the early days and shares insights on a new company he’s advising that provides real-time feedback on your Zoom conversations. 17:09 Question 5: When would you advise a founder to use a fractional growth advisor versus hiring someone in a full time growth position? Lauren and Yuriy discuss how fractional leaders can be the best way to more deeply understand who you want to hire in a full time capacity. 20:53 Conclusion and Final Thoughts. Want more of Never Too Early? Find us on Tiktok, @nevertooearly1 (https://www.tiktok.com/@nevertooearly1) and subscribe (https://open.spotify.com/show/0qdsUfD26ve136uIuIaoq7?si=1a7e36abfd554352)to us wherever you get your podcasts. Transcript LAUREN IPSEN: Welcome to Never Too Early, a YouTube series focused on unconventional talent insights for founders. I'm Lauren Ipsen, Talent Partner at Decibel. In each episode, we'll cover the top five commonly asked questions that we get from founders building their organizations for the very first time. It's never too early to learn from the best. I'm super excited to introduce my guest today, Yuriy Timen. Yuriy was the global head of marketing and growth at Grammarly and is now a full-time growth advisor, having worked with more than 30 tech companies in the past four years, including Canva, Airtable, Whimsical, Otter AI, Oyster, Flow Health, and many, many more. He's also been an incredibly helpful growth advisor and friend to the Decibel portfolio. So I'm very excited to welcome my guest, Yuriy, to the show. All right. Thank you for being on the show. YURIY TIMEN: Of course. Thanks for having me. LAUREN IPSEN: My pleasure. So I'm super excited to have you here and talk about all things growth. I just gave an overview of your incredibly impressive professional background, but it would be super helpful if you could give the listeners something fun about you. YURIY TIMEN: Okay. So here's one that no one saw coming. I was a competitive ballroom dancer growing up, to the point where I represented the United States at the Youth World Championships held in Moscow, Russia. LAUREN IPSEN: Oh my God! YURIY TIMEN: That’s – yeah, let's go with that. LAUREN IPSEN: That's incredibly fun. That's a really good one. Yeah. I don't know if you can beat that with anything else. YURIY TIMEN: Just putting it out there. Okay. LAUREN IPSEN: Okay, so let's talk about growth and the five most commonly asked questions that I get from founders that are scaling their organizations for the very first time. We'll start with the first question that I get, which is: How do I find my growth engine as a founder? YURIY TIMEN: What I like to tell founders is start by figuring out which way the current is flowing or the currents – maybe every current representing a growth hypothesis or a growth channel, and try to swim with the current as opposed to against the current. So, you know, I think every founder should first start with understanding the potential that they have for growing organically, right? Like, you can turn to paid down the line, but you have to already be generating revenue. You have to understand your LTVs. You have to understand your payback periods if you want to get paid effectively, right? And there's nothing wrong with paid. I actually come from a paid background, a performance marketing background and foundation, but always start – start with organic. And really, there are two, I would say, or let's call it three, but really two kind of direct response, organic growth levers that you can pull. One of them is around product-led growth, like can you generate enough word of mouth, enough kind of viral loops, sharing behavior, or what's traditionally called product-led growth. And the other one is SEO. And I think that there is almost like a checklist type of exercise that you can do with figuring out if your product is a good fit for either product virality and/or for SEO. Maybe I won't go into those checklists in this session. But I think you absolutely got to start there, because if your product has an inherent network effect or it's inherently viral – I don't know, think Spotify, for instance, right? Or Riverside, even, you know, to bring it closer to home where, okay, you have a podcast. I'm a guest. If I ever want to start my own podcast, right, there is a viral loop right there. So it should be easy for me at the end of this call – I'm sorry. At the end of this recording it should be easy for me to be like, oh, this is how I create my own account and become a podcast host myself. So if your product lends itself naturally to virality, lean into it. Lean into it heavily, right? Because that is a rare advantage, right? I've worked with a lot of products that have tried to manufacture virality. That's very difficult to do if your product is not inherently viral. For instance, Grammarly in the early days, it wasn't an inherently viral product. It's like, editing your writing was largely a solo pursuit. It wasn't a collaborative activity. So there wasn't an easy way to kind of, you know, build in share loops. And then SEO, you can also run through a checklist and be like, hey, the stuff that I'm building, the needs that I'm meeting, what are the keyword universes around those needs? What are people searching for? Is there a high volume? High volume, high intent, low competition. Are there intersections of those three where I can really make a mark in building my SEO engine, SEO program. I always start with assessing that when it comes to growth engine because those are things that are – you know, paid, it's almost like – hot take alert. But paid is like, almost anyone can force their way into it, right? Regardless, yeah, you have to have decent LTVs, but SEO compatibility, product-led growth, viral loop compatibility, that's oftentimes inherent to what you're building. So start there by seeing if there is, you know, a strong product channel fit. LAUREN IPSEN: Cool. Awesome. As a founder, how do I vet growth opportunities, new channels, new lanes of optimization? YURIY TIMEN: The first principle that I think applies universally is you got to take a hypothesis-driven approach. So you're going to have ideas around different growth bets that you want to take. First of all, find a way to systematically prioritize and force strength those. It's going to be part science, part art, because you're going to have to make assumptions, like, you know, common frameworks, like the ICE framework or the RICE framework, right? Standing for Reach, Impact, Certainty or Confidence, and Effort. Do something like that. It's less important that you score every idea accurately, because you won't. You won't score with precision. But it's important that you build the muscle of just, you know, not, jumping on the newest idea or the idea that may be the most charismatic person pitch, right? That's not how ideas should rise above other ideas that you want to test, right? So, yeah, you have a great idea, and you pitched it very eloquently. Okay, it goes in the backlog. It gets scored, right? And then the things that rise to the top and everything in that backlog needs to have a strong hypothesis tied to it. So everybody who's putting ideas in your backlog, they should be held to that standard where an idea is not an idea until you describe the underlying hypothesis on why you think it should work. Okay? So that's a universal principle using the hypothesis-driven approach. After that, I think with a lot of growth levers or tactics where founders struggle is defining what is the minimum viable test that I need to run to know if this channel or tactic is working or not. And that test needs to be – when I say minimal viable test, it needs to be defined not just in terms of the budget that you need to put against a given tactic or idea, but also, it needs to have a little bit of a statistical or data science approach to it, where you say, okay, how much traffic or how many leads do I need to generate to be able to measure down funnel performance and be able to say definitively, does this channel work or does it not work for me? It's important to have your success metrics well-defined. So the channel that you're pursuing or the tactic that you're pursuing, you have to be knowledgeable about what type of maybe KPI you need to be focused on. Like, for instance, if you're focusing on driving purchases or software subscriptions, you should probably be prioritizing more bottom funnel or demand capture channels, right? So think like SEM, or maybe some really highly relevant display. If you care about generating just more traffic or driving up awareness, then you should be looking at channels and tactics that are more conducive to that goal, right? So that may be more like upper funnel, your demand generation channels, like YouTube or influencers and the like. LAUREN IPSEN: Cool. How do you personally advise founders to balance growth and trying new channels, and figuring out how to optimize what they've got, and then bottom line? YURIY TIMEN: Great question. So I have my biases, like anyone, right? And they are largely informed by where I grew up, where I came of age, which is Grammarly. And Grammarly, as you very well know, given our longstanding relationship there, Grammarly was bootstrapped for the first seven years of its existence, which meant that Grammarly was profitable. That's the only way you can bootstrap a business, right, for that long. And that became part of Grammarly's DNA, being able to balance growth with bottom line and profitability. It was not a choice. It was a necessity when you bootstrap, right? And even after Grammarly went on to raise one funding round after another, that quality of its DNA has never gone away, right? Like, it was already built in. So that's my bias. My bias is, a company should always be trying to get to default alive as quickly as possible, right? To break even as quickly as possible and then invest in growth commensurately with its kind of margins and its profitability. That's my bias, but I recognize that's not always the case, because sometimes, especially in nascent markets, you have to move quickly. And that means, you know, if you're focusing on profitability, you're not going to be able to win market share and you may lose to competition. So the first thing that I do with founders when helping them strike that balance is I ask – because most of them are going to be venture-backed companies. So I always say, what is your understanding, what is your consensus with your board on how you should be approaching balancing growth? Because whatever advice I give you, I want it to be complementary to your social contract with your board on how you should be balancing the two. And if the answer is, we don't have one, or it's unclear, or they are stumbling their way through kind of describing how their board is advising them on balancing the two, then I say, okay. I'm like, you have some work to do. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. YURIY TIMEN: Right? Go to your board. Align there first. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. Cool. What are some growth tactics that you have found that have maybe worked for one early stage company, but not another? So maybe they've raised the same amount of funding, but they're – they come from different – they're in different sectors or different primary focuses. Talk to me a little bit about how you kind of work through some of that. YURIY TIMEN: Well, you know, I'll go back to an earlier question that you asked, which is how do I figure out my kind of growth engine or growth levers? So, you know, I talked about kind of product virality and building viral loops. I talked about SEO. Well, there are some products that are going to lend themselves more naturally to those channels and not others. I don't know – let's run through a few of them. A few of the companies that I've worked with, right? So, for instance, uh, Airtable or Canva, right? Both former clients of mine. Obviously lend themselves extremely well to, actually, both PLG motion and an SEO motion. So, on the PLG front, they both – they're both collaborative tools, right? In the case of Canva, there is a creator of designs, there is a reviewer of designs, there is an approver of designs, right? So, collaborative. And so that's an opportunity to invite, create different user tiers, permissions, etc., right? Airtable is similar. There are creators of bases, reviewers of bases, commenters, etc. So, again, an opportunity to build in all those viral loops. On the SEO front, Canva, you know, people search for all type of long tail, design or graphic searches, right? I don't know, like same sex wedding invitation, Hawaii theme. You know what I mean? And that is like – and they’re – and Canva will be there with their long tail programmatic SEO page, right? So SEO worked really well. You contrast that with an emerging category or a category creator. I don't know. Let me think of someone. Okay, I got one. There's a company I work with called Poised, which was basically like a Grammarly for audio and video communication, right? So it's kind of like, imagine we're talking here, and I have a little overlay that's giving me a real time feedback, like, hey Yuri, you're talking too much. Let Lauren talk. LAUREN IPSEN: Oh, that would stress me out. YURIY TIMEN: Yeah. I mean, there are some – the UI was tricky. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. YURIY TIMEN: The UX was tricky. LAUREN IPSEN: I feel like it would tell me to, like, lower the octave of my laugh. YURIY TIMEN: It probably would. But, no, no, no. I didn't mean it like – no, I love your laugh. I just mean, they did – LAUREN IPSEN: We’re actually ending the episode now. I'm just kidding. YURIY TIMEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They did get pretty sophisticated with tone, intonation, nonverbal cues. They would be – but anyways, that was a complete category creator. And so there wasn't as obvious of an opportunity to lean on SEO because it's like, what are people searching for? Are people searching for a real time Zoom communication coach? No, right? So that's an example of product that didn't lend itself to the same channel. LAUREN IPSEN: Right. YURIY TIMEN: On the performance marketing front, it's pretty easy for me to come in. I can, in 15 minutes – if they have all their data, in 15 minutes, I can help them figure out if they should go heavy into performance marketing or not. I ask, like, five questions. Like what's the conversion rate from website visit to, you know, sign-up? What's the conversion rate from sign-up to purchase? What is your average order value on your purchase? What is your projected LTV? What is your split between your monthly subscribers and annual subscribers? I have a little checklist that I go through, and based on the answers, I can be like, yeah, you know what? You can find a lot of success in the following performance marketing channels. Go after them. Or it's like, hey, you know, you're not up to par on the following metrics. Bring the conversion rate up to here, get your average order value up to here. Then you can – then you should be testing performance marketing. So there'll be some companies, some founders I work with, well, they already have the right sort of ingredients, the right inputs. And I'll say, hey, you should absolutely be leaning into paid. And there'll be others where I’ll say, no, you got work to do. LAUREN IPSEN: Talk to me a little bit about where you feel like it makes more sense to have someone like yourself come in in a fractional or advisory capacity as opposed to having someone come in a full-time way? YURIY TIMEN: Yeah. So I would say some of the biggest reasons you may want to bring on fractional as opposed to hiring someone full-time – okay. Number one, this is focusing on me. You want access to a certain caliber of talent that you don't think you either can recruit full-time right now or have the surrounding resources to actually make use of them. I'll oftentimes come in doing half a day a week with a Series A company, where they wouldn't know what to do with a hundred percent of my – of me, because of how much leverage I would be trying to create. And they wouldn't have the engine resources, the design resources, the anything resources, right? So that's one rationale for hiring fractional. You want access to a certain caliber of talent, but you just don't think that you need or can make use of the full-time equivalent of that caliber of talent. Okay? Number two. You need – you want – you think you need somebody in a certain role, but you're not confident what is the exact profile of the person you need to hire, and you need help figuring out that profile. You bring on someone fractional like me, not only am I helping you stand up a function or take the function to the next level, I'm helping you calibrate on who you need to hire in my place as your full-time hire. And sometimes in my case, I actually will help you make that hire, right? So it's sort of this idea of, like, I don't know – I don't know exactly who I need in this role. So if I'm a founder who never hired ahead of growth, how do I know what to look for, right? And – okay. Three, you don't know if this competency or channel is going to work for your product. Let's take affiliate marketing, for instance, right? I think it could work. How do I test that channel effectively? Well, I have three options to test that channel effectively. Number one, get someone on my team already today, who probably doesn't know the channel, but maybe they're tangentially related, and be like, hey, so-and-so, take a stab at this channel. Could work, but usually, if you're dealing with that kind of situation, chances are, the person you're asking is already wearing a hundred hats, and you're trying to, throw on a hundred and first hat on them, right? LAUREN IPSEN: Yes. YURIY TIMEN: So it may not work. Second option, go and hire full-time. Be like, okay, I think affiliates could work. We're hiring an affiliate marketing manager. You have to take the channel from zero to one. We have – okay, high-risk, right? LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. YURIY TIMEN: You're going to spend a lot of time looking for this person, and you haven't even validated the channel. This is where fractional comes in. Why not hire someone who knows the affiliate channel well, who could spend a day, two days a week? You know, you're not committing to long-term employment. You don't have the same level of, I don't know, responsibility or accountability before this person. And see if they can take this channel zero to one, prove it out, and strengthen your conviction that it is indeed a long-term channel that you want to hire full-time for. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. Super helpful. I think all of this is going to be incredibly beneficial to our founders, so I can't thank you enough for joining and being on the show. YURIY TIMEN: I love talking to founders, helping founders. For every one founder I work with, there's probably ten that I'm just friends with and helping out – helping out on a kind of casual, pro bono basis. So, you know, I invite the founders that are listening to this to reach out to me. I will do my best to respond to everyone. And hopefully, you know, maybe even spend some time with some of the folks and help them kind of unlock new horizons in their businesses. LAUREN IPSEN: Amazing. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for joining. And thank you all for listening to Never Too Early. More to come soon.

15. 

    25 Jul 2024

    Security Insights for Founders: Hiring Your First CISO with Joe Sullivan

    In this episode of 'Never Too Early', host Lauren Ipsen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-ipsen-6a5a84113) speaks with Joe Sullivan (https://www.linkedin.com/in/joesu11ivan/), an esteemed internet security expert, about key considerations for founders hiring their first Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). Joe shares insights from his extensive career running security for Uber, Facebook, and Cloudflare. The discussion covers when to outsource vs. hire full-time, the importance of proactivity in security, and the qualities that separate good CISOs from great ones. Joe also addresses common misconceptions and the evolving landscape of cybersecurity, especially in light of recent regulatory changes and expectations. 00:00 Introduction to Never Too Early 00:20 Meet Joe Sullivan: Internet Security Expert 00:56 Joe's Personal Interests: Snowboarding at 53 02:54 Question 1: When is the right time to bring in a CISO? Joe talks about how to index on the right kind of hire for your security organization. 07:18 Question 2: How do I know if I need a CISO or someone more in the weeds like a security analyst? Joe and Lauren also talk about when it makes sense to outsource your security advice versus when it is important to have someone on the job full time. 10:34 Question 3: What are some backgrounds that make for a good CISO? Lauren and Joe talk about the evolution of this role over the years and the different types of individuals that are best suited to play the part. 12:22 Question 4: What are the most challenging things about being a CISO? Lauren also asks about where trust and safety come into the equation. 14:08 Question 5: What separates a good CISO from a great CISO? Joe talks about early learnings in his career and ways to not always feel like the person bringing bad news to the team. 19:14 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Want more of Never Too Early? Find us on Tiktok, @nevertooearly1  (https://www.tiktok.com/@nevertooearly1) and subscribe (https://open.spotify.com/show/0qdsUfD26ve136uIuIaoq7?si=1a7e36abfd554352)to us wherever you get your podcasts.

16. 

    27 Jun 2024

    Maximizing Engineering Efficiency with Netlify's CTO Dana Lawson

    In this episode of Never Too Early, hosted by Lauren Ibsen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-ipsen-6a5a84113), talent partner at Decibel, Dana Lawson (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dglawson/), CTO of Netlify, shares insights on understanding the productivity of your engineering organization. Lauren and Dana cover topics such as measuring technical output, the role of AI in productivity, the best structure for your team, and how to determine when to hire or promote internally. Dana also stresses the importance of maintaining an objective, inclusive approach in hiring and promotions to ensure equity in the workplace. 00:00 Introduction to Never Too Early 00:20 Meet Dana Lawson: CTO of Netlify 01:21 Dana's Personal Side: Fun with Chickens 02:52 Top 5 Questions from Founders 03:20 Question 1: How do you measure the output or effectiveness of your organization? Dana and Lauren discuss different metrics and tools you can use to analyze how your technical organization is performing as a whole. 05:54 Question 2: How do you know when it’s time to hire or when your current team is not doing enough? Dana shares guidelines she follows on how to scale your team thoughtfully and effectively. 08:01 Question 3: How has AI changed expectations of your team? Lauren and Dana discuss how this is the time of 5Xing your productivity in tech, not 5Xing your headcount. 12:24 Question 4: How do you determine the best structure for a given technical org? Dana talks about how to evaluate the right format for your team at given phases of growth and how to keep a pulse on what your organization needs. 15:22 Question 5: How do you know when to promote internally and when to hire externally? Dana talks about being a woman in tech and how essential it is to equal the playing field and stay true to your process and avoid biases. 20:37 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Want more of Never Too Early? Find us on Tiktok, @nevertooearly1 (https://www.tiktok.com/@nevertooearly1) and subscribe (https://open.spotify.com/show/0qdsUfD26ve136uIuIaoq7?si=1a7e36abfd554352) to us wherever you get your podcasts. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nevertooearly.substack.com (https://nevertooearly.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

17. 

    13 Jun 2024

    Hiring Your First Advisors with Jenn Longnion

    In this episode of Never Too Early, host Lauren Ipsen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-ipsen-6a5a84113), Talent Partner at Decibel, dives into the vast and increasingly popular world of advisors. Lauren's guest, Jennifer Longnion (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferlongnion/) shares her perspectives on the different roles an advisor can play, and how to choose the right person and structure for your business. 00:00 Introduction to 'Never Too Early' Series 00:20 Meet Jennifer Longnion: Seasoned People Leader 02:30 Question 1: What are the different roles an advisor can play? Lauren and Jenn discuss the different types of modern day advisor engagements and what structures work best for startups. 06:45 Question 2: What are the primary differences between an advisor, a fractional leader, an exec coach, a Board member or an EIR? Lauren and Jenn discuss when it makes sense to bring in an executive coach, versus a mentor versus a fractional leader and what a founder can expect for each of these engagements. 11:02 Question 3: How do I structure advisor compensation dependent on the type of engagement? Lauren and Jenn break down how a founder should be structuring compensation dependent on the role they are playing for the company. 14:06 Question 4: What does the role of an informal advisor look like relative to a formal advisor? Jenn pushes on the importance of flexibility as an advisor and how these roles can often be dynamic. She also talks about how to stay close to your founders to ensure they are still getting the help they need as the engagements change over time. 17:03 Question 5: When is the right time to bring on an advisor versus hiring someone full time? Jenn talks about how an advisor can be a great solution in the interim if you are not entirely sure what you might need in this function down the road. Want more of Never Too Early? Find us on Tiktok, @nevertooearly1 (https://www.tiktok.com/@nevertooearly1) and subscribe (https://open.spotify.com/show/0qdsUfD26ve136uIuIaoq7?si=1a7e36abfd554352) to us wherever you get your podcasts. Transcript LAUREN IPSEN: Welcome to Never Too Early, a YouTube series focused on unconventional talent insights for founders. I’m Lauren Ipsen, Talent Partner at Decibel. In each episode, we’ll cover the top five commonly asked questions that we get from founders building their organizations for the very first time. It’s never too early to learn from the best. I’m super excited to introduce my guest today, Jennifer Longnion started her career as an organizational development leader with Best Buy, Motorola, and the Coca-Cola Company. She later joined Silicon Beach darling Dollar Shave Club at its prime as chief people officer before taking on the COO title; and then, most recently, taking the role of chief impact officer at Flexport. After three decades of leading in the hot seat, Jenn now focuses on scaling multiple ventures as CEO and founder of See & Free Consulting. Her clients have anointed her the “Org Whisperer” for her ability to walk into organizations at any stage, quickly assess the landscape, and implement transformational solutions on a dime. So, with that being said, Jenn is one of the most qualified to answer the top five commonly asked questions that we get from founders hiring advisors for the very first time. All right, Jenn, welcome to the show! JENN LONGNION: Hi! How are you? So good to see you. LAUREN IPSEN: I’m doing great. So good to see you too, and wonderful to have you here. Thank you for joining. JENN LONGNION: Of course. LAUREN IPSEN: All right. So I just walked listeners through your incredibly impressive professional background. But it would be really helpful if you could just give the guests something about you on a personal front. JENN LONGNION: Yeah. For sure. I guess I bizarrely asked my wife what she thought was interesting about me on the personal front, and she said, “Nothing.” We’ve been together 26 years. LAUREN IPSEN: Okay. JENN LONGNION: Maybe that’s the most interesting thing. But I tell people all the time, she and I are still, after all these years, the first and last one on any dance floor at any party or event. LAUREN IPSEN: Awe. JENN LONGNION: So if you like to dance, come find us. We’ll always be there. LAUREN IPSEN: Okay. I love it. JENN LONGNION: Yeah. LAUREN IPSEN: That’s awesome. And I’m going to out you, because I know that you mentioned this to me, but you wanted to be a DJ, it sounds like. JENN LONGNION: I did. Yes. I still do. I dream about being – not just a DJ, but a club DJ. LAUREN IPSEN: Absolutely. JENN LONGNION: I want—yes. It’s got to be—I want to make people happy and see them dancing and enjoying themselves. And that is my passion. And so, someday. Just—just wait. Maybe. I’ll make it happen. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. I’m ready. Okay. So we’re going to talk about advisors today. Over the past couple years—and I’m sure you’ve seen this too, Jenn, especially in your own business—but there’s been such a massive uptick in not only the demand for advisors from companies, but also, I think, more full-time operators are wanting to have a portfolio of work outside of their day job. It can really help you kind of keep a pulse on what’s happening in the market, help you feel like you have a good understanding of things that are trending in industry, and just keep you sharp while continuing to be fully occupied in a role. And so, this session is going to be specifically for founders, but really focused on advisors and the different roles in which they can play. So, with that being said, first question for you. What are the different roles an advisor can play? What is the right time to engage one? And then how do I know who the right person is? JENN LONGNION: Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think different types of advisors. There really are. And it depends on your “why” for engaging an advisor. Sometimes it’s because there’s an expertise that somebody has that you don’t have. You need to round out your understanding, especially for founders. Many of them have never been employed, much less led massive organizations or grown companies. And so, in some cases, it’s just what’s that know-how that I don’t have and that expertise that I need to supplement my brain, build my brain a little bit about what’s out there and what’s happening. Sometimes it’s specific industry kind of network opportunities. Connecting people to financial sources of income or investments. Sometimes it’s just listening to a pitch. You want people to give you feedback, but there’s people that have been there, done that, other founders who’ve lived the cycle, and they’ve had successful transactions. Others, it’s about kind of how do I become a leader. It’s engaging an advisor on that front, which is how do I grow my own leadership skills, my own capabilities, and kind of up my game on that front. So there’s so many different ways that people engage advisors. And I tell people, maybe to overuse your—the title of your podcast. But it is never too early to do that, right? LAUREN IPSEN: Ah. JENN LONGNION: I think you—yeah, as long as you’ve got that “why” for yourself about what’s important to you, what do you want to achieve, what do you want to get from that advisor, that’s the most important thing. And then you want to build your network. I mean, a lot of these entrepreneurial ventures rely on peoples’ networks and the ability to kind of lean on other people to help join you in your conviction to start a company and make something work. And so, the more people, the better, to kind of bring on and bring into the fold to help you do that, that are truly invested in your success. You said, “How do I choose the right one?” LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. JENN LONGNION: Oftentimes, people you know, know people. So there’s that. So if you don’t have the resources, but you have people you do trust in your—what I call kitchen cabinet, your confidantes, they will likely have networks. Don’t take that for granted. You’d be surprised just how many people are connected in the networks that you have. That’s one way. So really strong referrals. If you’re working with venture capital, or private equity, or any sort of investment firms, they typically have a very good set of resources for you to access. Professional organizations. I hear a lot of people at YPO, for instance, as an example. If you come out of Y Combinator, an accelerator like that, you may also be able to leverage those networks. But they know who’s out there, right? And that’s a good source for you to access to find out, who can help me right now? And who’s the best? And who knows their stuff? And that’s really what you want. LAUREN IPSEN: Super helpful. Talk to me a little bit about the difference between advisors, board members, exec coaches, execs-in-residence. There’s all these different titles, and obviously, slightly different roles that each of these individuals play. So help me break that down for our founders. JENN LONGNION: Yeah, yeah. So advisors are exactly that—people that provide advice, right? And so, that can be an informal engagement, somebody that you just say, “I need your advice, mentorship, guidance.” And it can be formal. And often, they’ll agree to some sort of number of hours or some sort of engagement where it’s like, “Call me. Phone a friend.” I’m a phone a friend advisor for a few ventures. And I try to be clear, that’s how to engage me best, is when you need something, call me. So advisors can be a wide range and can be engaged in many different ways. The board of directors is typically a group of people who bring certain skill sets to the table. Many times with founders, I find that they have their original investors on that board of directors because they have a very vested interest on getting a return in their investment, and they’ve done it before. A lot of them have gotten companies to scale and be successful. And so, they tend to be some of the early board of directors. But they’re there to help you make sure you’ve got a good, sound strategy, business proposition, help you fill out your team. Sometimes your leadership teams help you go get that network of other folks that can help you get the venture off the ground. And so, I tell people, “Choose wisely, because those folks will probably be with you for a little while.” But you really want those people to help you provide the governance that you need to get your venture off the ground and your business moving forward. They really are key to making that happen. Yeah. There’s other engagements called fractional leaders. That’s something I do a lot of. Typically, these are folks that come in on a part-time basis for an unspecified amount of time. Sometimes it’s just like, “We need you.” And oftentimes can be used to plug in—I tell people all the time, “I’m plug-in executive. That’s me.” LAUREN IPSEN: I love it. JENN LONGNION: Where you need—yeah, where you need leadership and don’t have it. Even if I don’t have the subject matter expertise, sometimes just having somebody that can be the grownup in the room or has kind of that leadership gravitas, credibility, and experience is necessary. Sometimes you want specific subject matter expertise, right? LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. JENN LONGNION: So sometimes, you want to go after that. Either way, you will scope that role appropriately and say, “This is what we need.” You mentioned execs-in-residence. There’s also a term called entrepreneurs in residence. But either way—sometimes, strangely, I have also been an exec-in-residence, but it was in an academic setting, because a lot of times, academia bring in execs-in-residence. And it’s somebody that’s got that kind of pragmatic business experience to bring to bear in academia. But in the business world, it’s oftentimes somebody that is either an operating partner or somebody that works closely with your investment firms or your investors. And oftentimes, it’s somebody that’s got professional experience. They have scaled companies. They’ve scaled ventures. They’re known and have credibility around that, and they have influence with those investments firms. So they’ll either be used to do due diligence, to say, “Yeah, this person’s got it. They’ve got that thing that you want to invest in or you want to coach and nurture.” Sometimes they’ll come in and mentor the senior leadership teams and help them kind of navigate the trials of early startups. But either way, you can leverage them. And oftentimes, they’re there and they’re available, and that’s exactly what they’re expected to do. They just may be serving multiple portfolio companies for that firm. And so, that’s important to know as well. LAUREN IPSEN: You did a really good job of articulating all of those different archetypes. Talk to me— JENN LONGNION: Thanks. Yeah. LAUREN IPSEN: It was a loaded question. Talk to me a little bit about the differences in which all of those individuals are compensated, and what the right structure is for each of those people. JENN LONGNION: It’s different based on the engagement and maybe even the conditions of those engagements, right? Advisors often will expect—if they’re expecting payment, they’re saying it’s formal, they’ll want that in the form of cash compensation or equity of some sort. So it might be a certain number of retained hours, for instance. I do that a lot, where I say, “I’ll be available eight hours a month, and for this amount of money.” Or sometimes I say, “Yeah, I’ll just take equity,” right? Some people don’t want the money. And the reason they don’t want the money is they want to have flexibility with their time and their commitment, right? So just be—just know that. If you go after an informal advisor, know that that’s really under their conditions, right, because they want that flexibility. Fractional leaders typically are going to come in on a retainer basis or a contract basis. They may say, “I’ll start with the first three months, six months.” It’s going to be a hefty price because you’re paying for somebody that’s got a lot of professional experience and probably has a good income of their own they’ve already earned. And they’ve done this for other companies or are doing this for other companies. And so, you’re going to pay more than you would pay for a full-time hire in those roles, but that’s okay if you know you need that expertise immediately to help you figure out what you’re going to need in the long-term. One thing we didn’t talk about last time was exec coaches. So that’s another area too that a lot of people will engage. And people ask me a lot about coaching. There’s different models of coaching and different methodologies of coaching. And so, some people will engage on kind of an hourly basis for a certain number of sessions. I think, oftentimes, they’ll—let’s say I’ll be here for six months or 12 months. It also depends if they’re coaching multiple people within your organization or on your exec team, and if they’re doing group coaching. Because I do, for instance, co-founder coaching, where it’s multiple folks, especially if there’s more than one founder, and they need to get alignment, and they want coaching together, because they just want to learn to work together as a team, that’s going to be more from an hourly basis. But it’s still in an hourly engagement. And I say, “You get eight sessions or 10 sessions.” But that’s how you pay your coaches. And an exec-in-residence, it depends. They might be compensated by the investment firm sometimes, because they’re wanting to really shape where they’re focused and make sure that they’re doing what they need. It’s more of a reciprocal relationship. Sometimes they’ll want a share of your company, right, as a part of being part of your growth trajectory. And so, just figuring out, kind of, again, why they’re involved and under what circumstances, that’ll help guide you towards how to engage them and compensate them. LAUREN IPSEN: Awesome. Okay. So we talked a little bit about this. And you mentioned that you’re an informal advisor to a couple of companies right now. JENN LONGNION: Yeah. LAUREN IPSEN: What are the primary differences between engaging an informal advisor and a formal advisor? JENN LONGNION: On the informal side, oftentimes, those come to me in the form of a referral. Somebody has referred somebody to me. And it’s because I have a certain expertise area or an industry expertise that they’re wanting to tap into, because the founder is starting a company in that arena, and they just want to know, what’s—how do I navigate this? If I want to go into COG, or if I want to go into direct-to-consumer, how do I get in there? Who are those people? How do I connect with them? Because those inevitably will be their clients or their customers. And so, you’re going after an informal advisor usually just for an initial kind of “tell me a little bit about,” right? Those are how those conversations usually start. And I will sit down with anyone, which is a problem, because I don’t always think about, “Oh, I don’t have time for this.” But I get so excited about these new ventures. So that’s the informal side of it. Formal advising sometimes can come—like you said, that can emerge from starting as an informal advisor, where you go from “I got a question to you,” to “Would you be on our board of directors?” or “Would you be a formal advisor for me, right, on a retained basis?” But a lot of times, you want to male sure before you engage that person in a formal way, that they will give you the time and the energy that you need from them. And then be really clear what you need from them, right, in that situation. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. Well, and something that I talk to a lot of folks about that are hoping to do more advisory work is that a lot of those informal conversations are ultimately what get you to be brought into the fold as a more formal advisor, right? Which is a lot of what you were just alluding to. People want to build rapport and credibility before allowing you to just have skin in the game. And, assuming that your resume is worth it, right? So I think it takes some time to build that trust. JENN LONGNION: It does. LAUREN IPSEN: And then those formal advisor-type engagements come to be. But I think it’s really smart for operators to just be open-minded to taking the calls. It’s going to make you sharper. It’s going to make you have a better pulse on what’s happening in market. And then it might lead to more of a formal advisory engagement or a potential board seat down the road, right? And that’s how these things happen. It’s more organic relationship-building at the start. JENN LONGNION: It really is. It really is. And those relationships are critical, right? For everyone, both the advisor and the founder. Yeah. LAUREN IPSEN: My final question for you is around when to bring in an advisor or someone in a fractional capacity, versus when to know to just hire someone full-time. And then if you could walk us through kind of pros and cons to both, and would it make sense to do this, that would be helpful. JENN LONGNION: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I kind of break it down to, like, if you know—if you don’t know what you need—you know that kind of approximately, I’ve got a challenge, I’ve got an issue, I’ve got a need. But I don’t know exactly what I need. And maybe I need somebody to help inform that, right? What’s the right resource to go after? That’s an advisor. Just call and get some advice, because somebody’s probably had that need before as well, or they are the person that can solve for that. If you know what you need, but you don’t know for how long—you don’t know if you can afford it, right? You know, it’s like, I need this expertise. I need these kind of financial, this financial analysis, or whatever the case may be. I know I need a strong CFO partner, but I’m not ready to commit to that. I don’t know exactly what the scope of that role will be over time—then that’s when you go after fractional leadership. That’s the perfect opportunity to bring in somebody for a period of time that’s just done it before. And they can tell you what you need, but they can also probably help you find who you need for the role. If you know what you need, and you know you’re ready for that partner, that person that’s going to jump into this crazy, chaotic joyride that you’re on, and somebody that you want to build a trusted partnership with that you’re willing to share in the company’s growth with, right, because you’re about to probably give equity to that person to join you, that’s full-time hire. That’s when you bring more people onto your leadership team, and you say, “We’re in this together.” LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. JENN LONGNION: But that’s when you know. And I tell people, on average—just because I don’t like to make investments in people unless I’m willing to make a commitment to them. So I say, usually, if you can see yourself 18 to 24 months from now, working with that person, right, that’s how you know it’s time to hire. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. JENN LONGNION: You need the role. You need the person. You want that talent in place. That’s how you know. And that’s how you want to bring them in. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. Well, and sometimes these advisory engagements start as, really, trying to build rapport and creating a beneficial dynamic on both sides. And then over time, if you’re working with them 18 months from now, then maybe the company’s at a different stage, where they could benefit from this person in a full-time capacity. And now that individual already knows the inner workings of the business. They already have rapport and credibility. And so, they can kind of just hit the ground running in a totally different way, right? So it can be mutually beneficial, I think, to start in that type of role if you’re not sure what you need in a full-time hire, right? JENN LONGNION: Yes, absolutely. LAUREN IPSEN: Well, I can’t thank you enough for coming on the show, sharing your wisdom and insights. I think this one is so incredibly topical and comes up all the time. And you are the perfect person to walk us through it. So thank you so much. And thank you all for tuning into Never Too Early. More to come soon. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nevertooearly.substack.com (https://nevertooearly.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

18. 

    30 May 2024

    Never Too Early: Paying Your First Sales Leader with Brian Murphy, Former CRO of Sigma Computing

    In this episode of Never Too Early, host Lauren Ipsen (https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-ipsen-6a5a84113), Talent Partner at Decibel, dives into crucial sales compensation strategies for early-stage founders. Lauren's guest, Brian Murphy (https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-murphy-6787ba4/), former CRO of Sigma Computing and Sales Leader at Okta, shares his perspectives on how to hire and pay your early sales team as well as properly structure and incentivize each stakeholder in your organization to get deals done. 00:00 Introduction to 'Never Too Early' Series 00:20 Meet Brian Murphy: Seasoned Sales Vet 03:48 Question 1: When do I know if I’m ready to hire a full time salesperson? Brian and Lauren talk about when it makes sense to bring a salesperson into the mix and how to set reasonable goals for that individual when it can often be a moving target. 06:46 Question 2: With deals where everyone contributed, who gets commission? Lauren and Brian tackle how in the early days, everyone should be pretty involved and hands on in getting a deal done. 09:25 Question 3: When is the right time to move from founder-led selling to non-founder led selling? Brian talks about how there is a difference between being founder-led and founder-involved and how one is more scalable than the other. 12:07 Question 4: What kind of Sales Leader do I hire first? An AE? An SDR? A Head of Sales? Brian talks about what your first sales hires should look like and the type of support structure they will need to be set up for success. 16:51 Question 5: How do you address compensation disparities and the amount of transparency across a sales organization?. Lauren’s final question to Brian is around common discrepancies that occur between your first sales hires’ compensation and your “phase two” sales hires that come into an organization to take a business to the next level. Lauren asks Brian his process in addressing those compensation disparities and the amount of transparency that he believes should be involved. 20:25 Wrapping Up with Insights and Advice Want more of Never Too Early? Find us on Tiktok, @nevertooearly1 (https://www.tiktok.com/@nevertooearly1) and subscribe (https://open.spotify.com/show/0qdsUfD26ve136uIuIaoq7?si=1a7e36abfd554352) to us wherever you get your podcasts. Transcript LAUREN IPSEN: Welcome to Never Too Early, a YouTube series focused on unconventional talent insights for founders. I’m Lauren Ipsen, Talent Partner at Decibel. In each episode, we’ll cover the top five commonly asked questions that we get from founders building their organizations for the very first time. It’s never too early to learn from the best. With that being said, I’m super excited to introduce my first guest today, Brian Murphy. Brian was most recently the CRO of Sigma Computing. Prior to Sigma, he worked at Identity and access management provider Okta for six years, through massive growth, in various sales leadership roles, ultimately culminating to running all of enterprise sales for the Americas. And before that, he led sales at Alpine Data Labs, which was later acquired into TIBCO; and as sales director at Adept before it was acquired into Teradata. So with all of that being said, Brian Murphy is one of the most qualified to answer the top five questions that we get from founders compensating their sales leaders for the very first time. Brian, welcome to the show. BRIAN MURPHY: Thank you. Thrilled to be here. LAUREN IPSEN: I really appreciate you making the time. All right. So today, we’re going to talk a lot about compensation, specifically on the sales side of things. So I just gave a short overview of your incredibly impressive background. But on a personal front, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Something that would be good for listeners to know about who you are? BRIAN MURPHY: Yeah. Happy to. So I grew up in the Boston area. Still live here. Not unlike many people from the area, live here, born here, die here. Probably will move when the Patriots move, or the Red Sox, or the Bruins move, so that’s not happening. Grew up in an Irish Catholic house. I was the youngest of four. I had nine—my father was one of nine. LAUREN IPSEN: Wow. BRIAN MURPHY: Six of the nine, including my father, were in technology sales, so I’m full of stupid jokes. I’m able to do that because I have four kids. A lot of dad jokes. But one of them is, growing up in that environment, Thanksgiving was like a QVR or forecast meeting, but it was really uncomfortable, so. I’ve always been in and around tech sales and wanted to be in tech sales before I really knew what tech sales was, so. LAUREN IPSEN: Awesome. BRIAN MURPHY: A little bit of a family business for me. Outside of work, I’m pretty boring. I’m a terrible golfer. So I try to do that occasionally. LAUREN IPSEN: I’m really bad too. BRIAN MURPHY: Yeah. Yeah. Not well, but it’s still fun. Like working out, like traveling, and obviously, with four kids, two dogs - LAUREN IPSEN: So you’ve got more excuses than I do, though, on the golf course, because, I mean, you can’t play for six months out of the year. BRIAN MURPHY: No. It’s perfect. I have a built-in excuse. So when I’m terrible, I can use that excuse all the time. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. So what’s mine?BRIAN MURPHY: Yeah. Well, you actually—you played in college, didn’t you? LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. I used to be good at one point. And so, people expect that that’ll be the case when we go out and play. But golf is not like riding a bike, you know? It’s not something that you just remain good at when you don’t play. BRIAN MURPHY: There’s a direct correlation associated with my career in sales. You’d think that sales people play golf all the time. But there’s a correlation associated with my career in sales and my index. And as my career has involved, my index has doubled. So I used to be a six in high school, and actually, I think I’m up now to, like, a 13 or a 14, so yeah. LAUREN IPSEN: Honestly, better for tournament play, though, you know?BRIAN MURPHY: Yeah. Yeah.LAUREN IPSEN: You get some pops. So all good stuff.BRIAN MURPHY: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. LAUREN IPSEN: Okay. Okay, cool. So let’s dive into sales, and specifically, let’s dive into compensation. BRIAN MURPHY: Sure. LAUREN IPSEN: I thought that you would be a great person to help me work through some of this. So every founder asks me, “I think I’m ready for a salesperson. But when do I really know if I’m ready?” And how do we set goals for someone when there’s really no predictability? So especially in the early days, how do I determine quota, ramp, OTE, when it’s all kind of a moving target, in a sense? So let’s start there. BRIAN MURPHY: Yeah. Absolutely. I think the first thing—you said it really well, Lauren—is that it is a moving target. And you have to understand there’s going to be some fluid aspects of this, right, based on the situation. So to answer the first question, when do you need a salesperson, founders should always be, I think, in the early stages, be involved in the sales process. But when you have some hypothesis associated with what your product-market fit, value proposition, and what your ICP is—and I’ll use that word “hypothesis” very specifically—you have an idea, but you don’t have that figured out. And that is such an important thing to be able to scale out an organization. When you have that direction, you need to have someone to go figure that out. It is absolutely instrumental to the company. You’re never going to be able to grow a business if you don’t know what those things are, where the focus is, the product-market fit, and the ideal customer fit, or ideal customer profile. So at that given point in time, you should have that. As far as setting targets for individuals, I think it’s always important, but it is crucial in the early days of the organization that you set targets that that individual and the team is going to be able to hit. And that’s in the early days, and that’s continuously through. There’s nothing that’s more challenging when you have—you’re saying you’ve got the sales person in and they’re not making their quota, and then we’re going to hire more. It’s going to be really hard to recruit individuals based on that. But I would also kind of err on the side of things that are outside of—in the early stages, outside of typical, as you would expect, revenue targets. And that could be customer meetings or feedback or numbers, some kind of leading indicators that lead to those things. Knowing, to my earlier point, that’s fluid. You don’t have everything figured out. And it’s really about kind of understanding, learning, failing fast, and adapting on those things. So again, to reiterate, when you—I think you should really focus on hiring a salesperson is when you have the hypothesis, but it’s not fully baked, right? Where that ICP and product market fit is. And align the goals very much on formalizing and solidifying those things so you can build some repeatability and predictability, because you don’t have that today. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. Awesome. Cool. I think that was comprehensive and will be super helpful to our founders. You touched on this a little bit, and I’m going to ask you to take it one step further. But you mentioned how in the early days, kind of everyone’s somewhat involved and hands-on in getting a deal done. And so, with deals where everyone contributes, who gets commission? And what does an effective structure look like, in your mind, between sales, marketing, and other key cross-functional leaders, to ensure that everyone’s properly incentivized? BRIAN MURPHY: Yeah. I’m a huge believer in taking what the overall goal of the company is and aligning that to the individuals within the company. But I think about it kind of a matrix, and there’s two elements. There’s, one, accountability; and secondly, influence. So who is most accountable for the outcome associated with that goal? But do they have influence associated with that as well? So for example, in AE, if you’re looking at revenue and how much you’re going to compensate that person, right, what percentage you’re going to pay that individual on the deal, they have high influence, because no matter what, they’re quarterback. They’re the individual that’s orchestrating all of theresources, the alignment, so on and so forth. LAUREN IPSEN: Sure.BRIAN MURPHY: They have—and they’re also—that’s their goal.LAUREN IPSEN: Right. BRIAN MURPHY: That’s 100% the objective of that individual. The other side of it, take somebody who is in SDR, that is responsible for really the top of the funnel in getting those meetings. They have some influence associated with that revenue. But it’s not completely control over that. And accountability-wise, their job isn’t fully to close it, but it’s to contribute associated with that. So they could get an opportunity, great opportunity, and the AU, the SEC could mess up on the proof of concept or something along those lines. So you have to think about a compensation model that kind of aligns with what their overall accountability and influence within that. And it would be a percentage of that total deal, right? It would be a smaller percentage because it’s a sales rep. So I would think about it more in that context, as far as the individuals. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. BRIAN MURPHY: But I really would say it’s the individuals that are on the front lines in go-to- market, right? LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. BRIAN MURPHY: So I wouldn’t necessarily say somebody on the product, the engineering side of that. I wouldn’t say that fully aligns to it. But anyone touching the customer and part of that end-to-end sales process should get a percentage of that. Obviously, varying degrees based on what the individual does. But closely aligning with what the overall target goal is to people who are involved in that process. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. It makes sense. I think this is also somewhat involved. But oftentimes, in the early days, a founder should be very involved in the sales conversations, especially for big deals. And across the board, they should be the one that can really sell their story the best. BRIAN MURPHY: Yeah. LAUREN IPSEN: And so, in your opinion, at what point and how does a founder transition out of the sales calls? And when is the right time to move from kind of a founder-led sell, if you will, to more of a non-founder-led sale, or someone that comes in and runs that process in its entirety? BRIAN MURPHY: Yeah. There’s two different parts, I think, about that, actually. So when you talk about a founder-involved or founder-led, I think those are two slightly different things. I have a huge, huge amount of respect and appreciation for founders, what they go through, what they do. And I think that they very well should be involved in sales throughout later stage of the company as well. They should always have that element. I think most of them do. The ones that I’ve engaged with are incredibly passionate individuals and good in, really, a multitude of areas. They’re incredibly multifaceted in that way. But what I would say is that the line of delineation where it’s led, right? So “involvement” and “led” are different things. And I’ll draw the analogy—I always talk about heroic sales versus methodical and process-based sales. So when you want to start transitioning to “We need to be able to scale the organization,” and you can have these amazing individuals, which founders are, be involved in that process, and they are the difference-maker associated with getting that deal or not, when you really have that kind of ICP, you have that methodology, you know what the product-market fit is, you have those things dialed in, and you have a sales process that is a playbook that you know is going to berepeatable, that’s when you really start having to not have the founder lead those things. You need to get an individual who’s a sales running sales, to start building that, refining that, and making that repeatable, so there’s not a reliance on that person all the time, right? Now, they still will be involved, like I said. But it shouldn’t be the heroic-based sale. It should be the methodical process-based sale. So when you start building those things, when you have a repeatable process, when you know what the ICP is, when you know what the product-market fit is, that’s when you start to have to build more and remove the founder from the leading part of that sale. Ideally, as soon as possible, as soon as you find those things. LAUREN IPSEN: Okay. So how do we think—so I guess this is another question that comes up all the time when I’m talking to our early-stage founders, usually at the seed or pre-seed stage. But they just kind of found product-market fit. They feel really good about their ICP. How do we know whether or not to bring in a founding AE, or an SDR, or a head of sales, whatever that might entail? Should that individual have support? Should they have a sales engineer? Should it just be them, and should they be able to run it all by themselves? And then I guess with that in mind, how do we then handle sales ops, post-sales, without support, if that’s the route that we decide to take? BRIAN MURPHY: Yeah. Yeah.LAUREN IPSEN: And I know that’s a lot of questions in one. But if you can try and break that down. BRIAN MURPHY: There is—I’ll try to break it down the best I can. And what I’d say at the beginning when you asked about compensation of a sales rep, when a lot of things aren’t predictable, it is fluid. And I think these situations are fluid as well. So I’ll break it down in a couple different ways. You asked about individuals, when to bring in head of sales, sales, AE, SE, ops, so on and so forth. And I think it’s kind of a maturity curve of how much time the individual is focused on a particular task. And when that task becomes more important, that you have to hire somebody to support it. So an example of that, let’s just say by way of example, you hire an AE that is doing their own pipe gen, their own outbound, their sales operations, right? They’re doing it all. And when you start to realize that they don’t—they spend so much time on the deals because they’re closing deals and moving deals. There’s only so many hours in the day, right? LAUREN IPSEN: Right. BRIAN MURPHY: It’s like, what hours are you throwing out? And they’re not getting to that part of it because they don’t have the time to focus on that. That’s when you’re like, okay, we’re missing opportunity, and you have to hire those additional roles, right? That’s the way I kind of look at it, is when the individual is being consumed by something that is overly important and neglecting another part of the business that is going to especially feed to that, right? So if you’re not generating pipe, you’re not going to have much opportunity. So it is, again, kind of a non-answer, but it’s very fluid, based on what you see and what’s needed. But that’s how I think about structuring an org and building an org where you need those particular rules to focus, right? And then kind of the second part of it is hiring a head of sales versus an AE. I don’t believe in hiring a head of sales until you have something that you feel, I would say, more than 50% confident that you have your kind of ICP done. And the head of sales, that’s part of their responsibility. A huge part of it is making sure that they’re constantly developing, identifying what that is, and building kind of systems to be able to get the technographic information to focus on the ICP and processes to go into pipe gen and create that opportunity. But if you’re starting from kind of flat, it’s going to be tough. You need some kind of signaling for that individual, otherwise you’re going to hire a head of sales that ends up being kind of a sales rep. LAUREN IPSEN: Right. BRIAN MURPHY: And it’s an overpaid role— LAUREN IPSEN: Totally. BRIAN MURPHY: —for that individual. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. Yeah, you don’t want to be paying head of sales compensation and have someone just operating as an IC. BRIAN MURPHY: No. No. LAUREN IPSEN: So, it’s thinking about at what point it makes sense to have someone in there that can really be a leader. And maybe it is that all you need is just a really senior AE that can just kind of run all of it from end to end, get deals done. And then over time, some of those folks want some leadership and guidance. And so those are very—two very different things. BRIAN MURPHY: I would say it’s the shift between “We have more to learn than we know,” versus “We still have a ton to learn, but we know enough,” right? “We know enough.” LAUREN IPSEN: Probably that’s a great way to put it. Yeah.BRIAN MURPHY: That’s the way I would kind of frame it, right?LAUREN IPSEN: Cool.BRIAN MURPHY: Yeah.LAUREN IPSEN: Cool.BRIAN MURPHY: Hopefully that answered the question. LAUREN IPSEN: It absolutely did. Cool. Okay. So at every level, there are different expectations around what sales compensation should look like. We just mentioned this. But we bring in a new head of sales from a tier one company who wants to bring on A+ people. And this happens all the time, where there’s this massive delta between the founding sales team and the ones that have been grinding through the ICP and trying to figure out what the buyer looks like, and all of these different components. But they’re getting paid a fraction of what, then, these new AEs are getting paid that came from this tier one group. And so, I guess this is something that comes up often. How much transparency is involved? What is the right process to ensure that you’re doing right by the individuals that were early in building the foundation of the company, and then those that maybe are more of the shiny objects that came with that second phase from a new leader? BRIAN MURPHY: Yeah. So, I guess, two parts to this. One, I’ll answer the question about transparency. Me personally, I don’t know if I have the right answer for this one, candidly, because I have one or two flaws. Joking. More than that. So one of them is I kind of say, a terrible analogy, but it’s like playing blackjack. You play by the book the entire time, you win some; you lose some. But if you play the odds, you’re going to win more than you lose, maybe. But you’re going to statistically be better off on that. The reason I use that terrible analogy is, transparency, there are kind of times where you can’t be fully transparent about things. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. BRIAN MURPHY: But overall, I believe in being transparent as much as you possibly can without it being something that is breaking your fiduciary responsibility to the company or in another area. So being pretty transparent about kind of bringing in new individuals and have different skill sets in different focus areas in different stages of the company, I think you should be transparent about that. I think you should say that. And there’s nothing wrong with that, by the way. The individuals in the profile that you hire in the early days, they are what I’d say typically more artists. I always use the analogy of artists and scientists, someone recently taught me. 44 years, it took me, to figure this out. But they talked about jazz and piano players. And I’m like, “I don’t understand that.” LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. BRIAN MURPHY: Apparently jazz is improvised. Didn’t know that, so learned something new. LAUREN IPSEN: Huh. Me neither. Okay. BRIAN MURPHY: All right, great. I’m not the only one. I looked at him like, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” LAUREN IPSEN: You’re teaching our listeners so much. Yeah. BRIAN MURPHY: Yeah. Yeah. So there are individuals that are artists, and they can do things that are absolutely amazing, and they’re dynamic and the first sellers. Not that they’re not all high intelligence. But they just—they can do things in a certain way, and get deals done, and get access, and build champions. But ask them how they do it, and they can’t explain it. They can’t do it. They’re just incredibly talented in that way. It’s the same way an artist can paint something, and I’d say, “How do you do that?” So it just doesn’t compute. You have it or you don’t. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. BRIAN MURPHY: And then there are scientists, who are basically saying—not that they don’t have the art gene. But what I’d say is they generally know what the signals are and what the formulas are associated with success. And, candidly, they’re going to have different quotas, and they have likely different stakes of equity in kind of ownership of the company as well. LAUREN IPSEN: Yeah. True. BRIAN MURPHY: So as far as communicating what different compensation is, no, I don’t think that’s really appropriate, and I don’t know if that’s entirely legal, to be honest. But being very transparent about the company, about, look, we’re bringing individuals in that are different people. This is what we believe is the right thing for the company. Here’s why. Here’s what the growth and the stage of the company is. And, candidly, some people can adapt, and they will turn into a scientist versus an artist, or move a little bit more in that direction. And some people will say, “I’m going to go to another place where my art skills are incredibly valued, and I’m really good in that area.” And there’s nothing wrong with that, right? And there’s different people that can go through different ranges. So I think being transparent about it. LAUREN IPSEN: Okay. Amazing. I want to thank you again for joining me. BRIAN MURPHY: Of course. LAUREN IPSEN: Thank you so much for the wisdom, the insights. I think this is something that comes up all the time, and this is going to be really helpful for founders as they’re thinking about structuring compensation, but also just more generally how to think about building a strong and productive sales organization in the early days. So thank you so much for your time. BRIAN MURPHY: Of course. Yeah.LAUREN IPSEN: I really do appreciate it. Yeah.BRIAN MURPHY: If anyone wants any more dad jokes, they can find me on LinkedIn. LAUREN IPSEN: All right. We’ll leave it at that. Okay. And thank you all for tuning in to Never Too Early. More to come soon. Thanks. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nevertooearly.substack.com (https://nevertooearly.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

19. 

    15 May 2024

    Hiring Your First Marketing Team with Jen Grant, 3X CMO

    Jen is currently the COO of Cube.dev (http://Cube.dev), formerly the CEO of Appify, and held the CMO title at Box, Elastic, and Looker. As a 3X CMO, Jen has seen it all. In this episode, Lauren asks Jen Grant the top five commonly asked questions she gets from founders building their first marketing organizations. What kind of marketer do I hire first? [2:48 - 4:54] What comes first, product marketing or a demand gen? Jen and Lauren discuss how you identify the kind of marketer to hire for and when you know that you have product market fit. What does a good product marketer look like? [5:13 - 7:27] A great product marketer, especially in a highly technical company, can create a value proposition that resonates with the target buyer. Jen and Lauren discuss how your first “marketer” might actually not come from a marketing background at all. When is the right time to bring in a product marketer? [7:49 - 9:17] More often than not, the CEO and founder of an early stage business should be the best at marketing their product, so when does it make sense for a founder to bring in an outside leader? The most valuable thing a product marketer can bring you according to Jen is a new perspective and a fresh set of eyes. Jen talks about the importance of bringing in a new perspective that can see the product in a different light. How do I evaluate the performance of my marketing organization? [9:17 - 13:50] How does a seasoned CMO evaluate their marketing hires? Is their demand generation lead spending money in the right areas? Are we all operating off of the same data? With roles that are more qualitative, how do you determine success? These are just a few of the topics Jen addresses. What is the biggest mistake you have made in hiring?  [16:18 - 19:35] Jen provides some advice for founders based on hiring mistakes she has made in her career and talks about the most important character trait she looks for when evaluating talent for an early stage organization. She also describes what it means to be “GSD.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nevertooearly.substack.com (https://nevertooearly.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

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