Suggestions
Sam Mallikarjunan
Taking some time to imagine (and build!) the future. Formerly the CEO @ OneScreen.ai, CRO @ Flock, an Instructor @ Harvard, & the Head of Growth @ HubSpot Labs.
I help build organizations that drive growth. Enduring companies build engines of growth and teams with the right muscles to test, experiment, and challenge assumptions. Growth isn't a mysterious magic, it should be intentionally and methodically executed.
When I look back on my career, it's not the impossible goals I've personally hit or big competitors I've personally beaten that make me the proudest. My greatest definition of professional success is that if I were hit by an asteroid today, I could go to that great CRM in the sky knowing I'd still had an immeasurable impact on the world because of the incredible impact the people I've helped grow will have on the world.
Key Team Accomplishments:
Objective: Startup SMarketing Growth
Taking a startup from "we have great product/market fit" to "we're a sustainable business with accelerating growth" requires focused, well-aligned execution with highly aligned sales & marketing teams. Start from the bottom of the funnel and work your way up. Design and lead teams that are independent and powerful and focused on optimizing one aspect of the revenue funnel.
Key Results: +102% increase in bookings yield from the funnel -32% simultaneous reduction in CAC
Smart growth requires aligning your business economics with your strategy. Sometimes you need to lower CAC. Sometimes you need to grow bookings. Sometimes you need to do both -- that's hard.
Objective: Create and Dominate a New Market for Existing Products
There was no demand for "inbound eCommerce" soft ware in 2011. eComm marketers do PPC, SEO, and blast their entire list 3X/week with a coupon. I led the initiative to define what the methodology was, and re-train the minds of our market.
Key Results: 22x Increase in incoming leads 5x Reduction in customer churn 200x increase in monthly recurring revenue
Objective: Global Expansion
Global markets present both opportunities and chal lenges. Leading HubSpot's marketing expansion into Latin America, we had to create demand for a tool that powers a methodology few people were familiar with.
Key Results: 15x lead flow 58x increase in monthly recurring revenue
Highlights
⚠ I'm a bit emo in the following post, but it gets happier at the end 😘
I've been in a self-imposed exile from the internet for almost a year, since I left the wonderful team at OneScreen.ai in good hands and decided to chart a new path forward for myself.
I worked briefly with the wonderful team at LinkedIn Learning to launch a course on Generative AI (also - holy crap apparently over 18k people have taken it???).
Other than that, I haven't done much work this year. I've been focusing on AI research, but also just been re-learning how to be a human that's NOT working at a startup. I've been working in startups for 20+ years.
But when I saw Dharmesh Shah's name in my email inbox, I broke my exile and responded. I worked for him at HubSpot Labs, and he had apparently talked Andrei Oprisan (who also worked with me for him at Labs) into working on a new project.
It's not exactly a startup (I promised my wife that I was done with those for now 🙃 ). But it's an immensely interesting project with potentially enormous implications for the future of how we live our lives at work.
I obviously couldn't say no 🤓 . So I've joined the team at Agent.ai to launch a platform to help people discover, use, and coordinate multiple AI Agents and make their lives at work better.
I also recently learned about the concept of #BuildInPublic (again, I've been away for awhile so I'm behind the times ha).
I like it. Most of you here are connected with me because of shared interests in growing professionally, but I've spent my career being pretty opaque publicly except for sharing wins.
I've spent my career as a marketer marketing to marketers about marketing. So I know that you know that I know how to spot self-promotional BS 🤥 - and you know that I know that you know how to spot it too 😜
So I'm going to try this out. I'm going to be fully transparent about what we're doing, why, how, and what works and what doesn't.
For example, I'm breaking my self-imposed exile because I roped one of the best marketers I know - Harry Hawk - to help with Agent.ai and he told me I have to make a post 😝 you can't ask someone to help and then not listen to what they say! Apparently LinkedIn has a feature that lets you use posts by real people in ad campaigns if they're associated with a page (you'd have to ask Harry for details - I'm just doing what I'm told ha🗣 )
BUT.
I'm not going back to my old ways of only posting highly curated, polished, self-promotional drivel. I've let myself be hampered by my fear of negative comments for too much of my life. As an example, I have 19 pages of notes on how I see the future of AI unfolding. It's actually been quite frustrating for me to see my predictions come true while I've kept them to myself.
That's why I like this #BuildInPublic idea. My team at Agent.ai and I are going to post honest, unfiltered views into what we're doing.
I'm out of characters apparently lol. So... thoughts?? 😱
