41: Doug Landis Talking about Sales Leadership

Thanks for listening to the Make It Happen podcast. And if you enjoyed the show, let me know by leaving a review or sharing your favorite episode with your team. All right, good Monday morning or Monday afternoon, everybody here in Boston. This is John Barrows of Make It Happen Monday, and I am super excited to be talking with one of my favorite people and good friends at the same time, Mr. Doug Landis. Hey, Doug, how are you doing today? What's happening, Johnny? Nice to see you on this Monday morning, and it is morning our time. Yes, it is. I'm here on the West Coast. The West Coast. Yeah, yeah, we'll debate that. We'll see what happens. But for those of you who don't know Doug, actually, Doug and I have become way more friends, personal friends than business friends.

But Doug has been a very strong catalyst for my career, if you will. So just for some context here, when I was at Basho, selling Basho, we went into Salesforce when Doug was working there to run all the onboarding, sent one of our YUE Now emails all the way up to the top, got it down to Doug, did a little pilot with Doug evaluating things. And then I think our first, wasn't our first trip, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, Tokyo, that one? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, that was great. We had the good fortune of traveling the world together to espouse this YUE Now tactic to all of our reps around the world. And good Lord, I tell you what, traveling globally with Mr. John Barrows, we had some fun.

Yes, we did. Yes. We'll keep it above board here. Yeah, we totally will. And for those of you who have been following me on Snapchat, you've seen some of the pictures of our Halloween party over in Vegas, which Doug and I were enjoying quite a bit. But that's a whole podcast. But anyways, just for everybody else's background, Doug, give them a little bit of context on where you're coming from and what you're doing now with Emergence. Because today's talk is going to be about the investment world and new ideas and starting businesses and stuff like that and leadership. So how did you get to where you are? Just a little background here. Sure, sure. So as John mentioned, I spent a good five years in Salesforce running sales productivity and enablement over there.

Left Salesforce. Previous to that, I was actually at Google running training and enablement there. Went to Salesforce five years and went to Box for five years after that to build the sales productivity team. I like to call it sales productivity and not enablement. Enablement's a marketing term. We can talk about that all day. Anyway, about a year ago, I was approached to make the switch from kind of being an operator to joining the venture capital world. I joined a company called Emergence Capital. We're hyper, hyper-focused. We're a VC firm in the Valley located in San Mateo and San Francisco. We're super small, but we're hyper-focused on investing in B2B enterprise staff companies. So we're like, we were the first investors in Salesforce.

We invested in Box and Yammer and SuccessFactors, ServiceMax, et cetera. So we've got a really strong track record in the kind of B2B enterprise staff space. My job's a little unique in that while I'm on the investment committee and I'm here to help find kind of new ideas and vet out new ideas and help us determine whether or not we're going to actually invest in the company. But once we do invest, I step in along with an operating partner and a good friend of mine, Viviana Faga. I step in and help them figure out how they're going to scale and grow. How are they going to go from a million in revenue to 10 million to 50 million to 100 to public, right? And so because in most cases, you've got these product-oriented founders that come in and they don't really know how to build a go-to-market strategy.

They don't know what they don't know. And one of the things that we like to offer as a firm is we want to be the most important partner to the most important companies. And so we want to do more than just write a check. And so the best way I can kind of consider myself is like I'm like free consulting, if you will, to the founders and CEOs. So we look at a lot of businesses in a lot of different industries. Again, only B2B enterprise staff. That kind of fits my wheelhouse, given my background. Yeah, and I think that fits the wheelhouse here with the audience too, right? Totally. No, we were talking before we jumped on here. I think sales in general, like I think sales reps are a little bit more entrepreneurial than the average profession, if you will.

And so, and I know, so what I really want to kind of hone in on is the leadership, what you look for in leadership, but I want to back out of that a little bit and come to, you know, being now that, and I'm sure the same thing happens to you, but now being where I am in my career, I got all a bunch of friends who always come to me with ideas. Hey, John, I got this idea for an app. I got this idea for this. And I'm like, you know, great. And, and, you know, somebody told me this a long time ago, which I now agree with, because I see it, you know, ideas are like assholes, right? Everybody's got them. And so, and they always think, oh, it's just this app. It's just this thing. So first and foremost, how do you know that your idea is good enough to even go ask for money?

And then I'm going to preface that with one more thing that Kim and I constantly have a conversation. My wife, Kim, who Doug knows very well, that we constantly have a conversation about, which is East Coast, West Coast. You said West Coast is the best coast, right? Well, there's a different mentality, at least growing up, all right? In the sense that East Coast, like, I don't think half of my ideas are worth a shit. And I'm kind of like, well, I got to get them really vetted out before I would even think about going asking anybody for money. Whereas West Coast, it seems like, hey, I'm going to fart in a jar here and I'm going to go get 50 million. So, like, what's up? So first of all, help me understand, like, how do you know you have an idea worth going to that next level with?

And then, like, why is it worth money compared to every other idiot idea out there that people are spewing on social and all these other things? Help me understand that a little bit. Yeah, totally. Well, that's a big question. So just to give some context, here at Emergence, we only invest in Series A and B stage companies, right? So at that point in time, there are kind of some certain requirements in order to come pitch to us. You're likely going to have a million dollars in ARR, if not more. So that means you've kind of identified your product market fit. You've identified the markets that you're going after. And you really want to scale your business, right? That's typically when companies come to us.

Now, for everybody out there that has an idea, you know, you think it's the next best thing, you know, this app that you want to build. That's great. I love that. And don't ever think that anything is possible because it truly is possible. And you're right, where you are located will kind of dictate, you know, what your options might be. You certainly have a lot more options out here in the Valley because there's just a lot more cash readily available. And the life and kind of the mentality of like, hey, start a company, start a business and go raise money is a lot more. We're just a lot more accustomed to it out here. But that doesn't mean you can't go do that. So here's what I've seen, shall we say.

And I did this actually myself back in the early 2000s, actually the late 99, 2000s, right before the big .com crash. I did the same thing. I came up with an idea. You know, I tested it out. We built a product. We got some early beta customers. And then we went out and raised some money from friends and family, right? So typically, you're going to, in order to get started, you need some level of investment, whether that's your own money or whether that's friends and family money. And that's just kind of build your MVP product. You'll hear that a lot. That's basically to build your product and go test it out in the market. What will typically happen after you raise some friends and family money, or maybe it's your own money, is you'll either go, maybe you'll join, if it's you and a tech founder, maybe you'll go join Y Combinator or 500 Startups or, you know, a seller prize.

These little accelerators that will give you resources and help you kind of vet out your products and idea to basically help build the early stages of the company. They'll also give you some funding, right? To kind of get you to that next level. Typically, from there, you'll go raise like a seed round of funding, right? And that seed round could be, you know, 500 million up to 3, 4 million, depending upon your idea, depending upon the market, depending upon how much traction you already have. And so, yeah, it takes a little bit of capital in the early days to get started. Now, I have seen some people, you know, because they're programmers, you know, they taught themselves how to program on iOS.

They built a mobile app. They used that to get into Y Combinator. They flushed out their idea even more. They flushed out the market size and the market opportunity to really understand what they were going after. They went out and raised some seed capital. And then, you know, halfway through raising seed capital, they came and started talking to us. Gotcha. So we'll come, we'll see people when they're in the seed stage because we want to start to build that relationship, right? They may not be quite ready to raise a Series A, but they know within six months they're going to need to start having those conversations because they're going to probably run out of capital to some degree. Or they just really want to accelerate their growth.

They're ready to go hire more people. They're really ready to go tackle the market. I'd say there's some certain things, certain signals or indicators that you may want to look for. The things that we look for when you get to us, like what is the market size, right? Some investors are okay if your market size is only $500 million. But just think about that. In order to turn yourself into a billion-dollar software company or a billion-dollar shoe company, you need to capitalize on a lot of the market, right? And so that's harder to do. So, you know, it's also, it's much better if your market, if your total addressable market is like tens of billions of dollars. Like if you're going after the travel industry, I mean, that's like trillions of dollars.

Can I pause there for a second, though? So, because, you know, I'm going to relate this to Shark Tank, right? You know, you always see, and they always roll their eyes at the person that comes in and says, look, if I could just get 1% of the market, then I'll be a billionaire. And they all just like, yeah, shut the hell up. So, like, there's a dressable market where you go on Google and say how many people could possibly buy this shit. And then there's the realistic aspect of, like, what portion could you? So how do you, because I think a lot of people fool themselves to say, oh, my God, there's eight, you know, for me, I'll give you a perfect example. I started sales from the streets, you know, this app five years ago.

And I did some research. I'm like, there's 17 million sales professionals just in the United States alone. So, again, if I could just get a fraction of them to get this, it'll go viral and all this other stuff will happen, right? But I think that's dumb math, right? So how do you really understand addressable market so you can, as you walk into it, you're realistic with your addressable market? Yeah, sure. So you're right. So there's total addressable market. And everyone's going to poke holes in that because it's like, is it really addressable? Can you really sell to everybody in that market? And then there's another acronym that you should make yourself aware of. It's called serviceable addressable market, right?

So the reality is when you come to, and I'm going to use software as an example, but in many cases, the jerk tank, it's about a consumer product. Like it's about a new lotion that doesn't have chemicals in it or something. And that's a little, that kind of market sizing is a lot more difficult than the way we look at the markets, right? So in the B2B market space, it's a lot easier to really identify a real market that you can actually sell to. So there's total addressable market. Then there's serviceable addressable market, right? So maybe you're only selling right now to the S&B size of that market. So that's now half of what the total addressable market is. Let's just go, let's just recognize the fact that that's really all you can service now.

It doesn't mean you can't go upstream, but certain things have to, product needs to be there. The market has to be there. The company needs to be prepared to go up market, right? And so it's important to kind of think about those things. But I'd say more, more than anything else, you have to identify all the people who have a willingness to buy. Willingness to buy is like the key anchor, if you will, in this process, because it's one thing to come up with a really interesting product or idea. It's another thing to actually say that people are willing to pay for it. And then the question is, is what are they willing to pay? You think in your mind that they're willing, they should be willing to pay $35 because that's what it's worth.

But the reality is the market's basically saying it's actually only worth seven, right? So it's like, all right, well, your total addressable market in terms of people is tens of billions, but in terms of their willingness to pay and the markets they're going after right now, it's a lot smaller. And so you just have to be really, really clear about, you know, who's my target customer and what is their willingness to pay? And then you got to prove that, right? So prove it with customers and customer traction. So that's the other thing. We look for market size. We look for market penetration. We look for customer traction. So like how many early stage customers do you have? And are these pilots?

Are these like fully engaged customers? Right. And so this is all the stuff that you're testing out in the early days. Would you say that probably one of the most important things you can do once you come up with an idea is to really hone in on that ideal customer profile? Yeah, totally. So, you know, the things that I've noticed and what we continue to talk about here is the reason why companies fail. Two reasons. Number one, focus. So you try and be all things to everybody. It's like trying to go up market too early. It's like trying to service like a horizontal market in every industry, which we know, you know, healthcare, financial services, government, manufacturing, they all buy differently.

And so it's kind of to your point, you know, being really, really clear about who is my ideal customer profile? Why are they the right fit? What are they willing to pay? And just nail that. You're better off to nail one little market segment and absolutely capitalize on that. And then start to build on, okay, what's level two? What's level three? What's level four look like? The second reason why companies fail is hiring, right? And it kind of leads us to the leadership conversation that's kind of like the second half of it. But literally hiring the wrong people at the wrong time for where you are in your evolution as an organization is another key reason why companies struggle and fail. Okay.

And it's interesting because, you know, you've, you've obviously been through my training a bunch and I'm, you know, the analogy of starting a business and going out for funding is extremely analogous to the analogy of having a product and trying to sell it. Right. I mean, it's the exact same thing you're trying to sell. Like if I'm coming up with a new company, I'm trying to sell it to you so I can get money from you so that I can take it to the next level. Or if I have a product and I'm trying to go to market, I need to find that. And, and right now, you know, for instance, with Morgan, you know, we're, we went through that whole ideal customer profile exercise to say, look, where, where do we fit?

I'm trying to educate him. Cause he's pretty new, right? He's 25 years old. I'm trying to say, Hey, where do we fit? And I tell, I talked to him for instance, about this inflection point, right? Where, you know, most companies, they do inbound and they do really, really well marketing and that drives their growth originally. And, and then all of a sudden there's that inflection point where marketing kind of tends to level off and quotas go up, territories get smaller. And all of a sudden now you got to do outbound or you want to move upstream. You want to go mid-market enterprise. That's not inbound, right? So that's outbound. And that point I call the inflection point. And I told him that's where this training is a home run because that's what we, that muscle's different.

Right. And I'm like, once you hunt for that, cause once you find that it's almost the sale almost takes care of itself. It's almost, okay, this is where it fits. Like I don't have to convince you of shit. Like this is exactly what it is. And this is where, this is a square peg into a square hole right here. Right. Right. And you hold, and also at that point in time, you also have a thousand examples of other companies just like them who are going through their exact same experience and how they went through the training and look what they actually, and look at, look at how it turned out for them. Right. So yeah. Having that ICP is perfect for just repeatability. Well, and then to your point, like then you hyper-focus on that, like this is what I did with you guys with Salesforce, for instance.

When I split off with Jay Barrows or Kensei Partners after Basho, I remember vividly being in the room after Basho went belly up and we had all the logos up there. We had, because we were doing some business with some crazy clients, like SAP and Forrester and Gartner and all this other stuff. And the two other trainers who were coming with me, they were fighting over all these big names. And I just remember sitting there looking at Salesforce because this was 10 years ago. And I'm just like, and I was pretending like I didn't care. You know, I was like, oh, I cared about the other ones. Oh, you know, SAP, I used to train them and blah, blah, blah. All I gave a shit was Salesforce because I knew that Salesforce was on this rocket ship.

And so when I got them as my, like, this was my account, I over-serviced the shit out of you guys. So I could have that, that name that I could then go tell everybody else about. Right. And that's made my life a lot easier moving forward, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. You were hyper-focused. And now, now you look at, look at, look at all the logos, you know, for Jay Barrows, right? Salesforce, LinkedIn, Box. I mean, there's like, they all have a very similar look and feel. Yeah, they really do. So perfect. So we got the ideal customer profile, then over-service and really get a couple of customer wins under your belt to come to funding. And now it comes time to, who do you surround yourself with? And, and from a, the hiring, the hiring and who do you, because, and also partners too.

Like I, so, you know, you decide to go into business, you know, I made my, you know, my former business partner, I can say he was a great guy, but we didn't really sit down and look at each other and said, Hey, let's start a business together. We were kind of forced on it. Like we were the two last men standing type of thing, which is, you know, wasn't a great way. It was a great way to, for us to capitalize on our situation, but not necessarily build a business. So say you're that founder that comes up with a good idea. You're that engineer. You're that dude who taught himself coding. And you, you, you kind of have a couple of clients, that type of thing. You go to a Y accommodator or something like that.

You get some advice and now you're looking for, you're, you're going to emergence and saying, okay, you know, I want to go big time on this one. What do you look for? Let's talk about what do you look for in me? Say, I come to you, Doug Landis and say, look, Doug, I got a great idea and I've got some clients here. Now, how do you know if I'm the guy, first of all, and then hiring from there, what do, what should I look for in building out my team to be successful? Totally. So, um, yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, this is kind of perfectly symbiotic in the conversation is that like focus, right? Is one reason why companies fail and hiring, I would say is another reason why a big reason why companies fail.

And so it's interesting if you, you know, if you were to come to us and say, you got a million in ARR, you've got, you know, a handful of customers that, that, and you can see line of sight to how you can easily get the five to 10 million in revenue. And then the, you know, now, now the question is you need capital to help you get there. One of the first things that we kind of, one of our anchors as well as market size and market penetration and customer traction, et cetera, is also leadership, right? That's what we also look for when it comes to funding. We look for leadership, who's on the leadership team and what's their background. Um, you know, clearly it's much, it makes us much more comfortable if you've been there, done that before, because you're aware of the mistakes that you're likely going to face or, or you've already made the mistakes and you've learned from them and you're likely to make decisions faster and better in the, in this next iteration, this next go around.

Now, if this is your first time kind of building a company, then you need to come to the table with something special and unique, whether it's an understanding of the industry that you're going after innately, like you've been servicing this industry and you've been part of the industry, you've been in the function, you've been in the role yourself. And so you really understand the pain points of the industry. We also have massive connections, you know, how to speak the language of that industry. But beyond that, we're also going to look for, well, who else is on the team? You know, and the reality is like, you can't get in a Y Combinator or a Seller Prize or anything like that, unless there's like two of you.

You could be the founder idea, the idea guy, but then you're going to need someone technical to actually help you build the product out and help you to go execute against it. And so we're looking at who else is on the team? Who's the technical founder, the technical leader in the organization? What is their aptitude and understanding of the technology and the market that you're serving today? So we'll do a lot of due diligence and background on that. But then we're also going to look at like, who's your sales leader? Who's your marketing leader? You know, do you have a customer success leader? You know, it's interesting, you know, if you're a sales leader and you've got another sales leader and you guys come to come up with a company and a product, the question is, what are going to be your roles?

You know, you gave the example earlier about how you guys all kind of in the early days before you sold off to Office Depot, we were talking about this, is how like everybody in your organization had distinct capabilities and you guys all fit well together. Interesting enough, if you look at Box, the four founders of Box, it wasn't just Aaron Levy and Dylan Smith. There's actually four of them that founded Box. They all still work there. They all found their roles within the company and they've stuck with it for the last 12 years. And so the whole idea is like, what's my role in this organization and how can I help this organization scale? Now, mind you, you might also, the other thing you need to be really honest about is, what are your strengths?

Right? So am I the builder? Yeah. Meaning like, am I the guy that can help get us from zero to 10 million? And then after that, we're going to actually really push to help scale. And that's not really my sweet spot. Or, you know, am I more of like the scaler? Like I need all the infrastructure built and put in place and then I like to come in and actually help to scale the organization. So I think it's really, really important. And I do this exercise with our founders and VPS sales candidates that we, that I often talk to, which is like, tell me what you lean into. So there are basically four categories, if you will. There are four buckets that every VPS sales needs to excel in. And the reality is you're not going to be a nine out of 10 in all of these.

So the question you have to be honest about is which ones do you lean into? And then you also need to make sure that your founder or your boss is really clear about that with themselves. What do they need? Right? And I'll tell you, because if you have a really, really analytical and process-oriented founder and you come in and you're like the culture guy and the deal guy, you guys are going to clash because the founder and CEO is going to want data to back up all of your decisions. They're going to want you to use data to test your hypothesis. They're going to want to, they want to see the process that you're putting in place and you're out there hiring and actually going to do deals, which is helpful, but there may be some inconsistencies in terms of how well you work together.

And so it's important to be really thoughtful about what are your strengths and what do you lean into? And then what does the organization need? And, and even for everybody out there, if you're thinking about kind of your next move, maybe your VP of sales at a bigger company, you may, you're thinking about going to a startup, it's really, really important to, to, you know, kind of stack rank this. And I'm actually, I just written an article. I'm hoping, hoping we're going to get it published in the next couple of weeks. So I'll send it out to everybody, but it'll help you kind of think through what's important. The other thing is you also have to understand, like, we're going to vet you out, right?

So like, let's say you're part of the founding team. We're going to, you know, part of our job is to vet out everybody on the founding team and go, all right, right, well, is this the team that can take this to a billion dollars? And in many cases, that's the answer is no. And, but we still may invest, right? We may invest and say, okay, this is the team that's going to get us to 10 million or the 20 million, but we know we're going to have to keep our eyes on these couple, these couple of folks, because I don't know if they're going to be the people that are going to get us to a hundred million or a billion, right? And that's okay. I'm going to use Jim Herbold as an example. Jim, Jim Herbold, easily one of the best sales people I've ever seen.

Best sales leaders. He's like a mentor of mine. He's a very good friend. He's the former VP of sales at Fox, but he took them from 1 million or zero, basically to a hundred million. And then when they got to it, which is insanely difficult. So when they got to, when we got to a hundred million, Jim was like, you know what? This is not my sweet spot anymore. I don't really, this, we need somebody bigger. That's not my jam. My jam is in the, in the weeds and the process in with the reps, building kind of the foundations and the infrastructure. And I'm not the a hundred million plus guys, right? And so he knew for himself, like time for me to bow out, time for us to bring somebody else in and I'm going to go back to, to building.

And now I consult with the organization. Look them up. Jim Herbold. Let me ask you, how frequent is it where they recognize that versus it has to be recognized for them? And I'll, and I'll give you some context here. My, that happened to me, right? So we started thrive. I've always said, I'm not the, the original startup guy. Cause I'm not like the ultimate risk taker in the sense that there has to be some pieces in place for me to take that risk. Right. I'm a calculated risk taker, but you know, for me, I wasn't the original founder. I didn't live in my parents' basement and eat ramen noodles, right? By the time thrive kind of got to my first startup, got to a point where it was, it was, you know, they could pay me at least a little bit of a salary.

And there was a commission, there was some structure to it, but I was the accelerator guy. I was the second in command. You bring me on board and I will turn the volume up here and I'll live in chaos. I'll build structure. But then when we got acquired by Staples, I remember the founder, the guy who was acquiring us sat and interviewed all the managers and I was 28 years old and we had a consultant come in and tell us, Hey, this is probably what they're going to ask. This is, this is the way you should phrase your answers. And you know me, man, I'm, I'm, I suck at lying. Right. I'm a, I'm about as transparent as it gets. So when he interviewed me, I was company guy, you know, I was like, well, yeah, I'm super fired up about this.

This is fantastic. And, you know, in the back of my head, I'm going, you guys are going to annihilate us. You're just going to fire us all. So I obviously was, I, I didn't come across well. And that guy's original perception of me was negative. And he actually looked at the whole founders and out of all the founders, he said, I was the one he had the biggest problem with to my CEO. And my CEO was floored. Cause he was like, are you shitting me? Like John's like, he started this, he bleeds blue. Like I was the, I was the rah, rah guy every month standing up there, given the, Hey, go team. We can do this. Right. The culture guy and the hard driver. And, and he recognized early that I wasn't the guy.

And, you know, now mind you, I think there was, if I was open with him, it would have been a much different conversation, but, and I think we would have connected much better. But the problem was he, he was right. I didn't see it because you know why I'm not a corporate guy. Like I, I don't have, I have zero filter. I fucking cannot stand playing politics. You know what I mean? So like the whole inner workings of an organization and kissing somebody's ass, like, that's just not me. Right. And so my little $10 million company being absorbed by this 50, uh, $20 billion organization, I was definitely not the guy, but it took them to fire me effectively to figure it out. So how often do you see somebody recognizing, like you said, with Jim, he kind of got to a hundred million and was like, you know what?

This ain't my game anymore. Versus somebody being like, dude, this isn't your game anymore. Yeah. I would say it's more common for somebody on the outside to actually make that call than for most people internally to make that call again, which is why I challenge everybody to be really thoughtful about what am I really good at? Am I good at the zero to 10 million? Am I good at the 10 to 20 million? Am I good at the 20 to a hundred million? Where's my sweet spot? What do I like? That doesn't mean you shouldn't go challenge yourself and say, well, look, I'm really good at the zero to 10 million, but I really want to get better at the 10 to a hundred million. That's cool. But just be really, really honest about it.

Kind of like to your point, John, if you had, if you had been more transparent with yourself and with them, it would have made the whole conversation a lot easier because I know you're not good in a $20 billion company. That's just, I mean, I'm sure the guy probably saw right through it. Like, okay, yeah, this is not the guy. And, and, you know, the reality is it's much more, it's much more frequent to happen on the outside. Somebody looking at like somebody like, you know, an investment firm or a VC firm that's looking at the leadership team, because we'll go through and we'll do our due diligence on every single person that's part of the leadership team. And, you know, like, for example, I'll look at the sales processes and I'll look at the sales leadership and I'll, I'll dig into the data and the numbers.

And I'll think of all, I will ask questions to understand how you've built out your business. And as a result, I can pretty tell, I can tell pretty quickly as to whether or not you're the guy, like, are you the guy or not the guy? And it's okay if you're not the person, maybe it just means like in six months or two a year, we need to hire somebody above you to help kind of, to help strengthen you. Um, that that's okay. You shouldn't feel, um, I guess you shouldn't feel, you shouldn't feel bad about it because like, you've done a great job getting us to this point, but we need to elevate this in order to really accelerate that's a big part of it. It's just being honest and, but also recognize the fact people on the outside will have a different perspective when they look in.

Yeah. So, all right. So we're, we're finishing up here. I know you have a hard stop at one o'clock and so do I, but just to, from takeaway standpoint, you know, ideas focus on that ideal customer profile, really hone in on that, get a couple of traction, you know, over-service existing customers, know your skill sets and what you're good at, surround yourself with people with other skill sets. And then be honest with yourself as far as, you know, what, to, to your point, I like that, you know, what gets you to lean in? What, what, what stuff do you really like versus the stuff that you kind of have to do just because you're the founder or whatever it is. Right. Totally. Are you a process guy or you're a deal guy?

Are you a guy or are you a culture guy? Right. And then again, remember if you're building a company at the end of the day, it's all about a willingness to pay. Who's actually willing to pay for your product and at what price. And that's kind of how you continue to build out this kind of MVP that you're building in the early days. I love it. And there's, there's one, there's, so there's a question on the Facebook that, that we'll get to later, but it, I think we could spend a whole nother half hour on this one, which is how did you identify real prospects from freemium users at box? Right. So it's like, cause you could come up with an idea to the point of not pay like, okay, you get a whole bunch of people who won't like, who will use it, but won't pay for it.

So how do you know that now you have something? So that's another discussion. Maybe we could just get that out, you know, on the Facebook page. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'll say one thing about freemium. I hate it. I hate it. And here's why it's great for raising brand awareness. It's terrible for actually generating customers. Right. If you think about it, cause everybody that signs up for freemium signs up with a Hotmail or a Yahoo or a Gmail account. And how the hell do you know what business they're associated with? Right. And to get somebody from a free user over to a full business, full paid customer is really difficult and takes a lot of effort. Now there's certain indicators that you can look for, but freemium can also be really expensive.

I can tell you a box. We spent millions of dollars supporting all of our free users because they were loading just like, like thousands and thousands of gigs of files in the box limit because it's a free account. Right. But yet how many of those did we actually convert to real business customers? Not a whole lot. So freemium is difficult. It's expensive. It's great for brand awareness to just be really, really clear about what you're using freemium for. Don't, you know, set your expectations properly, I guess, is the best way to think about it. Yeah. It's like all those people that came up with an app and then, oh, I got 20,000 people to download. Oh, good job. Okay. So, no, okay. Click the button and see how many people actually pay for whatever you're going to push in front of them next and then come and talk to me.

Right. Awesome. Doug. Well, look, I know you're out there. You're doing a lot of blogging and just really just being a great evangelist in general for sales and starting businesses and doing things the right way. Where can people find out more about you? Where can they follow you? So, jump on LinkedIn. I'm just Doug Landis at Emergence Capital. I'm also Doug at MCAP. If you want to shoot me an email, I'm also on Twitter at Doug Landis. And if you have any business ideas, run them by me. Of course, I want to make sure you have some traction. If this is a brand new business idea, take a deep funding first. Nancy had one last question, which is, do you work with just tech companies or would you help out nonprofit ideas of other industries?

I mean, we only service for-profit businesses. I mean, I'll help out nonprofit ideas because just shoot an email. I'll get MCAP and we can have a conversation. Awesome. Awesome, Doug. Well, pleasure as always. Hopefully, I'll see you another time where we can grab some drinks and catch up on it. So, I'll see you at Saster or Revenue Summit or Rainmaker. What am I going to see? Yes, yes. I'll see you everywhere, right? Actually, not Saster. I'm not going up to Saster this year. I hope to see everybody else that's listening at one of those conferences. I will be there. All right, brother. Make it a great day. All right. Thanks again. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.