From Box to the Other Side of the Table

On Nov 30th, 2016 I took the elevator down to the ground floor and handed my employee badge to the head of security and walked out the door at 900 Jefferson, for the last time. Outside the winter sky was a cool gun metal gray but for me, all I could see was bursting rays of sunshine. I had just wrapped up an incredible 4+ year run as the VP of Sales Productivity & Chief Storyteller at Box.com. 

I remember my first day at Box like it was yesterday. Captivated like many others by the energy, enthusiasm, and vision of Aaron Levie, I chose to end a very successful run at Salesforce and join the small army of leaders at Box hoping to create the next great SaaS company. I can't say the transition from SFDC to Box went as smoothly as I had hoped. I was the 3rd leader from Salesforce to get wooed over to this little-known startup with big ambitions. Marc (CEO of SFDC) was not happy with his protege stealing his people so he decided to throw his weight around, proving to Aaron, as if there was any question, who had more pull in the Valley. 

I recall sitting in new student orientation and Aaron running in the room, hair on fire, screaming at me like a little kid at Christmas. "I just got off the phone with Marc Benioff, who are you?" He asked, glaring at me as if we had just beat the odds and picked the winning horse. "Marc is pissed," he exclaimed. A few days later we found ourselves off the Salesforce AppExchange and no longer welcome at Dreamforce. 

The truth is, Marc wasn't pissed because I left, he was pissed that this little 20 something-year-old CEO who built a 'content management company' was making him look bad. Honestly, his anger had more to do with long time stalwart Tom Addis leaving weeks before me to join the same company. 

Almost 5 years, 1500 employees, global expansion, a successful IPO, and 5 WW Sales Kickoff's later and I found myself in a familiar position; making a difficult decision about my next move! 

The Other Side

Dec 5th, just a few days after my departure I pulled into the unfamiliar parking lot at 160 Bovat Street in San Mateo and walked into my new office building. On the 3rd floor sits a small, but highly successful, group of SaaS power investors. 13 years ago these technology titans created one of the most important venture capital firms, Emergence Capital, and I was joining to become their first ever Growth Partner. 

"Congratulations, how did you do that," became the most common query over the next 4 weeks? But what I found even more interesting were the remarks from my friends in the start-up community. "Nice work, but now you're on the dark side, you know that?" I didn't. What exactly did that mean? 

It's not that I wasn't familiar with the world of venture capital, I was. In fact, in 1999 I started a .com company called GrantConnect (a match.com for non-profits to help them find funding from institutions, grants and federal agencies). We had raised a few rounds of early funding but when the markets turned no one wanted to continue to invest in a company that wasn't going to provide substantial returns, as what was promised from companies like Pets.com. 

Even though the rise and fall of our little .com left me broke and deflated I could say that overall we had a great experience with our funders. This term "dark side" was new to me so I did some digging and I uncovered a few reasons why VC's might get this distinction.

• He who has the gold makes the rules. If you have nothing to exchange other than your business idea when you sign the contract, you are trading some control of the company (to the one who has the gold).
• They don't all want to build a big company. Some VC's just want to turn a profit and thus written deep in the exit clause is a line item that gives them priority to sell shares to anyone they choose.
• Founders are not owners, they are employees. Some VC's have created conditions in their investment contracts where the entrepreneurs end up becoming employees rather than owners either due to high equity stakes or clauses about who can sell shares and to whom. 
• VC's reduce your worth. When valuating a company, many VC's want to reduce the actual valuation in an effort to increase their equity stake in the company.

Do I believe this to be true? Sure, there are definitely some bad apples in every bunch. Thankfully, Emcap (Emergence Capital for short) is known for being "one of the good guys." Guys that look at more than just an idea. Guys that look at the EQ of the founders and the leadership team. Guys that take an active role in helping their investment companies grow to become more than what they thought was possible.  

A Growth Partner is Born

The move to the other side of the table as you can imagine came with a tremendous amount of excitement, curiosity, and questions. After spending the last 15 years as a practitioner focused on accelerating the performance of early stage hyper-growth SaaS companies like Salesforce, Google and Box I was now leaving a world of comfort and ease to enter a world of bewilderment. 

I wasn't the only one a bit dazed and confused with this move. Many of my friends and former colleagues were insatiably curious about what on earth a growth partner at a VC firm did. 

Ultimately my role is to help our portfolio companies find new ways to grow and scale. I come with no hidden agenda or idea as to what each company should be doing. Instead, I come with suggestions, models, connections, and a desire to help however I can. 

How did I get to be so lucky that one of the best VC firms in the country would take a risk and create a role that hardly exists anywhere else, or any other firm? It was easy ... 

In the early days at Box & SFDC we relied heavily on our VC connections to help us validate use cases, identify new sales tools, make introductions, refine our sales process and pinpoint key metrics to track and measure. 

Over time I found myself in regular contact with VC firms across the country. This time, I was on the receiving end of their calls. SFDC and Box had become target logos for every company that had a promise of making sales people better, smarter, faster. 

As tools like Sales Navigator, Datanyze, Salesloft, Prezi, DocSend, LeanData, Clari, LearnCore, Crystal and the myriad of others cropped up I knew we were entering a time where technology could actually have a meaningful impact in the way sales people sold. 

Given that my primary responsibility at both companies was to identify ways to help our sales people perform at the highest level, I was the perfect target for all of this neat new technology. 

I quickly became obsessed with this notion of "sales acceleration." I spent every waking minute thinking about it, testing, validating and capturing the ideas, strategies and tools that could help give our reps the edge they sought. From new onboarding models, sales playbooks and processes, prospecting techniques, communication platforms and opportunity management tools, we left no smooth, flat, lake skipping rock, untouched. 

Some of our new programs, tools, and models paid off and we saw significant improvements in rep behavior and performance. Some died on the vine. 

Fortunately for me and my teams we worked at progressive, hyper growth companies with lots of capital and support of leadership so we could test and validate, a lot. 

After 15 years of building, learning, and sharing I had developed a bit of a reputation. It's quite likely this was due to the fact that I worked for some amazing leaders, or perhaps it was because of my new hire presentations or the costumes I donned at SKO. Whatever the reason, people knew my name. 

It also didn't hurt that Emergence happened to be an investor in both Salesforce and Box and so my name was certainly a bit more well known to the partners over there. But being in the right place at the right time wasn't the only reason Jason Green, Founding Partner at Emergence, reached out to me. Jason and the partners at Emergence understand what TS Elliot once said "only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go." 

Where we go from here, how far we can go together is still unknown. This is a new role for me and the firm and in most cases the greater VC community, so only time will tell. 

"In all industries people often over estimate what you can do in one year, and underestimate what you can do in ten!" Marc Benioff. 

I wonder what we can do in the next ten years?