My experience building a Unicorn

Most of you have heard of MuleSoft - a great silicon valley success story. What you don't hear enough about was what went into building the company. It took a village, no many villages. You will hear many stories from many vantage points, and I would like to offer a reflection from my personal vantage point. First, let me shed context on my role in the company. You can read the journey of how I joined the company, the circumstances in which I joined and my relationship with the CEO , and how I successfully catalyzed an entirely new line of API infrastructure business which was non-existent in 2012, and leading that over the next 4yrs ( resulting in $xx M new bookings ). I wore multiple hats, reporting to the CEO, over a 4 ‘dog year’ period. To give an idea of how explosive the growth was in this 4yr period:

• revenues grew 10x. In 2012, closing a $50k ARR SaaS deal would be huge for the company – we would literally stand on desks, ring bells and high five each other all day. In 2016, $1M ARR deals were the norm and anything less was de-prioritized in the sales cycle or given to a channel partner.
• headcount grew from 60 to 1,000. Functions such as ‘product marketing’, ‘PMO’, ‘design’, ‘services’, ’channel operations’, ?‘customer success’, ‘sales operations’, ‘sales enablement’, ‘training’, ‘business development’ and ‘corporate development’ were all non-existent and gradually emerged ( until then we all wore multiple hats and it was all hands on deck ).
• company valuation grew 30x as three large VC rounds were closed. 7 new offices were opened across the globe while San Francisco HQ office physical space grew 5x while desk space shrunk 2x for everyone at the same time.

What I'd like to share is some key things I did, which in my capacity, moved the company forward:

Thought leadership matters

In the beginning days, things were quite simple. Those were the days one could cuddle pigs in the office - here is Jennifer Liao Duncan 's pet pig she used to bring in the office.

This was during the initial days, where there was no customer success, no real sales methodology powered by a sales enablement function, backed by corporate marketing. Heck, even product and engineering was combined, as was legal and HR etc. But very quickly, as things progressed, as the ACV value of sales were being pushed to higher and higher values, thought leadership was necessary - in order to propel the company towards a more strategic sale.

The company started to hold large conferences, with thousands in attendance, and Greg would step out of his typical zone to talk about strategic trends ( vs. integration and APIs ). Case in point, here is a photo of Greg giving a keynote at one of the first 'Connect' conferences.

I found myself also starting to scratch the intellectual itch and convey very strategic perspectives to various audience, from developers to senior executives, across a range of topics - from IoT to architecture to industry shifts and business models.

Here is a keynote I gave in Amsterdam - at the leading IT conference there, in front of dozens of Dutch CIOs:

Here is a keynote I gave at the Barbican in London

Here is another talk I gave in Copenhagen ( you can click on the video ):

...and a video lecture I gave at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley here:

Sales is mandatory

After launching the product suite, building a team and ‘spinning it in’, I became a go-to-market leader where I would work with the internal sales teams, who would be executing 6-9mo long sales cycles, at F1000 companies. I would have heavy involvement as a strategic-level expert advisor/consultant presence ( vs. product sell ) in the end-end sales cycle ( pre-sales --> sales --> services --> customer success ). Within these companies, I would serve as an ‘executive bridge’ between the sales team and senior customer leaders by being an advisor and consultant to CIOs, CTOs, Business Line Execs, Chief Architects, and senior IT management.?

In order to do this, it was on me to navigate the org- so I quickly learned how to be a relationship expert. Especially as the org got bigger, and ‘elbows out’ middle managers and junior execs started appearing. I still found myself relevant because I brought a credibility that trumped any hierarchical position: customer intimacy. It was key for me to develop relationships with sales and business development people as they hold the keys to the customer, and demonstrating you can help them, will create a trust - and sales people talk to each other - so make one successful, you will get a second; make two successful, you will get four more; make four successful you will get eight more; eight - sixteen - and so on ...

Here is a picture of me with some heavy hitting sales leaders, who are all friends to this day: Paul Davidian , Matthew Gray and Kevin Anderson :

I would often visit customers directly, and pioneered a lot of new important logos... the fun in this was more about trying to persuade a new skeptical mind to shift their thinking. But, the fact that we were physically in the room was in and of itself a win, so now we had to win their hearts and emotions - which is where I would work hard to develop that resonance - the 'so-what' and 'why' taking the API journey was important... ( remember, back in 2014 - we were still trying to sell why APIs ) - unlike today where it is an assumption now!

In the early days ( we are talking 2013-2015 ) I probably visited over 100 prospective clients during the sales process, ( e.g., clients such as Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Barclays, HSBC, Unilever, McDonalds, Salesforce, Cisco, Disney, Farmers Insurance, GEICO, State Farm, Gap, Williams Sonoma, Charles Schwab, UCSF Medical, Tesla, Pfizer, Ralph Lauren, Viacom and many more) - and by far the most exciting one Tesla ( and yes, they became a customer ) - it was cool to co-vision with Tesla on APIs ...

Summary

So - in summary - the first year or two was all about product - but after that it became about sales, field world and upselling customers to think big. And that's how the big sales happen - and that's how the unicorn comes to life! Get on the road, and sell.