My Journey - Building and Scaling a Company with Garden City

“Sometimes sour grapes produce the best wine”

COVID punched me in the face. Before the virus hit, I landed my dream job. I was leading the go-to-market strategy for a tech enabled service business who was looking to scale...fast. The CEO was looking to grow 4x over a 3 year period. He knew where he wanted to go but didn’t know how to get there, and I had experienced the blueprint for how to effectively scale a revenue engine. Then COVID hit. 

QASymphony

It feels like yesterday when I was introduced to Dave Keil, the CEO of this small software testing company in Atlanta called QASymphony. I wanted to be mentored by Dave and have a front row seat of building a VC backed B2B SaaS company. I had a seat at the table with the likes of Jordan Rackie, now the CEO of KeyFactor, Jeff Perkins, the CMO of ParkMobile, Kyle Cochran, SVP at Greensky, and Kevin Dunne, the President of Greenlight Technologies. Those four years was a continual learning experience as I was mentored by those I worked with, served and led. It was a time of rapid growth for me as a business leader. Together, we built the company to $25M in Annual Recurring Revenue(ARR) before merging with Tricentis- now a 800 person company with 1,800 customers, and the globally recognized leader in software testing.  

Inflection Point

Pain and Growth

I’ve always loved building, but I’ve struggled with how to balance that drive with creating a culture that truly values people, both employees and customers. I was angry when I lost my dream job. We had grown revenue by 140%. The flywheel was starting. I felt betrayed. But what I ended up realizing is the revenue playbook I had learned at QASymphony was applicable to any company. 

Conviction and Partners

So I started feeling convicted to build a business to come alongside entrepreneurs and founders to help them operationalize their mission to experience their vision. I wanted entrepreneurs to be successful, to accomplish their dreams. Because when they do, lives change. Communities change.  

But I didn’t want to build a business on my own. In the book of Proverbs, God introduces the concept of iron sharpening iron. I needed a partner to compliment my skill set. I’m so fortunate to have Matt Bolian as my Co-Founder. This wouldn't be possible without Matt. The cultural DNA of RevPartners is Matt. The category focus is directly influenced by Matt.  And I'm a better leader because of Matt.

Matt and I were focused on this concept of how to generate flywheel momentum for a business. And there are two ways to do that- increasing force or decreasing friction. Everyone is focused on this concept of force(doing more- hiring for sales and marketing) but reducing friction, or complexity of internal operations, is just as powerful. 

So Matt and I decided to build a business to address the friction tax for fast growing businesses.

RevPartners

Market Problem

Your customers expect a seamless experience at every stage of their journey. But as your company grows, silos naturally form, creating misalignment across your go-to-market team.

So if you have a sales team, you MUST have dedicated sales ops support to help analyze customer data, setup sales processes/tools (CRM or Marketing solutions), track performance, etc.

Solving the Problem: Outsource vs. In-house RevOps

You have 2 options- you can outsource(consultant/contractor/agency) or bring the function in-house.  

Option 1 - The Consultant: You can hire a consultant to fix an immediate basis that fixes your needs today. But here is the catch:

• Transactional - not incentivized to understand your business  
• Reactive - Will do exactly what you ask, not exactly what you need
• Technical Debt - Today’s solution becomes tomorrow's problem. You are left with a “Frankenstein” instance that was made in a consultants laboratory. 

Option 2 - In-House: In-house you face another conundrm. You face the “choice” of hiring:

• RevOps Specialist: Hire a senior specialist who will have an intimate understanding of your business at $150k+ per year (plus benefits). That’s too much expensive and risky for most SMB companies.  
• Junior Admin: Hire a junior admin who is tactical in nature and will likely have the unintended consequence of creating a similar Frankenstein instance as the consultant…

What We Do: Democratizing RevOps: RevOps for All

We are changing this paradigm. We are democratizing the revops function to allow for companies to have this strategic function at an earlier stage, allowing them to experience the benefit before the inevitable friction tax slows your business down.

We serve scaling companies as their in-house revenue operations department.  

More experience, less risk, better value.

Who We Serve

• Investment Round: Seed- Series B
• CEO Profile: Founder, Technical Led
• Run Rate: $2M ARR- $30M ARR
• Profile: Invested in Sales and Marketing but haven’t addressed operations

Our Value

• Alignment- Break down silos and create alignment across all go to market revenue teams- sales, marketing, and customer success
• Visibility- get clarity on what’s most important and make smarter decisions with trustworthy, centrally-owned reporting
• Velocity- Decrease friction through optimizing operational gaps in the customer journey- handoffs, lead-routing, manual data transfer

Our Focus

To be good stewards- of our employees, our clients, and our community. If we value our people and focus on serving our clients well, I’m convinced the business will take care of itself.  

Raising Capital

Why Garden City

When we sought investment, there were 3 critical areas for Matt and I- capital, access to a network, and a fund that shared our core values. These three things had to work together, especially the last two. Capital alone is transactional. We wanted partners to come alongside us to experience the journey together.

Garden City checked all the boxes for us...and then some.  

Their world-class advisory board consists of leaders who have personally built multi-billion dollar companies such as DocuSign, Lyft, Ritz Carlton, VMware, Costco, HPE, Uber, Salesloft, Square, Terminus, Equifax, and others

But more importantly, it was the culture. Their mission is to build the most caring & innovative service companies in the world. And Mike Arrieta, their Founder and CEO, shares our same philosophy on how to build a successful company- Happy Employees > Happy Customers > Happy Business. It’s the inverse method- start with your people and work out.  

Community

Your life shouldn't be done alone. Ask for help. Here are 4 actionable steps that have helped me in my journey:

• You’re not that big of a deal...really. Learn from others.  
• Take a risk. Get coffee with a stranger. Feel free to send me a Starbucks card :)
• Write a letter to ???- Stop making excuses. Do it.
• Say - “Do it BIG” at least once a day. A “Do it BIG” keeps the doctor away. 88% of the time it works 100% of the time ;). Stay awesome and keep doing it BIG!!

Stay Awesome and keep doing it BIG!