What's Old is New Again - Coming Full Circle (Silicon Valley Style)

Before there was Instacart, there was Webvan. Webvan is one of the most celebrated disasters in Silicon Valley History. It's like our Hindenburg. Turns out they were just early, like 15 years too early. And as we know, being too early is being dead.

Before Chewy.com, Pets.com was the sensation of the new millennium. Before Bitcoin pioneered the cryptocurrency age, there was Flooz. And before Facebook and LinkedIn, there was TheSquare.com. (oh what could have been) Unless you’ve been in the tech game for a while (like, two decades and shit), then you’ve probably never heard of these companies. They came along two decades before their time, but obviously were never forgotten.

Silicon Valley is indeed, a flat circle.

We are seeing this concept, that which is old is new again, in many sectors of SaaS and enterprise software too. Before there was Zoom, there was Webex. (I believe Webex still exists, but I’d love confirmation from Cisco. And while we’re on that….). Before there was Workday, there was Peoplesoft. Before there was Slack there was Yammer.

There are few verticals with higher stakes than marketing automation. Just in the last year we’ve seen several 10 figure exits in this space, and things are changing. Right before our eyes. With growing issues around email deliverability (Gmails spam algorithm keeps getting stronger), the days of blasting thousands upon thousands of emails to support sales organization are close to over. So now everyone is blasting cold calls into the stratosphere. Do you pick up a bunch of cold calls? No you don't. Stop it. You don't.

So what now?

Enter Sendoso.

I’ve long been bullish on the re-introduction of direct marketing into what smart sales and marketing organizations should be doing. Sure enough, someone I know pretty well just went out and did it. His name: Kris Rudeegraap (his co founder is Braydan Young). Kris is a veritable renaissance startup guy. The company: Sendoso. I hired Kris 5 years ago at Talkdesk and he was one of the best hires I have ever made. Most sales people don’t have the courage to actually go create and found their own startup. (like me...for example) Kris actually did, and now Sendoso is one of the hottest companies in the Valley with Sendoso’s Sending Platform, which is basically a platform that manages sourcing, shipping, storage and ROI measurement for anything you want to send to prospective customers or existing customers: Direct mail, personalized gifts, on demand collateral, wine, cupcakes, flowers, gift cards, even handwritten notes. You see all of this stuff goes a long way with your customers and we basically stopped doing it altogether like 15 years ago.

Marketers are looking for new solutions and Sendoso is giving them answers with something we knew worked like 30 years ago. Sometimes we just need to look back into the past to figure out how to step into the future.

Sendoso. If you aren’t using it, your competitors are. And their customers are happier as a result.