Quibb - What I Know Best

Ali Powell is principal sales rep at HubSpot. She started her sales career ten years ago and is now in her sixth year at Hubspot. Ali worked her way up to the top sales position in the company and has managed client accounts in Silicon Valley for the past two years. She’s also a huge proponent and supporter of women in sales and manages the Women in Sales Slack channel. During our conversation, Ali shared what she knows best:Beyond the stigma of sales and why being genuinely helpful impacts successHow marketing and sales work together at HubSpotTop characteristics to look for when hiring a salesperson for a SaaS companyA look inside Ali’s sales processWhat inspired her to create a community for women in salesListen to the episode here, and be sure to subscribe to get all future episodes of the What I Know Best podcast.

Eric Seufert is a partner at the brand new mobile marketing agency and consulting shop, Heracles. Previously he was VP of User Acquisition and Network Engagement at Rovio, Head of Marketing at Wooga, and Head of Marketing and User Acquisition at Finnish game company Grey Area. Earlier in his career, he worked at Digital Chocolate and Skype. Eric is most well known for his writing. He's the author of Freemium Economics (published by Elsevier) and his Mobile Dev Memo site is required reading for professionals in user acquisition and the gaming industry Eric is an extremely helpful and open force in the industry. We were incredibly excited to talk to him and learn more about what he knows best. During our conversation we talked about:The current state of mobile distributionHow to get to #1 in app storesGetting started with blogging by leveraging your expertiseWhat makes a great growth person and why they stay with a company Listen to the episode here, and be sure to subscribe to get all future episodes of the What I Know Best podcast.

David Cancel is the CEO and Founder of Drift. They help businesses know, grow, and amaze their customers. David has a long and impressive tech resume. In 1996 he was on the founding team of bolt.com and then went on to be CTO at BuyerZone (acquired by RELX Group) and next he co-founded Compete (now owned by Comscore). David founded two other startups, the second of which was acquired by Hubspot, where he moved into the Chief Product Officer role, at the then small startup back in 2011. He stayed at Hubspot for just over three years before starting his current company Drift in the Fall of 2014. Lots of folks recognize David as being amazingly talented when it comes to early-stage startups. During our conversation we talked about:Why being a founder is crazyWhat it’s like being an introverted technical founder and how it’s changedThe broken sales/lead processHis (uncommon) opinion on hiring non-PMs as PMsListen to the episode here, and be sure to subscribe to get all future episodes of the What I Know Best podcast.

Anand Sanwal got his start in tech working at failed Kozmo, one of the most well funded and infamous startups in New York City's history, notable for their rapid rise and crashing fall in 2000. Anand moved on to American Express where he and his future co-founder managed the chairman's fifty million dollar innovation fund.  It was after this experience and feeling the pain point around a lack of private company information that Anand left to start CB Insights. CB Insights tracks the world's most promising private companies, their investors, their acquirers, and the industries they compete in. During our conversation we talked about:Giving context to data that tells stories about where technology is headedHow a company can compete with voice and storytellingUsing trends in requests to map a product roadmapEvaluating success when there are long feedback cyclesHow the 'No Asshole Rule' plays a role in his company's cultureListen to the episode here, and be sure to subscribe to get all future episodes of the What I Know Best podcast.    

Building for an entirely new platform can be incredibly challenging, but also amazingly awarding. This is exactly the experience that Christoph Liu is currently going through as he works as an Interaction Designer at Merecedes-Benz - he's designing how we'll experience the next generation of cars. With over a 10 year career in Interaction and Experience Design, we chatted with Chris recently about:Why the conceptual phase of design is so importantThe future of the automobileCars at platformsThe importance of side projects for designersListen below, and be sure to subscribe to get all future episodes of the What I Know Best podcast

From Intuit to Netflix, NextDoor to AltSchool, Lesley Grossblatt has worked on product at some of Silicon Valley's most successful companies. We chatted with her recently about her 10 year product career and professional experiences, and also about her new role at theBoardlist. The social mission of the company is compelling - a curated marketplace for the discovery of highly endorsed women for private and public tech company boards.  Learn from Lesley about:how she's applied Lean Startup methods and practices across her careerher superpower, going from an insight to reality in a very efficient and fast way.the differences in working on a social-mission productListen here to learn from Lesley and her impressive career, and be sure to subscribe to get new episodes of the What I Know Best podcast from Quibb. 

From Microsoft to DigitalOcean, to Fab and now Blue Apron, Catherine's resume is impressive. After studying business and computer science at the University of Pennsylvania, she's moved into a career focused on product management. We chatted with Catherine about the skills and insights she's amassed during her career, including:Lessons from a dying unicorn (Fab.com)The value of meditation and mindfulness in startups'Translation' as the most valuable PM skillHow a failing startup can inject new blood and life into a startup ecosystemLessons from yoga, as applied to startups

When it comes to growth, not many people in Silicon Valley know more on the topic than Ivan Kirigin. Now the Founder of YesGraph, Ivan is a 2-time YC startup founder, grew Dropbox 12x over 24mo, and helped build out Facebook's games dashboard and Facebook Credits payment flows. We chatted with Ivan about all things growth, including:The biggest challenge to early tractionWhy big tech companies fail at growing new productsWhy there's such a big overlap between great founders and great growth peopleHow early stage startup growth is very different from big company growthYou can listen below, and be sure to subscribe to catch future episodes with other people across the tech ecosystem, sharing what they know best.

As Intercom’s Managing Editor, John Collins runs one of the hottest startup blogs today, Inside Intercom. How does he do it? We chatted with him about how he thinks about content, and the values inherent to Intercom that have allowed the company to make content that's meaningful and relevant to their ever growing spectrum of users. With John, we focused on:The culture instilled by intercoms CEO Eoghan McCabe that means creating content is a core employee and company valueHow Intercom's content has scaled - both the creation side, and how the topics and focus have stayed relevant to their ever broadening userbaseHow Intercom thinks about metrics related to their content, and the importance of creating content that's high-qualityMake sure to follow John on Quibb, and subscribe to the What I Know Best podcast on iTunes. 

Shiyan Koh has spent been at NerdWallet for almost 4 years,  starting in product before moving to work more on overall company strategy. Prior to NerdWallet, Shiyan was a Senior Investment Advisor at Bridgewater, a Senior Associate at Institutional Venture Partners, and an Analyst at JP Morgan. She has an MBA from Harvard and a BS from Stanford. hIn this episode of What I Know Best, we chatted with Shiyan about what she's learned as she made the shift from the world of Finance and Venture to working on Product at one of Silicon Valley's fastest growing and most successful FinTech companies. Her perspective on growing with a rocketship is also very compelling, as she shares some of what's worked in scaling the company to almost 10x the size since she first joined. While she's now on the business and strategy side of the company, her perspective on being user-focused has remained strong, giving her a compelling perspective on how to run startup Biz Ops and Corp Dev.

Kia Kokalitcheva is a Reporter at Fortune, covering tech and startups in the Bay Area, and also focused on on-demand startups. She was previously at VentureBeat, covering early-stage startups and funding news.We chatted with Kia about what it takes to write great stories in today's ultra fast-paced tech world, where stories are old just 10 minutes after the news if first released. We also chatted in-depth about the new focus on news and content from Venture Capital firms,  what exactly she's learned about what makes a great on-demand startups, and where that space is headed next.Be sure to subscribe on iTunes to get next week's episode. 

Mia Mabanta has spent the last 3 years of her career at Quartz, the digital-first business publication from Atlantic Media, launched in 2012. She's brought her unique, Silicon Valley informed perspective on marketing to NYC, applying models that are typically reserved for startups and consumer products, to the world of media. A graduate of Colgate University and Stanford GSB, Mia was previously VP Product Strategy and Marketing on the founding team of HelloWallet (which was acquired by Morningstar), and also spent some time doing Product Marketing at StumbleUpon.We chatted about what media companies can and can't learn from the tech world as it relates to user-centric marketing, and why she sees so much white space in both the future of media, and how media companies market and appeal to their readers (...starting with a great overview of Quartz' new news-bot app).

Working in Product for over 15 years, Bhaskar Roy knows more about running product than most. He's worked on product across various roles and types of companies - from Oracle, to Microsoft, to Skype, and also as Co-Founder and SVP Product at Qik (which raised funding from Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, and Marc Benioff, and was later acquired for $150M).He's an expert on early stage startups and getting products to the ever evasive 'product market fit', and has spent the majority of his career focusing specifically on Communication products.  We chatted with Bhaskar about his career, and walked away with many gems, including:How to hire great Product ManagersThe future of communication and mobile productsWhy livestreaming won't workThe differences being a PM at a startup, versus a large tech companyHow Skype lost out on the messaging wars ArticlesPrefer to read about what we learned from Bhaskar? Some articles based on our conversation:Periscope to Slack: Lessons from the Past for Today's Hottest Communication Platforms  

Peter Boyce II is an Associate with General Catalyst Partners, a Venture Firm that was founded in 2000, and has managed almost $3B across their 7 funds. Their portfolio includes some amazing companies - Airbnb, Snapchat, HubSpot, and Stripe. Peter has been with GC for 2 ½ years, focusing on early stage investments, both seed and Series A.Before venture, while he was at Harvard, he co-founded Rough Draft Ventures, Harvard College Venture Partners, and HackHarvard. Peter spent spent some time at NYC-based startups too, including Skillshare, and also co-founded a finance-focused startup.We chatted with Peter about the two topics that he knows best - helping to build and support student-founded startups, and the developing East Coast venture ecosystem.To catch all of the details, here's the full conversation between Peter and Sandi. Make sure to subscribe to the What I Know Best podcast for future interviews with other tech industry experts. ArticlesPrefer to read about what we learned from Peter? Some articles based on our conversation:Proven Method From Harvard - How Universities Can Support Successful Startup FoundersBuilding and Funding an East Coast Startup - No Longer Second Place to Silicon ValleyInside the Harvard Organization That’s Changing How Students Create Startups