00:01.15
thomaskohler
Um, hi Sarah um, it’s great that we have a chance to talk now on my end. It’s 7 pm and on your end. How late is it, you’re in San Francisco right or quick time. So um.
00:07.94
Sarah
Yes, it’s 10 am here so really excited to job with you today.
00:15.50
thomaskohler
And also glad that we got to know each other because I think the connection came from anaot who we both know right? Can you share more about the background there. How how? um the connection came.
00:21.73
Sarah
Is it is it.
00:27.65
Sarah
Absolutely so I have the privilege of being the vice president of marketing at a Fast-g Growing B two b sas company called sastropify where the Sas buying and management platform and we are invested in by Hb Capital which is where Anna atwork so gotten to be a fan of her work through. Through hv and I know many many many listeners are fans of her work as well. So very cool and thank you Anna for the connection.
00:51.11
thomaskohler
Yes, thanks Ana shout out to Anna. Um, so maybe you can give us a bit more context about yourself this how I usually um like to start and I think you have a very interesting background and also a cool specialization which we can also maybe deep dive a bit later on.
01:05.53
Sarah
Absolutely so my background is in b two b saas and particularly on the go-to-market side and as I kind of grew in my marketing career and got sort of more and more leadership roles and eventually became a part of the executive team I on a personal level noticed that there was a real gap in education. Content resources for startup employees and through my work mentoring at Techstars which is an accelerator for early stage companies and also through my work in the Colorado startup ecosystem in the us I got to really see the importance for founders of hiring really high quality executives. But also being able to develop their in-house talent to enable them to be successful at the leadership level and as I was out there looking at content resources to help me on my journey I realized there wasn’t much and so I have had the benefit of coaches of ceos who believed in me. Had an executive coach when preparing for my first exec role but the 2 books I’ve written power to the startup people and the newest book lead upwards have really focused on books I wish had existed and include interviews with experts people from the ecosystem founders vcs startup executives on how to be successful and. It’s been a really enriching side gig I will say from a just personal gratification perspective to be able to have these conversations and talk to people like you even outside of my my day job which I also love in growing Saas companies.
02:33.71
thomaskohler
Sarah First of really appreciated that we got to um to talk to each other because I think that’s something what I’m always look for passionate people about a certain topic that is somehow connected to leadership management or um, certain as points of it and um before we go a bit deeper in the. Books you wrote about and maybe also a bit of how a b two b marketing or can look like I think that’s also quite interesting because it changes over time and depending on company companies products and also customers. Yeah it it rise but what shaped you most that you got so passionate about. The leadership um topics.
03:10.26
Sarah
I think it was actually hanging out with really amazing founders. Maybe an odd answer but I’ll I’ll explain so I spent a lot of time with founders and thinking about how to build a company really have to be on the marketing side very close to the Ceo close to the founders and for me I always choose. Ah, role that I’m going to to sort of spend my blood sweat and tears you know building a company if I truly believe in the founders and usually co-founders and I always look for a strong co-founder relationship. That’s really crucial something. We have definitely at astropphi but that’s been true of previous companies and I’ve tended to see that the companies that do well. Really have that strong relationship between founders. But anyway as I’ve built those relationships with founders I’ve kind of started digesting their information diet of the books they’re reading the courses. They’re taking what they’re trying to learn I saw this at Techstars with how founders were approaching their people, challenges and problems and I started to feel um, just. Underrepresented from the employee side I thought well everything that the founders are going through employees have a different perspective on and if you think about it. You know a founder may be at a company for 1015 years depending on how long it takes if they’re successful to to have an exit or to take the company to the next stage of growth like going public. Um. You know, whatever, whatever that outcome may be or or landing the plane and selling it and employees may have many many jobs within that timeframe. So I also I found this um sort of I like to think of it as a healthy irritation of like why is no one talking about this or why aren’t enough people talking about it and then from a leadership perspective.
04:44.49
Sarah
Um, as a member of multiple underrepresented groups I felt also it was odd getting to the leadership level that um, tended to be a few people who looked like me and I didn’t think that that was based on necessarily merit. It was more that I think a lot of folks from underrepresented Backgrounds May or may not see themselves represented and so. Um, my work is always attempted to be its work in progress inclusive of everyone So No matter what your background. Um, you can potentially see yourself if you’re interested in a path to leadership whereas many people may or may not ever want to be startup leaders. They may be really happy as individual contributors and that’s really valid too. But um. Yeah I’m happy to dig more into that as well.
05:26.20
thomaskohler
And um I think the temporary aspect of a role along the growth journey of a company is something what a lot of maybe also first -time founders or first -time leaders or overall first time. First -timers in an environment that is um, pre determinedmined to change fast and develop I think it’s really important to set the expectation in the hiring process already. What the environment will look like if some people are not used to it already or um, don’t know what to expect because. Otherwise later on you have a lot of tension when um, when you need to change certain I would say behavior of teams or structures and you could even say okay in the startup everything is dynamic but it can’t be lot is that especially if if and expectations are not managed right? or um. Managed at all or defined. Um responsibility is not defined and so on and um, how how do you think you can enable an organization that also a good balance of maybe leaders from within can be grown and also a certain level of. Experience can be hired externally into it how how would you approach that overall or about your thoughts towards that topic. Maybe it’s a bit of a broad um question but I asked it broad because you wrote so much about it.
06:50.58
Sarah
Sure um I love this question. Maybe I’ll start by taking the approach of the other side which is how can startup employees think about will I be hired ah for a role that maybe I will reach a certain limit at the company and someone will be hired over me and am I okay with that or potentially is there room for me to grow. And sort of develop in my career and then also I can talk about how companies can think about it so something that we tend to see at the earliest stage companies is everyone’s doing everything right? I mean even the Ceo is is. Fielding all the sales calls and some somehow they’re you know, managing accounting and all of this and as you grow become more mature you hire more specialists and that’s just the natural evolution and you still have some generalists within organizations but the idea is the maturity is you have people who are very competent in certain areas very experienced or are growing that experience. And something. We also see um in different funding environments. You need a certain level of growth within a certain time period where just mathematically, you can’t necessarily get that growth from a people perspective within that time. So for instance, if you raise um, let’s say a series a and you have a certain revenue milestone to get to by the end of the year you might need to hire a salesperson who you can guarantee will will sort of have that background versus training an sdr to sort of be the ae I mean that’s ah, that’s a very simplified example. But I also think within our current fundraising environment. We’re seeing that companies need to make capital last longer and extend their runways.
08:15.91
Sarah
Which can be a really good thing for employee growth because you might have more time to hit certain revenue Milestones or company Milestones and there may be more opportunities to grow so from a broad perspective I would say the landscape may or may not offer that um to the same degree that it did in the past or in the past it really was okay, fundraising round we need to sort of level up higher. Um, hate the expression but sort of adults in the room. Um, but from an employee perspective if you think about it. You could be hired as the only marketer and then suddenly your company grows and reaches a certain level of maturity Now you really need someone who can lead a team and if you don’t have that experience. There may or may not be room for you to to do that And so.
08:50.93
thomaskohler
Um.
08:54.99
Sarah
What I’ve seen work really well just give this advice to employees and sort of my fellow employees is think about what’s really important to you in your career and don’t underestimate the power of working for someone who may or may not um, be a really good leader and mentor for you and if you’re only focused on sort of getting to the next run you can really lose that. Ah, really valuable chance to get that leadership coaching training just even by watching how they perform and how they manage that being said, especially if you’re sort of on the cusp. Let’s say you’re ahead of you’re the head of the marketing department and you really want to be the the Vp or you really want to be the Cmo um, you can. Conversation with your founders and say what are your expectations. Where’s the gap between where I’m performing now and what you would need from a board perspective from a leadership perspective and then potentially um, you can ask not to be hired over. You can have a conversation where you’re saying look I see this gap I’m going to get coaching I’m going to listen to the people factor. I’m going to read lead upwards and I’m going to get the skills I need that being said, sometimes the reality is we’re going to need someone potentially who has the experience. They’ve already seen seen the Playbook um, and and that’s also I would say on the kind of company side a risk. Where if you’re hiring someone from outside the risk is they’ve come from a big company. They might not understand your startup. They certainly don’t have experience with your culture versus the person who’s maybe come up and sort of seen it through the years that being said, um, if you hire from internally, especially if you’re hiring. Let’s say a Vp of sales. Let’s say you promote your head of sales.
10:27.74
Sarah
May or may not have a good reputation in the market where you know vpo of sales comes on board. One of their first remits is go hire a bunch of Aes that you’ve worked with in the past ordrs you’ve worked with in the past they don’t have that that network to pull from also a lot of people are skeptical of reporting to a first -time leader be kind of nerve-wracking like is this person going to actually be a good boss for me.
10:43.44
thomaskohler
Um.
10:47.70
Sarah
So it’s very complicated. There’s tradeoffs I read about it a lot in lead upwards but I will say I think from my experience. There’s often a lot of opportunity in early stage companies. If you’re patient and if you’re proactive and talking to your founders and talking to your leadership team about what your goals are where you could say look maybe I’m going to be hired over. For the cmo role or for the so cro rule. But I’d like to develop in these other ways and can I continue focusing on that and I would also say it’s individual. A lot of people are really happy going from being the only marketer to suddenly they have a team of 10 or 20 and they get to play a different role as a specialist. So. Um, how’s that I’m curious how you approach that too. Thomas I know you talk about it a lot with companies you work with.
11:28.79
thomaskohler
Um, so I would categorize it in different stages. Um, let’s say a classical. Let’s say seed stage marketing or a sales team or go to market unit can also really bery depending on how the founders. See themselves in terms of expertise and also motivation on what they want to do and I would always recommend for the founders especially in the beginning. Um, really do the sales by yourself because there is not not much I think you can offer initially. Um. Beside the founders charisma trust and um, everything he or she has in in in their minds. Um to convince with passion and later on getting getting it delivered and prioritized right? So I think that’s that’s key in the beginning and I think the whole marketing aspect. Sometimes maybe following that approach because once you have a message market fit or a product market fit you can invest further in a marketing approach. But I think first you can see it under product and a marketing and a sales I I don’t mind. Yeah I think it’s it’s really go to market. But depending on what the setup is. It’s more maybe a product-based approach a marketing-based approach or a sales-based approach. Um, so there it really arrivees and I would always hire in the beginning generalists with a lot of potential. Yeah later on when you see certain patterns and certain structures getting um more recurring.
12:54.48
thomaskohler
Um, try to get somebody who either wants to specialize or hire specialists and I think in the beginning series. A you don’t need um, ah leaders with big management experiences in scope. Um, maybe one by department but also.
13:12.54
thomaskohler
Maybe 1 or 2 previous roles in experience is maybe good enough. Yeah I think if you’re coming to expansion in terms of as a multi-product multi-market um, fast delivery. You need to hire people who have been there done that and then usually also the founders cannot excel with a certain speed. Um, and then you need to make the first 300 k hires. Yeah maybe earlier on you need to make the first 150 k hires in terms of let’s say grass andely. Um, and.
13:47.10
thomaskohler
There you also kind of expect that they are still partly hands-on. But I think from a 300 k hire don’t expect to be too hands-on just give them the full responsibility measure them on targets. Let them set the targets and let them deliver what they need to and set the expectations on what what’s the time they need. And the resources they need to deliver and provide them and of course always do your due diligence. Um, but I think that’s free stages on how I see um, hiring in an evolving journey and what is happening in between on the second layer I would say um, really depends on the people you set on top. Um. And also on the environment right? If it’s a b two b sa product that is more for the enterprise segment or maybe in the beginning you cannot even sell to enterprise because why should they talk to a company that does not have a proper um position in the market. Yeah, it’s tough. So maybe you start with midmarket or s and b’s and then go up market market during. Um, the time you have more traction the time you have a better product market fit and this is always possible at some point I guess but you also still need to really try and focus hard because the whole go to market for enterprise in each vertical in each market needs to be highly. Ah, prioritized and focused approach and if you don’t get the teams um focused on maybe 5 to 25 accounts per year to Target. Um, you will fail. Yeah.
15:20.47
Sarah
It’s interesting covering a lot of different areas here I think are probably really valuable for for people listening and I would say for startup employees who are thinking how does this impact me how do I think about my journey the reality is you kind of have to reassess your career every six months. Maybe even more but at least every six months and I think. Particularly at milestones like fundraising. Um, you know you’ll come in at a seed stage potentially and the company looks very very different sometimes even just six months or a year later depending on the maturity depending on growth and I think that can really catch people off guard I’ll also say you know you made a point about setting targets and when you’re hiring these sort of.
15:50.83
thomaskohler
Um.
15:54.87
Sarah
Experience leaders. We’ve all had a leader come in and they haven’t touched you know a crm and forever and they just only know how to read a report and they haven’t necessarily been in the weeds or I like to call it on the shop floor and I think it’s really crucial, especially you know at certain startup stages like series a series b where you have that leader. Who maybe has that deep expertise of where you’re trying to go like trying to get to that 50000000 an ar but until you get to that sort of next benchmark or milestone. They do need to be fairly hands on in some ways not that they’re executing but they need to at least understand and I think 1 thing that big company people I’ve talked to really struggle with coming to smaller startups.
16:28.20
thomaskohler
Mm.
16:33.20
Sarah
Is They may have this very specific set of knowledge that works with a ton of resources but we all have to be creative in startups particularly now I would also say a lot of folks who are going from startups to kind of getting into larger companies. They have to learn how to take true ownership and really um. Ownership at the business levels that the board is interested in that shareholders are interested in and so I think it’s scaling is quite hard in both directions. It’s hard to come up when you’ve been the person who does everything and it’s hard to come from I have a huge team and an assistant and then suddenly I’m you know it? Wow Everything’s broken and. Why isn’t that person a role yet right? You have to kind of figure out how to make that work. Um, but yeah I Love this topic and I’m I’m glad that you think about it and and certainly rich, Rich, rich one to dig into more.
17:18.18
thomaskohler
To be honest and I think also not every organization needs these type of hires at all. Sometimes yeah, sometimes you can if you have a very I would say lean approach or structure or the founders want to grow into that role. It can still work out I think a great example is cellando not yet anymore. But. Um, they really grew um founder led to a very very late stage and still the founders running the company. But of course they hired um a cto like from Amazon um, who then ran the show for some time I think he’s not here there anymore? Um, but this is and I would say.
17:56.69
thomaskohler
And a prime example for okay, a scalup or a startup or now a public company a major culprit. Um that is quite new or freshborn still higher than somebody from an Amazon which is also maybe not that old but way bigger in scale. Um, it can also maybe just work for a certain period of time where you need that. And at some point it doesn’t fit anymore right? So I think this is this needs to be seen very individual and very temporary. But I think the the key is there to always define the expectations with help of others benchmark your expectations iterate your expectations. And also be very transparent towards the candidates and also being open to let them um, shape the expectations based on their individual experience that it can work out and there are so many aspects it’s the existing team. The legacy of the company and the team. Um the future. I would say prospective market environments. Um so many things to consider. So I think you cannot give a general answer to it. You need to read discuss it case by case because it’s hyper individual and as even I make um a lot of Vp or director hires or even managing director hires I always in the first step um listen to.
19:05.28
Sarah
It.
19:11.28
thomaskohler
Um, what is expected and then do not question it too much before I talk talk to 5 to 10 candidates from different scopes and then go back and say that’s the feedback from that type of person from that type of person and that type of person. What do we want to do with it because we need to do something with it. But the question is what and then it really defines the style and what you hire and also shapes the the next stage of the company and also the role you Define. So I think that’s that should be a very um, iterative approach and I Think. You need to be open minded enough for that and be able to give away control and power um to get to the right conclusion and decision at some point and um, maybe you can um, tell us how to lead upwards.
19:56.40
Sarah
Um, and.
20:03.41
Sarah
Have say titling a book is not not for the faint of heart. It’s a challenge you have to figure out sort of what you’re um, yeah, what your audience is going to resonate with and I’m a marketer right? So lead upwards I think an alternate title for the book was potentially going to be the nonlinear path and I think. Related and the idea of bleeding upwards I think a lot of us have this perspective that depending on what our title is we sort of lead down from there. We’re the leader but actually regardless of your title. You could be an individual contributor. There are ways to take ownership and create impact and so what I wanted to reflect in the book as well is for those who are not the founders. We’re not the ones starting companies. We make a tremendous impact on the ecosystem and you know if every startup employee today sort of said I’m done I don’t I don’t want to come to work tomorrow right? The the saas industry would be ah sort of up in arms. Everything would would shut down and. We we truly are the lifeblood of the industry and if you think about how many founders there are for every employee just in the ecosystem. It’s tremendous and I think we tend to have this belief that we are um, you know because we’re not the founders because we’re not the ones who are establishing the companies that we can’t lead in the same way and so what I really wanted to highlight was. If. You’re a joiner. This is a term coined by a Vc named Jeff Busgang who was generous in contributing to the book. Um, he runs Flybridge Capital Vc at 5 bridge capital. He’s also Harvard business professor. But what I appreciate about Jeff’s concept of the joiner is this person who is.
21:29.29
Sarah
Motivated wants to contribute is joining the company really buying into the founder’s mission and so I I think to lead upwards and sort of think about this career perspective of regardless of my title What’s the impact I want to make where do I want to grow how can I make sure that’s right for me and not what i. See this other person doing and I think that’s what I’m supposed to do so I encourage people and I offer guidance in the book to really individualize and we talk a lot in the book about company fit as well as stage fit and I think it’s really important to do a lot of so you know self inquiryry and self-awareness and saying not just what am I good up what I actually want to do. And we yeah I talk about as well people who kind of get into this place where they’re really good at something. Maybe you’re a fantastic customer um customer marketer. You’re really good at doing all of those deep you know interviews. But maybe you’re an introvert and you don’t want to get on a plane every week or or a train every week right? So you have to really know yourself I think it’s important too to. Look around and say you know I don’t really want to work for a 500 person company I’d really rather be 1 of those first 15 people sitting around or standing in a parking lot like the early days at Netflix and and I think you have to really note know too if you want to go back to that stage or if you are open to the ride and the journey and. Having joined companies at seed stage and taken them through series b through exit I’ve worked for a public company after it acquired one of my companies I was working with I mean I’ve seen a lot of different stages and how they feel different like really remarkably different the level of process whether you know everyone’s name how much you’re actually involved.
23:02.49
Sarah
And things on other teams. You know something at early stage I mean everyone gets to have a say on what the product is building. It’s kind of amazing. Um, you actually know maybe not how many story points something is that engineering is working on but you really understand your teammates and then as the company gets bigger. You sort of have less and less visibility. So I think it’s important to kind of ask yourself is this what I want do I want to learn how to be someone who can be at a five hundred or a thousand person or a 10000 person company or do I really want to stay for this part of the journey. Um.
23:29.34
thomaskohler
Um I think also one tip I would add there and I totally agree with everything and I would always say yeah, that’s super smart, but it’s hard to figure that out because out you figure that out. Yeah, if you’re busy work working all the time and that’s usually the case people. People especially first time in role and so you can get overwhelmed. Yeah um, getting ep psychologist or a coach really helps. Yeah, you can call it. However, you want. But I think that’s something but really really fairly and it it costs some money but I think if you do it proactively.
23:55.82
Sarah
Nice.
24:07.00
thomaskohler
Without having a certain um area where you really want to dive into this can already be enough and you just go once a month to just reflect and have somebody really neutral and keeping you a bit of accountable at some point if you switch patterns or if you’re turning in in circles. Um. And then also mapping out a bit the expectations of yourself what you actually want to to achieve plus also an other side which I would differentiate is mentoring and mentoring for me is a bit more specific specific to a certain topical area or environment and I think the whole coaching and psychology um part would be quite neutral to the topic. Um, which can go.
24:35.48
Sarah
Um.
24:46.77
thomaskohler
Personal professional, um health related. Whatever it is yeah um, and doing this just maybe every 18 to twenty four months I think can always help proactively but what do you think about that topic.
25:00.66
Sarah
I love that coaching mentoring and I think those are those are really crucial I also think um, yeah, it’s interesting. It can be hard to know am I unhappy because my company just got really big am I unhappy because I’m working on something I don’t like am I unhappy because. Just a stressful month in my life and maybe I’m going through something on the personal side and and I don’t know whether work is is part of that and I think we tend to have a belief of the grasses greener like oh other companies but you know it actually it’s funny like some of the challenges I think we face at growing companies I try to normalize it. Um. On teams which is every growing company faces this and I it’s this is kind of weird. But I think right between a series a and a series b like right when you’re about to raise your series b I’ve noticed a slump at every single company I’ve been at for like a couple weeks just it’s scary. It’s a huge jump in terms of the next. Scale of growth and I’ve just seen the culture break down literally every company I’ve been at that’s done that round and then it goes back up and I don’t know I don’t know why but I’ll just note it and so I think also when you do have experienced people in the room. Maybe um. Potentially a founder hasn’t been through a certain fundraising stage or maybe they have but it’s helpful just to be able to also talk to a coach to your point and your coach is like yeah that’s normal, whatever you’re going through first board meeting. It was painful. No worries. They’re always painful the first time or maybe the first three hundred times who knows but I think it’s it’s also really helpful to get out of your own head and say oh.
26:25.86
Sarah
I’m not unique. This is actually just a really challenging moment or you know this? Um, churn potential that happens after you reach a certain side of scale right? because you’ve had the luxury of having a lot of customers and some of them maybe weren’t a good fit. Maybe you had people come on board and you had you know, got them outside of your icp then you really honed your icp. Well. Natural churn right? You have companies that weren’t really a good fit for you in the first place. So I think some of that too is as a leader as someone you know, kind of helping your team. You can say actually this is normal. Um and and some of that’s to be expected.
26:58.14
thomaskohler
I Think the series a and series B Cultural change aspect. Um I think there is a pattern what I identified so usually when you get serious B Um, the founders are way more detached From. Teams because there is usually a layer of middle management throughout the company and I think to just build this layer of middle management or even if it’s not there yet, but you know you have to do that I think the expectations or the the behavior changes. Without the implementation being done yet and this is where usually things clash. Oh It can also it it. It also can happen later depending on if they did a seed preeed or whatever when they start and how maturely companies with it. But I think this starts when you go either multiproduct or multi-markets.
27:40.15
Sarah
Um, interesting.
27:53.60
thomaskohler
Um, because at some point you need to have a certain way of maybe martrix matrix org where you get a hierarchical structure in G and a orox. Maybe you already get started with.
27:54.68
Sarah
Um.
28:09.39
thomaskohler
Kind of a matrix or a org in the whole revenue field because you need to divide by products or divide by countries and in the especially if you’re talking about Sas world in the product development side. You usually always get a kind of a matrix org or um.
28:15.44
Sarah
Are.
28:28.12
thomaskohler
Different type of or that is not hierarchical because you work in different cross-functional teams. Yeah, and this exactly and this is really changing I think the whole way people interact work together. Communication is a big.
28:31.78
Sarah
Like pods. Yeah.
28:44.11
thomaskohler
Aspect because suddenly it gets so complex where you usually pass the 8220 people Mark where you actually would maybe also need all hands not just for the company but each team or each group each layer that has a certain amount of people also needs an all hands and also then. Needs to interact with the other um organizations that have interdependencies and there you usually also see it in um, the prioritization that suddenly nobody knows what’s the prioritization. Um, everybody’s doing too much because it’s completely a new complexity and. Way more dependencies that you cannot map and until this is settled in it takes as you said, maybe even half a year or nine months and then the serious sea is coming. No it was a different environment but sometimes it happens.
29:32.44
Sarah
Yeah I think what you’re getting at is the importance of company values. So really instilling in your team this value around proactive communication. Both sort of receiving it and sort of proactively seeking it but also proactively sharing it and. I do agree with you I think that’s ah a huge challenge as your org gets bigger because especially you know you can fit the entire company. Let’s say in a Zoom meeting or in a conference room. You sort of walk over or just have ah 1 meeting for everyone but to your point when you have more and more complexity you you sort of have that breakdown. And I think again it goes back to values for me and and something I think a lot of companies struggle with um I’ve certainly experienced this where like whose responsibility is it to find out something if you have documentation and no one is looking at it doesn’t matter. Someone’s still chatting. Where’s this thing or how do I find that so I think really teaching ourselves to be um. Sort of proactive in how we find information and and also proactively sharing it and then also I think there’s some level of you’re never going to know all of the context I think about this as a marketing leader right within my first team which is a concept from Patrick Lennsion he’s ah wrote the 5 dysfunctions of a team and sort of has a lot of work in that field.
30:41.39
thomaskohler
Um.
30:42.68
Sarah
Did your first team is really your your executive team your leadership team and then your other team is your functional area so pp of sales or you know vp of operations whatnot then sort of but I always have the most context on my leadership team of what’s going on in marketing on any given day and I also have the most context on what’s going on the leadership team on the marketing team on any given day. I’m constantly going up and down sharing context and also there’s some context you can’t share in certain times where you just have to wait. So I think there also has to be a level of trust established and for me I have a high level of trust in my Ceo and my cofounders where you know as we’re working through issues with the board or figuring out the market. Have to have trust and faith in that vision. Um, and then it’s my job on the marketing side to figure out how that looks in the world but there has to be also a shared sort of commitment to um to embodying that mission and when you also get to a certain company size I think you find people have divergent views of where the company should go and you have to create alignment there and that’s. Easier said than done. Um, yeah, really happy to to talk more about this topic or yeah.
31:44.80
thomaskohler
Yeah, no definitely agree I think you’re trust a bit overtime because I tried to always q it at 30 minutes so um maybe we we wrap it up here. Is there anyone you can um recommend I interview next which you know I don’t know yet.
31:59.65
Sarah
Sure? Um, I’m very biased here. But I think you should talk to Sven Lainger he’s our Ceo co-founder of sastropphi he’s one of the more I think visionary founders in terms of people leadership and um, you know he and his co-founder max have really um. Put a lot of thought into how we structure a people team and and empowering the people team that we have we have a fantastic people team at astropify. So I think yeah, I’m happy to I’m happy to see ah I might know someone who knows him we’ll see happy to talk. Um.
32:22.36
thomaskohler
Um, yeah, if you would be open to that I would definitely love to do that.
32:31.27
Sarah
But this is been a pleasure Thomas I could talk to you all day and I just love to I mean 1 thing I’ll note for your listeners is you know if you’re interested in learning about these topics and talking about them. My dms are open on Linkedin. Always happy to chat and have conversations on the the show notes I think. We need to be having more conversations like this because it can feel very lonely and isolating in the startup world. We think our unique company. You know it’s so special that ultimately we’re all in this ecosystem together and genuinely believe we’re all here to help each other so I love that you take that approach to helping companies and i.
32:49.70
thomaskohler
Yeah.
33:02.28
Sarah
Excited to meet people who also believe in that.
33:05.65
thomaskohler
Cool. Yeah I would have maybe an intro a colleague of mine Alex he is doing a gdm as a go-to-market podcast and it’s called go to markete mastery. Um. When we in our record, it’s not launched yet. But um, when their episode will be live I think already 4 or 5 episodes will be out. Um, the vp said of personio and so on is interviewed and and a lot other folks and it’s really long around go to market and I think if you’re open to that it would be super interesting and I would look forward to look to listen to it.
33:19.10
Sarah
And.
33:30.30
Sarah
Sure Oh thank you? Likewise Yeah I would love that. Thank you so much.
33:34.66
thomaskohler
Thanks as well.