Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Dorsey: Midwest tech startups must grow executive talent internally or import it

Scott Dorsey · 20VC: Lessons Learnt From Marc Benioff & Selling To Salesforce For $2.7bn, What Product Market Fit Really Looks Like & Why Pricing Is Startup's Biggest Problem with Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner @ HighAlpha · Dec 5, 2016 · at 25:14

Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner at High Alpha and former CEO of ExactTarget, outlines talent acquisition strategies for tech startups operating in the Midwest.

0:00 / 0:08exact quote · 8.0s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“You've got a smaller pool of software executives in the Midwest. And as a result, you have to either grow your own or pull them in from other parts of the country.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Scott Dorsey

Assertion Contradicted
Drive Capital is the only venture firm with scale in the Midwest
“We have drive capital in Columbus, which is excellent and a great team. They're putting meaningful capital to work in the Midwest, but really outside of drive, we have very little scale of capital and that makes it more challenging for our company.”
Scott Dorsey Dec 5, 2016 ▶ 25:44 20VC: Lessons Learnt From Marc Benioff & Selling To Salesforce For $2.7bn, What Product Market Fit Really Looks Like & Why Pricing Is Startup's Biggest Problem with Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner @ HighAlpha
Opinion
Dorsey: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is an excellent manager
“What most people may not know is he's actually an excellent manager.”
Scott Dorsey Dec 5, 2016 ▶ 7:20 20VC: Lessons Learnt From Marc Benioff & Selling To Salesforce For $2.7bn, What Product Market Fit Really Looks Like & Why Pricing Is Startup's Biggest Problem with Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner @ HighAlpha
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dorsey: Salesforce operated at a faster pace than ExactTarget
“We felt like we operated at a fast pace at ExactTarget, and the pace at Salesforce was even faster”
Scott Dorsey Dec 5, 2016 ▶ 8:07 20VC: Lessons Learnt From Marc Benioff & Selling To Salesforce For $2.7bn, What Product Market Fit Really Looks Like & Why Pricing Is Startup's Biggest Problem with Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner @ HighAlpha
Prediction Held up
Dorsey: High Alpha Capital likely to invest in all Studio graduates
“So another way to put it is we're likely to invest in every one of our companies that come out of the high alpha studio.”
Scott Dorsey Dec 5, 2016 ▶ 11:46 20VC: Lessons Learnt From Marc Benioff & Selling To Salesforce For $2.7bn, What Product Market Fit Really Looks Like & Why Pricing Is Startup's Biggest Problem with Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner @ HighAlpha
Assertion Not checkable as stated
High Alpha requires up to 50 customer calls before greenlighting a startup
“So even before we decided to green light a new company, we were looking for 25, 30, 40, 50 customer conversations to really validate that we're solving a true problem.”
Scott Dorsey Dec 5, 2016 ▶ 12:11 20VC: Lessons Learnt From Marc Benioff & Selling To Salesforce For $2.7bn, What Product Market Fit Really Looks Like & Why Pricing Is Startup's Biggest Problem with Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner @ HighAlpha
Insight
True product-market fit requires selling to buyers with no prior relationship
“But when you know you have product market fit is when you start selling organizations where you have no prior relationship, you know, they're not friendly.”
Scott Dorsey Dec 5, 2016 ▶ 14:10 20VC: Lessons Learnt From Marc Benioff & Selling To Salesforce For $2.7bn, What Product Market Fit Really Looks Like & Why Pricing Is Startup's Biggest Problem with Scott Dorsey, Managing Partner @ HighAlpha
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.