Bob Tinker

Managing Partner, Metamorph Partners · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutiveauthorinvestorhostLinkedIn ↗survivaltothrival.com ↗

Bob Tinker is the managing partner at Metamorph Partners and co-founder and CEO of BlueRock Security. He was previously the founding CEO of MobileIron, leading the company through its IPO, and is the co-author of the Survival to Thrival book series.

9statements → 0claims → 0claims resolved → 3.89/5average certainty → 2.56/5average debate potential →

2 opinions · 7 insights · every statement was checked. none of them is a claim the record can settle: opinions, insights and disclosures never carry an assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Bob argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: speaking style how? →

271 words/min while actually speaking · 2.5 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Bob Tinker: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to 3,625 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Bob Tinker is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

What they said9 Episodes1

Everything Bob Tinker said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion

Tinker: Early startups should hire versatile "Davy Crockett" reps, not sales VPs

“My personal opinion on that is that's not the right thing to do. You need to find, like, go hire more of like a Davy Crockett type sales rep that can sell, but also has a little bit of product and product marketing in them.”

Bob Tinker Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 13:02 a16z Podcast | Finding Go-to-Market Fit in the Enterprise

Insight

Tinker: Product-led growth fails when enterprise sales require committee approval

“If it's a committee decision where you'd have the CIO, the chief security officer, the VP of infrastructure involved, It's really hard to do marketing-led or product-led when you have a committee decision.”

Bob Tinker Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 27:20 a16z Podcast | Finding Go-to-Market Fit in the Enterprise

Opinion

Tinker: Silicon Valley excels at product creation but struggles with go-to-market

“I think there's a bug in Silicon Valley, which is that at our core, I think we're fundamentally a product shop and we are really, really, really good at helping entrepreneurs build products. But we are not that good at helping entrepreneurs build go to markets…”

Bob Tinker Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 0:50 a16z Podcast | Finding Go-to-Market Fit in the Enterprise

Insight

Tinker: A GTM playbook is a buying journey, not sales slides

“This is something that I got horrendously wrong as a first time CEO is that I thought like having a go to market playbook essentially meant you have a really good PowerPoint pitch. And some good sales tactics. And that was horrendously wrong because your go-to…”

Bob Tinker Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 15:08 a16z Podcast | Finding Go-to-Market Fit in the Enterprise

Insight

Tinker: Scaling post-GTM fit requires shifting from frugality to calculated recklessness

“So you have to go from being sort of ruthlessly frugal, pinching every penny and counting every nickel to almost like calculated recklessness. We're going to try some things and spend some money on things and hire some people, even though you're not sure it's …”

Bob Tinker Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 31:26 a16z Podcast | Finding Go-to-Market Fit in the Enterprise

Insight

Tinker: Hiring a great VP of sales should feel uncomfortable for founders

“If you hire a grade A VP of sales, they're going to absolutely push you and the rest of the organization as they try and drive to scale. And it's going to be uncomfortable. And if it's not, you may have not hired the right person.”

Bob Tinker Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 34:33 a16z Podcast | Finding Go-to-Market Fit in the Enterprise

Insight

Tinker: Enterprise product-market fit does not automatically trigger rapid growth

“For consumer companies, when you find product market fit, the company takes off. Magic happens. Growth unlocks. For enterprise and B to B companies where the sales process is more systematic, customer decisions are more complicated, you can get the product mar…”

Bob Tinker Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 1:14 a16z Podcast | Finding Go-to-Market Fit in the Enterprise

Insight

Tinker: Enterprise product-market fit requires 5 to 20 paying, active, referenceable customers

“For enterprise companies getting to product market fit means can you get to five, 10, 15, 20 customers that gave you money and are they actually using your product and are they willing to say good things?”

Bob Tinker Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 1:52 a16z Podcast | Finding Go-to-Market Fit in the Enterprise

Insight

Tinker: Enterprise startups stall when regular salespeople cannot replicate founder selling

“One of the places where I see these companies stall out is they had founder selling to be able to get to the first 10, 15, 20 customers. And then we start to add salespeople that go to market model. They find, oh, wait a minute. A regular sales or marketing pe…”

Bob Tinker Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 4:53 a16z Podcast | Finding Go-to-Market Fit in the Enterprise

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
a16z Podcast \| Finding Go-to-Market Fit in the Enterprise	Feb 26, 2019	16m

Bob Tinker

The record, in short

How they sound: speaking style how? →

Appearances (1)

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