Steli Efti
person on 2 shows · 18 statements across 4 episodes · said 36 times in 18 episodes since 2016
Startups For the Rest of Us 22 
Top Founders 14
On the record as a speaker too: Steli Efti across every show, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year, every show
tap a year for its mentions
Startups For the Rest of Us 22Top Founders 14
2024 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2023 3 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2022 2 mentions in 1 episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2020 14 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
- TinySeed Tales Season 2 | Episode 8: Upmarket Starts to Pay Of
- Episode 515 | Finding a Co-Founder, Getting Better at Sales, and More Listener Questions
- Episode 491 | Episode 491: Hard Lessons Learned, Reaching High-Touch Prospects, Finding
- Episode 516 | When to Re-write Your SaaS Codebase
- Episode 500
- every mention in 2020, scene by scene →
2018 6 mentions in 1 episode
2017 4 mentions in 3 episodes 1 per episode
2016 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
every mention on every show, scene by scene, with the transcript →
18 statements about Steli Efti, every show
Close's three co-founders still work closely together after 14 years
“We've been working together as co-founders for 14 years. And I would say that our relationship today is closer than ever before, and we are such different people... We still, all three still work at the company and still work very sort of intensely together.”
Founders should delay major decisions during emotional crises, says Steli Efti
“I think we were all three quite wise in many times recognizing that this is an emotional state that I'm in or a face, and maybe this is the truth and I should act on it, but I can't act on it Right now. It's too hot. I need to let it cool down and simmer down.…”
Startups often fail because founders self-destruct in emotional distress, says Efti
“That's why I think a lot of companies don't reach their potential because they kill themselves. They sort of commit, they commit suicide rather than being killed by external forces because they overreact in situations where they should think it through a coupl…”
Undetected telephony fraud nearly bankrupted Close within its first year
“And if it hadn't been for us just generally curious looking around once in a while, we had sort of calculated out that within a week it would have bankrupt us. I think it's just like we didn't have enough money. It would have bankrupt, and it would have been s…”
Walling: Dharmesh Shah, Rand Fishkin, and Patrick McKenzie are TinySeed LPs
“If you decide to invest, you'll be joining folks like Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot, Rand Fishkin, Founder of SparkToro, Steli Efti, co-founder of Close.com, and Patrick McKenzie, who many of you know as PatioEleven on the internet.”
Long-term B2B contracts are useless during an economic crisis
“A contract is not going to be worth much because a contract is only worth something in a stable world, right? If our customers are going out of business, that contract is useless. If they would go out of business unless they break the contract, and so they dec…”
Close's cash position almost doubled between March and May 2020
“Over the last couple of months, I, our cash position has drastically improved, almost doubled, which made our business a lot more stable.”
Sales teams should prioritize deal velocity over contract value during crises
“Today I would always prioritize closing deals a little faster and giving up a little bit of money for that speed versus trying to optimize for maximum money and taking more time to negotiate and close the deal.”
Efti: Close.io generates millions in revenue with under 20 employees
“It's a very small team. We're less than 20 people and we're driving many, many millions in revenue and are competing with massive organizations.”
Close.io's average customer pays between $400 and $500 per month
“The average per month is probably, you know, in the four or 500 dollars.”
Efti: Close.io is profitable, self-funded, and took zero venture funding
“We're running a profitable self-funded business at this point, and Close.io never got a dollar in venture funding in one way or another.”
Steli Efti raised over $1M immediately after graduating from Y Combinator
“We raised raised a little bit over a million a few weeks after graduating from YC.”
Churning a bad-fit customer is entirely a marketing and sales failure
“Well, that is a tragedy still, because why the fuck did we close them in the first place? What did we do wrong in our marketing? What do we do wrong on our sales to never indicate that this should, this is a customer that shouldn't buy our product. We did some…”
Selling incomplete software reveals actual customer demand and prioritizes product roadmaps
“What we did is we said we have one very unique, strong thing that the product does. If people really care, they'll buy even if it's really insufficient in many other areas. Like we sold sales software that didn't have any reporting in it. And people still boug…”
Efti: Channel testing requires pre-planning for ambiguous results
“And I think one of the most important things that, that I teach people and the thing that we've learned to do is to plan for all three scenarios and say, okay, what does success look like and failure, but what is the in between? And what do we do if the first …”