Alex Rinke is co-founder and co-CEO of enterprise process mining platform Celonis. He critiques funded enterprise software startups that attempt to scale sales merely by expanding headcount.
“Just hiring a lot of salespeople, right? It's not a go-to-market strategy. And that's what a lot of startups did, right? Hey, we have just got a hundred million dollars in funding. We're going to hire tons of salespeople. They know how to do this. Good luck. That's not going to work.”
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More from Alex Rinke
Insight
Alex Rinke: Enterprise founders must personally sell their first $2 million
“If you didn't sell the first million or two in revenue yourself, Don't expect anybody else to do it, right?”
Alex RinkeFeb 8, 2024▶ 30:54Bootstrapping a Decacorn on $15k with Celonis CEO Alex Rinke
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Alex Rinke: Celonis tracks the exact realized value for every customer
“So, for example, I can pull out a dashboard right now Every single customer that we have, how much value have they realized?”
Alex RinkeFeb 8, 2024▶ 34:50Bootstrapping a Decacorn on $15k with Celonis CEO Alex Rinke
Insight
Big tech partnerships will not solve a startup's go-to-market problems
“Some entrepreneurs look at this as a big tech partnership as this silver bullet that's going to solve their go-to-market problem. That's not going to happen, right? It's going to be a very long journey and going to take a long time, require a lot of, you know,…”
Alex RinkeAug 13, 2020▶ 11:21Fireside Chat: Alex Rinke (Founder & CEO, Celonis) with Matt Turck (Partner, FirstMark)
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Fully autonomous 'self-driving' enterprises will not happen because humans are required
“We're not going to have a self-driving enterprise. You need employees and human input, but you can automate it.”
Alex RinkeAug 13, 2020▶ 27:10Fireside Chat: Alex Rinke (Founder & CEO, Celonis) with Matt Turck (Partner, FirstMark)
Insight
Alex Rinke: Do not scale GTM or raise big money before achieving PMF
“I would not recommend you thinking about partnerships, or scaling go to market, or hiring salespeople, or even raising a lot of money, to be honest, before you feel really confident that you have a product that solves a problem, that you can scale, that you ca…”
Alex RinkeFeb 8, 2024▶ 13:28Bootstrapping a Decacorn on $15k with Celonis CEO Alex Rinke
Opinion
Rinke: Many enterprise software companies over-pivoted on AI without achieving traction
“A lot of enterprise companies sort of over pivoted on AI, but then couldn't really show traction, right?”
Alex RinkeFeb 8, 2024▶ 26:09Bootstrapping a Decacorn on $15k with Celonis CEO Alex Rinke
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