Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Having the CEO run sales calls makes a startup appear too small

Zeb Evans · Clickup Close To $34m in Revenue, Competing in Project Management Space with 300,000 Paid Seats · Oct 8, 2020 · at 10:24

ClickUp founder and CEO Zeb Evans explains why he used an alias rather than his real title on early sales calls.

0:00 / 0:04exact quote · 4.8s
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“You kind of appear small when the CEO is the person doing the sales and answering the question.”

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 →

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Evans: Founders should bootstrap until product-market fit before raising VC
“I'm still, I still have very much an advocate for bootstrap as long as you can, until you get product market fit through, through getting product market fit after your product, product market fit, raise capital and efficient means when, you know, unit economic…”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 3:13 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
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“The only defensibility that we have is moving faster than our competitors and building better, a better product and a better user experience than they can as well.”
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Evans: ClickUp Rejects the Software Rule to Do One Thing Well
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Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 5:51 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Disclosure
Evans used a $5M convertible note to net 30% more equity
“Well, so I put in a cap at five million. So that, so essentially I was investing at a five million valuation. And then when we invested at two hundred million, your nerds, your notes convert at that same, I mean, I got like another 30 or 40% of the company.”
Zeb Evans Nov 16, 2021 ▶ 20:15 Clickup Breaks $85m ARR, "On Track for $200m in 2022" says CEO Zeb Evans
Disclosure
Evans used a fake name on early ClickUp enterprise sales calls
“And I was you know, using a fake name to be the acting salesperson in some of the calls.”
Zeb Evans Oct 8, 2020 ▶ 10:00 Clickup Close To $34m in Revenue, Competing in Project Management Space with 300,000 Paid Seats
Disclosure
ClickUp lets users try paywalled features 100 times before blocking access
“We do feature paywalls a little bit differently in the sense where everybody actually gets access to the feature that is paywalled, and they don't really know that it's paywalled until you kind of start using it. You get a hundred uses of every feature.”
Zeb Evans Oct 8, 2020 ▶ 16:25 Clickup Close To $34m in Revenue, Competing in Project Management Space with 300,000 Paid Seats
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