What it takes to scale B2B to $100M+ — Andy Mewborn on positioning, content, and distribution
Andy Mewborn's philosophy on building and selling in the modern B2B landscape is rooted in a simple but powerful mantra: 'Learn to build, learn to sell.' Drawing from his early days at Outreach and his success scaling multiple SaaS companies, he highlights the strategic differences between launching a niche, single-use tool in a weekend versus carefully positioning a horizontal platform. He notes that while platforms offer massive enterprise upside, finding the initial 'wedge' use case to drive top-of-funnel adoption remains a significant challenge in an incredibly noisy go-to-market space. The conversation dives deep into the shifting dynamics of SaaS pricing and buyer expectations. Andy argues that while usage-based pricing makes sense for simple, automated AI agents, it often introduces friction and anxiety for CFOs managing broad platform licenses. Furthermore, the timeline for proving ROI has aggressively compressed; driven by the instant gratification of consumer apps and ChatGPT, today's buyers expect to see tangible value from software almost immediately, forcing vendors to prioritize rapid adoption and intuitive design. Ultimately, Andy reveals his playbook for defensibility: building brand and community, and adopting an 'Always Be Experimenting' (ABE) mindset. With AI lowering the barrier to entry for software creation, traditional technical moats are disappearing. To survive and scale, founders must bundle community access with their tools to reduce churn, and relentlessly treat their outbound marketing and cold email motions like direct response ad campaigns—constantly testing new creatives to find a winning edge.
Discussed in this episode
- Andy's journey from early Outreach employee to building and selling niche SaaS tools and broader platforms like Distribute.
- The strategic differences between building a horizontal platform that requires a wedge use case versus a hyper-targeted niche tool.
- Why the combination of learning to build and learning to sell is the ultimate unfair advantage for startup founders.
- The complexities of usage-based pricing and why predictable, flat-rate pricing is often preferred by enterprise CFOs.
- How the timeline to prove SaaS ROI has dramatically shortened from months to weeks due to AI and instant gratification culture.
- The strategy of bundling exclusive community access with SaaS products to effectively eliminate churn and build user loyalty.
- Why traditional technological moats in software are dead, leaving brand and community as the only remaining differentiators.
- The 'Always Be Experimenting' methodology, which treats cold outbound and content marketing like rapid direct response ad campaigns.
Episode highlights
- — Andy's background and early days at Outreach
- — Niche SaaS widgets vs. horizontal platforms
- — The unstoppable founder: learn to build and sell
- — Navigating the noise in the go-to-market space
- — Usage-based pricing vs. predictable platform pricing
- — Accelerating time-to-ROI in the age of AI
- — Bundling community with SaaS to stop churn
- — Always Be Experimenting with cold outbound
Key takeaways
- Learn to build and learn to sell to become an unstoppable founder.
- AI has killed traditional SaaS moats; prioritize brand and community.
- CFOs hate unpredictable usage-based pricing for broad platform software.
- Treat cold outbound campaigns like performance media buys.
- Constantly experiment with new creatives and double down on winners.
Transcript
Good morning y'all. Thanks for checking out this episode of Bridge the Gap. This is one that I'm super excited about with someone that I've followed and admired for a long time. Andy Mewborn, the CEO and founder of Distribute.
Why is this so important? He was one of the number one first reps in outreach. He's done it all. He's scaled zero to 100 plus and has built and sold quite a few companies since then.
Listen to the very end to find his most crucial tip for how to stand out in today's crowded market when building top of funnel and navigating deals through your pipeline. Welcome back to another episode of the Bridge the Gap podcast powered by Revenue Remagined. We have with us today Andy Mewborn who is the founder of distribute an all-in-one workspace for GTM playbooks, which we'll talk about. He founded and sold the small little company you might have heard of that I used called Taplio.
He created Brand 30, which is a 4K strong LinkedIn group that has helped me early days, my wife and some others actually build and scale their LinkedIn presence, and got his start in tech with the like the small little company is like a first 50 employee called outreach. Some of you might have heard of it. Andy, welcome to the show, man. Thank you, man.
Uh, yeah, you made me sound so cool. Thank you. Right, that's the only reason Dale keeps me around is because I do a damn good. Yeah, you do a damn good intro.
I'm like. It's the it's the radio in me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, those are all, no, those are all great. Um, yeah, and shit, I'm just like, damn, when I started all that stuff, people are like, how do you start these things?
And I'm just like, dude, I just follow my curiosity and like, you put it out there and then that's kind of it. I have no secrets on that stuff and it's just like, even Outreach, I was like, uh, funny story on that, which I'll tell you, which is people were like, oh, what made you join Outreach? And um, honestly, I was in Chile before and uh, me and my buddy, you know, we were doing like the Y-Com. So, I'm assuming that's what I call Chili.
Chili. Yeah, yeah, Chile, Chile, whatever you want to call. You pronounce it right, I pronounce it wrong. Who knows what the actual thing is.
But we were in Chile. We were we were we were doing um, we were doing Solar, uh, we were in like the Y Combinator of of Chile. So, it's called Startup Chile, which is this program right after college, right? And so this was, you know, years ago.
But um, uh, I I studied engineering, right? Um, so we were doing Solar stuff and we had developed like this Solar technology, we were trying to sell it. And, you know, I was doing engineering and sales, and I was like, this process sucks. Like we can automate this whole thing.
And then after we sold that company, not not for crazy money or anything. But we sold it off and our contracts and all that fun stuff. And uh, you know, we were 23 at the time, or 22 still, I think, and we were like, all right, what do we do now? And I was like, well, I need to build this thing that automates this whole sales email flow.
And then when I got back to Seattle, which is actually where I went to college, my one buddy was like, dude, there's already these guys like building that. You should just go join them. Um, and so I was like, oh, okay, cool, interesting. So, let me take a look and and then it turned out to be a great decision, right?
So, yeah, that was kind of the the it always experiencing the problem is kind of like, I think it's a hack for building anything new. And we can kind of get more into that stuff. But, Yeah, I love the curiosity side of what you were saying. Like a lot of people do like it it's almost born out of necessity as well.
So like you're in a place and you're like, okay, there's a better way to do this thing and like how do I do it? And it may be just building a better widget as well. But it kind of like as we go through this, so we, when we're working with a lot of our clients, we talk about like bridging this gap. And so like it feels like the go-to-market gap is getting wider and wider.
It's like, how do you do top of funnel? How do you get in mid funnel? What's your close ratios? Et cetera, et cetera.
So, as you were building, as you started moving out and building distribute, like you're at what we're calling like a stabilization phase. Like you're trying to figure out the ICP, buying persona, value proposition, what's going to stick in the market, what's the differentiator. What are some of the big gaps that you're seeing in the first part of the funnel, and how are you guys looking to solve that at distribute? Man, um, I got a lot of gaps, I'll tell you.
We we can start with the first one. Uh, every every I got a list of gaps, but, you know, that's that's how it goes with with with building something. Um, so on distribute, we're definitely taking like the big platform play, right? So, there's pros and cons to that.
Um, so just to give you all context before I kind of get into the gap so you kind of can understand it, right? Yeah. So, the big gaps, if you think about like uh Distribute, like we're we're in a competitive space as Adam and I were we're talking about before. We're also going for the the platform play.
So, you could build a widget in today's world. You could also build. So you could go like you can go like narrow and niche and like we're going to nail that market or you can go horizontal. Yeah, like you can go narrow.
Like I built Andy's LinkedIn tool.com in uh in a weekend. Um, which is out now, it's like my new LinkedIn tool and, you know, found it to app too, blah blah blah. But I built it in a weekend.
It's already making 10k a month. You know, so and like which is crazy, right? So, you know, I'm an engineer by trade, so don't think everyone, you know, I move fast and I've been doing this for 10, 15 years. You break stuff along the way and then you just fix it.
Yeah, I just I put it out there and I do it and I'm like, all right, we'll figure out the things later. I did not That's very interesting. I didn't know you were an engineer by trade. Cuz you are I know you from Brand 30 initially and you are so outgoing and friendly and like arguably boisterous like the sales guy, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I get that all the time. Yeah.
I'm a yapper, Adam. I'm a yapper. But very anti-engineer. But now that explains why not only have you been able to like build the stuff from a like, I'm going to build it and tinker it, but also scale it because you have that personality and arguably have the sales chops as well.
Yeah. Yeah, there's a good one of my favorite quotes. My mom had a version of this. So I'm going to, you know, you guys know Naval, like the tech philosopher guy.
But he has this great quote, which is like, learn to build, learn to sell. If you can do both, you'll be unstoppable. Right? And it's so true.
My mom, you know, growing up used to tell me a version of that. My mom's also like a entrepreneur and all that, you know. So she would tell me, she's like, hey, you got to learn to build things and you got to learn how when you build them, how to get people to buy them. You know, basically the same thing.
And that's why I studied engineering in the first place, because I was like, all right, I got to get good at building and then Outreach, and I kind of my whole life is just kind of molded like that. Maybe, I don't know if this is my mom or what, but, um, you know, seeing my mom do this stuff, build, she built uh X-ray labs in California. So, you know, she would do that and then she'd have to go get orthodontists to refer her patients and blah blah blah blah. So, um, you know, um, and she did that coming from Mexico illegally back in the day, and me and her grew up in the projects in LA.
You know, me with a single mom. So, she started out from nothing. Um, right, and, you know, so when it comes to like going from zero to one, like we've seen it. You know, I've seen the the poorest of the poor and then now now I'm very fortunate to be uh in an in another circumstance.
But going back to it, like I think that's the secret to, you know, education, and we can get into this. But like when I look at my son, I have a two and a half year old. I'm like, all right, learn to build stuff, man, and once you start building, we're going to teach you how to get it out there and get people to want it, right? And so, um, that's that's how I want my kids to be educated as well.
And, um, you know, so, yeah, we went on a tangent here. But just going off, uh, going back to your original question, what's the gap? Okay? So, let's go into that.
So, now that I've told you guys that the gap here, um, it's really noisy in the go-to-market space right now. Everyone and and their abuela, you know, is out there trying to um, build a go-to-market SAS tool. So, um, you know, it it's tough. And going back to what I was just saying, you can build a niche tool and you can have customers day one.
Or you can build a platform which fills many use cases, can't be copied over a weekend. And, you know, and, you know, it's a bigger play. You're trying to go enterprise and all that stuff. So, definitely a difference in the types of things you build, right?
Now, on the platform side, the gaps are that there's multiple use cases. So, what do you focus on, right? Like you got to figure out what that wedge is to get people in, you know? And like, for example, Gong, when they came to market, what was their wedge?
It was just a call recorder, right? Like call recorder, now it's everything. Outreach, it was the sequence, right? Uh, we can we can go ZoomInfo was the data.
Now they got, you know, it's it goes on and on and on. So, they do start niche. Um, I would stay. But when you have a deal room, by default, you're already starting kind of with multiple use cases and you need to figure out kind of that wedge to get people in.
So, we're trying to figure that out, right? And I think all the deal rooms are trying to figure out. So, they're going to listen to this and be like, all right, what's his answer? But I I haven't figured it out, guys.
I'm I'm watching you guys too. So, um, so we're trying to figure that out like what's the wedge that's going to get us more scalable growth right now? Because we're we're working our ass off for top of funnel. Like it's, you know, Everyone.
Everyone. It's it's like It's like number one problem we hear from founders and CEOs. Where where the stabilization piece. Where the fuck is my top of funnel?
Yeah, back to the stabilization piece Andy that we were talking about like you have you have this platform that you're trying to figure out how to get top of funnel. You have you you understand conceptually your your buying persona, you understand conceptually your ICP and you understand conceptually your value proposition. But of that value proposition, it sounds like it goes a bit wide. So it's like how do I take that one thing that I can like wedge in there and then expand?
Like is it an expansion motion that you guys are looking at? Yeah, uh for sure. I mean, landing expand is kind of, you know, definitely the deal. I think for us it's it's a couple things.
I think if we can get good reps in there that like are tech savvy initially, like this is the play, which I'm sure you guys know. When if we get one or two of those reps, we've had a few accounts that they it scales to 60, 80, 100 reps naturally. Like without even us having to touch it because we know how to build product. We're nerds.
Um, you know, it it so we have a good product. Like that's it just comes down to that. We can get into that. But I think the if you were to pick one thing to be good at, it's like have a freaking awesome product.
Um and then we get and then you can and then a lot of the other stuff, you don't have to be perfect at, right? So, we're, you know, even though we have a great product and it's getting harder to actually do that because now you have to get discovered. But like I said, once we get discovered and reps in there, they go, I can't live without this anymore. Right?
But there's so much noise out there. AI this, AI that, go-to-market this. I think every, like I said, everyone and their mom's trying to build for sales tech because you can show an ROI and everyone is always going to buy things that make them money, right? Or at least.
Can you show an ROI? What's that? Uh I I see a lot of sales tech out there that's not showing any damn ROI. So Yeah, well, like claim ROI.
Let's go claim ROI. They're all trying to claim it, right? So Yeah. And and that's actually a big topic, right?
Um, yeah. Is ROI and shifting pricing to ROI-based or usage-based. What what what are your thoughts on that? How do you how do you feel about shifting pricing from per user, per seat, et cetera, et cetera, um, Yeah.
I um, So, I don't think there's like a golden answer here, right? I think it I there's agents. So, agents are definitely going to be per task. But guess what?
Those those agents are going to be, you know, you can kind of like gather what they're doing every day, how they're doing every day, and they after they do their task, it's it's like a checkbox, right? It's very simple. Um, so that for that, that's going to be usage-based. That totally makes sense.
When you have um, more of like a platform type play, that's that's a lot harder because again, multiple use cases, right? So, then as a CFO, and we had this problem at Outreach actually back in the day, which is like, we we gave people our dialer, right? Which was usage-based. And then the dialer, every C I swear to God, every CFO at every company we worked with was like, why is the bill this much at the end of the month?
And like, the concept's cool, but the accountants actually hate this usage-based pricing from my experience, right? So, like, so, I think there's a there's like what sounds great, and then also like personally as a like I would rather pay a little more and know what I'm going to pay at the end of the month than not know because I just don't like that anxiety. So, you know, if you've ever read Psychology of Money, that's also a great book, highly recommend, and, you know, it kind of goes into how people think about money and not just for their personal lives, but business-wise. So, for me, I personally don't like that.
Going full circle back to the Psychology of Money here, I I think there's always going to be people that don't that like it and then don't like it. So, I don't think there's one best way. Um, is it a way to differentiate? Sure, right?
Like if, you know, a competitor wants to differentiate in the deal room market and do usage-based. Great. Um, I just think that's going to be tough because if you have multiple use cases, pricing that's going to be a nightmare. Coming up with one price is hard enough.
Yeah. Coming up with like Yeah. make it simple for people to buy. Like make like like reduce the friction on the way cuz you're talking about Psychology of Money, which is very interesting, which I think is where AI agents and credits and all that kind of stuff, there people don't know how much something costs.
Okay, to write an email, it costs this much per credit, but to build a business like an account plan, it's this much. That's it's a whole other topic. Yeah. One other quick thing I was thinking about as you were talking.
How fast do you believe a SAS technology vendor needs to prove ROI? Oh, wow. I mean, it depends, right? That's an it depends my um, It goes how fast do they need to prove ROI?
I will say, I don't know if there's an golden answer there. But it's getting it's becoming a world where that needs to be very quick, right? And again, it's definitely becoming a world where like, hey, there's so much software out there. Like, how's this going to help us?
This is why AI has exploded, by the way, because the ROI on like using an AI model to write you a cold email when it and it's 9 99% better than all other emails. Like, the ROI is just so clear on a lot of this AI stuff. So, that is also shifting the world and all the other products, right? To be like, hey, I'm used to being able to chat and have all the answers at my fingertips, right?
So, now buyers are kind of like I believe are like shifting in that motion where, hey, I need to know like, I message you and I need to know like what's this making? Like, what's this producing? What's the output, right? Like and of course, like I wish it was that easy.
But this whole chat instant answer and having the the world's knowledge at your fingertips, people getting in that motion, they're definitely expecting ROI a lot faster, right? So, yeah. I'm seeing like I I I I went from like, okay, six to eight months to like three months to like a month. I'm like, you know, like some of the stuff you can't even get people to use it enough from like an um, from like an adoption perspective to drive the ROI fast enough.
So, Yeah, yeah, it's it's uh but I would love to hear your guys' thoughts. Like what do you think? That's a great question. Let's face it, y'all.
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Dale Adam. On usage-based pricing and ROI-based pricing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What what what do you know?
It's So, we get asked all the time in similar form but slightly different like, okay, so we're going to contract with you guys, what type of ROI are we going to see? Right? Like, we're going to spend X amount of dollars per month. How quickly are we going to see new pipeline and how quickly are we going to see deals closed?
Um, and my answer would be somewhat the same in our world versus your world in software. I can give you all the tools, all the systems, all the processes. I could tell you exactly what to do, how to do, when to do. If your team don't do it, I can't be responsible for that.
So, to your point, you could have the best tool in the world. Your deal room could have a 97% conversion rate. But if 21 of my 25 reps say, I'm just not going to follow the process, does that mean that you shouldn't get paid? No.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I I I have an issue with it. Now, where I do think it comes in and where you could drive behavior is, listen, our pricing is XYZ.
We could certainly look at some type of uh incentives or rebates or whatever you want to call them based on ROI at the end of the year towards your renewal. Um, that's a whole separate big calculation we'd have to do. But like I'd be much more keen to do that versus, sure, we'll give you ROI-based pricing and then your team doesn't use it. No.
Not not a fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's again, it's one of those it depends, right? Like And luckily, I don't think everyone is expecting this usage-based pricing.
If it's all like agent type stuff where it's like, oh yeah, we go and check your, you know, data to see if someone changed jobs and like something simple. Sure, like that's usage-based, right? It's all computer-based. It's all like there's no people in the middle.
Like, great. But yeah, I think just certain like if you've got user like humans in there actually using the technology in order to make it work, it's going to be very tough to do the usage-based, um, model. And if it did work and it was profitable, you'd see more companies like SalesLoft and Outreach and all these Apollo, you'd see them doing it. Trust me, they're because they've they're they're thinking about it, but it and if it was more profitable and would work, they would do it.
Now, Course. Zapier usage-based, right? Again, it's like an agent. Hey, you send one, you know, thing or it's it's crazy.
Right. Yeah. You get charged one penny for everything you send. Yeah, exactly.
Like, oh, we sent this to a spreadsheet. There's a penny. Great. Right?
Like that was the way that was the way I always thought LinkedIn should price data, right? Every time you ping the API, it's a penny or whatever. So then both sides of like everyone can get the information. LinkedIn just put the wall up.
We won't we won't go through that process. But Yeah. Well, I'll tell you kind of like where I think the world's going to to differentiate if we're talking pricing here, right? Um, So, if you go to like the go-to-market Elite Circle, which is Adam what what we rebranded from Brand 30, I got to I got to remember to redirect Brand 30 that by the way.
I think it's broken. But, um, here's my reminder. Um, so with that, what did we do? So, what I when I build things, I'm like, well, what's the biggest pain in my ass?
And how do I like, how do I make this tool kind of self-serve, right? Yeah. And I'm like, I don't want to deal with churn. I don't want to think about churn.
I'm I'm fully focused on distribute, but this is a moneymaker, this tool over here, right? So, I said, all right, to prevent churn, what did we do? What do we offer? So, we actually offered a community, the Go Brand 30 Elite Mark, you know, Elite Circle is what we call it, along with the SAS.
So, now, when when you're paying the 99 bucks a month for my SAS, guess what? You are also part of the community. So, what does that do? People don't want to leave the community even if they're not using the SAS.
Right? And so we actually played into that. So, that's kind of uh a lot of people hit me up and they're like, oh, I see what you're doing here. And it's it's just a different way to to do an offer, right?
Right. And so that's kind of the way we're actually doing it. Now, this is a low-ticket item. This isn't a mid like high ticket.
I'm still thinking about how we can make that better. But it doesn't matter. Like it it's all about value to the price of whatever you're charging, right? So, whether it's a low-ticket item or you're charging 50 a user per month, or you're charging, you know, you know, $20,000 for, you know, a year, whatever it sounds like.
Like, what is the value they're pulling out of it? Back to the like when do we get the ROI and the value comp, the value question. Like, the faster you can do it. And because we have things like Instagram and like all this other stuff that's like instant gratification.
So, it's not even technology. It's like we have instant gratification all over the place. So, people are like, if I can't see value out of it when I log into it and start using it, like they just bounce. And so I think that becomes a really tricky like my biggest thing with SAS today is adoption.
And how do you get people into your technology sooner? Like, So, we we started this this uh competition on the Oura Ring. Like we we all have Oura Rings and we've been thinking about it. But when I think about the app, the Oura Ring app, I go in every day to check like how I'm doing against somebody else, to check how my sleep score was, to check like So, because I'm an I I also am an engineer by trade.
So, like my focus goes right to, how can I get this person in the app on a at least a daily if not like a weekly basis? So, there's like usability throughout that process. Yeah. And it or the Oura Ring is a dumb app.
Like it's not it's not like super I mean, there's smart stuff in there, but it's not like you don't think like when I wake up in the morning, I should check like my Oura Ring app. You should check LinkedIn or I'm checking something else. Is Adam on it? Is Adam on the Oura Ring app?
Yeah. All of our partners. You got Is that two, Adam, or one wedding ring? Well, one one's a wedding ring.
Oh, okay. I was like, okay, he's doing Yeah. don't trust the data. Okay.
Um, dude, so guys, I I was going to I my wife lost my Oura Ring and my wedding ring somehow. So, literally like two weeks ago. So, I'm trying to find it. So, I was going to say, let's add you.
But I just thought that I got to go actually freaking find my wedding ring and my Oura. Um, but I'll yeah, it's I I I would prioritize the wedding ring if I were you. Just a little little bit of marriage advice for someone who's on number two. Oh, are you on number two as well?
Oh, okay. You know Adam Robinson, we were we were wake serving last weekend and Nice. I was like, my wife was like, oh, take your rings off. And I'm like, remember, I don't have my rings.
Uh she's like, oh shit, yeah. And he's like, oh, don't worry, dude. I've gone through like three of them. Uh and I'm like, oh shit, okay, so I'm not the only one.
That's why So, fun true true story. He was talking about wives and not rings, by the way. He was talking about wives. Yeah.
But but in my drawer is a backup silicone wedding ring. And it looks it it looks the same as my black one. But like I do have a second wedding ring in my drawer. Oh, nice, smart dude.
Smart, okay, okay. Yeah, I've seen dudes wearing those. I need to get I just need to find my real one and then we'll go from there, man. Um, but anyways, guys, so yeah, I think going back to what you were saying, Dale, um, you know, it kind of plays in yeah, the tech is great and people can reproduce that.
But what you're getting into as well is like the community aspect of it. Right? And I think as as we have AI, you could build stuff fast. I mean within a year, like you're going to you're going to be able to just talk to it and it'll build anything you want, right?
Like this is what's going to happen. Absolutely. Now, you still have to have some And this is coming from someone who builds apps, right? And in a year, it's going to be like you talk to it and it'll build you anything you want, right?
And and then then it's going to come down to like style and design, like brand. And then it's going to come down to community, right? Like what are the moats that are going to be left? Like Yep.
You know, you look at all these like D2C drink companies. All the ingredients are the same. Same. Right?
Same exact ingredients in in in all these drinks, but people buy the other one over like Liquid Death is an an amazing example. It's freaking water. Like I wanted unlimited for my sink for free. But I still pay the three bucks because I'm like, hell yeah, like it's cold and it looks cool.
You know? So, so, you know, I think a lot about this because my investors always like, what's you know, whenever you're raising or dealing with all this, they go, what's your moat? And I'm just honest with them. I'm like, honestly, there is no moat left besides brand and community.
Like, Right. And if someone tells you like, uh, otherwise, they might be high. They're they're is going to be some technology like like crazy high-tech battery technology or nuclear or something that takes millions of dollars to develop. Sure, sure.
No one can do that over a weekend. So, we're talking about SAS here though. Like simple widgets, simple tools, you know, like you DocuSign, they'll get and this is me, you know, like there was a kid online that rebuilt DocuSign in two days. I I saw it like with three tools, he basically rebuilt a free version for himself of DocuSign.
Exactly, exactly. So, it's like, it's crazy, right? And Right. That's where the world is going.
And so there's a shift also happening from like, and who knows what's going to happen because my predictions, you know, some aren't always the most accurate. But if you were to think like, where's the world going? For me, if we're looking at a software for something, I just go and build it. Right.
So, we're moving to this world of personal software. I do believe that's where it's going or almost personalized software, right? So, then you start to think, well, crap, like, are people going to need to build these platforms anymore? Are they just going to build exact because the platforms are still one to many.
You're trying to appease a few different Yes, like one ICP and sure that's, you know, whatever. But still, you if you have tens of thousands of users, you're still trying to make all those people happy. But if you had something just internal that you could spin up like that, built it for you. So, what what what does that mean for the state of SAS?
That's as as a SAS founder. Exactly. Well, dude, I I mean, I again, I was with Adam, we talked about this every freaking time. Uh we're like, dude, like in three years, we're we're out of a job.
Like, you know, like Make the money now. Yeah, we're like, we're out of a job or what? No, I don't I think entrepreneurs, founders, like yourselves, like me, like we'll always like figure something out. But, uh if you have that mindset.
But, um, in reality, though, I think, I think, you know, is SAS dead? No, it's not dead. It's going to take a long time for corporations to to, you know, uh figure this out. But, um, I think the golden era is definitely like of building of becoming a unicorn, building a platform.
Like, is going to be tough. You're either going to build something and it's going to grow to a hundred million in 20 months, like cursor. I don't know if you saw that. But like, that's what I used to code.
And, you know, and yeah, you use it and the first time you use it, you're like, holy shit, this is magic, right? And you're like, I wouldn't, you know, whatever. But then now I also use a different version of cursor WinSurf and I pay them too. So, like, I'm paying for two cuz I like it a little bit, you know, I've used one for one, one for another.
And so then you start to think about like, okay, well, how's this going to work in in the software in the SAS world? So, Yeah. There'll be consolidation for sure. It's just like GPT, it's just like Chat Open AI and Anthropic.
I mean, everyone like everyone's got their own little flavor of things, which may be interesting from a compatibility perspective at some point in the SAS world. Like maybe we go back to like pure pass play instead of like the SAS play where you're taking these individual personalized applications that can connect together at some level to provide some data at the bottom of it. Yeah, and it's going to be almost like, uh, what are you paying for like, you know, when you go to the store and you buy water? Like, what are you really paying for?
You're paying for convenience. Sure. 100%. So, what I think is like, SAS will never die, let's say, cuz like a lot of people they're not going to want to maintain build and maintain.
So, most people think build, oh yeah, you build it and then you're good. Maintaining it is always the the harder part, right? So, it's a convenience factor at that point. So, you're going to have to be selling.
It's the same thing as it's the same thing as go-to-market. Like this whole thing with go-to-market. Like, let me ask you let me ask you a question. How often should you change your go-to-market strategy?
Like your ICP, buying persona, value proposition? Like what's your philosophy on changing it? Or at least let me change the question a little bit. Pressure testing it.
So, maybe not changing it, but how often would you pressure test these things? Um, so me, we it's like doing LinkedIn content. Once you figure out one thing, you double down on it and keep doubling down on what works. But we're always also experimenting.
So, you know, we're always pressure testing essentially, right? So, Almost always. Almost always. Yeah, you're always you're always trying to what do we like you're always trying to find the edge, right?
What's the edge? But guess what? Like 98% of the people like are running playbooks and ICPs from like three years ago. And it's like, why am I not getting top of funnel?
It's like, well, you're probably actually talking to the wrong people by the way. And your competitor has moved through and your value proposition is way old. Yeah. But standing out now, again, like is harder than ever.
Like we started this conversation, Andy, with you talking about how you want more top of funnel. You and everyone else, and I mean no disrespect by that, shit, we want more top of funnel. Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's the game, right? Yeah.
But standing out because of AI, because of things like Outreach and SalesLoft and SmartLead and Instantly and all the other shit out there, I I literally if I were to look at my phone right now, I probably have 30 missed calls today and probably 50 missed cold emails. How do you stand out other than go to network? Yeah, and people ask me, they're like, you have a great LinkedIn. Like you you can do it.
And I'm like, dude, it's it's yes, it works, but it's not um, it's not the silver bullet, right? Don't get me wrong. It's a freaking hack for sure, right? But it helps, but it just because you have a good LinkedIn following, good content doesn't mean you're going to blow up your product, right?
So, um, you know, and maybe that's a positioning thing. Maybe that's an offer thing. Maybe that's a there's a lot of competitors in the market thing, you know, there's a lot of factors, but the one thing I will say is the people that are going to win, I have this saying that the people that experiment the most are going to win the most. 100%.
That's it. It's just who can have systems to to constantly as Dale says, pressure test or experiment? And it's just like I I kind of go back to like uh media buyers. Like this it's a good analogy cuz it's very similar to go-to-market where if you look at their process, um cuz I went through it because I was starting to run ads and do all this stuff.
And like Facebook now does all the targeting and all the hard parts for you. All you got to focus on is good creatives. So, what are they doing now? They're constantly testing creatives to see which one makes money.
And then once they find one that makes money, they put more spin towards it. Guess what? Back to basics, right? Yep.
Not and you don't need to know all the crazy targeting and all that. Facebook just their AI does it for you. And so what are they now doing? They're experimenting with all the creative.
And the people that are actually doing the best with paid ad campaigns right now, these all I know my wife runs uh sales at Attentive, which is uh, you know, an e-comm company. So, we talked to a lot of e-comm and I hear a lot of e-comm people who run ads and, you know, all that stuff. And the people who win are just the ones that are constantly trying to figure out what the right creative is and experimenting. And so, they're doing it if they're doing 10x more creative tests, they're learning ten times faster or even more, right?
And so, Well, that's Yeah, that's just like Gary Vaynerchuk, right? He built a whole media platform just to do creative on it, right? Yeah. And like That is what he did.
Yeah, and so you just got to test like, So for us, we have this, you know, we have this, uh, if you want to call it a, you know, one of our cultural checkboxes for the company or whatever, but it's like, always be experimenting. ABE. Like always be like And no one has the right answer until we figure out and experiment and prove that that is the right answer. Right?
Or we got what works. Yeah. So, build shit. Always be experimenting.
Yeah. So, build shit, sell shit, and experiment like hell. Yeah, and and experiment, repeat. Literally that's it.
Like So for us, every time I post a LinkedIn post, we have a spreadsheet of like, okay, what did this do? What did this work? And boom. And then What if it what if it be amazing if LinkedIn let you export that shit?
I'm just saying. Yes. Dude, don't get me started. But yes, exactly.
And we test that and then guess what? Then we we just make more content based on the stuff that work we know works, right? And like a lot of it is just like recycled of what we know already works. Like it's not we're not creating things from scratch every time.
That would be a waste. That'd be like you'd be you'd be that'd be crazy. That'd be crazy. I mean, that that goes for anyone, though.
Like if you're not going back through whether you're using a tool or whether you're doing it by yourself and looking at, hey, this type of post, video, what whatever, did the best. And this topic did the best. And like tweaking your content to that, you you're in this rat race in the the cycle. And all you're going to do is keep posting shit.
And you might get the occasional one-off. And listen, not every post is going to go viral. But I promise you if I look at my posts, whether it's about leadership or founder led sales or my kid or health or whatever, I guarantee you there's one that if I post about, I'm going to get better results than the other. Like it's just a fact.
Um, I love that you're tracking that. Track everything. Um, iterate on everything. Experiment often.
Perfection is the enemy of progress. Um, and just build shit and ship it, man. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It's it's all about the experimentation, man. Like most people um, they a lot of people talk about systems, right? And like systems but they talk about systems for things that work, right?
And they're like, oh, well, then we know this works. Let's put a system. But no one has a system to keep experimenting. That's actually where all the learning comes in.
Right? And so like for cold email, right? We we actually run our cold email just like ad campaigns, believe it or not. So, they're direct response.
So, we're we're literally doing the same thing. I have a campaign that I know that works, right? And then I have another two other campaigns always running that are testing new language. And then we're comparing those two against the one that we know works.
And guess what? If C is beating out A that I've had running for six months, then we're going to move that into. Times change. Right?
What uh what tool what tool do you use for cold email? Uh Instantly. I use Instantly. Yeah, so we have a bunch of domain yeah, we do all the hacky, you know, crazy stuff.
But I'm always curious who like Instantly versus SmartLead. They're the two big big ones. Yeah, SmartLead's great too. These are good.
They're both great. Yeah. We use Smart we just started with Instantly, but SmartLead's great. Um, so yeah, they're both awesome.
Whatever one you use. Again, it doesn't it's like the questions people like, should I use Photoshop or Figma? Whichever one you like better. And whichever one you're more comfortable with.
It ain't the tool, man. It's it's it's you and and how you use it, right? And so, 100%. Um, they they all pretty much do the same thing.
So, um, yeah, you know, I think when you think about it, it's it's this experimentation mindset that I think a lot of people, um, aren't used to. And fast experimentation, just because how fast the world works. And that's what people, that's really the big change that's happening in companies is holy shit, we need to like, if we're pivoting and we need to figure out like, well, how do we get more top, you know, top of funnel pipeline? Most of the time it's not just a checkbox.
What do you got to do? You got to try a bunch of shit. And the faster you try the new things, the faster you learn. So, it goes back to that old startup mantra, you know, build fast or whatever and break shit, you know, whatever.
But it's it's actually become more real than ever, I think, in today's age. So, 100%. We could um, we could go on and on and on. Um, God knows Dale could go on and on and on.
Dude, I have if we look at the word count on this episode, you win for sure. Um, I win I win everything. I I I mean you you got Yeah, yeah, put up your Oura Ring thing, dude. Let's see, man.
I I I shared my sleep score today on LinkedIn. Um, I'm not ready to share my fitness score at the moment. Hey, dude hey, did you beat Brian Johnson though on your sleep score? I have no idea what you're talking about.
You don't know who Brian the guy who wants the don't die guy? Have you guys heard of him? No, tell me more. He like has every like Oh my gosh.
He's a He's a big tech guy or he was a tech guy. He sold oxygen blah blah blah. He sold company PayPal or you know, Brain Tree or whatever. Or he started Brain Tree, I think.
And uh the payments company and and now he's on this kick. He has a Netflix documentary called Don't Die. Yeah. And and what he's trying to do, Adam, is is not actually not die.
He knows he's going to die at some point, but prolong the shit out of his life. And so he takes like over a hundred vitamins a day. He like measures his nighttime erections like as a as a measurement of like healthiness. Like, you know, like he does all this crazy shit to like stay alive.
Like I just added it to my list. Add it add it to if you're on Twitter, follow him on Twitter. Like I can't do Twitter. That's a whole separate conversation.
But I did add it to my Netflix list. Okay. Um, all right, let's do some rapid fire. Um, before we wrap and roll.
All right, so you're not you're not allowed to be in tech, you're not allowed to be an engineering. What profession are you going to be in? Dude, honestly. Guitar playing.
Yeah, you you were late, so you missed that whole conversation, my friend. Yeah, honestly, what would I be? Um, Shit, man. Well, I always told my grandma growing up I was going to be a uh uh Mexican novela, uh TV star.
So, yeah. Nice. TV star. There you go.
I like it. Yeah. Let's keep it going. Yeah.
What's more difficult? Starting up distribute and getting from one zero to one, zero to five or when you're at outreach getting into the the repeatability stage. They're getting true repeatability in your process and sales. Oh, man.
Different times. So Yeah. That's what I mean. That's like totally different.
It's kind of hard to do a like apples to apples to apples comparison. But starting anything from zero is is just way harder, right? Like it's just way harder. You got a lot of variables on the outreach side.
You got to like hire people, you got to like, you know, broken product pieces. Like Well, then you go back to that product market fit and that kind of solves a lot of like I said, good product. Product market solves 99% of your fucking problems. Yeah, but also product market fit, right?
Like if you're the top product in that product market fit thing, like That's easy. That's easy. Yeah. You've seen some of these companies like they're just like they're they're it's not like they have a magic secret, you know, like I talked to someone who worked with Dell, right?
And of course Dell is huge and he was he helped them on with marketing early on. And I go, dude, like what did you do to help them blow up, right? Cuz that's like the question, right? Like And he goes, honestly, dude, I'm not going to lie to you.
It was just right time, right place. It was a lot of luck. Like it was a lot of luck. And if you ask the founder, he'll tell you the same exact thing.
So, right time, right place, right idea, right? And so, you know, that's why I think a lot of that other stuff, you can solve and sometimes it's a pain in the ass and hiring and firing and doing all that. But like it's just part of the process. But like getting to a point where you can actually have the ability to hire is like that's awesome, right?
So, yeah, I think I think it it zero to one is hard. But like maniacs like me love it. Like Sure. Once Distribute gets flying like it will I stay running Distribute?
I don't know. Cuz I love the zero to one phase. No. You'll go build something else.
Yeah. What's your what's your favorite guilty pleasure snack? Oh, dude, I love ice cream. I love ice cream, dude.
Oh my god. What flavor? You only have one flavor for the rest of your life. Ice cream, cookies and cream.
Nice. Yeah, love it. Early bird or night owl? Uh, oh, early bird, dude.
Yeah, yeah. I'm in bed by nine. Yeah. Brad Johnson.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, before him, I was in bed by nine, but yeah, I'm an early bird, man. I love it. What's um, what's the first app you check when you wake up in the morning?
Um, probably Slack. Some of my team's in in uh in Europe. So, they're ahead and I'm just like, oh shit, is is everything okay? Yeah.
Last one. Last one is we wrap up. Dream vacation destination. Oh, man.
Dream vacation destination. Um, the only So, the only continent I haven't been on is Antarctica. So, I want to do Antarctica and like what, you know, am I going to see penguins and ice? But like, I just want to step foot on there and that's my dream vacation.
Um for now. So, like, yeah, just to just to like have hit every continent. Awesome. Yeah.
Andy, thank you so much for joining, for spending some time with us, for hanging out. Where can people check out distribute? Distribute.so.
Distribute.so, that's it. And then LinkedIn. That's it, guys.
My LinkedIn, distribute.so. Boom. That's it.
Awesome. So, distribute.so, LinkedIn. Go check out distribute.
Andy, thanks for joining the show, man. Guys, you're awesome. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thank you, Adam. Appreciate it, guys. Thank you.