Two months ago, Meerkat didn’t even exist. Today, the live-streaming app has over 700,000 active users, including people like Jimmy Fallon and Madonna.
It all started as a side project. Founder Ben Rubin had been working on live-streaming products as part of his job at Life On Air, and he thought it’d be fun to work on Meerkat in his spare time.
But then Meerkat took off.
Sometimes, when it comes to budget, marketers and their colleagues in the finance can find themselves on different pages. If you’ve ever asked to move budget from one budget to another, or requested more money to support an idea that wasn’t part of the yearly planning process, then you know what I mean. The back-and-forth can be frustrating for Marketing and Finance alike.
If this sounds a little like the relationship you have with your finance department, then you’re not alone.
Bill Macaitis knows something about growth. In his two years as Zendesk’s top marketer, he helped take the company from venture-funded startup to an IPO resulting in a $1.7 billion market cap. When he led online marketing and operations at Salesforce, he helped grow revenues from $900M to $3 billion. Now, he’s the CMO at Slack, the 17-month old messaging startup that’s rumored already to be worth $2.76 billion.
What’s the secret to his latest company’s growth?
If the thought of speaking in front of a crowd makes you uneasy, you’re not alone. According to a study by Chapman University, public speaking is the number one fear in America — followed closely by heights and then by bugs, snakes, and other animals. (Strangely enough, Americans are more afraid of zombies than we are of clowns or ghosts … but that’s a blog post for another day.)
Being humble keeps you hungry.
– Christine Tsai, Founding Partner, 500 Startups (Click to Tweet)
Venture capitalists aren’t often known for their humility, but Christine Tsai represents a notable exception to the rule. A founding partner at 500 Startups and former Googler and YouTube leader, Christine is the embodiment of someone who brought growth to life as both an investor and an operator.
The program began as it always did — with a spritely, “Welcome to INBOUND Radio on SiriusXM channel 125.” Host Mike Volpe went on to introduce the day’s guests. First up was a prominent Stanford medical researcher, who’d made a breakthrough in Parkinson’s treatment thanks to the millions of iPhone and Apple Watch users who volunteered to have their health monitored through their mobile devices. “Giving away your health data is about as inbound as it gets,” observed Volpe when he wrapped up the interview from HubSpot’s brand new Cambridge recording studio.
This post originally appeared on Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.
You didn’t get into this business to spend your days arguing. Conflict resolution was certainly not in your job description when you started out as a designer, account manager, or copywriter. Instead, you daydream about quiet days agonizing over creative — not being on stage in a courtroom.
But the reality is that you have to lead the charge for your agency, and that sometimes requires you to deal with hard-bargaining clients who want more work at less money.
The first 100 days at a new company or in a new role are critical for your future success. To demonstrate your effectiveness and make your boss happy that they hired you, you should aim to achieve wins early and often. These wins could be as simple as showing your team that you are a curious, lifelong learner or as complicated as leading a team to hit aggressive goals.
To help you figure out make a splash at your new job, you should check out our new ebook: The First 100 Days: How to Succeed in Your New Marketing Job.
We all know how frustrating it is to lose an argument — especially when you believe strongly in the value of your idea. If you’re going to get better at convincing others, you need to figure out why you lose arguments in the first place (and then avoid those mistakes in the future).
Most of the time, you can find a specific diagnosis for your lost arguments. Did you lose the argument because you relied on anecdotes to support your claim?Continue Reading
If you’re a marketing leader who knows the value of inbound marketing, you may have already implemented pieces of inbound into your overall marketing strategy. And you’re probably finding that you need to shift resources around — or get more of them — to make the changes needed to increase lead generation, reduce costs, and grow new markets.
Another obstacle that could be standing between you and your vision for more effective marketing? Your Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
The world “culture” is a little misleading. People often think that it’s about having foosball tables and free beer in the fridge. That has nothing to do with the culture. Culture is how people behave when you’re not looking.
– Will Dean
On this episode of The Growth Show, HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe sits down with Will Dean, the founder and CEO of Tough Mudder.
Most people have one approach when it comes to management and leadership. To motivate their team, managers will resort to punishments or rewards. They offer up fun prizes for the top performers and performance plans to those at the bottom — and hope that those incentives will make their team produce top-notch results.
But that approach doesn’t always work. People need to feel meaning in their actions and jobs, not just consequences.
The number one mistake marketers make is assuming the customer is ready to buy the first time they come into contact with your business.
– David Skok
On this episode of The Growth Show, HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe sits down with David Skok from Matrix Partners. Skok started his first company in 1977 at age 22, and since then has started four separate companies, three of which went public.
This post originally appeared on the Sales section of Inbound Hub. To read more content like this, subscribe to Sales.
Company culture is something that is very close to me. I refer to myself as an HR-driven CEO, and I mean it. If someone at VaynerMedia is unhappy, it is entirely my fault. Period.
