Crunchbase started as a tool built by Techcrunch and was in the unique position of having product market fit and brand awareness before spinning out as its own company. Since then, the product has transformed from being a database to a SaaS company that helps companies close more B2B deals. Throughout that journey, Shanee has maintained a perspective of balance between right brain and left brain, growth and profitability.  

In this episode, we talk with Shanee about how she manages good growth in the current environment. 

Key Lessons:

• Having a hybrid go-to-market motion that includes both product-led growth and sales teams helps to diversify how revenue is generated, the quality of revenue, and the type of customers that you can serve
• Marriage is a good metaphor for growth. When you’re doing growth, you’re essentially proposing to prospects. You need to invest in developing relationships before you can propose. 
• Cross-functional growth squads that include product, engineering, marketing, and sales create very effective collaboration for smaller companies and startups and career opportunities for those team members
• There are always some teams that are flying closer to the sun, and other teams that are farther out from the sun. The latter group should be ready with strategies so they can hit the ground running when they move closer to the sun
• Don’t think about it as trying to do more with less. Try to have the most impact that you can. 

Shanee Ben-Zur is the Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Crunchbase. She is responsible for the full marketing funnel as well as the company’s product-led growth strategy. Shanee is one part analytical realist and one part creative optimist, which serves as a winning combination when leading modern go-to-market teams. Prior to joining Crunchbase, Shanee built teams and scaled global B2B and B2C brands—Salesforce, NVIDIA, and PlayStation (SCEA)--and supported fast-growing startups including Dropbox, where she worked pre and post IPO. In these roles, Shanee developed deep insights into how companies can efficiently establish product-market-fit, acquire customers, engage users, grow communities, and increase revenue through self-serve, direct sales, and product-led growth motions.

Some argue that the metaverse has arrived, while others disagree. This point of contention is why we decided to take a detour in this episode away from our usual focus on the Plus 1 stage of growth for companies to talk about the metaverse as an example of an emerging technology breaking through the Plus 1 stage of growth. Jessica Outlaw is a metaverse researcher and storyteller, and she guides us as we explore the ethical frontiers of the metaverse. 

In this episode, Jessica shares her insights on how mindful and ethical product design creates competitive advantages for technology companies. 

Key Lessons:

• Describing a new technology by framing it with an existing technology helps people get comfortable with new technology
• The adoption curve for new technologies often starts with enterprise customers first, which then helps consumers see the value and buy it for themselves.  
• PMs should be mindful about data collection and retention policies, especially with biometric data, and think carefully about how the data could be used. 
• Designing products for privacy, accessibility, and inclusion can be a competitive advantage by building trust with users.

Resources:

• The Extended Mind: https://www.extendedmind.io/
• XR Access: https://xraccess.org/
• Rise of Privacy Tech: https://www.riseofprivacytech.com/
• 2021 Privacy Survey: https://www.extendedmind.io/survey
• 2017 study of Women's first time experiences in social vr: https://www.extendedmind.io/why-women-dont-like-social-virtual-reality
• The weaponization of app data (this is a mobile example): https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkbxp8/grindr-location-data-priest-weaponization-app.
• 'Anonymised' data can never be totally anonymous https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/23/anonymised-data-never-be-anonymous-enough-study-finds
• VR and accessibility: https://www.theinformation.com/articles/vr-is-failing-the-very-people-it-could-benefit-most
• Psychopolitics by Byung-Chul Han: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2505-psychopolitics
• The Voices of VR Podcast which has a catalogue of more than 1000 interviews with VR/AR/Metaverse creators: https://voicesofvr.com/

Jessica Outlaw is a behavioral scientist and the founder of The Extended Mind. She creates decision tools to advance social and behavioral science into emerging technologies. She focuses on virtual and augmented reality because of their potential to give people new experiences of understanding data, co-locating across distance, and how embodiment can influence decision-making. She is the author of a book on cognitive biases in product development and another on decision-making. She is the creator of the online course the Tech Ethics Toolkit offered Spring every year.

Imagine growing from $2B in revenue to $26B in revenue. Imagine scaling from 3,500 employees to 75,000 employees. This is the Plus 1... no scratch that... Plus Infinity, rocket ship stage of growth that our special guest, Sean Alpert, was part of during his eleven years at Salesforce. As the company expanded from three product lines to many, Sean and the product marketing team used messaging frameworks to tell a cohesive story and excite customers.

In this episode, Sean shares the valuable lessons from Salesforce that he’s now applying at Qualified about how to tell a billion dollar story. 

Key Lessons:

• An aspirational message paints a view of what the future is going to look like for your customers and motivates them to buy your product rather than enumerating every feature.
• Trendjacking ties your messaging to something that people are really paying attention to in order to harness the momentum of the trend.
• Messaging hierarchy starts with one key message at the top, and organizes messaging for individual apps to ladder up to the bigger message.

Sean Alpert is the SVP of Product Marketing for Qualified, the #1 Pipeline Generation Platform for Salesforce Customers. Previously, he worked at Salesforce for 11 years, where he did marketing for the Salesforce Platform, Einstein Analytics, Sales Cloud, and the Corporate Messaging team. Before Salesforce, he worked in marketing at Cisco Systems, Amazon.com, and Appian Corporation. He attended Dartmouth College for undergrad and got his MBA at Kellogg.