Lisa:
Welcome to the Atlanta Startup Podcast, the briefing room for the innovation ecosystem. I’m Lisa Calhoun, your host and general partner Atlanta Venture Capital firm Valor Ventures. On this show. I bring you the investors, the founders, and the activators creating the fastest emerging venture capital ecosystem in the country.
Matt Sniff from MapMyCustomers, a Valor portfolio firm– it is so exciting to welcome an actual Valor founder to the Atlanta Startup Podcast!
Matt:Thanks for having me. Really excited to chat on the show. I know we’re not in Atlanta, you know, company per se, but it certainly feels like a part of our heart as in Atlanta. So excited to be here.
Lisa:Tell us what you’re working on now.
Matt: You know, I never thought of it really as being in startups when I started doing startups back around freshman year of college. So that was about 10 years ago. Really got into it pretty hard, pretty quickly –developed a bunch of applications for the iPhone back when I was in school as well as a handful of websites and stuff like this and really just got super interested in making things that people like to use.
And you know, that was always the main thing was building stuff that actually folks got value from and folks could give you feedback on it that you can make bette, over and over, very quickly. So it was always just a very satisfying cycle. And you know, my path led me to be a developer in San Francisco for a company called Climate Corp. I was there for a little while and it was always working on something on the side.
The tool that I started building on the side was actually a Christmas present for my father back in 2014. Right before 2015 it started and it kind of just took off, right? I started developing it for him as you know, a tool to basically help him be more productive in the field. He’s a field sales rep and so what he does is goes around and travels all the time to basically sell his good, which is flooring, hardwood flooring, vinyl flooring, stuff like this to businesses.
He’s been doing that for a very long time and to be able to produce a technology that actually makes it more productive for something he’s been doing for such a long time was pretty cool. It really grew pretty quickly. So, you know, I put this on the app store you know, sort of at his suggestion and it started to kind of grow from there. Once it hit about a hundred paying customers, that was kind of the threshold where I told myself, if I can hit a hundred paying customers who aren’t, you know, my neighbors or my dog or my family friends, then it would be worthwhile to take this full time. And it would be a mistake not to. And then that’s exactly what I did. So I took MapMyCustomers full time in February of 2016 and didn’t really raise any money until the following year. So about exactly a year after that. And then both years, subsequently from there I raised capital again.
Lisa:
So you, did you build this all in San Francisco or did you choose to move somewhere else?
Matt:
I was only in San Francisco for the first year– the first 12 or 14 months. Once I left Climate Corp, I had to immediately vacate San Francisco just off of a financial premise alone. It wasn’t really feasible to be there with the kind of revenue that we had. So I moved back East. I was actually in the Carolinas for some time. We landed in Richmond, Virginia for five months and went through a great program called Lighthouse Labs there, which is a nonprofit accelerator. So they don’t take equity in your company and they basically give you $20,000 bucks to work on your company and your idea for the summer. So we went through that program and that was a really good experience where we met our seed investors down in Raleigh, North Carolina. And from there we were in Raleigh for two years. We still have some folks in Raleigh. We’re just not centrally located in Raleigh anymore. And you know, basically kickstarted the cycle of fundraising.
Lisa:
So Lighthouse is a nonprofit accelerator that took no equity… That is a story. I think a lot of founders who are listening will be interested to hear because that’s becoming a more and more popular option. And you know, ecosystem builders that like Lighthouse Labs, is that what it was called?
MATT Yeah, it’s called lighthouse labs in Richmond, Virginia.
LISA: Awesome. And so what brought you to New York?
MATT:
That was an interesting move and it was atypical for a couple of reasons. First being, we did not move there to raise money. And that would be the first guest I think of most startup founders is you would move to a bigger city. Atlanta is a big city for someone who’s, you know, been operating in Raleigh for a couple of years. You know, it wasn’t the case. We didn’t go there to raise money. So when we moved up, it was kind of a limitation we had down in the North Carolina market where we weren’t getting enough candidates. And I think that was just because, you know, I moved directly into Raleigh not having ever lived there before. And so as a founder, it was really difficult to break through without a network. And even if I spent the next, you know, which I did two years building a network, you know, even through like our seed investors and whatnot it could only go so far and I think, you know, warm introductions are great.
Even in like sales, you know, warm introductions are the best, but they only take you so far. So you know, in New York was just a lot of opportunity for business development as well as hiring people. And there’s a whole lot of people to hire in New York, but I think, you know, has it been flawless and perfect for us? Absolutely not. But is there a large pool? Well, people who are very hungry. And it’s not like those things don’t exist in other places or doubt in the North Carolina region. It was just sort of, you know, what we went for and we did end up raising a little bit of money, but not a lot in New York, specifically from New York investors. Actually, you know, the overwhelming majority of our money came from the Southeast, from Raleigh to Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale.
Lisa:
Great. So your lead investor right now –and we’re really excited to be a part of the round at Valor– is Las Olas out of Florida. And then Valor got to participate in that round, which was I think your first equity round. What what happened since then in terms of how working with investors remotely– has it supported or maybe not supported the company well enough because I think founders make these tough calls all the time about who to have on their cap table.
Matt:
Yeah, it’s interesting. So what I would say to that is it hurts, it hurts the founder a little bit more than maybe the investor knows, because you know, especially if you’re an earlier stage, a founder and younger founder, maybe first time founder, you want more, you know, sort of interaction and help and guidance from your investors. And a lot of that sort of just implicitly happens through being where they physically are. So Co-founders Capital is a fantastic firm. I think they’ve done a really good job of still working with us, even though we’re remote. You know, but when I go down there, you know, obviously it’s very helpful to have conversations off the record and stuff like this when you’re actually physically there. You know, other than that, you know, I think Las Olas is actually in Fort Lauderdale, but they’re kind of decentralized. A lot of the partners are spread throughout the country. So that’s been interesting. But they’re in New York quite a bit, which is pretty helpful. So that’s been pretty good.
In Valor’s case, you invite us down for a lot of events and stuff like that, which we took advantage of last year for founder’s day. And that was pretty cool. There’s a whole lot of value you guys provide even when I’m not physically in Atlanta, from customer connections to being able to connect us to, you know, candidates as well as just talk about strategy you know, for go to market. And stuff like this. So as far as like sort of feeling like I’m missing out on something, it’s probably more on the side of like a maybe founder therapy than anything else. Like the human connection is lost even on a video call. So from like you know, being able to connect with someone who’s been there, done, which a lot of our investors have been operators in the past, that is best done in person. Of course, it always will be. So that’s lost. But, you know, aside from that, as long as we can make regularly scheduled trips and, you know, regularly scheduled meetings in person happen, it’s not such a big deal per se.
Lisa
So MapMyCustomers has been growing a lot, learning a lot, releasing cool new software. For the listeners out there, actually, please just tell us what you do in your own words.
Matt: MapMyCustomers is focused on the problem of the traveling salesperson. So we work with folks who operate in the field to sell something to either an individual or a business to help them be in the right place with the right customer at the right time or the right prospect at the right time. So kinda like, you know, we think of ourselves as sort of uncovering the black box that can be field sales, right? A lot of the folks that we sell into our high-level revenue leaders at big, big companies and they really have no idea sort of what the reps are doing in the field on a daily or weekly basis. Which is an issue because then if they don’t know, the reps aren’t getting that back into CRM and they’re not understanding sort of the full picture of what actual activities are driving success in their field.
Matt:
So, you know, we’ve developed a suite of tools that helps an individual rep and it’s very rep friendly. It’s very, you know, consumer-friendly be more productive. Right? So things from like generating leads on the fly while you’re out in the field to being able to optimize routes very quickly, to being able to, you know, see which pens are red, which are ones that are overdue to be seen, which we call cadence management.
These are all things that we do where we’re moving is towards sort of this idea of an agenda where we can kind of become an intelligent work planner or a weekly planner for reps where we can actually, you know, sort of sync with their existing appointments and meetings in the field. But in between that, maybe they want to go visit at-risk accounts on a Tuesday afternoon or do some prospecting with TRC accounts on Wednesday mornings. And then we can dynamically suggest routes to go and see sorts of customers in those blocks of time. So kind of being able to layer on a recipe, almost like a SalesLoft kind of a thing. But for field sales specifically, if that makes sense.
Lisa:
Are there any industries where field sales is particularly important that you are focusing on or seeing a lot of activity in?
Matt:
Yeah, we’re really focused on medical devices right now as well as, you know, sort of clinical testing and we’re focused in on the East Coast ’cause that’s you know, that’s kind of a big net to cast. And these companies are, you know, usually more sophisticated from like a tech perspective as well as a sales perspective. And what we’ve found is that they take better to really try out new things and pushing the envelope with technology to enable their reps. And they really want to understand how to be better. Like they’re really interested and outperforming the field per se. So these are sorts of companies that we’re trying to get in touch with.
Lisa:
So MapMyCustomers, about how many is on the team today?
Speaker 3: (12:04)
We’re about 30 people in total. You know, roughly half of those are a little bit over half or full time in our New York office and the rest are spread out globally. So it’s a pretty distributed team across the board.
Lisa:
As you’re looking at your growth path, what are some of the key positions, key hires that you’re looking to fill in the next six to 12 months?
Matt:
The number one sort of role that I’m very much focused on right now is some sort of revenue leader, whether that be a VP of sales or a CRO type individual up in the city here and you know, this person will be instrumental for our success. We really haven’t had the high-level revenue leader, you know, to date. Right. It’s, it’s not been something that we’ve had, which is, you know, I think really you know, limited our growth or as much growth as we think we can do. And then later on in the year we’ll be looking for a VP of engineering. We currently have an interim CTO. It was down in the Carolinas, but we’ll be looking for a VP of engineering come the middle of the year or so.
Lisa:
So looking back to when you were like three people from where you are at 30, what would you advise other founders at that stage of growth? Looking back at things you wish you could tell yourself?
Matt:
Yeah, that’s a good question. So I think about that question a lot myself personally.
I would say I would have kept the team more senior but smaller longer if that makes sense. Instead of, you know, building it out as quickly as we did with really a number of junior folks. Having a strong middle management core was imperative and we didn’t necessarily have that as soon as we would’ve liked. And so that, that really caused some issues from an employee term perspective as well as just being able to make progress on the product. And that really hurt us a whole lot.
Another thing I would think about is, you know, think about what kind of sales leader you really need. I think a lot of founders get told you’ve got revenue leaders that fit for zero to 1 million in sales, one to five, five to 10 10 to 10 it up. You know, something along those lines. Brackets might shift, but you’re always like listening to this like sort of idea of a revenue leader. And I think that’s actually very true. I think we had a pretty good revenue leader from zero to 1 million down in the Carolinas and then beyond that we haven’t found the right leader to take us to five yet. And it’s wildly different personality and individual than the person that takes you from zero to one.
Lisa:
Fascinating. And so you’re, to recap, you would stay leaner longer, but more senior people and a lot of founders would say, that’s really expensive. How would I afford it? Because I can only afford the people that my revenues are t– that’s kind of a trade off I think that a lot of founders find.
Matt:
Yeah, it is. And I think we ended up becoming a slightly more junior team because we were trying to add a lot of individual contributors very quickly. And for the price of one senior person you could add, you know, four junior people in some cases or maybe even more. And you know, I, yeah, I think we, we just really didn’t focus on that middle management part. Right? So we, we added too many individual contributors too quickly without having the right middle management layer.
And the other core thing now that I think about it that we’ve really missed was having a defined product organization. Right? the reason we didn’t build it to find product organization was because we always thought our engineering leader could do it. We always thought that the CTO could just own product management and that really hurt us. And you know, I have gotten a lot of feedback, you know, when we were in seed-stage back in 2017 2018 like early seed stage, but you really didn’t need a product organization until you were like, you know, call it 40 people.
I think we really needed a product team at five people, right? We needed, and I was that person to a certain extent, but once we reached like 10 people, which happened pretty quickly going from like three people to 10 people, you know, we didn’t have that product person and that ultimately had engineering spinning their wheels. You know, our vision and our compass was sort of always in my head but not necessarily anyone else’s head. So having a product leader and having that product organization was just as important as engineering. If I would have known that a couple of years ago, I think we would be in a different place at the moment. And so I think that was a really important lesson to learn.
Lisa:
It’s really fascinating. Thanks for sharing that because you know that stuff that’s real from your heart, founder to founder, I think it makes a difference when people hear it and it’s not the same old dog food that you hear everyone talking about. Just you know, just the pitch, so to speak, without the real story behind it. So really appreciate you sharing.
Matt:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s stuff that I live with every day. And like you said, like what, what had been those things that you would’ve done differently? ? I ask myself that every day because every day we’re, you know, getting stuff wrong. And then that’s not an issue per se. It can be a good thing and a healthy thing. But I think knowing what you’re looking for in terms of how you’re scaling your organization is extremely critical. If you can answer how you want to scale your organization then you probably shouldn’t be scaling your organization.
That’s probably another lesson we could’ve learned as well. You know, it’s like a sales process, right? You don’t want to spend time with unqualified prospects and you want to have a healthy discovery and qualification process because you know, you could multiply the amount of time you wasted if you don’t have a good process. So really understanding what your organization needs and when it needs it. That is how you work your way towards product-market fit, which is ultimately the only thing that really matters in a startup.
Lisa:
As a CEO -founder leading your company, what feeding you now, where are you getting sources of credible, helpful information that help you raise your own ceiling?
Matt:
Honestly, I talked to a lot of candidates, right? And when you’re, when you’re interviewing for like a high level like VP of sales or CRO type person you’ll get a lot of advice whether you want it or not. Speaking to some individuals like this, especially in the city up here, and I would assume it’s the same thing done Atlanta, right? Like if you’re hiring for C level people or like high level leaders of some sort, you’re going to get a lot of advice.
I found a lot of really valuable conversations were had with candidates who weren’t good fits for the role. But it could be great fits for an advisory you know, sort of role. And that’s okay too. A lot of people, more so than people think, even in New York, want to just help. Especially if they’re, you know, in the back half of their career. Their fulfillment is making a lasting impact on people a lot of the time. Seeing people become leaders that they used to, you know, have work underneath of them. And I think they really just get a lot out of helping others. So, you know, in general I would say might be an unorthodox answer. But actually interviewing for these high-level roles has helped me a lot.
Lisa:
That’s fantastic to hear. You know, people say as you get older a lot of people’s lives tend in the direction of searching for significance. So if someone wants to be a part of the team or maybe an advisor role or is excited about what’s going on and not my customers in the future of sales, how would they get in touch with the company or with you? What would you recommend?
MATT:
So best way it would be to probably send me an email and my email is matthew@mapmycustomers.me.
Lisa:
Great. And for open positions, those are on your website too?
Matt:
On our website, we have a careers tab. So the best way would be to go to the website. I think under the about section there’s a careers link. You can also apply online right from LinkedIn as well. On our company’s page and and if you connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message, I’ll probably see that as well.
Lisa:
So Matt, thank you so much for your time.
