high-growth startups

Summary

Chris Valletta knows leadership. He's a former NFL player, Author of Teamworks: The Gridiron Playbook for Building a Championship Business Team, and frequent commentator on CNN, Fox News and many other global media outlets. Today, Chris is co-founder of Mission with sports legends Drew Brees, Serena Williams, and Dwayne Wade. He discusses the importance of purpose-driven leadership and building championship-winning teams. He emphasizes the need for leaders to take responsibility and develop a strong culture within their organizations. Chris also highlights the threat of a lack of leadership skills in today's business landscape and the importance of attracting and retaining talent with shared values. He concludes by urging founders to focus on their why and the impact they can make in the world.

Takeaways

• Purpose-driven leadership is essential for building successful businesses.
• Developing a strong team requires finding individuals with shared values and a commitment to personal accountability.
• The erosion of leadership skills is a major threat to businesses today.
• Culture is the immune system of an organization and must be nurtured and led by founders and leaders.
• Ego can hinder leadership effectiveness and should be managed to foster collaboration and growth.

About This Episode
Let's understand how to scale your membership using a high-tech business model and member feedback to drive member engagement. Our guest, Laura Buhler, will share her expertise on how to create a vision that people want to be a part of. Laura believes that it is all about the people. You can grow your association by investing your time and resources in understanding your members and having a "product" mindset.

About Our Guest 
Laura Buhler is the President and CEO of C100, a private San-Francisco-based nonprofit on a mission to galvanize global Canadians in technology to advance Canadian entrepreneurship and leadership in tech. Laura also serves on the Investment Committee for Luge Capital, a fintech-focused venture fund based in Toronto. She is a Board Director of Venture for Canada, a national charity which develops entrepreneurial leadership skills and also serves on the Advisory Board for the UCalgary Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership.

Full List of Questions We Asked Laura
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Can you share the names of some noteworthy companies that have participated in the C100 program?

Big names we might know?

What are some key ideas that associations can borrow from high-growth tech startups?

Would you say that the product is finding out your members problems and offering solutions and the product is solving their problems?

Your association serves a global community. How do you give your members a sense of human-touch and closeness when you are so big and spread out over the globe?

Besides hosting your events, how much time does your staff spend managing your members, or can they self manage?

What does a good member experience mean for your members?

How would you define the success of individual products or events?

You said you use a lot of new tech: how do you decide which platforms are good for your members at any given time?

What do your members use to connect?

How can I take action on these ideas if I’m not in a leadership role in our organization?

What are some start up business models we can use to scale our association?

What would you recommend in terms of an engagement with your members to connect one-on-one? Is there an ideal approach to this?

Audience Questions 
How can I take action on these ideas when I'm not in a leadership role in my organization?

Suggestions for maintaining memberships during covid when services are drastically reduced.

What are business models that start ups use that can help me scale business development

What do you recommend in terms of a monthly/quarterly/semi-annual outreach program to connect 1:1 with member organizations?  Is there an ideal approach to this type of 1:1 relationship building?

Closing Questions
Key takeaway for the audience?

Do you have any book recommendations?

Can you share a personal habit that has contributed the most to your success?

How can people get in touch if they have any questions?

Special acknowledgement to our guests for providing powerful insights into membership management. 

Follow our podcast for more free educational content.

Visit memberlounge.app to learn more about us.

Contact anika@grype.ca for questions or support.

(02:41) Brennan describes Frontline Ventures’ mission and his role there

(04:17) The mistakes companies typically make when moving into Europe

(09:18) How Brennan taught himself to code and found his calling as a builder

(11:13) Working at Google in the early days, and getting the opportunity to lead efforts in London and Dublin 

(15:11) Observations from Google Europe, including why the best companies are always reinventing themselves

(21:02) Leading social network Yammer through its acquisition by, and learning from the practices of, Microsoft

(26:44) Discovering vulnerability as an essential leadership trait

(29:13) Technology innovations that excite Brennan and his team 

In a recent article for TechCrunch, Frontline Ventures partner Brennan O’Donnell described the burgeoning opportunity that European markets offer to U.S companies, particularly in tech, pointing out that EMEA now represents 38% of the world’s GDP and is the world’s second-largest B2B software market. But in order to capitalize on the opportunity, CEOs would be wise to learn from thought leaders like Brennan, who have been through the rigor of scaling high-growth companies in Europe and seen the potential pitfalls. 

In this episode, Brennan talks to Jesse about the most common mistakes he's seen brands make when expanding into Europe, what it was like to lead growth at Google Europe, reflections on guiding Yammer through its acquisition by Microsoft, how he's learned to embrace vulnerability as an essential leadership trait, and the emerging technologies he's most excited about as an investor.

Guest Bio

Based in Silicon Valley, Brennan O’Donnell has over 20 years of experience building technology businesses and scaling global teams. As a partner with Frontline Ventures, he invests in growth stage startups with a focus on helping them expand into Europe. The fund’s portfolio includes companies such as TripActions, Lattice, Clearbanc and Attentive.

Before moving into venture capital, Brennan spent nearly a decade at Google, where he held multiple go-to-market leadership roles in the US and EMEA, building teams across both the Cloud and Ads businesses. After Google, he went on to hold c-level and executive roles in several early stage and high growth SaaS startups, including Yammer (acquired by Microsoft), SurveyMonkey (IPO), Euclid (acquired by WeWork) and most recently Airtable. He is a graduate of Northwestern University.

Helpful Links

Frontline Ventures website

TechCrunch: Proactive CEOs should prioritize European expansion

The Irish Times: Frontline Ventures targets US tech companies with new $80m fund 

Brennan on LinkedIn and Twitter

Tim Campos, former CIO of Facebook, is now founder and CEO of Woven, a startup tackling the world of calendaring. Brian Ardinger, Inside Outside Innovation Founder had a chance to talk with Tim about the future of innovation, how IT infrastructure has changed, what it's like to work in a high growth startup, and what it's like to rebuild a company from scratch.

Interview Transcript (To read the entire interview transcript, go to http://insideoutside.io )

Brian Ardinger: On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Tim Campos, the former CIO of Facebook and new entrepreneur with a company called Woven that is tackling the whole world of calendaring. We had a chance to talk about the future of innovation, how IT infrastructure has changed, what it's like to work in a high growth startup, and then what it's like to rebuild a company from scratch. Inside Outside innovation is the podcast that brings you the best and the brightest in the world of startups and innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO. A provider of research events and consulting services that help innovators and entrepreneurs build better products, launch new ideas, and compete in a world of change and disruption. Each week we'll give you a front row seat to the latest thinking tools, tactics, and trends, and collaborative innovation. Let's get started. Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host Brian Ardinger, and as always, we have another amazing guest. Today is Tim Campos. He is the former CIO at Facebook from 2010 to 2016 he was a VP of it at semiconductor company, KLA-Tencor, and he has recently jumped back into the startup scene with his own company called Woven.  Tim, welcome to the show. 

Tim Campos: Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here. 

Brian Ardinger: I'm excited to have you on board because I think you can speak to a lot of the things that our audience is interested in hearing about.  Everything from startups to corporate innovation, and you seem to have played a role in a variety of those different types of spaces and are continuing to do so. Let's start in the Facebook world. How you got there and what's it like to work with a high-growth company when you have to double the productivity of employees when they're growing at 20 X growth rate. 

Tim Campos: It gets crazy enough just to double the number of employees.  And to do that time and time again every year. Yeah, so I got to Facebook. It was really a big culmination of a lot of aspects in my career.  When I started, I was an engineer, software engineer, and I've always loved technology and building.  I spent the first half of my career in software engineering and then got exposed to IT at a startup when I was working in a software as a service company. And that really taught me. Two things. One, what you build and what people use those different perspectives and technology as you do that. But also there's a business around technology and that's really what got me interested in information technology and how I became CIO. And ultimately that landed me at Facebook. But my life has very much been defined by building things that help make people more productive, help people get more stuff done and that taken care of steer through what I'm doing today with Woven mind startup as a productivity software company and this is what we exist to do, is help people spend time on what matters most. 

To read the entire interview transcript, go to http://insideoutside.io