For those interested in understanding how to drive high performance teams, create focus in an organization, and drive organizational excellence, this episode is jam-packed with tactics and anecdotes across software industries.
Zack Urlocker is an active Board Member and advisor to many different startups. His resume is too long to fully write out but he previously has served as CEO, COO, VP Marketing, VP Product, and VP Engineering across 7 different companies including Duo Security, MySQL, Zendesk, Gatsby, Netlify, Active Software, and Borland Software. Almost all of these he has joined at an early stage and he has numerous experiences scaling companies from $6-100M+ ARR with over 4 $1B+ outcomes. We discuss lessons learned from each company, complete with anecdotes and compounded knowledge that helped Zack improve along his career. He shares detailed advice on building customer obsession, aligning organizations around one focus area, and maintaining speed as a key advantage for startups as they scale. We also discuss how to build operational rigor at high scale in a constrained capital environment. There are too many learnings in this episode to fully write out.
Where to Find Zack:
· Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZUrlocker
· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zurlocker/
· Substack: https://buildtoscale.substack.com
Where to Find Shomik:
· Twitter: https://twitter.com/shomikghosh21
· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shomik-ghosh-a5a71319/
· Newsletter: https://www.shomik.substack.com
· Podcast: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube.
In this episode, we cover:
(01:17) – How Zack Has Successfully Scaled 4 Companies to $1B+ Exits
(02:30) – Finding Customer Patterns Early in a Company’s Journey
(04:04) – Roles Across Various Software Industries & Business Models
(06:02) – Borland Software Lessons (Developer Software) – Scaling During a Turbulent Time Pre Dot Com Bubble
(13:18) – Active Software Lessons (Integration Middleware) - Scaling from $6-100M+ ARR in the Dot Com era
(17:15) – MySQL Lessons (Database Software) - Fixing Engineering & Running Marketing While Scaling from $6-100M+ ARR
(28:26) – Utilizing Customer Patterns to Find Free Users Who Are Likely to Pay at MySQL
(34:02) – Tips for Building Effective Remote Teams
(38:16) – What Customer Orientation Really Looks Like
(40:44) – Zendesk Lessons (Customer Service Software) – Scaling from $6-100M+ ARR in SaaS rather than infra
(47:01) – SaaS Pricing Dynamics
(52:27) – Duo Security Lessons (Multi-Factor Auth) – Scaling from $6-100M+ ARR in Security (vs infra & SaaS)
(1:00:25) – Why Speed & Customer Empathy = Efficient Software Businesses
(1:03:25) – “Figure Out Most Important Initiative, Put Best People On It, Starve Other Initiatives”
(1:07:43) – You Can’t Hedge In Product Strategy, Make Core Bets & Commit
(1:13:50) – Gatsby (Fronted Tooling) – Stabilizing a Company for Enterprise with a Large OSS Userbase
(1:17:36) – How to Orient Around Meaningful Customer Use Cases & Build Product & Go-To-Market Around That
Show Notes:
How to Subscribe:
Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube
Zack Urlocker (Exec - Duo Security, MySQL, Zendesk, Gatsby/Netlify) - Driving Operational Excellence Across Four $1B+ Outcomes From $6-100M ARR+