Joining the show this week is a woman who's dedicated her career to giving employees access to knowledge and elevating women in business. Featured on Forbes 30 Under 30, 100 Women of Influence, and more, this guest is none other than the Co-Founder and CEO of Spekit, Melanie Fellay.
Fellay shares her experiences as a female founder and her journey to raising millions to build her current business. She provides insights on early branding strategies, overcoming operational hurdles, and the challenges of building a high-growth company.
Takeaways:
Branding Early: Fellay emphasizes the power of investing in brand identity from the start, using distinct colors, mascots, and unique marketing to differentiate Speckit in a crowded market.
Creative Customer Acquisition: From leveraging LinkedIn and Twitter communities to booking a booth at Dreamforce before having customers, Fellay highlights unconventional methods that helped land Speckit’s first clients.
Leadership Evolution: Fellay reflected on learning the importance of hiring leaders with self-awareness, vulnerability, and a growth mindset rather than overvaluing industry experience.
Navigating Growth and Challenges: Fellay shares a pivotal period in 2022 when Spekit faced product performance issues, economic pressures, and team transitions during a period of growth, and how these hurdles shaped the company for the better.
Iterating on ICP (Ideal Customer Profile): Fellay discusses the journey of narrowing down Spekit’s ideal customer profile, focusing on enablement leaders, marketing professionals, and RevOps teams to optimize impact.
Quote of the Show:
“ You don't want to be sounding like you're just like a marketing ad for your product… talking about the journey, the lessons I'm learning, those tend to get the most engagement. ” - Melanie Fellay
Links:
Twitter: https://x.com/melfellay
Website:
https://www.spekit.com/
Ways to Tune In:
Spotify:
Apple Podcasts:
Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/7c6328f0-9b42-41db-8fe2-d263b4fbb261
Transistor:
https://podcast.notanotherceo.com/
Episode Transcript
David: [00:00:00] Today's guest is a unique blend of visionary and gritty operator. She's dedicated her career to creating a world where every employee has access to the knowledge they need to be successful. been recognized on every best of list. You can imagine from Forbes, 30 under 30 entrepreneurs, top hundred women of influence, and much more. She's actively sharing the trials and tribulations of scaling an organization as a female founder and has a mission of elevating women in technology. She's raised over six $60 million from some of the best investors in the world to build her current business. Her company helps organizations lever leverage the power of AI to surface the answers, content and training sales reps need just in time in any tool or workflow. Please welcome co-founder and CEO at spect, Melanie Fellay.
Melanie: Awesome. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited for this.
David: I'm very excited. I'm happy. We finally, we've, we've been talking for so many years. [00:01:00] I've followed the company and followed you. So thank you for joining me today.
Melanie: Yeah. I mean, I think I reached out to you early on and you were one of those folks that kindly offered mentorship, uh, when I was getting started. So I, I have very, just a lot of gratitude for you. So thank you. And I know
David: Thank
Melanie: this is what you're now doing, uh, to give back to the community at much larger scale than one off conversations.
So thank you.
David: Awesome. Awesome. So let's start first question. So what is the one thing you've done at Speckett big or small that's had the biggest impact and you'll absolutely do again. If you're CEO of another company in the future.
Melanie: Yeah. I mean, I, I think just going back to getting the company off the ground, We invested pretty heavily early on in brand. And the funny thing is that, you know, kind of if you read a lot of books and wisdom, it's like, you know, first, uh, you know, invest in the product in the future, invest in brand. I actually think that for us, having invested in brand early on, whether it was the kinds of events we went to, but the distinctive colors like me, really.
Uh, you know, being super active on LinkedIn [00:02:00] early on, sharing content, had a huge impact on getting the word out in what is still today, a very competitive space early on. A lot of our leads came from like my LinkedIn content. Um, again, when we had really, I didn't, I didn't have a huge professional network to tap into to, you know, buy our product because I started the company, you know, pretty early on in my career.
And so I think brand really helped me. Separate us out, you know, in our sea of blue and orange brands in, in our broader enablement space, we were like the hot pink brand, uh, and that also helped us think. So I think a lot of those things, you know, having the, um, we have an octopus mascot, um, called Specky and it's really a metaphor for our product, right?
Centralize everything in a centralized brain, but then access it. wherever you're working right, the tentacles of the octopus. Being able to, you know, grab contacts and deliver content. And that really resonated. And so, you know, all these different aspects help create a brand recognition that I think was, that exceeded the size of our company and really helped with word of mouth.
Um, so I think I would do that again because I think it's [00:03:00] paid dividends longterm, um, Um, it's also just really fun. You know, it helps with culture. It helps with a lot of different aspects when people can feel really emotionally connected both to the company as well as the
David: I love that. So did you, did you just do that intuitively? Did you do that because you saw someone else doing that? Like how did you cut? Cause again, you, you started this pretty early in your career. Like where did, where did that come from?
Melanie: product. So I'd say, you know, as before I officially started the company, um, so back in 2017, when I was still working in San Francisco and I was starting to get to the point where like, Hmm, like to solve this problem, do I just need to build a solution? Because originally when I started Speckit, I wasn't planning.
I didn't set out to start a company. I set out to buy a solution to solve my problems at my prior employer. And then kind of came to the conclusion that like. I'd have to buy four different platforms. It was just going to be a mess. And so as I started drinking up, like, what's the ideal solution at the same time, I started kind of like doing more research on like, you know, just kind of entrepreneurship, uh, companies, et cetera.
And so one of the books I [00:04:00] read that I do think influenced my perspective on brand was behind the cloud by Mark Benioff. Uh, it's one of his earliest books when he talks a little bit about, you know, how he built the brand of Salesforce and how it wasn't just a software, you know, like. They employed a lot of different marketing strategies from what you see today with, you know, Dreamforce and their mascots and all that stuff to like early on their stories of like, you know, the no software pickets outside of, you know, the Oracle and SAP conferences.
And so I think that was, you know, one of the data points that helped kind of inform that emphasis, I think at the time too. So this is, Now, 2018, 2019, there were a few brands that had really done a great job. So I don't know if you remember Drift, right?
David: Of course.
Melanie: Now they've been acquired by SalesLoft. They were like one of those like big stories.
Like at one point in time you logged on to LinkedIn and that's all you could see, right? Dave Gerhart, who was just a brilliant marketing mastermind there. David Cancel, like their leadership team really, I think, pioneered like brand awareness in terms of like, you know, both the different types of content [00:05:00] they were using.
And like the, I remember when I got invited to a meeting, when I evaluated their tool, the, uh, they were using the lightning mark in a lot of their content and like the rep had the lightning mark in the calendar invite. And so when I looked at my calendar, it was like visually distinctive. And so that's kind of what started us using like the octopus emoji.
As a brand was kind of first to have the concept of like the, the colored background, right? They had their like red, orange background and I was like, Oh, we should have the pink background. So I think it was intuitive in terms of like the value and importance, but I took inspiration from a lot of different things that I liked and kind of combine them.
So it was like the mascot and like the plushies was from Salesforce, right? And so, you know, kind of combining those into like, what feels authentic to us and how do we stand out? It ain't crowded.
David: I love that. I love, you know, actually I, I met David Cancel at a CEO dinner one time and we sat next to each other and I'd never met him before and we started talking and he, I [00:06:00] think in that one, I probably got 50 ideas, I don't know, 20 ideas for things to do. And, and actually almost every one that we did, one of the best ones that he gave me was, um, At, uh, conferences, they would create limited edition swag.
And essentially the only way you could get the swag is if you pre registered to come to the booth. So they knew who was coming to the conference because people wanted to pre register for the swag. And then when the booth opened, there was a line of people to pick up the pre registered, like, like limited edition swag.
And then everyone else was like, wait, why are they getting that special thing? Anyway, it was like
Melanie: That's that's so funny. Cause like we, I didn't get that inspiration from them, but we did do that. We, at our different conferences, we'll do like, now we'll do like branded specs. So our, our octopus became like this plushy. And like, I mean, people are obsessed with it. We have some customers that have like eight different versions of it.
Um, you know, kids love it and it's, and it's just, you know, it's a fun part of the brand, but [00:07:00] we started doing that too. Like special edition for specific events or like a sequel.
David: Oh, cool.
Melanie: for like, we did like our admin superhero. So like the top users of our product, they got like the sequenced one. And, you know, we do like these pink diamond awards for like, and so like, Every aspect, like, you know, creating awards for your customers is like very standard, but how do you bring an element of brand and like our, our values at company are kind of like ethos behind everything we do is simple yet spectacular.
How do we make things as simple as possible, yet spectacular? How do we make things delightful and wow, and memorable? Um, and that goes from our user experience, but also our customer experience, our brand experience. And so that's something that I think we've. We've really moved with a lot of intentionality in terms of, you know, what we do.
It's like, okay, how do we do awards, but how do we add our own kind of like spectacular flair to them? How do we make them a
David: Hmm.
Melanie: memorable? And I do think that that creates a certain level of connection with your customers, um, that, that [00:08:00] creates significant loyalty in the longterm.
David: Yeah, I really like that. The, the other thing, you know, um, I, a LinkedIn perspective, where did you have the, you know, you're talking about getting these leads. Was that like right away? You know, was that you started posting and then within days you were getting leads of people or was that, did that take time to build that, that kind of thing? Credibility and, and
Melanie: That, that takes time. So I'd say I was early to the LinkedIn game, like when it, when it mattered. So again, this is like 2018, like up until 2018, LinkedIn wasn't really a thing, but I was really lucky that now one of my closest best friends, but one of my former coworkers who was also then became my roommate at the time.
So I was living with her as I was kind of getting speckled off the ground. She was a growth marketer and she was early to getting behind this like LinkedIn craze. She started posting things. And at the time it's like when you could post and get a million views because no one was posting. And, you know, she gave me some tips.
Like, you know, [00:09:00] she learned that, you know, if you're going to do a presentation, which I'm realizing, I'm not following my own tip today. She's like, Wear something memorable every time. So like, I, and bright because people remember bright colors. So if I'm up on stage, you see me in like my pink blazer.
Normally when I do podcasts, she's like, because people will remember the pink suit, not just
David: Whoa.
Melanie: She said, you know, when you're posting, she's like, you know, this, this LinkedIn thing is, is taking off, you know, do that. And so early on, I hacked it. So I would post, but I had again, like 200. 200 Connections.
Um, and so I had like a couple different group chats going with like all my families and cousins and like all my friends and I was like, I'm going to put aside every ounce of like self respect ego that I have with social norms and I'm just going to like share and I'm like, can you guys please go comment and like this?
So like in the very early days when like we didn't even have a product yet and I was just trying to get awareness, like that's what I was doing. And then eventually, you know, things, things took off kind of more, more naturally, but no, I definitely hacked. And then, um, you know, [00:10:00] on Twitter early on our, our first kind of like target market was Salesforce customers.
That was one of the pains I felt the most as we think about just in time enablement, right? How do we empower reps with the information they need to win deals, to be successful in the moment, wherever they are? One of the biggest challenges that we were hearing and that I'd felt was just like, how do we get reps properly using their, their tools and workflows, right?
And so we, the initial version of the solution that we built kind of like, Tackle that problem first. And so, you know, we really, really looking to get behind Salesforce customers. And like, at the time they weren't really as active on LinkedIn. They were much more on Twitter. Like there's admin community that, that, you know, Salesforce had built.
And so, you know, if you looked at kind of like the content I was posting on Twitter versus LinkedIn, it was different. Um, that was somewhat intentional. And there, you know, I went down and I was like, okay, who are all the top influencers in the Salesforce admin community? And I reached out to those and I added them and I, you know, I did it both in terms of like product and market research, but it also helped me kind of, you [00:11:00] know, Build a network there in a community that's still to this day, frankly, I feel connected to.
And so I think, you know, something that I'd really recommend is like, don't, don't treat all potential buyers or customers of your product equal, you know, be intentional around, like, what are the communities that you really want to. Get more deeply embedded where there will be more loyalty. The irony is like a lot of those people never bought the product, right?
Many of them were actually too low level in the organization to have the kind of budget. And I learned that the painful way, be aware of that too. Like is the community, the champions that can use the tool or is it the buyers? Right. Um, early on, I'd say we invested way too much in the champion community, but I do think that that had a word of mouth impact in the sense that, you know, they were such, um, they were, they were fans of the product, the approach, the company.
And so they, they would, you know, retweet what we do. They'd comment, they'd like drive exposure within like the broader community and that had ripple effects, right? Even if they weren't, you know, still to this day, some of the people that I'd say have had the biggest impact on our like [00:12:00] company brand exposure still never actually bought the product, which is
David: Hmm.
Melanie: bit of this irony.
Um, you know, and
David: working with a lot of early stage companies in the last call it 12, 18 months, one of the conversations that I have, and this is mostly I'd say with founders is you have to put yourself out there for people to know that you exist. I mean, when you don't, when you're just starting and no one knows that you exist, You got to out there and, and, and, and talk to the world about this stuff and like, use it, you got to get help people to help you amplify that.
And, and a lot of founders actually feel uncomfortable. And, and I'll be honest, when I started BetterCut, I felt uncomfortable because I said, who cares about what I have to say? Who cares about, but to your point, actually, it's, it's like, You have an opinion. You're building a company for a community. You want to let them know that you're there.
You want to have that conversation, wherever that conversation is [00:13:00] occurring.
Melanie: honestly, like, you know, I think there's a way to do that, like, pretty early on, like, I, and I, we can talk about it a bit, but I'm, I'm in the process of kind of like finishing a book that I wrote really on the future of enablement in a world of AI, what changes for organizations and leaders and enablement and reps, et cetera.
But in that book, you know, I acknowledge pretty openly the fact that like, I'm not a technical founder by training, right? Like, I can't actually write code. I can be dangerous when it comes to talking about just about around the code itself and like how we design the system. But I can't write code. And I also don't come from a traditional, you know, you know, Learning design background.
Um, you know, I didn't have 15 years in enablement. Now, the benefit of that is I think I was able to approach the problem from a first principles mindset, which is like, okay, I don't have these kind of predisposed conceptions of like what solutions out there look like, like what would my ideal solution look like based on the world today versus like the digital filing cabinets that were kind of modeled after physical filing cabinets when you think about traditional CMS.
[00:14:00] Um, but, uh, I was pretty open about that early on too. It's just like, Hey, like, I've been thinking a lot about this problem. We'd love to hear how other people are solving it, you know? And so rather than being like, I'm the master, I know everything, you know, follow me, it's like, Hey, like, I really want to solve this problem better than anyone else in the marketplace.
Here are the things I'm seeing, you know, would love to hear what other people are seeing and did a lot of like kind of surveys and stuff. And I think as long as you can approach it from a place of authenticity, I think some of that helps overcome some of that, you know, imposter syndrome you might have of like, you know, which people care what I have to say, et cetera.
Now there's certain things where like, I've got pretty strong informed opinions. I've got a lot of data to back, you know, my beliefs and what I think, because I've been doing this for eight years and thinking obsessively about the problem, probably the most part of 16 hours a day, you know, but. Back then that wasn't the case.
And so I do think there's ways to do it in a way that yes, getting actually out there writing content, there is an uncomfortable nature there. But when you realize like no one's going to care about that post as much as you do. [00:15:00] People are gonna read it, they're gonna read it, they're either gonna be like, Huh, okay.
David: That's
Melanie: might hit that follow, they might connect, you know, like, And I think that's, that's also, um, you know, I don't know if that's intuitive Or whatever it is, but I, I've never, The content that I post isn't per se controversial, but it challenges The current thinking in uncomfortable ways. And, you know, there's a, that can be a little bit challenging at times because like, you don't want to, for lack of better words, insult the way that people are currently thinking about the problem or currently doing things, but you do want to lead them on a path of like, there's a better way.
And that's something that I've tried to do in the book. I'd say it's a little bit more on the challenging side. It's like, is this really the future we want to build towards these like long courses that people take that no one remembers and that like, you know, you can arbitrarily say people completed, but.
Um, but I do think, you know, you want to have, you want to be memorable and what you have to say, whether that's [00:16:00] leading from, and, and that was also, you don't want to be sounding like you're just like a marketing ad for your product. You know, you want to, I'd say early on, I shared more openly the last year and I can talk about where my focus has been.
I honestly haven't been out on LinkedIn as much the last two years, but I'd say what helped too is like, I was sharing a lot about my lessons on the founder journey along the way. You know, what I was kind of learning about culture and people and community and customers, like this kind of stuff that, um, So that when I did talk about Speckit or like we had an exciting launch, those people were already following us.
So they saw the benefit of it, but it wasn't just like, you know, here's a feature, here's a launch, here's this, here's why Speckit's better. Because I think that content gets pretty tiring. So figure out, you know, what is, what is your unique style? What feels authentic to you? Like, what is your community going to kind of like gravitate and care towards in it?
And the funny thing is, what I look at, you know, ever are analytics. Oftentimes it's like when I'm being the most vulnerable or [00:17:00] what I'm talking about, like the journey, the lessons I'm learning, like those just tend to get the most engagement. And while they don't directly speak to our product, right, it does create a connection in the buyer's mind to, to your brand.
Uh, and if it takes one or two people to click in, it's like, Oh, this content, who is this person? Oh, who's this person? Who's the product? Like, you know, that, that connection will kind of, I believe will naturally kind of happen.
David: I really, I really like that. And on the book front, you know, I wrote, uh, two books during the time of BetterCloud around how to manage and how to secure your SaaS applications, your SaaS environment. And like you, I actually start both books to say, I've never done the like as a day to day job. But what I have done that point, you know, I've spoken with thousands of people. Thousands of people in this job function. And, and I've listened and I've built a company around it and everything. And I think to your, some point, [00:18:00] actually in a role of a founder of a company like ours, where you're serving a function that you haven't personally done per se, depending on what the job is. You do flip at some point to have more kind of, uh, trend knowledge, if you will, and more understanding of what's happening because you're speaking to so many that they don't speak to each other. And what I found from a lot of our customers, they said, Dave, what are you hearing? What are you seeing?
And you start to become that trusted source, not because you did the job and you're an expert in that job for 20 years, but because you're seeing across companies, across industries, across functions, all of
Melanie: a hundred percent. And, and I think, you know, if you read the book, Crossing the Chasm, which I have on my note, it's one of the books I want to reread. I read it a long time ago. I want to reread it, but you know, I think the, the kinds of people, of customers and buyers who want to sell to early on are the ones that are [00:19:00] really, really interested in understanding what are other people doing?
Like, still to this day, like I was just on site in London last summer. Right after Thanksgiving with a customer and you know, their biggest question is like, what are other customers doing? Like what benchmarks do you have to share? Like that's what I
David: Exactly.
Melanie: kinds of customers are going to want that knowledge that only you can provide or only your company might be able to provide.
And, you know, they're the ones that are really ideally, especially if your solution is challenging the status quo or the current market, which ours very much is in terms of kind of your traditional LMS and CMS, and we're saying, Hey, You know, there's a better way. Here's what that looks like. And it's, you know, focused on access to content delivered just in time.
And it's focused on, you know, analytics, government, et cetera. Those customers that are bought into like, Hey, we want to try that better way. There is a better way. They're going to really want to hear what you have to say. Um,
David: Mm hmm.
Melanie: that are going to kind of be, you know, early on the customers that are like, no, I've been using an LMS for the last 20 years.
And like the LMS is the only way. [00:20:00] Right. They're probably not the right fit, um, for what I have to offer out the gate. And so kind of realizing that journey. So if you're a founder listening, like that book is a really good, I think, kind of frame to put on kind of like, who are your ideal customers early on?
And I, and I try and adopt that mindset too, when we launch new products, like, you know, earlier last year, we, uh, or this year, excuse me, we launched kind of like our challenger to the traditional kind of like CMS. Which is, you know, ability to host any sales, marketing content, recommended to your reps, et cetera.
And there's certain capabilities of like traditional CMS platforms that we just did not launch. I'm like, those don't matter. They're bells and whistles. Like, I don't think they solve the problem. Now there's a sliver of customers for whom, like, regardless of adoption rates of those features, they're still going to want them, right?
Um, that's probably not who you should sell to early on. So like how, when you launch new products, et cetera, do you adopt that mindset of identifying, like, who are the best big customers for the product one in its current state, which is probably nowhere near where [00:21:00] you want and see it going over the next, you know, 18 months or whatever it is.
And two, how does that customer kind of evolve as you mature that, that suite? So,
David: I like it. actually is a perfect transition to a question I've been asked, which is, How did you find your first five customers?
Melanie: um, I'll give a little bit of insight into how I, what I got wrong. And then I'll talk about how I actually got them.
David: Great,
Melanie: Um, you know, I, I was doing product market. Well, I did probably. Three to six months of validation before I even built a line of code on kind of the solution and product once I brought my co-founder on board.
Um, and so for that we had basically like mocks of what the potential solution would look like, like a prototype and sketch back in the day. We probably today. Um, and then we did a couple like surveys and for that I really reached out to. Friends who had, who they could share with like their, um, you know, people at their companies and stuff.
And [00:22:00] it was amazing. Everyone was like, Oh, if you build this, we will buy. And I was like, Oh, that's amazing. We're going to build this. And we're going to have like 30 customers out the gate and like problem solved and you know, it's a home run. Well, it turns out we built it. And then going back to those customers, they're like, well, um, I'm going to probably have to get approval.
And so that process was slow. I think we had like maybe one customer from that set actually buy and pull the trigger in that current state. Like people will tell you that they love what you're going to build. Uh, they won't necessarily buy it. So just be aware of that as you're kind of testing things.
Like I would, I would expect that to be a very normal process. So the question was like, okay, great. How do we go get customers? Um, so I did a lot of like kind of creative. Like outbound back in the day before a lot of these fancy tools, I would like use some on Fiverr. And try and like, get them to help me build a list.
So I would go, for example, on Salesforce is like the community. Like they, they do like an MVP list every year of like, they're like most valuable, whatever, um, experts in the field. So I'm like, Hey, can you help me get the contacts of these people? And then I would send out like [00:23:00] emails to each of them. You know, asking them for feedback, like early on, it was more of like, Hey, I want to get your feedback and then see if any of those, you know, and one that was helpful in itself, but also with those terms of leads.
And I say, people are really open to giving feedback when it's positioned as that. Um, so that was like one approach or, Hey, I'm writing a piece of content, would love to like hear your thoughts, give an X, Y, Z, would you be willing to contribute? And then you kind of naturally bridge that connection. So early on, when I was just like truly just trying to like warm leads and like get in front of people, those are some of the tactics I employed.
I'd say the big bet that I took. Uh, that actually closed our first five customers was getting a booth at Dreamforce. Um, and I share that because it probably goes,
David: You got a booth before you had any customers?
Melanie: and it's exactly that, like, it sounds so counterintuitive. Um, but here was the, the thinking I had, like, and maybe this doesn't work for other people, but here's, here's what I was thinking. We had like, we had like launched the product. Two months [00:24:00] prior. Now we talked to people, there was interest, but we hadn't like closed anything yet.
And at the time, you know, we tried raising a little bit from like VCs for seed round, but at the time people, you know, VCs, investors thought that I was crazy for trying to tackle, you know, these four different markets at once. You know, the LMS and CMS are completely different markets. Buyers, they're never going to be combined.
Fast forward seven years later, they're all the same. Um, and so. And frankly, I just didn't really know how to pitch or how to get investors and without any customers, it was just tough. So anyway, so we had to raise VC. We'd raised from my former CEO, the guy that I worked for at where I got the idea. So he'd invested in it and, uh, we brought on a couple of amazing angel investors like Dan Scheinman, a couple of friends and family.
So at the time we had like 120 grand in the bank, 120, 20 or 150. I can't remember exactly. Um, My co founder and I were not taking a salary. I'd moved back to live with my grandma in Colorado because I could get, you know, live for free. She was living in her studio apartment taking calls from like, you know, their, their bathroom when her husband was sleeping.
I mean, it was just a [00:25:00] true like startup grind mode. Um, and Dreamforce was, uh, I think it was like November that year in 2018. And so like the product was ready to like get out there. And I'm like, listen, it's going to cost us. 35 grand to get a booth, which like is a fifth of what we had in the bank. And we were paying the developers and our original kind of like technical found, uh, technical founding engineers.
Um, but I think if we either need to go for it, go big or go home at the biggest event of the year and put our name out there and like, I'm like, we're gonna be able to like rapid test validation. There's literally hundreds of thousands of potential buyers there, like we should do it. And. Somehow my co founder, uh, didn't think I was completely losing my mind.
And like, like you're, you're running go to market. Uh, and she, she got in. So it was basically the two of us. I asked a friend who was an SDR at another company to come meet our booth. Uh, because I [00:26:00] didn't know what I was doing. He literally took time off and came and manned our booth just to like, help me.
Uh, shout out Vic for that. Um, and, and that's what we did and we demoed and honestly, like, it was amazing. Like no one had heard of us, obviously. Uh, but we, we were really lucky, lucky with our booth location. We had like one of the really tiny booths, but we got to demo all day long. The tagline we chose was really good.
It was like, bring sanity to your Salesforce, uh, which was just like, just enough to get people curious. Like, what is this? Um, and yeah, that's what got us. And the crazy thing is it got us like, truly like some of like our best customers early on that became marquee customers. Like JLL was a customer early on.
Uh, and like landing a brand like that was instrumental. Now for the first customers, we also were very aggressive on pricing. Um, you know, so we did give like heavy discounts for the first year. We're like, okay, let's kind of, especially for these enterprises that were somehow willing to buy us as like, let's treat this as a [00:27:00] basically long paid pilot, but like, that's how we got, and you know, in the, the months following our first 20 to 30 customers and, and frankly, to this day, that's still how we got like in 2019, the following year.
The entire Southwest Airlines, you know, Salesforce team happened to walk by. And like, that's how we brought them on us as a customer. And they've been a customer now for, you know, going on five years. We were instrumental for them as they went through COVID and everyone was sent home. And, you know, I mean, it was, it was wild.
And now they've expanded to 4, 500 users and they've been an amazing reference customer. And so, you know, I, I do think conferences can work. It is a matter of luck. I think. The lesson that I learned early on is like, because conferences were working, we're like, that's pretty much only a marketing strategy.
We're doing LinkedIn, you know, Mel, LinkedIn, you know, conferences and that's going to work. And you know, once upon a time when budgets were flowing, I think that it worked well enough that we were able to mass, but, uh, I think we waited too long to invest in other, more people channels, but anyway, so that's how I got our first, uh,
David: That's really, wow. Wow.[00:28:00]
Melanie: I don't know. I don't know if anyone should follow that advice to be clear, but that's what we did.
David: well, the, the, the thing about it is that you knew where your audience was and you were, you knew that they were, I mean, Dreamforce has them all there and, um, it's high risk, but, but you can't get in front of that many potential buyers in one place. Dreamforce. Anywhere else online or anywhere else. And so, um, that's really, I did not know that.
That's a really interesting. So, so that was in the Dreamforce every year since, since, I mean, any year that has
Melanie: Yeah, we've been to Dreamforce, um, every year. I'd say, you know, as our ICP, you know, one of the things we learned over the years is that, you know, while we solve the challenge, like companies that are rolling out a platform like Salesforce or rolling out CPQ or, you know, just dealing with like bad adoption or bad data or, you know, onboarding hundreds of agents every week and need better [00:29:00] training because, you know, Salesforce is such a big part of how they run their company.
We truly are a perfect solution for them. Like, we can sell to that buyer. The challenge, though, is that oftentimes, no one really gets fired for not having socialist documentation or training.
David: Hmm.
Melanie: so companies buy the solution because we are a really good solution, but it still requires companies to actually be good at documenting and training.
Like we're really at the end of the day, more than anything in the delivery mechanism. Like we've done a lot to integrate to Salesforce, attract changes to your system. Like we've done as much as we can to make that process. As simple and automated as possible, you still need someone manning that. And the challenges early on, you know, we were selling to whoever would buy us.
And so it was like, I teams and Salesforce teams. And over time we've learned that really, that's not the ideal buyer. We really need to sell to someone in enablement. We're training whose like job is to write enablement or marketing and write content so that we can make sure that the contents in the system and stays fresh.
Um, so we still go to Salesforce because we have so many of our [00:30:00] customers where like that is one of their primary use cases. And it's a great, you know, time to have engagement, but honestly, next year, we're thinking about, do we do a booth or do we do events around Salesforce? Right. We still want to take advantage of like.
It's a time where so many of our customers are in the same place at the same time, but we want to kind of rethink like how might we be more intentional about bringing our community together, um, in a way that, that might not be a booth at Dreamforce.
David: Right, right,
Melanie: Um, I'd
David: What, um, let, let's talk, you talk about your ICP. Let's talk about that. Um, it's changed, uh, as you said, it's changed over the years. How narrow would you say you have gotten? You know, it, it like, have you, I interviewed another CEO and they said to me, it was a really interesting conversation.
They said, at my first company, I was aiming for the largest addressable market and largest ICP. And at my second company, I was [00:31:00] actually, we segmented until it hurt. Like basically we got down, you know, as narrow as possible. Like when you think about that spectrum, where, where, where do you fall on that spectrum?
Maybe where were you in the beginning?
Melanie: say
David: you
Melanie: in the middle of this year. We've gotten a lot better. We've gotten a lot better on like who are the right personas to be really in the conversation, buying the solution and like where are the use cases where we, you know, are really successful. Like, um, and. And also like, where's the budget right now?
Because the reality is that that answer has naturally shifted as the market shifted as well, right? Like in 2020 and 2021, where you had different levels of the organization, much lower down that had discretionary budget to buy their own tools. Um, I think at the time we thought for better now, I think for, for worse for what it's worth.
Um, it, you know, you didn't have to go as high up in the organization. And, you know, when it came to like your buyer personas. Um, we, we definitely weren't as intentional, um, [00:32:00] now much more intentional around who needs to be in the room for us. We need to have enablement or marketing enablement. And I put kind of training L& D under the broader enablement bucket and ideally rev ops in the room as well.
But at minimum enablement, ideally marketing to and rev ops, um, because at the end of the day, like knowledge enablement, it's such a cross functional process. And if we want to be the solution that like, as a rep, as a rep, I just want to be able to go about my day to day. And ideally if you have spec it.
If I just get off a call and I'm reviewing my Gall call, Gong transcript, boom, here's the enablement you might want to review. Here's the content you might want to share with your customer. If I'm in my email, my customer asks me a question, boom, here's the answer. Boom, here's the content you want to send, right?
If you're navigating Salesforce, oh crap, what do I need to do here? Oh, boom, here's what you need to do. Let me guide you, right? So that's really been the promise of the second. Now, the challenge is that that content, because of the market today, Right. Because the con the [00:33:00] market has kind of bifurcated this problem to four arbitrary categories, which I think is ridiculous.
Like, Oh, if it's, if it's sales and customer facing content, you, it's in a CMS, if it's internal knowledge on your process and policies, it's in a KMS, like a confluence or an ocean. If it's content on how you need to learn how to sell, it's in your LMS and each of those intentionally sold to different personas, and so now you've got content in all these different places.
For us, if we're trying to say you don't need four or five different potential solutions, that's actually part of the problem of content decay and content access and discovery and usage and all the pains you're having. Instead you need one solution that streamlines all of that and really focuses on the delivery in a way that's personalized.
And in the moment for your reps, we need to have all those people in the room. So, um, or we can approach it in a modular way and from a land and expand, which we've done a little bit like, Hey, just start here and then expand to other use cases. But, um, so that, that I say works for me the most. Now, in terms of [00:34:00] company size, and I say, I'd say that's where we've gotten much more narrow early on.
It was like, you, you have a problem around documentation and training, we're a solution, buy us. Right. And we really didn't pay much attention to that. Now, depending on our different use cases. So for example, call centers is actually a use case that we stumbled into that has still to this day, our highest adoption rate amongst users.
The like most sophisticated, um, champions because like call centers are so metrics driven that like, if you can't prove the ROI of what you're doing, it ain't gonna matter. And so when you look at the customers that have used this for that use case, whether it's Southwest Airlines call center, whether it's Equifax is like, they've been able to like very clearly demonstrate that like the before and after in a minimum 20 percent increases on, on productivity, as well as things like time, celebrate time, et cetera, uh, time.
Sorry,
David: interesting.
Melanie: time of call, et cetera. So
David: Right,
Melanie: call centers [00:35:00] are great for us because, you know, there's much clearer ROI, very structured. The problem is that we haven't focused on that outbound because that market is so crowded and so saturated and there's so much noise with AI and that we just,
David: Hmm.
Melanie: we've decided like that is a natural expansion path for us.
But even though we might in the future decide to go outbound on that, we've intentionally not chosen to go outbound ICP on that use case and the kinds of customers that would be really good fits there. Um, we have a process though with that. That is something that we might re evaluate in the future.
Where we have focused on outbound is really two, what I would consider two ICPs. So on, when we think about enablement, what we've learned the hard way is like, you need to be a big enough company that you really have the pain of enablement. Early on, we sold to customers that were too small. Right. They had like, you know, 30, 40 employees.
They were starting to feel, and like, they're just so [00:36:00] messy and unstructured that they have the pain, but they don't really have someone that's going to be able to like manage it and be effective. And so we really start minimum at that like 100, 150 range, and then go upwards to that, like 500 or so when it comes to like companies that are like, and for that, we want to be the first in platform.
So we've seen when we're first in. We tend to scale really well with companies and they realize like, wait, we actually don't feel the pain that we feel of needing to buy an LMS and needing to buy all this other stuff.
David: Hmm.
Melanie: got an LMS, they've already got a CMS. Now you're doing the rip and replace.
And like, while in some ways it's actually quite easy for us on the CMS side, because most customers are just not happy with the user experience and admin and usage and costs of their existing CMS, right? Oftentimes those two are connected. And so it's, it's more challenging.
David: So, you know what's so interesting when you talk about that? It's like when you come in early, you, your product, like you have an opinion of how the world should work. And if they get [00:37:00] with working with you early on, now they've, Bought in
Melanie: I
David: you were talking about before. They've bought into your way of doing it. then it's actually impossible. I think it's impossible to then go to a siloed approach after that because it's, it almost seems
Melanie: need all this.
David: It's like, okay, well,
Melanie: Totally. There's, there's some instances, um, where we can, you know, we, we're not an LMS by trade. I do believe we solve a lot of the learning challenge. Like you can use us during onboarding. We're just taking a different approach, which is like, there's no point in your reps going over like your negotiation process and module in their first three weeks.
Because they're not going to negotiate a deal then. So when they go negotiate that deal, let's make sure that the information they need and the guidance they need is right there, right? So we take much more of like an everboarding approach, which is like, as people navigate their kind of like journey of learning and coming across situations and new scenarios, that's when the information and training they need kind of discovers.
We do [00:38:00] have a web app though. If you want to have like these structured, like we allow you to order your content so you can say like, and we use it for onboarding obviously. It's like, here's our competitor's landscape. Go through each of the competitors and you know, you can, you can do that, but we're not an LMS in terms of having full blown certifications and badges and all that stuff.
And so there are some companies that eventually they're like, Hey, we also want an LMS or we need one from compliance, et cetera. And we work alongside those solutions, really.
David: Got it.
Melanie: Um,
David: Um,
Melanie: been,
David: things I want to talk about, um, is, I know that you've kind of evolved in, you know, the team and
Melanie: yeah.
David: leadership team and all of that. Um, what, uh, what have you learned about building a leadership team over the course of these eight, eight years? if you had one piece of advice, you know, when you think about, um, when you think about people in your situation eight years ago, [00:39:00] seven, you know, they raised some money, they're building their business, it's growing, they have to go out and build a team around them.
What, what, what is the one thing, let's, let's put it this way, what is the one thing you think makes a good early stage executive to be on your team? Like the people have been most successful.
Melanie: It's interesting. In some roles, I've had people be on the team now for, like, our head of legal, our head of people, our head of finance, just as examples. They've been on the team now for three, four years. Our director of marketing, she's been on the team for seven years. Our head of content strategy for six years.
So like, when I look at, there was a set of leaders that I actually think Senior. Like we were kind of like the biggest role for them, but they were such go getters. They didn't come with like, I've been doing this for 15 years. Like the mistake I've made is people coming [00:40:00] in, like thinking they know how to do the job and like not necessarily having that, like.
Full, um, vulnerability to ask for coaching and feedback or support, but then having a gap between what we needed for that role and what they kind of like sold me on their capabilities. I'd say that the folks that came in being like, you know, our head of finance, who's like, I mean, he's like a 20 out of 10.
Um, he's absolutely amazing. He can literally just do absolutely anything. He's, I can't speak enough about him and like what he's done for us as a company from biz ops to data and everything. He was very open. He's like, I've never had this big role. Here's what I have done here. You know, and he, he had such a great background.
He had, he was so clearly, I mean, like just brilliant and he was able to learn and take on more responsibility and, and flourish naturally. And so I'd say, um, you know, the, the background and pedigree that sometimes I looked for in the people that really sold me on like everything that they could do. Um, Um, often didn't work out the ones that like, [00:41:00] really open with all of our challenges that were super excited about that and like, didn't come in with like, big egos have been really successful.
I also think another mistake I made when it came to leadership is I think I overemphasized at time industry experience. Like, especially in go to market side, you know, I was like, so excited about people who had worked in like, kind of like the broader industry. And I just hired a president and COO here who joined in February.
Who's been just, Transformational for me. And I remember at the time I was evaluating a couple other candidates. Some of them had very deep, perfect industry pedigree. And you know, Saf, who's our president and COO, he hadn't worked in enablement. In fact, he literally said that he's been a CRO many times and has always said no to enablement platforms because he didn't believe in them.
Right. He was like, they don't get used. They're expensive. They're just like, you know, out there. And, but he was really humble about the fact that he didn't know the space. But he [00:42:00] had worked, you know, he reported the CEO so fine. Like he ran, he was the CRO of Galileo. He had worked at Twitter for a long time.
So he had like really a lot of success, but he was really humble in his approach. He was really open about like the things that he'd have to learn and that he wouldn't know. And, you know, he's been able to master that quickly and frankly brought in like a lens of like, I'm typically the buyer of this thing.
I don't believe in it. So we need to be able to sell to people just like me. Um, so yeah, I'd say, so that's, that's been a big thing. I'd say the ones. Also where I've had leadership turnover, I'd say like, I've probably had like a 50, 50 rate on leadership hires over the years. And in some cases people work for like a period of time.
And I think many times when, when I look back and I'm like, Oh, that didn't, you know, that didn't work out. It's like, well, it did. The first, let's say, two years, and then it didn't, right? They didn't scale. And I think sometimes you want this dream of like, you know, people are going to be on the journey the whole time.
And like, [00:43:00] you've got all these friendships, you know, when you're in the trenches with, with these folks, and then things get a bit ugly because it's not working. They're not meeting your expectations. You're growing more and more frustrated. The dynamic between you two are changing because you're going now from like.
You know, really demanding things that they, they might not have the skills or competencies or ability to do, but you need that now. And you don't necessarily have the time to get them to that next level. It's kind of need someone that has those skills for the time. Like, I think those are the situations I've struggled the most, probably not handled quickly enough.
Um, so,
David: All those things you just said, the three things were one vulnerability and self awareness. I think that is, I wish that those were attributes that I looked for in people. I, I, I, I've done a number of interviews now with CEOs on this podcast who have said that same thing, that they really try to [00:44:00] understand, does someone know? Their own limitations. It doesn't mean they can't get over the limitations, literally what you just said. It's just, are they aware of it or are they coming in saying, I know everything, I can do everything, you know, and really good at selling, which frankly, a lot of
Melanie: and I
David: who've been
Melanie: fall for it, you know, you're just like, Oh my God, especially, especially when you're coming from a desperate place where it's like, you've been running that function. You so desperately need someone in that's when you're the most susceptible to the person that sells you that, like, they've got all the answers and, you know, that's where I've, I think I've, I've fallen for it.
I've made the wrong decisions. Um, you know, the less good of two options, uh, in those moment moments because you are more susceptible. You're just like, I just need this problem solved. This person seems like they've got the solution, you know, whereas, uh, that's just it.
David: our, our, our head of talent at one point said to me, Dave, we're hiring some exec and they said to me, uh, her name's Jillian, [00:45:00] she said, she said, Dave, if you look at every back hire you've made, every single one has been based, has been hired. Um, because you, you try to rush the process because you were so stressed about running a function that you literally rushed the process, you know?
And so it was, it was, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Melanie: beach twice.
David: uh, so that was, um, so that's, that's stuck with the other one, the industry experience, I, again, same, same mistake, not only I've made, but so many people I've talked to have made is like, you know, That, that industry experience where they, they feel like I need the person who knows my space.
I need the person who's been in my space, by the way, usually at companies that are very old and, and are, did it a completely different way. And they probably joined the company when it was already a billion of revenue. And you're like, that's who I need to go get second one. And the third 50, 50 kind of success rate on hiring. [00:46:00] Now I've done 20 something of these episodes and I think the highest number I've heard for success rate is 60%. That's the highest has been 60%. Like nobody, people have done it 10 times. Like I have not talked to a person who says, yeah, my hiring rate on execs, like I'm 80%. And to me, that's so interesting that that's, you know, that we're all, you, I don't, interviews are not, you can't, in an interview process, you can do a lot of things, but it's, it is hard to get it
Melanie: it actually be interesting. It would be an interesting exercise for me to go back and do it at like, kind of like the VP and the level one below. Um, it actually might be higher than, than 50%. Like I'm like going
David: It probably
Melanie: model. I'm like, actually, like, I, I do think it's, it's quite higher than that, but
David: Mm.
Melanie: to, to really, really hurt and burn because like the impacts.
Sometimes just aren't even visible to you in the moment. And then [00:47:00] like, there is kind of like that long tail of like challenges there and like the time that it takes to recover, especially for key hires on go to market or, well, I mean, obviously go to market or R& D,
but, but, but it's really challenging. But. At the same time, when I look at, you know, cause, and in those moments, it's easy to question everything you've known about yourself. You know, like, do I not know what I'm doing? You know, I not know how to hire. And I w I've had some low points and then I go back and I look at like, okay, of the people I've directed, directly hired over the years.
And not just, not just execs. Like early on, I wasn't hiring execs. I was hiring like individuals. We actually have a really high retention rate. Of some of our earliest employees. Now there's a lot of people that have come and gone in, in the, in the middle, but we also have started seeing like boomerangs.
And so when I look at, you know, the cover and when I really get clear on what those people are in common, they weren't the obvious choice for the role. Like, for example, our head of marketing, Elle, who's still like, he's the [00:48:00] brilliant mind behind our brand. Her and I really, that, that was our jam. I heard her when she was seven months pregnant, not the obvious choice.
I also heard her before we had raised our seed run. We had no money in the bank. She had just moved to Denver, was unhappy with her job. She was seven months pregnant. She was like, I, I'm excited about this. I'm like, I can't really pay you much is the problem. I was like, I don't know. It's like, we're hoping to, you know, and it just kind of worked out and she was so brilliant and so good.
And she's still someone that like, I get so much joy working with her. She's, she's so amazing. And so like there, there's some situations where it's like, it doesn't seem like the obvious choice, but those, the situations play out and work the best. Our rep, Freddy, our first rep who now came, who left after three and a half years now came back to be our head of sales.
He didn't have any SaaS selling experience at all. And at the time I was like, I need something like SaaS, you know, he'd sold like staffing and other things. And like to this day, I don't think I'll, I'll meet a better seller, you know? So it's just, I think there, there is no secret sauce. There is no like secret bullet to hiring the right [00:49:00] people.
You have to go through these, Trials and these learnings and also learning about, you know, your style. And I think something that over the years I've gone back from feedback and looking at like leadership situations where like there was just a lot of friction in like personalities and styles like. I get in the weeds, I inspect, I have high expectations.
Like if leaders really don't want that, it's just not going to be a fit. It's just not going to be a fit. Like I, I can't just let set goals and outcomes and like meet when we, when we meet or be that, you know, like I, I care about understanding our data. I care about how our process are run. And so I care about reviewing the designs in our product.
Like there's a lot of things that I just like care about. And now I've just like learned to just. Embrace that and be very fricking open, open about the challenges that they're coming in. If I'm hiring for a role, we've got challenges. There's challenges at every part of the business and you know, really open around like, what, what do I expect my involvement to be?
How do I expect them to run? And like spending a lot more time on like, how do they actually run their [00:50:00] org? I think I've asked, I think I've learned a lot about interviewing. Like I didn't spend enough time, like actually understanding, like walk me through your operating cadence. Like how do you run your org?
And understanding like how similar or different is that from My approach and how I'd like, because if you philosophically disagree on, on some of those pieces, it's just going to be a constant friction. Um, so anyway, I think you, you learn some of those things over time and like what matters. And I've learned a lot from some of our great leaders and like, I'm, I'm open to you want different styles.
You don't want everyone like, okay, whatever Mel says is, is what goes, but you do need to find that right. Um, That right balance. And for me, that starts with the leader, really understanding what to expect with like how I'm going to approach this.
David: Mm.
Melanie: that took me a long time to learn that about myself and then like, accept that about myself.
Um,
David: What, um, one, one last question. I want to transition to your background. One, one last question. Um, big question. [00:51:00] What, what is the biggest challenge you've ever faced at Speck It? And if you were able to overcome that challenge, how, how did you?
Melanie: I'd say it was, there was a four month season that was the perfect storm of like just immense. It's Difficulty in Pain. It started with my, uh, so this is April 2022. So this is right after we had just closed our Series B round. Um, we were coming off of a lot of growth. We closed it in December, 2021. This is like right as the economy is slowly starting to turn, uh, to turn.
Belongs to my co founder and Zari and I were just two peas in a pod, yin and yang, whatever you want to call it. But like, we just, we worked really well together. We challenged each other. We have just such a deeply aligned vision and a deep friendship, but she had gone through a year of immense personal [00:52:00] struggle.
I won't go too deep into it, but just. I've never seen someone suffer like that on a personal level. Um, and she was just so, she had had to move back to Pakistan, which is where she's from. And so she was working like US hours from Pakistan. And basically a year in to that, just a year of just, you know, Immense pain after immense pain.
She was like, I just can't do this. Like for my own mental health, like I need to like, get back to being myself. And so at the same time, we'd grown, grown, grown super, super rapidly. And we'd never really, uh, we had amazing, uh, founding technical talent, but we hadn't really had like a true, what I would consider like CTO, head of engineering.
And there was A hire I made that I, that I rushed and long story short, we'd grown really quickly. We'd started bringing on all these amazing logos and we also started having performance issues in the product. There were two things.
David: Hmm,
Melanie: you know, one of the ways that we deliver, um, our [00:53:00] solution is via Chrome extension.
Chrome extensions are incredibly finicky products. And, you know, with Chrome changes and stuff, and like at the time we didn't have the level of observability that we need. And like some of those just like basic things that really help you prevent those, we started having performance challenges. Like, and you're talking like one to two second delays, but to a rep who's using us every day, right.
If you're slowing down your screen, I mean, it's detrimental. So like, and we just couldn't get to the bottom of like what the heck was happening. And at the same time, as all of our efforts were going towards this and this other product that we launched that was just like not a success, never should have built it, but became like huge piece.
Basically all of our technical talent went towards solving that. And over time, a bunch of bugs had grown and we have been so focused on growth. I had been so focused on growth that I had like removed myself from our support channel. You know, I'd remove myself from some of our meetings because I was so focused on like marketing and, you know, growth and revenue and customers.
And so I, And I use the product every day and I felt some challenges, but I didn't appreciate just how much like small little imperfections had grown with my [00:54:00] focus on like, well, let's just innovate. Let's just innovate. Let's just innovate. So we just hadn't focused on like the core of the products enough in those years of trying to like grab market share.
And so here we are, it's April, 2022. We're having really challenging product issues that no one Can give me answers to, I didn't fully appreciate the challenge at the same time, my co founder is like, I, I have to step away. It has, did it have anything to do with Speck? If it's Speck, it was just like the last thing, you know, it was consuming, consuming her.
And so that was just like a really hard time, like emotionally, because I've, I've really seen us go into the end together and having to inherit, like, just like such a challenge that like, I didn't know where to start. And I wasn't getting.
David: hmm.
Melanie: And I now had to hire a CTO at the same time. It's now May, June.
I'm like in it with our technical teams trying to solve it. I'm flying to Dubai because half of our team is US based. Half our team is in Pakistan. I'm trying to get everyone on site. Same time I'm trying to interview and the economy starts changing. [00:55:00] And we had investors that were like really early on, you know, Kraft is one of our investors, David Sachs, who wrote, you know, the whole like burn model, et cetera.
All of a sudden, there's a lot of pressure from our board to say, Hey, because we, we'd hired our, we'd closed our Series B December 2021. We'd had, you know, all the classic metrics. We had like 160 percent net retention when we raised our Series B. We had like 4. 0 over a year of growth. So we were like growing like crazy.
Everything seemed great on the surface. So we had like hired against that plan that everyone had approved. So we had just hired, I mean, like, Way too fast, but like 40 plus people in those first like four months to try and hit this continued three, four X growth rates. We just hired all these people, the team we're having growth challenges that naturally come with that.
And now the board is saying, Hey, valuations are dropping. Things need to look very different. And so in June, after I'd like sold everyone on this vision, like we have like such great team spirit, despite the product challenges that we were having. And obviously I don't think to our customers, they were as pronounced, but to me, they were now, [00:56:00] because it's like, can you see your baby,
David: Of course they are, of
Melanie: baby hurting?
And it's just, you know, and now like, I was like very intimately familiar with, with everything that was happening. And, you know, basically like we had to do a layoff because the plan that we'd hired all those people based off of the trajectory of the company looked like it was going to be different based on the markets.
The valuations that we had raised on and like what we were to expect to the future had changed. And so there was just dynamics and that just between Zari stepping away, plus the product challenges, plus having to do a layoff to phenomenal people that we'd just brought on to the company and some people that had been on the team for a long time.
It just felt horrible,
David: Hmm,
Melanie: for our culture, horrible for the team, the people that were impacted. And it took a long time to recover. So we went through like a period of pain and I know a lot of other companies did at the same time, like, you know, [00:57:00] everyone, and
David: everyone.
Melanie: that, but when you're going through it, it's so hard for it not to feel like you're.
David: Well, you still have to go
Melanie: You have to go through and it feels like it's like only, you know, your situation is so much work to your team. It feels like this situation is so much worth it. And we did do it before other companies did it because we're very proactive, which looking back, thank God we did because it, you know, set us up to be in a really strong financial position, you know, to this day now, two, three years later,
David: hmm,
Melanie: but at the time it felt like.
We're seeing a few people do it, but like, why, why are we doing it this early? And so it was a great decision that I would not have come to that conclusion myself. And I think that's where the board, even at the time, I frankly have a lot of feelings of resentment and stuff. Cause I'm like, you approved this plan and got on board.
Like, let's just kind of like, wait and see that was. An area where I would have just made a mistake as a founder to delay that decision. Did it course correct enough, even at that time, because I was so protective. [00:58:00] Um, but I guess that was really tough and yes, we had, there were other, there was a perfect storm of other challenges that happened that I won't get into, um, on the people side, but it was just, that was a hard season.
Anyway, that was, that was not just one challenge. That was a lot, but, um,
David: Well, I think, I think that that period of time for, I'd say every technology company, private, public, you know, like that, that, I think, I think this has been a since COVID, the beginning of COVID till now, it's probably been the hardest period, like extended period to run a company. I mean, I, I can't, the number of things that happened since February, March, 2020 till today, it's, it's, it's kind of unbelievable actually, like the sequence of events.
And so, um, well, thank you for, for, for sharing that. And I think, um, A lot of other [00:59:00] people have gone through that, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a reminder again that you're not alone in it, not that it makes it easy.
Melanie: and I think if you're able to look back and like appreciate, you know, Honestly, like that, we are such a better product as a result because we focused on our core, we focus on our foundation, we invested in the infrastructure we needed to be able to take advantage of AI, we focused on our design, our UX, you know, like from a product standpoint, like, yeah, we didn't build all the features at the pace that I was originally expecting us to, but like, we are such a better product experience.
And I do think in this space, environment, like UX is going to be a huge factor that helps any company race. And I think we're a better culture too, because at the end of the day, like it, there was a natural process, a slower one than I think anyone wanted where people that weren't really on board, you know, naturally kind of fell out, you know, whether they quit or transitioned out, you know, leaders that, that, that weren't the right fit for the organization.
So it ended up feeling like just like a series of just, you know, [01:00:00] beatings when people transitioned out and there were challenges. But I do think, you know, of the people that stayed or even other people that came back, like the resilience that you create in your culture when you go through things like that.
And then you see the other side and you see the wins and, you know, it just, I think it creates, like, that's what creates culture. Um, so I think there's, there's,
David: What, um, let's look more positive. Let's say more positive. What are you really excited about right now for Speckett?
Melanie: I mean, honestly, I, if you look at the pitch decks that I raised the company on, like I always painted this vision of, you know, intelligent recommendations right in the moment and being able to actually track, you know, what are people using and how does that impact performance? And at the time, I mean, it literally was a dream, right?
Like we're going to predict what people need before they realize they need it. And we're going to be able to measure how that impacts like their actual performance. Like I'm literally seeing that vision come to life. every day in the product, um, [01:01:00] as we've really incorporated AI. And I mean, it's just fun.
It's so fun to think about that. It's so fun to think about like the additional possibilities. It's so fun seeing customers like literally be mind blown now on demos. I'm like, this isn't just like a demo, like this, this is real, you know? Um, and, and, you know, so I think that's, That's been really, really fun and exciting.
Um, I also, I also think, you know, there, there's just a natural shift. Like, I think for so long, we've been beating this drum of like contextual learning, just in time enablement, context aware recommendations, you know? And for a long time, people were like, yeah, yeah. But like, I want my CMS. I want my digital filing cabinet and I want this centralized repository that people are never going to go dig through.
Um, whereas now, you know, with this whole rise of like, you know, I was laughing the other day, a very known CEO of a content platform posted like on, on Twitter. And it's like, you know, The world of browser agents opens up this whole new world of context to our content. I'm like, [01:02:00] yeah, dude, been saying that for eight years.
It's like, so I think the world is finally catching on to this vision. Uh, and I think we're, we're really well positioned against it. You know, I really do think we're, we're ahead of the market and the technology that we've built and the approach we've taken and the learnings we've had along the way. Um, and I think the team's really fired up about it.
Um, you know, there's still the process of bringing customers along as your product. Especially with AI, like we have such a density of enterprise customers as well. And so like, you know, we're learning a lot about, you know, openness to AI and security and all those pieces, but. It's really fun. Um, and
David: Awesome.
Melanie: working actually, uh, well, we just announced our acquisition of Sequence, which was, uh, really exciting.
They're a phenomenal team, really cool products. And so they're really bolstering just like our AI capabilities and seeing this vision come to, come to life. And then we're actually working right now. Uh, I guess maybe it'll be live by the time this episode goes. On a brand refresh, you know, we've had the same, uh, Logo.
And there's so many [01:03:00] aspects of our brand. I talked, we've spent way more time on this conversation. I expect to talk about branding now. Like I can't talk about brands. I have a lot of emotional connection to our current brand, our customers do too. But, you know, I really think it's time to reintroduce ourselves to the marketplace.
Not in a way that feels like, you know, Oh, the old speck it is, is dead, but just like, we really have a seat at the table now. Um, and so it's been a really, a lot of fun working with customers, working with our team, kind of like thinking of like, you know, what is that next evolution? How do we bring, you know, what's worked in the old and really, um, you know, reintroduce ourselves to the marketplace as the next gen solution.
So those are some of the things that I've been really excited about.
David: That's great. That's great. I want to transition to your, to your background. So, um, where, where are you from originally?
Melanie: So born and raised in Switzerland, um, my dad's Swiss, my mom's American. They met, uh, when my dad was studying, uh, well, when they were both doing their masters at DU. Um, but born and raised in Switzerland, since my dad's Swiss, went to all public schools. So, um, So, um, I [01:04:00] grew up in Switzerland, uh, my dad's whole side of the family is there.
So like the first 15 years of my life was living in Switzerland, in a village outside Geneva, speaking French, uh, but my mom spoke English at home. So if I switched to French, you would never know that I speak English. Um, and basically, and every summer we'd go to the States, but my dad's job basically relocated him.
He works in finance to the Bahamas. He works in compliance. This was in 2007, 2008, when. There was a lot of scrutiny happening with, you know, Americans trying to hide their money in foreign accounts. And like, there was a lot of mess and his job is to figure out that mess. And so we relocated to this little Island in the Bahamas, Nassau, out of nowhere when I was 15.
Um, and so lived here for three years before then going to, uh, CU Boulder. That's where my mom went. She really wanted us all to go to school at CU, um, and then move to San Francisco. So I'd say that's the.
David: Wow. What a journey.
Melanie: So, uh, diversified.[01:05:00]
David: and, and you mentioned this in the beginning, like you didn't really see. I don't, from what you've told me, you didn't really set out to be a founder. I mean, that wasn't like, was that the goal from, from day one for you? Did you know that that's what you were going to do? Was that your dream growing up?
Melanie: Now, you know, I think I've always, uh, I was definitely gifted academically. So I've always like loved studying and reading books and all that stuff. And so I, I've always, I think felt like naturally I would end up in a leadership position. Like I saw myself like being a leader. Um, but I really didn't have any.
Friends or family? Like, I mean, I definitely didn't have any family on either side in our extended family that had gone down the entrepreneurship path, which is definitely very different than, for example, my fiance, like he comes from a family of entrepreneurs, you know, so that path he grew up around it, it became very natural for me, I wasn't really exposed to that.
So it wasn't really, um, yeah, something that came naturally, but when I worked in, when I was, [01:06:00] uh, I was going to do my master's in accounting and go the CPA route, uh, In, in college and the summer when I was supposed to work at, it was PWC, I think, uh, my internship between my fourth and fifth year. Um, I won't get into too much detail, but long story short, I pivoted, ended up working at this startup in Boulder that was, Founded by this guy, Tom Bullock.
He was one of the founding CTOs of Zynga, um, and had worked in Silicon Valley the whole time and worked really closely with, with him. And, you know, I was hearing all the stories of Silicon Valley. He's friends with all the who's who's and, you know, on the technology side. And, you know, I was like, wow, like that is a whole different world than working in the startup, you know?
And it was. In the cannabis tech industry at the time, which was like its own field. Like it was just like, I was exposed to this like whole world. I was like, wow, this is really fun. Just like figuring things out. And I didn't really have a defined role. He was like, just like, go figure this out. Go figure this out.
And so I was exposed to a lot of things. And I think that really set my eyes on like, okay, [01:07:00] I feel like I belong in San Francisco. Like I need to like be, be around these minds. And I. I hope that my kids, you know, if they want to go the tech or, you know, entrepreneurial route, like I would send them right to the heart of San Francisco.
I know a lot has changed. I know I was there in the days, 2015 to 2018, but like there is something magic about being in an environment where like, you're just surrounded by people that like love that, especially in your early twenties. You know, someone early on told me your twenties are for learning, your thirties are for earning.
Like. I really had that mindset of like, I'm just going to absorb. I'm going to be a sponge. I'm going to like, just try and take in everything I could. And, and I think San Francisco does that really naturally, um, still to this day. So that's how I met them.
David: who do you think has had the biggest impact on your career to date? One person.
Melanie: I think, um, Brett Kuehner, [01:08:00] who was our, um, first investor, runs a seed fund. He worked at Salesforce for like 13 years, ran a bunch of different functions there, Sales ops and stuff. Uh, he was an early investor in a few different companies too, but he's really an operator by background and like a product guy.
Um, and he ended up leading our, our seed round. Um, love Brett, very unique personality. Uh, I tend to, to work well with unique personalities. Uh, but you know, he's, I think he's challenged my thinking the most about products, particularly. I think he's got really strong instincts. Um, You know, and he's, he's got the marketing side too.
I think he's, he's been there when I, when I needed it. So I'd say he's, he's probably had the biggest impact when I look at the last eight years, helping me think through some of the toughest challenges, um, gone through and just thinking to the product, he's pushed my thinking a lot to be more innovative, to be more [01:09:00] forward thinking.
So. Yeah.
David: That's great. You, you've been through, um, quite a bit, um, you know, in these eight years, like we talked about, and a lot of challenges, a lot of ups, a lot of downs. What is it that keeps you going? Driven and motivated like what what gets you through these tough times and and what what drives you? Yeah,
Melanie: wish I really knew what drives me or where does I've come from. I've spent more time than I'd like to admit pondering on that. Um, I probably like my existential nature of, you know, this life is short, you know, when I die, will I feel proud of, you know, what I did with my life? I think, you know, honestly, that's probably at the core of it, but, and just freedom, like, I want to be able to do the things that I want.
Like I'm in the process of planning a wedding and. I'm trying to do a lot of it myself and you're planning a honeymoon and find one my fiance's like, we should just get a travel agent for the honeymoon. And I was like, Oh, this is going to be more expensive and [01:10:00] stuff. And it's like, no, I was like, you're right.
You're right. You're right. You know? And like, I want to be able to make those decisions if I have to. Um, so I'd say that's, you know, just interesting long term outcomes. That's probably it. But now, honestly, like, I just, I love it. Like, I don't know how else to say it. Like I, whenever I find myself spending time, like the people side can be so And the challenges are exhausting, but like all it takes is me spending a little bit of time with our product team, actually thinking about the product and thinking about the problem.
And like, I'm lit back up, you know, or thinking creatively about like marketing challenges. And so I think I'm trying to be a lot more intentional around like, where do I spend my time? And like, how do I find more, more of that kind of time? Um, but I, I enjoy a lot of the different aspects of it, I think is, and, you know, whenever I'm.
Questioning things. Um, I really asked myself, like, what would I rather be doing? I don't have a good answer. Like, I literally don't know what I would rather [01:11:00] be doing. I can't imagine, you know, I'm sure there will be a point, you know, especially as I think about having kids, like where I'm going to want to spend more time on that, but, um, I, I think this is what I'm, I'm meant to be doing right now.
And as long as I, you know, and I will say one thing, whenever you're having a hard time, go talk to some of your favorite customers. Or just go on site with your customers because, you know, I was on, on site with one of our customers, International SOS. And they were talking about literally how their business, they, it's a big company.
They've got like 10, 000 employees, but basically they work with the US military as well as other companies to literally go rescue people when they're having challenges, whether it's health or security, they, they help companies that have expats or folks in different countries. Um, when we got a tour of their assistance center and what they were doing and how they were, you know, and it has a company they're leveraging spec it and the impact it has.
And like, you realize like, okay, on the surface, we're not carrying cancer, you know, we're, we're an enablement platform, but when you [01:12:00] realize like what that actually enables, right. The timing is back to people. When I, when I went on site for the, our customer, the ALS association and got to hear from like, I mean, truly like folks with.
ALS and like seeing like what our solution enables the ALS employees to be able to do to give back to the community. Like, I think that, that keeps me going. It just, you realize that yes, we're just tech, we're just tech, but you know, the value that we deliver has real impact. Uh, even if it's simple ROI calculation,
David: If everything you know today, everything you've gone through in your career, if you could go back to before you started your first job and give yourself one piece of advice, what would that be?
Melanie: I'd say just be yourself. And for me, that's like, I, I have opinions and I speak up. And I put my hand [01:13:00] up if there's a problem and I think I can solve it. And I think that served me really well early on in my career. So I'd say do more of that. I think sometimes I was like afraid to speak up in a room if there was, you know, other people there, but I, yeah, I, I think I would tell myself to do more of that.
I think at the end of the day, it, the right people will gravitate towards you, um, and you'll get really clear on the kind of people that you work really well with or not.
David: Love it. Be yourself. I like it. Simple, but actually a good reminder. I interviewed someone the other day and they said, um, stop self censoring yourself, you know, and it's the same. I actually think it's just important. You have an opinion, you should voice it. And, and I think At least for me, I think for most people early in your career, you self censor a lot, even later, but you know, um, so I, I really like that.
Be yourself. Um, [01:14:00] if people want to get in touch with you, if they want to check out Beckett, what's the best way, like what's the best mode to get in? Is it LinkedIn? Is it
Melanie: LinkedIn is always best. So connect with me on, um, LinkedIn and then, uh, for Speckit, go to our website, speckit. com.
David: Awesome. Mel, thank you. This, this was. This was awesome. And I really, I appreciate how open you've been. And, and, uh, it's, it's really been amazing to watch you grow this business over all these years and go through the downs and come back on the ups. And, um, so it's, it's been awesome and I really appreciate you
Melanie: Awesome. Thank you so much for the conversation. It was great.
David: Awesome. Everyone hope you enjoyed. And, uh, if you did, please share with your, with your networks, like, subscribe, all of that. And we'll see you for the next episode of Not Another CEO Podcast.
