One of our TPMs, Iliana Paleva, recently had the opportunity to interview Ken Grohe - a technology veteran and sales expert with over 30 years of SaaS experience. An incredible human all-around, Ken’s remarkable career has led him to pivot and catapult a number of startups into successful exits, such as taking Virident (Sequoia funded) from less than $3M of bookings to a successful $685M exit in less than 18 months. Read the interview below to learn from Ken about what it takes to take your company to the next level. 

Hi, Ken. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview with me. So let's dive into the ten questions in ten minutes.

Sounds exciting. Thanks.

Awesome. What is one habit you have that has helped you propel your selling skills to become a leader in tech?

I'd say curiosity. Curiosity is number 1. Second to that is practice. I literally remember even going to college - I know you went to Cornell, I went to BC. I remember walking up and down practicing my presentations, just no self-consciousness. I mean, right down the street, if there was a town drunk, or person nearby, or cars, I just had to practice to the point I got really good. 

You have helped so many companies grow exponentially. What are some factors you consider when you're deciding whether to join an established company or not? I know you've talked about revenue streams. Is this the top factor for you?

I really appreciate sales professionals more than almost anybody. I went to school to be a lawyer and I ran out of money; and I actually spent a day at a law firm. And I realized they spend all their time in briefs and no time in court. Sales is the opposite. You spend all the time in court, in theory, and hardly any time in the briefs, which is great, which is why I made the career choice. What I would tell you is, as much as I respect the sales profession, there are great sales professionals, and the people that do it - they can't make a bad product sell, so it has to go through product-market fit. I know the people that work at Hyperspace Ventures know what that is, but I actually think before you hire sales, you have to hire marketing. You have to have some business development, and you have to get to the first $2million among the founders and ARR (annual recurring revenue), typically. You have to get that before you hire a sales force, because the sales force can't sell a lousy product. You need a good product and a good market fit. If you do that, the only thing left is a business to business salesperson. 

For sure. That's an awesome tip. What do you look for when hiring lead salespeople?

When I was about your age, I was running around Akron, Ohio, where my daughters Erin, Samantha and Olivia were born (and ironically, Steph Curry and LeBron James were all born in the same hospital too.) Different days, obviously, different ages. I was trained by Dick Egan in 1992 for Election Day, so it was a long time ago. So I've been doing this for 30 years, hiring people and I have hired a couple of thousand people. I always ask the same three questions. I won't reveal those questions, but the answers reveal if the person has a good soul, number one. Number two, I need them to reveal some empathy skills, some people skills. A lot of people hide behind numbers and report news versus make news. I want to hire people that can make news. And then lastly, that natural curiosity, a lot of creativity, and just overall innate drive.

Great qualities to look for. How do you sell a product that doesn't have an established brand yet?

Well, that's the most fun. If you're just moving things from one side of the desk to the other, you're barely living. I mean, I want to create something more and improve my soul. So, whatI've done in the past is what they call “explainer videos” or “whiteboard videos.” I think UPS, maybe 20 years ago, pioneered it. Literally a person on a whiteboard drawing them out.Some of the better ones have been cartoon-based. I put out about 30 a year at the companyI'm at, TAOS - we have a lot of them. Some of them get well over 150,000 views, but it's an incumbent upon the person. And I love being the president of the Chief Revenue Office. I own both marketing and sales. I spend most of my time in marketing. Not brand marketing, not event marketing, but demand-generation marketing. How do you work with Google, so people can find you? And what pain are you solving for? But to answer your question specifically, I think an explainer video of 60 seconds or less. In fact, earlier today, I did a video called “Lunchtime Friday”, and it's always 60 seconds or less. And I honored a gentleman who just passed away recently who's one of my mentors. 

You have successfully pivoted a number of companies, and pivoting can be so hard on founders who have a hard time letting go of their vision. How do you usually convince leadership to let go? When is the right time to pivot? And what are some of the top factors to consider when doing so?

Probably no surprise: most of the founders of companies are more of a technical persuasion, the people that actually write the code and create it. And I respect them. They're doing something I cannot do. But you've got to be cognizant of the TAM - Total Available Market. If it's shrinking, like if you came up with a better copier machine right now, I would not invest. In fact, the opposite. The reason I invest in SignNow - it’s the opposite of a copy machine. Or making a better gas-powered vehicle right now: probably not the time, you want to go electric if you can. I know "staying green" is a big thing. But you've got to pivot to a bigger TAM and do PLG: Product-Led Growth. I know you're very familiar with it. It's not like the product does it all, but the first few customers have to be PLG. I was there at the beginning with Zoom. I was customer number two. I was at the beginning of Barracuda doing all the web filters to keep the web PG-rated or G-rated. I was there at the beginning with SignNow, I did not write the code. I just took it to the point of exploding. And now when you go to an Apple store, that API that you sign is actually ours, which is great. I was there at a Flashkap called Virident,and a company called Weka that was instrumental in a bunch of different places, namely two of the big three vaccine companies for the world's fastest file system. So, you have to go to the biggest TAM that's available. 

What is the perfect balance between a good product and good selling? Can good selling ever help a bad product and vice versa?

It can. It won't get you to escape velocity. I think a great GTM or go-to-market, that's kind of a hip word these days. Geez, all these years I was a VP of sales. Now I'm a CRO, but great go-to-market and a very high NPS (Net Promoter Score) will do it. You're probably familiar with this, Apple is an NPS of 73. And it basically shows how likely I would recommend other products to others, and the hail effect behind it. But I think a high NPS of a product, and a great go-to-market, when combined, can accelerate a solution - as long as it solves a pain. And like we talked before, not to hammer too much, it has to have a product-market fit. Someone has to be the early guinea pigs and put the first few pilots out there. When it’s a SMB (small- and medium-sized business) market the problem is that people say "why can't you buy this product?" Well, there's no one there to staff, to actually put it in. That's what TAOS does for people. And the big companies, everyone's always like, “geez, Bank of America or United Airlines could use this product. Why don't they buy it now?" Well, they'll buy anything, but they have to budget for it, which means you have to do a pilot to afford the budget the next year. Does it mean they have a lot of business, a lot of money? Yes - but they need to budget, because those big public companies need to tell people what they're going to do before they actually do it. It's a little more structured. That's why they're so highly regulated. But I think the combination of great go-to-market and high NPS can make anything take off.

What is a surefire way to make a good first impression and elicit a response from a potential client or customer when making first contact virtually?

Well, you're in the beginning of a generation that really won't focus on a resume at all. One of my daughters has a CV. I think it's all been replaced. Literally everyone who approaches me, and I get approached a lot, [doesn’t have one]. About half the time I'm buying things. Half the time I'm selling things. I'm not talking personal, I'm talking business. That's what you typically do when you're a president or chief revenue officer. You have to buy a lot of tools to enable your sales people. But what I've basically found is, [you should] have a large following. I'm blessed to have 20,000+ people who follow me. I've hired a lot of people, and the people I've hired have hired a lot of people. And the people that I've hired, that hired other people have been successful, and they've had children and they've been in the workforce. So I would say that, number one, having a large following, because you can't be a leader [otherwise], leaders have a following. Number two: are they participating in added value to the groups? If I'm in the AI (artificial intelligence) group, I want to be posting about the new things. Tesla is working on those [new things]. SpaceX is working on a new thing. Heck, one day, you're

probably aware of this, I go to Whole Foods, there's no cashiers. You walk in - as long as you have WiFi, you walk out. You never know. Those five minutes [of saved time] - I could have cured cancer in those five minutes. Not waiting while someone is behind a check or paying with cash. Not saying those things are dirty, but they're antiquated.

So to answer your question, specifically, if I can post to groups, [I want to] add value to the groups, the people that are out there. There are a lot of groups on LinkedIn, and you can learn from similar folks as part of it. And then lastly, scroll all the way down [on your LinkedIn profile]: I've given out at least 30 recommendations, and I've received 30 recommendations. Some people work for me, some people work for them. Some people are famous, like Kathy Ireland, like Scott McNealy (one of the titans in the industry). I didn't get into business just to make money, I wanted to make a difference - if you're not giving people kudos and getting kudos unsolicited both ways, what are you doing? You're just making a pay check. That's a job. I'm in for a career. That's what I look for. And I tell you, people's LinkedIn profile is the judgment trait. It's exactly what people look at first.

For sure, I totally agree with you. In your eyes, what makes an early stage tech company stand out from the rest - is it idea, execution, team?

What I would say, it’s the passion passed from the founders to the initial team. The founders (whether 1, 3 or 5) have a material investment in the company. The initial team is going to have a sliver of that, maybe 1/10 to 1/100 of their investment. But, however they can put the passion from the founders to the initial team, that’s huge. I made this comment before in preparation for an interview, when I was looking for funding for SignNow, I was preparing 47 slides and really cared about the font in slide 46. And how the rows lined up in slide 45. No, no - one slide is how I got funded, and one slide is how I sold the company. So, my point being is, it’s gotta be the passion going from the founders to the initial team.

I know you have always been into business and technology. What was it that first brought you into tech and why?

Effectively, I was the VP of sales of a company called Champion Exposition Services, which did trade shows. That was before the internet. That's how people communicated and got things together. I was walking through the trade show and I saw this one company - it was young, they were happy to be there, and they were meeting with customers. Everyone else was like, "I can't put this together. Why am I here? My job sucks, blah, blah, blah." No, they were happy to be there. It was a guy named Randy Suttle and a guy named Don Donnatelly. Ironically, they went to the same school I went to, which was Boston College. I was only a sophomore at the time.

So to answer your question, specifically, anybody who's graduating from college who isn't an intern of at least one or two summers or one or two years is at a competitive disadvantage. I got on the phone with my friend Paul McGee and his son Will Meghan the other day, and he's trying to get an internship program at Dell to be a future CFO. I said, I don't care how good a job you have and how much money you might make being a bartender, you've got to stop that. Get an internship. My daughter Olivia had four internships by the time she graduated, one of them was at Zoom. One was a pure startup. And she starts at such better expertise. And if you think about it, if you're the hiring manager, you're hiring someone 22, 23, but they're acting with an aptitude of 27, 28. They've worked with tools that you haven't yet worked with. So, hire someone who's invested in the internship. There's a lot of fun jobs out there. There's a lot of high paying jobs out there. But invest in your trajectory to be a great career in your early 20s. It will pay off in your late 20s and 30s.

You're so right. Awesome advice. And last question, what advice do you have for startups who have yet to go to market?

Well, I think I talked about this before, my wife and I are blessed to have investments in around eleven startups. Now they're waiting to exit. It's kind of like a popcorn machine ready to pop. But give yourself two years. I know some people hide behind something called "stealth mode". You can't be in stealth mode for 20 years. That's hiding. From the time you start and incorporate the corporation, which is going to take you two months, from the time you incorporate an LLC or a C Corp, if in two years you get to $2 million, you have a company. If not, go join a company that's already figured it out. But if after two years you can't do $2 million - the idea is good, but not great. I still watch Shark Tank as much as I can on Friday nights. Point is, if you can't get to that, you don't have a business, you have a hobby. Very good questions. I can tell why you guys do so well.

Thank you so much. It was super fun. And thank you so much for doing this. I think it's going to help a lot of people and startups and entrepreneurs.

Good. Thanks.

You can follow Ken on LinkedIn, as well as Twitter, where he shares his experience and invaluable tips.