Developing a long-term view with Userlytics Corporation's Alejandro Rivas-Micoud
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01/09/23 • 21 min
Summary:
This week on How To Win: Alejandro Rivas-Micoud, Founder & CEO of Userlytics Corporation, a UX testing platform founded in 2009.
In this episode, Alejandro breaks down six important lessons he’s learned throughout his career. We discuss creating a strong corporate culture, deciding not to use VCs, and why people overestimate the impact of things in the short term and underestimate their value in the long term. I weigh in on the idea of 'culture eats strategy for breakfast', being your own VC, and how the best companies have high revenue per employee.
Key Points:
- Lesson One - Culture eats strategy for breakfast (01:03)
- What does 'culture eats strategy for breakfast' actually mean? With a quote from COUNTRY Financial's Ben Kobulnicky (03:39)
- Lesson Two - User experience is the most important investment you can make (05:07)
- Lesson Three - Turning to VCs for capital should be a last resort (07:40)
- I explain how I bootstrapped Wynter with a quote from Cloudinary's Itai Lahan (09:49)
- Lesson Four - When scaling, be conservative when hiring (11:49)
- I discuss how really successful companies have high revenue per employee (14:26)
- Lesson Five - People underestimate the importance of thinking long-term (15:29)
- Lesson Six - Sometimes it pays to go global (18:21)
- Wrap-up (19:52)
Mentioned:
Alejandro Rivas-Micoud LinkedIn
My Links:
Summary:
This week on How To Win: Alejandro Rivas-Micoud, Founder & CEO of Userlytics Corporation, a UX testing platform founded in 2009.
In this episode, Alejandro breaks down six important lessons he’s learned throughout his career. We discuss creating a strong corporate culture, deciding not to use VCs, and why people overestimate the impact of things in the short term and underestimate their value in the long term. I weigh in on the idea of 'culture eats strategy for breakfast', being your own VC, and how the best companies have high revenue per employee.
Key Points:
- Lesson One - Culture eats strategy for breakfast (01:03)
- What does 'culture eats strategy for breakfast' actually mean? With a quote from COUNTRY Financial's Ben Kobulnicky (03:39)
- Lesson Two - User experience is the most important investment you can make (05:07)
- Lesson Three - Turning to VCs for capital should be a last resort (07:40)
- I explain how I bootstrapped Wynter with a quote from Cloudinary's Itai Lahan (09:49)
- Lesson Four - When scaling, be conservative when hiring (11:49)
- I discuss how really successful companies have high revenue per employee (14:26)
- Lesson Five - People underestimate the importance of thinking long-term (15:29)
- Lesson Six - Sometimes it pays to go global (18:21)
- Wrap-up (19:52)
Mentioned:
Alejandro Rivas-Micoud LinkedIn
My Links:
Previous Episode
Identifying your company's leverage with SmartAsset's Brian Bourque
Summary:
This week on How To Win: Brian Bourque, SVP of Marketing at SmartAsset, where they've grown a lead generation business from $0 to $100M+ in revenue primarily through paid acquisition marketing and SEO. Brian has a ton of experience leading profitable paid acquisition teams in quantitative, direct-response marketing businesses. He's an advocate of using behavioral psychology, tech, data, and creativity to find exciting, new approaches to business.
In this episode, Brian breaks down six important lessons he’s learned throughout his career. We discuss why tactics aren't strategy, why the internet is bigger than you think, and, for lesson one, why scaling is about realizing where the leverage lies in each part of your company. I give my thoughts on what a good strategy looks like, the concept of pattern interrupt, and why if they 'zig', you should 'zag'.
Key Points:
- Lesson One - Scaling is about realizing where the leverage lies in each part of your company (01:17)
- How do you find out which points of leverage are the best? (02:51)
- I weigh in on the overuse of the term 'scaling' (05:15)
- Lesson Two - Tactics are not the same as strategy (05:53)
- I talk about the differences between tactics and strategy with a quote from author Richard P. Rumelt (08:15)
- Lesson Three - There is value in asking, "What would need to be true to achieve X?" (09:42)
- I give my thoughts on finding your way to 'X' with a quote from author Roger Martin (12:08)
- I recall a story from Matt Epstein, former VP of Marketing at Zenefits, about impossible goals with a quote from Matt (14:07)
- Lesson Four - The internet is larger than you think (15:44)
- Lesson Five - At scale, everyone is a competitor (18:09)
- I discuss the concept of pattern interrupt with a quote from Mutiny's Jaleh Rezaei (20:41)
- Lesson Six - When they 'zig', you 'zag' (22:11)
- I explain why you should always 'zag' with a quote from author Marty Neumeier (22:55)
- Wrap up (24:40)
Mentioned:
Richard P. Rumelt 's Good Strategy Bad Strategy - The Difference and Why It Matters
Roger Martin's A New Way To Think
Content, community, and customer acquisition with Mutiny's Jaleh Rezaei
My Links:
Next Episode
Five steps to grow your business with Catalyst Software's Mark Kosoglow
Summary:
This week on How To Win: Mark Kosoglow, B2B SaaS thought leader and CRO of the customer success platform Catalyst Software. Founded in 2017, Catalyst's founders saw a need to create a tool that integrated customer success tools into a platform that was easy to learn and implement. To date, Catalyst has raised over $45M in funding and employs more than 100 people. Before Catalyst, Mark spent 8 years at the sales execution platform Outreach where he led their sales team as VP and later Senior VP of sales.
In this episode, Mark breaks down his five-step growth process. We discuss pipeline generation, engineering company processes, and creating moments of impact for your customers. I weigh in on the importance of understanding your ICP, why you should always be striving to learn new things, and the retention economy.
Key Points:
- Step One - Choosing your ICP (01:37)
- I weigh in on how to decide which customer segment to target (04:17)
- How does ACV play into Mark's strategy? (05:18)
- Step Two - Generating a pipeline (07:32)
- I discuss why you shouldn't be afraid to be a student with a quote from author Tom Vanderbilt (08:19)
- Mark lays out his SDR-heavy approach to sales (09:33)
- Step Three - Converting the pipeline (11:26)
- Why if you want to scale it, you should teach it and repeat it with a quote from Databox's Peter Caputa (15:38)
- Step Four - Retaining customers (17:39)
- I talk about the new retention economy (21:25)
- Step Five - Optimization (22:18)
- Mark explains why one person should be in charge of the customer journey (24:10)
- Wrap-up (27:55)
Mentioned:
My Links:
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