RB2B

In recent weeks, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey and Sequoia have all warned that AI may be a bubble. That it might just all be hype. I don't buy it and neither should you. Why? Because history tells a very different story: - In the 19th century, companies that refused to adopt machines and industrialization failed - In the 1990’s, companies that were slow to adopt technology and IT faded away - In 2004, cloud companies took on premise software and rebuilt it for the cloud. Those that did not migrate to cloud surrendered their market share to more modern technologies - In 2024, AI companies are taking cloud apps and making them AI-native. Cloud companies that do not migrate to AI fast enough will lose market share to those that do. Don't listen to the naysayers. Business is rapidly evolving. In the next few years, every single business will undergo AI transformation. And new technology trends generates chaos, hype and confusion. Not all initiatives during this time will be successful. In fact, many will fail. But not trying is not an option. If you want to be one of the winners in the next wave of transformation, stay in the game. Don’t miss this wave. Learn to survive amidst this chaos. The world is changing and so must we.

As an executive, I helped grow two data companies (Apollo, ZoomInfo) to over $1B in valuation. Now I’m working on my 3rd and instead of spending all my time in the Board Room, I’m writing posts on Linkedin. Here's 6 reasons why building a brand as an executive is crucial to your role and the success of your company: 1. GTM is rapidly evolving. Some of the old channels are dying. Outreach is no longer working. Buyers prefer not to talk to a sales person and instead do their own research. GTM needs to be rethought. Building a brand and receiving inbound is key to growth. 2. Who will build the brand? Earlier your marketing department was responsible for building the company brand. But that no longer works. Nobody trusts company content. Users are actively avoiding content from even established brands. Instead they are preferring content from personal brands. 3. Building a personal brand starts by being authentic and transparent. An executive has to be personally involved to share their true self with the world. Users prefer engaging with a personal brand because they are looking for a human connection and find this more trustworthy than traditional advertising. 4. We live in an attention economy and all companies (not just competitors) are fighting each other on attention share. Product is no longer a moat but Personal brand is turning out to be a significant moat and difficult to replicate. The scope of storytelling has expanded beyond product messages to life experiences and Edutainment. 5. Executives need to control the narrative of the personal brand, not sales or marketing teams. Users wants to hear from the executives. Thought leadership content directly from executives creates trust and credibility in the market and helps the executive communicate at scale. Relevant organic content is like free advertisement. 6. Is this exercise only for communicating externally? Not at all. The same platform can be used to communicate with your own employees or customers or prospects or competitor’s customers. It's very clear to me that we're entering a whole new era in business. As an executive, if you're NOT assisting your GTM teams, providing them with air cover through thought leadership content, or reducing your sales and marketing costs with compelling storytelling on social media, then you're not fulfilling your role effectively. Learn or Quit. Choice is yours.

As an executive, I helped grow two data companies (Apollo, ZoomInfo) to over $1B in valuation. Now I’m working on my 3rd and instead of spending all my time in the Board Room, I’m writing posts on Linkedin. Here's 6 reasons why building a brand as an executive is crucial to your role and the success of your company: 1. GTM is rapidly evolving. Some of the old channels are dying. Outreach is no longer working. Buyers prefer not to talk to a sales person and instead do their own research. GTM needs to be rethought. Building a brand and receiving inbound is key to growth. 2. Who will build the brand? Earlier your marketing department was responsible for building the company brand. But that no longer works. Nobody trusts company content. Users are actively avoiding content from even established brands. Instead they are preferring content from personal brands. 3. Building a personal brand starts by being authentic and transparent. An executive has to be personally involved to share their true self with the world. Users prefer engaging with a personal brand because they are looking for a human connection and find this more trustworthy than traditional advertising. 4. We live in an attention economy and all companies (not just competitors) are fighting each other on attention share. Product is no longer a moat but Personal brand is turning out to be a significant moat and difficult to replicate. The scope of storytelling has expanded beyond product messages to life experiences and Edutainment. 5. Executives need to control the narrative of the personal brand, not sales or marketing teams. Users wants to hear from the executives. Thought leadership content directly from executives creates trust and credibility in the market and helps the executive communicate at scale. Relevant organic content is like free advertisement. 6. Is this exercise only for communicating externally? Not at all. The same platform can be used to communicate with your own employees or customers or prospects or competitor’s customers. It's very clear to me that we're entering a whole new era in business. As an executive, if you're NOT assisting your GTM teams, providing them with air cover through thought leadership content, or reducing your sales and marketing costs with compelling storytelling on social media, then you're not fulfilling your role effectively. Learn or Quit. Choice is yours.

I hit rockbottom February 26, 2018. It was midnight and I was lying in bed with my wife, having just left the Traffic & Conversions trade show, and I remember saying to her... “We're screwed. Nobody cares what we built.” I had just spent a year of my life and $1M building a newsletter platform called Lead(.)com in stealth. The plan was to “launch” it at the Traffic & Conversions Summit. The day of the event we collected some leads, but when I started talking with people face-to-face I saw their reaction. All they were thinking was, "How do I get this guy to stop talking to me about this lame product?" What I was selling was just not interesting. They had already solved THAT problem. When we hit up the leads it was absolute silence. That night I could barely sleep. I was miserable. Totally defeated. The following morning I had to figure out how to salvage it. I remembered once hearing it was possible to have an anonymous visitor hit a website and you could resolve it to a deliverable email address. I thought I could sell that to anybody. So on the second day of the trade show, I closed every conversation with: "By the way, what if I could get you the email addresses of people who visited your website and didn't fill out a form?" BOOM!! People's eyes lit up. "What did you just say???" Those conversations inspired the next 6 years of my life. Here's the origin story of Retention.com and RB2B and WHY the hardest lesson for founders to learn is that they need to do customer development at the same time (or BEFORE) they build their product. Watch below 👇

RB2B went from $0-1M ARR in 16 weeks. Then it went from $1-2M ARR in 6 weeks. Here are 5 things we’re working on NOW to make sure that by January 2025 we are adding $1M ARR every 2 WEEKS: BACKGROUND: We currently get around 800 new trials, 80 new customers, 20 new upgrades and a total of $16K new MRR every week (including churn or downgrades) with an ACV of around $275/mo. By January 2025, our goal is to add $1M ARR every two weeks. Here's our playbook to get there: 1. Sales assist PLG: While all the initial growth at RB2B came from self-serve PLG, it is a myth that PLG companies do not need a sales team. Notion has 1900+ sales reps, Monday has 280 people in Sales and 20% of Atlassian’s 18K staff are in sales. All these are well known PLG companies. We hired our first PLG sales rep and will continue to build up that team. We are hoping this team will improve our Free ->  Paid conversion and increase ACV by doing slightly larger deals with bigger companies. 2. SEO Most data companies I've worked with (i.e. ZoomInfo, Apollo, Lusha, Contactout) have benefitted from SEO. RB2B is not yet ready to do programmatic SEO but we have some ideas that can increase our organic traffic, thereby increasing our signup numbers. 3. New Products Our ability to deanonymize website traffic can be used to optimize additional sales & marketing workflows. We intend to develop and launch 2-3 new products in the next six months. All the products will result in incremental revenues from the exact same user/target market significantly increasing average revenue per customer.   4. Brand Refresh: Our website and brand is ready for a face lift. We are actively working on this and intend to launch it very soon. Enhanced branding may increase trial signups. Big shout out to Eli Rubel and his team for this. 5. A new GTM process (soon to be unveiled) Stay tuned. We are about to launch an entirely new GTM process that will rewrite the rules to tech sales in B2B. Very excited about this rollout. Adam Robinson is doing a lot of heavy lifting on this process and will share more in coming weeks. This should dramatically increase our Free -> Paid conversion and ACV. Plus, we are still tinkering with LinkedIn thought leadership ads, UGC content and trying to write more on Linkedin. All this is being layered over our existing GTM to accelerate our revenue run rate from current $65K new MRR/month to about $165K new MRR/mo. TAKEAWAY The best time to accelerate is not when you are stuck, but when you are already growing. Because it is far easier to accelerate than to unstuck If your business is growing, don’t miss the opportunity to take more GTM risks If your business is slowing down, go slow on experimentation and risky bets. Good times are not just for celebrations and hi-fives. Good times are also an opportunity to run faster and be better.  And that’s exactly what we intend to do here at RB2B. 

Michel Lieben 🧠 booked 164 meetings in June using ‘Inbound-led Outbound’. Here's a 7-min step-by-step video walkthrough of his two best plays: BACKGROUND: First, here's how Michel defines Inbound Led-Outbound: 1. Create content on social media 2. Build up audiences with profile viewers and website visitors 3. Segment these audiences - and reach out to them with context PLAY 1: A. Segment your profile viewers with LinkedIn Sales Navigator B. Extract their email addresses C. Automate your outreach PLAY 2: A. Identify your website visitors with RB2B B. Engage them via LinkedIn & Email Watch the video for the full breakdown! 👇 TAKEAWAY: I’m dumbfounded by the power of the Inbound-Led Outbound model. I’m trying to figure out ways to go even deeper. My advice for now... Get started by creating content that maximizes humanity and authenticity.  Give them a front row seat on you journey. Share best practices and your latest strategies. Share things that no one else is willing to share. And don't be afraid to put your face out there. People want to get to know you. Only after that, do you go outbound. We’re seeing a massive shift from push to pull models for SaaS GTM. And nothing pulls quite like posting on LinkedIn. P.S. You can use RB2B (and get the Linkedin profiles of your anonymous website visitors) 100% free here: https://www.rb2b.com/

Here’s why your VC won’t accept your acquisition offer:  Imagine you're a founder who raised $6M at a $20M valuation. Against all odds, over the next 12 months, you grow the company and receive an acquisition offer for $50M. You think you're set for life! You and the employees have a chance to walk away with over $35M. But the VC rejects the offer. They tell you to aim higher and raise additional growth capital if needed.   Why? Here's what happened: Most LPs or GPs say they want 3x returns over a 10 year period.  So, you'd THINK a 2.5x return in 12 months would be a great result. Wrong. That's not how VCs look at it. VCs want 3x return on the ENTIRE FUND. For example: If it is a $200M fund, they want $600M in 10 years from 35 investments.  They typically have 10-15% equity in each venture at the time of exit.  Meaning... 3-4 (10%) ventures need to be a breakout success and provide the bulk of the returns.  30+ (90%) ventures will fail or provide a non significant return For the VC's 15% equity in a successful venture to return +$150M in returns, they need at least a $1B exit. Now you know why your $50M exit was rejected... It just doesn’t move the needle for the VC Either the VC is convinced that there’s a lot more potential in your venture than $50M or the VC has no other portfolio companies to drive the fund's payout.  As a founder the marginal value of money decreases significantly after a certain number (say $10M).  Anything after that number, you are essentially working for the VCs to provide a return and taking on unnecessary risk in the process. Remember: Once you take VC money... There's no going back.

I'm thrilled to announce that 5 minutes ago RB2B hit $2m ARR (just 6 weeks after crossing $1m ARR)! The crazy thing is that 6 weeks after launch we were at only $5,178 MRR. Our pricing was completely broken… And I was complaining about it DAILY on LinkedIn. We had two plans: 1. Free - Linkedin push to Slack 2. $495/mo - ^ + integrations What did that get us? A 0.2% free-to-paid conversion rate!!! Week 7 we changed our pricing to usage-based (thanks to my LinkedIn community!!!) What happened? Week         MRR 6                 $5,178 7                 $8,348    <<<<< changed pricing (twice in 24hrs) 8                 $14,228 9                 $23,024 10               $28,232 11               $36,350 12               $41,995 13               $44,030 14               $48,091 15               $61,651 16               $81,775    <<<<<<< Hit 1m during week 16 17               $95,594    18               $106,353 19               $121,546 20               $138,375 21               $156,751 22               $167,548   <<<<<< Hit 2m during week 22 We still have a tiny core team - currently 6 people - and are only hiring for 1 role. (Robb is looking for a Customer Support rep - if you are interested, DM me) Where will we be in another 22 weeks, as 2024 winds down to a close? If I had a crystal ball, I’d say: - $5m ARR  - 6 FTE  - VERY profitable (at least $200k/mo profit) - Set to triple in 2025 (with 1-2 additional employees) Will my prediction be correct? Only time will tell. The good news is that I made a PUBLIC Baremetrics dashboard so that you can follow along from home. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gRv47zwY BOOKMARK IT! 

Last week I saw a Linkedin post about a startup with $17M ARR that only had 5.5 months of runway left. They desperately needed to raise money or risked going belly up. This is completely baffling! How can businesses with $17M in revenue be not profitable? If you have a business that’s doing over $10M in revenues and still dependent upon venture money for survival... Your business is broken and requires serious rewiring. Here are 6 steps you can take to audit and recover: 1. Team: Are you running a business that can be run with half the staff or a very different team composition? How would you know? Use Linkedin Insights to check your team and composition (% staff in different departments) with your competitor’s. Use other data tools to review teams from other companies in similar business and revenue range. 2. Automation: Are you lacking key automation to bring down your costs? Document and review every single process and workflow from lead to revenue. Explore if any of the processes can be automated. 3. Pricing: Are you charging too low for your products? Keep updating pricing to align with the value you are delivering and with the competitive landscape. 4. High costs: Review your cost structure and expenses. Can you run the business at a much lower cost structure? Do you have expensive vendors that need to be renegotiated or employees that no longer provide the value proportionate to their compensation ?  5. Modern Business Models: Are you using archaic tools, technologies or processes that require higher costs. Can you modernize your business and make it far more efficient? 6. Flywheels and Network effects: Can your business benefit from having a growth flywheels or network effects that subsidizes future sales and marketing costs. It is much better to run a $10M business that’s spinning off $1.5M in profits than a $17M business that is losing money and at the mercy of VC for survival. I understand that businesses get evaluated on topline hence the relentless focus on growth at all costs. For the VCs higher revenues lead to a higher fund AUM, but you as a founder will end up chasing your tail if you simply pursue the top line. With ZIRP behind us, times have changed. An 8 figure revenue business that’s losing money is NOT a business. 

Last month John Barrows told me, “There is an argument to me made that you should burn your sales org to the ground and start over.” Here’s what he thinks the future of SaaS sales looks like: Me: Burn it to the ground?? Wait… What?! JB: I have NEVER done as personalized, as signal-based, as good of outreach as I did these last three weeks. In my own market. With my brand. Know what I got back? Crickets. Me: So you’re saying burn it to the ground? JB: No, no, no, no. I’m saying there is an ARGUMENT to burn it to the ground. Outbound as we know it has become ineffective. Me: What does the future of outbound look like to you? JB: I’m BLOWN AWAY by the new AI-native prospecting tech out there. Tech like Clay, RB2B, and SendSpark. They can identify REAL intent, then execute enrichment, research, and create and deploy messaging in seconds that used to take a rep hours. The reps who embrace this tech have a bright future ahead. I call these AI-native reps “Iron Men”. Part man, part machine… WITHOUT losing the human touch. Capable of using these tools to tell them EXACTLY when to engage at every stage. The reps who don’t embrace the change… I’m not optimistic. Me: How should sales teams adapt? JB: Few sales leader in SaaS today are capable of understanding the power of this tech on their own. We need to tap into the orgs and have the reps figure it out for us. Like a hack-a-thon. Take two hours per week and have your reps explore a tech to try to solve a problem. Have them play with Clay once a week. Have them work on AI-generated email copy the next. Have them spend another week trying to find new intent signals See what comes back. Me: What role do YOU want to play in all of this? JB: I want to help the top 20% of reps who are willing to embrace change understand what’s coming. The reps who embrace this tech have a BRIGHT future. They’ll be on elite teams of snipers who wield the power of this new AI-native tech in incredible ways. They will be more effective sellers than we’ve ever seen, and they’ll get paid TONS OF MONEY. I want to facilitate ushering in the new era of Outbound. TAKEAWAY: John Barrows is amazed by the power of new AI-native sales tech. Send automated personalized AI generated videos to website visitors??? Um....WHAT?!?! He also believes that there will be a new breed of “Iron Man” rep. These reps will understand how to use this AI-native tech to enhance their natural abilities. The truly successful reps will use the tech WITHOUT losing the human touch. This top 20% of reps who embrace this future of sales, will be rewarded. As for the 80% who don’t embrace the change? Barrows thinks they’re walking the plank. And so do I.