tag:kazanjy.svbtle.com,2014:/feedPeter Kazanjy2023-08-19T17:16:22-07:00Peter Kazanjyhttps://kazanjy.svbtle.competekazanjy@stanfordalumni.orgSvbtle.comtag:kazanjy.svbtle.com,2014:Post/how-to-contact-pete2023-08-19T17:16:22-07:002023-08-19T17:16:22-07:00How to Contact Pete<h1 id="contact-information_1">Contact Information <a class="head_anchor" href="#contact-information_1">#</a>
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<p>All of my contact information is already in all the major prospecting databases (Hi Zoominfo! Hi Apollo! You both make great products!), so might as well put it here too.</p>
<p><strong>If my kid is lost and told you to Google me to find this page, this is for you.</strong></p>
<p><strong>If you’re a founder or sales leader trying to get ahold of me, this is for you.</strong></p>
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<strong>Personal Email:</strong> <a href="mailto:petekazanjy@stanfordalumni.org">petekazanjy@stanfordalumni.org</a>
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<strong>Work Email:</strong> <a href="mailto:pete@atriumhq.com">pete@atriumhq.com</a>
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<strong>Cell:</strong> 650-892-4475</li>
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<strong>LinkedIn:</strong> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kazanjy/">https://www.linkedin.com/in/kazanjy/</a>
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<strong>Twitter:</strong> <a href="https://twitter.com/Kazanjy">https://twitter.com/Kazanjy</a>
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tag:kazanjy.svbtle.com,2014:Post/why-i-invested-zum2022-12-17T15:14:20-08:002022-12-17T15:14:20-08:00Why I Invested: Zum<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/sjJkii641xki1HY6sjX4uS0xspap.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/sjJkii641xki1HY6sjX4uS0xspap_small.jpg" alt="Image 2022-12-17 at 12.19.32 PM.jpg"></a></p>
<p><em>Why I invested: <a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-a-series-on-early-stage-angel-investing">A writing series</a> on early stage angel investing chronicling the rationales behind various early stage tech bets by <a href="https://twitter.com/kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>.</em></p>
<p><a href="https://www.ridezum.com/">Zum’s</a> a cool story of how a “B2B-lite marketplace” turned into “B2B Heavy” in the realm of student transportation, to substantial upside.</p>
<p>As context, I had been friends with the guys at Chariot, and was always intrigued by the idea of better mobility solutions through smarter routing, purpose made hardware, and such. Unfortunately, Chariot was going up against a myriad of other solutions: Uber / Lyft, mass transit (e.g. San Francisco’s MUNI and BART), professionals driving themselves, bicycling, etc. A lot of competition. (They were eventually <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/09/ford-mobility-solutions-acquires-chariot/">acquired by Ford</a> and later <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/10/ford-is-shutting-down-chariot-shuttle-service/">shut down</a>. Tough business for sure.). But helping those guys out here and there put the bug in my ear about better “micro-mass mobility” solutions through better tech.</p>
<p>Student transportation didn’t really have any of the issues Chariot had. Outside of the city, kids either can take the bus, or get driven to school. Bus routes are problematic in that they’re very static and require a lot of “deadweight time” of kids on the bus traversing a long route to pick up a bunch of other kids in order to make the route efficient. And a lot of the time you’re just not “on the route.” Parents driving their kids is problematic because it’s a pretty substantial opportunity cost by the parents that only gets more pronounced with more kids. Not to mention a single car driving one or two kids is really inefficient. </p>
<p>Zum’s initial solution to this was tech-forward, compensated, carpooling. While it feels B2C (and thus not in my wheelhouse), the recurring nature of the solution (and eventual school district partnerships) made it more “B2B lite” (kind of like <a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-faire">Faire</a>), with more commercial intensivity per customer acquired than pure B2B marketplaces like Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Instacart, etc. </p>
<p>The insight the Zum folks were advancing against was that, on the demand side, there are a ton of kids being driven to and from school by parents who would be more than happy to have another, trusted, party do it for them. And on the supply side, there are plenty of parents out there driving their own kid to school who would be stoked to pick up a couple other kids in exchange for some compensation. They’re already on their way, and their minivan has four other empty seats. Why not fill them? Not just that, with more granular “supply objects” (minivans, cars, etc. vs. buses), way more routes can be run, providing more coverage than traditional bus networks. And the “driver” parents are already driving (and it’s unlikely their full time job)…so it can be lower cost than traditional bussing. So a better product <strong><em>and</em></strong> cheaper - something that <a href="https://sarahtavel.medium.com/taking-the-wrong-lesson-from-uber-ae4b41e7c7da#.mcsbakc50">Sarah Tavel talks</a> about looking for in enduring businesses. Smart phones and the internet could facilitate the making of this market.</p>
<p>When it comes to alternatives, kids under 16 can’t drive themselves, and for the most part, for non-highschoolers, public transit is going to be out of the question as well. And because kids need specialized adult supervision, this isn’t really something Uber and Lyft can tackle directly.</p>
<p>Even better, unlike Uber / Lyft, this is a recurring relationship. Adult professionals commute in a variety of ways. Taking BART in the morning but Uber in the evening. Or driving themselves today but taking public transit tomorrow. Kids go to and from school in a fairly consistent way every day.</p>
<p>And the problem is just massive in scale. The number of students in need of transportation is just massive - north of 50m people. And unlike “work from home”, commuting to school isn’t going to change anytime soon.</p>
<p>When it came to imagining how this could “go right” there was a compelling vision. Zum had the trappings of AirBNB, where “unprofessional” (extra rooms, air mattress) supply was used to bootstrap a market by serving unmet need (travelers who couldn’t afford Hilton) - but in this case, it was kids who are being driven to school solo by parents now being driven by other (paid) parents with three other kids in a mini-van. Once the market was humming, they could move on to more “professional” supply (dedicated drivers), and different SKU types (Mercedes Sprinter Vans). It didn’t take much imagination to see an end state where Zum would have recurring carpooling minivans, dedicated “small bus / vans”, and even full bore buses. Which is how things have ultimately played out. </p>
<p>Lastly, because there’s a given monopoly buyer in a given region (the school district) it stood to reason that the provider that gets to scale on a region by region basis could win the entire market (at least in that region - less likely that there are inter-region network effects like with an eBay). This has since been borne out with Zum partnerships with Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle school districts. And of course these larger deals lead to capital efficiency on both supply and demand acquisition by being the “approved provider” (this was something I helped with the Chariot guys on - positioning Chariot to tech companies to provide dedicated intra-city transportation to their staff versus being pure B2C).</p>
<p>And speaking of eBay, that’s where Ritu, the CEO, had cut her teeth on marketplace dynamics. Not to mention - Ritu was a parent herself and had felt this pain point as a business professional who would have loved help dropping her kids off at school! When I met her, and she shared her vision, I was totally convinced. I ended up putting a larger check (for me, at the time) into their 2016 seed round, and they’ve since gone on to raise $200m+ from Sequoia, Spark, BMW, and Softbank.</p>
tag:kazanjy.svbtle.com,2014:Post/why-i-invested-rappi2022-12-11T11:31:14-08:002022-12-11T11:31:14-08:00Why I Invested: Rappi<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/qp32zew37aFXbZuWmM9Cy30xspap.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/qp32zew37aFXbZuWmM9Cy30xspap_small.png" alt="Rappi_logo.svg.png"></a></p>
<p><em>Why I invested: <a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-a-series-on-early-stage-angel-investing">A writing series</a> on early stage angel investing chronicling the rationales behind various early stage tech bets by <a href="https://twitter.com/kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>.</em></p>
<p>While I’m not as much of a consumer marketplace investor (B2B SaaS and <a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-incredible-health">B2B Marketplaces</a> are more my thing), I am friends with the founders of Instacart, and always kicked myself for missing early rounds of theirs. That, and my last software company was in the same portfolio as Uber at First Round (the outcomes were just a <em>smidge</em> different…lol). Anyway, I’m somewhat familiar with the power of consumer marketplaces that tip.</p>
<p>In 2016, when I saw <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/rappi">Rappi’s</a> Series A on Fundersclub, it made me think about the components of what makes a killer on-demand marketplace - and realized as long as the supply side has human components to it, then the higher the Gini coefficient of a market (that is, the more low income folks who are eager to act as on-demand runners), crossed with enough high income demand side folks who need delivery, the better off the market is. </p>
<p>So while the Ubers, Doordashes, and so on of the world have always had to contend with tough supply side conditions (in the developed world, at least)…Rappi would be less impacted by this. </p>
<p>That is, the key enabling technology that enabled on-demand marketplaces - the GPS-enabled smartphone - was scalably deployed and deployable in Latin America…there were still large numbers of low income people who could act as shoppers / drivers / runners. </p>
<p>I put in $10k and have been amazed to watch the ascent, with Sequoia, DST, Softbank, and T. Rowe Price leading subsequents rounds.</p>
tag:kazanjy.svbtle.com,2014:Post/why-i-invested-incredible-health2022-09-11T19:42:44-07:002022-09-11T19:42:44-07:00Why I Invested: Incredible Health<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/wmqoqui9wWibbETzzCzhFr0xspap.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/wmqoqui9wWibbETzzCzhFr0xspap_small.png" alt="incredible-health-logo.png"></a></p>
<p><em>Why I invested: <a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-a-series-on-early-stage-angel-investing">A writing series</a> on early stage angel investing chronicling the rationales behind various early stage tech bets by <a href="https://twitter.com/kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>.</em></p>
<p>After <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/24/monster-acquires-talentbin-and-gozaik/">TalentBin was acquired by Monster</a>, one of the things we were tasked with doing was bringing composite profile talent search to other talent categories beyond software engineering.</p>
<p>One of these was healthcare, specifically nursing. We crawled every state’s database of registered nurses and did clever things to append email addresses and other communication vectors. But when we went to sell it to recruiters at health systems and hospitals, they looked at us like we were crazy pants that a recruiter would proactively reach out to a candidate uninvited. Our offering was not viewed, um, favorably. I quickly realized that healthcare recruiting was 10-20 years behind tech recruiting. </p>
<p>And it made sense they were behind the times. Before the rollup period of health systems buying up lots of hospitals in the last decade, a given hospital had a single HR department, whose recruiting subsection was responsible for all the hiring for the hospital - nurses, doctors, technicians, janitors, etc. Not a lot of specialization. Not much opportunity for efficiency and leverage. The opposite of, say, Facebook or Amazon’s recruiting organization. As a result most hiring was done through staffing agencies - which themselves are generally mom and pop shops, or at best, regional winners. Again, not much technology leverage.</p>
<p>So when I met Iman, and she told me about how with <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/incredible-health">Incredible Health</a> they were building a talent marketplace that would abstract away sourcing from hospital HR staff and recruiters, I knew it was a prime opportunity. </p>
<p>In fact, because of the timing, they might be able to be the “cloud recruiter” for these massive hospitals and health systems who themselves might as a result never develop an internal recruiting muscle, and thereby be heavily reliant on Incredible Health. (This is in contrast to technology companies who used hiring marketplaces like Hired…but also have their own technology-levered internal staffs, as well).</p>
<p>Moreover, as a marketplace, albeit one with regional pools, a first mover would potentially have the advantage to tip a market and dominate. So potential large upside. Not to mention that marketplaces can be extremely capital efficient once they hit initial liquidity. Little known fact: Indeed only raised $5m from Union Square Ventures in 2005 before their eventual $1b acquisition by Recruit Holdings in 2012. Damn, right?</p>
<p>Lastly, when I first talked to her in 2017, Iman was a badass (we were connected by a VC I was acting a diligence partner for). A doctor who became a product manager who became a founder? That’s like a purple unicorn with a glow in the dark horn.</p>
<p>I told the VC I was doing diligence for that they should <strong><em>definitely</em></strong> invest. They didn’t. I did - $25k (which was a lot for me at the time) because I was very bullish. Incredible has done on to raise a seed from marketplace gurus NFX and Obvious, an A from marketplace legend Jeff Jordan at Andreessen, and then a massive B from Base10 Ventures. And from the looks of it, are running away with the market. Not surprising having had the pleasure of watching the team exeucte </p>
tag:kazanjy.svbtle.com,2014:Post/why-i-invested-faire2022-09-11T15:12:29-07:002022-09-11T15:12:29-07:00Why I Invested: Faire<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/fLiUQfAWX1mGFmfEfuW5mB0xspap.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/fLiUQfAWX1mGFmfEfuW5mB0xspap_small.png" alt="faire-wholesale-inc-logo-vector.png"></a></p>
<p><em>Why I invested: <a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-a-series-on-early-stage-angel-investing">A writing series</a> on early stage angel investing chronicling the rationales behind various early stage tech bets by <a href="https://twitter.com/kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>.</em></p>
<p>I owe my investment in <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/indigo-fair">Faire</a> to my wife. Before she went back to school to do a graphic design degree, she was a buyer for Williams Sonoma, one of the most impressive merchants in the world. The way they sourced products was medieval. Catalogs and trade shows and faxes and more. She would have to travel to Chicago twice a year to mill around in a massive exhibit hall. Fly to China. Fly to India. And this was the best organization in the world at this. Yikes.</p>
<p>So when I was initially introduced to the Faire team in 2016 (“Indigo Faire” at the time - cutest name <strong><em>ever</em></strong>) by my friend Lauren Farleigh, founder of Dote, I was primed to comprehend what they were working on. (I had worked with Lauren closely on Dote, and she thought I could be helpful with early go to market for them.) </p>
<p>Max and team explained that even though as product managers at Square they had made the sell-side transaction low friction for SMBs, the buy side was still a huge pain in the ass. It was clear that there was a serious opportunity to be the “Source” tab in the local store POS (where the POS itself was the “Sell” tab) - whichever the point of sale. </p>
<p>When looking at marketplace startup dynamics, you want to ensure that there’s a huge amount of federation on the supply and demand side. You don’t want to be standing between a few dozen market actors on one side and a few dozen on the other. In the case of merchandising for local businesses - there are tens of thousands of products trying to connect with hundreds of thousands of retailers. That problem sounded like it <strong><em>really</em></strong> needed a marketplace. </p>
<p>Further, unlike B2C marketplaces, with small order values (Instacart, Doordash, Uber, etc.) - in this case, these were serious orders (many hundreds or even thousands of dollars of merchandise, off of which Faire would take a serious rake), and moreover, these transactions had intrinsic recurrence built into them (if you found a product you wanted to stock in your store - you’re probably going to re-order it on an ongoing basis - and better to do that digitally, versus via fax / email).</p>
<p>Couple all this with the democratization of online / offline commerce with Square, Shopify, and other commerce engines, it was clear there was a huge opportunity. In terms of “how right this could go”, this was a potential response local commerce <strong>had</strong> to adopt against Amazon - pointing to a potential Amazon-scale business. Or, said differently, if you imagine Amazon and Walmart as a “full stack” of merchandise sourcing, logistics, and ecommerce, Square and Shopify’s market caps represent the “ecommerce” piece of the “rebel commerce stack”, the local business’s real estate is the “logistics”…and Faire was positioned to be the “sourcing” layer. Pretty compelling target to go after as a business.</p>
<p>The team had worked together at Square, was well positioned to raise capital well, and had an unfair engineering advantage in their Canadian market access. And had serious grind. They had adopted the “work on Saturdays” ethos of early Square - which, say what you want about that approach, it certainly selects for staff who are *<em>there to win.</em> </p>
<p>One of my first meetings with Max, Daniele, and Marcelo was in their rented office / apartment (epic view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Bay from the top of Nob Hill) on a Saturday where we talked about SMB direct sales and scalable outbound for half a day. It was clear they were all in.</p>
<p>If only I had put $25k in instead of $10k. Facepalm. But at least it was before they did YC and went to the moon. They’ve gone on to raise from Khosla, Forerunner, Sequoia, Lightspeed, and more.</p>
tag:kazanjy.svbtle.com,2014:Post/why-i-invested-lattice2022-09-11T11:46:15-07:002022-09-11T11:46:15-07:00Why I Invested: Lattice<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/2zLwgyTFY8j9z7xkGeyDwZ0xspap.jpeg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/2zLwgyTFY8j9z7xkGeyDwZ0xspap_small.jpeg" alt="lattice_logo_full_color__33_Logo.jpeg"></a></p>
<p><em>Why I invested: <a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-a-series-on-early-stage-angel-investing">A writing series</a> on early stage angel investing chronicling the rationales behind various early stage tech bets by <a href="https://twitter.com/kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>.</em></p>
<p>From my time at TalentBin I was very familiar with the HR / Talent Management Suites that were cobbled together acquisition frankensteins (Successfactors, Taleo, Cornerstone, etc) and could only service large orgs because of their high implementation costs and outside sales motions. Many of them had gone on to be very large outcomes. But it was unlikely that with their level of complexity they would ever be able to service the lower segments of the market.</p>
<p>All that said, talent management - the practice of making the people who make up an organization better at what they do was a powerful promise - especially in organizations where the people were the most important part of the business (knowledge worker organizations).</p>
<p>It was clear there was a talent management opportunity in the mid-market and SMB, and for high end workers where the minimal performance features of horizontal HRIS systems like Namely, BambooHR, Zenefits, or even Workday would not suffice. And if you thought about the next “thing” that HR departments would be budgeted to pay for, after the Applicant Tracking System, the HRIS system, and Payroll…talent management seemed likely. Hence…<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/lattice-2">Lattice</a>.</p>
<p>Jack and Jzac are great and I had met both in early 2018 through Brett Berson of First Round Capital (who has exceptional taste in people). I had also sold to them at Atrium and saw how they ran a company (very well), so I asked to invest in their next round - which ended up being <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/lattice-2-series-a--b9a4f624">an A bridge</a> ahead of their Shasta B. </p>
<p>Should have put in $25k but was feeling nervous because of my historical lukewarm point of view about HR Tech…so put in $10k. Whoops. Facepalm. Have gone on to raise a B from Shasta, a C from Tiger, and a D from Tiger again. Tsk tsk, Pete - should have bet on a killer team.</p>
tag:kazanjy.svbtle.com,2014:Post/why-i-invested-airtable2022-09-11T08:43:16-07:002022-09-11T08:43:16-07:00Why I Invested: Airtable<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/4TtMfyQxaMRSyZjzWoSXNo0xspap.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/4TtMfyQxaMRSyZjzWoSXNo0xspap_small.png" alt="2560px-Airtable_Logo.svg.png"></a></p>
<p><em>Why I invested: <a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-a-series-on-early-stage-angel-investing">A writing series</a> on early stage angel investing chronicling the rationales behind various early stage tech bets by <a href="https://twitter.com/kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>.</em></p>
<p>I <strong><em>love</em></strong> <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/airtable">Airtable</a>. It’s such a killer product, and since I invested in 2017 I’ve only come to love it more and more. I’m an <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=kazanjy%20airtable&src=typed_query&f=live">unapologetic homer</a> in the worst way.</p>
<p>I knew Howie from Crowdflower, and then after his eTacts business was acquired by Salesforce he met with me to talk strategy when Salesforce was briefly looking at potentially acquiring TalentBin. </p>
<p>Later on Ben Cmejla from First Round Capital introduced me to the Airtable product, and we started running parts of Modern Sales Pros out of it, and that was the point that it really started clicking for me. </p>
<p>It was very clear quickly that Howie had taken the promise of point and click development from Salesforce (which as someone who is a pretty good Salesforce admin, Salesforce is <strong><em>not</em></strong> point and click. Not even close. Not even on the same continent.) and created the actual underpinnings. Plus it was a massive delight to use. Literally fun to click around, “configuring state” in an Airtable.</p>
<p>Combined with Zapier, you could see how it was the beginnings of something really powerful. Things like MS Access and other desktop-based “databases” had always struggled for true scale because they were too technical for broad adoption. Too close to a real database, but too far from spreadsheet. But the desire paths were there - as evidenced by the bajillion Google Sheets / Excel docs trying to be lightweight databases with hacked “choose from this list” data validation fields. Something needed to tie it together. It was clear that Google Apps and Microsoft wouldn’t do anything like this for years and years, and that this could get adopted like wildfire within businesses who then run important workflows through various Airtables (and never churn off of those Airtables!)</p>
<p>After my obsession grew to an unhealthy level, I pinged Howie congratulating them on the amazing product, and asked if I could invest in their next round, I’d be overjoyed, and would be down to help out with whatever go-to-market things I could help with. </p>
<p>I was lucky enough to put a check into their <a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/airtable-series-b--42fd3e36">Series B</a>, and continue to love using Airtable for everything that it could possibly be used for and tell everyone about how rad it is.</p>
tag:kazanjy.svbtle.com,2014:Post/why-i-invested-a-series-on-early-stage-angel-investing2022-09-11T08:38:42-07:002022-09-11T08:38:42-07:00Why I Invested: A Series on Early Stage Angel Investing<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/iATPfFawQzJZd1acUiVsWD0xspap.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/iATPfFawQzJZd1acUiVsWD0xspap_small.jpg" alt="Image 2022-09-11 at 9.05.32 AM.jpg"></a></p>
<p>Over the last 8 years since my first software company, TalentBin, was <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/24/monster-acquires-talentbin-and-gozaik/">acquired by Monster Worldwide</a>, I’ve become a fairly frequent angel investor. </p>
<p>I’d love to say it was because I thought it was a surefire path to financial improvement - but the actual truth is that I find it quite intellectually compelling - combining problem solving, leveraging existing expertise, learning new things, and other things that I consider <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XUu3_pLPUE">best in life</a>. So I’ve probably ended up doing more than was probably wise. </p>
<p>Over the last nearly decade I’ve invested in north of 100 individual companies during my nights and weekends, and have certainly learned a lot along the way. And not done terribly at it either, with a handful of 20x realized outcomes, and even some 50x, 100x and even 500x markups (fingers crossed!). Not to mention, of course, a good number of investments that have gone to zero.</p>
<p>But despite this effort, I’ve never done any writing about it. Probably has to do with an <a href="https://www.atriumhq.com/">all-consuming day job</a>. So I thought I might change that up a bit. </p>
<p>The goal of this series is to write on why I invested in a given company as a mechanism by which to demonstrate (and clarify? Lol) my thinking to help others who are thinking about doing the same. (Not disimmilar to why I wrote <a href="https://www.foundingsales.com/">Founding Sales</a>!)</p>
<p>I’ll probably start with companies that have exited or have reached substantial escape velocity, and then later on move into companies that are earlier in their journey…and maybe some of the ones that didn’t work out as well.</p>
<p><strong>Individual Investment Posts:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-airtable" target="_blank"> Airtable </a></li>
<li><a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-lattice" target="_blank"> Lattice </a></li>
<li><a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-faire" target="_blank"> Faire </a></li>
<li><a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-incredible-health" target="_blank"> Incredible Health </a></li>
<li><a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-rappi" target="_blank"> Rappi </a></li>
<li><a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/why-i-invested-zum" target="_blank"> Zum</a></li>
</ul>
tag:kazanjy.svbtle.com,2014:Post/pete-kazanjy-speaking-bio2017-05-29T08:44:55-07:002017-05-29T08:44:55-07:00Pete Kazanjy Speaking Bio<p>Vertical headshot: <a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/6l38fctkxuetq.jpg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/6l38fctkxuetq_small.jpg" alt="017_MGP_9764 (2).jpg"></a></p>
<p>Horizontal headshot: <a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/dhfx4NxcwAXTQJN8qqeKZ0xspap.jpeg"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/dhfx4NxcwAXTQJN8qqeKZ0xspap_small.jpeg" alt="horizontal headshot.jpeg"></a></p>
<p>Pete Kazanjy (<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kazanjy/">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/Kazanjy">Twitter</a>) is a serial founder, and seasoned early stage Saas executive, advisor, and investor. Pete founded <a href="https://www.talentbin.com/">TalentBin</a>, a category-defining talent search engine and recruiting CRM, which exited to Monster Worldwide in early 2014. Pete currently is the founder of <a href="https://www.atriumhq.com/">Atrium</a>, makers of data-driven sales management software, author of <a href="https://www.foundingsales.com/">Founding Sales</a>, the definitive <a href="https://www.foundingsales.com/">Startup Sales Handbook</a>, and founder of <a href="http://modernsaleshq.com/">Modern Sales</a>, the nation’s largest sales operations, leadership, and enablement community. </p>
<p>At TalentBin, Pete went from product and product marketing founder generalist, to first sales rep, first sales manager, first VP of Sales, all the way to leading new product sales for 600+ sales reps at Monster worldwide. After Monster, he wrote a book on startup sales for founders and other first-time sellers, <a href="http://www.foundingsales.com/">Founding Sales</a>, documenting all the mistakes he made along the way, and solutions to them, so future founders can accelerate their go to market acumen. </p>
<p>Pete also founded and runs the canonical invite-only nationwide sales operations and management peer education community (<a href="http://modernsaleshq.com">Modern Sales</a>), featuring 30,000+ members from a who’s who of sales operations, enablement, management, and leadership from 10k+ leading sales organization’s. </p>
<p>Additionally, Pete is a well known expert in early stage go to market and “founder selling” - helping organizations figure out their early critical positioning and selling activities. He has done substantial <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pcSy-zV-776abGmZ8WJ7bGeXcHQAxscdypGdrUz28_c/edit#slide=id.g2022411f57_0_19">speaking</a> and <a href="https://kazanjy.svbtle.com/sales-marketing-and-recruiting-resources-for-founders">writing</a> on the topic, including being a frequent contributor to <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=kazanjy+first+round+review&oq=kazanjy+first+round+review&aqs=chrome..69i57.3735j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">First Round Review</a> and <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=kazanjy+saleshacker&oq=kazanjy+saleshacker&aqs=chrome..69i57.3759j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#safe=active&q=inurl:saleshacker.com+kazanjy">Saleshacker</a>, and advises a number of enterprise software companies on establishing and optimizing their sales and success motions. <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mUHbe-VBTJ0lKoR1EbqkX43SixwhmB1vHJ12LTXmQ_s/edit">Press clips here</a>.</p>
<p>Prior to TalentBin, Pete worked in product marketing and product at VMware, having graduated from Stanford in 2002.</p>
tag:kazanjy.svbtle.com,2014:Post/the-best-first-round-review-articles-for-early-stage-companies2016-10-30T15:46:50-07:002016-10-30T15:46:50-07:00The Best First Round Review Articles for Early Stage Companies<p><a href="https://svbtleusercontent.com/3gsgqmht39ftiw.png"><img src="https://svbtleusercontent.com/3gsgqmht39ftiw_small.png" alt="download (1).png"></a></p>
<p>As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, I am quite possibly <a href="http://firstround.com/review/">First Round Review’s</a> #1 fanboi. </p>
<p>The combination of relevant, actionable, and <em>true</em> information, delivered in such a well executed package is unparalleled. And when you compare it to the absolute sea of bullshit self-promotional content marketing (both VC and vendor) that founders have to otherwise contend with when trying to get insights to tackle day to day problems, First Round Review starts looking less like a VC publication and more a community treasure.</p>
<p>That, and <a href="https://twitter.com/camillericketts?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Camille Ricketts</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/shaunyou">Shaun Young</a> are just absolute delights. </p>
<p><strong>My Favorite Review Articles</strong></p>
<p>So, the other day <a href="https://twitter.com/Kazanjy/status/792055247086624768">I was tweeting</a> about how I seem to end up following up every startup coaching meeting I have with a handful of links to First Round Review articles that, if applied properly, will help solve the problem(s) the person I’m coaching has.</p>
<p>My friend Tyler tweeted back <a href="https://twitter.com/thogge/status/792061165195042816">“Which are you favorites?”</a> to which I responded snarkily with a <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=kazanjy+first+round+review&rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS688US689&oq=kazanjy+first+round+review&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3.14667j0j4&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8">Google search link to all the ones I’ve written</a>.</p>
<p>After I let that hang for a sec, I started listing for him my favorites as I could remember them. Partway through, I realized that the right format for this is really a blog post, lining out my favorites. And specifically, lining out the ones that I keep coming back to when having these early stage coaching conversations.</p>
<p>First Round Review has great <a href="http://firstround.com/review/magazines/">“Magazines”</a> that they’ve pulled together that are focused on different topics - like <a href="http://firstround.com/review/sales/">Sales</a>, <a href="http://firstround.com/review/product/">Product</a>, <a href="http://firstround.com/review/engineering/">Engineering</a>, <a href="http://firstround.com/review/people-and-culture/">Recruiting</a>, <a href="http://firstround.com/review/fundraising/">Fundraising</a>, <a href="http://firstround.com/review/management/">Management</a>, etc. </p>
<p>But some of those articles are more relevant to later stages companies (e.g., “scaling your hiring” - that’s really only relevant if you’re going to be hiring 10+ people over the coming year - early stage, you’re definitely not doing that.) And that’s great, because First Round Review wants to help folks across the spectrum. </p>
<p>But I spend most of my coaching time with very early stage companies who are just figuring out their problem space, proposed product, and early sales motions. So I wanted to pull together a list of the best Review articles for that specific audience.</p>
<p><strong><em>The Best First Round Review Articles for Very Early Stage Companies</em></strong></p>
<p>So here are my favorite First Round Review articles that I find most relevant for <em>very</em> early stage companies. </p>
<p>These are not about “How to manage a 100 person engineering team” or “Scaling through Hypergrowth with Ludicrous Speed” or “BlitzUnicorning from 0 to a Jillion” or other high class problems that folks like to read about / hear about at conferences, but don’t particularly have themselves. These articles are the ones you need right now to make sure your company doesn’t die, and you actually have a chance to scale, later (at which point, go crazy, read all about UniBlitzing and such).</p>
<p>Specifically they’re ordered from earliest to later, in that you’ll need the first ones before you need the latter ones.</p>
<p>I’m sure I’m missing some and welcome feedback, but these are the ones that I find myself coming back to continuously to email to folks. (And yeah, a bunch are by me. ; )</p>
<p><strong>Customer Development</strong>: This is the stage at which you’re trying to sort out the problem that you’re solving, validating that people actually have it, and proposing and building minimum viable versions of the solution that fixes it.</p>
<ul>
<li><p><em>‘Get in the Van’ and Other Tips for Getting Meaningful Customer Feedback</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/sippey">Michael Sippey</a>): This article is a fantastic overview on how to do early customer development interviews in the most effective way possible. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/the-power-of-interviewing-customers-the-right-way-from-twitters-ex-vp-product/">http://firstround.com/review/the-power-of-interviewing-customers-the-right-way-from-twitters-ex-vp-product/</a> </p></li>
<li><p><em>Product Prioritization</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/tconrad">Tom Conrad</a>): Early on you have very little engineering resources, and a jillion things you could make. This article is a good overview on how to think about feature prioritization and ordering. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/This-Product-Prioritization-System-Nabbed-Pandora-More-Than-70-Million-Active-Monthly-Users-with-Just-40-Engineers/">http://firstround.com/review/This-Product-Prioritization-System-Nabbed-Pandora-More-Than-70-Million-Active-Monthly-Users-with-Just-40-Engineers/</a></p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Early Sales and Go to Market</strong>: This is my favorite section, because this is where I spend most my time thinking / writing. This is the time in your companies life where you need to take the above proposed and minimally built solution, and prove that it does indeed fix the problem you sought out to solve, and prove that someone will give you money for it. </p>
<ul>
<li><p><em>Sales Mindset Changes</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/Kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>): An overview (excerpted from <a href="https://twitter.com/FoundingSales">Founding Sales</a>) of the things that are weird and new when you’re selling for the first time. Really helpful for first time sellers who otherwise would be tempted to put their head in the sand and avoid the exercise. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/10-ways-you-need-to-change-how-you-think-and-talk-to-succeed-at-sales/">http://firstround.com/review/10-ways-you-need-to-change-how-you-think-and-talk-to-succeed-at-sales/</a></p></li>
<li><p><em>Sales Narratives</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/Kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>): A framework for baking the message of your offering in a way that is resonant to would be customers. (Excerpted from <a href="https://twitter.com/FoundingSales">Founding Sales</a>) - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/To-Build-An-Amazing-Sales-Team-Start-Here-First/">http://firstround.com/review/To-Build-An-Amazing-Sales-Team-Start-Here-First/</a></p></li>
<li><p><em>Positioning</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/hiiamarielle">Arielle Jackson</a>): A more general version of the above article, focused on the core positioning of your offering. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/Positioning-Your-Startup-is-Vital-Heres-How-to-Do-It-Right/">http://firstround.com/review/Positioning-Your-Startup-is-Vital-Heres-How-to-Do-It-Right/</a> </p></li>
<li><p><em>Sales Decks</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/Kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>): An overview on how to take that Sales Narrative discussed above, and reduce it to visual and textual materials in the form a sales deck that will help you communicate that message to would-be customers. (Excerpted from <a href="https://twitter.com/FoundingSales">Founding Sales</a>) - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/building-your-best-sales-deck-starts-here/">http://firstround.com/review/building-your-best-sales-deck-starts-here/</a></p></li>
<li><p><em>Sales Email & Demo Scripts</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/Kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>): A sales deck isn’t the only thing you’ll need when you’re having these initial conversations with prospects. This article (an excerpted chapter from <a href="https://twitter.com/FoundingSales">Founding Sales</a>) is on how to reduce that narrative to email templates to get you meetings, and a demo script that shows off your product in the context of that narrative. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/here-are-the-scripts-for-sales-success-emails-calls-and-demos-that-close-deals/">http://firstround.com/review/here-are-the-scripts-for-sales-success-emails-calls-and-demos-that-close-deals/</a></p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Customer Success</strong>: If you’re successful at acquiring those initial customers, you’re going to need to make them successful, lest they churn out / tell their friends your product stinks. These are some Review articles on that topic. </p>
<ul>
<li><p><em>SquareSpace’s Head of CS on 1 - 100 CS reps</em> - (<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/christacollins">Christa Collins</a>): A good overview of Customer Success from basics to scale. <a href="http://firstround.com/review/lessons-from-the-woman-who-built-squarespaces-customer-care-team-from-1-to-370/">http://firstround.com/review/lessons-from-the-woman-who-built-squarespaces-customer-care-team-from-1-to-370/</a></p></li>
<li><p><em>Eero’s overview on how to make Customer Success central to your org</em> - (<a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/dana-lindsay-04051461">Dana Lindsay</a>): <a href="http://firstround.com/review/the-case-for-startups-to-put-cx-at-their-core/">http://firstround.com/review/the-case-for-startups-to-put-cx-at-their-core/</a></p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Hiring & Onboarding</strong>: Next comes hiring. You likely aren’t going to be doing much hiring before you’ve nailed the things above (unless you want to ramp your burn and fly your company right into the ground). But assuming you have the beginnings of that, these are some good articles to help you think about recruiting and onboarding. </p>
<ul>
<li><p><em>Recruiters 101</em> - The different kinds of recruiters that can help you (and when to use which kind) - (<a href="https://twitter.com/Kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>): Overview of all the different types of recruiters that can help you solve your hiring needs. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/Ive-Worked-with-Hundreds-of-Recruiters-Heres-What-I-Learned/">http://firstround.com/review/Ive-Worked-with-Hundreds-of-Recruiters-Heres-What-I-Learned/</a></p></li>
<li><p><em>Network Referral Recruiting</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/Kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>): A great architecture for proactively mining the networks of your existing staff to quickly hire high quality staff. Works well at earliest stage and later too. (now baked into automated software in the form of <a href="https://teamable.com/">Teamable</a>) - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/Mine-Your-Network-for-Early-Stage-Hiring-Gold/">http://firstround.com/review/Mine-Your-Network-for-Early-Stage-Hiring-Gold/</a></p></li>
<li><p><em>Sales (and CS) Hiring</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/Kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>): This article (an excerpted chapter from <a href="https://twitter.com/FoundingSales">Founding Sales</a>) focuses on sales hiring, and the various sourcing, assessment, and interviewing techniques needed for success there. However, it can be easily applied to customer success as well. (Ignore the soft focus pictures…) - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/the-anatomy-of-the-perfect-sales-hiring-process/">http://firstround.com/review/the-anatomy-of-the-perfect-sales-hiring-process/</a></p></li>
<li><p><em>Interviewing</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/Kristen_Hammy?lang=en">Kristen Hamilton</a>): A good overview of structured interview questions that can be applied beyond sales and customer success. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/hire-a-top-performer-every-time-with-these-interview-questions/">http://firstround.com/review/hire-a-top-performer-every-time-with-these-interview-questions/</a></p></li>
<li><p><em>Sales Onboarding</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/Kazanjy">Pete Kazanjy</a>): Sister article to sales hiring chapter above. All about effective onboarding of sales staff to get them productive as quickly as possible (can we used with CS staff too). (Excerpted from <a href="https://twitter.com/FoundingSales">Founding Sales</a>) - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/youre-losing-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars-because-of-poor-sales-onboarding/">http://firstround.com/review/youre-losing-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars-because-of-poor-sales-onboarding/</a></p></li>
<li><p><em>General Onboarding</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/carlyguth3">Carly Gurthie</a>): Carly is rad and this is a great distillation of general onboarding best practices. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/Employee-Onboarding-at-Startups-Is-Broken-Heres-How-to-Fix-It/">http://firstround.com/review/Employee-Onboarding-at-Startups-Is-Broken-Heres-How-to-Fix-It/</a></p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Management, Performance Management, Retention</strong>: I guess these could probably be a bit higher in the ordering, but these become more important when you get to 10+ folks, so I’m putting them down here. </p>
<ul>
<li><p><em>Radical Candor and giving good, clear feedback</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/kimballscott">Kim Malone Scott</a>): This is the most shared article in First Round Review history because it totally hit a nerve. It’s all about how, as a manager or leader, to give clear, direct, but empathetic feedback that ensures staff are executing how they need to in order to be successful. Great stuff. And Kim is the bomb. And <a href="http://www.radicalcandor.com/the-book/">going to be a book here</a>. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/radical-candor-the-surprising-secret-to-being-a-good-boss/">http://firstround.com/review/radical-candor-the-surprising-secret-to-being-a-good-boss/</a></p></li>
<li><p><em>OKRs / Operational Cadences</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/angusdav">Angus Davis</a>): A great overview of objectives and key results management cadence. You don’t have to be into OKRs to take away insights of good managerial and operational cadences from this. And Angus is an execution <em>machine.</em> A good primer that isn’t hand wavy bullshit on “goal science” or whatever. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/How-to-Make-OKRs-Actually-Work-at-Your-Startup/">http://firstround.com/review/How-to-Make-OKRs-Actually-Work-at-Your-Startup/</a> </p></li>
<li><p><em>Leveling & Performance Reviews</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/ventilla">Max Ventilla</a>): Part of a successful operational cadence is reviewing performance of staff, and this is something early stage companies often do poorly. And one reason they do it poorly is because they don’t have a rubric for evaluating performance. This article talks about both. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/altschools-ceo-rebuilt-googles-performance-review-system-to-work-for-startups-here-it-is/">http://firstround.com/review/altschools-ceo-rebuilt-googles-performance-review-system-to-work-for-startups-here-it-is/</a></p></li>
<li><p><em>Retention</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/carlyguth3">Carly Gurthie</a>): Startups often obsess over hiring in that it’s the first thing you do when you have zero people. But when you get to 10 or 20 people, retaining folks is pretty important too. This is another Carly Guthrie joint on that. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/This-is-Why-People-Leave-Your-Company/">http://firstround.com/review/This-is-Why-People-Leave-Your-Company/</a></p></li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Fundraising</strong>: This is last because lord know there’s enough focus fundraising as the key to early stage success. It’s probably actually the last, or second to last, after initially nailing those beginnings of success. (Maybe this section could be before Management. But maybe not.) </p>
<ul>
<li><p><em>Fundraising Storytelling</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/orenjacob">Oren Jacob</a>): All about how to tell the story of the problem, proposed solution, and proof associated with your startup. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/the-fundraising-wisdom-that-helped-our-founders-raise-18b-in-follow-on-capital/">http://firstround.com/review/the-fundraising-wisdom-that-helped-our-founders-raise-18b-in-follow-on-capital/</a></p></li>
<li><p><em>Fundraising Pitch and Campaign Excellence</em> - (<a href="https://twitter.com/brettberson">Brett Berson</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/btrenchard">Bill Trenchard</a>): This is a more serious distillation of the fundraising acumen that First Round has summed up from thousands of funded companies, and their Pitch Assist program. It’s serious stuff. - <a href="http://firstround.com/review/the-fundraising-wisdom-that-helped-our-founders-raise-18b-in-follow-on-capital/">http://firstround.com/review/the-fundraising-wisdom-that-helped-our-founders-raise-18b-in-follow-on-capital/</a></p></li>
</ul>
<p>That’s what I’ve got for now. If I missed one that’s particularly good for very early stage companies, hit me up and I’ll amend!</p>