The Twenty Minute VCGeorge Bonaci, VP of Growth @Ramp: How Ramp Became the Fastest Growing SaaS Company Ever |E1264
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
120 min read · 24,159 words- 0:00 – 1:30
Intro
- GBGeorge Bonaci
(upbeat music plays) I think the way that you find alpha is either by doing things that no one else knows about. I think another aspect is probably doing things that everyone is convinced will not work. I think a good leader needs to know how to do everyone on their team's job, but poorly. And I think the poorly part's important. I would always skew more junior. I think hiring for potential, especially early on in the business, is far more important.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Ready to go? (upbeat music plays) George, I'm so excited for this, dude. Ramp is one of my favorite companies to feature. I've heard so many great things about you. So thank you so much for joining me today.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
No, thank you so much for having me.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Now, listen, as we just said, I know a show is gonna be great when I actually have to do very little work because you give me such great suggestions. You said to me before, "Growth is just science, and most marketers are bad at science." I was always terrible at science, so, you know, it doesn't bode well for me. What did you mean by that statement?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
The goal of growth is to figure out how to grow the business, and usually, like early on, that's very top-of-funnel focus. How do you figure out how to get more leads? How do you figure out a channel that works and is repeatable and has, uh, predictable outputs given some inputs? And the honest answer is, like no one really knows. Every business is different. So even if you understand from past experience something that's worked, usually just taking, like that one playbook or that one tactic and copy and pasting it to a new company, like generally doesn't work. And I think that's, uh, the tendency of, of a lot of
- 1:30 – 2:45
How the Best Growth Teams Experiment
- GBGeorge Bonaci
marketers. So, when I say that like growth is mostly just science, I mean that you kind of have to come in with a blank slate, form a hypothesis, and then run a bunch of experiments. And you'll be surprised about what works, you'll be surprised at what doesn't work, um, but ultimately if you, if you run enough of those experiments, you'll, you'll find something. Uh, and I think that's usually lost on a lot of marketers 'cause they don't think in terms of experiments. They think in terms of like, "What do I know?" And "How can I apply it here?"
- HSHarry Stebbings
Is that because the profile of person that they are that they don't think in that way?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Partially. It's probably partly the profile, but it's also partly just like how you think. Like, I think the type of person that would go and become a chemist like me or an engineer is probably very different than someone that's like, "Hey, I want to become a writer," or "I want to get into comms or PR." Like, very valuable skills, but very, very different from the way in thinking or way of thinking that would make someone successful, like scoping an experiment and thinking about like what my hypothesis is and how I'm gonna measure results. It's just like a different part of your brain. Like, I would be a terrible writer, for example.
- HSHarry Stebbings
(laughs) You said about running experiments there and running a number of them. Can I ask, in your mind, is growth about increasing performance by 1 or 2% in many different areas, or is it about needle-moving chapters of a company and being much more pivotal
- 2:45 – 4:57
How to Allocate Bets and Resources for Growth
- HSHarry Stebbings
in that respect?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
The short answer is it has to be both. And what I mean by that is, if you're doing a good job, and it depends on the stage of the company, but in general, if you're doing a good job, you're thinking in terms of different time horizons. So you have to have some, like bucket of bets or experiments that are going to be those, like big swing, huge step changes in impact, but those are generally high risk/high rewards. You can't just do that. Otherwise, you're gonna fail and miss your number this quarter. Um, at the same time, like you need to have some bets where you have high confidence but probably not gonna move the needle a ton, but it'll help you get the 2, 3, 4, 5% improvement, like this quarter. And then you have everything in between. So, like ideally you're being intentional with how you're allocating your resources across, like everything from like the very long term to the very short term. And how you make those bets and how you allocate those resources is actually like a conversation you should probably have with finance or with leadership and align it to the goals of the company. But that, that's my way of thinking about it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You said there about bets, and I often think about growth very much like venture, which is you place a number of investments/bets and you observe and then you wait to see what works and double down. Do you agree with that analogy? How do you think about what is enough bets and failure rate associated?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Ooh, yes. So, it's absolutely a portfolio, but I think like an investment portfolio, it depends what you're optimizing for and it depends on the stage of the company. So, your risk tolerance is going to depend on the stage of the company. It's going to depend on if you're optimizing for growth or profitability or, or whatever it might be. So it is a portfolio. Um, I think that you should assume... If you're doing things right, you should assume the majority of your bets are going to fail, which is why I always believe that velocity is probably more important than getting things perfect. Uh, but it is a spectrum. Like, you could do some really well-controlled, rigorous experiments and it's gonna be incredibly academic and you're gonna learn something, but it might take you, like a year to, like say something conclusive. Um, or you can just run a bunch of experiments at an incredibly high velocity and it's kind of sloppy, and similarly, you might actually, you might not learn anything, uh, because you made a bunch of mistakes or didn't fully think through how you'd measure something. So, you kind of have to balance it. But in general, I'm probably biased to run thing, run more things faster than run something perfectly.
- 4:57 – 13:12
Velocity vs. Quality in Growth
- GBGeorge Bonaci
- HSHarry Stebbings
Does velocity impact quality of conversion? And what I mean by that is, if we're a little bit sloppy but we're very high velocity, we won't spend so much time on the visuals for that campaign, the graphics for this. It's velocity, but it's not as good. How do you think about that trade-off?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I think if you had to choose, velocity is more important. But there's, there's a other side of that coin, which is if you're just doing a bunch of sloppy things, it doesn't matter how many things you run, you're not gonna actually learn anything.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What did you do that was sloppy that you wish wasn't sloppy?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
(laughs) Um, I'm reminded of this one time, I won't say which company, uh, but we had a web page and the web page's conversion rate was trending down, and it was trending down for a long time, and it was our number one channel. And it was like, "Hey, what are we, what are we gonna do to solve this?" And there were kind of two paths. There was one where we could run a bunch of individual well-controlled experiments and understand, hey, changing this button or changing this H1 is, like what's going to improve the page and it worked or it didn't. Or we could just run everything at once, kind of use our gut, kind of use our past experience and, like hope that it worked. And we ended up going that, that latter route, uh, which was definitely the sloppier route, the less rigorous experiment. Um, and it ended up work, it did end up working. Uh, so we did end up, like 3Xing the web page conversion rate, like over the course of a couple weeks and helped us hit our number that quarter. I say that that was, like a mistake because we never actually knew what did or didn't work and we had to go back and undo a lot of the, um, changes that we made once we did end up A/B testing them.But I think that goes back to, like, the portfolio of bets. Like, we were operating on a very short time horizon, so we had to, like, optimize for velocity versus, like, rigor. And then, once we were no longer under the gun, we went back and optimized for rigor to understand what worked and what actually didn't.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do you think about giving something enough time to know if it works? We want a high velocity and we need to move on. But also, sometimes it takes a little bit of time, content in particular. Honestly, I would say 12 to 18 months.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do you think about enough time, but not being slow?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
It goes back to the portfolio. Like, if you're going to allocate 20-30% of your time to, like, longer term bets, that's fine. Be okay with the fact that you're not gonna get results anytime soon. Um, having said that, it would be great if you could figure out what some leading indicators are, or scope down the experiment so you could get some signal that, like, "Hey, we have confidence this will or won't work." I think, in general, I've always tried to prioritize experiments based on impact and effort, I think those are the obvious ones, but also confidence and time to results. Like, if you're really confident something's gonna work, you should just do it. Um, if you're really un-confident that something's going to work, but the time to results is really fast, you should do that as well. And I think usually those two dimensions are lost when people are, are prioritizing. They tend to just go for impact and effort, and not think about confidence or time to results.
- HSHarry Stebbings
When you think about impact, you also said there the word indicator. I think it's really important to understand what you're actually trying to move, what the core objective is. What's your biggest advice to founders and growth teams on how to set the right metric that you want to move?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
That's where I think the experimental design and the rigor of experiments comes in. Uh, you'll, you'll have a hypothesis, and I think most marketers tend to jump to, "Let's go do something. Let's go launch something." But the experimental design, like understanding what you're actually able to measure, what you will measure, how long it'll take to get that result, if it's statistically significant or not. All of that, honestly, like, you either need to be able to do that math yourself or go find someone on a data team and go work with them, or acknowledge the fact that, "Hey, we don't actually have a good way to think about this or measure this, and that's okay. We're gonna go collect some qualitative data, and it means we might be wrong." I think we just need to be hono- Folks need to be honest about that upfront, and define that upfront, is probably how I would think about it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So, we have this portfolio of bets, okay? And then we see one that starts to work. Do we immediately double down on it then? How do we know how much to double down on? Do we set a benchmark of what good is versus great? How do we think about that?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Yeah. Uh, absolutely. You should, like, triple down on that. Uh, I think that another mistake most startups make is they see something that works and they're like, "Okay, great, let's increase our spend. Let's double it, let's triple it." Ideally, if it's working, you take that channel to saturation as quickly as possible. Like, if you s- if you graph out what the results are, um, over a long period of time, you're probably going to see it approach an asymptote. You're gonna see the incrementality of those results start to, like, decay. And-
- HSHarry Stebbings
If you just burn a shitload of cash, though, on a channel super quickly... Say you're spending, um, 10K and you're like, "Shit, it works. Let's put 200K on it." The 200K will not be nearly as efficient as that 10K. Would it not have been better to do 30, 50, 70, and gradually get up there than just whack it as hard as possible? I'm naive.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
So, so yes, but it depends. So, if you're able to graph that response curve, going from 10K to 200K, obviously you're probably not gonna be able to go to 10K to 200K overnight. Um, if you were, that actually would probably be a good problem to have. Uh, but yes, if you're able to, like, graph that response curve and see when something goes from linear to start to decay in terms of response, that tells you, it's like, "Okay, we're no longer getting an expected output given the input," and then we have a conversation on if the returns are worth it. So, figuring out the asymptote, where things start to actually plateau, is, is the most important thing. And I think most companies, or most startups at least, they get to that asymto- asymptote too slowly, and they should really be scaling much, much faster if they find something that works. Um, having said that, I think, like, most things saturate probably more slowly than people expect. Uh, and so going from 10K to 200K might not be as insane as it sounds. Uh, but it depends. You've gotta watch it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do CACs get cheaper over time as brand becomes better known, you become more branded in an ecosystem? Or do they get more expensive as you saturate the core target market and you have to expand into maybe less directly relevant ICPs?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
The only right answer is that, like, yes, CACs become more expensive. Like, as you get more and more market share, it makes sense that it's g- Every incremental acquisition is going to cost more than previous. Um, having said that, I think the reality is that's usually not true. Usually you figure out new products to sell that actually make the LTVs improve. You figure out new geographies to break into. You figure out new channels that work. You figure out maybe that, "Hey, actually combining different channels has a halo effect and you're not fully capturing that in what the customer acquisition cost is." So, the reality is that, no, there's... It takes a really long time to get to the point where, like, the macro effect of saturation is hitting your CAC. Um, but that's how I think about it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you think early stage founders should look at LTV? Often CAC to LTV is kind of the hailed metric. George, you know as well as I do, it's so difficult to calculate LTV in any product, let alone early stage products. How do you think about LTV and its utility value to early stage founders?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I think it's a reasonable framework. I think you have to have some threshold that you agree on as a business, like, "This is what we're willing to spend and this is what we think a customer is worth." But the reality is, it's like false precision. Like, you're not going to know what your LTV is if you've been in business for a year, um, or six months, or, or whatever it might be. So I wouldn't over-index on that false precision. I would instead just acknowledge that there's some threshold we're gonna be okay with, uh, in terms of spending to acquire a customer and what that customer is worth. And that should change over time as you learn things and run experiments.
- HSHarry Stebbings
When you're running experiments, do you have culture challenges in terms of maintaining morale if you shut off someone's baby?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
(laughs) .
- HSHarry Stebbings
And what I mean by that is, someone's really been working hard on the YouTube, the Instagram, the SEO, and you say, "George, it's three months. We're not seeing the returns needed."... cut it. But they are very attached to it. How do you think about that?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
No one should be that attached to the experiment that they're running. Like, I think that is a cultural problem. I think that they should acknowledge that the vast majority of what they work on is going to fail. And that if they're not failing, like honestly, they're probably not doing their job well. Uh, you need to be running a bunch of stuff. It needs to be unique, it needs to be creative. And that means that most is not going to work. If you're that attached to something that's working, you should be very, very high on the confidence aspect of how we prioritize it. And in that case, like maybe we were wrong. We should have that conversation. But you definitely... No one should be that attached to any experiment.
- 13:12 – 17:33
The Role of Postmortems and How to Do Them
- GBGeorge Bonaci
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do you use postmortems to effectively analyze the success rate of different experiments programs?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Um, I would say like, you should be doing pre-mortems and postmortems. I think that's part of like good experimental design, like understanding what are the different failure modes for this and, and acknowledging, like what the probability of those failure modes are. If when you-
- HSHarry Stebbings
And so you, and so you do a... Sorry, just so I understand it, 'cause so many founders get really granular and like get notebooks out. For like pre-mortems, this is right before we're about to start, we plot out the three main things that could likely kill this project?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
That's one way to do it. Uh, I would actually get more specific than that. When you're planning the experiments, like, why would this fail? It's like, "Oh, we're not gonna have a large enough sample size as we predicted." Or, like there's a million things. You should probably write out those million things. And then I think what's more interesting is when you do a postmortem, if the experiment failed for something that you didn't actually anticipate, something that you didn't like factor into your, your experimental design, that I think is an interesting conversation. But if it's something that you had kind of anticipated and maybe the probability was wrong or whatever it might be, that is less interesting. And I probably wouldn't even do a postmortem for that.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How often is the pre-mortem the reason why something didn't work? How often do you get it right?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I would say for the high probability, high confidence bets, the things that you're doing to hit a number this quarter or even this year, I, I think pretty high. It's probably like 90% plus. Um, for the big swings, there's always like some black swan. There's always something that like you cannot anticipate, you had no idea. And that's where the postmortem actually, I think is valuable, and trying to figure out what you learned and how it might apply to either other big swings or, um, maybe even like higher confidence bets. Like that I think is actually the much more interesting and more valuable conversation.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I think every growth team is going, "Well, I couldn't predict COVID." (laughs)
- GBGeorge Bonaci
(laughs) Yeah, that is very true.
- HSHarry Stebbings
That was a tough one for us all. Um, so, okay, so we have that as the pre-mortem. For the postmortem, how do we structure that? Who's invited? What does that look like?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
So I think the person that was ultimately like the DRI for an experiment, the person that also hopefully scopes the experiment, th- they should write the postmortem. And I think they really need to be clear on, number one, did we run the experiment well? Um, or did it fail for some reason that we could have avoided? Uh, I think like outside of did we expe- uh, did we, did we scope the experiment well, it's did we learn something that could be, uh, generalized to other aspects of the business? I think that's an important aspect to have. And then I think like the third most important component is just making sure that the right cross-functional stakeholders are there. So the folks that can learn from it, the folks that can prevent the failure in the future, um, I think that's maybe like the third most important aspect of, of a postmortem. But beyond that, like the structure I don't think actually matters that much. It's gonna be very company dependent.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What do you like to do? Is it a Notion? Is it a Google Doc? When do you send it out? 'Cause you want people to have time with it, but not too much time. How do you think about that?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Yeah. I'm a Google Doc person.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Okay.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Uh, I think the per- the DRI should write it up. They should send it out in advance, at least like 24 hours in advance, so people have time to like think about it. Um, but ideally, like I'm more in favor of, of a live conversation rather than add some comments, have a conversation in the comments, in the doc, and then like have a maybe more boring live conversation. So I'm, I'm, I'm big on live.
- HSHarry Stebbings
I, I really like one of the suggestions, which is like, are there any learnings that could be generalized to other aspects of the business? Is there an example of one in the past that you could share just to illustrate that a little bit?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I'll give you a really tactical example. Um, a really tactical example was we were doing some very basic A-B testing on our homepage, and we saw that a red button by far outperformed anything else. Now, red is like, as a button, is generally like a bad idea. Uh, it has a negative connotation. It's like something is wrong, uh, don't hit the red button. But we couldn't ever find anything that outperformed on a pure A-B testing basis like that red button. Now, it turned out when you actually went and looked at the data by segment, although it outperformed in general, it severely underperformed for like the enterprise segment. Um, it's like a great example of like Simpson's paradox. When we took that information and like removed that from the web team and applied it to the content team and applied it to everyone else that was using the red button as a best practice, that was like incredibly valuable, 'cause most of the content we were generating was for enterprise. Most of the webinars we were generating were for enterprise. Like, most of the direct mailers we were sending were for enterprise. Uh, so what we were actually doing by saying, "Hey, red is the best button," or, or sorry, "the best practice," was actually like decreasing the performance of all of these things we were doing that were specific for the enterprise segment.
- 17:33 – 18:16
Growth Team Structure and Standalone or Not?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can I ask you, does growth sit in its own team? Or there, are you in the product team? Are you in the marketing team? Where do you sit?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I think my personal opinion is I think growth should be independent. I think like the growth team's mandate should be to figure out how to grow the business, and that should be more than just marketing. It should be more than just product. It should mean that like you have the mandate to do whatever is the highest leverage. And to me, that means you probably should report to... Uh, I honestly, that's one of the reasons why I love Ramp is the growth team reports to one of the co-founders. Um, I think some companies have chief growth officers. I think other folks have growth organizations that are more like SWAT teams and kind of roam between different parts of the business. Ultimately, it does depend on, on the business, but I think they should be as independent as possible.
- 18:16 – 28:48
The Three Ways to Find Alpha in Growth
- GBGeorge Bonaci
- HSHarry Stebbings
You said to me before about seeking alpha in growth. It was a cliffhanger 'cause I had no idea what you quite meant by it. What did you mean by seeking alpha in growth?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Yeah. Uh, I was using that in terms of, or I was, I was stealing alpha from, from, uh, investing terminology. Like what's your unfair advantage, is maybe a better way to put it. And I think like that is the key to being a good growth team. Like you gotta figure out something that is not saturated and that other people ideally like are not doing. And I think the way that you find alpha is either by doing things that no one else knows about, either...... most likely because it's so new. Uh, like think about when TikTok first came out. I don't think any B2B brands were thinking about advertising on TikTok. I don't think there even was advertising on TikTok when it first came out. But the folks that were really ahead of the game, they're like, "Eventually, there will be advertising on TikTok and it's gonna be totally saturated with consumer brands to begin with. But eventually, there'll be a B2B opportunity." And when they were the first ones to run those experiments, they probably had huge returns. Um, so anyway, doing things that I think folks don't know about is, like, one aspect. I think another aspect is probably doing things that everyone is convinced will not work. Uh, I remember first suggesting we try direct mail, like, years and years ago. And it was like, "Why would direct mail work? Like, junk mail to people's homes? Like, that absolutely won't work." And it became, like, one of our most successful, like, biggest channels after, like, a few iterations. So, um, I'm happy to chat about w- where you find these things, but you've- you've got to find them.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Ye- ye- can w- can we actually? Because it's, it's, like gr- it totally makes sense, like, do things that people don't know, uh, do things that people don't believe. How do you find them?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Um, I think this actually is, is a good segue into, like, how do you just learn in general, uh, as a gr- a member of the growth team or s- someone at, uh, in a company in general. I would say that there's three areas. Like, you can learn academically. You can go read a book and learn what's worked for other companies or other growth folks, or, uh, companies in the past even are great ar- like, aspects of, of being able to learn. So, learning academically is one aspect. Um, I think you can also learn from your peers. So, you can go and learn from folks at other companies, growth people at other companies. I think that's a great, like, area of, of, uh, of finding alpha. Um, granted probably not the, the best, uh, unfair advantage, since someone else knows about it. But I actually think the most interesting is to go and learn from other niches. So, like, other verticals, other geographies, especially if they're tangential to what you're doing. Uh, a great example is, like, WhatsApp. Like, WhatsApp as a marketing channel is not huge for most brands, uh, or most companies in the United States, but it's massive, uh, in a lot of, like, international regions. And I think, like, "Great, could we go try, like, WhatsApp instead of sending emails?" Um, it'll probably fail. But again, if you're doing enough of these experiments, you'll find something that works that no one else is doing.
- HSHarry Stebbings
My question to you on the number one, academically. Is that not just learning playbooks? And do you worry that then you'll speak to your friend George, who will tell you what worked at Samsara, but Ramp's a totally different business? And so, respectfully, uh, to your point on playbooks earlier, they're not applicable often. Does academic learning really work?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I think it does, but it depends how you look at it. So, yes, there are playbooks that you can just take and copy and paste. There are also playbooks that you can look at and think critically and adapt. And then there are playbooks you kind of come up with from scratch. I think a lot of academic learning is taking a past playbook and adapting it. And, like, the example that always comes to mind for me is, in, in the world of attribution in marketing, so, like, media mix marketing... Oh, sorry, media mix modeling or marketing mix modeling, depending upon who you talk to, MMM. Like, everyone's talking about it now as the best way to do attribution, blah, blah, blah. Uh, that's a really old concept. That's, like, from the old, like, Mad Men-style advertising days in, like, the 1950s and '60s. So, I think that's a good example where, hey, you could actually go and look at how did they measure the impact of ads in literal newspapers before anything was digital, uh, back in, like, the 1950s or '60s. And how do you actually adapt that playbook or that methodology to modern day, like, digital advertising or modern day digital marketing as a whole? Um, there's probably a million examples like that. Actually, direct mail is probably another example of that. There are so much, yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
W- what did you see in direct mail that no one else saw? Because so many of your friends were like, "George crushed it on direct mail," and no one thought this was a good idea. So, what did you see that no one else saw?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
No one else was doing it and it was incredibly scalable. Like, that was pretty much it. Like, the fact that no one else was doing it, it's like, "Okay, that's interesting. We should try it." But the fact that if it works, it would be incredibly scalable, and the fact that you can run it with very large sample sizes meant that we could run a lot of experiments in parallel and learn really, really quickly. Like, there's very few channels where you can go like, "Hey, tomorrow let's go reach, like, 200,000 people." Uh, direct mail, email, those are, like, kind of some of the only channels that, that would allow you to do something at that scale, and thus, run a lot of experiments.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What is no one trying today that you think is interesting?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
(laughs) Um, I don't know if I can give away my secrets. But I think the honest answer is, like, on the B2B side, and I don't think this is super cutting edge, but influencer marketing. Um, maybe, like, a year or two ago this would have been a little bit more cutting edge. But everyone's always thought of influencers and, and user-generated content maybe, uh, to get more specific, as more of a B2C tactic that works really well. I would argue that works just as well, and maybe even better, in the B2B world. Like, especially if you're moving up market or moving to enterprise. Yeah, th- there's definitely unfair advantage there. But it's a lot of work.
- HSHarry Stebbings
It's a lot of work. Um, how do you think about attribution and the challenge of capturing conversion? You know, I'm, um, I interviewed Nick at Revolut, and Antoine, who's the head of growth at Revolut, and their biggest mental shift for both of them was the power of brand marketing, but both being aware of the challenge of having no fricking idea what it does to your revenues, actually. How do you think about the importance of knowing source of revenue versus brand marketing?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Uh, it goes back to the portfolio. Uh, I think that y- you have to be okay with the fact that most brand marketing is a long-term bet. It's high risk, it's high reward. Uh, at least that's how a growth person would probably think about it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Is there a stage of company where it becomes interesting?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I think if you, if you're seeing all of your core direct response channels start to saturate, then it's something that you have to start doing. And the assumption is that, like, investing in brand is gonna do one of a few things. It's either going to make folks that have a problem and are aware they have a problem aware of you. And I think that's how probably most companies start thinking about it. But the more interesting aspect is, like, true demand generation. It's like, "Hey, there are people out there that don't realize they have a problem." And brand marketing, like, instead of being like, "Hey, try XYZ product or try XYZ company," it's like, "This problem exists. Like, there's actually a better way." And of course, like, we're the better way. But that, I think, is, like, a much more interesting type of brand marketing to open up j- like, demand for a new part of the market that, that you aren't able to reach with traditional channels.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can I ask just, on the bets that we continuously go back to, how much is too much concentration? When you think about, you know, a c- portfolio, it's like, "Hey, traditionally in venture, you don't want to be..."Uh, definitely not more than 10% in one single investment. How do you think about too much concentration in a, a growth portfolio?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
If you're doing things right, the concentration will change. Um, it's almost like when you find something that works, if you do a really good job of saturating it as quickly as possible, you will be, by almost definition, like, really concentrated there, at least for a period of time. It's really how quickly you can diversify and stack different bets and different wins so that you're not concentrated for too long of a period of time. Um, but I think concentration, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. It means that you're doing a good job maximizing an area.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do you think about communicating growth's goals to other elements of the organization? You're sitting there in your independent growth team, say, and you also have to work with product, and you also have to work with marketing. How do you work together most efficiently to communicate, "This is what I'm going after"?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I think communicating the way growth thinks about things is probably, like, more important than, like, what specifically they're doing. As long as everyone's aligned that, like, the growth team's job is actually aligned with everyone else's in the company, which is like, "We need to be successful." Like, growth team's job is not to make anyone happy. It's to make the business successful. And that might mean, like, for a period of time, working really closely with product or really qui- working really close with product marketing or some elemen- other element of the business. But really, they should recognize, and growth should be able to communicate, that we're bringing a unique skill set and unique point of view, uh, that hopefully is complementary to their skill set and their point of view, but ultimately the same goal of, of making the business successful. Um, so I know that's a little bit meta, but that's, that's how I would describe it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You're an angel in my company, George, and we're sitting down for a coffee, and we're, we're going for some advice. And I'm at about a million in revenue. Um, I've just raised to Series A. Is now the time to bring in a head of growth? And how do you advise me on when is the right time to bring in someone for growth, and what type of person? Is it senior or junior?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I would always skew more junior. I think hiring for potential, especially early on in the business, is far, far more important. I actually think it would be a mistake to hire someone more senior, like if you're Series A. Hiring a really smart generalist that can think in terms of princi- first principles, and they can think logically in terms of solving problems is probably more important than anything.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What background d- d- like solving problems and that kind of generalist, what background do you find is best?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Unless you're trying to solve a very specific problem and you have a really high confidence that this is the right problem to solve, I would not hire a specialist or someone with a traditional marketing background. I think hiring someone that has demonstrated they can think logically and they can do, do math, um, is really, really important early, in the early days. So that might be engineers. That might be ex-finance folks. Uh, that might be an ex-consultant that hated consulting and like, really wanted to stick with something long term and get their hands dirty. I think those make generally the best first m- uh, first growth hires. But really you should just be trying to assess for potential, which I think is a combination of, like, can they have vision? Can they kind of see areas where they can go? Like, can they acquire new skills really, really rapidly? Um, and are they, like, internally motivated?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Is there any profile... Before we actually dig into skills and skill detection, is there any profile where you're like, "I don't love that background. It's just tough to be good at growth with that background"?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Yeah. If you've been at a company, especially a company that's an order of magnitude or larger or bigger for more than a few years, it's, it's just really hard to then change your mindset and go to a smaller startup and think about, like, how hard you have to, like, get your han- or how much you have to get your hands dirty and how differently you need to think about things. Like, I think if you've been at a much, much larger company, you're going to tend to think more in terms of playbooks and, and rely more on your past experience than on what you can learn from others or what you can learn from, from maybe, like, other geographies or other companies or other peers. Uh, so going from playbook to first principle thinking is generally difficult to do. So I would, I would... I've personally, like, stayed away from that type of profile.
- 28:48 – 30:15
How to Hire for the Best Growth Hires
- GBGeorge Bonaci
- HSHarry Stebbings
Uh, no, I, I totally understand that perspective. On the skill detection, how do you run an interview process then? Again, uh, we- you're advising me. I, I have a number of applicants, and we have a candidate pool. How should I spend the first meeting? What questions should I ask? What should I try and uncover?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I think if you're able to do some sort of back channel and some sort of test in that first interview, that is going to be, like, the most valuable, highest signal thing you can do. Like if you-
- HSHarry Stebbings
When you say back channel or test, what do you mean? Do you mean, like, references or, like, physical take-home test, test?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I, I... Both. So exactly both. Uh, if you're like a Series A startup, it's probab- like, finding the best talent and hiring, convincing the best talent to join your company is generally gonna be really hard. I assume most people have probably never heard of most Series A startups. Um, and in that case, yeah, the best folks you're gonna be able to hire are going to be, like, referrals, warm intros, that sort of thing. So getting some sort of back channel information from the person that is hopefully connecting you is, is I think, like, actually the first step of the interview process. Um, I would argue the second should be some sort of case study or some sort of take-home test. Um, you could do the case study live in the conversation with them just to see how they think about things, but I would not be opposed or I don't think it would be a bad idea to go from warm conversation, get to know you, kind of selling you on the opportunity in the business, straight to a take-home test. So the first call should probably be about selling, uh, and then the se- and hopefully you're selling based on the referral that you go- just got, the very strong referral you just got. And then the second stage would be, "Okay,
- 30:15 – 31:46
How to do Take-Home Assignments When Hiring for Growth
- GBGeorge Bonaci
let's assess."
- HSHarry Stebbings
Okay, let's assess. Take-home assignment. What do you like to give as a take-home assignment and what advice would you give for me?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Yes. Uh, make it as real as possible and make it quantitative. Uh, and actually, maybe the third thing I'd say is understand what good looks like before you send the test out. So a great example is I like to just take a Salesforce dump or a dump of data and be like, "Hey, what's the best campaign? What worked best here? Um, what were the best leads?" Whatever it might be. And if it's real-world data, it's gonna be really messy. Like, there's going to be a bunch of tricks they have to catch. There are gonna be a bunch of mistakes they have to figure out, duplicate leads or, um, the dates don't align or missing data or whatever it might be. So I think like, that itself is like, can they work with real-world data is I think a really interesting question to answer. Then the other is like, how much of this did they think through? What was their thought process like? How quickly were they able to adapt? How quickly were they able even to like do the tests? Did they ask questions about it? All of those I think are signals before you even see the output, uh, to understand like are they at least thinking about things in the right way. But the real world is messy. They should, they should work with real-world data.
- HSHarry Stebbings
So they work with real-world data. They come back and you're impressed.What happens next? Do we go straight to an offer? Do we have a hiring panel? Do we do any other steps?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
They should, they should at least meet some other members of the team. Like ideally, you want this to be a mutual fit, like both culturally, but also they wanna work with the people on the team. The team wants to work with them. So I think there's still value in doing a panel, but it's almost more, um, culture fit and more team fit more than anything. But ideally, you are scoping that test that you send them so you know if they can do the job.
- 31:46 – 33:17
Common Pitfalls in Hiring Growth Talent
- GBGeorge Bonaci
- HSHarry Stebbings
When you've got growth talent wrong, what did you not see that you wish you had seen when you hired them?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
It's generally been hiring a generalist that ultimately, "Hey, this isn't for me. I don't wanna do this after all. Um, I've never done this problem," or, "I've never done this job before. Now that I'm doing it, I really don't enjoy it. I wanna go and get back into investing, or I wanna do like X, Y, Z." Honestly, I don't- I think it's difficult to assess for that. Uh, and you just have to acknowledge that like no one, even the best person at hiring is still gonna make a lot of mistakes. And that's, that's okay. I think probably what's most important is just being as transparent as possible, both in terms of the opportunity and then in terms of how you're being, going to be assessed, and also just being transparent that like, "If this doesn't work, that's fine." Like we've all had jobs before. We're all gonna have jobs again. Like that's, that's okay.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you agree that people are destined/much better suited for certain phases of a company life?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I wouldn't say they were destined, but I think you can be suited for it. Like if you spend the last five jobs and 15 years in a certain stage of company, I think it's gonna be difficult to adapt your way of operating and way of thinking to a different stage of company. Um, having said that, I mean, I don't think anyone in particular is like destined for a certain stage. I think like if you're very, very hungry and you're a self-starter and you love just doing a little bit of everything, it's like, okay, you're probably going to do better at like a seed or series A stage company than like a 100,000 person well-established business. Uh, but that might change over time. Uh, and that might change as they gain more, more experience or do different things.
- 33:17 – 42:06
Investing in Management and Learning
- GBGeorge Bonaci
- HSHarry Stebbings
You need to invest in your people, right? I mean, that helps them to grow and develop with scale. And you said to me before, management is a skill that needs to be invested in. Do you think it's currently invested in by most companies?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
By most companies, no, I, I don't. I think that like philosophically they're like, "Yes, we wanna invest in people's learning and development." I think... And I think they even believe that that's true. But like actually doing it is really difficult. Like it takes time, it takes resources. You have to be intentional. It has to be top down. Um, go ahead, sorry.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How, how, how do you do it then? Help me.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I, I think Samsara actually had like a great model for this. The CEO and founder, like he was very big on learning and very big on reading. And I remember like one time, uh, he was hanging out in like the cafeteria and we're like, "What do you like to do in your free times?" Like, "I like to read books." Uh, and so as a result, you saw how that permeated throughout the culture. So I remember they launched something when I was there called Leadership Principles. And everyone that was a leader within the company got a big box shipped to their home. And it had literally like 15 books in it. Uh, and they were all business books. And the expectation was that you read one of these books every single month and then rejoin a conversation with other, other peers. And this was all organized to discuss like one of the principles in these books that Samsara wanted you to embody. Uh, and then there was like an element where you actually then had to go put it into practice and demonstrate you were putting it into practice. Like to me, that is a great example of being very intentional about, hey, we value learning and development here, and we're going to add a structure and we're gonna add accountability to it to make sure that you are not just learning things but putting it into practice. That took time. That took a lot of investment. Uh, that took really coming from the founders. Um, and I think like a lot of companies maybe sometimes get caught up in the day-to-day and they say, "Hey, we value learning, but go figure it out on your own," rather than coming up with like a holistic program or holistic mechanism like that.
- HSHarry Stebbings
How do you think about the effectiveness of that? I read Howard Schultz's book on Starbucks and leadership lessons from Starbucks. I run a fucking media company in a world of TikTok and DeepSeek. I mean, it's completely different to the point on playbooks. The leadership principles probably don't align. Most leadership books written 20 years ago do not take account for a post-COVID millennial generation. How do we think about applicability and actually the lessons we teach being wrong?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I don't think business has actually changed that much. Tactically, sure, maybe it has. The channels, TikTok didn't exist 30 years ago. But I don't actually think business and being a good manager, in particular, has changed that much, or the skills necessary to be a good manager have changed that much. A great example is like the book The Goal. Like I, I'm a big fan of that book. I have some recency bias 'cause we reread it recently. But one of the key concepts in that is like the theory of constraints. And now this, this doesn't have anything to do with management, but the concept of the theory of constraints existed 40 years ago and it still exists today. Like every team is operating with some bottleneck in their process. And being able to identify that bottleneck and remove it is a very valuable skill for anyone, but it's especially valuable for a manager. Uh, that's how you get the most out of people. That's one of the core jobs of being a manager. So that's just one example. Like I would argue that most business books, as long as you're vetting them well and as long as like you are being intentional on what is the principle you wanna pull out of this and have your team put into practice, there's probably something that can be learned from, from almost any book regardless of how old it is.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What is the biggest bottleneck in your role today at Ramp that if-
- GBGeorge Bonaci
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
... removed would be the biggest game changer?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
The, the biggest bottleneck is probably the velocity of experimentation. Like there are so many opportunities. We don't have enough time, we don't have enough resources. That's probably like at the, if you zoom out far enough, that's probably the constraint for most businesses. Um-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Well, okay. What would you, what would you like to do but because of time or lack of resources you're not able to do? Number one.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
There are a lot of things I would just like to get off the ground faster. When you're reliant on external parties, either like external vendors or external lead sources or other legal teams to review your terms and services, things just go much more, much more slowly. Um, I wish that there was a way to speed all of that up. Um, I think that Ramp actually does a really good job of saying like, "Let's optimize for speed. Just accept those legal terms." Maybe not necessarily, but "Let's, let's figure out a way to move as quickly as possible and just like launch it and test it, and then we can figure out the details if he're going to actually scale it up."
- HSHarry Stebbings
We spoke about investing in, in people becoming managers and developing.I spoke to so many of your former, uh, colleagues, and they all said one of your biggest strengths is the willingness to roll up your sleeves and do the work yourself. My question to you is, ironically, how willing should a manager be to do IC work, versus that actually just being a plaster to not having great ICs?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
(laughs) That's a great question. I think a good, a good leader, I won't even say just manager, I think a good leader needs to know how to do everyone on their team's job, but poorly. And I think the poorly part's important. They should know how to do the job so they can step in if they need to, or so that they're dangerous enough to, to ask the right questions. But if they know how to do the job better than the people they've hired, then they didn't hire the right people. And it's going to lead to micromanagement, it's going to lead to, to your point, filling in gaps that are not the most effective use of their time. Um, so being able to, number one, either learn enough of what your team does so that you can do it poorly, or number two, hire people that can do what you need them to do better than you know, uh, I think is, is kind of the key.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Okay. So you've hired me, I've joined your team. I'm, I'm a junior. You, you hired very junior with this one, George, sorry. Um, but, uh, what does that onboarding look like? What do you expect from your new growth hires in the first 30 days?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
First 30 days, it's learn the business, it's learn the team, it's learn, like, your, your area of, of domain. I, I would expect in the first 30 days you know how to do your job, uh, and that's pretty much it. And you understand how the company operates and how the company makes money. Like, I think a strong foundation is actually understanding how the business works. Uh, for-
- HSHarry Stebbings
What do I do as a, what do I do as a leader to give you those best 30 days? Do I just say, "Just shadow the shit out of me."? Do I say, "Go sit in support."? Do, where do you go?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Great question. I think this, again, goes back to, to the investing and learning. I think the leader needs to be incredibly detailed in what those first 30, 60, 90 day plans look like. Who you're meeting, what you're doing with your time. Like, actually, this is something I learned from, from Samsara as well, like I remember my first 30 days were written out in excruciating detail. I think the first two weeks were completely scheduled out, like to the minute for me. Uh, and as a result, it was also very clear to understand if someone was learning and picking things up, and it was very easy to compare folks if they were given the same, like, structured onboarding. Um, so I firmly believe, like, the first 30 days is like, you learn the business and you learn the job. Now, beyond those 30 days, like, you should be able to start showing, like, some sort of step change impact, start having some ideas, start making things your own. And then by 90 days, you should be starting to actually, like, show the fruits of those new ideas and the fruits of, like, that new experience that you're bringing or new perspective that you're bringing.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Should you always go for early wins just to get points on the board?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
If you see the opportunity, yes. And there should be the opportunity. Um, if you were, you were i- you were ideally hired because you have some skill set or some, um, unique perspective, uh, or there's some gap in the business that you're filling. So there should be some early points on the board you can put up. Having said that, if someone is not able to put up points on the board, you should understand why, uh, and if they were set up for success. And if they were not, you should remove that as quickly as possible. But there are some roles and there are some problems that do just take time to solve, and that's where the, okay, how can we scope this down and run an experiment to validate, uh, are we at least on the right track is important. But there are some aspects or some times where it is difficult to put early points on the board.
- HSHarry Stebbings
George, how fast do you know if someone you hired isn't good enough?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I think you generally have inklings in the first couple weeks, but you should give some people the benefit of the doubt. Like, you should run some sort of struc-... And I guess this is why structured onboarding is so important, um, and this is why making sure people ship things in their first week is so important, so you actually can assess them based on facts versus just vibes or feelings. Um, but you generally have some sort of vibe or feeling in the first week or two.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you know what I find really hard?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
What?
- HSHarry Stebbings
It's hard to get rid of someone after a week. It's like you haven't given it enough time. Do you know what I mean?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Yeah.
- HSHarry Stebbings
It looks like you're just cutting it prematurely short. So you know, but you keep them for three months 'cause you're like, "Well, at least now it looks like I can say I've given them fair try."
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Yeah. I think, I think that's true. I, I don't actually think that's wrong. Sorry, go ahead.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What are the most common reasons growth hires don't work?
- 42:06 – 46:22
How AI Changes Growth Products and Strategies
- GBGeorge Bonaci
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can I ask, how does AI change the role of growth? You know, we see some pretty futuristic things in terms of, "Here's my budget, go spend it across five channels, and it will do it in the optimal fashion for you." Is that the future of growth? And how do you think about how your role changes with an increasing prominence of AI?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
It's h- i- in that example, I think it's hard to find alpha if you're just having a AI go find the opportunities for you. Having said that, I think AI is tremendously changing, like, the role of growth. Like, it's a-
- HSHarry Stebbings
Why is it hard to find alpha in that respect? Because they'd have all of your connected data history, and so they could look at all prior performance conversion on every channel, compare it like-for-like, benchmark it against standards, and then do what's best for you, not a anonymized dataset, "This is what you should do." It could be incredibly personalized.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
It could be personalized, but almost by definition, that's just going to give you incremental gains on things you're already doing, and things it has data on.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Mm-hmm.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Uh, I think, like, to get real advantage, like, how, uh, maybe we'll get to this point at some point soon, but I, I think it's hard. Have the AI go talk to, like, 50 people in the industry and, like, synthesize what they're doing and apply what they think is going to be relevant to your business model and your ICP and, like, go apply that. That sounds really difficult to do, at least with the state of AI today, but, but maybe not in a year. Who knows?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Tooling wise, does it change much?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Uh, using AI?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Yeah.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Yes. 100%. Uh, I remember, like, a few years ago, I was such a strong advocate that, like, everyone on the growth team needs to be technical. They need to, like, learn SQL, they need to learn Python. They need to learn how to work with, like, a growth engineering team, like, very, very closely.... I think, like, AI's upended that. Like, you don't need to be nearly as technical as, as you used to. Like, AI can help you write the code, it can tell you other ways of doing things. Like, it's... Even just, like, in that element of, like, who I used to, like, have a bias for hiring, it's totally changed.
- HSHarry Stebbings
In my mind, you know, growth people, bluntly, are either performance-driven scientific or they are creative-driven artistic. Does the world of AI make one likely to be more successful than the other?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I think it is a good... It's a good co-pilot, for la- lack of a better term, for, for both of those roles. I think that, like, on the creative side, it can help you think about new ideas and help you brainstorm. On the performance side, it can help you analyze the data and maybe be more efficient or move more quickly.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You've gotta choose which one it helps more.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
So here, here's my bias. I am not super creative at the end of the day. I'm not a creative-minded person. So I think it helps me a lot more.
- HSHarry Stebbings
You are, George. I think, I think you are.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
Don't, don't discredit yourself. Do you think it helps creative people more?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I, I think so. Like... Or maybe it helps uncreative people more is maybe what I would say. Um, the number of times that I've had ChatGPT just be like... Or any type of AI, really. I'm like, "How do I make this better? How do I add a joke in here? What are some other, like, visuals I can do? What's a good analogy for XYZ?" Like, I wouldn't have been able to do that on my own. I would have had to go to someone in product marketing or content and be like, "Hey, I need some help."
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can I ask you, how do you advise founders competing in incredibly intense, competitive markets? You know, Ramp is in a very competitive market across a number of different products. What's your biggest advice on competing in very proliferated markets?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I think it's... Like most things, you just have to have a better product and you have to have some plan for distribution. I think that having a better product probably solves, like, 80, 90% of the battle. Uh, but you also need to think about how you're gonna distribute that, that product, and, like, what your unfair advantage is in distribution. And hopefully, that's where the growth team comes in and where they can provide value. But I do think it's mostly on the product.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you agree with the suggestion, build it and they will come?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
(laughs) Absolutely not, no. Like, I'm a, I'm on... I'm a marketer at the end of the day, and I'm a growth person. Like, that is, that is antithetical to everything we stand for. There are some products, sure, where, like, yes, they are... It is so amazing and the word of mouth was so strong that, like, you could... They did build it and people did come. I think that is so out of the ordinary and leaves your fate so much to chance that that's not a good approach.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Listen, George, I've loved this. You are unbelievably concise with answers. I call it, kind of, word economy, which is like value per word.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
(laughs)
- HSHarry Stebbings
And, like, most people are fluffy and don't say much, but it takes a long time. You're unbelievably concise with very dense value. It, it makes my life a joy, to be quite
- 46:22 – 52:49
Quick-Fire Round: Common Mistakes and Growth Channels
- HSHarry Stebbings
honest. Um, I wanna do a quick-fire with you. So I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Sure, let's do it.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Okay. So number one, what's the most common, expensive, deadly, irreversible mistake you see founders make?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Hiring for experience because they don't know any better.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Hm. Yeah, fair.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
It's like, "We don't know how to do this. We'll hire someone that does."
- HSHarry Stebbings
And it should be, we should hire someone who doesn't?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
It should be like, we should actually assess for, "Hey, how do we determine what good looks like and how do we test them for it?" And, like, "Could someone figure this out? Could someone on the team figure this out?" Rather than hiring external.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you think most founders know what good looks like? That's the hard thing.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
They, they gotta figure it out. Like, I think that's where the learning comes in. Like, go talk to other... Go determine, "Let's..." I'm gonna make this up. Like, you're trying to figure out how to do cold calling. "Maybe this will work for us, maybe it won't. Go identify 10 companies that do cold calling really well. Go talk to the people that built that infrastructure and built that system," et cetera, et cetera.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Do you know what, dude? Do you know why I started these vertical shows?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Why?
- HSHarry Stebbings
Because one of my companies hired someone for growth that was just obviously terrible to me. And I said, "This is clearly a mistake." And they said, "I don't know what good growth looks like." And I was like, "Well, if I spoke to the 10 that I know and published them, you'd have an idea that George is top tier and that's what I should look for in someone that I work with." And so this was meant to be a benchmarking of world-class quality in each vertical. And that's why we started them.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
I love it. I think that's why I'm such a fan.
- HSHarry Stebbings
No, no, it's very kind. Um, tell me, what's the most underappreciated growth channel today?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Huh. Uh, it is probably honestly something on the influencer side of things. Uh, I don't think most people think of it as a growth channel, but influencers absolutely is, at least on the B2B side.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Can you do influencer at scale? That's the hard thing.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
That is the fun problem to solve. I, I think you can. I think you treat it almost as a outbound funnel. It's like, go make a list of the 10,000 micro-influencers or folks that could become micro-influencers and go do some scaled outbound to them, figure out a process that works. Like, you, you could solve almost any problem in that way, um, but short answer is yes.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What's the most polluted channel today?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Oh.
- HSHarry Stebbings
Or overrated?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Paid search. I think everyone goes to paid search 'cause they have to, but I think... Uh, like, in the very, very early days, you have nothing that works, sure. It's, like, table stakes. But it saturates quickly, you're paying a tax to Google. Uh, I, I think paid search is, like, relatively uninspiring of a growth channel that will scale long-term.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What growth tactic have you done that with the benefit of hindsight you're like, "Oh, I wish I hadn't done that"?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
(laughs) Oh, man. Um, I think, like very, very early on, it was event spon-... Like, at very small companies, it's event sponsorships, like, go exhibit at Dreamforce or something like that. Like, it feels like something you have to do 'cause everyone else does it, and it's, like, just a waste of money. You're in a sea of other companies and no one's paying attention to you. Like, your, that money would be better spent figuring out some guerrilla tactic to stand out or honestly, it'd probably be better spent on paid ads. We do a lot of our events. I think we're, we're at a very different scale though. Um, and we do things a little bit differently. It's not just like, go exhibit at an event, at an event. It's also, like, get a speaker slot, do some out of ho- out of home advertising around it, make sure we do, like, outbound emails immediately after. It's, it's more than just, like, "Let's get a booth in a corner of the conference hall 'cause it was all we could afford and let's hope people come to us."
- HSHarry Stebbings
It's one of those ones where it's like, if you're in, you need to go all in and have the billboard outside the conference, the key cards for the hotels as well-
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Exactly.
- HSHarry Stebbings
... the speaker slot, and the booth. Not just, like, a small shit booth.
- GBGeorge Bonaci
Exactly. And- and this- and- and that's why I think it changes in- depending on size. Like, when you're serious at your company, like most events, it depends upon your go-to-market motion, most events are not going to be high ROI.
- HSHarry Stebbings
What growth channel did you not take advantage of, that with the benefit of hindsight you're like, "Ugh, George, that was in plain sight"?
- GBGeorge Bonaci
It's a good question. I- I think, like, direct mail and gifting was one that we could have actually even attempted even earlier, uh, when we were at Samsara, in my opinion. I think that there's probably unfair advantages to be gained in, like, display advertising. Like, display advertising is so inexpensive right now, but it's not measured well and most people think of it in terms of, like, direct response. Like, if someone- no one clicks these ads, so, like, the response and the ROI is not very good. But the reality is, like, figuring out how to serve imp- the right number of impressions with the right message into an account or into a contact actually does have a halo effect. So there's definitely an advantage there, but solving- and solving for that advantage is probably dependent on how you measure it. Uh, so I- I would say display advertising's an opportunity.
Episode duration: 52:59
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