#52 How he started and sold his first company for $225M… and what he’s doing differently on round #2 with AJ Bruno

Pierce Ujjainwalla in

Co-founder & CEO

Dec 7, 2023

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164 lines · Pierce Ujjainwalla, AJ Bruno and 53---aj-bruno_full_length aug 18,

00:00:00Pierce Ujjainwalla
I'm Pierce Ujjainwalla and you're listening to Unsubscribed. Every episode, I sit down with business leaders to help you question everything you thought you knew about marketing. If you enjoy this show, please do subscribe and leave a review on YouTube or your favorite podcast player. Now, on to this episode.
00:00:26Pierce Ujjainwalla
My guest today is AJ Bruno. AJ is the CEO and co founder of Quotapath, a sales compensation platform that helps sales teams calculate their commissions. Prior to Quotapath, AJ spent six years at Trendkite, where he founded and grew the company to 250 employees and sold its decision for 225 million. He's the father of three young girls and an avid pilot who can be found flying around over the skies of Boston.
00:01:00Pierce Ujjainwalla
Welcome to the Unsubscribed Podcast
00:01:03AJ Bruno
AJ. Thanks Pierce. Thanks for having me. I appreciate your green today that you're wearing. And I also wear green. We actually just. Launched our new brand today. So that's awesome.
00:01:16Pierce Ujjainwalla
It's looking good. You're, you know, for those of you tuning into the audio, only AJ is rocking, just an awesome Quotapath shirt and
00:01:26AJ Bruno
hat too.
00:01:28AJ Bruno
Yeah. Well, Pierce, you've got, you've got the matching style with me today. Would you consider that in, again, is that a cardigan? Is that what you would consider? This, uh, this
00:01:36Pierce Ujjainwalla
kind of like my zip up bomber. That's, uh, it's got kind of the knack green and blue. We have similar colors. So as a marketing guy, I really appreciate your whole
00:01:48AJ Bruno
branding.
00:01:49AJ Bruno
It's nice. My, my CMO appreciates it too, for sure. Um,
00:01:54Pierce Ujjainwalla
well, right on. Hey, it's. So great to have you on. I've got a ton of questions, but I'd love to start. I know you're at Quotapath now, but I'd love to start with Trenkay, which was, I believe your first company. Um, can you give us sort of the founding story
00:02:11AJ Bruno
of that one?
00:02:12AJ Bruno
Oh, that's a great founding story and origin story. So first off, I've always wanted to start a company. I, um, always thought of myself in an entrepreneurial spirit. I've done some things. I started a company. In college that was like, I, I don't count it as my first company. It was a half. Uh, and the real, real quick story on that, it was called control the buzz.com, and it was a website that you went to that was blank.
00:02:38AJ Bruno
It had a text box and for a dollar you could change anything you wanted and say that text box or change that text to anything you wanted to, and just had to pay a dollar. So this was before Twitter. This is 2004, 2005. And so I, I'm very like, Excited to go down that road. I, uh, after leaving college, I had a B.
00:02:59AJ Bruno
A. In economics and I, uh, really knew that I wanted to, uh, do something that would be like down the path of starting a company and a couple of consulting offers. I had done an internship with NFL films here in the states. It was a lot of fun. So anyway, I talked to an uncle and he suggested that I go into sales I was like, sales, why sales?
00:03:20AJ Bruno
You'll learn everything about revenue and bottom line, top line, anything you need to know about a company exist in sales. Uh, so I took them up on that. I joined a company called meltwater, was an individual contributor for a couple of years, and then I moved to sales management in Philadelphia office. I eventually opened an office in San Diego and then was in the Bay running West Coast sales operations for a little while.
00:03:42AJ Bruno
Um, and during that time I had a. Uh, boss that I didn't get along well with, uh, is very challenging, felt like I was hearing mixed messages and it was just not a great situation for me, but he did do something that was really empowering and very impactful, which was he took all of the leaders to go see Tony Robbins.
00:04:03AJ Bruno
And if you don't know who Tony Robbins is, I didn't know at the time, I knew him from the movie Shallow Hal. He, uh, he shows up with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jack Black. Um, uh, he's like the guy that hypnotizes Jack Black's character. Very old movie at this point. Anyway, I went, uh, there, walked on coals, did all the things, and left saying I'm gonna start a company.
00:04:25AJ Bruno
I knew I was gonna start. I had two goals. I wanted to buy an airplane and I was gonna start a company. Um, and I flew back to San Diego. Uh, and told my wife that we're, we're starting a company and I'm going to buy an airplane within three years. So that led down the path. I started the company with the only other person that I knew that knew anything about startups.
00:04:45AJ Bruno
Um, this guy, Matt Allison, I had worked with him briefly at, uh, meltwater in Philly, but he lived out in San Diego. We would talk every single day about startups, startups, and we ended up landing on the idea of this. What became trend kite, this idea around public relations, attribution, PR attribution. Um, at the time I was working for the company Meltwater that was very much in the media monitoring space.
00:05:08AJ Bruno
So it was like a clipping service. But analytics and B. I. were more of a tack on solution and reporting. And so no new the. The way that the direction of the market was headed was more towards, like, how do we get more PR at the seat of the table of marketing with CMOs? They have so much attribution and channel attribution, and you know this, Pierce, obviously, marketing standpoint, it's like the value of PR is very challenging.
00:05:35AJ Bruno
Um, so our goal was to really understand that and understand, uh, your earned media, whether it was, uh, Philadelphia Inquirer. Um, the, uh, the New York times now all of the Toronto sun, Vancouver sun, Vancouver sun, Toronto. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of the Canadian publications are keeping me in this moment. A lot of suns
00:05:58Pierce Ujjainwalla
up here.
00:05:58AJ Bruno
Suns. Yeah. Yeah. So I, uh, we, we went down that path and we're wildly successful. I was. President and founder, founder and president of the company. And I ran all of growth. Um, so we had company, uh, clients like, uh, Hershey's wall street or sorry, Hershey's Nike, um, uh, Sephora, just all of these great brands that worked with us.
00:06:23AJ Bruno
I think about a quarter of the fortune 500 were customers by then we had over 5, 000 customers when we sold the company decision PR newswire in 2018. Uh, so there's a lot more in there on the origin piece of it, but it ultimately ended up being two guys starting a company in San Diego, moving back to Philadelphia, going through a business accelerator, uh, called dream adventures in 2013, um, getting funded, funded immediately, like right out of that program within four months of starting the company, uh, by Silverton partners and then.
00:06:54AJ Bruno
Uh, away we went in Austin and so we were based in Austin, Texas for a period of time before moving back to Philadelphia. And now I fly, uh, you know, all over the place, but quota path today, which was started directly as that, as trend kite got bought is based in Austin, Philly, and then quite a few folks that are remote.
00:07:16AJ Bruno
That's
00:07:16Pierce Ujjainwalla
amazing and congrats like your first company you build it up over six years and sell it for hundreds of millions of dollars I mean, that's that's really the dream and I read somewhere and correct me if I'm off here, but that you went from zero To 25 million in a r r in four years, is that
00:07:40AJ Bruno
right?
00:07:41AJ Bruno
Yeah. We went, we had a very, very fast rise, uh, as an organization and zero to 25 million from 2014 really, when we got sales kicked off a year after we started the company to 2000 and, uh, 18. Um, and so it was. Pretty much that triple, triple, double, double, uh, framework. Although I think we're not quite in the second double, um, but it was really seeing a strong growth along the way.
00:08:10AJ Bruno
And it was a really exciting time. Um, it was all the things that at 2014 to 2018 inside sales team would afford. There were 150 folks inside that the sales floor was very loud on a daily basis. And, uh, it was. Mayhem. It was, uh, the Thunderdome, as we like to call it, it was a lot, a lot going on. So you had,
00:08:34Pierce Ujjainwalla
and what was the, like, what was the team structure there of those 150 people?
00:08:41AJ Bruno
I had eventually at the height, I had account management, part of SDR and, um, the new business sales team. So on the new business team, we had four managers, actually we had six managers. And we had like an associates program where folks were like getting graduated up. Uh, but for mean sales managers that we're managing between six and eight, uh, A.
00:09:05AJ Bruno
E. S. Different levels on the account management team. We had 33 teams over there. Um, and then we had a, we had both a B. D. R. R. Actually it was an M. D. R. Program. We called it so inbound outbound team on the S. D. R. Front. And then part of the outbound, uh, is the team that I managed as well. Um, and that was, I think about 40 folks overall.
00:09:29AJ Bruno
So 40, 40 there, probably call it 70 AEs and then 30 to 40, uh, 30 AMs. Wow.
00:09:40Pierce Ujjainwalla
And, and, and so when you look at that team and that growth that you were able to, to achieve, like, how the heck did you do that? Was it? Was that the right product? The right time? Was it your sales strategies? Was it a, I'm assuming it's a combination of things.
00:09:59Pierce Ujjainwalla
But when you look back, like what were those big factors that helped you grow at that speed? I
00:10:04AJ Bruno
mean, the learning and growing, I think the community, Austin community, was really, really helpful throughout the entire, um, The entire time there, I just, as Austin was a great community, there are a lot of folks that were moving there.
00:10:20AJ Bruno
A lot of younger, talented. Another thing that we took advantage of was just the massive movements in technology, both more tech and sales tech. Um, the how abm was starting to become a thing and like, wasn't a thing until really that time. Um, and then we also had this just. Change in how sales and sales automation was done.
00:10:43AJ Bruno
Think about tools like outreach or sales loft. We use sales loft at that time. Um, and so like there was a lot of things that we took advantage of very early to help us get an edge and get in front of competitors. We didn't have a huge. Competitive market. We were competing directly against meltwater and another incision.
00:11:01AJ Bruno
Honestly, those are our two big competitors. And there are a couple of folks, a couple organizations, startups like us that we're just trying to get started and hitting on some of the same messaging, but slightly, uh, slightly unique. And we were all finding our swim lanes at that time.
00:11:18Pierce Ujjainwalla
What, what would you say were kind of some of the biggest challenges that you faced as a founder in your first company?
00:11:26AJ Bruno
Oh gosh. Um, well, if I were to just say bluntly and all the things that happened, we were two weeks away from running out of cash at one time. Uh, we had, uh, my co founder was the CEO. We had to bring on a CEO at a different time. I had some HR challenges, uh, because we had such a large sales team. There were definitely a lot of things that happened during that time that like, I look back at it, we're learnings for sure.
00:11:52AJ Bruno
Um, I've, the one thing that was funny about this whole thing of like most founders would come on here and say product market fit, but we actually had product market fit day one and we had like, we, I knew the market as well as anyone could. And at that time there weren't like 15 other companies that were funded that were in this jostling for the same position.
00:12:11AJ Bruno
Um, and so that was like the thing that was actually kept driving us no matter how. Disfunctional. Some things were, and honestly, we were actually like, I really enjoyed the aspects where we were very functional. Um, we had a strong go to market engine. The entire team was in Austin. It was easy to get face time.
00:12:32AJ Bruno
Um, we built the product, uh, pretty cleanly upfront. Timing worked out for us in terms of like the venture. And the funding rounds, um, so there are a lot of things that went really, really well. Um, but mostly I think the things that like were challenging were I had to learn and I had to grow up. Um, I was 27 when I started the company and here we are 11 years later.
00:12:57AJ Bruno
Um, and I learned a lot through, through those five and a half years at, at Trenkite.
00:13:04Pierce Ujjainwalla
Yeah, I mean, I'm in a similar position. I started my company as I was never a CEO before. There's definitely a ton to learn about leadership. I feel like you're always learning there. Where did you go, uh, to kind of learn?
00:13:21Pierce Ujjainwalla
Develop into the leader that you are today.
00:13:25AJ Bruno
Well, I think sales, uh, I, I do credit meltwater for my sales leadership for sure. And I, I learned very quickly, um, through lots of different, uh, I mean, just learning on the job, sure. But then reading challenger sales or. Um, uh, sales acceleration formula by Mark Roberge.
00:13:46AJ Bruno
There was like a lot of books that I held. Cracking the sales management code was another one that I leaned on. And so I learned a lot of frameworks through those. Leadership is something that you learn. You are, and I still take that you either have it or you don't. Um, but it's, it comes and goes, like there's obviously different ways, Pierce, you know, managing a product and engineering team versus a sales and marketing team.
00:14:10AJ Bruno
Those are two very, very different types. And I've learned the type of leader that I am, where I work well with folks that are very structured under me, like that they have their process, um, and plan. And that's something that I like, you know, I now can take going forward that I know. That like on any higher, they have to have a fairly structured point of view on how they're thinking about things, how they're working, like, but at the same time, I don't want to hurt the entrepreneurial spirit that they might bring into it.
00:14:43AJ Bruno
So I think I work best if someone comes to me and. Wants to work through a problem, uh, together and doesn't necessarily always have a solution, but starts up front with like, here's the proposed solutions. I think another learning on this whole thing was just how managing a board. Um, I've gone through nine fundraising rounds in 10 years and I've been in like 60 plus board meetings.
00:15:08AJ Bruno
About half of those are as a CEO. Uh, and I think there's always times where, you know, things are going well and it's, um, it's not as stressful, but it feels like you're, you're as operationally into the business as you possibly can. And then you have. Periods, potentially like this year where there's, um, what we would consider a tech recession, at least in the funding world, that it's pulled back on on tech.
00:15:33AJ Bruno
And so everyone has these uncertainty. Your investors are trying to figure out the world as well, but they, they also are trying to air confidence that they have, like, this is what you need to do or not do and want to be in constant contact because they're not out talking to, um, entrepreneurs as much as they were in the last three years.
00:15:52AJ Bruno
Um, and I think those are things that I, I. Okay. Look at and I'm like, okay, there's probably better. There are a lot of learnings of here was how I should have better managed the board or better managed the team. And I think those are the leadership lessons. I have a great CEO coach. I think that that's someone I've relied on for the last couple of years in a real big way.
00:16:13AJ Bruno
Um, and it's helped, uh, helped see, because as you know, Pierce, there's not really many people you can talk to. Um, it's, it's a lonely world at the top. Yeah,
00:16:23Pierce Ujjainwalla
no, those are some great. Great, uh, you know, shares there as well. I, I've had a CEO coach for a long time and I feel like it's, it's a huge help as well as the peer group, uh, as well that I think is super helpful.
00:16:39Pierce Ujjainwalla
Last one about Trenkite, then I want to switch over to Quotapath, but I, take, take me through, I'm curious about your mindset, you know, you built your first company six years, you sell it to Cision. And like, did you take any time off and like. How, how long did it take and why did you jump back into starting something?
00:17:01Pierce Ujjainwalla
I think
00:17:01AJ Bruno
that's my biggest regret is I took zero, I took, I had a week vacation, um, that I took a cruise with my wife and some friends and that was it. Like literally that was the only, and even then I was working through the idea of a quota path on that cruise. Uh, so yeah, I mean, in the last, since I started my career in 2007, I just haven't taken time off.
00:17:23AJ Bruno
Um, you know. In a real meaningful way, I've had, I think, one, two week vacation in that time frame. And it's, uh, it's a challenge. It's really tough. Um, but I think, you know, this fierce, it's entrepreneurs and founders never have, they don't have an off switch. Um, I ultimately do know that in the. At some point in the future, I, like, I won't do that again.
00:17:45AJ Bruno
I will take some time off and have a little bit of a reset. I think it's important. I've seen others do it, especially recently with, whether it's the pandemic or kind of executives getting burnt out or whatever the case may be. I've seen a lot of folks take a little bit of a sabbatical and come back refreshed.
00:18:03AJ Bruno
And I look at that and I'm like, oh, there's, you know, it's, it's possible to do. I didn't think it was possible at that time. So. I'm more bullish on, uh, people doing that today than I was previously.
00:18:15Pierce Ujjainwalla
Nice. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I feel I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs and, and we're, you know, this community of people that are always just wanting to solve problems and tackle hard issues and, and keep our minds busy with.
00:18:33Pierce Ujjainwalla
Building new things, so I totally get that, and, um, it sounds like you're building something great again at Quotapath, so, I mean, you're building the second time around. Now, you've learned a ton from your first company. What are you doing differently this time?
00:18:52AJ Bruno
Well, I think the thing that I'm focusing in on a lot more this year is just product.
00:18:58AJ Bruno
Uh, or this year, this, uh, this time around. It feels like a year. It's been a year and 20 years all wrapped into one. Um, so we're a product led organization and just focusing in and having a heavier product team to really build to what your customers are asking for. As I said, the first time around I had product market fit.
00:19:16AJ Bruno
Um, and I, I think I took that a little bit for granted at, uh, for quote about, because I dealt with sales compensation since I was in a sales leadership role. And so I knew the problems, I knew the challenges that face sales leaders, but I took for granted the challenges that faced operations or. Um, finance really, and actually I took for granted, but my co founder was the director of revenue operations at trend kite.
00:19:37AJ Bruno
So he knew those challenges, but the challenges of finance were the missing link to it. So I think that's something that I like from a learning standpoint, we're, we're really, really heavily heads down there. The world's changed quite a bit, as you know. And so the thing where I'm still learning and trying to dig in is how do you run a company, a remote company?
00:20:00AJ Bruno
I don't think I've solved that because I myself am very much an in person type of personality. Um, and that's a really big challenge. In like the world that we live in, it's like, how do you do that? And I think three and a half years, four years, almost, it's almost been four years since the pandemic. Isn't
00:20:1953---aj-bruno_full_length aug 18,
that,
00:20:20Pierce Ujjainwalla
yeah, it's wild.
00:20:22Pierce Ujjainwalla
Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:24AJ Bruno
Almost four years coming up. Um, but, uh, that the like ups and downs and the rollercoaster of events. And, uh, of AI going to change it. I think we're constantly learning. So it's less about what did I take from the first one? It's like, well, what did I take from last week? And what am I trying to do differently this week?
00:20:45Pierce Ujjainwalla
I'd love to hear some of the things you're doing around, you know, the remote team. At Knack, we're a hybrid team. We have an office, we have about half of our employees are remote. Uh, is there anything that you found or are you doing anything proactively to help? Build that remote
00:21:06AJ Bruno
culture. Yeah. I mean, we have, I, my, our head of people is just an amazing human being.
00:21:11AJ Bruno
I've worked with her for, uh, seven plus years. That's the other thing for a quota path that I've worked with, uh, about half the company for over five plus years. Um, so we have a lot of reliance and that, that helps with remote culture, but there's ultimately things that. You need to do. So for like example, celebrating our brand launch today, we're going to have a cheers this afternoon.
00:21:35AJ Bruno
Um, that, that, uh, Carrie set up. We also have, uh, a virtual poker night that, um, upcoming. Um, we do have an office in Austin and an office in Philadelphia. Uh, so we have get togethers in those offices once a month. Um, we had a, uh, in person kickoff in July, albeit it was in. Austin, which was my, maybe not the best choice of venue given the heat in Texas, but it was good to get the team.
00:22:04AJ Bruno
And then we have a virtual kickoff in January. So it's just continuing to keep those things front and center.
00:22:10Pierce Ujjainwalla
And when you do those meetups that you're your offices, is that just kind of like everyone in those cities come in and get together or is that the whole company, how do those work?
00:22:22AJ Bruno
Yeah, I would say, um, the whole company is important, but we're not a huge company.
00:22:27AJ Bruno
So it's, it's getting like the 70 folks together is some, and we're all, well, we have a few Canadians, um, but we're all located in North American, North America. And so it's a lot easier to make those direct. Connections. I think the other thing to do is I, so I traveled Austin a lot, but I also traveled to other cities to meet with customers.
00:22:50AJ Bruno
And so in that time, like, I'll be in Boston, um, for inbound, uh, in, um, a couple of weeks and, uh, speaking there and so a good opportunity to meet not just with customers, but the, uh, employees that are in, in around Boston.
00:23:06Pierce Ujjainwalla
Yeah, yeah, nice. I'm speaking there as well. It's coming up
00:23:10AJ Bruno
quickly. It is. I know. I did my first practice last week with the...
00:23:14AJ Bruno
Oh, nice. You're ahead of me.
00:23:16Pierce Ujjainwalla
Oh. So, you know, AJ, I'm a, I'm a marketing guy. Uh, now who has the sales team and I'm learning how complicated, uh, sales commission plans can be. Why are they so complicated and how, how do you make a
00:23:37AJ Bruno
good one? Well, I think there's a couple of things that go on. First off there, everyone feels that they have their special snowflake.
00:23:43AJ Bruno
There's a lot of people that are like, it needs to be written on the back of a napkin, but it turns out you can write in really small font on the back of a napkin, a lot of complicated things. I, what tends to happen in organizations is that it starts out with great intentions. You know, you have a company objective, a really simple number in terms of financial target and AR GMV or whatever you're targeting.
00:24:06AJ Bruno
And that waterfalls down to the sales team. But after some period of time, company objectives change, or you raise a round, or you have a new sales leader, you have a new rev ops leader, you have a new finance leader, you have people come into the organization and they have different opinions based on their experience and their backgrounds.
00:24:23AJ Bruno
The fact that 70 percent of companies keep their comp in a spreadsheet is, is. Really crazy to me, because it's like, why would you keep something that here's a payroll function just directly in a spreadsheet? And so when we started the company, we had this like sales view perspective of like, we wanted our sales, sales reps and sales leaders to understand their comp and basically demystify it, create like little Lego blocks to connect.
00:24:49AJ Bruno
So we were, um, we didn't have formulas or weren't spreadsheet based software over the years. We've realized and brought in what I like, what I said with rev ops and finance and have actually pointed at our product more at the admin, um, folks to, to really be able to build the plans, the accessibility of making changes, whether it's with a CRM change and how mappings work, uh, we're.
00:25:15AJ Bruno
Working that's where the product led part of it comes in today as we work with organizations like knack that, um, scale are scaling and getting bigger. Uh, we're realizing for finance that we do need to actually have a spreadsheet type view. And so it's like, how do you create a point of view along those 4 work streams, the reps, the sales leaders, rev ops and finance to create a spoken language, a language that they all understand.
00:25:42AJ Bruno
And at that finance level, the spreadsheet, whether it's F. P. N. A. Or E. R. P. Or counting software. You do have some level of of export import into the spreadsheet. So that's where we're focusing on. That's what our brand refresh really represents is speaking to that buyer, um, and ensuring that they understand that they're a big part of our journey along the way.
00:26:06AJ Bruno
And so we have some really big product launches this fall that will help Um, help solidify, uh, those objectives and speaking to that buyer. So, you know, answering your question plans, we get Frankenstein all the time. We're here to help simplify and help under make them understandable.
00:26:26Pierce Ujjainwalla
Right on. Yeah. You gotta get this, the finance people, their spreadsheets.
00:26:31Pierce Ujjainwalla
Yes. The most, um, So I, I actually thought about this one the other day and I wanted to ask you, so I feel like a lot of SaaS companies might, um, give a commission to their sales reps for that, like the first year of a subscription, right? And then, you know, we had a scenario the other day where I actually kind of realized, hey, it's actually
00:26:58AJ Bruno
like.
00:26:59Pierce Ujjainwalla
The, well, it's the best for the company to have a multi year deal, but if we're only comping the sales reps on the first year, it's a lot, you know, typically we'll discount. Right. So, so, I mean, I'd love to hear just your perspective on
00:27:15AJ Bruno
that. That's fantastic scenario. Like what, what do you recommend there?
00:27:20AJ Bruno
That's a normal, normal scenario and normal use case. And I really appreciate that. So first off appears directly after this, I'm going to connect you with Graham Collins, who does comp plan consults to help you all get like the right actual, uh, variable comp into, into quota path. Like that's the first thing I would say is that we like, we will help align those.
00:27:39AJ Bruno
The thing that you just said, which is very clear is like, how do you align company objectives to incentive compensation? That is, that is what repre we're, uh mm-hmm. representing in the next several months with our brand refresh. And how we're actually announcing this to the world is like you, you have a, you might have figured out that this is a variable compensation that you have to institute, but you don't know how to do it.
00:28:01AJ Bruno
Well, first, is it the actual right thing based on the numbers And like, let us actually measure. Those some of those numbers in the health of the business and tie them to the inputs of the company objectives and double check that. Secondly, let's actually make some of those changes and shifts. And then third, let's measure those changes and shifts as we modeled them out and see if they match expectations and forecasts.
00:28:25AJ Bruno
That's actually that feedback loop is you just described exactly how we think about our world and the opportunity that we have, not as commission tracking, but as this compensation management to align your company objectives to the incentive compensation plans that your sales reps have.
00:28:42Pierce Ujjainwalla
Absolutely, that's the one.
00:28:44Pierce Ujjainwalla
Sounds good to me. Um, so we actually connected through an outreach, you know, NAC is the customer of Codapath, and AJ, you reached out to connect with me just as you do with some of your customers. I thought it was great the way that you're doing this. Can you, could you maybe just share with, with our listeners Yes.
00:29:05Pierce Ujjainwalla
You know, how and why you're, you're connecting with your customers.
00:29:10AJ Bruno
Well, I think as we entered this year, we were doing a lot of things that our, um, team was saying that we should do on products. And that's like, you're listening to our sales reps or AM and hearing a lot of that. And the, like the product feedback was there.
00:29:25AJ Bruno
Um, but. As we were, as the market was changing, it was, I felt it was really important to like really connect with our customers to truly understand how they're actually thinking about more strategic goals with the organization and how that relates. I mean, Pierce, you literally just described a conversation that I'm having with our customers and what they're aligning.
00:29:48AJ Bruno
And then that helps informs like our feedback in terms of like, how do I take that? Okay. Hey, Graham, you should go, you can connect with them. And like, let's actually figure out a way to work with them to productize this piece of it. That creates like a lasting relationship, right? So the main goal was first, let me target target.
00:30:06AJ Bruno
Let me actually reach out to 55 new customers a week. I set myself to those standards. I do. So I can talk to 55 customers a week. Um, we also as a management team is exec team started to sponsor in pairs, different outreach. Additionally, my head of revenue operations and myself. The last few weeks have met in person customers at baseball games.
00:30:31AJ Bruno
So we were at Yankee stadium two weeks ago, and we were, uh, the Phillies game, uh, about a week ago and each, each, um, game it's called a web or sorry, excuse me. It's called our summer series. We hosted both prospects and customers, but mostly actually just customers. I think 80 percent of the folks that showed up at each 20 tickets for each of the games, most of them were customers.
00:30:54AJ Bruno
And it was just really interesting. Yeah, we were all watching the baseball game was fine, but there was so many organic conversations that happened. Just like this. Uh, we're talking about, oh, this new product feature that we're testing out. It came up that one of our product teams have had talked to a different customer.
00:31:11AJ Bruno
Another customer heard that and said, actually, I have that same issue. Let me, can I, can I join these product conversations? And so Just ensuring that you're listening to your customers and listening to as much feedback from your customers is something that I took for granted again at Trendkite because of product market fit and then at Quotapath more because I was more interested in the new business side.
00:31:35AJ Bruno
I was, I'm a seller by trade, so I love closing deals. Um, but the other side of it, I love talking to customers just like didn't dawn on me more until the beginning of the year. Hmm.
00:31:46Pierce Ujjainwalla
Yeah, no. Well, I think you do a great job of it. And, uh, yeah, I love, I love the baseball series as well. That's a good one. Yeah,
00:31:55AJ Bruno
it's fun.
00:31:56AJ Bruno
It's been, our marketing team is, is awesome. It's just, it's been great to work with a team that's thinking outside the box and doing things that is like. Very focused on both pipeline generation, but also just like, you know, retention and opportunity to get even closer to our customers.
00:32:12Pierce Ujjainwalla
Nice. Nice. Um, so we're going to move into the rapid fire section of this, but before
00:32:19AJ Bruno
we, yeah,
00:32:20Pierce Ujjainwalla
before we do, where can people find you and learn more about quota path?
00:32:26AJ Bruno
Uh, well, LinkedIn is the easiest, uh, route to connect with me. And you write a personal note saying that you listen to this podcast. I'll definitely respond. Um, but the other way to do that is, uh, because we just launched our brand. I will, I will plug quota path here. Uh, check out quota path. com. I would say that if you're interested in like how comp plans work or you're either a startup or really thinking about this.
00:32:49AJ Bruno
Uh, comp dot quota path dot com is our compensation hub, and it has, uh, scenario modeling quoted to O. T. Ratio S. D. R. Plans. Really great opportunity to just, like, play around with. It's ungated, so you can just, like, mess around with it. And if you find a plan that you want to check out or create or scenario model, you can pull that into a free workspace right within, uh, comp hub.
00:33:09AJ Bruno
So great way to do that.
00:33:12Pierce Ujjainwalla
Nice, I love it. Love the ungated way to get started as well. Yes. As the marketing person that that's good stuff. It's very
00:33:20AJ Bruno
PLG of us. Yeah
00:33:23Pierce Ujjainwalla
All right Okay. So first one is what's one marketing trend that you would unsubscribe
00:33:31AJ Bruno
from? I am really disappointed on how many people do the send later and all send at the exact same time my 9 a.
00:33:39AJ Bruno
m. Monday. Inbox is awful. I hate that trend. Can we can we please make it like fine send an automated message, but just like kill it that it's 9 a. m. Eastern time on Mondays, please. .
00:33:55Pierce Ujjainwalla
Uh, alright. Speaking about email, is email
00:33:58AJ Bruno
dead? No, not at all. It's, I think it's, uh, it's one. I tend to, um, respond to a handful of sales emails a month that feel like they're personal.
00:34:11AJ Bruno
And two, it's a, the very big mode. It's the only mode of communication that I have with. Outside of text with my like board or other folks where they're not internal to the company, but they're in my network. So email itself is not dead at all.
00:34:31Pierce Ujjainwalla
We've heard about your flying and I'm guessing that's probably one of the things there, but what do you do for fun?
00:34:38AJ Bruno
Yeah, I do. I do. I yeah, I absolutely do fly. I'm a commercially rated pilot And my parents live in the Outer Banks, North Carolina Tend to go some weekends in the summer down there and hang out with the girls So that's a that's a big part of it Outside of that my wife and I have lived in many different cities over the years We made six moves in two years one time Um, and so like our, we're very focused on, on food scenes, like many people are.
00:35:07AJ Bruno
Um, and now that my girls are older, so I'm an 11 year old and twin eight year olds, it's been nice to get outdoors. Uh, we went hiking here locally just yesterday. We're doing a lot of the things that we did pre kids. Which I really appreciate. Yeah. You, you like, everyone talks about, yeah, well, I love to hike and outdoors and I love the food scene.
00:35:27AJ Bruno
And then you have kids and all those things go away. Um, but then they come back and I'm re I'm enjoying the resurgence of those things coming back in our lives.
00:35:37Pierce Ujjainwalla
Nice. Nice. Yeah. I've got a, an eight and a six year old, so
00:35:42AJ Bruno
I'm starting to see the light on that. Yeah, the light, then it's on. Yeah.
00:35:46Pierce Ujjainwalla
Um, who's one person that you admire in the business community and why?
00:35:52AJ Bruno
Um, that's a, that's a really great question. I would say Sam Jacobs, of a community called Pavilion. And I, I really admire how he's been pretty authentic in his voice. Um, No, we, we ourselves had actually started a podcast that we do on a weekly basis to talk all things market and what's going on in founder world called top line that I really enjoy, but I admire his thoughtfulness and his approach to, uh, to, uh, to all things startup related.
00:36:23AJ Bruno
And then my cohost there is Asad Zaman, who's, um, the CEO of sales talent agency, and he's also. He's in Toronto. So he's a Canadian and, and he also has a very thoughtful approach. So those are two people that I admire. And I take every week, I take something from those guys and what they're doing and how they're thinking about the world.
00:36:43Pierce Ujjainwalla
Nice. Nice. I just met Sam, uh, in Boulder at, at actually in. Site, uh, insights, c e o conference. So it was cool. Yeah, he,
00:36:52AJ Bruno
I had a conflict. I couldn't make it there, Pearson. Oh. Oh. We could have met up in Pierce. We could have met there. Yeah. Yeah. They're supposed to go on a hot air balloon ride with I think Pablo Dominguez, but the wind was hot.
00:37:01AJ Bruno
Yeah. Yeah.
00:37:01Pierce Ujjainwalla
Well, we got up at five in the morning.
00:37:05AJ Bruno
Did you go on or when was it, when, when was two? When didn't
00:37:08Pierce Ujjainwalla
cooperate with us, uh, that time. Yeah. Um, you've shared a ton of great advice, uh, already today, but yeah. Is there, is there maybe one piece of career advice that you have that, that you might.
00:37:26AJ Bruno
Yeah, I mean, especially for founders who can get so emotionally wrapped into their businesses, which I, I appreciate and understand intimately. Well, but I think the thing to keep in mind is that there, there's always a, like a, a next time, an opportunity to get better and learn. So like, it doesn't mean that everyone should leave their businesses, but I'm just saying this was advice that my dad gave me when I founded trend kite.
00:37:52AJ Bruno
Okay. And I co founded it with my co founder, but I didn't realize at the time I wanted to be the CEO. And I wasn't, I was the founder and president. And I had this ego, uh, challenge at that time where I was very frustrated. And my dad made the comment like, AJ, you're 27. You're always going to have a next time.
00:38:11AJ Bruno
You're always going to have an opportunity to start a company and be in that seat and learn. And you know what? It's not going to be easy. So maybe just enjoy and take a step back and like learn and grow in the role that you have. And it was probably the best advice that I've ever received because it allowed me to leave my ego at the door and.
00:38:28AJ Bruno
On almost anything that I do, and I know the CEO role is, uh, is can be very ego is ego driven. There's David Ogilvie once said that there are no statues of committees in your towns. And that is true. You walk around your town. I'm going to see a statue of a committee. There's a statue of one. And that is something that I think about, but at the same time, I just like, if you're going to enjoy the journey, you have to leave your ego at the door.
00:38:57AJ Bruno
Um, otherwise you're just going to get so emotionally distraught and stressed out about the world and it's not going to be healthy.
00:39:04Pierce Ujjainwalla
Nice. Yeah. Always another time. Solid wisdom from dad there. Uh, last one. Who else should we interview on the unsubscribe podcast?
00:39:15AJ Bruno
Well, I mean, we mentioned, uh, Sam and Asad. I think those are great, great people.
00:39:19AJ Bruno
But you know, I would say that there's two, uh, thought leaders within my own company and, uh, both have had like founder pieces to their story. Sarah Strope, our, our chief marketing officer who was with TaxJar acquired by Stripe. She was with a company called Cloud and acquired by IBM and she's has a wealth of information and experience.
00:39:40AJ Bruno
And then Ryan Milligan, my, uh, senior director of revenue operations is has been with Wayfair and HubSpot, um, and he's, uh, he's on a really interesting journey and path. And I look to the thought leaders and thought partners in my own organization as really interesting people. Um, and someone that I, if anyone says, who should I talk to?
00:39:59AJ Bruno
I will immediately plug them. Yeah. I love
00:40:02Pierce Ujjainwalla
it. Would love some intros there. Um, right on. Well, AJ, this, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for the time. We've, we've heard through your founding story of your first company, uh, you know, heard some good lessons learned that you had there and, and what you're taking into building QuotaPath, which, you know, we're using it at Knack, it's a great.
00:40:25Pierce Ujjainwalla
Great platform. And, and I feel like you're one of those people when I talk to different sales people that I always learn a lot from. So thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your stories and ensuring how people can improve their sales. Really
00:40:44AJ Bruno
appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much, Pierce, for having me.
00:40:47AJ Bruno
It's been a pleasure.
00:40:48Pierce Ujjainwalla
Alright. Thanks for listening to Unsubscribed, a podcast created by Nack. If you enjoyed this episode of Unsubscribe, be sure to subscribe to my podcast and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. If you have any feedback or wanna chat, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or follow me on Twitter at marketing 1 0 1.
00:41:14Pierce Ujjainwalla
Cheers.

Listen in as I talk to AJ Bruno, the Founder & CEO of QuotaPath, a sales commission platform that helps companies streamline and manage their sales compensation. AJ shares how he started and sold his first company, TrendKite, for $225M to Cision and then how he started QuotaPath immediately afterwards. He reveals his secrets on growing ARR from $0-$25M in less than 4 years and the biggest challenges he learned from running his first company. We also discuss sales compensation plans, building remote work culture and he shares some killer advice he got from his dad.

You can also follow AJ on LinkedIn.

Thanks for listening to Unsubscribed! – a podcast created by Knak. If you enjoyed this episode, please do subscribe and leave a review on your favourite podcast player. If you have any feedback, or want to chat, feel free to reach out to Pierce on LinkedIn or follow him on Twitter @marketing_101.

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