How To Build A Great Company: A Journey From An Idea to 100M in Sales
Introduction
How this book came to be + a draft table of contents
With this post, I am starting to publish a book available for all Medium readers on how to scale startups from zero to 100M in sales. It is based on my experience leading Veeam Software operations as SVP Strategic Operations from 0 to $600M in sales, as well as consulting 20+ b2b startups on global scaling. I am always looking for the feedback — so please comment and share your thoughts!
I had coded my first startup project on the ten-hour flight Frankfurt — Johannesburg back in 2004 while working for Microsoft as a Global Alliances Manager. It had become quite popular, hadn’t made me a dime, and died miserably once Yandex, a Russian Google competitor, launched a competing product.
Since then, in various executive roles, I helped build Veeam Software from pretty much zero to over $600 million in annual revenue in under eight years, which resulted in the company being acquired by Insight Venture Partners for $5 billion. By 2017, Veeam had become too big for my taste. I made an exit and invested in about twenty startups as an angel investor. Among them were a space satellite manufacturer, a burger chain with a franchising program, a game studio, a fashion retail stores automation company, and many of my favorite AI and deep tech startups. I have helped them and many others, which I’ve advised without being an investor, to scale globally.
I have learned a lot about what it means to build a great company from scratch throughout this journey. There are no silver bullets, mind you, no simple recipes. It is all about this unique combination of passion and the desire to change the world with an efficient end-to-end revenue generation process, dull day-to-day operations, regularly tested, and improved. As Andrei Baronov, Veeam co-founder and “Steve Jobs of infrastructure software,” used to say — “You know what they say in Silicon Valley, that the best product doesn’t always win? Well, guess what — the best product never wins without the best sales, marketing, and operations!”
I tried to capture and describe this balance in this book through stories, cases, anecdotes, and a pretty detailed operating manual on setting up your company and business processes from the practical point of view.
I won’t be talking much, or at all, about the product. There are countless good books and resources that focus on how to design and build a great product. However, the same cannot be said about a detailed discussion of a growing company's operations and business processes.
Hence, I focus more on the *principles* on which a truly great company is built and the *principles* of the organization of the company's operations. These principles should age well, as they are based on basic human psychology and behaviors and the best practices of experimental testing of the processes you want to implement in your company. The tools may, and will, change, but if you learn these principles and practice them, you will have no issue applying what you have learned in the new circumstances.
I hope you will find this book useful on your journey towards turning your passion into a great company!
How this book is structured
What follows is a draft plan for the book's contents, updated as I add the chapters.
Part 1: Strategy
Chapter 1: A Great Company Architecture
Tree analogy — roots (Why?), trunk (How?), leaves (What?). Hierarchy of company operations. Overview of the levels and key concepts — core customer, values, sales, marketing, etc.
Chapter 2: Five Stages of a Zero to a 100M Journey
5 stages and a description of each. References to G. Moore. Contrast and differences between stages, requirements for the people, etc. Framing each of the subsequent chapters to always keep in mind differences between stages.
Chapter 3: Goals and Strategy — Level 0
Discussion of the top-level — BHAG, Core Values, “Why?”, Core Customer, etc. 3–5 year horizon.
Chapter 4: Go-to-markets and “Marketecture” — Level 1
Discussion of the GTMs, Marketecture, Segmentation, Buyer Personas, Messages etc. Split into several chapters?
Part 2: Operations — End-to-End Revenue Generation Process
Chapter 5: How do people buy?
3 stages discussion, levels of pain, psychological aspects (avoidance of loss etc), the evolution of the buying process (70% without contacting, importance of marketing), aligning the phases as the major differentiator of the best sales people.
Chapter 6: End-to-End revenue generation process — The Framework
Huge central framework along the lines of “attract — engage — convert — expand” and all that it entails. Discussion of silos challenges, that it became intertwined, overview of the orgs involved (marketing, sales, channel, customer success).
KPIs! (including critique).
Chapter 7: Marketing
Marketing part of the EERGP Framework. Probably a pretty long chapter — see subchapters below
- Customer Journey: Customer is always in the center, map their journey first. Maturity Frameworks.
- Attract Stage
- Engage Stage
- Convert Stage
- Expand Stage
- Organization: Interaction and conflicts with the sales org. Where should my SDRs be?
Chapter 8: Sales
Sales part of the EERGP Framework. What is a sales playbook and why? Typical sales processes and tools to make sales people productive. Roles and how to pay them.
Chapter 9: Channel
Channel part of the EERGP Framework. Partner program examples. “Dealregs”. Conflict and scaling. Partner types. Roles and how to pay them.
Chapter 10: Organization and People
What should my orgchart look like? People issues. How to constantly test and improve the process.
