Five Things We Learned from Gary Gaessler
Today at TVA we had mentor Gary Gaessler discuss his personal entrepreneurial journey, as well as, his scrappiest tips for early stage startup founders.
Gary drove to Telluride from Denver with his son (Tommy Gaessler) to spend one-on-one time time with our five teams (and to get a little skiing in!).
Gary’s background: Gary focuses on early stage sales & marketing in fast growth SaaS business-to-business companies.
He is the co-founder of Cloud Elements, a Denver based, venture funded, API integration platform. Previously he was the VP of Sales at SteamStep (acquired by BMC Software in 2011).
He was the co-founder of VoIPReview.com, the world s largest site for VoIP reviews (acquired in 2008).
He is the past Director of Founders Institute (and a mentor) and the founder of 1 million cups in Denver.
Here are the top five things we learned from Gary today at TVA:
- 80% of success is just showing up!
- Mentor whiplash is real, go with your gut.
- Build revenue from day 1.
- ABB= Always Be Branding (wherever you are)
- All founders are the sales guys — no one can sell your product better than you.
And just because… here are three simple rules of life shared by Gary:
- If you do not GO after what you want, you will NEVER have it.
- If you do not ASK, the answer will always be NO
- If you do not step FORWARD, you will ALWAYS be in the same place.
Thank you again, Gary! Hope to see you back in the box canyon soon.
Originally published February 23, 2016 at www.tellurideva.com.
