In my Inc.com article “You’re Not Ready for a Sales Hire,” I warned people away from the knee-jerk reaction to typical startup product problems. Sales is all about repeatable, scalable communications. But if you focus on sales too early, early customers can drag your product from serving a market into serving their niche. At some [...]
Like most good ideas, Dan Wolchonok’s venture came out a personal need. While on his way to a networking mixer for prospective students of Yale Business School, Dan thought, “I wish I could know about these people I’m going to meet. Who’s a Red Sox fan, who’s into tech, what did they just tweet about?”Dan [...]
By Nacie Carson, Contributor to YeswareTwo of the best perks that come with building a startup are working with dedicated talent at all levels of your organization and the ability to access that talent’s creative thinking in non-traditional ways. Part of the startup appeal is the concept that everyone has a seat at the brainstorming [...]
Meet Our Rainmaker of the Month: Chandler Quintin of One Mighty RoarChandler Quintin wants to be more than friends with Facebook. As Partner and Director of Accounts at a boutique Boston digital media & events experience firm One Mighty Roar, Chandler is pursuing the social network as a client. And his trusted partner is Yesware. [...]
Innovation is what separates the A-Players from everybody else. Sales will always be sales. The combination of emotion, logic, and storytelling have been and always will be the driver behind sales. However, tools have changed. What used to be strictly face-to-face interaction turned to phone, then fax. Now a combination of emails, tweets, LinkedIn [...]
By Matthew Bellows, CEO of YeswareNow is a great time to start a business. Technology is cheap. Funding is more available than ever. There’s a bevy of new tools available and online resources that didn’t exist five years ago. Most importantly, society is supporting start-ups more than ever before. But before you assemble a team, raise [...]
On last week’s premiere of Bravo’s latest reality show Start-Ups: Silicon Valley, brother-sister entrepreneurs Ben, 32, and Hermione, 27, Way struggled through their pitch to venture capitalist Dave McClure. Things got off to a bumpy start when Hermione—who had made an impression on the provocative McClure by sending him a gutsy text message—was woken up [...]
From ThinkNear’s $22.5 million sale to the confusion behind Color’s next steps—it’s closing, it’s selling to Apple for $10 million, its engineers are being acquihired for anywhere between $2-$5 million—this has been an interesting deal week for startups. ThinkNear’s team exemplified why the TechStars model of investing a small amount, raising a modest series A, [...]
I’m reading Brad Feld’s Startup Communities. In the interest of full disclosure, Feld—co-founder of Foundry Group and TechStars—is also one of the investors of Yesware, the startup I started working for in September. So I have two interests in reading his latest opus: get to know his approach to startups, and have an ice breaker [...]
As salespeople we want to have the maximum impact in the most efficient way possible. Many on us use email for prospecting, following-up and closing deals. But we often feel like we can do better, reach more people—or reach the decision makers in a more streamlined manner. With that in mind, we at Yesware, wanted [...]