Welcome to MGMT Boston where we try to help 525+ of you manage your awareness of top Boston startups and local up & coming operators putting in the work. Glad to have you here!
TLDR:
Akooda - Operations Intelligence software, leveraging AI, to help large organizations figure out what the heck is going on internally with their operations
Thanks to NFX & TechCrunch for the spotlight on Akooda
Dave Barron, Director of Product Strategy & GTM @ HubSpot - a high velocity revenue leader who has been to the far reaches of the GTM universe, parachuting into markets and building bonfires from scratch
Thanks to Dave for responding to my outreach
Other Resources:
MGMT Boston Operators Club - e-mail me directly to learn more!
The Endeca Effect: Overview / Markets / People / Products / Conclusion / Bonus - Steve Papa Alumni Learnings
Q3 Startups Highlighted: Snyk, FeatureByte, Neural Magic & Notable Systems
Q3 Operators Highlighted: Alexa Murray / WHOOP, Kieran O’Driscoll / AtScale, Max Milhan / Rhino & Ries McQuillan / Vested
Q1 Startups & Operators Highlighted / Q2 Startups & Operators Highlighted
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Akooda
Founders: Yuval (Goncho) Gonczarowski
Founding: 2020
Mission: We help large organizations figure out what the heck is going on in their company
Employees: 16 & 10% Local
Workplace: Hybrid
Stage & Capital Raised: Seed & $11M raised
Investors: NFX, Atlassian Ventures, New Era Capital, Village Global, Founder Collective, Flybridge Capital, Argon Ventures, Two Lanterns, and Oceans Ventures, as well as several leading industry experts
Key Customers: AB InBev, Redox, Lambent, Secureframe, RevenueBase and banks, hedge funds, healthcare, and other financial institutions
Glassdoor Rating: N/A
Valuation: N/A
Akooda is the world’s first Operations Intelligence software, leveraging AI, to help large organizations figure out what the heck is going on internally with their operations. Yuval (Goncho) Gonczarowski was a former Apple Prototype Engineer and McKinsey consultant who saw the struggles large scale organizations encounter up close.
Let’s say the uncomfortable part out loud. Large organizations often have no idea what’s going on inside of their own companies. With the rapid adoption of SaaS tools, some reports say modern tech-forward global orgs are using an average of 130 applications (src). While each tool is tailored to meet the specific needs of a department and bring efficiency to various functional domains, the downside is that these tools operate in silos.
In 2020, Gal Abramovitz and Itamar Niddam teamed up with Yuval to start Akooda to help bridge this tooling gap. Gal and Itamar come from well established backgrounds in Israel’s elite intelligence units and different high tech companies that focused on security, algorithms and data.
With a seamless 2-click integration, Akooda connects to the company’s existing SaaS applications and ingests them into its proprietary engine. This engine breaks down each platform's building blocks and rebuilds them into a meaningful narrative of events so that clients can ask targeted questions about their business. Akooda then identifies the most frequently occurring cultural terms, the ones unique to any specific organization like industry-specific terms, project names, feature names, customer names, and more - learning the internal lexicon and taxonomy of the organization's internal footprint.
Akooda explores Slack discussions, Jira tickets, calendar invitations, documents, and includes links that drill down to each specific item. Their platform offers insights and measures sentiment like the level of effort and focus an organization dedicates to specific data points across their company. It also reveals which individuals worked on specific projects, showcasing their connections and creating a full mapping of the organization.
The Akooda engine maps datasets to optimize organizational performance not previously measured. They’re measuring updates and discussion notes across meetings, chat platforms, and email to create an additional layer of critical information, all in an effort to help collaboration and make space for more informed strategic decision making.
Data Security and Privacy are not an afterthought at Akooda, but rather at the core of their technology and the way they design and build their products. With technical teams coming from the world’s leading cybersecurity companies, their customers spanning various industries, from robotics and insurance to healthcare and fintech feel comfortable giving Akooda access to their most sensitive assets, their data.
In that light, Akooda does not actually access, store or maintain a company’s data. Instead, they use metadata for tagging and ingest only data that the dashboard owner already has access to, based on existing privacy settings in the connected tools. Akooda does not bypass existing privacy permissions.
Akooda spent their first year with a core team building out the tool. And with less than a year on the market, they’ve already signed up 30+ customers in a variety of industries including financial institutions, VCs, banks, healthcare, insurance, technology, consumer goods companies, and more. They were recently named to NFX’s The AI Hot 75 list and will continue to focus on the growth of their GTM and R&D teams into 2024.
Operators to Know:
Gal Abramovitz, VP R&D
Amitai Gilad, VP Data
Yuval (Goncho) Gonczarowski, Founder & CEO
Itamar Niddam, CTO
Roni Geron Shalev, Chief Strategy Officer
Anat Tainovich, Head of Customer Success
Ido Tenenbaum, Head of Product
Michal Wachstock, VP of Marketing
My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Akooda team if I missed any up & coming operators internally
Key Roles To Be Hired:
More roles coming soon!
If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:
With the explosion of AI tools in the Enterprise, how does that change the competitive landscape for Akooda?
What is the long term vision for Akooda?
What are the biggest challenges as you scale the team past 20 employees?
What are the most important roles you’ll be looking to add in 2023 // teams that need the most help?
We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Akooda you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring more businesses into the AI age. All businesses applaud your efforts. See you around town and the internet beyond!
Dave Barron, Director of Product Strategy & GTM @ HubSpot
Career Summary / Product Market Fit - A Combination of Product & People / Career Insights
Dave Barron is a high velocity HubSpot revenue leader who has been to the far reaches of the GTM universe. I don’t know anything about the odds of Dave’s ability to survive on a deserted island but with a laptop, internet connection, and whiteboard he has Bear Grylls-like abilities to parachute into markets and build bonfires from scratch.
He grew up locally in the Boston area and admits he didn’t really know what he wanted to do with his life. Welcome to the club, Dave. He set off for James Madison down in Virginia where he majored in Management, Technology Innovation, and Entrepreneurship. A self described average student and generally bored, the fire hadn’t yet been lit. He worked at a hardware store, waited tables, and interned at a pharmaceutical company hopping across departments and doing some BDR work making cold calls to set appointments for the sales team.
One professor suggested he go check out a Lean Startup event up in D.C. where he met Kevin May, a future business partner. There were embers! After school, he went back to the same pharmaceutical company where he interned. He did ride alongs with the field reps for a couple weeks before he was launched into the field himself to sell. A fresh college grad, he was traveling across Alabama and Mississippi trying to build relationships.
Showing up to the same doctors offices for weeks on end, trying to access decision makers, he learned some of those early valuable sales skills. One mentor taught him a timeless lesson he still uses today that, when you go visit (or call on) a prospect, imagine a stack of papers on their desk. Try to remove one piece of paper (or problem) from their pile.
Dave ended up moving to Virginia to try his hand working in technology. He partnered with Kevin May, who he met at that startup event in D.C., on a new agency as their Project & Product Manager. His first task? Flying to Poland to meet the Engineering team. At GenB he built websites, mobile apps, and worked with government agencies. He learned how software was built, interfacing with engineers all day every day. He learned he loved building things.
Eventually it was time to move back to Boston to be closer to family. With his outside sales experience he landed at private equity backed SmartBear as a renewal manager. He worked on behalf of six product lines building their renewal program and also spent time on their Sales team too.
In early 2014, HubSpot reached out to him. They were building a new CRM, with a freemium approach, and were looking for sellers who also understood the product. This team would function as a startup within HubSpot and Mark Roberge would be leading the team and managing this role. To Dave, Mark was the sales leader in Boston. This was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.
He started in September 2015, just a few weeks before their October IPO. When he signed his offer letter, he remembers receiving his shares and thinking “shares in what?” You’re not the only one there either, Dave. He still has his mini bottle of IPO champagne on his office bookshelf.
Over his first two years, as HubSpot learned how to be a public company, Dave and his team were hunkered down in a basement building a separate product. He was on a seriously talented team now referred to as the “Signals Mafia”, building HubSpot’s Sales Hub. In addition to Mark Roberge leading the revenue efforts, Brian Balfour (Founder & CEO @ Reforge) was their growth marketer. They were one of the first teams in software, many of whom have gone on to do some seriously impressive things, trying to figure out a freemium sales motion through “product qualified leads”. What is now more commonly known today as PLG (product led growth). Shoutout to Kyle Poyar at OpenView here in Boston and this co-authored post with Dave here.
How did they get Signals (Sales Hub) off the ground? They called free users to figure out their discovery script. The Product team created mock ups and Dave would present them to customers, tweaking between calls. 40% of his time wasn’t even spent selling, just building alongside them. His product & project experience working with the agency engineering team in Poland paid off in a big way.
Dave became a Top 3 rep in revenue at HubSpot globally selling a $50 product. He thinks he sold 400+ logos personally in 2016 and the team sold 964 (!!) that year. They would race through half hour calls, do discovery and a demo, and then close. Rinse, repeat. The average deal size was $150 MRR for 10-15 person businesses.
Dave learned that his brain works best in high velocity, analytical selling environments. The big, long enterprise sales cycles just aren’t for him. By doing 10 calls per day you can get pretty good, pretty fast at the quickest paths to closing. He led a team of AEs before the business line was integrated into the broader HubSpot platform.
With Sales Hub launched, he made it known that if they were going to do it again he wanted to be a part of it. Dave shared “you need to be the squeaky wheel and specific about what you want. And you only get that opportunity if you perform at the highest level of the job you’re currently in”.
He got that opportunity and took a new role in Product, working on the Commercialization of HubSpot’s Service Hub, leading their sales & marketing strategy. He wrote emails, wrote website copy, and led the team all the way through a successful launch to $30M+ ARR.
He wasn’t done. Next, he was a part of the team that launched Operations Hub, their BI tooling service, and also the fastest growing product in HubSpot history. The power of a platform, right??
Today Dave works in Central Operations & Corporate Strategy as an overlay to the revenue teams, working in the research phase of “Horizon 2” products - projects that are a bit farther out from commercialization.
Dave understands that his career at HubSpot is about luck, timing, and working with a world class engineering team. If he didn’t sit next to two future HubSpot Chief Product Officers, his career would be very different. Building new product lines is a big part of how they continue to grow the business, stay creative, and keep proving it. Every day.
Product Market Fit - A Combination of Great Product & the Right People
Dave is a big believer that the overarching solution to most problems, at least in technology, is product market fit. “It solves all your problems, hard stop”. HubSpot has challenges that all businesses have. But because it has such strong product & engineering teams building in the right market, they continue to see success. Being a part of the company building process that already has product market fit is one of the most important things to having a long career (with a good financial outcome too).
Ok, sure we know product market fit is important. Build things people want and all that stuff. But what does that mean for someone looking to have a career like Dave?
Great Product
For a great product, it’s about simplicity. Whether you’re selling to enterprises or individuals, find products (and companies) that create great consumer experiences.
Use It! - Is it easy to use? Delightful? Talk to customers. Get NPS feedback. Listen to sales calls if you can! Is the seller really fighting to get the deals or does it sound pretty natural?
Social Signals - search hashtags on Twitter, read reviews, and see what other content is online about their product(s)
Finding the Right People
Sales is all about people. It’s about committing to training and upskilling all the time. It’s about building a diverse team, not just in looks but personality too in order to uplevel your culture. To create really high performing teams it helps to find the people or “something” you don’t already have.
From a revenue perspective, it helps to pair personalities to personas. When you’re bringing on people and training them, it really helps to think about who they’re selling to and bringing on the right people who have different perspectives to uplevel your team to new heights.
Career Insights / Learnings
Working Hard Still Worth It - “There is a time to work hard, especially early in your career. Showing up, doing the work, grinding, and being passionate about what you do is important to early career success”
Build Relationships - “You have to build your network. You have to help people across departments in your business, being curious about what they’re working on and trying to help. That helps you build your brand and do your job more effectively because you’re more aware of the bigger picture. Externally, talk to people who are doing your job or are 5-10 years ahead of you. Helping the people behind you is just as important too!
Dave is going to be at HubSpot as long as he’s working with people smarter than him on gnarly, curious problems where he can keep learning. He’s lucky enough to be in an environment where there is no shortage of any of those things! Ultimately, Dave could see himself leading a revenue organization. But for now, look for him to continue working on new spokes of the HubSpot platform, spreading orange to the far reaches of the Internet…and beyond.
If you want to learn more about Dave, you can check him out on LinkedIn or at HubSpot’s upcoming September INBOUND conference. Thanks for sharing. Excited to see the Horizon 2 products you’re researching impact the HubSpot ecosystems in the coming years!
Any feedback for me? One thing you liked? One thing you didn’t? Local startups or operators to highlight? Just reply to this e-mail!
See you next week!
-Matt