Behind-the-scenes look at two friends building a SaaS startup. Find out more about Arrows at https://arrows.to
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Learn to sell, find your first paying customers and grow a successful business. An interview series for (technical) founders who are fed up of building products nobody wants to buy... Your host, Louis Nicholls, interviews the best founders and salespeople out there. You'll learn how they found their first customers and grew successful businesses. With a focus on actionable insights from every area of sales.
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Things have been busy here at Arrows HQ, but we made time to get the team together for the first time. Most of us had never met each other before. On this episode, we have Kim and Matt on discuss the experience of organizing and attending our team retreat.By Arrows Podcast Network
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It takes a team to create Happy Customers (Ep. 50)
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Arrows is launching its second podcast today, called Happy Customers. So we have Stuart Balcombe on the show, the host of Happy Customers and the head of product marketing at Arrows. We talk about why we're launching a podcast, what the goal of the podcast is, and some tips he learned after creating multiple podcasts now. Please subscribe to Happy …
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Launching our ebook, with Shareil Nariman (Ep. 49)
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We're joined this week by the first Arrows employee, Shareil Nariman. Last week we launched the ebook that was written by Shareil, and it was a smashing success. Much better than we'd expected. Shareil tells us what it was like to write the book, and we talk about the strategy of writing it. You can find the ebook here: http://arrows.to/resources/b…
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Today we're joined by our friend (and Arrows angel investor) Justin Duke. We talk about building Arrows, how we try to balance building features vs foundations, and what we get anxious about when prioritizing features. Justin is a super talented developer who runs Buttondown and Spoonbill on the side of being an engineering manager at Stripe. https…
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We've always cared about marketing at Arrows.to, and really think it's critical to our success. But we've never had a full-time marketer who can help us really excel at everything we're doing. In this episode we run through a lot of the things we're doing from a marketing angle and why we think a full-time marketer will help us out.…
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Letting an employee go for the first time (Ep. 46)
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We recently realized one of our early employees was in the wrong role in the wrong environment for them. Neither of us was happy. So what do we do to fix it? How do we communicate it to them? To the rest of the team? Come hear our thoughts.By Arrows Podcast Network
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Ben Orenstein asks us hard questions (Ep. 45)
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Today our internet friend and listener of the podcast, Ben Orenstein (CEO of Tuple.app), asks us questions he wished we talked about on Keep Going. He asks why we chose to take VC funding, what our equity breakdown is, what the biggest thing we need to focus on is, and more. This one is long but good! Ben's company: https://tuple.app Ben's twitter:…
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After a couple of weeks off, we discuss why "working in bets" feels like it's not working for us as well as it used to when we were smaller... and how we're trying to focus everybody on the team around their own One Big Thing.By Arrows Podcast Network
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This week we talk about all of the Arrows funnels and the tools we use to organize them... our sales funnel, our marketing funnel, and our product development "funnel".By Arrows Podcast Network
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Impossible for every employee to know everything (Ep. 42)
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Growing the team brings new challenges that we hadn't expected. How do we stay open and allow people to be involved in decision-making while still staying focused?By Arrows Podcast Network
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How do we build the product we want? (Ep. 41)
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Arrows has two new engineers starting next week. So we discuss how we're preparing for them to join by getting our plans together for the next big iterations of the product.By Arrows Podcast Network
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We spent thousands of dollars on a PR consultant (Ep. 40)
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This episode is an interview with Kathy Osborne, founder of Kamel PR, who we worked with to do PR for our seed funding announcement. We talk about how we got connected, why we decided to spend money to hire a PR consultant, and more. To be honest, when we first took funding we assumed we'd do all the press ourselves. Oh boy, were we wrong... Workin…
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We finally hired developers 🎉 Plus, our new sales pipeline (Ep. 39)
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In a surprisingly fast turn of events, we hired 2 developers since the last episode! We talk about how that happened, how we structured our take-home project, and more.By Arrows Podcast Network
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As of today, we now have 5 employees at Arrows, and we still have a few more to come (https://arrows.to/jobs). This week we talk about this process and the new challenges we're experiencing as we scale.By Arrows Podcast Network
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Now that we've raised some funding, we can afford to hire a few people to join Arrows sooner than we expected. We dive into how that's going and what that means for the next few months.By Arrows Podcast Network
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Two bootstrappers raise $2.75 million from VCs, record the process, and interview their lead investor (Ep. 36)
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This is an unusual episode for us. We recorded most of it back in April, when we decided to raise venture capital money for Arrows. This episode was recorded on April 12th, the day we first started speaking to investors, and on April 14th, which is the day we signed the term sheet. It all happened very quickly. Special guest at the end: we talk to …
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Getting a deal with Uber, and then another, and another with Daniel Zarick of Arrows
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Welcome to Sales for Founders, the podcast for founders who want to go from hating sales to making sales. Today, Brendan is speaking with Daniel Zarick. Daniel is the co-founder of Arrows, a collaborative onboarding tool for high-touch customers. Before that he ran an app design studio and was the 2nd product manager at Twilio. You can follow Danie…
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Hey... Sales can be fun! Perspectives on Founder Sales with Ben Orenstein of Tuple
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We're pleased to have Ben Orenstein in as our guest this week. Ben is the co-founder of Tuple, a pairing application for development teams, and he has deep experience as a tech founder. In this quick and lively episode, we cover several common sales challenges for founders, like: - Dealing with customers, behavior change, and getting things done. -…
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Sales Chat #4 - Optimizing that first sales call
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Okay... It's time for that big initial sales call. You've booked, prepped and dialed in (or maybe you're in-person...right?!) Now what do you do? Plenty, actually. And a lot of it is simple, fundamental, easy, and actionable. And all of it can make that first sales call much more effective. In this episode, Brendan and Louis break down the key prac…
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Sales Chat #3: Brendan and Louis get into how to prepare for an important first sales call
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Welcome to Sales for Founders, the podcast for founders who want to go from hating sales to making sales. First impressions can make all the difference, and that's especially true when it comes to the first important conversation you have with a prospective customer. Things move quickly, you're still figuring each other out, and there are plenty of…
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SaaS sales and the struggle to gain meaningful customer adoption with Joe Valenti, founder of BrokrBindr
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Welcome to Sales for Founders, the podcast for founders who want to go from hating sales to making sales. We have Brendan McAdams at the microphone today for a conversation with Joe Valenti, founder of BrokrBindr, a SaaS application that automates the various functions and processes in the operation of a mortgage broker business. We're talking SaaS…
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Why is now the right time for Arrows? (Ep. 35)
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We explore some of the bigger questions around what Arrows actually is, why the timing is right for us now, and how a big new customer is starting to integrate Arrows.By Arrows Podcast Network
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Sales Chat #2: Why's a sales process so important? — with cohost Brendan McAdams
27:13
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Welcome to Sales for Founders, the podcast for founders who want to go from hating sales to making sales. Louis is back behind the mic for another season of Sales for Founders... ... and this time he's joined by a cohost — sales expert and previous guest Brendan McAdams! We're mixing up the normal format this series with a mix of real-life founder …
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We talk about some feature updates we made, and how we're trying to improve the product to better solve the job customers expect.By Arrows Podcast Network
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Sales chat #1: Is sales sleazy? — with cohost Brendan McAdams
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Welcome to Sales for Founders, the podcast for founders who want to go from hating sales to making sales. Louis is back behind the mic for another season of Sales for Founders... ... and this time he's joined by a cohost — sales expert and previous guest Brendan McAdams! We're mixing up the normal format this series with a mix of real-life founder …
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Getting people to follow through after demos (Ep. 33)
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We're trying some new things with demos and how we encourage people to take the next steps at the end. We also discuss our new features that we built on the fly for a trial customer.By Arrows Podcast Network
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After a slow week or two post-launch, we've starting to build up our momentum again.By Arrows Podcast Network
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This week we're really feeling the post-launch grind... website traffic and new trials are settling down to their new baseline and there's just a lot of work ahead of us. We detail how the launch trials went, what content and marketing we're testing and more.By Arrows Podcast Network
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Post-launch report, Friends of Arrows, & what's next (Ep. 30)
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We do a full update on all of our launch numbers (tweet impressions, website pageviews, free trials started, paid conversions). We give some details on our "Friends of Arrows" launch strategy. We discuss why the content series we planned to launch today didn't feel right. And finally, we detail our plans for post-launch.…
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Our launch went really, really well. This episode is two guys who are tired trying to make sense of it all. And actually... the numbers end up really out-of-date even by the time we edited the episode! We also discuss: launch day is only the start, not the end, so what's next?By Arrows Podcast Network
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Adding a free trial & final week before launch (Ep. 28)
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We've committed to adding a free trial and actually... it's already built! We also cover how we're adding educational videos to our onboarding process. And overall just covering the last few things we need to do before... 🥁 we launch next week!By Arrows Podcast Network
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Daniel delivers some lessons from the 2000 Brendan Fraser movie, Bedazzled. Benedict discusses naming concerns as they relate to the API. And together we discuss free trials as we gear up for a launch.By Arrows Podcast Network
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Since we're planning to launch Arrows soon, we decided to check in with each other to see how we're feeling about everything. Benedict woke up in the middle of the night worried that we hadn't launched and mentions some surprising feelings about it all.By Arrows Podcast Network
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This week was busy! We had a lot of customer demos, received some great feedback, and work on the API/Zapier launch is super close. And finally..... Daniel is almost finished with the new website. But at least some people have seen it now.By Arrows Podcast Network
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The new website has a progress update, the API+Zapier integration has a more defined structure, and we both recount the calls we had this week.By Arrows Podcast Network
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All-in on Zapier, website promises, and funding chat (Ep. 23)
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Daniel is finally close to being finished with the new website... sort of. Benedict lays out our newest plans to go all-in on Zapier for the near term. And Daniel wraps up the episode by sharing his latest thinking about what this year has in store for Arrows as a business.By Arrows Podcast Network
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VP churn, API options, and moving week (Ep. 22)
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Daniel moved into his new apartment in Los Angeles this week, hopefully ending the long nightmare of living out of a suitcase. Benedict talks to customers about their needs from an API and tries to balance the options. We lost a customer due to a new VP coming in and changing the tools, as we predicted.…
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Salesforce as the operating system for businesses (Ep. 21)
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After a rocky first week of the year, we try to get back on track with our marketing launch + API development plans. We share a little about what we've learned from customers so far about our early API, and we discuss how we're thinking about the marketing site.By Arrows Podcast Network
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The boys talk about their new year, the Arrows launch plans, how we're rolling out the API, and more.By Arrows Podcast Network
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Bootstrapping, investors, and API design (Ep. 19)
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We've started considering options for how we'll get to our break-even point, which could include client work or possibly taking on investors. We also discuss our early strategy for the Arrows API and rollout.By Arrows Podcast Network
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We dive into our launch + marketing plans as we head into January, when we're planning to roll out Arrows access more broadly.By Arrows Podcast Network
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Lessons from 20+ years of sales success — with Brendan McAdams, cofounder of Expertscape
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Welcome to Sales for Founders, the podcast for founders who want to go from hating sales to making sales. This week, your host Louis is talking to sales expert Brendan McAdams. Brendan is the cofounder of Expertscape. He also has over two decades of experience working as a salesperson. And — last but not least — he recently released a book and runs…
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A surprisingly exciting week for such an understated episode. We successfully rolled out our self-serve signup process, and had our first customer go through it today! Plus some discussion around our launch plans.By Arrows Podcast Network
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A hypothesis about a self-serve product (Ep. 16)
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We talk about the final steps we need to take before rolling out our self-serve signup process, and what self-serve might mean for Arrows as a product as we move forward.By Arrows Podcast Network
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Say hello to Arrows Software LLC (Ep. 15)
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We formed the LLC for Arrows 🥳 We also started to take note of all the SaaS tools we currently use to run Arrows, which leads to some conversation about how Arrows can be a must-have tool.By Arrows Podcast Network
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This week Daniel talks through some thoughts that have been swirling around his mind as the guys figure out how they should transition into a new phase of Arrows.By Arrows Podcast Network
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Making a business out of the business (Ep. 13)
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This week the boys lay out their plans for incorporating Arrows and enabling self-serve signup for the product.By Arrows Podcast Network
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After a few weeks of heads-down product development, the boys check-in to talk about the work they've been doing to redesign parts of the UI to accommodate future complexity in the product.By Arrows Podcast Network
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We decided it'd be interesting to share how we organize and plan our product development based on the customer research we do. Enjoy!By Arrows Podcast Network
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We reconcile with a tense conversation we had at the end of last week, and discuss the positives and negatives around one of us being more optimistic and the other being more generally conservative.By Arrows Podcast Network
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