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Building a Startup During Lockdown: Julio Martinez on Abacum, Y Combinator & More
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In this episode of The SaaS Operator Podcast, we dive deep with Julio Martinez, the founder of Abacum, an innovative platform changing the game for finance teams in mid-market companies. Julio discusses the launch during the unpredictability of COVID-19 and takes us through the highs and lows of building Abacum from the ground up.
Tune in to learn more about:
~ The challenges of launching Abacum amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
~ The pivotal role of user research in shaping Abacum's product-market fit.
~ Julio's approach to building a robust sales and marketing strategy.
Timestamps:
- (00:00) - Intro.
- (00:28) - Identifying the Problem and Market Opportunity.
- (02:43) - The founding story of Abacum and how it got off the ground.
- (05:20) - Acquiring the first customers through networks.
- (06:41) - Funding journey of Abacum from angel investment to VC rounds.
- (08:47) - Impact and advice from Y Combinator.
- (13:07) - The team size and structure post-series A.
- (13:53) - Organizational structure and the split among different teams.
- (15:41) - Go-to-market strategy for Abacum.
- (16:32) - The structure and cooperation between the marketing and sales teams.
- (18:45) - Challenges and "war stories" from the early days.
- (21:01) - Learning from hiring mistakes and refining the hiring process.
- (23:48) - Importance of founder's gut feeling in the hiring process.
- (25:05) - Vision for Abacum in the next five years.
- (26:34) - Where to find Julio Martinez and Abacum online.
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Follow Julio:
On LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejuliomartinez/
On Twitter: https://twitter.com/JULIOMARTINEZG
Mentioned In The Episode
Abacum - Financial Operations Automation Tool for Businesses.
ReactSquad.io - React.js Agency for Startups
Nikolas Chapoupis
On Twitter: https://twitter.com/nikolas_chap
On LinkedIn: https://de.linkedin.com/in/nikolas-chapoupis
EarlyNode
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