Not Another CEO Podcast

We’re kicking off 2025 with a bang. My first guest of the year has been disrupting the learning management space for the last 7 years. Her early investment in brand and community has paid off in a big way. She dealt with some challenges in April 2022 that many founders I know wouldn’t have been able to overcome but she’s emerged stronger and more determined than ever. My guest for this week’s episode of Not Another CEO Podcast is Melanie Fellay 🐙, Co-Founder and CEO of Spekit 🐙. We covered so much in our conversation but my highlights were: I met Melanie early in her journey and have always been impressed with how creative she’s been about brand marketing. With that being said, I didn’t realize how deliberate she was with her approach from the very early days, even when she had limited/no resources. We talked about everything from the omnipresent Spekit pink octopus to her personal LinkedIn presence to the community she’s been fostering from day one. If you’re an early stage founder, I strongly suggest you listen to this part of the podcast. If you do this right, the ROI on your time and energy is very high. Finding your first customers, especially when you start a company early in your career or are starting a company in a space you haven’t worked in, is maybe the biggest challenge founders face. Melanie walked me through the big bet that she made on Dreamforce to find those first customers. It was definitely a make or break investment given how much cash they had in the bank at the time but it paid off. Everyone is probably sick of me preaching ICP focus but this is a good example of what happens when you know exactly who your ICP is and where they congregate. Grit and resilience are probably the most important attributes for founders and Melanie put those on full display after going through an extremely challenging period of time about 3 years ago. Her co-founder had to step away from the company for personal reasons, they were experiencing a period of product quality issues, the worst in the history of the company and because of macro dynamics they had to do a lay off… all in the same period of time. She was very open and vulnerable in our conversation about this period of time at Spekit and how she overcame these challenges. I’ve talked to Melanie a number of times throughout her journey and what I enjoyed most about this conversation was her energy and excitement about this next chapter. Tune in to the full episode to hear more about Melanie's entrepreneurial journey and more of the lessons she's learned along the way. YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eGf2tHUk Spotify: https://lnkd.in/emKyjsBF Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eyXUJHvn

My guest for this week’s episode of Not Another CEO Podcast is Andrew Lau, Co-Founder and CEO of Jellyfish. We covered a number of topics that should be relevant to any venture backed startup CEO: how to find your first customers, how to choose your investors, how your role changes as you scale. One of the top requests I’ve been getting from listeners is to start asking guests how they got their first customers. I love Andrew's approach: - Identify the space you think you want to go after (in their case engineering). --- Interview a lot of people who would be your buyer in that space (in their case over 50 VPs of Engineering and CTOs) - Do professional services work for that buyer persona to get in the weeds on a set of problems (in their case they did the work pro bono) - Use that to identify a true pain that you can solve with a product - Ensure those buyers will pay for that product - Ultimately build a motion to find and get in front of many more prospects that look like your design partners. He gives a lot more details in our conversation. When it comes to identifying the right investors, Andrew has a framework that is pretty obvious once you’ve been through the process but he simplified it down better than anyone else I’ve talked to. In short, imagine a venn diagram with two circles. One is investors who you have some kind of personal relationship with and/or know and trust you. The other circle is people who are domain experts. They have knowledge and opinions on the space and are excited about it. The people that are in the overlapping area are the ones where the magic happens. A challenge any successful CEO will face at some point is needing to evolve their role. As your company scales, your responsibilities change, the place where you can have the biggest impact changes and ultimately you need to evolve to be successful through the next chapter of the business. Andrew outlines exactly how his role has changed. He needs to spend more time looking out 2 years and figuring out how to navigate the company to the next horizon. He is the chief storyteller, needing to get the company excited and aligned about where they’re going. I’ve found that this can be difficult for most founders because the things you did to successfully scale in the early stages of the company are pretty much the opposite of what you need to do to scale in the later stages. You can hear more of the details behind these topics and so much more by listening/watching to the full episode here: YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eCeJ3JMh Spotify: https://lnkd.in/egPr6gRj Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/eNsDtTQ7 If you enjoy the episode, please like and subscribe on your favorite platforms and share with your networks. An important thank you to Gail Axelrod, for making this happen.

Stepping into an existing company with limited GTM traction in a hyper competitive market for your first CEO job is challenging and high risk. Howard Ting took on that challenge to quickly build one of the fast growing cybersecurity companies in the world. My guest for this week’s episode of Not Another CEO Podcast is Howard Ting, CEO of Cyberhaven. I was introduced to Howard 6 years ago by Enrique Salem. The intro email was short “Meet Howard. He is a great person and one of the best marketers”. That was a great way to describe Howard back then but now we’d have to add that he is also a great CEO. I’ve learned a lot from Howard over the years and I’m excited that he was willing to share his lessons on the podcast. There is so much that leaders at any level can take away from this episode: - The “Friday Five” video that Howard records for his team every Friday to share the things that are important that week. This keeps his distributed team aligned and aware of what’s happening in the business.  - Being very specific about who their Ideal Customer Profile is and doing everything in his power to avoid being distracted by the opportunities outside of that target.  - How Howard found the role at Cyberhaven. Why he decided to take that role vs the other CEO roles being offered to him.  - What he looks for when interviewing executives to join his team (that's the video clip I included) - His approach to choosing investors. He’s looking to find partners who share his vision for the business and who will actively support the company's growth. - Taking care of his team. Howard and his team have been faced with some pretty tragic and challenging moments since he took over as CEO, specifically as it relates to people on their team. He talked about how he balanced that while still running the business.  - The entrepreneurial drive, motivation and inspiration that comes from watching his parents start and run a small restaurant for many years. I'm incredibly grateful to Howard for sharing his insights and experiences. Here are the links to the full episode: YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eSzbZ2nA Spotify: https://lnkd.in/ePiH6zjw Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/e_H8J7PV