Ted Glasnow

The world is moving away from this rigid kind of sales process to more of a buyer-centric motion.

[Shopify apps]  see us as a channel to then also enable connections to other ecommerce apps. With Zapier, those connections aren't going to be deep, so you can't enable as many use cases.

[Fixable is] a managed marketplace, but we're connecting you—the homeowner or the business owner, the DIYer—with the right pro for your project. It’s a virtual consultation. It's all on your phone, text, pictures, video chat to help you with your specific project and then to give you all the tools to be successful there.

"In the early days at Thumbtack, so much of our growth was coming from SEO that it made sense for it to dominate our growth roadmap. We spent disproportionate time generating content, earning links, and optimizing conversion on SEO landing pages. Over time, however, it became clear that we were running into diminishing returns from these efforts,... See more

To pick a wedge, find a large market and then:1. Pick a very narrow (and very painful) problem2. Pick a very specific segment of people to solve that problem for

Key not just to revenue but the rest of the business generally is seasonality.

Since we’re seed investors, we’re looking for markets where significant dollars are flowing between businesses. These are often older, more established buying patterns where the innovation is launching the marketplace itself.

In hindsight, Flexport should have invested in sales ops way earlier. Ben recommends a Sales COO position when the company starts to scale