Manoj Ramnani

It’s with great excitement that I announce that Mark Dye has joined the CircleBack team as Chief Strategy Officer!

Mark and I were introduced through a common business connection over 9 months ago, and even then, it seemed like we were destined to make great things together. I, for one, was excited to talk to Mark (though really, who wouldn’t be, given Mark’s background?). And his willingness to take time out from an important conference to chat with me about CircleBack suggested that he was intrigued as well.

Understanding the value of CircleBack immediately,  Mark agreed to become my advisor, helping me navigate the finer points of building a solid B2B product strategy.

And as CircleBack’s growth-mode continued its ramp-up, Mark has become more involved than ever. So involved, in fact, that it made perfect sense for him to join me as a full partner in the future of our strategic business development, sales, and B2B product strategy.  With nearly 20 years of experience in the B2B sales and marketing technology space—and with expertise in use of data in AdTech and predictive sales/marketing solutions—Mark brings a critical perspective to the table as we prepare to roll out the evolution of our technology. He’ll guide us through the nooks and crannies of enterprise products and, as you’ll see in the coming months, help us to take the Account-Based Marketing space by storm.

Most recently a Chief Strategy Officer at 6Sense, Mark was co-founder of Bizo, a company acquired by LinkedIn in 2014 for $175M. At Bizo, Mark led strategic partnerships, developing publishers network, and servicing brands.

And it’s this kind of credibility and expertise that we need to step into the future. With Mark at the helm of our strategy and B2B initiatives, we’re experiencing a kind of insights and access we’ve never had before. An expertise we couldn’t get anywhere else. And because of that, it’s an incredibly exciting time!

I couldn’t be more excited to have Mark take on this very important executive leadership role. He’s accomplished, well-respected, and proven, and his expertise in leading product- and go-to-market strategies is unmatched. He’ll be another much needed “army of one”  helping us bring our unique and deterministic dataset to power sales and marketing solutions.  

Welcome Mark!

The secret to startup success isn’t what you think. It isn’t an incredible startup idea, it isn’t receiving funding from a well-funded VC, or getting picked up by a major publication, or even building a feature that’s so popular, it spreads like wildfire.

Sure, all of those help—and at the end of the day, any one of them can have an incredible impact—but the true secret isn’t really a secret at all. It’s doing the work, and having a team that can make it happen.

It’s building a team of people with a thousand arms, a thousand legs, and a thousand minds. It’s hiring those who themselves are armies of one.

Traditionally reserved for the idea of a large group of soldiers who function as a single mind, following a single command, and acting as a single body, the concept of an “army of one” takes on new life in the world of startups. Rather than a large body acting homogeneously under a single order, those “enlisted” startup heroes do it all—they jump on any responsibility, any opportunity, any chance to grow themselves and the business.

They aren’t marketers or programmers or designers—they’re success-makers. Sure, they have hard skills. But they’ve moved beyond the I-shaped skills, beyond the T, beyond the V, the U, and the X. They’re an entirely different breed.

And though on paper they may look like standard employees, with areas of success and expertise, when you talk to them, you see something moving underneath. A level of dissatisfaction. A level of ambition. A level of “getting it done.”

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Caesar is made uncomfortable by Cassius, who doesn’t seem happy with Caesar’s rise to power. He says, “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.” And that look, that lean hunger, is exactly what I’m talking about.

Sure, if you have ambitions of being an autocrat, armies of one will bring you nothing good. But if you’re building a team of those who can get it done, who can singlehandedly solve complex problems, that’s exactly what you want.

You want people who are hungry, smart, and can do anything.

You want to build an army of people who are each an army of one.  

As I’m sure any successful startup founder, executive, CEO, or investment partner will tell you, success is a funny thing.

It starts with an idea—something you probably scratch on the back of a napkin—and takes on a life of its own. Before you know it, you have a product, a team, you’re making decisions, they’re paying off, and everything seems right with the world.

It’s a confirmation—you’ve had a great idea, you’ve built a process—and every affirmation you get makes you work harder, pour in more hours, and take your idea to its logical conclusion.

And then the day comes when you hit it big—whether selling your business, taking it public, or hitting a major milestone. And while the media does well with recognizing the key players involved in the success—the visionary founder, the team’s ability to execute,the  investor who first spotted them—certain unsung heroes are almost always still overlooked.

Our spouses, partners, and children.

These unsung heroes work just as hard—if not harder than us—to make these successes possible. They reaffirm and reassure us, they inspire us, they give us something to work for. But to just consider them muses dramatically undervalues all the contributions they make.

So I’d like to take a second and give some recognition—and some real estate all that our families endure for our success. It’s them that take on the roles of caretaker, parent, chef, housekeeper, tutor, etc.—often on top of their own careers—to allow our ideas to come to life.

They eat alone at the dinner table with our children when we’re stuck at the office. They take the reins of the house while we travel. They cry with us when we fail. They’re as shocked as we are when that great experiment fails. They’re understanding when we have to cancel a vacation.

What they are—fundamentally—are our life support. And I don’t mean that in a cliched or reductive way. They exhibit superhuman strength, living their own lives while propping ours up. Without them, we would starve. We’d show up to work in two dirty, mis-matched socks. Our heads would fall off. And they do it for free—out of love, support, and a profound sense of nurturing.

It’s magic. That’s all there is to it.

And whether we’re naturally inclined to celebrate these people, the way Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are, or more researched like the rest of us, it’s time we all do a little better in recognizing these incredible people—these key players, if you will—in the story of our success.

Let’s all take a page from from Fred Wilson’s book and pay tribute to each of our own Gotham Gals. It’s the absolute least we can do for these wonderful human beings.

And in the spirit of that, I’m pleased to introduce my incredible partner Ria, without whom I wouldn’t be half the man I am.

Here’s to all those unsung heroes!!

 

At the end of every year, many CEOs take stock of what their companies have accomplished and prepare their plans for the next year

And when we do, we look at various teams’ progress, measure them against projections, and take stock of where we’ve succeeded and where we didn’t. And while, of course, we do this to inform our strategic decisions in the coming year, we also do it to see who—if anyone—is ready to step into our executive team.

As many of you in startups know, typically, the last positions left to fill are typically those in the C-Suite. Because of the expense of executive talent—and the fact that everyone is in the weeds at all times in a startup—those seats tend to sit vacant as the rest of the space fills up.

And sometimes, managers in your current team will assume that, by virtue of there being no one above them, they are growing into that executive role. Sometimes, they’re right. But sometimes, they aren’t. While most CEOs and board members wish more managers were ready to take on those executive positions, companies have to—first and foremost—keep company risk low and, sadly, the promotion just doesn’t always add up.  

I talked to few CEOs during these holidays to see what they look for when they are trying to determine whether any of the existing team members are ready to step into an executive role.

Here are some skills, soft and hard, a person must have to truly be an executive :

Champion the vision of the organization.
From understanding the overall strategy to driving growth in their department, real executive potential is well-versed in communication with various stakeholders—teammates, peers, clients, and board members. They’re aligned with the business and with the CEO, and they work hard to communicate, understand, and lead.

Lead fearlessly.
Armed with incredible confidence, a mind for fairness, and a firm hand, true executives are equal parts strategic and people-pleasing. They take the company’s growth as their own responsibility while leveraging their own management style to ensure that their peers and teammates are aligned and working harmoniously.

Be loyal to the company.
While we certainly don’t want a bunch of yes-people heading up any organization, we do look for potential executives who take considerable pride in the work we do. Loyal, in touch with the industry, and on the same page as the rest of the exec team, these are the people we point to, saying “Everyone should be like that!”

Exhibit traits characteristic of the executive role.
It may seem obvious, but a true executive candidate must look and feel like an executive. They aren’t just excellent at their jobs. They’ve also got to have the recruitment capabilities, the ability to made strong decisions independently, and the desire to think strategically about an ever-changing industry and ecosystem.

Searching your existing team for executive potential is always a challenge. Feelings can get hurt, people can feel overlooked, and team members can part ways. But at the end of the day, executives have to be able to execute. And it’s on you—and on me—to search those traits out within our business.

Bill Gates. Mark Zuckerberg. Larry Ellison. Elon Musk—they’re all rich, all brilliant, all successful. And they all share one trait that’s worth more than vision, or education, or anything else.

They fire themselves. Constantly.

Let’s take Mark Zuckerberg as an example. 14 years ago, sitting in a dorm room at Harvard, Mark was concerned with one thing—writing code that would bring his vision to life. He wrote it day and night, dreamed about it, and, of course, the rest is history.

But imagine how much time Mark can possibly devote to coding now? Maybe 1%? Probably much less. As Facebook left the dorm room and moved to the Valley, Zuckerberg’s priority changed. He taught others to code and focused on growing the business. And then, when they moved from a rented house to office space to a campus, his priorities changed again. He was no longer leading a private company, and he couldn’t devote time to business development, to courting investors, to doing anything or the sort.

So he hired a team, fired himself, and embraced his new priorities.

Unfortunately for us, he made it look easy. But the reality is anything but. Common sense dictates that, if you do something successfully, you should keep doing it. And letting go of that, constantly forcing yourself into unknown situations, and never allowing autopilot to take over is scary. But if you want to succeed—if you dream of the visionary—this is what you’ve got to do.

It all comes back to a simple psychological principle—that the brain is not terribly different from how we might think about a computer’s processing powers. We can run a couple of applications, sure, but the more we launch (or, conversely, the more we have going on in one—like the thousand tabs you have open in Chrome right now), the less power the mind has to devote across the system or to new ideas.

So while it seems like you should be able to oversee business development, pick up slack in engineering, trade good ideas with marketing, etc., one of the most important things you can do when growing a business is resist the impulse. You can’t be everything. And it isn’t weakness. It’s biology.

So how do you know when it’s time to fire yourself?

That’s simple—do it every time you accomplish something. Once you’ve set the tone for engineering and development, let your team follow your example. Once you’ve set a standard for business development, empower your sales team destroy your record.

It was only because Zuckerberg had time that the newsfeed exists. Only because Benioff wasn’t worried about marketing that Salesforce has become one of the most powerful companies in the world. With time—and with psychological bandwidth—can you (or anyone) see past the present into what’s possible. And that kind of seeing, that’s true vision.

As a leader, the best thing you can do is build strong teams and encourage strong processes. And by setting standards and firing yourself, you get the best of both worlds—along with a lot more time of your own.

And that time is where the visionary happens. It’s where you can see all the parts of your business working together and you—the inventor, the strategist—can discover new ways to make your business better.

And this rule isn’t just applicable for the C-suite. Managers, directors, and VPs should also learn to fire themselves, effectively growing the organization exponentially as everyone jumps to bring new ideas to the business.

This past weekend, I decided to play golf. Or, more accurately, I finally made the time for a good friend who’s been asking me to golf with him for over two years. It’s a bit ridiculous, I admit, but between running a startup and raising a family, it’s hard to spare time specially for a game like golf that takes almost half day (or longer when you add those beers ;)).

Anyhow, Saturday, I finally made time, and off we headed to Top Golf. Now let me just say that, with few exceptions here and there, I’ve hardly played golf. And I know, I know, “most business happens on the golf course,” but not for me. Not yet anyway. And as you’d expect, when we started hitting balls, my first couple of drives gave me away. I sliced two, hooked three, and missed one outright. After about five minutes of this, my buddy leaned over from his driving stall and said, “Manoj, the trick here is to keep your eye on the ball. Don’t look up, don’t look back. Just keep your eye on the ball when you swing.”

After taking a minute to really internalize what he was saying, I put my head down, drew back my club and Whooaaaa the magic started to happen. I hit every single ball afterward. And I hit them well.

To say that my friend was impressed was an understatement. “You’re a natural,” he told me. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” But what I took away from it was a little different—that, when all else fails, focus is the difference between success and failure.

The more I considered the principle of focus, the more the idea—as simple as it is—seems to be at the core of everything we do. It grows our golf games, sure, but it also determines our successes at home, in our minds, and of course, in business. Every single shot I missed that day with my buddy became symbolic of every deal and opportunity that had passed me by in the office.

Which just confirmed to me that never again will I (or should you) take my eye off the ball—on the course or anywhere else.

And that’s a little easier said than done.

In business, especially in a startup, there are thousands of things to distracted by. Aside from all the little fires that startup CEOs are responsible for dealing with—being an expert in every department, filling all positions currently unstaffed, etc.—it’s easy to lose sight of your goals, get caught up in trying to latch onto fads, build products not in your roadmap, and the like. Every day is a new opportunity for distraction, and many times, it comes wrapped in the promise of success.

But just like trying to watch your shot before you’ve hit it, taking your eye off the ball in business can end really badly. But if you stay focused, you’re going to make contact, and you’re going to drive it home.    

No matter what you do, no matter who you are—if you’re a professional, you spend a lot of time problem solving.

You untangle things, you identify bugs, you create productive work environments, nudge the right people in the right directions. And that’s how things get done.

Sometimes, though, problems get a bit opaque. They get complex. And as tech gets more and more sophisticated, companies like mine (and, I’m sure, yours) begin building and working in environments that are as absolutely massive as they are hard to hold in your head at once.

And that’s where we run into problems. While we all are problem solvers at some level, some of us are more skilled than others. For some, the logical reaction is to get bogged down. For others, it’s to take a step back, look at everything rationally, and solve the problem. And that’s what makes a difference in the corporate world.

It reminds me of a parable I heard as a child.

Three prehistoric men are out hunting, and they come across a wooly mammoth. This mammoth—the story goes—was exactly what they were looking for. In addition to being able to feed their community for weeks, it also promised new, warm clothing for the coming winter, bones for tools, etc. But after felling the beast, they’re presented with a problem—they’re three small men, this is a three-thousand pound creature, and they are at least a mile from home.

The first man proposes all the men pushing from one side of the beast to use their collective strength. It doesn’t budge. The second man proposes breaking the animal down into pieces, but the other two note that, in doing so, they’ll risk destroying the hide they desperately need for clothing, and anyway, the men couldn’t possibly move all the parts before natural scavengers took a majority of the haul. The final man says, “I’ve got it” and runs off. Hours later, the man returns, and behind him, all the members of the village. They create a temporary settlement, and each, dozens of them at this point, take on different tasks—curing the meat, tanning the hide, fashioning the bones into tools, etc. Once they’ve all completed their different tasks, they work together to return everything to their original settlement, dressed in new clothes with full bellies and full pantries.

The point of the story, of course, is that any large, immovable problem is really just a series of small, totally manageable problems. So when we reach a level of complexity that seems insurmountable—whether it be in technology, business organization, or beyond—we have to do two things: 1) surface all the small problems that comprise the big one, and 2) use the most capable resources we have to focus on solving each of the small problems thoroughly.

If we can build a collaborative strategy—one that relies on everyone “swimming in their own lanes” while working on discrete pieces of a large problem—we can be just like the group in the story. Everyone collaborates on a plan, picks a place where they can make a big impact, and gets it done.

Of course, that’s always easier said than done. But the truth is, if we’re going to continue to survive and thrive in these rapidly expanding, deeply complex environments where we’re solving big problems, we can’t get discouraged by the size of a problem or let our own fears cloud our vision of the prize. Because, at the end of the day, the winners aren’t the ones who hunt down a mammoth. They’re the ones that get it back to the village and feed the community.

It may sound cliche—or even like a lie in this professional world of favors for favors—but what they say is true: passion wins the race.

And in some ways, that may be obvious. After all, when we hire, when we promote, when we consider which team members to keep and which to part with in times of crisis, we’re always looking for those that think like us, that are excited about the opportunity, the industry, and the problem we’re solving.

But what’s so curious to me is how passion stands out even when no one is looking. In some ways, it becomes impossible to ignore the passionate. Impossible to cancel out their contagious enthusiams.

Let me explain.

This past Saturday, I took my child to a tennis lesson for the first time. Typically, this is something my wife does—as you can imagine, running a startup doesn’t leave a ton of time for everything we want to do—but I ended up with the duty. We arrive, and in runs my son to a group of ten 5-7 years olds, all there to be coached by 4 instructors. I set down, dig into the emails and planning that waits for me at every moment, and I notice that I keep getting distracted. I keep looking up on the lessons. And it takes me a minute to realize why.

Of all the coaches, one kept encouraging the kids, kept pushing them, and frankly, you could tell he really cared. He (let’s call him Tom) was driven to make sure the kids did their best. He paid attention to them, challenged them, and ultimately led them to a level of excitement and discipline that his fellow coaches never even approached.

Now don’t get me wrong—the other coaches were doing just fine. But this guy—the way he worked, the way he spoke to the children—was so good, so positive, that his passion literally pulled me from my work and into the practice. He brought his A game, he kept it up, and I found myself wondering if perhaps I should reward him by hiring him as a private tutor.

Now think about that. I, who went to a tennis practice for children with the intention of getting some work done, found myself spellbound by a tennis coach and considering giving him significantly more of my hard-earned money. He didn’t say a word to me. He didn’t apply a clever sales pitch. He was passionate, driven, and that inspired ideas of reward in me.

And of course, that led to me thinking about work (most things do) in a new way. I thought about my team, I thought about my leadership style, and I thought about my hires and partners over the years. And I realized something. The people I remember fondly, the people I would hire again, the people that I’ve come to rely on day in and day out—they all bring that care, passion, talent, and commitment that Tom did. They go the extra mile because they care, because they work for the pleasure of solving problems, of answering challenges with code, design, text, and strategy, and ultimately, of creating something better than what existed before.

Because that’s where true passion lies. In the desire to transform. In the urgency to do more than get by. And surrounded by people like that, you can’t fail.   

There are few things as important as business momentum. It’s what keeps us burning the midnight oil, allows us to push harder and farther than we thought possible, and it picks us up when we’re down.

In other words, momentum is critical to the success of any business.

But not all momentum is created equal. There’s real momentum—when you’re succeeding, when you’re exceeding goals and making smart acquisitions and the like—and then there’s fake momentum, something you’ve invented to keep up moral or because confronting a failure is too difficult. And fake momentum is not a good thing.

Imagine for a second that you run a business that isn’t profitable. You have promising technology, but it’s still not perfect. You build excitement across your team. You behave like you’re making money—you hire, you expand, you acquire.

Everyone’s working hard, all burning the midnight oil, but something isn’t right. The deficits between money-out and money-in grow wider and, though you have the reputation of growth, you don’t have profit and real numbers to back it up.

Sound like a car racing toward a cliff? It should. And yet businesses around the country are experiencing this right now.

I’ve certainly experienced it. Last year at CircleBack was a tumultuous one, one where we put the cart before the horse, one where we hired a huge sales and marketing staff, moved into nice office space, and started sponsoring big events before we ever really started to bring in revenue.

At the time, it made sense. We had a great product and, with the right team and the right ethos in the marketplace, we’d have it made. We grew too big too fast and overlooked fundamental problems in our product and process. And the end result? We were forced to let more than half our staff go—an incredibly painful experience for everyone involved.

We were forced to go conservative.

But in doing so, it’s allowed us to reassess our business as it is, not how it “seems” or “feels like it should be.” And with that honesty and conservatism in mind, it’s allowed us to move forward, to make smart choices, to beat the drum that’s helped us get back to where we need to be—and it feels good.

That’s why, when I heard the news of one of our competitors had raised a huge round and acquired 3 businesses in 6 months, I wasn’t bothered. We’ve ducked back into reality, are celebrating our growth when it comes, and making smarter decisions regardless.

And that’s the point. Offer a great product and master the fundamentals, and you’ll go far. Get caught up in traffic, and you’ll end up stuck (or worse).

Recently, I returned from a trip to Europe with my family, and I have to say—it taught me a lot.

Of course, I learned about culture, art, food, and all the good stuff one normally gets from spending time in the midst of a new place. There’s nothing quite like experiencing new lifestyles, new ways of doing things, and new perspectives. But I also learned quite a bit about myself—and about approaching problems that always seemed a little out of grasp.

Allow me to explain.

It all started with a promise I made myself before my trip. I’ll run every day, I said to myself. I’ll explore new parts of the city, and it will be amazing.

And then, timezones happened.

In fact, the difference between the time in DC and Europe affected me so much that every time I thought of going for a run, I couldn’t. I’m tired, I’d think. I don’t know the path. I forgot to pack my running gear. Essentially, the new, unfamiliar territory gave me an excuse not to do what I’d promised myself. And like most people, I took it.

But then, something happened. My hotel offered a running program, providing gear and a 10k path, and basically taking away all my excuses. And so, backed into a corner with the promise I’d made myself and no reason not to, I started running.

And yes, at first, it was tough. But within 15-20 minutes, I was running faster and harder than I do at home, experiencing the culture and the sights like a local, and really kicking myself for not getting started sooner. It was a great experience, and one I would have completely missed if I hadn’t forced myself to start.

And in that way, it’s a lot like business. Too often, we’re faced with what we perceive to be impractical—a larger-than-life partner, an out-of-reach exec, a deal of a lifetime. And they too are the kind of things we put off, telling ourselves that we’ll get to the deals when we’re larger, the hires when we’ve raised more capital.

Which, of course, is a problem. We need to stop waiting for some other moment, and stop letting reasons not to do something influence our decisions—and get started. When we do that, we get closer and closer to our goals, and we experience things we’ve never dreamed of in the process.