Building a Thriving Community for 14,000 Operators with RevOps Co-op CEO Matt Volm

0:00 Sean, Hey everyone, welcome to operations, the show where we look under the hood of companies and hyper growth. My name is Sean Lane. When this show first started, back in 2018 the resources available for operators were slim. I originally didn't even want to make this show about ops, because I was skeptical that anyone would care. Fast forward to 2025 and the resources around rev ops have exploded, communities, newsletters, conferences, books, not to mention all the products that now explicitly target rev ops buyers. It's a great time to be in operations, and one of my favorite things about being in OPS is how generous other operators are when it comes to sharing their learnings and their experiences. So what happens when you get 14,000 of them together in a single community? Talk about compelling right? Someone who knows exactly what that's like is our guest today, Matt Vaughn. Matt is the CEO and co founder of Rev ops Co Op, a community for, you guessed it, rev ops folks. Matt is a former operator himself, and he started a software company in 2020 called funnel IQ that eventually transformed into what revops Co Op the community is today. They've got content, resources, events, and one of the most active slack orgs you've ever seen. In our conversation, Matt and I talk about how he brought his product development mindset from his software company to his community. We cover the tricky shift from driving engagement to moderating engagement, and what he's noticing about more and more of his new members joining from outside of tech to start though, with so many different types of communities and forums out there, I wanted to learn from Matt how he and his team landed on the format for revops, co ops community as it exists today. I'll say, like all things, where we are now is certainly not where we thought we'd be when we started. So while what we have now is Rev ops, Co Op, the community of, you know, 14,000 plus, you know, folks from kind of all across the globe who are passionate about revenue operations. We actually started four plus years ago as a software company. So previously, before this, I was the VP of Business Operations at this company called ally.io which was building OKR software. They went on to get acquired by Microsoft. But when I was there, I was responsible for all Biz Ops, which included revenue operations, and so I saw this problem around data and analytics and kind of providing revenue operators with just tools to be able to kind of measure their end to end performance across the entire go to market engine. And so went out, raised some money pre seed, and seed for this kind of product idea about building a go to market analytics tool called funnel IQ. And so we started building that product, right? One of the things we did early on, because, actually, one of our angel investors was kind of in the community space. He was like, hey, you know, rev Ops is this new thing, this new function? He's like, you know, it's probably an opportunity to build a community in this space as part of your own go to market efforts for funnel IQ. And so I was like, yeah, that all sounds good, but like, what's a community, right? Like, what does that even mean? And so we decided for us that that meant we were going to start with a Slack group and a newsletter. And we started with those two things, because most people in revenue operations, you know, work in a B to B environment where you're using a tool like Slack already, so there wasn't a big hurdle there. And everyone who works has a work email, right? So, you know, we'll send a newsletter to their inbox. So that was how we got started. As, hey, we're gonna start rev ops, Co Op as a separately branded community that'll be affiliated with funnel IQ, our software startup. We were doing it so that we could raise awareness of the funnel IQ product while also delivering value to people in rev ops. So everyone wins. And then, you know, fast forward, right? And in typical startup fashion, we pivoted a bunch, iterated a bunch on our software product idea, but that just never had product market fit. So we're like, All right, let's sunset or shut down the software product and just focus on the community. And that was about two, two and a half years ago that we made that switch. So that's kind of how we got started, and I guess, how we landed on, or at least ended up, where we are today. And once you kind of went all in on the community right now, there's, I feel like a bunch of different platforms now and different ways you can kind of facilitate these communities. And it seems like you all have largely stayed with slack as kind of the primary mode of engagement, at least, at least digital engagement. I know you're doing some in person stuff now too. Like, talk to me about that. How did you decide, like, this is the best. Forum. This is the best medium for this particular audience. Yeah. So similar to, you know, we approach, I guess, everything in the community, similar to what you would do if you went out and we're building a software product. I mean, that's essentially what we have. Is our community is a product, right, that we're delivering to our members. And so, like we talked a little bit about, you know, slack as a place where people can engage daily, ask questions, you know, get answers, kind of talk with their peers. You know, the reason why we started there and chose that was, again, because we were like, hey, you know, most people use this tool already for their job, so I'm not asking you to download another thing. I'm not asking you to learn a new platform, right? It's something you've already got on your desktop or your phone. And then again, with the newsletter, it was like, everyone's got an inbox. We'll give you some, you know, interesting, relevant content, right, on a regular basis. But like all things, you know, we also knew that, hey, you know, like, Slack is not for everybody, right? Like, some people really like to engage and like, sift through the messages that are there and participate in those conversations. And other people are just straight up like, I don't want to participate in another slack group, and that is fine for us. We look at all those individual elements, whether it's our Slack group, our newsletter, our digital events, our courses, our recorded product demos, right? Like, we've got all this stuff, some of it's free, some of it's paid. We've got in person events, right? Like, we look at all this stuff as a collection of things that we can serve up to our members, and we don't expect everyone to participate in 100% of those things, right? Some people, like, I said, don't want to do slack, but maybe they really crave the in person kind of get togethers. Other people are right. We're talking about people in rev op. Some people might just be straight up, like introverts, and they're not, like, going to be the social butterflies, right, that want to go around and, like engage with people in person, but maybe they do want to, like, attend digital events and engage in Slack group, because that's just an easier way for them to participate. So that's kind of how we've been approaching things from the very beginning. And again, while it might sound obvious, of just like listening to our members about the things that they want and what they want more of and less of, and just offering more programs and alternatives that way, even though Matt's initial software startup funnel IQ didn't work out, he's brought the same product development mentality that you'd have in a software company to his community. At the time we recorded rev ops, Co Op had 14,000 members strong and growing, and Matt and his team continue to look for new ways to support those 14,000 people, and of course, not every person learns the same way or wants to consume information the same way. And if you look back to before Matt even started the community, there weren't nearly as many resources for operators to learn from as there are today. So as we sit here in 2025 there are so many to pick from. So I wanted to know how Matt thinks about robots co ops, unique way of contributing to the red ops community as more and more alternatives emerge, yeah, for us, it's always been really just about, I guess, staying true to our selves, right? So, like, you know, even our like tagline, right? Like, from the very beginning, has really remained the same. Like for us, it's been, you know, an all about rev ops, right? Like, that's what we do. So, like for us, if you, like, you don't necessarily need a job title and revenue operations to be a member of our community. Like, you could be an SDR, an AE who wants to get into rev ops. You could be a recruiter who recruits a lot in rev ops, right? Like, you'd be a marketing person or sales leader who maybe doesn't have a like an ops person supporting them yet, and be a member of our community. But right? Like, if you join our community and you're not into revenue operations, like, you're probably going to get bored pretty quickly. So one is just keeping the narrow, I'll say, like, focus on the topic and the subject matter, while it can seem, call it appealing, right to be like, Oh, well, let's go broader with this, right? Like, let's start to do like all of sales and then like all the marketing and like all of customer success, right? And like, now what you end up doing is getting really, really broad and really wide, but really shallow. And so for us, staying narrow and going deep and focused on rev Ops is one of those things. And then I guess the second element of kind of staying true to ourselves and just how we look at and I guess see ourselves as different, is like just having fun along the way. And again, like this might seem obvious, and I don't know, probably some people are listening and like rolling their eyes a little bit, but like, I'm a big believer, and you know, like, the journey is your reward, right? Like, you know, regardless of where you end up, whether you know there's a successful outcome or not in anything, right? And whether it's a job or a company you started, or anything, like, doesn't matter. Like, what matters is like, what you do, what you learn, and like the experiences. You have along the way. Those are the things that you'll remember. And so for us, like, what I mean by, like, just having fun and stuff is, like, we're sarcastic, we're kind of snarky, right? Like, if you get an email from us, like, every email opens up with, like, some sort of, like, corny dad joke. We have a conference called Rev ops, AF, right? Like, you know the AF does stand for, like, what you think it stands for things like that, right? Like, we have a merch store with T shirts that, you know, say things like, I would agree with you, but then we both be wrong. Or, I work in rev ops, I don't know what I do, either, or we just roll out some that are like, sandboxes are for kids. I work in production, you know, just like stuff like that. That's like fun, right? So, like, that's kind of embedded in all the things that we do. So like, we're not going to be the, like, stuffy kind of corporate type of place, right? Like, we still have plenty of opportunities to learn, for people to get better, right? Like, the slack group, we have courses, we do all these digital events, all these in person events, but again, like fun is peppered into all the stuff that we do. So those are really the two things I look at that, you know, keep us, I don't know, unique, and really have been our focus from the very beginning. As rev ops leaders, our roles require juggling marketing forms enrichment and complex lead routing the entire inner workings of the go to market falls on our shoulders. But what if there was an easier way? That's why I'm excited to announce our new sponsor, default. Imagine this, a lead, submits a forum on your website instantly. Default, enriches the contact intelligently, routes different sized companies to different paths, schedules meetings and logs everything in HubSpot or Salesforce, all automated, all in real time, and perhaps most importantly, all in one place. Visit default.com/sean Lane today, or click the link in the show notes to learn more and revolutionize your rev ops today. Okay, back to Matt before the break, Matt was explaining the origin story behind his community, re ops Co Op, and how it serves operators who are looking to better themselves. Matt has worked in re ops himself, and now through reops Co Op, he has probably interacted with more operators than most people do in their entire career. He talks to folks like you and me, the audience for this show every single day. So I wanted to know, what has he learned about this unique group of people? So one like, over the last couple years, the interesting thing I've seen like collectively, is that one rev Ops is now growing globally, right? So started, not surprisingly, with, you know, a lot of like US based practitioners and companies, but we now have, like, I think, 45 plus countries represented across our member base. So very like, huge global presence, and like large like interesting pockets in places like Brazil, even like Australia and like London. So global growth has been interesting. The other thing is a lot of growth outside of software and technology companies. So companies outside of tech that are adopting revenue operations, actually, as our community has grown, the percentage of members working in software technology has gone down, which means that more new people are joining the community from outside of tech, places like retail, manufacturing, financial services, and then in terms of, yeah, like the folks that are in rev ops. The interesting thing is, right, no one goes to college to get a degree in revenue operations, right? Like, you know, it's not like finance or accounting in that sense, right? So everyone has, I'll say, like, definitely, like a unique background or kind of story. But I guess the main threads that I've seen in terms of how people kind of land in their ops role is one, like, they've been on an actual sales marketing or like CS team as a call, like the person executing, right? So, like a monthly manager or an SDR, an AE or a CSN, but they're the one that's like, you know, more, like, I don't know, call like, process focus, technology focus, right? Like, they're the person who, like, when they were on the team, right, was always interested in, like, how they can leverage technology to better do their job. They might be the one person who would actually like read your process documentation that you would put out there, right? So, like, they land into kind of a rev ops job from one of those, like, kind of frontline sort of positions, and then the other, call it angle, or, I guess place, is folks actually coming from more of like, I'll say, like the finance or analytics side of things, so actually understanding right financial outcomes, how those look on a financial statement, but they're in a unique position, then, for actually being able to understand the activity and the inputs right the things that businesses actually do to drive those financial outcomes. And it's not for every person that's. In, you know, kind of the finance space, but understanding the financial background and then having, again, like the ops, you know, sort of been those are, I guess, like the two call it common threads that I've seen, at least in terms of how people kind of navigate the very twisting and turning career path, if you will, to get into kind of Rev ops. Yeah, I think the other thing that jumps out at me when I kind of jump between the different channels in your community too is just like the sheer generosity of the people that are in these groups, right? And I think, you know, I'm sure this is probably true of other functions too. But you know, the one that I have direct exposure to is ops people and like, you cannot ask a question without getting two or three, like, really thoughtful answers, usually, more than that, to that question, like that doesn't happen by accident. Certainly it could be, you know, by nature of these folks. You know, they're, I think we as operators are enablers by nature. And we, you know, try and teach people and help people as a core part of our job. But like, you could still have a group of these folks and that, you could throw stuff into the abyss, and then you would never hear. Would never hear anything back. Like, how do you kind of encourage and kind of set up an environment where that is something that is clearly just happening naturally? I imagine it's much easier now with 14,000 people, but I would imagine at the beginning that took a little bit more of concerted effort in order to make sure that was the experience people had that if I hate, you know, even if I don't come to the community every day, if I know that I have a question, I can turn to this and say, at least I know I'm gonna get some sort of thoughtful help when I do show up. Yeah, I think there was a point at the beginning, and this is probably true in any community, but when you first start, right, you want people to get into your call, like our Slack group, right? To engage. And you need to help drive the engagement and drive some of those things that you mentioned, right? You want to make sure, like, if people ask a question, that they actually get answers. You want to make sure, if someone introduces themselves, that people actually respond, and you welcome them. And so those are a lot of things that you do intentionally. At the beginning, right? You need to, just like every day, spend time doing those things. There's no way around it, like you and your team need to do that. And then at some point, you reach a tipping point, and it's not necessarily based on, like, the size of your community, but there's all of a sudden, a shift that starts to happen where you have at least enough like active or engaged or call like helpful people in that space, then now those things start to happen naturally and organically. But that doesn't mean that your work ends. Then your work shifts from trying to drive the engagement and now moderating the engagement that's there. And the main thing with that is like in all places, right? Like, you're just naturally going to have some, like, bad actors, right? And so for us, we try to be really clear on, like, Hey, these are the community guidelines. If you're participating in our Slack group, like, you got to follow these rules, right? Like, no soliciting, no spamming, no DMing, no using what you learn here. And like, sending LinkedIn DMS or stuff like that. And then one, like, we make people aware of that every week, right? We put a post in our announcements channel to let people know. Like, these are the rules. These are the community guidelines. Encourage people to report violators. And then, like, we kick people out. And, you know, one, we kicked a lot of people out before for breaking the rules multiple times. We have a lot of people that report violations, and we just try to make it like a, I guess, a safe space to be able to do that, so that the conversations that happen there are, in fact, ones that are going to be relevant and valuable to you, and you don't need to sift through a whole lot of like crap in order to get to the stuff actually matters. And trust me, like you'd be amazed at some of the stuff that like people try to, I'll say, like, when you give them, like, the opportunity to, like, join a Slack group with 10s of 1000s of people in it. Like, I've seen some people try some crazy, crazy things. The shift from driving engagement to moderating engagement is an interesting one. Matt and his team face new challenges, and instances of product pitches and prospecting in these communities is only going to increase as the buying power of Rev ops folks also increases. And look, as someone who provides consulting services, I get it knowing where your audience spends their time is a huge part of selling into your ICP, and there are plenty of Rev ops consultants in these communities too, not just vendors who will sell to rev ops personas. So if you're in there, you need to give, give, give, and not sell in these types of forums, Matt told me that showcasing your expertise is really the best way to earn people's trust. Another thing that I appreciate about Matt and the content that the rev ops, co ops team puts out is how practical and useful it is. I actually read their newsletter. That's rare and so as a former practitioner himself, Matt now has 1000s of other practitioners who look to him and his team for advice, I wanted to know what that's like. Right? And where Matt turns to now for his own learning and content. The short answer is, it's weird, for sure, but yeah, to your point like, that's the, you know, we talked about it before, right? No one goes to school to get a degree in revenue operations, right? So everyone's really just learning on the job and learning as they go. And so, you know, that includes all of us, right? So we, when it comes to kind of putting together content like, we know from ourselves, right, that the things that we want and that we appreciate are going to be the tactical, detailed, like, here's how you do a thing, sort of content, not the like, high level, you know, kind of fluffier framework, sort of stuff, you know? So one with that in mind, right? Like, that's kind of where we start from when we create any of the content, knowing just what's important to our members and the people that'll be on the receiving end. And then, because, like us and the people that do a lot of our writing, you know, they've been in rev ops like before, they've been practitioners, right? So by paying attention to by knowing what our members want in terms of being tactical and detailed, by having access to all those conversations that we do in our Slack group, and just talking to these people every single day, we know topics and things that are going to be important and relevant. And then by obviously, like living and breathing this ourselves over the past. How many years we're able to turn that into content and stuff that's relevant? And we leverage not only our members for that, right, like we've talked about before, and we have the slack group, but we also do interviews and stuff with them on a regular basis. But we also leverage our partners for a lot of that too, right? Like folks like quota path, who are experts in compensation and all things compensation and commissions, right? Or, you know, like, boost up on the forecasting side, right? Like, there's a lot of partners that have expertise in specific areas or categories, so we leverage them for a lot of the category specific stuff as well. But that's kind of how we approach all the content stuff in the content creation side, what we do, and what are you excited for next in that area, like, what are you excited for around what's coming next, both for rev ops folks and the work that they do, but also for the community? Yeah, I guess the thing that with Rev ops, I guess in general, the field, or the function that has me excited or looking forward to the futures. I think we're kind of, you know, we're past the first couple years of like, you know, truly like trying to figure things out. And I think we're getting into a place now where we're starting to get some structure and consistency around the role, what it means, what it should be, right? You know, kind of Do's, Don'ts, things like that still have going around. Still have a long way to go with that, but we've gotten through some of those initial growing pains. And so as I look to the near future, the thing that, you know, I'm excited about is just seeing the role kind of continue to get elevated, see like, you know how rev Ops is positioned and starts to participate on executive teams and in the C suite, and I think, like elevating the role of the profession, that's the biggest like thing that has me looking forward to seeing how our members and folks are gonna kind of elevate themselves and then with the community and some of the other things. I guess. You know, we talked a little bit about the in person side, but one even just talking about, like, in person events, like, hard to believe that it wasn't that long ago that we were all going through COVID and we were wiping our groceries down when they got delivered, and we weren't allowed, like, go outside, right? And, you know, we, like, wouldn't shake hands, and, you know, like, all that stuff, right? Like that seems like such a distant thing the past, but I guess two things like, the reason why I bring up in person is because I think even with a lot of recent advancements in AI, it's making all the digital things that you either do or have access to a lot noisier and so, but you know, like, an in person event, right? Like, you know, at least inherently, like, you know, AI is not going to go and muck that stuff up. So I think in person events are really good for that reason. And like, whether it's like the conference, like we're doing the rev, ops, AF conference, we do a lot of these, like smaller local events in places like Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco, kind of all over the place. So the in person kind of stuff has me excited. Before we go, at the end of each show, we're going to ask each guest the same lightning round of questions ready? Here we go. Best book you've read in the last six months? I haven't read a book in the last six months, podcast, TV, show, magazine, so I guess this might date me a little bit, but I'm a big fan of friends, the sitcom and I. I, I will, like, just re watch that. Non nice. I mean, exactly, I've got all the DVDs still, like, all that stuff, so, yeah, nice, all right. Favorite part about working in OPS, I like, a solid process, right? Like, even, like, in my personal life, right? Like, you know, keep up. Like, pretty rigid, like, calendar, right? I have templated steps that I walk through to do things, whether it's like to get my kids out the door in the morning, to get them to soccer practice, to drive to the gym, right? Like, that's just like how my mind works. So I'm a sucker for a good process and a good template. Flip Side. Least favorite part about working in OPS, no one knows what you actually do. Fair enough someone who impacted you getting to the job you have today, I'll say this guy, William Sue he's a partner at mucker capital, and he was the first check into my very first startup when I was a first time founder, back in 2017 and I had never started a company before. I had no business starting a company. I knew nobody in venture capital, but I had an idea and a pitch deck, and I started sending a bunch of cold emails, and he responded, and he was like, the first guy that was willing to actually take a chance on me, and he was the first check into funnel IQ, even though I lost all his money the first time around, we still talk on a monthly basis. So he's the guy who's probably impacted my professional career the most. That's awesome. All right, last 111, piece of advice for people who want to have your job someday, give yourself permission to change your mind and try a lot of different things. So I think one the trap that we all kind of fall into, and I was guilty of this early on in my career as well, is thinking that, like you've got this thing that you want to do in your head, right? You're like, oh, I want to do that. I want to be that. Right? I want to be want to be a police officer, I want to be a public accountant, I want to be a lawyer, right? Then you get there and you're like, actually, this isn't like, that great. But, like, I thought I really wanted to do it, and then you kind of feel stuck, right? And you feel like, either like, well, I said I really wanted to do it. Now I'm too embarrassed to admit that it's not that great. What would I actually want to do? Right? Like, all these things start to swirl. Like, just get rid of that. Like, give yourself permission to change your mind, right? Like, a job is, you know, nothing more than that. It's a job. So if you think you want to, like, go out and start a company, like, go out and start a company, you can do it right. Like, I just told you the story about kind of how I did it, right? You just got to try and be kind of stubborn and put up with failure a lot. If you think you want to be a lawyer or an accountant anything else, like, go out and like, try experience those things, right? And like, learn from them. Maybe you learn that you love it, and that's what you want to do with the rest of your life. Maybe you learn that you don't and you want to move on. But collectively, those experiences, those will be super valuable. So yeah, if you want to be a CEO or founder of a company, you can do it guaranteed, like you don't mean anything more than like an idea and basically some willpower. Just be prepared to fall flat on your face multiple times. Every single day. You'll get used to failing, and then you'll just need to literally do that every single day for essentially the rest of your life. And that's what it's like to be a founder. Thanks so much to Matt for joining us on this week's episode of operations. If you like what you heard from Matt, make sure you are subscribed to our show so you get a new episode in your feed every other Friday. Also, if you learn something from Matt or from any of our guests, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to the show. It really helps other folks to find the show. All right, that's gonna do it for me. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time.