Episode description

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Mark Roberge, Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital. Previously, Mark was the CRO at HubSpot seeing it from the earliest stages through post-IPO.

“When to scale?” and “How fast?” are two mission-critical questions for start-ups, yet most entrepreneurs lack a rigorous approach to answering them.

After peeking inside the go-to-market machinery of hundreds of start-ups over the last decade, Mark Roberge shares a scientific, data-driven approach to go from zero to billion fast.

In this episode, Mark specifically covers:

2:39 - How he met the founders of HubSpot

5:16 - How his role evolved from selling to running sales at HubSpot

7:17 - Moving from being an individual contributor to a manager

14:37 - The time it takes to understand retention

19:34 - Why he doesn't enjoy starting upstream in a company in the early stage

25:17 - When are you ready to scale?

31:20 - How fast should you scale?

37:35 - The different aspects of the go-to-market system

42:12 - Where specifically do you scale?

48:22 - Where's the line on unhealthy growth?

51:21 - Key hires to make during each stage of growth

54:40 - Key traits of a sales leader and when to bring them on board

58:45 - When to go global

1:01:12 - The process for assessing disruption risk for pricing

1:06:09 - How much to spend on marketing

Learn more at https://tractionconf.io 

Connect with Mark Roberge: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markroberge/

Learn more about Stage 2 Capital at https://www.stage2.capital/

This episode is brought to you by:

Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don’t get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI.

Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to Seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 Billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca 

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