Growing Mobly with Zach Barney

Prateek Mathur
August 28, 2024

In this episode, of How I'm Building This, Prateek interviews Zach Barney from Mobly who shares his journey as a founder and his thinking about growth. He discusses the pain point Mobly solves, which is the manual and time-consuming process of lead retrieval at events. Zach shares how they won their first customers and the importance of validating the problem before building the product. He also talks about the tactics they use to scale, including being active on LinkedIn and attending events. Zach emphasizes the need for work-life integration as a founder and offers advice for aspiring founders.

Takeaways:

  • Validate the problem before building the product
  • Get your name out there and start building relationships early
  • Be patient and don't spend money until it's in the bank
  • Invest in marketing early to boost your company's visibility
  • Strive for work-life integration rather than work-life balance
  • Take risks and go all in if you want to build something big

Sound Bites: 

  • "The chances that I keep them interested and win that deal are significantly lower than they should be."
  • "Get your name out there. Don't wait. Just get out there, meet people."
  • "Don't spend money till it's in the bank. Things take longer, deals take longer, investments take longer, just be patient and wait."

In this episode, we cover:

00:00 Introduction and Background

04:45 Mobly's Solution and Target Market

08:02 Winning First Customers

09:56 Iterating and Scaling

15:42 Mistakes and Lessons Learned

20:07 Work-Life Integration

22:28 Advice for Aspiring Founders

Where to find Zach:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachbarney/

Mobly: https://www.getmobly.com/

Where to find Prateek:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prateekmathur

Activated Scale: https://www.activatedscale.com

For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email prateek@activatedscale.com

Prateek Mathur

Before founding Activated Scale, Prateek spent the last 20 years selling for and building sales teams at startups and public companies. He has won numerous awards and recognitions over his sales career. Over the last 5 years, he has advised a number of startups on their GTM, sales hiring etc. Prateek has intricately seen the pitfalls that startups face when scaling their business and hiring sales talent. With Activated Scale, he aims to make sales hiring easier by connecting companies with experienced US-based sales talent fractionally. Prateek is fascinated by the drive of a startup founder and loves their passion, vision and mission to reimagine our world.