Activated Scale

In this episode, of How I'm Building This, Prateek interviews Alex Sambvani from Slang who shares his entrepreneurial journey, discussing his early influences, pivotal moments that led him to start his company, and the challenges of navigating the funding landscape. He emphasizes the importance of hiring the right people, the strategies for customer acquisition, and the lessons learned in SEO and marketing. Alex also reflects on the scrappy beginnings of Slang and outlines the future plans for the company as it continues to grow in the voice AI space for restaurants.

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Takeaways:

Alex grew up around entrepreneurship, influenced by his father's small business.
A pivotal moment for Alex was winning a Hack Week competition at Spotify.
Raising funds in a tough market requires understanding investor fit.
Venture-backed founders must grow at a rapid pace to meet expectations.
Hiring in startups requires looking beyond resumes to find cultural fit.
Slang's voice AI solution addresses communication gaps in restaurants.
Customer acquisition started with network connections and cold outreach.
Inbound marketing strategies include SEO and paid advertising.
Quality content is more effective than quantity in SEO efforts.
Signing a customer before building a product validated their market fit.

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Sound Bites:

"I always loved tackling challenges."
"We built a voice AI prototype."
"We raised our series A in a tough market."

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In this episode, we cover:

00:00 Introduction to Alex and His Journey

03:00 Pivotal Moments in Entrepreneurship

06:05 Navigating the Funding Landscape

08:49 The Challenges of Venture Funding

11:53 Hiring in Startups: What to Look For

15:03 Building Slang: The Voice AI Solution

21:09 Customer Acquisition and Market Focus

26:58 Inbound vs Outbound Marketing Strategies

29:51 Lessons Learned in SEO and Content Strategy

33:08 Scrappy Beginnings and Customer Validation

34:51 Future Plans for Slang

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Where to find Alex:

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

Slang: https://www.slang.ai

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Where to find Prateek:

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

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

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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.