Activated Scale

In this episode of How I'm Building This, Prateek Mathur interviews Peter Fishman, co-founder of Mozart Data. Peter shares his background in data and analytics, and how he and his co-founder, Dan, started Mozart Data to bring the modern data stack to SMBs. They provide data engineering as a service, helping companies set up reliable and automated data pipelines. Peter discusses the importance of partnerships in their business and the challenges they faced in building those partnerships. He also emphasizes the need for founders to manage their mental health and find a work-life balance.

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Takeaways:

Startups should focus on solving a specific problem for a specific type of partner to create value and ensure successful partnerships.
Managing mental health is crucial for startup founders, and finding a work-life balance is essential.
Paid acquisition, content creation, and partnerships are effective strategies for attracting customers and growing a business.
Building a strong network and leveraging existing relationships can help in finding initial customers and gaining traction.
Strategic mistakes, such as not being hyper-focused on solving a specific problem, can hinder a startup's growth.

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Sound Bites:

"Cheating means like you need to take every advantage you can find out there."
"Money is a great accelerant of time."
"The most interesting questions that a data team can answer typically come from multiple sources."

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Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and Background

08:29 The Benefits of Joining an Accelerator Program

10:08 Raising Funding to Exponentially Grow

12:34 Solving the Pain Point in the Data Space

16:27 Finding the First Customers and Building Relationships

25:56 The Importance of Partnerships

28:20 Inbound Strategies for Customer Acquisition

31:14 Managing Mental Health as a Founder

36:21 Learning from Strategic Mistakes

42:29 Future Plans for Mozart Data

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Guest Speaker Links:

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

Mozart Data: https://mozartdata.com

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Host Speaker Links:

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

Activated Scale: https://www.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.