Activated Scale

In this episode of How I'm Building This, Prateek interviews Projjal the Co-founder OnLoop. . He discusses his background in strategy consulting and how he met his co-founder. He also talks about the importance of choosing the right investors and customers, as well as the challenges of fundraising. JJ explains the pain Onloop solves for managers and the approach they take to help managers become great managers. He emphasizes the significance of goals and feedback in driving performance and the need for AI in managing teams. JJ also shares his thoughts on outbound sales and the importance of mental fitness for founders.

Takeaways:

Choose the right investors and customers who align with your mission and values.
Goals and feedback are crucial for driving performance and should be tailored to individual needs.
Outbound sales can be effective when targeted and personalized.
Mental fitness is essential for founders, and seeking support from therapists, coaches, and mentors is important.
Building a startup requires discipline, resilience, and the ability to embrace failure.

Sound Bites:

"Founder investor fit is important and founder investor fit doesn't get spoken about quite as much as product market fit."
"If someone's really not motivated to show up to work, nothing else matters."
"People management has nothing to do with HR. Goals and feedback done right create real ROI in businesses."

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In this episode, we cover:

00:00 Introduction and Background

03:19 Raising Capital and Building a Software Company

04:10 Deciding on the right investors

08:02 Helping Managers Become Great Managers

12:43 Projjal’s passion for helping knowledge workers achieve their true potential

17:13 Winning first few customers through cold outreach

21:51 Transitioning from employee to founder

23:27 How customers are finding OnLoop

25:33 Outbound is not dead

28:05 Their outbound sales process

29:39 Mistakes made as a founder

33:23 Founder Mental Health

36:33 Advice for other founders

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Where to find Projjal:

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

OnLoop: https://onloop.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 podcast@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.