Growing Streamkap with Paul Dudley

Prateek Mathur
August 21, 2024

In this episode, of How I'm Building This, Prateek interviews Paul, Dudley, the founder of StreamKap, who shares his journey and experiences in building the company. He discusses his background in sales and how he found the right co-founder to start the business. StreamKap aims to make streaming ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) easier for customers who need low-latency data. Paul talks about their target customers and the challenges they solve for them. He also shares insights on outbound sales, content marketing, and the importance of focus as a founder. Lastly, he emphasizes the value of having a co-founder and taking care of mental health while building a startup.

Takeaways:

  • Finding the right co-founder is crucial for a startup's success.
  • StreamKap solves the challenge of streaming ETL for customers who need low-latency data.
  • Outbound sales and content marketing are effective strategies for customer acquisition.
  • Focus is key for early-stage startups to stay on track and make progress.
  • Having a co-founder provides support and helps manage the stress of building a startup.
  • Taking care of mental health is important for founders to maintain balance and well-being.

Sound Bites: 

  • "Finding the right co-founder is like an incremental journey towards starting a business from scratch."
  • "StreamKap solves the challenge of getting low-latency data for customers in various industries."
  • "Outbound sales on LinkedIn have been more successful than email outreach for StreamKap."

In this episode, we cover:

00:00 Introduction to Streamkap and Paul's Background

03:19 Finding the Right Co-Founder

05:17 Deciding on the right investors

07:26 What Streamkap does

10:46 Outbound Sales and Early Content Creation

12:52 Creating a feedback loop with early customers

17:13 Outbound Sales Motion

20:10 Inbound Sales Motion

26:24 Mistakes made along the journey

30:43 Managing Mental Health as a Founder

33:40 Advice for founders thinking about Outbound and Inbound Sales motion

37:58 What is next for Streamkap

Where to find Paul

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

Streamkap: https://streamkap.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 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.