Speaking at Traction Conference in Vancouver

The conference scene is picking up again as we start to emerge from the Covid coma. I’ll be on-stage twice tomorrow at Traction Conference in Vancouver, interviewing two pretty badass execs:

Mary D’Onofrio, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners

We’ll be chatting about “10 Rules to Grow Operationally Efficient Businesses and Scale to $100 Million ARR,” and I’ll be asking Mary a bunch of questions, including:

  1. What is a centaur?
  2. How do you get there?
  3. What is growth endurance?
  4. As you get bigger, margins go down and time to CAC payback goes up. Why?
  5. What does cash conversion score tell you about a company?
  6. You’ve done a ton of work on benchmarks … if you want to be a $100M ARR startup, what marks do you need to hit for:
    1. ARR growth rate
    2. Retention (net and gross)
    3. Margin
    4. S&M as a percentage of revenue
    5. R&D as a percentage of revenue
    6. G&A as a percentage of revenue
    7. Free cash flow margin
  7. What are your top 3 tips for founders to grow operationally efficient businesses TODAY?

Spencer Kimball, CEO at Cockroach Labs

We’ll be chatting about 3 steps to scaling, multiplying, thriving … in a challenging economy. I’m thinking someone who named his company “cockroach labs” will probably know a little something about that. I’ll ask him a few questions along the lines of …

  1. Our topic is “scaling, multiplying, thriving,” but the first step (especially now?) is survival …
  2. Too many users or customers too soon is a problem. Why?
  3. Do you sometimes need multiple sequential MVPs?
  4. Key challenge from 0 to 1?
  5. Key challenge from 1 to 10?
  6. Key challenge from 10 to 100?
  7. How does the founder role change as you grow?
  8. What’s a healthy way to manage that change in your founding team?
  9. Entrepreneur stress
    1. How do you manage it?
    2. How do you run the marathon?