“DO MORE. BE MORE. LEARN MORE.”
A cheesy slogan at worst; life’s greatest aspirations at best. Everyone must set their mark somewhere on the continuum.
What happens when you have a leader who truly believes (and lives) the slogan?
What happens when an entrepreneur with hoop-like dreams of joining the ranks of Georgia’s greatest entrepreneurs executes on that motto every day of his life?
In all of these answers you’ll find SalesLoft’s CEO, Kyle Porter.
Do More.
Days before writing this article, Kyle and I were watching Atlanta’s professional soccer team team in the still-shiny Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Atlanta United outplayed the Portland Timbers in the final game of the MLS Cup to bring our city its first championship this century.
After watching Arthur Blank and the team hoist the trophy while doused in red confetti, it was getting late and time for bed. Freezing rain and 70k+ fans squeezing out of the stadium made an easy decision to watch the highlights at home.
Just as I was thinking of my warm home, Kyle asks,“Where should we go to celebrate?”
Fifteen minutes later, half a mile from the stadium, we’re walking into a German beer garden packed with die-hard United fans.
Days before, Kyle and I start off the conversation about his entrepreneurial journey in a jam packed hour over lunch.
Jon Birdsong: So I’m going to start this off with a banger. Just yesterday, I got a text from a SalesLoft employee that said: “Today as I was scootering home from work, I was thinking about you and how grateful I am to you for introducing me to SalesLoft. SalesLoft has completely changed my life and I am so thankful everyday to be working here.”
How did you get SalesLoft’s culture to a point where employees will say that?
Emotional pause
Kyle Porter: I once heard the CEO of Spanx give a talk, not Sarah, but it was Laurie Anne, and in her presentation she had this slide that said: ‘Whoever cares the most wins’ and I never forgot that moment. Just this morning, I had breakfast with an engineering manager who had asked me to go out to breakfast with him because he wanted to talk about running his own business one day. He asked, “What do I need to do to get from here to there?” I started asking him questions about his purpose, and he says, “Kyle, I know where you’re going with this but I’m a nihilist, so I just want to put that out there. And I respond, “That’s fine, but tell me why you want to do what you want to do?” After a long line of questioning about his goals, it ended up the reason he wanted to build a great business was out of the love for his wife and family and friends. Finally I said, “It sounds to me like you have love for others and you want to see them fulfilled — that doesn’t sound like a nihilist to me.”
For me, the people I care about and I know, I want them to find fulfillment and joy because that gives me the most joy and fulfillment. I want that for my daughter, for my wife, for our team members, and for my friends. That’s what I want for everyone! I believe too many people think that comes after the fact, that it’s the end of the road, but it doesn’t.
There are people who say, “At the end of my career I’m going to start a charity and I’m going to do good.” Well guess what. Right now, at this company, people are going home to have dinner with their significant others and talking about their day and how they feel. Much of this is in part to how you treated them and how they interacted with you. You have the best opportunity today to make an impact on people’s lives. Rob Forman (SalesLoft Co-Founder) and I wanted to create an environment where others would find fulfillment. We wanted to create a space where they could take the talents and skills they have and then learn more, do more, and become more. That’s been the driving force of the business. Before SalesLoft was even created, I wanted to do that in a business. I didn’t know what it was going to be called. I didn’t know what industry it was going to be in. I just knew we were going to have a business that did that.
JB: When did you find out that was your purpose?
KP: I knew it when I joined ATDC in 2005.
JB: Were you a student then?
KP: No, I was just out of school and I went to work with Revelation Partners inside of ATDC.
JB: Right now, many folks reading this are asking themselves the question, “When is the best time to go start a company?” Tell us how you got started.
I was selling things from the earliest age. I remember, before I was 10, going to the flea market, getting GI Joes, and selling them door to door to my friends in the neighborhood with my dad’s hand-me-down briefcase — I still remember the code on the lock: 976. There was joy there because people were able to get the things that they couldn’t get, and there was a cool happiness there too. It wasn’t leadership because it wasn’t empowering someone else to then go do, and serve, and lead others. It was sales and it was commerce and it was enterprising.
JB: Okay, so fast forward to 2005 at ATDC.
KP: Yes, in 2005 at ATDC, I had gone through a lot of dramatic change in college. I had been arrested twice in college for partying and after a decade of trouble-making, I experienced a complete spiritual awakening focusing me on why I was here. One thing that stuck with me was that I had been given lots of talents and skills and they were unique (like everyone else), and that I realized my charter was to put them to work in the best and highest way possible.
JB: Were these skills academic or non-academic?
KP: It was a little bit of both but primarily street smarts to be real. In ATDC, there was this little group that would meet every other week and we were mostly entry level employees of ATDC startups who were there because we wanted to be startup people. At the time, I was working for a recruiting and consulting company and we were all services serving many of the those companies.
I would organize these events and I would call them wantrepreneurs because none of us were running companies but we all wanted too. We would get together and do things like read a book and share what was learned—complete with power points and projectors—and we would just talk about what we were going to do. We would come up with ideas and discuss how we wanted to start a company of our own. After work, we’d even play Cashflow the board game. We’d grab a beer, pull out the game, and play in an ATDC meeting room. Then we started to go see entrepreneurs speak. TAG, ATDC, and TiE all hosted these types of events all around town and many were in the ATDC building.
JB: Okay, quick question. If you guys wanted to start a company, why didn’t you guys start one then at that time?
KP: We weren’t prepared. We weren’t wise enough. We didn’t have the experience. We didn’t know how they worked. We didn’t know how they were funded. I didn’t know any of these things. That’s what we were trying to find out. We were educating ourselves on what it takes, and what I found was the most helpful was going to events where the entrepreneurs would come and talk.
Entrepreneurs like Reggie Bradford, Bill Nussey, David Cummings, Charlie Paperelli, Pricing Harding, and Rusty Gordon. Others came in and they gave talks and our whole crew would show up to these events and beforehand I would email the presenter. So I’d email Bill and say, “Hey, I’m going to come to your talk and I have a couple questions about X, Y, Z.” Then I’d go sit in the front row and before they came up, I’d shake their hand and mention, “Hey, looking forward to our talk.” Then they would say, “Any questions?” and I’d immediately raise my hand! Afterwards I’d come right up to them and ask them for a coffee. In fact, many of the important relationships I have today started like this, including one of our investors and board members, Tom Noonan.
What I learned was these entrepreneurs had a lot of influence and the vehicle of a startup was the way they impacted lives. I looked around the room at these entrepreneurs and I said to myself, “This person has talents, skills, capabilities and the desire to do something great and if I create a company, then I can create a vehicle that will attract those people in, and help those people grow.” So that is when I made the decision to start a company, and this was about 2005. My wife, April, and I had this spreadsheet listing the ‘Top 100 Things We Want to Do in Our Life.’ It had things like: buy a horse farm for my mom and fly a plane. There’s ones on there that listed ‘have a son.’ Recently, we looked back at our 2005 list and one of the items on our list was start a tech company in Atlanta with 50 employees.
JB: So how did you start?
KP: Well, I figured out what I wanted to do first and I knew I had a long way to go. Let me learn, earn, network, and prepare for starting that company. I was in a fortunate circumstance because I was in ATDC, which at the time, was the epicenter of everything tech in Atlanta. So every investor, entrepreneur and service provider came through at some point in time.
JB: Was working around ATDC a subconscious decision?
KP: Oh yeah. I was in the lobby and I saw the Technology Hall of Fame and I read the people’s stories and I said, “Who’s John Imlay?” Then I thought, “Oh! I want to be like that!” So I decided to be in the building where those people are hanging out.
JB: From 2005 to 2011, when SalesLoft starts, what skills do you feel you needed to learn?
KP: How to sell! Over the years, I learned how to cold call, and I learned how to objection handle. I learned how to build relationships, understand customer needs, and serve customers by solving their problems. I learned how to hire. I learned how to interview and attract talent. I learned some basic principles of leadership, which I realized later on that I had no idea about. I also learned how to learn.
JB: Did you have a time frame on when to start a business or was it more of a ‘you’ll know?’
KP: I was always “taking a stab at it” I guess it was more of a ‘you’ll know’, but I tried a bunch of stuff too.
In ‘08 I fell in love with an industry called Digital Signage.
I left Revelation Partners to try my hand at building a business in the digital signage industry. I went down that journey and started something but it didn’t turn into what I wanted to.
It came about by having meetings with the group from ATDC. We said this was a market that was going to be big. There were two other guys who wanted to start a company and we all agreed digital signage was the play. We were calling into workout facilities and gyms. We would call the gyms and ask them if we had some ads and content for their TV’s would they be willing to run a network there. *We didn’t have a network.* We were calling the display manufacturers and asking questions. I’m not sure how it even happened, but I got mailed this book and it said, Digital Signage Expo Las Vegas. As soon as I opened it, I thought, “I gotta be here.”
Laughs
It’s funny because all the others guys involved reminisce saying, “That’s when we stopped trying to do this business and you kept going.” So the next week, I had planned it out and came back to Revelation Partners and resigned and told them I was going into the digital signage industry. That’s all I knew. Remember, this was ‘08 so the market was on the downturn too. April had just gone through her investment banking nightmare.
JB: Is it fair to say the opportunity cost wasn’t big to go start your company?
KP: Exactly. I wasn’t able to easily make six figures and it was going to be a grind. So I went to the Digital Signage expo in Las Vegas and the first thing I did was look at every speaker on there and send them a LinkedIn message. I sent a simple note saying, “Hey, I’m starting a business in digital signage and I want to meet with you to ask you a couple questions.” I sent it to 30 folks and 12-15 took a meeting. So then in Vegas, I met all of them, and built a relationship with them. I would just come up after their talk and let them know I sent the note and would love to talk.
JB: That’s a great move.
KP: It’s my go-to. I don’t know why it doesn’t get used more often.
I gave a talk downtown at the school business fraternity event, and afterwards some kid comes up and hustles me, and now he works for SalesLoft. He’s one of our MVPs.
So the next question to ask after the meeting is, “Who else should I meet?’ Then you get to go to that person and say, “So and so said I should meet you,” and they’re like ‘Oh, then I should take this meeting.”
So I was setting up all these meetings and learning about the industry, and what I realized was I didn’t have the capital or idea or expertise. Basically I realized that I didn’t know how to start a business in this space right then.
So I decided I was going to work in the category. That’s when I went to work at Allure Global Solutions.
JB: What were the limiting factors you realized, while doing customer discovery, where you knew you were out in front of your skills?
KP: I didn’t know what business would be successful at the time. I didn’t know whether it was software, services, or whether it was content, or networking. I should have sensed it, but there wasn’t giant demand in the market and that was probably why I didn’t sense the opportunity. I just thought I hadn’t sniffed well enough, and that I hadn’t gotten ahold of it like I needed to. It would have been awesome to get that market momentum. Momentum in the market is critical. I couldn’t find anything and I thought maybe it was because I sucked at finding that momentum, but maybe it’s because there wasn’t anything there to find.
JB: Knowing you wanted to get into the industry, you figured the best way to learn the industry was work for a company already in market and learn the ins and outs?
KP: Correct. But I was relegated to move cities or stay in Atlanta and work for one of two companies that did anything in digital signage: Allure Global Technologies and Prism Technologies, so I just hustled these guys down.
JB: Did you cold email the CEO?
KP: For Allure, I don’t think it was the CEO, but instead it was the Founder and the Chief of Sales. Actually, now that I think about it more, it was one of the guys I had originally hustled down at the Digital Signage Expo, so there was a prior relationship there.
JB: Are you surprised job applicants don’t cold email decision maker more often?
KP: Yes. I don’t get a ton of cold emails and when I do, it should have been sent to the CFO or CMO, but I guess it’s hard to cold email for a C-Level or EVP level job.
JB: What is one key learning from your customer discovery around your digital signage exploration?
KP: I learned it’s easy to say a startup won’t succeed, and it’s even harder to believe in one. There are all kinds of excuses and reasons it won’t, but it’s really hard to believe in one.
Be more.
We walk into the beer garden filled with excited and exhausted Atlanta United fans. As we enter the bar, Kyle prompts an action with a targeted question, “How can we get this bar standing up on tables chanting A-T-L within 20 minutes?”
My exhaustion turns to an adrenaline-filled challenge. I now have a clear goal of what we want out of the night. Only time will tell if we succeed.
JB: So you start working at Allure, what did you learn there that helped prepare you to build SalesLoft?
KP: Well, it was my first professional sales job and definitely my first job working at a software company. They had their challenges. They were a result of a merger and had some organizational health opportunities.
JB: Knowing what you know now, how would you have analyzed your decision to apply there?
KP: I would have asked the question, “How big is this market?” and “How quickly is this market opening up?” I realized you really need two things in a startup to get started: a market that is big, and then you need to have a subset that grows into that bigger area. So our example is the world of sellers, it’s a giant market. Then the world of inside sales, a smaller market, but all the qualities of the inside seller are going to bleed into the whole rest of the industry. We have to ride that train in and then expand out to everyone.
JB: As an entrepreneur, is seeing that market growth opportunity skill, talent, or luck? Perhaps something different like creativity and vision?
KP: One of our marketing team members just made a few posters for my home office in Florida and one of them is Arnold Palmer with the quote “The harder I practice, the luckier I get.” You need to be specific and intentional about the market you choose, and you’ll need luck in the market, particularly how the market unfolds, but once you’re set, then it’s about how willing and able you are to grind it out and how often you are able to change the direction you are going without doing it too much. Stephen Fleming once told me, “It’s like dissecting the entrails of a chicken.”
JB: How was your mindset going into work at Allure? Did you view everyday as a day closer to starting your business?
KP: I think the way it manifested itself was because I was never optimizing for income, I’m always optimizing for lessons learned, experiences, relationships, and growth. Which means I’m making a lot less money than my peers but we were also right in the middle of the downturn so nobody was making much money.
JB: How important is it to find a partner that has the same priorities?
KP: Imperative. April was working and we didn’t have kids, but this was the economic downturn, and opportunity and big paychecks were far and few between.
Fast forward to the summer of 2011, we rented out the condo we had a mortgage on, because it was too expensive and then rented a place that was half the cost of our mortgage so were only spending a thousand dollars a month instead of two. I’m also driving a decade old car while my wife is driving her hand me down. We’re cooking just about every day and we’d play a game a the grocery store. When we got to the checkout line, I’d say, “Okay April, let’s take away the most expensive item from this line.” We never purchased brand name products. All of these behaviors — it wasn’t about stacking cash, that was a by product. It was about living lean, it was about comfortably living lean. All of this was the summer before SalesLoft began.
JB: So from 2008-2011, you worked at Allure Global, started a poker machine company, and transitioned to NanoLumens…
I’ll go long-story-short on the poker machines (more detailed story here). During my time at Allure Global, there was a casino party, and they had these poker machines that I fell in love with and ended up gambling on one of them all night long. I took a picture of the manufacturer listed on the side, sent him an email, called him the next day, and ended up getting a contract to distribute poker machines in Georgia. I was soon able to expand that to Florida and had some early wins, lots of losses, but really ended up owning 45 poker machines across Florida and Georgia and had to take them to an auction to sell them all off to get out of the business. Net, net on a cash basis, I broke even. All I have left from it was the trailer and one poker machine down in my home in Florida. It still smells like the cigarettes from the bar.
Laughs
The whole point of starting the poker machine business was to start a digital signage business for bars. The poker machines were the way to get into the bars so I could sell them ads on the digital signage. There were lots of barrier to entry. In addition, the iPhone came out at about that time and people weren’t playing games then, they were on their phones.
It was then I wrote the manifesto, I spoke about on stage at Techstars Demo Day this year. It included: I wanted to be in a professional industry, I wanted a business that had recurring revenue, I wanted a business that was justified by the market, not by my own desires. I learned 90% of what I wanted for my next business by failing in my first one. Once you go in and you go all in, the learnings come fast. The whole poker business took about a year.
At that time, I got introduced to a company called NanoLumens. I knew about them because I ran into them at digital signage events. I was in love with their vision so I went to work there. I had a good track record in that industry, experience in that category, and the skills they needed. I was at NanoLumens for 15 months — and learned a lot. I learned the power of marketing automation, the power of Salesforce, about sales engineering, about inside sales, and I hired the first sales development team. I learned about content, and content management, and how to manage content on a website. I was the third sales hire that closed the first sales deal and ended up becoming their VP of Marketing. I was involved with all those elements in addition to fundraising, business strategy, and product management. I basically just saddled up next to the CEO & President and did whatever was needed for the business.
I worked there for $35K — full salary all-in, 6 years out of school.
It was a tough business. It wasn’t scaling the way we wanted it to. There was a lot of struggle with hardware and network equipment. I remember driving to and from Best Buy in Charlotte, installing parts on an implementation for NASCAR studios.
JB: Why did you take the job?
KP: The leadership of the CEO, Rick Cope, was incredible. This guy was relentless. He was a visionary, he was persuasive, and he was a leader. Plus he served the country and reported to Schwartzkopft. He had pictures of him in a tank holding rocket launchers. He even had a rocket launcher in his office. I learned a ton from him. The biggest thing I learned from him was grit. I had it, but being around him stoked it.
JB: Is that grit innate or can it be taught?
KP: I think it can be taught a little but I don’t think you’re born with it. My theory is you are nurtured to it. People talk about nature vs. nurture. I lean almost always toward nurture, but the nurture is more impactful the younger you are. That is just my theory, I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but it’s certainly true with me.
JB: Did you take the job at NanoLumens because you were burnt out after the poker machines?
KP: Never burned out. When I have something to aim for, there is no burning out. It’s only when the dream dies when you can burn out. That’s my theory.
JB: 15 months at NanoLumens, how did you know you were ready to start your next company?
KP: David Cummings’ blog posts. I would read all sorts of stuff at the time and David’s were the most practical advice on what to do. And after reading all of his blogs posts, I remember thinking, “This makes sense, I’m ready to go.” The topics were things like: think about what type of lifestyle you’ll need, think about the financials you’ll need, think about how long it’s going to take, think about how you’ll get started. Then Craig Hyde called me and he said, “Have you ever heard of this guy David Cummings, I think he wants to start a business with me and I’m trying to decide what to do.” And I’m like, “Do it. Just go!” That opened my eyes to this as a possibility.
So I ran into David Cummings at a TAG awards ceremony alongside the founders of NanoLumens and they said some really nice things about me to David about the journey of building NanoLumens.
Afterwards, I asked David to lunch. It’s fun because today, I enjoy watching the reaction of someone asking me to lunch after an event. I love it.
As time got closer to the lunch with David, I remember talking with April. I was going to tell him I’d like to start a business with him and ask him if he’s in. I don’t know why, but when we started the lunch meeting, we skipped the whole pleasantries of the beginning, and moments into it I said, “Hey, thanks so much for meeting with me David. The purpose of this meeting is I want to start a business and I want you involved.”
Laughs
He said, “Okay! Let’s do it.” That was literally his response.
JB: How did you develop such rapport?
KP: Digitally. I commented on 8-10 of his blogs posts, reached out via twitter, email, and got good referrals from Craig as well.
JB: Finding your entrepreneurial desire along with your intuitive “why” of starting a business came full circle in 2011?
KP: Yes and no. The reason I wanted to be an entrepreneur in 2005 was to serve others and help create an environment where they would learn and grow. In between those years, some of that was forgotten a bit. Because the goal became “go start a company,” at times, I was less focused on “go start a company that will…”. My thoughts were, I know I need to start a company, afterall, it’s written down on my spreadsheet, so I need to do that. My “why” was getting a little masked over time. I was too busy thinking about being on the Georgia Technology Hall of Fame and less focused on what really drives me personally. It was more ego.
What’s been incredible is since the SalesLoft journey started, that realization of my “why” has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. As we’ve come through failure points, we ask the question “Why am I even still in this?”, and I think back to my roots and think, “Oh, here’s why,” and we power on.
This is why Kyle’s employees are texting me thanking me when I referred them to SalesLoft.
LEARN MORE.
We sit down after hyping up the whole bar, getting most there to chant A-T-L while we all continue celebrating Atlanta United’s victory. If it was me alone, I’d be at home by now, tucking myself into bed. Instead, I’m squeezing the juice out of life. We’ve met new friends and there are others Kyle is organizing to meet up and are on the way. As they arrive, we talk about startups and software for another hour. I leave the bar around 1:00 a.m. with new friends, new ideas, and new knowledge to take into tomorrow.
Kyle stays for a while with the folks who recently joined us, because regardless of it being Monday morning in the office or Saturday evening at the bar, there is no question he — and his circle of influence — are doing more, being more, and learning more at every moment of the day.
Story by Jon Birdsong