Curated learnings on the business of marketing, leadership and life with frameworks.
Journey from zero to something great!
Welcome to Founder notes on becoming intentional. I love sharing and teaching the business of marketing, leadership, and life with frameworks. In these lessons, I am going to share my journey in building a brand new company - every week.
Sign up now so you don’t miss the first issue.
Why now?
I’m starting a new business and in this new business, my goal is to hit 1 million in revenue in 12 months. In this process, I want to document every week what I’m doing what’s working, and what’s not working so you’ll have behind-the-scenes access to the way companies are built.
What makes me special?
Well, nothing really but I’ve been fortunate enough to run marketing for Pardot (acquired by ExactTarget) and in turn, ET got acquired for $2.7B by Salesforce. After a couple of years at Salesforce, I co-founded Terminus, which has raised over 100 million dollars, acquired 5 companies, and now has over 350 employees -we call it Terminators.
Along the way, I got to write 3 books on marketing and how companies go-to-market and run a top 50 business podcast, called MOVE (re-branded from FlipMyFunnel) with over 1000 episodes, and co-founded Peak Community where our goal is to help produce 50 CMOs and 10 CEOs by 2025.
Well, I also got fired once, almost divorced, and cried a lot when things didn’t go well.
But now in my next venture, I want to do the exact opposite of it.
I don’t wanna raise any money and I want to build something from scratch and bootstrap it. If you want behind the scenes then tag yourself in the comments and every Sunday morning just for the next 12 months you will see my weekly activity.
And do this while leaning into my faith, focused on our family mission statement, and with people I love.
What you gotta loose?
Worst case if I don’t make it on the other side, you will have a list of things NOT to do. Best case you will see a week-by-week progression of how to build a business from scratch - the challenges, struggles, the wins, and the lessons - all in real-time.
Want to hear something crazy about me?
Let’s do three.
At Terminus, I started a conference called FlipMyFunnel and invited our competitors to speak. Everyone called me crazy but that is what helped us create an industry conference at zero budget and put it in the magic quadrant of a brand new category called Account-based marketing
On my 3rd book - MOVE - on the front cover, I put a quote that says “I love the guys, but hate the book” - again people called me crazy but my point to the world is that we don’t always have to agree with everyone. Let’s have the courage to listen and learn. Guess what - the book became a WSJ best-seller book, not just another amazon best-seller.
Started a marketer-only community called Peak Community and turned off the sign-ups. People said - don’t you want growth? Well, we make it invite-only by another member of the community, and guess what happened next, we became one of the fastest-growing marketing communities for emerging leaders with a clear mission to help produce 50 CMOs and 10 CEOs by 2025.
so bottom-line, a little crazy is necessary to do something worthwhile!
Now, why document so transparently moving forward?
I always wondered if I had a way to see the journal of Steve Jobs or Mark Benioff on a weekly basis of what they did and what they didn’t do as they were going through that would help me be a better entrepreneur. But like most books, all of those books are looking back just giving a highlight reel.
I don’t wanna give you a highlight reel I want to give you a day-to-day window into building something…from the ground up!
You in? So let it begin.
First update will be on April 17th.
love,
Sangram
p.s. DM me on LinkedIn and tell me what you would like to see in my updates?
In the meantime, tell your friends!