Season 1

Explaining the decision to employ the newly developed and yet far-from-perfect radar system used to protect England from the stifling Nazi blitz in World War II, the esteemed scientist Robert Alexander Watson-Watt said, “Always strive to  give the military the third-best because the best is impossible and second best is always too late.” This attitude of being good enough, and not perfect, has been dubbed ‘the cult of the imperfect.’ The French philosopher Voltaire summed this attitude nearly two hundred years earlier when he wrote, “The best is the enemy of the good.”
Certainly, when creating a call campaign or lead list, trying for perfection in our initial query is also very much our enemy. In this episode of Market Dominance Guys, Chris explains why what you are doing when you create a list is already wrong! This is Market List Creation…Know your enemy!

Startups that begin their journey without a primary mission and focus on getting to true market dominance causes many teams to instead lead their new company into conditions that are ripe with extreme uncertainty and essentially abandoning all process. They often jump head-on into the product development cycle in order to execute on their “idea” and get to “market” as quickly as possible…so they can start selling and bringing in revenue. Understandable for sure. But this is not the only option…nor is it even close to the ideal one. Eric Ries’ fantastic work, The Lean Startup, demonstrates that companies CAN create order and reduce chaos by providing tools and processes to test their vision not once, but continuously. That’s the key here…continuously. In this Market Dominance Guys episode, entitled “Messaging Eats Product for Breakfast” Chris and I also discuss when is sales really sales, and when a product pivot should really simply be a messaging pivot.  

I know many veteran entrepreneurs would agree that “Raising venture capital is the easiest thing that a startup founder is probably ever going to do.”
Marc Andreessen said that the venture capital business is a 100% game of outliers- it’s all about extreme exceptions.”
“…think about it…there are on the order of 4-5000 ‘fundable’ companies a year, that want to raise venture capital.”
“…and about 300 of those will get funded by what’s considered a ’top tier VC’; about 25 of those will someday get to a 100M in revenue…”
“…and those 25 from that year, will generate something on the order of 97% of all the returns for the entire category of VC in that year.”
In this episode of Market Dominance Guys, Corey asked Chris to tackle the mindset around this Venture Capital seduction process and break it down with eyes fully open to its true purpose and function. Who should you have on your team to really give you the brutally honest feedback you need…before the VC enters the picture? And most importantly, how can you ensure that your VCs goals and YOUR goals are properly in alignment?
This is the Market Dominance Guys: “The Hard Truths about Taking VC Funding”        

In our journey to Market Dominance, Hope springs eternal…it does in sales forecasts…in product rollouts…and especially in venture fundraising. 
“But Hope is not a strategy. And Luck is not a factor. And fear is not an option.”
In this episode, I ask Chris about the key features and strategies every startup must-have. I brought extra paper expecting a long list…but to Chris, things are simplified…there are only three. 
So arm yourself! Tune in to this episode of Market Dominance Guys to hear Corey and Chris and let’s now dive into the 3 Features & 3 Strategies Every Startup Must Have. 

Welcome to Market Dominance Guys. There’s a common storyline for newly minted entrepreneurs…it goes like this: I have a product… a widget…a service. It works…I think it works pretty well. And so now I'm going to hire a bunch of sales folks…probably a VP of Sales and he’s going to do the hiring…and then we're going to launch and then we’re going to get working and execute on that hockey stick picture I have in my investment deck. Oh, and we're also going to do the market launch, some PR about our funding, and spend a few bucks updating the website. 
Now every superhero has their origin story…and in this episode, I’m going to ask Chris to dive in and talk about Startup Origin Stories: Is Sales the villain if something goes awry? Is sales the hero? Where’s the kryptonite in today’s VC funded startups and businesses?
Tune in to this episode of Market Dominance Guys to hear Corey and Chris explain sales isn't to blame.