I’m Jeroen, Co-Founder of Salesflare, and this is Founder Coffee.

Every two weeks I have coffee with a different founder. We discuss life, passions, learnings, … in an intimate talk, getting to know the person behind the company.

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EPISODE 53
Matthew Cleevely
Co-Founder of 10to8

"Stop being paralyzed by fear. You have to behave like your business is going to live forever... until it doesn't."  

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"You want to pick your customers carefully so they stick around for a long time. They also might ask you for random stuff you don’t want to build, and it can drag you in a variety of directions."

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"Don't use the confidence of your strength in one area to assume you’re going to be good at all the other functions. Be open to the idea that you might need to learn a lot about something before you even try it."

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"It's amazing how much you can achieve with articulating a vision that resonates with people. The next company we start, we will do much more of storytelling from day one."

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"I learned all these lessons the hard way and it has gotten me where I am today. I’m fine with going on that route over and over again."

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"A lot of people think that having a family while starting out is a burden or a distraction. It can actually be a huge help and support, and the motivation you need to keep going and be more successful than you could be on your own."

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"The value that your personal network will have for you in the future is so huge. You take the people that you value the most with you from company to company, and from team to team."

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"Just don’t do things you don’t want to do. Remember: it’s your life. Try not to have too many things that are pulling you in a direction you don’t want to go in."

PAST EPISODES

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"I really love the problem that we're solving and the team, and that's a massive motivating factor for me. If I wasn't as into the product and what we're doing, then it would be hard after a while."

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"When something’s in your head, it doesn’t mean it’s in someone else’s head. You saying it once doesn’t mean that they get it or that it’s being imbued in their work."

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"I think as a startup, when you are growing and you are doing well, it’s easy to have a little bit of an identity crisis in terms of what you really want to do. "

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"My favorite quote by Henry Ford is, “Whether you think you can do it and whether you think you can not do it, both times you’re right.” It’s a really big mindset thing."

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"Think early about your customer persona. We could have grown much faster if we had built software for that persona and if we had not tried to make other kinds of customers successful."  

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"If you take a VC on board, do it for the money, because that's all you are going to get. If you get something else, good for you, but that's the cherry on top."  

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"I always kind of coach people on my team to never have a one on one meeting sitting down in a meeting room. Because it doesn't feel like a natural discussion. It feels like an interrogation, right?"  

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"I think a lot of the people that work here are on some self-exploration and trying to understand themselves a little better, so they can be more awesome people. That keeps me going."  

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"Priority in product roadmap, priority in hiring and also making sure that people are working on the right problems. I think those are the top three things that consume most of our time right now."  

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"I play 'Dragon's Den' with my kids - Shark Tank in the US. I You know, they come up with their business ideas, and they think about pitching it, and then we have a negotiation."  

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"Understand which decisions are actually important, because you can't easily back away from it. Those are the ones that you have to really keep an eye on and those are the ones that you may regret."  

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"This too shall pass. When you have great moments, make sure to plan for the future, don't get overly excited. And when there are really dark tunnels, there's almost always a way out."  

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"As long as your employees are happy, then your customers are going to be happy. Your customers are happy, you're going to do well. It's all connected."  

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"Sometimes, even as founders, we think everything is working perfectly, but under the hood there can be a lot of problems there. It's something I would advise people to be super aware of."  

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"I thought to myself: “How can I control my own time 24 hours a day, where I can do, and build, and make whatever I want?” And that was truly the switch that flipped for me."  

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"We have Neolithic brains that love sugar and attention and status and things, and a pretty bad self-confidence. And we have a very medieval institution. That's how we try to run the globe."  

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"If you know what you want to work on, go work on it. If you don't, go figure things out. Go learn and go identify other problems through the course of living and talking to people."  

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"Never be afraid to have too big an ambition or expectation. Even if you don't reach it, you will aim high and you will end up higher than if you had started with lower expectations."  

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"People don't fail, systems do. And that means whenever you have a human failure in your business, you first should always, always look at what was the system that failed behind this."  

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"Trust yourself, or take all advice with a grain of salt. You can hear advice telling you one thing, and great advice from another person on something exactly the opposite."  

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"Don't do something if you're not obsessed with it. It's just too easy to give up, and when there's too many challenges and you need blind faith, you have to be obsessed with solving the problem."  

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"In the beginning, we didn't know exactly who was the right type of customer for us. I think we could have scaled faster if we knew exactly who our target market was from the get go."  

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"We really should have dreamt bigger and then just acknowledge that if you have bigger dreams, you may fail more often. The businesses that are going to change the world, are the ones that think big."  

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"Running a business is a marathon, not a sprint, and I think if you can stay healthy and focused and have a clear mind, you can make better decisions for your company."  

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"It's good to surround yourself with people who are like-minded and helpful, but I also think that it is important to remember to ask for help as well."  

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"Postpone hiring as much as you can. That's important because it gives us, the co-founders, the chance to build a culture between the three of us and align ourselves in terms of values."  

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"The bit that creates value, the bit that makes you successful and your business successful is the underwater stuff that no one is ever going to care about or credit you for eventually."  

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"As a founder, don't put off the things that would make you happier or more comfortable today, just because something might happen in the future. Concentrate more on the now."  

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"It's just a really, really lonely and hard journey. And I don't think people talk enough about that."  

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"Be clear in your own mind whether you are aiming for growth of users or growth of revenue because they will take you down two entirely different paths."  

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"As a first time entrepreneur, I was looking at the revenue, and the vanity of revenue over the profitability in cash, certainly for the last few years. And now the mindset has definitely changed."  

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"It's hard to feel connected to the results when you're a part of an organization with many employees. Now I don't have the choice. I don't have to ask myself if I'm motivated. I get up and go."  

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"Grow slowly and in control because you can very quickly lose control of your business and find yourself in a hole that you have to constantly be digging out of every day."  

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"Some things you have to go through on your own in order to really learn them. I think sometimes it's just impossible to make a shortcut, and I think being a founder and founding a company might be one of these."  

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"Build a better working relationship with the people around you, be willing to have hard conversations. I think that that's under invested in by a lot of folks in our field."  

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"I have my own theory that you get to keep about 10% of the value in the world that you create. So just look for ways to create value and things will all work out. Some of it will come back to you."  

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"It doesn't need to be that all you do is work. You can still do well while sleeping and while enjoying your time at the same time. Entrepreneurs I think overdo things, including myself sometimes."  

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"Something bad in our community is this very strong focus on the short term. Basically, raising money, building something and selling it. Let's think in terms of decades instead of years."  

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"Trust your gut. When you start, there's a lot of noise. And it's all good, but it's not really always relevant to you. Develop your own sense of what is right for your business."  

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"Don't build something that nobody understands and say, "It's their loss." No, it's not their loss. If you build something, make sure that you always listen and understand how people are using it."  

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"Shooting to the moon and everybody trying to change the world and stuff... that's cool... but is that you speaking or is that somebody else planting seeds."  

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"Start selling as soon as possible. I think when we started we were really focusing on the product, thinking it needed to be perfect. At the same time, our competitors were entering the market."  

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"Try to always think about how your customer would want your product to look, and what's important to the customer. Don't add anything except what's important to them and always validate it."  

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"Sometimes I have a really bad gut feeling about something, but I just go along. And then it slows us down a lot because of the hesitation. I just wish I had less self doubt."  

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"Question your findings and look at them in a critical way. And then maybe change direction based on your findings. That is something we should have done better."