256: From Side Project to Millions in Revenue - with Chase Summers

EPISODE SUMMARY
Every successful megacorporation that has ever existed was once small. We've all heard of the stories of a software startup founder that started their business in their parent's garage, or created it while still in college. And so with the right process and mindset, know that your company can be just as successful.

Dataedo Director of Customer Operations Chase Summers shares his experience in helping Dataedo grow from a side project to the profitable company that it currently is. He also talks about his transition from sales rep to a director with Host and B2B SaaS Sales Coach Matt Wolach. Watch and get ready to welcome growth for both yourself and your company!

PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE

Podcast: Scale your SaaS with Matt Wolach

Episode: Episode No. 256, "From Side Project to Millions in Revenue - with Chase Summers"

Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS sales coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor

Guest: Chase Summers, Director of Customer Operations at Dataedo


TOP TIPS FROM THE EPISODE

• Solicit and Implement Customer Feedback
• Identify the Market Gap
• Don't Take Yourself So Seriously
• Provide Autonomy But Do Not Neglect
• Be Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable
• Be More Interested Than Interesting

EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS

• Fewer Variables Equals Faster Customer Decision
• More Failure Equals Clearer Vision
• A Leader's Response to Failure Matters

TOP QUOTES

Chase Summers

[14:33] "My whole mantra with management is autonomy without neglect."

[15:12] "You can be an empathetic person but still be a really good leader. And so that's something that I've worked on is leading the people and giving them feedback at the same time, and being empathetic but also challenging."

[21:55] "Just learn to be interested and stop thinking that you’re interesting because chances are you're not."

Matt Wolach

[16:54] "You just don't do as well when you're under stress. And so I love the idea of just, breathe, take a step back. Don't take yourself seriously because it can really help you perform better."

LEARN MORE

To learn more about Chase Summers and Dataedo, visit: 

https://dataedo.com/

You can also find Chase Summers on LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chasesummers/

For more about how host Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com/

Get even more tips by following Matt elsewhere:

• Sales Tips
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Instagram

Transcript

Matt Wolach: 0:10

You know, I bet you're wondering how do you take a side project and turn it into a multimillion dollar company? Well, that's exactly what Dataedo did. And Chase summers, he came on the podcast to share that story and talk about what they did exactly. Now, he wasn't the founder, but he was the first sales hire. And he was the one who actually really made that growth start to take off, it's been exponential. Since he started, he walked through exactly how they were able to get their ACV, their annual contract value up their average price, their average revenue per customer went from $300 to$10,000. I bet that's a increase that you might like to see, he walked through a lot of very interesting things about how his role has changed from being sales rep to director to now running the entire customer side of the operation. And I think it's a lot of good perspective and experience that you can get a lot out of, so definitely check this episode out.

Intro/ Outro: 1:02

Welcome to Scale Your SaaS, the podcast that gives you proven techniques and formulas for boosting your revenue and achieving your dream exit brought to you by a guy who's done just that multiple times. Here's your host, Matt Wolach.

Matt Wolach: 1:18

Welcome to Scale Your SaaS. Super excited to have you here. Thank you very much for coming. Thanks for watching. If you're on YouTube, thanks for listening. If you're out on a podcast network, we are here to focus on growing your company so you can get more leads, you can close more deals, and you can scale your team achieving that big exit you're hoping for. And I'm really delighted to have a friend of mine here with me. I'd like you to meet Chase Summers. Chase, how're you doing?

Chase Summers: 1:43

I'm good. How are you doing really well.

Matt Wolach: 1:45

So Chase and I met two and a half three years ago,

Chase Summers: 1:45

So originally Dataeto was created in Poland by somewhere in there, I don't know it's been a while we actually connected on LinkedIn. And I think he'll he'll be able to a group of developers who initially created as a side tell some of his story coming up. So I don't want to step on any toes. But let me make sure that everybody knows who you are Chase because you've got a lot of awesome background. So Chase, project. So a data at that point data dictionary to document he's the Director of Customer operations at Dataedo did he was a lightweight data cataloging tool is built to serve a single source of truth about your data, they're solving a lot of really their databases, and to use internally to help themselves as amazing problems. And the growth that they've had recently has been phenomenal. Much of it, thanks to chase, and we're gonna get dive into that a little bit. But Chase has gone from a sales they navigated their business. And so over the years, they rep to head of sales to director and he's now running everything about the customer operations over there at the company. And so he has seen the growth and the process around growth from slowly started to roll data, you know, out to the broader market. all angles. And he's been involved with it along many steps. So we're gonna kind of talk to him about his journey and what has happened and a lot about what has changed for him So they initially put it off as a self service software. So come over that time. But once again, Chase, thanks for coming on the Yeah, it's awesome to be here. Man. I know, show. we've had a lot of conversations over the years. And you know, you've been a big part of my growth. And it's been cool to have you along the ride and getting to see what we've been in trial the tool by and if you'd like it, if you have building. But also, you know, my personal growth and how it's been here with the Well, thank you very much. questions, I had a little bit of a support team, nothing too crazy. They did that for six, seven years. And then I came in just over three years ago. It was the first sales hire and really started to say, Okay, there's a lot of potential here, what can we do to scale it out. And so since then, we've been able to go much more towards the mid level market. We've taken our average sale from around$300 to now sit around 10,000 So quite the change and different customer base different processes, end to end, but it's been an awesome ride. I know our CEO and founder killed her get her caught and often those of you on LinkedIn. He does all the data cartoons. You may have already seen him, but he's set a fantastic time. nation for someone like me to step into and and take the reins as we've grown into a more robust organization.

Matt Wolach: 5:07

I love it What a story that's been. And by the way, Piotr, if you don't follow him, definitely go follow him. For everybody out there. He puts a lot of fun stuff out on on LinkedIn. But what incredible results, he went from $300, average sale to $10,000. And I know there's a lot of people out there who want to grow their average deal size, what we call wallet share, or ACV. Some people call it or ARPA, lots of different names for it. What did you guys do chase to grow that average deal size? I mean, that is such a jump, but I know that it wasn't overnight. But what were some of the steps you took,

Chase Summers: 5:44

the first thing was it was incremental. Um, one thing that I have to say before going into what we've done to scale out the sell side, the customer side is you just have a fantastic product team who is very diligent with the way that they create the product, very intentional with creating the product in a way that it allows my team to then carry out, you know, our vision, a few things that we've done to navigate that is we've gotten really close to our customers. So we listen to a lot of the feedback that they have, we're constantly through customer success, really getting to meet within and and have an inside look at what they're doing, what they're willing to spend, what they have problems with outside what we currently do. So we can grow that way from an internal sales process. One of the biggest things that I think helped us get to this point was, when I came in as the first sales hire, I spent the first almost two years doing full cycle by myself, which was crazy, to say the least. But I think it really gave me a vision for the potential for Dave Ito. And, you know, really being able to take us to that mid level or enterprise market, depending on how you look at it. So as I was able to do that I was noticing trends of some of these decisions are too easy. So as we develop the product, as we were closing deals I was seeing, you don't always want it to be a no brainer. You want there needs to be a healthy amount of fall off, or else you're too cheap, or you're over providing value. And so what we learned was there was a lot of wiggle room in the market, when it came to deciding how to increase prices or increase our market change our market. We also looked at competitors. So we understood there was a big gap in the market. If we were $300. We had some competitors who were around their same prices, significantly less functionality. And then the next level of competitors were over $100,000. So obviously, there's a lot of wiggle room there.

Matt Wolach: 7:34

Yeah, so it sounds like you identified that there was a gap for that kind of mid market. Right? I'm and I say all this, I think many of you know, Chase is a client of mine. So I've kind of been part of the journey and watch them do all this as it's been happening. But there was a gap there in the middle, like you had the low end, you had the really high end. But you guys saw that opportunity.

Chase Summers: 7:53

Yeah, I think you have to take advantage of it. Again, it was very incremental. So it was trial and error, we would play around with even the way that we would price things, whether it was by user unlimited users. And what we found was, the fewer decisions you have to make a customer make, the better, they're going to follow the whole process. And so we found with our market who is a very technical market, and typically competitors in this space, are either very private with their pricing. So they don't show it on the website. They don't tell anything about it. Or they go the opposite route was making it so complex. So what we did is we first made incredibly transparent pricing, we said, Here's what we've got, if you like it, come get it. And it was easier for people to make that analysis, do comparisons, and then tap with that way. Also, you didn't have to jump through hoops to understand what we provide. And again, we simplified it over time. So we gave a set price that was very visible for them and understand without variable costs. Because with a lot of customers in that mid level market, they're thinking about their budget, they're thinking where they can squeeze things in. And if their price is changing from year to year, it's a little bit worrisome to them. And so we gave them a grandfathered price. That was a set price, there's no variable for support, there's no variable for the amount that you use, the product is solely based on name user. And we found a lot of success by doing that.

Matt Wolach: 9:13

That's phenomenal. I know that's something that a lot of people are trying to do. I also liked that you said that you were the one doing all of this, you were the one driving leads you were the one following up with these leads you were the one talking to them in the early schedule and pushing them through you were the one closing them and following up lots of lots of pieces of the process that you were a part of. But I love that you said that it gave you a chance to learn it all and really have a good understanding of it. Right?

Chase Summers: 9:39

A lot of failures, too, right? I made a ton of mistakes as I was kind of building this out. And I had a fantastic team internally to lean on who, you know, helped me with resources, definitely because we provided very technical software. And to be honest, I didn't have a technical background. So I had no idea what I was doing to the sales process. I understood what we can do there. But you know, I had a great group of what you could call sales in 10 years to come in and teach me to, that I can leverage in meetings with customers and make me sound way smarter than I actually was. So what is an awesome team backing me there. But yeah, as far as getting my hands dirty with the tool, and with the customers and full sales cycle, it was a lot of failing. And it was awesome that I was able to do that, because I could kind of put the puzzle pieces together and build up that vision. So again, for those two years, I was able to understand what discovery questions didn't work, what point in a demo, people zoned out and didn't want to hear from you. When we initially or when I joined, did you we obviously didn't have a demo process. So there wasn't anything there. So going from a self service software, where people, especially technical customers don't really like to talk to people to begin with, we had to learn how to tailor our demo or discovery, even how we approach procurement to our customers, because technical audiences or technical customers aren't the best internal selling. So even though we had to develop our sales materials, our communication, having an email so they could have something to hand off to their boss and their manager, we really had to take a lot of things into account. And I was very fortunate to be in a position that I could build all of that out at least a foundation. And when I was ready to hire people, they can step in and take it to the moon. And I've had a lot of success with the people that are hired so far.

Matt Wolach: 11:24

I love that. And by the way, everybody out there chases super badass, he's a badass, he's saying everybody else had a big effort, he chases awesome, trust me, he's so good. Yes, there's an awesome team there. And everybody's good. But really, he's he's done a lot of great work. But I do want to talk about that, since you just kind of alluded to that you were the sales rep. But then you started to hire a team. And so now you became head of sales, and then director of customer operations. So how has your day to day changed during this time, all these different transitions, what has changed for you?

Chase Summers: 11:57

Everything, the way that I have to make decisions, the way that my thought process works, one of the biggest things that that I'm happy that I was able to be a part of this, I my mentality of management is I'll never ask someone to do something that I want to do. And so having those core years where I just really was able to do everything with ego. Now, as I hire people, I know how to coach them, how to mentor them, how to tell them watch out for pitfalls. And so my day to day did go very quickly from boots on the ground, doing things and hiring people training them, teaching them. And then in those moments, I turned into the sales engineer, right, so I was in the meetings with them, helping guide them. And, you know, as that transition occurred, I had to grow management skills, and I had to be mentored. And, you know, fortunately not I have people like you have an incredible HR mentor of mine who really guided me through that transition from player to coach and did role plays, which I hate role playing. I think a lot of people could probably relate to that. But you know, getting uncomfortable learning, I started reading books, which is something I've never done in my life. But I understand that there was a lot of growth that had to happen there. And one of the biggest fears that I had in my transition from player to coach was I was worried. And once I got to the coach part, I wouldn't feel as fulfilled, right? I'm not closing deals myself anymore, I'm a little more hands off meeting customers as much. But what I found is, is so much more fulfilling for me, because now I get to teach people how to fish, you know, and then they go do it, and then they're able to, in my case, I'm gonna do it better than I think, you know, our team members can run demos do it better than I do, the people who are doing the outreach and the personalizations. And some of the top of the funnel work and doing it more efficiently and better than I do the same with especially sales operations. That's a weakness of mine to stay organized. So sales operations definitely doesn't matter. So being able to play a role in their careers and helping them to develop and, and again, just excel deed on the way that they have has been great. And it's a transition that hasn't been an easy one. I felt a lot, especially with some of my first hires. Just, you know, not understanding how to transition people in this role. Not sure how to find the right people, we're not sure. You know, being too quick to hire people. We're rushing the hiring process. And there's a lot of lessons that were learned and I'm so much better for it. But that transition has been a wonderful growth for sure.

Matt Wolach: 14:22

Yeah, I think that's just it growth, when I've made the same transition going from sales rep to manager to director to VP and then I was president and CEO. And so I've got I've done it all. So I'm just a bit older than Chase about twice as old probably. But it's it's it's definitely a shift in your day to day and it's something that some people aren't able to do but the ones who are doing it successfully the ones who like you said have been focused on growth you started reading you took on mentors you you made sure to put in the effort in order to get to that level in order to become that Next roll whatever it was that was needed. And so I remember when you started hiring people, and you needed to learn how to hire, how to train, what to tell them, how to take what's in your brain and put it in there. And there's some challenges there. What were some of the biggest challenges that you faced making that transition?

Chase Summers: 15:18

I think one thing for me is delegation. I love doing right. I love building but I also love doing. So making sure that I delegated appropriately. And also, my whole mantra with management is autonomy without neglect, one of the biggest things I struggled with early in my management was, I would be very good at giving people autonomy and empowering people to go and do things. But I also didn't give them as direct a feedback as they needed or so almost like the opposite of a micromanager, to where I was almost backing off people too much. And, you know, fortunately, I have very impressionable and very growth minded people on my team. And so they want that mentorship, they want the feedback, they want to be challenged. And I think once I realized that it took me to a new level of management where I can give pen again, there's a book called Radical candor, that showed me how you can be an empathetic person, but still, like really good leader. And so that's something that I've worked on is leading the people and giving them feedback at the same time and being empathetic, but also challenging. And it's been something that, you know, I know that my team is better for.

Matt Wolach: 16:25

It's super awesome. And what does that rule that you have behind you, for everybody who's listening on the podcast, he's got this thing behind, it says, what is that?

Chase Summers: 16:32

So rule number six. It's something that I think I stumbled on on LinkedIn one day, and it was as I was building out my team, and I was in this point in my career to where I feel a lot of pressure at all times. And I knew a lot of people who have found success in whatever portion of life you're in, you know, it gets stressful, because you take a lot of prime mover can do. And it was around the time that I was hiring, growing that team and really developing the culture that we have that they do. And I found this to where it rule number six means don't take yourself so damn seriously. And it's something that I remind myself daily are my my teammates up daily. But at the end of the day, we're data cataloging software, we're able to help organizations to manage their data to empower data governance, but we're not like it's not life or death. So don't take it. So seriously, let's have fun along the way. If we lose a deal, it's not the end of the world. And so again, that's something that that resonates with me and I preach to my team is still taking so seriously,

Matt Wolach: 17:30

I think it's super important to remind ourselves of that, because we do have a lot of requirements and stresses and needs. And if we can do that we operate better. And I, I played a lot of sports growing up, I still play golf, and if you stress out about it, and if you if you get too tight about it, you perform worse. And the same thing happens in business or in sales, you just don't do as well when you're under stress. And so I love the idea of just, you know, pre take a step back, don't take yourself seriously, because it can really help you perform better. I'm sure it's helped you and your team.

Chase Summers: 18:00

That's one thing, you know, as I've built the team, and, you know, again, I've been in the position where I've done a lot of the work that they've done, but now also manage support, manage customer success. So it's especially on sales to where there's a lot of things that that my team members are doing that I've never had the ability to do, or I've never had the time to do it. I've never been in that role. And so this is something that I say to them to have, you know, being able to constantly growing, but doing it in a way to where we're not taking it too seriously. Mental health is something that we really preach a lot in our team. And we really want to maintain a very authentic and genuine environment. And that's a big part of this nothing substitution. So you know, whether it is getting grace and failure is something that I talk about a lot I've seen with my team, responding to failure is, as a leader is such a important thing in such a think, under it's just not realized the impact it can have. Because when my team fails, and they're not recommended their you know, Coach, or empowered based off of that, and we discussed what they learned, and we discuss what they can do better next time. They're not in the future scared to come to me and say, Hey, I screwed up. Because the fact of the matter is, I tell them all, every mistake that they can make, I've probably done it and probably worse. And so as long as we're growing from those and realizing what we can take away from it and grow as an organization, that trial and error I think is why we are ahead of our competitors in a lot of ways. It's because we're not scared to test things and figure it out and make mistakes.

Matt Wolach: 19:32

I think that's awesome, super strong way to go through about it. I want to ask, what do you look for in salespeople? You've grown this team, you've done a good job of getting the right people I know that there were some challenges in part of that it wasn't always perfect. What do you what are you looking for when you're trying to grow your team?

Chase Summers: 19:52

Number one is authenticity. I want to feel like I'm speaking to a person. This translates to sales. I don't I don't want a PR firm in an interview like I want to talk to a person I want to understand like who you are. Secondly, I want people who are going to ask questions, who are going to come in and again, being a very technical software, you have to ask questions. So I need to know that you're going to be comfortable being uncomfortable, and being able to, you know, understand what you don't know, and then communicate it so I can help. And then lastly, is the ability to do uncomfortable. I think that is something in sales that is so powerful is hiring someone who is not scared to do uncomfortable work. And I think that that summarizes whether you're an SDR or an account executive or account manager, There are meanings that are always going to be uncomfortable. And it's just a fact of what we're dealing with.

Matt Wolach: 20:50

No doubt, no doubt at all. So if you had to kind of summarize, and I think your perspective is fantastic being the first sales, hire the first North American hire for your company, and kind of growing into a leader, you kind of have an entrepreneurial mindset and perspective because of that. And so I think your perspective can be viewed from founders because you're like a founder founders need to sell, and also sales reps who want to follow the same path that that you have gone through. So what tips would you give to others who are just kind of starting their journey and looking for similar growth patterns?

Chase Summers: 21:28

Yes, a piece of advice that was given to me and I try to pass it along to anyone I can, no matter what point career is learned to be more interested than interesting. I struggled with this early in my career, I wanted to hear somebody fake it till you make it people you have so many people who are young and ambitious. And LinkedIn is a great example, right? Everybody's out there telling you how great you are, or whatever. And I think one thing that I grew to master in my career is to be more interested than interesting. And I think that's even Matt, how we met was going to you or people like you and saying, hey, you know, here's where I'm at, in my career. Here's where I'm at, in my, you know, profession in my life, you know, what would you tell yourself in a similar position, or what I used to say, especially when I was around 20 to 22, is I would just shoot so many cold LinkedIn messages and say, What would you tell your 22 year old self, and I still do this from time to time because I'm constantly growing and constantly learning, and I don't know it all. So I try to stay just constantly interested. And you know, humility is a big thing for me. And I know that I will have it all figured out. I know that I'm constantly learning. And so at the end of the day, remind myself that I'm not the interesting people sold, billion dollar companies and and so much more so than an eight. There's always someone you can be learning from. So especially to the people starting out in software, sales, sales, or really any career just learn to be interested and stop thinking you're that interesting, because chances are, you're not

Matt Wolach: 22:59

very true. I think that is a phenomenal mantra. And it's something I want to be better at as well. Well, Chase, this has been great, really awesome, and of you to come in and share your story. And I think it's very powerful. Like I said, a lot of people can get a lot out of it. So how can people learn more about you and data, you know,

Chase Summers: 23:15

so I post a lot on LinkedIn, I've grown to really enjoy kind of sharing my story and things that I've learned and even the stories of others and just things that people have learned throughout the past mentorships a big thing for me, so my LinkedIn is a great way to access me as far as they do on the sterben site. Even if you just want to explore, check out the product, learn about our core values of the company. And that's a great place to do it. I'm always open I think I'm very big on having conversations just to meet people to learn about them. I don't think every conversation has to have an agenda. So if anyone wants to grab coffee, virtual coffee catch up, just ask me questions, ask me a mindset or advice on something and vice versa. I just love collaborating and getting to know people. So door's always open for that.

Matt Wolach: 23:59

That's awesome. And I know that he is genuine about that. So definitely reach out. Chase, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.

Chase Summers: 24:06

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Matt Wolach: 24:08

You're welcome and everybody else out there. Thank you for being here. Thanks for watching. If you're on YouTube, thanks for listening on the network of podcasts. If you want to make sure you don't miss out on any other amazing leaders like Chase coming up, definitely subscribe to the show. That way, you're gonna get all of the best advice and guidance that you can handle. And you won't want to miss that. Thank you for coming, and we will see you next time. Take care.

Intro/ Outro: 24:31

Thanks for listening to Scale Your SaaS for more help on finding great leads and closing more deals go to Mattwolach.com