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How to win in jobs, relationships and parenthood: my 39 year journey to living life grounded, happy, inspired and successful.

“Surfers on big waves in Hawaii are often risking their life. All the skills they use are honed and incorporated to the thrill of their ride (a form of success). Surfs up!”

David Goldman, my Father

Prospect and customer engagement

• Please stand up

• Stay standing if you’ve done business outside of Belarus in 2015

• Stay standing if you are fluent in English or Spanish or Chinese

• Stay standing if you have been to China or USA or South America in 2015

• Stay standing if you’ve ever been to San Francisco, California

@MrMGoldman

My journey towards working at NASA

• 20 years learning math, science, languages, history, sports

• I started as 20 year-old intern – Making $4.75/hour

• I worked in the robotics group at NASA Ames

• I wrote the user manual for Sojourner and Pathfinder

• I built a 12 person team with $1,000,000 in funding

@MrMGoldman

• ActivIdentity (Post-IPO growth 30 -> 400 employees, acquired by HID)• Mercury (scaled $200M -> $600M Rev in 2 years; $5Billion exit: HP)• GreenBorder pivoted from B2B to B2C (acquired by Google)• ClickTale pivoted from B2B SMB to Enterprise (20->100 employees)• nanoRep scaled to Enterprise ($7K -> $100K MRR in 6 months)• Toonimo (Alpha -> raised $2.5M seed round)• CloudYourCar (Distressed with zero revenue -> scaling revenue)• voicePIN pivoted from HW/SW to SaaS (security -> ROI based sell)

@MrMGoldman

Advisor: Full-time:

My journey after NASA

The job interview

• 10 internships at NASA Ames• >800 applicants, 150 interviewed• All day interviews for all 10 positions (1996)• 4 out of 10 positions listed me as their top

candidate• The Microsoft Excel formula• Fearless answers. Build trust. Ask for the job!• The decision, friendship, deliberation

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Finding Leading Indicators for Water on Mars - 1997

• NASA spoke universal language of math, science and dreams.

• Exploring Mars for signs of Water as part of 30 year vision.

• U.S.A. Independence Day – 4th July 1997 – We landed!

• Sojourner and Pathfinder

• I was 20 years old, starting my 19 year tech career.

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Why Mars?“After Earth, Mars is the planet with the

most hospitable climate in the solar system. So hospitable that it may once have harbored primitive, bacteria-like life. Outflow channels and other geologic features provide ample evidence that billions of years ago liquid water flowed on the surface of Mars.” via https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/why.html

Pathfinder timeline – Humans to Mars

• 30-50 year vision (circa 1990): get humans to Mars

• Launched: 4th December 1996

• Landed: 4th of July 1997 on Mars’s Ares Vallis

• Mission duration: 86 days

• Ceased operations: 27th September 1997

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Pathfinder Evidence of Water - 1997

“Some of the rocks at the Mars Pathfinder site leaned against each other in a manner geologists term imbricated. It is believed strong flood waters in the past pushed the rocks around until they faced away from the flow. Some pebbles were rounded, perhaps from being tumbled in a stream. Parts of the ground are crusty, maybe due to cementing by a fluid containing minerals.[33] There was evidence of clouds and maybe fog.[33]”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_discoveries_of_water_on_Mars

The NASA mindset – In My Words

• Nothing is impossible• Build a deep understanding of the human brain, the

earth and the universe• Think completely outside-of-the-box and lead with

research rather than revenue-driven approach• Improve quality of research while lowering the costs• “Faster. Better. Cheaper.”• Innovate, innovate, innovate, then innovate more

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The technology – James Cameron• We designed a stereo-panoramic software for 3D navigation• We ran this on SGI boxes running Unix• 2D images were put into an X, Y, Z environment• Researchers and geologists had to quickly decide path of

the Sojourner rover• Fly through after Pathfinder lander opened saved the

mission, avoiding catastrophic crash

• James Cameron ran Jurassic Park animation rendering on similar SGI machine that we used at NASA Ames

• He came to interview our researchers and used technology for underwater filming of Titanic

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Success in Life

• How to win in jobs, relationships and parenthood: My 39 year journey to living life grounded, happy, inspired and successful.– Education– Career– Marriage– Relationships– Fatherhood– Social Networking– Ethics

@MrMGoldman

Prospect and customer engagement

• “You’re talking about people that aren't afraid to take risks, that try to break things so they can make them better, that have the discipline and mentality to really push things, to see a challenge as an opportunity, and don’t take no for an answer.”

• Quote about Israeli enterpreneurs. • Hugo Bieber, Chief Executive of UK Israel Business

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Call to Action and Tools

• Be an entrepreneur.• Be genuine.• Build relationships.• Contact me via Twitter, Facebook, Skype or

LinkedIn. • Case studies of startup successes attached to this

presentation.

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Contact Me!

Case Studies

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Case Studies of 90 day focus

• “To me marketing is about values. This is very complicated work, it is a very noisy world and we are not going to get a chance to get people to remember us. No company is. We have to be very clear on what we want them to know about us.” Steve Jobs, 1997 Video, 3:14 mark

• appsee (SaaS)• CloudYourCar (IoT)• voicePIN (HW/SW Security + SaaS)

@MrMGoldman

Case Study: appsee (SaaS)• Defined Value of solution: Created pricing based on value

(conversion, engagement, user experience, brand image)

• Revenue goals: Targeted mix of Enterprise, mid-market and small business (path towards acquiring customers from complex sales cycles to self-service sale)

• Sales cycle: Targeted 90 day sales cycle for enterprise and built marketing plan and sales tools towards that. Used Salesforce CRM.

• Current customers: Built plan on how to get stickiness with customers, finding the up-sell by quantifying value and speaking to customers instead of just email/self-service.

@MrMGoldman

Case Study: appsee (SaaS)

• Investment goals: Took initial goal of $150K seed round and put on hold for three months to get metric to drive a higher valuation.

• Result: – Consistent revenue wins drove investment of $750K

(5x higher at same valuation). – Grew business from 2 people to 6 (within 90 days). – Scaled internationally. – Revenue gave additional budget to grow from 6 to 10.– The best in-app analytics solution globally.

@MrMGoldman

Case study: CloudYourCar (IoT)

• “We have not kept up with innovations in our distribution….We’ve got anywhere from 2-3 months of inventory in our manufacturing supplier pipeline and about an equal amount in our distribution channel pipeline….We are going to get very simple, taking inventory out of the pipeline, let the customer tell us what they want and respond super fast.” Steve Jobs, 1997 video, 2:04 mark

@MrMGoldman

Case study: CloudYourCar (IoT)• Challenge: Bled through investment funny with almost no revenue.

• Focus: Monetize existing inventory through direct and channel sell. Use that money to invest back into sales, marketing and customer service. Put R&D on hold.

• Geography shift: Went from focusing on only Polish market to deciding to go after Western Europe, Australia and USA.

• Cost base: Outsource manufacturing and inventory to minimize costs and increase speed of fulfillment.

@MrMGoldman

Case study: CloudYourCar (IoT)• Product quality: Sell, sell, sell and let customers tell you what is

wrong with the product and then innovate more.

• Investors: Kick them where it hurts, demand their support.

• Result:– Averted bankruptcy or major follow-on investment;– Operated the company lean (3 people instead of 12);– Drove contracts, including distributors, to sell through

inventory;– Outsourced hardware dev’t and manufacturing;– Employees in Spain, Ukraine, Philippines and Poland;– Everything is run in English.

@MrMGoldman

Case study: nanoRep@MrMGoldman

Case study: nanoRep (SaaS)

• Elevate the value proposition and integrate into Google Analytics to show conversion uplift. Track cost deflection in customer service center.

• Focus on engaging current customers (drive ASP from $100 MRR to $900 MRR)

• Drive new product release to drive up-sell in existing customers and value-driven new business (ASP of new deals $3,000 MRR)

@MrMGoldman

Case study: nanoRep (SaaS)

• Put 30% of effort into channel: Engage 100 members of LivePerson to train them and drive 30 day sales cycles in deals through channel.

• Result: – 50% of customer base moved to $900 plan– 25% moved to $2,500 plan or higher– 25% of revenue was from channel partner– New product release drove enterprise sale and drove

urgency.

@MrMGoldman

Case study: voicePIN (HW/SW)• “…we actually got rid of 70% of the stuff in the product

roadmap…you will see the product line get much simpler and you’re going to see the product line get much better.” Steve Jobs, Video, 1997, 1:05 mark

• Focus: Took four different products and decided to have only one product to promote/sell/innovate (voicePIN biometrics)

• Scalability of revenues: Shifted most of effort to SaaS to compress sales cycle, increase profit margins, grow internationally without needing on-premise engineers and drive higher company valuation.

@MrMGoldman

Case study: voicePIN (HW/SW)• Align team: Shift existing team (25 people) from project-based

implementations to SaaS, write job descriptions, recruit the right people, invest in Salesforce CRM and best-in-breed processes.

• Result: – Got international sales pipeline from UK and USA;– Confidence from investors to invest more money;– Traction from international press (Techcrunch, Finovate);– Company re-engineered from a project to a product business;– Strong sales pipeline in direct and channel.

@MrMGoldman