#238 - Aleks Gollu, CEO of 11Sight - on creating a unicorn business

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to reduce the distance between customers and businesses to one click, convert 3x more qualified leads and boost sales team results. My guest is Aleks Gollu, CEO of 11Sight.Aleks is a veteran of the Bay-Area venture/angel start-up eco-system with two positive exits working on his third. He's highly experienced in automated highways, telecommunications - especially real-time video, and supply chains. Aleks holds a B.S. degree from MIT and an M.S. and Ph.D. degree from UC Berkeley. He has also been granted 8 patents.Over time, he built a passion for applying bleeding-edge software and system technologies to neglected or unnoticed complex business problems in diverse industries. And in his role as an entrepreneur and lecturer at the UC Berkeley Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, he uncovered how SaaS companies can shorten sales processes from 10 days to 15 minutes.That became the founding idea behind his latest company: 11Sight. Their motto: "All it should take is 1 click"And this inspired me, and hence I invited Aleks to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the B2B Sales process - especially when buying decisions take less than 30 days. Aleks shares his vision of how to dramatically shorten sales processes while increasing conversation. He elaborates on the principles he follows to build a unicorn business, how to avoid failure, and how to design the business to minimize dilution of ownership.Here is one of his quotes:The pandemic made everybody realize you need to be present online. And today, we are working on educating people that you can't just put unnecessary friction on customers who are trying to call you because they are qualified, especially in b2b. Nobody calls a business just to have a conversation. It's like, I have a problem, I did my homework, and you are a good candidate as a solution. But will you talk to me? And if you don't, then you lose that customer?During this interview, you will learn four things:How optimizing your SaaS for the needs of your customer's customers can take impact to the next levelWhy you should always be looking at the value you're creating for your customers and in particular how they perceive that valueHow to leverage data across your solution to help your customers create a flywheel of value that encourages them to do more and more.The critical filters you have to pass through to set out on your start-up journeyFor more information about the guest from this week:Aleks GolluWebsite: 11sight