GTM 14: Understanding the Looming Recession with Erik Kostelnik

Erik Kostelnik is the CEO and founder of Postal. He is an award-winning entrepreneur and sales leader that has founded and scaled multiple tech companies that have led to hyper revenue growth and major capital investments.Erik gives his take on the possibility of a recession by explaining indicators like the IPO traffic jam, the commercial real estate situation, and rising debt.What You Will Learn:The value of strong network (and how to build one).Reading the current economic downturn.The three most important company metrics and why you prioritize them. Highlights:(2:40) The value of your network. (How to prune and develop a strong network).(9:27) Erik’s take on the current down market/looming recession.(10:50) Why it is going to be difficult for unicorns to IPO.(14:00) Why commercial real estate leasing could be a cliff.(21:40) The experience that changed the trajectory of Erik's career.(35:33) What Erik would do different in his career.(39:39) How to attract great talent in the down marke.(42:48) The three most important company metrics. (43:02) Why you can’t sacrifice your average revenue per employee and customer acquisition cost for bad talent.(46:20) Summary of Erik’s career learnings.Guest Speaker Link:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikkostelnik Host Speaker Links:LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/Newsletter: thegtmnewsletter.substack.com/The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.