HockeyStack

Two years ago I was a college dropout making $500/mo living with my parents in Istanbul, Turkey. Today, the startup I co-founded with my best friend Buğra Gündüz put up billboards all over San Francisco. I’m excited to share that October was HockeyStack’s best month ever! Getting close to our first $XXM quarter, and we added 15 people to the team. I’m extremely proud of everyone on our team - there is an insane push on new product development, pipeline, and revenue. We are very close to a breakthrough in our space. And I thought seeing HockeyStack everywhere in SF would be the perfect way to celebrate the year. Here’s how it happened: I made a post about a sticker on our office building that led to many people talking about it. The post went semi-viral on LinkedIn, and I got a DM from Charlie Riley about doing the same thing at scale using billboards. It was the first time I’ve heard about OneScreen. I did a ton of research online, talked to their team and customers, and we went live. It moved quickly! But this is not just another marketing campaign... It’s a testament to how far we have come. Ever since I left my family and friends behind and moved to SF for YC, it’s been my dream to plant our flag in the city where most of the companies I look up to were born. (OpenAI, Rippling, Airbnb, and pretty much all other YC unicorns) Billboards are now live on both sides of 101 highway, 3rd street, South SF, all bus stations, and more. (Send me pics if you see them!) I’ll share the results, and how I am tracking them soon!

🔥🔥 NEW HIRE FRIDAY 🔥 🔥 We're so happy to welcome Jackson Stevens to our GTM team! Some fun facts about Jackson: Outside of work, I am: - a big golfer - a reigning fantasy football champion - a contestant on Wheel of Fortune HE'D LIKE TO SOLVE THE COLD CALL PUZZLE!! Welcome, Jackson!

“We hit all of our revenue targets with 50% less paid spend.” We have been working directly with Chris Wood (Director of Demand Gen) and the ActiveCampaign team for over a year. Chris told Emir Atli all about it a few months ago... ActiveCampaign’s marketing team is very open to testing new ideas. Whenever we did a monthly/quarterly review and potential ways to improve, they never said “We have been doing this in X way and will stick to it” Sometimes we failed, but ultimately we found a ton of new ways to be more efficient and drive qualified pipeline in a crowded category. In this video, Chris told Emir why they switched from an internal build to HockeyStack and the 5+ key decisions made with HockeyStack.

“SEO is dead”. I hear this every week. I was curious about SEO in 2024, so I reached out to Gaetano Nino DiNardi. 2 months in, we are decreasing Google Ads costs weekly. SEO was so hot a few years ago. Publish 100 pages a month, get to the first page, and revenue. Now, it’s much harder. Google is stricter. And people love to say SEO is dead. Well, Gaetano proves this is far from the truth (and we have the data to prove it). He is joining me for our next webinar next week Tuesday. Here is the link to register: https://lnkd.in/dJ8eZvnX

Knees were weak, palms were sweaty. Sam Kuehnle just reminded us of the days before HockeyStack when VPs of Marketing would scramble to answer a CEO ping that looks like this 👋 We have our board meeting in 2 days. Send me a slide with what's working + anything they need to know. Here's what an answer would look like using HockeyStack, based on Sam's KPIs and metrics for pipeline health. Link to the Template (which you can recreate with or without HockeyStack) in comments below.

Point solutions are going the way of the Dodo Bird.  I’ve talked to multiple Founders recently who are all fixated on building “platforms” way earlier in their life cycle than one would assume. Why? Because building software has become easier over the last few years (in no small part thanks to AI). And as a consequence the number of point solutions and software companies has EXPLODED. For any given category, there are now dozens of competitors and more coming every day. The answer, according to the Founders I’ve talked to, is to build a platform from the very beginning. Many are taking inspiration from the incredible work that Parker Conrad has done at Rippling. If you could build a multi-product company from the very beginning, you have a chance for differentiation and you have a chance to solve a larger more complicated problem for a buyer that is focused on solutions not features, especially now. One buyer in particular is struggling with multiple integrations and point solutions - the CMO. CMOs are under siege trying to build pipeline and brand all with the right amount of attribution and, most of the time, are forced to either spend millions for bloated legacy platforms or cobble together integrations and solutions across dozens of vendors. That's why one company I’m particularly excited about is HockeyStack. They started by solving one of the biggest problems in marketing: attribution, got to product-market fit with 150+ customers in a year, and are now focused on rapid expansion with 3 new products: ABM, warm outbound, and an AI agent. Any one of these solutions might be good in isolation. But the intentional early integration of multiple products into a new marketing platform, particularly so early in their development, is both inspiring and an example of startups leveraging the low cost of software development to go bigger earlier and work to provide a comprehensive integrated solution to CMOs that reduces the pain of 10 million point solutions. I’m excited to partner with Emir Atli and the team as they work to help CMOs drive growth in a world where every dollar is scrutinized and everyone is looking for efficiency. Efficiency starts with understanding the value of every dollar.  HockeyStack solved that problem first. The next obvious step once you know the value of every dollar is to instantly deploy those dollars to drive efficient growth and that’s where they’re going next. The vision is a comprehensive all-in-one platform that instantly solves the most important pain points for a CMO in seconds and helps every CMO drive better growth for their company. That’s good for companies and great for CMOs.

I analyzed the branded search growth of 2,700 software companies to discover the 🔥 hottest trending startups in tech. These are all companies that have seen HUGE increases in search volume for their brand name over the past 12 months. Growing organic traffic to a website is great, but growing organic demand for your brand name? That's a whole other beast. In an era where Google seems to care MUCH more about "brand demand" (are people searching for your brand? Are they linking to your branded properties?), this is the type of analysis that will become more and more useful. You can run this analysis yourself in Ahrefs—check out the article that accompanies this to learn how (and P.S, we have more features to help with "brand analysis" coming soon 👀 ) Huge congrats to the 50 companies featured here—you know how to build a brand!

When I went through YC I spoke with 20 founders of $1B+ startups (i.e. AirBnB, DoorDash, Rippling). Here are 3 qualities they all had in common: 1. Relentlessly Resourceful Every leader (but especially founders) goes through insane challenges every day. No matter the company, it's always more bad news than good news. You need to handle a ton of stress, and the only way to continue is to be “Relentlessly Resourceful”. It’s more than not giving up. It’s always having a reason to keep pushing as hard as possible, being a RESOURCE for others around you, AND not giving up. This is what Paul Graham (Founder of YC) says: “If I were running a startup, this would be the phrase I'd tape to the mirror. 'Make something people want' is the destination, but 'Be relentlessly resourceful' is how you get there.” 2. Naughtiness YC has this question in their application: "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage." Sam Altman (founder of OpenAI and YC Alumnus) says this question is the most helpful one in the application to find the best founders. According to YC founder Paul Graham, YC is looking for founders who are willing to break rules (that aren't criminal!) to get to where they need to be. The context might be different for each company. For Uber it was city ordinances which in the end got changed. AirBnb bypassed Licensing and Zoning rules. This is also something that I am trying to identify in people I am hiring. Who's willing to break the current system? Who's willing to find the angle? 3. Friendship It’s really hard to build a company by yourself. The biggest reason why HockeyStack works so well is it is built on a foundation of friendship among Buğra Gündüz, Arda, and I. This also spreads to the entire company - most people are friends outside work. Not just "work friends", but true friendship. Remember: It’s easier and more fun to build with your friends. TAKEAWAY These things not only make a great YC startup. But can make any team/role in life successful. Nothing is impossible if you have relentlessly resourceful people who are good friends and looking to bend the rules of the world.

Want some expert advice on your content strategy for 2025? Emir will be hosting the one and only Gaetano Nino DiNardi next week to talk about how to build a content strategy that: - supports pipeline - balances quick wins with the long term - adds value without falling into the trap of gating to claim the MQLs Reg here and tune in on Nov 19 👉 https://lnkd.in/g9pjv4S8

Just spent 2 months meeting with Partners at Silicon Valley's top 15 VC firms. Here's the brutal truth about what's actually getting funded in 2024 (and no, adding 'AI' to your pitch deck won't save you): 1. Nobody wants to invest in Martech There is literally no VC that wants to invest in Martech right now. At least not without buying half of your company. Martech is getting highly competitive, and everyone is copying each other as it’s getting less expensive to build to tech, and martech products are GENERALLY “easier” to build. High risk, low reward, and less exciting for VCs right now. 2. Investment in non-AI tech is close to 0 It started as a meme on Twitter, but now it’s a reality. If you are not an AI company, you will probably not get funded. But VCs are getting WAY more educated on the market. They can spot the “fake” AI bolted on just to increase a company’s valuation. Real applications of enterprise AI are really HOT right now. 3. They want Infrastructure & Multi-product VCs are investing in infrastructure companies and multi-product companies. If your company is the core infrastructure for any team/department, you’ll win in this market. You’ll get less churn, higher ACV, and more cross-sell. One of the best examples is Rippling. All of their products exist in the market, and some of their competitors have better products. But collectively 30+ Rippling products work better TOGETHER. And form the core infrastructure for teams. — I’m very optimistic about the SaaS & VC market. Things are moving faster, more companies are hiring, and investment is increasing YoY. But if you want VC funding, this is what they're looking for.