Benjamin Jones’ Post

Pardon me if this smells like a TED Talk, but my goodness do I love to build. Throughout my quiet little sales career, I have had the pleasure of coaching, selling, creating, and leading at multiple stations. And of course, not necessarily in that order. That is not how growth works. At Mobile reCell, I have had the pleasure of performing each of those functions in sequence. It has been surreal. Almost three years ago to the week, I joined a founder-led sales org with only a handful of employees. At the time, MRC had yet to hire a sales human let alone a sales leader. The stars aligned, and we've built so much since then. 2023 was a record revenue year for the business (several times over), leading up to our acquisition by Apkudo. To say this was a team effort would be underselling the reality. This team stepped outside of its comfort zone too many times to count. We made plenty of concessions to build company success. Being "tip of the spear" can be scary in the dark. Typically is. Kudos to the Mobile reCell sales team (Matt Duncan, Rachael Youngman, Chris Newman) for developing night vision. We could not have done that without our marketing counterparts. Christina Vawter, Ryan Simmons, Kaitlyn McKamey, and Jada D.. Thank you very much. And thank you to the Mobile reCell team for supporting the effort given the interdependence of our functional departments. Exits & acquisitions are potent moments of reflection. In this moment we look back on multiple years of effort, sacrifice, and hopefully success. It's not just "end of year" thinking. It's end of years... To-date, I have had many roles. And in each of those I have enjoyed building: Building trust with partners, buyers and teammates. Building a principle-based book of business. Building teams. Building GTM orgs. Even building bridges to overcome the emotional roller coaster that can be sales. If we are building, we are growing. Congrats to the Mobile reCell and Apkudo teams for what they have built, respectively. Excited to receive my new Apkudo quarter-zip fleece. I can't wait to see what is built next!

💡 Shutting Down TribeScale 💡 But, whyyy? 🤔 Entrepreneurship is full of contradictions: “Never give up” vs. “Pivot and kill ideas fast.” And there’s no formula for finding that balance - it’s something you sense, often through experience. 🎢 So, why did we decide to shut down TribeScale? Honestly, it was a gut feeling. not a rational decision. When we started pivoting, then repivoting—trying different angles, searching for a lifeline to save the business, we thought we were progressing. But in truth, we weren’t looking for a valuable solution anymore, just a way to “save our baby.” The fear of failure clouded our judgment. 😓 So, we listened to our hearts and decided to let go. We closed the venture, threw away the business cards, flyers, and everything we had built, and opened a new, blank journal. 📖✨ We didn’t know exactly where we were headed, and we waited. It was a great test of trust. In ourselves, in the partnership and in the universe. 🌱💫 Looking back, it was the best decision. It freed our minds and hearts, allowing us to grow and start fresh. Lesson learned: "Never give up because of fear or others' opinions. But let go when your instinct tells you it’s time to move on. Everything will be fine. Just trust." 🚀

Caught up with Tristin recently. This guy's going places. Sharp mind, killer motivation - the right mix for success. We dug into what he's building at Shopgenie. Their growth? Impressive, unreal, off the charts. They're exploding. Tristin's leading the Product team and kicking ass. Heads up, product folks - he might be on the hunt for top talent soon. Even if you're not in the market, Tristin's worth knowing. He's got big plans for Shopgenie and beyond. Plus, he's just a good time to hang with. Thanks for swinging by Raleigh Founded - North Street, Tristin. Grateful I get to see a bit of your success. #startup #productmanagement #networking #techinnovation

In the quest for product-market fit, consider your startup a puzzle. Every failed motion, iteration or pivot is another piece of the puzzle you've found doesn't fit. Eventually, the courageous emerge from these pieces with success. A mistake you don’t need (or can afford) to make post-product-market fit is your founding GTM hires. Thankfully, there is a solution….. Cognatio Solutions #GTMHiring #GoTo4GTM #Foundinghires

#Statup #company of need Passionate Leadership for long term. Single #founder or multiple #Founders. Sometimes #VC are require multiple founder in #company but Outcome is matter from single founder or Multiple founder.

Hi everyone 👋 Happy Weekend 🤗 Am I the only one who feels that January is moving unusually fast compared to its usual slow pace? Last week, in particular, went by extremely quickly, but I'm grateful to have accomplished 90% of my set goals. The remaining 10% couldn't be achieved because the product stakeholders of a tech startup, with whom I was supposed to have a demo session, were not available. My conclusion now is that when you're very busy, the days or weeks seem to fly by. Just ensure that when you're busy, you're engaged in meaningful activities, and make sure your efforts contribute to the productivity of your business. So, How did your week went? Were you able to achieve your set goals? How did you go about achieving those goals? #techies #womentechsters #productmangers #womeninproduct

Today's your day to take that first step. Whether it's a long-held dream or a new project, make today the day you break it down, take action, and get started. #tuesdaymotivation #starttoday #makeithappen #lexgo #lexingtoncapitalholdings

Entering a new market is one of the most crucial challenges a founder can undertake. We break down the when's and why's (with an example from inDrive) in our latest blog post 👉 https://bit.ly/3QcrXEX #marketpenetration #newmarket #startupmarketing #startuptips #startuplife #indrive #hyperspaceventures

Last year, in an intro meeting with an ~investor~ a) I realized I get a little shy b) I needed to revisit my jobs to be done (cough, Neal Sales-Griffin, Sophie Davis) and explore a recommended positioning I did not initially consider. c) I need to see the ~investor~ when I gain confidence and better understand the ~lay of the land~ better. Today, I got to see her again! And yo, why I'm sharing here: 1- I listened to my mentors, kept going, and put myself deeper into the spaces I wanted to be in to gain confidence. 2- I listened to my mentors. I redid customer research, paid attention to how folks responded to particular keywords and started thinking about what feelings come to mind when interacting with KINNECT. 3- Today, I got to thank Elisa Sepulveda for causally dropping one of the biggest gems and unknowingly inspiring a pivot. We are celebrating many wins this week— from seeing rnd2 of KINNECT's first video brand campaign to submitting KINNECT to the app store, having an interview with TechCrunch, preparing for LAUNCH (waitlist gets early access), and receiving one of the most interesting investment offers (a mom from one of the actors in my campaign!). I want to remind those in the ecosystem to offer time when possible. You never know the weight of your advice until someone listens to it and then acts on it. I'm launching a freakin' brand/app/company and it's yes because of my team and me, but also because of the people who have showed up :) A reminder to those in the ecosystem: you, too, can increase a sense of belonging. Be kind. Thanks for everything - so freaking excited to launch! 7Span, 1871, Techstars, Slauson & Co., Serg Rodenzuela (secret ninja), Andrea Shannon, The Morrison Group (Perris Cavalier & Taylor Brown), Anchor 6:19 Creative (Kim Price & Shreya Bhakta & Roman Griffin) Wes McCabe, and the KINNECT team!!! #founder #founderjourney #dtc #gtm #venturecapital #startup

At the end of '22, we had a pretty serious problem at Duel Tech: even though our customers loved our product, we could not articulate its value and had a huge top-of-funnel problem. In other words, we were unable to grow. The team and I went on a course run by Matt Lerner and his incredible team at SYSTM (Formerly Startup Core Strengths), especially Nopadon and Marcin, to help us identify the unique levers needed to drive #growth... Since then, we: • Aggressively narrowed our niche: we're laser-focused on providing the best solution to fashion or beauty brands doing $30m+. If that's not you, you're probably not going to hear from us • slimmed down our product offering to do the one thing we do really well, really well • interviewed 100+ buyers and customers to understand their pain points • ran hundreds of experiments to identify what actually works for our business (rather than blindingly following strategies that worked for other businesses). The result? We have nearly tripled our revenue and doubled our pipeline month on month. We had to pay quite a lot of money for the course (which has paid for itself countless times over). However, all that expertise has now been summarised in Matt's new book, so you can get it for less than a tenner.  And it's bloody good! This is the next #leanstartup, released this week and already at number one- I'm proud as punch of you, pal! Whether you're a #start-up  or a #brand  or if you're trying to grow a business, it's a must-read: Order it now (half price today only) I've ordered one for every new starter at Duel. https://lnkd.in/exYJH9hk