Why Alternative Partners?

This is the story of how, or perhaps more reasonably ‘why’, I went from being a professional starving classical musician and circus performer, to the CEO and Founder of a Revenue Operations as a Service (ROaaS) company.

College

When I graduated from College, it wasn’t with a degree in Business Management, Computer Science, or anything reasonable. I graduated with a degree in Classical Music Performance as a Double Bass player (I also sneaked a Minor in Philosophy on the way out). One of the first things I realized upon graduation was that though I might be a phenomenal musician, I had absolutely no idea how to pay for rent. Or feed myself. Or survive, really - at all.

Realization

It would not be unreasonably hyperbolic to say that in my immediate state of near-panic I promptly embarked on teaching myself an MBA; having come to the conclusion that though I was an Artist, I needed to think of myself as a Small Business Owner first. I learned that the process of finding gigs and opportunities to perform was nearly identical to Advertising,, Marketing, and Sales in more traditional industries, and that the systems that solved for these problems and processes in Corporate America worked just as well in creative spaces.

Music/Circus

And so it was with that in mind that I began to cut my teeth on every CRM, Sales, and Marketing Automation tool that existed back in the late aughts. I eventually settled on Salesforce, more out of accident than anything. I learned how to build nearly every other tool I might need on the force.com platform. It was a huge investment for me at the time, and I was going to be absolutely positive to bleed every ounce for usefulness from it before I turned elsewhere. In hindsight, it’s amazing how quickly you can become proficient, if not (to flatter myself somewhat blatantly) expert in a skillset if your ability to purchase groceries or provide for the roof over your head hinges on it.

Turning Point

And then, I failed. I had to send my Landlord that email that begins with, “I’m sorry, but I have to ask - if you haven’t already cashed in my rent check, please wait until Saturday, as I do not currently have the funds required to pay.”

Journey

And so I moved on, though the idea was always to come back to the arts. With that in mind I looked for work that I felt might help me later on down the road. I was fortunate after some time to find work as a SFDC Administrator at a small consulting group in Cambridge, MA. That foot-in-the-door lead to years of working in a variety of companies, all of differing sizes and industries; non-profit, financial services, SaaS - sized between 6 employees all in one city to 30,000 throughout the world. I, as the kids say, ‘got guhd’. More importantly, I became passionate about my new career. Finally, after two years in the Bay Area - having moved from Somerville, MA - I thought I might be ready for something new.

What We Saw…

I got sick and tired of watching startups fail, not because their product or service wasn’t of sufficient quality, not because of poor market-fit, nor even poor leadership. So many startups fail because the skeletal structure required to support good ideas as they scale is just simply, inexplicably, never built.

…and Why We Do What We Do

I want to help plan and build that skeleton, that operational backbone. I want to make sure you can keep driving your product roadmap. I want you to stay sharp and laser focused on what you already do best. I want your first hire that can’t read your founding team’s collective hive-mind to not panic because nothing makes sense outside of your weird telepathic bond. I want you to succeed, to thrive. I want to partner with you in that, in supporting your success. Not in the modality that business tradition deems proper, but a more… dare I say, ‘alternative’ partnership. One that prizes transparency, ethics, communication, and a business model designed from the ground up to incentivize getting better work done faster.

Alternative Partners - trying to toe that ephemeral line, code-shifting between millennial-hipster-speak and old-money-jargon.