Plus 1 Growth

What do you get when a product manager marries a venture capitalist? A recipe for what it takes to grow companies and a lot of bedtime tech talk. Co-hosts Lauren Chan Lee (productLivity) and Eugene Lee (OMERS Ventures) both focus primarily on companies in the Plus One stage of company growth. That’s when a startup has achieved product-market fit with their first product, and now face a new challenge of more significant scale. Founders have a lot of decisions to make in this stage and choosing the right strategies can make the difference between being a one-hit-wonder or a hall-of-famer. In this podcast, we explore the stories of companies that have navigated the Plus One stage of company growth and share the secrets to their success that you can apply to your own business. Subscribe to get new episodes and visit https://plus1.transistor.fm/ for more info.

Crunchbase started as a tool built by Techcrunch and was in the unique position of having product market fit and brand awareness before spinning out as its own company. Since then, the product has transformed from being a database to a SaaS company that helps companies close more B2B deals. Throughout that journey, Shanee has maintained a perspective of balance between right brain and left brain, growth and profitability.

In this episode, we talk with Shanee about how she manages good growth in the current environment.

Key Lessons:

– Having a hybrid go-to-market motion that includes both product-led growth and sales teams helps to diversify how revenue is generated, the quality of revenue, and the type of customers that you can serve
– Marriage is a good metaphor for growth. When you’re doing growth, you’re essentially proposing to prospects. You need to invest in developing relationships before you can propose.
– Cross-functional growth squads that include product, engineering, marketing, and sales create very effective collaboration for smaller companies and startups and career opportunities for those team members
– There are always some teams that are flying closer to the sun, and other teams that are farther out from the sun. The latter group should be ready with strategies so they can hit the ground running when they move closer to the sun
– Don’t think about it as trying to do more with less. Try to have the most impact that you can.

Shanee Ben-Zur is the Chief Marketing and Growth Officer at Crunchbase. She is responsible for the full marketing funnel as well as the company’s product-led growth strategy. Shanee is one part analytical realist and one part creative optimist, which serves as a winning combination when leading modern go-to-market teams. Prior to joining Crunchbase, Shanee built teams and scaled global B2B and B2C brands—Salesforce, NVIDIA, and PlayStation (SCEA)–and supported fast-growing startups including Dropbox, where she worked pre and post IPO. In these roles, Shanee developed deep insights into how companies can efficiently establish product-market-fit, acquire customers, engage users, grow communities, and increase revenue through self-serve, direct sales, and product-led growth motions.