He Shared His SaaS Idea. A Competitor Beat Him to Market.

Omer Khan [00:00:03]:
Welcome to the SaaS podcast. I'm your host, Omer Khan. AI has changed the playbook for building and growing SaaS. Every week I talk to founders who are writing the new one. He talks openly about his startup idea. A competitor took it and beat him to market.

Omer Khan [00:00:19]:
My guest today is Mark Abbott, founder of 90 Software that helps leadership teams run their company and stay on the same page. He's grown it to nearly 44 million in ARR and has over 18,000 companies as customers. In this conversation, Mark breaks down the pitch he made to the guy who owned the framework.

Omer Khan [00:00:39]:
His entire product is built on why he spent years becoming a certified coach before writing a single line of code, how $500 a month on Facebook got him his first thousand customers, and why things actually got worse after he raised $20 million. So I hope you enjoy it. Mark, welcome to the show.

Mark Abbott [00:01:01]:
Thank you. Delighted to be here.

Omer Khan [00:01:03]:
Yeah, my pleasure. So for people who don't know what 90 is, can you tell us, what does the product do? Who's it for? What's the main problem you're helping to solve?

Mark Abbott [00:01:13]:
Yeah, so what the product does is it really helps leadership teams get on the same page in terms of who they are, what they're doing, where they're going, how they serve their ideal customer, sort of what pace they want to go at. But fundamentally, you know, the core of it is it helps align everybody.

Mark Abbott [00:01:35]:
It helps everybody get on the same page in terms of planning. It helps everybody get on the same page in terms of how they're measuring performance. And then ultimately, it helps everybody, you know, sort of execute, you know, well, so that they can turn these crazy ideas for businesses into exceptional companies.

Omer Khan [00:01:53]:
Now, this 90 is built around the concept of the EOS framework.

Mark Abbott [00:02:01]:
Yeah, it's an interesting. It really wasn't started that way. Right. So the original idea came to me back in 2005. I was a senior partner in private equity firm, and I was sitting on a bunch of boards, and I'm like, guys, this isn't that complicated. And by the way, back then, it was all guys, right?

Mark Abbott [00:02:20]:
You know, if you want to build a great business, it's just like building a great house. You have. You have to have a vision that's compelling because it's hard work. And then you have to have plan, and then you have to have tools and disciplines. Right?

Mark Abbott [00:02:32]:
And then there's a whole process that go from the idea all the way to whether you want to, say, a successful exit, an ipo, passing, you know, the ownership or even just leadership onto the Next generation. But I honestly just was very frustrated. I built at that point in time, I had invested in over 100 companies.

Mark Abbott [00:02:53]:
I'd sat on dozens of boards and I thought, geez, this should be easier. And so I wanted to. I had this idea for writing a book and creating the software. I won't get into why some private equity guys doing software, but it's not the first time I built something and designed something from a software perspective.

Mark Abbott [00:03:10]:
So had this crazy idea back in 2005, and then I got recruited to be a senior partner to actually to be CEO for a company that hedge fund was starting. So I kind of put the idea on hold and then they changed their minds, as hedge funds can do.

Mark Abbott [00:03:26]:
And I went back to the drawing board on this thing and I was investing in some companies personally and one of them was starting to run on this thing called EOS. And so I got a copy of the book Traction. I'm like, hey, this was the book I was going to write.

Mark Abbott [00:03:43]:
But what was super cool about, I call it like a peanut butter and chocolate moment, was that I hadn't planned on standing up a coaching community. And then I was like, whoa, right, this could be a really cool community to be a part of. The coaches could ultimately help me sell the software.

Mark Abbott [00:04:02]:
And so I literally met with the founder, Gino Wickman, and maybe some of your audience knows, but the book Traction is pretty well known. And I said, hey, I was going to write a book. You wrote it much better. But I really want to do this software thing given with that.

Mark Abbott [00:04:22]:
And he literally said, we tried it, it's not in our DNA. And we're talking like 2000 and I want to say 12, and as I say, the rest is history.

Omer Khan [00:04:33]:
So when Gino said it's not in our DNA, was it like, it's not in our DNA and it's a bad idea and you shouldn't do it?

Mark Abbott [00:04:39]:
They actually tried it. They tried to do the software thing and it didn't fail. And then, so when Gino said that to me, he, you know, I believe he meant that we're not a software company, we're not a technology company, we're a training and development company.

Omer Khan [00:04:54]:
And so how, how did you structure that relationship? Because you, you're taking some IP from Gino, you're building software around it. He's not. Doesn't sound that excited about getting into the software business. So what did you have to do in terms of structuring that deal or partnership?

Omer Khan [00:05:20]:
And how easy or hard was it to get his Confidence and trust that you were the right guy to go and do this.

Mark Abbott [00:05:32]:
Yeah. So there's a long story, but I'll make it relatively short. So this is 2012 when we had this conversation. And since he said he was not opposed to it at all, I joined the coaching community. And the first thing I wanted to do is just really get to know Gino and the community.

Mark Abbott [00:05:54]:
And so I spent several years just really developing my understanding of EOS as an EOS implementer. And I think I was number 35 or 33 today. It's almost 900 implementers around the world. But so, you know, I got, I just started working on developing a relationship with Gino and the other and the other implementers.

Mark Abbott [00:06:23]:
And I actually had a related company that in a software space that I was helping a little bit. So I was kind of, you know, you could say distracted to some extent, but I started to socialize the idea with the implementer community in probably 2015. Ish.

Mark Abbott [00:06:45]:
And then one of the guys that I shared a lot of my vision with, he had a client who said we should do software. So they actually decided they were going to do it.

Mark Abbott [00:07:00]:
And he said, hey, just got to let you know, I have a client who's in the software business and software space and they're going to, they want to start a version of, you know, what your vision was.

Mark Abbott [00:07:11]:
And I said, well, you know, kind of, kind of bummed that I shared with you, but, you know, I understand and it's obviously, it's a free, free market. Could I be an investor? And came back and said, no. So that company was called Traction Tools and it started, I want to believe, in 2016.

Mark Abbott [00:07:30]:
And I was like, ah, man. So then I said, you know, I really want to do this. Traction Tools entered into a license with EOS and they showed me the license agreement. I'm like, I don't really want to have all those restrictions. And so I actually started as EOS compatible in 2016.

Mark Abbott [00:07:50]:
We started laying the code in 2017. We got our first customer. But yeah, we started as EOS compatible and then actually had a number of implementers who invested in the business alongside of me. And, and they just kept saying, mark, you got to be. You have to use the trademark terms. This is what we teach.

Mark Abbott [00:08:11]:
It needs to be in there. So ultimately, in 2018, toward the end of 2018, we entered into a license with EOS. And so that's how that all started.

Omer Khan [00:08:24]:
So this wasn't an overnight thing, right? You had the first seat of the idea in 2005, and it was 2016 when you got your first customer. And that story you just shared. For many early stage founders, that is the biggest nightmare that you're told.

Omer Khan [00:08:44]:
Go out, share your idea, talk to people, get feedback, and they're worried someone is going to copy the idea. And whenever I talk to those funds, I'm like, ah, don't worry about it. No, the chances of someone actually doing that are so low. And that's exactly what happened to you.

Omer Khan [00:09:02]:
Did that change your kind of view about how much you want to share with people?

Mark Abbott [00:09:06]:
Well, you know, as I mentioned,.

Omer Khan [00:09:11]:
You.

Mark Abbott [00:09:11]:
Know, I was in the, you know, in the private equity industry and there are a number of times where the senior partner, so I was a senior managing partner, senior managing director, but there was this, you know, there's the founder of the, of the private equity firm.

Mark Abbott [00:09:27]:
And, and, and he gave me grief on numerous occasions for helping some of these companies that I was looking at investing in think about their strategy. So he thought I overshared. And, and, and, you know, I have had a number of times in my life where I've shared some stuff that's been leveraged.

Mark Abbott [00:09:48]:
But, you know, I think life is long and I'm not about burning bridges and I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be learning the lessons I need to learn. So it is what it is.

Omer Khan [00:10:00]:
So tell me about the first version of the product. So it sounds like you've got, it's a bit of a tightrope that you're walking here. On the one side you want to be something that helps EOS practitioners.

Omer Khan [00:10:16]:
On the other side, you don't want to be the official thing because you have to use all the terminology and all the restrictions and everything. So how did you navigate that? What did that first version of the product look like? And just generally, what was the reaction when you got it into people's hands?

Mark Abbott [00:10:34]:
Yeah, in hindsight, there was a lot of really good things that happened for us, but the restrictions were actually extraordinary. They could tell us we were not allowed to teach. So imagine being PLG software where you have no ability to teach about, you know, teach what your product does. Right.

Mark Abbott [00:10:54]:
So we were not allowed to teach everything we did. Marketing literally had to go through EOS worldwide and get approved. And as you can imagine, that was not a fast process and oftentimes, right, things got cut up materially. Nothing in the, you know, you know, and then I'm talking about once we, once we had the license, right?

Mark Abbott [00:11:15]:
And then, and then once we had the license, literally Every change to the software they had to approve. It was extraordinary. It was excruciating.

Omer Khan [00:11:24]:
Right?

Mark Abbott [00:11:25]:
And a lot of the stuff that I had written for when we were EOS compatible was immediately deemed no bueno. And so we gave up a lot of flexibility in order to get that license. But, and then there's, I can tell you lots of stories associated with, you know, life after the. Well, once we got the license.

Mark Abbott [00:11:53]:
But it was, it was not an easy decision. It really wasn't. When we started it, you know, as, you know, you know, when, when we, when we started it, because I was close to the community, a lot of the coaches and I mentioned there were investors, including the current CEO of EOS.

Mark Abbott [00:12:15]:
And so, you know, when we started it, you know, there was a lot of, you know, a lot of support for us. Number one, candidly, you know, I think we were a brighter product than the product that was out there. So that was, that went to, that was inert to our benefit.

Mark Abbott [00:12:32]:
So, you know, we got off the ground pretty well.

Omer Khan [00:12:35]:
What did that first version of the product do? Was it like a stripped down MVP or did you actually spend time saying this isn't going to work unless we've got the whole kind of system working in there.

Mark Abbott [00:12:48]:
So as I mentioned, my idea for this goes back to 2005. And what I haven't shared with you is I started thinking about AI in 2012. So I had a pretty clear point of view on what I wanted to build and sort of the crawl, walk, run associated with the platform.

Mark Abbott [00:13:06]:
And candidly, we're like at 5% of what I wanted to do at this point in time still, right? And so I had a very clear point of view. I've gotten a lot of grief over the years because a lot of people are like, that's not how you build software, it's agile, blah, blah, blah.

Mark Abbott [00:13:21]:
But no, at a very clear point of view of what I wanted to build, number one, I knew what we needed to build to begin, right? EOS has this thing called the five foundational tools. And so we needed to have a great vision traction organized in there.

Mark Abbott [00:13:36]:
We needed to have a great meetings tool in there, we needed to have a great rock setting tool, we needed have a great scorecard in there, right? And we needed to have, you know, an issues list. And so, you know, right off the bat we had, you know, these five foundational tools in it when we started.

Mark Abbott [00:13:56]:
And I spent the first, literally six months just developing the data schema. And so because once again, I had this vision for where it was going to go and how data was going to be super important for our success. And so, you know, in hindsight, you know, we started using MongoDB.

Mark Abbott [00:14:18]:
I got advice that that was the right thing to do. Now we have both Mongo and a relational database. But yeah, we took and, and by the way, I hired a third party to help me figure it all out software wise. So I put a fair bit of my own money in the beginning of this thing.

Omer Khan [00:14:35]:
Was it all self funded in the.

Mark Abbott [00:14:37]:
Early days plus the, you know, I wanted to have the, the implementers have an opportunity. So we had customers and coaches and me and, and then I had one, two co founders, one of which put, you know, a little bit of money in.

Mark Abbott [00:14:56]:
But when they were, when I, as you may have already sensed I'm okay with sort of taking, playing the long game and they wanted to go a lot faster than I thought was appropriate. And so in the end I bought them out pretty early on.

Omer Khan [00:15:09]:
I mean today we should give people a sense of the size of the business today. Where are you in terms of revenue, customer size of team?

Mark Abbott [00:15:19]:
So we have like I want to say we're nearing 44 million in revenue. We've got 18,500 companies that are running on it, you know, and there's, you know, in those companies there's almost a million employees and then about 25% of the employees are actually paid seats right now.

Omer Khan [00:15:41]:
Okay, and then you, I think you've raised about 35 million to date, is that right?

Mark Abbott [00:15:48]:
Actually 55. So we did a $20 million Series A with Insight Partners in 21 and then we did 35 million with that was led by Blue Cloud Ventures, Insight Pro routed up and then a new investor as well, Catalyst Ventures came in. So right now we have three institutional investors in the company.

Omer Khan [00:16:10]:
But when you started, I think if I'm right, you didn't raise any money. You were basically self funded through to roughly what, the first thousand customers.

Mark Abbott [00:16:22]:
Yeah, that's about right.

Omer Khan [00:16:23]:
And how much did you charge the first customer?

Mark Abbott [00:16:26]:
$12 Per seat. And to this day we still charge $12 per seat for the least. Yeah, the least sophisticated model. Yeah, we go 12, 14, 16. That's, that's going to change in the not too distant future because we've got a lot going on with AI right now.

Mark Abbott [00:16:44]:
But yeah, and then, and then it would go down based upon, you know, more and more, you know, of your employees you put in the company. The seat price would go down.

Omer Khan [00:16:56]:
Are you looking at more like usage based pricing now with With AI and just the pressure on kind of per seat pricing.

Mark Abbott [00:17:04]:
Yeah. So we're going to go and we're still working on it right now, to be very candid. But what I see is the next step is they'll get a certain, so there'll still be three or two packages. Personally, I'm kind of aligning towards with AI and without package and bringing it down to two.

Mark Abbott [00:17:28]:
And then on the, with AI you get a certain amount of consumption and then thereafter you pay. Ultimately, you know, I believe the world's going to get to a place where you're paying for the value we create.

Mark Abbott [00:17:42]:
But it may take a couple of years for us to really get into a position where we can, we can do that in a manner that, you know, is a win win for us and our, and our customers and the investors, of course.

Omer Khan [00:17:53]:
What was the reaction like in terms of getting the first 10 customers? Now on the one hand, you took your time. Most people, if they had an idea for EOS, they wouldn't say, ah, a good next step is to go and spend the next two years being an EOS practitioner to learn this really deeply.

Omer Khan [00:18:12]:
They would be like, I need to build a software. So you did that, you built relationships. But I'm still curious, for a system or a framework that had been used pretty successfully without the software to back it up, how much demand was there for a software product?

Mark Abbott [00:18:36]:
As I said, we came out second, Traction Tools went out first. And so there was no question that there was, you know, sort of product market fit in my mind. There wasn't, there was no question in my mind before I ever started the company, before Traction Tools ever existed.

Mark Abbott [00:18:55]:
Because, you know, when you think about it, you know, just making sure everybody in the company's on the same page and you know, we all know where we're going, we all understand what we're working on, we all understand what measurables are needed.

Mark Abbott [00:19:08]:
You know, we, you know, you just, you just, you know, I, in my mind I connect all this stuff and so I just see how it's all integrated and how it informs one another. And so as an example, in your, in, you know, in our, in our feedback system, it pulls the core values from the vision.

Mark Abbott [00:19:23]:
Traction Organizer pulls your roles and accountabilities from the, you know, accountability chart or the org chart. Right. It pulls your rocks from the rock system.

Mark Abbott [00:19:32]:
And so it's all right in there and integrated and, and then, you know, like as you know, back in 2012, I'm starting to say, well, when AI comes along right now, we can literally help people understand where they are developmentally. And, you know, we just literally launched, you know, our biggest sort of effort on the AI front.

Mark Abbott [00:19:54]:
But you can go in now and, you know, you can ask our companion bot, which is Maz, short for Maslow. You can ask Maz what's working, what's not working up and down and across the organization, and boom, it's got, you know, it could tell you it's super cool. Right.

Mark Abbott [00:20:10]:
And so to me, it's always been, you know, obvious that the, you know, there's so much power when you integrate these tools and you put it in the cloud and when you can leverage AI. So, I don't know, I just have been confident that it's right.

Omer Khan [00:20:30]:
Okay, So I think with the first thousand customers you bootstrap, you got to the first million in ARR, just selling to them. What was the model for selling? Because you were selling to coaches, right, not to the end users or people who would be using the product.

Mark Abbott [00:20:52]:
Yeah, for the first, I want to say, two plus years. Yeah, we just leaned right into the. Into the coaching community. So that was our, you know, that was our channel. I remember spending 500 bucks a month on Facebook, and that was it. Right. And for years. And then, you know, people would hear about us.

Mark Abbott [00:21:23]:
You know, we were starting to become somewhat known in like, you know, the entrepreneur organization eo and then, you know, later on Vistage and ypo. And so, you know, there's, you know, there's the entrepreneurial sort of communities that are out there, peer groups, et cetera, started to learn about us. And so, yeah, and.

Mark Abbott [00:21:48]:
And that was really it. It was, you know, it was 500 bucks on Facebook. It was being, you know, started starting to become known in some of these entrepreneurial peer groups. And then it was the coaching channel.

Omer Khan [00:21:58]:
So you were running 500 bucks a month on Facebook to target EOS coaches?

Mark Abbott [00:22:05]:
No. To target. No, because I'm a part of the community. Remember, the community gets together every. Every quarter. They call it quarterly collaboration exchange, qce. And so I'm networking with them and just developing relationships with, you know, the coaches. And as I said, when I joined, I. I'm pretty sure I was like number 33.

Mark Abbott [00:22:23]:
And, you know, today it's at 900. And so, you know, from 2000 and I was in the community until such time as it. They had to transition to a franchise or franchisee model. And the restrictions associated with being a franchisee were I just couldn't. I couldn't abide by those.

Mark Abbott [00:22:41]:
So Especially for other reasons which we can get into if you want. But yeah, so I started, you know, just have, you know, strong relationships with coaches and, and, and from the very beginning, you know, we really believed, I deeply believe in exceptional service.

Mark Abbott [00:23:01]:
And so we were really, really good on the service side, taking care of the coaches, taking care of their clients. And just, you know, we, we really, you know, from day one, that was a huge thing for us. So the product was good, it was easier to use and frankly had a better UI UX than Traction tools.

Mark Abbott [00:23:22]:
But providing exceptional service was just something from the very beginning because the coaches are my friends and I've been around entrepreneurs and business owners since almost the beginning of my career. I started in the private equity in a leveraged buyout business in 85 and did workouts before then.

Mark Abbott [00:23:43]:
So, you know, I just have a deep affection for people who are starting and building companies and want to make darn sure that we're doing everything we can to support them. And you know, so like very early on we, we were 24, seven, five days a week in terms of our support.

Omer Khan [00:24:00]:
So I'm still curious, what was the $500 a month Facebook ads for? What were you doing with that?

Mark Abbott [00:24:05]:
We were targeting, you know, EOS aware entrepreneurs. You know, the EOS world's really interesting, right? I think today maybe there's, you know, there's a whole EOS library and it's sold like three and a half million copies of sort of the EOS library. And so, you know, traction was getting out there and spreading around.

Mark Abbott [00:24:30]:
The EOS community will tell you that I think this is about, right, that for every company that ultimately gets a coach or an implementer, there are about nine who, you know, dabble with, with, with it. You know, we call them self implementers.

Mark Abbott [00:24:47]:
And so, you know, so even in2016, 17 or 17, 18, 19, there are a lot of US aware companies that were self implementing. And so you just, we just targeted, as best we possibly could, 500 bucks.

Omer Khan [00:25:03]:
So I've heard some different terminology. EOS coaches, EOS implementers. Are they the same thing or are they different?

Mark Abbott [00:25:11]:
Yeah, they refer to themselves as implementers. So yeah, they're called EOS implementers.

Omer Khan [00:25:16]:
And then you had the EO entrepreneurs, which was another bucket of people.

Mark Abbott [00:25:22]:
Well, EO is a peer group for entrepreneurs. And so it's a global peer group. Tens of thousands of entrepreneurs around the globe. Just like Vistage, right? Vistage is more CEOs, but you know, Vistage, the community's well over 20,000.

Mark Abbott [00:25:41]:
So and then YPO, I don't know the number off the top of my head, but it's, I would dare say, I mean, it's thousands and thousands.

Omer Khan [00:25:48]:
I mean, it strikes me as, you know, a PE guy going in and bootstrapping and moving fairly slow. Doesn't sound like what I would expect your DNA to be.

Omer Khan [00:26:01]:
So I'm curious why you did that and how much of a pressure were you feeling from peers from your team to maybe raise funding, put some more fuel on the fire here to accelerate growth.

Mark Abbott [00:26:16]:
Yeah. So, you know, with my background being, you know, what it, what it is, what it was, you know, I didn't start the company to go work for someone and. Right. And so, you know, I've been on a bunch of boards, as I said, you know, I've been on 30 boards in my career.

Mark Abbott [00:26:37]:
So, you know, my, my perspective was that I was going to bootstrap it until I got the thing to a valuation of 100 million and then I'd raise $20 million. So, you know, so the first, the first round diluted me by 17, you know, some odd percent.

Mark Abbott [00:26:58]:
And even after the second round, you know, I was still over 50%. So I just, you know, I'm too old to work somewhat.

Omer Khan [00:27:12]:
So. Did you get to 100 million valuation before you raised money?

Mark Abbott [00:27:15]:
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Omer Khan [00:27:17]:
And I'm curious what changed after that?

Mark Abbott [00:27:19]:
You know, we did stupid things because once you have 20 million, you can go faster. Right. And, and so, you know, I, you know, I've learned a lot of lessons and this isn't, you know, this is not my first startup, it's actually my third startup.

Mark Abbott [00:27:39]:
You know, I did one for, for, for a hedge fund and, and then I built a business. You know, so I actually, by the time I was 36 years old, I was running a multibillion dollar lending investment platform that I helped take public.

Mark Abbott [00:27:56]:
And, and, and the lessons that I learned in, in those situations didn't serve me as well as I thought they would. You know, in, in, in those worlds, the, you know, they were upper out cultures. Number one.

Mark Abbott [00:28:16]:
You know, we were, we were, you know, hiring very, you know, you know, we were hiring, you know, pretty exceptional human beings and paying him a lot of money.

Mark Abbott [00:28:26]:
And, and, and, and so, you know, when I, when I got a fair bit of money, we, we hired fast and then I started to hire some executives who, in hindsight, you know, we're well suited for the game that was being played. Right.

Mark Abbott [00:28:45]:
I mean, to your point, now we're running fast and you know, these Executives, you start hiring, whether it's a marketing person or a, you know, a product person or an engineer, et cetera, they all come with their own playbooks. And next thing you know, I've got this mess on my hands because everybody's bringing their own playbooks.

Mark Abbott [00:29:06]:
They're actually trying to create their own cultures. They have their own levels of sort of a pace and in various levels of ambiguity that they're comfortable with.

Mark Abbott [00:29:16]:
And then, you know, and they're smart and got some more junior people who've never experienced it, still on the senior leadership team because, you know, because that's just the way it happens. And they're listening to these other people and they're like, well, that sounds smart to me. And, you know, you're starting to lose control of things.

Mark Abbott [00:29:38]:
And so, you know, once we got the money honestly, you know, we started to go fast. But, you know, in my mind, I made, you know, a number of bad hiring decisions. To be very honest.

Omer Khan [00:29:53]:
Was it just the hiring decisions or when you were you. When you were deep in the trenches there, did you ever have a moment where you felt like, I wish I hadn't raised the money? And we just kept doing what we were doing with. With less chaos?

Mark Abbott [00:30:05]:
You know, that's a great question. And I never did go there. You know, I, As I said earlier, I, you know, I deeply believe we are where we are, learning lessons we need to learn. So I don't. I don't do the rumination, wish I could do it all over again thing.

Mark Abbott [00:30:25]:
It's just not my DNA, to be honest with you. So, you know, I'm super fortunate to be where I am. So. No, never, never, you know, regretted the hires. You know, there's, like. There's decisions we've made that. Yeah, like, those were stupid, but. But, yeah, I, you know, like I said, I had to learn those lessons. And.

Mark Abbott [00:30:47]:
And frankly, you know, part of what we do is we help people, you know, go from, you know, from zero to, you know, an exceptional organization. And I look at a lot of the lessons that I've learned over the last, you know, three, four, five years as extraordinarily valuable for, you know, for my clients. Because what we.

Mark Abbott [00:31:09]:
What we haven't really talked much about is, you know, I've coached a bunch of companies as well. Right. I was building this thing. I continued to coach up until I still have a few clients. But, you know, I'm very proud to say I've helped a couple of businesses, you know, go from zero. Right. Zero revenues to valuations.

Mark Abbott [00:31:30]:
In the nine figures. And so I take a lot of my scar tissue and help them avoid some of it.

Omer Khan [00:31:42]:
We talked about the 100 million million valuation before you raised money and you talked about a few channels that you were putting your time and effort into selling to the community. The 500amonth Facebook ads, word of mouth. Was there something else that you said as well?

Mark Abbott [00:32:02]:
Really going out and as we hired some more people sort of working, networking within the various peer group communities. Like I said, EO and Vistage is an example.

Omer Khan [00:32:15]:
Is that all you did to, to acquire customers and keep growing the business or were there other channels that did those sort of stop working and you had to expand into other areas?

Mark Abbott [00:32:27]:
Well, we probably three, four years ago, once we did the Series A, we started to, you know, invest in paid. Right. And so mostly just buying Google AdWords. And then, you know, we also, you know, mucked about with LinkedIn and some things like that. But honestly we've never been, you know, it's not fair to the current team.

Mark Abbott [00:32:56]:
But you know, we struggled for a long time in terms of, in terms of feeling like we're really, really good at marketing and there's a whole host of reasons for that. I am actually fairly obsessive and especially in terms of the look and feel and the brand and how we position ourselves.

Mark Abbott [00:33:15]:
And so, you know, there were a lot of sort of founder mode moments around being on and off brand over the years. But, you know, I think we're finally doing a pretty decent job.

Omer Khan [00:33:30]:
You touched on AI a little earlier and some of the things that you are doing with the product to evolve it, given what some of the things that are happening right now, we're seeing this whole kind of take off of vibe coding and people thinking that they can build the software themselves, why pay for it?

Omer Khan [00:34:00]:
And then you've got companies like Salesforce going completely headless and kind of completely leaning into that. I'm curious, is that something that keeps you up at night? Is that something that you see as a potential threat for your business?

Mark Abbott [00:34:22]:
Well, as I said, I had a pretty clear point of view on how AI would really take what we do to the next level. All the way back to 2012. We raised the Series B to get to work on embedding AI into the platform. And so we started that effort two plus years ago.

Mark Abbott [00:34:58]:
It took us a while to really figure out exactly how we wanted to do it, number one. Number two, sort of, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, I've been really thinking about how to leverage AI in a way that's really good for humanity and obviously preserves the trust of the coaches and the clients.

Mark Abbott [00:35:31]:
So, you know, there's a lot of, I've got a lot of hours thinking about how we want to do this and we had some fits and starts, but we wanted to make sure that the way we did this is something where we feel really, really good about how we're helping and how we're embedding it.

Mark Abbott [00:35:51]:
Since we did the race and since we started the work, you now have this sort of, this, this battle, you know, within the software industry in terms of, you know, AI embedded versus AI native and, and, and you know, ultimately, you know, we're, we're sort of, you know, we're doing the AI embedded, but we're also, you know, seriously sort of thinking through how the transform the platform over time into, into AI native.

Mark Abbott [00:36:29]:
You know, as far as, what I worry about in terms of sort of the competitive space is that, you know, someone with someone who has my vision, which I'm not sure about that I don't have any evidence that someone has my vision for what I really want to build here, but someone who has, you know, that vision and is con, has lots of conviction and can throw tens of millions of dollars at building something AI native.

Mark Abbott [00:37:03]:
You know, I, I, I feel that pressure on the back of my neck on the one hand. On the other hand, you know, you hate to use the term moat, but you know, we've got, we've been in the community for 10 plus years, we have great relationships, including a bunch of implement investors.

Mark Abbott [00:37:21]:
You know, we've got an amazing database, if you can think about it, right, 18,000 plus plus customers. And, and, and I think we've done a, you know, I think that what we're doing right now with AI is, is, is pretty cool. So you know, I, I, you know, you know, I, I, I like Andy Grove's perspective.

Mark Abbott [00:37:43]:
You got to be paranoid. And so I'm paranoid. But I think we're doing the right things. Would, I love to go faster? Yeah, I'd love to go faster because there's just a tremendous amount of build that I think is in front of us still.

Omer Khan [00:38:01]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've probably been doing more sort of vibe coding than I should be in the last few months. And the frustrating thing is my list of things to do just seems to keep getting longer when people keep saying AI makes it faster.

Omer Khan [00:38:23]:
And it's because you just keep coming up with more ideas and more things that maybe five, ten years ago you would have ruled out because it was too complicated or too hard.

Omer Khan [00:38:32]:
And maybe that's why you having a long time vision for the product, just maybe why you feel that in many ways you've only scratched the surface with where you want to take this product and business.

Mark Abbott [00:38:44]:
Well, the interesting thing is that for a long time now I've said, if you talk about before there was software, how people were doing, running on EOS and it was, they were kind of acting like, you know, a general contractor who's building their saws and screwdrivers and nails and, and, and, and hammers, you know, et cetera, at night.

Mark Abbott [00:39:18]:
And that's like, that's not your job, man. Right. And, and I think a lot of people are sitting here going, well, I can vibe code this. And you're like, well yeah, you could, but is that, is that your job number one? Is that how you add value to the world? Is that your customer base?

Mark Abbott [00:39:32]:
Or now are you getting into an entirely different industry with an entirely new customer base? And by the way, just because you build it does not mean they come right. You got to figure out distribution, to state the obvious stuff.

Mark Abbott [00:39:44]:
And then once you have some scale, you got to figure out how to make this thing damn secure. And it took us years to get SOC2 as an example, and then don't even get me started on gdpr. And so it's easy to romanticize and you know, all, all this stuff.

Mark Abbott [00:40:07]:
But you know, at the risk of staying in the obvious, building a company that's actually, you know, has, you know, what it takes to scale and, and, and, and to honor the commitments that, you know, it's making to its customers. Yeah, it, it's, it's not easy.

Omer Khan [00:40:26]:
Yeah, in many ways, maybe building a product has gotten easier, but everything else has gotten hotter.

Mark Abbott [00:40:32]:
Yeah, I mean, there's parts to it right now that are, I mean, you know, we're leveraging AI, not just in the product, but obviously operationally as well. And there's, you know, there's no question that it's helping us do a bunch of things.

Mark Abbott [00:40:45]:
And, and one of the things that we're working on right now, it's kind of a side project is it's really exciting.

Mark Abbott [00:40:52]:
But so, but it, but it is, it's just a different, you know, it's, there's another set of capabilities that have to be integrated into the system and you got to figure out, you know, how, how to do that in a manner that, you know, makes sense for you, who you are, where you're going, how you serve and and, and so it's just, it's, it, it, it's, it does make things a little bit more complex on the one hand.

Mark Abbott [00:41:25]:
On the other hand, there's no question that it has the ability to increase the velocity of certain work that's being done.

Omer Khan [00:41:34]:
All right, we should wrap up. So let's get on to the lightning round. I've got five quick fire questions for you. What's a piece of startup advice that you disagree with?

Mark Abbott [00:41:48]:
One of the things I talked a little bit about is companies go through these unavoidable stages of development. And I think that you need to be really careful with regard to who you're hiring. They need to fit the stage you're in.

Mark Abbott [00:42:00]:
And then the problem is that if you're growing fast, you're going to be going through those stages fast. And so the nature of leadership changes on the ones and threes, and it just does. Right.

Mark Abbott [00:42:15]:
And so if you hire someone who's got a lot of experience and, you know, into an early stage and they come in with their playbooks and they come in with, I'm not going to say 9 to 5 ish, right, but they come in with a different level of pace than the, you know, than your team's running at.

Mark Abbott [00:42:33]:
There's a, you know, it's just going to cause issues, right. And you got to remember that they're going to come in and they're going to start overseeing people and they're going to be building, you know, alliances and, and it can be a mess.

Mark Abbott [00:42:44]:
And so I think, you know, you need to be very careful with regard to your, your early hires and making sure that they fit the stage you're in.

Omer Khan [00:42:52]:
What is a recent great book that you have read?

Mark Abbott [00:42:57]:
My business reading is predominantly skim oriented, but my history reading is where I go a little slower. And so I'm a big Neil Ferguson fan.

Mark Abbott [00:43:11]:
And so I've read over the last year probably, you know, all, I don't know, six or seven of his books, but I love the way he looks at the world and tend to support his worldview.

Omer Khan [00:43:23]:
Tell me about one thing that you had to learn the hard way.

Mark Abbott [00:43:26]:
Entrepreneurs don't get to decide what their culture looks like. The marketplace dictates what your culture looks like. And so the higher the pace, the more ambiguity. You know, you just have to match that, that, that marketplace with your culture.

Mark Abbott [00:43:46]:
And so you can come in and think that you can create a lifestyle, you know, sort of kind of a culture where, you know, it's nine to five and, and everything's pretty straightforward.

Mark Abbott [00:43:55]:
But if your industry is going, you know, 90 miles or 120 miles per hour and there's tons of ambiguity associated with it, you got to build a culture that's going to thrive. And I think our early on years we, you know, we, we probably I. Our core values include resilience and inquisitiveness.

Mark Abbott [00:44:19]:
I think we under indexed on resilience and inquisitiveness early on. And that sucks because I really, really, really try hard to take care of all of our employees. It's a very important thing for me. But, you know, sometimes it doesn't work out.

Mark Abbott [00:44:34]:
And we've been phenomenal in terms of the cultural side from a work, you know, people working well with one another.

Mark Abbott [00:44:42]:
I think we have great people who really work well together, but not all of them were really comfortable with the pace or the level of ambiguity associated with just the nature of the game that's being played right now.

Omer Khan [00:44:57]:
What is a tool or habit that saves you the most time?

Mark Abbott [00:45:01]:
The honest answer is claw it. I mean, it's pretty bloody amazing right now.

Omer Khan [00:45:07]:
Yeah. Hard to compete with Claude these days. And finally, what do you do for fun when you're not working?

Mark Abbott [00:45:13]:
Yeah, I like to hike, like to run. My son and I are free diver and love to spearfish. We haven't done that as much as we'd like to these days. He works with us as well. I love skiing, he rides a snowboard.

Mark Abbott [00:45:35]:
But just being outdoors and, you know, appreciating the grandness of the world is, you know, brings me back to, you know, sort of center.

Omer Khan [00:45:44]:
Yeah, love it. Well, Mark, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure. I love your thoughtful approach to building your business. And in many ways you break the mold of what a startup founder is supposed to do. In other ways you are doing. It's not like you do completely the opposite.

Omer Khan [00:46:10]:
But I just love hearing some of the counter sort of views that you have and how it still helped you build a sizable business. And it sounds like you still have a big vision for where you want to take this business. Now, if people want to find out more, about 90, they can go to 90io.

Omer Khan [00:46:32]:
That's the word, not the number. And if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to.

Mark Abbott [00:46:39]:
Yeah, either LinkedIn or my email. Markinet IO works great. We'll respond well.

Omer Khan [00:46:47]:
Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure. Wish you and the team the best of success.

Mark Abbott [00:46:50]:
I appreciate it. Omer. Thank you.

Omer Khan [00:46:52]:
Cheers.