Olof Mathe, the founder of Mixmax, one of the most well-renowned email communication products, shares his thoughts on:

• How he and his team discovered product-market fit for Mixmax...
• Key metrics for early-stage startups - how they changed everything for Mixmax
• What led Mixmax to spread like a wild fire...from 0 to 5000 customers without spending a penny on marketing
• How Mixmax discovered its vision and foundational purpose
• Attitudinal difference between millennial sales professional and the previous generations

References:

https://mixmax.com/careers

About Olof Mathe:

• Founder and CEO of Mixmax
• Prior to that, Olof led the team that built Inkling Habitat and Skype.
• Olof grew up in Sweden and finished his engineering degree in France.
• Fun Fact about Olof: He co-founded an art hackathon where Digital artists and hackers get together in an art space and create full-fledged art exhibit within 24 hours. This hackathon was featured in TechCrunch and FastCompany.

In this podcast series, I sat down with the top writers from SF, LA, and NY to learn how they create great content.

You’ll be hearing their insights on attributes of the high-quality content.

This is a part I of a 10-Part Series.

In this episode, we hear from:

• Joe Escobedo @ Forbes
• Garrett Ruiz @ BlueJeans
• Riddhi Shah, Alum @ Medium and HuffPo
• KC Karnes @ CleverTap
• Alisha Paulsen @ Workday

Here are some of their top insights:

What are the attributes of high-quality content?

Joe Escobedo:

• High-Quality content should either educate or entertain your audience, or both.
• You never really know if it's good until it's published and you get feedback from your audience
• Provides a solution
• Ask "What kind of additional insights or information would they want."

Garrett Ruiz:

• Accurate
• Informative and insightful
• Leads the user to the next place in the buyer's journey

Riddhi Shah:

• High-Quality content is very intuitive. It's a mix of art and science.
• New or insightful information
• For virality, it should produce an element of surprise and strong emotions
• Relevant and addresses current concerns from the audience
• Distinctive tone of voice
• Delightful

KC Karnes:

• Go Deeper
• Understand the nuance of nurturing the relationship for the long haul, instead of generating eyeballs and clicks.
• "Inch-Wide Mile-Deep" Mindset.

Alisha Paulsen:

• Create unique content - informative and interesting.
• Grammar/Spelling errors or confusing sentences discounts the integrity of the piece
• Consistency
• Storytelling
• Personalization

I met up with Sean Sheppard to learn about his growth based product/market fit approach.

My takeaways:

1. Quickest path to product/market fit
2. Product Management Special:
   1. Skills, attitude, and mindset for achieving a great market fit
   2. Product Development Vs. Market Development
   3. A clear and actionable pathway to achieve the skills and knowledge needed to win as an early stage founder or a product manager 
3. The new set of hard skills needed to succeed as a startup founder

References:

Market Acceleration Program from GrowthX.

About Sean Sheppard:

• Founding Partner at GrowthX - A seed-stage venture capital fund.

• Co-founder of GrowthX Academy - A training ground for tech sales, marketing, and design professionals.

• Contributor for Huffington Post and mentor to several high-growth start-ups

• Named Top 20 Sale Influencers in Silicon Valley