Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Eli Rubel, founder and CEO of MatterMade a team of in-house marketing veterans who have helped companies like Loom, Dropbox, and com drive efficient, sustainable growth. Eli, I'm so excited to chat with you today and, and get into the weeds of marketing, and I know that's a big umbrella term, but you know, when we use it mechanically as companies it's to do one thing and one thing only get brand recognition, but also, I guess, really get people to buy our products and understand our brand and really connect within in so many different ways. And I'm so excited to learn about kind of your experience with the mechanics behind it. But before we get into all that, what were you doing before you started MatterMade?

Eli: Oh, man. Before MatterMade, my journey has been wild and winding. Not your typical typical Silicon Valley path. I went to art school briefly. dropped out of art school. I wanted to be a photographer did the starving artist thing in LA for a couple of years before having what I call my quarter life crisis.

So I, I was doing the, you know, the ramen artist in LA and decided that I needed to change my path and decided I was gonna start a software company. So I moved into my mom's basement. Thankfully I was in a spot where I was able to do that and gave myself this challenge where I wasn't allowed to leave the basement until I had founded a company.

So six months later took our first seed investment. And that ended up becoming glider.com, which was a contract lifecycle management company. It was acquired in 2014. And then after that I acquired an e-commerce company and did a turnaround for a couple of years before selling that to a private equity shop in and in 2019, I found a MatterMade.

Julian: It's incredible to think about putting yourself into to a situation like that, to almost like you had no oppor, no chance but to succeed or find something that you were going to be, you know, I guess working on or passionate about. I always like to kind of walk through the discovery of what product or what idea that, you know, you kind of invest your time in.

What was the initial push to go in the direction you did initially? And then that kind of, you know, I guess domino effect down to, to MatterMade. What was the drive? Were you answering questions? Were you seeking out answers? Were you looking to the market to identify problems in the world? How'd you go through that process?  

Eli: Yeah. I mean, so the way I saw it was, you know, I wanted to enter a market where I'd be competing with Stanford and MIT grads. Right. And I'd certainly, I didn't have a degree at all. And my only, you know, on the job experience was in the world of, you know, fine art and photography and editorial.

And so, I was woefully. , untrained and uncredentialed to be entering the market. So I saw it as I just needed to get my foot in the door and I didn't care. It didn't need to be an exciting idea. In fact, my kind of personal thesis was to pick something really boring that, you know, the Stanford and m i t grads and I'm just using that as like a blanket generalization, but that they wouldn't be interested in pursuing.

And so contract life cycle management at the time, Was a pretty quiet, sleepy space. You had DocuSign and hello Sign. Both only focused on the signatures at that point, and I was really interested in the workflow leading up to that point. Right. So for. Sales teams who are, you know, closing deals, negotiating deals, working with finance, working with legal, there's obviously a lot of steps there. And so, I felt like that was a messy, boring place within the tech space that needed to be cleaned up and decided to focus on that.  

Julian: It's incredible. And do you, you know, like once you started building the company and kind of faced this, you know, acquisition. , what was the, your circumstance at the time?

What was the environment? Were you know, needing an acquisition? Were you having a, you know, a bunch of suitors that were like, you know, whining and dining you to, to acquire the company? What was that process like and how did you end up choosing the acquire? I know a lot of founders either do like an acquihire or they do different.

You know, forms of acquisition to, to, depending on the situation and what, you know, the best suited outcome is for them. But what in particular was your environment and, you know, your process to that, and how did you choose your eventual acquirer?

Eli: Yeah, it was, it's kind of a funny story. So we were out raising our, I don't even know what it would be called now, probably the equivalent of a series.

In today's language the series names keep changing, so it's hard to apply it to today's team. But I, so yeah, I was in San Francisco, Dreamforce was happening, which for us was important because we were playing in the Salesforce ecosystem. So I was having those conversations with the VCs and.

Was about to meet with our lead investor at the time was True Ventures and took some corp dev meetings, just randomly, like they, they reached out to me on LinkedIn and they were like, Hey, are you gonna be at Dreamforce? I was like, yeah, sure. Let's meet. And I remember it was supposed to be a coffee meeting with this corp dev guy right before I headed over to True's offices, and I met him at the.

What was it? The St. Regis or the w one of these hotels down in, in Soma, like fidi area. And I walk into the room and it's their entire executive team lining the lining, the room, all wearing suits, you know, here I am, like dressed like a, you know, San Francisco slash Portland. dude. And they're all from the Midwest, like very dressed up for this serious meeting that I didn't know was a serious meeting.

So, yeah, I gave them the kind of the pitch about what we were up to and how we were, you know, about to close this round. And the, it was really like, it was one of these meetings where you don't know really what the meeting is about. Like I couldn't really tell what their angle was, if.

Partnership or whatnot. And so left the meeting, went and met with True. And I'm walking down the stairwell down opening up onto South Park in San Francisco from True's offices and I get a phone call. I thought it was my Uber driver, and I answer, I'm like, Hey, I'm almost there, cuz I was supposed to go straight to the airport.

And on the other line it's this corp dev guy and he's like, Hey, can you come back to the. I was like, no, I'm gonna, I'm in late for my flight already. I'll miss my flight if I do that. And he's like, I really think you should come back to the hotel . And I'm like, no, dude. Like I'm gonna miss my flight.

Like, why? And he was like, well, the chairman of the company wants to meet you and she's here. Can you just come and talk to her? Like, I think it's gonna be worth your time. And I was like, okay. That's interesting. So I purposefully, I guess, missed my flight and cruise over to the hotel and this woman sticks her hand out.

She's like, Hey, you know, my name's Audrey and I'm gonna buy your company. And I was it's not for sale. So that's that's interesting. And she's like, oh, it will be by the time you land in Portland, like, we'll loi in front of you and I think it'll, I think it will be for sale.

At that point. I was like, ah, well it's not, but cool. Sounds good. So it was, and literally it was that fast, like it was a really short, like handshake. Smile leave kind of a thing. I assumed they were just I didn't really know what to think. Kind of blowing smoke, who knows? And sure enough, like, I don't know, it wasn't when I landed, but it was within 24 hours there was an LOI with a price and terms and all that.

And. Just like that. Indeed. We were for sale .  

Julian: So what was it was offer that compelling or was it the opportunity to then kind of go through the acquisition process and maybe even start something else? What was going through your head at that time?  

Eli: Yeah, I mean, for me this felt like a great outcome. Again, if we go back to my original goals, like I wasn't qualified. I didn't have the credentials. I had no formal background and. To be able to go from start to raise capital to, you know, successful cash AC acquisition was more important to me than, you know, swinging for the fences. Yeah. And at the time it was truly our best opportunity as well.

The fundraising environment was challenging and yeah, we certainly had our own stumbles as a business, and so this felt. An absolute win, even though in the scheme of the Silicon Valley, right? Like, not an outcome, everyone's gonna like, write home about and be buzzing about on TechCrunch.

But that wasn't important to me as much as just like, base hit let's log some wins. And it was a life-changing outcome for me at the time, so, yeah.  

Julian: Yeah, I can imagine going through that and then it's almost like that experience definitely validated the journey and the start of the journey and now almost like a new chapter and into something else, which, you know, moves me into the, you know, the e-commerce company that you ended up purchasing and running for a bit.

What was. You know, interested in going into that space and how was it different in terms of the adjustment you had to make from, you know, founder from conception idea to mvp, to, to raising capital then to acquisition versus something that was, I'm sure somewhat already built and assembled and running and operating.

What was that transition like and what were the new challenges you face?

Eli: Yeah, I mean, it's funny when you talk to exited founders, everybody has their own story and it's usually never as pretty as the outside world assumes. As far as like the transition and just mentally I spent a year with the, like during my earn out working with the company that acquired us, and after that I, I spent about six months riding my motorcycle from Portland, Oregon down to Panama.

Just to clear my head, like I was just really burnt out. Yeah. And really unsure of what was next, what to do next. And I think that's something that a lot of founders who go through and exit experience in some capacity and don't necessarily talk about very publicly all that often. It's getting normalized more and more now, but I think it's good to share.

So, so yeah, I, and then after that, after the earn out, I probably spent another, Year and a half, like fairly depressed, trying to figure out like, well, fuck, like I don't feel like starting another software company, honestly. I'm pretty burned out. Yeah. And I need a break. But that's where all of my skill and my network is.

So what am I supposed to do? . And so I kind. decided to do that thing like that, saying that you hear all the time when you're growing up, it's like, make your work your passion and you'll never work a day in your life. I'm like, okay. Like I, I now have the means and opportunity to try to make that true for me.

Let's like, let's go for it. And so, yeah. And motorcycling had always been something I was really passionate about. Really enjoyed just being out in nature on a bike. And so, I kept putting it out there to my friend group. I was like, Hey, I don't know what this looks like. If any of you can think of, you know, an opportunity where I could do tech ish stuff or entrepreneurial stuff in the motorcycle space.

Like tell me. And then sure enough, randomly one, one day, a buddy of mine is like, actually I have a friend who is this really successful brick and mortar motorcycle shop owner, and he bought this brick and mortar shop that came along with a fairly not. E-commerce presence and he doesn't know how to turn a computer on, like he's old school, doesn't wanna deal with it.

Just basically is gonna like wind the thing down because he doesn't know how or what to do with it. You should talk to him. And so this just felt like this golden opportunities right in my wheelhouse to take a break from traditional like SaaS. And learned something new that was still tech enabled, that was still kind of generally in the sphere of my brain working in the tech world, but not, you know, software.

And so I met the guy, , kind of did my own reverse version of what this woman had done to me when she bought my company. I was like, Hey, like I know we don't know each other very well, but I'd love to buy this this e-commerce company that you have and you don't. And a funny story about this actually, we, he's like, yeah, cool, like that sounds good.

Let's talk more details. And he's like, let me show you The Warehouse. And the Warehouse was in Soma. And we go up there and he like, they're employees packing things up and whatever, and he's like, you know what? Honestly, this is just too much of a headache. Like, I'm just gonna shut it. And I'm like, fuck what?

And I don't know him very well, so I'm okay. And then in front of me, he proceeds to, he's like, you know what, actually, like, today's the last day. Today's last day. And he fired everyone in front of me on the spot and was just like, you know, it's just, you know, I'm sorry everybody was not working, whatever.

And it wasn't necessarily even that it wasn't working. He just didn't know or care to know. The digital side of the business, it's not his wheelhouse. Sure enough, like that was everyone's last day. So I go get back and I email him my updated offer now that he's like, shut the business down.

I buy it for, you know, pennies on the dollar and spent the next four years basically, or no, I don't know if it was four years, maybe a little less than that. Turning it around, making it, you know, profitable again, and then selling it to this PE firm who's rolling up e-commerce brands in this space.

So yeah, , it's, that's a, like I said, it's a non-conventional story.  

Julian: Yeah. Well, I mean, man, I imagine the shock factor that you, you had in that moment and and then also the opportunity I'm sure just kind of struck you and I'm so interested. How were you able to turn it. What were the important pieces that made the company then, you know, successful and profitable that it didn't have at that time?

It sounds like obviously he had, you know, maybe some lesser interest in the parts that would make it successful, so I'm sure it was nothing of his, you know, ability. But in, in your eyes, in that experience, what was the keys for it to be successful?  

Eli: Yeah, I mean, it needed to be completely replatformed. They were tracking inventory on a legal pad, like a piece of paper. And for context, by the time I finished with that business, We had 22,000 SKUs under management. Wow. In a warehouse out in Concord. And so obviously that needs the level of sophistication has to move from a legal pad to digital inventory management and scanners and, you know, aisles and bins and all this, all the stuff that that you learn about when you learn about e-commerce.

And to your question earlier about the transition from SaaS to e-commerce, it was really fun. Like I, I think back. I remember having conversations with other founders, again, who have sold their businesses and or even just people who've been in tech for a long time on the founder side.

There's this kind of pattern I've heard where folks who've been in it for a while go, man, I really wanna do something tangible. I wanna do something with my hands. I can touch idea, like product or see someone and enjoy it. Enjoy whatever it is that I've put out into the world. Or do something like more blue collar for a little bit.

Just like, I don't know, it's just kind of like funny fantasy I think a lot of people have who are working on products that are very ethereal and meta. And, yeah. . So it really scratched that itch. I mean, when I bought that business, I was going, I was driving, I was riding my motorcycle to Soma at 6:00 AM and I would stay in that warehouse until midnight, 1:00 AM a lot, like many weeks.

In the beginning of the business when I was learning it myself and then figuring out who I, what I needed to hire for. , you know, moving boxes around, labeling things like learning how to code and Shopify I think it's called like liquid. I don't know. They've got their own language. But yeah, like it was just, it was a blast and it was also, A whole new set of skills to learn.

So total a total shift. Very different.  

Julian: Yeah. And now moving into MatterMade and what kind of after the successful acquisition of the previous company and now going through this e-commerce binge, I would say what got you back into, you know, kind of, I guess the top of the funnel and helping companies grow?

You know, their growth engines and working with, you know, rather than a product where it's something you sell, maybe have a subscription with or a service provided there. You know, what was the excitement that brought you into MatterMade?  

Eli: Yeah. I mean, All the while, while I was working on that e-commerce business, some of the VCs that I had backed, glider had connected me with their portfolio companies to help with growth or friends in the industry.

Same thing. Executives brought me into help early stage companies think through their demand gen strategy. Yeah. And just marketing strategy in general. And what I found was that, . While it was fun for me to plug into these companies and lend them my brain and experience I didn't think it was as impactful as it needed to be for them because strategy alone doesn't really matter if you don't have the arms and legs and the experienced arms and legs to actually execute it and report on it and run tests and experiments, and so, I started to develop this hypothesis a around, you know, what if I built my ideal full stack B2B marketing org and roamed around Silicon Valley and now virtually everywhere plugging into these companies and helping both with the strategy and execution side so that we can own the results end to end like we can actually be responsible for marketing sourced revenue.

Yeah. , and that was kind of the initial hypothesis. Hired a small team, found incredible product market fit there. I mean, people were just like we, I couldn't hire fast enough for it. And really went from there. So I didn't necessarily. Truthfully, I set out to build a lifestyle company In the earliest days.

It was just like, I just wanted it to be me and maybe like one or two employees, and very quickly remembered how much fun it was to have a team of really smart people, a team of people who are, you know, better at many things, most things than I am in disciplines that I don't know or understand. And have them teach me and grow with me and vice versa.

Be able to teach them and help them grow in their career. And so I just kind of got hooked on that energy again, like the first time around. And pretty quickly scaled the company up from there. We were the fastest growing company in what we're, I'm in Denver now, so we're the fastest growing company in Denver.

In the Inc 5,000, last year we were number 40 or number 87 on the list.  

Julian: Ah, it's incredible to see how, you know, initially building that company, you know, coming from the basement level, literally coming from the bottom and rising to the top. But just the excitement from building a company, then building your network, and I think a lot of founders see this.

Once that network is built, then it compounds on itself and leads to so many different opportunities and. It's like, I don't know if it's fearlessness or stubbornness or what, whatever it might be, but  

Eli: naivete,

Julian: That leads you to, you know, progress and continuing. And I love hearing the opportunities that bear fruit in this way because it's exciting to see the, and I hope inspiring for a lot of other founders that the work kind of pays off in ways that you may not think of down the.

And I'm interested in terms of, you talk about plugging into companies and a lot of them didn't have the arms and legs to really, you know, run the strategies or operate the strategies at maybe their highest capacity. Where are companies missing? Is it the reporting of the strategies that they're deploying the testing of it, knowing where to test how do companies or how can companies better manage their growth? You know, in acquisition,  

Eli: Yeah, I mean, and it's easy to do the talking heads in marketing, talk about things like demand capture and demand creation. And so then companies build their, you know, the marketing leaders build their plans generally around those things so that everyone else in the company's listening to some of these podcasts, like, oh, okay, yeah, that sounds like the right stuff.

We understand what you're doing. And so then they end up going into channels and. getting really technically minded about the channels. Like how can we optimize this channel to make it as technically excellent as possible? And it's kind of, they miss the bigger picture, right? , if you think about, and part of the reason that marketing is so challenging is and is a black box to non-marketing leaders is because there's so many moving pieces.

Yeah. I call them surfaces, right? many different surfaces that marketing touches and. . So when you think about just demand capture and demand creation, you're really only focusing on a very narrow, albeit very important part of marketing. And so nowadays we see a lot of companies who have cost to acquire problems, right?

Their c is like out of control or not in a place their, that their investors are happy with. And it's because they've neglected all these other surfaces. And so for us, what we do when we come in is, first we help companies audit. , their cost to acquire and then reduce it. So, and the way we reduce it, it's not, there's never ever any silver, silver bullet.

Right. I think that's the other problem that the companies kind of fall into this trap of, it's like, oh, we're gonna crack that one channel, and then it's the floodgates open. It's like, no, there you're looking for a bunch of 1% improvements, but if you get 50 of them because you're testing, you know, 14, 14 things every week, or seven things every week, if you get 50 of them in.

Two quarters of the year, that's a 50% improvement, right? Yeah. So, I think more and more companies need to start thinking about like, where can we find the little wins as quickly as possible or the little learnings as quickly as possible? Because on the whole, that's when companies look back and you hear these success stories and they're like, oh yeah, we were like, you know, magicians, everything's great.

It's like a lot of the time they don't really know what happened. It just worked , and then they're stuck like we come into companies. They've had a lot of success and they're trying, they come to us to figure out why are they having the success, which is, you know, that's kind of funny, right? Like, yeah.

They didn't have attribution set up. They didn't have tracking set up. So we're going in for the first time and saying like, actually, here's where your success is coming from. And usually it's not one place. It's the aggregate of the places working together.  

Julian: Yeah. When you say surfaces, those are the, are those the different channels that you're marketing?

Eli: No. I mean, yes and no. I'll say yes. And so yes, channels are surfaces, but surfaces also can be like the handoff between sales and marketing or lifecycle emails or you know, any touchpoint that a prospect or someone. Let's just like not use bud words. Buzz words, anytime someone interacts with your.

along the journey from first impression to revenue through retention and renewal. All of those touchpoints are surfaces, right? And so, yes, the channel is a big surface. It might be like their first, the first time they're brought in, but that's not the end all be all right? There are a lot of other con rate, like points of conversion.

Yeah. Where someone can either say, Nope, screw you guys, I'm out. I don't trust you, or I don't, you know, I don't believe that you guys can deliver on the value that I need. Get sucked further into the buyer journey and so, got it. Those are what I mean by services.  

Julian: Got it. Got it. And did you build your own in-house tool to manage the whole lifecycle of the process?

Or do you use different tools along with your team to kind of, not only manage and create analytics around the marketing strategies that your clients are working with but also to execute maybe on other strategies as well?  

Eli: Yeah, I mean, so we. , we have our own system for auditing and ranking.

Like we have a benchmark that we created around what we call demand efficiency. . So demand efficiency is a leading indicator for reducing cost. Acquire. We kind of looked across all of our engagements, whether it was with, you know, loom com, hop and Dropbox you name it. All of these companies over the last handful of years that have become success stories.

And we look for patterns. We're like, what's really moving the needle? Yeah. Where? What were the unlocks? And then we waited and scored all of those things across all of those engagements and came up with the demand efficiency benchmark. And so now companies can go in and answer a series of questions, takes about five minutes, and it'll actually show them.

How they score against, you know, leaders lead industry leaders, how they can compare by selling motion, by all sorts of different kind of, you know, how what round of funding they have, they raised all those different things and see how they stack up with within the realm of demand efficiency.

And then it'll actually show them like, Hey, here's, if you scored a 70 out of a hundred, here are the four things that you could do tomorrow. increase your demand efficiency score, which we have seen across all of these portfolio companies, will lead to a reduction in costs to acquire over time.  

Julian: So the main key result you want is decreasing the cost to acquisition, or is it also to have a more successful, say, conversion rate or all the above.

Eli: All the above, yeah. They're very related, right? Yeah. It's like if. 50 different conversion rate points throughout a buyer journey, if we can, again, increase each one by 1% or whatnot that's the foundation, right? You want, you don't want to try to drive scale. And that's why we're in the kind of pickle as an industry that we are right now where.

Companies weren't focused on that foundational excellence and they were just focused on like, let's drive pipeline. And so we're basically coming in and saying like, we can drive pipeline for you. Obviously we have a huge track record of doing that, but before we do that, let's get excellent on the foundational pieces.

Let's increase demand efficiency and improve it. And then on that new found foundation of efficiency, we can drive the pipeline that you're looking  

Julian: for. Yeah. Do you have any. Have there ever been any difficult times working with other founders? Being a founder yourself? Sometimes, yeah. In terms of like sharing ideas or going through a strategy.

I'm always just curious on, on how, you know, coming from a services company as well how the conversation goes on how to. You know, I guess find a line where you're really an advisor and a consultant to what they're looking to do. Even though they might have their own maybe ideas or initiative that they want to push forward, how do you manage that conversation?

Have you ever had any difficult conversations that you've had to manage yourself? .  

Eli: Yeah. I mean, to always tons of difficult conversations. Yeah. When you have strong personalities in the room with a bunch of smart people all trying to get to the same outcome, I think the first thing is just reminding everyone, like, Hey, we're, we all want the same thing, right?

I've, I think over time I've become incredibly blunt and that's my solution for solving these things. So it's like, you know, if there's. Of undertones of like, well, I don't know if, like, is that in our best interest? And I go look like it's such a small place. Silicon Valley is so small. If I fuck this up, people are gonna hear about it.

So like, like, I, like we want the exact same outcome. Yeah. I want you to become this like crazy case study that I can put on our site with amazing metrics and you want the amazing metrics to go raise on a great valuation, right? Like that's, we all want the same thing. Yeah. So sometimes it's just about like anchor.

Back to that and reminding everybody. And then of course there's the soft side of like, especially when you work with technical founders, right? , it's just a different type of brain and they're not used to marketing feels really soft and really like squishy and gross to them. Yeah. Of, not to generalize, but kind of gonna generalize here and.

I think the reality is that marketing isn't squishy, and soft marketing is a series of experiments with hypotheses and results, and so sometimes it's really just taking the time to, to reeducate founders who haven't experienced that type of marketing, take them along for that journey. Show them, you know, tell them some stories about other clients where you've, you know, created a messaging matrix and run all of these hypotheses and hypothesis based tests.

What the, what type of impact that can drive. And usually pretty quickly, you know, you prove it to them twice and then they kind of leave you alone and let you do your thing and let the results speak for themselves.

Julian: I love that. I love the blunt piece as well. It's just like the straightforward and also another founder mentioned this to me, it's like putting your stamp on, on your business or whatever you're doing.

It's like the stamp of approval really does mean a lot to other founders because it's like, yeah, like my reputation, just like yours is on the line of success and we're all leading to the same direction as. It's such a really cool, you know, way to to really get in line with expectations and it's super fun to hear the different ways that you do have to speak to different founders because of their background, their experience, their perspective.

And it's always fun to, to talk through those. But, you know, what, I guess, you know, in terms of today, are you seeing any new trends that companies are starting to work on? I feel like marketing. You know, kind of been blown up. Now that we're all virtual, it's less maybe physical, a little bit more digital.

TikTok is obviously a huge influence on a lot of people's you know, just casual kind of experiences in, in terms of entertainment, but as well as Instagram still there. What are the, some of the more recent trends you're seeing, or are they still the traditional, you know, models depending on the business that, that you're working with?

Eli: Yeah, I mean, I think the two biggest trends are, one, again, putting much, much more pressure on marketing to be accountable for reducing acquisition costs and driving costs acquired down. So that one we've already talked about. The other one is I think marketers who are out in front of the market right now are really worried about this cookie list world that we're about to enter into, right?

Like, companies already have a hard enough time with attribution, and that's so. Most companies we engage with, you'd be surprised some of the shiniest logos on our website had some of the worst tracking problems, right? And. And that's because, you know, when you're growing really fast, it's an easy thing to get pushed out.

Even though it's probably the most important thing to not allow to get pushed out, but that wave, that next kind of double punch around the cookies and tracking is about to be dropped down on us. And I think that's probably the next big. I'm gonna call it a trend in that everyone's hair is gonna be collectively on fire trying to figure out how to solve it.

Yeah. And operate in that new world.  

Julian: Yeah. Have you kind of conceptualize a strategy for that new world that's coming? .  

Eli: Yeah. I mean, well, that's a much longer conversation. Yeah. . But yes.

Julian: I love that. Yeah. We'll get into that maybe at another time, but yeah.

You know, I know we're coming close to the end of the episode and you know, a couple more questions for you. One is, what are some of the biggest challenges that MatterMade faces today and in the current market? And also with, you know, funding rounds being a little. different and difficult for companies.

Companies I think are going a little bit more bootstrapped and you know, I think one of the things is easy to cut is sometimes services companies, even though they might be the even most necessary companies to be working with, to, to kind of reduce the cost in other areas. Yeah. What are some of the biggest challenges that, that kind of keep you up at night?

Eli: Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest challenge really is just around,

A lot of companies, especially on the earlier side, underestimate the cost to run a marketing program. Right. And they like, especially for first time founders who don't really understand what marketing is. They like, think they understand it. But they don't. And so they think like, oh, I'm just gonna hire this one, two years out of college, has a marketing degree person, and then I'm gonna get like a marketing advisor.

And those two in concert with each other is like gonna solve my problem. And what ends up happening is two things. One, obviously it doesn't solve their problem and it doesn't meet their expectations and they fire the junior person and they're going and asking their advisor what they should do. But most importantly, it kills a bunch of time, right?

Like right now burn, like companies are looking at their runway trying to figure out like, how do we get to viability? How do we get to profitability with. 18, 24, 36 months we have in the bank. Yeah. And if you burn six to eight months of that, trying to do it on the cheap, only to realize that you literally just threw away six to eight months worth of cash and progress.

And it's not just the cash burn of the marketer. Yeah. The junior marketer that you have working on it. It's the cash burn of the entire company because now you're six to eight months behind on your marketing strategy and results. And so, The biggest challenge for us is really just around. Helping educate the market around that so that more companies don't make that mistake and it doesn't necessarily have to be that they hire us, right?

Sure. Like we're just one way to skin the cat. They could hire a proper team with a, with proper leadership and proper execution, arms and legs. They'll end up spending more than working with a company like Man Ray to do it. But nonetheless, really for us, like how do we just help companies not waste all that time and all that cash?

So I think that's very top of mind.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. What, what's the long term vision for MatterMade?

Eli: Yeah. I mean, we I don't have aspirations to build the next massive agency. I really don't even like to call us an agency. I think of us much more as like a boutique consultancy that helps companies create marketing sourced revenue. Yeah. And reduce cost to acquire. And so for me, it's continuing to build on.

Crazy track record that we have. Continuing to add, you know, we, at this point we've helped grow some of a large, handful of the most prolific companies of our, you know, generation. And so I want to continue on that path. I want to keep adding whenever the, you know, the latest technologies come out, and talented founders are working on them.

I want to be part of that growth story and be able to look back with my team on a career and a track record that we can all be really proud. .  

Julian: I love that. And of course, congrats on some of the exciting logos you've been working with and have worked with. I think it's really cool to see, you know, the fruit that those companies really, you know, were able to bear over the next few years in, in different kind of climates, especially, you know, loom we, we use at such a household name for us and as well as Dropbox and all these other companies that are now so necessary.

For, you know, whether it's internal companies or how they share information across other orgs. Whether it was early in your career or now, what books or people have influenced you the most?  

Eli: Books or people? Cheesy but Tim Ferris early on, that was what kicked me in the pants to start my own company.

Four hour work week. Double by Cameron Harold, which is a more obscure, more on the obscure side of books, but that was really helpful in just kind of early business acumen. The coaching habit by keep it on my desk actually by Michael. Stainer, I probably butchered that. That book I really love is just like a way to approach conversations through asking questions rather than talking a bunch.

And I found that to be really impactful with my own leadership style and just helping enable my team members.  

Julian: I love that. I always like to ask this question. I've been troubleshooting it, but I think I'm gonna keep it around. But what if you weren't working on MatterMade, what else would you other than riding a motorcycle maybe to other parts of the world.  

Eli: Yeah. . You know, I haven't answered that question for myself either. I I like spending a lot of time on fitness stuff and, but I don't know if there's a there with my skillset. It's pretty obscure or pretty off. Off off course.

What else? I've always wanted to start a bagel shop. Oh yeah. . . I like that. Yeah. I don't know. No. Like all the, all, when you ask me that question, all the things that come up for me, I pretty quickly go like, go. Pretty simple, pretty local. . So I might do another stint of, in the same way that I bought the e-commerce company to take a break from tech.

I might take another break from tech and do something weird before, you know, going back. And I think if I did come back to Tech after that, I'd probably start another software company. .  

Julian: Amazing. Well, Eli, I know we're close or we're pretty much at the end of the show and I'm always you know, so thankful for, you know, conversations with people like yourself who have different experiences and come from a diverse background.

And also who really lived the founder experience in regards to, you know, not setting out to do it originally, but making the decision and kind of going full on into it. And you know, it. You know, leads to such great stories. And yeah, overall super thankful to have you on this show. But before we go I always like to give, you know, my guests a time to give us their plugs.

Where can we find you? Where can we maybe, you know, work with MatterMade? Give us your LinkedIns, your websites, your Twitters everything, every plug all at once.  

Eli: Yeah, for sure. I appreciate it. Julian MatterMade.co is the place you can find out about how we might be able to help your company reduce cost to acquire and drive marketing sourced revenue.

And then folks can find me on LinkedIn. I think my name there is Elias, and then Eli parenthesis Rubel, R u b E L. So yeah, feel free to connect with me there or look us up and get in touch.  

Julian: Amazing, Eli. Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself and thank you again for joining the show.  

Eli: Yeah. Thanks Julian.

Really appreciate you having me on.  

Julian: Of course.