Julian:Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast.Today we have Mark Fershteyn, CEO of Recapped, a new category of product thathelps B2B sellers collaborate with their buyers. Mark, I'm so excited to chatwith you, not only because you've been almost a serial entrepreneur in in, notonly in your endeavors.

Pre Recapped, butalso thinking about growth and, and really just kind of thinking about how toconnect people and products. And so I'm so excited to kind of tap into, whatyou've been able to do at Recapped where the company is. But before we go andtalk about that, what were you doing before you started the company?

Mark:Yeah, Julian, first off, thanks for having me. Really, really excited. I thinkwe're gonna have a great conversation. Before founding Recapped, I spent almosta decade either selling B2B software myself. Or leading sales teams. Yeah. Andreally what I, what I really had a lot of passion for is just building thingsfrom scratch.

Yeah. I wasn'treally a big fan of kind of maintenance and, going from nine to 10, I likedgoing from zero to one. Yeah. And so I was very lucky to launch a coupledifferent teams, manage a couple different teams started at Citrix. Hugecompany. Everything from GoToMeeting to, document management and electronicsignature.

Ended up moving toApp Academy, which was a coding bootcamp. Yeah. Where I got to help kind ofmore on the B2C side as well as with some partnerships. And ended up launchingRecapped out of personal frustration.  

Julian:Yeah, it's so fascinating thinking about the mentality of going from zero toone and what in particular was, was more interesting, in that kind of problemset or in that experience, was it, attacking the problem from a particularangle or perspective or uncovering it as sort of, a lot of founders kind oftalk about the, the, the interest of that, but what in particular had youexcited about that particular, stage of growth of a company?

Mark:Yeah, that's a great question. I think. A lot of it really just tailors to whatmy strengths and weaknesses are. Right. I may not be the most regimented anddetailed oriented and I, I would never be a coo, right? Yeah. But on the flipside, I think where like my a d d kicks in and, I'm able to really strive isgoing, being the first kind of person going through the jungle Bushwick in thetrees, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Iforging my own trail. Like for me that's really, really exciting. Doing thingsthat don't scale, having experiments, which most of them are gonna fail.Mm-hmm. That is the most exciting piece of the puzzle for me. It's like solvingthat puzzle. Yeah. And so I think just my skills and what kind of excited mejust led me really to that.

So I was very luckyto kind of be thrown at literally like the worst performing teams that we hadand getting them up to, top three, top four, top five, and then moving on tothe next one that was failing. And that was it was a really fun ride.  

Julian:Yeah, I do. Thinking about, building things that don't scale and I, I love, Ilove that concept.

And, and a lot offounders obviously through the early stages, go through that process, but inparticular, what, what about, the things that don't scale? What were you ininvesting your time, your resources in, and when did you get them to the point?When did you kind of define what was scalable and what was kind of valuableand, and invaluable to kind of keep in this process?

Mark:Yeah, that's a great question. So when I was at Citrix, for example, we had Ithink 12 or 13 different verticals or industries that we went after, right? Sowe had products, yeah. And we tailored the messaging and the, the value propreally for that vertical. So we'd have everything from healthcare to finance,to legal, to, accounting, you name it.

And I was,initially, I was kind of just, I guess I happened to be just thrown at theworst performing one. It was like literally it was the one that was missingquota. No one on the team was making any money. I was a new manager and,foolishly, I raised my hand and kind of said, I'll like, what's the worst thatcan happen?

I'll handle it. Itcan't get any worse. And once we got it to I guess it was, what, six to ninemonths and we got it to becoming a top three vertical in terms of revenue production.And really, I think a lot of it was really just enabling my team to do the workthat they should be doing. Right?

Helping them tailorand make small changes. And I mean, they're the ones that really carried it,but being able to like push them to show that like, Hey, we have thiscompetitive nature. Let's tailor, let's use that, let's leverage that and let'slet's have fun while we're doing it. Right? Yeah. And so top three, and thenthey just kept repeating that same cycle over and over.

Julian:Yeah. And is it the, is it the people, is it the process? What does it take tomake kind of that team successful? It, it, yeah. I guess, yeah. Is it the teamor the process or is it something else?  

Mark:Yeah, I think it's a little bit of everything. I think almost anyone can begood at sales because there's so many different ways to be successful, right?

It's not a one sizefits all. But I think there are best practices and fundamentals, right? You canhave. Really great discovery, right? You can learn what the pains are andreally amplify those pains. And I think if you do a good job, just even doingthat, that's going to dramatically, I think, improve your chances of success.

Yeah. Right. Sothat was always, almost always the first thing I said I started with, alongsidewith just hustle, right? I think at the end of the day, if you're making 150dials a day versus 50 dials a day, your outcome or your chance for outcome fora successful outcome is gonna be significantly different.

Yeah. Yeah, it was,it was kind of always just hustle first, and then we just make adaptive changesto whatever we were doing.  

Julian:Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like it's almost like the, the, the motivation or almostlike that quality, that grit, that hustle that somebody innately has and thenkind of help helping them in the right direction go in the right direction.

And what are thosedirections that, that you would go? Obviously there's a traditional things thatare extremely valuable and, and in the sales process, the activity you can putin and emails and and calls. But what else? When we think about. Sales nowadayswhere things really, rely on an omnichannel approach.

You get some leadsfrom marketing, you use some information articles and there's so much valueadded. But I think now the challenge is really getting that message tight and,and honed. But yeah, I'd love for you respond about that.  

Mark:Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's always that aspect too, right?

But I think, andnot to be a walking commercial or anything, but this is exactly kind of why Istarted working on Recapped, right? Yeah. I. We were doing complex deals and Ire and I remember I had this light bulb moment in my head where I realized thatso much of sales is really just project management, right?

You're trying toherd all these cats together, right? You're trying to really align everyonetowards a mutually beneficial outcome. Right? And just as salespeople, likeagain, we're, we're wired a certain way, right? We're like, we're running after20 different opportunities. We're talking to hundreds of prospects.

It's so hard tokeep track of everything, right? Things get lost, walls get dropped. And so Ireally wanted just a way for my team to be able to really just better managetheir deals and collaborate, right? Because I think sales should be acollaborative experience. It shouldn't be this like greasy hairs, snake coilman, like that, we have this like bad image of when we think of sales, likeselling at the end of the day is solving someone's pains, right?

Sure. Someone has aproblem and if your solution does a great job of it and, and you're able tohelp them, it's a really rewarding. Yeah, scenario. And so I just wanted tochannel that and, and enable my team to be successful. And I think one of thebiggest challenges today is that selling has gotten so complex, right?

Yeah. Competitionis at an all time high budget is almost nonexistent right now. Yeah. Right. Soyou have. Scrap up and fight for every single thing while also managing, sixplus different stakeholders on the buying side and all of their, competingpriorities. And so being able to do that in a way, it's just, I think it's,it's really hard out there for sellers today.

Julian:Yeah. And what is involved in that process? And, and even just to give somecontext for the audience, what team is the ideal team for Recapped? I think alot of us. I think in early stages it's kind of a one-to-one, somebody handlesthe full cycle. If it's not something super complicated, there's maybe onestakeholder and one decision maker.

So it's, it'sfairly, not complex, but obviously as things, start to touch different teams,technology start to expand across, within organizations there's so many morepeople involved. What. I guess what is the ideal structure of an efficient kindof sales process and, and how you manage that project?

Who's involved init? What are the steps and how do I ensure as a person I kind of, make surethat everything complete is completed in a full circle?  

Mark:Yeah, that's a great question. So, couple, couple things. Couple randomthoughts. One, I think is, again, going back to kind of my. Epiphany that salesis project, right?

You have to manageit like a project. So first off, I would start like, if you're doing a complexdeal, and by complex that can mean anything. $20,000 or more, 25,000. Usuallythat's where we start seeing complexity happen, but it's less so around thedollar amount and more so about the number of people involved.

Right. If you and Iget on a call and I'm able, and you're able to buy from me on a 30 minute callor a two hour call, we probably don't need something like that. It'stransactional, right? Don't introduce any more chaos or any complexity than,than it needs to. On the flip side, if you have to go to your boss, we have toget legal involved.

We need security,we need it. This becomes a six month thing. All of a sudden, we need to be ableto create a. Mutual action plan or a project plan. You can do this in a GoogleDoc. You can, do it in a, in a Word doc, but really outlining what are thegoals? What are the outcomes? What are the consequences of not achieving thesegoals?

Right? What are thenext steps? And by next steps, we don't mean, Hey, let's schedule a meeting.It's what is everything that needs to happen for that mutual success to happen?Right. Hey, like we need to go live and we need to start seeing results fromyour product in six months, which means we need to do X, Y, Z today, or we'renot gonna hit that timeline in six months.

Right. So I thinkbeing able to. Really manage these deals and stay on top of them. That's whatgets people an edge up today.  

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. And I guess what typically gets lost in the sales process and whatare, what are teams typically using to try to keep track of, of, of this wholeI, I would say project, right?

I mean, it sounds,it sounds like it, right? I think to, to minimize it would be like the salesprocess. But really yeah, you're right. It's a project cuz it's so,incorporates so many different people. And, and there's so many things thatrely. On it being successful, but yeah. What do typical people typically use?

To, to keeptrack.  

Mark:Yeah. Almost everybody out there is living in kind of email hell, right? It's,it's a, it's a thousand emails. It's back and forth. It's different threads,and if you're the buyer, all you want is to find that proposal or that pdf orthe, or the quote or the quote or the case study, right?

So now you'resitting there lawyer searching through your inbox trying to find it that onething. And, and as a seller, like if you forget to CC someone on an email,yeah. That could completely ruin two weeks of, the timeline of the deal, andwho knows, right? Like if maybe the company has to change priorities in twoweeks, all of a sudden you just lost that sale that could have otherwise beensuccessful.

But to answer yourquestion, I mean, everything could get lost, right? Content, next steps. Timekills all deals. Yeah. And every single day. And every single little delaycould be adding 30, 40% bloat to your sales cycle.  

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about the traction that you've seen so farwith Recapped, you know, what's been exciting about the growth up till now?

How many users are,are on the platform, and what in particular is exciting about the next stage ofgrowth?  

Mark:Yeah, we, so we started, so we launched about three and a half years ago as thefirst kind of customer collaboration platform. Going back to my earlier point,we were the first ones in the jungle, chopping down trees, trying to figure outwhat the hell we were doing.

And so we stumbledkind of into this, bigger vision than what we originally set out for. And werealized it's, it's not just collaboration between sales and, and the buyer.It's, it's collaboration throughout from one organization to another, right?Having legal, having marketing, having customer success, being able to weavethat collaboration both internally and externally.

That's a very, veryambitious goal. Right. And, that's certainly not what we set out for. So we'veraised. About 8 million to date. We had a seed round about two summers ago fromcrv, incredible fund and, and some really great venture capitalists that joinedas well. One of our customers wrote a check for 500,000.

It was incrediblyhumiliated or humbling and since then we've three or four Xed, we're grownpretty steadily. Made some changes, obviously with everything going on in themarket to be a little bit more less aggressive and a little bit, more sensibletowards profitability.

Sure. But very,very excited with everything that's going on with the AI space. Right. Thinkingabout how to incorporate AI into our product. It seems like in the ai, likewe're seeing. Leaps and bounds on a weekly basis as where things were takenmonths and quarters and years before. Yeah. So the hype cycle is definitelythere.

But also I thinkeveryone right now is really, really focused on insights and analytics anddata. Yeah. What is the roi? What is the return? What is every dollar is beingmeasured at a level that it really hasn't been in a while. Yeah. And so we'refocusing a lot on that.  

Julian:Yeah. I would say, I, I would ask, for other founders out there who are reallylooking to get a grasp of measuring their ROI and really keeping track of themetrics that, that kind of lead them to know, what part of the machine needsimprovement.

You have the top ofthe funnel all the way down, if so many steps involved, what would you oradvice be for founders now, being that it's so important to be kind ofconscious and and intentional with how you structure things. How would youstructure a process and, and how do you kind of cut through the noise to, to beefficient, but also effective in, acquiring new customers.

What have you seenthat's successful for you?

Mark: Ithink one of the biggest learnings, AK mistakes that we've made over the pastcouple years. Is we scaled before we really nailed something. Mm-hmm. Right?Because we had this pressure. We were, we raised all this money, there was allthis excitement and it's like, grow, grow, grow, grow, grow.

But yeah, inhindsight, I wish we would've grown slower. Right? I wish like we definitelyfelt pains that people were doing too much work and we needed to hire otherpeople. But I wish, I, I wish we would've waited till the pain was two times orthree times more painful. Right. Because it really forces you to.

Have thatdiscipline and that execution, and I think founders today are probably doing amuch better job of it. Yeah. Than when we were fundraising in, 2021 when itwas, the craziest time in the market. Yeah. So I would really, really pushpeople to take their time to hire, really. And if someone is not an rockstar orhas a really high outcome to be a rockstar Yeah.

Just don't hirethem. Right. Yeah. It's don't hire people that are good. In my opinion. Right.Because if you do that 10 times over, the results can be exponentially bad.Yeah. And so it, it, I mean, it could kill, I've seen it kill organizations, soYeah. Thankfully we, we've been lucky. But that's, that's my biggest, I thinkone of my biggest lessons is we just, we just we're so focused on scaling andgrowing.

That we didn'tactually have 100% confidence in everything that we were scaling, if that makessense.  

Julian:Yeah, yeah. No, it does. And, and I'm curious in terms of your experience, and,and how to share this with, with founders, walk me through a process. So I'mlooking to scale my business. I've just kind of, received this certain amountof funding.

I'm looking to hirethese individuals, but maybe I don't have, experience hiring. Maybe I haven'thad the. The kind of nauseous or, or I guess the battle scars to reallyidentify the right person. What would I do to kind of make sure that they'reright for my culture, they're right for my team, they're right for the goalsthat the company has at the moment.

What are thequestions you ask? Is there anything in particular that you've found that'sbeen helpful to identify, that type of talent that's gonna be yeah, I guess, Iguess, a positive to your team versus something that you have to learnfrom?  

Mark:Yeah. Man, it's, it's, it's hard, right?

So I think firstoff, you need to set your expectations that you're probably gonna screw it up85% of the time. Yeah, yeah. Right. We went in because I've been very lucky tohave hired hundreds of salespeople over my career. I came in thinking that Iknew what hiring was gonna be like and how to spot great talent.

I bombed 70% of thetime, and that was with. Years, like a decade of experience of hiring, becausehiring for a small startup is so much different than when you have a big namebehind you. You're, you're a big corporation, you have resources, at a startup,you don't have a lot of, you don't have a lot of resources, you don't have alot of training, you don't have a lot of enablement.

And so you'rereally looking for people that are comfortable with being thrown in the waterand just being told to swim or figure out how to swim, right? And the best wayto do that. Is by finding people who have already done that, right? Becauseeveryone, everyone thinks they want to be at a startup until they're actuallyat a startup.

And it reminds meof that, the quote, right? Like, everyone has a plan until they get punched inthe face, right. Mike Tyson, or however, but like, it's so true. Like we'vehad. Through our network and through my friends who are also founders, like somany people. Join a startup, see what it's really like and realize, okay, thisis not conducive to my lifestyle.

This is not like,I'm not happy. I'm so stressed, I'm so overworked, I'm so underpaid. Like itreally is not for everyone. But to answer your original question, I thinkthere's a couple tips. One, if you're a founder, I would really recommend doingevery single role if possible, by yourself to some capacity so that you canactually start.

Having a bettergauge of what's possible, right? Yeah. So for example, we hired some marketers.I wish I would've done marketing myself. I wish I would've sat down for threemonths and tried to become a CMO just so I can get dangerous enough so thatwhen, when we make these hires, I can actually, see if they're doing a greatjob or if there's wool that's being pulled over my eyes.

Sure. So wouldreally recommend doing it yourself if you can't. And regardless, even if youcan't or you can't, I would recommend leveraging your network. Sure. I'm sureyou have some advisors. I'm sure there's people. And if you don't find someonethat you admire or a company that you want to be like and reach out to thatperson and say, Hey, I'm a founder.

I'm reallystruggling trying to find a great head of marketing. Can you please help me?Most people have been thrown a lot of tremendous help throughout their career,and most people are a kind, you wanna pay it forward, right? So don't be afraidto ask. And then something else that was really beneficial for us is I, I did,we did this from day one, is we wrote out our culture values.

And those hiringdecisions went against those culture values, right? Yeah. So, and when we wereinterviewing, where did they rate one to five on each five of these fivevalues. And it became very apparent that, in the early days, like you wantpeople who have that culture, you want to create an echo chamber.

It still needs tobe diverse, obviously, but you need people all rowing in the same direction.Yeah. And then as you scale, you can deviate a little bit more from that. But Ithink the culture is what's gonna define you guys in the early days.

Julian: Yeah.And also just, I think one thing that comes to mind too is after you hire them,the enablement, how do you enable people to be successful in your team?

You mentioned theculture piece, obviously aligning around that, but is it. If, if I'm bringing onsalespeople for instance, is it, how do I enable them to be successful? Is it,predefine like scripts or is it, tools, sales enablement tools? Is it meetingsto go through and, and, and do a bunch of one-on-one role playing sessions?

How do I kind of. Identifywhat's gonna be valuable and helpful to my team, and how do I enable them as afounder without having to, I guess manage them. Right. Because a lot of timesas a, as a startup, you're like, I wanna manage you 50% of the time, but theother 50%, like, I hope you're doing some good stuff.

How do you enablethose people?  

Mark:Yeah. It's really, really difficult. I, all of the things you just said, yes,you have to do. Right. And then so much more. Right. So I think any. Anyexpectation of how much time you think it's gonna get or expect to get someoneup and running, I would multiply that by three or four.

I think one of thethings I have not done a great job of admittedly, is enabling people. And nowin hindsight, I wish I would've invested more time and more energy becausemaybe they would've been more successful. That was something really difficultto come to terms with over the past couple months as I like, we reviewed wherewe've been as a company, but it's.

You're gonna haveto help them be like very, very few, if any, people are just able to come inand just jump right into it. Right? Yeah. So you're gonna have to spend 1, 2,3, maybe four, five months really helping them and that's why it's so importantto make sure you hire the right person in the first place.

Yeah. Cause like ifyou're gonna be spending all this time, yeah. I mean you're cuz not only areyou spending time. Training someone, they're not being doing it efficiently andthere's an opportunity cost to your time of things that you could be doingelsewise or doing better, right? So it's, you really have to make sure thatevery hour is going in the right place.

And that's whyhiring with the right people is, is so important.  

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. Well said. And I'm just curious whether it's external or internal,what are some of the biggest risks outside of, obvious things like fundraising,scaling, and but what are some of the biggest risks that you think Recappedfaces today?

Mark:That's a really good question. I think, when we first started we used to bereally scared of competition. I realize that competition doesn't matter as muchas you think it does, right? Yeah. People just our human brains just don't do agreat job of understanding really large numbers. And for most markets, themarkets are so big that you can have multiple billion dollar businesses and youstill wouldn't have, massive penetration in the market.

So, we used to bereally worried about that. Now, I think. It's really making sure the biggestthreats for us, I think are the biggest threats that most businesses see, whichis being as capital efficient as possible while still trying to grow and tryingto maintain. Outside of that, I think it's really just nailing down the productvision.

Yeah. Being able toprioritize the right features for the right customers. The customers you getare just so important in the early days because they define what the roadmap isand. If you build for the wrong, wrong audience, then you're just going, you'rejust doubling down on the wrong road, right?

Yeah. And so I'malways really, really conscious of. Product and roadmap. I think that's, that'sprobably what keeps me up at night, whereas back in the day used to becompetitors and Sure. None of that, none of that shit really matters.  

Julian:Yeah, yeah. No, so yeah, another founder said it to me in a similar way, butyou know, there is so much opportunity out there that can be multiplesuccessful companies and not everyone's hospital name.

It's, it's verymuch, it's the scaling of numbers that you're right. We, we just can'tcomprehend until, we're engaged in it and see that, There can be successamongst the competition and everybody has a particular pain that, that you cansolve. If everything goes well, what's the long-term vision for Recapped?

Mark:That's a really good question. So, my co-founder and I are both immigrants. Icame here from former Soviet Union. He came here from India. And I think forus, without getting too kind of philosophical, our big like American dream isto go public in ipl, right? So that's. That's like the grand vision.

Who knows if we'llget there, who knows if, that's what's in store for us. But that would be theideal outcome for us. Yeah, long term, because I think, I mean it's, we live inan amazing time and an amazing place where, it is possible. So Yeah.  

Julian:Absolutely. I like this next section.

I call it myfounder f faq. So I'm gonna hit you with some rapid fire questions and we'llsee where we get. So first question I'd always like to open it up is, what'sparticularly hard about your job day to day?

Mark:Something that's really hard for me is having, I'm not having a lot of empathyand putting myself in other people's shoes, right? Because I'm juggling so manythings on a daily basis. And, I, I, I don't think of companies as families,because, If, if families like you kind of have to love each other, whatever,what, regardless of performance.

I think ofcompanies as good, companies as really good sports teams, right? Yeah.Sometimes people have to be benched, sometimes adjustments have to be made. Andso balancing that while still being very supportive and loving for my team issomething that's been really, really difficult. But hopefully I've gottenbetter at.

But that's, that'sthe biggest thing I think for me is just, yeah. Remembering that at the end ofthe day, we're all people and we're all struggling, and we're all fighting inthe same direction.  

Julian:Hopefully. Yeah. So, yeah. I, I like to add, this is a question I'm, I'mintroducing now, but is, is Recapped similar to the first version of, of theproduct?

How similar is itto, to what you first initially started building? Or how different is it andwhat's particularly exciting about where it is today?  

Mark:Yeah, it's funny, so I found sketches from like 2017 the other day. Yeah. Itlooks pretty identical. Really I think we got very lucky and that because I wasalso building for myself, like, I was able to kind of envision how I wanted theproduct to work.

And outta the box,it looks pretty simpler. Similar, our scope audience ambition is only 10 x.Yeah. But the initial solution is still very much the same. Right. Whetheryou're an attorney or a real estate agent or. A salesperson on a complexenterprise say sales cycle. At the end of the day, it's still just clientcommunication and client collaboration.

Yeah. Right. And sowe want to go, we want to be the collaboration platform for anyone that's doingback and forth with the clients. Right. Even if it's just one-to-one, right?Like. My accountants should be using Recapped. My, our lawyers should be usingRecappedped. Right. Because it needs to be secure, it needs to be safe, itneeds to be easy.

And for a lot ofthings, email just doesn't do the job.  

Julian:Yeah, yeah. When thinking about building software, a lot of founders will justcome into challenges when they start to scale and integrating with otherclients, say systems and things like that. What's been a challenge for yourteam to start building into and integrating with and what's still on theroadmap that you're, you're.

Really lookingforward to integrating and, and, and what it'll add in terms of the value ofthe platform.  

Mark:Yeah. My, my co-founder brought this up a while back and it's kind of alwaysstuck with me. It kind of enlightened me. Integrations and features aren't justsomething that you build once and you forget about it.

Yeah. Right. If we,we have a Salesforce integration, we have a HubSpot integration. Guess what? Assoon as that integration's released 10 other feature requests come outimmediately, there's a maintenance cost to every single feature, especiallyevery single integration. So if you're thinking about an integration, don'tjust think about what it's gonna take to release it, but what is the nextversion and the next version and the next version look like?

Because you mayfind that the maintenance cost of that may not make sense for the fivecustomers that are requesting it. Right. So yeah, that's kinda just. It's beena change in the way I think about features.

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. And is there anything in particular you're waiting for on thehorizon to, to be built into Recapped that you're excited to launch?

Mark:Yes.  

Julian:Pulling for spoilers here, obviously. Yeah. Joking.  

Mark: Ithink really cool stuff that we're doing with data and analytics. And givingpeople insights, because right now insights can be the difference between awinning organization and not. Right? Yeah. And so that plus some of the otherthings that we have, like APIs and integrations and automations.

Will be really,really exciting, I think.  

Julian:Yeah. How do you you mentioned AI earlier. How do you envision AI being a partof Recapped? What do you, what do you think it could add in terms of whetherit's, the analytics piece, is it the collection, is it some type of contentgeneration, for instance?

What do you think,what, what is your excitement about what that technology can add to, to whatyou're doing already?  

Mark:Yeah. I'll, I'll take it even just outside of Recapped because I think itapplies, but one of the things I'm really, really excited about with AI isit's, I think in the next one to two years, we're gonna see an AI co-pilot fornearly just about every role, right?

We're seeing thiswith engineers with, GitHub and other platforms. I think it's gonna help peoplebe more efficient, more effective, and make smarter decisions. Right? So, inRecapped, who to follow up with, when to follow up with them, what content toshare with them, what next steps should be what What questions to ask, whatanswers to give them.

Right. Like all ofthis Yeah. Should and could be done by ai. And it should really help you be a10 x salesperson. Yeah. And hopefully that means teams will, be able to reallyjust magnify their outcomes and their outputs. Without having to 10 x theirheadcount. Right. Which is every startup's dream.

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to ask this next question because I, I love how foundersextract knowledge out of anything that they ingest, whether it's early in yourcareer now, what books or people have influenced you the most and how?  

Mark:Yeah. Steve Jobs is up there. Love everything. I'm, I'm a huge Apple fanboy.

So his biography,highly recommend it. Obviously not always the nicest person from accounts, butyou know, had a obsession with the customer and the customer experience, and Ithink that that shaped a lot of the way that I kind of make decisions. Andthinking about, products. As just beautiful works of art, right?

Yeah. Or they canbe beautiful of art. Like it's not, it doesn't have to be an enterprisesoftware from the 1990s. Right. It can be fun, right? Like Slack is a greatexample of that, right. So I think that, and then I think I mean the typicals,right? The, I'm watching the last dance on Netflix right now with MichaelJordan.

Yeah. Again, thatrelentless kind of, Passion to be the best and to compete and to win for me isreally inspiring.  

Julian:Yeah, yeah. I guess for, for founders out there, any, any, any like firstsaunder books that kind of helped you, I guess, launch or go early on? I wascurious on, on what kind of was was almost your bible in the first first periodof the battleground?

Mark:Yeah. I'm looking at my bookshelf right now. Phil Knights Shoe Dog was reallygreat. Yeah. A lot of the books that I kind of always prescribe are more aroundsales. I think influence is a must read for anyone. I think just understandinglike human psychology, which also dovetails really well into sales and salespsychology.

And then. IMeditation's by Marcus Reis, I think is just a really good read for people justin general around not letting things really get to you having a stoic mindset.Yeah. I'm rereading it right now actually, but I'd say those are two reallygood ones. And then there's also. The hard thing about hard things.

That was also yeah,a really good read.  

Julian:Yeah. Yeah. I love those. Well, mark, I know we're coming to the close of theepisode, so I'd like to make sure we didn't leave anything on the table. Isthere any question I didn't ask you that I should have or anything that wedidn't talk about that you wanted to bring up?

Obviously we'll geta chance to give you your plugs, but yeah, anything we left on the tablehere?  

Mark:No, Julian, I think this was great. Good thought provoking questions. Okay.Definitely wasn't great for most of 'em, so that's good. No, I, I don't thinkthere's anything else to add.  

Julian:Amazing, man. Well, tell us where we can be a fan of you, where we can supportyou and the product.

Give us yourLinkedIn, your Twitters, your Instagrams, wherever you want. Where can we getin touch with you and, and be a fan of support.

Mark:Absolutely. First off, email, if anyone has any questions, wants to reach out,anything I can do to help Right. From a startup founder that's gotten a lot ofassistance over the years.

More than happy topay it forward. mark@recapped.Io. It's on pretty much every piece of clothing Iown and wear. I don't do a lot of social media, but you can find me onLinkedIn. And then if you think Recapped can help you and really nail down aprocess and help you, close more deals and deliver a better customerexperience, please go to Recapped.io.

You'll, speak tosomeone on the team or myself or whoever, but more than happy to help, justreach out.  

Julian:Amazing, Marcus. It's such a pleasure not only learning about your earlyexperience, but what brought you to Recapped and how you're really helpingteams really close the, the cycle that that been, has common leaks, commonproblems, there's so many things that could go wrong, but you know, reallyclosing the loop on the communication and the process has been extremelyvaluable for companies up to now.

And I'm excited tosee where the company expands too. So I hope you enjoyed yourself today onBehind Company Lines, and thank you so much for being on the show today.  

Mark:Thank you so much for having me.  

Julian:Of course.  

Mark:Really appreciate it.

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