In this episode, I sit down with Guy Rubin, Founder & CEO of Ebsta — the global leader in Revenue Intelligence, recently acquired by Fullcast.Guy shares unfiltered insights from a decade of building, scaling, and exiting a SaaS company that transformed how revenue teams operate.We cover:🚀 Raising Venture Capital vs Bootstrapping — the good, the bad, and the ugly💰 Exits — why selling to the highest bidder isn’t always the best outcome📉 GTM SaaS Consolidation — who’s winning, who’s losing, and why🤖 AI in Sales — how top Go-To-Market teams are using AI to pull ahead🎯 Elite AEs — what separates the best from the rest, and why the gap is wideningWhether you’re a founder, sales leader, Account Executive or SaaS operator, this episode is packed with hard-won lessons from someone who’s lived it all — from bootstrapping to acquisition.👇 Timestamps & Resources below 👇00:00 Episode Highlights & Intro00:02 Why "build it and they will come" never works and why founders should focus on solving "11/10 problems" (not 7/10)00:06 Founder Archetypes 00:08 Why Timing Beats Execution: Ebsta's Inception Story00:11 Doing Product Led Growth before Product Led Growth was a thing00:13 Why Guy chose NOT to raise VC and instead bootstrap the business 00:17 Going head to head with companies that have raised BILLIONs00:22 Delivering value to the C-suite: Pictures Work Better Than Words00:25 VC or Bootstrap: What's Right For You00:28 The great SaaS Consolidation: who’s winning, who’s losing, and why00:38 Advice to founders looking to sell their business 00:40 Why US SaaS companies continue to beat European ones00:45 The Rise Of The 10x Sales Professional 00:52 Why the best path to revenue growth is focusing on Existing Business 00:56 Why are we seeing a return to Full-Cycle Sales 01:02 Leveraging AI to Increase Sales Efficiency 01:10 All Eyes On Ideal Customer Persona (ICP)...and Finance01:16 The future of GTM: Will AI Agents Kill CRM 🔔 Don’t forget to subscribe for more unfiltered conversations on technology, business, and defying the status quo.Follow Guy:🔗 LinkedIn: / rubinguy 🤖💰 Ebsta – Revenue Inteligence: https://www.ebsta.com/📊 2025 GTM Sales Benchmarks – https://benchmarks.ebsta.com/2025-gtm... 🎙 The Heresy Podcast – conversations with builders, thinkers & rebels 🔔 Subscribe: / @heresypodcast 🔗 Follow Dimitar: / stanimiroff
Ali Mitchell has backed more than half a dozen unicorns — but his story starts with failure.
Before co-founding Huddle and later leading EQT Ventures, one of Europe’s most successful VC funds, Ali was a founder who learned firsthand how hard it is to build and scale. In this episode, we unpack what those early failures taught him about resilience, product-market fit, and what separates great founders from good ones.
We also dive into:
Why Europe still struggles to produce $10B startups
What the best founders get right about distribution and go-to-market
How to raise VC capital the right way (and what most get wrong)
Why Ali still believes in founder intuition — even in the age of AI
A conversation about hard lessons, second acts, and the patterns behind six unicorns.
🎙️ Heresy is a podcast about people who defy conventional wisdom — founders, investors, and thinkers reshaping how technology gets built and scaled.
👇 Timestamps & Resources below 👇00:00 – Trailer01:01 – Ali’s Early Journey and Entrepreneurial Roots05:32 – Building and Scaling Huddle14:27 – Go-to-Market Lessons and Missteps22:18 – Why Europe Struggles with Commercialization27:56 – From Founder to Investor: Lessons from EQT Ventures36:14 – The Cultural Contrast: US vs. Europe43:40 – What the US Gets Right: Selling, Storytelling, and Scale48:54 – The Tuck Shop Story: Teaching Entrepreneurship Early50:06 – Returning to Europe: Family, Values, and Purpose51:56 – From EQT to Odyssey: A New Mission for European Tech54:51 – Flow and the New Era of Engineering Automation56:00 – Odyssey’s Investment Focus: AI + Automation in the Real World57:30 – Lessons for Founders: Ambition, Focus, and Resilience59:41 – What Most People Get Wrong About Venture Capital01:02:31 – Final Advice for First-Time Founders01:03:41 – Closing Thoughts🔔 Don’t forget to subscribe for more unfiltered conversations on technology, business, and defying the status quo.Follow Ali:🔗 LinkedIn: / alimitchell 💰 Odyssey Ventures: https://www.odyssey.ventures/🎙 The Heresy Podcast – conversations with builders, thinkers & rebels 🔔 Subscribe: / @heresypodcast 🔗 Follow Dimitar: / stanimiroff
#Ali Mitchell #EQT Ventures #startups #venture capital #founders #SaaS #Europe #tech #VC #Heresy Podcast #DimitarStanimiroff #growth #failure #unicorns #scaling #productmarketfit #fundraising
Philip Su is an engineer and leader who helped build Microsoft, Facebook, and OpenAI from the inside. In this episode, he shares hard-earned lessons on thriving in the AI era — and staying human through it all.
We cover:
How AI is reshaping software careers (and what to do about it)
Why “good enough” is no longer safe
The dangerous gap between exponential tech and human systems
Burnout, identity, and what working in an Amazon warehouse taught him
The rise of agentic tools, LLMs, and what CS students need to know now
Whether you’re an engineer, founder, or future-oriented thinker, this conversation will challenge your assumptions — and help you find a better path forward.
Max Altschuler (Sales Hacker, Outreach, GTMfund) joins us in London to talk about building category-defining companies, investing in breakout startups, and rethinking how venture capital works.
We go deep on:
Lessons from scaling Outreach with Manny Medina
The birth of Sales Hacker and the GTMfund story
How AI is reshaping go-to-market motions
Why GTM is the last true moat in SaaS
The tension between being a founder vs fund manager
How Max picks winners—and his take on “The Death of VC”
This is a must-listen for operators, founders, and anyone navigating the future of SaaS, sales, and startup investing.
This episode originally aired as the final Heresy podcast, recorded shortly after the winding down of Heresy.io — our sales software startup.
After a last-minute acquisition fell through, we had no choice but to begin closing the company. In this episode, I sit down with my co-founder Svilen and our first hire Jack Otis Barker (frontend engineer) to reflect on the journey:
The highs and lows of startup life
The things we got right (and wrong)
What we’d do differently if we had the chance
Why we still wouldn’t trade the experience for anything
We’ve since relaunched the Heresy podcast with a broader focus on scaling, selling, and building in tech — but we’re keeping this episode up as a time capsule of sorts.
💥 It’s raw, it’s real, and it was never meant to be the end.
In this episode of the Heresy podcast, Dimitar is joined by Andrus Purde — founder of Outfunnel and former CMO at Pipedrive.
With over 20 years of experience across companies like Skype and Pipedrive, Andrus has seen it all when it comes to digital marketing and growth. But lately? He’s had enough of cold email.
Tune in to hear:
Why Andrus believes we're slowly killing email as a channel
His personal framework for picking the right marketing channel for your business
Lessons from scaling Pipedrive’s user acquisition from the ground up
What most early-stage founders and marketers get wrong about demand generation
🔥 A must-listen for anyone building go-to-market from scratch or rethinking how they reach prospects.
On this episode of the Heresy podcast, Dimitar is joined by Josh Allen, Chief Revenue Officer at Drift.
Josh shares his journey through tech — from LogMeIn and CarGurus to leading Drift’s revenue engine — and offers a candid, no-fluff take on what managing hyper-growth really feels like.
Tune in to hear:
What it takes to scale from $40M to $400M
Why it’s totally normal to feel like your “hair is on fire”
Hard-earned lessons on leadership, pressure, and pace
Practical advice for navigating the chaos of scale
In this episode, Dimitar speaks with Jeremey Donovan, SVP of Sales Strategy at SalesLoft — the world’s leading sales engagement platform.
Jeremey brings a data-driven perspective to modern sales outreach and shares actionable tactics you can implement immediately, including:
How long your emails actually should be
The subject lines that get opened (and why)
How to achieve up to 5x higher reply rates
Where and how to use video to break through the noise
Practical tips for SDRs, AEs, and Sales Enablement pros
Whether you're building a sales motion from scratch or fine-tuning a mature machine, this episode is packed with insight.
Jason Lemkin — SaaStr founder, serial entrepreneur, and investor — joins Dimitar for a candid, practical deep dive on building a high-performing SaaS sales engine.
First, hear Jason’s story — from his early career and first two exits to the hard lessons learned along the way.
Then get actionable advice on:
Why founder-led sales is critical
The importance of closing your first 10 deals before hiring salespeople
What to look for (and avoid) in your first Account Executives
When and which type of VP Sales to hire
Whether to hire VP Sales or VP Marketing first
When to start building your Customer Success team
Jason’s top sales tips to scale fast and smart
If you’re serious about scaling SaaS sales, this episode is a must-listen.
Struggling to get your message to truly connect with prospects?
Munyaradiz Hoto, Director of Digital Marketing at Foundry and London Revenue Collective teammate, breaks down how to operationalise your messaging for maximum impact.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
Why traditional prospect qualification is often misleading
Why most deals aren’t lost in competitive bake-offs
How to help prospects uncover their “undiscovered needs”
Techniques to destabilise “preference stability” and displace existing solutions
How to address objections tied to “anticipated regret”
Whether you’re an individual contributor, manager, or exec, this episode is packed with game-changing sales insights.
How do you build an outbound sales machine that consistently delivers?
Best-selling author and sales leader Aaron Ross joins Dimitar to share:
What inspired him to write Predictable Revenue
How he balances running two businesses and raising nine kids
Tactical tips to cut through the noise and keep your outbound strategy razor-sharp in a crowded market
If you want to master outbound sales, this episode is packed with actionable insights.
For more from Aaron, visit predictablerevenue.com.
How do you build a sales team that consistently delivers?
Jacqueline De Gernier, VP Commercial Sales EMEA at DocuSign, joins Dimitar to share:
The secret sauce behind hiring top-tier sales talent—including the use of aptitude tests
How to onboard and train new reps for success
What truly separates the best performers from the rest
Territory planning strategies that minimize conflict and boost collaboration across regions
Plus, plenty of actionable sales advice from a seasoned leader
Whether you’re scaling a team or refining your process, this episode has you covered.
Want to run pipeline review meetings that actually drive results?
Patrick Traynor, VP Sales at The Dots and former Head of Enterprise Sales EMEA at LinkedIn, shares his proven frameworks and hard-earned sales wisdom including:
How to run pipeline reviews that uncover real blockers
Using BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) to qualify deals and flag risks early
Why ego kills deals—and how to stay humble while winning big
If you’re serious about leveling up your sales game, this episode is for you.
How do you build a world-class sales team at one of the fastest-growing tech companies?
Elaine Mao, Global Head of Sales Ops & Strategy at Uber for Business, joins Dimitar to share:
Why she’d hire a sales ops pro before any sales reps
The secret sauce behind Uber’s rapid sales scaling
How Sales Ops drives growth and efficiency in hypergrowth environments
Practical tips for sales leaders looking to build ops from scratch
If you want to scale your sales org with operational excellence, this episode is a must-listen.
What does it take to build a truly world-class Customer Success team?
Daniel Farkas, VP of Global Renewals and EMEA Customer Success at Box, joins Dimitar to share the blueprint—including when to invest, how to hire, and what to measure.
You’ll learn:
When to start building your CS org—and when it’s too early
What traits to hire for in high-performing CS reps
The KPIs that actually matter (beyond NRR and churn)
How to position CS as a strategic growth engine, not just a support function
Whether you’re building your first CS team or levelling up an existing one, this episode is your playbook.
Disqualify to win. That’s one of many lessons Tom Castley, VP of Account Management EMEA at Apptio, has learned over 20+ years in SaaS sales.
In this fast-paced episode, Tom shares:
Why disqualifying early saves time—and closes more deals
The 7 questions every rep should ask to avoid dead-end opportunities
How to sell disruptive tech into complex orgs
A crash course in the Sandler sales methodology
Battle-tested stories and tactics from the frontline
Whether you’re a founder, AE, or sales leader, this episode is packed with practical, no-fluff advice.
How do you scale a SaaS sales org from $2M to $10M in ARR without losing momentum—or your mind?
Peter Crosby, Chief Commercial Officer at Triptease, joins Dimitar to break down:
What changes (and what doesn’t) as you move from early traction to real scale
How to build the right sales motion for your growth stage
Mistakes to avoid when hiring, structuring, and forecasting
How Triptease navigated this critical growth window
If you're scaling a SaaS business, this episode is a roadmap for the messy middle.
What does it take to launch and scale the European arm of a hypergrowth US tech company?
Dimitar sits down with James Parton, Twilio’s former Director of Europe, to talk about:
The early days of Twilio’s expansion across Europe
How “developer-led” sales really works
The role of pre-sales, sales engineering, and enablement in technical GTM
What it's like being the first boots on the ground for a US startup abroad
A must-listen for anyone scaling international teams or building go-to-market in dev-first businesses.
What do Just Eat, Funding Circle, GoCardless, and Property Partner have in common? They all turned to Terry Russell to help scale their sales teams.
In this episode, Terry shares:
How to design comp plans that actually motivate
The secret to developing sales talent in fast-growing orgs
Hard-won lessons from inside some of Europe’s best-known startups
Whether you’re a founder, sales leader, or coach yourself, Terry’s stories are full of practical takeaways you can apply right away.