In this episode of The Venture Podcast, we had the privilege of sitting down with Rod Boothby, in Salesforce Park.

Rod’s journey shows the significance of lifelong learning—from selling baseball hats at Queen’s University, including one worn by Elon Musk during his time there, to co-founding one of the most widely used software tools in the world—NPM (node package manager), to his leadership at cutting-edge companies like Joyent and ID Partner Systems.

Here are a few key takeaways from the conversation:

Bottom-Up Sales:

Many of Rod's early successes in business development, such as landing big clients like Walmart and Visa, came from identifying passionate internal advocates within those companies who believed in the product. A key strategy was empowering developers to use the product and demonstrate its value to their bosses, which helped the product essentially sell itself and eliminated the need for long sales cycles.

Ecosystems > Product: 

Rod highlighted the importance of building ecosystems around a product where users and contributors play a role in its growth. NPM’s success was built on its strong community involvement, ease of contribution, and the ability for others to participate in the system’s evolution. 

VC Funding Advice: 

Rod advises delaying VC funding for as long as possible, advocating for building up customer traction and revenue streams before seeking outside investment. This provides better negotiating power and helps avoid giving away too much equity early on. He also suggests understanding the venture capitalist’s business structure and practicing pitches and refining answers to potential objections before approaching serious investors.

Entrepreneurial Environment: 

Rod believes in fostering environments that encourage entrepreneurship. He noted that in places like San Francisco, optimism and encouragement are critical cultural traits that help entrepreneurs succeed, and Canada could benefit from adopting this mindset more widely.