Jason Hausske

At the Utah Business Forward Event this past Wednesday, I got to share a table with Robert G Pedersen II who graciously answered our several questions. While he said many things I resonate with and loved, one thing he said that I should do better with and think many entrepreneurs should do better with, is asking ourselves "why not?" instead of asking "why?". We should always have a mind for leaping into new ideas, exploring them with fervor, rather than first trying to convince ourselves an idea should be explored. Too many opportunities are lost or overlooked because we persuade ourselves that it isn't worth the effort to go after it. People who eventually make their mark in the world don't ask why, they ask why not, shrug, and then roll up their sleeves to go after it. #entrepreneurs #business #startups #venture #ideas

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"There are no project opportunities for us in Washington state." Really? 🤔 This was a frustrating update a VP of Sales continually heard. Seeking a fresh perspective, he gave Citylitics a shot. In just one hour, he uncovered over $20M in project opportunities that had missed his sales team’s radar, including a promising project right in Washington state. Knowledge is Power. The most successful businesses in infrastructure are relentless in their pursuit of learning more about their markets, customers, and future project opportunities. Ready to breathe new life into your business development efforts? Challenge Citylitics to uncover fresh insights. 💡🌐 https://hubs.la/Q02GCJCK0 #PublicInfrastructure #InfrastructureInsights #KnowledgeIsPower #SalesStrategies #Citylitics

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What (Management) lessons can we learn from Los Angeles' apocalypse fires, and why is it time for Californians to rise against professional politicians and ideologues... First and foremost, I am so sorry for the hard-working people of Los Angeles, the gardeners, construction workers, retail/services managers, and entrepreneurs. What happened was unfair and heartbreaking but mostly outrageous because it was so predictable and avoidable. I (legally) immigrated to this country 25 years ago. In exchange for an Eb1 visa, I had to produce a five-year plan, hire many people, and pay many taxes. This led to a green card and eventually US citizenship... Originally, from Europe, I always thought of my affiliation as progressive, squarely leaning toward democrats (the 80s and 90s version), although I was always fiscally conservative... After 2 decades of no changes, worse infrastructures, growing taxes (why are we paying $4.89 a gallon vs. the national average of $3 again?), exploding homelessness, and consistent deficits... California, the 5th largest economy with a budget of $322B, should LEAD THE WORLD FOR ITS INFRASTRUCTURES, have the most modern high-speed trains (LA to Seattle in 5 hours), quality and abundant water, and clean (nuclear) energy (France relies 75% on it). Modern buildings, with yearly preventive clean-ups and fire prevention strategies and equipment, and communities of tiny houses solving homelessness and addiction. Dream on... The Tenderloin (a dangerous San Francisco neighborhood) 25 years ago is the same as it is today, but some say it is probably more dangerous and dirtier...Homeless people have grown significantly over these last 5 years (~200,000 people), $24B has been spent on the problem, and there has been no progress... Why? Less than 20% goes to helping people, the rest and the vast majority in the hands of administrations and mindless bureaucrats...such a waste, such as shame... It does not matter if you lean right or left; the bottom line is that we should not support politicians who are incompetent and live only to protect ideologies... When will California change and recognize that politicians have failed us over the last thirty years? It's time to rally, rise, and shake up the status Quo. Let's remain civil and temper our (justified) anger, but man o man... Go to any city in Asia or Dubai, and you'll realize we are short-changed. As in any capitalistic corporation, how about demanding the following from our leaders: 🔥 Extreme transparency on budget allocation 🔥 One-time term 🔥 Enforce Lobbyist $ Caps 🔥 Enforce performance-based reviews 🔥 Streamline Recall mechanisms

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It all about networks and relationships!

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Colorado founders -- the next Thunderview CEO Dinners event (Oct 3rd) is focused on getting your first sales as CEO and then growing your sales team. As Natty Zola said at our last dinner, revenue is the best form of funding, and it's up to the CEO to make those initial sales. If you're struggling to get leads and close deals, you're in luck. Our featured speaker is Scott Schnaars, who has sold and build sales teams everywhere from early stage startups like Badgeville and ReSci (Retention Science), mid-stage companies like Firstup (formerly Dynamic Signal) and Cloudinary, and massive companies like Yahoo and Webex. This is a highly tactical conversation, and you'll leave with actionable steps to find and close leads the following day. Additionally, for founders who are moving beyond CEO-led sales, Scott will discuss best practices for hiring and managing your earliest salespeople. If this is your first Thunderview CEO Dinner, please reserve a seat at https://lnkd.in/et5zZShA If you've been to previous dinners, head straight to the tickets page (check your email or DM me) and grab your ticket as this is going to be another sellout crowd. Thunderview CEO Dinner October 3rd, 6p - 9p Mercury Cafe in Denver 🤘 Even if you aren't coming / can't come to the dinner, please please please like and reshare this post if you are in Denver. I'm fighting the "you've shared this link before" LinkedIn distribution penalty. 🤘

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I recently spoke with a product manager who was frustrated with the close ties between metering and pricing in her organization. This interconnectedness was causing significant misalignments between the finance, sales, and engineering teams. Here’s why: In traditional billing platforms, metering is tightly integrated with pricing. This leads to various challenges: ➡️ Engineers have to manage usage tracking while being forced to grasp pricing logic, diverting their focus from core product development. ➡️Finance teams are heavily reliant on engineers to set up and maintain accurate metering infrastructure, which slows their ability to iterate quickly on pricing strategies. ➡️This complexity is compounded by the sales team’s need for flexibility in pricing configurations, limiting their ability to respond to customer demands and close deals faster. However, by decoupling metering from pricing, you can create the most flexible environment you can conceive. 1️⃣Engineers can focus solely on improving data accuracy and usage tracking without needing to integrate complex pricing considerations 2️⃣ Finance teams can independently manage pricing models, whether pay-per-use, tiered, or custom, without relying on engineers.  3️⃣ Sales teams can propose and implement customer-specific pricing strategies (e.g., based on API calls, GBs stored, etc.) seamlessly without requiring technical changes. Clear boundaries between metering and pricing can facilitate improved cross-functional collaboration, drive growth, and optimize revenue. By decoupling, teams can innovate faster, meet customer needs, and remove the roadblocks to growth. Have you also been hassled by a coupled architecture? DM to share your experience. #Billing #Pricing #Finance #Decoupling #Revenue

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When you're not in the board room, you're always wondering, "What's going on in there?". I have now worked with seven companies where I'd regularly present to a board, a mixture of PE and VC-led, and it's almost always centered around a few key topics. If you're meeting your numbers: - what's your future forecast  - how are you going to continue to grow - how will you grow faster and more efficient  - update on money in the bank and spend If you're not meeting your numbers (along with the things I mentioned above): - what is your plan to turn things around and meet your numbers (this includes new logo, back-to-base sales, and churn reduction) - what resources can they offer to help - do you have the right players in the right seat This is an oversimplification because many nuances are at play, but this is generally it. While board meetings can be stressful, almost every board I've worked with wants to be helpful. Of course, their interest is, first and foremost, that the business is healthy and growing, so there's always that undertone, but overall, they want to help. After all, they are guardians of the investments they make on behalf of others and have to report back on their performance. Think of them like they are CSMs for their investors (the folks that give them money). They need to get a great return on the investment they made on their behalf.

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My recent Forbes article on Maximizing Your Company's Exit Valuation. Please reach out directly if you would like the expanded version, or if you want to iterate on this for you own company.

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"Don't Make it a Thing - Just Do the Damn Thing" ✨ 2024 Highlight Reel - One day, I'm helping founders raise capital, and the next accidentally organizing an entire event week... 🎯 The Greatest Hits ✅ Watched in as my former colleagues at Alliance for Southern California Innovation helped startups secure $110M+ in funding. (Congrats Eric Eide, Dan Davidson, and Nima Ashraf) ✅ Collaborated as CogX Festival Ambassador with Charlie Muirhead (CogX) & Crew ahead of their first LA Conference. We threw 8 salons that were basically tech TED talks with better snacks at the Fairmont Century Plaza. Special shoutout to Brandon Florian and Travis DeMeester for making "Dual-Use Technologies" exciting. ✅  Reunion with the Aerospace & Defense community thanks to my long-lost brother from another mother, Rahul Singh, at the DIU & NSIN roundtable. ✅ Then came the "hold my coffee" moment: SoCal Deep Tech Week 2024 with Owen Fileti, Joshua Peng, Rahul Singh, and many others. Zero resources, all hustle - somehow convinced 900+ brilliant minds to show up (and 60% actually did! 🎉) 🙏 What 2024 Taught Me 📝 Seize opportunities immediately - waiting only leads to missed chances 📝 Make decisions and commit to your course 📝 Trust your well-intentioned decisions, even amid uncertainty 📝 Leverage your network when the mission matters - people will support what they believe in 📝 Embrace imperfection - treat everything as a pilot and iterate aggressively 📝 Above all: Don't make it a thing - just do the damn thing 🏀 2025 Game Plan ☒ Assist in revitalizing the Industrial Base across Deep Tech ☒ Increase collaboration within and outside ecosystem (no siloes) ☒ Talk to more Deep Tech Founders, hear their story, and introduce them to funders, business, etc. (more on this soon) ☒ Share more brain dumps (I keep too much in my head.) 🔮 2025 Predictions ✨ More "Applied AI" / "Physical AI" + "" – AI is the Engine and Interface, and Data is its fuel.  ✨ History class finally becomes useful (ex: Defense Production Act & National Defense Education Act) ✨ Global politics gets industrial (CHIPS Act is just the appetizer) ✨ Two-front challenge: Rebuilding at home while playing global chess ✨ The Great Talent Hunt: Brace for more conversations about workforce gaps (spoiler alert: upskilling and education are about to become everyone's favorite buzzwords for social mobility) Thanks to all who supported, contributed, and shared the moments this year. Here's to a wild 2025... 🫡🇺🇸

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Exciting news and annoucement: NEWS: We have been featured in The Daily Herald, it spotlights Tanner King and my company Mars! 👨‍🚀 You'll also be excited to hear... ANNOUNCEMENT: We are excited to now expand the reach of our solution to both marketers and product professionals to help them instantly understand their customers with unbiased data. Reach out if you or anyone you know is interested in taking a spin around the product- I'm confident you'll like what we've built thus far. You can find the article here: https://lnkd.in/gt6pMHZy #SoftwareCompany #CustomerInsights #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Marketing #TechInnovation #StartupSuccess #Entrepreneurship #BusinessSpotlight #ProvoBusiness #TheDailyHerald #TechNews #InnovationInTech #CustomerExperience #MarsCompany #TechStartups #DigitalMarketing #AIInnovation #BusinessGrowth #TechUpdates

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True partnerships are transformative catalysts for change. They transcend mere funding, embracing deep listening, dynamic collaboration, and vibrant community-building. Recent experiences at the MARGULF FOUNDATION Grantee Convening, Culture Shifting Summit, EdLoC, and Google Impact Summit have reignited my passion for reimagining how funders can evolve to genuinely empower social impact leaders. In my latest Camelback Ventures blog, I dive into the heart of this crucial conversation: ➡️ How can we build partnerships that fuel innovation? ➡️ What does holistic support for entrepreneurs of color and women really look like? ➡️ How might we create an ecosystem where visionary ideas thrive? Join me in exploring how we can reshape the landscape of social impact. Together, we can craft a future where diverse voices lead the charge in solving our most pressing challenges. Read the full article and let's continue this vital dialogue. How are you reimagining partnerships in your work? 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eW7UrGXu #SocialImpact #EquitablePartnerships #InnovationInFunding #DiversityInEntrepreneurship #SystemicChange

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What do you do when you’re part of a two-person web team that is overwhelmed with trying to ensure your site, with over 6,000 pages and 140 contributors, reaches its full potential? You call @Siteimprove! 🦸 That’s what the @City and County of Denver did, and now their site is hitting Digital Certainty Index scores 25% higher than it was before! Learn how we helped them do it

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Warning: rant incoming. (Look away if you don’t care about being spammed by salespeople who have not done their homework.)   Also, a special plea to all the salespeople (hope you’re reading this).   When I started my company last year, I had to place a notice in the classified section of two print papers to announce my business. Print ads! A bit ironic since my biz is SaaS. (I know! So arcane. Tip for entrepreneurs-in-waiting: it’s required for NY incorporation.)   It was my first public announcement. Immediately I started to get random sales calls—phone, emails, LinkedIn messages—for various services. The pitches were either generic, or completely missed the mark. Mind you, my website was up, my LinkedIn is open. They could’ve read up on me easily. But clearly didn’t.   I think what I’m doing is fairly clear (please tell me if I could be clearer!). So, a little effort could’ve saved me and the salespeople time and annoyance (not to mention the time I’ve spent writing this rant).   The other irony is that spamming is the antithesis of the whole premise of my company, ImpactPro Tech, which is:   Get to know your prospects and tailor your outreach based on their profiles before you reach out. Especially with major donors, but any donor really. The data exists to enable this. (Message me if you want to know more!)   Now, a brief sub-rant on AI. With all the GenAI tools out there, I see why people like using them. Makes it more efficient to generate content. But, please (!!), don’t rely on these solely. It’s so obvious they’re AI-generated. Do some human personalization. These generic correspondences won’t win me over. Get to know me first (see above).   I would’ve thought this was all obvious, but it’s not.   In fact, I just learned from Sharon Gillenwater’s new book “Scaling with Soul” that this is a relatively new concept even in the biggest enterprise sales companies. She built a whole business around this and convinced the smartest ones. But, apparently, many companies have still not learned.   Interestingly, nonprofits have been ahead of the curve all along. They’ve long had teams of prospect researchers and smart Development Directors doing the hard work of slogging through data, because they know it matters. (Shameless, but relevant, self-plug: call me if you’re one of the sloggers, ImpactPro Tech can save you slogging time so you can get on with meeting with the right donors faster!)   So, to all the smart fundraisers and salespeople out there, congrats on being on the leading edge.   To the rest, learn from them.   Rant over. Thanks! And, for any entrepreneur out there, check out Sharon's book. https://lnkd.in/eZ_J47Q2

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Time is of the essence to every business owner, especially in a very small business. What if we had a category of micro-business to which much of the paperwork required by the state of Washington didn't apply? Providing a little space to create that first job might just be the start of something big. #smallbusiness #economy #growth #success #regulatoryburden #redtape

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Exciting news from Techstars for our #Colorado ecosystem! Thanks, Nicole Glaros, Natty Zola, and David Cohen, for your collaboration in reimagining how best to support founders in #Colorado. #startups #entrepreneurship #ecosystem #innovation

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Who owns your end to end GTM system? What about the Bowtie data model? This was a key question during our two-day Revenue Architecture Summit in Santa Cruz. Marketing owns awareness. BDRs or equivalent own education. Sales owns selection. Finance oversees the mutual commit/contracting. Professional services do onboarding. CS helps with retention. Account managers focus on expansion. So do we even need somebody to own and optimize the overall #bowtie process and data model? YES! "But my marketing is great at increasing leads and sales is increasing close rates, so why worry about an overall owner?", you might say. What if the new leads are low quality and sales is rushing through the sales cycle, ultimately yielding high onboarding and ongoing churn? Whether you like it or not, revenue production is a closed loop system. Something you do on the left side of the bowtie impacts the right side and the other way around. Best to assign an unbiased data owner who does that personally have anything to gain by making the data tell any particular story. The most likely owner for the overall system, or at least for the overall data model, lives in operations or finance. We see new titles around GTM Strategy and Operations. We also see RevOps moving from CRO to COO or CFO. So hence my question: In your company, who owns the end-to-end revenue production system? Who owns data definitions and brings together your teams to decide on next actions to improve revenue production based on the data? #revenuearchitecture #bowtie #revops Photo courtesy Jill Guardia (she/her)

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One of the hardest decisions I faced as an entrepreneur was leaving my home state. However, being immersed in the ecosystem taught me a lot: 1. Networking, even a close family friend couldn’t help us secure a spot in an Oregon accelerator. This is NOT normal. 2. Advisors strongly recommended that we relocate as soon as possible. I should have listened sooner. 3. Successful businesses in Oregon often sell and are quickly moved out of state—sometimes experiencing almost 10x growth overnight. This creates a significant drain on Oregon's value and potential to reallocate and reinvest inside of the state.

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🚀 Ready to supercharge your GTM strategy? Join me in Austin, Texas, from October 14th-16th for Pavilion's annual GTM2024 conference! This isn’t your typical B2B event. Over three days, you'll dive deep into hands-on sessions with other GTM leaders, crafting actionable strategies that will propel your speed to market. 🛠️✨ Oh, and did I mention? I’ll be there too! 🎉 Whether you're looking to connect, collaborate, or just grab a coffee, I’d love to chat. Fun fact: I will be speaking on my favorite topic: How to Scale AI in GTM! Stop by to be part of the conversation. Don’t miss out! If you’re interested in attending, drop me a DM or message me with “Boost my GTM” to grab my special promo code for 10% off your ticket. 🎟️ Register Here: https://lnkd.in/ebpdhUkn Let’s make GTM2024 unforgettable! 🌟 #GTM2024 #Austin #PavilionGTM #Marketing #Sales #Strategy

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What happen if you “Just added a Zero” to your revenues? Or better yet,added that “Zero” to your profits. Before you say “That’s impossible”, think about ways it could be done…and more important, what impact it would have on your business. #podcast #podcasts #hvac https://lnkd.in/e5Afj5-9

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