BTM Event Video: Salesloft CEO Kyle Porter – How did your initial failure turn into a success?

Building the Sales Machine (BTM) Event Series: we post clips of the best questions that where answered during our live events, so you can take the best ideas back to your teams and companies for further discussion.

BTM: How did your failure eventually turn into a success?

Kyle Porter:

When we first started this company (Salesloft), we flat out failed in the first 18 months.  To give you some perspective, Salesloft is an 80 person company today, we had an amazing 2015.  We grew sales 1000%, we went from a $1 million run rate to a $6 million dollar run rate in 5 quarters, so a really fast growth.  We were also honored and rewarded as the number 1 place to work in atlanta.

In 2011 I started the company, and I had no idea what I was getting into.  I was a really good sales person, but I couldn’t do any of the other things that mattered when building a software company. So by the end of the year in 2012 , we tanked out and I had to start the company over again from scratch.  We had to let go of our engineers, and my best friend and marketer left the company, I ran out of money.  I say we, but I really mean me.  I hit my head up against the wall really really hard.