“Marketing and sales will never solve a product that is not meant to be bought by someone...”
— Elias Rubel

Today’s guest is Elias Rubel, a serial founder and currently the Founder & CEO @Matter Made. His company is a B2B growth firm, focused on helping clients accelerate their outcomes through marketing, especially at the Series A level (post product-market fit).

Matter Made’s clients include companies like Dropbox and SV Academy, and companies backed by some of the best names in VC. The Matter Made model isn’t based on a traditional agency model, but built to align with the needs of early-stage growth startups.

In this video, Eli talks about building a contemporary, incentives-aligned marketing company to support early-stage and growth start-ups. This video is perfect for you if:

You are a founder or an aspiring founder, and you want to know how to get the most out of early-stage growth marketing efforts.
You are a VC helping your portfolio companies with talent acquisition and growth.

In the true spirit, Elias is a builder with an incredible attention to measurable results. He and the team are growing a contemporary marketing company that aligns with the interests and needs of startups. Enjoy!

Key Themes

The one thing that early-stage founders do with marketing that limits speed and growth.
Why the traditional agency model has failed to impress founders and startups today.
Building a marketing agency with greater incentive-alignment, having been a founder before.
How the right marketing partner can help derisk your company during its growth stages.
Augmenting marketing talent during critical phases, not replacing them.
Saying ‘no’ because it is the right thing to do…
Telling founders hard things in the interest of their company success.
Eating packet ramen even after having ‘exited’ a company.

Transcript

Elias Rubel

So right now, actually, I thought I would be running a software company. But it turns out I really enjoy helping other companies grow like in the early stages after our first SaaS business was acquired. And I thought I'd jump right back into another. And fast forward like four years, I just kept getting dropped into these portfolio companies with the mandate of like, hey, these are Series A companies they need help with growth. They don't have like a strong marketing muscle yet. Can you help them like spend six months and just get them to accelerate the timeline to grow through them. And so after four years of doing that, I was like, Whoa, time flew by, I guess this is what I do now. I founded matter made, which is a b2b growth firm. And we basically just focus on helping accelerate outcomes for marketing organizations, usually around the series a level.

Jon Low

Thank you. So, Eli, what are some of the specific activities in your role as the founder and leader of Matter Made that you enjoy the most? What's most rewarding for you?

Elias Rubel

For sure, the most rewarding thing is going in and seeing an amazing company with a lot of really talented people and getting to be part of helping them achieve their goals faster. I know that sounds cheesy and maybe even sounds like a sales pitch. But like, truly, it's like you go in everybody's really gung ho they have these metrics that they all really want to hit and they're just willing to do anything like move mountains at that stage of a company to get there. And being able to go in and help provide a little bit of foresight since we've been there and done that so many times, and help them avoid some of those pitfalls. Like it's just really gratifying to get to experience that.

Jon Low

Thanks. And you know, like, I say this with respect, but you know, founders and growth stage startups vary in their perspectives of what agency agencies can provide, right? And since you come from a background would, what I would arguably say a founder mindset, what problems did you foresee in the traditional agency model?

Elias Rubel

Yeah, no, that's a great question and it comes up all the time, right. Like people generally have a real awful taste in their mouth with agencies. And a lot of the time, it's like the traditional agency model is pretty misaligned, right? Like they're trying to run the clock, right burn hours, or they're taking a spiff on, you know, like your ad-spend. They're just focused on like trying to get you to spend as much as possible.

And so for us, like we first off, we got rid of that model, we were like, we just were on retainer. And we're going to sprint as hard as a marketing org would sprint for you in house. That's just how we work and so that way, our incentives are completely aligned, right? Like, if we don't succeed as a company, then Matter Made hasn't succeeded as a company, right? So that's kind of the first piece.

The second piece goes into this model around like, if you think and this is something that we've talked a lot about with our VC partners, and like there's starting to be a groundswell in this direction, which is like, starting a company is already super risky enough, right? You're taking a huge bet on the product, then you're taking a huge bet on building right in our engineering organization to build that product, and marketing and sales more and more, most more.

So marketing and sales, but more and more, it's like, there's just certain blocking and tackling certain basic playbooks and strategies that need to be rolled out, at least in that early stage. And then you get more creative and more funky and like more aggressive as you spend more and kind of go as you grow. But to get to that first like to get to Series B milestones, sometimes even Series C milestones. It's a lot of the same or similar stuff. And there's nuances at each company. Sure. But basically, this thesis we've developed, it's so much different than normal agency, in partnership with these VCs is like, why risk another org? Why would you risk your company on a whole nother group that is marketing, right, because now you're hiring for folks who've never met each other before.

We've all come from different backgrounds hoping that they gel together, not to mention the time it takes to hire them. And so it just introduces another giant point of risk in this early volatile company's lifecycle. And so, for us, it's about making that less volatile, taking that risk out of the picture, right? Like we've, we've helped, like 10 companies a year or more that we take from, you know, zero million to 10 million plus in revenue. So our pattern matching is just far better. We see much more than your average employee, you know, going to three years at a time company to company they just don't see that much. That much breath.

Jon Low

Great, thank you. And you know, just because like any partnership, the best way partnerships work out or collaborations work out is everyone does their part and owns that part. In terms of the founders and startups that you look to partner with? Yeah, what do you think those founders or teams could typically do better at the early stage when partnering and looking to leverage agencies such as yourself, what can they do better?

Because, you know, it's all well and good to say, oh, to blame an agency, right? But if you change your mind every two weeks, if you lack transparency and conviction and clarity, like, well, that's on you, right?

So I just want to kind of swing the pendulum to the founders side. Whereas like, Hey, don't like you got to take some radical ownership here as well. Right. So I'd like to offer you a forum and an opportunity not to vent but to share some sentiment and experience around there. And I do this with respect to the ecosystem as well...

Elias Rubel

Yeah, for sure. It's stuff that people need to hear and, you know, that's one of the great things about being outside brought in is that you know, when when you're in house, eventually politics takeover, you're trying to, you know, do the right thing for the company, while also not like stepping on people's toes too much and this delicate balance whereas outside in we can say, look like the babies ugly. And we want to get the baby to the point where we can sell it to someone. So like, it can be very objective.

But to get back to your question, and I'm so glad you brought this up. The first thing is that marketing and sales will never solve a product that is not meant to be bought by someone, right? Like if the product-market fit is not there, we could run the most complex integrated lifecycle marketing campaigns with all of the best talent in marketing and all the biggest budget. And the only people who are buying that product are idiots, right? Like they're just people who have too much budget and whatever.

So like, you don't want to bank your budget or you want to bank your company's success on people who happen to buy your product because they had too much money, right? You need a product that's that just like, the only problem that remains is that they haven't heard about you. And the minute they hear about you, they're like, holy shit, but yes, let's learn more. Right, maybe they're not ready to buy but at least the problem that your product is solving the way that it's solving it clicks. So that's the first and most important thing and a lot of the times we'll choose not to work with companies, just purely on that basis, we're like, we don't believe it's not that they're not going to get there.

But it's not a negative thing. It's just like, it's not smart for a company to spend on marketing until they have at least some early signs of that fit being there, right. And then you can pour on the gas and then it makes sense to bring in someone like Matter Made or bring in your own in house team. So that's, that's one.

Another one, this is like a favorite of mine. And I loved it. Now. It's funny, as we do more and more of these engagements, we bring these things upfront, like before they even do the thing, we just tell them, Hey, this is a thing that people sometimes do. And we know that this is going to hinder your company's ability to grow. And it sounds silly right now, but I promise you, like, six months from now, you're going to be feeling riled up about this thing. Just like let's remember this moment. And so this is it. When you're a founder, and again, like I was a CEO of a SaaS business that raised venture and got acquired, so I get it. You get so passionate about everything right you're passionate about the product you're passionate about the images that go on the website you're passionate passionate about the second sentence in the subhead on the third page of your you know, feature set like everything matters to you. And the most important one of the most important things to communicate to these founders is that when it comes to marketing your opinion really doesn't matter that much.

It's not that it doesn't matter you should come up with. You're the one where we get all these hypotheses from and then we do our market research. We combine your hypotheses and your point of view on the kind of where the markets are going and your vision with what the market is doing today. But from that point on like the actual copywriting the actual images the actual like button like all this just nitty gritty in the weed stuff, like whether or not you personally like how ad creative looks, for example, doesn't fucking matter. Like just to be blunt.

And there's so many we see time and time again, founders waste so much effort and energy and cycles. Like just trying to get it right the first time. And the reason it doesn't matter. It's not just my opinion. It's not just because like, I don't like that feedback, it's not true. The reason it doesn't matter is because a good marketing word is testing these things so aggressively that like, it's not about one line. It's about how did the 10 lines perform? How did the 10 different images perform and like aggressive multivariate testing. And so, getting into this mindset early on, where you are not the source of truth as the founder, when it comes to these decisions, you're the source of inspiration. And then you have marketing or you trust to come up with a series of tests. And then the data is the final decision maker. And that's like, that'll save a founder so much time if they get that in their head early and just like embrace it. And just so much heartache to like it's it sucks when your baby isn't the one that wins, but really all you care about is that your company grows and that people use it right? And so staying focused on that Northstar metric is a lot more important than some of those nitty gritty decisions. So that's a freebie out there for founders.

Jon Low

Yeah, really well said the thanks for sharing that, obviously. But it reminds me of, you know, I did copywriting for some time back in the day and I learned from a book written in the 1930s by Claude Hopkins called Scientific Advertising. And back then it was considered advertising considered an art form, not a science, right? And it's still probably a bit of a rougher but literally now like 70 plus years later, it is actually very scientific. It's testing iterating and using rationale and feedback, fast feedback loops to optimize and so yeah, I just thought I'd throw that out there.

Elias Rubel

Completely.

Jon Low

Yeah. And so, you know, and you know, as a marketer who is deeply in the discipline of marketing for growth stage startups yourself he like, yeah, how have you justified or like, stuck to Matter Made and its vision, even though a lot of people want to hire you as VP of Marketing for their company?

Elias Rubel

I'll work backwards. So starting from the, you know, companies who might want advice on how to hire someone who would make us completely obsolete, right? I am. I mean, I'm so supportive. We're not under the illusion that we are going to run a marketing org for someone forever, right.

In fact, we're very specific and saying, like, by all means I'll give people advice all day long, I'll connect them with great VPS or CMOs when I can and marketing talent because the fact of the matter is like we exist because of the natural gap that takes place when a team and a team say they raise $10 million, Series A. And they've got these board directive goals that they know they need to hit. And they probably have one a, and maybe they just hired their VP of sales, and they've got this product market fit. And now they're like, Well, shit, we've got the money in the bank, we need to sprint, we need to build a marketing engine. And all of a sudden, pretty quickly, they hire a recruiter and they realize that okay, to find a good VP of Marketing, it might take three months if things go really well. And then that VP of Marketing is going to need to get their bearings for probably another two months, if things go really well.

And then they're going to have their bearings and decide what hires they want to make, right? And then those hires might take another three months if things go really well. And that's like things going well, right. We all have been in the seat where we're trying to make the key hires and like it's a competitive market, and you don't always get the people you want right away.

So that's why Matter Made exists, and that's why I can champion great people into great companies when it makes sense. And we can still exist as a firm because we're brought in when the CEO or the VCs realize or even the VP of Sales a lot of the time brings us in because they're like, well, hey, man, I've got to feed my reps, and I want to grow so like bring these guys in for the next six months, take the pressure off the hiring process, and the whole while we get to help them find those right people. So it's cool.

We I mean, we're not recruiters, but we certainly help like, help them with those decisions, connect them to great people when we can and then ultimately, lead a transition process and train and onboard those folks. It's just it's about having not having a gap, you know, when you're trying to grow

Jon Low

As an agency, how do you stay nimble to like, keep your ramp-up time from first conversation to an agreement to help us startup and its founder and its team? How do you speed up that ramp up time? How do you stay nimble and get into operation quickly? Because arguably that's the value proposition in comparison to say, hey, waiting on a key hire right? And then, yep, onboarding them.

Elias Rubel

Yep, totally. So we used to kind of over time, we've become very, very good just through the sheer number of companies at that same stage that have brought us in like we've just become so it's so predictable for us at this point, for the most part, like the patterns are there, where we can start to really shorten the time by by following like.

I'll give you an example. Most companies come to us, they are not the first time CEO, right, they've done this before. And that's why it makes a lot of sense to them, like, Oh, we get that there's gonna be this natural gap. We're not disillusioned at all about how long it might take to make these hires, we need you to come in and help us get to productivity right away. The very first thing we have to remind everyone is like we could start campaigning aggressively with budget and like, account based marketing, all that jazz.

We could start that in a week's time, if you wanted to, but we're going to tell you why you don't want to, and then you're going to make the decision. And almost everyone comes to us thinking they want that. And then we take a step back and say, here's the thing. Let's say that you spend 10 grand next month or it let's say when we spin up these campaigns we spent $10,000 on this first channel test, whatever it is, and we get x conversion rate, right.

If we didn't take a step back first, to really make sure that the messaging is tied to the right audience and the right way. Shown on the use case, and all of that is industry everything. If all of those little details aren't right, you probably just threw away $9,000, maybe, maybe the whole $10,000 you throw it away. So like, there's this common challenge where people feel that activity is success. And then that those are the companies where six months down the road, they're like, why isn't marketing working? Or why isn't it sales? Why isn't x working? And the answer is like, it's the old leaky bucket thing, right?

So it's really important to spend that ramp up time. It's highly productive, focusing on really understanding your buyers. And then once you have that, and the messaging aligned and the audience, then you can build a really great list and then you know that that list is right for your product. So you can create an offer that's right for those personas in that list. And then when you go hit the ground with those campaigns, like the money is really being being put to use and then you know all the conversion rates will prove that.

So I think that like for us, we usually sprint through that process in 30 days, and then start launching campaigns like. And usually that's the right amount of time to get that right.

Jon Low

Thank you. I also want to give you some time and opportunity to talk through, you know, as both a service professional and a founder with you in this unique position. What are some of the, you know, key challenging times you've gone through, you know, and I'm sure there are numerous right, but what are some that are most memorable for you? And what did they teach you?

Elias Rubel

Yeah, I'm trying to decide where to start. I mean, when I did my first SaaS business backwhen I was in the not in the services side, we went through, you know, like co-founders having to leave like all sorts of things. Kind of the things that happened to a lot of founders that a lot of founders don't openly talk about, necessarily.

I think our culture as an ecosystem has become a lot more healthy over time around that stuff. And people are more comfortable sharing those stories. I mean, when we raised we raised four Glider, Glider was the company that I started it was a contract Life Cycle Management CLM in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, and, I mean, we had to fully reboot and start from scratch six months and like, like zero product, we had to fully reboot. And that was like a huge shock to the system and a real test of just like, do you really want to do this?

Like, are you really in this? So I think that was an early on, like, tough times. I mean, shit, I without saying anything that I would get in trouble for saying like the business was acquired. And then we ended up in court for three years with the acquiring company because like m&a is hard and people do shady stuff when you're young and early in your career, and they assume that you're not going to punch back.

So, I mean, that was like a trying time for me personally, for sure. And that and the identity crisis that came from like, the sounds may be shallow, but in my brain, I was like, I'm an exited founder, like I've sold my company. Times are great. Like, this is awesome. I'm going to start my next company, we're good to go. And then at the same time, like, I was still living like a college student on a ramen diet, because none of the acquisition payout had happened the way that it was supposed to. And for three years, it was like, these weird people are like, Oh, man, you like where's your sailboat? Like, things must be great. And I was like, ah, if only it was that simple. So, yeah, I'd say like on the pre. On the pre services side, those were definitely some really intense moments. Service aside is so different. I mean, I'm learning new stuff. Every Six months our business looks nothing like it did six months prior.

And I think the biggest challenges are just like, as we start to bring on more and more talent to our team, how do we maintain this really tightened? It's for me, it's about culture, like how do we, I never want us to grow beyond a point as a firm, where we're not like seen and, and perceived and in actuality are this like nimble, a team of assassins, right, like we want to drop off is one of our clients. And they're an outlier in the sense that they're much larger than most of our normal clients. They brought us in specifically because they wanted to think like a startup when it came to marketing like they wanted to be nimble, agile, not be afraid to break things like all the stereotypical kind of like, posters you see on the wall at Facebook. And I never want that to change. Right. And so I think that's a continual challenge, as we bring on more and more time. Our team is like keeping it tight knit, keeping it nimble, and still being known as the people come in and kick ass for them.

Jon Low

Great, thank you. And just because we have maybe a few more minutes Eli, as you think through the Matter Made culture and the company you want to build and its constituents— what are some of the core values of pillars you think define the culture you are creating and would like to refine that matter read?

Elias Rubel

We were just going over these the other day as a team. We're going through our own, we are dogfooding ourselves going through our own kind of like, “Hey, we haven't touched our brand in a little while let's polish it up and let's have it start and kind of emanate out of our guiding principles.”

So I mean, those range from like, being revenue for us always comes below client happiness, right like that, that for a services business, I think is really important. And so we're, you know, every week we're faced with some decisions that may tie back to this where it's like, Okay, well, we could just optimize for revenue. Or we could optimize for making sure the clients are happy. And so that's a gut check that I run everyone through and want everyone to kind of be approaching problem solving from that lens.

The other is just constantly learning. It's so easy to go heads down and run the stuff that we know works, because it works. But the landscape does change. And there are these cool new things that we can be trying and so having a culture of people who are just thirsty for information and willing to try things and willing to fail at those things, but you know, that's how you that's how you find those golden nuggets in marketing and really get latch on to something.

And the last one is, it probably stems from some of the more painful experiences along the career path, but it's only work with good people. So like be willing to say no, even if someone has a giant check, and they're like, hey, we're gonna pay you half a million bucks to do this thing for the next year. We just have to be comfortable and happy saying no. So that we just work to surround ourselves both our own team and clients and partners with just like, solid people.

I feel like this one that really rings true for me, it's it's like, it's so easy for, for Silicon Valley to feel transactional, if you let it, you know, and it's so easy for us to kind of fall into this way of being with each other that doesn't feel human anymore. You know, just like, Okay, cool. What are we doing? Like, what are you doing for me? What am I doing for you? And so my real focus here is like, we just want to be human. We just want to enjoy the people that we're that we're collaborating with all around the table.