Nick Mehta is the CEO at Gainsight, a company with 1,200+ global employees and 20k growing customers. Their mission is to be living proof that you can win in business while being human first. 99% of the reviewers on Glassdoor approve of their CEO. So what’s Nick’s secret to success? In a conversation with Annie, Nick talks about breaking into the customer success industry, standing out through the details, utilizing LinkedIn as a career-building strategy, and his most important advice for what NOT to do when networking.
Nick Mehta is the CEO at Gainsight, a company with 1,200+ global employees and 20k growing customers. Their mission is to be living proof that you can win in business while being human first. 99% of the reviewers on Glassdoor approve of their CEO. So what’s Nick’s secret to success? In a conversation with Annie, Nick talks about breaking into the customer success industry, standing out through the details, utilizing LinkedIn as a career-building strategy, and his most important advice for what NOT to do when networking.
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“Business is fundamentally about human beings first. It's about human beings in your company and human beings with your customer and not losing sight of the human side of it. And that's something we're really passionate about. Our purpose and our mission statement at Gainsight is to be living proof you can win in business while being human first. So that's actually more than just customer success; it's about this new way of thinking about business.” - Nick Mehta
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Episode Timestamps:
*(01:42) - How to use LinkedIn as part of a career-building strategy
*(09:51) - Celebrating 10 years of Gainsight and reminiscing back to it’s beginnings
*(13:50) - Why customer success ignites passion inside Nick
*(15:51) - Taking a ‘human-first’ approach in networking and relationship building
*(22:24) - Advice for networking calls. Don’t be transactional!
*(26:11) - How Nick broke into the customer success industry
*(30:15) - Anecdotes of pivotal relationships that lead to Nick’s success
*(37:41) - Looking back on his career and learning from mistakes
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Sponsor:
Who Got Me Here is brought to you by Connect The Dots, mapping professional relationships so you can find the strongest connections to the people and companies you want to reach. Visit ctd.ai to learn more.
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Links:
Narrator: We all have that person in our lives who seems to be connected to everyone. You can be intentional about your network while still being human. In order to build strong connections with others, you really have to be strongly connected with yourself. I believe that meaningful networking has been the single greatest contributor to my good luck. You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.
[00:00:33] Annie Riley: Welcome to Who Got Me Here, a podcast about making connections matter. I'm your host, Annie Riley, and today I'm super psyched to sit down with Nick Mehta, the CEO and Founder of Gainsight, a platform that has literally defined the category of customer success for B2B SaaS, Software as a service. Nick has received numerous awards and recognitions for his leadership as CEO, including a 99% approval rating on Glassdoor, which is quite the achievement. And, Nick serves on the board of F5 and has written multiple books on the topic of customer success, and you might have seen his posts on LinkedIn where he's super prolific. Welcome, Nick, to the show. We're really excited to have you here.
[00:01:18] Nick Mehta: Thank you so much, Annie. It's really exciting to talk about careers. So excited to be here.
[00:01:23] Annie Riley: Well, you have written a ton. You're one of the guests where I wanna make sure we get to something new because I was on LinkedIn reading about everything that you post and I went to Page, I think it was 73 of your posts. Like I was like, oh gosh. To go, to go as far back as I possibly could to see, wow, you know what is back in the history of Nick's posts and that only got me to 10 months. 10 months ago post showed up on page 73, so I thought that that was hilarious. And many people who, when I say that, you know, you're coming on the show, I'm gonna be interviewing, I tell friends, you know, what should I ask Nick? The number one reaction I've gotten from people is, oh, I follow him on LinkedIn.
[00:02:09] Nick Mehta: Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Somehow I've become the LinkedIn guy. I don't know. E everyone has a job. I guess. That's my job now, so.
[00:02:16] Annie Riley: So I know we wanna talk about relationships, networking, career building in general, but given that you have become so known for this LinkedIn presence, I kind of wanna start there and ask, how did this come to be?
How do you think about LinkedIn as part of. Career building, relationship building, networking strategy. And what advice do you have for people who might not be starting with the same platform?
[00:02:42] Nick Mehta: Yeah, totally. A hundred percent. So I, I think this, the social stuff is, is like a tough, like, it's hard and intimidating for people to get started.
In fact, I've tried to, Coach some of my team members on doing it more too. So I, I sort of have a lot of empathy for how, what it's like to get started. For me, the story was obviously, I think it's easier when, you know, c e o you start with a, a bit of a brand and platform already, but when we were real small company, you know, I started just experimenting with how to get our own company's name out there.
Right. And so obviously, you know, you try, you know, Twitter and other social media, Instagram. What I found was LinkedIn actually creates, for our audience, which tends to be business people, it has like the most organic, like distribution, the most engagement. People really want to have conversations. A lot of people, you know, watch it.
And so I think, well, maybe five, six years ago we're like, wow, this LinkedIn thing is, it's not just like the, the thing that, like the spammy network connections and all the InMails, which you know that that's not always great, but the actual content publishing and sharing is, is actually incredibly powerful.
And so that was something that, that we learned like early on. And you know, over the years, learned a lot of stuff like for example, Just simple posts on LinkedIn on a regular basis without even having a link to a blog or anything else. Get you a lot of interest in traffic and just awareness. And so then one of the things I figured out over time is, you know, I talk to a lot of people every day and I learn a lot every day, and a lot of people would potentially benefit from some of that.
Just learning what I'm learning and it allows our customers and our audience to all learn together to get better together. It feels good to try to help in the small way, allows me to learn from them too, to see what's on their minds, what are they thinking about, what resonates with them. Obviously, you know, we're a vendor so it gets our brand out there, right?
That doesn't hurt as well. But biggest thing is to try to help people. So I came up with kind of a formula and actually this is the most meta thing ever. And by the way, I love, love meta thing since my last name is meta. You know, I did a post on LinkedIn about doing LinkedIn posts. I saw that, you know, the kind of the TLDR on that post was, you know, what I think about is every day I have tons of interesting conversations and meet people and learn things and you know, write down something I learned.
And I put those into a list. And then over the weekend I try to write the five posts for the week based on just what I learned in the last week. And those learnings could be about, you know, customer success, which is the domain we're in. Could be about company culture, could be about SaaS more broadly.
Right. I try to keep it relevant to, I think what people want. You know, I'm not writing as much like totally personal stuff, but I add my own personal flair. There's a lot of music references and Taylor Swift and things like that. I saw her a big swifty. Yeah, you are too. Yeah, there go. Yes, I'm going to the first, uh, first Aris concert with my daughter, my wife.
So, oh my gosh, amazing. And try to make it your own brand, but also try to understand like what is the audience actually you want? And you learn a lot by trying things, right? And so I've learned that culture, um, kind of SAS best practices, more broadly leadership. And then customer success is sort of, What our audience wants.
And so what I do is I write a post, you know, every day. Typically it's, you know, not that long. You know, few paragraphs, emojis actually help, by the way. So I've learned that as well.
[00:05:49] Annie Riley: You write a post every
[00:05:50] Nick Mehta: day? Yeah. It's only, I mean, it's not a huge number of words, but yeah, I write a post every day and something that I've learned, something to try to share.
And then at the end I always ask like, you know, what would you add? You know, what? What's your experience been? And that engages people, right? So they'll actually add. Their experiences and you know, over the, the post, you know, some of them get like moderate engagement. It's a lot, you know, especially the stuff that's more about customer success cuz that audience is a little more narrow.
So we'll talk about things like, you know, how much should CSM be compensated? I talked about that today. Or what's a strategy for scaling customer success? But then the ones that actually get more traction, cuz I think they're more mainstream, are about culture. For example, I had a post. You know, something I've always wondered about, which is why are, you know, a lot of companies so weird when people leave, like when somebody resigns, they're kind of weird to people on the way out.
And that had incredible engagement and like, honestly, a lot of sad stories about people sharing how they were treated on the way out and opportunity for all of us to do better. So I, and then I did one, you know, on another one that was pretty popular on like, like what I learned from a recent Salesforce earnings call.
I've had a few stories over time. That really resonated and it, it just, you learn a lot. Like one was about, you know, how companies treat people on the way out and you know how they're not always so kind to them when they leave and you know, how can we all do better? And so it just shows you there's a lot of interest in like companies doing better.
Another example was like, what can people learn from. The Salesforce recent earnings and some of the challenges they've had, and how does that apply to all of us, right? So I think you learn like what topics really resonate with people. So if I was given you folks advice, I'd say, obviously you start by just reading and engaging and commenting, but eventually you figure out there's some stuff that you know or you're learning and you can start sharing it and engage the audience.
Try to make a regular practice. Doesn't have to be every day, once a week or something is great. And you know, just get started. It is one of those things that the longer you go, the easier it gets, for sure. Mm-hmm. And
[00:07:38] Annie Riley: what advice do you give to people who might feel a little powerless when getting started?
You know, a common thing that comes up when I talk to people about building their brand is this idea of, well, who am I? To be giving advice or to be put putting content out there. I'm not the c e o of something. I'm not the founder of something. I think people have a lot of inertia around how to just get going.
So what's your guidance around
[00:08:03] Nick Mehta: that? Yes. I think one of the things that's interesting is like, think of a Venn diagram. One circle is what do you know uniquely? Another circle is what are you passionate about? And the third circle, What is the world interested in, right? And so my world, you know, in that middle is like culture, customer success, leadership, SaaS, blah, blah, blah, right?
I think most people have something in the center of that Venn diagram. Things you're really knowledgeable about, you're passionate about, and you know, people are more broadly interested. So let's pick some examples, right? Let's say you're a salesperson and maybe you're like a really cutting edge salesperson and you're in experimenting with chat G P T and using it to write some of your.
And you're doing like a regular weekly thing of like, here's an email I sent, you know, and here's the one that worked well. And by the way, including some failures and things that didn't work well. Right. Let's say you are an intern at a big company and you're like just trying to be an intern, but like you're learning like what's working as an intern.
What, what projects are interesting? What are techniques to like get visibility with management? Um, let's say you're, um, somebody, uh, trying to break into a job and you can like, kind of like share like your experience of going through the job. It's a little bit like live streaming, you know, in some ways right?
[00:09:12] Annie Riley: Actually, like share content about your job search and what you're going through in that moment. Yep.
[00:09:17] Nick Mehta: People would find it super interesting,
[00:09:18] Annie Riley: you know? Yep. How do you know it's working and what do you do in that messy middle where you're like, you're posting, you're posting, you're posting, And you haven't gone viral yet.
[00:09:27] Nick Mehta: Totally. Yeah. It's really, it is very frustrating early on cuz you got those like, you know, three likes or whatever, right? Like it doesn't Yeah, totally. It's
[00:09:34] Annie Riley: like sad. You're like, here I am.
[00:09:36] Nick Mehta: Everyone deals with that. That's the reason these things are hard to get started. I mean, I think one thing is you can engage other friends.
So like you, you tag other people. And you say, Hey, what do you think? And I, so I think there's ways to kind of, not just have it be totally empty from day one, but I do think that part of it's just the grit to kind of keep going, knowing that it eventually will work. Um, as long as you have something that you're passionate about.
And that the world's interested in. I like that
[00:09:59] Annie Riley: advice to make it something that you are excited about because that probably makes it less of a chore, people can tell. Mm-hmm. And then you can keep up the momentum more easily too. You're not like, oh, I've gotta go in and post this
[00:10:09] Nick Mehta: thing. Totally. I mean, honestly, like I'm irrationally excited about customer success.
Like it's kind of weird, but like I am. And so, and it's genuine and so I keep going. And also I think people appreciate enthusiasm. They really do. They can tell when somebody actually.
[00:10:25] Annie Riley: Yep. Absolutely. So you just celebrated 10 years of Gainsight, is that right? Yeah. Congratulations. Happy birthday. Thank you.
When you were first getting started with this, what did you envision Gainsight could become? Perhaps even take us back to before it was Gainsight, like as you were kind of getting started with this round of your entrepreneurial journey. Cuz from what I can see in your background, this has. One round of a much bigger picture of companies you've started, things you've built, things you've been a part of.
What did you hope this would
[00:10:59] Nick Mehta: be? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting when we got started, like it was myself and a couple other guys, and when we got started, All of us had worked in other SaaS companies and so we had just felt like a very direct pain, which was, you know, in SaaS, if you kind of sell to customers and you don't really like proactively help them, they'll eventually leave you.
Right? So you have to, you know, minimize churn, make sure that they're getting value. That's what customer success is all about. And so, in the early days in 2013, this was kind of a new concept, but we thought eventually every company's gonna need. And also there was a new profession emerging called customer success manager, which was basically the people in these companies doing this job.
They used to be called other things like account manager, relationship manager, you know, client services. And it was kind of converging into this new profession. And when we actually threw an event in 2013 ca, our first pulse conference, which is our big industry event that's now, you know, five, 6,000 people.
And the first one we had, you know, like 300 people showed up and there was tons of energy in the. And so it kind of gotta start thinking, gosh, there might be like a movement here, right? Not just like a new software category, but a new way of doing business, A new profession. We didn't know how big it would get and honestly like, you know, of course you always dream big.
So, you know, have we achieved all the things we dreamed for? No, absolutely not. Like there's so much more, you know, do I want it to go faster? Of course. Like I wish we had done even more. Like though it's not all up into the right and easy, the things that are amazing are that profession, you know, back in maybe 2013.
My guess is there are maybe a thousand CSMs in the world, maybe less, 500, like literally that many people, and now it's probably three, three or 400,000, like literally, you know, 1,500 x or something. And then, you know, the, this event that we do went from 300 to people to 5,000 people, and obviously Gainsight had.
You know, 15 people in the company now we're 1200 people. And, and so a lot of stuff has kind of come a long way. That's why we use the term movement, cuz it's been, it's not just a software, you know, opportunity. There was really like a movement. And that's where some of the excitement, you know, on LinkedIn and other places is that it feels like people are part of a movement.
You know, our customers feel like they're part of a movement. They're not just, you know, buying software. Mm-hmm.
[00:13:02] Annie Riley: That's a really cool framing and we've heard some pieces of advice from other guests that relate to that, cuz a lot of times people are thinking about building their careers and the first step is to pick a direction, pick a space to build in, pick a job to apply for.
And a lot of people can feel stuck even in that choice. Right? What's the right direction to move in? And this idea of picking things that can become a movement or where you see a lot of energy and momentum moving in that direction. I think that's really helpful guidance.
[00:13:35] Nick Mehta: I think a big part of that specifically is gonna be like tying to what you said earlier, Annie, which is.
Something that is both like you believe really the world needs and like you think it's really gonna happen. Obviously that's important and so you can, you know, pick generative ais and something right now, but also something you're gonna be really passionate about. So you're gonna stick through thick and thin, you know, so like pick an example that's less in fashion crypto right now.
Right? So obviously it's not necessarily the best time for crypto, but you know, there's some people that like are really passionate about it and they're sticking. And I'm sure that whatever crypto turns into those people will be the beneficiaries. The worst thing you can do is jump on something because it's hot, but you're not passionate about it.
Cuz most likely it will stop being hot at some point and you will throw in the towel and eventually it'll come back and you won't be able to benefit from it. Yeah.
[00:14:23] Annie Riley: Well, I guess applying that to your own career, what part of customer. Ignites that passion in you? Like what is the thing about customer success that you actually
[00:14:33] Nick Mehta: like?
There's three things. Yeah. I've thought a lot about this. Number one is, um, there's sort of like you think about like the heart and the mind. So on the mine side, it's very clear that like for any company that's in SaaS or any kinda recurring revenue business model, The heart of the business model is keeping and growing your customers.
So I know it's actually business-wise important and I think people get that. That's the mind side of it, but the heart side of it has really been two things. Number one is seeing this profession grow. Like literally, you know, former babysitters for our kids have now become CSMs. You know, like family friends are in customer success.
People's kids are asking for intros so they can do internships and customer success. You know, we brought people from lots of underrepresented backgrounds into internships in cs, like seeing it as like a true career that That's awesome. And seeing a lot of our customers I've worked with go from like being a C S M to being a vp, to being a chief customer officer, to being like literally a C in some cases.
Some of our, over the 10 years, I've seen people move all the way up to be CEO and not dozens of them actually. So that's really great. And then there's an element of customer success, which is all about this idea that we're really passionate about Gainsight, which is not forgetting that business is fundamentally about human beings first.
It's about like human beings in your company and human beings with your customer and not losing sight of the human side of it. And that's something we're really passionate about. Like our purpose statement. Our mission statement, Gainsight, is to be living proof you can win in business while being human first.
So that's actually like more than just customer success, it's about this new way of thinking about. We're not the only ones that think it that way. We definitely haven't innovated created any of this, but it's our own spin on. And I think customer success is fundamentally very human first, cuz it's about saying, okay, if I can make my customer successful as a human being with using our software and our products and maybe get them promoted and all that, then I'm gonna be successful too, cuz they're gonna stay with us and grow.
Maybe I get promoted too. So not forgetting about the human side of business, that's something I'm very passionate about. Yeah.
[00:16:26] Annie Riley: I've seen in a lot of your writing you refer to humans. When you're talking about customers, you talk about humans. When you talk about your team, you say you're 1400 humans, not employees.
So how can people who want to build their network, who want to build more, be more strategic about building relationships, how can they apply this human first principle to their efforts at networking and relationship building?
[00:16:52] Nick Mehta: Yeah, I love it. That's awesome. Yeah. One of the things. You know, ideally not being transactional.
One of the worst ways to network is transactional, right? It's like we all have experienced it, right? It's like somebody that's. You know, basically just calling you to ask for something, right? Versus trying to build a relationship. And part of the problem is not doing it early enough, as you know, while Annie, like the worst time to network is when you're looking for a job.
The best time to network is always right. And so, you know, the people that are really successful, especially in these tough times, are the ones that are like always building relationships. And part of that is always trying to help other people. So as an example, to make real tangible. You know, in our customer success profession, you know, basically any leader can reach out to me for job advice.
Um, and I almost always do it. So literally on a weekly basis, probably 10 to 15 calls with people. Trying to help them do intros. I wrote this post recently, you probably saw about, you know, over 10 years I've probably done, you know, 5,000 calls on customer success, career coaching. There's no business album.
We don't charge for that. We don't make money off that, obviously, maybe long term helps our business, but that's the kind of thing where it's like you just wanna help, you know? And then out of those, I've done tens of thousands of intros, you know, of people to each other. I think a big part of it is networking all the time, but really trying to help, I think networking almost has the wrong word.
It's just trying to help, and if you start your career with an attitude of trying to help and you just say like, I'm gonna make every minute I can to try to help other people, help somebody in their job help appear at work. That's how you build a strong network long term. The opposite is, oh, and you know, I'm looking for something right now.
Let me reach out to some people. Let me have a pretend like I would love to catch up, but really I just want to ask for a favor. Right. But those favors are much more effective when you've reciprocated, you know, when you've helped them out. You know, like at this point. You know, there's thousands of people I've helped find jobs and you know, there's big chunk of all top CS leaders, you know, and it's not like I'm asking for something in return.
It's not like that's not transactional. It's more like you're truly just trying to help and then eventually build this goodwill that. It comes back to you in spades. I think that's great
[00:19:02] Annie Riley: advice. And we recently had a conversation about what people who are facing a job search at this moment in time should do.
Because I, you know, it's ideal that you're doing this on an ongoing basis and in the tech industry in particular and around the world, many people are finding themselves. Having been laid off, or maybe they started a job search last year that they thought was gonna take a certain amount of time and now the world has shifted and they're still at it.
And I think that those are good opportunities to almost hit reset on your networking skills. But I could imagine someone in that position listening to this and saying, well, I am looking for something so, and I don't wanna seem transactional, so what should I do? What does this mean for me right now?
Cause I do need a job.
[00:19:50] Nick Mehta: I know that's, it's so hard cause obviously some people may be really behind the eight ball. You know, part of it is like if you have a little bit of time, then I think one of the things that's really effective is not making too big of an ask in that first meeting. So I think one of the things to think about as you connect with somebody is, you know, Hey, hey, I, I just wanna put on my radar, you know, on your radar the types of things I'm interested in, and just if you see anything that let me know, and then you might like reconnect with them in a few weeks and congratulate them on something you saw.
And then like maybe make more formal ask. You know, one very practical thing that I, something people could consider is I think it's the easiest if you make it easy on the other person. So when you talk to somebody who's has a lot of connections, it's actually hard if the person says, well, I'm kind of open to anything that's like the least useful thing to say, right?
If I say, oh, what are you looking for? Oh, I'm open to anything. Okay. So I have like 60,000 connections on LinkedIn, like where do I start? Right? Versus like, Hey Nick, you know, I'm really interested in breaking into a company that's an early stage company that's focused on software for pharmaceutical something, right?
It's like, oh yeah, well now it causes your brain to think, oh yeah, I can think of a few companies. That's one tip is try to be a little more specific, right? Give some specific asks. Uh, a second tip I think is. As you think about where to focus your energy, like, you know, what is your filter? What I personally think, it's always nice to say like, if you're on a ladder, like you think, or not even a ladder, like a jungle gym, stretching a little bit, but not having to leap across the jungle gym in one leap.
Right? And so, as an example, if you're a product rep manager right now, you'd love to be a CEO one day, you know, like say, Hey, I'd love to get a CEO job right. Now. It's, it's gonna be trickier, right? But, um, if you're product manager in an educational tech, And you really wanna think the next stage is actually to go into, into marketing and you like to be like a senior manager marketing.
Like that's a leap that people might be willing to let you take cuz you understand the domain experience. You've done something semi relevant, right? So kind of like, I think when you think about your filter, like think about how this is like taking you one step, but not like just leaping, you know, into the abyss.
That's the second thing. And then the third one, to really make it easy on the. Is, um, if you're talking to somebody and you're like asking for intros, is to actually consider, um, you know, what I recommend is, you know, for each company that you're interested in, write a really nice email explaining why you're a really good fit for that company with your LinkedIn profile and all that, and send that to your person that you know, and then they can just easily forward that on.
So like, making the email really easy to forward, it's a very simple thing, but it reduces the friction versus like the extreme opposite of all this advice is, Hey, I'd really love to do something great with my. Can you do some intros for me? I'm like, first of all, I don't know you. I hardly know you. I don't know what you're a good fit for.
What company should I focus on? And you literally want me to go figure all that out and write all the emails for you, you know? And that's by the way. Yeah. And so I lower the bar of, of a, you know, when you're asking for help, make it easy for people to help you.
[00:22:52] Annie Riley: Yep. I wanted to double click on this as from your perspective as the receiver of all of these intro calls.
So I did see that post where you said you've, you know, had thousands of calls over the years. I think you said you averaged two a day in career conversations. So what has been the call that has been sort of most surprising, where you've seen the person seeking your advice, you know, seeking your help, you've seen them do something unexpected and you.
Oh, I'm gonna steal that move. That's a cool thing that they did. Have you ever had that on one of those?
[00:23:27] Nick Mehta: Yeah, I mean, I think that the people that, um, a couple things that really stand out. One is doing research, like, honestly, like you did a lot of research for this podcast, right? Some people jump on podcasts and they're just like asking for generic questions and it's, it's very similar to the person that's networking for a job and.
Has done no research. You know, so they ask you like a simple thing. You know, you go into an interview, don't ever ask the CEO what keeps you up at night, because that means you literally did no homework for this interview. And you're asking the most generic question you can ask to a leader, right? And so I think one thing that surprises me is when people have done the research, a second thing that surprised me is if you're talking to busy people, I gotta say the love language of busy people is b.
So I remember talking to somebody, I'd never met him before. He was looking for some advice and he is like, look, let me just get this chase, Nick. Here's kind of what I'm really good at. Here's what I've done and here's what I was looking to to go do next. I saw you're connected to some of these people. I was wondering if you could help.
It was like literally a three or four minute ask. I was like, thank you. You just like literally maybe may turn this 30 minute call into 15 minutes, gives me some time back and I'll go jump on these right? Right. Another thing that surprises me, it shouldn't surprise me, but people that follow up quickly, I gotta say like, it's really dispiriting when people don't follow up quickly, it doesn't seem like they want help.
You know? That's like, and honestly then frankly, you're like, what do they like to work with as well? If they're not responsive and things like that. It's really like, if they're in the job search, they're not responsive. Another thing is, um, after the meeting, like, so, you know, they meet me, I introduce them to the.
The people that send a note after the, they're uh, they're like, they've done their meetings with a status. Hey Nick, thanks so much for the intro to company X, Y, and Z. I actually met with them. I think it's a really good fit. It's a really great thing to do. Keep it top of mind. It keeps me top of mind with them.
Like so I'm thinking about other opportunities. It shows that they follow through. Yeah, so I think a lot of that stuff people have lost and I think it's a big opportunity. I was talking to somebody yesterday, she's trying to break into customer. And I told her, I was like, look, one thing, I gotta be honest with you, there's like 500 people applying for whatever job you're applying for.
Right? You've gotta be all over it. I told her if she, there was a company I was gonna try to help her get connected to. I said, if you get a, a meeting with this company, I would spend 10 hours prepping for that 30 minute call. Like literally, cuz you gotta blow 'em away. You gotta just totally blow 'em away.
And I think people kind of like half-heartedly walk into these calls and they don't realize they're making an impression every time. I would never walk into a call without preparing.
[00:25:55] Annie Riley: Yeah, and I think often people get in their heads about wanting to do it the right way. Like, I booked 30 minutes on this person's calendar, I need to take the full 30 minutes.
And it's like, no. Once you've reached your objective, right, you're saying Hang up, move on, and give the person the time back and focus your energy on. Following up. And so I think that that's something that is a common trap that people fall into this sort of like, gotta do it. Right. Gotta follow the rules.
And you're saying no, the rules have
[00:26:24] Nick Mehta: changed. Yeah, it's interesting cuz what you asked about surprising things. Another thing that I tried to do, and I think I've seen some people do as well, is literally in the beginning of the call I'd be like, Hey, I know we booked us for 30 minutes. But I'd love to be efficient with your time and maybe give you 10 minutes back at the end.
And that, by the way, makes the person so happy to start the call because they're like, oh, this is so awesome if I get 10 minutes back. Right? And so I think that's a really good point, Annie, don't use all the time.
[00:26:45] Annie Riley: And I wanna get into a little bit of your personal story more and the role that relationships have played in getting you to where you are today, cuz that is after all the title of the show who got me here.
I'd love to go even further back than your experience at Gainsight. I saw that you raise. I think it was a series A from Sequoia in like 1998 for a company that you started
[00:27:09] Nick Mehta: that's on page 5,000 of LinkedIn. So yeah,
[00:27:13] Annie Riley: I would love to learn more about how you got into this industry, into this space, because you know, the world of startups and technology, it's changed so much since then and I feel like you were doing it kind of before it was cool.
And how did you even know? About this world? How did you get
[00:27:33] Nick Mehta: into it? Yeah, I mean the quick story there is that obviously tech's been around a long time. It's just been in different forms. Right before the internet we had, you know, PCs and computers and Mac, and before that there was other stuff, right? And so there's many, many generations of all this.
And like, actually one thing I'd recommend for anyone that wants to do a career in tech is really learned history. I think it's highly underrated, like learning the. All the people have done this stuff, like the people that created the first semiconductors. And you know, there's a lot of great books. I highly recommend that.
But specifically, um, for me, I grew up around technology. My dad was a small business entrepreneur, never did anything big, like, just like really small companies, but there were a lot of computers at home and so I kind of like. Like was programming. And so I was very lucky that I had that, you know, growing up.
And so I kind of liked that. I liked technology and this is, you know, I'm older so this is like, I remember when I was like, um, eight years old. My dad was in the family room of our house and he in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and my dad says, shows me Bill Gates is on the cover of Time Magazine is like the richest.
The youngest billionaire in the world, or is, I dunno, 30 years old or 25 or something. And my dad's like, I'd love to have you do something like this someday. And so the bar was pretty high from the beginning. No pressure. Exactly. So there was like, that's why I still have definitely not lived up to my parents' expectations and my mom wants me to be a doctor still.
So that whole, you know, kind of like seeing that like the technology. You know, that early era of like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, and that was all like, when I was a kid, I was like, oh, that's so cool. And so I went to college and um, I was actually gonna take a more traditional career path to start and work in like investment banking or consulting or something.
[00:29:07] Annie Riley: Yeah, I saw you did internships and stuff and iBank,
[00:29:11] Nick Mehta: but then I met a, um, I was studying computer science and I met a classmate and, and he had, yeah, he was actually on the golf team at our college and like he basically, They had this idea and he actually started initially on his own of like just building a website where people could buy golf clubs over the web.
And you know, nowadays those kinds of things sound, oh, obviously there's a trillion ways to do that. But this is 1996, right? So long time ago. And then we basically, he brought me on his co-founder. We were running this out of our dorm room and then they end up kind of starting to take off. So we actually like turned down our jobs and actually moved to California, lived in my friend's parents house, worked in the garage, ran this startup, and eventually like raised venture capital.
Actually like literally almost went public and it was, we had TV commercials and billboards and it was a whole, and we were like 21 years old. So it was crazy. But that brought me to Silicon Valley. Very lucky about that. Brought me into tech. And then obviously like this podcast's all about started, you know, building out network.
And you know, it's funny, like there's people I meet now that are like, oh, I met you back in chip shot days, or, or we, we sold golf clubs over the web and we had all, we were like one of these classic early internet companies where we were selling stuff for like way, way less than it cost us, right? So we were, had all these promotions and so a lot of people have been like, oh, I bought a golf club from you guys.
I'm like, yeah, we probably lost a lot of money on that. But that kind of was the start of then like, you know, being in this world and building a network. There was, you know, a couple other pivotal moments on the way, which I can share. But that chip shot experience was definitely one of the, one of the beginning ones.
Yeah. That's
[00:30:34] Annie Riley: amazing. And it's so interesting, like if you had not known that person, they hadn't been from the Bay area, right?
[00:30:41] Nick Mehta: We met at the ice cream social like freshman year. And then we, you know, we're in computer science class together. We started programming. Now his name's Amer and he's one of my best friends, so That's
[00:30:50] Annie Riley: amazing.
Who are one or two other Pivotal relationships, pivotal people that had a big impact on getting you to this point where you are today? I'd love to hear a couple of anecdotes, especially if you have not yet shared them on LinkedIn. Totally.
[00:31:05] Nick Mehta: I'll give you three. Yeah, definitely. These have not been shared on LinkedIn.
Three ones. Amazingly, there's still something left. Three, one. So one of my first, so after my startup, you know, and we ended up shutting it down, so it's kinda super hot and then it then ended up shutting down. And so I had to get a real job and I honestly, I was like 21 years old. I thought it was like the king of the world.
Cause I was running the startup, but really I was just like a 21 kid. I didn't know anything. I went to be a product manager at a company called Veritas Software, which is like a mid-size company, you know, in public company. I end up working for this guy named Mike. Mike was the, he eventually became a vc and he's like a super, he's actually the VC that funded Snowflake, and he's like, like literally ultra, ultra, ultra successful.
But I remember he was my boss, like I was product manager or something. He was like a director, I think we're in an office in Mountain View, California, and he'd always be out, like outside at lunchtime and having lunch with people who. From our company, like pretty much like every day or every two days.
And I was like, oh, what's that? And he's like, oh, you know, I tried to just meet a couple of people outside of work every day, every couple days, you know? And so that was like the lesson that just kind of started this genesis. And then when, when I left Veritas, five years later, I think I was like, maybe I emailed him or something to get some advice.
I wanted to go do something new. Looking at a few different things and he literally did like 25 intros and they were like the nicest intros, like, you know, Hey, you gotta meet this guy Nick, blah blah blah. And I just remember that and I was like, I think honestly Mike probably had more of an influence in my career than anyone.
Cause then I now I'm like, wow. The value of helping other people build, you know, building your relationships without any, expecting anything in. Um, so Mike was kind of a big one for me. Um, a second one in a di yeah, a second in a different way was, um, this guy named Jeremy Burton. And Jeremy was another boss of mine in the same company and he's now a c e o of another company.
And Jeremy, um, was really gifted. At bringing his own voice to like and to communications. And so he was a C M O Chief Marketing officer of our company. And we were like a good company, but we made really boring stuff. It was like data backup software. Not the most exciting thing, but I remember going to one of our conferences for our customers and like, He had this whole thing about like the matrix, the cuz that that movie was kind of hot back then and there was a matrix kind of spoof about, you know, data backup and, you know, people loved it and it was like, wow, you can really bring personality even to the most boring things.
And so bringing your own brand, your own personality, I thought that was like a thing I learned a lot. From Jeremy. And then, then the last one more, you know, tied into Gainsight. I had had gotten to know, um, a gentleman named, named Roger Lee. We met originally through a mutual friend. He's a partner at a venture capital firm called Battery Ventures.
We eventually got to know each other and like we were in a C E O group together called Y P O, and so we saw each other a lot. And he kind of like randomly called me in December of 2012 and said, Hey, I just met two folks that are thinking about customer success. I know you've been thinking about it too.
Do you wanna kinda like meet up? And then like, honestly, that's how Gainsight got started. It's kind of one of those things where like literally, I remember I was in a parking lot. Like outside of 24 Hour Fitness about to go try to go work out. And he called me and then like, that call is like, why I do what I do now.
And so these are the kind of stories where you're like, wow, these people individually can have a huge impact on you. And what I always reflect on is the greatest opportunities to try to help other people. Right? And so, Could I be in a small way trying to channel some of what Mike SP did, or Jeremy or Roger or others for me to try to help other people, you know, and not cuz I'm some great person or whatever.
It's literally just selfish. It's like, it feels really good to try to help other people, you know?
[00:34:39] Annie Riley: I love that you had that modeling earlier in your career, cuz I think especially for some of the things that you're describing that you learned from Mike and from Jeremy, again, people get in their own heads, so when they think.
Voice and how to stand out. They're like, what are the rules? Rather than breaking the rules or they think they need to prioritize what's going on in their company, in their job, and don't think about going out to lunch with other people to actually be better at. The job that they're doing. So having that modeling was absolutely huge, and I love that through channels like this podcast, people who might not have seen that from their manager can learn that from you and Mike and Jeremy in your experience.
And then on the Roger Lee example, the thing I wanna just hone in on is the fact that Roger knew you were looking at customer success. So how did he know that? How did he know to think of you in that?
[00:35:30] Nick Mehta: Yeah, it's interesting cause I think that's something that's also helpful is staying top of mind with people so they know what you're excited about.
Right. So again, I was mentioning this before, you know, it's like, hey, I'm really excited in this case about excited about customer success and customer retention, but it could be like, I'm really passionate about like, you know, the convergence of generative AI and how it's gonna allow us to transform the way people deliver elderly care.
Right? Like something like that. I'm, I'm, that may or may not even make sense, but Ima like, it's really good to be specific cuz then people remember, like, that's why if you say to somebody, oh, I just excited about working in a hot company. It's like, well that's not very helpful. Who isn't right? But it's like if you are really specific and you think about some things that you're specifically passionate about now, one of the challenges is, of course, none of us were.
Pre-ordained to do a certain thing. It's not like I'm pre-ordained to do customer success, a few different bounces of the ball. I could be doing something completely different, maybe way less lucky than I am now. Right? And so I'm not pretending like people watching this need to like believe every single thing's figured out in their life, but I think it's nice to have a few hypotheses, you know, a few things that you're like excited about that you seem kind of interested in.
And I think part of the way to get excited is to try to go. You know, so one of the things that I feel people don't necessarily always do enough of is just go learn about stuff, right? So like, again, I'm using AI as an example cause it's the example of the day, the opportunity there is so huge. Like literally this is another good, good little tidbit.
You know, busy people. I think one of the biggest things you can give them is knowledge and information, right? Like, Busy people often have access, they're lucky, they have access to resources, all those kinds of things. But they're always interested in learning. And so right now, you know, everyone's interested in learning about generative ai and so there was an entrepreneur to reach out for advice and he's working on generative AI stuff.
And honestly, I'm more likely to take that call cuz frankly I can learn something out of that. So can you learn something that will help a busy person? Like can you be an expert on something that's cutting? You know, can you figure out like the emerging trend in a certain, you know, field, I mean to. If you have time.
It's huge. It's a huge opportunity.
[00:37:38] Annie Riley: Yep. And it's a way to break in, back to your point earlier, you know, to position yourself in that space, which maybe you feel like you have no business being a part of.
[00:37:47] Nick Mehta: Almost all the people that do the new cutting edge things had no business being a part of them. Like they just, I know, get imposter syndrome.
Most of the people are literally just figuring it out and winging it as you go. Read any of the famous business books about the great entrepreneurs, all of them in the beginning were just figuring it. Absolutely.
[00:38:02] Annie Riley: And I know that sometimes when we look back on careers, things can feel so tidy. You know, they can feel so neat and tied in a bow, and if only you do A and B and C, you can be as great as Nick one day, right?
Or you can have that type of success. As you look back on your career, are there any. Mistakes that you have made, pitfalls that you have fallen into around relationship building and networking. Any stories to share with our audience that folks can learn from to maybe avoid those same traps?
[00:38:34] Nick Mehta: Yeah, I'm not a big believer in general in like mistakes in that I'm very happy with my life and the path that I'm on, including all the mistakes is what got me here.
Right. So I'm very content that way.
[00:38:44] Annie Riley: Who got me here?
[00:38:45] Nick Mehta: Mistakes. Yeah, exactly. Mistakes. Got a hundred percent. Um, now I think that being said, I think like. Almost every single regret I would have would be around any time I didn't do my best to treat people well. So that's, I think where like as a, I'll give you some examples just to make it tangible.
So when people leave companies, you know, we talked about this a little bit before, right? You know, I'm a big believer of like, how do you really celebrate them on the way out? You know, they're excited about their next job. Don't make them feel guilty. And I'd say at like 99.9 9, 9 9 9 9% of the time, that's exactly what I do.
When I, if somebody says they're leaving, I'm like, well, first of all, let me thank you for what you've done here. I wanna congratulate in your next job. You know, what can we learn for the future? And like it's great and maintain a relationship. I. Try to help him in the future when they're looking for a job.
And one time one of our, my key direct reports told me he is leaving. It was like a total shocker. And I was like, you can't leave. There's no way. That's totally impossible. And I honestly, I think I made him feel too guilty. Now, luckily, we're like super close friends now, and it's all, and I helped him in his last job search, but that was one where I'm like, ah, I did not handle that well.
And so I think this is an opportunity where anytime there's bad news and things go wrong, that's your opportunity to handle it. By the way, getting rejected from a job, getting laid off from a job. These are all really tough things. And how do you try to handle it as well as you can, right? People remember how you handled it.
You know, when, right now, unfortunately a lot of people are getting cut and like it is, you know, really tough. But people remember the people that left, you know, with a really positive attitude and wanting to help and maybe helping their colleagues find jobs and stuff like that. So in tough times, trying to like be the person that helps.
Another example, that's a different vein and one where frankly there, there wasn't a good ending in the story. There was. Customer early on, and they were the big customer and they like tried to get out of their contract and what they did wasn't very ethical, but I think that I could have done it and handled our side in a way that maintained the relationships and didn't make it as personal and like, yeah, maybe we got a little more money out of it because of the way we did it, but was that really worth it?
In the grand scheme of things, probably not. And so I think those types of things where you like push too hard, you're too short term oriented, you're too transactional. Um, you're too emotional and you're not thinking about like, how can we help this person? How could we be a bigger person? How could we, you know, when they go low, we go higher, right?
Like,
[00:41:06] Annie Riley: yeah, well, I saw a post that you did recently about, you know, it's gonna happen that people are going to betray your trust or you are gonna be disappointed. And when you have those instincts around, Anger, frustration, maybe a little hurt. Like how do you shift those to generosity? And I mean, easier said than done in many cases, but I thought that that was like those things are actually your cues to shift to a generous mindset.
[00:41:37] Nick Mehta: I a hundred percent agree. And I think one of the other things to think about is things change over time too, like. Uh, there's people where that type of thing happened, but like, it wasn't like, that's my story, right? But on their story, it was probably not, they weren't thinking about it at all. They. They were thinking about something totally different and probably in their own lens, like managing things totally appropriately, right?
And so it's just my story versus theirs. And I have a lot of stories that end really positive, where like years later, like we're super close and actually all that stuff is, you know, water under the bridge, right? Like, um, you know, my, my, I mean I was think about like the story of like my college roommate the first day I met him, like freshman year.
Like I walk in, you're like this young, young kid. You go into college dorm and I. I'm never gonna like this guy. Oh my God, I can't believe I got roomed with him. I'm sure he was thinking the same thing about me, by the way. And like, we're best friends, you know, 25 years later or 29 years later. I have so many examples of like first impressions or like, you know, feelings of betrayal or whatever that turn into like lifelong friendship or great business relationships.
And so one of the things I'd encourage people to do is whenever you have those feelings, think about times in the past where you've had those feelings and later on it turned out those weren't right or they changed, you know? And that can give you some confidence that might happen. Yep.
[00:42:50] Annie Riley: Absolutely. I mean, it all goes back to this human first ideology that you, I know are so big on like humans are gonna be messy, things are gonna go awry, judgments are gonna be proven wrong.
Just expect it. And sort of this going back to this generosity mindset, how can I help others And feeling like it's worth it cuz you know it feels good and it comes back to you in the end. Nick, I know we're almost out of time. Anything else that you wanted to share with our listeners, a around your advice or experiences with relationship building?
And we'll put it in air quotes, networking, since we're reframing that one.
[00:43:28] Nick Mehta: Yeah, I'd be, I think the last thing I'd just say is the little details really do stand out. We alluded to some of these, right? Being super responsive, maybe sending an agenda for call beforehand, sending notes afterward. Sending a follow up note.
Sending a written thank you note, because these things are actually become more rare. They actually really stand out. Um, and much more common is the, oh, you get an ask only when somebody needs something. There's no agenda beforehand. They don't follow up afterwards. They're not super responsive, and you really differentiate yourself by focusing on these little details.
Mm-hmm.
[00:44:06] Annie Riley: Yep. Absolutely. Well, what's the best detail you've seen recently? I'm curious that you've seen someone do.
[00:44:12] Nick Mehta: You know, I think like something that's pretty creative is, um, sometimes people have like used video. There's some different tools out there like Loom and other tools where you can just make like a little two minute video of yourself talking about something.
So it could be like, Hey, in advance of our call, actually, somebody sent me this, which I thought was pretty cool. They're like, in advance of my call to make this efficient for you. I made a little video. Of like, like my background and what I was hoping to accomplish. And that if you have time to watch it, it's great.
And by the way, even if they don't watch it before the call, the initiative that you took to write that to make that is, is huge.
[00:44:43] Annie Riley: Yep, absolutely. Super, super cool suggestion there. Well, Nick, thank you so much for coming on the show. It has been a delight to get to chat with you and learn from your experiences, get your advice for our audience around how to.
Long lasting, impactful relationships. Uh, where can people find you if they, obviously LinkedIn
[00:45:03] Nick Mehta: is a big one. Hey, come on. We got for an hour about that one. You set yourself up there. Yeah. But
[00:45:09] Annie Riley: where, where any, is that the best place for people to, to find you, reach
[00:45:13] Nick Mehta: out to you? I'm pretty sure either walking the streets of Palo Alto cause I do a lot of walking calls or.
Or, uh, LinkedIn. Yeah.
[00:45:20] Annie Riley: Got it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Nick, for joining us. It's been a pleasure.
[00:45:24] Nick Mehta: Awesome. Yes, great questions. This is super fun. Awesome. That's the show. When you have a warm connection, everything is easier. Making a sale, finding a hire, landing a job, but keeping track of who you know and understanding the full scope of your network is really hard.
Narrator: Connect The Dots makes it simple and automatic to keep a complete record of your professional relationships in one place, then share your network with friends and coworkers in a much more effective way. Get on the waitlist at ctd.ai.