Cross Functional and Friendly

2022 has been a rollercoaster. As we move on from a global pandemic to what is clearly a harsh winter for the tech industry, making the right professional decisions—or more importantly, having the right frameworks to do so—is essential. In the last episode of season 2, the trio reflects on 2022 and looks ahead at 2023. They address questions that we all inevitably grapple with in our professional journeys: when is it the right time to leave a job? when should you start a new company? and everything else you need to know about your next career move.Perfect timing, as we enter the new year. 

Managing our careers has always been a valuable skill. What we do happens to be far more important than how hard we work. This is doubly true in an environment where technology and the job landscape are in constant flux. Charting your professional path has powerful downstream effects. For instance: is it better to be a big fish in a small pond? Placing yourself in a startup, taking on more risk and responsibility? Or is it smarter to be a small fish in a big pond? leveraging the structured growth and stability that a larger organisation can provide? In this episode, Stella, Nikita, and Kristen address these questions through their own personal journeys. They leave us with valuable frameworks that they’ve used to manage their own careers and professional growth over the years. Tune in!

So you’ve made those crucial first hires, built the right team, and set clear goals. In this episode, the trio unpacks the next vital step: managing performance. If the sales team isn’t performing, should the product team be held accountable? Great products sell themselves right? Or is it marketing’s fault for not positioning the product correctly? Or maybe they’re actually doing fine but the sales lead you hired isn’t that great after all. Evaluating whether your teams have reached their goals is deceptively simple in theory, but increasingly complicated when you have to do it across functions. Tune in as the trio pair actionable advice with their own experiences over the years! 

In this episode, Stella, Nikita, and Kristen weigh in on how goal setting works across teams—how they change based on product, marketing, and sales objectives, and more importantly: how they can coalesce around a broader organisational goal. Are OKRs actually effective? Are monthly reviews better than quarterly ones? If these are the questions you’re dealing with as a founder or cross-functional leader, this episode is for you. Tune in! 

The trio talks about how sales, product, and marketing teams should be built, and how to set up systems that enable cross-functional (and friendly!) collaboration between them. If you're a founder grappling with these issues, this conversation acts as a definitive guide. 

The trio explores how founders should think about making their first Marketing, Sales, and Product hires. They also unpack the immediate (and highly crucial) next step—how those early hires should interact with their cross functional peers. This is really critical for startups—if Sales and Marketing aren’t aligned, things are going to get very ugly, very fast. Stick around till the end for actionable best practices!

The final episode of our first season. Oji walks us through his path to working with some of the best startups and tech companies in the world

Join the trio as we discuss Sonia's journey into venture and why it ended up being the perfect career path for her

The second episode in our series on career transitions, the team discusses what's new in their careers

April walks us through the ups and downs of her career as she find her true calling

The public and private markets are in a state of flux. The trio talk about what that means for start up life. We walk through some VC funding 101, why things are changing suddenly and what to ask before you join a start up

Join the team as they talk with long time friend and Chief People Officer, Liz Hall. Liz has led teams at Fog Creek, Trello and most recently Splash

Join the cross functional team as we explore what “exactly”  is PLG. We are joined by one of the founding father’s of PLG himself, Michael Pryor, former CEO and Cofounder of Trello.

The final deep dive of the trio's background brings us to Stella Garber. Stella is a lifelong entrepreneur and she takes us through how her immigrant background influenced her pivot from a traditional career in medicine to a love of startups and tech. Stella tells us more about how she is balancing entrepreneurship, angel investing and family.

The cross functional friends are back with episode 2. Our first three episodes focus on getting to know the trio, and episode 2 is all about Nikita Miller. Nikita takes us through her background from coming to America at age 8 from Jamaica to attending Cornell for Industrial Labor Relations and how that all made for a natural path to leadership in product orgs of all shapes and sizes.

The cross functional friends first podcast! We all met at Trello but what were the paths that brought us there and what have we done since. Our first three episodes focus on getting to know the trio, and episode 1 is all about Kristen Habacht. Find out how a Theatre major with no tech background ends up building a career as a successful tech sales leader.