#204 Founder & Former CEO Blue Bottle, James Freeman: After the Exit
Grit19 Aug 2024

#204 Founder & Former CEO Blue Bottle, James Freeman: After the Exit

Guest: James Freeman, Founder and Former CEO of Blue Bottle Coffee

In the six or so years since he sold his last shares of Blue Bottle Coffee to Nestlé, James Freeman has had a lot of time to ruminate — about how he succeeded in creating a unique café experience, and also the ways he failed his workers as a manager. But he’s already thinking about how he’ll be better in round 2. “I've changed so much — physically, mentally, emotionally — I feel like I could be a better collaborator,” James says.

In this episode, James and Joubin discuss All About Coffee by William Ukers, Oliver Strand, performance anxiety, MongoMusic, farmers’ markets, “first touch” design, Parisian cafés, self-deception, Facebook ads, “great exits,” The Picture of Dorian Gray, “frictionless” coffee, Zeno’s Paradox, Yoda, iced oat lattes, espresso machines, The Devil Wears Prada, Steve Jobs, Angela Duckworth, and sandpaper.


Chapters:

  • (02:25) - Coffee is culture
  • (07:10) - James’ music career
  • (11:20) - Moving into business
  • (15:17) - Starting Blue Bottle
  • (17:55) - “Fun until it wasn’t”
  • (21:09) - Food vs. tech in San Francisco
  • (23:15) - The coffee shop experience
  • (29:18) - Dissatisfaction and bad management
  • (33:42) - Exhaustion
  • (36:22) - Exit
  • (37:39) - Anxiety and falling apart
  • (40:31) - Paying the bills vs. the high life
  • (44:08) - Visiting Blue Bottle today
  • (46:53) - The decision to sell
  • (51:35) - Could he have stayed?
  • (54:01) - The next coffee shop(s)
  • (57:35) - Returning to the ring
  • (01:01:39) - What if it works out?
  • (01:03:30) - What “grit” means to James


Links:

Connect with James


Connect with Joubin


Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

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Chief Sales and Success Officer at Slack, Bob Frati: Exploring Slack’s Key Growth Levers and Competition

Chief Sales and Success Officer at Slack, Bob Frati: Exploring Slack’s Key Growth Levers and Competition

In Episode #1 of Go to Market Grit, Slack’s SVP of Sales and Customer Success, Bob Frati, gives the inside scoop about the company’s sales and go-to-market strategy, and why they have been able to scale their go to market so quickly and effectively over the last few years. Bob and Joubin discuss two key topics in detail, outlining the next four years for Slack and key growth levers they can pull, along with growing competition in Slack’s market and what that means for their future. In this episode of Go to Market Grit, we cover: Key growth levers for Slack, and why the company is positioned for continued market dominance.Slack’s response to growing market competition, and why it’s ultimately better for the consumer and for the company.How Slack identified a business need and strong product market fit, and then worked to expand the solution to a broader audience. The importance of having a strong and developed customer-facing team to navigate complexities in large enterprises, and push business forward to completion.How Slack grew its sales team from 300 to 2,000 people — quickly, and effectively. Some of the factors that Slack looks for when hiring customer-facing sales staff, and why they value these characteristics.Why hiring should be a mutual fit for both the candidate and the employer.Identifying motivated individuals, and finding ways to tap into their motivation that will drive them to be successful. Bob’s career journey from sales rep to manager — including why and how he executed the leap. Why much of Slack’s success can be attributed to tight collaboration between its engineering, product, sales, and success teams. Slack’s ability to not only deploy a solution in an organization, but to help manage through the change and ensure success — and why this is a game-changer.Slack’s role in ushering a new way of working, and why it transcends the tired and overused digital transformation narrative in business.Links Host company: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/Loom: https://www.loom.com/ Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rfrati/Host Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoubinmirHost Email: gtmg@kleinerperkins.com

16 Juni 202050min

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About the Joubin MirzadeganJoubin has been with Kleiner Perkins since 2019 where he advises the KP portfolio companies on how to build and scale a robust go-to-market strategy. Additionally, he enables the firm’s portfolio through high impact relationships with F500 executives and key ecosystem partners. Joubin was previously at Palo Alto Networks as a global district sales manager for the Central US based in Chicago where he scaled the Central Cloud business from 1 enterprise rep and $2M ARR to 12 reps and $50M+ ARR in 4 quarters. He has also worked for Evident.io as an enterprise account executive and at Bracket Computing (acquired by VMWare) where he built the inside sales team from the ground up.

20 Apr 202045s

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