Episode 6 Meagen Eisenberg | DocuSign, MongoDB, TripActions
6 Meagen Eisenberg | DocuSign, MongoDB, TripActions. Meagen goes from early employee at DocuSign to CMO at MongoDB and TripActions.
Meagen Eisenberg is the Chief Marketing Officer at TripActions, previously at MongoDB, and was an early executive at DocuSign. Meagen has been featured in Forbes, has been named one of the most influential martech leaders, was recognized as a Top 25 B2B Marketing Influencer, and Adweek's Top 50 most retweeted by mid-sized marketers.
Interview transcript:
Meagen Eisenberg:
When I was at DocuSign, our CMO was getting ready to leave. And it was, it was, he resigned the day I gave birth to my third child. I wanted to be a CFO, but I didn't want to leave DocuSign because I loved the company. And so, um, from the hospital, I had my laptop there cause I had to be there four days. I started scheduling time with our CEO and COO at DocuSign. I was like, I want to be the COO. And for the next 12 weeks, I tried to get the CMO job at DocuSign. And I went in two days a week during my maternity leave and I pitched and I fought and I, I would like I was driving up from, um, from the South Bay and I would like try to put myself up, you know, to go after it. And, and in the end I didn't get it. Um, I ended up being ranked three out of the, you know, candidates.
Braydon Anderson:
This is the early years, the show about influential early employees of the most successful companies and their stories that have made a lasting impact. I'm Braydon Anderson and on today's show, our guest shares her experiences as a senior leader at some of Tech's hottest startups. When you're about to start a new role, are you prepared and ready for that role? Maybe it's your first leadership position or maybe it's a new position on a completely new team. How do you prepare for that? Are you ever actually ready on day one for that role today we're joined by Megan Eisenberg, the chief marketing officer at TripActions, as shoe's beginning her first CML role. Megan could attest that taking that next role. Isn't always easy, but now Megan has been featured in Forbes has been named one of the most influential MarTech leaders was recognized as a top 25 B2B marketing influencer and ad week's top 50 most retweeted by mid sized marketers early in her career. When she was working at Cisco, she realized that if she wanted to manage a team, she needed to get more education, leading her to attend Yale university for an MBA.
Meagen Eisenberg:
If I wanted to move up in my career, most of the managers at Cisco had MBAs either from Santa Clara or from Stanford, Berkeley. And so I thought I need to go get my MBA if I'm going to manage and applied. And at the time it was one of the toughest times to apply because of the bust. A lot of people had to go back to school, which is very similar to now, when there's a recession, people go back to school. They, if they lose their job, they have to retool and they want to come out stronger. And so I applied and, uh, ended up going to Yale, uh, and they had a focus on finance and strategy. Um, when I got there realized I was not going to do well in finance, my first finance exam, I totally got schooled by all my colleagues that were investment bankers on the East coast.
Meagen Eisenberg:
But, uh, what I did realize is after taking a couple marketing courses, how much I loved it, and I thought, you know, I could come out and market for tech companies and make a pivot in my career. At that point, I was still employed by Cisco systems. I was on an educational leave of absence. Uh, and I, I wanted to come back and do marketing for Cisco, but, um, they, you know, my sponsor didn't want, they wanted me to come back and go into it and engineered, uh, into the it manufacture it department. And so I left and I joined a startup that had just been acquired by IBM. And that sort of took me through the rest of my career path. Someone brought me from one company, you know, your network, that first group of people I've stayed connected to at that startup. And they've taken me to all the other companies I've been
Braydon Anderson:
That's so cool. So you finished your MBA and you realized finance strategy may not be the best fit.
Meagen Eisenberg:
So I doubled down on strategy and Yale was known for that. I just did the minimum on finance. I should've done a little more of in hindsight, but I got proficient. I got the same grade everyone else got, but I had to work twice as hard as them.
Braydon Anderson:
Hey, you got to know your strengths and jump on those. And so that, so you do the marketing, you do the strategy. What, why was that the right decision for you? Was it again just a natural strength for you? Or why was that the right decision?
Meagen Eisenberg:
Well, I mean, tech's hot. I was going to come back to the Bay area and I think tech marketing could use some help. Right? At the time there was so many companies blossoming, MarTech was taking off. So if you understood how an end user would use it, I understood it. I understood developers. Uh, and so I could, if I could sell tech to them, you know, but because I understood the buyer, I mean, I think that's one of the most important things in product marketing is you have to understand the buyer and the why. And so my first decade of my career in tech was, was middleware infrastructure, software selling to it, selling to CISOs. I was insecurity selling to developers. And so I think it gave me a slight advantage, having a slight understanding of tech. Now it's changed dramatically in 25 years. Uh, I I'm blown away by what we're doing now. They definitely don't feed it in school anymore, but I learned they don't teach in school.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. So you start in this product marketing type of role then, um, which is, you know, this is the early two thousands. And really when product marketing was like fairly new, right? Like I was a product marketing manager about five years ago. And even then it felt so new and this was again just five years ago. So I'm just curious, like, what was it like for you to take on a role that was so new to the tech world?
Meagen Eisenberg:
You know, I, I think a lot of people after they graduate with their MBA, they go at their natural. If you're going to go into marketing, you go into product marketing because of the, there's a lot of analysis strategy, work needed, pricing, packaging, understanding the personas and buyers. So when I graduated, I went under Dan Druker was the CFO of Trigo and he really gave me a great foundation for marketing because he had a philosophy that many didn't have back then about aligning with sales. And that the success of marketing is dependent on your relationship with sales. And if they're not successful, you're, you're going to get fired first, then sales is getting fired, right. And then the CEO. And so he has a huge, you know, he treated sales like a customer and a partner. And so I learned that as a product marketer to really listen and understand and to listen to customers and buyers, and then the core messaging that was necessary. And then I did a lot of presenting. Um, we, you know, being acquired by IBM, I was in the RF, you know, it was middleware. And I was in the RFID side of it. We were trying to launch a new product and so traveled all around the world, which was very exciting, um, and, and taught and did demos on the product that we were, um, we were selling. And I think it was just, um, you know, a really great experience because then as I moved on and eventually switched into demand gen it, it gave me the ability to take the message to market because I started to understand, okay, now I get the message and the buyer, but how do they digest it? How do I get the information in their hands and get them into our funnel in front of sales? And what is the, the tricks around that? And I think demand gen is really a lot of systems technology, understanding the data and what's happening, and then running the programs and then fine tuning that. And it's, it's ever, you never solve it every week. New challenges, new bottlenecks, kind of back to the apex certification on a manufacturing flow you're problem solving every week. And trying to figure out how to build efficiencies in with your SDRs, with your sales team, understanding what are the roadblocks, what do I need, what content do I need to create to get the buyer through that? Oh, they're worried about security. Let's create content around security. They're worried about the legality of e-signature electronics, let's create content that explains this was legal. You know, what laws are in place that make electronic signature legal, like just that constant, um, problem solving, learning, and then fixing it and moving forward.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. Which is fun. Like being able to constantly solve new challenging problems is a great skill to have in your career. Um, so you, you mentioned demand generation, uh, I believe this is what you were doing at DocuSign then. Um, so how did you get introduced to DocuSign? What is DocuSign for those that don't know? And tell me about that path.
Meagen Eisenberg:
Sure. Well, DocuSign is rocking right now. It's one of those, uh, I guess stay at home stocks, but it's, it's allowing you to process documents, electronically signature. So all world would be fax machines trying to close that deal at midnight and go get the fax. You don't need to do that. You can sign a document on your phone, on mobile, on your laptop. You can see if someone's looked at the contract who signed it, who's next, it's easier. There's a better paper trail. So it makes companies a lot more efficient and think about sometimes the old days and some companies still do this, they would FedEx or DHL contract around the world, right? So you, you lose 24, 48 hours waiting for the contract to be sent over they to sign it. Then they have to FedEx or DHL it back. And so there are massive efficiency there, $31 billion company now. I mean, they're yes. Yeah, they're doing amazing. How early were you? There were about 150 people, about eight people and marketing. The, uh, Dustin gross was our CMO and he was just hiring the functional leaders to build out what was necessary, a head of product marketing, head of demand gen, head of online, um, Europe, et cetera, and field marketing.
Braydon Anderson:
Gotcha. And, and so what you were doing demand generation, um, tell me more about that. Like what did you actually do as part of that role?
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah, so a couple of things, one, I did an audit of our systems and what we had in place and, uh, decided that we needed to put a marketing automation platform in, we put eloquent in and about 20 other systems and the first year and a half. Uh, the other thing is there was not a good handoff and relationship between sales and marketing. So really understanding the funnel, what content they needed. So audited, the content we had, uh, partnering with sales, uh, created nurture programs over. I think we had over a hundred different nurture programs. Cause if you think about all the personas, everybody needs to sign something over the age of 18. And in a business you've got procurement, HR facilities, marketing sales was the largest one. Um, and so really just building out the content library, supporting the sales team, creating the nurture programs and then creating the actual programs in the market that would bring people into our funnel and then accelerate them through. So my team grew from one to 25 people over the three and a half years that I was there. We also grew to 1200 people. So I went from demand gen and then I went on to, uh, you know, I own systems operations, eventually field marketing and the creative team, uh, and uh, really just an amazing ride and loved my experience, uh, and, and the team there.
Braydon Anderson:
So I'd love to just understand, you know, when you first get there, just tell me what DocuSign was like in the early days. Like, I think a lot of people do know what it is. It's a $31 billion company. It's huge. What was it like when you got there?
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah, they had just so originally it was founded in Seattle and so they had just, Keith crock was CEO and adjust open the San Francisco office. So there was a handful of us in the office, which eventually grew. And we've, we've, you know, we moved, I think twice, uh, when I was there and the growth. Um, but really it was just, you know, what you do when you go into scale, a company is you, you have to assess what are the people you need? What are the processes that you don't have in place you need to get in place? And what are the systems and bill really building a predictable engine for your sales team. And we were, you know, going at market, we had SMB mid market, we were going into enterprise. And so we started to, it's a very different selling motion where if you're targeting, you know, you're on your inside sales team is on the phones, selling and closing SMB. As you go into enterprise, you're more in the field and there's different tactics and the sales cycles are longer and there's a committee that's purchasing. So you have to create content for everyone. That's part of that buying decision.
Braydon Anderson:
Um, I'm curious, before you joined DocuSign, you were actually working at some very large companies like IBM, Cisco, did you see joining a startup like this as a risk? Or were you excited? Like why make that type of move?
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a good thought. You know, I graduated from college and couldn't go, I couldn't wait to go work for a big company. Like Cisco was a dream. And then when I graduated, uh, IBM had acquired a startup, but everyone at Trigo was like, no, no, the startups are so much better. You would love it. And I followed the CMO, Dan, over to Postini, uh, a security startup that actually got acquired by Cisco, maybe eight months after I joined. Um, and I realized how much I loved the build phase. I'd love trying to figure out what technology is needed, where do we need to hire? What programs do we need to build? You have a lot of, um, you have no control, but you have a lot of control, right? You're getting to all these different jobs in marketing, and it's not, you know, I think as you go into a larger company, larger companies are, are, are great and finding their own way, but your role becomes more narrow. And I kinda liked the idea of the wild West. Just figuring it out, um, being very empowered. It was not enough resources and startups. So you're empowered to try and do different things. You don't have a lot of budgets, so you have to be very creative, you get to hack things. And, um, you know, it's, there's a lot of innovation at startups for a reason. You don't have money and you don't have people. Um, and so you got, you just find new ways of doing it. And I just thrived in that environment. I still,
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah, you get really scrappy. You find a way I feel like is what tends to happen in these startup worlds. For sure. Yes. Um, so I'm curious then you, you work at DocuSign for a few years. I'm curious about the process of going from DocuSign to becoming the CMO at MongoDB.
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah. You know, I, um, I, interestingly enough, when I was at DocuSign, our CMO was getting ready to leave and it was, it was, he resigned the day I gave birth to my third child. I wanted to be a CMO, but I didn't want to leave DocuSign cause I love the company. And so, um, from the hospital, I had my laptop there cause I had to be there four days. I started scheduling time with our CEO and COO at DocuSign. It was like, I want to be the COO. And I, and I had been getting, paying by recruiters for different jobs and MongoDB. We had reached out, but I had ignored it because one, it was a New York company and I had barely heard of it. And I was, um, didn't think I was technical enough for it. Uh, and so I kinda ignored it. And for the next 12 weeks I tried to get the CMO job at. And I went in two days a week during my maternity leave and I pitched and I fought and I, I would like, I was driving up from, um, from the South Bay and I would like try to put myself up, you know, to go after it. And, and in the end I didn't get it. Um, I ended up being ranked three out of the, you know, candidates and Brad Burks. Got it. Awesome guy deserved it. He was the right pick for them at that time. Um, but it gave me going through that process, gave me the confidence of that. Hey, you know, I can do it. I can leave. I've got, uh, people reaching out. And at the same time, mom going to be was pretty aggressive. Even if I had said, no, they kept coming back and I'd give them all the reasons why it wasn't going to work and they'd come, you know, they were smart. Dave's a closer, he kept coming back and just say, no, this is why. And I remember saying to him, I, I don't know why you want me, my own company doesn't want me. He was like, no, that's exactly why I want you. You have to prove to them, they made the wrong choice. And I was like, gosh, you're right. And I don't like that, but you're right. I do. And um, you know, I kind of built a rapport with him over that time and I felt like I could, I could have an open discussion with them. And if he had so much faith in me that I could do it, I'd given him all the reasons to be concerned and he's still had faith. So I, I, I left and took it. And I remember I flew back and forth the first year with my daughter, Audrey. Um, cause she was four months when I took the job. And so she, and, and you know, to their credit, MongoDB gave me a travel stipend. So I could bring an au pair with me and travel with her. So I could still nurse and do all the things I wanted to do the first year with her. Um, and be the, be a CMO and say it worked out. I mean, mom's going to be also another amazing stay at home stock. That's doing, you know, last I looked at was over $200 a share. So just, um, amazing companies.
Braydon Anderson:
Megan, that is, that is an unbelievable story. That is awesome. So cool. To be able to give birth and still get this new CMO role and you're flying back and forth, like, man, that is impressive. Very, very impressive. Um, I'm really curious. Cause like, you know, you've got some confidence, but you also even mentioned like, Oh, I just don't feel like they didn't want me as a CMO. Why do you like, so I'm curious, like, did you feel prepared and ready to be the CMO?
Meagen Eisenberg:
No, I was totally scared. I was like, Oh my God, what if I fail? You know, there's I had never run comms before. Right. I had no comms background. I always had peers that did come. So that was going to be totally new. I hadn't done product marketing in 10 years cause I'd been doing demand gen you know, I felt very competent on demand, field systems, operations. Um, but no, I felt like those are my weaknesses and I didn't know anything about MongoDB. So that was a pretty steep learning curve. But I don't know that I ever totally like, you know, was a master of it. But, um, no, I was totally scared. It was about two or three months. And as I was hiring the team and building it out and starting to see progress and we were launching a new website that I was like, okay, I think I have this. I think I have this. I'm a little scared, but I think I have this and I got a little more confident, but no, those first couple months I was pretty terrorized.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. Especially it's such a technical offering. And again, for those that don't know just briefly, what is MongoDB? Cause it is a very technical offering.
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah. It's a different style database. It's a more modern database and legacy Oracle. Uh, it allows you to scale and work with mass amount of data. It's a document style database. And even in the last three years, they've launched a product called Atlas, which is a database as a service that's taken off. It's doing amazing. It sits on, uh, Amazon, AWS, it's on, um, Microsoft and Google GCP. You can spin it up very fast. So they're seeing a huge amount of success, but it's infrastructure, it's a database, you build apps on it.
Braydon Anderson:
Gotcha. And so I'm curious again, what was it like when you first joined MongoDB? They, they were a little bit bigger than when you had joined DocuSign.
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah, they were under 400. I think we were like three 96 or something. I did have 24 people in marketing though when I started. Um, and I had a pretty good product marketing team in place. Um, and so, you know, the talent there was great. We had very smart people on the team, uh, and I just needed to surround them with more of the systems, operations demand, gen mindset, and partnering with sales and really understanding what sales needed. Very fortunate. Actually the CRO, when I joined MongoDB was Carlos Delatorre and we worked together, um, for the time we were there, he just joined TripActions about four or five months ago as our CRO. So I couldn't be more excited to partner with him and to scale TripActions with him.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. It seems those connections stick.
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah. You know, that's what it's about. I, if I think about over time, one of the most important things as a leader is to be able to hire and develop people. And if you do a good job, continue to work with them, how much faster do you run when you land at a new company and you have eight or nine people you've already worked with there's 12 or 13 people here at TripActions that I've worked with throughout my career from Trigo from ArcSight, from DocuSign, a couple of, from Mongo. Like over that time, you, if you are good and a hard worker and you, you know, earn their respect and you develop them, you get to keep working with them. And now there's not that storming and forming. They're like they know exactly what you're looking to do to hit the ground running and you can just move so fast.
Braydon Anderson:
It's so true. And I've seen that time and time again, just in these interviews that I've done, but in my own career, for sure. So I couldn't agree with that more. Um, now you were with MongoDB when they went public and is the CMO, I imagine you had a pretty, you know, you were able to contribute to that quite a bit. So I'm curious, tell me about having a large contribution to taking a company public.
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah. All very new. I'd never done it before. A lot of learnings, a lot of, um, just, you know, you're really going public is about the CFO and the CEO. I would say, first of all, you need, EMEA is proof. You don't have to have done it before as a CMO that you need a straw. Like our CEO, Dave had done it before. Um, and so he was very experienced our CFO at the time. Michael also awesome strong, um, just had a great background investment banking background. So we were in very good hands. Um, my job was to make sure that the day, you know, you go into a quiet period, but then the day of you get to make a lot of noise. I think we did really well. I had a very strong comms person Mark on the team, but we didn't have a PR firm. So he did an amazing job lining up, I think 24, 25 interviews, day of 15 minute blocks across four or five execs. And then they just did phone, phone phone all day long, which gives you a burst of all the stories. Cause then you go into the quiet period again. So I think that was amazing process to be part of the other side of it is whether you go with NASDAQ or NYC. I really thought up to the point, the communication I was getting was we were going to go with the New York stock exchange. So I was doing so much negotiation with them. And then I think it was like two weeks before we switched to NASDAQ, I'd found out, I was like, Oh no, wait, what what's happening? And so it was like this, okay, over here. Now we're going to do this and execute. So, um, yeah, I mean it, it was, it's almost, it's, it's not, you should have certain things you're gonna know you're going to do no matter what we put an ad in the wall street journal, a full color ad, which was a lot of fun to get to do. We didn't put it across the U S we did certain cities, but, um, just, just an amazing fun experience to be there day up to, we had good weather, we got to set up a station in time square, um, where people could come by and just the excitement for the company to, um, you know, bring in, you know, t-shirts and sweat. I dunno, it was just a very amazing moment. And there's not many tech companies that are in New York. So the beautiful part about it is most of our company, or at least half our company is in New York and we were a block off of NASDAQ. So everyone could walk over from the office and be a part of it, the outside, cheering it on, cheering it on. And so, yeah, it was amazing. I think most people, you only are really able to fly it's expense. It would be expensive to fly your company in to New York. If you're a West coast based or Chicago, Atlanta, or one of these other tech hubs. Um, if you were to fly everyone in, you just can't. So usually it's just the leadership and the board that gets to go. Uh, so it was amazing that a lot of the company, I think we had 75 plus on the floor ringing the bell. Uh, so that was just lots of great memories with the team. Really cool experience.
Braydon Anderson:
That's cool. Um, I'm curious, what's maybe one of the hardest learning experiences you had at MongoDB.
Meagen Eisenberg:
You know, I think the transition from being a VP of demand gen and to a CMO role, uh, one of the things I didn't realize is it's not, when you're a C level executive, not enough to be amazing at your function, you actually, your peer set becomes the CFO, the CRO, the head of product, the, you know, that's the group you need to really work with. Um, and so you transitioned from a CMO. Who's like, you're doing amazing. Keep it up, give you more responsibility, keep rocking. Everything is sunshine to wait that, of course that's what you're going to do, right? Like now we need you to make a business and we need, you know, you know, a roadmap for, for the company and the values and, um, budget discussions like, yeah, okay. Marketing always needs money, but actually we should probably invest right now in sales or in engineering, like making those tough calls that are right for the business. Even if it means you don't get head count and budget for your function, you need to do what's right for the business. And so I think I was pretty sucky at that and didn't do enough to bond with the head of product and engineering hearing out of the gate with when you're in marketing, you've got to bond with everyone. You can not be effective if you're not bonding with engineering and product. Cause you don't know the roadmap, you can't influence that, bringing it to market, understanding the product. It was so technical and what you're bringing to market. And what's so like what is the amazing thing about it? If you're not aligned really well, how do you take that to market? So you've got to be an expert at partnering with that team. You're dead in the water. If you don't partner with sales, right. You've got a very strong partnership with sales. And then of course the CFO, because that's your budget and your livelihood and your hiring, and then head of people, you know, you're always trying to hire and it was a war for talent. And so marketing is in this interesting position that cannot be effective without everyone else, because even HR, you're helping, you're doing the company brand, you're helping them hire across the board, the website presence, you're applying for awards with them. Like your function is tied into everyone else's function. So you have to have very strong working relationships there in order to be successful. Unlike any other role, most roles can be while they would be better with you, but you you've got to have that, um, that relationship, those relationships there. And I've always been a relationship person, but I didn't understand the level at which it mattered. So I learned that I had to definitely learn that and I made some mistakes there for sure.
Braydon Anderson:
Any tips that you would give to someone that's trying to build those relationships with these different functions. Like you're probably a natural, but maybe others aren't.
Meagen Eisenberg:
You need to spend time. Right? I was flying back and forth from the Palo Alto office. So my struggle was when I flew out to York and I had three kids. So when I flew out to New York, I really needed to spend time with the marketing team. Most of my team was in New York, at least 50% of my team was New York. So I was spending time with them when I should have been spending time with product and engineering and finance and all the other functions. But I felt my team cause I felt when I was back in the Bay area, my team was needing me. They weren't getting the FaceTime. We weren't, you know, doing a line, but I, but I was keeping my family together. And then I would go out to New York and I'd get things running and going well in New York. But then my family was kind of, you know, fall, not falling apart, but like that your kids need you right there. I had, um, you know, uh, under one, three and five year old. And so I felt this constant tug and pull and trying to balance. And so I thought, well, if I don't do good at marketing, I'm not here. So I always made the trade off to, to for function, um, to focus on the marketing org, but to it, I think at her across the different functions, one of my criteria when I was leaving, as I, as I picked a company that was close to home and I will tell you, this job is so much easier being in headquarters full time. It's so much easier to build relationships, to balance your family, to, um, I mean, I get the road warrior life, which is who we support as a business travel company. But, um, ethnics, heck I just, the water cooler talk, I get to have lunch with people. Like when there's conflict, you have a partner you're working through the conflict. It's just different. If you guys have that relationship outside of the conflict to work through it. And there's a level of trust that builds up over time by getting to spend more time with them in person.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. You bring up a couple of good points. So first of all, yeah, like you are remote from the main headquarters, which makes building those relationships that much more challenging. You're away from your family, making those, building those relationships, that much more challenging. You brought up a good point though. I'm curious with, you know, we're in COVID-19 right now, everyone, most people are still working from home. Obviously it's been challenging to maintain some of these relationships and a lot of companies are implanting on not going back into the office. What are the pros and cons that you see from those types of decisions?
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah, I that's why I'm still at TripActions. I actually don't think it's sustainable. I actually really think people will come less productive. Um, I think that we will get back to traveling within a year. Um, if not January, February timeframe. I think the in person connections matter so much and even talking with different, uh, travelers that are in sales, as soon as a competitor starts encroaching on their account, they're gonna fly, right? You you're, you're certainly going to tighten up your value prop if you're in sales, because the relationships side, you're not taking people out to dinner and sitting with them and building that rapport the same way, right. You've got to come across on a virtual conference call and it's different. So those that are really good at the relationship sale better become really good at the value prop and showing that, which is I better for companies in general to really nail down their value prop. But, um, you know, relationships in business are in person and even think about you're on these virtual conference calls and it, it freezes, right? And it drops on you don't get the chance and you can't read the body language and you can't, you know, the friction doesn't go away, but if you're in an office with people and you go for lunch and dinner and you spend time, it just makes solving problems. I think so much easier. Um, and building relationships and bonding to your team. Like, I feel very separated from my team. I want to bond with them. I want to, even if it's an outdoor walk or hike and we stay six feet apart, I want to, you know, at some point bring the team together. Uh, so I don't think it's sustainable. I think humans need to be in a, be together, be productive. Um, and I think it gets boring at home. Or if you have kids at home it's noisy at home, um, it's all, you know, there's nothing easy about, uh, about, uh, working at home and your kids are there for sure. No matter how good they are. It's I think is, uh, a bit of a distraction and I love the discipline of going into the office. I love the separation of home and work. Like I like that routine and, and coming in I'm, you know, in the office now and I just, for me, it it's necessary.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. Yeah. For me, the productivity is the biggest thing that I've noticed for myself. You know, I'll fully admit I was not as productive when I was working from home. We've gone back into the office and luckily, and it's just, my productivity is through the roof and comparison of working in the office versus home. And maybe I just need to get better. I don't know. But, um, I, I agree with ya. So, so yeah, so you've mentioned this trip actions. This is where you're at now. Why the move from MongoDB to TripActions?
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah. You know, I think a lot of it was going back and forth and having my girls that are getting older, I wanted a company closer to home. I wanted to, you know, my sweet spot is getting in and really scaling a company, uh, and taking them to a successful exit. Uh, I love large addressable markets. If you think about it. When I was, uh, looking at Mongo to be, there's not much larger software market than the database market, 45 billion on the way to 60 billion. Uh, and if you look at business travel, it's one point 5 trillion pre COVID. They believe it's about 600 billion post COVID. We have less than 1% of the market at TripActions. And so even if it's half the size that it was pre COVID, we have a lot of room to grow. So we're, we're very busy taking market share right now. And we've had very good months now, revenue doesn't come in until people travel where we're usage based model, but we are signing a ton of contracts now is a great time to switch in business, travel, you know, switch in and switch out with a new business travel platform. And we have a great booking tool and a TMC with our travel agents and we're global. So we've been busy, uh, lining up and taking market share.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. And do you guys have seen some tremendous success? You, you had shared some numbers with me about your 400, about when you joined, you jumped up to 1200, obviously COVID has affected that a little bit, but that was in a year. You tripled in a year from 400 employees. Like tell me about that. That's nuts.
Meagen Eisenberg:
It was nuts last year. Um, we were, we added 800 people and grew to about a little under 1200. Now we're 900. We did do a layoff a little under 300, uh, three months ago. Uh, but still 900 people around the world. I'm still adding a lot of customers. Um, and, and still, you know, we just had an infusion of cash. Uh, we closed 125 million, uh, and we had about 200, 200 and something in the bank. So we are set to ride out the downturn. You know, what's, the problem is companies that haven't recently raised. Cash are now in an environment it's really tough to raise startups that don't have cash well will go out of business or need to be acquired. And larger legacy players have massive infrastructure. They have to support in our space. So we think our larger competitors will be weakened by the environment. They'll have a ton of costs. And also as you get bigger, you tend to acquire more companies and take on more debt. And so if you don't have revenue coming in and you have debt, you're, that's a problem. So we think we can ride out the downturn for the next year or two. I love Ben Horowitz had a quote. He said, as long as this doesn't go on for 10 years, we'll be fine. Um, and I think it's true. We, you know, I think we will come out stronger because smaller players that don't have cash in cash out lasted for the next year or two we'll go out and the bigger ones will be weakened and we are positioned well to take market share. We're also only five years old and we're on more modern technology. So we can build an innovate much faster than the larger player. So we are building product like crazy. We did not let go any of our engineers. In fact, we're hiring engineers, we're hiring enterprise sales reps. We're growing in Europe. It's, you know, it's an odd time, but I actually think we will come out of this much stronger. So I'm excited about the future.
Braydon Anderson:
I'm curious as you've gone through these different companies, when you join a new company, what's the first thing you focus on accomplishing,
Meagen Eisenberg:
Uh, interviewing and meeting people. So I spent a lot of time collecting information. I'm assessing the people on the team. I'm assessing the systems. I'm asking, what are the problems I'm asking everyone that, what, what do you need for marketing? I'm talking with people in sales with customer success, with product, what are the biggest issues and challenges we're facing? So I can put the plan together to go tackle those. Cause you need early wins to build relationships. You need to solve some problems right away. And then others take longer solve those along the way and show an impact. And so I just, at the beginning, I spent a lot of, uh, interviewing, getting to know people and hiring. I heard 20 people in six, my first six weeks here at TripActions last year. I know we were, you know, I, I needed to hire fast. I had 10 people on the team that were amazing, but I needed a lot more on the B2B side. I needed systems and ops. I needed product marketing, I needed comms. So I went on a hiring like craze. I hired, you know, and I did, I hired leaders and I hired the people on their teams. And so it was just a busy, busy time, but it was so fun to be back in the Bay area. There's a lot of great talent. I wasn't asking people to fly back and forth to New York. So it seemed also much easier to hire and such a fun company. You know, you get to use the product, everyone uses it. You know, it's fun to market a product.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. I had a really good leader earlier in my career that did very much the same thing he got there. He was over sales, he didn't just go to try to implement a bunch of stuff. He went and interviewed anybody he possibly could to find out what are the problems what's actually going on. And to just to get to know everyone as best as he possibly could. And I think it's just such a valuable first step when joining a new company like this is let's find out what the problems are, what, what finds out what we can actually go solve and what, what is the low hanging fruit essentially. So I love that advice. Now, in the midst of you working in being a part of these great companies, your LinkedIn is jam packed with being an advisor and sitting on a couple of different boards of companies. So I'm curious, how did that happen? And maybe what are you typically helping these companies with?
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah, you know, it's because I was a big user of marketing technology ever since I graduated business school, I implemented Eloqua. I learned about it and I understood it. And then I was a product marketer. I could really tell them back their value prop and became a great customer case study for a lot of the technologies and was comfortable speaking about their technologies for our vendors. And, um, was often asked to join at customer customer groups to give feedback. And, uh, one of 'em, uh, meant to go, who actually was sold to, uh, a plan, uh, in the last year, um, approached me and I said, Hey, I'm willing to be an advisor. And, uh, I joined them as an advisor and kind of once you have one and you add that on your LinkedIn, and then if you do a good job and you provide value and people hear about it, I started to get asked by other MarTech companies, if I would be an advisor and startups. And then that led to sales tech companies asking because I was buying also sales tech and providing feedback and able to give them their value prop in a way that customers would resonate with it. Um, and so that just started to grow and eventually HR tech and, uh, it took me a while to get on a board. Actually. I love Godard at G2. He, um, reached out to me on a board seat and, um, I was fortunate enough to get to join his board. That was my first board. Um, and I just, you know, I think if people want to do advisory work, I, I always get asked, how do you get that going? Um, cause I've never actually sought out advisor work. I've just been approached and then decided, are you a competitor to someone I advise or work at, if not, and I think you would be great to work at and I enjoy it and I can help you then I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll join as an advisor and I have time for you. Um, but I tell people if someone reaches out to you to be a COO or VP of whatever your function is, and you're not ready to leave, you don't want to leave your company. You can always put, you can always say, well, I'm, you know, this is not the right time for me, but I'm happy to be an advisor. And you know, if they want to hire you full time, why wouldn't they want your advice too? And I've turned some where they, we reached out to be their COO. And I've just said, listen, I'm not going to leave. I love what I'm doing here, but I am, I am open to doing some advisory work and I've turned that into advisory work.
Braydon Anderson:
That's so cool. And that's such a great approach and it's so easy. Like if you're being recruited, it's an easy way to still keep the relationship going if maybe the role makes sense in the future. And yeah, I love that in our last couple of minutes here, Megan. So first I'd love to just hear your perspective on being a woman, seeming senior leader in the tech space.
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah. You know, I, um, what I love is that TripActions, we're 50% women. So this is the first tech company I've been at, where we are as a whole, as a company, gender, our gender diversity is pretty amazing. Um, prior to that, you know, certainly when I joined MongoDB to be, I was the first female C level exec, um, and, and, you know, DocuSign, we had, you know, I was the first, also a female VP, um, at DocuSign. But, um, you know, over time they added many more women and executives to the team. Um, you know, I, I was the youngest of three girls and I, I, my dad always wanted a boy, but he had girls. And so I think he just treated us like boys, girls, whatever. It was like, go mow the lawn, take the trash out. I'm going to build a rabbit Hutch or a dog house. I'm fixing them. He was always, you know, he was just building stuff all the time and making stuff and he would involve us in it. And I loved watching. He had a work bench he'd go out and do stuff. Um, he was always doing projects, uh, and for you, it was very frugal. So he would rather fix it himself then than buy something new or pay someone to do it. So I was fortunate for that. Um, he also was just, you're going to go to college, you're going to do the sciences. Like he was a, I think a strong advocate and just said, you have to go to college. Like I'm not paying for it, but you have to go to college. And, um, I think just having that mindset, I just never thought I couldn't do it. Maybe I was ignorant. And I just, um, you know, if I wanted something, I went for it. If someone said no, or close the door, I just found a way to do it. I think I was very scrappy and I had FOMO and I just kept trying to do things. Um, and I didn't think I had a ceiling. Um, and if I focused on solving the problems and delivering value, you know, I was lucky and I did have, I think I had, I was fortunate to have bosses and mentors that also didn't see a ceiling for me and, um, gave me the opportunity. Uh, and I, I watched all the women that I ever saw in leadership. How were they successful? You know, I, I watched them, many of them didn't have children, so I think that's an added challenge, but they were still awesome at what they did. And I tried to learn how they interacted, what they did, how they got there, um, from them.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah, that's awesome. That's such a fresh and just encouraging mindset to have of just not, there's nothing getting in my way. I'm going to go and tackle it. And, uh, I think that's so healthy. Uh, I love that. Uh, I'm curious, what's maybe one of your favorite stories from the early years.
Meagen Eisenberg:
My favorite stories from the early years. Oh my goodness. Um, Oh, that's a tough one. Um, you know, I mean, I, I think it's not the early years, I guess taking a company public was one of, probably my lifetime moment, uh, that I went through and I really enjoyed, um, you know, I think when I think of my early years, things that were fun is when I started to, you know, very relevant to what I'm doing now is my would get to do business trips. When I joined IBM and they had acquired Trigo and I got to fly around the world and present an Amsterdam and New Zealand and Singapore and, um, Hong Kong and like just that opportunity to, um, go see the world and do work and be, you know, be demoing or, you know, we did events all around the world to sell our products. Um, I think those were the times that you just, maybe people would call them boondoggles, but those are times that you just went with the team and you were selling and you were out there. And I, I didn't have children yet. I wasn't married and I got to just travel and, um, you know, it just felt very much like an adult.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. That's so cool. Uh, I'm curious. Last question here is what, what piece of advice would you give to someone that's currently in the early years of a startup?
Meagen Eisenberg:
Yeah, I think the best thing is to be a learner, a keep reading. I went back even, I went through all my Amazon books. I did a sort, just to see, cause someone had asked me what books have you read in your career? It doesn't go all the way back, of course, around, um, my entire career, but I was impressed 70, 80, a hundred books. Like I, I, and I looked at the books over time. It was, you know, how to be a leader, how to manage a team. Um, you know, nice girls don't get the corner office. I remember it was one of the books I read who moved my cheese. Like I read a bunch of just self-development books, leadership books. I, there was a bunch of books in there about having children, um, how to be a good parent. Like, you know, I went through that phase of, of trying to be like the best mom, um, you know, learning Excel. I remember I bought this really big book on how to be better at Excel, uh, and all the tips and tricks, how to do H code and HTML. Those were all pre Amazon, but I just, throughout my career, I've always tried to learn, take courses. If you go to a large company, they often offer learning. And so if you're at a Cisco, HP, any of those take the leadership courses, take all the learning I could get. I was just absorbing it. Um, and just keep reinventing yourself right now. There's a, um, a COO group as soon a book club and we're reading books throughout it like that kind of stuff. You just, if you want to stay up on your game, you've got to keep reading, uh, and developing. Cause the world is changing very fast. Um, what it was like 25 years ago. So keep, keep doing that. And in a recession when it's going to be, you know, competitive workforce out there, you know, if you can go back to school, get your MBA, um, but keep learning.
Braydon Anderson:
That's Megan Eisenberg, the marketing rock star of the tech world. Thanks for listening to today's show. If you liked the show, leave us a review. Also subscribe on Apple or Spotify. I'm Braydon Anderson and this is the early years.