Sep 23, 2026 · 1 hr 11 min · 12 segments
Welcome back to the Patent Hacks Podcast, where we dive deep into the minds of innovators, founders, and industry leaders shaping the future. I’m your host, Trevor Skene, co-founder and CEO of Patent…
So can you talk to me a little bit about your philosophy, like in the startup world more so, like what you think, especially early days and, well, let's talk about both of them, early days and at the scaling point, but let's start with early days.
What are your thoughts on like kind of like early days things that startups can be doing to kind of optimize their sales?
So using, let's say that one company as an example, one of the things you have to establish right away is is what you do good and what you don't.
If you get a bad deal, It will not work out and it will use some money, but it will taint getting references.
It will taint probably even your internal people and it will taint your salespeople.
Because for me, any company I ever worked for, it took me usually at least six months until I felt comfortable enough to actually introduce a lot of my contacts.
And when I say contacts, For example, Dan Lasher, he has been a contact of mine since probably 2006, 2007.
I could still pick up the phone and call him right now and get him on the phone.
I'm not going to bring him into a deal until I know the company inside and out is going to do a good job for him.
And so not being able to tell people, no, that was actually one of the reasons I had a hard time when I first started with that company that I helped grow so fast is because they're like, oh, we do everything.
And, you know, oh, you just have to find the deal and we will find the developers to do it.
But, you know, the thing was, is that getting to understand, I remember, and it was actually Dan had mentioned to me, there was a decent size SAP deal that was, being quoted maybe four or five hundred thousand that was a big deal for the company i was working for and i told him like no we will not take it i'm like sap makes or break companies if you want us to do some support on sap and provide like application support or you know some customization or some api integration that's one thing but for us to come in and do an implementation no we are not set up for that yet And I turned it down.
And I remember with the CEO getting like a really heated argument because he's like, why don't you believe in us? And I'm like, it's not that I don't believe in us.
I don't want to put us in a position like that because they're currently a large client of ours.
Do you really want to lose it for something that we probably shouldn't be doing anyway?
So can you talk to me a little bit about your philosophy, like in the startup world more so, like what you think, especially early days and, well, let's talk about both of them, early days and at the scaling point, but let's start with early days.
What are your thoughts on like kind of like early days things that startups can be doing to kind of optimize their sales?
So using, let's say that one company as an example, one of the things you have to establish right away is is what you do good and what you don't.
If you get a bad deal, It will not work out and it will use some money, but it will taint getting references.
It will taint probably even your internal people and it will taint your salespeople.
Because for me, any company I ever worked for, it took me usually at least six months until I felt comfortable enough to actually introduce a lot of my contacts.
And when I say contacts, For example, Dan Lasher, he has been a contact of mine since probably 2006, 2007.
I could still pick up the phone and call him right now and get him on the phone.
I'm not going to bring him into a deal until I know the company inside and out is going to do a good job for him.
And so not being able to tell people, no, that was actually one of the reasons I had a hard time when I first started with that company that I helped grow so fast is because they're like, oh, we do everything.
And, you know, oh, you just have to find the deal and we will find the developers to do it.
But, you know, the thing was, is that getting to understand, I remember, and it was actually Dan had mentioned to me, there was a decent size SAP deal that was, being quoted maybe four or five hundred thousand that was a big deal for the company i was working for and i told him like no we will not take it i'm like sap makes or break companies if you want us to do some support on sap and provide like application support or you know some customization or some api integration that's one thing but for us to come in and do an implementation no we are not set up for that yet And I turned it down.
And I remember with the CEO getting like a really heated argument because he's like, why don't you believe in us? And I'm like, it's not that I don't believe in us.
I don't want to put us in a position like that because they're currently a large client of ours.
Do you really want to lose it for something that we probably shouldn't be doing anyway?
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