---
title: "A Decade in One CRO Seat: Make More Money Than You Spend"
episode: 143
podcast: "The LeanScale Podcast"
publisher: "LeanScale"
guest: "David Cady"
guest_title: "Chief Revenue Officer"
date_published: 2026-10-20
date_modified: 2026-10-21
duration: 00:57:05
word_count: 10405
topics: ["sales-leadership", "gtm-strategy", "brand-positioning"]
canonical_url: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/david-cady-virtuous-make-more-money-than-you-spend/
source: "LeanScale Knowledge Hub — https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge"
license: "Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast."
---

# A Decade in One CRO Seat: Make More Money Than You Spend

_David Cady on ten-plus years running go-to-market at Virtuous: one financial rule that outlasts every venture metric, why spray-and-pray stopped paying back, category creation with Responsive Fundraising, why the SaaS partner program missed, and promoting high-agency people into the problem they just solved_

**Episode 143 · The LeanScale Podcast**  
David Cady, Chief Revenue Officer (Virtuous) · Hosted by Anthony Enrico  
Published October 20, 2026 · Updated October 21, 2026 · 00:57:05  
Canonical: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/david-cady-virtuous-make-more-money-than-you-spend/

**Topics:** Sales Leadership · GTM Strategy · Brand & Positioning


## Executive summary

David Cady is Chief Revenue Officer at Virtuous, the Phoenix-based responsive fundraising CRM that more than 10,000 nonprofits run on. He joined when the company was six or seven people and has held the go-to-market seat for more than a decade, through growth to about 200 employees and, per the show notes, a $100M round led by Susquehanna Growth Equity. Host Anthony Enrico points out that a CRO is lucky to last 18 months. David's tenure gives him an unusual view of how go-to-market changes when the product, market and leader stay the same.

His route in was unusual. He taught high school English until the school told him it would cost $1,200 to add his newborn son to their insurance, about half his paycheck. He took a cold-calling job at CDW at the end of 2007, six months before the housing market collapsed and IT budgets froze. He made less that first year than he had teaching and his family lived on food stamps for a couple of years. He calls it burning the ships: 100 calls a day beat going home and missing the mortgage. After about a decade selling enterprise transformation software, a lunch with longtime friend and Virtuous founder Gabe Cooper, meant to test his own startup idea, turned into a job selling Virtuous.

The financial rule behind the company is simple. Every 18 months or so the venture world changes what counts as good: the Rule of 40, the magic number. Gabe's answer never changes: make more money than we spend, and treat this like a real business. David says that removing the safety net forces calculated risk and rules out dumb decisions. In practice it meant a CAC of roughly $1.50 to $1.80 per dollar of ARR, payback of 15 to 18 months that the team kept pushing toward 12, and a period in 2021 and 2022 when peers were spending four to six dollars to win one.

On go-to-market, David says the cheap outbound of a decade ago (pick an ICP, write a script, run a sequence) is no longer cost-effective, especially in a buyer market that runs on trust. What replaced it was partnerships, community and brand. He covers how Virtuous surrounded micro-verticals such as the 300 to 400 rescue missions in the US, and how the CEO's book Responsive Fundraising created a category that sells a future state before the product. He is candid that the standard SaaS partner program, with gold, silver and bronze tiers and lead incentives, was a swing and a miss in a market where many partners have no growth goals. Partners matter as much for retention and expansion as for new leads.

The rest of the conversation is about people and what comes next. 2021 and 2022 were the hardest years, mostly because of hiring and misaligned expectations. The people who rise at Virtuous are high-agency problem solvers who get promoted into the problem they just solved. Neither he nor Anthony has found a reliable way to interview for that. David closes on N of One Fundraising, the new book applying the one-donor-at-a-time idea to AI, and on his own approach to AI: learn as many tools as possible so he is ready to adapt. The episode suits CROs, founders and revenue leaders building capital-efficient companies, especially in vertical or mission-driven markets.


## Key takeaways

1. **Make more money than you spend outlasts every venture metric** — David says that roughly every 18 months the venture world changes what it values, whether that is the Rule of 40 or the magic number. His CEO's answer is constant: make more money than we spend and treat this like a real business. If those basics are right, whatever the market favors will come back around to them.
   _Why it matters:_ Anchoring on a simple unit-economics rule frees a go-to-market team from chasing whichever ratio is fashionable. David says it also helped to imagine the money was not there, because extra capital creates unnatural pressure.
   _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives

2. **Without a safety net you take calculated risk, not dumb risk** — David compares capital discipline to surgery: you need a scalpel on every decision but only get to measure once, so you still need a bias for action. The boundaries keep you moving and taking enough calculated risk to beat inertia, while ruling out the dumb bets.
   _Why it matters:_ Anthony makes the same point from LeanScale: not raising outside capital was his best decision, because he knows the money would have driven the business into a brick wall. Building the hard way forces you to find out what works before scaling it.
   _For:_ Founders, Revenue Executives

3. **Know your CAC ratio and payback, and drive them down** — Virtuous wanted to earn back each dollar of go-to-market spend within about 12 months. In practice it spent roughly $1.50 to $1.80 per dollar of ARR, with CAC payback of 15 to 18 months, and kept working to bring that down. Those limits meant every shot had to count.
   _Why it matters:_ A hard payback target changes channel choices. It is why Virtuous moved away from broad outbound toward partnerships and community, which paid back in a trust-driven market.
   _For:_ Revenue Executives, RevOps Leaders, Founders

4. **Spray-and-pray outbound stopped paying back** — In Virtuous's early days, crappy email outbound still got replies. David credits Mark Roberge and the Sales Acceleration Formula, but says the early Salesforce and HubSpot era approach of picking an ICP, writing a script and running a sequence is very cost-ineffective today. Virtuous itself started with an ad hoc, wide-net approach to keep the lights on.
   _Why it matters:_ In a highly trust-driven market, buyers need to believe you through brand, hear from peers and see partners vouch for you. Those channels take years to build and need to start long before outbound stops working.
   _For:_ Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders, Revenue Executives

5. **No go-to-market trick outsells a bad product** — David believes in two things. Go-to-market is funnel math, as fixed as physics, so know your inputs, outputs and conversions. And if the product, messaging and value proposition are bad, nobody will care once you get the meeting. Even if you win the deal, the customer will churn.
   _Why it matters:_ As CRO, David owns retained and long-term revenue, not just new revenue, so he has to hold acquisition and retention in tension. Sales and marketing need to know the product, and the product has to be really good.
   _For:_ Revenue Executives, Sales Leaders, Founders

6. **Brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room** — David uses his Rivian as the example: he bought into the life the ads showed, camping in the mountains with his kids. Brand is much less about the product and more about who you believe you will be, or what community you will join, once you buy. In tech it means showing up consistently and doing what you say, over years.
   _Why it matters:_ Brand is not a slogan or tagline. It has to be something the team delivers time and time again, which is why it cannot be built overnight or forced.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Revenue Executives, Founders

7. **Category creation sells the end state, and the product comes last** — Virtuous coined Responsive Fundraising, much as HubSpot did with inbound marketing. It had been talking to nonprofits about marketing automation, reporting and big data, and the tools obscured the outcome. The CEO's book described a world where every donor is treated like a major donor, a one of one, and all product marketing, pitch decks and wording were reoriented around becoming a responsive nonprofit.
   _Why it matters:_ In a sales conversation the rep presents Virtuous last, as the only tool that gets the buyer there. The question stops being whether the buyer believes you and becomes how they get to the future they have already bought into. David says it worked because buyers in his market distrusted software vendors.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Sales Leaders, Founders

8. **A category has to be backed by commitment, not just a term** — David compares running a category to building a separate lifestyle brand. You have to be good at community, get your team and partners bought in, and commit enough energy that people believe it is real. It also has to be genuine: much of the Virtuous team comes from nonprofits, and the CEO sees this as his last company.
   _Why it matters:_ David says he can turn that excitement into demand and closed revenue far more easily than without it. Anthony adds that hitting extraordinary KPIs is very hard without a mission behind them.
   _For:_ Marketing Leaders, Revenue Executives

9. **Surround a micro-vertical before you scale** — Early on, Virtuous looked for micro-verticals inside the nonprofit market where the same people attend the same events and use the same consultants and technology. Rescue missions are the example: about 300 to 400 in the US, all at the same conference. The goal was to surround around 200 logos by supporting their events, showing up in their community and building the product for their use cases.
   _Why it matters:_ Partnerships at that stage meant finding like-minded people in the space and being friends with them, then delivering on what you said. It concentrates trust instead of spreading spend thinly.
   _For:_ Founders, Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders

10. **The standard SaaS partner program missed in a mission-driven market** — As Virtuous grew, it tried the traditional SaaS playbook: gold, silver and bronze tiers, deal registration and lead incentives. David calls it a swing and a miss. The community was not coin-operated. Many consultants and agencies serving nonprofits want to avoid letting customers down and get home by five, and an offer of 5% extra rev share for ten leads means little to a firm with 15 customers and no growth goals.
   _Why it matters:_ Every partner has a motivation, but it may not fit a programmatic approach. Virtuous swung back to finding the 20% of partners who produce 80% of the output, mapping what a win looks like for each, and delivering it.
   _For:_ Revenue Executives, Founders, Marketing Leaders

11. **Partners drive retention and expansion, not just new leads** — Partnerships are usually treated as an acquisition channel. David says that once partners have referred enough business, the relationship switches to retention and expansion. Virtuous has partners whose customer bases it has largely saturated, and its team now needs to give those customers an excellent support and product enablement experience.
   _Why it matters:_ Anthony adds that companies often split the customer journey by function and give partnerships to one person who mostly cares about leads, which produces another webinar and lackluster results. He has also seen four or five partners, each with its own plan, drive half of a company's revenue.
   _For:_ Customer Success, Revenue Executives, Sales Leaders

12. **Change your tactics as the company matures** — David's kids were eight, six and four when he started at Virtuous and are now 19, 16 and 14. Parenting them the same way at both ages would be idiotic, he says, yet companies often make decisions as if every business were the same age with the same problems. What a business needs from its leader changes every couple of years.
   _Why it matters:_ Leaders need a growth mindset and the willingness to change their own approach as the company grows, not just to change the team.
   _For:_ Revenue Executives, Founders

13. **2021 and 2022 were the hardest years because of hiring** — Virtuous expected 2020 to crush it, but it was one of its biggest growth years, and it got through the SVB collapse with a fast-moving CFO. The hardest period was 2021 and 2022. Expectations in the job market were misaligned: some hires were working two jobs, remote culture hurt, and employees had learned at companies spending four to six dollars per dollar of revenue that free-flowing money was normal.
   _Why it matters:_ David's lesson is that talent matters most. A good hire does amazing things and a bad hire does ten times the opposite, so look for people who are mission-aligned and willing to go the extra mile.
   _For:_ Revenue Executives, Sales Leaders, Founders

14. **Promote high-agency people into the problem they just solved** — At a growing company there is no clear ladder. The people who go furthest at Virtuous take on the next large problem and end up in charge of it. If someone says outbound is broken, asks to try a plan and it works, they become head of business development. Some people at Virtuous have held five or six roles, each defined by the next bottleneck.
   _Why it matters:_ Ownership is built in before the person steps into the role, and they can be trusted with the next set of problems when the environment shifts. David also says that a company that runs out of problems to solve has started to die.
   _For:_ Revenue Executives, Sales Leaders, Founders

15. **Nobody has cracked interviewing for agency** — Anthony says candidates who ace interviews and case studies sometimes crash and burn in the job. David has added cognitive and aptitude tests but still doesn't know how to test for it well. What he looks for in practice is grit, a bit of a chip on the shoulder, and people who are open about what is broken rather than reporting that everything is going great.
   _Why it matters:_ Interviews reward people who hide weakness, which works against what David wants. When he does find high-agency people, he pays them more and promotes them as fast as possible so they stay.
   _For:_ Sales Leaders, Revenue Executives


## Frameworks

### Make More Money Than You Spend (05:43)

**Definition:** Run the company on one durable rule, earning more than you spend and treating it like a real business, instead of whichever venture metric is in fashion.

Every 18 months or so the venture world changes what it values, such as the Rule of 40 or the magic number. Virtuous's CEO keeps the rule constant, and David says the market always comes back around to those basics. The team imagines the money is not there, which removes unnatural pressure. In practice it means a payback target of around 12 months on every go-to-market dollar.

### Funnel Math Is Physics, and Product Comes First (22:02)

**Definition:** Go-to-market is a math equation with fixed laws: know your inputs, outputs and conversions. But no go-to-market tactic overcomes a bad product, and the CRO owns retention as well as new revenue.

David holds two beliefs together. Check every strategy against expected and actual conversions. Then accept that if the product, messaging or value proposition is weak, meetings will not convert and any wins will churn. Sales and marketing need to know the product, and the CRO has to keep new and retained revenue in tension.

### Category Creation: Responsive Fundraising (27:01)

**Definition:** Define a future state that has nothing to do with your product, orient all messaging around helping the buyer reach it, and present the product last as the only way there.

Virtuous moved from talking about tools such as marketing automation and analytics to describing the responsive nonprofit, where every donor is treated like a major donor. The CEO wrote Responsive Fundraising and The Responsive Nonprofit, and the third book, N of One Fundraising, applies it to AI. Pitches build urgency with real data and customers, then reps say Virtuous is the only tool that can help. David compares it to HubSpot's inbound marketing and says it works because buyers in his market distrusted software vendors.

### Surround a Micro-Vertical (32:53)

**Definition:** Find a niche inside your vertical where buyers share events, consultants and technology, and surround a couple of hundred logos through partners, community and fit-for-purpose product.

Virtuous's example is rescue missions: about 300 to 400 in the US, all at the same conference, with a presence in every city and many of the same partners. The team found those partners, supported their events, showed up in their community, built product for their use cases and delivered on it over and over.

### Map Partner Motivations, Not Program Tiers (35:20)

**Definition:** Every partner has a motivation, but it may not fit a programmatic tier-and-incentive model. Find the 20% of partners who produce 80% of the output, learn what a win looks like for each, and deliver it.

Virtuous's gold, silver and bronze program, with registration and lead incentives, missed because many nonprofit consultants and agencies have no growth goals and are not coin-operated. Tech-company partners may want leads and audience, while community members often want a platform for their voice, book or career. Building to each motivation is harder to scale but works.

### Partners Drive Retention and Expansion (38:02)

**Definition:** Once partners have referred enough business, the partnership becomes a retention and expansion channel, and partner-managed customers need an excellent support and enablement experience.

David says partnerships are usually measured only on acquisition. Virtuous has saturated some partners' customer bases, so the value now lies in keeping and growing those customers. Anthony adds that splitting the customer journey by function leaves partnerships with someone who mostly cares about leads.

### Promote Into the Problem They Solved (46:34)

**Definition:** Let high-agency people take on the next large problem, and when they solve it, put them in charge of it.

At a growing company there is no clear ladder, only the next set of problems. When someone fixes a broken outbound motion, they become head of business development, with ownership built in. Some people at Virtuous have held five or six roles, each defined by the next bottleneck, which prepares them for when the environment changes again.

### N of One Fundraising (51:47)

**Definition:** Treat every donor as a sample of one, borrowing the medical-research idea of designing treatment around an individual patient, so each donor gets an individualized experience.

Giving time or money is personal and usually tied to deep conviction. Virtuous believes that if nonprofits connect with donors in a way that honors that intent, generosity will rise. The book, released about a week after recording, is the AI version of Responsive Fundraising.


## Quotes

_Speakers inferred from an undiarized transcript — verify before attributing._

> "Brand for me is always like, what do people say about your company when you're not in the room?"
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (25:49)

> "My CEO was great because he just says, we want to make more money than we spend. We want to treat this like a business, that's a real business."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (06:00)

> "Every 18 months, okay, is it rule of 40 this time? Is it magic number this time?"
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (05:52)

> "You've got to be a surgeon and have a scalpel every time you make a decision. At the same time, you don't have that much time to measure twice."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (06:55)

> "I've always said the best decision I ever made with LeanScale is not raising any outside capital, because I know exactly what I wanted to do if I had capital and it would have driven the business right into a brick wall."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (04:27)

> "It was a burn the ships. I had no other option. There was nothing I could do besides just keep moving forward."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (10:51)

> "Sales and just this world, it's simple, but it's not easy."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (13:17)

> "Early days of Virtuous, you were able to do crappy email outbounds and get replies."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (19:15)

> "If I have a dollar to spend, I kind of need to know that I can earn it back at least within 12 months."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (20:45)

> "There's no trick I can do to win a bunch of customers if the product is bad. And even if you do, ultimately they'll churn."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (22:55)

> "As a CRO, my job is not just new revenue. It's retained revenue and long-term revenue."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (23:02)

> "Virtuous is just a conduit then to get there. CRM is just your tool to get there."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (29:10)

> "That was a swing and a miss for us. What happened was our community is not coin operated."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (34:08)

> "Every partner has a motivation, it just might not fit your programmatic approach."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (35:20)

> "At some point, your partners have referred enough business over that it actually switches to retention and expansion."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (38:14)

> "A good hire does amazing things. If you get it right, a bad hire does 10X of the opposite."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (43:53)

> "The B players don't change."
>
> — Anthony Enrico, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (45:36)

> "The people that have gone the farthest at Virtuous and have done well are just high agency problem solvers."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (46:29)

> "If we run out of problems to solve at Virtuous, we've started to die as a company."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (47:59)

> "I've always thought change is inevitable. Bring it on."
>
> — David Cady, The LeanScale Podcast Ep. 143 (54:27)


## Practical advice by role

### Revenue Executives

- Anchor go-to-market spend on one durable rule, such as earning back each dollar within about 12 months, rather than whichever venture metric is in fashion.
- Track CAC per dollar of ARR and payback period and keep pushing both down.
- Own retained and long-term revenue as well as new bookings. Deals won on a weak product will churn.
- Measure partnerships on retention and expansion of partner-managed customers, not only on referred leads.
- Promote people who solve the next big problem into ownership of it, and pay and promote high-agency people quickly so they stay.
- Revisit your own leadership approach every couple of years as the company matures.

### Founders

- Consider whether outside capital would push you into scaling before you know what works. Building the hard way forces discipline.
- Recruit outside the coasts with intention. Talent that relocates for family and roots is there, but you have to go find it.
- Start with a micro-vertical where buyers share events, consultants and tech, and surround a couple of hundred logos before broadening.
- If buyers distrust software vendors, consider defining a category around the future state they want, and commit to it with community, partners and content.

### Marketing Leaders

- Define brand as what people say about you when you are not in the room, and build it by showing up consistently over years.
- Lead messaging with the end state the buyer wants, backed by real data and customers, and present the product last.
- Treat a category as a commitment: get the team and partners bought in and invest in community so it reads as real rather than a slogan.
- Give community members what they actually want, such as a platform for their voice, book or career, rather than lead incentives.

### Sales Leaders

- Do not rely on scripted, sequence-driven outbound in a trust-driven market. Build peer proof and partner credibility alongside it.
- Make sure reps know the product deeply and check every strategy against expected and actual conversions.
- Map each key partner's motivation instead of applying a tiered, rev-share program to everyone. Focus on the 20% who drive 80% of output.
- In one-on-ones, reward people who surface what is broken over those who report that everything is fine.

### Customer Success

- Treat partner-referred customers as a retention priority, with strong support and product enablement, once a partner's base is largely saturated.
- Work with partner managers so that partnerships are not run purely as a lead channel.


## AI takeaways

**Thesis:** David treats AI as a reason to stay adaptable rather than a plan to predict. He wants to know as many tools as possible so he is ready when work changes, and Virtuous is applying its one-donor-at-a-time category to AI through N of One Fundraising.

- **** — 
- **** — 
- **** — 
- **** — 

**Agent & automation ideas**

- A donor-level personalization agent that tailors outreach to each donor's stated passions and giving history, in the spirit of N of One Fundraising.
- A partner-motivation agent that summarizes what each key partner counts as a win and flags partners whose customers are at retention risk.
- A payback monitor that tracks CAC per dollar of ARR and payback by channel against a 12-month target.


## Operations takeaways

### Revenue operations

- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 

### Pipeline & marketing ops

- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 

### Customer operations

- **.** 
- **.** 
- **.** 


## Metrics mentioned

| Value | Metric | Context |
| --- | --- | --- |
| More than a decade | David's tenure as Virtuous go-to-market leader | Compared with the typical CRO tenure, which Anthony puts at about 18 months at VC-backed SaaS companies. |
| 6–7 people | Virtuous team size when David joined | He joined as the product came out of beta, with no title or job description beyond selling it and making payroll. |
| About 200 employees; 10,000+ nonprofits | Virtuous today | Anthony's description of the company David helped build in Phoenix. |
| $1.50–$1.80 | CAC per dollar of ARR | Virtuous's go-to-market spend per dollar of new ARR, which it kept working to reduce. |
| 15–18 months (target about 12) | CAC payback | Actual payback periods versus David's goal of earning back each dollar within 12 months. |
| $4–$6 per $1 of revenue | Peer spend in 2021–2022 | What David says many CEOs and CROs were spending to acquire a dollar of revenue, which set unrealistic expectations among hires. |
| $1,200, about half his paycheck | Cost to add a newborn to school insurance | The figure that made David leave teaching for sales. |
| 100 dials a day | Cold-calling volume at CDW | David's first sales role, starting at the end of 2007, where about 30 account managers were being hired. |
| About 300–400 | Rescue missions in the US | David's example of a micro-vertical that shares one conference and many partners, where Virtuous aimed to surround around 200 logos. |
| Up to 80% | Partner revenue share offered to LeanScale | Anthony's example of vendors applying a coin-operated partner playbook to a firm that only wants the best fit for its customers. |
| About 50% | Revenue from a handful of partners | Anthony has seen four or five partners, ten at most, each with its own plan, drive half of a company's revenue. |
| 10x the opposite of a good hire | Impact of a bad hire | David's case for talent as the most important factor at Virtuous. |


## Entities mentioned

- **Virtuous** (company) — David's employer, where he has led go-to-market for more than a decade. A Phoenix-based fundraising CRM used by more than 10,000 nonprofits, including Habitat for Humanity and Ronald McDonald House, which David joined at six or seven people and which now has about 200. It coined Responsive Fundraising as a category and runs on the rule of making more money than it spends. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/virtuous/
- **CDW** (company) — Where David started in sales at the end of 2007, as one of about 30 account managers hired in a 100-dials-a-day cold-calling role. Six months later the housing market collapsed, IT budgets froze, and he made less that first year than he had teaching. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/cdw/
- **HubSpot** (company) — David's comparison for category creation: Virtuous coined Responsive Fundraising much as HubSpot coined inbound marketing. He also cites the early Salesforce and HubSpot era of scripted outbound sequences as a playbook that is no longer cost-effective. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/hubspot/
- **Rivian** (company) — David's personal example of brand: he bought a Rivian believing he would live the adventures its ads showed, camping in the mountains with his kids. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/rivian/
- **Silicon Valley Bank (SVB)** (company) — The SVB collapse was one of the black swan events Virtuous lived through. David recalls wondering on a Saturday whether the company would have money in the bank on Monday, and credits a CFO who moved fast. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/silicon-valley-bank/
- **OpenAI** (company) — Named in the conversation, with Anthropic, as a company whose go-to-market teams are drafting off existing demand, the contrast to selling a product without market-leading pull. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/openai/
- **Anthropic** (company) — Named alongside OpenAI as a company whose sellers benefit from demand pulling them into the market. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/anthropic/
- **LeanScale** (company) — Anthony's company. He calls not raising outside capital his best decision with LeanScale, and describes go-to-market vendors offering LeanScale up to 80% of revenue to partner, which he turns down in favor of the best fit for customers. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/company/leanscale/
- **David Cady** (person, guest) —  · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/david-cady/
- **Anthony Enrico** (person, host) — Co-founder of LeanScale and host of The LeanScale Podcast. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/anthony-enrico/
- **Gabe Cooper** (person, mentioned) —  · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/gabe-cooper/
- **Mark Roberge** (person, mentioned) —  · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/guest/mark-roberge/
- **Salesforce** (tool, CRM) — Cited with HubSpot as shorthand for the early CRM era of scripted outbound sequences, and named in the conversation as an easy product to sell because its market share pulls sellers into deals.


## FAQ

**Q: What does "make more money than you spend" mean for a go-to-market team?**

A: At Virtuous, the nonprofit fundraising CRM, it means running the company like a real business rather than chasing whichever metric investors favor that cycle, such as the Rule of 40 or the magic number. CRO David Cady says the rule translates into a target of earning back every go-to-market dollar within about 12 months. Virtuous has spent roughly $1.50 to $1.80 per dollar of ARR, with CAC payback of 15 to 18 months, and keeps pushing it down. The discipline forces calculated risk, rules out dumb bets, and shaped the shift away from broad outbound toward partnerships and community.

**Q: Why did spray-and-pray outbound stop working?**

A: According to Virtuous CRO David Cady, there has been far more noise over the last decade. Early on, low-quality email outbound still got replies, and the approach of picking an ICP, writing a script and running a sequence worked. Today it is very cost-ineffective, especially when buyers are highly trust-driven. Those buyers want to believe you through your brand, hear from peers like them and see partners vouch for you, and each of those takes years to build.

**Q: How does category creation help sell into a trust-driven market?**

A: Virtuous coined Responsive Fundraising, much as HubSpot coined inbound marketing. Instead of talking about marketing automation and analytics, it described a future where every donor is treated like a major donor, set out in a book by the CEO. All messaging and pitch decks were oriented around helping nonprofits become responsive nonprofits, with urgency backed by real data, and reps introduced Virtuous last as the only tool that gets them there. David Cady says it worked because buyers distrusted software vendors. The category gave them something to believe in before evaluating the product, but it needs real commitment from the team, partners and community.

**Q: Why do tiered SaaS partner programs fail in some markets?**

A: David Cady says Virtuous's gold, silver and bronze program with registration and lead incentives was a swing and a miss because its community was not coin-operated. Many consultants and agencies serving nonprofits have few customers, no growth goals and a strong commitment to their clients, so an extra 5% rev share for ten leads means little to them. Every partner has a motivation, but it may not fit a programmatic approach. Virtuous returned to finding the 20% of partners who produce 80% of output and building around what each one values.

**Q: Do partnerships help with retention and not just new revenue?**

A: Yes. Virtuous CRO David Cady says that once partners have referred enough business, the relationship switches to retention and expansion. Virtuous has saturated some partners' customer bases, so the priority is giving those customers an excellent support and product enablement experience. Host Anthony Enrico adds that companies often hand partnerships to one person who mostly cares about leads, which misses this value.

**Q: How do you identify and develop high-agency employees?**

A: David Cady says the people who go furthest at Virtuous are high-agency problem solvers who take on the next large problem and are then put in charge of it, such as someone who fixed outbound and became head of business development. Some people have held five or six roles this way. He has not found a reliable interview test, even with cognitive and aptitude assessments, because candidates hide weakness in interviews. On the job, the signs are grit and openness about what is broken. Once found, he pays and promotes them quickly so they stay.

**Q: What is N of One Fundraising?**

A: N of One Fundraising is Virtuous's book and idea applying its Responsive Fundraising category to the AI era. The term comes from medical research, where a single patient is a sample of one and treatment is designed around the individual. For nonprofits it means giving each donor an individualized experience that honors the personal reasons behind their giving. Virtuous believes this will significantly increase generosity.


## Timeline

- **00:00** — Intro: two kids from Ahwatukee and Mountain Pointe
- **01:38** — What staying in Phoenix cost, and what it was worth
- **05:02** — "Make more money than we spend"
- **08:09** — From the classroom to cold calling in the 2008 crash
- **14:00** — The lunch that turned into Virtuous
- **17:56** — A decade in one CRO seat: how GTM changed
- **21:12** — Partnerships, community, and why product comes first
- **25:14** — What brand really is, and Responsive Fundraising
- **32:19** — Why the SaaS partner program missed
- **37:59** — Partners drive retention, not just leads
- **40:19** — The hardest season: 2021–2022
- **46:11** — High-agency problem solvers
- **51:46** — N of One and what's next with AI
- **56:06** — Closing


## Related episodes

- **Ep. 12: Are Partnerships a Complete Waste of Time?** (Tim White (Wealth.com)) — Another operator's view of partnerships as a give-to-get relationship, which matches David's case against coin-operated partner programs. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/tim-white-partnerships-waste-of-time/
- **Ep. 33: Why AI Won't Save Your Bad Brand** (Mario Paganini (Overjet)) — Brand as a long-term advantage that cannot be faked, close to David's definition of brand as what people say when you are not in the room. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/mario-paganini-ai-wont-save-brand/
- **Ep. 96: After the Series A: The Capital Clock** (Anthony Enrico (LeanScale)) — Anthony on how capital shapes go-to-market decisions, alongside David's rule of making more money than you spend.
- **Ep. 71: From $500M to $10B: The CRO Playbook for Constant Reinvention** (Alex Loktev (P2P.org)) — A CRO on reinventing go-to-market through several eras, like David's decade of adapting in one seat. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/alex-loktev-cro-playbook-reinvention/
- **Ep. 125: COO or CRO? Where the RevOps Career Actually Ends Up** (Thurman Sneed (Marigold)) — Another long-tenured revenue leader with an unconventional route to the CRO role and a focus on paying for itself.
- **Ep. 134: He Fired a $500K Client Right After a Layoff — Then Went $8M to $42M** (Kevin Rice (Hathway)) — A capital-disciplined company that grew by focusing on one industry, similar to Virtuous's micro-vertical surround in nonprofits.
- **Ep. 120: AI Made Outreach Worthless. Events Are What's Left** (Alex Reynolds (Vendelux)) — Why cheap outreach stopped working and in-person community took its place, echoing David's view of spray-and-pray outbound.
- **Ep. 69: Inside the Mind of a Modern CRO** (Brett Kelly (Inovonics)) — A CRO on leading a team through change, set against David's view that a leader's approach must shift as the company matures. · https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/brett-kelly-modern-cro/


## Full transcript

_Machine-transcribed and not diarized; speaker attribution is inferred._  
_Transcript only, as a separate file: https://www.leanscale.team/knowledge/podcast/david-cady-virtuous-make-more-money-than-you-spend/transcript.md_

### 00:00 — Intro: two kids from Ahwatukee and Mountain Pointe

**[0:00]** A brand, we could probably argue for an hour, like, what does brand even mean, and how do we

**[0:05]** conceptualize that? Like, brand for me is always like, what do people say about your company when

**[0:10]** you're not in the room? My guest today is David Cady, Chief Revenue Officer at Virtuous, the

**[0:16]** fundraising CRM that more than 10,000 nonprofits run on, from Habitat for Humanity to Ronald

**[0:23]** McDonald House. Before software, he taught high school English and he left the classroom for a

**[0:28]** sales job that paid $8,000 less than the teaching day did, spending his first year in the industry

**[0:35]** on food stamps while the housing market collapsed around him. It was a burn the ships, like, I had

**[0:40]** no other option than having to go home and not make the mortgage, right? The average tenure of a CRO,

**[0:45]** you're pretty lucky if you make it 18 months, but you've been here over a decade. There is and has

**[0:51]** been a lot of noise generated over the last 10 years. You were able to do crappy email outbounds

**[0:59]** and get replies. I've always said the best decision I ever made with LeanScale is not raising

**[1:06]** any outside capital because I know exactly what I wanted to do if I had capital and it would have

**[1:14]** driven the business right into a brick wall. My CEO was great because he just says, we want to make

**[1:19]** more money than we spent. We want to treat this like a business. That's a real business. I've

**[1:24]** always thought change is inevitable. Bring it on. David, we spent the first 10 minutes of our call

### 01:38 — What staying in Phoenix cost, and what it was worth

**[1:39]** realizing we grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same high school. And then you said

**[1:43]** something that really raised check out to me that Phoenix is a very weird place to be an operator,

**[1:48]** especially in tech, but you built a 200 person company here anyway without leaving. What has

**[1:54]** staying in the desert actually cost you and what has it been worth? It's great to be here, Anthony,

**[2:02]** excited to spend some time and dig through these things. Phoenix is a fun place to grow a company.

**[2:09]** The one thing I think that's special about here is everyone is actually here fairly intentionally.

**[2:17]** I do think that a lot of this community decides to put roots down here, whether it's for family,

**[2:23]** location, weather, opportunity. The hard part about a lot of this is just the fact that

**[2:29]** the community itself is really dispersed. And so you have a ton of people who are really

**[2:35]** intentional about what they want to do with their lives and their jobs. But there's not a lot of

**[2:41]** central education, tech environment, and investment that sort of brings everyone

**[2:48]** together. So you kind of have to find everyone. And honestly, like you and I, we stumbled across

**[2:55]** each other doing a lot of the same work for a long time together, growing up, going to the same

**[3:01]** neighborhood, same high school, and just hadn't crossed paths before. And so I think that's

**[3:07]** something that just requires a ton of intentionality. So from a hiring standpoint, it's not like I can

**[3:13]** go to this one career fair, go to this one website, or just we have a line of people out the door. You

**[3:19]** have to be intentional. The thing, though, like I said, that has been super impactful is everyone

**[3:26]** is pretty focused on what they want to do, why they want to be here, and does have this sort of

**[3:32]** passion to build something that's long lasting. There's a lot of Phoenix is a community where a

**[3:37]** lot of people have moved here over time, and are looking to plant roots and do come here with the

**[3:42]** specific reason. So that's been a cool part about building here. The other thing is just the nature

**[3:48]** of being a flyover state. There's a ton of pressure on the coasts when you build to sort of do it

**[3:57]** unnaturally. And you have a lot of pressure to do it really, really quickly. So sometimes you make

**[4:03]** bad decisions, quick decisions that you could regret. And he's sort of like the urgency,

**[4:09]** the tyranny of now takes over where for us, it was always about like, how do we build a durable

**[4:15]** business that's here for the long run, which I think is something that Phoenix is priding itself

**[4:22]** in. And again, just being a flyover state, like we wanted to build something that was here for

**[4:27]** the long run. Yeah, I've noticed two of those things too. I've always said the best decision

**[4:34]** I ever made with LeanScale is not raising any outside capital because I know exactly what I

**[4:42]** wanted to do if I had capital and it would have driven the business right into a brick wall.

**[4:47]** So the best thing for me would have been to have to build things the hard way,

**[4:52]** slow things down and then find out what works before trying to grow a little bit quicker. And

**[4:57]** also on the talent front, there's not a lot of competition if you're the business for some of

### 05:02 — "Make more money than we spend"

**[5:03]** the best talent and so much incredible talent comes from California comes from New York comes

**[5:10]** from Chicago to plant roots here because they're saying, Hey, it's more important maybe for me to

**[5:16]** have a good place for my family. But you still have exceptional talent. You just have to go find them.

**[5:22]** Yeah, you got to find them. And I think that's why creating a good brand and creating a company

**[5:26]** that is attractive to people is so important. I mean, you mentioned raising money definitely

**[5:32]** comes with its own set of strings that you have to work across. And, you know, we've been really

**[5:38]** fortunate to have a set of investors who have a long term mentality. And every time I talk to my

**[5:43]** CEO, you know, there's every 18 months, generally in the venture world, what's valuable or what's

**[5:52]** meaningful and important and business valuation tends to change. And so I'm always every 18 months,

**[5:57]** okay, okay, is it rule of 40 this time? Is it magic number this time? Like, what do what are

**[6:00]** we trying to hit to make sure that we're on the right track? And my CEO was great because he just

**[6:07]** says we want to make more money than we spend. We want to treat this like a business that's a real

**[6:12]** business. And in reality, if we do those basic principles, right, whatever the tide is at this

**[6:19]** time, whatever the market is saying, like, it will always come back around to those things. And so

**[6:25]** in some ways, it freed us up to just say, let's try to imagine that the money is not there. And

**[6:30]** always creates a lot of unnatural pressure. When you have that extra money, and it's just let's

**[6:34]** just make more money than we spend, let's treat this like a regular business. Is it really that

**[6:38]** easy? Because I feel like I feel like you have to go back and dust off the calculus books sometimes

**[6:44]** to understand how investors are valuing companies. But I think you're right, the companies that,

**[6:50]** hey, if you're growing, and you're profitable, you own your own destiny.

**[6:55]** Yeah, it's it's tough. Like, I know, I equate it to, you know, you've got to be a surgeon and have

**[7:02]** a scalpel every time you make a decision. At the same time, like you don't have that much time to

**[7:08]** measure twice, you get to maybe measure once. And then you can cut once, but you do have to

**[7:13]** have a bias for action. I think, you know, it does create just boundaries that you have to

**[7:19]** live within and be okay with. But yeah, it's it's the pressure is important to keep you moving.

**[7:28]** And sort of like removing that, that safety net is important to continually take enough

**[7:35]** calculated risk to get past the inertia that obviously happens. I mean, it's so tough to build

**[7:41]** a company anyway, when you've got black swan events that seem to happen every year. At this point,

**[7:47]** like you have to keep moving enough. So calculated risk is still important. But it does keep you

**[7:53]** smart. You can't do dumb things. No, you definitely have to make the bets that have the best outcomes

**[8:01]** in the long run. And I am very curious to go a little bit deeper on one of the biggest bets

### 08:09 — From the classroom to cold calling in the 2008 crash

**[8:09]** that you made on yourself on your career. I would love if you could take us back to that moment

**[8:15]** when you were teaching, and then decided to make a monumental change. During one of those black swan

**[8:24]** events where the entire economy felt like it was just collapsing around everybody.

**[8:29]** Yeah, a lot of my early journey was kind of born out of necessity and had to learn a lot along the

**[8:37]** way. You know, when I graduated college, I thought I was going to change the world by teaching was

**[8:43]** going to work with students. A lot of what I love to do was more around the humanities and philosophy,

**[8:50]** like, although I taught English, I was always fascinated with like the why did we make the

**[8:54]** decisions that we do? You know, how do people think? So I love that part of my job. But life

**[9:00]** always has a way of sort of throwing a wrench in things. It's been a while since I was teaching,

**[9:05]** I always know how long it's been because it's the same age as my oldest son, who's going to be 19

**[9:10]** soon. And so my wife and I got pregnant and we both looked at each other. This was after I walked

**[9:15]** into the HR office at the high school I worked at, told them we were having a kid and they let me

**[9:22]** know that it was going to be $1,200 to add him on to our insurance. And I looked at my paycheck and

**[9:27]** I went, that's half of what I make. Like, there was just an impossibility that I could keep doing

**[9:33]** this. And so yeah, I had to go home and have the conversation like, I don't think I can do this

**[9:38]** anymore. And at that point, kind of just took stock of like, well, what am I good at? What do I like?

**[9:44]** I've always been kind of a nerd and a geek. I grew up around my dad's computer and 85 IBM and,

**[9:49]** you know, tinkering and MS-DOS grew up changing graphics cards and CPUs and memory in the computer

**[9:54]** to keep up with the latest, you know, PC game. So I love that. And, you know, took that and sort

**[10:00]** of blended it with, well, I like people, like understanding what makes them tick. And just pure

**[10:05]** happenstance that like a company was coming into town at the time that was hiring like 30 account

**[10:10]** managers company with CDW. And it's very much a cold calling, 100 dials a day kind of company.

**[10:16]** I started then right at the end of 2007, six months in, right, housing market collapsed,

**[10:28]** all of that craziness started to happen. And then IT budgets froze across the board. No one was

**[10:33]** spending a dime on anything. So we've got a new baby in the world, new job. And I actually ended

**[10:40]** up making less that first year of sales than I did teaching. And, you know, you mentioned the

**[10:46]** story, like our family was living on food stamps for a couple of years, just trying to make do.

**[10:51]** The thing that honestly was a big part of that journey, like there, I, it was a burn the ships.

**[10:57]** Like I had no other option. There was nothing I could do besides just keep moving forward.

**[11:04]** And so 100 cold calls a day seemed a whole lot better than having to go home and not make the

**[11:10]** mortgage. Right. And I looked at like my peers and what people were doing. And especially in sales,

**[11:15]** there was so much like 90% of this is controllable. It's my activity. It's my attitudes, my output.

**[11:22]** And I liked that sense of control, especially during a time when everything just felt

**[11:27]** so wildly out of control. And so kept my head down for two, three years. And eventually, right,

**[11:34]** the economy starts to correct, start to make more money, start to come out the other side.

**[11:41]** And then from there, like my career shifted more into software and spent the better part of a

**[11:48]** decade after that. And software and enterprise software and larger companies doing sort of

**[11:53]** enterprise transformational software. And that, that's sort of where my love of like,

**[11:58]** like selling change, working with software, because it was so transformational to businesses,

**[12:04]** like understanding what made people tick and like why they would do things. I loved that part.

**[12:10]** And then yeah, a lot of that time was sort of the heyday of Silicon Valley and SAS software and

**[12:15]** vertical SAS was coming about. And so I worked for a few companies where I had a chance to

**[12:20]** just do a lot of different things with cool startups. And I started to get the startup bug

**[12:24]** from there. That was sort of pre virtuous. But yeah, sales was a, it was a forcing function,

**[12:30]** like I had no other choice. And you do a lot when you have nowhere else to go.

**[12:35]** I think some of the times those are the biggest motivators and probably the only environment

**[12:40]** where you may even find success because when you don't have any other option, you get full focus,

**[12:46]** completely narrow the aperture. It's really the only time you can, you can make certain things

**[12:51]** like that happen. And I, I've always loved sales because, Hey, it doesn't necessarily matter who

**[12:58]** you know, who you are. There's a number on a scoreboard. And if you're at the top, then you're

**[13:03]** always going to be doing well. Yeah. A hundred percent. It definitely beat, uh, being homeless

**[13:10]** and not being able to buy groceries. Like it just the perspective shift that you, that I had, I mean,

**[13:17]** it wasn't easy. I always say, you know, sales and just this world, like it's simple,

**[13:22]** but it's not easy. And I think that is why this profession is often a hard thing for most

**[13:29]** people. There's a lot of things you have to like give up, overcome, be okay. That you're challenged

**[13:34]** with to be successful long-term. Yeah. If anybody's ever asked, I've compared it to diet and exercise,

**[13:39]** like everybody knows what to do, eat less, more fruit, vegetables, and go to the gym. But it's

**[13:46]** very, very hard to consistently do it every single day for years and years and years and be a

**[13:52]** professional at it. Yep. So going through that career, you start to gain lots of experience

**[13:59]** in the sales industry, in the role. How did you find the virtuous team and what made you

### 14:00 — The lunch that turned into Virtuous

**[14:10]** make that next leap? So I have always just loved entrepreneurship. I think just even that early

**[14:18]** sales bug was like, I love the fact that I could, whatever I put in, which is what I got out. And

**[14:24]** then really got enamored with the startup world. Again, in the Bay Area, I worked for a lot of Bay

**[14:29]** Area companies, pre-virtuous. So I had actually wanted to start something of my own. And I knew

**[14:36]** our founder, been a longtime friend of mine, our founder, Gabe Cooper. And so I took him out to

**[14:41]** lunch really with this idea of, hey, I'm thinking of doing something myself. Am I crazy? Should I

**[14:49]** be doing this? What should I be thinking about? And that lunch really turned into, well, I'm

**[14:55]** doing this thing called virtuous. Gabe is an engineer product guy by trade. So he's sort of

**[14:59]** like the opposite of what I am in many respects. And that really turned into this idea of like,

**[15:05]** hey, virtuous is an idea. It's really getting off the ground coming out of beta. And he need to go

**[15:13]** to market help. And for me, I'm like, well, my wife will be happy because I don't have to mortgage

**[15:18]** our house and take this massive risk. And then I get to come into a company that has a lot of the

**[15:24]** things where, you know, are the things that I'm not necessarily gifted or good at, which at that

**[15:29]** point, like hadn't written a line of code in my life, but loved product, loved tech. And so it was

**[15:34]** able to step in early days of virtuous really with just the only idea of like, I got to sell this

**[15:41]** thing. Like, that's it. Like, there was no real title or job description that was like, keep the

**[15:48]** lights on, sell the thing, and let's make payroll. Early on, we had angel investing in friends and

**[15:55]** family. And so we had enough runway to keep going. But really, we were always very lean in terms of

**[16:00]** how we thought how much we raised. And again, back to the make more money than you spend. The whole

**[16:05]** thing was like, hey, let's make sure we can hit payroll with what we sell. Had a couple fun stories

**[16:11]** with that and Christmas time and making payroll and all that. But yeah, it was it was a lot more

**[16:16]** of an entrepreneurial journey to jump in and just say, hey, I want to grow something. I want to build

**[16:20]** something. I really just care about solving interesting problems with people I like. And

**[16:27]** that was the early days of virtuous, about six or seven of us at the time when I started.

**[16:33]** I have to ask, what was the idea that you were bringing to that lunch? And what were you thinking

**[16:38]** at the time? Yeah, I mean, I'll be honest, like, I kind of went into that lunch, potentially hoping

**[16:43]** I could like inception gave enough and plant this idea enough, like maybe there was something there.

**[16:50]** Right. Like, I respect the guy a ton. He's done well. This is not his first company. And so

**[16:55]** in many ways, you know, working with him was something that that was ultimately a goal of

**[17:01]** mine. I think I had zero clue, though, like my experience had been like large scale sales

**[17:07]** organizations, big tech companies, even right, the Silicon Valley startups that I had worked for,

**[17:13]** you know, startups in like the, you know, I joined with a couple hundred people. And at that point,

**[17:20]** like they were burning money, like there was no tomorrow. So I don't think I had the even the

**[17:23]** frame of mind for like what this would actually mean to build something durable and with limited,

**[17:30]** like with a limited resource pool. You know, I'm just like, I'm just gonna start cold calling,

**[17:35]** I bet this will work. So I had zero clue. Honestly, going in, I think the thing that

**[17:43]** has saved me and sort of given me the longevity is just adaptability. Like I had no preconceived

**[17:50]** notions, no, no desire to like be a specific title role. I'm like, I just want to see if we

### 17:56 — A decade in one CRO seat: how GTM changed

**[17:58]** can build something. And whatever was on the table, like however that looked like I was,

**[18:04]** we're open to do whatever it took. One of the things that I love about your story is

**[18:13]** the dedication to this mission that you've had and the tenure that you've had along it.

**[18:18]** I mean, the average tenure of a CRO, you're pretty lucky if you make it 18 months.

**[18:22]** That's a pretty good run as a CRO and most Silicon Valley, BC back SaaS companies,

**[18:29]** but you've been here over a decade. And one of the things I'd love to know,

**[18:35]** because I think it's, I think it's hard to tell when someone's only done a few stints,

**[18:41]** but they haven't really like dug their heels in. How has go to market changed over this decade?

**[18:48]** Because your same product, same solution, same market. There are so many constants in your story,

**[18:56]** but I know there must have been so many times where you had to adapt and iterate.

**[19:00]** How has go to market changed over the last 10 years?

**[19:04]** Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. There's a few things I think are probably not going to say

**[19:09]** anything that everyone doesn't already know. One, there, there is and has been a lot of noise

**[19:15]** generated over the last 10 years. Early days of virtuous, like you were able to do crappy

**[19:22]** email outbounds and get replies, right? You could do crappy outbound and you could get replies and

**[19:30]** love Mark Roberge, love the sales acceleration formula, but a lot of the whole kind of early

**[19:35]** Salesforce HubSpot days where you just like pick an ICP, write a script, do an outbound sequence

**[19:40]** and go very cost ineffective today. And so many people, especially in the world that I sell into

**[19:47]** are like highly, highly trust driven. They want to know that they can believe you. They have to

**[19:54]** believe it from like your brand, which takes a whole long time to build. Like that's not an

**[20:00]** overnight thing. It's a multi-year progress process. They can, they want to hear from their peers.

**[20:06]** They want to know other people who look like them in their world, like that they are doing,

**[20:13]** you know, the thing you're asking. And then partnerships is another big thing to create

**[20:17]** trust. So for us, I think we sort of tried a lot of different things, casted a really wide net early

**[20:25]** on. And part of that was out of necessity. Cause it's like, we just got to keep the lights on.

**[20:28]** If someone will write us a check, that's great. And so, you know, we were getting customers big

**[20:34]** and small all over the place. And that was just sort of a ad hoc spray and pray approach just to

**[20:39]** get like names in the door. What we learned over time, especially in, and this is true when we're

**[20:45]** trying to be really cost-effective, right? That was a thing for us is like, if I have a dollar to

**[20:51]** spend, I kind of need to know that I can earn it back at least within 12 months. Like our CAC ratio,

**[20:58]** like we were maybe spending a dollar 50 to a dollar 80 per dollar of ARR CAC payback periods,

**[21:05]** usually 15 to 18 months. Like, but we tried to drive that down more and more. So knowing that

**[21:10]** those are the limitations, we really had to make sure like every shot counted. So partnerships

### 21:12 — Partnerships, community, and why product comes first

**[21:16]** community, uh, was a huge part of our success in the first, um, several years, honestly, still till

**[21:25]** today. I still think that's actually a really underlooked portion of go to market. Um, just

**[21:32]** in general is partnerships and networking and community. I think there's a lot of talk today

**[21:37]** about, yes, we have to do that because there's so much noise with AI. There's so much going out.

**[21:40]** There's so much stuff online, but doing that just takes time and it takes being in market with

**[21:47]** customers. And I just don't know if there's still quite an appetite to do that really well. I am

**[21:53]** very fortunate to have an amazing product. Uh, there's a lot of great, great go to market ideas.

**[22:02]** Like I'm, I'm a firm believer in two things. Like you have to be fundamentally about the numbers,

**[22:08]** right? Sales go to market funnel math, whatever you call it. Like it's fundamentally just a math

**[22:13]** equation you have to solve. Know your inputs and outputs. It's like physics. Like you can't break

**[22:19]** the law of physics as hard as you try. Just do that first. So you have to know like, Hey,

**[22:25]** have all these strategies, what are our conversions? What do we expect to find? Did we do it? Yes or

**[22:30]** no. At the end of the day, if you get on a phone with someone and you get those meetings and your

**[22:34]** product sucks and your messaging sucks and you're like value prop sucks. Like nobody will care. And

**[22:41]** I think that is something I actually am a firm believer in. Like sales marketing needs to know

**[22:48]** the product and the product has to be really good. Um, I can't out go to market. There's no

**[22:55]** trick I can do to win a bunch of customers if the product is bad. And even if you do,

**[23:02]** ultimately they'll churn. And as a CRO, my job is not just new revenue. It's

**[23:07]** retained revenue and long-term revenue. And so you have to hold those intention.

**[23:13]** I think a lot of people overlooked that and overlooked the magnitude of it. And one example

**[23:18]** I give, sometimes I use this if somebody's considering going into sales, but they're not

**[23:23]** really sure about the profession. And I think sometimes for people early in their career,

**[23:28]** it might get a bad rap. And I say, you know, what I think would be probably the coolest job in the

**[23:33]** entire world is if there was a sure, like full proof cure to cancer and you were the sales rep,

**[23:44]** repping that product, how incredible would it be to go find all the people that need help and get

**[23:50]** them connected with a product that can save their lives? Now, I know we're not usually saving lives

**[23:54]** with software, um, but we are, we are solving problems and we're, we're helping people's

**[23:59]** careers. We're helping people provide for their families, all kinds of things that actually

**[24:04]** unlock when you do this well. And I think it's a very, very cool thing when you have an excellent

**[24:10]** product. If you're selling a product that isn't competitive, doesn't work, doesn't do a lot of

**[24:14]** things, isn't solving a real pain, that can be one of the worst jobs in the world. Yeah.

**[24:20]** Yeah. It's actually like part of our, my recruiting strategy. And when I think about

**[24:24]** good salespeople, if you can sell a product at a second or third tier product company,

**[24:30]** you're probably exceptional at sales. Um, you know what, it's really easy to sell sales force.

**[24:36]** It's really easy to sell these products that have like all the market share in the world

**[24:41]** and basically just have enough demand that you're getting pulled into market. Anyway,

**[24:45]** you know, go to market at open AP open AI and, and, and anthropic right now, like you're kind

**[24:50]** of just drafting off of the existing pipeline and signing orders. Now I'm not taking away from

**[24:56]** those teams, but it's hard when you don't have a class leading product. So, you know, if I'm

**[25:02]** thinking about companies, I want to be at like, that is the number one thing that I need to

**[25:07]** understand before I go somewhere. And then, then you, then you have great go to market plans that

**[25:12]** you can work with. I'd like to go back to one of the things that you mentioned, another area,

### 25:14 — What brand really is, and Responsive Fundraising

**[25:18]** I think that's overlooked as well. And I think your, your tenure gives a really unique insight

**[25:24]** into how to do this building a brand. You mentioned it's not something you can do overnight. It's

**[25:30]** often not something you can force. What are the major components in your mind of brand building

**[25:36]** and operationally tactically? I know it might look a little different depending on the company,

**[25:40]** but what are some principles that you can follow to help build an incredible brand?

**[25:45]** Yeah, you know, brand is, you could, we could probably argue for an hour, like what does brand

**[25:49]** even mean? And how do we conceptualize that? Like brand for me is always like, what do people say

**[25:55]** about your company when you're not in the room? I like to think about brands that I personally

**[26:01]** love myself. Like I'm a, I'm a big car guy. I've recently over the last few years got into Rivian's

**[26:07]** and a big part of that was like, I believed that when I bought that car, I would be in the places

**[26:15]** that the ads showed me. Like I would be in the mountains camping. I would be with my kids. I

**[26:18]** would sort of like live this amazing adventure. And I'm like, I have to have this thing because

**[26:24]** I believe that's what I will be. So I do think that there's something about brand that is

**[26:30]** very like much less about the product. And it's what you believe you will be where your company

**[26:36]** will be, or you'll sort of like the tribe or community you'll be a part of once you're,

**[26:41]** once you've bought that. In tech, I think there's several ways to do that. Like one,

**[26:46]** it does take time. Like you have to show up consistently and do what you say over time.

**[26:51]** Like it's not a slogan or a gimmick or a tagline. It really does have to be something your team

**[26:56]** shows up and sort of like delivers time and time again. The thing for us, like we actually spent

**[27:01]** some time doing category creation. I know category creation, especially today, there's sort of pros

**[27:08]** and cons. Can you do it? Is it a real thing? But I still think it sort of dovetails into this idea

**[27:14]** of brand. So with virtuous, we kind of coined this term responsive fundraising, very similar

**[27:19]** to what HubSpot did with sort of inbound marketing in the early days. And the whole idea here is we

**[27:23]** were talking to nonprofits all about like marketing automation and reporting and big data and analytics

**[27:29]** and all of these technical terms. Describing like this world or like, Hey, if you use these things,

**[27:35]** this will happen. They got so caught up in like the what the tools we were talking about that we

**[27:41]** sort of like an obfuscated this like end reality. And so for us, this was a CEO thing. He wrote the

**[27:48]** book, responsive fundraising hero to follow up book called the responsive nonprofit. And just

**[27:53]** in a week we'll release end of one fundraising, which is basically the AI version of those things.

**[28:00]** But the whole idea of that is we're creating a world that has nothing to do with virtuous.

**[28:07]** And we're talking about how the best of the best nonprofits create a world where every single donor

**[28:13]** is treated like an individual major donor, a one of one, which ultimately so many nonprofits say,

**[28:20]** Hey, this is the world we want to create in our fundraising practice. So we wrote this book,

**[28:26]** we've sort of all of our wording, all of our product marketing, all of our pitch decks,

**[28:34]** we're oriented around, we will help you become a responsive nonprofit. Here's what that world looks

**[28:40]** like. Here's why you should care about it. And here's this urgency of why the world is changing

**[28:45]** so fast. You need to do it now. So it sort of creates this existential crisis moment backed up

**[28:51]** by like real data, real customers, real problems, like world changing events. And then from a

**[28:56]** sales rep perspective, you go last, I was like, Oh, by the way, virtuous is the only tool on the

**[29:02]** market that can help you do that. And now it's not about a do I believe you? Is this a problem?

**[29:10]** Like they're latched onto the, I need to become this thing. Virtuous is just a conduit then to

**[29:15]** get there. Just to CRM is just your tool to get there. But it's less about what is the product

**[29:22]** going to do? And it's more, Hey, I'm bought into this end reality. There's all the technical stuff,

**[29:27]** like you have to be really good at community, you have to get your team bought in, you have to get

**[29:30]** partnerships bought in, you actually have to like commit to this thing. It's kind of like building a

**[29:36]** weird, separate little company like lifestyle brand, to some extent, because you need people to like

**[29:42]** believe there's enough energy there that it's a real thing and not a slogan. For us, it worked

**[29:48]** only because so highly trust driven in our buying, like the buyer's world, that this was a way for

**[29:55]** us to create that trust when like there's a, there was a ton of distrust for software providers in

**[30:02]** our space. So I think it works. I am not that guy. I'm lucky to have a CEO and visionary CMOs in past

**[30:12]** who have really known how to do that well. But man, I can take that excitement and turn it into

**[30:17]** demand and turn it into closed revenue, like so much easier than without it.

**[30:23]** I'm already feeling the emotional pull into everything you're talking about. And I think

**[30:27]** it's fantastic. Something that I think is missing from quite a few, quite a few brands.

**[30:33]** Yeah, you have to generally care about your customer. Like we have a lot of our teams comes

**[30:40]** from nonprofit and our CEO gave it, he has sold out to this idea. This is the last company he wants

**[30:45]** to ever create. This is the swan song for him. There is selling out to this idea that it's,

**[30:51]** it's meaningful. And I think there has to be a genuineness to that for it to be real. Like, yes,

**[30:57]** at the end of the day, we're software experts. My job is to sell the thing. That is the KPI.

**[31:03]** But you don't have to like not be human at the same time. And you can't have mission and purpose

**[31:10]** that is greater than those things. I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive.

**[31:15]** I would argue, I think it's very difficult to accomplish the mission. If you don't have that,

**[31:20]** so hitting, hitting extraordinary KPIs, hitting incredible numbers, very,

**[31:25]** very difficult to do if you don't have that mission behind you.

**[31:27]** Yes, it is a hard trade off, right? You sort of have the short term and long term thinking

**[31:31]** and brand building and category building and sort of that trust building exercise is a long term

**[31:36]** build. And there's always that push and pull of short term, long term. And I think it's why it's

**[31:40]** important to have different people within the organization who sort of hold those things in

**[31:44]** tension, but appreciate and value why both matter. Another thing you mentioned or a couple of other

**[31:52]** things were networking, community building partnerships. What are some things that you

**[31:58]** have done that have worked really well? Are you doing things in person? Are you dialing in your

**[32:03]** partner program? Or do you have certain incentives? I know some of these might sound tactical and

**[32:10]** maybe a little detailed in the weeds, but I think a lot of people need just a picture of what good

**[32:16]** looks like in those areas. Yeah, that's a great question. So partnerships is near and dear to my

### 32:19 — Why the SaaS partner program missed

**[32:22]** heart. It's been something I've had either run personally or had oversight over the last 10 years.

**[32:28]** It's kind of similar to brand building in some sense. And I'll be honest, there have been years

**[32:35]** where I don't think we have always gotten this right. And the pendulum has sort of swung both

**[32:41]** ways. So initially, right, partnerships has always been like, let's just find people who are like

**[32:47]** minded in our space. And let's be friends with them. And that worked like in a lot of our early

**[32:53]** strategy at Virtuos was like, let's find the micro verticals within our larger nonprofit vertical,

**[32:59]** where you have a lot of the same people, they all go to the same events, they all work with the same

**[33:04]** like consultants, they all work with the same tech companies. And let's really surround say 200 logos.

**[33:11]** So for us, like rescue missions is a great example, there's about three, 400 rescue missions in the

**[33:14]** United States, they all go to the same conference, they all have a presence in their in each city,

**[33:20]** they all work with a lot of the same partners. And so for us, partnerships was finding all of

**[33:26]** those people, supporting all the events that they were throwing, showing up in the community that

**[33:31]** they were at, and honestly, just doing what we said we were going to do, building the product,

**[33:37]** almost specifically for some of these use cases, and then just fulfilling that over and over.

**[33:42]** I think what happened is we got bigger, the pendulum swung to like traditional SaaS partnerships,

**[33:47]** which was let's create a program, let's do you know, your gold, silver, bronze level partnerships,

**[33:53]** let's create registration and lead incentives, and let's try to drive predictability by building

**[33:58]** this sort of like rigid system. Because that was what she did, right? Like in so many times,

**[34:04]** when we're building this business, you just kind of look at the SaaS playbook, and you go, all

**[34:08]** right, let's try that this year and see how that works. That was a swing and a miss for us. One,

**[34:13]** what happened was our community is not coin operated, and especially people who are tech

**[34:23]** companies. So there's a lot of tech companies and nonprofit, they look and function a lot like us,

**[34:28]** like all the salespeople want leads, the marketers want audience building, like everyone sort of has

**[34:33]** similar motivations, but consultants and agencies that were supported the nonprofit, like oftentimes,

**[34:40]** they're like, I just don't want to let our customer down. I'm really bought into this mission. Right,

**[34:46]** I just want to make sure I can get home by five o'clock at night. There's not this sort of like

**[34:50]** endless growth mindset. And so when we tried to like square peg round hole, it's like, no, no,

**[34:56]** but we'll give you like 5% extra rev share. If you guys send us 10 or more leads, they're like,

**[35:02]** I only have 15 customers and like, I have zero growth goals this year. So we brought in operators

**[35:09]** and teams that just it was a hard that was a hard thing for them to get any sort of brought the SaaS

**[35:13]** playbook to a vertical market that wasn't living that. So we've really swung back, I think the

**[35:20]** thing that is true for me is every partner has a motivation, it just might not fit your programmatic

**[35:28]** approach. And so for us, it's always been the 80/20 rule of life, how do we find the 20% of partners

**[35:34]** who will give us 80% of the output. And we should do things like map their motivations, understand

**[35:41]** what makes them tick, what is a win for each of our organizations, and then actually deliver those

**[35:46]** things. But it was hard to build something that was called it like infinite scale. Now, I think

**[35:53]** that's true for partners that have businesses they want around. And that's been true for us.

**[35:59]** On the community side, I treat that a little bit differently. Most people just want a brand and a

**[36:05]** platform that makes them look great. So how can we get their voice into the market, their book

**[36:13]** release into the market and then platform them in a way that helps with career growth, visibility

**[36:18]** growth. But again, not everyone has that. So I think it's just it's really important to understand

**[36:24]** motivations. That's been tough. As we've hired as we've had folks in the in the partner space is

**[36:30]** like knowing what is most important to partners and not just building it because the rest of the

**[36:36]** market does it a certain way. I think that's that's really, really good advice. And I can share two

**[36:44]** stories, just as anecdotes to support it too. So one, lean scale being a rev ops, as a service

**[36:51]** company, we have lots of go to market tools that want to partner with us. They promise us I've

**[36:57]** been offered up to 80% of the revenue that is sold. And I think every single time we're like,

**[37:05]** that's nice. I just want the best solution for my customers. So if your tool is an incredible fit,

**[37:11]** I might pay you to come implement it and like get involved. So that's always been a big part of our

**[37:17]** motivation. And I think that resonates well, but I see the same playbook kind of being applied to

**[37:21]** us. I was like, guys, I don't think you I don't think you get it. And the other thing, I'm curious

**[37:28]** your opinion on this, too. I haven't personally been in a company where there's been hundreds and

**[37:35]** hundreds of partners, and there's a super scaled out approach. But I have been in plenty, where

**[37:41]** there's four or five, maybe max 10 partners. Each one of them basically has their own partner

**[37:48]** program partner plan. And it's driven 50% of the revenue in the business. Yes. That's 100%. And I

**[37:57]** think we underestimate the time and energy it takes to build something great. And I also think

### 37:59 — Partners drive retention, not just leads

**[38:02]** the other thing that we we did wrong is be more new and we're growing the partnership community

**[38:08]** often is looked at as hey, this is a way for new leads, new revenue growth acquisition. But at some

**[38:14]** point, your partners have referred enough business over that it actually switches to retention and

**[38:20]** expansion. And we have partners that we've saturated their customer base for the most part,

**[38:26]** our team should be providing an amazing support experience product enablement experience. So those

**[38:32]** customers retain with virtuous and that that is something I think that sometimes gets lost as we

**[38:39]** worry so much about acquisition, but like the retention and expansion growth that comes through

**[38:44]** partner managed customers is so huge. And I just don't think we often think about it that way.

**[38:51]** We break up the customer journey functionally often where you've got right acquisition and

**[38:57]** demand creation and like closing that and servicing that and partners, it's like you get

**[39:01]** this one person and they just mostly 90% care about leads. And so we'll just you know, and then

**[39:08]** everyone's like, we'll do another webinar, we'll do another field event. And you just get this

**[39:13]** lackluster results. So I'm I agree, like going deep is important and then also understanding like

**[39:19]** the value that they provide to existing customers is sometimes overlooked.

**[39:25]** 100%. Hi, I have a big question for you across your tenure at virtuous. And I also I might

**[39:35]** compare this to parenting, I think. So I have young kids at six, four, one and a half of another one

**[39:41]** on the way in about a month here. And I think there's always this when you're early, it feels

**[39:47]** like, oh, this has to be the hardest part. And then they turn into toddlers and you're like,

**[39:52]** oh, no, no, no, this has to be the hardest part. And then they start getting bigger kid problems.

**[39:56]** And then I know parents that have teenagers or adult children and they're like, no, no, no,

**[40:01]** it's hard here, here and here. I'm curious your perspective from from a business.

**[40:06]** What has been the most challenging season at virtuous?

**[40:12]** Yeah, it's funny that you relate it to raising children. Most of my time at virtuous I when I

### 40:19 — The hardest season: 2021–2022

**[40:20]** started my kids were like eight, six and four. And now they're 1916 and 14. And so I've actually at

**[40:29]** the same time as we grew a business raised a family. And there's so many things that I

**[40:33]** like overlap to those processes. One thing I actually think is really important for everyone

**[40:39]** to know is sometimes we treat business in the decisions we make, as if every business is the

**[40:45]** same, same age, same problems. I'm like, the tactics I had when I raised my kids when they were

**[40:51]** eight, six and four, versus when they're 18, 16 and 14 are very, very different.

**[40:58]** And you're not still putting them in timeout, you mean? Is that still part of the.

**[41:02]** And so I think like, that's when I say that it feels very much like common sense. And I was like,

**[41:07]** yeah, duh. But then I feel like when we look at businesses, we don't think about like the

**[41:11]** maturity of the company and the maturity of the team, the maturity of where they're at, where it's

**[41:15]** at and its size. And honestly asking ourselves, like, am I changing? Because my parents had the

**[41:22]** same way as I did 10 years ago versus today. Like that would be idiotic. And I wouldn't be a good dad.

**[41:27]** And so I think that like, one, you have to be willing to shift your approach and be adaptable

**[41:32]** yourself. Like growth mindset is so, so important. Like, because the leader of the business needs is

**[41:39]** very different every couple of years. So to your question, honestly, I feel like we had every black

**[41:46]** swan event in the books, you know, when virtuous through the years. I mean, we thought 2020 was

**[41:52]** going to crush us. I mean, so much of fundraising shrunk and people, but actually that was one of

**[41:57]** our biggest growth years. The SBB collapsed. That was fun when it's Saturday and you think,

**[42:02]** oh gosh, are we going to have money in the bank on Monday? Luckily we've got a CFO who moves really

**[42:08]** fast. Like that was a fun one. Honestly, and I don't know how everyone will take this. I want

**[42:14]** to say 21 and 22 were probably our hardest years. And honestly, when I look at the type of people

**[42:21]** that we were trying to hire, there was so many misaligned expectations in the job market for

**[42:27]** what it took to be successful. And then what everyone thought was normal and reasonable to

**[42:33]** work at a SAS company. Now it's tough. Cause I'm like, I know I'm CRO work for company, but like

**[42:39]** I've been and sort of like grown through this to see what's worked and what hasn't. You just have

**[42:46]** to be willing to do what it takes to win. And I think that at that point we were hiring people

**[42:52]** that were like working two jobs and remote culture was killing it cause killing us. Cause it was like

**[43:00]** half the time. I don't even know if they were at their desk. And the thing that frustrated me,

**[43:06]** right? It's like, it wasn't necessarily their fault, employee's fault, that time of the market,

**[43:14]** CEOs and CROs, they were burning four, five, six dollars just to acquire one dollar of revenue.

**[43:21]** And so when you do that and you don't know how the sausage is made, if you're just like,

**[43:26]** Hey, I've just got a job at this tech company, you think that's normal and money was free and it was

**[43:32]** easy and it was flowing. And I think that created misaligned expectations for a few years. I'm like,

**[43:38]** what is normal in the job market and what you can expect from a company? So I say that cause I still

**[43:44]** think the most important part for us today and always has been, has been talent. Like a good hire

**[43:53]** does amazing things. If you get it right, a bad hire does 10 X of the opposite. And I think that

**[44:00]** was probably our most challenging time where we were sort of growing a ton, trying to find people

**[44:05]** who were like mission aligned, we're willing to do, right? Go the extra mile bought in like

**[44:11]** team mindset. I think that season, and that was true across a lot of organizations,

**[44:17]** a lot of companies at the time was very much the hardest. And again, I say it's tough cause I'm like,

**[44:23]** I might have a, I might have a skewed viewpoint. I know miss hero, but like at the end of the day,

**[44:28]** like this, this is also the thing that I feel like has allowed me to be successful is like just

**[44:34]** going for the mission. You work hard and you stay a little bit longer than it's comfortable and like

**[44:40]** good things will always happen with the right people in the right teams. Like find a good team.

**[44:47]** I have a deep appreciation for that. I think talent from my perspective has been one of the

**[44:52]** biggest challenges as well, getting the right people that are bought in and there is, oh my

**[44:58]** goodness, such a difference between an A player and a B player. It's not one level. It's like

**[45:05]** exponentially different. And I used to, I knew that in theory and then being responsible for

**[45:13]** the entire business and seeing it in action, seeing it play out, seeing it in reality was

**[45:19]** just eyeopening. And I think like doing everything you can to get those A players and even if,

**[45:27]** I've, I've gone as far as like, Hey, I don't, we don't even have a role,

**[45:30]** but you're incredible. I need to figure that out. We'll make, we'll make something. Yes. And then

**[45:36]** if anybody is, and I don't want to be too like ruthless about it, but the B players don't change.

**[45:43]** I always had this hope that like, Oh, they get a little bit more experience, enablement, whatever.

**[45:47]** It's going to turn around and change. No, A players come in day one and they're productive

**[45:51]** and they're phenomenal. And you never, ever question if you're going to let them go.

**[45:55]** Like that thought never crosses your mind. If it does cross your mind,

**[45:59]** it's probably not going to change. Yeah. There's a lot of self accountability, right? You never

**[46:03]** necessarily have to tell them where things going wrong. They, they, they will seek guidance,

**[46:07]** feedback or inquisitive, but often are never surprised when you give them feedback or never

### 46:11 — High-agency problem solvers

**[46:14]** surprised when you say something's not working. Cause they're like, Oh yeah, know that seen it have,

**[46:19]** have a plan have already tried these three things. What do you think? And yeah, I'm with you. We've

**[46:24]** hired a lot of people where I'm like, Hey, I don't even know if I have a role, but I just need you on

**[46:29]** the team. And I will tell you like the people that have gone the farthest at virtuous and have done

**[46:34]** well are just high agency problem solvers. I always say like, there's not really a clear ladder,

**[46:39]** especially when you're small, especially when you're growing, like you're just trying to deal

**[46:43]** with this next set of problems. But often the people who actually do get promoted, they're

**[46:49]** just tackling the next set of large problems and then they get to be in charge of it. So it's like,

**[46:55]** Hey, our outbound sucks. And someone goes, Hey, I have a really good plan. I'm thoughtful about

**[47:00]** this. Can I just, can I just try something? I'm like, yeah. And then it works. I'm like, Hey,

**[47:04]** guess what? You're an hour ahead of biz dev. Congrats. Like I love doing that stuff because

**[47:09]** then it's the sense of ownership is already built in when they step into the role. They're

**[47:14]** clearly, I trust them that they'll understand like the next set of problems. And honestly,

**[47:19]** we've had people at virtuous that have gone five, six different roles and it's always like

**[47:23]** problem related. It's like, where is their bottleneck? And I trust those people to just

**[47:28]** be like, Hey, next bottleneck. Like I need those people there. That is the biggest thing because

**[47:34]** the problems are going to change. So do you have someone who can figure that out when that happens?

**[47:39]** Not like, okay, I trained them up enough to be able to solve this particular problem on their own.

**[47:44]** And then, uh, oh, by the way, a new period, like 2122 comes around and things operate a little

**[47:50]** differently. You got to fix it. You need to make sure they're prepared to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And

**[47:55]** I think, uh, those people look at problems as opportunities versus problems as problems. Um,

**[48:01]** I always say like, if we run out of problems to solve a virtuous, we're, we've started to die as

**[48:05]** a company. Like that's the worst place that we can be on. So I love long lists of problems that we

**[48:09]** have that we know we need to solve. Cause that just means there's more opportunity for growth and

**[48:13]** improvement and like unlock. And people who look at that and go like, that's exciting. Can I solve

**[48:18]** them? I just need, no, I don't, I'm not an expert on finding them hiring. I'm like, I still don't

**[48:23]** have, that was going to be my next question. Like I really don't, I just know him when I see him and

**[48:29]** I, and I, I like to find high agency people just like give them problems to solve. I mean,

**[48:38]** is there even a way to interview for it or test for it? I feel like I haven't been able to correct

**[48:44]** that code either, or what experience you look for or getting referrals and references. It's like,

**[48:50]** I, I've had plenty of people that like do a phenomenal job during interviews. We even have

**[48:56]** case studies and tests we have do, and then they get in the real job and just crash and burn. I'm

**[49:03]** like, how, I'm like, I don't even know what I could have done to vet this better. So I was hoping

**[49:09]** maybe you had something. I wish. I don't know. And I still don't know how to test for it well.

**[49:17]** And we started to do more like cognitive tests. We started to do things like understand people's

**[49:22]** aptitude, but at the end of the day, like it comes down to having a bit of a chip on your shoulder,

**[49:28]** enough grit to like move through problems. And this is the other thing. Like this is very hard

**[49:35]** to do on an interview because in the interview, like that person is trying to put their best

**[49:41]** face forward to get a job and sort of like showing weakness or showing vulnerability is

**[49:48]** almost, I feel like impossible to do those scenarios. But when in the real life, it looks

**[49:54]** like people who are like very open and honest about the problems they're running into

**[50:00]** and not hiding them. And I think that's the thing. It feels like it's the opposite

**[50:06]** that you would do is like, let me bring all of my problems. Now I do think like having solutions,

**[50:11]** all of those things are important. But the last thing I want is like one-on-ones with people that

**[50:16]** everyone's like, everything's going great. I'm like, no, no, no, that can't be right. Like what's

**[50:20]** broken? And I want people to be like, this is broken and this is why. And this is broken. And

**[50:25]** I don't think we need to worry about it. And this is broken. And I'm going to need your help with it.

**[50:28]** Like then we actually have something to work on because the point is not just to like

**[50:32]** come in and check boxes and like do work. The point is to solve problems.

**[50:40]** Well, when you figure it out, just let me know. I'd love to steal your playbook on it.

**[50:44]** Yeah, I'll listen. We find your next podcast hosts and they'll, they'll do it again. I think

**[50:50]** you know it when you see it. And when you find those people on your team, giving them more money

**[50:56]** and promoting them as fast as humanly possible. Like I want to create environments where they

**[51:01]** feel like this is the place I want to be for a long period of time. And that's something I feel

**[51:05]** like we do well is create longevity for employees who may not know it all, but are like are able to

**[51:11]** figure it out. And like, that's the most important thing to them. You've already had an incredible

**[51:21]** run with Virtuous. Virtuous is doing very, very well. I would love to hear from, from your

**[51:27]** perspective, what's the future for Virtuous and what's the future for you and go to market?

**[51:33]** Yeah, that's a great question. So for Virtuous, like I think for us, we're continually wanting

**[51:40]** to fulfill this promise of how do we create a world where every individual donor has individualized

### 51:46 — N of One and what's next with AI

**[51:47]** experiences. And that's why our book, like Inn of One fundraising, the whole idea is it's a medical

**[51:52]** term and comes from like the research world where every patient is an Inn of One is a sample of one.

**[51:58]** And you build medicine and design around an individual. So our whole idea is how people

**[52:06]** who have individual passions, individual desires, motives, and especially when you give somewhere

**[52:13]** your time or your money, it's a highly personal thing. People do without a very deep conviction,

**[52:18]** right? And usually when you think about all the places that you've given personally,

**[52:22]** it usually comes tied with like a deep, meaningful reason. And so the more that non-profits can

**[52:28]** connect with those donors in a way that honors that intention, like we believe generosity will

**[52:32]** skyrocket. Like that is the most important thing is we want to create more generosity in the world

**[52:37]** by giving tools to nonprofits to help unlock that at the donor level. So like we want to be

**[52:42]** the biggest nonprofit software company in the world. We've got dreams to do it while also

**[52:48]** being a top decile SaaS company and having the best KPIs in the world. We don't think again,

**[52:53]** those things are mutually exclusive that we can't be an amazing company and do things in a way that

**[53:00]** we feel like are very special in changing the world. Leaning into AI, I know everyone

**[53:06]** is saying that and it's hard to know like, well, what does that actually mean? The biggest thing

**[53:11]** for me is like, I'm kind of geeked out and excited. Like I'm a kid again. Like it's the first time I

**[53:16]** got to the library and the internet was there. And I am like just the exploration, the excitement of

**[53:22]** like, what could be with that? The number one thing I'm telling my team is like, I can't really

**[53:28]** predict the future. There's good things. There's scary stories that are coming out. But like the

**[53:33]** thing I want to do as I want to know as much, I want to be exposed to as many of the tools.

**[53:40]** I want to be as smart as I can be. So when real decisions start needing to be made, when the

**[53:46]** actual culture of things start to shift, when work starts to look very, very different,

**[53:51]** I'm just ready to adapt and ready to go because I want to be adaptable. And I think this is just

**[53:55]** such a fun environment. Now I'll let the frontier models and politicians figure out where this all

**[54:02]** goes. But I do think that for me, I want to come in with a sense of positivity and just say like,

**[54:08]** this could be so exciting. And I truly believe like for some of our largest problems in the world,

**[54:15]** AI is a way to fundamentally shift like how we can cure diseases, how we can solve

**[54:21]** some of our biggest problems. Like, that's exciting. And so to me, I'm just like, you know,

**[54:27]** I've always thought change is inevitable. Bring it on. This is a fun way. Like,

**[54:31]** I get to feel like a kid again, some some respect. So, you know, it's a little bit of both what's

**[54:37]** next for virtuous and me in that sense. Like, I, it sounds simple. I love working on big problems

**[54:44]** with people I really, really enjoy. I just happen to be really good at go to market. And that's the

**[54:48]** thing that I like to do. But I really do feel like the next 10 years is on the precipice of like so

**[54:54]** many fun, cool things to be able to do that again, and having tools in ways that like we've never

**[55:00]** imagined. And again, I love people. And so I don't think that that removes humans out of the equation.

**[55:07]** If anything, I think it just empowers them to do what we do best, which is have a spirit have heart

**[55:13]** have souls and like, do good in the world. Well, I love the optimistic approach to I think

**[55:22]** realism baked in there too, of course, there's going to be challenges. And

**[55:28]** but I think a lot of the benefits, one, it's inevitable, we're just moving that direction

**[55:32]** anyway. So you might as well do your best to navigate it. But I do think once we get through

**[55:38]** whatever the major societal hurdles will end up being, I think on the other side, we have an

**[55:43]** opportunity to build a much better world. 100%. Yeah, I'm with you. David, this has been

**[55:51]** phenomenal. Thank you so much for being here sharing everything you have. I am shocked that

**[55:58]** two boys from Awetuki and Mountain Point High School have ended up in tech and have built

**[56:03]** real careers in it. And I think there's something that's really, really grounding about your

### 56:06 — Closing

**[56:08]** approach, and building something real building something of immense value, and really sticking

**[56:16]** to it having roots in the company. I don't know, maybe it's a maybe it's a Phoenician thing,

**[56:20]** something that we do. But I think everything you shared on how to build partnerships, how to build

**[56:26]** a brand, what it takes to really make it through be in the long haul, be adaptable reinvent yourself

**[56:32]** as the world around you is changing every single day. I know you and I will be challenged with

**[56:37]** that over and over again. So I appreciate you sharing that. So David, thank you for being on

**[56:41]** the show. And I can't wait to see what you and Virtuous do next. Thanks, Anthony. Yeah,

**[56:47]** this has been a joy. It's so much fun to talk through this. And I just I love go to market,

**[56:52]** I love software, I love doing this and keeping the human part the most important thing. It's

**[56:55]** it's a joy to do the work I do. Thank you. Thank you.


---

_LeanScale Knowledge Hub. Free to quote and cite with attribution to The LeanScale Podcast (https://www.leanscale.team)._