Former Founding Team Member @ Cybrary

B2C2B SaaS (9 years - joined founding team member in 2015)

Venture-backed, Series C, $46m+ raised

4,000,000 Users

10,000,000 Annual Visitors (Approx. 40% Organic, 30% Direct, 20% Paid, 10% Referral)

$75m+ in total revenue (60% B2B, 40% B2C)

Product, Marketing, Product Marketing, Sales, Customer Success

I joined Cybrary in 2015 as a founding team member and was privileged to witness the full arc of a B2C2B SaaS business—venture-backed and growing from idea to scale. During my decade-long journey, we raised over $46 million in venture funding, attracted 4 million users, and grew annual traffic to over 10 million visitors, with the majority arriving organically and directly. By the time I exited the business in 2024, we had achieved $75 million in total revenue and transitioned from a pure B2C model to a B2C2B motion that unlocked B2B revenue, which ultimately accounted for 60% of our business.

As a founding team member, I wore many hats. I built out key business functions—Product, Sales, Customer Success, and Support—before hiring the leaders who would scale each one. I led Product and Marketing, and partnered closely with Sales and Customer Success to craft sales decks, onboarding frameworks, and more. Our success in go-to-market strategy hinged on understanding our industry’s unique opportunities and executing effective community and search strategies.

Through my experience, I’ve come to understand that there’s a significant difference between someone who has operated at the earliest stages of a startup and someone who has only advised from the outside. After working with countless agencies and consultants, I’ve seen many who lacked the necessary context and an understanding of how different functions integrate within a growing business. It's surprising how many out there never take the time to understand your business. It often feels like they haven't put a lick of thought into your business outside of your scheduled check-in. This leads to output which looks shallow and generic. What's more, you get what I call "lazy thinking" - bringing preconceived notions or attempting to pattern recognize your business with other businesses.

When working with me, you’re getting a multi-disciplinary thought partner who will push you and your business. I’ll hold you to the highest standard, challenge your assumptions, and help you extract what’s in your head and put it into a strategic plan. My methodologies will guide our discussions, but this won’t be about filling in templates. Startups are inherently difficult, but I’m here to make that journey a little easier for you.

I care about "first-principles thinking", outcomes over output, and understanding your business from the ground up. If you're not saying "I wish we could hire this guy", then I haven't done my job right.

One of my most memorable “bad consultant” experiences came when an investor brought in an outside consultant to advise on product-led growth (PLG). By this time, we had been drinking from the firehose of blogs, podcasts, and books on PLG. We had even run numerous experiments over years trying to unlock true PLG for the business - if you understand PLG, you understand that you can't fit a business into a box, every PLG is completely unique and authentic to the business. Even similar businesses in similar categories may have a different flavor of PLG.

Consultant: "Add a video to the landing page and give people a way to create a team and add their credit card."

Me: "Um, ok. We have tried similar experiments over the years, would you like to see the data?"

Consultant: "Have you ever heard [company x]? Let me show their onboarding...See how they let a new user create a team and add a credit card?"

Me: "...yeah. As I was saying, we tried something similar. Do you want to see the data? I can also walk you through a progressive approach we can take to run experiments to re-evaluate whether this approach will work without blowing up our Roadmap and the associated risks with what you're trying to push us to do."

My advice to all consultants, and something I personally value strongly: be open-minded. Seek to understand more than to be understood. Founders and early team members have been immersed in their businesses and thought about all the possibilities for far longer than you. Ask questions, seek to understand, and be empathetic to the resources available to founders during the early years.