One Year With Rohirrim
I recently celebrated my one-year anniversary at Rohirrim, and it’s been an awesome experience — both challenging and fulfilling.
In the spirit of the New Year, I thought reflecting on my time here would help me assess what I’ve learned and where I’ve grown, as well as ensure I am pointed in the right direction for my life and career.
I thought it would be worthwhile to provide feedback on lessons learned along the way, and comment on three of my biggest observations from the past year.
So, to start it off…
People Don’t Buy Products; They Pay for Outcomes!
This is a philosophy I have, and I’ve truly believed for a long time. I have been repeatedly reminded in my career that an approach to delivering outcomes for customers, rather than just “selling a product” is something that separates great companies from others that may look like them.
Many venture-backed startups optimize for growth efficiency, and want to “drop their software off” once they close a sale. This strategy is appealing because it has a less expensive business model to scale, as opposed to maniacally investing the time and effort required to exceed contracted expectations and ensure a project’s success for every customer.
Here at Rohirrim, we take pride in going above and beyond, and it’s been great to work with my peer Andrew Shoaff and the talented team of Customer Success Professionals he leads.
Andrew also subscribes to this philosophy, and as a result, he’s fostered a CS team culture where we do what’s right to ensure customers succeed with our platform. His team continually ensures that we’re helping our customers on their journey and learning together, providing great insights to our product team to prioritize specifics we can focus on that will impact customers.
As an early-stage company, we’re working to build a business that is optimized for growth. But most importantly, we know that our growth is predicated on the success of our customers leveraging our technology to fuel their growth! Aligning with the philosophy that “people don’t buy products, they pay for outcomes,” and remaining focused on our customers’ success with RohanRFP is a massive differentiator for us, and I’m proud that we have so many happy customers who acknowledge and rave about our team.
Execution > Strategy
A Peter Drucker saying I love is, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This quote has stuck with me so greatly that I’ve even coined my own mantra in the same vein: “Execution Over Everything!”
All companies have “great” strategies underpinning their ideas and offerings in the market. Startups, as disruptors, are often funded based on those ideas and their strategy for building the company. There’s always excitement when a founder brings a new idea to build a company around, and there’s always extensive talk about a strategy to disrupt the market.
The reality is that strategy will evolve, but real impact and success are created through continuous execution, with excellence, by the people doing the work. It’s not sexy, but aligning on a focus to ensure the day-to-day “blocking and tackling” gets done is the real underpinning of disruptive tech companies.
We’ve always had an innovative product and strategy at Rohirrim, and over the last year, we’ve made real impact for customers driven by the excellent execution of our teams.
It’s not always easy to stay on task as the opportunity for distraction in this fast-paced world of AI grows daily. There is constant change in a high-growth startup like ours, but we are acutely focused on delivering results for customers, and empowering our people to execute with excellence in all operational aspects.
This is a difference-maker. And while it may seem “obvious,” in the noisy world of high-growth startups, it’s easy to miss the fact that the difference between success and failure is the ability to execute.
So, it’s worth saying again, execution over everything!
Great Investors and Backers Make a Difference
We’re fortunate at Rohirrim to have some great backers. I wrote a blog about the hidden value of investors for startups earlier this year, and our great investors continue to make a difference for us as we enter another year in 2025.
We’ve been very intentional when choosing who we work with as a company, and we’ve been fortunate to secure and formalize genuine relationships with advisors and investors that have helped us tremendously over the past year. Our advisors, including Dr. Mike Papay, Todd Fredrick, Gen. Rich Clarke, and Ben Levitan among them, have helped guide us and make great connections to customers, adding momentum to our go-to-market execution.
While many large VC / PE firms have resources to “help” their PortCos, we’ve been blessed here with Insight Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and IBM Ventures all contributing value-added help proactively without interfering in the operation of the business.
These investors truly add value to us beyond growth capital. The experts and resources they offer provide great mentorship to help optimize decision-making, allowing us to continue streamlining operations and extend our network to connect with customers.
While I’ve worked with some great investment firms and advisors in my previous roles, it’s remarkable to experience the benefits provided by these amazing companies and people. The introductions and insights they collectively provide have been extremely valuable to us, helping shine a light on this important value-add from these great backers.
Despite being a career sales professional, I’ve also bought a lot of software, and being on that end of the process has really helped me understand the customer perspective in investing in software.
I’m grateful as I’ve learned from both good and bad experiences, and it’s been a pleasure over the last year with Rohirrim to capitalize on these lessons learned. There’s no better feeling than helping customers achieve their goals by leveraging your technology, and we’ve had some amazing customers join the Rohirrim Tribe in 2024. I’m excited to keep the ball rolling in 2025!
