How To Increase Launch Velocity With Nathan Bowser

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I’m Eric Chemi, and this is Politely Pushy. Welcome to Politely Pushy, folks. I’m your host, as always, Eric Chemi. I’m excited for today’s conversation

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because we’re ho We’re here with Nathan Bowser, who you’ve done so many things. You’re the host of the Awesome Future podcast. Your company is Awesome Future. You’re doing so much with go to market strategies for disruptive companies that are either startups trying to break out

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of their own, you know, into their own trying to create new categories, disrupt existing categories. So, you’re a busy busy person. I appreciate you spending time with me today. Thanks for coming on the show, Nathan. >> Absolutely, Eric. It’s great to chat with you. >> What?

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>> It’s a pleasure to be here. Yeah, >> it’s a pleasure to have you. What What are you working on today? Like I’m just curious like what is in your mindset if you if we’re not doing this podcast. What is the rest of your day look like? >> Well uh most weeks uh and today included

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uh I’m talking with CEOs and go to market leaders on my podcast The Tech Glow Up. Uh on The Tech Glow Up I take a human approach to talking about technologies and I use it as an opportunity to learn from CEOs and people who have sort of been there and

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done everything in innovation uh to to get advice for other founders uh go to market strategists and leaders uh about the uh the successful ways to approach the complicated work of launching new ideas into the world. Um, that’s part of what I do. Uh, I also work with

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disruptive companies on go to market problems. I have a silly simple framework uh that’s called that I talk about as launch velocity, right? And simply like the frequency of the launches and campaigns that you put out into the world tells me two really

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important things I need to know about your chances for success. Right? The number of times that you put new campaigns and launches out into the world is kind of like the shots on goal that a B2B technology has to engage and activate their customers.

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And uh the excuses that you might give me when I suggest that hey maybe if we doubled or tripled your launch velocity, right? We actually do less but more frequently. Uh we can increase your launch velocity and you start to see linear growth immediately and the kinds

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of learnings and activations that that drives in your team is the exponential stuff that starts to really unlock growth. Most teams when they tell me, you know, when I say, “Hey, let’s triple your launch velocity,” right? You’ll hear like, “Oh, but Nathan, like there

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is no way that my team is going to follow me, right? There’s no way we can.” >> That’s what I was going to say. I was going to say the idea of increasing velocity and frequency from the people that we are probably mutually talking to seems very scary. It seems like a recipe

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for failure. It seems like, well, absolutely we can’t do this. Is a non starter. I I totally get that they’re asking those questions because I was going to about to ask you, but wouldn’t they feel this way? >> Yeah. So, like, what was the first thing that came to mind? Like, what was your

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like, but Nathan, we we couldn’t triple our quarterly launches because >> because we’ll probably screw them up and we need to get them better before they’re ready to get out the door. That’s one thought. We’re overworked as it is. That’s another thought. We we’re

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we’re they’re all halfbaked ideas. They’re they’re not we’re not sure about them. We can’t we can’t, you know, make so many bets. We got to just pick a couple of strategic bets and not, you know, dilute ourselves. These are the things that I think I’ve heard many times.

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>> So these kinds of objections, right, like the reasons why you couldn’t take a step that would drive immediate results of your growth, right? like those objections are the obstacles that are standing in your way, right? It’s a limiting mindset. It you’ve maybe overburdened

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your team with too many like keeping the lights on tasks that you can’t actually see how they’re driving value, right? And so instead of being fleet and nimble and agile to like respond to a very disrupted market, like you’re telling me that it’s like more important to send a

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questionable email than it is to like test new things to learn and grow, right? Like one of the other things you said is like what if it’s not perfect, right? If we’re >> look bad, we don’t want to look bad sending stuff out that’s not good. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And that that’s

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like perfectionism, right? Like that’s an assumption that people are actually reading your emails, right? Like that’s a there’s this like incredible disconnect uh between what you’re hoping your content is doing and the results it’s actually showing in your funnel.

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And if you do less more frequently, right, uh maybe don’t put as much content in that email so that it takes half as long to put out, right? there’s silly simple things that you can do uh to carve out some innovation time. And I’ll I’ll tell you right Eric like

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another way to think about it uh right uh that’s maybe a little less controversial is like every major CEO right now Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Evan Spiegel at Snapchat, uh even like Reed Hastings at Netflix, they’re all like talking about we need to run

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internal startups in our companies. We need to like take down the meeting load. We need to work in fleet like quick responsive teams that have clear direction and a mandate to add value to the product. Right? Jeff Bezos has a two pizza rule for meetings, right? You got

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to be able to like feed everybody who’s going to be in the meeting with two pizzas, which means 10 people or fewer. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t like to manage more than 20 people at a time. And like the reason why these like leading CEOs of some of the largest companies are

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focused on like working like a startup is because the clarity that those teams get is like empowering. Having closely aligned teams that are also highly empowered is like incredibly satisfying and like builds accountability, right? Like starts to build trust. there’s a

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number of like incredible benefits that like working in a small empowered team can deliver. Uh and most of the time you were only thinking about this on the product side, right? How are we building the code? How are we building the product? And what I think is like a

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total no-brainer is like when you take that learn, that focus direction, that mandate to add value to the product and bring insights back to the org. Like when you put that on the go to market side, when you have that innovative approach, when you’re learning and testing and

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growing and shipping quickly, like you build an innovation engine on both sides of the company and you can feed back and improve the work uh in both directions. Uh, sorry I went on a bit of a rant there, but uh, I think one of the big reasons is like it’s proven that this

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kind of work is great and go to market’s just kind of still working in the 90s uh, when things are pretty fast on the tech side. >> No, I love I love all those all those avenues because it gives me a lot of angles to to talk give you some questions. First off,

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where did you come from that you became the expert? Like why are companies calling you to say, “Hey, Nathan, help us figure this out. We have this problem.” What was your background originally? >> Yep. Uh I’m sort of on like a third dream career. Uh I never fit into like

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one box. I was like a theater major who like uh spent a decade as an art gallery director and then like really like this journey starts when I made the move into like B2B technology. So, how does how does a theater major doing art go into B2B tech? Because then I’m going to ask

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you about your recent Tech Global podcast with with Caitlyn Ley talking about English majors winning the AI. So, we we got a lot to to get through. >> Yeah. >> Uh let me >> Yeah. So uh I had a really powerful introduction to the idea of technology

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innovation through an event uh about a dozen years ago called delight. It’s an experienced design event that was built around the idea that companies that are loved win and that like a great customer experience is a great business strategy. This made total sense to me. I

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bought in 100% and I joined the team so that I could like get closer to the ideas and that kind of leadership. And what I quickly discovered is that that was a pretty unique and early perspective in the digital space. We were still trying to convince people that they

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needed a mobile website and like I joined this, you know, this marketing agency and this tech firm that had a really explicit value around great user experiences and like content that really helps and adds to the conversation. >> How did you get that job though? What

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did you offer them as a resume? >> Yeah. uh they needed somebody who could understand and support the event side of the work that they were doing and also that they could train into being a very specific kind of B2B market content marketer. And so my background, right,

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being in the art gallery world is it you’re launching new events. Uh you’re doing event marketing on a monthly or better basis. And um that was honestly like working in art galleries is a fantastic way to learn about selling to executives. >> That’s true.

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>> Like you’re in their house right there. >> Yeah. You’re in their house seeing how they live, you know? It’s it’s the best customer research. Um so um I got this bug that like mark B2B marketing and technology was a way to impact user experience and then I joined like other

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agencies and went to other uh you know went to other startups and I quickly realized that that was a very novel and differentiated idea that most people hadn’t bought on to the impacts of user experience the importance of clarity like those real human stories and So uh

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I spent about a decade working many different sides of like deep tech innovation after this agency work uh where I was a like agency uh marketing leader who was working with pharma brands who was working with supplements who was working with technologies and educational institutions.

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Right? I started I was the number 12 uh employee at a 13 person startup. I was employee 30 at a NASDAQ acquired startup that grew to over 200 uh where we were working and launching like deep tech projects with Fortune 500s and uh larger. And then I had the

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opportunity to work as the chief marketing officer for augmented world expo which is one of the leading uh communities and professional organizations in the spatial computing space. And so over the last decade uh I’ve sort of constantly been searching

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uh researching hosting uh building uh events programming content prototypes exploring uh these ideas of deep technology, virtual reality, augmented reality. how marketers, designers, and creators can like use those tools to uh tell stories to connect with audiences

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to like both prove the value of these new technologies, but also then like to use them as a marketer and as a communicator. And uh so there through this whole time there’s this like curiosity this through lines of curiosity of education of demystifying technology and like how

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crucial research and user experience are to these you know new ideas. Um so why do people come to me and ask for help when they’re like trying to build new categories? They’re trying to grow and scale disruptive technologies. I mean the first one is that I have seen

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every single side of the business problem that they’re trying to approach and I have this weird sort of out ofthe-box business empathy that helps me really understand where there’s key problems and like the kinds of like very basic elemental blockers that get in the

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way um of people as they grow uh through these different sizes of of teams and innovation. Um, I’m going to take a breath because I think I started to get to your answer, but I want to make sure that >> No, this is this is good. I’m going to ask something totally

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off topic, but it came to me. Having been an art gallery person, where’s all the art in the background of this Zoom shot here and this Streamyard shot? Like, I was expecting to see something fancy. I see that little tower looking thing. >> This is a Ray Davis uh drawings, a local

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Portland artist. uh that I adore. Uh this is Glitch magazine, which is like a an augmented reality sort of art book exploring art and culture. We have a Heather Dunaway Smith augmented reality print. >> Uh above that, uh this is the Wajimaya calendar. It’s still pretty. Uh

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uh and there’s some others. Oh, there’s a Christopher Russell uh multi-layer photograph that glows in the dark that you can’t quite see. >> I see. I see. It’s just It’s hiding in the background. Not Nothing’s Nothing’s like so gigantically big. You’ve got all

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these little uh little little fun Easter eggs hiding back there. >> Oh, yeah. We uh we’re a tiny home family. So then I do I because I’m still curious about your background and then your most recent like said the tech globe podcast. So you have this the Caitlyn on from

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Cisco who was going to be a teacher then worked at Facebook and is saying why English majors will win the AI era and Nick you’ve got kids I got kids that we think about what should they be studying because look at this last three years AI can do all the work.

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>> AI knows everything. So what are we learning? What are we exactly trying to do here? And and if that’s three years on AI, what’s it going to be three from now? What will it be 10 from now? >> Mhm. Well, Eric, uh I try to stay out of like big trend scouting and predictions.

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>> Uh I really try to stay super focused on like what is actionable and valuable for business today. Uh but I will join you on that. I will share a few things, a few perspectives on like where AI is going. >> Or how about this? How about I make it more? How about I make it like the

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people that you’re talking with like this recent podcast, what is their what is their current reasoning about what people should be learning today? How about how about that? That helps you be more specific. >> Yes. So on the tech glowup right I talk

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with CEOs and go to market leaders about the journey of innovation and like what it takes to protect you know adapt build up great ideas until their time comes. And so I will tell you that in the last 6 months and incredibly so at the health conference in October where I talked

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with over 20 uh healthcare executives that AI is is sort of like a marketing musthave. uh every technology is an AI technology and uh everyone is still really kind of trying to find how they differentiate. They know that they need to have AI uh but how they differentiate and how they

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add value with AI to their products and to their current customers is a thing that’s being developed uh and is growing. I think the ones that you find uh are most advanced uh are the ones that are using AI to sort of accelerate uh the things that people are already

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doing or give time back. Like one of the most common refrains that I heard at health uh whether it was from open evidence or point-and-click care was like we have to give people time back like doctors and nurses and the people who are like trying to like you know who

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are facing incredible challenges in the American healthcare system just need a break. And like if we could use AI to give them 10 minutes back in their hour or like a bit of focus, a bit of respit, a bit of clarity, like that’s worth it. Um, but I I would also say there is a lot of

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skepticism and like we’ve been talking about our kids and like what the future generation should be learning and my kids are incredibly skeptical. I would say like Gen Z is incredibly aware of ad tech that anytime you go to a website or enter an email address that that is a

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transaction and that people are going to be like learning about you and following you and they hate it. They also are hearing a lot. my senior in high school like their English classes are now only doing writing in the class because so much AI like cheating was happening that they’ve

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they’re removing technology out of English class and bringing it to writing in the moment so that students can have that time for critical thinking and like personal generation which like makes you better at using AI when you know what you’re trying to make in the first

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place. So, like my kids like will berate me and my wife if we use AI for like tasks that they’re being asked to do manually because they think it’s wasteful and expensive and like corporately greedy. And so I I honestly sort of suspect that like you’re going

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to have to convince my kids to use AI or like >> Fascinating >> Yeah. uh even though many of their peers are are like totally all in. Um, so you know the the question like uh what are skills like why why does an English major thrive in a scenario like this? And I think uh the easiest way to

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think about it is that most of what we’ve seen with LLMs to to date is predictive and responsive to things that have happened in the past, >> right >> and critical thinking that can adapt and look to the future is the skill that humans still have a very strong

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differentiation on and right like me personally one of my strengths is bringing really disperate ideas that have like some similarities and patterns or like hey you know I in the last six years I’ve talked to 300 executives working in deep technology and so I

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have a lot of reference points that I can pull from uh you know, hey, have you thought about this kind of model? Hey, what about this kind of campaign? And having that like deep personal database and this very associative style brain, I think uh is like so out of the box that

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it would be really hard to teach AI how to do it because it is very nuanced. It is very personal. It builds on a decade of being an art gallerist and as a tech marketer and as somebody who’s really interested in like 3D scanning and like uh the humanness, the

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connection to the real world like our understandings of our bodies, our nature, our health, our human goals, I think are the things that will allow you to differentiate and stand out when you’re using an advanced technology or when you engage with AI.

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>> I like the way you talked about every company’s got to say they’ve got AI, right? It’s not clear how much they actually have. How do you separate what’s hype from what’s real from what these companies are saying? >> I’ll give you one example. >> Yeah.

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>> That I think also kind of shows like the kind of differentiator that I bring. trust but verify was like the the like theme for how the healthcare industry seemed to agree about AI, right? There’s there’s a lot of push. I had like four or five executives on my podcast

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interviews literally call out like it’s time for paradigm shift in pharmacy in billing. Like straight up like whole new ideas. Um, so people are ready for AI. They’re ready for advancement. And this idea of like AI but like a human in the loop or like AI results but we’re going to

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include the original sources so that you can like verify everybody was agreed like this is the level of safety that we need. So anytime a technology told me right oh you know we’re a chat and you know we include the links to the original sources or you know we don’t do

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prescriptions you know we provide the certain details and then like give reference points and journal articles I started asking what’s the clickthrough rate to those additional validation steps what do you think uh so Eric you laughed Right? Like, so out of say a dozen

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people that I asked this question of like, do you track the click-through rate and what is it on these human validation steps? What do you think the best answer I got was? >> Okay, I bet most people don’t track it, but they might say they tracked it, and

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they might say the click-through rate is 40, but maybe in reality it’s 5. So, you’re pretty spot on. The best answer I got was we track it and it’s pretty good. >> Some of the answers I got was like, “Oh, people haven’t asked for that yet.” It was and like as a marketer who’s you

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know a communicator who needs hard data to you know tell stories about technologies this idea that like this is the foundational concept we have for how we’re going to use AI and like we’re not even tracking it. It’s how we’re selling you know the power of the tool and we

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don’t even know how often that gets used. That to me was like incredibly telling about uh the percentage of these solutions that are actually uh sort of fully realized uh at the level that they might be advertising. And that sort of painoint is why I just

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stay away from the hype cycles and and really try to stay focused on like, hey, Eric, you’ve got a business goal, right? like hey what is the kind of solutions you know that suit that I I try to bring it into like what we can do today and and try to let you know this the CNETs

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and the CNNs and the Yahoo businesses deal with the trends cuz like if you’re trying to do business now if you’re trying to grow an organization now talking about the future like typically is like a recipe for disappointment. Um, but when you can be really clear about

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what your core value is today and like the outcomes that you can drive, you know, whether you’re in health tech or whether you’re like scrubbing dirty, you know, fuel sources and and creating uh graphine from propane, you know, like uh you have to be able to talk about what

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people can do now cuz like the future uh it’s too abstract and it changes, right? like there’s so little certainty that uh you know a connection to something real that’s tangible is like really a differentiator now. So how do you coach teams to balance datadriven decisions

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with some of that creative intuition right with let’s say a an artistic expression kind of brain or vibe they want to go for but we need to have data. How do you coach them? Hmm uh it’s going to go back to do less more frequently again. And I think the one of

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the big challenges, you know, when you’re trying to be data driven is that like you’re trying to see the whole funnel and you want to see all the interconnected causalities. And sometimes you need to just pick one metric and move it forward, right? And so like I I’ll give you an

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example. I was working with a like a pretty innovative 3D scanning technology that had like a really notable brand and uh kind of a a new hot technology with some big year-end goals. and they were like, “Okay, we really need to hit these year-end goals, but we also need

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to like build out this new media campaign and we need to like start a B2B partnerships and and and and and so like one of the first steps that we had was like we we sat down and we looked we metric that like we win on this year if we actually move it forward and then

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let’s look at all these other activities, all these other goals, all these other, you know, emotions and either eliminate the ones that don’t line up to that goal or find a way that they can be in support of that one thing, right? And so instead of like a wide nozzle spray of marketing

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activities like to hit all of this, right? to really focus on what we thought was going to make a difference and then use research to validate and drive improvements on those goals and you know on those activities and what I’ll tell you is even in some of the

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like and this organization was true for this they had a fantastic research work they had a like they had teams of UX researchers of of market researchers who were supporting all the different products, but the problem was this one team was just one product within like a

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suite. And so they might get quarterly access to the UX team to the researchers. That’s it. >> Right. You love. So like how do we do three launches if we only get one research question a quarter? And so this is I think a a place where go to market orgs are like totally under selling the

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value that they have back to the product and back to the greater org. Right? When you only focus on sort of like sales metrics, conversion metrics and forget to that marketing is like the primary touch point for user interaction is the primary touch point for feedback is the

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primary learning spot, right? And so I really encourage go to market teams to think about themselves as researchers, right? As a they’re not just a broadcast channel, but you are a sensor, right? You are learning and if you’re doing your job right, these tests that you do,

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these increased launches that you do are bringing in insights that you hopefully are bringing back to the whole team. and you know that aren’t just I said this before you know you want insights coming in on both sides so you can meet in the middle on where the real value is and so

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um and what you’ll find and I I honestly like the the executive that I was talking with just a moment ago on my own podcast like sort of sheepishly admitted that he still liked doing in-person client visits for research even though he thought it was above like below his

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pay grade to be doing like research visits. But I think one of the reasons why he is so good in the role that he does is that he continues that connection to the customer and uh sees that as a core part of a strategic leader’s responsibilities and I think um

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it lights you up like when you see somebody using your tool right you learn so incredibly quickly and uh you can see how the changes and ideas that you made work or don’t and like that kind of learning is a success and if you can build a culture of accountability and of

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learning and of growth. Then like everybody can start to bring in their own signals and add uh and marketing starts to be a value in instead of just like an expense uh or an output. Then how do you so so this is let’s say that the getting to market is like

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getting stuff done but what about now the other side of it? You’ve worked with a lot of brands. They got to cut through the noise in these crowded markets, right? Like they’ve got their product. They’re out there. They they’re internally good. But what about building

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a message? What’s your go-to formula for getting them to build a message that sticks and cuts through the noise? >> Authenticity. uh frequency and authenticity are like the two biggest drivers of like engagement uh in today’s channels. Uh, and they are also the things that

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most brands, especially like the ones who are concerned about like getting it right or showing up, you know, not being embarrassed, uh, it’s really hard. Uh, >> they don’t have enough authenticity because they’re they’re double thinking too much and they’re probably not frequent enough.

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>> Yeah. I mean, I um I actually have two my brain is kind of short circuiting with too many examples of like how like you could go to almost any so like a a health an electronic health record company that uses AI to save time. I I could say like the same five value

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propositions and find it on like 90% of tools in that category and and I think where like especially technologies need to shift frame like their frame of mind and and this is a place where like leaders CEOs can really do a lot um can make a big impact is if you move from

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thinking about the best industryspecific way to talk about what you made your technology and to totally revolutionize into talking about how your customers use it, right? Like if you’re if you are fraught about like finding the best like organization of interoperable API fire standards,

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you’re going to lose everybody and you’re only vaguely signaling to like your actual audience. Like it’s just that’s table stakes, >> right? >> Uh for somebody who’s actually looking for your product. So, like, oh, like Nathan’s the energetic out of the box

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person who like gets me excited about every meeting. Like, it’s way more important that Eric knows that Nathan’s full of ideas and has an energy that I just love than it is to know that my shelf is tidy, right? And like I actually argue with my wife about like

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working from home and having so much of real life in the frame. And I would argue that it’s one of the things that like makes people trust me, right? Like I show up to a health tech conference uh wearing like a a fuchsia shoot like some of the mainstage like female speakers,

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but I’m still getting like male executives of some of the largest health tech companies to like open up and and cry on my podcast because they feel safety and connection in the authenticity in the way that I show up. And so like I have real personal data

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points that like I get conversations and I get connections with these these executives in ways that like nobody else does because I prioritize authenticity and because I prioritize the human side of what we’re doing. >> How but how does a company do that? When

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you say frequency and authenticity, frequency in what mediums, what platforms, and authenticity in whose voice? cuz let’s say for you you’re you but the company is a is a product. It’s not really a person. So how do you adjust for that? >> How should they adjust for that?

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>> No, that’s super good. Uh you always want to meet your audience where it is. And I think uh you know assuming that your audience wants to read a 50page white paper on LinkedIn, right? Like we’re on a video podcast for a reason, right? uh audiences have moved uh and so a lot

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of the things that uh you know as a very specific example like if you are a B2B technology and you are still focused on your white papers and your thought leadership if you’re not putting an executive or a product lead or even the designer of that white paper on a video

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and having them talk like this level of personal uh to a camera and just to tell you about like the behind the scenes or the the the strategy that went into it or the principles that drove the design or the research, >> you’re totally missing out and your your content isn’t

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isn’t delivering like we we like I think you know a 50-page white paper is a great example of like a keeping the lights on project that feels really important, >> right? And no startup, no startup would ever spend time doing that because that doesn’t actually move the needle and

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isn’t worth their time to actually make money. That’s not an ROI for them. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. That’s a should have, but that’s not a proven, right? And I I think >> uh often times it’s like it’s super simple. I was having a conversation on LinkedIn with some some other you know

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go to market friends and there’s a lot of like an anxiety about like can we do video and can we be like professional at the same time and there’s like silly simple things that you can do like get a good videographer and put them right in front of your executive at like the next

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time they’re speaking on stage and just get some good video footage that like is talking about your message from a person, you know, like uh there’s there’s incredibly simple things that you can do and it it just takes having enough brain space to really understand

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like who are we trying to reach? What are we trying to get them to do? And like what can we offer them in a you know that would be delightful that they might you know get a little bit step closer to what they’re trying to do. Well, well, I look forward to your

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50 page white paper coming out uh in in January. Uh Nathan, this has been fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much for the time. I I’ve loved hearing all of this. This this going to my brain’s got swirling with I got to rethink about a lot of things that that that I’ve been

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doing. Uh this has been great, Nathan. Thank you so much. >> Oh my gosh, Eric. It’s a pleasure. I uh hope I was uh enough polite and uh pushy uh for the show. >> Two thumbs up. I give you two thumbs up. Thank you to my guest and thanks for listening. Subscribe to get the latest

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episodes each week and we’ll see you next time.