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Introduction
A Technology sector deal maker, entrepreneur, diversity advocate, and community builder. These are some of the terms that describe Mona Sabet.
A Silicon Valley veteran, Sabet combined her expertise in engineering, law, and business to forge an impressive career that has included 100s of tech deals and nearly 50 acquisitions.
Sabet served as Chief Corp Strategy Officer for UserTesting and played a pivotal role in the company’s acquisition in 2022 for 1.3 billion. Most recently, she co-authored Sail to Scale, which examines common mistakes made by entrepreneurs from start-up to exit.
In this wide-ranging discussion, we cover Sabet’s entrepreneurial journey from Canada to California, and uncover insights from her latest book.
Eric Morse
So Mona, you've had a really interesting career going from science and engineering and law and then into entrepreneurship. Was entrepreneurship always on the radar? Or is this something you came to a little bit later?
Mona Sabet
I think it was probably deep in me at the very beginning, but very deep, and it had to be like excavated out over time. But I was saying earlier on that even in my law days, when I was working at law firms here in in Canada, which is arguably where innovation goes to die, I still found ways to sort of do things that were different from how most associates at law firms were doing, and was a little bit seen as being contrarian to, you know, what was going on with a law firm. So I think that that's probably where I first started realizing that I had that spirit in me. And then certainly I moved down to Silicon Valley in 1999 right in the middle of, literally, the internet bubble and the.com boom and everything like that and and so, you know, you couldn't really live down there for more than five years without being inculcated into the idea of, you know, what's the possibilities for new innovations and what could happen in the World of commercialization. And that really sort of brought it out of me.
Eric Morse
Yeah, interesting. It is, you know, people say it's in the water, but there is a buzz that is different in Silicon Valley than anywhere else I've ever been.
Mona Sabet
It's a density, along with just the depth of of technology, you know, that and the possibilities the technology can create, and also a culture that has developed that is very different from what I see in many different parts of you know, even the United States, much less the rest of the world, where, when we were doing our startup, we would reach out and talk to other founders who were doing startups in a competitive space to ours, and everybody would reach out and like, you just reach out to someone on LinkedIn and talk to them, and they're perfectly happy to, like, respond to you. And we all sit together and we talk about how hard it is, and you know, the emotions that we're experiencing every day. And you know, NDAs are not a big thing as much down there, and it's because everybody knows the idea isn't really worth it, right?
Eric Morse
Yeah absolutely. Well, what took you to the valley to begin with?
Mona Sabet
It was really 1999 and the.com bubble and the idea that. So, you know, if you step back a little bit, I started off my law experience here in Toronto. And I was working Toronto was the financial center of Canada, so I was working on a whole bunch of financial and insurance companies, and that was not very interesting to me. And my undergraduate degree was engineering. And I always knew I wanted to be in the world of tech and business through law, obviously. And so I just decided to get up and go someplace else where I could do more tech related law, which happened to be Calgary at the time. There was, you know, obviously a lot of oil and gas startups in Calgary, but there was also a lot of technology in the oil and gas space. So a lot of tech companies doing tech enabled stuff in that space, and it was easier for a lawyer, a young lawyer there, to actually lead a tech transaction in Calgary. Over here, you had to be the third person in a team with a partner at the top, right, right? So I up and drove to Calgary and then looked for a job and got one. And I did that for a few years, and then realized that the tech industry of startups was in Vancouver at the time, and so I up and moved to Vancouver, and then looked for a job when I got there and found one. And so this was just, it's not like Silicon Valley was the first time that I had gone in search of the right thing that I wanted to do. It was just a continuation, and it was a much bigger step, because I didn't think I was moving to another country. You don't think about the US being very different from Canada, but it was, it was a very different culture that I was experiencing when I went down there. Yeah.
Eric Morse
Interesting. Yeah. Okay, so you went west and then south.
Mona Sabet
I went west and then south, all in search of tech. Yes.
Eric Morse
Fantastic. I know, you know, part of your journey at usertesting and chief strategy officer there and involved in mergers and acquisitions, and you know, a couple questions with that. One, given your entrepreneurial lens and your your work with technology companies and your legal degree and experience, I'm sure that was, you know, big part of getting into that merger and acquisition side of it, but, but tell me more on the strategy side of it, in terms of that was a way to scale, I presume, and then talk maybe a little bit about, then an exit that was fantastic.
Mona Sabet
Yeah, that was a, that was a great experience. I mean, we'll, we'll start maybe. With the transition from law to non law. So I had joined before a couple of a couple of lifetimes before usertesting. I joined a company and that had raised a series a financing, you know, your traditional Stanford spin offs, San Francisco based company, blah, blah, and I was their general counsel, so still in the legal space, and after about a year and a half, because it was a software company, I had sort of put everything in place that you needed to put for the legal part of the business. And I went to the CEO, and I said, Look, you know, I'm expensive, and I've done it all, and you could probably hire someone cheaper than me, but, you know, this isn't interesting for me anymore. And he said, Okay, well, why don't you take on some product marketing and some business development. And so the beautiful thing about startups is there's always, like, too many things to do, and if you just raise your hand, you will get given stuff. And so that's really the beginning of how I started moving, and it was exciting for me, and I loved the opportunity and the difference, right? That led me to one of the board members, was a chief executive at another company, and that led me to be able to go into this other company and run corporate development specifically, you know, completely outside of law, right? And that's really where my M and A, I'd been doing M and A from a legal perspective, but M and A from a business perspective really kicked in. I remember the first time I was given one of their like, you know, SEC filings, and I was reading all the words, and then when I hit the, you know, financial documents, I skipped it and started reading the next set of words, because that's what lawyers do. And I thought, hold on, my job is actually the numbers, and I don't have to read the words. Okay, I got it so. So that was the beginning of me really sort of going deep into corporate development, and M and A and thinking about we were highly acquisitive. I mean, we did so many acquisitions in the period of time that I was there. And so really understanding what it took for a small company to get on a large company's radar, because we were the ones looking at all the small companies saying, like, literally all the small companies wanted to talk to me, because I was running M and A there and I had the money. I used to say that my job, my kids were young back then, and I used to say my job was shopping, to shop for companies. So that's sort of how I got into that space. Then moving more into what I'd call corporate strategy, was really a combination of even when I was in this corporate development role, I was doing a lot of, you know, corporate development really does involve a lot of work closely with a strategy group, except we didn't have a strategy head, and so doing a lot of work with the finance team and with the product marketing team to develop the strategy of the business, so we knew where to invest in in organically, whether it was partnerships or acquisitions. And that's sort of how I got into that space. So I know that when I first met usertesting, a funny story, I looked at the, you know, they were looking for someone, and I looked at the website, and I thought, you know, I don't see how this company could succeed. Shows how much I know. And I had really come from so much really deep tech, like everything that I had done before that was heavy, heavy tech, and this was a very simple technology solution. And so I had talked to the CEO and said, Well, I'm not really quite sure. And he said, Well, why don't we have another coffee? And let me tell you a little bit more. So we had another coffee with him, and he showed me, like the financials, essentially, again, no, NDA, probably not the right thing to do, but it was fine. And the market pull for this product that was not terribly deep. On the technical side, was unbelievable. And you know what I realized was that the internal execution he was telling me was really, really bad, and we really needed to figure out how to move out of like launch mode into Scale mode. But the market was pulling us forward regardless of how poorly we were executing. I'm like, this is, for me, I can do this right. Market pull is the hardest part. I can everybody else has fixed execution at some point or other. So that's what made me decide to join. And it was, it was ridiculous, right? I mean, you know, I joined when we were about 40 million in revenue, which, by Canadian standards, I think, is not bad, right, but was still quite small from, you know, being in the Bay Area, and then grew it to over $200 million in revenue over a period of four years, we did a few acquisitions during that period of time, went public. Luck on the New York Stock Exchange. And then, because 2022 hit and everything, sort of, you know, sort of started dissolving. All the PE started circling, all of the SaaS companies. And then we ended up exiting for $1.3 billion which wasn't a bad deal.
Eric Morse
It's not a bad deal, yeah. Especially then there was a lot of discounting going on...
Mona Sabet
there was a lot of discounting going on, yeah, and, you know, after we exited. So, you know, I was involved in negotiating the IPO as well as the exit. And after we exited to Thoma Bravo, I said to myself, well, you know, it's been four and a half years of intense literally, every day, seven days a week for four and a half years. So it was probably time to take a little bit of a break. But it was a great ride, and we had, you know, the thing that I think made us successful outside of the market pull, we had to do some crazy things still to be able to keep the market going at the space, the pace that we were going at, but we had a great team, and we really got along well. It was a lot of fun. That's great. That's the same time, right? Yeah, yeah. And I think that, you know, when people talk about internal culture, and they talk about, like, oh, and we're going to have vision and values and all of that, none of that really made a difference. It was very much trying to get a group of people together that we're doing something very hard together, but really being able to have fun along the way that turns the culture into something that's actually going to be a success for the business,
Eric Morse
Right? Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. Well, that's really cool. Well, we should talk about your book. This is exciting. So, sale to scale, yes. And you wrote it with two partners on this one, right? And really takes, you know, the entrepreneur, through the journey, right? It's launch, pivot, scale and then exit (yeah).What was the origin of, you know, I need to write a book. This needs to happen.
Mona Sabet
There's like, literally a combination of just my need to continue doing crazy things. So I was talking to one of my co authors, Heather, and she had just sold her company to service now, and I had just exited from usertesting, and we were talking and comparing notes and talking about all the stupid things and how amazing we still managed to do this in the face of all the mistakes that we made over the course of our career. And all the mistakes were really like, well, oh yeah, I did that. And oh my god, we did that too. And so there was a lot of back and forth on all of those mistakes. And Heather said to me, you know, I really would love to write a book about my experience. And whenever you say something to me, it just somehow, like I can't stop. And so it turns into reality. So I said, Okay, let's do that. Then we joined up with Maria. So Maria is a product expert. She has been at Google and Facebook and done some of the products that all of us use every single day, and the three of us very much. I call it a founding team for our founding startup, which was the book, because it was literally as hard as my startup was, but it was a great combination of people. And again, the thesis was that we had all experienced these same set of mistakes, sure, and that we wanted to write a guidebook for regardless of what point in the journey you were on, you could sort of open up to the right chapter and the right section and say, Oh yeah, what do I do next, you know? Or what do I not do next?
Eric Morse
Well, I love that you say it that way, because that's how I felt reading the book, like you can read it front to back. And I think, I think you should, I think an entrepreneur should, but really what you want is it by your desk. It's like, what am I going through now? And, right, yeah, what's the mistake I'm likely to make, and how do I avoid that?
Mona Sabet
And that was really the intent of it, yeah.
Eric Morse
Okay, yeah. Very cool. So I was thinking, you know, roadmap, because I don't say also, but I know where I want to go, but where am i right now and what do I need to be doing?
Mona Sabet
Yeah, we talk each about there's still four sections, the launch, the pivot, the scale and the exit, as you said. And we call them waves because we really felt like each one could be like an exhilarating ride, or it could crash your boat, make you sink. And so that's why we talked about them in terms of sailing and waves and all of that
Eric Morse
Interesting. You know, lot of similarities going through the mistakes made. You know, our students make the same mistakes.
Mona Sabet
Yeah, they're not, they're not uncommon, yeah, (no mystery at all).
Eric Morse
When, when you think about, you know, your experience in the valley and prior, what are the mistakes that just kind of make it dang. You know that you didn't have to do that
Mona Sabet
First time Founders, the one that I always talk about first that is in the book, is what we call, actually, was Maria coining this. But you know, being in love with the solution instead of the problem, yeah, the. That's and there's a number of other mistakes that you'll make during that early stage, but it starts with that, and then everything else follows from that. And I think when I talk about that, a lot of people nod their heads and say, yeah, no, that totally get that, and I don't do that, but actually they're still doing it. It takes a while to really understand what that means. So you know, if I explain to a technical person, for example, they're oftentimes saying, Well, this is my expertise, and so here's a technology solution, and I'm very creative, and I can apply it to a lot of problems. Well, that's still a solution in search of a problem, right? And really being able to so, you know, I talk about problem Market Fit instead of product market fit. Because a lot of when people hear the words product market fit, they start with a product, yeah, and you really need to start with a problem.
Eric Morse
I love that. Yeah, that's really nice way to say it. Actually, we should probably adopt that here as well. I love that. I love that. You know, when I I like the whole idea that one, one of the pieces in there that was also new for me was the all in on the pivot, oh yeah, you think of pivot. And we talk, we use the word all the time, all right? I mean, it's just common lingo, but to really do it well is not easy. And people throw the word around flippantly, like, oh yeah, just pivot. You'll be fine.
Mona Sabet
You're welcome. You can do that. Yeah, we and I've, you know, I've made this mistake, and I've hopefully learned from it, and there's so many different I think in every company that I've been at, there's been some kind of pivot, or other, even large ones. I mean, you're pivoting in many different ways. Y ou know, the current company we're working in, I'm working in right now is pivoting operationally. You know, we have been a very launch stage company where everybody did whatever it took to get to, you know, the revenue that we needed to get to, but we are getting. We're still spending, you know, the same amount of money to get the same amount of revenue. We're not scaling anymore. And so we have to pivot to be able to scale. And I think that the mistake that everybody makes is looking at whatever they have to pivot for. If I think about the last company I was at usertesting, our first attempt to have a pivot was really it's like, okay, well, we need to position our product differently for a different market segment. So it was a marketing pivot, but it wasn't a marketing pivot. In order to do it well, we needed sales teams to sell into a different customer base. So we needed a sales team pivot. And in order to do it well, we actually needed the product, even though it was the exact same product, to speak a different way because we were speaking to a different set of customers. So we needed a product pivot, and we sold it a different way than we did. So we needed a business model pivot, and we didn't think about all of those things the first time we pivoted. And so the first pivot wasn't terribly successful, and then we had to redo it all over again, but do it the right way. And so, you know, every single pivot really is an all in Pivot. It's you've got to take the entire company
Eric Morse
You talked about rethinking every piece...
Mona Sabet
Right. Exactly, yeah. And, you know, it's almost like a relaunch, and people don't invest that kind into it. But it's also like a really urgent relaunch. I mean, it's almost more urgent than your first relaunch, because if you take too much time pivoting, then all the people that totally believed because, you know, you were so definitive in that first vision that you told everybody that if you're pivoting, suddenly they're like it. But what about what you just said last quarter? But I'm still there, so you really have to be quick with your I pivot.
Eric Morse
So you can bring everybody along. That's right, you mentioned as well. You've been a pioneer your whole career, whether it's engineering, law, moving out west, moving south, from there, moving to Silicon Valley and getting involved in the tech world there. I know the numbers are still terrible in terms of equity, in terms of men and women in Silicon Valley and engineering. And I'm not sure what the law numbers are, but I guess they're still not quite where they need to be. You've been really big on building communities and support systems for women, and I know you continue in that work. Tell me a little bit about that. What are you working on now, and how do you feel that that kind of movement is going for you?
Mona Sabet
So my I've built three nonprofits focused on professional women in various areas of technology. My current nonprofit is called HiPower. It's focused on executive women, and the focus of the this particular organization is to get women to have a voice outside of the role they have at their company. It's sort of a interesting perspective, but it's what I find is that women and I hate generalizations, but I'm going to make them so I apologize in advance to your audience, by and large, women, often times and men less often times have a tendency to rely on what I call like the corporate authority that is bestowed upon us to be able to exercise our authority and influence in the world. And what happens is, as soon as you lose that corporate authority, or you decide to leave it, you know you don't have any influence left, and so trying to develop that influence outside of the corporate authority, I always use the example of when I was running Corporate Development at Cadence Design System. I mean, I was I had the responsibility of deciding who we were going to invest in from a startup perspective of who we're going to acquire. So every startup wanted to talk to me, every investment banker wanted to talk to me, and every law firm wanted to talk to me. Everybody wanted to talk. I was literally so popular, and then I left, and none of them wanted to talk to me anymore. (Yeah) And so having an influence beyond the title that's bestowed upon you, I think, allows us to be able to have influence broader in society, and that's how we're going to achieve a more, you know, balanced and equal society. So that's the purpose of HiPower. But, yeah, I mean, I think that women's organizations, or any organizations generally that are focused on particular communities are really critical, because I always describe it this way. It's like, imagine, you know, it's easier to describe it if you know, if you're a parent and you have a young daughter, and she's going to a school for the first time, and she goes to the school, and everybody else, it's small community, and they've been together since kindergarten, right, right? And you walk into, like, ninth grade in high school, and you're the odd person out, and you know that this is going to be a good, challenging experience for her. It's gonna help her grow. And so as a parent, you're like, "Yeah, you know you have to go through tough things to grow. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." I remember my parents telling me that, but you also know that too much challenge could, like, have a negative effect on her. And so you also want the support system. You want both the challenge and the support. And I think that when people are in a minority or an underrepresented position, they get the challenge all day long, of feeling like they're out of place, like they're the new person in that they don't fit in anywhere. And that's how you know we all feel when we're not represented, and that's great for us. It helps us grow. And I get a lot of women saying, Yeah, but it's not fair. And I'm like, Yeah, well, life's not fair. That's true, but at the same time, too much challenge can wear you down and it can eat away at your willpower. And so having Women support groups is how you get the support to be able to continue with the challenge. And that's why I think, you know, all the different kinds of communities that exist are critical. And you know, a lot of people say that, well, why don't you have a men's community? And I'm like, Well, you know what, if there's a man who's been working in a predominantly female community for five years, I bet you would be valuable for them.
Eric Morse
Valuable for them. You know, we all need peer groups. I think entrepreneurs more than any and in your book, you talk about how it can be so lonely, and I think those peer groups are so important, but they're only important to the extent everybody can identify. And so sometimes you need multiple peer groups. (That's right) And I love your story. I moved it halfway through my ninth grade year, so I get it.
Mona Sabet
But it made you stronger.
Eric Morse
It made me stronger. I had good support, good family around me. So absolutely, but wow, that's a I think that's really powerful. And are you, are you seeing a difference? Is it? Is it getting better?
Mona Sabet
I am, but, you know, I'm also old, and so it's been a few decades, and I've definitely seen the difference between, like, when I started work and what it looks like today, or even when I moved down to the Bay Area and what it looks like today there. It's still not great in many respects, but it's, it's getting better. I mean, there are so many women VCs now, and there were like, I don't remember any when I first moved down there. And you know, the women VCs aren't necessarily focused on just investing in women founders, but because they are women VCs, they have a different perspective. They're interested in different things than maybe men VCs would be interested in. And they bring along women investors that wouldn't normally other investors. And so it is changing the ecosystem, and I think that, you know, it'll continue to do that despite what other influences there are in the world.
Eric Morse
Yeah well, Mona thanks for that. It's probably a good place for us to wrap. I think you know your career as a pioneer and an influencer and continue to be an influencer is is really fantastic. And I appreciate all that you do for the world of entrepreneurship and also for us here at the Morissette Institute as one of our advisory board members and pushing us as we need it. So thanks so much for being with us today.
Mona Sabet
Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thanks, Eric.