Many CEOs treat in-person marketing spend as a necessary but unknowable cost of doing business. Events feel important. Customers expect presence. Competitors show up. Measurement feels impractical, so ambiguity is accepted.
Zach Barney’s experience—as both a go-to-market executive and a first-time founder—shows why that posture is more dangerous than it appears. When CEOs accept unmeasured spend as unavoidable, they aren’t avoiding a decision. They’re making one. And the consequences surface later, under far more pressure.
This episode examines how unmeasured event ROI quietly compounds into revenue risk, capital stress, and ultimately leadership strain—long before it shows up on a dashboard.
In most scaling organizations, digital marketing is measured aggressively. Attribution is imperfect, but directionally clear. Pipelines can be inspected. Conversion rates debated. Budgets adjusted.
In-person marketing operates differently. Barney describes it as “this big black box where we just hope it worked.” Teams approve $50,000 event sponsorships, attend conferences, host dinners, and return with stories rather than evidence. Post-event debriefs often end with a familiar explanation: it was a branding play.
What makes this especially risky is timing. In-person spend tends to rise precisely when companies feel pressure to stand out. As digital channels saturate, events feel like one of the few remaining ways to create real differentiation. Barney notes that in some companies, in-person has grown from roughly 20% of marketing budgets to as much as 70–80%.
The result is a growing category of spend that is both expanding and largely unexamined.
A central insight from Barney’s experience is that ambiguity is not neutral. Choosing not to measure is itself a decision—one that reallocates accountability away from evidence and toward hope.
Most companies don’t ignore measurement because they don’t care. They ignore it because the systems are fragmented, the data is messy, and the effort feels disproportionate. Reps collect business cards. Contacts live in phones. Follow-up is inconsistent. Attribution breaks down immediately.
Over time, this normalizes a dangerous operating assumption: we’ll never really know. Spend continues because stopping feels riskier than continuing. Measurement is deferred because growth appears healthy enough.
But that growth often masks structural weakness.
One of the most consequential dynamics in this episode is how early traction interacts with founder optimism. Barney describes building Mobly during a period when capital was tighter, expectations were higher, and patience was thinner.
Early revenue and customer enthusiasm created confidence. Hiring accelerated. Burn increased. Measurement discipline lagged behind ambition. Like many founders, Barney assumed the numbers would catch up.
They didn’t—at least not fast enough.
When the board confronted the company’s shrinking runway, the problem wasn’t a single bad decision. It was a series of reasonable ones made without sufficient evidence. Optimism had replaced validation. Spend had outpaced proof.
This is where unmeasured decisions show their real cost. What begins as a marketing blind spot expands into hiring mistakes, capital pressure, and forced corrections under stress.
The episode makes clear that this isn’t just a marketing problem. When CEOs tolerate ambiguity in one part of the business, it spreads.
Unmeasured event ROI distorts forecasts. Distorted forecasts justify hiring. Hiring increases burn. Burn shortens runway. Short runway forces urgency. Urgency narrows judgment.
By the time leadership feels the pressure, the original decision—to accept “we can’t measure it”—is long forgotten. What remains is the human cost. Barney describes experiencing near-daily panic attacks when the reality of runway risk set in. The stress wasn’t abstract. It was personal, physical, and destabilizing.
This is not presented as a cautionary tale about mental health in isolation. It’s a downstream consequence of delayed realism.
The maturity shift Barney describes is subtle but decisive. It isn’t about abandoning optimism. It’s about validating it.
As Mobly stabilized, the company became slower and more deliberate about spend. Hiring decisions required proof. Pricing confidence increased because results were measurable. Metrics replaced narrative.
The discipline didn’t reduce ambition—it focused it. Evidence allowed the company to raise capital quickly when it mattered, rather than scrambling reactively.
For CEOs, the implication is straightforward but uncomfortable: intuition scales poorly without instrumentation. At small scale, trust and narrative can carry decisions. At growth scale, they amplify risk.
This episode reframes event ROI not as a marketing analytics issue, but as a leadership one. The question isn’t whether events work. It’s whether CEOs are willing to accept prolonged ambiguity in one of their fastest-growing spend categories.
Barney’s experience underscores several hard truths:
For CEOs approving large, recurring in-person budgets, the takeaway isn’t to stop spending. It’s to recognize that “we can’t measure it” is not a limitation—it’s a choice.
The full episode goes deeper into how this realization unfolded in real time, under real pressure, and what it required to reverse course.
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Zach Barney is the CEO and Co-Founder of Mobly, a platform designed to bring clarity and attribution to in-person go-to-market activity. A former VP of Sales in private-equity-backed companies, Barney founded Mobly after repeatedly watching organizations overspend on events without knowing what worked. His perspective blends go-to-market rigor with lived experience navigating capital pressure as a first-time founder.
LinkedIn: Zach Barney
Website: https://getmobly.com/
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Jeff Holman is a CEO advisor, legal strategist, and founder of Intellectual Strategies. With years of experience guiding leaders through complex business and legal challenges, Jeff equips CEOs to scale with confidence by blending legal expertise with strategic foresight. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Intellectual Strategies provides innovative legal solutions for CEOs and founders through its fractional legal team model. By offering proactive, integrated legal support at predictable costs, the firm helps leaders protect their businesses, manage risk, and focus on growth with confidence.
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The Breakout CEO podcast brings you inside the pivotal moments of scaling leaders. Each week, host Jeff Holman spotlights breakout stories of scaling CEOs—showing how resilience, insight, and strategy create pivotal inflection points and lasting growth.
Listen and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform:
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Want to be a guest—or know a scaling CEO with a breakout story to share? Apply directly at go.intellectualstrategies.com.
Transcript Summary
00:00 — Informal introduction and rapport building
02:15 — Mobly overview and in-person marketing problem
04:55 — Attribution gaps and ROI frustration
07:30 — Market timing and digital fatigue
09:40 — Co-founder origin and early skepticism
11:20 — Customer interviews and validation process
13:10 — Founder skill complementarity
15:40 — Early product architecture and wedge product
18:00 — Data quality and enrichment differentiation
21:40 — Growth traction and early scaling lessons
23:50 — Fundraising difficulty and cash pressure
25:10 — Panic attacks and personal breaking point
29:30 — Perspective shift and operating discipline
33:00 — Founder mental health advice and openness
36:20 — Metrics, pricing confidence, and next stage growth
39:20 — Definition of success and founder motivation
Full Transcript (AI generated and might include errors)
Jeff Holman (00:00.988)
Hello everybody, welcome back to the Breakout CEO Podcast. I'm Jeff Holman, your host. I'm with Intellectual Strategies and really glad to have Zach Barney with me today. Zach, welcome to the show.
Zach Barney (00:12.482)
Thanks, Jeff. Happy to be here.
Jeff Holman (00:14.15)
Yeah, glad to have you. We met in person a year ago at a little Christmas thing going on. Favorite things, CEO's favorite things, I think is what the theme was, right? Maybe it was ugly sweater too, I don't remember.
Zach Barney (00:22.435)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (00:27.106)
Yeah, it probably was not ugly sweater because I haven't done one of those in a couple of years, but yeah.
Jeff Holman (00:34.511)
okay. Maybe I thought it was an ugly sweater. I probably wore an ugly sweater. Just on a real light note here to kick things off, CEO's favorite things, what was the thing that you brought to the party and what did you walk away with?
Zach Barney (00:50.498)
last year or this year? This year I brought a game called Camel Up, which is one of my favorite, my wife's favorite games to play. It's a fun little strategic betting game, betting on camel races board game.
Jeff Holman (00:51.964)
this year.
Jeff Holman (01:09.798)
And that was a popular, popular gift. think it exchanged hands.
Zach Barney (01:12.77)
Yeah, it got frozen really quick. Yeah, it's awesome.
Jeff Holman (01:15.887)
Yeah, yeah, and it also got purchased by other people who didn't end up with it.
Zach Barney (01:21.056)
On the side, yeah. That's right, yeah. No, it's a good one. It's a good one, I'm glad we got that. I ended up with a big fat bag of buttermints that Clark brought. had like, I think there were like 15 packages of them.
Jeff Holman (01:34.162)
That's right.
Jeff Holman (01:39.602)
Last you a while. were delicious. was.
Zach Barney (01:43.266)
They were unreal, and there are so many flavors in that bag. Like, cinnamon cheesecake, that was a good one. Cinnamon cheesecake, yeah.
Jeff Holman (01:47.462)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (01:51.238)
Wait, cinnamon and cheesecake or cinnamon cheesecake? I had a bag of cinnamon. didn't.
Zach Barney (01:57.162)
Yeah, yeah, I'll him in as well, but send him in cheesecake. Yeah.
Jeff Holman (01:59.982)
wow, that's not something I would have thought of. So I'm going to try to get Clark on the show. He, you know, he hasn't committed to me yet. And, you know, if he watches this, he'll be like, don't mention my name. But I'm going to try to get him on the show because I think he's got a fascinating story. But well, that's cool. So you're the CEO of Mobly and you've been going for a couple of years now, right? And had some fundraising.
Zach Barney (02:17.506)
Yeah, I agree.
Zach Barney (02:27.788)
Yeah, three years. Three years, yep.
Jeff Holman (02:29.286)
What's that, three years? Yeah, fantastic. give us just for context, give us just a real brief overview of what Mobly is.
Zach Barney (02:38.978)
Yeah, Mobly is your system of record or your operating system for all things in person go to market. Imagine if something like Marketo or HubSpot was rebuilt from the ground up with an in-person focus instead of digital. We bring the same level of clarity and attribution and measurement to all of your sales and marketing teams, face-to-face interactions, trade shows, conferences, dinners, happy hours, you name it.
Mobly is the mobile app that our users take with them to capture content information, make clear notes, tags, and have clean attribution.
Jeff Holman (03:15.878)
Yeah, so I think it's fascinating in a world that's going more more digital, you said, let's capture in-person. How, that seems counterintuitive a little bit. that, what prompted that for you? Was it an experience you had or people asking for it? What was that?
Zach Barney (03:24.002)
Yeah. Yeah.
Zach Barney (03:34.19)
Yeah, I actually think we timed the market perfectly, Jeff. So yeah, mean, the reason for wanting to start the business was my own personal pains. I oftentimes refer to myself as a recovering VP of sales. I came from the private equity world where I was a VP on the operating side over several companies in our portfolio where it was my job to fix their revenue engines.
Jeff Holman (03:39.175)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (04:00.46)
Right, and that's very doable with the digital side of things because you have great tools. I mentioned Marketo and HubSpot are two of them. Google Ads, LinkedIn, all of these things that can tell you everything you want to know about somebody's interaction with your brand online. And then on the outbound side, if you have SDRs or AEs that are doing outbounding, they're great tools like Outreach, SalesLoft, and Gong.
You know your metrics. It's easy to replicate and scale that outbound process. And then you have this big giant black box of in-person where we're like, I want to spend $50,000 to sponsor this event. And we're going to get a 5X ROI. And then you come back and you have a post-mortem meeting. And the head of event marketing is like, it was a branding play.
or we had to be there for our customers. They have no way to know whether or not it was good, right?
Jeff Holman (04:56.69)
you
Jeff Holman (05:01.424)
What? Yeah, but you said a 5x ROI. What did that mean before the event?
Zach Barney (05:06.552)
Well, yeah, before the event, you're targeting that because you're thinking about all the math that happens on digital and assuming the same thing. But then you're just like, yeah, maybe we got that. We don't know, because the reps are out there collecting business cards and putting people in their phones and then forgetting to properly attribute their leads or maybe doing nothing with it. It's just a mess and dumpster fires. That's why we wanted to start the company. And the reason I said we
Jeff Holman (05:27.377)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Barney (05:35.438)
time to market so well, is there is a lot of digital fatigue going on right now. What used to work doesn't work anymore. Just content, AISDRs are all over the place, right? It's just really easy to spin that up. And I often quote syndrome from...
Jeff Holman (05:41.98)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (05:51.43)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (05:56.686)
the Incredibles where he says when everyone's super, no one will be. That's kind of what marketing teams are experiencing right now, is it's just really hard to stand out from the crowd doing what worked five years ago. So one of the final frontiers to stand out and show, hey, I'm a real human, this is a real company, we're building a real relationship, is in person. We actually see, like historically, in person has been about 20 % of all B2B marketing spend.
It's closer to 40-50 % right now and we have some customers where 70-80 % of all of their marketing dollars go toward in person and they're still doing things in archaic way without Mobly.
Jeff Holman (06:39.74)
Wait, wait, 70 or 80%. Like, are they only attending events in person or what do these events look like or what are the in-person interactions?
Zach Barney (06:47.638)
Yeah, exhibiting at a trade show, hosting a party, walking floors at user conferences, you name it. In fact, we have a quote from one of our customers. She's the SVP of marketing at an AI company. Three fourths of her marketing dollars go to in-person. And she recognizes the irony in that, that they're spending nearly every cent they have on in-person to sell their AI tool.
Jeff Holman (07:03.76)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (07:17.72)
but that's what's working for them.
Jeff Holman (07:17.734)
But why would they do that though if ROI is so hard to track or measure with in-person events? Are you saying that she does this because she's able to use Mobly or she would do this even if Mobly didn't exist?
Zach Barney (07:26.464)
It was hard to track. It was hard to track without Mobly. With Mobly, it's easy. Yeah.
Zach Barney (07:38.446)
I think she would probably do a lot of in-person and would throw a lot of people and time at the problem because she's kind of a rock star and understands the importance of attribution, but it's very manual, expensive labor. So she was out looking for something like Mobly and came to us and we just like fit squarely into what she was looking to accomplish, which is systematize our lead capture.
Jeff Holman (07:57.02)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (08:08.494)
clear attribution, integration with our CRM, and easy to use so our end users aren't complaining about something breaking or not working.
Jeff Holman (08:17.796)
Yeah, interesting. So for somebody who's maybe not as savvy as she is or is experienced or maybe hasn't tried the Mobly experience yet, you know, what's maybe a misconception somebody like that might have about going to events? You know, they've probably had the traditional experience. We send our team out, they go, they're gone, they eat a lot of food and dinners and spend a lot of money. They come back and we're like, now what? Right?
Zach Barney (08:22.061)
Hmm?
Zach Barney (08:36.354)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (08:43.02)
Yeah, that's the common one for sure. It's a necessary evil. We have to go because if we didn't take that booth, our competitors would. Or we have to be there for our customers. All of these preconceived notions, and a lot of companies, they think they've realized that this is just the cost of doing business. We have to do it. It's just part of it.
And we, you know, we, we get budget for it and we don't know if we'll ever be able to measure the ROI from in-person, but we know we have to do it. Right. that's, that's how a lot of companies go about it. So it's really that school of thought or no, need to figure this out, but we're going to do it in a very manual way.
Jeff Holman (09:31.846)
So when you came up with this idea, what did your team look like? Who was there in the room with you? And you're like, you know what, we really need to figure this out. And how did you validate that there was a need for this? That you could actually deliver a product that gives you ROI at these events?
Zach Barney (09:49.688)
So I love that question. It's a very core part of our story. So I have one co-founder. He's my best friend of 30 years. His name's Chris Jenkins. My background is in sales. His background is in product and engineering. A little bit of channel and alliances.
When I like we had always wanted to do something together. And when I came to him with this idea, he's like, hey, man, I'd love to start a company with you. Timing is pretty good for both of us. We had recently both had some pretty nice exits at previous companies. But he said, I don't think this is the right idea. I it doesn't resonate with me. Of course, it doesn't resonate with you. not.
Jeff Holman (10:31.376)
About Mobly. okay
Zach Barney (10:32.556)
Yeah, of course it doesn't resonate with you. You're in product and engineering, you're not in go to market. And he suggested, well, why don't we do the product thing? Why don't we go interview some companies and get their take and make sure it's not just a Zach problem. So we set out while we were still both gainfully employed at our previous jobs and we interviewed 30 companies over the span of about six weeks.
Jeff Holman (10:38.459)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (10:46.608)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (10:57.614)
and 29 of the 30 said, yeah, this is a huge problem. We'd love to have this solved. We would pay to have it solved. Please solve it. So that gave us a little conviction. Well, it gave me a lot. It gave him a little conviction and yeah, not bad at all, right? So we spent a little time and money building a prototype of our first mobile app in Figma. Literally just a Figma file. And then we spent December of 2022,
Jeff Holman (11:06.001)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (11:10.162)
Yeah, mean, 20 out of 30, that's not bad. Yeah.
Zach Barney (11:26.848)
showing off the prototype to those same companies that we interviewed. And four of them signed LOIs off of a Figma file. Yeah, like, okay, yeah, this is real. I...
Jeff Holman (11:34.588)
just off the Figma file.
Zach Barney (11:42.646)
Like we have lunch and I'm like, I'm going to quit. Like I'm going to come do this full time. And I read for lunch, I went home, I called my boss and I'm like, hey, I don't think this is the long-term fit for me. She's like, yeah, the only place for you to go is to take my role. And I thought I'd be done by now, but I'm not going to be done for a few more years. So you're probably pretty miserable standing pat. And I'm like,
Jeff Holman (12:05.837)
Zach Barney (12:07.926)
Yeah, I don't want to be stagnant. I want to go start this thing. we parted ways as friends and like the next week we were in incorporated company and I was full time on it.
Jeff Holman (12:17.316)
wow. So you knew that you were headed this direction likely, right? If things panned out, if the numbers helped show enough interest that you were ready to jump.
Zach Barney (12:28.29)
Yeah, yeah, I had the deep conviction in this space, but I'm not technical. And I know that success rates go up significantly when you have more than one person dedicated to building something in the early stages. So I needed somebody like Chris.
and we're such good friends, so close, and we compliment each other really well that I needed the right co-founder and he was it. So the timing was just perfect all around. I couldn't have done it earlier in my life because, I mean, much earlier. If I did it right out of school, that's one thing, but between the two of us, we have 11 kids. So the timing of...
Jeff Holman (13:09.766)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Barney (13:13.408)
of both having recent exits and having a little bit of a nest egg that we could fund the company off of for a while just made the timing perfect along with all of that market validation. So I knew I wanted to do it and then the timing all lined up perfectly.
Jeff Holman (13:32.112)
Yeah, and I don't want to skip over the part where you said that you guys have complementary skill sets. You've been friends for 30 years. Like what does that really mean in terms of launching a company? What was easier because of that? And maybe what were some of the conversations you were able to have that you might not have had with other people?
Zach Barney (13:37.187)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (13:43.479)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (13:51.224)
Well, I I mentioned my backgrounds in sales and marketing, his is in product engineering and alliances. But on top of that, I primarily worked in startup land and he's primarily worked in larger enterprise. So that is really helpful where he's able to look at things from a big picture process, scalability perspective. And I'm able to look at things from a, we have to move fast and break things perspective.
Jeff Holman (14:14.342)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Barney (14:20.16)
and not be all in on one or the other. We also, we know each other and care about each other enough that we're totally comfortable having hard conversations and knowing that it's not gonna destroy the company. Just as an example, we moved to a new office this week and the landlords, they're like, hey, can you send us a black logo that we can put out on the building? So I just pulled up our logo files and sent them the black logo.
They put it up yesterday and apparently it was the one that I shouldn't have used. And rather than sitting and stewing about it and just holding a grudge against me for not talking to him, he confronted me about it immediately and was like, hey, I wish you would have talked to me. That's not the one that I would have used. And it was fine. I'm sorry I didn't mean anything by it. I was just like kind of checking a box and then the new move-in guide and.
Jeff Holman (14:50.705)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (14:55.503)
Jeff Holman (15:06.706)
Zach Barney (15:17.206)
It clearly means more to you than it does to me, so let's just get a new one. yeah, that really, really helps because you go through a lot of hard times as a startup and a lot of companies break because of founder fallout.
Jeff Holman (15:32.016)
Yeah, for sure. Well, so as you guys launched this business, were you doing the sales and he was doing the tech development or what was the division?
Zach Barney (15:43.864)
So he's semi-technical, but most of his CTO experience is more from a product perspective. he knows enough to be dangerous. What we did, we actually worked with a dev shop called Raven that we're really good friends with. In fact, Chris used to date one of the founder's wives. And his co-founders, her big brother, it's crazy. But we worked with them to build the prototype.
Jeff Holman (15:59.057)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (16:04.057)
Zach Barney (16:13.582)
I did most of the market validation. We were on the call together, but I orchestrated that, set that up. And then he focused on the product architecture primarily. And then once we made it a real thing, we were both doing selling. I would say I was probably doing 60%. He was doing 40. So it was pretty evenly split.
Jeff Holman (16:39.708)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Barney (16:40.032)
And then he was handling finance and operations, HR type thing. And I was handling recruiting and evangelizing.
Jeff Holman (16:50.556)
Got it, got it. Well, so what did the early version of the product look like? I don't know if you've pivoted a lot, but what did it start out like?
Zach Barney (16:58.774)
Yeah, we haven't done a lot of pivoting. We've definitely done a lot of expanding. But that's one question I get a lot. And it's always fun to be able to say, no, it's actually exactly what I thought the product would be when we started it. I was right. And that's cool and validating. But yeah, our very first, we call it a wedge product, right? Our first product was a mobile app that anybody could take anywhere.
Jeff Holman (17:10.684)
Really.
Zach Barney (17:26.072)
when they meet somebody in person, if they just have their phone, they don't have a laptop handy, and they can capture that person's contact information and push it to their CRM. And the way that works, we use a technology called optical character recognition, same technology used in like a mobile check deposit, to snap a photo of an attendee badge or a business card, or if there is no badge or business card, you can just type in a person's name and company name. But once we have those three anchor points, first name, last name, company name,
Jeff Holman (17:39.282)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (17:50.853)
Okay.
Zach Barney (17:54.274)
We then built a really sophisticated enrichment process that goes through an entire waterfall of data providers and live human validation to pull in everything that is possible to know about that person from a legal sense. We obviously stay within GDPR compliance and things like that, but we're cell phone, social media, work email, personal email, mailing address, company socials, you name it.
Jeff Holman (18:23.238)
Just from different sources.
Zach Barney (18:23.52)
in the same format every time. And the real magic there is that we have a team of very, very sharp, live human being analysts that are helping to, number one, train our OCR models, but number two, check for discrepancies. Because a lot of the Zoom infos of the world get really dated really fast. So if somebody changed jobs six months ago, Zoom info might still have another previous employer, and then none of the data is going to be accurate.
So they're helping to not only train the model, but also to check for recent job changes, missing info and so forth, and then go out and find it, which is not super scalable, but that's how we took down the market is our customers trust us that we will have the best possible data. And if we can't find it, nobody can.
Jeff Holman (19:12.882)
So it's not just capturing info at the event, it's the validation and the trustworthiness of the data that they eventually get within your system.
Zach Barney (19:22.186)
Yeah, yeah, we don't touch like the events registration database or APIs at all. So you're not scanning a QR code like you would with a bad scanner. Like a lot of people are like, I can already do this with the bad scanner that the event provides me. The difference is number one, those scanners tend to be really expensive. They tend to be single time use. So you're only using it for that one event, which means there's no effort put into custom customizing or integrating.
Jeff Holman (19:32.272)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (19:42.586)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Barney (19:49.198)
And then thirdly, you're relying on whatever data people put in when they registered. And I am one of those people who has put in burner account information when I signed up for events before. And I forgot that I put in a burner account, so I go talk to somebody at a booth that I'm genuinely interested in, and I allow them to scan my badge, and they get Zach's burner account 91 at hotmail.com back. And they can't get ahold of me, right? So.
Jeff Holman (19:49.756)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (19:57.906)
you
Jeff Holman (20:14.384)
Wait, wait, wait, your name, I need to correct this on our record. It's not Zach Burner account. That's not your last name.
Zach Barney (20:20.138)
It's not, no, Burner account is not my last name. My last name is Barney, like the big purple dinosaur, yep. So yeah, like the whole value proposition for Mobly, at least what they think it is when they come in is, okay, I can standardize that process. So whether an event is giant and typically provides bad scanners and I'm paying five grand for that, or it's a small little dinner where there's nothing, like, you know.
Craig's favorite thing saying there's no badges there, right? It's just a bunch of friends hanging out. You can capture contact information the same way with Mobly. It integrates with your CRM and then you can follow up with those people from the app and the activities actually log back to the CRM instead of being stored in your phone and in your head. So that's why people come to us. I don't want to spend money on badge scanners and I want to unify that process. They stay with us because
Jeff Holman (20:48.306)
Yeah, right.
Zach Barney (21:13.73)
due to our data quality and our enrichment speed, they are increasing their conversion rates by about 20 % and capturing 40 to 50 % more leads. So it's pretty eye-opening for them when they come in thinking this is a cool little nice-to-have tool and they're like, holy crap, I'm missing out on millions of dollars in revenue by not having this. Yes, I need this now. And that's been really fun. Yep.
Jeff Holman (21:24.498)
really?
Jeff Holman (21:36.434)
So it's that snowball effect where they're, I got the data, but now I've got the right data and I've got a little bit more data and it's good data. And I, so I can make a better pitch or I can connect more closely with these people. And that just everything.
Zach Barney (21:41.55)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Barney (21:49.336)
I'm not having to slack somebody back to the home office to go find them. Manually when I talk to somebody because it's just there. It's just pushed where it needs to be. Nobody's forgetting about it or dropping the ball.
Jeff Holman (21:53.585)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (22:00.89)
Yeah, well, so as you look back, I mean, you've got a relatively quick validation phase of your business. How many other phases have you had since then? Has it been pretty straight line or has there been a time where you're building, you're pulling back, you're raising money like you did, you're scaling? What does the rough terrain look like for your business?
Zach Barney (22:19.074)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (22:25.325)
So even though we are both relatively experienced in the business world, this is our first time founding a company. And we got dinged pretty hard on that. We also started the company at the beginning of 2023, which is right after the feeding frenzy of 21, 22 with venture capital. So it was really hard for us to raise money at first. If we were to start a company a year before,
Jeff Holman (22:34.15)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (22:43.686)
Yep. Yeah.
Zach Barney (22:50.318)
We can just say, hey, I have a pulse and gotten a million dollars. But it was hard for us. A lot of people told us the idea was stupid. It was easily replicable, all of these things. It took us a long time. Like our first angel check was about six months in. And so we were self-funding. And
Jeff Holman (23:06.05)
okay.
Zach Barney (23:11.394)
Yeah, that was fun. But then it took us another six months beyond that. So literally a whole year before we raised a proper pre-seed round. And the reason we got that is because we had almost 200,000 in revenue and a lot of very, very happy loyal customers. From there, you would think, okay, great, everything's honky-dory. Nope. We ran out of money really quick.
Jeff Holman (23:14.3)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (23:21.478)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (23:36.91)
We were expecting that to last about 18 months and it lasted about six We maybe nine we Like we hired way quicker than we should have we were way more aggressive on our Projections than we should have been and we're just you know, we're optimistic founders. So You know six months in we're in a board meeting and one of our board members just stopped the call and she was like
Jeff Holman (23:41.03)
Mm.
Jeff Holman (23:55.708)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (24:05.774)
Okay, let's just talk about the elephant of the room. You guys are out of money in four months if you don't do something. What in the world is going on here? And she was super like helpful and constructive about it, but that was a slap, you know, in the face. Yeah, in a good way, like we can't just continue to be optimist. We have to be pragmatic here. Number one, we got to go raise some more money. And number two, got to cut costs. But,
Jeff Holman (24:17.98)
wanted to bring it to the forefront make sure we yeah
Zach Barney (24:32.94)
So number one, we had enough conviction in the traction. Like we had grown to half a million in revenue. It was going well, but we didn't want to cut. We know that that's the funeral for most companies when they do deep cuts that early on. We didn't want to do that. No, we're ready to go out swinging and fly really close to the sun. But personally for me, that set me off. And up until that point,
I had probably three panic attacks in my entire life and and like so rare I started having that many a week Like three to four a week like really really bad. This was last summer Yeah, you're in a half ago You're in a half. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah
Jeff Holman (25:06.3)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (25:13.106)
Really? Wait, this is not too long ago, right? mean, this is, yeah, within the last year, oh, last summer 2024. Got it.
Zach Barney (25:23.854)
Like literally I was having nearly every day I was having a panic attack and I'm not talking about I was anxious. I was literally incapacitating myself to where I couldn't focus. I went to the ER once. I was never suicidal but people around me thought I was. Like my wife was calling and texting family and friends to keep an eye out for me. The doctors were doing wellness checks.
Jeff Holman (25:35.718)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (25:49.137)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (25:51.522)
so I got medicated, which was the best thing ever. I haven't had a panic attack since. And also, like, unfortunately, I, I functioned best from my backs against the wall. So, that was the kick in the pants that we needed to get our house in order and, and really start operating like a real business. So, we just got to work and kept building, kept.
Jeff Holman (26:06.162)
Hmm.
Zach Barney (26:21.038)
kept selling and ended up raising an oversubscribed seed round six days after we went to market. So we kind of accelerated that process, but within six days we were oversubscribed. We had to turn people away. We had to raise the size of the round.
And it was so validating. The risks that entrepreneurs take is insane. And I always knew that. I'd been in startup world my whole career, just never as a founder myself. But I'm very close to a lot of founders that I've worked for. I've always known it and had deep respect for founders. But I'm at this place now where I don't care what the company is.
Like, I don't care if the company sells for a trillion dollars. Founders deserve every penny of equity that they make for all of the struggles, the hardships, the risks that they take on. I don't care about.
Jeff Holman (27:10.503)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Barney (27:21.548)
discrepancies in in pay whatever anymore like I mean I do not pay myself incredibly well by any means but I have so much more respect for other founders after seeing like holy crap this is the hardest thing I've ever done I would do it a thousand times over but it is by far the hardest thing I've ever done and I've done some hard things in my life I just have a newfound appreciation for
for that journey and I'm proud to say that we came through it on the other side.
Jeff Holman (27:52.358)
And I want to hear more about coming through it, but I don't want to overstep this. I mean, this phase you went through, right? What was your perspective before all that was happening? Was it starkly different than like, know, compensation fairness or, you know, maybe this, maybe that. Like, how drastically did your perspective shift through those hard times, we'll call it.
Zach Barney (27:55.714)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (27:59.16)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Barney (28:10.702)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (28:16.706)
I'm still definitely very much an optimist. I always just hope and plan for the best, for sure. But I was like willfully ignoring signs that we needed to do something else because I'm like, no, I'm not gonna think about the negative things. I'm gonna think about the positive. I'm always thinking about what could go right, not what could go wrong. And...
Jeff Holman (28:23.65)
huh.
Jeff Holman (28:40.08)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (28:43.552)
I always just had faith that this is the right thing. This is meant to be, this is gonna happen. Yeah, we're in a tough spot because maybe the revenue isn't scaling as quickly as we thought it would, or maybe it's tougher to collect the money from our customers than we thought it would be. But let's look on the bright side. In six months with two and a half extra revenue, we have amazing net promoter scores.
Jeff Holman (29:01.318)
Mm-hmm.
Jeff Holman (29:12.22)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Barney (29:12.598)
Like everything else is going right, we're just burning capital faster than we should have. So do we pull back and handicap the business or do we go find a way through the wall? So I wouldn't, like the only thing, it's a big thing, but the only thing that's really changed about me is I'm a little bit more careful about seeing the proof point.
before making a spend decision. Like, OK, yeah, I believe that this is the right thing, but I'm going to validate it with actual evidence before just trusting my gut. So we're just a little bit slower to make hiring decisions, to make purchase decisions, and so forth. But we still believe that you have to be optimistic when you're building a company. So we'll still continue to do that to some extent.
Jeff Holman (30:06.268)
Well, and being an optimistic person, still hit hard times personally and you're sharing those openly and I really appreciate that. I wonder if by sharing these types of things, if you've shared them among your network and friends, have you found people coming to you saying, yeah, me too, I've been there, I've been down that path. Was that kind of revealing to you that how many people might have
Zach Barney (30:09.57)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Barney (30:13.57)
Yeah. Yeah.
Zach Barney (30:28.589)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (30:35.474)
yeah.
Jeff Holman (30:35.888)
been going through those things and they just haven't shared it openly.
Zach Barney (30:39.628)
yeah, yeah. I actually was chatting with a founder friend of mine a few months after that. And he kind of laughed. He's like, welcome to founder life. This is not abnormal. If you're not having a lot of panic attacks, then you're not really a founder. And yeah. So like on one hand, I was like, crap, does this not get better?
Jeff Holman (30:58.13)
You're not really on the edge, huh?
Zach Barney (31:06.286)
But on the other hand, was like, okay, and he's still doing it. He's still cranking away building the business. So something is working still. So we talked a little bit deeper. I talked to a lot of friends. I talked to some of my investors that have dealt with it as well. And yeah, they're all very, very supportive and yeah, help put things into perspective more than anything. Like, you know, I
Jeff Holman (31:13.575)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (31:28.785)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (31:33.718)
I've been able to raise millions of dollars in funding. I've been a VP of sales. I've had some good outcomes. If the company fails, I can go get another job. Like, yeah.
Jeff Holman (31:45.55)
Is that the fear behind panic attacks that like if it fails, like I'm a failure or I don't know what I'll do next and so having a backup plan is a relief to that or? I'm really curious.
Zach Barney (32:00.832)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There should, like, I guess the validation that all of the doubters were right, you know? Like, I have a certain opinion of myself. I won't say it's necessarily arrogant, but I do believe that I'm capable of doing a lot. And I, like, it destroys me inside to feel like,
Jeff Holman (32:09.18)
Mm.
Zach Barney (32:24.654)
I was wrong to do this, right? I took big risks financially. I put my family in a much tighter financial place than we've been in for years. And so my wife has sacrificed a ton. My kids have sacrificed a ton. And...
Jeff Holman (32:31.922)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (32:40.336)
And you've got the trust of founder or employees and investors and yeah.
Zach Barney (32:43.606)
Yeah, I'm like at that point, you know, there were like nine people on the team that were all relying on me for their paycheck. And I know, like I care, I care about people. I know that, you know, if the company goes down, so do their paychecks. And yeah, that was hard. It's really hard.
Jeff Holman (32:55.985)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (33:05.606)
What would you tell, and I don't want to dwell on this too much, but I think it's important. And it's one of the reasons that I started the show. As an attorney, I can't necessarily reveal client secrets about, listen, everybody's been there. You just don't see it. But I'm so glad you're willing to share. What would you tell somebody who's maybe a little bit behind you or maybe even approaching that part of the rough part of the journey? What would you tell them as they're heading into that and they're thinking,
Zach Barney (33:08.334)
Hmm?
Zach Barney (33:14.552)
Sure.
Jeff Holman (33:35.634)
Man, am I the only one? I don't know how to handle this. Like, what advice would you give to them at that point in time?
Zach Barney (33:43.79)
The biggest piece of advice, Jeff, would be there's absolutely no shame in admitting that you're struggling and be open about it because there's so many people out there willing to support. There's so many people out there. Life is much bigger than a company. I don't care if it's your life's work. Mobly is my life's work. Life's bigger than Mobly. And yeah.
Jeff Holman (34:03.506)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (34:08.185)
And of all those people, who is that first person? If someone didn't realize there were all these people out there, who would you say, listen, just go talk to this person or maybe not a name, but the friend or the co-founder, would you talk to your co-founder or an investor or a spouse or parent or find a coach or a therapist? Like, do you have a, is it just anybody? Find anybody at that point?
Zach Barney (34:20.556)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (34:30.284)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (34:33.998)
immediate family for sure, a doctor. Therapy is good, but it doesn't fix you overnight. I've gone to therapy and it's been awesome, but I didn't walk out and suddenly everything was better.
Jeff Holman (34:43.73)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (34:49.622)
So a doctor, an actual medical professional that can prescribe medication. I'm not a huge fan of just medication being the solution for everything. But in a case like this where I was literally going to the ER, yeah, medication was a good thing. And it helped, you know, it helped calm me down. yeah, like talk to family, talk to a doctor, talk to a therapist.
Be open about it. Like I I don't go running around like shouting from the rooftops
those struggles that I've had, but I also don't hide it. Like everybody in the company knows that I've struggled with it. And, you know, I've had people on my team struggle with anxiety for different reasons and being able to empathize with them and help them, you know, know that they're not alone in this struggle. It is something that I would recommend doing if you've ever been there and gotten through it, like be that resource to other people.
Jeff Holman (35:54.95)
Yeah, no, it's so good that you're sharing this here and in other settings with people where it's appropriate. So getting back to your journey then, so you manage this aspect of being a founder, this rough part of being a founder, you guys raise money. What do you think has been kind of the pivotal shift in the operations of the company or the trajectory of the company most recently?
Zach Barney (36:04.173)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (36:23.182)
Operating with metrics in mind.
you know, we're past the stage where this is just an idea and a highly talented small group of people. We actually have the, you know, the metrics to be a top tier company. So even if like the initial pitch of the vision doesn't like immediately resonate with an investor or a potential hire that we're trying to recruit when we talk to them about our traction.
Jeff Holman (36:56.689)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Barney (37:00.782)
and share them case studies and stories from our customers like, holy crap, this is something impactful. Like, I haven't worked at a company that's growing this fast. Now, by no means are we like, lovable or rep lit or any of those companies growing 100X, but we're growing exponentially every single year. And we have really, really good customers. We have really great logos really early on into our journey.
Jeff Holman (37:07.719)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (37:17.424)
Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah.
Zach Barney (37:28.754)
And that's a lot of validation. So yeah, would say, like yeah, the past year has just been more of that, like just maturing as a business and being confident enough to ask for double the prices that we used to ask for and get them.
Jeff Holman (37:33.426)
How did-
Jeff Holman (37:44.122)
Yeah. Does that come from like a sense of desperation? Like what are we going to do? Or does that come from investors and advisors saying, hey, you've done a great job so far. Here's the next stage, metrics, pricing, or where does that come from for you guys?
Zach Barney (38:04.034)
Little bit of both. Like I said, I perform best when my back's against the wall. And that's unfortunate. I don't like that. I don't like having my back against the wall. But if you don't have a healthy degree of panic at all times, then you're clearly not in a startup. that, also, yeah, tension, there we go. There we go, tension.
Jeff Holman (38:09.34)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (38:28.42)
Or tension. We could call it tension too, right?
Zach Barney (38:33.57)
But then, yeah, beyond that, I would say just, yes, it's the next stage of the company. I've been involved in Startup Land my whole career. I understand what comes next. I understand the milestones that have to be reached. So we always set out with that in mind when building the company, very, very thoughtfully about who we hired, in what roles, and so forth, to make sure that they were the capable people to take it to the next step.
Jeff Holman (39:03.002)
Yeah. Well, with what you've been able to accomplish so far, what is, you know, continuing building on these practices, probably extending your runway, raising more money, whatever that is, what does success look like for you and Mobly in the next one to two years?
Zach Barney (39:23.918)
Well, raising more money right now. We're about 90 % committed, so I can't really say that that would be success since we're basically already there. Another 4X year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The next couple of years, I mean, we're gonna grow exponentially again in revenue over the next year. So that's probably number one.
Jeff Holman (39:35.89)
That's the next 60 days, right?
Zach Barney (39:50.318)
And number two, just be recognized as a household name as one of the top companies to work for in Utah.
Jeff Holman (39:58.258)
Yeah, that's very cool. And I hope for my benefit, because I'm thinking about events I've been to and we pull out our LinkedIn, I'm like, sure, I'll exchange. I like LinkedIn, I don't have problem with it, but maybe someday I'll be pulling up my Mobly app and I'll be like, you know what, I actually prefer Mobly, you should too, let's exchange information here. So last question about all this.
Zach Barney (40:12.194)
LinkedIn's great, yeah.
Zach Barney (40:22.616)
There you go. We'll get you there.
Jeff Holman (40:27.952)
trajectory stuff with the path that you're on, the roadmap you've got ahead of you. What are one or two things or maybe one or two people perhaps that you would like to have access to because you're still headed into new territory, right? First time founder doing great building with another first time founder, but headed into new places, new spaces.
Zach Barney (40:29.517)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (40:56.078)
new levels of performance. What do you anticipate would be a person or an insight or perspective that would be valuable to you as you're headed there?
Zach Barney (41:07.802)
I think it's always important to be networked with people that are just one or two steps further along than you in the recent past. So yeah, I mean, our next round is a series A and you know, we're over the next year or two, hopefully.
Jeff Holman (41:17.106)
Mm-hmm.
Zach Barney (41:25.614)
getting into the 10 figures of revenue. So somebody who's done that, right? I think that the big mega names of people who have had multi-billion dollar exits are great, but the discrepancy between where I'm at in my journey and they are in theirs is so vast that there's actually a lot less value than somebody who is a relative peer and has very recently seen what we're about to go through. So that's that.
Jeff Holman (41:30.962)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (41:52.91)
Probably the biggest thing for me is people that have been through like the A and B rounds as founders.
Jeff Holman (41:56.988)
Do you find that that's, mean, Utah has got an amazing tech community growing, flourishing even, I think. And do you find that you can find a lot of that here in Utah or do you have to extend out of Utah to get what you're looking for?
Zach Barney (42:09.964)
Yeah. Both. Yeah, Utah's great. I love Utah for a lot of reasons. But one of them is we have a really good tech community. It's not so big that you don't know anybody. But it's also not so small that it's not valuable.
Jeff Holman (42:25.724)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (42:33.378)
There are a lot of people that have done a lot of really cool things and are very, very willing to step in and help and collaborate. I aim to be one of those people that helps coach and mentor others that are just a step or two behind me. I'd say mostly it's findable here, but there's some great people in other areas of the country that I lean on as well.
Jeff Holman (42:54.512)
Yeah, very cool. Well, it's it's great hearing your story and having you share that with us, including some of the rough patches that you've been through. What would you leave as maybe I don't know if advice is the right word, but what would be that motivation that you would leave with somebody who's either, you know, a little behind or a little ahead ahead of you or even just, you know, about the same point in your path? What's what keeps you motivated day to day to keep?
Zach Barney (43:02.146)
Yeah, of course.
Jeff Holman (43:22.79)
grinding and building and moving this. You said this is your life passion, but what does that mean and how does that motivate you?
Zach Barney (43:27.128)
Yeah.
Zach Barney (43:30.562)
We have to be a special kind of stupid to be a startup founder because the odds are so stacked against you. My advice would be don't do it. Like honestly, don't start a company unless you can't imagine yourself doing anything else and you don't care that you'll make less money doing it than.
You know, like I'm still making half as much as I did at my previous role. I wouldn't say I'm poorly compensated, but was making a lot more in private equity as a VP of sales, right? You don't do it for the money. Maybe have the optimism that that pie in the sky is gonna happen eventually, but do it for the love and the passion of...
Jeff Holman (43:54.929)
Yeah.
Jeff Holman (44:03.004)
Sure.
Zach Barney (44:14.858)
of solving a big problem, something that's deeply personal to you, or else it's not worth it. Go work in corporate.
Jeff Holman (44:21.616)
Yeah, yeah, you won't last, right? can't, if you don't have the passion for it, you can't persist long enough to find the success. So, well, Zach, it's been fantastic sharing some time with you, getting some of your insights, having you share those with our audience here. Really appreciate having you on the show today. It's been wonderful.
Zach Barney (44:27.981)
You won't.
Zach Barney (44:42.19)
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Jeff Holman (44:43.728)
Yeah, and so for our audience also, thanks for joining us again, hearing some insights, hopefully taking away a few things, maybe some motivation or some explanation around the motivation, how to keep going in this journey that you guys are in. So thanks again. I'm Jeff Holman with The Breakout CEO. Glad you joined us and we'll see you next time.
