Adrian – Verbatim Labs

Adrian Grant-Alfeiri

Adrian is the founder of Verbatim and writes The Proof newsletter.

Tell me about yourself and your company.

“Verbatim went from two to four to six to eight to 10 clients. And fast forward a year and a half later, we’re a four-person, full time company. ”

Verbatim is a content studio built for early stage software companies. The core idea came about when I worked in venture, specifically early stage software investing, right out of college. I got great exposure to the ecosystem, and I was also running an interview series and a blog at the same time.

I had been thinking about moving on from venture, so I convinced a couple of the founders to let me run their content engines. I built everything from scratch—the strategy, the calendar, the content—and then I figured out what was working, what wasn’t and went from there. My initial idea was that I wanted to get into startups, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to launch my own. So I figured I’d work with all these teams, then hopefully I'd really like one of them, and then I'd go work for that company.

To date, we've worked with 40 plus venture backed companies building their content function from scratch. We come in, we build a function, the strategy, we test across all these different content styles and formats and channels, and then about 3-6 months later, once we have a good documented process and workflow and we know what content is performing, then we offboard ourselves. We help write the JD, interview people, place candidates, and then we move on.

Why did you seek out David? What was the inflection point? What was happening in your life at that moment?

“Our clients were changing, and there were expectations for us to be highly professional in our deadlines, in our processing, and in our quality. Everything was ramped up.”

We hit a point going into Q4 2021 when we went from four to six to 12 clients with just me and one full time Head of Content. Our revenue went through the roof, but then things started breaking, and I knew we needed to implement more formal processes. Now we weren't working with a company out of YC that had raised $2 million. We were working a company which had just closed a Series C and was valued at almost a billion dollars. Our clients were changing, and there were expectations for us to be highly professional in our deadlines, in our processing, and in our quality. Everything was ramped up.

It hit a point where we needed to double the team, and that was scary to me. I was an investor. I hadn't started a company before. I hadn’t even wanted to start a company. But all of a sudden I have to hire growth, I have to hire a content lead. How do I interview people? How do I compensate people? I was friends with a lot of founders, but there's a difference between pinging your founder friends with questions and having someone dedicated to your business.

I had known David for years, and over time, we had become good friends, so I reached out because we needed to professionalize across the board. And David really became a partner, a right hand person that felt like he was part of the business, which I think is really rare.

“David really became a partner, a right hand person that felt like he was part of the business, which I think is really rare. ”

You say that working with David is like working with a partner rather than a coach. Can you say a little bit more about that and what that looks like on the ground?

“David's the first coach I've worked with. I was a little scared of working with a coach because I didn't want someone to just tell me what to do.”

I grew up playing competitive soccer, and in that world, coaches tell you what to do. They don't offer recommendations. They don't give you the knowledge. They just say, “do this.” And maybe for sports that's useful. But in business/life, especially in tech startup land, work and life blur really easily, and it's not really helpful for someone to tell you what to do.

And so one of the reasons I consider David a real partner in Verbatim is because anytime I come in and say, “hey, this is going great. This is not going great,” it's a) clarifying to see what information I just dumped; and b) we can pull out what's actually useful even if that means getting a version of tough love when David says, “hey, this isn't as big of a problem as you're saying;” and c), it’s about giving me the context, the field as you would say, and the right information to make the decisions but at the end of the day, never saying, “this is exactly what you should do.” I didn't want that.

Usually when someone tells an entrepreneurial, type A person what to do, they’ll probably ignore that information. And so, being given the clarity and the tools and essentially a lay of the land is what's important. David will say, “you just told me you want to get here. This is the sequence that I might recommend. But you need to make that decision, and you're the only one that can.” That's very empowering.

If you had to highlight one thing that you've learned working with David, what would it be?

“For most entrepreneurs, the minute that some business venture goes decently well, you have the confidence to be like, “Okay, I want to go after this new project.”

The biggest learning has been around the sequencing of events and new projects. Once Verbatim started to go well, I immediately started discovering other problems I wanted to work on. For most entrepreneurs, the minute that some business venture goes decently well, you have the confidence to be like, “Okay, I want to go after this new project.”

Anything else you want to say about David?

“ He has the emotional intelligence and background and experience to translate our conversation into insights that are relevant to the short and long-term business goals”

Sometimes I'll hop on a session with David and say, “Look, man, my work is being affected because my relationship with my parents or this friend or this business partner is not where I want it to be.” And I like being able to come to him and say, “the business is going pretty well, but actually, I want to talk about something else.” He has the emotional intelligence and background and experience to do that just as well and then to actually translate our conversation into insights that are relevant to the short and long term business goals we talk about day to day.