On this episode of "The CEO Series," G2 co-founder and CEO Godard Abel discusses his "never-stop-climbing" approach to business.
On this episode of The CEO Series, we went to the headquarters of G2 in Chicago, a software marketplace and review platform that has raised $257 million at a valuation of over a billion dollars, which makes them a unicorn.
Godard Abel, G2's co-founder and CEO, sat down with me to share his perspective and philosophy on leadership — what it takes to manage the health of the business, engagement of employees, expectations of stakeholders and so much more.
On this episode of The CEO Series, we went to the headquarters of G2 in Chicago, a software marketplace and review platform that has raised $257 million at a valuation of over a billion dollars, which makes them a unicorn.
Godard Abel, G2's co-founder and CEO, sat down with me to share his perspective and philosophy on leadership — what it takes to manage the health of the business, engagement of employees, expectations of stakeholders and so much more.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 We're at G2 here in Chicago, and they are a software marketplace and review platform, and they raised
00:06 257 million dollars at a valuation of over a billion dollars, which makes them a unicorn
00:13 Today we talked to Goddard Aple, their co-founder and CEO
00:17 Let's go
00:19 CEOs carry a lot of weight. They manage businesses, people,
00:24 expectations of stakeholders, and so much more. I want to hear their story. How is it testifying in front of Congress?
00:30 What are some things that you look out for when evaluating a company?
00:33 I'm on a journey to learn and get to know top business leaders
00:38 I think everybody thinks that they want to be a CEO. I didn't get into this to be a CEO. What are the risks?
00:44 Oh, I want you to hold this under your tongue. And how do we de-risk that? I'm Will Salve.
00:48 Thank you for your business. And this is the CEO series. All right, so we are with the CEO
00:53 and co-founder of G2, Goddard Aple. Goddard, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for coming in, Will.
01:00 Yeah, great to be here with you. So first question,
01:03 which I'm really interested in your answer is
01:05 you raised
01:07 257 million dollars and
01:09 I think from the outside looking in, a lot of people say, "Oh, you've raised that much money,
01:14 you're unicorn status now, you've made it." All is well.
01:19 What's something that comes along with raising that amount and those expectations that some people don't think of?
01:25 And that was an amazing milestone. We had an amazing party. I love becoming a unicorn. But then you also wake up the next day
01:30 and you and I were talking about this, but you're really committed to
01:34 giving at least three times that back to your investors.
01:38 So it's exciting. In that round, we raised 157 million.
01:41 But I know the expectation of our new investors, great investors, but they want at least three times that money.
01:46 So really we have to give them 500 million dollars back. And so you're also, it's a big commitment as a founder CEO,
01:51 where you realize that, you know, you've now signed up to go for much bigger outcome.
01:56 Obviously we wanted to do it, but it's really the beginning of your next journey then.
02:00 You know, and I think our next journey hopefully ends with a successful public offering
02:03 that hopefully gives those investors at least three times their money back, hopefully much more.
02:08 But then it's many years of work to get to that next peak. So, you know, it feels great,
02:13 but it's also a commitment to getting that next peak.
02:16 Have you always had an entrepreneurial spirit?
02:21 Because you've started, I've seen on your LinkedIn, you've started five companies.
02:25 I read an article where you had a car wash business when you were younger.
02:29 So talk about just having the entrepreneurial spirit, always wanting to grow and build companies.
02:34 I know you've had a couple of successful exits. What has that been like for you?
02:38 You're right. My first business was in high school and I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
02:43 But it was called Ultimate Car Care.
02:46 And I started with my best friend at the time, Joe Nacito.
02:49 And honestly, we just wanted to make a little bit more money.
02:51 And Joe's dad, I remember, had like a nice red Corvette.
02:55 And so to start the business, we're like, oh, and we had prom.
02:58 It was like our junior year, but we both had like nice tuxedos.
03:01 We stood next to his Corvette.
03:02 Yeah, smart.
03:03 And I guess we figured this would be a cool flyer because we wanted to kind of do car detailing for fancy cars.
03:08 So we're like, oh, we'll take a nice picture next to a fancy car.
03:11 And we just printed out posters and with our phone number.
03:14 Can you tell me a little bit about your
03:17 growing up life? Like how'd you how'd you grow up?
03:19 Tell us about your family a little bit.
03:21 Yeah, and I was born in Germany and I mentioned that Northwest Germany.
03:25 And I was born into a family of entrepreneurs.
03:28 And I think two years after I was born, my father, Gert,
03:33 took over a family business from my grandfather.
03:36 And I always admired my grandfather because I heard a lot of stories about him from my dad.
03:41 But he started a business ultimately called Able Pumps, but he did it in 1947.
03:47 And if you remember history, I mean, this was two years after the end of World War Two.
03:51 And my grandfather and my dad, they were born in Northwest Germany,
03:55 industrial part, which, you know, sadly during the war had gotten bombed to rubble.
04:00 But my grandfather during that time decided to start his own company.
04:03 And I always think about that when I had struggles as an entrepreneur.
04:06 I'm like, wow, it's nothing like those struggles.
04:08 Talk about starting your first company outside of Stanford.
04:12 What did you do? And then walk us through.
04:14 I know it's a long story, but walk us through that up until you started G2.
04:18 The first company I really started was called Big Machines.
04:20 And we started that we incorporated January one, 2000.
04:24 You know, it was really the dotcom boom and companies like Amazon had gone public recently.
04:30 And at least during 1999, beginning of 2000, when we started,
04:34 investors were also very willing to bet on kind of young, motivated.
04:39 Yeah, it was a hot thing.
04:40 And frankly, it was brand new, maybe like crypto a couple of years ago.
04:42 Right. So investors were also betting on kind of young,
04:45 inexperienced entrepreneurs like us because nobody had experience in the Internet.
04:49 It was brand new.
04:50 Give us the timeline of Big Machines, because you were in that for what, around 13 years?
04:54 Yes. And I was reading that there was some
04:57 there were some ups and downs during that time, obviously the dotcom crash.
05:02 So that's a big thesis of what you've talked about in the past is being an entrepreneur
05:08 does not just it's not just rainbows all the time.
05:10 Everything's good.
05:11 Did that give you a crash course in building business right away?
05:15 Literally a crash course.
05:17 And that was all dotcom, right?
05:19 It went from dotcom boom to they called it dot bomb because everything was crashing.
05:24 And in 2001, people were even saying Amazon was going to go bankrupt.
05:29 They were already a public company, but they'd taken on hundreds of millions of debt
05:32 and literally credit risk analysts on Wall Street were just predicting when Bezos was going to be bankrupt.
05:37 Yeah. So all of a sudden it went from this tremendous boom time.
05:39 And that was our first year.
05:40 You know, we we raised 20 million bucks right away from some famous people.
05:44 John Scully, others, you know, raised that 20 million.
05:48 And then by the end of 2000, I'm like, OK, we're going to raise our next round.
05:52 And all of a sudden, all the VCs who were earlier were like, oh, you're brilliant.
05:56 We're going to bet on you.
05:57 They were like, the Internet's a failure.
06:00 We're just trying to protect, you know, the few portfolio companies we can save.
06:03 So like no way that make you feel it was very deflating because it went from like euphoria
06:07 to, you know, like feeling like, oh, we're going to go public.
06:11 We're going to be millionaires like, wow, we're going out of business.
06:14 And a lot of fear, anxiety, doubt, especially.
06:17 I also convinced my dad to be our first customer and I convinced him to be my first angel investor.
06:22 And I convinced my best friends from MIT and where I went to college,
06:26 like five of them to join me in my company.
06:28 And so then I'm like, wow, I'm going to like lose my dad's money,
06:31 ruin my friend's career, ruin my own career.
06:36 And so it felt extremely heavy, you know, and that actually lasted,
06:40 honestly, like three years, like 2001, 2002, 2003.
06:45 Like all those years, like we missed our sales plan dramatically.
06:48 I think 2001, we were going to sign up.
06:51 Our plan was to sign up 20 customers.
06:53 We only signed up two.
06:54 And so it was just, yeah, I remember being a very tough time where
06:59 I honestly just didn't know if we're going to make it.
07:01 But then I think what would help me, one, like having Chris there.
07:03 And I think the reason we kept going, we don't let each other down.
07:06 And that's what gave us the courage.
07:08 And the other thing I think I remember deciding that moment,
07:09 like I was listening to advisors a lot.
07:11 I also just said, hey, we're going to stop listening to anyone else.
07:13 Like if we're going down, we're going to go down doing what we believe.
07:16 And then I just focused 100 percent on sales.
07:19 I'm like, we just got to win that next deal.
07:21 And so in hindsight, actually create a lot of clarity and focus.
07:23 What advice would you give to entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs
07:26 that are experiencing, say, that that valley right now?
07:29 Yeah, let's just don't quit.
07:31 Most entrepreneurs I talk to, it's perseverance.
07:34 Because I think almost all entrepreneurs, you go through failure.
07:38 Usually it takes a lot longer.
07:40 Usually you struggle for years.
07:42 Almost every successful entrepreneur I meet.
07:44 So it does come down to don't quit
07:47 and keep going.
07:49 It seems like you have like an itch that can't be scratched.
07:52 True.
07:53 And it's a blessing and a curse as an entrepreneur and a CEO, right?
07:57 Like because it's on one hand, it's very motivating.
08:00 On the other hand,
08:01 there's an itch.
08:03 But yeah, it's an itch that might not be
08:06 able to be scratched.
08:08 Right. And I do think I've thought about this a lot.
08:10 And we talk about our peak culture at G2.
08:14 But I do think we're meant as humans to be climbing peaks.
08:16 And so in that sense, I never want to stop climbing.
08:19 I always want to have a goal.
08:20 I always want a greater purpose.
08:22 And right now it's building G2 to the next level.
08:25 I mean, I could see beyond that.
08:26 Maybe it's a different mission.
08:28 It's a different peak.
08:30 But I do always want to be climbing
08:32 and growing.
08:33 And I do think entrepreneurship is a great platform for doing that.
08:36 And I've had breaks, you know, and I probably financially I could retire.
08:39 I could just sit on the beach.
08:41 But I don't believe I would feel gratified.
08:43 And frankly, I don't think any human would.
08:45 So I think we're meant to strive.
08:47 We're meant to climb.
08:48 We're meant to have a purpose.
08:49 And I think entrepreneurship really gives that to me.
08:52 So right now I love this climb.
08:54 But I do think someday I'll get to the peak of G2 and then, you know,
08:57 we'll see what's next.
08:58 But I do want to pick another peak.
08:59 Yeah, it may not be another company,
09:01 but I want to keep contributing to the world.
09:02 What is G2?
09:03 And G2 is now the trusted place you go for software, we like to say.
09:08 But it's the number one software marketplace in the world
09:10 where over 10 million software buyers come every month
09:13 to discover great apps for their business.
09:15 And we saw the problem, the idea for G2 came from big machines
09:19 because we saw how hard it was for our customers to discover us.
09:23 But then we had big customers like Rolls-Royce,
09:25 they were like, wow, we wish we'd found you two years ago.
09:27 Right.
09:28 We didn't know you existed.
09:29 So we just thought we wanted to create this Amazon-like
09:31 shopping experience for business software.
09:33 And to our surprise, no site like G2 existed.
09:35 There was nowhere where software buyers could get trusted peer reviews,
09:39 trusted insights, discover the best apps.
09:42 And so we just thought, wow, this is meant to be built.
09:44 What is your ultimate vision?
09:46 Because you've mentioned that you want to go public eventually.
09:49 That's a goal of yours.
09:50 You just raised a lot of capital.
09:52 What what is your ultimate goal with G2?
09:54 Do you want to be CEO
09:56 as the years pass?
09:58 Yes, I do want to lead G2 to its next peak.
10:00 And I do want to eventually ring the bell.
10:02 I think also, more importantly, to realize our vision at G2.
10:05 You know, and our vision is to help really every
10:08 every knowledge worker in the planet have the best software.
10:11 And there are over a billion knowledge workers on this planet.
10:14 Most knowledge workers are using 10 different software apps a day.
10:17 If those apps are great,
10:19 they can be very productive.
10:22 They can be very happy in their jobs.
10:23 If their apps are terrible, they'll probably fail their job.
10:25 They won't be productive.
10:26 So we think it's kind of an essential mission.
10:28 And we do. It's a very global marketplace.
10:30 G2 is already today.
10:31 You know, we started here in Chicago, but now we also have teams in Asia,
10:35 you know, in India, Singapore.
10:37 We have teams in London, Dublin, because we're really aiming
10:40 to connect software buyers everywhere in the world to software sellers
10:43 everywhere in the world.
10:44 And I like to say the cloud is a truly borderless world.
10:47 So we can connect business buyers, sellers everywhere on the planet.
10:50 So we really want to be the largest cloud software marketplace on the planet.
10:54 And to do that, we do need more capital.
10:56 And I also think an IPO can be a great branding event
10:58 to make sure every knowledge worker knows about G2.
11:02 Yeah. Yeah.
11:03 Well, I've loved talking to you.
11:05 I really appreciate your time.
11:07 I've known about G2 since about 2018,
11:10 and I didn't really know what you guys did at the time.
11:13 But now I've had a much greater understanding.
11:16 I'm cheering for you guys.
11:17 So I really appreciate your time and thanks for thanks for joining us.
11:20 Yeah. Thank you, Will, for visiting us in our office
11:23 and really enjoyed the conversation.
11:24 Hey, Arman.
11:28 Hey, Arman.
11:30 Let's go talk to him.
11:33 Do it again.
11:34 They raised two hundred and fifty seven million dollars at an...
11:38 Hey, Steve, he said it's all right to unplug the fridge.
11:44 He is the CEO.
11:46 (laughing)