Meet the Operator Network: Northzone’s Powerhouse Resource for Portfolio Companies

 

 

Johan van der Poel / Katana

Fresh from raising their Series B, inventory management software startup Katana found themselves with an interesting problem. Their goal was to expand features for largely underserved mid-market and SMB manufacturers, but they were facing introducing more complexity into their pricing model when they knew the existing model was already not serving them. 

Katana’s pricing model was fairly complex, and yet customers were clustering in only a couple of the pricing options. As a result, Katana felt they weren’t pricing correctly for most customers when it came to pricing new products and features. 

Time to call in the experts. To tackle this problem, Katana’s team worked with Johan van der Poel, Founder of Northlane and member of the Northzone Operator Network. Johan met with the Katana team regularly for two months. The most impactful moments were the three workshops he held for the team – this concentrated time together allowed them to identify the problems, work through solutions, and develop a plan for external validation. 

By working with Johan the Katana team was able to create a new pricing structure which allowed them to optimise price levels to match delivered value and accelerate overall sales velocity. Together they increased lifetime value (LTV) by 50% and increased MMR by 30% at Pricing Launch. Without Johan’s expertise, this process would have taken much longer, costing Katana hundreds of thousands in lost revenue. Instead, they were able to leverage Johan to expedite the process and catalyse their growth.

“We were very happy with the work. He understands SaaS pricing in depth and he is great at bringing all the internal stakeholders to an agreement” – Kristjan Vilosius, co-founder and CEO.

 

Joanna Lord  / Yonder

Credit card startup Yonder had only been live for a year when they started working with Joanna, CMO at Spring Health. Regarding the Operator Network, Joanna said, “Northzone uniquely focussed on thoughtfully matching operators’ skills and motivation with companies who need it”, and that was certainly true of this match. 

Northzone facilitated the partnership between Yonder’s leadership team and Joanna at a critical point in their journey. The company was scaling fast and as a consumer brand, it was clear that nailing their strategy across the full breadth of marketing efforts was imperative. Joanna met with several members of the Yonder leadership team regularly for a few months. She provided mentorship and leadership development to their Operations leaders, guidance and advice to their CEO, and worked hands-on on the development of their marketing strategy with their VP of Marketing. 

On the marketing front, Joanna and the team worked to tackle two specific problems. The first was scaling the team. Joanna was able to leverage her experience to provide customised guidance regarding which hires to make and when, based on Yonder’s marketing model. She also helped leadership work through what other growth loops they could implement to make the Yonder card more accessible, and then sticky. They developed and launched a “lite” model directly targeted at customer acquisition that has been hugely impactful. 

“Joanna made a measurable impact on our business and the changes we implemented based on her guidance generated a noticeable uptick in acquisition”, said founder Tim Chong.

 

James Allgrove / GovDash 

Government contract procurement tool GovDash’s founder faced a familiar question: As a founder, when is the right time to delegate? In this case, GovDash’s CEO Sean Doherty was specifically wondering about the right moment to transition away from founder-led sales and build out a sales team. He spoke with Northzone, who connected him with James Allgrove, an expert in B2B GTM strategy. 

James and Sean met every other week over several months. James was the first UK hire at payments company Stripe, and built Stripe’s UK GTM team from the ground up. He later scaled the New York office from 5 to 200+ people, and served as CRO for Fidel API building out their commercial function. It was this rich experience that he was able to leverage to advise Sean and help GovDash move into its next phase of growth. 

Together James and Sean worked through a checklist in each meeting to move closer to the goal of building an operating model for GovDash’s commercial team. They developed key tools such as GovDash’s ICP and a foundational sales motion, and got into the weeds, writing job descriptions and mapping out hiring processes. While James still serves as an advisor to the GovDash team, they considered the engagement a success once GovDash was able to start putting their plans into motion and building out a GTM team. 

“The expertise James brought helped us hire our first two account executives and get them ramped up despite having limited bandwidth as a founding team.” – Sean Doherty, Co-founder and CEO.

 

Ross Seychell / Ravio

Sometimes an Operator’s role expands beyond that of an advisor – they occasionally engage with portfolio companies on an even deeper level such as as a fractional CXO or investor. That was the case for Operator Ross Seychell and his work with Ravio. 

Shortly after they joined the portfolio, Northzone initially connected Ross with Ravio’s co-founders Merten Wulfert and Roy Blanga so that Ross could provide product guidance. Ross is an experienced Chief People Officer who has served at scaling companies such as Wise and Personio, and also at larger public companies like King and Tesco. And Ravio is building Europe’s leading benchmarking platform that provides scaling companies with accurate market data for compensation and reward structures based on investment, size, location, and more. Given that Ross represented Ravio’s ICP, it was a perfect match. 

As Ross learned more about the Ravio platform through his advisory work, he felt compelled to get more involved. “There’s something powerful about backing founders you believe in, who are building something that you can personally attest to the need for,” Ross said. Having built such close ties with the team, Ross came aboard as an angel investor and extended his support by facilitating introductions to potential customers, offering product feedback, and providing guidance on buying decision processes. 

Of the partnership with Ross, co-founder Roy said, “It’s always a pleasure working with Ross. He has been very helpful with in-depth insights and introductions. We’re tremendously grateful for his support.” 

Operators in Northzone’s network can provide value to startups in numerous ways, ranging from a short phone call to a hands-on role within the company. They leverage their expertise to help leadership teams get unstuck and overcome hurdles that would otherwise slow them down – this helps founders move faster at those critical inflection moments that make the difference between success and failure.