Stealth Startup

Co-Founder

TRIBE HQ

TRIBE- tribehq.co, is a vetted peer community for earlier to mid stage entrepreneurs. Peer groups, retreats, guest speakers, business book club. Highly vetted, growth minded and supportive individuals coming together to grow, learn, vent, and support each other!

Founder

Station Entertainment

Advisor and Investor

Station Entertainment is one of the fastest growing sports and entertainment agencies in the country. We represent top influencers and athletes- TheStation.io

Chief Executive Officer

UC Irvine

Advisory Board Member - CX

Helpware

Helpware.io is a BPO company that has created a unique platform that combines machine learning with human review to enable content moderation, tagging, and image/video annotation, triggered by a simple API call. With offices in the Irvine, Kiev, Manila and Guadalajara, we have the global scale to tailor custom solutions to our many powerhouse clients.

CXO and Co-Founder

SCMT Creative

•Founder and Partner of a strategy firm focused on creative and brand strategy 
•Led successful projects for both big players and fresh startups
•Worked with some of the most exciting creative minds in all of California

Director of Strategy

DealerSocket

-Managed the content strategy team and planted the entire infrastructure for a brand new department
-Content strategy rollout for over 250+ people Sales Org
-Developed messaging to be used by Sales and CSM teams
-Blog strategy for DealerSocket
-Training material creation for internal sales team

Senior Content Strategist

-Reported weekly to executive team on implemented and forecasted revenue.
-Contributed to major overhaul of entire departmental infrastructure for 150 person department.
-Responsible for training rollouts, system implementations, SOPs, KPIs
-Mentorship to new hires
-Implementation of rollout for complete product relaunch
-Led trainings and classes of 5-150 people

Strategic Services 

As a mentor I helped new Consultants come into their role by coaching on process, training on products, developing ideas together to consult on, and exploring how to look at reporting analytically.

Consulting Mentor

•Consistently managed over 40 clients in Los Angeles and Hawaii, totaling over $1 million in annual revenue.
•Implemented campaigns for sales and service that generated over $1 million at stores.
•Provided analysis and innovative marketing/ process ideas to high-ranking management in the automotive industry.
•Led teams of 2 to 6 people for CRM implementations across the US and Canada.
•Gave presentations and trainings to groups of 25 to 50 people.

Strategic Services Consultant

S.T.O.R.Y. (Start Them Off Reading Young)

I started this company with three other college students because of a vision to help combat illiteracy.  We sold clothing, and for every item sold we donated books to children.  As President, I established contacts, bookkept, marketed, managed buying and orders, planned, strategized and made decisions to keep the company growing.

Founder and President

Investor l Managing Partner @ Unfounded Ventures l ex CEO @ Station Entertainment & CXO @ Helpware l Partnering w/ great people to build profitable startups

Transforming workplaces: wellbeing programs for happier and mentally healthier employees | Speaker | Facilitator | Stress management | Mindfulness | Mindset | Relaxation

Cofounder of 2 different startups that scaled into tens of millions in revenue.

Former CEO @ Station Entertainment, Former CXO @ Helpware

Currently investing in SMBs @ UnFounded Ventures.

We are launching a portfolio company- a premiere peer community for earlier stage entrepreneurs: TRIBEHQ.co

I am an advisor to several startups on building profitable, purpose based businesses.
      
I love to help others anywhere I can, and would love to meet other founders and entrepreneurs. 

Bonus facts, I'm from California, now in North Carolina. I love adrenaline like surfing and climbing. I'm a dad to a 2 year old. 

Don’t hesitate to reach out!

Update on our pre-seed round:

We are now in conversations with over 40 VCs

We've had over 350 deck requests 

Multiple follow on VCs ready to go

Multiple angels ready to go

Meanwhile a ton of potential customers calls happening 

Development side full steam ahead

Hiring and hiring pipeline filled

We will be able to officially launch very soon 

Super excited to talk more about everything soon!

A lot of learnings as well on the VC convos which I'll make more posts about soon. 

I'm curious, for those that have raised through VC before, what's your biggest advice?

Trenton Hughes

building a new startup | Also Co-Founded TRIBE, Helpware & Station Entertainment, Multiple Exits l

We've got something big coming soon 

Heck of a week with Scott Frazier this week in San Francisco 

A ton of awesome meetings, people and technology in the works in SF

And lost my voice

Co-Founding a New Venture | Also Co-Founded TRIBE, Helpware & Station Entertainment, Multiple Exits l

We are building out a potential advisory board for a cutting edge AI company we are raising a pre-seed for

If you know anyone at a big AI company like Open Ai, Scale, Anthropic, Cohere, etc.

Or you know anyone from top marketplaces like Turo, Yelp, Angellist, Cars, Carvana, etc

Would love to talk, setting up a bunch of meetings right now

Very much looking forward to the bigger announcements soon

Stoked to have Darren McKee as a part of TRIBE, he's a next level dude providing insane value on social selling and Linkedin

He came in with such a giving minded mentality week one and it shows as to why he's blown up. So deserving

Stoked to support his cohort as well!

If for some reason you don't know Darren yet or haven't seen his stuff, definitely go check him out

I simplify LinkedIn & Social Selling - Founder of Darren McKee Co & CEO of 531 Social

I’m not a big “community” person, I’m actually on record saying I think that people are sick of them and they are a waste of time and resources. 

I can also admit when I’m wrong 😑 

Scott Frazier introduced me to Trenton Hughes who convinced me to take a peek inside of his “community” called TRIBE HQ

I hesitantly added their workspace to my slack to my dismay, expecting to see what every other space looks like. A big ole nothing burger of channels that are empty and the same 9 people responding to things and zero value add. 

But, what I saw was different. 

I saw 100 + founders all willing to support each other with pretty much everything from sales to marketing to product to legal to ops to recruiting, legit every part of running a business.

Last week I joined a sub group called “technical founders” and sat in a 45 min call with 6 other founders building - sheesh it felt good and I felt seen and that’s something I’ve never experienced in a “community.”

I called Trenton to tell him about my early experience, it was 4PM on a Friday. That led to us talking about how we could get more people to know about tribehq.co 

So here is what we came up with:

Trenton knows what I do and he also knows about the folks I’m connected with here. He also knows that I don’t partner with my companies from a sponsorship or brand mention perspective (unless I actually know the product and founders)

Today, TRIBE HQ is officially a sponsor of my  darrenmckee.co LinkedIn and Social Selling Cohort for the month of October, and I’m so amped about it - this group of leaders is absolutely STACKED!

To the companies that passed on this, I’d keep an eye on this for future opportunities because this partnership will put north of 100K eyes on Tribe which ultimately will get more entrepreneurs and founders access to a community that is actually worth a darn. 

P.S. - I still think most communities stink 😂

We have our last entrepreneur retreat coming up in Jackson Hole Nov 7-9

15 people booked in

1 to 2 openings left

LMK if interested!

Chief Marketing Officers usually get $250k+ salaries. 

They come in and look at how to spend a bunch more money on ads and other things. 

If I was a CMO on a tight budget, I'd instead look at implementing a ton of no cost or low cost options to drive leads and grow.

Here's what I'd do:

1. Founder content- we'd make the founders mini influencers
2. Niche podcast- we'd create a podcast for whatever niche we are in
3. Reviews sites: Clutch, G2, etc, we'd create campaigns to push reviews in a big way
4. Website redo- it blows my mind how bad 90 percent of y'all's websites are
5. Influencer partnerships- we would find influencers, newsletters, conferences, podcasts in our niche and sponsor them. Many can be very low cost or affiliate models
6. Community- we'd build community within our customer base and show proof of it any way we can across socials
7. Social: we would show off our team, our momentum constantly 
8. Newsletter: we'd create our own weekly newsletter that would feel like a secret club membership

What other low or no cost ideas would you add?

Who will be in SF next week for tech week? 

I'm meeting with a few VCs and other founders. 

Would love to talk to more!

We are raising up our pre-seed and would love to talk to folks in that world

I advised an entrepreneur doing about $1.5M who was struggling with growth. 

They had: 

A. Terrible website
B. No social media
C. No accountability metrics for the team
D. No emails or newsletter
E. A staff member who wasn't good to the team.

They wanted to double their business. Any one of these items could do it for them. 

The bar isn't as high as we think it is, if you do the basics right. 

Where are you guys struggling most in your businesses? Happy to help

TechCrunch article just dropped saying that the AI services transformation will be harder than VCs think 

And that's for sure the truth.

Businesses aren't able to go implement AI by itself

We've seen a ton of businesses go lay off a bunch of staff only to need to rehire

Services is a 10x bigger market than software. 

The reason is because companies want the results, not just the tools

The winners in this new era will be the ones that can blend AI + humans to ensure work actually gets done

Any other thoughts you guys have on where this goes?

Taplio

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Taplio

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