"The most difficult decision I have had to make has been to reshuffle the leadership team."
Meet Alex Colvin, Founder and CEO at Penula, a Proactive Retention Platform that is focused on increasing Customer Lifetime Value by reducing churn and driving upsells. The platform achieves this by helping enterprise marketing teams ask customers what they want and making it happen automatically at the moments that matter.
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Let’s start with a brief introduction first. Introduce yourself to our readers.
Alex Colvin: I’m an early 30’s entrepreneur who has a passion for building software to solve complex problems in a simple way. My career began in management consulting and I was able to get my first taste of Technology early in my career while working in San Francisco helping with the system implementation project of some of the darlings of silicon valley. I founded Pendula in 2017.
Our audience is interested to know about how you got started in the first place. Did you always want to become a CEO or was it something you were led to? Our readers would love to know your story!
Alex Colvin: In 2017, I decided to jump into the deep end and start Pendula, building on some experience I had within the subscription billing world. We formed a small bootstrapped team and built a very simple customer experience tool that helps collect unpaid bills.
A key part of the first tool we built was an SMS email cleansing conversation for customers who were not receiving their bills as a result of incorrect contact information. After seeing how incredible our initial results were in collecting customer information via two-way text we decided to see how we could apply the same experience to every use case, ones focused on revenue and service. This triggered our mission to be the heart of every conversation between businesses and their customers and defined our business ever since.
“Selfmade” is a myth. We all received help, no doubt you love to show appreciation to those who supported you when the going got tough, who has been your most important professional inspiration?
Alex Colvin: My father David has been a part of Pendula from day 1 – he has helped us with our early fundraises and was one of our first customers. He has stayed on our board since the beginning of Pendula and is now currently our Chairman.
How did your journey lead you to become a CEO? What difficulties did you face along the way and what did you learn from them?
Alex Colvin: You don’t really become a CEO and you are not really ever more than a title, I don’t see myself as a CEO – I see myself as having an ever-changing role across the business helping improve what we do in the best way I can. Ultimately my role at Pendula is to care about our team – they are the ones who make the everyday parts of the business work and without them, there is no need for a ‘CEO’.
Tell us about your company. What does your business do and what are your responsibilities as a CEO?
Alex Colvin: Penula is a Proactive Retention Platform that is focused on increasing Customer Lifetime Value by reducing churn and driving upsells. The platform achieves this by helping enterprise marketing teams ask customers what they want and making it happen automatically at the moments that matter.
Pendula has over 100 customers including Origin Energy, Amaysim, Ramsay HealthCare and Energy Australia, and operates offices in Sydney and Brisbane. The business has raised over $11M in capital rounds over the past 3 years which was led by MA Financial Group and Equity Venture Partners.
My job is to help steer the ship and help guide decisions on the bets we think will pay off.
What does CEO stand for? Beyond the dictionary definition, how would you define it?
Alex Colvin: This is a really simple one – a CEO stands for the team and the individuals in the team – enable them and get out of their way.
When you first became a CEO, how was it different from what you expected? What surprised you?
Alex Colvin: Every day is different – a CEO of a startup in its infancy is worlds apart from a CEO during a funding round to one with employees in multiple cities with different teams. The principals are the same, however – do the things that will give the best long term result for the business. The thing that was most different to what I expected was having to let go of so many things as the team grew – I always trusted my team but it is always a strange feeling to completely hand something over to people who are objectively better at doing it than you are, I’m always surprised at how much more able specialists are at completing tasks that you yourself initially started.
There are many schools of thought as to what a CEO’s core roles and responsibilities are. Based on your experience, what are the main things a CEO should focus on? Explain and please share examples or stories to illustrate your vision.
Alex Colvin: Every day I split my focus into 3 key things, in no particular order:
- Team and Culture
- Product
- Customers
They are all interconnected and form the foundation of the entire business – get these right and everything else will generally take care of itself.
Share with us one of the most difficult decisions you had to make for your company that benefited your employees or customers. What made this decision so difficult and what were the positive impacts?
Alex Colvin: The most difficult decision I have had to make has been to reshuffle the leadership team. Following our last capital round, we found ourselves in a place that most scale-up founders do. You have a team of individuals who are really smart, bought into the business’s mission and vision but every time we look to do something big it is brand new and we had to learn how to do it before we could then do it. This meant that our progress was slow as the expectation for results increased in pace.
The only answer was to level up the team and bring in additional experience so we could shortcut the learning process that was embedded in our business. What this meant was a reshuffle of our team hierarchy and also that a few people did not continue the journey with us. This was not only the most different decision I have made in the history of our business but also the hardest to communicate internally – ultimately we did make the right decision and the new leadership team is now driving the business into a growth stage that has not been possible until now.
How would you define success? Does it mean generating a certain amount of wealth, gaining a certain level of popularity, or helping a certain number of people?
Alex Colvin: Success is achieving our goals with the smallest amount of effort – we are focused on building a good business,
Some leadership skills are innate while others can be learned. What leadership skills do you possess innately and what skills have you cultivated over the years as a CEO?
Alex Colvin: I do genuinely care about the people in my team and I always have – that translates to a nurturing nature that is embedded in our business – this is my best strength as a leader.
The biggest skill I have cultivated over the years is being the last to talk – it is always difficult to hold back when you have so much intimate knowledge on topics of discussion. If you do you will hear perspectives you have not conceptualised which lead to better decisions and a more engaged and enabled team.
How did your role as a CEO help your business overcome challenges caused by the pandemic? Explain with practical examples.
Alex Colvin: We were fortunate in our business where our revenues were not affected by the pandemic, it’s inherent in our proposition to companies that this is something that is critical at all times.
The biggest challenge came down to people as a result of the lockdown – keeping engagement up while being completely virtual was always challenging – the way we overcame it was to always keep the team front of mind even if they were not present in the same room.
Do you have any advice for aspiring CEOs and future leaders? What advice would you give a CEO that is just starting out on their journey?
Alex Colvin: People don’t make decisions based on facts, they make them on emotions. By showing the people behind stats and facts you will get a lot further and be a lot happier. Basically, your passion is your best asset to growing your business, not your product.
Thank you for sharing some of your knowledge with our readers! They would also like to know, what is one skill that you’ve always wanted to acquire but never really could?
Alex Colvin: I’ve always wanted to be able to quickly solve a Rubix cube – I keep trying and can’t seem to crack the magic
Before we finish things off, we have one final question for you. If you wrote a book about your life today, what would the title be?
Alex Colvin: The Balancing Effect
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Alex Colvin for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Alex Colvin or his company, you can do it through his – Facebook
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