Life in the Fast Lane: My First Year at MetaCX

Two weeks ago, I celebrated my first year anniversary with MetaCX. It was a year that both flew by and never seemed to end for reasons both related to and unrelated to my job.

When I started as the 30th employee and only marketer at MetaCX, I had no idea what was in store for me. I’ve been in the start-up world for most of my career so I had certain expectations, but as 2020 was sure to remind us, sometimes life has a way of surprising you.

What set the tone for my first year as well as what sets MetaCX apart from many other tech start-ups is the fact that we’re building something that’s transformative. Our founders recognized that supplier/buyer relationships were broken and instead of coming up with a band-aid solution, decided to create an entirely new approach—shared success plans informed by live performance data.

What I quickly discovered is that when you’re creating an entirely new category of software, you don’t launch a company in the same way as you would a point solution. You can’t just tick off your capabilities and show which pain points they address. And you don’t have the luxury of comparisons—we’re a more affordable version of Company A or a more customizable version of Company B.

Instead, you have to get the businesses you’re interested in partnering with to buy into your vision. And the tricky part to that is that businesses, like people, are resistant to change. In my opinion, that is what this whole year has been about—making businesses realize that there is a better way and that the end result is worth the discomfort of change. While at the same time building a kick-ass product.

I’m really proud of the progress we have made. We officially launched the company, unveiled a brand new website, raised capital, welcomed numerous new executives to the team, and had four transformative product launches. But those are just the things that were highlighted by the press and on social media. What you didn’t see were the million advances being made behind the scenes. The past year, our team was constantly asking ourselves questions like:

• How can we get people to understand our vision?
• What does a transformative software experience look like?
• How can we make our approach easier to adopt?
• What part of our story resonates the most?
• What capabilities do business really care about?
• Which industries value an outcome-based approach?
• How can we make change less scary?
• How can we fix the customer lifecycle?
• Who cares about the customer lifecycle?

And the list goes on and on.

The result has been trial and error and ultimately, a better and stronger MetaCX. People love the saying, “Death by a thousand cuts,” but the inverse is equally true. Victory is the result of a thousand tiny steps forward and MetaCX is well on our way. We’re constantly evolving and will continue to make our vision come to life.