Serial entrepreneur Pam Marrone is an accomplished startup founder. She is the founder and CEO of Marrone Bio Innovations (NASDAQ: MBII), a company she started in 2006 and listed on NASDAQ (MBII) in 2013. Dr. Marrone spent her 30+ year career focused on biological products for pest management and plant health, and has started and led three companies.
For Startup Happy Hour in October, StartupSac and the Carlsen Center welcomed Dr. Marrone for a fireside chat interview and Q&A from the audience where she shared her tremendous experience and knowledge in starting and growing successful businesses. Among the topics covered:
- The importance of pursuing a lifelong passion and demonstrating a lifetime of the entrepreneurial mindset of continual learning
- Being a serial entrepreneur – how startups get bigger and become their own organisms that are hard to control
- Understanding the market. and finding product solutions fit
- The importance of language in messaging your value proposition and the process of realizing it – showing a monetary benefit to the customer
- The importance of picking the right people for your team
- Defining culture in the company and the dangers of cultural drift
- Scaling – managing hiring and culture during high growth stages
- Core elements of the fundraising process
- The value of relationship-building in fundraising
- Dealing with conflicting advice from investors
We recorded the session which can be watched in the video below.
