Joni Klippert

In progress here at Trellus (YC W22) 1. Initial beta tests are beginning soon around our screener-drop automations 2. Continued focus on performance upgrades to enable us to do another 10x in volume growth and keep systems fast and operational 3. Upgrades to practice bot UI's + controls 4. Increase integration surface areas in Attio + a few more unnanounced! 5. Continued released of smart presence + upgrades to our model predictor for smart presence #sdrs #bdrs #ai #coldcalls #salesenablement #sales

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New on the Scarf blog today: Are you ironing out the ideal customer profile for your open source business? Learn about how Liquibase uses Scarf to track open source usage to model their ideal customer profile and operationalize their GTM. https://lnkd.in/gtj2QMSV

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I shared a panel recently with Michael Contento, CEPA on exit planning & valuations... ...at the ChannelNext Events MSP conference hosted by Julian Lee. Here's the top quotes we shared on the panel: - "Exit planning is business planning." - "An exit strategy should be, by far, your foundation of a growth strategy." - "We talk about revenue, we talk about profit, we talk about productivity. Why aren't we talking about valuation?" - "Understanding your current valuation, getting a proper evaluation done, comparing it to your profit gap and value gap." - "The mindset is you're going to sell your company. It doesn't mean you have to sell your company." - "If your company is sellable by tomorrow, that means you are running an incredibly profitable company that anyone will buy." - "A business who's too dependent on the business owner is not very marketable, unfortunately." - "It's not about what the number is on the last page, it's the 20 pages before that, that tell you what's wrong with your business (valuation report)." - "When that (offer) number came, it didn't include all the blood, sweat, tears, crying, bounced checks." --- For more info on how to navigate a scale-up or exit plan, see the below video & DM for a complementary 30-min strategy call: #CEO #BusinessOwners #Founder #SMBstrategy #ExitPlanning #ScalingBusiness #Entrepreneurship #MergersandAcquisitions #PrivateEquity #BusinessGrowth #Transition

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Your Cloud Infrastructure bill is the new headcount plan. For years, startup board meetings obsessed over hiring velocity to drive growth. Now we’re seeing a shift. CFOs are putting cloud spending in the spotlight. In the age of AI, the marginal cost of delivering value isn’t a new developer for a salesperson; it’s a token, a model call, or a GPU hour. That’s why we backed Matt Biringer and Yassine Açoine at North.cloud. Their AI-powered financial system helps high-growth startups and Fortune 500 companies alike manage cloud costs with the same visibility and rigor they bring to development, hiring, and GTM. • No FinOps headcount required • Massive savings in minutes, not quarters • 500%+ net retention, hundreds of millions of cloud spend under management • Customer DevOps teams can focus on... drum roll... development and deployment, not forensic cloud accounting exercises. Cloud COGS are becoming core to your business model. North makes them predictable & controllable. Here's why we led their Series A round and why you'll never go back after trying this solution in your cloud infrastructure: https://lnkd.in/eQFHp9ku #DevOps #CFO #venturecapital #FinOps #AIinfrastructure

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👀 You can’t manage or optimize what you can’t see. 👀 I had a great time stepping in for my co-founder Cory Wheeler on SaaSMe Unfiltered to talk with TJ Johnson of MGM Resorts International about what really unlocks SaaS Management: full visibility into your software environment. During our conversation, TJ shared that “No one person typically will have that picture unless you have a tool.” His advice? Implement a tool so you have centralized visibility into your SaaS data, and then optimization and governance will naturally follow. Catch the full episode: https://lnkd.in/g2ZK_p2u

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The latest episode is live, and this one is fantastic. I sat down with Eric Gilpin, President, GTM of G2, a leader who’s spent over two decades scaling teams, navigating change, and driving growth in some of the most competitive technology markets in the world. What makes Eric stand out is how he thinks about people, performance, and presence. In this conversation we went beyond tactics and hit on: Being strong at work without losing your presence at home Work demands a lot. But the cost of absence, in relationships, in moments, in memory, isn’t on any spreadsheet. Why alignment with your spouse matters more than “balance” It’s not a 50/50 scorecard, it’s shared intention and honesty about what really matters. What “being present” requires, not just physically there, but mentally and emotionally engaged, even when everything else claws for your attention. The real talk on AI Will AI replace us? Maybe parts of what we do. But the parts of leadership no model can replicate are exactly what matter most going forward. Listening to understand, not to respond That might be the most underrated leadership skill in the age of speed. This episode is about the humanity beneath the headlines and what leaders need to actually thrive in the chaos of work, tech, and life. If you’re thinking about the future of work, AI, or how to show up better in the places that matter most, give this one a listen. 🎧 Youtube: https://lnkd.in/e4nrDEAu

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“An absolute must.” That's how CIO Brian Atkinson (of Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine) described Island during a recent discussion with Reworked. Let's take a step back. ICOM encountered a challenging situation: → Entirely SaaS-based operations → Various compliance requirements (HIPAA, GLBA, etc.) → A diverse user group (students, physicians, faculty, & staff) This complex environment led them - like many organizations today - to adopt legacy solutions (such as VDI), resulting in slow and awkward browser experiences. Not ideal. Then Brian found Island. And things started to improve. However, this story goes beyond just problem-solving. We didn't simply deliver a product and vanish. We were on-site twice weekly, offering best practices and continuous support to help ICOM maximize the Enterprise Browser's benefits. Our goal has always been to create an environment where organizations don't have to choose between productivity and security. An approach that clearly “delights both users and IT teams because it finally gives them what they've both been wanting: security without sacrificing usability.” Read more about ICOM’s journey via the link in the comments. ↓ Virginia Backaitis Gartner

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I’ve been talking with founders about how painful enterprise customization still is — even in 2025. David Dworsky and Gordon Ritter just put words to what we’ve been seeing: the age of point-and-click configuration is ending, and the next category winners will make customization conversational. For early-stage founders, this is the wedge: - Own one painful workflow - Capture the data - Build toward becoming a system of record If you’re building in this space, I’d love to hear how you’re approaching it. Link to the full article on this in the comments. 

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We at USU just launched a brand-new ITAM platform — built from the ground up for better performance, flexibility, and real-time visibility. From license optimization to hybrid infrastructure support, this platform changes the game. 🎯 👉 Explore what’s new, what’s better, and why this matters for your IT strategy: https://lnkd.in/eVEcnYTY #USUSolutions #ITassetmanagement #ITAM

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Docusign just integrated IAM with Claude Cowork. Bonterms is now an IAM Extension App. That means your teams can trigger a Bonterms deal from a Maestro workflow, a webform, or anywhere they start a deal. We're showing it live tomorrow. 📅 Wednesday, Feb. 25 🕐 10am PT / 1pm ET No slides, no sales pitch — just a live walkthrough of how teams are using Bonterms to close NDAs in 5 minutes and commercial deals in 20. Drop in → https://lnkd.in/gKj7eg-e

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jensen called the idea that enterprise cos will rip+replace software 'illogical' and he's right. no one wants to vibe code their payroll - software is 8-10% of enterprise budgets & for most companies the compliance risk of rebuilding mission-critical systems far outweighs the software savings

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An #automation starting point for your business. Subscribe to an automation platform that requires little technical knowledge like Zapier or IFTTT. If you're technically savvy, check out n8n. You now have an admin employee for less than $100 per month 👀 Next, do this very simple exercise. 1. Review the list of job responsibilities and tasks that an admin employee needs to complete for your business. 2. Select 1-3 specific tasks. I highly suggest something menial, boring and extra points if it's something the employee or company hates doing. I also suggest that you refrain from starting with the highest value task. Start small to learn the tool you're using and introduce your organization to automation. 3. Break those tasks down into individual steps. 4. In Zapier or IFTTT build 1 automation (workflow) per task 5. The individual steps you broke out in number 3 above become the steps in the automation. 6. Once the workflow is complete, test the workflow on an example task with multiple reviewers. DO NOT test on a live task. If you mess something up, it just creates friction to adoption. Make your adjustments in testing mode before you fully implement it into the process (in softeware we call this going from "QA/testing" to "production". And just like that, your company is leveraging automation to reduce costs, reduce menial tasks Here is a quick example of one of the first automations we set up for Lit Alerts almost 2 years ago: Task: When an agreement is signed, we want that customers information to be dispersed to the team members and systems we use to manage customers. Steps: 1. File the agreement in our completed agreement folder 2. Create a record of the details of the deal in a backup Google Sheet document 3. Send a message to the team in Slack notifying them of the deal completion, deal details and associated contacts (this triggers other steps from customer support, finance and sales that are not yet automated but will be soon). 4. Send the customer details and payment information to our payments provider. This automation has saved us countless hours of uploading documents and entering data in multiple systems while also providing peace of mind that we are recording our customers information in a scalable way. Just start with something simple. Then move on to the next task that every one hates doing.

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I’m excited to share the latest episode of ThriveCast, where I sit down with the incredible Andrew Capland to explore how growth really happens when alignment, activation and accountability aren’t just buzzwords—but the backbone of your system. 👉 Tune in to “The Growth Operating System — Building Alignment, Activation, and Accountability” here: https://lnkd.in/gZcP3zuM Here’s what we dug into: Here are the top insights we covered: 1️⃣ Ideas are cheap. Systems win. How team alignment, communication, and consistent execution outperform frameworks and playbooks every single time. 2️⃣ The new ladder for Growth Leaders. Why moving into growth leadership means influencing peers, managing pushback, and driving clarity—far beyond tactics. 3️⃣ Effectiveness > “Right answers.” Great growth leaders focus less on being correct and more on persuading teams, prioritizing under ambiguity, and keeping momentum. 4️⃣ AI is a multiplier, not a replacement. Tools can generate ideas—but timing, context, judgment, and cross-team communication remain deeply human. 5️⃣ Build your Growth OS before you scale. From rituals to scorecards to decision frameworks (yes, including RACI), we break down how to make growth repeatable, not accidental. If you’re building or scaling a growth function in SaaS — whether you’re in product, marketing, revenue operations or leadership — this episode is for you. 🔗 Give it a listen, drop a comment with your key takeaway, and if this resonates, let me know and I’ll send you the full episode guide with all the frameworks we covered. Thanks for being part of the ThriveStack journey—let’s turn your growth from chaos into a system. #GrowthOS, Delivering Value #B2BSaaS

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