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Isaac Garcia, CEO and Founder of Sales Insider

For our interview this morning, we caught up with Isaac Garcia, a serial entrepreneur who previously founded and sold his last company, Central Desktop, and now is working on a new startup, Sales Insider. Isaac told us a bit about how he thinks his company can help solve the recruiting issues with hiring software sales reps—and also tells new entrepreneurs that sometimes, you just can't have it all, and the challenges of balancing a startup, family life, your health, and the rest of your life. Central Desktop was acquired by PGI (NYSE: PGI) in 2014.

What is Sales Insider?

Isaac Garcia: Sales Insider is a talent marketplace for hiring software sales reps. It's very, very specific.

Why software sales reps?

Isaac Garcia: I think of sales recruiting as being a highly frustrating component of being a software founder, and trying to scale up a company. A big area people struggle with is hiring software sales people. We're going after the fat middle of the market. There is executive recruiting for VP of sales and high end sales reps, and you also have very low level entry level for people hiring right out of college. However, there's this huge middle area, where people are looking for account executives, customer success reps, account managers, enterprise reps, that is a big market. I don't think anyone is specializing in that.

How did you start Sales Insider from your past company, Central Desktop, after you sold it?

Isaac Garcia: This came out of my own frustration. I have hired and fired hundreds of sales reps in my own career. I kind of feel like I have an edge from the next person in interviewin gand finding great sales talent. The question was, how do we do that at scale? So we created this marketplace concept, attracted talent, where we screen them, and only provide the best reps. I started this because I struggled hiring and finding sales reps myself. You can find reps from other industries, and recruiters will throw resumes at you, but finding software sales reps with experience, particularly, B-to-B SaaS, is difficult. That's a niche we are targeting.

How long have you been around?

Isaac Garcia: I started the company officially last summer. I was kind of incubating it before, but we landed our first client and started getting revenue in August of last year. Since then, we've been growing pretty well, and now have five or six employees now, in the early, early startup stage.

What was the biggest lesson you learned from Central Desktop?

Isaac Garcia: It takes a lot more than you expect it does to reach success. A lot of the time you heard these stories from software startups, where so-and-so's company has really succeeded, has a billion dollar valuation. But, it probably took them a lot longer for them to get there. Even the example of Zoom, which is a great kick-butt company that has really grown quickly, in six to eight years, you have to think about all that experience the CEO brought in from WebEx. Really, the knowledge and experience in that startup started a long time ago, even before he founded Zoom. I think, as a founder at Central Desktop, understanding what it really took—ours was a nine year journey, from start to end with the acquisition—was a lot longer than I ever expected it.

What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs?

Isaac Garcia: One, is you have to stick with it, because it's going to take a lot longer than you think. You can't quit in the first six months, the first year, the first two years. That's how long it takes for you to get out of the gate and get it going. The other piece of advice I'd give, is you can't have it all. We tend to think today that you can balance your life, and you can have it all. I kind of disagree with that. I think if you're really going to dive deep into your work, you probably aren't going to have a very balanced family life. If you're going to work super hard on your life, you're going to probably sacrifice something else. It might be your health, your physical fitness, your family, your marriage, or your sanity. Something is going to give with all that. So, you're trying to find a balance, but you have to approach it with you can't have it all to begin with.

So did you run into issues with that as a founder?

Isaac Garcia: Yes, it's tough. Whether it's health or whatever. I managed to keep my marriage, now going on 24 years, but it's a challenge. Raising kids, and now being an “older” founder. The first company I did I was 24. Now I'm 45, so it's a different kind of stage of life. It's interesting, but I really do feel like you can't have it all.

Finally, what's next for Sales Insider?

Isaac Garcia: For now, we're very, very focused on only one market, LA. We are doing placements across the country, but we are an LA-based marketplace. That marketplace is going to be replicated in Austin, Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago, and other underserved markets, before we going into markets like the Bay Area and New York. But, we'll become a large, national marketplace that we're building, not just here in LA.

Thanks, and good luck!