Show notes
The notion that leaders are born and not made can feel oppressive to founders and others working their way up the business ladder. Leadership is isolating enough without the toxic mythology that you’re just supposed to know how to do from the get-go. Our guest today, Christine Tao, Co-Founder and CEO of Sounding Board, is working to normalize coaching for CEOs, Founders, and others who want to become better leaders. Sounding Board allows organizations to manage, scale, and measure coaching on one unified platform. Their AI-Powered admin tools and centralized data insights integrate with our proprietary, managed coach network to deliver coaching at scale. Sounding Board recently closed a $30M Series B funding round led by JAZZ Venture Partners.About Christine Tao:Christine co-founded Sounding Board in 2016 to solve the most challenging yet important part of her role as SVP of a fast-growing VC-backed startup: Leadership Development. Her experience as an operator at stops like YouTube and Tapjoy has helped guide at Sounding Board. She did her undergrad at UC Berkeley and her MBA at Wharton.A word from our sponsor:Ripple Ventures is always focused on helping our founders and CEOs find the best partners to work with. But before we introduce any provider to our companies, we always make sure we try the product first. And when it comes to managing business expenses at Ripple, we were super excited when the team at Jeeves came knocking on our door.Jeeves helped get me and my team setup with physical and virtual credit cards in days. I was able to allow my teammates to expense items in multiple currencies allowing them to pay for anything, anywhere at any time. We weren’t asked for any personal guarantees or pay any setup or annual fees either. Not only does Jeeves save us time, but they also give us up to 3% cashback on our purchases including expenses like Google, Facebook or AWS every month. The best part, Jeeves puts up the cash, and you settle up once every 30 days, unlike some other corporate card companies that make you pre-pay every month. Jeeves offers a truly all-in-one expense management corporate card program for international startups and we at Tank Talks could not be more excited to partner with them. Listeners of Tank Talks can get set up with a demo of Jeeves today and take advantage of a $700 discount and skip the waitlist by visiting tryjeeves.com/tanktalks to learn more.In this episode we discuss:02:33 The difference between a coach and a mentor04:51 The lightswitch moment when she knew she had to found Sounding Board08:26 Why she decided to turn her coach into her co-founder11:53 The value and ROI coaching brings to clients and organizations15:23 How the Sounding Board platform is scalable for future growth18:55 Solving the cold start problem with a marketplace21:13 The ICP for Sounding Board and what leadership means to Christine23:35 How they landed at that ICP25:10 How Sounding Board integrates with learning platforms27:02 The biggest challenges coaches and organizations saw during the early pandemic28:32 How Sounding Board standardizes it caching approach across organizations and internally30:32 The structure Sounding Board uses to contract and pay their coaches31:37 Overcoming jargon and other industry-specific knowledge32:34 The success and flexibility of matching coaches to organizations34:00 What the future of the coaching industry looks like over the next 5-10 years37:27 The broad appeal of coaching across the work/life spectrum39:30 Plans to deploy their recent $30M Series B lead by JAZZ Venture Partners41:51 The number of coaches on the platform today and the plans for growthFast Favorites:PodcastThe Startup Chat20 Minute VCNewsletter/BlogMark SusterFirst Round ReviewReforgeTech GadgetLogitech Video CamNew TrendRenting, not owningRentTheRunway.comBookThe Hard Thing About Hard Things By Ben HorowitzLife LessonYou should always just ask.Follow Matt Cohen and Tank Talks here!Podcast production support provided by Agentbee.Agency This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tanktalks.substack.com
