Karla Berman, Shark Tank | The #1 Challenge in Enterprise Sales, Recruiting Top Executives, and Investing in Startups

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

Google, Softbank, and Shark Tank are part of the career of our guest today: Karla Berman. Who, despite having “the dream job at Google,” decided to take on the challenge of joining a startup, Yalo, and help it grow to millions in sales.

Today, Karla is an angel investor and a participant on Shark Tank Mexico.

In this episode, we talk about:

Her most important lessons from working at Softbank and Google
What she looks for in the businesses and founders she invests in
How to sell to large companies and build sales teams

Karla also shared with us:

Her advice for improving your communication skills and the common mistakes founders make when recruiting talent.

Karla has spent more than 15 years working in digital businesses in Mexico, and this interview has unique lessons from her entire experience. I hope you enjoy it.

Youtube Timestamps*

[1:20] - Karla’s Career and Attracting Talent

How did Karla arrive at the fascinating world of startups?

Karal often says that Javier Mata, the founder of Yalo, “seduced” her, in the good sense of the word, when he hired her.

What did Javier do differently to convince her to leave her dream job at Google and join his startup?

At Softbank, Karla led the operations team and support for the portfolio companies, and one of the main ways investment funds help their startups is by hiring.

What would Karla say are the biggest mistakes founders make when recruiting talent?

Karla has been supporting startups as an angel investor for some time, even from before Shark Tank.

What are the most important lessons Karla took from her experience at companies such as Grupo Expansión, Google, and Yalo? And how have they shaped her as an investor?

[18:30] - Being an Investor and Shark Tank

Did Karla watch Shark Tank before they invited her?
What has surprised her the most about Shark Tank? Is there something where she said: “wow, I did not expect this to be like this”?

What her investment thesis is.

What does she look for in the businesses and founders she evaluates?
Does Karla have a preference for founders who know how to sell? How relevant is that quality for her?

Karla often says that the entrepreneurial world is elitist: the same universities, the same firms and corporates.

How does she advise founders to develop their ability to communicate and sell?

In a past interview, Karla said: “in Mexico the 100 largest companies are the same as 20 years ago. In the US, the largest companies did not exist 20 years ago.”

Without competition, there are no incentives to innovate, to compensate talent better, to invest in technology, etc.

How could we solve this?

[32:22] - How to Sell and Build Sales Teams

One of the biggest difficulties of Software as a Service in Latin America is the low adoption.

There is still no Latin American “unicorn” that sells software to local companies. The ones that exist sell mainly abroad, such as Incode, Auth0, and Mural.

According to Karla, what are the biggest challenges of selling software to large companies in Mexico and Latin America?

Karla joins Yalo when they were billing around 1 million dollars, and when she leaves they reached several million in billing.

What lessons did she take about how to sell to large companies?
What lessons has she learned about how to do “pricing”?

At the beginning, the sales leader is one of the founders of the company. Eventually, companies grow and hire a sales leader, but that “timing” is very variable.

Some companies do it at the beginning, others later.

When is the right moment, according to Karla, to hire a first salesperson, and what qualities should you look for in that person?

When Javier Mata hires her as Vice President of Sales at Yalo, she becomes the leader of the sales department.

How does her role in sales change, and what does she usually recommend? Should the founder step away from sales, stay in it, or what?
Any other lesson Karla took from scaling Yalo’s sales team?

[49:49] Rapid-Fire Round

If Karla had to start her career over from scratch, what would be the main piece of advice she would give herself?
What has been the most influential book on her path through the world of startups?
What would she like to change about the world of startups in Latin America?