I recently went one on one with Neha Sampat, founder and CEO of Contentstack.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth? 

Neha: I’m the founder and CEO of Contentstack, the leading Composable Digital Experience provider (DXP). Growing up in Pomona, California—the town where my parents settled in after leaving India—I had watched my parents struggle financially as my father tried to make his various business ideas work. I was motivated to help make ends meet, so I started my entrepreneurial career and created my own business when I was about 11 years old. Fast-forward to after my college graduation, I started a tech PR firm during the dot com boom only to see the market crash a few years later. I took this opportunity to shut down my firm and double down on completing my MBA, which led me to my enterprise software career. Soon later, I founded digital consultancy Raw Engineering, integration platform Built.io – which we sold to Software AG down the line, and finally, Contentstack.

One of the biggest challenges that have been instrumental in my growth as a “right-brained” tech CEO was recognizing the value I could bring to the technical world. In one of my very first projects at Contentstack I was working on an idea surrounded by really smart engineers. Coming from PR, I thought in headlines and one-sentence pitches to describe value, but the engineers didn’t. They were used to a complex, technical mindset. That’s when I realized the value I could bring to tech. I’m now the CEO of a company that balances the business and technical sides through product — and I still love delivering the best headlines.

Adam: How did you come up with your business idea? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with great ideas? 

Neha: Prior to Raw Engineering, Built.io, and Contentstack, I was leading e-commerce at VMware, but I started to get the entrepreneurial itch. ​I had been yearning to do things at the speed of the market, but large enterprises move at a slower pace. I started to notice the inherent push/pull between tech and business teams and realized there might be a better way.

Fast forward and all three of the businesses I have co-founded and led have evolved and ended up solving for the roadblocks of the previous one. When I co-found Raw Engineering, our goal was to help enterprises manage digital transformation in the early days of cloud and mobile technologies. My team immediately realized a significant pain point for clients was integration – giving way to the creation of Built.io. Shortly after developing Built.io, my co-founder, Nishant Patel, saw the need to develop a modern, API-based Content Management System as part of this same transformation. And that’s when Contentstack was born.

Recognize the roadblock, gap in a stagnant market, consumer pain points, etc., and build off of that. If you can create a solution for a significant problem, you can scale and grow from there. 

Adam: How did you know your business idea was worth pursuing? What advice do you have on how to best test a business idea? 

Neha: Five years ago, with Contentstack, there were signs of product-market fit all around us. With virtually no marketing, companies were looking for us. We were winning deals but only had one focused salesperson. That’s how we knew it was time to raise our seed round to build out the go-to-market team and address the growing demand head-on.

Product market fit exists when you are solving a problem that is a major pain point. Telltale signs may be when people get creative with their budgets to find room for your solution if they are already trapped in a competitor contract. Or if a new “willingness to pay” emerges signifying that you’re delivering legitimate value (or potential value) to a person, team, or company. Signs like this might let you know you’re onto something big.

Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your business? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?

Neha: The key to growing my business has been installing trust and confidence in our employees in order for them to do what they do best and grow in their careers. For our customers, we build off of care and creativity in order to connect and share their stories to get the best possible results for their audience. 

For those attempting to take their business to the next level, identify the two types of CEOs: startup vs scaleup. When you’re a startup CEO, you’re very hands-on and actively solving many problems. As a scaleup CEO, the demand on your time becomes harder and you’re not necessarily the person at the end of every problem. A few areas I focused on to illustrate the startup to scaleup differences include:

• Risk tolerance maturity – startups are worried about cash burn, but a scaleup leverages a good capitalization plan and focuses more on long-term strategy.

• Care without Compromise – in a scaleup you have to find ways to streamline customer care (often through automation) to ensure processes are repeatable and scalable.

• Go-to-market – moving from being super scrappy to coordinated efforts across the organization like ABM strategies, lead attribution, and sales techniques.

Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips? 

Neha: Regarding sales and marketing, the most important focus areas align around delivering real value to our customers. Pay attention to trends to evaluate which ones are short-term, and which are long-term trends that will provide a return on time and investment. For example, we integrated OpenAI into the Contentstack platform which showed our existing customers how they can speed up the process of creating and delivering relevant, timely content to their end users. When the platform delivers real value, the sales and marketing impact is a byproduct and you’ll see the business grow. 

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level? 

Neha: One of my leadership mantras is expect to win. There’s a whole lot of humility that comes with good leadership. But there needs to be a whole lot of belief, too. Founders can’t work THIS hard and believe in any other outcome. For the people who have recently taken a leap of faith to join the journey and for those who I have worked with for over 10 years - we have to keep marching together over the finish line. And I have to expect that I can lead us there. The moment I feel I can’t, I’m doing everyone a disservice -- employees, shareholders, family, and more.

Additionally,  there are four principles at the heart of leadership that I live by:

• Leading with empathy

• You always have something to give

• Don’t compromise on principles

• Show others how it’s done

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams? 

Neha: I believe that people are the most important factor and your greatest asset, but the hardest thing to get right. As a leader, you can't use the same approach with every person, so you have to take the time and put in the hard work to really understand the people you work closely with, what motivates them, and what helps them do their best work. The advice I give is to focus on unlocking potential and giving people the support they need to do the best work of their careers. For employees, it involves leaders unblocking, rallying, and getting out of the way in many cases. Realize and recognize that there will exist a difference of opinions. A good leader doesn’t necessarily have to get everyone to agree, but if you can get them to disagree, but commit anyway, you’re up-leveling everyone to put the organization’s needs before their own. That is leadership.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders? 

Neha: One great piece of feedback I received was: “There are multiple paths to the finish line.” I split my companies in January of 2018 and at the time, I was trying to sell Built.io AND raise capital for Contentstack. My expectation was a Series A round of $5-7M, but one potential investor told me I needed to prove I can run the standalone company before trying to raise. It felt like a slap in the face, but I forced myself to pay attention to this feedback that made me uncomfortable. We instead ended up raising $2M in seed capital, preserved equity, and got Contentstack to the next inflection point, with more customers and ultimately a significantly higher valuation. A year later, I raised a $31.5M Series A for Contenstack, at more than five times the value of where we started.

Another tip I give fellow entrepreneurs is to find your highest use, leveraging your self-doubt as your superpower. I am a woman, non-techie in a technical world and I didn’t go to an Ivy League, but now, those are all things that set me apart and empower me to keep challenging the status quo.

Lastly, don’t underestimate the power of culture. In my opinion, culture makes or breaks a company, so empower your people, prioritize accountability and transparency, and protect the culture you’ve created as you scale.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received? 

Neha: “You always have something to give,” meaning creating opportunities and access starts with asking – and answering – this question. Whether it’s time, expertise, money, etc., we all have something to give — and there’s always someone out there that can benefit. It’s one of the ways we achieve equity in a world that doesn't allow women to start on a level playing field.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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