Doug Camplejohn
(00:01)
Hello, this is your host Doug Camplejohn. Welcome to this week’s episode of Revenue Renegades. This week I am joined by Melanie Fellay, the CEO and founder of Spekit. Melanie, welcome to the show.
Melanie
(00:13)
Thanks, excited to be here.
Doug Camplejohn
(00:15)
So much to talk about today. Let’s start with the founding story of Spekit. How did the idea come about, and what was the inspiration?
Melanie
(00:25)
Yeah. The short version is I’ve primarily worked in startups. I was at a fast-growing startup in San Francisco that had raised a Series C and scaled to around 170 employees. There was no concept of enablement or supporting functions. IT had rolled out Salesforce, but the implementation was a disaster. We were growing quickly, no one knew left from right, our best employees were onboarding new hires, and it was chaos. Change management was a huge pain, and we were going after a tough market problem. We were just really inefficient in how we worked and sold.
Long story short, I inherited Salesforce and was responsible for re-implementing it. In the process, I dug more broadly into how we ensured people knew how to use our systems, do their jobs, and where information was stored. I’d previously led teams and had that unlocked for my org, but realized the company lacked this capability overall. That’s how I stumbled into enablement.
I realized we had a broken enablement problem; I just didn’t know it at the time. I started looking at different technology categories: digital adoption platforms like WalkMe and Whatfix for in-tool training, but they seemed cumbersome to implement and only covered tooltips. We also needed broader process and information. Then I looked at knowledge bases like Guru and Confluence. They were good but not contextual enough and couldn’t store files. We were a real estate fintech, so we had many document types exchanged with customers. We needed file storage, so I looked at CMS platforms.
Those could track sharing, but didn’t do knowledge, weren’t contextual, were heavy, and wouldn’t solve onboarding. I needed to organize content so a new hire could go through information in sequence. It felt insane: to solve scattered or missing information, we’d need four separate solutions, even though they all had a powerful content foundation. It felt outdated and not modeled around how employees actually interact. If reps wouldn’t use it, what’s the point?
I began ideating my ideal experience: meet reps where they are, so everyone knows what they need, when and where they need it. On the admin side, it had to be easy to manage and reuse information across onboarding and everyday work, with built-in change management that tracked system changes (like in Salesforce) and kept documentation in sync. Those pieces led to Spekit, a modern take on the broader content and information challenge.
We started the company in 2018, and it’s been a wild ride.
Doug Camplejohn
(04:14)
Some of the best products come from founders scratching their own itch.
Melanie
(04:20)
Still true every day. Every time we build something, I think, I wish this was easier or better. It’s a complex but fun problem to innovate on.
Doug Camplejohn
(04:35)
Same here. In sales tech now at Coffee and building the CRM, every day it’s like: I need this, this doesn’t work. I joke the whole company is building something for me, but turns out others have the same problem.
Melanie
(04:52)
Yup.
Doug Camplejohn
(05:03)
Tell me about the evolution since starting in 2018. All startups have ups and downs.
Melanie
(05:14)
I started with my co-founder, Zari. We were in San Francisco and had witnessed the sad demise of that prior company—great investors, but poor board dynamics and things went wrong. Initially we said, let’s do friends and family and avoid venture. We invested our own savings, raised a small round, and started building. Pretty quickly we realized the scale required more capital.
The vision—consolidate tools and rethink the experience into a more intelligent, unified platform—was tough to fundraise for then. Investors thought it was too competitive, too many players and segments, and doubted convergence. Fast forward eight years, consolidation happened, but at that time the vision was a hard sell.
The first year and a half was brute force: building and making big bets. We launched at Dreamforce—big cost, big bet. I had no network, so our first 30 customers were real, taking a risk on us. We invested in a solid foundation: a flexible knowledge structure more like a knowledge-graph than a folder hierarchy, akin to a data dictionary, so concepts could relate and scale—well suited for an AI world.
The first user-facing product focused on our unique Salesforce integration. Think if WalkMe and Guru had a baby: embed content inside app UIs and provide a searchable sidebar and knowledge base. Our Salesforce integration automated the “pin the tail on the donkey” problem—others manually targeted where content should show; we automated display via integration. We narrowed into a simpler, better digital adoption use case. In 2019–2020 every company was buying too many tools while growing fast. Tool training and change management pain was acute, which drove product-market fit and fast growth. We raised a $2M seed in September 2019, then our Series A in January 2021.
We landed big logos—like Southwest Airlines—that established market legitimacy. Being an early Salesforce certified partner helped; riding their coattails was valuable. I recommend early-stage companies find a marquee partner like that. In 2021 we really started growing—classic triple-triple, all the Series B metrics.
As a first-time founder, I didn’t realize how inflated that environment was. We grew the team and customers fast—faster than we could support. In December 2021 we raised our Series B with great metrics—160% retention, ~4X YoY growth—and hired heavily in Q1, hoping to reach $20–25M in 2022.
Then everything halted at the beginning of Q2. We’d grown fast in product, chasing more market with lots of features but without scalable infrastructure: observability, performance, etc. Without a seasoned repeat CTO, we hit painful product issues.
One main delivery mechanism is a Chrome extension. We aim for a frictionless rep experience, but the extension sometimes slowed browsers by 1–2 seconds. That sounds small, but for reps it’s detrimental. It was sporadic and hard to diagnose, varied by machine, and once word spread internally at accounts, it hurt. A few key accounts felt real pain. That was Q1 2022. We’d raised a lot, just hired a lot, and now had a serious problem that took longer to fix than needed.
At the same time, my co-founder went through a horrible year personally. She led R&D and product, and needed to step back to focus on family.
Melanie
(12:01)
She stepped away in April. We were yin and yang with a great partnership; it felt like a sad breakup. We lacked the right engineering leadership to solve the problem, so suddenly I was acting as CTO, flying around to coordinate the teams. Meanwhile, the board said winter is coming, cut spend. We had just hired for another 3–4x growth. One investor, Craft Ventures, was early in pushing efficiency and the “burn multiple.” Looking back I’m grateful. At the time, few were doing layoffs or cuts, and we were coming off success.
Melanie
(14:21)
We needed to cut back. We hadn’t yet felt pipeline pain, so it was tough to internalize. By June, signals appeared in large accounts—slowing down, more verifications—so we made the hard decision to do a layoff. It was incredibly difficult. I had just recruited great people, including a phenomenal head of partnerships who built a team. I decided we didn’t have time to invest in a new partners strategy until we had clarity.
All while product issues persisted. It’s like the baby is in pain and I couldn’t get into the code to solve it myself. I can dig into marketing analytics or sales reports—my background is biz ops—and find root causes. But code was outside my purview. That season was tough. That summer, I hired a CTO, Paul—previously at Guru—who transformed my life, took ownership, and knew how to solve these problems.
Then churn pressures hit. Companies that had bought Spekit on 3-year deals were shrinking. They’d planned to grow from 400 to 600 employees; then cut to 200 and asked us to work with them since they were overpaying given headcount.
Melanie
(16:46)
In 2022 it was primarily tech customers feeling the pain. We had many tech customers. I care about long-term reputation, so we worked with customers rather than being inflexible, but it was tough for the business. The business plan flipped overnight. 2022 was very difficult.
I can share more, but that period most shaped me as a founder.
Doug Camplejohn
(17:54)
Thanks for sharing that. It’s healthy to hear these stories and remind each other it’s not all roses. Especially when it felt like a rocket ship and then everyone says pump the brakes—super hard—plus having a close co-founder leave at the same time.
Melanie
(18:26)
For sure. Looking back, I’m proud that you see people’s true colors in those times—who joined to ride a “unicorn” versus who stayed for what it really means. Anyone who’s built something meaningful knows how hard it is and that every company has ups and downs. It’s easy to feel like it’s just you. Talking to customers doing layoffs and churning tells you everyone’s on fire, but it still feels like an “us” problem.
We’d grown fast without the right processes. Peak expansion—was it because customers grew or because of real product value and usage? It’s easy to focus on the metrics you want. Now I ask: what metrics are we not looking at that actually indicate account health and risk? How much success depends on one champion?
I’m grateful because it made businesses stronger. It also came during the SaaS era of empowering managers and avoiding “founder mode.” Messages get diluted up the chain. I went back to being in the weeds, collaborating with leaders and seeing who stays during challenges versus who leaves.
Melanie
(20:49)
We still have a huge percentage of our early employees on the team, celebrating five, six, seven years. Many hired in the first half of that year didn’t stay; some weren’t ready for what was coming. You learn what to look for in a team, the importance of resilience, what makes a good culture, and the values to hire for.
Doug Camplejohn
(21:32)
You’ve talked about “unshakable grit.” Where does perseverance fit into your journey, and where do you think it came from?
Melanie
(21:47)
I’ve asked myself that a lot—where do determination and ambition come from? I have some hypotheses from early childhood.
One is I have a deep fear of death. Thinking about not existing drives me to make the most of limited time. I want to be the best at what I focus on so I can look back with pride. Another is my background: no entrepreneurs in my extended family. I grew up in Geneva, Switzerland, in an upper-middle-class family—annual US trip to Colorado, basics covered. My dad was very careful with money. That shaped how I think about money and work.
I hated asking for permission or money. I’d finish homework before leaving class so I could play after school. I started babysitting at 11 to make my own money, and I worked steadily. Switzerland has a lot of wealth; seeing how others lived made me want freedom—of time and decisions—and to create experiences for others. Those combined likely shaped my determination: whatever I do, I want to do well and earn that freedom.
Doug Camplejohn
(25:50)
I just posted a quote from the TV show The Lazarus Project: “Be brave enough to lead the life you want to live.” So much of life is driven by fear and becomes limiting. Here’s the life I want—don’t get in my way. I tell my kids and friends: the most important characteristic for success—especially for entrepreneurs—is perseverance. I may not be the smartest or luckiest, but I aim to be the last one standing, pushing through.
Melanie
(26:23)
Yeah.
Melanie
(26:48)
Getting back up.
Doug Camplejohn
(26:54)
Let’s talk about being a female founder. You’ve shared challenges, and there’s strength in vulnerability. Where is it an advantage and where a disadvantage?
Melanie
(27:13)
I started the company young—25—and was one to two decades younger than many CEOs we compete with. In our broader space, among the top companies, there wasn’t another woman. I never thought in terms of man versus woman. I grew up with guy friends, had girlfriends, always had a voice, and worked mostly with men at prior companies without issue. I never felt I didn’t have a voice for being young or a woman, and I’m grateful for that.
Fundraising was when I noticed differences. I’m not the most concise talker. I love storytelling and talking with my hands—that’s who I am. The stereotypical tech founder is a cryptic engineering whiz whose big ideas investors barely understand, and investors assume he knows what he’s talking about. I don’t fit that mold. I’m rational and logical: here’s the map, market, and why. Feedback was: your vision makes sense but is too obvious—paint a bigger dream. A former CEO who invested in us said investors don’t invest in logic; they invest in an expert vision, and he coached me on pitching.
It was hard to find female mentors—there are few, many are busy and have kids. So most guidance was from men and influenced even how I wrote. I used to write emotively with smileys and exclamations; I tried to strip that out. Eventually I said, forget it—I’ll be me—and everything worked better.
Melanie
(31:37)
A turning point: Salesforce Ventures invited me to their party at Dreamforce. Despite all the equality talk, I walked into a packed venue and barely saw any women—on both floors of a VC and founder event. I felt uncomfortable, which is rare for me. It felt hypocritical to talk equality but not include women in the room. I decided if I’d get stares anyway, I might as well stand out—so I started wearing bright pink as my confidence suit, and our brand leaned more pink. That was 2018 or 2019.
Another moment in 2019: after we launched at Dreamforce 2018. We’d raised about $150k total then, with maybe $60–70k in the bank; a Dreamforce booth was ~$30k. We bet about 50% of our cash on it, and it was an amazing decision. Salesforce invited me—on my own dime—to advise the AppExchange team on diversity. They had ~5,000 apps and about 0.01% led by women. They proposed mentors and a female-owned filter. I appreciated the conversation, but said what we need is exposure and money: set aside $5M annually at Salesforce Ventures for diverse founders, dedicate billboards to highlight diverse businesses, or create a Dreamforce booth scholarship for diverse founders.
Melanie
(33:54)
I followed up multiple times while fundraising for our seed. Right after we closed the seed, they said legal didn’t approve it but they’d consider it for the future. I said, forget it. I called three female-led partners I knew on the AppExchange—Blake at TaskRay, Andrea Tarrell at Sercante, and a founder at Cloud Giants—and proposed we buy a second booth together and run a scholarship to give it to the next female founder. They all said yes immediately. I emailed Salesforce to buy a second booth and explained. After some approvals, we ran the scholarship. The winner wasn’t a female founder but a diverse-focused co-founder team—still a step in the right direction. Getting applicants was hard with limited exposure, but it was huge for that business.
The AppExchange team invited me after and couldn’t believe we’d done it and paid for it. Mike Wolff, who led AppExchange, listened and cared. There are people who want to make a difference; it just hadn’t been prioritized earlier. I think good came from it. I also don’t like anchoring on “female founder.” I’m a founder of an incredible business that drives real outcomes and solves a long-standing problem, and I hope more women pursue entrepreneurship.
Doug Camplejohn
(39:07)
Thank you for leading by example. Shifting gears: 2018 was “BC” (before ChatGPT). You were sitting on all this data. How did the AI moment affect your business, and how do you think about it now?
Melanie
(39:24)
Yeah.
Doug Camplejohn
(39:34)
And then we can talk about the AI hype too.
Melanie
(39:39)
I went to my first AI conference in SF in 2018, led by Figur8, which did early image labeling with human-in-the-loop validation for companies like Tesla and Google. I love math and physics and have always been interested in intelligence. We weren’t AI-first, but I followed the evolution closely.
To deliver the vision—predict a rep’s needs in the moment, ingest context, and surface the right thing—we’d need intelligence. Also, AI could help with content governance that plagues companies—identifying conflicts and outdated info. We hadn’t built these in until two years ago, when we committed to Spekit 2.0, doubling down on AI and content.
The painful product season pushed us to rebuild infrastructure for an AI world. Looking back, I’m grateful. We’re now building an agentic platform so customers can build agents atop our workflows, and we’ve injected meaningful AI use cases across the product, rebuilding pieces to get maximum output.
Melanie
(41:52)
I view it as a two-sided marketplace: the rep discovery problem (finding and personalizing the right info for the specific activity) and the admin/content problem (ensuring the content exists and is accurate). We’re investing in both.
On the content side: ensure information is up to date. Sure, we added generation in the editor for basics like battle cards, but the bigger shift is “dynamic content.” Historically, content and data were separate—data in systems, content in static docs/PDFs. We’ve built content modularly so long playbooks become small components that can each be driven by different sources—Gong for one snippet, a web agent for competitive updates for another, etc. We’re building mechanisms to listen for updates and conflicts—for example, when a new integration is added, scan all content that contradicts it (like battle cards saying we don’t have it) and flag fixes.
This matters because many AI search tools connect LLMs to content sources without governance. Ranking the “best” answer isn’t enough if the answer is wrong. You need to own the governance layer on top of content.
On the discovery side: what context do we need about a rep to determine what they need? As a browser-based solution, we can ingest activity context—emails, navigation—to see if the rep is reviewing a call to follow up vs. prepping for a call. We’re also integrating CRM and call intelligence tools to bring deal and contact context together and provide the right coaching and information, creating a personalized “everboarding” experience.
Doug Camplejohn
(46:02)
There’s also a thread predicting deep reductions in humans in the loop. Thoughts on AI, SDRs, superintelligence, and agents?
Melanie
(46:23)
Humans need connection, and people want to buy from people. Some things we shouldn’t have been doing—like blasting hundreds of generic emails—AI can automate and do better, though the question is whether to keep doing that at all. Some roles may be more at risk—the SDR role is ripe for automation. We use tools like Clay to find intent and build personalized workflows, but the jury’s still out on effectiveness. I posted recently about Salesforce seemingly using an agent to email us—the messaging was way off. We’re a ways from “really good.”
I don’t think AI replaces reps. It will refocus on human relationships—more in-person events, dinners, curated experiences. The art of business slipped during remote, and companies will see the advantage of being in a room with buyers.
AI will also level the playing field. The advantage of a great manager over a not-so-great one shrinks; tenure advantages about “knowing where things are” fade. The best hack in enablement: create a “President’s Club” cohort, analyze what they do, and replicate it. We’ll train our assistant on that, so the same coaching reaches B and C players. The bar for reps will rise, but the need for reps remains.
Doug Camplejohn
(49:20)
You wrote a book recently. Tell us about it.
Melanie
(49:28)
It’s on the future of enablement and AI—really the future of the rep experience and content. Part one: what we’ve gotten wrong about learning and enablement, and the complexity introduced by tooling. Certifications don’t keep teams up to date when products change daily. We’re in a “change economy” where product, process, and business changes that were quarterly are now weekly or daily. How do you bring the team along? Kickoffs have value, but they won’t ensure reps know how to sell. The speed of learning—learning agility—becomes a competitive advantage. AI can enable personalized experiences that weren’t possible before.
Part two: what must be true about the future of content and systems, how to measure, and best practices. The main ICP is enablement, but sales leaders, marketing heads, and CROs have given great feedback that it helps them rethink how to enable teams for the future. What worked the last few years won’t work as R&D ships 10x faster.
Doug Camplejohn
(52:03)
We’re running up on time. Speed round. What’s one thing listeners would be surprised to know?
Melanie
(52:20)
My primary residence is in the Bahamas.
Doug Camplejohn
(52:27)
I was surprised too. Not a bad place to operate from. What do you like to do for fun outside work?
Melanie
(52:44)
I love playing padel.
Doug Camplejohn
(52:48)
Hmm, okay. Not as trendy as pickle, but you’re bucking the trend.
Melanie
(52:56)
Way more intense, way more fun.
Doug Camplejohn
(53:02)
One product you love in your personal life, and why?
Melanie
(53:08)
Mealime.
It’s a meal planning app focused on efficiency. Pick recipes with dietary preferences and servings; it compiles a grocery list with exact ingredients. In the US you can one-click checkout via Instacart, Amazon, etc. Each recipe is under 30 minutes, healthy, and delicious—a quick, efficient way to plan and eat.
Doug Camplejohn
(53:59)
How can listeners stay in touch and help you on your journey?
Melanie
(54:04)
Spekit is our company website; follow us on LinkedIn. I also have justintimeenablement.com for the book and my blogs and thinking, and I’m on LinkedIn as Melanie Fellay.
Doug Camplejohn
(54:23)
Melanie, thanks so much for joining us. Great conversation—really great to have you.
Melanie
(54:28)
Thanks so much for having me. Thanks, Doug.
