AMA: Ben Harper, founder of Meet Hugo

Everyone's talking about lead generation, but what is it? It's the process of attracting and nurturing prospects in the hope that they become customers. And sales teams want to find the smartest way to do it.

Cue Meet Hugo, an award-winning intelligent platform designed to help build a strong sales pipeline. Founded by Ben Harper, CEO of Clarity Stack.

Hi Ben! Tell us a bit about your company.

Clarity Stack launched our main product, Meet Hugo, in late 2018 to help enable businesses to be more intelligent in their sales efforts. We’re based near Peterborough.

How did the idea for Meet Hugo come about?

I previously ran a digital marketing agency, and the idea for Meet Hugo came from looking at the challenges we had around lead generation and new business, so Meet Hugo was formed to solve those problems for companies like us.

What’s your morning routine?

I don’t have the stereotypical startup founder routine of up and at the gym by 5:30. I have 2 young kids so a lot of the time I’m up fairly early sorting them out, before getting into the office by around 7:30 to plan out the day.

If you were going to invest in a startup business and you could only give one piece of advice to the team running that company, what would it be?

Just do it - it’s very easy to fall into the trap of planning everything, talking about things for a long time, and never getting anything real done. Try things, fail fast, and find out what works for you.

Good advice. What is the biggest mistake you’ve made as an entrepreneur?

In my previous company, employees didn’t have shares - when my business partner and I exited that business the rest of the team didn’t benefit at all, and that’s probably the biggest mistake I’ve made as an entrepreneur.

So do you have a share or option scheme in place now for your current team?

We’ve just launched our EMI options scheme with our team, after getting help with setting it up from Vestd. Everyone is very excited to be involved in the future of the company, and the concept that everyone will benefit from an exit in the event in the future is a huge motivation for us all.

Amazing! That's great to hear. Talking of teams, how do you keep your team aligned?

We have a very transparent culture, everyone can see any stats they want regarding our performance, and we make a huge effort to communicate effectively with all of the members of our teams to keep everyone on the same track.

Can you share any practical tips or processes to help people work remotely?

Other than using Meet Hugo (which is a great way to build more sales opportunities when you can’t be out networking), I’d recommend using tools like Slack to enable your team to work better together whilst they’re at home.

And finally, who's your favourite band/musician?

That’s a really hard question - I have a lot of favourites, so naming just one is just about impossible! I do occasionally get mistaken online for the more famous Ben Harper who is a musician, so I’ll give him some credit back and name check him here.

And favourite film?

Moneyball - the combo of data and sports works for me!

Thanks so much for your time Ben. We wish you and your team all the best.