The following interview is a conversation we had with Andy Mowat, CEO and Co-Founder of Gated, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: Over $3 Million Raised to Build Noise Cancelling Headphones for Email

Andy Mowat
Great to be here, Brett. 

Brett
Yeah, so to kick things off, could we just start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background? 

Andy Mowat
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve grown the go to market motions for several SaaS, unicorns, upwork Box, and most recently, culturam. I’ve run kind of the go to market strategy systems, operations, data, and then oftentimes the top final marketing as well too. A couple of years ago, I was just getting hammered by emails, so I hacked together Gated. 

Brett
Now is it just me or is like the term go to market just blowing up now and it’s becoming more and more popular? Is that just me? Has it always been this big or is it becoming, I guess, more mainstream across companies? 

Andy Mowat
I like it. What it describes for me is how the different functions within go to market work across each other and I’ve been really passionate about that. Right. So if you look at it as there’s a salesperson and there’s a marketing person and then there’s a post sale person and those people don’t work together, I think you’ve got a really stunted go to market motion. At Coltramp when I joined, they said, oh, we want somebody to run sales ops. And I said, I have no interest. And they said, what do you want? And I said, well, give me all marketing systems and operations, all sales and all post sale and then all the data and infrastructure be able to do it. And they’re like, yeah, that’s what we want. And I think for me, I’ve just seen how companies can get siloed and how at the same time if you have people that are thinking across the entire go to market, it can be so much more effective. 

Brett
Super interesting. Now, two questions that we like to ask just to better understand what makes you tick. First one, what CEO do you admire the most and what do you admire about them? 

Andy Mowat
Yes. Sam Lavon, CEO of Madcudu, is a friend, a mentor, and just a terrific, deeply insightful person. So I met Sam when I was know I was looking at culture amp for a new scoring tool. I didn’t want to send leads that were just black box to the sales reps and not have the sales reps know why they should call them. And so I talked to Sam, was blown away by what he was doing, ended up cutting a check, and since then, he’s actually on my board. His son helped code the first version of Gated. But Sam is one of the most thoughtful leaders I’ve seen in terms of how do you structure your team, how do you make sure you’re always kind of pushing it and really thinking strategically about everything? So they will be one of the winners in the kind of PLG scoring data space. 

Andy Mowat
And I’m excited to call Sam of Rand. 

Brett
Nice and what about books? Is there a specific book that’s had a major impact on you as a Founder? 

Andy Mowat
I read all the time, I write all the time. The one I often share with people is the book Traction. Oftentimes people say, well, how do I grow a top of funnel? How do I hire a great marketer? And Traction is one of those it’s by the founders of DuckDuck Co. It’s one of those great quick reads to understand what are all the top of funnel channels and what’s the strategy for each one. And then I think the key thing is you can’t give the same advice to every single company, and a lot of people want cool. I’m talking to you for five minutes. What’s the best strategy you’ve got? And I’m like, It depends upon how you think about your business. So I’ll oftentimes give them that, and if they read it and come back to me, then I’ll go deeper with them. 

Brett
Nice what are some of the other books that you recommend?

Andy Mowat
After they read that, let’s put them in the show notes. I’ll come back with four or five for you. It always depends. I oftentimes actually have to send them articles I’ve written. If you go to my LinkedIn, I’ve written an entire six series handbook on rev ops. I’ve got one coming out around just all the go to market hacks that have worked for me. I just dropped two this week as well, too, so I’m always writing. I think it’s the best way I know how to articulate my own thoughts, get input from others, and then make them better as well, too. 

Brett
Nice yeah, I follow a process around that as well, where I choose a topic that I want to learn about for the month. I consume a book or multiple books, listen to podcasts, YouTube, and really absorb everything I can on that topic. And then I turn that into an essential guide of XYZ. I found that writing component is just the ultimate way to learn and really apply what you’re reading, as opposed to just kind of going in one ear and out the other. 

Andy Mowat
Wow, I love that. That’s really cool. I’ll do that too. I’ll write an article in kind of a draft form with a vision of the world in some way. I think it needs to be and then I’ll share it with some deeply thoughtful people and I can have them. And it’s a great way to kind of have those dialogues going with people. So I think we think very similarly about that. 

Brett
Nice. 

Andy Mowat
Love that. 

Brett
Now let’s talk a bit about how we ended up here, Andy, because I think it’s a fun story. So I was emailing a guest, someone that I really wanted to have on the show, and I was hit with Gated in my inbox and I was like, what the hell is this thing? And I looked at it and it said, donate a few bucks to a charity of your choice and that’ll deliver the email. So I did it. I think it cost me $2. And a few minutes later, the guest responded and we’re booked. He’s coming on the podcast, I think next week or maybe the week after. So that was super cool. And then you dropped me a note on LinkedIn as well, I think, thanking you for the donation. So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about that growth strategy to start with. So are you reaching out to hundreds of people per week or thousands of people per week or what does that look like for you? 

Andy Mowat
We’re seeing thousands of donations. I’m definitely not reaching out to every single one of them. As I was mentioning to you before we hopped on, I have a Clearbit which will take a look at who has donated and it’ll tell me what’s their profile here’s, their link, how many followers do they have, and if it’s an intriguing profile, I love to do it. I also love to just talk with salespeople that are experiencing gaining. I think early on we saw that actually we had an investor that’s very prominent in sales and marketing, and that person said, you need to make this work for both sides. And so I love hearing how people are reacting to it. So it’s been great. It’s turned into kind of a nice small viral motion. 

Brett
Do salespeople hate you? At first? Because when I first saw it, I was like, what is this thing? What is this nonsense? And then I was like, okay, I’m just going to try it and see if it works. And it worked. My first reaction was like, annoyed that you were preventing me from getting access to who I wanted to get access to. Is that something that you see with salespeople? And then are you seeing that same pattern where it goes from something they hate to something they say, wow, this is pretty epic. If I can get this email delivered and read by this person yeah, with. 

Andy Mowat
The original email solution, and we’ll talk about the new platform in a second, but with the original email solution, it generally goes something. And we’ve got some really great quotes on there of I hated Gated when I first found it and then I understood it right? And so you think about it, cold email reply rates than one to 2%. And if you donate a couple of bucks, the reply rates are above 50%. Right? Like you’re standing out and you’re clearing out all the noise and that clearing out the noise works for both the user, but it also works for the sender. Now, if you’re sending irrelevant messages, you probably hate me. If you’re sending stuff that’s valuable and personalized, then it works well. 

Brett
And for sales reps, then, do they have to go to management and get approval? Like, is this a new line item that sales teams have to get approval on or are they paying for it themselves? What are you seeing in terms of patterns there? 

Andy Mowat
I think it starts off with this is interesting, let me drop $2. And then I’ve had a lot of conversations with sales leaders that start to understand this. I was talking to CRO at 100 Million Dollar Company the other week and he’s like, give me my stats, let me see them. So I think people start to understand it pretty quickly. 

Brett
And can you give us an idea of just the numbers that you’re seeing right now with maybe number of emails that are sent per week or month or whatever makes sense there and just an idea of the growth that you’re seeing? 

Andy Mowat
Yeah, so the email solution, it’s in the high four digits of users. It is close to 10 million messages filtered a month.

Brett
Wow. And what do you attribute to that growth? Where is that coming from? It can’t just be from LinkedIn messages and clever LinkedIn messages. So what are you getting right there in terms of growth? 

Andy Mowat
Everybody knows us. We have an inherently viral product that people know about. It’s like I go to a party in San Francisco around anything sales and marketing related and everyone’s like, oh my God, that’s the tool, I know it or I’ve heard of it. So I think we’ve done a phenomenal job of helping people understand not just, yeah, it’s here, but also the connection to the bigger mission. I don’t know if you looked at our manifesto and we’re literally updating it today for the new platform that we’re launching in a couple weeks. Actually, by the time we publish this, it’ll probably be launched live, so we can talk about that. But I think it’s not just what does the Tang tool do, but what’s the vision for the world that you’re creating? And so what I said very early to my Co-Founder was not everyone will use the tool, but I want everybody to believe in the mission of what we’re trying to do. 

Andy Mowat
And so I think we’ve really inspired a lot of people. If you look at our LinkedIn, you’ll see there’s a ton of advisors of people that are very prominent, that are helping us out, advising us as well too. 

Brett
And I’ll link to the manifesto in the show notes. But do you want to maybe just talk us through what that manifesto is for the business? 

Andy Mowat
Yeah, I mean, maybe this is actually a good time to just pause and separate. What we have is powerful. And in late May, so probably around when this podcast drops, we are launching a brand new product, right? Like, we’ve built something really powerful on email, but we see the problem going so much further. So if your game, I can actually explain what the new platform is, what it will do, and we can deep dive a little bit on that and then I can talk about like the manifesto fundamentally does not change much. I think our vision for the world is right now, you don’t control your own attention. The manifesto talks about anyone can reach us and they can send us whatever the heck they want and they can do it. And automation increases that. And so we’re all struggling with the noise and we can’t focus. 

Andy Mowat
And so what the manifesto talks about is what are the beliefs we have that are guiding how we’re building Gated? 

Brett
Let’s dive into the product. Yeah. 

Andy Mowat
So Gated 1.0, which we will hear and refer to as Gated for email, we are turning off sign ups in a couple of days and we will continue to use the product. It will continue to be there. We are building a universal link for everything. Now, we will not be able to filter your LinkedIn or your slack, but what we can do, and most people, frankly, and that’s where we’ve seen some limitations on growth, is there are a lot of people that love the idea but can’t afford to turn off the noise. And so the new platform will help the right signals come through. And so it’s driven by kind of two beliefs. The first one, Brett, is if I go to your LinkedIn profile, I know who you are, I know what you’ve done, but I don’t know who you’re trying to meet, what conversations you’re trying to have. 

Andy Mowat
And so I think we believe very firmly that people aren’t very good at articulating what they want to do, keeping it up to date. And so our platform will help you share very clearly like, hey, these are the conversations I want to have and I want to be as available as possible for these. And what it’ll help you do is qualify people around those and authenticate who those people are. And those people will make you as available as possible for the conversations you want to have and for everything else. You could start to tighten it up and restrict so that’s what we’re building. Does that make sense? And feel free to ask any questions you want. 

Brett
Yes. Let’s say I’m a startup Founder and I throw on Gated, the current form of Gated, and a journalist from Bloomberg reaches out to me and they get that I feel like they’re probably not going to donate and I just missed that media opportunity. So are you in the new platform? I could say I’m open to media opportunities and then would allow those to still go through. 

Andy Mowat
Bingo. That’s exactly right. I think you’ve described it exactly. So there is a portion of the world that can afford to just unplug and turn off the noise with an email, and that’s what we do with an email. But what we’re really helping is salespeople and people trying to break through and yell at you what they want to yell at you get through. I think the new platform is much more focused on let’s articulate how people can help you and what conversations you want to have. So that’s exactly right. I think you described it perfectly. With the existing platform, there’s just times when there may be that serendipity that you may miss. And so we’re trying to do is make that as easy as possible to capture. And so instead of filtering out the noise, we’re helping the signal rise above. 

Brett
This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage, and grow their own podcast. Now, if you’re a Founder, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast, I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines. IO podcast. Now back today’s episode. Well, I think you’re clearly listening to customers and potential users because when I was thinking about using Gated, that was my roadblock and that was honestly my only concern. It’s like, yeah, I do get a lot of spam. That problem completely resonates with me, but also a lot of really good things that have happened in my life have come as a result of people cold emailing me. 

Brett
So it made me a little bit scared to close off that source. And it’s kind of like this risk that I have to weigh of like, yeah, the spam sucks, but those things do come through. So you’re addressing that, which is super smart. 

Andy Mowat
Yeah, it’s powerful. I think the other thing that we’ve realized deeply with Gate is if you think about the three major trends, you got to be on more and more platforms. AI is basically AI and automation are nuking platform by platform. And then finally, how people connect is really starting to degrade, right? Like you get all those invites every morning from people you don’t know. And the value of a LinkedIn connection is becoming worse and you got to make a decision every day. Should I accept that person who I have no idea who they are and I’ve never met them and let them into my DMs forever, or should I ignore them? And so I think what we’re really believing is we can solve those problems, right? We can help you say like, here’s what I want to hear about. But I think the other thing is with email or with anything, if you’re trying to filter conversations after they’ve been sent, I think it’s an impossible game. 

 

Andy Mowat
And so instead what we’re really trying to do is influence what conversations people are going to send you in the first place. 

Brett
And can you give us an idea of what that categorization looks like then? So is it me saying I’m open to emails about media opportunities and speaking to investors, but I’m not open to opportunities for offshore development? What are those categories and what does that look like for the user to determine what those categories are going to be?

Andy Mowat
Yeah, so that’s an interesting thing. So we’ve really much more focused on, yes, I’m available for these because I think the list of what am I not available for is endless. And you just described one which I’m never available for, right, which is offshore software. Dev literally had people offer me 500 hours to sell me for half an hour for that and I don’t have an interest in that. So I think what we’ve really focused on is helping you articulate the conversations you want to have. And I think that is more than a hashtag. And so we’ve started off talking to people and said, what are your priorities? What are your goals? And it was a mess. But when we started to say, what are the topics you want to have conversations around, it got really interesting. And then what we started to realize, we’ve actually built a very cool tool that makes it fun for people to articulate those topics. 

Andy Mowat
I’ll shoot you over a little snapshot of it and people can see it, but effectively think of Madlibs as a kid. Do you remember that, Brett? Yeah. So think about Madlibs where you could articulate. So in our case, I’m looking to do what about what topic, with who to accomplish what goal, and we guide you through articulating those. So it comes out in a very structured way. And so, say for you’re probably like, I’m looking to meet, go to market leaders that have built successful companies with funding greater than X to share their stories, right? And so all of a sudden, those are probably the types of people you’re trying to meet and get on your podcast and that becomes a very available way for you to get there. And a lot of people come to your LinkedIn profile, I think I came there before I sent you the thing.

Andy Mowat
And they’re like, I don’t know, is he open to me reaching out or is he more of a closed person? But if you could articulate that, people be like, oh, I see there’s a runway right here where Brett wants me to come down because I fit this. And so let me submit something and let me tell Brett why we should be talking about that. And so I think that’s the really interesting thing, right? You’re actually closed off to some of those people you’re trying to meet right.

Brett
Now and where are they going to see that information? Because it’s not on my LinkedIn profile, right? Would it be on Gated.com that the sender is going to?

Andy Mowat
That’s the interesting thing. We’re building a single link that you can put anywhere. So you can put it on the top of your LinkedIn profile, you can put it in your email, right? So you get off a call with me and I say, hey Brett, like, great talking, thanks for taking interest in what I’m doing, how can I help you? But I don’t know that still even after this conversation, you’re like, that’s amazing. I’m looking to meet these three types of people and I might say take that link and forward it on to a bunch of other people. You can put it in slack communities, you can put on Twitter, you can put it wherever. So we’re imagine like Slash Brent, but that link you can put anywhere.

Brett
Who is your inspiration for all these viral loops? Or is it just what you’ve learned over the course of your career? Because it seems like just from this brief conversation, there’s like four or five different viral loop plays that you have in motion here you’re going to have in motion. Where did that inspiration come from? Is there a specific company that you saw just do that really well or where’s the origin for you? 

Andy Mowat
That’s a really fun question. I’m always thinking that way. I guess it’s my systems in the process. Like when we built Cold Tramp, we took it from 4 million, 80 million in revenue in four years. Yeah, I’ll give you an example and I just wrote an article on it around a customer advocacy playbook. We’re thinking, great, we can get people to the top of the funnel, but they may not be ready to buy right now. How do we engage these people and how do we bring them through the funnel? Right? So that is a really interesting process to think through. Like, how does the data work, what events can you get them to, what communities can you build? And so I think I’m always thinking about how do you use data systems and processes to work within how your tool works or your company or your application or your software and drive those viral loops because that’s where it gets really interesting versus let’s pick up the phone and call somebody I think is very hard. 

Andy Mowat
Way to go.

Brett
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. And in terms of the long term go to market, are you eventually going to have an enterprise sales team or do you have an enterprise sales team today? Or is this all product Led growth?

Andy Mowat
This is all product led growth. To date for the original email product. We definitely had a long waitlist of companies that wanted to your earlier point, of companies that wanted to have like a gated account, right? So don’t send me the request for payment, just send me the receipt. I think as we look at the potential of our ability to kind of build that universal gate that you can put everywhere, it’s PLG for a while, right? Like we’re building this to help people control access to their attention. So there are 10,000 tools that help sales and marketing pummel buyers. We’re not building the 10,000th and first we are building the first kind of think of it like buyer automation, user automation, like the ability to kind of control access to you. That’s the vision I’ve got here. It’s a bold vision for sure.

Brett
And what are your views when it comes to market category? I know we had talked about that in the pre interview and I introduced you with the very vague label that I put on it of a communication platform, which probably doesn’t mean anything. So how are you thinking about your market category?

Andy Mowat
Yeah, I guess that previous statement would definitely kind of go into it, which is we’re in a brand new category, but I don’t over index on category definition too early. I think people need to understand it, understand the pain it can solve and then you find those categories. I mean, there’s so many great examples of brand new categories.

Brett
Now when it comes to the go to market side, obviously you have a lot of first hand experience with all those amazing companies that you’ve worked with. What’s something that you see founders get wrong when it comes to go to market?

Andy Mowat
A couple of things. One, I see a lot of people try to bolt on demand gen. And so, you know, people call me and say, well Craig, you’ve run demand gen at a couple of places you understand go to market. I need to hire somebody and I need to hire somebody that can generate demand right now. And I tend to take a step back and say, well, explain to me what your business is uniquely good at and let’s think of how you can have a unique approach to demand gen versus just going out and buying a bunch of SEM ads or renting an audience in some sort of way like that. And so just within us, and I’ve written the article on customer advocacy, which I think is a really good one, is customer proof points, users talking. All of those things are really important and if you can catalyze them in the right way but I’ve seen what really becomes powerful is when you can kind of weave how you do business with your core acquisition strategies versus just kind of having them as like, oh crap.

Andy Mowat
And then by the way, we need demand as well too. So that would definitely be one I think one we’ve learned a little bit is went really quickly to a product with the email that people absolutely loved, couldn’t live without and raved about, and we staffed up for the hockey stick. And I think we see the high four digits as like, great number of users. People can’t stop talking about it and we’re making an impact. But I think I would almost have held on longer on the staffing up to really understand, like, okay, is it just accelerating or is it hockey sticking? And I think I see a lot of people, especially in the prior funding environment, where they would just staff up and build out these huge teams. And we didn’t build a huge team, but we added maybe one or two extra people that I would have held back on, where I see people build these just huge sales teams or these huge marketing teams.

Andy Mowat
And I think the world has changed a lot there, but I still think it’s tempting to say, great, I need more growth, let me hire a bunch more bodies. But for me, I always start with top of funnel, drives, everything. 

Brett
And you’re two years into the journey now. Are you happy with the growth that you’re seeing? Is this where you expected to be? Are you surprised by it? What are your thoughts there? 

Andy Mowat
I love the fact that we have changed how people think about email. I came into this to fundamentally rewire know, Steve Jobs says, why are we here in the world but to put a dent in the universe? I put a dent in the universe, but I’m angry and frustrated. Know the people that use our tool on the email love it and can’t live without it. I’m one of those people. But I also recognize that the friction within email is harder than we thought. And so that for me is like, okay, we’re not going to fundamentally change the world with our original product, and that’s why we’re doing product number two. 

Brett
Was it hard to go through that discovery process to say, hey, this isn’t quite right for what we want to achieve and what our ambitions are, and it’s time to go back and revise it and then rebuild the product in a different way? Was it hard to let go of what you wanted it to be at first with the first version? 

Andy Mowat
Yeah, it was. I mean, it was kind of happened like four months ago. We asked users and they’re like, I’d pay for this thing. It’s great, it’s amazing. But I think we just realized it would be a smaller business that wouldn’t drive the impact. And so in the end, it was an easy decision, but emotionally, it’s hard to make that decision for sure. 

Brett
In that journey, to make that decision, what did you learn, do you think? 

Andy Mowat
I guess what I would say is you have to have intellectual honesty. I think that’s something like. All of our investors have appreciated in differing manners and ways. But it’s kind of when I invest in a company as well, too, I want to know that the team is not just going to run out the same playbook because that’s what they took the money for in the first place. And so I think that is it’s felt good to have that intellectual honesty, which is, holy crap, we build something that impacts tens of millions of people a month, but it still isn’t going to change the world in the way we needed to change it. And so that was like challenging to face and powerful at the same time. 

Brett
Yeah, I can see that. And I think that’s very helpful advice for founders listening in. To hear you mentioned there angel investing and I see on your LinkedIn there’s a long list, probably of 15 or 20 different companies. What’s that been like for you? And it looks like you’ve been doing it for a long time now, right? It was 13 years, I think I read. 

Andy Mowat
Oh, yeah. I mean, the first one I did was I cut 15 grand to the guys that bought the TriNet of Hawaii and it turned into 900 grand. Right. That was like 2002. And so however long it is, I’ve probably been investing longer than that. But generally I focus on spaces I know, which is like rapidly scaling SaaS companies, people changing the way data works with go to market. And then sometimes I’ll find somebody I really enjoy and I’d say about half of those on there are investments where I’ve cut a sizable check. The other half are advisory roles. I just published an article literally this morning on the power of micro advising. And so I have a lot of people reach out and say, like, hey, I love what you’re I like how you think. I like you. And I think the advisory is both. 

Andy Mowat
It’s been powerful for gated. It’s another one of those growth hacks and you can read about in the article, but getting people to believe in what you’re doing to talk about it. And I think as an advisor, it’s great because instead of just having a one time coffee with a CEO, I get to be on speed dial from them. And we’ve got this relationship that’s formed by some equity as well, too. And so I really found that to be a powerful note in my career as well. 

Brett
Nice. Super interesting. Something else is on my list of questions that I meant to ask earlier. So I apologize for jumping around here, but let’s talk about the domain gated.com. That has to be a premium domain. What was it like getting that domain? And did you have to debate that? Is it worth to spend that cash and not just go with gated IO? What was that decision like? Because I think that’s something that a lot of founders struggle with as well. 

Andy Mowat
Yeah, fun question. So we called it at first was GGAT three D with the E backwards. And then somebody’s like, you can buy Gated email. So I bought Gated email and I kind of knew gated.com was out there, but every time I’d call it would get more expensive. And we closed ours called Precede Round, and this really influential person that I did not know, but he’s a Founder of company with a couple hundred million dollars in revenue and he paying me cold. And he’s like, I want to invest. And I said, I’m sorry, the rounds closed. And he said, okay, cool, but Gate, you should really buy that. And I was like, yeah, I know, but it’s just such a pain in the butt. Those guys in Vegas are always trying to swindle you. And he’s like, okay, I’ll take care of it for you if I can roll that money in. 

Andy Mowat
So he ended up buying it and we had a kind of a handshake deal, which we cemented over with paper where he rolled that into it. So we didn’t spend any cash on it, we just gave up some more equity for it. 

Brett
Wow, that’s awesome. Now, last question. Andy, I know we’re up on time and it’s a shame. I want to keep asking you more and more, but I have a feeling that I’ll be hopefully bringing you back on again to dive deeper into some of these other topics. But last question for you, and I know you touched on it a little bit, but can you just paint a picture for us of what the world’s going to look like five years from now if Gated succeeds in everything that you’re trying to achieve? 

Andy Mowat
Yeah, I guess everyone can already anticipate the world that’s going to drive why Gated need to exist, which is AI is going to just overwhelm us on every channel. If you thought it was easy before to send 100,000 emails, and Lord, I push send on a 15 million person email. So if you thought it was easy before, it’s bad. If you thought you were only suffering an email, you’re going to suffer on LinkedIn. I can already automate a message to you on every single one of my connections. 

Brett
Slack. 

Andy Mowat
All these other channels are just getting overloaded. And so I think the world for Gated looks like this. You have a single intelligent gate that you control. You can tighten up or loosen as much as you want. And through that is where you focus on new connections and new conversations. It works. Cross platform, anybody can reach you. And over time we’ll start to add AI to it too, which says, great, there’s this message coming in, it’s around a focus area that you’ve articulated. Looks like it’s pretty relevant or looks like it’s not at all. And so I think what we’re really, this is the first step for us, which is the universal link, but over time we can start to put. Once we’ve control the send of the message to you, we can do some really interesting stuff with it. So we’re after building the universal Gate, we’re not trying to get in the middle of existing conversations. 

Andy Mowat
Like if you’re going back and forth on email with somebody or text or LinkedIn, go for it. But as new people are trying to reach you, I think you’re dealing with it on so many different channels all the time and I want that geek to be everywhere. 

Brett
Amazing. Makes a lot of sense. And I love this vision. I love the problem that you’re solving and I really just love how you’re approaching building this company. It’s so fun to hear and I learned a lot and I think our audience is going to as well. Andy, before we wrap up, if people want to follow along with your journey, where should they go?

Andy Mowat
They can always email me. Andy@gated.com, if you make a donation, I will reply very quickly when this is launched and by when this drops, go to my LinkedIn or just go to and but that’ll be available on my LinkedIn, different places and you can see the conversations I want to have. And if you want to talk about one of those things, submit and we’ll connect. And you can always follow me on LinkedIn. I publish a lot of thought pieces there. It sounds like you do as well too. So I’m excited to read your stuff and gain a.com to get the app. It is completely free with the original email product. We made money off the donations with this new one. We’re really focused on driving change with communication and over time we’ll add some premium features, but the core app will always stay free. 

Brett
Amazing. Andy, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about what you’re building. Share lessons that you’ve learned as a go to market leader and really just paint a picture for us of what the world’s going to look like when Gated gets fully adopted. This has been a lot of fun. 

Andy Mowat
Thanks. It’s great. I love your questions. Excited to listen to a couple more of the podcasts as well too. 

Brett
Awesome. Let’s keep in touch. This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B, two B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on Podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you on the next episode.