Pros
None that I can think of.
Cons
I worked as the BDR Manager for Satchel Pulse from April 2022 - August 2022 and can say without question it was the worst company I’ve ever worked for. The red flags began popping up almost immediately after I signed my offer letter. The executives wanted to meet with me a few times prior to my actual start date. In one of these meetings, they started dropping all of the company’s baggage on me. They described how the company had a co-founder who was running the sales team and had attempted to run the BDR team for a while but it didn’t work out. They also told me not to ever refer to this person as the co-founder because the CEO would take major issue with it. From there, my experience with Satchel Pulse was chaos. I also learned that the annual employee retention rate was 30%, which was jarring! The BDR team that I’d been brought in to run had little structure and zero accountability. From the top down, the strategy at this company seemed to change biweekly. The executives gave misdirection and strung me along on projects ranging from leasing an office space which never happened (got the tenants out of their lease early too), creating and implementing a new BDR team structure, performance review criteria & new comp plans for BDR team, etc. Since none of the things I was creating or suggesting were being put into play, I started to feel like I was being assigned busy work. The plan was to grow and scale the BDR team in early June but by early July I was in a meeting with the CEO and executive team and they were singing a different tune. Now, I was being asked to let go of six BDR’s from my team in one day. That week the BDR team went from 11 BDR’s to just three remaining. Around this time, I was told that the CEO wanted to bring in an executive to lead the Sales team with decades of experience in Edtech. I was told not to worry and that this was going to be the last gig for the person they were bringing in. It was explained how the incoming executive was in their 60’s and would probably work at Satchel Pulse for two to three years at most, helping to grow revenue and then was going to retire. I was told this would put me in a great position to learn from them and take over the reins once this person leaves. I let go of six people on a Friday and the new executive started that Monday with a clean slate. After that, the executive team always made it a point to say how I was still very much a part of the leadership team for the company, we just needed to figure out exactly how that looks and what specifically my role was going to be. This left me feeling uneasy, but I had no choice other than to take their word for it. Fast forward to late August. I joined a web meeting with the new executive as well as another member of the leadership team to what I thought was going to be a meeting to talk about candidates for a new role we were going to be hiring for. After a couple minutes of small talk, I was informed that as part of the restructuring of the company and Sales department, my role as BDR Manager had been eliminated and I was let go. This confirmed how I’d been feeling all along. I was surprised but not shocked. Too many red flags along the way and this validated everything I had been thinking. All in all, Satchel Pulse letting me go was one of the best things to ever happen to me. I value transparency and integrity over all and couldn’t foresee a future there. If you’re thinking about joining this company, I’d advise at least talking to a few former employees first.