Driving Startup Growth Via Curated Data-Driven Community Connections | Brendan Hayes from Astronomic

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Stay relevant to your visitors and increase conversions by 50% by adding Patmonk to your website in seconds. Letting the AI do all the work and increase conversions while you keep doing marketing as usual. Check us out on pathmonk.com. Hey everybody. Welcome to today’s episode of Pathmonk Presents to We’re joined by Brandon Hayes is the head of growth at Astronomic.

Brendan, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Good to have you, Brendan. And, let’s. outta the gate. let’s talk about, astronomic and let’s talk about what’s the big idea behind your company, right? So if you were explaining it to a friend of a coffee, how would you describe what you do?

Brendan Hayes: Sure. So astronomic is essentially an evergreen accelerator that companies can access on demand. So for entrepreneurs, whether they need access to advisors, investors, customers, or talent, they can visit our website, astronomic.com, sign up for our community and get warm intros to all of the appropriate people and services that they need to grow and scale, and hopefully, eventually exit their companies.

Rick: That’s the plan, right? If you’re a founder, then that’s, that, that’s what you want, that you want something like this where you get the right connections and the right type of support to be able to, to find product market fit and a bunch of other things that come with it. So that’s, sounds like a really helpful, business that you got going.

Brendan. Now, are there any specific types of businesses or industries where you feel, astronomic really shines, do you think?

Brendan Hayes: Sure. So we’ve grown so much that this year we’ve worked with everyone from vertical AI to consumer packaged goods and everything in between. really anything that is technology native, is our bread and butter.
So whether you are building a B2C consumer app or a B2B SaaS, those are the companies that most likely find the most benefit from collaborating with us. Got it. Okay.

Rick: Now I know you have something excited, exciting in the works, right? there’s an event coming up. We talked about it offline briefly before, before getting into things.
do you wanna touch on that? Maybe, I know there’s, someone involved the CTO of Workweek, if I’m not mistaken. So maybe tell us a little bit about that. Maybe some people can, also come to that event.

Brendan Hayes: Absolutely. Part of what we do through building this incredible community is we host these curated events, for entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and investors who come from a similar industry or vertical, and would other ne otherwise never meet in the real world.
And, one series of events that we have coming up we’re really excited about is going to feature both the CTO at Workday, which is a Fortune 500 B2B SaaS company, along with the CIO at a company called Snyk, which is a series G cybersecurity company. That’s raised well over a billion dollars and has a very innova innovative AI security platform.
And we’ll be hosting fireside chats, with both of those business leaders in New York and Chicago coming up in December. those are gonna be really exciting events, that we’re hoping to get other executives and founders to attend.

Rick: Amazing. And, let me correct myself, of course, I said, workweek, it’s workday, right?
You don’t wanna, maybe we, don’t wanna send anything to the competition. Workweek is something on the past, right? We wanna talk about Workday these days. all jokes aside, Brendan, that sounds really exciting. It sounds like a good opportunity for. For, entrepreneurs of all kinds to, network and learn something, really valuable.
So that’s great. also, is there any company maybe that, right now is, about to launch or, something you’re excited about, let’s say?

Brendan Hayes: Yeah, so something I’d love to talk about, we’re currently advising a startup that is coming out of stealth mode. In early December and we’ll have a launch in Austin, Texas.
they are a sports betting analytics platform that’s essentially the Watson of sports betting. And so they analyze hundreds of thousands of data points, including media reports from the mainstream and. The blogs and podcasts and, player data and matchups and historical trends and everything you could possibly imagine, to make predictions about the outcomes of games and individual player results.
And, they’ve been working on it for three years. the founders have very strong backgrounds from, enterprise data and, it’s gonna be an amazing product. I’ve seen the demo, I’ve used it. It’s, live right now and, we’re just really excited to, to help them launch to the world.

Rick: Amazing. And by the time this episode comes out, they might be already rolling and, be live.
if at that time you already have a link or something you could share with us, then we’ll, also put it in the show notes just so you know.

Brendan Hayes: thank you. Yeah. Follow us on LinkedIn astronomic. We’ll be posting about some of these upcoming events. And if you’re gonna be in Austin on December 4th, and you might be an investor that’s interested in the sports world and in big data, please join us for this private event.

Rick: Sounds

Brendan Hayes: good.

Rick: Now, Brendan, let’s talk about, let’s get a little bit more technical, let’s say, and talk about, astronomic. And, I wanna understand a little bit more since our audience is interested in conversion rate, in growth in marketing. How much of a role does your website play in pulling in new clients?
And is there anything about it that you think really works or anything you got your eye on improving?

Brendan Hayes: Sure we’re, very proud of our website. our designers Wow. Has done an amazing job and continues to update that. And we feel that it’s, very dynamic and comprehensive and interactive and leads you directly into our web app so that you can sign up for the community, you can join our private Slack channel.
you can browse events and services and just meet great. Vetted qualified people, who have also signed up for the community. whether you need investors for your startup or, business partners or customers, definitely sign up for the community and we’ll get you plugged in either digitally or through the in-person events that we host in every major city across the US every week.
but yeah, we’re very proud of the site. I think it does a great job. Of explaining the, many different pathways that you can take to engage with our powerful community. And, the interactive component is important. it’s not just a static marketing site. it really flows dynamically into our web app, which allows you to, get involved.

Rick: Yeah, that’s interesting. Also, I like the component of what you just mentioned about bringing people together about the community, right? The Slack channel, the in-person events. it’s bringing people together and it’s, I think it’s essential, especially for a, business like yours.
now speaking of people, let’s, talk about you for a second, Brendan. Let’s, switch gears for a second. Talk about you as a leader, So as a head of growth, What does a typical workday look like for you? And what are the main things you focus on a day to day?

Brendan Hayes: Sure. So I’m very lucky in that nearly all of our growth comes from word of mouth.
And I would say I’m mainly focused on product led growth, which is creating the proprietary technology platform that, that we’re. Built upon and our digital assets to reflect out to the world, what we’re doing with managed services and with events. And then people engage with us either online or offline, and they always tell their colleagues and friends, about the experience that they had and.
Our inbox is overflowing with new leads. And so I’m really passionate about delivering great experiences for our clients. and beyond that, what I think sets us apart is the authenticity of the community. So we’re not just trying to be a services company. We’re really trying to create a unique, vetted community of professionals. That span the whole ecosystem of, startups, and that includes these high net worth individual angel investors, family office leaders, C-Suites from the Fortune 500 and Enterprise who might wanna buy innovative new technologies from the founders.
and of course the founders themselves. And so we organized dinners and hikes and. Essentially professional house parties that are all informal, yet professional and people just have a great time and make connections, whether that’s business partners or customers or advisors, and, They, always spread the word about how great the community is.
And, as the head of growth, I’m really focused on how we can build the, technology backbone that enables, those real life experiences. So that word of mouth growth continues at the rate that it’s been climbing, which is really quite staggering this year and we’re proud of that.

Rick: I’m sure you are. And that makes a lot of sense, especially if you do all of these things to foster their community by, let’s say, it makes sense for the, referral ecosystem that you build to, to work so well as you’ve, said. props to you guys and that’s, a great

Brendan Hayes: initiative.
Thank you. Yeah, we use a lot of data and technology to figure out how to curate. These events in a way that people will make meaningful connections. that’s what it’s all about. and so there’s a, tech component that we’re building. we’re really excited about AI agents, layering on top of our existing platform, which, I’m very involved with building right now.
So a lot of what I do on a day-to-day is, a technical exercise, or it’s talking to our clients and figuring out what they need and who on our team I need to connect with to deliver. but it’s really all about just the authenticity and the curation of, putting the right people in the right rooms together and letting the magic happen and everything just grows organically from there.

Rick: That’s great. Yeah, that’s absolutely great. Now, Brendan, we, we’re coming towards the end of, the interview here. we have a rapid fire segment that I love to do with you is just a few questions. We try to keep things light and engaging, so nothing crazy, nothing too serious. but the only unspoken rule is that if for a concise question, we expect a concise answer.
Is that okay with you? I can do that. All right, let’s do it. when it comes to consuming content, do you prefer watching, listening or reading? Reading. Reading. Okay. What’s the latest piece of content that you read? Could be a book, could be an article, whatever that you picked up. And were there any gems that really stuck with you?

Brendan Hayes: I find gems every day on X, formerly Twitter. I find that a lot of the voices in tech that I want to connect with are on there, and, that’s really powerful because I can just skim through and quickly identify the content that I want to interact with or skip over. So I’m addicted to that right now, but I like to think it’s productive sometimes, or most of the time.
Yeah, I

Rick: like that caveat, right? It’s like most of the time it is productive, right? as long as you keep that focus, because it’s easy to get distracted in it. but yeah, that’s a good one. If you had a magic wand and could fix one frustrating thing in your, life with tech, what would it be?

Brendan Hayes: It’s a great question.
How to plan my meals and what I’m going to eat next. That’s always such a decision. You have to make multiple times a day. That takes up time and there’s no science or art to it. You’re just free styling. So maybe someone will build an AI that will, help me prep my meals and save me some time and energy.

Rick: Oh, interestingly, I use chat GPT for, something like that. I just like layout. what my week might look like, especially when it comes to inspiration for dinners and things like that. but yeah, that’s a good one for sure. Unusual, I gotta tell you that people typically go to how do I, parse through data and, make it visual just like you go easy.
How do I plan my meals? what do I eat?

Brendan Hayes: just more basic. I’m so busy. I, that’s just one thing that I know is taking up time that’s not productive. so that was my concise answer for you. I get it. I’m just looking to optimize my. My life admin right now. Maybe laundry is next. maybe we can work on robots for laundry, which I, know are coming

Rick: soon.
Oh, they’re coming.

Brendan Hayes: They’re coming

Rick: for sure. What’s, maybe that’s related, maybe, not, but what’s more repetitive task that you love to put on autopilot forever.

Brendan Hayes: Delegating tasks to, operations. as head of growth, I do a lot of work with go to market and partnerships and sales, and I have to triage what’s important and delegate that out to the ops team and, I’m hoping to, automate some of that in 26 as we build out the agentic side of our platform.

Rick: Okay. That should be an interesting one. Keep us posted. All right. Yeah. Yeah. It’s exciting. Yeah, it sounds like it. Brennan, I want to thank you for being on the show with us today. As we wrap it up, I want to give you the last word. Also, if someone forgets everything about the interview today, Brandon, what is the one thing that you should remember about your company?

Brendan Hayes: Just remember that we’re building this company because many of us were founders in the past, and we know what it’s like out there, and we want to build a place where you can always come to us on demand and get what you need. And we love the big accelerator programs like YC and Techstars and EOR over in Europe, but most of those programs only last about three months.
And so what do you do when the party’s over? you can come to astronomic and we’ll support you from early phase all the way through, exit with whatever you need.

Rick: Awesome. I love that. if someone wants, say there’s a founder here that wants to check you guys out, know more about you guys, how can they do it?

Brendan Hayes: astronomic.com or astronomic on LinkedIn are great ways to find us and follow us too.

Rick: Easy then. Brendan, thank you again for, for the interview today. I’m sure our audience found it, invaluable. Again, maybe we get to do this again soon. Maybe we, catch up next year when you’ve worked on, the ENT side of things.
But until then, Brandon, I wish you a wonderful day and I hope to see you again soon. Likewise. Let’s do it again next year. Sounds good. All right. Bye everyone. Bye.