UGLY TALK: COLLECTING SKILLS TO BE AN OPERATOR
You got here on the skills you already had. Building, selling, whatever you happen to be good at. That is what got the thing off the ground.
Then the business starts asking for skills nobody taught you. Not the parts that made the company exist. The parts that keep it running.
You don't have to do all of it yourself. You have a network, you can hire fractional, the tools are actually good now. But you can't direct what you don't understand. That is where founders get hurt.
This Ugly Talk names the gaps - sales and marketing, money, people, process - and how founders who collected those skills the hard way actually did it.
🎯 Why you should be in this room.
Hear which operator skills founders wish they had picked up sooner.
Learn how much you need to know about a function to hire for it and direct it.
Get the tells that a part of your business is running on hope.
Find out what people got wrong first, and what it cost them.
Leave with a short list of what to learn next and what to hand off.
💬 What's on the table.
Collecting the skills: how the jobs you already did quietly trained you, and where they left holes.
Sales and marketing: what a founder still has to own after hiring help.
Money: the numbers to watch weekly, and the shortcuts that get expensive.
People: the first few hires, and what a bad one actually costs.
Directing help: network, fractional, AI - how much you have to understand to use any of it well.
🎤 Featured speakers.
Sarah Larson - Founder, People Magnets
Sarah is a People Expert with over 25 years of experience in HR, Life Sciences, and venture capital. She specializes in helping companies identify people challenges, build strong teams, and develop strategies that support growth. She has served as Head of HR for several Life Sciences companies, including Foundation Medicine, where she joined as the second employee and helped grow the team to over 600 people. Sarah also spent eight years in venture capital as Partner and Chief People Officer at Third Rock Ventures and Chief People Officer at S32. She has advised CEOs, boards, and growing companies as a strategic advisor and interim HR leader. At Magnet, she combines her deep HR experience with a people-first approach to help organizations build strong cultures and thrive.
Jeremy Chow - Founder & CEO, Tactus
Jeremy Chow is the Founder and CEO of Tactus, an accessibility technology company that has built a wearable device that translates music into vibrations, making music more inclusive and accessible for the Deaf community. As a technical founder with a background in Mechanical Engineering, he started this project through a collaboration with a Deaf dancer and has built and designed the technology from prototype to a product on the market. What began in Boston has since grown into a global venture, with active involvement in innovation ecosystems across Tokyo and Hong Kong.
Chris Kluesener - Co-Founder & CEO, Matcha Energy
Chris Kluesener is the cofounder and CEO of Matcha Energy, an electrification investment platform for multifamily and commercial properties focused on EV charging and battery energy storage. Matcha funds, installs, owns, and operates the assets, taking on the capital and operating risk property owners won't, and runs the portfolio on its own software platform. Before founding Matcha, Chris led management consulting teams in Deloitte's Strategy & Operations division and ran channel partner sales at Feedback Loop, a Series A startup acquired in 2022.
🤝 Who's hosting it.
Phil Slabine - Founder, Not Dorks Accounting & Finance
Phil Slabine is co-founder of Not Dorks Accounting & Finance, a managed service firm providing early-stage and growth companies with the support they need. He spent 15 years in corporate accounting, most recently as corporate controller at a fast-growing robotics company, before leaving to build his own business. He spends most of his time on the unglamorous parts of building a business — cash runway, pricing, and the plumbing of your financial model — and thinks that since founders have to do accounting anyway, they might as well get amazing value out of it. Based in Boston.
🙋 Who's getting in.
Boston founders past the idea stage, with real money on the line.
First-time founders suddenly running functions they have never run.
Operators who inherited sales, finance, or people because somebody had to.
Anyone who has said "I'll figure that part out later," and later showed up.
⭐ About Ugly Talk
Started in 2019, Ugly Talk has been transforming business setbacks into breakthrough "aha!" moments by hosting unfiltered, no-nonsense events where battle-tested entrepreneurs share their raw lessons and insights.
With a growing presence in cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Miami, we've built a vibrant community of thousands of founders and industry leaders making a profound impact on the entrepreneurial landscape.
Official Website: UglyTalk.com
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