Teasha Cable has built her career on solving a fundamental business problem: fragmented decision-making. As CEO and co-founder of CModel Data, Inc., she’s developed a unified platform that transforms how organizations approach their strategy execution, turning siloed processes into trackable, learnable systems.
In this exclusive interview, Cable shares her journey from Silicon Valley to Birmingham, Alabama, where she’s found unexpected opportunities to grow her business while making a significant impact on the regional economy. With experience as a VP of business operations, revenue operations, and product strategy, including work at Singularity University helping large companies navigate AI disruption, Cable brings a wealth of knowledge about what truly drives business success.
What market observations drove your decision to become a founder?
Decision making is really something that has deep impact on people’s ability to grow their business, so most people end up with stagnant strategies. Their business core strategy is not necessarily sound, and then when a business doesn’t grow, nor does the economy, so economic development opportunities end up falling by the wayside because they don’t have good quality information about whether or not a business is or is not successful, and then, when a business isn’t, what do they actually need in order to be more successful. So without that core set of information, then the decision making landscape is often barren, and it’s barren in ways that have real impact on whether or not people get the things they need within the economic landscape.
What key insights from building CModel have shaped your decision-making framework?
The very first one is that, often what goes missing in the decision making process within an organization, which is any group of people coming together to do something, is trust, and so without that trust, most people are really stopped at the door. We believe that transparency in decision making is important, you don’t have to spill all the beans in one place, but you certainly need to make sure that the right amount of information is available to people up and down the spectrum at the right time, and that’s really our ultimate goal, is to make sure that that information is present.
Trust can boost employee morale, trust can align people to what your purpose and your mission is, but a lack of trust can make it so strategies never get implemented properly because people don’t necessarily trust or believe in the outcome, and so it’s really important that trust is ultimately established upfront in any decision making process. The next step after that is alignment around what the outcomes and the actions are, and so you need a baseline of information that comes together to create that alignment.
So if I know how much time something is going to take for me to do, and when I expect to actually see value on the thing I’m going to do, it’s gonna be much easier to align people around my decision to do that. When that information is not present, then it’s a little bit harder, so really it’s the openness and willingness to communicate details that one might not otherwise communicate that becomes a big part of improving decision making.
Can you walk us through your journey from Silicon Valley to Birmingham?
I had a fantastic career before I started CModel, I’ve been everything from a VP of business operations, revenue operations, a VP of business and product strategy. I worked at Singularity University for a number of years, helping large companies not be disrupted by exponential tech like AI. What I have learned in all of that work is that there’s often opportunity that needs to be identified, and sometimes opportunities can be found in places that you don’t necessarily think about, and my move to Birmingham is an example of that.
I did not expect or know that I’d find the mist of opportunity that I’ve found in Birmingham for my company when I came. I came originally for investment in our company from Alabama Futures Fund, but what I found is not just a community for my company to grow, but pathways. There’s a number of mid size businesses here in this area, there’s a geographic connection to Georgia and Louisiana and Tennessee, places where we can sort of expand to at the right time.
Being in a place like this has helped versus where we were in California. I, of course, love California, I was there for a long time, I appreciate all of my experiences there, but I do feel like in this particular region, we’re able to have a significant impact, and specifically, in ways where we’re able to contribute to the processes that they’re running around economic development right here in Birmingham.
What strategies have you implemented to identify market opportunities in non-traditional tech hubs?
Think about a company you have to put together, who are you targeting, and how many people are there, is very specifically drawn to people who are paying to solve a very specific problem with lots of different tools and lots of different people, including management consultants and a number of other folks.
When I look into how people spend their money to solve this problem, that’s where I found where Cmodel can come in and drive a very specific result to help people to navigate through. How do I grow my business? It’s not just a machine telling someone what to do, it’s just putting the right information in front of them at the right time.
Our market opportunity is really drawn by the level of pain that people are experiencing, trying to sort of slush their way to growth and not being successful by the way. I think I read this in the Harvard Business Review, when you take inflation into account, most companies see little to no growth, and so you have to ask yourself, why is that?
Well, it’s because when you’re trying to answer the question, what do I do to achieve my goals and know why? It’s incredibly complex, and that level of complexity either leads to picking the wrong things or picking the wrong things at the wrong time, and so you ultimately must solve this problem in order for us to change that very specific dynamic, which is, companies don’t actually grow.
How do you approach due diligence and relationship building in your startup?
When I think about due diligence, I think for my company, it’s just keeping our paperwork straight. If I had to say how CModel approach due diligence, we actually, as a solution, can help organizations to qualify. You know where a company is on their growth journey, and then utilize that information in a due diligence process. So if a company says that they’re in growth stage, then there’s certain things that ought to be true about that company, certain metrics.
That ought to be in a certain place and our company, our solution, has the ability to look at that company’s data and information, to determine whether or not that is true, and then, when it’s not, be able to appropriately match them to a set of resources in order to make that true, if that’s the goal of an organization. We can serve as a part of a due diligence solution in order to help validate whether or not a company has actually met a certain set of criteria or not, and then I think that’s the best way for me to answer that I, in terms of how we do it, we just try to tell the truth.
What role has mentorship played in your journey? And how do you give back to emerging entrepreneurs in your community?
For me, mentorship has been sort of key in getting over some critical humps that we have, mentorship hasn’t come in like a traditional, “Hey, I’m your mentor”. Usually what happens is, I find people who maybe like minded, or have certain levels of expertise in an area, and they’re just willing to share. They’re open and willing to share the information that they have, and when I find people who don’t hoard knowledge, I typically tend to try to spend as much time as possible with them so that I can learn, and I can consider that to be a mentorship, and on the flip side I do the very same thing.
I actually, formally and informally, mentor startups coming along, I share everything that I’ve experienced to this point, including successfully raising over 2 million dollars in venture capital, I show the details of how we were able to do that as much as possible, even the don’ts, because the don’ts are the areas where people often hide their hand. I give back as much as possible, and that’s what our whole tool is. Our whole solution is about helping you get from one phase of growth to the next, what decisions are you making?
I think we take for granted the information that founders and business leaders actually don’t always have at their fingertips, and I’m hoping that our solution, having stored much of that up, is super helpful to them as they start navigating the critical decision landmines that are coming.
What advice would you like to give black founders about raising capital, especially considering this economy and the climate right now?
My first piece of advice is to build a solid core business strategy, so that they can capitalize their business with revenue where necessary, and not just be reliant on the idea of raising venture capital, because 1% of any company is ever going to get venture capital, and 1% of that 1% will be black, and then point 1% of that 1% will be black women.
Based on that, there’s other ways to capitalize your business, but in order to do that, you need a very solid core business strategy which starts with clearly identifying who you are and what your purpose is, and when you have a set of values that are very clear, and when you have a clearly defined purpose that is not just make money, and we have, because that’s not gonna get you very far, and when that purpose is clearly identified in your vision, meaning what? What does the world look like when your purpose is fulfilled?
And then a very clear mission which includes a set of milestones and metrics that you can measure to determine whether or not you’re on or off track. Then there’s a high probability that you can make it from where you are to the next phase.
A financial model is foundational, understanding who the market is that you serve and the personality of those folks is very important. So those are the things that I would advise and then go for it, and without fear, because fear will set you back. It’ll stop you from achieving all the things that are possible for you along the way.
How would you measure CModels’ impact beyond financial returns?
Our goal here is to build outcome focused visionaries so that people will create more opportunities for other people. So our impact is going to be measured by how many businesses live long enough to make additional impact on things that aren’t just tied to money.
How many businesses have employees that are able to give back, not just of their money, but their time in their communities? How do you grow to a future of work where that’s possible, where work can be redefined.
When we set our vision, I didn’t set my vision believing that I’d see it in my lifetime, we’re taking it step by step, and hoping that the work that we’re doing today will lead to those outcomes in the future, even if that’s a future that I don’t get to experience.
The future of entrepreneurship is?
The future of entrepreneurship is knowing that when all the repeatable and mundane tasks are taken away and done by artificial intelligence. The only thing that will be left is to constantly create something new, and that creating something new will come from human perspective. So the future of entrepreneurship is honing your critical thinking skills and your problem solving skills so that you can take what looks like it is solved and optimize it and optimize it and optimize it, so creating something new from human perspective. That’s where the future of entrepreneurship will remain.
Building sustainable companies means?
Means know your numbers. First, first, it means have a solid business strategy, core business strategy, know who you are. The second one is, know where it is that you ultimately want to go, and in order to do that you have to know your numbers. So that’s what I believe building sustainability is all about.
Black excellence in business means?
Means excellence, so we have to step far outside of the mindset of mediocrity and be okay. Be okay, being excellent, and that always means optimizing whatever experience that we’re having. So if we’re working hard, we’re not just working hard in competition. We’re working hard because it’s the right thing to do, and so excellence will be bred when we’re doing the things that, one, we have passion and capability abilities to do. So capability leads to excellence as well the things that we and we can, you can aspire to capabilities. You don’t have to have them today, but you can want them, and then you go for them, but excellence is executing at the highest level that you can. That means that there is no settling up for mediocre behavior, we can’t fall into traps of mediocrity.
Can you share 2 moments when the community support in Birmingham significantly impacted the journey after relocating there?
There’s 2 things that have been really beneficial for me here in Birmingham. One has been my place here at the innovation depot. So, my offices are in a building called Innovation Depot, and they’ve done a really great job here in Birmingham and really bringing tech companies into a space and then giving them resources to really help them to move along through that journey that I kind of keep talking about.
The second thing that’s been super helpful to me is our connection and proximity to the economic development arms of the city itself, because we’re helping businesses, it’s been really nice to know that the city in itself wants to help businesses, so their initiatives are supportive. There’s also a partnership that CModel has developed with Prosper, which is in partnership with Regions Bank, where we’ve been able to produce our tool in order to conduct a census of black businesses in Birmingham, and that has been a useful experience for us, and really helpful in kind of seeing and understanding where businesses are, and knowing that our technology is in the back, sort of powering how this data will is analyzed and and collected.
We recently are starting a cohort with 2150, which is connected to Miles College here in Birmingham, and then that program working together on health initiatives and building a decision intelligence knowledge center right here in Birmingham to help students to work on what does the pipeline into workforce development look like and helping students look at data and information and how that will help them to determine their learning pathways and also career pathways. So there’s a number of things that because we’re here, we’ve been able to put our hands on and start to be able to work on.
