ABOUT THIS EPISODE
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Could the acquisition of HubSpot by Alphabet spell a revolution or a step back for marketing automation? Join Naomi Liu, Mike Rizzo, and myself, Michael Hartmann, as we tackle this burning question. We dissect the ripple effects of such a corporate shake-up, drawing from historical tech giant acquisitions and project what it could mean for the innovative landscape of marketing tools. We don't just stop there; we also weigh in on the shifting tide towards bespoke marketing stacks, questioning whether the allure of customization outweighs the convenience of an all-in-one platform.
Strap in as we venture into the high-stakes realm of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and their profound impact on the tech world. Amidst discussions of composability and the democratization of development, we're bringing you firsthand insights into the complexities of creating custom solutions within large corporations. We consider the potential risks and rewards, from grappling with maintenance to protecting intellectual property, and ponder the scenarios that might compel a company to radically rethink its technological backbone.
Wrapping things up, we shift gears to the grassroots level, sharing a fascinating chat with a startup founder who crafted a nimble, homegrown tech solution during the lockdown era. We invite our hands-on listeners to share their tales of tech tinkering and celebrate the art of simplicity in technology. Your feedback is the heartbeat of our conversation, and we eagerly anticipate the diverse viewpoints and experiences you'll bring to the table. Tune in for an episode that's set to challenge and refine your approach to technology in marketing and sales.
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IN THIS EPISODE
SHOW NOTES 🔗
TRANSCRIPT 🔗
00:00:23.570 --> 00:00:24.612
We've got the three amigos.
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Naomi, mike and I are here.
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I'm Michael Hartman, it's Naomi Liu, mike Rizzo.
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Hey, we wanted to get together.
00:00:34.157 --> 00:00:49.972
It's now I don't know almost about two weeks since the buzz that came around about Google potentially buying HubSpot, which seems to have died down, and I think we were just going to sort of chat about like what would that?
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What are some of the implications of that?
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Is it a good maybe?
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I don't even know if we could say if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
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I think it really depends on perspective, but what it may mean for the future of marketing automation.
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So I don't know.
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We can open up the floor.
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I can start.
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Does anyone want to jump in and take a shot at this, or do you want me to?
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To, uh, take the take the first arrows well, I think go ahead, naomi, real quick.
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I was just saying.
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I just googled on my phone.
00:01:17.292 --> 00:01:23.917
I googled google buying hubspot on my phone and just to see if there's been any new chatter coming about.
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And yeah, it definitely has died down, but there still are some people talking about it.
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There's some videos that have been posted to YouTube, some articles, but a day, a day ago, three days ago, it's definitely not as prevalent as it was.
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I'm just reading here.
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But yeah, it's.
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It's interesting that there was definitely a ton of chatter and now it's just kind of died down.
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So I'm curious what going to happen.
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Yeah, and I think it's important for us.
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You know, we anchor on google, which I mean, of course, because it's a brand we know, but, like, at the end of the day, it's the holding company, it's alphabet alphabet.
00:01:58.980 --> 00:02:00.031
Yes, which is you?
00:02:00.072 --> 00:02:07.772
know, but I mean, but everybody says that, right like, everybody's like, oh, google, google's gonna buy, you know, or could buy hubspot or whatever.
00:02:07.772 --> 00:02:33.365
I think that's an important distinction, not just for the market and the investors, but also for the way we think about how it fits into the broader let's call it ecosystem that is Alphabet, because Google is so heavily B2C focused on, like reach to consumers, that that would probably feel even more strange.
00:02:33.365 --> 00:02:36.474
It was Google proper.
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Yeah, at the same time, things like Gmail are used by a lot of businesses as their email platform.
00:02:46.867 --> 00:02:47.789
Yeah, right yeah.
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It's not just, I mean, it's like that.
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And outlook, I would guess.
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I have no idea, so I'm talking out of my you know what.
00:02:54.658 --> 00:03:09.514
I would suspect outlook is still the big behemoth in that, but it wouldn't surprise me if gmail's got a big chunk of that these days yeah, yeah, the g suite like google for work products, right, um, yeah, those are.
00:03:09.614 --> 00:03:16.478
those are certainly more oriented towards businesses, but I, you know, I think I don't know.
00:03:16.478 --> 00:03:37.760
You know, you were talking a little bit at the before we hit record, just about executives sort of speculating on what it might mean, and I think we were everybody in the market was talking about like speculation on the pace of innovation or lack thereof, when things like this happen uh, well, I think I think, like in my I'll tell, just go out there.
00:03:37.800 --> 00:03:51.581
Like I think I could see pretty strong arguments for investors of both alphabet, and maybe hubspot, that this could be a good thing for them, assuming trajectories of things stay the same, etc.
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Etc.
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What I'm not convinced of is that it would be a good thing for HubSpot's customers.
00:04:00.909 --> 00:04:13.657
Part of that's just based on what we've seen with Oracle buying Eloqua and Salesforce buying Pardot and then Adobe buying Marketo and what has happened with those platforms.
00:04:13.657 --> 00:04:14.695
I know from my experience.
00:04:14.695 --> 00:04:21.521
I was working with Eloqua actually right before the acquisition by Oracle.
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I left and was working with Marketo and then came back to another place where I was using Eloqua and I was about a four year span in between and I couldn't have told you any significant changes that I saw within the platform in four years.
00:04:35.713 --> 00:04:37.119
Were there changes?
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Probably.
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So my fear is that for customers that there's going to be real or perceived lack of innovation compared to what they were we were talking about before this.
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Right I?
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I see hubspot posting about things on a pretty regular cadence.
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I don't know if it's weekly, but it's feels pretty close to them.
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I don't know how significant those are because I'm not familiar with hubspot and the details of it, but I can see that real.
00:05:05.140 --> 00:05:24.364
The other thing that I told you guys is I feel like I've heard a little more chatter lately about people thinking well, can I solve my need for what these martyring automation platforms do by putting together my own stack of sort of piecemeal components that I need at a lower cost cost.
00:05:24.364 --> 00:05:25.303
There's trade-off of.
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It might be more expensive to I'm going to have to build and maintain it.
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I may have to have people to do it, but the costs of these platforms have also tended to get higher and higher.
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In platforms you get the platform, you only use a portion of it.
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So I don't know where that lands me on this.
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I'm not sure I'd be a fan of this from a customer standpoint.
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If I was a HubSpot customer, sure I'd be a fan of this from a customer standpoint, if I was a HubSpot customer, yeah, I can speak a bit about this.
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Before we went on to Marketo, we were on a platform called Neolane.
00:06:05.517 --> 00:06:10.179
Some of you may have heard it, most of you probably have never heard about it.
00:06:10.179 --> 00:06:23.278
It was acquired by Adobe and rebranded to Adobe Campaign and it essentially just certain feature sets of it were end of life right.
00:06:23.278 --> 00:06:33.818
And so at that point the decision was made during our renewal to look at other vendors and we decided to go with Marketo.
00:06:33.818 --> 00:06:39.601
And just as we're about to sign our contract, it was announced that Adobe acquired Marketo.
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I was like, oh okay, which ended up working in our favor because we were able to negotiate, you know, more favorable terms for ourselves.
00:06:47.259 --> 00:06:50.471
But, um, you know, I think I.
00:06:50.471 --> 00:07:08.681
For me it's interesting because I did see kind of the the stalling or the lack of innovation happen with the acquisition of Neolane into Adobe campaign, with the Marketo piece, because I jumped into the tool right when the acquisition happened.
00:07:08.681 --> 00:07:17.515
I didn't have that historical knowledge necessarily of what life used to be like prior to the acquisition, so for me everything was new right.
00:07:17.515 --> 00:07:26.758
So I feel like it also depends on who you talk to and what the end use business case is for why they're using the platform right?
00:07:26.758 --> 00:07:31.085
Did they come in pre, during post or you know?
00:07:31.085 --> 00:07:34.801
And what are the use cases that they're trying to solve with the tool?
00:07:36.171 --> 00:07:38.558
So just real quick, because I'm not familiar with the platform you mentioned.
00:07:38.558 --> 00:07:42.320
Was it primarily just an email platform?
00:07:43.350 --> 00:07:46.200
No, it was closer to an Eloqua than it is to a Marketo.
00:07:46.200 --> 00:07:48.075
So it was.
00:07:48.075 --> 00:07:55.039
You could do everything right Campaign management, lead management, scoring, hygiene.
00:07:55.039 --> 00:08:03.083
I would say it was closer to an Eloqua interface and capability than in terms of, like, how you would use the platform.
00:08:03.083 --> 00:08:09.222
It's very visual as opposed to kind of a stacked smart list and things like that.
00:08:15.152 --> 00:08:16.317
I had never even heard of that.
00:08:20.173 --> 00:08:20.754
It's a French.
00:08:20.754 --> 00:08:24.602
It was a French tool Interesting.
00:08:24.602 --> 00:08:26.522
It originated in France, yeah.
00:08:27.370 --> 00:08:35.274
I see I was using Exact was exact target at one point, which was basically, which is also still now kind of around Salesforce bought them too.
00:08:35.455 --> 00:08:51.921
It's marketing cloud exact target and part were the same, right like they were like all one sort of entity, but then, like that acquisition turned into exact target, became the cloud, whatever SFMC.
00:08:54.313 --> 00:08:55.217
And then there's the other one.
00:08:55.831 --> 00:08:57.108
I can't tell you what it's called anymore.
00:08:57.929 --> 00:09:00.014
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement.
00:09:00.014 --> 00:09:05.703
Sfmcae is now Pardot, or whatever.
00:09:06.030 --> 00:09:12.572
Our listeners can't see me just shaking my head and rolling my eyes Comes up with these stupid names.
00:09:12.632 --> 00:09:13.674
It's the mouthful product.
00:09:13.674 --> 00:09:20.999
Yeah, yeah, Like, obviously I come from the HubSpot camp.
00:09:20.999 --> 00:09:38.137
I guess, Like I came up through that ecosystem and I I as ecosystem and as someone who has a minuscule number of shares in HubSpot I was like, oh, this is interesting, Maybe that means something, I don't know.
00:09:38.137 --> 00:09:44.322
And so from that perspective, I thought, okay, let's see what happens there.
00:09:44.322 --> 00:09:51.815
From the user side of things, I think, like everybody else, I was a little, a little leery of like, well, what does that really mean?
00:09:51.815 --> 00:09:56.990
I think it depends on, you know, with it being the parent company.
00:09:56.990 --> 00:10:17.420
Um, you know, I don't, I I think it just feels a little different from a MarTech-first organization, right, Like a Salesforce buying an ExactTarget or a Adobe buying a Marketo.
00:10:17.420 --> 00:10:30.220
Those are marketing technology solution providers and CRMs and they sit inside of this business tech ecosystem and they're acquiring these other tools to bolster their offerings.
00:10:31.049 --> 00:10:34.178
Alphabet is not like out of the box a company.
00:10:34.178 --> 00:10:45.001
That just is like a MarTech first company, necessarily, Right, they own lots of different things, and so I actually don't know if it would be necessarily the same result.
00:10:45.001 --> 00:10:50.331
The same result.
00:10:50.331 --> 00:10:51.273
It might literally just be a play around.
00:10:51.273 --> 00:11:06.916
Look, we're going to buy you just to bolster our revenue and use up the $111 billion of cash we have sitting around right now and put something that looks good and is growing in our portfolio and then therefore let you continue to run the way that you run, Like um.
00:11:07.858 --> 00:11:13.802
You know that's maybe dreamer speak, but but it just feels very different because it's not um.
00:11:13.802 --> 00:11:16.550
It's not like we're going to now try to maybe.
00:11:16.550 --> 00:11:18.516
I mean, I know they have other products, right?
00:11:18.516 --> 00:11:31.516
I'm not super well-versed in the entire ecosystem of what Alphabet and Google have, but you know there's infrastructure there that they might want to try to fold it into.
00:11:31.516 --> 00:11:45.015
It might be really good for that future vision of how do you build products on top of data lakes and data warehouses and sort of that warehouse native model.
00:11:45.015 --> 00:11:46.833
It could be really good for that.
00:11:46.833 --> 00:11:52.937
You know HubSpot isn't a warehouse product first right.
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They have their own technology underlying.
00:11:55.884 --> 00:12:02.233
I think it's interesting you bring up that, like Google sorry, alphabet is a different kind of entity compared to the others.
00:12:02.233 --> 00:12:20.687
In fact, it made me think that if someone had asked me before this sort of rumor stuff started going around who would, who would likely be a candidate to buy hubspot, I probably would have not picked alphabet or google, probably would have gone to something like microsoft.
00:12:20.687 --> 00:12:35.949
Yeah, I think they would have made a whole lot more sense before that because of what you described right, which is they're already in that sort of marketing and sales crm ecosystem and they have other tools, that kind of work with it with.
00:12:35.949 --> 00:12:42.519
So, yeah, it's, it's interesting, who knows?
00:12:42.579 --> 00:12:48.577
maybe it won't happen maybe it will happen someone listening to this that is like smarter than like there's many people.
00:12:48.577 --> 00:12:57.290
But someone out there is like, who's well versed in the alphabet lore and information, is like mike, you're an idiot.
00:12:57.290 --> 00:13:04.095
Like they're totally a like tech company or something like I'm like quickly googling, like all right, well, what is what is alphabet like?
00:13:04.095 --> 00:13:04.756
What do they have?
00:13:04.756 --> 00:13:13.269
According to investopedia, alphabet has become one of the world's largest technology conglomerates, with a market cap of 1.78 trillion.
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As of feb 3 2024, they posted a net income of 73.8 billion dollars on revenue of 307.39 billion for 2023.
00:13:24.644 --> 00:13:28.192
The majority of alphabet's revenue is generated from advertising.
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So there's I mean, yes, it's in marketing, I suppose, but they're a holding company for these other assets, right, and so they're in the marketing world, but on the ad tech side, because of their the, the entities that they hold.
00:13:45.894 --> 00:13:50.649
But I guess it says like below is a look at seven of the company's major acquisitions.
00:13:50.649 --> 00:14:00.259
So mandiant was a cyber security business, fitbit, wearable fitness device, look, business intelligence software and data analytics.
00:14:00.259 --> 00:14:04.916
So Looker's come up a few times recently in conversations I've been having with folks.
00:14:04.916 --> 00:14:12.535
Of course they have Nest, they've got Waze, doubleclick, youtube and then Google.
00:14:12.535 --> 00:14:16.235
Oh wait, sorry, yeah, so that's just.
00:14:16.235 --> 00:14:17.304
The article continues.
00:14:17.304 --> 00:14:26.251
So you know it is in this realm of these technologies, but, like, even where we started, this was.
00:14:26.251 --> 00:14:45.036
You know, google, sort of leading B2C alphabet, has products that help reach consumers to service the businesses right on the ad side, but they also have apps that are end user applications where they have business components to them, usually in service of their ad business.
00:14:45.036 --> 00:14:54.890
Right, youtube, double click ways, ways definitely has a bunch of like ad revenue that can come through there, but these are all things that are used by end consumers.
00:14:54.890 --> 00:15:02.747
Fitbit, right like mandiant, as a cyber security business, is probably the the most b2b focused thing.
00:15:02.747 --> 00:15:08.241
Um, so I you know it's, it's just interesting.
00:15:08.241 --> 00:15:13.127
I think it feels different in general than than some of these other things.
00:15:13.307 --> 00:15:28.101
And, and you know, I guess, like going back to one of the other comments you were making around sort of tech stack consolidation or maybe like piecemealing things together.
00:15:28.101 --> 00:15:32.352
I think we're going to see more of that over the next decade.
00:15:32.352 --> 00:15:40.610
For sure, I think it does require some risk takers, right, like, as you think of that, that, what is it?
00:15:40.610 --> 00:15:43.528
The adoption, uh, life cycle of, like new products?
00:15:43.528 --> 00:15:45.352
Right, there's going to be these like early adopters.
00:15:45.352 --> 00:16:04.595
Um, there's gonna be some folks that are going to have to be, or like not folks, but well, people, professionals, that are willing to put their um reputation and, you know, expertise on the line on behalf of a company who's willing to take a risk and trust them to go figure out the new architecture of those frameworks.
00:16:04.595 --> 00:16:11.990
Because it's like it's not a, you know, here's a box that has a bunch of functionality in it, like it's literally here's a bunch of parts.
00:16:11.990 --> 00:16:13.658
Put them together, it's very different.
00:16:13.658 --> 00:16:23.985
You know no directions and and so I think I think that will will be interesting to see unfold over the next few years.
00:16:24.967 --> 00:16:28.055
And you were talking a little bit about like the pace of innovation too.
00:16:28.055 --> 00:16:32.555
Right, like, yes, hubspot releases things on a pretty regular cadence.
00:16:32.555 --> 00:16:39.636
There's a really well, you know, they've done a really good job of like letting you tap into the sort of the beta and alpha features sort of right within the product.
00:16:39.636 --> 00:16:40.751
So you're sort of like in there, you feel done a really good job of like letting you tap into the sort of the beta and alpha features sort of right within the product.
00:16:40.751 --> 00:16:48.139
So you're sort of like in there, you feel like you're a part of their ecosystem and contributing to the voting and what features they build and all that stuff.
00:16:48.139 --> 00:17:16.489
Like when people talk about you know I think you were mentioning some CMOs or conversations, you were having Hartman pre-recording that there's folks that are feeling like there's just this, like lack of newness that's happening right, like innovation in general and like something changing and it just feels expensive.
00:17:17.432 --> 00:17:22.653
Yeah, yeah, I think I don't know.
00:17:22.653 --> 00:17:34.518
My take on this is like innovation from like a technology perspective is is really taking shape in the form of how does like AI actually change?
00:17:34.518 --> 00:17:38.643
You know, change everything for us, the way we use these tools and all this stuff.
00:17:38.643 --> 00:17:39.267
Right Like that's.
00:17:39.267 --> 00:17:47.396
That's where all the innovation is these days, because at this point, once you have these computational ML, ai systems, that's where all the energy is going to be put in.
00:17:47.396 --> 00:18:02.378
So, from go-to-market tactics perspective, we've seen PLG and ABM and inbound and all of these things that got spun up over the last handful of you know decade or whatever.
00:18:02.378 --> 00:18:06.355
I think that stuff's gone right, like like.
00:18:06.355 --> 00:18:12.134
I don't like maybe someone's going to come up with a new model, that's like a new buzzword or framework or whatever.
00:18:12.884 --> 00:18:46.966
And I know we've had this ongoing series of conversations with people who are for for the leading edge of some, at least in name right, newer, newer go-to-market approaches, and one of the things that feels it to me that is interesting about it is it feels a little bit like they're actually kind of older models like pre-internet, where it required like a lot of building trust and, you know, building relationships, and now there are tools and technologies that enable to do that in different ways, but fundamentally it's, it's a kind of a similar thing.
00:18:46.966 --> 00:18:49.854
Right, that's yeah, so that's interesting.
00:18:49.854 --> 00:19:18.831
You know, the thing that's bouncing around my head about this idea of sort of custom made stack for go to market is I'm thinking about the I don't want to put words in scott's mouth because I'm certainly doing this but this, the idea of composability, right, and the democratization of being able to to develop, you know, applications to me.
00:19:18.831 --> 00:19:20.615
I mean, you mentioned AI and ML.
00:19:20.615 --> 00:19:38.915
Sure, that's a part of it, but I think the ability for people to sort of build things on their own is, to me, more likely to be a driver on pushing change if the pricing on these things doesn't change and the innovation slows down or continues to slow in some cases, depending on what your perception is, I don't know.
00:19:39.105 --> 00:19:40.299
I mean I don't know.
00:19:40.299 --> 00:19:41.346
I mean, I mean I don't know what you think.
00:19:41.346 --> 00:19:46.786
Like I've worked in bigger companies, like it would be in most places I've been right.
00:19:46.786 --> 00:20:02.972
It would have been really hard to build a case, I think, to say, take out an existing sort of platform or set of tools that are there and build a case like we actually can solve this for, quote, less money by doing it on our own.
00:20:02.972 --> 00:20:05.904
But that also implies we have to do our own maintenance and support right.
00:20:05.904 --> 00:20:09.334
So there's an there's there's implications on the long run too.
00:20:09.334 --> 00:20:20.701
Like would do you think that you would ever get to a point where you could see that happening in kind of a bigger organization like you're at I mean I I never want to say never, because it just really depends on the use case.
00:20:20.724 --> 00:20:30.091
Like my whole mantra with a lot of the tools that I bring into our ecosystem is low code, no code, very low support.
00:20:30.091 --> 00:20:44.702
That is needed a large user base where you can tap into Mindshare, a good community where you're able to get access to information fairly quickly.
00:20:44.702 --> 00:20:56.251
I personally would shy away from trying to build something myself just because we've done that in the past and I've tried to like leave that and you know it's a bit of PTSD there.
00:20:57.945 --> 00:21:00.233
No, I feel that I would be on the same side.
00:21:00.233 --> 00:21:01.470
I think I would lean that way too.
00:21:02.144 --> 00:21:12.436
Because things are fine, you can put together a custom solution to solve a short-term use case.
00:21:12.436 --> 00:21:22.132
But the more you build onto something like that, then you're dealing with things like okay, well, what if some support teams or IT teams that are there that have helped to like build this?
00:21:22.132 --> 00:21:23.395
What if they leave?
00:21:23.395 --> 00:21:26.010
Then that intellectual property leaves with them in their brain.
00:21:26.010 --> 00:21:29.366
And then what do you do five, 10 years from now when you're kind of stuck?
00:21:29.366 --> 00:21:37.327
I'm dealing with some of that right now, with a platform that we have.
00:21:37.327 --> 00:21:38.450
That is okay.
00:21:38.450 --> 00:21:41.837
Well, no, nobody knows how to export information from this.
00:21:41.837 --> 00:21:42.306
What do you mean?
00:21:42.306 --> 00:21:44.530
Right?
00:21:44.530 --> 00:21:45.633
I, I wouldn't.
00:21:45.633 --> 00:21:53.599
I don't think I could sit here with a straight face and say that that's something that I would support, you know, yeah no, I mean, I think it would be.
00:21:53.961 --> 00:21:54.865
It would be a challenge.
00:21:54.865 --> 00:21:58.695
I was trying to in my head, like trying to answer my own question, like what could I?
00:21:58.695 --> 00:22:24.884
I could imagine a scenario if probably the thing that would drive it is if the scenario like you had right, an end of life on something you've had for a while, or you have an event, your major vendor comes back, or a couple of them come back and they're basically like doubling pricing without any new feature capabilities right in there, or maybe more so.
00:22:24.884 --> 00:22:26.307
I think that's a likely scenario.
00:22:26.307 --> 00:22:30.359
No, but I I could see that as being a driver to go okay.
00:22:30.359 --> 00:22:44.173
Well, should we really consider something so radical because I can't think of a better word like it would be a radical departure from You're essentially going from leveraging these companies that are software companies to being in-house.
00:22:44.826 --> 00:22:47.214
You have to have your own software company inside your company.
00:22:48.305 --> 00:22:53.600
But then that's also taking away the fact that time with people is also worth something.
00:22:53.600 --> 00:23:01.471
Yeah, right, like yes, it would be a really terrible thing if a vendor came and said okay, on renewal, you have no choice, your contract's now doubled.
00:23:01.951 --> 00:23:43.855
Right, you can't spin something up, you know, depending on how soon your contract's up, but there's also a dollar value that's put to the headcount and resources to support and build something homegrown too absolutely yeah, that's it's interesting it'll be interesting to see if this gets more legs and gets so yeah yeah, I was just like rounding out my thought, which you sort of did for me, hartman, which is cool, because I was like I was like thinking that I think we've reached a point, I guess.
00:23:43.855 --> 00:24:06.708
I guess where I was trying to go is this idea of like pace of innovation and and sort of going back, like leaning on some of our conversations that we're having with these new go to market ideas, right, like partner-led, community-led, whatever all the leds are right, I think they do.
00:24:06.708 --> 00:24:20.456
Just go back to your point, some motions that are pretty well established, maybe just with new spin on them, like partners as a business model has been around for a while.
00:24:20.456 --> 00:24:49.769
But like choosing to architect your go-to-market you know, organization, your systems, your processes around a particular model is just a choice and getting educated on that choice and the either the benefits or the drawbacks or, um, just just purely the like how is your choice right and if you want to use that and pull that lever for your business, like that's, that's the direction you go right.
00:24:49.769 --> 00:25:00.657
Even our conversation with mark, like I think they've honed in on a particular type of go-to-market and they they branded it and named it.
00:25:01.178 --> 00:25:10.566
But it's just, it's an intentional focus and strategy is really what it boils down to, right, and it's being educated on what that methodology means or could mean to a business.
00:25:10.566 --> 00:25:22.176
And I think, when it comes to tying it back to the tech side, like tech is, we've exhausted the like fun, sexy levers.
00:25:22.176 --> 00:25:28.028
We sort of know the art of the possible for those that are using go-to-market technologies.
00:25:28.028 --> 00:25:44.858
Right To like support some of these methods, whether it's community led or whatever, like there's tooling in place, but at the end of the day, it's it comes down to like leaning in and really trying to understand the art of the possible and how it works.
00:25:45.984 --> 00:26:03.119
And so, from a pace of innovation perspective on the HubSpot side, the thing that I'm seeing them do a lot other than like, yeah, there's some new features and stuff that are kind of cool and stuff that are kind of cool, they're building out features for these practitioners, like marketing and revenue operations professionals.
00:26:03.119 --> 00:26:12.756
That makes their lives a little bit easier, and you don't see that happening in other MarTech solutions, right, and so I'm not putting HubSpot on a pedestal and say, yeah, rah, rah then.
00:26:12.756 --> 00:26:44.009
But I think what's interesting about that choice that they're making is that it's sort of a signal to the market that there's, in some ways, there's not a whole lot of sexy new marketing stuff that's going to come out of marketing tools, right, like you've got like yeah, like it's all there, but what does need to happen is we need the practitioners to be able to go implement and manage and scale that choice to invest in our product faster.
00:26:44.431 --> 00:26:54.964
We need to make that adoption easier and that means that you have to have the people and the tooling in place to just like, stay focused on your motion and stop.
00:26:54.964 --> 00:26:59.033
As an executive that might be thinking like pace of innovation and marketing is gone.
00:26:59.033 --> 00:27:05.194
Like all this other stuff, yeah, we've sort of invented all the fun things at this point.
00:27:05.194 --> 00:27:17.125
Now it's about double down, dive in and understand the art of the possible, regardless of your tech stack whether you want to go architect your own or the one you have like.
00:27:17.425 --> 00:27:19.289
Lean in and just try to make it work.
00:27:20.653 --> 00:27:22.237
Stop looking for the silver bullet.
00:27:22.237 --> 00:27:25.488
But I don't think that's really what it is.
00:27:25.488 --> 00:27:32.210
I think what you're saying is there's a movement towards making the platforms and the teams that use them more efficient.
00:27:34.235 --> 00:27:43.097
Right, and it's making them more efficient by I guess I sort of plainly said it stop looking for the silver bullet.
00:27:43.097 --> 00:27:55.859
Yeah Right, there isn't going to be a new piece of email automation and making that easy to send a series of emails over a period of time was amazing for the market.
00:27:55.859 --> 00:27:59.032
Tying user IDs or cookies or whatever to ads and doing retargeting was amazing for the market.
00:27:59.032 --> 00:28:03.226
Tying uh, user ids or cookies or whatever to ads and doing retargeting was amazing for the market.
00:28:03.226 --> 00:28:24.176
Like, all of these things are now just in market right, and so it's like stop looking for the next silver bullet that's going to help you reach and find your customers and start picking a like, create a hypothesis, find like we believe this will be the go-to-market motion that helps us, uh, grow the business by x percent this year in a category or whatever.
00:28:24.176 --> 00:28:32.887
And then, like, lean in and try to figure out how the tech stack you have today or the things you're missing need to be applied, and and do that thing.
00:28:33.249 --> 00:28:41.067
But stop looking for, like these tech vendors to like, come up with the next magical thing that's going to help you reach your audience, because I think we're past that point.
00:28:41.067 --> 00:28:44.868
We're just past that sexy innovation stage.
00:28:44.868 --> 00:28:49.471
That's just my spicy take on pace of innovation.
00:28:49.471 --> 00:29:06.884
Discussions around MarTech vendors in general is everybody's like I want a faster way to be able to make more money, or I want a more efficient way to be able to reach my customers or acquire new leads or whatever, and I think a lot of that's already in the market.
00:29:06.884 --> 00:29:14.495
It's really just about like you need a better way to implement your tools and understand what they can do for your chosen path of go-to-market.
00:29:14.495 --> 00:29:19.235
I did not expect to get that spicy on this today.
00:29:20.007 --> 00:29:35.306
I did not expect to get that spicy on this today, I think what I'm walking away from with, like all these different things, these different approaches that are driven by market pressures, to kind of the vision that Scott Brinker shared at Mopspalooza, this new like.
00:29:35.306 --> 00:29:36.048
It feels like.
00:29:36.048 --> 00:29:43.834
It does feel like there is about to be like some significant changes to things that are going on.
00:29:43.834 --> 00:29:46.144
I don't know what those will be, but it does feel like that.
00:29:46.144 --> 00:29:47.708
I don't know.
00:29:47.708 --> 00:29:51.857
Do I, do you guys think I'm just way off my rocker on that?
00:29:53.841 --> 00:29:55.065
no, no, I think you're right.
00:29:55.085 --> 00:30:00.354
We're seeing text at consolidations, right or like just acquisitions in general like no, I think you're right, naomi's considering it.
00:30:00.374 --> 00:30:07.209
We're seeing tech stack consolidations right, or like just acquisitions in general, like this is where the conversation started.
00:30:07.209 --> 00:30:10.256
There was another acquisition announced this morning.
00:30:10.256 --> 00:30:13.234
Oh, I didn't see that yet.
00:30:13.234 --> 00:30:14.463
It was Webflow.
00:30:14.463 --> 00:30:17.989
Who did Webflow acquire Real-time Google folks?
00:30:17.989 --> 00:30:20.336
Webflow acquires Intellimize.
00:30:20.336 --> 00:30:34.149
So Guy I think it was Guy Yalif did I get his last name right again, I met him ages ago, was running Intellimize and so there's an acquisition there.
00:30:34.149 --> 00:30:39.675
But I think a lot of this has to do with somebody, some, some MarTech company.
00:30:39.675 --> 00:30:52.728
You know, in these examples where we're seeing these groups come together, someone has a vision for how to make it, make these tools streamlined in a way that helps their customers do something.
00:30:52.969 --> 00:30:55.330
Right Complimentary tools.
00:30:56.325 --> 00:30:58.071
Right and so and so this.
00:30:58.071 --> 00:31:16.355
You know this acquisition means X for the ability to do Y, but I think that just continues to point back to the fact that, like you know, the technologies have been around, they do what they do, but when you try to stitch them together in a particular manner this, this is another example of like we see an opportunity.
00:31:16.355 --> 00:31:25.968
Webflow is saying we see an opportunity to do this with intellimize, because of the market landscape that we've identified and the way that people go to market using our tool.
00:31:26.710 --> 00:31:50.455
right, and so now it's their job to educate their customers on the art of the possible with these two pieces of technology, so that they don't, so that they don't let somebody go build it themselves, right yeah, it's gonna be interesting as we're talking about I'm also like I'm I'm surprised there's I haven't seen and maybe it's because I'm not as close to it, but I've not seen anything like this happening on the like.
00:31:50.455 --> 00:31:55.035
The crm sales automation, sales tech area like it has been in marketing.
00:31:55.035 --> 00:31:56.076
It feels like it's much.
00:31:56.076 --> 00:32:00.896
It's a much different place in marketing tech than it is in sales tech.
00:32:01.645 --> 00:32:23.075
Like the fact that there really hasn't been a significant competitor to to Salesforce and Dynamics and there's maybe one or two others out there, right, hubspot, crm, like out there, and they're all using pretty much the same model and it's like, yeah, I bet you get, you get you get a hundred people in a room.
00:32:23.075 --> 00:32:27.451
They're going to get a hundred of them who say or 50 of them who say got to have leads in contacts.
00:32:27.451 --> 00:32:31.936
The other 50 will say no leads in contacts or no leads, just go to contact, like it's just.
00:32:31.936 --> 00:32:35.632
But the technology hasn't changed.
00:32:37.014 --> 00:32:39.499
Yeah, I think, uh, the technology hasn't changed.
00:32:39.558 --> 00:32:42.970
Yeah, I think, if anything, we should just go back to business cards and like a Rolodex.
00:32:43.350 --> 00:32:43.853
A Rolodex.
00:32:43.853 --> 00:32:46.613
Our young listeners are like what's a Rolodex?
00:32:46.613 --> 00:32:48.084
They're like actively searching.
00:32:48.524 --> 00:32:49.892
Is that a R-O-L-O-D-E-X?
00:32:52.146 --> 00:32:52.928
Ask your grandparents.
00:32:54.994 --> 00:32:58.733
Yeah, right, yeah, I mean, it's interesting, I agree.
00:32:58.764 --> 00:32:59.487
And how salespeople are traveling.
00:32:59.487 --> 00:33:00.289
Yeah right, yeah, I mean, it's interesting.
00:33:00.289 --> 00:33:05.270
I agree with the bar in the back of their car yeah, right, that's how it went.
00:33:06.312 --> 00:33:08.196
I would say I agree with you.
00:33:08.196 --> 00:33:11.328
Pace of innovation like or just like what's happening there hasn't changed much.
00:33:11.328 --> 00:33:14.516
Hubspot introduced leads a while ago.
00:33:14.516 --> 00:33:15.807
I think they did it the right way.
00:33:15.807 --> 00:33:18.112
It was nice, um, you have a choice to use it.
00:33:18.112 --> 00:33:26.739
You don't have to, and it's on Orphaned, which is good.
00:33:26.739 --> 00:33:47.789
I think, when it comes to composability and CRM and sort of that sales tech side of things, probably the biggest opportunity is the companies that want to hone in on these niche markets and understand their unique pain points right, which is like exactly why certain marketing agencies are super successful as they hone in on a niche.
00:33:47.789 --> 00:33:58.936
They understand exactly like the language, the legal problems and the motions of the business to go build something that is or like service the client in a way that's highly specific to that audience.
00:33:58.936 --> 00:34:00.925
I think that same thing will.
00:34:00.925 --> 00:34:13.606
There's probably just a ton of opportunity for, yeah, as the ability to build your own tech stack is easier and more cost effective well, so there's probably much, much more opportunity there, right?
00:34:13.626 --> 00:34:45.271
literally, literally yesterday I was talking to a that with a um a play.
00:34:45.271 --> 00:34:47.034
That is ad ad.
00:34:47.034 --> 00:34:59.129
You know, helping with with ad strategy and implementation and managing their inbound leads in different ways and it's like he's just created kind of custom stuff along the way solutions.
00:34:59.129 --> 00:35:02.653
As he's gone is like he's just wasn't something he was out there planning to do.
00:35:02.653 --> 00:35:10.086
It just sort of fell in his lap and now he's actually a point where he's like like it's trying to decide do I want to grow this or not?
00:35:10.086 --> 00:35:16.074
But I don't think that would have been as easy to do five, ten years ago as it is today.
00:35:17.715 --> 00:35:19.617
Yeah and that and that.
00:35:19.617 --> 00:35:22.341
Yeah, that totally is the point.
00:35:22.341 --> 00:35:38.289
Right, like you, you start to understand the needs of a particular market and you build services and products around it, especially now that it's a little easier to do so with all these different MarTech solutions.
00:35:38.289 --> 00:35:59.090
You can integrate via Zaps and Workato and whatever else, and now you've got this bespoke solution for a particular industry, and I think that that's the type of innovation we're going to see is just people leaning in and truly understanding the types of industries and businesses and then building repeatable things that they've seen work over and over again.
00:35:59.090 --> 00:36:08.496
So agencies can have a heyday, but some MarTech vendors could also do the same, and it's not like there's any shortage of really specific CRMs out there.
00:36:08.496 --> 00:36:14.848
Right, there definitely are, sure, but I think I don't know.
00:36:14.848 --> 00:36:15.470
We'll see what happens.
00:36:15.470 --> 00:36:19.425
I think the way we end this is that we We'll see what happens with no like.
00:36:20.068 --> 00:36:23.706
I think the way we end this is that we have no idea what we're talking about here.
00:36:23.706 --> 00:36:31.611
We don't know what's going to happen Not whatsoever, but we're curious and interested to see what's going to happen over the next several months and years.
00:36:33.226 --> 00:36:34.047
And we want your thoughts.
00:36:34.047 --> 00:36:39.236
If you listen to this, message us, because we want your thoughts or if you're building a homegrown solution.
00:36:39.236 --> 00:36:40.118
Absolutely.
00:36:40.158 --> 00:36:42.950
I would love to actually I would love to talk to people who are doing that.
00:36:42.950 --> 00:36:43.091
Who's?
00:36:43.111 --> 00:36:43.672
building something.
00:36:43.672 --> 00:36:47.834
Yeah, yeah, I actually talked to somebody who did that.
00:36:49.286 --> 00:36:56.033
This is probably during the, the, the real peak of the lockdowns and stuff like that.
00:36:56.033 --> 00:37:13.632
It's a small startup and this guy was like yeah, I'm building using I don't remember what it was like, I don't think it was SendGrid, but something like got email like just rudimentary email, got segment underneath it, got blah, blah, blah, and it was like I was like actually sounds like it would work great, as long as you keep things simple.
00:37:15.677 --> 00:37:22.528
Yep, don't overcomplicate it yep, so don't overcomplicate it.
00:37:22.528 --> 00:37:23.090
Yeah, yeah, all right.
00:37:23.090 --> 00:37:23.853
Well, y'all thanks for doing this.
00:37:23.853 --> 00:37:24.093
I know it's.
00:37:24.093 --> 00:37:25.518
It's a struggle sometimes to get on everyone's schedule.
00:37:25.518 --> 00:37:27.586
It's short notice, so fun.
00:37:27.586 --> 00:37:31.575
It's always fun talking with the three of us that was super fun.
00:37:31.876 --> 00:37:35.488
Thanks for organizing again, hartman all right, all right.
00:37:35.508 --> 00:37:39.434
so everyone will be looking for your feedback and ideas and stories.
00:37:39.434 --> 00:37:43.500
If you've got them, like Naomi said, bye, everyone, bye.