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It's one of the scenarios that every revenue operator has nightmares about.
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00:00:18
You get that email from your boss or the VP or even the CEO asking why
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00:00:23
something is broken in your stack.
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00:00:26
And then you get that sense of panic.
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00:00:27
You start logging into things, checking things and you find
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00:00:30
out that yes, it's true.
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00:00:32
You ask yourself, how could this happen?
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00:00:35
How could I miss it?
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00:00:36
And the answer, or at least a big part of the answer for me, is that in the
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00:00:39
martech and revtech world, we're still relatively immature in some ways compared
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00:00:44
to other technically oriented areas of the business, like engineering or I.
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T.
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00:00:50
Fact is, a lot of early marketing automation professionals were
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00:00:53
basically demand gen folks who kind of started LARPing as I.
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00:00:56
T.
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00:00:56
People and for the record, I include myself in that category,
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00:01:00
but we didn't always know the best practices for ensuring observability.
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00:01:04
Reliability in our infrastructure.
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00:01:06
We had to learn all these things the hard way.
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00:01:09
And we also lack the tools.
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00:01:10
So we didn't have QA automation.
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00:01:12
We didn't have smoke testing.
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None of the things that a DevOps team today takes for granted.
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So this is the problem that today's guest set up to solve.
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She's had a long career as a marketing operations executive, including
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00:01:24
some orgs at places like Microsoft.
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And she's created a company called StackMoxie to provide easy testing
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And monitoring for the revenue stack.
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00:01:34
MH lines, welcome to the
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00:01:36
Oh, thank you for having me.
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00:01:38
And by the way, I don't think you should include yourself in
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00:01:41
the relatively immature category.
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00:01:44
The LARPing thing you can include yourself in, but relatively
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00:01:47
immature, I
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00:01:48
think you set the bar.
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You know, I made sure we have a lot in common, I think, as
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00:01:52
we've identified over the years.
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00:01:53
One thing I only realized while I was looking at your LinkedIn profile,
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00:01:57
preparing for this interview, is that we both started out one of our first jobs in
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00:02:02
the, uh, retail clothing sales industry.
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00:02:05
I was working at a sporting goods store in my hometown of Toronto.
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00:02:10
You started out at The Gap, where you said you learned the secrets to gap folding,
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00:02:14
and have retained them ever since.
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00:02:15
So what are the secrets to gap folding if you're not under
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00:02:19
NDA?
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00:02:19
the point is that when you see it on the shelf, everything looks the same, right?
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00:02:23
When you walk into the gap, way back when we used to have the wall of khakis
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00:02:26
and a wall of denim, because that's what the, gap was all about when I'm
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00:02:31
aging myself, but you get the point.
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00:02:33
and so the point was that they all look the same.
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00:02:35
And so it's a fold.
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00:02:36
Now, actually, if you watch YouTube, which you actually accomplish
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00:02:41
enough, that my guess is you don't watch as much YouTube as I do.
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00:02:44
But there's like these folding boards that help you get it in exactly the right size.
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00:02:49
And so in your closet, everything looks completely uniform and
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00:02:52
beautiful, like it used to on the go.
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00:02:55
So be able to do it without a folding board, you were kind of
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00:02:58
doing
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00:02:58
well, they had guides, but those guides would slow you down eventually.
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00:03:02
So you were folding so much in like back to school season that,
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00:03:05
that you had to Be way faster.
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00:03:08
You know, it's like after that, I wound up bartending.
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00:03:11
even when I had a big career in PR, I helped bartend two nights a week.
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00:03:16
You know, when you're early, you have to use little jiggers and everything.
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00:03:19
And eventually you can, free pour.
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00:03:21
It's like anything you, learn to do it without a net over
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00:03:24
time.
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00:03:25
you'll have to show me the folding technique cause I, uh, for the life of
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00:03:27
me, still have trouble folding a t shirt
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00:03:29
to look,
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00:03:29
Well, when you and I see each other, we will likely be traveling.
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00:03:32
And now, because I.
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00:03:34
I worked in fortune 500 for a little bit too long.
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00:03:38
It's like a badge of honor to be able to travel with a single
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00:03:40
suitcase and not checking anything.
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00:03:43
And so to get everything in my carry on, even if I'm gone for 10 days, I
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00:03:47
roll it and like shove it in there.
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00:03:49
So I will have a different folding technique.
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00:03:52
All right, much, to reveal.
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00:03:53
That's a separate podcast.
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00:03:54
I want to talk about your sort of evolution and entry into the
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00:03:58
world of marketing operations.
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00:04:00
You spent a lot of time in marketing leadership before
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00:04:02
moving towards mops kind of.
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00:04:04
similar to myself in the early days of mops when it didn't
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00:04:08
really always exist, didn't have the identity that it has today.
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00:04:12
So I'm curious what drew you into that operational discipline from
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00:04:16
the world of, marketing in general.
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00:04:18
So I kind of came to marketing in a weird way.
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00:04:20
I was never very intentional about my career, kind of took the
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00:04:24
next fun job that I was offered.
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00:04:26
and a lot of times as we're sequential in the same company,
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00:04:29
But my undergraduate degree was in finance because I liked math.
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00:04:34
I wanted there to be a right answer that you could check your work and
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00:04:37
verify that that was the right answer.
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00:04:40
and so I think there's so much subjective about marketing.
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00:04:44
It actually kind of reminds me.
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00:04:46
My little brother lived with me for a while.
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00:04:47
His name's Alex and he is an incredible cook, um, and can cook me under the table.
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00:04:53
so while he lived with me, I learned to bake because I could do something precise
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00:04:57
and be good at something and contribute.
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00:04:59
And so it's kind of the same way with me and marketing.
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00:05:01
There are incredible creative marketers out there and I'm just not one of them.
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00:05:06
And so I focused on the thing that I could do.
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00:05:11
Really well, which is make sure the thing worked and set it up
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00:05:14
and verify that it's working.
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00:05:16
And you can kind of see that as a through line in my life at this point.
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00:05:20
that's so interesting.
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00:05:21
Cause I feel like I can really relate.
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00:05:23
I mean, I also moved, moved into ops from the marketing world and there's a
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00:05:26
lot that I like about marketing and I have a creative side to me, but I really
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00:05:30
struggled when you get into like the world of opinion, like this email is great.
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00:05:33
This email is not great.
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00:05:35
and ultimately, you know, it's kind of like the highest paid
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00:05:37
person's opinion that wins in that debate a lot of the time.
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00:05:41
And so I found I gravitated towards ops for the, clarity that it
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00:05:45
brought that like it worked or it didn't, it, you were in a world of
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00:05:48
facts.
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00:05:49
In the world facts with marketers, I would highly recommend never trying
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00:05:54
to confuse them with facts like statistical significance though,
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00:05:57
because they, you know, Oh, we sent out this email and it worked way better.
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00:06:00
I'm like, you send it out to five people there are no facts there.
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00:06:03
So don't, try and confuse marketers with a good time.
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00:06:06
Yeah, that is a whole other story.
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00:06:08
thinking about where ops is today, marketing ops specifically, I
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00:06:11
would say as a subdiscipline where it started and how it's evolved.
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00:06:15
What do you think, like it was getting right?
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00:06:17
And getting wrong early on because it kind of stumbled into its own haphazardly,
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00:06:22
I guess, would be my observation.
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00:06:23
Not that I want to lead the witness here, but
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00:06:25
what was your
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00:06:26
perspective?
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00:06:26
Well, it's funny.
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00:06:28
I was recruited.
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00:06:30
to lead the marketing apps organization at the Astros the year
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00:06:33
after they won the, world series.
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00:06:36
and I was really excited, but it turns out it was all about
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00:06:40
like printing the tickets.
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00:06:41
Like 50 percent of it was like print production.
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00:06:44
So like ops has been around for forever on some level.
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00:06:48
And, a good friend of mine was at the time when I started in marketing
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00:06:53
ops, running marketing ops at Levi's, and it was definitely about pricing.
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00:06:57
So I think it's kind of been its own thing as defined by the
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00:07:01
different organizations it's in.
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00:07:03
I think the organizations that got it really well and I had the
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00:07:07
incredible benefit of working for just a beautiful leader at
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00:07:11
Microsoft who got it really right.
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00:07:12
Actually, a few of them and they were all very focused on supporting the marketer.
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00:07:18
it's a really important thing.
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00:07:20
Big trip wire to talk about a marketing operations or rev ops being a support
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00:07:24
function but in my mind It was always about Letting that marketer be that
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00:07:30
creative genius and really know the customer and figure out what's motivating
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00:07:34
them from Either a creative perspective or messaging or an offer or pricing
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00:07:40
whatever it is and We were the ones who were able to make that scalable
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00:07:46
and efficient and get them the data they needed to make better decisions.
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00:07:50
and that was definitely the team I supported at Microsoft's goal.
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00:07:54
you mentioned the contentious issue of ops as a service provider
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00:08:00
is not a service provider.
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00:08:02
Let's explore that, because I think unambiguously it is, and I think
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00:08:06
there's a bit of a complex around it, like, we are a service provider, we
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00:08:10
don't want to just be treated like a service provider, we want to be
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00:08:13
strategic, we want to provide strategic value, and I strongly believe in that.
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00:08:17
Where do you think the tension lies?
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00:08:18
Like, is it something that we should just embrace and like be
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00:08:20
strategic within that channel?
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00:08:22
Or do you think there's like another facet to the role that it should
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00:08:25
be doing simultaneously to provide strategic value to the department?
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00:08:29
Well, I mean, I think this layers nicely with the debate Mike Rizzo
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00:08:33
posted on LinkedIn this morning talking about revenue operations and
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00:08:38
marketing operations and how 9 percent of RevOps leaders have come from
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00:08:42
a marketing operations background.
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00:08:45
And by the way, that's higher than I thought it was.
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00:08:48
I think it's, it's similar, right?
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00:08:50
I truly believe the rev ops thing becoming just an extension of sales
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00:08:54
ops was, people willing something to be true because it benefits them.
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00:08:59
So there's a sales leader who thinks they should be the rev ops leader
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00:09:02
because they want all the budget and they want the bigger job title.
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00:09:05
even though they don't really care about marketing ops and they'd prefer
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00:09:07
not to have to talk to those people.
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00:09:10
I think some of this, where Marketing operations not being a
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00:09:15
cost center is someone trying to explain their place in the world.
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00:09:21
some people.
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00:09:22
and so I think that's the way the dialogue kind of got started, right?
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00:09:25
Like, someone's really critical to an organization.
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00:09:28
And so they feel like that means they couldn't be a support function.
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00:09:31
And I totally disagree with that.
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00:09:32
I think it's a very American kind of thing to think that support functions
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00:09:36
aren't some of the most critical roles in any society or organization.
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00:09:40
so I, I very strongly feel it is both strategic 100 percent a support function.
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00:09:48
And critical all at the same time,
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00:09:51
I think the support function we all broadly understand in a lot of
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00:09:55
ways, like campaigns and lead flow and all that thing, where does the
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00:10:01
strategic Aspect of it live for you.
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00:10:04
This is something I think about a lot.
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00:10:05
I think the place most marketing operations professionals get it wrong
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00:10:12
and most sales ops and rev ops people get it wrong is they think of themselves
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00:10:19
as an administrator of the tool and supporting the ancillary integrations
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00:10:26
and what goes through that tool.
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00:10:27
So I'm a Marketo administrator and I lead.
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00:10:31
Marketing ops, and so I think where we miss and where we're not strategic the
Speaker:
00:10:39
way we should be is that very firmly believe marketing and revenue operations
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00:10:45
should sit with the business and there should be a corresponding function and it.
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00:10:50
But I think there always has to be someone in the business.
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00:10:52
Otherwise, I mean, let's be honest.
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00:10:55
We've all worked for it.
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00:10:56
People who don't understand the business and miss the point.
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00:11:00
And so I think, you know, They need to understand that they're owning
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00:11:02
an infrastructure and they have to manage it like an infrastructure.
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00:11:06
And if they can't, then I.
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00:11:07
T.
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00:11:07
should be involved.
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00:11:08
But that's the strategic piece to me.
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00:11:10
What is the outcome of this infrastructure?
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00:11:12
What are we trying to accomplish?
Speaker:
00:11:13
Is it scale?
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00:11:14
Is it efficiency?
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00:11:15
Is it understanding our data better and understanding that full end to end
Speaker:
00:11:21
infrastructure and owning it, like, Okay.
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00:11:24
you mentioned in the opening DevOps or, um, I.
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00:11:28
T.
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00:11:28
would own it.
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00:11:30
and then thinking about what's the outcome of that as opposed to is the.
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00:11:35
API flowing into Marketo, who cares, right?
Speaker:
00:11:38
Like the API has to flow into Marketo because the leads are
Speaker:
00:11:41
making it from the website and they have to come with the right data.
Speaker:
00:11:44
So it's not just a checkbox.
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00:11:46
Yes or no.
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00:11:46
It's is my system working and accomplishing the goal.
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00:11:50
And I think, We have to be the ones to educate the CMO on what the goal should
Speaker:
00:11:55
be for marketing or revenue operations.
Speaker:
00:11:58
And that, again, should be efficiency and scale in my mind every time.
Speaker:
00:12:01
Let's take a concrete example, just to like explore this perspective a little
Speaker:
00:12:05
further, like our marketing automation platform, whether you're using Marketo
Speaker:
00:12:09
or, or HubSpot or part or whatever, one of the new tools that's emerging.
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00:12:14
There's almost a philosophy that's baked into having one of those systems
Speaker:
00:12:19
that you're like, yeah, you're going to send emails, but if all you're doing
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00:12:21
was sending emails, you could have, you know, MailChimp or something like that.
Speaker:
00:12:25
So clearly, you know, you get it, you're supposed to nurture and
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00:12:27
you're supposed to do all these other things with these tools.
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00:12:30
to what extent should ops be challenging almost the marketing
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00:12:35
strategy and informing that strategy?
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00:12:37
or is the strategic part like, here's how we can, you know, scale campaigns,
Speaker:
00:12:42
do that more efficiently, but like the strategy piece, how we're actually going
Speaker:
00:12:46
to market is up to you, marketing leader.
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00:12:48
so we're hiring an engineering leader right now.
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00:12:51
and so I think it's very similar to being, in a startup where I own product
Speaker:
00:12:55
and there's an engineering leader.
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00:12:57
Right?
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00:12:58
I want an engineering leader to come to me and say, Hey, we've
Speaker:
00:13:03
heard this from the customers.
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00:13:04
Did you know this is possible?
Speaker:
00:13:07
And so I think there needs to be a forum where marketing ops is in the room when
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00:13:13
they're talking about what the customer pain points are or what the needs are.
Speaker:
00:13:17
you know, generally it's an architect title is how I think about it and they go,
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00:13:22
hey, did, you know, this is even possible.
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00:13:25
And so sometimes there are things you can offer to customers, whether
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00:13:31
it's in products or whether it's in, Marketing operations or these
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00:13:36
operations functions, any technology function where I can't spend all day
Speaker:
00:13:42
understanding what marketing and revenue operations people need and also watching
Speaker:
00:13:47
every NVIDIA video to understand what new technology is on the market.
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00:13:51
And so you want to partner in that.
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00:13:53
And I think that's what where the strategy comes in.
Speaker:
00:13:55
You're a partner.
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00:13:56
That's brought in in the beginning to brainstorm what's
Speaker:
00:13:58
possible, but they should know what's valuable to the customer.
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00:14:02
And then we should be the one to solve the problem.
Speaker:
00:14:05
again, Gary was in at Microsoft and was so brilliant about saying
Speaker:
00:14:12
that, like, force them to bring you the problem, not the solution.
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00:14:15
So you can really get your head around what they're trying to solve.
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00:14:18
And then you help solve the problem.
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00:14:21
So you don't try and.
Speaker:
00:14:23
Solve the solution they gave you as opposed to not having a robust
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00:14:26
understanding of the product.
Speaker:
00:14:28
You mentioned product, and I often saw that your role mixed marketing
Speaker:
00:14:33
and product together, like there was kind of a theme in your CV.
Speaker:
00:14:37
Where did that come from?
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00:14:38
Was that by luck?
Speaker:
00:14:40
Was that by preference?
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00:14:41
it's also why I would totally I've gotten laid off like 3 different times
Speaker:
00:14:45
because I cannot help myself right when we're going through the marketing
Speaker:
00:14:49
metrics and those were like nice layoffs.
Speaker:
00:14:53
They were like, you're important.
Speaker:
00:14:54
You've done a really good job.
Speaker:
00:14:55
People really trust you, but I cannot work with your pain in the ass.
Speaker:
00:14:59
at some point when you've got the data set up and the systems
Speaker:
00:15:01
working and the channels humming.
Speaker:
00:15:05
it's really easy to see where there's gaps in the product, right?
Speaker:
00:15:08
Like if you've done a really good job, running sales, marketing, demand
Speaker:
00:15:12
gen and channel strategy, it's very easy to see a hole in the market.
Speaker:
00:15:18
so I would totally insert myself as kind of how I got into it the first.
Speaker:
00:15:22
Place, the very first one I worked for an early CRM startup.
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00:15:27
and I demanded that they make some modifications to the product so that
Speaker:
00:15:30
I could use it for marketing and PR because it was just right there.
Speaker:
00:15:34
It was so obvious to me.
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00:15:35
It wasn't CRM.
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00:15:36
It was a relationship management platform that I needed, to manage talking to.
Speaker:
00:15:44
Media when I was doing PR or talking to analysts, like it wasn't just a CRM, it
Speaker:
00:15:49
was a relationship management platform.
Speaker:
00:15:51
And so, yeah, it's cause I'm a pain in the ass.
Speaker:
00:15:53
I think it's probably the.
Speaker:
00:15:55
What
Speaker:
00:15:55
Yes, sir.
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00:15:56
getting laid off for that reason?
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00:15:58
Do you think it's because you're meant to be a founder there's a
Speaker:
00:16:02
lot of people that could not go and be a founder face that scope of
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00:16:05
responsibility, make those decisions.
Speaker:
00:16:07
There's other people who like want to have their fingers in all those pies.
Speaker:
00:16:09
And evidently, that can be disruptive maybe if you're trying to do
Speaker:
00:16:13
that and you're not in that role.
Speaker:
00:16:14
Is that what pushed you
Speaker:
00:16:15
there?
Speaker:
00:16:16
Well, what would happen ultimately is I want to figure it out.
Speaker:
00:16:21
And I think you're exactly the same way.
Speaker:
00:16:23
I think that's why we get along so well.
Speaker:
00:16:25
Like, I just want to get my head around it until I understand something.
Speaker:
00:16:29
and so the higher up I would go in the organization, the more.
Speaker:
00:16:33
I would ask questions, just trying to understand why
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00:16:36
things are the way they are.
Speaker:
00:16:37
Um, and if we're in a meeting and someone brings something
Speaker:
00:16:40
up, I would ask questions.
Speaker:
00:16:41
Well, ultimately, I would wind up calling really powerful people
Speaker:
00:16:44
to the mat with those questions.
Speaker:
00:16:47
I'm unapologetic about that, right?
Speaker:
00:16:49
I don't want to spend time solving this problem.
Speaker:
00:16:52
Like I worked at as a contractor on a big Salesforce project for a
Speaker:
00:16:59
fortune 100 who shall not be named.
Speaker:
00:17:02
And about halfway through, I realized my boss just did not care about anything.
Speaker:
00:17:08
And it turns out that she knew full well, the project was never going to be
Speaker:
00:17:13
pushed to production, but she would lose budget if she didn't spend the dollars.
Speaker:
00:17:18
So she was like, Hey, just shut up about it.
Speaker:
00:17:22
Like, we don't need you to do meetings with other teams.
Speaker:
00:17:25
If they make requests, capture them in the backlog for the future.
Speaker:
00:17:27
But like, we know this project is going to
Speaker:
00:17:29
Your boss, this was you on the consulting
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00:17:31
side or the boss at the
Speaker:
00:17:33
client side, like the
Speaker:
00:17:33
project
Speaker:
00:17:34
I was a consultant and this was the budget owner, the VP.
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00:17:40
and my director didn't understand it.
Speaker:
00:17:42
So when I'd ask her questions, she kept having to pull me in with a VP.
Speaker:
00:17:46
And finally the VP pulled me aside and said, Oh my God, just ship something.
Speaker:
00:17:50
Just say it was successful because we have to spend the budget
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00:17:53
or we'd lose it for next year.
Speaker:
00:17:54
This ties us into the wonderful world of the mega enterprise.
Speaker:
00:17:59
I was talking to another guest recently.
Speaker:
00:18:01
He was like, yeah, and everything I've just said doesn't apply to enterprise
Speaker:
00:18:04
and enterprise is like this parallel universe where like gravity doesn't
Speaker:
00:18:07
apply and all the rules are different.
Speaker:
00:18:09
And you worked at Microsoft, So
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00:18:11
right now they're like around 000 people, that's like, not
Speaker:
00:18:15
as a small size city anymore.
Speaker:
00:18:17
if you put them all in one
Speaker:
00:18:18
place,
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00:18:19
what's that all about?
Speaker:
00:18:20
cause it's a different job.
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00:18:21
That's how I think about it.
Speaker:
00:18:22
Like running ops at that scale is a different job than, than where
Speaker:
00:18:25
I work at a 400 person company.
Speaker:
00:18:27
I mean, I think it's the thing I just mentioned, right?
Speaker:
00:18:31
people have incentives that are set up at the very highest level.
Speaker:
00:18:36
and those incentives create, gosh, I would almost say, the difference
Speaker:
00:18:40
between complex and complicated problems is kind of one of my favorite
Speaker:
00:18:44
building an engine in a car, right?
Speaker:
00:18:46
It's incredibly complicated or building a car, but it is
Speaker:
00:18:49
knowable and it is testable.
Speaker:
00:18:51
Complex is there are too many variables for something to be
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00:18:55
knowable and predictable, which is like traffic in a city.
Speaker:
00:19:00
And so, I think how people will take the incentives and, progress forward with
Speaker:
00:19:08
those incentives and what will happen at that size organization is complex.
Speaker:
00:19:13
Like, you just can't understand what perversions will happen with whatever
Speaker:
00:19:17
incentive structure you put in place.
Speaker:
00:19:20
And so there are microcosms.
Speaker:
00:19:22
there are fiefdoms.
Speaker:
00:19:23
There are people who, try and keep their head down.
Speaker:
00:19:27
And then there are also people who, dramatically care.
Speaker:
00:19:31
so one of the incredible people I worked for at Microsoft, his name was, Karthik.
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00:19:37
And he's really who created the idea of our product because things kept breaking.
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00:19:42
And he said, if something breaks again, and you don't fucking tell me.
Speaker:
00:19:47
First, everyone on the team's fucking fired.
Speaker:
00:19:49
Like he was awesome.
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00:19:50
Yeah.
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00:19:50
he cared dramatically and he cared across the whole system, even though he owned a
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00:19:54
massive chunk of it, but not all of it.
Speaker:
00:19:57
I think that is definitely something That happens, but it's rare for
Speaker:
00:20:01
someone to be that invested in the success of a program or that invested
Speaker:
00:20:06
in the ultimate goal as opposed to in the I'm measured on this 1 thing.
Speaker:
00:20:11
So I'm going to be myopic and focus on this 1 widget and I might optimize
Speaker:
00:20:16
this widget to the detriment of the widgets on either side of me.
Speaker:
00:20:19
But who cares?
Speaker:
00:20:20
I get it.
Speaker:
00:20:21
And send it on my widget.
Speaker:
00:20:24
And so for me, I care about winning.
Speaker:
00:20:27
you know, if it's a program and competition, I care about
Speaker:
00:20:29
beating the competition.
Speaker:
00:20:30
If I work for a company, I want to see Microsoft win, and I'll do it
Speaker:
00:20:34
to my own detriment on occasion.
Speaker:
00:20:36
So, yeah, I think that's why I probably wound up as an entrepreneur.
Speaker:
00:20:40
Like, I was always going to need to, to work towards the
Speaker:
00:20:44
ultimate goal, not some local
Speaker:
00:20:46
maximum.
Speaker:
00:20:46
must have been difficult for you at Microsoft and like you
Speaker:
00:20:49
were there for a few years.
Speaker:
00:20:50
That wasn't a short stint if I'm recalling correctly.
Speaker:
00:20:53
I was a contractor solely dedicated to Microsoft, so I wasn't in house.
Speaker:
00:20:58
although I was in quite a few calls where people didn't realize I was a V dash.
Speaker:
00:21:03
so that was pretty funny.
Speaker:
00:21:05
it was super hard.
Speaker:
00:21:06
I just wanted to see what we were doing succeed.
Speaker:
00:21:08
And I didn't quite realize that occasionally I was asking questions
Speaker:
00:21:11
that would throw people under the bus and make it hard for my people who
Speaker:
00:21:15
were managing me to be successful.
Speaker:
00:21:17
I wanted to see the program succeed.
Speaker:
00:21:19
I didn't care if, one of my favorite, you know, Calls was going in to go
Speaker:
00:21:24
see, Scott and he's like, Hey, I need you to hire 50 Marketo certified
Speaker:
00:21:30
consultants, in the next 6 months.
Speaker:
00:21:32
And I was like, that exam came out 2 and a half years ago.
Speaker:
00:21:34
There are not that many certified people on the West coast.
Speaker:
00:21:39
what are you talking about?
Speaker:
00:21:41
I know one of your other vendors has a bunch of them.
Speaker:
00:21:43
Why don't I just train them and help them make them successful?
Speaker:
00:21:47
And he was like, why would you do that?
Speaker:
00:21:48
And I'm like, cause I want you to be successful.
Speaker:
00:21:50
Like, This is about making the program successful.
Speaker:
00:21:53
And he's like, well, they're going to be able to compete with you then.
Speaker:
00:21:56
I'm like, I don't care.
Speaker:
00:21:57
He's like, well, what if I give you 10 more dollars ahead or something?
Speaker:
00:22:00
I can't remember what he did to help me recruit people better.
Speaker:
00:22:02
Cause he's like, that is not in your best interest.
Speaker:
00:22:06
But I wanted the program to be successful and get great people as quickly
Speaker:
00:22:09
as we could and get them trained.
Speaker:
00:22:10
Do you think it's possible do really good work in that environment?
Speaker:
00:22:14
Or do the perverse incentives of local maximums, et cetera, ultimately prevail?
Speaker:
00:22:20
I think we did incredible work and I learned so much from the really
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00:22:25
brilliant people I got to work from.
Speaker:
00:22:27
So I think there are people who can rise above it and care.
Speaker:
00:22:30
I think it's a hiring challenge to find people who can figure out how to play the
Speaker:
00:22:35
game because you wouldn't make it right.
Speaker:
00:22:37
You have to play the game or you would have gotten laid off at some
Speaker:
00:22:40
point, and still care about success.
Speaker:
00:22:43
And they had a ton of both.
Speaker:
00:22:46
People who, just played the game, but people who also
Speaker:
00:22:49
cared and could play the game.
Speaker:
00:22:51
I've never been that good at playing the game.
Speaker:
00:22:53
Too honest.
Speaker:
00:22:54
Well, I don't think before I speak So I would ask questions.
Speaker:
00:22:57
I'm, I think I'm too curious.
Speaker:
00:22:58
So you kind of alluded to some of the origin story of your fascination
Speaker:
00:23:04
or interest in observability.
Speaker:
00:23:06
your boss has said, you know, if, if it's broken, if I don't find out about
Speaker:
00:23:09
it, then, you know, everyone's fired.
Speaker:
00:23:10
and that's, the thing for me.
Speaker:
00:23:11
Like I've had that experience of, the CEO, like emailing on the
Speaker:
00:23:15
weekend, like, why didn't this thing work and being like, Oh no.
Speaker:
00:23:19
And, having my boss be like, well, this, is not a good day for Justin.
Speaker:
00:23:23
I was like, yep, it's not.
Speaker:
00:23:25
and I don't ever want that to happen.
Speaker:
00:23:26
And I say that to my team too, like if something's broken,
Speaker:
00:23:29
like we need to know about it.
Speaker:
00:23:30
Before anybody else.
Speaker:
00:23:32
And so that we can let the business know rather than the business letting us know.
Speaker:
00:23:35
so I think we all feel like emotionally why it's important,
Speaker:
00:23:38
but, what else like convinced you that this was like a business
Speaker:
00:23:42
problem that really needed solving.
Speaker:
00:23:44
I'm going to come back to Gary Kamakawa again, he and, his partner who was
Speaker:
00:23:49
amazing, they were definitely someone who felt like we are standing up
Speaker:
00:23:54
something very hard and very novel.
Speaker:
00:23:57
Bye.
Speaker:
00:23:57
And so you need to know the metrics that we want to measure it against.
Speaker:
00:24:02
And if you're not there yet, if they are all at a fail, like what
Speaker:
00:24:06
does world class look like and how do we strive to get there?
Speaker:
00:24:09
and where are we and what progress are we making?
Speaker:
00:24:11
Because if we can't be real honest about that, we're never going to get there.
Speaker:
00:24:15
And so your goal is improvement.
Speaker:
00:24:17
Your goal isn't perfect out of the gate.
Speaker:
00:24:20
That was something that really, really stuck with me.
Speaker:
00:24:24
especially salespeople, right?
Speaker:
00:24:25
A salesperson is never going to admit that something was an object failure.
Speaker:
00:24:29
And I think marketers always want to put a good spin on things as well.
Speaker:
00:24:34
and so I think as ops people.
Speaker:
00:24:37
It was really hard to kind of transition into a place of it's
Speaker:
00:24:43
not about the thing being perfect.
Speaker:
00:24:45
And my not being represented as being perfect.
Speaker:
00:24:48
It's about giving everybody ultimate.
Speaker:
00:24:51
Transparency because again, if ops is the goal of being efficient and scalable.
Speaker:
00:24:57
If something's broken and people can't do their job and you don't tell
Speaker:
00:25:00
them everyone's being inefficient.
Speaker:
00:25:03
And so that transparency truly enable scale and efficiency and so that everyone
Speaker:
00:25:09
can be focused on moving on to something that they could accomplish today or
Speaker:
00:25:14
creating a workaround or taking lunch early while we fix the problem so that.
Speaker:
00:25:19
There's not 15 people independently spotting a problem and trying to solve
Speaker:
00:25:23
it independently, or God thinking a campaign didn't work when in fact
Speaker:
00:25:28
the, tracking stopped on our UTM's
Speaker:
00:25:32
And that kind of transparency, can also be dangerous, like engineering teams provide,
Speaker:
00:25:37
you know, uptime and SLA's and rely, and they're, they're used to that, like
Speaker:
00:25:41
marketing ops teams are not used to that.
Speaker:
00:25:43
Have you found anyone feeling either threatened or resistant to the notion of
Speaker:
00:25:48
more transparency, more observability?
Speaker:
00:25:51
Yeah.
Speaker:
00:25:51
Yeah.
Speaker:
00:25:52
Yeah.
Speaker:
00:25:52
We are actually thinking about doing a campaign where like we target ads to
Speaker:
00:25:58
everyone in the company saying, if you use stack moxie, you will see failures.
Speaker:
00:26:02
That's a good thing.
Speaker:
00:26:03
Your team is taking ownership or something.
Speaker:
00:26:05
Like, how do we educate executives to understand that when you start
Speaker:
00:26:13
getting better quality in place, you're going to find things.
Speaker:
00:26:16
And the goal is to communicate them.
Speaker:
00:26:19
we had a vendor that God bless and 6 months had 3 major outages
Speaker:
00:26:24
that impacted our product.
Speaker:
00:26:27
it was just the sign in.
Speaker:
00:26:28
So our product was still working, but we chose to communicate at the moment.
Speaker:
00:26:32
We knew.
Speaker:
00:26:34
and all 3 instances, the companies.
Speaker:
00:26:37
uptime monitor on their software said they were up and in Twitter, they had no
Speaker:
00:26:42
reported issues, but we knew it was down.
Speaker:
00:26:45
and so we reported it to all of our customers, and it's not
Speaker:
00:26:48
blaming the company that's down.
Speaker:
00:26:50
We chose that software vendor.
Speaker:
00:26:51
And if we have downtime, we have downtime and I had 3 investors ping me about the
Speaker:
00:26:56
quality of our team because we put our investors on those notifications as well.
Speaker:
00:27:00
If they want to be on it.
Speaker:
00:27:02
And so it's hard.
Speaker:
00:27:03
Like, people are not used to getting notified when there's a slowdown.
Speaker:
00:27:07
it's the double edged sword, right?
Speaker:
00:27:08
I think something's wrong with my system because I'm getting told
Speaker:
00:27:11
something's wrong with the system, but it's a value we have to live.
Speaker:
00:27:14
If we ever want marketing to get a little better, the other problem is, is we're
Speaker:
00:27:19
partnered with all of these marketing operations and sales operations tools.
Speaker:
00:27:24
and they are awful.
Speaker:
00:27:26
At admitting when things are broken and telling us those things.
Speaker:
00:27:30
And so, just like in business, I wind up calling out a bunch of our partners
Speaker:
00:27:34
who are crazy about all the time.
Speaker:
00:27:36
And they're incredible tools and they're better than the alternative,
Speaker:
00:27:40
but we're totally calling them out that some of them have.
Speaker:
00:27:43
Sub 90 uptime on certain pods.
Speaker:
00:27:46
Right.
Speaker:
00:27:47
And so no partner wants that.
Speaker:
00:27:49
you know, kind of like the classic thing that When you make a mistake,
Speaker:
00:27:52
but you recover, it can actually be better for you than if you didn't
Speaker:
00:27:54
actually make the mistake because you have like more positive sentiment
Speaker:
00:27:57
associated with the recovery.
Speaker:
00:27:59
I also think it's just the right thing to do, but like, we have an issue, I announce
Speaker:
00:28:03
it, I say, here's what's going on.
Speaker:
00:28:05
Ownership, here's our plan for mitigation, communicate, communicate, communicate.
Speaker:
00:28:10
It's resolved.
Speaker:
00:28:11
And like, you obviously have to pick and choose when that
Speaker:
00:28:12
sort of thing is warranted as otherwise you kind of annoy people.
Speaker:
00:28:15
But, I tend to think that works well and actually makes you look better than if
Speaker:
00:28:19
you're just like, no, everything's fine.
Speaker:
00:28:20
Everything's fine.
Speaker:
00:28:20
Like ignore the smoke coming out of the kitchen.
Speaker:
00:28:23
Like we're okay.
Speaker:
00:28:24
do you feel that that kind of mentality Is the, is the
Speaker:
00:28:26
industry moving in that direction?
Speaker:
00:28:28
Well, I think those are the people who are getting promoted and getting the strategic
Speaker:
00:28:33
roles, the people who are willing to do that and can communicate consistently
Speaker:
00:28:37
and effectively and save the rest of the organization from a bunch of headache.
Speaker:
00:28:40
I mean, it's the reason I knew everyone in the organization enough to figure out
Speaker:
00:28:45
where the bodies were buried because if something was broken, even my first job at
Speaker:
00:28:49
MTV, um, I got promoted on my very 2nd gig to running the venue because there were a
Speaker:
00:28:56
bunch of really cool people in bands who work there, but I would always be sitting
Speaker:
00:29:00
in the office and would answer the phone.
Speaker:
00:29:02
And so Madison Square Garden would start asking for me over my boss
Speaker:
00:29:05
because they could always get me and I would run around and go figure it out.
Speaker:
00:29:08
Right?
Speaker:
00:29:09
so if you communicate, Okay.
Speaker:
00:29:10
And you're transparent, people learn to trust you and then
Speaker:
00:29:14
they task you with more.
Speaker:
00:29:15
And especially if you've turned down things you're not competent at and capable
Speaker:
00:29:19
of, they'll almost demand that you then figure out how to take those things on.
Speaker:
00:29:23
it's also a really great way to get visibility.
Speaker:
00:29:27
Brent Kaiser, who is brilliant, who, built the marketing operations function at, bank
Speaker:
00:29:32
of Hawaii, one of our amazing customers.
Speaker:
00:29:35
Our goal was on his monthly report for people not to feel like they needed to
Speaker:
00:29:41
read it, that they knew if something was wrong, that, they would be notified.
Speaker:
00:29:48
And so that monthly report, like, if they ever needed to go back and
Speaker:
00:29:51
look at it, the data was there, but that they felt so comfortable,
Speaker:
00:29:53
they could ignore those emails.
Speaker:
00:29:55
It's a great philosophy.
Speaker:
00:29:57
I look at it like a Gantt chart and a proposal deck.
Speaker:
00:29:59
Nobody actually looks at the Gantt chart.
Speaker:
00:30:01
They don't care.
Speaker:
00:30:01
It's never right.
Speaker:
00:30:03
But somehow having it, there's like a comfort, you know, like you
Speaker:
00:30:06
trust that this, whoever prepared it has things under control.
Speaker:
00:30:10
it's evidently the slide that investors always go to is the market
Speaker:
00:30:13
bigger than 5 billion dollars.
Speaker:
00:30:15
Yes.
Speaker:
00:30:16
All right, let's move forward.
Speaker:
00:30:17
Like, they don't have any idea what went into it, but is this
Speaker:
00:30:20
Wacky founder thinking they can build a 5 billion company.
Speaker:
00:30:23
Great.
Speaker:
00:30:24
One of the challenges I see with justifying, tech for revenue observability
Speaker:
00:30:29
as an expense is that no one thinks they really need it until they do.
Speaker:
00:30:33
you don't think you need insurance until you have an accident kind of thing.
Speaker:
00:30:36
And probably with bigger companies who are more risk averse, it's maybe easier.
Speaker:
00:30:42
but it's, hard.
Speaker:
00:30:42
And I see it as a smaller company where it's like, well, am I going to like
Speaker:
00:30:45
invest time in that, or am I going to invest time in X it's a really hard sell.
Speaker:
00:30:50
How have you found that bringing this solution to market?
Speaker:
00:30:53
My biggest insight.
Speaker:
00:30:55
I don't know if any of y'all know Steven Dunstan.
Speaker:
00:30:57
So he's leading all of our revenue functions.
Speaker:
00:31:01
he's really funny.
Speaker:
00:31:01
He and I are so super aligned on how we want to go to market.
Speaker:
00:31:05
our investors keep asking us to hire like SDRs and salespeople.
Speaker:
00:31:08
And I'm like, Oh, I just, I just can't bring myself to do it.
Speaker:
00:31:12
and he's like, look, Starting a company is hard enough.
Speaker:
00:31:15
We can at least respect ourselves and, and, you know, not be the
Speaker:
00:31:18
people out there doing that.
Speaker:
00:31:20
he's someone that I'm very, very aligned with and he, has done a really
Speaker:
00:31:26
great job of helping us realize that marketing ops people, like people who
Speaker:
00:31:29
are in the day to day and the management are very worried about time savings.
Speaker:
00:31:33
which if you ask any VC investor or any sales guy, like time savings is
Speaker:
00:31:37
the least important virtue, but a marketing ops person, because everything
Speaker:
00:31:42
is so manual, that is their currency.
Speaker:
00:31:45
That is our most important thing.
Speaker:
00:31:47
And their boss could give a shit, right?
Speaker:
00:31:49
Like, sorry, Justin, if you need to spend an extra 10 hours a week
Speaker:
00:31:53
to do it your way, do it your way.
Speaker:
00:31:55
So The hard thing for us has been helping even our incredibly smart marketing ops
Speaker:
00:32:03
people who are early adopters not sell their bosses on the thing that mattered
Speaker:
00:32:08
to them, but sell their bosses on the thing that mattered to their boss.
Speaker:
00:32:12
cause like we do GDPR privacy compliance.
Speaker:
00:32:16
Most people could get that sent through procurement and six minutes flat.
Speaker:
00:32:21
They don't really care.
Speaker:
00:32:22
They know they have to do it.
Speaker:
00:32:24
they care that it's done.
Speaker:
00:32:25
Right.
Speaker:
00:32:25
But that's the extent of it.
Speaker:
00:32:26
What they really care about is putting a really dynamic automated
Speaker:
00:32:30
QA in the hands of their marketer.
Speaker:
00:32:33
Um, so that they don't have to do the QA and there's not a 48
Speaker:
00:32:36
hour turnaround on them doing the QA on their marketer's back.
Speaker:
00:32:39
The CMO or the data privacy guys, like do the QA, so plan
Speaker:
00:32:47
it earlier, get it out on time.
Speaker:
00:32:48
Who cares?
Speaker:
00:32:49
Right?
Speaker:
00:32:49
Like if you have to do that, you have to do that, but it's the,
Speaker:
00:32:52
well, we can't check it and have third party verifiable logs.
Speaker:
00:32:56
If we don't have a third party tool doing these things that
Speaker:
00:33:00
check for the GDPR privacy.
Speaker:
00:33:02
So he's been amazing at helping figure out.
Speaker:
00:33:05
That there are different audiences that need different
Speaker:
00:33:08
messages.
Speaker:
00:33:09
So you almost have to, and I don't mean this in a negative sense, but you almost
Speaker:
00:33:11
have to Trojan horse some of the benefits within, other benefits that are also true,
Speaker:
00:33:17
but that are more like business oriented.
Speaker:
00:33:19
Because I completely agree with you.
Speaker:
00:33:20
No one cares about saving RevOps time.
Speaker:
00:33:22
Like we wish they did, but really low on the company priority list.
Speaker:
00:33:27
Even where saving that time would be, you know, objectively helpful to the business.
Speaker:
00:33:31
Yeah, they don't get it.
Speaker:
00:33:32
So they can't care, and I think that's the other big challenge we have in
Speaker:
00:33:35
our industry is there is no CMO who really gets it, who can therefore
Speaker:
00:33:43
help us be better at our jobs.
Speaker:
00:33:45
Like, we're having to figure it out on our own and thank God for you because,
Speaker:
00:33:50
you know, you and our communities and we're trying to partner with each other.
Speaker:
00:33:53
We're lifting each other up and it's really, really hard.
Speaker:
00:33:57
but your CMO isn't going to be like, Hey, have you ever thought
Speaker:
00:34:01
about the fact that you're running?
Speaker:
00:34:03
The most expensive technology investment in our company, and you're
Speaker:
00:34:08
running it like a marketing campaign.
Speaker:
00:34:10
Meanwhile, there are 17 people on DevOps running our cloud
Speaker:
00:34:15
services, and we're spending 20, 30 percent less as a company on that.
Speaker:
00:34:20
And that's the entire backbone for our whole product.
Speaker:
00:34:22
and so when you start to realize this is every dollar of revenue and the
Speaker:
00:34:26
most expensive piece of technology at our company, it puts a different
Speaker:
00:34:31
light on how you should be focusing on managing that infrastructure.
Speaker:
00:34:35
I see on your website as well, you talk about monitoring AI
Speaker:
00:34:39
implementations, you know, I've, I've used StackMoxie in the past.
Speaker:
00:34:42
I'm familiar with lots of what you do, but this is a newer thing.
Speaker:
00:34:45
And is this, I know it is obligatory.
Speaker:
00:34:47
You probably have to include it in your term sheets that you will
Speaker:
00:34:49
mention AI on your home page.
Speaker:
00:34:51
every size company has to do it now.
Speaker:
00:34:53
But, what's the deal there?
Speaker:
00:34:55
Like, how do you, you see observability as it relates to AI?
Speaker:
00:34:58
I think it's what makes AI possible in all sales and marketing.
Speaker:
00:35:02
one of our technology leader for the last year is a guy named Sev Garriskin.
Speaker:
00:35:08
and he is very passionate.
Speaker:
00:35:10
the AI alignment issue.
Speaker:
00:35:13
And so if you think about Skynet and the Terminator and what happens, it's where
Speaker:
00:35:19
AI realizes that humans are the problem.
Speaker:
00:35:22
they task AI with saving the planet and they realize humans are the problem.
Speaker:
00:35:25
And so the machines start to eradicate humanity.
Speaker:
00:35:29
It's a misalignment.
Speaker:
00:35:31
when AI is deployed in customer service chat, half the time we see
Speaker:
00:35:36
it trying to make the end user happy.
Speaker:
00:35:39
As opposed to solving the problems in alignment with the company's goals.
Speaker:
00:35:44
And so he spent the last year helping us figure out how to build
Speaker:
00:35:48
these basic functions, and now he's off, to start a new company to
Speaker:
00:35:52
literally prevent the Skynet thing.
Speaker:
00:35:54
He is trying to solve AI alignment for the betterment of humanity.
Speaker:
00:35:58
So I've been really lucky to have him in my life.
Speaker:
00:36:01
but when you think about that, Deploying a I, you have to make sure it's aligned
Speaker:
00:36:08
with your brand aligned with your goals integrated with the technology that
Speaker:
00:36:12
needs to feed it in order to just work.
Speaker:
00:36:16
so all the different things we can do where we can.
Speaker:
00:36:20
ingest your brand guidelines, and then check to make sure that the color on
Speaker:
00:36:25
your landing page is the right color.
Speaker:
00:36:27
Or when you have a chat conversation with someone, you want to make sure that the
Speaker:
00:36:34
chat answer comes back, with the truth.
Speaker:
00:36:39
Or what you would expect it to do or what a salesperson would say.
Speaker:
00:36:42
and we've always been able to look at chat.
Speaker:
00:36:44
We've always been able to test against these dynamic variables being pulled
Speaker:
00:36:47
from Salesforce or whatever system.
Speaker:
00:36:50
so bringing that all together is kind of the backbone of AI theoretically working.
Speaker:
00:36:56
and so think the other side of that coin is 60 percent of investments
Speaker:
00:37:02
in AI applications have been going to sales and marketing functions.
Speaker:
00:37:07
And if you read how developers are thinking about using AI in their life,
Speaker:
00:37:13
the thing is, you write a prompt.
Speaker:
00:37:16
Then you write a validation test to make sure the prompt worked.
Speaker:
00:37:19
don't have any of that validation testing.
Speaker:
00:37:22
when you're trying to get a new app through to procurement, procurement's
Speaker:
00:37:26
like, how do we know it's going to work?
Speaker:
00:37:28
How do we know it's not going to drift?
Speaker:
00:37:29
How do we know it's not going to hallucinate?
Speaker:
00:37:32
our tool can do all that testing.
Speaker:
00:37:33
So I think it's a great moment for critical thinkers like you and I
Speaker:
00:37:40
in RevOps as AI is being deployed.
Speaker:
00:37:43
It's also the complex versus the complicated problem.
Speaker:
00:37:46
Once AI is involved, it becomes unknowingly complex.
Speaker:
00:37:51
We could do something complicated manually, but once you add AI
Speaker:
00:37:55
into that mix, generative AI, it becomes unknowingly complex.
Speaker:
00:37:58
You can only test it
Speaker:
00:37:59
automatically.
Speaker:
00:38:00
So just like, let's say a simple integration test lead fills out a form.
Speaker:
00:38:05
Do they make it into salesforce?
Speaker:
00:38:06
We can use technology to check other technology.
Speaker:
00:38:10
Okay.
Speaker:
00:38:10
are you using AI to check other AI, like basically having prompts to
Speaker:
00:38:14
check the output of, of other prompts?
Speaker:
00:38:16
Right now our product, the AI is actually being used for us to build integrations.
Speaker:
00:38:23
So that's how A.
Speaker:
00:38:25
I.
Speaker:
00:38:25
Is being deployed today.
Speaker:
00:38:27
we also have some A.
Speaker:
00:38:29
I.
Speaker:
00:38:29
Functions where we can check alignment with, like, brand
Speaker:
00:38:32
values or things like that, in A.
Speaker:
00:38:34
I.
Speaker:
00:38:35
The goal for what's next is to be able to use natural language to
Speaker:
00:38:41
have this chat conversations to check as many variables as possible.
Speaker:
00:38:45
So it would be a I running.
Speaker:
00:38:48
The chat engagement on our side with the AI chat on the website say,
Speaker:
00:38:54
so we're going to Acme Corp, and they've got a customer service chat
Speaker:
00:38:58
on their website ours would be using natural language to submit questions.
Speaker:
00:39:02
25 different ways.
Speaker:
00:39:04
And then using natural language, generative AI to validate that
Speaker:
00:39:07
those answers are what they should be against sources of
Speaker:
00:39:10
truth.
Speaker:
00:39:11
Super
Speaker:
00:39:11
interesting.
Speaker:
00:39:12
so I'm gonna talk a little bit about your journey as a founder.
Speaker:
00:39:14
A little bit of what led you to start, like, what are some of
Speaker:
00:39:17
the challenges, in doing this?
Speaker:
00:39:18
Is it a good idea, to start a company?
Speaker:
00:39:21
and how do you see that going?
Speaker:
00:39:23
to start a company.
Speaker:
00:39:25
Yes.
Speaker:
00:39:27
I think that is a good idea.
Speaker:
00:39:29
I think people who are wired like you and I, can figure out the skills
Speaker:
00:39:33
that we need to like kind of be successful in running a company.
Speaker:
00:39:37
And I, don't like being the face person.
Speaker:
00:39:40
I'm not someone who enjoys.
Speaker:
00:39:41
Public speaking.
Speaker:
00:39:43
I used to say my dream job was to be the chief of staff for
Speaker:
00:39:46
a senator on like judiciary or something like that in the Senate.
Speaker:
00:39:50
now, actually, I'd love to be chief of staff.
Speaker:
00:39:52
Hey, so you can publish this.
Speaker:
00:39:54
This is my application.
Speaker:
00:39:56
I want to be chief of staff for who's ever going to run that,
Speaker:
00:40:00
like, subcommittee on technology.
Speaker:
00:40:02
For the U S Senate, right?
Speaker:
00:40:04
how do we get all the information in and make really good decisions?
Speaker:
00:40:07
But I don't want to have to be the person who like ask kisses and raises money.
Speaker:
00:40:12
so the business I picked to build, unfortunately, this business, the
Speaker:
00:40:17
problem I was passionate about solving requires integrations.
Speaker:
00:40:21
And so if you think about how Salesforce has been so dominant
Speaker:
00:40:24
in the market, by having the app exchange all of these integrations.
Speaker:
00:40:30
And so it's almost impossible to replace salesforce because people have customized
Speaker:
00:40:35
it and have all these integrations that make it do what they need it to do.
Speaker:
00:40:39
so stack moxie is very similar.
Speaker:
00:40:41
Whoever wins this category, as evidenced by New Relic and Datadog
Speaker:
00:40:47
is going to be the company that has people building integrations
Speaker:
00:40:51
against the technology someday.
Speaker:
00:40:54
AI makes that a little less true, but nonetheless, likely.
Speaker:
00:40:59
And so my business is always going to be venture backed.
Speaker:
00:41:03
It's going to be who will crown the winner of this market.
Speaker:
00:41:07
and so for someone like me, where I want to know what world class
Speaker:
00:41:10
is and I want to work towards it.
Speaker:
00:41:12
So that's being number 1 under category who's insanely competitive.
Speaker:
00:41:17
It means I am always going to have to have venture capital to do this.
Speaker:
00:41:22
And someone who's as unfiltered as I am.
Speaker:
00:41:25
Venture capital might not always be the easiest thing to do.
Speaker:
00:41:30
So it takes a special kind of VC to appreciate me.
Speaker:
00:41:33
venture capital brings strings.
Speaker:
00:41:37
Now you've got board members to answer to.
Speaker:
00:41:40
You've got questions.
Speaker:
00:41:41
It introduces.
Speaker:
00:41:43
Almost like the enterprise dynamic in some ways where you have like other
Speaker:
00:41:47
considerations beyond just those that you see as the pure pursuits of
Speaker:
00:41:52
the business, to take into account.
Speaker:
00:41:54
So that's, that's a hard pill for some people to swallow.
Speaker:
00:41:57
I'd
Speaker:
00:41:57
imagine
Speaker:
00:41:58
Well, we've turned down more VC money than we've taken.
Speaker:
00:42:01
that definitely is something that helps, um, because what I'm unwilling
Speaker:
00:42:07
to do, the big one they always want is for us to hire a ton of SDRs and
Speaker:
00:42:11
I'm like, Our customers would hate us.
Speaker:
00:42:15
we have an incredible reputation.
Speaker:
00:42:17
We need to find better ways of getting out into the market for sure.
Speaker:
00:42:20
But it's not SDRs to marketing ops people.
Speaker:
00:42:23
It's just not.
Speaker:
00:42:24
there's a
Speaker:
00:42:24
point in our current timeline where someone like injected a mind virus
Speaker:
00:42:27
into every VC where the answer to every question is like hire a bunch of SDRs.
Speaker:
00:42:32
I don't know how, where, how this happened.
Speaker:
00:42:34
percent, here's my theory.
Speaker:
00:42:36
SaaS is like a bond model.
Speaker:
00:42:38
And so they're trying to make it a predictable payback.
Speaker:
00:42:41
And so, that's the mind virus is they're trying to make everything predictable.
Speaker:
00:42:45
So if we hire this many SDRs, then here's the formula we have in our
Speaker:
00:42:48
projection of how much revenue we're gonna do, So when I realized that they
Speaker:
00:42:53
had a formula, they wanted to apply to us, I would turn down their money.
Speaker:
00:42:56
Cause there's not a formula, we're going to discover what our customers need.
Speaker:
00:43:00
we're also going to give them more value than we charge them every single time.
Speaker:
00:43:05
Like half of the investors we've talked to are like, you need to triple your prices.
Speaker:
00:43:09
And I'm like, we will triple our prices when they get 10 X the value.
Speaker:
00:43:14
we're trying to educate people on the market and give them value, not
Speaker:
00:43:18
gouge them because VCs want to see an immediate return on their money.
Speaker:
00:43:22
So if you don't realize this is a massive category, that's the underpinning of AI.
Speaker:
00:43:27
and we can do it with low costs and just making our customers successful,
Speaker:
00:43:31
then you're not the right investor, which means it's been not fun for me.
Speaker:
00:43:36
Every role has its drawbacks.
Speaker:
00:43:38
Nothing's perfect.
Speaker:
00:43:39
but it's good to know that at least there are, uh, VCs out there that you,
Speaker:
00:43:43
you have found that you were willing to partner with and that who may be,
Speaker:
00:43:46
we're less
Speaker:
00:43:47
susceptible to the myofirms.
Speaker:
00:43:48
Servin Ventures, Neeraj, our partner at Servin, Swan Ventures
Speaker:
00:43:55
here in Seattle and Kirby at Ascend.
Speaker:
00:44:01
They're amazing.
Speaker:
00:44:03
Um, and we have a ton of other incredible angels and investors as well.
Speaker:
00:44:07
So we are so incredibly lucky.
Speaker:
00:44:09
so it unfortunately makes it even harder to add a new VC
Speaker:
00:44:13
It's great sitting down with you, uh, MH, and it has been a lot of fun just
Speaker:
00:44:17
watching your journey, uh, from the sidelines over the past few years,
Speaker:
00:44:21
because I've, uh, You've been aware of and like using your tool in some
Speaker:
00:44:24
early iterations in my past role.
Speaker:
00:44:26
So rooting for you, folks, we will include a link to stack moxie in the
Speaker:
00:44:31
show notes, but it's stack moxie.
Speaker:
00:44:34
com.
Speaker:
00:44:35
Go check it out.
Speaker:
00:44:36
Uh, you can create an account, play around, uh, and it can do
Speaker:
00:44:40
a lot of cool things for you.
Speaker:
00:44:41
M.
Speaker:
00:44:41
H.
Speaker:
00:44:41
Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Speaker:
00:44:43
You're amazing.
Speaker:
00:44:44
Thank you so much for having me.
00:00:14
It's one of the scenarios that every revenue operator has nightmares about.
Speaker:
00:00:18
You get that email from your boss or the VP or even the CEO asking why
Speaker:
00:00:23
something is broken in your stack.
Speaker:
00:00:26
And then you get that sense of panic.
Speaker:
00:00:27
You start logging into things, checking things and you find
Speaker:
00:00:30
out that yes, it's true.
Speaker:
00:00:32
You ask yourself, how could this happen?
Speaker:
00:00:35
How could I miss it?
Speaker:
00:00:36
And the answer, or at least a big part of the answer for me, is that in the
Speaker:
00:00:39
martech and revtech world, we're still relatively immature in some ways compared
Speaker:
00:00:44
to other technically oriented areas of the business, like engineering or I.
Speaker:
00:00:49
T.
Speaker:
00:00:50
Fact is, a lot of early marketing automation professionals were
Speaker:
00:00:53
basically demand gen folks who kind of started LARPing as I.
Speaker:
00:00:56
T.
Speaker:
00:00:56
People and for the record, I include myself in that category,
Speaker:
00:01:00
but we didn't always know the best practices for ensuring observability.
Speaker:
00:01:04
Reliability in our infrastructure.
Speaker:
00:01:06
We had to learn all these things the hard way.
Speaker:
00:01:09
And we also lack the tools.
Speaker:
00:01:10
So we didn't have QA automation.
Speaker:
00:01:12
We didn't have smoke testing.
Speaker:
00:01:13
None of the things that a DevOps team today takes for granted.
Speaker:
00:01:17
So this is the problem that today's guest set up to solve.
Speaker:
00:01:20
She's had a long career as a marketing operations executive, including
Speaker:
00:01:24
some orgs at places like Microsoft.
Speaker:
00:01:28
And she's created a company called StackMoxie to provide easy testing
Speaker:
00:01:32
And monitoring for the revenue stack.
Speaker:
00:01:34
MH lines, welcome to the
Speaker:
00:01:36
Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker:
00:01:38
And by the way, I don't think you should include yourself in
Speaker:
00:01:41
the relatively immature category.
Speaker:
00:01:44
The LARPing thing you can include yourself in, but relatively
Speaker:
00:01:47
immature, I
Speaker:
00:01:48
think you set the bar.
Speaker:
00:01:49
You know, I made sure we have a lot in common, I think, as
Speaker:
00:01:52
we've identified over the years.
Speaker:
00:01:53
One thing I only realized while I was looking at your LinkedIn profile,
Speaker:
00:01:57
preparing for this interview, is that we both started out one of our first jobs in
Speaker:
00:02:02
the, uh, retail clothing sales industry.
Speaker:
00:02:05
I was working at a sporting goods store in my hometown of Toronto.
Speaker:
00:02:10
You started out at The Gap, where you said you learned the secrets to gap folding,
Speaker:
00:02:14
and have retained them ever since.
Speaker:
00:02:15
So what are the secrets to gap folding if you're not under
Speaker:
00:02:19
NDA?
Speaker:
00:02:19
the point is that when you see it on the shelf, everything looks the same, right?
Speaker:
00:02:23
When you walk into the gap, way back when we used to have the wall of khakis
Speaker:
00:02:26
and a wall of denim, because that's what the, gap was all about when I'm
Speaker:
00:02:31
aging myself, but you get the point.
Speaker:
00:02:33
and so the point was that they all look the same.
Speaker:
00:02:35
And so it's a fold.
Speaker:
00:02:36
Now, actually, if you watch YouTube, which you actually accomplish
Speaker:
00:02:41
enough, that my guess is you don't watch as much YouTube as I do.
Speaker:
00:02:44
But there's like these folding boards that help you get it in exactly the right size.
Speaker:
00:02:49
And so in your closet, everything looks completely uniform and
Speaker:
00:02:52
beautiful, like it used to on the go.
Speaker:
00:02:55
So be able to do it without a folding board, you were kind of
Speaker:
00:02:58
doing
Speaker:
00:02:58
well, they had guides, but those guides would slow you down eventually.
Speaker:
00:03:02
So you were folding so much in like back to school season that,
Speaker:
00:03:05
that you had to Be way faster.
Speaker:
00:03:08
You know, it's like after that, I wound up bartending.
Speaker:
00:03:11
even when I had a big career in PR, I helped bartend two nights a week.
Speaker:
00:03:16
You know, when you're early, you have to use little jiggers and everything.
Speaker:
00:03:19
And eventually you can, free pour.
Speaker:
00:03:21
It's like anything you, learn to do it without a net over
Speaker:
00:03:24
time.
Speaker:
00:03:25
you'll have to show me the folding technique cause I, uh, for the life of
Speaker:
00:03:27
me, still have trouble folding a t shirt
Speaker:
00:03:29
to look,
Speaker:
00:03:29
Well, when you and I see each other, we will likely be traveling.
Speaker:
00:03:32
And now, because I.
Speaker:
00:03:34
I worked in fortune 500 for a little bit too long.
Speaker:
00:03:38
It's like a badge of honor to be able to travel with a single
Speaker:
00:03:40
suitcase and not checking anything.
Speaker:
00:03:43
And so to get everything in my carry on, even if I'm gone for 10 days, I
Speaker:
00:03:47
roll it and like shove it in there.
Speaker:
00:03:49
So I will have a different folding technique.
Speaker:
00:03:52
All right, much, to reveal.
Speaker:
00:03:53
That's a separate podcast.
Speaker:
00:03:54
I want to talk about your sort of evolution and entry into the
Speaker:
00:03:58
world of marketing operations.
Speaker:
00:04:00
You spent a lot of time in marketing leadership before
Speaker:
00:04:02
moving towards mops kind of.
Speaker:
00:04:04
similar to myself in the early days of mops when it didn't
Speaker:
00:04:08
really always exist, didn't have the identity that it has today.
Speaker:
00:04:12
So I'm curious what drew you into that operational discipline from
Speaker:
00:04:16
the world of, marketing in general.
Speaker:
00:04:18
So I kind of came to marketing in a weird way.
Speaker:
00:04:20
I was never very intentional about my career, kind of took the
Speaker:
00:04:24
next fun job that I was offered.
Speaker:
00:04:26
and a lot of times as we're sequential in the same company,
Speaker:
00:04:29
But my undergraduate degree was in finance because I liked math.
Speaker:
00:04:34
I wanted there to be a right answer that you could check your work and
Speaker:
00:04:37
verify that that was the right answer.
Speaker:
00:04:40
and so I think there's so much subjective about marketing.
Speaker:
00:04:44
It actually kind of reminds me.
Speaker:
00:04:46
My little brother lived with me for a while.
Speaker:
00:04:47
His name's Alex and he is an incredible cook, um, and can cook me under the table.
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00:04:53
so while he lived with me, I learned to bake because I could do something precise
Speaker:
00:04:57
and be good at something and contribute.
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00:04:59
And so it's kind of the same way with me and marketing.
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00:05:01
There are incredible creative marketers out there and I'm just not one of them.
Speaker:
00:05:06
And so I focused on the thing that I could do.
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00:05:11
Really well, which is make sure the thing worked and set it up
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00:05:14
and verify that it's working.
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00:05:16
And you can kind of see that as a through line in my life at this point.
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00:05:20
that's so interesting.
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00:05:21
Cause I feel like I can really relate.
Speaker:
00:05:23
I mean, I also moved, moved into ops from the marketing world and there's a
Speaker:
00:05:26
lot that I like about marketing and I have a creative side to me, but I really
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00:05:30
struggled when you get into like the world of opinion, like this email is great.
Speaker:
00:05:33
This email is not great.
Speaker:
00:05:35
and ultimately, you know, it's kind of like the highest paid
Speaker:
00:05:37
person's opinion that wins in that debate a lot of the time.
Speaker:
00:05:41
And so I found I gravitated towards ops for the, clarity that it
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00:05:45
brought that like it worked or it didn't, it, you were in a world of
Speaker:
00:05:48
facts.
Speaker:
00:05:49
In the world facts with marketers, I would highly recommend never trying
Speaker:
00:05:54
to confuse them with facts like statistical significance though,
Speaker:
00:05:57
because they, you know, Oh, we sent out this email and it worked way better.
Speaker:
00:06:00
I'm like, you send it out to five people there are no facts there.
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00:06:03
So don't, try and confuse marketers with a good time.
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00:06:06
Yeah, that is a whole other story.
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00:06:08
thinking about where ops is today, marketing ops specifically, I
Speaker:
00:06:11
would say as a subdiscipline where it started and how it's evolved.
Speaker:
00:06:15
What do you think, like it was getting right?
Speaker:
00:06:17
And getting wrong early on because it kind of stumbled into its own haphazardly,
Speaker:
00:06:22
I guess, would be my observation.
Speaker:
00:06:23
Not that I want to lead the witness here, but
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00:06:25
what was your
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00:06:26
perspective?
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00:06:26
Well, it's funny.
Speaker:
00:06:28
I was recruited.
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00:06:30
to lead the marketing apps organization at the Astros the year
Speaker:
00:06:33
after they won the, world series.
Speaker:
00:06:36
and I was really excited, but it turns out it was all about
Speaker:
00:06:40
like printing the tickets.
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00:06:41
Like 50 percent of it was like print production.
Speaker:
00:06:44
So like ops has been around for forever on some level.
Speaker:
00:06:48
And, a good friend of mine was at the time when I started in marketing
Speaker:
00:06:53
ops, running marketing ops at Levi's, and it was definitely about pricing.
Speaker:
00:06:57
So I think it's kind of been its own thing as defined by the
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00:07:01
different organizations it's in.
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00:07:03
I think the organizations that got it really well and I had the
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00:07:07
incredible benefit of working for just a beautiful leader at
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00:07:11
Microsoft who got it really right.
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00:07:12
Actually, a few of them and they were all very focused on supporting the marketer.
Speaker:
00:07:18
it's a really important thing.
Speaker:
00:07:20
Big trip wire to talk about a marketing operations or rev ops being a support
Speaker:
00:07:24
function but in my mind It was always about Letting that marketer be that
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00:07:30
creative genius and really know the customer and figure out what's motivating
Speaker:
00:07:34
them from Either a creative perspective or messaging or an offer or pricing
Speaker:
00:07:40
whatever it is and We were the ones who were able to make that scalable
Speaker:
00:07:46
and efficient and get them the data they needed to make better decisions.
Speaker:
00:07:50
and that was definitely the team I supported at Microsoft's goal.
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00:07:54
you mentioned the contentious issue of ops as a service provider
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00:08:00
is not a service provider.
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00:08:02
Let's explore that, because I think unambiguously it is, and I think
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00:08:06
there's a bit of a complex around it, like, we are a service provider, we
Speaker:
00:08:10
don't want to just be treated like a service provider, we want to be
Speaker:
00:08:13
strategic, we want to provide strategic value, and I strongly believe in that.
Speaker:
00:08:17
Where do you think the tension lies?
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00:08:18
Like, is it something that we should just embrace and like be
Speaker:
00:08:20
strategic within that channel?
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00:08:22
Or do you think there's like another facet to the role that it should
Speaker:
00:08:25
be doing simultaneously to provide strategic value to the department?
Speaker:
00:08:29
Well, I mean, I think this layers nicely with the debate Mike Rizzo
Speaker:
00:08:33
posted on LinkedIn this morning talking about revenue operations and
Speaker:
00:08:38
marketing operations and how 9 percent of RevOps leaders have come from
Speaker:
00:08:42
a marketing operations background.
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00:08:45
And by the way, that's higher than I thought it was.
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00:08:48
I think it's, it's similar, right?
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00:08:50
I truly believe the rev ops thing becoming just an extension of sales
Speaker:
00:08:54
ops was, people willing something to be true because it benefits them.
Speaker:
00:08:59
So there's a sales leader who thinks they should be the rev ops leader
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00:09:02
because they want all the budget and they want the bigger job title.
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00:09:05
even though they don't really care about marketing ops and they'd prefer
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00:09:07
not to have to talk to those people.
Speaker:
00:09:10
I think some of this, where Marketing operations not being a
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00:09:15
cost center is someone trying to explain their place in the world.
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00:09:21
some people.
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00:09:22
and so I think that's the way the dialogue kind of got started, right?
Speaker:
00:09:25
Like, someone's really critical to an organization.
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00:09:28
And so they feel like that means they couldn't be a support function.
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00:09:31
And I totally disagree with that.
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00:09:32
I think it's a very American kind of thing to think that support functions
Speaker:
00:09:36
aren't some of the most critical roles in any society or organization.
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00:09:40
so I, I very strongly feel it is both strategic 100 percent a support function.
Speaker:
00:09:48
And critical all at the same time,
Speaker:
00:09:51
I think the support function we all broadly understand in a lot of
Speaker:
00:09:55
ways, like campaigns and lead flow and all that thing, where does the
Speaker:
00:10:01
strategic Aspect of it live for you.
Speaker:
00:10:04
This is something I think about a lot.
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00:10:05
I think the place most marketing operations professionals get it wrong
Speaker:
00:10:12
and most sales ops and rev ops people get it wrong is they think of themselves
Speaker:
00:10:19
as an administrator of the tool and supporting the ancillary integrations
Speaker:
00:10:26
and what goes through that tool.
Speaker:
00:10:27
So I'm a Marketo administrator and I lead.
Speaker:
00:10:31
Marketing ops, and so I think where we miss and where we're not strategic the
Speaker:
00:10:39
way we should be is that very firmly believe marketing and revenue operations
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00:10:45
should sit with the business and there should be a corresponding function and it.
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00:10:50
But I think there always has to be someone in the business.
Speaker:
00:10:52
Otherwise, I mean, let's be honest.
Speaker:
00:10:55
We've all worked for it.
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00:10:56
People who don't understand the business and miss the point.
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00:11:00
And so I think, you know, They need to understand that they're owning
Speaker:
00:11:02
an infrastructure and they have to manage it like an infrastructure.
Speaker:
00:11:06
And if they can't, then I.
Speaker:
00:11:07
T.
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00:11:07
should be involved.
Speaker:
00:11:08
But that's the strategic piece to me.
Speaker:
00:11:10
What is the outcome of this infrastructure?
Speaker:
00:11:12
What are we trying to accomplish?
Speaker:
00:11:13
Is it scale?
Speaker:
00:11:14
Is it efficiency?
Speaker:
00:11:15
Is it understanding our data better and understanding that full end to end
Speaker:
00:11:21
infrastructure and owning it, like, Okay.
Speaker:
00:11:24
you mentioned in the opening DevOps or, um, I.
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00:11:28
T.
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00:11:28
would own it.
Speaker:
00:11:30
and then thinking about what's the outcome of that as opposed to is the.
Speaker:
00:11:35
API flowing into Marketo, who cares, right?
Speaker:
00:11:38
Like the API has to flow into Marketo because the leads are
Speaker:
00:11:41
making it from the website and they have to come with the right data.
Speaker:
00:11:44
So it's not just a checkbox.
Speaker:
00:11:46
Yes or no.
Speaker:
00:11:46
It's is my system working and accomplishing the goal.
Speaker:
00:11:50
And I think, We have to be the ones to educate the CMO on what the goal should
Speaker:
00:11:55
be for marketing or revenue operations.
Speaker:
00:11:58
And that, again, should be efficiency and scale in my mind every time.
Speaker:
00:12:01
Let's take a concrete example, just to like explore this perspective a little
Speaker:
00:12:05
further, like our marketing automation platform, whether you're using Marketo
Speaker:
00:12:09
or, or HubSpot or part or whatever, one of the new tools that's emerging.
Speaker:
00:12:14
There's almost a philosophy that's baked into having one of those systems
Speaker:
00:12:19
that you're like, yeah, you're going to send emails, but if all you're doing
Speaker:
00:12:21
was sending emails, you could have, you know, MailChimp or something like that.
Speaker:
00:12:25
So clearly, you know, you get it, you're supposed to nurture and
Speaker:
00:12:27
you're supposed to do all these other things with these tools.
Speaker:
00:12:30
to what extent should ops be challenging almost the marketing
Speaker:
00:12:35
strategy and informing that strategy?
Speaker:
00:12:37
or is the strategic part like, here's how we can, you know, scale campaigns,
Speaker:
00:12:42
do that more efficiently, but like the strategy piece, how we're actually going
Speaker:
00:12:46
to market is up to you, marketing leader.
Speaker:
00:12:48
so we're hiring an engineering leader right now.
Speaker:
00:12:51
and so I think it's very similar to being, in a startup where I own product
Speaker:
00:12:55
and there's an engineering leader.
Speaker:
00:12:57
Right?
Speaker:
00:12:58
I want an engineering leader to come to me and say, Hey, we've
Speaker:
00:13:03
heard this from the customers.
Speaker:
00:13:04
Did you know this is possible?
Speaker:
00:13:07
And so I think there needs to be a forum where marketing ops is in the room when
Speaker:
00:13:13
they're talking about what the customer pain points are or what the needs are.
Speaker:
00:13:17
you know, generally it's an architect title is how I think about it and they go,
Speaker:
00:13:22
hey, did, you know, this is even possible.
Speaker:
00:13:25
And so sometimes there are things you can offer to customers, whether
Speaker:
00:13:31
it's in products or whether it's in, Marketing operations or these
Speaker:
00:13:36
operations functions, any technology function where I can't spend all day
Speaker:
00:13:42
understanding what marketing and revenue operations people need and also watching
Speaker:
00:13:47
every NVIDIA video to understand what new technology is on the market.
Speaker:
00:13:51
And so you want to partner in that.
Speaker:
00:13:53
And I think that's what where the strategy comes in.
Speaker:
00:13:55
You're a partner.
Speaker:
00:13:56
That's brought in in the beginning to brainstorm what's
Speaker:
00:13:58
possible, but they should know what's valuable to the customer.
Speaker:
00:14:02
And then we should be the one to solve the problem.
Speaker:
00:14:05
again, Gary was in at Microsoft and was so brilliant about saying
Speaker:
00:14:12
that, like, force them to bring you the problem, not the solution.
Speaker:
00:14:15
So you can really get your head around what they're trying to solve.
Speaker:
00:14:18
And then you help solve the problem.
Speaker:
00:14:21
So you don't try and.
Speaker:
00:14:23
Solve the solution they gave you as opposed to not having a robust
Speaker:
00:14:26
understanding of the product.
Speaker:
00:14:28
You mentioned product, and I often saw that your role mixed marketing
Speaker:
00:14:33
and product together, like there was kind of a theme in your CV.
Speaker:
00:14:37
Where did that come from?
Speaker:
00:14:38
Was that by luck?
Speaker:
00:14:40
Was that by preference?
Speaker:
00:14:41
it's also why I would totally I've gotten laid off like 3 different times
Speaker:
00:14:45
because I cannot help myself right when we're going through the marketing
Speaker:
00:14:49
metrics and those were like nice layoffs.
Speaker:
00:14:53
They were like, you're important.
Speaker:
00:14:54
You've done a really good job.
Speaker:
00:14:55
People really trust you, but I cannot work with your pain in the ass.
Speaker:
00:14:59
at some point when you've got the data set up and the systems
Speaker:
00:15:01
working and the channels humming.
Speaker:
00:15:05
it's really easy to see where there's gaps in the product, right?
Speaker:
00:15:08
Like if you've done a really good job, running sales, marketing, demand
Speaker:
00:15:12
gen and channel strategy, it's very easy to see a hole in the market.
Speaker:
00:15:18
so I would totally insert myself as kind of how I got into it the first.
Speaker:
00:15:22
Place, the very first one I worked for an early CRM startup.
Speaker:
00:15:27
and I demanded that they make some modifications to the product so that
Speaker:
00:15:30
I could use it for marketing and PR because it was just right there.
Speaker:
00:15:34
It was so obvious to me.
Speaker:
00:15:35
It wasn't CRM.
Speaker:
00:15:36
It was a relationship management platform that I needed, to manage talking to.
Speaker:
00:15:44
Media when I was doing PR or talking to analysts, like it wasn't just a CRM, it
Speaker:
00:15:49
was a relationship management platform.
Speaker:
00:15:51
And so, yeah, it's cause I'm a pain in the ass.
Speaker:
00:15:53
I think it's probably the.
Speaker:
00:15:55
What
Speaker:
00:15:55
Yes, sir.
Speaker:
00:15:56
getting laid off for that reason?
Speaker:
00:15:58
Do you think it's because you're meant to be a founder there's a
Speaker:
00:16:02
lot of people that could not go and be a founder face that scope of
Speaker:
00:16:05
responsibility, make those decisions.
Speaker:
00:16:07
There's other people who like want to have their fingers in all those pies.
Speaker:
00:16:09
And evidently, that can be disruptive maybe if you're trying to do
Speaker:
00:16:13
that and you're not in that role.
Speaker:
00:16:14
Is that what pushed you
Speaker:
00:16:15
there?
Speaker:
00:16:16
Well, what would happen ultimately is I want to figure it out.
Speaker:
00:16:21
And I think you're exactly the same way.
Speaker:
00:16:23
I think that's why we get along so well.
Speaker:
00:16:25
Like, I just want to get my head around it until I understand something.
Speaker:
00:16:29
and so the higher up I would go in the organization, the more.
Speaker:
00:16:33
I would ask questions, just trying to understand why
Speaker:
00:16:36
things are the way they are.
Speaker:
00:16:37
Um, and if we're in a meeting and someone brings something
Speaker:
00:16:40
up, I would ask questions.
Speaker:
00:16:41
Well, ultimately, I would wind up calling really powerful people
Speaker:
00:16:44
to the mat with those questions.
Speaker:
00:16:47
I'm unapologetic about that, right?
Speaker:
00:16:49
I don't want to spend time solving this problem.
Speaker:
00:16:52
Like I worked at as a contractor on a big Salesforce project for a
Speaker:
00:16:59
fortune 100 who shall not be named.
Speaker:
00:17:02
And about halfway through, I realized my boss just did not care about anything.
Speaker:
00:17:08
And it turns out that she knew full well, the project was never going to be
Speaker:
00:17:13
pushed to production, but she would lose budget if she didn't spend the dollars.
Speaker:
00:17:18
So she was like, Hey, just shut up about it.
Speaker:
00:17:22
Like, we don't need you to do meetings with other teams.
Speaker:
00:17:25
If they make requests, capture them in the backlog for the future.
Speaker:
00:17:27
But like, we know this project is going to
Speaker:
00:17:29
Your boss, this was you on the consulting
Speaker:
00:17:31
side or the boss at the
Speaker:
00:17:33
client side, like the
Speaker:
00:17:33
project
Speaker:
00:17:34
I was a consultant and this was the budget owner, the VP.
Speaker:
00:17:40
and my director didn't understand it.
Speaker:
00:17:42
So when I'd ask her questions, she kept having to pull me in with a VP.
Speaker:
00:17:46
And finally the VP pulled me aside and said, Oh my God, just ship something.
Speaker:
00:17:50
Just say it was successful because we have to spend the budget
Speaker:
00:17:53
or we'd lose it for next year.
Speaker:
00:17:54
This ties us into the wonderful world of the mega enterprise.
Speaker:
00:17:59
I was talking to another guest recently.
Speaker:
00:18:01
He was like, yeah, and everything I've just said doesn't apply to enterprise
Speaker:
00:18:04
and enterprise is like this parallel universe where like gravity doesn't
Speaker:
00:18:07
apply and all the rules are different.
Speaker:
00:18:09
And you worked at Microsoft, So
Speaker:
00:18:11
right now they're like around 000 people, that's like, not
Speaker:
00:18:15
as a small size city anymore.
Speaker:
00:18:17
if you put them all in one
Speaker:
00:18:18
place,
Speaker:
00:18:19
what's that all about?
Speaker:
00:18:20
cause it's a different job.
Speaker:
00:18:21
That's how I think about it.
Speaker:
00:18:22
Like running ops at that scale is a different job than, than where
Speaker:
00:18:25
I work at a 400 person company.
Speaker:
00:18:27
I mean, I think it's the thing I just mentioned, right?
Speaker:
00:18:31
people have incentives that are set up at the very highest level.
Speaker:
00:18:36
and those incentives create, gosh, I would almost say, the difference
Speaker:
00:18:40
between complex and complicated problems is kind of one of my favorite
Speaker:
00:18:44
building an engine in a car, right?
Speaker:
00:18:46
It's incredibly complicated or building a car, but it is
Speaker:
00:18:49
knowable and it is testable.
Speaker:
00:18:51
Complex is there are too many variables for something to be
Speaker:
00:18:55
knowable and predictable, which is like traffic in a city.
Speaker:
00:19:00
And so, I think how people will take the incentives and, progress forward with
Speaker:
00:19:08
those incentives and what will happen at that size organization is complex.
Speaker:
00:19:13
Like, you just can't understand what perversions will happen with whatever
Speaker:
00:19:17
incentive structure you put in place.
Speaker:
00:19:20
And so there are microcosms.
Speaker:
00:19:22
there are fiefdoms.
Speaker:
00:19:23
There are people who, try and keep their head down.
Speaker:
00:19:27
And then there are also people who, dramatically care.
Speaker:
00:19:31
so one of the incredible people I worked for at Microsoft, his name was, Karthik.
Speaker:
00:19:37
And he's really who created the idea of our product because things kept breaking.
Speaker:
00:19:42
And he said, if something breaks again, and you don't fucking tell me.
Speaker:
00:19:47
First, everyone on the team's fucking fired.
Speaker:
00:19:49
Like he was awesome.
Speaker:
00:19:50
Yeah.
Speaker:
00:19:50
he cared dramatically and he cared across the whole system, even though he owned a
Speaker:
00:19:54
massive chunk of it, but not all of it.
Speaker:
00:19:57
I think that is definitely something That happens, but it's rare for
Speaker:
00:20:01
someone to be that invested in the success of a program or that invested
Speaker:
00:20:06
in the ultimate goal as opposed to in the I'm measured on this 1 thing.
Speaker:
00:20:11
So I'm going to be myopic and focus on this 1 widget and I might optimize
Speaker:
00:20:16
this widget to the detriment of the widgets on either side of me.
Speaker:
00:20:19
But who cares?
Speaker:
00:20:20
I get it.
Speaker:
00:20:21
And send it on my widget.
Speaker:
00:20:24
And so for me, I care about winning.
Speaker:
00:20:27
you know, if it's a program and competition, I care about
Speaker:
00:20:29
beating the competition.
Speaker:
00:20:30
If I work for a company, I want to see Microsoft win, and I'll do it
Speaker:
00:20:34
to my own detriment on occasion.
Speaker:
00:20:36
So, yeah, I think that's why I probably wound up as an entrepreneur.
Speaker:
00:20:40
Like, I was always going to need to, to work towards the
Speaker:
00:20:44
ultimate goal, not some local
Speaker:
00:20:46
maximum.
Speaker:
00:20:46
must have been difficult for you at Microsoft and like you
Speaker:
00:20:49
were there for a few years.
Speaker:
00:20:50
That wasn't a short stint if I'm recalling correctly.
Speaker:
00:20:53
I was a contractor solely dedicated to Microsoft, so I wasn't in house.
Speaker:
00:20:58
although I was in quite a few calls where people didn't realize I was a V dash.
Speaker:
00:21:03
so that was pretty funny.
Speaker:
00:21:05
it was super hard.
Speaker:
00:21:06
I just wanted to see what we were doing succeed.
Speaker:
00:21:08
And I didn't quite realize that occasionally I was asking questions
Speaker:
00:21:11
that would throw people under the bus and make it hard for my people who
Speaker:
00:21:15
were managing me to be successful.
Speaker:
00:21:17
I wanted to see the program succeed.
Speaker:
00:21:19
I didn't care if, one of my favorite, you know, Calls was going in to go
Speaker:
00:21:24
see, Scott and he's like, Hey, I need you to hire 50 Marketo certified
Speaker:
00:21:30
consultants, in the next 6 months.
Speaker:
00:21:32
And I was like, that exam came out 2 and a half years ago.
Speaker:
00:21:34
There are not that many certified people on the West coast.
Speaker:
00:21:39
what are you talking about?
Speaker:
00:21:41
I know one of your other vendors has a bunch of them.
Speaker:
00:21:43
Why don't I just train them and help them make them successful?
Speaker:
00:21:47
And he was like, why would you do that?
Speaker:
00:21:48
And I'm like, cause I want you to be successful.
Speaker:
00:21:50
Like, This is about making the program successful.
Speaker:
00:21:53
And he's like, well, they're going to be able to compete with you then.
Speaker:
00:21:56
I'm like, I don't care.
Speaker:
00:21:57
He's like, well, what if I give you 10 more dollars ahead or something?
Speaker:
00:22:00
I can't remember what he did to help me recruit people better.
Speaker:
00:22:02
Cause he's like, that is not in your best interest.
Speaker:
00:22:06
But I wanted the program to be successful and get great people as quickly
Speaker:
00:22:09
as we could and get them trained.
Speaker:
00:22:10
Do you think it's possible do really good work in that environment?
Speaker:
00:22:14
Or do the perverse incentives of local maximums, et cetera, ultimately prevail?
Speaker:
00:22:20
I think we did incredible work and I learned so much from the really
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00:22:25
brilliant people I got to work from.
Speaker:
00:22:27
So I think there are people who can rise above it and care.
Speaker:
00:22:30
I think it's a hiring challenge to find people who can figure out how to play the
Speaker:
00:22:35
game because you wouldn't make it right.
Speaker:
00:22:37
You have to play the game or you would have gotten laid off at some
Speaker:
00:22:40
point, and still care about success.
Speaker:
00:22:43
And they had a ton of both.
Speaker:
00:22:46
People who, just played the game, but people who also
Speaker:
00:22:49
cared and could play the game.
Speaker:
00:22:51
I've never been that good at playing the game.
Speaker:
00:22:53
Too honest.
Speaker:
00:22:54
Well, I don't think before I speak So I would ask questions.
Speaker:
00:22:57
I'm, I think I'm too curious.
Speaker:
00:22:58
So you kind of alluded to some of the origin story of your fascination
Speaker:
00:23:04
or interest in observability.
Speaker:
00:23:06
your boss has said, you know, if, if it's broken, if I don't find out about
Speaker:
00:23:09
it, then, you know, everyone's fired.
Speaker:
00:23:10
and that's, the thing for me.
Speaker:
00:23:11
Like I've had that experience of, the CEO, like emailing on the
Speaker:
00:23:15
weekend, like, why didn't this thing work and being like, Oh no.
Speaker:
00:23:19
And, having my boss be like, well, this, is not a good day for Justin.
Speaker:
00:23:23
I was like, yep, it's not.
Speaker:
00:23:25
and I don't ever want that to happen.
Speaker:
00:23:26
And I say that to my team too, like if something's broken,
Speaker:
00:23:29
like we need to know about it.
Speaker:
00:23:30
Before anybody else.
Speaker:
00:23:32
And so that we can let the business know rather than the business letting us know.
Speaker:
00:23:35
so I think we all feel like emotionally why it's important,
Speaker:
00:23:38
but, what else like convinced you that this was like a business
Speaker:
00:23:42
problem that really needed solving.
Speaker:
00:23:44
I'm going to come back to Gary Kamakawa again, he and, his partner who was
Speaker:
00:23:49
amazing, they were definitely someone who felt like we are standing up
Speaker:
00:23:54
something very hard and very novel.
Speaker:
00:23:57
Bye.
Speaker:
00:23:57
And so you need to know the metrics that we want to measure it against.
Speaker:
00:24:02
And if you're not there yet, if they are all at a fail, like what
Speaker:
00:24:06
does world class look like and how do we strive to get there?
Speaker:
00:24:09
and where are we and what progress are we making?
Speaker:
00:24:11
Because if we can't be real honest about that, we're never going to get there.
Speaker:
00:24:15
And so your goal is improvement.
Speaker:
00:24:17
Your goal isn't perfect out of the gate.
Speaker:
00:24:20
That was something that really, really stuck with me.
Speaker:
00:24:24
especially salespeople, right?
Speaker:
00:24:25
A salesperson is never going to admit that something was an object failure.
Speaker:
00:24:29
And I think marketers always want to put a good spin on things as well.
Speaker:
00:24:34
and so I think as ops people.
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00:24:37
It was really hard to kind of transition into a place of it's
Speaker:
00:24:43
not about the thing being perfect.
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00:24:45
And my not being represented as being perfect.
Speaker:
00:24:48
It's about giving everybody ultimate.
Speaker:
00:24:51
Transparency because again, if ops is the goal of being efficient and scalable.
Speaker:
00:24:57
If something's broken and people can't do their job and you don't tell
Speaker:
00:25:00
them everyone's being inefficient.
Speaker:
00:25:03
And so that transparency truly enable scale and efficiency and so that everyone
Speaker:
00:25:09
can be focused on moving on to something that they could accomplish today or
Speaker:
00:25:14
creating a workaround or taking lunch early while we fix the problem so that.
Speaker:
00:25:19
There's not 15 people independently spotting a problem and trying to solve
Speaker:
00:25:23
it independently, or God thinking a campaign didn't work when in fact
Speaker:
00:25:28
the, tracking stopped on our UTM's
Speaker:
00:25:32
And that kind of transparency, can also be dangerous, like engineering teams provide,
Speaker:
00:25:37
you know, uptime and SLA's and rely, and they're, they're used to that, like
Speaker:
00:25:41
marketing ops teams are not used to that.
Speaker:
00:25:43
Have you found anyone feeling either threatened or resistant to the notion of
Speaker:
00:25:48
more transparency, more observability?
Speaker:
00:25:51
Yeah.
Speaker:
00:25:51
Yeah.
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00:25:52
Yeah.
Speaker:
00:25:52
We are actually thinking about doing a campaign where like we target ads to
Speaker:
00:25:58
everyone in the company saying, if you use stack moxie, you will see failures.
Speaker:
00:26:02
That's a good thing.
Speaker:
00:26:03
Your team is taking ownership or something.
Speaker:
00:26:05
Like, how do we educate executives to understand that when you start
Speaker:
00:26:13
getting better quality in place, you're going to find things.
Speaker:
00:26:16
And the goal is to communicate them.
Speaker:
00:26:19
we had a vendor that God bless and 6 months had 3 major outages
Speaker:
00:26:24
that impacted our product.
Speaker:
00:26:27
it was just the sign in.
Speaker:
00:26:28
So our product was still working, but we chose to communicate at the moment.
Speaker:
00:26:32
We knew.
Speaker:
00:26:34
and all 3 instances, the companies.
Speaker:
00:26:37
uptime monitor on their software said they were up and in Twitter, they had no
Speaker:
00:26:42
reported issues, but we knew it was down.
Speaker:
00:26:45
and so we reported it to all of our customers, and it's not
Speaker:
00:26:48
blaming the company that's down.
Speaker:
00:26:50
We chose that software vendor.
Speaker:
00:26:51
And if we have downtime, we have downtime and I had 3 investors ping me about the
Speaker:
00:26:56
quality of our team because we put our investors on those notifications as well.
Speaker:
00:27:00
If they want to be on it.
Speaker:
00:27:02
And so it's hard.
Speaker:
00:27:03
Like, people are not used to getting notified when there's a slowdown.
Speaker:
00:27:07
it's the double edged sword, right?
Speaker:
00:27:08
I think something's wrong with my system because I'm getting told
Speaker:
00:27:11
something's wrong with the system, but it's a value we have to live.
Speaker:
00:27:14
If we ever want marketing to get a little better, the other problem is, is we're
Speaker:
00:27:19
partnered with all of these marketing operations and sales operations tools.
Speaker:
00:27:24
and they are awful.
Speaker:
00:27:26
At admitting when things are broken and telling us those things.
Speaker:
00:27:30
And so, just like in business, I wind up calling out a bunch of our partners
Speaker:
00:27:34
who are crazy about all the time.
Speaker:
00:27:36
And they're incredible tools and they're better than the alternative,
Speaker:
00:27:40
but we're totally calling them out that some of them have.
Speaker:
00:27:43
Sub 90 uptime on certain pods.
Speaker:
00:27:46
Right.
Speaker:
00:27:47
And so no partner wants that.
Speaker:
00:27:49
you know, kind of like the classic thing that When you make a mistake,
Speaker:
00:27:52
but you recover, it can actually be better for you than if you didn't
Speaker:
00:27:54
actually make the mistake because you have like more positive sentiment
Speaker:
00:27:57
associated with the recovery.
Speaker:
00:27:59
I also think it's just the right thing to do, but like, we have an issue, I announce
Speaker:
00:28:03
it, I say, here's what's going on.
Speaker:
00:28:05
Ownership, here's our plan for mitigation, communicate, communicate, communicate.
Speaker:
00:28:10
It's resolved.
Speaker:
00:28:11
And like, you obviously have to pick and choose when that
Speaker:
00:28:12
sort of thing is warranted as otherwise you kind of annoy people.
Speaker:
00:28:15
But, I tend to think that works well and actually makes you look better than if
Speaker:
00:28:19
you're just like, no, everything's fine.
Speaker:
00:28:20
Everything's fine.
Speaker:
00:28:20
Like ignore the smoke coming out of the kitchen.
Speaker:
00:28:23
Like we're okay.
Speaker:
00:28:24
do you feel that that kind of mentality Is the, is the
Speaker:
00:28:26
industry moving in that direction?
Speaker:
00:28:28
Well, I think those are the people who are getting promoted and getting the strategic
Speaker:
00:28:33
roles, the people who are willing to do that and can communicate consistently
Speaker:
00:28:37
and effectively and save the rest of the organization from a bunch of headache.
Speaker:
00:28:40
I mean, it's the reason I knew everyone in the organization enough to figure out
Speaker:
00:28:45
where the bodies were buried because if something was broken, even my first job at
Speaker:
00:28:49
MTV, um, I got promoted on my very 2nd gig to running the venue because there were a
Speaker:
00:28:56
bunch of really cool people in bands who work there, but I would always be sitting
Speaker:
00:29:00
in the office and would answer the phone.
Speaker:
00:29:02
And so Madison Square Garden would start asking for me over my boss
Speaker:
00:29:05
because they could always get me and I would run around and go figure it out.
Speaker:
00:29:08
Right?
Speaker:
00:29:09
so if you communicate, Okay.
Speaker:
00:29:10
And you're transparent, people learn to trust you and then
Speaker:
00:29:14
they task you with more.
Speaker:
00:29:15
And especially if you've turned down things you're not competent at and capable
Speaker:
00:29:19
of, they'll almost demand that you then figure out how to take those things on.
Speaker:
00:29:23
it's also a really great way to get visibility.
Speaker:
00:29:27
Brent Kaiser, who is brilliant, who, built the marketing operations function at, bank
Speaker:
00:29:32
of Hawaii, one of our amazing customers.
Speaker:
00:29:35
Our goal was on his monthly report for people not to feel like they needed to
Speaker:
00:29:41
read it, that they knew if something was wrong, that, they would be notified.
Speaker:
00:29:48
And so that monthly report, like, if they ever needed to go back and
Speaker:
00:29:51
look at it, the data was there, but that they felt so comfortable,
Speaker:
00:29:53
they could ignore those emails.
Speaker:
00:29:55
It's a great philosophy.
Speaker:
00:29:57
I look at it like a Gantt chart and a proposal deck.
Speaker:
00:29:59
Nobody actually looks at the Gantt chart.
Speaker:
00:30:01
They don't care.
Speaker:
00:30:01
It's never right.
Speaker:
00:30:03
But somehow having it, there's like a comfort, you know, like you
Speaker:
00:30:06
trust that this, whoever prepared it has things under control.
Speaker:
00:30:10
it's evidently the slide that investors always go to is the market
Speaker:
00:30:13
bigger than 5 billion dollars.
Speaker:
00:30:15
Yes.
Speaker:
00:30:16
All right, let's move forward.
Speaker:
00:30:17
Like, they don't have any idea what went into it, but is this
Speaker:
00:30:20
Wacky founder thinking they can build a 5 billion company.
Speaker:
00:30:23
Great.
Speaker:
00:30:24
One of the challenges I see with justifying, tech for revenue observability
Speaker:
00:30:29
as an expense is that no one thinks they really need it until they do.
Speaker:
00:30:33
you don't think you need insurance until you have an accident kind of thing.
Speaker:
00:30:36
And probably with bigger companies who are more risk averse, it's maybe easier.
Speaker:
00:30:42
but it's, hard.
Speaker:
00:30:42
And I see it as a smaller company where it's like, well, am I going to like
Speaker:
00:30:45
invest time in that, or am I going to invest time in X it's a really hard sell.
Speaker:
00:30:50
How have you found that bringing this solution to market?
Speaker:
00:30:53
My biggest insight.
Speaker:
00:30:55
I don't know if any of y'all know Steven Dunstan.
Speaker:
00:30:57
So he's leading all of our revenue functions.
Speaker:
00:31:01
he's really funny.
Speaker:
00:31:01
He and I are so super aligned on how we want to go to market.
Speaker:
00:31:05
our investors keep asking us to hire like SDRs and salespeople.
Speaker:
00:31:08
And I'm like, Oh, I just, I just can't bring myself to do it.
Speaker:
00:31:12
and he's like, look, Starting a company is hard enough.
Speaker:
00:31:15
We can at least respect ourselves and, and, you know, not be the
Speaker:
00:31:18
people out there doing that.
Speaker:
00:31:20
he's someone that I'm very, very aligned with and he, has done a really
Speaker:
00:31:26
great job of helping us realize that marketing ops people, like people who
Speaker:
00:31:29
are in the day to day and the management are very worried about time savings.
Speaker:
00:31:33
which if you ask any VC investor or any sales guy, like time savings is
Speaker:
00:31:37
the least important virtue, but a marketing ops person, because everything
Speaker:
00:31:42
is so manual, that is their currency.
Speaker:
00:31:45
That is our most important thing.
Speaker:
00:31:47
And their boss could give a shit, right?
Speaker:
00:31:49
Like, sorry, Justin, if you need to spend an extra 10 hours a week
Speaker:
00:31:53
to do it your way, do it your way.
Speaker:
00:31:55
So The hard thing for us has been helping even our incredibly smart marketing ops
Speaker:
00:32:03
people who are early adopters not sell their bosses on the thing that mattered
Speaker:
00:32:08
to them, but sell their bosses on the thing that mattered to their boss.
Speaker:
00:32:12
cause like we do GDPR privacy compliance.
Speaker:
00:32:16
Most people could get that sent through procurement and six minutes flat.
Speaker:
00:32:21
They don't really care.
Speaker:
00:32:22
They know they have to do it.
Speaker:
00:32:24
they care that it's done.
Speaker:
00:32:25
Right.
Speaker:
00:32:25
But that's the extent of it.
Speaker:
00:32:26
What they really care about is putting a really dynamic automated
Speaker:
00:32:30
QA in the hands of their marketer.
Speaker:
00:32:33
Um, so that they don't have to do the QA and there's not a 48
Speaker:
00:32:36
hour turnaround on them doing the QA on their marketer's back.
Speaker:
00:32:39
The CMO or the data privacy guys, like do the QA, so plan
Speaker:
00:32:47
it earlier, get it out on time.
Speaker:
00:32:48
Who cares?
Speaker:
00:32:49
Right?
Speaker:
00:32:49
Like if you have to do that, you have to do that, but it's the,
Speaker:
00:32:52
well, we can't check it and have third party verifiable logs.
Speaker:
00:32:56
If we don't have a third party tool doing these things that
Speaker:
00:33:00
check for the GDPR privacy.
Speaker:
00:33:02
So he's been amazing at helping figure out.
Speaker:
00:33:05
That there are different audiences that need different
Speaker:
00:33:08
messages.
Speaker:
00:33:09
So you almost have to, and I don't mean this in a negative sense, but you almost
Speaker:
00:33:11
have to Trojan horse some of the benefits within, other benefits that are also true,
Speaker:
00:33:17
but that are more like business oriented.
Speaker:
00:33:19
Because I completely agree with you.
Speaker:
00:33:20
No one cares about saving RevOps time.
Speaker:
00:33:22
Like we wish they did, but really low on the company priority list.
Speaker:
00:33:27
Even where saving that time would be, you know, objectively helpful to the business.
Speaker:
00:33:31
Yeah, they don't get it.
Speaker:
00:33:32
So they can't care, and I think that's the other big challenge we have in
Speaker:
00:33:35
our industry is there is no CMO who really gets it, who can therefore
Speaker:
00:33:43
help us be better at our jobs.
Speaker:
00:33:45
Like, we're having to figure it out on our own and thank God for you because,
Speaker:
00:33:50
you know, you and our communities and we're trying to partner with each other.
Speaker:
00:33:53
We're lifting each other up and it's really, really hard.
Speaker:
00:33:57
but your CMO isn't going to be like, Hey, have you ever thought
Speaker:
00:34:01
about the fact that you're running?
Speaker:
00:34:03
The most expensive technology investment in our company, and you're
Speaker:
00:34:08
running it like a marketing campaign.
Speaker:
00:34:10
Meanwhile, there are 17 people on DevOps running our cloud
Speaker:
00:34:15
services, and we're spending 20, 30 percent less as a company on that.
Speaker:
00:34:20
And that's the entire backbone for our whole product.
Speaker:
00:34:22
and so when you start to realize this is every dollar of revenue and the
Speaker:
00:34:26
most expensive piece of technology at our company, it puts a different
Speaker:
00:34:31
light on how you should be focusing on managing that infrastructure.
Speaker:
00:34:35
I see on your website as well, you talk about monitoring AI
Speaker:
00:34:39
implementations, you know, I've, I've used StackMoxie in the past.
Speaker:
00:34:42
I'm familiar with lots of what you do, but this is a newer thing.
Speaker:
00:34:45
And is this, I know it is obligatory.
Speaker:
00:34:47
You probably have to include it in your term sheets that you will
Speaker:
00:34:49
mention AI on your home page.
Speaker:
00:34:51
every size company has to do it now.
Speaker:
00:34:53
But, what's the deal there?
Speaker:
00:34:55
Like, how do you, you see observability as it relates to AI?
Speaker:
00:34:58
I think it's what makes AI possible in all sales and marketing.
Speaker:
00:35:02
one of our technology leader for the last year is a guy named Sev Garriskin.
Speaker:
00:35:08
and he is very passionate.
Speaker:
00:35:10
the AI alignment issue.
Speaker:
00:35:13
And so if you think about Skynet and the Terminator and what happens, it's where
Speaker:
00:35:19
AI realizes that humans are the problem.
Speaker:
00:35:22
they task AI with saving the planet and they realize humans are the problem.
Speaker:
00:35:25
And so the machines start to eradicate humanity.
Speaker:
00:35:29
It's a misalignment.
Speaker:
00:35:31
when AI is deployed in customer service chat, half the time we see
Speaker:
00:35:36
it trying to make the end user happy.
Speaker:
00:35:39
As opposed to solving the problems in alignment with the company's goals.
Speaker:
00:35:44
And so he spent the last year helping us figure out how to build
Speaker:
00:35:48
these basic functions, and now he's off, to start a new company to
Speaker:
00:35:52
literally prevent the Skynet thing.
Speaker:
00:35:54
He is trying to solve AI alignment for the betterment of humanity.
Speaker:
00:35:58
So I've been really lucky to have him in my life.
Speaker:
00:36:01
but when you think about that, Deploying a I, you have to make sure it's aligned
Speaker:
00:36:08
with your brand aligned with your goals integrated with the technology that
Speaker:
00:36:12
needs to feed it in order to just work.
Speaker:
00:36:16
so all the different things we can do where we can.
Speaker:
00:36:20
ingest your brand guidelines, and then check to make sure that the color on
Speaker:
00:36:25
your landing page is the right color.
Speaker:
00:36:27
Or when you have a chat conversation with someone, you want to make sure that the
Speaker:
00:36:34
chat answer comes back, with the truth.
Speaker:
00:36:39
Or what you would expect it to do or what a salesperson would say.
Speaker:
00:36:42
and we've always been able to look at chat.
Speaker:
00:36:44
We've always been able to test against these dynamic variables being pulled
Speaker:
00:36:47
from Salesforce or whatever system.
Speaker:
00:36:50
so bringing that all together is kind of the backbone of AI theoretically working.
Speaker:
00:36:56
and so think the other side of that coin is 60 percent of investments
Speaker:
00:37:02
in AI applications have been going to sales and marketing functions.
Speaker:
00:37:07
And if you read how developers are thinking about using AI in their life,
Speaker:
00:37:13
the thing is, you write a prompt.
Speaker:
00:37:16
Then you write a validation test to make sure the prompt worked.
Speaker:
00:37:19
don't have any of that validation testing.
Speaker:
00:37:22
when you're trying to get a new app through to procurement, procurement's
Speaker:
00:37:26
like, how do we know it's going to work?
Speaker:
00:37:28
How do we know it's not going to drift?
Speaker:
00:37:29
How do we know it's not going to hallucinate?
Speaker:
00:37:32
our tool can do all that testing.
Speaker:
00:37:33
So I think it's a great moment for critical thinkers like you and I
Speaker:
00:37:40
in RevOps as AI is being deployed.
Speaker:
00:37:43
It's also the complex versus the complicated problem.
Speaker:
00:37:46
Once AI is involved, it becomes unknowingly complex.
Speaker:
00:37:51
We could do something complicated manually, but once you add AI
Speaker:
00:37:55
into that mix, generative AI, it becomes unknowingly complex.
Speaker:
00:37:58
You can only test it
Speaker:
00:37:59
automatically.
Speaker:
00:38:00
So just like, let's say a simple integration test lead fills out a form.
Speaker:
00:38:05
Do they make it into salesforce?
Speaker:
00:38:06
We can use technology to check other technology.
Speaker:
00:38:10
Okay.
Speaker:
00:38:10
are you using AI to check other AI, like basically having prompts to
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00:38:14
check the output of, of other prompts?
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00:38:16
Right now our product, the AI is actually being used for us to build integrations.
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00:38:23
So that's how A.
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00:38:25
I.
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00:38:25
Is being deployed today.
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00:38:27
we also have some A.
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00:38:29
I.
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00:38:29
Functions where we can check alignment with, like, brand
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00:38:32
values or things like that, in A.
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00:38:34
I.
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00:38:35
The goal for what's next is to be able to use natural language to
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00:38:41
have this chat conversations to check as many variables as possible.
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00:38:45
So it would be a I running.
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00:38:48
The chat engagement on our side with the AI chat on the website say,
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00:38:54
so we're going to Acme Corp, and they've got a customer service chat
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00:38:58
on their website ours would be using natural language to submit questions.
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00:39:02
25 different ways.
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00:39:04
And then using natural language, generative AI to validate that
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00:39:07
those answers are what they should be against sources of
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00:39:10
truth.
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00:39:11
Super
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00:39:11
interesting.
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00:39:12
so I'm gonna talk a little bit about your journey as a founder.
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00:39:14
A little bit of what led you to start, like, what are some of
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00:39:17
the challenges, in doing this?
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00:39:18
Is it a good idea, to start a company?
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00:39:21
and how do you see that going?
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00:39:23
to start a company.
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00:39:25
Yes.
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00:39:27
I think that is a good idea.
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00:39:29
I think people who are wired like you and I, can figure out the skills
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00:39:33
that we need to like kind of be successful in running a company.
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00:39:37
And I, don't like being the face person.
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00:39:40
I'm not someone who enjoys.
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00:39:41
Public speaking.
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00:39:43
I used to say my dream job was to be the chief of staff for
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00:39:46
a senator on like judiciary or something like that in the Senate.
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00:39:50
now, actually, I'd love to be chief of staff.
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00:39:52
Hey, so you can publish this.
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00:39:54
This is my application.
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00:39:56
I want to be chief of staff for who's ever going to run that,
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00:40:00
like, subcommittee on technology.
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00:40:02
For the U S Senate, right?
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00:40:04
how do we get all the information in and make really good decisions?
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00:40:07
But I don't want to have to be the person who like ask kisses and raises money.
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00:40:12
so the business I picked to build, unfortunately, this business, the
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00:40:17
problem I was passionate about solving requires integrations.
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00:40:21
And so if you think about how Salesforce has been so dominant
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00:40:24
in the market, by having the app exchange all of these integrations.
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00:40:30
And so it's almost impossible to replace salesforce because people have customized
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00:40:35
it and have all these integrations that make it do what they need it to do.
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00:40:39
so stack moxie is very similar.
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00:40:41
Whoever wins this category, as evidenced by New Relic and Datadog
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00:40:47
is going to be the company that has people building integrations
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00:40:51
against the technology someday.
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00:40:54
AI makes that a little less true, but nonetheless, likely.
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00:40:59
And so my business is always going to be venture backed.
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00:41:03
It's going to be who will crown the winner of this market.
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00:41:07
and so for someone like me, where I want to know what world class
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00:41:10
is and I want to work towards it.
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00:41:12
So that's being number 1 under category who's insanely competitive.
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00:41:17
It means I am always going to have to have venture capital to do this.
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00:41:22
And someone who's as unfiltered as I am.
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00:41:25
Venture capital might not always be the easiest thing to do.
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00:41:30
So it takes a special kind of VC to appreciate me.
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00:41:33
venture capital brings strings.
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00:41:37
Now you've got board members to answer to.
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00:41:40
You've got questions.
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00:41:41
It introduces.
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00:41:43
Almost like the enterprise dynamic in some ways where you have like other
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00:41:47
considerations beyond just those that you see as the pure pursuits of
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00:41:52
the business, to take into account.
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00:41:54
So that's, that's a hard pill for some people to swallow.
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00:41:57
I'd
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00:41:57
imagine
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00:41:58
Well, we've turned down more VC money than we've taken.
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00:42:01
that definitely is something that helps, um, because what I'm unwilling
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00:42:07
to do, the big one they always want is for us to hire a ton of SDRs and
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00:42:11
I'm like, Our customers would hate us.
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00:42:15
we have an incredible reputation.
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00:42:17
We need to find better ways of getting out into the market for sure.
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00:42:20
But it's not SDRs to marketing ops people.
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00:42:23
It's just not.
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00:42:24
there's a
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00:42:24
point in our current timeline where someone like injected a mind virus
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00:42:27
into every VC where the answer to every question is like hire a bunch of SDRs.
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00:42:32
I don't know how, where, how this happened.
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00:42:34
percent, here's my theory.
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00:42:36
SaaS is like a bond model.
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00:42:38
And so they're trying to make it a predictable payback.
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00:42:41
And so, that's the mind virus is they're trying to make everything predictable.
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00:42:45
So if we hire this many SDRs, then here's the formula we have in our
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00:42:48
projection of how much revenue we're gonna do, So when I realized that they
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00:42:53
had a formula, they wanted to apply to us, I would turn down their money.
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00:42:56
Cause there's not a formula, we're going to discover what our customers need.
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00:43:00
we're also going to give them more value than we charge them every single time.
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00:43:05
Like half of the investors we've talked to are like, you need to triple your prices.
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00:43:09
And I'm like, we will triple our prices when they get 10 X the value.
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00:43:14
we're trying to educate people on the market and give them value, not
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00:43:18
gouge them because VCs want to see an immediate return on their money.
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00:43:22
So if you don't realize this is a massive category, that's the underpinning of AI.
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00:43:27
and we can do it with low costs and just making our customers successful,
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00:43:31
then you're not the right investor, which means it's been not fun for me.
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00:43:36
Every role has its drawbacks.
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00:43:38
Nothing's perfect.
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00:43:39
but it's good to know that at least there are, uh, VCs out there that you,
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00:43:43
you have found that you were willing to partner with and that who may be,
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00:43:46
we're less
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00:43:47
susceptible to the myofirms.
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00:43:48
Servin Ventures, Neeraj, our partner at Servin, Swan Ventures
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00:43:55
here in Seattle and Kirby at Ascend.
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00:44:01
They're amazing.
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00:44:03
Um, and we have a ton of other incredible angels and investors as well.
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00:44:07
So we are so incredibly lucky.
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00:44:09
so it unfortunately makes it even harder to add a new VC
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00:44:13
It's great sitting down with you, uh, MH, and it has been a lot of fun just
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00:44:17
watching your journey, uh, from the sidelines over the past few years,
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00:44:21
because I've, uh, You've been aware of and like using your tool in some
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00:44:24
early iterations in my past role.
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00:44:26
So rooting for you, folks, we will include a link to stack moxie in the
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00:44:31
show notes, but it's stack moxie.
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00:44:34
com.
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00:44:35
Go check it out.
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00:44:36
Uh, you can create an account, play around, uh, and it can do
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00:44:40
a lot of cool things for you.
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00:44:41
M.
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00:44:41
H.
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00:44:41
Thanks so much for coming on the show.
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00:44:43
You're amazing.
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00:44:44
Thank you so much for having me.
