WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:04.370 --> 00:00:07.320 Hey folks, today we have Andrew Edinger on the show. 00:00:07.330 --> 00:00:09.620 A gentleman that's been a friend for a number of years. 00:00:09.620 --> 00:00:13.540 He's kind of my go to guy on DevOps and infrastructure. 00:00:14.040 --> 00:00:15.810 Pretty unique sales motion. 00:00:16.300 --> 00:00:20.490 He's been a sales leader across six or seven companies. 00:00:21.180 --> 00:00:26.540 He was the one that took Pivotal from zero to five hundred million in ARR 00:00:26.540 --> 00:00:28.400 and it was eventually sold to VMware. 00:00:29.100 --> 00:00:30.900 Another one he did was Astronomer. 00:00:31.550 --> 00:00:34.190 Where we're going to unpack that a little bit and sort of the early 00:00:34.190 --> 00:00:35.960 signs of community led growth. 00:00:36.550 --> 00:00:39.920 And more recently he's joined Appen as CRO. 00:00:40.525 --> 00:00:45.205 A 300 million dollar revenue company out of Australia that's publicly traded 00:00:45.655 --> 00:00:50.835 as he tries to help the team pivot to more of a software product led company. 00:00:51.015 --> 00:00:51.515 All right. 00:00:51.915 --> 00:00:53.555 Here's my conversation with Andrew. 00:00:56.355 --> 00:00:57.765 We got a lot to cover today. 00:00:57.975 --> 00:00:59.885 I do want to start with astronomer. 00:00:59.944 --> 00:01:02.455 Give us the 30 seconds on what astronomer does. 00:01:02.665 --> 00:01:06.465 And then tell us a little bit of what the context was like there when you joined. 00:01:06.695 --> 00:01:07.975 Yeah, happy to Mark. 00:01:07.975 --> 00:01:08.745 And thanks for that. 00:01:08.745 --> 00:01:10.944 I think like most folks on your show, I like to build, I 00:01:10.944 --> 00:01:12.465 like to fix, I like to grow. 00:01:12.845 --> 00:01:15.975 And it was one of those opportunities in your career where there was an open 00:01:15.975 --> 00:01:20.744 source community that was vibrant, but also fractured at the same time and needed 00:01:20.744 --> 00:01:22.835 to be repaired and restored for growth. 00:01:23.400 --> 00:01:27.600 At the end of the day, it was an open source company around Apache 00:01:27.620 --> 00:01:31.650 Airflow, which very simply put was data orchestration, basically connecting 00:01:31.650 --> 00:01:34.499 all your disparate parts inside of your modern data stacks, your data 00:01:34.499 --> 00:01:38.490 gets from point A right to point B in a safe, secure, and reliable way. 00:01:38.770 --> 00:01:41.399 So when I joined, it was like an opportunity to say, Hey, look, how 00:01:41.399 --> 00:01:44.780 many times in your life do you get to go join a top level Apache project? 00:01:45.119 --> 00:01:48.569 All the vanity metrics are 20, 000 plus stars in a million 00:01:48.570 --> 00:01:52.110 downloads, et cetera, and really actually give that some new energy. 00:01:52.460 --> 00:01:55.849 There were about 20, 25 people in the company and sub a million 00:01:55.849 --> 00:01:57.529 dollars in revenue when I started. 00:01:57.685 --> 00:02:01.615 So we went from that sub million to the mid twenties, which included 00:02:01.615 --> 00:02:04.965 launching a cloud product and taking some other revenue that were, you 00:02:04.965 --> 00:02:07.065 know, in, in, in other channels down. 00:02:07.065 --> 00:02:09.774 So it was actually more growth than that, but it was a really exciting time. 00:02:09.775 --> 00:02:13.405 And companies continue to do absolutely fantastic under Andy Byron and team 00:02:13.405 --> 00:02:14.505 and they're crushing it right now. 00:02:14.744 --> 00:02:15.144 Awesome. 00:02:15.735 --> 00:02:20.065 You said coming in, it was a little fractured, the community. 00:02:20.755 --> 00:02:22.295 Can you tell us what that means? 00:02:22.305 --> 00:02:24.595 Like what, how did you know it was fractured? 00:02:24.605 --> 00:02:25.704 How do you measure that? 00:02:25.704 --> 00:02:27.085 And what do you think was the cause of it? 00:02:27.225 --> 00:02:31.275 Yeah, look again, you know, I think the developer is very powerful and 00:02:31.275 --> 00:02:32.744 they have a very powerful voice. 00:02:32.744 --> 00:02:37.045 And there was a number of kind of core and foundational features that 00:02:37.055 --> 00:02:40.605 had been asked to be included in the project for a number of years. 00:02:40.605 --> 00:02:44.964 It just never materialized into a packaged upgrade and piece of 00:02:44.965 --> 00:02:46.165 software that folks could use. 00:02:46.450 --> 00:02:49.480 Namely the scheduler, which made all of these things work 00:02:49.480 --> 00:02:50.820 was not highly available. 00:02:51.060 --> 00:02:54.930 So as you sought to put this into your mission, critical workloads, you 00:02:54.930 --> 00:02:58.850 couldn't have a single point of failure, something just very basic, such as that. 00:02:58.890 --> 00:03:01.479 And there were a lot of promises made that weren't fulfilled. 00:03:01.479 --> 00:03:02.540 And so ultimately. 00:03:02.795 --> 00:03:06.204 To astronomers credit, the engineering team really delivered on that promise. 00:03:06.204 --> 00:03:10.714 And that really kind of gave a rebirth to the growth of the project. 00:03:10.714 --> 00:03:14.214 And a lot of hard work went into that and further, but that was really it. 00:03:14.214 --> 00:03:16.644 There were just a lot of skeptics that maybe in fact, there was a new way 00:03:16.644 --> 00:03:20.024 of doing things because there was not enough attention paid to some of the 00:03:20.025 --> 00:03:21.504 legacy features that were required. 00:03:21.755 --> 00:03:25.225 Alright, so this is a pretty unique context we haven't really unpacked 00:03:25.305 --> 00:03:30.945 on the show, and that is this very developer centric, open source context. 00:03:31.255 --> 00:03:35.165 As a newcomer to that, as a revenue person, as a salesperson, 00:03:35.645 --> 00:03:36.794 I would be a little freaked out. 00:03:36.985 --> 00:03:41.160 You know, developers, it's a culture of its own, and I don't Uh, 00:03:41.160 --> 00:03:45.660 generically speaking, I might say that like developers don't have a ton 00:03:45.660 --> 00:03:48.170 of respect for salespeople per se. 00:03:48.330 --> 00:03:50.010 Was that the context there? 00:03:50.040 --> 00:03:51.160 How did you navigate that? 00:03:51.160 --> 00:03:55.370 How would you recommend a sales leader coming into a context like, take that on? 00:03:55.539 --> 00:03:56.169 Yeah. 00:03:56.230 --> 00:03:58.769 Well, I think Mark, you hit the nail on the head. 00:03:58.810 --> 00:04:02.099 Look, I've had a lot of history before this with open source developers at 00:04:02.099 --> 00:04:03.879 Pivotal and Spring Boot and that whole. 00:04:04.160 --> 00:04:04.680 Movement. 00:04:04.680 --> 00:04:06.740 So I had a little bit of experience here. 00:04:06.770 --> 00:04:10.000 And as a result, I built technical chops and capabilities that 00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:11.250 I didn't have in my career. 00:04:11.750 --> 00:04:15.470 And so the first thing to your point, you cannot do is sell 00:04:15.480 --> 00:04:16.860 and you have to add value. 00:04:17.200 --> 00:04:17.640 Right. 00:04:17.669 --> 00:04:21.690 And so obviously I show up looking like a salesperson, probably talk like a 00:04:21.690 --> 00:04:25.989 salesperson and probably I'm not that incognito there, but once you start to 00:04:25.999 --> 00:04:31.150 add value and actually show that you can help and understand and have empathy, 00:04:31.435 --> 00:04:34.745 To solve the problems that they have and show them the way you start to 00:04:34.745 --> 00:04:37.005 earn the credibility and the respect. 00:04:37.315 --> 00:04:40.685 And I think it all comes down to understanding the user journey that 00:04:40.685 --> 00:04:44.674 they're on, because once you understand that user journey, you can understand 00:04:44.674 --> 00:04:48.134 the pain that they're in and in their environment, their situation, ultimately 00:04:48.134 --> 00:04:49.034 the impact you're going to have. 00:04:49.034 --> 00:04:51.685 So it still comes down to the basics of fundamental selling. 00:04:51.915 --> 00:04:54.395 And qualification, you're just doing it a much different way. 00:04:54.395 --> 00:04:57.855 That's much more technical led than sort of sales and qualification 00:04:57.855 --> 00:04:58.784 led, if that makes sense. 00:04:58.965 --> 00:04:59.575 It does. 00:04:59.605 --> 00:05:01.425 But can you unpack value a little bit? 00:05:01.425 --> 00:05:06.255 Because I'm going to channel a new seller or leader coming into this context. 00:05:06.255 --> 00:05:10.155 It's almost feels like I have to go spend three years in some sort 00:05:10.155 --> 00:05:14.434 of computer science department to like go toe to toe with these folks. 00:05:14.434 --> 00:05:19.425 How can I possibly add value to a developer who's been coding for 15 00:05:19.425 --> 00:05:21.255 years when I've never touch code or. 00:05:21.560 --> 00:05:23.970 Did you have to go and literally learn to code a little bit? 00:05:24.570 --> 00:05:29.070 I would say that I had to learn to code, but I did learn how to use the product. 00:05:29.090 --> 00:05:33.869 And I did learn how at the end of the day, if you're a developer and you're 00:05:33.869 --> 00:05:37.940 deploying something to production and being able to view and look at logs 00:05:37.940 --> 00:05:42.300 and metrics in a dashboard that could tell you the health, the state, and 00:05:42.300 --> 00:05:45.520 how things are running in production, you could very easily show them how 00:05:45.520 --> 00:05:49.070 that might be something that would add value to them that was previously 00:05:49.090 --> 00:05:50.920 impossible in the open source world. 00:05:51.200 --> 00:05:55.020 Or that they would have to spend their precious time coding, configuring, 00:05:55.020 --> 00:05:59.219 managing, upgrading, supporting, and scaling out to the rest of the enterprise. 00:05:59.400 --> 00:06:03.079 And that at the end of the day was not something that a data engineer and that 00:06:03.079 --> 00:06:06.489 core persona was really interested in doing, they were interested in doing 00:06:06.489 --> 00:06:08.569 their daily lives of getting data ready. 00:06:08.745 --> 00:06:11.495 For the organization to consume and for business leaders to make 00:06:11.625 --> 00:06:14.005 informed decisions and actions to run the business off of. 00:06:14.255 --> 00:06:14.565 Okay. 00:06:14.565 --> 00:06:18.595 So if I know like medic or I know like challenger sale, something off 00:06:18.595 --> 00:06:24.735 the shelf, it feels like I have to customize that to this buyer context. 00:06:25.414 --> 00:06:30.035 Like what falls flat if I'm just like a straight out medic implementer 00:06:30.075 --> 00:06:31.155 and I did that and whatever. 00:06:31.420 --> 00:06:32.930 Healthcare, finance, whatever. 00:06:32.930 --> 00:06:34.770 And now I'm going into the developer environment. 00:06:35.670 --> 00:06:36.990 How does that have to be tweaked? 00:06:37.240 --> 00:06:37.640 Yeah. 00:06:37.850 --> 00:06:40.760 Well, for starters, most of the developers in the open source 00:06:40.760 --> 00:06:41.840 world don't have any money. 00:06:42.050 --> 00:06:43.850 They don't actually care about your metrics. 00:06:43.850 --> 00:06:47.179 They don't actually care about being qualified and worse. 00:06:47.199 --> 00:06:49.510 They actually have no idea how software gets procured 00:06:49.519 --> 00:06:50.800 inside of their organization. 00:06:50.930 --> 00:06:54.370 At the end of the day, you have to implement a process. 00:06:54.585 --> 00:06:58.035 Such that they understand that you can make their life better. 00:06:58.275 --> 00:07:01.965 And once you do that, you've earned the credibility to then ask for the 00:07:01.965 --> 00:07:06.255 next steps on how you would get to their boss, what this would mean and 00:07:06.255 --> 00:07:07.814 how you would articulate the value. 00:07:07.814 --> 00:07:09.534 And we've learned this the hard way, right? 00:07:09.534 --> 00:07:11.874 There were plenty of times I called a Casper, the ghost. 00:07:12.094 --> 00:07:13.485 You thought you did a great job. 00:07:13.655 --> 00:07:16.205 You let them go sell on your behalf to their boss. 00:07:16.455 --> 00:07:20.265 And guess what you see in salesforce close unresponsive. 00:07:20.585 --> 00:07:24.654 And so we had to really radically change our engagement model around 00:07:24.655 --> 00:07:29.094 situation, Bain impact that would then frame up sort of where they were 00:07:29.094 --> 00:07:32.939 trying to go and be very prescriptive about how the engagement model worked. 00:07:33.210 --> 00:07:37.760 And earning the right and the credibility to then take that next step together 00:07:37.969 --> 00:07:42.270 with them and enabling them with the tools and us and our technical 00:07:42.380 --> 00:07:46.480 personas to be able to communicate with their VPs and heads of engineering 00:07:46.710 --> 00:07:48.079 on the value that we could provide. 00:07:48.079 --> 00:07:49.359 And so it was a delicate dance mark. 00:07:49.360 --> 00:07:50.199 There's no doubt about it. 00:07:50.710 --> 00:07:54.099 Help me unpack that as like a sales coach or manager. 00:07:54.140 --> 00:07:55.369 So it's like, okay. 00:07:55.780 --> 00:08:01.260 You're listening to a first meeting between one of your reps and these, 00:08:01.320 --> 00:08:05.930 this engineer and the engineer is loving it like, Oh my gosh, this is great. 00:08:05.930 --> 00:08:06.810 I had no idea. 00:08:06.810 --> 00:08:08.690 You've showed me exactly the value. 00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:11.760 I'm going to take this to my VP engineer and I need this product 00:08:12.469 --> 00:08:15.509 and the engineer and the salesperson is like, okay, that's great. 00:08:15.969 --> 00:08:17.270 Can I join the meeting? 00:08:17.620 --> 00:08:18.980 I'd like to be part of that. 00:08:19.610 --> 00:08:21.030 And the answer is no, no, no, no, no. 00:08:21.250 --> 00:08:23.359 My VP of engineering is extremely busy. 00:08:23.359 --> 00:08:25.019 I'll just handle this on my own. 00:08:25.739 --> 00:08:30.379 And your salesperson's like, okay, that's not acceptable from what you're saying. 00:08:30.530 --> 00:08:35.500 So how do you handle that objection of like getting to power in this context? 00:08:35.610 --> 00:08:37.449 Yeah, it's a very good question. 00:08:37.519 --> 00:08:38.620 Very astute, Mark. 00:08:38.650 --> 00:08:42.129 And look, at the end of the day, uh, we did a lot of that early on 00:08:42.130 --> 00:08:43.650 and we learned our lessons, right? 00:08:43.679 --> 00:08:45.500 And they were, it was variable. 00:08:45.760 --> 00:08:48.380 Obviously hard to predict, hard to forecast and hard to understand. 00:08:48.380 --> 00:08:52.310 And so what we did was we learned that if we drove them into the product, 00:08:52.310 --> 00:08:55.849 which was not product led growth, it was sales led growth into the product. 00:08:56.220 --> 00:09:00.650 And we got them to deploy literally in a few hours in a workshop, a 00:09:00.650 --> 00:09:04.849 few of their pipelines so that we, we could show their management, 00:09:04.869 --> 00:09:06.989 their code working in this cloud. 00:09:07.345 --> 00:09:11.235 We drove an engagement process that we were up front and unapologetic about. 00:09:11.235 --> 00:09:12.735 It was like, look, here's our process. 00:09:12.964 --> 00:09:14.055 Here's how we engage. 00:09:14.095 --> 00:09:15.255 Here's your investment. 00:09:15.415 --> 00:09:17.564 And here's what we would like to do in return. 00:09:17.564 --> 00:09:19.765 If we prove these things, like, does this work for you? 00:09:20.124 --> 00:09:23.155 And we were able to attract them because we were willing to invest 00:09:23.155 --> 00:09:26.645 the time in the product with their working code and our engineers. 00:09:26.935 --> 00:09:31.615 To solve the problems that they had, and ultimately, because you're making their 00:09:31.615 --> 00:09:36.744 life 10x better, and because you're giving them their time away from focusing on the 00:09:36.775 --> 00:09:40.865 undifferentiated heavy lifting required on a lot of developers these days, they 00:09:40.875 --> 00:09:42.474 ultimately were ready to take you there. 00:09:43.445 --> 00:09:45.665 Hey folks, just Mark here to stop the recording. 00:09:45.695 --> 00:09:49.885 Yeah, this is an extremely abstract, common, and very 00:09:49.885 --> 00:09:52.955 challenging objection in sales. 00:09:53.525 --> 00:09:56.105 That, I suppose, we'll categorize as getting to power. 00:09:57.025 --> 00:09:59.655 It's coming up more often because historically in 00:09:59.655 --> 00:10:01.885 sales, we always called power. 00:10:02.835 --> 00:10:07.295 And due to some of these new motions like product led growth or even community led 00:10:07.305 --> 00:10:11.924 growth like we're talking about here, it's actually beneficial to engage the 00:10:11.924 --> 00:10:17.034 non decision maker, the people closer to the front line first, and then use their 00:10:17.034 --> 00:10:19.219 excitement and their support for it. 00:10:19.689 --> 00:10:21.560 To get to the decision maker. 00:10:21.979 --> 00:10:27.310 Now, in most situations like this one with Andrew, the engineer, even though 00:10:27.310 --> 00:10:31.680 they're so excited for this product, would prefer to go to their VP of 00:10:31.709 --> 00:10:36.830 engineering boss themselves without the salesperson, they know the boss, 00:10:36.860 --> 00:10:41.560 they know she is very busy and they want to be very protective of her time. 00:10:42.339 --> 00:10:45.449 And most of the time that's going to be a closed law. 00:10:46.409 --> 00:10:47.339 And here's the reason why. 00:10:48.729 --> 00:10:50.239 Engineers are not salespeople. 00:10:50.920 --> 00:10:53.670 And this is true in almost any other product you're trying to sell. 00:10:54.280 --> 00:10:59.219 They're going to position the product in how it benefits them, not how it 00:10:59.260 --> 00:11:01.640 optimally benefits the VP of Engineering. 00:11:02.269 --> 00:11:04.560 And that's what we have to get through first and foremost 00:11:04.569 --> 00:11:06.250 by getting access ourselves. 00:11:06.720 --> 00:11:10.069 So Andrew walked through a couple techniques that he uses with 00:11:10.069 --> 00:11:12.429 his team to get that access. 00:11:12.679 --> 00:11:13.519 I'll give you two more. 00:11:14.439 --> 00:11:18.440 One that I like to do is I like to say, You know, first off, just ask, like, do 00:11:18.440 --> 00:11:19.700 you mind if I join you in the meeting? 00:11:20.670 --> 00:11:22.450 Quarter of the time, that might actually work. 00:11:23.010 --> 00:11:25.820 And if they say, no, I'd prefer just to take this myself, then 00:11:26.569 --> 00:11:27.670 I'll ask them, okay, great. 00:11:27.680 --> 00:11:30.800 Just walk me through how you're going to explain the product to them. 00:11:32.369 --> 00:11:36.020 And there's a lot of different variations that you can take. 00:11:36.220 --> 00:11:40.270 But essentially, you, after they do so, you express some concern. 00:11:40.930 --> 00:11:46.084 You express some concern, like, hey, I know you really want this product, 00:11:46.084 --> 00:11:48.135 but like, I do this every day. 00:11:48.145 --> 00:11:53.075 And if I were your VP of engineering, I'm not sure I would be that excited based on 00:11:53.095 --> 00:11:54.915 how you just walk me through the product. 00:11:54.934 --> 00:11:58.405 Are you sure I can't just be sitting there in the room with you or sitting on the 00:11:58.405 --> 00:12:00.085 zoom with you to walk them through it? 00:12:00.515 --> 00:12:01.805 I'm going to take another stab at it. 00:12:02.655 --> 00:12:07.135 And if they absolutely deny me, now I am sales coach. 00:12:07.805 --> 00:12:12.425 I'm going to build the slide with them that they're going to walk 00:12:12.714 --> 00:12:17.014 into the office or walk the VP of Engineering through on Zoom. 00:12:17.635 --> 00:12:22.145 I'm going to explain to them and build out the content that positions my 00:12:22.145 --> 00:12:26.375 product in the way that resonates best with the VP of Engineering to make sure 00:12:26.375 --> 00:12:29.705 that this doesn't stall and I can get through this stage of the opportunity. 00:12:30.355 --> 00:12:31.725 Really common objection. 00:12:32.064 --> 00:12:33.675 And thank you for Andrew for bringing this up. 00:12:33.785 --> 00:12:35.055 All right, let's get back to Andrew. 00:12:36.165 --> 00:12:36.795 Now, yes. 00:12:36.915 --> 00:12:39.395 Were there times in which there was friction and it just fell flat? 00:12:39.425 --> 00:12:42.864 Of course, just like any perfectly run medic process, it doesn't work 00:12:42.865 --> 00:12:44.094 a hundred percent of the time. 00:12:44.375 --> 00:12:44.755 Right. 00:12:44.775 --> 00:12:48.354 But what that gave us was a far greater level of predictability. 00:12:48.365 --> 00:12:52.240 And most importantly, When you look at the consumption metrics, right? 00:12:52.260 --> 00:12:55.540 Those were the ones that ultimately wound up consuming more, which meant 00:12:55.540 --> 00:12:57.020 their net retention rates went up. 00:12:57.210 --> 00:12:57.490 Right. 00:12:57.490 --> 00:13:00.069 And as you very well know, and preach better than anyone in the world, that 00:13:00.069 --> 00:13:01.799 is the best leading indicator, right. 00:13:01.800 --> 00:13:03.149 Of a healthy software company. 00:13:03.149 --> 00:13:06.390 And so sometimes there's a little bit of pain involved in getting there, but 00:13:06.390 --> 00:13:08.320 it's necessary if you want to have right. 00:13:08.320 --> 00:13:09.579 A sustainable business. 00:13:09.579 --> 00:13:09.929 Do 00:13:09.930 --> 00:13:13.720 you think that's a shift in the last like decade or two of like, if we 00:13:13.720 --> 00:13:18.365 went back 20 years ago, The VP of engineering was doing more top down. 00:13:18.485 --> 00:13:20.595 They were like, this is going to be my tech stack. 00:13:20.595 --> 00:13:22.435 This is going to be our developer environment. 00:13:22.915 --> 00:13:25.415 And people can sort of just conform. 00:13:25.955 --> 00:13:31.955 And have we shifted to a more engineering first culture where it's like, almost like 00:13:31.955 --> 00:13:36.655 a servant leadership, you know, like as the VP of engineering, my job is to make 00:13:36.665 --> 00:13:39.505 my engineers as productive as possible. 00:13:39.505 --> 00:13:42.155 And if they're servicing cool tools that will help that they 00:13:42.155 --> 00:13:43.694 like that shows that productivity. 00:13:44.170 --> 00:13:46.800 That's my job is to clear that space and make that happen. 00:13:46.800 --> 00:13:48.000 Has that flipped a little bit? 00:13:48.479 --> 00:13:50.010 I absolutely believe so, Mark. 00:13:50.010 --> 00:13:53.930 And you know, I speak with many C level executives and they do reach 00:13:53.930 --> 00:13:57.050 down into their organization to find out the trends and what's happening. 00:13:57.365 --> 00:14:00.605 And I think there's this old saying that goes, don't ever bet against open source. 00:14:00.675 --> 00:14:03.645 And it's because it is so easy, but at the end of the day, 00:14:03.645 --> 00:14:04.965 these developers are powerful. 00:14:04.965 --> 00:14:05.634 They're smart. 00:14:05.635 --> 00:14:08.725 They spend their spare time evaluating these things and 00:14:08.755 --> 00:14:10.244 participating in these communities. 00:14:10.244 --> 00:14:14.614 And it's a really nice leading indicator of the future of, you know, what products, 00:14:14.615 --> 00:14:18.265 particularly in cloud infrastructure and data are going to rise to the top. 00:14:18.655 --> 00:14:19.935 Community led growth 00:14:19.944 --> 00:14:24.415 has become a bit of an acronym, you know, like product led growth. 00:14:24.694 --> 00:14:27.745 I think it's about maybe a five year delay in a way. 00:14:27.745 --> 00:14:29.115 I'm quite intrigued by it. 00:14:29.505 --> 00:14:33.214 Would you consider this motion that you all used at Astronomer 00:14:33.234 --> 00:14:34.734 as community led growth? 00:14:35.095 --> 00:14:37.555 Yeah, I mean, look, anytime you're an open source, like 00:14:37.555 --> 00:14:39.535 your first job is the community. 00:14:39.835 --> 00:14:40.335 That's it. 00:14:40.444 --> 00:14:40.865 Period. 00:14:40.865 --> 00:14:41.204 The end. 00:14:41.204 --> 00:14:43.505 And without a vibrant community, you don't earn the right to 00:14:43.505 --> 00:14:45.495 actually monetize anything. 00:14:45.495 --> 00:14:48.564 And so we took a strategy was called the three C's, which was 00:14:48.564 --> 00:14:50.345 community content conversion. 00:14:50.535 --> 00:14:53.795 And if we didn't do all of the right things to engage the community, which is 00:14:53.795 --> 00:14:59.785 a combination of obviously solid technical leadership and feature velocity and 00:14:59.795 --> 00:15:02.204 development into the core open source. 00:15:02.530 --> 00:15:07.500 But also rich documentation, rich libraries, rich certifications, right? 00:15:07.500 --> 00:15:09.710 Where we hired the top person from Udemy to run these 00:15:09.710 --> 00:15:11.719 classes and gave away 25, 000. 00:15:11.990 --> 00:15:14.030 Free certifications to go do that. 00:15:14.310 --> 00:15:18.089 All of the right content that HubSpot and others made very famous, where it was 00:15:18.089 --> 00:15:20.810 like, look, you're looking to integrate this with Snowflake or Databricks and 00:15:20.810 --> 00:15:25.589 provide all of that with no paywall, no emails, I don't want anything from you. 00:15:25.589 --> 00:15:27.309 Just use all that information. 00:15:27.559 --> 00:15:30.609 You have to combine those two things before you have the right 00:15:30.619 --> 00:15:32.310 to even think about converting. 00:15:32.590 --> 00:15:36.720 Them into some paid product or into a conversation around where 00:15:36.720 --> 00:15:39.150 your value can materialize itself. 00:15:40.430 --> 00:15:41.870 Hey folks, just Mark here. 00:15:42.060 --> 00:15:46.129 Yeah, I'm just loving this journey with Andrew right now. 00:15:46.130 --> 00:15:47.930 I'm loving learning from him. 00:15:48.639 --> 00:15:52.379 You know, there, there's some big movements at play here. 00:15:52.529 --> 00:15:54.909 This is getting back to empowered buyers. 00:15:56.369 --> 00:15:58.169 I think that's partially what drove. 00:15:58.634 --> 00:16:03.355 The interest and success of product led growth, empowering 00:16:03.355 --> 00:16:05.365 buyers to go try product. 00:16:05.584 --> 00:16:08.915 And I feel like community led growth is coming fast. 00:16:09.555 --> 00:16:12.094 This is a new marketing mechanism. 00:16:12.094 --> 00:16:16.494 This is a new go to market motion that's going to be just as disruptive and 00:16:16.495 --> 00:16:18.395 just as powerful as product led growth. 00:16:18.594 --> 00:16:22.765 It's obviously crawling out of The open source arena. 00:16:23.365 --> 00:16:27.724 And I believe it's applicability beyond that domain, beyond DevOps, beyond 00:16:27.765 --> 00:16:31.635 infrastructure to almost any type of B2B software is going to be powerful. 00:16:32.145 --> 00:16:37.674 So I love digging in here with Andrew to learn these concepts like community, 00:16:37.994 --> 00:16:44.454 content, and conversion to really dive into the uniqueness of dark social, a 00:16:44.454 --> 00:16:48.634 concept that's coming up here, but it's becoming ever increasingly important 00:16:49.005 --> 00:16:51.924 to marketers to be at the front. 00:16:52.425 --> 00:16:55.655 Of when the demand and awareness cycle happens and get visibility 00:16:55.655 --> 00:17:00.234 into that and nurture it and create a moat at the marketing side for 00:17:00.234 --> 00:17:01.915 your business through your community. 00:17:02.665 --> 00:17:02.915 All right. 00:17:02.915 --> 00:17:03.494 This is important. 00:17:03.504 --> 00:17:05.415 Let's hear more from Andrew on this concept. 00:17:06.774 --> 00:17:10.064 And so we really worked very hard on those three C's, but really 00:17:10.064 --> 00:17:11.294 the first two to earn the right 00:17:11.294 --> 00:17:11.854 for the third. 00:17:12.105 --> 00:17:13.365 So define that for us. 00:17:13.365 --> 00:17:17.314 Cause I think as PLG took off, I mean, it was kind of called freemium 00:17:17.314 --> 00:17:21.024 before, and then people call it PLG and that really took off. 00:17:21.025 --> 00:17:21.279 And. 00:17:22.240 --> 00:17:28.550 It was, it was a little difficult to define the boundaries of where PLG sat. 00:17:28.780 --> 00:17:33.040 And after staring at this for a long time, for me, it was basically. 00:17:34.505 --> 00:17:39.655 If I could use your product and extract value from your product without 00:17:39.665 --> 00:17:43.644 talking to a human, whether it was for seven day trial, whether it was 00:17:43.655 --> 00:17:48.404 forever without any payroll, that to me was a product led growth motion. 00:17:49.055 --> 00:17:50.745 How do you define community led growth? 00:17:50.915 --> 00:17:53.415 Like, where is the, is there a clear boundary there? 00:17:55.095 --> 00:17:58.395 Yeah, I mean, look, PLG is, as you suggested, and many folks have 00:17:58.395 --> 00:18:02.065 done, a world class job against that and instrumenting for the aha 00:18:02.065 --> 00:18:04.485 moment, and when users convert into. 00:18:04.919 --> 00:18:07.129 Teams, and then you can go after the enterprise and all of that. 00:18:07.129 --> 00:18:09.800 And I think that's well defined and well pioneered by many of 00:18:09.800 --> 00:18:10.919 the greats that are out there. 00:18:11.250 --> 00:18:14.479 I think on the community side, you know, there's a lot of adjacencies there. 00:18:14.479 --> 00:18:17.759 So you have the core community of like the personas that you serve, where 00:18:17.759 --> 00:18:21.849 you want them speaking, evangelizing, and talking to their peers about 00:18:21.850 --> 00:18:26.020 using your technology or your set of technologies, but then you also have 00:18:26.020 --> 00:18:29.850 the spheres of influence and sort of the adjacencies, like the VP of engineering, 00:18:29.850 --> 00:18:31.589 right, in this case, or the CIOs. 00:18:31.865 --> 00:18:35.585 Or the heads of business or the folks that run, you know, your cloud 00:18:35.605 --> 00:18:37.245 data warehouses in this example. 00:18:37.245 --> 00:18:39.155 And so you have a multitude of these communities that 00:18:39.175 --> 00:18:40.565 ultimately then can intersect. 00:18:41.045 --> 00:18:41.235 Right. 00:18:41.235 --> 00:18:42.605 And that's much different than PLG. 00:18:42.605 --> 00:18:46.944 PLG is like just getting the product at all costs and then our system takes over. 00:18:47.145 --> 00:18:51.074 The communities are a lot more intricate and a lot more complicated 00:18:51.244 --> 00:18:53.155 and intersect in many different ways. 00:18:53.185 --> 00:18:57.275 And in fact, actually running both strategies is really powerful. 00:18:57.275 --> 00:18:57.985 It's tricky. 00:18:58.175 --> 00:19:02.015 But if you think about it, actually executing against that community process 00:19:02.045 --> 00:19:05.905 into a PLG motion gives you perfect nirvana because in theory, then they get 00:19:05.905 --> 00:19:10.295 into your funnel, a lot more educated, a lot more willing, and sort of already down 00:19:10.295 --> 00:19:12.125 that path versus just, Oh, I landed here. 00:19:12.125 --> 00:19:13.585 Let me check this out and see what it's like. 00:19:13.775 --> 00:19:17.834 Let's stretch the boundaries on that and go way outside this context 00:19:17.914 --> 00:19:19.024 where it's typically applied. 00:19:19.545 --> 00:19:21.645 You know, there's just a lot of companies, for example, a 00:19:21.645 --> 00:19:22.975 lot of entrepreneurs right now. 00:19:23.245 --> 00:19:26.755 Creating SDR co-pilot technology, something that our 00:19:26.755 --> 00:19:28.315 audience can relate to, right? 00:19:28.315 --> 00:19:32.335 So basically these are, you know, ai, ai co-pilots where it's like, 00:19:32.340 --> 00:19:38.025 okay, I as an SDRI go out, I find 50 accounts a month, create sequences, 00:19:38.025 --> 00:19:42.475 I execute them, I manage connect calls, I set appointments, whatever. 00:19:43.015 --> 00:19:46.555 And you know, a lot of that can be streamlined, automated 00:19:46.555 --> 00:19:50.165 using AI as an entrepreneur. 00:19:50.165 --> 00:19:54.275 In that use case, can I use community led growth? 00:19:54.699 --> 00:19:55.469 Absolutely. 00:19:55.499 --> 00:19:59.790 At the end of the day, you just still have to balance, right, the boundaries 00:19:59.790 --> 00:20:02.739 of these technologies like anything else, whether you're using community 00:20:02.739 --> 00:20:04.340 led growth in that AI context. 00:20:04.700 --> 00:20:07.560 Or you're using, right, those AI tools just to automate 00:20:07.570 --> 00:20:09.220 outreach or other sequences. 00:20:09.260 --> 00:20:12.629 You need to still ensure that you have that personalized touch and 00:20:12.629 --> 00:20:16.979 you don't come off as a robot and a machine because it's very disingenuous. 00:20:17.040 --> 00:20:20.230 And I've used some of these things and seen some of these messages from like, 00:20:20.550 --> 00:20:23.580 I'm not really sure if the person on the other end is going to look at this 00:20:23.820 --> 00:20:25.820 and actually believe that I'm a human. 00:20:25.820 --> 00:20:27.000 Now, some of them are good enough. 00:20:27.070 --> 00:20:31.040 And so I guess my long winded answer is to say, yes, but you absolutely need 00:20:31.040 --> 00:20:34.020 to be careful like you would with any other applied use of that technology. 00:20:38.160 --> 00:20:42.050 Talking Too Loud, hosted by Chris Savage, is brought to you by the 00:20:42.050 --> 00:20:46.700 HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. 00:20:47.590 --> 00:20:52.729 On this podcast, Chris Savage, Wistia CEO and Loudest Talker, takes you 00:20:52.729 --> 00:20:56.759 inside the minds of entrepreneurs as they share the hilarious, 00:20:56.809 --> 00:21:01.390 informative, and most challenging aspects of building more human brands. 00:21:02.170 --> 00:21:05.730 You can hear episodes like building a reusable notebook empire with 00:21:05.730 --> 00:21:10.950 entrepreneur Joe LeMay, Or the AI video revolution with Wistia's own 00:21:10.960 --> 00:21:12.770 head of production, Chris Levine. 00:21:13.360 --> 00:21:16.480 Listen to Talking Too Loud wherever you get your podcasts. 00:21:21.210 --> 00:21:28.100 What new roles come up in taking a community led growth first mentality? 00:21:28.119 --> 00:21:34.610 Because I, if I draw an analogy to PLG, you know, in B2B software, The 00:21:34.610 --> 00:21:38.003 PLG movement created this growth role. 00:21:38.003 --> 00:21:41.900 It kind of like blurred the boundaries between product and 00:21:41.900 --> 00:21:43.820 marketing and brought them together. 00:21:44.350 --> 00:21:48.319 This sort of like growth role would own this human, this funnel. 00:21:48.460 --> 00:21:50.810 They would run experiments like crazy. 00:21:50.859 --> 00:21:52.129 They would be data driven. 00:21:52.570 --> 00:21:55.159 These data scientists became popular. 00:21:55.479 --> 00:21:57.740 They often had data analysts on the team. 00:21:58.129 --> 00:22:01.759 They were product managers working with engineers working side by side with like 00:22:01.939 --> 00:22:04.439 paid digital designers and marketers. 00:22:05.414 --> 00:22:08.685 What's the analog to that in the community side? 00:22:08.695 --> 00:22:10.555 Do we have like community managers now? 00:22:10.555 --> 00:22:11.845 Or how do you, how does this. 00:22:12.350 --> 00:22:14.090 evolve the roles and the team. 00:22:15.479 --> 00:22:20.959 In the open source world to developers is developer advocates, and you can 00:22:20.969 --> 00:22:24.489 argue whether they belong in product, whether they belong in marketing. 00:22:24.629 --> 00:22:26.120 They shouldn't be in sales, right? 00:22:26.120 --> 00:22:30.360 They certainly can be under a CRO org, if you have enough of the wall set up, but 00:22:30.360 --> 00:22:34.230 their job and their team's job is simply to go out there and help the community. 00:22:34.545 --> 00:22:38.635 And it does drive sales professionals crazy when they find out that Mark was 00:22:38.635 --> 00:22:42.445 at a conference and spoke with Jane and Jane's in charge of data engineering 00:22:42.445 --> 00:22:44.325 at JP Morgan or whatever company. 00:22:44.515 --> 00:22:46.695 And you didn't tell sales, what are you doing? 00:22:46.695 --> 00:22:47.055 Mark? 00:22:47.084 --> 00:22:50.345 Like, and it's like, no, no, no, that's actually the worst thing you could do. 00:22:50.614 --> 00:22:53.995 And so there's definitely friction there, but it is necessary. 00:22:53.995 --> 00:22:54.445 And as. 00:22:54.740 --> 00:22:59.860 You know, revenue leaders in that space is incumbent on us to give those teams, 00:22:59.880 --> 00:23:04.670 the space to breathe and to foster those relationships, because it is 00:23:04.850 --> 00:23:09.160 something that compounds over time into material value for your organization. 00:23:09.419 --> 00:23:10.790 But it's not a one hit wonder. 00:23:10.900 --> 00:23:12.220 You've got to be comfortable with that. 00:23:12.220 --> 00:23:13.729 It's hard and it takes time. 00:23:13.730 --> 00:23:16.740 And that's the flywheel that ultimately gets going there. 00:23:16.740 --> 00:23:18.990 And then you can choose to invest in one or 10 or. 00:23:19.005 --> 00:23:21.975 20 or 30 of those and you know, how you scale that out, but 00:23:21.975 --> 00:23:23.265 it's the developer advocacy. 00:23:23.785 --> 00:23:23.985 All right. 00:23:23.985 --> 00:23:24.985 This is intriguing, 00:23:25.005 --> 00:23:25.575 Andrew. 00:23:25.625 --> 00:23:28.744 I want to make sure we have time to get to your latest role. 00:23:28.744 --> 00:23:32.214 Cause there's a whole new set of go to market challenges. 00:23:32.225 --> 00:23:33.015 So happen. 00:23:33.930 --> 00:23:39.550 Rockstar company, your CRL, very different context that you're walking into. 00:23:40.430 --> 00:23:43.800 Paint that for us and what's ahead for you in this role. 00:23:44.169 --> 00:23:44.499 Yeah. 00:23:44.500 --> 00:23:48.030 So look, we're publicly traded company in the Australian stock exchange, right? 00:23:48.030 --> 00:23:50.834 Our revenues, 330 million a year. 00:23:50.834 --> 00:23:52.739 Appen is so exciting. 00:23:52.749 --> 00:23:57.050 And you know, on one hand, it's the forefront of where AI is 00:23:57.080 --> 00:23:58.450 being developed and consumed. 00:23:58.450 --> 00:24:00.330 And on the other hand, it's a very mature company. 00:24:00.330 --> 00:24:01.670 It's been around for a while. 00:24:02.054 --> 00:24:06.574 Helping companies create the necessary data to train their AI model. 00:24:06.704 --> 00:24:10.624 We've had those tools forever that happened in a more services led approach. 00:24:10.624 --> 00:24:14.444 And now we're combining those to be much more product led with services 00:24:14.444 --> 00:24:15.424 that are enabled around that. 00:24:15.424 --> 00:24:18.245 It's really exciting given the rise of LLMs and all the 00:24:18.245 --> 00:24:19.844 conversation we find ourselves in. 00:24:20.724 --> 00:24:20.924 So 00:24:20.935 --> 00:24:23.175 how does a 300 million plus. 00:24:24.120 --> 00:24:28.080 Services, consulting business run. 00:24:28.740 --> 00:24:33.440 And in parallel, you are launching and growing a product business within that. 00:24:33.480 --> 00:24:36.800 That must create some operational challenges and tension. 00:24:38.499 --> 00:24:39.700 This is a very good question, Mark. 00:24:39.730 --> 00:24:43.599 Look at the end of the day, this is a set of tooling that we've 00:24:43.599 --> 00:24:48.950 run 24, 000 AI projects over the last 15 years on our own tooling. 00:24:49.290 --> 00:24:53.280 Some of our customers use that tooling and it's really just to say, Hey, look, 00:24:53.520 --> 00:24:59.250 we've done that many projects with 50 plus million man hours on these tools that now 00:24:59.250 --> 00:25:04.220 we're just going to expose out to folks to be able to use because what we're finding, 00:25:05.100 --> 00:25:09.864 I don't know why more entrepreneurs don't start as a services business. 00:25:10.194 --> 00:25:12.525 And then turn into a product business. 00:25:13.254 --> 00:25:14.414 Yeah, there are some issues. 00:25:14.514 --> 00:25:16.074 You know, I think I do know why. 00:25:16.784 --> 00:25:21.084 And that is because back in the day, we used to think that services 00:25:21.084 --> 00:25:23.684 businesses were VC fundable. 00:25:23.685 --> 00:25:28.374 And they became a really tarnished business model, especially 00:25:28.374 --> 00:25:29.294 for venture capitalists. 00:25:29.294 --> 00:25:30.444 They weren't as scalable. 00:25:30.925 --> 00:25:32.995 And so I think a lot of people have walked away. 00:25:33.555 --> 00:25:35.495 From pursuing a services business. 00:25:36.205 --> 00:25:42.475 And yet I think it's an amazing foundation upon which to build a product business. 00:25:43.085 --> 00:25:48.305 You are essentially getting paid by the market to do your market research. 00:25:48.685 --> 00:25:50.165 You are not sitting in. 00:25:50.804 --> 00:25:57.054 An insular room hypothesizing on where the demand is, you are out there solving 00:25:57.064 --> 00:26:02.644 real problems for real customers, driving value and understand how it works. 00:26:02.704 --> 00:26:05.665 You are seeing the patterns from client to client to client. 00:26:05.945 --> 00:26:09.885 You are in such a better position to architect and get right 00:26:09.894 --> 00:26:13.695 from the beginning your minimal viable product as you transition. 00:26:14.094 --> 00:26:18.415 Now, there are certainly challenges in that as you make that transition. 00:26:18.415 --> 00:26:18.479 Appreciate it. 00:26:18.960 --> 00:26:23.650 But I wish I saw more entrepreneurs start in their pursuit of their problem they're 00:26:23.650 --> 00:26:29.639 solving with a services orientation and then use that to transition into product. 00:26:30.189 --> 00:26:31.319 All right, let's get back to Andrew. 00:26:32.640 --> 00:26:36.060 It's like in the case of a large financial institution, if you're 00:26:36.060 --> 00:26:41.780 going to create an LLM in sort of wealth management and 401k rollovers. 00:26:42.060 --> 00:26:45.690 The experts on that data and their call center transcripts and your 00:26:45.710 --> 00:26:49.790 internal acronyms and how your software works are best held internally. 00:26:49.919 --> 00:26:53.800 And so you're going to need these tools and these platforms for your internal 00:26:53.800 --> 00:26:58.170 people to go create all of those workflows and collaborate with each other. 00:26:58.199 --> 00:27:01.170 And the tools today and the options that they have are spreadsheets. 00:27:01.339 --> 00:27:05.080 They have wikis, you have JIRA tickets, you have SharePoint portals, 00:27:05.230 --> 00:27:07.159 and there is no streamlined way to. 00:27:07.340 --> 00:27:11.199 To help them mitigate their risk of that data going to the wrong people's 00:27:11.199 --> 00:27:12.940 hands or the wrong things happening. 00:27:13.190 --> 00:27:16.509 There's no tools in place to help them actually accelerate their time 00:27:16.509 --> 00:27:20.819 to value in, into production with this massive backlog and at the same 00:27:20.819 --> 00:27:24.170 time, increase the effectiveness and the efficiency and the collaboration. 00:27:24.465 --> 00:27:28.285 Across a dozen plus personas that go involved into creating a simple 00:27:28.285 --> 00:27:30.375 LLM product into production. 00:27:30.385 --> 00:27:33.735 Because if you look at the life cycle of personas involved, it's a lot. 00:27:33.965 --> 00:27:36.225 And they need a platform to go work on and collaborate. 00:27:36.225 --> 00:27:37.724 And we've been doing that for a long time. 00:27:37.914 --> 00:27:39.225 We just have to reposition it. 00:27:39.225 --> 00:27:41.724 So people understand that it's a really exciting spot to be in. 00:27:42.424 --> 00:27:44.675 Yeah, it's a, it's a path of entrepreneurship. 00:27:44.675 --> 00:27:49.485 I wish was attempted more frequently to really understand the market through 00:27:49.485 --> 00:27:51.495 the services and then productize it. 00:27:51.505 --> 00:27:53.165 Once you understand where the needs are. 00:27:53.710 --> 00:27:58.950 But I, I, I don't want to undermine the go to market transitions that need to happen. 00:27:59.110 --> 00:28:00.640 So let's just talk for a second. 00:28:01.300 --> 00:28:03.650 You're mentioning the bank and this wealth management. 00:28:04.650 --> 00:28:05.559 What did you do? 00:28:05.559 --> 00:28:09.530 Are you just giving the existing account executive this product 00:28:09.549 --> 00:28:10.760 now and they're bringing it? 00:28:10.790 --> 00:28:14.339 Or is this a different type of seller and different type of seller 00:28:14.339 --> 00:28:15.960 motion to, to make this happen? 00:28:16.274 --> 00:28:17.485 Very good question, Mark. 00:28:17.485 --> 00:28:20.485 And again, to your point of entrepreneurship, maybe it's just 00:28:20.495 --> 00:28:22.225 actually called a glutton for punishment. 00:28:22.504 --> 00:28:25.314 I'm not sure, but these are fun and interesting problems 00:28:25.314 --> 00:28:26.784 that I find myself working on. 00:28:26.925 --> 00:28:29.225 And this AI journey is actually no different. 00:28:29.225 --> 00:28:31.745 And the common thread here is a really technical sale, 00:28:31.935 --> 00:28:33.584 a real technical engagement. 00:28:33.850 --> 00:28:37.840 Having to hire, uh, you know, the professionals that interface 00:28:37.840 --> 00:28:39.530 with these personas as peers. 00:28:39.739 --> 00:28:43.349 So instead of a traditional sales engineer, you know, I'm hiring data 00:28:43.349 --> 00:28:46.010 scientists and machine learning engineers that go and partner 00:28:46.010 --> 00:28:47.679 very deeply with these customers. 00:28:47.889 --> 00:28:49.429 Run the onsite workshops. 00:28:49.764 --> 00:28:53.975 Whiteboard their problems with them, help them understand the data that's necessary 00:28:53.975 --> 00:28:57.745 here and help them build those prototypes with them so that they can understand and 00:28:57.745 --> 00:29:02.084 working code on the platform, how this would work, which allows us to create the 00:29:02.094 --> 00:29:06.254 business case and the opportunity for them to see the light and how this can have a 00:29:06.254 --> 00:29:08.975 dramatic impact across the organization. 00:29:09.855 --> 00:29:14.945 Yeah, we're swinging back to these very technical roles. 00:29:15.614 --> 00:29:18.495 You know, a lot of us live in B2B SaaS and. 00:29:19.245 --> 00:29:23.965 There's kind of been a progression from like 25 years ago of like, Hey, 00:29:24.215 --> 00:29:26.435 can the technology even do this? 00:29:26.675 --> 00:29:29.275 And we did have technical people sitting side by side to 00:29:29.275 --> 00:29:30.555 go head to head with the CTO. 00:29:31.935 --> 00:29:37.004 To suddenly like, yeah, we pretty much know how this tech is going to work. 00:29:37.004 --> 00:29:38.264 It's, it's well understood. 00:29:38.264 --> 00:29:39.534 It's relatively commoditized. 00:29:39.925 --> 00:29:42.225 And it's more about the go to market. 00:29:42.225 --> 00:29:43.245 It's more about the brand. 00:29:43.245 --> 00:29:46.785 And it's more about the category creation that's going to drive 00:29:46.785 --> 00:29:47.875 the success of the business. 00:29:48.875 --> 00:29:50.805 I haven't sat around and been like, oh. 00:29:51.705 --> 00:29:55.315 Is that SaaS business even technically feasible? 00:29:55.395 --> 00:29:57.275 That hasn't come up for me in like a decade. 00:29:58.215 --> 00:30:01.375 Here comes AI and here comes those challenges again. 00:30:01.925 --> 00:30:04.265 Is this even technically feasible? 00:30:04.625 --> 00:30:06.005 How does this work? 00:30:06.305 --> 00:30:08.855 What kind of security implications does this have? 00:30:09.105 --> 00:30:10.965 I don't know how to adopt this stuff. 00:30:11.215 --> 00:30:14.675 So here comes the technical sales support staff back. 00:30:15.185 --> 00:30:18.495 And a lot of us haven't had experience in that in a while. 00:30:18.965 --> 00:30:22.000 Just a heads up, This is not unique to Appen. 00:30:22.390 --> 00:30:24.010 This is not unique to DevOps. 00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:30.120 If 90 percent of B2B software sales is going to be AI in the 00:30:30.120 --> 00:30:34.510 next 5 or 10 years, this is coming, especially in the early phases. 00:30:34.910 --> 00:30:37.300 So pay attention to Andrew's guidance here. 00:30:37.660 --> 00:30:41.140 And think about it if you're going in that direction with your product. 00:30:41.710 --> 00:30:42.820 All right, let's get back to Andrew. 00:30:44.150 --> 00:30:47.390 And so it's really just pattern matching from my last 12 years in 00:30:47.390 --> 00:30:49.120 different areas of, of this space. 00:30:49.120 --> 00:30:52.410 And arguably this is the largest one of them all inside of AI 00:30:52.410 --> 00:30:53.560 and really excited about it. 00:30:54.700 --> 00:30:54.980 Okay. 00:30:54.980 --> 00:30:55.920 That's fair. 00:30:56.030 --> 00:30:59.980 Now be a coach that as someone who has experience in there, so I'm sitting here 00:30:59.980 --> 00:31:06.950 as CRO of a pretty big team and I want to benefit from SDR co pilot technology. 00:31:07.650 --> 00:31:10.120 But my legal team's saying, no, we're not ready. 00:31:10.230 --> 00:31:12.580 We need another six months to get our act together. 00:31:12.580 --> 00:31:17.140 And I'm on the other side, there's this startup seller who's like, Hey, we 00:31:17.140 --> 00:31:19.160 just raised money at a huge valuation. 00:31:19.170 --> 00:31:20.910 We need some pilots going on here. 00:31:21.390 --> 00:31:23.160 And the CRO is like, I love this. 00:31:23.180 --> 00:31:24.020 I want this. 00:31:24.970 --> 00:31:29.430 But my legal team has given me the Heisman for six months. 00:31:30.100 --> 00:31:32.950 What is your recommendation as a sales leader, as a sales 00:31:32.950 --> 00:31:34.470 coach to get through that? 00:31:35.040 --> 00:31:38.930 The thing that we did successfully in some of my earlier journeys we spoke about, 00:31:39.140 --> 00:31:42.730 right, was we just ran these small pilots and then engaged these teams earlier. 00:31:42.970 --> 00:31:45.940 Again, it's counterintuitive, but the sooner you get security involved 00:31:45.940 --> 00:31:49.120 or risk or legal into these, you know, engagements, uh, better, 00:31:49.120 --> 00:31:51.940 and at least you understand where your objections are a lot sooner. 00:31:52.180 --> 00:31:55.130 It's not a fun saying is if I'm going to lose a deal, I'd certainly rather lose 00:31:55.130 --> 00:31:58.770 it in 30 days and 90 days or the last day of the quarter when I had it forecasted. 00:31:58.960 --> 00:32:00.920 But again, blockers still exist. 00:32:00.920 --> 00:32:01.850 This is new. 00:32:02.150 --> 00:32:05.140 There are no standards and your mileage will vary depending on 00:32:05.150 --> 00:32:08.360 person to person and company to company, but that's sales 101, right? 00:32:08.730 --> 00:32:08.880 I 00:32:08.880 --> 00:32:11.540 was so excited, Andrew, when I heard. 00:32:12.045 --> 00:32:17.225 Uh, sales leader caliber like yourself was jumping into Appin to help them 00:32:17.225 --> 00:32:22.825 with this exciting transformation and to help lay the groundwork for 00:32:22.825 --> 00:32:25.405 this AI revolution that's coming. 00:32:25.415 --> 00:32:28.285 So I'm going to watch your story closely. 00:32:28.425 --> 00:32:29.895 I'm sure it's going to be a fun one. 00:32:30.435 --> 00:32:31.099 And I really appreciate it. 00:32:31.130 --> 00:32:33.560 I appreciate you joining us today to drop knowledge. 00:32:33.930 --> 00:32:34.510 Thanks, Mark. 00:32:34.560 --> 00:32:35.200 It was a pleasure. 00:32:35.200 --> 00:32:35.730 I appreciate it. 00:32:35.730 --> 00:32:36.150 Thank you. 00:32:43.450 --> 00:32:46.310 Today's episode is written and produced by Matthew Brown. 00:32:46.670 --> 00:32:49.370 Our show is edited by Pizza Shark Productions. 00:32:49.740 --> 00:32:53.159 Big thanks to HubSpot for Startups and to the HubSpot Podcast 00:32:53.160 --> 00:32:54.880 Network for keeping the audio on. 00:32:55.080 --> 00:32:56.740 Hey, also, we're a new show. 00:32:56.810 --> 00:32:58.104 So if you like what you hear, subscribe. 00:32:58.345 --> 00:33:01.415 Or if you hate what you hear, leave us a rating and review over 00:33:01.415 --> 00:33:02.595 on your favorite podcast player. 00:33:02.605 --> 00:33:03.635 I love the feedback. 00:33:03.935 --> 00:33:05.555 Also check out stage two capital. 00:33:05.675 --> 00:33:11.994 We're the first VC firm running back by over 500 CROs, CMOs, CCOs. 00:33:11.995 --> 00:33:14.165 So if you're an entrepreneur looking to scale your business, 00:33:14.165 --> 00:33:15.675 check out stage two dot capital. 00:33:16.055 --> 00:33:17.325 All right, that's it for today. 00:33:17.545 --> 00:33:18.305 I'm Mark Roberge. 00:33:18.315 --> 00:33:18.935 See you next week.