AppChat

Brian Walsh
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  • BUSINESS

The AppChat podcast features B2B SaaS leaders sharing insights on how to supercharge growth. Learn real-life strategies, wins, opportunities and how to best leverage the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond to take your organization to the next level. Brian Walsh of CodeScience hosts decision-makers and thought leaders, talking tales from the trenches with those who have experienced something great.

Episodes

  1. 01/07/2019

    [E9] Salesforce Essentials EVP Meredith Schmidt on Helping SMBs Thrive

    AppChat

    26 min

  2. 12/18/2018

    [E8] A Conversation with AppExchange Leader Mike Wolff

    AppChat

    29 min

  3. 09/05/2018

    [E7] The Recipe for Success: Twilio's Ron Huddleston on Building Out Ecosystems

    Ron Huddleston, Chief Partner Officer at Twilio, joins the AppChat Podcast to discuss the importance of building out ecosystems and the differences he has seen building multiple ecosystems for various companies. Other subjects include breaking down various ecosystem models, how Huddleston's previous experience prepared him for working at Twilio, and the importance of trust and credibility in the industry. Here are the key topics, with timestamps, as well as the full interview transcript: Key Topics 00:00-01:58 Introducing the AppChat and our guest, Twilio's Chief Partner Officer Ron Huddleston 1:59-3:28 The challenges of indirect software sales 3:29-8:43 The importance of software companies building out an ISV and/or SI ecosystem 8:44-12:34 The differences in building out an ecosystem for Salesforce and Microsoft 12:35-17:10 The differences between a pure, cloud-based ecosystem, and a hybrid model including cloud and on-premise 17:11-20:02 How much Huddleston uses his previous experiences building ecosystems for Twilio, and how much he has to continue to discover and invent 20:03-25:54 The importance of trust and credibility when building out ecosystems 25:55-29:06 Building an app and sticking to the commitment you made to your ecosystem 29:07-30:22 Closing out and how to get in touch Full Transcript Intro: 00:01 You're listening to the AppChat, a podcast focused on SaaS growth strategies, plus successes in the Salesforce ecosystem, and beyond. Here's your host, CodeScience CEO, Brian Walsh. Brian Walsh: 00:14 All right. We're back on the AppChat Podcast. And today, I'm joined by Ron Huddleston, who, Ron, you have an incredible background when it comes to building out ISV ecosystems. Let me get this right. So you're currently the Chief Partner Officer at Twilio. Ron Huddleston: 00:31 Yeah. Brian Walsh: 00:32 Before that, CVP, One Commercial Partner organization at Microsoft. Ron Huddleston: 00:35 Yeah. Brian Walsh: 00:36 SVP of the AppExchange at Salesforce. Ron Huddleston: 00:38 Yep. Brian Walsh: 00:39 And started the OEM, ISV program at Oracle, where you were vice president. Ron Huddleston: 00:44 Yes. Brian Walsh: 00:45 Are there any bigger partner programs in the world to run than that? Ron Huddleston: 00:51 Amazon, maybe, now? Brian Walsh: 00:53 Maybe now, yeah. Ron Huddleston: 00:54 Yeah. Yeah, they're breaking new ground. But the Microsoft thing was definitely a big one. They've all been really fun. I do think that the folks at companies that get to build ecosystems, ISV, or SI, or any type of partner ecosystem, I think that it's probably the most fun job you can have at a bigger technology company, because you get exposed. It's not the same thing over and over. You get to really understand how to work with other folks and understand what's important to them. And so I stuck with it -- it was probably my 20th job at Oracle -- and when I found it and started building it, I just realized it was the most fun, like exciting, interesting, technically satisfying, from a business perspective, satisfying thing you could really do. So just from a personal perspective, I think it's probably the most fun you can have in cloud technology for a job. Unless you're like the CEO of a startup, or doing what you're doing, like building things. But if you're going to work for somebody else, I think it's a great job. Brian Walsh: 01:59 But I mean, I find that sometimes indirect sales, especially indirect software sales, can be extremely challenging. Like you're not actually doing that final license sale. You're lining up the partners and enabling them. I mean, is there something wrong in your head? Ron Huddleston: 02:14 No, there's not. It does carry its own set of complexities. But the strange thing is, whether it was on-premise or the cloud, those complexities repeat each other over, and over, and over again. So there really, after 20-odd years of doing this, there's not much you haven't seen, because where things get complicated is around human behavior, not necessarily around bringing really great solutions, and great partners, and technology together to solve problems. That's kind of the easy part, just to like address customer problems. Where things get a little crunchy is how human start, where things can get complicated, is when you're aligning different people, different organizations, different teams. That's where things get a little more complicated. I think everything up to that is not as complicated. But again, it's a pattern. And the patterns tend to repeat themselves. So you can sort of see around corners, the longer you do these kind of things, which makes it easier every time. This is, what, my third, fourth- Brian Walsh: 03:18 Fourth one. Ron Huddleston: 03:19 It kind of makes it a little easier every time you do it because you know, I probably made 10,000 mistakes. And you only make the same mistake three or four times. Brian Walsh: 03:29 Eventually, you get it right. So why an ecosystem? I mean, there's a huge amount of effort and investment. Why is it important for a software company to actually build out an ISV and/or SI ecosystem? Ron Huddleston: 03:44 Yeah. There's a lot of reasons. It depends on, are we talking about the technology company themselves that want to build an ecosystem? Brian Walsh: 03:51 Yeah. Ron Huddleston: 03:52 So you have to be a bigger company in order to do that, obviously. It's really hard to do it, otherwise. You can certainly build a small, little portfolio of folks that you work with if you're a smaller company. But there's nothing better than a broad ecosystem because it does a couple things. First things first is, if there's any way, shape, and form you're trying to prove out the sort of platform nature of the technology that you're trying to provide, the long road to get to that level of credibility is trying to do it yourself; trying to hire all the people in the world with the right expertise to sit down with a customer and explain to them, "No, bet on us. We're future-proofed. And you can do all of these things with us. We're a platform," it is really hard. The easier way to do it is to work with an ecosystem of technology, or IP, ISVs, and SIs; and the ones that are trusted in the space, that are maybe already trusted by the customers that you want to serve, and work with them to have them understand how your platform can help. And then build what's essentially, if those are the ingredients, then you know, the recipe book is how all those ingredients come together to help essentially cook a meal, like serve a beautiful meal for the customer, right? And so that's why it's a cool job. You get to be the chef, kind of. That's a good analogy, I'm going to use that analogy -- 20 years, I just discovered a new analogy. But you know, if you think about it that way, as ecosystems, as, you know, sure, you can call it one broad ecosystem, but really, it's a bunch of small solution maps, or what I was just calling recipes. It's a group of technologies, partners, companies, expertise, that solve particular problems. And no one company can really solve anything complicated on their own, really. Like it is just hard to do that over, and over, and over, and over again. You know, if you want to be broad-based, it makes it ... If you want to be a broad solution, like a platform, it makes it really hard to also solve problems, complicated problems, by yourself, right? If you want to stay really narrow and be like a really verticalized application or SI- Brian Walsh: 06:12 You can go super deep. Ron Huddleston: 06:13 You can go super deep. You can solve things on your own. But if you want to be big and broad, it's just the permutations of options are almost impossible. That's why ecosystems are so important. They drive credibility, but they also are the only way to solve really hard, complicated problems if you're trying to solve a lot of them. Those are the two reasons that it's great for the partner, or the platform, but it's great for all these companies that are sort of looking. It's great for cutting-edge companies. Like in the cloud, it was a wonderful thing. People actually all start relational databases. Like there were a lot of companies that were building up relational database practices back in the day. And there were these little, small startups that were building relational databases, or were driving Java for, like J2EE or something. Brian Walsh: 07:05 Yep. Ron Huddleston: 07:05 And I know this is going to sound really old. Brian Walsh: 07:07 We, you and I sound ancient right now. But keep going. It's great. We're reminiscing. Ron Huddleston: 07:10 Yeah. But the point was these companies, these smaller companies that would never have -- it was going to be a long time until they were big enough to where people really get exposed to them. Having an ecosystem, being part of a partner's ecosystem, of a vendor, a big platform's ecosystem, helped the companies that were the best, the most innovative, had the best technologies, sort of punch above their weight class, and could help change the market really quickly. So it's this symbiotic relationship between these platform players that need partners for the two, you know, for lots of reasons, but the two reasons I highlighted; but it's also great for partners, for ISVs and SIs, because it helps the best rise to the top. It helps the best innovate. And you know, it also, if you are the type of SIs or ISVs that are specialized in a particular place or industry, it helps you get access to customers where you might not get access before. So it's a real symbiotic thing when it's working really well, and nothing stands in the way, and there's no friction. And it's really just about sort of, you know, matchmaking. Like, you know, you're a cook. All your ingredients are great. You cook the best stuff. Everything, your oven works. Your waiters are awesome. I guess waiters would be sales in this analogy, right? Brian Walsh: 08:31 Yeah. R

    31 min

  4. 07/10/2018

    [E6] The Role of Strategic Alliances with Yeva Roberts of PFL.com

    Yeva Roberts of PFL.com joins the AppChat Podcast to share what her role as Senior Director of Strategic Alliances & Innovation entails and how relationship building plays an integral role. Also addressed is the critical gatekeeper role of Salesforce solution engineers, successful tactics PFL uses to interact with them to drive sales, and what to look for in a great Alliances Manager of your own. Here are the key topics, with timestamps, as well as the full interview transcript: Key Topics 00:00-00:50  Introducing the AppChat and our guest, Printing For Less' Yeva Roberts 00:51-2:23       Defining the role of Strategic Alliances and what it means 2:24-4:37          The history of Printing For Less 4:38-10:42       How Yeva got involved with PFL and the changes she has seen 10:43-11:55      Bridging the digital and print worlds to ensure people understand the value, importance, and opportunity 11:56-15:31       The breakdown of relationship building vs. business development in Strategic Alliances 15:32-20:04     The role of solution engineers and how to interact with them 20:05-22:39     How to identify the SEs that are going to help you the most to get established 22:40-26:21      Tips on managing relationships with your partner account managers (PAMs) 25:32-28:52      PFL's versatility across multiple clouds at Salesforce 28:53-30:15      What to look for in a great Alliances Manager 30:16-30:52      Closing out and how to get in touch Full Transcript Intro: 00:01 You're listening to the AppChat, a podcast focused on SaaS growth strategies, plus successes in the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond. Here's your host, CodeScience CEO, Brian Walsh. Brian Walsh: 00:13 Welcome back everybody. We are back on the AppChat podcast and today I'm joined by someone I think is absolutely fascinating. I had the honor of working with her for the past, I think a year and a half, two years. We've been on and off again, been working on things, having conversations, meeting up at conferences -- and so with us is Yeva Roberts who's the Alliances Manager for PrintingForLess.com. Welcome. Yeva Roberts: 00:39 Thanks, Brian. I'm so excited to be here. Brian Walsh: 00:41 It is great to be here. I'm sorry everybody else doesn't get to see the video of this because your smile just makes me want to speak in a really happy tone. So thank you for that. How would you define your role as an Alliance Manager? What does that mean? Yeva Roberts: 00:56 Wow. So, that's a tough one. So I guess it depends on what stage of growth you're in. As an ISV, I think for us being a startup within a larger company, it means that you get to wear multiple hats. So initially if you're the very first Strategic Alliances, evangelists is what we call each other, you get to be the channel operations person, the channel sales, channel marketing, what have you, because you're really trying to prove your worth in an AppExchange exchange of 4,000 apps. So for you and me, I think it's a matter of just being open to wearing multiple hats and navigating the ecosystem, and being that internal subject matter expert on Salesforce. As well as being that external subject matter expert on PFL, in my case to all the Salesforce solution engineers, account executives, marketing teams, PR, as well as all the SIs and ISV partners. Brian Walsh: 01:55 That is such an interesting role. I once heard it described to me as you're in charge of making sure two large companies, corporations, actually can speak the same language and understand each other. Yeva Roberts: 02:06 Yeah, it's funny. I love that because you're essentially a translator. You're getting to look at the world through a keyhole, really two keyholes, right? So you get to see your worldview as an ISV and then you get to advocate for and evangelize the second worldview of your partnership. Brian Walsh: 02:24 So why don't we back up a second and actually talk about Printing For Less. What is PFL? What do you do? Yeva Roberts: 02:33 So PFL is actually about 20-year-old company and it got its start as America's first eCommerce only print shop. So imagine in 1996 and 1998, that time period where eCommerce was still in its infancy, PFL had this idea really. The founder, Andrew, and his partner had an idea of, "Hey, we're in Montana, you know what would be really cool is to open up a print store." But because as you can imagine, the population in Montana doesn't really require you to have a storefront, they decided why don't we copy what Amazon user experience is like. At the time Amazon was just launching it and so they went live with the storefront on website only, so there was no physical store. And then fast forward, they accumulated about 125,000 small business customers. Those small business customers grew up and they thought that while Printing For Less -- or PFL now -- was doing a great job with print, what they were starting to do is really adopt tools like Salesforce for their CRM or marketing automation platforms and digital marketing platforms. And then they said, "Hey, you do a great job for us in print and since you are a marketing technology company first, meaning you have the API and the tech stack, why don't you integrate and make our lives so much easier. Integrate with these CRMs and these marketing automation platforms. And so that's when PFL, Andrew, and the team decided to pivot. It's been really about five years ago now that they decided to pivot and really take the company into a new direction. And we still have our 125,000 small business customers to serve on the direct side of the business. But now we're working within Salesforce and other ecosystems as well. Brian Walsh: 04:24 All right. So their printing shop, they've built up 125,000 customers, start pivoting into actually a channel model working with different marketing automation, different CRM and sales process on there. How did you get involved? Yeva Roberts: 04:41 I love that story. It's one of my favorites, so I'm actually a digital marketer by training. So I spent about 10 years in the B2C space, and I was managing digital strategy for some global brands as well as direct mail. So I was really in the thick of things, trying to figure out how to integrate email and direct mail and social together to go to market in the integrated way, and at the time -- I guess this was probably eight years ago -- marketing automation was still in its infancy. Salesforce was still trying to figure out how do we really support B2C brands. So I was struggling being in the middle doing everything manually, in terms of handing over files and walking them over for direct mail, to the digital team, or the taking the files for digital and handing them off to the direct marketing agency. And so I thought, "Hey, you know, after so many years of being in the middle, it would be kind of fun to pivot as well and go into a more product development, product marketing role, and figure out a way how to integrate a printing type environment with an email service. And so ExactTarget -- I was a user at the time -- was in our backyard, and so I went work for a printing company here locally in Ohio and just convinced the executive to give me some play money. And, so we decided to do the very first light integration into ExactTargets' Hub Exchange. So at the time they didn't have Journey Builder, they still had Automation Studio at the time. And so we did this light integration, it was really just a test. And so I'm really excited, the engineering team is really excited. Again, working for this other printing company and ExactTarget is super excited and this is 2012 and we go to this user conference. We have our first showcase, we go to the user conference again the following year and I meet PFL. So PFL is that the exhibit hall, the Expo Hall. And I walk up to them like, "You know what, you did a great job swag bombing our entire executive team with your tactile marketing automation concept." And I absolutely love you for doing that because you know, here I am advocating for this integration because as a marketer I feel like it's a problem that we need to solve in the marketplace, and I would love to see your app. And so it all happened in their booth. Their CMO and founder, Andrew, showed me what they had built and I absolutely fell in love with it because obviously, it was like, here's my light version, MVP if you will, and here is their full-on product stack of what I wish I would have built. Brian Walsh: 07:30 What it could be. Yeva Roberts: 07:31 Exactly. And I was like, "Is this working?" You know, the usual kind of customer question you get, "Is this for real? Did you actually build this or is this still POC concept," right? Proof of concept. They're like, "No, this is working. This is how it looks." So anyway, fast forward, we stayed in touch and I eventually moved over to the team. I think I was in a product marketing role managing ExactTarget reseller professional service, and I thought, "You know what? I would love to do this 100% and just evangelize what PFL team has built." And since I understood the marketplace, had been in the Salesforce ecosystem for so long, both as a customer and as a partner, that it just made sense and they needed somebody that knew how to navigate it, that had a passion for it and could talk peer to peer. I think that's so important in the Strategic Alliances role that you truly understand the problem that you're trying to solve with your apps. And so we didn't know, I think the two of us didn't really know what it was going to end up looking like and we've been figuring it out ever since. Brian Walsh: 08:41 That's wonderful. So it's like six years ago, they're already using the term of tactile marketing automation. Now they're saying, "Hey, here's the physical representation of what we've been doing on digital, around ads and email and all of the other piece. When that happened, when everyone started talki

    31 min

  5. 04/13/2018

    [E5] It's Not Nuclear Physics: Lessons on Hiring and Leveraging a COO with Jay Abraham of the Abraham Group

    Jay Abraham, founder of the Abraham Group (and departing COO of CloudCraze, acquired by Salesforce in March), joins the AppChat to discuss his fascinating journey from nuclear physicist and submariner to highly-sought-after startup consultant, as well as what goes into a great (read: productive) relationship between a COO and CEO. Also addressed is: defining scale and how an organization prepares for it; how to know your organization needs a COO; and mistakes Abraham learned from in the trenches at CloudCraze and in his career. Here are the key topics, with timestamps, as well as the full interview transcript: Key Topics 00:00-1:56 Introducing the AppChat and our guest, Jay Abraham (formerly of CloudCraze) 1:57-4:35 Abraham's early career as a nuclear physicist and submariner before he held multiple COO positions 4:36-7:40 Experienced gained from handling the outsourcing of American Express' IT infrastructure 7:41-9:53 Transition to becoming COO of CloudCraze 9:54-16:42 The relationship between COO and CEO, and creating processes to delegate responsibilities 16:43-18:42 Defining scale and how an organization prepares for it 18:43-22:46 The cultural shift that happens when processes are defined and put into place 22:47-25:44 At what point does your organization need a COO? 25:45-31:02 How a CEO begins a great partnership with a newly hired COO 31:03-33:56 Giving power to employees to help identify and solve problems cross-functionally 33:57-36:37 Mistakes that Abraham has learned from 36:38-37:31 Closing out and how to get in touch Full Transcript Intro: 00:01 You're listening to the AppChat. A podcast focused on SasS growth strategies, plus successes in the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond. Here's your host, CodeScience CEO, Brian Walsh. Brian Walsh: 00:13 Alright everybody, welcome back to the AppChat podcast. And thrilled to have with us today, Jay Abraham, who is coming to us most recently from CloudCraze, and they're fresh off of their acquisition by Salesforce, which actually just closed last week. Welcome, Jay. Jay Abraham: 00:28 Welcome Brian, thank you very much. Brian Walsh: 00:32 Yeah, absolutely. Jay, before we get into you, give us a little bit of background, who was CloudCraze, talk about the acquisition, just what happened there? Jay Abraham: 00:41 CloudCraze is, I'd say, one of the foremost B2B e-commerce platforms. It's built natively on Salesforce, so it's tremendously helped our growth and scale, and obviously that was recognized by Salesforce by their recent acquisition of us; and I congratulate them on our acquisition and I think they're gonna have a wonderful future in the years ahead. Brian Walsh: 01:02 Fantastic. I think another statement of how amazing the Force.com platform is to be able to support an application this complex, as CloudCraze across so many large enterprise companies. Jay Abraham: 01:14 That's true, I think one of my team members on the product management side, was very appreciative. She came from one of the competitors, and she said that the biggest thing she recognized is that she didn't have to worry about the backend. But she had to worry about customer facing issues, giving them the capabilities they wanted, and that relying upon the Force.com platform allowed them to leverage everything they could -- and there's a whole team at Salesforce, obviously, building upon the Force.com platform. Brian Walsh: 01:47 Yeah it's such an efficient capital spend to not have to worry about that part of your infrastructure, the pager, all of those headcount just to manage what servers are up. Jay Abraham: 01:56 It is. Brian Walsh: 01:57 Awesome, so let's actually back into you, in your role getting there. So I mean you've done the COO role dozens of times in your life? Jay Abraham: 02:07 Officially as a COO, this is probably the first time. But I think I actively fulfilled the role as a Chief Operating Officer in many projects, both working at company's directly as well as being brought in as an executive troubleshooter. When people think about a COO, it's somebody you can give the mess to. The stuff that nobody wants to deal with, that's the COO. Brian Walsh: 02:34 I love that tagline on your LinkedIn profile, executive troubleshooter, because that's always been my experience of "Yeah, yeah, I got that. I'll take over." Jay Abraham: 02:43 Right. Brian Walsh: 02:44 But let's go way back in time. You actually were a nuclear physicist. Jay Abraham: 02:49 I was. That's what started off my career. I went to MIT. To think I built fusion power plants at the time. It was a really long time ago, 1983. When my professors convinced me to build one. Assuming all the technical details were completed and I figured out it would cost two billion dollars in 1983 dollars to do it and we'd have all the problems that we had with fission. The length of time that I would have to teach and do research before I could actually build the power plant would be 40 years and I'd be retired by that time. So I decided I'd do something else. Brian Walsh: 03:26 But it didn't end there. You actually became a submariner to practice at first, like hands on. Jay Abraham: 03:32 I did. It was kind of interesting to me. It started off at undergraduate school as a theoretical physicist and now to become a submariner you have to become a practical engineer. It was probably the genesis of my experiences being a Chief Operating Officer, because being on a submarine, you're responsible for everything that happens. And you need to, as Officer of the Deck or Engineering Officer of the Watch, you basically need to know how everything works. Even though you may not be the expert, you've got a lot of enlisted people who are -- the reactor operator, the electrical officer -- you need to be able to synthesize all that information and say, "This is what's important." And I think that's helped me a lot in my career going forward. Brian Walsh: 04:14 I can imagine. Does it also give you a whole background of jokes to say of "Hey guys, this is not nuclear physics." Jay Abraham: 04:22 I try not to say, because it was silence service in the submarine service. Everybody talks to me about telling all the stories and I can't really talk to them about it. Brian Walsh: 04:36 And I think when I was first starting to get to know you, the story that really broadened me of just the scale of things that you've done, was handling the outsourcing for American Express of their IT infrastructure. Jay Abraham: 04:48 That's true. It was an interesting project. We came in and the CFO for the technology group needed somebody to kind of lead point on financial evaluation. You go in and the technology team really wanted to outsource, which is very different in most companies. Most companies, the technology team would actually like to keep everything in-house. In this case, American Express had aggressive goals on reducing technology costs. I think the technology team felt like they wanted to step out of the way and give it to someone else to do and we said "Before we do that, let's figure out actually how the economics work." We can't just ask somebody to come in and give us a cost and say, "It's lower than what we're paying today, that's great." We build a model to kind of predict what we could actually, as American Express, reduce costs to. Then, each of these vendors bid against those costs, so we could compare, you know. These were, in the old days, we're talking about main frames, mid-ranges, desktops. We came up with unit pricing on each of those in MPS or server units or PCs and said based on various categories and scenarios of how things might play, here's how the cost would look for every vendor, as well as the internal vendor, and that's how we compare them. Brian Walsh: 06:10 Now did you have a big IT background at that point? To understand all of those individual units and how that built up? Jay Abraham: 06:18 No, I didn't have that IT background at the time. I had some technology background with my prior career with Mitchell Madison, I was a partner there. We did a lot of strategic sourcing and this is somewhat similar to strategic sourcing -- you need to understand base economics of both the vendor and yourself to see what lever needs to be pulled. My team had that background. I gave that direction on how to build it. We talked to technology people within American Express to say, "What are your parameters and what can't you do? What can you do?" And we helped them think through it. I think, a lot of this, people talk about technology being too complex to understand. My general impression has been that people think too much about what they don't have information from as opposed to what they do. Brian Walsh: 07:11 Yeah. Jay Abraham: 07:11 I mean, you can take whatever you have information on, make assumptions, simplifying the other type of things that you do have -- or you don't have -- and use that to be able to create a model or create a hypothesis that you can test against. Brian Walsh: 07:25 That's amazing. So my take away is you're a savant. Jay Abraham: 07:31 I think most consultants have got an ability to be able to synthesize and take useful data from a mess of information. Brian Walsh: 07:41 Yeah, that's exactly right. I know that it worked well for you as you transitioned to CloudCraze, because you had known Chris beforehand, right? And he was bringing you on just to sort of manage a couple of the pieces outstanding? Jay Abraham: 07:56 Right. Chris and I had known each other from marchFirst days, which is about the tail end of the time I was a partner in Mitchell Madison, which was a consulting firm. They got acquired by a company that Chris was part of and he and I knew each other. He was on the technology side. He'd always come by and borrow my people to help sell some of his engagements because we had this strategic mindset. Chris had always wanted to get me involved in some of the companies he'd done. His prior company, Acquity, w

    38 min

  6. 03/29/2018

    [E4] Adjusting Scrum Methodology to Meet Aggressive Scaling with Dory Weiss of nCino

    Dory Weiss, VP of Engineering at nCino, joins the AppChat to talk about embracing the Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) methodology in developing cloud banking products on the Salesforce platform. Other subjects include her unusual start as a writer of code, maintaining company values amid growth, "pollinating" ideas across teams, and a way to show off sprint work while having fun in the process. Here are the key topics, with timestamps, as well as the full interview transcript: Key Topics 0:00-2:25: Introducing the AppChat and our guest, nCino VP of Engineering Dory Weiss 2:26-9:23: Weiss' early career as a graduate student in English, her transition to coding, and the similarities between the two languages and ways of thinking 9:24-15:00: Scaling personally and professionally by sticking with nCino's culture and core values 15:01-19:02: Giving out football helmet stickers in recognition of core values, and the tight alignment between nCino and CodeScience that stems from culture 19:03-24:29: How to hire, onboard and train a good culture fit -- making it "emotionally safe" for development and growth, and weighing technical and culture qualifications 24:30-30:20: Moving from agile to large scale scrum (LeSS methodologies) and dividing teams while prioritizing the right work to get done for clients 31:21-38:56: Managing scrum relationships and integrating work responsibilities to balance speed needs while reducing silos and "pollinating" across teams 38:57-42:01: The "review bazaar" process for presenting and evaluating sprints like a science fair 42:02-42:50: Closing out and how to get in touch  Full Transcript: Brian Walsh: 00:13 Okay, everybody, welcome back to the AppChat podcast, and this week, as our promise is, we're gonna have colorful people in amazing SaaS companies. We have with us Dory Weiss from nCino, who's VP of engineering. Dory, introduce yourself and nCino. Dory Weiss: 00:28 Hey Brian, yeah, hey. Great to join you. I am Dory Weiss, as you said. I'm the VP of engineering at nCino. I joined nCino in 2013, which is one whole year after nCino started in 2012. I started in 2013 as a developer. I was the fifth developer when I joined and I think I was employee number 38. Now a mere five years later we are just over 450 folks. We've gotten really big. We are spanning a couple of buildings now at this point, which is exciting, and we've gone international, so it has been a crazy ride over the last couple of years. Dory Weiss: 01:11 nCIno, for folks, who are not familiar with us, we are the worldwide leader in cloud banking. What we do is we make it possible for banks to originate financial products more easily and with more transparency into what they're doing. Brian Walsh: 01:27 You're built entirely on the Salesforce platform? Dory Weiss: 01:31 We like to say we're built 99 percent on the Salesforce platform. Brian Walsh: 01:35 There's always some little piece that you have to do outside? Dory Weiss: 01:37 There is a little bit of magic that we can't make work on platform and that makes us a little bit sad, but those things that we need to do off platform, we do. Brian Walsh: 01:47 That's pretty amazing, though, that these large banks ... Because your customers are the who's who of the banking industry, right? Dory Weiss: 01:54 Yeah, I think at this point we have 10 of the top 30 banks in America as our customers in terms of asset size, so yeah, but also not just the largest enterprise banks are customers. We have 180 customers spanning institutions of all sizes. Brian Walsh: 02:16 That's amazing. Alright, so, you're the fifth developer at nCino. How did you get there? You had a very different course to get into becoming the fifth developer and working your way to VPE. Dory Weiss: 02:26 Yeah, frankly I never quite know how I ended up where I ended up. I learned a couple of years ago to stop trying to guess what was gonna come next, because every time I thought I knew where my life was going, something would happen to prove me really desperately wrong, but I started out actually ... I was working on being an English professor. That had always been my dream. My undergrad was in English literature. I went to grad school at the University of Iowa in a PhD program for English Literature. Brian Walsh: 03:02 Wow. Dory Weiss: 03:03 Yeah, I was so excited about teaching. That was my dream, and I loved teaching. I always really loved being in the college classroom, but as I got towards the end of my comprehensive exams and towards the beginning of my dissertation, that whole process ... I started to feel really disillusioned and the things that I was most interested in, teaching, were not the things that seemed to be what was most important to my professors and to some of my peers. Academia didn't seem grounded in thinking about, "Hey, there's a group of people who I want to introduce to really incredible ideas and have the sort of meeting of the mind sort of exchange about how do we make the world better and how do we come to understand the world more deeply?" That wasn't the focus of being in academia. Brian Walsh: 03:55 Right, almost like the values that you held for why it was pushing you there were different than those values that were already existing within the educational environment. Dory Weiss: 04:02 Exactly, exactly, and not that academic research isn't incredibly important, but it's not where my heart was leading me, and so there was the sort of moment of, "Oh, wait, this isn't what I thought it was and I don't think I want to do this other thing, so, crap." Brian Walsh: 04:24 How many years in were you at this point? Like 10 years in? Dory Weiss: 04:26 I was five years in. I was five years in. It had been a big investment and I had just always ... My self-concept had been built around this idea that I was gonna be an English professor someday, so that was a really destabilizing moment. I ended up leaving grad school and just had no idea what I was gonna do next. I ended up in Austin, Texas and found out through a friend of a friend that the University of Texas had a software developer training program. What they did was they looked for folks who had strong aptitude, technical aptitude and really strong people skills. Ideally folks who had graduate degrees in something, anything. Brian Walsh: 05:12 You mean like non-technical background people. Dory Weiss: 05:14 Yeah, like no requirement for a technical background at all. The folks that I went through the training program with, they were folks who had PhDs in mathematics and biology and chemistry and music and painting. It was just like ... I used to call us the island of misfit grad students, because it was a whole bunch of us that, I think, had similar experiences, that had found something lacking in academia and just didn't know what they wanted to do next. Anyway, the training program was really incredible. It was a six month long training program. You got paid to do it which was just incredible, and if you made it through the training program, then you were guaranteed a job on campus at the University of Texas. The university is a state institution, so once you've been there for six months, you're tenured as a state employee, so if you could get into the program and make it through those six months, it would- Brian Walsh: 06:16 Then you've got a job. Dory Weiss: 06:17 It was an incredibly sweet gig. Brian Walsh: 06:19 Wow. Dory Weiss: 06:19 I had no idea what being a developer meant when I applied. I remember ... Brian Walsh: 06:19 Had you ever written any code at all? Dory Weiss: 06:28 I knew HTML and CSS. Brian Walsh: 06:30 Okay. Dory Weiss: 06:32 I knew that that wasn't like really what coding was, but I didn't know what coding really was. I had the sense that I was missing something, but I didn't know what. Yeah, I remember the hiring manager for the training program called me one evening. It was actually on a Friday evening. It was probably like 6:30 or 7 and I had already had a whiskey on that Friday night. The hiring manager called and he said, "You know, we all really liked getting to know you, and the one question that we had that we're just not sure about is if you're gonna like the work." I said, "You know, I don't know if I'm gonna like the work either. I don't know what this is gonna be, but I want to give it a try." Luckily they hired me and gave me a chance, because it turned out that I just absolutely loved it. Brian Walsh: 07:25 That is such a cool story. I was at the women in enterprise tech conference and it was amazing how many of those speakers, and it was a fantastic conference, how many of the speakers had no technical background and yet ran global companies in technology. Leyla Seka from Salesforce, and Hilarie Koplow-McAdams from New Relic. She's a VC now, and Meredith Finn who's a VC, Jessica Lynn, all of them, same exact background, like, "Hey, I'm just gonna somehow get into this," and then they excel and become amazing leaders of these organizations. Dory Weiss: 07:56 Yeah. Well, I think for myself at least, on one hand a language is a language is a language. The things that made me a good writer of the English language are the same things that made me a good writer of code. It's a matter of trying to communicate an idea as simply as possible, as directly as possible as you can to an audience, and I think that that sort of focus on how to organize and present ideas really helped me understand the beauty of writing simple code, which I think is a real strength. Dory Weiss: 08:34 I think that's part of it and I think the other part is, for me at least, was this idea that a lot of the skills that attracted me to the classroom are the same things that I think make you a good teammate, make you a good member of a scrum team, let you be thoughtful in terms of thinking empathetically about your customers and what their needs are and how to best serve them. The combination of analytical thinking and empathetic thinking. For m

    43 min

  7. 03/16/2018

    [E3] From Bootstrapping to Booming: Lessons on Scaling Through VC Funding with Tom Martin of Glance Networks

    Tom Martin of Glance Networks joins the AppChat to discuss his experience bootstrapping his business for 16+ years and how debt financing and venture-capital funding changed Glance Networks' approach to scaling. Also addressed is keeping company values intact through rapid hiring and business growth.

    35 min

  8. 03/02/2018

    [E2] Freemium Rockstar: Finding Product-Market Fit and Defining Success with Ian Gotts of Elements.cloud

    Ian Gotts of Elements.cloud shares lessons learned from his previous experience founding a startup (and joining a rock band) in growing Elements.cloud. Topics discussed include: how to identify product-market fit, the advantages and challenges of a freemium model, providing value at all product levels, important updates on GDPR and how to prepare, and key metrics to define SaaS success.

    30 min

  9. 02/20/2018

    [E1] From Salesforce to SaaS Startup: Andy Swanson of Nintex

    Andy Swanson of Nintex joins the AppChat to share his journey from Salesforce account executive to VP of Enterprise Sales at Nintex. Swanson shares his experience transitioning to a startup, how his acting background influenced his consultative approach to selling, and why failure and vulnerability is useful in the sales process.

    33 min

  10. EPISODE 1

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    A short introduction to the AppChat, by host Brian Walsh. CodeScience's CEO Walsh explains why the AppChat was created, what listeners can expect from the show, why he's excited to get started and what comes next. The AppChat podcast features B2B SaaS leaders sharing insights on how to supercharge growth. Learn real-life strategies, wins, opportunities and how to best leverage the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond to take your organization to the next level.

    3 min

Trailer

About

The AppChat podcast features B2B SaaS leaders sharing insights on how to supercharge growth. Learn real-life strategies, wins, opportunities and how to best leverage the Salesforce ecosystem and beyond to take your organization to the next level. Brian Walsh of CodeScience hosts decision-makers and thought leaders, talking tales from the trenches with those who have experienced something great.

Information

  • Creator
    Brian Walsh
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2019
  • Episodes
    10
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    AppChat