December 9, 2024 • 47 mins
Brian Swift is a dynamic tech leader who transitioned from hardware engineering at Samsung to influential product and go-to-market roles at major tech companies including Twitter, Atlassian, Safetyculture and Dovetail.
He is now the CEO and co-founder of Twine, a SaaS business that connects the dots across customer calls, CRM, and roadmap to deliver crucial information to the right people when they need it most.
In this insightful conversation, Brian shares his evolution from engineering to product management and entrepreneurship, offering valuable perspectives on building successful tech products and teams.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know you can tell that the product isn't meeting
the needs.
You can see the eyes of theperson live on the moment just
becoming disenchanted with yourproduct.
When someone's making aneconomic decision on behalf of
their company, they will giveyou the answers much more
directly, and so they will saydoes the product do this?
If it does not, then I think wecan end this conversation.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Brian Swift former head of product and head of
go-to market at companies likeTwitter, atlassian.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Safety Culture, dovetail and now co-founder of
Twine.
For us and for any startingcompany, you just need to find
product market fit.
If you don't have that, nothingelse really matters.
And the way I think aboutproduct market fit is you look
for the three stages you want.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hey, brian, thank you so much for joining us here
today on Battle Skies of a SalesLeader.
When we look at your profileand your LinkedIn and what
you've achieved in your career,I think it's nothing short of
remarkable.
When you look at some of thebrands that you've been a senior
leader and instrumental inhelping to build and construct
so there's Twitter, there isAtlassian, there's safety
(01:06):
culture and, most recently,before going out and setting
your own business up, a companycalled Dovetail as well I'm
incredibly excited.
I've got a whole bunch ofquestions, particularly around
your drive and lead intoentrepreneurship.
But firstly, we'd just love tohear, I guess in your own words,
a little bit about your journey.
What have been your core rolesand how have you operated?
(01:29):
and thought, as a seniorexecutive, some of these big
brands.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, well, it's great to be here.
My career has been a bit of awinding road.
I studied engineering andactually worked as a hardware
engineer originally, so beforesome of those brands you
mentioned, I worked at Samsungmaking semiconductors, really
learned how businesses operate,a lot of math, statistics, but
found that I really wanted to bemore involved in strategic
(01:53):
decisions and ultimately thatfew year journey led me to
product management.
I didn't know what that was atthe time, I don't think a lot of
people did, but rode thissoftware wave of startups and
worked at a few big companies,obviously that you mentioned.
Most of my career has been inB2B software, selling to other
(02:14):
businesses and trying to buildproducts that you can sell to an
enterprise but then also oftenhave a product-led growth
approach.
So almost a consumer gradedesign to software but being
sold to businesses, and I'vejumped around a bunch of
different types of products,sizes of companies, and then I
(02:36):
think the one nuance of the mostrecent part of my career is I
switched to run go-to-market atDovetail.
So after spending years beingon the receiving end of a lot of
feedback from sales andcustomer success and support
people out in the field, I wasnow on the other side of the
equation.
So I think that caused me to afew light bulb moments and
(02:59):
realizing having a lot ofempathy for the counterparts I'd
worked with over the years andthat ultimately led to me
wanting to become anentrepreneur and solve a problem
that I saw while I was in thatrole.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, incredible, and yeah, I certainly, in my time
as a sales leader and watchingdifferent leaders at global
organizations kind of come andgo one of the things that I've
noticed is that if non-salespeople or leaders often get
their chance to come intogo-to-market because I think
(03:32):
that, in order to elevate withinan organization, having that
360 perspective of the frontoffice and the back office is
incredibly important and Iactually think it would be great
for sales guys to go behind thescenes and do some of that as
well, to understand what reallygoes on.
But let's even take a step back.
You know you're here in Sydney,in Australia.
You don't have an Australianaccent.
(03:54):
Tell us a little bit aboutwhere you grew up and how you
ended up here in Australia aswell.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, I grew up in Detroit, michigan.
My father worked in the autoindustry, most of the time at
Ford Motor Company, so that'swhat brought us to Detroit.
When I was a kid Grew up there,australia was obviously never
on my radar.
It was just a thing that yousaw in movies, basically and
jumped around the US for variousroles.
(04:24):
I was in Austin, texas, for awhile, on the East Coast, in
Boston, obviously, spent a lotof time in San Francisco as I
worked for more and more bigtech companies, especially
Twitter, or it was formerlyknown as Twitter, and I, from a
personal level, wanted the lifeexperience of living overseas.
I like warm weather.
I only speak English, so thatlimits my options quite a bit.
(04:45):
I had been to Sydney on aholiday and loved it.
At the time there was only onesoftware company I really knew
of, which was Atlassian, andthey happened to reach out about
a role on one of their bigproducts, and so I took a bit of
a leap of faith and moved downhere without really knowing
anyone and just joining acompany that built products that
(05:07):
I knew of, I had used, and withworking with a leader that I
really got to know during theinterview process and trusted.
So that kind of is what broughtme down here originally.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
So how did you get into to product management?
And what does productmanagement mean to someone
that's not from productmanagement?
And and you go oh, productmanagement, I'm going to step
into that world.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I definitely stumbled into it.
The first startup I joined Iwas hired as.
A director of strategicanalytics was my title, which
doesn't really mean anything.
I had worked in strategyconsulting and they wanted
someone who could come in andunderstand the numbers of the
business.
They were trying to pivot tobuild a consumer app and
understand the numbers of thebusiness.
They were trying to pivot tobuild a consumer app.
(05:47):
Basically, it was a voiceoverIP for a gaming company that
wanted to build WhatsApp beforewe knew what WhatsApp was.
Obviously it was a good idea.
It didn't quite execute wellenough, but I happened to report
to the VP of product and thatis how I learned what product
management was and the way Iwould describe it is.
You're working with across-functional team, typically
including engineers anddesigners, to build,
(06:09):
quote-unquote, the right productfor the right customer as
quickly and efficiently aspossible to solve their problem
and grow your business.
So that involves a lot ofthings, many of which include
go-to-market, which often, Ithink as companies get bigger,
becomes further and furtherseparated from the actual day to
day role of a product manager.
I'm understanding who thesecustomers are, what their buying
(06:31):
processes are, and that wasdefinitely a journey I've gone
on as I've tried to work in moreB2B companies.
But yeah, most of the day today of product management boots
on the ground.
New in the role is working withengineers and designers to
build a product and reallyunderstand your customer and
solve a key problem for them.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
And in the companies that you worked for Twitter,
atlassian would you say that theproduct management is a push or
a pull in terms of who isdriving the innovation and
actually building that product?
Is it coming from more of theengineering side?
Is it coming from more of theengineering side?
Is it coming from more of thesales side?
Is it reliant on the sort ofCEO that you've got at the top,
(07:11):
whether they're GTM orproduct-focused?
Speaker 1 (07:13):
I think most tech companies take on the
personality of their founder orfounders.
So Safety Culture, as anexample, lucanier the founder,
serial entrepreneur, veryproduct-minded, and so a lot of
the strategy and innovation camefrom him through me into the
product org, but a lot of itreally came from him.
He knew the space very well.
(07:34):
He was someone who had bigideas, won't say no to anything
just like.
We have to figure this out andsolve this problem, no matter
how big it is, and I think thatthrough the product became where
a lot of the innovationhappened.
As companies grow, often theshift moves more and more into
go-to-market, where you have aproduct that's found
(07:55):
product-market fit.
Maybe it has reached some levelof product-led growth, but
inevitably, if you want to sellthe product to bigger companies,
you need to really havego-to-market leaders and people
thinking more strategicallyabout how you sell the product,
who the buyers are, how younavigate complex buying
processes.
And while a lot of thatinitially often doesn't impact
(08:16):
the product development process,over time it does, and so you
need people in the product sidewho kind of understand the
nuances of that.
So you need people in theproduct side who kind of
understand the nuances of that,and I think, while I haven't
worked at Atlassian for a while,you can see a lot of their
products and the reason they'recontinuing to do so well is
because they're beginning tonail this enterprise
go-to-market motion and having aproduct that can back that up.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Which has been a lot of work and quite a journey for
them.
But yeah, I think that'stypically how it works and from
a product side because I thinkit's an awesome jump that you've
done from product to GTM whatis the general consensus of
go-to-market and sales from theproduct side?
(09:00):
What do product managers andproduct people typically think
of the other side of the fence?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
It varies by company and at the stage, but there are
a lot of reasons that there isdysfunction or misalignment
between those orgs.
Despite people wanting, it'snever on purpose.
People want to work together,obviously, but you typically
have salespeople who have, theythink, in months and quarters
they're talking to customers.
They're out on the front linehearing all the deficiencies of
the product, reasons they're notgoing to hit their quota often,
(09:34):
which is determined by what theproduct team is building, and
so they try to pass thisinformation on.
But the challenge is thatgo-to-market, usually globally
distributed if you're a bigenough company product usually
all sits together.
They have to balance not justthe enterprise or sales-led
customer base, but usuallythere's a product-led growth
(09:56):
aspect to it, at least in thecompanies I've worked for, where
their needs and requirementsare quite different Not
completely at odds, but somewhatdifferent in how you think
about building a product andhaving a product strategy that's
going to ultimately win in thelong run.
And balancing that with betsand innovative things you need
to do is quite challenging.
And there is this translationgap I often have found in my
(10:19):
experiences where a salespersonmight hear an objection on a
call that is related to theproduct.
It's like playing the game oftelephone.
There's all these failurepoints of they didn't quite.
Because they're not researchers, they're not product managers,
they will interpret it in aslightly different way than a
product manager, would they tryto pass it along?
They don't do it for all oftheir calls necessarily, maybe
(10:40):
just the ones that matter most.
Some salespeople are quite goodat this, they are very
charismatic and so they carry alot of weight in organizations
where others often I found incustomer success typically are
more grounded in they want towait until they see a pattern
and then they present it over tothe product org.
And so as a product manager,you're getting all these
(11:01):
different inputs from sales,from CS, but then also typically
from your founder and customersthat you want to go acquire
that maybe aren't in your idealcustomer profile yet, that you
need to go innovate and build anew product for which the sales
team probably doesn't care asmuch about.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So it's this very messy situation, especially as
you scale and I guess that'sgoing to lead us nicely into
part of this conversation interms of you setting up Twine
and the problems that that'ssolving for both the product and
GTM sides.
But before we get there, I wantto understand your transition
(11:38):
from product to GTM.
What was that leap like, goingfrom product into more of the
business development salesrevenue side of the business?
Speaker 1 (11:47):
well.
It was challenging for sure.
It's like learning a whole newskill.
Um, I had the a few advantages.
I guess I I understood theproduct very well and, and I
think, understood the customerquite well because I managed the
product.
I had a leadership team andfounders that really and
founders that really and boardthat backed me kind of stepping
(12:07):
into this.
So there was a lot of frameworkand support around that
transition.
But it was quite eyeopeningwhen you see the challenges of
being on a sales call or a CScall or just in a pipeline
review meeting and understandingall the nuances that go into
selling software and the thingsthat often have nothing to do
with the nuances that go intoselling software and the things
(12:27):
that often have nothing to dowith the product, that are quite
challenging.
But then even how you demo itand frame it.
So one takeaway I had from thisis I wanted all the product
managers to have to demo theproduct live to a customer at
least every month, because Ithink the way you walk through a
demo makes your brain get outof the.
What features are we building?
(12:48):
How are we designing them to?
How are we going to tell astory around this to a customer.
In order to do that, you needto know who the customer is,
what they're responsible for,what is the pain point that has
triggered this conversation, andI think that gives a product
management team a much morewell-rounded viewpoint and,
similarly, with sales and CS,understanding how to get
(13:10):
feedback from the customer in away that is useful and a bit
more structured, and then talkthrough and really dig into some
of these moments of feedbackwhere maybe the product isn't
landing well, and teasing outnot just a feature request but
really understanding the painthat they have in a way that's
going to be useful for them inmanaging the relationship but
also working with their productteam.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
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Now let's get back to theconversation.
What was there?
(14:16):
An aha moment where you thoughtI all of a sudden, I get the
challenge that salespeople havegot when working with a product
that isn't quite meetingrequirements.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I don't know if there was one moment.
I think it just takes being ona couple calls and just.
I don't know if there was onemoment.
I think it just takes being ona couple calls and just.
Not that they're train wrecks,but you can tell that the
product just isn't meeting theneeds.
And the customer will gothrough all the things they need
the product to do, and eachanswer maybe isn't completely
off, but it's slightly off andyou can see the eyes of the
(14:47):
person live on the moment, justbecoming disenchanted with your
product, whereas often inproduct conversations you're
talking about what the productcould be and you're doing
generative research or you'reshowing them new designs, and
it's a very differentconversation than when someone's
making an economic decision onbehalf of their company.
They will give you the answersmuch more directly and so they
(15:09):
will say does the product dothis?
If it does not, then I think wecan end this conversation or
come back when you actually fixthat.
And so the tone of theconversation is quite different,
but equally important andeye-opening and relevant.
For our product team, I thinkthat was the most eye-opening
thing for me.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
So, for SaaS companies that are in their
early stage startup and I guessthat this is almost you at this
moment in time as well but forthose that are in the process of
still defining their idealcustomer profile and defining
what their go-to-market strategyis, what would your typical
recommendation be for having asymbiotic relationship between
(15:49):
product and GTM, and how do youbring them together so that you
can accelerate and optimize thatproduct market fit?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
It's a great question .
I think we often talk aboutthese things as separate
concepts, like your go-to-marketmotion or go-to-market strategy
and your product strategy, andone of the biggest issues I see
with companies it's easier whenyou're smaller, much harder when
you're larger is that thesethings become not necessarily at
odds, but they aren't plannedand discussed as a group.
(16:19):
And so the actual, a fewtactical things that I've seen
work well are have your productteam sit down with your sales
and CS team on some recurringbasis and just go through what
the customers are saying, bothgood and bad.
Often the product team justhears all the bad stuff.
It's good to hear what isworking well, because then you
can double down on that and itoften helps with how you
(16:40):
position the product from aproduct marketing perspective.
So I think just having arecurring time to sit down and
go through actual voice ofcustomer whether that's like a
clip of a customer or just goingthrough verbatim comments that
the customers have made andunderstanding the themes and
biggest opportunities and then Ithink, conversely, on the
product side, when you'redefining a feature, usually it's
(17:04):
here's the things that must do,here's how we're going to solve
those problems, but doing thego-to-market stuff up front.
So writing the press release orblog post with your product
team and with the sales and CSteam of this is how we want to
describe what we're about toembark on as a product team, and
(17:25):
do that before you write asingle line of code.
I think if that forces everyoneto think like a go-to-market
person like who is this for?
What are the key value propsthat we're trying to position?
How is it differentiated fromtheir other products?
What are those other productsthat they're comparing?
And if you get all thecounterparts in a room, this can
be quite a powerful way toalign everyone and talk about it
(17:47):
.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
The way you describe that, it almost seems obvious
that you bring those twotogether.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
From your experiences , is that not common, that you
see, yeah, yeah, yeah, I thinkgreat companies do this
regularly, but it's very normalto fall in the trap of the
product team builds the product,the go-to-market team, tells
the world about it and sells itand supports the customer Almost
in two parallels.
Exactly.
And while that sounds silly,it's just very natural in your
(18:19):
day-to-day to lose sight of this, and so I think usually it
comes down to the leaders inthat org figuring out these ways
to get everyone to just talk toone another.
But often when you're in theideation phase of product
development, making sure thatgo-to-market is heard, and when
go-to-market is planning out aquarter or the next six months,
(18:40):
what does the product team needto do to support them and serve
their customer?
And who is that customer?
And do we all agree on that?
Because often the product teamwill be talking to an end user,
at an existing customer thatyou're serving.
Well, but the go-to-market teamis now pushing the horizon of
the product and they're goingafter a new market or a new
region, or they're moving upmarket and the requirements are
(19:00):
shifting slightly, and so makingsure that everyone's aware that
that is one is occurring andthat, two, the go-to-market team
is aware of what deficienciesthe product has that's holding
them back, and the product teamacknowledges those and makes a
decision about whether or notwhich of those they're going to
address in a way that allowsthem to continue to scale and
deliver a product that works.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
How often would you recommend those teams
collaborating and having thosetactical or strategy sessions?
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I think there should be collaboration happening every
day, like not necessarilysitting down as a big group in a
meeting, but there are littleways of.
This was an interesting momenton a customer call just having a
mechanism to share that.
Or, if the product team has anidea and they want to validate
it, having a mechanism or a wayfor them to reach out, to go to
market and ask for their opinion.
Or just say hey over the nextfew weeks on all of your calls
and ask for their opinion, orjust say hey over the next few
(19:49):
weeks on all of your calls.
If you could ask this onequestion and let me know what
the customer has said, that'd bereally powerful.
So you actually bring them intothe research process and
ideation phase of productdevelopment.
But in terms of sitting downand defining strategy, certainly
quarterly to ask are we stillaligned?
Are we marching in the samedirection?
Do we still have the samevision of where we want to be in
six, 12 months?
(20:09):
Or has something changed?
Has the market shifted?
Have customers started to saysomething different about our
product?
Has the competitor popped up ina region that the product team
isn't aware of?
And just question do we stillbelieve this is the path that we
should be going down from aproduct perspective, from a
go-to-market perspective, Atleast once a quarter?
I think if you're smaller, youshould definitely do it once a
(20:30):
month, because the ship tends tobe a bit easier to steer and
you should be steering it morequickly.
At a bigger company, if youhave thousands of employees,
trying to change the directionof the ship every month can be
quite jarring.
So, you probably want to do itonce a quarter and do a much
more rigorous process to makesure you're aligned and avoid
unnecessary shifts in thestrategy.
Yeah, to make sure you'realigned, and avoid unnecessary
(20:50):
shifts in the strategy.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, also, what I've taken away from that is to be
super intentional as well.
So, actually build that out aspart of your planning.
Is that incorporation andcollaboration and synergy
between the two teams?
And, yeah, I know that from amarketing and sales there's
always some constructive tensionbetween the two, and I'm going
to I don't want to put words inyour mouth, but I'm going to
suggest that perhaps there oftenis with with product and sales
(21:14):
as well, or product and gtm is.
Would that be fair?
Speaker 1 (21:17):
yeah, I think there is a lot of tension and I think
naturally it's just built intothe way that those functions
tend to operate.
Yeah, it's kind of.
They're on different cadences.
Yeah, different horizons.
Their, their goals are aligned,but not often 100% aligned.
So, for example, a product teammight have 10% of their roadmap
is on trying an innovative newthing that might not work or
(21:38):
ever be able to be sold.
Or 20% of their roadmap mightbe for the bottom, like the SMB
market, which your sales teamdoesn't speak to, but it's still
an important growth labor forthe overall company.
And so I think, beingintentional, one very specific
thing I would suggest for bothgo-to-market and product that
can be a common language, isyour ideal customer and your
(21:59):
customer segmentation.
So, having that clear like atDovetail, we actually had
animals that we would use wecame up with a catchy word that
would describe a big enterprisecompany that has a massive
research team, or a innovativetech company who might have a
small research team, but theybelieve that more people should
be doing research, and so whenyou're having a conversation of
(22:20):
should we build this feature orthis customer we lost this deal
because of this, if you knowwhat kind of customer it is and
what segment they fall in, oryou have a word for it.
In this case, we used animals.
It gives everyone a commonlanguage.
That, I think, is often at theroot of the disagreement.
There is the time horizondifference, but then you are
(22:41):
selling to someone that I am notbuilding a product for, or we
are prioritizing this customersegment over that one and we
haven't been explicit about that.
And so there's all theseunderlying things that are
beneath the surface, and then ifyou can just tease them out, it
helps.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
And when you talk, you know your animals, ideal
customer profiles, segments thatyou're talking about.
Does the decision anchor backon total value that can be
driven out of each segment?
Is that where can we solve thebiggest problem or generate the
greatest revenue?
Is that the main anchor point?
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, I think it's an overall company strategy
discussion at that point, who isour ideal customer, which is a
function of what is their needs,and can our product, in a
differentiated way, solve thoseneeds?
And is there enough economicvalue that we can extract
relative to the competition thatthe business can grow?
Which sounds simple, but it canbe quite challenging,
(23:40):
especially in today's worldwhere products and technologies
and markets are shifting soquickly.
So, having a conversation withyour entire leadership team
about who is the customer orcustomer bases that we're going
after and why and how mucheffort do we want to put in them
and often it can be that theproduct team is.
The majority of the investmentsare on a new segment that the
(24:00):
sales team isn't quite ready tosell to because the product
needs to get to a standard wherethey can sell it.
But the sales team is nowselling the product that you've
been building for the last twoyears and it's their job to
extract as much value of thatproduct investment as possible.
And it might be more inmaintenance mode or just we're
going to fix issues as they comeup.
(24:21):
But our innovation is nowshifting to this new market, our
new segment, and I think thatneeds to be a holistic company
conversation.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Awesome.
So I want to fast forward alittle bit into entrepreneurship
and your decision to leave thesafety of these incredible
brands and VP of product anddriving their meaningful impact
and value across theseorganizations.
What drove you to go off andco-found Twine and effectively
set your own venture up?
Speaker 1 (24:51):
I think some people just inherently they're like oh,
I just want to be anentrepreneur.
That's not necessarily me.
I'm a very competitive person.
I played sport my whole life.
It's something that's kind ofbuilt into how I operate.
So I think I have that aspectof pure entrepreneurship in me.
The thing that struck me isI've been very fortunate to work
with a lot of really greatfounders and seeing how they
(25:14):
operate and seeing thechallenges they go through, and
so I'm going into this now eyeswide open.
I know the challenges and thestruggles that they've gone
through and I've been veryfortunate to have a firsthand
experience with some reallygreat founders and very
different in how they approachproblems and people.
Great founders and verydifferent in how they approach
(25:35):
problems and people.
And I think the very consistentthing that I've observed and
heard from them is it is a grindand you need to be ready for it
and you should assume it'sgoing to take at least 10 years
to get to the outcome you want,and if you're not willing to
sign up for that, it's probablynot worth it.
And then a problem that you'lljust feel so motivated and
excited to solve every day, evenon your bad days.
(25:57):
It's something that is innatelymotivates you, even when, if
it's not going well, you stillare like, well, I need to solve
this, this problem for thiscustomer base.
And if you have the the driveto solve that problem and the
passion behind it and arewilling to do that for 10 years
in your head and understand thatcompany building isn't just
(26:18):
about you sitting and havingthese great ideas.
It's you have to do all these,all this little tasks and stuff
that you never even think of,and be someone that can build a
team of people.
Because I think the one thingthat I've learned over the years
is the surprising thing is thateven tech companies, it all
(26:41):
comes down to the people.
It's not actually thetechnology, it's the people that
you have around you.
And how can you rally themaround a problem?
And obviously they need to beable to solve that problem, and
you've got that through theinterview process.
But how you rally a group ofindividuals and have the ability
to do that problem and that'syou've got that through the
interview process.
But, um, how you rally a groupof individuals and have the
ability to to do that every dayand show up and be the person
that they can uh, believe in andwant to follow.
(27:01):
I think that is, uh, anotherkey thing, that I've been very
fortunate to see some people whoare quite good at that, so I
try to imbue that into my dailyroutine.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
It's funny.
Your talk of this is going tobe a grind in a 10 year sort of
path.
A very good friend of mine,adam, went through a venture
capital startup incubator calledAntler and he was successful in
getting on board.
But one of the things that theytalked about is that they said,
kind of semi jokingly, they,they said, be prepared to eat
(27:32):
pot noodles for the next sevenyears.
It looks very glamorous fromthe outside, you've got your
sass, your startup, your ceo,founder, etc.
So, but it is a grind andyou're not going to be making
money for a very long time.
I think it's a good realizationthat you need to have that
passion, that drive, and I guessI want to go back to that
question.
You say you weren't innately anentrepreneur.
(27:52):
What was it that drove you tobuild the business?
Was it an entrepreneurship?
I want to build somethingmyself, or was it?
I see a big gaping hole with myexperience of product with GTM.
This is a massive problem thatcould be meaningful across the
entire world.
I want to help to solve thatmeaningful across the entire
world.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
I want to help to solve that.
What I meant by that was I'mnot someone who wants to be an
entrepreneur, just to say.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
I'm an entrepreneur.
I know some people are fromhigh school and I'm going to go
start LinkedIn entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, I think, on a personal
level, I just want to pushmyself to solve problems that I
think are important, and when Iwas early in my career I had
said I want to be the VP ofproduct of a fast growing
software startup, for whateverreason, that was the goal I set
for myself and then, once I gotthere, I was like, well, what's
(28:45):
my next challenge?
And that ultimately led torunning GoToMarket for another
software company a whole newproblem that I can just throw
myself into and, from firstprinciples, figure out how to do
it and lean on people and I'msomeone who likes the challenge
and to learn and I got to apoint where I to your second
point of there was a problemthat a big gaping hole in the
(29:07):
market that I felt compelled tosolve, and I'd reached a point
in my career where that goingjumping out and trying to solve
a problem like that was probablythe next big challenge for me
where I was going to push myselfout of my comfort zone.
I think advice I always givepeople is, when you're looking
at a role, you should feelcomfortable doing about 50% of
it, maybe a little bit more, andthere should be about 30 that
(29:30):
you feel like I sort of donethis before, I've seen someone
do it.
And then there's 20% where Ihave no idea how to do this and
that, for me at least, has beenthe right balance, where I'm
constantly pushing myself.
And one actual thing I took awayfrom the founder of Safety
Culture is at the end of everyyear and we would do this for my
role I would write out a JD formy job for the following year,
(29:53):
so actually write out what I'dbe responsible for, what are the
key things I would spend mytime doing, and essentially
reapply for the job and mentallysign up for it.
And while my title didn'tchange during each year there,
the company drastically changedand grew and so it became a very
meaningful delta.
So that's something I'vecontinued to do.
Each year is like what is theJD, what am I going to try to
(30:18):
push myself to grow into overthe next year?
And that's something I'm doingnow as a founder, where now I
just have to push myself to doit and I'm working with some
advisors on how to structurethat, and people have gone on
the entrepreneurship journey.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
But I think it's about setting a big goal,
recognizing that you don'treally know how to do a bunch of
it, but just diving in and justtrying to figure it out.
So I guess it's the concept ofaffirmations and writing down
your goals in a different,different way, in a corporate
setting.
Um, I love that.
That's a.
That's a great tip I think I'mgoing to.
I'm going to take that on boardas well.
So you've founded the businessearlier this year and you've got
a founding team with yourself.
(30:58):
From a capabilities perspective, what was that founding team?
What did that look like?
Or, more so, another way, whatwas the most critical skill sets
that you felt you needed tohave in order to poise yourself
for the best success at launch?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
I think.
Obviously, in engineering,we're building an AI software
product, so someone who hasexperience doing that is a must
have, and so that was obviouslythe first hire we made.
My co-founder has experience ingo-to-market various roles sales
, customer success, sales,engineering at much larger
companies, so he understands theproblem we're solving as a
(31:34):
subject matter expert and isdriving a lot of our early deals
.
I'm doing some of that, butlearning from him along the way,
and then the other hire that wemade is a designer.
So I think now there's allthese new products popping up
every day, especially in the AIspace, and some of them are real
.
Some of them maybe not so much,but it becomes hard to stand
(31:56):
out and be a brand.
I think brand becomes even moreimportant in the design of your
product and how it makes peoplefeel when they use it.
See your website, see everylittle bit of content that you
put out that matters and helpsyou stand out more than ever.
And so I found someone who Ihad worked with in the past who
I think is immensely talented atthinking about how do you
design an AI product.
(32:16):
AI first product that resonateswith people but doesn't feel
gimmicky.
And then how do you build abrand that stands out and
doesn't just look like anotherB2B SaaS product, whether it's
the website, the actual userinterface in the product, the
tone of voice we use in all ofour marketing content, even in
our help center?
How do you describe the problemin a way that is interesting
(32:40):
and different?
And so this is something I tookaway from my Dovetail
experience from those founderswho are every little detail,
every word matters and is anopportunity to showcase your
brand and who you are and defineyour personality of your
company and what you stand for,and so having a designer on
board as our second hire wasvery critical for us the, the
businesses you've you've been attalk like.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
I think you've mentioned that they're
product-led growth strategieswhere you're going out and and
and really that that image andthat first impression I think is
incredibly important.
And then the buying process offthe back of that.
Do you think that the conceptof design at the beginning is
critical for all sorts of salesor GTM strategies, or is it more
(33:26):
important for product-ledgrowth?
What about if you're more of asales-led growth where you've
got a sales rep out there justdiscussing a value proposition?
Speaker 1 (33:33):
It's probably more important for the product-led
aspect of it, where you have torely on this content you've put
out there, whether that's yourwebsite or the product or just a
marketing content strategy thatis kind of trying to sell for
you.
And so how you craft that, Ithink, really matters.
But even in a purely like salesled function, I do think how you
(33:58):
express your product on a call,how you write emails, what you
link people to from those emailswhether it's a case study or,
um, some some content that helpsthem understand how that your
product can solve them I I thinkall these touch points, your
brand and what your companystands for, really matters, and
whether maybe we're a littlelucky that our designer has a
(34:19):
little bit of marketing, alittle bit of brand strategy in
her DNA and so she's able tokind of flex into all these
things.
But I do think, even for asales-led motion at a company
that's starting up, people arebuying, not necessarily what
your product is today that'sobviously part of it but they're
also buying for what you standfor and this unique insight you
(34:41):
have.
That needs to spark a littlebit of oh, like aha, moment in
them, and certainly that can bedone through a sales process.
But I think you need someaccompanying content or some way
of explaining it to them.
that opens their minds a bit,and I think having a unique
style and design can really helpwith that.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, amazing.
You mentioned AI and you guysare an AI first solution.
I want to hear a little bitabout the product and how that
fits into the solution thatyou've developed, the problem
that you're solving, but also,in parallel to that, ai as a
whole.
I'm finding it incredibly noisy.
Already, every single daythere's a new AI app in my face
(35:21):
on LinkedIn.
How are you finding AI isinfluencing and impacting
startups like yourself, but alsothe broader business world?
Speaker 1 (35:31):
It's certainly a huge shift.
A huge shift right.
It's probably the biggest shifttechnological shift we've had
since cloud and maybe mobile, Iguess 10, 15 years ago.
So it is a real shift.
It's not gimmicky, but I thinkthere's so much noise that it
often feels gimmicky, and a lotof the ways people talk about it
and the way they use it can be,and so it's hard to find the
(35:54):
signal and the noise of all thisstuff.
I think the way I advise peopleand the way we've approached
Twine is AI and large languagemodels are just another tool in
your tool belt to solve aproblem.
You can't start with the AI andwork backward.
The first principles stillapply who is the customer?
What is the problem you'reapply?
What is a?
Who is a customer?
(36:14):
What is a problem you'resolving?
What is the best way you cansolve it relative to your
competition or any substituteproducts, and often for certain
problem types, ai offers a newway to approach that, and so if
you apply it, in that sense, Ithink you can.
Actually you don't need to sayyou're an AI-first product.
You just solve the problem in amagical way and you can see it
(36:36):
in users' eyes.
We don't actually use the wordAI really on our website
anywhere we want to solve aproblem, and once they use our
product and they can see the waywe're solving it with the power
of an AI-first approach, it cando things that feel somewhat
magical, even if it's not like achat bot, like any of these
other products that pop up, andso we selectively deploy it for
(36:59):
the problems that we have, andthis is, I think, how all the
great AI first companies arepopping up.
It's not just wrap in a largelanguage model around an
existing experience that youhave.
It's how can we, in a novel way, knowing what we know now about
large language models and wherethey're going, how can we solve
an existing problem that we seein a way that is novel and
(37:20):
different and unique?
And we'll save it.
All comes.
You know, you got to save yourcustomer time.
You got to allow them to dotheir job faster.
You got to help them growrevenue, cut costs.
All that stuff is the same.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
It's just.
How can you deploy thistechnology to do that?
Yeah, amazing.
So I want to transition on togrowth customer acquisition,
getting your first revenuethrough the door and then
planning to build out your teamwhat is the sequence of events
there?
How do you think about each ofthose in terms of customer
(37:54):
acquisition growth levers thatyou need to hit in order to
reinvest into, you know,continued growth and is growth
into product?
Is it into sales or marketing?
Speaker 1 (38:05):
I think all that for us and for any starting company.
You just need to find productmarket fit, and if you don't
have that, nothing else reallymatters and you're just
investing in things that areprobably not going to generate a
return for yourself or yourinvestors that you really want.
And so that has been ourjourney so far.
And the way I think aboutproduct market fit is you look
for the three stages.
(38:26):
You want someone to reactemotionally, like in a positive,
like wow, say that on a salescall, or even if it's a product
led, they'll send something insupport like this is amazing or
thank you so much, and theyactually elicit an emotion in
solving a problem in a way.
For them, the second thing isthat they'll actually start
telling other people about it,and so you'll get these people
(38:46):
reaching out like I heard aboutyour product from so-and-so.
That is a sign that not onlywere they amazed, like excited
about it, but they're willing totell a colleague about it or a
friend or whoever it is in theindustry.
And then the third is that ifboth those things are happening,
all of a sudden you'll just getsignups coming out of nowhere
and or requests for demos thatyou're just like I don't even
(39:08):
know where these came from.
And I think that those are thethree stages of product market
fit.
So we're really on that journeyand, as it relates to growth,
as we try to figure that out,which we've been working with a
few partners where theybasically said the product's
going to be a little rough, it'sgoing to change a lot.
Here's what we're trying tosolve.
We'd love for your input inhelping us solve that.
And if they care enough aboutthe problem and often their
(39:31):
existing relationships fromsomeone's network in the company
, they'll be willing to do that.
And then, if you can offer themdiscounts or whatever once they
actually the product gets to apoint where it's ready to.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
How important is it to get those I call them
friendlies on board in the earlystage to actually help to be
invested in the growth, but alsoin product development.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
I think having the friendlies involved and invested
in the growth is superimportant.
I do think there is also thatcan't be your only myopic focus,
because often there is thisweird dynamic where they've seen
the product in its rough phasesand so they almost their first
impression whether it's explicitor not is oh, that thing was a
(40:15):
little rough.
I'm not sure if that really evenwhen it gets to a point they
can be biased by that, and soyou can't just have your only
goal be let's convert thesefirst customers into paying
customers and then run to thenext phase.
It's learn what's working andwhat's not.
Have an iteration on yourproduct vision.
Go, solve that and try toslowly open it up to more people
(40:35):
and see if their initialreaction is different from the
previous cohort.
And that's at least the waywe've been solving it.
And to go back to your otherquestion about growth, I think
we try.
I would advise not to like.
Product-led growth is a highlyefficient way to grow a business
, but it's not always the rightstrategy.
(40:57):
It's very dependent on the typeof solution you're building and
the market and who your buyeris.
And that's the market, who yourbuyer is, who your ideal
customer is.
That ultimately determines theway in which combination of
motions you deploy.
And I've often seen product-ledgrowth means a really slick
consumer-grade product andsales-led growth is enterprise
(41:21):
products and the design doesn'tmatter as much.
I don't think that's a falsetrade-off.
I think you always want tobuild a product that as soon as
a customer uses it, it canspread organically and they love
it.
But the initial purchasedecision or any expansion
purchases might not beproduct-led growth.
It might be sales-led growth100%.
It might be a combination oflike.
There's some organic expansionand then you have to bring in a
(41:45):
salesperson because the purchasedecision requires a personal
connection, and so that's whatwe're trying to navigate and
figure out, and we're findinglittle pockets of customers
prefer product-led growth, someprefer a handheld approach from
our team, and so I'd say we'restill trying to nail that.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
So you're on the product-market-fit definement at
the moment and just reallytrying to establish that.
When you look forward, what arethe next milestones of
achievement?
So let's just say we've, we'vesolved product market fit.
What is milestone one, two andthree look like.
Over what time frame?
Speaker 1 (42:23):
our goal has been, um , find those first few signals
of product market fit, like Ijust defined before, and we've
we've gotten to that point.
We're now, and then, okay,let's have a pricing and
packaging strategy that works.
So people will actually putdown a credit card.
Just them telling you this isso great is one thing, actually
paying for it is another.
We've passed that milestone now, and so the next phase is how
(42:48):
do we scale this product wherewe don't have to reach out and
tell someone what we are, whatwe stand for, and have them see
the value of the product?
How do we build distribution,brand awareness, even if it's in
a small pocket that we thinkcan be repeatable?
And that's going to be somecombination of content marketing
(43:11):
, community building, gettingout and talking us as founders
about what we stand for, andthen just some, probably a
little bit of outbound sales anda little bit of outbound
marketing to try to test wherewhich pockets are.
So I think we're in thisexperimental phase of what are
the distribution channels thatwe think could be efficiently
(43:31):
scalable, and once we find those, we'll double down on them.
And then, I think, thefollowing year, looking forward
to 2025, how do we grow our team.
I think that will be a smallinvestment in the product team,
as well as some go-to-marketfolks in the US and maybe the EU
(43:52):
or EMEA region, because most ofour customers are there and
they're going to require somepeople in their time zone
supporting them.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Amazing and there's a lot of sales people, reps,
leaders listening to thispodcast that may be interested
in Twine and the problem thatyou're solving.
Can you just give us yourelevator pitch on what the
problem is you're solving andhow people can connect with you
if they would like to?
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Yeah, there's a lot of.
The general problem we'retrying to solve is there's a lot
of product insights in everysales and CS call that go
untracked or unpassed.
They're not passed back to theproduct team in a format that's
useful.
That's really hard.
That's why it's not anyone'sfault.
We automate that whole process.
So we will look at everycustomer call and find those key
moments, whether it's comparingto a competitor, product
(44:44):
feedback, deal blockers, churnrisk or even those moments where
a customer is really positiveand they talk about how much
time it saved them, which can bequite useful for product
managers and product marketers.
We extract that automatically,attach the CRM data so we can
then generate reports on yourbehalf.
So you can sit down with aleader every month and say what
are the biggest product issuesthat are blocking revenue, and
(45:05):
Twine, like an analyst on yourteam will just tell you that and
generate a report with clipsand some summary of the key
logos and customers that itimpacts and from a product team
you can just keep a pulse onwhat are customers saying out on
these calls about our product.
And it involves no work,basically from the go-to-market
team but generally that's thecore thing our product does
today.
But we're looking at all theways that product management or
(45:29):
product teams and go-to-marketteams struggle to communicate or
share this information.
So things like, if you're doinga product update and you want
to close the loop with acustomer because our AI knows
who asked for this, we can veryeasily say hey, sales rep, in
other region, your customerthree months ago asked for this.
The product team has thisupdate.
You should close the loop withthem and here's a clip of them
(45:51):
asking for it.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
So we're just starting to chip away at all
those things.
I've worked with a number ofSaaS vendors over my time and I
can think this would beincredibly valuable.
And the other piece with duerespect to past and present
people that I've worked withwhat this is really doing is
it's taking ego out of feedbackas well, and it means that it's
very much a data-driven,analytical approach that's
actually taken from the source,as opposed to Chinese whispers
(46:19):
or an opinion that someone maynot value within the
organization.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
For sure, we try to make it a comprehensive,
objective, consistent extractionof the information that matters
, and it removes some of thesebiases that you mentioned, but
also just removes a lot of timeand effort from matters.
And it removes some of thesebiases that you mentioned, but
also just removes a lot of timeand effort from people.
And so if you rely on a manualprocess today, you might get one
or two pieces of feedback a day.
Some of our customers now wentfrom a few a month to hundreds a
(46:45):
month, because there are theselittle moments on calls that you
don't always recognize.
So yeah, we're hoping somepeople found it useful so far,
but there's a lot of work.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
We have in front of us Incredible.
I'm really, really excited foryou and I'm confident that we're
going to see a lot more twinein the months and years to come.
So, brian, thank you so muchfor joining us today.
It's been an absolute pleasure,loads of nuggets for myself and
, I'm sure, a lot for theaudience as well.
So appreciate your time.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Thank you so much for having me.
It's been great.
You know you can tell that the product isn't meeting
the needs.
You can see the eyes of theperson live on the moment just
becoming disenchanted with yourproduct.
When someone's making aneconomic decision on behalf of
their company, they will giveyou the answers much more
directly, and so they will saydoes the product do this?
If it does not, then I think wecan end this conversation.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Brian Swift former head of product and head of
go-to market at companies likeTwitter, atlassian.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Safety Culture, dovetail and now co-founder of
Twine.
For us and for any startingcompany, you just need to find
product market fit.
If you don't have that, nothingelse really matters.
And the way I think aboutproduct market fit is you look
for the three stages you want.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hey, brian, thank you so much for joining us here
today on Battle Skies of a SalesLeader.
When we look at your profileand your LinkedIn and what
you've achieved in your career,I think it's nothing short of
remarkable.
When you look at some of thebrands that you've been a senior
leader and instrumental inhelping to build and construct
so there's Twitter, there isAtlassian, there's safety
(01:06):
culture and, most recently,before going out and setting
your own business up, a companycalled Dovetail as well I'm
incredibly excited.
I've got a whole bunch ofquestions, particularly around
your drive and lead intoentrepreneurship.
But firstly, we'd just love tohear, I guess in your own words,
a little bit about your journey.
What have been your core rolesand how have you operated?
(01:29):
and thought, as a seniorexecutive, some of these big
brands.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Yeah, well, it's great to be here.
My career has been a bit of awinding road.
I studied engineering andactually worked as a hardware
engineer originally, so beforesome of those brands you
mentioned, I worked at Samsungmaking semiconductors, really
learned how businesses operate,a lot of math, statistics, but
found that I really wanted to bemore involved in strategic
(01:53):
decisions and ultimately thatfew year journey led me to
product management.
I didn't know what that was atthe time, I don't think a lot of
people did, but rode thissoftware wave of startups and
worked at a few big companies,obviously that you mentioned.
Most of my career has been inB2B software, selling to other
(02:14):
businesses and trying to buildproducts that you can sell to an
enterprise but then also oftenhave a product-led growth
approach.
So almost a consumer gradedesign to software but being
sold to businesses, and I'vejumped around a bunch of
different types of products,sizes of companies, and then I
(02:36):
think the one nuance of the mostrecent part of my career is I
switched to run go-to-market atDovetail.
So after spending years beingon the receiving end of a lot of
feedback from sales andcustomer success and support
people out in the field, I wasnow on the other side of the
equation.
So I think that caused me to afew light bulb moments and
(02:59):
realizing having a lot ofempathy for the counterparts I'd
worked with over the years andthat ultimately led to me
wanting to become anentrepreneur and solve a problem
that I saw while I was in thatrole.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
Yeah, incredible, and yeah, I certainly, in my time
as a sales leader and watchingdifferent leaders at global
organizations kind of come andgo one of the things that I've
noticed is that if non-salespeople or leaders often get
their chance to come intogo-to-market because I think
(03:32):
that, in order to elevate withinan organization, having that
360 perspective of the frontoffice and the back office is
incredibly important and Iactually think it would be great
for sales guys to go behind thescenes and do some of that as
well, to understand what reallygoes on.
But let's even take a step back.
You know you're here in Sydney,in Australia.
You don't have an Australianaccent.
(03:54):
Tell us a little bit aboutwhere you grew up and how you
ended up here in Australia aswell.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, I grew up in Detroit, michigan.
My father worked in the autoindustry, most of the time at
Ford Motor Company, so that'swhat brought us to Detroit.
When I was a kid Grew up there,australia was obviously never
on my radar.
It was just a thing that yousaw in movies, basically and
jumped around the US for variousroles.
(04:24):
I was in Austin, texas, for awhile, on the East Coast, in
Boston, obviously, spent a lotof time in San Francisco as I
worked for more and more bigtech companies, especially
Twitter, or it was formerlyknown as Twitter, and I, from a
personal level, wanted the lifeexperience of living overseas.
I like warm weather.
I only speak English, so thatlimits my options quite a bit.
(04:45):
I had been to Sydney on aholiday and loved it.
At the time there was only onesoftware company I really knew
of, which was Atlassian, andthey happened to reach out about
a role on one of their bigproducts, and so I took a bit of
a leap of faith and moved downhere without really knowing
anyone and just joining acompany that built products that
(05:07):
I knew of, I had used, and withworking with a leader that I
really got to know during theinterview process and trusted.
So that kind of is what broughtme down here originally.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
So how did you get into to product management?
And what does productmanagement mean to someone
that's not from productmanagement?
And and you go oh, productmanagement, I'm going to step
into that world.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
I definitely stumbled into it.
The first startup I joined Iwas hired as.
A director of strategicanalytics was my title, which
doesn't really mean anything.
I had worked in strategyconsulting and they wanted
someone who could come in andunderstand the numbers of the
business.
They were trying to pivot tobuild a consumer app and
understand the numbers of thebusiness.
They were trying to pivot tobuild a consumer app.
(05:47):
Basically, it was a voiceoverIP for a gaming company that
wanted to build WhatsApp beforewe knew what WhatsApp was.
Obviously it was a good idea.
It didn't quite execute wellenough, but I happened to report
to the VP of product and thatis how I learned what product
management was and the way Iwould describe it is.
You're working with across-functional team, typically
including engineers anddesigners, to build,
(06:09):
quote-unquote, the right productfor the right customer as
quickly and efficiently aspossible to solve their problem
and grow your business.
So that involves a lot ofthings, many of which include
go-to-market, which often, Ithink as companies get bigger,
becomes further and furtherseparated from the actual day to
day role of a product manager.
I'm understanding who thesecustomers are, what their buying
(06:31):
processes are, and that wasdefinitely a journey I've gone
on as I've tried to work in moreB2B companies.
But yeah, most of the day today of product management boots
on the ground.
New in the role is working withengineers and designers to
build a product and reallyunderstand your customer and
solve a key problem for them.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
And in the companies that you worked for Twitter,
atlassian would you say that theproduct management is a push or
a pull in terms of who isdriving the innovation and
actually building that product?
Is it coming from more of theengineering side?
Is it coming from more of theengineering side?
Is it coming from more of thesales side?
Is it reliant on the sort ofCEO that you've got at the top,
(07:11):
whether they're GTM orproduct-focused?
Speaker 1 (07:13):
I think most tech companies take on the
personality of their founder orfounders.
So Safety Culture, as anexample, lucanier the founder,
serial entrepreneur, veryproduct-minded, and so a lot of
the strategy and innovation camefrom him through me into the
product org, but a lot of itreally came from him.
He knew the space very well.
(07:34):
He was someone who had bigideas, won't say no to anything
just like.
We have to figure this out andsolve this problem, no matter
how big it is, and I think thatthrough the product became where
a lot of the innovationhappened.
As companies grow, often theshift moves more and more into
go-to-market, where you have aproduct that's found
(07:55):
product-market fit.
Maybe it has reached some levelof product-led growth, but
inevitably, if you want to sellthe product to bigger companies,
you need to really havego-to-market leaders and people
thinking more strategicallyabout how you sell the product,
who the buyers are, how younavigate complex buying
processes.
And while a lot of thatinitially often doesn't impact
(08:16):
the product development process,over time it does, and so you
need people in the product sidewho kind of understand the
nuances of that.
So you need people in theproduct side who kind of
understand the nuances of that,and I think, while I haven't
worked at Atlassian for a while,you can see a lot of their
products and the reason they'recontinuing to do so well is
because they're beginning tonail this enterprise
go-to-market motion and having aproduct that can back that up.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Which has been a lot of work and quite a journey for
them.
But yeah, I think that'stypically how it works and from
a product side because I thinkit's an awesome jump that you've
done from product to GTM whatis the general consensus of
go-to-market and sales from theproduct side?
(09:00):
What do product managers andproduct people typically think
of the other side of the fence?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
It varies by company and at the stage, but there are
a lot of reasons that there isdysfunction or misalignment
between those orgs.
Despite people wanting, it'snever on purpose.
People want to work together,obviously, but you typically
have salespeople who have, theythink, in months and quarters
they're talking to customers.
They're out on the front linehearing all the deficiencies of
the product, reasons they're notgoing to hit their quota often,
(09:34):
which is determined by what theproduct team is building, and
so they try to pass thisinformation on.
But the challenge is thatgo-to-market, usually globally
distributed if you're a bigenough company product usually
all sits together.
They have to balance not justthe enterprise or sales-led
customer base, but usuallythere's a product-led growth
(09:56):
aspect to it, at least in thecompanies I've worked for, where
their needs and requirementsare quite different Not
completely at odds, but somewhatdifferent in how you think
about building a product andhaving a product strategy that's
going to ultimately win in thelong run.
And balancing that with betsand innovative things you need
to do is quite challenging.
And there is this translationgap I often have found in my
(10:19):
experiences where a salespersonmight hear an objection on a
call that is related to theproduct.
It's like playing the game oftelephone.
There's all these failurepoints of they didn't quite.
Because they're not researchers, they're not product managers,
they will interpret it in aslightly different way than a
product manager, would they tryto pass it along?
They don't do it for all oftheir calls necessarily, maybe
(10:40):
just the ones that matter most.
Some salespeople are quite goodat this, they are very
charismatic and so they carry alot of weight in organizations
where others often I found incustomer success typically are
more grounded in they want towait until they see a pattern
and then they present it over tothe product org.
And so as a product manager,you're getting all these
(11:01):
different inputs from sales,from CS, but then also typically
from your founder and customersthat you want to go acquire
that maybe aren't in your idealcustomer profile yet, that you
need to go innovate and build anew product for which the sales
team probably doesn't care asmuch about.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
So it's this very messy situation, especially as
you scale and I guess that'sgoing to lead us nicely into
part of this conversation interms of you setting up Twine
and the problems that that'ssolving for both the product and
GTM sides.
But before we get there, I wantto understand your transition
(11:38):
from product to GTM.
What was that leap like, goingfrom product into more of the
business development salesrevenue side of the business?
Speaker 1 (11:47):
well.
It was challenging for sure.
It's like learning a whole newskill.
Um, I had the a few advantages.
I guess I I understood theproduct very well and, and I
think, understood the customerquite well because I managed the
product.
I had a leadership team andfounders that really and
founders that really and boardthat backed me kind of stepping
(12:07):
into this.
So there was a lot of frameworkand support around that
transition.
But it was quite eyeopeningwhen you see the challenges of
being on a sales call or a CScall or just in a pipeline
review meeting and understandingall the nuances that go into
selling software and the thingsthat often have nothing to do
with the nuances that go intoselling software and the things
(12:27):
that often have nothing to dowith the product, that are quite
challenging.
But then even how you demo itand frame it.
So one takeaway I had from thisis I wanted all the product
managers to have to demo theproduct live to a customer at
least every month, because Ithink the way you walk through a
demo makes your brain get outof the.
What features are we building?
(12:48):
How are we designing them to?
How are we going to tell astory around this to a customer.
In order to do that, you needto know who the customer is,
what they're responsible for,what is the pain point that has
triggered this conversation, andI think that gives a product
management team a much morewell-rounded viewpoint and,
similarly, with sales and CS,understanding how to get
(13:10):
feedback from the customer in away that is useful and a bit
more structured, and then talkthrough and really dig into some
of these moments of feedbackwhere maybe the product isn't
landing well, and teasing outnot just a feature request but
really understanding the painthat they have in a way that's
going to be useful for them inmanaging the relationship but
also working with their productteam.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
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Now let's get back to theconversation.
What was there?
(14:16):
An aha moment where you thoughtI all of a sudden, I get the
challenge that salespeople havegot when working with a product
that isn't quite meetingrequirements.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
I don't know if there was one moment.
I think it just takes being ona couple calls and just.
I don't know if there was onemoment.
I think it just takes being ona couple calls and just.
Not that they're train wrecks,but you can tell that the
product just isn't meeting theneeds.
And the customer will gothrough all the things they need
the product to do, and eachanswer maybe isn't completely
off, but it's slightly off andyou can see the eyes of the
(14:47):
person live on the moment, justbecoming disenchanted with your
product, whereas often inproduct conversations you're
talking about what the productcould be and you're doing
generative research or you'reshowing them new designs, and
it's a very differentconversation than when someone's
making an economic decision onbehalf of their company.
They will give you the answersmuch more directly and so they
(15:09):
will say does the product dothis?
If it does not, then I think wecan end this conversation or
come back when you actually fixthat.
And so the tone of theconversation is quite different,
but equally important andeye-opening and relevant.
For our product team, I thinkthat was the most eye-opening
thing for me.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
So, for SaaS companies that are in their
early stage startup and I guessthat this is almost you at this
moment in time as well but forthose that are in the process of
still defining their idealcustomer profile and defining
what their go-to-market strategyis, what would your typical
recommendation be for having asymbiotic relationship between
(15:49):
product and GTM, and how do youbring them together so that you
can accelerate and optimize thatproduct market fit?
Speaker 1 (15:58):
It's a great question .
I think we often talk aboutthese things as separate
concepts, like your go-to-marketmotion or go-to-market strategy
and your product strategy, andone of the biggest issues I see
with companies it's easier whenyou're smaller, much harder when
you're larger is that thesethings become not necessarily at
odds, but they aren't plannedand discussed as a group.
(16:19):
And so the actual, a fewtactical things that I've seen
work well are have your productteam sit down with your sales
and CS team on some recurringbasis and just go through what
the customers are saying, bothgood and bad.
Often the product team justhears all the bad stuff.
It's good to hear what isworking well, because then you
can double down on that and itoften helps with how you
(16:40):
position the product from aproduct marketing perspective.
So I think just having arecurring time to sit down and
go through actual voice ofcustomer whether that's like a
clip of a customer or just goingthrough verbatim comments that
the customers have made andunderstanding the themes and
biggest opportunities and then Ithink, conversely, on the
product side, when you'redefining a feature, usually it's
(17:04):
here's the things that must do,here's how we're going to solve
those problems, but doing thego-to-market stuff up front.
So writing the press release orblog post with your product
team and with the sales and CSteam of this is how we want to
describe what we're about toembark on as a product team, and
(17:25):
do that before you write asingle line of code.
I think if that forces everyoneto think like a go-to-market
person like who is this for?
What are the key value propsthat we're trying to position?
How is it differentiated fromtheir other products?
What are those other productsthat they're comparing?
And if you get all thecounterparts in a room, this can
be quite a powerful way toalign everyone and talk about it
(17:47):
.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
The way you describe that, it almost seems obvious
that you bring those twotogether.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
From your experiences , is that not common, that you
see, yeah, yeah, yeah, I thinkgreat companies do this
regularly, but it's very normalto fall in the trap of the
product team builds the product,the go-to-market team, tells
the world about it and sells itand supports the customer Almost
in two parallels.
Exactly.
And while that sounds silly,it's just very natural in your
(18:19):
day-to-day to lose sight of this, and so I think usually it
comes down to the leaders inthat org figuring out these ways
to get everyone to just talk toone another.
But often when you're in theideation phase of product
development, making sure thatgo-to-market is heard, and when
go-to-market is planning out aquarter or the next six months,
(18:40):
what does the product team needto do to support them and serve
their customer?
And who is that customer?
And do we all agree on that?
Because often the product teamwill be talking to an end user,
at an existing customer thatyou're serving.
Well, but the go-to-market teamis now pushing the horizon of
the product and they're goingafter a new market or a new
region, or they're moving upmarket and the requirements are
(19:00):
shifting slightly, and so makingsure that everyone's aware that
that is one is occurring andthat, two, the go-to-market team
is aware of what deficienciesthe product has that's holding
them back, and the product teamacknowledges those and makes a
decision about whether or notwhich of those they're going to
address in a way that allowsthem to continue to scale and
deliver a product that works.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
How often would you recommend those teams
collaborating and having thosetactical or strategy sessions?
Speaker 1 (19:28):
I think there should be collaboration happening every
day, like not necessarilysitting down as a big group in a
meeting, but there are littleways of.
This was an interesting momenton a customer call just having a
mechanism to share that.
Or, if the product team has anidea and they want to validate
it, having a mechanism or a wayfor them to reach out, to go to
market and ask for their opinion.
Or just say hey over the nextfew weeks on all of your calls
and ask for their opinion, orjust say hey over the next few
(19:49):
weeks on all of your calls.
If you could ask this onequestion and let me know what
the customer has said, that'd bereally powerful.
So you actually bring them intothe research process and
ideation phase of productdevelopment.
But in terms of sitting downand defining strategy, certainly
quarterly to ask are we stillaligned?
Are we marching in the samedirection?
Do we still have the samevision of where we want to be in
six, 12 months?
(20:09):
Or has something changed?
Has the market shifted?
Have customers started to saysomething different about our
product?
Has the competitor popped up ina region that the product team
isn't aware of?
And just question do we stillbelieve this is the path that we
should be going down from aproduct perspective, from a
go-to-market perspective, Atleast once a quarter?
I think if you're smaller, youshould definitely do it once a
(20:30):
month, because the ship tends tobe a bit easier to steer and
you should be steering it morequickly.
At a bigger company, if youhave thousands of employees,
trying to change the directionof the ship every month can be
quite jarring.
So, you probably want to do itonce a quarter and do a much
more rigorous process to makesure you're aligned and avoid
unnecessary shifts in thestrategy.
Yeah, to make sure you'realigned, and avoid unnecessary
(20:50):
shifts in the strategy.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, also, what I've taken away from that is to be
super intentional as well.
So, actually build that out aspart of your planning.
Is that incorporation andcollaboration and synergy
between the two teams?
And, yeah, I know that from amarketing and sales there's
always some constructive tensionbetween the two, and I'm going
to I don't want to put words inyour mouth, but I'm going to
suggest that perhaps there oftenis with with product and sales
(21:14):
as well, or product and gtm is.
Would that be fair?
Speaker 1 (21:17):
yeah, I think there is a lot of tension and I think
naturally it's just built intothe way that those functions
tend to operate.
Yeah, it's kind of.
They're on different cadences.
Yeah, different horizons.
Their, their goals are aligned,but not often 100% aligned.
So, for example, a product teammight have 10% of their roadmap
is on trying an innovative newthing that might not work or
(21:38):
ever be able to be sold.
Or 20% of their roadmap mightbe for the bottom, like the SMB
market, which your sales teamdoesn't speak to, but it's still
an important growth labor forthe overall company.
And so I think, beingintentional, one very specific
thing I would suggest for bothgo-to-market and product that
can be a common language, isyour ideal customer and your
(21:59):
customer segmentation.
So, having that clear like atDovetail, we actually had
animals that we would use wecame up with a catchy word that
would describe a big enterprisecompany that has a massive
research team, or a innovativetech company who might have a
small research team, but theybelieve that more people should
be doing research, and so whenyou're having a conversation of
(22:20):
should we build this feature orthis customer we lost this deal
because of this, if you knowwhat kind of customer it is and
what segment they fall in, oryou have a word for it.
In this case, we used animals.
It gives everyone a commonlanguage.
That, I think, is often at theroot of the disagreement.
There is the time horizondifference, but then you are
(22:41):
selling to someone that I am notbuilding a product for, or we
are prioritizing this customersegment over that one and we
haven't been explicit about that.
And so there's all theseunderlying things that are
beneath the surface, and then ifyou can just tease them out, it
helps.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
And when you talk, you know your animals, ideal
customer profiles, segments thatyou're talking about.
Does the decision anchor backon total value that can be
driven out of each segment?
Is that where can we solve thebiggest problem or generate the
greatest revenue?
Is that the main anchor point?
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah, I think it's an overall company strategy
discussion at that point, who isour ideal customer, which is a
function of what is their needs,and can our product, in a
differentiated way, solve thoseneeds?
And is there enough economicvalue that we can extract
relative to the competition thatthe business can grow?
Which sounds simple, but it canbe quite challenging,
(23:40):
especially in today's worldwhere products and technologies
and markets are shifting soquickly.
So, having a conversation withyour entire leadership team
about who is the customer orcustomer bases that we're going
after and why and how mucheffort do we want to put in them
and often it can be that theproduct team is.
The majority of the investmentsare on a new segment that the
(24:00):
sales team isn't quite ready tosell to because the product
needs to get to a standard wherethey can sell it.
But the sales team is nowselling the product that you've
been building for the last twoyears and it's their job to
extract as much value of thatproduct investment as possible.
And it might be more inmaintenance mode or just we're
going to fix issues as they comeup.
(24:21):
But our innovation is nowshifting to this new market, our
new segment, and I think thatneeds to be a holistic company
conversation.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Awesome.
So I want to fast forward alittle bit into entrepreneurship
and your decision to leave thesafety of these incredible
brands and VP of product anddriving their meaningful impact
and value across theseorganizations.
What drove you to go off andco-found Twine and effectively
set your own venture up?
Speaker 1 (24:51):
I think some people just inherently they're like oh,
I just want to be anentrepreneur.
That's not necessarily me.
I'm a very competitive person.
I played sport my whole life.
It's something that's kind ofbuilt into how I operate.
So I think I have that aspectof pure entrepreneurship in me.
The thing that struck me isI've been very fortunate to work
with a lot of really greatfounders and seeing how they
(25:14):
operate and seeing thechallenges they go through, and
so I'm going into this now eyeswide open.
I know the challenges and thestruggles that they've gone
through and I've been veryfortunate to have a firsthand
experience with some reallygreat founders and very
different in how they approachproblems and people.
Great founders and verydifferent in how they approach
(25:35):
problems and people.
And I think the very consistentthing that I've observed and
heard from them is it is a grindand you need to be ready for it
and you should assume it'sgoing to take at least 10 years
to get to the outcome you want,and if you're not willing to
sign up for that, it's probablynot worth it.
And then a problem that you'lljust feel so motivated and
excited to solve every day, evenon your bad days.
(25:57):
It's something that is innatelymotivates you, even when, if
it's not going well, you stillare like, well, I need to solve
this, this problem for thiscustomer base.
And if you have the the driveto solve that problem and the
passion behind it and arewilling to do that for 10 years
in your head and understand thatcompany building isn't just
(26:18):
about you sitting and havingthese great ideas.
It's you have to do all these,all this little tasks and stuff
that you never even think of,and be someone that can build a
team of people.
Because I think the one thingthat I've learned over the years
is the surprising thing is thateven tech companies, it all
(26:41):
comes down to the people.
It's not actually thetechnology, it's the people that
you have around you.
And how can you rally themaround a problem?
And obviously they need to beable to solve that problem, and
you've got that through theinterview process.
But how you rally a group ofindividuals and have the ability
to do that problem and that'syou've got that through the
interview process.
But, um, how you rally a groupof individuals and have the
ability to to do that every dayand show up and be the person
that they can uh, believe in andwant to follow.
(27:01):
I think that is, uh, anotherkey thing, that I've been very
fortunate to see some people whoare quite good at that, so I
try to imbue that into my dailyroutine.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
It's funny.
Your talk of this is going tobe a grind in a 10 year sort of
path.
A very good friend of mine,adam, went through a venture
capital startup incubator calledAntler and he was successful in
getting on board.
But one of the things that theytalked about is that they said,
kind of semi jokingly, they,they said, be prepared to eat
(27:32):
pot noodles for the next sevenyears.
It looks very glamorous fromthe outside, you've got your
sass, your startup, your ceo,founder, etc.
So, but it is a grind andyou're not going to be making
money for a very long time.
I think it's a good realizationthat you need to have that
passion, that drive, and I guessI want to go back to that
question.
You say you weren't innately anentrepreneur.
(27:52):
What was it that drove you tobuild the business?
Was it an entrepreneurship?
I want to build somethingmyself, or was it?
I see a big gaping hole with myexperience of product with GTM.
This is a massive problem thatcould be meaningful across the
entire world.
I want to help to solve thatmeaningful across the entire
world.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
I want to help to solve that.
What I meant by that was I'mnot someone who wants to be an
entrepreneur, just to say.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
I'm an entrepreneur.
I know some people are fromhigh school and I'm going to go
start LinkedIn entrepreneur.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, I think, on a personal
level, I just want to pushmyself to solve problems that I
think are important, and when Iwas early in my career I had
said I want to be the VP ofproduct of a fast growing
software startup, for whateverreason, that was the goal I set
for myself and then, once I gotthere, I was like, well, what's
(28:45):
my next challenge?
And that ultimately led torunning GoToMarket for another
software company a whole newproblem that I can just throw
myself into and, from firstprinciples, figure out how to do
it and lean on people and I'msomeone who likes the challenge
and to learn and I got to apoint where I to your second
point of there was a problemthat a big gaping hole in the
(29:07):
market that I felt compelled tosolve, and I'd reached a point
in my career where that goingjumping out and trying to solve
a problem like that was probablythe next big challenge for me
where I was going to push myselfout of my comfort zone.
I think advice I always givepeople is, when you're looking
at a role, you should feelcomfortable doing about 50% of
it, maybe a little bit more, andthere should be about 30 that
(29:30):
you feel like I sort of donethis before, I've seen someone
do it.
And then there's 20% where Ihave no idea how to do this and
that, for me at least, has beenthe right balance, where I'm
constantly pushing myself.
And one actual thing I took awayfrom the founder of Safety
Culture is at the end of everyyear and we would do this for my
role I would write out a JD formy job for the following year,
(29:53):
so actually write out what I'dbe responsible for, what are the
key things I would spend mytime doing, and essentially
reapply for the job and mentallysign up for it.
And while my title didn'tchange during each year there,
the company drastically changedand grew and so it became a very
meaningful delta.
So that's something I'vecontinued to do.
Each year is like what is theJD, what am I going to try to
(30:18):
push myself to grow into overthe next year?
And that's something I'm doingnow as a founder, where now I
just have to push myself to doit and I'm working with some
advisors on how to structurethat, and people have gone on
the entrepreneurship journey.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
But I think it's about setting a big goal,
recognizing that you don'treally know how to do a bunch of
it, but just diving in and justtrying to figure it out.
So I guess it's the concept ofaffirmations and writing down
your goals in a different,different way, in a corporate
setting.
Um, I love that.
That's a.
That's a great tip I think I'mgoing to.
I'm going to take that on boardas well.
So you've founded the businessearlier this year and you've got
a founding team with yourself.
(30:58):
From a capabilities perspective, what was that founding team?
What did that look like?
Or, more so, another way, whatwas the most critical skill sets
that you felt you needed tohave in order to poise yourself
for the best success at launch?
Speaker 1 (31:12):
I think.
Obviously, in engineering,we're building an AI software
product, so someone who hasexperience doing that is a must
have, and so that was obviouslythe first hire we made.
My co-founder has experience ingo-to-market various roles sales
, customer success, sales,engineering at much larger
companies, so he understands theproblem we're solving as a
(31:34):
subject matter expert and isdriving a lot of our early deals
.
I'm doing some of that, butlearning from him along the way,
and then the other hire that wemade is a designer.
So I think now there's allthese new products popping up
every day, especially in the AIspace, and some of them are real
.
Some of them maybe not so much,but it becomes hard to stand
(31:56):
out and be a brand.
I think brand becomes even moreimportant in the design of your
product and how it makes peoplefeel when they use it.
See your website, see everylittle bit of content that you
put out that matters and helpsyou stand out more than ever.
And so I found someone who Ihad worked with in the past who
I think is immensely talented atthinking about how do you
design an AI product.
(32:16):
AI first product that resonateswith people but doesn't feel
gimmicky.
And then how do you build abrand that stands out and
doesn't just look like anotherB2B SaaS product, whether it's
the website, the actual userinterface in the product, the
tone of voice we use in all ofour marketing content, even in
our help center?
How do you describe the problemin a way that is interesting
(32:40):
and different?
And so this is something I tookaway from my Dovetail
experience from those founderswho are every little detail,
every word matters and is anopportunity to showcase your
brand and who you are and defineyour personality of your
company and what you stand for,and so having a designer on
board as our second hire wasvery critical for us the, the
businesses you've you've been attalk like.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
I think you've mentioned that they're
product-led growth strategieswhere you're going out and and
and really that that image andthat first impression I think is
incredibly important.
And then the buying process offthe back of that.
Do you think that the conceptof design at the beginning is
critical for all sorts of salesor GTM strategies, or is it more
(33:26):
important for product-ledgrowth?
What about if you're more of asales-led growth where you've
got a sales rep out there justdiscussing a value proposition?
Speaker 1 (33:33):
It's probably more important for the product-led
aspect of it, where you have torely on this content you've put
out there, whether that's yourwebsite or the product or just a
marketing content strategy thatis kind of trying to sell for
you.
And so how you craft that, Ithink, really matters.
But even in a purely like salesled function, I do think how you
(33:58):
express your product on a call,how you write emails, what you
link people to from those emailswhether it's a case study or,
um, some some content that helpsthem understand how that your
product can solve them I I thinkall these touch points, your
brand and what your companystands for, really matters, and
whether maybe we're a littlelucky that our designer has a
(34:19):
little bit of marketing, alittle bit of brand strategy in
her DNA and so she's able tokind of flex into all these
things.
But I do think, even for asales-led motion at a company
that's starting up, people arebuying, not necessarily what
your product is today that'sobviously part of it but they're
also buying for what you standfor and this unique insight you
(34:41):
have.
That needs to spark a littlebit of oh, like aha, moment in
them, and certainly that can bedone through a sales process.
But I think you need someaccompanying content or some way
of explaining it to them.
that opens their minds a bit,and I think having a unique
style and design can really helpwith that.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, amazing.
You mentioned AI and you guysare an AI first solution.
I want to hear a little bitabout the product and how that
fits into the solution thatyou've developed, the problem
that you're solving, but also,in parallel to that, ai as a
whole.
I'm finding it incredibly noisy.
Already, every single daythere's a new AI app in my face
(35:21):
on LinkedIn.
How are you finding AI isinfluencing and impacting
startups like yourself, but alsothe broader business world?
Speaker 1 (35:31):
It's certainly a huge shift.
A huge shift right.
It's probably the biggest shifttechnological shift we've had
since cloud and maybe mobile, Iguess 10, 15 years ago.
So it is a real shift.
It's not gimmicky, but I thinkthere's so much noise that it
often feels gimmicky, and a lotof the ways people talk about it
and the way they use it can be,and so it's hard to find the
(35:54):
signal and the noise of all thisstuff.
I think the way I advise peopleand the way we've approached
Twine is AI and large languagemodels are just another tool in
your tool belt to solve aproblem.
You can't start with the AI andwork backward.
The first principles stillapply who is the customer?
What is the problem you'reapply?
What is a?
Who is a customer?
(36:14):
What is a problem you'resolving?
What is the best way you cansolve it relative to your
competition or any substituteproducts, and often for certain
problem types, ai offers a newway to approach that, and so if
you apply it, in that sense, Ithink you can.
Actually you don't need to sayyou're an AI-first product.
You just solve the problem in amagical way and you can see it
(36:36):
in users' eyes.
We don't actually use the wordAI really on our website
anywhere we want to solve aproblem, and once they use our
product and they can see the waywe're solving it with the power
of an AI-first approach, it cando things that feel somewhat
magical, even if it's not like achat bot, like any of these
other products that pop up, andso we selectively deploy it for
(36:59):
the problems that we have, andthis is, I think, how all the
great AI first companies arepopping up.
It's not just wrap in a largelanguage model around an
existing experience that youhave.
It's how can we, in a novel way, knowing what we know now about
large language models and wherethey're going, how can we solve
an existing problem that we seein a way that is novel and
(37:20):
different and unique?
And we'll save it.
All comes.
You know, you got to save yourcustomer time.
You got to allow them to dotheir job faster.
You got to help them growrevenue, cut costs.
All that stuff is the same.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
It's just.
How can you deploy thistechnology to do that?
Yeah, amazing.
So I want to transition on togrowth customer acquisition,
getting your first revenuethrough the door and then
planning to build out your teamwhat is the sequence of events
there?
How do you think about each ofthose in terms of customer
(37:54):
acquisition growth levers thatyou need to hit in order to
reinvest into, you know,continued growth and is growth
into product?
Is it into sales or marketing?
Speaker 1 (38:05):
I think all that for us and for any starting company.
You just need to find productmarket fit, and if you don't
have that, nothing else reallymatters and you're just
investing in things that areprobably not going to generate a
return for yourself or yourinvestors that you really want.
And so that has been ourjourney so far.
And the way I think aboutproduct market fit is you look
for the three stages.
(38:26):
You want someone to reactemotionally, like in a positive,
like wow, say that on a salescall, or even if it's a product
led, they'll send something insupport like this is amazing or
thank you so much, and theyactually elicit an emotion in
solving a problem in a way.
For them, the second thing isthat they'll actually start
telling other people about it,and so you'll get these people
(38:46):
reaching out like I heard aboutyour product from so-and-so.
That is a sign that not onlywere they amazed, like excited
about it, but they're willing totell a colleague about it or a
friend or whoever it is in theindustry.
And then the third is that ifboth those things are happening,
all of a sudden you'll just getsignups coming out of nowhere
and or requests for demos thatyou're just like I don't even
(39:08):
know where these came from.
And I think that those are thethree stages of product market
fit.
So we're really on that journeyand, as it relates to growth,
as we try to figure that out,which we've been working with a
few partners where theybasically said the product's
going to be a little rough, it'sgoing to change a lot.
Here's what we're trying tosolve.
We'd love for your input inhelping us solve that.
And if they care enough aboutthe problem and often their
(39:31):
existing relationships fromsomeone's network in the company
, they'll be willing to do that.
And then, if you can offer themdiscounts or whatever once they
actually the product gets to apoint where it's ready to.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
How important is it to get those I call them
friendlies on board in the earlystage to actually help to be
invested in the growth, but alsoin product development.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
I think having the friendlies involved and invested
in the growth is superimportant.
I do think there is also thatcan't be your only myopic focus,
because often there is thisweird dynamic where they've seen
the product in its rough phasesand so they almost their first
impression whether it's explicitor not is oh, that thing was a
(40:15):
little rough.
I'm not sure if that really evenwhen it gets to a point they
can be biased by that, and soyou can't just have your only
goal be let's convert thesefirst customers into paying
customers and then run to thenext phase.
It's learn what's working andwhat's not.
Have an iteration on yourproduct vision.
Go, solve that and try toslowly open it up to more people
(40:35):
and see if their initialreaction is different from the
previous cohort.
And that's at least the waywe've been solving it.
And to go back to your otherquestion about growth, I think
we try.
I would advise not to like.
Product-led growth is a highlyefficient way to grow a business
, but it's not always the rightstrategy.
(40:57):
It's very dependent on the typeof solution you're building and
the market and who your buyeris.
And that's the market, who yourbuyer is, who your ideal
customer is.
That ultimately determines theway in which combination of
motions you deploy.
And I've often seen product-ledgrowth means a really slick
consumer-grade product andsales-led growth is enterprise
(41:21):
products and the design doesn'tmatter as much.
I don't think that's a falsetrade-off.
I think you always want tobuild a product that as soon as
a customer uses it, it canspread organically and they love
it.
But the initial purchasedecision or any expansion
purchases might not beproduct-led growth.
It might be sales-led growth100%.
It might be a combination oflike.
There's some organic expansionand then you have to bring in a
(41:45):
salesperson because the purchasedecision requires a personal
connection, and so that's whatwe're trying to navigate and
figure out, and we're findinglittle pockets of customers
prefer product-led growth, someprefer a handheld approach from
our team, and so I'd say we'restill trying to nail that.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
So you're on the product-market-fit definement at
the moment and just reallytrying to establish that.
When you look forward, what arethe next milestones of
achievement?
So let's just say we've, we'vesolved product market fit.
What is milestone one, two andthree look like.
Over what time frame?
Speaker 1 (42:23):
our goal has been, um , find those first few signals
of product market fit, like Ijust defined before, and we've
we've gotten to that point.
We're now, and then, okay,let's have a pricing and
packaging strategy that works.
So people will actually putdown a credit card.
Just them telling you this isso great is one thing, actually
paying for it is another.
We've passed that milestone now, and so the next phase is how
(42:48):
do we scale this product wherewe don't have to reach out and
tell someone what we are, whatwe stand for, and have them see
the value of the product?
How do we build distribution,brand awareness, even if it's in
a small pocket that we thinkcan be repeatable?
And that's going to be somecombination of content marketing
(43:11):
, community building, gettingout and talking us as founders
about what we stand for, andthen just some, probably a
little bit of outbound sales anda little bit of outbound
marketing to try to test wherewhich pockets are.
So I think we're in thisexperimental phase of what are
the distribution channels thatwe think could be efficiently
(43:31):
scalable, and once we find those, we'll double down on them.
And then, I think, thefollowing year, looking forward
to 2025, how do we grow our team.
I think that will be a smallinvestment in the product team,
as well as some go-to-marketfolks in the US and maybe the EU
(43:52):
or EMEA region, because most ofour customers are there and
they're going to require somepeople in their time zone
supporting them.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
Amazing and there's a lot of sales people, reps,
leaders listening to thispodcast that may be interested
in Twine and the problem thatyou're solving.
Can you just give us yourelevator pitch on what the
problem is you're solving andhow people can connect with you
if they would like to?
Speaker 1 (44:23):
Yeah, there's a lot of.
The general problem we'retrying to solve is there's a lot
of product insights in everysales and CS call that go
untracked or unpassed.
They're not passed back to theproduct team in a format that's
useful.
That's really hard.
That's why it's not anyone'sfault.
We automate that whole process.
So we will look at everycustomer call and find those key
moments, whether it's comparingto a competitor, product
(44:44):
feedback, deal blockers, churnrisk or even those moments where
a customer is really positiveand they talk about how much
time it saved them, which can bequite useful for product
managers and product marketers.
We extract that automatically,attach the CRM data so we can
then generate reports on yourbehalf.
So you can sit down with aleader every month and say what
are the biggest product issuesthat are blocking revenue, and
(45:05):
Twine, like an analyst on yourteam will just tell you that and
generate a report with clipsand some summary of the key
logos and customers that itimpacts and from a product team
you can just keep a pulse onwhat are customers saying out on
these calls about our product.
And it involves no work,basically from the go-to-market
team but generally that's thecore thing our product does
today.
But we're looking at all theways that product management or
(45:29):
product teams and go-to-marketteams struggle to communicate or
share this information.
So things like, if you're doinga product update and you want
to close the loop with acustomer because our AI knows
who asked for this, we can veryeasily say hey, sales rep, in
other region, your customerthree months ago asked for this.
The product team has thisupdate.
You should close the loop withthem and here's a clip of them
(45:51):
asking for it.
Speaker 2 (45:56):
So we're just starting to chip away at all
those things.
I've worked with a number ofSaaS vendors over my time and I
can think this would beincredibly valuable.
And the other piece with duerespect to past and present
people that I've worked withwhat this is really doing is
it's taking ego out of feedbackas well, and it means that it's
very much a data-driven,analytical approach that's
actually taken from the source,as opposed to Chinese whispers
(46:19):
or an opinion that someone maynot value within the
organization.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
For sure, we try to make it a comprehensive,
objective, consistent extractionof the information that matters
, and it removes some of thesebiases that you mentioned, but
also just removes a lot of timeand effort from matters.
And it removes some of thesebiases that you mentioned, but
also just removes a lot of timeand effort from people.
And so if you rely on a manualprocess today, you might get one
or two pieces of feedback a day.
Some of our customers now wentfrom a few a month to hundreds a
(46:45):
month, because there are theselittle moments on calls that you
don't always recognize.
So yeah, we're hoping somepeople found it useful so far,
but there's a lot of work.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
We have in front of us Incredible.
I'm really, really excited foryou and I'm confident that we're
going to see a lot more twinein the months and years to come.
So, brian, thank you so muchfor joining us today.
It's been an absolute pleasure,loads of nuggets for myself and
, I'm sure, a lot for theaudience as well.
So appreciate your time.
Speaker 1 (47:07):
Thank you so much for having me.
It's been great.
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