Episode Transcript
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Kevin Horek (00:31):
Welcome back to the
show. Today, we have Griffin
Perry. He's the founder and CEOat METR. Griffin, welcome to the
show.
Griffin Parry (00:38):
Thank you very
much for having me, Kevin. Nice
to meet you.
Kevin Horek (00:41):
Yeah. You as well.
I'm excited to have you on the
show. I think what Meter isdoing is really, really
important, whether you're astartup or a company that's been
around a very long time andevery everywhere in between. But
maybe before we get into allthat, let's get to know you a
little bit better and start offwith where you grew up.
Griffin Parry (01:03):
Several places.
I'm actually I'm an expat brat.
So my dad was a journalist andmy mum was a teacher and
associate worker. And I lived inNew York in the seventies. So
I'm originally British and stillBritish, actually.
I grew up in New York in theseventies and then Ottawa and
(01:24):
then we came back to the UK fora bit and then we moved to Hong
Kong. I did most of my secondaryschooling in Hong Kong. And then
eventually I came back to the UKand I've been here pretty much
all my adult life, except for arather glorious 2 years in Italy
about 10 years ago.
Kevin Horek (01:42):
Very cool. So walk
us through, you went to
university. What did you takeand why?
Griffin Parry (01:50):
So I went to
Bristol University in the UK and
I studied economics andpolitics, which clearly is
highly relevant to what I'vegone on to do.
Kevin Horek (02:00):
Okay. But what got
you passionate about that early
on?
Griffin Parry (02:04):
I wish I could
say that I've applied a lot of
thought to what I studied andwhy I didn't. I've actually I've
just gone through the my oldestdaughter is going to university
next year. So I've just spentthe last year helping her plan
where she should go, what sheshould do. And she's definitely
applied an awful lot morethought to it than I did. But, I
mean, in the UK, you narrow itdown to 3 subjects when you're
(02:28):
sort of 16, 17, 18.
And mine were English, maths andhistory. And so I enjoyed the
history bit most and economicsand politics looked like there
was a lot of that with a littlebit of math. So that's what I
went for. I mean, I mean, I aminterested in both subjects
still. So it wasn't that wasn'ta waste of time.
(02:49):
It just wasn't very vocational.
Kevin Horek (02:51):
Interesting. Okay.
So walk us through your career,
maybe just some highlights alongthe way because you've done a
ton of stuff, and then I reallywanna dive into your end, what
you guys are doing there.
Griffin Parry (03:02):
Cool. Sounds
good. So I. I sort of I spent 2
or 3 years sort of being anaccountant and being a
management consultant and sortof finding my way. But where my
career really started taking offis I started working at Sky,
which is the big pay TV businessin the UK and now across Europe.
(03:24):
And then I stayed there for 12,13 years. So I sort of think of
myself as a sky, man and boy.And in terms of what I did, like
there was a through line from, Iwas a management consultant when
I joined. I did a lot ofstrategy work, but then I
started bridging into sort ofbusiness development and new
(03:44):
product development. So it was areally exciting time in media at
the time.
So, you know, all thetraditional analog media
businesses were turning digitaland so there was huge
opportunity and threat. And so Iwas one of the people who was
assigned to sort of working outwhat, what we should do. And Sky
was a really interesting,dynamic, growing company. Still
is. But at the time it was areal buccaneering, piratical
(04:05):
type of place.
So everything was possible. Andeventually I ended up running
one of the things that Irecommended that we invest in
and do, which was television viathe Internet. So when I first
proposed it, remember, this isgoing back 20 years, everybody
laughed because people assumedthat television should be
(04:25):
distributed by the airwaves orsatellite. But, you know, we
were given a little bit ofmoney, we were given a little
bit of rope, and we basicallybuilt the online TV portfolio
within Sky and it eventuallybecame core business. So, yeah,
that was the exciting thing Idid in that sort of corporate
(04:46):
career.
And then I jumped into startupsabout 10 or 12 years ago.
Kevin Horek (04:50):
Okay. So what made
you make the leap from kind of
corporate into doing thestartup? Because that's quite
different. Different set ofchallenges.
Griffin Parry (04:59):
Definitely a
different set of challenges. And
it's also definitely true thatyou have to unlearn an awful lot
of things that make yousuccessful in the corporate
world because they're actually abit of a drag and an obstacle in
a startup. There is a throughline. So I was essentially I was
corporate venturing like I wasdoing the crazy stuff in a big
(05:23):
company. And a lot of that isabout overcoming objections sort
of internally.
And I sort of wanted to be freeof that. I wanted to sort of
properly innovate and do it at afaster clip. So that was, know,
there was a sense that ofunfinished business or I was
frustrated from doing somethingI wanted to do. So that was
definitely one of the things.And and sorry, I should just
(05:46):
explain.
We've had 2 startups. So thefirst one started in 2012, I
think. It wasn't my idea. It wasactually the idea of my co
founder. But I knew him wellbecause he, he was the sales and
marketing leader of the businessthat Sky appointed to build the
back end platform for the onlineTV portfolio.
So we had a customer and sort ofsalesperson client management
(06:10):
relationship. And he said, look,we've been looking at various
new opportunities for us as acompany. And there's obviously a
big opportunity in games, videogames, where the skills and
capabilities that we'vedeveloped in the television
industry are applicable. And,and they had some interesting
(06:33):
data points, sort of projectsthat they'd done as a business,
which suggested there was a bigopportunity. So he propositioned
me.
I was just at the right moment.I said, fine, let's go for it.
And, yeah, that that was thestart of our first business,
which was called Gametox.
Kevin Horek (06:46):
Interesting. So did
you self fund? Did you raise
some money? Walk us throughthat.
Griffin Parry (06:51):
Oh, that was so
very different funding journey
from the current business. So,yes, it was largely
bootstrapped. So I got a bit ofearn money in, then it was
friends and family. And then wesort of graduated through sort
of richer and richer angelinvestors. And then we did do
some institutional fundingtowards the end of it.
But, yeah, I mean, from a 10,000foot level, it was broadly a
(07:12):
bootstrapped business.
Kevin Horek (07:14):
Very cool. And then
you sold it off, correct?
Griffin Parry (07:18):
We did. Yeah. We
sold it to Amazon in 2017, which
was, and it became an AWSservice. So Amazon Games Box was
a thing. To explain a little bitabout the business, it was the
way Amazon now describe it isthey would call it fully managed
games back end.
(07:38):
So the reason that theopportunity existed at the time
is the video games industry waschanging quite a lot. So
previously most games werebasically code that you could
put on a shiny disc or itsdigital equivalent and sell as a
product to someone. And therewas a migration towards games
(07:59):
becoming more services so thatthey would have online
components. And some of thosewould be because some games
features were online, likeleaderboards, you have to be
online. And some of them werebecause it gave the people who
are running the games theability to manage them over
time.
But in both cases, you neededbasically online platforms and
(08:20):
an understanding about how tobuild and operate them. And so
that understanding wasrelatively scarce in the video
game space at the time. It'scompletely different now. But so
what Games Fox was, was it wasthis, I call it cloud
infrastructure, but the way tothink about it is a managed back
end. It basically allowed videogames makers to to quickly build
(08:41):
and adapt a back end for theirgames so they can do updates and
leaderboards, etcetera.
And we ultimately sold to Amazonbecause they were very
interested in the game spacegenerally and the game sector
was a big segment for the AWSinfrastructure business. So,
(09:03):
yeah, we we ended up selling toto Amazon working at AWS in our
own app, which was an absolutelyfascinating experience.
Kevin Horek (09:10):
Interesting. So
walk us through your your time
in Amazon and then deciding tobuild a meter and then let's
dive into that.
Griffin Parry (09:19):
Yeah. Sure. So we
kind of so our time at Amazon
was split between 2. So thefirst half, we were running the
service as a or integrating theservice integrating the company
into AWS and setting up theservice. And then the second
(09:39):
half, which is largelygeographical because we were
based in London and Dublin andthe center of gravity for the
business, the borders was on theWest Coast.
So that was quite difficult froma time standpoint of view. So we
migrated into field roles inEurope. But and it was, you
know, AWS is a reallyinteresting place. I know less
about Amazon, more about AWS.Okay.
(10:02):
It's very deliberate the waythat business has been designed.
And there's a reason why it'sscaling as fast or continuing to
scale as fast as it is. It's anincredible business. And the
three line between GamesBox, AWSand Meter is about pricing
because at Gamespots we deployeda usage based pricing strategy.
(10:26):
So the broad summary is we soldthem, we basically charged our
customers on the basis of thenumber of players their games
had.
And that worked well for us. Butat the time we experienced a lot
of operational and go to marketchallenges associated with it.
And we thought it was just us.You know, we'd done it wrong or
(10:48):
we were overlooking some keytooling that everybody else was
using. When we arrived at AWS,they are also a usage based
pricing business, albeit on amuch, much bigger scale.
And what we saw is that they hadexactly the same kind of
operational and go to marketchallenges that we'd had at
(11:08):
Gazebox. So that's when westarted thinking, oh, maybe it
wasn't just us. And so we juststarted asking around and we
realized that the problems thatwe've been experiencing were
absolutely endemic in softwarewhere companies were adopting
usage basic pricing strategies,which had been pretty rare and
were becoming much more common.So we, when we finished our run
(11:31):
out, we launched META and METRis focused on solving those
problems that, we'd experiencedourselves.
Kevin Horek (11:39):
Okay. So what made
you actually start building
METR, and and what was thecaveat to or basically, like,
the kind of final straw to say,like, look, we need to really
build this.
Griffin Parry (11:52):
Well, we were
always intending to launch
another company. So Okay. Evenas we sold, you know, sign the
deal to sell, we knew we weregoing to go again. So it was
less about intent to build acompany and more about finding
the right idea. And we basicallydecided to take a slightly
different approach because withGames Box, we knew we knew quite
(12:14):
a lot, but we hadn't reallyexperienced the problem that we
were solving firsthand becausewe weren't games developers.
And so we were determined thistime around to understand the
problem much more intimately.And so when we were thinking
about what we'd like to do, wethought about the things that
had frustrated us most and wherewe thought it was a common
problem and other people had it.And this point about pricing or
(12:38):
pricing enablement became theclear favorite pretty quickly.
Yeah. This is stuff that wereally understood and we knew
was a real problem for lots ofpeople, so we wanted to solve
it.
Kevin Horek (12:49):
Okay. So walk us
through what is meter and and
how does it work?
Griffin Parry (12:57):
So, a wise man
described it, Meta to me as a
pricing enablement platform theother day. I actually thought
that was rather good. So I mightstart using it. But, to explain
what it is, so we're a platformand we help B2B software vendors
build painlessly and changeprices easily. And we're
(13:21):
particularly focused oncompanies who are deploying
usage based pricing strategiesand particularly focused on
companies that have reached acertain level of complexity.
So our customers tend to bescale ups and above. And to
explain why it exists, thetailwind for us as a business is
(13:45):
the adoption of usage basedpricing strategies. And 4 years
ago, maybe 30% of softwarevendors use some kind of usage
based pricing and now more than80% of them do. And if that
surprises you, it's worth justcaveating it slightly. This
isn't just pure pay as you gousage based pricing.
(14:06):
This is the deployment of usagebased pricing strategies all
along the spectrum. And at oneend it looks a lot like
subscription still. It just hasusage based elements integrated
into it. So a classic examplewould be, you know, it's a
feature based or a seat basedsubscription, but you've got
usage allowances And if youexceed those allowances, you
(14:29):
have to migrate to a higher tieror pay overages. So it's all
along that spectrum.
Kevin Horek (14:35):
Okay. Go keep
going. Sorry.
Griffin Parry (14:37):
Well, I was going
to say, like, as soon as you
start doing it, there is a taskthat you have to do that you
didn't previously have to do ifyou're only doing subscriptions.
And that's bringing togetherpricing information with product
usage data and processing themto work out what needs to go on
the bill. And the existing quoteto cash stack that is typically
(15:02):
used by software vendors doesn'tcater for it because it assumes
subscriptions. So early adoptersof usage based pricing like
Gamesparks either have to relythey have to fill that gap with
a manual based spreadsheetsystem or build their own
tooling. And so what we're doingis basically preventing them
(15:25):
having to do that.
Like this is a we're aspecialist vendor which allows
them to do that combination orcalculation of taking product
usage data and pricing.
Kevin Horek (15:36):
Got it. No, that
makes sense. So how do I
actually go about implementingmeter in my application?
Griffin Parry (15:49):
Well, we would
assume that you again,
remembering that we tend we tendto focus on those slightly more
mature, more complex businesses.You will have established
tooling in your quote to cashstack.
Kevin Horek (15:59):
So you
Griffin Parry (15:59):
will have a sales
CRM and you will have a finance
stack, which will include aninvoicing system. And we don't
want you to replace any of that.Okay. What what META does is
integrate with it and makes itwork as it needs to when you're
doing usage based pricing. Sothe integration points are with
those existing toolings and thenwith your production systems
(16:23):
where the production system isabout taking in product usage
data and then you configure thisand meet it.
And then hopefully at thatpoint, meter begins to disappear
into the background. Like youstill want your, your staff
using the tools that they'realready used to, like Salesforce
or the Sales CRM or NetSuite orthe finance stack side of
things. But they now work asthey need to for usage based
(16:46):
pricing with a high degree ofautomation. And in terms of
impact, it takes away a hugeamount of pain associated with
billing. So drilling operations,which are a real cause of stress
and heartache, are automated andbecome painless and our
(17:06):
customers love us for that.
But I would say that I don'tthink that that's the major
return on the investment forimplementing META. I think there
are much bigger impacts ortransformative impacts on the
business. And they are, one isyou eliminate errors. So billing
errors are a carrot, a killer.They erode customer trust,
(17:28):
obviously, but they also resultin revenue leakage, meaning a
whole bunch of revenue youshould be getting, but you're
not because you're not billingeffectively for it.
So that is one bigtransformative impact. The
second is, meter deliversinformation to the billing
system at invoicing time once amonth, But it also delivers
(17:51):
information about bills orrunning totals of bills on
demand at any point during themonth. And that information is
really useful for various teamsaround the business. So
salespeople want to haveinformed conversations with
customers. They kind of need toknow where the bill is tracking.
And it's really useful to bealerted about changes in
(18:14):
behavior or if the bill istracking towards a limit above
which maybe charge down regions,etc. So it really improves the
productivity and performance ofthe sales team. Same thing is
true of customer success.Product teams also really like
it because you can build billingdashboard for the end customer
within the product rather thanrequiring them to ring up
(18:36):
customer success to find out,well, what the bill is or is
likely to be at the end of themonth. So that impact on
performance productivity invarious teams around businesses
is really key.
And then the final thing isbecause you've introduced
automation, it's much easier tochange pricing. And so you've
delivered pricing agility to thecustomer. And that is key.
(19:04):
Firstly, it helps sales teamsdesign custom pricing, which,
helps win and retain the mostimportant accounts. And it also
helps the product team with newproduct development.
It's much easier to add newfeatures or launch new products.
So those are the real so, yes,meter takes away all the billing
(19:26):
stress, but the things thatreally matter is it eliminates
errors. It makes sales, customersuccess and product teams more
productive and it deliverspricing agility to the business,
which really helps with, withsales and the new product
development.
Kevin Horek (19:45):
No. That that's
interesting. So you you brought
up something interesting aboutobviously, different customers
are gonna and you mentioned,like, sometimes you give maybe a
better deal to some of yourbigger customers or or whatnot.
But do you help at all withrecommending what should be
(20:05):
charged? Or are you not doingthat at all?
Or like a minimum at
Griffin Parry (20:13):
least? We don't
do that now. So we have one
product in the market, which isan infrastructure product, and
it allows you to automate thoseprocesses that I was describing.
Yeah. And one of the one of thegreat things about that is it
allows you to change pricingeasily.
What your pricing should be,that's something that you're
(20:34):
going to have to work out at themoment. Okay. So I would always
say we are not pricingstrategists. So, you know, I'm
obviously an observer of themarket when it comes to how
people are pricing and howstrategies are evolving, but I
don't have a strong convictionview about what's best and
what's worse. I'm just lookingat all the various things people
(20:55):
are doing, going, wow, isn'tthere a lot of creativity there?
Where I do have a high degree ofconviction is about how you have
to set up your pricing andbilling operations. Like, how do
you how you have tooperationalize pricing like this
within the business because thatthat is what Mesa does. That
said, we obviously onboard lotsof very useful data onto the
(21:16):
platform. And the next step forus is to introduce what we call
decisioning software, which isbasically recommendations about
what the pricing should be basedon patterns in the data.
Interesting.
And that's coming later thisyear and is actually the the
area of the business that I'mmost excited about.
Kevin Horek (21:37):
Sure. So is that
leveraging kind of machine
learning and AI to do some ofthat, or what's the strategy to
implement that?
Griffin Parry (21:48):
So the I'll I'll
answer the question directly,
but with a story. So the firstperson in the room after And so
we've been planning for thisfrom, from day 1, which is 3 and
a half years ago now. But youhave to build the business in
sequence. So you have to deliverthe infrastructure product,
(22:09):
which is great andtransformative for our
customers. But you have to dothat first to start accumulating
the data, which you then use todistribute those to deliver
those recommendations in termsof what the pricing should be.
Kevin Horek (22:25):
Makes sense. So how
did you land your first
customers and get people to wrapwrap their head around kind of
this business model? Becauseinjecting yourself right in the
middle is actually really smart.But was it a hard sell, I guess,
is the question?
Griffin Parry (22:45):
Yes and no. So
the way I've got product brand
background, so we sort of did itin sort of classic product best
practice. We did lots ofdiscovery and, we talked to a
lot of people. And so we andwe'd also experienced the pain
ourselves. So that was quite aneasy process.
We talked to a lot of people. Webasically said, look, this is
(23:05):
the problem we have. Do yourecognize it And is it a big
deal? And we quickly generated alot of feedback like, oh, my
God, this is an itch that needsscratching. And we got a strong
sense about who cared about itin the organization.
So it was quite easy to getgoing. And we did sort of, I
would say, 70, 80 discoveryconversations. It was slightly
(23:30):
easy because of what business toAmazon. You know, we're quite
interesting. We're talking abouthaving experienced the pain
ourselves.
It was quite easy to open doorsand get people to talk to us. We
had a high degree of convictioneven before we started building
about what was missing. Thedifference So that's the good
bit. The thing that's slightlydifficult is pricing affects a
(23:54):
lot of different teams within anorganization. Sure.
It's something that doesn't havea clear owner. So it's relevant
to finance, it's relevant toproducts, it's relevant to
marketing, it's relevant tosales, engineering, or we always
need to be involved as soon asyou're building or implementing
new tooling. And that's one ofthe challenges of the business
because you've got to workyou've got to work out who you
(24:17):
want to talk to, who's yourprimary person you want to sell
to. And you also need to workout how the buying committee is
composed because it'sheterogeneous, because pricing
affects so many different peoplearound the org. And the problems
that we solve for, a lot of themour customers don't realize they
have yet.
So things like, for example,sales productivity, like the
(24:42):
fact that you understand theusage of your customers and you
can be alerted about certainpatterns which would indicate
you should proactively reach outto the customer. That's not
necessarily identified withinour customers as a high priority
pain point. And so there's nopoint selling a solution for a
problem your customers don'tknow they have. So we had to
(25:03):
work. So obviously we wouldstart by talking about our grand
vision, which really excited us.
We realized that when the peoplewe were talking to got excited
about some parts of it and werekind of more quizzical about the
others. So we just ended upworking out over time. And this
is a class you know, pathstartup journeys is let's just
zero in on the thing that reallymatters to them right now. Sell
(25:25):
that and then introduce to themall these other things we're
going to do to them afterwards.And so the thing that we really
zero in on is billingoperations.
You know, it's a huge painpoint, and we introduce a high
degree of automation which,solves those pain points. And
then we explain what else itdoes to them.
Kevin Horek (25:47):
Okay. Any advice
for getting some of your first
clients and actually gettingthem to convert? Because that's
the hardest part, especiallywhen you have to convince that
many people at a company.
Griffin Parry (26:00):
Be lucky.
Kevin Horek (26:02):
I mean,
Griffin Parry (26:02):
you know, that's
that's definitely a part of it.
Like I've never that'sapplicable to this business and
our previous business. Likeyou've got to you will rely on
brakes and what you need to dois prepare yourself so that you
can take advantage of them whenthey come. The way we did it is
(26:25):
that we obviously talked to alot of people, like I said, and
then we recruited a designpartner group of 5. We were
deliberately looking for a bitof diversity in there because we
were still not completely surewho the ICP was.
And we found those basically bydoing through the discovery
work. Like, you know, we talkedto a lot of people and then we
(26:47):
identified those who we thoughtwere most interested in what we
were doing or had the mosturgency. And we recruited them.
But there were other things thatwe got lucky in that we just
didn't we joined a communitybecause that community, it was a
(27:07):
rev op community and thatcommunity was talking about
these problems. And we put up ahand and said, look, you know,
full disclosure, we're planningto solve this problem.
Is anybody interested inchatting to us? And so we
recruited one of our designpartners through there. And
another one came through like aVC connection. So one of our VCs
introduced us to someone whointroduced us to someone and we
(27:29):
explained what we were doing andthey were interested. So yes,
there is a lot of love, butthere's also a lot of grind.
And one of the challenges here,obviously, is that this is
critical infrastructure for thecompany. Like this is billing.
Yeah. So you have to build quitea lot of product and you have to
generate a lot of trust with thecustomer. And I think it did
(27:50):
help us a lot that we had had asuccessful previous business and
we had raised our seed fundingin one of the most favorable
environments you can imagine.
And so we had a lot of moneyfrom a lot of high quality
backers. So, yes. I mean, thatthat's what happened.
Kevin Horek (28:08):
No. I'm glad you're
being brutally honest about it.
I I think that's like, it's goodadvice in itself. Right? Like
right?
Griffin Parry (28:16):
Yeah. For sure. I
mean, I I I could pretend that
we played a perfect game, butstartups are about grit and
grind, aren't they?
Kevin Horek (28:27):
A 100%.
Griffin Parry (28:28):
That's what we
did.
Kevin Horek (28:29):
And and leveraging
your past experiences, to
hopefully help your future ones.Right? And if you don't have a
ton of past experience, it'spotentially a lot harder.
Griffin Parry (28:41):
Totally. It's
yeah. You've got a you've got a
toolkit in front of you. Like,use it. Be creative.
And that's what we did.
Kevin Horek (28:51):
Very cool. So I'm
curious because you've been
through this, the whole, like,idea to acquisition, you're
working on another startup, youbootstrapped, you've raised
money. What advice do you giveto other founders that are maybe
coming up or have been added along time in there? And, you
know, just what advice do yougive to people?
Griffin Parry (29:16):
Let me think. I
mean, I think we just touched on
one thing that I generally sayif people ask me a question like
this. I mean, the fact that gritcounts for a lot. So for me,
startups are about learning anditeration. You know, you have an
idea, you test it, you learn,you adapt.
You're constantly failing, butlearning from the failure. And
(29:37):
that means that you need highenergy levels and a lot of
resilience to keep going. That'sjust that's just part of it. And
so if that sounds like aturnoff, if you're considering
doing a startup and that soundslike a turnoff, you probably
shouldn't do a start up. Whatelse could I say?
I'm a real believer that it'sabout the Sorry, go on.
Kevin Horek (30:00):
Before you go, I'm
going to like, sorry to
interrupt you, but when you whatgot you through kind of the some
of the low points? Like, how didyou not quit? What got you
through that?
Griffin Parry (30:13):
Because I didn't
I guess 2 things. Firstly, I
didn't see it as unpleasant ortough. I just saw it as part of
the process.
Kevin Horek (30:22):
Yeah.
Griffin Parry (30:24):
So that's a
mindset thing. It's like, you
know, people do endurancesports. You could ask somebody
doing, you know, who's doing amarathon like, how do you get
through the 26 miles? And theygo, well, I enjoy running. So
there's definitely an element ofthat.
I mean, I generally don't getthat stressed or that concern. I
just see it as part of theprocess. But the other thing I'd
(30:48):
say is that I've never feltalone because I have a very good
relationship with my co founder.So it's always everything is
always shared. And there'salways a fellow traveler there
with me.
Kevin Horek (30:59):
And you said you
met them working together at
play, right? Is that correct? OrSkye, sorry not funny.
Griffin Parry (31:07):
It was when I was
at Skye. Yeah. And, you know,
this guy started lurking aroundmy office because he wants to
sell me something.
Kevin Horek (31:14):
Okay.
Griffin Parry (31:15):
And then, you
know, and I, I humored him and
eventually we became friends andthen eventually he didn't sell
something to me. I think hekeeps reminding me that about
the amount that we spend withhim. And it makes me feel
ashamed because that was sort ofmy responsibility. But we just
(31:36):
became friends because I was hismost important customer. And
obviously he wanted to make sureI was looked after, but we
became friends.
And I do have a lovelyrelationship with him. I mean,
we are we share a name, which isone thing. So my name is Griffin
Perry and his name is JohnGriffin. So we still get each
other's emails, which is quitefunny. But we are, we're
(31:58):
contrasting.
We're different. And weunderstand why we're different.
And we see ourselves when webring us together, we make a
whole. And there's a lot ofempathy, a lot of communication,
a lot of trust between us. Andso and that's really nice.
And I know, again, that's I'vebeen very lucky with that
relationship.
Kevin Horek (32:18):
No. Yeah. Yeah.
That sounds awesome. That's
that's cool, right, that youfound somebody that compliments
you.
You could work to get like,there's so many factors in being
able to work and find acofounder. Like, it's it's crazy
when you find somebody that youyou have that relationship with,
what you just outlined.
Griffin Parry (32:36):
Yeah. But I but I
would say, I mean, it's you have
to work at it as well. It's likehosting. It's like a marriage.
Kevin Horek (32:42):
100%. Yeah.
Griffin Parry (32:43):
I mean, you know,
you can fall in love with a
person, but you've got to reallywork at it. And it's just those
things that I mentioned. It'slike you're you'll be in a good
place if you if you establish ahigh degree of trust and you
continue to communicate and youreally empathize about the
perspectives of the otherperson. And so but you've got to
work at work at that. And I'mlucky that I found a person who
(33:07):
sort of thinks similarly and,yeah, this sounded mushy.
But, yeah, we we've workedsuccessfully together and
continue to. It's nice.
Kevin Horek (33:18):
Very cool. So,
obviously, you've taken
basically ideas from a corporatejob, moved it into another
company, and then ended upselling that company, and then
moved another problem that yousaw at a company to create a
startup. But and I it sounds sosimple, but it's actually really
(33:40):
hard to say, like, this is aproblem, and it needs solving,
and then going out there andvalidating that it needs
solving. So, like, what advicedo you give to people that are
trying to come up with an ideathat wanna be an entrepreneur?
They're just, like, strugglingwith actually coming up with an
idea.
Because it's easy to come upwith an idea. It's all about the
(34:02):
execution and then gettingpeople to actually buy into that
and then giving you money forit, really.
Griffin Parry (34:10):
Yeah, it's I
mean, I've gone through 2 really
different journeys. I'm sure. Iknow the one I prefer. Okay.
This time around it was mucheasier because we'd experienced
the pain firsthand.
I think it's, I'm not sayingthat every startup has to be
like that. And I know that's nottrue because this wasn't true of
(34:32):
our first startup. But if youreally understand the pain
firsthand, it's much easier.You're just much more confident
about what you should be doing.You know, you can trust your
instincts that much more.
But I understand. It's again,it's a lucky thing. If you've
got that, you know, you'veexperienced pain, which is
actually a pain around which youcan build a big business. You
(34:53):
know, you've been quitefortunate. So if you're not in
that situation and this was trueof us in Games Fox, and I should
probably give a little bit moreflavor.
Like what we were doing with theoriginal business is taking a
bunch of intellectual capitalthat was developed in an
adjacent business. So weunderstood television and the
(35:13):
delivery of television onlineextremely well. And you could
apply that to the video gamespace. But we didn't really
understand the video game spaceand how it worked and who the
personas are and how they howthey speak and what their day to
day struggles are. So we had tolearn all of that.
But we knew what we we had agood sense of what the broad
problem is and we had confidencethat we could solve it given our
(35:35):
experience. But we had to reallylearn the market itself. And I
mean, the advice I give islisten, listen, listen, listen.
Talk to people. Listen.
Like, you know, this is, Iguess, product, sort of product
management best practice. Butyou have to accumulate data, and
(35:55):
you do that by getting out thereand talk to people.
Kevin Horek (36:00):
So, no, I 100%
agree with you. You keep
mentioning luck. And I thinkluck is has a lot to do with it.
But I also think you need toalmost, like, create your own
luck, and you need to keeptrying different things and
putting yourself out there andreaching out to people and doing
a bunch of different things toto hopefully get lucky with, you
(36:20):
know, your first client orsomebody introduces you to
something like like talk aboutor what are your thoughts around
that? Do you agree with that?
Or how did you, like, createyour own luck?
Griffin Parry (36:31):
Yeah. I totally
agree with what you're saying.
It's a process. So a lot of whatI was saying about grit is part
of this. It's like you've got tobe thoughtful.
You've got to worry, how are wegoing to solve this problem? You
then got to attack it with a lotof energy. You're going to fail
a lot, but you're going togenerate a lot of understanding.
You synthesize thatunderstanding and you move
(36:53):
forward and do something again.So it's, this is quite similar
to sales in a way.
Like sales is a numbers game.You've just got to pick up the
phone 100 times to make sureyou're going to win twice and
you've got to learn constantlyfrom every failure. And so
you've just got to commit to theprocess. So, yeah, I mean, it's
(37:14):
obviously you get good fortune,but you've created the
opportunity for you to that goodfortune to happen. And also the
process allows you to take fulladvantage of that good fortune
when it happens.
So it's not luck like you've wonthe lottery. It's you can set
yourself up before it's muchmore likely that you will be
(37:35):
lucky and you'll be able to takeadvantage of that luck. And but
that's a lot of that's where theyeah. It's thoughtfulness and
grind. That's what you're gonnado.
Kevin Horek (37:44):
No. I think that's
really good advice. So you
brought up something earlierthat I think is really
interesting that I I wanna divea little bit deeper into, and
it's really around your road mapbecause you said earlier that
what we talked about was kind ofAI and helping predict what
people should charge for aproduct is also, like, how did
you know to not chase that outof the gate that you needed to
(38:07):
build an actual product? Andthen you can add that. Because
as a founder, especially assomebody that's maybe it's a
first time around, they want togo to step, you know, 10 today,
not wait until they have, youknow, 1 to 9 done.
Griffin Parry (38:26):
I feel like I
mean, it's worth saying that
when we founded the company 3 or4 years ago, like there was less
excitement about machinelearning and data science. I
mean, so we we felt it becausewe'd come out of AWS, but it
wasn't as much a thing as it isnow. But I think the main
(38:48):
response to your question is itgoes back to that
thoughtfulness. It's like howare you how are you going? And
you also mentioned roadmap,which I think is exactly right.
It's like how are you going tobuild this business? You need to
break it down into a series ofsteps. It's like, you know, if
you look at a mountain, you'vegot to go, I'm going to climb to
the top of that mountain bygetting to base camp and then
camp 1 and then camp 2. And soyou sort of set it up. And once
(39:10):
you start thinking about it likethat, the sequencing for us was
pretty clear, although we werereally, really, really excited
about what we can do on the datascience side.
We knew that you need toaccumulate the data to enable
you to do it. And you also needto establish the back channel so
that your customers can benefitfrom your recommendations. And
(39:31):
by that, I mean we will guideour customers to better pricing
that will deliver better longerterm outcomes. And we could just
deliver it to them in a slidedeck, but it's much more useful
for them that we can say, clickthis button to implement this
pricing now and then youimplement it back via our
(39:51):
infrastructure. So we've got ahighly synergistic business.
And so once you start thinkingabout that, where you go, okay,
well, you know, this is theboring bit, but this is
addressing a powerful pain pointthat lots of people have. Once
we've done that, that buys usthe right to go on to this more
interesting bit. And we justthink about it like that, one
foot in front of the other.
Kevin Horek (40:12):
No. That it's the
best way to put it. I think that
makes a lot of sense. I'm I'mcurious though because you can
like, you just mentioned, youcould do it manually in a
PowerPoint, for example. Wouldthat be enough of a V1 for
certain customers to maybe testthe idea before you actually go
(40:34):
build it in code because we allknow that it takes a long time,
right?
And obviously, I know doing itmanual sucks, and it's not
scalable. But you do it for, youknow, a couple of customers, you
put it into PowerPoint orwhatever, and then you send it
to them get their feedback. Whatare your thoughts around kind of
building something manual asyou're trying and growing and
feature set into your roadmap?
Griffin Parry (40:56):
So a couple of
things. So firstly, even before
you think about what we do,there's plenty of data about
this process and the appeal andthe value of it. There's a huge
industry of pricing strategyconsultants out there. And what
they do is they gather togethera bunch of data about customers
and their spend and their usage.They crunch it in a spreadsheet,
(41:21):
very complicated one, and theymake recommendations about what
the ideal pricing should be,both broadly and for individual
customers.
And then they deliver thoserecommendations on a PowerPoint
slide. Now, those businessesmake lots of money, like, and I
have huge respect for them. Andwhat META will be doing, we'll
(41:43):
be automating some of thatprocess. And so, you know,
hopefully will be seen as afantastic enabling tool for
really good pricing consultantsbecause we're doing a lot of
what they would need to dothemselves. So, yeah.
So I had that data point. So,you know, this is from complete
speculation. I could see thevalue of this in the market
already. But the other thingthat I'd say is you're asking
(42:07):
like, can we do some kind ofprototype basically to prove
whether there's value? And yes,of course.
And yes, we are doing that. Sowe have, you know, our data
science team has been workingwith our customers on
prototypes. We've beendelivering technical proofs,
basically how you build themodels and can they be effective
(42:29):
and sort of value proofs. Like,does this actually make a
difference? Would a customerwant to pay something for it?
So, yes, that is ongoing. Andthen so it's not I don't want to
suggest that it's paid becauseit's not we're actually doing
quite it's quite there's quite alot of expensive development
there, you know, involvingexpensive data scientists. So
we're not fully operationalizingit because that would be an
(42:51):
additional level of spend. So,yeah, you find ways of testing
and validating cheaply. And,yeah, we do that.
Kevin Horek (42:57):
No. That that makes
a lot of sense. So we're kinda
coming to the end of the show,but is there any other advice
that you would like to pass onto anybody that's either, you
know, in a startup or doing astartup or or just something
that you maybe wish you knewearlier on in your career when
you were starting out?
Griffin Parry (43:16):
What I was gonna
say before is I was gonna say
that I really think that peopleshould think about it as being a
journey and not a destination.So for me, I think startups are
about like minded people comingtogether to tackle something
daunting. And I think theprocess is its own reward. And
(43:37):
the process is camaraderie ofworking with other people, the
learning. I mean, I think youlearn more quickly in a startup
certainly than in a corporate.
I think there's a lot ofsatisfaction because you're
doing something challenging andit's the sense of agency and
possibility is brilliant. Youwake up every morning going,
right, we can do somethingcompletely new. So when I think
(44:04):
about what I do, like peopleask, why do you do what you do?
And I'm, I'm not doing it forthe money. Might not get any.
Kevin Horek (44:13):
Yeah. Fair enough.
Griffin Parry (44:14):
And I'm not I'm
not doing it because I want to
make a dent in the universe orwhatever the phrase would be. I
think it's slightly differentfor John, my co founder. But for
me, that's not the reason I'mdoing it. I'm just doing it
because this is what I do and Ienjoy the process. And I think
that's the right mindset to taketo a startup.
You don't want to be mortgagingyour future. You want to enjoy
(44:36):
the day to day. Yeah. And that'swhy I really, I really encourage
people to think that way. Ithink it makes you much happier.
Kevin Horek (44:45):
No. I actually
think that's really good advice,
and that's kind of how I see it.It's like, this is what I do.
It's not like, there there isn'tanything else I wanna do.
There's also nothing else I'mqualified
Griffin Parry (44:55):
to do. Oh oh oh
my god. Me too. I can I I'm
unemployable now, unfortunately?Yeah.
Yeah.
Kevin Horek (45:01):
It's like I could
ask you if you wanna upsize your
combo. That's probably the bestthing. But, let's how about we
close the show with mentioningwhere people can get more
information about yourself,meter, and any other links you
wanna mention?
Griffin Parry (45:19):
Sure. I would
encourage people to go to our
website, which is me set.com. SoM3 T. R. And to give a specific
suggestion, we published areport about 2 or 3 weeks ago
about predictions for howpricing is evolving in software
in 2024.
(45:40):
Involved 10 experts.Unfortunately, one of them is
me, but we had some properexperts. And it's really
interesting. Like, I've talkedabout this trend towards usage
based pricing. You'll beunsurprised that that's one of
the predictions, but there's 9other really interesting ones as
well.
How do you use pricing toachieve results?
Kevin Horek (45:57):
Perfect, Griffin.
Well, I really appreciate you
taking the time out of your dayto be on the show, and I look
forward keeping in touch withyou and have
Griffin Parry (46:03):
a good rest of
your day. Cool. Thank you
Kevin Horek (46:06):
very much for
Griffin Parry (46:07):
having me. Thank
you. K.
Intro/ Outro (46:08):
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