The Agentic Revolution Transforming Go-to-Market/Chandar Pattabhiram - Workato, AI Agents, Onlyness ~ Spark of Ages Ep 38

Chandar Pattabhiram, marketing maestro and Chief Go-to-Market Officer at Workato, shares his expertise on the agentic economy and the revolutionary impact of AI on go-to-market strategies.

• The rise of AI agents brings productivity without pause, enabling organizations to shift from reactive to proactive approaches
• Current AI implementation remains largely experimental and edge-focused rather than addressing core business processes
• Workato's approach focuses on cross-functional processes versus siloed applications to prevent agent sprawl
• Traditional go-to-market principles still apply – win more, win bigger, win faster – but AI provides unprecedented efficiency
• Enterprise context is crucial for AI effectiveness – it's not just about LLMs but Enterprise Learning Models (ELMs)
• AI enhances storytelling capabilities but emotional connection remains essential – "heart to head, not head to heart"
• Success requires identifying your "onlyness" and selling to markets that value your unique differentiation
• Bring philosophies rather than playbooks when moving between companies
• Balance technical understanding with human connection – "CTFO: chill the F out"
• Life ultimately comes down to health, experiences, and relationships (H-E-R)

Ready to master go-to-market strategy in the AI era? Chandar Pattabhiram reveals the secrets behind scaling companies into billion-dollar powerhouses:

🤖 The Agentic Economy Unveiled
"It's reigning agents everywhere," Chandar declares as he breaks down how AI agents are revolutionizing business operations. We're only in "the bottom of the first inning" of this transformation, but the potential is mind-blowing. Learn how these intelligent agents eliminate productivity pauses and shift organizations from reactive to proactive across every function.

🎯 Beyond "Agent Sprawl" – The Process Revolution
Forget siloed thinking. Chandar reveals Workato's competitive edge: cross-functional process thinking. "Don't think functionally, think process. The process grows across systems." Discover why this approach is crucial as companies face "agent sprawl" – a problem he warns will be "1000X worse than application sprawl."

💡 Marketing Fundamentals That Still Matter
Even in our AI-driven world, emotional connection reigns supreme. "People think hard to head rather than head to heart," Chandar observes. Learn his philosophy of identifying your "onlyness" and positioning to markets that value your differentiation – essential wisdom for scaling companies.

🚀 Career Transformation Insights
From mechanical engineering to marketing visionary, Chandar shares his personal journey and life motto: "Health, Experiences, Relationships." His advice to aspiring leaders? "Bring philosophies, not playbooks" when transitioning between companies.

Chandar Pattabhiram: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandarp

With over 25 years in strategic marketing, Chandar has been the Chief Marketing Officer at companies like Marketo and Coupa, helping grow Coupa from $150 million to nearly $1 billion in revenue.  He's been recognized by LinkedIn as one of the top 5 CMOs in the world to follow and he gained these insights while cutting his teeth at some great companies: Accenture & IBM.  Originally from Chennai, Chandar did his undergraduate at PSG College of Technology in India with a background in mechanical engineering, and went to the University of Texas for Business School.

Website: https://www.position2.com/podcast/

Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/

Sandeep Parikh:
maestro who's basically a rockstar.
With over 25 years in strategicmarketing, chander has been the
chief marketing officer atcompanies like Marketo and Coupa
, helping grow Coupa from $150million to over a billion
dollars in revenue.

(00:26):
These days, he's the chiefgo-to-market officer at Workato,
where he's revolutionizing howcompanies approach marketing and
strategy.
But Chandler's not just aboutnumbers he's a storyteller at
heart.
He's been recognized byLinkedIn as one of the top five
CMOs in the world to follow andhas a philosophy that boils down

(00:46):
to one simple mission set upsales to win.
He gained these insights whilecutting his teeth at some great
companies Accenture and IBM.
Originally from Chennai,chandler did his undergraduate
at PSG College of Technology inIndia, with a background in
mechanical engineering, loveengineering and went to

(01:07):
University of Texas for businessschool.
Some of the key takeaways youcan expect from this episode the
impact of the latest AIinnovations on go-to-market
strategies and the agenticeconomy.
Specific practical operationalchallenges that go-to-market
teams face due to theproliferation of AI agents.
And, finally, chandr'sgo-to-market journey and

(01:31):
valuable lessons learnedthroughout his career.
Chandr, welcome to the Spark ofAges.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Rajiv, thank you for the very kind introduction.
It's awesome to be here, myfriend, and great to chat with
you today.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Yeah, great.
I've been following you formany, many years.
As you probably know, workatois one of the companies that are
heavy in the B2B space, and soI'm so used to seeing you up on
stage and it's great to get toknow you in person and then have
you on our show.
So this is going to be a realtreat.
It's great to be here.
Okay, so let's start.

(02:01):
In your thought leadership,you've highlighted the agentic
opportunity and the need for anew agentic stack to address
agent sprawl.
What are the most significantpractical operational challenges
that the proliferation of AIagents creates for go-to-market
teams trying to effectivelyreach and engage both human
buyers and other agents, andengage both human buyers and

(02:25):
other agents?
So how does this change ornecessitate a fundamental
rethink of traditionalgo-to-market processes, beyond
just adopting AI point solutions?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah.
So I think, first of all, let'stalk about the positive things
of it and AI agents.
It's reigning agents everywhereIf you look at every software
company and everybody'slaunching their own version of
agents.
So it's here, it's starting toget real, and the real the
Twitter headline of why is that?
It can bring the best versionof ourselves every day, every
minute.
You know there is noproductivity pause when it comes

(02:55):
to agents, unlike human beingsthat you know, at five o'clock
in the evening, you know we gettired, but there is no
productivity pause and there'sno plateau of productivity.
It's all the peak ofproductivity when you have
agents working alongside you tobring the best version of
ourselves.
And from a go-to-marketperspective, from sales to
marketing, to customer successthere's a lot of opportunities
for us to go from being reactiveto proactive and being as

(03:16):
responsive as possible, both asindividuals, as an organization,
and really be the mostresponsible organization and
drive not only just theefficiency of it, but the
responsiveness of it.
That's the good part of it,right?
The challenge today, to a largeextent, is that, first of all,
if you lose a baseball metaphor,this is probably in the bottom
of the first inning in terms ofreal adoption right.

(03:36):
There's a lot of experimentalAI as opposed to actionable AI
that's happening.
The challenge today is a lot ofthe AI is at the edge.
All these agents are at theedge.
When I say at the edge, it'sabout SDRs driving some
productivity in terms of lookingat LLMs and making sure they
have the best emails being sent,marketing content, et cetera.
People visiting websites andhow do you make that easier in
real time, et cetera.
Or engineers developing codeand getting partnered with cloud

(03:59):
and stuff like that to makesome very better code.
But it's not more for the codeof a business, which is in terms
of when I'm running my order tocash or my purchase to pay or
my financials.
Can these agents actuallyoperate at the core of your
business and really help bringthose business processes and
scale them in real time?
That's the challenge today andto do that, going back to you

(04:19):
know that's the effect.
The cause to do that is thestack has to be fundamentally
reimagined and that's thejourney we are at Workado and
other companies.
And how do you look at the stackbottom up, in terms of the
simplest level is can you lookat this?
It is a three-layered stack.
There is an element of thesemodels and people have choice
when it comes to models.
There will be a lot of choicewhen it comes to these models.

(04:40):
It's going to get commoditizedover time, but there is going to
be models.
And then, below that is theability to give the most
enterprise context and skillsfor these models to learn it's
not LLM, it's ELM rightEnterprise Learning Models,
contextual.
And above that is the abilityto get the most easy way for you
to build these agents,cross-functional agents, and
have a foundation for that.
So if you can provide this kindof think about it in three

(05:02):
layer ways, you know thefoundational context and skills,
the models and then, on top ofthat, the ability to build these
agents with the rightgovernance, trust and the
ability to avoid agents crawl.
And I think that is the stack.
I give you a long answer, but Iwant to set where the context
is and where this work can go toin terms of the agentic
opportunity.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
I think that really helps.
I mean, when you're talkingabout go toto-market, you have
to start with a strongfoundation.
But even if you take an LLM,any type of LLM, to make it
enterprise and I think this isthe first time I'm hearing ELM
so enterprise LM, that's a wholedifferent layer of intelligence

(05:42):
, complexity and it's whatenables you to build trust when
you're running these teams.
That's right, enabling thiseffort.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
That's right.
And so you know there's aninteresting part, right?
If you look at the revenuethat's coming from AI today,
right, there's two kinds ofthings.
First is a lot of these, youknow, boards, and I'm a board of
a public company and the boardis looking at CEOs and says,
okay, what is your AI strategytoday?
And obviously the CEO and stuff, okay, what do we do?
There's a CIO and then thetrusted partner for them a lot

(06:09):
of times is this SI, both thestrategy firms like BCG and
McKinsey, as well as theAccentures and the Deloittes,
and so there's a lot of thatexperimentation of these AI
projects is happening with thesefirms at the helm, in addition
with the CIO.
But really, if you look at thehelm in addition with the CIO,
but really if you look at therevenue, 90% of it is really
POCs, and so if you look atAltimeter, they call it ERR

(06:30):
Experimental Run Rate ratherthan ARR, which is really
repeatable revenue, and sothat's really what the challenge
is how do you go fromexperimental to actionable and
the governance and the trust andthese policies are very
important.
Otherwise, for a public company, for example, the CFO is a CFNO
when it comes to kind ofimplementing all of these

(06:51):
without that governance andtrust.
So that's really where the gameis as we look at today.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Wow, it's amazing.
It's very difficult to makethat leap.
It's very exciting to talkabout it and then experiment
with it.
Right, the innovation teams areplaying with it, and then
you're talking about actuallyputting it into practice.
So that's potentially at thepublic company level and at
Workato, as an automation and AIand, heavily I'd say, an

(07:17):
integration firm that puts itall together.
You're selling to these largercompanies and mid-sized
companies, but then you're alsoimplementing this in-house,
right?
You're eating your own ordrinking your own champagne,
right?
So how does the go-to-marketplaybook that you're building at
Workato for selling thesesophisticated automation and AI
solutions differ, right?

(07:38):
Yeah, in terms of strategy andexecution, compared to the
go-to-market models that youemployed at companies like
Marketo and Coupa?

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, yeah, I think you know again, like I said, you
know we are drinking our ownchampagne and what Workato is.
You know we use and our historyhas been that.
We've been we're modernmiddleware founders of Tipco,
have been the founders ofWorkato, where we connect to
applications.
We connect to where the sundoesn't shine in an enterprise
all parts of the enterprise andprovide that context.
And now we're building veryaggressively and very

(08:10):
thoughtfully this whole stackwhich includes the agentic layer
, right?
So if you look at that and howwe're drinking our own champagne
, in the go-to-market side ofthe house, it ranges from sales
to marketing, to customersuccess.
So let's give me a fewmarketing examples, right.
One is when customers tomarketing to customer success.

(08:30):
So let's give me a fewmarketing examples.
Right.
One is you know, when somebody,for example, when some, first
of all, the simpler use casesare the when, when you get a
lead, the responsiveness isinstantaneous.
The latency gap between gettingsome action happening by a
prospect and you're respondingthere used to be a latency gap.
That latency gap is zero rightnow.
So instant responsiveness interms of leveraging the LLMs and
being contextual from an SDRand doing that that's kind of
the simpler use cases, but evenmore advanced use cases.

(08:50):
For example, somebody comes toa Google AdWords search, comes
into you and then looks at aspecific page but doesn't go
forward Like that you can givewithin five a response on is
going to the user contextually.
Hey, you search for this adword, came to this page and here
is a follow-up saying that itis an offer that we can give you

(09:12):
.
Right, and so that's thereal-time responsiveness
information of the point ofaction.
Even somebody who sits at thepricing page but doesn't go
there immediately, we can golook at that and say, okay, you
attended the pricing page,you're looking at this
information.
Here is something that I cankeep responsive to you.
Right, from a sales perspective.
Right.
One of our customers is usingWorkado.
You know CPQ generation.
It takes 30 minutes to create aquote for this company.

(09:34):
Today they're able to do it inone and a half minutes from 30
minutes to one and a halfminutes because they're
leveraging the models plus theWorkado capability, the
automation capabilities, incombination to drive that
efficiency play.
And the customer successexample is it's a common example
across the board where someonelike Sally in the customer
success department is reasonablyreactive when a customer

(09:59):
success tickets comes in,because she has to triage it
across multiple systems andshe's not able to proactively
know hey, the NPS score wentdown or the adoption and my
snowflake is actually showingthat they're not adopted it.
But really changing the gamefrom reactive to proactive,
because you can listeneverywhere with these agents and
be instantaneous, and that's onthe customer success side too.

(10:20):
And if you just extend to theback office IT, the concept of
provisioning and deprovisioningcan completely be non-humanized
and get automatically done whenan employee joins the company
from that perspective.
And so there's a lot of thesedifferent use cases, even in
finance, like differentautomation scenarios.
But the key in this context isdon't think functionally but

(10:44):
think process.
You have to think about itbecause the process grows across
these different systems.
It's not like a Zendesk agentversus a Salesforce agent versus
a Mercado agent.
How do these things work acrossthese systems?
And think about it at a processlevel as opposed to just a
function level.
I think that's what's going tomake it successful and that's
some of the things that we aredoing with our own technology.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
So that's the part that's different about what
Workato is doing, because you'rea firm that ties together
multiple applications intoprocesses.
That goes across applications,goes not just within function,
but across function.
You're thinking about itdifferently than you would have
maybe at Marketo or Coupa 100%,because I was very functional,

(11:29):
siloed, when I came to Marketo.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
I'd wake up in the morning and think about
marketing, because selling tomarketers but ultimately order
to cash is not a functionalthing, it's a process thing.
Purchase to pay is not afunctional thing, it's a process
thing.
It cuts across boundaries rightand fundamentally, if you're
actually a technology that ishelping companies cut across

(11:51):
boundaries and streamlineinformation flow across these
systems.
The same thing that is true forapplications is also true for
agents, and except that thechallenge here is that if the
app sprawl was X, the agentsprawl is 1000X because you will
have more.
So that's kind of what's coming.
But really the ability to thinkabout this at a process level
helps our customers have afundamental advantage.
And even when we call ouragents, just from an optical

(12:15):
alignment perspective, we callit agent X, agent X, sales agent
.
X is the cross-functional thingas opposed to the agent F, for
any company is a functionalthing as opposed to X being the
cross-functional thing asopposed to the agent F, for any
company is a functional thing asopposed to X being the
cross-functional thing.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
So that's the advantage.
That's amazing.
And then how do you get peopleto work across functions?
That's probably something youguys had to cure as well,
because a lot of times peopledon't want to work across
functions.
So is that part of the salethat, if I buy from Workato as
part of the deal is I'm notgoing to just do a bunch of
things that are very functionalin nature and then try to cross.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
I'm going to sell it at a different level and make it
a company-wide process.
The whole idea of automation isthat you don't have to go pull
something and go do the firstmile.
Something comes to you and saythat people will start working
better when it says, okay,something is triggered in
something and comes to me to dosomething, as opposed to me
going and trying to find outwhat I need to do.
When that happens, itseamlessly cuts across

(13:17):
boundaries.
So I'm not an approval person,a credit approval or inventory
person or something saying whatdo I need to do, as opposed to
something comes to me saying doit right now and then I do it
and then it moves the thingforward Right, so that is
abstracted from each user.
That process flow is abstractedfrom each user to say that
you're in marketing or you're insales or you're in inventory.
It just goes through.

(13:38):
It seamlessly Solves theproblem Right.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
So then, when you're selling it right, but when
you're selling it right from ago-to like so you've taken on
this interesting title ofgo-to-market executive, you
might be.
I know there's companiesstarting to move that way.
I saw that ZoomInfo relabeleditself as go-to-market for its
stock ticker right, and some ofthe competitors, like I think
Demandbase, changed itself fromsaying it's an ABM system to a

(14:01):
go-to-market system.
But you're one of the first onesthat took on.
I think, in terms of the saleof this, you could choose to
sell something functionally andsay I'm going to solve this
specific problem, or you canchoose to sell it as well.
I'm not going to go thereunless I can get something that,

(14:22):
unless I can get somethingthat's more of a process flow.
Is that part of the filtering,when you guys think about it,
when you guys try to drive themotion?

Speaker 2 (14:30):
It is, it's a part of and near not or right, and so
certain times what happens is atLashing, for example, has a
very specific financial need,which says that I got to close
my books.
30 systems within financeconnecting all roads lead to
Rome, right, erp, and I need toconnect all this stuff.
It's painful and okay, I'mgoing to use Ricardo to kind of
automate this process and do itin half the time to close books

(14:50):
for a public company.
But in addition to that, it'san or.
In addition to that, it teamsand business technology teams
have the purview of processesacross these different functions
.
Right, they're looking at itsaying, hey, why do I need
technologies that are these thatare connecting these
applications?
Because I see the siloedproblem.
And how do I go from siloed tosynergy?
And a lot of times businesstechnology teams and IT teams

(15:12):
are tasked to do that.
That's historically whatmiddleware happened, right?
So when you open the doorthrough those teams,
fundamentally, you know manytimes you're the burnt victim of
saying that this is a problem,that my organization is not as
streamlined, it's more siloedthan it needs to be.
And so when you open the doorthrough that buyer persona,
you're fundamentally approachingit from a process perspective,

(15:33):
as opposed to approaching itfrom a very functional selling,
to marketing or sales orcustomer support, which tends to
look at it siloed.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
I think that's a really interesting way of doing
it.
It changes the dynamic becausea lot of times I'll take'll take
.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
you know, a salesperson say I'll take the
first thing I can get, and thisis this is creating a different
bar and it's a really smart wayof going it is, and I think I
also think that there'sfundamentally a functional
challenge when you sell only toa line of business, when you're
selling, you know these AItechnologies.
Again, the challenge is goingto be the agent sprawl I talked
about.
But the other thing is you knowexecutives buy platforms,
practitioners and functions buyproducts, and so you've got to

(16:09):
kind of position as a platform,say, when you're looking at it
holistically across the board,then just looking at it as a
specific product for aparticular functional use case.
Right, that's the approach.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
That's great.
So you talked about agentsprawl, right, you have with AI.
There are vast data setscustomer conversations, campaign
performance so are you seeingthat AI is changing the metrics
that are important forgo-to-market teams to track and

(16:38):
prioritize?
Are they changing fundamentallyor are they basically similar
to what you've always had, butyou're doing it faster, more
effectively?
And are there specific datasources that you're seeing that
are becoming more important thanthey used to be in this
AI-driven framework?

Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah, it's a good question, man, but ultimately,
if you go back to firstprinciples, you know
go-to-market is go-to-market,selling is selling Ultimately.
You gave me that thing aboutset up sales to win, so I'll
answer the question this way.
I'm responsible fororganizations ranging from
growth marketing to corporatemarketing, to partnerships, to
go-to-market strategy, tooperations and stuff and even

(17:16):
incubation sales outside of justthe enterprise sales teams.
So why do we exist?
We exist to drive harmonyacross these functions.
There's either harm or harmonyin organizations.
So harmony across thesefunctions to ultimately set up
sales to win.
So the metrics, ultimately, arethese three things In all
go-to-market.
You can boil it down to threemetrics Win more, win bigger,

(17:39):
win faster right.
Are you winning more?
It's just your win rate.
Are you winning bigger, whichis your ASP, and winning faster,
which is the sales cycle?
So AI, non-ai, all these things, et cetera, right.
Ultimately it comes down tothese metrics.
I don't think the mindset ofmetrics changes, but it really
is driving, as I said, theefficiency and the
responsiveness at a scale that'snever been done before.

(18:01):
The efficiency and the response.
That's really the opportunityhere, so that you're really
focusing on what matters mostand driving all these efficiency
issues.
You know salespeoplefundamentally they don't like to
do a lot of things right, andsalespeople do what you inspect,
not what you expect.
And so imagine you kind of soevery time you look at a
pipeline report or you look atany of these Windroth analysis

(18:24):
and all these things, I meanthere's a lot of these data has
to be kind of further calibratedbecause you know it's some
salesperson in Abilene, texasputting the data in and you
don't know if that's true or not.
But getting that out, gettingthe deficiency more, getting
them to be more responsive,that's the aha from this
perspective, right, and to dothat.
And you talk about agents andstuff like that for success.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
So maybe one way of thinking about win more, win
bigger, win faster.
So when I'm running the buyerjourney, when I'm trying to
understand the buyer journey,maybe before, where I might key
up on a single type of buyer ora single and a secondary type of
buyer as part of driving mymotion, Now I can hit multiple
secondary type of buyer as partof driving my emotion.

(19:04):
Now I can hit multiple, likeonce it lights up that a company
may be interested in my, mycapabilities.
I can now address multiplebuyers, multiple types of folks
with different types ofmessaging almost simultaneously
and helping the salespersonthink through how they get you
know the system the marketingsystem can get to them and the
salesperson can get to them aswell.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
You can't.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
And it's hard.
It's not simple because youstill have to approve all this
content and think about how youcustomize it and all that.
But I can open up multiplelayers.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
You can, Rajiv.
I think there's a two-edgedsword here.
Just to be very clear, goingback to fundamentals of
go-to-market, right, the abilityfor you to kind of think
holistically I talked aboutprocesses, opening the door
through IT and the ability tosee the impact across areas of
go-to-market that AI can do ishigh and, yes, like that.
So there's, on one hand, theability to go do that
positioning.
The other hand is the firstprinciples of go-to-market is,

(19:58):
while you're scaling anorganizational, it's not like
the larger, even going from ahundred million to a.
So your success is inverselyproportional to the amount of
buyer centers that you deal with, Meaning the smaller the amount
of buyers.
When I say a buyer center, forexample sales, is a buyer center

(20:19):
, sales and sales associate,right.
You go try to open the doorwith four or five different
buyer centers, you're kind ofgetting dilute sales enablement
problem, your positioningproblem, your website problem
and all these things.
So there's a balance thereproblem, your website problem
and all these things.
So there's a balance there.
And my philosophy has alwaysbeen that when you're trying to
open the door in a scheme, whenyou're scaling the organization,
you have to make sure buyercenters in such a way that they

(20:40):
are one or less one standarddeviation away.
So procurement and finance areclose cousins.
We're trying to sell toprocurement and supply chain at
Coupa.
That's two standard deviationsaway and that's a challenge when
you're scaling an organizationright.
You look at a company likeServiceNow when it was growing.
It's brilliant because theysold to IT as the buyer center
ITSM.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
they didn't worry about anything else.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
And they went up the stack in terms of category
expansion, but to the same buyercenter.
And a lot of timesorganizations get challenged
when they go broad acrossmultiple.
Because I'm a platform.
That's the great news I cansell to anybody.
The bad news is that you're aplatform and you try to go after
five different buyer centerswhen you're scaling.
That's a fundamental challenge.
I actually wrote about it twoweeks ago, put this picture that
the number of buyer centersthat go to market sex is

(21:23):
inversely proportional.
So my point is even with AI,you just have to be careful that
you don't dilute those firstprinciples of go-to-market and
try to spray and pray.

Speaker 1 (21:32):
I think yeah, I think you nailed that in terms of if
you go too broad and try to hiteverything with too broad of a
capability, you're going to haveall these people potentially
fired up and you're diluted as acompany and the other right,
the client is potentiallydiluted, right?
I'm actually thinking more thatwithin the group that's trying

(21:52):
to buy from you, where before Imight be able to hit the IT
group, or I might be able to hitthe innovation group or maybe
even one of the functions thatwould be working with IT as part
of that.
Now maybe I can go afterfinance and procurement as part
of it, where I might have reliedon my champion to go do the job

(22:13):
for me.
Now I can actually hit allthose areas through marketing
and through PDA et cetera.
And I wonder, not wonder.
But then we have the metric ofdoes that actually accelerate
the sale?
If I'm going to create all thatextra input, how do I create an
experiment, experimental groupthat does this and then

(22:35):
understand can I get a greatersales velocity or opportunity
velocity to enable that to occur?

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah, it's a good question, man, and you know it
also centers around, like youknow, where your core existing
champion is today, and if IT hasa lot of power in the
organization, they canessentially try to go force that
decision across teams.
The bigger question you'reasking, the more meta question
that you're approaching, is thatwhen you're looking at these
agents, is that a line ofbusiness sale or an IT sale?

(23:05):
And so that's the meta questionin this perspective.
So I think there's two answersto this.
If you're looking at I give youexample of sales or customer
success or these things the wayit's positioned today, some of
these functional apps functionalagents sorry, not apps are
still being a line of businesssale, because the Zendesk buyer

(23:26):
says I'm going to buy a Zendeskagent, or a Salesforce buyer
says agent, whereas when you'relooking at these agentic
platforms that can helpcompanies not only just buy
these agents but also custombuild them and scale them with
governance and trust, that is anIT sale, right.
And so you have to thinkthrough what are you?
Are you a very specific nicheagent for a specific line of

(23:49):
business?
In that case, you open the doorwith those line of business, or
are you fundamentally aplatform that is trying to help
these companies scale theiragent tech framework with
governance and trust and alsobuild agents, then I feel, and I
believe, that you're bestsuited to open the door with IT
with a set of proof points.

(24:10):
That's the point of saying, hey,I have this agent tech, sales
agent tech, marketing, agenttech HR, that I can go to the
line of business and demonstratethat.
But that's a proof point of howthis platform can actually
scale.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
One of the things I do like about since we've
interviewed Rishi before on thispodcast, who was your chief
growth officer, right?
So one of the things I do likeabout the way Workato sells is
that it is through example,right, it's not necessarily.
Well, I'm sure at some point itis.
It's like, oh, we're an iPassplatform and, as a result, we do

(24:44):
all these technical soundingthings Like you talked about.
I can enable my sales team tobe immediately responsive.
If somebody gives me a businesscard during the trade show,
right, it automatically looks upinformation on them,
automatically pulls it together,it automatically gives me the
data it.
It then puts the information inthe right systems, but I don't

(25:07):
have to leave my slack instanceto to know or communicate with
it or work with it.
That's right, right, so that'ssomething you guys are really
good at is telling that storyfrom an example point of view,
and that's one of the things Ithink you've written a lot about
.
Is marketing as storytelling,right.
How to reach the heart andbuild a bond, maybe.
Talk about how could does AIhelp you with that as well?

(25:29):
Is that?
How do you keep authenticitywith that?
emotional resonance that you'rebuilding up.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
It's a hard question.
It's really hard, right?
I mean people think heart tohead rather than head to heart,
as you said, right, as a brand,you have to connect heart to
head.
Your ethos is heart to head.
I mean, what's the Greek line?
Ethos, pathos, logos.
Ethos meaning credibility,pathos meaning emotion and logos
meaning logos.
Ethos meaning credibility,pathos meaning emotion and logos
meaning logic.

(25:55):
So emotion before logic, right,if you're credible, you can
drive with emotion.
That's a storytelling answer.
I think.
Look, you know, there is atremendous opportunity it's
early about how AI can help, youknow, improve your storytelling
from that perspective.
Again, this concept ofenterprise learning.
I'll tell you one example.
I was helping a large VC firm Iwouldn't say what the name is

(26:20):
today to help them rebrandbefore I joined Workato, a very
well-known VC firm, really goodfounders or at least really good
managing partners and stufflike that and they kind of gone
a little off in theirpositioning from where they were
and they want to really kind ofup-level their positioning and
stuff like that.
And they've gone a little offin their positioning from where
they were and they want toreally up-level their
positioning and stuff like that.
So we went through a workshopfor a few weeks.
And so I was trying to say,okay, how can I leverage AI to
help on this emotivestorytelling and these things?

(26:41):
So I use one of these modelsall these models are reasonably
good and then I fed the brandethos into a document and said
what this brand stands for.
And then I kind of fed it alsothe whole Steve Jobs think
different commercial, like 1997,in terms of what that whole
storytelling is, and said, giventhis brand ethos, I want

(27:04):
something stylistically alignedto this whole think different
kind of a story.
What I got back in like 40, 50seconds, was incredible.
It was absolutely.
I mean, that would have taken aset of copywriters, you know,
some time to kind of come upwith it, right.
But of course it's a startingpoint, not an ending point.
There's always human in theloop for it to kind of go
further, to calibrate it.

(27:25):
But that element of this ideaof smarter together, you know
the wisdom of the crowd right,and leveraging the wisdom of all
the data that's sitting outthere, is incredible from a
branding perspective and how youcan look.
No, you have to keep your theessence of your brand, but, man,
there's significant opportunity.
That just one practical example.

Speaker 1 (27:41):
And when I show I love that example because we had
a similar situation where my myteam was going to present, as
part of doing a website, wasgoing to present a new, uh, a
refinement to their logo.
And, uh, you know, I was likeyou know, you guys just can't
send that low.
A bunch of logo designs.
You've done all theseinterviews, you've done all this

(28:01):
research.
Hey, we need to put it togetherin a set of frameworks.
So within a week, literallyfrom the monday that we brought
it up to the friday that we hadthe workshop, the team developed
a whole, used one of the commonframeworks, built a whole brand
architecture, messagingarchitecture that aligned with
the interviews that they had andcame up with a whole bunch of

(28:22):
examples of ways the company canreposition themselves or refine
their positioning.
And while these chat tools orAI tools didn't come up with the
answer, it enabled us toiterate much faster.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
Absolutely, it's the, it's the latency loop.
I go back to the point right,the latency loop of going from
idea to execution.
You know, if using a, I meanit's closing the chasm between
what your idea and execution, isright, that's really the, the
brilliance of the models, and itactually turned out to be, you
know, pretty good Like, forexample I'll tell you one more
example right, we just did a bigpartnership announcement with

(28:58):
Anthropic for the MCP right.
It's a new, hot new protocol, amodel context protocol that is
happening in the AI space interms of how you provide skills
and context to different agentsthat everybody's building.
So Anthropic has this standardand so Workado obviously being
we connect where the sun doesn'tshine it's a great feeder of

(29:19):
context and skills into MCP.
So we're going to announce itin New York and the previous day
we were just quickly doing apartnership agreement and stuff
like that.
So I said I just fed it fromengineering Write me a one pager
kind of a solution sheet of theworkado anthropic value
proposition, mcp valueproposition right, yeah, what?

Speaker 1 (29:40):
my product marketer will probably take in a few days
and write it in differentstyles.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Give me it's from engineering, like you learn and
then stuff.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
It's incredible man.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
But that's again.
But those are use cases at theedge I talked about right.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
Right.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
The opportunity really is to go in from the edge
and if I'm drawing my order tocash and my efficiency of my you
know financials and mypurchasing and provisioning,
that is going to be the gamechanger in terms of these
organizations and how they getyou know, reduce the latency
loop, close the chasm and beextremely responsive.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
That's really the game here.
You've talked about earnedchannels right and the peer bond
world at one point in yourdiscussions or in the things
that you've written and talkedabout how their existing
customers significantlyinfluence prospects.
So how are you leveraging thelatest AI capabilities to fuel
brand advocacy and gatheractionable insights that

(30:29):
actively shape brand perception?

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Yeah, that's a good question.
I think first of all, I keepsaying our existing customers
and gather actionable insightsthat actively shape brand
perception.
Yeah, it's a good question.
I think, first of all, I keepsaying our existing customers
are our best sellers.
I tell our sales teams all thetime no offense to you, our best
sellers are our customers.
And the more you can bringexisting customers into the
prospect cycle, the better yourchances are, especially if they
like your product and dealacceleration happens through
community activation, that'sright.
Your product and dealacceleration happens through

(30:53):
community activation, that'sright.
You really think about dealacceleration happens through
community activation.
And then can you create thatflywheel of you drive the
awareness, the acquisition, theadvocacy that actually drives
the awareness and theacquisition right.
And I think that's the simpleframework to think through it.
And so, from our perspective,like you know one of the ways,
like you know one of the ways,like you know, I guide a company
called PeerBoundai.
Since you said the wordPeerBound, it kind of struck me

(31:14):
Sunny is running the company.
Used to work on my team, reallysmart guy, again like you, a
HBS guy, and he's running it.
But just an example of whatused to take me, you know days
to look at a case study and sothink about, like you know, the
customers come spoken in.
Some, you know we have thisdeal analysis, the win-loss
report, and potentially they'vesaid something in some webinar

(31:35):
or some interview that we did.
But the ability to turn aroundand create these advocacy
stories instantaneously indifferent formats, in different
kind of you know form, functionslike some of them could be a
one slider, some of them couldbe a longer two-page PDF, some
of them could be the website,the problem solution views.
But everybody to do that andone of these examples is this
company, for example, we useRicardo also for that and get

(31:56):
those advocacy stories at thehand of sales instantly is an
awesome, awesome, one actionablething that they do.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
Right, it's almost like as they're.
Two comments on this.
One is I think Forrester talkedabout this recently at their
B2B conference the notion of abuyer network.
Yep, right, it's not before wewould have internal and external
drivers to it.
We knew about the notion of, oh, you have to influence analysts
, you have to influence yourcustomers to help them drive

(32:29):
advocacy right, but now theyformalized it into a set of a
whole bunch of different, youknow, areas that we have to,
that we want to drive towards.
Right, it's not just theanalyst, it's the reviewers,
it's just there's so manydifferent, disparate channels
now that we want to, that wewant influence to them.
And the cool part, like you'retalking about, is that with AI

(32:51):
and with the ability tounderstand context while the
salesperson is speaking, perhapsas they're talking on a Zoom
call, it could literally bringup some of these examples.
Right, the hit on my competitor.
I hear about an objection.
It could literally pull upthings.

(33:16):
So lots of really interestingand cool ways to pull
information together instantly.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
Look, it's a really good point.
I think there's two variationsto this right.
I think one is again going backto the latency loop.
It's contextual information ofthe point of action that you can
get based on being real timeand stuff like that for the
seller, like if I'm selling tocompany X, this particular use
case, this particular thing andyou know we have a reference bot
that we have built, for example, as one example right in terms

(33:45):
of getting real time informationbased on if I'm selling to X, y
at the point of action,information based on if I'm
selling to X, y at the point ofaction.
The second point you made isactually a very interesting
point, which is, look, if I havea piece of asset, like a
customer has given some sort ofan endorsement on our value
proposition relative to acompetition for any of us, right
, and then why?
What's our?
In their mind?
You are what your buyers thinkyou are right, and so let's

(34:08):
start with that.
And so that perception fromtheir perspective, why you think
they think you're different,why they bought you, et cetera,
that piece of content, asset, etcetera, can be contextualized.
Selling it to an analyst has adifferent kind of nuance to it
than selling it to anotherprospect, then putting it on
your website, then sending it toan influencer, et cetera, right
, so the ability to kind ofnuance that in real time and do

(34:29):
that, I think it's a huge, huge,huge benefit that it would have
taken us.
Think about a traditional wayof doing this right.
It sends to some corporatemarketing team, a customer
marketer looks at it, and thenthey have to go and the analyst
relations person takes that andnow they have to go customize it
.
I keep going back to the samepoint that latency loop and
closing the chasm is really thevalue in this perspective.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
Welcome to the Spark Tank, where we ignite the
unexpected connections that fuelgo-to-market innovation and
occasionally set fire toconventional business thinking.
Today, we're thrilled to haveChandler Pithabhiram, a true
go-to-market guru, who canprobably turn a startup pitch
into a market revolution fasterthan most people can order a

(35:17):
coffee.
This is the ultimate wordassociation challenge, where
your first instinct could eitherunlock a million-dollar insight
or create the kind of beautifulchaos that makes corporate
strategy meetings actuallyinteresting.
Here's how it works.
I'll start with a word relatedto go-to-market marketing or
business strategy and, chandar,you'll respond with the very

(35:38):
first word that pops into yourmind no filtering, no
board-level deliberation, noconsulting your inner management
consultant.
Then I'll respond and we'llkeep this chain of associations
flowing for at least threeback-and forth volleys for each
term.
So, chandar, are you ready tospark some go-to-market
brilliance?

Speaker 2 (35:57):
I'm ready to spark some go-to-market thoughts.
There we go.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
No, PowerPoint required.
All right, here's the firstword, something you know really
well Demand.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Essential.

Speaker 1 (36:06):
Scale.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Hard.
Why?
Because most companies try toscale it before they nail it and
you have to nail your instantrepeatability as a growing
company.
Both this scale it and that'sthe trap that organizations fall
into.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
I think this happens a lot.
Tehi Nam of Storm Venturestalks about this a lot, where he
talks about the founder.
We quickly, the founder makes acouple deals, it doesn't, it's
not repeatable because thefounder knows so much.
And then they quickly turn onsales and marketing and they say
what the hell?

Speaker 2 (36:36):
nothing worked that's right, and I think tahi and I'm
on, I'm privileged to be on aboard with him and using the
board of markello too.
I think he talks about thenuance between product market
fit and go-to-market fit.
Yeah, and product market fit isfinding a initial set of use
cases, but the real go-to-marketfit is nailing the rinse and
repeatability and then try to godo it and that's the challenge.
That's hard for organizations.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
It's hard to take that step.
Yes, you got to do your dealgrind All right.
Next one Giving Go-givers.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
Philanthropy Should start earlier in life, because
giving can be not only justabout money but about time, and
people can start giving earlierin their life their time to to
causes as much as giving moneyOnce they get more money later
in their life.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
I love.
I love that notion that youknow, a lot of times folks will
say I'm going to make a bunch ofmoney and then I'll start
giving and you can give from dayone.
You know, salesforce, I know,talks about this a lot as part
of their corporate philosophy.
But you have time, you have.
Whatever money you have, youcan give.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah.
So I think that sequentially,people have talked about being a
go-getter and then being ago-giver, but I think that's a
parallel thing, that you can bea go-giver as much as being a
go-getter early in your life.
And I'm privileged to be partof a board of directors for one
school at a time.
It's a charity cause helpingrural kids in India with better
schools and stuff like that andyou know.
And so again, the message thatwe send to people obviously we

(38:02):
have the privilege of peoplegiving money.
We've established themselvesand are very charitable, but it
doesn't have to start there.
It can start earlier in life.
I wish I had done that earlierin my life to start being a
go-giver in terms of my time asmuch as being a go-giver in
terms of my money later on.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
I think that's just a great way to build up your
sense of purpose, your sense ofconnection, your sense of
community and, frankly, itsounds like and I know you've
done this most of your careersalways be willing to give of
yourself and your time and yourexperiences, because that always
comes back in some way andaccelerates and creates a
virtual cycle, a virtuous loop.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
That's not from a charitable perspective, but in
terms of helping people grow intheir careers too.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
I love it Okay, chennai.

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Hometown.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
For me big temple, big, gigantic temple.
I went there in 1985 and myparents when they forced us go
through south india in themiddle of summer and we stopped
in chennai and I was like thisis one of the hottest places
I've ever been in it's a reallyspectacular temples yeah, no,
it's great temples.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
That's why I say chennai is a city.
Madras was an emotion.
Uh, because I grew up in Madrasand it was called Madras and my
feelings are about Madras.
Madras is an emotion, chennaiis a city, and that's the way I
always go back to my times in.
You know Madras as I use, Ialways think of it.
I don't call it Madras.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Really.
So you see it as Madras becauseyou grew up, because that was,
that was your heritage, that'swhere you that's why I say
Chennai is a city.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Madras is a feeling.
It's an emotion.
I love it.
That's beautiful FutureGame-changing.
I think we are at a time wethought the internet was truly
the game-changing technology fortimes, but AI is going to be
incredibly more.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
I've never seen this.
I mean I've been Like you.
I've never seen this, I meanI've been like you.
I've been through multiple,multiple, what I thought were
game changing times, everythingfrom the PC to the network, to
the internet, to mobile, toblockchain, and nothing is like
this one.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
Incredible, and that's why the windshield is a
lot more exciting than the rearview mirror, even though the
rear view mirror has a bunch oftechnologies.
I think it's I mean, it's bothit's exciting.
That's why I use the wordgame-changing.
There's multiple areas thatcould be very, very positive.
There's other areas, you know,that may not be very positive
too, so that's why it'sincredibly game-changing.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
I think it's so.
If you were to advise kids onwhat to think about with this
environment, this AI environment, what would you say to them?
Is there something you've saidto your kids or your nephews and
nieces.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Well, you know, there's a school of thought, you
know, which says that you knowwhat AI cannot replace is human
emotion, and so human connectionand human emotion.
So I keep telling my kids youknow, learn what AI is, but
don't forget what makes youuniquely different.
And start with the heart andnot the head.
And it can solve a lot of thehead, but the heart is what

(41:02):
uniquely is different.
And so I tell my kids that youknow, liberal arts may be a
great degree in the future, asmuch as computer science is
right.
My daughter is actually doingpsychology and data science, and
so there's an element of the AIpiece and the data science, a
lot of it, and then thepsychology piece.
Again, people think hard tohead, and those pieces are the

(41:23):
ones that have a potential notto be replaced, where everything
else can be.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
So she is playing with models and she's thinking
about them in the psychologicalcontext which is really
interesting, they have to cometogether they have I mean, I
think it's why a lot of the llmmakers have added once instead
of just question, respond, likethe search engines used to be,
or are it always asks for I cando more for you.

(41:49):
Do you want to keep going?
It's, uh, it's, it'sunderstanding that psychology of
how to drive greater usage andconnection and value.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
It is.
It's interesting, right, likeyou know, tomorrow, do you think
your psychologist or yourcounselor will be replaced?
You know it's a good question.
I mean that human connection,and so you know if you're
talking at something,potentially, but if you're
talking with somebody in termsof, you know, getting that human
connection, that's probably onecareer path, that one of the

(42:18):
few career paths that may not beas impacted as any of the
technology career paths today.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
You know, we may have to have a special training for
kids on getting them to meetother kids and talk to other
kids.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
So it'll be so easy to talk to your AI agent.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
That's actually fascinating.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
There's the messiness of human relationships, right
that, meeting your first friend,having your first rejection,
having being part of a group.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
Yeah, I mean, you think about this.
Like you know, Elon Musk hadhis Optimus Prime, the robotic
launch, right.
So think about these agentswalking around your house.
We've been talking aboutagentic and enterprise and stuff
like that.
But think about you know, yourbartender can be an agent
sitting around your house.
We've been talking aboutagentic and enterprise and stuff
like that.
But think about you know, yourbartender can be an agent
sitting in your house, or maybesomeone who's a companion, If
someone's sitting in your housewho just does all this stuff and
keeps you engaged five yearsfrom now.

(43:09):
Yeah, it's possible, it'spossible.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
We don't want to lose that human connection right.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
You don't.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
That's why hard to head, you know you think hard to
head, I think there's a shot.
Yeah, that's time.
So, chanda, did you always knowthat you wanted to work in
technology?
I know you.
You came in as a, you went formechanical engineering.
I didn't know if that wassomething you were interested in
or that was part of the normalcourse of things.
You have to be a doctor, anengineer.
Was there like a specificmoment or project that sparked
your passion then forgo-to-market from engineering?
So where'd you get that passion?

Speaker 2 (43:43):
That's a good question, man.
I was the only guy in mycollege, I think, went to
business school when I was 21.
Because early in life I thinkit's an element of discovering
yourself and it's important tokind of, I feel, to understand
what you're not good at and whatyou're not passionate at as
much as what you're good atRight.
And so I think when I did theengineering piece, I think it

(44:04):
gave me a great foundational ofstructured thinking.
But I didn't have an onlyness.
If each one of us is a product,we think about what is my
onlyness?
Where can I be really great atmy product?
I didn't feel that I had thatdifferentiation, my onlyness.
And I was lucky enough in mylife that I realized that early
in my life that I should qualifyout rather than qualify in this
thing.
I knew what I was qualifyingout of and then the journey of

(44:26):
qualifying in into what I neededto go was a longer journey, but
I knew early on, as I was goingthrough the degree, that I
think you're going to be verysuccessful in life in one thing.
One is you have to find yourVenn diagram of what your
passion and your DNA is right.
And I also think that when youpick careers that match your
personality, you tend to be alot more successful than careers

(44:46):
that don't match yourpersonality.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
So is that what you found?
Like you were going through theprocess, you were in
engineering.
I'm sure you did well in schooland then you found-.
I was actually reasonably goodthis is good, I'm good, but my
persona is more meant forbusiness, that's right let me.
Let me put the two together.
And did that hit you as youwere in the middle of it?
Is or is there someone in yourlife that came in that gave you

(45:08):
that?
Or did you do some internshipthat opened it up for you?

Speaker 2 (45:11):
I think there's a combination of things.
You know, I've inspired myfamily.
My brother-in-law was abusiness person, so I was
inspired by that.
My dad died when I was 16, soit was kind of.
You know, I was he's one of mymentors.
My brother-in-law was abusiness person, but I also
inherently, you know, as I wentthrough it, I was involved in
drama, I was involved in a lotof these, these, these kind of
storytelling things, and I justnot.
It's where you naturally alignyourself to, like where your

(45:32):
passion is right and and and youjust have to stick to it.
I I was talking to a UC BerkeleyMBA class about a few years ago
as I was graduating, and one ofmy points was that, hey, just
don't become managementconsultants or financial bankers
just because everybody else is,and if your onlyness is
something different, go pursueit because you'll be great at it
.
Right.

(45:53):
And so, luckily for me, Ididn't know what my onlyness was
when I was 20, but what I knew,what it wasn't was.
I didn't know what my only nestwas when I was 20, but what I
knew, what it wasn't, was goingto be a mechanical engineer.
So that was the process ofqualifying out that I did.
But naturally, I think you know, over the years I was in
management consulting and then Iwas lucky enough to kind of
transition that into marketingin 2000 in a startup in Silicon

(46:13):
Valley that failed.
Management consulting wasactually really good, but then I
kind of started realizing thatyou know, my onlyness could be
accentuated If I was a product,that area.
I could really shine in thatand kind of where your
personality comes out, the jobfunction matches your
personality and just build onthat.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
You've said before that failure is the feature, not
the bug.
Yep, could you elaborate moreon this philosophy, what that
means to you in practice?

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Every time we go here , people reverse engineer wisdom
and do anything in their livesright.
They can go and say, if they'resuccessful here, they go back
and say, oh, all these greatthings happen A lot of times.
As we know, we learn more fromwhere we did mistakes and where
we did not follow.
The path wasn't as rosy as whatyou think it is.
Everybody makes it out to be,when you have success, right,

(47:01):
and so that's what I kind oflooked at.
The best lessons for me, mysecond business school was right
.
All these startup failures thatI had professionally and I've
been batting at 50% in startupsright.
50% was successful, 50% was not.
And even in successful startups, you went through some
challenges along the way thatyou failed.
And even in successful startups, you went through some
challenges along the way thatyou failed.
And so those are the bestlessons.

(47:22):
And there are two kinds of jobsright Jobs that you're
successful and jobs that youlearn from, and so that's the
second part of that right, andso, from my perspective, that's
why I've always talked aboutsome of the best lessons when it
comes to whether it's inpositioning or messaging or go
to market.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Yeah, if you were to pick one of the businesses that
didn't go well and something bigthat you learned from it that
you'd like to share, I'd love tohear it.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Yeah, I think you know like, for example, I'll
talk about a business thatactually didn't go well in the
first half and went reasonablywell in the second half, pretty
well in the second half.
This was a company calledCastan.
I spent quite a few years in it.
It was the first appliancecompany in the middleware space.
Right, I think you know.
The big lesson for me is youhave to sell and position your

(48:10):
product to a market that valuesyour onlyness and
differentiation.
So, for example, if you'reselling an iPod, don't go try to
position an iPod to a personlooking for a stereo system,
even though that your board andyour VCs might say, hey, go and
play the enterprise, play and godrive it to the enterprise,
because that's where the moneyis.
Whereas if you're reallybuilding an iPod, where it's all

(48:31):
about simplicity and notcomprehensiveness, pick a market
segment that values thatonlyness.
So we're building an appliancethat was simple and good, but
we're trying to go position thisfor the largest of large
companies.
We failed.
When you look at a company likeHubSpot I really really respect
Yamini and team what they'redoing is that they realized over
the years is that they arebuilding simplicity.
They're not building this bigcomprehensiveness.

(48:52):
But they said I'm going tostick to a market that values
that which is the SMB, ratherthan trying to go force fit
myself into a market thatdoesn't value it.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
The siren song of that is very, you know, very
attractive.
It's very magnetic to go keepgoing up market for them.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
but to focus on simplicity, You're right, asp
goes up, and gravity doesn'twork in enterprise software.
What that goes up doesn't comedown, and so once you go up
market, you can't do that, andso that's one lesson of like you
know position and sell yourproducts to markets that value
your onlyness, right, and Ithink that's one.
You asked me for one.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
I have 50, but that's one.
I love it.
No, that's fantastic, I reallyappreciate it, and I think you
mentioned the other one aboutbuyer centers and really
understanding the buyer centerand really yeah, that was a big
thing even in one of my recentcompanies that when we started

(49:44):
diluting our buyer centers.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
A great metric that captures it is the NRR If you're
actually selling well and ifyou're able to expand within the
same buyer center, naturallyyour NRR will go up from that
perspective.
But if you're selling reallywell but your NRR is not great
it's below 110, it shows thatyour cross-sell motion is not
being fixed, unless you haveadoption challenges or churn
leak, which is a differentproblem.
But if that's also not bad infact in our case our sale was

(50:09):
good, our churn was really good,but NRR was not great.
But that's because you'rehaving the dilution of the
buyer-centered problem.
So that was one perspective,right it's?

Speaker 1 (50:17):
amazing yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
And there's a lot of lessons in terms of management
and people and stuff like that,because that's the you know in
any function you're running thefunction and you're doing the.
You run marketing, you domarketing, you run sales, you do
sales.
I think some of these lessons Italked about is doing the
function.
There's so many lessons fromfailure on running the function
right, on what management things, and you know, when you trade
up on talent and trade down oncamaraderie, you pay the price

(50:42):
right From those perspectives,that's really interesting.

Speaker 1 (50:44):
Yeah, trade up on talent, trade down on
camaraderie, okay.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
You do that, you pay the price.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
That's a whole thing in and of itself.
Yeah, yeah, that's a wholeelement of itself.
Okay, now that you're deeplyinvolved with AI and
go-to-market, so Now that you'redeeply involved with AI and
go-to-market, so how has thattechnical foundation that you
had from your engineering daysinfluenced your understanding
and strategic approach toimplementing and leveraging AI
within go-to-market functionstoday?
So do you find that yourengineering mindset provides a

(51:11):
unique advantage in navigatingtechnical complexity and
practical applications of AIcompared to someone from a
purely marketing or salesbackground?

Speaker 2 (51:19):
I think so.
I really do think so, becauseyou can fly the plane depends on
what lane level you fly theplane at, right, when you're
fully approaching it, fromunderstanding the technology.
At 10,000 feet, if you don'thave a little bit of a technical
background, you kind ofcursorily understand it.
Of course, you understand thevalue of it, et cetera, right.
But if you fly the plane at1,000 feet, it gives you a
little bit more nuancedperspective on here's what's

(51:40):
happening, here's how you canactually come to the table with
more, you know, with a littlebit of a point of view.
You know that's thoughtful, asopposed to a general point of
view saying, yeah, we need toincrease productivity, we need
to do this, this, this, etcetera, right.
I do think, look, a technicaldegree helps you on two things.
One, it helps you really thinkabout framework-based thinking,

(52:00):
right, which is very, veryimportant from my perspective.
As you think in frameworks, youhave to think in philosophies
and frameworks, right?
That's very, very important interms of how you do it.
The second thing it does isthat if you're in the technology
fields, it gives you anadvantage so that you can fly
the plane a little bit.
You're not going to be atechnical architect.
You're not going to be a deepproduct manager, but it's not
that you are six standarddeviations from what the hell is

(52:22):
going on in terms of what thetechnology is.
It gives you that advantagefrom my perspective.

Speaker 1 (52:27):
Yeah, I think, more than anything else, or as much
as what you're talking about,you can fly at that lower level
and the people you're talking tofeel that you're more
believable because you have thataha with them, that connection
with them, who are the moretechnical folks, and they in a
way, work harder with you andfor you and around you.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
That's one thing.
Yes, that's the team that works.
But the second point isimportant is when you're dealing
with technical founders inorganizations and you're on the
go-to-market side of the house,you just have to make sure that
having the skillset benefits you, I feel, because technical
founders respect you more whenyou not only bring the skills
that are important for the job,but the ability to kind of think

(53:07):
in their shoes and you don'thave to be exactly in the depth
of it, but the ability totranslate that piece.

Speaker 1 (53:13):
I think it's important, it's that connection
piece that you're trying tobuild the connection piece,
exactly the right.
It's that connection piece thatyou connection piece, exactly
the venn diagram, all in thevenn right, values in the vent,
right?
So, all right, here's a bunchof rapid fire questions for you.
So I'm gonna it's more personalquestions, I'm just going to
basically hit you with a quickquestion and then just give me

(53:34):
whatever pops off the top ofyour head.
You can elaborate, of course,but this is the rapid fire
segment as part of us closing up.
What's the next thing you planon starting Book, tv show, movie
podcast and why that thing?

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Book, because I think B2B marketing and go-to-market
is something.
There's a lot of books on B2Cmarketing, go-to-market taught
in business schools and stufflike that, but the nuance in B2B
is very different and I feelthat there's an opportunity to
write something that'sactionable, practical, based on
scaling companies.
So I plan to do that.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
I think that's a huge area for study.
If you had a billboard with anymessage to your younger self,
what would it say and why thatspecific message?

Speaker 2 (54:13):
I borrow something that my friend told me years ago
and I've actually kind ofinternalized it CTFO, chill the
F out.
I love it.
Don't get too stressed aboutwhat's going to happen.
Just live the journey andhopefully something good and
regardless of what happens,it'll happen.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
What is a belief or perspective that has completely
changed your mind in the lastfew years and what triggered
that transformation?

Speaker 2 (54:39):
completely changed your mind in the last few years
and what triggered thattransformation.
I was okay.
This is actually true.
I think what I've learned overthe last few years is that you,
as an executive, you come intoorganizations and you try to say
that here's my playbook that Iwant to implement right, and
because people hire you becauseyou've implemented a successful
playbook in different kinds ofcompanies.
But the biggest mistake is tobring a playbook from A to B

(55:01):
rather than bring a philosophy.
The biggest lesson for me isthat bring a philosophy from
company A to company B tocompany C.
As an executive, that's goingacross, but do not make the
mistake of bringing the sameplaybook.
A philosophy, for example,practically says set up sales to
win is a philosophy betweenCoupa and Marquero and Workado.
But if I try to bring the sameplaybook I tried from Marquero

(55:22):
to Coupa to Workado I willconsistently fail, because each
one is unique.
It's nuanced both in terms ofits culture, its DNA and the
market segments and product, etcetera.

Speaker 1 (55:33):
So that's the biggest belief system that I've changed
is that it's not about theplaybook, it's about the
philosophy.
I really like that.
Chandra, when we were talkingonce, you mentioned that you had
an option to go and be a CEO ofa particular company or take on
this senior executive role as ahead of go-to-market, and you
decided to take the go-to-marketleadership role.

(55:54):
Why?

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Yeah, it's a good question.
Look, it's a little bit of soulsearching because there is an
element of ego involved ineverybody and says I can go do
this right.
And a friend of mine gave methis advice that just because
you could do it doesn't mean youshould do it.
If a great company equals greatproduct times, great
go-to-market times, greatculture, the simplest thing to
look at this formula right ACEO's job is to go look at all

(56:19):
these three functions to createa great culture, great product
and great go-to-market.
Now, as a first time CEO goingin a lot of times you're going
to get this opportunity wherethere's some hairiness in the
organization right and sometimesthe product could be red, the
go-to-market could be red andthe culture could be red in
these situations.
So I had to kind of do a littlebit of soul searching and says
I was actually at a late stageopportunity and I looked at it

(56:40):
and says I'm not a productperson.
In the technology space, in thisAI driven world at the pace of
which innovation is happening,if you take a CEO gig and you
don't have the dominant, youdon't have the DNA for that
particular domain or something.
From a product perspective, youmight spend five years doing a
lot of hard work, give your lifeand soul, because every problem
is your problem, and you dothat, but you might not end up

(57:02):
successful at the end of itRight.
So in the risk-adjusted returnif I check the ego at the door
is that if the product is greatand you can bring your
go-to-market strength to anorganization and then bring your
philosophies in creatingculture, then your risk-adjusted
return, both emotionally andmonetarily, can be high.
And that's what I traded up on.
I was talking to Biden Deiterabout this.

(57:23):
You know the guy from Bessemer.
He gave me some guidance onthis right Now that I was asking
for guidance.
We just had a conversation andwe kind of bought it up, and so
I think that recalibration forme was important and so that's
why I said I'll pick a greatproduct with a great founder CEO
and if I can bring, if I havethe ability, the opportunity to
kind of bring my go-to-marketpresence into it, then I feel

(57:44):
fulfilled in the organizationbenefits.
And that's what I did.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
So it's a great way of really examining and
understanding yourself.
Do you have a favorite lifemotto that you come back to and
share with your friends, eitherat work and life?

Speaker 2 (57:56):
At the end of the day , life is about you know, with
your friends, either at work andlife At the end of the day,
life is about you know H-E-R.
Health experiences andrelationships.
And so I think I go back tothis is obviously the health
piece you can control as much asyou can, but it's about
experience and relationships.
Right, when I look back in mycareer in any organization, like
you know, you're going to picktwo to three really close
friends and a bunch ofacquaintances, right.

(58:17):
But that's really for me isthat, when I look back at it,
the experiences I've gonethrough, it's very important and
the relationships that I'vebuilt, that to me is the most
important life model.
Like, ultimately, at the end ofthe day, when I go back to
reflect on IBM or Castine orMercado or Mercado or Coupa
stuff, there's been two to threerelationships, deep
relationships that I've built,that I've really really good
friends, and so that I think isimportant.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
And I think if you look at those three companies
and I'm sure there's othersthere are many common people
across all three of them, sothat probably helped you think
through these.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
We can do this and we can build two to three good
relationships, Like in Marketo,for example.
Right, I was just talking to mytwo good buddies from Marketo,
Sanjay and David.
We're talking about this and soI think, but you have, it's
about experiences andrelationships.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
It's amazing, okay, if you could instantly gain
mastery in a skill completelyunrelated to your professional
field what?
Would it be Singing?
And?

Speaker 2 (59:10):
why?
Why, Because I love to dokaraoke and sing.
My problem is my DNA is alittle smaller circle than my
passion circle, Right, and so Igot to get my DNA circle to be
as big as my passion circle andso then it works.
But I do like doing it.
It's a good stress reliever.

(59:32):
It's a good thing and Iactually love doing it.
But I'm getting better at it.
But I would hey, if I had achance to be awesome at it, I
would take it up anytime.
That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
I would love to sing as well.
I can hold a tune, but my wifeis a fan of it.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
I'm a minimum viable product or minimum lovable
product, but I am notworld-class at it by any means
right.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
I like to pick songs that you can say and speak.
Yeah, and it doesn't requireyou to hit all these high notes,
so I can do Billy Joel.
You May Be Right and I can dothat really well.
And I don't have to sing itthat well, you don't have to be
a good singer to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
He is, but I don't have to be.
You're not picking VivianRhapsody is what you're telling
me.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
No, All right.
What's a seemingly small act ofkindness or generosity you've
received that had adisproportionately large impact
on you?

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
I just told you the story that you know.
Somebody gave me these smallbooks.
Oh, that's awesome, and eachone has actually each one.
I may not have told the storywhen this started, that my team
at two companies ago each onegave me a book of their personal
jobs with a personal note in itabout me.
It was generous from aperspective of the amount of

(01:00:47):
affection and the amount ofthings that was done and I just
felt it was amazing, but from myperspective, I'll take that for
life.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Is there just something you want to get, and
it can be personal, it doesn'thave to be financial.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
Something you want to get, or that's just something,
and it can be personal, itdoesn't have to be financial.

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
Something that, if it just, it just explodes.
It's something you're juststriving to grab.
Oh, the moonshot from from thatperspective, yeah, um you, you
could be a singer, you could bea rock star singer, you could be
what's up, or you know what's apersonal moonshot that may be
related to something you'reawesome at.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Okay, if I get to become a really really good
personal singer and continue toplay tennis till I'm 70, then
I'm good.
Those two things will be verygood for me.
I'm playing tennis every day.
If I'm continuing to play tillI'm 70 and 15 years to go and
then get to really become areally good singer, that'll be
great.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Take business out of it for a second.
No, I think that's wonderful.
I think it's something that youcan keep doing, keep enjoying,
and you could still, in allthose things relate to lots of
people and help a lot of folksin the business skill that you
have.
So I love it.
It comes together sobeautifully.
So thank you so much, chandler.
It's been such a thrill to haveyou talk with me.

(01:02:01):
It's everything I dreamed of,and more, in having you on this
show.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
So thank you so much, Rajeev.
Thank you, man.
I didn't even know the hourwent so quickly.
It was great riffing with youand appreciate you really being
very thoughtful of guiding methrough the conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Wow, that was amazing .
As I mentioned before, I'veknown Chandler over the years
and this was just a terrificdiscussion by him.
He's so well thought through interms of his life,
understanding, his businessunderstanding, his technical
understanding, understanding andhe has just so much to offer,

(01:02:44):
from early stage to largercompany to even public companies
where he's on the board of apublic company Love his notion
of heart to head and the powerof telling stories and being
able to structure those storiesin a way that people can
understand them yet connect withthem.
Ethos, pathos, logos I meanthat was just brilliant.
It was just a pleasure to havehim there and I love his
statement to himself, which isCTFO, chill the F out.

(01:03:09):
And I definitely appreciate hisideas for business when it
comes to picking the right buyergroup, really understanding
that buyer group, reiteratingsome of the things we've learned
in previous podcasts about thenotion of a founder-led sale and
how something has to berepeatable before you turn on
sales and marketing and scale itin an appropriate way, and

(01:03:31):
really understanding the metricsbehind that.
I'm probably going to listen tothis multiple times just
because I took away so much fromit, and I hope you do it as
well.
So thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed the podcast,please take a moment to rate it
and comment.
You can find us on Apple,spotify, youtube and everywhere
podcasts can be found.
The show is produced by AnandShah and edited by Sean Maher,

(01:03:53):
aidan McGarvey and Laura Ballant.
I'm your host, rajiv Parikhfrom Position Squared, an
AI-driven growth marketingcompany based in Silicon Valley.
Come visit us at position2.com.
This has been an FNFunnyproduction and we'll catch you
next time.
And remember folks be evercurious.