063 - What Does Data Sharing Really Mean? Inside Reveal’s $50M Series A

A couple of months ago, Reveal’s $50M Series A shook the Partner Tech space.

Today we have on Simon Bouchez, Reveal’s CEO and Co-Founder on the podcast to give us the inside scoop.

On the episode we discuss Reveal's business model, data sharing, partner tech, and data sharing.

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Transcript:

Isaac Morehouse  00:00
Hey what is up partner up, I had to steal Jarrods line. I just want to briefly tell you about the Sunday story that just dropped. If you don't subscribe to the partner hacker daily, go subscribe. Go subscribe to partner hacker daily on partner hacker.com. Great, great little email. But we have this Sunday stories feature which I love putting together, we just dropped one about partner fleet. And I love the analogy here with this story of partnerships are typically like if you're selling a house partnerships are like the utility closet. Like they're there, they're really important. They're a big part of what makes this house function and valuable. But they're kind of they're kind of hidden away. And partner fleet is bringing them out into the front yard, they're creating curb appeal with partnerships instead of here's our tool, here's our utility, here's our SaaS product, sign up. And then once you're in, you realize that we have various integrations, we have various partnerships, and maybe there's some some value there, but we're just selling you. On the forward facing side, we're just selling you on the utility that we bring, instead, leading with partnerships, we are selling you up front on the fact that we have all these integrations, we have all these partners, here they are. And it's not just a list buried away on your website somewhere tech integrations, here's the list. It's an actual marketplace. And there's co branded landing pages for each of the people you partner with that are unique to both of your companies showcasing the way that you work with them specifically, it's not generic ads. And I just I love this idea of bringing those front and center because let's face it, the buyers want that now. They're making decisions more based on the integrations you have how you work with their stack, what added benefits what your ecosystem brings to the table, than they are just on the individual standalone utility of what you're offering. And partner fleet is really helping to make that happen. And I just think it's a really fun story. So definitely check it out. I know I get super hyped about these because I love I love putting them together. I love telling these stories. And I gotta say, our Sunday stories, the most popular email people have asked me Sunday, nobody's gonna open an email on Sunday highest open rate of any of our emails are these Sunday stories. People love them. And we get emails all the time say, Hey, this is great. I really love this is a really cool, really cool story about this category, this company, whatever. So check it out. Back to the show.

Jared Fuller  02:45
What is up partner up? We're back. After an incredible week, ecosystem week 2022 The first annual one over 1000 people. I don't know, we covered it as the biggest b2b partnerships SAS conference or event that had happened. But I think the whole point Isaac is that we've been screaming from the rooftops that this is like this partnerships moment. I don't know. It's It's crazy.

Isaac Morehouse  03:11
It's crazy. And by the way, I got a little overexcited in one of the one of the emails leading up to ecosystem week, I was like, this is the biggest partnerships event that has ever occurred and you were like, oh, asterisk, b2b SaaS, okay, they gotta make that clear. The old channel partner world is is but we're gonna get there. We're gonna get there. Yeah,

Jared Fuller  03:32
we we are we are and I think couldn't think of another perfect person that I've been trying to get on the podcast for a long time. That we've had a handful of calls. We have Simon from revealed today. What is up Simon?

Simon Bouchez  03:44
Hey, guys. Craig, great to be with you. Yeah, it's been a longer video I guess, to get off of a convo with the both of you been following the content for quite some time already learning a ton. Because we are all learning and all contributing to this, you know, to this new trend that we very much believe in with partnership and ecosystem congrats for events with ecosystem week. It's, it's, it sounds like an amazing event. And yeah, to your point. isiaka Yes. I previously worked for SAP for a few years and they would probably would, you know, contradict you a little bit because they are throwing events with very large growth and lots of partners. But but for sure, in our specific space in SAS and get to the this is this is this is great to see And and frankly we are cheering for you and advocating for the for the same thing.

Isaac Morehouse  04:41
Well, Jared, I feel like your party lights make a nice segue because the party lights it kind of reminds me of like, I don't know like the like the French. Listen, I've never been there. So this is me just making it up the French techno scene I think like Daft Punk or something like electronic but for I'm starting to the, the party vibe, the fun, that's what I want to ask you about I have I have interacted with four or five different reveal employees. And I gotta tell you, they all have one thing in common. They're all very, like fun and funny. And like smile a lot. I don't know if this is just a small sample size. But I also saw I was putting together that we have a Sunday story coming up on focus on reveal, and a couple of weeks here, and I love putting these together and kind of talking to people to companies. And that's one of the things that was mentioned in those conversations was how much like the, the important things leading to I asked what what's led to the growth and success. And one of the things that mentioned was quality of relationships, and how much fun, you know, working through hard times, but like having fun. So I want to ask you about that. Is that is that? Like, does that just emanate from the founders? What is this? Are you guys having a ton of fun over there? Is that something just is it? Is it a French thing that we're missing out on over here?

Simon Bouchez  05:58
I don't know if it's a French thing. So first of all, thanks for the feedback, because that's, that's really important to me. And I've been in the startup game for more than a decade now. And, you know, at the end of the day, building great relationship, having fun, and long standing friendships and, and partnership, presumably, is is the most important, but just as an anecdote, obviously we were we launched our product in January 2020. So the first two years, we we haven't met most of the people joining the team, you know, and earlier this year, I think it was in January, we decided to get through this on site off site events in Paris. So we flew a bunch of people from the US that we just across the globe, people were joining us, so we had about like 3035 people at the time. And we organize this dinner, but you know, it couldn't be very awkward because you like, Okay, I'm bringing these people, there are two weeks old Italian, the company they come from either they come from New York, they come from London and everything, they've never met each other. So we decided to move this restaurant that we know. So it's a Greek restaurant in Paris, where you can, you know, have good Greek food and good fun, but certainly attend sorry, they clear the table. And you can literally jump on the table and does music until 2am. And like it goes crazy, like completely crazy. And I was very stressed out by this by this body because of like, yeah, maybe it's gonna be super awkward, it's not gonna work. I'm not gonna click like, you know, really anxious about it. And like at 1031 with 35 people on the table for four hours straight. And was so funny, because even the people from the US journeyers, they came with their, you know, wife, and that's bad. And everybody was on the table having fun. So when I saw that, I was like, okay, we can, we gotta do something cool with this company, that's for sure.

Jared Fuller  07:49
Love it. That's amazing. Simon, let's, I without going like to I hate doing that, like, Tell me your life story kind of interviews. They're just they're so they're so tired and in the world. But I've talked a lot about the next wave of entrepreneurship. Where I believe that some of the best entrepreneurs are going to be partner leaders. And certainly there's going to be a rising category of technology companies that service the partnerships and ecosystem function. Well, you made you made a bet fairly early. And some you've already had a successful company. So like, what led to that? What was the thing behind the thing that where you truly felt that in 2020, and you probably had this idea 2019 earlier, that you had to do this now because in 2020, it still felt like partnerships was the third wheel on a date. You know, maybe maybe it's becoming first chair now, but it was certainly the third wheel back then of sales and marketing.

Simon Bouchez  08:52
I mean that but working on it does take some work to do together to get the total share. But but we're getting there. Yeah. So in 2009 is the exact same forming team as revealed we launched our first SAS business. Totally unrelated to go to market or marketing. It was an HR HR update your discussion on HR in the previous part, so we won't get we won't get there. But anyway, it was a recruiting tech products, fully bootstrapped. We've grown this business quite nicely to like, you know, 100 people that didn't need an AR, and we sold it to SAP and the one thing we've learned, we have done zero partnership. Just to be clear, I don't come from partnership and for this company with the needle zero partnership, direct sales, cold calling, cold emailing, going straight at the customer enterprise sale, so it was really a play. But one thing we've done is internally, we very quickly, you know, try to understand what would qualify a company of another to go after because there are just so many companies you can go after you have to find you You know, a way to score and prioritize them. So I know it's very mainstream now. And it sounds like almost at the abuse, but back in the days in 2010, it wasn't that abuse. And on one end, you have all these ICP standard elements such as you know, the, to the industry and the size and so on that you can use, obviously, but you often have stuff that are very, very kind of industry, industry related for us, it was typically, you know, how many jobs does the company has on online on the Coppa website, how many job boards are using, and so on, and so forth. And all these people like the the applicant tracking system, the HR systems of the world, the job boards of the world, they were all partners, we didn't know it was partners at the time, because we didn't have a partnership team. But that's kind of what it was. And we started collecting information from these people, not to have a proper partnership and partner relationship with them, but just to inform our go to market and to prioritize. And we have seen this strategy, kind of producing results very quickly, we could at any point in time, indicate to our sales team and sets the sheet, the top 1000 account, we should go after across Europe, we were primarily focused on Europe. And it helped us be very efficient, very lean, to have a profitable growth. So it was a profitable company from day one set up centimeter margin in 60%. growth year over year, zero to 10 million in six years. So really like the kind of business we want to have now. Right? Clearly, it wasn't necessarily the you were you

Isaac Morehouse  11:33
were doing that before it was cool.

Simon Bouchez  11:37
Yeah, that's That's unfortunate. You know, but, but yeah, long story short, we sold that business with a py, so you know, different aspects of partnership. But to your to your question, Jared, then again, so but the idea and the thesis initially in 2019, wasn't to be at the bottom of Deck. The idea was to say, Okay, we have an expertise in b2b SaaS and b2b software engineering. And we know that the next products, we want something that is not based on the productivity improvement, well, the business case is now that you're gonna save X amount of time, by using your products, we wanted to build something that if a company would use our products, they would make more money, right? Because we think that this is, this is the way to be the stickiest products across the value chain, and to the highest possible impact. And in 2019, we've done a lot of research, and we're like, Okay, we are investigating all potential, you know, levers that you can activate for driving revenue within the company. And very quickly, the topic of partnership, you know, was, was brought up by many companies. And it was kind of simple, we know there is a better value, because anecdotally, we see the results, we see that our best salespeople, they work with partners, we know that on our largest deals, we have partners, we know that in our long term strategic plan, there is always partnership and ecosystem involved, but it doesn't scale very well. So it's like zero to maybe 10% of my revenue every year. So I'm not considering this as a as a key as a key driver for my future goals. So when you're the kind of products where everybody acknowledges that there is some value, but on a deeper rational level, it's kind of not so great. You know, usually there is room for an interesting play and interesting. So that's that's kind of how we got started, and how we landed on partnership.

Isaac Morehouse  13:32
Can I ask you, Simon, after having built successfully, such a great bootstrap company, what made you decide to go the venture backed route second time around?

Simon Bouchez  13:45
Look, it has to do with the nature of the business. Because obviously, when you launch a product, like trivia, you have a couple of things that you want to you want to assess at first, it's like, first thing is who's going to be crazy enough to share their CRM data with me and even more with partners, like, you know, initially not coming from partnership with like, yeah, it's kind of crazy. Would I do that myself? Like, would that would they have done that three years ago, I wasn't sure. So we wanted to really validate that and, and get enough proof point to be the launch. And then very quickly, you realize that what you need is critical mass in the network. Because some early adopters are ready, they want to cheer for you, they want to kind of invite partners, they want to promote your product, that's great. And that's also a sign of, you know, a potential category. But some of the companies are like, Yeah, but you know, I need to have some sort of access, some sort of easiness to connect and to create value with, with my partners. So we do you have basically, it's like, you know, if you launch Instagram, if you're the only one posting a picture, then you know, it's kind of it's kind of a bummer, right? So you need to find a way to get the speed reading and that's why it's more capital intensive. And very quickly, we You know, being a second time and tripping up probably out, we raised the seed round was amazing kind of seed funds in Eastern Europe. And then, you know, just seeing the growth and the interest we had, when we had this opportunity earlier this year to raise the series, there was insight within, you know, frankly, we didn't think twice mazing partner amazing access to the US a lot of runway to invest. And

Isaac Morehouse  15:23
I was I was blown away at your Series A, I think I was at SAS connect when I heard that you just read like, because I asked Samia there said, how many employees you have said 50. And I said, you just raised $50 million dollar Series A, for a 50 employee company. That's, that's a really, that's a really great ground.

Jared Fuller  15:42
Hold on in partner tech. Right, which prior to this was not really something where you saw big checks big investors at all. Simon, I want to follow up on that in maybe take it a different direction outside of the I think the business value. It may be what you're what you're experiencing right now that I've kind of provided much color commentary on. I've said this phrase and I just googled it to make sure I'm like I did I did I directly steal this and put it in quotes. So I don't I don't think I stole it. I'd be happy to your credit. But I've been saying no self quoting. I've been saying systems that exchange change. And what that what does that mean? Well, we've had this system of go to market and b2b sales and marketing, where that system has been pretty much the same. I mean, it's CRM, marketing automation, yeah, there's things that have accelerated it. And there's been more data, but it hasn't been a fundamental shift. To me the second that there's an exchange for the first time of information outside of your walls, that by definition, changes the system. And I can go back, I have done this in a previous show. And in a presentation, I'm like, every single time that there's a new exchange, the system changes. As you're seeing this start to happen now with more nodes and nodes and nodes and things happening. What are you recognizing that's like a bigger? Like, there's something bigger happening here? Now there's a new world that's emerging? What are you starting to see in those early phases?

Simon Bouchez  17:14
Yeah. So look, I think that we are still, you know, on the verge of seeing these changes, what we are doing is fundamentally changing the game, because there is an exchange of information that wasn't possible before, obviously. But it's mostly being used to improve how things were done before, right. So you still engage with your strategic partners. You know, typically, the example I will give you is most companies we work with, they're like, Hey, we have 100 partners, but we actually do business with five of them. Because we don't have the bandwidth, we don't have the time, we need to invest wisely, and we have a small partnership team. So we're going to spend the vast majority of our time on the five to 10, partners out of the 100 rehab. And I'm like, Yes, makes sense. And maybe we'll do like VR and the other with the partner take a variable now, you can drive more results from this five or 10 relationship. But the truth is, you still have a long tail of partner like these 90 partners you're not engaging with, because you don't have the resources and the capacity, but you still collect data from them, you still have a lot of information from from from these partners and reversely, they also get many information from you. So maybe, instead of just doing more with the five of them, you can start leveraging the longtail of of partners. So that's, you know, to me, that's where, if there is indeed a billion category, a billion dollar category here, I think we're gonna have to see a change a mindset change in, in the watch. And we need to truly, truly recognize that there is the largest chunk of value is yet to be unlocked, and won't be unlocked by just focusing on improving what we have been doing for the past decade. Interest, likely better. The other example I will give you if I had a very interesting call recently, not with a partnership team, actually it was with a marketing team. And they are selling to restaurants and utility sector in general. And what they need to know is what kind of point of sale solution is being used by you know, restaurant ARB. Right? And that's once they know that they can sell if they don't know, it's, it's a shot in the dark basically. And they realize that you have literally dozens, if not hundreds of companies that are looking for exactly the same information, asking their reps to collect the data to collect the information to go into a field in Salesforce and to say the point of said solutions A or B or whatever, right? So it's like hundreds of companies doing the exact same thing to prioritize leads. And what they are trying to do now is they are trying to create a network between them to just exchange that information. So they're like, Okay, we don't even have a partnership. We start exchanging, you know, the POS information across the CRMs, we have connected. And now we can use that to have a more efficient go to market. And to me that example is very interesting because it has an implication consequence. And it creates leverage for the entire organization. It's not just elevating upscaling ready the partnership efforts is like literally becoming a cornerstone of the, you know, the go to market strategy and whatever it may be cold calling emailing, suddenly, it has an impact across the ball on every actions that can be taken to improve revenue and renewal operation in general,

Isaac Morehouse  20:38
you know, as you were talking about tapping into the value of the full partner ecosystem, because I mean, it's very, very common that 20% of your partners or 10%, are going to generate most of the value. So you're going to focus, you know, if you're, if you're doing a lot of manual focus, a high labor costs of managing partners, whatever, you're gonna focus on those with the greatest returns. But I immediately started thinking about the long tail model that we've seen in the kind of creator economy. And I think YouTube is the best example of this where, like, in the old world, a TV network or a movie production studio, they couldn't be bothered to try to work with some goofy indie person that had an audience of a few 100, or a few 1000 wasn't worth it, right, they needed to have only hits, they needed only the big stuff. With YouTube, allowing the self serve platform, it's like, it switched that value proposition YouTube overcame those networks, because of its longtail because of the 90% of creators that only had a few 100, or a few 1000 views because you could tap into millions of niche marketplaces or nearly millions of niche markets, people that wanted really niche videos, right? Because the supply was so big. And so it's making me think in this partnerships world, like, is there a way Is there a future where there's some version where there's more of a self serve ability, so you can you could build, you know, something that taps into the longtail of partnerships instead of just stuff five, or 10 or 20 that are driving the bulk of the value, you're tapping into 1000s that are all driving little bits of value. And the way the reason that works for YouTube is because of those creators, to them a few 100 Or a few 1000 views is really valuable relative to the other alternatives that they have, which is no views or no ability to build a small little audience. And like what might that look like in the partnership? Or oh, can you can you can you create value for those really small longtail, you know, that massive market of longtail potential partners in some in some unique ways in something that doesn't require the same level? I don't know, I just I feel like there's something that we're gonna see there.

Simon Bouchez  22:50
Yeah, I mean, I see the point. And, and the analogy, what I would say, though, is obviously b2b In Job, it will be good market b2b partnership is very complicated. So I know you guys are talking a lot about trust and creating relationship and, you know, the Better Together story, you have to deal with your partner. So it's not like you can effectively drive business with anyone without any kind of relationship and kind of trust, it's really much more complex than that. But I do think that there is, there is, there is a way to really scale and elevate the amount of relationships you can create. Because I think the key part is, how balance is that exchange of information and that partnership, because, you know, in your example, are inflammatory Ito, and, you know, you, you you want to put an ad, it's very clear, I'll drive traffic and get money. So you know, the exchange is very, it's very clear why we're doing that on both sides of the table. On partnership, it's obviously much more complicated. And what's in it for both sides of the partnership, as to be clear, has to be defined in the context of a strategic partnership. Normally, that's the job of the partnership team to establish that and to really kind of put things in motion in the, in the case of long term partnerships that I was talking about before. It's TBD. Right? I don't know, I don't have the answer, how it's gonna balance out. But I'm pretty sure that in business, what I know for sure, there is a very simple concept, it should bring me business and bring you business normally, we should find a way to make it work right. So, this this balance, exchange of information, not putting at risk any of my business or yours is is a very interesting dynamic. And the example I gave on the POS systems is typically, you know, a non risky, non very, not very engaging type of relationship. So you don't have to kind of do too much, too to get there. And it creates, you know, very good value for both sides of the football side of the table. So that's why I like this example and And where I think all industries is heading, and hopefully where we can kind of take the industry.

Jared Fuller  25:08
If I, if I pull that back one layer, you said some words in there that maybe trigger words to some traditional lights that are having a hard time seeing the light, you said a word share, I think our mothers used to tell us like, you know, share, share with others. And I've seen that reveal tagline who share wins. I love that, by the way, because I'm just a marketing and branding geek. I love little, little quick, quick little things like that. And then in our conversation, Simon, I've seen you ponder in like pause on things that aren't just about the tech or the changes to go to market or what's happening. It's actually something much more deeper. And I feel like in today's climate, there's lots of words being thrown around that are kind of closer to that. So like sustainability, right? You're talking about your last company, it was a much more sustainable company. As we see SAS in this, you know, painful spot, we'll get to the other side. But it's, it's going to be a cycle, that's for sure. It's Do you think that there's something bigger going on here around a more sustainable world, like, there seems to be a good chunk of waste happening? Right. So if you think about the exhaust of that waste, there's a lot of human capital across the globe. It's a lot of hours and time and energy. It's it's a less efficient system. Whenever we're spending a lot of our time marketing and selling to the 99% that are never going to buy like I was talking to Tiffany Bova, who is the like the Head of Community and evangelism for Salesforce. She's like, she was like Gartner's biggest analyst of all of their analysts. So she has seen it all. And she told me she's like, guess what the average sales rep. Productivity is right now that in any given court month, quarter or year 52% of sellers won't hit quota. Now, here's, here's another step. That hasn't changed in 15 years. But now I have Gong and I have SalesLoft, I've outreach, I have all these tools. I thought that was supposed to change. That didn't change, it seems like there's something bigger here happening where I think that might be affecting other stuff, I'd love to peel that back with you. Because I can tell you care a lot about it more than more than a lot of folks I talked to

Simon Bouchez  27:22
Yeah, I guess, you know, so first of all, first thing you would say, especially in this, you know, complicated times, building tools to get of our sales teams and more software, and more efficiently. You know, I'm not sure it's gonna say the wall over All right, so that's just to clear the air. I'm not overselling like our vision and, and, you know, we are not curing cancer at the end of the day. So. But that being said, I think that ilevel selling is, especially in Europe, if I compare with the US instead of very underestimated and seen as something, you know, not really valuable. I do think that, you know, sellers, and sales and anyone contributing to selling are super, super important. Because, you know, without that, obviously, you die. And without that, more importantly, you don't build sustainable businesses. And you can't invest, you can't create job and you can't be the next year in five years, in 10 years. So that's super important that we help and enable organization, especially today, to go to market efficiently, and to sell the products to stay in business, and to keep growing the economy and hopefully improve people's lives. So what we are doing, I guess, is trying to find a way that is more efficient for the seller, but also provides a better experience for the buyer. Because at the end of the day, when you when you buy something, you expect a great buying experience, you want to be kind of integrated with your challenges with the way you work with the other tools you use. And I think that's that's also what fundamentally is changing not only there is there is a change in the way company go to market and trade the product is becoming more and more ecosystemic, if you will, but also the way buyers are expected to purchase software is similarly becoming more ecosystemic. If if I tried to sell you a product, and Stoli not integrated, it doesn't fit with you know your church, because you don't like the brand. It doesn't fit with, you know, your iPhone or your tech stack, or anything like that. You know, it's not going to be a great buying experience and I'm probably annoying you with my emails and my cocoa whereas if I come to you and I have a great value prop that fits right in your you know writing your stack and is truly aligned with both your values and your needs and your current challenges, then obviously, it's going to be much better. So I think with with partnership and ecosystem data, you have a way to kind of You know, provide a solution on both sides.

Isaac Morehouse  30:05
I love Simon, when I'm hearing you talk, you just clearly have a bootstrapped background, because you're so focused on, we need to drive revenue, we need to create value now, for our customers for like, there's just something so cool there. Because I mean that that, to me is as crazy as it sounds, it's easy to lose focus of like how business actually needs to create value. And that's measured in profit, right? Because from very basic economic sense, you spend X amount of money on resources, human capital, all kinds of different stuff. And then if you sell it for a higher amount, the difference between those is new value that you brought into the world, you took a resource valued at x in the market, and you added value to it and created that profit. And like that, it's so easy to forget that because the venture model totally makes sense where you're like, hey, at first, we're not going to be creating value, we need some time as we spin things up. But then in the future, we will I get that you're buying time. But it's easy to get so caught and buy in that time that you just keep buying time, especially until recently when the money was just flowing. And I just love you have this relentless focus on, we need to create value. Now we need to drive a revenue. Now this is this is like real bottom line stuff here that needs to matter. So I have a bootstrap background as well. And you're just speaking my language.

Simon Bouchez  31:25
I mean, you know that we are currently working on the country, okay. With the team. And, and, and obviously, you're growing our network going out revenue, and everything is it's, it's a key component that I recall a couple of weeks ago with one of our largest customers, and he told me, Look, we are a determinant in Bipin tutu, by leveraging your your staff, right. So that really did that. So that's, that's pretty amazing. That's the first time and you're in such a number. It's kind of a $1 billion company. So you know, but still 10 million in one quarter is pretty amazing. So I came back to the team. And I said, okay, okay, well, number one, we need to have more of those, right, I don't care how maybe it's gonna impact the rules, like the network or whatever. Instead of having 10 IDs, if we have 100, we're gonna make it like to use a wedge D. lingo. But at the end of the day, regardless of how much capital you raise, regardless of how many users you have, if you have 101,000 10,000, companies telling you that they are making 50 million a year using your products, you're going to be really, really good. So focusing on that kind of x is definitely you know, my, you know, my approach to building companies and what I'm trying to kind of convey to the team.

Jared Fuller  32:47
Well, I want to, I want to see if I can tie those two things together. Because what I was trying to peel back was I've talked about this, I think a little bit that the best entrepreneurs that I know, really, really have conviction and an undeniable shift in the world. And it would be hard to ignore the word sustainable without addressing everything that had been that's going on in the world like climate, and Baba, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Geo geopolitics, you name it. And then Isaac brings up the other side of it, well, hey, we also have to make money, which is profit. And you almost have these two opposing forces, right? Like you never think about profit, and sustainability, usually in the same word, normally, that is a completely like, opposite thing. It seems to me like though Simon that the best, the best changes in the world, the best products and companies are tied to these more global trends and shifts. Like, to me it seems like that that phrase sustainability, yeah, we're not solving anything like that. But it's a part of the similar thing, right, a more efficient and more resilient world. I mean, imagine a place where our businesses are interconnected. We do interoperate. I don't know about you, but I'm really sick and frickin tired of the sales and marketing debate. I mean, I've been in that debate in in those halls, and I've been a part of that for the past eight years, it's the same debate. That's not valuable. It's a waste of everyone's time, because it hasn't fixed itself yet. So to me, I think there is some meaning where it can be both and perhaps, that what we're doing in the partnerships function means a little bit more than just another job.

Simon Bouchez  34:29
Yeah. So, why clearly agree is that you know, there is so much inefficiency, that we self sanction, 15 inefficiency that we are trying to solve with other ways. So typically, you know, how do you score your leads? How do you create your target list? How do you manage or do you know your deals across the revenue, the revenue team? Many of these processes are inefficient and we have created A lot of technology, a lot of tools to overcome the complexity, and to simplify and optimize the result. And what I'm seeing with partnership is obviously, we are all doing the same thing at the same time, right. So if you pull resources together, at some point, you have a lot of these challenges that have not existed, right? So and it becomes immediately much more efficient. If I'm getting referred by a partner on a deal, then immediately I can create an opportunity, I have a meeting, and I don't need this 20 tools I'm used to I'm using to book a meeting with that same company, like, I'm literally kind of getting to the outcome in a much faster way. And it's also cleaner for for the buyer, because if they, you know, if there isn't a decision made, it's probably because another conversation happened. So there is a lot of efficiency on the side that is created. And across the board, my example on showing some data collected by the sales team, you know, all of these examples that we're seeing, we can clearly see that this partnership is becoming much more efficient. The question is, how can you scale that, right? Because it's not that easy to interoperate, to collaborate, to share, to have this transparency with an organization, because we have to remember, it has to replace 95% of the revenue generated by a company, right? If we, if we want to really turn things around. So there is a there is a lot of work to do. But we have the early signs of of the fact that it is possible to me if I have to compare, you know, we are sponsorship is still an early stage company. So, you know, we basically are this is an idea that it could be the gross kind of catalyst of let's say, the next decade, we have influencers like you guys, we have early adopters, many such companies are really showing the value. We have findings now, across the board, like I think it's getting interest from, from investors, and we know the time is there, because pretty much any b2b company can use partnership one way or the other. So we have all that, but we still need to scale to get to the we need to go create this unicorn that we want in the publishing space. And and I think there is still a lot of creative work to do to get there. But you know, we we intend to do to do our part.

Jared Fuller  37:15
Spoken spoken well. So that way, you're not making any, you know, crazy promises. I'm not holding excitement, what's the growth rate gonna be? How are we going to get there,

Isaac Morehouse  37:23
but I think I want the crazy promises.

Jared Fuller  37:27
The crazy promises, I'm known to make a few crazy promises. Luckily, luckily, we hit some of them. But I don't want to frame it as the forces of good and evil. But I think that my point was just simple that I think there is more good here than a normal. And I don't know, like going back to Isaac, you're in my beginnings and kind of history and like studying first principles and economics and without talking about politics. To me, I only get this passionate about stuff. If I feel like it's more than just business like that it is actually making a better place. And you can kind of make that you make that distinction about I mean, heck, where my first scale is I slung documents and E signatures y'all, right? Like whose document there are days of the world with documents. That's like the most boring thing in the world is documents. But it was still great. Like I love love the company learned a ton. This feels different to me, it doesn't feel the same. So I don't know. I think that those are the people that have the ability to go out and change the world. And we're in the early stages, right? Like, it's the grass fires. It's the the outliers, the Malcolm Gladwell that actually go out there and go build bridges that they hadn't before.

Isaac Morehouse  38:34
What one thing? You know, one thing I like when I was when I was talking with a couple of people on your team, putting together this, this forthcoming Sunday story, everybody should keep an eye out for those. Somebody use the phrase that was it, we want we want to create, we want to create a product that breaks walls through collaboration. And I thought that was really I thought that was really cool. I think there's something here about what what your tools and what the partner tech stack in this space allows people to do is more than simply a new, like increase in utility. It creates a shift in mindset, like because it allows you to more easily collaborate, it turns on a part of your brain that is often not engaged in business and in go to market. You know, organizations have like, you start thinking collaborative first. I mean, I've even had this conversation personally. Since Jarrett has partnered pilled me so hardcore. I was just talking to an entrepreneur the other day, and he's talking about their, their growth strategy. And I was like, hey, what if you started doing co marketing stuff? He's like, What are you talking about? I'm like, do it do a joint virtual event with someone who they were in, they run a non tech boot camp, I'm like, pair up with a tech bootcamp. You guys don't compete with each other and run a virtual event about bootcut. And like, I can't turn it off now. Right? You start to see the world and you're like, Oh, right. So I just think there's something cool and I think that bleeds outside of just business that collaborate collaborative, you know, light bulbs switch.

Simon Bouchez  40:05
So what one thing I would tell you just to kind of give you my, my two cents on this, first of what we have proven over the past couple of years is that, you know, initially when we launch many companies, one of the key objection we had was okay, but if I'm sharing that data, it's going to destroy value for me, right. So maybe there is an upside, maybe I'm going to kind of sign off, maybe I'm going to create value for my organization, but I am going to destroy some value. So I need to balance that out. And what we are proven now is that there is no value destruction. So if you share, and if you are collaborating with people, you probably need to carefully kind of select them and create relationship and all of that. But at the end of the day, there is no destruction. And the point of that is very simple. We enable 1000s of partnership, a huge amount of data, just about almost 400 million CRM records that are going through all servers every day. Zero escalation, I had zero goals, coming from a user saying, Hey, I've lost a deal. I've lost a customer, because, you know, data lead to another partner, I didn't want to share, like, literally the amount of escalation and I'm not gonna it's not a marketing number, it's zero. And when we launched one of the curious K outline on the, you know, investment paper was like, that might be, you know, the risk that, you know, by sharing all that data, you know, sometime, it could, it could blow back, basically. And it never did, never did. So, the upside we create isn't that positive, it's not a zero sum game, that you create more value for everyone. And you're not destroying any value. So if you want something like, kind of big picture, improving the world, and that is net positive compared to other techniques in good market, I think this one is pretty, it's pretty nice to see and something we need to cheer for.

Isaac Morehouse  42:04
The I love that you said that that you initially it's like, well, this idea of sharing my data, and then I'm going to, I'm going to get fewer customers, I'm going to this is a same pattern. There's this paradoxical thing that happens, the same pattern in the world of content, content marketing, which I've tons of familiarity with, that people have this idea early on, well, I can't We can't just give away our stuff for free. So like, I've worked with people who do career coaching, or like I said, boot camps and things in this idea. Well, if we just put it all out there for free, if we publish, let's say, Here's exactly how to how to get hired and run your career, then they're not going to come by our product, they're not going to go through our bootcamp and it's the complete opposite. The more you give away for free, the more people want to come work with you. If you're like, hey, if you were working with me, as a consultant, this is exactly what I'd tell you. And you walk through it in a podcast in stuff that you're publishing for free. Guess what, there's no one that ever says, Yeah, I was gonna hire you. But I just read your blog instead. And I realized I didn't have to know they read the blog. And they say, I have to work with this person, because they know what they're talking about, right? And you have to like, you have to get that paradox in your mind. So you realize, the more that I give away, the more value I give, people are going to want to give me more in return. This is not a threat. There's there's just a mindset change that occurs. There is something

Jared Fuller  43:24
here I mentioned, you said to the share word earlier, and we're talking about moms, the Isaac, then you bring that up, right. So you give first, I think there's something meaningful here, I could pull this thread, but it keeps coming up. So I don't know, Simon, what do you think? Now one thing

Simon Bouchez  43:36
I would add is, if you look, over the past 10 years, I've had the opportunity to kind of participate in very large cloud deals, acquisition, m&a, fundraising, and everything. And across the board, when you work with people that are really, really smart, and are very successful in business, what they tend to do is give first and work with you for free, a, you know, an exec or the president of the business units at SAP that wants to acquire your business for some reason, she's going to find time to kind of lend you a couple of deals and help you out of the blue, great VCs that are just advising you making intros, just like that right? Up first. You you share some of your social capitals, sometimes some of your money, some of your time, whatever. And it pays dividends, right. So that's what you see when you are with the most talented people across the industry. And I think that's a trait you find with publishing people. And that's what I think is super, super interesting. Now we need to make sure the partnership team is also very business oriented just to kind of reconcile the two, you know, aspect that was talking about because I think that there is still some work to be done here to really make sure that we are not self obsessed on partnership and how it work and the mechanics because frankly, nobody cares, right? The point is Is how do you connect that to actual results? And how do you contribute to the company goals, right at the end of the day, you know, as the CEO, and when I said the objectives, like, Okay, everybody should contribute to the, to the OKR. And the rest, what you do is kind of it's your initiative, this is your round, this is, you know, up to you, you figure it out. But let's make sure we contribute. Because we have, we have a common project and a common goal we need to reach. So that aspect is to kind of in the making, but in terms of traits and kind of go personality trait when you work with, with with partnership team, I think it's really, you have everything, you need to have a really tough talent and to people that are really doing, you know, and they're not super successful in business overall. So, yeah, that makes me very bullish about these days.

Isaac Morehouse  45:50
I love that because it's, it's like, first you got to have the mindset of you're not scared to share, you're not scared to give, you're not scared to create value first, without knowing every single detail of how it's going to be paid back, you get that mindset. But then you have to remember, not all sharing, not all giving is created equal. It's not all valuable. It's not. It's not just like, oh, let's just start giving away and then and then like good things will just happen magically, you're trying to understand the causal connections and understanding why does it work this way, like the example I use with content, you can start to break down and see why people see you as an expert, they see you as trusted. And now they want to come and get what you gave them in a generic sense, in a personalized sense, you can you can put those pieces together, and you can see why sharing certain things is not going to create value. And so like that's where I think you bring those worlds together. Okay. Yes, we are not opposed. We're not scared to share. We're not scared to give before we ask. But we need to have a narrative about what are the causal relationships here of why this is going to ultimately drive value for the business.

Jared Fuller  46:47
I think it's so beautiful. I think it's so beautiful. You did a great job of tying those two things together, Simon, the, hey, there's something more meaningful and important here. And then at the same time, like, the mission is to also drive the value to make that change happen in the world. It's both, it's always a dichotomy. It's never just one dimensional. Right? We have to have both. And I think that's why it's so important that there is a new, I mean, I don't know been doing partnerships for a long time. Without this rising change in innovation, it's really hard to drive that value at the end of the day, the ROI, the revenue. If you're doing things the old way. What What a time, Simon, we need more. We have to spend more time together, do do a trip out to Paris or get you down to St. Pete.

Simon Bouchez  47:32
Anything. All right. Anytime, anytime. I'll be in Miami soon. But anytime you welcome in Paris, and yeah, I shouldn't be in the US for sure.

Jared Fuller  47:43
Amazing, amazing. Well, congrats again on the massive series A and for helping kick kick start the moment so to speak. I think you all play a very, very important role. So my personal opinion, I think what you do is very important for the future of go to market b2b in the entire industry. So partner up. Hope you enjoyed this one, Isaac, you're gonna see them all next time. Absolutely. Can't wait. All right, partner up. We'll see y'all next time. Peace. Thanks, Simon.

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