What is up PartnerUp!?
Vince Menzione from the Ultimate Guide to Partnering joins the PartnerUp crew to recap PL[X] and discuss the importance of customer success.
Vince shares his expertise about managing partnerships when working at Microsoft. He shares the difference between channel and partnerships and talks about how leveraging the partner ecosystem requires support from your C-suite.
Isaac and Jared dive down some economic rabbit holes regarding TikTok, Netflix, YouTube and Ludwig von Mises’ preconditions for action. They discuss the importance of mindset and the power of creating a vision for a better future through partnerships.
This episode was recorded LIVE at PL[X].
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Full transcript:
Jared Fuller 0:11
We already started but before we get started, what is up partner up? I gotta say that and then Isaac, my friend.
Vince Menzione 0:19
Thank you, sir. Oh my goodness.
Isaac Morehouse 0:21
Cheers. It looks like some craft brews something over there are bubbly. Yeah, we don't know. I had to put the sunglasses on because the future is so bright. Yeah, crossbar ultimate guide partnerships and partner up. We just finished five days of the pls Summit. I like I'm kind of I don't even know what are we going to talk about? What are you so much? My brains like
Jared Fuller 0:48
I gotta I gotta wait to kick this off because I want to give credit where credit is due. And I want to get some credit to my friend Vince right here. Because it was his conversation with Jay McBain on the ultimate guide to partnering, where I really started to take this a lot more seriously. And I was like, you know, there are these professionals that come from the channel world where we're thinking about different things on the startup b2b SaaS side. But they figured out some really important things. And there was this conversation that Vince had with Jay where I was like, I think I need to turn it up a notch. I think I need to take this very seriously. So maybe we can start there. Because Vince, you've been how long you've been doing the ultimate guide to partnering?
Vince Menzione 1:35
It's going on six years.
Six years. Oh, gee, oh, gee, Oh, gee.
Isaac Morehouse 1:40
Yeah. Even around back then.
Vince Menzione 1:44
I had to tell people to listen to podcasts, like download this thing called the podcast app.
Isaac Morehouse 1:51
That's pretty amazing. When? When? When did you hear that episode? June
Jared Fuller 1:55
2019, I believe. Okay.
Vince Menzione 1:57
So 2019 or 2020? Might have been 2020.
Jared Fuller 2:00
Might have been early, because I think I was already doing the podcast. It was your first one that you did with Jay whenever that was Yeah, cuz that's where it's kind of interesting. 63 Episode 63. But it's okay.
Isaac Morehouse 2:10
Because it's like everything. You know, everything old is new again, sort of when when you and I started talking about this, and you're like, we need to launch we need a launch partner hacker. And I'm like b2b partnerships. I don't really know what is the and you had me listened to a couple episodes of Jay McBain you have you read some stuff. And I remember having this, like I was trying to piece it together and being like, Well, this sounds like the way that things kind of like an old school way of doing things, this whole like channel thing that like fell out of favor with all the startups. And now it's like coming back into favor, is it different isn't the same. And it's just really interesting to hear people who have been in the more like enterprise channel. It's like both. It's like, Hey, this is what we've been doing for a long time. And it finally hit sort of SAS startup world, but at the same time, it's got a different flavor to it.
Jared Fuller 2:57
Yeah, my take on this, Vince and I'd love to hear your take because I've had some combos with Jay and Janet and some other channel folks that I respect, where I feel like the problem for b2b SaaS startups is that partnerships is a department which means it's abstracted away and siloed from the other departments. But then I also feel like channel has the same problem different side of the coin, where channel is an abstracted away business unit, where they've replicated every other business function, right? So you have like channel marketing and Channel Sales, and it has its own p&l, it everything flows through. And basically, to me, in a lot of ways, partnerships is just immature channel right channel is, hey, we can dedicate 30 million 300 million I mean, we talked to Tiffany Bova this week, she was managing a $300 million channel for Fortune 500 company like at that scale, you are relying and providing a forecast on that number that is not a part of the direct number. But channel is experiencing a very similar disruption in that, Hey, why do we have channel marketing? And then direct marketing? Why do we have Channel Sales and the direct? Maybe these departments and business units need to work together? Why are they siloed? Why are they separate? So Vince, I'd love your take on that is what we're experiencing is startup land and the you know, channel the same? I think
Vince Menzione 4:21
I think it comes down to the cloud transformation. Right? So the whole transformation to the cloud from selling widgets and you know, licensed software, you pushed it through a channel. And that was a very different model. And then the hyperscalers got involved and everything moved to the cloud. So what you've seen is this whole tech is feed ISV Plus system integrator plus channel on the back end. And what's happening is a lot of the organizations that grew up in the old school are having a having a hard time again, they built their own channel organizations, now their record and you've had tackle on talking about marketplaces that whole compensate issue about CO selling with Aaron. This whole notion around selling it as Jay says it's the five seats at the table. It's no longer a department. You're not it's not a transaction. It's an influence strategy across all the seats, the buying behavior has changed. It's moved down the organization, right? It's no longer the CIO making the decisions. Back the CMO has a higher budget in most cases and more influence than the CIO does. So everything's changed in the last few years. And it got accelerated during COVID For sure. But transformation has been going on a few years now. And the ISV side, so the channel was this and it's the Rodney Dangerfield, like it is the horse stepchild, it's bolted on to the organization. And the CRO doesn't trust, right, we talk about trust, as the new data. The CRO doesn't trust it. Nobody else trusts your the data and the organization is set. That's why they have their separate departmental, they have a separate marketing organization. They've got all these separate silos. And it's not functional cross and what and that's how it needs to be, you know, I spent like almost 10 years at Microsoft running a $4.6 billion ecosystem business. Microsoft got it right early, right, they they understood from day one that they weren't going to sell direct. And once once software moved from being on a shelf to being a licensed model, they had to figure out how to integrate partner across all the lines of business and get it across to the customer success unit today was about customer success. That's the last bastion of getting getting it right. So I do think this, I think the old organization, you talk about a Jannik coming out of the channel and some of those older channel organizations are still struggling, like understanding this new world. And so there's a little bit of goes I was just
Isaac Morehouse 6:47
gonna say if we get questions, Jared, and I can't quite see him if there are good questions up there. If LR Alex if you want to pop those up on the screen at any time, feel free. Go ahead, Ben. Sorry. Yeah,
Vince Menzione 6:56
yeah. I somebody just said that the they often said that they are the redheaded stepchild, the organization, right. Vince, and you guys are barefoot. I gotta take my shoes. I got shorts on doing this can't see a
Jared Fuller 7:13
video like this is? I'm gonna miss the studio. Yeah. This has been quite the we're gonna need to detox after this week, because we've definitely had a few drinks on the podcast
Isaac Morehouse 7:23
at the end of the day. We're gonna need to detox literally. And metaphor. Yeah,
Jared Fuller 7:27
that metaphor. Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna I'm gonna hit my sauna this weekend. For sure. Yes, what it all out. So
Vince Menzione 7:32
I gotta I gotta give you guys some kudos and credit as well. Like, congratulations on an amazing event. I mean, this is absolutely amazing. And I think Chip said it earlier in the week, right? Just like, the energy, the excitement, the enthusiasm. Like it's great to see partner, front and center and people, you know, we're all getting it right. I mean, we got it a long time ago, you're you got it as well. And now it's getting the rest of the organization to buy in. So you're creating this entire group of evangelists, they're gonna go back into their organizations and hopefully do the right thing. Man, it's not
Isaac Morehouse 8:08
get this get this. This is what's so crazy about this event, like, Thank you, but this is this is all the speakers, all the sponsors, all the attendees. That's what gave it that energy. We had 118 different speakers at some point during this thing and get this not a single one flaked out on us or showed up late for their sessions. Everything ran on time, every single one of 180 Like to me that's like, you know, you only make sure that you don't miss out if it's important and to have 118 swings your at bats and have to be batting 1000 on the speaker showing up and everything. I've done a lot of events in my life. You always get one or you get a speaker that demands the m&ms be sorted by color. We don't have any debt. Everybody's been amazing.
Vince Menzione 8:57
Total weight. Joe says I gotta put my sunglasses back on. I think I'm better.
Jared Fuller 9:02
Looking cool that.
Isaac Morehouse 9:03
That is a great look.
Jared Fuller 9:04
We looked like a couple of Florida bugs. Right? Yeah, we
Isaac Morehouse 9:05
look totally balmy.
Vince Menzione 9:07
Totally. We we skirted the storm. I mean, we're pretty lucky here.
Jared Fuller 9:12
Yeah. Every year is what a, you know, vicious cycle thence. From your point of view, I'd love to talk for a minute because it was such big news like a month ago. And Jay talked about that in his keynote this morning. The restructuring of Microsoft's partner program and there might not be anyone that is a personality or public figure in partnerships or channel that knows more about the before and after. I'd actually love to have you talk about that for a minute. Because from Jays framing, he made it seem like it was much more tied to customer outcomes, customer success. But I've definitely heard from Microsoft partners that they're furious. They're angry. I mean, obviously that happens all the time. Whenever there's something happening. What's your take, like? What does that mean for all of us in partnerships because Microsoft's In a lot of ways, is a bellwether for channel in partnerships. They'll do things in their ecosystem that affects, you know, the largest partner program in the world. That it seems like the long tail of everyone else doesn't really understand or digest till a year, two years later, what did that really mean? Can you talk to us a little bit more about that their recent partner program restructuring? Do you have any other baseball or opinions?
Vince Menzione 10:22
Yeah, absolutely. So first off, you know, it was it was this the house of silver and gold, right, that whole, you know, stratification of partners didn't make sense anymore, didn't serve the customer didn't tell the customer what you did, and that you did it better than anybody else. So that was first off
Jared Fuller 10:40
there. For a second, maybe from your point of view, can you summarize for us what the difference was just as a high level just to make sure that we're on the same page? Yeah,
Vince Menzione 10:49
they they basically grouped. So they group they had like 18 Different certification levels. I forget the exact nomenclature they use for it. But it wasn't aligned to the business in the right way. And the way that Microsoft met the customer, and the way that Microsoft sold to the customer support to the customer. And so what Microsoft want, what the customers wanted, is they wanted to have clear delineation, they wanted to know that the partner that was being recommended that that showed up was a partner that had been vetted, that had success working in that particular solution area. So they grouped partners by solution areas, they have this scoring methodology that says, you know, you need to do a certain number of things, right, you need to have the certifications and the accreditations, you need to show up and have great success with customers. And we're going to score you and we're going to give you a point score, and you've got to get at least 70 points in order to be considered a successful partner, right, whatever that looks like, you can still be part of the program, but you're not going to be one of these elite partners that we care about. And so the partners were up in arms, because a there was a lot of ambiguity when it got announced in April. And they launched it, Dan Rippy was on our podcast that day, they launched about a month ago. And he clarified a lot of that he talked about what it is and what it isn't. And what and what it was the first phase of it was really around systems integrators, global systems integrators, local national systems integrators that take a solution, and then they deploy it for a customer. But there's, it's still rolling out, there's gonna be several iterations. And the way he described it as it was the first house in the neighborhood, we're going to build this house for these types of partners, we're then going to build the house for the what they call the ISVs, which are the SAS software companies. And then we're going to build the next house and the next house and the next house. And as we build the houses, we're going to make it so you can come in, you can be a startup and you can come in, there's going to be value for you to be part of this. And then we're going to work out our way that we go cosell together, whatever that joint success looks like. So it's in process, it's going to be rolled out over a period of time. And I think that wasn't clearly defined in the beginning. So that was item number one, Jay also talked about no chief partner, officer, we got rid of the channel chief, we're getting rid of that word channel that we both talked about kind of being old school. And now it's a chief partner of Officer Nicole diesen is the new chief partner officer that that role within the organization. And so Microsoft is iterating. They're listening to customers. They're also recognizing Microsoft moves when they when they sneeze partners can get a call to right. So they're also kind of sending the sending a message. Like if you're not at a certain size, a lot of lifestyle businesses out there that had built a business small, you know, small midsize businesses. And they're saying like, maybe it's time to sell your business and have maybe there's aggregators out there. We'll take several these organizations and buy them there's been a lot of m&a activity in the in the old channel in the old ecosystem world. So there's a little bit of that going on as well.
Jared Fuller 14:02
Right. What do you think the implications are for the rest of the market, like the long tail of the Microsoft world? Like, what is Microsoft's restructuring mean for us in 2022? Like you have, you know, the I don't want to beat a dead horse with a mass layoffs this week. But the long tail of those layoffs seem like they're going to continue. You have Microsoft restructuring their programs. What's your opinion, your take on kind of like the world of channel evolving the partnerships, the will the partnerships evolving to ecosystems mean for you and me?
Vince Menzione 14:39
I think, Well, I think we're in the right space. I think, you know, I've been around organizations that had an inordinately high cost of acquisition, right. And they, you know, let's hire another 100 salespeople. Rather than build a channel program. I've seen that up close and personal. And that's not the right approach. The right approach is to work with other organism Patience and partner, right? The power of many the seven organizations, the seven partners that that are part of that customer buying journey is so important to success. I think that it's hard to say what's gonna happen with the economy, Jared really at this point, right? Is this going to be a bigger or smaller over the next several months, there have been some layoffs we've seen, we've seen it around the media industry. We've seen it around meta, and Google and some of the others but I'm not quite sure that it's going to I don't know what's going to happen from an impact perspective at this point.
Jared Fuller 15:35
I do not get Isaac or I started on that we have. We have some talks on YouTube that I hope that no one ever unearths with either of us from back in the day where we're both want to be economist Isaac's more well read than I. But we definitely have some perspectives and point of views on what it means from a macro perspective that we've left off of this podcast partner up. I've been telling Isaac, I want to start another podcast after the new year, once we get partner up to past episode 100. I want to do one that's more allows Isaac United stray
Isaac Morehouse 16:08
beyond dangerous
Jared Fuller 16:11
the realm of partnering.
Isaac Morehouse 16:13
No, it's funny, I feel like and this is not I'm not an expert by any means. But it almost seems like I was telling Jared, this back in the beginning of the year, and we were talking about this the market, though the signs are not looking great for the next couple of years. So there's almost like there's a bear market, but there's this little bull market within the bear market. And that is exactly where we are, right? Yeah, the almost almost because of a lot of these trends, these longer term bigger macro economic trends, hey, marketing team, you got to get more for less. So you're gonna have to co market together Hey, sales team, you better start finding those near bound leads that already have partners in influence involved because you're, you know, we're not going to be able to pay for a bunch of experiments and a bunch of ads and a bunch of, you got to get really tight, you got to get really lean. That means you got to get to know your partner ecosystem more than ever. So there's like, something's happening in the partnerships world, not necessarily just just because of the economic struggles or downturn. But that's it's almost making it more urgent.
Jared Fuller 17:15
I'm pretty sure it was Isaac's political Sensei, Rahm Emanuel, this had never let a good crisis go to waste my political. Don't try to go it over
Isaac Morehouse 17:28
here. Give me a beer. And start. It's hard.
Vince Menzione 17:32
You know, my Microsoft is always been a partner lead or partner assisted, right. And so 95% of all transactions in the Microsoft.
Jared Fuller 17:42
I mean, literally, like, the OS was not built on Microsoft applications. It was built on three other applications. I mean, from its core, DNA was a platform. Right emoji of the OGs. in the software world,
Vince Menzione 17:55
Bill Gates license the software to ibm 40. Plus, it must be one of the most brilliant strategies of mankind. I mean, it's you know, you didn't sell it to them. I mean, that created an entire ecosystem out of Boca Raton. So I mean, it's it. So yeah, so that they built their backs on it. What remains to be seen is how, to your point, what's gonna happen with how well can organizations lever that partner ecosystem? And will they embrace it in the right way? I still see and I, you know, we talk about this all the time, this transformation requires that the C suite gets on board. And that's what we're all trying to drive. But there's still quite a few CROs that came out of the old model, right? And so maybe they need to retire and they need to get out and we need more CROs and understand partner assist and partner led growth. What's
Isaac Morehouse 18:47
the to be dire here? What's the quote? I don't know. If it's Thomas Kuhn. I can't remember. But science advances One funeral at a time, right? Like, there is there is this thing with like, generational Well, and that's,
Jared Fuller 19:00
again, creative destruction, Joseph Schumpeter,
Isaac Morehouse 19:03
but this is the this is part of when we're in an economic downturn, a lot of times people who have been kind of waiting a few years to retire, they're like, alright, I don't want to go through another horrible time. Maybe I'll maybe I'll retire. There could be some some movement, who
Jared Fuller 19:14
knows that there was more venture capitalists have retired in 2022, than there were in the past 10 years.
Isaac Morehouse 19:20
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, and rather than just looking at that, like, Oh, my God, the sky is falling. There's a lot of there's a lot of opportunity for some some people to step up with some fresh perspectives. Like there's a really huge silver lining to that shift.
Vince Menzione 19:34
The best startups, recessions, right. I mean, some of the biggest last,
Isaac Morehouse 19:39
always, yeah,
Jared Fuller 19:40
100%. And, Vince, I'd love your take on this. I've talked about this on the podcast a couple of times. But the parallels between our consumer lives and our business lives seem like that cycle used to be a three year cycle, I feel like and then it was a two year and then a one year cycle and now I feel like it's six months to quarter.
Isaac Morehouse 20:01
What do you mean? What do you mean the connection between our consumer life and our business life?
Jared Fuller 20:04
What I mean is the experiences that are acceptable for us in our consumer lives yet versus the experiences that are acceptable to us at our business lives, just
Isaac Morehouse 20:13
shout out to him partner had a great column on partner hacker maybe a month ago about this, everyone wants to fly first class like, look, yeah, consumer consumer software companies have spoiled people, you get on these apps, and the experience is so amazing. Everyone wants that your partners want that too. So if you just throw them into some crappy portal, they gotta log into or give them some crappy one bit like, they're gonna walk to they care about the experience, the quality of that. So So you're saying the feedback loop, consumer does something. And now people in b2b, they expect it like quicker than ever?
Jared Fuller 20:49
Well, I'll give you a perfect example. Last night, we did the partner hub podcast with Max author Sharon Scott Barker. Yeah. And that was, that was such a, it was such a cool podcast in my heart, because I've been a friend and follower of max for going on 10 years. And then sales hacker that partner hacker, and he was he was speaking fondly of Netflix. And Netflix of late has actually been more of an enemy from a philosophical point of view, and a consumer point of view than some other ones. I'll give you a perfect example. Vince, I want your opinion on this to someone who thinks partnering and ecosystems and in more broadly, is that Netflix, Netflix built a walled garden, they built a really good walled garden, they control the content distribution, the payouts, the people, the all of that ecosystem. 100%. And you look at Netflix, from a stock performance perspective, they've got their butts handed to them did why? Why? I mean, can I publish this podcast and Netflix? No, but I'm a consumer of Netflix, I'd love to comment on it. I'd love to participate in the community with it. I can't, but you know where I can, YouTube, YouTube, is the number one acquisition of all time by any company, you can't even say there's a close second, in my opinion, by far the best manage handled best price, most enterprise value created. They're just a money printing machine. Why? Because I can publish content, I can consume content, I can cosign content, I can do it with other people. And so like we mentioned Netflix earlier, I feel like those experiences that used to be world class at Netflix was great, you just click a button, you're there with their exclusive content. And exclusivity feels like it's a dying vestige of
Isaac Morehouse 22:36
a world's first mover advantage, best product, best experience. Those all work for a little while. And that's we have this great session day one, the difference between product lead growth and network effects. And product lead growth is like this is how you get people in you give them the experience. It's viral. It's easy, it's fun, everybody wants to use it. Network effects is how you keep them. And there's not a lot of network effects. If it's just you're just waiting on Netflix to bring on the next show that you like, there's no way to interact with it. There's no way to whereas YouTube, the network, I hear
Jared Fuller 23:14
I hear your kids know there are your kids watch YouTube,
Isaac Morehouse 23:18
YouTubers that actively hate YouTube and spend entire videos ripping on it, but they don't leave it because that's where the viewers are. Right? Like, it's such a defensible thing, because anyone can come on small creators and big alike. And they all get basically the same experience. They're not even treated like second class citizens. If you come on and have no no viewers. You can you still have all the same tools to upload and everything like that, which is very, very interesting,
Jared Fuller 23:43
right? Oh, don't
Vince Menzione 23:44
worry about tick tock. Exactly. Yep, Doc is
Isaac Morehouse 23:47
tick tock, Vince, your hip your
Jared Fuller 23:51
Well, yeah, you know, I don't want that on my phone. Because I don't want the Chinese government taking my stuff.
Isaac Morehouse 23:55
I thought exactly. That's a tic tac.
Vince Menzione 23:59
But it's uh, you know, it's a great app. And it's liquid. It's done to metta and the others. I mean, it's really, it's exploded, and a lot of people are consuming news on tick tock. Yeah, it's kind of scary.
Jared Fuller 24:10
It's but I mean, I'll try to put the political stuff aside. I think the YouTube model and the Tick Tock model is the same. It's just the algorithms better with tick tock than YouTube. I mean, the point is, it's consumer created content, consumer interaction, everything.
Isaac Morehouse 24:25
Let's actually, let's actually talk about that for a minute. I don't know a lot about tick tock, but what I hear because I always asked my nephews and my kids who are on and stuff like, what do you like about it? What makes it better than let's say YouTube or Snapchat or whatever? One of the things they say, is that on tick tock, you you don't the number of current followers you already have, doesn't really play a part in how much your stuff gets seen. So there's this feeling it's easier to like go viral as a nobody. And because everyone knows that they feel more incentivized to play Right, it's like with kids, if you give them a game, that's way too hard for them, they'll try it two or three times, then they'll give up. If you give them a game, that's way too easy for them, they'll try and get bored, it needs to be challenging, but they still need to have the belief that they can win. And like YouTube has gotten to the point where it's really, really hard to go viral. And people feel like, Oh, I couldn't do that all the YouTubers that are big, now they got in early, it's really hard now, tick tock makes it feel easy. So here's the insight here, here's what I'm wondering about, you know, like a partner program. And again, I think a partner had a column on this as well on the longtail idea, this idea that, like, there's so much out there in the market, so many like small partners that may later become big partners. If they feel like they have to first prove that they're big partners before you treat them seriously. They're not going to be motivated. But if you can somehow let them know, hey, it's really easy to go big with us, like give them that feeling that hey, you could you could become a big partner, we could feature you in our newsletter at any time. Like even just having that feeling. It's like, oh, then it's worth it. I'm gonna keep trying it, right? Marketing.
Jared Fuller 26:07
Nothing about partnerships. Like this guy's got a good mind here.
Vince Menzione 26:12
So we talked, you talked about the experience, right? Three clicks and a box shows up at the end of the day. And I think marketplaces are that in a very big way. Right? It takes a lot of the friction, it makes it a fungible item, you can get two organizations together, and you could you can deliver to a customer or multiple organizations together and create an offer in market. You heard from tackle, we'll talk about the cloud spend, right? That supply cloud supply chain of customers that have already made commitments to either Amazon, Google or Microsoft, and the ability to think for them to go burn down their commitments. And it can be smaller organizations to your point, Isaac like these are, these are can be very small organizations, they can they show up on Microsoft's radar, and whether it's a seller selling to an enterprise or a channel partner downmarket going together and go and doing something with that organization, they get access to those same clients. So it's a way to go big as a smaller organization and it and it's it's a fungible offer, it takes a lot of the friction out of the system where we normally do things right, bid proposal, click Buy, but I've gotten another thing I gotta get do over here. And so it's all under one umbrella.
Isaac Morehouse 27:24
That's what I love. Jared always telling me stories of some of these drift partners and HubSpot spot partners who were like, a guy that owned a hot air balloon business are those stories matter? Because when you okay, there's a REIT, this is gonna sound disconnected. But there's a reason that kids who grow up with parents who are let's say, professional athletes, or movie stars, disproportionately go into those professions. It's not it's not genetic, some there's some of that it's not connections, there's some of that. It's because what you grow up viewing as possible, you tend to do you view as normal. If you grew up in a world where no one you've ever met has ever started a business, you're not going to see that as something within your possibilities. Right? Like, it's rare. It's rare. It's rare, like what you see is like, Hey, this is normal. This is doable for me you believe you can achieve. So when you create, when you can highlight partners in your program that like, hey, they were just a small, they were just a small partner. Look what they did, it creates this like, yeah, that's possible for you to whereas if you're like, hey, look, you're never gonna You're never gonna get into our gold tier. Let's face it.
Jared Fuller 28:26
I don't know. I mean, Mehta is getting their butts handed to them right now. And why is that because Mark Zuckerberg still runs the company. I think the goal in Silicon Valley is to build a big enough company to where you can pass it off to an immigrant to run it. Sundar pici Satya Nadella. You know, Shantanu like, I'm not I'm not kidding, though. Like, who were their parents that were entrepreneurs of fortune 500 companies that did this, like new immigrants and the world like none of these. This is this. I mean, Panda doc people I work for actually, you know what both partner stories that I have is Panda doc Makita and Sergey both immigrated from Belarus. And if you're paying attention to world news right now at all, yeah, Russia in Ukraine, Belarus is even worse. It's even worse. Why? The third last dictator in all of Europe. ever made everyone flee to Ukraine. Russia invades Ukraine, and then Belarus the country you just fled is now invades Ukraine too. And then the look at David can sell and Elise Torres. Leah's Torres emigrated from Nicaragua when he was 17. David can't sell grew up in the Bronx. Both of those has households are ESL. So I understand your point.
Isaac Morehouse 29:44
Like you're right, but it's all liars. The outliers end up being all the better, right? They're forged in the fire if you're able to be like, no one I've ever met has ever done anything amazing, but I still believe myself enough to do it. You're going to be incredible and that's that's usually those outliers are usually people doing amazing things. But But as a general rule, if you just look at the distribution,
Jared Fuller 30:03
I'm sure your distribution curve comment is correct if you grow it,
Isaac Morehouse 30:05
like I grew up with people who owned like small businesses, landscaping, shops, bakeries, whatever. So almost all the kids I grew up with, they believe that that's possible. And they go after that. I never grew up with anyone who did like a venture backed startup where it was like, I want to colonize the moon. So no one even tried, right? No one would even try. You'd be crazy if you tried, right? Whereas in Silicon Valley, everybody thinks that's normal to try like, oh, I want to freeze my brain. I'm gonna create brain freezing technology. Oh, that's a good idea. Good job. Good for you. So I'm right, like in Kalamazoo, Michigan, people would have been like, You need Jesus. Anyway, I got this is for other podcasts, but you really write it down and show your partners at least at least let them see show them the path, you made a really good point path to the possible right. Ludwig von Mises, my favorite Congress, three preconditions to action, discomfort with the status quo, a vision of something better, and a belief in the ability to get there. If your partners don't have a belief in their ability to get from here to there. You can't show them hey, here are the steps that make it possible. They're going to be disheartened and disempowered to go fight for it. Yeah.
Jared Fuller 31:11
Well, that's your favorite economist, Isaac, you know, I did meet my wife at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. These guys many of those of you had to farm. Yeah, so hold on your I wanted to steal what you just said. And Vincent, this is a perfect comment for you. It's the if you do a game, and then someone is so far, so far ahead. In the leaderboard, it basically makes everyone else give up. Right? So tick tock, in summary, makes it feel like, hey, these other people aren't so far ahead that I can also participate in the community. What about that might be true and partnering or like, I think that's the distilled point that Isaac made, which is a really good point is that the partner programs that win today, don't just go well. Accenture is a far ahead in a way Deloitte Sparta had no way we're gonna send all the business that way. It really that long tail drops off and you become beholden to that big partner.
Vince Menzione 32:09
Yeah, and I've seen organizations go from startup to significant partner for one of the hyperscalers because they decided to double down on one of the hyper scalars and not the other. And they became sort of the Accenture that hyper scalar. And I know a case in point, and I think a lot of it so you know, I want to bring us back a little bit on some of the like, over the five days, the things that I think really need to change and I love Alan's comment there about the they need to retire and go out to the desert or whatever the CRS
Jared Fuller 32:40
mine system. Is Alan still in chat with us
Vince Menzione 32:44
on here a minute ago. The times are changing for two years in the desert, the old CROs he's still
Jared Fuller 32:55
here. Here we got Alan Adler. We got Jamie McBain holy cow. We got the whole crew with us right now.
Vince Menzione 33:02
The mindset, the mindset, the growth. So you know one of the things with Satya was the change in mindset and Microsoft, Microsoft went through that change too. Don't forget Steve Ballmer was fighting every organization. He was fighting. You know, every technology organization wanted to have a competing strategy. Satya came in he changed the mindset of the organization. Everybody got a copy of the book by Carol Dweck growth growth mindset, he hired a performance coach to come in and teach up his leadership team to remove the silos and this is what has happened in other organizations too. There were competing silos within Microsoft had to remove those silos, you have to change them and you have to change the reward structure across the organization. So everybody's on a common set of OKRs that they're driving against, and they're accountable for that all accountable for the same business. And so that's those are the things that need to change within the organization. Fundamentally, the organizations that don't get it right are the ones that don't get their mindset right, they have a finite mindset. They don't have a growth infinite mindset. You know, Simon Sinek with infinite game infinite mindset and so I think that fundamentally over the five days when I looked across all the content all the great presenters and talks and everything that it's all about mindset we got to get that right
Isaac Morehouse 34:18
that's such a quotable the organizations that don't get it right don't have the mindset right. I think that's what you said something like that, but I just love that it comes back to the mindset. Absolutely. That's powerful.
Jared Fuller 34:30
It's the ethos right it's the the people that are I don't know I've there's been some pariahs in the partnership space that shall not be named, oh boy, Isaac just got really scared just now by the way, he got really scared that I was gonna mention names. I'm not gonna mention names. And I can tell Vince that they've been hurt in the past. And I mean that genuinely, that like I can tell they've been hurt in the past. and they focus so much on poor protection. They focus so much on scarcities, they don't have the right mindset. They don't think that by working together, that they can produce more than they otherwise would, if they worked so low. So even under the guise of being under in partnerships, they still feel like no, I need to protect myself for most because I've been hurt in the past. And
Isaac Morehouse 35:29
this, this is like, you know, as a, as somebody who is very passionate about marketing and copywriting, and language and category narratives, this is one of the challenges you face. If you come up with some language that you really like, and you start putting it out there. The temptation is when you hear other people using it, and not crediting you just using it to be like, well, that's mine. No, that's when it's working. That's when you're having an impact. If you have if you have an ecosystem of people using language, one of the 16 network effects James courier and they don't even know where it came from. They don't even know where they first heard it. But it just becomes common speak. That's how you win, you got to stop going around hunting for credit, making sure you trademark the hell out of everything and comments on everything. You know, I'm the first one that said that are chasing people down and being like, hey, please credit me when you say that, like, chill out, go put it out there and hope that it becomes bigger than you, you know, hope that it becomes adopted more widely.
Jared Fuller 36:30
I see Jill highlighted on the screen. And I might have, I might have said something today that like was a total contradiction of what I just said. So I hope she's not calling me out for that says Jill.
Isaac Morehouse 36:39
She says Vince, can can Oracle change now.
Vince Menzione 36:46
What I was thinking about when Jared was talking about some organizations, that's the first one that came to mind. Larry will never change. Sorry, if anyone
Isaac Morehouse 36:55
from Oracle is on this. You still there is still time, you will be visited by three ghosts tonight. You have time to change before
Vince Menzione 37:04
I remember years ago Larry said the cloud was this sort of like a passing thing you know, wasn't going to take off.
Jared Fuller 37:11
Oh, boy, they sure act like it wasn't going to take off. Oh, man, I can't even as a startup trying to navigate the Oracle Partner Program, or OPN Oracle partner network multiple times. That was the most Orwellian experience I think I've ever had, it was very Orwellian. It was like indoctrination. First, do what we say second, understand what you may get out of it at some point in the future and will never tell you. It was very, it was a very strange experience.
Isaac Morehouse 37:42
I just I'm just so impressed. Like it is gonna sound you know, it's gonna reveal how crazy I am and how unfamiliar I am with a lot of the stuff that we're talking about here. But the patients, all of you who work with large enterprises, like I just commend you for that level of patience. With my previous two companies. I literally we had a rule internally, it wasn't like a hard and fast rule. But we're in the talent business replacing people in jobs. And I was like, any company who has an HR department that's larger than one person, I don't ever want to have to work with people on my team want to work with them fine. I don't ever want to have to work with them. I like the bureaucracy the obviously amazing huge companies out there. It's but like, personally, I just have a hard time. I have a hard
Jared Fuller 38:24
time Isaac Morehouse is available the keynote your company's next conference Anytime he's not gonna offend anyone there. No, I'm you're good. Vince, you you've you've seen ecosystems and been a part of that. Actually, I think we need to build a lot more bridges between startups and innovation and that hacker mindset and then the big enterprises. Maybe that's that's this is a place where you and I found common ground. I'm the hacker I'm the one do it crazy. And then you're the one that's like, Hey, here's what actually drives change in these enterprises. And we found a lot of common ground.
Vince Menzione 38:57
I think there's a set of principles, I believe this that go across an organization that are true for the startup, and they're true for the 400 Microsoft's of the world, right? And principles don't change principles are the same. And I'm a huge fan of Stephen Covey's work, right? If you read the seven habits growing up, or whenever those principles don't change their life principles. And I think I believe the same set of principles apply in partnerships. And the smaller organizations can also benefit because it's also easier to implement and get those things right in a smaller organization with one person in HR than it is in a Microsoft or an Oracle. Right. So but you do have to get those fundamentals down.
Isaac Morehouse 39:39
If you want to call it out. Alan will bring it home here. We'll bring it home. Alan's got to come and see if I can read it. Can we please wake up to the reality that while we talk about b2b SaaS and our poor valuation outcomes that our species is about to get butt kicked off the planet? Only give to give Samsung entre that the nice guys when can show business can show business be good. Okay, so Allen's like, Hey look, none of this stuff matters if we like destroy ourselves and our lives in the process that progress business is a subset of something bigger. I was
Vince Menzione 40:19
I will just say I love the partnership with you all. I feel like you have been open kimono with me being the OG the old guy out here. And I think that's what we all have to do moving forward into this. If we're gonna take this thing forward, I think we will have to be together and drive in this together. So I love that
Jared Fuller 40:37
it's genuine Vince. I mean when whatever. We announced P Alexa and stuff. I mean, how much money did we try to charge you for this? I mean nothing. It was like, Hey, let's do a cross pod takeover and and the conference, right? Like it's there. There's a cute there's a cumulative effect, right? Where the sum is greater than its parts. Whenever you bring multiple people together that have value that share the same values that work together and build something better than any one of us could have done alone.
Isaac Morehouse 41:07
And it's fun. I don't know about you. I want to have fun in my nine to five.
Vince Menzione 41:11
Next year. I want to be in Tampa with you. Oh, how's that? Oh, I love it.
Jared Fuller 41:15
Next year, there's going to be an in person component to pls Vince Manzoni I want to thank you so much for the trail that you blazed for 1000s and 1000s of people not to mention me and putting your work out there and sticking it out for all of us to like have an example. And thank you so much for joining us at the close and all you crazy people in chat. You are really weird, right? Yeah, I want to I want to take a second and acknowledge how weird these people are spending their Friday nights.
Isaac Morehouse 41:47
You got to give them love. It's operant conditioning you got to reward them for this behavior.
Jared Fuller 41:51
No, I want to tell them how weird they are. I don't want to tell them how good they are.
Isaac Morehouse 41:56
Your families have
Jared Fuller 41:59
been thank you so much. Pls. Thank you. Humbled
