On this episode of the Enterprise Monetization Podcast, we sat down with Chris De Vylder, the Global Head of SMB Sales, Sales Strategy, and Operations at Atlassian. Chris offered insights into product-led growth and some of the myths around it.
Hi. Welcome to the 7th episode of “The Enterprise Monetization” podcast. And this is your host, Sandeep Jain. In this podcast, we invite thought leaders from monetization space that has CPQ and billing, so that you can learn about challenges, opportunities, and best practices in enterprise monetization. Today, I'm very pleased to invite our guest, Chris De Vylder. Chris is a seasoned sales executive who's currently serving as Global Head of SMB Sales, Sales Strategy and operations at Atlassian. Now, folks don't know what Atlassian is. Atlassian is the builder of popular collaboration products like Jira, Trello, and confluence, and a poster child for product led-growth companies. Prior to joining Atlassian, Chris had sales BD operations and product roles at companies such as NetApp, Concentrics, and Siebel. Chris is also a growth advisor at open view, which is an expansion stage VC firm with a strong focus on product-led growth companies. Chris, it's exciting to talk to you again. Chris and I spoke a couple of years ago, when I was researching into the Quote-to-Cash base and had a terrific conversation with Chris at that time. So it's such an amazing thing to speak with him again, and get his viewpoint on how Atlassian scales the sales part. So Chris, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Sandeep. We're looking forward to this. It's been great seeing the evolution of what you've done. So, it's good to go into.
Serendipity is the name of the game for me.
Yeah, that's right.
Awesome. Before we start, Chris, can you share sort of a quick fun fact about yourself before we go into the deep innards of billing and CPQ?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one thing I was thinking about, as you kind of as I was preparing for this, like, a lot of people in the US specifically talk about Timbuktu. And I can actually claim that I have visited Timbuktu and being there and it is effectively a remote place. But it was an amazing journey to get there.
Amazing. So what made you decide to go there just because people…?
Yeah, I used to travel a lot when I was in College and Post College. And so, this actually happened a little bit after college. But we always tried to kind of raise the bar as to where we wanted to go and how remote we wanted to go. And so I had a friend with whom I traveled quite a bit. And this is one of those destinations that we had in our mindset. So, Timbuktu is actually in Mali. I wonder if you ask like 20 people, how many we would know which country Timbuktu is in? It's in the North Central Mali. And Mali has actually a lot of interesting sights. And we decided to make it a three-week trip there. And we ultimately ended in Timbuktu. And from there, we made our way back home. So, its good.
That's fascinating. I was, that would have been my next question. Where is this place, actually?
It's in Mali, so Central Africa.
Amazing, amazing. I had a travel buddy as well. And we did like about 20 countries together. And we decided to leave the countries like UK at least Switzerland, you know, post when we have kids or families. We were trying to rough it out.
Exactly, that's exactly what it was. And so, I've kind of slowed down the roughing it out a little bit. I hope to go back to it in the near future.
Okay, all right. So back from travel to now Quote-to-Cash. So, could you give us a share of like, share your background with the listeners like, how do you like, you have a product role, you had ops roles, and now your sales at Atlassian? So, give us an idea about your journey, like how you ended up here?
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. So, I grew up in Belgium, went to college in Belgium, and I was in you know, I'm an engineer. Obviously, I have a technical background. But after college, I really wanted to explore the world. So that was kind of my way of substituting for rough travel. And I ended up finding a job in South Korea where I was for a startup. I was focused on selling semiconductor equipment. So, we build the software that was going into semiconductor equipment. And that's really where I got my kind of first exposure to sales, you know, solution selling because we were selling very expensive equipment. It was a very small company. And we grew the business in this very traditional B2B sales environment. You got to imagine it's like $500,000 a piece, at least for the equipment. And so, we were dealing with these large semiconductor companies. And that gives me a good taste for what sales and channels sales was like, because we were working with channels in the Far East. And you know, the company that well made some money there and was able to afford to go to business school. And it was a long-time kind of ambition of mine when I was back in Belgium to come to the US for business school. So I was able to realize that ambition and after business school you know, I was looking for ways to kind of get into product management because I wanted to build products. And I was intrigued by the CRM space in general. And I ultimately landed at Siebel systems, where I was able to use that knowledge of channels to help build out the initial what they call “Partner Relationship Management Products”. And that's kind of the connection between these two. So just able to kind of take that experience that I had fresh from Asia and leverage it into a product management role at Siebel. So we build our products there. You know, I ended up spending about four years at Siebel, which was you know, really cool kind of sales graduate school. Like, if you look at the salespeople that Siebel had at the time, and you know, for those who remember, obviously, was a company that was known for a very strong culture. Some people liked it, others hated it. But I actually really enjoyed it. And I met some amazing salespeople there. And so that continued kind of that like a trajectory of learning about how salespeople operate and how B2B sales transactions were conducted. I didn't want to go back to startup lando. And so I ended up joining this company called uncover. And interestingly enough, it was in a very similar spaces as you are in right now, like we were doing or building a solution. So I joined them as a Product Manager. But we were building a solution that was essentially an add-on for the traditional Quote-to-Cash systems at the time that allowed them to do subscription-based billing. And at that time, most of that was support contracts, as well as security products that were already sold in a subscription version in essence. And within that company, we initially build out the product, we build it out for channels, which was also a key component, how do you sell these products to channels and enable channel partners to resell these products? And we continued on that trajectory. So ultimately, we were too early to the game. And so, at that time, there were clearly customers that needed it for certain use cases, but it was not broad enough. It was also very difficult because the API's etc, were not ready at the time to connect our system to the system. So, every build out of our solution was a heavy integration exercise. And so that ended up being a factor that limited our growth. And as a consequence, we ended up deciding to become more of an outsourced sales play. And I was asked to build out an inside sales organization. And what we did is we shifted from a software sales company to a company that or where we offered services primarily to Tech Companies to sell these subscription based products on their behalf, and that's what we did. Did that for about six, seven years, we ended up selling the company to a large US distributor of tech products.
And say not the most successful exit, but you know, that keeps the motivation going. And I ended up then being recruited by one of my customers from the startup to really help them run their support renewal business, and so restructure that that was net up, we restructure that business, we grew it from about 600 million to a billion dollars. And you know, at some point, I was kind of done with that, well then the opportunity at Atlassian popped up. And I was like, wow, this is a chance to really learn about this unique business model. And this was now five years ago, and ultimately, they hired me and I was brought in to look at the PLG model and figure out how we could layer in an enterprise sales model in essence.
Awesome, awesome. Fascinating journey, Chris, from timber to Atlassian, I guess.
Yeah, yeah. They went to somewhere in the middle. But yeah, it's good.
Awesome. So, we talked a little bit about what Atlassian does, but can you tell us more about Atlassian and your particular role there, Chris?
Yeah. So, as I mentioned, so Atlassian is obviously famous for its PLG model. And I would say that the company can probably claim to have invented that model. But five years ago, there was already a motion in place that was starting to focus more on enterprise level customers. So what we found out or what the company had found out is that there was a need for some of these companies to have a more advanced engagement than the pure PLG based model that the company was built upon. And so, what they wanted me to do, and I came in from a sales operations, sales strategy and operations perspective was to really look at our business and say, how do we build out more established relationships with these enterprise companies? How do we essentially expand our revenue from these different customers that we already have in the install base? So ultimately, like the common thread that was there, you know, through Siebel, and cover and all these other companies was that I had built up an expertise and installed base selling, like, how do you figure out you know, what you have? And how can you make as much money as possible from these customers? And obviously, at Atlassian, we wanted to maintain the culture of the company, which was to not be overly aggressive in sales, but to really offer customers the value and the advice that we could give them to build more trust in our product. So, we build out these motions over time that really capitalized on the install base, identifying the right customers to follow up with building the infrastructure to do so and then handing that over to sales in very specific sales playbooks. And initially, we started with one sales playbook that was more of an upgrade sales playbook. So, taking customers from standard versions of our product to enterprise grade versions of our product. But over time, and over the course of like four acquisitions, we've gradually built out more playbooks to plug into our customer base, and also build out a sales organization that now I would say resembles more traditional sales organization grafted on top of the PLG motion, but still maintaining some of the or actually maintaining some of the core principles that made it lasting great. So some of them being pricing transparency. You know, obviously, the tactics that we use are nowhere comparable to what traditional B2B companies would use. But anyway, those models are outdated now anyways, but that's essentially what we've done here. So now we've got you know, fairly sophisticated sales organization that ranges from business development reps to an inside sales team to field sales teams, etc. Obviously, complemented by an extremely strong channel organization, that really has helped us not only expand our reach geographically, but also allows us to get into accounts of different levels sometimes, then we have access to.
Awesome, awesome. One of the notions that I've heard is like product-led growth companies don't have salespeople. A lot of times I've seen people mentioning that, but that's like a wrong thing. It seems like because every, when you take these customers who are paying you, like $10 a month or something like that, you actually then have to grow them into an enterprise.
Yeah, that's fine. I mean, if they're large companies, not only, do you want to do that as a company, because there is significant upside potential for you. But also, the customer is really demanding it. Because they do want a different level of service than they get when they swipe their credit card essentially. And so ultimately, as you grow, you have to build in those motions to support those types of customers.
Awesome. So, can you talk more about this, like the Quote-to-Cash stack at Atlassian to support end of customers?
Yeah. So, we sell through three different channels. So, we sell through Ecommerce, which is actually the core of the business, or what's the core of the business and what the business was founded upon. We sell through channel partners, and we sell direct now. And all of these channels obviously need to engage with each other. So because at the time, there were really no products available in market to support these combined motions, Atlassian ended up building a fully homegrown stack, at least when it comes to the front end of the process. So, the quoting and the interfaces to our cash collection and accounting engines. So the front end is homegrown, the back office is NetSuite, and obviously a bunch of add-ons to make it work from a tax perspective and all the other things that you typically need with systems like that.
Understood, and Chris, for a company that's starting now, and that wants to sort of have this trifecta of channels, but want to be able to share the same things, are the tools available right now that have just solved this problem any better than what it did? I don't know, five years ago when you guys decided to build your own?
Well, this was built way longer ago. Atlassian has been in business for like, close to 20 years. So, I don't know exactly when in the history this was built out, but I would say, you know, the answer is probably really. No, I mean, there are some systems out there, I mean, being one of them, that allows you to be more flexible in your pricing mechanisms. But, you know, systems that really allow you to combine the scale that you get with what's more like a B2C sales motion, but then also allow you to get a little bit more sophisticated in your interactions that you the things that you typically require in B2B sales motions, those combinations are really not available in market right now. I mean, you can look at obviously, any large company like SAP or Salesforce is going to claim that they have these solutions, but they're typically different acquired companies that are still require a lot of integration work to make that work together. So I'd say there's no real off the shelf solution available that allows you to do this effectively.
Understood. And, Chris, is this a big bottleneck in the growth of the companies, or is it like a small fraction? Is it a big friction?
Like, I mean, it's a challenge, for sure. Like, you know, the scale at which you need to run your commerce infrastructure, obviously, is nowhere close to an Amazon or any of these Ecommerce sites, but still, the scale is large, and the number of customers, we have close to 200,000 customers that purchase from us, and don't quote me on that number officially, like it's about that number. But you know, the scale and that combined with the sophistication that you need is just very, very hard to do. And so we are struggling with that for sure. As we tried to keep up with the creativity of our product people, obviously, Atlassian is a product led organization, which means lots of new ideas come out of the product. Organization, we make significant investments in new products, because we obviously want to stay ahead of the curve there. But then fitting that all into an infrastructure that can flexibly accommodate that and, evolve with that and combine the scale within the sophistication of B2B transactions. It really it does slow us down sometimes, and we've had to make up for that with more resources to support these processes manually.
Understood. And in this process, do you have both expansion, like a free customer becoming enterprise, but you also have this other workflow where an enterprise customer contracts, or they reduced back to do an individual sort of workflow?
I mean, that doesn't happen that often. Like we're fortunate that most of the customers keep growing with us. So, I wouldn't say that is still a challenge, we do see some challenges in terms of, yes, graduating customers. Why? Because I mean, in our case, it is in one system, because it's the homegrown system. But I've seen other companies that ended up combining, you know, different types of transaction systems, because there is nothing that supports both of these motions elegantly. And then obviously, you're starting to deal with the issues of like, well, where does my customer sit? And how do we get the information of the customer that we have about them in a self-serve environment, and also make that accessible in the more B2B transaction systems that support it? We don't have that issue, because our systems are homegrown. But that's part of the core challenge, we do have some of these issues or challenges on the marketing side, for example, where you have similar challenges really were like scaled systems for more B2C marketing are not don't have the capabilities of the more B2B oriented systems. And again, you need to exchange information between those systems as customers graduate, or potentially get demoted from one category to another.
Got it. And Chris, could you give us a sense of how many SKU’s that you guys transact in and how many currencies that you have?
Yeah, I don't know the exact numbers SKU’s. But I would say that compared to some of the companies, other companies I've seen, it seems like it's significantly lower, but it's in the 1000s let's say. And right now, we are selling in USD, AUD and JPY. So, these are the three currencies that we support. So it's interesting like even in Europe today, we don't offer directly through our own systems, we don't offer Euro based transactions. That being said, our customers can always go and purchase through our channel partners who offer all of these flexibility to purchase in different currencies, payment terms, etc.
Understood. And Chris, is this a function of the inability of existing systems to support like multiple currencies, or is this just a choice?
I mean, part of it is a choice, part of it is, it's like, it's flexibility. Like, obviously, there are certain currencies, that we are gradually layering into the system. And you know, the existing infrastructure makes it a little bit more difficult to do so fast. Mostly, because it's still spans multiple systems and multiple changes across systems. It's also a matter of choice in terms of financial management, because obviously, the more currencies you have, the more you need to start thinking about hedging and all these other aspects of it. So it's a balancing act between you know, these things, and obviously, the customer experience that we want to provide. But we have a, you know, I'm going back to our channel, there is this strong capability that we have, and that allows us to build a layer around our infrastructure that really provides those capabilities to their customers and our joint customers essentially.
Got it.
But yes, I would say, clearly, infrastructure is in some ways, preventing us from moving very fast in some of these things.
Got it. So, what would you say, Chris, is your biggest challenge in the scope of cash? Because you're the Atlassian, being the poster child for product-led growth? Like this is the heart of the company, right?
Yeah.
What are the some of the biggest challenge or challenges in this Quote-to-Cash, from your perspective? Like, if they were solid, I mean, then your revenue can be accelerated in a much faster pace?
I mean, I think it comes down to the ability to combine scale and speed of Ecommerce systems with sophistication of that you need for these B2B interactions. And so as we discussed, there is like, no real system on the market that allows you to do the two in one system effectively and right. Ultimately, like a lot of the core functions are shared by these two. Like our pricing, our core pricing model, and our product catalogs, and all of these things are the same across the two motions, and we want to offer them, most of them, we want to offer to both channels, or be able to offer to both channels. But the fact that there are no systems on the market that allow you to manage that one central catalog and kind of push it through an Ecommerce site and at the same time, make it available to more traditional quoting systems. That is really the key bottleneck. I think that everybody who's in PLG, either is already facing or will be facing very soon. And that's been validated by conversations I've had with other people in the industry that that they're struggling with the same issues and ended up using two separate systems, which then require separate maintenance and orchestration between the two, which has massive overhead.
That's really interesting. You mentioned this, Chris, I had a previous guest on the show. They had the product catalog in their B2B system. And then the other way, like they were kind try to do the B2C workflow. And so they ended up replicating the product catalog in AWS somewhere. And from there, they were trying to build the online experience. But your point, they have now two separate catalogs, and they were trying to synchronize…
They need to be synchronized and maintained. And that's, I mean, that's just work and lots of room for errors.
Right. So, and we talked about this a little bit earlier about this B2C and B2B being together. But Atlassian, you know, you're doing both bottom up and top-down sales. Anything specific that it means to your internal systems that were designed to support this? Anything specific, anything interesting you guys did there?
I mean, we did a number of a number of things. Like, part of the challenge was what's kind of very different between the PLG motion and the B2B sales motion is that, ultimately, in the PLG motion, you want to collect as little information about your customer as possible, as you want to get them into the product and make sure that they experienced the product as fast as possible and get value out of the product as fast as possible. So, ultimately, you just want to get like, you know, an email address, or minimal information. You don't want to ask company size all that stuff that you. And so you know, you get their email address, and I know some companies advertise, then they can provide you with all the data required to figure out who that is. And you know, some of these companies do provide quality data, but it's not complete enough, and it doesn't really tell you exactly who you're dealing with. And so those are some of the things that we've built out here internally is the ability to kind of bubble up from these large amounts of data that we see in our PLG motions to bubble up information about the companies and to really build a profile about both the individual and the company that we can then leverage in more sophisticated ways in our top of funnel activities around marketing, but also bottom of funnel once we start selling to these companies. And essentially booking orders from them.
Sandeep Jain: Got it. And, Chris, if there's one thing that can help solve your existing Quote-to-Cash problem, what would it be?
Yeah, I mean, it ultimately comes down to like, that's centralized catalog, and then an ability to APIs, or kind of plugin quoting modules for your enterprise salespeople, it is to support the kind of motions that you need to support. Like, if you think about it, ultimately, that product catalog needs to be centralized, the pricing rules need to be centralized as much as possible. Like you need to be able to access that to an Ecommerce front end, which is either typically something people want to build out themselves or their, they want to, they can buy off the shelf systems. But ultimately, like the most companies build custom front end for their Ecommerce sites. So you want to have that centralized back office that allows you to drive the scale and the transaction levels that you need to drive on the commerce side, but then also make that available and provide, I would say at a minimum level, the quoting interfaces for both your channel community and for your direct sales teams to build those more sophisticated transactions that require a whole lot of other capabilities, like the ability to combine multiple assets on one quote to co-term them to provide discounts to have approval flows, wrapped around that all of that stuff that comes with a traditional B2B sales motion, you also probably want to have the ability for your partners to plug into that directly, and to leverage API's or more electronic interfaces into your company to get pricing and to conduct transactions that way in parallel to more traditional quoting interfaces. So, it's really like the centralized engine within all of the different modes of interaction that you need to provide to different actors that need to use it in either the B2C motions or the B2B motions. That's kind of what I'd say is what would be the Holy Grail.
And so, Chris, why do you think like nobody has come up with a product to solve this exactly what you're just talking about? Like why, since this is like a core problem for growth for a product-led growth company, yeah, the non-product led growth companies as well. So why do you think…
I think it's something people are now starting to pay attention to. I mean, Quote-to-Cash is one area where this clearly is an issue. It's complex. Like, you need to be able to handle volumes of transactions, and then this complexity of the transaction. And obviously, larger companies like ourselves, it's difficult to just like rip this whole thing out and replace it with something else. So it's not an easy sales cycle. It's clearly not a PLG sales cycle, the sell a Quote-to-Cash solution. So that's one aspect. But you see this across the board, like you see similar issues come up in the marketing space, as I alluded to earlier, like the inability to combine these real volume based processes with more, like, Marketo versus Salesforce marketing cloud, for example. Like they're built for different purposes, and they are good at one specific purpose. They're not necessarily good at combining purposes, which in PLG, you need to be able to very flexibly or fluidly go from one motion to the other potentially. And so marketing doesn't have the systems that the systems that allow you to interface with PLG streams from a sales perspective. You know, we've seen more and more activity there in terms of companies that are starting to build out solutions for that, you know, pokers being one of them and some other companies in that space. But I think that's one of the areas that you're seeing a gap that is now gradually being, well, at least I think people have identified the gap and are now starting to build solutions for that. CDB systems is another area where you're struggling with combining the scale with the sophistication of what you need to get done. So those are different areas of like the kind of IT infrastructure that are probably due for some level of refresh.
Interesting. And I've seen this at other companies, but this Quote-to-Cash because this is becoming more of an infrastructure engineering problem. I've seen this moving from an IT responsibility to engineering responsibility. Is that some of what happening at Atlassian as well?
It is. I mean, in some ways, and you know, maybe it's a channel that I haven't talked about enough, given that we're a product-led company, like, obviously, the product is also a purchasing channel. And so when you're actually transacting in PLG, the first transaction often happens in the product. And so that's another emotion that you need to be able to facilitate. So the integration between product and commerce infrastructure as a consequence, or product and marketing infrastructure becomes much more intertwined. And therefore, it does make sense to combine these into potentially the engineering organization.
Got it. A lot of times, I hear this question about how to structure the teams for monetization, because it spans like finance, sales, engineering. And so where do we put this functionality? Is this an IT role? Is this becoming a more engineering role with an oversight from an IT? So that's…?
It's a difficult question to answer. And I think, you know, I mean, it's not just a Quote-to-Cash challenge. It's like any kind of cross functional business process, which in PLG somehow, they manifest themselves even more, because you have to go even further in terms of the cross functional nature of what you're doing, including product and marketing and everything else. I mean, everybody needs to collaborate to actually get to a business outcome. So ultimately you know, I believe in like the notion of what Jeff Lawson outlines in his book, which is the “Amazon way”, but also what Twilio at least seems to be implementing, or has implemented, which is the combination of multiple people that are focused on solving a customer problem, and then align resources across functions to work on that customer problem. And obviously, with Quote-to-Cash, it's a little bit more difficult, because everybody is relying on that same quote with the cash infrastructure. But I think you have to start from there as like, what are the customer problems that you solving? And who in the company needs to be working on that? The two pins are box roll. Like, let's limit it to as few people as possible, like I recently coined the term Minimum Viable team in terms of like, what you need to get the job done, because otherwise the collaboration just becomes very difficult to orchestrate. And so I think you're gonna see more and more of that having to happen just so that you can get to the outcomes faster. And from a Quote-to-Cash perspective, ultimately, you will have to absorb inputs from all of these different business processes or different outcomes that you need to orchestrate to kind of build the infrastructure against for them.
It's interesting, because you mentioned this, like people getting together across different functions to solve a customer problem. And I'm reminded of this, I was exploring something in customer support a few years ago. And enterprise companies, there is a tier-one support there is a tier-two and tier-three. Sometimes you're being passed over multiple tiers. And so, there's a new concept and support where when you first put a call to a customer support person, they will solve your problem. They will be the point of contact, and they will pull in other people as needed to solve that problem. I'd like to your point about customer experience, you're not being thrown from one party to another. But customer support is also getting this kind of a model where one person solves your problem, and they might have to pull other people from different directions.
And they’re accountable for solving it.
It's interesting. Chris, changing gears a little bit. Do you have any thoughts on usage-based billing? That's a new thing that we're hearing a lot in enterprises. Of course, you have public clouds that live and breathe, usage-based billing. But in enterprises, you know, we've been talking about this. Any perspective on this? Like, is it a hype? Is it reality? How are companies doing usage-based billing? Any thoughts on that?
Yeah, I don't think it's a hype. I think it's you know, companies like Amazon and others have proven that people are willing to live with that kind of model. I mean, not just because it offers them the flexibility. But it's just the right way to do it in some ways. The challenges with it typically come in with some of the larger organizations who still want to have predictability of what they purchase and predictability of pricing. So, in many ways, you have to be able to support again, both notions. So I don't think usage based billing is a fad. I think it's here to stay. I think it's attractive for many companies. But it will have to be combined with some level of prepackaged pre prices offerings that are offered larger organizations, more predictability around budgets, and what things will cost them, but certainly here to stay in my opinion.
Got it. And Chris, do you think it's like an incremental change to the existing systems to support this kind of billing or is this like, on an exponential or a different scale for companies?
I don't think it's easy to build. I mean, as we're obviously build a business on this, like, that was the initial premise of, at least from what I can tell. So I think it's, you'd stay it's hard to combine with existing systems, typically, because they don't support it natively. So I think that's another challenge to layer on top of the scale versus sophistication challenge, and then you know, layer into that, like, different flexibility, ultimately comes down to flexibility. Like you want to be able to sell on the website, or through a salesperson or through a channel partner, you want to be able to offer fixed pricing, or usage-based billing, depending on essentially what the customer preferences are in terms of how they want to purchase these things.
Interesting. Now, it's interesting. You mentioned this, Chris, like when I was researching this space a couple of years ago, if you're the CEO of a company, if you're building a product, like you should be held accountable to how fast or how better, you can build a product. But when you're out selling, you should be able to decide I want to sell in Japan and Japanese yen tomorrow, I want to show this to partners, I want to know usage-based building. Near other folks, these are like couple of years’ worth of projects, and they even fail at times. It kind of sounded very absurd to me that like, these systems in a very ideal world should be like air and water. They should be transparent. But they are a fundamental reason that you exist. But they don't show their existence in your face, and this is it. It's kind of hard for me to fathom that, that nobody has kind of build that. Well, you do the business that you want to. And this system is like a transformer or adapts to the way of selling company on the planet. They will start with maybe subscriptions. They'll go to one time. They'll go to use it.
Absolutely.
I've channeled partner B2C and B2B marriage. And it always was a fascinating thing for me like why nobody has built this?
Yeah, because it's hard. As the fundamental reason, I think it's hard. Like, there is infinite amount of creativity in pricing schemes, discounting schemes, all these things. And I think sometimes too many really. And, obviously, it's difficult for assistants to keep up with that.
Right. So, Chris, maybe you answered this question earlier, but how do you think this industry is going to change in the few years? Do you see, I think the biggest thing that I'm hearing from you is the scale versus sophistication? B2C versus B2B, like combining these motions, or what do you think about AI, ML, is there a possibility of using that or anything else?
Yeah, I mean, I think so. I mean, ultimately, PLG is a model that's here to stay, that's clearly not a fad. It's just means like, you actually build a product that's good enough so customers can get in on their own and use it on their own, and that's a testament to the quality of your product. So any good product company, obviously there are exceptions to the rule, like there are certain things that are not as easy to sell in a PLG motion, but it’s here to stay. And so the whole CRM industry is going to have to evolve to accommodate that model, which means reconciling B2B and B2C, which also means getting more sophisticated about how you collect customer data. And so the whole infrastructure around like the CDP's of this world will have to evolve to be able to collect the massive scale, all the stuff that happens in the product, all the interactions that you want to kind of react to viscerally with, like you know, very quick responses based on what a customer is doing in your product or on your website, all the things around personalization, versus then the more sophisticated that long range motions around like, well, what's the best next thing that I'm going to go sell to that customer? And so, both of them will have to rely on AI and ML probably at some point. And you can start with more heuristics and simple rules. But ultimately, you know, the way that product responds to a customer will have to be based on models where you understand like, based on these actions, I'm going to provide these types of responses or these types of interactions in the product or on a website or in an Ecommerce, shopping cart type of environment. And for the longer-range activities to help salespeople, obviously, you want to do similar things. You want to understand the full profile of the customer, not just what they just did in the product and how they acted. But like, who are they? What's their profile? What's their role in the company? Who is the company that we're dealing with? What vertical are they in? What kind of industry are they in? And based on that, what kind of decisions do I make about what to tee up to them next? So, I see a big role for AI and ML there for sure.
Awesome, Chris. Here with this, we have come to the end of this fascinating conversation, Chris. It was amazing to speak with you. But before we go, could you share a resource like a book, a podcast or a blog that has created an impression on you, and why?
Yeah. I mean, I mentioned it earlier, I did enjoy Jeff Wilson's book. Ask your developer because it kind of resonated, a lot of it resonated with me, even though a lot of it is kind of common sense within the valley, but still there's a lot to be taken away from it. From a podcast perspective, you know, I'm a big fan of the “Open View” guys. So, they have a great podcast that I listened to on a very regular basis. And those are like from a business perspective, those are things that are things that I enjoyed recently, and that I listen to all along ongoing basis.
Awesome. Chris, hey, thank you again for your time. And this was very interesting conversation. A lot of people I know are struggling with Product-Led Growth. So, I’m sure you get pinged by…
It's becoming more fashionable for sure, every day.
Well, Atlassian assured that there's plenty of money to be made thinking that way.
It works. Okay, great. Well, thanks Sandeep. This is great, great conversation.
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