Jake Hookom === Jake: [00:00:00] Sometimes you get products where they've got, years of features and capabilities that you'll swear up and down that your customers adore. is you look at the telemetry maybe like 2% of those features are actually used. Jeff: right. Jake: means sometimes we're focusing on the wrong thing. . Jeff: Welcome to Launch Pod, the show from Log Rocket, where we sit down with top product in digital leaders. Today we're talking with Jake Hookem, EVP of Product at Perforce. In this episode, we'll discuss how Jake's focus on category carving at 4 51 helped him soar above the sea of headless commerce tools and into a successful exit. Why most PMs are wronged to measure success by number of features shipped and why it's about solving user problems throughout the entire customer journey, and how Sitecore's, enormous practitioner community provided market awareness and an ability to drive product adoption beyond anything they could have done on their own. So here's our episode with Jake Comb. All right, Jake, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for coming on. Jake: Hey, thanks for having me. It was great seeing you the other week in Vegas. Jeff: Yeah, it was awesome that we got to actually meet in person before doing this over at Google Next. Always nice to kind of make that [00:01:00] connection first before we do this. You're coming on, you're over right now as the EVP of product at Perforce, but you spent time at Sitecore 4 51. We're gonna dive into some cool kind of stories from those times and how you accomplish neat things by mean Sitecore, obviously a great, practitioner community yeah, so I mean with that in mind, let's jump right into I think one of the cool things we had talked about and we got to catch up on previously was you joined 4 51, you joined at an interesting time though, and you had. A bit more than maybe normal work context going into it. You jump in, you hit 4 51. It is covid. Set the scene for us and let's jump into this thing 'cause I think this is a cool little case study in, in category carving. Jake: Yeah. Yeah, really to set the scene. Prior to that, I spent about two decades at McKesson, customer technology. And as everybody does, at some point in their life, they turn 40 Jeff: I've been there. Jake: yeah. That statement was awesome. It was like, what's next for me? What do I wanna [00:02:00] do again? Everybody's gonna hit that inflection point in their life. And had a great opportunity to join a small startup in the Minneapolis area called 4 51. Focused on commerce. I'd always dreamed of working downtown and instead of out in the suburbs and experiencing new, exciting things. And, I did that during Covid. Coming into the office, joining a new company , first stint there. So I joined them as their chief product officer. I love the leadership there. The owners of that company. I went from a very busy, highly active, big corporation environment to getting in the seat at 4 51 and the message was first 90 days calendar, no meetings. It Jeff: Mm-hmm. Jake: days, let's work on strategy and where we can go as a company. So it was unnerving initially, but at the same time it just, it was a huge breath of fresh air, to really be able to understand and study where there are [00:03:00] in positioning in the category and in the market. But went there 'cause I loved the technology Hit it off extremely well in terms of, ideas. I saw it reflected a lot of what they're doing from a technology perspective and my own background working in customer technology, but had technology that had been around for, A little over a decade, great ideas, but really just kicking butt in the local area, the local market. And they had bigger plans, like how do we grow? The intent out of the gate was to look at acquisition or funding and get to that next level. So that was like charter day one, and they said, first 90 days, let's put together a plan. Jeff: Nice. And then, so I think you kinda came in and I love how you looked at this because I've always had this kind of view of, at the executive level, especially at startups, if you just stay in your lane, product or marketing or whatever, you are doing a disservice to both yourself, but the [00:04:00] company mainly like you're there. The executive team is the first team when you're an executive and you, your goal is to grow the company. But I love you came in with kind of the view of what do we have to do across, more than just product, but how do we position, how do we do go to market? What are the big picture things we need to do? Obviously, product needs to support that, but how does the rest fit into place? I think there's a book you mentioned was it play bigger or, yeah. Jake: prior to joining 4 51 and, knowing that change in my life was gonna happen I had a chance to, and I've got a good friend Kelly get, From the Mock Alliance Commerce Tools a great, thinker about the market and opportunities. But he had recommended to read the book, play Bigger. Jeff: Mm-hmm Jake: you know, one Of the things, and I do want to come back to. This aspect of working at Enterprise and in a startup and the hats you've gotta wear, but. One of the advantages of going into a startup, a smaller environment is you're able to wear a lot more hats. [00:05:00] And, between the marketing team, the executive team, the leadership team, the our CTO we had the opportunity outta the gate to just come together and look at the technology they had. Again, the technology necessarily wasn't the problem. It. Did a ton of great things in terms of the way they were thinking about e-commerce in general and the problems that they were solving with customers. But their headline in going to market was, Hey, we're headless commerce And I. Jeff: of those. Jake: Yeah, there's a few of them. And so, when you're starting out in a small company, the big thing is how do I differentiate? And what I love about the book play bigger is this notion of like you mentioned, category carping. In product management you talk about what category do you operate in? how do you compare on features? How do you look at yourself commercially to scale yourself within the category you operate? And customers are always asking for features and new capabilities. How does that fit in our [00:06:00] category? Is that a different category to sell into play bigger really emphasizes go a step further and say. How do we define a new category for our Jeff: Mm. Jake: Where you come at it with a completely different message, and this is where when we looked across the headless commerce market and a lot of these great collaboration sessions with the leadership at 4 51 was really, where are we gonna win? Like we look at all the deals and all the customers that we serve, where do we consistently win and how do we double down on that? How do we make that our DNA. market. And so again, there's always a lot of opportunities. But again, as you're starting out, you can't cover the market completely. And nor can you expect to. But really emphasizing that notion of, let's play bigger, let's understand the category we play in. Let's define it and really deliver a set of messaging behind it Jeff: Yeah. Jake: everything we do front to back in our DNA to. Oo, this new [00:07:00] category placement. So what we did was really focused on, not only the headless and the API first. I know there's some aspects around the mock alliance that we want to talk about, but, it's going a step further and saying, Hey, we know B2B better than anybody else. And , we took all of our features that we had and we lined it up and oriented to this notion, this DNA of being B2B first and understanding that customer market better than anybody else. And the cool thing was, is they were able to carry that conversation. Immediately into, when we talked about funding and acquisition is that yeah, there are other like headless commerce startups out there, but we really zeroed in on the fact that we distinguish ourselves because we serve a class of customers that nobody else can touch. Jeff: Right you are you, you picked, You know the area to focus on. And we are going to be the best in the absolute world to the point where no one can even come close in this segment and win there. Jake: peanut butter spread. This is where we win. And [00:08:00] being very deliberate about that. Jeff: Just a big old dollop of peanut butter in the center of the bread. Not a good sandwich, but a great way to go to market. Jake: Yeah. Jeff: So I guess, how did you guys zero in on B2B? What was the process where you kinda looked back and were able to discern this is the hill we die on right now? Jake: obviously 4 51 did a great job in solving a lot of different use cases, in terms of, not only B2C and traditional kind of digital and brick and mortar retail type scenarios. some distinctions around franchising models, et cetera and commerce. But when we really looked at the capabilities and, how that platform came together? Overall, our ability to, manage multiple versions of products, multiple price books, multiple catalogs. Jeff: Yeah. Jake: built in from scratch is not only having the concept of users like every commerce platform has users, but tying that into notions of [00:09:00] accounts. Jeff: Yeah. Jake: Account management and my background coming from McKesson and working in the B2B commerce world for McKesson and that's one of the reasons why I joined 51 is that really resonated. And when we looked at, at that customer base. we were extremely successful, where we're differentiating against, the capabilities of a Shopify or other, BigCommerce or the other players out there, even against those big players, if they had these use cases, nobody could do it better than us. And so , let's turn that up to 11 and let's be who we are. Jeff: It's good to, zero in, and there is just so much difference to serving a B2B market in this area that people don't even realize and they're like the knit, the nitty gritty details are really where you win here, right? Like you said it's complex. Price Books is maybe different price books. It is tying user to account and I have been constantly. Shocked at how many tools, even ones that are made for B2B make it [00:10:00] difficult. Even, go to market, people will kinda sympathize here, but Salesforce still, the idea of lead to contact to account and all that is just a nightmare in almost every, place. If you solve that I can see, that's a, it's a good place to pick and go. We're gonna be different here and solve this really difficult problem. One thing you mentioned when we've talked before that I think really hit home to me and has been a theme I've noticed talking to folks here and while I'm out on the road, is the notion though, that product goes beyond the digital thing you deliver, right? If you are a product manager or you're an engineer, , you do wanna focus on delivering your piece, and that is a digital experience. But in the big picture, what we're looking at, how do we deliver the best product? It's, the software only goes so far. It's about solving a user problem. When I buy something, I want to look at. The problem I had and say, I no longer have that problem, and you need to be able to deliver the service. And , maybe it involves not just software, but training or services or stuff. But I like how you put like product as a spectrum. It goes beyond just [00:11:00] features, there's marketing messaging all the way to ProServe. There's, how do you contract with people even how do you host to have the right performance? How did apply that thought here in carving out this category. Jake: Yeah, obviously, servicing that customer base it's. You start with the RFP process, especially in B2B sales. Sure a lot of your audience, focuses on like traditional PLG motions from a product perspective, when you look at B2B led sales motions, a lot of times it's starting with like customer relationships. You're going all the way through. What does implementation Does services look like? How's that customer supported afterwards? Especially in the realm we're operating in, in, in headless. Jeff: Yeah. Jake: The mock environment. Yes, you're bringing technology in that ecosystem, but it is as much of a services to deliver that technology. So that was one of our big emphasis is as and I find this a lot of times with product managers and product owners, they are super, super good at taking customer feedback and they measure their [00:12:00] success based on the features they put in the product. And a lot of times it's, to your point, it's that spectrum, that ecosystem around product delivery that is even more important than the next feature you throw in. Um. I've done it as many people have is sometimes you get products or you inherit products where they've got, years of features and capabilities that you'll swear up and down that your customers adore. is you look at the telemetry and, this is a space you guys operate in, Is maybe like 2% of those features are actually used. Jeff: right. Jake: that means sometimes we're focusing on the wrong thing. So this idea of product as a spectrum is let's focus on what we do well from a capability perspective. Being clear on, especially in the B2B realm B2B product sales perspective is. We sell it to the customer. What does success look like on the implementation plan just as important, again, as the features. So [00:13:00] what do we expect in the first week? What do we expect in the first month? What do we expect in the first 90 days? Jeff: Yeah. Jake: journey look like for the customer? And how do we rally the other departments in your organization around that success? Jeff: Yeah. And that last bit's important, right? 'cause they don't report into product. So it's, an exercise and how do you bring the team along? Because I think we've all, unfortunately, we've probably all been there when. There's a great idea, but how it comes together just is lacking. And unfortunately you end up, usually as bad off as if you just didn't have the reddy in the first place. So it's not just, delivering the feature, like you said, it's how do you bring everyone along? How do you make the whole ship turn or the whole ship, go faster and it is just so important. With that, like how did you kinda work with other executives across the company to drive that? Like what did that look like on a kind of like. Piece by piece basis to go, here's what we're delivering, here's what we need. Or was it more collaborative? 'cause like you said, it was early on and everyone was, a bit more involved together Jake: would say from two perspectives. [00:14:00] Obviously working at, spending a lot of my career at a Fortune 10 company and then Startup, the answers are different. I think, number one, I. For product, and I like to share this visual is you put up like a blank page or a blank slide. You put a little dot on it Jeff: Yep. Jake: this is the best feature we've ever released. And that white space around it awareness of that feature. When we talk about how do we be successful on this front to your question is, a, it starts with radiating intent. Like, you become so customer focused. You can work with your engineering team, deliver features, you can work on communicating with customers. You should be spending just as much time with your support and services, your sales Groups to make sure they're aware of the features and really, having a conversation around, okay, this is our goal. This is a new capability we're rolling out, or this is a new customer space we wanna [00:15:00] operate in. Can we. Product is oftentimes comes in the quarterback in those situations. What can we do to help you or support you on that? But it really starts in being great communicators equally inside the organization. And making sure that, those other teams are empowered. So if a customer asks, not just us a question in those customer calls, but you know, if they're interacting with support over a ticket system or you're not on that call with the customer, making sure that those individuals are comfortable, not only asking, answering questions, but also a line gets back to that. 30 day, 90 day success plan. Jeff: Yeah. Jake: rallied around what that is and to help that customer through that process. Jeff: Right, Because you can sell a vision, but if you know they're not there and using the features that you sold 'em on and seeing the value, sure you got one year of revenue, churn kills businesses. So you gotta make sure you kinda deliver that value over the course of the whole contract and hopefully. Multiple re-ups of the contract. I do [00:16:00] wanna move on 'cause one thing I think we kinda started briefly to touch on and moved on is even in the headless commerce space, there's a pretty deep differentiation between if you look at B2B and B2C some of it's price books, some, it's that, but there's also this whole world of just really unsexy stuff, but has to get done right. And I think you called it like putting manners in place, which I love. And now I'm gonna definitely steal that like. All the time, but that's the, you know, your SOC twos, your hipaa, your PCIs, how do you look at building that stuff in and like communicating that and, what is the, way you've thought through, this is obviously table stakes to go into market for this world, but at the same time it's really not. It's just like a tick box kind of thing. Jake: Yeah. And it, goes in your go to market strategy and even as. With new product launches that, I'm working on with our teams today with where I'm at, we talk about commercial market, mid-market enterprise. Sometimes when you're launching new features you might intentionally say, Hey, I'm gonna go after the, [00:17:00] like our commercial tier customers or mid-market tier customers they don't have requirements around, so compliance or they're not gonna be asking for HIPAA compliance Jeff: Yeah. Jake: or PCI compliance. Those are all good things. When you're selling into those higher echelon customers like these, let me be clear, these are all things you should be doing. And again, coming from a Fortune 10 company, like we lived and breathed these, sitting out on the other side of the table working with ISVs or product or software vendors, these are all the things we hammered on. It's as much about problem solving in your product, but again, as you're selling up in the food chain or up to higher end echelon customers or the larger customers and enterprise buyers, understanding, through their RFP, through their the markets they operate in, if it's financial, if it's healthcare, other, what are the requirements that they have? Jeff: Yeah. Jake: just, stakes to your point that need to happen. How far and how much of our [00:18:00] roadmap are we focusing on getting those things done? Jeff: Yeah. Jake: Sometimes you find, there might be emerging technology, so there's a lot going on with ai. Everybody can talk about ai, but, one of the things we're finding in market is, AI is shifting our ICP, it's opening up new In market. Largely with commercial and mid-market where we talk about enterprise versus startups, people wear different hats and so making technology more accessible. But as you start going to enterprise AI is excited as we are about it. It. It can be difficult to sell into those spaces. But my point being is you can look at these certifications, these other kind of manners and processes you can put in place to be your differentiator Jeff: Yeah. Jake: and selling in market. Jeff: Yeah. I mean I think, obviously given where we operate with session replay analytics, we're. Ingesting a lot of user data and processing that through ai. It's interesting to see, as you go through, [00:19:00] you really have to set the scene for, how you are a good operator here, how you have good manners, the SOC twos the HIPAAs for healthcare companies. But it's even interesting as you look at enterprise, a lot of have their own kind of corporate. AI policies about how, not just how they're going to operate, but even how they're going to use AI tools where maybe their data isn't being passed, but it's a kind of other data they're just utilizing even. And if you don't have those answers cleanly ready to go you can, you can kiss that signal goodbye potentially. Like They don't want an off the cuff answer. They want something that they know has been worked and is clear and considered. But clearly, I mean, you guys did over there worked. 'cause I think over, several years you had a pretty solid outcome. You were processing what, $5 billion in sales a year by the point of acquisition? Or is that about accurate? Jake: Yeah. I wanna be clear, 4 51 technology was like, I would describe it , as ready to pop. Jeff: Yeah. Jake: It was great stuff the way that was designed. But it was really [00:20:00] unlocking and tapping into Jeff: Yeah. Jake: the great things about it. Let's double down and focus and Jeff: Yeah. Jake: up to 11. And ultimately, it became our message and in discussions with like companies like Sitecore where we ultimately got acquired. Jeff: Yeah. Jake: It was interesting for me because. Big on community. I was one of the original members of the Java Champions community, so I was always a Java guy. Jeff: Yeah. Jake: And so joining 4 51 and then joining Sitecore through acquisition where they're heavily.net, had to learn new skill sets myself and appreciating that other side of community. But, again, this is one of those cases like. Again, we kinda go back to this is that white blank page where this is that little.is the best feature ever at a macro level, like 4 51 was that it was brilliant technology, great concept, great execution. It just needed that amplification. And the kind of Cinderella story was, I had an opportunity to get in [00:21:00] seat. And literally, in about six months we ended up getting acquired. So Jeff: Yeah. Jake: again, it's one of those things where just focusing on where you win, defining your category, being very opinionated About, our technology or perspective on market. And sometimes that's hard 'cause you want to please everybody. Jeff: Right. Jake: This is a case where worked to at Advantage and ended up getting acquired. Jeff: So I wanna move on and talk about your time at Sitecore and, the kind of fantastic work you did around community and building a whole group of practitioners there who really helped, continue to grow that company. But one thing you hit on that I wanna make sure people don't gloss over is the idea of, you don't need to be everything to everyone, the, especially as you're growing until you're, probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars of a RR success usually comes from like, find those, small, tight things that you just see, massive outside success on and just double down and then double down again and again, and just, you can build a really sizable, significant, fast moving business. Through [00:22:00] that methodology and that I love that you guys took that and ran with it straight to a great outcome moving into Sitecore. That so often of like companies getting shiny object syndrome and we have to do this and we have to do this, and we have to do this. And every new thing that comes up. You feel like you have to tackle 'cause you, you're worried about fomo, but you guys just nailed down. Here's where we're best. We're gonna be really clear, we're gonna be really focused, we're gonna drive value, and we're going to deliver huge amounts of kind of actionable problem solving to our customers. And you did. And um, so that takes us to Sitecore. Jake: Yeah, when we talk about B2B product sales Jeff: Yeah. Jake: I think you, highlighted this, it's like sometimes, your highlight could be how many users do we have? Like how we spread ourselves out and looking at volume when you look at B2B product and sales led motions That idea of that spectrum that you need to be in product around and building that customer relationship. When you talk about expansion and focus really, that success day one and then leading [00:23:00] that success, day two, day three, day four in growth, really your point of focus and sale is not only where you win, it's also saying, Hey, we've got this blue chip customer. We did this for them, it becomes more about the success story, the outcome of the individual customers you focused on to drive those stages of growth for your product versus like showing up and saying, we've got, 5,000 businesses on our platform. And When you talk about selling into enterprises or even bid market or higher, really the conversation is, can you solve my problems? Jeff: yeah. Jake: Have you solved as your point of your pitch? Jeff: Yeah, I'm pretty involved in the sales and product side here and as you said, we saw each other at Google next, and I always find it so interesting when, the thing that always resonates the most is not talking about, AI buzzwords or whatever the newest, hottest thing going on is. It's painting a picture of a very real [00:24:00] problem that we solved for a customer that looks similar. You just see the light go off in someone's head of, I have that problem too. You can solve that for me. And that's when you set the hook. It's not, the kind of big flashy words, it's the, but it's doing the work to have those stories. It's doing the work to have solved those problems of being able to do that. We hit a juncture here where you've been with 4 51 for a little bit. They get acquired by Sitecore. Sitecore is obviously a much. Larger business here. So you come into this and how'd you come in and how did you end up getting involved with the practitioner program? Such a large community there. Jake: . That was one of the coolest things about Sitecore was they Jeff: Mm-hmm. Jake: a vibrant community. Obviously this is during a period, during Covid. So we joined Sitecore. Everybody is working remotely across the globe, and we spend about a year in the seat, all of us working disconnected our first time really coming together and even as a team at Sitecore, product management team at Sitecore our MVP, our community and [00:25:00] Budapest. And, sometimes when you get in and you're working on a product and as much research and outreach you're doing is one thing, but talking about, Google next last week, getting out there and meeting people Jeff: Yeah. Jake: me and for a lot of the leadership team coming into the seat with all the change going on at Sitecore and everything we're doing and looking at the future and where are we going Get all excited about those things, Getting into the MVP, summit that was occurring in Budapest and meeting all those individuals that have been, users of Sitecore for over a decade. their passion, like the tech topics they talked about, the excitement that they had. amazing to get Jeff: Yeah. Jake: perspective. So we're all coming into Sitecore is doing a bunch of acquisitions. Four, one included. All of us are coming new. New to Sitecore, new to like really looking at it from a technology lens and a strategic lens, but getting in with the vibrant like Sitecore MVP community and those individuals, it was like we're [00:26:00] missing, we're this whole other aspect that we could be tapping into and, getting feedback on in a different way that I think. didn't have that perspective out of the gate, and there's so many success stories behind that as post covid and the interactions we're having with the MVP community that drove a lot of opportunity for Sitecore and its growth during that period. Jeff: we were already talking about, that kind of idea of where you see success double down, but where you have an engaged. Practitioner group. That's such a large opportunity because you and I have been around and doing this long enough where, you remember the kind of what we, I think we now realize to be the fallacy of, people go through these very discreet buying stages and you want to hit them with this messaging, consideration this, messaging during, mid decision or whatever. But in reality, the way people. Decide and become aware of companies, even B2B and make those decisions is so much more emotional and [00:27:00] reminiscent of B2C than we realize and you talk to your peers, you look for who's talking about what. And if you see a solution or an environment where there's just hundreds of people shouting about this wonderful thing, that is really hard messaging to beat by someone who doesn't have that. So I love that you leaned in here to this thing that, was working and said, how do we bring this forward in a new way? 'cause they're on blogs, they're on GitHub, they're on, they're the places that you as a brand can't go. But they can, you can make that special. Jake: and it does tie into kind of. When we talk about having a small startup and this notion of play bigger and Jeff: Yeah. Jake: focused on where you win, and then you get to a scale of a portfolio like Sitecore, I. Where you do peanut butter spread. But this is where that aspect of partners and community, Have the ability to tell those Jeff: Yeah. Jake: category stories, those industry stories to help amplify like where it's really hard sitting in more of the corporate seat [00:28:00] in the middle to focus on that front. As important as it is when you have this startup mentality, where can we win? Where can we play? Joining Sitecore really understanding the breadth to your point of that community how, vibrant it was, the different industries, the different partners MVPs focused on, not on, not only geographically. the globe, but just again, in different industries, different use cases, et cetera. So it was almost like managing and looking at that community and looking at those individuals as almost like startups, individual Jeff: Yeah. Jake: and like fostering their ideas. One of the outcomes that I loved was, 'cause everybody got hit with the AI transformation, but because of that foster that ecosystem. Obviously like every other product you're working on incorporating this new technology change in Jeff: Yeah. Jake: but we were showing up and we're doing our conferences and the community. Had extended the platform, were solving these use [00:29:00] cases, publishing blogs, putting out code into open source, demonstrate the power of like use cases that were like, oh, we're not gonna be able to touch to Q2 or Q3, but they were able to get that message Jeff: Yeah. Jake: and we're able to get that out there in the blood supply of Hey, look what you can do with Sitecore technology . And again, it was almost like a jealousy on the product side of like, oh, we wish you could do all this stuff and bake it in our product. But it was equally an appreciation that all these passionate individuals, like their ability, again, that startup, that kind of mini startup mentality and looking at that group, they're able to move at pace and really hit these point problems to your to, like you talked about, it's like how can you solve this for me . And so when I'm deciding on Sitecore or versus somebody else, it might be within your product or it might be something from a blog or something a partner had put out there Jeff: Mm-hmm. Jake: Big differentiator. Jeff: 'cause that comes back [00:30:00] to, if we look at. The role of product isn't to ship software. That's one way to do it. And a necessary piece. Yes. But that's not the whole job, but it's to solve the problems. That, kinda like you said, that active, practitioner, user base who are building the add-ons, they're building the plugins, they're building the point solutions and the small pieces where maybe you can't touch just because you can't possibly be everything to everyone. As a team. That's a huge asset though, as like a, as a buyer, you look at that and go, I'm going to be able to do more with this because this world exists. Or I'm gonna be enabled to do the thing that I maybe need to build myself because I've seen other people do this. But also, I firmly believe , that at some level, success and the difference between like average companies and great companies is not necessarily that average companies just don't succeed as often as great companies. I think it's much more that great companies pick the right things to just be absolutely world class at, and they drive it home. And yes, bigger companies, you have more things and more things you can cover, but it's still, usually, it's only a few things, but it's also at bats, right? If you can only run. [00:31:00] Work on three things, or you can work on six things or eight things, or nine things in the same time period. You just have more chances to be right. And this community gives you the ability to do all of that, right? They can do some of it for you, but you can also, you have this great user base to go talk to if you want feedback. You have people who are passionately gonna sit there and true passion right there goes kinda like a curve. Where at some level people don't care enough to give you honest feedback. Like, Yeah, it's great, whatever. It's fine. And then, maybe even mid-level excitability, people who are fans continue to like, yeah, it's good and they'll give you a little bit, but you know, the real super fans, they can be your biggest critics too, they'll let you know when you misstep. And so being able to talk to those people who would tell you like, oh, you don't do this. You need this. You can go and drive those like very specialized things and know that you were acting in the right way, or they'll just build it for you if they're frustrated, but your customers get the value and it's just this great ecosystem. With that, how did you guys look to leverage that kind of feedback loop? 'cause you can do so much with the community. Did you look into that? Did you use them for, where we going next kind of [00:32:00] stuff. Jake: Yeah, I mean obviously, through the MVP program, they got insider views in terms of where we're at from a product perspective and what we're thinking about, what we're planning. so getting feedback from the MVP community, we do that through like regular sessions that they, part of that luxury was, it was this flywheel as I refer to it as, you know, a, we recognize that like many MVP programs like Microsoft and Oracle and others have we recognize what you're doing. We recognize your voice and we're gonna bring you in. In terms of giving you insight and visibility into and watch your feedback in terms of where we're going and what we're planning on doing. Part of that, also is making sure that they're prepared to help amplify that message from a practitioner marketing perspective as a new technology gets launched or through beta programs or otherwise. So when you launch. You can build a small little ecosystem of use cases or add-ons also as part of [00:33:00] that. But I think, you brought up, focusing on roadmap and these are the things we do well, for a lot of product leaders, it's okay from a partnership perspective or otherwise, like how can I, increase the size of the truck we're taking to market. Jeff: Yeah. Jake: into these folks outside of your r and d organization or outside of your four walls, to help innovate. If it's prioritizing things in your roadmap from an extensions perspective, or to enable that might be through documentation Jeff: Mm-hmm. Jake: It. Might be like a kind of a slow crawl out of the gate. But I think just a testament to Sitecore and that community that they built is once you get that groundswell of focus and that commitment outside they'll move at pace, both positive and again, they'll give you feedback where, it might be, oh yeah we'll get to that, or might drive change within the product. Jeff: Yeah, and it's great because, one thing I found useful here is. They use the language that group uses. [00:34:00] It sounds very natural coming outta 'em. 'cause it is. We had a dinner in Austin several, weeks ago at this point where we got together a bunch of product leaders and for our market. We had kinda two e-commerce leaders from e-commerce companies sitting across from each other. It was complete coincidence, but one of them was a customer who'd been with us for a little bit, and the other was starting to wonder, we had briefly mentioned kinda what we do around, how do you drive insights out of user behavior on your site, and how do you understand where people are running into friction using ai and. She kinda started to ask about that, but the person who was sitting across from us, who was one of our customers jumped in and was like, oh no, it's great. It does this. And just laid out all the areas of benefit in the exact, language of the problems that, that she knew that they were having. And very deep specifics. But also, you get the hard side too, where she was like I wish it did this, but we looked, no one else on the market did it either. That's something that they're working on. But you kinda get this you also stretch a note down, all right, we gotta go make this 'cause they're all interested in that. But it's fantastic having [00:35:00] that, having that kind of superpower to be able to go talk to real people and get feedback. Like you said, it's meeting real people. Jake: Yeah. 'cause when you think about like customer advisory boards and those kind of formats it's, important to get feedback on your roadmap and Jeff: Yeah. Jake: practitioners, it is those kind of cross pollination discussions that are in those relationship development That, can be one of your best outcomes. Jeff: Now, within that, was there any way you found to kinda really continue to grow? Loyalty, for lack of a better word there, or engagement, how do you incent people to really, double down there. Back to the concept of doubling down on things at work. Jake: Yeah, sometimes software companies or product companies will have these things like certifications out there. A lot of the MVP community and we talk about like open source technology or open systems and understanding your partner ecosystem, giving those individuals recognition. and like year on, year on year also helps them in terms of their ability to go service new business, [00:36:00] service new customers. They're being recognized as the best of the best. I love when, and I still watch it today when Sitecore does their annual MVP recognitions and LinkedIn just, it's like a spring bloom. terms of just Jeff: Yeah. Jake: posting their recognitions, their Jeff: Mm-hmm. Jake: The history that they had, how proud they are of it. It's really something special. Jeff: looking back at even just what we talked about here, it just makes so much sense if you can drive that kind of community where what are the big risks? Success people don't onboard successfully and they don't see the value. If you have this community, A, you have a lot more experience doing that, but you're also working with them. You're getting feedback, but. In a lot of cases, you also have the materials maybe that they've self-built to help validate that experience. You have, the flywheel of feedback where you can keep making the product better. And then you have those, evangelists who are gonna go out and talk about things in the language that, your prospects want to talk about it in. I think a great kind of story there of how do you go in, and maybe they're not the buyers, but they're [00:37:00] certainly the ones who are going to make a company successful once they've bought. But it's also. I can't count the number of times we've talked to, a leader who's come in and said, oh, heard about you. Because my entire team, reads product content and engineering content and all this stuff that, log record puts out. So when we start to look this problem area. The entire team just dropped everything and said, we have to look at Log Rocket, because, we've been reading them for a long time and it's, you can't fake that. So it's great to have this kind of community. . Jake: yeah. I mean, I think that's where. I talk a lot about PR practitioners, Jeff: Yeah. Jake: There's an economic buyer that you're marketing to, but what you're highlighting is it's sometimes hard when you talk about where you're investing and where you're budgeting for Jeff: Yeah. Jake: go to market. It's like we're gonna focus all of our investment on that buyer, the economic buyer, and reaching them. What you brought up is a great example of focusing on practitioner content. Jeff: Yeah. Jake: if you're approaching a new customer in another [00:38:00] cases, like hey, you do that pitch, that initial pitch and you talk about, different logos where your product works, ecosystem, where's that next conversation? Next conversation's with the tech validator on the back end. And then they're gonna do their digging and they're like, they're trying to answer, does this solve my problems? Yes, I talked to the salesperson, but they're gonna do their own digging. And I like to talk about like really that Saturday night developer persona. Don't wanna talk to a salesperson, they don't want to give a credit card. They wanna sit at their computer, their laptop, maybe like half hour, an hour, an answer. Can I wrap my hands around this technology? Can I deliver? And you really need to take a look and say, as that practitioner or as that tech expert, are we showing up to your point on content material out there, either from the community or I. Stuff that we've generated to service them. Jeff: Yeah, no, it's great. We had a guy, Andy Boyd, who's over at Out Fire. He is a CPO, but he was at IBM Watson early on and kinda led [00:39:00] growth there. And one thing he talked about was exactly that, right? Like one of the biggest experiments they saw success with was not some fancy, oh, let's, drive something and use customization and blah, blah. It was just, we're selling to developers. They ultimately want to be easy to sign up. They want to see how do I turn it on, how do I use it? How do I implement it? Is it easy? Can I do this and then let me play with it and see value? And so make it easy to see value. And if you can do that, you're light years ahead of some flashy marketing campaign. Yeah. So no, so I could go into this stuff all day long, right? But unfortunately I know you have stuff to get back to. I can't take your whole afternoon. Hopefully we don't have to wait till next Google next to connect again. But thanks so much for coming on. This was great to be able to go through, practitioner community at Sitecore. How do you look at and double down on this idea of category carving from 4 51 and just generally, building this career through and ultimately solving, customer problems. So thanks for coming on. Jake: Oh, thank you so much and it was great seeing you the other week and hopefully some opportunities with the great technology over at Log Rocket Jeff: [00:40:00] Yeah. Jake: what we're doing over at Perforce. Jeff: Nice. And lastly, if anyone's, wants to reach out and has, thinks they can be helpful to you or has a question is LinkedIn the best way or what's a good way to get in touch? Jake: Yeah, LinkedIn is an excellent way Jeff: Yeah. Jake: love to connect with folks. Jeff: Nice. Awesome. Thank you so much. Great to have you on Jake. And we, hopefully talk soon.