LaunchPod - West Stringfellow
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Jeff: [00:00:00] What's up Wes? Welcome to the show, man. Good. Uh, good to see you again.

West: thanks Jeff. Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jeff: We got to hang out a little bit at dinner back in San Francisco a couple weeks ago. We had, uh, Raj Singh who talked to that event on the show recently. So this is, this is cool. It's like a little, we've had a reunion recently to have you, have you come on now too?

West: Dude, that was great listening, Raj. I really appreciated his insights. I, I empathize deeply with, uh, with how he felt about innovation. I, I appreciated that opportunity. Thank you.

Jeff: Yeah, no, thanks for coming out. That was, that was a fun night. He is a, he's a smart cap, but it was cool to kind of meet a whole bunch of folks around San Francisco there. Uh, a lot of, lot of neat stuff. It was interesting, you know, you go to a lot of other, uh, cities and I've been to a lot of 'em throughout.

And in all of them people are, are accomplished and really, really smart. But I think that was the highest proportion of people who had been founders of any event that, uh, we've thrown yet. 'cause, uh, I guess, you know, in San Francisco you can't, you can't throw a rock and, and not hit a founder at some level.

Um, but it was cool. I, I'm glad you came out. . . So, yeah, so I mean basically, you know, your background I think kind of speaks for [00:01:00] itself. You've founded a couple companies, you sold one of them, was it Codename Goldfish to Target you founded. How do, , you ended up now at Blackhawk Networks, , do you wanna just give us like the TLDR of, how you kinda walk through all that, how you got to where you are and, you know, I probably missed a few important details there too.

West: Yeah, no worries. , , Yeah, , I think of my career as kind of having three phases. The first phase was, , 97 to oh three, where I was a database administrator and web designer just doing startups. , That led me to the second, which was kind of oh four. To, uh, 17 and I was just climbing the corporate ladder.

I got to launch a prime video . It was called Unbox at the time, but, and then got to, got to contribute to the first billable web service for AWS, , built their India fraud office and then went to Visa, was the VP of Innovation. Built their PayPal competitor, then went to PayPal, built their Visa competitor, and then, and then, uh, then went to ultimately.

I built my own startup, uh, chief Product Officer at Rosetta Stone of BigCommerce, and then built my own startup and Target acquired it really quickly, became [00:02:00] VP of Innovation there. , And then after that built, how do and then, uh, Blackhawk.

Jeff: now you're at Blackhawk, uh, kinda helping with digital transformation and AI transformation and everything. Right? Maybe let's go back a little bit first because I think , the target story is kind of a neat one because you came in, um, you had, you know, had you guys even gotten, , what was it, goldfish off the ground or, hey, also what is the thing with the name?

I mean, I'm not against De Boat. Why Goldfish?

West: So because I was trying to raise capital and because I had intellectual property around it, I was actually trying to keep my startup and stealth. So I came up with a code name goldfish because the average attention span of a goldfish is three seconds. We wanted to convert a customer into a retail customer, , in three seconds.

So our goal was to create social media content, , that was engaging enough to convert , and we built a social media solution five years before Instagram launched shopping.

Jeff: . Nice. And then, , it was so good that basically you guys didn't even launch at a stealth almost. Target came and knocking and acquired you guys wholesale and you ended up there. Is that the

West: Yes. 

Jeff: brief representation? Yeah. 

West: I was, uh, raising [00:03:00] capital. One of the venture capitalists that I spoke with Target had just been in their office. Right before I went to visit the vc, that is Target went and visited them. And I guess Target was scouting the , area. Lots of companies come to the Bay Area thinking that if they come here, they'll find the insights that they're looking for.

So anyway, I got introduced to Target, talked to them and they were really bullish on the idea. They gave me a seed investment. I joined them as their first entrepreneur in residence. Very quickly we were able to demonstrate, uh, a lot of momentum and traction, and they ended up acquiring it very quickly.

And then, , I raised my second round with them. And, , while I was doing that. I moved to Minneapolis, I had a lot of incentives to make target stock go up. So, uh, I moved to Minneapolis. I sat in the strategy department and I got to read their strategies. 'cause it, you know, I wanted to align my company's strategies with theirs so that we would all grow together.

As I was, coming to understand their company, I started to realize that there was a huge opportunity in terms of improving the data that they were using to build their [00:04:00] strategies and maybe using different tools to run the analysis. And so I took some of the money that, , my company had received, and I actually just built targeted strategy.

I had this specialty group agents, they're a management consulting group. I had used. Multiple different companies, but I paid for them to come and build targeted innovation strategy. I printed that out, 300 copies. It was about 340 copies and hand delivered them to every executive in Minneapolis.

And then, , shortly thereafter, got a call from the CEO, like, what are you doing? like, dude, I'm just trying to help you grow your company. Like, here's like my opinion on how you could potentially approach the market and the customer with a little bit more, , efficiency, in my opinion.

Jeff: How'd that go over? 

West: dude, you know, it, I think some people were a little confused because, Like, who is this person and why are they doing this work, and what does this work mean? But, I've always had, , a lot of luck, working ahead of the business, like looking beyond where the business is looking, really trying to figure out where the customer is and where the competitor is.

And then ultimately like where technology could take us relative to our [00:05:00] customer and our competition. You know, I was just trying to introduce that perspective to target. For me, it was kind of like a thank you, like an act of goodwill. Like, Hey, I'm here. I'm just trying to be helpful. Uh, and I think it was, it was generally received that way , and they made me the VP of innovation.

Jeff: There. There you go. So, I mean, you, you went from founding a startup to being kind of wholly funded by target , to being an employee I mean, that piece went well, right? I, I think the joke is always , like higher troublemakers , and people were gonna raise a little, you know, a little noise and it sounds like you kind of came in and, and did that.

But I mean, good to hear it went over well, like, that can go one of two ways and I think it says a lot about a company, but like, how was it going from, complete outsider to now, like, you at least say entrepreneur and residence to, on the kind of executive staff over there.

West: I really enjoyed it. I thought it was an awesome opportunity. , You know, Target's a fascinating company. They've been around for, when I was there, I think they were like 150 year olds. They, they spun outta Dayton Hudson. So there's this huge history and, they serve so many American customers, which I, you know, I just love those kind of, , institutions, , in America.

And I [00:06:00] really appreciated the opportunity to help, help them grow. And, and you know, they have , so many different customers in different places. The analysis was always super fun. There's so many opportunities. The projects were always super fun, and it's such a recognizable brand that, at the time you would get this tailwind on almost everything that you tried to do.

Which, you know, if you're trying to build new things, is always a, a really good signal. For example, with the Techstar. As part of being the VP of innovation, because I was the first entrepreneur in residence when I joined Target, there was a lot of media and stuff. And because of that, I got a lot of folks reaching out to me like, Hey, I'm an entrepreneur.

I kind of wanna do what you're doing, and here's my idea for Target. And as I was building relationships with the local community, you know I kind of professionally grew up in Silicon Valley and I'm super community based with my work. I love having a professional community, and so when I got to Minneapolis, my first thought was, I gotta find that.

So I started running around the city trying to find people who were building startups in Minneapolis at the time. It had a good [00:07:00] startup scene, but it was still very, very nascent, very small. And I was really lucky to meet a couple people who were championing the community and really wanted to build out the community there.

And one of them was like, dude, I think if we brought a startup accelerator here, it would really move the needle for the community, for the company. There's a lot of big headquarters in Minneapolis,

You know, I had this signal coming from entrepreneurs saying, I wanna be a, I wanna be an entrepreneur residence and Target. I had this signal coming from the Minneapolis community and I was like, let's just connect those dots. So I proposed building a Techstars accelerator and ultimately was able to raise 15 million from Target and build an actual startup accelerator. And we were able to build a physical facility. You know, target has enough capacity and resources to build like a standalone accelerator facility, and so we.

Brought Techstars in, ran our first accelerator, and then had Target run its own accelerators for its own projects and its own startups and now it's a permanent function@targetstartups.target.com. And so like, you know, having those kinds of resources where you can reach out to Techstars and be like, Hey, I'm thinking about building an accelerator.

And boom, you build one and [00:08:00] having a building that you could build it in. And when we said we're building an accelerator, we ended up getting, I'm doing this from memory, but I think it was like over 500. Some, , applications from all over the world, and that was two times the benchmark for a normal accelerator with Techstars.

I was like, dude, like, you know, there's so much demand here. So anyway, I, I really appreciated that opportunity. I had a lot of fun. We had a great team. We did a lot of fun work it's, it's a cool experience to get to, you know, I went from bootstrapping my startup to managing $77 billion in revenue, you know, innovation for $77 billion in sales.

Sorry, not revenue sales. And, uh, and so I was like, holy cow, what a difference. But what I learned from that, and actually what really inspired how to which was the startup that I did before Blackhawk was. I saw Target trying to find growth like all companies do, and then I saw the startups and the accelerator trying to find growth and, and now massively different sides of the cap capital spectrum, right?

Target is selling $77 [00:09:00] billion in goods. Startups have less than half a million in funding, and both of them were trying to solve the same problems. I was still leading my own. Startup inside Target, and I was still solving the problems too. Who's the customer? What is the competition doing? Where's the market going?

What do the investors want? Across a different capital spectrum. So, you know, what does a VC want versus Wall Street want? Now I'm at private equity. They have a different investment profile. They have different, you know, payback periods and different kind of preferences for how their capital's managed and how to earn.

I really enjoyed seeing that all at the same time. 'cause it helped me find the correlations, the like similarities, the threads that connect all of those. And, and it was that insight that drove me to build how to.

Jeff: I won't come back to how to quickly, but one thing I want to kind of make sure we don't miss is, you know, coming in to, to target and kind of doing what you did and, you know, starting with, here, I'm gonna print out 340 copies of this, make sure every executive gets one. And, and go basically say, here's what you need to be doing to, to do better.

It worked well for you and you, you know, clearly, you know, [00:10:00] that was the accelerator on your end, but in a lot of cases that's, that's gonna go badly. And I think as much as, yeah, right, like a lot of play a a, a law of players are just gonna, you know, chop someone off for doing that. But also, like, I, I have to assume a part of it has to do with how you.

Communicated it and presented it and, I've learned over my life that there's a skill to managing up too. Um, how'd you go about that? Like, what did that look like at a company of that size and institutional background to basically come in and, and say like, how do you do that?

Right? Do you have tips on, on doing that versus, the high nail getting popped down kind of thing?

West: Yeah. Uh, it's a great question. I've been real lucky in my career in that I've got to work for, , a bunch of big brands and do new things for those brands. So I had the benefit of making many, many mistakes before I got to Target

And so I approached.

Sharing this information with Target, purely from a place of like, Hey, I'm sincerely trying to help you grow your business. Nothing in the data that I shared with them was my opinion. We did a very comprehensive [00:11:00] analysis of all of Target's competitors. We looked at the annual reports for anyone who was kind of in a similar sector. We looked at customer data that we could find. , We did tons , of research , and then built a big matrix of data. And then that matrix we correlated to market opportunities.

So where are our competitors? Where's the market? What's the tam, Samsung for that market? Where's our customer? We just triangulated where our competition was moving, where the customer was moving, where capital was moving. And so what I shared with them wasn't a, this is what I think. I didn't go into their office and say like, Hey, I believe this to be true.

I went into their office and said. My team did a ton of research. We think there are some pretty significant growth opportunities for Target, and I would like to share them with you. And so what you have here is an executive summary. If you read the first five pages, we'll get the whole picture. If you want to go deep, there is literally like 380 pages of research substantiating everything that we said.

What was particularly impactful is that, you know, I didn't know this. I was presenting a strategy how I know how to do a [00:12:00] strategy, which is based on data. And so I didn't know that that would be different for Target.

I read their strategies and I thought, these are great enterprise strategies. But I felt like I would prefer to have more data in my strategy, so I just thought, here's my take. Because I approached it that way, which wasn't, I know more than you or I know anything really.

I was like, here, this is, I know that this is the result of my research. I found it helpful. Hopefully you do too. Most people took it really, really well. Uh, and in particular, Brian Cornell, who was the CEO at the time, . Was very open to the conversation. I ended up printing off this huge scroll.

And we, we took every competitive capability. So what was, you know, competitor A doing, competitor B doing, and then we. , Those were the rows, and then we had their capabilities as columns, and then we had emojis. Just simple emojis as to where we were relative to them and our capabilities and emojis in terms of how our customers felt about us relative to our competitors.

And it was just a really quick way to say like, look, we've got a [00:13:00] big pile of smiley and a big pile of frownie. We should fix the frownie. And then if you went down further in the column, you would get to what's the tam? What do we think would take for us to get into that market?

The competitive set, what do their products look like? So it, it, it was a real quick, quick matrix for Brian to go. I see exactly where we need to invest. I see where we're doing good. And that scroll really started a great conversation with him he asked just, you know, simply, what would you do?

And I think you, I have learned in terms of managing up, going to. Executives with this sincere intent to help, not like, Hey, look at me. Look at what I can do more like, I honestly think this will make the business.

More money or save the business money. I find that that generally is well received because that's what their job is. If you look at the executives as a customer, I'm a product manager, right? So I think very much through the lens of how can I work backwards from my customer? Well, Brian Cornell and the board of Target, all the executives of Target.

they needed to grow the business. They [00:14:00] needed to do that in a profitable way. They couldn't make enormous bets that had like, you know, five, six year payback periods. They generally needed to get capital back from their investments in a reasonable amount of time. You know, 12 to 18 months at most.

, They had really, really, advanced competition. Some of the most. prolific companies in the world like Amazon and Walmart and, you know, they were playing a serious game and they were playing to win. And so, you know, I, I kind of kept that ethos in, in my mind as we were doing the due diligence and worked with the strategy team to really, really ensure , our research was rock solid.

Our models were rock solid. Our analysis was concise and compelling and crisp, and because of that effort and just trying to appeal to their sensibilities and then really streamlining the message so that it was easy to understand. So I didn't go in there with 380 pages of data and be like, oh, read this.

I went in there with five and I said, if you wanna dive in, read it. , And you know that stuff all helped a lot. And I remember. it, it was like one of the first or [00:15:00] second sentences Brian said to me , when we met after I distributed the strategy. He said, by the time things get to my desk, all the data has been sandblasted out of them. And I just see this perfectly beautiful veneer and it's so refreshing to see the data. And you built the entire strategy on data. I was like, yeah, well that's how, that's in my opinion, that's the foundation of a good strategy is data.

But he really appreciated the due diligence that we put in. He appreciated the clarity of thought and he appreciated the alignment with what the corporate needs were. And so, if you're gonna manage up, figure out who they are, figure out what they care about, and help them do their jobs.

That's all they really care about.

Jeff: a lot of times it's just the presentation matters and, and how you communicate

West: I think that's right and I think, we were lucky that there's a lot of public data around all of Target's competitors, it's so easy to find information on those companies and, I remember when I got the call from Brian,

I was sitting at my desk and someone called, and no one calls my, like, who calls the phone at your desk? And , I [00:16:00] answered the phone like, well, this has gotta be a wrong number. This is weird. And there was, someone was like, hello? And I'm like, hello? And they're like, is this Wes? And I'm like, yes. He goes, all right.

Could you please hold for Brian Cordell? And I was like. Oh God. And I literally stood up where I was sitting at my desk. I'm like, I gotta take this call standing up. Like I, you know, like if he walked in a room, I would stand up and shake his hand. I like stood up, like, oh you know, like, I don't know what's gonna happen.

And, and he goes, Hey Wes, he's a friendly dude. And he's like, Hey Wes. I'm like, Hey Brian. He's like, so just saw the strategy, just curious what you doing? And I'm like, man, I just want the stock to grow. Like, I think the stock's gotta go up. And he's like. Okay, why if we come talk about it, and I was super upfront, like I have strongly incentivized to make your stock go up.

So I'm doing that.

Jeff: It's funny, that works in, in so many places. Like,

you want to close business and make revenue. I also only get paid if we make revenue. We're we have the same goal, let's go make some fricking revenue here. , And that helps a lot With lineman, you can start with that, right? Like, we both want the stock to go up. Let's, let's go make the stock go up.

West: yeah, yeah.

Jeff: Let's flip it [00:17:00] maybe a little bit, because I do wanna get to this. I wanna make sure we have time and,

I could take all day just going on this one but like, you're at, you're at Black Hawk now, , you know, you did how do and, and came over, , to Blackhawk and there's a big push, .

Behind ai here and kind of bringing the company forward. Can you just give people like the quick level set on what Black Hawk does? 'cause you laid it out , in San Francisco at dinner and my mind wa was blown it's a cool company, man. Like

West: Yeah, it is dude.

It is, it is. , We do have a lot going on. No, it's a very cool company. , So Blackhawk was actually created by one of my buddies who just passed rest in peace. Don, I love you. He, , was one of my mentors for a long time so he worked at Safeway and first off, Donna was like a.

Amazing dude. He built a world of wonder toys where he patented, , laser tag. 

the, the, yeah, he invented laser tag and he invented Teddy ruxbin. Do you remember Teddy Ruxbin?

Jeff: I actually, um, well, a, the past couple weekends, I've brought my kids to play laser tag a couple times. and then Tay Ru, I mean, they're a little old for Tay Rman, but I, I very much [00:18:00] remember Tay Ruxbin from when I was a kid. That was like, everyone wanted Teddy Ruxbin.

West: Right. So, so he invented those, which is

just amazing, right? And then he was one of the first, I think I, I'm gonna get this wrong, but he was either like the first president or CEO of Atari in America. And then he invented, gift card , with a lot of the folks who are still at Black Hawk, actually, like that whole crew invented a gift card.

You know, when I say gift cards, a lot of people think of greeting cards and, and what I'm talking about is. You know, at, at the end of the end cap, at grocery stores, you'll see those big racks of gift cards. That's Blackhawk. they also do, they, they've acquired, they're owned by Silver Lake, which in my opinion is one of the best private equity firms.

And they. Have been acquiring companies. They're trying to build like a nice vertically integrated, multis segment business. And they have, billions of dollars in, in sales,

like they're a very successful company. And, , you know, when you look at the gift card rack. It seems inert, right? It's the most valuable part of the store. 

We've been doing a lot of work looking at our customers, looking at both our B2B [00:19:00] customers, 'cause we have partners who provide us the content or distribute our products. And then also looking at our end users. And my, my focus at the company is on the recipients and the people who receive the card, now some of those people buy the card for themselves and some of those people receive the card from businesses.

But our goal is to help the customers in that context. Achieve their goals. Right? Some people are trying to save money. Some people are trying to give gifts, others are trying to, uh, receive income or be rewarded for something that they did. In any of those circumstances, there's a different use case, a different recipient, uh, a different piece of technology, and my teams, , work together to, to build the kind of full stack of that experience.

About a couple hundred million people will interact with our products this year. And, I can't get too deep into our strategy, but I can say that, you know what, if you look at the economy right now, customers are trying to find ways to save money. They wanna keep connecting with the brands that they love, they wanna provide their family with, uh, you know, the, the things that their family needs.

And in many ways gift cards provide a [00:20:00] lot of utility and value that I think are overlooked. And, we've learned a lot by talking directly with our customers. And I've had the incredible opportunity to partner with some of, you know, Blackhawk is partners with everyone in America. It's incredible.

So I've had the opportunity to partner with a lot of, , extraordinarily large brands, learn about their customers, learn about their business, and just doing what I do all the time, which is just go figure out who the customer is, what is gonna get them to buy more, what do they need?

Like, what is the thing that they're thinking about paying for next? And how can I be a part of that? , And providing that to them so that we can grow with them and we can facilitate their growth.

Jeff: When you laid out, like people use it for self banking or kind of like a, uh, their own like version of banking, people use it for, I mean, gifts are the obvious one. People use it for fund transfers. There's a lot that you can go to. 'cause I was kinda thinking like, how do you do digital transformation on like, great, I have a physical card.

you go. But, there's a whole world of, you know, you can use it for digital transactions later and, and that's maybe somewhere to go. What's something we don't know about that is [00:21:00] just maybe past that people don't know about this.

West: The biggest thing that I think I've learned since I've been there is that the market for gift cards globally is over 300 billion and it's growing at like 3%. And so it's an enormous market. , And then when you look at the evolution of payments, I think we're moving more towards.

Branded payments than, than towards generic. And I think we're starting to see stored value becoming, which is what a gift card is, right? A gift card is stored value, or we sell prepaid cards too. It's a huge part of our portfolio. , But you know, those are stored value. And especially right now, I see a lot more customers kind of, well, in our data, we see customers moving towards stored value because it's safe.

And because it's branded, , and people like. Having a relationship with their retailers, with their whomever it is. What we see though in that area is a huge surface for digital innovation. Whenever you see those form factor evolutions.

When I was the Chief Product Officer at Rosetta Stone, we [00:22:00] moved from boxed CD products to SaaS and app-based products.

And like that was an enormous evolution. and it opened up our understanding of the customer. 'cause when you're selling a physical product that the customer carries away and, you know, they just kind of manage and use in their own time. That's a different relationship. That's kind of like a fire and forget or set it and forget it.

You put it out there, they take it away. . When you have a digital relationship or a SaaS relationship, that's actually a, an ongoing relationship. You want a customer to come back into your environment. You wanna provide new value propositions that sustain that engagement, that retain them, that increase their growth organically.

And then ideally you wanna find some sort of, viral , or organic growth, product attribute or coefficient so that your customer becomes your biggest advocate and starts selling the product for you. There's a lot of work that we can do there in in our industry, and that's the kind of vector that we're approaching the opportunity from is how can we take our existing, loyal customers, increase their usage, and then how can we attract that one ring [00:23:00] out next group of customers who knows that they have the problem that we can solve, but doesn't yet know that we can solve it?

Jeff: It's easy to overlook the potential of the space until you look at something like Starbucks, which. Ostensibly just kinda built a similar function in-house. But like they're one of the, if you were to count them as a bank because of their holdings, cash holdings, they're, they're one of the largest banks in the us, um, which is absurd.

And it's basically just a , , interest free loan to Starbucks from their customers. But people view it as, I have value stored on my Starbucks account. And like to them it's cash, basically. It doesn't, it 

doesn't matter. , But yeah, I mean, you similarly though, you give me an Amazon card. , That's just cash to me like that.

It's a cool space. Man. I think there's so much interesting stuff you can do there, but , let's jump into , the thing that, you know, I think across the board, every single product person I talk to is curious about, and, you know, curious to hear about how you guys are doing.

You kind of talked about earlier with me, , that one of the things you're doing is working on kinda the AI. Transformation , within Blackhawk. , And I'm curious to hear [00:24:00] like, you know, we talked about how you move the product forward and how you, you know, get more people to use, uh, this form of, you know, cashless cash almost, but like, what does that look like internally for the team?

Like, how are you driving innovation inside , and working with teams to, to, you know, be able to move faster, you know, what is it harder, better, faster, stronger kind of thing?

West: Yeah. When I joined day one. , I was like, we're we, we need to get AI a asap and we need to, we need to make sure everyone knows how to use it. And it's been, it's been a mission to get it done. You know, I've, I've worked in regulated company, heavily regulated companies before, like PayPal and Visa, so I'm very sensitive to like, it's a, it's a regulated environment. We have the highest security standards that you have outside the military and like, you know, so trying to get something like an AI in there is, is it's challenge.

Yeah, so it took a long time to, relative to like, you know, being at a startup or, for example at Target, because we wanted to do so many wacky things relative to their IT protocols. We had our own internet, you know, we were like, we're not even gonna worry with [00:25:00] it, we're just gonna go around but in Blackhawk, we don't have that option. So working through the company, working through governance and risk and compliance to make sure everything's safe. It, it, it's been a process, but we've gotten it in place. And it's exciting. It's exciting to see the teams using it and rolling it out.

When I was at Target , and running the accelerator and building my startup and innovating target those, that lens of getting to see all three things at the same time, I realized as I said, you know, everyone needs to figure out their customer competition, market investors, blah, blah, blah.

Figure out what to build, how to build it, get it to market, get the right ratios, uh, and, and, you know, get the right capital and grow. It's. Been really fun to apply What I learned in the eight years of building how to, how to for context was, uh, an ai, it was a, it was a bot that, that accelerated innovation.

It was like, uh, McKenzie Bot or uh, Techstars bot, I spent millions, , curating knowledge to train the AI on the assumption that no one would ever scrape the internet and sell it back to the internet. Like that? 

just [00:26:00] never occurred to me. Yeah. I was

like, you, 

Jeff: that, no,

that get sued to oblivion, you know?

West: But you know, uh, apparently

that's 

not 

Jeff: happened. Um, not 

West: Yes. 

Jeff: but

West: Yes. So.

I figured,, I would try to build a machine learning model that would help people accelerate innovation. Obviously, uh, uh, other, other companies won that

Jeff: Yeah. 

West: and 

Jeff: couple, upstarts

West: the biggest technology companies in the world. But like all the lessons that I took from that I'm getting to apply and that's a lot of fun.

And so, uh, you know, I've open sourced all the machine learning training that, we created. That my team's using it at, at Blackhawk, I'm getting ready to train other teams, , how to use it for product management. And I'm finding with. AI transformation. It's different than every other technical evolution that we've ever gone through, you know?

And I think the best example that I've been able to come up with is email. Like re, I remember when I first got my like 2,400 bo [00:27:00] modem and was like plugging it into the wall and like sending my first messages, you know? And I was like this, what is this magic? Like I am sending words through digital technology.

This is fascinating. And um, you know, but to go from that to, to like outlook, that was not a huge cognitive leap, you know? It's like, all right, now I gotta have, I don't use commands, I use buttons to go from outlook to a web interface, a webinar, like a, like a browser to go from a browser to a mobile, not, I'm still doing the same thing.

I'm still typing a message, I'm still sending it to someone. Not really much changes. Ai, we're treating ai, like we're launching a new email platform, right? We're like throwing it out there and just being like, ah, figure it out. But, we don't work that way. No one works, by talking to the computer, no one works by like giving the computer feedback and like, oh, hey, you didn't do that, right.

Could you please adjust it? And that's exactly how we have to work with ai. In my opinion, it's like teaching someone how to manage an intern. You know, you've gotta provide the [00:28:00] intern with all the context. Like, what are you doing? Who are you, why is it important?

Why is it matter to the business? What does quality look like? , And then when you get the first result, it's probably not the right result. So you gotta iterate. You gotta be able to say, Hey, look, you did this great. Don't change it. You, this could be improved. Here's how I'd like to see it improved. You know, could you please do blah, blah, blah.

That kind of back and forth, that kind of. You know, iteration of banter. Most people just don't do, most people sit in their desk and then they'll, like, if they wanna have a conversation, they'll go set up a meeting and then they'll have a very specific intention and et cetera. And so, you know, treating AI like another email client, in terms of rolling it out, companies are just like, here's ai, figure it out.

It, it's not gonna work. And so, you know, what I've been doing is. , Based on my experience, I, I, you know, I led some transformation at Visa and at PayPal and at Rosetta Stone and Target. And based on all those experiences, I've learned to listen to the team. There are people on the [00:29:00] team who are hungry for ai.

They're naturally curious. They're going to be the culture carriers for the organization. And so because I was such a vocal advocate for Claude and I. Spearheaded it for so long, I'm kind of the like champion for it in the business. And because of that, it's like I'm a lighthouse and people reach out to me like, Hey, I want cloud, or Hey, I want this tool or whatever.

And so I've built this big list of folks who want AI and are willing to, to do the work, to be proactive. Those are the people who are the best to empower. They will carry the culture, they will carry the AI transformation further in the organization than anyone could ever push. And then I think the peer-to-peer dynamics, you know, having a real community of practice where, , people feel safe, sharing what works for them is critical.

And then also making sure everyone is comfortable with the fact that. Most things have processes and data. You know, , most product managers, most engineers, designers, et cetera, they may have learned a little bit on the job, a little bit from the internet, a little bit from school, but [00:30:00] generally they're figuring it out as they go along.

And what I learned from spending eight years trying to teach machines how to innovate, how to do product management, how to write a strategy, how to interpret a competitive analysis, how to create a customer analysis, how to do a swot, et cetera. Like is that there are actual processes that are optimal in terms of managing the data or sequencing questions such that the computer establishes a context window in a way that's gonna yield the result you're looking for.

And so. You know, a lot of it is teaching the culture carriers, the processes, because if they understand the sequence of prompts, they can do it themselves. And then when their peers and colleagues ask them, , they can communicate the right process. And, it's. Uh, organic process.

I'm having a lot of fun with it and I feel really grateful that I, that I get to use all the stuff I, I learned at how to at Blackhawk and feel really grateful that I get to be a part of the transformation. 'cause this is such a once in a generation thing, you know, like rolling out AI and it's a lot of fun.

Jeff: Can you maybe, can you share like what's one. Big win you [00:31:00] guys have gotten here. That, that you were, you know, maybe unexpected or, or happy about

West: Big win for me is when , we got a full enterprise license , and really made the move to like, Hey, let's pursue this. That, that just for me 

personally, I was, I was very excited by that. There was a lot of effort to get to that point. Uh, but, but I honestly, so that, that's kind of like my west.

Independent person hat on West's Black Hawk executive hat on. 

Dude, the, the best thing is when I see the teams stoked for the output that they can produce is when I see the light in the team's eyes. When, when they get it, when they, when they do it for the first time and they go. Oh my gosh. Everything is about to change.

And then you see them move a little bit more carefully with the ai, like the second that they realize what it's capable of, they go from being like blah, to being like. Oh, really? And then it's like, yes. Now you see, now let's go. Now let's like really have some fun, right? Like, let's start actually seeing how fast we [00:32:00] can go, how precise we can get.

, and it's good. , And I think what, what we're learning is that our capacity for. Creating ideas and strategies is very quickly going to exceed our ability to build them, right? And so it's like kind of this ai growth, everything's growing in circles. Now we gotta get the engineering team when they're already there.

They're already using all the tools, but now we gotta figure out how to get them to go faster in our environments. And then we push out to like, how do we get more rapid releases in our environment, et cetera, et 

cetera. So it's,

it's. 

Jeff: get customers to uptake new things faster? Because that, you know, there's like three speeds here, right? That exist and it, you know, product can make decisions. Engineering builds and, but you still have to have the market uptake it and all these things are gonna push back on each other over time.

West: That's right. And you know, especially with many companies aren't built for, you know, data optimization, process optimization and speed of speed of release. And so, AI transformation is really an inventory of a company's existing processes, operations, data, and culture , and all those things will change [00:33:00] as a result of AI done well.

Right? All those things will change, but we're not trying to do it all at once. We're starting with my team and a couple other teams really making sure we get it and then rolling it out.

Jeff: I love the kind of like success measured by just seeing eyes, you know, the lights go on because it is one of those things, I think I've talked to enough people who have companies where they, you know, tried to, you know, keep, oh, we have this, you know, these two people are, are AI experts and they're just gonna be, knowledge from else.

And that doesn't work. It, it really is, a number of synapses and like a network effect here. So, I think that's a great way of looking at it early on is like, let's just turn more people on and get, you know, more and more smart people thinking about it. And like you said, kind of from Target, right?

Aligned around. We all have the same shared goals. Let's make sure we all know that. Let's, let's build people to work on these problems with this new set of capabilities. And you know, the more you can do that, you're gonna expend exponentiate. Is that a word? Yeah, sure. Exponentiate. The speed at which you're attacking those things.

So, cool, man. Well, listen, I could, like I said, I mean, I'm having a blast. I could [00:34:00] talk to you all day. Um.

West: Likewise,

Jeff: I, I am certain though that Blackhawk probably wants you back and not spending all day with me today but it was great talking to you, man. Good to catch up again. Let's stay in touch. If people are looking to reach out , and, you know, pick your brain a little bit. Is linked in a good spot or 

what's a nice place to, yeah. LinkedIn. All right. Yeah. Shoot him a message.

West Ring Fellow, over on LinkedIn. Good guy. Great thinker. , Thank you man. This is a blast. I appreciate you coming on.

West: Thank you, Jeff. Thank you for the opportunity. Have a great day. Have a great Thanksgiving.

Jeff: Thank you. You 

West: holidays. 

Jeff: a good, one. Yeah, you too.