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Oct 22, 2019 · 20m · mad

Empowering Superheroes at Work // Rich Waldron, Tray (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Rich Waldron · 16m spoken Matt Turck · 21s spoken
0:00 / 0:00
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions

At FirstMark's Data Driven NYC event, Tray.io Co-founder and CEO Rich Waldron presents 'Empowering Superheroes at Work,' exploring how general automation platforms enable 'citizen automators' to solve SaaS proliferation and build powerful cross-departmental workflows.

How this conversation actually went

Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Matt holds 2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →

Matt as informed peer 0.4 Guest teaching 2.8 Guest disagreement 0.2 Matt pushing back 0.4
05100:0010:0020:000:09–2:31 · Matt as informed peer 0/10 Overview of Tray.io as a General Automation Platform This is a solo presentation segment where Rich introduces Tray.io as a general automation platform. The host does not speak, so host expertise and pushback are scored at zero.2:31–4:39 · Matt as informed peer 0/10 Scratching Our Own Itch and the 'SaaSberg' Concept Rich continues his presentation explaining the background of the company and coining the 'SaaSberg' concept. As a pure monologue segment, host metrics remain zero.4:39–7:21 · Matt as informed peer 0/10 Workflow Complexity and the 2.2x Revenue Growth Advantage Rich highlights departmental software sprawl statistics and claims automated sales pipelines drive 2.2x faster growth. Host participation remains absent during this presentation phase.7:21–9:46 · Matt as informed peer 0/10 Timeline of Integration Tooling and Citizen Automators Rich breaks down the rise of the 'citizen automator' and modern serverless infrastructure. The segment is entirely guest monologue without host involvement.9:46–20:29 · Matt as informed peer 2/10 Automation in Action: Real-Time Data Enrichment Rich completes the product demo and enters Q&A. Matt asks a practical question about real-world user technical skills, and audience members ask about enterprise controls and bug handling in a collaborative tone.0:09–2:31 · Guest teaching 2/10 Overview of Tray.io as a General Automation Platform This is a solo presentation segment where Rich introduces Tray.io as a general automation platform. The host does not speak, so host expertise and pushback are scored at zero.2:31–4:39 · Guest teaching 2/10 Scratching Our Own Itch and the 'SaaSberg' Concept Rich continues his presentation explaining the background of the company and coining the 'SaaSberg' concept. As a pure monologue segment, host metrics remain zero.4:39–7:21 · Guest teaching 3/10 Workflow Complexity and the 2.2x Revenue Growth Advantage Rich highlights departmental software sprawl statistics and claims automated sales pipelines drive 2.2x faster growth. Host participation remains absent during this presentation phase.7:21–9:46 · Guest teaching 3/10 Timeline of Integration Tooling and Citizen Automators Rich breaks down the rise of the 'citizen automator' and modern serverless infrastructure. The segment is entirely guest monologue without host involvement.9:46–20:29 · Guest teaching 4/10 Automation in Action: Real-Time Data Enrichment Rich completes the product demo and enters Q&A. Matt asks a practical question about real-world user technical skills, and audience members ask about enterprise controls and bug handling in a collaborative tone.0:09–2:31 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Overview of Tray.io as a General Automation Platform This is a solo presentation segment where Rich introduces Tray.io as a general automation platform. The host does not speak, so host expertise and pushback are scored at zero.2:31–4:39 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Scratching Our Own Itch and the 'SaaSberg' Concept Rich continues his presentation explaining the background of the company and coining the 'SaaSberg' concept. As a pure monologue segment, host metrics remain zero.4:39–7:21 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Workflow Complexity and the 2.2x Revenue Growth Advantage Rich highlights departmental software sprawl statistics and claims automated sales pipelines drive 2.2x faster growth. Host participation remains absent during this presentation phase.7:21–9:46 · Guest disagreement 0/10 Timeline of Integration Tooling and Citizen Automators Rich breaks down the rise of the 'citizen automator' and modern serverless infrastructure. The segment is entirely guest monologue without host involvement.9:46–20:29 · Guest disagreement 1/10 Automation in Action: Real-Time Data Enrichment Rich completes the product demo and enters Q&A. Matt asks a practical question about real-world user technical skills, and audience members ask about enterprise controls and bug handling in a collaborative tone.0:09–2:31 · Matt pushing back 0/10 Overview of Tray.io as a General Automation Platform This is a solo presentation segment where Rich introduces Tray.io as a general automation platform. The host does not speak, so host expertise and pushback are scored at zero.2:31–4:39 · Matt pushing back 0/10 Scratching Our Own Itch and the 'SaaSberg' Concept Rich continues his presentation explaining the background of the company and coining the 'SaaSberg' concept. As a pure monologue segment, host metrics remain zero.4:39–7:21 · Matt pushing back 0/10 Workflow Complexity and the 2.2x Revenue Growth Advantage Rich highlights departmental software sprawl statistics and claims automated sales pipelines drive 2.2x faster growth. Host participation remains absent during this presentation phase.7:21–9:46 · Matt pushing back 0/10 Timeline of Integration Tooling and Citizen Automators Rich breaks down the rise of the 'citizen automator' and modern serverless infrastructure. The segment is entirely guest monologue without host involvement.9:46–20:29 · Matt pushing back 2/10 Automation in Action: Real-Time Data Enrichment Rich completes the product demo and enters Q&A. Matt asks a practical question about real-world user technical skills, and audience members ask about enterprise controls and bug handling in a collaborative tone.

speaking balance: gold is Matt, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)

0:00 · Matt 0% · guest 100%0:00 · Matt 0% · guest 100%3:00 · Matt 0% · guest 100%3:00 · Matt 0% · guest 100%6:00 · Matt 0% · guest 100%6:00 · Matt 0% · guest 100%9:00 · Matt 0% · guest 100%9:00 · Matt 0% · guest 100%12:00 · Matt 11.5% · guest 88.5%12:00 · Matt 11.5% · guest 88.5%15:00 · Matt 2.1% · guest 97.9%15:00 · Matt 2.1% · guest 97.9%18:00 · Matt 1.2% · guest 98.8%18:00 · Matt 1.2% · guest 98.8%
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 13:44 Filtering out totally non-technical users

Rich explicitly reframes Matt's question to clarify that people with zero understanding of technology are completely unsuitable for Tray.

 Hardest push from Matt ▶ 13:30 Challenging theoretical accessibility vs real usage

Matt presses Rich on whether non-technical people can actually use the platform in reality versus just in theory.

 Biggest teaching moment ▶ 14:25 Explaining automated user capability scoring

Rich reveals that Tray runs automated backend scoring models to gauge user technical complexity and adaptively trigger support.

 Matt holds his own ▶ 14:51 Humorous callout on adaptive support tracking

Matt quickly picks up on the backend tracking model to playfully ask if struggling users automatically get assigned more help.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
ChapterTopicMatt as informed peerGuest teachingGuest disagreementMatt pushing backWhy
Overview of Tray.io as a General Automation Platform 0200 This is a solo presentation segment where Rich introduces Tray.io as a general automation platform. The host does not speak, so host expertise and pushback are scored at zero.
Scratching Our Own Itch and the 'SaaSberg' Concept 0200 Rich continues his presentation explaining the background of the company and coining the 'SaaSberg' concept. As a pure monologue segment, host metrics remain zero.
Workflow Complexity and the 2.2x Revenue Growth Advantage 0300 Rich highlights departmental software sprawl statistics and claims automated sales pipelines drive 2.2x faster growth. Host participation remains absent during this presentation phase.
Timeline of Integration Tooling and Citizen Automators 0300 Rich breaks down the rise of the 'citizen automator' and modern serverless infrastructure. The segment is entirely guest monologue without host involvement.
Automation in Action: Real-Time Data Enrichment 2412 Rich completes the product demo and enters Q&A. Matt asks a practical question about real-world user technical skills, and audience members ask about enterprise controls and bug handling in a collaborative tone.

Statements from this episode (7)

Assertion Supported
Tray.io had raised over $100 million in funding by October 2019
“We've raised over a hundred million dollars to date.”
Rich Waldron Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 0:57
Assertion Supported
Average enterprise marketing departments use 91 applications; HR uses 90
“Here are some statistics on the average amount of applications per department in your typical enterprise organization. Special shout out to marketing here with 91 different applications in the average organization, followed closely by HR at 90.”
Rich Waldron Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 4:04
Assertion Contradicted
Companies with automated sales pipelines grow 2.2x faster than competitors
“Your average organization that builds automated sales pipelines grows 2.2 x faster than any other competitor.”
Rich Waldron Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 5:57
Insight
Tray.io defines 'citizen automators' as technical ops professionals without engineering backgrounds
“What we kind of define as a citizen automator is somebody that is technically minded that is within a team that is not in the engineering or IT org. It's your sales ops professional. It's your marketing ops professional. It's the group of people that understan…”
Rich Waldron Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 7:52
Disclosure
Native integrations still forced one customer to re-enter 30 custom fields
“One of our customers was finding that they had to re-enter 30 to 40 different, ah, custom field data between platforms that already had a native integration.”
Rich Waldron Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 9:30
Insight
Quants and heavy Excel users make the best low-code automation users
“Typically we see people that are quants or particularly useful with spreadsheets and can build heavy Excel models are a really good tray user.”
Rich Waldron Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 14:22
Disclosure
Tray.io secretly scores users' technical capabilities via product usage to customize support
“On our backend we actually have built our own scoring models, which will detect dependent on The types of workflows that you're trying to build, and the way you use the product, we assign a score which helps us determine how complex you are, how technical you …”
Rich Waldron Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 14:32
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