The Exchanges

Q on some of this. So the, the ABM part. So, um, what does that mean? That means, uh, so ABM is, uh, for anybody that is not familiar with campaigns marketing, that, that, that, that means that you have a target list of accounts and they first markets one account that you're targeting and I come on the website, then you're going to recognize me. Like how does that work?

A Yeah. So, uh, ABM is just a fancy word for what you just said, which is a target account list, which, uh, anyone who's been in enterprise sales, Many of my companies have done enterprise sales for 20 plus years. Like, uh, that's ABM is a new acronym wrapped around this kind of idea. But if you sell in the enterprise, most of the time, there's a very limited set of customers for you in the world. And so those are the only customers that you want to talk to. You don't want to talk to Joe, the plumber you want to talk to, you know, fortune, 100 company only. And so what we do is for those companies that subset of customer that we have, that is Has that kind of target customer list. We make sure either through qualification from a conversational standpoint or all sorts of targeting, whether it is linking into emails, linking into various cookies, linking into, um, you know, IP based rules, like all sorts of, there's like a million different ways that we do this thing. Uh, we make sure that their people only get surface. People that are in or companies that are in their target account list. It's very important. Like if they get anything outside of that, then again, the whole thing fails, right? The whole thing doesn't work in their view.

AI assessment note: “linking into emails, linking into various cookies, linking into, um, you know, IP based rules”

Q um, How do you think about, uh, integrations with the rest of those tools in the enterprise? I mean, ultimately are you trying, I mean, I'm sure you're in this to, to, to win and build the, the platform, but like, is the end game to be like the system of record for all conversations or are you, are you partnering? Are you building? How do you think about it?

A Yeah, I think, I think it depends on, uh, depends when I think, you know, like, Uh, we have a very long view on what we're trying to do. Uh, and you know, that path is from the very beginning has been working with existing tools and systems today. Uh, because I think the idea that you're going to just going to rip something out and just going to replace something is like, is not going to work. Those tools are going to exist for a very long time. Uh, and so we integrate into those things. We write back to those things. We are partners with all of those systems, but we think, you know, what we're trying to do is Create that layer or that interface for the people that on your team and the automation, you know, the bots, let's say that actually have conversations with your customers, right? So like, think about all the people that have conversations, uh, in the company with your customers or your prospects that starts at sales, but that can be support. That can be your account management, your CS teams, et cetera, et cetera, your technical service teams. All those people are having conversations with your customer today. We want to be the interface for those people. And then, uh, we will continue to write back and deal with all the systems underneath, but like they shouldn't have to worry about those systems.

AI assessment note: “We integrate into those things. We write back to those things. We are partners”

Q And what's, what, what happened next? What was the, what were the early years of your career leading to the first company that you started?

A It's a long, winding story, so I will, I'll give you the short path. I will say that, you know, um, that, I didn't really, no one used the term entrepreneur or no one that I knew used that term, um, back then. And I think entrepreneur to me back then meant that you were, um, it was before the cult of entrepreneurship. It was, you know, you are, uh, did infomercials or you had like a, uh, franchise or something like that. So it was not something that I inspired to. I was, uh, obsessed with the early commercial internet and I started to code and do things. And I would liken that. That time when I was doing that, it was so long ago that it felt like we were a bunch of pirates, like figuring things out. There were no books. There was obviously no Google. There was no information. And so, um, it was just a really interesting time where we could just make things and those things led to companies. And I joined a couple of early startups a long, long time ago. And then I started my own company in 2000 post bubble, 2007 act for starting things in bad times. Uh, and then, uh, I've started Um, five, you know, including that first one. And I always say that if you start one company, it's excusable because you can, you're naive to it's questionable and three or more, which is my camp certifiable. So I'm certifiable.

AI assessment note: “I joined a couple of early startups a long, long time ago. And then I started my own company”

Q Which is the automated version of, of, of this. What, what, what does that do? How does that work?

A Sure. So, so that was something that we had to, you know, we brought in pretty early and I, I, You know, we feel like we were probably the first ones that really did that from a website standpoint, which is like the sales qualification bot, right? To really figure out if you were qualified or, or who you should talk to. And you know, we, when we did it, we weren't sure if it was going to work, if the timing was right yet, if anyone wanted to have a conversation with a bot. And the truth is like the buyer doesn't care if it's a bot or not a bot or whatever the buyer is selfish, just like all of us. And we want an answer to our question immediately. That's why it works. It doesn't work because it's a bot or not a bot. That we're kind of indifferent as buyers. We just like, if the option is I have a conversation with this thing, whatever this thing is, and I get my, an answer in real time versus I fill out some form and I wait, you know, two weeks or something, someone to get back to me, I'm going to take this path.

AI assessment note: “sales qualification bot, right? To really figure out if you were qualified”

Q Interesting. So what was the, um, insight that led to drift? Why drift and why now? I mean, why now when you started it?

A Why now is probably the most important questions because I, a question I should say, um, You know, I've gone, if I think about my journey across five companies and 20 years, I would say that I started from a very engineering standpoint, which is like, it's all about the product. It's all about building the thing. It's all about scratching the edge. It's all about, you know, like, uh, eating your own dog food. And then I went all the way to the other end, uh, when I started drift and said, like, what are the undeniable trends that are happening in the world? Right. And what, how those changing user behavior. Cause I figured out Doing it this way that user behavior was almost impossible to change.

AI assessment note: “what are the undeniable trends that are happening in the world”

Q You want to talk briefly maybe about the, the other products or the email product. What does that do?

A So, you know, basically the idea that we continue to march down is like, How do we, if there's a conversation that's happening with the customer, right? The buyer, the buyer doesn't only want to have a conversation on one channel. The buyer is kind of like what we did at Performer is across all these channels, right? It's this omni-channel thing. And so like, and during your buying journey and your customer journey, you're going to bounce through all those things. You're going to go from website chat. You'll go through email. Sometimes you go back to video asynchronous, synchronous video synchronous being like zoom that we're using now. Sometimes you have a phone call. Sometimes all of those things. And then like, if you get into a big company where you have lots of people involved with, uh, this product or this, this, uh, company does lots of those conversations happening. So for us, it was like, how do we start to get in the middle of those conversations? Cause it's important for us to capture that context and the conversation data. And more importantly, how do we provide a better experience for the buyer? Because again, Fundamentally believe that this paradigm shift has already happened. Company control to buyer control. So like everything we do starts with inverting the existing model and saying like, how do we make the buyer experience better? And so we say, okay, email, f…

AI assessment note: “how do we start to get in the middle of those conversations?”