The Ledger
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Siroker calls Adobe's marketing cloud a poorly integrated 'Franken-suite'
“Adobe you know, has a product that, you know, has been evolved through acquisitions, which turns what they're offering into what our customers tend to describe as a Franken-sweet. It's a bunch of products that don't really integrate well with one another.”
Siroker: Optimizely would have benefited early on from vertical focus
“If I had to give myself advice to a past version of myself, I think a lot about that, and I think about optimization. I think that it would have actually served us better to be more narrowly focused on a set of customers and deeply empathize with their biggest…”
Siroker: Job candidates heavily focused on titles are a massive red flag
“We try to seek missionaries, not mercenaries. So people who are really focused on title as part of that process, ah, to me is a red flag. It means that they're about trying to make their LinkedIn profile look good, not how to make our customers wildly successf…”
Secure six paying reference customers before scaling a second product's go-to-market
“Looking back, what I would, wish I had done differently is, is have a small team of folks working on getting six reference customers who are using the product, paying for the product, and are willing to be public spokespeople for the product as a way, ah, to r…”
Optimizely became the top website optimization platform globally by 2012
“So in 2012, ah, we became the number one most adopted website optimization platform in the world. We actually had Obama And Romney using us extensively, which is great.”
Siroker: Optimizely operated without multivariate testing for a year and a half
“We didn't have features that people assumed were, ah, must haves, things like multivariate testing. We didn't have that for a year and a half.”
Siroker: IBM has hundreds of non-developers running daily tests on Optimizely
“They've seen 70% of the decision gets made before sales person is involved. So they use Optimizely. They've got a team of hundreds of people doing A-B testing, optimization every single day that don't require developers to be involved in the process.”
Siroker: Founders should pace growth for longevity, not headline speed
“Make it a conscious commitment, not an unconscious commitment, to grow at a pace that enables you, ah, to build an enduring company, not just, you know, one of the top fastest growing companies of the year.”
Siroker: Codifying company culture early creates hiring consistency on 'culture fit'
“Why did we start so early codifying our culture? It started really with this pragmatic need to be consistent. We would interview a bunch of people, ah, on a day, and at the end of the day, the interviewers would get together and do a sync meeting. And soon I'd…”
Siroker: Company cultural behaviors break as headcount scales from 40 to 400
“Now, the values are different from the behaviors. The values of transparency, for example, I think are pretty, ah, universal. Behaviors within the organization, such as an early one that we had, which was that every time we'd have a meeting of two more people …”
Siroker: Hiring hungry, unproven talent beats hiring for resume pedigree
“I'd rather somebody With a chip on their shoulder, who wants to have an opportunity in our company to prove that they can do great things, ah, than somebody who has the pedigree or resume that says they've done it before.”
Siroker: Optimizely remains heavily underpriced relative to customer ROI
“I think early on, ah, and still, even to this day, ah, we're very underpriced. People look at our product and, you know, when they're thinking about renewing, they're looking at the millions of dollars of Lyft they're getting, ah, and maybe the hundreds of tho…”
Siroker: Optimizely proxied websites to let non-technical users test changes
“If you haven't implemented Optimizely, we would actually proxy your website and inject Optimizely into it, so that you get that sort of visceral magical feeling of making a change to your website without requiring a developer.”