One on One Interviews

Yesterday Amazon announced the launch of their $150 million Black Business Accelerator Program, aimed at getting more black-owned businesses involved in selling on their platform. You can get the details at Sell.amazon.com/bba and also read a detailed article on the announcement published here yesterday.

To learn more about the initiative I spoke with Brandi Neloms, Manager at Amazon, during a recent LinkedIn Live conversation.

The last time I had spoken with Leyla was about 18 months ago after she left Salesforce and became a partner in Operator Collective, a VC firm founded by long-time tech executive Mallun Yen with the goal of broadening the pool of those participating in venture capital investment. In fact 90% of these limited partners (LPs) are women, and more than 40% of them are people of color.

I recently caught up with Leyla about why she co-founded BVI, the goals set for training black investors, and what the endgame was for this initiative. And just as I was setting this conversation up, I saw a glowing post from another good friend of mine, communications executive Letty Ledbetter, who was sharing her experiences going through the most recent BVI cohort while pointing out the role Leyla played in her becoming a part of the BVI family. So I was glad to have her join the conversation and share her perspective going through the program.

What is customer advocacy? What role does it plays in the organization? How is it different from marketing? And what's the importance of advocacy as part of a holistic customer experience?

It’s not often I have an opportunity to speak with two industries leaders together on an important topic like customer advocacy, but those were a few of the questions I asked Kalina Bryant, Global Head of Customer Advocacy for Asana, and Cynthia Hester, Director of Global Customer Programs for Google Cloud, recently during a great LinkedIn Live conversation.

I’ve known Scott Wilder for well fifteen years or so. And in that time (and even before that) he has led community building efforts at big tech brands like Adobe, Apple, Google, Intuit and Marketo. And now he's heading up HubSpot's engagement and community building efforts.

Earlier this week Scott and I had a LinkedIn Live conversation on how community building has evolved over the years, it’s role in digital transformation efforts, and how it will need to be done in a post-pandemic world in order to stay in tune with rapidly evolving customer needs and expectations.

I’ve been pretty interested in how subscription business models seemed to have held up pretty well during the pandemic, even allowing more traditional businesses to stay connected with customers who couldn’t venture out to their bricks and mortar locations. But now that we’re seeing the light at the end of tunnel and getting closer to life without masks and social distancing, I wanted to see if subscription models will be just as attractive in the post-pandemic economy we can’t wait to get to. So I was excited to speak with Katrina Gosek, VP of Sales Portfolio Products for Oracle, to get her perspective as subscription management is one of her portfolio focus areas.

There is no hotter technology out right now than virtual events platforms, with the pandemic accelerating their growth exponentially. Bevy is no exception as its virtual events platform is experiencing hyper growth right in line with the industry. But where Bevy is completely exceptional is how it has put diversity and inclusion at the core of the company's culture - as the company is closing in on 20% of its employee base being black, and with 60% of the participants in its recent $40M funding round also being black.

During a recent LinkedIn Live conversation I spoke with Bevy CEO and co-founder Derek Andersen about competing in the virtual events platform space and the role the Startup Grind – the local event driven startup community he founded in 2010 - played in shaping Bevy’s approach to building its virtual events platform. We also spend time discussing why he felt embarrassed a year ago when none of his 27 employees were black, and how that realization led him and his cofounder to build diversity and inclusion into all aspects of the business going forward, including seeking out black advisors and investors to participate in the company’s latest funding round. And to add additional perspective one of those angel investors participating the funding round, Salesforce VP of Trailhead Evangelism and Trailblazer Community Leah McGowan-Hare, joins us to share why she felt investing in Bevy was a “no-brainer”.

It’s been a couple of years since I caught up with Tyler Lessard, Chief Video Strategist for video platform Vidyard, to hear how B2B-focused organizations are utilizing videos in the sales and marketing efforts. So when I saw the company’s recent 2021 State of Video in Business study that was recently released, I had to do a LinkedIn Live convo with him to get his take on some of the key findings.

PegaWorld, the annual event put on by Pega, a leading customer engagement and process automation platform provider, will be taking place virtually on May 4th. And earlier this week my CRM Playaz co-host Paul Greenberg and I had the opportunity to hold a LinkedIn Live conversation with company founder and CEO Alan Trefler to talk about the event a lot more leading up to the event.

Actually, “a lot more” may be an understatement when it comes to speaking with Trefler as there are so many areas you can delve into with him. Not only is he still at the helm of the company he founded back in 1983, he’s having a lot of fun while also leading Pega to cross $1 billion in annual revenues for the first time last year. He credits a lot of Pega’s success to the lessons he learned working in the family’s restoration business – which will be celebrating its 100th year anniversary next year. He’s also a chess master and an accordion player.

So Paul and I covered a lot of bases in our time with Alan, and below is an edited transcript of a portion of our conversation. To hear the full discussion click on the embedded SoundCloud player.

Last week’s conversation with Katherine Kostereva of Creatio on how low-code/ no-code development platforms will be a huge factor in helping non-programmers to automate their own tasks and processes was eye opening for me. And I wanted to see how the message of the importance and relevance of the latest automation tools is being received by microbusinesses as well as self-employed folks – people who need the most help getting things done to stay afloat. Which is why it was great timing being able to follow my conversation with Katherine up with Jon Fasoli, VP and Segment Leader, Small Business and Self-employed, for Intuit.

During our LinkedIn Live conversation Jon shared with me how artificial intelligence and automation is helping even one-person bands spend more of their precious time on experimenting with new ways to connect with customers and prospects, and less time doing mundane activities. He also discusses how more digital interactions are feeding AI in platforms like Quickbooks that automatically provide insights into your business that lead to better decision making on how to best use the limited resources smaller businesses have at their disposal in order to make the most of tough situations like we’ve all faced over the past 15 months.

I spoke with Katherine Kostereva four years ago during her company’s user conference. Back then the company she founded was named bpm’online, but today the company is called Creatio and has recently raised $68 million to further build out their no-code low-code platform aimed at helping non-IT people use easy interfaces to automate business processes on their own.

Four years ago we spoke about how 80% of companies had not fully automated their important business processes and the impact that was having on productivity and efficiency. So I was eager to circle back around during a recent LinkedIn Live conversation with Katherine to see where things stand now and how the pandemic might have impacted things.