Avanish, JW, and Andrew discuss: 

• The ideation of VIIZR out of Ford’s Greenfield Labs (1:30)
• The critical alignment of technology and go-to-market strategy when picking what platform to build VIIZR’s core product and capabilities on (4:00) 
• Small vs. scalable businesses and how VIIZR supports its customers (7:30) 
• Their view on the most important components of platform building for customers (8:12) 
• How VIIZR tackles knowing where to build and where to partner (10:30) 
• What happens when high tech meets high touch (16:30)
• Ford’s path to investing in VIIZR and the genesis of the company's name (20:24) 
• The power of the democratization of technology over recent history (24:00)
• The biggest obstacles VIIZR has faced and how the team has navigated hurdles (26:23)

And much more! 

Guests: JW Hoh & Andrew Albert

Jian Wei Hoh is originally from Melbourne, Australia and has spent the past two decades globally focused on technology and business growth across startups and enterprises. He is currently the CEO of VIIZR Inc, a field services platform for trade professionals. Prior to VIIZR, Jian Wei served 5 years at Ford Motor Company, most recently as General Manager and Head of Business Design at Ford Greenfield Labs. Previously, Jian Wei was an executive overseeing the growth of rideshare in Scandinavia, social media in China, and omnichannel marketing and digital transformation across Oceania. As a practitioner of Human-Centered design, Jian Wei currently teaches business design thinking to startups, students and executives across various institutions in the United States.

Andrew Albert has over 20 years of CRM, Platform, and Enterprise SaaS experience in engineering, consulting, and platform enablement. Prior to being CTO of VIIZR, Andrew spent 16 years at Salesforce, most recently as the SVP of AppExchange advising and mentoring ISVs on how to architect great applications on the Salesforce platform. Previously, Andrew joined Salesforce as a technical consultant helping ensure Salesforce's early enterprise customers were successful. Prior to Salesforce, spent a few years at Siebel as a Software Engineer and another few years as a Siebel consultant.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

Links

• Follow our guests, JW Hoh and Andrew Albert
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Avanish and Jason discuss: 

• Thirdera’s founding story from a company with no resources in early 2021 to a company of just under a thousand resources across 12 countries today. (2:30) 
• ServiceNow’s  pivot to digital transformation across the enterprise and the  $6.2-6.8 trillion market opportunity it creates (7:15) 
• The platforms that will be positioned to win in this evolving environment (10:52)
• The rise of the data model (12:30) 
• Jason’s advice for those who want to be “extraordinarily future-ready” (16:26)
• The critical role experience will play in the future (20:00) 

And much more! 

Guest: Jason Wojahn

Jason Wojahn has more than 25 years of business, technology, and investment experience across start-ups, private and public companies. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Thirdera, a global services consultancy specializing in ServiceNow digital transformation, workflow automation, cloud advisory, and adoption. Thirdera brings together the power of the ServiceNow platform and its limitless potential across the world of work. Our architects, developers, consultants, designers, and project managers help our customers transform, get more from ServiceNow, and unlock hidden potential in their businesses and technology.  

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

Links

• Follow our guests, Jason Wojahn
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• Learn more about Tidemark

Avanish and Erica have a robust discussion around: 

• Erica’s 23-year journey at Deloitte 1:00
• Why  it’s not about the role you have, but about what you do with the role and opportunities you’re given (7:40) 
• Erica’s advice for growth companies thinking about building partnerships with organizations such as Deloitte or Accenture (10:25) 
• Unpacking what “partner empathy” looks like in practice (12:45) 
• How it is different to go to market with what we now call an ecosystem rather than what used to be more traditional partner programs (15:50) 
• The biggest roadblocks Erica has encountered and show she steered around them (23:30)
• How organizations looking to enact change and has some of a similar history of direct sales and direct delivery can embark on this journey and start changing mindsets. (28:48)
• Why storytelling is the ultimate superpower (30:34)

Guest: Erica Volini 

Erica Volini is the Senior Vice President responsible for Global Partnerships at ServiceNow. In that role, she has the privilege of managing the over 2,000 partners that are part of the ServiceNow global ecosystem. Before joining ServiceNow in 2021, she spent over two decades at Deloitte Consulting leading the Human Capital business and as the Chief Commercial Officer for Deloitte’s overall relationship with ServiceNow. She has written and talked extensively around the Future of Work and is a recognized expert in that space. She got her BS ILR from Cornell University and while she’s a true-blue New Yorker, she currently resides in Scottsdale, AZ with her husband and son with a new baby on the way in just a few short weeks.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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• Follow our guests, Erica Volini
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• Learn more about Tidemark

In this episode of The Platform Journey, Stephen and Avanish discuss: 

• The shift from linear sales motions to ecosystem sales motions (3:35)
• Integrating a financial model perspective and business model perspective (7:30)
• Reframing how we think about revenue allocation and the financial impact of partners on a business (9:45)
• Recognizing both the buy and sell side of contracts and sales execution (15:50)
• The importance of owning your management systems and partner motions (20:25)
• The opportunities (and challenges) facing new platform and ecosystem companies (25:15)

Guest: Stephen Hurrell

Stephen leads the expertise in the Office of Revenue and guides leaders in the applications and technology for buying and selling products and services to maximize revenue. The topics of coverage include partner management, digital commerce, price and revenue management, sales enablement, revenue performance management and subscription management. Stephen's uniquely diverse technology experience spans over 30 years, including leadership roles, heading up product strategy across a range of data-driven applications in sales enablement, financial reporting and planning, and billing and monetization platforms. Stephen was General Manager at InsideSales.com where he managed the C9 Analytics business, VP of Product and AI strategy at RecVue and held roles at Oracle, Exigen and Aviso. Stephen earned his BS in Economics from the London School of Economics.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

Links

• Follow our guests, Stephen Hurrell
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• Learn more about Tidemark

In Part Three, Avanish and Allan discuss: 

• The evolution of monetization models (3:00) 
• Understanding the three buckets of  tech partner monetization (6:45) 
• How Procore’s model resulted in much higher levels of adoption and engagement, and a much higher orientation around how to make the magic happen (10:50)
• How to turn ISVs from  flavor-adders to the meal, into the whole meal (16:34)
• Allan’s favorite monetization model: the reciprocity or reciprocal model (20:37) 
• Bringing it all back  to sourced revenue attribution (28:14) 
• The importance of finding lagging and leading indications (30:33)

Guest: Allan Adler, Managing Partner, Digital Bridge Partners

Allan Adler is a world-class advisor, consultant, and change agent.  As Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners, he helps individuals, managers, and executives understand and leverage partnership best practices in business and society.  He is the creator of the GoToEcosystem Framework and has worked with a wide range of organizations to unlock their full ecosystem potential.  Allan is Chair of the Ecosystem Counsel at PartnerHacker and an Executive Member of Partnership Leaders.  Previously, Allan founded and ran MSI Consulting Group; a 100-person sales and marketing strategy firm focused on the tech industry and worked as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.  He received his MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business, where he was honored as a Baker Scholar. Allan is a CPA and serves on several for-profit and not-for-profit boards.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

Links

• Follow our guests, Allan Adler
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• Learn more about Tidemark 

In Part Two, Avanish and Allan discuss: 

• Understanding taxation, reciprocal, and mutuality models (3:30) 
• The role of NRR and ARR (7:27)
• The “stickiness” justification when monetizing tech partnerships (9:30) 
• Understanding universal success models (12:00) 
• Hyperscalers (14:01) 
• Why your go-to-market or the go-to-eco motion has to be multi-threaded(20:50) 
• Why Allan likes to look at the journey of go-to-eco very similarly to the journey of making a product(24:30)
•  Understanding that is incumbent on partner leaders to recognize that partner operations is not a “nice to have.”(30:29)

Guest: Allan Adler, Managing Partner, Digital Bridge Partners

Allan Adler is a world-class advisor, consultant, and change agent.  As Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners, he helps individuals, managers, and executives understand and leverage partnership best practices in business and society.  He is the creator of the GoToEcosystem Framework and has worked with a wide range of organizations to unlock their full ecosystem potential.  Allan is Chair of the Ecosystem Counsel at PartnerHacker and an Executive Member of Partnership Leaders.  Previously, Allan founded and ran MSI Consulting Group; a 100-person sales and marketing strategy firm focused on the tech industry and worked as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.  He received his MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business, where he was honored as a Baker Scholar. Allan is a CPA and serves on several for-profit and not-for-profit boards.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

Links

• Follow our guests, Allan Adler
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• Learn more about Tidemark

Avanish and Allan unpack a wide range of topics to kick off this series, including:

• Why tech partnerships harness so much power (3:42) 
• The role tech partnerships play between channel and alliances (5:43) 
• The commercial envelope concept and what it means for technology partners (8:02) 
• Distinguishing between the strategy and the platform business model (10:34) 
• Going to market directly vs. going to market through an ecosystem (12:00) 
• Where does the customer fit in? (15:40) 
• Why is digital transformation happening, and what does it mean for customers? (20:26) 
• The important CEO to CPO conversation that needs to be had (24:13) 

And much more!

Guest: Allan Adler, Managing Partner, Digital Bridge Partners

Allan Adler is a world-class advisor, consultant, and change agent.  As Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners, he helps individuals, managers, and executives understand and leverage partnership best practices in business and society.  He is the creator of the GoToEcosystem Framework and has worked with a wide range of organizations to unlock their full ecosystem potential.  Allan is Chair of the Ecosystem Counsel at PartnerHacker and an Executive Member of Partnership Leaders.  Previously, Allan founded and ran MSI Consulting Group; a 100-person sales and marketing strategy firm focused on the tech industry and worked as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.  He received his MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business, where he was honored as a Baker Scholar. Allan is a CPA and serves on several for-profit and not-for-profit boards.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

Links

• Follow our guests, Allan Adler
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• Learn more about Tidemark

In this episode, Avanish Sahai and Chris Grusz use the marketplace journey of Amazon Web Services as a springboard to discuss a variety of platform-related topics:

• The driver of a successful flywheel (2:17)
• Developing products and fostering selection to match customer demand (5:28)
• Balancing feature development between both buyers and sellers to maximize value for both (7:45)
• The advantages offered by a marketplace when co-selling with ISVs (14:56)
• The Amazon leadership mindset, and facilitating feedback from customers (20:54)
• Maintaining a long view and finding ways to attract new types of customers (25:32)
• Offering simplification: the key to successful marketplaces (30:00)

Guest: Chris Grusz, General Manager, WW ISV Alliances & Marketplace, Amazon Web Services

Chris Grusz is the General Manager, ISV Alliances & Marketplace.  In this role he leads the ISV Partner Development and Marketplace organizations globally. With AWS since 2015, his team is responsible for the adoption of AWS Marketplace - with double digit YoY growth equating to billions in sales on an annual basis, more than 2,000 ISVs and 12,000 software product listings in AWS Marketplace.  Chris’ team works with all ISVs to adopt various partner programs and co-sell initiatives.   In addition, his team also works with customers across Commercial and Public Sector on a global basis, helping them utilize AWS Marketplace to change how they find, buy, deploy, and manage application portfolios running on AWS. Prior to joining AWS, Chris held various leadership roles including Director of Sales, Managing Director and Business Unit Executive for IBM in Sales & Distribution as well as IBM Software Group. Chris holds a BA in Business Administration and an MBA in Technology Management from the University of Washington where he graduated Magna Cum Laude.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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• Follow our guests, Chris Grusz
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Marcus and Avanish talk about the following and more:

• ServiceNow’s history as a platform company from the very beginning (3:05)
• The cooperation and cohesion of ServiceNow’s internal products and what partners can build (6:49)
• The importance of committing to an ecosystem as well as a platform—and what companies really want (12:45)
• The challenge of long-term investment into a platform and ecosystem strategy (24:52)
• Why you should be cautious of building a platform just because you can (29:00)

Guest: Marcus Torres, GM and VP of App Engine Business at ServiceNow

Marcus is a people, product and business leader with over 20 years of proven experience building and scaling products within organizations of all sizes across consumer and enterprise markets. Extensive experience in market segments of SaaS, cloud computing, platform, mobile, developer experience, digital marketing, location-based services, and supply chain management.

Marcus is General Manager of ServiceNow’s market leading low code business, App Engine. App Engine is one of the fastest growing businesses at ServiceNow. He previously led ServiceNow’s Integration Hub business while driving product strategy for the ServiceNow Platform. Responsibilities include GTM, product management, product strategy, strategic partnerships, M&A, executive engagement and business operations with additional dotted line responsibility across engineering, product marketing and sales.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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• Follow our guests, Marcus Torres
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• Learn more about Tidemark

In this episode, you can hear Laura and Avanish discuss:

• Expanding single channels and products to create more value (7:00)
• The importance of internal alignment on products and partners (10:48)
• Using modeling to optimize partnerships and platform strategy (13:35)
• Key measures of success when growing partnership ecosystems (16:47)
• The benefit of defining clear metrics of success (21:12)
• Laura’s advice: Start where you know you can have an impact, but don’t be afraid to disrupt (28:57)

Guest: Laura Padilla, VP, GLobal Partners, Airtable

Laura Padilla is currently the VP of Global Partners and Services at Airtable where she is building the partner and services delivery strategy. She brings over 20 years of leadership experience in leading/building complex business units and new revenue streams to scale small, private companies to +$1B post-IPO revenue including Zoom, Nutanix, Box and Riverbed. Leadership experience across marketing, alliances/business development and partner/channel sales roles in the SaaS, Enterprise Software and Hardware industries. She most recently was at Zoom where she led the global partner and platform sales business unit that was composed of over 300 team members and over $500M in revenue. This included indirect sales with and through VAR’s, service providers/carriers, OEM's, referral partners, ISV’s and SI’s, as well as influenced revenue with technology partners such as Slack, Dropbox, Box, Okta, Five9, Twilio and others. She is known as a function builder where her strength is in scaling new organizations to drive incremental revenue and customer value. 

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

Links

• Follow our guest, Laura Padilla
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• Learn more about Tidemark