The Platform Journey

In this episode, Avanish and Jim discuss:

• Jim's 46-year journey from IBM to Salesforce, including his role in scaling Salesforce from $22M to $5B in revenue
• How customer demands, particularly from companies like Cisco and Merrill Lynch, shaped Salesforce's platform strategy
• The strategic decision to separate the application layer from the platform
• Creating a successful customer success organization to drive adoption and showcase customer stories
• The evolution of Salesforce's partner strategy and metrics for measuring ecosystem success
• How the "tactics dictate strategy" philosophy helped Salesforce respond to market needs

About Our Guest

Jim Steele is the President of Global Strategic Customers and Partners at Salesforce. Previously, Jim served as Salesforce’s President of Worldwide Sales and Chief Customer Officer for over 12 years, from 2002 through 2014 where he led the growth of the company from $22 million to more than $5 billion in revenue. Jim rejoined Salesforce in 2020 as President of Global Strategic Sales with his primary focus to bring the full power of Salesforce to its largest and most strategic customers. Most recently, Jim has also assumed responsibility for Salesforce's Alliances & Channels organization, the Emerging Business operating unit, and Private Equity practice. 

Previously Jim served as Chief Revenue Officer and President of Yext, President and Chief Revenue Officer of InsideSales.com and President of Worldwide Sales at Ariba. Jim started his career at IBM where he spent over 22 years in executive leadership and senior sales roles including VP and GM of Sales in Asia, based in Tokyo.

About our Host

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

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This season will feature conversations with key decision-makers who have to support the journey to a platform or any ecosystem. We will talk to C-suite executives, board members, investors, and others who must be bought into the platform journey. 

In this episode, Avanish and Kevin discuss:

• Kevin's career journey and his experiences shaping ServiceNow's growth.
• What it means to authentically be a platform company and how ServiceNow approached platform-first scaling.
• How customer feedback drove ServiceNow’s expansion into new domains like HR and customer workflows.
• The key factors for entering new markets, including market fit, size, and differentiation.
• The importance of hiring domain-specific experts and adapting go-to-market strategies.
• Building and leveraging ecosystem partnerships to drive growth and scale.
• Balancing core revenue innovation with new domain expansion to ensure sustainable growth.

Guest: Kevin Haverty

Kevin Haverty was formerly the Vice Chairman, Global Public Sector at ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW). In this role, he worked directly with CEO Bill McDermott on expanding ServiceNow’s strategic footprint in the public sector and mentoring the company’s next generation of early-in-career professionals.

During the past decade, Kevin successfully led and grew ServiceNow’s world-class go-to-market organization. He most recently served as the company’s Chief Revenue Officer, and also held the roles of EVP and SVP of Worldwide Sales and VP of Americas Sales.

Earlier in his career, Kevin held several senior sales leadership roles at EMC, Data Domain, Thomsen Financial, and Brocade. He also served 10 years in the U.S. Army National Guard, attaining the rank of Captain.

Kevin holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Providence College, where he was a distinguished military graduate of the Army ROTC program. He currently serves on the Board of Sprinklr.  

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, Kevin Haverty
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This season will feature conversations with key decision-makers who have to support the journey to a platform or any ecosystem. We will talk to C-suite executives, board members, investors, and others who must be bought into the platform journey. 

In this episode, Avanish and Dave discuss: 

• Dave's background and what led him to start Tidemark
• Tidemark's VSKP framework on how a Vertical SaaS company can win their category, expand their offerings, and then, for a select few, extend through the value chain
• What it really means to be a control point and why it matters
• The mindset (and perhaps mindset shift) that is required to build a strong ecosystem
• The wedges you need to be mindful of and the problems they can cause on your journey
• Thinking about the varying horizons of your product roadmap and how to synthesize them in actionable paths forward
• How to determine if your team is ready for the platform journey

And much more! 

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, Dave Yuan
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In this episode, Avanish and Tyler discuss:

• The opportunity involved in bringing together disparate partner initiatives within an organization (4:35)
• Leveraging a partner ecosystem at Salesforce to create transformative offerings and expand internationally (6:30)
• The importance of building an ecosystem to manage data in the face of AI (9:05)
• Prioritizing customer success and partner growth to drive company value (12:40)
• Changing the paradigm around bringing applications to data (14:50)
• The inherent value of the consumption model in a partner ecosystem (18:30)
• Enabling partners to start delivering value as quickly as possible (19:55)
• Finding support from the top down, and curating the right talent for the ecosystem journey (22:30)
• The importance of simplification (27:10)

Guest: Tyler Prince

As the SVP of Worldwide Alliances & Channels, Tyler Prince is responsible for growing the Snowflake global community of Consulting Partners, System Integrators, ISVs, Resellers and Technology Partners. He brings a deep breadth of experience to his role with more than 30 years of delivering transformational capabilities to partners and customers across many industries. Prior to joining Snowflake, Prince served as EVP, Global Alliances at Salesforce and as Partner & Global Oracle Practice Leader at PwC. Prior to PwC, Prince held various management positions at Oracle, PeopleSoft, IBM and Andersen Consulting. He resides in Chicago, IL where he remains active in the local community as a board member of the American Cancer Society and 1871, a non-profit digital startup incubator.

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, Tyler Prince
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• Learn more about Tidemark

In this episode, Avanish and Warren talk about:

• Developing extensions based on user and partner feedback (4:15)
• Thinking of ISVs as customers in their own right (9:10)
• The importance of internal alignment, and transparency both internally and externally (11:55)
• Getting buy-in from the board all the way down for ongoing investment in platform (14:20)
• When to prioritize adoption vs. monetization on your platform (19:50)

Guest: Warren Chen

Warren is Head of Ecosystem Partnerships and Developer Success at Canva, with over a decade of experience in App Platform Ecosystems at Salesforce, Atlassian, and Canva.

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, Warren Chen
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• Learn more about Tidemark

In this episode, Avanish and Aaron talk about:

• Aaron’s personal journey to the coveted Chief Ecosystem Officer title (2:00)
• How Aaron defines charting the platform journey as an ecosystem leader (4:45)
• Tackling build/buy/partner with a sophisticated view, enabling you to take a completely different approach to how you execute partnerships and ecosystems (7:49)
• The power of harnessing your datasets to drive enhanced outcomes (9:50)
• The recent shift to the importance of profitability and what that means for partnership teams (11:11)
• Tying your ecosystem strategy to your corporate strategy effectively (19:20)
• Understanding the difference between vanity metrics and true business operator metrics (24:18)

Guest: Aaron McGarry

Aaron McGarry, AMG, is a Go-To-Market operator with 17 years of leadership experience at industry giants such as VMware, Salesforce, and Qualtrics. He has a proven track record of building and scaling high-performing teams, driving strategic growth, and delivering operational excellence.

AMG is an empathetic leader and coach, with a deep passion for growing, mentoring, and developing talent, ensuring that his teams reach their fullest potential. Renowned for his Build - Buy - Partner approach and keen expertise in GTM strategy, he has architected and scaled premier Ecosystem and Sales Organizations. 

He played a pivotal role during Salesforce’s meteoric rise from $6B to $26B in revenue, experiencing hyper-growth firsthand. His track record also includes notable milestones such as Rackspace's IPO, SoftLayer's acquisition by IBM, and Qualtrics' acquisition by SilverLake.

Recognized for championing strategic growth and for his operational acumen, AMG serves as a trusted advisor to CEOs and boards of directors across early, mid, and late stage companies. He is a sought-after speaker on topics encompassing GTM strategy, leadership, and team development.

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, Aaron McGarry
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In this episode, Avanish and Adrienne talk about:

• Changes in the productivity space that have impacted Workspace’s platform strategy (9:55)
• Balancing product and ecosystem developments while you scale (16:10)
• Taking a principle-based approach to building a platform (19:00)
• The necessity of a multifaceted strategy in creating a successful platform (20:30)
• Innovation and “first-of-a-kind” thinking in partnerships (22:50)
• Building a partnership strategy based on product and business goals (24:40)
• Creating missions at the business and team level to achieve your goals (27:40)

Guest: Adrienne McCallister

Adrienne McCallister is the Vice President of Global Partnerships for Workspace and Messaging, where she oversees Workspace’s productivity suite partnerships, as well as all Comms/Messaging partnerships, covering Google's consumer communications products Messages by Google(RCS), Meet, Dialer and Business Messaging.

Adrienne’s previous roles at Google include partnership lead for Android’s U.S. carrier partners, Google’s VR/AR/Lens efforts, helping to launch Chromecast, Google Home and leading its global distribution partnerships, as well as leading strategic content partnerships for Google TV. Prior to joining Google in 2011, Adrienne held senior business development roles at Associated Content (a Yahoo! company), Clearleap (an IBM company) and AOL. Adrienne holds an M.B.A. from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and has a bachelor’s degree in finance from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia.

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, Adrienne McCallister
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Avanish and Jim discuss:

• Investing in an ecosystem in a tough market (8:04)
• Committing to working with partners over growing professional services (11:26)
• Finding a way to demonstrate returns and get the C-Suite on board with building an ecosystem (12:40)
• How to avoid having an “identity crisis” by setting an intention for how you will grow your platform (17:15)
• Understanding how a partner delivers services to integrate in a complementary way (19:50)
• The advantages and challenges of a managed service provider motion (21:30)
• Selling a solution rather than an outcome (26:34)
• The importance of authentic communication (29:00)

Guest: Jim Nairn

Since arriving in the Spring of 2021, Jim Nairn has served as WalkMe’s Senior Vice President of Alliances and Channels Ecosystems. Prior to joining WalkMe, from 2015 through 2021, Jim held the role of Vice President of Partner Sales for ServiceNow. Jim’s pedigree comes from a 20+ year career in Direct and Indirect Selling in the Telecommunications, Infrastructure and Software space, before moving into SaaS (with ServiceNow), in 2015. Jim has spent those 2+ decades working with a vast array of partners, traveling the globe and helping grow some of the biggest tech companies in the world. He continues to serve as an advisor for pre-ipo startups, consults a vast network of C-Suite executives and mentors several former colleagues, employees and associates, worldwide. Today, Jim lives just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with his wife Kati… and 2 daughters, Emma and Amelia.

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, Jim Nairn
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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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