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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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• 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.

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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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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.

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• 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