The Platform Journey

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.

Links

• Follow our guests, Erica Volini
• Follow our host, Avanish Sahai
• 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
• Follow our host, Avanish Sahai
• 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
• Follow our host, Avanish Sahai
• 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
• Follow our host, Avanish Sahai
• 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
• Follow our host, Avanish Sahai
• 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.

Links

• Follow our guests, Chris Grusz
• Follow our host, Avanish Sahai
• Learn more about Tidemark

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.

Links

• Follow our guests, Marcus Torres
• Follow our host, Avanish Sahai
• 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
• Follow our host, Avanish Sahai
• Learn more about Tidemark

In this episode, Avanish and Peter discuss: 

• The power of maintaining a customer-centric approach (4:24)
• Looking down, not up, to determine how to really fix the source of a problem within your platform (5:39)
• How to think about delivering true value to the developers on your platform (10:17)
• Not setting out on the platform journey before you’re ready (16:19)
• Choosing the right marketing motion for your platform (22:15)

Guest: Peter Reinhardt, CEO of Charm Industrial

Peter Reinhardt is CEO & Co-founder at Charm Industrial, where they are developing novel carbon removal & renewable industrial syngas technology. Prior to Charm, Peter was CEO and co-founder at Segment, a SaaS customer data platform that grew to 600 people before it was acquired by Twilio in 2020 for $3.2B. He previously studied aerospace engineering at MIT.

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, Peter Reinhardt
• Follow our host, Avanish Sahai
• Learn more about Tidemark 

In the Season 2 premiere of The Platform Journey, Avanish and Kevin discuss: 

• Driving value to your underlying platform through partnerships (3:35) 
• Reevaluating the way we categorize partners; building network effects to solve customer problems (6:17) 
• Embracing “coopetition” and the importance of transparency when building a platform (9:16) 
• Understanding and communicating the core and context layers of your ecosystem (12:42) 
• Kevin’s key advice for an ISV setting out on the platform journey (15:15)

Guest: Kevin Ichhpurani, Corporate VP at Google Cloud

Kevin Ichhpurani is Corporate Vice President, Global Ecosystem and Business Development at Google Cloud. Kevin brings nearly 25 years of experience in the technology industry leading global strategy, platform ecosystem transformation, venture capital and mergers and acquisitions. Most recently, Kevin served as Executive Vice President and Corporate Officer of GE. Prior to GE Digital Kevin was a Senior Partner, Global Markets at Ernst and Young and before Ernst and Young Kevin served at SAP as Executive Vice President, Head of Business Development and Global Ecosystem. Kevin holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

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 Ichhpurani
• Follow our host, Avanish Sahai
• Learn more about Tidemark