Acquired Episode 15: ExactTarget (acquired by Salesforce) with Scott Dorsey
01:15:47 Share

okay. Listeners, now is a great time to tell you about long time friend of the show service now.

Yes, as you know, service now is the A I platform for business transformation, and they have some new news to share. Service now is introducing A I agents. So only the service now platform puts A I agents to work across every corner .

of your business. yeah. And as you know from listening to us all year, service now is pretty remarkable about embracing the latest AI developments and building them into products for their customers. AI agents are the next phase of this.

So what are A I agents? A I agents can think, learn, solve problems and make decisions autonomously. They work on behalf of your teams, elevating their productivity and potential. And while you get incredible productivity enhancements, you also get to stay in full control.

Yep, with service now, AI agents proactively solve chAllenges from I, T, H, R. Customer service software development. You name IT. These agents collaborate, they learn from each other, and they continuously improve handling the busy work across your business so that your teams can actually focus on what truly matters.

Ultimately, the service now. And agencia I is the way to deploy A I across every corner of your enterprise. They boost productivity for employees and rich customer experiences and make work Better for everyone.

Yeah, so learn how you can put A I agents to work for your people by clicking the link in the shower notes or going to service now dot com slash A I dash agents.

But this can be be .

a great episode. awesome.

Yeah, I think administrator might only be asking for reviews should .

we keep doing that. Busy, you wait you with you who get. See me down, you.

Welcome to episode fifteen of acquired the podcast where we talk about technology acquisitions. I'm gilbert and we are your hosts will be talking about the twenty thirteen salesforce acquisition of exact target we have with us today. Scott dorsey. Scott was the founder and C E, O exact target and I actually turn the exact target for a summer when I was in college and uh probably th mentioning Scott is also my cousin. So super, super excited to have family on the show and welcome Scott.

He thinks bbn really appreciated and David delighted be on the show and proud to watch how your crews development and glad that you you had a little little tenant exact tg along the way. That's pretty neat.

Super, super fun. Meta, great people there are .

self would be .

today without IT. No, no, it's true. I think Normally we talk about a the acquisition history and facts and David solar reviews that, but I thought a really cool way of diving into the show that they would be kind of David, do a little bit review of facts, but kind of go to A Q and a with .

Scott yeah that's that's a plan since were like you enough to have the the primary source here sitting with us. So um for folks you don't know, exact target was founded by Scott uh and and your confounders Chris bag a impediment comic in indian apple is in december of two thousand so got december of two thousand. How do you guys decide to start a tech company? The bubble is just burst.

Um you you weren't in silicon valley. What was going through your mind? Exactly.

David, it's it's a great question and where a classic and kind of didn't know any Better against long odds story and that we started exact target in december of two thousand. And the under the toughness conditions, the internet bubbles had burst. You know VC funding had really dried up.

And we were three first time software entrepreneur s you know, starting a tech company in indian apple is and actually none of us had a technical background. So we we are against long odds for sure. But we had we had a real clear vision around what we are trying to accomplish and is actually my cofounder, Chris baked.

And while we're kind of unpacking some family stories here, Chris is actually my brother and loss that we we both married into this great family from indian apple sees, from pitzer gh and I from chicago, and I had just finished my MBA a kilo g over northwestern and really studied entrepreneur ship and internet business models. And and just come back from our capstone course, which was studying really the silicon valley ecosystem and and figuring out how to apply that chicago and how to apply that to the midwest. And Chris had this big idea around database marketing and how to apply database marketing principles to the internet, and that Chris is one of these just incredible visionaries and of the Angel list.

And he he's now done at multiple times, even post exact target by finding a company called compendium and the blogging software. This and now is very deep into food tech and agriculture. But you know, Chris had a real sense that the internet was going to transform marketing and that email marketing, in particular, in permission based email, was going to be a very powerful way for small businesses to get to know their customers Better and be able to build these kind of personalized relationships and be able to deliver real thing content that that drove business.

And and he was right. So he he was so passionate about the idea that he really convinced me to kind of quit my dad job. I was working for an internet incubator and chicago o called divine, and we sold the house and had two little ones and put, put the family in the current, drove in indian apples and said, let's give this a shot.

Oh, that's a pretty good. Did you guys, did you guys try and raise money from silicon value? Bc, at that point, so you rise some money from friends and family and a few local individuals. Bob company, and I believe, was your lead investor. But, but, you know, I got to imagine in december of two thousand, not many VC are making any investments, let alone first time tech entrepreneurs in .

indian APP lus. No, that's exactly right. Daily respond our wheels talking to a lot of different VC and indian apple as mini apples.

We really didn't head back to the valley in a meaningful way, but we certainly talked to a lot of VS in the middle st with absolutely no luck and and then start talking to Angel investors who are also kind of slow to move. So our first round a family thing was just a classic. Friends and family around.

We raised about two hundred thousand dollars from those that love us and trusted us. And that that early investor roster was, you know, my parents and my brother and my father in law, and then pretty much all of Christmas neighbors. Chris a Chris, Chris has just as infectious enthusiasm, and it's not much of an exaggeration to say he went door to door with with the P.

P. M. In his igher hood and collected five thousand dollar checks. And we were, we were so careful, you know, especially personal being family.

We only wanted to raise small a mounts of money from family members that if I didn't work out, there be no hard feelings, we wouldn't have any discomfort, you know, around the thanksgiving, a dinner table. So we we scooped up a lot of five and ten thousand dollars checks in a couple together. The first couple hundred thousand dollars in the business.

And really cool story is that for those investors that put five thousand into that seed round and went the distance, and actually a handful of them did they they held the stock all the way through the sales force acquisition that five thousand dollars became, well, yeah, well, north of a million dollars. Lots of lots of pools and home renovation project started popping up in Chris neighborhood. And we had a lot of happy family members.

So that that was really our first move. We we were a bootstrapped started up. You know, the three of us worked without a taking a service for the first six months of the business. And then we are really fortunate to find bob compton.

And bob was a very accomplished venture capitalist, and but no at his own right, bob head investing in company called software artistry, which was the first really inDiana software company to go public, and then later was acquired by IBM. And then he was a venture capitalist, C. I D.

Equity, and and then actually ran one of their investment, soft mordantly. And soft dani sold the metro ic icon as a big eggs that so bob was a very accomplished investor and tech entrepreneur, and he became our leading investor and really became my mentor. He was chairman for, you know, the first seven, eight years of the business. And one, bob put money into the business and raising capital got a lot easier. We had that stamper credibility that we really needed.

huh? And with with only two hundred thousand rays. I mean, this was the error before cloud computing. How did you invest that to build the business?

A great question then. And it's so different. You know, A W S.

Didn't exist. So we were, we were buying servers. So we were iraq servers. We were buying networking equipment. You know, we really had to build the infrastructure.

And ironically, our first ten thousand dollars went to levers, which later turned out to be an email marking competitor. But leos had a server based solution for sending email at volume. And that was one of our one of our early licensing purchases.

So really, most of the money went to building the product in building the early infrastructure. And then this was interesting. You have to leverage your timing and your unique assets.

And one of one of our unique assets in an element of the of the era was that we had a lot of awesome friends and colleagues that were looking for what was next, and a good number of them were with documents that didn't work out. And we ended up hiring our first sales team as kind of independent contractors, where you we convince her friend that we had a big vision. This was a need opportunity, and they would sell for us, and we gave them equity in the company and they would sell for us really as an internal contractor.

No sour commissioned, and they they had to do at all. They had to find the lead, put the pitch deck together, sell the deal, collect the deal, implement the customer. And if they made IT all the way through, we paid them a commission. So we actually built this really kind of season sales team early just on the back of of the fact that we had a lot of really good friends, that we're kind of looking for something that was next in their career. And then once we ve got fun that they became real employees and we are able to provide benefits and all that good stuff, but we a very scalable sales organization before we really could afford to.

How much do you think that sort of original DNA of totally giving you know pure commission base sales um to those early sales folks do you think help shape the way that oranienburg built?

Great question. Band a huge influence. You know we from day one were a very sales driven, customer driven organization. And you're just the nature of the three founders, all sales marketing leaders, you know kind of general manage the background.

You know everybody sold, everybody spend time with customers and and early on, we would describe ourselves as marketers building software for marketers. You know we had a very, very keen sense for what problem we are solving and what we wanted the product to look like and how we wanted to function. So that was product management v one, you know, was really all driven by the founders.

But we created a sales culture early on where the three abbots were very aggressive and selling and working with customers. And it's perhaps that my very favorite element of software as service is that if you are a good listener and you were closely with customers, they will reveal your product road meet for you, you know. And it's really your jo B2Certainly bri ng you r vis ion in you r poi nt of vie w, but you're really distilling ing feedback from many.

Many are individuals and in organizations at your customers and your prospects in the marketplace. And you can distal that feedback in the right way and take action upon IT. You can build an amazing solution that clients really want.

So that was one of our I think one of our real strong suits was being very close to the customer and and being great listeners and really helping them shape our product. But we are incredibly sales driven because of that kind of independent network of sales representatives of that we built. We were very sales heavy early on.

Actually, I look back I did a history of exact target chat a few months ago. I look back at one of our early dex and this this was even staging to me. but.

At the moment where we had forty four employees, we actually had twenty six. And sales that's heavy, that's heavy. We are very, very sales driven.

And we also we also unlocked uh, a channel uh, far earlier than most software companies. We realize that digital agencies could be great partners of ours. They were building websites, they were writing copy in content, but they really didn't have tools for email marking specifically.

And we build a big channel program that allow these agencies to leveraging our tech platform, rebranded or White label let where they needed to and and build these reactions ring revenue streams that were advantages for them. And that allowed us to start reaching into big. Four thousand and five hundred companies like general mills and home deep became of ours through their trusted agency at a time when we were still a small, scrappy company. So that helps us to punch way above our way class really on. And that was that was a big driver, early success .

on that front. We should take our little thing to this is, I think, really our first one of our first the peer enterprise technology h companies that we recovered.

Actually, I be curious and Scott taken saying.

well, well, but I I want to come back to because know and I say that because you know VC this sort of this like stroke when you are looking at you know investments in the enterprise that like there's this matrix of you know what what your target customer is, when you when you're an enterprise, your software company who you sell to and you need to do, it's like a test like you to you need to have that nail.

It's like are you enterprise or are you midd market? Are you S M B? You sell direct to the channel, you know? And um and and typically you need to have very clear answers to those.

But that sounds like you from the geta you guys were like, yes to all of those IT. Was that deliberate? You know how did you think about that?

No great question, David. We were very small business focused, very small business focus. In fact, are, you know first way of customers were literally restaurants, dry cleaners, peto shops. We are very S M, B and very retail oriented.

The original problem we are trying to solve was that when the retailer turns the lights on and opens the door in the morning, and they often have little visibility into who's walking in the door and who their customers are and how to build you know, deeper relationships. And that was part of the background that Chris brought to the business. So early on, we were in a thousand dollar year subscription and in very small business focused IT.

Actually a good number of the reasons why those early VC said no as they they just couldn't picture that this could become a large business and up. And then over time, through you, I think being crafty and Angel and very sales and customer oriented, we started to realize actually our first wave of expansion was to to do grab a lots of small businesses at one time you need to start selling to franchise organization. So we started evolving to franchise organizations where the franchise, or cared a great deal about, uh, centralize branding and content, but they wanted to give autonomy and authorship down to the franchise.

So we started to build kind of this this parent child relationship and this kind of enterprise architecture to serve franchise org. And that gave us a big boost. Then we started realizing that really every organization the world is going to need is email, digital marketing, communicate with our customers, whether you were nonprofit or or microsoft.

On the enterprise side, there really were common set of needs. And we we just built more, more sophisticated technology. And then ironically, we were a salesforce customer from the inception of our business. So we we were students of sales force. We really watched our sales force building scale their business, and we admired that they were multiple ic SaaS platform that serves small business is all the way up to large enterprises.

And I just felt love with the idea that you could essentially builds off where once and and sell in, deploy over and over again and that you could build features that you know could be every feature we ever built. You know how a switchboard we had no on off button where we could uh deploy the software and and packaged in a really flexible way that was very simple for the small business. Or we could turn on all the advanced abilities for the the more sophisticate enterprise.

And they have essentially one code base where we have clients, you know paying a thousand dollars a year and clients had a lot of seven figure clients and even some eight figure clients essentially using the same platform. That's just a remarkable level of scale and flexibility. And there's a lot of attention that comes that applies the organization around segmentation, who building products for how to build your services or what do your .

support models. But these all the things are afraid.

Yeah, absolutely. But so we started small and then we disrupted we really disrupted the inconvenience by cani inching our way up market and night. I think they often underestimated us.

But but IT was that that flexibility. I was strong. I really I wanted I wanted to be a part of that democratization of software.

I wanted to deliver, uh, compelling software to small businesses in an affordable way. And I was felt that our market opportunity would be a lot bigger if we could continue to serve s bid enterprise. And then the really need thing as small businesses become big businesses and marketers leave small companies and go to big companies.

So we had a lot of pull through. Actually, one of our largest customers over time was group on in. Group on came into our small business inside sales team when they were barely just getting started and they were able to scale with us, you know, nearly every step of away. So there are a lot of need success stories where that s beat enterprise range. Yeah was a big differentiator for us.

Yeah, so clear. So you you so know fears a boot strapping. You start really small and trigger pizz shops and say, and then, you know, things go well uh, a couple years that well, four years later, two thousand four u and a raising ten and a half million from insight.

By two thousand six you raise another seven million dollars. And at that point, you're doing sort of forty million in revenue. What you know on that on that kind of stair step.

But you know how long did they take to get to from the individual little guys to the french ise to up to up to I would assume by the time you're doing forty million in revenue, if you're priority at the enterprise, you're starting hit the enterprise at that point um where they are like specific great points along the way. I'm thinking probably you microsoft is one of your biggest customers. You how did how did that conversation started? How did they come into the fold?

Yeah, that's a great, a great question, dave. And maybe i'll first start with just kind of going back to that, that time frame. So in december of o seven, we actually failed to go public.

We were we are forty million yeah we are forty million in revenue. We were profitable and we are just starting to kind of reach the enterprise space and and we were extraordinary capital efficient. So the fun raising that your reference is all accurate, but actually can be a little deceiving because each of those rounds was a mix of primary and secondary capital.

So we we often had a security component to our fund raising to provide founders, employees and early investors and opportunity to take a little bit of money off the table along the way. And I was so grateful we did that actually because we, especially because of how we book strapped the business and how are three cofounder ers worked for of a very long period of time without paying ourselves. Having an opportunity to take a little bit of money off the table along the way was powerful, because IT IT just allowed to sleeping at night, knowing that you, we had some level of financial security for our family, and we, we be able to send our kids to college and all, all those good things.

But then I just IT got us hungry, you know, to really want to take the business of distance and make sure we didn't prime really, yes, sell the business. So I was interesting is when we filed in december of seven, we had only raised six million in primary capital, and we had nearly as much unbaLanced so had had been extraordinary capital efficient up to that point. So so we filed ed to go public in december of o seven.

The you public active market just fell apart in early o eight. And we actually stayed on file all of a way and and ultimately ded pull the IPO in early on nine. And that's the home of this I be happy to jump in to.

But I I would say was that time frame where we started reaching up and in the enterprise and the nature of our business was shifting, we started building more professional services capability and you know that the the fundamentalists of the business started shifting in addition to the equity markets not being very favorable. IT actually was a huge blessing for us because IT IT gave us a chance to state, private, bring more capital in the business and kind of retaliate towards the enterprise. And IT was much easier to do that as a private company.

yeah. And that I wanted to go next year kind of building up to. So you finally go public in december of two thousand seven.

And this was the days before the jobs act, which you hard to imagine. Now that, well, easy, because we all live through IT. But you your perspective was stand or out there in the public domain. From december of two thousand and seven, you were still to this day. But until may of two thousand nine, you are on file and all your competitors could come read or s one and you see all your financials and and then and then you ultimately didn't go, I assume because the financial crisis in the part there were no I P was happening. Um what was that like?

He is so difficult, if so difficult, you you're exactly exactly writing so can read .

everything about you. And you know you're still a private company, but you have none of the benefits of being a public company. But all the downsides.

that's exactly right. I would I would commonly say we had we had you know all the burden and costs and pressure of being a public company with none of the benefits you zero because you're exactly right. This was prepared s act and know we had a report every quarter just as if we were a public company is.

So the the silver lining is we had a great training ground of how to set coral expectations, how to work with the street, how to work with the analysts. We had to do quarterly earnings calls with the analyst that would be covering our stock, but I was very, very difficult and. A testament to the strength of our team in our company culture that we kept everybody focused, we kept everybody a very positive and and await was just a difficile year for running the business in general.

You know, given the economic crisis, our chair numbers went up because a lot of our small business customers were going out of business renewal, got tougher up sells, got tougher new business. There is a lot of Price pressure. So know we had a we had a good year and no eight, but IT was a very different year from the years of our business.

But he was a great IT was a great learning and growth opportunity for us in in early o nine, each became IT became evident were we were not going to get out. We certain we didn't want to. We didn't need the capital. We didn't want to go public unless we were very confident was going to be a successful IPO. And then to my earlier comment, the business really started shifting more to the enterprise, and I also learned a valuable less than we were profitable at that time.

And you know the public markets really want to see margin expansion and became really evident that if we were to go public, we were going to have to show margin expansion, both gross margin and an Operating income and was going make IT very difficult for us to make those strategic investments in the business that we want. And we were very passionate about moving beyond email into a pear digital marketing platform. We were ready for international expansion.

We are ready to start a couple of our acquisitions and and all of that became a lot easier of private company. So we we pulled our IPO in early nine in conjunction with a large round of capital LED by battery and in scale. And the later T, C, V.

Came on board as well. And our internal tagline was Better than an IPO. And we really we really outlined for employees between that .

and then a later around you did in two thousand eleven. And can you raise more money than in the private markets than you ultimately he did in your .

yet we raise one hundred and forty five million in two thousand and nine. And and once again, there was there was a large secondary ary component, but IT IT gave us know a warchest to really get aggressive, you know, expanding the business. And we we created a vision we call accelerate twenty thirteen, where we became very specific around the company what we wanted to look like in two thousand and thirteen.

We started with the end of end in mind and then worked away back and very counter to IT this. This was the time where you know sqa and out their favorite, you know kind of famous deck around the our yes, yes, good times are over. Uh almost Mandating you know twenty percent headcount reduction across other companies.

And as all of our competitors were pulling back, we hit the accelerator. We get very aggressive uh in investing in uh R N D development, uh building uh big sales capacity. Ultimately, we build a sales organization that was three or four times larger than the news competitor.

So we we can hyper invested in the in o nine and ten, counting on the fact that when the economy came rolling back, we are going to be the best position to take advantage that. And that happened. And then we we actually rolled into our IPO, which is much of two thousand twelve, with just huge momentum.

We we had accelerating growth rates. We had grown in that a that oh time frame, o eight or nine, around thirty percent. And then we moved up to the forties and then we are amid fifties as we controlled in to the public markets in early twelve so that that hyper investment in that decision to stay stay private paid big dividends for us yeah .

and then talking about accelerating growth, one of the things that always struck me as as really unique about was how deliberately you expanded the business internally and using channel partners as the way to grow. Um I think we ever really talked about our international expansion all in the show. And to be really interesting to come to hear how you thought about that.

i'll be happy to you in your exactly right then. This was kind of a derivative of our your channel and agency program and that we knew we could get uh, reach in the market that we likely wouldn't be able to address directly. Uh, three channel partners and we did the same thing internationally.

So we found a partner in the U. K. And they spun up essentially an exact target reseller and we did the same in australia. And as those uh you know great teams and and later you know became friends, they built their business and really scale IT around the exact target platform when they started to reach some critical massive of customers and employees, we then acquire the business.

So IT was IT was kind of a low cost, low risk way for us to expand and nationally before we would have been able to do otherwise, you know, is is kind of a small capital efficient company. And we really validated with with these partners that there was market for our our, our software in our services, you outside the united states. And then we started working with multinationals like nike and expedia, microsoft and IT became a paradiso.

We're gonna grow those relationships that we had the international present. So yet three years in a row, we actually acquired every August first required our reseller in the U. K.

And use that as a beach, had to expand through europe. And then the next August, we acquired a reseller in australia. And then the next August, we acquired a reseller in a saulo brazil and and gave us a great reach into that marketplace. So we did six acquisitions over the course of exact target history, and three were product expansion and three were geo expansion.

So yeah, so you go to this, you go to this period of kind from a dead IPO that wasn't gonna happen. You pull back, you raise a bound of money. In a time when nobody could raise money, you accelerate the business come out and you go public in march of twenty twelve.

And and then it's just a little over year later that the the acquisition happens. The topic of I show that we want to and we will get to we will get to category and tech themes, everything else in a minute. But but I want to spend A A little bit of time.

We were talking with out before the show. One of the things we love to do and acquired is dig into these legal court cases, and I see documents and also to step in likely an exact targets case. I don't think there are any major court cases, but one of the things that happens when a public company is acquired is um there you're required and this will be coming out for a linton soon.

I can't wait to dive in. You required to disclose to the see that the play by play of exactly how the acquisition happened. And so that will link to IT in the show. Now it's is amazing document about how the exact target acquisition happened.

And i'd love to just you know as do you talk a little bit about that process you know how I started and and again all of its documented public life like they were three other bitters um that uh we can talk about their identities they referred to as party a, party b and party c in the document. But multiple offer is going back. And for them, they must have been such a stressful time for you. How did you navigate through IT?

IT was incredible. IT was incredible learning experience and exhilarating and a nerve racking at the same time, for sure or so we had been we had been a public company for five quarters, and you know, life was good. We actually, we had a great time.

Our IPO was super successful. You know, we came out in the new york stock could change IT, you know, north of a billion dollar valuation. And our IPO was heavily oversubscribed and we felt like we had all the right investors supporting us from from day one.

And all that learning that happened in two thousand eight and two thousand nine were able really a to the s one and filing process and IPO and how to pick the right banks in the right analysts. And we we just had had we had an amazing time going public and and really loved IT. And then five course.

Is the public company more of the same? You know, we kind of meet exceeded plan every quarter. We we're really embraced by by wall street and had a great investor base.

We had completed two acquisitions won't called ego digital in the predictive analytics space. He and the second part dot in the B2B mar keting aut omation and and and lif e was gre at. We are very happy, you know, as as an independent public company.

And we were growing in north of forty percent year over a year. What started really happened, you know, across the kind of software ecosystem is that marketing cloud solution started really gardening more attention. And I would say really the the largest public five or six software companies in the world, you know, we're really all shifting the cloud and in publicly stating and tend to go a lot deeper in the marketing, you know.

So that started happening in a big way. And and for for us to exact target a big part of our strategy had been to build a very open platform, robust aps and lots of integrated partnerships. So our premise was that marketers need one place to to store all the data they have on their customers and then to use that data to drive more personalized and relling communications and in relationships.

So even literally before the ap change existed, we integrated into sales force and we integrated in the microsoft dynamics, and we had great relationships with with adobe and in armitage ure and kind of many others across the industry. So I was very logical that we were attending shows and conferences and cosine com accountable with all these companies. But sales force, now we've had this really rich relationship with from being a customer to being an integrated tive partner to doing lots of things together in the market.

And you know, we got to know market and in the team. And salesforce had made a big push in marketing with eight and six and body media acquisitions and and really you know how to social first strategy. And and over time, I just became apparent that their customers wanted more.

You know that social was an important channel, but they really wanted a multichannel platform. They wanted greater data capabilities and they wanted a platform that was Normally oriented for B2B cus tomers, but also B2C. So know we always had a close relationship with sales force and always kind of share product road maps and vision and direction.

And IT IT just became a apparent they were going to make a bigger investment in marketing and knocked on our door and said, hey, we'd like we'd like to collaborate and take a closer look at. Kind of joining forces. And and you're absolutely right when you're when you're a public company, you get that kind of inbound inquiry. You know the level of governance and processed is is that a very different level?

yeah. And i'm curious and really very list will link to this document you should read. It's like, you know it's like a legal least version of like hydration a of like experience drama but did somebody hand you a playbook can be like, okay, you know here's what you do in this situation or were you guys you know, figuring that out as you went along?

Clearly was the first time experience for me. But fortunately, we we had an excEllent you know set of advisers and board members that had quite A A bit of experience you know in this area to make sure that we really follow the right process. And I did what was ultimately the best interests of our shareholders know for me is know it's founder in CEO.

IT certainly can be kind of an emotional dia in a Better sweet process. And I I I had hoped that I had hoped that the the premium we are offered would be, you know, so substantial that I was really an excEllent outcome for our shareholders and for our employees. And then i'd really hope that we we ended up with with an acquire that was very strategic and and would continue invest in the business and and sales force became that know in a whole lot more.

So the the process was amazing. I was I was uh an exhilarating and certain ly had a lot of pressure associated with IT. But I I I I was very, very comfortable that this was the best decision for our shareholders and and for our employees and all of our constituents. And now that we're able to you see what's transpired over over the last three years, I have hundred percent confidence that this was a huge win for for sales force and for exact target everybody involved with the company along the way.

Yeah, i'm really curious um you guys sold for about a fifty percent premium over what you have been trading at publicly. There's got to be a bunch of offer sort of coming in from investment bankers or perhaps even CEO calling you um and saying, hey, you know that I think this might work out. What number do you start actually paying attention at listening? Like when do you .

form the sub commitment we say to the so the the acquisition happened in in june of twenty thirteen, two and a half billion dollars, thirty three dollars and seventy five cents of share. And your IPO probably was nineteen dollars just over a year before. So and I think .

trading at twenty two or so the day before.

yeah, that's that's about right.

That's about right.

We our IPO Price was nineteen. We came out at twenty three uh and nickel and then you know largely traded you know in the twenties and we're kind of in the low twenties when sales force first put the first offer of twenty six years share in front of us. And and i'll take IT, IT was less about even coming up with a with a number that was interesting. We were really just focus on making sure that when you get that, you know first level of inbound interest, that we take a serious ly and and really handle the process in a way that's above approach and and that were, you know kind of following every step you need to as as a public company and and let the process run in the ultimately let the the subcommander the board make the best decision at the end of the process.

And IT IT helps to I think you guys during the negotiation process released U B, Q one earnings and up to guidance and that that's always a good thing to do as you are saying you too about like and when you pull the IPO the first time, you know and then went out, raise the money and went out afterwards with the accelerating growth like, you know, great acquisition happen when companies get bought that. So when you a great future ahead of you and things are going great and didn't meet anybody, you know .

that no, that's exactly writing and you really maxi ze value yeah. When you are Operating from a position of strength, then you have multiple parties that are really interested in either making adventure investment or ultimately quiring the company. And unfortunately, we we had that.

We had a big way and we just fit so beautifully into sales force. You know, they had a big vision around the marketing cloud. We were perfect compliment to the two acquisitions they are already made, and we really brought this data architecture that was very consumer oriented to the table.

So we we give salesforce of a big entry into the B2C sid e of the ind ustry. We brought you know this multi channel marketing platform where by that time we had d expanded, you know beyond email into mobile and social and and website analytics. We had we had a really broad, you know, kind of digital multi channel platform.

We were the largest and the fastest growing marketing software company really in the world. Then we were able to feel a big gap for them. And then a silver lining was that we had recently quired part dot and parrot. Was this just gem of a company in atlantic that are required for red one hundred million dollars? And they were B2B mar keting aut omation pla yer, tightly integrated in the sales force. So salesforce know not only was able to get all the benefits that exact targets brought to the table, but parada was a great snap in that puts sale force in a position where they could compete with a liquid and markets and other players in that of that slice of the industry as well.

Cool.

right listeners. Our next sponsor is a new friend of the show, huntress. Unrests is one of the fastest growing and most loved cyber security companies today. Its purpose built for small emd size businesses and provides enterprise grade security with the technology, services and expertise needed to protect you.

They offer a revolutionary approach to manage cyber security that isn't only about tech, it's about real people providing real defense around the clock.

So how does IT work? Well, you probably already know this, but IT has become pretty trivial for an entry level hacker to buy access and data about compromised businesses. This means cyber criminal activity towards smaller, medium businesses is at an all time high.

so hunters created a full managed security platform for their customers to guard from these threats. This includes end point detection and response, identity threat detection, response security awareness training and a revolutionary security information and event management product that actually just got launched. Essentially, IT is the full sweet of great software that you need to secure your business, plus twenty four, seven monitoring. Buying a elite team of human threat hunters in a security Operation center to stop attacks that really software only solutions could sometimes miss hundred years, is democratizing security, particularly cyber security, by taking security techniques that were historically only available to large enterprises and bringing them to businesses with as few as ten, a hundred or a thousand employees at Price points that makes sense for them.

In fact, it's pretty wild. There are over one hundred and twenty five thousand businesses now using, and they rave about IT from the hill tops. They were voted by customers in the g two rankings as the industrial leader in end point detection and response for the eighth consecutive season and the industry leader in manage detection and response again this summer.

Yeah, so if you want ding edge cyber security solutions, backed by a twenty four, seven team of experts who monitor, investigate and respond to threats with unmatched precision, head on over to huntress dot com slash acquired or click the link in the show notes are huge. Thanks to hunt us.

I think this is a bad time. We move to our our next section of acquisition category. And um what what kind of do is David I what kind of make our our picks between people, technology, product, business line or other? And then Scott, yeah it's it's .

always .

kind cheap only you well.

I think I mean, I think for me is got obviously your word is most important here, but clearly is a business line acquisition for this else force going from and and it's just this is gonna into my tech theme in a minute. But you know, having been selling into the sales organization for so long and developed these huge accounts and big scale business, that sales were had to to pick up exact target. And as you are mentioning, part of everything else along with IT, to now be able to sell in to the cm o and the marketing side was clearly business line and a great one for them.

Yeah I mean, I I have nothing to disagree with there. I mean, exact target clearly had um IT was IT was not just a product but a sweet of product. I think when I was finishing on my ten year there, we were launching the digital marketing hub and that include s mess and email marketing microsites. We had social with cot, eet and IT became clear that like you know there there is their own exact target, had changed a lot different customers that, that then sales force could expand into a really a whole, whole sweet of products to add to sales forces, repeat or to.

And if we worn more clear, this is a business line. Salesforce actually, still, you caused this, the salesforce marketing club business line that the result and get you read IT when .

you when you game there, right? Correct correct. I I I would actually agree guys there there's no question that we, you know brought to menus, group of people in town and culture to sales force and and a lot of really unique and proprietary technology.

But I would I would agree with the add classify, the acquisition in the category I would call the business line because we just fit so beautifully into the marketing cloud strategy and brought a sizable on a recurring revenue. You know we were three hundred million and recurring revenue moving to four hundred. And for sales force that their size and their growth pho city.

And now you see with demand where you know they have to make large acquisitions, you know that are meaningful, you that actually are relevant can contribute to the top playing growth. And we were able to do that in a big way. And it's it's made me really proud that you know mark, on a number of occasions with uh with jim crammer and mad money and other places said that exact target been the most successful acquisition that the forces ever completed.

And I I believe that to be true, which is gone remarkably well. And the the leaders that were on my team that are now leading you kind of big functionally areas within sales force in the marking cloud there, they're happy and having a tremendous of success and really growing the business in a big way and committing the indian apples, which is really, really cool. Salesforce just recently announced that in addition of the fourteen hundred employees.

They have in downtown india, they are going to add eight hundred new positions over the next few years. And then I don't know if you heard this band, but the the tall is building in inDiana is the chase tower sales force is going to consolidate and move employees into that tower. And it's actually to be renny ed, the sales force tower.

So I have to oh yes, yeah, I don't .

absolutely. Market market. Mark likes this tower. Mark, a team like they love their towers. By that, it's it's going to be so fantastic for our tech community that the talks building in the city, in the city is actually a tech building. So it's going to be a big, a big boost and accelerated to our tech community, which i'm very happy about.

And I always remember to there are so many like unique things about exact for the region. There is a big like drumm beat from, I think maybe you're first or second that IT was about being an urban company and that people needed to, you know, we are in monument circle, which was like this incredibly cool, historic, like center of downtown big statue. You exact target had a building with this cool roof deck that looked out over IT. And I remember thinking, I never want to work in an office park again. And I think that like a lot of exact target employees got super spoiled in that way.

It's exactly right. And our real state strategy was, was to really build around this urban core and build a build a campus and a work environment that was super appealing really to the the millennial, the Younger generation. And it's been really found over the last decade, you know, downtown indian apple has had this huge resurge of housing and amazing you know, restaurants and and you know a lot of arts and culture and sports and exact target know has has been a part of that fabric. Downtown indian apple is.

And I really felt that to build the high growth category leading company and in a market like indian apple, as we had to be in the urban core to really take advantage of just the the energy, the vitality, the ability to to recruit you know top next people from all over the country and then even to bring in, you know, partners and VC and customers that could fly into indian apple is and you know, take a fifteen, twenty minute a cab ride downtown india. Then be able to just enjoy all the benefits of that, that downtown setting house. And that's has been neat.

And i'll tell you, one of the one of the need legacy elements of exact target is for years, we've worked done and not to flight in place from media, apple, Susan, Frances co. And not having. It's been a real barrier. Our west coast investors now have to jump through lots of hops to make make IT in the for a board meeting and and IT makes just fundraising for all companies here and eighty more difficult than right around the time of the acquisition. We actually got to done with united airlines and and had a non sub light back and forth the same Francisco, which might seem trivial, but it's actually been a game changer for for our tech community and and sales forces appreciated as well.

No, I totally believe that. I think a lot of a lot of credence es paid to seattle proximity to separate cisco as a competitive advantage in in fundraising and and starting a company in general. And I think that kind of quick direct flight has not just a tremendous a .

to do with that is so true. It's so true. The same is happening is solid. Solid is is amazing tech ecosystem. You know, i'm returned to be and now you've got you almost a dozen, I would say, you know, kind of a unicorn level valuations and so much of that is you salt lake in park city are kind of wonderful place to be, but it's is such a short hop away from silicon valley that you're able to raise capital and get those investors will engage in the business.

Yeah uh, moving in the next section. Uh, what would have happened otherwise is sort of two alternate futures here. And I I can't want to pose both questions to you.

What is do you think exact target would have made sense with any other require? And then two you know exact target competed against responses and many other um comedies that started as as email marketing solutions for a long time. Do you think there was anyone decides exact target that they could have made sense at sales force.

I guess, to both questions. You we we certainly could have fit fit in well with a number of you know can the other largest software companies in the world that have been focused on going a lot deeper in the marketing tech and thought as a big growth area. In the geno question, the sales force looked at lots of different players over the course of time to potentially require.

And you know one element that's interesting when you go through that evaluation process is a public company and really try to make the the best decision for your shareholders is you really have to do a lot of financial modeling and a lot of thinking about what is life as an independent company look like. And we we ultimately did come to the conclusion that being being a part of sales force was was a Better outcome, higher probability outcome for our employees, for our shareholders. But there, there a number of different number of different ways that that that our future could have played out.

But I very, very happy the way play out. The other other interesting dimension is a public company. We would get an enormous amount of pressure around email.

When is the end of email coming and and these new channels are going to cannabis. The email, oh my god, just know it's kind like I A nickle for every time I answer that question. But IT was IT was just A A heavy theme.

And even sometimes i'd say a cloud over our company where we were fought of as such in centric company that even as we expanded around the world and expanded all these other Jason technologies, actually reference span we were we're still thought of as an email company and and and I think often didn't get credit for being a broad multi channel army channel platform. But email was such a powerhouse for marketers that that that line of business just kept booming and and other lines were growing. But they could never every you can get close, you know, to the to the email side of the business because it's just the most powerful tool that the market there has. And and as e commerce has exploded with growth, the emails become even more relevant.

Yeah, i'm curious when you're forecasting what is life look like as an independent company. I mean, let's say you could continue to grow forty percent year over a year indefinitely or at least to some the top .

of some ice on paper. Hard to do.

And that's right, that's right. That's right. Gets tougher with a lot big numbers.

Yeah, yeah. So at what point do you one factor in the top of the esc? And then two, how many years out you know what do you look at is like sort of the payback period of of that premium and say, like, well, they're giving us fifty percent premium and we don't think that we will reach that market cat for twenty years. And we looking to attend your time horizon or something like that.

you'll say that's where you that's really where the bankers and advisers and no kind of independent committee come in because they they had a lot of expertise and how to build those funding role models and what time horse makes the most sense in order in order to kind of predictive independent path verses first of joining forces with another. So I probably can provide a lot more detail than map, but exactly right. And that's exactly the process .

that you go through. That's right. Yeah, i'm ious. 是的， before before this and this also bleeds in the my team. You don't have to say whether you consider IT turn up, but do you think looking back, most of the big data driven marketing companies of tech generation, exact target being one of, if not the leader, um you got really big. We're growing really fast on a great jetty but then they all get swallowed up by a by other big enterprise companies, whether it's you know oracle and illiquid exact target in sales for so do you think there was any way that if maybe they're been consolidate among the companies into could there have been a giant you know, there are so few giant enterprise software companies, could one have been built in the marketing category?

That's a great question. I think I think I think why that didn't happen is, is overlapping functionality that when when you take a look at and they were certainly a lot of conversations that suit along the way, could you stack together, you know, somebodies kind of large markey tech companies become something bigger and something more meaningful.

And where IT arts, where IT starts, are run, run, run a flow or or kind of collapse is that you just have a lot of duplication of functionality. So you know, an amateur got kind of pulled in. You do be early know there certainly could have been a fit between, let's say, email and digital marketing channels and analytics, and that would have been a logical connection point.

But they kind of got pulled into adobe early. But when you looked at you ask and responses in some of the btb marking and automation companies, you often had, you know kind of of a lot, a lot redone IT functionality. But but we were headed down that path themselves.

You know that's really why the part of acquisition made sense. And we kind of kept moving deeper and in the data and analytics and the web and and really trying to build out that robust platform to make all these channels work together. And what's really interesting is the big product we built that stitched all together is a product called journey build there. And sales forces really embrace the journey builder platform and is applying IT even across different clouds within sales force and using .

a lot of unique ways. cool. So David, you have anything before we going to tech trans?

No, I think the only the comment just sort of what you are saying is it's interesting you're seeing so many startups s now um that are emerging that are next generation marketing animation. But they're all taking your person, he said, of marrying IT up with data and analytics. So i'm thinking, you know anything from mixed ed panel and segment is part of the ecosystem in a different way. But and so many customers that I in court and you know inner com, it's funny there's taking exactly of the we're .

saying that no, it's it's fun to see the you know, one of the topic that you asked me about, David, but I think I jumped into another category. It's kind of a fun story love to tell you about is just the the nature of our microsoft relationship to manifields touch on that rock that is really fun stories. So we.

We really became the largest cloud company running on microsoft technology. We were are early users of equal and that that and and really everything we built was on the microsoft framework. And we pushed microsoft technology, I think, to the edge, you know, as we were building a super transaction intensive, muli tended platform.

But but through that, we really built this wonderful relationship. And then we started integrating in a microsoft dynamics and had a really nice relationship there. And then and then ultimately, microsoft became a customer.

And it's a really fun story. Microsoft had an eternal platform and internal email platform called pens that that really kind of powered marketing automation and email marketing specifically for for microsoft business units. And the internal solution was was not well liked across microsoft.

So when we were fortunate to land microsoft and really go through our adoption, we built like an eighteen to twenty four months implementation period where we would be on boarding different business units of microsoft, exact target and off boarding them on the internal system depends. And and we we set a joint goal within. I know IT was an acronis for a personal ed email, something something out of a notification .

system maybe computing against pan.

That's that's right. Exactly, exactly. So we actually set a goal with the with the microsoft implementation team, and they were incredible to work with that when we got to the end of implementation. And we're literally able to turn the lights off on pens, retire this internal system that was was not well like across the enterprise that we'd have a celebration, we have a party and and we did.

We actually uh on the microsoft campus had uh huge tent h that was erected, uh, an event that was just in located to the full, I mean beautiful you know wine, beer, food and the microsoft team. They had to get fire martial approval, but they actually pull the servers that were running pens out of microsoft data centres and brought this serious ly, brought them to the party. And we sledge hamer. Dm, we all strapped down goggles and just beat the time of these servers.

And there was office space .

seriously total off his face. He was just like a spectacular way to retire their internal system.

That was IT was a blast wa that could not be like A A Better segway into into what technology themes does this illustrate for you? And that's like a very physical visual manifestation of the the one that I wants to touch on and that businesses using software as a service to outsource anything that's not their core competency.

We keep this keep this keeps coming up in epo des over and over again where businesses now, you know, with the event of cloud computing and the general cost of starting a company going down, companies Operate using tens of other companies, infrastructure and software of even starting at a free tier or on some kind of three me on pricing structure. And you know it's it's different at that sort of scale where they're actually migrating from something they built in house. But I can't want you to open up to you since um you know what you do at high alpha and start these new these new software s service companies. How do you identify where are the sort of um holes where we can take something that a whole bunch of companies are doing and do IT on one platform and they can all just P S. Is our platform.

No, it's an exciting part of high alpha. A so high alpha, we're a where a venture studio we started a year ago and where a venture studio focus on starting new cloud companies. And we will we have two sides to high alpha. High alpha studio is our start up studio, and we we've signed up to start eight to ten new companies over the next three to four years.

And the high alpha capital is a kind of second ARM, and that is a venture fund that is utilized to find their own companies when they are ready to read scale, then and then also find other great house entrepreneurs around the country. So you're right and and we spend a lot of time, but just idio you're looking for on met needs, you know within the enterprise h cloud space. And and we do that through our own ideas.

We do that through entrepreneurs that approach us. We spend a lot of time with corporate innovation groups and universities and and just know tech visionaries that you have a sense for where the markets going. And this whole, this whole notion that every employer is a buyer of software, something radically different.

You know you to think back to client, clients server days, a pre cloud and text spending and buying was tightly controlled, tightly, tightly controlled by the cio in the IT department. And then you know with the event of cloud IT, IT starts to kind of open up to a different business unit or business line owners can can make decisions within a framework. And now we're an era where every employees, a buyer you know with premium and in and an employ credit card and you can spend up flag channels and lots of other solutions.

And it's it's creating lots of opportunity, but it's also creating quite a few unintended consequences. So you you'll get a kick out of this where you're actually have started in a business. We have an announced that yet that essentially is a SaaS platform for managing sand sass applications and really is and it's it's targeted at the chaos and kind of the overcrowding of that spend.

It's a huge problem. And we are our our M B P is about ready. Go live with our first a group of pilot customers. But IT IT brings together as spend, sah utilization and then user sentiment, user feedback. So IT brings those three, three variables into one platform so organizations can add a minimum, actually understand what they're using, what they paid forward, being utilized across the enterprise, what have maybe they paid for but isn't being utilized. Where do they have overlapping products and platforms, whether there maybe something cool happening, like where's their innovation happening within like one group of apartment that should be a thought about across across that organizations so that that's kind of a cool company that we're excited about to help organza kind to get their arms around how their business is using seasons and use IT in the most optimize way.

So the tech team i've been referencing a bunch, this is another perfectly then is there's business sort history ally in the enterprise space, which you again, we haven't talked as much about on the show. There's been there kind of been sort of tourist giants, right? Like there there's microsoft, there's sap, there's oracle and then there's salesforce, which is a emerged to sort of that most recently as one of these giants.

And there's this concept of like account control and like the lots of startups in the space, but ultimately, those for companies are by far the biggest. And the of the account control with the cio s and and increasingly see eos and hit sales and C E S where they can push also is the products to their channel. Um and an exact target, as we talked about being a business line acquisition was a perfect fit with sales force says one of their first four years into a new new product sending through their their gorilla channel.

Um there are gorilla zed channel. Do you think that you how do how do you react to that and and or wanted to main dies, I think of sas enterprise investors. Is that with sas like that's changing great.

Like you don't you know people can victo ff premium like individual please. And account control is being a wote. And how do how do you pick about that being on both sites? Now I definitely .

see people I definitely see both sides of IT. And you you're totally spot on, David. It's one of the big reasons why the exact target acquisition been successful.

That sales force just has these amazing executive level relationships with the bigger companies around the world. And they they know salesforce, they trust them. They want they want to buy more.

They want to buy more products that are tightly integrated and know when you look at the sales force, marketing cloud numbers, they're booming and and they really booming because they have all those trusted CEO and CEO relationships and and then then marking the team. They're just incredible innovators and amazing at executing scaling the business. So that's that's real. There's no question about that. However, there is still plenty of opportunity for new innovation and new entrance and and the innovative, the lump of companies coming up with the new ideas and new concepts and software that's lighter and more flexible and more mobile friendly and more consumer like there's there's no shortage of room, I think you for innovation and and for new companies to find the grove and that .

you don't need your cio to approve to buy.

you don't you don't. That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Which honestly, you know um you're talking about addition and getting ideas for new companies and getting your first customer, obviously something near dear to my heart at at prior square labs. And as someone that is often going out and transitioning from the customer development to getting your first customer and taking the people that you were talking to about what your needs and saying, cool, we built this, what you pay for IT. It's become extremely easy to do that when you have an advocate in the organization who for you know, like you're going to charge less than ten thousand dollars for your product so they just can use their credit card and you don't have to go through the cio. So it's open this whole new wave for for us of the ability to end your first customer and a much faster time frame.

Absolutely right? No, that's exactly right. And then in that all these great cloud platforms where you can really quickly write, build technology, build MVP, get IT to market in and really see if you've got product market fit and if you got something that can be viable. And that's what so fun I think about, about what what we're both doing in coming up new ideas and launching new companies. As you can you can go for my idea to to MVP and proof of concept really, really quickly.

Yeah yeah I were going to move on to um what was formally that the last part of our show? I think we have a couple cool sections after, but um grading the acquisition and scope, you can choose to participate in this or now I feel like you might be a little bit biased, but this is obviously an incredibly successful position.

You mean you hear you here, mark preach IT um to to the world time and time again in some of the biggest stages these ever on obviously a success we've given is to things that have like ridiculous multiples. I mean, you look at what instagram did a facebook or you look at pixar, a sort of reverse integration, a reverse acquisition of of disney, disney pictures, disy animation and those are so I guess what were omino land on? This is isn't a minus for for exact target.

I think i'm similar um. You know we've talked about all the reasons why this is a great outcome thing. We actually didn't cte.

It's funny. We're not super quantitative on this show you know about acquisitions. Um so now we went through this whole this home eps once about your revenue. But some numbers I want to throw out when the exact target in tony twelve, which was the final year a full year of being a simple and company I believe have about two hundred and ninety four million in revenue and in sales forces fish gold twenty sixteen in which ended generate thirty first twenty sixteen.

So essentially the calendar year twenty and fifteen and the marketing cloud d division did six hundred and fifty four million in revenue, so over twice as much in um less than three years. So that's a that's a pretty great outcome, um I think and speaks to the power of this. There many product things that, that i'm sure that sales force has done with the acquisition and bolted on many things, but also just the power of these enterprise relationships that they have. So I think this was a great, a great deal. And i'm also going know when I think about instagram, like you know went from A A billion dollar acquisition Price to three billion dollars in revenue in in like three years and that yeah also remind us, put on the fence here, got any any common .

you guys are tough creators. They are really you guys are really, really, really, really like that, professor. It's really difficult, incredible stage, incredible stingy about giving A A N A.

So my I know, I know, I know instagram is is is the bar. Um it's a high bar eye. There's no question I bias, but I I think I give you really very great.

And I I definitely I think I definite give a full way no no mind as I go the full way. And and i'll think the reason is that this was extraordinary outcome you know, act target. You think about, you know, three first time soft entrepreneur s starting a software company in indian apple is, you know, with, but with very your humble .

expectation inconsequence inconceivable that we would ultimately .

ll the business for two and half billion dollars. And and what i'm so grateful for that every every employee was a part of exact target, had equity in the company. And this was really a meaningful outcome for our employees, not only just the come experience of a lifetime and being a part of this powerful culture we called orange, but there is a financial outcome that was meaningful in.

And the need thing is that at thirty three, seventy five a share, every person who ever invested in the exact target from friends and family adventure rounds to public investors made money. So so I um smile from here the year just thinking about what what an incredible outcome this was for everyone at exact target. And then the only thing and quite you reference the numbers is that you know integration is is remarkably difficult, is so difficult to acquire companies, integrate them effectively.

And when you look at sales for this was the largest acquisition you've done first time, they've required a public company and and to see the kind of results that have been produced. And and I just know how delighted mark in the team have been about the performance of the business. I give them an a and both sides, the single forests in the exact target side.

Not know. You have to love your company, right? Like if you don't know, good.

Oh, absolutely, absolutely.

That's right. Let's just move on. The same fun we have at the end the episode. It's a section called the car without and this is where we um talk about something that in pop culture media that we we read or watched or or stumble upon our product that we love, really anything that that really took out our fancy in the last last couple weeks. And i'll start with mine, a big fan of the talk show. IT is a podcast done by john ruber of during fireball that mostly covers apple and john does a live show every year at wwdc, the biggest apple conference and this year. Um his guess know his guess are Normally friends of his or other people sort in the apple journalism space and out walks crag federici and fills shiller the the senior V P of marketing and the senior p of software just engineering all up anyway just like an unbelievable candid interview with with two guys that have great personalities on stage and you Normally only see these people in in you know the extremely reversed um very very perfectly timed and and executed apple keynotes and getting them off the cuff like that. It's just so fun if you're you're a fan of apple or just like a fan of technology and how these businesses run in general to get that .

sort of Candy. Look at these guys are mine is great book that i'm almost done reading but been enjoying immensely. This was recommend. I saw this as a recommendation.

I went to why commentators start up school in thirteen I believe either twenty twelve, twenty thirteen and jack dorsey spoke there and he recommended IT as a part and it's been on my list you ever since and I just finally got around reading IT look all the score takes care of itself um and it's by bill walsh who was the legendarily unfortunately late coach the forty nine years during their amazing dyna sty in the in the nineties and if I remember you grow up and watching you tana, Jerry rice, Steve Young and but the book is it's about his you know kind of philosopher and lessons on leadership and he's such a he's such an amazing guy like he's not the you think of like a football coach in that year and it's like, you know super you know harit yelling and screaming like that's on his sight at all. It's like it's just this commitment, excell lence. And like, you know, that's all the matters and all the other stuff is just show and and there's a lots of good gyms in the book. Well, I IT in the off to check IT out.

That's very fun. I love a car about future here. Guys, this is kind of fun.

Thanks and David. I should clarify, jack dorsey is no, no relation. I me that i've got lots of family connections here on on the show. Jack, jack and I are not related to one another, although that would be kind of fun. So my car about was a month ago.

I was flipped channels trying to find, I think, probably in NBA play off games for T, S, B, N, and caught the end of the national spelling. Be the script. National spelling b and IT was phenomenal.

They, the two finalists were in eleven year old and thirteen year old, who were just extraordinary at their ability, obviously, to spell very difficile words and handle a tremendous t of pressure. And and the auto be tied in the end. In this, the thirteen year old had had an older sibling that had one previously, and the eleven year old was the fifth grader who was the Youngest kind of finance and champion ever.

And watching those two Operate was incredible. And to me, i'll take two little stories. One is just quite exceptional, I think, how Young people are developing so quickly and when we look at across our businesses, at in turns are contributions new collar graduate can make. They are able to contribute to businesses in a way today that that never existed in the past. And and watching these uh, two kind of Young students a compete was really incredible. And then one of my favor parts is that each of the final is said to share their favorite word, which I would definitely a difficulties spelling any of them probably be pronouncing one of them but but one of them that stuck with me was indefatigable and and for what a great word, which which really means tireless persistence to be fatigability. And as i'm working with early the all these early stage startups, to me, that's like the number one characteristic for a CEO or founding team is that they have this tireless persistence and they just they've such a burning fire inside them to succeed and to solve a big problem and make a difference in the world that you just know .

there's going .

to be successful. David, a table follow up until next time where N. A, here.

yeah. What may not do to Augusty one railway ke, which, because we mention a few times on this show, instagram reported latest user numbers this week. For facebook reported its gram latest user numbers this week.

Pretty incredible. They past five hundred million registered users, three hundred million daily active users. Think about every idea, three out of five registered users on instagram music, every single .

that's impressive.

We instagram was our one of our very first shows and legis. It's economical but um especially with snapped at everything going on there, all these extension al questions and that business just continues to perform an amazing level. Now do thank you get that.

We want to think our long time friend of the show, venta, the leading trust management platform, venta of course, automates your security reviews and compliance efforts. So frameworks like soc two I saw twenty seven o one gdpr and hip compliance and modeling ing vento takes care of these otherwise incredibly time and resource training efforts for your organization and makes them fast and simple.

Yeah, vana is the perfect example of the quote that we talk about all the time here and acquired jeff basis, this idea that the company should only focus on what actually makes your beer taste Better. I E spend your time and resources only on what's actually going to move the needle for your product and your customers and outsource everything else that doesn't. Every company needs compliance and trust with their vendors and customers. IT plays a major role enabling revenue because customers and partners demand IT. But yet IT add zero flavor to your actual product that IT .

takes care of volvo for you, no where spread sheet, no fragment to tools, no manual reviews to cobble together your security and compliance requirements. IT is one single software pain of glass that connects to all of your services via s and eliminates countless hours of work for your organization. There are now A I capabilities to make this even more powerful. And they even integrate with over three hundred external al tools, plus they let customers build private integrations with their internal systems.

And perhaps most importantly, your security reviews are now real time instead of static, so you can monitor and share with your customers, in part to give them added confidence.

So whether you are start up or a large enterprise and your company is ready to automate complaints and streamline security reviews like fanta, seven thousand customers around the globe, i'd go back to making your beer taste Better head on over to vent a outcomes lush required and just tell them that been in, David sent you and thanks to friend of the show Christina anta CEO all acquired listeners get a thousand dollars of free credit vented outcome slash acquired yeah .

hey just to close down the show anyone listings out there thanks so much um tell your friends review uh on itunes. Share IT on twitter, facebook, whatever you like to do. Snap about us if if that's your thing. And scot, uh, how can our audience .

find you got us on twitter and a hiphop c com. You can learn more about the the new venture that we're building here in indian.

Apple is awesome.

Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks so much.

Guys really joined to. Thanks, thanks. Thanks, David. Easy you, easy you. Easy you.

Who got the true.