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How do I implement my go-to-market strategy with my Cloud Partners? How do I get buy-in from my executives, sales team, and others in my organization? How can I get the right attention from the Cloud Providers?
Questions like these, and many more, arise when you’re trying to build relationships with the Cloud Providers and accelerate your revenue journey through the cloud. Welcome to ‘Unlock Cloud Go-to-Market,’ the series where hosts Erin Figer and Patrick Riley share the essential stages of the Cloud GTM maturity model to start, optimize, and grow your company’s revenue through the cloud. They’ve helped countless ISVs tackle the ins and outs of their Cloud GTM motion, and in each episode, they're sharing those success stories from the people who have put them into place. Because ultimately, this way of thinking is the future. And the future is now.
Mike Romans (00:00):
I think early days when we made a decision as an organization on where to build our actual solution, we decided early days on AWS and it made a lot of sense. They had first mover advantage, they had the most tools and functionality available, they had the most regions. And what we found from the go-to-market perspective is they had the customers that we wanted to solve the problems for.
Patrick Riley (00:24):
Welcome to Unlock Cloud, go to Market, the podcast where we deliver actionable insights from ISVs, partners, thought leaders and cloud providers to help you launch scale and succeed in your cloud go to market journey. Whether you're building your first motion, fine tuning your strategy or aiming to maximize revenue, this show brings you the stories, strategies and lessons learned from the people driving innovation in the cloud ecosystem. Each episode cuts through the noise with candid conversations and proven tactics that you can apply right away because the future of cloud B2B success is here and the time to unlock it is now. Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of Unlock Cloud. Go to market. Today we've got four on the screen. I dunno if this is a first, I think it is, but we're going to explore a unique perspective that we don't always talk about and we haven't in season one or at all in season two yet, and that's really about cloud go to market through the lens of CTO. So why does this matter just as much as it does to rev ops to sales leaders? So we've got some amazing guests today. We're joined by Mike Romans and Nick Reitz from Kasada. Mike leads global partnerships and sales. Nick wears a bunch of hats, but he's a field CTO and one of the early employees as well. They're joining us from across the globe today, so we are extremely lucky to have them on. Gentlemen, welcome to the call. Welcome to the podcast.
Mike Romans (01:50):
Thank you, Patrick. Great to be here this morning or your afternoon.
Patrick Riley (01:54):
Yeah, absolutely. It's not just me. Today you've seen co-founder Brian Dinker join me on a previous episode. Today we're lucky enough to have tackle zone additional co-founder here and our CTO Dylan Woods. Dylan, welcome. Glad to have you.
Dillon Woods (02:10):
Yeah. Hey everybody. Thanks for having me today. I'm glad to be here.
Patrick Riley (02:13):
Kasada made some great time to talk with us. We're going to talk through their story and so we're going to talk about how marketplace wasn't just this thing they wanted to go do from the get-go and they had this plan and they had this partner in mind that they were going to go do it with. Why don't talk about how that kind of progressed, what that decision making process looked like to them and through Nick's lens specifically on a CTO's version or vision of how marketplace should be. So we're going to talk about that. They didn't just turn on the switch, they really made this part of their core go to market fabric. It started with aligning sales strategies. So I'm going to get into it and kick it right off to you Nick. First, tell everybody who's listening or watching this, what is Kasada and what problem are you guys solving?
Nick Rieniets (02:58):
So we're a disruptor in the bot mitigation space. We help businesses who have problems where adversaries scale attacks by using automation and scripts. So we work with large enterprises. We like to think that we solve the hardest bot problems to are to solve, and the way we think about that is no customer has a bot problem. They've got a business problem that's caused by bots and that's really driven the creation of Kasada. Our founding moment was really the realization that the existing tool sets to secure web and mobile apps weren't really built to accommodate for the scale of bots, and we've spent the last 10 years really thinking hard about how we build something that's robust and offers our customers continuous return on their investment in our technology.
Patrick Riley (03:48):
That's great, and I'm sure you've had your hands full over the last few years with AI and the massive shift in how bots probably operate. So there's probably a lot on your portfolio that can help customers in that realm as well. Would that be a fair statement?
Nick Rieniets (04:01):
Well, AI's got a lot to benefit both for the defenders and the attackers and we've spent a fair bit of time thinking and talking to people on the other side of the fence to think about and learn how they're using AI to benefit themselves. And you're starting to see it built into tool sets, but the realization really is that at the human level, everyone has the benefit to gain productivity by using ai and that's both from a defender's perspective but also from the attackers. And so it really becomes a race against farmers to who can be better at doing it.
Patrick Riley (04:33):
If you want to have a more deeper dive on Kasada, please make sure stick around at the end of the podcast, we'll tell you how to connect with Mike and Nick. You can feel free to reach out to them on LinkedIn and ask 'em for more. But I want to dive in now into your go-to-market approach and how AWS has factored into that. Can you give us a summary of how you would describe your go-to-market philosophy today as it stands and then we'll go and we'll kind of talk about the history.
Mike Romans (05:02):
I think early days when we made a decision as an organization on where to build our actual solution, we decided early days on AWS and it made a lot of sense. They had first mover advantage, they had the most tools and functionality available, they have the most regions and what we found from the go-to-market perspective is they had the customers that we wanted to solve the problems for. So it was actually a key alignment not only on where we built but how we went to market, who we went to market with and who our joint customers were. And so in the very early days we had identified AWS as being the player and by doing so, we actually were able to gain a lot of advantages with the global sales team and the global Salesforce and it helps us do a bunch of different things really in certain areas where we are well staffed up and we have a big presence, working with them can help us accelerate deals. And then in other geographies maybe where we're just dipping our toe in the water and looking to get those geographies moving, it can actually help us as an extension of our sales team and working to help us bring customers and prospects in so that we can tell a story and help better together we can actually help them as a business.
Patrick Riley (06:18):
One of the things that you just said and that stood out in our prep call was you clearly prioritize AWS and it wasn't just that you were chasing customers but pursuing alignment. I think alignment goes beyond where our customers are, where they want to buy, but also alignment goes into is this a good fit from a product perspective? You mentioned they're being first movers, but also that they've got the infrastructure that aligned to you from a programs perspective too. So the programs that you want to be engaged in and they had that available. So can you talk to us a little bit more about AWS being the partner from the lens of the programs? Was there something specific that made you think, hey, this is where we have to go from this particular lens?
Mike Romans (07:03):
Yeah, I think so. I mean I've been working injunction with AWS for quite some time even before my days at casda, and so we had always identified them as probably the player when it comes to the space that we want to be in. There's a number of programs that they have and ways that we can get involved with them to help ultimately the benefit of our customers. If you take a look at their first party services, they're fantastic when you look at mass market offerings, but when you start getting into very niche sectors of technology and what we do, we can compliment what they actually do as first party services so they can tack us on to step up the security and the defenses and what we do in bot mitigation. And ultimately what that means is we can offer a total solution to the customers to really address the problems that they're having.
(07:50):
And then when you look from the technology perspective by keeping everything in the AWS ecosystem and in the regions and on the infrastructure that they offer, you start getting speeds and fees, you start getting the consistencies and their performance improvements by just having everything in. We found that the majority of the customers that we were targeting had already moved their application origins onto AWS infrastructure. A lot of the organizations that we work with are using CloudFront and Perimeter Protection services within AWS. When you look at a cost perspective by keeping everything inside of that AWS ecosystem and then the performance impact by keeping everything in and when it comes to latency, you really look at a total solution that probably addresses not only the customer's concerns when it comes to security and what they're able to do, but from a cost optimization perspective as well. So when we look at partnerships, we like to work backwards. What's the customer ultimately looking for? Where's the customer decided to place their big bets and how can we make sure that we come to meet them on the playing field that they want to be met on? And that's really I think ultimately what initially drove our decisions not only to where we build, but how we partner and how we go to market.
Patrick Riley (09:05):
That makes sense. Dylan, do you have any thoughts or initial feedback on the why they chose AWS that might benefit some of the folks listening?
Dillon Woods (09:16):
Well, I'm just curious how you went about getting AWS to recognize that your product was able to fill some of the gaps with their first party services. Sometimes other companies I've talked to really struggle with getting to that moment to help the sellers at AWS recognize that there is a better together story and that if you going out together you can create a joint solution that's actually more beneficial to customers.
Mike Romans (09:39):
Yeah, that's a great question and I think AWS is very good at the partner organization. I want to say they have over 1700 partners, but they prioritize a certain list of partners where they understand that partners can actually help extend their services quite dramatically all for the benefit of their customers. So AWS has the mentality that it's always a customer first solve those problems and everything else will kind of fall into place. And so I think we got fortunate enough to be recognized as one of those vendors that can really help them move the needle on their first party services, but also help move the needle for their customers because that's the end goal. What we look to create are win-win win scenarios. So we're AWS is able to win, Kasada is able to win, but ultimately we're able to be successful because we're making the customer successful. And so I think that's really what's driving it.
Dillon Woods (10:33):
It's really kind of a snowball effect. You go out and get a great case study where you make one customer successful and you can kind of show that they use these two products in conjunction, they use this first party service from NWS with Kasada and they were able to get to a bigger outcome. You can build on that success over and over again. That's one of the ways that we suggest to some of our customers to build that story.
Mike Romans (10:55):
Yeah, absolutely. And I also think when you take a look at the part of the market that we focus on, it's the really top end of talent is the enterprise customers. It's the largest customers in their respective verticals and they've got the most sophisticated adversaries that are causing them the biggest disruptions and problems. And so by us focusing on that layer, we're not really competing with the SMB mid-market plays that AWS would be looking after themselves with the WAFs and with the rule sets that can really take the WAF and make it a little bit more, give us some characteristics for fighting automation and things like that. And so because there's no compete and it's a step up, I think early days, one of the, I think, phenomenal things about Casana is even as a startup, really early days, some of our first customers were these really large enterprises.
(11:43):
So we started in Australia and one of the largest customers that we signed up, one of the first customers was realestate.com au, which is the largest real estate marketplace e-com play in all of Australia. So a pretty big business with some significant problems. When we decided to make the movement to North America, one of our first customers there was Hyatt Hotels, so once again, probably one of the largest hotel chains in their respective space. A lot of issues that happened globally. And so by bringing those customers on first and foremost and solving those most complex sophisticated problems, as Nick was saying earlier, we really differentiated ourselves in the marketplace where we're not trying to be a me too, we're really being able to step up the security that AWS would offer. I think that fit was just perfect in nature and really allowed us to then extend that into the sales teams and the orgs and the vertical teams right across AWS and tell the story about how it's not you or us, it's together and being able to offer this stack that really addresses the customer's concerns and their business problems. So I think that's been instrumental in our approach.
Nick Rieniets (12:50):
I would add if you think about the strategic relevance of the AWS partnership for us or for any startup and you think about milestones in a startup from a revenue perspective, maybe it's the first million, it's 10, 30, 50 and a hundred million, and the beauty of the AWS relationship is that it offers different things at different stages through that growth phase. And certainly for us in the earlier stages, it was gaining traction with the AWS team and establishing our reputation, but as we've started to scale through those milestones, it's the sheer size and root force of the AWS machine that really enables us to grow faster than we would. They're a true force multiplier in that regard.
Dillon Woods (13:31):
So would you suggest to a new startup that they should start partnering with AWS as soon as possible? We often get asked, when is the right time to really lean into a partnership with AWS or one of the other cloud providers? Do you think it really is important to get going right from the beginning?
Nick Rieniets (13:46):
I think it's important to establish a bit of a foothold in terms of awareness of who you are. There probably is a too early point with any startup. You've got to be ready to add customers at scale before you try and grow through the channel. It certainly took us a while and I'm sure we'll talk about that a bit later, is we certainly held off marketplace for a period of time for a range of reasons. If you're in heavy build phase as a startup and you're still chasing product market fit, you'd probably want to hold off, but the minute that you're confident that you've got something, you start adding customers like Hyatt, that's the signal that you've got something that's working and that would be where I put my foot on the gas.
Patrick Riley (14:25):
Nick, I want to take you into this now we get Mike's perspective from an alliances and a sales view. They might see some things from customers or signals or indicators that this is the right route to go chase from a tackle perspective. We're always talking usually getting champions within ISVs from the alliance's role, but when it comes to your role from a CTO perspective, I know you talked about in preparation for call and you hinted at it here, you guys were kind of avoiding marketplace at first because of the difficulties that may have been perceived or actual. There's a ton of ISVs out there today having the same conversation as is it worth it? Is this something we should go after and do? When you have a great product and you have a great enterprise motion like you did, it's easy to just say, we can continue doing what we're doing, we'll continue to sell in this manner and marketplace is something that we've already got resources dedicated to this product innovation or these activities and I don't need to go move things to add another route to market. What was that process like for you? Why did you avoid it and what made you rethink it?
Nick Rieniets (15:33):
If we think about the core strategy early on, we were very conscious of not adding to customers too quickly because we felt it would slow us down in terms of developing the product just in terms of the drain on resources and so forth. And certainly the product probably wasn't mature enough to grow at scale. And so our core philosophy go back five years ago, was at a small number of large customers and sort of contain that in that way and that served us very well and it enabled us to grow at a sustainable rate and concentrate our focus on the customers that had really big problems to solve and by their nature were higher value from a revenue perspective. And as a result, we sort of looked at the marketplace early on and thought, well, it's something we want to do, but it seems too hard to do.
(16:18):
We looked at it without engaging with any experts in terms of what it was. Everyone kept telling us that it was a great idea, but we still had a big backlog of things we wanted to get done in the product. I guess the perception was that it was going to be an engineering effort to lift and shift up into marketplace, and it wasn't really until we started looking into it and working with Tackle that we realized that the effort on us was minimal When we started to unpeel the layers of, well, what does it take to get from where we are now into the marketplace? We realized that it wasn't as big as we had thought it would be, and so effectively we had one product manager with some oversight from the engineering team and some stewardship from the leadership team that really did that. And my recollection of it, it was less than a month and we were up and running. Initially it was we're not ready and then it was, it's going to be too hard or too disruptive, but in the end it kind of ended up being one of the easier things we've done and is a significant contributor now in terms of reducing the friction procurement.
Patrick Riley (17:20):
Mike, were you over there waving your flag for Marketplace or was that something you had to kind of buy into as well?
Mike Romans (17:26):
No, I was waving the flag. Certainly I've seen what it can do and what it can accomplish, but I think Nick is spot on when we talk about the right time and the right place and for us as a business, I think if I look back and I say, could we have done it earlier probably, but I think when we look at everything that we had going on, the development frameworks and all the new features and functionality and the focus of the team, I think we actually did it at the right time and we're reaping the benefits of that now because we're seeing more and more of our customers actually want to procure through the marketplace because it aligns with their internal strategy of what they want to do with AWS, the retirements of their agreements with AWS keeping everything isolated on that ecosystem. So it's definitely gone in the right direction for us.
Dillon Woods (18:13):
Why was it the right time? Nick said the right time for starting the partnership is when maybe you have product market fit, but it wasn't until later when it was the right time for Marketplace. And can you dive into that a little bit more? What was it that made it the perfect time for you to start with Marketplace?
Mike Romans (18:29):
Yeah, I think for us, it aligned with our US based expansion not only of business and customers but of internal resources as well. And so you want to make sure that when you start heading down that path that you're able to support it not only from an internal partnership perspective, but also have the right people in place to support the customers that you're going to bring on as a result of that. And so for us, the way our business was progressing, it was the right time for us as we started that global expansion phase of our business. And then what we're seeing now is it's not only helping us with that North American marketplace when it comes to acceleration of the deals and alignment, but it's also helping us as I'm pushing into new geographies around the UK and Europe and AsiaPac and things like that, it's actually helping us to expand our presence through the AWS Salesforce that's already in place. It was the right time when we chose to do it.
Patrick Riley (19:25):
When did you feel like you needed help from tackle to really make this a low lift effort for not only the engineering effort but the sales kind of an enablement perspective? Was this like an extension of your team? How did you see tackle and what was the value to you in adding the platform to your tool belt?
Nick Rieniets (19:48):
It removed the need to understand the process. I think the biggest thing for us, there was a lot of uncertainty in terms of how we would move to marketplace. So partnering with Tackle was a real accelerator in terms of acquiring that knowledge and then having the work done for us.
Mike Romans (20:05):
I think it enabled us to move when we wanted to move. I think we were getting caught a little bit in paralysis when we were trying to figure out and understand what resources internally would be required, how long would the move be, what would we have to give up on our development roadmap in order to make it happen? And so we're kind of paralyzed to some degree. And then when we started talking with Tackle, we really found out and it became clear that we could do this and it helped force our decision that this can happen without a lot of work on our end. And because of that, I think we were able to move when we did without the help of tackle, I think it might've been another six to 12 months to be quite honest with you. In no doubt in my mind, tackle helped us accelerate our movement into this partnership.
Nick Rieniets (20:54):
If I think about the business case for doing it effectively, you could summarize it with reduces engineering and product input whilst increasing revenue. So it became somewhat of a no-brainer once we understood the value of partnering to get it done.
Patrick Riley (21:11):
Dylan, you've got to see a lot of early stage teams including tackle in its early days, wrestle with the trade off of adding tooling or adding support while being under pressured, also kind of grow, move fast and not overbuild the product. Do you have any advice for other CTOs and then I'll get Nick's comment as well, but for other CTOs that are in this position of, Hey, there's a lot on your plate, we know there's a lot of pressure here to go fast and to get on marketplace, et cetera, what would you say to them?
Dillon Woods (21:44):
I actually think it can go two different ways. It can go like it did here where maybe there's some hesitation because you recognize how complex the problem's going to be and you don't really have room for it on your engineering roadmap and so you wait or you look for alternatives, but it can also go the other way where you might actually underestimate the complexity of building this yourself and you might think, Hey, maybe if we just took one engineer and gave them a couple of weeks, this is something they could throw together. That's actually sometimes a worst way to go because we do end up taking over a lot of DIY types of solutions where they tried to build it really quick, but then it quickly became overwhelming where it wasn't any one engineer, but it was several engineers and it wasn't one or two weeks, but it was months and the ongoing maintenance and adding new features just became too much.
(22:33):
We see that often we help those customers by taking over from there, but by then it's really too late. You have a pretty big sunk investment, don't really want to get in that situation. What we aim to do is to make it so just like these guys have talked about, it's more of a business decision and not really an engineering decision about when the right time is to enter the marketplace. It's based on a lot of other factors like global expansion. Your engineering team can just keep rolling and keep working on the high priority items that they already have on their plate.
Patrick Riley (23:03):
Nick, from your perspective, has anything changed in regards to what Dylan said, whether it's your roadmap or with your priorities now that you've gotten into Marketplace, you've integrated with Tackle Your product and your Better Together stories evolved and you've tested it a few times, has anything significantly changed from your perspective on roadmap, integrations, et cetera now that you started down the marketplace route? Or is it really aligning with where you all were headed before?
Nick Rieniets (23:33):
In a roundabout sort of way? I think if you think macro, what's changed in the startup ecosystem over the last three or four years, everyone's trying to run leaner fundraising's a different equation. Valuations are significantly different than they were back in the 2120 twos. And so as a result you're looking for for any quick wins that you can get and you're looking for ways of moving faster with less people. Thinking back to our piece, that was a big thing for us is just by being able to partner with someone to do this piece of work enabled us to move into that space without disrupting the core focus of our engineering process. Now that we have marketplace, the biggest thing that I see is more in the way we engage with our customers and the way we think about global expansion. So most of our customers take us up on the opportunity of procuring through marketplace.
(24:28):
It's a win-win win. As Mark said before, they definitely see that value and I dunno what the number is, but it's the majority of our new customer acquisitions are procured through Marketplace and that's great for us and it's great for the customer and undoubtedly it's great for AWS as well when we think about global expansion, we are effectively AWS first if not AWS, only as we expand into Europe and other regions. And so that relationship is really underpinned by that presence in marketplace. And there are the kind of conversations that Mike has with the AWS team significantly benefit from the fact that we are present in marketplace. And so it's about growing and the speed of growth. I think that's really changed the way we think about operating and that also that does underpin revenue. If we can be forecasting to grow at a faster rate, it means that we can invest more back into product and we could do more things consecutively, whereas before we would've had to grow more slowly.
Patrick Riley (25:28):
That's a great use case. Thank you Mike. It's one thing to list on Marketplace, but as Nick just kind of helped tee up in my mind, it's another to build it out as a true kind of sales engine and partnership that you've done with AWS. How do you manage that relationship beyond just the listing? You hinted earlier about some of the activities that you're doing with AWS. Can you tell us some of the things that you all are doing today with them that keeps that engine going and why they're so engaged with you?
Mike Romans (25:59):
When I look at Marketplace, one of the key reasons we went there was to ensure the customers could buy where they wanted to buy, but also to help us with procurement, especially procurement as we're opening up new geographies, what we actually found is that was all true and that was great. What we actually found was just dealing with contracts, legal terms and conditions and things like that. Marketplace turned out to be a real big help in that area because any customers that are large customers of AWS that are used to procuring SaaS-based solutions through the marketplace and through private offers, we've actually been able to adhere to the SEMP, so the standard terms and conditions through the marketplace. So customers that are used to buying through that mechanism have already adhered to those terms and conditions. And so for us, we can accelerate deals and accelerate working with the legal teams by not putting a 40 plus page managed service agreement in front of 'em, but maybe having a couple of bullet points that need to just tweak that SEMP terms and condition is just a little bit.
(27:03):
And so that's actually helped us really accelerate a lot of the deals and proof of concepts and things like that that we've been working on. So I think that's been great. And the other fallback from that is as we're billing through the marketplace, our line item shows up on the monthly billing through AWS. Our accounts receivable folks aren't chasing after customers for payment center. The bills get paid on time every time without fail. And so that becomes real easy. And so when I pull that back and I take a look at those components and I say, okay, so how is that going to help me streamline and accelerate kind of a global expansion business? Well, you've got some key things there that can be really, really difficult if you don't have those in place and you can spend a lot of time and reps working on that type of stuff, ultimately chasing payments.
(27:49):
So this really helps us with new goss. And then I think the second part of your question is when we do look to go to market through the marketplace and through the marketplace team, AWS has a lot of programs in place where they will help their ISV partners either from a funding perspective or a marketing perspective or an events perspective or alignment perspective. You name it, there's various different vehicles that you can utilize as you work through the AWS ecosystem and they've now verticalized their entire Salesforce. So you have key vertical sales folks, solution architects, tams right across the accounts and the businesses. We align to the Edge services portfolio. So you have Global Edge teams, we align with the security portfolio, so you have global Perimeter protection teams like the WAF team and the SHIELD team and things like that. We align across business development teams, which are global, so we work with them.
(28:44):
So we're working with numerous different teams and those teams effectively are all in place to drive change through their customers and to ensure that the customers can be more efficient and effective in their business. And so everybody's pretty much aligned. And so if you can make the right connections within those teams, drive the right conversations both internally and externally and understand how everybody kind of co-sell effectively, then you can actually get to a point where you're going to have success. And we've seen success in North America, the motion might be a little bit different where we have a big team in place where we utilize a lot of the marketplace and AWS teams for acceleration of our business. And then like I said before, in other GOs where we don't have a big team in place, we may utilize them to really find us the right customers, but in my mind it's not just the right customers.
(29:36):
I can identify the right customers all over the world, but it's being able to identify the customer that has the right fit at the right time and the timing is key. And so the AWS broader ecosystem of reps and solution architects and tams, they understand the projects that are being worked on and how to make the customer successful. And so where we are, a key component of that, they will bring us in. So it's not me going, Hey, can you help us with this customer? It's them going, we have this opportunity that needs help to complete this part of the equation.
Patrick Riley (30:10):
That is a huge value add and a lot of ISVs, they just can't adopt it because there's somebody in legal who's stuck in this. We have to do these complex agreements and we have to have customer signatures and we can't adopt this new age technology. It's like talking to your grandparents and trying to get 'em to log onto wifi. It's amazing to see that you've adopted that because that not only is a time saver, which is money, but that volume and speed gives you time back for your reps to go work on other things. And in your case, it sounds like they're doing a lot of co-selling with the edge security, the various teams globally and regionally, which by the way they're doing on the back of your complimentary better together story with AWS building the relationships where they have those teams and then prioritizing the asks for AWS where there's less resources and it sounds like it's working well if they're bringing you in for specific use cases in the projects that are going on with their customers. So there's a lot there, but simplifying how you transact and then focusing on spending time with obviously a strong better together story, but focusing on spending time with the actual overlay teams and not just the broad PDMI think is a great strategy.
Mike Romans (31:30):
And the one thing that I would add, marketplace sits at the nucleus of all of that. If marketplace isn't there, none of that works full stop because everybody's aligned to that motion and the mechanism and where AWS drives their internal resources, where customers are driving their resources, where we get involved that literally is the nucleus. So if you don't have that, nothing else works. It's paramount.
Nick Rieniets (31:57):
I was going to say the added ingredient here, which makes Marketplace even more important for us is AWS actually have a competing product to us. So rather than see them as a competitor, we've chosen to really align and get closer to them and Marketplace effectively enables the sales team at AWS to see us as a peer to their own internal product. And so we're effectively there as the solution they can go to when they need something above and beyond what the core product offers. And that has really enabled us to counteract any of the perceived negativity of them competing.
Patrick Riley (32:36):
I'm glad you said that. That's a great statement because we get a ton of ISPs every day saying, well, I have a competing product so I'm not going to even spend any time here. But clearly you've figured it out on how to partner the right way because they're always going to have a competing product eventually they're going to have a competing product for everything. It's the nature of their business. They see something that's lucrative and that they can build out, and so they either buy somebody or build it and then it's very generalized and it satisfies 80% of the workloads, but there's a very niche as you kicked off this podcast, but there's a very niche and specific use cases that you're trying to handle and they're always going to need help in those cases. Alright, I want to talk a little bit about the backend.
(33:17):
We've talked a lot about how you all got set up in marketplace and you're better together. You've had some successes, tremendous successes in the marketplace thus far, but that's not the end of the story. At some point we've got billing and we've got rev rec and we've got all these processes in the backend. The biggest value isn't usually obvious when you get into marketplace. A lot of people have all these anecdotes on, we can go faster, we can do all these things, but how has Marketplace made billing easier? Mike, I'll ask you, can you talk to us a little bit about payments and financial operations? What does that look like today versus what did it look like before?
Mike Romans (33:57):
Yeah, and I touched on this a little bit earlier, but from the billing perspective previously it was you had to bill in US dollars regardless of where you were in the world and all of that. And now it's become a lot easier to build in local currency for customers. I'm not saying that's something that we do all the time. I think a lot of customers have become accustomed to being building US dollars, but there are some out there that would prefer to be built in the US currency, especially as we see global FX rates up and down like a yo-yo all the time based on just global geopolitical things that are happening. So having the ability to bill in local currency I think is definitely a value add and something that we do like to offer our customers, especially in these new territories that we're opening up.
(34:47):
But for us, it is the accounts receivable side that really makes a lot of sense. I see the emails between our accounts receivable teams and the customers. I look after chasing payments. I'll never see an email chasing payments through the marketplace. And so when you set it up in the marketplace, we utilize private offers all the time, and when you set it up and you set up the billing through there, the bills get paid on the day when they're supposed to be. And so I think our accounts receivable team looks at what we're doing on the go-to-market side and they're on board fully on board because it makes their job in their life slot easier. And so once again, it's just about managing the time of your staff, right? If they're not chasing after payments, they can be doing other things that are much more beneficial to our business and how we run. I think marketplace is key to just sure that we can streamline and be effective at the billing and at the payment receivables without really having to spend a lot of time on it.
Nick Rieniets (35:45):
I think the private offer aspect of the way we leverage Marketplace actually addresses one of our initial objections as well in that we have this perception that when you went to Marketplace, you had to publish your price list. And we knew that as the way we'd gone about selling directly, we knew that we weren't yet at a point where we had confidence in the price list. And so there was still a lot of case by case basis that we were working through pricing with customers. And so that was one of the inhibitors that we had early on was not realizing the value of private offers. We thought that we would be blocked from procuring through Marketplace by the inability to have a published price list. So private offers has been critical to us being able to do what we do through Marketplace.
Patrick Riley (36:35):
The fact that the marketplace, in this case, AWS's invoices to customers get paid is something I think a lot of people just overlook and they think, oh yeah, they just think it's AWS, it's a big name. So that makes sense. They're paying their bill. But underlying that, and I know it's obvious to us on this call, but it's not obvious to everybody listening, customers are building their infrastructure on AWS and that infrastructure bill is where these private offers are landing on. So when they buy something on Marketplace, it's adding to that infrastructure bill that's probably critical to their day-to-day operations and them running a business and that's why they're paying these bills and that's why that risk is less. It's not just that it's one cash pot for all their purchases, it's that their infrastructure's running on that same bill. So I think we know that, but a lot of folks listening just haven't quite grasped that the infrastructure is on that same bill and that's why customers are paying.
Mike Romans (37:35):
I also think the customers that we are dealing with typically would have a private pricing agreement in place with AWS, and so the more you're feeding through marketplace, the more leverage that the customers have to negotiate broader discounts when it comes to renewing A PPA, and so it all goes hand in hand and increases the same wheels. And so by putting us through the marketplace, the customer is actually able to benefit not just ourselves by getting a payment when we want, but the customers can really benefit by growing that footprint within inside AWS and negotiating bigger deals across that whole infrastructure spend. So it works together.
Patrick Riley (38:13):
Dylan, in a way, what we've been hearing and what people have been talking about a lot lately is AWS becoming the new global distributor. Well, how does that operate within the traditional world with resellers and distribution? We didn't really talk a lot about this, but I do want to touch on it. I think it's important, and I think a lot of the things you're working on today, a lot of the innovative new solutions that tackles building aligned to this. Can you talk to us a little bit about what's your take on that? Are marketplaces the new distributors or how does that work, especially in the lens of the PPAs as Mike mentioned, and owning infrastructure and companies being built on there? Is that where we're headed or is there some complimentary?
Dillon Woods (38:53):
There's been a bit of disruption there. Ultimately, there is still a clear need for traditional distributors and resellers. There's still good reasons that buyers want to procure through those types of partners, but the good news is that you don't have to choose one or the other. Just over the last year we've seen AWS and the other clouds really start to embrace distributors and resellers, and it's now possible for a distributor, for example, to own a third party listing of another product, and then they can sell it via AWS marketplace. They can even sell it through another channel partner through the marketplace. So you're seeing even more complex types of deals where there's maybe four or five different parties that are involved in the transaction, and it's all happening through one of these marketplaces. A lot of people don't know this, but some of those distributors and resellers are actually tackle customers because they have a lot of the same challenges that an ISV does when it comes to pushing through private offers or co-selling with a cloud provider, especially if they're thinking about multi-party co-selling where you might be co-selling with a distributor and a cloud provider at the exact same time.
(40:09):
Tackle helps make that really easy Channel partner private offers for example, or CPPO is one area where we really help ISVs increase their efficiency in creating those offers when there's multi-port involved. Another area would just be managing the listings. When a distributor owns your listing, you want to make sure that it's exactly the way you want it. All the marketing material, the pricing, the logos, everything and tackle can help you push those listings out to your distributors or even share data between all of these different parties. I think that there's some disruption, but I don't, don't agree that there'll be a wholesale replacement of those distributors and resellers.
Patrick Riley (40:49):
Okay. Mike, you're in an elevator at the next AWS summit or at Reinvent, and you've got another ISV there, an alliance leader who's trying to really get their leadership on board with marketplace, but they're kind of hitting a brick wall. What's your advice to them in the few floors you've got on getting their leadership team on board?
Mike Romans (41:10):
It's interesting you say that because I've had a few meetings with other ISVs with these exact same questions on how do we do it, what were the benefits, the same sort of things that we're talking about here today. What I tell each and every one of them is our story was we thought it was complicated and it would take a lot of time, but it doesn't have to be as long as you use tackle. If you want to do it on your own, it could be, but if you're just willing to bring in a third party to help you do that, it doesn't have to be and it won't be. So don't look at this with apprehension about what could go wrong. Look at this as if we do it right, it's going to go well, it's going to be quick, and then we can start being effective. And so how quick do you want to start scaling your revenue? How quick do you want to start getting listed on Marketplace? I think those go hand in hand.
Patrick Riley (42:04):
I love it. Thank you. And I like how you started it off with Tackle. We are the third party for you to partner with, right? There
Mike Romans (42:10):
You go.
Patrick Riley (42:11):
Okay. Nick, you've had quite the journey on marketplace. You're at the next secret meeting. What's your advice to fellow CTOs evaluating marketplace? I know your time is already extremely limited, focusing on a lot of other things, and marketplace seems like this go-to market thing that somebody else should deal with. What's your advice to another CTO?
Nick Rieniets (42:33):
CTOs and leadership teams across the board in the startup ecosystem are really have a heightened focused on productivity of the team. So moving faster. AI is the rocket fuel there, but as you look at different parts of your business and you look for ways of improving productivity, particularly with engineering teams, how do you enable the engineering team to directly impact revenue? I think partnering on and getting into marketplace is a super easy thing to do for us. It was truly something that reduced effort on our side and increased revenue and made the lives of our sales team, our partners, and our customers significantly easier. I think most CTOs would be in that position today of looking for ways of being able to tell a story of enhanced productivity.
Patrick Riley (43:25):
Thank you both. This was a very insightful podcast and a great session. I loved your lens from A CTO, Nick and Mike, obviously it was great to get your alliance's perspective on how you brought Nick that fold and what you all are doing now from a success standpoint. So thanks for sharing this Kasada journey with everybody. I hope that everybody listening really got some clear takeaways. Marketplace is easier with tackle, that's easy, but marketplace sped up time to value for Kasada. It wasn't as difficult as they had initially evaluated. Building a successful complimentary story and better together story and co-sell, were key to their successes and continuing to follow that up and realign with those sellers in their different markets as they continue to expand or some of the key takeaways and those standard contracts. I love that.
Mike Romans (44:18):
Look, thank you for having us. We had a great time here. It's been great speaking with everybody and a great way to start my morning.
Patrick Riley (44:26):
Awesome. Any last words, Dylan?
Dillon Woods (44:27):
No, thanks for letting me join today. It's fun to chime in. So thanks guys. Have a great day.
Patrick Riley (44:33):
Alright, well some of us are going to bed. The rest of you are going to work, so hope you have a great rest of your day or night and thanks everybody for listening. This was another episode of Unlock Cloud Go to Market. I'm Patrick Riley with Nick, Mike and Dylan, and we hope you have a great day. Thanks for listening to this episode of Unlock Cloud. Go to market. For more resources on executing your cloud go-to-market strategy. You can visit our website@tackle.io.