One On One Interviews

I first spoke with Rich Rao almost eight years ago when he was Director of Worldwide Sales and Operations for Google. And earlier this week I caught up with him for a LinkedIn Live conversation for the first time since then, but now Rich is Vice President, Small Business at Facebook. Rich shared with me how Facebook is working to help small businesses transition to doing more business online, the role AI can play in helping these businesses more efficiently and effectively connect with potential new customers, and how they are incorporating Instagram and WhatsApp into an integrated approach to community building.

I known the HubSpot co-founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, since July of 2006. And from a cheap row seat I’ve watched them take the company public, and grow it from just them to close to 4000 employees. And even though I think I know the story pretty well, and have spoken with both of them throughout the years for this series – the last time being four years ago with Dharmesh at the companies Inbound conference – I always learn something new about what they’ve done and how they’ve done it. That continued earlier this week when I had a LinkedIn Live conversation with Dharmesh. Now, Dharmesh doesn’t do a ton of these, so I was really glad he joined me and shared a number of things during our discussion. Below is an edited transcript of a portion of our conversation, where he talks about the early days of building the company, why the partnership with Brian has been so long lasting and successful, and why a guy who describes himself as an introverted tech geek decided to write a culture code that ha

We’re full-throttle into the holiday shopping season having blown past Black Friday and Cyber Monday – which by the way broke the single day online US shopping record with $10.84B spent, according to Adobe Analytics. But now that we’re closing in on the big day, and every minute counts towards making sure what you order makes it to where it needs to go in time for the big day, shoppers are turning to Old Faithful, aka Amazon.com, to make sure the magic happens. But a recent report on CNBC had me wondering if Amazon is ready. The title of the segment was “Amazon pushes holiday shoppers to pick up packages at stores amid potential delivery crunch.” But doesn’t that go against the main reason we all turn to Amazon in the first place? The convenience of having our stuff sent to our homes is what got us hooked, and the belief that we’ll get that stuff when we need, is what kept us hooked. But if that’s not the case, if we have to go and pick it up to make sure we get it, does that make Amazon less attractive

Recently I spoke with Keala Gaines, VP of Global Payment Services for eBay, to learn more about the impact modern payment technology is having on the customer experience, how having the payment tech on certain device types can help increase conversion opportunities, and how using the latest technology can also make things run more efficiently.

Earlier this week I spoke with Clark Twiddy, president Twiddy and Company, to hear how they used the SAS data analytics platform and Clark’s military background with intelligence to bring data science to his family-owned small business. And how that helped the company to “digitize their southern hospitality” and create new opportunities even in the heart of a pandemic that is crushing the travel and leisure industry at large.

I’ve known Mike Volpe for well over a decade, going back to his days as HubSpot’s first chief marketing officer. And I’ve spoken with him a few times over the years for the series, the last time being when he became the new CEO of Lola.com a little over two years ago. As a refresher, Lola.com is focused on making business travel easier for the travel manager and the traveler. Being that business, it’s not surprising that the pandemic has had a major negative impact on Lola. But even that would be an understatement as the company lost 97% of its revenue when travel basically came to a screeching halt overnight at the beginning of the Covid-19 shutdown. 97%! Knowing the industry that he was in, I remember checking in on Mike at the onset of the pandemic via email. He told me that I should check back in a couple of months because they were working on a plan. And roughly five months later, Lola just announced a new service offering called Lola Spend, that helps companies to track expenses and manage spe

The folks at Adobe recently put out their holiday season shopping forecast, based on one trillion visits to US retail websites. Yes, you read that right – one TRILLION visits to retail websites in the country. And some of the key predictions include: • Online holiday spend will surpass $189B (up 33% YoY) • Black Fri: $10.3B (39% YoY); Cyber Mon $12.7B (35% YoY) • 42% of all online shopping done from smartphones (up 55%) • Small retailers ($10-$50M): +107% daily revenue boost for season • 26% of consumers say knowing the election outcome will impact their holiday spend* These are just a few of the interesting data points in the forecast. And to get a little more insight into the numbers I spoke with Vivek Pandya, Adobe’s Senior Digital Insights Manager.

With the pandemic impacting so many aspects of our daily lives – both personally and professionally – I was curious to find out how it is effecting how things in the venture capital space. And last week I had the opportunity to speak with Scott Beechuk, Partner at Norwest Venture Partners. Norwest is a leading venture and growth equity investment firm managing more than $9.5 billion in capital, and Scott focuses on early- to late-stage investment opportunities in enterprise SaaS with a focus on companies building business applications taking advantage of human-assisted AI, advanced behavioral analytics, client-agnostic platforms and industry-specific solutions. Scott shared how his experience as an entrepreneur and later at Salesforce as SVP in product management has helped shape his approach to being a VC, and how COVID-19 has impacted how he operates.

Late last month Salesforce introduced Digital 360, combining their Marketing, Commerce, and Experience Clouds with some new components to help companies accelerate their digital transformation efforts with respect to customer engagement. And earlier this week I had the pleasure of having a LinkedIn Live conversation with Adam Blitzer, EVP & GM, Digital for Salesforce, to talk about how the coronavirus is affecting digital transformation efforts and causing foundational changes to companies will need to engage customers and prospects long after the pandemic is over.

Throughout the most of this year during the pandemic I’ve had the opportunity to speak with executives at a number of technology companies serving the small business community. And while there are a number of themes that have recurred with many vendors and across the months we’ve been dealing with COVID-19, the ones that have resonated with me have been the descriptions for small businesses I’ve heard over and over again: innovative, creative, resilient and inspired. And during a recent conversation with Melissa Schneider, GoDaddy’s VP Global Marketing Operations & Product Marketing, she went even further in detailing a couple of real life examples of just how resilient and inspired small businesses have been in order to survive and succeed in the midst of the coronavirus.

Earlier this week Oracle Netsuite, a platform integrating front and back office business applications, announced a flurry of innovations to help their customers adjust and succeed in the current environment, and beyond. And before the announcement I was able to catch up with Evan Goldberg, Founder and EVP of Oracle Netsuite, to learn more about the new developments, as well as to get his take on how his customers are adjusting eight months into the pandemic.

Earlier this week I cohosted a unique livestream event, alongside Small Business Trends publisher Anita Campbell, with Zoho CEO and cofounder Sridhar Vembu and Chief Evangelist Raju Vagesna. It was unique because we spent the vast majority of the hour plus event talking about everything but what the company is mostly known for – cranking out 50+ business apps that 60 million people use on a daily basis. It was also unique because it was the first time in about a decade that Sridhar and Raju sat down together (virtually in this case with Sridar being in India and Raju in Austin, TX) for a conversation like this. The end result of this discussion demands that another decade not pass before another one of these conversations take place. As bringing these two gentlemen together provided us a glimpse into what has made Zoho the success story it is, allowing us to go beyond the numbers to get a better understanding of the culture, strategy and heart of the company. In this hour long conversation they talk ab

Heading into National Small Business Week T-Mobile launched new rate plans for small businesses with Microsoft 365 included, allowing customers access to Office apps, cloud services, device management and advanced security. To learn more about the offering and how T-Mobile is working with Microsoft to help SMBs succeed in these unprecedented times, I recently spoke with Mike Katz, Executive Vice President of T-Mobile for Business. In addition to filling us in on the new offerings and the Microsoft partnership, Mike also shared how small businesses are using mobile and cloud technologies – and their own creativity and innovation – to transform their businesses to meet the changing needs of their customers. Mike also shares how 5G broadband wireless technology holds the promise of being a game changer to those businesses from a variety of perspectives.

The economic uncertainty brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has caused businesses of all sizes to layoff valuable employees. And many of those businesses still need to get things done in order to survive the current state of affairs. Especially things related to maintaining relationships with current customers, on top of finding ways to bring on new ones. Which is why I was really interested in talking with Susan Marshall, founder and CEO of freelance marketplace Torchlite. Torchlite specializes in placing CRM professionals certified in Salesforce products and services. Salesforce is also Torchlite’s biggest investor. During our LinkedIn Live conversation, Susan talks about how Torchlite differs from general freelancer marketplaces, what’s driving the growth of their marketplace, how the Torchlite model works from both freelancer and hiring business sides, how SMBs are tapping into the community of “flexperts”, and why they are so selective of who becomes a Torchlite freelancer.

Due to the ongoing impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the protests that originally broke out in response to the killing of George Floyd captured on video, corporations have pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to social justice causes, as well as to help struggling small businesses. Companies like Google, Facebook and Salesforce have committed grants and funds to increase entrepreneurial opportunities to people who traditionally have been shut out of billions of dollars represented by the top venture capital firms – Women, Black and Latinx entrepreneurs. And the company that Facebook and Salesforce chose to facilitate their SMB grant programs was Ureeka, a startup founded by Melissa Bradley, David Jakubowski and Rob Gatto, that provides mentorship and guidance through their platform to help their community membership of entrepreneurs’ get answers to their most pressing questions. I recently had a LinkedIn Live conversation with Ureeka cofounder Melissa Bradley to learn more about Ureeka’s mi

As we head into the Labor Day holiday weekend, many companies are focused on having their employees return to the workplace to accelerate efforts to get business back on track. To help companies safely bring employees back, Salesforce and CVS Health are teaming up to integrate Salesforce's Work.com workplace management platform, which allows for wellness monitoring and manual contract tracing, with CVS' Return Ready offering, which offers tracking and insights on COVID-19 testing. To learn more about the partnership and how it can make it easier for companies to bring employees back in ways that keep them safe while still in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I recently spoke with Bill Patterson - Salesforce EVP/GM of CRM Applications, and Kelly Jones - Division Head, National Accounts Business Unit at CVS Health.

As impressive as the 44.5% increase sounds, it pales in comparison to seeing it in graphical form. And, as Marketplace Pulse points out, that’s the fastest increase in over two decades, pushing e-commerce share of total retail to 16.1%. And for even more drama, if you take out auto sales and bar/restaurant revenue, online sales accounted for 22% of overall retail sales. More than one out of every five dollars…now that is some serious drama. Such rapid and dramatic changes in consumer behavior, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, is causing companies to react just as dramatically in order to stay connected with their customers. Which means the way they market and advertise is constantly changing, whether your selling to individual consumers or other businesses. To dig into how these seismic changes are impacting ad and marketing technology usage by companies of all sizes, I recently held a LinkedIn Live conversation with Robin Bordoli, CEO NextRoll, a provider of data platform and account based marketing (AB

This week Adobe released a US-based study of one thousand currently employed people who usually work in an office setting to see how they are working during the COVID-19 pandemic. To dig in more to the study I had an opportunity to speak with Patrick Knight, Sr. Deliverability Consultant at Adobe, to get more takeaways and insights from the study.

Last week Microsoft made it known publicly that it was interested in acquiring a stake in TikTok, a wildly popular video sharing platform that has been in the news a lot lately. But the Microsoft news seemed to set off a bunch of reports that other companies were also interested, including Apple and Twitter. In fact so many TikTok acquisition stories started cropping up my CRM Playaz co-host Paul Greenberg and I started exploring whether we should put a bid together… OK I was just kidding on that one. And yes, I didn’t need to say I was just kidding for you to know I was just kidding. But with all the TikTok acquisition talk going on, the Wall Street Journal published a report this week that found TikTok “skirted a privacy safeguard in Google’s Android operating system to collect unique identifiers from millions of mobile devices”. Given this news and the obvious repercussions it has for data privacy, what does this say about the dedication to customer experience if any company decides to buy TikTok kn

Robotics Process Automation. RPA. It’s something that companies are expected to spend over $2.4 billion on by 2022, up from $689 in 2018 according to Gartner. But what exactly is it? And where does it fit in when it comes to helping companies with their digital transformation efforts? Big questions I was able to ask during a recent LinkedIn Live conversation I had with Francis Carden, Vice President of Digital Automation and Robotics for Pega – a leading customer engagement and process automation platform provider.