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The Rise of PLG and the Next Gen of Marketing Automation - Dave Rigotti
Episode 17 • 28th January 2024 • RevOps FM • Justin Norris
00:00:00 00:40:02

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Historically, Product-led Growth (PLG) companies have been underserved. Marketing automation platforms, growth playbooks, reporting frameworks, and “best practices” have been largely designed around the needs of their sales-led cousins.

But PLG has had a renaissance in the past few years, and all that's changed. PLG now has its own communities, methodologies, frameworks, and tools.

Today's guest, Dave Rigotti, has quickly become one of the godfathers of PLG as a thought leader and co-founder of Inflection.io.

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About Today's Guest

Dave Rigotti is an entrepreneur and marketing leader dedicated to furthering the B2B marketing industry. Dave was VP of Marketing at Bizible (acquired by Marketo), Director of ABM at Adobe, and now is co-founder and marketing leader at Inflection.io.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/daverigotti/

Key Topics

  • [00:00] - Introduction
  • [01:39] - What is PLG?
  • [04:00] - Why PLG has gotten so popular recently
  • [05:50] - Reasons Dave focused his new company on PLG
  • [07:26] - Why sales-led software doesn’t scale for PLG
  • [07:40] - Playbooks of top PLG companies
  • [14:34] - Inflection’s data structure
  • [19:12] - Opportunities and challenges of PLG ops
  • [22:46] - Funnels, attribution, and PLG
  • [25:31] - Scoring in PLG
  • [26:47] - Top-down vs. bottom-up PLG motions
  • [29:34] - Dave’s journey from startup to enterprise to startup
  • [33:17] - Sustaining product agility as a startup
  • [35:01] - How it feels to see Bizible not evolve after acquisition
  • [36:06] - How to break the cycle of product stagnation as you scale

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Transcripts

Justin Norris:

You're listening to RebOps FM with Justin Norris.

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Well over 15 years ago, we saw the rise

of the freemium phenomenon in B2B SaaS.

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Companies like Box, MailChimp, and

FreshBooks went to market not just

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through an army of salespeople, But in

a bottom up way, they offered a free

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plan that users could get immediate

value from with the hope of converting

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a portion of those free users to

paying one somewhere down the road.

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So if we fast forward today, we have

the hot topic of product led growth,

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which in many ways sounds similar.

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And so what I want to look at really is

what the PLG phenomenon is all about.

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What does it mean?

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Who's doing it well?

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What are the best playbooks?

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And what does it mean

for Ops practitioners?

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Because if you're living in a PLG

world, it has some big implications

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for your data, your processes,

your tech stack, and a lot more.

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So, to help guide us through all

this in the world of PLG, we have

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today my friend Dave Rigotti.

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He is the co founder of Inflection.

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io.

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And host of the PLGTM conference.

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Dave and I go way back to when he

was the VP of Marketing at Bizzable.

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And we're going to talk about his

journey there as well as his experience

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creating a new marketing automation

platform specifically designed

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for the needs of PLG companies.

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Dave, so excited to have you here.

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Dave Rigotti: Hey, thanks

so much for having me.

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So nice to talk with you as always.

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And thanks for having me on the podcast.

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Really appreciate it.

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It's a

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Justin Norris: pleasure.

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Dave, why don't we start broad

with your take on what PLG is.

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I alluded to a few companies

that have been doing something at

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least PLG like for a long time.

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I know even back in 2010, I was working at

a product that was primarily free trial,

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transactional, pay with a credit card.

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So it's not necessarily that that

process is new, but we have seemed

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to enter into an area where we've

developed a new category for this.

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How do you think

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Dave Rigotti: about that?

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Yeah, I tend to have a

slightly broader view of PLG.

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That I think a lot of people do.

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So we always think of the Dropboxes,

the Airtables, the Canvas, the Figmas.

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All great examples and should be held on a

pedestal of shining stars of what PLG is.

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But I think that's just

one way to think about PLG.

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If you have a online signup for your

product, you don't have to talk with a

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salesperson to use the product, or you

don't have to have somebody handhold

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you through like an implementation.

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That can mean both companies

that have both sales led

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motions and product led motions.

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See this a lot, like a lot of product led

companies aren't these bottoms up, native,

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you can buy it for 15 a month products

where They're born as PLG and they're

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still seen as PLG and they're more like

Sendoso where for a long time Sendoso was

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a sales led company, you had to talk with

the salesperson, you got to go through an

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implementation process and that's still

true for their main product, but now they

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have a secondary product, Sendoso Express,

where you can just sign up for it online.

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If you were to ask somebody, is

Sendoso a product led company?

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The answer is usually no, but for me,

it's a yes, maybe it's not the main thing

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or the shining thing like you would have

at a, at a Slack or a Canva, but they

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have some kind of product led motion.

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And to me, if you're getting

money from online signups,

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you're a product led company.

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Justin Norris: Definitionally, we're

really looking at if you have a motion

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where, in the absence of interaction with

a person, you can interact directly with

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the product and conduct business with that

company in that way, you have at least

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a product led arm to what you're doing.

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Dave Rigotti: Bingo.

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You have a product led motion.

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Maybe you're not a product led company.

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Maybe that's a good way to think about it.

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But yes, I would agree with you there.

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Justin Norris: Aside from the fact that

marketers and analysts and BC firms like

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to take things that have already existed

in the brand them and make them a big

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thing, is there another reason that in

the past few years, all of a sudden,

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everyone's talking about product lead

has become the same big thing, given that

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this type of way of going to market has

existed for so many years before that?

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Dave Rigotti: I think it's just consumer

preferences of liking to try before

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you buy, or wanting just to dive right

in and have your own sales journey.

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Like all of the benefits that people

see from being product led, you're

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just feeling it more and more and more.

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And Hey, I'd rather try out the product

than trust what a salesperson is

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going to tell me as part of the sales

process, or I want to implement today,

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not in a month after we get through

a long, complex contract negotiation.

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I think that's such a huge part of it

is just the consumer preferences and.

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We're seeing VCs like to

back their pattern matchers.

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So they'll look at what's been successful.

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Let's go back that again.

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You've now had the first wave of product

led companies be uber successful.

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Go look at most of the best B2B SaaS

companies that are, that are public

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companies, they're product led.

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Now you have inputs to say, okay, great.

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We should go back more

product led businesses.

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Like we should give more

seed rounds, more A rounds.

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So I think that's been a part of it

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Justin Norris: for sure.

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I hadn't thought of it this way before,

but you also talked about the idea of

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trust and I have seen many marketing ops

or rev ops professionals lately and I feel

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this way myself say, you know, I'm just

not going to buy a product that I can't

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touch and see first because they have

been burned so many times by You know,

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no matter how much due diligence you do,

you never know exactly how the product

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is going to work until you're in it.

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And I think that's so important now.

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Dave Rigotti: We've all been burned.

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We've been around too long.

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You and me.

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Justin Norris: Yeah.

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No trust.

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Cynical.

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You've probably have expressed

this to some degree in what you

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just said, but is that why you

decided to focus your energies here?

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You know, we'll talk a little bit

about inflection and your journey

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there, but What made you really laser

in on this way of going to market?

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Dave Rigotti: The reason we serve the

product led industry is because it's

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a different way of going to market.

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Yet most of the solutions for go to

market teams at product led companies

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were all built for the sales led motion.

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So we'll talk more about Marketo.

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But it's just a good example.

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Product led businesses that they CRM

is no longer the center of the universe

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or the source of truth of data.

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Not everything's in there anymore.

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You have tons of data in a data warehouse.

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You have data that you're collecting

about users in your product, what

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features they've used, what buttons

they've clicked or whatever that you

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want to go orchestrate journeys around.

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So for us, we started with it because.

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There's a lot of data that

product led companies have.

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They want to go do something with,

they haven't been able to before.

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It's really difficult for them.

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So we've created our product to

make that much easier for them.

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Justin Norris: 12 years ago, I was

at a company called clear fit was

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product led and transactional to

boot, and we were using Marketo and

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it was super cool for a lot of the

things we were doing, but all of the.

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Playbooks, all of the ways of thinking

around it, like the life cycle,

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the scoring, the reporting, none of

it worked for what we were doing.

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It was all based on enterprise sales

motions, that was the type of company

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that Marketo primarily served.

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There's really feeling in a lot of ways,

like square peg, round hole for me.

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Dave Rigotti: There's all that data

that's really hard to bring in.

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Also, if you have 50 million users,

you can't put that in Marketo.

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It won't work.

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Even if you did, the pricing

and packaging doesn't make

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sense and all this other stuff.

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So it was a good focus for us.

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Justin Norris: So I imagine there's a

lot of companies that are feeling like

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breath of fresh air, signing up with

inflection and feeling like, Whoa,

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like a tool that's actually designed

for the way I want to go to market.

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And so from observing that customer

base, I'd love to just get a

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little bit tactical, sign up for

free trials, send a welcome email.

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There's that sort of standard thing,

but going a little bit deeper.

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What are the playbooks of top

PLG companies today in your

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Dave Rigotti: experience?

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First of all, there's so

much on the data side.

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So I talked about Salesforce already.

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Some Ops pros have admin access

in Salesforce, not always, but

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have influence over the data.

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Set up in Salesforce, what data's

in there, what fields are on what

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objects and can go influence that.

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A lot of the times now you're working

with data teams or developers or.

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I teen some companies on schemas and

snowflake and what data's in snowflake.

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And how often is that data being

put into the data warehouse that

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we want to go do something with?

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If it's dumped in every night,

that's probably way too long.

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To go trigger a welcome email, or if

you're trying to do something like

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a, an upsell campaign, if somebody's

interact with a feature and you want

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to go send them an email about, I

don't know, a more premium version,

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or it's a good signal that they're

ready for the enterprise plan, but that

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feature isn't tagged in the product

to fire an event, you're already lost.

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You need to go work with the teams on

that super tactically, there's like a

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whole set of things around working with.

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Data teams, engineering teams,

learning product events,

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like understanding schemas.

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That is brand new to most

Mops Pros and Rev Ops folks.

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So once you get over that, the

campaigns that we see almost everyone

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start with is an onboarding campaign.

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And I know you were like, oh, like, yeah,

yeah, yeah, the trial, nurture, whatever.

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Yes, but it's where everyone starts

because everyone's got a 24 hour drip

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nurture for their welcome sequence.

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And then if you can get access

to that product data, you

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can make it way more smart.

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So if it's time to send them

email, a step number three, and

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they've already done it, skip it.

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Tell them about step number four, or

if it's time for seven or four and

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they haven't done step number three.

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Don't tell them to do yet another thing.

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Send them a reminder to

do step number three.

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It's totally block and tackle and it

sounds so boring, but we've seen customers

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get 20 percent boost in product adoption

from doing that, and that just has huge

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impacts on Renewals and churn and NRR,

and you now have an engaged customer

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or an adopted customer that you can

use for upsells later down the road.

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So I think it's, it sounds boring almost,

but it's such a good thing to go do.

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The

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Justin Norris: key differentiator that

you mentioned is that a lot of the

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time it is just 24 hour wait, it's kind

of just a canned email wait type of

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thing versus something that's smart.

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And I was curious just with these emails,

are you seeing most people send them?

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From a marketing persona,

like, Hey, it's Acme.

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We're emailing you.

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Is it a sock puppeted

CS or sales type person?

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Like, Hi, it's Dave from inflection.

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I'm emailing you.

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Who's the sending persona?

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Dave Rigotti: It's similar

to a content download.

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You have a generic drip that goes out

or like a similar thing to everyone.

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And then you overlay that with product

specialists, either somebody that

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is assigned to them to help them.

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Onboard the product or that's frankly a

salesperson trying to get them to upsell

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or make sure they get into the right tier.

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So there's usually two sequences

running like a, an onboarding

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one and then a person based one

just to the, the right folks.

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Just like you would have it

on content download, like you

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would have a salesperson just

follow up with good folks.

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Justin Norris: Makes sense.

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Do you have your customers sending the

person based one from inflection to

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or are they using like a sales loft

or an outreach to do that overlay?

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We see

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Dave Rigotti: both.

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You can do that without out of inflection.

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You can do tokens in the send

from reply to stuff like that.

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So you could pull from Salesforce

and say the account owner.

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But yeah, we see tools like a sales

loft and outreach and in there's

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even tools specific around this for.

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Like this product and sales category,

like a pocus or an end game.

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We see all of it.

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Justin Norris: That's interesting.

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I had no idea about that.

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You alluded to like triggered

upsell campaigns, which

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obviously makes a lot of sense.

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Is that usually just when people

start poking around and pushing

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at the things that are locked?

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Or what are the types of triggers that

you find are most indicative of a person

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being ready to go to the next level?

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Dave Rigotti: We see locked features a

lot, like, hey, looks like you tried to

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set up SSO, that's not a part of your

plan, it's part of the enterprise plan,

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click your, here's my account, let's talk

about upgrading to the enterprise plan.

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Certainly emails like that, um,

even emails like abandoned cart.

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So like you go, You've clicked

upgrade, but that was all you did.

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And now you get an email, you know,

four hours later, the next day that

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says, Hey, you started an upgrade, but

you didn't finish, or you started out

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a user where you didn't finish, like

click here to finish, and we're seeing

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marketing teams deploy those emails.

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And they're easy two hours to set up.

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And they're generating six figures in ARR.

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And they'll send, you

know, 50 emails a month.

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It's probably the highest

ROI emails I've ever seen.

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And that's

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Justin Norris: six figures of incremental

ARR, like on top of whatever they were

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doing before that they can attribute.

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Yeah.

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So what's the psychology

there, do you wonder?

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Is it just, oh, I was looking at

it, maybe I will, maybe I won't.

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But it's a low enough threshold

that just by reaching out to that

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person, you can help them cross that

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Dave Rigotti: divide?

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I don't know, man.

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It works.

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Like, that's all I know.

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I don't know why B2C companies do it, but

everyone does it, and it seems to work.

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So

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Justin Norris: B2C, it's,

it's the impulse, like, yeah,

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okay, you know, I can, I will.

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And I suppose if it's a low,

a low enough cost purchase,

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it can work the same way here.

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Dave Rigotti: The other email we see

a lot, Justin, is automated recaps.

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So like Spotify, everyone talks

about Spotify and Wrapped every year.

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You know, you get an email that has all

of the songs you listen to, your top

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songs, like some fun stats about you.

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We're seeing B2B SaaS companies roll

this out to all of their users every

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month, or even I've seen once a week.

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That it's just like, here's what

you've done in the last week.

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And it's meant to essentially

remind the user all the value that

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they're getting out of your product.

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Or another way to think about

it is all the success that

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they're having with your product.

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And these emails have, they're very

high volume and they have very high

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open rates and high engagement rates.

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So it's always a good opportunity to kind

of get in front of the users with your

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brand and the value that you're bringing.

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You can always push other messages

like, Hey, you're like, you

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were super successful last week.

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I'll leave a G2 review.

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And even added people

into those emails that.

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Maybe isn't even a user like an executive.

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So they're almost like automated

mini email based QBRs that are

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different for every single user,

at least every single account.

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Justin Norris: That's a great example

of, you know, it seems maybe like

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a simple email on the surface, but

the level of data that's required to

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create that would be really difficult.

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It would require a lot of, you know,

engineering support to do it using a

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traditional marketing automation platform.

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How does that work in your platform?

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Do you Do the roll up of

the stats in platform?

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Are they doing those calculations outside

and just pushing them in to inflection?

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Dave Rigotti: It's all in our product.

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You can think certainly fields

to inflection, but you can also

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think like tables or like if

you connect us into segment.

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For example, you don't have to go

in inflection and create fields for

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every segment event in inflection.

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We just bring them all in so we can ingest

column data like data from Salesforce.

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Like here's the columns on the

contact, but also stream data.

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Yeah.

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Like here's the stream of events

this person's had via like a segment

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integration or a or snowflake integration

Without having to go set that up and

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then for like manipulating the data It's

essentially Excel built into the product

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so you can do like count ifs and you can

do you can summarize field you can do

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some pretty complicated functions right

in the product without having to like

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You know, munch the data offline and re

upload it and try to stuff it in a field.

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That's

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Justin Norris: huge.

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Let's, well, let's, let's go into

the data topic in a little bit more

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detail because we've, we're there.

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So you've alluded a few times to,

like, the challenges and, and some of

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the challenges that occur to me, or at

least that I've personally experienced.

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There's the data structure.

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Can the tool accommodate the

structure of the data that you have?

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There's latency.

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So like how close are you

to the source of the data?

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And if you're pulling from a

warehouse and you've got, you know,

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at least this 24 hour leg, how

much volume can it accommodate?

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What's the best practice way?

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I guess that you're seeing companies use.

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Yeah,

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Dave Rigotti: the best practice is

to go to their product data source.

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If you can, so whatever is

actually tracking the product

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data, it's like not Snowflake.

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A great practice would be if you're using

like Segment, for example, to like track

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all the product events, and I use Segment

a lot because it's the most popular one,

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would be to like for us, would be to

connect in Segment, connect in Salesforce.

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Now we essentially have a, you know, real

time stream into Segment Data and then

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a five minute stream into Salesforce.

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So if you wanted to kick off an

email when somebody signs up for

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their product, it happens right away.

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And we just store all of the

Segment Data in our product.

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So you don't have, you essentially bypass

like a data warehouse in that case.

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So that's almost always preferred

because it cuts out like a whole data

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team and a whole long set of questions

about the frequency of data getting into

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like a snowflake or a data warehouse.

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Are all the events getting in there?

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Are they stored in a way that even makes

sense that you could do something with?

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Data teams change formats and don't

tell marketing and I don't see

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just like a whole set of things.

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Justin Norris: So you have basically

real time streaming and you're

343

:

getting it in the format that

it's instrumented in the product.

344

:

Yeah.

345

:

Do you have to pre configure inflection

instance to like match that scheme or

346

:

does it just sort of absorb what's,

what's coming in in a dynamic way?

347

:

To your point about like the

product team adds a new event.

348

:

Does it break your org

or how does it work?

349

:

We're

350

:

Dave Rigotti: already pre formatted

for standard CDPs or product tracking.

351

:

So like segment, like

you just connect it and.

352

:

A minute later, you have all

the events in Inflection.

353

:

When a product team adds a new event,

it just shows up in Inflection.

354

:

There's a whole little editor if you

wanted to, like, change the names of it

355

:

to make it more friendly, like, or move.

356

:

Underscore, underscore,

whatever, whatever, whatever.

357

:

Like make it marketer friendly.

358

:

You can do that, but you don't need to.

359

:

And so it's just available right

there and all new events will

360

:

get shown up for data warehouse.

361

:

You do just cause everyone has a

little bit of different setup and

362

:

their data warehouse usually takes

like an hour or two configuration

363

:

to go through and essentially map.

364

:

Inflection mostly is the work standard

fields and inflection to those fields in

365

:

the day warehouse, like which field is

the first name, which field is the email

366

:

that you want us to use less standard or a

company could decide it's actually not the

367

:

field in the data in a day warehouse name.

368

:

Email could be could be something

else like and so they need to tell

369

:

us and usually takes a couple hours.

370

:

And if

371

:

Justin Norris: a company is using

like Snowplow or a different event

372

:

tracker, are you agnostic or do

they need a specific integration for

373

:

Dave Rigotti: each one?

374

:

Depends.

375

:

Like, we don't have a direct connection

into Snowplow, so we'd say like, great,

376

:

like, go get that into Snowflake or

Redshift or BigQuery or whatever, and

377

:

then we'll connect to the data warehouse.

378

:

You know, like a segment we

have a direct connection to.

379

:

So it, it kind of depends right now, and

it's, we're adding new ones all the time.

380

:

Justin Norris: That makes sense.

381

:

So we've sort of moved into the PLG ops

considerations from my point of view,

382

:

and one of the things, I wonder if you

agree with this, I actually found this

383

:

way of doing ops a lot more fun, because

I'm not saying more fun, but just there

384

:

was a dimension of fun that you don't

always get to have, maybe because you

385

:

don't have that sales team, BDR team that

you need to work through, you're having

386

:

really direct access To the end user at

all these different stages and can use

387

:

automation really to its full extent and

capability to agree with that statement

388

:

Dave Rigotti: from a mops perspective.

389

:

P.

390

:

l.

391

:

g.

392

:

presents an opportunity and a

challenge i've seen mops pros at p.

393

:

l.

394

:

g.

395

:

companies.

396

:

Um, no, they're no longer in tech.

397

:

They were at a PLG company last

,:

398

:

They left tech.

399

:

I think one starting a coffee shop.

400

:

Another one is just left marketing

and is doing something else.

401

:

It burnt them out.

402

:

Extreme burnt them out.

403

:

You and I've been around for a while.

404

:

I never saw that before.

405

:

And so challenge and opportunity, the

challenge is like you very quickly

406

:

have to become an expert on segment

data warehouses and structures and

407

:

like interacting with data teams and

engineers and product managers and this

408

:

like whole tier of stakeholders and

dependencies that you never had before,

409

:

used to have most of the keys to the

kingdom and you've got control and you

410

:

would know it now that's not the case.

411

:

And that leads to a lot of burnout.

412

:

It's also, I think, an opportunity

for mops to step up and be a leader

413

:

in the marketing organization.

414

:

I hear a lot of rev ops mops people

complain about being ticket takers

415

:

and going to the rhythm on campaigns.

416

:

You now have an opportunity where

nobody in marketing has ever

417

:

thought about this stuff before.

418

:

And you have an opportunity to

kind of up level and grow in a

419

:

career as a professional and,

you know, or as a team leader.

420

:

And this always happens on

every new big tech wave.

421

:

It's how I got my career started.

422

:

I was young and I got started in social

media, right, as social media was

423

:

happening and became like the little

mini expert there and it, it helps.

424

:

Um, it definitely helps a lot.

425

:

So I think there's a challenge

and an opportunity and,

426

:

uh, but it's a lot of work.

427

:

That

428

:

Justin Norris: makes sense.

429

:

I think, I mean, I think part of the

opportunity piece and I certainly

430

:

wouldn't downplay the challenge either.

431

:

You're right.

432

:

But part of the opportunity piece is

it gives You, some of the immediacy

433

:

of direct response, you know, where

versus like, all right, I sent this

434

:

email and then maybe they talked to

sales and then, you know, using some

435

:

complicated attribution algorithm

that most people don't believe in.

436

:

I'm going to figure out that I had some

impact versus like I did this thing and

437

:

somebody gave me their credit card number.

438

:

I have cash on the barrel now.

439

:

Like that's a huge

440

:

Dave Rigotti: difference.

441

:

100%.

442

:

I'd say One of the reasons why

ProductLed is so successful is

443

:

because you can expand customers.

444

:

So if you go look at NRR of companies,

they're making more from their

445

:

existing customers a year later.

446

:

Like, churn doesn't

affect them, basically.

447

:

They're growing without having

to even acquire new customers.

448

:

And it's because you can, like, go expand.

449

:

They have usage based metrics

to kind of go expand customers.

450

:

That means, like, you can

send a couple of emails.

451

:

Run a couple of campaigns

and like materially affect

452

:

your business in a great way.

453

:

You can make a lot of money from

some simple email campaigns, which

454

:

if your company's not done a lot

of before, dude, those are some

455

:

huge wins that generate revenue and

pipeline like now, which is cool.

456

:

Justin Norris: That's super empowering.

457

:

To that point, I mentioned earlier

that the normal funnel, you know,

458

:

didn't really work for me when I

was in PLG, like MQL, SQL, like it

459

:

just doesn't compute, doesn't apply.

460

:

I'm curious, how do you

think about the PLG funnel?

461

:

Because I think funnels are still

generally important and useful as a model.

462

:

How do you think about it conceptually?

463

:

And then I'm also curious, how

is it actually instrumented?

464

:

What tools do you give marketers

to instrument it inside Inflection?

465

:

Yeah,

466

:

Dave Rigotti: it's a good question.

467

:

And I don't know if this

is totally answered yet.

468

:

I think we're all still figuring it out.

469

:

I'd say like you said funnels, which I

think is the right way to think about it.

470

:

Because there's maybe you

don't want to do a trial.

471

:

You just want to talk to a salesperson,

your fortune 500 customer, you wouldn't

472

:

be able to sign up online anyways.

473

:

So that is the sales led funnel.

474

:

Then there's somebody who signs up.

475

:

Yeah.

476

:

And self service and self expanse.

477

:

That's like pure PLG.

478

:

Then there's PLG to sales led.

479

:

So they sign up, they use your product

and, um, now they're ready for the

480

:

enterprise plan and you need to go like

get them into the sales funnel, even

481

:

though they're existing customer, you

know, so really an expansion play, but

482

:

it's like getting to a sales led funnel.

483

:

I don't think it's answered exactly what

all those look like and how they work.

484

:

A huge topic.

485

:

And one that we'll have a

session on at PLG TM is.

486

:

It's like attribution for all of that,

like the attribution like super breaks

487

:

at PLG companies for, for these reasons,

like people come in and out of different

488

:

funnels for inflection, specifically, we

have a cool canvas builder, like a journey

489

:

builder, and you can have certainly all

kinds of branching and I don't want to

490

:

get into like a product pitch, but you can

have on one canvas, both the journeys for

491

:

sales lad PLG that can come back in, in

between, And that's important because a

492

:

lot of especially big PLG companies today

have to have one system for their sales

493

:

led motion like a marketo and then another

system for their product led motion or

494

:

communicating with their users like a

like a brazier interval with inflection.

495

:

You could do both scenarios out of one

products and have them in one canvas and

496

:

a user can move in between and they can.

497

:

Kind of build and support each

other like the different motions.

498

:

You don't need two tools to do one thing.

499

:

So just

500

:

Justin Norris: spit balling on this notion

a little bit within the data structure.

501

:

Would it make sense?

502

:

Like instead of one life cycle field,

maybe you have to, like, you've got

503

:

like their product life cycle stage

and then maybe like their sales life

504

:

cycle stage and maybe a user would go

to the end of the product life cycle

505

:

and never progress in the sales or

maybe they would like incrementally

506

:

move up in both or vice versa.

507

:

Is that a way to think about it?

508

:

Dave Rigotti: Yeah, there's like sales

stages and then product adoption stages.

509

:

Like, where are you in the

product adoption curve?

510

:

Justin Norris: I was going to ask this

before, but just out of curiosity,

511

:

is scoring still a relevant concept?

512

:

You know, like scoring their product

interests and getting them to a

513

:

product specialist, let's say.

514

:

Dave Rigotti: Definitely for the sales

led motion, even for PLG to sales

515

:

led motion, we see scoring a lot.

516

:

Maybe it's a little bit different.

517

:

It's kind of more like customer Tam.

518

:

All right.

519

:

This customer is looking to learn

more about our enterprise tier,

520

:

but they're a five person company

and their ability to pay as low.

521

:

You should certainly treat that company

differently from Microsoft looking to

522

:

learn more about your enterprise tier.

523

:

So I like to think about it as

like expansion Tam because both

524

:

of those companies might be

paying you 1, 000 a month today.

525

:

But one customer has ability

to pay a thousand times more

526

:

and another one does not.

527

:

So how do you segment that to

focus your expansion team or your

528

:

sales team on the right accounts?

529

:

I think scoring is really relevant.

530

:

It gets even more relevant if you

have product specialists jumping

531

:

on signups, where you might have a

million signups a month, and you might

532

:

have a team that's helping people

get started with their trial or.

533

:

You know, on board appropriately,

you know, like a 10 person

534

:

team, like they have to focus.

535

:

And so how do you figure that out?

536

:

You need scoring.

537

:

Justin Norris: So going a bit deeper into

that, the way I was thinking about this

538

:

is that you can have PLG where it really

just is, I sell a product that doesn't

539

:

require sales and it's going to just

be product led and you can upgrade it.

540

:

Maybe it'll be a few hundred dollars

a month, but that's where it is.

541

:

And then you have PLG where it

really is more just a bottom up

542

:

way of penetrating an enterprise

like, yeah, I'll have a few people.

543

:

Signing up from different apartments

and we'll see that and then we'll

544

:

kind of send sales in on top of that.

545

:

And that seems to create the possibility.

546

:

Well, there's a lot more

challenges in coordination.

547

:

We have those two motions running

side by side at my current company,

548

:

360 Learning, and I see that.

549

:

And your product specialist and your sales

rep may be stepping on each other's toes.

550

:

How have you seen people

try to solve those problems?

551

:

Dave Rigotti: It's definitely a problem.

552

:

Not different, I think, in a lot of

cases from like a content download

553

:

where you have an SDR or an AE or

marketing or invites to events, like,

554

:

it's never perfectly coordinated.

555

:

I'm also a fan of it, like, not

being perfectly coordinated.

556

:

Certainly, you couldn't send

different pricing to the same person.

557

:

You can't do that.

558

:

But I've always been a fan of not

being too coordinated, almost not

559

:

having the perfect attribution model.

560

:

Be a beautiful mind and just go

crazy trying to coordinate it all.

561

:

But there should be some

level of coordination.

562

:

I also always like, just like a content

download, you might have somebody,

563

:

the automatic nurturing from like a

marketing automation, and then like

564

:

somebody coming in over the top.

565

:

Those are never coordinated, but

they're slightly different messages,

566

:

and they serve different purposes.

567

:

So, I like it being not

perfectly coordinated.

568

:

I also like it being different.

569

:

Somebody helping you set up the

product, that is also selling

570

:

you, gets dicey real fast.

571

:

They're almost always just going to

go into figuring out very quickly, is

572

:

this person going to upgrade or not?

573

:

And I'm only going to focus on the

ones that are going to upgrade.

574

:

And I'm only going to do the bare

minimum that I need to get an upgrade.

575

:

The incentives aren't perfectly aligned.

576

:

Justin Norris: I think you touched on

an interesting thing there because the

577

:

user experience with a PLG company, I

feel like it tends to be warm and fuzzy.

578

:

I mean, that's anecdotal and

maybe just personal, but.

579

:

Because those specialists are generally

more just trying to help you succeed

580

:

with something that you're doing, rather

than trying to just sell you something.

581

:

And you just feel like you have

an overall like more positive

582

:

sentiment towards those companies.

583

:

I know that's the feeling that

we tried to create when we were

584

:

doing this as a PLG company.

585

:

Dave Rigotti: It's like if you've ever

walked into like a cell phone store,

586

:

like you know that person that's

helping you out with your phone is

587

:

also the sales person and everything

they say and just like, is this really

588

:

what's Right for me, or are they

trying to get me to spend more money?

589

:

So let's talk a

590

:

Justin Norris: little

about your journey Dave.

591

:

I think the first time we actually

interacted we were on a webinar together

592

:

I want to say it was like 2015 you were

at Bizable And then you had this amazing

593

:

journey with visible, you know, the

fish ate the little fish and then the

594

:

bigger fish ate the, you know, market

about visible and adobe about marketo.

595

:

She ended up running like enterprise and

enterprise motion at marketo and then

596

:

you like spun off and are creating a next

marketo walk us through that a little bit.

597

:

Dave Rigotti: Yeah, i started my

career, i went to university, i

598

:

studied marketing entrepreneurship.

599

:

I've always loved startups,

but I got recruited.

600

:

I did an internship at Microsoft and

I got recruited out of college to join

601

:

Microsoft, which was too hard to pass up.

602

:

And so that took me to Seattle for and

I just moved to New York a year ago.

603

:

So lived in Seattle for 13 years.

604

:

And worked at Microsoft for

almost five years on Bing.

605

:

Kind of right as Bing launched.

606

:

Both on the consumer marketing side,

and then I switched to Bing ads.

607

:

And I was doing marketing for Bing ads.

608

:

And found my love.

609

:

I was like, okay, I really love marketing.

610

:

I really love B2B marketing.

611

:

But I love startups.

612

:

So how do I get to a startup?

613

:

And I just kind of cold

applied to Visible.

614

:

It was Visible at that time.

615

:

As the first marketing

hire probably five or six.

616

:

And Visible was just a tool to

connect AdWords into Salesforce.

617

:

That was like all I could do.

618

:

You couldn't use it for attribution.

619

:

It wasn't an attribution product yet.

620

:

And so just got lucky with that.

621

:

Worked with some great people

who I'm still working with today.

622

:

A lot of the ex Visible co founders

and ex Visible crew are co founders.

623

:

I love

624

:

Justin Norris: that you

guys have done that.

625

:

Dave Rigotti: Yeah, we've worked

together for over 10 years.

626

:

It's a long time.

627

:

If you find great people that you

like to work with and push you and

628

:

support you, let's just keep it going.

629

:

So anyways, Works at Bizzable, we grew

that business great, sold to Marketo in

630

:

2018, which was a great exit for everyone.

631

:

And then I had to find a new job because

I was running Marketing at Bizzable.

632

:

There's no more Bizzable.

633

:

It's a product of Marketo.

634

:

So I started running Enterprise

Demand Generation and Account

635

:

Based Marketing at Marketo.

636

:

Six months later, we got gobbled up by

Adobe and so for another two years, I

637

:

ran basically the same role at Adobe, but

I took on Increasingly larger portfolio

638

:

of products that I was supporting

639

:

Justin Norris: from being in a

small startup and visible is like

640

:

an amazing group of people, but

you're never more than 50 or 60.

641

:

Maybe when you're required,

maybe a bit bigger.

642

:

120 120.

643

:

Okay, so bigger than I thought,

but still, you know, smallish

644

:

to 10, 000 person behemoth.

645

:

And I know what it's like

to work inside Adobe.

646

:

It's a great company, but

it's very different than the

647

:

way the visible operated.

648

:

Was that a shock to the system for you?

649

:

Dave Rigotti: It was a shock in all the

classic reasons of startups first big

650

:

companies, like it moves slower, you

see operating marketing opportunities,

651

:

but they're not big enough opportunities

for the business to care about.

652

:

So you just don't do them.

653

:

Things like that would

bother me a little bit.

654

:

A lot of the visible team is still there.

655

:

So for so many people, this

is five years later, it's been

656

:

awesome for their careers.

657

:

They're getting promoted.

658

:

They're getting stock grants.

659

:

They're making way more money

than they ever did at a startup.

660

:

So, overall on a whole, it was

awesome for so many people.

661

:

And I liked it too for a while.

662

:

It was a good place to Chill

out a little bit, make a little

663

:

bit more money, honestly.

664

:

And then I was there when the pandemic

started, I was still at Adobe and Adobe

665

:

is very early in supporting families.

666

:

It was like one of the first companies

to shut down the offices and was very

667

:

like accommodating to an employees,

which was nice for a while, but you

668

:

know, I wanted to go do something and.

669

:

Aaron was on a long sabbatical

after he left Marketo and Adobe and

670

:

got back after a year sabbatical.

671

:

Hey, let's team up.

672

:

Made sense to go at it again.

673

:

The marketing

674

:

Justin Norris: automation category,

when I first looked at it, you

675

:

know, there was a lot of players

that like don't exist anymore.

676

:

There's like Manticore and Silverpot.

677

:

Like, it was just like it was one of

those wide open categories it felt like,

678

:

and then it really consolidated down.

679

:

I hadn't really seen a new player.

680

:

For a while, at least until inflection

emerged for me, and it's, I'll have to

681

:

just say it's been so much fun seeing

you on LinkedIn, getting your emails,

682

:

the speed with which new features

come out, the agility, the feeling of

683

:

responsiveness to the market, the feeling

of like, oh, this is a company that's

684

:

just like got energy, it's moving.

685

:

It reminded me of the early days of

Marketo when like Sheryl Chavez would

686

:

send you an email every three or four

weeks and just like new features.

687

:

It's like it's Christmas every month.

688

:

It's amazing.

689

:

How are you finding that?

690

:

How do you think about what you're doing?

691

:

I'm asking you three questions

at one, but how is it like

692

:

being able to roll stuff out so

693

:

Dave Rigotti: quickly?

694

:

The second time around with

startups are always you make

695

:

so many different decisions.

696

:

You have so much benefit of hindsight.

697

:

So when we sold visible, I think

we never got above 10 engineers.

698

:

We have probably 25 engineers

and we're a 30 person company.

699

:

So 25 out of 30 employees

roughly are engineers.

700

:

Abyssal was like 10 out of 120.

701

:

Part of it is just way more

investment in product and feature

702

:

development and product development.

703

:

And it's the nature of market

animation, like you have a lot of

704

:

features you need to go build and

you need velocity of building that.

705

:

That's been a big thing for

us is investing way more there

706

:

than we did last time around.

707

:

We're always like, let's go

build a great product at Visible.

708

:

I still believe it's a great product

all these years after leaving.

709

:

And so we're going to do that here at

Inflection, and we continue to do so,

710

:

and just have a lot more engineers.

711

:

Justin Norris: Now, you mentioned,

uh, Bizable, and for the record of

712

:

listeners, like, I used Bizable as early

as:

713

:

like, I love Bizable, huge fan of it.

714

:

Does it hurt a little bit to see

it get acquired and then kind of

715

:

not change anymore, and to see

newer competitors enter the market

716

:

and come up on top of it a little

717

:

Dave Rigotti: bit?

718

:

Not at all.

719

:

Not at all.

720

:

Done with it.

721

:

I still chat with people to like help

them out, but no, that's a past life.

722

:

I'm surprised it still exists at Adobe.

723

:

So many products at that ARR

size it's at, at a company

724

:

like Adobe would get shut down.

725

:

Wouldn't exist.

726

:

And so I'm actually

surprised it's still a thing.

727

:

Marketo Engage Measure or

whatever it's called now.

728

:

That probably stung me a little bit.

729

:

Maybe the name

730

:

Justin Norris: change.

731

:

Just the product marketing aspect

732

:

Dave Rigotti: of it.

733

:

Yeah.

734

:

Yeah.

735

:

Not that they changed the name,

actually change it, whatever.

736

:

But that's what we picked.

737

:

That's what we

738

:

Justin Norris: ended up going with.

739

:

Dobie Marketo Engage Measure

Advanced Enterprise Edition.

740

:

That hurts me.

741

:

I didn't build it.

742

:

Dave Rigotti: I had 10 other

options that you could have gone

743

:

with, but no, that's old history.

744

:

Justin Norris: I know it probably feels

premature to even ask this question,

745

:

but where do you see inflection going?

746

:

Because every product seems to

follow this curve of like, it's

747

:

young, it's dynamic, it has energy,

it gets big, and then I guess bot

748

:

stagnates, and then the cycle repeats.

749

:

Do you have a, as a second time

founder and startup innovator, do

750

:

you have a plan to stop that from

happening, or how do you think about

751

:

Dave Rigotti: that?

752

:

We're going big.

753

:

We are very focused and we're

very methodical when we're

754

:

thinking about inflection.

755

:

This is before you even like to

go build what is now inflection.

756

:

Let's go pick something that

can become a public company.

757

:

At Bizzable we ended up happening,

building the product, and

758

:

there's a whole story there why.

759

:

And it was started as 99 bucks a month

and just kind of growing and growing

760

:

and growing, getting as big as you can.

761

:

But look like attribution

companies don't become IP able,

762

:

venture scale, true businesses.

763

:

Marketing automation absolutely does.

764

:

And so we were very intentional about

going after a space that has the

765

:

potential to build a big business.

766

:

And we're very focused on placing bets

now to help us become a big business.

767

:

And I don't mean like big and slow.

768

:

I mean, like it's important for us

to stay motivated that we're building

769

:

a big company, but yeah, I think

there'll be tons of things that I do

770

:

that I want to do in five, six years

to help fuel the energy at our company.

771

:

I've seen some companies attract

really good founder type people.

772

:

Rippling is very good at this.

773

:

They put almost like founders on like.

774

:

Each of their products that they roll

out and each product is like a mini

775

:

startup and they're not even products.

776

:

So just like big features

within their products.

777

:

Eventually like we'll do that.

778

:

Eventually like I even want to have,

Hey, if you come here and then later

779

:

you leave inflection after a couple

of years and you go start a company.

780

:

I'll give you your first hundred thousand

like I'll write your seat check for you or

781

:

your pre seat check or whatever it's gonna

be called then and just attract people

782

:

that are motivated people to keep that

energy and that speed as long as possible.

783

:

Justin Norris: So my takeaway from

what you're saying is you perceive

784

:

the problem to be structural and you

think you could solve it structurally

785

:

by having a big company that still

has that individual companies

786

:

within companies or like incubating.

787

:

Companies within the larger

company and giving founder type

788

:

persons ownership of those.

789

:

Growth

790

:

Dave Rigotti: solves all problems.

791

:

I always believe this in startups.

792

:

If you're not growing anymore as a company

You're not going to track the best people

793

:

and then it just is a cycle from there.

794

:

So

795

:

Justin Norris: excited for what

you folks are doing Dave and a big

796

:

fan and supporter of yours as you

know, and we'll watch it carefully.

797

:

Dave Rigotti: Thanks, Justin.

798

:

Thanks for having me.

799

:

Big fan of yours too and glad that

we're Eight, nine years later, we're

800

:

still hanging out, and next time

you're in New York, let me know.

801

:

We can hang out in person.

802

:

Justin Norris: Absolutely.

803

:

Thanks, Dave.

804

:

We'll speak again.

805

:

Hey, everyone.

806

:

I want to invite you over to the

RebOps FM Substack community,

807

:

where you can sign up to get rough

transcripts, show notes, longer form

808

:

articles, and other bonus content.

809

:

Just head over to rebops.

810

:

fm slash subscribe to get free access.

811

:

I'd also love to know what you thought

of the episode, and to hear suggestions

812

:

for topics you want to learn about.

813

:

Feel free to leave a comment on Substack,

Or send me an email at justinatrevops.

814

:

fm.

815

:

Thanks for listening.

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