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Attention is all you need,

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that famous paper that kind of brought LLMs.

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I think it's true for marketing.

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It has come to the point where truly attention is all you need.

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It's literally just about getting someone's attention,

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getting them to stop scrolling,

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getting them to look up from what they're doing.

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That has become a large percentage of our job.

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So I would like to know how you work with all the team.

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Who is your manager?

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How is it organized?

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We don't have a traditional CMO or a head of all of marketing like some other companies do.

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But yes,

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I reported to the CTO.

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Why do you think it's...

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relevant for a growth team to report to the CTO?

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Having the growth organization as part of a more technical department meant that we have more technical resources.

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I think AI has really commoditized a lot of like the task execution.

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And so the job really becomes like solving problems.

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On the growth team,

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that's very much expected.

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If you come in to a new role and you just have like five successes in a row,

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you're probably not trying very unique or very innovative things.

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I don't know if my role exists in five years.

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I brought this up to a few folks,

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including my boss.

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I don't think he disagreed.

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Hey,

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George,

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welcome to the show.

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Thank you.

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Thanks for having me.

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So,

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George,

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you are leading growth at Ramp,

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which is one of the highest growth.

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This is incredible,

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the story that you have.

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I've got a couple of macro questions,

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let's say.

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to discuss before diving into the topics.

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But one,

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I would like to understand the kind of the organization that you have,

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because I understood that growth is sitting not underneath the marketing team.

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And so I would like to know how you were with all the teams,

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like who is your manager,

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et cetera.

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Like how is it organized?

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Sure,

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no problem.

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So I would probably describe marketing as a little bit more of a distributed function at Ramp.

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than at least most companies that I've been at.

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So growth is responsible for pipeline,

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SQLs.

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And that's my organization.

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So it's things like performance marketing,

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SEO,

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lifecycle,

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events,

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the things that you would typically associate with driving pipeline,

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as well as some that maybe you would less so associate with driving pipeline.

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So we have like a verticalization initiative.

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We have like a designer on the team,

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that sort of thing.

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But that's growth.

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We have also product marketing that actually reports up to product.

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We have a phenomenal comms team.

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They do PR,

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AR,

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all of the traditional comms type activities.

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They report to the CEO.

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So it's just a little bit more distributed.

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We don't have like a traditional CMO or like head of all of marketing like some other companies do.

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But yes,

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like I reported to the CTO.

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As of this morning,

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we announced that he is now co-CEO.

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Yeah,

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I saw the announcement.

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Yes,

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it's actually not much of a change internally.

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They've always acted,

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the two co-founders always acted as true partners.

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But yes,

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it's always interesting to say,

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at least in the past,

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that growth reports to the CTO.

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Yeah,

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and I would like to ask a couple of questions around this,

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because this is actually the first time I see growth reporting to the CTO.

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So why?

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First,

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why?

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And second,

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why do you think it's relevant for a growth team to report to the CTO?

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Yes,

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it's a good question.

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I think...

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One of the reasons why I joined Ramp and why I always really respected the culture is they have a strong philosophy that everyone is a builder.

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Everyone should be technical.

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Everyone should be building regardless of your function.

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And so I think actually it was pretty natural to eventually,

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like once you reach a certain scale for growth to be part of a more technical organization,

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especially in the age of AI,

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because everyone should be building things.

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And that's like a whole separate topic we can we can get into.

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But I just.

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really appreciated that number one,

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it's a philosophy of builders.

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And number two,

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having the growth organization as part of a more technical department meant that we had more technical resources.

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I think in the past,

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marketing has always struggled to fight for engineering resources when there are products to build and there's other higher priorities.

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But now that distribution has become,

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I think,

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far more important for most companies,

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and product development has accelerated in some ways been commoditized,

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at least in some markets,

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distribution matters more.

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And being able to move more quickly and build products and be more technical,

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I think,

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is actually a huge competitive advantage.

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So I think Ramp saw that earlier than most.

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That was one of the things that attracted me to the company as well.

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Okay.

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I understood you have a science background,

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correct?

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I do,

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yes.

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I studied biochemistry,

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but then mostly worked in analytical chemistry labs and synthetic biology research.

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Okay.

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So you have a...

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technical background,

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maybe not the type of technical background that is usually related to growth.

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But

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I feel,

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you know,

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OK,

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I completely understand the fact that you have more technical people inside your growth team because you're reporting to the CTO.

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Still,

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one of the challenges is to have kind of the business mindset inside of the technical aspect of the job.

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How can you reconciliate the two things?

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Because you come from this science background.

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And I want to dive into also your test and learn approach,

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like kind of the scientific approach that you have into growth.

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But yeah,

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how can you mix the kind of technical aspects that is expected from your...

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department plus the business mindset.

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Sure.

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I've always kind of had the philosophy that you should have a healthy percentage of a growth team or at least a marketing team be folks with some quantitative or technical background.

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And it's actually less because they can build things and more because they're generally forced to be good problem solvers.

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If you're an engineer,

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a scientist,

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you've worked in finance,

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whatever it might be,

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You've had to solve.

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problems in a very analytical way and sometimes from first principles and i think that's just a lot of like the day-to-day of growth like if you really break it down it's either solving a problem which is generally like novel and requires some like trial and error uh or it's just executing tasks and i think like this is another topic we get into like i think ai has really commoditized a lot of like the task execution um and

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so the job really becomes like solving problems and there's probably a few maybe three classes of problems to really solve in growth but you kind of solve them all to experimentation.

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So

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I think they kind of go hand in hand.

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Okay,

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interesting.

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And so what does treating growth like a science actually change in your day to day?

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Like in how you hire,

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like the way you run your week,

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you decide working,

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et cetera.

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How do you manage this?

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I think the biggest thing,

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which

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I think is obvious when you say it out loud,

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but it's really hard to put in practice,

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is just hiring people that like want to fail and are okay failing.

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And everyone says this.

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We hear this a million times.

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what that really means is you have to be okay with someone failing like nine times in a row.

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And as long as you're learning something from those failures,

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and when I say learning something from those failures,

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it doesn't mean that you just go slap some stuff out there or throw some stuff out there and call it an experiment.

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That's not an experiment,

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you have to put some thought into it,

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there has to be some experimental design,

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you have to put a lot of work and effort into how you're going to measure success.

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But as long as you're doing that,

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if you fail nine times,

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10 times,

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15 times,

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like I think that's okay,

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because those those learnings ideally are compounding.

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And every iteration of that experiment is getting better.

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And you're finding things that will work eventually.

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So that's the number one thing is finding people that are okay with that.

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And I think most people are actually like not okay with that.

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It's very uncomfortable,

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especially if you're in a new role or if you're new to the company to come in and just start failing over and over again.

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But on the growth team,

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that's very much expected.

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If you come in to a new role and you just have like five successes in a row,

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you're probably not trying very unique or very innovative things.

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So that's the first thing that I probably look for specific to growth.

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But even more generally than that,

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I think Ramp does a really good job of hiring for a spike,

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like really identifying number one,

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what you need in a role,

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like what is the one thing that you really,

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really need?

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And then finding one person that that is the one thing they're the best in the world at.

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And if they are weak in every other area,

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like I'm okay with that.

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We just will hire for those weaknesses rather than trying to find someone that's a little bit more average across all aspects.

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Nice.

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Going back to what you said just before,

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like being comfortable with failing,

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I think this is something that most managers need to feel comfortable about,

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you know,

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because at the end of the day,

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I feel people,

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they fear failing because of the way they will be treated by managers,

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you know.

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So

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I feel like for people who wants to apply to

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Ramp, I think it's a really good thing to hear what you just said,

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because it means that you are comfortable with this with the people inside your team.

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Yes,

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that's exactly right.

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Like the,

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we do employee engagement surveys every,

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every couple quarters,

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like most companies our size probably do.

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And the number that I'm always most proud of,

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and the one that I look at most closely,

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is a question around,

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do you feel safe taking risks?

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If the team doesn't feel safe taking risks,

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then we are going to fail as a growth team.

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And to your point,

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that is purely from your manager,

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from your manager's manager,

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like,

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it is on them,

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it is on me,

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to make sure that people feel comfortable taking risks and failing.

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You're completely right.

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Nice.

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Okay,

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when

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I work with growth teams,

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usually,

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you know,

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the way they prioritize experiments is on,

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you know,

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usually this is the

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ICE framework.

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Like,

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usually it's the impact and effort.

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How do you evaluate?

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How do you weigh the type of experience that you do?

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It is exactly that.

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Impact,

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effort,

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confidence.

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The only thing I would add is time to results.

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Ramp is incredibly high velocity.

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And I think that's actually very important in a world where technology and AI is accelerating all things.

266
00:09:45.638 --> 00:09:46.999
So time results really matters.

267
00:09:47.899 --> 00:09:48.780
If someone comes to me,

268
00:09:48.781 --> 00:09:52.823
they want to run an experiment and do the sample sizes or do the experimental design,

269
00:09:52.824 --> 00:09:54.504
we're not going to learn something for like four months.

270
00:09:54.524 --> 00:09:55.524
That's a terrible experiment.

271
00:09:55.664 --> 00:09:55.905
Like,

272
00:09:56.185 --> 00:09:58.046
I have no idea what the world's gonna look like in four months.

273
00:09:58.497 --> 00:10:16.805
uh we need to scope that down to something we can learn in like two weeks uh and even that might actually be too long for for many things so time to results including that in the ice framework i actually think is is incredibly important uh and then the other is is confidence like what's your confidence that something's going to work i think people generally overlook how important that is um if

274
00:10:16.806 --> 00:10:26.068
you're going to run a really tiny experiment but you're incredibly confident it's going to work you should do that if you're going to run a really tiny experiment but you're very unconfident it's going to work you probably shouldn't do that it's probably a waste of time

275
00:10:26.909 --> 00:10:27.449
I think that.

276
00:10:28.065 --> 00:10:32.909
What most people that aren't scientists probably don't realize is how much of an art science actually is.

277
00:10:33.069 --> 00:10:34.710
Like I worked in a chemistry lab and

278
00:10:35.110 --> 00:10:44.277
I would say my fellow chemists were some of the most superstitious people I've probably ever worked with because there's so much that like you just can't account for and that you don't know why something went wrong or why something went right.

279
00:10:44.777 --> 00:10:48.400
And that's why I think like confidence in your experimentation is actually like very important.

280
00:10:48.480 --> 00:10:55.585
You probably have some intuitive gut feeling on like what will or will not work based on years of experience or past experiments that you can't...

281
00:10:55.929 --> 00:10:56.630
put into words.

282
00:10:56.710 --> 00:11:00.673
And I actually think that's worth something that goes back to hiring people that that are spiky.

283
00:11:00.813 --> 00:11:04.016
Like I like to hire people that have a good intuition and are right a lot,

284
00:11:04.096 --> 00:11:05.257
even if you can't quantify it.

285
00:11:05.877 --> 00:11:06.017
Yeah,

286
00:11:06.077 --> 00:11:06.738
I completely agree.

287
00:11:07.058 --> 00:11:08.079
Usually when I work with teams,

288
00:11:09.060 --> 00:11:09.680
and they say like,

289
00:11:09.740 --> 00:11:09.920
hi,

290
00:11:10.041 --> 00:11:10.921
should I prioritize,

291
00:11:10.941 --> 00:11:11.061
etc.

292
00:11:11.362 --> 00:11:13.143
And they don't want to work with big,

293
00:11:13.323 --> 00:11:14.104
big frameworks,

294
00:11:14.144 --> 00:11:15.425
because they're a small team and blah,

295
00:11:15.426 --> 00:11:15.525
blah,

296
00:11:15.526 --> 00:11:15.725
blah.

297
00:11:15.745 --> 00:11:16.746
I'm always saying like,

298
00:11:17.307 --> 00:11:17.587
guys,

299
00:11:17.667 --> 00:11:19.749
your gut feeling is usually right,

300
00:11:19.769 --> 00:11:20.029
you know,

301
00:11:20.169 --> 00:11:21.730
so you should just follow your gut feeling,

302
00:11:21.770 --> 00:11:21.930
Like,

303
00:11:21.950 --> 00:11:25.073
even though it doesn't sound like it's scientific enough.

304
00:11:25.665 --> 00:11:25.885
Like,

305
00:11:26.405 --> 00:11:26.626
really,

306
00:11:26.627 --> 00:11:27.486
it means something,

307
00:11:27.506 --> 00:11:27.746
you know?

308
00:11:28.727 --> 00:11:29.407
I couldn't agree more.

309
00:11:29.627 --> 00:11:29.847
Like,

310
00:11:30.328 --> 00:11:30.688
I don't know.

311
00:11:31.008 --> 00:11:36.811
I think that as the growth function was kind of growing in importance or popularity over the years,

312
00:11:37.111 --> 00:11:39.493
we may have over-indexed too much on what is measurable.

313
00:11:40.633 --> 00:11:43.275
But the quantitative is just as important,

314
00:11:43.315 --> 00:11:44.876
which is crazy for me to say as a scientist.

315
00:11:44.936 --> 00:11:45.096
Like,

316
00:11:45.116 --> 00:11:46.116
most of my career...

317
00:11:46.117 --> 00:11:48.718
I was about to say this.

318
00:11:48.858 --> 00:11:49.078
Like,

319
00:11:49.598 --> 00:11:51.059
it's really good to hear from a scientist.

320
00:11:52.160 --> 00:11:52.400
And so,

321
00:11:52.840 --> 00:11:53.040
okay,

322
00:11:53.220 --> 00:11:54.301
you launch your experiment.

323
00:11:54.441 --> 00:11:54.561
and

324
00:11:54.881 --> 00:12:10.830
now it starts working but on some channels you know you can reach the ceiling pretty fast so how do you manage like evaluating and working with uh evaluating the ceiling reaching the ceiling like how do you manage this it's

325
00:12:10.831 --> 00:12:22.457
a very good question um i think a problem that most people and companies face is that they're afraid to like overshoot the ceiling they're afraid to scale up so fast

326
00:12:22.885 --> 00:12:26.588
that they waste money because they've hit the like asymptote of their saturation curve.

327
00:12:27.268 --> 00:12:27.448
And

328
00:12:28.089 --> 00:12:29.130
I think as a result of that,

329
00:12:29.150 --> 00:12:30.070
they waste a lot of time.

330
00:12:30.771 --> 00:12:31.771
Like if something's working,

331
00:12:31.811 --> 00:12:32.692
the tendency is like,

332
00:12:32.693 --> 00:12:32.932
all right,

333
00:12:32.952 --> 00:12:33.172
great,

334
00:12:33.213 --> 00:12:33.393
let's,

335
00:12:33.713 --> 00:12:34.253
let's do 50%

336
00:12:34.614 --> 00:12:34.774
more,

337
00:12:34.814 --> 00:12:35.394
let's double it,

338
00:12:35.414 --> 00:12:35.975
let's triple it.

339
00:12:36.375 --> 00:12:37.556
Like you should do 10x more,

340
00:12:37.676 --> 00:12:39.917
like you should saturate that as quickly as possible.

341
00:12:40.298 --> 00:12:42.259
They're like the when you find something that works,

342
00:12:42.279 --> 00:12:44.941
that is a relatively ephemeral competitive advantage.

343
00:12:45.842 --> 00:12:49.584
And so you should maximize it as quickly as possible for as long as possible.

344
00:12:50.125 --> 00:12:50.245
So

345
00:12:50.485 --> 00:13:11.834
what that means more tactically is like okay we found something that works it's like take it to the max i want to know where that asymptote is next week uh and if we waste a little bit of money finding it like that's fine uh you could probably do the math and realize that finding that asymptote fast versus like testing your way to it over months or quarters like the roi is probably higher like waste a little bit money and finding it fast um now

346
00:13:11.894 --> 00:13:17.716
that's easy to say if you're a larger company that has like money to burn uh when you're an earlier stage startup that probably means something different,

347
00:13:18.137 --> 00:13:18.997
but it also means probably

348
00:13:19.217 --> 00:13:21.598
something different because like you have more,

349
00:13:22.038 --> 00:13:23.078
you may not have as much money,

350
00:13:23.338 --> 00:13:25.079
but you probably have more freedom to try crazier things.

351
00:13:25.239 --> 00:13:30.740
So you're probably able to find something with alpha and advantage that a larger company might not have the risk tolerance for.

352
00:13:30.760 --> 00:13:31.881
So it probably cancels out.

353
00:13:32.961 --> 00:13:33.161
Okay.

354
00:13:34.221 --> 00:13:36.002
Though you're a really creative company,

355
00:13:37.522 --> 00:13:38.363
even though you're really big.

356
00:13:39.143 --> 00:13:45.845
And so do you have like something that is kind of absurd sounding?

357
00:13:46.125 --> 00:13:50.266
in terms of channel that you would like to try soon or that you've tried recently?

358
00:13:51.807 --> 00:13:54.587
There are a lot of very crazy things that we've tried recently.

359
00:13:56.348 --> 00:13:57.688
A lot of them we discover on Twitter.

360
00:13:58.388 --> 00:14:04.370
It's kind of interesting how Twitter has become like the place where crazy ideas are shared.

361
00:14:04.371 --> 00:14:05.330
And like a lot of the times,

362
00:14:05.350 --> 00:14:06.391
I can't tell if they're fake or not.

363
00:14:06.451 --> 00:14:08.451
Like people are just posting crazy things for clout.

364
00:14:09.532 --> 00:14:10.432
But there are interesting things.

365
00:14:10.472 --> 00:14:11.112
Like last week,

366
00:14:11.212 --> 00:14:13.913
there was something that went semi-viral on Twitter.

367
00:14:13.914 --> 00:14:14.253
It was called,

368
00:14:14.293 --> 00:14:14.573
I think...

369
00:14:15.541 --> 00:14:16.542
I don't remember what it was called,

370
00:14:16.543 --> 00:14:20.986
but basically it was a side project for someone and you could install it and in Claude code,

371
00:14:20.987 --> 00:14:21.746
it would show you ads.

372
00:14:21.846 --> 00:14:23.248
So instead of Claude saying,

373
00:14:23.568 --> 00:14:23.908
thinking,

374
00:14:23.968 --> 00:14:24.469
percolating,

375
00:14:24.489 --> 00:14:24.769
whatever,

376
00:14:24.789 --> 00:14:25.670
it would show you a little ad.

377
00:14:26.170 --> 00:14:29.873
And the incentive for someone installing this would be they'll split the ad revenue with you.

378
00:14:30.253 --> 00:14:31.454
And it's like a pretty genius,

379
00:14:31.494 --> 00:14:33.296
if not like very old business model.

380
00:14:33.776 --> 00:14:35.157
And it like totally blew up overnight.

381
00:14:35.357 --> 00:14:36.478
And like the moment I saw it,

382
00:14:36.479 --> 00:14:38.280
I messaged the teams like we should advertise on this.

383
00:14:38.940 --> 00:14:40.121
And the team like got on it,

384
00:14:40.122 --> 00:14:44.505
we became like one of the largest advertisers within a few hours because we wanted to test what it was like.

385
00:14:45.137 --> 00:14:48.263
And that's a crazy channel that didn't exist two weeks ago.

386
00:14:48.984 --> 00:14:49.545
And similarly,

387
00:14:49.546 --> 00:14:49.806
it's like,

388
00:14:49.826 --> 00:14:50.708
let's maximize it.

389
00:14:50.848 --> 00:14:53.773
How quickly can we juice this thing for as much as possible?

390
00:14:54.294 --> 00:14:54.434
Now,

391
00:14:54.775 --> 00:14:55.336
is that channel,

392
00:14:55.337 --> 00:14:57.881
is that marketing tactic going to exist?

393
00:14:58.203 --> 00:14:58.803
a year from now,

394
00:14:58.863 --> 00:14:59.464
two years from now,

395
00:14:59.504 --> 00:14:59.664
like,

396
00:15:00.324 --> 00:15:01.925
probably not things just change really quickly.

397
00:15:03.066 --> 00:15:04.426
But we got something out of it very quickly.

398
00:15:04.466 --> 00:15:09.249
And I think that the reason why I share that as a crazy channel is because those types of things are popping up like every single week.

399
00:15:09.389 --> 00:15:09.709
And like,

400
00:15:10.169 --> 00:15:12.331
they don't even cross my mind as being crazy anymore.

401
00:15:12.791 --> 00:15:13.751
But they kind of seem that way.

402
00:15:13.811 --> 00:15:17.413
Like this is one guy's side projects that we found on Twitter that like,

403
00:15:18.054 --> 00:15:19.595
they didn't didn't have a website,

404
00:15:19.655 --> 00:15:21.215
like there are no terms and conditions,

405
00:15:21.216 --> 00:15:22.036
it was just like,

406
00:15:22.736 --> 00:15:25.098
put a credit card in and your ad will start showing to random people.

407
00:15:25.838 --> 00:15:26.518
That was worth testing.

408
00:15:26.819 --> 00:15:27.499
So that's maybe one.

409
00:15:28.595 --> 00:15:52.927
um we are starting to do i think some like really innovative and interesting things with like events uh i was talking to to our person that leads um brand and enterprise marketing uh she's she's brilliant she was like i met someone that uh that like is a broker of fossils like literal dinosaur fossils uh okay it'd be really cool to do an event where we bring people to like a fossil dig and i was like yeah we should totally do that so So.

410
00:15:53.035 --> 00:16:09.844
uh more unique events like no one wants to go to a dinner anymore like you can you can go buy dinner yourself i think that's a little bit played out but like go into like a i don't know an archaeology site that'd be pretty cool i agree yeah okay well and and i see also

411
00:16:09.945 --> 00:16:19.970
what's what's interesting in this case is the excitement that you have with this kind of crazy idea like there is no link between your business and archaeology,

412
00:16:20.430 --> 00:16:21.211
but still like you.

413
00:16:21.511 --> 00:16:22.852
you think the idea is pretty cool,

414
00:16:22.872 --> 00:16:23.112
you know?

415
00:16:23.192 --> 00:16:24.173
And so I think this is,

416
00:16:24.673 --> 00:16:25.594
this is at the end of the day,

417
00:16:25.694 --> 00:16:27.235
what's creativity in business,

418
00:16:27.255 --> 00:16:27.495
you know?

419
00:16:28.095 --> 00:16:28.215
I,

420
00:16:28.596 --> 00:16:28.856
yes.

421
00:16:28.996 --> 00:16:29.756
And like what I,

422
00:16:29.776 --> 00:16:29.957
um,

423
00:16:30.637 --> 00:16:32.338
I keep telling my team more recently is,

424
00:16:32.398 --> 00:16:32.518
uh,

425
00:16:33.199 --> 00:16:36.281
attention is all you need that famous paper that kind of brought LLMs.

426
00:16:36.321 --> 00:16:37.301
I think it's true for marketing.

427
00:16:37.421 --> 00:16:37.542
Uh,

428
00:16:37.682 --> 00:16:41.704
like it has become to the point where truly attention is all you need.

429
00:16:41.724 --> 00:16:41.904
Like,

430
00:16:41.944 --> 00:16:45.667
I don't think you need to be as precious about your messaging and positioning and your targeting and

431
00:16:46.099 --> 00:16:49.840
and all that you don't need to really think through your funnel as deeply as maybe you used to in the past,

432
00:16:49.920 --> 00:16:51.300
because things are moving so quickly,

433
00:16:51.301 --> 00:16:53.041
and people's attention spans are so short,

434
00:16:53.461 --> 00:16:53.761
that like,

435
00:16:53.841 --> 00:16:55.622
it's literally just about getting someone's attention,

436
00:16:55.662 --> 00:16:56.722
getting them to stop scrolling,

437
00:16:56.782 --> 00:16:57.462
getting them to like,

438
00:16:57.862 --> 00:16:58.963
look up from what they're doing.

439
00:16:59.723 --> 00:17:02.083
That has become a large percentage of our jobs.

440
00:17:02.163 --> 00:17:03.124
And if you can get their attention,

441
00:17:03.444 --> 00:17:05.744
then it's a lot easier to get them in the funnel and help them understand.

442
00:17:05.784 --> 00:17:07.685
But like the hard part is truly getting attention.

443
00:17:07.865 --> 00:17:12.046
So if a dinosaur dig gets someone's attention as an event invite,

444
00:17:12.086 --> 00:17:13.527
like we did our job,

445
00:17:13.867 --> 00:17:15.067
that's what matters more than anything.

446
00:17:15.823 --> 00:17:16.063
Nice.

447
00:17:16.804 --> 00:17:17.064
Is

448
00:17:17.544 --> 00:17:19.285
Outbound part of your team?

449
00:17:20.326 --> 00:17:20.866
It's a good question.

450
00:17:21.046 --> 00:17:22.727
So the SCR organization,

451
00:17:23.007 --> 00:17:23.707
which leads Outbound,

452
00:17:23.867 --> 00:17:24.728
is not part of my team.

453
00:17:25.548 --> 00:17:29.471
The tooling to enable them to do effective Outbound was part of my team.

454
00:17:29.531 --> 00:17:31.952
It's now part of growth engineering as of about a quarter ago.

455
00:17:33.033 --> 00:17:37.995
Because they had built such phenomenal products that it was time to really productize them and take them to the next level.

456
00:17:38.015 --> 00:17:39.536
So that's like a pod of,

457
00:17:39.736 --> 00:17:40.076
I don't know,

458
00:17:40.156 --> 00:17:41.097
four engineers,

459
00:17:41.137 --> 00:17:42.678
two full-time data scientists,

460
00:17:42.679 --> 00:17:43.118
a PM.

461
00:17:43.158 --> 00:17:44.599
Like it's become a large operation.

462
00:17:45.307 --> 00:18:05.003
because outbound is number one a big channel for us but also because we've seen such success with with our internal tooling to make that team more efficient and effective okay so it was part of your team and now it moved to the other team correct okay so you still have some background around what's been tested etc etc i'm really interested because i know that

463
00:18:05.183 --> 00:18:14.611
outbound is a really big level of growth for you and i also know that you are kind of the at the avant-garde of how...

464
00:18:14.955 --> 00:18:17.376
to use AI and agents,

465
00:18:17.576 --> 00:18:17.736
etc.

466
00:18:18.696 --> 00:18:19.276
with outbound.

467
00:18:19.836 --> 00:18:19.956
And

468
00:18:20.697 --> 00:18:31.560
I'm curious to know the type of iterations that you went through and now what you see is working versus not working with outbound and AI because now everybody is saying,

469
00:18:32.260 --> 00:18:32.460
okay,

470
00:18:32.580 --> 00:18:38.342
outbound is kind of dead and the conversion rates are really low and it's getting to lower and lower every quarter.

471
00:18:39.702 --> 00:18:42.483
And you've got these new AI SDRs,

472
00:18:42.543 --> 00:18:43.103
but then you...

473
00:18:43.403 --> 00:18:45.484
you realize it's AI on the phone and you know,

474
00:18:45.485 --> 00:18:46.104
this type of things.

475
00:18:47.085 --> 00:18:47.525
But still,

476
00:18:47.665 --> 00:18:50.066
I feel that you on your side,

477
00:18:50.126 --> 00:18:50.846
you've managed to,

478
00:18:52.107 --> 00:18:52.347
you know,

479
00:18:52.567 --> 00:18:53.087
make it work.

480
00:18:53.447 --> 00:18:53.567
Yeah.

481
00:18:53.627 --> 00:18:53.867
And so,

482
00:18:54.147 --> 00:18:54.308
yeah,

483
00:18:54.828 --> 00:18:56.328
it's a wide question,

484
00:18:56.488 --> 00:18:59.850
but I'm interested to get your feedback on this.

485
00:19:00.190 --> 00:19:00.310
Yeah,

486
00:19:01.050 --> 00:19:02.031
it's a very good question.

487
00:19:03.411 --> 00:19:03.691
I mean,

488
00:19:03.851 --> 00:19:10.194
I was the PM that owns our outbound tooling that moved from my organization to growth engineering.

489
00:19:10.294 --> 00:19:10.494
Like,

490
00:19:11.074 --> 00:19:12.475
he's brilliant and he's very good at this.

491
00:19:12.715 --> 00:19:15.757
And we've talked a lot about what the future of outbound looks like.

492
00:19:16.538 --> 00:19:20.020
The way I'd probably summarize it is when early stage companies ask me,

493
00:19:20.040 --> 00:19:20.200
hey,

494
00:19:20.260 --> 00:19:20.480
like,

495
00:19:20.521 --> 00:19:21.381
what channel should we test?

496
00:19:21.401 --> 00:19:22.042
Should we do outbound?

497
00:19:22.043 --> 00:19:22.302
I'm like,

498
00:19:22.342 --> 00:19:22.462
no,

499
00:19:22.982 --> 00:19:23.843
I do think it is dead.

500
00:19:24.203 --> 00:19:25.644
But it is the poor quality,

501
00:19:26.245 --> 00:19:27.946
high volume outbound that is dead.

502
00:19:28.286 --> 00:19:30.387
Like AI has completely commoditized that.

503
00:19:30.548 --> 00:19:33.950
Like there are some industries and verticals where it's probably not dead,

504
00:19:34.010 --> 00:19:37.212
like folks that are less online and like less marketed to probably still works for them.

505
00:19:37.232 --> 00:19:37.853
But in general,

506
00:19:37.893 --> 00:19:38.773
the poor quality is dead.

507
00:19:39.073 --> 00:19:40.094
What's not dead is,

508
00:19:40.975 --> 00:19:41.135
like...

509
00:19:41.315 --> 00:19:42.916
high quality human interactions.

510
00:19:43.116 --> 00:19:45.176
And I think the easiest way to do that is via like,

511
00:19:45.316 --> 00:19:46.277
like field marketing,

512
00:19:46.337 --> 00:19:46.897
field sales,

513
00:19:46.917 --> 00:19:48.177
like go out and meet people in person.

514
00:19:48.877 --> 00:19:51.018
But the second best way to do that is probably with really,

515
00:19:51.078 --> 00:19:52.579
really good high quality outbound,

516
00:19:52.699 --> 00:19:53.599
like something that again,

517
00:19:53.659 --> 00:19:54.919
number one is going to get someone's attention,

518
00:19:54.959 --> 00:19:57.220
like they have to like see it and will be willing to open it.

519
00:19:57.480 --> 00:19:58.300
Now once they open it,

520
00:19:58.500 --> 00:19:59.721
it can't be like AI written,

521
00:19:59.821 --> 00:20:00.881
or at least seem AI written,

522
00:20:01.001 --> 00:20:06.323
like it has to be very specific to that person's pain points to who they are as a person to what they care about.

523
00:20:06.980 --> 00:20:07.860
And doing that,

524
00:20:07.900 --> 00:20:08.981
if you're an early stage startup,

525
00:20:09.021 --> 00:20:10.041
is like borderline impossible.

526
00:20:10.081 --> 00:20:10.281
Like,

527
00:20:10.661 --> 00:20:13.222
there's no way some early stage startup is going to put five engineers,

528
00:20:13.282 --> 00:20:16.823
two data scientists and a PM on building like a machine to do good outbound,

529
00:20:16.903 --> 00:20:18.003
like in the same way that Ramp has.

530
00:20:19.083 --> 00:20:20.324
So what does that like more tactically mean?

531
00:20:21.124 --> 00:20:22.344
The PM that built this,

532
00:20:22.704 --> 00:20:25.265
he posted on Twitter maybe six months ago,

533
00:20:25.425 --> 00:20:28.266
five months ago about the tool that he built called Ramp Revenue.

534
00:20:28.766 --> 00:20:35.948
And the way that we iterated to that was just like sitting down with like our SDR team and observing what they do and where they spend time.

535
00:20:36.328 --> 00:20:40.970
and looking at the differences between a great SDR and an average SDR and being like,

536
00:20:40.971 --> 00:20:42.271
what is the difference in their day to day?

537
00:20:42.811 --> 00:20:44.291
And then slowly solving like very,

538
00:20:44.331 --> 00:20:45.352
very specific problems.

539
00:20:45.372 --> 00:20:45.652
It's like,

540
00:20:45.712 --> 00:20:45.892
okay,

541
00:20:45.912 --> 00:20:48.953
this person's doing a lot of research on a specific person at an account.

542
00:20:49.214 --> 00:20:51.755
How can I automate that research flow and that specific flow?

543
00:20:51.835 --> 00:20:52.375
Not just like,

544
00:20:52.376 --> 00:20:52.495
oh,

545
00:20:52.496 --> 00:20:53.295
I'm going to scrape LinkedIn,

546
00:20:53.296 --> 00:20:56.337
but like that specific flow of what are they looking for in someone's profile?

547
00:20:56.717 --> 00:20:56.997
It's like,

548
00:20:57.017 --> 00:20:57.197
okay,

549
00:20:57.257 --> 00:20:57.417
great.

550
00:20:57.437 --> 00:20:58.117
I've automated that.

551
00:20:58.118 --> 00:20:58.317
It's like,

552
00:20:58.318 --> 00:20:58.417
ah,

553
00:20:58.418 --> 00:21:01.099
they're spending a lot of time copy and pasting between windows.

554
00:21:01.100 --> 00:21:01.339
It's like,

555
00:21:01.379 --> 00:21:01.539
okay,

556
00:21:01.540 --> 00:21:02.679
I'm going to bring it all into one tool.

557
00:21:03.019 --> 00:21:03.139
Oh,

558
00:21:03.140 --> 00:21:04.280
they're spending a lot of time like

559
00:21:04.420 --> 00:21:29.287
actually like taking a template and customizing that template i'm going to build something that customizes that oh they're spending a lot of like a lot of their deliverability is getting caught if you email this certain certain domain i'm going to build like a spin tax tool that changes words at random with synonyms so that it doesn't get caught like and the next thing you know you've got like 15 different point solutions and it's like okay let's wrap this into one tool and if the sales team uses it then it's a good tool if they don't use it then i didn't build a good tool for my customers.

560
00:21:29.347 --> 00:21:31.228
And so really bringing that product.

561
00:21:32.248 --> 00:21:36.950
management mentality to building tools where if the SCRs are internal customer,

562
00:21:37.390 --> 00:21:38.210
either use it or they don't,

563
00:21:38.211 --> 00:21:39.251
we're not going to force them to use it.

564
00:21:39.252 --> 00:21:39.831
And if they use it,

565
00:21:39.832 --> 00:21:41.152
then you've really built something valuable.

566
00:21:41.932 --> 00:21:44.713
But the way we got there was really just like very specific point solutions,

567
00:21:45.093 --> 00:21:46.234
with the end result being,

568
00:21:46.674 --> 00:21:48.835
if I'm on the receiving end of one of these outbound emails,

569
00:21:48.875 --> 00:21:49.075
like,

570
00:21:49.575 --> 00:21:50.095
it is very,

571
00:21:50.195 --> 00:21:51.676
very specific and valuable to me,

572
00:21:51.677 --> 00:21:53.357
it actually doesn't really matter if it's written by AI,

573
00:21:53.417 --> 00:21:54.677
not as long as it's valuable to me.

574
00:21:55.237 --> 00:21:57.738
And I think a lot of our outbound is getting there,

575
00:21:57.858 --> 00:21:59.159
like we have a lot of work to do still.

576
00:21:59.539 --> 00:22:01.700
But that's at least why it still works for us as a channel.

577
00:22:01.840 --> 00:22:05.561
compared to the very generic off-the-shelf stuff.

578
00:22:05.581 --> 00:22:05.701
Yeah.

579
00:22:06.661 --> 00:22:11.743
It gets back to the first principle and a lot of pragmatism,

580
00:22:12.383 --> 00:22:12.643
you know?

581
00:22:13.403 --> 00:22:16.084
It's exactly what I'm saying to some people on my team,

582
00:22:16.085 --> 00:22:16.324
you know,

583
00:22:16.544 --> 00:22:16.704
when

584
00:22:17.924 --> 00:22:19.805
I'm always saying this to someone from my team,

585
00:22:19.845 --> 00:22:23.926
like you don't need to build a coffee machine if I just need the Excel file with the email addresses on it,

586
00:22:23.927 --> 00:22:24.126
you know?

587
00:22:24.706 --> 00:22:24.906
Like...

588
00:22:25.226 --> 00:22:25.446
Yes.

589
00:22:26.327 --> 00:22:27.947
Just get me the Excel file and that's it,

590
00:22:27.967 --> 00:22:28.187
you know?

591
00:22:28.227 --> 00:22:29.628
Like it's pretty easy.

592
00:22:29.688 --> 00:22:30.808
It's going to take you 10 minutes.

593
00:22:31.108 --> 00:22:32.349
instead of building like,

594
00:22:32.509 --> 00:22:32.749
you know,

595
00:22:32.789 --> 00:22:34.731
the rockets that goes to the moon and blah,

596
00:22:34.732 --> 00:22:34.911
blah,

597
00:22:34.912 --> 00:22:35.091
you know.

598
00:22:35.392 --> 00:22:35.512
Oh,

599
00:22:35.972 --> 00:22:36.593
you're so right.

600
00:22:36.633 --> 00:22:38.695
You're preaching to the choir,

601
00:22:38.755 --> 00:22:39.255
so to speak.

602
00:22:39.695 --> 00:22:39.876
Yeah.

603
00:22:40.316 --> 00:22:40.676
I like,

604
00:22:40.716 --> 00:22:42.458
I was telling someone last week that,

605
00:22:42.718 --> 00:22:43.619
especially with AI,

606
00:22:43.739 --> 00:22:44.059
everyone,

607
00:22:44.119 --> 00:22:46.141
because it's so easy to build things and it's like.

608
00:22:46.521 --> 00:22:46.781
Yes.

609
00:22:47.242 --> 00:22:47.582
It's like,

610
00:22:47.642 --> 00:22:51.165
it feels fun that all of a sudden everyone wants to go and build a cathedral.

611
00:22:51.185 --> 00:22:53.767
They want some like masterwork of art that's gigantic.

612
00:22:53.787 --> 00:22:54.688
And I have to remind people,

613
00:22:54.708 --> 00:22:58.552
it's like the folks that started building cathedrals died before they were done.

614
00:22:58.712 --> 00:22:58.992
Like.

615
00:22:59.192 --> 00:23:17.287
it takes a really long time and it's really hard like you should solve something today versus for six months from now yeah and and and i can be impressed by the fact that you shipped a rocket that can go to the moon but this is not what i need you know exactly exactly uh all right so again

616
00:23:17.447 --> 00:23:25.474
kind of a macro question but um i know you're trying a lot of things and i would like also to address the AO slash GEO topic,

617
00:23:25.554 --> 00:23:27.636
but how do you see...

618
00:23:28.456 --> 00:23:36.863
demand and demand gen actually move in the next month,

619
00:23:37.263 --> 00:23:37.784
years?

620
00:23:39.045 --> 00:23:40.246
What's the trend that you see?

621
00:23:40.286 --> 00:23:41.147
What's your vision?

622
00:23:41.527 --> 00:23:41.647
Yeah,

623
00:23:43.108 --> 00:23:43.389
I think,

624
00:23:43.689 --> 00:23:45.330
I don't think my vision is that unique anymore.

625
00:23:45.410 --> 00:23:49.874
I think everyone is starting to see at least what we started putting in place a year,

626
00:23:49.934 --> 00:23:50.494
year and a half ago,

627
00:23:50.615 --> 00:23:51.035
which is

628
00:23:51.976 --> 00:23:52.576
AI is kind of,

629
00:23:52.876 --> 00:23:55.399
or marketing is kind of like trifurcating in the three buckets.

630
00:23:55.559 --> 00:23:56.940
There's stuff that's immune to AI.

631
00:23:57.588 --> 00:23:58.789
You should do a lot more of that.

632
00:23:59.229 --> 00:24:01.231
There is stuff that is being disrupted to AI.

633
00:24:01.812 --> 00:24:02.692
You should stop doing that.

634
00:24:02.953 --> 00:24:05.555
And then there's stuff that's not possible with AI that wasn't possible before.

635
00:24:05.556 --> 00:24:06.916
And you should figure that out pretty fast.

636
00:24:07.196 --> 00:24:09.398
In the first bucket of stuff that's immune to AI,

637
00:24:10.138 --> 00:24:10.719
it's two things.

638
00:24:10.859 --> 00:24:11.860
It's like high trust,

639
00:24:12.400 --> 00:24:13.441
personal interactions.

640
00:24:13.641 --> 00:24:15.983
And that's usually going to be like events or field marketing.

641
00:24:16.503 --> 00:24:17.404
And it's like creativity.

642
00:24:17.664 --> 00:24:20.527
It's like if you want something totally off the wall,

643
00:24:20.607 --> 00:24:21.347
very creative,

644
00:24:21.387 --> 00:24:24.530
like I'm going to trust a person with good taste over AI,

645
00:24:24.590 --> 00:24:25.110
at least today,

646
00:24:25.231 --> 00:24:26.972
like and I think for the foreseeable future.

647
00:24:27.884 --> 00:24:28.945
And we and as a result,

648
00:24:28.965 --> 00:24:29.786
we've done a lot more of that,

649
00:24:29.826 --> 00:24:32.889
like our events team has gone from two people to 25 people,

650
00:24:32.989 --> 00:24:35.631
because we're really investing in high trust in person interactions.

651
00:24:35.671 --> 00:24:36.131
And similarly,

652
00:24:36.132 --> 00:24:36.291
like,

653
00:24:36.652 --> 00:24:38.893
we do a lot of crazy stunts and marketing campaigns,

654
00:24:38.953 --> 00:24:40.575
because we want to we want to get attention.

655
00:24:40.595 --> 00:24:41.856
We think that's a valuable resource.

656
00:24:41.876 --> 00:24:41.996
Now,

657
00:24:42.536 --> 00:24:44.958
the second bucket of stuff that's being disrupted by AI,

658
00:24:45.279 --> 00:24:46.900
it's very traditional,

659
00:24:47.000 --> 00:24:48.281
low quality content,

660
00:24:48.321 --> 00:24:49.322
low quality SEO,

661
00:24:49.502 --> 00:24:50.903
like all that stuff is dead,

662
00:24:51.023 --> 00:24:52.004
like that's a losing game.

663
00:24:52.905 --> 00:24:53.025
Now,

664
00:24:53.026 --> 00:24:54.566
the high quality content is a different story.

665
00:24:55.227 --> 00:24:56.528
But I think a lot of companies

666
00:24:56.708 --> 00:24:57.731
especially early on,

667
00:24:58.293 --> 00:25:03.166
they're doing too many things and they're spread so thin that they put out a lot of low quality stuff and there's no ROI on that anymore.

668
00:25:04.274 --> 00:25:04.914
So that's the second bucket.

669
00:25:05.174 --> 00:25:06.895
The third bucket is really the most interesting.

670
00:25:06.896 --> 00:25:09.476
It's like stuff that's now possible with AI that wasn't possible before.

671
00:25:09.736 --> 00:25:11.517
That's changing like every couple of weeks.

672
00:25:12.517 --> 00:25:13.198
And it's like,

673
00:25:14.118 --> 00:25:14.758
it's really funny.

674
00:25:15.339 --> 00:25:18.400
I was having a debate with someone where I wanted to test something.

675
00:25:18.520 --> 00:25:18.920
And they're like,

676
00:25:18.921 --> 00:25:19.881
we already tested this.

677
00:25:19.882 --> 00:25:20.481
It didn't work.

678
00:25:20.501 --> 00:25:20.941
And I was like,

679
00:25:20.942 --> 00:25:22.062
we tested it three months ago.

680
00:25:22.302 --> 00:25:22.602
Like,

681
00:25:23.182 --> 00:25:25.043
look at all of the stuff that's changed in three months.

682
00:25:25.063 --> 00:25:25.923
We should test it again.

683
00:25:25.963 --> 00:25:26.543
We tested again.

684
00:25:26.804 --> 00:25:27.164
It worked.

685
00:25:27.964 --> 00:25:28.304
And like,

686
00:25:28.404 --> 00:25:31.866
that's actually kind of frustrating both as a leader and I'm sure as an IC.

687
00:25:32.226 --> 00:25:32.426
like

688
00:25:32.914 --> 00:25:33.714
I've already done this.

689
00:25:33.755 --> 00:25:35.836
Like how many times are we going to redo it to see if it works?

690
00:25:35.916 --> 00:25:38.737
But that's kind of the treadmill we're on now with AI.

691
00:25:38.897 --> 00:25:45.321
But that's kind of where I think things will continue to go in that broad direction for probably another year or two.

692
00:25:45.881 --> 00:25:48.062
And it just means that the velocity,

693
00:25:48.162 --> 00:25:50.564
like the pace that everyone has to work at is higher.

694
00:25:51.004 --> 00:25:53.826
And if you're not investing the technology to be able to handle that pace,

695
00:25:53.886 --> 00:25:55.647
then like it's going to be a hard job.

696
00:25:56.867 --> 00:25:56.987
Yeah,

697
00:25:57.007 --> 00:25:57.568
I completely agree.

698
00:25:57.988 --> 00:25:58.228
You know,

699
00:25:59.649 --> 00:26:01.690
have you heard about VivaTech in Paris?

700
00:26:02.734 --> 00:26:03.534
It sounds very familiar,

701
00:26:03.554 --> 00:26:04.555
but I don't remember what they do.

702
00:26:04.935 --> 00:26:05.115
Well,

703
00:26:05.315 --> 00:26:05.455
yeah,

704
00:26:05.855 --> 00:26:07.556
it's a huge event,

705
00:26:08.336 --> 00:26:09.136
just like Cannes,

706
00:26:09.137 --> 00:26:10.656
but for startups,

707
00:26:10.676 --> 00:26:10.796
etc.

708
00:26:11.517 --> 00:26:14.637
And I was giving a talk at VivaTech last week.

709
00:26:14.758 --> 00:26:19.439
And the topic of my talk was how to reorganize your team now with AI.

710
00:26:19.499 --> 00:26:20.439
And

711
00:26:21.179 --> 00:26:21.559
I said,

712
00:26:21.839 --> 00:26:22.120
for me,

713
00:26:22.260 --> 00:26:24.420
now you should reorganize your team into three buckets.

714
00:26:24.820 --> 00:26:26.861
Like all the jobs related to relationship,

715
00:26:27.021 --> 00:26:27.321
events,

716
00:26:27.341 --> 00:26:27.461
etc.

717
00:26:28.221 --> 00:26:29.782
All the jobs related to creativity.

718
00:26:30.242 --> 00:26:30.842
And then what's...

719
00:26:31.198 --> 00:26:32.098
what can be automated.

720
00:26:32.118 --> 00:26:34.439
And so it is exactly the three buckets that you mentioned.

721
00:26:34.879 --> 00:26:35.019
Yes.

722
00:26:35.039 --> 00:26:38.400
And then I said that there has to be like a layer of quality,

723
00:26:39.580 --> 00:26:42.521
QA on top of all these three buckets.

724
00:26:42.881 --> 00:26:44.642
But for me now having like,

725
00:26:44.722 --> 00:26:45.022
you know,

726
00:26:45.222 --> 00:26:49.083
really small teams of paid managers and blah,

727
00:26:49.783 --> 00:26:50.904
because you've got agents,

728
00:26:50.905 --> 00:26:51.284
et cetera,

729
00:26:51.664 --> 00:26:52.164
really for me,

730
00:26:52.184 --> 00:26:53.924
the three main buckets are relationship,

731
00:26:53.944 --> 00:26:55.345
creativity and agents,

732
00:26:55.525 --> 00:26:55.965
AI,

733
00:26:56.565 --> 00:26:56.945
engine.

734
00:26:56.985 --> 00:26:58.086
And this is what I call the engine.

735
00:26:58.686 --> 00:26:58.806
And

736
00:26:59.226 --> 00:26:59.346
I...

737
00:26:59.406 --> 00:27:00.006
I think that's it,

738
00:27:00.007 --> 00:27:00.226
you know?

739
00:27:00.246 --> 00:27:03.187
And so it's pretty good to see that you've got exactly the same vision.

740
00:27:03.527 --> 00:27:03.807
Yeah,

741
00:27:03.808 --> 00:27:04.527
100%.

742
00:27:04.528 --> 00:27:05.628
You are so spot on on that.

743
00:27:05.688 --> 00:27:06.148
And actually,

744
00:27:06.448 --> 00:27:07.108
thank you for the reminder.

745
00:27:07.109 --> 00:27:07.948
I actually did watch your talk.

746
00:27:08.168 --> 00:27:10.669
You said a few other things that I so strongly agreed with.

747
00:27:10.729 --> 00:27:15.370
Like the other one that stood out since you reminded me was like the junior talent pipeline trap.

748
00:27:15.610 --> 00:27:20.672
Like the things that I think should be automated does not necessarily mean that like,

749
00:27:21.172 --> 00:27:23.532
or the things you can automate doesn't necessarily mean you should.

750
00:27:23.773 --> 00:27:28.254
And like the one thing that like I will not automate is something like handicaps someone's learning,

751
00:27:28.354 --> 00:27:29.114
early career learning.

752
00:27:29.762 --> 00:27:30.002
And

753
00:27:31.043 --> 00:27:31.323
I mean,

754
00:27:31.743 --> 00:27:32.484
I'll use an example.

755
00:27:32.504 --> 00:27:33.905
I remember at my time at Samsara,

756
00:27:35.145 --> 00:27:37.807
we would hire folks fresh out of school,

757
00:27:37.987 --> 00:27:39.008
very early in career,

758
00:27:39.088 --> 00:27:45.592
and we would put them on the performance marketing team and we'd make them run $15 million in Google ad spend with no experience running Google ads before.

759
00:27:45.593 --> 00:27:46.672
And that sounds incredibly risky,

760
00:27:47.113 --> 00:27:50.395
but we would do it because like you understand very quickly how things are going.

761
00:27:50.396 --> 00:27:52.576
There's a very steady baseline.

762
00:27:52.577 --> 00:27:53.857
There's very quick feedback loops.

763
00:27:53.917 --> 00:27:54.597
Like that is like,

764
00:27:54.797 --> 00:27:55.618
that was a learning ground.

765
00:27:56.170 --> 00:27:57.630
I would not automate like at that time,

766
00:27:57.650 --> 00:27:58.811
like if AI was existed,

767
00:27:58.831 --> 00:27:59.891
that's something I would not automate,

768
00:27:59.951 --> 00:28:01.412
even though it's very easily automatable,

769
00:28:01.512 --> 00:28:01.912
because like,

770
00:28:01.952 --> 00:28:02.132
that's,

771
00:28:02.352 --> 00:28:04.813
that's what we use to test people to help them learn to get them like,

772
00:28:05.013 --> 00:28:06.193
to their next step in their career.

773
00:28:06.513 --> 00:28:07.514
I think that's a little different now.

774
00:28:07.574 --> 00:28:07.714
Like,

775
00:28:07.734 --> 00:28:09.254
I actually think we should automate Google ads.

776
00:28:09.255 --> 00:28:10.434
And we've done a good job with that.

777
00:28:10.534 --> 00:28:11.835
But yeah,

778
00:28:11.915 --> 00:28:13.115
you you need to,

779
00:28:13.575 --> 00:28:17.517
you need to provide the opportunities for folks to grow your future leaders to grow.

780
00:28:17.757 --> 00:28:18.177
Beyond that,

781
00:28:18.497 --> 00:28:19.097
you should automate.

782
00:28:19.677 --> 00:28:19.917
Yeah,

783
00:28:19.937 --> 00:28:20.177
I agree.

784
00:28:20.718 --> 00:28:21.018
All right.

785
00:28:22.142 --> 00:28:24.103
So let's open the topic of AEO and GEO,

786
00:28:24.163 --> 00:28:27.846
because I know you've tested a lot of things and you're still testing a lot of things.

787
00:28:28.687 --> 00:28:28.927
For me,

788
00:28:29.007 --> 00:28:33.450
one thing is all the people involved in this topic,

789
00:28:33.510 --> 00:28:42.996
they tell you like you need a kind of a proprietary data to make sure that you appear on ChatGPT or Google AR Review,

790
00:28:43.056 --> 00:28:43.397
etc.

791
00:28:44.117 --> 00:28:44.858
In your case,

792
00:28:44.898 --> 00:28:47.319
you've got a rare data moat,

793
00:28:48.400 --> 00:28:50.221
which is not the case for many companies.

794
00:28:50.722 --> 00:28:50.962
And so...

795
00:28:51.182 --> 00:29:00.285
if you were not working for Rump and that you didn't have all the data that you have today how would you approach this topic?

796
00:29:00.825 --> 00:29:16.969
It's very good you've got to get it somehow and that could mean either yes you actually need to go find some proprietary data that you have some insight in from your customer base or it means you need to go like create some running surveys doing like fundamental research or

797
00:29:16.970 --> 00:29:19.830
it means that you need to find some data that already exists out

798
00:29:19.930 --> 00:29:41.702
there and we need to make it digestible and understandable by an llm um that's kind of the order of of or like reverse order of difficulty the third thing is the easiest thing to do um if you have truly like no data no nothing unique or specific to share then like okay you can go repackage something that is unique but is very undiscoverable and uh undigestible now

799
00:29:41.722 --> 00:29:49.526
that requires kind of going back to the beginning of our conversation that requires having someone that can think in first principles and like really break down the problem and then be technical enough to figure out how to

800
00:29:49.666 --> 00:29:50.609
how to make it digestible.

801
00:29:50.730 --> 00:29:51.793
But a good example is,

802
00:29:51.914 --> 00:29:52.135
um,

803
00:29:54.482 --> 00:29:55.803
I'll give an example from the past.

804
00:29:56.463 --> 00:30:02.167
There are a lot of databases and there's a lot of like data that is regulated by the government in the United States,

805
00:30:02.187 --> 00:30:03.128
but at like the state level.

806
00:30:03.188 --> 00:30:05.670
So each state might have a different database of information.

807
00:30:05.730 --> 00:30:06.090
It's pretty,

808
00:30:06.230 --> 00:30:07.411
and they all have different systems.

809
00:30:07.451 --> 00:30:08.612
There's no standardization.

810
00:30:09.192 --> 00:30:10.473
That data isn't proprietary.

811
00:30:11.914 --> 00:30:12.494
It's out there,

812
00:30:12.834 --> 00:30:16.157
but it's probably not being digested by an LLM for a variety of reasons.

813
00:30:16.217 --> 00:30:16.577
And so like,

814
00:30:16.578 --> 00:30:17.558
if you truly have no data,

815
00:30:17.578 --> 00:30:23.862
you could go and you could structure that information and you could do all of like the AEO optimizations to make it digestible and you could figure out the...

816
00:30:23.962 --> 00:30:42.233
queries it's relevant for and spin up thousands of pages that answer those queries with this proprietary like you could do that if you truly have no data but my guess is that most companies actually do have some really interesting data and a very like unique perspective to share um they may not have just like thought about it hardly interesting okay what

817
00:30:42.473 --> 00:30:50.238
is completely overlooked on this on aeo geo topic oh that's that is such a good question um

818
00:30:52.890 --> 00:30:59.535
So I think what's really overlooked is how quickly things have moved from like marketing to humans to marketing to machines.

819
00:30:59.615 --> 00:31:00.316
And this is something I've been,

820
00:31:00.536 --> 00:31:02.318
I think a lot of people have been saying for a long time.

821
00:31:03.098 --> 00:31:06.781
But like you don't see people or companies really taking action towards it still.

822
00:31:07.482 --> 00:31:08.343
So I'll give you an example.

823
00:31:09.023 --> 00:31:11.525
We ran an experiment a couple months ago,

824
00:31:12.086 --> 00:31:13.046
more than that now at this point.

825
00:31:13.847 --> 00:31:17.650
But the hypothesis was that we need to be able to market to machines.

826
00:31:17.990 --> 00:31:22.154
And some of the simplest marketing tactics that most companies have is like an incentive.

827
00:31:22.194 --> 00:31:22.434
It's like

828
00:31:22.454 --> 00:31:22.534
Like,

829
00:31:22.535 --> 00:31:23.054
take a meeting,

830
00:31:23.055 --> 00:31:26.056
I'll give you 50 bucks or we'll discount our product or whatever.

831
00:31:26.117 --> 00:31:26.597
Free trial.

832
00:31:27.237 --> 00:31:27.497
It's like,

833
00:31:27.498 --> 00:31:29.359
why don't we test incentives to machines,

834
00:31:29.360 --> 00:31:29.959
to LLMs?

835
00:31:30.059 --> 00:31:30.199
Like,

836
00:31:30.219 --> 00:31:30.780
does that work?

837
00:31:31.020 --> 00:31:31.300
Like,

838
00:31:31.340 --> 00:31:31.901
is that crazy?

839
00:31:32.361 --> 00:31:32.521
Like,

840
00:31:32.621 --> 00:31:34.242
we test incentives to humans all the time.

841
00:31:34.282 --> 00:31:35.303
Let's do an incentive to a machine.

842
00:31:35.963 --> 00:31:36.704
And so that's what we did.

843
00:31:36.904 --> 00:31:37.224
And like,

844
00:31:37.225 --> 00:31:39.166
we actually like published the results.

845
00:31:39.286 --> 00:31:42.348
It's one of the few times we actually like published some of the things that we learned.

846
00:31:42.848 --> 00:31:44.469
And the results were like,

847
00:31:44.489 --> 00:31:44.649
yes,

848
00:31:44.689 --> 00:31:47.591
you can actually absolutely offer an incentive to LLMs.

849
00:31:47.811 --> 00:31:48.992
And for Claude,

850
00:31:49.112 --> 00:31:49.833
it works beautifully.

851
00:31:50.213 --> 00:31:51.414
It's a little bit slow picking it up.

852
00:31:51.494 --> 00:31:52.054
but it works really,

853
00:31:52.074 --> 00:31:54.375
really well for chat GPT that doesn't pick it up at all.

854
00:31:54.875 --> 00:31:56.316
And then for everything in between,

855
00:31:56.356 --> 00:31:56.816
it's like,

856
00:31:57.136 --> 00:31:58.337
there's some interesting nuance,

857
00:31:58.377 --> 00:31:58.717
but like,

858
00:31:58.917 --> 00:31:59.057
yeah,

859
00:31:59.217 --> 00:32:00.358
incentives work for machines.

860
00:32:00.958 --> 00:32:01.398
And it's like,

861
00:32:01.958 --> 00:32:02.599
in retrospect,

862
00:32:02.619 --> 00:32:03.579
it sounds very obvious,

863
00:32:03.599 --> 00:32:05.080
but like no one had ever tested before,

864
00:32:05.081 --> 00:32:06.100
at least never talked about it.

865
00:32:06.620 --> 00:32:07.981
And it's,

866
00:32:08.121 --> 00:32:09.141
it's both helped on a yo,

867
00:32:09.442 --> 00:32:10.742
it's helped in terms of like,

868
00:32:10.922 --> 00:32:11.102
like,

869
00:32:12.083 --> 00:32:13.643
recruiting brand in that,

870
00:32:13.763 --> 00:32:13.903
oh,

871
00:32:13.904 --> 00:32:15.044
they're doing interesting things.

872
00:32:15.324 --> 00:32:16.484
And it's helped in terms of like,

873
00:32:16.524 --> 00:32:17.425
non aeo,

874
00:32:18.185 --> 00:32:18.985
just like visibility,

875
00:32:19.046 --> 00:32:20.066
like the fact that like,

876
00:32:20.578 --> 00:32:21.839
we are running this experiment,

877
00:32:21.899 --> 00:32:23.340
like actually helped our SEO as well,

878
00:32:23.720 --> 00:32:24.941
which is kind of crazy.

879
00:32:24.942 --> 00:32:25.061
So

880
00:32:26.142 --> 00:32:26.362
I mean,

881
00:32:26.382 --> 00:32:27.803
like that's one example.

882
00:32:28.163 --> 00:32:30.425
There's probably a million I could share.

883
00:32:31.365 --> 00:32:31.525
Okay,

884
00:32:31.605 --> 00:32:31.786
cool.

885
00:32:32.086 --> 00:32:32.386
And so

886
00:32:33.187 --> 00:32:34.427
I wanted to address this topic.

887
00:32:34.487 --> 00:32:40.491
Like now we see that people are talking about the fact that you should actually divide your marketing into like content,

888
00:32:40.752 --> 00:32:41.292
like for example,

889
00:32:41.352 --> 00:32:43.293
content for humans and content for machines,

890
00:32:43.294 --> 00:32:43.534
you know,

891
00:32:43.574 --> 00:32:44.654
and you can divide it by two.

892
00:32:45.355 --> 00:32:49.918
But how do you staff and structure a team for

893
00:32:50.390 --> 00:32:52.191
both humans and machines,

894
00:32:52.192 --> 00:32:52.491
you know?

895
00:32:53.512 --> 00:32:53.652
Yeah,

896
00:32:54.672 --> 00:32:55.413
it's a bit of a bet.

897
00:32:55.613 --> 00:32:57.094
I don't think you can do everything.

898
00:32:57.994 --> 00:33:00.075
And so when it comes to AEO or SEO,

899
00:33:01.196 --> 00:33:04.097
we pivoted the SEO team almost completely to AEO.

900
00:33:04.738 --> 00:33:06.799
We do some like run rate,

901
00:33:06.819 --> 00:33:07.539
keep the lights on,

902
00:33:07.579 --> 00:33:08.340
like SEO work.

903
00:33:08.980 --> 00:33:09.760
But the future,

904
00:33:09.761 --> 00:33:10.261
in my opinion,

905
00:33:10.321 --> 00:33:11.001
truly is AEO.

906
00:33:11.041 --> 00:33:11.581
And actually,

907
00:33:11.582 --> 00:33:12.222
you already see this.

908
00:33:12.223 --> 00:33:13.022
It's already validated,

909
00:33:13.042 --> 00:33:18.405
like with Google's AI mode and like AI overviews being rolled out to the extent that they have been over the last couple of months.

910
00:33:18.945 --> 00:33:19.906
So I think that proves that...

911
00:33:20.126 --> 00:33:22.047
AEO is probably the most important thing.

912
00:33:22.167 --> 00:33:24.548
So I would pivot SEO completely to AEO.

913
00:33:24.809 --> 00:33:30.171
And the good news is that a lot of the tactics that work for AEO do overlap and do help SEO with some exceptions,

914
00:33:30.191 --> 00:33:31.852
which is kind of a very interesting point.

915
00:33:33.673 --> 00:33:33.793
But

916
00:33:34.194 --> 00:33:34.914
I would go all in.

917
00:33:34.974 --> 00:33:36.275
I tell the team all the time,

918
00:33:36.695 --> 00:33:38.536
I don't care about the short term success.

919
00:33:38.576 --> 00:33:40.917
I don't care if we miss our numbers this week or this month.

920
00:33:41.077 --> 00:33:41.317
Ideally,

921
00:33:41.318 --> 00:33:41.658
we don't.

922
00:33:41.918 --> 00:33:45.160
But I don't care about that if it sets us up for success a year from now.

923
00:33:45.660 --> 00:33:47.101
Because things are moving so quickly,

924
00:33:47.841 --> 00:33:49.522
the advantage of moving quickly.

925
00:33:50.002 --> 00:33:55.086
and the advantage of responding quickly like compounds over time in a way that it hasn't in the past.

926
00:33:55.246 --> 00:33:58.168
So investing in the future and the future is not that far out.

927
00:33:58.169 --> 00:33:59.569
The future is like a few quarters up.

928
00:34:00.810 --> 00:34:01.030
Okay.

929
00:34:01.610 --> 00:34:02.251
Just like a ramp,

930
00:34:02.431 --> 00:34:02.771
basically.

931
00:34:03.372 --> 00:34:03.532
Yes,

932
00:34:03.632 --> 00:34:04.012
exactly.

933
00:34:04.092 --> 00:34:04.492
Exactly.

934
00:34:04.532 --> 00:34:04.732
Yes.

935
00:34:06.514 --> 00:34:08.535
Okay.

936
00:34:08.536 --> 00:34:08.775
Okay.

937
00:34:09.516 --> 00:34:09.896
Let's say

938
00:34:10.537 --> 00:34:12.778
I'm a future CMO,

939
00:34:13.038 --> 00:34:14.459
future head of growth.

940
00:34:14.679 --> 00:34:14.920
I'm a,

941
00:34:15.100 --> 00:34:15.780
let's say I'm a student,

942
00:34:15.980 --> 00:34:16.180
okay?

943
00:34:16.401 --> 00:34:17.141
In a business school.

944
00:34:17.301 --> 00:34:17.902
And I would like to...

945
00:34:18.490 --> 00:34:33.875
uh be you in the future okay uh if i had to think about the type of skills i should develop now to be ready to take your role in 2030 let's say yeah what

946
00:34:33.975 --> 00:34:44.098
what's your advice it's it's it's got to be just go build things like that's it i i think like if you can

947
00:34:44.750 --> 00:34:49.451
be very present and aware in the moment of like what you're doing and like the pain that you're feeling.

948
00:34:49.771 --> 00:34:50.892
I think that's a very important.

949
00:34:51.072 --> 00:34:55.693
I think a lot of people kind of go through their day to day and have become like numb to the pain of what they're doing.

950
00:34:55.753 --> 00:34:57.473
And it could be it doesn't even necessarily need to be work.

951
00:34:57.474 --> 00:34:58.134
It could be at school,

952
00:34:58.154 --> 00:34:58.854
it could be in life,

953
00:34:58.914 --> 00:34:59.194
whatever.

954
00:34:59.514 --> 00:35:02.415
It's like there are so many painful experiences that we just like put up with.

955
00:35:02.815 --> 00:35:04.775
There's so much friction in like our day to days.

956
00:35:04.776 --> 00:35:07.316
It's like if you can actually lift your head up and be aware of that,

957
00:35:07.696 --> 00:35:09.157
and then go build something to solve it.

958
00:35:09.317 --> 00:35:11.417
Like it doesn't matter if you're solving it for yourself.

959
00:35:11.418 --> 00:35:14.038
It doesn't matter if you're not able to solve it but like you at least try

960
00:35:14.606 --> 00:35:16.226
you're going to learn a bunch of really interesting skills.

961
00:35:16.727 --> 00:35:20.948
I remember a year ago interviewing someone who was a student,

962
00:35:21.068 --> 00:35:22.268
and they cold emailed me,

963
00:35:22.568 --> 00:35:25.729
and they had a phenomenal pitch on why they should be an intern at RAM.

964
00:35:26.149 --> 00:35:27.089
And I remember getting on the phone with them,

965
00:35:27.090 --> 00:35:27.349
and I was like,

966
00:35:27.350 --> 00:35:27.950
how do you use AI?

967
00:35:28.030 --> 00:35:28.610
And he was just like,

968
00:35:28.611 --> 00:35:29.030
what do you mean?

969
00:35:29.890 --> 00:35:30.330
And I was like,

970
00:35:30.410 --> 00:35:31.611
how do you use it?

971
00:35:31.612 --> 00:35:32.191
He was just like,

972
00:35:32.851 --> 00:35:33.211
I mean,

973
00:35:33.471 --> 00:35:36.512
I go for walks and I talk to it for five hours a day.

974
00:35:37.652 --> 00:35:38.693
I use the voice mode.

975
00:35:38.694 --> 00:35:39.453
I don't type with it.

976
00:35:39.653 --> 00:35:43.834
And I remember talking to someone else about this in the growth world.

977
00:35:44.094 --> 00:35:44.934
And he was just like,

978
00:35:45.374 --> 00:35:47.375
I wouldn't be surprised if in like 2040,

979
00:35:47.455 --> 00:35:50.856
like people don't know how to read anymore because everything's like voice and everything is XCube.

980
00:35:50.956 --> 00:35:52.156
I think that's a little bit extreme.

981
00:35:52.176 --> 00:35:52.736
But like the point,

982
00:35:54.157 --> 00:35:57.318
like the new generation that are going to be the leaders in 2030,

983
00:35:57.378 --> 00:36:03.159
they're working in a very different way than like I would have even imagined working or even imagine like living life with this technology,

984
00:36:03.560 --> 00:36:04.280
which I think is a good thing.

985
00:36:04.440 --> 00:36:07.801
So if you're not leaning into it and if you're not like if this doesn't sound familiar to you,

986
00:36:07.802 --> 00:36:10.221
you should go build some stuff and you'll learn very quickly.

987
00:36:11.182 --> 00:36:11.362
Okay.

988
00:36:11.363 --> 00:36:11.662
what

989
00:36:12.306 --> 00:36:15.687
How do you think your role will evolve in the next five years?

990
00:36:15.727 --> 00:36:19.209
Like how your day-to-day will be in

991
00:36:19.689 --> 00:36:24.891
2030? I don't know if my role exists in five years.

992
00:36:27.593 --> 00:36:29.293
I brought this up to a few folks,

993
00:36:29.333 --> 00:36:30.514
including my boss,

994
00:36:30.734 --> 00:36:32.154
and I don't think he disagreed.

995
00:36:32.495 --> 00:36:37.057
But I think it's more like the role of having some department head,

996
00:36:37.477 --> 00:36:38.557
professional manager,

997
00:36:38.697 --> 00:36:39.758
it just won't make sense.

998
00:36:40.458 --> 00:36:41.738
Everyone needs to be a builder.

999
00:36:41.878 --> 00:36:43.559
Everyone needs to be providing values in IC.

1000
00:36:44.359 --> 00:36:44.799
And like,

1001
00:36:46.860 --> 00:36:48.240
maybe there is going to be a need for managers,

1002
00:36:48.260 --> 00:36:49.420
like managers of like AI,

1003
00:36:49.641 --> 00:36:50.641
like fleets of agents.

1004
00:36:50.642 --> 00:36:54.662
I would consider that more of like an agentic operator or whatever,

1005
00:36:54.663 --> 00:36:55.462
a marketing engineer,

1006
00:36:55.502 --> 00:36:56.322
whatever you want to call it.

1007
00:36:56.782 --> 00:37:00.183
But like the days of having some VP that manages like,

1008
00:37:00.704 --> 00:37:01.044
I don't know,

1009
00:37:01.144 --> 00:37:04.885
15 people directly and like there's five layers of management.

1010
00:37:05.245 --> 00:37:06.305
I don't think that exists anymore.

1011
00:37:06.306 --> 00:37:09.706
I think you're going to see very flat organizations where everyone is expected to be a builder.

1012
00:37:10.106 --> 00:37:12.408
That's kind of like what we've pushed pretty hard at Ramp.

1013
00:37:12.528 --> 00:37:15.110
I think that's going to become the norm faster than we expect.

1014
00:37:15.111 --> 00:37:16.330
Yeah,

1015
00:37:16.370 --> 00:37:16.591
okay.

1016
00:37:17.011 --> 00:37:22.334
And do you already have agents taking decisions inside of Ramp today?

1017
00:37:22.335 --> 00:37:22.515
We do,

1018
00:37:22.735 --> 00:37:22.975
yes,

1019
00:37:23.515 --> 00:37:24.096
of all types,

1020
00:37:24.836 --> 00:37:25.577
including in marketing.

1021
00:37:25.757 --> 00:37:27.058
So it depends.

1022
00:37:28.299 --> 00:37:31.421
The way that you allow an agent to make decisions is actually very important.

1023
00:37:31.501 --> 00:37:33.282
So it's less about building the agent,

1024
00:37:33.302 --> 00:37:38.946
and it's more about having the right evals and having the right off-ramps to either...

1025
00:37:39.366 --> 00:37:40.186
have human review,

1026
00:37:40.347 --> 00:37:41.287
have a human takeover,

1027
00:37:41.307 --> 00:37:41.867
whatever it might be.

1028
00:37:41.868 --> 00:37:47.510
So having the evaluation that gives you a sense of confidence in what decision an agent is making is actually like the really hard part.

1029
00:37:47.511 --> 00:37:48.531
The automation is not hard.

1030
00:37:49.492 --> 00:37:49.612
Yeah,

1031
00:37:49.672 --> 00:37:50.032
I agree.

1032
00:37:50.332 --> 00:37:52.213
Like the technical part is the easiest part now.

1033
00:37:52.433 --> 00:37:52.553
Yeah,

1034
00:37:52.793 --> 00:37:53.274
it's crazy.

1035
00:37:53.474 --> 00:37:54.254
This is like a new world.

1036
00:37:54.294 --> 00:37:54.654
Yeah,

1037
00:37:54.674 --> 00:37:55.495
I agree.

1038
00:37:55.496 --> 00:37:55.715
I agree.

1039
00:37:56.195 --> 00:37:56.375
Okay.

1040
00:37:58.336 --> 00:38:00.618
What's next for you and what's next for

1041
00:38:01.078 --> 00:38:01.318
Ramp?

1042
00:38:03.039 --> 00:38:07.081
I think that what really excites me is that we're just very early in this journey,

1043
00:38:07.161 --> 00:38:07.802
both as a company.

1044
00:38:08.042 --> 00:38:08.422
Like we have...

1045
00:38:08.642 --> 00:38:25.487
a very small percentage of the market even though we've grown very quickly so there's there's a lot of opportunity for the company but even just like for growth for marketing there's there's so much opportunity there's like going back to the bucket of stuff that's now possible with ai that wasn't possible before like that changes every couple weeks i feel um and

1046
00:38:25.527 --> 00:38:36.130
it's very it's stressful but it's also very exciting like i'm always very stressed out like when i take a day off or when i'm not on twitter and i realize anthropic drops dropped something new or whatever uh

1047
00:38:36.766 --> 00:38:38.647
It's stressful to feel behind all the time,

1048
00:38:39.067 --> 00:38:40.108
but it's also kind of exciting.

1049
00:38:40.168 --> 00:38:44.029
It's like I have more interesting things that I want to play with than I ever have.

1050
00:38:44.169 --> 00:38:45.270
And the list only gets longer.

1051
00:38:45.850 --> 00:38:46.390
So what's new?

1052
00:38:46.510 --> 00:38:47.130
Or I'm sorry,

1053
00:38:47.131 --> 00:38:47.631
what's next?

1054
00:38:49.351 --> 00:38:50.092
I think it's really,

1055
00:38:50.312 --> 00:38:51.212
it's probably three things.

1056
00:38:51.352 --> 00:38:52.293
It's probably number one,

1057
00:38:52.973 --> 00:38:57.014
continuing to build this function of an agentic operator,

1058
00:38:57.075 --> 00:39:03.777
someone that is an expert at building the systems and the loops to remove all of the tasks in our day to day.

1059
00:39:03.937 --> 00:39:04.097
Like,

1060
00:39:04.117 --> 00:39:05.498
I think that is an area that we're...

1061
00:39:05.882 --> 00:39:06.783
like very focused on.

1062
00:39:07.463 --> 00:39:08.143
I think number two,

1063
00:39:08.203 --> 00:39:10.165
it's like really starting to understand like,

1064
00:39:11.005 --> 00:39:14.427
as folks delegate more decision making to machines,

1065
00:39:14.487 --> 00:39:15.868
like how do you influence those machines?

1066
00:39:15.888 --> 00:39:16.908
And how do you do so in like,

1067
00:39:17.189 --> 00:39:19.750
in a very straightforward or,

1068
00:39:19.830 --> 00:39:20.451
or ethical way.

1069
00:39:21.011 --> 00:39:22.532
And then the third is attention.

1070
00:39:22.712 --> 00:39:23.072
It's like,

1071
00:39:23.933 --> 00:39:26.254
it's a never ending fight to get someone's attention.

1072
00:39:26.274 --> 00:39:27.875
And you've always got to be doing interesting things.

1073
00:39:27.895 --> 00:39:28.815
Like I it's kind of funny,

1074
00:39:28.816 --> 00:39:31.677
I was talking to the person who's very good at what she does,

1075
00:39:31.737 --> 00:39:33.158
like she runs all of our stunt marketing.

1076
00:39:33.850 --> 00:39:34.390
And she was like,

1077
00:39:34.391 --> 00:39:35.511
I have this idea for a stunt,

1078
00:39:35.551 --> 00:39:38.353
but I'm not going to do it because I think people are going to expect it would come from us.

1079
00:39:38.493 --> 00:39:38.733
Like,

1080
00:39:38.773 --> 00:39:40.375
it's a little crazy and it's clearly B2B.

1081
00:39:40.415 --> 00:39:40.555
Like,

1082
00:39:40.655 --> 00:39:41.215
they're going to be like,

1083
00:39:41.216 --> 00:39:41.315
oh,

1084
00:39:41.316 --> 00:39:41.835
this is ramp.

1085
00:39:41.855 --> 00:39:42.316
It's crazy.

1086
00:39:42.876 --> 00:39:43.477
And she's like,

1087
00:39:43.478 --> 00:39:45.638
I want to go in a different direction where no one will know it was us.

1088
00:39:45.658 --> 00:39:46.018
And I was like,

1089
00:39:46.038 --> 00:39:46.479
oh,

1090
00:39:46.699 --> 00:39:47.259
that's genius.

1091
00:39:47.339 --> 00:39:47.539
Like,

1092
00:39:47.920 --> 00:39:51.282
the fact that you have to pivot even from the things that are working is like.

1093
00:39:51.755 --> 00:39:54.437
It's very interesting to me and I think it is going to have to continue.

1094
00:39:55.658 --> 00:39:56.138
Nice.

1095
00:39:56.819 --> 00:39:59.961
Are you planning to go to Europe?

1096
00:40:01.522 --> 00:40:03.904
We're definitely planning to expand internationally.

1097
00:40:05.785 --> 00:40:07.406
I guess it depends what you mean by Europe.

1098
00:40:07.407 --> 00:40:07.766
Like most,

1099
00:40:08.006 --> 00:40:09.508
all of the companies I've been at before,

1100
00:40:09.528 --> 00:40:12.410
it's like they kind of follow the same approach to international expansion.

1101
00:40:12.411 --> 00:40:12.530
So,

1102
00:40:12.531 --> 00:40:12.790
all right,

1103
00:40:12.810 --> 00:40:13.010
let's,

1104
00:40:13.170 --> 00:40:14.031
we're in the US only.

1105
00:40:14.051 --> 00:40:14.251
Let's.

1106
00:40:14.575 --> 00:40:22.197
try out Canada because it's close and culturally somewhat UK and then Australia because they speak English exactly it's it's always the same um

1107
00:40:22.577 --> 00:40:42.923
I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same for us as all yeah it's easier at least you don't have to localize content and blah blah so yeah but you even that's like an interesting question it's like localizing content used to be such a pain I remember at Samsara what like what a machine we had to build and how resource intensive it was like expand country by country it's like now it's like

1108
00:40:43.063 --> 00:41:09.145
the localization is somewhat easy like ai has made like really good translations like great it's made like um being able to build a panel of like your buyer in france or in germany or whatever and then ask the synthetic panel questions like it works surprisingly well yeah i agree but still you will need the relationship because in b2b you need relationship with the people and so you will still need some people that speaks the language and 100 yes like i'm a strong believer that if you're going to like launch

1109
00:41:09.146 --> 00:41:11.327
in a new country you need people on the ground from that.

1110
00:41:11.407 --> 00:41:27.978
country like yeah i can't do it automatically or like autonomously and you can't do it from the united states your home you need people that like know that culture great well george thank you very much for your time uh it was great uh for people who wants to follow you do we send them to your linkedin let's

1111
00:41:27.998 --> 00:41:40.967
do linkedin although i'm a big lurker on twitter i don't have a as active of a following so yeah linkedin works okay but we can send them to your x accounts if you want to linkedin sounds great i'm always happy to talk shop with folks and

1112
00:41:41.047 --> 00:41:41.827
And Ramp is always hiring.

1113
00:41:42.828 --> 00:41:43.088
All right.

1114
00:41:43.348 --> 00:41:43.588
Great.

1115
00:41:43.988 --> 00:41:44.248
Thank you,

1116
00:41:44.249 --> 00:41:44.548
George.

1117
00:41:45.028 --> 00:41:45.269
Thank you,

1118
00:41:45.270 --> 00:41:45.429
Jordan.

1119
00:41:45.469 --> 00:41:45.949
This is awesome.

1120
00:41:46.289 --> 00:41:46.909
Do it

1121
00:41:48.390 --> 00:41:49.670
Just do it

1122
00:41:51.191 --> 00:41:53.292
Don't let your dreams be dreams.

1123
00:41:54.272 --> 00:41:54.832
Yesterday,

1124
00:41:55.092 --> 00:41:55.913
you said tomorrow.

1125
00:41:56.173 --> 00:41:57.833
So just do it

1126
00:41:58.253 --> 00:42:00.314
Make your dreams come true

1127
00:42:00.974 --> 00:42:02.435
Just do it