Cloud company buzzient 2013

Property of Buzzient, Inc.

Running an Enterprise SaaS Company in the Cloud

Tim JonesCEO, Buzzient

[email protected]


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The Cloud IS Liberating Cloud is not just an environment to deploy your product

Cloud can be used to deploy YOUR COMPANY

You’d never imagine building an on premise product in 2013 …so… Why would you design a company as premise-bound?

Don’t just push your product to the Cloud, push your Company there as well!


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What is a Cloud Company? SaaS product

Distributed development team w/external partners for scale

Distributed sales/service team (“JetBlue Model”)

On-demand back-office infrastructure

Minimizes hard assets via the sharing economy

Leverages a global network of talent

Enables an organically funded company to scale and compete


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Why move your Company to the Cloud Real Estate is a luxury, not a necessity

A big expense, but is only utilized ~50% of the time at most

Why can’t ALL hard assets be like AWS, with ability to spin up/down capacity and where you need it?

Ability to tap into a larger talent pool Breaks the “Tyranny of high cost locations” in high tech

Especially for Enterprise companies, puts your resources near your customers


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Product Strategy Key element in product development is TRUST; team members have to trust

that everyone will do their part regardless of location

Developing your product with a distributed team isn’t easy , but…

Once the product is GA, you don’t need the team in the same place

Git has moved the scrum meeting to the cloud; AWS, the server room

So, why not let everyone work from home/the mountains/the beach once your product is deployed?


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Talent in the Cloud: We are all 1099’s Everyone a contractor, even senior management

Performance based compensation; no base/or small base salaries

Large upside potential from profit sharing, options and shadow stock

P/L rolls up from each individual person “Profitability begins with YOU”

Aligns investor/customer goals with the company

Allows for parallel “gigs” If you’re meeting your objectives, why not play in a band on the side?


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Development Talent in The Cloud: Destroy “Tyranny of Location”

Who to Hire 20-something who deployed to Iraq

Ran combat team as a squad leader

Came back to US, enrolled in top 5 engineering program with 3.8 GPA in MS program

NOT in a major city, so “off the radar”

Who Not to Hire 20-something who’d never left his

home state Complains about office chairs and

type of cola in the fridge 3.0 GPA from a top 50 Engineering

program In a major city, so automatically a

highly sought after development “ninja”


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Customer Service in the Cloud “The JetBlue Model”

Provide the best service, regardless of location and personal profile Tap into a larger potential workforce

Service doesn’t need to be centralized Rural, Global, Regional talent enables low cost service and follow-the-sun

The Cloud puts EVERYONE in the service team, there’s no contact center in another building


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Enterprise Sales in the Cloud Enterprise selling requires customer intimacy and knowledge

Only so much can be done over the phone; sub-$100K deals yes, but not $100K+

Customer demand is global; your HQ is probably not near your customers Result: High T/E cost to visit key accounts

Enterprise Sales offices are more dead real estate => “Glengarry Glen Ross”? Other than a place to keep the coffee machine…???

Conclusion: Selling should be done over the phone/web/on customer premises


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Enterprise Marketing in the Cloud Inbound Marketing, while not yet proven for $100K deals, gets you in the

door.

The best digital marketers are…well…digital Not sitting in a CMO’s office, but in a small agency or studio building

Marketing talent is highly fragmented – no one person knows it all

Conclusion: A network of on-demand marketing professionals brings more to the table than a single dedicated team


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What do you give up? Managing real estate, facilities, all the “stuff” which doesn’t add value to

customers

Interrupts driven by service providers and other “payroll expanders”

“Geography = Destiny” behavior “We must be good ‘cause we’re in Palo Alto!!!”


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What do you gain from a Cloud Company? Clear, constant focus on 2 things: Product and Customers

Results-driven organization Everything is performance based

Agility and Flexibility “You can sleep in your car but you can’t drive your house”

Emphasis shifts from “Payroll Footprint” to “Customer Imprint” The ultimate dent you make in the Universe is not the size of your payroll but the

positive impact you have on your customers


Running an Enterprise SaaS Company in the Cloud

Tim JonesCEO, Buzzient

[email protected]

Cloud company buzzient 2013

Technology

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