Laxman: Awesome. So, our guest for today is from a company that is a game-changer in the revenue operations space and is the number one revenue operations software by G2, currently valued at 2.6 billion. We have Andy Bryne CEO of Clari. Hey, Andy, welcome to the hype is real.

‍Andy: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

‍Laxman: So first of all, congratulations on your 225 Million Series F. We're also celebrating with you. And that's kind of raising your valuation to 2.6 billion, that's a huge milestone for you and Clari, so I'm assuming this is your first podcast after the big round?

‍Andy: It is our first podcast after the big round. Yeah, the round has been amazing. Employees are excited, customers are excited. You know, it's a big indicator of our momentum. You know, it's our second growth equity round, we raised in less than 12 months, and we've quadrupled the valuation of the company. So, it's been a remarkable 12 months for us. No question.

‍Laxman: Wonderful. Congratulations. And so, let's take back to almost 9,10 years. Take us back to 2013. Tell us the story behind Clari as an idea. What was it your pain point? I'm sure you must have told this a hundred times now.

‍Andy: Yeah, no. Um, well, it's been a while since I've thought that far back. But yeah, you know, the thesis that we took to Sequoia Capital, who's our largest shareholder was that we thought machine learning was going to be something significant in the enterprise software market, which is a half a trillion-dollar market. You know, the previous company that we had started from scratch was a company called Clearwell Systems. And we were doing natural language processing and machine learning, to allow people to respond to litigation issues or securities investigations. So that was a really fun company, we grew to 100 million in ARR. And then Symantec acquired us in June of 2011. My co-founder and CTO Venkat Rangan, after about a year ago, came to me and said, hey, Andy, this whole machine learning stuff we've been doing, to allow people to replace what humans do, sifting through legal documents and replacing, you know, having the machine do what humans would do is going to be a big deal in enterprise software. And we started having a discussion about that, over a really bad cup of coffee at this coffee shop in Mountain View. And we started exploring and looking at the enterprise software market. And we noticed that the existing incumbents, the big legacy vendors, Salesforce, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, they were on 30-year-old architectures that were legacy, that were not built from the ground up with machine learning in mind. So, with that, we went to Sequoia as the fourth company we've done with them. And we thought that this would be pretty big. And at the time, the only companies that were doing large-scale machine learning were in the consumer space, right? It was Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Google. Um, so Sequoia said, hey, love it, great team. Disruptive potential very disruptive technology and AI and incumbents, legacy incumbents that are an antiquated architecture. So that's how it all came together. We quickly realized that after we had closed Series A that we would focus around CES, because a lot of the customers we were talking to were exploring the first applications where we would apply machine learning, they were saying, poor sales reps, poor sales managers, the executives, it's just horrible what they have to deal with. And that's how it all got started.

‍Jared Robin: What an incredible story. So armed with an incredible idea, a market that's yearning for and money from a top VC. You have to get your first 100 customers. So, you know where this question is going is can you walk us through that? Like, how would you go about that? From an idea to 100 customers? This is big because this is the beginning today.

‍Andy: Yeah, I mean, I actually think about it in stages. So, there's the first 10, the first 25, the first 50, your first 100. So these stages, and you know the first ten, and they each have their major challenges and wonderful success moments that you know, where you have a lot of gratitude and you feel like you've accomplished a great deal getting to that firsthand - what was a lot of creativity, a lot of finding, Geoffrey Moore's early adopters, if you've read Geoffrey Moore's Crossing the Chasm book, if you haven't, you should. And, so finding the first early adopters to get to your 10, bringing that thesis to them, and not only that, finding the person inside the early adopter account, that is willing to take a risk on you because you're a startup they never heard of, they do lean in because Sequoia Capital, is backing you, so as an entrepreneur, you've got that's been worth its weight in gold, having Sequoia as the lead investor. And frankly, Sequoia made all kinds of introductions for us, right. And that was fantastic. And so now, trying to share with them that vision. That hey, there's a new way of thinking about how you should run your sales teams. And that there is a way we could apply machine learning to spot risk, identify hidden opportunities and predict outcomes and allow sales reps to close deals faster, managers to drive more revenue, execs to boost forecast accuracy. And, you know, for us, you had to find those, those customers that were willing to take a risk. Look at early prototype work. And then we were having to do commercial arrangements, once you've found the person that wants to take a risk and wants you to kick the tires and look at the technology. And then you have a commercial arrangement that is a no-risk arrangement saying, hey, look, we don't need to recognize the revenue, the way you set up the contracts, you almost give it away for free to get some feedback, now, then you start to create these learning loops. So, you get your first five to 10 customers, you come back to engineering. And you know, at that point, we had maybe 10 engineers, and we had our first signed order for five grand. But if we didn't deliver, they wouldn't pay us. So, it really wasn't a real order, you know, but you know, these are small victories that you build on, you know, some of these small victories early on is really, really powerful. And you start to get validation of the thesis and the assumption that, hey, we're on to something. So, each of these are just sort of additional breadcrumbs that you're pulling through along the way on your path where you think you should go. As you get to the first 10. You have, and you know, you've done commercial arrangements that they feel like they can go back to their boss, and the people that are going to actually write the checks, and they look like heroes saying - Look, I'm getting this technology and basically getting it for free. This is amazing. The only thing they're asking is that can we think can they use our logo? And can we be a reference so now you know you're building, now you're going from 10 to 25, right? You gotta have a reference pool. So now you have the reference pool built based on you know, feedback that you deliver, or technology you've delivered, they have basically realized this is the key point, they've realized real value. And you've been able to in a small way quantify the value. And now you'd have to start actually not just throwing technology and seeing if they love it, but also quantifying the value of it. Now, as you go from 10 to 25, you actually have to do your small form of Value Engineering hacking, hey, if you buy this, we will A reduce your slip rates, B we will increase your conversion rates, C you will drive more pipeline, D you will accelerate your growth, right. And you start to use the value-based selling references and then you start building your brand and it gets a little bit more powerful as you get to 25. Then from 25, it's kind of almost a little bit more scale. So now you're hiring people. I'm no longer doing the work. I'm hiring a hand full of sales leaders and sales teams, and now hiring is so critically important to get from that 25 to 50. And hiring the right. General athlete salesperson who is not coin-operated, who's super curious, and they can be a sales engineer. And they can also be a sales rep. They can also play product manager; they like to learn. And it's not just about making money, but it's about being able to create something from nothing and deliver value to people who were skeptical. And they liked the idea of hey, Jared was a skeptic. Now, Jared loves us. And there's just something profound, and you have to find that profile of a salesperson. So now you've got, you know, a handful of folks that are now taking, and I'm now enabling those salespeople, right, and we don't have a full-time sales enablement person yet, you know, we have just a handful of reps and leaders. And now you start to get the process in place, you start to find repeatability going from 25 to 50 to 100, you start to see patterns that you couldn't see because you didn't have large enough data set patterns in who we sell to, patterns in you know, what's the propensity to buy, this profile of a customer, type of account. And then once you have that codified into sales tax in the sales process, you're starting to then scale out the engine that leads to 100. And then 250, and 500. So, you start to go from the value engineering to sort of looking back at hiring at scale, and then pattern matching and building that into enablement, and process management. And now you're starting to buy technology tools like Clari, right? A lot of our customers who are, they get to about 20, no 10 sales reps, or 5-10 sales reps, and they start buying Clari because they want to be data-driven. And they want to make scaling easier. So that's typically when we come in to help them, you know, accelerate their ability to grow and get it more efficient over time. So that's the journey to 100 if that makes sense.

‍Jared: Yeah, it totally does. And I remember my early days working for a Peter Thiel-backed startup, and in reaching out, just based on that, and doing, you know, much of the same. Now, I assume you all used your product, at a certain point to scale.

‍Andy: From day one. Jared, from day one.

‍Jared: Figured as much. So, you had a very pragmatic approach, but you are the space leader, going from that there are other competitors that, you know, have, similar philosophies on scaling, but you have a wow factor. Right. Like, and I want to unpack that, like, what, differentiated you above just having a great software that made people need to go to Clari and you know, like, the whole revenue ops movement is very closely intertwined with you all right.

‍Andy: Yeah. Well, yeah, I would say it's intertwined because we created the category. And I remember the early days Jared. When I was saying, okay, we have the rise of the Chief Revenue Officer, right, the CRO title did not exist. We had the rise of machine learning, right in sales. And that was brand new. And we realized revenue is not just an outcome. It's a business process that should be transformed. And automated and streamlined. Right. And, you know, as a result, we started arming CROs with this AI that's required to win more deals and drive more revenue. I would say that we, you know, I'll go high at the highest level the entrepreneur sort of entrepreneurship. Why we are number one in the category and crushing the competition? Number one, I think it's us learning the loops that we built. And we just had such trusted relationships with key people from the boardroom all the way down to the frontline, we were studying, how would we be able to create this new ability for them to get unmatched performance and predictable growth from the boardroom? All the way down to the frontline, arming every single person on the revenue team, all the way down to the rep. And I think the learning loop with the key personas and the rapid iteration of delivering software and innovating at a high pace is number one. Number two, I would say is the team. I look at our team, I look at the exact team that we had that you know. And I look at the team that we've built over time, as we've scaled the company, we've just kept adding better and better talent over time. So, I look at our team and how we've executed, I look at our board, our board is stacked with operators, right, you know, from Sequoia, Steven Singh, who's a former founder and CEO of Concur software, he was an operator. Enrique Salem was, you know, 10 years CEO at Symantec. Stephanie Buscemi is, you know, former CMO of Salesforce. And now with the Blackstone investment, we have Jen Morgan, who is the former CEO at SAP, so the team is a critical thing to keep your edge above the competition. And the third thing I'd say it's technology. And design to answer your question, Jared. About the wow factor. When we were still in the garage, when there were three of us, our first hire, actually, when they were four of us, the fifth person we brought on board was our Head of Design. And we thought design is just so important. And that's been you know, if you think about the wow factor, we get all kinds of commentary coming back from CROs down to reps that we've totally transformed their lives, we've made it simpler, more efficient, etc. And what that's all resulted in, as I think about our journey and why we're, you know, in a really strong position. The learning loops, the team, the technology, you know, for the first time, CROs have all of the signals that they care about in one system, right from thinking about what do they care about all day, they're trying to parse through all the signal from all the meetings that they're having their recorded conversations, the emails, the marketing campaigns, the CRM data, and that's all now in one system, and it's feeding through our machine learning. And that's allowing the CROs to have total visibility and total control that they've never had before. And the end result is they're hitting their number quarter over quarter, time and time again. And you're driving more efficiency, growth, and predictability. So that's how we stay above the competition.

‍Jared: Pardon me, I absolutely love the category creation. I'm a big fan of Christopher, Lockheed in Play Bigger.

‍Andy: I love Chris. Chris is awesome.

‍Jared: It's one of the few books I've read twice, in under a year period. It just rang true. You know, having a great product.

‍Andy: This is what I was telling Chris; I have more notes on this book than any book I've read.

‍Jared: Yeah, because at the end of the day, you can be really good at advice really good at positioning, and all this. But creating a category like you've done with revenue operations. Oh, man, that's the anecdotes. And they're crazy. And I don't want to go on a tangent. But that's what impressed me so much about Clari is that you are buying into that. And you gave a pretty good, you know, overview on the three parts of the wow factor, but wanted to dive just a little deeper for the revenue leaders listening to this podcast. What's really helped you, like are there any secret takeaways that you haven't really shared elsewhere? That helped you get to where you're at that that would impact somebody else?

‍Andy: Oh, the first thing I want to say is that it's all about the people. That is number one, right? It's about hiring the right talent and the right leadership. And so that's number one, you've got to make sure that you’re hiring not only the right people, but you're scaling at the right time, I've seen a lot of CEOs who scale too early, and they haven't really gotten repeatability. So we've seen, you know, mistakes made there, too, at the risk of sounding a little self-serving, but you need to be data-driven at a certain point, you need to be able to look across and predict where you're going to land and be not just a great sales leader and inspire your team, but a good data-driven operator. And for that, you need to really be a student of the technology stack that's out there that is the best in class. And investing in technology earlier and making sure you're making bets on, you know, the key brands in the tech stack that will allow you to scale faster. And three, I'd say is, when you get to a certain level of scale, you have to be students and be a student of growth levers, understanding where your growth is coming from, from what segment, from what geo, from what product line, because then you have a good view as to when you're spending lots of capital, you have to be really clear and effective at where you're going. You just don't want to hire salespeople and build the army, you want to be very sophisticated and understand where my levers are and where I'm going to get the most growth and you know. You know, they call them strategic growth initiatives, where am I going to get the most growth like, you know, in the case of, one customer could be, hey, we want to drive higher net dollar retention from 120 to 140. That's where we're going to get growth. Another customer could be, hey, we're going to acquire for growth, we're going to acquire a handful of companies, we're going to get those products into our swim lanes, and we're going to use that, another could be global 2000, I want to penetrate the global 2000. So, these are different levers where, you know, were brought in to help these customers understand how they can get the most growth out of those strategic moves that they would make, and then help them realize their fullest potential. So that's the third piece is really understanding your growth levers. So, people, technology, and then growth levers.

‍Laxman: Wow, wonderful. A lot of learning so far in 30 minutes. So, as you said, the term revenue leaders or CRO wasn’t a thing when you've launched Clari in 2013. But today, they play a pivotal role in influencing the future of the company, be it you're talking to investors, or be it you're projecting your future and all that stuff, right. So, what do you think are the common mistakes some of these leaders tend to make these days as per your experience of dealing with a ton of CROs?

‍Andy: Yeah, I would say the interesting thing that we're seeing with CROs is those CROs. Well, first of all, say the rise of the CRO is very similar to the rise of the CMO back in, you know, the 90s, when Marketo and HubSpot and Eloqua, these companies, right, there wasn't a CMO, right it was VP of marketing. And now you had, you know, a new way of marketing that led to that is actually enabled by new technology and you had marketing automation, a new category. The same thing is happening here with Revops, right where, you know, it's no longer VP of sales is Chief Revenue Officer. They're realizing revenue is not just an outcome, it's a business process. Now, what I'd say is, for those heroes that don't look at their revenue as a business process, they end up staying in a CRM, and using lots of Excel spreadsheets, using lots of BI pages and they bounce back and forth in and out of all of these different tools. And what that does is they try to scale, there's waste, tons of waste tons of Excel spreadsheets, people are not on the same page. And, they can't grow as fast as they would like. And then also, if they are growing fast, their cost structures are super high. And so, they need to look at it a different way. And that of course, that's where we come in, and we can help them as a result, we see CROs that are making that shift to looking at revenue is a process, not just an outcome, they're deploying Clari reps, are closing deals faster, managers are driving more revenue execs, you're boosting forecast accuracy. And then what happens is a lot of these CROs whose companies have either gone public, or they've been acquired, they land back, they graduate back to series A or Series B Series C companies. And they get Clari as the first purchase they make because they can't live without it because they know they can get efficiency, growth, and predictability. Second, so that no one is making a good strategic move on track. I've said it before, I'll say it again, the hiring too fast, and scaling too fast without really good data-driven modeling and assumptions and getting some feedback from the board on how you intend to achieve 90% growth next year at scale, and where it's going to come from, and being able to understand the risks. That would be mistake number two, is, it’s not just you, hiring for hiring sake, as being smart about that. That would be the two mistakes that I've seen a lot of CEOs make.

‍Laxman: Sounds like a pretty classic problem that almost every company goes through probably after series A they get to realize these things.

‍Andy: I think I would say, Laxman, that it's just so interesting that revenue is the most important business process in the company. Yet, it's also the most antiquated. And when we started the company, we were just blown away saying wait a minute, you're doing what? You're in the CRM, and then you export all these Excel spreadsheets, and then those don't work very well. So, you ask IT to spool up a bunch of BI pages and it’s just a mess. And so yeah, it is a classic problem. And it's broken. In all nearly every company that we talked to; they say we need to transform it. So yeah, it's been, it's been a fun journey.

‍Laxman: I'm sure. Wonderful, so little of the numbers and of the business. Let's move the gears a little bit to mental health, remote fitness, and all that stuff. Right? I see you're a big advocate of employee mental health, biking, all that stuff. Right? So, in this remote or remote hybrid world, how do you see people manage their teams and how is it to kind of keep important to that mental health and fitness and have that work-life balance like difficult? Usually, when you're working from home now these days, there is no work-life balance as such.

‍Andy: Yeah, well, mental health is something that is super, super important and touches me very deeply, because I've lost a family member, a very close family member, a handful of years ago to it. So, I think about it all the time, the pre-COVID. And what I do know is that there is physical health, and you know, physical fitness, and then there's mental health and mental fitness, I think that there is a lot more that we can do as leaders to educate our employee base on both - being physically fit and mentally fit. And we have all kinds of things that we're doing that's both formal at scale through new systems that we've deployed that allow them to check in with service providers at scale to the software interface about what an employee might be feeling and engage with a therapist. To simple things like you know, we do surprise day off we just say it’s tomorrow and we just surprise people. I end up just randomly calling people to see how they're doing. Like you know employees that have never heard from me before. I just call to check-in. I have a weekly town hall that has no agenda whatsoever. Where I share, you know what's going on in my life, we open it up and let people talk about what's going on in their lives, I always share a lot of the books that I'm reading. I'm reading a really powerful book right now called your golden journey, which is part mindfulness part practice on how you can train your brain and train your mind to be to realize your fullest potential, not just your body, but I think you need both. And I'm always, you know, trying to promote people getting out and, you know, my church is my mountain bike. Um, when my body allows me to, and when it's behaving well, I'm on it five days a week. And so, I love that and, and I, you know, took up meditation five years ago, and that's a daily practice for me as well. And I'm pushing this incredibly hard on our, our employee base, and my staff and you know, sometimes I get the roll of the eyes and like, oh, God, here comes Andy again, with some great gratitude moment. But um, I think it's arguably the most important thing we can do as leaders is, is give our employees time and space. To take care of self.

‍Laxman: Yeah, love those ideas, the weekly town hall especially. That's the first time I've heard so initially, I thought Weekly once is like too much like, you can ask all 100 people to spend an hour with you. But that, yeah.

‍Andy: Yeah, we do all hands once a month, which is formal and slides and all that stuff. But every Monday I just call people if they want to show up and hang out, we just hang out. Right? So, it's great. Yeah, very, very valuable.

‍Laxman: And calling your employees just like that randomly is kind of a big thing. Right? So, what do you hear from them? When you call you will say, Hey, I'm Andy, your CEO.

Andy: I know some of them are like -  Oh my God, why is the anti-burn calling me? No, no. And I'll have to they say might be saying any burnout on your phone, maybe Andy burns, so they don't pick it up. And then I have to text them. This is Andy and by the way, this is not a robocall or somebody fishing, it's really me. And then, you know, we just call, and I just want to, you know, ask how they're doing. And they asked how I'm doing and, you know, we talk about family, and talk about, you know, you know, hobbies and interests, and, you know, work takes up I don't it's really especially with COVID right now, and just actually the new hybrid world, there's no such thing as work-life balance, you know, they're not separate anymore, right? They're fully integrated. And so how can you have them peacefully coexist so part of that is like, I am spending a lot more time just not talking about work. Yeah, and just talking about life and, and because I've been studying a lot of the mental health and wellness stuff, we end up kind of navigating to that and I end up sharing things that I've learned that I apply to my life that they now use that made their life better that has nothing to do with work. And I feel like that's kind of part of my role as part of my not even role at the company but it's just as I'm in my 50s It's part of what I want to do.

‍Jared: Yeah, I love this so much I also add the emotional element myself without getting too tangential physical, emotional, mental, because when you're thinking about your breaths, it ignites something like on another level and your questions about why things are impacting you now get answered for you know, years ago, and the emotional things are there and you know. What's funny about this tip is my dad called me the other day and by the way, my employees get a phone call from me they say oh, no, because we have a team of eight, so they're like you want something done. My dad who is been in sales for his whole life and has since taken up life coaching like a side thing that he does, and he's very into it. He's like, Jared, what's on your mind? And I'm like, oh, you know, I had a very business-like alignment type thing. You know, early-stage that's big, making sure everybody's aligned. Yeah. And I knew he didn't necessarily have experience with it. And in he was asking, like, how, how’s everybody feeling? And I'm like, no, no. And I was being snappy. And then I slowed down. And I'm like, huh, you're righter than I want to admit. Because you're it I don't want to be because you're not answering the question I have, you're asking a more pertinent question. And it was, it was just like a recalibration a high end. And, you know, and I believe to be a strong leader, we need to practice on ourselves. Because it'll emanate. Like you'll snap, said, people, you'll be less on edge, and everyone will be healthier. And they'll be more likely to take your advice to tangent done. But, uh, that's really cool that you do that?

‍Andy: Yeah, I mean, I, well, that's cool that you have that call with your dad, and kudos to your dad for doing that. And my response to that is that I feel like it is an obligation, it's a responsibility that I have, to be curious about mental health at scale. And to be curious about how, you know, we can be, you know, how do my employees realize their fullest potential? How do my boys realize their fullest potential? How does my wife realize her fullest potential? Right? That’s my job, to help them figure that out. And I'm blown away that we're all this stuff around mental health and wellness, and some of these techniques that are out there that they're not being actually educated to, they're not being embedded into the school systems. And there's, I think there's a big move that can be made, where people can incorporate more of this thinking about not just mental health, but you, your commentary about breath and about meditation about, you know, moments of gratitude, you know, personal affirmation, there's the visioning boards, there are all these different techniques that are out there, but I'm just learning now at age 50. I mean, come on, and I'm thinking, oh, my God, this is such a huge, unlock. It's massive. And imagine if this was actually incorporated into formal curriculum early in like middle school, it would be huge. Anyway, but I could go on and on. So that's a little I took your tangent, and I went off even further.

‍Jared: The biggest superpower I always say that you could have as a founder or a leader is level-headedness, but like true, deep level-headedness, because everybody, likes the benefits. The company benefits.

‍Andy: Yeah, I mean, I definitely didn't have that in my 30s. Didn't have that.

Laxman: Yeah, wonderful. And Andy, with all these numbers on your head, right, raising hundreds of millions, billions of valuations, 500 employees and all that stuff, right. As a leader, how do you stay on top of your game? What does your day look like?

‍Andy: There are two questions there. I'll start with my day. My alarm goes off at 4:45. I hit the snooze button twice, my wife gets pissed, she says get out of bed. So, I'm out of bed at about five o'clock. I have my morning, that's all to myself. I have a cup of coffee, I meditate. I have a gratitude journal. So, I go through that. I look at what I'm going to do my practices through the day that I'm going to go in and try to apply to have nothing to do with work. I read the Wall Street Journal cover to cover and then I go for a mountain bike ride and then my day starts, so that is my time for Andy Byrne. You know, my day is basically, I'm with people all day long. All-day long meeting after meeting and its high stakes, intellectual processing. That is taxing and then I'm spending time with my wife and my son, my other sons now in college. He's a freshman in college. So, I'm really focused on that after work. So work, I end, my day ends at about six. I'm with my family for, you know, between six and 8:30. I do about an hour and a half worth of work. And then my head hits the pillow at about 10:30. So that's my day. What was the second question?

‍Laxman: How do you stay on top of your game? Right? I think part of it is what you've already told.

Andy: Yeah, I mean, it's mental health. And it's also just a priority. I mean, I'll get up every morning with a blank sheet of paper, and I'll write it what are my priorities today, what's the top three. And I do it every day, and it's just nice, it's not electronics, I make sure that my morning has no electronics at all in the morning. And I have this, my wife cuts down, she takes the printer paper that we print in, she recycles it, she cuts them up into little squares, and I take one square out, and I will write what are the top three. And then I come to my whiteboard, and I see if it's different than what I've had up here for the quarter. And I'll reconcile that. And then I say to myself if I focused on those top three things, then I feel like my day is going to be very productive. So, I think focus is really, really important. And even in your personal life, you should get up on Saturday and say, what are the top three things I want to achieve today? Right, and then you're, you know, like, I'm gonna feel incredible. At the end of the day, if I focus on these three things. And I feel focus and priorities are important for people to have in their cadence in their rhythm every day.

‍Laxman: I agree. That's great advice.

‍Jared: Yeah. Pardon me. So going back to Revops, the future of the industry, you've helped. You've created this, you've shaped it. Maybe you're the one that calls the shots on what's next. I'm curious to hear. What do you think?

‍Andy: You know, well, I'd like to say, I think CROs are realizing that there's so much more innovation that can be applied to the revenue process, Jared, it is profound, the level of innovation that we will come out with over the next 12 months will literally dwarf the last five years of innovation that we came out with we are when Andreessen says Software is eating up the world, you know, and when that came out, I didn't fully realize the magnitude of that comment. And we see that there's still so much more efficiency and machine learning that you can apply to allow CROs to realize their fullest potential. Then if I was to say, you know, the big I think evolution that you'll see is that you know, customers always ask me, hey, are you replacing the CRM? Right, and we're not, we're not replacing the CRM, but our customers are viewing the revenue operations platform as important as their CRM. Right. And why is that? Well, because when you deploy Clari, right, they are achieving unmatched performance and predictable growth like they've never experienced in their careers, right, these publicly traded companies these CROs they're realizing efficiency and growth at scale, like never before. And so, I do think that the value that people see in rev ops will be very similar to the value that they saw from their CRM. I think the market is that big because it's the most important business process in any company on the planet. And every CRO that we talked to, wants to transform it. So, they have more efficiency, growth, and predictability. So, I feel like we're just in the early innings. I really do.

‍Jared: Do you think it seems CRM slows people down? And are you creating the new evolution of that?

‍Andy: No, I don't think so. Yeah, no, it's an interesting question. And I don't think so, I think that CRM will always be there, Jared, it's the backbone, right? It's started a company, you need a phone system, or you're not going to use Zoom phones, you're going to get zoom, you're gonna deploy a CRM, you're gonna get a try to start building a database, you're always gonna have CRM. And but I think that you have new because of new technologies that are out there, machine learning APIs, new ways of thinking about design, you have new companies that are forming around the CRM, that are as important as the CRM. And actually, you know, for in our case, we make the CRM better, because we're automatically harvesting all this data from all these different systems, whether it's an exchange in Gmail and office 365, pulling data from Gong and chorus, pulling data from a high spot and seismic and mindtickle, and we're pulling all that data in, we're normalizing a lot of that data that we're pulling in, we automatically push that back into the CRM, actually, data quality gets better. And people get more value from their CRM. So, I think they peacefully coexist. So, the CRM will never go away. It's a key piece of their infrastructure.

‍Laxman: So these are some great insights on the future. And so slowly wrapping up Andy, a few weeks back, we were on a call with Amit Bendov, Gongs CEO who said, okay, we need to have Andy here. That's how we are touching base with you. And I'll put the same question to you. One guest that you'd recommend being on the show, who would that be?

‍Andy: One guest, let's see who I think ought to be on this show. You know, the guest that I think would be a profound guest on the show would be Todd McKinnon at Okta. You know, Founder CEO, what he has accomplished, over there is nothing short of remarkable. So that would be the person that I would suggest you try to pull on your show.

‍Laxman: Wonderful. Thank you. We will be after him.

‍Andy: Okay, sounds good. I'll try to help you.

‍Laxman: Wonderful. That'd be great. Well, we'll take your help for sure. Great. Cool. So, I think we are almost done with all the questions. Do you have any questions, Jared? I think we have a minute if you want to take it.

‍Jared: It has been an absolute pleasure to talk with you and get into your mind. You know, what, as a founder, CEO, but also as a human, and how you lead by example because people are always saying, I'm a servant leader. And thanks for that effect. It's a very popular phrase. And not everybody is bringing it down deeply, and understanding it and to hear how you operate, brings a smile to my face, because you're impacting the next generation of humans in the workforce, and whether people are looking at you for guidance, or really working for you. So that's awesome.

Andy: Well, thank you, Jared, I really appreciate that. I feel like I'm still just learning how I can help people realize their fullest potential. They say people say that a lot. People say servant leadership a lot. And the question is, are you holding yourself accountable and measuring your own capabilities as a leader. And I still feel like I'm just getting started on that, and my best work is in front of me. So it's really exciting to be at this stage of the company and, you know, with the big raise that we just had, and with customers really excited about, you know, transforming their revenue process and, and along the way, hopefully, you know, the human people factor that our employee base and our customer base, they all they look back and they say, you know, that was a remarkable experience, thanks to Clari’s leadership and you know, that it's an obligation that I take deep in my heart, and there's a lot of weight associated with that. But I'm excited to take it on.

‍Laxman: Great learnings personally for me and for Jared as well, we both are at the very early stages of it. Thanks a lot for all the learnings.

‍Andy: Thank you. Thank you, guys. Nice meeting you both.

‍Laxman: Thank you, Andy. Thanks. Have a nice day.

‍Andy: You too. Thank you. 



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