Nearbound Podcast #168: The BIG Announcement
HUGE B2B SAAS COMPANY MERGER! Tune in to this special episode to hear Jared and Isaac explain why this is such an important event in this industry.
You Might Also Like
Nearbound Podcast #167: Building SaaS Credibility in a Skeptical World - Bobby Napiltonia
Nearbound Podcast #166: Pete Caputa’s Return: The Partner Led Startup Story
Nearbound Podcast #165: From Zero to $400M in Revenue - Finding Success in a Crowded SaaS Market with Jeff Cheal
Who uses like lead growth language, like product lead growth language, for
example,
that's typically going to be more of an executive thing. Why? Because it's kind
of cross-functional.
You're going from product in redesigning your marketing function and your sales
function and
your success function and your support function to better serve the needs of
the customer. It's a
very cross-functional thing that has to come from an executive standpoint. And
that's more of a
design concept from my vantage point, right? It's not necessarily a difference
of, well, what do I do
given I have a job today as an account executive?
We're back at last. Welcome to the Nearbound podcast. And this episode of the
Nearbound podcast
is brought to you by Crossbeam. Crossbeam is a partner ecosystem platform that
acts as a data
escrow service provider that for finds overlapping customers and prospects with
your partners while
keeping the rest of your data private and secure. So you can sign up for free
right at crossbeam.com.
Wait, Isaac, what was that? I thought, I thought Nearbound was a project of
reveal.
Wait a second. Are they more enemies? What the heck? Oh my goodness, the
biggest news in
partnership tech history. It's real. The big reveal, the reveal in Crossbeam
merger. It's happened.
Going back all the way to the very first sponsor of my very first podcast
episode. That's why I did
that Adroll just kind of as a joke. If you go back to episode number one, that
was my very first ad.
That's so insane. First of all, I had to say, the number of times that Jared
Fuller has said,
this is the biggest news in partner history. But the thing is, he's always
telling the truth.
So it just keeps escalating. And this is truly wild. It's funny, Jared, because
we knew
you'd started the podcast a year and a half before we even launched partner
hacker.
You know, crossbeam was your first sponsor. Then we launched partner hacker,
who was our first
sponsor of our launch reveal, reveal. And that launch was announced on a table
in the
crossbeam lounge at SaaS Connect. And I remember you and I, you know, when we
were doing partner
hacker early on, and we're talking to all the different companies in this space
, shout out to
some of those early, early companies that worked with us, partner stack,
partner fleet,
Sindoso, a bunch of great companies. We, you know, I remember being like,
you know, the companies that I think I like the most in this space? They're
crossbeam and reveal.
I like them both. And I remember I told you, I said, what they need to do is
merge,
and then they can buy us. And you were like, and you were like, they're never
going to merge.
It's not going to happen. And I was like, but it feels like it has to happen.
I, at least I remember this conversation. So I'm using this as a, the one time
that I was
right about something in this industry, uh, where you and I didn't agree. But
crazy.
I love my man. I'm crazy. I mean, I, I truly remember being like,
and when we started talking reveal and reveal was like, Hey, let's do it. Let's
bring partner
hacker into reveal. And you know, you and I were really excited about this. And
I remember
being like, man, I love this. I love reveal. And I love that reveal is like, at
the time,
was just a little, a year, about a year behind crossbeam, a little less known
in the United States,
like a little bit of that dark horse underdog status. But I love crossbeam too.
I mean,
the first person you and I got a, got on a call with with partner hacker was
Sean Blanda,
cross beams head of content. And we're like, Sean, give us all your info and
advice and insight,
because you're like the best in the business at content. And like we've learned
from that.
We've had great friendly relationship with, uh, with Sean and the team over
there.
So to me, this is, this is amazing. Actually, I remember that first
conversation. Um,
he, he set a phrase that stuck with me to this day, stock and flow, stock and,
um,
he's probably wishing, well, no, now that we're all together, you know, it's
like, we did a really
good job at stock and flow. We had big events. We had book launches. We did so
much incredible
stuff over the years. And then we did flow. I mean, we were on the socials
daily. We had nearbound
daily partner partner hacker daily. I mean, this come full circle is just the
wildest thing to be
a part of. And it's so cool. You know, we talked so much about living in market
and the customer
is always right. Guess what customers have wanted and asked about and if I didn
't work,
right? And fantasized about it's like, okay, I'm running partnerships. I need
to start doing
some account mapping. I need to start running some plays where I'm working with
partner data.
So I got to get cross beam or reveal. Which one do I pick? And it's kind of
like,
I like them both. They have pros and cons, but like some of my partners are on
one and some are on
the other. More, baby. No more. Right. It's like the world's largest networked
database.
It's official. It's the, it's the best better together story that there is,
right? Guess what?
Now all of your partners are on the network, right? It's one network, one
network now. And
I just think it's, I couldn't be more excited. I really, I could not be more
excited. I think
this is something that needed to happen whenever, whenever something just makes
sense from a market
standpoint. And the only reason it hasn't happened is like logistical or happen
stance. Like Simon
didn't know that cross beam existed when he started reveal. Bob didn't know
that Simon existed.
And they both go about with a great idea, great product, start building it in
different continents.
And then eventually bump into each other when they're both kind of look like
what appeared to
be a little too far down the road. They have enough traction. Yeah, now we can,
we can do it.
We can kind of go it alone, right? Maybe we'll beat you. Maybe you'll beat us.
Maybe it'll be a,
maybe there's enough room for two companies. And over time, it just became
clear like the network
effects are so strong. You want one network. Everybody wants one network.
But both companies were still growing, right? So it's like, well, what are you
going to do?
And I think this is just, this is what you do. You come together, you merge,
right? This is not a,
this is not a buyout by one to kill the other. This is the two companies truly
merging,
coming together and bringing, bringing everything that they both bring to the
table into one. So
anyway, I'm blabbing too much. Because like to me, this is the most exciting
thing. This truly,
since I first learned about all the players in this space, this was what I
thought needed to happen.
And I'm so excited to see it happen and to have played some small part in
bringing it about.
100%. And it is the craziest story that I've participated in. And in my 14 year
history was
asked by far. And the end beneficiary to your point, Isaac, is the market, is
the customer, is all
of you that listen to this. And what I'm, there's so many things I'm excited
about, but I'm just
going to kind of riff here with you today. Why, why I think this is so cool.
One of the personas
that has been catching on to the whole nearbound narrative and really aligning
faster than I had
probably anticipated. And this was part of your and my original thesis, Isaac
was, is the marketing
persona. Yep. Right. And the death of cookies happening this year, this year,
you know, like
Google has said, we're halfway through, right? January one, they're starting
with 1% of users,
but by the end of the year, it'll be 100% of users that have cookies default
off in Chrome.
You know, apples already killed them. Marketers need a new data set. And the
signal that they
need to be looking towards is not gleaning personal information to retarget.
That's kind of irrelevant
to spend more dollars on ad platforms. It's actually trust data. It's the
relationships that matter.
It's this second party data. And I think the market is going to benefit
tremendously from what is good
for reveal and cross beams future, which is a statement that I've said hundreds
of times,
probably, which is great product never beats great go to market, but great go
to market
never beats great network effects because with network effects come benefits
that no one else
could potentially overcome. And what that does is that allows for so much more
value.
I'll shout out some of the luminaries from podcast episodes of the past. We
haven't had
them on in forever, but like Alan Adler, right, like ecosystem value. There's
inherently going to be
exponentially more ecosystem value, despite the fact that we're just combining
two networks.
No, it's not linear. It's not one plus one equals two. The ability for us to do
things into the future,
like having a true platform and changing the way that marketing, you know, goes
to market,
changing the way that sales co sales, the changing the way that people service
companies.
I mean, it is the vision. It's the nearbound vision coming to life at the
fundamental layer,
right? This is the foundation that was always needed. And this partnerships
moment would never
have been possible. Never have it been possible had it not been for cross beam,
Bob Moore,
the original founding team, Jess Walder, Xshan Blanda, to everyone that's been
over there,
to Simon and Alex and everyone that, you know, grinded it out for years with
reveal.
These were two innovative tech companies that fundamentally transformed the
future of partner
tech. It's not a portal. It's not PRM. And I think all of the go to market tech
stack
can truly be rebuilt on top of working with the people that your customers and
your prospects
already trust. You know, I love when you have these and this is like, even as
much as we talk
about network effects, it's still not intuitive for humans to understand them.
No. So when you look at the Metcalfe's law, right, you think about this just
mathematically,
so we know that let's just take the reveal network or the cross beam network.
Network effect means that every time a new member joins the network, it adds
additional value to
all of the existing members of the network. So every time somebody else joins
reveal,
now reveals network is more valuable to everyone else who's on the network,
right? So everybody
wants more people on because now you have more people connected, blah, blah. So
both of these
companies have this going independently. And that's already the case. They
already have that
network effect. Now imagine two things. The mathematics are crazy. Instead of
one person joining,
you get the 20 plus 1000 people from cross beams network joining the 15,000
from reveals
network and vice versa, all in one shot, you're literally like, like
accelerating that so quickly
and you remove this little cost, even though you still benefited from those
network effects of a
member joining adding value to everyone else, that member had to also think
about the nodes
that were on the other network. They joined reveal, they had to think about
cross beam. So maybe
they have to be a part of both. And so you remove that friction, that cost, you
double, more than
double the number of nodes instantly on a single network. And you you increase
because each of
those each of those people that joined, yes, they added value to that network,
but there was a
little bit subtracted for the fact that they might still have to also be on the
other network,
right? All that's gone, like the just like mathematically, the network value to
every member
that's on that network, even free users. Like that's what's so cool about this.
This is not just
about like paid customers, even free users of these tools, now just got like a
massively
expanded value for for nothing, just as a result of this merger happening.
Well, let's let's geek out for a minute, since we're talking network effects,
and you reference
Metcalf. So Metcalf's law. So Metcalf's law is actually a number, right? And
Metcalf's law stipulates
that a the total value of a network grows proportional to the number of users
squared. So if you were
to have 10 users, would provide roughly 100 times more value than a network
with one user, right?
But the thing that Metcalf doesn't necessarily take into effect is the digital
side of it. And
there was a gentleman read that actually talked about the velocity increasing.
So if we were to
think about this from the perspective of that, I mean, you add two networks of
10 to 15,000 companies,
we're talking, you know, 1.5 million times the value, right? Right. And that's
not even including
the velocity that's going to, you know, people that were sitting on the
sidelines or failing to
adopt one versus the other, like, there's exponentially more value here for the
market. And I'm so excited
to bring that to life because these things matter, like, geeking out on network
effects and
considering this deal, this merger between the two companies, like, that's kind
of core to,
you know, Bob's thesis. I think, you know, one of my favorite episodes is the
Bob Moore podcast,
where we had him on and he was talking to me about his definition of a platform
, right? And
I think we have some platform definitions now that were kind of hard for us to
say in the past.
I think Bob's definition was of a platform was where the value of a new feature
being launched
is more valuable than any other feature that a competitor could launch, right?
And if you were
to think about a feature that Crossbeam and Reveal would launch separately, it
's kind of like,
maybe apples to apples to some degree. But now if you think about our ability
to combine and do
things and obviously there's lots of products, update announcements and things
that are going to,
you know, happen and communicate with our users on both sides, those loyal
reveal customers and
those loyal Crossbeam customers. I think our ability to truly have platform
value where we
launch a new feature and the networks are combined, you're not going to be able
to launch a competitive
feature elsewhere. Yeah, exactly. The fact that it is on that platform by
itself makes it inherently
more valuable. Yes, that was his phrasing. Yep. Yep. Which is it? Yeah. And
that's,
that's exactly, I love those kind of little tests of like, when do you know you
have a platform,
right? When do you know you've got a real network effect going here? Man, that
's,
it's so funny too, Jer, because you know, the way, the way all this stuff is
coming about.
I remember we even teased it on this show. Because as I said, we've always been
, we've always been
friendly with Crossbeam and very respectful of each other, both companies, I
think like
respectfully competing and recognizing that we make each other better. And when
the Nearbound
book came out and ELG book came out within like a month of each other, we had a
bunch of people
on LinkedIn, you know, saying like, Oh, I read the Nearbound book. I'm reading
the ELG book now,
like, Oh, it'd be interesting to see like what's the same, what's different. We
even had an article
about, you know, the differences between the two books or, you know, the
summary of both books
we published on Nearbound. And on LinkedIn, someone was like, we should have
Jared and Bob both like
do an event talking about this. And Sean, I was like, I'm in Sean, are you in?
And Sean was like,
okay, so it was public, right? So I'm like, cool. So we email each other and he
's like, Hey, after
ELG con let's get a meeting on the books. And we'll kind of chat about doing
like a webinar where we
talk about the ELG book, the Nearbound book, what's different, what's the same,
all this stuff,
what's happening in the industry. So I was really excited. We have that meeting
booked out, like,
you know, month in advance or something because they wanted to get through
their event. Literally
like a week before the meeting, Simon's like, Isaac, Jared, we got to talk, we
got some big news
coming. So, so I have this meeting with Sean and I'm like, well, the good news
is
cross beam and reveal get to do some big stuff together. Like we wanted to.
The bad news is it won't be the event that we were planning. It'll be something
totally
different. It'll be something way bigger, way better. So it's just, it's so
funny how,
like how quickly and then like the minute that, you know, you and I heard from
Simon that this was,
this was going down, it's like instantly it all makes sense. It all clicks
together. It's so
easy. It's so easy to see. So I want to ask you, because I think this is, we
don't have a hard and
fast answer to this. Yeah, this is kind of like, Hey, let's as we unfold as it
evolves.
When you Zuma and look at the market, people are resonating with this sort of
overall concept of
reaching buyers through the voices that they trust. You know, we've called that
nearbound and we
have a lot of, you know, language and ways of describing that. Cross beam is
focused on the
ecosystem led growth language and their concepts around that. These things are
essentially the
same thing. There's some differences and there's ways in which the different
language sort of
allows you to see things from different angles. So I'm curious from your
perspective, like,
how do those come together? How do those differ? And what do you think? I'm not
asking your opinion
of what should happen. I'm asking, what do you think will happen in the market
in terms of how
people approach and utilize for lack of a better term partner led strategies,
whether under the
ELG or the nearbound framework or both? Well, what's funny, Isaac, is I was
actually talking with Bob
about this the other day because I'm like, Hey, Bob, congrats on your book. He
's like, Hey,
congrats on your book. And I was like, we should probably chat ELG nearbound,
you know, like,
there's going to be tons of product questions, obviously about cross beam
reveal.
More to come on that. We'll leave that to the product marketing teams, the
incredible organizations
there and the product organizations. But when it comes to the, you know, the
lexicon, we let off
this episode talking about the network effects of the data side, Isaac. Well,
from your, in my
opinion, one of the most important network effects is language, right? Language
is a network effect.
And we've certainly seen nearbound take off in ways that probably surprised
even you and me.
So from my vantage point, you know, who uses, you know, in terms of like role
models and mentors,
who uses like, lead growth language, like product lead growth language, for
example,
that's typically going to be more of an executive thing. Why? Because it's kind
of cross functional.
You're, you're going from product and redesigning your marketing function and
your sales function
and your success function and your support function to better serve the needs
of the customer. It's a
very cross functional thing that has to come from an executive standpoint. And
that's more of a design concept from my vantage point, right? It's, it's not
necessarily a
difference of, well, what do I do given I have a job today as an account
executive, right? Like,
if your company does not have a PLG strategy, PLG content as a content marketer
means nothing to
you. If your company does not have a PLG strategy, PLG, you know, sales tactics
don't really mean
anything to you as an account executive, right? And I think ELG in nearbound,
for example, will
complement each other that way, meaning nearbound, you can do nearbound plays
even if you haven't
fully adopted an ELG strategy yet that goes from product to marketing to sales
and success.
That design component is necessary. And I think they married together like
peanut butter and jelly,
you know, like companies need an ELG strategy and the frontline needs nearbound
plays that they can do
now that does what that provides the proof that's needed for those executive
conversations. And
then to Asher Matthews point and partnership leaders, and I'll give them a
shout out, you know,
they're out there waving the chief partner officer flag. They need to be a
chief partner
officer to make an ELG movement happen inside of your company. You really have
to have those
frontline successes. You don't get that role absent, tangible impact on revenue
and your P and L.
Yeah, you know, I, I, I like the, you know, the analogy to PLG, obviously,
because it's a
similar, similar phrasing. But if you think about a company that's PLG, they're
all in on PLG. And
by the way, not many are like there are some who are truly PLG from the ground
up. Many are kind
of like they've got some PLG elements to them, like they have a free version,
and that enables you
to do a lot of cool things. And that, you know, affects the way that you think,
but it's not
necessarily the same as like true, you know, true PLG as a as an overall
strategy, the way that the
company is built. So if you have a PLG company, do they not have any inbound
efforts? Do they not
have any outbound efforts? No, of course they have those. Those are tactics in
their toolkit.
Those are informed by the fact that they're PLG. It's going to look different.
Inbound and
outbound are going to look different for a PLG company. And I think that's very
, very similar,
right? Like ELG is your fundamental business model, your approach, your
strategy, one that
requires demands and is built around an ecosystem. And if yes, that's your sort
of your ELG approach,
then the tools in your toolkit, you're still going to need to do some outbound
stuff,
you're still going to need to do some inbound stuff, and you're sure as heck
going to need to do
some nearbound stuff, that's going to have to plug in to all of those. And that
's that tactical
on the ground stuff. Like, okay, we're hosting an event. Are we running any out
bound to reach
people cold and tell them about the event? Are we running any inbound creating
some fun content
that drives interest? And are we running any nearbound? Are we involving
partners in the promotion
and execution of the event and getting the people that already have the trust
of our target audience
to get them interested? All of those are necessary. And an ELG company is going
to hold an event,
and they're going to need to do all of those things, right? So like, I think
they marry very,
very nicely when you just think about the existing language, the inbound out
bound and
nearbound, they fit in a similar bucket, ELG, PLG, fit in a similar bucket. To
me, those are not
in conflict. Those are very, very complimentary, almost nested within each
other. Absolutely.
I couldn't agree more. And they're serving people and will continue to serve
people for
years to come. This is, I just got an invite to do the closing keynote, which I
'm really excited about
for a, which I'm, it's kind of wild. I haven't even told Isaac about this yet.
I was like,
what are you talking about? I was supposed to know what's going on at a multi-
billion. So
billions and billions and billion dollar private equity annual meeting. So like
, we're talking
hundred plus portcos, all CEOs, CMOs, CROs, CCOs and CPOs. And they're having
me close out the entire
event is the closing keynote on a one-hour, nearbound go-to-market keynote. And
I'm like,
wow, that's wild. That's where we're at right now, though, folks. Like, if you
're listening to this
and me and Isaac just kind of reminiscing and pontificating on the future, like
, that's crazy to
me. That's insane. The closing keynote for a, I can't say the name right now
because it's not public
yet, but it's one of the world's largest private equity funds, their annual
meeting with all of
their portcos. And the nearbound guy, the one you listen to on this podcast is
doing the closing
keynote talking about how to run nearbound go-to-market. And then I'm going to
layer that with the
ecosystem-led growth narrative as well and bring it all together for them. So I
'm so excited.
The moments here, folks, it's yours for the taking. Yeah, it's, I think it's,
was it
Paul Graham? No, I think it's a, was it Ben Harowitz? No, it was Mark Andre
essen. Sorry, Mark Andreessen,
his definition of product market fit, right? When the market starts pulling
product out of you.
And I think we have encountered, if you want to call it, language market fit or
narrative market fit is probably better, where people cannot stop. They're like
asking for more
all the time. Okay, I want to know more about nearbound, about working through
an ecosystem,
about the who economy, like tell me more. And it's crazy because, you know, not
to the level of the
event you just described, but I'm getting like every week, people coming to me
and asking me to go
on a podcast or come speak at a, you know, an internal team meeting or to come
give their marketing
team some input or advice. I've been in B2B marketing for like two years. It's
not because of me. I'm
not an expert that people are that I'm sought. I'm not a known name in B2B
marketing. It's
nearbound. They're like, tell me about nearbound marketing. Okay, they want to
know about nearbound
marketing. They've seen me associated with it. They see the stuff that's being
put out. And they,
like, they want that, right? They want that. And that has somehow elevated me
to appear to be
a credible human in the B2B marketing space, which is tells you how powerful
this, this is,
this concept is, it's connecting. And it's like, I mean, even people in other
industries, you know,
I'm, I'm going to speak at, well, he was on the podcast, our friend, Tim Sherm
ak, but
to a conference he's hosting for realtors. He's like, you need to come and talk
about nearbound
in the who economy to all these realtors, right? It's like, there's something
bigger here that is
so cool to be in the midst of and to be a part of. And I think that's what
initially attracted me to
making the leap in the B2B and starting partner hacker with you two and a half
years ago.
And to see that momentum build, and then to see it, you know, now you have this
merger that makes
all of these plays so much easier and like, I don't know, I just get excited. I
get really
excited. I know it's easy to look at things and say, oh, AI is eating
everything and SaaS is in
trouble. And there's a lot of that that's true. There's a lot of really cool
things happening. Things
that frankly have needed to happen for a long time because buyers have wanted
them to happen.
And now the markets finally be enforced to adapt to what buyers already wanted.
100% on that your story made me think of just like other crazy things that have
happened in the
past couple months in the midst of all of this is I had the wildest. I'll try
not to disclose
anything. So Microsoft, you can get mad at me if I do. But I have the wildest
meeting ever
with just one gentleman from Microsoft that I want to give away too many
details on the
division or business unit, but it's a multi-billion dollar business unit. Just
responsible on the
sales side. He read the book. So Mo, yeah, so Mo will shout out Mo. He wrote a
review on near
round.com of the book. And then he's like, hey, I've been sharing this around
inside of Microsoft.
And I want to put you in touch with some higher ups. And I'm like, okay, sure.
I still don't know
why you want to talk to me. You're Microsoft. You know, like, why would this be
an interesting
meeting? And I'm telling you right now, Isaac, that was one of the coolest
meetings I've ever
been in in my life. Because who showed up on that call? This was complete P and
L ownership
for all of North America for every line of service for all of Microsoft. So we
're not talking billions
or tens of billions. We're talking a lot of money and full remit over sales,
marketing,
partnerships, success, everything. So we're talking top brass at Microsoft with
, you know,
weeklies with, you know, Satya. And what was so fascinating about that is that
everything that
you and I've been saying and that we've been feeling in the market in the
market, Microsoft
was seeing as well, like they have 95% partner attach. But here's the crazy
thing. And if you're
a Microsoft partner, you know, this isn't new to anyone. It's public
information. It's not orchestrated.
And what do I mean by it's not orchestrated? It's that partners and Microsoft,
yeah, of course,
they work together. But it's almost not on purpose or at least not on an
account basis or not on
an let's say an intent or a relationship. It's like, Hey, you're a Microsoft
partner,
we're going to call into all of your customers. Okay, I'm a Microsoft partner.
I'm going to call
into this set. But it's not on purpose. And they were really talking through
how they wanted to
redesign and rethink through all of their go to market to align with what we
were talking about
and nearbound. Like, how do we help certain partners, let's say, verticalize
and get better at
marketing to a subset of the market? How do we help our partners call into
accounts that are
better fit from them? And then how do we provide support and call into their
accounts and see their
information? And it was just this fascinating conversation with four senior
executives at
Microsoft, where we were just kind of geeking out out loud about transforming
billions and
henceforth, you know, you're talking hundreds of billions of dollars of
commerce in the ways
that you and I've been talking about. It's the wildest thing. And what I can
say is that these
conversations are happening from Microsoft to Stripe to mom and pop startups
and, you know,
brother and sister startups, husband, wife startups, solo, you name it. You
called it the
nearbound underlay, you know, from the bottom up. Yeah, they're happening
everywhere.
Yeah, that's what's fun to me. I like to do this little, where you just go poke
around and see,
like, who is talking about these things that I've never heard of before and
just stumbling upon,
like, well, not that long ago, the nearbound club, a new community that sprung
up that I didn't
know anything about. We didn't nobody at Reveal or nearbound.com knew anyone
over there personally.
And I just had I just talked to a marketing agency. He asked to interview me
for his
sub stack that the guy who runs this agency and he was like, yeah, I was I was
struggling starting
in January. What was the name of that newsletter? What was the name of that
newsletter? It was
not the name of that newsletter. Live, live, you can market a marker. Yep. That
's like,
con from us. I was like, that's a great name. Where'd you get that? He's like,
from you.
But he said, you know, like, you know, economy's getting tight. He was having a
hard time getting
clients starting in January. And he said he read the book, nearbound book. And
he started using that
framing and that terminology in his pitches to his customers. Hey, I'm going to
come help you
with your marketing stuff and I'm going to help you get a nearbound motion
going. And he was like,
night and day, started to get easier, started to get clients. Like it's been
huge. Like,
and it's because of the shared pain, right? I said a while ago on this show, I
don't know how long it
was. Everybody's problem aware solution, wary. And I think everybody is is so
problem aware.
They just know that reaching buyers through their existing methods is just
getting harder and harder.
And they are solution curious. And when it comes to how do the solutions look
in practice,
I think we're still not that's still not clear for most people. But from a
broad level, okay,
I'm problem aware enough that I know I need a solution. And I'm very curious
about this idea
of reaching people through the voices they trust. It's logical. When I look at
examples of people
doing it, they're winning more than those who aren't. When I try to figure out
what that would
look like in my own company, I'm starting to get some ideas, but that's less
clear yet. We
haven't moved to the part where it's easy to immediately plug that in, get the
plays, get the
tactics, figure out which departments are implicated in that, which strategies
does that involve.
But we've moved from, yeah, I know there's a problem, but I don't trust any of
these proposed
solutions to I know there's a problem. And I know that the solution has to
involve reaching
people through voices they trust. Now, what is that going to look like in my
specific company?
And that's a big step on that process. And that means that the early movers,
you do have a few people
who get it soup to nuts who are like, yep, problem, yep, this is the solution.
And here's how I'm
going to implement it. And they're out there doing it. They're the pioneers.
And they've kind of
figured it out. They're starting to write those plays. But for it hasn't
reached the early
adopt the broader market yet hasn't expanded into that. And people are still
like, okay,
I get it. I need to go through voices I trust. How's that look in my company?
And that's where
it gets fun because that's where it's not about someone laying out the high
level ideas. That's
where the story finding comes in. It's about finding the people who are doing
it and learning
what you can do, what you can emulate from them and what you might need to
adjust.
There's so many of them. I mean, like, I've loved everything that like working
with Jessica
Fewless at inverter and like their team has done. I mean, we've done so much
with them.
They're doing their own nearby marketing on their own. They're an agency. They
're helping
folks figure out their nearby marketing. They help write the nearby marketing
blueprint.
They're doing ABM campaigns that are all nearby. Isaac might have one of them
for those of you
the ongoing joke for the dozens of you that watch on YouTube. And actually, we
've got a few
hundreds now. Look at that, baby. There we are.
Marketing blueprint. Physical copy. It's actually super nice.
There we go. Coming to an event near you. It's been fun. So fun to get to see
how the right
language and helping people drive their curiosity, take a little bit of courage
and some conviction
to go put these plays into practice because we were just merely a match. I mean
, that's
the old Sam Adams quote, you know, igniting brush fires of, you know, liberty
and the minds of the
few. It does not take a majority to prevail, but an irate tireless minority
keen on setting the
brush fires of freedom in the minds of many. You know, I think I just nailed
that Sam Adams quote.
I think you did. That's an impressive top of a top of mind. Unless you have
those glasses that
like reflect on the inside of your eye from a Google search or something.
No, no, speaking of which that was actually one. I wanted to shout this out
just to kind of
wrap this up. We're talking about like how big this is in the market is.
I covered a story a couple months back where Google was in talks with Apple
about Gemini
powering some stuff and I was like, Oh, the WWDC is coming up like Google and
Apple is going to
pen a deal for Gemini to power AI for Apple. Well, it turns out that Google
pays Apple and I knew
this in the back of my head and I didn't put two and two together. The risk
profile there is
actually pretty high for Apple and for Google. Why? Google pays Apple, I
believe it's $20 billion
a year to be de facto search on iOS devices for that license. That's that's 5%
of Apple's revenue.
That's that's a significant amount, right? That's a big partnership $20 billion
a year, right?
And the WWDC just came out. Apple did what they normally do and they launched
Apple Intelligence,
right? Instead of AI, it's they've never said AI. By the way, this is like the
first time they've
ever said it and they still avoided saying it. It's Apple Intelligence. Well,
turns out Apple
Intelligence, it's got some element stuff, whatever. I won't get into the
features, but
basically Siri is still stupid. That's the big takeaway. You'll ask Siri
something,
but then what happens? I'm sorry. I couldn't find the answer. Would you like me
to ask chat GPT?
It's a powered by partnership with OpenAI. It's the most it's the wildest thing
just to see Apple
ending their keynote with being like, here's our latest and greatest. It's a
powered by feature.
It literally says chat GPT and it has the logo in it.
Yep. So you biggest companies? No, and then that's where I feel like,
you know, I love the brush fire quote, but I would be severely exaggerating to
compare myself to a
match. I'm more just like a little piece of Tinder. The fire was started when I
got here.
You know what I mean? Wonderful industry. I'm helping spread it by being no,
like it's just
amazing to be it's amazing to be in a place at a time when it's undergoing a
major shift
and you're there and you're on that wave. I remember one of the first one of
the earliest,
maybe first 10 episodes that I co-hosted with you. We had Chris, Chris Similla
on and he was at
Crossbeam at the time and he said, episode 50, I believe, it's a damn good time
to be in partnerships
and I remember like, oh, that's good. That's reassuring because I just am new
to this whole
thing. Like it's good to hear that people feel that way. And I just I think
that's timely. I think
that's timely right now. So despite the realities, right? Like it's not all it
's not all roses. There's
a lot of healthy. That's the thing about brush fires, right? They burn away a
lot of stuff too,
that that was overgrown. So like that, you know, a movement is like a brush
fire. It will absolutely
clear out some some garbage in there, some dead wood. And there's a lot of that
. So like a lot of
that. That's not easy, but it's good. It's good. It's good for the growth of an
ecosystem. Oh my gosh,
the metaphors are just coming together. They're they're they're they're there.
I mean, that's,
you know, systems that exchange change, like that's that's that's actually my
keynote from the first
super node conference. It's it's for those of you that really want to geek out
on like network
effects and systems thinking. It's still like one of my favorite presentations
ever because I talk
about the origins of systems, which has to go back 13 billion years ago. You
know, roughly.
Yeah, that was the presentation where I was like, Jared, you got to make sure
you get those slides
ready. Your presentations in two days, you have a 15 minute session. You're
like, yep, I'll send you
the draft slides. And then I open up a slide deck. Slide one is like 15 billion
years ago. And then
I'm like, wait, how many slides are in here? 108 slides for 15 minutes. And
somehow you got
through the mall. So kudos to you. It's it's one of my favorites, though,
because like systems
that exchange change and like, that's the reality whenever you have this
collaborative spirit and
you're thinking in systems that like nothing is things that don't exchange,
they stagnate and they
they end up in entropy, right? Like, in order for us to grow, these moments are
critical because I
don't think anyone wants a world that we had, you know, in the middle of the
pandemic, it was like,
oh, you know, all of this tech stuff work from home, zoom, you know, all of
these things.
If you were some places in tech, it was okay in other places, it wasn't. But
the reality is this.
Everything came online. And in the past year, even 2023 to 2024, we added there
's 14,000 plus
companies in MarTech alone. So if you look at Scott Brinkers, Chief MarTech Map
it went from like 11,000 last year to 14,000 this year. That's the biggest
growth. I mean,
that's like more than the three previous years combined. There's stuff that's
going to get cleared
out. And, you know, being in a place where you're facilitating more exchange,
right? And more
change is probably the best place to be in that. And that's, you know, like,
what, I'll go back to
how I wanted to interject this into the podcast at some point, Isaac, because
it's, I think it's
just a lesson for those folks that have gone out and found the conviction to do
something in this
space, really material. So that's the folks that are fighting for the chief
partner officer
role, or like Greg from starting like Euler to Pete Caputa, you know, taking
the reins of data box
to some of my favorite companies that have emerged kind of since we've done
this and are
doing things really well is what I what I said to you, I remember me trying to
recruit you as like
partner in this. I'm like, look, there's it's kind of a Steven, it's a bastard
ized Steven Pressfield
quote mixed with some David Cansell. But what it was, and for those folks of
you that are thinking
about having an entrepreneurial itch, it's the differences between builders,
geniuses, and pros.
And not to say that we were pro and we did this, you know, 100%, but the right
mindset and the right
choices really do make a difference in your life. And the difference between a
builder and a genius
is that a builder has a hammer and she's looking for a nail, right? Here's my
product. Do you want
it? Here's my product. Here's my product. Here's my product. I found a solution
Neat. AI is going to eat your lunch. Like good luck in this world. Then there's
geniuses and they
might come in the form of the 10x technological innovation, right? So like some
maybe something
with blockchain AI proliferates some giant challenges that will come, they will
come with AI. And some
genius will do something with blockchain and we finally go, aha, that's the use
case we were all
looking for. That's what we needed blockchain for. You know, but here's the
reality.
As I said earlier in the podcast, great product never beats great go-to market
and great go-to market never beats great network effects. So then obviously a
Microsoft can copy
it or someone like that Microsoft blockchain another startup boom, you have the
open AI 2.0
and all those LLM startups. Good luck, right? All those blockchain startups.
Good luck. Who knows?
But a pro, if you really want to nail it right, they don't choose the product
first. What they do
is they choose the market first and an undeniable shift in the world that's
affecting human behavior.
And you know what we chose Isaac? We chose that. We were sick of the spam. We
were sick of getting
marketed to. I was sick of sales and marketing alignment meetings. All of my
peers and my colleagues
were. I believed with all of my heart that what was happening in SAS was not
okay. I was sick of
the board meetings. I was sick of the VCs doing things. What I felt was going
to break. So I chose
the market first and then we built something for all of you, right? We built
something where we
investigated. We pulled back the layers and it was the content was the product,
right?
We decided to build in market, to live in market and to create a product that
was this for you all.
And we didn't care what came out the other side of it because we knew we chose
the market first.
We chose the persona that was most impacted by it, partnerships. And we helped
them see,
and we hope we helped you see an undeniable shift in the world and human
behavior through your lens.
The market and the moment and the moment is also the name of the track from the
PLX Summit, right?
Yeah, that was, yeah, maybe if you ate lists as that PLX playlist after this
one, go back,
go find the PLX playlist on Spotify. It hits. The best working music ever. I've
been jamming it
all weeks since you re-told about it. We should look if you're editing this,
you should put that
at the end of this episode, the moment that song from the PLX playlist.
Bringing this home and
getting overly complicated with metaphors as I want to do since you mentioned
the brush fires.
Market is like an ecosystem that is a great metaphor and we've talked at length
about that.
And a movement within a market is like a brush fire. And I was watching a
documentary about the
Everglades recently since we've moved down here in Florida. And the Everglades,
what do you think
of? You just think of water. They're just water soaked. It's a big swamp, right
? No, they have like
annual fires all the time. And you'll have this ecosystem, this market, it has
a dry season where
there just isn't enough rain for everything in there to grow. And it starts to
get things start to
die off and they start to be a bunch of clutter collecting around things that
aren't really serving
a much of a purpose anymore. And I kind of feel like in this market, there's
just not enough
attention from buyers anymore. We can't get to the buyers enough as these
changes from the how
to the who economy. And it gets dry. And what do you need to clear out
everything so that you
can get new growth again? You need a fire. You need a movement. You need a
brush fire. You got all
kinds of lightning strikes down here in Florida. You need a bunch of lightning
strikes and they
spark something off. And that movement of like, okay, this how economy tactics
are drying up.
So we need to spark something new to clear out all the dead wood so that new
growth can
emerge. And when the rainy season comes again, because it absolutely will,
markets come and go
that you'll have all that stuff cleared out so that the real healthy, strong
stuff can grow back,
right? And like, maybe that's belabored. Maybe that's too romantic for some of
you. But for me,
that hits, that hits and like feels like that's the moment we're in dry season.
Now the brush fire is sweeping across clear in the path and new growth can come
once we kind of
get rid of all of this, all this dead wood that's laying around that are just
relics and remnants
from the old how economy days when you just relied on spamming people and just
cranking up the volume
more on your outbound and your advertisements and your cookies. Clear that
stuff all out of here.
This movement's coming to burn it away so we can start to build something
interconnected
and healthy and strong. 100%. I could not think of a more apt metaphor for this
announcement of the cross beam and reveal merger. Isaac Morehouse, everybody,
the master of metaphors
all the time, all the time. Yeah, amazing way to end an episode to say, you
know,
cross beam reveal are now a single entity. I don't know. Like, yeah, it's wild,
wild, so much fun to be a part of it. So much. Thank you to everybody who's
been here with us
a part of this. And there's a lot more to come. The market keeps moving and we
're excited to keep
moving with it. Absolutely. All right, near bound. We'll see you around until
next time on the near
bound podcast.
I lost my way. Live the day by day.
The lonely way. No one hears me now.
I lost way.
I felt it fade in the craze.
No one reaching out.