The Crossbeam x Reveal merger: Watch Bob Moore and Simon Bouchez give the inside scoop
At ELG Con London, founders Bob Moore and Simon Bouchez revealed the why, when, and what to expect from the GTM deal of the decade. Watch their chat now.
>> All right. I think we're rocking and rolling. We got the green light.
>> We're ready. >> Greetings, everybody. Bob Moore, co-founder,
CEO of Crossbeam. >> Thank you for joining here. We are live
in London from E.L.G. Con London, which just wrapped after a full day here in
the garden
museum, really amazing day of talks from a number of thought leaders and influ
encers
in the sales technology, go to market and partnerships space, bringing some
really great
stories forward, many of which we hope to bring to you through webinars like
these over
the course of the coming months and more. But this session is a special one.
This is
actually the first time Simon and I have been in the same room together since
the deal
closed. We've obviously spent time together on quite a few different occasions
over the
last many, many quarters and years. But this is kind of a big day because we
get to, A,
spend quality time together as one united company, B, share the story of the
deal that brought
our companies together with all of you and give you all the juicy bits in the
inside
baseball you might be interested in. And three, talk about the future. It's
probably the
most important thing. We've got a whole list of questions that were submitted
by registrants
and we hope to cover all those along with some interesting anecdotes about just
what
we've discovered and learned so far about the journey of bringing everybody
together.
So we will dive right in, I think. And maybe we can just hop in a time machine
to start
and even before the first time we even met, maybe do you want to talk a little
bit about
like origin story of reveal? When did it happen? Why did it happen?
Yeah. So reveal was my second company. The first one was also a sales business.
But
in 2019, with the same funding team, we decided to tackle a different problem.
This idea that
companies could be more interconnected and create value with each other and not
necessarily
against each other. It was kind of the driving force for us. We officially
launched in January
2020. At the time the company was called ShareWork and became a couple of years
after. And yeah,
we've been evolving in that space, trying to build that category. And we've
been competing
with you, but right? Quite some time.
Yeah. And that is one of the remarkable things about this story is how much
everything tracks
in the same exact direction and how we've kind of been living these parallel
lives. So
very similarly, cross-beam was started in 2020. We launched in January of 2019.
So
like exactly just one year before ShareWork or reveal launch. And what was the
origin story?
It was the exact same one. I had started a company in the 2010s that we built
to some
scale and then sold to a much larger company. I went in-house at the larger
company and
observed this exact thing, which was there was just a massive amount of in
efficiency
in the way that companies collaborate across company lines. And the root of
that inefficiency
was a giant data problem. And my previous companies were in the data analytics
space.
That was a huge data nerd. And it felt like there was this moment in time
opportunity to
create something new that would break down these intercompany data barriers in
a way
that was also responsible and compliant and scalable and could maybe unlock a
new paradigm
for growth. So yeah, we starting in 2020, I guess when you guys launched, we
started
bumping into each other out there in the market somewhat abstractly. I don't
know your memory
of that era, but my memory was we at cross-beam were in this mode where we'd
been able to
raise a good amount of venture capital. And our north star above all else was
to get the
network to the largest possible size because the interesting thing about this
business
model that we both have is it doesn't work unless everybody's on it, at least
within
a particular atomic network of connected companies. So for the first two years,
three years of
the business, the big north star metric was how large is the network and how
viral is
the network. And we were very, very, very focused on that. And I think didn't
really
even start bumping into each other in any material way until maybe a year plus
had gone
by. And our networks had both gotten so big that it was kind of unavoidable
that we were
this, you know, these two sons in the same solar system.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's exactly what we have experienced as well. When you
launch that
kind of business, then you have to solve for the, let's say, the cool star
problem. And
you have to find your first users, and then you have to see the network effect
being created.
So at first, we focus on our home market, Europe and France, and that's how we
got started.
And probably it explains why we haven't seen each other that much for the first
few months,
the first few quarters. It's also interesting that you're saying that you
launch cross-beam
to solve a gigantic data problem, because I think that's also where we
complement each
other. We came at the problem more because we thought that other methodology to
go to
market were just simply inefficient or too costly. And outsourcing information
and collaborating
with others could lead to more efficient and cost effective and cost efficient
way to
go to market. And I think these two visions are somewhat interconnected and now
are part
of the same, you know, the same motion. And that's pretty interesting to
combine kind
of the, you know, disability to solve the most complex data problem with this
ability
to just solve, you know, clear, don't do as go to market problems and ineffic
iencies.
Yeah, and not to foreshadow too much. We'll talk a lot about the future and
kind of how
all the companies are combining and why. But it's really interesting looking at
it through
that lens because if you think about cross-beam and where we invested really
heavily in what
strengths we developed, it was in the kind of the back-end infrastructure, the
extreme
flexibility and security around data and data control, security, privacy,
enterprise
readiness, the ability to attract and retain very large enterprise customers on
the platform.
And I think where reveal has become known for being really, really, really good
is in
the way in which people experience the platform, the user experience, the
customer support and
success experiences and just kind of the level of delight that exists in going
through the
process of bringing this stuff to life in your company. And it's not surprising
when
you think about those origin stories, right, that like cross-beam kind of came
at it from
this very bottom-up perspective and reveal took a very top-down kind of kind of
people
down approach and it's neat that that one day our paths finally crossed. So,
you know,
fast forward to August of 2022 and at this point we're bumping into each other
somewhat
frequently in the market, especially in the U.S. market and our good friends
over at partnership
leaders were throwing their annual event called Catalyst. The first catalyst
event, that's
a great point and it was in August in Miami which I'm sure you were thrilled to
leave Paris
to go to the hottest city in the U.S. in the hottest month of the year but we
all convened
there and my recollection of this is we're standing in a cocktail hour that was
sponsored
by cross-beam. So, everybody's drinking these like blue cross-beam cooler
cocktails, Pam,
our mascot in this giant foam rubber uniform is like running around and every,
you know,
it's a very cross-beam vibe but the talk of the town is Simon had just gotten
off stage
and it was the first time the term nearbound had been introduced and it was
like kind of
introducing that to the world and we just have this very chance meeting like
ships in
the night of crossing paths and there's a little bit of absurdity to it like I
've got
my mascot running around and you just got off stage talking about a word that
you made
up right and it's like if I were in this moment and our eyes kind of crossed
paths and it's
like oh that's the guy and that was a really, really, really short but
important interaction.
Would you agree?
Yeah, I would definitely agree and to your point it was kind of surprising for
us at
the time it was a very important and special moment and by the way, you know,
thanks to
the partnership leaders team for kind of providing us with this opportunity. We
just, we had
just raised our series A with inside partners and we really wanted to kind of
make a statement
and come up with something very meaningful for the future of the category and
the future
of our company. So it was very, very focused on that event. The whole team was
a spent a
lot of time prepping this and maybe the most important thing that happened this
day was
the thing that we weren't prepared for, right? So just meeting with Bob,
spending some time
with you and just understanding that we are not so different after all. I think
being second
time founders on both sides has probably changed our perspective when it comes
to competition
in the sense that one, we are going to complete with everything we have and as
hard as we
can but on the other end we also know that those markets and newly created
category,
they have a tendency to consolidate, they have a tendency to evolve in ways
that you can't
necessarily predict at a given point in time. So it created a sense of
partnership within
the competition and I think it was a pivotal moment and from there I think we
have kept
on talking to each other, right?
Yeah and I think it reminded me of, this is why I am so glad that we are both
repeat
founders honestly and I think that came through the interaction because I had
this memory
from my first company, RJ Metrix, where we competed viciously with this company
called
Looker who we would go head to head in a bunch of sales deals and it was a
crowded market
but somehow we just always found ourselves bumping into these folks. I was a
first time
founder and very able to be deeply distracted and have these very deep feelings
about my
worst enemies on the planet are the folks at Looker and then life goes on, RJ
Metrix
got acquired, Looker got acquired for a lot more but I started another company
after that
called Stitch Data and lo and behold Stitch Data was in a very different space
and our
number one partner turned out to be Looker. So the day shows up when I get to
finally
meet and be in the same room with the executives from Looker and get to know
them and within
five minutes I realize oh I don't hate these people, these are like kindred
spirits and
the only thing that was different about us was that we were at different
companies but
we had started businesses at about the same time to solve the same problems
running up
against the same market constraints in the same macro environment trying to
address the
needs of the same customers and the same personas and this is why we kept bump
ing into
each other and the reality was that there was this one little difference
between us but
outside of that we were living these interesting parallel lives and that always
stuck with
me that had happened just a couple years prior to this chance meeting with
Simon and after
we chatted for five minutes I said oh wow it's like Looker all over again like
I think
there's a we have a responsibility to our market and our investors and
everything else
that we are going to be we are not going to be buddies however I think we can
respect
each other and I think that we can do it in a way where we can cultivate option
ality about
ways to create the most value for our industry and for the customers that we
are both mutually
interested in serving and you know that really quickly did evolve into by six
months later
or even less than that you and I engaged for the first time at the end of 2022
about possibly
merging with with one another.
Yeah yeah and there are two other things that we share like I think the strong
conviction
that what we are both building and we were both building as the potential to be
massive
and also the ambition that goes with it like on you know on both side it was
pretty clear
that the ambition was really to build the largest possible business in the
generational
company and to build this new category and when you have this kind of alignment
at a
very foundational level it's very important and yes six months after we met we
just got
our funding wrong you got one as well pretty massive even more massive and we
had that
conversation and let's say the I love that business case was there was already
you know
pretty clear to the both of us but the timing wasn't perfect right on both side
we were like
okay we we want to see through we are not exactly sure where the market is
going we were just
kind of emerging out of this zero interest you know interest rate period but we
we we
shared on both sides that we needed to see through and spend a little bit more
time as
independent companies to see what could be could be done before we made the
ultimate
decision or created the better together story so that's why at that point we
decided not
to do it and not to get off engage in such a project and and I think it was
probably for
the best right I totally agree to deeply for a bunch of reasons and frankly I
think the
way that we're doing it now which will which will chat about is so much better
informed
and will benefit everybody kind of in the broader ecosystem much more widely
because
we had the benefit of that additional year kind of being out of market and
frankly just
coming into our own as company it's like reveal how to phenomenal growth year
in that year
that we decided to kind of go in our own ways crossing that a phenomenal growth
year we
were both our companies that kind of ended that year in a really good position
and the
ability still just as well as a year prior to continue going forward as
individual companies
but I think there was one thing that once we had planted the seat in our heads
about
maybe coming together that I think really really came to the forefront which is
our customers
wanted us together and if you looked at anecdotal evidence whether it was like
you could literally
go to a conference like this one and half the conversations I get are people
tapping me
on the shoulder saying hey when are you and reveal going to be be inter
compatible or
you look at the hard data which was hey let's look at customer requests that
are coming
in through all of our sales conversations or coming in through customer success
or coming
in through you know people posting on social media the number one feature
request that existed
for cross beam was integrate with reveal combined with reveal like bring these
networks together
because imagine a world where there were two linked ends right and half the
people you
know are on one and half the people you know are on the other there comes a
point where
not only is it frustrating and annoying but you literally cannot get a fully
realized
value proposition out of the promise of what this product is while this thing
is fragmented
and as much as we both had good years and we both had these companies that seem
like
they're kind of working we felt like it was working for us but it wasn't
working for
our customers and that felt like an opportunity for us to like set egos aside
and optimize
for the bigger win for the people in this space we're in yeah and you know it's
interesting
because all the conversation we've had as independent companies with our
customers were
and prospects were mostly focused on the network would you have was on cross
beam was on review
what's your coverage can I get kind of some sort of reinsurance that if I pick
one or the
other I'm gonna have access to the important partners I want to do business
with and even
if it's super interesting and it's been kind of let's say the first phase of
both companies
evolution getting to that critical mass and creating them the network and
providing access
it's not the core of the conversation right the core of the conversation is how
do you
turn the ecosystem the data that we enable these kind of thousands of companies
to connect
into actual business value and whenever I join the sales call or call with a
user to
add them with the onboarding or whatever this is something I've tried to do
regularly over
the years 75% of the conversation was around the network piece and 10% about
what do we
do with the data and how do we operate this and the rest was kind of small to
can teach
out right and it felt like a very unbalanced way to approach the problem and
not really
kind of in line with what we think companies need right now in terms of
guidance in terms
of value proposition and in terms of yeah just service we can provide an even
feature
right so that destruction was really standing in the way of us and all of our
users realizing
the full potential of what we are both trying to build yeah couldn't agree more
and as we
see here at ELGcon the ecosystem like growth conference and you think about the
subject
matter that was discussed here at this conference nobody's talking about like
the had a breakdown
walls within the network there's almost like this presupposition that okay we
are going
to have access to this extremely powerful very unique data layer that enables a
bunch
of these go to market motions people are here today talking about those go to
market
motions and talking about those playbooks and talking about getting executive
buy in
an alignment and like there's so many mountains to climb in the journey of
making this stuff
ubiquitous and making it drive value in such a big way that you know we I think
we realized
that we were actually not each other's competition like our competition was the
you know many
many many years ahead during which we were proving ourselves to be the most
prolific
source of growth that companies can experience over the over the coming decade
and I think
that that was going to require a lot a lot of work and the distraction of
competing with
each other was was going to be was going to be tricky so yeah so this brings us
kind
of to the deal right so we we reengaged around January of 2024 we signed a term
she in March
and kind of went into this quiet due diligence period which you know there's
probably hours
and hours of content where we could geek out on the little inside baseball
intricacies of
that but one of the weird side effects was Simon and I we were actually fairly
removed
from the due diligence process just for like hygiene purposes right so it's
really important
in these things you can't operate like your one company until the deal is
closed so from
our point of view we were just doing our jobs operating the business the vast
majority
of our teams were also kind of not able to be aware of the deal until it was
done so we
had these very small clean teams on either side that were doing the due
diligence work
and contract reviews and the legal documents so we had this very interesting
multi month
period where it was kind of business as usual but Simon and I you know were
aware that there
was a potential that we might close a deal here and last Monday that deal got
closed
and then the floodgates opened right maybe this is a fun moment like we can
talk about
we're literally still today like learning new things over the course of the day
but yeah
we're the things that stood out to you about we did so we use cross beam and
reveal immediately
like as soon as the deal closed we basically connected with each other on our
own platforms
which was this like very moving kind of weird surreal meta moment but then the
data by the
way the platforms worked great if you ever merge with another company it is an
amazing
use case for the platforms because instantaneously we got the answer to all the
questions that
we ever want to know about the network graph did anything stand out to you yeah
no I mean
it was so first of all it was very painful not to use it before we closed the
deal so
there is a pre-closing use case if some of you are working in court there by M&
A I think
that can be very very interesting yeah it was only us who couldn't use it
before we
are the companies yeah anybody else can use it pre-close yeah that was that was
quite
painful and then there is the let's let's call it the post-martial integration
use case
where we can very very quickly get to know each other from a good market
standpoint to
see the overlap in terms of a fusibase speaking of which I think Bob we had a
couple of you
know guesstimate in terms of the overlap between the two networks and
surprisingly it
wasn't kind of as massive as expected we were wrong in in some some pretty
profound ways
that I get 40% or whatever and we are more what 15 20% yeah so as we thought
you know
going into this transaction cross-room network was 20,000 companies or Ville's
network was
12 we figured at least five or six thousand companies maybe more would be at
the intersection
of the network graphs it turned out to be a number that I think was less than
2000 in
total it was like you know in the teens on a percentage basis which which is
actually
great news because it ultimately means that like you know if you look at our
announcement
press release we had kind of done back of the envelope math and we said hey the
combined
network is 25,000 companies roughly turn out it's 29,000 and it just means that
the
extent to which we had each been doing work that was kind of net accretive to
the totality
of the world adopting these practices was was greater than we thought and it
gives us
a much much stronger starting point I think to bring value to more companies it
's true
and it was also limiting so obviously each network has you know developed in
different
areas and again so because systems because it's actually very out to convince
someone
using cross-beam and being a cross-beam user to join Ville and vice versa so we
were building
worlds and not only preventing our own networks to grow but also preventing all
these you
know these companies and all of you to maybe expand beyond your own kind of so
because
this is them or eco-chamber and now just today I had a lot of conversation
during the conference
with users saying okay now I can look at the Riven network and start seeing
kind of maybe
you have interesting partners in the EMEA APAC or in other verticals that are
super interesting
for me I can expand my business I can start thinking about kind of new business
development
areas and opportunities and that's super exciting right yeah that actually
reminds me of a
data point I haven't even told you this I got this from our analytics team
today which is
so we can talk about how many companies are on the network and it's these tens
of thousands
of companies but there's also tens of thousands of partnerships on the network
so you can you
know measure the like the nodes in the graph or the edges in the graph that
connect those
nodes and the total number of partnerships on the network is north of 50,000 it
's like
obviously larger than the number of companies and kind of grows at this
interesting core
layer that but while of the 29,000 companies on the network there's a couple
thousand companies
that overlap on the two if you look at the partnerships themselves that overlap
that
happen to coexist on both despite there being over 50,000 partnerships there
are only a
couple hundred that exist on both so to your point exactly even if a company
was on both
platforms they were never partnering with the same company on both platforms
they picked
the platform to have each specific partnership happen on and there was not
redundancy in
that so the net like if it's a plus b minus 20 percent on the number of
companies it's
a plus b minus 1 percent on the number of partnerships and the connective
tissue that
exists there which is which is even it's kind of more obvious to say out loud
once you say
it out loud it would have made no sense to keep two partnerships on two account
mapping
platforms but to see it in action and see that it proves true to that enormous
order
of magnet enormously small order of magnitude just like kind of chillingly cool
to check
out yeah maybe it means that the biggest keychain M&A and partnership the one
plus one equals
three can actually be true with you know we literally that's the math yeah it's
kind
of incredible so should we talk about the future yeah let's let's get to the
good stuff
and I think the overwhelming majority of the questions that got submitted were
about where
this is all going right and you've got such great perspectives on this do you
want to
maybe talk a bit about I think just setting some expectations for our customers
who might
now know like what is going to happen next with the platforms and with their
own experience
in in getting to this unified vision yeah so first of all Bob and I we've been
through
acquisitions and post-merger integration processes before so the first thing I
want to say is
that it's very tough right so we are not you know dismissing the difficulty of
bringing
two companies to church to teams together I think the first two weeks have been
pretty
amazing so far and we're going to be extremely focused on getting that right it
also means
that how we involve the user the user community and the customer community in
that process
going to be extremely important so of course our goal is to have a unified
network just
to combine the power of the two networks into one and to provide universal
access to all
of you so that's potentially the number one item right on the roadmap of course
we want
to have one platform and directionally we want all of you to have access to
that network
through a unified product experience so these two things are true what's also
true is that
we're going to take our time we're going to work with you we have a lot of
commitments
we have a lot of contracts in place we have a lot of processes that have been
built on
top of the region and cross-frame data so we are not going to rush or force
anyone to
do anything the way we approach this is we have a responsibility to create a
positive
incentive and a lot of upside for users to do anything if one day you are as to
migrate
or you are as to change a process it means that there is something more that
you can
create than what you already have so this is really the this is really the let
's let's
call it the philosophy and I guess cross-beam is the selected backend system
right in
terms of data mode and so on so this is this is on top of the the cross-beam
backend that
we are going to be the new experience I think you have so many amazing
companies on the
network so many large nodes as we say internally but so many amazing ecosystem
leaders with
a huge power of attraction that we we we must leverage that not to mention the
incredible
enterprise capabilities and the security that that cross-beam has built and
revealed has
been known for kind of cool UI and ability to maybe activate and take action on
the data
and the vision is really to kind of create a new experience for all of you on
top of
the the very solid and strong backend of cross-beam and this is something that
the team is already
working on and we we can we can deliver nuts in an instant in six months one
day you have
a big shift and a new platform but gradually you're gonna start seeing massive
evolution
of the product and and it's pretty exciting actually I'm very excited yeah I I
'm and I'm
just so impressed with the yeah there's an important piece here that maybe is
is more
important to us internally than it is externally but that I want to acknowledge
because I think
our teams deserve a lot of credit for just how well and how quickly they have
adapted
to collaborating with one another a really important thing to know just
organizationally
and operationally is that we have combined the reveal and cross-beam teams in
an extremely
deeply embedded way this is not a situation where there's kind of like the
former reveal
folks are working out of this office in Paris and doing their thing and then
cross-beam
is is kind of operating as usual we did a lot of work at closing to design an
organizational
chart and a leadership structure that is extremely representative of the the
biggest
strengths of both companies so you look across our leadership team you look
across the way
they're bored is structured you look across the way that the the the jobs to be
done throughout
the company at all levels are structured and what you see everywhere is these
teams that
are cross-pollinated with reveal and cross-beam people and so far and I think
this is a you
know a testament to how much we really work in your experiences as companies
without knowing
it the compatibility of those teams and the way in which even the working
styles has overlapped
has been strong enough that we can already see like the writing is on the wall
around
how incredibly powerful this you know everyone having a real incentive to be
unified on the
cross-beam back end with this incredible new unified vision around creating an
experience
that has the absolute best of what reveal does well and the the absolute
firepower of
what Cross-beam is capable of and bringing that to life in ways that you're
going to
just progressively and continuously see in in the coming months and quarters it
's like
I'm just so excited by that and I think it's it's very very different than you
know a lot
of these post-merger situations where either one thing just swallows another
one and and
you kind of say goodbye to the good things about about an acquired company or
you get
into some slog that takes five years and like we all can think of large
enterprise
SaaS products that we probably use where it's like are you on the old one or
are you on
the new one and you know years and years later that question is still being
asked we're not
going to allow that to be one of these situations and frankly you know we've
got the we've got
the right people skilled in the right things and we're working off the right
foundations
to to get that right this actually makes me think of another question that's on
the list
but I think maybe another big topic that's super important which is like the
mission
the unified mission of the companies and and the values that underlie that what
's your
recollection of how how we kind of thought about values going into this process
it was
surprisingly fast right so we essentially just share the doc the internal HR
document
that we add on both side stating the you know the mission and the core values
of each companies
and they're pretty much the same right it's like so like I said I swear we didn
't copy yours
and he said I swear we didn't copy yours yeah so it's it's it was a really easy
combination
and I think you know values around trust around impact around what else do we
have yeah the
importance of just creating a sensible longing and fun for for our teams and
how much we
care about the the experience of participating in being in our own ecosystems
whether whether
it's the ecosystem of our our team or our customer base or even at an event
like this
right where you might have people that don't even use the platforms but are
looking to learn
and grow we want to create a big sense of sensible longing in all those spaces
so yeah
that was that was a really big deal and I think it was a great the very first
all hands meaning
that we had as a combined team that's what we led with and that that's capped
off by a
mission statement of wanting to leverage the power of ecosystems to change the
way that
all companies grow right and that's that's that's our big hairy ambitious goal
for this
combined company that we've now co-founded together which is like let's have
this thing
matter in a really big way to an extremely material number of companies and the
only way
to do that is through actually generating that value right and that's like it
feels so good
to be able to run full speed into that challenge and that task now that now
that we're united
which is a really really great thing.
Understand should we take a few questions as well?
Yeah let's see we got a bunch of these submitted here.
Do you want to take the the first one the tough one yeah how did you choose
which brand
would remain to negotiations?
Yeah this is a great question how did you choose cross-bank?
Yeah how did you come up with that?
I swear the deck was not stacked it was a very aggressive game of rock paper
scissors
that that went down.
Yeah this is a great so we talked a lot about this and this you know prior to
the term sheet
being signed and like one of the other things that we talked about extensively
prior to
entering into even doing a deal process was like what are these core values
that we want
to live by not in the combined company after the fact but during the actual
deal like what
are the things that are important and there were a bunch of them on several
different
dimensions but one that was really important to both of us was let's have the
hard conversations
up front and not do things that involve just kicking the can down the road that
's going
to put us in some situation where it's an inevitable awkward conversation that
just needs
to be resolved later but creates ambiguity for our teams ambiguity for the
market etc right
so we had a lot of conviction going into this that there was going to be one
unified company
name and I think the at the end of the day like reveal a great brand and I
think we we
we own those you know collectively we own those reveal assets in the reveal
domain and
like there's probably ways that we can figure out how to how to leverage that
right and and
kind of make sure that it doesn't instantaneously disappear by any stretch but
when you think
about what Simon mentioned before I think the thing that made a compelling to
go with cross
beam is the level of large reach that we had across very large late stage
enterprise
organizations and the knock on effect of that being a certain level of brand
recognition
that existed that I think transcended a larger number of stage personas that
existed out there
in the market including ones in a large enterprise arena that are probably the
hardest ones to
actually gain momentum in and the cross beam brand had also been around for an
additional
year you know we we kind of had a larger universe of companies on the platform
just by absolute
numbers so you know this it's it's it's not an easy set of decisions but a
worse decision
would have been to call this company cross beam reveal a worse decision would
have been
to call it cross-ville that's a terrible name re-rebeame because the the
exercise of going
through and you guys just did this right like you were share work for a period
of time which
kind of adds to this as well right like the reveal brand as a portion of the
reveal life
cycle was also shorter lived but it is extremely painful and investment heavy
so like a net
new third brand would also not make much sense and I think this is an I'll say
for the for
the reveal team and for Simon personally like the perfect example of why
experienced savvy
low ego repeat founder DNA was necessary in order for this thing to happen in
you know
in both directions because again like that's the kind of conversation that I
think a if
either one of us had been a hot headed entrepreneur without as much experience
not focused on
the long term bigger picture somebody could have ended up storming out of the
room and
that's just not the way it played out and and you know it's obviously an
emotional decision
for for me and for the team of our trivia but I think when you are this kind of
opportunity
to change a market to change the course of you know the trajectory of your
business and
of an entire category and hopefully to have an impact also on thousands of
companies that
are using a product you have to pick the things you want to optimize for and to
your point
like you have two strong brands with good equity good brand equity cross-beam
with a stronger
presence in the US arguably stronger presence in the enterprise which is
clearly a segment
we want to go after so net net it makes sense like the next journal from an
external perspective
if you keep cross-beam then it makes sense it allows us to grow or at least it
creates
no limitation and boundaries in our in our potential to grow so for me very
quickly I'm
like is it really something I want to push because it's not in line with
optimizing the
potential of what we are trying to be or whereas there are other things you
know and we had
that conversation a bunch of times and I think there are a few questions around
kind of the
private product and some of the features we've built or even the way we have
organized the
team or some of the key people exactly what you described before like creating
a blend
of two companies and not having kind of either a company absorbed by the other
or a company
that is kind of a peripheral product that is never fully integrated so I was
much more
focused on kind of you know making those points and finding a good compromise
and agreement
on that front rather than fight for something that is ultimately just serving
myself or
even the team and it's not it's not the right angle and if you enter such a
conversation
that way then it makes everything almost impossible I guess so yeah I mean we
have a few few
of the questions of for example how we do decide what feature from we get
migrated to
crossbeam and vice versa for example we would reveal collaboid feature be
merged into crossbeam
so I think putting aside the specific feature yeah the question is how do we
blend these
two things together and how do we come up with the best possible experience the
short
answer is we're gonna work on it very very hard right because we don't have all
the answers
it's been what two weeks so there is still a lot of work to be done but the
strategy has
been clear has been discussed by the clean teams and by the team before and
right after
the the closing of the year and more importantly I think we expect you the
community and the
users to kind of play a big part right in that process just tell us what you
want to
see we have so much potential so many resources and talents that now we can we
can write a
completely new chapter and start kind of bringing the best of both worlds in
this in this new
in this new product yeah I think there's a we one of the exercises that that we
went
through early on here as a combined company is kind of like exchanging demos
with each
other so what there's kind of like an open office hours that have the
experience on a
regular basis right so like the crossbeam team is getting a deep dive demo and
training
on reveal and how to use it and vice versa so we can all during this period
where we
have a lot of people kind of spread across these two networks while while we're
getting
to our future state everybody at the company can support everybody right and we
don't
have these divides so I think really really smart initiative but if you sit
through these
demos and you actually look at these two products and anybody that uses both
deeply knows this
already the despite the network maybe then diagramming by 13% the feature
functionality
these things then diagrams by 90% and and there are things that I think are
absolute killer
features that have emerged in the two platforms and now what we have the
advantage of being
able to do is to actually anecdotally through customer conversations but also
from a raw
like data perspective look deeply at we and we try to solve this problem in
this way you
try to solve this problem in that way where have we actually seen engagement
where we
can do a cohort analysis on consumption of this feature and know for sure
people that
use this feature on reveal have a net promoter score that's 20 points higher
than people
that use it on crossbeam or people that use that feature on crossbeam are 10
times more
likely to come back and use it again two months later than they were when they
use it on reveal
and make very well informed decisions about the version of a capability that is
going
to be the most compelling for the collective customer universe going forward
and when
we talk about this unified product vision this is why I have so much conviction
that
it's not going to be like a three year long slog because we do deeply
fundamentally understand
what works and how it's instrumented from a front end and experience and
features standpoint
in both products and we have these teams that are extremely motivated and very
very efficient
and I think we're going to get this opportunity to use the same extremely hyper
rational like
not emotionally driven decision making process that went into selecting the
brand name into
really selecting what's what's going to matter and that's not to promise
everybody that every
feature that you love is going to make it but every feature that matters at
scale or some
equivalent is and that's what we really want to get right and by the way my one
other comment
on exchanging demos is both platforms also have stuff in them that nobody uses
and this
is a byproduct of two SaaS platforms that have both existed for five years now
it's like sometimes
you get it wrong and sometimes you build stuff and you have the greatest
aspirations of it being
adopted and it sits there and it's an extra button in the UI and it's an extra
workflow when you
on board and then no one consumes it and it just adds to the cruft of
experiencing these products
this is yet another opportunity I think for everything that is complex about
bringing the best of the
best together for everything that might get net added to the collective
universe we're probably
going to be able to remove two things that I promise you're not using anyway
and just make
the whole experience tighter yeah and it's true that for those of you that are
working in
test companies you probably know that your roadmap is a fully data driven right
and coming from
actual usage and customer request but more often than not it's also driven by
what competition is
building for better or worse or by the crazy obsession of funders or you know
executive that
are convinced that this thing will bring a revolution to the market through
this experience and through
this deal we have the opportunity to discover what we got wrong essentially and
to your point I think
the key part of the experience we want to bring our own reducing the time to
value our main mission
is to allow you to connect with partners and access data and share data with
them so it should be
as simple as possible as fast as possible also as you know the performance of
the application should be
you know as perfect as possible so that that aspect and reducing the time to
value without
anything going in between is super super important and then secondly the action
ability
of the data like what can you do with it how can you you know really activate
and turn it into value
and more importantly how can it go beyond just partnership games and
partnership use cases right
and how can it evolve into something that the broader go-to market team can use
turn it into
ecosystem intelligence AI and all of those those things that are already in
both products but not
as a core component yeah and we can put that front and center yeah and that's
great and we have time
for one more of these questions and I think that's actually a great segue to
the bottom one on the
list here which is like what do we think the impact on the merger will be on go
-to market teams at
large for example sales teams beyond the world of partnerships and like this is
such a profoundly
important question because if you look at where whether it's our product road
maps or you look at
our most successful customers I think the thing that I'll speak for Crosby I'm
curious for your
take from from the reveal point of view but there is one thing that is
undeniably true that has
been extremely consistent over the course of building these companies which is
the customers
that get the most value out are the customers where the sales teams are deeply
involved in
consuming this stuff just as much as the partner teams and there's plenty of
cases where we have
very successful partner teams doing account mapping using it to vet partners to
identify who to
build integrations with and like it's a it's a clear cut and value delivering
use case but if you
want to talk about transformative power inside of a company and you want to
talk about literally
changing like bending the curve of how these companies grow there's only one
way to do it which
is to to expand the number of personas within a company that actually consume
the data and
relationships from the partner ecosystem and actually use that in the course of
building the business
that's literally the definition of ecosystem lead growth and this merger to all
the points that
Simon made around eliminating distractions and making sure that we go from this
obsession on
kind of the horizontal network building between these two competing networks
that ought to be one
into a more vertical question of look okay we have this network now how do we
build applications
and functionality and support personas on top of it it's absolutely game-
changing and I
maybe a last word on that and I'll let you close this out with your thoughts
you mentioned AI and
both of us would immediately be fired by our board if we don't talk about AI at
least a little bit but
I have like this is like 1.0 AI that is so critical which is you look at the
whether it's AI agents or
co-pilots or different applications of applied AI inside of go-to-market
environments enterprise
environments B2B companies the the universes that we all know and love and and
who are here with us
on this this webcast and it becomes very clear very quickly because we've been
ticking the tires
on many of these that the the the level of intelligence that these agents have
is very profound
and the breakthroughs that have happened in AI at the base like foundational
models level is
unlike anything that I think any of us ever expected to see in our lifetimes
but the ability for those
things to be effective is directly impacted by the context window that they
have and the the
the set of facts that inform the recommendations that they make and or the
actions that they take
on your behalf and so the question as you think about the next generation of AI
powered tools that
are going to enable go-to-market teams and partnership organizations for that
matter it becomes less
a question of like are we going to build the next amazing LLM at a foundational
level and like be
out there competing with OpenAI and and and llama it's it's much more what are
the what are the data
layers that are going to be foundationally important for companies to actually
whether through AI or
AI assisted humans or some hybrid there actually make the take the actions that
are going to matter
the most and that are going to move the needle the most and it's not lost on us
that the data
layer that exists at the intersection of cross beam and reveal and the
interconnected companies there
is the answer to that question and this second party data as an asset that is
it that is either
used directly in training or within a context window for these AI models is
just profoundly
profoundly impactful in terms of the number of things they can do and the
effectiveness of what
they will do so the the way in which this plugs into the AI future is enormous
it's extremely pivotal
cross beam recently we had a launch at the Microsoft Ignite conference where we
have an
integration with Microsoft's co-pilot for sales products doing exactly this
right like
consuming data from the cross beam network into that product which is making
recommendations and
pre-writing emails and things for go-to-market teams this is the way this is
the future and
what you are looking at in this unified cross beam universe is is is such an
incredibly
powerful and important AI play and I didn't want to I didn't want to get out of
this event without
talking about that because it's going to matter to us in a huge way yeah it's
going to matter a
alert and just to close on the you know the impact we potentially see on the
good-to-market
teams impact of the merger I think at the end of the day across trends across
kind of
movements and categories good-to-market team they care about just a few things
like identifying
the right companies for their products they want to understand how to get in
touch with them
when and what to tell them right and we know for a fact that your partner
ecosystem and your partner
customers they have a very high propensity to be your customers that's pretty
clear compared to
any other prospect you could you could pick we also know that your partners
they have a
turn of information on your prospects they know a lot their relationship so we
can help you extract
that and they can also be a way to engage and reach out to those to those
targets and prospects
right so it means that in the data sits everything you need as a good-to-market
team to be successful
so our job and responsibilities to help you turn kind of that data asset that
has been collected
over the years and through our platforms into actual business value and that's
what I think
we keep us pretty busy for the next five to ten years right yeah yeah and I
think you know we
talked a lot about bringing the platforms together one of the great things
about combining our
product and engineering teams is that like we can walk and chew gum at the same
time right and I think
a big important priority for us is that while we move forward with this unified
product vision and
we work with our customers to bring everybody over to the cross-beam back end
to be able to
cooperate on the same network we are still going to have a steady steady drum
beat of progress around
these features and functionality and go forward movement especially as it
relates to
you know using ecosystems and partner practices as this force multiplier for go
-to-market work
and the products we're building for those teams so what a great note to end on
stuck the landing on time we did it now we get to go spend the next 10 years of
our lives
building something that matters to you hopefully so thank you all so much and
the first of many
to come oh look at all that applause hey did you know there's hundreds of
people here there's
hundreds of people here oh all right