How We Got There

In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Bethany Blackwell, who is a VP at Carahsoft . Bethany runs the Salesforce channel for Carahsoft, which includes Salesforce, Slack, Mulesoft, Tableau, ISVs, and SIs. Carahsoft has worked with Salesforce for the past 15 years as a Value-Added Reseller and got there start on the GSA schedule to help Salesforce sell to the public sector here in the U...

In today’s episode of How We Got There (which was recorded earlier this year, before the downturn), I talk with Doug Landis, who is a Growth Partner at Emergence Capital. Doug spent some time at Salesforce and Box before moving into his current role in helping Emergence’s portfolio companies with go-to-market assistance. He was working in the early days of sales enablement and now recommends hirin...

In today’s episode of How We Got There (which was recorded earlier this year), I talk with Jon Schultz, who is a Director of ISV Sales at Salesforce. Jon has spent his career in partnerships, including the last 6 years at Salesforce. He got a PAM role at Salesforce after moving with his now wife across the country without a job! His team works with horizontal ISV partners who are high growth partn...

In today’s episode of How We Got There (which was recorded earlier this year), I talk with Ari Treuhaft , who is the COO of Litify .. Apologies for the audio quality but the conversation was too good not to share! He spent time at a law firm building an operating system for law firms on Salesforce and from there, Litify was born. They offer vertical SaaS for legal organizations, who think of thems...

Stony Grunow is a Co-Founder of Breadwinner and Co-Founder/CTO of Salesbolt . He shares how he got started in the ecosystem and how he solved a problem he was experiencing with Breadwinner - integrating Salesforce and online accounting platforms. On the Salesbolt side, they are solving the problem of customer contact data getting out of date in CRM by reaching out to LinkedIn to get the latest and...

Brooke Daniels who is a Director at Salesforce Ventures . She spent years using Salesforce before joining the core team and working on the Mulesoft acquisition integration. In her role, she is the go-to-market expert for Salesforce Ventures portfolio companies and helps portfolio companies as needed. Brooke shares the variety of funds under the Ventures umbrella including the Impact fund (sustaina...

In today’s episode, I am joined by Jack Campbell, Director of Strategic Partnerships at OpFocus , Jack has been in the Salesforce ecosystem for over 8 years with a focus on the System Integrators throughout his career. OpFocus is solely focused on helping SaaS businesses optimize their revenue operations and that usually centers around their usage of Salesforce. I was excited to talk to Jack becau...

In today’s episode, I am joined by Ian Gotts , Co-Founder and CEO of elements.cloud , who has been in the ecosystem for almost as long as it’s been around (2001!). After launching elements.cloud in 2016, he brings years of experience to the conversation that he is readily willing to share with others. He shares about how they stay in their lane by working collaboratively with ISVs that are complim...

In today’s episode, I am joined by Stevan Simich , Founder and CEO of Mogli , from working at Altvia to founding Mogli. He shares deep experience in how to look for patterns in customer interactions to figure out what to build, starting with services to connect with customer needs. Don’t productize until you see something 10 times in a row, a guiding principle to know when to lean in to any produc...

In today’s episode, I am joined by Chris Federspiel, CEO and Cofounder of Blackthorn.io . He shares his vision for Blackthorn and a bit about the journey along his way. His company has deep knowledge of going to marketing with what was previously known as Salesforce.org (or .org for short). Chris is delightfully open (on LinkedIn and in real life!) and shares vulnerabilities of building a business...

A special type of abridged episode to share a bit about the Dreamin’ events now that these are largely back on. Many ISVs attend and sponsor these events to drive awareness and leads for their business. Eric Dreshfield is the Founder and Co-Chair for Midwest Dreamin’, who GTM Guides is a proud sponsor of this year, and he is the Product Evangelist of Mogli. In this episode Eric shares who attends...

In today’s episode, I talk with Ryan Hitchler who is the CEO and co-founder of Centro . He shares how we got into the ecosystem. We discuss building a unique connector between Salesforce and Slack after his time at Conga and CRM Culture (ActionGrid). Ryan is the guy that I go to whenever I have any questions about Slack and is on the leading edge of all things Slack & Salesforce.  I reall...

Steven Jacobson, CEO & Founder of Appinium , shares his journey to the ecosystem with video and learning on Salesforce with Appinium and prior to that he founded Cornerstone for Salesforce (formerly CyberU) Steve used feedback from Mark Cuban(!) led Steve to not only build a moat but build a river around Appinium. He shares candid learnings around how important having alignment is for a high-p...

Yeva Roberts , Director of Strategic Alliances at AllCloud , shares her journey into the Salesforce ecosystem starting with Taylor, PFL, and Yotpo before switching from ISVs to SI alliances with AllCloud. AllCloud is a platinum Salesforce SI and one of the fastest growing ones out there.  Yeva shares her perspective on the value exchange between ISVs and SIs by creating a compelling story to...

Andrea Maliska , Founder of Rebel Learn joins the podcast. Rebel Learn is a learning and development consultancy. Andrea has taken her learnings from working at Conga to many companies inside and outside the ecosystem. She shares a few examples but is most proud of the CTA bootcamp she worked on with Sebastian Wagner called Flow Republic . She shares how to start small on internal and partner lear...

Max-Michael Mayer , CEO & Founder of ISVApp joins the podcast. Salesforce ISV/OEM partner since 2008, starting with PropertyBase before solving his own problem and founding ISVApp to help other Salesforce ISVs/OEMs with a toolbox to understand your usage analytics, flagging churn risks in the customer-base. He shares which usage metrics every ISV needs to track, specifically around the diligen...

Maria Pergolino , CMO at ActiveCampaign , after working with Marketo, Apttus, and Anaplan has built much of her career in the ecosystem. From giving away a car at Dreamforce to trials in the enterprise, Maria shares some of her learnings from Marketing to the Salesforce ecosystem. I really enjoyed her thoughts on trialing while balancing self-serve and sales-led to improve the overall health of th...

Casey Karp is the Director of North America ISV GTM Strategy at Simplus . She shares her journey from an ISV in the ecosystem to running ISV alliances at Simplus a platinum SI. If you’ve listened to the podcast, you are likely picking up on a theme - that Systems Integrators are a key reason why the ecosystem is so attractive to ISVs building product. Casey shares her POV that will help you as an...

Melanie Fellay , CEO & Co-Founder of Spekit shares her journey into the Salesforce ecosystem starting with owning a Salesforce instance and feeling the pain of adoption & documentation that inspired her to start a company to modernize how it’s done. Melanie shares best practices around validating an idea using the Ideas Exchange and connecting with people in the ecosystem directly to harde...

Ben Asfaha , CEO & Co-Founder of PipeLaunch , shares his founding story and reflects on the time he has spent at various ISVs like Nintex and Conga as well as Salesforce itself. He provides some tips around how to go about launch the app by taking a detailed mockup to customers & partners to refine their product prior to building out the brand and the value he saw by focusing on the challe...

Maritina Tsembelis is the Strategic Partnerships Manager for Salesforce at Gearset . Maritina is an American in England and has been active in building community for ISVs in the ecosystem in the UK as the founder of the Salesforce ISV Meetup with over 700 members. She created this community out of a way to learn about the ecosystem that she found herself creating alliances during her time at Data...

Drew Quinlan , Vice President, Strategic Alliances (ISV & GSI) at Ring Central , is a long-time ecosystem member (and big US Soccer fan) who has built his career on building and improving alliances programs. Drew shares his perspective on how founders need to take a focused approach to building an alliances motion and how to vary the volume of potential targets when talking technology partners...

Lucy Mazalon , Head Editor/Operations Director at Salesforce Ben & The DRIP , is a long-time ecosystem member who offers a unique voice via Salesforce Ben & The Drip that helps Salesforce practitioners up-level their careers. Lucy shares her perspective of how ISVs are adjusting their strategies as in-person events have come to a halt due to COVID. Lucy walks through how to run effective e...

Jon Jessup , CEO and Founder of 1440.io , launched his first AppExchange app in 2009 and is an active member of the Salesforce ISV community. His company 1440 has three products listed on the AppExchange today including Commerce Studio, Reputation Studio, and Translation Studio. He shares his feedback on why he builds on the Salesforce platform and some go-to-market tips for more technical founder...

Mike Wolff, SVP Global ISV Partners at Salesforce, talks about what he took from his direct sales experience to help guide him in his role with the ISV channel and shares a tip for how ISVs should best work with their PAMs (Partner Account Managers) - leveraging a V2MOM. If you’re unfamiliar with V2MOM, it is a technology to drive alignment on top priorities across Salesforce’s business. If you ha...