The Platform Journey: Recent Episodes

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In this episode, Avanish and Rob discuss:

• Canva's two-step mission — grow as large as possible in order to do as much good as possible, including giving away over $1 billion in software annually and serving 100+ million students worldwide
• The cupcake framework for platform architecture — the "cake" is the core product for everyone; "frosting and sprinkles" are the enterprise-specific features, keeping the product intuitive across all customer segments
• From PLG to enterprise — how Canva is making the shift from buyer-led growth to a seller-led motion, and why that requires sales, enterprise marketing, and a deliberate partner ecosystem
• Building the "most pluggable platform" — Canva's ecosystem philosophy: agency partners, integration partners (including OpenAI and Anthropic/Claude), and strategic partners like Deloitte and EY each play distinct, purpose-built roles
• AI as infrastructure, not a feature — with 28 billion AI interactions in the product, Rob explains why Canva thinks of itself as an AI platform that does great design, and how new features like Magic Layers were built by starting with the customer problem, not the technology

Show Description

This season features conversations with key decision-makers who have shaped the evolution of today's leading technology platforms and ecosystems. We talk to C-suite executives, board members, investors, and others who must be brought into the platform journey.

In this episode, Avanish and Rob discuss how Canva is scaling from a beloved consumer product to a global enterprise platform—and the frameworks, partner strategies, and customer-first principles guiding that evolution.

About Rob Giglio:

Rob Giglio is Chief Customer Officer at Canva, where he leads the company's go-to-market, enterprise, and ecosystem strategy as Canva scales from a beloved consumer product to a global business platform. Rob brings a rare cross-industry perspective to platform building, having spent the early part of his career at world-class consumer brands including Procter & Gamble, Clorox, Gap, and Williams-Sonoma before moving into tech. He served in senior leadership roles at Adobe, DocuSign, and HubSpot before joining Canva. That consumer-first lens—centered on brand clarity, customer orientation, and ease of use—shapes how he thinks about product, partnerships, and growth. At Canva, Rob is focused on helping businesses of all sizes realize the value of design and communication as a platform capability, while building an ecosystem that is, in his team's words, "as easy to integrate with as Canva is to use."

About Canva

Canva is a global visual communication platform used by more than 260 million people every month. Founded in Australia, Canva makes design accessible to everyone—from students and solo creators to the world's largest enterprises. The company recently crossed $4 billion in ARR and gives away over $1 billion in software annually through its education programs, serving more than 100 million students worldwide. Canva's platform includes AI-powered design tools, an open API ecosystem, and integrations with leading platforms including OpenAI and Anthropic. Learn more at canva.com.

Host Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and served as a Board Member of Hubspot from 2018 to 2023; he currently serves on the boards of Birdie.ai, Flywl.com and Meta.com.br as well as a few non-profits and educational boards. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early to mid-stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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With a career spanning the US Navy, executive leadership positions at PetSmart and Banfield Pet Hospital, and pioneering online training, Don brings unique insights into building and scaling businesses across industries. Throughout the conversation, Avanish and Don discuss OpenSesame's evolution from an online learning marketplace to an AI-powered platform that serves enterprises, learning management systems, and content publishers. They explore the "Intel Inside" ecosystem strategy, the Simon AI tool that democratizes course creation and enables instant translation into 70 languages, and how organizations can successfully navigate workforce reinvention in the AI era while meeting customers where they are.

In this episode, Avanish and Don discuss:

• OpenSesame's dual-sided platform strategy: Partnering with 200+ LMS/HRIS systems on the delivery side while aggregating 50,000 courses from 200+ publishers, providing distribution for small publishers to reach enterprise customers and enabling large publishers like Harvard Business Publishing to access mid-market and SMB segments.
• The Simon AI course creation tool: Democratizing content development by enabling subject matter experts to create high-quality courses without instructional designers, with built-in translation capabilities across 70 languages for voiceover and text—expanding global reach for multinational organizations.
• Workforce reinvention as strategic imperative: Positioning OpenSesame at the center of organizational AI transformation by providing not just technology but comprehensive change management roadmaps, helping HR and learning leaders guide their teams through adoption with curated content and use cases.
• The "meet them where they are" philosophy: Balancing long-term product vision with practical customer adoption paths, especially during transformational periods like AI implementation, by understanding customer needs deeply before prescribing solutions and allowing products to flex without compromising the ultimate vision.
• The 1% better daily improvement mindset: Embracing continuous learning and incremental progress as the foundation for breakthrough innovation, recognizing that overnight successes are built on consistent dedication and discipline over time.

About Don Spear:

Don Spear is CEO of OpenSesame. Before his current role, he founded BlueVolt.com, held executive leadership positions at Banfield Pet Hospital and PetSmart, and served as a submarine officer aboard the USS Tunny (SSN 682).

About OpenSesame

OpenSesame, the leading provider of online business training, is the choice for L&D professionals wanting to drive learning initiatives forward with innovation, agility, and care. We offer the world's most comprehensive digital learning catalog, with regularly updated content from expert publishers in a variety of formats and languages. By providing comprehensive learning resources and innovative tools like Simon, OpenSesame empowers L&D professionals to exceed their goals and champion learning across their entire organization.

Host Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and served as a Board Member of Hubspot from 2018 to 2023; he currently serves on the boards of Birdie.ai, Flywl.com and Meta.com.br as well as a few non-profits and educational boards. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early to mid-stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Drew discuss:

• Drew’s early journey from systems integrator to one of Salesforce’s first top sales leaders
• How Salesforce’s “connect the dots” sales motion enabled enterprise expansion beyond PLG
• Why relationship visibility—not lack of relationships—is the real bottleneck in enterprise sales
• The concept of “social capital” and why misused intros burn trust instead of creating it
• CTD’s hybrid model for individuals and enterprises—and why both matter
• Drew’s vision for CTD as a trust layer and emerging relationship platform

Host Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and served as a Board Member of Hubspot from 2018 to 2023; he currently serves on the boards of Birdie.ai, Flywl.com and Meta.com.br as well as a few non-profits and educational boards. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early to mid-stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Drew Sechrist

Drew Sechrist is a Salesforce veteran who helped grow the company from $0 to over $1B in revenue. As the #1 global sales manager and account executive, Drew mastered the art of leveraging relationships for warm introductions to close deals faster and bigger.

With co-founder Ian Swinson, another Salesforce alum with deep expertise in CRM and social networks, they’ve built Connect The Dots™ to empower professionals and companies to harness the power of their networks. The vision? A free, intuitive way for individuals to carry their relationships with them, while helping companies replace expensive, ineffective cold outreach with strategic network intelligence.

About Connect The Dots (CTD)

CTD is the Relationship Activation Platform that helps go-to-market teams instantly find and request introductions to key decision-makers using real relationships from across their company, board, investors, advisors, customer champions, and more.

Whether it’s a warm path through your CEO, a trusted investor, a strategic partner, or even a personal connection, CTD reveals who actually knows your target buyers and makes it easy to request and track trusted intros at scale. We turn hidden networks into a repeatable, high-impact channel for modern sales teams. Learn more at www.ctd.ai

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Antonio discuss:

• BBVA's data transformation journey, including the strategic decision in 2017 to create a global data function at the executive committee level reporting to the CEO and Chairman
• Building hybrid data architecture combining centralized lake house (AWS) with data mesh approaches to balance agility and control across global operations in regulated environments
• The "eight robots" framework—a top-down AI transformation agenda targeting the most critical parts of BBVA's value chain, from digital client relationships to banker productivity to risk underwriting
• How BBVA defines data democratization as "responsible access" not "open access," implementing strict governance while enabling self-service analytics in a highly regulated industry
• Real-world AI impact: solutions reducing tasks from 11 minutes to less than 1 minute, generative assistant "Blue" serving 20+ million clients in Spain and Mexico, and IVR improvements saving minutes to seconds
• The partnership and ecosystem strategy leveraging enterprise-focused innovation through AWS, OpenAI, Google Gemini, and vertical solution providers to increase speed of learning and innovation
• Why the "mode in this cycle is learning—how fast you can learn, how fast you can test hypotheses"—embracing experimentation and continuous improvement as models rapidly evolve
• Antonio's vision for the future: using AI and data to expand bankarization globally, serving underserved populations and fueling economic growth for families and businesses

About the host:

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and served as a Board Member of Hubspot from 2018 to 2023; he currently serves on the boards of Birdie.ai, Flywl.com and Meta.com.br as well as a few non-profits and educational boards. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early to mid-stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Antonio Bravo, Global Head of Data at BBVA

Antonio started his career in 2009 as a consultant focused in Technology, Media and Telecom. There he had the opportunity to learn how (mobile) internet growth blurs barriers between different industries and makes them converge. One of those industries is finance. He joined BBVA in 2011 to be part of its transformation strategy, and since then he has had different jobs. Started working in the Strategy & M&A area, with focus on the BBVA Ventures team (today Propel) investing in fintech startups, continued with a role in Digital Banking Strategy team, and later in 2015 assumed the responsibility of Business Development in South America (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Perú, Venezuela, Uruguay and Paraguay).

He also held the responsibility of Agile Organization until July 2019, focused in scaling the Agile methodology through-out the entire organization, more than 33.000 people including holding and countries, to improve quality, time to market, productivity and team engagement.

From July 2019 until September 2021 he held the responsibility of IT Strategy & Control within BBVA, a function that manages some of the core IT functions at a global level, such as IT strategy, finance, vendor management, PMO, first line of defense and IT spin-offs.

Since September 2021 he holds the position of Head of Sustainability Strategy & Business Development, where he contributes to the design of the strategic plan for all segments and manages investment in descarbonization funds. In January 2024 he was also appointed as Head of Corporate and Investment Banking Strategy, Industrial client coverage and cross border business.

In January 2025 was appointed Global Head of Data at BBVA. Antonio is responsible of leading the transformation of the Group towards a data-driven company.

About BBVA:

BBVA is a global financial services group founded in 1857. The bank is present in more than 25 countries, has a strong leadership position in the Spanish market, is the largest financial institution in Mexico and it has leading franchises in South America and Turkey. In the United States, BBVA also has a significant investment, transactional, and capital markets banking business.

BBVA contributes with its activity to the progress and welfare of all its stakeholders: shareholders, clients, employees, providers and society in general. In this regard, BBVA supports families, entrepreneurs and companies in their plans, and helps them to take advantage of the opportunities provided by innovation and technology. Likewise, BBVA offers its customers a unique value proposition, leveraged on technology and data, helping them improve their financial health with personalized information on financial decision-making.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Umesh discuss:

• Uniphore's founding story in 2008 and evolution from conversational AI applications to an end-to-end Business AI Cloud platform serving 2,000+ customers including Fortune 500 enterprises
• The pivotal moment when two of Uniphore's largest customers (10% of revenue) warned their contracts might expire unless Uniphore opened up their platform for customer-built AI agents
• How platform necessity emerged from scale—running out of data scientists to manually fine-tune models for each customer led to building automated platform tooling
• The "open-heart surgery" transformation: shifting from selling business outcomes to line-of-business buyers to serving CIOs and developers, requiring wholesale DNA changes across engineering, product, sales, and marketing
• Why platform and ecosystem strategies are inseparable: "A platform is really not a platform until other people are building things on it"
• The M&A strategy for platform companies: narrower aperture requiring 100% architectural alignment, but instant unlocks when acquisitions fit the single-codebase platform architecture
• Three frameworks for platform success: maintain paranoia about whether you're a feature/product/company, surround yourself with "system thinkers," and stay intensely close to customers
• The "five-by-five" metric for measuring platform adoption: five large enterprises and five GSIs using the platform as their weekly "factory" for fine-tuning models and building agents, requiring simplified user experience for non-technical business users

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and served as a Board Member of Hubspot from 2018 to 2023; he currently serves on the boards of Birdie.ai, Flywl.com and Meta.com.br as well as a few non-profits and educational boards. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early to mid-stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Umesh
Umesh Sachdev is the CEO and Co-founder of Uniphore, one of the largest AI-native, multimodal enterprise-class SaaS companies in the world.  Sparked by his vision and focus to use AI technology to bridge the gap between humans and machines, today Umesh is recognized as an enterprise AI pioneer, bringing knowledge AI, generative AI and emotion AI into a single platform, allowing customers to harness AI’s powerful capabilities across voice, video and text-based applications.  Known for his grit as a leader, his passion for customers and his deep understanding of technology, he is called upon to guide some of the world’s largest brands through their digital transformation. Umesh’s strong portfolio of patents serves as a testament to his innovative thinking and commitment to advancing AI technology.

As an international business leader, Umesh has been recognized with many awards including ‘40 under 40’ Bright Young Business Leaders in the Economic Times, ‘Next Generation Leader’ by Time Magazine, and previously, as an ‘Innovator Under 35’ by MIT Tech Review.  Umesh is an alumnus of Jaypee Institute of Information Technology and an accomplished speaker and highly sought-after presenter.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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This season features conversations with key decision-makers who have shaped the evolution of today's leading technology platforms and ecosystems. We talk to C-suite executives, board members, investors, and others who must be bought into the platform journey.

In this episode, Avanish and Greg discuss:

• Greg's journey at the intersection of technology and professional services, including his role building EY's global partnerships practice into a substantial business driver
• Why most companies remain confused about partnerships, platforms, and ecosystems, and how successful companies are "built from the ground up" to orchestrate ecosystems
• Microsoft's transformation under Satya Nadella as the gold standard for ecosystem strategy - shifting from competing against everyone to becoming a platform that orchestrates the capital of hundreds of thousands of companies
• Why the future belongs to companies that shift from linear value chains to orchestrated ecosystems where they either orbit around or become the center of mass for other participants
• The urgency for C-suites to think beyond operational AI improvements and envision what their industry will look like in five years

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and served as a Board Member of Hubspot from 2018 to 2023; he currently serves on the boards of Birdie.ai, Flywl.com and Meta.com.br as well as a few non-profits end educational boards. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Greg
Greg is the Founder of Sarafin Advisory which he launched in 2024 to provide companies with actionable advice and insights to help them grow Enterprise Value in an era of immense change and opportunity. Previously, Greg spent over 9 years at EY where he was most recently the Global Vice Chair - Alliances and Ecosystems. Prior to joining EY in 2015, he spent seven years as an executive at IMB, running one of the top five accounts at the firm and then managing the professional services P&L for Banking and Financial Markets in North America. He also held significant leadership positions in financial service technology and digital disruption across industries. In addition, he helped found a health payments dot-com and, prior to that, ran his own software development company.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Andrew discuss:

• Andrew's journey as an "operational CFO" from Sun Microsystems through ServiceNow, WalkMe, Lacework, and now Amplitude, being part of the team that built ServiceNow from $400M to $4.5B ARR
• Why CFOs must "play chess, not checkers" - thinking several moves ahead about decision implications and making strategic investment pivots for anticipated future growth
• The critical difference between multi-product and platform strategies: true platforms have definite customer adoption journeys where products aren't sold independently
• Recognizing platform readiness signals: when customers organically create their own workflows and use cases you never conceived, like hospitals using Amplitude for emergency room optimization
• Building effective teams by mixing "veterans with rookies" to solve problems rather than just "admire problems," and driving focused execution around single key investments
• The "fair exchange of value" approach to pricing and partnerships that emphasizes customer adoption, transparency, and simplicity over complexity

About Avanish Sahai:

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and served as a Board Member of Hubspot from 2018 to 2023; he currently serves on the boards of Birdie.ai, Flywl.com and Meta.com.br as well as a few non-profits end educational boards. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Andrew Casey:

Andrew Casey is Chief Financial Officer at Amplitude, where he leads Amplitude's General & Administrative organization, which includes finance, accounting, and legal. With more than 25 years of enterprise software experience, Casey brings deep financial expertise combined with extensive go-to-market strategy and business operations experience.

Casey joined Amplitude from Lacework, where he served as CFO and oversaw its successful acquisition by Fortinet. Prior to that, he was the CFO of WalkMe, where he led its Initial Public Offering (IPO) and transformed its enterprise sales motion. Casey’s career also includes senior finance roles with ServiceNow, Hewlett-Packard, NortonLifeLock Inc. (formerly Symantec), Oracle, and Sun Microsystems.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Mike discuss:

• Mike's journey from his early tech roots in Silicon Valley to his role as CRO at Zscaler, including his transformative work growing ServiceNow from $500M to $6B in the Americas region
• The importance of always viewing platform strategy through the customer's lens - helping them achieve outcomes rather than managing multiple point solutions
• How a successful platform requires breaking down silos not just within your own organization, but often within your customer's organization
• The "one team" concept of the three-legged stool: customer, vendor, and partner, all working together toward shared success
• Why ecosystem partners are mission-critical, providing industry expertise and customer insights that vendors can't replicate
• The role of security in enabling productive AI adoption, with Zscaler helping customers leverage generative AI safely at scale
• How to develop meaningful metrics with partners beyond just pipeline generation, focusing on mutual success plans and regular reviews
• The importance of playing the long game with partners - "It's not how you behave when things are going great, it's how you behave when things hit the fan"

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Mike Rich
Mike Rich is a highly accomplished technology sales professional with a career spanning more than 30 years.

During his tenure as President, Americas at ServiceNow from 2011–2023, Mike played a pivotal role in the company's success. Under his leadership, the AMS region experienced unprecedented revenue growth, catapulting from $500 million to $6 billion+.

Mike focused on initiatives like vertical industries that enabled customer-facing teams to partner closely with customers. During his time, the company's overall growth skyrocketed from $80 million to $8 billion. Throughout his career, Mike has kept customer satisfaction as the north star, ensuring that every business decision aligns with the goal of providing unparalleled value to clients and career advancement for employees.

Before ServiceNow, Mike held leadership roles at enterprise software companies Borland, Rational Software, and Kana.

Mike's leadership philosophy revolves around building diverse teams that prioritize achieving desired mutual outcomes. His passion is fostering environments where collaboration, mutual respect, and teamwork are paramount.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Dennis discuss:

• How Freshworks evolved from a single help desk product to a multi-product platform serving 74,000 customers globally, from small businesses to enterprises like Airbus and Nucor Steel
• The importance of being "pulled" by customers into new markets rather than pushing—recognizing when customers you didn't expect are adopting your products
• The challenges of building and scaling a multi-product company where products are at different maturity levels and target slightly different ICPs
• Why ecosystem strategy is critical at Freshworks, including both technology integrations with thousands of partners and a services ecosystem to source and implement solutions
• Freshworks' differentiated approach of building "uncomplicated" solutions in a market dominated by complexity—particularly for mid-market and low-enterprise customers (up to 20,000 employees)
• Dennis's philosophy of customer-centricity: "When in doubt, go talk to a customer"
• Building an ecosystem strategy that includes both technology integrations with thousands of partners and a global services network, with direct sales in nine countries and partner-led expansion everywhere else

About the Host

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Dennis Woodside

Dennis Woodside is the CEO and President of Freshworks. He joined Freshworks as President in 2022. Dennis has spent more than two decades at innovative companies in Silicon Valley. Previous roles include Chief Operating Officer of Dropbox and sales and strategy leadership roles at Google for more than 10 years, including CEO of Motorola Mobility after Google acquired the company.

Dennis serves on the board of the Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula in California and previously served on the boards of the American Red Cross and ServiceNow. Dennis holds a B.S. in Industrial Relations from Cornell University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

About Freshworks

Freshworks Inc. (NASDAQ: FRSH) provides people-first AI service software that organizations use to deliver exceptional customer and employee experiences. More than 72,000 companies, including American Express, Bridgestone, Databricks, Fila, Nucor, and Sony choose Freshworks’ uncomplicated solutions to increase efficiency and loyalty. For the latest company news and customer stories, visit www.freshworks.com and follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Lara discuss:

• The four distinct phases of software company growth and what each requires - from finding product-market fit ($0-100M) to demonstrating platform vision ($100M-1B) to scaling enterprise deals ($1B-5B)
• The critical importance of not neglecting your core business while scaling - how ServiceNow used tiered pricing models to continue monetizing their core products
• Why platform and ecosystem strategies are "two sides of the coin" but must be tailored to each company's specific situation - there is no one-size-fits-all approach
• The "win-win-win equation" that must exist for successful partnerships - creating value for customers, partners, and your company
• Creating cultural alignment around ecosystem strategy - including Dave Schneider's innovative approach of inviting partners to ServiceNow's sales kickoff
• How to avoid "throwing money against the wall" with partnerships that lack strategic foundation
• Building unfair advantages at scale through customer relationships, installed base data, and continuous innovation to stay ahead of imitators

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Lara Caimi

Lara Caimi is the President of Worldwide Field Operations at Samsara. Lara brings nearly 25 years of experience to Samsara, where she is responsible for leading Sales and Customer Outcomes. Before Samsara, Lara was Chief Customer and Partner Officer for ServiceNow, overseeing nearly 2,500 global employees across organizations including customer success, professional services, and channel ecosystem. Previously, she served as ServiceNow’s Chief Strategy Officer. Before joining ServiceNow, Lara was a partner at Bain & Company, where she advised technology companies on growth and go-to-market strategy.

Lara holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and English Literature from St. Olaf College, a MIB from the University of Sydney as a Fulbright Scholar, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Jim discuss:

• Jim's 46-year journey from IBM to Salesforce, including his role in scaling Salesforce from $22M to $5B in revenue
• How customer demands, particularly from companies like Cisco and Merrill Lynch, shaped Salesforce's platform strategy
• The strategic decision to separate the application layer from the platform
• Creating a successful customer success organization to drive adoption and showcase customer stories
• The evolution of Salesforce's partner strategy and metrics for measuring ecosystem success
• How the "tactics dictate strategy" philosophy helped Salesforce respond to market needs

About Our Guest

Jim Steele is the President of Global Strategic Customers and Partners at Salesforce. Previously, Jim served as Salesforce’s President of Worldwide Sales and Chief Customer Officer for over 12 years, from 2002 through 2014 where he led the growth of the company from $22 million to more than $5 billion in revenue. Jim rejoined Salesforce in 2020 as President of Global Strategic Sales with his primary focus to bring the full power of Salesforce to its largest and most strategic customers. Most recently, Jim has also assumed responsibility for Salesforce's Alliances & Channels organization, the Emerging Business operating unit, and Private Equity practice.

Previously Jim served as Chief Revenue Officer and President of Yext, President and Chief Revenue Officer of InsideSales.com and President of Worldwide Sales at Ariba. Jim started his career at IBM where he spent over 22 years in executive leadership and senior sales roles including VP and GM of Sales in Asia, based in Tokyo.

About our Host

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the AppExchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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This season will feature conversations with key decision-makers who have to support the journey to a platform or any ecosystem. We will talk to C-suite executives, board members, investors, and others who must be bought into the platform journey.

In this episode, Avanish and Kevin discuss:

• Kevin's career journey and his experiences shaping ServiceNow's growth.
• What it means to authentically be a platform company and how ServiceNow approached platform-first scaling.
• How customer feedback drove ServiceNow’s expansion into new domains like HR and customer workflows.
• The key factors for entering new markets, including market fit, size, and differentiation.
• The importance of hiring domain-specific experts and adapting go-to-market strategies.
• Building and leveraging ecosystem partnerships to drive growth and scale.
• Balancing core revenue innovation with new domain expansion to ensure sustainable growth.

Guest: Kevin Haverty

Kevin Haverty was formerly the Vice Chairman, Global Public Sector at ServiceNow (NYSE: NOW). In this role, he worked directly with CEO Bill McDermott on expanding ServiceNow’s strategic footprint in the public sector and mentoring the company’s next generation of early-in-career professionals.

During the past decade, Kevin successfully led and grew ServiceNow’s world-class go-to-market organization. He most recently served as the company’s Chief Revenue Officer, and also held the roles of EVP and SVP of Worldwide Sales and VP of Americas Sales.

Earlier in his career, Kevin held several senior sales leadership roles at EMC, Data Domain, Thomsen Financial, and Brocade. He also served 10 years in the U.S. Army National Guard, attaining the rank of Captain.

Kevin holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Providence College, where he was a distinguished military graduate of the Army ROTC program. He currently serves on the Board of Sprinklr.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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This season will feature conversations with key decision-makers who have to support the journey to a platform or any ecosystem. We will talk to C-suite executives, board members, investors, and others who must be bought into the platform journey.

In this episode, Avanish and Dave discuss:

• Dave's background and what led him to start Tidemark
• Tidemark's VSKP framework on how a Vertical SaaS company can win their category, expand their offerings, and then, for a select few, extend through the value chain
• What it really means to be a control point and why it matters
• The mindset (and perhaps mindset shift) that is required to build a strong ecosystem
• The wedges you need to be mindful of and the problems they can cause on your journey
• Thinking about the varying horizons of your product roadmap and how to synthesize them in actionable paths forward
• How to determine if your team is ready for the platform journey

And much more!

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Tyler discuss:

• The opportunity involved in bringing together disparate partner initiatives within an organization (4:35)
• Leveraging a partner ecosystem at Salesforce to create transformative offerings and expand internationally (6:30)
• The importance of building an ecosystem to manage data in the face of AI (9:05)
• Prioritizing customer success and partner growth to drive company value (12:40)
• Changing the paradigm around bringing applications to data (14:50)
• The inherent value of the consumption model in a partner ecosystem (18:30)
• Enabling partners to start delivering value as quickly as possible (19:55)
• Finding support from the top down, and curating the right talent for the ecosystem journey (22:30)
• The importance of simplification (27:10)

Guest: Tyler Prince

As the SVP of Worldwide Alliances & Channels, Tyler Prince is responsible for growing the Snowflake global community of Consulting Partners, System Integrators, ISVs, Resellers and Technology Partners. He brings a deep breadth of experience to his role with more than 30 years of delivering transformational capabilities to partners and customers across many industries. Prior to joining Snowflake, Prince served as EVP, Global Alliances at Salesforce and as Partner & Global Oracle Practice Leader at PwC. Prior to PwC, Prince held various management positions at Oracle, PeopleSoft, IBM and Andersen Consulting. He resides in Chicago, IL where he remains active in the local community as a board member of the American Cancer Society and 1871, a non-profit digital startup incubator.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Warren talk about:

• Developing extensions based on user and partner feedback (4:15)
• Thinking of ISVs as customers in their own right (9:10)
• The importance of internal alignment, and transparency both internally and externally (11:55)
• Getting buy-in from the board all the way down for ongoing investment in platform (14:20)
• When to prioritize adoption vs. monetization on your platform (19:50)

Guest: Warren Chen

Warren is Head of Ecosystem Partnerships and Developer Success at Canva, with over a decade of experience in App Platform Ecosystems at Salesforce, Atlassian, and Canva.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Aaron talk about:

• Aaron’s personal journey to the coveted Chief Ecosystem Officer title (2:00)
• How Aaron defines charting the platform journey as an ecosystem leader (4:45)
• Tackling build/buy/partner with a sophisticated view, enabling you to take a completely different approach to how you execute partnerships and ecosystems (7:49)
• The power of harnessing your datasets to drive enhanced outcomes (9:50)
• The recent shift to the importance of profitability and what that means for partnership teams (11:11)
• Tying your ecosystem strategy to your corporate strategy effectively (19:20)
• Understanding the difference between vanity metrics and true business operator metrics (24:18)

Guest: Aaron McGarry

Aaron McGarry, AMG, is a Go-To-Market operator with 17 years of leadership experience at industry giants such as VMware, Salesforce, and Qualtrics. He has a proven track record of building and scaling high-performing teams, driving strategic growth, and delivering operational excellence.

AMG is an empathetic leader and coach, with a deep passion for growing, mentoring, and developing talent, ensuring that his teams reach their fullest potential. Renowned for his Build - Buy - Partner approach and keen expertise in GTM strategy, he has architected and scaled premier Ecosystem and Sales Organizations.

He played a pivotal role during Salesforce’s meteoric rise from $6B to $26B in revenue, experiencing hyper-growth firsthand. His track record also includes notable milestones such as Rackspace's IPO, SoftLayer's acquisition by IBM, and Qualtrics' acquisition by SilverLake.

Recognized for championing strategic growth and for his operational acumen, AMG serves as a trusted advisor to CEOs and boards of directors across early, mid, and late stage companies. He is a sought-after speaker on topics encompassing GTM strategy, leadership, and team development.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Adrienne talk about:

• Changes in the productivity space that have impacted Workspace’s platform strategy (9:55)
• Balancing product and ecosystem developments while you scale (16:10)
• Taking a principle-based approach to building a platform (19:00)
• The necessity of a multifaceted strategy in creating a successful platform (20:30)
• Innovation and “first-of-a-kind” thinking in partnerships (22:50)
• Building a partnership strategy based on product and business goals (24:40)
• Creating missions at the business and team level to achieve your goals (27:40)

Guest: Adrienne McCallister

Adrienne McCallister is the Vice President of Global Partnerships for Workspace and Messaging, where she oversees Workspace’s productivity suite partnerships, as well as all Comms/Messaging partnerships, covering Google's consumer communications products Messages by Google(RCS), Meet, Dialer and Business Messaging.

Adrienne’s previous roles at Google include partnership lead for Android’s U.S. carrier partners, Google’s VR/AR/Lens efforts, helping to launch Chromecast, Google Home and leading its global distribution partnerships, as well as leading strategic content partnerships for Google TV. Prior to joining Google in 2011, Adrienne held senior business development roles at Associated Content (a Yahoo! company), Clearleap (an IBM company) and AOL. Adrienne holds an M.B.A. from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and has a bachelor’s degree in finance from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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Avanish and Jim discuss:

• Investing in an ecosystem in a tough market (8:04)
• Committing to working with partners over growing professional services (11:26)
• Finding a way to demonstrate returns and get the C-Suite on board with building an ecosystem (12:40)
• How to avoid having an “identity crisis” by setting an intention for how you will grow your platform (17:15)
• Understanding how a partner delivers services to integrate in a complementary way (19:50)
• The advantages and challenges of a managed service provider motion (21:30)
• Selling a solution rather than an outcome (26:34)
• The importance of authentic communication (29:00)

Guest: Jim Nairn

Since arriving in the Spring of 2021, Jim Nairn has served as WalkMe’s Senior Vice President of Alliances and Channels Ecosystems. Prior to joining WalkMe, from 2015 through 2021, Jim held the role of Vice President of Partner Sales for ServiceNow. Jim’s pedigree comes from a 20+ year career in Direct and Indirect Selling in the Telecommunications, Infrastructure and Software space, before moving into SaaS (with ServiceNow), in 2015. Jim has spent those 2+ decades working with a vast array of partners, traveling the globe and helping grow some of the biggest tech companies in the world. He continues to serve as an advisor for pre-ipo startups, consults a vast network of C-Suite executives and mentors several former colleagues, employees and associates, worldwide. Today, Jim lives just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with his wife Kati… and 2 daughters, Emma and Amelia.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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Avanish, JW, and Andrew discuss:

• The ideation of VIIZR out of Ford’s Greenfield Labs (1:30)
• The critical alignment of technology and go-to-market strategy when picking what platform to build VIIZR’s core product and capabilities on (4:00)
• Small vs. scalable businesses and how VIIZR supports its customers (7:30)
• Their view on the most important components of platform building for customers (8:12)
• How VIIZR tackles knowing where to build and where to partner (10:30)
• What happens when high tech meets high touch (16:30)
• Ford’s path to investing in VIIZR and the genesis of the company's name (20:24)
• The power of the democratization of technology over recent history (24:00)
• The biggest obstacles VIIZR has faced and how the team has navigated hurdles (26:23)

And much more!

Guests: JW Hoh & Andrew Albert

Jian Wei Hoh is originally from Melbourne, Australia and has spent the past two decades globally focused on technology and business growth across startups and enterprises. He is currently the CEO of VIIZR Inc, a field services platform for trade professionals. Prior to VIIZR, Jian Wei served 5 years at Ford Motor Company, most recently as General Manager and Head of Business Design at Ford Greenfield Labs. Previously, Jian Wei was an executive overseeing the growth of rideshare in Scandinavia, social media in China, and omnichannel marketing and digital transformation across Oceania. As a practitioner of Human-Centered design, Jian Wei currently teaches business design thinking to startups, students and executives across various institutions in the United States.

Andrew Albert has over 20 years of CRM, Platform, and Enterprise SaaS experience in engineering, consulting, and platform enablement. Prior to being CTO of VIIZR, Andrew spent 16 years at Salesforce, most recently as the SVP of AppExchange advising and mentoring ISVs on how to architect great applications on the Salesforce platform. Previously, Andrew joined Salesforce as a technical consultant helping ensure Salesforce's early enterprise customers were successful. Prior to Salesforce, spent a few years at Siebel as a Software Engineer and another few years as a Siebel consultant.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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Avanish and Jason discuss:

• Thirdera’s founding story from a company with no resources in early 2021 to a company of just under a thousand resources across 12 countries today. (2:30)
• ServiceNow’s pivot to digital transformation across the enterprise and the $6.2-6.8 trillion market opportunity it creates (7:15)
• The platforms that will be positioned to win in this evolving environment (10:52)
• The rise of the data model (12:30)
• Jason’s advice for those who want to be “extraordinarily future-ready” (16:26)
• The critical role experience will play in the future (20:00)

And much more!

Guest: Jason Wojahn

Jason Wojahn has more than 25 years of business, technology, and investment experience across start-ups, private and public companies. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Thirdera, a global services consultancy specializing in ServiceNow digital transformation, workflow automation, cloud advisory, and adoption. Thirdera brings together the power of the ServiceNow platform and its limitless potential across the world of work. Our architects, developers, consultants, designers, and project managers help our customers transform, get more from ServiceNow, and unlock hidden potential in their businesses and technology.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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Avanish and Erica have a robust discussion around:

• Erica’s 23-year journey at Deloitte 1:00
• Why it’s not about the role you have, but about what you do with the role and opportunities you’re given (7:40)
• Erica’s advice for growth companies thinking about building partnerships with organizations such as Deloitte or Accenture (10:25)
• Unpacking what “partner empathy” looks like in practice (12:45)
• How it is different to go to market with what we now call an ecosystem rather than what used to be more traditional partner programs (15:50)
• The biggest roadblocks Erica has encountered and show she steered around them (23:30)
• How organizations looking to enact change and has some of a similar history of direct sales and direct delivery can embark on this journey and start changing mindsets. (28:48)
• Why storytelling is the ultimate superpower (30:34)

Guest: Erica Volini

Erica Volini is the Senior Vice President responsible for Global Partnerships at ServiceNow. In that role, she has the privilege of managing the over 2,000 partners that are part of the ServiceNow global ecosystem. Before joining ServiceNow in 2021, she spent over two decades at Deloitte Consulting leading the Human Capital business and as the Chief Commercial Officer for Deloitte’s overall relationship with ServiceNow. She has written and talked extensively around the Future of Work and is a recognized expert in that space. She got her BS ILR from Cornell University and while she’s a true-blue New Yorker, she currently resides in Scottsdale, AZ with her husband and son with a new baby on the way in just a few short weeks.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode of The Platform Journey, Stephen and Avanish discuss:

• The shift from linear sales motions to ecosystem sales motions (3:35)
• Integrating a financial model perspective and business model perspective (7:30)
• Reframing how we think about revenue allocation and the financial impact of partners on a business (9:45)
• Recognizing both the buy and sell side of contracts and sales execution (15:50)
• The importance of owning your management systems and partner motions (20:25)
• The opportunities (and challenges) facing new platform and ecosystem companies (25:15)

Guest: Stephen Hurrell

Stephen leads the expertise in the Office of Revenue and guides leaders in the applications and technology for buying and selling products and services to maximize revenue. The topics of coverage include partner management, digital commerce, price and revenue management, sales enablement, revenue performance management and subscription management. Stephen's uniquely diverse technology experience spans over 30 years, including leadership roles, heading up product strategy across a range of data-driven applications in sales enablement, financial reporting and planning, and billing and monetization platforms. Stephen was General Manager at InsideSales.com where he managed the C9 Analytics business, VP of Product and AI strategy at RecVue and held roles at Oracle, Exigen and Aviso. Stephen earned his BS in Economics from the London School of Economics.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In Part Three, Avanish and Allan discuss:

• The evolution of monetization models (3:00)
• Understanding the three buckets of tech partner monetization (6:45)
• How Procore’s model resulted in much higher levels of adoption and engagement, and a much higher orientation around how to make the magic happen (10:50)
• How to turn ISVs from flavor-adders to the meal, into the whole meal (16:34)
• Allan’s favorite monetization model: the reciprocity or reciprocal model (20:37)
• Bringing it all back to sourced revenue attribution (28:14)
• The importance of finding lagging and leading indications (30:33)

Guest: Allan Adler, Managing Partner, Digital Bridge Partners

Allan Adler is a world-class advisor, consultant, and change agent. As Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners, he helps individuals, managers, and executives understand and leverage partnership best practices in business and society. He is the creator of the GoToEcosystem Framework and has worked with a wide range of organizations to unlock their full ecosystem potential. Allan is Chair of the Ecosystem Counsel at PartnerHacker and an Executive Member of Partnership Leaders. Previously, Allan founded and ran MSI Consulting Group; a 100-person sales and marketing strategy firm focused on the tech industry and worked as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group. He received his MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business, where he was honored as a Baker Scholar. Allan is a CPA and serves on several for-profit and not-for-profit boards.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In Part Two, Avanish and Allan discuss:

• Understanding taxation, reciprocal, and mutuality models (3:30)
• The role of NRR and ARR (7:27)
• The “stickiness” justification when monetizing tech partnerships (9:30)
• Understanding universal success models (12:00)
• Hyperscalers (14:01)
• Why your go-to-market or the go-to-eco motion has to be multi-threaded(20:50)
• Why Allan likes to look at the journey of go-to-eco very similarly to the journey of making a product(24:30)
• Understanding that is incumbent on partner leaders to recognize that partner operations is not a “nice to have.”(30:29)

Guest: Allan Adler, Managing Partner, Digital Bridge Partners

Allan Adler is a world-class advisor, consultant, and change agent. As Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners, he helps individuals, managers, and executives understand and leverage partnership best practices in business and society. He is the creator of the GoToEcosystem Framework and has worked with a wide range of organizations to unlock their full ecosystem potential. Allan is Chair of the Ecosystem Counsel at PartnerHacker and an Executive Member of Partnership Leaders. Previously, Allan founded and ran MSI Consulting Group; a 100-person sales and marketing strategy firm focused on the tech industry and worked as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group. He received his MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business, where he was honored as a Baker Scholar. Allan is a CPA and serves on several for-profit and not-for-profit boards.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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Avanish and Allan unpack a wide range of topics to kick off this series, including:

• Why tech partnerships harness so much power (3:42)
• The role tech partnerships play between channel and alliances (5:43)
• The commercial envelope concept and what it means for technology partners (8:02)
• Distinguishing between the strategy and the platform business model (10:34)
• Going to market directly vs. going to market through an ecosystem (12:00)
• Where does the customer fit in? (15:40)
• Why is digital transformation happening, and what does it mean for customers? (20:26)
• The important CEO to CPO conversation that needs to be had (24:13)

And much more!

Guest: Allan Adler, Managing Partner, Digital Bridge Partners

Allan Adler is a world-class advisor, consultant, and change agent. As Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners, he helps individuals, managers, and executives understand and leverage partnership best practices in business and society. He is the creator of the GoToEcosystem Framework and has worked with a wide range of organizations to unlock their full ecosystem potential. Allan is Chair of the Ecosystem Counsel at PartnerHacker and an Executive Member of Partnership Leaders. Previously, Allan founded and ran MSI Consulting Group; a 100-person sales and marketing strategy firm focused on the tech industry and worked as a consultant with The Boston Consulting Group. He received his MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business, where he was honored as a Baker Scholar. Allan is a CPA and serves on several for-profit and not-for-profit boards.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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• Follow our guests, Allan Adler
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In this episode, Avanish Sahai and Chris Grusz use the marketplace journey of Amazon Web Services as a springboard to discuss a variety of platform-related topics:

• The driver of a successful flywheel (2:17)
• Developing products and fostering selection to match customer demand (5:28)
• Balancing feature development between both buyers and sellers to maximize value for both (7:45)
• The advantages offered by a marketplace when co-selling with ISVs (14:56)
• The Amazon leadership mindset, and facilitating feedback from customers (20:54)
• Maintaining a long view and finding ways to attract new types of customers (25:32)
• Offering simplification: the key to successful marketplaces (30:00)

Guest: Chris Grusz, General Manager, WW ISV Alliances & Marketplace, Amazon Web Services

Chris Grusz is the General Manager, ISV Alliances & Marketplace. In this role he leads the ISV Partner Development and Marketplace organizations globally. With AWS since 2015, his team is responsible for the adoption of AWS Marketplace - with double digit YoY growth equating to billions in sales on an annual basis, more than 2,000 ISVs and 12,000 software product listings in AWS Marketplace. Chris’ team works with all ISVs to adopt various partner programs and co-sell initiatives. In addition, his team also works with customers across Commercial and Public Sector on a global basis, helping them utilize AWS Marketplace to change how they find, buy, deploy, and manage application portfolios running on AWS. Prior to joining AWS, Chris held various leadership roles including Director of Sales, Managing Director and Business Unit Executive for IBM in Sales & Distribution as well as IBM Software Group. Chris holds a BA in Business Administration and an MBA in Technology Management from the University of Washington where he graduated Magna Cum Laude.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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Marcus and Avanish talk about the following and more:

• ServiceNow’s history as a platform company from the very beginning (3:05)
• The cooperation and cohesion of ServiceNow’s internal products and what partners can build (6:49)
• The importance of committing to an ecosystem as well as a platform—and what companies really want (12:45)
• The challenge of long-term investment into a platform and ecosystem strategy (24:52)
• Why you should be cautious of building a platform just because you can (29:00)

Guest: Marcus Torres, GM and VP of App Engine Business at ServiceNow

Marcus is a people, product and business leader with over 20 years of proven experience building and scaling products within organizations of all sizes across consumer and enterprise markets. Extensive experience in market segments of SaaS, cloud computing, platform, mobile, developer experience, digital marketing, location-based services, and supply chain management.

Marcus is General Manager of ServiceNow’s market leading low code business, App Engine. App Engine is one of the fastest growing businesses at ServiceNow. He previously led ServiceNow’s Integration Hub business while driving product strategy for the ServiceNow Platform. Responsibilities include GTM, product management, product strategy, strategic partnerships, M&A, executive engagement and business operations with additional dotted line responsibility across engineering, product marketing and sales.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, you can hear Laura and Avanish discuss:

• Expanding single channels and products to create more value (7:00)
• The importance of internal alignment on products and partners (10:48)
• Using modeling to optimize partnerships and platform strategy (13:35)
• Key measures of success when growing partnership ecosystems (16:47)
• The benefit of defining clear metrics of success (21:12)
• Laura’s advice: Start where you know you can have an impact, but don’t be afraid to disrupt (28:57)

Guest: Laura Padilla, VP, GLobal Partners, Airtable

Laura Padilla is currently the VP of Global Partners and Services at Airtable where she is building the partner and services delivery strategy. She brings over 20 years of leadership experience in leading/building complex business units and new revenue streams to scale small, private companies to +$1B post-IPO revenue including Zoom, Nutanix, Box and Riverbed. Leadership experience across marketing, alliances/business development and partner/channel sales roles in the SaaS, Enterprise Software and Hardware industries. She most recently was at Zoom where she led the global partner and platform sales business unit that was composed of over 300 team members and over $500M in revenue. This included indirect sales with and through VAR’s, service providers/carriers, OEM's, referral partners, ISV’s and SI’s, as well as influenced revenue with technology partners such as Slack, Dropbox, Box, Okta, Five9, Twilio and others. She is known as a function builder where her strength is in scaling new organizations to drive incremental revenue and customer value.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Avanish and Peter discuss:

• The power of maintaining a customer-centric approach (4:24)
• Looking down, not up, to determine how to really fix the source of a problem within your platform (5:39)
• How to think about delivering true value to the developers on your platform (10:17)
• Not setting out on the platform journey before you’re ready (16:19)
• Choosing the right marketing motion for your platform (22:15)

Guest: Peter Reinhardt, CEO of Charm Industrial

Peter Reinhardt is CEO & Co-founder at Charm Industrial, where they are developing novel carbon removal & renewable industrial syngas technology. Prior to Charm, Peter was CEO and co-founder at Segment, a SaaS customer data platform that grew to 600 people before it was acquired by Twilio in 2020 for $3.2B. He previously studied aerospace engineering at MIT.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In the Season 2 premiere of The Platform Journey, Avanish and Kevin discuss:

• Driving value to your underlying platform through partnerships (3:35)
• Reevaluating the way we categorize partners; building network effects to solve customer problems (6:17)
• Embracing “coopetition” and the importance of transparency when building a platform (9:16)
• Understanding and communicating the core and context layers of your ecosystem (12:42)
• Kevin’s key advice for an ISV setting out on the platform journey (15:15)

Guest: Kevin Ichhpurani, Corporate VP at Google Cloud

Kevin Ichhpurani is Corporate Vice President, Global Ecosystem and Business Development at Google Cloud. Kevin brings nearly 25 years of experience in the technology industry leading global strategy, platform ecosystem transformation, venture capital and mergers and acquisitions. Most recently, Kevin served as Executive Vice President and Corporate Officer of GE. Prior to GE Digital Kevin was a Senior Partner, Global Markets at Ernst and Young and before Ernst and Young Kevin served at SAP as Executive Vice President, Head of Business Development and Global Ecosystem. Kevin holds an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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Highlights of Avanish, Damien, and Nick's discussion include:

• Xero’s growth story from one person’s headache to a global platform supporting over 3 million customers
• The genesis of Xero’s impressive platform strategy
• How the company has created a playground for developers to solve for Xero’s customers in new and innovative ways
• Understanding the role the tension between things that the company could do and things that the ecosystem could do plays in overall platform strategy
• Practicing transparency both internally and with your partner ecosystem
• Defining your ecosystem platform principles to strike balance between first-party and third-party propositions

And much more!

Guests: Nick Houldsworth & Damien Tampling

Damien Tampling, Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer, Xero

Damien leads Xero’s global strategy, corporate development and partnership teams. Prior to joining Xero, Damien spent nearly 20 years at Deloitte in a number of senior strategy, M&A and other executive roles and was a founding partner of Deloitte’s global online and mobile technology practice, Deloitte Digital. He holds a Bachelor of Business from RMIT University, Melbourne and is a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Nick Houldsworth, Executive GM Ecosystem, Xero
Xero is a global small business platform, with over 1000 connected apps in its ecosystem. In 2021 Nick oversaw the launch of the new Xero App Store, and has held board and advisory roles for a number of startups. He is passionate about building a network of innovation through Xero’s ecosystem community to support small businesses worldwide. He is based in Auckland, New Zealand.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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• Follow our guests, Nick Houldsworth and Damien Tampling
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You can find the full transcript here.

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In this week’s episode, Kathy Tsitovich discusses LegalZoom’s transformation into a platform, with all of the challenges and successes that have occurred along the way. See key topics from her discussion with Avanish below:

• The early days of platforms and the LegalZoom customer channel (01:42)
• Identifying stakeholders in order to guide platform strategy (05:51)
• Curating valuable, lasting partnerships (09:45)
• Defining and measuring platform success (14:35)
• The importance of executive support, organizational alignment, and the long view (17:14)
• Kathy’s lessons major lessons learned and final thoughts (23:58)

Guest: Kathy Tsitovich

Kathy Tsitovich is the Chief Corporate Development & Partnerships Officer at LegalZoom – the industry leader in online small business formations and a leading online platform for legal, compliance and tax solutions. Within this role, Kathy is responsible for driving company growth through inorganic efforts, a robust integrated partner ecosystem created for LegalZoom’s newly formed small businesses and opening new channels for new user growth via strategic partners.

Prior to joining LegalZoom in 2020, Kathy spent more than 20 years at Intuit, where she held multiple leadership roles, including Vice President of Business Development & Partnerships for the consumer group, leading the Global Partnerships team focused on delivering small business partner solutions and integrations via the Intuit Developer Platform. She was also a key member of Intuit’s Corporate Strategy & Development. Kathy holds a patent for algorithms and models for creditworthiness based on financial management data and is a 2014 winner of the Scott Cook Innovation Award for her contributions to QuickBooks Capital.

Kathy graduated from the University of Missouri with a B.S. in Business Administration and Finance and is currently the Executive Sponsor of the LegalZoom Women’s Network.

Kathy lives in Chicago with her husband, two kids and dog, Bear. When she’s not catching up on email or writing a “to do” list, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, reading and playing golf as much as possible during the super short Chicago summer!

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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Tom and Avanish kick off the session focusing on what it means to build a platform, and a partner ecosystem around that platform. Then, they dig into where Tom is on the platform journey. He’s been building OneStream for some time and it has grown amazingly well, with a marketplace of over 50 solutions and over 200 partners. They cover…

• Driving towards constant improvement and platform dependency (7:23)
• What the true definition of “platform” is and the necessary mindset to achieve platform status (9:27)
• Recognizing the right patterns early on in the platform journey (15:25)
• Separating platform thinking from traditional product thinking (17:00)
• The biggest roadblocks for platform building (19:10)
• The evolution of cloud ecosystems over the last several years (28:09)

Guest: Tom Shea

Tom is an original founder of OneStream Software™, an original architect of OneStream, and serves as CEO of the company. He is passionate when it comes to delivering value, success, and support. Tom’s vision is to change the entire CPM ecosystem with a solution that combines power and flexibility with ease of use, deployment, and maintenance. Prior to OneStream, Tom was an original founder of UpStream Software in January of 2000 where he invented and architected UpStream TB and later UpStream WebLink. These products pioneered a new space called Financial Data Quality and achieved a better way to manage data quality for Hyperion products by providing a packaged product (UpStream/FDM) every company could use. Tom is a graduate of Oakland University, where he earned his BS in Accounting and Finance as well as an MBA in Systems Analysis and Design.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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In this episode, Arshad Matin details Avetta’s impressive platform journey and the critical components to developing a successful SaaS platform that provides value to everyone that touches it. See key topics in his discussion with Avanish below:

• Understanding Avetta, a two-sided network for supply chain risk management (0:57)
• Enriching a platform with data and APIs (2:45)
• The tipping point of ecosystem and network growth (7:50)
• Providing multiple pillars of value and capitalizing on industry trends (11:10)
• Creating a “platform mindset”: the win-win-win scenario (17:08)
• How to approach a platform strategy: key questions to ask (23:42)
• The importance of humility and empathy while building a platform ecosystem (26:25)

Guest: Arshad Matin

As Avetta’s CEO, Arshad is focused on enhancing safety, sustainability, and regulatory compliance outcomes for organizations throughout the world. Prior to joining Avetta, Arshad served as President, Chief Executive Officer, and a board member of Paradigm, a leading global developer of software and analytics solutions to the global oil and gas industry. Arshad also held senior leadership positions at Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ: SYMC), Seismic Micro Technology, and was a Partner at McKinsey & Company. Arshad also serves as a board member and trustee for ASGN Incorporated (NYSE: ASGN), and several non-profit organizations including the Houston Endowment, Texas Children’s Hospital, and Asia Society Texas Center.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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• Follow our guest, Arshad Matin
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You can find the full transcript here.

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In this episode, Anu Bharadwaj shares her tricks of the trade as one of the most impressive product and platform minds we know. She draws on her time at Microsoft, where she launched several products for Microsoft Studio, as well as her current role leading operations for Atlassian, to provide some really fascinating insights.

• How Atlassian got its start (1:23)
• Anu’s unique journey from Microsoft to her role as Atlassian COO (3:56)
• The three key things that led to the platformization of Atlassian (11:44)
• The impressive proliferation of the Atlassian Marketplace (17:13)
• The roadblocks and challenges Atlassian has faced with both platform and ecosystem shifts (25:01)
• Is your product right for platformization? What should you consider when making this determination? (30:11)
• Why no strategy is better than its execution (31:13)
• The human side of platform building (32:33)

Guest: Anu Bharadwaj

Anu Bharadwaj is the Chief Operating Officer at Atlassian. Anu leads transformative projects across product lines at Atlassian, including the enterprise business, cloud platform teams and operations.

An accomplished executive with a track record of growing $1B+ businesses, building great teams and shipping blockbuster products, Anu joined Atlassian in 2014 as the Head of Product for Jira, and has held a variety of roles at the company during her tenure. Prior to joining Atlassian, Anu was at Microsoft, launching several products for Microsoft Visual Studio for over 10 years. Anu is passionate about making the world a better place through technology and effective philanthropy. She is a member of OutSystem’s board of directors and serves as the Director of Atlassian Foundation.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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You can find the the full transcript here.

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In this episode, Mike Rosenbaum shares his experience and key learnings on what it really takes to build a powerful platform, drawing on his time leading product management and go-to-market strategy for core CRM products at Salesforce and as EVP of the Salesforce Platform team, to his current role leading Guidewire.

• The early innings of platform building at Salesforce (3:30)
• What you should be considering as you chart the platform course for your company (6:07)
• Getting crystal clear on what you mean by “platform” (8:28)
• What really made Salesforce unique (12:13)
• Mike’s cardinal rules for platform building (14:26)
• A realistic approach to failure (17:38)
• Always considering your customer’s perspective (23:18)
• What the highest level of platform looks like (27:40)

Guest: Mike Rosenbaum

Mike Rosenbaum is CEO of Guidewire Software, where he has overall responsibility for global strategy, organization, culture, and operations. He is passionate about building great teams and innovative products and platforms that deliver value for customers, partners, and shareholders. Prior to Guidewire, Mike led product management and go-to-market strategy for core CRM products at Salesforce and was also EVP of the Salesforce Platform team. He also served in the US Navy as a submarine officer. Mike’s unique leadership and cloud experience give him the capability to accelerate Guidewire’s role in the P&C industry.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

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Having started out as a marketing applications company, HubSpot’s goal today is to be the number one platform for scaling companies. In this episode, co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah shares some of the most important lessons he has learned on the journey since HubSpot’s founding in 2006.

• HubSpot’s journey to becoming a CRM platform (1:17)
• How to measure success as a platform (3:14)
• How to attract partners to the platform (5:52) and striking the balance between established partners and new native apps (8:01)
• Importance of being a joy to partner with (8:55) and culture of solving for the customer (11:51)
• It’s ok to have conflict and competition (14:32)
• Investing in the core vs opening up the platform (16:53)
• A couple platforms Dharmesh admires (25:45)
• Parting thoughts on monetization (28:36)

Guest: Dharmesh Shah

Dharmesh Shah is co-founder and CTO of HubSpot. Prior to founding HubSpot in 2006, Dharmesh was founder and CEO of Pyramid Digital Solutions, which was acquired by SunGard Data Systems in 2005. In addition to co-authoring “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs”, Dharmesh founded and writes for OnStartups.com -- a top-ranking startup blog and community with more than 700,000 members. In 2013, Dharmesh published HubSpot’s Culture Code, which has garnered over five million views. Named an Inc. Founders 40 in 2016, he is an active member of the Boston-area entrepreneurial community, an angel investor in over 60 startups, and a frequent speaker on startups, inbound marketing, and company culture.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow. From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase. Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale. Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years. Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

Links

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You can find the full transcript here.