1 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:09,679 What's going on? Everybody? Welcome to another episode of Adventures and DevOps. 2 00:00:09,720 --> 00:00:12,400 You know, Warren, you were just saying it's okay to pause and take 3 00:00:12,439 --> 00:00:16,320 your breath and you know, collect your thoughts, and then I just hit 4 00:00:16,359 --> 00:00:19,320 the go live button. I was like, what am I supposed to do? 5 00:00:19,359 --> 00:00:24,519 So I just blurt everything out there? But hey, Warren, how 6 00:00:24,559 --> 00:00:27,440 are you? Yeah? Good, good, good life strategy, really all 7 00:00:27,559 --> 00:00:33,079 right, working working so far? Yeah, so I'm Warren S too. 8 00:00:33,240 --> 00:00:36,520 Authors you know, thanks for having me back. Well again, I can't 9 00:00:36,520 --> 00:00:39,719 help but notice your your name, well, the saaspoton. I feel like 10 00:00:39,759 --> 00:00:44,880 there may be some punctuations saying there. Gosh, how convenient is that? 11 00:00:45,039 --> 00:00:50,719 I didn't even put that together? Because joining us today is Michael Zerker from 12 00:00:50,759 --> 00:00:56,079 Prismatic. You're the CEO and co founder of Prismatic, which is focused on 13 00:00:56,200 --> 00:01:00,320 SaaS integrations. Right, that is right, thanks for having me. What 14 00:01:00,439 --> 00:01:07,680 a coincidence, What a coincidence. That's amazing. So I'm gonna start off 15 00:01:07,680 --> 00:01:14,760 with a really cool fact that I know about you that I just now. 16 00:01:14,799 --> 00:01:19,680 I'm now I'm terrified to hear this, right, because we are alive and 17 00:01:21,280 --> 00:01:23,400 now I'm serious. I looked you up on LinkedIn, and I saw that 18 00:01:23,480 --> 00:01:27,519 you live in Soux Falls, South Dakota. Is that correct? I do 19 00:01:27,840 --> 00:01:33,159 that. That's so cool, Like Souit Falls is such a cool area, 20 00:01:33,840 --> 00:01:42,400 but also like a really interesting place to have a tech oriented company, I 21 00:01:42,439 --> 00:01:46,200 think. But I don't know anything about the community itself, just the landscape. 22 00:01:46,359 --> 00:01:51,079 No, you are you are right. It is not exactly a historical 23 00:01:51,159 --> 00:01:55,120 tech mecha, that is for sure. I built my last company here, 24 00:01:55,120 --> 00:01:57,719 and so you have a you know, pretty decent sized network from that company, 25 00:01:57,719 --> 00:02:00,400 which which got to scale and I acced it a while back, and 26 00:02:01,079 --> 00:02:05,079 so that's where we started this company. We're fully remote at this point, 27 00:02:05,200 --> 00:02:07,759 so most of us aren't in Sioux Falls, but but I am. I 28 00:02:07,759 --> 00:02:12,960 guess, so I guess we can claim it to some extent. That's cool. 29 00:02:13,039 --> 00:02:15,639 On kind of a tangent there, do you find yourself And I asked 30 00:02:15,639 --> 00:02:21,280 this because I'm in a similar situation where I'm in a I live in a 31 00:02:21,360 --> 00:02:25,199 really small, rural, agricultural town. I think I might be the only 32 00:02:25,840 --> 00:02:34,039 tech oriented person in the town. Do you find yourself talking with like younger 33 00:02:34,080 --> 00:02:38,560 people in the community who are interested in getting a path in technology, like 34 00:02:38,599 --> 00:02:44,039 software engineering or anything Yeah, certainly, you know, I think I think 35 00:02:44,039 --> 00:02:47,240 there's probably everywhere, but certainly Sioux Falls. There's there's certainly a ton of 36 00:02:47,240 --> 00:02:52,280 interest in technical fields, and we have a handful of you know, scaled 37 00:02:52,400 --> 00:02:58,039 tech companies here. There's an autonomous tractor company doing really cool things called called 38 00:02:58,120 --> 00:03:00,319 Raven, and some you know, some some cool businesses. So there's certainly 39 00:03:00,800 --> 00:03:06,000 plenty of like interest. But I think what's so interesting about where things have 40 00:03:06,039 --> 00:03:09,159 gone is that you could live here and work for work for anybody out of 41 00:03:09,199 --> 00:03:14,280 anywhere. And I think that's more true in tech fields, specifically developers, 42 00:03:14,479 --> 00:03:17,360 et cetera, than it's than probably anywhere else. And so I think that 43 00:03:17,400 --> 00:03:22,879 really changes that dynamic that you can you can decouple your career choice from your 44 00:03:23,039 --> 00:03:25,319 choice of where to live, for sure. Yeah, And that's a that's 45 00:03:25,319 --> 00:03:30,560 a very recent change, Like it certainly wasn't true when I started my career 46 00:03:30,639 --> 00:03:35,039 in the nineties, and then it sort of gained traction and then you know, 47 00:03:35,120 --> 00:03:38,120 Code, of course, I think was really like the theme that opened 48 00:03:38,199 --> 00:03:43,560 up that as a long term possibility. Yeah, I think, I mean 49 00:03:43,599 --> 00:03:47,000 we've been creeping that direction and then COVID fast forward to us a couple of 50 00:03:47,039 --> 00:03:51,080 decades or something, and you know, just by proving it can be done. 51 00:03:51,120 --> 00:03:54,360 And yeah, I don't think the tech sectors broadly likely to go back. 52 00:03:54,400 --> 00:03:57,840 I mean, I know specific firms are doing whatever they're doing, but 53 00:03:57,960 --> 00:04:00,280 like I think, I think from a big get your perspective, the cat 54 00:04:00,400 --> 00:04:03,919 is out of the bag, right, Yeah, exactly, agreed. So 55 00:04:04,080 --> 00:04:12,080 let's talk about SaaS is software as a solution. I would imagine everyone's had 56 00:04:12,120 --> 00:04:15,439 some experience with them, and like, sure, the big problem, I 57 00:04:15,519 --> 00:04:20,319 think, the one that you have focused on addressing is integrating with all of 58 00:04:20,319 --> 00:04:24,959 these different SaaS is because there's a there's a kind of like this theme in 59 00:04:25,040 --> 00:04:31,680 software development right now where a good portion of your application is likely powered by 60 00:04:32,800 --> 00:04:41,199 bringing multiple SaaS vendors together to provide some of your back end. Would you 61 00:04:41,199 --> 00:04:44,079 say it's a fair statement, Yeah, I think so, I think, 62 00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:46,120 And I think it all stems from you know, customer, the customer need 63 00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:50,759 you know, any any software as a service, any SaaS company is delivering 64 00:04:51,120 --> 00:04:57,040 some domain specific thing to some customer, and I think increasingly, for a 65 00:04:57,079 --> 00:05:01,399 lot of reasons, those customers just expect that whatever solutions being delivered is just 66 00:05:01,480 --> 00:05:06,160 in this like magical web where everything talks to every everything else, right, 67 00:05:06,199 --> 00:05:12,040 this like fully connected graph and and I think that's kind of been like creeping 68 00:05:12,240 --> 00:05:15,959 toward true for a long time. But I think we've seen seen it happen 69 00:05:16,000 --> 00:05:21,279 in certain spaces and in consumer tech for example, and those expectations have broadened 70 00:05:21,319 --> 00:05:26,959 to the SMB space in B to B, the enterprise space even in B 71 00:05:27,000 --> 00:05:30,639 to B, and I think there's just more and more expectation that every point 72 00:05:30,720 --> 00:05:34,079 solution, every system of record just kind of like magically talks to each other. 73 00:05:34,600 --> 00:05:38,040 At the end of the day, guess where that burden got put. 74 00:05:38,120 --> 00:05:42,000 It got put on SaaS companies, on software vendors, you know. And 75 00:05:43,319 --> 00:05:46,160 there are pros and cons to that whatever. We're not here to debate that. 76 00:05:46,319 --> 00:05:48,639 The fact is that's what customers want, and so you know, we're 77 00:05:49,360 --> 00:05:51,759 there. There are a lot of ways to skin that cat, but you 78 00:05:51,800 --> 00:05:55,360 know, somehow or another, you have to deliver that to your customer to 79 00:05:55,360 --> 00:06:00,519 stay competitive. There's an argument that the connecting of these integrations is the core 80 00:06:00,680 --> 00:06:05,399 value that businesses today are bringing, and that you can't be competitive by building 81 00:06:05,480 --> 00:06:09,839 something. You've got to find the pieces out there. I mean, everything's 82 00:06:09,839 --> 00:06:13,399 been done before already for the most part, right, So the only value 83 00:06:13,480 --> 00:06:15,920 left is connecting them in interesting ways. And that's sort of like internal right 84 00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:20,600 in ways customers don't necessarily see. But then there's of course the external kind 85 00:06:20,639 --> 00:06:25,040 as well, where they're bringing their own sort of expectations on what their own 86 00:06:25,040 --> 00:06:28,800 system is using and wanting it to play ball with that. Yeah, I 87 00:06:28,800 --> 00:06:30,560 think there are kind of two factors. I think the first is exactly what 88 00:06:30,639 --> 00:06:33,560 you said that, like, for a lot of solutions, a huge portion 89 00:06:33,600 --> 00:06:38,600 of the value is in their ability to connect other things. Secondly, I 90 00:06:38,639 --> 00:06:43,439 think customers are less and less willing to build those integrations themselves. You know, 91 00:06:43,480 --> 00:06:46,040 it used to be that in the small end of the market you'd use 92 00:06:46,079 --> 00:06:47,560 Zappier, in the big end of the market you'd use mules, Softom and 93 00:06:47,560 --> 00:06:50,160 everything in between. And if you're a big business, you have some it 94 00:06:50,519 --> 00:06:53,720 group to do it. If you're a small business, maybe you're the one 95 00:06:53,720 --> 00:06:58,040 who connects things. But like that expectation was always put on customers, and 96 00:06:58,079 --> 00:07:01,160 I think customers are just back away from being willing to accept that to some 97 00:07:01,279 --> 00:07:04,680 extent, you know, and saying like, hey, you're you're the software 98 00:07:04,720 --> 00:07:08,639 people, go make it work and you know, And I think as a 99 00:07:08,639 --> 00:07:13,720 result, we're just seeing this huge trend or this huge just expectation of native 100 00:07:13,720 --> 00:07:15,800 integrations. I think it may be a pendulum swinging the other way too, 101 00:07:15,839 --> 00:07:19,399 where sales is saying, hey, you know, of course we have integration 102 00:07:19,560 --> 00:07:23,439 with X, Y, Z other software, and then you turn around and 103 00:07:23,480 --> 00:07:27,240 be like, oh, we don't actually have that. What's the easiest way. 104 00:07:27,279 --> 00:07:30,040 Do we hire a team in some other country to build it for us? 105 00:07:30,199 --> 00:07:33,600 Or Oh, there's an automated solution that you know will come in and 106 00:07:33,639 --> 00:07:36,279 just connect this up for us. We don't even need an engineering department to 107 00:07:36,279 --> 00:07:40,519 make that happen. Yeah, you know what I hear A lot is is 108 00:07:40,519 --> 00:07:44,000 a very similar, but it's often through the lens of like a product manager, 109 00:07:44,000 --> 00:07:46,800 where they're saying, I'm looking at our road or looking at our pipeline 110 00:07:46,879 --> 00:07:50,600 of deals over the next X number of months, and some percentage of them 111 00:07:50,639 --> 00:07:54,839 including integrations that we don't have today, and so the way I can unlock 112 00:07:54,879 --> 00:07:59,199 this pipeline as a product manager or an executive or whatever is to figure out, 113 00:07:59,199 --> 00:08:01,199 as you said, like how do we how do we get there? 114 00:08:01,720 --> 00:08:07,480 And to a large extent, most most SaaS companies don't really care how to 115 00:08:07,480 --> 00:08:09,680 get there. They just need to get there in a you know, in 116 00:08:09,879 --> 00:08:13,680 a reliable way that that's actually tractable. And I think that has people looking 117 00:08:13,680 --> 00:08:16,480 at a lot of different ways of doing it right now, especially the ones 118 00:08:16,480 --> 00:08:20,879 that are VC funded, where speed is the only importance required it. Yeah, 119 00:08:20,959 --> 00:08:24,759 that's that is right. I think there's an interesting abstraction there, you 120 00:08:24,800 --> 00:08:31,759 know, like when you're writing code hands on the keyboard. Part of the 121 00:08:31,959 --> 00:08:39,600 value that SaaS applications add is don't build something that is not unique to your 122 00:08:39,720 --> 00:08:41,679 product. You know, if somebody else has already built it, just buy 123 00:08:41,759 --> 00:08:46,840 that and focus on your core business. And I think making one SaaS talk 124 00:08:46,919 --> 00:08:52,159 to another is an extension of that. Like there's no need to have ten 125 00:08:52,200 --> 00:08:58,120 thousand people writing a you know, a salesforce to Google Drive integration. Let's 126 00:08:58,159 --> 00:09:01,879 let those two guys go and battle it out. Or is that where you 127 00:09:01,960 --> 00:09:07,639 come in as Prismatic. Is that like your value add to the whole transaction? 128 00:09:09,720 --> 00:09:13,159 Yeah, so you know we are Prismatic is used by a SaaS company, 129 00:09:13,240 --> 00:09:18,759 whether that SaaS company is kind of on either end of that connection, 130 00:09:18,320 --> 00:09:22,519 whether you're the system of record that everybody's connecting to or whether you're a point 131 00:09:22,600 --> 00:09:26,320 solution connecting to the system of record, which is often kind of the dynamic 132 00:09:26,679 --> 00:09:31,960 in a B to B environment. Regardless, we are a tool that can 133 00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:37,159 be embedded into a SaaS to make it as easy as possible to make those 134 00:09:37,159 --> 00:09:41,159 connections. And the way that we always think about it is like, like 135 00:09:41,200 --> 00:09:45,240 you said, there's no reason for everybody to reinvent the wheel of the eighty 136 00:09:45,279 --> 00:09:48,559 percent of this that is the same no matter which industry or which toman you're 137 00:09:48,559 --> 00:09:52,120 in, Like, why in the world should every software company go rebuild the 138 00:09:52,120 --> 00:09:54,559 way to scale integrations, log integration, secure integrations, I mean, the 139 00:09:54,559 --> 00:09:58,519 list goes on and on. Instead, we want folks to focus as much 140 00:09:58,519 --> 00:10:03,679 as possible blond the things that are actually unique in a domain, because a 141 00:10:03,679 --> 00:10:09,360 software company that sells software to egg tech is going to know tons and tons 142 00:10:09,360 --> 00:10:11,759 and tons about ag tech. Put you know, ideally, they would put 143 00:10:11,799 --> 00:10:16,200 all of their effort, all of their energy into things that are unique to 144 00:10:16,240 --> 00:10:20,720 that because that's their deep experience, their deep domain knowledge that doesn't include, 145 00:10:20,759 --> 00:10:24,320 as it turns out, building yet another way to stand up in ELK stack 146 00:10:24,399 --> 00:10:28,000 to you know, to log integrations and some of the unique things related to 147 00:10:28,039 --> 00:10:31,559 it, right, And so I think wherever you can you can shove that 148 00:10:31,720 --> 00:10:35,679 off, shove it, you know, into an ecosystem the better. That 149 00:10:35,720 --> 00:10:39,519 doesn't mean you can just offload your integrations completely, because it turns out integrations 150 00:10:39,519 --> 00:10:43,600 have a lot to do with the domain, but it does mean you can 151 00:10:43,639 --> 00:10:48,519 offload the infrastructure, the scaffolding, the tooling that it takes to go build 152 00:10:48,559 --> 00:10:52,120 the domain specific integration stuff. If that makes sense, Yeah, for sure. 153 00:10:52,799 --> 00:10:56,240 And I don't I don't want to derail this, but I'm glad you 154 00:10:56,279 --> 00:11:01,720 brought up ag tech because my nephew is a farmer and like the amount of 155 00:11:01,799 --> 00:11:07,639 technology involved in farming. Like I hang out with him sometimes and he shows 156 00:11:07,679 --> 00:11:09,320 me like, oh yeah, this is our tractor and it's got GPS and 157 00:11:09,399 --> 00:11:13,240 it tracks how far you know, and at tracks where the next row of 158 00:11:13,039 --> 00:11:18,559 onions should be. Enough, Like I'm just completely geeking out over this because 159 00:11:18,960 --> 00:11:22,000 you think of farming and like, I don't think of farming as being like 160 00:11:22,080 --> 00:11:26,320 a high tech industry, but it kind of is these days. Oh for 161 00:11:26,440 --> 00:11:31,000 sure. Yeah, I mean I think as we squeezed all the efficiency we 162 00:11:31,039 --> 00:11:35,639 can out of it, it's it's gotten bizarrely tech enabled in the best possible 163 00:11:35,639 --> 00:11:39,720 way. There's some amazing things happening in eg tech today. Yeah, it's 164 00:11:39,759 --> 00:11:45,559 like the tractor tracks how many times you've lifted and lowered the bucket, and 165 00:11:45,600 --> 00:11:50,480 when you hit the maintenance threshold, it sends an SMS message out to the 166 00:11:50,559 --> 00:11:54,320 dealer and some guy shows up and say it's maintenance time for your tractor. 167 00:11:54,360 --> 00:11:58,639 I'm like, ah, yeah, okay, fair enough, I guess. 168 00:11:58,639 --> 00:12:01,720 So. I'm always amazed when I see it, honestly, I mean, 169 00:12:01,840 --> 00:12:05,759 just the automation and the and the industry really does remind me of some sort 170 00:12:05,759 --> 00:12:09,200 of computer game, you know, Sims or Fell or something like that. 171 00:12:09,240 --> 00:12:13,679 It's just like, it literally seems like that from a you know, owner 172 00:12:13,759 --> 00:12:18,960 perspective. The number of actual people on staff at a farm is incredibly minimal. 173 00:12:18,679 --> 00:12:26,559 Yep. It's farming simulator, irl. We just connected it to the 174 00:12:26,559 --> 00:12:31,200 real world somehow. And now there's iron driving around out there. And you 175 00:12:31,200 --> 00:12:35,240 make it a game and someone will pay actually to do that job. Right, 176 00:12:35,399 --> 00:12:39,120 They'll pay to drive your tractors for you. It might be hard on 177 00:12:39,120 --> 00:12:43,120 your fence lines, but they'll pay to do it. There's a new business 178 00:12:43,159 --> 00:12:48,559 here, I'm sure of it. Just you know, make the right interface 179 00:12:48,639 --> 00:12:52,039 right and chat dialogue on the right hand side. It's just you got a 180 00:12:52,080 --> 00:12:56,720 gold in there. I love it. I am curious about what the actual 181 00:12:56,720 --> 00:13:01,120 interface is for say Prismatic or some of the ones that you're actually integrating into 182 00:13:01,360 --> 00:13:07,519 into your system. Is it providing a APIs that are somehow ubiquitous or you 183 00:13:07,559 --> 00:13:13,159 know, everything goes into Prismatic and there's some configuration there that has it redirected 184 00:13:13,279 --> 00:13:16,759 to the right integration and whatnot. You give me a good picture of that, 185 00:13:16,799 --> 00:13:18,519 I think, I'm sure people are interested in. Yeah. Yeah, 186 00:13:18,559 --> 00:13:22,799 So you know, we see a couple of different pieces of this equation. 187 00:13:22,840 --> 00:13:24,080 If you think about, hey, I'm a SaaS company and I need to 188 00:13:24,120 --> 00:13:30,279 deliver native integrations to my customers in whatever industry they're in. The first is 189 00:13:30,320 --> 00:13:35,039 you have to somehow have the infrastructure to actually run those integrations. As you 190 00:13:35,200 --> 00:13:39,919 probably are aware, like integrations have kind of unique burstiness problems because of that 191 00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:43,840 the nature of what they are. They're often scheduled run every fifteen minutes or 192 00:13:43,840 --> 00:13:48,279 at the top of the hour at midnight, and so like the first piece 193 00:13:48,320 --> 00:13:52,879 of Prismatic or something like it is just the infrastructure to run this stuff, 194 00:13:52,879 --> 00:13:54,679 and that includes security, and it's one of those things that like, the 195 00:13:54,720 --> 00:13:58,840 deeper you dig, the more you realize there's there's a lots of doing it 196 00:13:58,840 --> 00:14:01,960 well. And then on top of that, you have to have a way 197 00:14:01,960 --> 00:14:05,840 to actually construct these integrations. And if an integration is you know, a 198 00:14:05,879 --> 00:14:09,480 bunch of business logic that is domain specific to what this integration needs to do, 199 00:14:09,919 --> 00:14:13,159 then you have to have ways to specify that. And at Prismatic we 200 00:14:13,200 --> 00:14:18,960 take the view that there are two distinct and both completely valid ways to do 201 00:14:18,000 --> 00:14:22,480 it. One is by actually writing code, which in Prismatic land is just 202 00:14:22,559 --> 00:14:26,159 typescript using an SDK of ours that lets you, you know, kind of 203 00:14:26,200 --> 00:14:31,759 write the actual business logic pieces, but none of the stuff around it, 204 00:14:31,840 --> 00:14:35,039 right, Like, you want to just be contained to the part that's actually 205 00:14:35,039 --> 00:14:39,039 business logic actually domain specific. So code native is what we call that path, 206 00:14:39,039 --> 00:14:41,759 and we see that as I mean, just a natural way for software 207 00:14:41,759 --> 00:14:46,559 companies to do some things. Then the other path is low code, which 208 00:14:46,600 --> 00:14:50,240 is the natural path for software companies to do some things depending on kind of 209 00:14:50,279 --> 00:14:54,360 which people inside of a software business are the closest to the domain specific stuff 210 00:14:54,559 --> 00:14:58,080 and are the ones who should be building and specifying these integrations. And so 211 00:14:58,159 --> 00:15:03,200 we see those as b basically equal but different paths to build the integration that 212 00:15:03,320 --> 00:15:07,279 can then run on top of that infrastructure that I that I talked about before. 213 00:15:07,679 --> 00:15:11,799 So so what that gets you is a platform that can run integrations, 214 00:15:11,159 --> 00:15:16,080 monitor integrations, introspect integrations, alert on integrations, Uh, you know, 215 00:15:16,159 --> 00:15:18,120 all of that stuff. Then the then the then the third piece of all 216 00:15:18,159 --> 00:15:22,799 of this is what we call the marketplace, which is a actual like ux 217 00:15:22,879 --> 00:15:26,120 that you can put in your app. This is the only thing that a 218 00:15:26,440 --> 00:15:30,399 our customers, customers will see, and it's the ability for you know, 219 00:15:30,600 --> 00:15:33,440 to have a little like, hey, here's your marketplace of all the integrations 220 00:15:33,480 --> 00:15:37,679 we offer. Go click connect on Google Drive or on you know, acme, 221 00:15:37,919 --> 00:15:41,320 ERP or whatever, putting your credentials and it'll turn on. And and 222 00:15:41,360 --> 00:15:43,840 that's another one of those things that like, I don't care which industry you're 223 00:15:43,879 --> 00:15:48,080 in, that looks substantially similar everywhere. It doesn't make sense for everybody to 224 00:15:48,120 --> 00:15:52,240 reinvent that the same way it doesn't make sense for everybody to reinvent authentication screens 225 00:15:52,279 --> 00:15:58,039 for example. And so you know, warrant you to to your to your 226 00:15:58,399 --> 00:16:02,960 your ongoing concern. But uh, you know, we we we provide that 227 00:16:03,159 --> 00:16:07,480 such that it can be put into embedded in embedded you know, embedded inside 228 00:16:07,480 --> 00:16:11,840 of SaaS tools, and between those three components and all the things that support 229 00:16:11,919 --> 00:16:17,039 them, you have a pretty full featured way to provide native integrations. I 230 00:16:17,080 --> 00:16:21,039 totally get the perspective here. I think our customers are similar, right, 231 00:16:21,080 --> 00:16:25,000 they want the Some of them, for sure, want the full integrated experience, 232 00:16:25,039 --> 00:16:27,960 hands off, like they don't even care if they're users see our interface 233 00:16:29,320 --> 00:16:30,799 for our stuff. But then there are for sure the other ones are like, 234 00:16:30,840 --> 00:16:33,799 we don't like what you did. We want to customize exactly how we 235 00:16:33,840 --> 00:16:38,000 want. I always hope that there's some sort of middle ground here where the 236 00:16:38,039 --> 00:16:42,080 configuration makes sense. But then there is this sort of weird fine line of 237 00:16:42,639 --> 00:16:47,320 that's too specific for what we need. We need the code first approach for 238 00:16:47,360 --> 00:16:52,000 sure to make it happen. I mean it makes a lot of sense. 239 00:16:52,080 --> 00:16:56,519 Yeah, you know, we think a lot about the integration platform Space originated 240 00:16:56,600 --> 00:17:00,840 and and most of the you know classic ipass space, which is integration platform 241 00:17:00,840 --> 00:17:06,839 as a service. The Classic ipass space sells to it groups generally sells to 242 00:17:06,880 --> 00:17:11,920 businesses for use internally inside that business. And you know, if that is 243 00:17:11,960 --> 00:17:15,480 your if that is your goal, if that's what you're doing, then you're 244 00:17:15,519 --> 00:17:18,680 going to have a certain outcome around. You know, low code is the 245 00:17:18,680 --> 00:17:21,519 thing that makes sense because we're dealing with you know it teams, et cetera, 246 00:17:21,559 --> 00:17:23,480 et cetera. But if instead you're in the space that Prismatic is in, 247 00:17:23,519 --> 00:17:27,279 which is called embedded ipass and is a new category, and you are 248 00:17:27,279 --> 00:17:32,119 selling exclusively to SaaS companies or to software companies, you come to a pretty 249 00:17:32,160 --> 00:17:34,519 different conclusion on the kinds of tools that are going to enable them best. 250 00:17:34,799 --> 00:17:38,519 And sure low code is part of it, but every developer ever who has 251 00:17:38,559 --> 00:17:44,079 touched anything related to low code is terrified of painting themselves into a corner and 252 00:17:44,160 --> 00:17:47,000 being stuck on the last five percent. Right, Hey, it was really 253 00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:49,200 easy for the first ninety five percent, and then it was impossible for the 254 00:17:49,279 --> 00:17:52,039 last five and guess what that rounds to zero. Now I'm going to just 255 00:17:52,039 --> 00:17:55,720 build it myself. And so, you know, the way we always thought 256 00:17:55,720 --> 00:17:57,720 about this is like, if you're selling to SaaS businesses, if SaaS businesses 257 00:17:57,759 --> 00:18:03,000 are who you're serving, then you've got to always have an escape patch and 258 00:18:03,079 --> 00:18:07,559 about the best escape patches straight down to typescript, right, like just just 259 00:18:07,599 --> 00:18:11,359 let them, let them pull the rep cord and write typeescript where they need 260 00:18:11,400 --> 00:18:14,599 to, And that has served us very very well and I think has worked 261 00:18:14,640 --> 00:18:18,640 very well for our customers. Yeah, I've definitely seen the concerns over the 262 00:18:18,680 --> 00:18:21,119 low code interfaces for a lot of things. I mean, even at the 263 00:18:21,119 --> 00:18:23,720 app level, they're out there, but yeah, like you said, if 264 00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:26,440 you don't know what you're doing, they're great. But if you're anyone who 265 00:18:26,519 --> 00:18:32,640 has any experience of writing an integration using anything else that promises only low code 266 00:18:32,640 --> 00:18:36,279 and doesn't give you those options, it's just becomes a huge burden at some 267 00:18:36,359 --> 00:18:40,440 point when you realize, hey, our business logic has requirements here, and 268 00:18:40,559 --> 00:18:44,680 it like I need to do a thing and there's no documentation or no expectations 269 00:18:44,720 --> 00:18:48,000 about how that actually works for real in practice. But with like an SDK, 270 00:18:48,200 --> 00:18:52,279 that's like a huge advantage. Yeah, and you know, what we 271 00:18:52,359 --> 00:18:56,000 see, really, what we've seen be really successful is businesses customers of ours 272 00:18:56,039 --> 00:19:02,599 that will that will use developers to essentially build like low code extensions or low 273 00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:06,480 code blocks that can then be used by other folks. In their organization, 274 00:19:07,039 --> 00:19:10,119 and so you kind of have this thing where like developers can be the leverage 275 00:19:10,200 --> 00:19:14,640 to make the low code tool form to the business or form to the industry, 276 00:19:15,279 --> 00:19:18,720 and then you can use other people inside the business to build the you 277 00:19:18,720 --> 00:19:22,160 know, whether it's a custom specific integration or maybe you just need to build 278 00:19:22,160 --> 00:19:26,160 a hundred because you're an integration heavy space. My last business built six hundred 279 00:19:26,200 --> 00:19:30,440 integrations in the public safety space, which is law enforcement and nine one one 280 00:19:30,480 --> 00:19:33,480 centers. So like, the way Prismatic came to be is that my co 281 00:19:33,519 --> 00:19:37,680 founders and myself spent I was there for sixteen years, beam my head against 282 00:19:37,680 --> 00:19:41,119 this integration wall and came out of it and said like, dang it, 283 00:19:41,119 --> 00:19:42,440 we're gonna go. We're just gonna go build the thing that we always wished 284 00:19:42,440 --> 00:19:45,559 we had. So if you're in a space like that, you probably don't 285 00:19:45,599 --> 00:19:49,359 want developers to build six hundred integrations. You want to developers to build a 286 00:19:49,359 --> 00:19:53,920 set of tools. In my now biased view on top of Prismatic, but 287 00:19:53,960 --> 00:19:56,519 like, regardless of how you get there, somehow build a set of tools 288 00:19:56,720 --> 00:20:02,400 that enable other people in the organization to go build those six hundred domain specific 289 00:20:02,440 --> 00:20:07,839 things. I really love that you're leaning into the marketplace, especially because one 290 00:20:07,839 --> 00:20:11,680 of the biggest problems I've had with other low code or even code as a 291 00:20:11,720 --> 00:20:15,759 platform tools has been that they care a lot about who their customers are, 292 00:20:15,920 --> 00:20:19,160 but they don't pay a lot attention to the success of the marketplace, which 293 00:20:19,200 --> 00:20:22,920 you really have to have to see a multi sided marketplace where there's the consumers 294 00:20:22,920 --> 00:20:26,720 and the people that are building the code and those building blocks and the If 295 00:20:26,759 --> 00:20:30,160 you have a platform that's not attentive, like not attendive to that audience, 296 00:20:30,359 --> 00:20:33,720 you will not get high quality building blocks, which means your customers will all 297 00:20:33,720 --> 00:20:37,400 suffer. So really an attention there on doing that effectively, like you know, 298 00:20:38,119 --> 00:20:41,759 good, good job. Like that's not a there's not a trivial insight 299 00:20:41,799 --> 00:20:45,839 to have to really focus on that aspect because they're not your customers, you 300 00:20:45,839 --> 00:20:48,759 know, primary right, Yeah, it's interesting because a big chunk of our 301 00:20:48,759 --> 00:20:53,440 solution actually serves our customer's customer. And you know, we we internally are 302 00:20:53,440 --> 00:20:59,640 really careful about talking about customers are our customers. Customers and organizations are our 303 00:20:59,680 --> 00:21:03,759 custom because otherwise nobody knows who you actually mean when you say customer. Which 304 00:21:03,839 --> 00:21:07,759 was one of the first problems that we like ran into in this business is 305 00:21:07,119 --> 00:21:11,960 Okay, apparently we have to invent a word for this because I knew that 306 00:21:11,960 --> 00:21:14,920 there are two very different things. I totally get you one hundred percent. 307 00:21:14,960 --> 00:21:18,279 I think it's a you know general B to B T B problem or you 308 00:21:18,279 --> 00:21:21,000 know B to B B C. Like is this thing we went with, 309 00:21:21,079 --> 00:21:25,599 I think, uh, you know, fundamental end user and administrative user for 310 00:21:25,759 --> 00:21:27,599 the platform, you know, so like offer an end user and an end 311 00:21:27,680 --> 00:21:30,680 user, and we use that everywhere in our but yeah, it's it's not 312 00:21:30,799 --> 00:21:34,799 trivial to explain that. Yep. Yeah, it took us a little while 313 00:21:34,799 --> 00:21:38,160 to get our head wrapped around kind of all the different personas and where they 314 00:21:38,200 --> 00:21:41,440 overlap and where they don't. And thankfully that was years ago now, but 315 00:21:41,759 --> 00:21:48,279 it was certainly a muddy time. So I think another one of the problems 316 00:21:48,279 --> 00:21:52,720 with building your own integration is keeping up to date. You know. It's 317 00:21:52,720 --> 00:22:00,000 one of those things where like you build this integration yourself and then the company 318 00:22:00,039 --> 00:22:03,799 wheny you're pulling that data from they change their API or they have a new 319 00:22:03,839 --> 00:22:10,519 feature, but it's only available in the new API and you're on two versions 320 00:22:10,599 --> 00:22:15,519 back. So yeah, I'm assuming that y'all have like a process where you're 321 00:22:15,559 --> 00:22:23,279 continuously working closely with those those integration partners and getting updates for like when they're 322 00:22:23,440 --> 00:22:29,279 releasing new APIs, you're updating it so that in the Prismatic platform, your 323 00:22:29,319 --> 00:22:36,000 customers customers automatically get those updates right away, right. Yeah, So we 324 00:22:36,200 --> 00:22:38,960 certainly that's part of what we manage is you know, on the things that 325 00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:42,519 we are in what we call our public component library, meaning those like connectors 326 00:22:42,519 --> 00:22:47,839 to common third parties, we take responsibility for upgrading those as necessary, and 327 00:22:47,880 --> 00:22:52,240 when Salesforce deprecates whatever, then we move, you know, move things forward. 328 00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:56,319 What's what's interesting kind of around that though, is that, uh, 329 00:22:56,480 --> 00:23:00,000 you know, one of the insights we had fairly early on that has proved 330 00:23:00,240 --> 00:23:03,559 out is that, I don't care how big your library of connectors is, 331 00:23:04,039 --> 00:23:10,359 You're never going to have the thirty thousand SaaS companies that are in vertical markets 332 00:23:08,920 --> 00:23:12,400 in SaaS in you know, and that's just in the United States much less, 333 00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:18,000 you know, worldwide, and so many many, many of our customers 334 00:23:18,400 --> 00:23:22,400 build connectors that are not connectors that we built, and so you know, 335 00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:26,559 we we can build to Salesforce and HubSpot and service now and you know, 336 00:23:26,599 --> 00:23:30,400 the list goes on and on, right, But it turns out an early 337 00:23:30,440 --> 00:23:34,200 conversation with a customer or prospect I guess you know, like four years ago 338 00:23:34,759 --> 00:23:41,319 where he was in the in the vertical markets from Australia, in the vertical 339 00:23:41,359 --> 00:23:47,799 market of liability waiver software for go karts. Okay, So like that is 340 00:23:47,839 --> 00:23:49,519 about as narrow a vertical market as it gets. And it turns out he 341 00:23:49,559 --> 00:23:53,559 had competitors who are also in the liability waiver market, right, So, 342 00:23:53,680 --> 00:23:57,400 like, what what you realize is like there are so many vertical markets and 343 00:23:57,400 --> 00:24:02,400 they're getting narrower and narrower, in narrower as those solutions get better and better 344 00:24:02,440 --> 00:24:04,160 and better. One of the ways they get better is they get more domain 345 00:24:04,160 --> 00:24:08,079 specific. And so you now have so many vertical markets that are so narrow 346 00:24:08,359 --> 00:24:12,799 that there is no vendor ever on the ipass side, in betded ipass side 347 00:24:12,920 --> 00:24:15,519 that is going to have every connector you could ever have. And so one 348 00:24:15,519 --> 00:24:18,640 of the things that we did, kind of to your point, is build 349 00:24:18,680 --> 00:24:22,000 a set of tools so that software companies can build their own connectors in a 350 00:24:22,039 --> 00:24:25,680 really nice way. Turns out it's the same set of tools we use to 351 00:24:25,680 --> 00:24:30,400 build our public library. But that includes ways to deal with versioning, like 352 00:24:30,960 --> 00:24:34,279 you mentioned where like how do I deal with the fact that maybe salesforce updates 353 00:24:34,279 --> 00:24:38,319 to a new API version. I can't just make a change and magically have 354 00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:41,680 three thousand of my customers get that updated. What if there's a problem, 355 00:24:41,759 --> 00:24:45,480 what if there's some nuance, What if I have SLAS with enterprise customers that 356 00:24:45,519 --> 00:24:49,000 say you can't update our software without notifying us, And so like, one 357 00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:52,480 of the values in one of those sneaky things that people don't think a lot 358 00:24:52,519 --> 00:24:56,640 about with integrations until they run into it head first, is how do you 359 00:24:56,720 --> 00:25:02,640 deploy integrations to three thousand customers, but then manage the rollout to those three 360 00:25:02,640 --> 00:25:06,640 thousand customers in a way that actually serves your customer base, which is going 361 00:25:06,680 --> 00:25:08,920 to be different for every SaaS company, And so like to your point about 362 00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:12,240 versioning, Uh, It's it's true that connector is a version, but it's 363 00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:17,880 also true that then that causes all kinds of downstream versioning, and we thought 364 00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:21,240 pretty deeply about how to handle that. It's never perfect, and I'm not 365 00:25:21,240 --> 00:25:22,680 going to say we have a silver bullet, because that's just a hard problem 366 00:25:23,440 --> 00:25:26,720 for sure, but I certainly we have a lot of tooling around it. 367 00:25:27,160 --> 00:25:33,200 So in your in your marketplace, you have the connectors that y'all have written, 368 00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:40,200 but then you are are the ones that other people right also available there, 369 00:25:40,319 --> 00:25:45,359 like for the company that has the go Kart liability insurance connector. Uh 370 00:25:45,480 --> 00:25:49,680 yeah. So what's interesting is that you're right. We build this like library 371 00:25:49,680 --> 00:25:53,440 of connectors that we provide and everybody uses and we maintain, and it's you 372 00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:56,680 know, it's kind of the big SaaS apps that you'd expect. I think 373 00:25:56,680 --> 00:25:59,680 there's a couple hundred of them at this point in that library, maybe one 374 00:25:59,720 --> 00:26:04,519 hundred. As companies build their own connectors, they generally want to keep those 375 00:26:04,559 --> 00:26:08,920 private because they generally see it as a competitive advantage. If you're that guy 376 00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:14,759 in the gopart car market and he goes and builds connectors to whoever he needs 377 00:26:14,799 --> 00:26:17,880 to build connectors to, he doesn't want to put them in the library and 378 00:26:17,880 --> 00:26:21,960 then turn around and have his competitors get them for free by just like becoming 379 00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:25,799 a customer prismatic. And so we actually at this point we have hundreds and 380 00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:29,640 hundreds and hundreds of custom connectors as we call them, that have been built 381 00:26:29,640 --> 00:26:33,920 by our customers that are internal to their environments, and they put them in 382 00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:37,039 their own repositories, and they put them in their own CICD pipelines, and 383 00:26:37,039 --> 00:26:41,480 they release them to Prismatic as they would any other software, but they're they're 384 00:26:41,559 --> 00:26:45,680 private to them, and it turns out that's what people that's what people largely 385 00:26:45,720 --> 00:26:48,480 want. Now. That said, if somebody goes and build something that's common 386 00:26:48,519 --> 00:26:51,359 and they're willing to share it, we'll often take that on and then we'll 387 00:26:51,359 --> 00:26:55,240 take on responsibility for maintaining it going forward. And we've done some of that, 388 00:26:55,799 --> 00:27:00,200 but you'd be surprised just how many of these like niche custom connectors there 389 00:27:00,240 --> 00:27:03,160 are to systems that I have never heard of and we'll never hear of again 390 00:27:03,599 --> 00:27:07,599 that like that aren't in the public library because because there's a competitive advantage to 391 00:27:07,759 --> 00:27:14,359 keeping them private, and and I guess to kind of elaborate in the marketplace, 392 00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:18,480 the thing that that our embedded marketplace allows is for a soft customer of 393 00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:22,640 ours, let's say it's like acme erp it lets. Acme erp deployed to 394 00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:26,839 their customers a marketplace that includes some things from us, some things that they 395 00:27:26,839 --> 00:27:32,440 built themselves, some integration workflows that they built that are domain specific. And 396 00:27:32,480 --> 00:27:33,799 then it just feels like, oh, well, this is the acme er 397 00:27:33,839 --> 00:27:37,960 pre P marketplace. It's not the Prismatic marketplace. It's not a generic integration 398 00:27:38,039 --> 00:27:42,119 marketplace. This is the acme ERP marketplace. And there's a huge amount of 399 00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:45,880 power in that, like curated here are the thirty things you actually probably care 400 00:27:45,920 --> 00:27:49,680 about, customer, H got and and that's and that's a that's a big 401 00:27:49,720 --> 00:27:53,319 part of what Prismetic enables for our customers. AH got you? That makes 402 00:27:53,359 --> 00:27:59,720 sense? Yeah? Is acn ERP a real e r P? No, 403 00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:03,599 no up in the RP. It turns out here's here's another thing that I 404 00:28:03,599 --> 00:28:07,160 have learned. It turns out there are ERPs for every industry you could possibly 405 00:28:07,240 --> 00:28:14,039 imagine. There are there are chiropractic ERPs. There are long mowing ERPs. 406 00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:17,559 There are like the list goes on and on and so like a big and 407 00:28:17,559 --> 00:28:19,920 and those tend to be the system of record in whichever customer uses that ARP. 408 00:28:21,440 --> 00:28:23,799 And so those ERPs tend to either be integrated to a lot or integrate 409 00:28:23,839 --> 00:28:27,079 to a lot of other things. And you know, in some ways, 410 00:28:27,079 --> 00:28:30,680 in my previous company, we were we were an ERP for law enforcement to 411 00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:33,680 some extent. They didn't call it an ARP, but that's kind of what 412 00:28:33,720 --> 00:28:37,039 it was. That's why we had to integrate to so many things, and 413 00:28:37,079 --> 00:28:40,559 so many things that had to integrate to us. Is we were like the 414 00:28:40,599 --> 00:28:45,519 center of this elaborate hub of activity inside of you know, a police department 415 00:28:45,599 --> 00:28:48,039 or a nine one one center or whatever. I think, well, you 416 00:28:48,079 --> 00:28:52,799 may have fallen into that. This is a good cartoon out there where the 417 00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:56,640 characters were attempting to come up with a name for their company and everything was 418 00:28:56,759 --> 00:29:03,000 already taken. So you know, I imagine there is an acme ERP out 419 00:29:03,039 --> 00:29:06,720 there. I could like, I would probably is. I wouldn't be surprised. 420 00:29:06,920 --> 00:29:11,920 Uh. I was just sorry, go ahead, I was just gonna 421 00:29:11,920 --> 00:29:14,559 say. You kept saying it, and I was like, dang, that 422 00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:21,599 is the coolest ERP name ever. It's much better than I saw in Microsoft's 423 00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:25,519 docs for the longest time Contoso dot com. Yeah, And I'm just like 424 00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:30,039 I remember as a very early on engineer being like, what is that? 425 00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:33,119 Like? Is that a real company that they're using as an example? Does 426 00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:37,240 Microsoft? Is that actually what I'm supposed to put in? Uh? The 427 00:29:37,319 --> 00:29:40,759 integration for I mean, I think it was like authentication at the time. 428 00:29:40,759 --> 00:29:42,519 I'm just like I don't understand, like, could you not have pulled something? 429 00:29:42,799 --> 00:29:47,519 I think we use we literally use our company name in the example. 430 00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:51,000 I think it's like author is dot your domain dot com, like wherever. 431 00:29:51,039 --> 00:29:53,279 It is, like, there is no question that this is not a real 432 00:29:53,319 --> 00:29:56,759 thing. So way back in the day. This is gonna date me, 433 00:29:56,799 --> 00:30:02,079 but Microsoft used to use north Wind the company and all of their examples. 434 00:30:02,079 --> 00:30:04,039 So, like anybody who was around software in the I guess it would have 435 00:30:04,079 --> 00:30:08,400 been the late nineties or something early two thousands, it was all like north 436 00:30:08,440 --> 00:30:11,519 Wind database, north Wind Trading Company, north Wind, this north Wind that 437 00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:15,559 I have the same thing where it's like, okay, tell me about this 438 00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:18,440 north Wind because it is ubiquitous somehow, and then it turns out Microsoft just 439 00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:22,440 made it up. I probably still have the north Wind Microsoft access database. 440 00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:26,599 Yeah, exactly, exactly, because you didn't change the name. You know, 441 00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:29,880 when you were installing it the first time, you're like, oh, 442 00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:32,480 that's the depault. I'm going with that. We're like, that's what it 443 00:30:32,559 --> 00:30:34,039 was bost to name it, right. The field says enter name and the 444 00:30:34,039 --> 00:30:38,160 examples as literally northwest north Wind is the name. The doc said it. 445 00:30:40,799 --> 00:30:42,319 Yeah, and there's some point in your career where we're like, you don't 446 00:30:42,359 --> 00:30:45,440 have the confidence to change it. You're like, I'm typing north Wind because 447 00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:51,000 I don't know where this is going to come back up. It works in 448 00:30:51,039 --> 00:30:55,920 the example, so I'm gonna stick with it. I definitely turned into the 449 00:30:55,960 --> 00:30:57,880 domain name that's gonna get used, which you know ends up other places and 450 00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:03,160 then it becomes an internal company you know, secret nomenclature for that project that 451 00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:06,119 you're working on, will right, you know, just you know, you 452 00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:10,200 keep bringing this up. And I think, having built so many integrations in 453 00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:15,079 my past life, one of the things that always really bothered me was itempotency 454 00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:18,039 of dealing with them. And I don't know how much you see this, 455 00:31:18,640 --> 00:31:23,599 but I can totally imagine that the it's not just the API format or schema 456 00:31:23,759 --> 00:31:27,480 like you mentioned will with the version ing. There is some really gnarly bits 457 00:31:27,519 --> 00:31:32,480 when it comes to just things that you would normally expect, even from very 458 00:31:32,559 --> 00:31:34,599 large companies, in how their API works. I think item bonzy and rate 459 00:31:34,680 --> 00:31:41,039 limiting are huge ones. Any any like you know, secret sauce advice there 460 00:31:41,119 --> 00:31:44,119 that's just like you know, you definitely don't want to think about that. 461 00:31:45,319 --> 00:31:48,000 I mean, I don't know that I have any secret sauce. I think 462 00:31:48,599 --> 00:31:52,640 I think those problems and many other like others like them are the classic like 463 00:31:52,720 --> 00:31:56,079 everything is easy until you're six months into it, Yeah, for sure. 464 00:31:56,119 --> 00:32:00,720 Like I think we all make the problem. Developers, engineers and just like 465 00:32:00,799 --> 00:32:04,000 people in general all make the problem that anything we haven't done ourselves, we 466 00:32:04,119 --> 00:32:07,079 just like consider much easier than it actually is, because what we see is 467 00:32:07,119 --> 00:32:10,440 the obvious surface level stuff and it's like, oh, well to integrate this 468 00:32:10,519 --> 00:32:15,119 and that it's two APIs, I just need like a lamb in between that 469 00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:17,119 talks to those two APIs. This is one hundred lines of JavaScript, and 470 00:32:17,200 --> 00:32:21,119 I'm done. And then you realize, as you said Laurren, like item 471 00:32:21,160 --> 00:32:25,200 potency and pagination and rate limiting and rate limiting that is sometimes very complex. 472 00:32:25,880 --> 00:32:30,400 You know, it's not always like x per second. It's got burst limits 473 00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:32,240 and it's got you know, different limits by time of day. And so 474 00:32:32,359 --> 00:32:37,519 I think at Prismatic, what we're essentially doing is just continuing to build scaffolding 475 00:32:37,559 --> 00:32:43,480 and tooling that solves those problems in ways that let developers or what we call 476 00:32:43,519 --> 00:32:47,640 technical non developers to kind of like use those tools to not have to reinvent 477 00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:51,680 the wheel. Now, can I make you not? Can I Can I 478 00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:54,440 keep you from having to ever think about item potency and and integration in a 479 00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:59,119 B to B SaaS company? Probably not. Can I make tools to make 480 00:32:59,119 --> 00:33:02,160 it easier to implyor make it just like drag that thing on there, say 481 00:33:02,160 --> 00:33:05,880 that we want to store the you know whatever. Yeah, there are all 482 00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:08,240 kinds of ways that we can make that easier. And I think that's just 483 00:33:08,279 --> 00:33:14,160 a it's a perfect and classic example of this is all really easy until you're 484 00:33:14,200 --> 00:33:16,559 actually in the in the depths of it, and then you just keep keep 485 00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:21,519 digging and digging and digging until you wish you hadn't started. You know, 486 00:33:21,599 --> 00:33:24,680 if you can make it so that I don't ever have to inspect an HTTP 487 00:33:24,799 --> 00:33:30,359 two hundred response to see if it's returning an error object instead of getting an 488 00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:36,359 HP four hundred back, it'd be great. Yeah, well you've worked with 489 00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:45,240 one of those. Yeah, And again, there are no silver bullets to 490 00:33:45,279 --> 00:33:47,720 these problems, right, like everybody dreams up their own craziness. We've seen 491 00:33:47,759 --> 00:33:52,079 everything you can imagine. You know, a similar A similar vein is the 492 00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:57,680 number of ways that oh OFF two has been bastardized by APIs and by SaaS 493 00:33:57,680 --> 00:34:00,839 companies like I we may eight a standard. Guys, it even has like 494 00:34:00,920 --> 00:34:05,599 four different standards in the standard pick one. Uh, you know, but 495 00:34:06,000 --> 00:34:09,360 every everybody makes up their own stuff. Sometimes they expect an act pack. 496 00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:14,079 Sometimes they expect an act pack with a certain like hash in it, like 497 00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:19,280 it's it's insane. And so at this point we have ANF two implementation that 498 00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:22,199 does o off too, but that's you know, one twentieth of what it 499 00:34:22,239 --> 00:34:27,360 does. It's all the bastardizations that are the hard part. You know. 500 00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:30,559 I love I love the brothers up. I mean, so I'm actually in 501 00:34:30,599 --> 00:34:32,840 the IF working group for for a lot, so you know that that's okay, 502 00:34:34,039 --> 00:34:37,360 that's one thing, and for sure they're like the implementations go go everywhere, 503 00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:42,440 like people say that their standard and they're realistically not not even clear it's 504 00:34:42,480 --> 00:34:45,119 not just yeah, and then having to deal with that consequence. There's a 505 00:34:45,119 --> 00:34:47,760 lot there. I mean, we've built integrations for our customers in the same 506 00:34:47,760 --> 00:34:52,239 exact way, specifically just for the OAF, so I can imagine, I 507 00:34:52,239 --> 00:34:54,760 mean, just way more complex space to actually have to think about the whole 508 00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:59,840 API and not just this small little off piece. Yeah, you know, 509 00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:04,079 the authentication piece is complex enough that there are players in this space, not 510 00:35:04,159 --> 00:35:07,559 prismatic, but other players that see authentication as most of the value that you 511 00:35:07,559 --> 00:35:14,239 can provide, and they'll like their connectors are basically just the authentication and then 512 00:35:14,599 --> 00:35:17,079 sling whatever you want at it. And for some kinds of problems, that 513 00:35:17,079 --> 00:35:21,559 probably is a pretty decent solution. It doesn't, in our view, solve 514 00:35:21,639 --> 00:35:24,960 enough of the problem though. Sure it's complex in and of itself. No, 515 00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:27,960 I mean we actually went there. I mean, that's actually one of 516 00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:30,199 the things that we offer in our platform. It's not one hundred and fifty 517 00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:35,840 just because it's not that number. It's much less than that. But yeah, 518 00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:37,960 for sure, it wasn't one of the ones that we did recently. 519 00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:40,639 But I do remember working for a company where it was for sure a two 520 00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:45,000 hundred response coming back, and the error whether or not was successful or not 521 00:35:45,119 --> 00:35:49,800 was there was a URL in the body which pointed to I kid you not 522 00:35:50,000 --> 00:35:54,679 a PNG on a website, and the color of a circle or the shape 523 00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:58,760 on there would tell you whether or not it was an error. Like sometimes 524 00:35:58,800 --> 00:36:00,880 it'd be text. But there's no way you're gonna ocr that to figure it 525 00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:05,679 out that that is. That is what I have not seen yet, Warren. 526 00:36:05,840 --> 00:36:13,119 So, uh, congrats. I image recognition as air as air handling 527 00:36:13,199 --> 00:36:16,440 is something. He's laughing. I still I still get, you know, 528 00:36:16,559 --> 00:36:21,320 flashbacks to how how bad this was, and I'm just like, what do 529 00:36:21,320 --> 00:36:23,039 you want us to do? And this was like way after we've already moved 530 00:36:23,039 --> 00:36:28,239 to micro services as a company and gone much farther than that, and we 531 00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:30,599 still had teams that were building solutions that that had this stuff. And it's 532 00:36:30,639 --> 00:36:34,679 great to know that in a lot of cases there's a company out there that 533 00:36:34,719 --> 00:36:38,199 would actually just you know, have to inspect those images for me. Yeah. 534 00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:42,800 I guess, uh, that's that's my lot in life at this point. 535 00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:49,760 So, I mean, you could use like Amazon Mechanical Turk and send 536 00:36:49,800 --> 00:36:53,159 the you are there, we go them and have somebody click the URL and 537 00:36:53,199 --> 00:37:00,400 then reply back with whether that was successful a sponsor and error response. Well, 538 00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:01,639 let's just let's take it all the way down. Let's just not even 539 00:37:01,679 --> 00:37:06,119 have APIs. We'll just have Mechanical Turk and and access database and they can 540 00:37:06,199 --> 00:37:12,920 just they can just enter everything. Absolutely, we need to bring more aucrosoft 541 00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:16,280 access back. Is that even still any product? I honestly don't know. 542 00:37:17,039 --> 00:37:20,960 I'm sure, I'm sure it's one of those. Like it's probably still running 543 00:37:20,960 --> 00:37:25,039 power plants somewhere, you know, because that's how that that's how that works, 544 00:37:25,079 --> 00:37:28,800 right, Like, once the thing gets enough ubiquity. Uh, it's 545 00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:30,440 it's pretty hard to ever deprecate it for real. That might be a state 546 00:37:30,519 --> 00:37:35,840 secret somewhere that they're actually using, you know, a legacy version of access 547 00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:38,960 database. You should not spill that information. Uh, that could be a 548 00:37:38,960 --> 00:37:44,880 supply chain attack coming in the future. Yeah, sorry, apparently. Yeah, 549 00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:47,239 So we are live streaming. So if you were watching the live stream 550 00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:51,840 and it suddenly got interrupted, it's because we stumbled across the topic we weren't 551 00:37:51,840 --> 00:38:04,760 supposed to talk about. So whenever you're creating the public integrations that you have, 552 00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:09,039 what's the process of deciding who you're gonna who you're gonna integrate with. 553 00:38:10,639 --> 00:38:14,360 I mean, I think there's always a lot of nuance to it. But 554 00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:20,199 I think just broadly, we're looking for solutions that are that horizontally serve SaaS 555 00:38:20,280 --> 00:38:25,199 companies or horizontally relevant. I guess to SaaS companies rather than some specific vertical 556 00:38:27,079 --> 00:38:30,880 so like we could chase let's we talked about Agitech before, we could chase 557 00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:32,159 the players in eg tech, and we could have one hundred and fifty or 558 00:38:32,159 --> 00:38:36,880 two hundred connectors just in ag tech if that's what we wanted to do. 559 00:38:37,119 --> 00:38:38,239 The problem, of course with that is, well, now you've built an 560 00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:43,199 embedded ipass for ag tech, and that's probably not a product that's gonna to 561 00:38:43,199 --> 00:38:46,000 reach in US critical mass. And so we've always looked for the things that 562 00:38:46,039 --> 00:38:50,920 serve horizontally. There are some really obvious ones, like go look at the 563 00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:54,000 list of the biggest thirty software companies in the world or SaaS companies in the 564 00:38:54,039 --> 00:38:57,719 world, and you're going to find, you know, many of them that 565 00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:00,599 are on our connector list. Salesforce hubspots is now you know, the list 566 00:39:00,599 --> 00:39:04,840 goes on Oracle, et cetera, et cetera. I think from there, 567 00:39:04,920 --> 00:39:07,880 though, you can kind of take the like we want to we want to 568 00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:12,960 serve folks horizontally. That doesn't necessarily mean the biggest ones. It sometimes means, 569 00:39:13,679 --> 00:39:19,360 you know, in integration heavy sub markets, which one seem to be 570 00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:22,000 the most horizontal. For example, UH and and you end up with things 571 00:39:22,039 --> 00:39:28,880 like the sales marketing category or the sales marketing vertical has a huge integration problem, 572 00:39:29,360 --> 00:39:32,159 you know, and there are solutions like segment that basically just do that. 573 00:39:32,159 --> 00:39:36,800 They're a little more of an ETL, but it's similar. So we 574 00:39:36,920 --> 00:39:39,079 have a bunch of sales and marketing tools, some of which are much smaller 575 00:39:39,119 --> 00:39:44,239 than the service now is, et cetera. But because that space is so 576 00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:46,079 integration heavy, it makes sense. So I think, you know, we're 577 00:39:46,119 --> 00:39:50,199 weighing a bunch of different things. And this is the challenge of being a 578 00:39:50,199 --> 00:39:53,280 product manager is there's never a there's never an exact formula to spit out the 579 00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:57,199 answer. I actually heard a different thing when you said that, which is, 580 00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:01,199 if you are planning on building a platform embedded ipass as a service for 581 00:40:01,320 --> 00:40:06,800 a specific market, you should consider trying to partner with prismatic and use it 582 00:40:06,840 --> 00:40:13,119 as your fundamental under under a layer because be generic and go specifically into ag 583 00:40:13,239 --> 00:40:15,840 techs or ed tech or you know, sales, et cetera. I think 584 00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:22,960 there is absolutely a future where a space like ours ends up with people who 585 00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:24,400 pull it in. We always talk about it is like pull it into a 586 00:40:24,440 --> 00:40:30,880 domain like customize it for that domain and then have the you know, Prismatic, 587 00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:35,639 egg Tech or whatever. And I think, I think you're right that 588 00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:38,559 as platforms like Prismatic get better and better and better at being the being the 589 00:40:38,599 --> 00:40:43,320 guts. But we don't know any I don't know anything about egg tech aside 590 00:40:43,320 --> 00:40:47,440 from the tractor conversation we just had a half an hour ago. People who 591 00:40:47,519 --> 00:40:51,440 understand those domains really could do interesting things. And we have a couple of 592 00:40:51,440 --> 00:40:54,360 partners doing things kind of like that in a couple of spaces, and I 593 00:40:54,400 --> 00:41:00,280 expect to see that pull up, right, Although we shouldn't talk about a 594 00:41:00,440 --> 00:41:05,079 tech because I'm totally excited about going and doing that now and just spending my 595 00:41:05,199 --> 00:41:09,559 day driving around fields to tractors to reboot them. Like that's a good time 596 00:41:09,599 --> 00:41:14,400 waiting to happen for me. You actually want to become a tractor repair man 597 00:41:14,559 --> 00:41:19,039 and get the uh you know, your phone hooked up to the legacy SMS 598 00:41:19,079 --> 00:41:23,440 technology and get those messages. You may never see another human being the rest 599 00:41:23,559 --> 00:41:25,840 as long as you live, if that's your path, like you know, 600 00:41:27,039 --> 00:41:34,480 thrown me with a good time, So not seeing if another human may be 601 00:41:34,519 --> 00:41:39,400 a pro for some The con is I think we've now waited into the right 602 00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:44,360 to repair debate. Uh, you know, a huge, a huge seing 603 00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:46,159 with tractors. Is that mostly not repaarable now, is the way I understand 604 00:41:46,159 --> 00:41:50,000 it. Uh. You know, they've gotten so technical and the such closed 605 00:41:50,039 --> 00:41:53,119 walls that I think you basically can't be a tech that just drives around and 606 00:41:53,159 --> 00:41:58,559 repairs tractors now, which legislation quite hot, But I don't know where. 607 00:41:58,559 --> 00:42:00,920 I don't know if the past or didn't pass. I just I remember the 608 00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:05,440 debate it very well did may have passed. I imagine it will take a 609 00:42:05,480 --> 00:42:12,199 little while to filter through the industry. I mean, if you're if you're 610 00:42:12,239 --> 00:42:15,519 subscribed to like the the ag tech RSS feed, I'm sure you know the 611 00:42:15,599 --> 00:42:19,800 answer to that. But I remember that. I remember the conversation. Yeah, 612 00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:23,119 and I think that it went that they couldn't stop you from working on 613 00:42:23,159 --> 00:42:28,159 your own tractor. But like both of you, I don't know for certain 614 00:42:28,159 --> 00:42:30,400 that that was the answer. Yeah, And it's one of those things where 615 00:42:30,960 --> 00:42:32,320 you know that the skeptic in me wondering what does that? What does that 616 00:42:32,360 --> 00:42:36,039 mean? In practice? Right? Like, I mean, you know as 617 00:42:36,039 --> 00:42:37,480 well as I do. You got a bunch of embedded micro controllers on a 618 00:42:37,559 --> 00:42:42,400 tractor with a bunch of like sea or rust or something built on them fifteen 619 00:42:42,480 --> 00:42:45,639 years ago. Okay, so I can. I can open the panel and 620 00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:50,079 poke at it, but what like, do I have a j tag programmer 621 00:42:50,079 --> 00:42:52,360 for this thing? Like it's uh, you know, it seems it seems 622 00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:55,000 like a stretch as technical as they've gotten. I mean, the old ones 623 00:42:55,039 --> 00:42:58,599 I think are easier. You know, you can try to find on eBay 624 00:42:58,679 --> 00:43:01,199 some part that that exact thing and you throw it in there. I think 625 00:43:01,199 --> 00:43:05,880 the new ones are really the problematic. They're so well integrated that even if 626 00:43:05,880 --> 00:43:08,159 you have the right to do it, there's no expert out there outside of 627 00:43:08,199 --> 00:43:12,559 the company who actually even understands what that is. And have you tried to 628 00:43:12,559 --> 00:43:17,039 go through manuals on like how Windows ninety five was actually built and like read 629 00:43:17,119 --> 00:43:20,519 through that. I mean, I'm sure some people have gone through that and 630 00:43:20,559 --> 00:43:22,360 be like, I know every single bit that's here and would be able to 631 00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:28,159 understand it. But it's it's its own sort of problematic situation of bean to 632 00:43:28,199 --> 00:43:32,400 try to fix a complicated machine. Yeah, and from that perspective, I 633 00:43:32,400 --> 00:43:38,480 can understand the manufacturer's desire to sort not. It's I don't feel like it's 634 00:43:38,519 --> 00:43:43,760 a protection thing. It's like a maybe a self preservation thing, because they 635 00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:47,199 know what's going to happen is somebody's going to open it up, upload some 636 00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:51,920 rom that they got off of pirate Bay on there. It's going to brick 637 00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:53,559 it, and then they've got to do a warranty repair on this thing. 638 00:43:54,599 --> 00:43:59,519 I think part of it is definitely a mote around exposing it. I know 639 00:43:59,599 --> 00:44:02,079 part of it. It's definitely ip where if you expose that, there will 640 00:44:02,079 --> 00:44:06,199 be ten other companies who build that exact same thing, who promise that they 641 00:44:06,199 --> 00:44:10,239 can connect to the ag tech network automatically and work exactly the same. So 642 00:44:10,519 --> 00:44:14,599 I can imagine, like all of the things happening here, I'm on the 643 00:44:14,679 --> 00:44:16,559 opposite side for sure, though I prefer open. I think there's a lot 644 00:44:16,599 --> 00:44:20,760 more benefit that comes from it. You know, I think we're building platforms 645 00:44:20,760 --> 00:44:23,679 here. We tend to believe that in general, you don't have a competitive 646 00:44:23,679 --> 00:44:28,400 advantage just because you built it first, Right, it has to fundamentally be 647 00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:31,280 better, and having customers or users out there that are pushing you to get 648 00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:37,000 better is for sure a better direction to go in. Yeah, it almost 649 00:44:37,039 --> 00:44:43,559 feels like they're still in the an environment similar to what we were in in 650 00:44:43,599 --> 00:44:52,960 the nineties, where closed loop competitive agreements and intellectual property was the defining factor 651 00:44:52,000 --> 00:44:57,159 in your business, not how much value you actually provided to your customers. 652 00:44:57,519 --> 00:45:00,920 Oh, we're going to get this all loop back around, and to do 653 00:45:00,960 --> 00:45:05,079 it today and deliver value, you need to have the most number of integrations. 654 00:45:05,519 --> 00:45:08,000 Right there, you go full circle. Lauren, you're a geni, 655 00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:17,920 You're a podcast genius. So what does the future of Prismatic look like? 656 00:45:20,960 --> 00:45:23,800 Yeah, you know, I think we started with a really simple plan, 657 00:45:24,000 --> 00:45:29,039 which was we're going to build a thing that makes what we just finished doing 658 00:45:29,079 --> 00:45:32,559 at old company not insane. Uh you know, when I left there, 659 00:45:34,360 --> 00:45:38,719 sold sold it to a big investor. We had we had about one hundred 660 00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:44,320 folks in our engineering team, and about half of our resources were on integrations. 661 00:45:44,800 --> 00:45:49,199 There's like no CEO or a product manager or anybody really who wants to 662 00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:51,800 see that on a slide and think like, yeah, that feels right. 663 00:45:52,000 --> 00:45:54,400 And so like, you know, we started out just to say we're gonna 664 00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:58,280 we're gonna solve as much of that problem as we can. And we didn't 665 00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:01,079 even start with a real opinion about what shape that solution would take. And 666 00:46:01,199 --> 00:46:05,599 you know, that was five years ago. Now we built, you know, 667 00:46:05,639 --> 00:46:08,199 an early product, iterated with customers. We're now scaling the business and 668 00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:13,880 you know, are growing pretty quickly, and through that, I think our 669 00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:17,159 viewpoint on what shape that solution takes has continued to evolve. I think as 670 00:46:17,159 --> 00:46:20,760 you get more customers, I think is the category evolves. I mean, 671 00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:23,039 our category didn't even have a name until about three years ago, so it's 672 00:46:23,079 --> 00:46:29,320 it's certainly a fast moving place. I think some of our original you know, 673 00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:30,960 ideas about what was important have turned out to be less important, and 674 00:46:31,039 --> 00:46:36,960 vice versa. You know. I think we will just continue iterating on that, 675 00:46:37,079 --> 00:46:43,800 like core belief that there has to be a solution to let software companies 676 00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:46,840 connect their products to the other products their customers use as easy as possible. 677 00:46:47,159 --> 00:46:51,639 And I think we're mostly agnostic about the shape of that solution. I think 678 00:46:51,639 --> 00:46:55,079 we're mostly agnostic about whether it's more code or more low code or both or 679 00:46:55,519 --> 00:46:59,719 like you know, we see so many companies that get really opinionated about that, 680 00:46:59,800 --> 00:47:02,840 and we certainly have opinions about where different pieces of the solution make sense. 681 00:47:02,920 --> 00:47:06,679 But I think to some extent, we're just looking for a solution. 682 00:47:06,800 --> 00:47:09,039 We're just iterating toward a solution, and we're pretty willing to take that wherever 683 00:47:09,079 --> 00:47:13,360 it goes. So I expect for the next few years we're going to keep 684 00:47:13,400 --> 00:47:15,400 with exactly that same mindset. We're going to keep building fast, We're going 685 00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:19,400 to keep working closely with customers. We're going to keep you know, iterating 686 00:47:19,440 --> 00:47:22,039 on the code native side, iterating on the low code side, continuing to 687 00:47:22,039 --> 00:47:27,000 scale the infrastructure because we keep getting bigger customers that keep inventing new ways to 688 00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:30,239 do crazy things with integrations, and I think all of that in and of 689 00:47:30,280 --> 00:47:34,880 itself is going to keep us really busy, you know. So as long 690 00:47:34,920 --> 00:47:37,800 as all of that keeps serving customers better every day or at least every week, 691 00:47:38,440 --> 00:47:42,000 I think I think we'll absolutely be doing that. I think you did 692 00:47:42,039 --> 00:47:46,079 something with genius here. Actually going a little bit further, as companies have 693 00:47:46,559 --> 00:47:51,880 engineers on staff called integration engineer or like sometimes they're in the customer success role. 694 00:47:52,159 --> 00:47:54,480 So I can imagine as long as people are hiring for that position, 695 00:47:54,559 --> 00:48:00,199 they're not necessarily utilizing this great resource that's out there instead right, you know, 696 00:48:00,199 --> 00:48:02,920 instead of hiring an engineer it's probably a lot cheaper to even go out 697 00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:07,280 in a lot faster to integrate Prismatic in the long term. Yeah, and 698 00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:14,079 a lot of the actual end users in the SaaS business of Prismatic are integration 699 00:48:14,159 --> 00:48:19,000 engineers or integration specialists or you know, they have a million different titles. 700 00:48:19,039 --> 00:48:23,679 But you're exactly right, like we're we're a platform that can to a large 701 00:48:23,679 --> 00:48:29,159 extent, enable those teams independently so that they're not as reliant on DevOps for 702 00:48:29,199 --> 00:48:31,719 example. They're not as reliance on core developers, for example, and they 703 00:48:31,719 --> 00:48:37,480 have a platform that's kind of like their sandbox to go build their stuff in 704 00:48:37,920 --> 00:48:40,360 and that has worked extremely well. Like we're, we can provide a huge 705 00:48:40,400 --> 00:48:43,800 amount of leverage in there for a huge amount of value for those teams, 706 00:48:44,960 --> 00:48:49,000 and sometimes let those teams get structured in different ways where you know, you'll 707 00:48:49,159 --> 00:48:52,960 you'll hire for a different profile than you otherwise would because it turns out they 708 00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:57,559 don't need to manage a Kubernetes cluster to you know, to deploy integrations, 709 00:48:58,320 --> 00:49:00,880 you know, and you can instead focus on more domain expertise or more like 710 00:49:00,960 --> 00:49:06,880 API expertise or things like that. I like to hear that you're sticking with 711 00:49:06,920 --> 00:49:12,280 your core value proposition, because that's one of the things that you know, 712 00:49:12,320 --> 00:49:15,039 it's almost my entire career working with startups, and that's always been the big 713 00:49:15,119 --> 00:49:20,840 struggle is for those that actually make it to the part where they know what 714 00:49:20,920 --> 00:49:28,679 their core value is. After like achieving a moderate level of success there, 715 00:49:29,239 --> 00:49:34,079 they tend to wander off somewhere else and do something else. And My Fitness 716 00:49:34,079 --> 00:49:37,400 Pal is my favorite example of this because you know, when they got started, 717 00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:39,239 it was all about just tracking your food, you know, put in 718 00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:44,920 your food and it gave you the stuff there and they were hugely successful at 719 00:49:44,960 --> 00:49:49,800 that. But today if you open the my fitness Pal app, you have 720 00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:53,719 to navigate through three different screens before you get to the to the screen where 721 00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:59,840 you do the core thing that they do. So I'm excited to hear that 722 00:49:59,880 --> 00:50:04,360 you sticking with that and that you're not you know, you haven't gotten shiny 723 00:50:04,400 --> 00:50:07,800 objects syndrome and have gone off to chase something else. Yeah. I think 724 00:50:07,840 --> 00:50:13,519 there are rational reasons at some scale to start diversifying a product line. I 725 00:50:13,519 --> 00:50:15,199 mean, at some point you've saturated a market, for example, and if 726 00:50:15,199 --> 00:50:19,840 you're going to keep growing, you have to you know, somehow diversify when 727 00:50:20,000 --> 00:50:23,199 when your target market is what prismatics target market is, which is essentially all 728 00:50:23,199 --> 00:50:28,840 software businesses worldwide, there is no risk of saturating that market anytime soon, 729 00:50:29,000 --> 00:50:30,719 right, So, like, I think, we know this is something that 730 00:50:30,760 --> 00:50:32,800 we set out to do, we know that we're good at it, we 731 00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:36,519 know that we've thought really hard about it for years and years and years. 732 00:50:37,039 --> 00:50:38,880 Why would we spend our time on anything else? I think is basically the 733 00:50:38,880 --> 00:50:43,440 way that we see it here, and I think we will just keep doubling 734 00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:46,559 down on on that and keep serving a bigger and bigger chunk of that market 735 00:50:46,599 --> 00:50:52,719 every day. There's a it actually reminds me of a totally different vertical here 736 00:50:52,480 --> 00:51:00,000 in the mutual fund and investment world finance. Okay, there's a writer Investors 737 00:51:00,039 --> 00:51:01,360 and Lynch who has a book one up on Wall Street and he calls it 738 00:51:01,400 --> 00:51:06,280 value based investing. But he actually coined a term here to mean that the 739 00:51:06,280 --> 00:51:09,559 the investors go out and they start to do extra things, or the companies 740 00:51:09,559 --> 00:51:15,039 that they're focused on actually do these things. His he coined it diversification. 741 00:51:15,679 --> 00:51:21,280 So you're you're diversifying what you're doing, but you know you're not good at 742 00:51:21,280 --> 00:51:23,280 that next thing. You're not good at the next step, So you're really 743 00:51:23,320 --> 00:51:28,800 just making your whole portfolio worse in a way. I see you try if 744 00:51:28,840 --> 00:51:31,840 you're just not good at it, Well, I think, I mean, 745 00:51:31,880 --> 00:51:35,039 it's so hard to be good at one thing. Think of how hard it 746 00:51:35,079 --> 00:51:37,719 is to be good at four things, right, like, especially especially before 747 00:51:37,760 --> 00:51:42,360 you're at a scale where you can you know, bring in people to you 748 00:51:42,360 --> 00:51:44,360 know, to do some of that, and uh, you know, I 749 00:51:44,360 --> 00:51:47,480 would argue that that scale is pretty good sized. Yeah, I mean that's 750 00:51:47,519 --> 00:51:52,159 a standard founder of mistake. I think that, Oh we were so survivorship 751 00:51:52,199 --> 00:51:53,679 buy us right. We were good one time. You know, if we 752 00:51:53,840 --> 00:51:57,800 just do the same thing again, we'll be successful a second time with a 753 00:51:57,840 --> 00:52:00,920 new thing. Realistically, it doesn't work that way. You got lucky. 754 00:52:00,039 --> 00:52:02,960 Maybe you know, you had help, you had backing, right, you 755 00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:07,079 had no need to do it. Your network was perfectly aligned for whatever whatever 756 00:52:07,119 --> 00:52:12,760 that is that made it happen. That's likely not the second true the second 757 00:52:12,800 --> 00:52:15,880 time around. So you know, like like Will said, it's great to 758 00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:21,239 hear you know that the focus is there for Yeah, I'm I'm acutely dialed 759 00:52:21,239 --> 00:52:22,960 into the second founder thing. I you know, had a pretty good exit 760 00:52:23,079 --> 00:52:27,119 last time, and I was too young to retire, so I did this. 761 00:52:27,239 --> 00:52:29,880 But I went into this thinking like, oh my gosh, Like, 762 00:52:30,280 --> 00:52:32,119 I mean, so many things had to go right. I can look back 763 00:52:32,159 --> 00:52:36,079 over the sixteen years of my first thing and see all of the stars and 764 00:52:36,079 --> 00:52:38,280 moons that had to align to make that happen. What are the chances that 765 00:52:38,280 --> 00:52:42,719 that happens you know again? And you know what, you realize it is 766 00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:45,440 going to be a very different path and it's gonna you know whatever. But 767 00:52:45,639 --> 00:52:50,360 yeah, I was I was terrified starting prismatic that like, you know, 768 00:52:50,440 --> 00:52:53,079 you had one good run and now you decided to just like do it one 769 00:52:53,079 --> 00:52:55,679 too many times and this one, this one blows up in your face. 770 00:52:57,239 --> 00:52:59,840 You know, you waste a bunch of years. But it's gone, okay, 771 00:53:00,199 --> 00:53:04,800 I'm feeling better about it every day. And there's that paranoia that karma 772 00:53:04,880 --> 00:53:07,960 is going to go, look, we cut you some slack and now you're 773 00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:13,159 pushing your luck. We gotta put exactly And then there's I think there's a 774 00:53:13,639 --> 00:53:16,000 go ahead, Oh you go ahead. Well I was gonna say there's there's 775 00:53:16,079 --> 00:53:21,400 pressure there, you know, because like when you're a solo founder, like 776 00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:23,280 ah, whatever, you know, it's just me. But then you start 777 00:53:23,280 --> 00:53:30,360 adding employees and oh yeah, and so now like you have like your employees, 778 00:53:30,559 --> 00:53:35,239 kids are essentially your kids because you're on the hook for making sure that 779 00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:39,679 they get provided for and that weighs heavily on your mind. Yeah, definitely 780 00:53:39,760 --> 00:53:45,039 something you notice along the way. I remember I, you know, early 781 00:53:45,079 --> 00:53:46,519 in my career, and the last thing is we got to a decent size 782 00:53:46,559 --> 00:53:50,880 and it was a lot of young folks at the time, and they all 783 00:53:50,880 --> 00:53:53,480 started having kids and buying houses because that's what you do when you're you know, 784 00:53:53,880 --> 00:53:57,480 in your late twenties or early thirties or whatever, and things are going 785 00:53:57,480 --> 00:54:00,679 well. And I suddenly realized, like, oh my off, the amount 786 00:54:00,679 --> 00:54:05,840 of like capital outlay happening, you know, far flung from this organization is 787 00:54:05,920 --> 00:54:07,719 kind of terrifying. We better not screw this up at this point. And 788 00:54:08,440 --> 00:54:12,079 that stuck in my brain for a long time as a I don't know, 789 00:54:12,079 --> 00:54:14,800 I was probably twenty four or something at the time, and that was a 790 00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:17,119 that was a grow up quick moment for me in a lot of ways. 791 00:54:17,320 --> 00:54:21,599 Hey, you're like, I'm twenty four and have fifteen mortgages. Yeah, 792 00:54:21,679 --> 00:54:29,960 exactly, exactly, so from a technical perspective, you know, whenever we 793 00:54:30,000 --> 00:54:37,000 talk about integrations, my mind instantly goes to calling HTTP APIs and getting a 794 00:54:37,039 --> 00:54:44,719 payload. Hopefully it's a Jason payload. What is Is there a common pattern 795 00:54:44,880 --> 00:54:51,480 or is there do you have you done enough of these where you have like 796 00:54:51,480 --> 00:54:57,559 like just I guess, just some general advice on things about APIs or integrations 797 00:54:57,599 --> 00:55:01,719 that were surprising. I mean, I don't know that I was even surprised 798 00:55:01,719 --> 00:55:06,039 by this, because I'd seen enough pain along the way in my previous journey. 799 00:55:06,039 --> 00:55:09,880 But like there is every everything in the world is out there. You 800 00:55:09,880 --> 00:55:14,480 know, there are still soap APIs. There are still soap APIs in giant 801 00:55:14,480 --> 00:55:17,920 applications, you know that are really important applications that run the world. And 802 00:55:19,599 --> 00:55:21,880 you know, there are plenty of rest APIs that don't give you JSON. 803 00:55:21,960 --> 00:55:24,320 Now there are of course some that do, but there are there are plenty 804 00:55:24,360 --> 00:55:28,920 that don't. There are also plenty of integrations that don't have anything to do 805 00:55:28,960 --> 00:55:31,519 with httpa APIs. You know, it's like we're going to take a flat 806 00:55:31,559 --> 00:55:35,519 file and we're going to put it in ss FTP share somewhere, and we 807 00:55:35,599 --> 00:55:38,239 all laugh about that, and it does feel very antiquated, but like the 808 00:55:38,559 --> 00:55:42,880 huge amount of the world is run on things like that, and you know, 809 00:55:42,960 --> 00:55:45,159 I think, I think, uh, companies that really want to do 810 00:55:45,159 --> 00:55:50,079 integration as well can't just decide they're only going to integrate with things that happen 811 00:55:50,159 --> 00:55:52,800 to have the most modern, most palatable API. I think instead you have 812 00:55:52,840 --> 00:55:55,280 to think about it from a customer perspective, and like, I don't care 813 00:55:55,320 --> 00:55:58,400 how we do it. What I know is that we need to do this 814 00:55:58,440 --> 00:56:01,400 for our customer. And if that means like reading some crazy, you know, 815 00:56:01,519 --> 00:56:06,559 flat file that's fixed with and you know, sticking it on an SFTP 816 00:56:06,719 --> 00:56:09,119 share somewhere, then that's what we're going to do. There are also plenty 817 00:56:09,159 --> 00:56:13,719 of integrations that, you know, although many of the solutions may be in 818 00:56:13,760 --> 00:56:15,800 the cloud, some place that data has to end up is not in the 819 00:56:15,840 --> 00:56:20,199 cloud. You know, it's it's behind a firewall in a data center somewhere, 820 00:56:20,239 --> 00:56:22,760 or maybe behind a firewall in a Even if it's in a cloud, 821 00:56:22,800 --> 00:56:25,400 it's like for some reason cordoned off from the public Internet. And so you 822 00:56:25,480 --> 00:56:30,960 know, something that Prismatic released relatively recently is on premise agent where you can 823 00:56:30,039 --> 00:56:34,559 run inside, you know, in doctor, you can run inside your environment 824 00:56:34,639 --> 00:56:37,519 something that we're remote tunnel to prismatic such that we can dump a flat file 825 00:56:37,599 --> 00:56:42,239 to your file share inside the thing, or maybe talk to an API that 826 00:56:42,320 --> 00:56:45,119 happens to be private behind a firewall. So I think the diversity of these 827 00:56:45,119 --> 00:56:50,480 things is way more than most people give it credit for. We all think 828 00:56:50,519 --> 00:56:53,320 about the you know name hot SaaS app here that has a really cool graph 829 00:56:53,360 --> 00:56:58,199 q LAPI. That's what we think APIs are. The reality is some APIs 830 00:56:58,320 --> 00:57:02,480 or you know, APIs that maybe don't even meet the definition. Technically the 831 00:57:02,519 --> 00:57:07,920 word invented thirty years ago and are still really important parts of the world. 832 00:57:07,760 --> 00:57:14,719 So I think being flexible and finding tooling that lets you be flexible is maybe 833 00:57:14,760 --> 00:57:21,360 the advice I would give. Yeah, I'm glad I asked that, because 834 00:57:21,360 --> 00:57:24,320 you know, I spend so much time in new tech startups that I just 835 00:57:24,800 --> 00:57:30,760 naturally think of Jason, APIs or graph ql or whatever. And You've got 836 00:57:30,800 --> 00:57:36,400 a great point. You know, like some of these legacy companies, their 837 00:57:36,679 --> 00:57:42,599 their footprint and their infrastructure is just so massive that I'm sure they would like 838 00:57:42,599 --> 00:57:45,760 to upgrade to something newer too, but the level of effort to do so 839 00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:52,480 is just cost prohibitive, especially if what you currently have is working. And 840 00:57:52,599 --> 00:57:55,639 that is the truth of it. And I mean this is not always the 841 00:57:55,639 --> 00:58:00,079 most popular opinion among technical folks, but like, some of this stuff has 842 00:58:00,119 --> 00:58:05,599 worked for thirty years, don't I don't know that we really want to swap 843 00:58:05,639 --> 00:58:07,440 it out for a new thing. Like, you know, there kind of 844 00:58:07,440 --> 00:58:12,440 has to be this like barrier you cross for the things that you might get 845 00:58:12,480 --> 00:58:15,599 if the new thing works out well before you're willing to take on the risk 846 00:58:15,639 --> 00:58:17,119 of a new thing. And do we all snicker and laugh at the flat 847 00:58:17,119 --> 00:58:21,559 file that gets put on an SFTP share every fifteen minutes around the clock that 848 00:58:21,679 --> 00:58:24,199 happens to run some mission critical thing at a power plants or whatever. Yes, 849 00:58:24,239 --> 00:58:28,880 we all sticker about that. Has it worked basically NonStop for thirty years? 850 00:58:29,360 --> 00:58:32,960 Yes, I can see, yeah exactly. So, like there are 851 00:58:34,800 --> 00:58:38,760 obviously really complex things to weigh there, and you know, obviously everybody's slowly 852 00:58:38,800 --> 00:58:43,159 modernizing. That will go on forever, I imagine in technology, and so 853 00:58:43,199 --> 00:58:45,480 this stuff won't exist forever. But you aren't going to get you know, 854 00:58:45,599 --> 00:58:50,559 somebody to move that overnight because you thought it would be nicer if they hedographic 855 00:58:50,599 --> 00:58:52,920 QLAPI. It is that is, that is not how the world works, 856 00:58:52,920 --> 00:58:59,280 and so I think, I think again flexibility is really important. Yeah, 857 00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:05,199 for sure, Warren, do you see that a lot with was the authentication 858 00:59:05,400 --> 00:59:07,559 and authorization space. I didn't know which way to go with as honestly, 859 00:59:07,559 --> 00:59:10,639 because I worked. I worked in a place where we were shipping around like 860 00:59:10,719 --> 00:59:17,320 gigabyte large doc files for customers manufacturing and so like. Yeah, for sure, 861 00:59:17,360 --> 00:59:21,159 anyone who's like, we were rest all the way until I got to 862 00:59:21,199 --> 00:59:25,840 this file and then you're not basically faring that and shipping it over an API, 863 00:59:27,000 --> 00:59:30,639 like, I'm just gonna laugh at you. I mean, realistically, 864 00:59:30,639 --> 00:59:32,079 how are you getting five gigs over the internet like that? For sure, 865 00:59:32,119 --> 00:59:37,159 you're compressing it it's some binary format and being sent like that. Yeah. 866 00:59:37,199 --> 00:59:40,800 But on the off side, absolutely, for surely even these providers that say 867 00:59:40,840 --> 00:59:47,119 they're oh too compatible, they'll support XML and other ones. I mean AWS 868 00:59:47,199 --> 00:59:52,000 for instance a good example. Until recently, I think all their APIs were 869 00:59:52,239 --> 00:59:55,400 still fundamentally XML based. I mean the SDKs of course handled it appropriately, 870 00:59:55,679 --> 01:00:00,800 but their XML requests and that's still fairly calm. The actually, interestingly enough, 871 01:00:00,920 --> 01:00:05,400 the default standard for OATH two, because of the legacy of how the 872 01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:13,320 Internet was built, supports URL encoded at www url encoded format, not JASON 873 01:00:13,360 --> 01:00:16,000 by default, so that's the primary one that we have to support. I 874 01:00:16,000 --> 01:00:20,239 mean, by default we do Jason just because it looks nicer for everyone and 875 01:00:20,280 --> 01:00:22,480 debugging, but you get a lot of weird behavior, like if you don't 876 01:00:22,519 --> 01:00:27,360 specify the accept header, sometimes the docs will say, hey, we're XML, 877 01:00:27,400 --> 01:00:30,639 but the result will be some nonsensical other thing. So there is a 878 01:00:30,719 --> 01:00:36,400 lot of undefined behavior when not requesting explicit things. And a part of it 879 01:00:36,440 --> 01:00:37,679 is, unfortunately, the legacy world that we're still using. Yes, the 880 01:00:37,800 --> 01:00:43,400 Internet is part of that legacy, unfortunately, so we're dealing with the consequences 881 01:00:43,400 --> 01:00:45,480 of that. I don't know if I have any particularly good stories because we're 882 01:00:45,480 --> 01:00:50,679 not shipping along a lot of data. But if you think anything related to 883 01:00:50,800 --> 01:00:53,719 a author open ideas bad, like, just take a look at the guts 884 01:00:53,760 --> 01:00:58,159 of how SAMIL works. I mean, this is security over XML, and 885 01:00:58,280 --> 01:01:00,760 this is I mean, it's not the most shocking thing ever, but it 886 01:01:00,800 --> 01:01:06,119 gives you a good understanding that like literally every stas company out there that offers 887 01:01:06,239 --> 01:01:09,199 SSO as an option is doing XML in some way and you're not going to 888 01:01:09,199 --> 01:01:14,760 get away from that. Yeah, I think that's right. The other thing 889 01:01:14,760 --> 01:01:16,119 I always think about is, like, you know, we talk about XML 890 01:01:16,159 --> 01:01:20,920 as this legacy thing, which at this point it is fifteen years ago it 891 01:01:20,960 --> 01:01:22,519 was the hot fangled whatever, right, and so like, I think what 892 01:01:22,719 --> 01:01:28,519 is often lost on us is we are building we're building legacy tech right now, 893 01:01:28,920 --> 01:01:31,400 and in ten or fifteen years we're going to dislike what we're building right 894 01:01:31,440 --> 01:01:35,440 now. Like that has proven to be true since the beginning of computing, 895 01:01:35,480 --> 01:01:38,800 So I don't know why it wouldn't continue from here. There's always going to 896 01:01:38,800 --> 01:01:42,920 be legacy stuff. And I think, you know, a key belief that 897 01:01:43,000 --> 01:01:46,400 prismatic is that's the real world and we live in the real world. We're 898 01:01:46,920 --> 01:01:51,920 not making the nicest platform to make a really cool blog post to show that 899 01:01:51,960 --> 01:01:54,079 in two minutes you can connect this to this and move on with your life, 900 01:01:54,159 --> 01:01:58,400 because that is in the real world. The real world is all of 901 01:01:58,440 --> 01:02:01,639 this complexity and all of this data and five gigabyte doc files. And you 902 01:02:01,719 --> 01:02:04,519 know, I mean like, because whether we like it or not, that's 903 01:02:04,519 --> 01:02:07,199 the real world. So the next time you're having a bad day, that's 904 01:02:07,199 --> 01:02:10,039 a thought to keep in mind. Just remember that if you're really lucky, 905 01:02:10,639 --> 01:02:14,519 ten years from now, someone's going to be looking at this code you're writing, 906 01:02:14,599 --> 01:02:17,719 bitching about how it's legacy. Yep, they're going to be talking about 907 01:02:17,760 --> 01:02:22,880 this stupid graph ql thing where like there, you know, it's just I 908 01:02:22,920 --> 01:02:27,000 don't know what we'll do instead, but like graph ql will be will be 909 01:02:27,079 --> 01:02:29,519 chopped delivered, It'll be the worst thing ever and we'll all make fun of 910 01:02:29,519 --> 01:02:30,920 it. I'm sure the answer is there is going to be some sort of 911 01:02:31,159 --> 01:02:37,239 LM involved there, and I don't know I'm okay for that future yet. 912 01:02:37,599 --> 01:02:42,880 It's going to be an LM writing it back to an access database at the 913 01:02:42,880 --> 01:02:45,119 bottom. It's always an access database. That's my new life. That's my 914 01:02:45,199 --> 01:02:54,679 new life. Theory awesome. What else should we talk about for integration's prismatic 915 01:02:55,000 --> 01:02:58,840 future goals? I think I think we I think we covered a lot of 916 01:02:58,840 --> 01:03:02,360 things. You know, if it's been really interesting to be at the beginning 917 01:03:02,440 --> 01:03:07,840 of a category. This certainly isn't the first time that that any company has 918 01:03:07,960 --> 01:03:12,639 tried to build a tool to help companies provide native integrations. There have been 919 01:03:12,719 --> 01:03:15,320 kind of like several generations in the past of this, but none of them 920 01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:19,599 really got critical mass in any way. And I think, you know, 921 01:03:19,920 --> 01:03:22,400 we believed when we started this, and I believe, you know, tenfold 922 01:03:22,440 --> 01:03:28,000 that today that like the time is right for this category and these solutions. 923 01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:30,800 And so it's been interesting to watch, like what didn't go right in some 924 01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:36,199 of the previous iterations of this ten years ago, eight years ago, whatever, 925 01:03:36,639 --> 01:03:38,920 why is now the time? And then just watching what it looks like 926 01:03:39,000 --> 01:03:44,039 when you start in a space and you don't know who your competitors are because 927 01:03:45,000 --> 01:03:49,679 they're not calling it the same thing you're calling it. Eventually people kind of 928 01:03:49,719 --> 01:03:52,599 like consolidate around the name. In the case of our category, G two 929 01:03:53,280 --> 01:03:58,079 kind of like helped firm that up by deciding to call it embedded ipass, 930 01:03:58,119 --> 01:04:00,800 and several of us were using that term, and then they've used it and 931 01:04:00,840 --> 01:04:06,320 everybody kind of globbed on. But like just watching from from like goo, 932 01:04:06,639 --> 01:04:12,559 watching a category get firmed up has been really interesting and very different than my 933 01:04:12,679 --> 01:04:15,440 last experience. We were a disruptor in an industry that had been around since 934 01:04:15,440 --> 01:04:18,559 the seventies. You know, there was no category to be formed there. 935 01:04:18,559 --> 01:04:23,039 We were we were like a better tool, we believed, but like we 936 01:04:23,039 --> 01:04:27,440 weren't. We weren't generating in a new space. And that's that's very much 937 01:04:27,440 --> 01:04:30,000 what's happening here. And you know, I think I think software companies, 938 01:04:30,039 --> 01:04:35,519 SaaS companies and developers are are well served to pay attention to the category. 939 01:04:35,559 --> 01:04:40,800 Like even if there's some completely rational reason to keep this stuff in house for 940 01:04:40,920 --> 01:04:45,239 now, I think it's a category that is moving so fast and getting so 941 01:04:45,320 --> 01:04:48,559 much better all the time. Prismatic included in that that. I think we're 942 01:04:48,559 --> 01:04:54,280 seeing more and more people decide what people decided with authentication ten years ago, 943 01:04:54,320 --> 01:04:58,639 which is like can I build this? Yes? Do I want to build 944 01:04:58,639 --> 01:05:00,920 this? Or is it the highest invest you yes? Probably not, I 945 01:05:00,920 --> 01:05:04,599 should probably focus on my core domain instead, right, And I think the 946 01:05:04,639 --> 01:05:09,000 same exact thing is happening in the integration space, and it's been fascinating to 947 01:05:09,039 --> 01:05:12,199 watch. I also think it's going to have a big impact on software companies 948 01:05:12,199 --> 01:05:15,239 because I think everything you can do to focus more of your energy, more 949 01:05:15,239 --> 01:05:19,400 of your R and D energy on core product, the more of that you 950 01:05:19,719 --> 01:05:23,199 can do, the better you're going to serve your customers. And I think 951 01:05:23,199 --> 01:05:27,679 in a little way, this integration platform space and better integration platform space is 952 01:05:27,719 --> 01:05:30,840 a way is a way to do that, and I think software, because 953 01:05:30,840 --> 01:05:32,400 of this and a million other things, is just going to keep getting better 954 01:05:32,480 --> 01:05:35,639 and better and better at serving customers in their own niche and their own neurow 955 01:05:35,679 --> 01:05:41,639 verticals better and better all the time. For sure, what was the first 956 01:05:41,679 --> 01:05:45,039 integration you built for Prismatic do you remember? Oh, that's a good question. 957 01:05:46,320 --> 01:05:50,480 Probably Salesforce, which to this day is our use connector. I mean 958 01:05:50,519 --> 01:05:55,239 it's I think last I heard they had ten percent of the revenue in SaaS 959 01:05:55,280 --> 01:05:59,960 worldwide, So like that's a that's a pretty major, pretty major player obvious. 960 01:06:00,559 --> 01:06:03,400 But you know, some of the earliest ones that we watched our customers 961 01:06:03,400 --> 01:06:08,159 build and go to production were things that like I literally don't remember the name 962 01:06:08,199 --> 01:06:14,239 of it was crazy ERPs and vertical markets, it was you know, sales 963 01:06:14,280 --> 01:06:19,000 tools in big enterprise stuff that were really important to our customers customers and therefore 964 01:06:19,039 --> 01:06:24,440 were important to our customers. And really early on we had validated this idea 965 01:06:24,480 --> 01:06:28,480 that like it is one thing to have a marketplace or our library of connectors, 966 01:06:29,119 --> 01:06:30,800 we're never going to have the thirty thousand you have to have. And 967 01:06:31,159 --> 01:06:33,920 you know, since then, I've just been I've just been amazed at the 968 01:06:34,000 --> 01:06:38,800 kinds of things that our customers connect to because that's what their customers need. 969 01:06:39,039 --> 01:06:42,360 And I think that's what's often lost in these conversations, are lost in the 970 01:06:43,159 --> 01:06:46,159 you know, in the the tech Crunch article talking about whatever is the like, 971 01:06:46,960 --> 01:06:50,119 Yes, it is neat that in the sales marketing space, if you 972 01:06:50,159 --> 01:06:54,760 build one hundred connectors, you can connect you know, some large percentage of 973 01:06:54,840 --> 01:06:59,280 that ecosystem. But the long tail is where customers are actually well served. 974 01:06:59,440 --> 01:07:02,239 And software companies have to serve their customers well, and that means the long 975 01:07:02,320 --> 01:07:08,639 tail. And I think as not sexy as it is to some extent prismatic 976 01:07:08,719 --> 01:07:12,079 as a tool that serves the horizontal stuff really well out of the box, 977 01:07:12,360 --> 01:07:15,159 but we have spent a lot of time getting really good at helping our customers 978 01:07:15,159 --> 01:07:17,800 in the long tail. And that is sexy. It's not what anybody wants 979 01:07:17,800 --> 01:07:21,280 to hear or talk about, but I can tell you it's what makes what 980 01:07:21,320 --> 01:07:25,599 makes it's what makes tools at the end of the day, serve their customers 981 01:07:25,679 --> 01:07:29,360 best. Sure, yeah, and I agree with you. I think we 982 01:07:29,400 --> 01:07:39,320 should probably make a a decision based effort to talk about that more because that 983 01:07:39,440 --> 01:07:44,079 is important to keep in mind in technology. You know that it's the technology 984 01:07:44,119 --> 01:07:47,679 is cool, and that's why a lot of us are here geek out on 985 01:07:47,760 --> 01:07:53,880 that. But you've got to do something that generates value along the way. 986 01:07:55,280 --> 01:07:59,199 Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And fortunately, customers are pretty good 987 01:07:59,199 --> 01:08:01,360 at reminding us all of that, and product managers are usually pretty good at 988 01:08:01,599 --> 01:08:04,880 consolidating that and communicating it, and so you know, I think I think 989 01:08:04,880 --> 01:08:09,119 good software companies have a million ways to hear that feedback and respond to it. 990 01:08:10,119 --> 01:08:12,880 But yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, all 991 01:08:12,880 --> 01:08:18,119 the matters is how we're serving customers. Everything else is just the path right 992 01:08:18,159 --> 01:08:24,560 on cool? Well, should we move on to some picks. Let's do 993 01:08:24,640 --> 01:08:28,039 it all right own? All right? Picking on you, Warren, which 994 01:08:28,119 --> 01:08:31,399 get Yeah. Today, I'm going to go with the book The twenty one 995 01:08:31,600 --> 01:08:38,600 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell. And I absolutely love this 996 01:08:38,600 --> 01:08:41,039 book. I think this was one of the first ones when I decided that 997 01:08:41,199 --> 01:08:44,520 maybe I can be a leader too. I picked up and read and I 998 01:08:44,560 --> 01:08:47,600 wouldn't have expected that it would have been that interesting for me. But there 999 01:08:47,720 --> 01:08:51,840 have been some that were really cornerstone to how I think about leadership now, 1000 01:08:53,239 --> 01:08:59,000 things like the law of succession and the law of incomplete data. I love 1001 01:08:59,079 --> 01:09:01,239 to think that I I'm only going to be successful as a leader if I 1002 01:09:01,319 --> 01:09:04,560 can point to someone and say that person will replace me when I leave. 1003 01:09:05,199 --> 01:09:11,520 And honestly, every organization I've been to since reading that, I, you 1004 01:09:11,560 --> 01:09:14,079 know, keep looking at this and be like, where is your replacement? 1005 01:09:14,119 --> 01:09:16,119 Where is your replacement? Everywhere? And that, you know, was my 1006 01:09:16,159 --> 01:09:18,840 thought when I joined this podcast. You know, Will is just looking for 1007 01:09:18,920 --> 01:09:26,359 his long term replacement. Absolutely, it's like the Roman Senate. Somebody's going 1008 01:09:26,399 --> 01:09:29,680 to stick a knife in my back sooner or later. Oh hopefully it won't 1009 01:09:29,720 --> 01:09:33,039 be like that. Will. I can't wait to hear six months from now 1010 01:09:33,039 --> 01:09:38,479 that Warren has stabbed Will and taken the podcast, right, like going to 1011 01:09:38,520 --> 01:09:45,359 live in the same country? Right? Fair enough? Awesome, Michael, 1012 01:09:45,399 --> 01:09:49,279 what'd you bring for a pick? Uh? So there's a company called McMaster 1013 01:09:49,439 --> 01:09:55,960 Car and an associated catalog that is just like the coolest thing ever for anybody 1014 01:09:55,960 --> 01:10:00,560 who's ever made anything physical. And I think it's not known enough about you 1015 01:10:00,600 --> 01:10:02,199 know, it's it's anybody who has a shop or bit, you know, 1016 01:10:02,239 --> 01:10:05,920 a commercial shop or whatever's gonna have a McMaster car those big yellow catalog somewhere, 1017 01:10:06,319 --> 01:10:09,640 But I think more of the world needs to know about McMaster cars, 1018 01:10:09,680 --> 01:10:14,479 So go to their website. It's like the rare catalog that is as educational 1019 01:10:14,520 --> 01:10:18,159 as it is a catalog. You can go to the section on like leveling 1020 01:10:18,239 --> 01:10:23,279 feet for a table looking to my right here, and they will explain to 1021 01:10:23,319 --> 01:10:26,239 you all the different kinds of leveling feet and the different ways they articulate, 1022 01:10:26,319 --> 01:10:29,279 and the different kinds of materials and the advantages of that, and then they 1023 01:10:29,279 --> 01:10:31,479 will show you all the ones you can buy. And they have absolutely everything 1024 01:10:31,560 --> 01:10:35,720 under the sun. It's it's just the coolest, coolest thing for anybody who 1025 01:10:35,720 --> 01:10:41,800 makes anything. So do they still ship the physical catalog only to people who 1026 01:10:42,279 --> 01:10:45,560 get to like a certain amount of spend, And it's it's kind of become 1027 01:10:45,600 --> 01:10:48,399 this cult thing where like it's kind of unknown what the algorithm is to get 1028 01:10:48,399 --> 01:10:55,079 yourself a catalog. But they they resell on eBay, So when people every 1029 01:10:55,119 --> 01:10:57,680 year they put on a new catalog and it has this big green number on 1030 01:10:57,720 --> 01:11:00,159 the front. They're on like one and thirty something or one hundred and forty 1031 01:11:00,199 --> 01:11:03,960 something or whatever. And every year it's a new one, or maybe it's 1032 01:11:04,000 --> 01:11:06,439 even more often than that, and so the people who always get a new 1033 01:11:06,439 --> 01:11:09,920 one will put the old one on eBay and they sometimes sell for like fifty 1034 01:11:09,960 --> 01:11:12,960 one hundred dollars because it's kind of become a status symbol to like have a 1035 01:11:13,039 --> 01:11:18,560 McMaster car catalog. They managed to make their catalog like an elite scarcity thing. 1036 01:11:19,199 --> 01:11:24,279 That is, that is some branding right there, right and and there's 1037 01:11:24,279 --> 01:11:30,479 something about having the physical catalog that is so satisfying, Like this is an 1038 01:11:30,600 --> 01:11:35,319 experience that you can't get from a website, having that catalog and just flipping 1039 01:11:35,359 --> 01:11:39,880 through it, you know, and finding what you need and reading up on 1040 01:11:39,960 --> 01:11:45,159 it. Like that's a tactle experience that can't be replicated. And mcmastercar has 1041 01:11:45,199 --> 01:11:49,800 definitely nailed that. It absolute nailed it. They also have about the lowest 1042 01:11:49,840 --> 01:11:55,359 friction ordering experience that I've ever seen, and I'm including Amazon in that, 1043 01:11:55,479 --> 01:12:00,520 which has a very low friction ordering experience, Like it just magically shows up 1044 01:12:00,520 --> 01:12:02,920 and they don't ever show you they at least unless this has changed recently. 1045 01:12:03,000 --> 01:12:06,439 They don't show you shipping costs. They don't calculate shipping. It just costs 1046 01:12:06,520 --> 01:12:10,760 exactly what it costs to ship it to you, and everything ships to day. 1047 01:12:10,840 --> 01:12:13,199 I think you can get one day, but nothing ships slower than to 1048 01:12:13,399 --> 01:12:16,199 day. And they just like you just push the button and then two days 1049 01:12:16,279 --> 01:12:19,800 later it's at your door no matter what. Uh, And you get this 1050 01:12:19,840 --> 01:12:24,079 little invoice and it's just like all handled on the back end. It's definitely 1051 01:12:24,119 --> 01:12:27,960 set up for commercial use. But right it's it's just the coolest company. 1052 01:12:28,319 --> 01:12:32,119 Yeah, good call. I hadn't thought about them in quite a long time, 1053 01:12:32,319 --> 01:12:34,960 but as soon as you said the name, like the memories just came 1054 01:12:35,079 --> 01:12:40,800 flooding back. Not always the cheapest place to get things, but you can 1055 01:12:40,840 --> 01:12:45,079 find anything anytime and get it two days later, which which is just pretty 1056 01:12:45,079 --> 01:12:47,680 awesome. Yeah. And and based on my experience with them in the past, 1057 01:12:47,800 --> 01:12:53,960 like you can depend on what you order from them as well. Yeah, 1058 01:12:54,119 --> 01:12:56,560 yeah, I think that's I think their entire brand is built on the 1059 01:12:56,760 --> 01:12:59,479 like it's gonna be of the highest quality, it's gonna be what you wanted. 1060 01:12:59,600 --> 01:13:01,600 We're gonna educate you to make sure you get the right thing. I've 1061 01:13:01,640 --> 01:13:05,760 never had a problem with them. Awesome. Dang, that's going to be 1062 01:13:05,800 --> 01:13:11,680 a hard pick to top because that just brought back a flood of memories for 1063 01:13:11,800 --> 01:13:17,439 me. But my pick is also going way back. I'm going to pick 1064 01:13:18,600 --> 01:13:23,079 for those of you who may not know, there's a band called led Zeppelin 1065 01:13:23,800 --> 01:13:29,319 that was popular and started in the sixties, popular in the seventies up into 1066 01:13:29,359 --> 01:13:33,880 the eighties, really key to defining heavy metal as we know it. But 1067 01:13:34,800 --> 01:13:38,640 like the songs that they did are not what you would think of when it 1068 01:13:38,640 --> 01:13:43,720 comes to heavy metal. But go check out led Zeppelin. The Immigrant Song, 1069 01:13:44,159 --> 01:13:47,039 And if you've seen Shrek three, you've already heard this song because it's 1070 01:13:47,079 --> 01:13:55,279 the song used when snow White unleashes the animals to attack in the movie Shrek 1071 01:13:55,319 --> 01:13:59,039 three. And the only reason I know all of this is because I was 1072 01:13:59,119 --> 01:14:03,640 scrolling through YouTube one day a couple days ago, and there was this video 1073 01:14:04,239 --> 01:14:11,279 a vocalist coach reacts to led Zeppelin. And it's this whole genre of YouTube 1074 01:14:11,319 --> 01:14:15,239 videos where people listen to music that's outside of their expertise. And so this 1075 01:14:15,560 --> 01:14:20,119 lady, who's a professional opera singer, was going to evaluate Robert plant, 1076 01:14:20,279 --> 01:14:25,560 the singer of led Zeppelin, his vocals in this song Immigrant Song, and 1077 01:14:25,640 --> 01:14:30,800 the song starts and she immediately stops and She's like, wait, I've heard 1078 01:14:30,800 --> 01:14:34,800 this before, and then goes and finds the YouTube video from Shrek three where 1079 01:14:34,840 --> 01:14:39,920 snow White is singing the song and she was blown away because she thought that 1080 01:14:40,000 --> 01:14:44,319 the song was written for Shrek three, not realizing the Led Zeppelin song from 1081 01:14:44,359 --> 01:14:49,520 the seventies. So that's my pick. I love it. Yeah, good 1082 01:14:49,560 --> 01:14:53,760 times. Well Man, thank you so much for being on the show. 1083 01:14:53,760 --> 01:14:58,119 This has been a really cool chat, fascinating, brought back some old memories. 1084 01:14:59,319 --> 01:15:02,039 Thank you for it's been a pleasure. Yeah, it's been so much 1085 01:15:02,079 --> 01:15:08,079 fun. Born thanks again for joining me on the show of course, and 1086 01:15:08,119 --> 01:15:12,399 then to all the listeners out there, thank you all for listening. Appreciate 1087 01:15:12,399 --> 01:15:17,199 you being there and we will see everyone next week. M