WEBVTT 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