Show Notes
In today’s episode, I am joined by Ian Gotts, Co-Founder and CEO of elements.cloud, who has been in the ecosystem for almost as long as it’s been around (2001!). After launching elements.cloud in 2016, he brings years of experience to the conversation that he is readily willing to share with others.
He shares about how they stay in their lane by working collaboratively with ISVs that are complimentary partners. Oftentimes there is feature overlap, don’t worry about it, instead focus on how you can combine to improve customer outcomes. Keeping it simple here is key to everyone involved here, don’t jump right to things like referral programs or reseller programs.
Their top producing lead source is when people who use them at one company move to a new one. Ian wrote a book about how B2B SaaS companies that offer an innovative solution should think about selling that I link to below. The goal is to help you sell to the evangelist when you are to the left of the chasm in Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm sense of the phrase.
Ian and elements.cloud is famously successful at Demo Jams. It’s not about if he walks away with a trophy, although they have won many, it’s more about leaving everyone in the audience with an understanding about what they do. He talks through how to get the most out of the Dreamin’ events and world tours. As a general rule of thumb, he estimates the budget will end up being double the money of the sponsorship when you factor in travel for booth staff.
Here’s a closer look at the episode:
1:30 How did you find your way into the ecosystem?
3:30 How does Elements.cloud help its customers?
5:00 Any recommendations for folks seeing the same ISV in customer after customer and how to actually get that moving in the right direction?
6:50 In building your company, what are you most proud of?
8:50 Looking back, What was your biggest mistake?
12:09 What’s one thing you would change about the demo jam format?
13:35 What are the benefits to your company from sponsoring the dreaming events?
17:36 To properly staff a booth at a dreaming event, what's that look like for you?
20:00 What’s your top producing leads source at your business?
27:00 General advice for founders and raising
Resources:
Website : https://elements.cloud/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/elements_cloud
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elementscloud/
Ian’s Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iangotts/
Ian’s Book: https://elements.cloud/impact
[Book about Netflix] No Rules Rules: https://www.amazon.com/No-Rules-Netflix-Culture-Reinvention/dp/1984877860
This episode is brought to you by ISVapp. ISVapp is used by leading Salesforce ISVs and OEMs as the central toolbox to reduce churn, increase renewals, identify upsell potential, and close more deals. ISVapp is the only plug & play solution for the AppExchange AppAnalytics API and provides deep product insights. The set up is easy and takes less than 5 minutes. Visit isvapp.com to learn how you can take advantage of usage data in your app today.
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