113: The Inside View at High Growth Companies

Thank you to our partners, SalesLoft, LeadIQ, and Costello for helping us put this one on. Find all our upcoming events at jbarrows.com slash events. Good afternoon, everybody. This is John Barrows. Make it happen Mondays. Hopefully, you all had a fantastic weekend. I have a pretty interesting duo of guests here. I actually rarely do dual interviews, so this one should be interesting. It's the team over at Looker, who's actually been through a very interesting growth spurt recently and being acquired by Google. I'd like to introduce Raphael and Talal. How are you guys doing today? Doing well. Thanks. Yeah, doing great. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for joining. Do you want to give each one of you a quick little background on what your role is, what you're doing these days, and how long you've been with Looker?

Yeah, sure thing. I'll go first. My name's Raphael. I go by Rafa. I've been with Looker for just under six years now, so started on the West Coast in our Santa Cruz office, or a couple dozen folks, as like SMB sales rep, and then was out there for a year, moved out at the beginning of 2015 to New York to help us grow the sales, you know, org out here. And since then, there's just been tons of crazy growth. I'm now leading a team of four managers and 31 reps covering our SMB and mid-market teams. Nice. Very cool. Yeah, so my name's Talal. I joined Looker shortly after Rapha, actually, about, you know, a few months after, so I've been here about five and a half years now. I joined as kind of our first boots on the ground out here in the East Coast for Looker.

You know, started off kind of just being our, you know, technical customer-facing, you know, person in New York, so I've been taking on a few different roles. And then, yeah, I've just been helping to grow the team out here ever since. I run our sales engineering group for the East Coast, which is about, you know, group of about 25 people, also four managers. So it's interesting because I, you know, I think we could take this conversation a lot of different directions, but I always, you know, with startups and growth and all that stuff, I always found it, and I don't know if you guys are there yet, that once you kind of figure out where you fit and like what you like to do, it's almost, it's a very liberating thing in the sense that, you know, I'll give you an example.

Like I, I'm kind of a, I'm not a startup startup guy. I'm not the guy that like drops everything, lives on my parents' couch and eats ramen noodles and takes a whole huge risk. Like I'm the second guy, right? Like you start the company, get some traction, bring me in, I'm going to throw fire on this thing. But then once it gets to a certain stage where it's too process oriented and that type of stuff, I kind of lose interest. Right. I mean, so, cause when I first got acquired, like when my first company got acquired and when we got to 10 million, I was kind of bored. Like it was seven years I built this company and I was, I was kind of going through the motions cause I had figured it out. You know what I mean?

And then this whole acquisition of Staples was like, Ooh, this is cool. Like this is, but what happened was I thought I was the right guy. Cause I thought it was the, like something interesting for me to learn new, but I didn't realize that I wasn't the right guy. And so I fought it and they were the end, the ones who ended up firing me cause I just didn't fit in that new world. Right. And now kind of knowing where I fit. And I know a lot of people who have been in business for 15, 20 years, they stay, especially in the startup space. It's almost like they go, you know, they look for their company at a certain stage. So where on this journey that you guys have been on right now, like, I mean, for the past six years or so, where's your sweet spot?

I want to ask that. Like, have you, have you kind of figured out where your sweet spot is? Probably circa 2016 or something. Yeah. I mean, it depends on where you define it. Like where were you having the most fun or? Yeah. Yeah. And what, yeah. And like, kind of like the growth stage, right. That, that you were like, I, this is my thing. Like I, I, I rock it in this spot and yeah, we're having fun doing it obviously. Right. I mean, there's always like the thing about working for a small startup with less people. You personally know so many people, you're scrapped, you're building things together. There's just nothing that beats that. It's so fun. It's really stressful and crazy, especially when you're like us, like we had plenty of nights, we're bouncing our heads off the wall, but something super fun.

I think both of us excelled and we're psyched on that. Although we're, we're having a lot of fun these days too. It's just new and different and we're learning different things. Yeah. It's, I, I, you know, so that, I mean, there was nothing like kind of like early days. I was working out of my apartment, you know, jumping around the city, like whatever needed to be done was doing it. Like that was, that was a ton of fun. Um, you know, through the years, I keep waiting for that, that period where I'm like, all right, you know, when it gets to this size, I'm going to get bored and, and it's going to, and it just hasn't happened yet. It's just like every new stage for us. And because it's been such high growth, insane velocity of growth every year has, has presented itself like with these completely new challenges.

And so I say this on like every interview I did is, you know, I've been here at liquor for five and a half years and I haven't been bored for a single day. I keep waiting for that to happen. Yeah. And I think that, see that, I think that's the key there is not getting bored. Like there are some people and I, you know, this took a little while for me to figure out because we went from zero to 20 and like, when we were zero to 20, everybody was all in, right? People were all in working hours, crazy stuff, whatever, 30 people, 40 people, everybody's still super passionate. And we kind of hit 50 people. And I remember very distinctly at around 50 people, I was just like, I was frustrated because a lot of the people that we were bringing on board just did not have the same passion for the business that we did.

And I remember being frustrated with that, but it was the wrong frustration because, and I vividly remember like Jack Welsh, he was here in Boston. Um, this was back, you know, 20 years ago. And I, and he talks a lot about passion and that, and I asked, I was at a seminar and I said, Hey, you talk a lot about passion. You know, we were super passionate when we got to about 50 people. And then all of a sudden it's like that 51st person we hired just didn't have the same passion that we did. And I asked him, I said, how do you instill your passion on somebody else? And in front of a thousand people, he's basically called me a fucking idiot. And, uh, and he goes, he goes, you can't, he goes, you can't, you can't instill your passion on somebody else.

You have to hire passion. Two questions for you. One is because the other, cause, cause that got me to realize it's okay to have B players. Like there are certain players that fit in that they just do their job. And if you get to a certain point, you have to kind of accept that. Cause if you had all a players, the place would explode. Right. So, so how have you guys been able to, or how have you seen the culture evolve and how have you been able to maintain that? I'm not bored. This is still fun. I mean, you'd both love to talk about it. I mean, I think it's a point. It's a testament to, to your point, John are hiring, uh, like, you know, uh, style and how, how, um, you know, detailed we are about it and the bar we set, uh, reflected in the fact that we've both been here for almost six years and are still really psyched.

You know, it's hard for us to say where the sweet spot is because it's, it's different every year, but we stay engaged in, I think, cause we keep learning and we're still in a culture where we're challenged hard. We're learning a lot from our mentors and leaders in here. And we're able to also have a say in like continuing that, that hiring process of, of adding to that culture. Yeah. I mean, that, that is, it's probably the, the most important piece of all, like what we've learned through the years is, I mean, and, and it's the two, the two things we emphasize, this is the two things that the deal breakers for us in an interview with, with someone that we want to bring in as we look for passion and we look for collaboration and the, you know, desire to come in and want to learn from other people around them.

You know, I can teach someone how to write SQL or a new programming language. I can teach someone the industry. I can teach someone to give a shit about their job. Yeah. So can I ask, how do you figure that out in an interview? Right. Because I can pretend I'm all, you know what I mean? Like, I can be like, yeah, I can't wait. I'm fired up. And then I show up and I'm a complete fucking dud. So what are some of the things that you do in the interview process to really help understand what somebody's drive? Cause drive is, I will tell you, like, that's the one thing I'm most concerned with these days. Okay. Which is, you know, millennials get a lot of shit for a lot of things that I don't think they deserve shit for.

But the one thing that I am nervous about right now is the work ethic component of what's happening because, because, and I just look at it very tactically on my end. I train usually when I do onsite training, I mean, you guys seen 830 to 430, right? And so 430 comes usually some Q and a people want to ask me some questions and then five o'clock. And then I'll usually light up my laptop, check a few emails before I head to the airport. When I leave the office these days, almost any office I go into by 530, it's a fucking ghost town. And I'm just like, how do you, I mean, and look, I'm not, you know, don't get me wrong here. If you get all your shit done during the day, that's good for you, whatever.

But I just am nervous right now that that work ethic and that drive and that passion isn't there. So, but I'm not hiring as much as you are. So A, are you guys seeing the same thing? And B, how do you identify it throughout the interview process? Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, it does definitely varies from person to person, especially as you grow like a bigger and bigger team. You can't always have those people that are just until eight, you know, unless you're just whipping them into doing that and then they hate you. Yeah, that doesn't work. But like I found in interviews, you know, you can't directly ask these questions to get the answer you want. It always has to be, I mean, one thing that I love doing and I still do to this day is start off by saying, Hey, you know, these, these interviews often run to the end and I'm usually when I ask all the questions.

I want to give you the opportunity up front to just ask any questions you had for me. That's really telling what they'll ask you because genuinely curious about the product or the industry or the space or what they're going to be doing or how they're going to add value or what risks do I love hearing like, Hey, why do reps lose deals? Like what are competitors and why, like, how do you get around them? I'm really curious. So that's really interesting. What's the value? That's really interesting. Uh, you know, and, and will lead me to believe they're, they're really, they actually will be passionate. They're curious. And then, you know, you know, you don't want to hear just a really like, like an ant, you know, something, Oh, well, what's the vacation policy or, Oh, you know, how many reps are hitting quote?

And then they don't have any other question for you. It's like, okay, you just slot in somewhere, make some money. Um, tell them if you have to add. Yeah. Yeah. We, we've got to kind of like a little check like that too. We're kind of looking for the subtleties and the way they're talking about certain things, but we also, we have a dedicated interview actually in our process specifically to suss out, you know, passion. And what we have them do is we basically ask them to teach us about something that they're passionate about. Love it. That's an impossible thing to fake, right? You have to be knowledgeable about it and you, it just comes off in the way you're talking about it and you're super excited.

And I know, I mean, we had a guy teach us about how to build your own computer keyboard and he knew everything about every little piece of it and different way. And it was like, I, it went over my head, but it was clearly he had the ability to be passionate about something. That's all that really mattered. Yeah. And on the sales side at on that, we do something slightly differently where we just give like a light preparation of, you know, looker knowledge and links for them to do research. And then the capstone of their interview day is pitching looker to us or kind of like a mock intro meeting, like a mock, you know, small startup company they'd be selling to. And it's funny, we actually literally have like printed out roles for ourselves, like little cards.

We're so good at these cards. Like we're literally can just become these people. But it shows in their preparation for that, you know, how much they really researched, what their follow-ups are afterward. Like, do they send a follow-up email? Are they asking the right questions after them asking for feedback in it? So that kind of gets some light too. Yeah. We're fortunate enough that like, looker is such a cool product and such like a fun industry. And like, I'm super confident we'll be able to get them to care and be passionate about looker once they're in the door. But it's just like you said, it's like that, do they have that? Are they passionate people? Do they have the ability to feel that?

Are they driven? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. I mean, I actually just straight up used to ask what similar to you, I'd ask, Hey, what are you passionate about? And I would just, I, and I didn't care. I literally didn't care what you were passionate about. I just care how you described what you were passionate about. Cause if you were like, Oh, I really enjoy the customer journey and it, you know, making sure the customer makes the right solution. It's, it's really important to me. And that's what you're passionate about versus like, holy shit, Tom fucking Brady. Are you out of your mind? The dude's 42 years old. He's like, Benjamin button is never going to die. I swear to God, we're going to win the Superbowl six more times.

You know what I mean? Like, like, even though football has literally nothing to do with what you and I are talking about here, if you, if you do that, I, cause to your point, you know, now it's my job as a manager to get you bought, to guide that. Like you're never going to be as passionate about my business than I am. And I should never expect that from you, but I should be able to at least get you bought in to, to, to, to, to transferring that passion over to something that we do. Right. Yeah, exactly. How do I get you as passionate about lookers? You are about Tom Brady. Yeah. Yeah. That's my job. Right. Like the passion is within people. It's not within things. Yeah. That's what you discovered.

That's a good point. Yeah. That's cool. I love it. So, so how do you, how do you guys stay passionate about it? Is it because you're constantly learning and you're constantly challenged? I mean, you know, what, what gets, what keeps you after six years and now an acquisition and now all this complication stuff, you're like, you know, there's a big unknown right now. I mean, I know it's not finally, you know, a hundred percent yet, but there's a big unknown with the, with the Google acquisition. I mean, we got, we got acquired by, I mean, they Staples was $20 billion when they bought us. I mean, not nearly the size of Google, but 20 billion is pretty damn big. So we had our little $10 million company get acquired by a $20 billion company.

And like, there was a wild, wild west when, cause I had no fucking idea what was about to happen. So part of that was exciting. Part of that was freaking me the hell out. Right. And I didn't survive. I ended up getting my, my head cut off here. So, so what keeps you guys driven with what you guys are doing right now? Yeah, no, that's a good question. Um, I think it comes down to just like a few major things. So, you know, the overriding thing is just the people that we're with, you know, again, back to like the hiring and what we've built and, you know, what we keep as high standard here. I genuinely love the people that I work with my business partners in the New York office, back at headquarters, employees that I have, the managers that are under me, um, developing their careers and seeing them shine and grow and succeed is like, that's extremely fulfilling.

Um, but in addition to that, you know, my current manager and mentor, he's an executive with lots of experience and he's developed me, developing me to be a better leader myself. So I'm still learning in that, that learning with that fulfillment of developing people keeps me engaging, keeps me excited. And of course, I wouldn't be lying, you know, we're in sales. So crushing numbers over and over doesn't get boring, wouldn't be. Yeah. But that wouldn't be important if it wasn't for those other two things. And so when I see us going into Google, super excited, it's going to help us accelerate our mission, uh, moving forward. And yes, there's going to be some crazy stuff that goes on. Any integration is going to be tricky, but we're going to be steering the ship that we've been on with the people that have been on it all psyched going in.

And, and I'm, I'm really optimistic. Yeah, it's, it definitely is a contagious thing. Like if you surround yourself by passionate people, you, you know, it grows on you. And so that's, that is super important. Um, I I'd say, I mean, for me personally, it's, it's, uh, like, I, I like to build things. I like to solve problems. I like to create like new things. The second it turns into like maintenance, you know, maintenance mode and keeping the wheels in motion. That's when I started like updating my resume. And that's the thing that just hasn't happened. And I, and I don't anticipate happening, you know, with this, even moving into Google, there's just, there's so much green field ahead of us, so much space for us to go fill that, you know, it, you know, we stay in that build mode as we, as we move into, um, as even as we move into the Google mode.

Yeah. Love it. So, so let's talk now about your, your guys' relationship, sales and engineering, because I'm always fascinated about that relationship and organizations, because I remember when I was selling outsourced IT services, again, I was, I was one sales guy within 50 engineers and especially early days, I literally had no fucking idea what I was doing. Like I, I was to my buddy started the company. I joined, I was like, yep, let's do this fun. And, and it was now we were doing outsourced IT support for the SMB market. And I'm selling servers, workstations, firewalls, backup, antivirus, all that stuff that I knew nothing about. So I would bring sales engineers with me and really ultimately be pretty damn lazy because, because I didn't know what I was doing.

I, you know, I pretty much set up the call and I'd be like, so, uh, thanks so much for coming in today. Anyways, Dylan, you know, and I would let Dylan talk for like, you know, 45 minutes to an hour. And then I'd come back at the end and be like, all right, great. Thanks so much for that. I'm going to put together a proposal and I'm going to, and then if the client had a question, anything, anything technically related, I'd be like, Oh, Dylan, Dylan, no problem. Dylan, here's a cell phone. Call him at home. I don't give a shit. Yeah. And, and, you know, over the years I started to realize how valuable, you know, the engineering time was and how to respect it a lot more, but how have you guys developed the, like, as you've grown, right, how has the relationship of engineering and sales changed?

And what are some of the things you've done to work together, uh, more effectively than being a lazy ass salesman that just abuses Yeah. I mean, there's a lot there. So I think the good points you make, I mean, one thing that I'll, you know, say just philosophically that we've, has always been our compass with these things, um, A and SC relationships working together. I think I, I steal this analogy from our, uh, CRO who used to be my boss Lambert is just like sales reps are many CEOs, right? Many executives running their own business in their territory with their own, you know, revenue targets to hit, uh, their sales engineers are somewhat like their CTOs. They're, you know, co-founders of that firm or, or their co-leaders of it.

And they make decisions together. And yes, there has to be a quarterback in certain situations. And, you know, CEOs often plays that part, but no good CEO would ever make any big decisions preparation-wise, follow-up wise, you know, executing on this or that, um, without having their CTOs back, looping them in, getting feedback, ensuring that they're, you know, making good use of each other's time, just cooperation and communication tightly, building good bonds and relationships, and just driving their business together, knowing their individual skills and where they add the value in the right, right areas of their deals. So that's been like kind of a cornerstone philosophy that we've had and all of the little, you know, mini processes and workflows and things we do together kind of branch off from that cornerstone.

Yeah. I mean, I, that's, that's the thing we like, we tell everyone on day one, like this will make an, or break your success is your ability to build a really good relationship. And, and everyone works a little bit differently. So it's not, it's not that easy of a task. I'd say one thing that we've, we did probably later than we, we should have is we really started to blur the line between, you know, an AE and an SE in terms of, Oh, you're the technical person and you're the salesperson. And we tried to really, um, you know, for the sales engineers emphasize and, and we, so all the sales engineers join all the sales trainings basically, and they go through that process. And we have our own way of like, you know, tracking sales stages and, and different pieces like that, that really makes you think about, okay, well I can build this really cool thing and it's going to blow their minds, which is great.

But what's the business implication of this? How is this affecting our ability to, you know, bring them in as a new customer and, and, and pieces like that while, while staying really that trusted advisor and really, um, not losing that piece of it, but also understanding like, you know, Hey, the, you know, we're, we're here for a reason and not losing sight of that. So that's because that, because that to me, there's a fine line, right? Because I, I love the blurred line, but there does need to be a line because one, what I recognized was I had a couple of engineers on my staff, specifically this kid, Dylan. Um, he was my CTO. We were both 26, five. Um, so, but what happened was he kind of caught the sales bug.

Like he, he, like I would bring him out in these meetings and he would, and the funny thing was, is he would see the easiest part of the sale. I vividly remember after I got, after I got fired. Okay. He reached out to me after I got fired from Staples. He reached out to me. He goes, you know what, John? I was like, I think I want to be, he's like, he was a CTO. He's like, I think I want to be a sales engineer because I think I've reached, reached my peak as a CTO. I think I want to branch. I think I'd be a really good sales engineer. And I was like, Dylan, I think you'd be great at sales engineering. I mean, you have a personality, you can engage with a client, you know, with any, and he goes like this.

And he said, yeah, because I think if I just had a bunch of like people set me up on meetings and then do the follow-up from them, I think I'd be great. And I'm like, Dylan, like that's why sales reps get paid to pay as much as we do is because all the bullshit that it took to get that fucking meeting. And then all the bullshit that we have to do afterwards, right? You see the best part of the whole fucking process. It's like the client's like, Oh, this is great. And that's mad. It's a perfect fit. And everybody's happy. So, so, but, but, so he got this sales bug when I was with him. And what would happen was he started to sell. So he started to pitch the product and you could literally watch the customer lose, he would lose credibility in the customer's face because he would start.

And I, and I had to have a very direct conversation with him. I said, Dylan, you're an engineer. You have to stay in that world because they don't trust me. I'm a sales rep. They trust 50% of the shit that's coming out of my mouth. Okay. You're here. You're the trusted advisor. They believe you because you're going to be the one who has to implement what I fucking say. So you stop selling. So how do you, how do you find that line? It's, it is super important. Like, and, and it starts, there's a difference between understanding the sales process and selling the second you find yourself actively selling, if they can tell that that's what you're, you know, you're actually selling. Yeah. You immediately lose credibility and, and, um, that's such an important piece.

That's like such a big part of the value. And one of the things that we, which, which, you know, um, you know, uh, maybe the sales reps don't always love is the importance of saying no. Right. That's what really what builds you the credibility is because then your yeses become really meaningful. You know, if you ever find a sales engineer, you know, on the other end of the phone call, just saying yes to everything you say, you start to really question like, all right, they're just, they're just saying yes. But if you say, no, we don't do this and this is why, but here's all the other, you know, there's a way to say no in a good way. But, but yeah, if you're just, if you're just a yes person, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, we'll tell it, we'll tell our product team to go build that for you. Like, no, you should really start to question that. So, um, that, that's a really big piece of it. It's like your, your job isn't necessarily just to make them feel good entirely on the call just by saying yes to everything, but it's to build that credibility so that they actually understand when you're, when you're saying things that they leave you. Yeah. And like just being really consultative overall. I mean, ideally the sales rep can build that like trustworthy, uh, close relationship with the prospect in addition to the sales engineer. I mean, really that's kind of what you want to be building. Right. Um, uh, so that you're just empathizing with them leading through the sales cycle, being a consultative style, you know, challenge your sales rep.

Uh, but to your point, you know, John, there's going to be people out there that just purely based on your title, just don't trust you and you can, your emotional intelligence. If you're a good sales rep, well, we'll figure that out pretty quick. Like every time I ask this person, any interesting question, it's like immediately cut off. I want to go to something else, want something else. So, so then, then if we, you know, if, and when that happens, like to Talal's point, your, your, your solutions engineer, your sales engineer has to be that, you know, tight glue of trustworthiness with the champion. And, you know, there's even certain points where like AEs and Estes will discuss this about the deals.

Like, Hey, there's a situation where another champion great is here. She is just doesn't trust me at all. So can you shoot them a one-on-one email and just ask them about this because it'll help them with their evaluation. But I don't think they're going to tell me the information, even though it will. And then, and then they'll play off each other. Yeah. And that gets back to like tight communication with each other, knowing what roles to play, knowing where that line's drawn. It's all super key. So you said earlier that you have some, you know, it kind of varies with the relationships and such, but are there some kind of foundational things that you have in place as far as, you know, documentation or agendas or, you know, uh, summary stuff that, that, that helps, uh, game plan for a meeting and then, and then navigate that sales process as a team?

Yeah. So we have this, uh, doc that was put together like AES workflow doc that, you know, a while ago where it just outlined, it basically, it was an initial guideline and framework for new AESC pairs to review together and say, okay, Hey, here's that kind of the pipeline building, the pre intro meeting, the intro meeting, the, the pre demo, the, the post demo, you know, the, the pre trial scoping, the mid trial, the negotiation, and, and then some details within there of who does what, when highlighted so that they kind of know just a baseline of what to kind of build from. But then they can, those pairs can always kind of discuss it as a group and then embellish, embellish in their own ways, right?

Giving them autonomy to be their own team and know where each other's strengths are, know where they can help each other. I don't know if you have something else. I think that stuff, that's one of the things that evolved over the years where it started off as like, Hey, go do it this way. AES should do this. AES should do this. And then it turned into more of like a, almost like a questionnaire guideline of like, these are the things you're going to have to be able to do. These are the things you think about. You should, you should have a process for how you do these, but you, you, you should go come up with it yourself because there isn't a one size fits all. There's AEs that are just more technically consultative oriented.

There's some that are more relationship oriented and like both can be really, really great, great AEs. It just, you know, it would work differently in the scenarios. Yeah. So with that, um, what are some of the, I guess, the learning lessons over the years for you? Like working together as a group and some of the things that you probably, you could have done better. Uh, and some of the things that really worked through this to, to get you, first of all, both of you to where you are in your career, as far as leading these teams, but also to get Looker where it is to the point where it's gotten this evaluation and gotten acquired by Google. What would some of the say, like if, if, if somebody who is Looker, uh, four years ago, you know what I mean?

Say, say, say there's a company that was Looker about four or five years ago and was looking at you guys saying, what do I not know? Like, what should I not do? What should I do? What should I be paying attention to? What would some of those things be? Yeah. I've been thinking about that a lot recently. I mean, there's so much like individual learnings we each have developed our own careers, but like Looker overall. Um, one thing that I noticed that we did, uh, was, and this just kind of came down, you know, from our, our, our CRO top down all the way was an emphasis on deals and bookings and driving the business through sales. And, you know, that came down from like our executive culture all the way through everybody.

We can bring in our product, you know, BB product on a call. Our CEO could help out. Our board would get looped into deals to help out. Like it was always about making the number and driving deals. And there was always an accept, you know, it was always okay to, you know, if you really had to drop the ball on a meeting and not show up or do this or that, if it's required to like get on a call for a deal or do something. And so that was like a huge emphasis. I think that, that being a leading philosophy led us to be so successful on that metric. So many quarters in a row for so many years, it led us up to where we kind of are, um, you know, uh, going into Google now. Um, now that being said, your philosophy that you choose steering your company, uh, year by year is going to have, there's trade-offs.

You can't do everything perfect. You can't be perfect at executing on revenue and bookings. You can't be perfect at operational like processes and details can be perfect at this or this or that. So I think with us, you know, something that I observed and that comes, that stems from everything down to like, you know, the budgeting ahead count for this org versus that org, or, you know, spending more heads and brainstorming and thought process on this area of the business versus that area of the business. And so, you know, I think we built up some operational debt because of it, because you're just so focused on the goal number, number, number. And we're kind of always growing as fast as we did, just cramming so many new processes and frameworks to scale the org, to create rules and engagement, all this kind of stuff.

Um, and I think we honestly did a pretty good job of it overall, but it's, that was a bit of the exhaustive effect is growing so fast as we did. Uh, it's something that got kind of chaotic. Just real quick, uh, Frank, your CEO is Frank, right? Yeah. Um, I, I pardon my ignorance here. It's, does he have a tech background or does he have a business sales background? Nick's actually, so he's at green plum for a while and he was in alliances really high up there as executives. So he's got the business side and the technical side, which is just huge for us, right? Cause he, he understands both sides of the business, not just one or the other. And I think he'd actually be at quite risk if he had an executive team that was really way on one side versus another versus something in the middle.

Yeah. The companies that I, that I see who are most successful are, are leaders that, that, and obviously I'm biased from a sales standpoint, but have that sales driven mentality where look at the end of the day, if sales doesn't happen, not, none of this works. So, so, you know, I've seen engineering driven companies with that almost treat sales as like a necessary evil. It's like, Oh fuck, we got to hire a bunch of sales reps to sell this crap. And they just kind of put them over here and they're like, yeah, good luck. And those, those companies, unless their product is off the charts, you know, like a Slack or a Google or something like that. Like I see those companies struggle when they treat sales as a second class citizen.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, totally. And, but, but I'd say there's, there's swing, they're swinging the pendulum, you know, too far in the wrong direction where you're all like you're selling smoke and mirrors and one thing that's, excuse me, excuse me, no, not Zendesk, Zenefits, Zenefits. Um, the, the one thing I'd say about, about Looker is like from day one, this came all the way from, you know, Lloyd Tapp, the founder of Looker, who is like an obsessive culture on around like customers and customer success and value to the, to the customer. And that's what we've led with from day one. And that in itself has paid back like in just insane ways, you know, like our, every one of our customers is a Looker sales rep in their own way.

Like it's an, it's, it's incredible how many, it's so validating to see how many of our customers, you know, where someone has gone to another company and the first thing they've done is I, we need to bring in Looker or, you know, they've, they've talked to their friends at other companies and, Oh, we heard, we heard about Looker. It's, it's just like this, um, effect that has a huge effect. It ends up having a huge effect on business, but it's taking it from a different approach. Um, so I say that that's one thing I think Looker has just done an incredible job at is like that, that pays back in itself, even though it's not, you know, we, we literally named our support team department of customer love.

Yeah. So, you know, it sounds a little cheesy, but it, it kind of, it reinforces the attitude and like, we couldn't have done it without that to, you know, kind of actually made me realize that having that like sales, you know, prior top priority mentality, as you said, John, really critical for like, you know, B2B tech companies to be successful, but that'll run you into a wall within a year or two. If you don't also pair that with genuine empathy for customer success, post-sale, keeping them happy, the referencing network and that happens. So, yeah, I mean, this is the, this is the forcing function of being a SaaS company too. It's, you know, you know, you really, it's not just about the initial sale.

It's about the recurring, you know, revenue that comes from a customer, which means they've got to be happy. They've got to be constantly getting new value out of the product in order to actually stick around. When did you guys really double down on the customer success? Was that right straight from the start or like, how did that, when, when did that, when did you have that customer love section? So that, that, yeah, like, so that, that came from Lloyd, like that was on day one, you know, almost to a point where like, we would prefer to just give the product away to someone to show them because we knew we're so confident in the value and that, that we would get money from them eventually because it would become so sticky that we were, we were doing, um, just, you know, crazy things in the sales cycle.

We were like, we were, when I first started, we would build out like a whole, basically like production environment for them just to set it up for them without them buying anything just to show them. And they would be like, Oh my God, I can't believe this thing actually works. And it would become a customer. But that, I think that is kind of like core to, to lifeblood of the lifeblood of look. Yeah. Like I can recall from the early days, like when I first started back into 2013, I still have this like vivid memory of Lloyd walking through the office or like, you know, 25 folks back then he goes, he, I think he heard of just somebody come up on a support chat and just had one little thing and they got really upset and he's just going, no churn, no churn, zero churn.

We're never gonna have any churn or whatever. And now, obviously like you can't fully realize it. That's aggressive. But, but his, his emphasis on like, everybody has to be successful with our product. Like, and then that, that kept evolving year over year. I recall, you know, Frank, our CEO, every time we had an all hands, every time I had a company I would meeting so many times, almost every time I had all hands, he would reemphasize the importance of caring about our customers first, doing what's best for them, um, above everything else. He didn't talk about all the revenue numbers we had and this and that actually, you know, as much of what I'm saying, we're a sales led business and we prioritize deals when it came to our culture.

And like, when we'd have our founders and our CEO talk, that's not what we talked about. We're not hoorah. Hey, we hit our numbers and goals. Yeah, sure. That's successful. That's great. But it came down to like, why are we successful? And this came actually down to remember when we would get funding rounds all the time, people like, Oh, we got all this funding. And, and Frank would always say, which was, was great is look, that's just a reflection of, you know, the, the dynamics of the market and the fact that we have been so serious about caring for our customers over and over and that we'd reached this point of success versus like, yeah, we've got a bunch of funding. Cool. We just hit another quarter or whatever it is.

Um, that, I mean, still, obviously we had that culture within our sales teams and keeps it going, but it's the, it's the balance of those. I think that helpful. Yeah. I love it. So, so what's next? What do you guys, I guess, what's exciting, what are you fired up for going into this new world of Google? Yeah. I mean, uh, there's a, there's a lot of open questions right now, um, which is part of the excitement. Um, you know, I think from a technology vision perspective, you know, the, the two companies are just super aligned from a cultural perspective, you know, it feels like there's a lot of alignment there too. And it's, and it's, you know, I think I'm personally learning a lot about how these acquisitions work as well, which is, that's kind of where, where it stops when you're thinking about making, you know, uh, a deal like this is okay.

The company's aligned, the business is aligned, the culture's aligned. We love the people. We love the technology. And then it's like, all right, let's go figure out how we go make this thing work. And so there's, and that's back to like building and the excitement of all this is that's, you know, that's kind of what's next for, for us is going, let's go answer those questions. How do we go make this work? Yeah. The, the thing that I like keeps me comfortable too, I mean, obviously there's tons of unknowns, right? We're going to be integrated into Google and stuff. Um, you know, again, the alignment on the product and the vision, the culture and stuff is all there. Uh, but you know, as far as we understand, right, Google's philosophy is, you know, again, a multi-cloud, uh, approach to where they just want to be really within the whole cloud, uh, you know, technology industry, freely letting people use what softwares and databases and different technologies that, that makes most sense, even if it's not all in GCP.

And so I think what's exciting for us is I don't have this sense at all that, you know, we're going to be souped up and it's only going to be, you know, Google, Google, everything. And that's going to be everything we're really going to be able to operate somewhat, you know, my understand and independently within the org and still be able to add all the value to all of our customers year every year. And so, uh, clearly there'd be a lot of alignment and, and, and unknowns, but that's what keeps us really kind of psyched and engaged. Cool. Yeah. I mean, I always tell people, you know, at the, at the very least, like we said, like I was talking about before, you know, just paying attention, right.

Uh, you know, I don't think enough kids growing up in business, they don't pay attention to what happens when certain things happen within organizations and learning from that. So for future reference, right. Uh, I wish I paid a lot more attention when I was a kid, when I say kid twenties, right. To say like, Hey, you know, those decisions that the executives put out there, how did they roll out that new comp plan? How did they do the integration? What promises did they make and which ones did they keep? Right. And how did it not only make me feel, but also the team feel. Right. So that as, as I learned all that stuff, good, bad, and ugly, you know what I mean? That I could say, okay, now, you know, maybe when it's my turn next to start my next company or go through that acquisition that, right.

That I could apply all that knowledge as opposed to being, uh, kind of blind to it and just going along. So it sounds like you guys have a, uh, a shitload of stuff in front of you to learn from, which is going to be super fun. So one of my mentors, uh, outside of look, or I asked him, you know, just at this pivotal moment in my career, right. Any advice for me? One thing he said was, okay, one, stay with Google thing to do. It's not about having your resume. And you, to your point, John, leave your ego aside. It's going to be probably a smaller title you're going to get. There's going to be people that are, you know, within the reporting and bureaucracy structure. There's going to be some crazy stuff that happens and just learn from it.

And to your point, like that's really my mentality. And that's what I'm stuck for. Yeah. I mean, we're, we're, you know, I definitely have to mention like, we're super fortunate and both of us in like the way that we've developed our careers to have been, you know, surrounded by just really smart people, great mentors, people that have really helped like enable them people that probably put more trust in us than they should have. Um, but yeah, super excited that they'll be moving, you know, into Google, we're kind of like moving into Google as a unit together. Yeah. And then, yeah, there's, there's, there's definitely going to be some gut punches along the way, you know, and, and we kind of have to learn how to watch them and, um, and adapt.

And that's kind of what we've been doing it from day one anyway. So, you know, we're, we're pretty well practiced at it at this point. Yeah. I'm curious to see, like, for me, one of the biggest, the biggest, probably the biggest learning lesson I had through the acquisition was we tried to staples bought us because, and they said, Hey, we want you to be you. And, and it was pretty evident after six or 12, 12 months that we, we had to assimilate to the mothership. And what we kept doing was I was, I thought it like you read about, right? So, uh, cause I, cause I remember like the first three to six months, I was super optimistic. This was new. This was interesting, but then, and I'm not saying this can happen at Google because I think they're going to be way better at this than staples was.

They staples really all their promises fell off. And, and so I turned to very, from a very positive person to a very negative person about six months in. And I started, I started acting out. I vividly remember you guys, you guys will crack up on this one. Remember, um, uh, remember the movie 300 with Leonidas, right? That whole thing. There was no joke about six months into, uh, me, the acquisition of staples. I sat in my, I sat in my downstairs two o'clock in the morning on my big screen, you know, 50 inch TV with lead with 300 blasting and me envisioning myself as Leonidas and staples was, uh, that was right. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, fuck. And I remember being like, fuck them. I'm, and I, these words came out of my mouth.

I said, I'm going to succeed despite them. And as soon as I said that, I was like, I should have walked in that day, handed my resignation letter and said, I'm out. But I fought it. Cause I was like, no, I'm, I'm going to figure this out. And I fought it and I fought it and I, and I went real negative. And, and it was probably, it was because I did, cause I didn't have, I didn't think about, I was like, like, this is my company and I'm going to make this happen. Right? So what I told my CEO after I got fired, I said, look, you need to stand up. Cause there was a bunch of people that were just like me. They were fighting the fact that we got acquired. And I said to him, I said, guys, I said to my CEO, I said, you need to stand up and say to everybody, look, Hey, everybody, here's the new world.

Here's the new vision where we're going. Okay. If you're not on board with that, I understand you didn't sign up for this. You didn't know when you hired, when we hired you back, whenever we were, that this was going to happen. So if you're not on board with this, I get it. Let's figure out a transition. But if you are on board, let's go make this happen and please stop complaining. And he didn't do that. He still tried to play the middle ground of, we were still this tiny little company, even though we were staples and it fucking fell apart. So I guess the only thing I'll say to you guys is just try to be as open with your people as possible as you go through this stuff and, and, and, and help them, you know, and get, and give them credit.

Like if they don't want to be on this train, help them figure out a transition. Cause otherwise it's a cancer that'll eat away at the entire thing. Yeah, no, that's a really good point, John. It's like, look, we're both just genuinely optimistic people and pretty psyched and I'm too, man. Yeah. Yeah. Something could go wrong though. Right. We could have just like crummy leadership integrates us when we actually get in there and stuff happens or whatnot. I don't think that'll happen, but anything. It's never one thing. I'm going to tell you this right now. It's never, it's a, it's a, it's a build of little shit that starts eating away. And that's what happened to me. Right. And then, and then it's kind of like I snapped, you know what I mean?

And, and I didn't know, cause to your point, I'm, I think I'm a pretty positive person. I like to see myself as pretty optimistic, but it eroded my optimism slowly enough where I turned to be pessimistic. So just be conscious of that. You know what I mean? I, like I said, I've heard, I I've talked to other companies that have been acquired by Google. I understand, you know, it sounds like Google is a fantastic company. Just the, to your point, the culture that you guys have built and the communication and the trust you've built with your employees, just keep that going, man. That's really good. Yeah. Just being really transparent and open and like understanding that it's, you know, it can, things might be coming up and we'll be clear with them.

And yeah, yeah, it's, it's great advice. I mean, one of the things I'm thinking about is, is, you know, there's, there's going to be a big void to fill, right? There's been this, you know, whatever, seven years sprint, basically that Looker's been on facing, you know, the exit. And, and the exciting part of it is like, if you talk to Lloyd, if you talk to some of our leadership, they're really looking at this less as like the end of the road and more of like the beginning of, okay, now we can actually go accomplish this mission that we've been out to the beginning, which is, yeah, which is exciting. But yeah, I think to your point, like keeping, keeping it together, keeping the team as excited about that mission, I think is going to be the next challenge for us.

Yeah. And just sharing that vision. I, I, you know, I, I implore leaders to be wide open with the vision of where things are going, whether they really know all the details or not, but just be like, Hey, this is where, this is what this, you know, this is what the, so now that the gloves are off, right? It's like, cool. What does that mean? Right. And where do I fit in that? Cause now I feel comfortable with that versus, you know, I don't know what's going to happen here. So. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a good point. Cause even to your point, there still might be some people thinking, Oh yeah, we got acquired by Google because shareholders want to get paid out fast enough. And maybe they thought the IPO route was too risky.

So they want to get their money is when they could. Okay. Yeah. You could think about it in that way, or you can think about it in the reality, which is that we could have done whatever we wanted. We're so successful. We chose this path because it's allowing us to accomplish that vision to your point, which is, you know, making like Looker that true data platform, BI staple across so many companies out there that that'll benefit and add value to their businesses. So we've only scratched the surface of that pre acquisition, and that'll just kind of help us continue on that path faster. So that's a good reminder that I like, make sure we remind our teams of that vision too, because it can get lost in the haze, right?

Cause so much chaotic stuff's going on. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's really good. Stay grounded guys. I'm, I'm, I'm psyched for you guys. And I'm, I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys can do now that, uh, now that you got some, uh, some heavy backing here with, uh, it was a lot of upside potential. So, uh, I'm looking forward to continuing the, the journey with you. Hopefully I, hopefully I can do what I can to help. So yeah, well, Hey, thanks for joining and training, training our sales rep through this year at SKL. Yeah. That's a fun night. Cool. Well, uh, talk to me to tell everybody where, like what you guys, you know, if they want to get in touch, if they're interested in Looker, like from a con, you know, from a, from an employee standpoint, but also customers, like what's, what's the best way to get in touch with you guys?

Yeah, sure. So, uh, you know, if, you know, interested in careers here, uh, looker.com slash careers will have all the details that you need. Um, if you're interested in a sales career on the East coast, just email me at Raphael.com with an F, uh, you know, anything with regard to customers too, uh, there's, you know, demo request for you, trial forms on our site or whatnot. So they can usually take care of you, um, from there and you'll get rooted, you know, within a, within a day's notice to where you got to be, um, you know, sad. Well, yeah, that's the best place to go. Um, you know, we're, we're basically, I think we've been in infinite hiring mode from day one. And so we are, we're always looking to bring on a new talent to the team.

So definitely, uh, you know, apply. Yeah. Call out to all the sales engineers, sales managers, sales reps out there. Cool. Well, thanks again for joining me. I appreciate it. Like I said, um, you know, I'm looking forward to see what you guys can do. So hopefully everybody got some value out of this. And, uh, like I say to everybody all the time, you know, at the end of the day, go out there and make somebody happy, right? If you, if you made somebody smile today, no matter how bad your day was, you had a good day. So, uh, hopefully y'all can, uh, have a good day. One of these days here soon and, uh, let's make it happen. Thank you all very much. Thanks John. Bye.