PODCAST: CEO Brian Walsh in Conversation with SaaStr’s Jason Lemkin at DF16

Jason:

… Brian tell us a little bit about the company, how big it is, how long you’ve been around, and just what your mission is.

Brian:

CodeScience is part of what we call the PDO program, or Product Development Outsourcing, and it was founded 8 years ago. We were the founding member of it and we’re focused 100% on working with SaaS companies and really on bringing products to market on the AppExchange.

Jason:

Yeah. Okay, so let’s slow down. PDO is a Salesforce acronym?

Brian:

Yeah. It’s a Salesforce acronym and what they looked at was in the general partner ecosystem where you have 3,000 partners, 4,000 partners, it’s really different to build a product that can be installed in 10,000 apps rather than a customization in a single app. So many startups fail in that process and so they pulled together just 33 of us worldwide who focus on just building apps and getting through security review and understanding the user experience that Salesforce presents.

Jason:

So I approach Salesforce, I want to get on the AppExchange or otherwise develop on the platform and if I need help, Salesforce refers folks to the PDO partners?

Brian:

That’s exactly right….Usually the first question is what do you know about Salesforce? How do you know about coding for this? It is a really different environment and so that’s our specialty. We can help ramp those teams up on their product and then actually teach them how to maintain and do the next iterations and sprints. Our main value proposition is that time to market.

Jason:

…Today, a lot of SaaS companies just start oAuthing into Salesforce data. They don’t even bother with the AppExchange. They don’t bother even really understanding the platform ecosystem because today you can oAuth in and get data out and push data in.

Brian:

That’s right, it’s an API company.

Jason:

Yeah. It’s amazing change. I mean when I got on the AppExchange in 06 and that first class, your only option was to go through the AppExchange. When does that work and when does that break down? Just oAuthing in. How far can I take a company just using that way to access Salesforce?

Brian:

Well if you think about it from that perspective then it’s just a data play. I’m just pulling data out, pushing data in.

Jason:

Yeah, which is still amazing that I can do that in a company doing 10 billion in revenue.

Brian:

That’s right, but to do a user experience, to put it in front of them. We can think about where Salesforce is going with Lightning — the Salesforce administrator becoming a product manager in their own company. They’re talking to stakeholders and their frontline users and saying what do you need to get done. Then they assemble an app from their own work, from AppExchange partners, from customizations. They’re putting it together. These features we think of EchoSign as product. It’s really a feature.

Jason:

It is a feature, yeah.

Brian:

I don’t send signatures out just for the heck of it. I’m doing it to close a deal, I’m doing it to get an NDA, that’s a feature of a bigger process. That’s what Salesforce is enabling then is you can drag these together, you can actually build a composite app out of many different partners.

Jason:

If I’m a first-time founder or I’m not but I’m new to Salesforce, should I take a baby step with using oAuth and getting data down and learning how it goes because I can do that in a day. Should I start there or should I go whole hog in terms of AppExchange and a deeper integration. I know it’s not really a binary question but what’s your advice?

Brian:

I think you have to start wherever you can. You get it going and you do the cheapest way possible. With startups, you’re going to run out of money. You have such a small roadway ahead of you, so you need to build it whatever way you can. I know that’s what Mattermark did is start from the outside, let’s push data in, let’s do that. When they saw enough traction, when they lined up the first customers, they said great – now let’s build.

Jason:

… Let’s talk about why I should do AppExchange. There’s marketing benefits, there’s technology benefits, there’s sort of ecosystem benefits.How is it different today than it was a few years ago? What are the benefits I get today?

Brian:

One is there’s even more trust of that entire market. I think every single company now has at least one AppExchange app installed.

Jason:

You mean every Salesforce customer has an app?

Brian:

Yeah.

Jason:

It’s not risky anymore.

Brian:

It’s not risky and the big boys are doing it. Even the top Fortune 10 are installing AppExchange [apps]. That’s an amazing opportunity as an entrepreneur to know that I can walk into any size business and be able to be installed. Another part is that the size of the Salesforce customer base is enormous. These aren’t going on to the app store and installing a 99 cent app. These can be $120 a seat on a monthly basis. That’s real money and there’s an expectation that these are business apps, that people will pay for business apps.

Jason:

There is that for sure. Another thing that’s changed, it does take longer to get on the AppExchange, the bar is higher. The bar is higher from a security perspective. The bar is higher from an application perspective, and I know at least anecdotally it takes longer than it used to to get up on AppExchange, right?

Brian:

Yup.

Jason:

Okay, so let’s have some fun. Let’s use Mattermark as a case study because a lot of folks will know of Mattermark. When did they launch the AppExchange app?

Brian:

It is going through security review right now and I think that they’ll be doing it in December. I’m not speaking for them.

Jason:

December, okay. That’s great. When did Mattermark just start interacting with Salesforce data through oAuth or otherwise? When did it have a basic Salesforce integration?

Brian:

I think they’ve had that for the past year.

Jason:

Past year, okay, so they built that. As Mattermark evolved into more and more of a sales tool I’m sure that became more important, and then what’s the thought process? Why did they want to do this? How did they connect with you? Then talk about scoping out this AppExchange app. Let’s use this as a case study both to promote CodeScience a little, but just as much to help founders out there watch someone that’s going through something that Mattermark went through.

Brian:

Yeah. I think what they started finding and what they got from their users that were using the oAuth was there wasn’t the user experience. I had to move out of Salesforce, log into Mattermark, do my work.

Jason:

So they wanted to live in Mattermark in Salesforce.

Brian:

That’s right.

Jason:

Okay, so that you don’t get that.

Brian:

You don’t get that. The other side of it is the configuration. How do I map to all the different fields? Every org is different.

Jason:

You need mapping?

Brian:

You need mapping, you need configuration.

Jason:

Mapping fails for oAuth. How are you going to do mapping?

Brian:

API still has limitations. You actually as a customer can get charged for too many API calls.

Jason:

You can. Let’s go back in time. Mattermark just through API, just through oAuth is pushing data about accounts into those opportunities or records in Salesforce, so I can see the Mattermark data in it. I did get that. Right?

Brian:

Yup.

Jason:

That has value. I couldn’t do research or finding opportunities probably natively in Salesforce using Mattermark data, correct? That’s my guess.

Brian:

Right. The other side of it is think about the tasks that they’re trying to do. When that sales rep is about to make a call, what’s the most updated information? What’s the recent news? Because that’s great topical information so I can close a deal. Get that next call. How can we take that data and actually put it in the right place?

Jason:

Let’s talk about that for a minute because for folks that haven’t done it, that term may seem niche, this data mapping. But having built it it’s very important. Compare Mattermark and data mapping just as an oAuth app and an AppExchange app. What’s the superlative data mapping? What does that mean?

Brian:

Data mapping is essentially saying I have two different databases. I have my Salesforce one and I have my Mattermark.

Jason:

Constructed differently. The fields are different.

Brian:

Yeah. Each Salesforce customer actually has a whole different data model.

Jason:

They do. Salesforce is very extensible.

Brian:

How do I map those together?

Jason:

How do I do that with Mattermark before AppExchange?

Brian:

That was within the Mattermark application. That breakdown is, my Salesforce administrator now also has to belong to Mattermark. They have to know another system.

Jason:

I get that’s a tax. Is that a terrible tax or is it just nice to be able to do it in Salesforce?

Brian:

The other part of it was now the API limiting that starts happening, they would get large customers like Digital Ocean who was pushing too much data through the API. They’re doing updates too often, so how do you control that, how do you manage that, and how would you know the rate limits that their currently hitting?

Jason:

Got it. You’re almost forced to do it for rate limits even today for bigger customers.

Brian:

Yeah.

Jason:

You can hack it with small stuff.

Brian:

Yeah.

Jason:

Okay, so I get mapping, I avoid rate limits, and I can do the admin stuff inside of Salesforce.

Brian:

That’s right.

Jason:

Does the rep get a benefit in Mattermark? Does the end rep get a benefit?

Brian:

The end rep then gets the Mattermark data on, not just as record rows, but also widgets and components, so they can interact. On the opportunity page you can actually drop the Lightning component for Mattermark that says here’s exactly what’s going on for this account.

Jason:

I see, so they get an upgrade from the experiment as well?

Brian:

That’s right.

Jason:

… Let’s say I’m an ISV or a SaaS company. One thing I get worried about sometimes working with folks who are providing great services, like CodeScience, is it’s too expensive or I’m not big enough. What’s the bottom end of the sweet spot?

Brian:

We’ll work on all sizes. We’ve had 2 people doing a startup come in. Glance when they first started, it was a handful of people and we helped build that out. That was 8 years ago. Amazing partnership. For us it’s a mixture of projects that go in. We warn people that what your budget is, 30% of that should be build. You’ve got to save the rest for customer success. You’ve got to save the rest for sales and marketing. When someone comes and says I’ve got a million dollars I want to build a product. We say great, don’t spend it all with us. When you get done what are you going to do?

Jason:

You’re stuck. You’ve just got a piece of software you don’t know how to support or maintain.

Brian:

Yup, and as great as the AppExchange is, it’s not a build it and they will come market.

Jason:

No, it’s not.

Brian:

It’s enterprise sales.

Jason:

That’s rookie error number one is I put all this effort, I put it up on AppExchange, and Salesforce is magically going to give me 1,000 customers. When has that happened?

Brian:

Never.