Reintroducing Accoil Analytics with Peter Preston at Atlassian Team ’24

This is Techron tv. Hi, I'm Mitch Ashley here at Atlassian, team 24 in Las Vegas. If I, with some really fantastic and interesting people doing great things within the Atlassian community.

Speaking of which I get to meet with, uh, Peter Preston. Peter is co CEO and co-founder of a COIL and Yes. Analytics.

That's Right. I had to ask to make sure I did that. How you doing?

Excellent. Excellent. And thank you for having me.

Oh, Absolutely, absolutely. Tell us a little bit about what the company, what does the coil analytics do? So, A coil analytics is product engagement.

So if you have a SaaS product, and particularly we're focusing on B2B SaaS, and you want to know what your users are doing in your app, uh, we help you measure engagement, activation rates, adoption, that sort of stuff at both account and user levels, uh, with a real focus on helping you drive, go to market motions. So we're not automating outreach ourselves, but we're providing you with the signals that say now's the time, for example, to reach out to this particularly hot company. If you've got a big account that you know is using the product and you've got a sales team on it, we can help you sort of pinpoint like, now's a good time to reach out, or we can trigger things in HubSpot or Intercom, for example.

Mm-Hmm. So we see this product engagement data as a bit of an engine for, or fuel for your, your outreach tools, including the human outreach where you have sales involved or customer success perhaps. So more than just a usability of the product, not that that is an important it is, but is it things like we see customers or particular customer using this part of the product more heavily now and maybe there's a companion or something else that service or something else you might be able to take to the next, uh, step in that relationship?

Yeah, so I think that's, that's a big area that we'd actually like to move into is, uh, especially, I mean here around around the Atlassian ecosystem. There's a lot of opportunity for, for cross sales, upsells, that sort of thing where, um, having been in the marketplace ourselves before this was something that we sort of struggled with, was understanding what are our customers doing that they actually value in the products, and what are some of the things, maybe some of the features that just aren't making them feel the love, you know? Mm-Hmm.

So we're trying to figure out, again, going back, what are those moments that actually matter to your customers and how can you take advantage of that? So, um, not here to tell anyone how to sell or anything like that, but we think that timing is important in a lot of these motions, whether it be, uh, marketing, sales, support even, and customer success, and we want to help you get that right. So you're reaching out at the right time when someone is either increasing an engagement or perhaps tailing off, that might be another sign.

So churn's a big thing as Well as they say timing's, timing's everything, right? Timing is everything. Knowing your customer is even more Yeah.

Uh, than every, everything. Um, uh, oftentimes entrepreneurs, I've started companies myself too, a lot of times entrepreneurs have a problem. Maybe they're in a startup now or they're working in a big company and that's what they get passionate about, maybe going, forming another company.

I'm guessing you lived this challenge in another life, another role We did, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we were, uh, marketplace partners, uh, a couple years ago as a company was called Think Tilt, and we made Proforma, which is now the forms within Jira service Management.

So acquired by Atlassian. I spent a couple years in the company, got to know it from both sides now, but we are launching a coil is actually, it's bringing an older product back to life and something that we had used at Think Tilt ourselves to solve these exact problems. So we were sort of customer zero for this, uh, loved the product and have talked to a lot of other people that enjoyed it, formerly called Sherlock that enjoyed Sherlock.

So we saw an opportunity there, uh, again, an experience that we really liked digging into ourselves. So Yes. So this is kind of the relaunch or the next, um, you know, kind of version or evolution of Sherlock into a coil.

Is that a Good That's it, yep. Yeah, so we're, we're bringing it back to the market. We will be making some updates to it, but for the most part it's, it's the same product that people had used before and really enjoyed using it.

We got a lot of value out of it, so we figured, let's give it a crack. Is there a good community good following with Sherlock that's coming kind of with it, looking forward to this? Or is it really kind of reintroducing it to the Bar?

It's reintroducing it. Yeah. It would've been nice if we could have taken it over with some customers, but they had sunset it, so, uh, we're kind of starting from scratch again.

But we've been lucky enough to know, uh, a few of the companies that had used it before, and so we've, we've been able to talk with them and get a sense of how they were using it, and that's hugely what they liked about it right there. Yes, it's been great and, uh, some, some big fans, so that was really encouraging when we're Talk about market intelligence. Yeah, Yeah.

And, uh, from some sizable companies too, which was nice. So we're pretty encouraged by that, but also just excited to, to bring it back. And then we're looking at the Atlassian space and how can we introduce it here in particular.

Mm-Hmm. What do you think, I mean, a lot has happened, you know, since you joined the course, the, the Atlassian community. Think about all the digital transformation, how much more digital engagement, digital experiences that we all live with now.

Mm-Hmm. Most of them I hope are good and probably some can be better, but you know, it's really transformed how we work together. Just think about the remote work and all the things that we do online now.

How does that change what questions that we want to know about people that are using our products? Or is it still back to fundamental things? Uh, I think it goes back to a lot of fundamentals.

So I, I think now with the move to cloud and, uh, I'd say that would be the big driver. So you get a bit more visibility into what your customers are doing. So if you're on a, you know, on-prem or server or whatever, maybe you don't get to see exactly how your customers are using your product.

So I think you get a bit more visibility now and a bit more opportunity from that. From an end user point of view, I think, uh, it's, everything's a bit more accessible, uh, which means hopefully that you can use it a bit more and, and, and learn about it. And in context you can learn about it.

And that's what, uh, I think excites me the most is helping companies like the ones that we see around us here at Atlassian to, to deliver a bit more value and understand how to do that based on some of the data that we can provide them. Mm-Hmm. There, there's some magic here, right?

That you're staying in be and wanna be part of, continue to be part of the Atlassian Mm-Hmm. Ecosystem. What it is about the technology or the people or the companies.

What is it that's, you know, I'm gonna do another company, I'm gonna go do this, and I of course I'm gonna do it here. Yeah, I, I think it was a, a no brainer for us because, uh, I would say if I were to stack rank, it would be the people and then the products and uh, sort of overarching all that is the community that's, that's around it. Uh, coming to this event for me is more fun than anything else really.

Of course, we're here to do business, but it's great to reconnect with people. I think there's just an energy that has kind of come out of Atlassian that makes this a special ecosystem. Uh, done some consulting and work with, with other companies that are in, uh, we call it other ecosystems that don't necessarily have as friendly of a, of of a feel.

It's, I dunno, it's a nice vibe Mm-Hmm. Within the Atlassian space, and I appreciate the people. I think that's the biggest thing.

Lot easier to do things when it's fun too, right? Agreed. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Now you're launching the product in a, in, in a relatively soon, it's not quite out yet, is that true?

Yep, exactly. So here at team, uh, we're, we can demo it for you, but we're not actually taking anyone on yet. We will be doing early access, uh, just to give people a taste of what it can do.

Um, so that's really what we're, we're looking for here at team is people that are interested in giving it a try. So hopefully within the next two to three weeks, we should be opening the doors for early access and, and letting people in the door. Great.

Great. Now, does it integrate into, uh, other Atlassian products or is this something you build into your app? Software that I'm building?

That I'm using Atlassian. Yeah. Right, right now it is not integrated with anything Atlassian yet, but, uh, that's part of why we're coming back to the space is we see opportunities in, we'll pick one of the JIRAs to start with.

So, uh, we see, we see use cases for software teams. We see use cases for support teams, and, uh, JIRA product Discovery, I think is a really exciting product, and we'd like to explore how we can play in those workflows. A lot of great, see where that goes.

Data There. Yeah. A lot of great data and I think, you know, we are one of the signals that could help that.

So we'll see where, where JPD goes, but I think that's, that's an exciting space as well. Gotta ask the AI question. Is that what's happening in your part of the world regarding relative to ai?

Is it making an impact yet, or are you still kind of thinking about where that, where that applies? We were talking about it just this morning, so Yeah, of course. I feel like it's an everyday thing now.

I was sitting in the next table, actually. Yeah, I knew you Were. No, of course.

Um, whoops. Uh, no secrets there, but, uh, yeah, we are, we're talking about how we, how we approach that, and I think it's, it's a, it's an interesting challenge. I think we've seen AI sort of slapped onto things Mm-Hmm.

And I don't know what value that brings necessarily. How many copilots do we need? Right?

Right, exactly. Every products Gotta Exactly. I'm not saying they're useful, but after A while Yeah.

Enough Copilot it's use case based. And so we're trying to figure out what that looks like for us and the data that we're ingesting. Can we help customers engage with that data better?

Um, and to think of it in, in, in that sense is how can they engage with it in a way that, uh, sort of expands their own interaction with it? So we want to help non-technical teams look at data more. And so we see AI as one of those opportunities and can kind of just deliver them, here's some insights this happened, here's what potentially what it could mean for you, and here's some actions that you can take from that.

But how we build that is another question altogether. And, uh, I think that's the kind of what we're wrestling with in the moment is, do we Yellow Brick Road is still to be built, right? Brick by brick.

We're All trying to figure out brick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the dark, I feel like.

Yeah. There's one street lamp, it's not over there. Yeah.

Te tell me about, so I imagine you still use the, uh, uh, Atlassian products Oh, yeah. To work today. What, what sort of, where do you live in terms of using those, uh, most of your time?

Confluence and Jira software is where I live, so we tend to use Jira software to track most of our projects, uh, from product engineering, ops, marketing, that's all in there. So yeah, we go by sprints. Still a small team and fully remote.

So we found that that's actually really easy and it's, everyone on the team has been exposed to these tools forever, so everyone knows it. The RDS go into Bright requirements document or whatever we call 'em these days. Yes.

Go into Confluence and Yep. Plans and all that kind of Thing. And I'll admit my Confluence is a mess, so everyone's closet.

Yeah. It's, It's sort of like your closet. You gotta go clean it out every once in a while, but it holds so many great things.

I just Like to keep the door Closed and where to go. Yeah. It can happen.

Yeah. I've been through that experience myself too. What, what is it, um, what's coming up at the conference that you're sort of like, I might of all my to-dos of what I wanna do?

What's number one on your list? Uh, I think the AI conversation, I'm, I'm very interested to hear what Atlassian is going to do about that or what they're thinking about. And, uh, I heard some sort of, heard some whispers and some little teases over the last day or two and mm-Hmm.

Uh, no real, no real sense yet exactly what it's going to be, but I'm, I'm fascinated to see which direction they go and how that might impact us. You know, selfishly, what, what does that do? Sure.

To, to us with, uh, that's, that I think is one of the biggest things. And, uh, honestly, yeah, the community events have been, have been nice too, just to see, uh, people sort of rallying around the ecosystem has been nice. So that's always a nice social aside for me.

But yeah, on the business side, it's the AI stuff. Great, Great. Yeah.

You know, a question I wanted to ask you too is, um, I know you're just getting into market and early access. Who do you envision, um, you sell to? Who is the person that's gonna say, yeah, at Coil is what I need?

Is it somebody in the, like a product leader or, So we see initially product managers that have to answer the question, what are our users doing in the products over and over again? Um, helping them sort of keep those other teams at bay. Having been on product marketing teams, myself, I was one of those people that was mm-Hmm.

Uh, begging for data as much as I could. Uh, I think analysts are overworked, or maybe that's the wrong word, have a big backlog of, of things to do, and that then means product managers tend to be the ones that answer these product engagement questions. So we're, we're thinking that that's probably the first port of call is how can we help them answer these questions a lot faster and give that value to the other teams?

Mm-Hmm. Fantastic. What, what's it like to start a company or start a product to become part of the ecosystem Good on the marketplace?

Any tips or suggestions for people might be thinking about, you know, dipping their toe in that water, maybe you're plunging in that direction. What have you learned? I, I think this is actually one of the best places to launch a business.

So if you haven't considered being on this marketplace in particular, or a marketplace, this is a, it's worth considering. I think distribution is, is baked in. Obviously there's a lot of work to do to make people aware of your product, but, uh, that would be the first thing is just join in and get involved and, and look at the marketplace as, as an, as an opportunity, not just this sort of walled off space over there Mm-Hmm.

Where those people play. It's, it's actually a pretty big opportunity. And I think that's, that would be the biggest thing I would say.

Sometimes marketplaces, I'm not saying this about Atlassian, sometimes marketplaces are, it feels like I just need to get listed in the directory. And like, what do I do after that? How do I get noticed?

How do I build that audience that following or let people know what we're doing? Yeah. That is a perpetual struggle.

And I think there are challenges that are very unique to being in a marketplace, including this one, that it can be difficult to stand out. You don't, and for very good reason, you don't get to see as much, um, of the analytics that you would if you're a standalone product, not on a marketplace. Mm-Hmm.

I think Atlassian has, it's, you know, it's in their interest to protect their customers. So they're not giving you as a marketplace partner, everything that you might want and need. So I think there's a lot of creativity that goes into building these businesses and how do we work with what we've got and when do you trust your guts?

What kind of signs and signals are you looking for? Uh, so there's a lot behind that and it's, it can be challenging and I think that's what makes it a bit fun, really, is that unique character to it. Well, I heard about this company, they're doing product analytics.

Might be really good to help you with that. Yeah, yeah, I can, I can introduce you to them anytime. Yeah, You can.

Alright. Peter Preston, who is co-founder Co CEO with, uh, eco Analytics and, uh, we, we wish you all the best on the launch of your product and welcome so much back into reentering the, uh, the Atlassian market as a, as a new company. Thrilled to be here.

Great. Thanks man. Great to have you.

They said we learned so much talking with folks here, whether you're someone thinking about creating a product or you have a need, you know, for something like what a coil does, this is a great environment to find that out as well as looking on the marketplace and the other great resources. So we'll be back with another interview in just a moment.