Data-Driven Prioritization – Andrew Lau, Jellyfish

This is Textron TV. Hey everyone, welcome back here to techstroke TV. I am happy to have all the way from Boston where he tells me the fishing's been good this summer Andrew Lau Andrew is the co-founder CEO of jellyfish.

Hey Andrew, welcome to Tech strong TV Allen. So great to be here. Thank you for having me and I look forward to coming down that way and fishing together because I feel like I you know, what you doing cold up there.

That's right. Oh wait till February and we'll make it make the trip. I'm gonna hold you to that man.

Hey Andrew, not every I I've known about jellyfish a while, but not everyone maybe has why don't we start here? Why don't we give people a little jellyfish background? And you're the co-founder CEO.

How did you come to do this? Oh, man. Okay.

Thank you for giving us a chance to talk about it because I'm more than excited to maybe I'll give you the Top Line picture and then let's go in a little bit how we got here, right so jellyfish is, you know, I'll be very simplistic about it, but it's it we're trying to do for engineering with Salesforce did for sales and what do I mean by that right? I don't mean we're looking at sales pipelines or calls or anything else things. But when I started my career 20 something years ago, there was no data in sales and that meant to sales and business weren't working together.

They were like doing a lot of gut feel a lot of hopes and wishes, but they weren't like tied in and and I think if you talk to the kids today, they know every sales metric possible. When I look at engineering right now, it is probably the single most expensive and and really the most strategic function for most companies say every company is a software company software has eaten in the world, right it is what's Gonna Save, you know, all these different companies out there and potentially save the world now the challenges it's the only department now that the business doesn't understand and so often the business side and Engineering are not working in stride. Like we're we're underfunding products.

They need to be refactored. We're not driving hard and enabling the teams to be most functional and helpful and what they need to do. We're not really leading our companies forward with software Innovation because we're not giving up attention to it.

And so for us the goal here is to provide that connection between business and Engineering create that executive leadership visibility and understanding engineering and making sure that the engineering team understands how they fit in with business, right? So that's the jellyfish story The Years in 2022. We're trying to do this in contemporary data Centric manners.

We tied in the tools the teams are using so no one has to change anything. They're already doing. Now is your question.

How did I get here a little if you bear with a little bit longer story? I was training engineer my co-founders Dave and Phil actually hired me in 1999. I know that's forever long ago as a different note.

Not for me. Okay. Well, yeah for a lot of folks listening is probably watching here.

It is for a long time ago different generation, but I joined them as the first engineer of a team and I got to see a company go from eight people to 550. Right and that was a tremendous experience for me to see that grow in the cherry on top is we sold it for over a billion dollars, right? So that was like that taught me a lot but it also taught me about relationships and teams and trust and why these things matter We got the crew back together in 2016.

I'm just say like hey, like we really respected working with each other 20 years ago. Like can we consider doing it again here today, but we don't want to do this naive video. We want to make a dent in the world and for us, you know, we came up through the engineering ranks through the management ranks through the product ranks, and we frankly said the job is hard.

Like when I was running a large team of 70 people, I think the job was beyond hard because you're trying to make sure the team is supported executing at their fullest and the business doesn't understand what they're doing. We're trying to fund the team. We're trying to actually invest The Pride we're trying to make the business succeed and boys that hard because you're holding all the sides together by hand.

And so for us we come here with empathy we come here with empathy because scale engineering leadership and management and Engineering is just playing hard because the disconnect from business. And we want to fix that and if today every company's a software company, well, then sky's the limit for the potential here. Absolutely.

You know Andrew I'm sitting here. Why listening to you and I'm thinking back to my own. I actually in 1999.

We will we went public in early 2000 based in Cambridge. Then we were based on purchase early ASP, which was like Cloud before there was cloud and there was no there was no virtualization that wasn't great bandwidth, but I've been there done that but you know what? I also saw Salesforce come on the scene when they did And here's the Dirty Little Secret.

I don't know how secret it is. Yeah, a lot of sales people hated Salesforce, right? They hated the idea of having to put everything into a system where everyone can see what they were up to and what their progress was and how they were marrying efforts to business.

Objectives right and and metrics and you know, it's shown lights into dark Corners. That didn't hadn't seen light ever before. I got to imagine.

As data-driven as Engineers are I think they're much more data driven than salespeople. Sure. a little reluctant it I I think it goes to you like so so thank you for bringing them up Alan.

Like we we're students of the journey as well because if I'm gonna make analogy I better go back in time and ask what happened back then I I would say that yeah, there was reluctance. It was more about like doing the work of typing things in yeah things in well the good part in 2022 is you know to type things anymore. Right?

It's automatic it's and so that's one change but to your point that doesn't solve an entirely but I think if you look back in the Journey of sales with what they showed up an old four and what company isn't running a CRM, so that was the Revelation it took six years to kind of get to that point. But if you look at the macro stats, we as an industry now push more money into sales. Right like because we now actually understand like hey how this team is actually like really making the business hum and not only that they're not where is an industry or not throwing silly money in there.

We're putting strategic money what I mean by that. Well, I mean that look if for some reason these leads are you know, we're not enough leads. Well, then let's not blindly fun salespeople.

Let's get the bdrs moving right or if it turns out that like Hey, we're actually having certain parts of some segments. Let's move those reps to a different segment. Right?

And so what actually ends up happening is that it makes the team more successful now when I look at this from the engineer, you're right that probably is some hesitants in that stuff, but I think it actually goes to why and how you use the tools we are using right? We come from first and foremost that I think actually companies are making dumb decisions. Frankly.

We are starving Investments that need to happen refactor projects. That really should be happening. We're spending way too much on bugs.

I'm working on weekends fixing Old Line software from 20 years ago that I didn't make that needs to be rebuilt and the company is thinking like they're not realizing we're spending 80% of our time on that old product that actually makes no profit boy. That's a dumb decision, right and on top of it. We have team members right now that are you know, not getting their stuff done not because of them, but because someone's not reviewing the PRS products not actually helping them make the right decisions on this stuff.

And so I actually look at this go back to like the why and the why is to actually really, you know, I said we're talking about engineering but more than half the time it's actually about getting the business to understand. There's a reality of how software works is a reality how maintenance works there's a reality of Investments that we have to make and not smear ourselves like peanut butter. So I actually think the behavior change that I think we're trying to drive here is as much with the actual business to make logical decisions and Investments than it is actually just about investments in engineering right.

So those are those are like, you know, it goes back to the why and the last person make sure that we're not leaving any Engineers Left Behind like we have one company and team where they've got a tremendously distributed team and they're realizing that there are some introverted more quiet team members that just aren't getting their PRS review. And boy, that means they're not getting their stuff out there and that's unfair right? And so like you have to go back to the Y and the why really here is making the team succeed and making the business understands and invest in accordingly.

I think those are the most important things and I think if you explain the why I think people actually like are on board because who wants to be part of a company that doesn't succeed. I want to be coming they succeeds. I want my code and my project to create the next, you know, 20 million ARR because of the things I did that's what I want is an engineer and so like really you got to connect those dots and I think really have to go back to the why here because we're all trying to build a successful company that actually leads to the market, you know.

I agree with you Matt. I said beautifully Andrew. Let's continue with the Salesforce analogy for a minute if you don't mind.

You know initially like when I first became aware of Salesforce, look there are a lot of big companies using things like Siemens or Sea Bowl excuse. Most people see well, yeah. Yeah and you know and the thing about Salesforce.

Well, well that was that space versus having a running yourself and that was a huge Advantage but what really ignited sales force is when it became a platform where it wasn't just what the sales force software itself did but what these this whole Echo System. Yeah is these and stuff out there who were enhancing building our you know that that platform you see a similar kind of path for jellyfish you think? I love that you're calling me on this analogy.

Right because I because not all analogies are perfect. But I think it helps us clarify here just to walk through this. I think you described like I cheated I gave it a cheap analogy here that I think is a good one, but not perfect.

The siebel did come first right siebel did Blaze the trail verse CRM. Yeah and and did kind of open the door and Salesforce kind of made it accessible, right? It made it for everyone right and and I think to a certain degree we have a little bit harder Journey right?

Because like look, it's we're not just adding phone calls up here, right? We actually have to to figure out like what people are actually working on and how to make them succeed here. And so I in some ways we're earlier in the journey and that part of it right so I completely agree with you that yes, the real leverage will be longer term which is what we have the platform or lots of isps can can work with us to enable, you know, these engineering teams to be even more successful.

But we actually have to walk the journey fully first, right? We have to actually like right now engineering is the only Department that probably doesn't have clear slides for the board meeting. They probably don't have kpis the business actually understands and we as an industry actually have to solve that right it is two strategic of a function to just be like hopes and wishes, right like and I think we really need to actually figure out what those are and the journey for us and and this industry is actually help figure out like how do we understand the like this team is actually driving the business goals on these things.

What are the handful of kpis we need to and that's the journey we're on to work with our customers our leaders to help figure out what works for them and their way and yes, if we get there then we get to talk about that. Now, let me add one more thing that I think is worth calling out here. I think, you know, we can joke and and talk about sales for today because it is so darn ubiquitous.

It is everything to everybody. So maybe it was an easy. Allergy to make right but part of that Journey helped figure out not just what it was but who interacts with it and I actually think today like we're also on that Journey right when you think about you've got a team of a hundred two hundred Engineers, it is about the code, but it's also about the product management process.

It is also how it fits in with Finance. It is also around how the forecasting actually happens around next year's 2023 budgets. It's also about is the code making it through the devops pipeline cleanly, right like and and who's actually not left behind along the way and each of those use cases leads to different constituencies a different user a different need right and it also leads to different systems and different isvs that are actually at the core of actually where we might be able to synergize different data together to actually help that function move.

Right? And so the way we think about it isn't, you know, a blanket or platform for platform sake we think deeply around which use cases which person Who are we helping what data is really going to help them get that business objective and an engineering objective together, right and how we bring it together so that people don't have to type in things manually because look it's it's where we're two we're two new here to actually have a bunch of folks running around filling out spreadsheets by hand again, right we have better than that, right? So and the way we do that is actually partner with these isps to actually bring these things together in context to help them understand what's going on.

Script here a little bit of off the reservation if I apologize, but you know, I think one of the things also that jellyfish can help with is we're going through an interesting time in terms of how engineering is organized in Enterprises. Yep, right? The CTO.

Is it the CPO? Is it the chief data officer? We have one of our properties within the textural universes digital cxl.

We made it X for a reason, right? Yeah, it seems from from Oregon, you know from organizational organization the person who's who's owning engineering? right at the sea level.

Yeah differs. Yeah the difference from organization organization. true What do you know?

How does? I mean jellyfish obviously can work with any of them. But what do you see with that?

Yeah, I think it's a great question. And and look if I had the magic answer here, we should be writing some some big articles together a perfectly in this stuff, but maybe we will but but I think it is. Um, it's an evolution right?

It's all say a couple things so companies that are software companies right now. Like we're software is their price are really going through this kind of this revolution right now around, you know on the team level they're going through this shift when I started out all you know, QA program managers and Engineers kind of like the triumphant we've shifted now as an industry and now it's much more around product design and Engineering this epd kind of thing. That's actually happening on the team level.

As you pointed out actually when you get to the kind of sea level. Yes, there's kind of a CTO CPO and and I think the industry's kind of figuring out which one actually makes sense there. But actually what's really saying is the recognition that this is not just a sideshow function.

Right. So like, you know 20 years ago, like look you might join a company and they have a handful of software Engineers, you know handful and you know, they got hundreds of people in the business side and a couple engineers and and they really had a hard time distinguishing being like is this like, you know repairing laptops or is this like, you know doing this thing here right this website, that's the kind of side show thing. Well if you look at a company today, Sometimes 40% of budget now goes to engineering because it is the thing that we sell now it is the thing that helps the company succeed and so inevitably like if it's the thing that represents what we sell as a business, you need to have someone represent that piece of it right and that's why you're seeing that kind of elevation of the sea statement accordingly in that now the part I think we'll be interesting for you and I to watch together is actually what happens in the kind of global 2000 segments in those things, right?

Because you've got the CIO function you've got product they're going through the same epd kind of changes going on over there, too. But I actually think that the constructs and Enterprise are slightly different, right the the CIO right now has all these things going into him or her right? And that's a lot on their way down.

There's still worried about the data centers and the infrastructure and and laptops too. That's a longer. They're keeping the wheels on the bus, right?

And and so I think that the question that will that we should all watch together is does that structure remain in those organizations or do they actually break out in a more kind of Be You Centric model where an abuse-centric model I've seen some organizations where the GMS are starting to act more like a CPO right in a software company. And so there's no see in GM, right but like it's but their behaviorally shifting. So I think you're calling out a thing that I think about and I think you're right on which is we are to point where these roles transition and it's not arbitrarily it's because the nature of business is changing.

Yeah when when you and I live in a world where we're not just order takers of somebody else's thing. We're actually Driving Innovation or making the thing that will make the business succeed. Well suddenly gee that's gonna cause all kinds of reorganization of what's actually happening and it probably will play out in a generation.

I don't mean long 30 years. I mean probably in a software no five years five years are generational epics. Yeah in you know internet time.

Anyway, hey Andrew, we're way over time. I apologize. I monopolize here for a bit.

But it was a great discussion. You know, what we didn't mention though you are for people who need to want to get more information about jelly. Yeah.

Well, thank you for reminding me an allen. Thanks for having this year. co, right just hit us on the web lots of great stuff on our website and and a lot of great information that actually helps us all Elevate as engineering leaders here on that and you can find me on LinkedIn.

I'm easy to find my handles am Lau just find me there either place for more than happy to trade notes and share stories, but the root of it Alan you and your community. Here to learn from you. Right?

Like I think we are on a journey together. It's gonna take us some years together as an industry to get there. But if we're there we're a world where engineering is leading the business and and I think you and I and Industry as a whole are gonna be much better for it.

Absolutely, Matt jellyfish dot CEO go. Check it out. And you're out here on Tech strung TV.

We're going to take a break. We'll be back in a moment.