Integrating Disparate SaaS Applications – Marc Boscher, Unito

This is Textron TV. Everyone welcome back to techstrong TV got our next guest lined up here for you. It's a new company First Time guest on here.

I want to introduce you to Marc Boscher. Hey, Mark, welcome to Tech strong TV. Thanks for having me excited.

Yep, so we're gonna hear about your new company. I'm exciting news. But before we get into that, why don't we give people a little bit of the Marc Boscher story and how you got to be here today?

Yeah, sure. So I'm the CEO and co-founder of unido. It's a company.

We started a few years back to solve a problem that I'd had while for pretty much decades. com bubble. com bubble in 99 and I've been products since and when your product you have to You have to work with every department but you have absolutely like no authority over them.

And so every Department ended up choosing their own tool sets and I was the one jumping around having to bridge the gap amongst all of them. And so it was on the bucket list of someone should solve this and it really started as a basement project. How do we is there a way where we could integrate all these tools together into let's say my tools as a product leader and people to interact and collaborate without having to switch around all the time.

And that's how it started basement project to scratch that it launching MVP and we started getting some traction and and here we are today. It's interesting. I have a good seat where I am here I get to talk to a lot of companies a lot of Founders new old and in between I can't tell I would say the majority.

Of Founders have started their companies because of a problem. They themselves had that they said I got to fix this and then once they started working on the fix they realize I'm not the only one with this problem. Right.

There's a business here. I'm going to get this fixed out to other folks. And and so it succumb easier.

It's a lot easier when you're solving a problem. You've got first-hand experience, but right but I I had a whole list of these someone should solve this problem that I'd accumulated over, you know, joining different startups to different stages and there's a lot more that goes into it than just having, you know the idea of so much it's all this and you know, we've been doing this for a few years now and we still have a long way to go. So I think there's there's a lot more to just the idea right?

There's a lot that goes in sure. Well, no, I don't think it's just the idea. I think what happens is most people see the problem.

The first inclination is someone had to have fixed this before someone had this problem. Let me go see what's available to fix the problem. Then they find out lo and behold no one fixed the problem but a lot of people talked about the problem and they say God darn it.

I'm gonna go fix this problem for myself. And they do they they cobbled together something they prototype something. you know and then all of a sudden it Dawns on them is you know, this is This is a problem affixed to a problem that a lot of people have.

This could be a business now. I will tell you also having been involved in such a Serial entrepreneur since the dot-coms and before is often. What happens is that problem you fixed winds up becoming just a feature of a larger platform kind of play, right?

And what's that? What's really interesting with this is because you've got this movement of it's become so easy to build and launch something and you you're getting more and more and more more software absolutely so much more specialized each of them on a specific problem and it's specific audience. And for that audience that product is just amazing, but it's very Niche and so you get this it's just accelerating this proliferation of software, which is both good and a huge challenge for organizations.

Right? Well that goes back to the underlying problem that you are trying to sell. is you know the proliferation of software and I don't mean it in a bad way, right software is eating the world software ate the world already.

I think it's digesting it now, but but the real issue is especially when you get to larger Enterprises right when you're working at a startup. All right. So you got a half a dozen, you know kind of things you go to a Enterprise that's grown both organically and Via acquisition.

Your head explodes crazy with the amount of platforms and products and AppSec that you got to support. How do you use it's a win-lose battle because then companies get into this debate of which one do we standardize on and which one we cut and and that's true. Like it's really a win lose for the organization because all the people that won't get the softer those designs specifically for them.

They're losing out on productivity. They're losing that on happiness. They're often Gonna Leave the company.

Absolutely they want so the premise you know for you know was how do you how do you make it win-win? How do you get the Best of Both Worlds? How do you let people work in the tools that make them happiest and more productive, but then you make those software interoperable and integrated so that everyone can like you don't pay the penalty of having silos and software and having too many software as hell.

So how do you resolve that that problem? That's that's really what we set up to solve. Okay.

Yeah that you set it up. You got it kind of answer your question. I mean it's in an abstraction layer that sits on top anyway now what it what if you need them?

Yeah. So you need oh is an integration like a no code integration platform. It's core and you could compare it to the likes of a zap here on one end or a workato or you'll soft but we took a completely different approach to integration and architected from the ground up based on two a sink on data synchronization between software and that's that's really our claim to fame if you want is that out of the box and and we Target business users.

So out of the box any non-technical person can connect up two tools together where they work and when let's say another team is working and we'll sink the data two way so that it feels like everyone's in the same tool but they're not they're actually working in each different software. And so we work more in the background in that sense and we leave people where they work we go. Where people work and that's that's really fundamental.

The premise is deep 2A and seamless integration that a business user can set up. We think that's the that's the key. That's the important combination for integration today and integration is like as old software Integrations as all the software, right and it's evolved as software as evolved over time.

And we think it's it's due for kind of the next evolution of it because today it's all based on very simple automation or if this happens here do this there. But how do we actually make these pieces of software interoperable? How do you make them feel like they're deeply deeply integrated and people don't feel friction as they work with people that are in other tools.

things on that Mark one You know when we look at the zap ears and so forth of the world today so much of it is API. Right, just API integration, right your year, maybe one app talks to the other via an API. interface secondly, though So there's integration in this integration.

right this simple transferring of a value, right? versus truly integrating through integration at scale or is it? You know, look I was in cyber security for 20 25 years, right?

Back in the day Ark site was the Sim that ruled the world right that Hewlett Packard boredom for like a billion something dollars back then HP. Before we had apis to get your tool integrated into Ark site was like a year and a half waiting period it probably only took I don't know three weeks to get done but there was such a backlog of tools that needed to get integrated. You know, you took a number and we'll see about a year and a half.

How do you do that? Without waiting a year and a half. I think you're touching on something.

That's really important. That's why we're talking about ease of use and targeting a business User. It's really really important because today you either have to you have to kind of opposite options.

When you look at the integration space you either looking at really simple very shallow basic automations that anybody can set up but you can't get super far or you're looking at much deeper technical knowledge needed. There's a central group that's managing it and here's the cue wait in line. Right?

So what we're seeing more and more and especially in large organizations because we are unfortunate 500 organizations it and security is playing it's shifting. It's role to executing those Integrations and building them and maintaining them to selecting platforms that can then let the business line users self-serve into me setting up and maintaining and changing the integration as their own workflows are changing because sending it up is only scratching the surface in most cases. When you're setting up your your peering to departments or an entity that you acquired or a third party that you're partnering with or hiring and you're setting up an immigration for workflow that's going to evolve over time.

You want the agility to be able to change how you're working together? And if every time you have to go see the central, you know person built this and hope they're still working there. You're not gonna have that agility.

So the the combination of going allowing a deep integration and then making it really simple and capsulating the complexity for businesses are set up so and then still giving the governance functionality to the IT department. That's the combination for this to scale. Love it.

All right, we didn't even get to the news. We were supposed to talk about Mark. What's the news coming out of your Neato?

Well, we in a particularly interesting fundraising environment. We close our series B round but really that's a means to an end. Right?

So the ends is what we're talking about is really solving. How do we solve this problem for a larger amount of Integrations and tools and because we had a very different architecture based on sync. We specialize on certain categories of tools and we have a smaller integration catalog which right now we're expanding out and that's gonna really accelerate the the capabilities and the reach for our platform.

So solving this problem for more and more people. So that's you know, yeah, no congratulations because as you mentioned in challenging times, yeah, you know raising money and it's a decent round is a sign that you know, one of the people who I saw my company to and then help build. Companies with always said look when you get someone to reach into their pocket and give you a check.

It's a good thing right you doing something right something to be proud of so congratulations to you and the team there mark, let's talk a little for our audience out here. How did they engage with the company with you need a what? How does one get started there?

io and you can find us on a lot of the integration directories of the tools that we integrate. It's a pretty seamless, you know process it can take a couple minutes to set up but what's important is we also have a really solid team on the support and customer success side and that's been really instrumental because when you're enabling business users to solve these problems themselves, they like to know that there's someone there that have their back just in terms of guiding them to work the best practice and so we train our support teams to be very knowledgeable of all the tools that we integrate so that if you're coming in and and you know jira inside out, but you're trying to solve a problem and collaborating with the marketing team that's you know, living in Asana our Trello or whatnot. Then we can guide you on one of the best practices for that and we know all those tools Currently, so there's there's a in-app chat if you in the trial and you have a question just reach out and you'll have an answer.

I love it. And IO is that it? Yeah you need.

io. Mark we're out of time. I want to thank you for coming on here and telling us all about you needo and you know tackling the issue of so many tools and so little time but it unfortunately the problem gets worse before he gets better in terms of proliferation of software tools.

But it's as you said it's not necessarily all a bad thing either. Anyway, that's the luck. Congratulations come back on Tech strong and keep us posted.

Thank you. All right, Mark. Take care.

We're gonna take a break on text strong. We'll be back in a minute.