Introducing Iterable’s New CEO: Sam Allen

Hey, everyone. Welcome back here to Techstrong tv. You know, today's the day of CEOs.

I've got another, this time, a new CEO to introduce you to. His name is Sam Allen, and he's recently been appointed CEO of Iterable. And not to worry if you haven't heard of Iterable, we're gonna explain it to you.

But first, let's welcome Sam. Sam, thanks for coming on Textron tv. Congratulations on the CEO, uh, job.

I think congratulations. Great to be here. Yeah, thank you.

Really appreciate it. Thank you. Appreciate you coming on.

So, Sam, before we get into Iterable, and we are gonna get into it, let's hear a little bit about you, right? You newly minted, but you didn't wake up, you know, it wasn't you, you've had a life before that, right? Let's hear a little about Sam's life.

Yeah, I've had a bit of a convoluted background, but I I, I've been in the tech sector since the late nineties, so I've been through quite a few, um, you know, market changing, you know, tectonic shifts in our space. Uh, my first 10 years, um, out of college I was a officer of the United States Marine Corps. So that's where I honed a lot of my, my, my leadership chops.

And, you know, I, I'm a deep believer in values-based leadership. My number one value is integrity, and that's what I lead with. Um, and then I focus on, you know, being, uh, have a high caliber moral courage, making decisions fast, making the right way, getting people included, and then frankly, looking out for people.

I, I consider myself a servant leader. Like my job is to make sure people can do their jobs. Um, and so I try to clear the decks for folks, but, um, yes, all almost 30 years in the tech sector, I've been at large companies like Cisco.

I just spent the last decade plus at Salesforce in a variety of very senior operating roles. Um, I have been in a few startups, some great successes, some swing and misses, but that's the nature of the game. Uh, You and me both.

Yeah. I got the t-shirts to prove it. Right, right.

I got all kinds of scar tissue, but those are all learning opportunities. Um, and I, you know, look, it all came along a few months ago. You were right.

I, I was, uh, very, very content and happy in my Salesforce career. And, um, this was not an easy decision, but it was the right one. And we, we can get into it, but I could not be more excited about the opportunity that lies ahead with Iterable.

I'm, I'm, I'm pretty pumped. Good. Glad to hear it.

All right. So let's, I guess that leads us to Iterable, Sam to give us the scoop here. What, what's about, Yeah, so Interval is what we call a customer engagement platform.

Um, it's behind a lot of brands that you've heard of over, we have over 1200 customers globally. Um, but if you would like to call out or Pete's Coffee, Volvo, uh, Stanley Black and Decker and Strava, the fitness app. And I actually use, use all of those.

Um, but let me kinda explain this in more layman's terms because I think that'd be a bit more helpful. So I'll give you a personal example. So I love coffee.

Um, I start every day with a couple of, of cups, but at, at home. But every afternoon after lunch, I find my way to a local Pete's, um, where I'm a very loyal customer. And what's amazing is my engagement with that brand is amazing because they will send me notifications, say, Hey Sam, it's about time for your local cup of co or your daily cup of coffee.

Why don't you come on in. And by the way, as a thank you to you for being a loyal customer, uh, we've got a dollar off on your favorite, um, you know, maple Nut Scone, which they know I buy. Um, and so it's very personalized.

It's a very personalized and engagement, um, a very motivating one. It makes me feel like this brand actually cares about me. It doesn't offer, send me offers I don't care about.

It doesn't send me offers for tea 'cause I don't like tea, um, or doesn't send me offers of food that I've never, uh, bought before. So all of that is powered by Iterable. It's that really deep engagement, personalized, hyper-personalized with the brand and irritable drives all of that from the back end.

I love it, man. You know, I'm trying to think. Companies I've engaged with the first that similar kind of, because that experience is a real feel good.

It gets you right here, right? Yeah. All of a sudden you feel loyalty to brand, you know, the, the pet food, um, farmer's dork, I dunno if you're familiar with Farmer's Store.

Yeah. We Use that. Yeah.

A lot of people do. And we're Bulldog people in my house. I've had four bulldogs over the last, I don't know, 25 years.

They don't live long, unfortunately. But I've got a s scoring French bulldog on my feet. So if you hear that, Oh, do you?

All right. So, you know, then I I, we do English. So, um, what happened, our last bulldog before the current one was a farmer's dog dog, and she got sick and unfortunately, you know, passed away the, the, the farm.

You know, I went in to stop the subscription that week. I got a plant, you know, as a sympathy thing with all kinds of cards. And then a couple months later, Hey, how you doing?

Right? Have you thought about a new puppy? A lot of our people wait six to nine months, you know, blah, blah, blah.

It was such a, and I'm sure, look, it was a drip campaign, let's face it. Right. It wasn't someone there really, but I, I can't tell you the goodwill that it enabled in, in my house for them, that when we got the new puppy, as soon as we were able to, we put her on Farmer store.

Yeah. And think you're now telling that story. Right.

And so you're as, and I'm telling It here to you Exactly, yeah. You're engendering brand loyalty and the people in your community, and that that's the real power. I mean, you just nailed it with your own story.

It's fantastic. Yeah. And now taking it one step further is when you could do it via an app and text and stuff, like, you know, this reminds me of the old promise that they used to tell us that when you're walking in a shopping mall who watch walks and shopping malls anymore, but you went by a store that, you know, d vicinity locator Yeah.

Would start popping coupons for the store as you walk by it, right? Again, that personalized it up to the second, you know, in the moment, if you will. Right.

Uh, experience. And it, it is, I mean, that's where marketing's going, right? Yeah, absolutely.

That, that's where absolutely this stuff is going. And that's very cool. That's, that's actually a big reason why I, you know, go back to your question.

Why Iterable, um, why I came here. It's not only because we have this amazing industry leading platform. I mean, if you go look at customer reviews on like G two crowd as an example mm-hmm.

Sure. With one rated platform, that's all great. And, um, a compelling reason to be here, but more importantly, is our AI strategy.

And we're really uniquely, um, set up to drive very strong AI strategy in the space because of the way the platform's been architected. AI to us is not a, it's not a bolt-on feature. It's not a check in the box.

Like so many companies say they're AI first, and really when you dig into it, they're not, they're not, yeah. Notable from the ground up has been architected to really take advantage of ai. And so these personalized engagements are gonna get even more powerful, more personalized.

Um, and if you're a marketer working at a company, your job is gonna a lot easier because our RA platform, AI platform is gonna allow you to do your job with much more efficiency and drive a lot more revenue for the company. And so all those things coming into play are gonna be a pretty amazing opportunity for us. So Sam, I know you had just recently announced you barely got, you barely got your coffee machine warmed up, right?

Um, but let me a, this might be a little too much in the weeds, but how does it actually work? What does it integrate with on the, on the retailer side, for instance, to know that you usually get your coffee at 2:00 PM that you usually get that maple scone Yeah. Right.

At, at two 15. How, where, where is the, how does that integrate? Yeah.

So the first thing is it's about data. Right? And a lot of people will telling you that.

And coming from Salesforce, you know, Salesforce phenomenal top-notch company deserves every loyal it gets. When we were at Salesforce, we focused very much on the data, the bottom in, in line infrastructure. We're also, so that's very critical and a critical component of, um, of the Iterable.

Uh, Nova is our new AI kind of, um, our focus. Uh, so when we think about AI and Nova and Iterable, the underlying data is the most important thing. So we have the data.

So every time I interact either inside of Pete's, usually with my Pete's app, um, uh, but when I interact with Pete's, every interaction I have goes into a data profile about me, Sam Allen. And that's why when, when I go and, uh, buy a Maple nuts going every day, they know that that's what I really like, and they can give me an offer. You can start to tune your offers instead of saying, Hey, uh, we're gonna give this guy $2 off or half off, let's give him 25% off.

'cause we know he loves it, and that'll probably get him, it's enough of incentive for him to buy. We're protecting margin, we're giving him brand value, and we're giving him, you know, a discount. And so the data is the most important piece.

The other really important thing about how herbal works on the back end, and again, I'm not even officially started yet, so still working through all the mechanics of this, but honestly, it's, we have an agnostic, um, data ingestion, uh, architecture. And so we'll take data from anywhere and we're built from the ground up to take that data from anywhere we Just stuck it in. Yep.

Stuck It in, integrate it, take multiple data feeds, put them together. Um, and then the future of AI is to take up potentially data feeds from, you know, multiple brands that I might engage with. And you can start to build a 360 view degree.

You find 360 degree view of Sam Allen as a customer, potentially use that to make my engagement across multiple platforms really compelling. But it really is about the data, the flexibility. Um, and then one more thing I think is really important.

Um, our AI is explainable. And what I mean by that is if you're a, if you're a, uh, marketing manager, um, what many of our competitors do is they provide an AI capability that just gives you a recommendation, but you don't know the why. And so the machine's kind of telling you what to do, and it's hard for you to trust it.

What our platform does is it says, Hey, you should run the following campaigns to the following cohorts of people, and here's why you should do that. We did the research, we found that you're gonna get a 15% uplift if you run this campaign in this geography. And by the way, if you want to understand that data yourself, click here and we'll explain it to you.

And so that explainability of the AI to help a marketing manager is a tremendous step up. Well, it, it, it competition. It's a security blanket too, Sam.

Yeah. Right. We, we discuss this, we do a show every morning text on gang, five, six people pundits, just, and we talk about, you know, three different subjects every day.

One of them, today, a new thing came out now with the, some company outta San Diego, I think came out with you could look in and try to stop bias hallucination and, uh, and, uh, censorship and ai, they were going with the deep seek the Chinese on, which, you know, yeah. Good thing to do, I guess. But at, at, at the end of the day, the feeling of, look, I don't know how the hell this works.

I don't know how it came up with this answer. It's kind of magical. And I, I, you know, at first you're in love with the magic because we're all little kids at heart and we, you know, we love a good magic show, right?

Right. But at some point before, I bet the farm on it, I, I gotta see behind that black curtain a little bit. Yeah.

And see what levers is getting, are getting pulled. Yeah. And, and so it's important, and I think this is gonna be increasingly important with as we adopt more and more AI that you get to see mm-hmm.

You know, you gotta see the, how they make the sausage a little bit. Yeah. Right.

I, I just don't want the sausage. I wanna see how that sausage is made. Yeah.

And, um, and I think that's, so that's a very, very important Yeah. Trust piece of the whole thing of it. Trust.

Yeah. The customer trust is just absolutely paramount. It's one of the things I took, you know, when Mark Benioff started Salesforce, his whole thing was trust as a number one value.

And I just deeply believe that. And man, you can't think of a better technology for that's more applicable than ai and you're a hundred percent right. And that's what makes Iterable Nova so amazing is our marketing man, the marketing manager that used the platform can ask that question, like, why are you telling me this?

Where did you get the data from? Um, and so they can verify and use their own gut instinct to say, you know what, this does make sense. Oh, I saw the data feeds.

I see where this is coming from. Yes. Execute, hit a button, and it goes.

So it's, it's pretty powerful from that perspective. Absolutely. So this, this is what Iterable does, and it sounds fantastic.

Your, you are coming in as the new CEO. Yep. If you can, and I know it's early, give us a sense of your vision saying, here's where we are now, man, but I think I could take us here.

Yeah. Or this is where we're going, right? I mean, you mentioned Salesforce.

Look, Benioff had a, a vision a year and a half ago, maybe more about what became Agent force, right? Yep. Agent ai.

And he's driven, you know, he, I saw it a week or two ago. He claimed 15% of the work being done at Salesforce now his, his ai. Mm-hmm.

Um, what, talk about your vision for it admirable here. So what is really compelling to me when I went through my diligence was the, the vision, the architecture, and the product vision that's been laid out by Andrew Bonney, the founder, um, and our chief scientist is stellar. Like, I won't, don't tend to change a thing about the vision of where the product is going to go, where my true superpower is gonna come into play here is my vision is how do we scale the heck outta this business and grow it to much, much bigger than it is today?

How do we go penetrate the enterprise? How do we go find massive adoption in Europe and in Asia Pacific and in South America? How do we expand beyond?

We're, we're really strong in four key industries in the US today. We kind of own those industries. How do we get the next four and the next four after that?

How do we do all that at scale with fiduciary responsibility while building an amazing team and doing phenomenal great work and having fun, like all of that scale, all of the economics around how we do that? How do we think about inorganic growth? So we have a great organic, uh, um, strategy.

How do we think about inorganic growth as we can continue to gr get great success and drive, continue double digit growth as a company? What else out there in the marketing tech stack makes sense for us to maybe go buy or partner with? You know, um, yeah.

When you're, when you're moving in a fast moving market like this, you gotta think that, right? Because organic growth is great, obviously. Yeah.

Yeah. But, you know, you gotta start stacking stuff and, and sometimes that means tuck-ins and strategic. Yeah.

But I used, I was a corp dev vis dev guy that Yeah. You know, in many startups, so I know where you coming from. I, yeah.

So I, when I was both at Cisco Systems and then Salesforce, my first job at Salesforce were in m and a. And so I've got a, you know, a very strong background in, um, in mergers and acquisitions. And it's just something I deeply believe in.

And, and you know this Alan, like you can't build a strong compelling technology company solely, organically. No one has, right? Everyone has done acquisitions, and so they're gonna be an important part of our strategy.

It's not something we're gonna look at in the first six months. Like, gotta get my feet under me and understand the business and the meet with the customer. I get it.

Partners and all that. But that's what I, you think about vision for me, it's, we've got a great organic vision. How do we go drive inorganic and how do we drive expansive volumetric growth for the business?

Couple of kinda loose ends I want to tie up here, Sam, as we run law on time, the Iterable website, what's the domain? com. It's I-T-E-R-A-B-L-E.

Just the way it is under your name here on the screen. Yeah. Correct.

Um, secondly, you mentioned there's four key industries here in the US that you guys are doing, you know, high penetration. What are, if you can, I don't say anything that's gonna get us all in trouble, but what are they, if you don't mind? Yeah.

So, um, they are, um, retail consumer applications such as, um, um, uh, uh, Strava Coffee that I mentioned. Coffee. Yeah.

Uh, media and travel. And, uh, the, we're, we've got great leadership in those four sectors. We've also got, we also have great traction in things like financial services, but I think about financial services, health, life sciences, those are tremendous opportunities for us to grow as well.

And so, you know, we're looking forward to expanding into those other, um, into those other industries. Look, I think this is applicable across the board. You also mentioned, you know, non-US or non-North America, whatever you want to call it.

Um, I, I saw that, I think one of your refer, we were talking about Farmer's Talk. You guys have a, uh, another dog food brand similar over in the uk Yeah. Marley Spin.

Yep. We'll give them a shout out as well. Right.

So, look, Europe is a tremendous growth market for everybody. Uh, I have a lot of experience in, in Europe. I've lived there for a little bit and in my past.

And, um, I I, I go there five, six times a year. It is too, man. Man, I just got back.

Oh, wonderful. Yeah, We were, we were, we were in Italy in Tuscany and Oh, wonderful. I did a little Rome a little day or two in Venice, but most we were in a villa in Tuscany was.

Yeah. But, um, I think there's just, it's fertile ground in, in, in Europe, you know, a few key countries. We already have a footprint, we've got a phenomenal office in Lisbon, and we've got another office in London.

And so we've got really, okay. We've got a springboard there. Yep.

Very cool. And look, those, you know, I mean that EU market from a pop population point of view is, is roughly equivalent to us, right? When, when you put it together It is.

And it's also, you know, uh, frankly, Europe I've always found has been a bit ahead of the US and things like mobile, um, and, you know, the, the fact that we have a very strong mobile capability, I just, again, I think it's just an awesome opportunity for us over there. Yeah. No, no brainer.

Hey man, Sam from the bottom of my heart, I wish you all the success and Iterable come back, keep, keep this story fresh with our, our viewers out here. They like to hear these kinds of things. Many of them probably have already used it and they don't even realize it.

Yeah. I mean, very much so. Um, thank you very much, Alan.

I, I really enjoyed this. I, I, I guess wanna reiterate, I, I can't be more excited about the opportunity that lies ahead for us. I would love to come back.

I, I open any time, you know, six months. You Got an open invite, my friend. Anytime you want.

Let's do it. Don't wait six months. Things happen too quick.

Alright, we'll do that. Alright. All Righty.

com here on Techstrong tv. We'll take a break. We'll be back in a bit.