The Futurum Group – Techstrong Group Acquisition with Daniel Newman (Part 4)

This is Textron tv. Hey everyone. Welcome back here to Textron tv.

It's Alan Shival. You know, we've been having a series around the recent announcement of Textron Group joining with the Futurum Group, uh, to, to create an e to E And I'm gonna ask my friend Daniel Newman to explain e to e to you. 'cause he's already done it on every episode we've done here.

So we're gonna drive it home, make sure you understand it, we think it's important. Um, I also would ask you go back to text truck tv. Check out the first three episodes of this series.

I think there's a lot of information there that's very relevant to you. Um, so Daniel, I, I kind of introduced you already. I said this EDE thing.

Expand on it, if you will. Look, uh, the way we digest content really comes from a, a multitude of different places. You know, we've talked a lot on the different episodes about wanting to consume content that's punchy, that's that's quick to consume, you know, reels and tiktoks.

But we also talk about the fact that the way people make decision comes from a combination of having people they trust influential voices, say an analyst, uh, combined with real meaningful evidence or data. Mm-Hmm. So I phrase the, the, the E to E, the empirical to the ephemeral as what I believe a tech strong plus TUM group is able to offer to this technology sector.

And of course to the buyers of technology is data-driven insights, research led, demand generation, and of course, um, unbiased testing, marketing and claims validation. And then having a whole series of ways to distribute that content through text on tv, through the various Textron websites that are, that our great chief content officer Mike Ard here is leading through the six five and the media that we're doing there. The analyst video through signal, through research reports, through papers, through a few terms, intelligence platform, through, uh, our field days with tech Field Day that we do all the time.

Having that data, those insights being delivered is a massive, massive thing to help these IT buyers make decisions. And Alan, we have so many more platforms together to do this. We are bringing distribution to these insights and we are helping people struggling with the rapid change of digital transformation, of generative ai, of new technologies and tools.

Get those insights. And of course we're gonna have Mike Beard write all those pieces By himself. By himself.

I'll tell you, No ai, no ai. I'm tell you the piece I like about most of this is that really we are the marketplace for ideas. We are the place where all the ideas come floating through.

And having some data to augment some of those ideas is invaluable. 'cause too many conversations these days are people just kind of tossing out opinions and not enough, uh, relevant statistics to back it up per se. And so I'm looking forward to this conversation where at the moment that we're talking about something or some topic that there'll be actual data to go with that at the very minute the conversation is happening.

Well, When you have millions of eyeballs on these websites and this content, you have the ability to do this real time insights engine. I'm trying to think of the final name. We have E two E, we're coming up with new ideas on the show, everybody.

So, you know, pitch us in, join the community, give us some nice, but I've been thinking real time research engine, real time insights engine. We can start polling more and more, you know, not just the big decision maker dashboards and the market sizing that we're doing through intelligence, but we start using these sites, these communities, these research and all stuff we're doing to drive the intent data to start getting more community to participate in the data. This is a kind of a open sourced, it's pretty cool in this world.

This is an open source data collection engine that can give us real time insights about decision making. So we can do it on a big platform, the SaaS future intelligence. So we can do it on the everyday ideas platform led by, And I, and I, we've talked about this in a couple episodes, but sometimes I feel like we're kind of driving down the road and we're constantly looking in the rear view mirror, but we never see where we're actually going.

And I think we got an opportunity here to flip that, where we still need to know where we've been, but more the focus needs to be on where we're going and what's different and how to drive the car Full self-driving. Mm-Hmm. Autonomous even.

But let me, let me bring this home if I can for a second. 'cause at the end of the day, it's really not about us. It's about that's About you.

Mm-Hmm. Yep. And When You look at who the buyer is today, who's the consumer, who's the decision maker, it's very different.

Now, when I first got into tech, we, the three martini, I, I don't want to get anyone in trouble, but the three martini lunch or the EMC, if you remember back in the day in Hopkinton, EMC would take you to their executive briefing center, take you out to the North shore for a nice dinner, and then a night of entertainment on their dime. Uh, could, it would be illegal. Now, someone would get fired for this.

But the, the idea of selling, let's say just top down to the C level, to the CIO down, okay, that is still a viable road, but it's not the only road so many times today in that technology world, it's a bottom up. It's the practitioner who's getting paid a lot of money, who gets to pick what tools they want to use. There's also a whole business community that is much more tech savvy than it's ever been Before.

Yeah, this is True too. And they have a lot, I have to say about what's going on in terms of what gets picked for technologies. And they have a lot of insight.

And to be fair to our IT friends, a lot of them are a lot more business savvy than they were back in the day when absolutely before social media came along. You couldn't do that video today because you'd be on, you know, if you were at that dinner, you'd be on some Facebook videos Too. Yeah, right.

Yeah. Lemme, lemme ask you guys a question. I've done, this is the fourth video and I haven't had a chance to ask a single question.

Go Ahead. Sorry. So, you know, considering that I, I, I now have a little stake in this thing.

Good. Where do you think this goes? So you all have done a good job, I think on a lot of what I would call the emerging trends, tech strong ai, DevOps, cloud native, you know, and, and we have a very, very rich heritage in some of the most important technologies, infrastructure, uh, core cloud compute, semiconductors, enterprise applications.

And of course we're in the areas you're in too. But Mike, I mean the ideas guy, where do you want to see this new E two E all in powerful research led demand generation media go where, what are the things you're most excited about? And if you could spend Alan's money and maybe even sell Always does, if You could spend a little out, what would you want to build next for this community?

If I was looking at topics, I'd be on to things like robotics that we mentioned earlier. But truth of the matter is, I feel like we need need to kind of, there's too many fiefdoms with too many different pieces of content that are related to each other that we don't really connect the dots for. There is tons of stuff going on in chips that has a direct impact on software development, and we need to understand what that means and what that's gonna change for your strategy.

And too much of what we do today is we're going deep in these silos, but we don't connect the dots between them to make a more informed decision. So I think that's the big opportunity where the total value of the thing is gonna be much greater than the sum of the parts. So the left to right tying threads together, I think we talked about that on one of these episodes.

The whole, Well, a couple Of them. So Mike Nazar here is basically saying that we're gonna come together and we talked about research to very, very interesting and engaging content, but he's also saying, you know, as I, from the chips to SaaS mm-Hmm. And everything that is required to deliver, um, there is an opportunity to bring those readers and those consumers video content and OTT and everything we're doing and gonna do, um, thread them together, create a very cohesive, frictionless, enjoyable experience and help people become experts in new areas, uh, gain expertise in areas that maybe they're not spending so much time on.

And of course, bring those buyers and those vendors more together, closely together to solve problems. Just the line. Absolutely.

But, uh, you, and this is the beauty of this whole thing, and it's the beauty of, you know, as you said earlier, we're blessed to be in this market. Take chips for instance. Daniel, you've been following chips forever, not forever, for a long time.

Yeah. A decent amount of Time before, before there were chips. You Know, I, I grew up in the Wintel monopoly, I don't want to say the M word and the Wintel era where Intel was the king of the, of the, of the hill.

We've seen that change. We're seeing the, the entire chip market. I mean, for, for the first time in 10 years, I get excited about chips because Google's making their own chips and Amazon makes their own chips and everybody makes their own chips.

And what's this gonna mean for the old time chip makers at the very time that this is happening? All of the old kinda chip magazines that I used to read when I was into chips and hardware have disappeared, right? 'cause they didn't keep up with the times.

I think there's a tremendous opportunity. Sometimes what's old is new again, I think there's a tremendous opportunity there to tie in these newly rejected re rejuvenated areas Mm-Hmm. And how they do perform.

Um, We, we talked about this earlier to a certain degree, but used to be you wrote software and it dropped it on the X 86 and that That was the only one game in town. Modern software is gonna be, my app spans all these things. It's gonna be partially on an X 86, partially on a GPU, partially on an accelerator.

The way we think about orchestrating software development is gonna change. And if that changes, then uh, the way we think about managing it as a whole needs to change. So I, and maybe AI making those decisions, maybe, But I think we're on some moment.

You know, if you think back in history, you know, did we know it was the PC revolution when it was started? Or did we figure that out a year Later? It Boca tone by the way.

There You go. Alright. And I think we're on the cusp of something here as well, where the, the way we think about it is gonna be more holistic.

And I think this creates an opportunity for us to move that ball forward. Agreed. Yeah.

I'm very excited. I think the ability to do data-driven, everything is the difference. It's the data of the audience.

It's the data of the intent. It's the data of the research and having those things that you can really be forward with. And of course, on the analyst guy saying this, mm-hmm.

But having these at the, you know, at the existence and the, and coexisting with all this interesting and engaging content is gonna be so important. 'cause in the end, all the vendors and technology companies we work with, as well as all the customers that we talk to, they want to be, they want to be right in the moment when it comes to picking their solutions. And the thing is, as we know, as fast as AI has come on, as fast as digital transformation has moved, the difference between a company being successful and struggling in the digital economy is getting the solutions right, getting them implemented and putting them to work to drive productivity and efficiency into their businesses.

They ask, we can help, We deliver it. Yep. You know what?

So let me, let me tie the bow on this then. For us though, folks, I am beyond excited about what the future holds here. Um, you know, the, there's only, I, there's that old story about opportunity knocking, right?

There's, it knocks from time to time and you could see sort of the forces of, of the universe kind of coming together in new ways and new patterns. I really feel like this futurum group tech strong alliance together is going to make a difference. And that, you know, over the last 30 years I've working with SoftBank Venture Capital and others, I've interviewed and spoke and made deals with hundreds, hundreds of entrepreneurs and founders.

The ones who are successful always have something in common. They think, and at least in some small way, if not some big way, what they're doing is gonna change the world. Right?

You've almost gotta believe that if you're gonna be successful, that what you're doing is important. It's gonna change the world. I believe what we're doing here is important.

It's not only gonna change the tech media analyst space, it's gonna change the buying behaviors of people. It's gonna change the it landscape. It's important.

Can I say one thing? You It. I'm gonna give you a last word.

I'm Gonna, I'm gonna close this off. I listened to a great interview. I had the chance at GTC this year to listen to this.

They're probably the most important CEO on the planet right now. Jensen won mm-Hmm. Who has joined us on the past on six five.

And you check that out. But, and he said something about, I don't think about market share. And by the way, when you're a CEO, most of you think about market share.

And so going to your point about doing something important, when we set out to do this, it wasn't set out to say we want to go after Gartner. We want to compete with Forest. Or they're doing what they do.

We want to do what we do. What we wanna do is create a market. We want to create a market for research led demand generation.

And people have done it in different parts and pieces in different ways. I see the opportunity with a tech strong future and group tie up and all the things that we can deliver to change the way this business is done and to create a market together. We are stronger.

And not just for ourselves, but for all of you. And thank you so much for letting me tie this off. Thank you so much for being part of Techstrong and welcome you all to working more closely with the Futurum group.

Fantastic. Thank you, Daniel. All right.

See you guys.