Above the Cloud

This episode features Yext VP of Industry Insights Duane Forrester discussing the evolution of search ranking factors. We discuss how the search engines have evolved well past keywords to discerning user intent, and why this demands that business structure their data in order to remain relevant in a new search environment.

Transformation has been a key challenge for legacy media organizations, and this challenge is arguably most acute in the sales organization. Elise Balsillie leads sales at Australia’s Yellow (aka Sensis) and discusses how sales has evolved in her organization with podcast host Charles Laughlin.

The LSA analyst team tore into a stack of hot button issues in part two of our most recent around the horn sessions. We cover the potential market opportunity for 'hearables", the real impact 5G will have on local, and why we should all think about moving to Des Moines.

LSA's analyst team gathered for one of their periodical roundtable bull sessions last week. Among the topics they kick around include the future of privacy, why boards are the real villains in the demise of companies like WeWork, and why it makes sense for SMB software companies to treat small businesses like consumers.

The LSA talks to Synup SVP, Growth, Brett House about the company's "State of Retail 2019" report and generally how brands need to readjust their marketing to the new realities of the consumer path to purchase.

Duda CEO Itai Sadan talks about his company's ambitions after raising $25 million to fuel its innovation and growth.

iHeart Media is a giant player in terrestrial radio, with almost 850 stations and a dominant position in many major markets. But podcasting may be the company's future. This conversation covers the business of podcasting and how it integrates with all of iHeart's properties.

In this episode, we ask Boostability CEO Gavan Thorpe to talk about the state of local SEO. His company focuses on delivering SEO services at scale to very small businesses. One topic of note was how SEO firms like his are adapting to Google's progression to being a walled garden, where most search results produce zero clicks. We also ask if AI will eventually be generating SEO content.

Dan Hight is a longstanding participant in the local digital ecosystem. Now he's moved into a thought leadership role as chair of the Local Search Association's Place conference, which takes place October 15-16 in Austin, TX. In the podcast, we talked about changes in the local digital ecosystem -- driven by data and technology -- and how they are informing the focus of this year's event.

Our semi-regular analyst roundtable features a conversation about WeWork's S-1, cloud kitchens, DoorDash's arrogance, Square's priorities and more.

Monica Ho is CMO of SOCi, a SaaS platform that helps brands and multilocation businesses do localized social marketing (GMB, reviews, social marketing and so on). We discuss the new SOCi/LSA report on Localized Social Marketing Benchmarking Report which found most brands do a poor job of optimizing their local pages. Those that do, however, reap the benefits.

SquareStack CEO Bill Furlong discusses his new book, "Appify Your Business", a primer for small businesses on how to use mobile apps to transform their day to day business life. This episode is sponsored by Mono Solutions.

Aksh Gupta runs Occasion, a marketing and scheduling platform for small businesses focused on delivering experiences -- zip lining, cooking classes and so on. This podcast focused on the decision process that goes into changing a business when the original plan isn't working. Aksh went through this and came out the other side with vastly better KPIs.

Former Kelsey Group analyst Mike Boland talks to Above the Cloud about how augmented reality will evolve and develop more practical applications, including for small businesses, in the coming months and years. We also settle the question of whether Pokemon Go is really AR.

In this episode of Above the Cloud, Upserve CMO Andrea Kayal talks about Upserve's origins as Swipely, a company that collected insights from transaction data to its pivot to restaurants and rebirth as Upserve. We also cover competition, customer acquisition and influencer marketing in the hyper-competitive restaurant vertical.

Alexander Fleiss is CEO of Rebellion Research, a firm that applies AI and machine learning to investment strategy. He also lectures on AI at his alma mater Amherst as well as Yale and other leading universities. In this podcast, we have a wide-ranging discussion on AI, how it will transform small-business and the degree to which it will transform the economy. And we do talk about robot waitresses.

Jordan Boesch is the founder and CEO of 7Shifts, a SaaS product that helps restaurants manage their staff. The product began as a tool to help his dad manage the work schedule at his Quiznos franchises. It has since evolved into one of the hottest companies in the restaurant vertical with a mission to "improve happiness and efficiency in the workplace."

Matt Crowell quit his job, sold his condo and his car to pour everything he had into his first startup, GetintheLoop, a mobile marketing SaaS platform he is taking to market through a franchise model. Interesting take on how to scale a digital marketing product. Get in the Loop started in Western Canada, has gone national in Canada and is poised to launch in the U.S. in 2019.

George Leith runs sales at Vendasta, a digital marketing software company based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. George has emerged as a prominent voice on sales excellence and a proponent of elevating the craft of selling into a profession. He does this through the Conquer Local podcast and sales academy, where he shares his sales knowledge and curates the best practices of other leading sales and marketing pros. We talk about using data to sell, how to hire a good sales rep, and how effective reps spend their days.

Neal Polachek, the former Kelsey Group president and current LSA Advisor, has a new initiative called "Think Like an App." It's a talk he's crafted for small businesses that encourages them to create the customer experiences that technology has taught consumers to expect. He explains how that works in this podcast.

This bonus episode of Above the Cloud is part of our continuing effort to leverage the amazing content generated at the November Tech Adoption Summit in San Francisco. This podcast was taken from the Q&A segment of Tolithia Kornweibel's well-received talk at the Summit, where she addresses customer acquisition strategy and Gusto's mission to empower small business to create great work environments.

Mark MacLeod is a regular guest on Above the Cloud because of his unique position as an investment banker specializing in small business software. Today's topic is his firm SurePath Capital's recently released State of Small Business Software report, which tracks all deal activity across the SMB software landscape, and from this data gleans insights on where the industry has been and where it may be heading.

Matt Matergia and Jillian Als are two of Mono Solutions key players. They joined Above the Cloud from their offices in Copenhagen on a dark December afternoon to talk about the evolving role of websites for small businesses, where they are seeking new channel partners in a rapidly changing SMB environment and how younger business owners view websites.

Gene Marks is a dynamo. Every morning he gets up at 5 am to write on small businesses issues for Forbes, The Guardian, Inc., and other publications he contributes to regularly. Then he goes to work for his 10-person small business that resells and installs CRM software at small, medium and large businesses. Gene offers us both an analyst's and a business owner's perspective on how technology is transforming how small businesses operate.

This episode of ATC features an interview with Mark Canon conducted at the recent Tech Adoption Summit in San Francisco. Mark is a longtime fixture in the local/SMB space, having served in senior roles at Switchboard, AOL, Autobytel, and hibu. He is currently chairman of Boomtime. This conversation is a bonanza for sales methodology geeks. It's all about account based selling and how to break through in an environment where products are largely undifferentiated and SMBs are too busy to take your calls.

This episode of Above the Cloud features a conversation between the Tech Adoption Index's Neal Polachek and Tedd Paff, an entrepreneur and founder of Customer Lobby, a business that he exited from successfully in 2017. The interview took place at the recent Tech Adoption Summit in San Francisco. The episode is sponsored by Boostability, Broadly, DexYP, Google, Mono Solutions and Vendasta.

In this episode, we interview Costantino Caroppo, founder of Hub-U, a new SMB OS start-up based in Italy. Costantino is a former CMO at Axelero and was the self-described "father of the Italian IYP" while at Seat Pagine Gialle. We talked about the new way to sell to small businesses while enjoying coffee outdoors at the Sofitel hotel in Hua Hin, Thailand, where we were both attending the AsiaComm conference. This episode was sponsored by DexYP, Google, Mono Solutions, Vendasta, Boostability, and Broadly.

This episode of Above the Cloud features an interview with Mark MacLeod, founder of SurePath Capital partners, a firm that helps SMB software companies raise money and find attractive exit opportunities. As a former executive at Freshbooks and Shopify, Mark has a solid perspective on what it takes to win in SMB software. This episode is sponsored by DexYP, Google, Mono Solutions, Vendasta, Boostability and Broadly.

This episode of Above the Cloud features an interview with Adam Blake, CMO of ThriveHive, a SaaS-based marketing platform for small businesses. Key focus of the conversation was ThriveHive's product-centric marketing philosophy, which emphasizes offering high value free products to build relationships with SMBs. Blake also discusses its latest example of a free service, ThirveHive Grader, which helps SMBs optimize their Google My Business listings. This episode was sponsored by Boostability, Broadly, Mono Solutions and Vendasta.

This episode of Above the Cloud features an interview with Microsoft SMB channel strategist and product marketer Abid Chaudhry. The conversations centers around Microsoft's approach to the SMB channel, how it segments the market and what trends it is watching, including how post-Millennial generations see technology as an enabler of a more untethered style of work.

This episode of Above the Cloud features an interview with Gusto head of marketing Tolithia Kornweibel. Gusto is one of the hot companies in SMB SaaS, having raised more than $300 million and unveiling a sleek new office in San Francisco's Dogpatch. We cover a wide range of issues impacting the cloud HR space in this interview -- including effective sales channels for bringing SMBs into the cloud, the real concern over SaaS overload and the backlash it could generate, and where Gusto may take its business beyond payroll and HR.

Will baby boomers starting businesses in lieu of retirement have the same tech adoption profile as millennial entrepreneurs? Is GrubHubs acquisition of LevelUp a move toward becoming the OS for restaurants? And what does eBay's entry into the small business lending wars mean? Tech Adoption index analyst Neal Polachek and your host kick it all around.

This episode features an interview with Josh May, co-founder & CEO of POWr, a San Francisco based start up that builds website plug ins for self-service website users, mostly small business owners. Josh sees POWr's role as helping SMBs make their sites more competitive with big businesses. Josh started his first business at 18. He has built POWr into a profitable business on a $100K seed round and a $40 marketing investment. This episode was sponsored by Mono Solutions and Boostability.

The episode features Broadly CEO Josh Melick who shares some success tips for inside sales, makes the case that the "phone call is dead" in the local SMB space and offers a skeptic's view of the full stack of SaaS products. This episode was sponsored by Mono Solutions and Boostability.

This episode of Above the Cloud features an interview with Vendasta CSO Jackie Cook, who talks about the company's new study, "Why Your Clients Churn" which delves into what it takes for digital marketing services sellers to retain small business customers. We start the podcast with a chat between the host Charles Laughlin and Neal Polachek all about the metrics driving the SMB SaaS business. Thanks to sponsors Boostability and Mono Solutions.

The inaugural episode of Above the Cloud features a quick review of how Mark Meeker's annual Internet Trends report sees trends in the SMB Software word. Plus a conversation with Ariel Diaz from Blissfully.com talks about his fascinating new report on how businesses are using cloud technology. This episode is sponsored by Mono Solutions, Boostability, Net-Linx and the 2018 Tech Adoption Summit.