Podcasts about Viant

Viant is on an M&A tear, with two acquisitions – IRIS.TV followed by lockr – in less than six months. Although the rationale behind these deals might be obvious to ad tech insiders, Wall Street investors speak a different language, one that Viant CEO Tim Vanderhook has become fluent in as the leader of a publicly traded company.

Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Viant Technologies (DSP), returns to discuss the latest quarter. Viant is an online ad broker, competing with Google and The Trade Desk (TTD). Tim reports a hot streak of growth on the top and bottom line and expects it to continue. He also says adoption of their AI product has been “tremendous,” and that their CTV segment is also staying strong.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

According to research from the CMO Council, 63% of marketers say they are under extreme pressure to deliver improved revenue outcomes. So how can you leverage your tech stack to enhance collaboration across GTM teams and drive impactful results? Shawnna Sumaoang: Hi, and welcome to the Win-Win podcast. I’m your host, Shawnna Sumaoang. Join us as we dive into changing trends in the workplace and how to navigate them successfully. Here to discuss this topic is Andrea Bras, VP of product marketing at Viant Technology. Thanks for joining, Andrea! I'd love for you to tell us about yourself, your background, and your role.  Andrea Bras: Wonderful. Well, thank you Shawnna for having me. I’m excited to talk about my journey at Viant and as we’ve continued our partnership with Highspot. So, as you mentioned, I’m vice president of product marketing at Viant Technology. We are an AI powered DSP or demand side platform built for CTV or Connected Television. What we do is we help marketers to connect with their consumers. Through planning, through execution, through measurement of their advertising media in the most engaging ways using our technology. So I’m actually coming up on my tenure anniversary, so it’s just, wow, it’s almost mind blowing. It’s been such an amazing journey here. VT is such a pioneering, innovative company and we’re never left bored or wondering what’s next, right? So prior to joining VT, I’ve actually been in digital marketing for, geez, almost 25 years now. Actually, I joined when it was actually still known as online marketing. If anyone in your audience can remember that. But what I’ve been fortunate enough along my journey is to really wear a lot of hats and be exposed to a lot of different types of companies. So I’ve worked with the small startups, local retail, all the way up to big global corporations. I’ve also worn a lot of hats. So I’ve sold advertising. I have bought advertising. I’ve developed partnerships, thinking about the consumer in mind, and it’s really positioned me very well in what I believe. Is a perfect mixture of all of that background to bring me to my best results as a product marketer. And so our role here in product marketing at Viat is we really sit at the intersection of all of the orgs in the company. We provide support to all of them, but primarily sales and product. We sit within the marketing team and it’s our job to really look for the best things that all these teams are working on in order to craft. Really amazing and compelling positioning and messaging. We developed the go-to-market solutions and the content. We support the product launches, and of course we manage and work through all the sales enablement technology. We, of course, have chosen Highspot, which we love. And that brings me here today, and I’m excited to discuss more with you, Shawnna. SS: Likewise, we are lucky to have you on this podcast. Given that you are a seasoned marketing leader, I’d love to understand what are some of the key go-to-market initiatives that you’re focused on driving for the business this year, and how does your enablement tech stack help support these efforts? AB: Well, that’s a great question. And you know, given where we sit in the org, we have our hands in pretty much everything, but we really do have some very key go-to-market initiatives. We’re highly focused on, as I mentioned in my intro. Connected television is something that is our most important focus and for good reason. I mean, when you think about the power of TV and what that does for advertising, and you’re converging it with the power of digital and the ability to understand and message the performance of your advertising. It’s such an exciting thing and we’re doing a great job of really building the technology to support that in the best ways, as well as the partnerships. I mean, we’re getting to work with some of these greatest streaming platforms. Think Disney, think Paramount. And so we’re working really hard on how do we showcase how easy it is to build these upper and lower funnel opportunity that CTV brings based on campaign objectives. So there’s a lot of education that comes in mind, or that we have to work with our consumers and our clients just so they can really understand the huge opportunity in front of ’em. So that keeps us very busy. The other thing that really is related to CTV, but it’s our recent Iris TV acquisition. So for those of you who may not be familiar, Iris TV has really built their tech. To standardize contextual, the opportunity to present ads contextually AC interoperable across all of these various streaming platforms. So think cooking shows and what that could mean across not just one cooking show, but all of the great content cooking shows across numerous streaming platforms. And that really brings such value because now you’re layering in the ability to capture the consumer in the right mindset. So that just, you know, it’s an organic content experience and we’re really excited about that. And then of course there’s Viant AI. So we launched Viant AI. It was hugely successful last part of last year. And man, it’s just so exciting ’cause we have on this hand, CTV and all the great things coming there, part of our direct access program. But then over here we’ve got this whole new realm of innovation with AI. I know you guys lean in really heavily, which we’re excited about. So we’re just really. Keeping close to our technology teams and watching the innovation develop and keeping track of that. Of course, to make these launches successful and keep our go-to market as top-notch as possible, you need a unified go-to-market alignment as your company’s very familiar with, and that’s where Highspot has just been an absolute game changer for us. When I think about where we were before, I mean, we had really legacy tech and we did our best, but you can only do so much. Right? I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of stories from your clients. When we brought on Highspot, a couple of really magical things happened for us. One, we had to sit and think about our content strategy, right? You know, before we would organize it, but we didn’t really think about what it was. And you know, due to how you build and develop the platform, it’s really exciting because. You’re thinking, okay, what are our buckets of content, right? So we had to think, okay, well there’s storytelling content. And then it’s like, well, we also have all these different product releases that come. So you have product overview, right? And you know, verticals, channels, you name it. So we had to take the time and effort to really build this out. And then we wanted to also put it around a wonderful launch, give it a big stage. So put us a little bit under a time crunch, which was probably a blessing in disguise because we had to work. In fact, our Highspot onboarding rep, who was amazing, he told us we were one of the fastest launches. So I don’t know if that still holds true, but from contract signing, I think we signed the contract in late October, and then we had this up and running in January. So for all of you who either are planning a launch or thinking about launching or maybe haven’t signed up yet, there’s a lot you can do to get up in front of it. For us, it was a combination of having a pilot team as we were building, getting their feedback along the way. Then we did a soft launch just to get the logistics outta the way, get people using it so that when we did our big launch at our annual Viant Con, where we dedicated two hours and actually. Flew the Highspot rep out to help us launch this. We had a such a meaningful two hour session. Honestly, we still hear great feedback about that launch. It really helped us get started with Highspot in a big way. SS: I love that. And you, you touched on the importance and the critical nature of alignment. What are some of the common pitfalls that organizations might encounter when aligning go-to-market teams to execute these key initiatives and, and how can they avoid them? AB: Yes, that is absolutely critical and we have really face several and overcome. And of course, Highspot has been a great tool in helping us do so. You know, when we first started, when I first started Viant, we were a smaller corporation. It was pretty easy to stay on top of your priorities and kind of know how to manage your workload. But as you’re rapidly growing or expanding or adding teams. The more support you’re providing and the more awareness that the functions across the org understand about what you can bring, that starts to change. You start to get all of these demands, and the lack of prioritization isn’t because there’s no priority. It’s that idea that if everything’s high priority, then there’s no high priority, right? So. That helped us realize, okay, we’ve gotta do a better job. And luckily we, our Chief Product Officer, he came from a very big tech company and you know, they were very used to juggling prioritization of high needs across the org. So he shared the tips and tricks that he’s done and I was able to add on the marketing lens. And so the end result is we meet monthly with the C-Suite across every function. They have a chance to see transparently all of our projects. They can prioritize their departments, so they get to own that, and then they also see where their priorities fall in our holistic view. So it’s been a game changer and it’s really helped us. So, you know, everybody will probably look a little different, but it’s been hugely valuable. And I’d say the other things to keep an eye out for is whenever you introduce anything new you’re gonna have change management. There’s always challenges with that. So really just, you know, the Highspot team was great helping us understand the win-win value for our sellers and other stakeholders. So just getting ahead of that, working through those, of course, defining SWIN lanes, if there’s any blurred lines or confusion, you’re gonna have people stepping on each other’s toes. Just really getting in front of all that business. So, and then I’d say the last thing, and you guys are great for this, is really having technology partners that have support teams. Because what’s great about Highspot is we have that ongoing support. So we’re always working as treating you as a partner, but then we’re also, we have the ability to tap and, you know, level up the support as needed. And that’s come in handy several times. So these are just some of the things that can help you get in front of some of the challenges with alignment. SS: I think those are, that’s phenomenal advice for our audience. And you actually also recently established multiple committees to support your go-to-market engine. Can you share more about that journey and the impact that it’s had so far? AB: Thank you for asking. That’s a great question. We have put a lot of work, so yes, we have launched or about to launch, actually three distinct committees started out as one, but we landed on three. And I’ll tell you why. Rewinding back last year as we launched last January, I forgot to mention, of 2024. And so, you know, as you’re ramping up, you’re kind of learning the process, you’re getting best practices, you’re building out the platform, all the things you’re doing in the first year. And one thing I also forgot to mention, which I will touch on in our discussion is engagement metrics. So you’re kind of getting your feet wet there. That has been another game changing element with the Highspot platform. What is really critical, and I can’t stress this enough, to your audience, is getting that co-ownership across your key stakeholders. Especially, you know, think sales leadership, right? You need that co-sponsorship. So while we have support, sales leadership is busy, they’ve got big goals to crush, right? We were thinking, how do we get in front of them? How do we really show them how much opportunity there is for them to really move the needle using this technology and get them closer to it? So the other thing obviously is the feedback loop. We really wanted a good feedback loop. So we’re like, how do we do it in an organized way, make good use of their time? And so when we started to build a list, it became very big. And then we had all these objectives. So that’s why we broke it into three. And so at first we had the executive, and that’s really pointing back to that co-ownership. Getting them bought in. Um, we are creating compelling metrics that I know will raise their eyebrows, so I’m getting that ready, leading into our executive committee. And so really just letting them know the awareness, showing them some things to get them excited and asking for their hand and driving adoption with their teams. Then we’ll have the, what we’re calling the steering committee. And this is really your kind of more short term strategy. Your operational managers that, you know, they can help us really drive that lower funnel strategies and behaviors from their teams. And then of course, the cross functional stakeholders think Salesforce, rev ops training, having really valuable discussions. And then of course, the action committee, which is gonna be our day-to-day users. So that allows us to capture what’s working, what’s not, and just your general feedback of what’s going well. And of course we’ll do this quarterly. We don’t wanna take up too much time and use kind of a waterfall effect. So we’re really excited. And I know my boss, our chief marketing officer, he’s leaned in totally, which is gonna be tremendously successful, and he’s gonna help co-run the agenda with me for the executive. So more to come. Exciting stuff. SS: I absolutely love it. And I think, you know, for our audience listening, it’s a really great strategy to deploy within your organization if it makes sense for you. But I think it’s a great initiative. AB: And one thing I’ll add on to that really quick, I would say really what we wanna do with this is ensure we’re coming in loaded with a heavy agenda. Of meaningful content. So prep, prep, prep, that’s, and so, you know, whoever you can pull in to help you make the best use of the time, I highly encourage that. SS: Yeah, absolutely. I think it’ll be extremely valuable on both sides, so that’s fantastic. Now, you’ve touched on this. I. Actually quite a bit throughout our conversation already, but I’d love to hear your perspective on what would you say is the unique value of a unified platform when it comes to maximizing go-to-market effectiveness and, and really improving collaboration. AB: You know, I can’t saying praises enough at Highspot. It has really elevated us in that way, which was beyond my wildest dreams. Like I saw the opportunity and just seeing it play out has been just a wonderful experience. Starting for foremost with just product marketing’s needs. The consistency that we’re able to. Foster across teams now in this unified platform is when I think about what we used to have to do when we had a logo change or we had, you know, some sort of, we had to manually do all of these things and now we can just do bulk updates or folks would share decks, you know, that they had out market. And I’d see just content with old branding or just really, really just. Horrible things, you know, make you cringe. I don’t see that anymore. You know, it’s so exciting because now they know that the best content’s there and so there’s no dependency on these old things or an inability to find the stuff they need. So it’s very rare that I find anything that’s off brand, if at all. So that consistency and governance is huge. Obviously, probably more importantly is what it’s doing for our sellers. I mean, when you think about the time they save now, they’re in there, they’re in and out, they’re experts, you know, they love it. We hear nothing but great feedback. The amount of time it takes ’em to build compelling content, find what they’re looking for, and all of that has been second to none. And then the ease of pitching it out. Really the ones, we wanna get more adoption of this looking ahead, but the ones that are even leaning into client metrics and things like that, I mean, it’s just been a phenomenal result. Again, that brings me to engagement metrics that’s really closing the loop and having that single source of truth really just makes a huge, huge difference. So what we’re seeing is we’re breaking down silos. We’re having really meaningful conversations, unlike we used to with our partner teams. Everybody’s able to use it in different ways, so it’s really just driving faster, smarter, go-to-market execution, and we love it. SS: Well, I love that. Now, you’ve talked about the partnership that you’ve had with Highspot, and I know that VT recently partnered with our professional services team on an initiative to begin leveraging Highspot AutoDocs. Can you share a little bit about how you’re utilizing AutoDocs to streamline workflows and improve effectiveness? AB: I’m really glad you asked about that, Shawnna, because this is one of our most recent and most exciting efforts leveraging Highspot technology. So we call our version of AutoDocs Pitch Builder just to create some, you know, fun for the sales reps, make it easy for them to understand what it does, and it really has helped us. Where we elevated with the one unified repository, it’s helped us take it even further. And what I mean by that is due to the nature of our clients and the businesses we serve. The content we build serves different purposes. You know, if you think about advertising, everybody needs to advertise their business. So I think automotive companies, retail companies, travel and tourism, pharma, you know, so we build content that way. We have vertical, we have channels, we have measurement. There’s a whole vast array. And you know, the reps are really good at building these custom stories, but feedback we were getting is, you know, I’m still struggling even in the remix experience to know where to go to find the best content and all these things. So. Pointing to your Highspot Spark conference. I like to get as much of my team up there as possible. You guys do a fantastic job with that. So last October we were there and I had a member of my team and he’s like, Hey, you know, he sat in one of the focused AutoDoc sessions and he says, I really think that we were getting ready to launch our new general presentations and we were taking a new approach this year. And he is like, I think that what Highspot has with AutoDocs would really help sales team with this. You know, in my head I’m thinking, oh my gosh, there’s no way we’re gonna be able to launch that, you know, by the time we need to roll this out in a month, you know? And he’s like, no, no, no. I think he’s like, let me talk to the team. I really think we can. So I’m like, okay. But in my mind I’m thinking, oh, it’ll be summer. You know? There’s no way. Long story short, he worked with our ongoing support team and they connected him with the professional services you guys provided. Put together a case and I was blown away. We were able to deploy through the help of your team. You know, we could have built it ourselves, but it would’ve taken a long time. We never would’ve met our deadline. And it was just such great work. And what this does now is it creates this really easy pathway for sellers to, you know, pull in the problem statements from a choice of things that, a choice of problem statements based on where their discovery questions, take them with their clients, and then choose, you know, the right core messaging. Choose the right verticals, choose the channels, all within this visible, easy. And you, you have this structured framework. So think about it as a new seller, you can go in there and it. Immediately, that’s valuable trust. You can trust you’re building a deck that matches the company positioning. And then on top of that, the loose feedback I can give you was what I have heard is it used to take our sellers at least 30 minutes, probably an hour to build a reasonable deck. And those are probably our season one, probably up to ours. We just ran the numbers leading up to this podcast. On average, our sellers that use Pitch Builder are building their decks in 3.2 minutes. SS: That’s amazing. AB: Right? That’s what we said. So the combined learning of the Highspot Spark Conference and understanding new releases you guys had coming, having my team there, understanding, bringing that idea to it, and then leveraging a professional services, they did a superb job, just was a perfect blend. SS: Amazing. Well, I’ll be sure to pass that along to our professional services team. I’m sure they’ll be glad to hear that. Now as we talk about improving effectiveness, another way a lot of businesses are starting to think about optimizing effectiveness is through ai, and I know Viant actually recently won in AI Excellence Award, so congratulations on that. What are some of the key ways that you’re leveraging AI to support your go-to-market teams? AB: That’s a wonderful question, and thank you. We’re truly honored to have received that recognition for AI excellence and kudos to the team here at Viant across the board. It’s just been such a wild ride. We are leaning heavily into AI, as I know Highspot is, and so what we’re trying to really do is focus on all the wonderful feedback we’re getting from our clients. From our Viant AI solution, how easy it’s, you know, done for them and really capture the wins there and understand how do we transition that into internal wins within our org. And we’re doing it across the board, but specifically for product marketing. I’m leaning in heavily with any tools and resources we have that can help us do better quality work, do it faster, just make it easier, all those things that AI brings. And so I’ve tasked my team, we’re kind of on the forefront of this. We’re already, we’re using ChatGPT on the regular. We’re using our own by AI on the regular, but we wanna get better and we wanna continue to explore that. So I’ve tasked my team with leaning into things like co-pilot with Highspot. Okay, how do we tap that? How do we do more with that? Another thing that we’re leaning in on, and I have another person on my team who really, I am very lucky here, very specializes in billing the bots and things so. When due to how technical our products are, obviously we have our initial storytelling and the benefits and all the buzzy stuff, but as you build relationships with clients, as you probably well know, you get those deeper questions about technology. And so we have a lot of just kind of fragmented FAQs, docs that support launches. So he had the idea of saying, Hey, we should probably get those FAQs into a chat bot so sellers can just get in there and ask questions and not have to search for these random docs. Kind of scattered throughout. And then we’re like, how do we get that where our sellers go in the Highspot platform or leverage something like copilot. So we’re just kind of dipping our tone, a lot of waters, but we’re excited. We’re thinking about calling it pitch aid just to kind of go with the theme, and we’ll probably take it even above and beyond. We’re building out personas, so we’re trying to think about. All the ways that we want to create this value that our sellers can tap when they’re making their pitches and make it very easy for them to just do a q and a chat style function. So, you know, we look forward to partnering closer with you in our AI journey. SS: I love that. I think that’ll be amazing for your reps and your sellers. Now, to shift gears a little bit, what are some of your best practices for measuring the impact of your programs on your go-to-market performance? AB: That is probably one of my favorite questions because it’s a combination of solving a huge need that I didn’t ever think would get solved, as well as just a journey that’s new for me. So it’s exciting in its own right. So we are leaning really heavy into, okay, how do we really make sense of this gold data we’re getting from you? Engagement data, right? So I like to quote my boss, he always says, okay, don’t boil the ocean. You just gotta get started, right? So that’s what we’ve done through the last year. We were kind of, you get these really fun insights. You’re like, oh, that’s such a cool insight. And you’re like, okay, well what do we do with it? Right? So you’re, you go through this journey. But we really started to nail down how do we need to think about this? And so. We started to realize it’s like, okay, we have the sales engagement data and then we have our client engagement data, so how do we wanna start thinking about that? And then there’s really kind of the two big buckets of how we apply those layers is one for product marketing. Direct control is governance, right? And content management. So, okay, based on our sales and our clients are engaging pitches, digital rooms, you know, views, downloads, et cetera. And then, you know, what does that tell us about our content and how we should be managing it? And one thing that’s so exciting that I’ll share our most recent learnings from this effort, you know, we’re used to working through our roadmap. We get these initiatives, requests, you know, executive asks all of those things. We’re now really shifting how we make and build our roadmap. We’re still gonna do all that, of course. But now we have this new opportunity with this kind of engagement data to say, hey, there’s these materials that get used all the time. So we do a monthly report to our executive team, just of the high level metrics I just mentioned. And we started seeing this one brochure we built. It’s our differentiators brochure, which, you know, it’s a good piece. But we originally built it two or three years ago and we’ve refreshed it once. We were seeing that thing in the top five every month and often the top position every month with both sales and client engagement data. And we’re like, holy moly, this thing is on fire. Right? So what we’re doing now is it is now part of our ongoing strategy and we’re gonna look to the top 20%, right? Driving all engagement data. To make it a proactive part of refreshing and keeping it the best capable content on an ongoing basis, whether that’s monthly or quarterly. So that’s how we’re changing and shifting based on governance. The other side of the hat is really the behaviors, right? And we don’t directly control that, but what we’re trying to do is leverage data in a way. Now we can really showcase how this data can drive the behaviors we want from the team and then inspire our sales leaders and executive team to embrace that and leverage it, right? So we’re, we’re building out that platform. So more on that, but it’s really so exciting because, you know, we used to have to rely solely on maybe an annual survey we would send to sales, hey, you like what we’re doing right? And maybe you get 10%, 20% responding or just kind of ad hoc, scattered feedback. And now we really just have this objective, trustworthy data we can work off of. SS: I love that. Since launching Highspot, what results have you seen on that front and are there any key wins or notable business outcomes you can share? AB: So as part of leaning in more, like I said, we’ve already learned so much, and then now also in preparation to make these committee our kickoff sessions as valuable as possible and really go out with a banging. I had this hypothesis and I said, and I felt pretty good about it. Because you see the names of the people driving new business and you recognize those names from users in Highspot. And I started thinking, I said, I really think Highspot drives new business. So I tasked my systems and analytics team. I’m very fortunate. And product marketing, if you were in a product marketing team, if you can have an analytics team, it’s really valuable. So I test ’em to say, okay, how do we drive the correlation between Highspot engagement? And revenue outcomes. And we started with kind of looking at a quadrant. We said, okay, let’s look and do the old quadrant on Highspot engagement, users usage to revenue outcomes, and kind of map out those so we can think through different use cases there to start and then really start to see the correlations. So the big great things is you start to see these stories emerge naturally. And they dug in and there’s another persona team who came from another big tech and has regression analysis and all this. So lucky me, they were able to drive that. When you take a user of Highspot or a non-user, I would say someone like one of our sellers that’s not really using Highspot, and you layer on the best Highspot engagement activities, you have an opportunity to enhance their new business by 29%. And now I’m sure there’s other variables. You know, I’m sure the Highspot users that are active, Highspot users probably are good at going after new business. But the bigger picture there is, is think about that. If we even get 10%, 15% of the movable middle and the bell curve, just doing the things that are right, think about how you can move the needle. So we took that same lens, or we put it across total revenue, connected to engagement, and then also incremental increases with existing business. And every single one had really remarkable results. New business being the top. So. Just huge insights. We’re gonna definitely debut that to our executive team and get them excited and, and then lean in, hear their questions, and work with our sales enablement and training teams to say, okay, here’s those behaviors that we should start to reinforce. SS: Amazing results, though. Amazing results now. I appreciate you joining this podcast so much. I’ve learned so much from you already, and it is amazing to be able to talk to another strong female marketing leader. So I really appreciate your time and I noticed that you were recognized for the Los Angeles Times Inspirational Women’s List in 2024. So I have to say, this might be one of my favorite questions of the entire podcast, but what is one piece of advice that you would share? With other women looking to develop as leaders to drive impact for their organization. AB: Well, thank you so much for that question. I will tell you it was such an honor. I mean, I was so humbled and grateful to the LA Times Studio for that recognition. And it was such a journey and just so wonderful. But you know, back to your question, you know, as you go through your career journey, you see different types of leaders and you see what works and what doesn’t work. What inspires you individually? What inspires teams? And some of the takeaways that I’ve kind of compiled and really showcased as part of panel I got to participate on last November was how you need to lead authentically. And what I mean by that is. You can’t adopt someone else’s leadership style exactly, because it may not fit you. You have to understand your natural way of inspiring people because you get more as a leader by inspiring people than mandating them to do things, right? Not saying mandates don’t have their place where they’re needed, but when you’re inspiring people and getting them excited about the work they do, it’s gonna have such an impact, and you can’t do that unless you’re your authentic self. It’s kind of hard and as a woman, you probably know this, it can even be harder sometimes because the, the standard kind of tried and true leadership that have been staples don’t always come off authentically when you’re a woman leader. So, you know, we know the age old challenges that come with that. So how do you, I’ve really studied and done a lot of psychology reading and stuff like how do I foster the best. Kind of leverage my quality traits. And that leads me to the second part that’s really important. I was lucky enough in my earlier I was, when I was working at one of the larger corporations, they put us through this exercise, and if you can do this anyway, if you haven’t already, we did strengths finders, which I thought was so great, but I’m sure there’s lots of tools out there. And you kind of learn about your own unique strengths. And it’s kind of eye-opening ’cause you know, but you don’t. But when you see ’em in front of you and then you start to read what they are, you think they nailed it, right? And so when you can understand those things about yourself, you start to position yourself to be where you do well, right? Because you know that about yourself. And then you can kind of channel those and then work on the areas where maybe aren’t as easy. That’s also really helpful as a leader when you’re building teams, you know, it’s not getting the same cookie cutter employee. You have to build these energies together. Right. And it’s really a combination of different types. Of strengths. And so when I have a position to fill, I’ll look at the current team and I’ll say, okay, what, what are my strengths on there? What’s missing? What can I do better? And I will design the whole process around that. When I’m looking for a candidate, I’ll say, you know, I’ll design the interview questions, I’ll design the job role, all of it. And that’s how you get kind of a well-oiled machine. So that’s a big thing. And then of course, just in mentorship, you know, embrace mentorship. It’s so important to build future leaders. Help them understand the grace in getting out of a job they hate, you know, and finding that place where, you know, we’re always gonna have projects that aren’t fun, but if you really hate your job every day, it’s, you know, I always advise young people coming up like, don’t be afraid to make a move. It’s okay, whether it’s another department or another company, you know, you’re only gonna do yourself justice by getting yourself where you belong. So, yeah, it’s really. Tailoring your support for the unique mentorees that you have. We have a regular intern program, so I get interns every year and it’s really great. I learn and get a lot of great feedback. So, you know, I guess I’ll say, you know, to sum it all up, lead with authentic behavior and purpose and clarity, and you’ll drive impact and really focus on driving the young future leaders of America. SS: I love that advice and it resonates a lot with me, so I really appreciate this, Andrea, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast today. AB: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Shawnna. SS: To our audience, thank you for listening to this episode of the Win-Win podcast. Be sure to tune in next time for more insights on how you can maximize enablement success with Highspot.

In this episode of The Refresh, Kait from Marketecture breaks down the biggest ad tech news of the week, covering major acquisitions that are reshaping the industry. As the trend of every company becoming an ad tech company continues, we dive into the latest moves from T-Mobile, Blis, Viant, Lockr, Publicis, and more. This week's highlights: T-Mobile acquires Blis – Expanding its ad business with a privacy-focused omnichannel platform Viant acquires Lockr – Helping publishers integrate first-party data into alternative IDs Publicis acquires Lotame – Strengthening its data dominance with 4 billion consumer profiles The rise of alternative IDs – The challenges of scaling identity solutions in ad tech Google & the DOJ – What's next for Chrome & Android? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, Dot discusses the latest acquisitions in the ad tech industry, new data exposing the severity of publishers' struggle against AI search engines, and the countdown for this year's All In Census. 

Tim Vanderhook, CEO of Viant Technology (DSP), talks about how it executes digital ad campaigns for companies. Despite the stock's big slide with overall market weakness, he explains what makes Viant a great investment "at a really advantageous price." Tim considers digital advertising a "canary in the coalmine" for consumer strength.======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day.Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about

Tim Vanderhook is the co-founder and CEO of Viant Technology (NASDAQ: DSP), a leading advertising technology company that went public in 2021 at a $2.5B valuation.In this episode of World of DaaS, Tim and Auren discuss:The trillion dollar advertising market opportunityWhy linear TV is massively undervaluedThe explosive growth of streaming audioFighting fraud in modern ad techLooking for more tech, data and venture capital intel? Head to worldofdaas.com for our podcast, newsletter and events, and follow us on X @worldofdaas.  You can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Tim Vanderhook on LinkedIn.Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com)

In this episode of the Ad TechGod Pod, host AdTechGod interviews Dave Simon, Vice President of Sales at Viant. They discuss Dave's extensive career in advertising, starting from his early days as a media buyer to his pivotal role in the rise of programmatic advertising at BrightRoll. The conversation digs into the challenges faced during the pandemic, the future of advertising with a focus on AI and CTV, and the importance of human connections in the advertising industry. Dave shares insights on navigating industry disruptions and the continuous evolution of advertising technology. Takeaways Dave Simon's journey in advertising began with a passion for creativity. Transitioning to sales was driven by a desire for entrepreneurial excitement. The rise of programmatic advertising marked a significant shift in the industry. Navigating challenges during the pandemic highlighted the importance of adaptability. AI and CTV are key trends shaping the future of advertising. Identity and privacy concerns are increasingly relevant in the ad tech landscape. The human element in ad tech fosters collaboration and support among peers. Continuous learning is essential in an ever-evolving industry. Disruption can come from unexpected sources, changing the landscape rapidly. The future of advertising is bright with innovation and new opportunities. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Dave Simon and His Journey 01:24 Dave's Early Career and Transition to Sales 06:34 The Rise of BrightRoll and Programmatic Advertising 12:07 Navigating Challenges During the Pandemic 15:13 The Future of Advertising: AI, CTV, and Privacy 23:37 The Human Element in Ad Tech 28:07 Disruption in the Advertising Industry Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Viant CEO and co-founder Tim Vanderhook joins Eric Franchi and Joe Zappa live at CES to discuss what's next for ViantAI, how AI will disrupt advertising, the ramifications of Google's dominance, and CES vibes.

En cette fin d'année Tip & Shaft vous propose d'écouter ou de ré-écouter les 2 épisodes de Navigantes les plus suivis en 2024. Votre podcast revient dans son format habituel le 8 janvier, toute l'équipe de Tip & Shaft vous souhaite, avec quelques jours d'avance, une très bonne année 2025 !--Sylvie Viant est une figure incontournable de la course au large en même temps qu'une pionnière. Elle a ainsi disputé la toute première Whitbread, course autour du monde en équipage par étapes, en 1973 à bord de la goélette Grand Louis menée par son père André, avec à bord son frère Jimmy et des marins comme Philippe Facque, Patrice Carpentier, Loïc Caradec… Elle a ensuite été la première femme directrice de course, ”un rôle qui n'existait pas avant”, aux manettes de grandes compétitions hauturières, comme la Transat anglaise ou la Transat Jacques Vabre, continuant alors à jongler entre navigations et deux enfants. Si elle a finalement passé la main de la Transat Jacques Vabre à Francis Le Goff, cette femme discrète et souriante n'est jamais bien loin des pontons, restant une référente dans le domaine de la direction de course. Tout un parcours sur lequel elle revient, à grand renfort d'anecdotes, dans cet épisode qu'on ne voit pas passer.Navigantes est animé par Hélène Cougoule et produit par Tip & Shaft.Rediffusé le 25 décembre 2024Diffusé le 20 mars 2024Post production :  Grégoire LevillainGénérique : All the summer girlsHébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

On this Screaming in the Cloud Replay, we're revisiting our conversation with Michael Garski, the director of software engineering at famed electrical guitar manufacturer, Fender. Prior to this position, he worked as a principal software architect at Viant, a principal software architect at MySpace, a manager of internet development at Countrywide Financial, and a manager of system architecture at Fandango, among other positions. He also had a four-year stint in the US Navy, working as an engineering laboratory technician. Join Corey and Michael as they talk about how artists are angels and Fender's job is to give them wings, how Fender has diversified its offerings in recent years, how serverless is a mindset and how Fender approach serverless technology, how Fender's traffic surged during the pandemic and how everything mostly scaled up without a hitch, the challenges of teaching students to play instruments over the internet, the vendor lock-in boogeyman, and more.Show Highlights(0:00) Introduction(0:42) Dragonfly sponsor read(1:25) How does Michael describe Fender's work(2:08) Fender's work to go serverless(4:13) The impact of COVID on Fender(6:19) Explaining Fender Play and how it works on the backend(9:44) Working with MediaConvert(11:30) Experiences with scaling and hitting AWS service limits(12:52) Why Michael prefers working on the customer side(15:33) The Duckbill Group sponsor read(16:15) Frustrations with gateways and third-party apps(19:03) Managing a massive influx of users during COVID(21:13) The vendor lock-in boogeyman(23:19) Cloud costs vs. saving time(24:49) Walking the fine line of criticism as a director(28:09) Enforcing consistency across services(31:52) Where you can find more from MichaelAbout Michael GarskiMichael Garski has worked in the Los Angeles tech industry for over 20 years, across companies including Fandango, Countrywide Home Loans, MySpace, Viant, and is currently at Fender Musical Instruments as the Director of Platform engineering were he leads the devops, data, and api engineering teams. His focus currently is on building the platform to support the consumer facing digital products for Fender. The most prominent application he supports is Fender Play, a web and mobile application that provides video-based instruction for guitar, bass, and ukulele for more than a quarter-million subscribers.LinksLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgarski/Original Episodehttps://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/keep-on-rockin-in-the-server-free-world/SponsorsDragonfly: dragonflydb.ioThe Duckbill Group: duckbillgroup.com 

On today's Daily, Dot discusses: Viant's acquisition of IRIS.TV; The Guardian abandoning X; Inverness Graham buying Alliant.

AdTechGod discusses the recent acquisition of Iris TV by Viant Technologies with Tim and Chris Vanderhook. In this episode, we dive into Viant's recent acquisition of Iris TV, aimed at boosting transparency and improving targeting and measurement in the growing CTV space, where over 40% of ad spend on Viant's platform now flows. We explore how this move strengthens Viant's ad products to compete with walled gardens while keeping Iris TV independent to support an open ecosystem. We'll also look at the importance of understanding content at a detailed level to give advertisers the edge in reaching the right audiences.takeawaysViant acquired Iris TV to enhance transparency in the CTV ecosystem.The acquisition aims to provide better targeting and measurement capabilities.CTV is growing rapidly, with over 40% of total spend on Viant's platform.The focus is on creating superior ad products to compete with walled gardens.Iris TV will operate independently to support the open ecosystem.Understanding content at a granular level is crucial for advertisers.Privacy regulations are shaping the future of ad tech.The market is excited about the potential of Iris TV.Investment in ad tech is essential for the open ecosystem's growth.Viant aims to attract more entrepreneurs to build innovative solutions.Chapters00:00 Introduction to the Acquisition01:07 The Purpose Behind Acquiring Iris TV05:14 The Future of CTV and Walled Gardens08:14 Iris TV's Independence and Its Role10:37 Understanding Content and Privacy in CTV18:33 Market Reactions and Future ProspectsMentioned in this episode:Sweet Suites

Le leader d'un club social de pédophiles libéré pour la quatrième fois. Un suspect arrêté pour le meurtre commis à la station Guy-Concordia. Un graffiti insultant dans les fenêtres d'un centre d'enquête du SPVM.  Faits divers avec Maxime Deland, journaliste à l'agence QMIPour de l'information concernant l'utilisation de vos données personnelles - https://omnystudio.com/policies/listener/fr

Check out the newsletter here for supporting charts and links: https://www.thatswhaticallmarketing.com/post/top-of-the-marketing-charts-sept-2024In this edition of That's What I Call Marketing, we take a look back at what hit the top of the marketing charts in September. There's a lot to unpack, from campaigns that caught my eye to debates that will get you thinking. We dive into some big questions around attribution—Analytics Partners ask if it's doing more harm than good—and data-driven targeting, where Jon Bradshaw reckons the martech industry might be missing the mark.Some standout campaigns? Well, Tesco's homewares range goes all high fashion, brought to life by BBH London with some truly slick OOH work. We've also got G-Star RAW teaming up with Olympic gold medallist Rhys McClenaghan in a fragrance-style spot that's dripping with effortless cool. And then there's John Lewis, slowly building to its Christmas crescendo with a new three-part campaign kicking off with a nod to its century-spanning heritage.But it's not all about the big brands. Tombola's fun and surreal ad starring comedian Jo Griffin breaks the mould in the hyper-competitive online bingo space, while Firehouse Subs deliver laughs with their return of the ‘Hot Sauce Table' in a spicy series of ads. Oh, and can we talk about AI? From Adidas experimenting with AI-driven ads to Viant launching ViantAI, the future of AI in marketing is a hot topic that won't go away (even if it sometimes feels like we wish it would!).As always, we'll also look at a few creative stunts, like Pizza Hut's genius move of printing job seekers' CVs on pizza boxes—guaranteed to get attention. Plus, a clever campaign from Dad Shift pushing for better paternity leave in the UK using statues in central London as part of their message. So grab a cup of tea, dive in, and don't forget to leave a comment with what caught your eye this month! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As I continue to invest time in AI and discover the impact and implications it is and will have on our industry, I have used NotebookLM to create this discussion based podcast episode based on the September Newsletter. I would love to get your thoughts on it, please leave a comment.I will upload the regular audio file as well.In this edition of That's What I Call Marketing, we take a look back at what hit the top of the marketing charts in September. There's a lot to unpack, from campaigns that caught my eye to debates that will get you thinking. We dive into some big questions around attribution—Analytics Partners ask if it's doing more harm than good—and data-driven targeting, where Jon Bradshaw reckons the martech industry might be missing the mark.Some standout campaigns? Well, Tesco's homewares range goes all high fashion, brought to life by BBH London with some truly slick OOH work. We've also got G-Star RAW teaming up with Olympic gold medallist Rhys McClenaghan in a fragrance-style spot that's dripping with effortless cool. And then there's John Lewis, slowly building to its Christmas crescendo with a new three-part campaign kicking off with a nod to its century-spanning heritage.But it's not all about the big brands. Tombola's fun and surreal ad starring comedian Jo Griffin breaks the mould in the hyper-competitive online bingo space, while Firehouse Subs deliver laughs with their return of the ‘Hot Sauce Table' in a spicy series of ads. Oh, and can we talk about AI? From Adidas experimenting with AI-driven ads to Viant launching ViantAI, the future of AI in marketing is a hot topic that won't go away (even if it sometimes feels like we wish it would!).As always, we'll also look at a few creative stunts, like Pizza Hut's genius move of printing job seekers' CVs on pizza boxes—guaranteed to get attention. Plus, a clever campaign from Dad Shift pushing for better paternity leave in the UK using statues in central London as part of their message. So grab a cup of tea, dive in, and don't forget to leave a comment with what caught your eye this month! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Viant AI is a generative AI tool designed to automate media planning and campaign setup for digital advertising. Built on top of Viant's demand-side platform (DSP), Viant AI helps advertisers and agencies streamline the labor-intensive tasks involved in planning and executing campaigns. By providing key information such as advertiser details, campaign goals, and budget, the tool automatically generates initial campaign strategies, allowing media planners to review and make adjustments. The AI's generative capabilities have drawn attention for their ability to save time, reduce busywork, and optimize campaign performance.For more in-depth discussion of these topics and links to the news we discuss, subscribe to the Marketecture newsletter at https://news.marketecture.tvCopyright (C) 2024 Marketecture Media, Inc.

Eric Franchi and Joe Zappa chat with Tim and Chris Vanderhook, co-founders of Viant. They discuss the Vanderhooks' creative approach to the extremely successful launch of ViantAI, their take on “founder mode,” and how their approach to adtech entrepreneurship has evolved over 25 years. (Note: Viant is a client of Joe's agency, Sharp Pen. This episode was not sponsored.)

AdTechGod sits down with Tim and Chris Vanderhook from ViantTim Vanderhook is the CEO and Chris Vanderhook is COO of Viant..Their journey is one of true entrepreneurship, from the early days of launching a social network that rivaled the giants, to their daring pivot into AdTech. Under their guidance, Viant has made strategic moves, including the acquisition of Adelphic, which further strengthened their position in the market, capable of delivering cross-channel strategies that encompass desktop, mobile, CTV, and more.The Vanderhooks are known not just for their business acumen but also for their forward-thinking approach to the advertising ecosystem.Thank you to Kevel and Innovid for advertising on this episode.Mentioned in this episode:ADTECHGOD DISCLOSURE

Bilan d'une autre opération de la Police ontarienne menée à Montréal. La police tire sur un voleur de voiture à Montréal. Un père voyeur plaide coupable. Discussion faits divers de Maxime Deland, journaliste à l'Agence QMI.Pour de l'information concernant l'utilisation de vos données personnelles - https://omnystudio.com/policies/listener/fr

A special set celebrating spring and emotions, between a nap under substance & a mini dancing post night of love. A sensorial and hypnotic sound shaped by nostalgic tracks.

Sylvie Viant est une figure incontournable de la course au large en même temps qu'une pionnière. Elle a ainsi disputé la toute première Whitbread, course autour du monde en équipage par étapes, en 1973 à bord de la goélette Grand Louis menée par son père André, avec à bord son frère Jimmy et des marins comme Philippe Facque, Patrice Carpentier, Loïc Caradec… Elle a ensuite été la première femme directrice de course, ”un rôle qui n'existait pas avant”, aux manettes de grandes compétitions hauturières, comme la Transat anglaise ou la Transat Jacques Vabre, continuant alors à jongler entre navigations et deux enfants. Si elle a finalement passé la main de la Transat Jacques Vabre à Francis Le Goff, cette femme discrète et souriante n'est jamais bien loin des pontons, restant une référente dans le domaine de la direction de course. Tout un parcours sur lequel elle revient, à grand renfort d'anecdotes, dans cet épisode qu'on ne voit pas passer.Navigantes est animé par Hélène Cougoule et produit par Tip & Shaft.Diffusé le 20 mars 2024Post production :  Grégoire LevillainGénérique : All the summer girls

Enregistré par Tara Peel, ce mix est une joyeuse descente aux enfers guidée par le lapin noir d'Alice. Petit voyage dans les abysses de l'artiste pavé de synthwave mais aussi de dark disco ou d'une techno sombre sous acide, c'est un cocktail surprenant ou le fantasme dépasse la réalité. Recorded by Tara Peel, this mix is a slow descent to a joyful hell guided by Alice's black rabbit, a journey into her own abyss – paved by synth wave, dark disco & deep techno on acid. A surprising cocktail where reality is overcome by fantasy.

On reproche facilement aux vins naturels d'être souvent bourrés de défauts : goût de souris, oxydation, présence de gaz… Il semblerait que ces jus vinifiés avec peu ou pas d'interventions et d'intrants souffrent de tous les maux. Mais qu'est-ce qu'un défaut ? Des personnes apprécient une acidité volatile élevée, d'autre ne crachent pas sur un goût de peau de saucisson ou de riz soufflé… Et ces problèmes ne se rencontrent-ils que dans les vins naturels ? Pourquoi ne considère-t-on pas qu'un vin conventionnel au goût de planche a des défauts ? Tour du sujet pendant cette passionnante table ronde organisée dans le cadre de l'édition lyonnaise 2023 du salon Sous les pavés la vigne organisé par Nouriturfu et RadioVino, au Palais de la Bourse, le samedi 4 novembre 2023. Avec Olivier Grosjean (auteur), Marie-Ève Lacasse (journaliste et autrice) et Frédéric Lignon (caviste) Animation : Antonin Iommi-Amunategui +++++ Captation : Laurent Le Coustumer pour RadioVino Musique : Maria Schneider & SWR Big Band, Mack the knife

Viant CEO Tim Vanderhook talks about the scaled ad tech company's company's current approach to identity and bidding and explains why he doesn't buy into the recent trend toward unified programmatic platforms. For more information about our expert, Ari Paparo: https://www.marketecture.tv/authors/ari-paparoThe full version of this episode is available at https://www.marketecture.tv/programs/viant-tim-vanderhook .Visit Marketecture.tv to join our community and get access to full-length in-depth interviews. Marketecture is a new way to get smart about technology. Our team of real industry practitioners helps you understand the complex world of technology and make better vendor decisions through in-depth interviews with CEOs and product leaders at dozens of platforms. We are launching with extensive coverage of the marketing and advertising verticals with plans to expand into many other technology sectors.Copyright (C) 2022 Marketecture Media, Inc.

Robert Cohen has his eyes on the future of orthopedic surgery, but he brings a wealth of knowledge about its past as well. In this interview, Cohen reviews his long history in orthopedic surgery, dating back to his studies in college. Over his career, Cohen has had a role in materials, 3D-printing, and began working with MAKO Surgical several years before its acquisition by Stryker in 2013. Now Cohen leads the team that will guide Stryker's digital strategy in the future. Cohen, who chairs the board of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, wraps up the discussion sharing his thoughts about the future of engineering education. This episode is sponsored by Viant. Go to ViantMedical.com to learn more. Thanks for listening to the StrykerTalks Podcast. You can subscribe to the DeviceTalks Podcast Network on any major Podcast Player.

IN THIS EPISODE, WE COVER: 01:47 - Who is Dave Simon? 03:52 - Question #1: What is the best early career investment a salesperson can make? 09:00 - Question #2: How has your view of sales changed over the years and why? 14:22 - Question #3: What is one mistake you made early in your sales career and how has it affected you in the present? 18:22 - Question #4: Who has had the biggest impact on your career and why? 22:01 - Question #5: If you could go back in time what would you do differently? MORE ON DAVE:Currently VP of Sales at Viant Technology, Dave is charged with leading Sales & Strategy across a multi-leveled 6 office territory that includes the Central and Southwest regions of the US. Driving vision for hiring, training, talent development, product roadmap, cross-team collaboration & customer growth, focusing on the adoption of Adelphic, our omnichannel DSP.   Prior to Viant, Dave was at Convoy, where he was Head of Mid-market and Small Business sales. Prior to Convoy, Dave was at Cuebiq, a location measurement & analytics startup where he led the Programmatic Sales team as well as standing up their Partnerships team.  Prior to Cuebiq Dave spent over 10 years at BrightRoll, and then Yahoo!/Oath via their acquisition of BrightRoll.  At BrightRoll he led their Midwest sales team.  Post acquisition, Dave pivoted to building the newly created Agency-focused DSP Sales team, eventually leading it for all of North America.  He held a similar, US role, at Oath/Verizon Media after Yahoo was acquired by AOL.  Dave will be based in Chicago and will oversee the central region as well as the Texas and Colorado offices.  Outside of work, Dave can be found on his bike, on the golf course, or in his home gym.   Dave lives in River Forest, a Chicago Suburb with his wife Sendy and their two kids, Avery & Luke.Connect with Dave here:  https://twitter.com/DaveSimon18  https://www.linkedin.com/in/davesimon1/ MORE ON RAMPED: Check us out at www.rampedcareers.com Interested in becoming a Ramped Professional? Sign up here: https://www.rampedcareers.com/onboarding/signup Interested in becoming a Ramped Corporate Partner? Email us at sales@rampedcareers.com

Oral argument argued before the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on or about 05/11/2022

Shane Boda v. Viant Crane Service, LLC

In this week's episode, we interview Joe Army, CEO of Vapotherm, and Alton Shader, CEO of Viant. First. We'll follow Army's heartful move into Medtech, which includes his current role as CEO of Vapotherm, maker of the high flow nasal cannula that proved to be a highly effective tool to treat patients hospitalized with COVID-19. We'll later learn that Vapotherm's ability to supply hospitals with this life-saving technology was in doubt due to labor shortages. But Shader details how the contract manufacturer stepped in to immediately help with Vapotherm's dilemma. The interview is a taste of the discussion Vapotherm and Viant will lead at DeviceTalks Boston on May 10. Go to devicetalks.com to register. We also bring in former Johnson & Johnson executive Peter Stebbins to tell us about his upcoming interview with Frank Doyle III, dean of Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Doyle will be our keynote interview subject on the morning of May 10 at DeviceTalks Boston. Stebbins also provides his experience and insights to this week's Newmarker's Newsmakers including news from Medtronic, Masimo, Boston Scientific, GE Healthcare and FitBit. #5 https://www.medicaldesignandoutsourcing.com/medtronics-ceo-would-like-to-put-the-tech-in-medtech/ #4 https://www.massdevice.com/masimo-completes-acquisition-of-sound-united/ #3 https://www.massdevice.com/boston-scientific-wins-fda-approval-for-imaged-guided-software-for-dbs-therapy/ #2 https://www.massdevice.com/ge-healthcare-elekta-collaborate-to-expand-precision-radiation-therapy-access/ #1 https://www.massdevice.com/fda-clears-fitbit-ppg-algorithm-to-detect-afib/

Viant Technology (DSP) is an advertising software company that enables programmatic purchases of advertising on desktop, mobile, connected TVs, linear TVs, in-game streaming audio, and digital billboards. Co-founder and CEO Tim Vanderhook weighs in on what is next for Viant Technology (DSP) as the stock price traded at all-time highs in February 2021.

Being a part of a University is such an interesting world. You're essentially part of building and running a small city. Sometimes it can be hard to know what direction to take things. Do you treat it like a typical direct to consumer business? Do you treat it like B2B? And how do you really know who the target customer is? These are all things we are going to explore with today's guest, Emily Reagan the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at the University of Texas.Emily joined UT right at the beginning of the pandemic and during one of the worst winter storms Texas has ever seen. But despite those challenges, she knew that the best way to start her tenure at UT was by focusing on the foundation to all great marketing - relationships. “Relationships are really, really important. And, um, and marketing, the role of marketing in organizations is, is, is typically not the one calling the shots on the strategies or what we're doing or what we're not doing. Um, but they are critical in, in, you know, in smart companies, they're obviously at the table at part of those conversations, but they're, they're not necessarily the lead. They're often a partner, they're an influencer. And particularly in a B2B organization, they're very much a, an influencer and a partner to the sales team. And, um, and I really enjoyed that. And I enjoyed, um, the, the relationship building with the sales team and kind of understanding their world a little bit better. I had been doing a lot of work consumer marketing prior to that.So I hadn't really worked with a, you know, a software sales team. Mm. And so that was kind of a new experience. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, but I think, and the thing there is, is, is, you know, do what you said you were gonna do and, and build relationships. And because those are, you know, that's who you're really to help kind of make their job easier. And so I think that's just a really important thing regardless of what function that you're in sure is to understand who your, your internal customer is. Mm-hmm , and, and really being clear about what, how you can work together and how you can build trust and build relationship.”She shares so much insight on this episode. Not just about the university, but also her experience working with other industries prior to joining UT.You guys are going to get so much from this episode. Let's get to it!Main TakeawaysRelationships are key. You should be building a relationship with the community around you. Your sales team, your stakeholders, and your consumers. The goal of marketing is to make everyone's life easier through trust, understanding, and solid communication.Watch UT for innovations. They are on the forefront of Web 3, AI, and the Metaverse. Tune in to find out their plans for thse new tech, and what you might be able to apply to your own organization.Look internal for team members. Although it is helpful to find people from outside your organization - there's likely untapped talent within your group already. Promoting within will also help inspire and motivate the team, knowing that their potential is being looked at.Key Quotes“I think it's important at the intersection to take a moment daily just recapping, where did I win today? What do I want to do better? And really just being happy with the wins because they're usually hard fought.”“Relationships are really, really important. The role of marketing in organizations is typically not the one calling the shots on the strategies in smart companies, they're obviously at the table at part of those conversations, but they're, they're not necessarily the lead. They're often a partner, they're an influencer to the sales team. And I enjoyed the relationship building with the sales team and kind of understanding their world a little bit better… That's who you're really to help make their job easier. And so I think that's just a really important thing regardless of what function that you're in sure is to understand who your, your internal customer is. and really being clear about what, how you can work together and how you can build trust and build relationships.” “UT is going to be, from a research and an impact perspective, at the forefront of [Web 3 and the Metaverse]. And that's really where the story is with UT, in our research and our innovation and the things that we're commercializing and working with businesses on. We have centers around AI and blockchain and all of that type of innovation that's happening. And so we are the hub of that. We are wanting to connect more with our Austin community and the Texas community again. To be partners and to share and to innovate together. That's a huge part of what we're doing at the university and as a marketing communications team, it's our job to tell those stories.”BioEmily Reagan was appointed the first Vice President and Chief Marketing and Communications Officer  for the University of Texas at Austin in November of 2020. In this role, she drives the overall strategy,  vision and direction of the UT brand, leads university marketing and communications efforts, and  delivers a consistent narrative and in support of the university's mission, brand, strategic goals and  objectives and reputation management. Emily first joined UT Austin as McCombs School of Business' first Chief Marketing Officer in 2018. As an active alum, she has brought fresh perspective, passion for  building both the UT Austin and McCombs brands, and deep integrated marketing expertise to her alma  mater.  Prior to McCombs, Emily was SVP, Integrated Marketing at Bazaarvoice, a marketing services company based in Austin. In this role she was responsible for brand management and thought leadership as well  as managing paid, earned, and owned marketing channels to drive awareness and demand for the  global business. During her 6-year tenure at Bazaarvoice she was also VP, Lifecycle Marketing and  Director, Demand Generation.  She began her career in Dallas in a Public Relations role at EDS (now an HP company) and proceeded to  grow her responsibilities in marketing communications and sales support before heading to graduate  school. Following her MBA, she worked in Los Angeles and San Francisco as a senior strategy consultant  for Viant, an e-business consultancy, working with clients such as Sony Pictures and Kinkos to build and  execute their digital strategy. She then held numerous leadership roles in marketing at TXU Energy,  RadioShack, and Guitar Center, Inc. Emily was also SVP, Group Account Director and VP of Strategy and  Insights for WPP-owned agency Wunderman DC, where she led accounts such as AARP, Audi of America,  and Procter and Gamble.  Emily earned her MBA from The University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business and a BA in  Journalism from Southern Methodist University. Emily is also former chair of the McCombs MBA  Advisory Board and of Hands on DC, an all-volunteer organization committed to improving the physical  learning environment in Washington, DC's public schools. She served three years on the selection  committee for Austin Woman Magazine's Women's Way Awards and was honored in 2021 as a finalist  for Austin Business Journal's Profiles in Power.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world's number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.

About MichaelMichael Garski is the Director of Platform Engineering at Fender Musical Instruments, where he leads the teams responsible for service development & testing, devops, and data. He's been with Fender for over 5 years and prior to that  worked as a software engineer & architect on back-end systems at Viant, MySpace, Countrywide Home Loans & Fandango. He is passionate about application reliability and observability and their impact on customer satisfaction.Links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgarski/ TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: Your company might be stuck in the middle of a DevOps revolution without even realizing it. Lucky you! Does your company culture discourage risk? Are you willing to admit it? Does your team have clear responsibilities? Depends on who you ask. Are you struggling to get buy in on DevOps practices? Well, download the 2021 State of DevOps report brought to you annually by Puppet since 2011 to explore the trends and blockers keeping evolution firms stuck in the middle of their DevOps evolution. Because they fail to evolve or die like dinosaurs. The significance of organizational buy in, and oh it is significant indeed, and why team identities and interaction models matter. Not to mention weither the use of automation and the cloud translate to DevOps success. All that and more awaits you. Visit: www.puppet.com to download your copy of the report now!Corey: If your familiar with Cloud Custodian, you'll love Stacklet. Which is made by the same people who made Cloud Custodian, but put something useful on top of it so you don't have to be a need to be a YAML expert to work with it. They're hosting a webinar called “Governance as Code: The Guardrails for Cloud at Scale” because its a new paradigm that enables organizations to use code to manage and automate various aspects of governance. If you're interested in exploring this you should absolutely make it a point to sign up, because they're going to have people who know what they're talking about—just kidding they're going to have me talking about this. Its doing to be on Thursday, July 22nd at 1pm Eastern. To sign up visit snark.cloud/stackletwebinar and I'll talk to you on Thursday, July 22nd.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. We talk to a lot of people here on this show who are deep in the weeds of SaaS companies, or cloud vendors, or cloud vendors cosplaying as SaaS companies. Today, we're taking a bit of a different direction. My guest is Michael Garski, Director of Platform Engineering at Fender Musical Instruments. They make guitars among many other things. Michael, thank you for joining me.Michael: Oh, thanks for having me on, Corey.Corey: So, one of the things that I really appreciate about what you do as a company is I can, at least presumably, explain it to someone who is not super deep in technical weeds without 45 minutes of explainer first. The easy answer is, “Oh, Fender. You folks make guitars.” These days, no one just does one thing, I have to imagine. How do you describe what the company does?Michael: Oh, well, to quote Leo Fender, his view was that artists are angels and it's our job to give them wings. So, in addition to actually making and developing guitars and amplifiers, we've branched off into consumer-facing products to actually teach people how to play those instruments.Corey: You folks have been relatively outspoken about the various things you're doing at different AWS events. I mean, my approach to that tends to be that if AWS is great at making bricks that you can use to build amazing things with, “Well, great, can you draw a picture of the house that you can build with this?” “No, we're going to have a customer come out and talk about that stuff instead.” You folks have been focusing on a lot of serverless work, and you've been very public about the fact that you are almost entirely serverless-driven in terms of architecture if I'm not mistaken.Michael: That is true.Corey: Tell me about that. How did you get there and what brought it about?Michael: So, I work in the digital division in Fender. We started, let's see, we're coming up on five years I've been there. So, what we did was, initially, we started building services that could run within a container, or on an EC2 instance, but we started looking at Lambda functions. We had need to ingest a product catalog, so the IT team was able to drop us off a product catalog into an S3 bucket, and the easiest thing to do then was just trigger a Lambda function to then process that file. And it just kind of snowballed in from there.Corey: I think the common problem when people hear ‘serverless' is they think, “Oh, great. More discussions about Lambda functions.” And Lambda is almost getting something of a tarred reputation in some circles because when we can build amazing things with it ourselves, we love it, but when we ask AWS how to wind up integrating two services, or about a feature gap, their response is, “Oh, use a Lambda function for it,” It starts to feel like they're using it as spackle and the spackle has become load-bearing. Do you view serverless as being purely function-driven or is it broader than that?Michael: It's much broader than that. Serverless is a mindset where you're looking beyond just Lambda functions to using a lot of third-party services so that you can actually focus on your core business. Like, we use Zuora as a subscription provider for web-based subscriptions; we use Algolia for full-text search; we use a variety of other services so that we can just focus on the core business.Corey: One thing that's been on everyone's mind, somewhat recently, has been the idea of dramatic changes as far as user behavior goes. And in the more traditional environments where you see things like EC2 instances or on-premises data centers, back when the pandemic first hit and companies that were very focused on a model of business that aligned directly with people behaving in certain ways that they suddenly didn't, would the 80% drop-offs or more in their user traffic, but their infrastructure spend just kept hanging out exactly where it was, in a straight line. So, at some level, it feels like yes, the whole point of cloud is that it can be elastic, except no one builds it that way for a variety of reasons. When COVID hit, what changed for your business?Michael: Change for our business is we launched a program called Playthrough, okay we did this about a year ago; we started it, we gave away three months of Fender Play for free. It was a single-use code that a user would redeem and no credit card required, and over a period of five days, we saw our traffic increase by more than ten times. And we had very little changes we needed to make. Everything scaled up, we had no issue with—we used a lot of Lambda functions, DynamoDB, everything just scaled up fine. The only point that became a bottleneck was our Elasticsearch cluster. However, beefing up the nodes and adding a few more nodes that resolved that issue immediately.Corey: So, I'm going to go out on a limb and postulate that you folks increased pickup when the lockdowns hit, if for no other reason then, “Well, I'm trapped at home and I'm tired of staring at the guitar on the wall. I may as well learn to play it.” I would guess. I could be way off base on that.Michael: No, no, that's very true. Even since then, even after that program has expired—of course, not everyone then converts and sticks around—but many, many did, many more than we thought would did stick around, and our usage and our goals were exceeded for this last year, and we're in a healthy place, and looking at continuing to grow and expand in the future.Corey: So, one of the applications that I think gets a fair bit of attention—rightfully so—lately, is something called Fender Play, and as best I can tell, that is a app that works in web, it works on mobile, and it's a video-based instruction tool for guitar at least, but some other instruments as well. How did that come to be? Did that exist before COVID hit? Has that been something that's been in the works for a while? Or was it, “Well, we're going to do a two-week sprint and build this thing from scratch?”Michael: No, we launched that—this June we're coming up on the fourth anniversary since it's been launched, so we launched this in summer of 2017.Corey: One of the problems I've always found is that it's challenging to learn to do something that is as, I guess, physical and intricate, et cetera, as playing an instrument without having someone in the room looking at you and smacking you with a stick whenever you do things that are wrong. “Nope, that's a bad habit. If you keep doing that it's going to hurt you.” How do you approach that as a company from a non-interactive perspective of someone who's going to watch a video and do things and maybe it'll work, maybe it won't? Particularly in light of things like, well, the competition is YouTube, which, you know, I'm going to roll the dice and sometimes I'll see a great tutorial, sometimes I'll see one that I don't realize teaching me terrible things, and then it's going to recommend some baseless conspiracy theory because YouTube. How do you differentiate that? What makes Fender Play different?Michael: So currently, you're right; it's just a video-based instruction app. There's not any way to, like, provide direct feedback to students within the web and mobile applications. However, we do have an online community, and our Fender Play instructors do an office hours feature, is where they'll actually answer questions live and talk to students. We are investigating and doing some earlier research in some, possibly, being able to provide that type of feedback to users, but it's very challenging problem, just due to the nature of you're playing an instrument that has multiple strings, so you're trying to pick out the chord that they're playing in, and the timing. But it's something we definitely need to add.Corey: There's something to be said as well for the kind of care and attention that you folks wind up putting into your media where, “This is how you finger a chord,” and someone on the YouTube video will do it for two-tenths of a second, and they're filming it with a potato that isn't focused properly and pointing at the wrong part of the guitar. You folks have a high bar for quality on this. Is that done in-house? Do you wind up just going through a bunch of random folks that you just wind up offering a bunch of gift cards to, or free guitars to do this? How does the program work on the back end?Michael: So, we have an in-house curriculum team that puts together the lesson plans to really help people learn in small bite-sized lessons so that it's not too overwhelming at once. And that curriculum then is shot and filmed by an in-house video team that put that together; they upload the data into S3 for the final cut, then that gets transcoded via MediaConvert, and we serve it up via CloudFront.Corey: It's rare to wind up talking to a company that is something of a household name about something that they're doing, and hear the AWS services that they're using not trend toward a baseline mean if I can be so bold. Normally, you'll see some of the case studies, like, “Oh, this is an online bank. What services are they using?” “Oh, they're using EC2, and S3, and load balancing because did you miss the part where it's a bank?” They're not going to use these far-future services due to regulatory risk, among other things, in many cases.You're using Elemental MediaConvert, which is one of those relatively high-up-the-stack offerings that isn't broadly known. It's one of those services that is focused on specific use cases and specific industry verticals in a way that a baseline primitive service isn't. What does MediaConvert do?Michael: What it does is it takes the final edit of the video, and we have several different presets so that it will put it into an HLS format with different bitrates so that the user is getting the best quality video depending on their bandwidth.Corey: When I looked into it in the early days when it was first launching, I found that it looked an awful lot like Elastic Transcoder, which is a service that they've had for a while, only they changed up some of the capabilities. It's obviously far more capable as a service, but they also added something that felt like 15 different billing dimensions to it, “So, what is this going to cost me?” “Well, we're going to run it for a month and find out if we're still in business.” And it seemed like it was one of those very difficult to get started with and run experiments with service. Now, obviously, services evolve over time. When you started looking into it was that experience roughly akin to what you felt, or am I completely and unfairly slandering in the product?Michael: We actually started out using Elastic Transcoder and then moved over to MediaConvert, I believe it was last year. We found it to be a little bit easier to use, and the pricing overall in transcoding the videos for us is really a drop in the bucket as compared to actually hosting them and serving them up via CloudFront. And when we switched over to MediaConvert, we adjusted our settings to lower the maximum bitrate for a given video, we found that after a certain point, the quality to the user just doesn't really improve, and yet we're paying to serve the larger video.Corey: One statistic that I found was that in March of 2020—you know which I believe we're still in at this point; just, it's the Endless September model, applied to March—you wound up seeing over an order of magnitude in traffic increase within five days, and looking at that through a lens of traditional architecture, that means that nobody sleeps a whole heck of a lot. Given that you're in on the serverless story, and you have been since before that hit, what was that scaling experience like for you?Michael: Scaling experience was completely seamless. We use a lot of Lambda, DynamoDB, Kinesis, SNS, to glue things together, and no problems whatsoever. Just had to bump up our Elasticsearch cluster a bit, that was really the only thing because we saw some latency starting to rise on some of our APIs.Corey: Let me ask the uncomfortable question then because whenever I tried to scale things up quickly in a cloud environment, what was your experience with smacking into various AWS service limits as the traffic grew?Michael: Initially, we actually requested some service limits increase to make sure we weren't hitting the concurrent Lambda invocation limit, and same thing with Cognito, making sure that we weren't going to hit any limits as far as sign-ins and things like that. So, we were able to just put in requests, and they served us around pretty quick turnaround time on that, as well.Corey: It really does seem like there's a strong benefit on the serverless space, but I had to double-check before we started recording that you do, in fact, work at Fender because you are a staunch advocate for observability. And usually, when someone is that passionate about observability, you can guess that they work at an observability-slash-monitoring company. It's akin to the idea of someone selling mattresses telling you that mattresses are great and you should have four of them. You're on the customer side of that and still very passionate about it. Where'd that come from?Michael: Came from my time years ago, when I worked at MySpace—if anyone can still remember that—working on the search systems there. And as the company started winding down, to laying people off, and being one of the only people left working on those systems, being able to know and understand them, you just have to, so you have to continue to monitor and find ways to monitor, and that really ingrained how important instrumentation is and being able to really understand the health of your application as it's running so that you can see, yes, everything is good, and then when something doesn't look right so that you can know where to start looking, and you can be alerted of a problem.Corey: So, I tend to view the world in olden terms where monitoring was what we did, and we use something like Nagios, which was the second-worst option out there because everything else felt like it was tied for first. I also take a somewhat regressive view that observability is to monitoring as DevOps is to being a systems administrator. It's the same thing, but by using the more modern terminology, you can charge more for it. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you take a somewhat contrarian [laugh] view to that.Michael: Yes, yes, I do. It's about really understanding how your applications is running. It's not just looking at, oh, how many HTTP 500s am I serving up per hour, if I hit a threshold for the last hour? It's a lot more than that. It's really being able to really dig in and see what the issue is or what's working really well.And to that end, we rely on two services for this. We use Honeycomb and Epsagon. Honeycomb, kind of, acts as our top layer because it gives us the really good high-cardinality metrics where I can punch in a user ID and I can see all the API traffic that this user has performed. As well as, even just like when we launched the Playthrough when our traffic rose, that the reason we discovered that our latency was dropping was due to a service-level objective being triggered in Honeycomb on latency. And we were able to respond to that using that before customers really noticed anything at all.Corey: As an Epsagon customer myself, I'm always conflicted when I find myself going into their service and using it to figure out what the heck's going on with my giant pile of Lambda functions, and API gateways, and whatnot, wired together because the experience is uniformly excellent, but I'm also frustrated in that it needs a third-party to even begin to allude to what's going on. It feels, on some level, like the vendor that is providing this service to me should be reasonably effective at telling me what it's doing, and when it's breaking. I understand that how I wish the world is and how it actually is are two radically different things but does that ever strike you as well?Michael: Whether or not AWS should be providing that type of level, that seems… that seems like more of a service that you can have competition and other vendors that really specialize and get in the weeds on it. I don't think AWS needs to provide every service you could possibly use for your application. That's not something I'm too concerned about. I don't really even think it's their place, frankly.Corey: No, no, I understand. The problem I keep running into, on some level, whenever I try and diagnose it natively is, I look at CloudWatch and it's difficult to understand that is this—in my case because again, I'm still early days with a lot of these things—is it the API gateway that's having the problem? Is it the CloudFront distribution that is tied to that? Is it the Lambda function? Where's the handoff?Trying to understand where in a complicated application the failure is occurring is a challenge. And let's be clear, most of that is a problem of my own making because I didn't have the good sense to instrument this thing in a reliable repeatable way when I built it. It feels like everything is tied together with duct tape, and baling wire, and spit, and a bit of luck. As a counterpoint, the more companies I talk to, the more I realize that no, no, this is actually how most people feel [laugh] when they look at things that are working. It's, yeah, it's terrible. It's a trash fire, but it makes money so we're going to roll with it.And there's always, on some level, a sense of what we've built is very far from the platonic ideal of what we should have built. Does that resonate with you, or do you take a step back and look at what you've achieved with a perspective of, “This is awesome. More people should do it exactly like this.” And honestly, if it's that one, I'd love to take a look at what you've built.Michael: I think there's always room for us to improve on what we're doing because we're constantly learning and evolving to improve both, even at such a low level of like, “Okay, how do we lay out the files in our service repository to make the best organization to make sense?” All the way up to, “Okay, how are we going to do tracing? And what kind of information do we need to get from that so that we can find problems when they occur?” We're always looking to learn what others are doing, and talking to others in this space. No one will ever be a hundred percent right. There's always room for improvement everywhere.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by LaunchDarkly. Take a look at what it takes to get your code into production. I'm going to just guess that it's awful because it's always awful. No one loves their deployment process. What if launching new features didn't require you to do a full-on code and possibly infrastructure deploy? What if you could test on a small subset of users and then roll it back immediately if results aren't what you expect? LaunchDarkly does exactly this. To learn more, visit launchdarkly.com and tell them Corey sent you, and watch for the wince.Corey: One thing that you folks have done that I think was really interesting and didn't get as much play as I think it really deserved, was that, especially in the early days of the pandemic, you wound up seeing that massive increase due to giving out almost a million free three-month subscriptions to Playthrough. Additionally, you also worked closely with LAUSD, the Los Angeles Unified School District, to add Fender Play to their middle school music program's curriculum to help supplement their remote learning programs. First, was that all in the same timeframe? Or—and, two, what has it been like, I guess, working with a organization that is, I guess, on some level, not particularly cloud-first. I would imagine. When I lived in Los Angeles, I never got the sense that LAUSD was full-on serverless, full on-board with cloud, full on-board with remote learning. And then the pandemic of course exacerbates all of that.Michael: Yeah, so those were really two different projects. So, that the Playthrough project that started in March, and we started working with Los Angeles Unified School District last year during their summer school program; started out with 1500 students and we put it together very quickly. Essentially, we use the same three-month codes that we used for that Playthrough promotion so that we could set things up very quickly for students and gave out, through our nonprofit arm of Fender, the Fender Play Foundation, gave out 1500 instruments to these students to use during the summer school program. And that program became so successful, we continued on with them in the fall, and now in the current semester, and we will be again this summer. I believe there's 7000 students in the program now.And working with their IT team has actually been quite nice. And in dealing with partners, you wouldn't think much of, “Oh, it's a school district, what do they have?” But as far as just ease of working with them, we actually hooked into their SAML provider in Cognito so that LAUSD students could authenticate when they come in through the remote learning systems. And they were great to work with and very helpful and cooperative.Corey: One of the arguments that you'll see that comes up against serverless, from time to time, is that you are now indelibly linked to your provider, but you can't take what you've built with all of these services and just move it over to Azure or GCP on a moment's whim. Now, in practice, people who tend to build for that, just build everything on top of EC2 and very little else, and then run it entirely in AWS and never move it to any of those other places. But was there friction with making that, I guess, architectural commitment to a single vendor?Michael: Oh, you're bringing up the vendor lock-in Boogeyman.Corey: Oh, I absolutely am. Most people who bring that—when I bring it up as a straw man so you can attack it, most people who bring up the vendor lock-in Boogeyman, “Oh, you have to go multi-cloud,” are either trying to sell you something that is required if you want to go multi-cloud, or they're a cloud provider themselves who know that if you go all-in on one provider, it will certainly not be theirs.Michael: I think if you properly architect your applications with separations of concerns that you could move to, say—okay, say Lambda wasn't working out for us anymore, and we needed to take our applications and, where, we're going to put them into a container, but we're going to stay in AWS. Our applications are set up in such a way that Lambda is basically a deployment pattern. We could easily convert those individual function handlers into route handlers with a minimal effort because the business logic and then the underlying data storage are separated. So, it would be feasible for us if we wanted to, say, move to Azure and use Azure Functions and whatever comparable service they have to DynamoDB. I'm not too familiar with a lot of their offerings.But that would certainly be possible to do it with, obviously, some effort and really, at the end of the day, the resources you have working on the applications are end up going to costing you much more than any, sort of like, software licensing or specific savings you're going to get from a cloud vendor, so might as well go ahead and just use those service that they're providing. So that you can just focus on the business.Corey: My approach has almost universally been that looking at an awful lot of companies and their AWS bills, it is a challenge to find an environment where the resources in the environment cost more than the people who are operating them. In the context of business, AWS bills seemed giant and enormous, right up until you look at payroll and then it's, “Oh, okay.” That's counterintuitive for folks who are learning this, and I fall prey to it myself is, when I'm playing around as a hobbyist trying to build something I value, my time is free because I'm learning as this goes, and then in that context, especially when I was starting out as a student, it was, “Oh, great. So, this winds up costing me $7 a month. Oh, that's a lot of money. That's my ramen budget, so I'm instead going to wind up spending eight hours avoiding it charging me anything.” It's the exact opposite from the direction you want staff that you're paying to work on these things to go in. How do you approach the idea of increasing the cloud cost if it will save time for your team?Michael: It's a balance between, where do we need to build this ourselves? And then not only build it, you have to operate it and maintain it? Or what is the cost of getting this third-party service? And that's really what it comes down to in all of them. And do we actually want to spend time working on this piece of infrastructure that these other people are specializing in and do so well? I've got better things I can have people doing than that.Corey: Speaking of people, one thing that you talk about, as you self-describe, is that you wind up not writing a whole lot of code anymore, but you're something of a stickler for observability and enforcing consistency between services, so you'll periodically do things like submit a PR to tweak a log message to put your mind at ease, was one example that you gave. Given that you're a director, which is generally manager of managers style approaches, how do you avoid having those PRs come across to your team as either micromanagement or a condemnation of what they've built? Because I get it; when I see something that's easy and small to tweak, I want to go ahead and get it fixed immediately. I don't want to go back and forth and play those games; I just want it done. But I'm also always weighing that against, I don't want to have people think that I'm judging them somehow for something I'm very much not.Michael: That's a very good point. The larger technical decisions on how things are laid out, I generally just try to—I don't insert myself into. I let the team go ahead, and make those decisions, and leave that direction, and let them take the charge on that, and I take the approach of looking at it as more of a guiding, and mentoring and teaching to really hone and instill that discipline in really being able to understand what the applications are doing. And as our team is growing, I have less and less time to even do those things, but I can go through the systems and go, “Hey, how come we're not tracing this call to the reCAPTCHA servers? Let's add that in there.” And I'll just at this point now, I mainly just write Jira tickets to have someone else actually do the work.Corey: The more I do this, the more I realize that as complicated as the technology is, the people are in many ways, far more complicated. And let's be fair here, non-deterministic things that work super well on one person one month could work entirely differently a following month, or even with the same person, or between teams. It's a constant balancing act, on some level. And giving people a sense of psychological safety has always been the biggest challenge. The thing that surprised me about management, back when I was running ops teams was the more, I guess, responsibility you accrue as you rise from individual contributor into the management—or ‘rise' is sort of a wrong term; it's an orthogonal transition—is that you spend a lot more time on the people problems, and your ability to directly control or affect change diminishes because you have to do everything via influence. You get a lot more responsibility with a lot less direct power [laugh] over the outcome in some ways. Does that align with how you see it, or am I just—do I have very strange approaches on management? Which may be true, and why I got out of it as fast as I could.Michael: No, that is a good point because you are having to [unintelligible 00:27:05], like, influence, and guide, and more take a higher-level view, as opposed to really getting into the weeds of like, “Okay, what methods are we going to put on this interface? How are we going to, say, architect the internals of an application?” Those are details I just really don't have time for anymore. But larger things as to making sure that we're okay, it's like, “What's the performance of this?” And, “Overall, is something that can be adapted as the business needs change, and as we change? And as we learn, what can we do to modify it?” And more just things like guiding, and mentoring, and really taking a higher-level view of that.Corey: I'm going to selfishly ask about something that I struggle with myself. That goes a bit more into the technical area, but you talk about enforcing consistency across all of your different services. What does that mean? Similar coding style? Similar instrumentation?Because I look at the things I built and microservices that power my internal nonsense, and each one of those is very different than all the rest. So, whatever your version of consistency is, I know I'm not doing it. But how do you view it?Michael: So, there's really two types of consistency. The one I really refer to the most is in observability. So that, if you've got a thousand Lambda functions out there, and each one is logging things slightly differently, that's just a pain to deal with, and realistically, dealing with a thousand unicorns is a real pain. So, through that observability, at least in Lambda, we use an internally developed middleware to make sure that the logging is consistent, and it's easy enough to use. And then other consistency, like, just within projects of how we lay things out.That's something that's been consistently evolving. What's the folder structure in how we organize the code? And we've kind of been evolving that over the last three years. And within about the last six months, we've come up with a really good pattern and a template for the future. And it's not much different from what we started out with, but it's a little bit easier, really, to comprehend as a new engineer coming in. It makes more sense.Corey: I have to ask—and I understand if you don't want to give a particular endorsement in any direction—but do you go through Serverless Framework, SAM CLI, the CDK, using the console and then lying about it? What is the template that you wind up using for that uniformity? Because even internally, I use three or four of those different things and professional advice: don't do that.Michael: Let's see. So, in our development, QA, production environments, infrastructure is all managed with Terraform. Each engineer has their own personal AWS account so that they can work on things there—Corey: Oh, that makes billing granularity super easy.Michael: Oh, yes. You can tell who's got EC2 instances running up for too long. But for the most part, we'll use Serverless Framework in that regard to say—for the engineer can just deploy into your local environment. Although we are working on ways to reuse the Terraform infrastructure and deploy that. But we have our own build and deployment pipeline that we built using CircleCI, and all of our Lambda functions are in Go.And so having to compile, say, 20 binaries in a service, that gets kind of slow, one of our DevOps engineers actually came up with a way to use Lambda to build the Lambdas, so that we can build them all in a distributed parallel fashion during the build process.Corey: One thing that I do love about the whole serverless approach—and it is a neat part about Lambda—is no two people ever seem to do it quite the same way. You can tie things together in so many different and exciting ways, and it's fun. It's almost like a modern version of playing with Lego. And I know that if Jeff Barr is listening, he just perked up at that. But I love the concept that you can take so many different ways to achieve similar outcomes. And it almost gives a bigger sense of creativity in how you approach problems. Has that been your experience?Michael: Oh, definitely. It's not only the creativity; it's also the flexibility in how you solve it, and the ability to adapt and evolve as services evolve, or change, or there's new ones are added. And to the point of using AWS, kind of, saying, “Oh, using a Lambda function to do this.” Like, using Lambda functions for customizing behavior of Cognito with the Cognito triggers, is to me, I think, a perfect way to customize the service to do exactly what you need to do.Corey: I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. It's always appreciated. If people want to hear more about what you have to say and how you view these things or even, possibly, decide to work with you, okay can they find you?Michael: I'm somewhat active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best place to find me. Please go ahead and connect to me; tell me you heard me on the podcast here.And yes, we are hiring. We have, all within our technical organization, from client, to web, and mobile engineers, data engineers, DevOps, API, we're always hiring and if we don't have something right now that fits your experience, let me know that you're interested and I'll put you on the list so that when we do have an opening, we'll reach out right away.Corey: And we will, of course, include links to that in the [show notes 00:32:20]. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time. I appreciate it.Michael: Thanks for having me on, Corey. It was nice talking to you.Corey: Michael Garski, Director of Platform Engineering at Fender Musical Instruments. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with a comment telling me that I'm almost certainly doing that chord incorrectly.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

Michelle Martin and Ryan Huang discuss DBS' Q4 profits falling, General Motors beat Wall Street expectations but could face a shortage of chips, Twitter's strong quarter, Under Armour's strong profits, Coca Cola's sights on brighter outlook, Viant's IPO, Singapore property market could be due for more property cooling measures, the Biden administration reviewing the sale of Tiktok, Biden and Xi's first phone call and the Apple Car.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Meet: Sanji Fernando is a senior vice president at Optum, where he leads the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Analytics Platforms team for Optum Enterprise Analytics (OEA). He is responsible for developing platforms that support the design and development of leading-edge AI models and analytic tools for the enterprise. Previously, Sanji was a vice president at OptumLabs and led the OptumLabs Center for Applied Data Science (CADS). The CADS team applied breakthroughs in AI and machine learning to solve complex health care challenges for UnitedHealth Group (UHG) by developing and deploying software product concepts. CADS pioneered using deep learning to streamline administrative processes in revenue cycle management and developed graph analytics tools to support provider network design, among other innovations. Sanji joined OptumLabs in 2014 from Nokia, where he created Nokia's first data science team. His team launched the first big data computing cluster at Nokia, using cluster derived insights on user activity and engagement to design new product concepts. Before that, Sanji spent 9 years at Nokia in a variety of corporate roles with Nokia's Multimedia Division, Nokia Research Center, and Nokia Ventures. Prior to Nokia, Sanji was a co-founder and VP of Engineering at Vettro, a venture-backed mobile software company. Sanji began his career in consulting with Viant and Accenture. Sanji is a graduate of Trinity College with a bachelor's degree in computer science. He lives in the Boston area with his wife and their three boys. In his free time, Sanji enjoys coaching his sons in basketball and baseball. He also serves on the board of his local Little League. What you'll learn: Evaluating the value of AI solutions Growth of AI in the healthcare space Establishing short and long term goals Sanji mentioned our annual survey on AI in health care and we recently shared the findings from our 3rd annual survey; we have both a press release and special report on that. If you would like to reach out to Sanji about anything he discussed on the podcast, please reach out to him via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjifernando/

Since the early stages of the Internet, in the mid-1990s, Sparky Rose has grown from a cutting-edge designer into a leading branding and marketing professional with deep expertise and focus in the medical and recreational cannabis industry. A visionary and believer in championing products that help society, he was at the forefront of the cannabis industry from 2003 to 2006 as executive director of Compassionate Caregivers, an Oakland, California-based medical cannabis company. Sparky helped grow the business from two to seven dispensaries in just 18 months. In addition, he had oversight of its three cultivation centers, managed over 280 employees, and oversaw revenue growth to more than $5 million per month.Sparky understands the regulatory issues between states and has been commissioned to consult for numerous cannabis companies in California, Colorado, Washington, Nevada, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois, where he resides. Prior to co-founding Supercritical, Sparky developed the original branding, design, and packaging for Sacred Mind & Body’s THC and hemp seed oil line. He’s advised the Cannabis Training Institute and ebbu. He was one of the co-founders, with CEO Adam Grossman, of the Papa & Barkley cannabis brand, heading up all branding, design, and packaging. Most recently, Sparky led new product initiatives and retail design and experience as Chief Marketing Officer for Illinois-based PharmaCann. He is known for creating one of the most comprehensive training programs for cannabis patient care representatives as well as consulting and advising on various operational aspects, including the company’s nitrogen flush packaging process.Earlier in his career, Sparky was creative lead at San Francisco-based Viant through its IPO in 1999 and was the head of all eBusiness at Fortune 500 firm Robert Half International (NYSE: RHI) following which he worked in its corporate development/M&A department. In addition, Sparky has consulted with non-cannabis clients including Chanel, DDB, BBDO, Ogilvy & Mather, DirecTV, PepsiCo, and Fox Sports Networks. He has also served as creative director for Discovery Communications’ Digital Cable Networks and Advanced Television Studio. Sparky is a lifelong drummer who played for Bay Area sensation Tang! before his marriage to wife Kat and acquisition of two miniature schnauzers.

To newer players, she is the voice of the APTA live streaming, but to players that have been around, she is a 13 time National Champion and HOF'er. Gerri Viant shares why many top players have come to her for instruction including our guest host, the incomparable Ana Zubori! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/insidethewires/message

It was fun recording with Justin. I got to learn a bit of his background, but I know a lot now of his music background. him enjoying mustard, him being cuban, How he got into music, his first band, the phases of bands he's created, the people he's met, the ''New York Saga", and finally the creation & the end of The Lofis, it was cool, I did a podcast with him before with the Lofis but this time alone gives it a dope feeling. I can't honestly wait to do a solo podcast with Phil and P$ keeping it a buck, ENJOY!!!!!!!!! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Qu’ont en commun un tacos, un body bag et un chandelier? Ils se retrouvent tous dans le top 3 de Richard et faudra écouter pour savoir pourquoi il nous parle de ça aujourd’hui!

Rene Thomas Folse, JD, Ph.D. is the host for this edition which reports on the following news stories. California Class Action Filed Against Cigna and Viant, Medicare Sues Lawfirm to Challenge Jurisdictional Issues, WCAB Orders Additional Emergency Filing Rules En Banc, COVID-19 Fraud Task Force Organizes in Arizona, OSHA Issues Respirator Interim Guidance, WCIRB Responds to COVID-19 Rating Issues, U.S. Plans to "Ease" Back to Normal.

Former Nielsen exec Megan Clarken has a big task ahead of her as Criteo CEO. What is she facing? Also Viant, having bought itself back from Meredith, is now an indie DSP. But isn't it dangerous to go alone? Take this episode of The Big Story to learn more.

Join Tony DUrso as he interviews Tyler Mulvihill & Damon Burton: Blockchain & SEO! Tyler Mulvihill leads business development for Viant, a next-generation blockchain-based platform for modeling business processes, tracking assets& building transparent fluid supply chains of the future… Damon Burton is President of SEO National and UtahSites which manages industry leading campaigns in SEO and online reputation management… Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 1pm Pacific or on our mobile app at tonydurso.com/mobile.

Join Tony DUrso as he interviews Tyler Mulvihill & Damon Burton: Blockchain & SEO! Tyler Mulvihill leads business development for Viant, a next-generation blockchain-based platform for modeling business processes, tracking assets& building transparent fluid supply chains of the future… Damon Burton is President of SEO National and UtahSites which manages industry leading campaigns in SEO and online reputation management… Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 1pm Pacific or on our mobile app at tonydurso.com/mobile.

Join Tony DUrso as he interviews Tyler Mulvihill & Damon Burton: Blockchain & SEO! Tyler Mulvihill leads business development for Viant, a next-generation blockchain-based platform for modeling business processes, tracking assets& building transparent fluid supply chains of the future… Damon Burton is President of SEO National and UtahSites which manages industry leading campaigns in SEO and online reputation management… Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 1pm Pacific or on our mobile app at tonydurso.com/mobile.

Join Tony DUrso as he interviews Tyler Mulvihill & Damon Burton: Blockchain & SEO! Tyler Mulvihill leads business development for Viant, a next-generation blockchain-based platform for modeling business processes, tracking assets& building transparent fluid supply chains of the future… Damon Burton is President of SEO National and UtahSites which manages industry leading campaigns in SEO and online reputation management… Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 1pm Pacific or on our mobile app at tonydurso.com/mobile.

Join Tony DUrso as he interviews Tyler Mulvihill & Damon Burton: Blockchain & SEO! Tyler Mulvihill leads business development for Viant, a next-generation blockchain-based platform for modeling business processes, tracking assets& building transparent fluid supply chains of the future… Damon Burton is President of SEO National and UtahSites which manages industry leading campaigns in SEO and online reputation management… Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 1pm Pacific or on our mobile app at tonydurso.com/mobile.

Join Tony DUrso as he interviews Tyler Mulvihill & Damon Burton: Blockchain & SEO! Tyler Mulvihill leads business development for Viant, a next-generation blockchain-based platform for modeling business processes, tracking assets& building transparent fluid supply chains of the future… Damon Burton is President of SEO National and UtahSites which manages industry leading campaigns in SEO and online reputation management… Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 1pm Pacific or on our mobile app at tonydurso.com/mobile.

Episode 2 of 3 in the Nationals Special Edition.

Acompáñanos a aprender sobre Viant, un proyecto que aborda el futuro de las cadenas de distribución de todo tipo de elementos, desde donaciones hasta materias primas, con las herramientas que entrega la tecnología blockchain para aumentar la rapidez, seguridad y transparencia de estos procesos para beneficio de los usuarios finales.    

Viantól már olvastam itt, most a zenéjére kerül a sor.

Viantól már olvastam itt, most a zenéjére kerül a sor.

Join Tony DUrso as he interviews Tyler Mulvihill & Damon Burton: Blockchain & SEO! Tyler Mulvihill leads business development for Viant, a next-generation blockchain-based platform for modeling business processes, tracking assets& building transparent fluid supply chains of the future… Damon Burton is President of SEO National and UtahSites which manages industry leading campaigns in SEO and online reputation management… Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 1pm Pacific or on our mobile app at tonydurso.com/mobile.

Join Tony DUrso as he interviews Tyler Mulvihill & Damon Burton: Blockchain & SEO! Tyler Mulvihill leads business development for Viant, a next-generation blockchain-based platform for modeling business processes, tracking assets& building transparent fluid supply chains of the future… Damon Burton is President of SEO National and UtahSites which manages industry leading campaigns in SEO and online reputation management… Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 1pm Pacific or on our mobile app at tonydurso.com/mobile.

Join Tony DUrso as he interviews Tyler Mulvihill & Damon Burton: Blockchain & SEO! Tyler Mulvihill leads business development for Viant, a next-generation blockchain-based platform for modeling business processes, tracking assets& building transparent fluid supply chains of the future… Damon Burton is President of SEO National and UtahSites which manages industry leading campaigns in SEO and online reputation management… Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 1pm Pacific or on our mobile app at tonydurso.com/mobile.

Join Tony DUrso as he interviews Tyler Mulvihill & Damon Burton: Blockchain & SEO! Tyler Mulvihill leads business development for Viant, a next-generation blockchain-based platform for modeling business processes, tracking assets& building transparent fluid supply chains of the future… Damon Burton is President of SEO National and UtahSites which manages industry leading campaigns in SEO and online reputation management… Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 1pm Pacific or on our mobile app at tonydurso.com/mobile.

Join Tony DUrso as he interviews Tyler Mulvihill & Damon Burton: Blockchain & SEO! Tyler Mulvihill leads business development for Viant, a next-generation blockchain-based platform for modeling business processes, tracking assets& building transparent fluid supply chains of the future… Damon Burton is President of SEO National and UtahSites which manages industry leading campaigns in SEO and online reputation management… Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 1pm Pacific or on our mobile app at tonydurso.com/mobile.

Join Tony DUrso as he interviews Tyler Mulvihill & Damon Burton: Blockchain & SEO! Tyler Mulvihill leads business development for Viant, a next-generation blockchain-based platform for modeling business processes, tracking assets& building transparent fluid supply chains of the future… Damon Burton is President of SEO National and UtahSites which manages industry leading campaigns in SEO and online reputation management… Listen to The Tony DUrso Show on VoiceAmerica Influencers Platform every Friday at 1pm Pacific or on our mobile app at tonydurso.com/mobile.

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Joel Rubinson, founder of Rubinson Partners, Inc., joins former colleague Sima Vasa today. They talk about how digital analytics can be intercepted with the theory of recency to create great strategies. Joel also discusses targeted advertising, and why surveys are important to improve marketing. “There’s a need for survey because you can’t learn everything you want from digital exhaust.” - Joel Rubinson Joel Rubinson - The Persuadables In order to address the struggle of figuring out fragmentation in advertising, Joel published a white paper titled The Persuadables. Viant and Nielsen Catalian Solutions (NCS) collaborated with Joel in this groundbreaking research. The study intercepted two analytic frameworks that weren't brought together yet. The consumer dynamics framework used reflected customer loyalty or buying rate towards a particular brand. When intercepted with the theory of recency, they were able to arrive at interesting results. Intercepting with Recency Joel had also worked with late Erwin Ephron, father of recency. One lunch, they were playing around with the idea of applications of the theory in the digital context. Suddenly, Joel found himself drawing curves. Soon, they were able to come up with an idea for media optimization. Erwin passed away before the research could take off, but Joel pursued it. He approached leading digital ad network Viant and got into a partnership with NCS, which had a massive frequent shopper database. Research to Target They classified shoppers on two dimensions. They retrieved data on how much customers are currently buying from the brand, and whether or not they're probabilistically close to an upcoming purchase of the category. Coupled with more techniques, they are able to generate insights helpful in targeting the right segment. This kind of evidence-based research is paramount to creating better advertising strategies. “Targeting the right segment seems to always pay off. It is a repeatable, winnable strategy. So this should really be a basis for media planning.” - Joel Rubinson Quick links to connect with Joel Rubinson: Website - Joel Rubinson LinkedIn Twitter Sima loves to hear from her listeners with input, questions, suggestions and just to connect! You can find her at the links below! LinkedIn Twitter simav.sg-host.com Sima is passionate about data and loves to share, learn and help others that share that passion. If you love data as much as her, subscribe on iTunes and don't forget to leave a rating and review!

Microsoft: Enterprise Leading Case Study Speakers: Igor Lilic, Cellarius, ConsenSys Tyler Mulvihil, Viant, ConsenSys Event: Blockchain Xplore, MetaX, Microsoft Conference Center, NYC, 2.27.18 Links: https://www.metax.io This is the Impact Innovation Podcast by Rebel Method. Bringing you events and panels on different topics to keep you on the edge of innovation and accelerating impact founders from zero to impact. What your event covered? Interested in sponsoring our podcast? Message Sergio on LinkedIn here: www.linkedin.com/in/sergiomarrero Music credit: Starlight by NUBY https://soundcloud.com/nubymusik/starlight Tags: startup innovation fintech blockchain crypto ethereum bitcoin microsoft digital advertising consensys ethereum

Pierre-Loic Assayag is the CEO and Co-Founder of Traackr. A veteran of the internet economy, Pierre-Loic is focused on using technology as an instrument of change and innovation to transform companies and industries as he did successively at Viant (first internet pure play consultancy), Invivia (seamless computing), Optaros (SaaS implementation for e-commerce), and now at Traackr. He sees Traackr, and the underlying practice of influencer marketing the company founded, as a catalyst for inevitable change for all organizations to regain the trust and attention of their customers.

A new Viant study shows that "passive commerce" can persuade customers away from CPG loyalty brands. We break open the data and go deep with Richard Kestenbaum, a Forbes Retail contributor.

My guest this week is Pierre-Loic Assayag, the CEO and co-founder of Traackr, the world’s most powerful and effective influencer management platform. Traackr lets marketers scale their influencer marketing programs by focusing on the individual people with the greatest impact on their objectives. Their customers include Coca-Cola, HP, OpenTable, Capital One, Kiehls, Travelocity, SAP and Adidas. Half of the top 50 communications agencies today use Traackr to drive successful social programs and earn more attention by engaging with the right people, an amazing achievement for a company just in the process of raising its first round of institutional capital. A longtime mar-tech veteran, Pierre-Loic has deep expertise in advertising and marketing innovation across the digital space. After starting his career at P&G, Pierre-Loic became Peugeot-Citroen’s first Director of New Media heading up an international portfolio of information technology projects. He went on to join the frontlines of the Internet economy at places including Viant and Optaros, bringing blue chip customers the vision and execution they needed to survive and thrive in a media landscape transformed by the slow, painful death of traditional mass media. In our second segment we’ll talk about a subject near and dear to any entrepreneur’s heart, which is when to raise money. Traackr’s been remarkably capital efficient in the way it’s grown into a global company, and that’s because Pierre-Loic has some strong views on the relative importance of customer revenue and investor capital. He also has a very specific and I think pretty unique way of thinking about when to go raise money, a model based on aligning your interests with that of investors I think could save a lot of us a lot of heartache as we journey down the road. -- How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ​of the Northeast's most accomplished ​entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.​..​​ ​People first. How Hard Can It Be is ​also ​sponsored by Actifio​, the world’s leading Enterprise Data-as-a-Service platform. Deliver your data just like your applications and infrastructure... as a service available instantly, anywhere. For hybrid cloud, faster DevOps, and better business resiliency, Actifio is Radically Simple.

If blogs are the core of your social media diet, how must they adapt to keep your personal and business presence successful? Join us with Six Apart's VP of Products Michael Sippey, live from Sun's campus, as we chat and take your questions through the key updates for your blogs. Stay tuned for an exclusive Socially Speaking giveaway!Michael Sippey is VP of Products at Six Apart, responsible for product strategy and management for the TypePad, Movable Type and Vox blogging platforms. Previously, Michael was part of the founding management team at email services agency Quris, led engagements at the Internet consulting firm Viant, and managed market data and transaction download systems at Advent Software. He blogs at sippey.typepad.com.

If blogs are the core of your social media diet, how must they adapt to keep your personal and business presence successful? Join us with Six Apart's VP of Products Michael Sippey, live from Sun's campus, as we chat and take your questions through the key updates for your blogs. Stay tuned for an exclusive Socially Speaking giveaway!Michael Sippey is VP of Products at Six Apart, responsible for product strategy and management for the TypePad, Movable Type and Vox blogging platforms. Previously, Michael was part of the founding management team at email services agency Quris, led engagements at the Internet consulting firm Viant, and managed market data and transaction download systems at Advent Software. He blogs at sippey.typepad.com.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Eileen Gittins Founder, President, and CEO, Blurb, Inc. Date: July 10, 2007 NCWIT Interview with Eileen Gittins BIO: Throughout her career, Eileen Gittins has been at the intersection of the Internet, consumer and enterprise software, imaging systems, search, and digital photography. A passionate advocate for enabling technologies that offer new ways to do valuable things, Eileen is now democratizing publishing for the rest of us with her new company, as Founder and Exec Chairman of Blurb, a software and services company that passionately believes in the power of books: making, reading, sharing and selling them. Eileen is also the Co-Founder and CEO Bossygrl. Eileen has served as CEO of several pre-IPO venture-backed companies in Silicon Valley, including Personify, an e-commerce data mining and analytics company; and Verb, a context-based search engine company. Each was acquired by Accrue and Attenza, respectively. At Qbiquity, a viral marketing platform company, Eileen served as Board Chairman and interim CEO, where she was instrumental in negotiating the merger of Qbiquity into Collabrys. As a CEO, she has raised over $40M in venture capital throughout her career. Most recently, Eileen served as interim executive management at Viant, a San Francisco-based investment-banking firm in the technology and media sectors. Eileen has also served in executive positions at Wall Data; Pivotal Corp, an Eastman Kodak spinout; and Kodak's Business Imaging Systems. Previously, Gittins was vice president and general manager at Salsa Products, a division of Wall Data, where she created a 100-person department and launched 17 product lines. She was also co-founder and vice president of marketing at Pivotal Corporation and held various sales, marketing and management positions with Eastman Kodak's Business Imaging Systems Division. Gittins completed her undergraduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco State University and graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in art (photography/digital imaging emphasis). She has also completed the Stanford Executive Management Program. Lucy Sanders: Hi. This is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women and Information Technology, and this is another interview in a series of interviews that we're having with fabulous women IT entrepreneurs, women who have started just the most amazing companies. With me is Larry Nelson and Pat Nelson from w3w3.com. And today, we're interviewing Eileen Gittins, the founder, president, and CEO of Blurb. Hi, Eileen. Welcome. Eileen Gittins: Thank you for having me. Lucy: And Larry, welcome. Why don't you say a few words about w3w3.com, since this podcast will be hosted on your site as well as the NCWIT site. Larry Nelson: Well, I'll tell you what, it's really a pleasure. Lucy, you and your team have lined up some magnificent IT entrepreneur heroes, I guess would be the right way to put it. It's our pleasure on w3w3.com because we are just an all‑business, primarily high‑tech business radio show, where we archive anything. So we'll have this up for a long time at w3w3.com. Thanks. Lucy: Well, Eileen, welcome. We're really happy to have you here and to get your thoughts on entrepreneurism. And before we start, I'd like to hear a little bit more about Blurb. It's a fascinating company, a print‑on‑demand book business. But it's ever so much more than that. Really, investigate your website, it seems like it's a community site. It's a site for people who like to create books and read books and share. So, why don't you just tell us a little bit about Blurb? It's a company that you've said was possibly your most fun company. Eileen: Well, I think you're doing a great job. You're right. Blurb is more about a community. So we are a creative publishing service that enables anyone to create a book, market that book, distribute that book, and perhaps even profit from that book via our service at blurb.com. So there are three components to the service. The first is free software. It's called Blurb BookSmart. It's purpose‑built to enable folks like us, who may not be book designers, to focus on our content. So it's a drag‑and‑drop kind of metaphor. There are hundreds and hundreds of page layouts and themes, backgrounds, borders, custom illustrations ‑‑ a whole grab bag of cool stuff that you can do to really make your book look professionally published. We've hired book designers ‑‑ not just graphic designers, but actual book designers out of the industry ‑‑ to help build out all of the page layouts and themes for this application. So then you can import your photos, your blog, your cookbook, your recipes, your story, your poetry, whatever your expertise is, into these page layouts. And when you're ready to rock and roll, you hit the preview button, you take a look at it, and if it looks great, you then upload the book file to blurb.com, and you get your book back in about seven to 10 business days. Larry: Wow. Eileen: You can order just one copy, or we're delighted if you'd like to place an order for tens or even hundreds. Prices start, for a seven by seven book in a soft‑cover edition, at $12.95, for a 40‑page color book. I will tell you that, for your listeners who may on occasion have to run down to Kinko's or your favorite color copy shop, you can barely print four or five pages for that price, let alone a 40‑page, beautifully produced book for that amount of money. We have four book sizes at the moment: so the 7X7, 8X10, 10X8 ‑‑ so that's landscape or portrait ‑‑ and then a big book, which is our 13X11‑inch book. And all of these are supported with templates and themes. Once you get your book back, then the very cool thing about Blurb is you automatically get a free bookstore. And you can keep that private, meaning only you can buy a copy of your book. Or you can share it with friends and family. You can send a link out, so it's still a private bookstore, but shared with people that you know. That's particularly useful if, say, you're doing a family book, maybe a baby book or a wedding book or something, and frankly, you like to not be in the post office business or the bank business, meaning you'd just as soon not have to collect money and ship books to everybody, and you'd much rather them be able to come and look at the book themselves and decide for themselves if they want to purchase a copy. And then, finally ‑‑ and this may be of great interest to your listeners because I think this is really turbo‑charging our business right now ‑‑ one of the challenges for people who are interested to make money on their books is, in the traditional book publishing and distribution process, there's a lot of people who need to get paid in that food chain. And so what Blurb has done is said, "You know what? If you make your book using Blurb, you can market it for free in the bookstore." You can put your blurb about the book up. You can have a free book preview. You can now bookmark it and send that out to a number of different locations, like del.icio.us and Digg it, and say, "This is a really cool book." You can have Blurb badges, which are little widgets that you can put on your blog or your website that promote your book, and when people click on them, it takes them automatically to your book in the bookstore. And then, here's the cool part: you can set your own price for the book, and you keep 100%, the uplift. Lucy: Wow. Eileen: Yeah. And then, finally ‑‑ very finally ‑‑ you mentioned community. You will be seeing from Blurb in the near future all kinds of very cool new community features to enable people to share ideas and share tips and tricks and to help each other, as well as a profile so that you can kind of get a feel for who are the people that you're talking to. All kinds of very cool new community features coming up from Blurb. Larry: Well, Lucy, I've got to get going because I'm going to go home and finish my book. Lucy: Larry is an author. This is definitely one of his favorite interviews. He just loves it. I mean, lots of really cool features. And the other thing I liked: you have some great vocabulary. I'm an observer of words. And so, Blurberati? Eileen: Yes. Lucy: Blurbarians. Eileen: Yes, the Blurbarians. Lucy: Blurbarians. Yeah. Eileen: Blurbarians, the Blurberati. And of course, we've made Slurpers, and Slurpers are tools that will enable an end‑user to get their content in there. So, for instance, if any of your listeners might have their photos on Flickr, we've built a Flickr Slurper. What's so cool about that is, as you may know, when you typically post photos on a photo community, they're down‑sampled for screen resolution ‑‑ usually 72 DPI, which is not so great for book printing. So what the Slurper does is we have written to a commercial API from Flickr, so we're able to grab the high‑res version for you automatically, bring that into your little workspace in the application, so that then, when you drag and drop those images into the book, they're the resolution that you need to print, big and beautifully. Lucy: Fascinating. We could probably talk for Blurb for the whole interview. But I suppose we should start the interview. Larry: Yeah. I've been hearing all this. A question that Lucy generally gets to ask, I can't help but wonder, how did you first get into technology? And by the way, is there anything cool out there that you feel is out in the marketplace today? Eileen: Yeah. How did I first get into technology was actually through photography. Larry: Ooh. Eileen: So I'm a photographer. And I worked for Kodak for many years. I have a degree in photography, I used to teach photography, and I've been a custom printer, blah blah blah. And what's so fascinating about photography ‑‑ and I'm talking traditional photography, film‑based, darkroom‑based photography ‑‑ is that it's really the intersection of art and craft and technology. I mean, understanding shutter speeds and apertures and understanding chemistry and understanding the process of silver halide and what happens with a developer and with fixture and reciprocity failure and all those things that are the more technical aspects of photography are what made me appreciate that I am actually one of those people who lives at that intersection between the creative mind and the technical. And so I'm consistently drawn to things that give me that opportunity to marry those two things together. And when you think about software ‑‑ in particular, applications software that consumers and end users and normal people use, not big, enterprise‑class, back‑end kind of things ‑‑ that is exactly that, right? That is, how can we apply technology to enable mere mortals to either get things done more efficiently than they could before, get things done at all that they couldn't do before, or in the case of Blurb, some of both, right? I mean, for the very first time ever, really ‑‑ I mean, think about it, ever ‑‑ could I make a book that looks like a book that you'd buy at Borders for $20, and it's four‑color and laid out and designed and beautiful. When I think about the application of technology to enable people to unleash their passions, to do more with less and to just enjoy life is really what gets me out of bed in the morning. Lucy: And I think that you've partially answered our next question. You are a serial entrepreneur. And certainly, as the founder and CEO of Blurb, you continue to be entrepreneurial. What is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Why are you an entrepreneur? Eileen: Because I'm a builder. I like the creation aspect. I mean, there's nothing that gets me more excited than seeing an opportunity that's not yet there, [laughs] and where I can see it, I can see a market, I can see a convergence. I see patterns. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs train themselves this way. I know I didn't wake up one day and just all of a sudden saw patterns. Over the course of many years, I think I've trained myself to look at those convergences. And sometimes you just see patterns emerging, and you see gaps in the marketplace, and you just think, "Wow. That's big. That's really interesting. That's a problem that I'm having, or that other people are having, and I need to go and figure out why hasn't it already been solved." And then, once I've figured that out, then it becomes about the economics, right? Because there's two parts to it. It's not enough to have a great idea. It's important to have a great idea for which there is a business need and a business application and a market that you can efficiently reach, with economics behind it that are going to enable everyone to have a nice payday as a result of investing your energy. And so I just love solving puzzles. I mean, I just really am one of those people who likes to look at what's not there yet that should be. Lucy: I think it's great to compare entrepreneurship with being a builder. Larry: [laughs] Yeah. Lucy: I think that's a really nice analogy. And on your path as an entrepreneur, I'm sure you had role models or mentors. Who influenced you the most, or what influenced you the most, on your career path in entrepreneurship? Eileen: Can I go back to your last comment before I answer that one, the builder comment? Lucy: Sure. Eileen: By the way, I'm married to one... Lucy: Oh. Larry: [laughs] Eileen: Who actually is a builder. And we talk, in software and in the IT world, of course, about things like architecture all the time, and blueprints and project schedules and all that... Lucy: That's right. Eileen: And I find that the analogy is maybe more perfect than any other single one I can think of. What we are doing and what other entrepreneurs in the IT world do is they imagine the building that's not there yet, right? And what should it be? And what's its function? And who should it house? And then how does it grow over time? And does it need to have additions? And does it need to be architected in a way that it will support a third story, even though that's not there yet? So all of that level of abstraction, the technical level of the engineering, and then coupled with the aesthetic beauty, which one hopes results from the actual building that's built, is very analogous, I think, to software development, and, in fact, to Blurb itself. So yeah, I think I am a builder. And I'm also married to a traditional builder. All right. So then, the follow‑on question was about mentors and who influenced me along the way? Lucy: Right. Eileen: Well, there are two things. One is I was in college, and I was working my way through school, and I had a night and weekend job at a big, fancy department store out here in San Francisco. And I was selling men's designer clothes or some such thing. They paid me well on Sundays, right? Yeah. I mean, I worked my way through school and didn't pay off the last student loan till I was 30. That was my opportunity. I had to put myself through school. So here I am, working at this store. And they had a management training program, which is, for any person who works at the store who's getting a college degree, they invited you to interview for a job, basically, as a management trainee for the company. Well, I will tell you that I really didn't want to go into retail. That wasn't really my aspiration. But hey, I was just delighted that somebody wanted to interview me and that somebody might potentially want to give me like a real job that I went down to the big hiring office in San Francisco and ended up interviewing. And I will tell you that the net result was I was not hired, because I was not considered management material. And I will tell you that I am one of those people ‑‑ and I think there are many people who are entrepreneurs who are like this, who are naturally competitive. The minute someone told me that I was not management material was the day that I decided that I was going to be the CEO of a company. Lucy: [laughs] "I'll show you!" [laughs] Larry: There you go. Lucy: Yeah. Eileen: I mean, seriously. So that was the first thing that happened. And then, on the positive side, my very first manager at Kodak was a wonderful woman ‑‑ actually a woman, which was interesting at the time ‑‑ and she was the person who taught me the most about the value of team and the value of people in building not only a great life but a great career. And I came in thinking I was God's gift to Eastman Kodak Company. And in the nicest possible way, she reminded me that I was brand new, and that there were a lot of people around who knew a lot more than me, and that I would be wise to be a bit of a student, right? And I took that very seriously. And to this day, I remember her often. In fact, there was recently an article written about Blurb, a really nice piece in "USA Today." And I got an email from her. And I haven't talked to her in years. And I got an email from her, and I felt like I was back at the student level again. Larry: That's fantastic. Let me ask you this question, Eileen. You've had so many neat little successes ‑‑ little and big successes ‑‑ along the road. What was something along the way that was a challenge that you were not able to overcome and you were forced to learn to live with? Eileen: So, wonderful question, because I think you do learn the most from your failures. Gosh, there have been many failures. In fact, I will tell you that life in a startup is a series of them. We talk now about "fail fast" as a new mantra for building our business, and our whole goal is to get things up and expose them to real people, and identify the ones that fail quickly and reinvest in the ones that succeed quickly. And so, just as a mantra, I think, at some weird level, it is all about failure and learning from that. On a personal level, a couple companies ago, I had a board that, frankly, I learned the lesson of "choose your board members very well." Larry: [laughs] Eileen: Now, you don't always have the leverage to do that. As a first‑time CEO, sometimes you inherit VCs and you inherit a board and you just inherit things. But what I learned from that experience is, if you don't have shared values with your board ‑‑ and I mean both on a personal level, frankly, and on a company level; what is the company trying to achieve ‑‑ then, at the end of the day, frankly, the board holds the tickets, right? You don't. And at the end of the day, they can make other decisions. And in the life of startups that are VC‑financed, even though you may think it's your company, in order to get that financing, you've had to give up ownership of the company, so it's not your company anymore. You may put in the insane hours each week and feel like it's your company, but literally, it's not your company. So there was an occasion where, in a past company, there were a number of companies that wanted to buy us ‑‑ big companies, big money ‑‑ and I was advocating that the market was shifting and that we should take one of those offers. And we, frankly, had a board ‑‑ and understandably, at the time. This was big IPO‑fever time, back in the day. And they really thought we should hold out for an IPO. Then, of course, it very quickly became I was the person who was in favor of selling and so needed to move on and find somebody else who really believed in the company and believed in the IPO. So there I was, no longer running my own company. Very tough lesson to learn. Lucy: It is a tough lesson to learn. Eileen: Yeah. But you know what? I did learn and I have great respect, now, for the fact that investors invest in companies and they invest in momentum and they invest in people. At any given time you really do serve at their pleasure to some extent. Don't think that your vote counts the most, because it doesn't. So you have to really choose people with whom you have great trust and great rapport. They have confidence in you and you in them. Then it's like any marriage, you need great partners. Lucy: Well, and that's terrific advice. I'm wondering if you have any other advice if you were in a room talking to a young person thinking about entrepreneurship, being an entrepreneur. What other advice would you give them? Eileen: And I do this all the time, as a matter of fact. I serve as an advisor to a lot of early stage companies. The number one thing is, "Do something you're passionate about." Life is too short to do something that is just for money for just for job or just for ego. Do something you really love. If you love it, it's funny how we all tend to be good at the things we really love to do. So there's a happy convergence there. Find something you love and figure out how are you going to make a business or how are you going to make money from doing the thing that exists that you already love to do. Larry: Boy, this is a great segue right into my next question. That is, if you were to take all the different characteristics, both on a personal and a professional and if you were to select one characteristic about yourself that makes you successful, what would that characteristic be? Eileen: I think I'm a good judge of people. Because at the end of the day, team is everything in an early stage company. I will argue in a later stage company, too. In particular in an early stage company where they may only be one or two people in a given discipline. Boy, they better be the right one or two! Because you don't have 40 you got two, right? [laughter] Eileen: I think being able to judge people well, to be a good judge of character. To be able to motivate people, recruit people and identify good people, just have a good sixth sense about that. I think that's probably my strongest suit. Lucy: We've heard the theme of really emphasizing team before on this series. Certainly being a good judge of people is absolutely mandatory to building a good team. Larry: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah. Is that a fact? Lucy: Absolutely. I just love, by the way as an aside, personal characteristics. I love that phrase "happy convergence." I just have to tell you, too, I think you have a great way of putting words together. Eileen: [laughs] Well, maybe I'm in the right business then. Lucy: Yeah, I think you have a great way of putting words together. I want to shift a little bit to your personal life and how you bring balance between your personal life and your professional life. You're obviously very busy in both spheres. Eileen: Yeah. The first thing is I'm really fortunate to be married to a wonderful man who is my best friend. Who keeps it real, as they say. [laughs] He reminds me I am not the boss of him. Lucy: [laughs] I know one time my son said that to me. "You are not the boss of me!" Eileen: "You are not the boss of me." You know what? Everybody needs that in their lives. I go around here and, of course, I am the boss of people, right? So you need somebody in your life, and hopefully somebody in your close immediate family who reminds you that, "That's your professional life and now you're home." Lucy: [laughs] That's right. Eileen: "And that's not how the rules are played here," in the kindest and most loving way. I think that a big part of it is that I have that balance with my husband who plays that role for me. The other things though are, a couple. One is, I do think it's really important, especially when you're founding a company. It can be all consuming. I suffer from this as much as the next person. You just have to find a moment where you do something completely different. For me right now, when I was younger I used to swim competitively. We could have a whole conversation about that and team building and being sports minded and all that. But I was a serious swimmer, I was one of those insane people who swam two hours in the morning and two hour every night and was a nationally ranked swimmer. Then life intervenes and you get involved in other things and pretty soon you realize, you're not in shape anymore. You're not physically fit. You're not, hopefully, totally overweight or anything, but you're just not fit anymore. So a few months ago I just decided it's about making a decision to become fit because you can always find the excuse. I don't care if you're a CEO or a full‑time mom or even just somebody who you'd think would have all the time in the world. It's not about time. It's about making the decision. So I went back into a pretty rigorous physical fitness regime a few months ago. It's time that I know that I'm doing something good for my long‑term health, my well being. I feel better, I look better, I sleep better, my stress levels are better, everything is better! Right? Larry: I [inaudible] better. Eileen: It's just, you've got to make a decision about doing something that's not work. That is improving balance in your life. For me, that's been it since last October. Larry: Wow, I tell you, that is a wonderful answer. I was guessing ahead of time since your husband is a builder and you're a builder. I thought maybe the way you did this balance was probably building a Lego library or something. [laughter] Larry: Nonetheless, you've accomplished a great deal. You've got a lot that you're going to be doing with Blurb, but outside of Blurb what is next for you? Eileen: Boy it's hard to think outside of Blurb when you're in it like this. Probably another one. I am not going to be one of those people who, even if I financially did really well, that would mean I'd be going and hanging out on the beach. That's just not me. Something else will capture my attention and I'll go do it. I'll tell you a couple of areas that are interesting to me. One is education in this country. I'm very interested in how some of the things that I've learned along the way, maybe even some of the technologies like Blurb and others can really inspire and motivate young people to want to learn in different ways. In an earlier life I thought maybe I'd be a teacher. But again that doesn't have the leverage that I want and I think I've accrued some knowledge along the way that can be better leveraged. So very interested in education and how I may be able to apply myself to help move that needle. Lucy: Well that would be wonderful. At NCWIT we care a great deal about K‑12 education and computing technologies. It's rather circular. You can use information technologies to improve education about computing maybe. [laughs] Larry: There's an idea. Lucy: There's an idea. Eileen: Yeah. No. It's really true. In fact I'll tell you, even with Blurb we've made a point of going and meeting with schools. I went back to my high school. Met the now principal who was a teacher when I was there who remembered me, God forbid. I'm going to be teaching a class there in September on publishing. Lucy: Wow! You'll have to do another interview and find out how that goes. Eileen: Yeah! Larry: At she won't have to study for it. Lucy: Eileen's return to school. Fabulous! Eileen: Eileen's return to the principal's office. Lucy Sanders: No! Don't you dare go to the principal's office. Eileen, we really appreciate you taking time today to talk with us about yourself and your career and also about Blurb. It's been really, really interesting. I want to remind listeners where they can find this podcast. They can find it at www.ncwit.org and w3w3.com. Pass it along to a friend. Again, Eileen, thanks a lot! It was really, really interesting. Eileen: Listen, my pleasure. I'm honored to have been invited. So thanks again. Lucy: Thank you. Larry: We'll call on you soon. Eileen: Cheers! Lucy: Cheers! [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Eileen GittinsInterview Summary: Eileen Gittins wanted to create a beautifully designed and produced photo essay book, something that looked like a book you'd buy at the bookstore, but she only needed 40 copies. This turned out to be remarkably painful, expensive, and time-consuming, and she thought that was just wrong. So she founded Blurb. Release Date: July 10, 2007Interview Subject: Eileen GittinsInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry Nelson, Pat NelsonDuration: 25:00