Panintelligence’s Zandra Moore on Invigorating the Talent Pipeline

00:00:01:08 - 00:00:27:00
Ben Hillman
I remember a specific day when I was in sixth grade. I was in a musty old portable classroom, begrudgingly used while renovations were completed on a building that I would never set foot in. But this particular day was when parents would come to classes and talk about what they did. A sort of career day. We may have heard from roughly two or three folks, but one individual stuck out to me.

00:00:27:14 - 00:00:53:01
Ben Hillman
He was a food photographer. You know how a hamburger can look? Absolutely delicious or vegetables look freshly picked in every sort of advertisement. I've got some news for you. It's mostly fake. The parent talked about the methods and the craft that went into making pancakes look delectable, often taking hours to set up for just one photograph. It's not sirup they use.

00:00:53:18 - 00:01:12:23
Ben Hillman
It's motor oil. But I don't remember this day because I felt like I had been lied to my whole life. I remember this day because my eyes were open to the range of possibilities that one could entertain with a career in the arts. I think we often forget the impact that small gestures can have on the younger generation.

00:01:13:05 - 00:01:39:02
Ben Hillman
If you're a parent or even in proximity to someone searching for meaning, leading by example can create a lasting impression. While she boasts over a decade of experience leading up Panintelligence, Zandra Moore was gracious enough to sit down with Padel CMO Andrew DAVIES at SaaStock 2022 and discuss, among other important subjects, what it takes to build a talent pipeline.

00:01:39:14 - 00:02:00:20
Ben Hillman
We can and will share lessons on how to build better, says. Let this episode remind you that it's not always about finding the next growth hack. Paying it forward to the next generation can return dividends of immeasurable value from Paddle. It's Protect the Hustle, where we explore the truth behind the strategy and tactics of B2B SaaS growth to make you an outstanding operator.

00:02:00:23 - 00:02:25:04
Ben Hillman
On today's episode, Zandra Moore dives deep on building a talent pipeline. We talk about spinning Panintelligence out of another company competing against giants. Being intentional about inclusivity. Nailing your go to market motion, and a Q&A from SaaStock 2022. After you finish the episode, check out the show notes for an in-depth field guide focused on what we go over.

00:02:28:06 - 00:02:34:04
Ben Hillman
First up, Zander talks about spinning Panintelligence out of another company.

00:02:36:04 - 00:02:53:16
Andrew Davies
Hello, Welcome to SaaStock Vital Pilots at the Hustle Stage. We got Zandra here and I'm a fantastic conversation. Venezuela wild. Feel free to listen and sit down if you'd like to, but this will be going out on the Protect the Hustle podcast. Thousands of people. So we're going to be going through a whole range of questions and conversation here.

00:02:53:18 - 00:02:59:07
Andrew Davies
They'll be time for Q&A as well afterwards if anyone is to jump in and let's get going. Great to have you with us.

00:02:59:08 - 00:03:00:03
Zandra Moore
Thank you very much.

00:03:00:05 - 00:03:07:16
Andrew Davies
So why don't we just start the talk? Can you just give us a very quick introduction to Panintelligence and what the business does and then we'll dive into you and your backstory as well.

00:03:07:17 - 00:03:28:22
Zandra Moore
Yeah, cool. So fun Intelligence. We're an embedded analytics software platform for suspenders, so usually suspenders get to a point in their growth and journey where what they built for themselves doesn't quite connect to their customers and they need to have more self-service in analytics, reporting dashboards, machine learning. So where they engine that they white label and embed in their products.

00:03:29:00 - 00:03:38:18
Zandra Moore
So most of our go to market is focused on helping those offenders to improve the data maturity in their product, but also enabling them as a business.

00:03:38:18 - 00:03:44:04
Andrew Davies
That's very cool. And obviously showing up a SaaStock. Is this your first year here or have you been able to see in the.

00:03:44:04 - 00:04:05:06
Zandra Moore
Past Is the first year? Actually we sort of just missed getting in because of the last disruption of the three, Isn't there not being an opportunity to do it? So it's great to be here. It's been super busy. I'm amazed at just the energy in the rooms. It's been fantastic. And even on day two, as we are today, the energy still right up there is loads of loads of really interesting conversations.

00:04:05:08 - 00:04:20:11
Andrew Davies
Very cool. Well, the coffee line is is full. And so where people are getting caffeinated, if that's the only way they're going to grab the energy for the rest of the day. But yes, we are a great conversations too. Cool. So then we just dive into our founded story, Open Intelligence. I'd love to hear about, you know, why this is what you're spending your time on.

00:04:20:17 - 00:04:41:19
Zandra Moore
Yeah. So it's a bit of a potted history. I'll keep it brief, but I was fortunate to have a role model at home. My mum was in the early dawns of the information superhighway, the beloved Internet as we know it now, encouraging people like Lloyds Bank to buy a website. I love her story of going in and pitching to them and they said, I'm sorry, we're not really into this information superhighway.

00:04:41:19 - 00:04:59:11
Zandra Moore
And then she sold it to Barclays down the road 24 hours later. And just being at that early dawn of the cloud, it was called advanced infrastructure provisioning. We we had the first computers at home, the first first people on the street to have a computer, that kind of stuff. I grew up with it. So I left my education just wanting to be in tech.

00:04:59:11 - 00:05:18:12
Zandra Moore
And I've always been in software and technology. I got to a point in my life where I had two very young children. I'd been a sales director and sales leader for a number of SaaS startup scale ups with access to the capital, and I knew I wanted to have a bit of a piece of the pie, and I was always looking for that opportunity to be in a founding team and to grow a business myself.

00:05:18:19 - 00:05:40:05
Zandra Moore
And I set up my own consulting business, started to help SaaS spenders kind of take their businesses to market. A bit like part time interim sales director managed to help them get off the ground and I stumbled across. I a company in a company or a product and a company called Panintelligence. And my co-founder, CTO, who was messing around with a bit of tech, which is analytics, I'm dyslexic.

00:05:40:05 - 00:06:01:03
Zandra Moore
He's dyspraxia. We like to make the complex simple. I love visual representation of data. I've always been engaged in technology that really does that, that makes the complex, simple and makes the user experience for people truly engaging, no matter your level of expertise. He was doing that and we got on brilliantly. We started working together and then we had the opportunity to buy the IP.

00:06:01:03 - 00:06:22:00
Zandra Moore
So we did and we spun the business out in 2014. And really our obsession more than anything else is the business intelligence analytics industry has spent years making a meal out of knots, proving the value of analytics at that kind of domain expert level. The people that make decisions are the ones that need to be able to find the insights for themselves.

00:06:22:00 - 00:06:35:20
Zandra Moore
They know the questions to ask, so we've got to make it easier for them to do that. So our obsession is enabling everybody to build whatever they need for themselves when they need it in whatever application they're working in day to day. And that that's what we do. That makes sense.

00:06:35:20 - 00:06:46:08
Andrew Davies
Yeah. And so founding story being a mantra, buy out. That's an interesting origin journey. Let's talk anymore about that. Was it was it leveraged? Were you raising money for that was oh gosh.

00:06:46:14 - 00:07:05:05
Zandra Moore
Oh. So the the business that we were part of was a big banking software provider, end to end lending platform to the big banks. They were going to sell the business and we were loss making small team. They were just proving the tech out and starting to find customers for it. We made that panel look worse, so we just said, Well, if we could buy this off of you, would you let us?

00:07:05:05 - 00:07:27:15
Zandra Moore
And they were like, Yeah, sure, it's going to make our valuation better. Go for it. So we then went and found some seed. Funding is a bit kind of friends and family people. That name is already and it was just good timing for them, good timing for us. And we're very small team and spun the business out. We literally picked us over and carried it across the carpark and squatted in somebody else's office for about three months whilst we try to get I mean, took us three months to set up a bank account.

00:07:27:15 - 00:07:42:23
Zandra Moore
I mean, crikey, it was, it was, it was funds a very, you know, very much a startup. But we did have a product and we did have some revenue, but it was no different to most startups, you know, doing all the things from scratch with a reasonable team. But yeah, a nice place to be when you think about your product.

00:07:42:23 - 00:07:44:07
Zandra Moore
So let's talk about another company.

00:07:44:07 - 00:07:49:23
Andrew Davies
Yeah, absolutely. So you have some IP. Yeah. You had someone's office, you were borrowing some members of staff as well. Okay.

00:07:50:01 - 00:08:09:23
Zandra Moore
Yeah, we did. We keep it a few people over. So a developer and a consultant. So myself and my co-founder and one of the other members of the team that exited came and joined us as well in a finance role. So yeah, we, we've had a, an interesting different size opposed but we, you know, I'd been involved in a number of other startups.

00:08:09:23 - 00:08:24:05
Zandra Moore
It was just nice to be able to kind of empty my bank account, which I did. I convinced my husband I would see small children that were preschool age, that we should put all of our savings into be buying a piece of IP and then go for it. So best thing I ever did, it really was.

00:08:24:10 - 00:08:39:01
Andrew Davies
That's awesome. I love that confidence that you provide innovation anyway. Right? And yeah, I've got a few friends have gone through that process. Both of them have been unsuccessful in being able to grow or draw those lines around the IP. So I love the fact you were able to do that. Did you raise equity finance afterwards to understand standard?

00:08:39:06 - 00:09:17:02
Zandra Moore
We did. So we grew pretty organically from 2014 to 2019, acquired less customers, got up to about 30 staff, very much investing back into the business, pretty much borderline break even most of that time. And then in 2019, we raised the series A, we did that through private equity and so a family office in the UK and that's enabled us we re raised about 2.1 Basecamp, so it wasn't a big round, but it just gave us what we needed to accelerate our go to market and also to invest in our SaaS platform, which we developed out but needed to just rapidly own develop for a for a more product like motion, which has been brilliant.

00:09:17:02 - 00:09:39:23
Zandra Moore
And we raised that in November 2019. So that's not a bad time to have raised. And we've just closed in the end of this round in the last month. So, you know, we're we're we're delighted really. We've been able to kind of cross into the US as well in that time and build out our customer base globally.

00:09:39:23 - 00:09:46:20
Ben Hillman
Next, Zander talks about competing against giants.

00:09:46:20 - 00:10:01:09
Andrew Davies
Very cool. So I love that you raised the the neurodiversity point earlier, so we'll come back to that in a moment. And before we do, on the topic of perhaps seeing things through a lens, other people, I'd see it you were at Challenger Space, right? There's a massive businesses in your market you're competing against.

00:10:01:12 - 00:10:02:21
Zandra Moore
Some people think memento.

00:10:03:12 - 00:10:10:13
Andrew Davies
Your look up how big all these big funded companies. Yeah so talk to me about is that part of the fun It's like oh well that's what.

00:10:10:21 - 00:10:31:14
Zandra Moore
Makes there's a strategy I look we've we've been in the buy space for my my co-founder me up I've been in and around the AI and analytics space so many years and it's overpromised and underdelivered for a very, very long time. And there's way too much complexity built in. So they are legacy enterprise tools that require people with certain types of skills to make things useful, and they usually locked away from the value.

00:10:31:14 - 00:10:51:04
Zandra Moore
So they don't get it, they don't get what they're building and why that's important and that's low and it's a long process. So, you know, there's so much potential and doing this better. And I think for me there's an opportunity when you're a smaller business and you're at that challenge space, you often find the people that are using those like systems will come in, tell you the problems.

00:10:51:04 - 00:11:11:09
Zandra Moore
They probably don't tell how the AI or look at, but they definitely. TALOS And that gives you this unique opportunity to really kind of truly know and understand what you need to do to to deliver that value. And I think we're so close to that now, as in we understand that where we're delivering that through our software vendors, we're enabling them to do this really well.

00:11:11:09 - 00:11:30:15
Zandra Moore
And that gives us a fantastic route to market because we and we are better than the software platform, immediately switched on to hundreds of thousands or thousands of users. And we get that feedback loop very quickly as well. What's enabling them? So I think it's brilliant. I love taking on the big boys and winning is is always part of the joy of it.

00:11:31:00 - 00:11:34:13
Andrew Davies
Well, they're spending lots of money to educate the market, right. And also to win.

00:11:34:13 - 00:11:36:12
Zandra Moore
Off the hang of the coat tails. Totally.

00:11:37:07 - 00:11:43:21
Andrew Davies
And do people here work with you because of a differentiated viewpoint or is there a feature differentiation that you prove?

00:11:43:21 - 00:12:10:16
Zandra Moore
Well, I could walk you to tears and my feature differentiation, I will try not to buzz the mascot product team about their products and they'll they'll glaze over and we won't. But yeah, of course there is. And there's both in product and in people and products were built for SaaS vendors. The others aren't from the ground up. Everything is SaaS underneath from the way it authenticates, connecting to their data without moving it the way it's white labeled how it is embedded, not having to compromise on your data stack.

00:12:10:16 - 00:12:29:03
Zandra Moore
Like I said, I have a list, but I won't go on. But yeah, we've built for SaaS members for that only that use case embedding and white labeling for them. So we totally get it. And the products build from people ways. Yeah, you're smaller, you can have a better relationship with a team where I'm a scaling up business, we're working with scaling up businesses so it can be found.

00:12:29:03 - 00:12:47:12
Zandra Moore
It's found a CPI, CPI is okay. The quality of that relationship enables true value creation because we can work together to make sure that what we build for their customers together, how we deploy that really drives that money because we're close enough to it with them. So they get that support and expertise. So we become an extension of their team.

00:12:47:19 - 00:12:51:23
Zandra Moore
We become the data experts in that business that makes sense that.

00:12:54:15 - 00:13:02:02
Ben Hillman
And now Zandra talks about being intentional about inclusivity.

00:13:02:02 - 00:13:11:13
Andrew Davies
And so you mentioned the Cofounding team, dyslexic and dyslexic. Yeah. Has that formed a view on who you want to go and hire and how you view on how you and how empowered people in your team?

00:13:11:15 - 00:13:28:00
Zandra Moore
You you should see our text messages between each other. It's an absolute nightmare. Mike have found his code can and we call it can glitch because you really can't understand half of what we say to each other. It just sort of know watching to the saying yeah, we culturally we have a very diverse leadership team and I mean that in lots of different ways.

00:13:28:00 - 00:13:54:16
Zandra Moore
Neurodiversity, gender diversity, backgrounds, race. If you look across our business, there's a real mix. I think when you have diversity at the top level, it sort of fosters diversity naturally, but you still have to work at it. It's not you know, you have to be intentional, but I think it's so kind of maybe we don't perhaps have the same concerns that maybe other people have because we know how to kind of help people operate to their potential and their strengths because we've got to do it for ourselves.

00:13:54:23 - 00:14:01:04
Zandra Moore
Yeah. So it's I think maybe we just do it naturally without thinking about it attracting people in like us. Maybe.

00:14:01:14 - 00:14:16:01
Andrew Davies
So I'm sure listening to this, whether live or on the podcast, there are lots of founders were told that they need to be intentional about. They use the word intentional about how you include people intentional. How about how you work on this? Can you give us some practical examples of what's.

00:14:16:10 - 00:14:16:19
Zandra Moore
Going to help.

00:14:16:22 - 00:14:18:10
Andrew Davies
You be intentional about?

00:14:18:10 - 00:14:41:05
Zandra Moore
There's so many ways that you can say. I often get asked by by a lot of founders about gender diversity as a woman is an obvious question for them to ask me and, you know, there's some very simple things you can do. So the technology sector, we have a brilliant way of bamboozling everyone with language and terminology that unless you're in the sector, can just feel completely alien and makes people not believe that there's a place for them.

00:14:41:05 - 00:15:01:13
Zandra Moore
The very first thing is when you're trying to attract people into the industry that may not be in it today, build that talent pipeline. We've got to get rid of the jargon. And that's right the way through from the job specs to the job boards to the interviews and how we make sure that we lower that barrier of entry so that, you know, it is proven that women are more likely to look at a job stack.

00:15:01:14 - 00:15:18:06
Zandra Moore
And if they can't do 100% of it, they might apply was a man is more like supply if they can only see 30% of themselves and it says, oh, 10%. Right. So the point here is let's reduce the language and the complexity, the language to enable everybody to see this is a sector that is a place for them.

00:15:18:06 - 00:15:46:14
Zandra Moore
The other thing we need to do is be visible as as women in the industry. We have to get out and be seen if we're not in the schools. And thank you for inviting me on. This podcast is part of being visible right then you don't you can't be. What you can't see is really very fundamental. And we need to be showing young girls the pipeline of talent is a problem because it's the education system that is still not enabling young girls and women to see the more technology subjects that there is a career for them that they can enjoy, and that is for them.

00:15:46:14 - 00:16:07:06
Zandra Moore
So we have to be visible and we also have to educate young people on the different types of roles in our industry. Everybody thinks it's coding. We still have this problem. You ask a young person and they will tell you, Well, I don't really bothered about computers. I'm not interested in coding. They still don't understand all the wonderful creative, interesting, dynamic jobs that there are in this industry and just how how much fun it is in this sector.

00:16:07:06 - 00:16:21:12
Zandra Moore
You know, unless we tell them it's fun, it's not all coding, you know, it's on the computer all day. I mean, look at this event. This is a great place to be if we don't give them the opportunity to see them, then by just going to a trans am afraid. I've got a boy who's 14 and a girl who's 16.

00:16:21:12 - 00:16:32:16
Zandra Moore
My 14 year old boy spends a disproportionate amount of time on his X-Box, whereas my daughter spends more of it talking to her friends and therefore boys will unfortunately more likely to go into computing was just the way it is.

00:16:33:01 - 00:16:53:14
Andrew Davies
So it sounds like you had a fantastic role model in your brother who was, you know, someone who was, you know, clearly a technology leader, was able to bring that to the home. Yeah. What do you think about how do you advise other parents about leading that children into, you know, perhaps decisions, though, would not be norm in their culture like, okay, something there are things you're doing intentionally as a parent yourself and how do you talk to other parents about that?

00:16:53:18 - 00:17:09:01
Zandra Moore
Most children don't listen to their parents. If I give my mum had told me it's going to tech, I might not have done. She just led by example by just bringing her passion and energy for the industry into the home. She never made me feel like it. Something I should do. I just got inspired by her. Just seeing her grow really is hard.

00:17:09:01 - 00:17:36:22
Zandra Moore
As a parent, I think you can always influence and when you see choices, you can push them away from those things. My teenagers don't listen to me. I mean, bombastic anger and passive them. They don't anymore. And they will at some point maybe look back on things. But it is actually I think it is about helping the teachers and helping the schools to understand better what our industry can do for the young people and getting into spaces where those young people can experience technology and software and understand that better.

00:17:36:22 - 00:17:46:02
Zandra Moore
So I think a better off maybe not as parents doing it, but maybe as adults and leaders getting involved with the people's children because they're probably more likely to listen to us smugly.

00:17:46:02 - 00:17:50:14
Andrew Davies
And I love that. And are there programs you know of in your little Leeds area?

00:17:50:14 - 00:18:12:07
Zandra Moore
Yeah. Oh, gosh, there's those. I mean, so in Leeds, not that many people on this podcast listening to it or in the room will be from Leeds. But if you are there's a head partnership absolutely amazing. They work with some of the most underprivileged schools in the city. They run girl tech programs, green tech programs. They connect employers with those schools of wrong initiatives that are really engaging from career panels.

00:18:12:07 - 00:18:30:11
Zandra Moore
So almost like speed networking with founders type stuff, and that just gets you in a room with young people facilitated by an organization when they know exactly the right intervention and is organized for you. But every city will have some kind of community not for profit organization whose mandate is to do that, just go and find them because they exist everywhere.

00:18:30:12 - 00:18:45:19
Zandra Moore
It's not necessarily easy to you know, we can't just wait for these things to come to us. You got an intentional right. If you really want to influence the pipeline of talent and see diversity in it. I have a third of my staff, at least a third of my staff this year have gone into schools to do just that.

00:18:45:19 - 00:19:10:02
Zandra Moore
And and they love it. And it's really great for staff, you know, wellbeing and happiness. They feel like they're doing something good and often they're going into maybe skills that they went to themselves, which they really love and they see their teachers and stuff like that. So and they're just I think there's a lot of things to be said about trying to not just solve the problem that you have today, which is I don't have enough women maybe applying for a job, go a little bit further down the talent pipeline and and it's enjoyable to do that.

00:19:10:03 - 00:19:10:17
Zandra Moore
It's not know.

00:19:10:17 - 00:19:18:21
Andrew Davies
How to love it because you know you're really paying it forward that because it might not be people you ever get to hire and can intelligence but hopefully future generations will have an easier job as a result.

00:19:19:02 - 00:19:31:14
Zandra Moore
Yeah, but your children might be working alongside them in future and they'll be better people for working alongside diverse teams. And we'll have better products and better solutions to society's problems by having diverse teams deal building problems is that's a result of it.

00:19:31:14 - 00:19:50:01
Andrew Davies
Well, my daughter is ten and last week we had a detailed breakdown of Amazon's marketplace business model entirely. Her asking questions was not being pushed by me and I was lost, like the economics of it went beyond my brain, so I had to start googling to give her answers. So I'm expecting in the next couple of couple of months that have stopped listening to me and have to go back to her teachers.

00:19:50:01 - 00:20:11:02
Andrew Davies
But I love that there's people, you know, like yourselves, like your team that are hidden schools in the UK. There's a program called Startup Sherpa that a colleague of mine runs in secondary schools, running innovation and start up programs with 14, 15, 16 year olds. And it's incredible to see that creativity when they're set with a challenge. And it's about modeling, as you said, you call them what you fancy for.

00:20:11:02 - 00:20:18:18
Ben Hillman
Next up, Zandra talks about nailing your go to market motion.

00:20:18:18 - 00:20:35:13
Andrew Davies
So let's come back to Europe today. You're at SaaStock. You're trying to group an intelligence against some very large US competitors, some in the UK as well. But what does the next few quarters look like for you? You just raised a bit more finances that will go to market result for adults. How do you think about investments at this market environment?

00:20:35:13 - 00:20:55:05
Zandra Moore
Wow, it's tough, isn't it, for people out there trying to raise finance? I think the market shifted massively. We're fortunate that the investment round that we've done is actually existing customers have exited themselves and reinvesting back in the business because they see they understand the value and have seen the value and they've exited and said, Right, okay, can we write you a check?

00:20:55:05 - 00:21:21:11
Zandra Moore
So that's really cool. That's a real validation, the business. And you also bring in expertise because it's SaaS founders that are getting behind the business, which is amazing. So I think what's next? So it's not about product for us now, it is go to market and we've been absolutely obsessive over our ICP. I cannot tell you how narrow that scale and but in a way it's been an absolute godsend because we're just seeing that driving now through, you know, is reducing our cost of acquisition.

00:21:21:11 - 00:21:33:09
Zandra Moore
It's accelerating our expansion avenues because we're absolutely winning the the right fit for our company and our product is so is such a critical thing that we've we've nailed that this year.

00:21:33:17 - 00:21:39:22
Andrew Davies
So I'm sure everyone in the audience thinks that they're focused. So talk to us about how focused your ICP is. Well, the attributes.

00:21:39:23 - 00:21:57:03
Zandra Moore
So about 18 months ago we said, right, it's got to be SaaS Flanders. They've got to have a minimum of 1 million RR and they've got to have raised the money. Okay, okay. Now it's got to be SaaS vendors that are on us because that we've got less competition there. You know how the I assume and the current DCP.

00:21:57:12 - 00:22:22:15
Zandra Moore
Okay great. Actually no we we need to then think about, you know, maybe how many employees they have that problem and change base how big was the last round where they previous founders we've now got 20 ACP characteristics who qualify out more by 70%. We qualify out of our MPLS before they don't become an MQ. We literally disappear even if there's interest because actually for us we need to find those SaaS ventures.

00:22:22:15 - 00:22:45:11
Zandra Moore
Those SaaS businesses which are ready for us and they need us and we can deliver the best value to them. If they're too early, they're probably not going to be able to invest in the time that they need to think about driving the values of data. They may not have enough data for that to be a big enough problem or enough customers equally, if they're too late and they may have tried to build out too much of themselves and their dev teams are too invested.

00:22:45:18 - 00:23:01:22
Zandra Moore
So there's a really critical point for us. We're agnostic of cloud providers where agnostic of all of these things, but as a business we've become really focused on actually if you're an us and you're a certain stage with a certain level of of investment in the business is probably the right time for you to be looking at what we do.

00:23:02:00 - 00:23:18:12
Zandra Moore
Timing is everything, I think ready to buy and at least these people ready to buy. Does it solve a problem for them they rarely have otherwise. If it doesn't, they won't get the value. And at least if you come into late, you're trying to maybe convince too many people in the organization to swap something out, let's say committed to.

00:23:18:12 - 00:23:24:10
Zandra Moore
So that's the key for us is really knowing that we've hitting people at the right time, they say embodies characteristics.

00:23:24:15 - 00:23:39:05
Andrew Davies
So I've been at several businesses as we walk through that journey of focus of deleting two thirds of my life marketing database and sales reps walking out because their territories no longer going to be supported and all the rest of it. Where did you see the point of highest friction? As we went through that process, the focus was at people.

00:23:39:05 - 00:23:42:07
Andrew Davies
Was it process? Was it some functions that didn't like the decision?

00:23:42:07 - 00:23:58:19
Zandra Moore
We always kind of got, How about just this one? We sneak this one through. Right? When you're growing a business, it's hard to say no when you see someone that's especially if the relationship's good and this guy is really great, what can we make? We think this is a really good fit and you have to be really honest with each other yourself and your prospect and the person that's talk to you.

00:23:59:00 - 00:24:22:08
Zandra Moore
Is this the right time? Is it the right fail? Do we just like it? That's we like the idea of working together. We always have the best fit when there's a real compelling need. A customer is about churn or their risk of churning because of data insights being a challenge, or that competition is doing something in the losing business to that so that a compelling need can be the biggest driver for for the timing.

00:24:22:16 - 00:24:41:15
Zandra Moore
And sometimes we'll meet people and there isn't a compelling need and they'll come back to us and there is a compelling need. So it's always good to have the conversation. But actually true engagement, as in let's work together on building something out. There needs to be some good, strong drivers for both parties, and we like to be honest with people and say, you know what, maybe there isn't enough of a compelling need for you right now, but make sure you come back.

00:24:41:15 - 00:24:50:04
Zandra Moore
We'll give you all our resource and time when there is and and that's when we throw the resource and to working with the people. Just to that point, they really need us very cold.

00:24:50:04 - 00:25:05:00
Andrew Davies
So one last question before we perhaps open up. If anyone's authentic on the floor, you're spending now some capital there's been hard earned on go to markets. What does that look like once you get a market motion you're investing in? Is this sales led? Is this product led? You mentioned earlier, How are you deploying it?

00:25:05:02 - 00:25:37:02
Zandra Moore
So we are you can't really have a a product led motion for an embedded product because there's quite a few different stakeholders involved and rightly so. Right. Assessment is about to embed something third party into their platform. Why label it? And it's essentially their product. So they're going to want to kick the tires on that and they're going to want lots of stakeholders to be comfortable that this is a good product fit, technology fits, commercial fits this there's a lot of so for us, we work through those stakeholders as part of that so that they're absolutely confident that this is a partnership.

00:25:37:03 - 00:25:56:19
Zandra Moore
It's not just buying a piece of tech off the shelf, it's a partnership. Now we're working together. There is a level of emotion in the fact that they can spend If an environment puts in the data about build something in a matter of hours or cost. So that initial does this do what I expected it to do. But actually there's still other conversations to make sure people are confident that that partnership is is.

00:25:57:02 - 00:26:16:15
Zandra Moore
So for us, it's a direct sales motion. So it's usually B2B SaaS lenders that we we mostly work with and we sell directly to their team. So usually a chief product officer or a chief technical support founder, depending on the stage that they're at. And they will have that sort of question around do we build this ourselves or do buy something in?

00:26:16:15 - 00:26:27:00
Zandra Moore
And then we we start kind of that engagement. They spend something out, they start to build something out, and then we check for the fits right together.

00:26:27:00 - 00:26:34:20
Ben Hillman
What you'll hear now is Zandra answering questions from SaaStock 2022.

00:26:34:20 - 00:26:49:20
Andrew Davies
Fantastic. Well, really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much for spending it with us. Any questions here before we vote? Hi. I wanted to ask, like, where do you see the future of the embedded analytics and suspect? Where do you think it will be evolving into in the future?

00:26:50:00 - 00:27:07:10
Zandra Moore
Okay. At the moment, most people are still trying to solve the basics, just giving their customers the ability to just see what they need in real time and be able to choose how they see that data. So we're still there right now. There's two other areas that I think we're heading towards, but you've got to get the basics right first.

00:27:07:10 - 00:27:40:11
Zandra Moore
As SaaS businesses, we need to get our own house in order. We're not very good at kind of giving ourselves visibility of our own real time metrics. So there's also a bit of that getting our house in order. And then once you've kind of tackled the in app and then how stuff we're all data companies and in the next five years to ten years, we're probably going to be valued as much for our data assets as we are for the software and understanding how we can unlock the value of that and the other monetization opportunities is absolutely where we all need to be thinking in our future roadmaps and planning, because that's your not just

00:27:40:11 - 00:28:01:02
Zandra Moore
expansion opportunities. This is new use cases, new users, new monetization streams. So most of our customers are still doing the basics and still helping them with just better in-app reporting and better in-house reporting. But where we get really excited are the ones that have that vision. They're seeing themselves as data companies, not software companies, and they want to unlock that value.

00:28:01:06 - 00:28:08:05
Zandra Moore
For me, that is the really, really exciting opportunity that we all have, and that's CMO drive the valuation of our businesses.

00:28:08:08 - 00:28:21:18
Andrew Davies
I love the fact that you have, of course, content on your sites and like training materials. I'm curious like at what point did you decide to introduce that and what impact is that had on users like for acquisition monetization and and retention?

00:28:22:02 - 00:28:44:12
Zandra Moore
Okay. Great question. So I have this machine of a CMO called Charli. She's an X-ray, a fighter pilot, and if she was here, she'd absolutely kill me for telling you that. But she is unbelievable and she gets truly gets the value of self-serve from a early onboarding phase. And what I mean by onboarding, it's not that they've made the decision to buy this is pre onboarding.

00:28:44:12 - 00:29:01:06
Zandra Moore
This is I just want to be able to see if this product does what I think it does. And maybe a lot of people simply just want to watch a few training videos, have a go themselves. It might not be a true proof of concept, but actually what it does is allows those allows those people to kind of experience the products in a way that suits them.

00:29:01:06 - 00:29:20:09
Zandra Moore
I'm a big believer we all learn differently. Some people will listen to a podcast, some people will watch a video someone will do to training somebody else. Great documentation. You've got to offer because we're all different and we all learn differently. Those different ways for people to kind of on board in a way that suits them. So for me, I think that training of documentation is much about that.

00:29:20:10 - 00:29:39:12
Zandra Moore
Letting people consume an understanding of your product in a way that works for them, to then get them into the funnel to then have a conversation with you. It's also really useful when they're in that conversation and you want to train them. But I actually it's it's as useful for getting them into the funnel. We see a lot of people just going on those courses, watching the videos simply to learn what to do.

00:29:39:12 - 00:29:57:20
Zandra Moore
Ask quick question around the TV structure right now. So like what are the core things that you've been working out when it comes to your next milestones in your company and what has been potentially, you know, being a female founder myself as well, these things can be, you know, inspire a lot, but it's important to also back it up internally.

00:29:57:20 - 00:30:15:11
Zandra Moore
So I would love to hear a bit more about that too. So we're obsessing over the go to market teams at the moment. So we're building our sales and marketing operations a lot more. We are focused on and have been always but continue to be focused on bringing people outside of the tech industry and tech that helps with taking that step.

00:30:15:11 - 00:30:33:22
Zandra Moore
And it's also a really good way of building a building talent within the business that has a different perspective, which can be really good. They also don't use all the language that we use, so it's actually great for being able to talk to people at the right level. So we tend to take recruitment consultants that have been placing slack people and bring them into the sales team and bring them up.

00:30:33:22 - 00:30:52:06
Zandra Moore
And that works really, really well for us because they're great hustlers, but they're also they've got some of the language, but they know how to talk to the right level with lots of different stakeholders. They're used to speaking to C-suite, so they're really good at that. So I would definitely recommend recruiters for SD hires and BDC. And then we work with somebody called No North Coders.

00:30:52:10 - 00:31:09:13
Zandra Moore
And if you've heard of North coders, if you're in the north of England, you have if you're not well, hey, there's somebody elsewhere that you can use, but they basically retrain people into dev and technical roles that helps us with people that are returning to work, often women or people that are changing career pathways. So that's great for diversity as well.

00:31:09:17 - 00:31:30:17
Zandra Moore
The great thing is they're also paying to do those courses like £10,000. So if you've made a decision to retrain, pay to retrain that commitment, that career is it's a different energy to it. And they really go in and invested the money. They bring their experience from their previous role into that lens and perspective on development. So they have a more broader view of what they're doing and why they're doing it.

00:31:30:17 - 00:31:37:21
Zandra Moore
So we get all of our junior devs through North Caters and we get most of our sales teams from a great many companies. So they're my top tips.

00:31:37:22 - 00:31:46:14
Andrew Davies
Awesome. Well, thank you again, Zandra. I'm sorry about the Fed and wants to come up and ask them, I think face to face. Have a fantastic rest of the show. Enjoy the rest of your day of sight. Life back to.

00:31:46:14 - 00:31:50:17
Zandra Moore
Leeds. Thank you. Hopefully not as bumpy. Cheers, guys. Thank you very much, everybody.

00:31:52:12 - 00:32:17:17
Ben Hillman
A huge shout out to Zandra for doing this podcast. Now you have what it takes to build a talent pipeline. Today we talked about spinning Panintelligence out of another company competing against giants being intentional about inclusivity, nailing your go to market motion. And finally, a Q&A from SaaSt, Oct 2022. Make sure to get Protect the Hustle a five star review and tell us what lessons Andrew taught you from today's episode.

00:32:17:18 - 00:32:26:08
Ben Hillman
Thanks for listening. Make sure you subscribe to and tell your friends about Protect the Hustle, a podcast from Battle Studios dedicated to helping you build better SaaS.