Godard Abel of G2 joins Nick to discuss The Founder and CEO of G2 on AI’s Impact on Enterprise SaaS, How to Embrace the Climb, and Insights on Managing Through Crisis. In this episode we cover:
- Founding G2 and Market Challenges
- Metrics and Marketplace Growth
- Investor Insights and Data Utilization
- Founder Mode and Leadership
- Building Strong Support Systems
- Embracing AI and Innovation
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0:18
Godard Abel joins us today from Boulder. He’s the Co-Founder and CEO of G2, a leading software marketplace helping businesses make informed technology decisions. Prior to G2, he founded BigMachines which was acquired by Oracle and SteelBrick, which was acquired by Salesforce. Godard, welcome to the show!
0:36
Yeah, great to be here with you, Nick, thanks for having It’s a pleasure. I
0:40
know you got your start in Chicago. I’m, you know, at the studio, and will met today, so it’s nice to talk to a Chicagoan, but, you know, take us all the way back. Tell us about your first business that you launched in high school. The first
0:51
business was called ultimate car care. And I was growing up in swickley, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And my best friend High School is Joe nacido, and he and I just wanted to make some money, and I think didn’t want to get regular jobs, but his dad owned, like, a nice Corvette, and so he was always getting it detailed. And then Joe was like, Hey, we should start a car detailing business. And, you know, just wash some nice cars and make some money. And anyone one fun story about that, we’re like, oh, how do we market it? So we just took a picture. We went, there’s like, a junior year prom, and took a picture of us in tuxedos outside his dad’s Corvette, and just printed up a bunch of posters or flyers. One thing we learned is actually, and we distribute them ourselves, just around town, like, put them into mailboxes. And then we learned we got, like, a nasty note from the US Postal Service. I didn’t realize this, but they have an exclusive monopoly to drop things into mailboxes. We’d circumvented it, but it did kind of work. Got you Yeah, but it did kind of work. And we just had, like, I remember my parents got my sister and I, like, this is in the 80s as teenagers, but they got us an extra phone line, so we just put an answering machine on that, you know, and then people would call me like, hey, visual, ultimate care, leave a message, let us know when you want your car done. And we got enough business, yeah, that we made, I think, decent money on weekends.
2:07
Wow, wow. You know, it’s funny how some of these older business development tax tactics can work quite well. A quick aside, I was doing diligence on a company we invested in a customer of theirs that was based in Utah, and it’s a pest control company, and they had grown. I did a call, a diligence call, with the CFO. They had grown from 4 million of revenue to 400 million in four years, four, four and four. And I was just, you know, mouth agape. I’m like, how, how did you do this? And he said, we hired an army of door knockers, and it’s been like the most successful growth, growth engine. Nothing, nothing fancy.
2:46
Yeah, I do think going door to door is something good about that, you know. And, and obviously, back when we started, there was no internet, no email, so you had to use more real world tactics,
2:55
amazing. So, you know, we can’t get into all the details of your background. Godard, but talk us through like, you know, launching these businesses, big machines, steel, brick and ultimately, g2 which what you’re, you know, building and growing today. And
3:10
the first one was big machines. And actually, I think it also inspired the second and the third and big machines. We started January one, 2000 and we were very young entrepreneurs. I think we literally had our law year incorporated on January one, which was kind of hard to do in Delaware, but we’re like, I was gonna be the D company for the new millennium and but it was that internet.com boom era. You know, a lot of people were drinking Kool Aid, and I’d gone out to California for business school, as in the Silicon Valley, and people also called it the reality distortion zone. And, you know, like most young people, especially in the Bay Area, during that time, was like impossible, almost, not to drink the Kool Aid. You know, if you had any entrepreneurial spirit in you, and so decided I want to surround my company. I was working for another startup, but I remember the idea for big machines came actually back from Pittsburgh, because that Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, 1999 I went home to see my parents, and was talking to my dad about the internet. My dad was also an entrepreneur, but in a very different business. He was in industrial pump manufacturing, and he made big pumps, but these niche piston membrane pumps to pump heavy slurries. And actually moved my family from Germany to Pittsburgh to the US when I was about 10 years old because he wanted to start a US subsidiary, first company. Subsidiary, first company. And so he was selling these heavy pumps. And I was talking about the internet, and, you know, I was drinking the valley Kool Aid. And obviously, Amazon was already a darling, you know, but they were just selling books. And then I asked my dad, well, how’s it gonna affect your pump industry, you know, the internet. And, of course, like coming from the valley, I was expecting, Oh, it’ll be very disruptive, you know. And he was just like, well, it’s not and I’m like, What do you mean, dad? And he just said, Well, my pumps, they’re very complex engineer pumps. And every time we sell a pump, I need a German pump engineer to talk to the customer, understand the requirements, the pressure, the flow rate, the viscosity, the solids, content of the fluid. And. Based on that, we’ll custom configure a pump, yep. And he’s like, that’s nothing like selling a book on Amazon. And I think back then, Amazon was only selling books and CDs, you know, standard SKU products. But then I drew inspiration from Michael Dell, and he was one of the other great early internet entrepreneurs 1990s and Dell started just selling PCs. And actually his breakthrough was selling them direct to consumer online. And PCs at that time were also quite configurable. You could obviously choose, like your memory, your hard drive, your operating system, but there were probably about 20 different choices you had to make to configure your PC. And Michael Dell figured out how to do all that online, and you could see pricing in real time or in real time or in real time. Obviously, we all take it for granted today, but that was the idea. I’m like, Well, Dad, I think I could help you sell your pumps like a Dell PC with online configuration technology. And my dad was skeptical, but he’s a very supportive father, so ultimately he became my first customer and also first angel investor. And so we, we kind of set off to the races with that vision, amazing.
6:02
So you’ve sold two companies to very large fortune, 50 tech companies, and you launch g2 and I think most people in the audience, if you’re in business, you’re pretty familiar with g2 at this point. But how would you describe g2 and your vision? And
6:17
g2 is the trusted place you go for software. And when we first started it, you know, just over 10 years ago, we called it Yelp for software. And one of our founding mantras was, you know, why can you get more information on $100 lunch on Yelp than you could on $100,000 CRM package? Because there was no peer review site for software. And in some ways, the idea was obvious, you know, because by the time we started the time we started g2 most of us were very used to buying, not just books on Amazon, but almost everything. And I see online, I think as consumers, we won’t buy I know I won’t buy anything with zero reviews. I certainly wouldn’t have lunch at a restaurant with no reviews. And so it’s very common in the consumer world. But what we found interesting was in our world of enterprise software. And yeah, we did ultimately, big machines was a long journey of entry. Was bought by Oracle, but it took us, like, 12 or 13 years to do that. And one of my biggest lessons was like, wow, it’s just way too hard to buy and sell enterprise software. And the problem we also saw when we were building big machines. Eventually, we did sign up big companies like Danaher, where used to work, you know, a lot of their manufacturing divisions and GE, I remember Ge energy, and they make huge steam turbines, so, truly, big machines I remember. But it took us nine years, I think, a nine year sales cycle, to GE, and then part of the problem was when we finally signed up as customers, they’re like, Wow, we wish we discovered you three years ago. We’ve been trying to develop the software in house. We didn’t even know you existed. And part of the problem was, you know, I think analyst reports like Gartner’s, they didn’t include us in a report till 2009 so it took nine years. Didn’t make us a leader for 12 years. And so that was kind of the status quo of the industry. You know, CIOs would subscribe the analyst reports, but those would be very dated, and they’d be very exclusive, because until you had 20, 30 million enterprise revenue, they wouldn’t even include you. And so obviously we thought that was bad for entrepreneurs software vendors like ours, but also very bad for the buyers, because there was no online website where you could just go to discover the best app. And the other founding bet we made at g2 the year we started. It also is when Marc Andreessen said, Software is eating the world. And I think by that Mark meant that purpose built software is going to be created to solve every business problem, for every business function, every vertical and I think that’s come very true today. You know, on g2 alone, there’s over 100,000 different types of software in over 2000 categories. And we thought the world, you know, as software’s eating the world, the world needed a buffet, if you will. And we thought it needed a buffet with real time, trusted peer reviews, because we also thought it was absurd that in software, and we thought the analysts were like restaurant critics that couldn’t eat the food. You know, they’d stand outside the restaurant and, like, ask 10 people, Hey, how was your meal? And we’re like, hey, why not just ask the people eating the food, right? Ask the users of the software, and that was always our founding premise, and and it’s, it’s, you know, it’s come to life pretty well over the past decade. It’s kind of
9:06
funny how long it took Gartner to recognize you, but I’m not too surprised, considering the the irony in in what you do. So how do you think about leading? It leading indicators of success versus lagging? I’d be curious to hear, you know, what are your north star metrics that you’re managing at g2 and you know, how do you describe them publicly? I’m sure you can’t disclose all the details, but you know, what milestones have you reached? Godard, yeah. And at g2
9:35
you know, we are building a marketplace, and so our leading indicators that come, you know, before revenue, were always one like, what’s the number of quality reviews we have? That is our reason, the etra and our unique content. And you know, now we have almost 3 million trusted, verified reviews. Second key metric is how what’s the size of our buyer audience? You know, how many software buyers are coming to read those reviews, to get those insights? And I think now we’re up to over 90 million a year software buyers coming to GT to discover those software apps. And then, of course, the third measure is revenue. And you know, we had disclosure, we are over 100 million ARR now, and you know, and still growing well, we have over 3500 software vendor customers around the world, because we learned, once we have these reviews, once we have a huge buyer audience, then we’ve become an excellent marketing platform for software vendors. And so that’s, you know, that’s become our core business.
10:30
Is it hard to get that long tail of software like there’s, you mentioned the example with your father, right? Like these, these custom components for nuanced, unique industries. So there’s software’s eating the world. There’s a variety like, how do you get that long tail and how do you build a critical mass of reviews that’s reliable social proof, yeah. And
10:53
I think it is hard to get a complete taxonomy of software. And as I mentioned, we have over 100,000 listings now in those 2100 categories, although it’s a lot easier for us to disregardner, you know, because we don’t have to go do primary research on all 100,000 vendors. And you can self serve. And now g2 has become a thing, a brand, if you will, most software entrepreneurs now, and you can go list your product for free, you know, on G two.com and obviously we get, you know, 1000s of products just added organically. Now we also have a research team that, you know, as we define they define our categories, and they also make sure that, you know, we do have listings for the top products in each categories as we keep adding categories. So we do have a research team that maintains that taxonomy. And they also make sure in each category of software, we’re asking the right questions, you know, the right high level feature function questions of the reviewer, so we can give the best insights for that category. And so and our research team does keep looking. And what’s been really exciting, as you can imagine, since, you know, the last, I don’t know, 18 months since the launch of chat, GPT, 3.5 we’ve added, you know, I think, about 30 different AI software categories, obviously, things like vector databases that are now in this age of generative AI or central infrastructure. And obviously, two years ago, nobody cared about them. And now I think we’re adding agent builder categories. I was also a dream force. And obviously Marc Benioff only talked about his agent force. Same thing Yamini HubSpot talking about agents.ai so now we’re building this new AI agent builder category, and that’s the beauty of software and now AI it does just keep growing, and our research team makes sure we stay on top of that and keeps an eye on the software buying trends and makes sure we cover the latest category and make sure that we include all the key products in those categories.
12:37
So it’s clear that g2 serves software buyers and sellers, but it also serves investors. You know, the majority of our audience happens to be investors. So can you talk about how investors are using g2
12:49
Yeah, and we do have about 60 of the world’s leading software investors now as customers, and that includes, you know, top tier VCs, as well as some of the, you know, hedge funds that are now also investing in private companies. And I think part of the reason they want our data is, I think it’s very hard to get good insights on private software companies. And obviously people look at like LinkedIn for a number of employees, right, or CrunchBase for funding, but to know how are the actual products performing in market is very hard. And obviously there’s public information, and we had this idea to start selling data investors, because a lot of them told us, including our own investors, like Excel, IVP Premier, and part of these they want to invest in g2 they’re like, we’re using g2 all the time to help us source deals, you know, find cool new companies. And obviously publicly, you can see how many reviews they have if they’re a leader in a category or not. And so investors use it all the time, but then we sell them data that gives them more insights, which is including buyer traffic trends, so telling investors which categories of software are surging on g2 based on buyer interests and traffic, and then which vendors within those categories are surging. And we can also give them competitive market insights, like which, which products are being switched to and from. And obviously, there’s, you know, there’s some new trends now. There’s disruptors, like, let’s say Apollo, in, you know, sales information, where, obviously a lot of people on the low end have been switching from zoom info to Apollo and g2 can give investors leading signals. You know, when those trends are starting to happen based on our data, and so that’s become an exciting business for us. Do
14:26
you have a sense for how close buyer traffic data is as a proxy for
14:31
revenue? And I think it’s a bit hard to correlate it directly to revenue. I do think it’s a good indicator of market share, because you can see what percent of buyers in a g2 category are considering which vendors, and I think it can be really good indicator of market share. And also, I think most interesting to investors is always trends. Who’s trending up the fastest, who might be trending down. And obviously we don’t have exact revenue data, but and I think then, if you’re a smart investor, you’re going to kind of also say, hey, we think the total category of revenue. As x, and then you can get a good sense for share and how that’s shifting.
15:04
You had mentioned Yelp, Amazon came up earlier as well. You know, as you think about comps that are household names, you know, what have you taken from those? And what have you left? Yeah, you know, as you’ve built g2 Yeah,
15:20
and to take the first one, I mean, Yelp obviously proved that reviews are really helpful, you know, I think they started in San Francisco for restaurants, but very helpful for driving local business commerce. I think so. I think that was a very positive inspiration. I think that the challenge that Yelp also showed was trust, you know, I think there have been all kinds of news about fake reviews, frankly, both on Yelp and on Amazon. And so we also architected g2 differently, where we said, initially you had to sign up with your LinkedIn profile. And we did that Nick, because that’s our professional identity now, especially in tech and in software. So we tie every review to a LinkedIn profile, and so we know it’s a real person. And the other context that’s important to B to B, that you don’t need to B to C, is you need to know what industry is this person in? What’s their job title? How big is their company? And because, as you know, in a category like, let’s say CRM software, will recommend different software for SMBs that might be more like a pipe drive or a HubSpot versus enterprise, you know, which is probably more like a Salesforce or Microsoft. And obviously, to those of us that know those categories, well, that’s kind of obvious, but most software buyers don’t, and so we can guide them on the demographics. So we had to build a lot more trust, as well as buyer demographics than Yelp. And obviously at Amazon, what’s exciting about Amazon, we’ve actually become a partner to Amazon for Amazon Web Services marketplace. So the AWS Marketplace, you probably know, it’s the world’s largest Cloud Marketplace, and Amazon doesn’t disclose it publicly, but I’ve heard estimates. You know, over 50 billion of partner SaaS products are sold to the AWS Marketplace. And g2 reviews now actually also syndicated AWS because Amazon also said, wow, and they invented online reviews. It’s actually talked about in Jeff Bezos biography. And I think way back in 1995 when Jeff was just selling books, you know, he added the idea of reviews. And it was interesting in the book. He said the book publishers got very angry with Amazon, because they said, Why are you allowing people to sell that say nasty things about our books, Jeff, I thought you were trying to sell them. And of course, Jeff, being a brilliant entrepreneur that he is, he had data right away. He’s like, look, a book with one negative review, even one star, will sell more than a book with no reviews. And of course, a book with 100 reviews, mostly positive, will convert 30% more than a book with no reviews. And so he discovered, wow, it’s the greatest online conversion and trust lever for commerce and so. But what’s exciting for us now that Amazon said, wow, for B to B software, you guys actually do it better than we do. And so they, you know, they also license our review content, and now we syndicate it to the AWS Marketplace. And what’s interesting now, you know, Amazon studied it, but you know, typically US products with critical messaging will convert 15% higher. And I think that’s that’s been exciting division. And so I do give Jeff Bezos, like I said, a ton of credit for inventing this, and also now for ability to have this marketplace and exciting that g2 reviews are also driving conversion there.
18:13
So Godard, I want to talk about sort of a buzzy topic in the valley right now. You’re in Boulder, of course. You started the business in Chicago. I’m in Chicago, and so we’re not in the echo chamber. I’d love to get your take, and that topic is founder mode. So you’ve started a number of successful companies, and you’ve worked for large successful organizations like Oracle and Salesforce. Do you agree with this premise that most large orgs are managed ineffectively, and that this founder mode, so to speak, is a superior management approach.
18:44
And I do know, you know Salesforce well, like my last startup, steel brick, was acquired by Salesforce. And actually, I did go out to the valley, you know, for a few years, and I was working at Salesforce. So I did, you know, and I would say, Marc Benioff is actually one of my entrepreneur idols. And so I was back out for Dreamforce just two weeks ago, and Mark was launching agent force. And I did hear from a lot of Salesforce team that apparently Mark has been back in quote, unquote, founder mode, you know, actually the last few months leading up to Dreamforce, because he got so excited about AI to AI agents, and also was unique this Dreamforce, like all he talked about in his keynote was agent force, which is very unusual. Every part of Dreamforce talks about every cloud sales, cloud marketing, cloud service, cloud here’s a lot of innovations. This time it was all agents. Because I, you know, I, what I heard is Mark is all in on this. He thinks it could be a path to 100 billion. Salesforce already at 40 billion. So I do think, and he did think he had to rally the company, because to focus everyone on just AI agents, and to be able to, you know, tell the leaders of sales, cloud service, cloud, sorry, you don’t even get a slot in my keynote. I think it took a founder, you know. So I do think it’s a very useful tool at times when you have to pivot a company quickly. Then I do think founder mode. Is a unique tool, you know, that can be deployed. I do also think at companies like Salesforce, and I saw it, I mean, there’s also a lot of excellent leaders, you know. So I think the negative idea of founder mode that, oh, you know, big company managers are kind of just empty suits, right? And they just slow things down. I don’t think that’s true. And you also saw that Salesforce, like the president of Salesforce Now Brian Milam, he also became a friend, but he’s just an amazing operator whom I know. Mark also really values. And I think the really smart founder CEOs like Mark, they see both sides. Like at times they have to go into founder mode when they want to drive a big pivot. And big companies do become big ships when you’re doing 40 billion revenue. I’ve never run a company that big, no near that big, but I think it gets hard to change and change focus. So then I think founder mode is a unique tool. But also, companies like Salesforce, they need great operating leaders like a Brian Milam or their CRO Miguel Milano, right, that can then allow and align, align with Miguel, but he runs like 25,000 sales reps. And so I do think you also need the mature operator leader skills. And so to me, it’s not either or. I think great companies need both. They still need inspired founders that go into founder mode when needed, and they need strong operating leaders that run the operations day to
21:13
day. So go to before this interview, I asked you for your key company building lessons, and you gave me five. One is embrace ups and downs. Two is persevere through failure. Three was build strong support systems. Four, lead consciously and five, take care of yourself. What do you mean by building strong support systems? And how have you done it?
21:36
And given you do go through tremendous ups and downs, and I remember my first company, big machines. I mentioned that euphoric.com start, but the reality three years in, we were almost bankrupt. And yeah, we that first year, we raised 20 million in VC, in 2000 based on, frankly, just.com hype, hype and vision. And then three years later, we were burned through 19 million. I think we were only doing a million a year in revenue. We missed sales plan every quarter. And so honestly, business was just horrible state almost bankrupt, and had to make a really hard pivot. That’s actually why we moved the company to Chicago, because we, like my co founder and I, Chris, were like, we just have to get profitable, otherwise we’re going bankrupt. And so I had years of just fear of failure, losing my dad’s money. It was amongst them, like ruining my friends careers. I grew all my best friends from MIT and wounded my own career. It did just feel horrible. And so I think the support system, frankly, does start for me with co founders. And like Chris, whom I mentioned, Chris Schutz, he was my best friend from MIT. We started big machines together. We’re actually now building another company together, logic IO, where he’s a CEO. But I think, I think you have to have, especially co founders, founding team, where you’re like in it together. In all my companies, I’ve always had co founders because I’ve never wanted to do it alone, you know, because I don’t think the downs I would have gotten through without, you know, now your co founders also become your friends. It’s kind of more like family, and so I think that’s, that’s where it starts in terms of support system, and then I would say, I’ve also been lucky, like I’ve been married now for over 20 years, the end of my wife, Stacy, and she’s also been with me. Actually, we started dating in 2000 way back when I started my first company. But she’s also always been with me. So also now we have three wonderful kids. And frankly, for a lot of years, I think I think I was a bad father and maybe a bad husband, because when big machines was struggling so much like, I wasn’t as present at home, you know, at least in hindsight, as I would have liked, because I was so consumed by the fear to doubt, the uncertainty about failing at work, but, but ultimately, Stacy, my family, stuck with me and and I think also gave me something to look forward to, You know, like, because even when you’re struggling at work, when you especially remember the days you’re little kids, they you come home and they they run and hug you and say, Hi Daddy. You know, it’s special. So I think that’s probably, for me, the key, you know, having strong co founders, yeah, plus family and or close friends outside of work, so that, you know, you can get through the the anxiety and tremendous stress that most entrepreneurs face.
24:03
What was the pivot that you made? Was it a big product shift? Was a market or customer shift without Yeah, it
24:10
was more perseverance, because in hindsight also, and these things are only obvious in hindsight, but we were, like, too early in the market, because today you called Cloud software, but we were essentially trying to sell cloud CPQ to manufacturers in like, 2001 also 911 happened, right? 2002 and remember those years we call manufacturers, maybe, like Danaher and GE and they’re like, the internet was a fad. You know, we’re actually, we’re fine, like sending all our turbine data to our customers on a CD ROM. And now Amazon, by the way, is a credit risk. That was also true in 2001 right? Everyone was betting, when’s Amazon gonna be bankrupt? So gonna be bankrupt? So I think we were just too early, and we weren’t able to sell around it. And frankly, also in that infrastructure, our customers also figured the product didn’t perform that well, because they were, most of their users would be on dial up, you know, 56k like. So in hindsight, we were too early. So. One was just persevering. And then I think we did have to cut the company from 70 to 20 people to survive in 2003 so we had to make those hard changes. So one was persevering. And then two, I think, in hindsight, looking back on it, it was actually partnering with Cloud leaders, including Salesforce, because we partnered with them in 2004 but the business didn’t really work till 2007 because and to mark anyhow, Salesforce credit. They popularized cloud CRM. They got people to trust it, and all of a sudden they started selling their Jesus world. They needed a CPQ partner, and we were already there. We were already in the cloud, because we’ve been grinding on it for a few years. And then all of a sudden the business took off. And we also partnered with Oracle, with their Siebel CRM on demand, which is why eventually you know, Oracle acquired it, but so it was a combination of partnering with the cloud CRM leaders, and persevering long enough that the cloud actually became popular and real.
25:48
So on perseverance, like, what advice would you have for entrepreneurs that, you know, there’s ups there’s downs, aside from just sticking with it, you know, what advice would you give to founders that are in crisis. You know, it seems like everything’s going wrong because you’ve been through it.
26:07
Yeah, no, like I said, I did feel this crushing weight, like my company felt like a storm cloud of anxiety in my forehead for years that would just never go away. But I do think that gets my last recommendation, take care of yourself and yeah, what I have found is and I like working out every day. I still do it every day, because I do find for me. And maybe it’s also like I wrote in college, I did at MIT, so I was kind of used to it. And I remember my freshman crew coach, like, well, she had a great quote at MIT, is like, hey, when the body’s tired, work the mind. The mind is tired, work the body. And I have always found like a good workout will especially sometimes I just push myself, like working out, because then, like, once you’re in enough physical pain, like you stop thinking about work, so then you also get natural endorphins, and you sleep better. And so for me, you know, taking care of myself physically. And then I also, later I learned I got a conscious leadership coach, Jim desmer. He also taught me how to meditate and breathe. And so now I have those daily routines kind of what I call, you know, spiritual, physical and mental self care, so that I’m in a position to deal with the anxiety, you know, and still make good decisions and still be inspirational to our teams. And so I think really taking care of yourself, physically, mentally, spiritually, is, you know, extremely important otherwise, and I’ve been doing it now for almost 25 years building companies. Otherwise there’s no way. I think I’d still be doing it, you know, if I didn’t, didn’t take good care of myself. Godard, you
27:28
talk a lot about the climb, and personally, I’m someone that loves the climb. I’m a Dan and her guy, and big believer in continuous improvement. Always climbing. Find that next summit. Find the next peak, you know, talk about your philosophy here and the culture that you have built at g2 and
27:45
I do, I do love peaks and parties. I move to Colorado, so I love real climbs. And now I like actually doing my skis in the winter. You know, back country, uphill skiing. Okay, we’re like, What do you mean? You ski uphill? Yes, you get skins, and you can skin up to the to the peak. And enough times. It takes a long time, but it does like, as I mentioned earlier, clears my earlier, clears my head, right? Clears all my work anxiety. But also, like, it’s a great metaphor for company building, you know? And I think also, like, forget, when you building a startup, there are all these ups and downs. It’s like, when you’re climbing a real Summit, all times there’s false peaks, like, Oh, I get over that next hill, that’s the summit, and you get there and you’re like, oh shit, I gotta go down again, up again. And so I think I love the metaphor, and we’ve also made it mnemonic now for our values. So peak also stands for performance, entrepreneurship, authenticity and kindness and and I do think the kindness is important, and that’s like, you know, supporting each other, having a support system. Because, you know, oftentimes in business, you are struggling, you’re not hitting your goals yet that quarter, then, you know, being kind and authentic with each other. We can support each other, coach each other, and like, you know, sometimes you have to hunker down in a blizzard and maybe snuggle in the same tent. But you know, if you have that team with you, and you have that commitment to your vision, like, one day I will get to the peak I’ve always found as a team. You know, we found a way to get there, and so far, all our ventures have found ultimate success. Coder, do
29:05
you have a framework or any advice for folks running companies on how to build AI into everything they’re doing? You know, it’s one thing to purchase, you know, AI products and leverage AI models or infra. But, you know, how do we practice what we preach and sort of instill into our culture and our organizations? You know, a lot of the advancements that come with AI,
29:34
and I do think AI has been one of those shifts where founder mode is required. You know, I think for any existing software companies that were started before chat, GPT 3.5 because we certainly believe a g2 the way people use software, or even the way they interact with websites like g2 is going to totally change. And traditionally, we built g2 very much for the or the Google Search paradigm. And people would search for CRM software, they would discover you. G2 so it’s kind of built on that vision of the consumer internet, which did work well for a decade, but obviously now with chat GPT 3.5 we’re seeing more and more buyers. They start on chat GPT, right? They just ask, chat GPT, hey, what’s the best CRM software? And so we have at g2 we actually partner with open AI. We’ve built our own g2 AI Monty, that’s now the ultimate software buying advisor. And actually, I put my co founders on that. So Mike wheeler, our CTO Tim handoff our product co founder. They lead our labs team. We call it, and you might have also seen Dharmesh at HubSpot. He leads their labs team. He built their AI. So we put our founders on it. Because I think about a month after launch, we’re like, wow, we gotta, we have to innovate here. And so we’ve launched a buyer Monty. Now we’ve also launched a seller Monty agent, where seller Monte is kind of like a virtual AI SDR, on your g2 profile for vendor, it can actually answer all the buyers questions, walk them down the funnel, book a demo, or even close a deal. So we’re excited. You know, it’s really accelerating the g2 marketplace vision, where, with our AI Monty agents for the buyer and the seller, we can be much better matchmaker for software and you know, we’ve also for our investor product. We’ve also, we call it g2 data solutions, data solutions for investors and consultants to the software industry. We’ve also added a monty for we call market intelligence. But now you can just ask Monty, Hey, how’s the software vendor doing? Who are they competing with? Why are they winning? Why are they losing? Kind of all the questions an investor would have in diligence they can now ask our AI Monte so we’ve created new persona interfaces based on generative AI chat experiences, and we’re applying it aggressively internally. And I think, just like everyone else, I think one of the first use cases being support. And you might have seen by an alligan HubSpot founder, chairman, he just tweeted that he thinks, he thinks support is kind of the second AI use case of cross to chasm. He’s they’re saying HubSpot customers reporting 60% case automation on average for support. We’re not that high yet at g2 Wow. But we’ve also launched an AI Monty for customer support, and I think the other use case Brian Halligan mentioned is for content writing and g2 we also have a lot of content writers, so we’re using AI writing assistance, and that’s also been one of the most popular categories on g2 I think there’s 487, AI writing assistance listed right now in g2 and so we’re but I think, like I said, founder mode, I’m encouraging. Obviously, we talked about the external innovation, but also internally. I think for most tech companies, right, I think there’s so many opportunities right for automation. And I just mentioned, I think support and marketing writing, I think being two the best ones, where I think AI is already, you know, boosting productivity dramatically. And I think if you’re not using it, you know, especially in a software tech business, I think you know, you’ll soon be in trouble
32:49
when it comes to support. Are you able to train those agents on previous tickets, whether they be written or recorded phone calls? Yes.
32:57
And you know, you can even do Gong calls tickets. Obviously, we’re now looking at the new agent force for Salesforce. We do use the Salesforce support desk. So far, we built our Monty. We just used our own kind of chatgpt trained model. But I do think, and also that’s the arms race now in tech, right? Everyone’s introducing better AI agent builders, and I think we’re also experimenting and learning quickly, you know, like everyone else. But I do think most processes at g2 and I don’t think it’s full automation, you know, but I think certainly it’s human assistance, right, but partial automation, but like in support being great example, like the basic, simple kind of, what you’d call tier one, support automated anyway, right? And then the humans can focus on tier two, tier three. And what I’m hoping more, we can turn our support reps into customer success agents, you know, where they actually give our customers strategic advice, because they’re freed up from kind of all the mundane cases and ticket resolutions. Yep,
33:47
yep. So so got our gear in Boulder and Fast Company published this article titled, what tech entrepreneurs can learn from Deion Sanders coaching playbook. What if anything? Do you think founders can learn from coach Brian?
34:02
Well, one, I think bold vision. And, you know, he came to Colorado two years ago, and I did become a huge fan my boys. Also, we have twin boys who are now sophomores at CU so they started cus same time as coach prime and, but I think he said that really bold vision. He’s like, I’m gonna win a national title. Yeah, and he was walking into a one in 11 team, and Colorado, I think, last, won a national title in 1991 it’s been a lot of tough years there, yeah, but I think so, I think, you know, having a very bold vision, also being willing to put it out there. And he also brought great talent, you know, he was brought his son, Shay doer, brought Travis Hunter. And so I think also entrepreneurs, you have to go out and attract great talent. And I think he’s persevered through criticism, you know. And I think his first season, obviously started out great. They were three, and now had all kinds of hype. ESPN was here in Boulder every week, and then obviously went the other way. He lost like seven games in a row, but I think he stuck to his vision, and this year, now they’re four and one again. And all of a sudden, in the beginning of the year, the media was just saying, oh, Prime was a bust. You. You know, he doesn’t actually know how to coach a football team, right? He’s getting all kinds of criticism. I also relate that as an entrepreneur, I do remember, like in 2020 we do some cutbacks at the Queen event. Business Insider wrote kind of a hit piece on me, and, you know, said, What a foolish entrepreneur I was. And so I think you also and deserve it as a leader, right? If you’re in the public, you get criticism, but his ability to persevere, you know, stick to his vision, keep focusing on his talent and his players, and keep executing his plays. And, you know, and then, and then, really transforming a program. And I think he’s already had tremendous impact on Colorado, where every game is not sold out. I think applications to see you the university were up something like 30% you know, African American applications were up 90% Wow. And so I think you can just he’s really showing what inspirational leadership can do, courageous leadership. So that’s why I find tremendous inspiration in coach prime. And obviously he’s a hell of a marketer. You know, I think millions of Insta followers, and that’s actually not by luck either. He now teaches a marketing class at CU but he has his son, Deion Sanders JR. He’s actually his full time social media guy, and actually runs all his channels for him. So it’s very deliberate. You know, he’s investing in it, and so getting them all better. I think he’s doing all the things a great entrepreneur would do. And of course, he’s also a Hall of Fame football player, which I’ll never be, but, but as an entrepreneur, I can, I can draw a lot of inspiration
36:15
from him. It’s kind of amazing how he, I mean, much like a Kobe Bryant or something, Dion was, you know, this elite two store sport player, right? But he didn’t stop there. He built this massive career in media, and then he restarted late, later in life. I don’t know how old he is, but he’s not a young guy. And he started coaching in high school, and then got a college job at, what was it, Jackson State, and then now he’s, you know, coaching one of the bigger programs.
36:42
He’s pretty amazing, 5758 but you’re right. He didn’t start, you know, collegiate coaching until he was like, 53 and, and you’re right. He’s reinventing himself. And now I think, you know, already becoming probably one of the highest, sort of the highest impact coaches, if you look at it by, you know, impact to the university and revenue and and he’s starting to win on the football field too. It’s, it is quite amazing.
37:05
I mean, the only other athlete I can think of that has done, that has been so successful in so many different different domains, is Kobe Bryant, with his Oscar for writing and, you know, rest in peace. But
37:15
yeah, magic, I don’t know if you study. Magic Johnson, yeah. Magic Johnson, yeah. Very good. He’s also become a hell of an entrepreneur, you know, I think he has, I’ve heard tons of businesses in LA movie studios, and just become an incredible entrepreneur, you know, post basketball and obviously also HIV positive and but another incredible story of a former athlete now an incredible entrepreneur. Yeah, good one, good art. If
37:38
we can feature anyone here on the show, who do you think we should interview, and what topic would you like to hear them speak about?
37:43
Maybe you already got them, but Sam Altman,
37:46
haven’t had him yet. No, and he is top of mind.
37:49
I think you saw he just raised another $6 billion today. I did see that. Yeah, and, and I do think he, more than anyone, is leading this gen AI revolution. So I find him most fascinating,
38:00
interesting timing, right? Like they’ve dealt with some leadership challenges there and some defections, and then, boom, he closes another massive round.
38:08
I’m sure he also has, yeah, great personal stories. Yes. Goddard,
38:12
what book, article or video would you recommend to listeners?
38:14
One maybe slightly off the beaten path, called Inner Engineering, okay, by Seth guru, who’s an Indian spiritual guru, and he talks all about Inner Engineering, which is, you know, how do you really, truly take care of yourself, engineer yourself for happiness as well as successful impact in the world. And so I highly recommend Inner Engineering. Wow.
38:35
And can you embrace those principles and still be a successful entrepreneur? Yes, okay, I am a buyer of that book. God, do you have any habits, tactics or behaviors that are a force multiplier?
38:47
I mentioned working out every day, even like last week, I went to India, and I arrived at 3am on Tuesday, and I got up at 6am to work out. Didn’t really want to, but I always find I feel much better after I do. I
39:02
love that quote you shared earlier. You know, when the mind is tired, work the body. When the body’s tired, work the mind. Yes. So I try that every day. And then finally, here, Godard, what’s the best way for listeners to connect with you and follow along with you too. I
39:16
love LinkedIn, so just go to our table, find me on LinkedIn, and let’s connect. I always love, love hearing especially from fellow entrepreneurs. Okay, he
39:24
is Goddard able, the firm is g2 which has eclipsed over 100 million. Arr, sir. Thank you so much for the time today. Really appreciate all the words of wisdom and looking forward to the next big milestones for g2
39:37
Thanks, Nick. Fun chatting with you.
39:42
Hello. All right, that’ll wrap up today’s interview. If you enjoyed the episode or a previous one, let the guest know about it. Share your thoughts on social or shoot them an email. Let them know what particularly resonated with you. I can’t. And tell you how much I appreciate that some of the smartest folks in venture are willing to take the time and share their insights with us. If you feel the same, a compliment goes a long way. Okay, that’s a wrap for today. Until next time, remember to over prepare, choose carefully and invest confidently. Thanks so much for listening.
