近日，风险投资机构GGV 纪源资本在旧金山Pearl 展厅举办了第二届GGV Evolving Enterprise峰会。我们有幸邀请到来自顶级科技公司的创始人和高管等五十多位杰出演讲嘉宾，向大家分享他们在产品、上市、人才和商务拓展等方面见解的想法。
以下是本次活动的一些重点：
GGV 纪源资本管理合伙人Glenn Solomon和Square公司首席财务官兼营运主管Sarah Friar。
Sarah Friar（Square公司首席财务官兼营运主管）在炉边讲话中强调说，让团队成员从客户的角度思考问题，并感受到客户的压力是非常重要的。于是，Square直接让工程师团队入驻旧金山一家颇受欢迎的餐厅Soulva，让他们在现实生活中使用销售时点信息系统，高压的环境有利于工程师团队更好的体会顾客的痛点，促进工程师的同理心。上市后后，Square在每期收益报告中都强调商家利益。“我们希望受到挑战，进行公开谈话。”她还强调，她更关心员工的输出，而非输入。她不会给员工具体的工作指导，相反她喜欢“退后一步，让员工自己摸索“，推动更广泛的创新和更多元化的解决方法。
参加我们 “Series A”研讨会的专家分享了他们对如何确定产品/市场适合性，精简组织结构，选择正确的早期客户以及协调初始执行团队的建议。
Ilir Sela（Slice）、Dave Vasen（Brighwheel）和Tiffany Chu（Remix）参与了由Jeff Richards（GGV纪源资本管理合伙人）主持的座谈会。
Tiffany Chu（Remix联合创始人、CEO，Remix旨在为公共机构研发过渡性计划软件）仔细查看了她LinkedIn的好友，并邀请其中所有城市规划官员到她的办公室接受采访，分享他们工作中的困难和Tiffany Chu可以帮助他们的地方。这轮初次用户访谈验证了她的团队研究方向的有效性。
同时，她还警告早期阶段的公司要仔细挑选最初的客户。Remix早期与一位顾客签订了一个很大的订单，然而顾客的复杂要求Remix无法交付，最终部署失败。几年后，Remix用更为成熟的产品和团队赢回了这位客户。
Tiffany Chu还谈到了她如何看待公司技术对客户及其社区的影响。“我非常关注技术对社会的影响。每当Remix进驻一个新的城市并产生一定影响，都是一场胜利。“
Ilir Sela（Slice创始人兼首席执行官，Slice是独立比萨店最大的技术提供商）鼓励创始人用更有创意的方式寻找人才，并讲述了他如何在其家乡马其顿建立起一个300人团队，这一队伍使得他在全球竞争中占据了低人力成本的优势。 早期精简的组织结构使得Ilir的公司年销售额达高达4000万美元。Ilir还谈到了产品决策的重要性，在团队投入和个人愿景之间取得平衡。“你必须倾听团队的意见，但也要当机立断。”
Dave Vasen（Brightwheel创始人兼首席执行官，Brightwheel是早教行业领先的垂直软件研发公司）认为，早起团队人员的选取需要有外科手术般的精准度和针对性，因为初创团队会影响公司文化，后期更换的成本极高。
此外，他建议创始人留出时间进行自我反思，与高层管理人员一起工作，并定期收集团队的反馈意见，这会帮助创始人在日常的工作之外，站在更高的层次上思考公司的战略和方向。他也鼓励团队内部的交流，“我不想员工只是点头，而是真正的参与决策。我们要推彼此一把。“
在公司发展和增长的研讨会上，专家分享了他们在建立市场推动力，内容营销的重要性以及如何处理客户回头率和追加销售方面的经验。
Jenny Roy（Gladly），Edith Harbaugh（Launch Darkly）和Dave McJannet（Hashi Corp）参与了由Crystal Huang（GGV纪源资本投资执行董事）和Alex Choy（SVB企业级软件部副总裁）主持了本次公司发展和增长研讨会。
Jenny Roy（Gladly营销副总裁，Gladly研发顾客服务与支持的软件）谈到了Gladly在公司建立初期就指派了一位从事人力资源管理的副总裁，因为他们认为良好的招聘、面试和入职流程有利于树立公司的口碑。公司发展的各个阶段里，她曾带领不同的销售团队，面向消费者和公司销售不同类型产品。在她看来，并没有适用于所有情况的黄金法则，她鼓励团队去尝试，但是如果影响策略行不通，就抓紧放弃转换思路。
Edith Harbaugh（软件管理平台Launch Darkly首席执行官）强调了内容营销对创建新类别的重要性。其团队编写了许多关于Netflix和Facebook等大牌客户案例研究的博客，并利用Edith本人广受好评的个人博客“To Be Continuous”，面向软件研发者和市场，讨论特性切换的重要性。她还强调随着团队的增长，企业文化也应到有所调整。“有些人不喜欢改变，但是8个人的公司和80个人的公司文化理应有所不同。”
Dave McJannet（基础设施自动化软件制造商Hashi Corp首席执行官）提及Hashi Corp在年度客户会议中的提前投入，以及这样做的积极影响。他表示，该公司第一个小规模Hashi Corp会议“让公司看上去比实际规模要大很多”，现在公司已经有数百名年会参与者。他认同Jenny Roy重视早期人力资源主管的观点，尤其是在雇佣公司最初的50-60名员工，因为他们将在业务规模扩大时形成核心的业务文化。
Dave认为营销是一场漫长的比赛，“我们不去衡量年度客户会议的直接影响。我们对其效果有信心，所以愿意组织它。”
Stewart Butterfield (Slack)结束了本次炉边讲话。
最后，Stewart Butterfield（领先的企业协作平台Slack联合创始人、CEO）谈论了工匠精神和真正了解终端用户日常体验的重要性。Slack创始初期，虽然他从未研发过企业软件，但他预想了软件使用者的情况，面对日常的家庭和财务负担，复杂的软件只会增加用户的压力。最后，他决定研发出“让人们在工作中使用起来赞叹不已并会向他人推荐的的软件”。
他还表示，尽管遭到了他的批评，但他并不后悔Slack在纽约时报刊登的整版大胆广告“致亲爱的微软”——“微软团队发布后的109天里，109篇文章提及微软的文章有107篇在标题中提到了Slack。“
Last week, GGV Capital hosted its second annual Evolving Enterprise summit at the Pearl in San Francisco. We were lucky to be joined bymore than 50 founders and executives from top enterprise technology companies, as well as exceptional speakers who shared insights on product, go-to-market, talent and scaling.
Here are a few of the top takeaways:
Sarah Friar (CFO & Head of Operations at Square) emphasized during her fireside chat that it is incredibly important for team members toput themselves in the shoes of the customer and “live the struggle.” Square puta team of their engineers behind the counter at Soulva, a popular San Franciscorestaurant, to enable them to actually use the point-of-sale system in a reallife, high pressure setting to fully understand customer pain points and strengthen empathy for Square customers. Following its IPO, Square highlightsits merchants in every earnings report and encourages them to ask questions onearnings calls. “We want to be challenged, to have an open conversation.” She also stressed that she manages people around output, not input, and doesn’t believe in being prescriptive in how goals are met — she likes to “step backand let people figure it out,” driving a broader range of innovation and more diverse approaches.
The panelists on our “Series A” panel shared advice on identifying product/market fit, staying lean, picking the right early customers andaligning the initial exec team.
Tiffany Chu (Co-Founder and COO of Remix, which builds transit planning software for public agencies) looked through her Linkedin connections and invited every urban planning official in her network to her offices toconduct interviews on their pain points and how her product could help them. This round of initial user interviews helped her team validate that they were onto something.
She also warns early stage companies to pick initial customer scarefully — Remix signed a big deal early on with a sophisticated customer, couldn’t deliver and the deployment failed. Ultimately, they won that customerback years later with a more mature product and team. Tiffany also talked about measuring the impact her technology is having on her customers’ communities.“ I’m very focused on social impact. Every time a city uses Remix to make adecision that affects change, it’s a win.”
Ilir Sela (Founder and CEO of Slice, the largest technology provider to independent pizzerias) encouraged founders to be creative in looking for talent and told the story of how he built a 300-person team in his birthplace of Macedonia, giving his organization global leverage in a lower cost environment. Going lean in the early days enabled Ilir to bootstrap the business to $40M in annual sales. Ilir also talked about the importance ofhaving a true north around product decisions, and balancing team input with astrong personal vision for the product. “You have to listen to the team, butalso know when to just make a decision.”
Dave Vasen (Founder and CEO of Brightwheel, the leading vertical software provider for Pre-K education) believes in highly “surgical and targeted” hiring at the early stages, as the first hires can have a huge impacton culture — and are costly to replace. He also advised founders to make timefor self- reflection, to consider working with an executive coach and to regularly collect feedback from the team, as all of these enable them to think about strategy and direction at a high level separately from the weeds of day-to-day operations. He also talked about open dialogue, “I don’t want folks to just nod their heads, but instead, engage. We need to push each other.”
The panelists on our growth stage / scaling panel shared their insights on building a go-to-market engine, the importance of content marketing and how they manage retention/upsell.
Jenny Roy (VP of Marketing at Gladly, which builds customer support & engagement software) talked about how Gladly brought on a VP of People early on in the company’s life because they see well-run recruiting, interviewing and onboarding processes as opportunities to build a great reputation. She has run marketing teams in many stages of organizations, across both consumer and enterprise products, but has no hard rules on the ideal marketing stack — she encourages people to experiment and quickly shut down campaigns that aren’t working.
Edith Harbaugh (CEO of Launch Darkly, a feature management plat formfor software delivery) highlighted the importance of content marketing forcreating a new category. The team wrote many blogs on customer case studies with big names such as Netflix and Facebook, and leveraged Edith’s own popular developer-centric podcast, “To Be Continuous,” to educate the market on feature flags and why they matter. She also talked about actively shifting the cultureas the team grows, “Some people don’t like it, but the culture at 8 people can’t be the same as at 80 people.”
Dave McJannet (CEO of Hashi Corp, a builder of infrastructure automation software) talked about how Hashi Corp invested early in an annual customer conference, and the positive impact of doing so. He said that the company’s first humble Hashi Conf “made us seem bigger than we were” and the annual event has now grown to hundreds of attendees. He agreed with Jenny Royon the importance of hiring a Head of People early on to focus on hiring theright 50–60 initial people because they will form the core culture for the business as it scales. Dave also talked about marketing as a long game, “We don’t try to measure the direct impact of the conference. We have confidence it works, and we run with it.”
Finally, Stewart Butterfield (Co-Founder and CEO of Slack, the leading enterprise collaboration platform) talked about product craftsmanship and the importance of really understanding the day to day experience of an enduser. When he started building Slack, he had never built enterprise software before, but he thought about the realities of the real life of the user, who has normal day-to-day family and financial stresses and how bad software could compound that. As a result of this thought process, he built a product that people would rave about at work and tell other people to use.
He also said that he had no regrets about Slack’s bold full-page “Dear Microsoft” ad in The New York Times, despite the criticism he received — “The day after Microsoft Teams launched, there were 109 articles written about it and 107 mentioned Slack in the title.”
Thanks to everyone who joined us for the event. We appreciate your time and look forward to staying connected.
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