The 'Five C's' of Cloud Success Revealed

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I do believe there is a lot of things that you can get over time, just like any

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partnership

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or I talk a lot about, like I call partnerships, even in my own world, I call

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them friendships,

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just like your personal friendships.

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And most people have a lot of Facebook LinkedIn connections, they know a lot of

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people,

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their neighbors, their ecosystem around them that are friends, but you probably

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have very

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few best friends in your world.

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And to get to that point, you're probably into similar things.

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It takes effort.

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Welcome to Unlock Cloud Go-To-Market.

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The series where hosts Aaron Feiger and Patrick Riley share the essential

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stages of the

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Cloud GTM maturity model to start, optimize, and grow your company's revenue

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through the

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cloud.

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They've helped countless ISVs tackle the ins and outs of their Cloud GTM motion

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And in each episode, they're sharing those success stories from the people who

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have put

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them into place.

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And ultimately, this way of thinking is the future and the future is now.

1:03

Everybody and welcome to another episode of Unlock Cloud Go-To-Market.

1:05

I'm co-host Patrick Riley.

1:07

I'm co-host Aaron Feiger.

1:09

And today we sit down and talk with Michael Musselman, VP of Partnerships for

1:14

Astronomer,

1:14

formerly of Lacework, a tackle customer advisory board member, as well as an

1:19

advisor of

1:20

Cady Shack. He talks to us today in depth about a number of his frameworks,

1:25

successes, and

1:26

a ton of great analogies.

1:28

You're definitely not going to want to miss.

1:29

But also one key fact around how he sees the alliance leaders within a ISV as

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entrepreneurs

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and how they run a small business within your larger business.

1:43

Stay tuned.

1:44

Today, we are joined by a very special guest, Michael Musselman.

1:48

He is the VP of Partnerships at Astronomer, formerly of Lacework, and a very

1:53

trusted tackle

1:54

customer advisory board member.

1:56

Michael, thank you for being here with us today.

1:59

Thanks for having me.

2:00

I'm excited.

2:01

Well, today, just as if we've done an every episode for those of you that are

2:04

new to join,

2:06

the idea of this podcast is to help you unlock your cloud-to-market by going

2:10

through the

2:11

tackle maturity model and dissecting stories from customers and ISVs who have

2:16

had success,

2:16

seeing challenges, and overcome those challenges on their way to growth.

2:22

The tackle maturity model is where we look at our customers in four different

2:26

buckets,

2:27

with establishing foundation being the first bucket, moving up to building

2:31

adoption, driving

2:32

adoption, and scaling adoption within the cloud marketplaces.

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Each of those phases of maturity, we break down into four different categories.

2:41

We focus on people, processes, technology, and alliances.

2:44

Today, when we talk to Michael, we're going to go into a little bit of the

2:49

establishing

2:49

foundation phase of maturity.

2:51

We'll start there, and he's got some great tips throughout.

2:54

We might sprinkle in a couple extra scaling tips for you, so stick around for

2:59

that.

2:59

Without further ado, I'll turn it over to Aaron, and we'll get started.

3:02

Thanks, Michael, for joining us.

3:03

I'm so excited for you to share all your years of experiences.

3:08

You've been at this now for five-ish years.

3:11

You know, share with our audience a little bit about your first time in the

3:17

role, and now

3:18

you're doing this all over again at Astronomer.

3:21

Love to get a little bit more of a background for our audience.

3:25

Yeah, I kind of stumbled upon this, and I think it'll come up later in some

3:28

other discussions

3:29

about characteristics, and I think I've been successful in it, but I honestly

3:34

have just

3:35

been learning a lot.

3:37

So I was employee 68 at Lacework, which is a security cloud security company.

3:43

Prior to that, I was Sales Engineering, Sales Engineering Leader at several

3:48

companies.

3:49

One was in the cloud, and in that last company, I transitioned from running our

3:53

worldwide sales

3:54

engineering team into kind of a business development partnerships role.

3:58

And so that was a SaaS call, and I started working with more tech partners.

4:02

And even though we were built on AWS, I really didn't understand what that

4:04

thing was

4:05

all about.

4:06

So I get to Lacework on employee 68, and we're kind of going to build out like

4:11

what's the

4:12

partner strategy, tech partners?

4:14

What do we do?

4:15

We don't know.

4:17

And in all reality, I think because of having the background and being close to

4:20

the pipeline

4:21

and being close to sales, I started getting sellers that maybe had come from

4:25

other companies

4:26

early on.

4:27

Let's say it was Snowflake or Zoom a logic or, you know, CrowdStrike or people

4:30

that already

4:31

had strong, and they were asking me questions about what's our strategy going

4:34

to be?

4:35

How are we going to work with AWS?

4:36

We're built on AWS.

4:38

Or I'd have a lot of people, can we transact through the marketplace?

4:40

And so my first question, I was like, I don't know.

4:45

Give me a second and we'll go figure this out.

4:47

Actually, that's exactly how I stumbled on tackle, because I didn't know enough

4:52

So I needed people who knew more than me to help.

4:55

Turns out, you know, the sales team at tackle were pretty helpful.

4:58

They knew that.

4:59

And I figured, well, we could probably figure this out on our own, but at that

5:02

time, my

5:03

team of one, I didn't have any developers.

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I didn't know how to build marketplace listings or I didn't know any of that.

5:09

So I needed help and you guys actually were there to help me understand and

5:13

navigate so

5:14

that I could go back to my sales team and say, yes, we can transact and they

5:17

hate to be

5:17

a smart marketplace.

5:18

And so that was the first time I met tackle and that's kind of that.

5:22

And then the journey at lacework was nothing short of amazing from just

5:27

figuring out how

5:29

to partner with a big hyper-scale or in this case, I started with AWS.

5:34

And what's important of them and what did they want us to do and how do they

5:38

measure us

5:39

and then, you know, we'll talk more and deep later about some of these things.

5:44

But in the very beginning, it was just figuring that out and then you can't do

5:47

it alone.

5:47

So I needed a team to help me and, you know, we started to use more and more of

5:52

tackle

5:52

capabilities and apply it to our business differently.

5:56

And then since then, I've been able to like speak with and in front of other

5:59

audiences,

6:00

speak with other partners, learn from other partners.

6:02

And so, you know, it's just been really, really fun journey.

6:06

And then joining us, Ron and I own all partnerships.

6:09

So slightly different space.

6:11

I'm not in security like the last run.

6:14

I have to think about all partners.

6:16

So tech, cloud, size, bars, you know, MSPs, OEMs, there's a lot more to

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consider.

6:22

But I think the roots are still there.

6:23

And I'm able to like kind of apply the same thing and the experiences and the

6:27

relationships

6:27

and maybe get us there a little bit faster.

6:30

And so I'm happy to share all those experiences.

6:32

But that's how I got here today.

6:34

I was going to bring up a catty check and let you plug that in for a second.

6:39

That's just honestly like I spend little time, but it was a community.

6:43

What I found is there was very few people that I think understood how to

6:47

partner with AWS

6:49

or with Google or Microsoft.

6:51

And those people, a lot of their value was that knowledge and that experience.

6:56

And I found some of them were very open to sharing that one on one, but I

7:00

couldn't find

7:02

very little content.

7:03

There was no podcast like this.

7:06

So it's like you had to learn either by making friends or by making strong

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partnerships

7:12

or by school of hard knocks experience.

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And so I think what a few of us found was once we kind of figured it out, a lot

7:20

of people

7:21

would come to us and ask us for help.

7:23

That doesn't really scale very well.

7:24

So the short answer was through tackle and even their forums and some of those

7:29

ways.

7:30

But we also started an AWS community of Cads, Cloud Alliance directors called

7:35

Catty

7:35

Shack.

7:36

And so that was a simple way for us to just help others and partner with AWS

7:41

and get feedback

7:42

to AWS about tools that they build for us like ACE and marketplace.

7:47

And so I think over time that's just developed into a really neat complimentary

7:52

to companies

7:53

like yourself into AWS and to the community so that like rising tide to kind of

7:59

lift all

7:59

ships.

8:01

You're learning this through like grassroots, like hands on experiences.

8:06

You're pulling together and finding other like-minded individuals like, hey,

8:11

you're doing

8:12

this.

8:13

It's not just like you're in the role.

8:16

You're also in this role and you're like-minded like me.

8:20

And so you're starting to pull together like-minded folks and creating this

8:24

community.

8:24

What are some of those characteristics that you see in that like-mindedness?

8:31

I think you're always looking in mirror and trying to figure out, okay, if I'm

8:34

successful

8:35

in this role or others are asking me for help, I must be doing something right.

8:39

What is it that I either learned in the decade before I started doing this for,

8:45

you know,

8:45

if I'm going to go higher teams that helped me, right, I should hire people who

8:49

are smarter,

8:50

faster or whatever, I've just waddled down the characteristics that I look for

8:55

when I've

8:55

added people to my team, right?

8:57

And then obviously like there's a little bit of a mirror because we have to

9:00

work together,

9:01

we have to speak together and they honestly have to carry out a lot of the

9:05

strategies

9:05

that we come up together.

9:06

I don't know these things, I've learned a lot from the team I hired at least

9:10

where I still

9:11

am very close to them.

9:13

But I look for things like intelligence and curiosity.

9:16

I look for drive, right, I can't give you what your mama didn't, I always joke

9:20

and say,

9:21

I look for this entrepreneurial spirit and I think there's this book by Carol D

9:26

work

9:26

called Mindset and I think there's this fixed mindset and this growth mindset

9:30

and I find

9:31

that entrepreneurial type of people look at a problem and they're like, hmm, I

9:35

have to

9:35

go solve this rather than, I can't do that, I can't, I don't know how, I don't

9:40

want to learn

9:40

something new.

9:42

And then I just generally, I think, be honest, how would AWS as a partner trust

9:48

you if you're

9:48

just not honest with them?

9:49

So I think those characteristics are what I usually interview for and I'm

9:53

looking to build

9:54

our teams with that.

9:56

But then what I've realized is those skills make for really good aligns

10:01

director or leader

10:02

because what people don't see is behind the curtain, we probably spent 80% of

10:08

our time communicating

10:09

and selling to our own teams and our own business and has nothing to do with

10:14

the outward

10:15

facing partnership.

10:16

And so that's the part where these skills, you don't know how you're going to

10:19

use them,

10:20

but you realize they're very handy and helpful for getting what you want out of

10:25

your partner,

10:26

but certainly for making your team helpful to the business and helpful to all

10:31

these other

10:31

teams in the business.

10:34

That's a great point to bring up that you're looking at this as kind of a small

10:38

business if

10:38

you will within your bigger enterprise and you're trying to, trying to build

10:42

that out.

10:42

Yeah, you've got that entrepreneur, that's where that entrepreneurial mindset

10:45

comes from.

10:46

Can you elaborate a little bit more on why that is important?

10:51

A lot of people listening to the podcast might not quite understand, like, what

10:55

do you mean

10:55

I have to build a business within this?

10:57

There's very few things you can do in a business other than like, in this case,

11:01

business development

11:02

or partnerships that if done well, touch all areas of the business.

11:08

So I always think of like an octopus and I've got like eight legs all over the

11:12

business,

11:13

but wait, we started this conversation with marketplace.

11:17

I have analogies I've used them before, but how's owning a small business, my

11:21

wife owned

11:21

a retail store once upon a time and like, let's just say you accept a catch.

11:26

Tomorrow you're like, wow, there's this whole set of users that wants to pay by

11:29

credit card.

11:30

And so I want to accept that.

11:32

Well, one thing is to just say I want to accept it, but the second is, wait, I

11:36

need a bank

11:36

account.

11:37

I need a terminal to charge the cards.

11:40

Wait, I need a merchant account to process the transactions.

11:44

Wait, I used to get a dollar.

11:46

Now I'm getting a dollar less than like MxCs or Discover fees.

11:50

Wait, I need to reconcile between cash versus credit card purchase.

11:55

All of that.

11:56

I've needed to change my accounting model, right?

11:58

So even that is a completely different language that my finance team, my APAR,

12:05

my CFO, that's

12:06

very different marketplace touches money.

12:08

That makes me valuable in the business, but also like, there's a whole line of

12:12

business

12:12

there that you have to consider.

12:15

That's what I'm selling out of the country, taxation, that, like, there's a

12:19

whole other thing

12:19

that touches legal, right?

12:21

I'm signing up for marketplace.

12:22

There's these contracts legal terms of service, MSA is one of your company

12:27

calls them, like,

12:28

you're involved in that.

12:30

Where you report to is who's kind of giving me direction for what they want by

12:34

function

12:34

to doing the business.

12:36

But as a shareholder and someone who's like, yeah, I want to make the company

12:40

money.

12:41

Well, revenue starts with pipelines.

12:43

So now I'm touching sales and most of us and many of us like online to the CRO

12:48

function

12:48

or the revenue side of the business.

12:50

But guess what?

12:51

There's two sides of revenue.

12:52

Actually, there's three.

12:53

I've called demand and marketing once and I just touched marketing the CMO.

12:57

But in many companies, sometimes your renewal business is different than your

13:01

net new sales

13:02

business.

13:03

So, wow, I just touched two other lines of business, right?

13:05

Because if I don't consider renewals, well, my renewals are some competitors

13:09

net new business.

13:11

And my new business is obviously where I'd want to co-sell in some of this.

13:16

So now I've just touched those line of businesses.

13:21

Paco helps me with operational excellence, but like a lot of the people

13:23

processing technology.

13:24

Wait, I just said ops.

13:26

Now, wait, where does the ops report?

13:28

Sometimes to revenue, sometimes the CRO.

13:30

Oh, my gosh, that's another line of business, right?

13:33

All of them have different goals, different KPIs, different personalities.

13:40

How do I ever make them want to work for me for this bigger outcome?

13:45

Now, even if I am the CEO or the CEO sit right next to me, that still doesn't

13:50

mean that everyone

13:50

wants to do what you want them to do in the time frame that you want them to do

13:54

that.

13:54

Yeah.

13:55

And you've got to like change how you talk to each of them.

13:59

And as you navigate going and getting your business stakeholders on board and

14:03

keeping them

14:04

on board, you have to continue to pitch your business to them in a way that's

14:10

meaningful

14:11

to them.

14:12

And in the metrics that are going to matter for that particular area of the

14:17

organization.

14:18

I think I just had my own aha moment here for a minute, Michael, in that I'm an

14:22

entrepreneur

14:23

and created a business, sold my business to tackle.

14:27

And I now realize like why I'm so attracted to cloud alliance leaders inside of

14:32

all of the

14:32

partners that I've worked with because we all share that entrepreneurial spirit

14:37

I do really think that that is a big key characteristic of a cloud alliance

14:42

person.

14:43

It's like you are an entrepreneur at heart as an entrepreneur.

14:47

We're sometimes really hard to manage.

14:49

So where do you think like this role should best align or in your experiences,

14:55

like maybe

14:55

sometimes in the beginning of a journey in the earlier stages, you report into

15:01

a different

15:01

area of the business.

15:03

And then as you mature, you might change.

15:05

Can you share a little bit about how you've seen in your own experiences and

15:10

across having

15:11

access to lots of folks in the network through Caddy Shack, like where the

15:15

alliance role typically

15:17

is aligning and how that changes throughout the maturity?

15:20

I wouldn't have had this vantage point without kind of Caddy Shack over time

15:25

because you

15:26

talked to your peers and I'm doing the job.

15:28

And then I'm talking to others that have done the job before me or way more

15:31

scaled than

15:32

I or are just getting started, but I'm like you, I'm getting to talk to more

15:38

business leaders,

15:39

CROs, you know, SDPs of channels and partners.

15:43

I think at the end of the day, businesses exist to make money.

15:48

So revenue should drive most of the businesses, but there's a lot of different

15:52

tactics for

15:53

where and how you make money because I've also talked to peers that are

15:57

measuring like marketing

15:59

activities or influence which still equates to revenue or the number of integr

16:05

ations into

16:06

AWS services that's really important to them.

16:08

And I think depending on the outcome and depending why they would hire my role

16:13

or someone

16:14

like me or someone like you into that company, there's some why that happened

16:18

before this.

16:19

So I'm usually trying to figure out why do they want to build a partnership

16:22

with one of

16:23

the cloud providers?

16:24

Sure, of course, you're built on them.

16:26

You're spending a bunch of money.

16:27

I get that.

16:28

Why do you want to do this?

16:30

And do you understand what's involved?

16:32

Depending on what it is, there's a bunch of different tactics and the kind of

16:35

people you

16:36

hire and what you do.

16:38

But I do believe like whether it's under the CRO or whether it's under the CMO

16:42

or the CRO,

16:44

it's statistically higher under the CRO and revenue.

16:48

But there are a lot of people under the COO, under the CTO, under the COO, just

16:52

if I roll

16:53

these lines.

16:54

It does this directly for the CEO.

16:56

Right.

16:57

It really does matter, but I think the outcomes that you want kind of back into

17:02

the goals

17:03

that you'll have and then where do those goals fit into the business probably

17:08

makes the

17:08

most sense as far as how I would line that up.

17:11

In the beginning, it's more, where's partnerships or operations like the COO

17:18

and then as you start

17:19

to really get through that initial phase of like laying down those principles,

17:24

then

17:25

it's moves over into like the CRO because it's like now we got to go really

17:29

like impact

17:29

our go-to-market and our revenue and to really unlock that driving adoption and

17:35

scaling adoption.

17:36

We see a lot of times the Alliance team shifts over into the CRO when they're

17:42

kind of crossing

17:43

that chasm from this was something we were incubating to now this is something

17:49

that is

17:49

going to be a meaningful revenue channel for us and we needed to align into the

17:55

CRO.

17:56

Is it ever a meaningful revenue channel?

17:58

That's the big question.

18:01

But I do think there's a lot of it in value and intangibles to any business,

18:05

but I think

18:06

lesson number one that I've seen is that when people look at AWS or Google out

18:13

of the

18:13

gates as a channel or a var or something that they have experience or a GSI

18:19

that they have

18:20

experience working with and they apply that experience and that lens to this

18:26

partner.

18:26

I think there's just a misalignment forever of expectations and I do believe

18:31

whether we're

18:31

talking about Google or AWS, they are incredibly impactful and helpful to your

18:37

business and they

18:38

can definitely do things that you can't do on your own, but if it's like an ATM

18:43

where I put

18:44

in my card and I get a 20 out, it doesn't work that way.

18:48

And so I have to remember this conversation a couple times where I was like,

18:53

what do I get

18:53

out of them?

18:54

What revenue or pipeline do I get?

18:56

I was like, zero.

18:58

First time I ever met my CFO, he asked me that question.

19:00

I was like, zero.

19:01

This doesn't make a lot of sense.

19:03

And I was like, well, that's not the right question.

19:07

It's kind of like, well, then what do we get?

19:09

I was like, ah, then now we're in a better discussion, right?

19:13

Because if that's what you're expecting, you're going to be disappointed.

19:16

But I do believe there is a lot of things that you can get over time, just like

19:21

any partnership

19:22

or I talk a lot about like I call partnerships, even in my whole world, I call

19:25

them friendships,

19:26

just like your personal friendships.

19:28

And most people have a lot of Facebook LinkedIn connections.

19:31

They know a lot of people, their neighbors, their ecosystem around them that

19:35

are friends.

19:36

But you probably have very few best friends in your world.

19:39

And to get to that point, you're probably into similar things.

19:43

It takes effort.

19:44

And so I will quote someone at AWS who I think is awesome, but Carol Pots leads

19:50

like the

19:50

ISV sales team and early on.

19:53

I was like, how do you guys decide who you invest in?

19:56

Which partners are the most important you?

19:57

And I was expecting this metric, KPI, AWS, Amazon based answer.

20:03

She's like, oh, we invest in the partners and invest in us.

20:06

And I was like, wait, that sounds too easy.

20:09

But from not lens, it made a lot of sense.

20:10

It's like, I want to spend my time with the partners that understand our

20:14

business and are

20:15

able to help us achieve our goals.

20:18

That was many years ago and it's always stuck with me as an example.

20:22

But yeah, I don't know if there's a right or wrong answer.

20:25

But I think it depends on the founders, depends on the industry, depends on the

20:29

competitors.

20:30

It depends on where you are.

20:33

Truth be told, at lacework, when I started, I was like, who's our kind of

20:37

competitor?

20:37

And it was like, well, how are we?

20:40

Of course, when Paul Austin company, huge massive, and I was like, wow, they

20:43

have a massive

20:44

team and a massive partnership with AWS, Google and Microsoft.

20:48

Like I'm way behind.

20:49

I've had to go figure that out.

20:50

Why?

20:51

Because I'm aligned to sales.

20:52

And I didn't want to put my sellers in a disadvantage to not be able to sell

20:55

through the marketplace

20:56

and not be able to co-sell with AWS as an example.

21:01

So that's where we started.

21:03

These are excellent points.

21:05

And they all kind of back up the Y.

21:07

I want to make sure we didn't gloss over the fact that you said something

21:11

critical here,

21:12

which is like, you have to understand your Y or Y you're here.

21:16

In our prep call, we talked a little bit about this and it's something you

21:19

brought up.

21:20

I'd love for you to kind of talk through again in this lens, which is that you

21:26

often talk

21:27

to ISVs and your advisory capabilities are in your peer network.

21:32

And you always ask them why first.

21:34

Can you give some examples of like, what a good Y is?

21:38

Because we all understand some of the bad Ys and those expectations setting

21:41

that you brought

21:42

up.

21:43

And I think that those are fantastic.

21:44

What's a good Y?

21:45

I think everyone has experiences.

21:47

So what you're trying to do is connect a future that they don't understand to

21:51

the past of

21:52

their own personal experiences.

21:54

But if you don't understand, and a lot of times now, I'll call it a North Star,

21:57

where we're

21:58

trying to get to in two or three years, you're to understand kind of the past

22:02

or the culture

22:02

of the company or the business you're in or the competition you have or all of

22:07

this stuff.

22:07

I just landed here at astronomer, right?

22:10

Like, this company's been around for a few years.

22:13

We're a managed service built off of an open source, Apache Airflow project

22:18

that's turning

22:19

10 this year.

22:21

There's a massive community of 2,900 developers, millions of downloads a month.

22:27

I don't understand any of that, but someone here does.

22:30

So it's our co-founders, our CEO, our CRO.

22:35

Like I need to go figure out why this stuff exists and then try to apply what I

22:41

know now

22:43

that outcomes and the capabilities of partnering with the cloud and try to

22:47

connect these two

22:48

things together.

22:50

And then I do find that expectations is really the good and the bad, right?

22:54

Because if you're expecting unnatural things or things that are really hard to

22:59

do or I love

22:59

analogies, so I have always said, like, if the cloud or clouds are our solar

23:05

system and

23:05

AWS is our sun, then I want to be in Earth's position, right?

23:09

I want to be close enough to give the work, but not far enough to freeze.

23:13

But me expecting unnatural things is like changing gravity or me telling the

23:19

sun, like, hey,

23:20

I'm cold today.

23:21

Can you turn up the heat a little bit?

23:23

It's just not going to work.

23:25

So if your why is that, then that's okay.

23:30

But maybe the cloud isn't the partnership that we invested.

23:35

Maybe that's not the right go to market.

23:38

I can't even remember one conversation I had with the peer, but like, they

23:42

built awesome

23:43

SaaS software.

23:44

They were built in AWS and their customers were legal.

23:49

And so they're like, I want to go build a partnership with AWS.

23:51

And I was like, why?

23:52

I was like, who are your customers?

23:54

Law firms?

23:55

Like, do they have AWS?

23:56

Do they have committed spends?

23:59

Like, no, I was like, I'm to do that.

24:00

This didn't make any sense for your business and your universe.

24:04

There's much better partners that you should go find and build those

24:08

relationships with

24:09

that help you build pipeline, validate you, transact, whatever the answer is.

24:14

But it's just not this galaxy, right?

24:16

It's not this solar system.

24:18

It's another one for you.

24:20

In there, once you know the why, we have this cloud flywheel.

24:25

And so it's like, where you start in your flywheel could be different.

24:30

So at lacework, you started with marketplace and getting it operational and

24:35

transactable.

24:36

And then you went to co-sale where you start in the flywheel may also change

24:41

depending on

24:42

your why.

24:43

And depending on the resources, depending on the direction of the company.

24:48

And I think much like with tackle, we've been kind of learning this together,

24:52

right?

24:52

And also the sun keeps changing and moving around.

24:56

There isn't a right or wrong answer.

24:59

It really does depend on you and the forces that you're dealing with.

25:04

It's just kind of aligning that.

25:06

And honestly, today, I would say to anyone, the best place to align these wise

25:11

and figure

25:12

it out is when you're interviewing.

25:14

If what you know from your experiences and what's possible doesn't align to

25:18

what the company

25:19

wants, it's okay.

25:21

Maybe that's not the right place for you.

25:23

And so I think we think about that or even the conversations I'm having.

25:27

This is really important, but this other thing's really important.

25:30

And for now, you know, astronomer, awesome, already transactable in all three

25:34

marketplaces.

25:35

I can already co-sale with all three.

25:38

You kind of start with one, but I think you really need to do all three.

25:41

I think of this like football and the three phases of offense defense and

25:45

special teams.

25:46

Like you can absolutely have a great offense.

25:48

But if the other team scores more points than you do because you have a bad

25:52

defense, you

25:52

still lose at the end of the day.

25:54

So I think you need to think of the common a C's and I know we're ahead of that

25:59

direction

26:00

because that's kind of the framework that I think through.

26:03

So I'll leave it there.

26:04

The misconception, like what's one of the biggest misconceptions you've seen?

26:09

So we talked about setting expectations.

26:12

And I think in there is you find a lot of misconceptions.

26:15

So what's one of the biggest misconceptions you've seen around unlocking cloud

26:20

go to market

26:21

in the organizations that you've been a part of?

26:24

So it actually was an analogy this weekend because it was very true to me.

26:29

But I've used similar.

26:30

Well, I had some friends that I saw this weekend, like our best friends.

26:34

And they brought like three bags of like nectarines.

26:39

Last year, I know they got a few, but they didn't taste right, but this year

26:42

they were awesome.

26:43

The snazberries taste like snazberries.

26:45

They really want good choke.

26:47

But if you were to ask them, or if a business was asking me, like what kind of

26:53

revenue,

26:53

what kind of pipeline do we get?

26:54

What kind of nectarines do we get?

26:57

By the way, I want them now or I want them yesterday.

27:00

Like, that's an unnatural question to ask about your nectarine tree that you

27:04

just bought

27:04

as a seedling or just planted the seed.

27:07

And then what everyone kind of forgets in the middle is like to get three years

27:10

to have

27:11

these bags of nectarines, it wasn't like you just planted the seed and walked

27:15

away

27:15

and three years later, this thing happened.

27:17

You got out of it, what you put into it.

27:20

You watered it.

27:21

You fertilized it.

27:22

You did this.

27:23

And I think if you have the right people and the right strategy and the right

27:27

timeline,

27:28

maybe it takes two years instead of three.

27:30

Maybe it takes one year instead of three.

27:33

But I can't tell you if you're ever going to get nectarines.

27:35

I can't tell you how many you're going to actually harvest in two years, three

27:39

years

27:39

one year.

27:40

I mean, we could take this analogy all over the place, but it's really hard for

27:45

a CEO to

27:45

invest in partners or this line of business because it's the long tail of your

27:50

business.

27:51

And when they decide to spend a dollar with me or my team, I'm deciding to not

27:56

spend that

27:57

dollar in engineering, writing code and not spend that dollar on my sales team

28:02

hiring

28:03

a seller.

28:04

They're betting on the future games.

28:06

So it's like, how do I scale my future sales team?

28:09

How do I scale my future pipeline?

28:11

Who's got millions of customers and like that kind of influence and reach very

28:16

few people?

28:16

The sun has very few competitors in our solar system.

28:20

It's pretty powerful.

28:21

Can you imagine if that sun gave us a more, like invited us to their podcast,

28:26

like gave

28:28

us a bunch of like gifts to go grow or go to market or expand our marketing

28:32

budget or did

28:34

things to help us again, awesome analogy too.

28:38

It's like meeting a new neighbor and the first thing out of your mouth like, hi

28:41

, nice to meet

28:41

you.

28:42

Michael, can I borrow your lawn boar?

28:43

That would just be really weird.

28:45

That relationship is destined for like a really awkward time forever because

28:49

you just

28:49

met someone you're asking them for pipeline, gifts, access.

28:54

That's probably not going to happen and no one wants to spend their time with

28:58

that person.

28:59

Now I can go to my best friend and be like, hey, can I borrow your lawn boar?

29:02

But that's a natural thing.

29:03

We've been friends for 10 years.

29:05

So I think all of these things come into play from your personal and like

29:10

joking life

29:10

to like, this is business and here's partnerships.

29:14

Now that we know our why, we kind of figured out how we're going to start,

29:19

where in the

29:20

firewall we're going to start that aligns to helping meet the momentum going

29:26

around our

29:26

why.

29:28

You have two additional C's.

29:30

So we talk about co style, co market, co build and you kind of have two

29:36

additional C's.

29:37

I'd love for you to share with the audience your C's.

29:40

We've got them in our maturity model, but I love that you kind of just pulled

29:44

them out

29:44

and brought them front and center and said, there's five C's.

29:49

I think the ones that people forget is consumption and there's two areas of

29:54

consumption.

29:55

Number one, it's much easier to be a friend of the cloud.

29:58

The more I spend, let's just be honest, right?

30:00

And there's more easy to kind of talk about better together and co build and

30:04

all these

30:04

levers, the more I commit, the more I spend.

30:07

But there's another one that people don't think about.

30:09

We call it drag.

30:10

It turns out like my technology today is data orchestration and ETL and

30:16

pipeline data pipelines.

30:19

So in this case, I'm like an air traffic controller kind of moving planes in

30:24

order sequence land

30:25

here at this time.

30:26

What's this thing moves?

30:27

Go to your gate.

30:28

Then this thing comes in like we're sequencing all of the stuff, but the

30:32

reality is I'm taking

30:33

data from one place and I'm moving data to another place.

30:36

And the reality is when I'm moving that stuff around, maybe I'm moving it into

30:41

redshift.

30:42

That's a pretty important service rate of yes, I'm staging stuff in S3.

30:46

That's pretty important.

30:47

I'm driving consumption and compute.

30:49

If you can figure out that drag like what do you do and how is it affecting the

30:53

customers

30:54

spend or the outcomes that the customers trying to get to grow revenue, reduce

31:00

costs, whenever

31:01

your value drivers you're attaching to, you need to connect to your technology

31:04

to that.

31:05

And not all fits under the C for consumption.

31:08

The last C I've already said it in different ways for insolving friends and I

31:12

call it champions,

31:13

which a lot of sales playbooks do.

31:15

People have a choice in who they spend time with, how much time they spend with

31:19

them, what

31:20

they offer them.

31:21

People are going to spend their time with people they like that understand what

31:25

's important

31:26

to them, their KPIs, their goals and obviously they're contributing to their

31:30

own company's

31:31

revenue success of their own personal metrics and so I just call friends

31:36

helping friends,

31:37

but that sees for champions.

31:38

You can bucket those two last C's under like goodness, right?

31:43

I've got a good story for my consumption and I'm a good person and I want to

31:47

work with

31:48

you.

31:49

But it has to be authentic.

31:50

I've met a lot of people that I can see from a mile away with their up to and

31:54

it just

31:54

doesn't feel authentic, right?

31:57

So you can't fake it and it takes time, right?

32:00

You can't rush it either.

32:01

There's some tricks that I could do maybe to get those nectarines a year or two

32:05

earlier,

32:05

like it doesn't happen overnight because trust takes time, takes a very short,

32:10

stupid time

32:10

to break it.

32:11

So you got to be careful too and you got to think about the ongoing care and

32:15

feeding.

32:16

What if I stop watering that nectarine tree tomorrow?

32:19

I get no more nectarines like you just broke your partnership.

32:22

So you have to care and feed it.

32:23

I think we've just added a sixth C there for your consistency at the end there,

32:27

right?

32:28

Oh, I've got a lot more trust me.

32:30

I can add like 10, but I think you have to at some point just say like there's

32:34

too many.

32:35

How you use this though, it's funny.

32:37

Like my team's still to this day, even when we're talking with our partners, we

32:41

talk to them

32:41

through these C's.

32:43

Every decision we make, we're trying to map like what C's does this thing

32:48

bucket?

32:49

So it's turned into actionable strategy.

32:52

Turns out it's the lens that your partner is measuring you through.

32:55

So I guess it's okay, but also like when you're doing stuff, it helps to kind

32:59

of map it

32:59

back to like, why are we doing this?

33:01

Where does it fit?

33:03

And a lot of times the best things are when you're combining them together and

33:06

I'll give you

33:06

an example.

33:07

I've built this integration with some service that now we're writing a blog and

33:12

we're going

33:12

to go market that blog and we're going to generate pipeline that we're going to

33:16

co-sell.

33:17

That's how you put this stuff together.

33:19

You've got co-sell co-build co-market, but the other C's you're talking about.

33:25

Are the attributes or factors that can really accelerate the experience in

33:33

those carrying,

33:35

champions, consistency are all like key attributes that can affect your co-beld

33:43

, your co-sell,

33:44

and your cloud go to market?

33:46

Michael, as you look at your kind of your framework of C's here, as you're

33:50

taking on a large

33:52

undertaking with now taking on astronomer and looking at how you're going to

33:57

continue

33:57

to grow them, you've got a lot of expertise through your advisement with Caddy

34:03

Shack and

34:03

you've seen a lot change over the last few years.

34:07

What trends do you see looking forward that are shaping kind of the future of

34:12

this space

34:13

for your role and for these partnerships?

34:15

Is there anything that stands out as a trend to you and something that we

34:19

should all

34:19

keep our eye on?

34:21

I think it comes back to all the discussions we've had.

34:23

Is it going to be different for each company and each industry and each leader

34:29

and all

34:29

of that?

34:30

But I do think that it's not going away and I'd commonly will joke like AWS is

34:37

telling

34:38

me they're 85% of the world's workloads are still not in a public cloud.

34:42

So like, wow, there's a long way to go.

34:45

It feels like some of us have been doing this for five or ten years.

34:49

No tackles been around for a long time, but it's still maturing and the

34:54

variables the target

34:55

keeps kind of moving around or about.

34:57

So there isn't a one word or right or wrong answer, but I think the secret here

35:03

is in kind

35:04

of this discussion and the hard part is and I make no forms about this.

35:11

This cloud partnership isn't for everyone and I'll quote my Caddy Shack partner

35:16

that

35:16

he says just by being in a marketplace is like being a product in the largest

35:20

wall market

35:21

in the US.

35:22

It doesn't mean that anyone is buying it.

35:24

It doesn't mean anyone finds it and wrote 37 on the bottom shelf in the back.

35:30

You still have to go do something with it.

35:33

But if your business and your customers are pulling you this way, if there's

35:37

gravity,

35:37

that makes a lot of sense.

35:39

So I think it depends on what your North Star is, your why, but I do still

35:44

fundamentally

35:46

believe that it's still early.

35:48

It's maturing.

35:49

So now everyone's doing it.

35:51

So sometimes by competition, you have to figure it out in it.

35:54

You shouldn't corporate it in your business, but it's not easy either.

36:00

And so your expectations and what you want out of it and what you put into it

36:03

is always

36:04

going to be a decision that a business has to make.

36:06

I picture like an Instagram video of like someone walking through Walmart.

36:11

Like let me come show you where our product is and like why it's so amazing and

36:14

then you

36:15

have to go buy it.

36:16

And then when it changes shelves, let me go tell you where we are now.

36:19

And like it's over here now, right?

36:21

You've got to put in all of that extra go to marketing around getting that

36:26

product out

36:27

to the market.

36:29

And like my football analogy, many teams have an offensive offense and the

36:32

other team just

36:33

scores more points and you lose.

36:35

So like nobody wants to lose, right?

36:38

Or on that Chargers fan, I don't like to admit this, but like they've had years

36:41

of like

36:42

terrible special teams.

36:43

So it's like you've lost games because the function that is probably less

36:47

important than

36:48

offense and defense has lost games for you.

36:50

And so the thing about the three C's is like if you're just doing co-sell all

36:55

the time

36:55

and you never think about the co-building or the co-innovation and like that's

37:02

the sticky

37:02

stuff, but it's really hard.

37:04

Someone's writing code, right?

37:06

Or you never actually connected it to pipeline or the marketing funds or the

37:11

programs.

37:11

Like you're just missing a part of the game.

37:14

So I think balance is the other.

37:16

It's there, but you get out of any partnership, which you put into it and these

37:20

kind of understanding

37:22

your partner and balancing that, I think that's kind of the home run.

37:26

How do you stay flexible?

37:27

Because like the clouds are always like this is always changing.

37:31

It's always evolving.

37:32

You know, what advice do you have for a cloud alliance leader who's newer in

37:37

this role

37:38

to like stay flexible, keep up with the ever-enchanging environment that they

37:44

're now in?

37:45

I think probably like you through my career.

37:49

I didn't know that I wanted to do this job, but I just knew other things.

37:52

And I think for every job that I wanted that I wasn't doing, I would find

37:57

people who

37:58

were doing that job and I would ask them questions.

38:00

Or I would find what they're doing to learn.

38:03

I would more or less put myself in a position to do that job before I've ever

38:09

done that job.

38:10

And I think hiring managers always want to see that.

38:13

So I actually had someone last week ask me the same questions like, Hey, I'm

38:18

doing this

38:19

in the company, but I've always been curious about your world.

38:22

Like what could I do to get started?

38:23

I was like, Well, there's podcasts like this.

38:26

I have a podcast.

38:27

There's groups.

38:28

There's LinkedIn stuff.

38:30

There's assets.

38:31

None of that stuff really existed five years ago.

38:34

So if I wanted to get into this space, I would start with like trying to learn

38:40

as much as

38:41

I could from those and others that are already doing it.

38:45

And I think that's kind of the answer.

38:47

Because that opportunity may or may not present itself, but you kind of said

38:52

your own

38:53

more star and you figure out what do I need to know to put myself into a

38:56

position.

38:57

So I commonly refer my favorite definition, mine or someone that I heard of the

39:02

word lock

39:03

was when prior preparation meets opportunity.

39:06

And so like a lot of people see like, Oh, yeah, I bought a lottery ticket and I

39:10

won.

39:10

Okay, I guess that's lucky.

39:12

But you know, most people are preparing for their own destiny through education

39:19

, learning,

39:20

partnerships, friends, whatever.

39:22

And then the opportunity opens themselves up to go like execute.

39:26

And so that others might look at that.

39:28

It's being lucky, but you're the one that put in that grind for years to get

39:32

yourself

39:33

to position for that opportunity.

39:35

I love that you found friendships inside of tackle that you have built at least

39:41

works

39:42

and you're continuing to partner with us and allow your friends to tackle to

39:47

help you

39:47

now at astronomer.

39:49

Yeah, that's one of my secret weapons, right?

39:51

In the beginning, I said this, you guys interact.

39:54

I was one company team of one, but you had already sold and had a bunch of

39:59

customers.

39:59

So one, I met a lot of your customers.

40:03

I asked them how they were doing.

40:04

My sales team, Brian Bidill is out there somewhere in the ether.

40:09

Like he was awesome.

40:10

He was a consultant, right?

40:11

He wasn't selling to us.

40:12

He was trying to figure out where we were, where we wanted to go, how tackle

40:16

could help.

40:17

I think that was like really awesome.

40:19

So even getting on board it, a lot of the folks are still at tackle some or not

40:23

Like they all had experiences onboarding other customers and other marketplaces

40:28

or co-sells.

40:29

So I would just ask them a ton of questions.

40:32

They were a wealth of conversation about like what did that company do?

40:36

Or like this is where we are and what our business does.

40:39

Like what do you recommend that we do?

40:41

I still never call you guys a vendor.

40:44

You've always been a partner to our business, right?

40:46

Like we could do this, but we do it better and faster because of tackle.

40:51

I give you money in exchange for services, but we've always been kind of a

40:54

partner on this

40:55

journey.

40:56

So I'm super appreciative to you both and, you know, John and Brian and Dylan

41:01

and everyone

41:02

dog, everyone, not over the years.

41:05

I know we didn't have you for too long.

41:07

So I do want to respect your time, but thank you for being so gracious with it.

41:10

It was very insightful for us.

41:13

We were lucky to have you as a partner and an ally.

41:16

You've done a lot for tackle and when we certainly hope to continue to support

41:20

you all

41:20

and especially in your new journey, Michael.

41:22

So thanks for being a good repeat customer.

41:25

But for our listeners, if you want to learn more about Michael, you can check

41:30

out his LinkedIn,

41:32

Aaron and the final thoughts.

41:34

Yeah, I just want to say thanks again, Michael, for coming on and sharing your

41:38

experiences

41:39

over the last, you know, five or so years in this space of cloud go to market.

41:45

You've got so many great lessons learned and thank you for participating.

41:49

Not just being a consumer of the community, but also contributing to the

41:53

community and

41:54

all that you do.

41:56

Happy to and I think you guys I learned by helping others too because then I

42:00

learned something,

42:01

some angle, something that I didn't think of.

42:03

So I've realized giving back is actually a unique way for me to validate the

42:07

lessons I've

42:07

learned or learned something that I didn't even consider because this stuff

42:10

does keep

42:11

changing.

42:12

So thank you for having me.

42:13

I do appreciate it.

42:14

And obviously thanks to tackle and the whole team.

42:16

It's been an awesome five year journey, you guys.

42:18

Oh my gosh, that was such a great conversation.

42:23

I could have talked to him longer on, especially some of those analogies that

42:27

he had.

42:27

I was like, I could get kept going and kept building on them.

42:31

I know he's a super busy guy.

42:32

So he gave us a lot of his time and we appreciate it.

42:36

He does a lot for tackle, but there's so much to unpack there.

42:39

Aaron, I know you saw you take notes a couple times and can you tell me what

42:43

are some of

42:44

the top things that you took away from that conversation?

42:47

I had my own aha moment in listening to and having this conversation with him

42:53

around cloud alliance leaders, like really good cloud alliance leaders or

42:58

entrepreneurs at heart.

43:00

And I think that that has really resonated with me as an entrepreneur and why I

43:06

have loved

43:07

the space for over 10 plus years is the opportunity to work closely with other

43:15

like-minded

43:16

individuals, many entrepreneurs inside of these organizations trying to build

43:21

their business

43:22

inside their business.

43:24

And I've just really gravitated towards that.

43:26

I was like, oh my gosh, yes, like these are my people.

43:29

Yeah, you do see that.

43:32

I never heard that before, but as soon as he said that, I was like, yes, that's

43:35

right.

43:36

And he was like, and partnerships are more like friendships.

43:40

And when I think about my circle of people in my network and the customers that

43:45

I've

43:45

worked with, most of my customers do turn into friendships like inside of work

43:52

and outside

43:53

of work.

43:54

That's not a big space.

43:55

Everybody thinks I go, we throw around all the numbers of the cloud providers

43:59

and we see

43:59

the thousands of sales reps, but like the community, the ISV community, the

44:04

advisors, those

44:05

who like to share those alliance leaders, like it's really small.

44:09

Yeah.

44:10

And that growth mindset just keeps coming back, right?

44:12

You have to have a growth mindset around cloud go to market because it's a

44:18

challenge and

44:19

it's a puzzle that you have to unlock and it's going to constantly have

44:23

changing pieces.

44:24

And you have a new puzzle to figure out inside of there to continue to grow and

44:30

unlock doing

44:30

more business with your cloud partnership.

44:33

Yeah.

44:34

And without that, I mean, you're going to get pretty stagnant, pretty fast

44:36

because the

44:37

cloud providers are coming out with updates all the time and we'll be changing

44:40

to the agency

44:41

model and AWS rolling out new ways to send private offers like all these things

44:46

change constantly.

44:48

So you need to have that mindset to evolve to a good point.

44:51

I always thought about it as like it takes an at like some a little bit of the

44:54

characteristics

44:55

of this role as an athlete, right?

44:57

Like an athlete knows like you have goals, but you're always competing against

45:02

yourself.

45:03

You always have to kind of like keep training, keep going out there and trying

45:07

to do better

45:08

and get better.

45:09

And as athletes, like we deal with like losses and defeats and we have to pick

45:14

ourselves

45:14

back up and like keep going, right?

45:17

So I think it's like that entrepreneurial meets an athlete, boom, cloud

45:21

alliance leader.

45:22

Yeah.

45:23

And then run it on that flywheel.

45:25

I'm so glad you made that connection.

45:27

That was a great connection.

45:28

Well, I really hope our listeners enjoyed this conversation with Michael just

45:32

as much as

45:33

we did.

45:34

I'm so fortunate to like get to know him more through this tackle experience.

45:40

Love that we built that friendship at Lasork.

45:43

He continues to take that friendship to strontomer and into wherever he goes

45:48

next.

45:49

Thank you everyone for watching and listening to this week's episode of unlock

45:54

cloud go to

45:54

market.

45:55

I'm your co-host Aaron Feiger.

45:58

And I'm co-host Patrick Riley.

45:59

Until next week.

46:01

So pull up a chair.

46:02

Grab a notebook and join us.

46:04

As we share the essential stages of the maturity model to start, optimize and

46:08

grow your company's

46:09

revenue using the cloud.

46:12

For more resources on executing your cloud go to market strategy.

46:15

You can visit our website at tackle.io.

46:18

(upbeat music)