Episode 1 Rich Taylor | MySQL, Xamarin, Qualtrics, Looker, Qualio
Listen to Episode 1. 1 Rich Taylor goes from door-to-door salesman to VP of Marketing.
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Rich has worked for MySQL, SunMicrosystems, Pentaho, Datameer, Xamarin, Qualtrics, Looker, Sourcegraph, Mattermost, Pusher, and now Qualio. Hear how Rich has worked for some of Silicon Valley’s best start ups, how he went from a door-to-door pest control salesman to VP of Marketing, and why he typically only spends, on average, one year at each company he works for.
Interview transcription:
Rich Taylor:
I was sending, um, a campaign for each sales rep. So I had a CSV file and HTML file, and we're doing this one off email campaign and I uploaded the CSV file or the HTML file went and, and then upload the CSV file again. So I sent a list of emails to a list of emails, um, and there was, I think it was 84,000 people on that list. And all of a sudden, you know, it was a, Oh shit moment.
Braydon Anderson:
This is the early years a show about influential early employees at the most successful companies and their stories that have made a lasting impact. I'm Braydon Anderson and on today's show how our guests has done what most people consider career taboo. He's worked at 11 companies in 15 years. How often do you hear that loyalty pays off? It's something that I think we would mostly agree with, especially when it comes to our careers, the longer you're there, the better, right? But what if you treated your career like a venture capitalist trace their investments by investing in a lot of companies hoping that one or two of them will pay out large dividends today, we're joined by rich Taylor and that's the exact approach rich has taken rich has worked at some of Silicon Valley's most successful companies. And he did. So when they were in their infancy in the process, he's gone from a cold calling BDR to VP of marketing, which began his career selling door to door pest control, but it was introduced to a fast growing tech company where it began his path to VP of marketing.
Rich Taylor:
So he called me up, said, Hey, would you rather, you want to just call people and do phone calls and, um, and be a business development rep I'm like, sure, sounds good. So walked in this interview, in this strip mall in Boise, the headquarters were in Sweden. There was an office in California, an office in Seattle. Um, and I walk in there and this guy had shorts and a polo shirt. I was dressed up pretty nice. He was in shorts and a polo shirt putting together some cubicles. And, uh, we interviewed, I got the job called my brother-in-law once I left, he came in, I got the job. And, uh, we started calling on people selling, selling software. Yeah, it was awesome. So why such a big jump like door to door pest control to a tech company? Like, was that intimidating or like, what was that process like for you?
Rich Taylor:
I had these three or four job offers and decided to go with this small software company. I think it helped them. I, my best friend's brother worked there and, um, and kind of had been doing pretty well in sales there. Yeah. So what, what did you do at my SQL? So I started off as probably one of the first BDR. So this was, or sales development rep is what our titles were. Um, so cold calling, uh, actually it was different. So my scale had about 2000, about 1500 leads a day. Um, so it was open source software. They're tons of inbound inquiries, but these inquiries where everyone from Google, who was a customer really big customer to my brother who was working on his junior high school's website. Um, and so our whole job was filtering through the leads, calling all the leads. There were more like warm calls from door to door, uh, to warm, like follow up on leads. It was night and day so easy. Um, we made about 100 phone calls a day, you know, I think I did 75 or so meeting set in a month. Um, and, uh, and it was, yeah, I did that. I did that for six months before I, I moved into marketing, um, at that same company.
Braydon Anderson:
Okay. And so walk me through that. How do you go from being, you know, it makes sense. You'd probably go into a, more of a sales route. So how do you go into this marketing role and what, what was the marketing role?
Rich Taylor:
Yeah, I think, I think what I learned was, uh, my brother-in-law made about half as many calls as I did and set the same amount of meetings and, and even in door to door pest control, I knew I wasn't the best salesman, but I kind of understood people and process and how to do it, do things really well. So while he was, I made, you know, a hundred calls a day and set so many meetings, he would make 50 and set the same amount. Um, and he would just keep pace with me cause he wanted to beat me just a little bit. Um, and so what I learned was he was going to be great at sales and I was probably going to be better at something else. I studied economics and then marketing and college and university. Um, and one of my favorite classes was, um, customer relationship management.
Rich Taylor:
And so, yeah, uh, we S we are using the Salesforce for everything really early, and I just kept helping the, the director of dimension kind of help helps with all his processes. So anything we want to do better in, in Salesforce, I would just give them suggestions. Then he finally gave me admin rights to make some of those changes. Um, and then eventually I approached him. I still remember the moment it was on a beach at a company meeting in Orlando and, uh, or Miami on this, you know, booze cruise. I approached him and said, Hey, I'd love to works for you. How do I get into marketing? Um, and about two months later, he offered me a role and I moved over.
Braydon Anderson:
Wow. Okay. And so tell me about this new role then, like, um, what did you start doing and just tell me more about what that role was.
Rich Taylor:
Yeah, so maybe a little more history on my SQL at the time. So I joined there was about 80 people. Um, it was, they were spread remote all over the world. Um, we had, you know, a few offices, one in Sweden, one in California and one in Seattle. Um, and then one in Boise. And, um, my boss was in Colorado working remote and, you know, my, my role there, we were at about 110 people when I joined marketing. Um, all of a sudden day one, I was the Eloqua administrator. Mmm. Market automation, if you don't know what that is, I was also the Salesforce administrator my first day. And my job was to mainly send emails and make sure that Salesforce, it didn't break. And, um, and so day one, they're saying, Hey, we're going to trust you with all of these emails sending that we're doing.
Rich Taylor:
Yeah. Uh, and it was, uh, it w I think it was, it was intimidating, but, um, but that was, that was my role. I also took over Google ad words. Google was a big customer of ours and gave us credits for ad words. So it was kind of like play money. You could, we could spend a lot of money and not over, over optimize it. Mmm. So that was my role. It was direct marketing campaigns, um, administrator for an email marketing and then, uh, own Salesforce for about a year and a half. And with no experience. Right. Yeah. Nothing. I mean, I had the, I had six months experience as a sales development rep, but that was it. It was a, he, my boss had been doing it for a while and, you know, he had bigger things to do. And so gave those, those administrative.
Rich Taylor:
And I think I'd proven some of that admin capability as a sales development rep, but yeah, I had no, no training, no experience. Yeah. Did you ever make any mistakes like it, especially when sending emails or anything like that, like I imagine that would happen. Yeah. So I broke Eloqua two or three times. Our volume of emails was huge. So we had, we were sending millions of emails a month, especially what year is this? So this was 2006, um, through 2008. And so I can only imagine how far email marketing and email automation has come since then. So I can only imagine what it was like back then. Yeah. Marketing automation was really early, so we built our own lead scoring before anyone else had. Um, we're probably the first company doing lead scoring, um, in an automated way. So I uploaded a CSV file with all our campaigns into this web app that our web team created.
Rich Taylor:
And, uh, that's how we did lead scoring back then. So I was, I was really early, but, you know, back to, uh, email marketing mistake, um, I was sending, um, a campaign for each sales rep. And so I had a CSV file and HTML file. And, you know, I created, I pulled all these lists and I create all these emails. I changed them for their names. I think there was 26 reps worldwide then, um, and we're doing this one off email campaign and the Philadelphia sales rep. Um, I was sending an email for her and I uploaded the CSV file or the HTML file went and, and then upload the CSV file again. So I sent a list of emails to a list of emails. Um, and there was, I think there was 84,000 people on that list. And so all of a sudden the emails went out and I, and I, I had 26 of these going, so this was one of the, this was one towards the tail end.
Rich Taylor:
They're all going good. I was checking in on him. And then this one, I got a couple of replies back and all of a sudden, you know, it was a Oh shit moment. And it just hit me. So I, I paused the campaign. I called my boss. I said, Hey, here's what happened. He's like, all right, uh, we'll call the rep. And so I called Michelle and we talked, she's like, well, that's not good. I go, no. And, um, I think 15 people emailed me, yes. Angrily or upset. Mmm. And, and then the next day it was written up in computer world that I had made this big mistake. They didn't use my name, but they talked about our company. Um, wait, like, like press or internally. Yeah. Like press, no press. They talked about, uh, uh, so is computer world online. And, um, it ended up that I called each of those 15 people and seven of them actually got upgraded and incurred in the opportunity.
Rich Taylor:
So from that mistake, I learned, you know, you can make lemonade out of lemonade. It was, it was terrible five days that I felt. But, um, you know, everyone realized, you know, you can handle mistakes well, or you can handle them poorly. And my boss is really supportive of me Mmm. Back my boss's boss, uh, made jokes about it. And we all said no too soon. So I think I can joke about it now, but I, I, the lucky thing for that is anyone you can no longer upload a CSV file to the HTML, uh, email file. So I, I fixed that for anyone in the field.
Braydon Anderson:
So you helped Eloqua make it, make some adjustments so that people make the same mistake that you made.
Rich Taylor:
Yeah. In fact, uh, this may be something interesting, but, um, probably five years ago I had dinner with the founder of Eloqua, just, it was a random event. We were sitting next to each other. And I started talking to him about, you know, me being the Eloqua admin, you know, five, 10 years ago. And we had a really, really fun conversation just about, um, me breaking it and different things and who was really supportive. Uh, he, he went on to be the CEO of Influitive and some other companies, but it was a really fun conversations is kind of going back and talking about breaking the software. He knew he knew exactly what we were doing and how much we pushed his software.
Braydon Anderson:
So it's really cool. That's really cool. Well, luckily you didn't get fired from this mass email mistake, but yeah. In fact, I actually got promoted the next quarter because I was doing a good thing. So, um, I liked it turned out to be okay. Yeah. Um, that's awesome. I really, really loved that story. Uh, so a question I have, and it's pretty timely. So right now we're in this COVID-19 situation, right. Where it's really forced. Most of the, especially the B2B world work remotely work from home. Um, but my understanding is that Maya's SQL was a remote company back in 2005 when you were working there. Right. Like tell me about that. What was that experience like way back then, where right now it's 2020 and it's still hard for us.
Rich Taylor:
Yeah. So while my SQL is remote first, so the CEO, his name's Martin [inaudible], he's now CEO of hacker one, um, really, really great person. Um, and, and we had this remote first culture. In fact, uh, you know, our company calls were called radios Keela. That was the name of the dolphin. That was our mascot. Um, at the end of it, he would sing Nordic drinking songs for, in Swedish or Danish. And, uh, and we had people all over. So, so open source software, which what my SQL was. Mmm. You know, you had people contributing from all over the world. And so it was pretty natural to hire great people from everywhere. And I, and, you know, we used, we used Skype as kind of our, our Slack at the time in IRC. So I got good at IRC and Slack or Skype before most people did.
Rich Taylor:
We did Skype calls all the time. Um, my boss happened to live in Colorado. I lived in Idaho. Um, and we, we saw each other in person five times for the four years. I worked for him. Um, and we had a great relationship. We still do it. He's, he's a, you know, okay. A great person. And so I think for me, it was, it was really natural. [inaudible] do it because the company was set up that way. We had a good structure that way. We had good internal documentation of, of things and processes. Um, and we just set ourselves up to work remote, and it was really good. Um, but it was, yeah, I think all the best practices and people, things people are writing right now that was kind of natural. I, we had a Boise office, I got kicked out of it twice cause we grew too big. And so they made me go to work at home. And, uh, and so that was kind of a good lesson early. Um, and, and of just how you, how w working remote could work. And, you know, I, I realized I could wear shorts every day and nobody cared maybe before that was a thing. And, um, you know, it was, it was really a great experience, just kind of growing up that way. Yeah, that's awesome. Um,
Braydon Anderson:
and then my understanding is eventually my SQL was acquired by sun Microsystems.
Rich Taylor:
Um, how did that acquisition happen? Tell me about that. Yeah. So probably one of the coolest, the coolest acquisition stories I've heard of. So, um, like I said, I only saw my boss like five, five times in person. So every time I saw him, it'd be really great. We were really good friends. And, um, in fact, in Japan where we opened an office, I was called little Jeff, his name's Jeff LIS. And, uh, so really looked up to the sky, greatest boss ever at. Um, and so I, we were all going to Orlando for one of our company meetings. We hadn't had a company meeting for two years and it was an all company meeting. We all joined in Orlando and we had this party the night before, and I saw my boss real quick and I ran over to him and he's like, Oh, Hey.
Rich Taylor:
And then he walked away and it felt really weird. And then I saw him again and he just, he like saw me waved and then disappeared for the rest of the night. So it was really strange the next morning I got there. Um, and I sat behind him at, at this big, we're doing a kind of a kickoff meeting and our CEO gets up and he said, uh, Hey, I want to be, you know, and my boss still wasn't talking to me, he was turned around working. I'm like, all right, why are you working at 7:00 AM? And, and so, you know, I'm sitting right behind him and our CEO gets up and he says, you know, we want to be the first billion dollar open source company. And we're all like, yeah, great. And we're on our way. We went from 80 people to 400 in a few years.
Rich Taylor:
And, um, we're doing really well revenue wise and all of a sudden he says, and I'm excited to say that we are now, we are the first billion dollar company as sun Microsystems is acquiring my SQL for $1 billion. All of a sudden on the screen comes Jonathan Swartz. He's a CEO of sun Microsystems. Someone's doing pretty well at the time, had a lot of open source software. And then my boss turns around and says, uh, sorry, I couldn't talk to you. I would have told you, wasn't supposed to. And now, now we have to email everyone in our database and tell them about this. You and I have to go to work. And so the whole rest of the time I'm sitting in meetings with my boss and we're just working the whole time. My first experience with startups was, Oh, they just all got acquired for a billion dollars and you go work for a giant company.
Braydon Anderson:
And then you make a lot of money in the process, right?
Rich Taylor:
Well, well, I think, I think some of that is like, when you, when you start off, uh, as a sales development rep, you don't get a lot of equity. So it was an amazing bonus. Um, I, I can't like understate that, but I didn't understand a lot about equity then. Sure. And, and it, but it, but it was a great, I mean, it was a great outcome for all of us and we were all very appreciative of it. So I'm curious what it's like to get acquired. Cause I think we all have this image, like you're saying like, Oh, we're all gonna get rid of, it's going to be this great experience. But like, I'm curious what it was like working for a relatively small company. You know, you got up to 400 employees, but still worth a lot. And then working for this massive company, sun Microsystems. Yes. Sun sun was a really interesting company as it had a huge hardware division and that's where it made most of its money. Um, and we came on to be kind of the darling software company that was going to help all the other software.
Rich Taylor:
So we were looked at very highly by most of the people there. Um, I got a new boss a little bit later. Um, she was awesome and you know, she's been at sun for a long time. Um, and, and what I, what I, what I found out was, uh, when you get acquired by a big company, once that shine comes off, all of a sudden you're in this giant machine and, and people don't want to change things very fast. Um, we went from our leads, getting to our sales rep from website form fill to going to the sales rep. It took about, um, you know, like two seconds, maybe three, like it just happened. And so our leads were coming in real fast and they want to change a lot of those things. Um, they didn't want to use Salesforce and Eloqua anymore and some of this type stuff.
Rich Taylor:
And, and so, so we kind of had to change some of our systems and some of the processes, but, but overall, it was a really good experience. The, the downside was right at that time, these really expensive machines that son was selling, um, we're being disrupted by, uh, another open source software and all of a sudden they're their revenue tanked. And they went from being like a $20 billion valued company. And then they got acquired, um, just two years after I joined for about 5 billion, um, by Oracle. And so it was, it was a massive just change in the, in, in the company. And so I went from being at this cool old style, you know, this, this really amazing company. And then there were some layoffs and different things that happened while I was there. So it, I think there was the biggest changes for me were, you know, people didn't want to move as fast and they wanted to keep their processes and, and that, you know, you just can't control your outcome.
Rich Taylor:
It's a, it's you just part of a big cock. And so that was, that was, those were some of the two big, big things I learned, you know, that's hard to process, um, being able to go from like a fast moving company, not very bureaucratic to almost the complete opposite. I'm sure it's got some, some challenges. So I'm curious what, what happened next? Yeah. So, uh, sun Microsystems got acquired by Oracle. Um, we didn't know what was going to happen to us, uh, at Oracle, pretty much if you're in sales, if you're not in sales or engineering, there's not a real big reason for you to be at Oracle. So being in marketing, um, I got laid off and, um, so once, once the acquisition happened, my boss called me up and I got laid off and it was, uh, it was kind of a, a big shock.
Rich Taylor:
I had done my job really, really well. I felt very, you know, very good in my role. I thought I'd be there a lot more years. I was just finishing up my MBA. Um, I did that at night while working for S for sun. Um, I was teaching a, uh, uh, an adjunct, I was an adjunct professor at Boise state where I was going to school. And, um, so things were really good and I was kind of a big slap in the face. And, um, and it, and it really shocked me. And what I, what I learned from that was if you do a good job and you try to work really hard, that people take care of you. So my, my boss, his boss, he got laid off too. He was a, you know, SVP running a big division. Um, and you know, I just, he just reached out to me and, and helped me out.
Rich Taylor:
And I reached out to a lot of people and they all just helped me out. And so I think what I learned from that was that if you're part of something that grows and you're all in it together, and you have that teamwork, um, and that, that kind of feeling that as long as you all do your job and have a lot of trust in each other, you'll take care of each other after. And he really did that for me. So yeah, the same Zachary locker, great person, somebody to look at that that really took care of me a few times in my, in my career. Yeah. W what exactly, if you don't mind me asking, what did they do to help you out in this specific scenario? Sure. So, um, what, one of the things he did is he used to go on the ski trip with a bunch of other, um, tech executives.
Rich Taylor:
And so I'm sitting in Boise and in salt Lake, they do a ski trip once a year. He said, Hey, just come to the ski trip. And I'm like, okay, cause you're not working right now. Right? No. So I got laid off. I made a big list. I'm told my wife made a big list. We had just bought a house. Um, we just built a house. And, uh, and so, you know, it's some bills and I'd been, you know, I, it was fine, but I didn't know how it's going to get a job in policy. Cause there's not a lot of software options to go work at. So made a big list, um, you know, talk to a bunch of people, show up at this kind of ski trip and, you know, spending money when you don't have a job feels weird. But, um, when bought a ski pass, so it was a snowbird and then had dinner with these, these guys.
Rich Taylor:
And, uh, Zach introduced me to all these people and, Mmm know, all of a sudden, by the end of the trip I had, uh, three job offers and, um, one was in San Diego. One was working in remote where I was and one was to move to San Francisco. And, uh, you know, just, just the, the, the introduction was so good that, that it just, it just really shocked me. Um, him and another guy also, you know, tweeted about me being available through this layoff. And, um, I had, I think four other job offers from kind of their tweets just introduced to people wow. And turned into job offers. So I think for me, the people taking care of like people being very generous to me, really stuck with me and made me realize how, how important that could be for someone like me. They didn't really, it wasn't a big deal to them maybe. Um, but, but they did it, they did a really good thing for me. And it's something that I could probably never pay him back for forever. Except, you know, it's something I try to try to do for others. Pay it forward a little bit if you will. Yeah. I think that's something that I've always, if somebody asks and need some help, like as long as I feel like, you know, uh, they've tried to do good things then, then I'll, I'll do that for almost anyone. Yeah. I think it's a great
Braydon Anderson:
That’s a great mentality to live by, honestly. So that's great. Um, okay, so you have all these offers. Um, what job did you take and why?
Rich Taylor:
Yeah, so, uh, something that always bothered me in marketing was that the data from marketing and sales don't talk to each other. So I wanna, I, I was very interested in data. We had been using a database and kind of did all this data structure to really understand our data and we had a lot of it. Um, and so I went to a company called Pentaho and what's interesting about it as I, I started it, wasn't in marketing. Um, know I had five years marketing experience at a really, really great marketing marketing of software company and it was sales operations. And I think something that I learned at my SQL was there was always this conflict between sales and marketing. And I couldn't understand it because all I was trying to do is serve sales. And I had a brother-in-law in sales that got promoted there.
Rich Taylor:
I had lots of friends in sales. They were somewhat, you know, as a sales development rep, I was good friends with all these people. And, and I didn't understand why sales management was so mad at marketing management. And so I did sales operations and took a role with, uh, somebody moved to San Francisco. Um, you know, I figured if I'm going to work in software, I might as well work where that all happens. And, uh, and it was, it was a really great experience. I did that for a year. There learned a ton. I was a Salesforce admin, again, went back to that and, uh, did comp plans, did you know, forecasting all that type of stuff.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. So you make a great point about this marketing operations versus sales operations. And there definitely oftentimes is this kind of discord between these two very important organizations within a company. So, um, you know, I guess, had you done sales operations before it doesn't sound like you had the better followup question is like, how is sales operations different from marketing operations?
Rich Taylor:
So I think, no, I hadn't. I had done some Salesforce administration and mySQL, but that was three years before I'd, I'd given that off to another team pretty, you know, pretty quickly. Um, the, the biggest thing that I wanted to understand was in marketing and especially demand generation, I feel that sales is your customer and understanding them is really, really vital. So I took this role mainly as an understanding of sales, more worked for a really good, you know, VP of sales. We went from eight to 16 million in ARR that year. So we doubled revenue. Mmm. It had big growth, you know, it was, it was a really interesting way to dig into who I felt was who I still feel is my customer in, in marketing for the most part. I'm one of two customers. You have your customers of the company and the, you have your internal customers and they're the biggest ones. Um, so for me, it was a, all the other jobs we're going to be doing the same thing I'd done. This was a, this was a way to learn something new.
Braydon Anderson:
And I'm curious, do you feel like there's an evolution happening between sales, operations and marketing operations since you've seen both sides and a lot's happened in the last 15 years since you started in this world? Like, is it
Rich Taylor:
evolving in meshing into one potentially. Yeah. So you'll hear a lot of people hiring for revenue operations. Um, so, uh, this, this I think is where it's going to is there's so much, like if you look at how many companies are in the marketing and, and sales software space, it's just blown up. It's huge. There's like 8,000 companies trying to sell to sales and marketing people and customer success. So in my mind, yeah, I think it, it, you know, I have someone running revenue operations who reports up to me at the current company I'm at, and they, you know, they do a piece of Mmm, process it's, uh, tools and then it's analytics. And I think those three things, if you have them siloed within the organizations, then they, they just become the bitters of the highest paid person in the room where if there are revenue operations, they should be kind of a, like a, uh, a way to compliment the co the organization and do what's best for the, the entire company. Um, and so in my mind that that is a big evolution that should be happening and it is happening in a lot of organizations.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. That's cool. It seems like it should be a pretty natural fit, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Okay. So you're now growing in your career, you're at Pentaho, you're, you're getting more senior opportunities. Um, what was that like, like any learnings from this type of experience?
Rich Taylor:
Yeah, I think so the biggest learning there was, um, you know, I I'd worked for someone, they, they brought me on a Pentaho, I got really close to the CEO. I got really close to Mmm. You know, the CFO or who, who was, you know, really operational good person. All of a sudden, uh, my, my boss got replaced. Um, and it was kind of a shock to me. You know, we had double revenue, we went from eight, 16 million, which is not a small feat. And, uh, and then we got a new EVP of sales. I had already, the, the CEO had already, um, agreed to move me into, become the director of demand generation. Um, I had a baby coming soon. Um, my, my wife was pregnant and, uh, this was our first child coming and all of a sudden, uh, we have this new VP of sales.
Rich Taylor:
So he sits me down. Like the CFO comes in and sits down with me. And the next room, the CEO is talking to the VP, my old boss. And, uh, he said, Hey, we're letting go of your boss. And I said, what? And he's all, we have a new VP of sales coming in, and we need you to help him figure out what we're going to, how we're going to reorganize the sales. Um, and then with, so that, that happened, my old boss walks out, this new guy comes in and, uh, I got a phone call from my wife and she said, Hey, we're uh, okay, can gonna be induced in two weeks. I said, okay. So I went and told him, I said, Hey, you got me for two weeks and I'm taking the least two weeks off. And so within two weeks we did a brand new plan for the entire company, um, that were presented to the board.
Rich Taylor:
We looked at every single sales rep. We talked about all these things, and this was a huge kind of growing up moment. A lot of these people are my friends, um, that I had to go talk, you know, it's pretty, uh, okay. Trying not to be biased and an unbiased view of how the organization was doing and what we should do, um, and just present the data. And I think that was a good lesson for me of, you know, not to be as emotional, like emotions come into these things. But, um, if you're able to be objective and show data and show these different things and show, lay it all out, and then let certain people decide it's, it was a really big career changing moment for me. I realized how hard these things are because the company wanted to grow and grow. And then I was moving over into demand generation.
Rich Taylor:
So I was still going to be at the company and moving into a new role that I had to build trust in. And, um, and so, you know, I was there for another year. We were really successful. Again, eventually the company got acquired for $500 million by Hitachi. So it was, it, it was a great exit. Um, and I learned a ton there about, you know, what, what I want to do and in different things, but that was a big growing up moment for me in my career of just having to be at that table and talk about people in an objective way.
Braydon Anderson:
Yeah. Taking the emotion out of it, to an extent, um, and letting the data speak for itself is a pretty valuable trait. It's hard, it's hard to make those types of decisions and completely motion. And
Rich Taylor:
I don't know if that's necessary, but I'm having a fine balance between those two key areas. Richly spin Tahoe because of reorg was taking place. And he felt it was time to move on, but I mainly left cause there was new change in the org and it just felt like they were going to want something different than what I had provided so far at data mirror, rich gets the opportunity to try some things he had never done before. Some he liked and others, he didn't adding a long commute to the mix. One year was long enough for him, but w it was just, uh, I was commuting about an hour a day or two hours a day, an hour there, hour back. And then, uh, it was just something that just, you know, it was, it was good for a year, but, um, once I hit about a year, it just, it just made sense to find something different.
Braydon Anderson:
He then turns down an offer at a BI company in Utah to join Xamarin that night. Um, someone I had interviewed with a couple of months ago called me up, um, and his name's Nat Friedman, he's now CEO of get hub. Um, and he was CEO of a company called Xamarin. He called me up. He said, Hey, uh, for some reason I've been thinking about you today and I, I want you to come join Xamarin. Then with the arrival of his third child, he realized living in a one bedroom flat in San Francisco may not be the best solution for his family. Yeah. I took a job with Qualtrics, um, and, and moved to Utah. I'd always been selling to very technical, technical people. And this was the first time I'd be, you know, marketing to marketing people. So it was a really intriguing change for me. Yeah. And I'm curious, like you mentioned marketing to marketers, whereas before you were marketing to very technical people, um, any unseen challenges or what, what's your takeaway from that? Uh, so I don't know how to say this without, well, my take is this, I do better in a very authentic, um, marketing way where what I realized marketing to marketers is there needs to be more high.
Rich Taylor:
There needs to be more flash. And, and that's not who I am, which is something I knew, but I was still in demand gen. So the numbers really, you know, we're, you know, that was important to me, you know, uh, what I didn't realize is how, how much that lack of, uh, not being able to, I guess, push things in a certain way, uh, marketing to marketers was harder for me. Um, so that's, that's what I learned there is it wasn't the right fit for, for who I am. And so you leave Qualtrics, where do you go next? Yeah. So, um, I interviewed with about five, six companies, um, got about three offers and Looker was one that was really intriguing to me. So Looker's a company out of, um, San Francisco, or they were in Santa Cruz, California. So I w I was going to go back to the Bay area.
Rich Taylor:
I I'd interviewed with some companies in Utah, just didn't, you know, my wife wanted to move back to, um, back to California. She didn't like the winter. Um, and so, so there's this company in Santa Cruz, California. So I show up, uh, didn't think there was real companies in Santa Cruz to be honest, uh, I show up and, um, you know, really, really enjoyed the team. The CMO was interviewing at the same time. I was, um, they had a director of demand gen, so they brought me on as senior director of marketing. And basically I took on the website to start that went really well. Uh, did some product marketing there, some customer and developer marketing, but it was, uh, it was a more technical audience. And it was back in the business intelligence space where I'd been at Pentaho and data mirror. And, uh, and it was, it was an amazing company, learned a ton.
Rich Taylor:
Uh, they eventually got acquired by Google for 2.6 billion. So the outcome was really good, but when I was there, I was employee just, just over a hundred when I left, there were about 300 worldwide. Um, and, and, you know, it was, it was a great opportunity to kinda join a really, really strong company that, that did that, that worked on a product that I, I still use today. I think it's a great product. And you weren't there at the time of acquisition by Google, is that correct? No. So, um, so what I, what I realized there and what, what I was really clear with my COO was at some point, I want to be a VP of marketing and run the whole, the whole ship. Um, and she was very supportive of this. Um, you know, I, I wasn't in, on the exec team, I reported to the exec team all the time, um, you know, built all our forecasting plans and all this with, you know, I was, I was kinda marketing ops.
Rich Taylor:
And then we had someone in, um, in finance and sales operations, we all worked together to build all the forecasting and planning models for the company. Um, and, and so, so it was, it was really interesting there. And then, you know, one day I just got a phone call, uh, company wanted to hire a head of marketing, really liked my background. And, um, and, and that's why I left. It was probably the hardest decision I've had to make to leave a company. Um, but it was, uh, you know, it was, it was, it was, it was time for me to go try something new and, and kind of take on that batch. I knew Looker was going to go to acquire by something really great. And there were great people there. Uh, but it was, it was the right time for me to go stretch myself again.
Rich Taylor:
Yeah. And now that's what you're doing. You're currently the head of marketing at a company called Kaleo. Is that correct? Yeah. So I, before this there's been three other VP of marketing roles. Um, so, uh, first one, they were pre-revenue, so it was a little early to join. I wish I would have known that the next one was called matter most. Uh, they're kind of Slack, competitor opensource. It was enterprise sales, um, or ended up being that way, but help them get a series, a 20 million series a and funding. And, um, you know, was there a year? And then the last one was helped push her. Uh, I just had to travel too much for that role. I left there, but yeah, now I'm a Kuala. We, uh, it's a, it's a different space. It's selling into health sciences. All the other ones were really technical again. Um, but it's a great company and excited. We are so far coming up
Braydon Anderson:
rich talks to why he's been a part of so many companies, but first scenes from an upcoming interview,
Rich Taylor:
the first day
Danny Holmoe:
president Obama spoke and the reception of president Obama was just huge. And there were tons of people there, and it was kind of chaotic getting everyone into Mainstage and making sure that everyone had a seat. And so in between days one and day two, we got feedback that not everyone was able to get a C in the main stage area. And that, that experience wasn't as good as we would have liked it to be. And so that night Kyland was trying to figure out how many seats were in the main stage area. And so I said, yeah, let me go run and count them half joking, half serious. And I looked at him and he said, okay, yeah, go ahead and do that.
Braydon Anderson:
Okay. So rich elephant in the room, right. Um, you've been at a lot of different companies and yeah, it sounds like some of them maybe were not your twist, but it sounds like a lot of them were your choice to be at those companies for fairly short amount of time and a lot more companies than most people do. And I feel like there's some taboo around that, right? Like everyone talks about loyalty, preaches, loyalty. This doesn't feel like loyalty when you're jumping from company to company year over year. And so tell me about that. Like, how are, how are you keeping on getting interviewed?
Rich Taylor:
Yeah, I think it, I think it has been taboo and I think it is for certain places. Um, if you look at startups, most startups that nine out of 10 startups fail, the average tenure of a VP of marketing is, uh, like 15 months. So, so when, when people talk about loyalty and sticking there, I mean, I've, I've been, I've been through three layoffs of, uh, either like directly just me being laid off or let go versus the entire org being, let go. And so what I've, what I've done at each of these companies has been very clear about what my role is and responsibilities and what the outcomes they wanted and been very diligent in, in achieving all those outcomes. Um, you know, it, if you do what you say, like if you do, what's agreed upon to do, and you're, you're able to tell that story and that most, any of these CEO's would be references for me.
Rich Taylor:
Um, it's pretty hard to say like rich, isn't the right person for us, or, or that if you need a job to be done, most likely, you're going to look at replacing the VP of marketing at a company every year, 15 months. And so, so I think that's one thing is, is I'm not too worried about that because, uh, I have been able to find new jobs and I'm not too worried about that. Now quality is somewhere I, I want to be until they kick me out. I really, really, I, I know what I want now and match that to the, the company I'm at. Mmm. And that's been really good, but, but I think that taboo piece says, you know, I think CEO's, and exact want you to be loyal because they usually don't promote you very fast. And the data says that if you leave a company and come back, the economics of it are saying you make more money.
Rich Taylor:
Uh, if you leave to get an MBA and come back, you make more money. If you leave to another company and go to another company, you're going to make more money. Uh, now I wouldn't switch as much as I have maybe, but I've had a great experience learning from tons of different environments and it's made me a better marketer and a better human in my mind. Um, and so, so yeah, I mean, I think that's the elephant in the room, but some people don't like it, that's fine. Um, but I, I, I still get recruited all the time. And, um, I personally, and I never hold it against anyone either. Uh, the opposite of that is we just hired someone at our company who was at the same company for 14 years and people were worried about why was she there so long? Um, really, so I, I think it's on both sides.
Rich Taylor:
It's just, it kind of depends. Yeah. That's so fascinating. And so I've have a couple of followup questions to that. And so, um, a lot of the companies that you've been at have had some great acquisitions look to Google, my sequel to sun Microsystems. Right. So, um, a couple of questions, first of all, has it been valuable from a financial implication if that's not too personal of a question? Yeah. So, um, you know, the other thing to understand is there's a lot of, yeah know, aye. I also feel like venture capitalists look at a whole portfolio of companies and they invest in a bunch of them knowing that maybe one or two of them will pay off in a big way. Mmm. With startups, it's pretty similar. I've been at some great companies and I've picked, I've been fortunate to pick really well or landed some great companies.
Rich Taylor:
I didn't have equity in all of these Mmm. That got acquired, but, uh, I always stay a year and get my first year vesting. Um, and then, and then they've done well for me. So, um, so yeah, I've, I've taken more of a portfolio approach to, uh, where, which companies I go to and how long I stay. Mmm. And yeah, but I'm also very open about that with anyone. And I think, I think the one thing to look back, you know, you look back at maybe regrets or different things in your career. Um, I don't think I have any of those. I think monetarily, some of the choices would have been better than, and some of those are yet to be known. Mmm. But the other thing to, so maybe look at is, you know, equity wise, if you join startups, um, okay. When you get to a certain point, you get more equity and if you join earlier or later you get different types of equity and that's something that's not as talked about more.
Rich Taylor:
And I wish, uh, you know, I wish people had more advice about equity and what it means in a startup and, and how that's structured in also compensation. I think those two things are not, if people are being more open about them now, but there's not enough information out there. It's a little taboo to talk about. And that, I think that's unfortunate. Yeah. Um, so I'm curious then again, I got a couple of followup questions cause to go for this, um, you know, you talk about how there's this stock offs inside of it. Right. Um, I think people hang onto that too much is that's going to be their saving grace. And that's why I'm going to stick around it. Like early in my career, I worked at a company I had, I had some shares and I kept using that as an excuse of like, this is why it's okay.
Rich Taylor:
That they pay me so little. Right. Yeah. Is that attract that you feel like a lot of people are in, in w tell me what you think about that. Yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll give an example. So, um, there was someone that I, that was working for me and I was able to go get them a promotion or race. Um, and this, this company had a very structured promotion cycle. Um, and I gave him the raise and then I basically had to take my company hat off and say, all right, now we're talking to his friends. I gave you the most, you got the most of anyone in the company. Race-wise but because you started so low and you've been here for so long, you could leave right now and make 52 50% more than you're making right now. Wow. And, and I go, now the equity is another piece.
Rich Taylor:
I don't know what that's going to be. Um, but it turned out that that person stayed there for a long time of that company. And they didn't. Yeah. Once they left, they did make almost 50% more at a different company and got equity at that other company. And maybe they're doing well. Um, so I, I think that is something that some people use, that's kind of a downturn now in a competitive market, you know, the tactics of a company are to make sure that you, you feel like you have something else. And there's a whole package of things. There's benefits and different things, but, you know, skateboards and candy and that type of stuff, like, you know, I work from home now. A lot of people are now Mmm. You know, I've been working from home before COVID, uh, hit. But, but for me, you know, that that is something that people hang on to.
Rich Taylor:
And I learned this pretty early in my career as well. Um, when we're looking for sun Microsystems, I was supposed to go get an intern. And, uh, so I, I went and asked, my boss said, Hey, go get an intern. We need them to do this. And I raised my hand and said, basically I need somebody to help. And so I go get the intern payment sheet and, you know, I was in Boise, Idaho, and I was making what I thought was pretty good money. Um, and then I realized MBA interns made 50% more money than I did. And so I went to my boss after I got the intern sheet of what we pay them. And I said, Hey, uh, I'm getting my MBA and I'm going here. And I work here full time. Should I be paid more? Well, my bad and Eddie, he didn't know.
Rich Taylor:
He liked, he didn't really look at it. And I had gotten a few, I had quite a few raises at this company already and overnight, I got a 50% raise in salary. Wow. And, and like, nobody told me this. And, and there was someone that at the company that said, you, you are way undervalued and way underpaid. I'm like, I'm doing all right. Like, I'm happy. I love my job. Things are going great. But this person said that to me. And it kind of stuck with me and then that, that happened. And so, so I think I'm very open about what people should expect and not, and, and I think there's a lot more information out there, but I think that's a, that's an unfortunate thing by many companies that they don't, they're not really as open about that. And, and, and you don't know who to ask, like, should I be making this or not? Um, yeah. So I think that is a taboo topic as well.
Braydon Anderson:
For sure. You made an excellent analogy about these VC funds, right. That, um, they're investing, knowing that one of these companies may take off. Right. So, and you compared yourself to that, you've had some losers potentially, and you've had some winners, but it feels like [inaudible], and you've had a lot of winners that you've selected as the companies to go work at. How have you selected these companies? Like, what are the qualities that you're looking for as you approach a new job?
Rich Taylor:
Yeah. Um, I, I look at three things and, and the F like, there's, there's all the, like the, the details of salary and bonus and equity in that stuff. But that, that to me is like the final thing. So what I look for first is, Mmm, do, do I think there's product market fit and that one's tough because you got to figure out like, like you're doing basically, what if he see, does, like, do they have enough customers? Is, are people buying? What's the sales cycle, you, and I think asking these questions really important, like, is there a product market fit? That's a really big thing that I think we sometimes look at and it sometimes makes us go to companies that we know most about, which I think is sometimes bad. Cause we, we over, we overvalue what we know a lot about, but maybe no one else knows that much about, and that, that can be tough.
Rich Taylor:
So product market fits one. The second thing I look at is, um, do like the team, do I like working with the people Mmm. And this evolved over time, or I, I was like, ah, it's not important. I can work with anyone. But then I realized, well, there's people I like working with more than others. Um, and, and I I've, I very much value, um, you know, we, we often worked for people like us or wants to work with people like us. What I've learned is that if I worked for people different than me, I learned way more. So I try to find some diversity and whether it's culture or where they're from, or those types of things is really important to me. So, so team is really important who I'm working with and working for perhaps a is really important. And then the third one is, do I think I can make an impact?
Rich Taylor:
Do I think I can make an immediate impact within a year, make an impact. And then after a year, which in my mind is, you know, a decent time for a startup, do I think I can figure out what's next? And, uh, and so that's, that's, I think something really, um, you know, can I make an impact personally? Do I think I can do a good job within this role, uh, and also learn from the role? So, so those are the things, product, market fit is the team, the right team. And then, um, you know, can I make an impact? Yeah. I love it. Fantastic advice. What piece of advice would you give to someone that's currently in the early years of the startup? Aye. I think when you're in the early years, don't feel bad asking questions of people and don't feel bad. Like, don't feel like reach out to people.
Rich Taylor:
People are happy to talk about their careers and how they got places. Um, and, and sometimes, you know, I, I am not one that likes to talk about myself. This is actually kind of awkward for me, just cause I I'm, I'm a little bit private in that way. Um, but anyone that asks me, I'm usually willing to open up and talk about that. So I think that's one thing. I think the second thing is find some people three years and six years ahead of you [inaudible] and like try to find some mentors that people will talk to you about. What should you expect during these times and what does she do well, and then I think probably the third piece of advice is do the job you need to do right now. Really, really well. Mmm. The reason I got promoted from my first role for the second role was because I was a really, really good sales development rep and it's, it's worked well for me because I've, I've managed or been manager of the manager, uh, of, of sales development rep teams like [inaudible] for a long, long time since that. And, and I can go back to what, what made me successful and help a new sales development reps do that. So do your job really, really well. And that will, that will go, that, that speaks beyond other things. Cause people will give more to you.
Braydon Anderson:
That's rich Taylor, the man that created countless marketing teams at some of Silicon Valley's most successful companies. Thanks for listening to today's show subscribe wherever you get your podcast, Phil. And if you know someone that you think we should interview, email me braydonta@gmail.com. I'm Braydon Anderson, and this is the early years.