An Interview With Scott Brinker, VP Platform Ecosystem, Hubspot

Scott Brinker is the VP of Platform Ecosystem and Hubpot as well as Founder and Editor of Chiefmartec.com, the most widely read blog on the web focused exclusively on the intersection of marketing and technology. Today Scott is considered one of the preeminent thought leaders in the world when it comes to marketing technology. We caught up with Scott to get his take on what we’re building at Outseta and to learn how he thinks about the technology related challenges that start-ups often face.

Geoff Roberts (GR): Scott, for the sake of our readers tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and how marketing technology became such an important part of your professional life. 

Scott Brinker (SB): Sure thing, Geoff. I’ve been in this industry for 20+ years now, but I became really fascinated by marketing technology as I saw two business functions that previously were very siloed start to collide - IT and marketing. As these functions started to intersect more and more, it became clear to me that there was very little knowledge shared or best practices around how these functions could support each other’s needs effectively. There’s no doubt that marketing teams today need to be staffed with technical resources, much more so than they did previously - I refer to these people as marketing technologists. So the merging of these two functions was really what gave birth to my blog, Chiefmartec.com.  

GR: You are perhaps most well known for the infographics of the Martech landscape that you put together each year - over 5000 Martech vendors in 2017! How does this make you feel? Do you perceive this to be a problem? I’m curious, generally, how you think about this.

SB: That’s a good question. At the end of the day, there are both pros and cons to this. On one hand, there are simply so many options out there - the more than 5,000 marketing technology vendors that you mentioned - it’s overwhelming. There are simply so many options for any one category of marketing technology, that there’s a problem with over-saturation and it can be difficult to identify the technologies that your business actually needs. On the the other hand, marketers have access to more technology and tools than ever before. For pretty much any marketing touch point or need, it’s pretty likely that there’s a software tool out there that can fulfill your need. So the pro would simply be the accessibility of tools and the wide range of functionality that the marketing technology landscape now provides.

GR: Former SAP exec and new Marketo CEO Steve Lucas recently made the following comments…

“What’s crushing the marketer right now is that every time there’s a new consumer touch point, there’s a new point solution for it,” Lucas said. “It’s overwhelming the marketer.” The problem with that, he said, is that “you lose any context on who the customer is.” 

What is your take on Steve’s comments, and what do you think will emerge as the solution to this problem over time?

SB: I agree with Steve’s comments, but I do think that there’s more than one path forward. We’ll see a couple of different types of solutions continue to emerge as we consider the challenge that comes from an ever growing number of consumer touch points. 

The first is going to be the all encompassing platform play, much like what you’re working on at Outseta. There are other companies working on this sort of approach as well. The idea here is to build a single system that’s wide enough to cover all of the major touch points, or at least the most important ones. This has the advantage of companies only needing to pay one bill, only needing to work with one company for support.

The other route is continuing to integrate any number of point solutions that are more specialized and do one thing really, really well. There’s a growing number of companies that are either data warehouses, or pre-built system integrators, that allow you to effectively make use of data coming from disparate systems in a meaningful way.

GR: How do you think about the differences between solving these issues at an enterprise versus a start-up level? My own take - while the costs and number of point solutions that need to be integrated are all larger demands within an enterprise, the importance of solving these issues within a start-up may actually yield a bigger return. Start-ups don’t have dedicated resources to devote to this work, so it comes with an opportunity cost of technical co-founder time. They are also more cost sensitive than their enterprise counterparts, and the benefits of having a clearer understanding of their customers and business may be that much more beneficial in helping them find initial traction and scale their business successfully. What are your thoughts?

SB: I agree with you 100% with regards to their being a significant opportunity cost for start-ups. I don’t think the real issue for start-ups is the integration work associated with integrating a stack of point solutions. Most of that integration work isn’t terribly difficult, but it is work that needs to be thought through carefully. Which systems actually need to be integrated so that the data can be put to use in a meaningful way? How do you actually intend to use the data? What real world business process, or use case, or workflow are you trying to support? I think it’s most important that the real world use case is carefully considered so that you’re actually getting business value out of integrated and accessible data. At the end of the day start-ups are all about prioritization - there’s not enough time in the day to do everything. Start-ups are also going to be more resource constrained in terms of dollars, in terms of people, and in terms of time. If you can provide a single platform that saves start-ups time, then that’s very valuable.

It’s worth noting too though that start-ups have a huge advantage - they are starting from a blank slate. They have the opportunity to consider their needs and deliver a tech stack that they build to address those needs from the ground up. That’s huge. In almost any other business there are going to be legacy systems in place and an existing way of doing things. Not just from a technical perspective but also from a cultural or change management perspective that can be very, very challenging.

GR: So the concept for Outseta is to provide basic functionality across CRM, customer support and knowledge base, email marketing, subscription billing, and reporting - the basic functionality that SaaS start-ups need and nothing more. It’s a platform play, and we’re going wide rather than deep in any one area. This definitely flies in the face of “conventional” start-up wisdom, which often suggests that you do one thing very well, very deep. I’ve certainly heard this from many smart people whose opinions I trust - what’s your take? 

SB: Everybody has heard the “do one thing and do it really well” mantra. You’re either choosing a high level of specialization, or less specialization with a broader reach of functionality. I don’t see either option as being correct, or more right, than the other - I think it’s simply a matter of approach and the strategy you are using to deliver value to whoever your customers might be. If your customers only need basic functionality across A,B,C,D, and E and you can deliver that to them in one platform that’s built well with these components integrated from the ground up, I’m all for it. 

GR: Is reducing your technological footprint, within any company, an import thing to be thinking about in and of itself? Why or why not?

SB: It’s definitely worth considering, but I think it’s most important to focus on what technology you need to help you achieve your business goals, whatever they may be. If you’re too worried about your technological footprint, you could end up with fewer tools, or not the right tools, that you really need to support your business objectives. The converse is true too - you can go way overboard and have all sorts of software that’s simply overkill for your needs. But again, if you can pay fewer bills and work with fewer vendors while still supporting your business needs appropriately more often than not that’s a good thing.

GR: How important is or isn’t delivering on a single, 360 degree view of your customer? It can certainly take companies a lot of time, effort, and money to get there - is it worth it, or is this an aspiration that’s not as important as it may seem?

SB: I think it’s very important if it’s delivering a view of your customer that’s actually useful in a real world setting. For example, it used to be that there was one marketing message that businesses pushed out to just about everybody. One of the things that marketing technology has really delivered is the ability to better segment and personalize your marketing messages to buyers with different characteristics, personas, etc. Say you want to use marketing automation to send different messages to different customer segments - you’re probably going to need your automation tool to be integrated with your CRM and have context on those different customer segments. There’s real value in having that context; that better, more complete understanding of the customer. 

The flip side here is it’s easy to go overboard. There can be prospect or customer records with crazy amounts of detail, tracking every touch point imaginable, but if you’re not using that detail in any specific way then it’s just a longer, more detailed record than it needs to be. I would start by making a list of the data from different types of point solutions that most often has to be integrated to help support a business goal within a SaaS business.

GR: One thing we learned during our idea validation interviews is that start-ups solve for their immediate need - if they need to send an email campaign, they buy Mailchimp. If they need to start billing customers, they buy Recurly. They are not thinking at an early stage about buying a platform to solve multiple needs that they’ll have at some point in the future. From a go-to-market perspective, how would you solve for this? 

SB: I don’t think there’s any one trick here, I would simply lay it out for them. You’ve worked in a number of SaaS start-ups before, and you’ve identified 5-6 needs that are common to most of these businesses. So the pitch becomes, “You only need functionality A today, but we know that you’re going to need B, C, D, and E in the near future. By working with us you’ll get functionality A today, but the rest of the functionality you need will be there for you whenever you’re ready behind the same login credentials.” This is a simpler solution and if it saves start-ups that ever valuable time, I think they’ll get it.

GR: Knowing what you now do about Outseta, tell me why you think our idea sucks. Or if you insist on being nice to us, what’s the biggest challenge you think we’ll face?

SB: I think the biggest challenge for you is simply going back to the size of the marketing technology landscape - these are so many good options out there across each of these categories. There’s some irony here in the sense that you’re offering a system that out-of-the-box should help more SaaS companies launch successfully. If they have a good business idea, the promise is your company can increase their odds of being successful and some portion of them will undoubtedly be in the marketing technology space!

GR: Now let’s flip it - what do you like about our idea? What concept excited you or do you think at least shows promise?

SB: All of the things we’ve talked about - I think it’s a simpler solution and if it can meet a start-ups basic needs, it will give them more time back to focus on other aspects of their business.

GR: I am personally of the belief that most companies understand the impact that well integrated and effectively used marketing technology can have on their business. They get it. But I do think that most companies tend to underestimate the resources, time, and costs associated with evaluating, buying, integrating, and maintaining their tech stack over time. How do you educate companies on what it will take to deliver on their vision, and what are the common traits you see in the companies that are most effectively leveraging and supporting their marketing technology?

SB: I think there’s really two things of note here. The first is the work associated with figuring out what business processes and campaigns you actually need your technology stack to support. There’s real strategic thinking that needs to be done here, and it tends to not be a one-off project - you’ll need your tech stack to support an ever changing set of business needs. I agree that most companies tend to underestimate their needs in this regard. The second is simply about the structure of modern marketing teams today. I’ve written a lot about the “Marketing Technologist” role, but I don’t think the structure of modern marketing teams has necessarily kept up the requirements of the marketing function in many businesses.

GR: What’s most exciting trend/characteristic/movement to you that’s happening in the Martech space right now? What gets you giddy thinking about what 2018 holds?

SB: There’s so much it’s hard to pinpoint any one thing. There are totally new types of customer touch points being created every day, like virtual reality experiences, just to give one example. Another huge one is just machine learning and data science tools making data not only accessible, but also highly useful to marketers with so much less effort than was required before. If you look across the various categories in my marketing landscape infographics, there’s exciting innovations happening just about everywhere.

GR: We’ve gotten pretty technical in this conversation - what’s something about Scott Brinker the person that those that know you only by professional reputation wouldn’t know or expect?

SB: I was a music major, which most people probably wouldn’t guess given how technical my job is today. But I think there’s an interesting parallel between orchestras and how businesses used to be run, versus how they are increasingly run today. In an orchestra there’s one person up front, coordinating the efforts of many musicians to deliver the final product. I see that increasingly as the old way of doing business. Today, I see a growing number of companies operating without that conductor, instead leveraging a number of small teams that are all focused on their own objectives. Think of this more a a jazz band, where everyone is doing their own thing but there’s enough structure there for it all to come together beautifully. I’ve always enjoyed that parallel and I think it’s true. I play keyboards and a bit of guitar today.

GR: Thanks, Scott!