When we take on a new employee here at FirstRain, a lot of thought and energy is put into ensuring they are a really great fit. And so, unsurprisingly, when we recently expanded our sales engineering team, in the summer, it took us a few months and a couple job description rewrites to find our ideal candidate. Through that process I realized something interesting: what we needed in our early days when the FirstRain solution was still evolving is not what we need today.
Like many growing companies, in our early days we had a great idea and strong core technology but went through a process of understanding the real needs of the market and adapting our solution over time. In such an environment, the sales engineering role needed to be focused on tinkering and crafting solutions, managing clients, demonstrating consultative selling skills, architecting solutions and acting as a product specialist—really whatever needed to get done to help our growing customer base to “seamlessly” adapt the product to their needs and get the job done!
Needless to say, finding the perfect person to fit those chameleon-like standards was a bit tricky! At that time, we focused on finding an individual who could demonstrate analytical abilities and design thinking, who would excel in flexible environments, and would thrive as part of the tight relationship between our client solutions team, product development and leadership. This was essential in order to take important customer input and feed it back into our organization for immediate development or adaptation. In other words, bending the product to the customer’s will.
Although times like that are exciting and fun, they’re not easy. There were days that made you want to hide under your bed, and others where you were thumping your chest, knowing that that you are cracking the code. At times, every couple of weeks, we’d modify the sales process to see how we can shorten the sales cycle, increase close ratios and triage the outliers. Back then, we were correcting and adjusting, correcting and adjusting, getting ever closer to a repeatable solution and support model that worked across our target markets, or sometimes, just axing a target market from the list completely.
But as we started to hire for the team again in the summer of 2011—even though we had many extraordinary candidates—something was off.
We realized: the candidates were right, it was the job description that was wrong—wrong for the kind of company we are now. Today, FirstRain has a sophisticated solution set, clear target market and crisp sales process. In this environment, we now needed a different role, a more focused role that corresponds to what our customers need us to do today: Listen & Match.
As we noted in our (now updated) job description, today’s FirstRain Sales Engineers need to:
Listen to prospects and the account executive to validate and better match the solutions offered with the prospects business challenge. Asking good questions becomes critical, executing on the deliverable and work on workflow issues with the prospect becomes paramount.
With a new job description the resumes began to roll in, and we started to interview 3-5 candidates a week, it became clear … the new candidates matched what we needed today.
As our solutions have matured, we are no longer looking for people whose main skill was “bending” the product to do whatever a given customer needed. Instead, we now need people who deeply understand the capabilities of our solution set, can demonstrate design thinking, as well as understand the business challenges our customers experience – to effectively bridge that gap, develop a rollout plan, and execute! It’s often a delicate dance, and one that still requires great flexibility. Instead of ‘Solution Benders’ we now need ‘Solution Dancers’, a role which is more nuanced, more sophisticated, and, I’m starting to find, is a lot more fun to manage.
The iPad is changing the world so fast sometimes it is hard to believe. We released our iPad app in early October. It’s such a hot, sexy app that now I lead off with it. Every time I meet with a prospect the first thing I show them is the Business Web on my iPad (usually pre-configured for their market) and then I’ll describe what we’re doing and why.
And to my delight I find that many of our prospects and customers are investing so heavily in the iPad that they can immediately relate to how FirstRain fits. But more fun than that is the new apps I get to see, often before they have been released. BI apps, sales apps, fashion apps… the world is going iPad.
Today Fidelity announced a major update to their iPad app – this time including FirstRain content. Fidelity has been our customer for many years now, but over the past few months it’s been exciting to work with them on integrating our sector and stock research into their iPad app.
Like we have done online, we are providing Fidelity with Hot Topic research, centered around sectors and trends – what’s rising? what should you as an investor be paying attention to? when you see a topic you want to drill in on, what are the recent developments that help you understand it?
You can download the new Fidelity iPad app for free on the iTunes store. To see hot topics, open it up and click on Research (tab at the bottom of the home screen). Chose hot topics and you’ll see the key active sectors and what’s changing . We identify what’s changing and what’s hot using our analytics technology – identifying clusters of topic, detecting anomalies, comparing them to past patterns, analyzing the new pattern to see if it shows a rising event. Here’s the landing Hot Topics screen this morning:
You see a list of sectors – swipe right to see more. Within each sector you can then drill down into a topic and see the latest business web news and understand what’s behind the trend. For example here — drilling in on Automobile Fuel Efficiency:
The topic research page shows you not only the news you need to read but also the stocks related to the trend that you may want to do deeper research on, and the volume of conversation on the Web on the topic you are researching so you can get a sense of how active it is.
Good apps on the iPad are simpler and easier, and more pleasurable to use than web apps. There is something about the simplicity combined with the tactile experience that changes how we feel about using the application, especially for non technical people and the older generation. We have only had the iPad for 2 years now… it is just the beginning of a sea change that will sweep how we all interact with both professional and consumer applications.
One of the best ways I’ve found to build community in the office is by working together to give back to the greater community. Last week, the FirstRain team and I continued our annual tradition of volunteering at the Second Harvest Food Bank. SHFB is a fantastic organization that strives to end local hunger around the San Francisco Bay Area. I was pleasantly surprised (and impressed with the massive amount of food to sort) to learn that gathering and collecting enough food was not the organization’s main concern. The great need for volunteers, like those of us from FirstRain, is necessary in order to help sort the food. Kristin Sulpizio, the Director of Volunteer Services told us the “the food is there, it’s finding people to help figure out what to do with all of it, is our problem”.
FirstRain participated in this event not only to give back to the local community but to hopefully encourage others to follow in our footsteps. I know activities like this strengthen our own FirstRain community. Working together outside of the office allows my team to engage in an experience that deepens their sense of shared values, such as social responsibility and caring for others. Every year, I know I can count on our team to clear their busy schedules, to show up and to work very hard. This morale is later translated inside the office, all part of the many reasons why FirstRain’s company culture is so dynamic.
Everyone got his or her hands dirty that day. Working as a team, we were able to quickly and successfully sort through a hefty amount of food in our two-hour time slot. Thanks to the entire FirstRain team’s effort, we helped 236,000 people receive food this month! The day was a huge success and everyone left the bank in great spirits. As always, I was pleased and proud to see my team come together for such a great cause –and one we will continue to support!
One of the challenges with creating something that’s truly new and innovative in a market is the anxiety you inevitably feel as you wonder whether the market itself is ready for your solution. But when you have really smart people who see an opportunity for technology to solve a real problem in a totally new way, sometimes you take a leap of faith that the market will respond and then a really interesting adventure will begin.
And so, it was extremely gratifying to see the announcement yesterday that the analyst firm IDC has included FirstRain in its 2011 list of “Innovative Business Analytics Companies Under $100M to Watch.” FirstRain was one of 6 companies selected, and one of just two specifically focused on the discipline of Cloud-Based Analytics. According to IDC, this designation is given to companies recognized by their analysts as “driving innovation in business analytics.”
As an analytics software firm whose patented technology solves the challenge of delivering relevant, Business Web content to professionals in Sales, Marketing, Competitive Intelligence and other key roles, this recognition by IDC is yet another validation of the importance of the problem we’re helping our customers solve, and it’s terrific to see a leading analyst firm like IDC recognize the role FirstRain is playing. We’ve seen it in the great customers we’re signing every day, with the amazing product feedback we hear from those customers, and now we’re hearing from the analyst community too. It looks like this adventure is getting bigger!
I have a pet peeve that got me thinking. My peeve is people who say “I’ll call you” or “I’ll email you some times to connect” and then don’t. It’s the modern equivalent of the Hollywood brush off “Let’s do lunch”. One of my service providers did this to me last week and it’s annoying and unprofessional, and it got me to thinking again about how important expectations are.
Satisfying other people really is all about setting their expectations, and it’s especially true in business.
The ultimate is meeting your quarterly numbers. AAPL was slammed because they missed their financial expectations even though profits had grown dramatically. If you say you are going to report X and you report X-1 you are going to get dinged in today’s short term market. It’s a no win for the public company CEO and the great ones understand it’s a long term game, but the CFOs make their stripes on setting expectations right consistently.
Next is product schedules. There is discipline to this skill. You want to be aggressive to stretch the team and yet hit the dates you set because the rest of your business team is planning on it. Literally. Planning customer roll out, planning PR, so major delays play havoc with customer expectations. I very much admire my business partner YY and her ability to think through every aspect of the product release, set the company’s expectation at 95%, consistently deliver that 95% and sometimes deliver the upside of 100%. Everyone’s needs are met and our products leap forward every month.
Then there is your relationships. Californians seem very friendly at first, and then are hard to get close to. The English are frosty at first and then warm up. In business, be clear about your relationships. Are you work colleagues or friends… can your companion truly be him or herself in all his or her dumbness at times, or do they always need to be wary ? Are you loyal or fickle at heart? Obviously you can’t signal this early in a relationship but there comes a time when you can, and it’s just more efficient.
Arrive when you say you are going to arrive. Being late is the ultimate in bad manners – it says you think your time is more important than my time.
And if you tell me you are going to do something for heaven’s 
sake do it or don’t tell me in the first place! It just makes me grumpy.
At FirstRain many of our technical and support team are located in Gurgaon just outside of New Delhi in India. Because it is very important that the US based team and the India based team work closely together we not only travel to Gurgaon several times a year, we also bring Gurgaon team members out to San Mateo from time to time for product design sessions, for training and to improve our support process.
Earlier this month Sagar and Nitin came out for 2 weeks and since they were here over a weekend we decided to take them for a classic California experience – wine tasting at Ridge Winery. Ridge is in Cupertino up on the Montebello ridge and offers spectacular views of the Bay Area, plus a warm garden to picnic in and wine tasting for those that drink. We put together a picnic and took family members with us, including one who was 15 months old, and one who was 82. A great way to get to know one another better in a relaxed atmosphere.
Cory, our resident sommelier, sampling the cheese selection with his grenache
Our littlest rainmaker, Sebastian, enjoying the picnic with Sagar and Nitin
Towards the end of the picnic our families persuaded us to pose together and toast a lovely day
I was delighted that my blog, The Grassy Road, was selected as one of the top 10 CEO blogs by Chief Executive Magazine this week. Given all the exposure and risk a CEO already faces why, you may ask, blog?
At the heart of my reasoning is that transparency is a good thing for a CEO. It’s important the CEO is an active communicator, it’s important that she is well understood by all her constituencies and a blog can be a powerful additive to the traditional communication platforms.
We have a FirstRain blog – MarketMine – on our web site. It’s a good vehicle for us to comment on our industry, market developments at FirstRain, showcase customers, and for my team to write and share their views in an open forum.
But for a CEO blog Seth Godin set the bar high when he posted many years ago that blogs need
“Candor
Urgency
Timeliness
Pithiness and
Controversy – Does this sound like a CEO to you?”
I agree – this is a tall order – but if you can do it then it becomes both interesting reading and a vehicle for people to get to know me… my opinions on industry, technology, corporate boards, gender equality issues and, then sprinkled in just occasionally, a personal post about a vacation or a swimming race.
You can get to know me and what I care about very easily by reading my writing. You’ll know where I stand on a number of business issues, what developments matter to me as CEO of FirstRain, and, if you want to, how to connect with me. It’s a powerful recruiting tool for prospective employees to understand our culture, and many customers read it as a way of staying close to FirstRain.
More challenging is blogging on the Huffington Post if I think an idea is interesting to the Business section readers (I’m not qualified to write about politics or celebrities which are their highest traffic sections!). HuffPo has a huge readership and so posting there carries significant responsibility, but overall I get positive feedback from people who find it helpful and so I strive to share my experience, and expose readers to our business at the same time.
But it is not without risk. As a visible person (I sit on two public company boards) I do also have to be very careful that what I write never breaches confidentiality, while controversial is never in bad taste, and does not embarrass my companies even indirectly. This is hard at times – I am not without strong opinions! Sometimes I want to write on an idea that even I know is a little out there and I’ll ask my team for advice – and so far they have corralled me well.
We are swimming in a social media world. It’s one of the characteristics of today’s Web that makes the need for FirstRain so strong in our customers. They need to understand, with great precision, what’s developing in their markets. One of the best ways I can stay on top of the emerging trends is to be a part of that world myself – blogging and tweeting and collaborating so I understand first hand what the benefits and challenges are.
John Kador characterized me as ” fearless in mixing the personal with the professional in her blog”. I should have told him about the deep breath I take before I click on Publish Post each time!
We announced the FirstRain iPad app yesterday. Our new iPad app marries the elegance of the iPad with the precision of FirstRain’s business Web. It’s visual business monitoring – slick, fast, cool, beautiful, powerful – all the adjectives we can’t use in a press release but want to say. I truly love it and it’s now how I stay on top of my customers, our industry and everything else business wise that I need to know in a few minutes a day.
If you are in sales, marketing or purchasing, or you are a partner in a law firm, or a librarian, or a MI or CI professional, you are going to want a FirstRain subscription and this app. You are missing developments in your market, your customers, your vendors TODAY that you can now see real-time with the gentle swipe of a finger.
One of the more fascinating developments in our rapidly evolving financial markets is the shift that’s beginning to occur as the Baby Boom Generation—whose oldest members turn 65 this year—approaches and enters retirement. And while this event raises many societal challenges, ranging from the increased load on our health care system to the solvency of our social entitlement programs, it’s equally interesting to consider those folks who are recognizing the emerging needs and opportunities presented, and coming up with innovative ways to fill that need. And it’s a big need.
An interesting article last week from Canada’s Financial post articulates well the big demographics changes to come for countries like the U.S. And Canada, and the potential impact and opportunity for financial service providers:
“As you assess the stock holdings in your portfolio this fall, consider this: According to recent population projections, the proportion of seniors in Canada could nearly double in the next 25 years, while the proportion of children is expected to continue falling. If these demographic changes occur, it will have a major impact on the Canadian economy, which in turn will impact your investment portfolio…Financial service providers, especially wealth and asset management companies, also stand to benefit as an enormous amount of wealth is controlled by the Boomer generation. Institutions that cater to the specific needs of older clients will capitalize on this growing segment.”
One great example of a firm actively adapting to meet this opportunity is Fidelity Investments, who announced this week the launch of a greatly expanded set of market research and education tools focused specifically on helping Baby Boomers and others learn about and select fixed-income market investments. It’s a smart move, and we at FirstRain were very pleased that our technology was selected as one of the top tools available in the new Fidelity fixed income research suite. As their announcement notes, Fidelity users will be able to leverage a custom FirstRain implementation that provides, “trends analysis on the fixed income markets, so investors can see what fixed income topics are being discussed online and with what frequency. The content is categorized and investors can drill down into subcategories that change daily, depending on what is being discussed online.”
It’s a powerful tool that builds on the quite successful and popular FirstRain ‘Hot Topics on the Web’ tool that Fidelity users have already been using on the Fidelity.com Stock Research Center since 2009 (we’re told FirstRain hot topics are very popular on the page).
FirstRain ‘Hot Topics on the Web’ on Fidelity.com’s Stock Research Center
And the reason, we believe, it’s been so successful is because of the incredibly targeted, unique and interesting content we’re able to uncover from the business Web. Because, at our heart, we’re an analytics software company which applies powerful technology to uncover hard-to-find business content: our customers consistently tell us they find content on FirstRain that they wouldn’t otherwise find or would take them a great deal of advanced searching.
Fidelity has been a fantastic partner to work with over the last two years, and we’re very much looking forward to our expanded relationship and tackling these new challenges—and the opportunities they now present!
Earlier this year I set out a challenge for myself to do a really long swim for my mother, and on Monday that crazy idea grew into something really big for FirstRain and for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.
We started doing athletic competitions at FirstRain back in 2008 as a way to build stronger teams inside the company and this Summer I decided to encourage Rainmakers to get involved in a series of events building up to my personal challenge of a 2.4 mile ocean swim off Maui.
And to my delight many of my coworkers have been with me all the way – and into the race! All summer Rainmakers have been training with me in the pool, competing in the Splash and Dash series and yesterday two of them did the Maui ‘Aumakua Swim too. We’ve been doing relays, running, teaching each other how to swim better and generally having fun and becoming friends.
The race yesterday was on a spectacular, perfect Maui day. The water was crystal clear and we were swimming over coral reefs, fish and the occasional turtle. Thomas and Jordy did the 1 mile distance and were both very pleased with their times and I beat my time goal in the 2.4 mile distance.
Jordy, Thomas and me – we were ready!
2.4 miles is a very long way to swim if you don’t compete all the time. It was a huge personal challenge for me but once I set my pace I pushed through, absolutely determined to finish because I was raising money for OCRF, I was on a mission and I was supported by so many coworkers, friends and family.
My mother was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer 18 months ago. She has been through treatment and is in remission but we know the fight is not over. Unfortunately today there is no effective early detection method for this disease and so the statistics are tough. Over 22,000 women are diagnosed with the disease each year in the US and over 15,000 die from it. My goal was to raise as much money as possible for OCRF to help find a detection method and ultimately a cure.
And the result was donations of more than $31,000! Truly fantastic generosity from many, many people. We put out a FirstRain press release on the news because the achievement is, to a great extent, the result of my coworkers wonderful involvement and support. It’s a privilege to work with such terrific people.
Several Rainmakers have asked me what we are going to do next Summer – any suggestions for what we should do next?
