Josh James built Omniture, sold it, then started Domo. The second time around, investors expect you to repeat that success, which raises the pressure. Domo's business-intelligence platform needed consultative selling, not the product-led sales that worked for Omniture, forcing him to rebuild his go-to-market strategy from scratch.
Anything that you thought, having had a huge first success, that you thought would be easier the second time that actually weren't?
Well, I thought it would be easier. Easier? And you guys all know, for starting companies, it's not easy. And I think you just get older and more tired, and still, like, no one's picking up the ball and running with it. Still, there's things you have to do. Yeah. I think there's higher expectations, so there's a different type of stress. The first time around, no one has expectations. Everyone thinks you're gonna fail, and so it's just kind of like—
It's comforting in the early days.
Yeah, it is. If you do, it's not a big deal. You get a badge of honor. This time around, people have expectations, and they throw money at you, and that's definitely nerve-wracking. I think the other big lesson, or big difference, is I figured if Let's go get some of those same people that we worked with last time.
Yeah, getting the band back together.
Get the people that have been there, done that, and we'll upgrade in other places and get more people that have been there, done that. And then you lose that wonderful thing that happens in a brand new startup with brand new founders, is everyone's trying to make a name for themselves. Everyone's putting everything on the line, and it's all been there, done that, and it all kind of ends at 6, 7 o'clock, and there's not the 11:30 text messages, So we had to make sure we pulled some of those, I mean, generally speaking, younger people in and promoting them and making it their life and having that kind of energy is extremely important.
And was it, so there's the energy and then also sometimes everyone wants to get the band back together, right? It's the easiest way to repeat Lightning.
Sure.
But do you find that sometimes it's, they only want to do things sort of the way that where they were successful? Was that an issue as well?
Yeah, and no one—
That's what we want to do. We know how to crush it one way and the world evolves.
Well, I mean, even with me, I mean, there's things that I was sure were gonna work the same way. There were some things I knew that we screwed up, and I'm like, we've gotta improve those things. And you definitely shoot people in the head a lot faster, because you've learned that lesson a million times. But there's things like, we at Omniture, it was really easy to sell. It's like, do you have a website? Okay, here, you need web analytics.
Yeah.
And Domo is not as easy. People don't understand. They're like, well, it's BI. We're like, no, no, no, no. And they're like, oh, it's BI 2.0. And I'm like, no, that's kind of like this sucks 2.0, because BI kind of sucked. And so it's understanding how to be much more consultative in the selling process and training the whole organization on that process is something we had to completely relearn. So that was different.
And you need different DNA in the team, you think?
Some DNA difference, yes.
Yeah.
And I think I'm really comfortable, I mean, if people come into my office, which they often do to come and complain about somebody else on the team.
Yeah.
First thing I do is call that person and say, hey, come in here. Okay, say it again. And you know, it makes people uncomfortable, but they learn real quick, like, we're not gonna walk around and complain about each other. We're gonna get in a room, we're gonna figure it out, we're gonna fight, and we're not gonna make it personal. But if you're gonna come in here and say something about somebody, then that person's gonna be walking in here 2 minutes later. So, but I think, I mean, that's what's fun. Fighting and trying to make things win and beating the heck out of competition, and that's fun.
