Creating Cohesive Company Culture via Employee Engagement Experiences, with Suman Siva of Marco

Suman, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. Excited to chat.

Yes, and I love what you're doing with Marco Experiences. I looked at it, like doing my research on this and figuring out all the different types of things you guys offer for different companies. There's a lot to unpack there. I want you to take a step back. Like, what are you doing today? What do you offer today for people who aren't familiar with what you guys do?

Yeah, so Marco is an experiences platform and we help companies and teams bring their people together, Really, however. And so that's virtually, in person in New York and San Francisco, as well as through kind of company retreats. So obviously a lot of different products and verticals, but we believe that especially kind of like in a hybrid world, it's just more difficult. We can get into it, but like companies need all these types of options to have a cohesive kind of culture partner from an experience perspective. So that's what we do.

How did that get started in the first place? I know there's a lot that's happened in the last number of like a year and a half or so here. How did this get started?

So I'll jump from the— I'll start from the beginning. So we— so my last kind of real job was at SoftBank on the consumer technology, consumer internet investing team. And I joined when the fund had kind of just kicked off. And we look, you know, we invested in a bunch of different categories, whether it's food delivery, proptech, so companies like DoorDash and Rappi, companies like Opendoor and Compass. And one of the areas that we spent a lot of time on was travel. And so I personally kind of worked on some travel investments, one in particular called GetYourGuide, which is in the experiences space. So it's like a European TripAdvisor competitor. So really all of this starts from the beginning because I basically looked at the space a ton. A couple of folks on the team had come from Airbnb's corp dev team, they were obsessed with travel. And And I kind of was like, there, you know, in this experiences category, there's not like a brand that resonates for the modern consumer. That's where it started. And it has gone, you know, through a number of pivots over the past couple of years. And we can, we can chat through how it got to its current evolution. But, but that's the genesis, I would say.

Yeah, take me through that side. So I know a lot of companies I've talked to, a lot of founders I've talked to, they've evolved their business, they've pivoted. I know one of the recent ones I had maybe like 10 episodes ago, He, I mean, I interviewed him maybe like a year and a half, 2 years ago. And I interviewed him again more recently, like completely changed his like business model in some ways, like everything pivoted, raised a bunch of money, everything changed. For you, take me through like how the evolution kind of happened to what you actually have today.

So I left SoftBank. And I would say one thing that a couple of things that haven't changed is always called Marco, right? And it was always an experiences platform. And Marco Polo was, it's a game you play as a kid in the pool, but it's also, He was a discoverer from Europe and he kind of chronicled his journey. So he allowed Europeans to discover kind of the Far East. So it's this whole concept of like, if you're in the experiences space, you should really care about curation and discovery, helping people discover amazing experiences. But so I basically left SoftBank, realized I didn't have very many skills. I was like, I'm gonna build this company. I have a cool deck. But the initial company was actually consumer-facing. And so my co-founder Was one of the first engineers on Instagram Stories and kind of is a very product-minded engineer. And so we were chatting and we basically— the thesis initially was let's create like Superhuman for Facebook events. So a social product that you can use with your friends and then build a marketplace for experiences on the back of it. And the reason was we saw at GetYourGuide, they basically acquired— they paid a lot of paid acquisition, essentially was their strategy. And we were like, okay, well, what if you could have an organic growth engine and then monetize with this marketplace? People are like, oh, smart. You started a virtual events company during COVID I'm like, no, no, I started an in-person experiences company before COVID So there's this holy shit moment of like, oh my gosh, you're, you know, what are we gonna do? We're sitting, I remember we're sitting in Tahoe and we're getting all the news of all the ski resorts getting shut down. This was, I mean, this is kind of crazy to talk about right now because we're sitting here. with the new variant that's kind of taking hold. So it's been a long couple, couple of years. And so we said, okay, what are we gonna do? And so we basically just started doing virtual events. And we would find these hosts who, you know, a lot of their income streams had dried up, right. And so they were creators, they were trying to figure out what they were going to do, right, whether it's a musician, or kind of someone who's starting a wine company, for example, and wanted to do in-person activations for his brand. And we basically had some of these people and we started just doing events for them, for the public. We quickly realized that, you know, a bunch of strangers in a Zoom room is even more awkward than a group of people that, that, you know. But so there's kind of 2 realizations. One is, hey, there's actually a new category being created, right? So a lot of these people were able to build audiences virtually and really democratize access to whatever it was they were passionate about. So we started doing that. And then the second piece of it was we were like, hey, experiences are really for communities. I think the best way is, you know, you want to do these with people you care about. We actually started getting asked to do some of these and the quality started to increase too. So we're like, there's actually some pretty high quality stuff on here. And we were working with these amazing hosts. And then we found that companies were actually kind of willing to do these and pay for these experiences because they were like, well, people aren't coming in the office. How are we gonna have some type of empathy building, kind of team building activities? So that's where it started, right? We always wanted to do things in person. And so as the world kind of started to open up, we've safely kind of introduced in-person and company retreats like I mentioned, but it's expanded, right? And so I'll pause for that.

Yeah, no, just going to the B2B side. So a lot of companies have done that. They've switched to like, okay, well, going consumers is a little bit different, a lot different at times going the B2B route. When you decide to make that switch and kind of focusing more on that side of things, what did that mean from how are you gonna go about that from an acquisition standpoint? Build a sales team? Like, how are you strategically kind of choosing who you're gonna target with that too?

Yeah, our go-to-market has predominantly been, we've just started to kind of explore paid acquisition as a channel. But initially, our first hire was Chris Knakal, who's a friend and also now extremely close coworker. And he actually Worked at a company called Scoop, and so I was the chief of staff there when it was like you know eight or nine people. Talk about pivots. So that was a mobility solution for companies, a carpooling solution, right? So they sold into the same buyers: office manager, HR professional, that type of thing. And then now they are a hybrid work solution, right? So they pivoted because carpooling, as you'd imagine, dried up during COVID But now they've Rob Sadow is a fantastic CEO, and and carpooling will be one of those many solutions they provide. But anyway, so we we found Chris, and we're like, hey, you're used to selling to these types of folks. Like Why not give us some advice? One thing led to another, advice led to full, you know, being full-time. And so we built out a sales team very different from consumer, right? Because consumer, really, we were building a product that could go viral, the whole concept of it, which is, by the way, one day we may explore bringing this back because none of my friends use Facebook events. So you're seeing like paperless post invites nowadays. So basically that was like a, how do you create a viral loop? And then you could market that. as consumer companies do in a variety of ways. But now B2B, right? It's like, okay, what does— and we're a B2B marketplace and now we're exploring kind of enterprise solution we're calling Marco Membership. So that'll be a big focus next year. Already have some kind of traction there, but it's just different, right? So it's like enterprise kind of sales motion, paid acquisition. The economics are different given kind of the size of the kind of experiences we're hosting, particularly as it relates to in-person and the company retreats, which are kind of large-scale events. So very different.

What are you seeing from that? So is it matter— like, what's the model behind that in terms of like how many events they do? Or is it an ongoing kind of thing? I'm curious on like the business model behind that when you're going B2B.

Yeah, the business model now as we're building it is still maintain a marketplace model. So, you know, companies can come in and can experience Barco, what we have to offer, high-quality experiences, whatever category. And really then, you know, we naturally see companies being like, hey, you guys do a bunch of stuff, right? Can you just tell me how— I mean, now the way I talk about it is just to back up and talk about the mission and why this is a problem, right? The place used to be where culture was built. Everyone used to go into the office every day. Now name a tech company that isn't hiring distributed. All of them are, right? It is a competitive disadvantage to get every— like, and now you're like, I don't have to hire everyone in the same 7, 10, 15-mile radius. I can hire people anywhere. With that comes a lot of challenges. Now, how do I have a cohesive culture? How do I get, you know, maintain employee engagement, right? Like McKinsey just published a report around kind of the Great Resignation. 19 million Americans have left since I think April of 2021, left their jobs. A big reason is because they don't feel engaged at work, right? So it is a big kind of issue that you need to invest behind, but it's complicated. You're like, well, my people— I mean, our company has people in New York, where I'm based now with my co-founder, SF, where I used to be based, LA, Miami, Atlanta, Seattle. Yeah. And the Philippines. Right. So it's like we drink our own Kool-Aid. It's like, how do you actually get those people together and have an engaged culture? And so in terms of your question, going back to your question, right, you're like, what's the frequency? Really, we see people that are starting to be like, well, we're going to use you for the virtual stuff and then perhaps a retreat. And really, the natural evolution of that was, hey, let's be your strategic partner and kind of help you figure out, you know, how you should do this, how frequently, for which folks, right? Is it your exec team? Is it your product team? Is it your entire company? And so the solution now is like, let's solve your entire kind of employee engagement outside of the office. And that's kind of the vision.

So with that too, so selling that vision and that mission in terms of raising capital, as you raised, I mean, they announced it in January, raised almost $3 million. Take me through that process of how that fundraising went for you. I know there was a connection at least with one of the SoftBank people there, but take me through that, that, that side of things, raising capital for this idea.

Totally. I mean, look, like SoftBank's minimum check size when I was there was $100 million. So it's funny, early stage investing is like super different. And I have friends who are like, oh man, you must have had such a robust investor network. And I did know people who were investors, but I was like a growth investor, right? So we were looking at a lot of different companies in the network. One of the best things about starting a company is, you know, the network you're building, whether it's entrepreneurs, you know, and founders or investors. But it was not easy. I mean, so initially I didn't even ask friends and family for money because I was like, I want to have a real business model before we do that. But once we started to get traction with kind of that virtual kind of experiences marketplace, people started to buy. We barely had a website, but we were getting traction. We're like, okay, this is, this is an opportunity to provide culture for companies. We started raising a friends and family round that led to kind of some, you know, one of the folks actually, Hunter. Hunter is the CEO of— Horsely CEO of Bitwise, which is a company that's absolutely crushed it. It's a crypto kind of index fund. And he was like, well, this is a pretty good idea. You guys have some traction. Perhaps you go talk to some institutional folks. I'll make some intros. So kudos to him to kind of make some intros. And then one thing led to another and we're like, hey, let's just raise a round and kind of go after this opportunity. And we've kind of expanded the aperture as we've gone, but certainly stayed busy over the past year.

How long did that fundraising take? 'Cause I've talked to people who've taken 10 months to fundraise, some people taking 3 weeks. I'm just curious that process for other founders who are out there wondering about raising capital. For you, how'd that go?

Totally. I mean, look, I think myself and Nick, we had kind of legitimate backgrounds, right? Like I worked at Bain, worked in investing, we're at SoftBank, and Nick was an amazing engineer, like helped build Instagram Stories essentially, was at Brex. It was still challenging, right? Because we're first-time founders. It's kind of like, hey, I mean, and look, we're playing in a market where initially people were like, is this a COVID company? Like, we would get to a stage, I think, with a lot of investors, we're like, okay, real traction, you know, you guys seem halfway smart, but is this just purely like a flash in the pan? And so that was frustrating because we were like, hey, come on, we're building this, it's gonna work.

This is real. Yeah.

And so it took a few months, but that was because we started off raising a bit of money from friends. as a family. And then you— and then we— so it took a few months for sure. I think, I mean, you know, fundraising, we're continuing to grow, and we'll have to do more fundraising, right? I think it's always challenging. People who tell you that it's easy are probably just so legitimate in terms of the fact perhaps they've started and sold multiple companies, or they're in an extremely hot space, right, or hot market, and just like, and that sort of thing, or probably a combination of both, right?

Both.

In those cases, you oftentimes will read kind of the flashy headlines of like, oh man, they raised a $20 million seed round. I'm like, there's something there. That's, that's not the norm. It's still challenging. I think even in, in this day with a lot of money in venture, people are still particular and they're just funding. I think they're rewarding signal with higher valuations, higher amounts of money. I don't think it's necessarily easier for everyone who's trying to start a company. That's not true.

Yeah, I agree completely. I just see your exact point. I know one of my friends who raised a $20 million seed round. It's exactly like, exactly that point. He's like, former team who had grown multiple companies at scale. So of course they have the pedigree to be able to do it. It's totally different than what— and at Vitalize, we invest in seed and pre-seed. And so we see the round valuations and everything too. It's just insane the size of some of these rounds. But again, the teams are often, yeah, they've done a lot of things, sold different companies, whatever. It's a lot different than a first-time founder going into this and then trying to raise this massive seed round off of that. It's a totally different thing. But for you too, so I'm going back to You mentioned your background a bit in doing this. Why though, like even start a company, like getting to that point of going from, you know, SoftBank and investing side of it to the side of starting a company, that transition, I'm curious as for you, how has that been for you transitioning into that side of things?

I can tell you like why I think intrinsically perhaps. So I mean, my dad is a classic kind of immigrant, went to IIT, lived in Sri Lanka, had a business, a retail business, so nothing to do with engineering. And that got burned down during the Civil War, came to America. But he's always talked about like, tells these hilarious stories about him being a hustler and just like having this business, which was successful. And so me and him are pretty similar. So I've always been like, oh man, maybe one day I'll kind of do something entrepreneurial. And I have a twin brother and my, you know, my mom is a classic and both my parents are like, be a doctor, sister's a doctor, twin brother works at a hedge fund, right? Very classic, like kind of finance route. But I've always been like, I don't think this whole finance thing is really that, for me, especially kind of the more traditional finance route. So I interned in investment banking, didn't like that, did consulting, liked the people, wanted something a little bit more entrepreneurial, tried some startup stuff. Eventually was like, I'm investing in startups. But I was like, oh man, being on the other side of the table, that sounds pretty fun. And then now I've realized it's, it's extremely challenging. And so it's fun. But, but that's kind of the story. And then there's the idea, right? I was like, this is an interesting space. there needs to be some innovation here. Airbnb Experiences is maybe the only experiences company you can think of that has a brand. But are you ever gonna do something on Airbnb Experiences on a Friday, whether it's with your team or yourself? Maybe. But I think still they don't have— there's a lot of opportunity in the space. So, and it's a fun space. I mean, yeah.

And I asked that too, because I'm curious. I know inherently what your platform does. It's like you're enabling the creator, I economy in many ways, because if you think about the creators on the platform, it helps. So like, that ties into like people wanting to kind of go independent, start their own thing, people considering quitting jobs to start their own thing or do part-time. Like we have, we've, we just hired maybe like 8 part-time people at Vitalyze. And it's like, that's exactly what people want. They want like a half-time thing while they work on the other thing, or combine multiple jobs, because they can, because it's all remote anyways. And so people are taking those leaps. For you in supporting the creator economy, like How does Marco do that? Find people for the platform? Like, I'm curious about that side of things. We—

I'm kind of obsessed with the creator economy now, because I think a lot of VCs talk about it and like write blog articles about it, but few actually spend time with real creators. So I just find it kind of interesting. But we're, I mean, we're doing it right. Like when we first started, we weren't even taking money, right? We were just like these 4 folks who were out of jobs. So we kind of like We're just kind of introducing ourselves to them as a platform. But that's like the reason we exist, right, is really the creators. And the cool thing now is there are just new ways, and which is why things like Web3 are interesting. There's just new ways to monetize, right? So who would have thought a lot of these folks we work with, particularly individuals, but even businesses, right? They don't necessarily have like a B2B strategy, right? They're not like, oh, I'm gonna go talk to the head of HR at You know, Robinhood and get he or she to be you know a customer and buy like that's not necessarily what their strength is. Their strength is what they're passionate about, right? And so for us, it's really important. By the way, you mentioned part-time work. We have you know six people who are part-time who are flexible. Two of whom I mean, so for example, we're working just started working with Alex Delaney, who's kind of a famous. Kind of got a great brand and is kind of food and beverage obsessed. So he used to be a writer for Bon Appetit. Super cool, super cool guy. And so he's helping with our food and beverage strategy to get access to kind of unique food and beverage experiences. But also he's creating his own food and beverage experience, right? And so that's someone who has domain expertise and we're going out and we're finding them. And that's going to be one of the important parts of our platform, right? So we'll have exclusive inventory, Through himself as well as his network. And the same goes for verticals like D&I. We brought on a part-time person called Courtney Roberts, who spent her whole kind of past 10 years building out her career within diversity inclusion, learning development, training, and that sort of thing. And so it's cool, right? Because we're, you know, they see the value and companies now see the value of investing in this kind of, these kinds of things. So.

How are you going about finding them in terms of those part-time hires? I know, like, we, it is crazy, by the way, in terms of thinking about how many people want part-time So like, like our founder of Vitalize, Gail, she tweeted like one tweet about an Airtable link about like part-time work in startups in VC. And we got over 700 people to fill it out in like a day or two. And that's like, that is just how wild it is for you. How have you gone about finding people in terms of those part-time hires and stuff too?

So one, I mean, there's a structured kind of philosophy of like, hey, we're gonna launch it in Austin. So We'll talk to folks and working with a guy who spent 8 years at South by Southwest, right? In terms of, okay, what is the— what— and we'll, you know, one of the folks on our team, Oliver, he kind of— people have networks and we're reaching out to creatives, right? So it's really like we hire for product and engineering, business acumen, right? Whether that's marketing and sales and people who like experiences, right? So from the part-time perspective, a lot of the creatives are interested in this kind of stuff. But I also think the mission of what we're trying to do resonates for people, right? We are trying to make work kind of a better place, right? Through having kind of better relationships with employees, which is more challenging now that people are distributed. So people get it. Like, we have people who quit their well-paying jobs and found us and were like, this is cool. Like, can I— do you guys have an opening? And part of it is like, we're like, not necessarily, but like, what are you interested in? And then we hear them and we're like, wow, you're—

Yeah.

You've got a great background. I mean, one woman worked at TED Infatuation Tesla events, and she had another job. And she was like, hey, I've got great— and I'm like, you know more about experiences than me for certain. And so we'll find a way to work with you. But I think that's a testament to our team, that kind of warm outreach. But I think platforms like Twitter, as well as just having a mission that resonates with folks, I think will be increasingly important as we scale the team, right?

Yeah, it definitely kind of resonates with me in terms of how you have to be opportunistic when people come in that are just great talents. And like, you may not be searching for them or like needing that position, but we've definitely done the same thing where we're like, wait a minute, they are amazing at this thing. Like we can bring them on and have them do something, even if it's a few hours a week and whatever. 'Cause you also don't know how that translates to them. You know, if they're great, then they execute really well. Maybe it expands into something more and they can take on more responsibility. And that side of things as well as your company grows.

And, and by the way, we have, we have almost everyone in our comp— like so many people in our company worked part-time, partly because we hadn't, didn't have the money to pay them yet. And we were like, they were like, this is interesting. Let's, and it's kind of a, it's like dating, right? You're like, hey, before we get married, perhaps we go on a few dates. Right. And then so we have this kind of period. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so we have this period with a lot of people actually. I would, I need to go back and look at the number of people. But I would say a majority of people on our team spent some time working part-time, you know, before joining, oftentimes quitting well-paying jobs that were more secure, partly because then they were like, well, this is cool, I want to be part of this. So free plug for anyone who is interested in getting some work in a cool company.

But oh, I agree. I think you can find it in for sure if you're willing to just take on some type of part-time Part-time role or even offer your services. You know, there's a lot of ways you can get in with that. And I think we, I mean, we definitely see it in venture. I think people who want to get into venture should look at that same type of thing, honestly. And also one of the last things with your company too, with all the insights you have with, you know, these companies in the platform using the platform, like what are you seeing in terms of what they actually want from it? Like what types of events they want for it? You know, that side of things. I'm trying to think of other companies that are like, oh, I want to dabble in this, but I have no idea. How to use it, how many we should do, all that sort of thing. What are you seeing from your side of things, like what people actually want in terms of the platform?

Yeah, so I think there's a few parts of that. One is there's just a lot of uncertainty. And if you talk to— we talk to a lot of people leaders. We have this Future of Culture ebook, which you should definitely check out. We interviewed a bunch of people, head of people at Strava and Ritual and a bunch of companies in terms of how they're approaching it. It being how do you build culture in this new world? And I think part of it is like people just don't know what the cadence should be, what types of experiences they should do. What they do know is people are coming into the office less, right? And they do know that employees need to be engaged. So that's why we actually think there's a proactive opportunity. A lot of the times people are booking things reactively. They're like, well, crap, I haven't done anything with my team in 4 months and no one has talked to one another and there needs to be something that we do, right? Now, and we've seen that behavior a lot for the past year, people are like, oh crap, I gotta do something. Now, I think as we hopefully in the next kind of quarter, as the new variant kind of will, I think, grow and then hopefully subside, I think there will be eventually a point where people will be like, okay, now the future of work is more distributed. We're kind of hybrid. There's gonna be different flavors of it. What do we do? And we need to, the same way we think about real estate, you know, strategically, and we're investing in millions of dollars of kind of real estate, the purpose of real estate being to bring people together so they can collaborate. And interact with one another, they're gonna say, okay, well, what should our calendar be? Right? Like, what should we do? Should we do an annual company retreat? Should we do— oh, we have a few hubs now. And this is what we're, we're literally creating a culture plan for ourselves. Our head of sales pitched it to our, one of the folks on our team and approved it, which was like, okay, we've got a hub in New York and a hub in SF. And, and then people all over, what should our plan be? I think people will approach it more proactively. But then the specific point in terms of what experiences, a lot of them are, you know, entertainment and celebratory, right? But then we're starting to see more where that's why we're investing in kind of like D&I and learning and development, how digital fluency, kind of what is Web3, what is, how do you kind of like have an inclusive workplace, stuff that's a bit heavier. I think that will be really important, particularly in terms of the virtual offerings. I think that the virtual offerings will be more Oh, wow, I could not have done this in person because it's someone who, you know, isn't perhaps in the same city. And then I actually think that what you'll— you may see a decline in, you know, the virtual cocktail making classes because people are going to be like, I'm going to go to a bar, right? That's where I'm gonna get my cocktail. And so I think that virtual will still grow, but it'll— the bar will be higher and it'll be more kind of interesting, unique kind of personalities. And then you'll see kind of smaller team events. And we have, you know, a lot of things people gravitate towards your interesting hosts, right? So, you know, in New York, we're doing an event with, with some folks in the press for Accidental Bar with kind of a sake, like a sake tasting, but it's kind of irreverent and it's kind of like a nouveau sake tasting. So stuff like that where it's like, oh, I would do that with my friends. Like, I would absolutely do that.

And my work will pay for it.

Like, amazing. And then retreats, I think, are just phenomenal. A great way to get your entire team together, particularly when you don't see each other. That often. So I think that will be a huge trend. I was reading an article on Skift, which is this kind of like travel publication on— I think during the pandemic, startups spent more money on Airbnbs than they did on rent. And the purpose of the Airbnbs was generally these retreats. So really, I think that Airbnb, I think, will benefit from this, from their accommodations business. But I think this whole notion of like, hey, how do I bring 50, 100 people together once a year? You know, once a quarter, right, to get together. That will also, I think, become a bigger trend.

Yeah, I can see that for sure, that happening. It seems to make so much sense of people wanting to have a connection at some point to see in person. Like, I just recently, after like 11 months, saw Gail, the founder of our firm, in person for the first time. So first time ever. And so like, that's exactly— it was like, oh, this is amazing to actually see her in person. Like, I remember staring at her being like, I've seen you on Zoom so many times and now you're real. I can like interact. It's so bizarre. But yeah, I think you'll definitely see that. I love where Mark Marco is going with everything. And when I heard about the company, I was like, okay, this is really intriguing. Where's the best place for people to learn more about Marco, connect with you as well if they'd like to?

Yeah, you can, you know, just go to the website at marcoexperiences.com and shoot me an email at suman@marcoexperiences.com. So I'm sure if you have show notes, you can, you can drop them in there. And yeah, we're excited to be— I would say we're really excited to like, We don't view ourselves just as kind of an events or experiences company. Really, the problem we're trying to solve is how do you bring people together kind of intentionally, creatively, thoughtfully, you know, communities starting off with people at work, which I think is a big problem and people can relate to it. Most people who are working jobs are feeling it. So love to help out your teams if you're interested.

Awesome. Thank you. We'll definitely be sure to link that up in the show notes as well. Sunil, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today.

Awesome. It was my pleasure. Cheers.