Big Arse Companies Why They Buy from Startups The Real Stories

Hey, everyone. I'm John Lehrer, Managing Director of Workbench. We're an enterprise fund and community based in New York. Our mantra has always been that amazing things happen at the intersection of suits and hoodies. Which is why I'm so excited for our panel today on how startups can better work with corporates. Before we kick off though, I want to make sure everyone's awake, so raise your hand if you'd love to sell into one of our esteemed panelists. Awesome. So we're a little short on time today and we're going to skip intros and dive right in. So, Tom, I'm looking at you. Aradali is a 150-year-old company and yet you've done some amazing work with startups lately, even some that are super early stage and don't have many customers. Walk us through the why and then get into the how a little bit.

I think the simple answer is this. We've been around 150 years. The city of Chicago burned down, the Great Depression. The minute you start thinking I know everything, you're lost. So for us, after 150 years of being around, we're sitting down and looking and going. A lot of media that we are engaged with is enabled through the digital world. And so the question for us is, how do we participate in that? And startups are a simple way for us to be there, for us to participate on the cutting edge. It was helping the founding of Workbench. Oration's a great example of a company that we sat down and looked at what they offered from a pharmaceutical perspective, which is in a healthcare market, which is a damn train wreck right now. And so one of the things that we sat down and thought is, here's a startup, they're not proven. They've got a great idea. It serves our employees, it serves our company. Why the hell not? And so that was us taking somewhat of a risk, but bottom line is that it was. If we can improve something, it doesn't have to be us, it doesn't have to be IBM, it doesn't have to be another Fortune 500. It can be a startup. And a lot of times startups are more nimble. And therefore it gives us an opportunity to work at the cutting edge of technology.

Awesome. So, Joyce, let's look over to you. Your role at Thomson Reuters involves really scouting and then vetting startups internally. Playing off Tom's point, how do you think about risk for an early stage company? I mean, how early can you go?

We go really early. Right. So you know, to your point, it's the activities and the pace and just the evolution of emerging technology has changed so rapidly that we have to be able to understand what's coming in the next five to 10 years and plan our emerging tech strategy. Plan how? Engage with early stage companies to do co creation and market development. So we have worked with companies that have 10 people, right, all the way to companies that have raised series A, Series B. And of course there is the, you know, the large tech companies. But I think what we're looking for from the smaller companies are really that external insights. How do we build quickly? What are some of the things that you're doing in terms of capability that can allow us to fill the gaps that we can't find in large companies? And then how do you advise us to go and look at our entire IT infrastructure and our product innovation cycle for the next two years, five years and 10 years?

And when you're looking at some of these 10 person companies, how are you finding them out there? I mean, are they coming to you? Are you searching for them?

It's a mix, right? So you know, Workbench is a great partner and many VC friends here. We do monthly quarterly discussions with the ecosystem to really kind of share what Tom Snorter is looking for from emerging tech perspective. What are the enterprise technology areas that we're interested in? What are the product innovation initiatives that both encompass this technology and business model that we're looking for. So through that communication, our partners, like you, understand kind of what we're looking for, what fits the startups and then we kind of facilitate that conversation. But the other part is really, you know, there are projects that we'll work on that, you know, we can't share a lot of information or we just simply don't know right, where it's going to go. So, you know, example, you know, a lot of examples in fintech or some of the more emerging tech areas where we internally as a large company need to have time to develop that visibility, that clarity. So part of the learning is to proactively go out and identify startups that have those specific capabilities, but also the understanding of the market so that we can find almost like a board of advisors, right, that allow them to come in early in the game, but also allow us to really develop a holistic view of, you know, who can we partner in the future, who could be the potential vendors, how do we potentially integrate with large companies that we've been working with and so forth.

Scarlett, if a startup wants to get in touch with you. What's the best way for them to reach out and how can they understand the pain points that you may be looking for solutions for?

There's a few different ways. And first I want to highlight on some of the things that Joyce was talking about, the way that I view my role and I'm a recovering entrepreneur, so I think that I think about it a little bit differently than most corporates, specifically in New York. It's kind of being the foot soldier on the ground. So it's a lot of proactive and reactive as well. So being mentors and all these accelerators and going to enterprise meetups and things like that, and just being part of that ecosystem and hearing what's going on, the best way is actually understanding what we're doing and what we're looking for. And you can go to the corporate websites and kind of see the high levels. Going to events like this and hearing the areas that we're really interested and concerned about is one of the best things, I think that we can start focusing later on, if you want, about the ways that people go about now that are really not effective. But people cold reach out to me all the time. And if they come at it from a perspective of, hey, I saw you speak at X, you talked about your initiatives in yz, and here's how we can help you with that. You've got my attention. Keeping it curt, to the point, not sending me six paragraphs is the best way. And of course, always you're going to hear this from any vc anyone else. Warm introductions are always key.

So, Tom, if someone doesn't have a warm introduction to you, what's a way that they can understand what's going on at Donnelly and reach out?

Well, I think that there's simple stuff. You could look at every function inside of a company, what's going on for it, what's going on for hr, what's going on in finance, what's going on with legal, and you could apply that across many, many industries, then you can specifically look and go inside the industry. You can go, okay, an industry that's laid ink on paper for 150 years is in transition. What the hell is that? Transition. And so when you show up, you need to have a conversation with me about a business issue that I got going on that I could identify with, with what you're saying, versus oftentimes it's more, let me tell you about my tech. Let me tell you about this whiz bang shit that I did that I'm sitting And going, I have no idea what you're talking about and it's not settling a business issue that I've got. So now you're wasting my time. So for me, do your homework before you show up because that is going to get you in the door with me because you're speaking a language that's meaningful for myself or another business leader in the company. And that then is solving a business problem versus I'm there to listen to some whiz bang tech you design that I could give two craps about.

I think if I may add, it depends on the audience, right? So I've had companies where a specific example, a London based company, five people, they reach out on LinkedIn, very specific email on, this is what we do, this is the content that we have, this is how we're getting our content and this is what we want to talk about. You know, I read my LinkedIn emails and now they're working with, you know, one of our business teams in financial risk to partner. So I think the audience is really important. If you're talking to somebody like me, you know, other companies where you know, I know the landscape of big data, I know the landscape, cloud, I know the landscape marketing tech, I know the capabilities out there. So be specific what exactly you're offering and how does it fit into the enterprise stack and how you differentiate and that quickly helped me to understand. Okay, you know, if it's cloud within our data center team, here's a person that you should talk to, right? Or here for marketing tech, is it digital tech, is it, you know, market development team or so forth? So I think depending on the audience and how technical are you certainly have to take tailor your message and how specific you go on the technical and business capabilities that you offer so that help you by helping us.

But at the same time, Scarlett, you just mentioned before to keep it short. So how are you supposed to make sure that they're showing that they understand your pain point? Here's how we differentiate in a very crowded landscape, but at the same time keep it very concise. What have you seen work?

Well.

It'S knowing your audience, right? So part of, part of that is saying here's a problem, here's how we solve it. My focus is if you can intrigue me then I want to hear more and then you can go into all those other details. If you send me a three sentence email where you're solving a pain point that you know that we have, you're referencing data that you've seen about what we're doing that's going to get me excited. And then you can send me the six paragraph email. But the first interaction shouldn't be that way. And the other thing that I see a lot too is I get very nervous when people automatically assume that we're a distribution channel. So we have 50 million customers, operations in over 30 countries, and it's very easy to tweak that out within the first one or two emails. And so you have to really think about how am I really going to change your business and impact your bottom line and not just use as a distribution channel to have access to a bunch of customers, which I think a lot of companies and startups aren't really understanding right now.

Yeah, I want to jump in because I look and go. The tech is one thing. If you're going to show up, you're going to help to solve a business problem. Got it? If you show up like an idiot in the work environment, we're not interested in talking to you. So you don't understand the culture that you're in. You don't understand our environment's very aggressive about getting stuff done. So you're a drawer and you're gonna come in and draw pictures for us and you're gonna talk for hours about stuff that we're sitting there and going, how the hell is this gonna solve anything? Or you're not driving the result that we're looking for quickly, we are gonna look and go. Your interpersonal approach to the company is misaligned to the culture that we need you to work within. So this whole simplicity, you know, I'm with you on emails. If you make me read something more than one screen, you're out. I'm not even reading. You're done. And so I will never talk to you. And my other is it, you know, you link me in and then you want to sell me your shit. Okay. And so it's like, no, I'm not interested in that. So. Because all I know is you saw me on LinkedIn, you know my background, you sent me a bunch of stuff and now this is a generic sales call. You've not studied anything about what's going on or my pain points. This gets into culturally, how do you show up in my organization. So I expect certain things out of people that come work for me.

I think part of that too is doing your research. What, what is really frustrating is when you get that generic email which you know has been sent to a million people because I'm not going to take my time to look at that and Joyce uses LinkedIn, I use Twitter, and those things can be easily found. People who send me DMs on Twitter who are connected to, I will have that meeting with them because they know me. They took the time to read what I was talking about. So I'm going to connect with them in a different way. LinkedIn for me is very overwhelming. There's so many messages that I just get blinded by that. And Twitter is the most effective thing because I check it every day. It's direct, it's 140 characters. So I'm going to have that conversation. And that's just knowing your audience and taking the time to really know who you're speaking to and what kind of gears them up.

I think the other thing to, you know, how do you kind of balance conciseness with how to target the right customer is, you know, using buzzwords is great. Right. So you kind of know what the big category you are. But let's just take example of Big Data. It doesn't really help me anymore to know what Big Data is and it doesn't really help me to know. It's just data visualization.

Right.

What part of that value chain do you fit in? And if I can help pinpoint where you are in that kind of workflow or value chain in the spectrum, Big Data or fintech or however you want to kind of dice that up, it helps me to understand where you fit in. And is it a vendor relationship, is it a partner relationship, is it you align with a product innovation project? So perhaps we need help to work on. So it doesn't have to be kind of a huge paragraph, but clearly understand where you play in a specific stack will help.

I think the other piece of that is in our company, when the business leader brings you forward, you will grease through procurement super easy. When you're not really brought forth from a business leader, but you're entering somehow in through procurement. Yeah, the organization has that sense of I now need to use you. I'm being forced versus I've got a business problem. I have a partnership. I now want to work with you. I think you're capable. And I will go tell procurement what I need and what I want and what I'm willing to pay for it. And I note with a lot of the startups, the whole getting bogged down inside of procurement becomes an issue. And for our company, that doesn't happen if you've got sponsorship from the business.

So, Joyce, playing off that, let's say you've done your homework, you Sent you the good LinkedIn message. You have the meeting and you're in with a business person that can really have the pain point that they're going to support. How can a startup here nail that meeting and make sure that they'll want to help you accelerate along procurement and keep things moving?

So assuming that you found kind of advocate, right?

Yes.

Like or champion like me, I think some startups are very proactive. They ask, okay, so who are the audience? Who are the people attending the meeting? Is it 30 minutes? Is it 15 minutes? How should I do that? Ask questions, Right? You know, assume the business have some understanding of the technology and the space we're interested in. I think today there's so much information about certain technologies, certain business area that you don't have to describe. This is the big data market, this is the fintech market, this is the payment market. Right. We know how big it is, we know where the disruptions are. But really, again, I think going to here's the ecosystem, right? We know, you know, these are the large tech companies, these are the large players. Here's where we fit in from an ecosystem perspective and here's what we fit in from a technology stack perspective and then going to the demo.

So that's how meetings go really well. Scarlet, what happens when people tank, walk through what to avoid.

In the introduction or when you follow along in the process?

Already both in the intro and then if they end up getting a meeting.

Part of it is not reading signals. So like first of all with the intro, I mean, we already kind of talked about this, but there was a company here who has emailed me nine times in 72 hours from different people that just does not work. And I'm forward about that and I will not talk to you after that point. And so it's being on the same page moving forward. And once you get past the first initial meetings and you talked about having the evangelist, which is extremely important, it's making sure that depending on what your product is, you have those right people in the meeting. And it's kind of pushing in, not an aggressive way, but saying, I need to make sure that tech, I need to make sure that risk is in this meeting and asking for it. Going back to what you were saying. And so when that doesn't happen, I've had a handful of companies who kind of get stuck in the middle where there's not really much happening. And I'm doing a million different things. And so I can't sit there and hold hands with every single company. So the Ones who are coming at me and saying, scarlet, I've been sitting here for six weeks, nothing's happening. What's going on. It's not being afraid to say what you want to do and what you want to happen. And the people who just let that slide by are going to be sitting in the pipeline and nothing is ever going to happen. The ones who are proactive in saying, I, I need your help, let's get this going. I'm going to be championing for you, I'm going to try to make that happen.

Tom, when a company is working with you, how do they balance persistence to drive something forward versus bordering on harassing with nine emails?

Well, I'm actually easy because if you can bring me something that's valuable, I want to meet with you. Oration is a great example. The CEO calls me up, here's what our product is, I want to come talk to you. I was like, hell yeah, okay. But I've had the Same thing where 10 million emails from the same company and you're at the point that even if they called, I'd not want to talk to them because now they've just irritated the crap out of me. And so it is something that for me, I'm looking and going, I need, I run HR for a 68,000 person organization that's global. I run global affairs, I run postal, I run, you know, advise at workbench, I'm running the split up of our company into three companies. If you cannot make your interaction with me simple, effective and helpful, I'm out.

I think your point about companies stuck in the middle, right? So I wouldn't be in my role if I don't love working with startups and help our large company to become better in how we innovate and how we serve our customers. So for the companies that are stuck in the middle, I think one of the specific ways that being helpful is there are companies that send these kind of monthly or twice a month, kind of very short updates, but very to the point, right? Is these are the milestones we have achieved. Here are the customers we got, here are the partners we got and here's the help we need. Because by the time you read through there may be kind of keywords that come out. Right. If you partner with a company that we're a partner with, I'm kind of interested to know where there's kind of a three waste energy. Right. If I'm part of a community building kind of innovation, there may be some help I could provide you. So I think for companies that try to move through having that kind of updates that are very targeted to move you along, kind of still keep you in the top of mind, I think that has been helpful and I can forward that to the right business folks.

That's 100% right. And it's kind of the same emails that you send to your VCs, you know, your monthly or quarterly. However, depending you do it. Having me having access to that, because it's the same thing. I come from startups. My goal is to help you. Yes, at the end of the day, BBVA is paying for me, but I want to make sure that it's a worthwhile relationship for you. So even if it's not within bbva, based off of that email, I can say, oh, you're going after those customers. Okay, I know three people who could be a great resource for you. And so it's just giving the top line, but not. It's a delicate balance and you kind of have to feel what makes the most sense.

I think too, for me, do not mistake activity for result. So a lot of the written documents that I get, Wellness is a great example. Our company can make your employees well and will save you millions of dollars. So yeah, anybody could write that. But when you actually start digging into the actual results, you don't see it. And so do not mistake. I'm involved in a lot of activity as an actual result. And frankly, I'm looking for what are the results that the product that you're selling me has caused?

And what aside from pure results, I mean, are you looking for customers, VC funding, the type, VC that backs a company. What are the key metrics that you're looking for?

Well, for me, you get into the whole funding conversation, I get into the product. So I'm looking at your product and go, okay, if your product is a recruiting product, I want to know how, how many people the companies that are using you have actually recruited using the product that you've got and not gotten sued because it violates federal laws around discrimination. If it's healthcare, I wanna know if you're gonna tell me about, you've got all these people that you're making. Well, I'm dying to see the metrics that you're using on that. And when dug into, it was you mailed my employees that have diabetes a letter. And I was like, oh, that is such bullshit. I'm a bad swearer. I'm trying not to swear up here. And so for me, those metrics are the things that when you dig down and you find it's bullshit beneath all the activity. Then I literally canned a $5 million contract because it was like no, no, no letters. I can send my own letter and call that effective. So those are metrics that I look for depending upon is it healthcare, is it recruiting? But let's be honest, it all ties back to is it somehow helping me either get more customers or cut costs, save money.

Joyce, what are some things that startups have to consider when working with an organization of your scale in terms of the product, in terms of support that is different than working with a 10 person startup that they're selling into?

That's a good question. I think the larger kind of the startups that have more resources, obviously they have a more sophisticated engine in kind of helping the customer, helping the partnership side discussion, I think at the end of the day doesn't really matter. I think back to your earlier question is it's all about kind of how you optimize the mapping, right? Between the startups and enterprise there are a set of initiatives, engagement models on the enterprise side and then the startups have a set of strategies that you want to reach your end customer, whether it's to sell, whether to partner or do something else. So it's how do you optimize that mapping? And I think attributes like where am I in the funding stage to me is somewhat a proxy to how scary scalable you are. Right. So there are certain groups within Tom Sorters love to work with 10 person startup, right? And because they're product innovation they want to work with, they don't exactly know what they're building they want to co create. We have infrastructure in place from a contracting perspective, from a know how perspective. We know how to work with those companies that are still evolving because we are evolving those teams. But then there are teams where I think especially in the enterprise technology side where you have like cloud or big data or some of the infrastructure side of things, you know, you tend to want to work with larger startups because the first question that come out is well we have, you know, petabytes, petabytes of data or you know, we have 10,000 people in the tech organization how scalable it is, right. So it, you know, if you look at the startups, you tend to kind of follow that spectrum that earlier startups for enterprise technology tend to have a harder time in at least selling to Tom's orders. More mature startups focus on enterprise technology solutions have an easier time. But then if you look at more emerging technology, product innovation topics that everybody's trying to learn. Right. Then the earlier stage startups tend to have an easier time.

We've used that. So the earlier stage stuff is exciting to me. That's my expertise, that's what I care about. And I think that you're getting a lot more of the real thought at that stage. But there has to be a filter because there are so many and you only have so many resources. So we have a competition that we kind of help push them through the pipeline. And the way that I kind of view my role and my team's role is making you get over all the stuff you don't want to deal with. The regulatory stuff, the risk stuff, the compliance stuff. That stuff takes a long time and you can spend an hour a week with our team and get a year's worth of information during that. So let's go. What's happening next? And back to Tom's question. I don't care about the funding. I don't care about the funding because the VC's metrics are very different than my metrics and it's a completely different relationship. So if you've raised 10 million bucks, congratulations. Doesn't mean you're the right business for me. It means you have a strategic alignment with what I'm looking for and you're doing something different. And there are two different categories. There are stuff that's going to have an immediate impact on my business and there are stuff that's going to have more long tail. I'm personally interested in the more long tail stuff, but there are places for the earlier stage stuff that's happening. Right. And having an immediate impact on your business. But I can make those introductions, but that's not what I focus on.

Awesome. So we are just about out of time, but let's get one line closing thought from each of you with a final tip for the audience.

Final tip. It's not that hard to work with big companies. Don't make it overwhelming in your head.

I think it's, I mean, help you by helping me be tactical and strategic and find where the multiple touch points are. And I use that in different ways.

I already said it. But do your research and be genuine because the psychology component of all this can have a huge impact on the success of your business.

Great.

Thanks, everyone. Let's give a round of applause.