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Josh Schachter
Welcome, everybody, and welcome to [Un]churned. I’m Josh Schachter, founder and CEO of UpdateAI and host of [Un]churned. I’m here today with Ellie Wu. Ellie is the vice president of sales and customer success, excellence at insight partners, Insight partners, if you’re not in the VC founder fundraising space, you may not know all the VCs out there. But they’re they’re one of the brightest out there. They’ve been around for 25 years, they’ve invested $30 billion in startups have had 50 IPOs. within that group that includes over 500 companies in their portfolio. And those companies are companies like Salesforce, Shopify, Qualtrics, DocuSign, Twitter, Monday, wicks, you name it. I mean, the list goes on and on. And so so we’re in really good company here with Ellie, who has purview to all of those portfolio companies. And she’s in good company with those companies. So Ellie, thank you so much for for being here today.

Ellie Wu
Thank you so much, Josh. And I don’t know if it’s if it’s my headphones, I thought I heard you say Salesforce, but I think you met SalesLoft.

Josh Schachter
Oh, my mistake. Yes. Thank you, for VCs love to course correct me. So thank you so much

Ellie Wu
for that. Not a problem.

Josh Schachter
So So tell us, Ellie, I want to I want to hand over the intro a little bit to you, in your own words. Because I know insight really takes pride in being very operational with their companies and really giving them hands on guidance and support. Tell us a little bit about what you do at InSite.

Ellie Wu
Sure. So prior to joining inside, I spent the bulk of my career starting from engineering moving into sales and from sales to CES. And then from CES to customer experience. And bringing that experience into our portfolio is really the the benefit of those companies who get to partner with insight. We have folks who are functionally aligned, and we were called operators. That’s that’s what the folks on the investment side, call us. And it’s because we have operating experience having the front row seat or the battle scars, and knowing intimately the challenges and how we’ve navigated or how we wish we would have navigated things, when we’ve been in these seats, and being able to work with our CEOs and their leaders has been a really exciting role to have, particularly in this current environment that we are still navigating.

Josh Schachter
And what are some of the like, like tactically speaking, what’s some of the stuff that you work on with your portfolio companies? Because I think it’s such a such an amazing benefit for a company to have resources like you. So what exactly does that look like? Yeah,

Ellie Wu
we definitely partner with our investment team to look at how do we, it could range from everything from evaluating companies post sales, structure, and performance. It could also be helping them build advising around what do I do when I am looking to move from a segmented approach to a Multi Product, segmented approach, so advising on those key areas, and then also hiring, making sure that we connect great leaders with our portfolio companies based on what they need, because not every company needs the same type of leader some need somebody who’s more commercially oriented, others need somebody who’s more familiar with the operational value driven approaches through implementation or onboarding, some people need something very focused on enablement. So that’s the range of the things that I get involved with, with our portfolio companies.

Josh Schachter
Awesome. Awesome. Before we move on, I want to get to know you a little bit. I like to do this with all our guests. The name of our podcast is uninsured. We want to be raw, we want to be authentic. So in that spirit, a couple of very quick questions for you know, nothing too new comp, too complicated. Where were you born? And where do you live today?

Ellie Wu
I was born in Taipei, Taiwan. And I live just outside of Seattle, Washington today.

Josh Schachter
And what’s something that some of your colleagues port COEs would be surprised to know about? You?

Ellie Wu
You know, I found that some folks are surprised that I speak Mandarin. And even though it was my first language, I think there is this inherent bias just based on how I speak English that they are sometimes surprised that I speak Mandarin or that I wasn’t born here.

Josh Schachter
Who’s someone in your career that you’ve really looked up to whether you’ve known them or not directly? Who’s somebody that you’ve looked up to?

Ellie Wu
Oh, there’s so many I’ve been really fortunate to know some really exceptional and then rest my Reshma Saujani is definitely one that comes to mind. And I just her story, her resilience. The lessons that she’s so candidly shared about what she learned that her run at trying to pursue public office and what she’s been able to do today for so many of the girls and women who have pursued a career in engineering and otherwise I think she’s just amazing.

Josh Schachter
I’m sorry. I’m embarrassed who Who is she?

Ellie Wu
So she founded Girls Who Code. And then she wrote a fantastic book, which is, I think it’s called Pay up. I have to I cannot believe I’m drawing a blank on that. But we’ll definitely send you some more information following our chat. Josh,

Josh Schachter
you’re on the spot. That’s fine. I’m putting pressure on you. And again, for anybody listening that wants to look her up. What’s what’s her name?

Ellie Wu
Rash, ma Su, Gianni,

Josh Schachter
Reshma Saujani. Okay, awesome. All right, let’s let’s, let’s talk a little go to market a little a little customer success here. You know, as you know, a lot of our audience are in customer success and adjacent fields and functions within SAS. So we’re in right now we’re recording this in q4 2022. We’re in what some might say is a downturn, right. And there’s anxiety out there. And I’ve been going around to some ces conferences, and you hear just a lot about metrics, and numbers. And there’s this, it feels to me like there’s this. There’s just this intense focus right now on making sure that CES is really demonstrating its own ROI. And I want to get some of your thoughts on that, and how you see that manifesting in inside of your portfolio companies.

Ellie Wu
Yeah, so it, the analogy that comes to mind and what we’re seeing here, I don’t know, if you remember what it was like when you were in your 20s or early 30s, when you can really pretty much do a lot and you’d be fine, pop up the next day, pull an all nighter and not an issue. Then you get to a certain age in your life where all of that can catch up to you. And then you’re like, well, this next doctor visit is given me a lot of data that isn’t exactly the best news, what do I need to do and calibrate? And what’s like my, what’s my assessment going to be of everything that’s happening here so that we can right size things, we’ll make some adjustments so that there’s more longevity, right. And so if we take that, and that experience, I think some companies are going through that now. And it’s mainly driven by the uncertainty mainly on the top line growth. So previously, it was growth at all costs, or I could hire more people and push that number higher. And we’re moving out of that stage where there’s a lot more critical review being done of Okay, that’s great. That’s your NRR. What did it take to get to that? NRR? What are the resources and investments required to do that or even hit any number. So I’m seeing a lot of the efficiency metrics come to the forefront. So whether it’s the CAC customer acquisition cost, or the customer retention costs, the efficiency around how you’re doing business is moving to the forefront, because as you have this uncertainty around that top line growth, the other lever you can control is what does it take to run this business? And how efficient are we being with what we have?

Josh Schachter
And the efficiencies here? Are you’re referring to sales dollars to marketing and advertising dollars?

Ellie Wu
You think everything’s on the board? Everything things on the

Josh Schachter
board? People Operations,

Ellie Wu
people operations? What does it take for you to? What does it take for you to close the sale? What does it take for you to keep the sale? All of it?

Josh Schachter
Yeah. So what? Let’s talk now to Customer Success leaders? What’s your advice to them about how they should be going into 2023? They’re, you know, maybe by now they’ve already submitted their their budgetary goals for the next year, but how should they be positioning themselves and their goals for their team and their needs?

Ellie Wu
Yeah, so there’s going to be a resource that beyond sharing the details around Russia with you, Josh, I will also share our latest sales KPI summary report, it is a fantastic report. And it it sets the groundwork and the framing where I think a lot of the CES leaders can benefit from looking at this lens, because this is how your sales partners are looking at it. This is likely how your CEO is looking at the business. And so being able to calibrate your conversations around what matters most. So if you’re an early stage company with less than 10 million Arr, you may want to think about okay, what are the impacts I have on win rate expansion bookings. Are there any correlations we’re seeing between NPS and gross retention? And then also being able to zoom that out to say, Okay, if we’re looking at the numbers, how might gross retention actually impact sales and their sales targets based on what I’m able to do? And being able to speak to your partners and your boss within this context with that kind of business framing beyond the traditional CS metrics? I think that can only help so In the position our leaders can have going forward, every organization is going to need to lean on their customer base, more than more than recent history, maybe not more than ever, but definitely in recent history. And and so being able to make these shifts and make the conversation with this knowledge is going to be so powerful for CS leaders.

Josh Schachter
It sounds to me like you’re saying that that CS metrics are still a little bit misunderstood or not understood by leaders, it may be perhaps, that you almost need to explain them in context of the numbers that people are usually looking at, like top line metrics, right? And see, okay, great. We know you guys all understand pipeline velocity metrics and sales metrics. And we’re here, here’s the the correlation, the relationship, here’s the second order. You know, correlation, two, from CES to those other metrics that we know, you understand? Is that kind of what you’re saying?

Ellie Wu
Yeah, you’re, you’re essentially translating it into their language. Right? So if if you only speak within your own language, it’s going to be it’s going to require more work and effort for them to meet you where you are.

Josh Schachter
We talked a little bit about the portfolio that you have inside the strength of that portfolio, lots of companies that are that have large ces teams. What are folks coming to you for in this moment in time? What what are the some of the themes that you’re seeing that are top priorities or maybe struggles or or moonshots that leaders are wanting to take in the coming year?

Ellie Wu
Yes, well, with just a few minutes left, we can’t solve for world peace. But the things that leaders are looking at is how do we start thinking about the I mean, the doing more with less is nothing new to CES leaders, we almost always had to do more with less. The difference here is they’re having more of their peers or their leaders coming to them to say, what can see us do to help us write out some of this bumpiness that’s a new conversation that’s coming into into the view. Whereas previously, it was CES, I just need you to hold up this number and make customers happy. Now it’s much more Okay, our existing customer base, we need to make sure they stay and if they can, let’s grow. And that has shifted the perspective and the conversation CSX leaders are having with their peers and what their leaders.

Josh Schachter
So it sounds in many cases as it’s, it’s sobering for for companies, but it’s potentially an opportunity for customer success within those organizations to to show their value.

Ellie Wu
Absolutely. And that’s why I stress again, for this is a great time for CS leaders to get to know the metrics beyond CS. And to think about how do I translate the impact between my metrics and the metrics that I’m seeing for sitting on the board decks?

Josh Schachter
If we want to get a copy of your report, will you’ll send it to me, I’ll put it into the show notes for the podcast. Others can pick up on it. Yes, absolutely. Belly, thank you so much. Make sure that your CFO knows if you work if you work in CS, make sure your CFO knows what you do. Those are your department does. We’ll leave it at that. Ellie, thank you. Thank you all for listening. Thank you, Josh.