Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Jason, thanks so much for joining us.
Jason Purcell, Salsify
Absolutely. Thanks for having us.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So I'm excited to talk about Salsify because it's one of the anchor tech companies in the Boston tech scene. And you guys are focused on Commerce experience management. So we're going to talk about what that means for the digital shelf, which is another term that I'm excited to learn about. But you also announced a $155 million series, E round of funding recently. So there's a lot of exciting things happening at Salsify. So let's just kick it off. Like what does Salsify do?
Jason Purcell, Salsify
So our mission is to empower brand manufacturers like L'Oreal and Coca Cola and Johnson and Johnson to win on the digital shelf right. If I'm a brand like L'Oreal, I'm engaging with millions of consumers across 10s of thousands of products and dozens of markets and, and those consumers are looking and experiencing my products on, you know, e-retailer sites like Amazon and on social marketplaces like Instagram and on my own direct to consumer sites. And, and that's a, that's a tough problem to manage. So we empower those brands to create and manage the content that drives those experiences collaborate internally with their agencies, to activate that content across that big portfolio of experiences where the consumer is engaging, right, that's the digital shelf, and then measure how effectively it's working and fine tune and close the loop so that they can do a really good job of telling the story that they want to tell to their consumers. So talk about the founding story of the company.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So talk about the founding story of the company.
Jason Purcell, Salsify
Well, there were three co-founders, myself, Rob, and Jeremy. All of us are still with the company. We started in 2012, and we'd all been at a previous Boston company called Endeca, which was driving search and browse experiences for the world's largest retailers, the Home Depot's and the Walmarts, and the targets of the world. And so we had a lot of exposure to e commerce from the retail side. But it was clear that, you know, retail was still gonna be a big part of the picture. But brands were going to be able to have much more control over their own destiny. And we wanted to start thinking about how could we, how could we enable those brands to be effective at delivering the message. So after Oracle acquired Endeca, and we helped with the integration, we said, let's let's start our own thing based on everything that we learned in EnDeca and everything we learned about the market, and really build a platform for the brand manufacturers of the world.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
And how'd you come up with the name salsify.
Jason Purcell, Salsify
So that we knew early on, obviously, we've refined what we do. But we knew early on that content was a core part of the solution we were going to be delivering right management creation of that content and then spreading it getting it out to all the places where the consumer was engaging. And so we had this mental image of you know, you blow on the dandelion flower in the seat spread far and wide. And, and turns out salsify is a cousin to the dandelion, right, it's a plant, it's a cool looking purple flower. And, and, and the domain was available. So we liked the, like, the sound, and we felt like, you know, it had all the right connotations around fast. And, and, and that's what we went with.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
And now it makes sense as far as the logo and how that's all incorporated as part of it.
Jason Purcell, Salsify
That's right. Yep.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now, how about the platform as it exists now, because obviously, there's been an evolution. And, you know, when I think of when I'm shopping, and you know, we're recording this in the midst of a pandemic, so I'm spending a lot of time buying things online. Right. So that experiences the consumer is something that's very important for the customers you're dealing with. And so talk about the platform in terms of where it's at today.
Jason Purcell, Salsify
It's grown quite a bit. I mean, we have a pretty ambitious product vision, because the problem that we're trying to solve is, is vast, right? The, the challenge that one of these brands faces is they've got just a really big portfolio of places where they're trying to deliver these experiences, you know, you're probably shopping on Amazon and target and, and Walmart, but it's not just that you're experiencing these products on Instagram, and you're experiencing them on the brand sites that the brands themselves are running. And, you know, that content that fuels those experiences is just dispersed all across these big organizations, they're working with agencies, they're working with their marketing and their e-commerce teams, and, you know, legal and compliance, we provide the platform that enables that extended organization within one of these brands like a Mars or 3M to collaborate on it to make sure that it's as good as it can possibly be to speed up how quickly they can tell these stories. And then activate those experiences across that broad range of channels, right, press a button and have the content immediately appear on Amazon, you know, press a button immediately have so it shows up in that sponsored post on Instagram so that you can click Buy Now, you know, and make sure you're getting the right product, that that's the core of what the platform does, and it continues to expand. Right. You know, just as a concrete example of that. It only started out the core of what we did was really around making sure that that content can be created and managed very, very quickly and easily and delightfully. But when you're selling on marketplaces, it's not just about the content. It's also about tracking inventory and orders, right, because as a brand, I'm not fulfilling. So we've we've added in inventory and order management into the platform to facilitate those kinds of transactions for the brands that get one place where they can manage that entire set of commerce experiences through our platform. And that's, that's what we're aggressively building towards.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now, as I highlighted, you know, you recently announced $155 million series E around of funding. So talk about the growth plans ahead.
Jason Purcell, Salsify
The the strategy that we're pursuing is really heavily dependent on aggressively investing in in our core product, right, there's a lot of surface area that we want to build, we want to do it in a way which is consistent with building the highest quality, the most delightful product possible. So there's a lot of r&d investment that we that we made and continue to make. And I see that continuing that this was a big part of that. Also, customer success in our largest customers have thousands of users that are logging into the to the product every day. And, you know, the product itself is a core part of that, but also our customer success organization and making sure that we are set up, not just in North America, but globally to service those customers in a way that is, you know, consistent with us being one of their best partners. You know, I mean, that's what I aspire to do is I want to make sure that when a Chief Digital Officer talks about salsify and the value we brought to them, they say we are, you know, one of if not the best partner that they work with. So the you know, the financing here was was a really nice opportunity where we found a, we found a number of companies that really understood the market saw the opportunity, obviously COVID accelerates that from a digital transformation perspective. And this gives us the ability to accelerate those investments, even faster than we otherwise would have.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now what's the size of the team currently? And you know, what are, you know, I guess what's what's what's it like working at salsify in terms of the culture?
Jason Purcell, Salsify
Well, we're about 400 people In growing where we're, you know, historically, a lot of the folks are centered in Boston, it's where we started the company. And that continues to be where we're a lot of folks are with COVID, people are scattering left and right, we're bracing that I mean, one of the things I think that we've learned is that you, you, you can work anywhere. And, you know, I was probably a skeptic at the beginning of this as to whether we'd be able to maintain it, but if anything, I've seen it make everybody more effective. We also have offices in Europe, we opened our headquarters up in Lisbon, we've got about 40, folks. And recently an office in London, and, and established entity in Singapore. Early this year, we haven't flown anybody out there yet given COVID. But that's sort of the next area of expansion. So increasingly dispersed. And, you know, I always struggle to answer cultural questions. It's sort of this amorphous, you know, open ended thing. I'll tell you, when we started the company, Jeremy, Rob, and I remember very vividly was at the salty pig in, you know, across from Copley, right. And we're talking about what mattered. And we said, you know, odds are, we'll face a lot of challenges, and it probably won't be very easy. But if we could just retain this Northstar of saying, Let's push every decision down in the organization as far as we possibly can. And with that comes a responsibility to provide context and information and transparency. But if we could, if we could hold on to that as a as a, as a North Star, from a cultural value perspective, a lot of stuff will take care of itself. And, you know, look, you can find 1000 examples of where we failed at that. But by and large, I think that tends to drive the culture of the company, it creates a place where people really are empowered. and empowerment is a two way street. It comes with responsibility. You know, it means you've got to got to pull when when you need stuff, but I think it creates a really well aligned culture. And you know, and I think it's been a big part of why we've been successful so far and overcome, you know, our own missteps along the journey.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So why is now the ideal time for someone to consider joining salsify?
Jason Purcell, Salsify
Well, you know, I think we've got a lot of challenges ahead of us that are going to be really fun to solve. You come into a place where we've got clear product market fit. We've got a lot of very vocal advocates as customers who are passionate about what we're doing about the value we're delivering to them, you know, about what they want us to do in the future. So you have that as a foundation. You have a team that's really well motivated and aligned, but there's just crazy amounts of Greenfield stuff that we still have to tackle. We still have to scale up the the customer success organization we have, you know, crazy opportunities in product. So there's still all this untapped opportunity that we haven't tapped, but you're doing it on a foundation, where we're not having to figure everything out from scratch. And I think, you know, I contrast that to the very early days of salsify where it was hard, you know, it was difficult to, to get something off from scratch. Now, we're coming in where we've got this momentum, and you're able to be a big, big key part of really scaling that up to be you know, how do we become a company that is driving hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue for our customers, that's, that's the goal that we see. So I think the timing is great, because we've, we've not solved the hardest problems, but we've got a foundation that people can build on top of which is great.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Well, if you are in some exploring opportunities at salsify, you need to go to their company page on VentureFizz because there's lots and lots of opportunities across all functional areas who so go to venturefizz.com/salsify, and you'll see all their listings there. Jason, thanks so much for giving us the inside look of what's happening at Salsify
Jason Purcell, Salsify
Absolutely. Thank you for the time. Appreciate it.
