The Future of AI: Standardization, Disruption, and Collaboration

[00:00:00] Marketers Talking Marketing: The Hardest to Hire For Marketing Function with Karthik Krishnaswamy

[00:00:00] Jess Bahr: Everyone wants to know what their competitors are doing, especially behind the firewall, where you can't always pull that data as easily.

[00:00:11] Jess Bahr: Welcome to Marketers Talking Marketing, the podcast where marketers come together to talk marketing.

[00:00:17] Jess Bahr: Today, we have a special guest, Karthik Krishnaswamy.

[00:00:20] Jess Bahr: And we are talking about the hardest to hire for marketing function that is product marketing.

[00:00:26] Jess Bahr: Karthik, before I dive in, introduce yourself for our listeners at home.

[00:00:31] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Thanks, Jazz.

[00:00:31] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Thanks for having me here.

[00:00:34] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I was an engineer 25 years back.

[00:00:37] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I started off as an engineer, then I became a product manager.

[00:00:41] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And now for the last five years, I've been a product marketer.

[00:00:44] Karthik Krishnaswamy: All of the B, two B tech space.

[00:00:46] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I had product marketing at Trey, a local automation startup in the Bay Area.

[00:00:51] Jess Bahr: Karthik, you were programming 25 years ago.

[00:00:54] Jess Bahr: Were you programming on punch cards?

[00:00:56] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Wow, it's so funny.

[00:01:01] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Even way back when I took computer science classes, I studied in C plus plus, which is still widely used by kids today.

[00:01:11] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I coded in java.

[00:01:13] Jess Bahr: No one likes C.

[00:01:14] Jess Bahr: Plus plus.

[00:01:14] Jess Bahr: They want to learn.

[00:01:15] Jess Bahr: Go.

[00:01:15] Jess Bahr: They don't care about they don't care about that old shit.

[00:01:21] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Just to clarify moving.

[00:01:24] Transitioning from Engineering to Product Marketing

[00:01:24] Jess Bahr: So you went from engineering, so you are a technical individual to product on that and then to product marketing.

[00:01:32] Jess Bahr: Which of those three functions is your favorite?

[00:01:35] Jess Bahr: Do you like being on the marketing side?

[00:01:37] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah, it's a great question.

[00:01:38] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right?

[00:01:39] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I've reflected on this as well, many times, why I made the transition.

[00:01:44] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I love product marketing.

[00:01:45] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I think product marketing product marketing is where you actually tell the actual story, right?

[00:01:52] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You find out what the pain points are.

[00:01:54] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You figure out what the value proposition is for your company.

[00:01:58] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You figure out who exactly your persona is, who the target audience is, and you put it all together.

[00:02:04] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Engineering, of course, it's very important you actually build a product.

[00:02:08] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Product management, you go again, figure out exactly what the pain points are, who should you talk to?

[00:02:13] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But it's putting all this together and crafting a whole narrative and the spark you see in the eyes of your customers, prospects and sales when you put it all together, when you tell the story, that's what keeps me excited.

[00:02:29] Jess Bahr: Yeah, it really is kind of the connection of all those.

[00:02:32] Jess Bahr: As you mentioned, you work directly with sales, you work directly with customers to capture their story, running caps, all that good stuff.

[00:02:39] Jess Bahr: You work with I'm going to say non, not quite as technical marketers like the rest of marketing is not product marketing.

[00:02:48] Jess Bahr: And you work with product.

[00:02:49] Jess Bahr: Of those four groups, which one is the worst?

[00:02:51] Jess Bahr: Fuck mary kill.

[00:02:53] Jess Bahr: Fuck mary kill.

[00:02:54] Jess Bahr: Customer, sales, marketing, product and engineering.

[00:02:59] Jess Bahr: I'm put product and Engineering together.

[00:03:00] Jess Bahr: Which one's the worst?

[00:03:01] Jess Bahr: Which one's the best?

[00:03:02] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Wow.

[00:03:04] Jess Bahr: Is this what you thought you're getting into?

[00:03:06] Karthik Krishnaswamy: No, I love them all.

[00:03:09] Karthik Krishnaswamy: How diplomatic is that?

[00:03:16] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Oh, so every every group will jokes aside, you know, I think I'm gonna answer this from a product from a function standpoint, right?

[00:03:24] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So every group, it's got its own interacting.

[00:03:28] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It's not pluses and minuses.

[00:03:29] Karthik Krishnaswamy: They have their own characteristics.

[00:03:30] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I mean, Sales, you want to enable them, equip them.

[00:03:33] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But it is frustrating when they always come back to you all the time, when everything has already been mentioned, hey, what is this about?

[00:03:40] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Can you tell me where this asset is?

[00:03:42] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And it also lies with product management.

[00:03:43] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I mean, product marketing to actually make sure that all the content and all the assets are easy for them to access.

[00:03:50] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So, product, you work very closely when you're launching a product, when you're launching a feature, again, it starts with the interaction, with not just the interaction, but with collaboration, strong collaboration with product to craft that narrative, to really we've talked off camera about hottest hire product marketing.

[00:04:12] Karthik Krishnaswamy: We are the only group in marketing where the tech stack is Google Docs or in a startup or Microsoft Word.

[00:04:22] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:04:22] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I mean, they got complicated with tech complexity.

[00:04:27] Jess Bahr: You got grammarly sometimes, though.

[00:04:29] Jess Bahr: Listen, you can hit it hard with grammarly.

[00:04:32] Karthik Krishnaswamy: That's true.

[00:04:33] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So start with product management and to really nail down the story, and it's like just to sort of distill that.

[00:04:40] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What are the pain points in the market?

[00:04:43] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Who are you exactly targeting?

[00:04:45] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What do we do better than our competition?

[00:04:47] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What are we doing better than the competition?

[00:04:50] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Quantifiable value proposition.

[00:04:51] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So it's not just we make things go faster, easier, better quantify.

[00:04:57] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It social or proof points, rather, from customers that have actually deployed your solution.

[00:05:05] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And I've been able to flow leads faster in ten X.

[00:05:12] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right?

[00:05:12] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I want that kind of clarity.

[00:05:15] Karthik Krishnaswamy: That's where it all starts.

[00:05:17] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Then, to your point, we collaborate.

[00:05:21] Karthik Krishnaswamy: We take all this.

[00:05:22] Karthik Krishnaswamy: We build a whole bunch of content, website, blogs, white papers, webinars, and more videos, more and more and more.

[00:05:31] Karthik Krishnaswamy: That's what sales keeps asking.

[00:05:33] Jess Bahr: Sales will never have enough.

[00:05:34] Jess Bahr: They'll never have enough to satiate them.

[00:05:36] Jess Bahr: And then as soon as you give them what they want, they want it in a slightly different format, or it's just like, not quite what they wanted.

[00:05:44] Jess Bahr: They want a customer story, but not that customer story.

[00:05:47] Jess Bahr: Or that customer story, but not to say that thing that they said.

[00:05:52] A conversation about early stage product marketing with Karthik Krishnaswamy

[00:05:52] Jess Bahr: Now, you've had kind of an interesting career.

[00:05:54] Jess Bahr: So you were at Nginx.

[00:05:56] Jess Bahr: You helped kind of build product marketing there, I would say.

[00:06:00] Jess Bahr: Correct.

[00:06:00] Jess Bahr: Okay.

[00:06:01] Jess Bahr: I'm like not over product.

[00:06:03] Jess Bahr: I hype you up regularly.

[00:06:04] Jess Bahr: I want to make sure I'm not overstating your impact.

[00:06:06] Jess Bahr: For those at home, you were at Nginx, and this is kind of a funny story.

[00:06:12] Jess Bahr: So.

[00:06:12] Jess Bahr: Karthik I was working at NS One.

[00:06:15] Jess Bahr: Karthik was at Nginx, and we were working on a joint webinar together.

[00:06:19] Jess Bahr: And then one day, I come into the office, and I see Karthik sitting on a couch at NS One.

[00:06:28] Jess Bahr: And I didn't put two and two together, that he had actually applied for a role at NS One, and I was walking into an interview and I was walking in to interview him.

[00:06:37] Jess Bahr: I wasn't paying a lot of attention.

[00:06:38] Jess Bahr: We had a ton of interviews, and so I didn't realize that he was interviewing.

[00:06:42] Jess Bahr: And then all of a sudden he just shows up one day interviewing for the job.

[00:06:46] Jess Bahr: So because we were working the joint webinar together, he finished his side of it at Nginx and then started at NS One and then did NS One's half of the webinar, so I didn't have to do it.

[00:07:01] Jess Bahr: Collaboration.

[00:07:02] Jess Bahr: We're very collaborative.

[00:07:05] Karthik Krishnaswamy: As an NS One product marketer, Scott, because an Engine X.

[00:07:09] Jess Bahr: Product, it's like Spiderman, like the Spiderman meme, where they're pointing at each other.

[00:07:14] Jess Bahr: So you were NS One, then you went back to Nginx to help as they had gotten acquired.

[00:07:18] Jess Bahr: We're growing again.

[00:07:19] Jess Bahr: And now you're at Tray with a little stint at Cisco in the middle there, which is like the opposite of every other company you've been at.

[00:07:25] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:07:26] Jess Bahr: What attracts you to early stage product marketing?

[00:07:29] Jess Bahr: Why do you like being at those earlier stage companies?

[00:07:33] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Thank you.

[00:07:33] Building the Narrative of an Early Stage Startup: Insights from a Product Marketer

[00:07:33] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Great question again, but great questions here, Carl.

[00:07:39] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Fair enough.

[00:07:42] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Nginx rather I joined when they were just about to we were only a Series B three weeks in.

[00:07:47] Karthik Krishnaswamy: After I joined, we needed he joined.

[00:07:49] Karthik Krishnaswamy: We got CDC, Arizona, CDC.

[00:07:52] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Trace CDC.

[00:07:53] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yes.

[00:07:53] Karthik Krishnaswamy: There was a brief San Francisco, to your point, where I'm getting where I'm going with this is, I think, finally the tender two decades into my career, I've realized that, yes, my heart is with startups and somewhat early stage startups.

[00:08:13] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I think this is where I'm heading product marketing here.

[00:08:16] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It's slightly more mature trade.

[00:08:18] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But when I joined Nginx, I was the sole product marketer.

[00:08:21] Karthik Krishnaswamy: There was a technical mother.

[00:08:23] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And at NS One as well, there was another one.

[00:08:27] Karthik Krishnaswamy: There was only a team of two.

[00:08:29] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:08:30] Karthik Krishnaswamy: This is where you're really at early stage startups, you're really sort of building the function.

[00:08:37] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You're actually crafting the narrative again, or building the story of not just the product or the solution, which is of course you're doing that, but for the entire company.

[00:08:45] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:08:45] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What is the brand, what is our personality?

[00:08:49] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What is our narrative?

[00:08:50] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What is our story?

[00:08:51] Karthik Krishnaswamy: How do we again, stand out from the crowd?

[00:08:53] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Especially important in a startup context?

[00:08:55] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I mean, we are doing that now if you're in a crowded space.

[00:08:58] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So I think that's the excitement versus in a bigger company.

[00:09:04] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I wanting the company.

[00:09:04] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I mean, any big company, all of this is already there, right.

[00:09:11] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Your value is going to be somewhat marginal or it's going to take a long time to have a lot of impact, consequential impact.

[00:09:18] Jess Bahr: I think that's pretty common.

[00:09:19] Jess Bahr: And why a lot of us who do choose to work in earlier stage companies are really attracted to it is we can have a bigger impact quicker.

[00:09:26] Jess Bahr: So the economy is kind of interesting right now in this time of recession, a lot of larger companies are slowing down hiring.

[00:09:32] Jess Bahr: They're investing more in contractors, freelancers, just non full time headcount.

[00:09:37] Jess Bahr: It's the early stage companies that are hiring.

[00:09:40] Advice for Product Marketers in Early Stage Startups

[00:09:40] Jess Bahr: So for anyone in product marketing who's listening to this, who's thinking of going to an early stage company, what advice would you give them?

[00:09:46] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Wow.

[00:09:46] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah.

[00:09:47] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So as with many roles and early stage in a startup, and early stage startups especially, it's not fully well defined.

[00:09:57] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yes, there is a definition of product marketing.

[00:10:01] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You craft a narrative, you enable sales, you produce content.

[00:10:05] Karthik Krishnaswamy: All of that is important.

[00:10:06] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But think of it as an opportunity to really learn about the function itself and the company.

[00:10:15] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And sometimes you may have to write a press release.

[00:10:20] Karthik Krishnaswamy: There's going to be no PR agency or you're not going to be able to rely on a solid PR function.

[00:10:26] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You have to call journalists and pitch your story.

[00:10:30] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You have to talk to analysts, which is a core part of product marketing anyways.

[00:10:34] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Be prepared to not just support an event.

[00:10:38] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You may not have an event marketing manager.

[00:10:42] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So you have to first figure out what events you want to host.

[00:10:45] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You want to host yourself, what events you want to participate in.

[00:10:48] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And think about the boot sort of design flow.

[00:10:55] Jess Bahr: So you're really wearing all of the marketing hats.

[00:10:59] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:10:59] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And as a product marketer and all the other marketers are always going to be thinking, product marketers have a lot they think their sh ID doesn't stink.

[00:11:10] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But the point there is we do call this core, we are the foundation of the marketing function.

[00:11:17] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:11:18] Jess Bahr: Bold statement, literally.

[00:11:20] Karthik Krishnaswamy: We talked about booth design.

[00:11:22] Karthik Krishnaswamy: How many times I've been asked what should be the message in our booth?

[00:11:28] Jess Bahr: Okay, I will go, yes, I will.

[00:11:33] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Concede to that tagline for this event.

[00:11:37] Jess Bahr: Where's our messaging doc?

[00:11:39] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Exactly.

[00:11:40] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I'm not I'm just on what tagline?

[00:11:43] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah, we have stopped.

[00:11:45] Karthik Krishnaswamy: We can proceed further.

[00:11:46] Karthik Krishnaswamy: We need the tagline.

[00:11:47] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I'm like, okay, of all the 100 different things, here's a document for you.

[00:11:52] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But the point there is that's the real attraction, real opportunity with product marketing, and especially in a startup, you can just go do all these things, right?

[00:12:03] Jess Bahr: Yeah.

[00:12:03] Product Market Fit and Collaboration Between Product Marketing and Management

[00:12:03] Jess Bahr: Do you ever find I'm going to ask you a question that I think you probably get asked in an early stage company.

[00:12:10] Jess Bahr: How do you find product market fit?

[00:12:12] Jess Bahr: Is that something that tends to rely more on product marketing versus product and engineering?

[00:12:19] Jess Bahr: I feel like that's often something that gets pulled in with your function.

[00:12:22] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah, great question.

[00:12:23] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Again, product, many times product management does lead it.

[00:12:29] Karthik Krishnaswamy: They try to really first figure out who their target audience is.

[00:12:36] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Talk to what I call friendlies, like customers that really want to use your product, but also non customers.

[00:12:45] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Do a win loss analysis.

[00:12:48] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Reach out to customers that have bought your product, but reach out to also prospects that are in the pipeline, also folks that you've lost deals to.

[00:12:58] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:12:58] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What am I trying to say here?

[00:13:00] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What I'm trying to say is they lead all of this to really validate the hypothesis of the product.

[00:13:06] Karthik Krishnaswamy: We support them closely, even in the messaging, again, of a beta customer.

[00:13:11] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:13:12] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What should we tell them?

[00:13:14] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Just a simple email or on a phone call?

[00:13:16] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What should we exactly tell them?

[00:13:18] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What are the characteristics of the particular release or the product that we should talk to them about?

[00:13:22] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:13:24] Karthik Krishnaswamy: This is a very narrow answer to your product market, but it sort of leads with product marketing, but especially at a startup.

[00:13:30] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I mean, you start with a hypothesis and you keep experimenting.

[00:13:35] Karthik Krishnaswamy: There's a b testing.

[00:13:36] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You're very familiar with that.

[00:13:37] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Now I'm kind of all over the place, but it's a collaboration between product marketing and product management.

[00:13:44] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Product management leads it.

[00:13:45] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It starts with, like I said, figuring out your target audience and really trying to validate the hypothesis with a variety of audiences.

[00:13:55] Jess Bahr: Yeah.

[00:13:56] Product Marketing Tech Stack

[00:13:56] Jess Bahr: So you mentioned earlier that the product marketing tech stack is really like Google Sheets and Word and maybe grammarly.

[00:14:04] Jess Bahr: If you're getting fancy, are there other tools that you often use?

[00:14:07] Jess Bahr: You have a favorite tool in a more built out, mature tech stack.

[00:14:12] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Definitely less complex than what demand gen uses.

[00:14:16] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What other functions at birth?

[00:14:17] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Marketing.

[00:14:18] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Marketing use their tech stack?

[00:14:20] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Definitely.

[00:14:21] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It's definitely true.

[00:14:22] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But we do use some tools.

[00:14:24] Karthik Krishnaswamy: My favorite gambling is actually I love gamily or Sent construction.

[00:14:32] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Make sure my copy blogs, whatever I get really verbose.

[00:14:37] Jess Bahr: Karthik and I feel like grammarly is probably in there, giving you a lot of underline, saying these five words, these five words back to back, you can replace with one word.

[00:14:47] Jess Bahr: I'm in there all the time and it's telling me not to be so weak.

[00:14:50] Jess Bahr: Like stop starting your emails off.

[00:14:52] Jess Bahr: So weak.

[00:14:54] Jess Bahr: It's a great tool.

[00:14:55] Jess Bahr: Have you used Chat GPT yet?

[00:14:57] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I have.

[00:14:59] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It's scary how true it is.

[00:15:06] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It's a great tool.

[00:15:07] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Basically.

[00:15:08] Jess Bahr: Do you see it playing a role in helping product marketers maybe be more quick at their work?

[00:15:14] Jess Bahr: Help them kind of get a leg up on things with research and everything?

[00:15:18] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Definitely.

[00:15:19] Tech stack wars: Microsoft PowerPoint vs Google Slides

[00:15:19] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I also want to go back to the tech stack.

[00:15:20] Jess Bahr: I was a little yeah, sorry, so not grammarly.

[00:15:22] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So Karthik, I'm a big fan of Microsoft PowerPoint.

[00:15:26] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I'm not a fan of Google slides.

[00:15:27] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Sorry, Google.

[00:15:28] Jess Bahr: Wait, what did Google Slides do to you?

[00:15:32] Jess Bahr: Why PowerPoint over Google Slides?

[00:15:34] Jess Bahr: Hold on, hold on.

[00:15:36] Jess Bahr: First, are you on PC or are you on Mac?

[00:15:39] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I'm on Mac.

[00:15:40] Jess Bahr: Okay, so you're saying Microsoft PowerPoint over Google?

[00:15:43] Jess Bahr: Over Google, over Google slides and over Apple keynote.

[00:15:47] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yes.

[00:15:48] Jess Bahr: Okay, why?

[00:15:49] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Because PowerPoint is just a lot more mature, a lot more options, a lot more background.

[00:15:54] Karthik Krishnaswamy: For example, or if I want to create a table in a simple table, there's just a lot more options that Google Slides, especially Google Slides.

[00:16:04] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I've not used Keynote as much.

[00:16:06] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Just lacks Google Suite.

[00:16:09] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I think that's what it's called.

[00:16:11] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Every other software in suite.

[00:16:13] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Office software is great.

[00:16:15] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Slides, they just need to so startups.

[00:16:20] Karthik Krishnaswamy: One word of warning that I would give to folks who want to apply to startups, many of them use Google.

[00:16:26] Jess Bahr: I was just thinking that Slides is.

[00:16:29] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Something you should just be they should learn.

[00:16:32] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Let's say they'll be a learning curve.

[00:16:34] Jess Bahr: So if you're like an Outlook fanatic and you love Outlook and teams and PowerPoint and you do things in Word art, you might find a little learning curve going to startups.

[00:16:47] Jess Bahr: Typically the startup stack, and I say this having been the only PC user at many companies, usually the startup tech stack is everything in Google Sheets, everything shared with everyone.

[00:16:58] Jess Bahr: So you can also go and see edit history and oh yeah, there's a lot there.

[00:17:04] Jess Bahr: There's a lot there.

[00:17:05] Jess Bahr: That's a good point, though.

[00:17:06] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah, sorry.

[00:17:08] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Google Slides, especially the other tool that I've just been exposed but I've not used it is for competitive analysis.

[00:17:17] Karthik Krishnaswamy: There are many companies, and many are a decent amount of startups that are in the space that help you with competitive analysis.

[00:17:27] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What they do is the tool itself.

[00:17:29] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You can specify your competitors.

[00:17:31] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It goes and does a website scrape, constantly monitors for news.

[00:17:38] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Not only does it capture all the information, it also packages it up right in a battle card.

[00:17:45] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It monitors some of the tools, monitors a tool called tool called Clue KLUV.

[00:17:49] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It monitors conversations that are happening on Slack teams about your competitor, within the company, about deals you've lost against your competitor, and again puts it all together for easy consumption, especially by sales.

[00:18:03] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You can, of course also provide input.

[00:18:06] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I think that is going to make our lives it's like a chat Gpd for competition.

[00:18:12] Jess Bahr: I don't know, I was just thinking it feels like something you could layer AI on top of to really get a feel for it.

[00:18:20] Jess Bahr: Everyone wants to know what their competitors are doing, especially behind the firewall where you can always pull that data as easily.

[00:18:27] Jess Bahr: I have alerts set up, so I like to I got a lot of friendly companies out there and so in Slack.

[00:18:33] Jess Bahr: I have alerts set up for friendly companies for some of these.

[00:18:36] Jess Bahr: I'm in like 50 groups, I'm in a ton of groups.

[00:18:38] Jess Bahr: It's like a block on my calendar to go check messages.

[00:18:41] Jess Bahr: And so I will watch and I'll share conversations sometimes.

[00:18:44] Jess Bahr: I won't always say who it is and who's saying it, but I'll say, hey, I saw in this Slack group so and so said that your tool is trash and here's why you don't provide that feedback.

[00:18:53] Jess Bahr: And so, yeah, I think that would be powerful if there was a third party tool that could scrape publicly available data and maybe get into some of those communities to see the conversation happening and share it back.

[00:19:04] Jess Bahr: So we'll link down the show notes below for anyone who wants to check it out, too.

[00:19:08] Jess Bahr: Send Karthik Swag if you're listening.

[00:19:11] Jess Bahr: Clue.

[00:19:12] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Clue with a k.

[00:19:14] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah.

[00:19:15] The Potential and Limitations of Chat GPT for Content Marketing

[00:19:15] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Jack TBD.

[00:19:16] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So I've been a content marketer as product marketers.

[00:19:19] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You write blogs, you write literally copy, adword copy that you're very familiar, messaging.

[00:19:28] Jess Bahr: Keywords, the whole shebang for all that.

[00:19:32] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It's definitely it's very helpful.

[00:19:35] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right?

[00:19:36] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You still need to of course, you still need a human to actually it's not just you can just take what it gives.

[00:19:43] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You need to give it context and you need to refine the response, et cetera.

[00:19:48] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But the product marketing function as a whole.

[00:19:50] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So I go back to again, they're launching a new product as a startup auditing a big release.

[00:19:57] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What is it that we want to all the things that I talked about, right?

[00:20:00] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What is the challenge?

[00:20:01] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Who is the audience?

[00:20:02] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What are the key top three messages?

[00:20:05] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Give me quantifiable value, prop, and then to craft an additive and even to build up a customer pitch deck.

[00:20:13] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I don't think Jack Gpd is there yet.

[00:20:16] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I could be wrong and perhaps a year with the statement, but you need to build all that, right?

[00:20:28] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You're the one who knows the context, who knows the industry, knows the competitors, and has visibility into the insights into what people want.

[00:20:39] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And again, putting it all together, I.

[00:20:41] Jess Bahr: Feel like it goes really well at the bookend.

[00:20:43] Jess Bahr: So I've used it for, I would say, accelerating research of I'm writing like, I need to write a five email nurture on this topic, what are some common things with it?

[00:20:55] Jess Bahr: And then also after I have something written, going back and saying, make this sound better, like, make this more condensed, make this more professional, make this more casual, make me sound like I have a personality, being able to kind of use it for those steps around it.

[00:21:13] Jess Bahr: But, yeah, I can't imagine it gets to .2 parts.

[00:21:17] Jess Bahr: I can't imagine it gets to a point where it's able to fully replace the entire human component of that process.

[00:21:22] Jess Bahr: But number two, if it does, the person who wrote the algorithm owns the copyright to it.

[00:21:30] Jess Bahr: And so if you just copy and paste it out of Chat GPT, OpenAI owns what you just did, they own the copyright on that.

[00:21:36] Jess Bahr: So you have to modify it anyways if you want it to be your true work.

[00:21:40] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right?

[00:21:41] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Well, it was especially funny when you said, I'll rely on Chat GPT to make it more personal.

[00:21:48] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I'll write a human copy and then I'll feed it to AI to sort of make it more personal and sort of give me the human touch.

[00:21:57] Jess Bahr: Anyway, I'm a really boring person, okay?

[00:22:01] Jess Bahr: I'm a very boring person.

[00:22:03] Jess Bahr: Try and spice it up a little.

[00:22:05] Jess Bahr: I am boring.

[00:22:06] Jess Bahr: I am self identifying as boring.

[00:22:09] Improving Visibility and Collaboration Between Sales and Product Marketing

[00:22:09] Jess Bahr: Garthik, what's the most annoying thing that sales asks you for I love sales.

[00:22:16] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Don't get me this whole hesitation this whole conversation is about to make look better.

[00:22:28] Jess Bahr: What's the most common question you could ask over and over again that you wish people understood more about product marketing?

[00:22:34] Jess Bahr: We'll make it more neutral.

[00:22:38] Karthik Krishnaswamy: No, sometimes there's just look, there's just conversations happening over slack virtual town hall, in person town hall.

[00:22:52] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And they also get they just lost a deal.

[00:22:56] Karthik Krishnaswamy: They found this post by a competitor.

[00:22:58] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So there's lots of input points and triggers and people react to it.

[00:23:05] Karthik Krishnaswamy: They're on the front lines.

[00:23:06] Karthik Krishnaswamy: They're, of course, humans.

[00:23:08] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And so the question would be, what do we say to this event is a little bit more prepared?

[00:23:18] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But I came across this prospect at this event.

[00:23:23] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I don't know what to say or I learned something about I learned something new.

[00:23:27] Karthik Krishnaswamy: How do we reposition our message based on what I learned?

[00:23:30] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:23:31] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What I'm trying to say is there's just a lot of input points and triggers again, that sales could give us and sometimes the expectation is immediate.

[00:23:42] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You need to react immediately.

[00:23:43] Jess Bahr: Yeah.

[00:23:44] Jess Bahr: Whether they're often likely also on the phone with a prospect doing a demo and the prospect says like, oh, actually that's not a pain point you guys solve.

[00:23:54] Jess Bahr: So and so does it better.

[00:23:55] Jess Bahr: And they're like, what do I yeah, they're under like an urgent situation and they're kind of pulling you into that urgently, even though you may need more time to go and investigate it.

[00:24:07] Jess Bahr: And also, maybe your prospect is full of poop and they're claiming competitors do things they don't like.

[00:24:14] Jess Bahr: We have seen that before.

[00:24:15] Jess Bahr: That won't be the first time it's happened.

[00:24:17] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right?

[00:24:18] Jess Bahr: Yeah.

[00:24:20] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Just to be able to I mean, again, they are on the front lines.

[00:24:24] Karthik Krishnaswamy: They want to close the deal.

[00:24:26] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Sometimes the expectations of what they need from product marketing give me something very quick and we need to go and really research and analyze and think about what exactly we should say.

[00:24:37] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:24:38] Karthik Krishnaswamy: The other thing is, even when you do have a notion page or basically a content hub or a sales enablement hub, again, they just have a lot of things on their plate.

[00:24:51] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:24:51] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Can you give me this asset?

[00:24:52] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I already gave it to you last week.

[00:24:54] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Can you give me this blog?

[00:24:55] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Why are you here?

[00:24:56] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Go read it.

[00:24:57] Jess Bahr: It's in the drive.

[00:24:59] Jess Bahr: Why are you sending out the one that's a year old?

[00:25:02] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And I'm sure if you talk to a sales counterpart right.

[00:25:06] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I can never find the effing information that I want.

[00:25:09] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Product marketing always says it's there.

[00:25:12] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I can never get my hands.

[00:25:14] Jess Bahr: I think that is the number one complaint when it comes from sales to marketing is the sellers want visibility into what is marketing sending?

[00:25:22] Jess Bahr: What they want to know is what are my prospects receiving, what's the messaging, what's working, what's not working so that they can really be aligned with it.

[00:25:29] Jess Bahr: Right.

[00:25:29] Jess Bahr: To make the deal smoother.

[00:25:30] Jess Bahr: And end of the day, we all exist to make sales easier.

[00:25:35] Jess Bahr: Everyone in the company does.

[00:25:36] Jess Bahr: Engineering is building a better product to make sales easier.

[00:25:39] Jess Bahr: We're aligned with that.

[00:25:40] Jess Bahr: We might shit on sales sometimes, so we're aligned that we exist to make their lives easier.

[00:25:45] Jess Bahr: I think the number one complaint from them is not complaint, but the number one ask is always, how do I get visibility?

[00:25:50] Jess Bahr: And it blows my mind because there are so many tools out there that still do not solve this well.

[00:25:57] Jess Bahr: You can have files in salesforce organized.

[00:25:59] Jess Bahr: You can have hotspot organized.

[00:26:01] Jess Bahr: You can have an internal wiki.

[00:26:03] Jess Bahr: You can have an internal drive.

[00:26:04] Jess Bahr: You can have version control in your drive.

[00:26:07] Jess Bahr: It seems like an impossible problem to solve.

[00:26:10] Jess Bahr: It just does not feel possible to ever solve it.

[00:26:13] Jess Bahr: At least not in our lifetime.

[00:26:15] Jess Bahr: Not in our career lifetime.

[00:26:17] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah.

[00:26:18] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Two requests, right?

[00:26:20] Karthik Krishnaswamy: One, what are you sending my prospects and customers, but just me?

[00:26:24] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Give me all the assets that I can send to a prospect in just an email.

[00:26:28] Karthik Krishnaswamy: To your point?

[00:26:28] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah, both of us are just loggerheads all the time.

[00:26:34] Jess Bahr: I guess the solution, as I say it, is really having a really robust marketing website that is using some AI or technology to serve the right content at the right time to the right person, so the sellers don't have to be that counterpoint.

[00:26:49] Jess Bahr: I think that leads to product Led growth, right, as the rise in that versus sales Led, too.

[00:26:54] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah.

[00:26:54] Karthik Krishnaswamy: No, I think it's a great and great observation there.

[00:26:57] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:26:57] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Like, we talk about sharing the right content to the right audience at the right time.

[00:27:03] Karthik Krishnaswamy: That's deep.

[00:27:04] Karthik Krishnaswamy: That's also the playful actual ads.

[00:27:06] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:27:06] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But we don't think about internally.

[00:27:09] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Like, even internally within the corporate, within the organization.

[00:27:12] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And it's not just sales.

[00:27:13] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Of course sales is important, but sharing something with product management of the brands that we have built, that product marketing has built.

[00:27:21] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:27:21] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So it applies.

[00:27:22] Karthik Krishnaswamy: What I'm trying to say is in the intranet as well.

[00:27:26] Joy in managing people: A conversation with Karthik Krishnaswamy

[00:27:26] Jess Bahr: Who has an Internet anymore?

[00:27:27] Jess Bahr: Karthik.

[00:27:29] Jess Bahr: Karthik.

[00:27:30] Jess Bahr: You've built teams, you've built functions, you've managed managers.

[00:27:33] Jess Bahr: You've really like built departments.

[00:27:36] Jess Bahr: What do you get more joy out of managing people?

[00:27:40] Jess Bahr: Being an individual contributor and doing the work, or having an intern come in and just make you feel old as fuck.

[00:27:47] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Wow.

[00:27:49] Jess Bahr: What's the most joyful part of your day?

[00:27:51] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah.

[00:27:52] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Wow.

[00:27:53] Karthik Krishnaswamy: No, I think it's an evolution.

[00:27:55] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right?

[00:27:55] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I mean, I kind of started in product marketing only five years back.

[00:27:59] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I've been formally professional, whatever.

[00:28:02] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:28:02] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I've been dabbling in product marketing before that.

[00:28:05] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But at the time when I started off full time, I enjoyed being an IC.

[00:28:11] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:28:11] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I mean, I enjoyed actually creating, crafting the story, not as much, writing blogs, but I've gotten to begin to enjoy that as well.

[00:28:18] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But you get that point.

[00:28:20] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And then I came back to Nginx and even at NS One, I was leading a team, small team, but at Enginex, definitely team grew and I was able to nurture in house talent, build, bring in new talent.

[00:28:35] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And I have the opportunity at NS One as well.

[00:28:39] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And the privilege, I have an amazing team to help establish or help grow my team's folks in my team, their careers, their growth, think about what their aspirations are.

[00:28:54] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I think as perhaps with any function, if you're a manager, that brings me joy.

[00:29:00] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Right.

[00:29:01] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I mean, that you are sort of not responsible for, but you're sort of directing and guiding somebody else's career and growth, I think that brings joy.

[00:29:12] Interview with Karthik Krishnaswamy on his Product Marketing Journey

[00:29:12] Jess Bahr: Like you said, what is the most rewarding part of your job?

[00:29:16] Jess Bahr: And this can be across the entire history of the companies you've worked for.

[00:29:19] Jess Bahr: What is like the highlight moment?

[00:29:22] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Two things.

[00:29:23] Karthik Krishnaswamy: One is well, can I point out true highlight moment?

[00:29:27] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah.

[00:29:27] Jess Bahr: 100%.

[00:29:29] Jess Bahr: I asked you to do fuck Mary Kill for different functions.

[00:29:32] Jess Bahr: Karthik, you have a long leash to do whatever you want.

[00:29:38] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Well, maybe let's make it to three, then.

[00:29:41] Jess Bahr: Oh, my God.

[00:29:42] Karthik Krishnaswamy: No.

[00:29:42] Karthik Krishnaswamy: So, I mean, all in product marketing, enginex again, first product marketer, there was a technical market really sort of build that function.

[00:29:52] Karthik Krishnaswamy: We got acquired within one and a half years, but.

[00:29:57] Jess Bahr: Acquired for a stupid valuation.

[00:29:59] Jess Bahr: Yeah, 670,000,000, which was way more than what was raised.

[00:30:05] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Lucky, right.

[00:30:07] Jess Bahr: I think the valuation shocked a lot of people.

[00:30:09] Jess Bahr: I remember having some conversations and they're like, how is that their multiplier?

[00:30:15] Jess Bahr: How did they get to that amount?

[00:30:16] Jess Bahr: And the value of this is now, I'm tangenting really quickly, but I think having a company where you have an open source audience and you have a product was such a huge multiplier for them.

[00:30:28] Jess Bahr: Would you agree?

[00:30:29] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Absolutely.

[00:30:30] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And just on the point, I mean, open source was and still is pretty hot.

[00:30:35] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I think not.

[00:30:36] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I think I mean, it's still hot given the but it was definitely hot.

[00:30:40] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah, I think.

[00:30:41] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And just one more point about Nginx again.

[00:30:45] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Going power 400 plus million websites, web server.

[00:30:49] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It's an all in one library.

[00:30:51] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Proxy load balancer API.

[00:30:53] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Gateway kubernetes.

[00:30:55] Karthik Krishnaswamy: English controller.

[00:30:55] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Whatever.

[00:30:58] Jess Bahr: It's going to give you stickers for your laptop the minute you power it on.

[00:31:01] Jess Bahr: Stickers.

[00:31:02] Jess Bahr: Just populate on your laptop like it does everything for you.

[00:31:06] Jess Bahr: Yeah.

[00:31:06] Jess Bahr: Okay.

[00:31:07] Building Repeatable, Scalable Motions: A Conversation with Karthik Krishnaswamy

[00:31:07] Jess Bahr: So back to your top three rank order, top three most fulfilling parts of your career, moments in your career.

[00:31:14] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Nginx, building on the product marketing function and building repeatable scalable motions.

[00:31:19] Karthik Krishnaswamy: That is especially important as you as you grow as a startup.

[00:31:23] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I mean, when you met, you know, what kind of activities you did for any function.

[00:31:27] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Again, when you are series A, not the same.

[00:31:30] Karthik Krishnaswamy: When you're going to go public, right?

[00:31:31] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You've gotten scale and you need to scale your function and process, too.

[00:31:35] Karthik Krishnaswamy: How do you do product launches?

[00:31:37] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It can't just be last minute.

[00:31:38] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Scrambling together.

[00:31:40] Karthik Krishnaswamy: You need to fill up what you're talking about.

[00:31:43] Jess Bahr: I don't know what you're talking about.

[00:31:44] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Karthik Hat so putting Proxies in place to again, even publishing content, right?

[00:31:50] Karthik Krishnaswamy: If I publish a blog ten days, in ten days backwards, is there a graphic image?

[00:31:56] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Is the social post aligned?

[00:31:58] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Do we have social posts?

[00:32:01] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Putting all those processes, that is a highlight moment at Nginx.

[00:32:05] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And of course, like I said, I mean, crafting the story itself and I'm having the again, the privilege and honor at Trey here.

[00:32:13] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Tray is a local automation is a local automation space.

[00:32:18] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It's a VRCC startup.

[00:32:19] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Very different from infrastructure.

[00:32:21] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Sometimes I have a little bit of FOMO, but I've begun to embrace local automation, which is basically enabling equipping business, technologists, citizen, automators in enterprises, the non developers to sort of integrate applications and automate processes.

[00:32:41] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Like a demand, like a marketing ops person to integrate.

[00:32:45] Jess Bahr: I know, I get hit with ads for them all the time.

[00:32:48] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Okay, great.

[00:32:49] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Click on them and use it.

[00:32:53] Jess Bahr: You and one other person are the only people I've ever talked to who went from infrastructure and selling into really technical audiences to non technical infrastructure who have made the statement, I miss infrastructure.

[00:33:07] Jess Bahr: I think 99% of people are like, this is great.

[00:33:12] Jess Bahr: I never have to talk about on Prem again.

[00:33:14] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It's only because I'm just an old hack.

[00:33:16] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It's been doing infrastructure for 25 years, and now I'm not doing that anyways.

[00:33:21] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But I have the privilege of doing the same thing at Trey.

[00:33:25] Jess Bahr: Really?

[00:33:26] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And I have an amazing boss.

[00:33:27] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But crafting what we call ICT, we didn't talk about that ideal customer profile starting from that point on to, again, trying to launch a huge new campaign, trying to think vertical play.

[00:33:41] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Do we want to target rev ops?

[00:33:42] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Do you want to target HR?

[00:33:44] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Do you want to target it?

[00:33:45] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And what does it mean?

[00:33:46] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It's building those foundational muscle at both these companies.

[00:33:51] Karthik Krishnaswamy: That's what I would say.

[00:33:53] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I mean, I'm only at five weeks, five months at trade, but both of these jobs, engineers and trade, really exciting.

[00:34:01] Karthik Krishnaswamy: And I've been able to make a lot of impact.

[00:34:04] Karthik Krishnaswamy: The third one was NS one.

[00:34:07] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I'm smiling because I joined November right before the Pandemic in November 2019, 2020, jan 2020, we all go to Miami and within one and a half months I was able to deliver this pitch DDI, a new product line that the company is not pursuing anymore.

[00:34:32] Karthik Krishnaswamy: But it's just I think I'm proud of sort of what I was able to achieve along with input from everybody else on crafting that story.

[00:34:41] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Within just six weeks.

[00:34:44] Jess Bahr: You produce so much content, right?

[00:34:47] Jess Bahr: I think you made like 90 things.

[00:34:52] Jess Bahr: The bill of material was like massive.

[00:34:54] Jess Bahr: Yeah, I honestly, Karthi, for a moment I thought you were going to say that.

[00:34:58] Jess Bahr: The third highlight of your career was when we met in person for the first time.

[00:35:02] Jess Bahr: I really thought that was where you were going with that story.

[00:35:05] Jess Bahr: I wasn't in Miami for those listening because I was sick, but I really thought that's where you're going.

[00:35:10] Jess Bahr: But that makes sense.

[00:35:11] Jess Bahr: I mean, you did a lot.

[00:35:11] Jess Bahr: I think what I would take away from your examples is that you really love being able to build and build things that have a lot of value.

[00:35:19] Jess Bahr: And so Nginx was like a fantastic exit.

[00:35:27] Jess Bahr: No one was.

[00:35:27] Jess Bahr: Not everyone was very impressed at the valuation they got bought by.

[00:35:32] Jess Bahr: It was a massive multiplier.

[00:35:33] Jess Bahr: At Trey, you're really doing the same thing, where you're coming in and building something that's going to really outscale you.

[00:35:39] Jess Bahr: Right.

[00:35:39] Jess Bahr: You're building these repeatable systems and processes to grow.

[00:35:42] Jess Bahr: And that's the thread that I'm seeing with your highlights across your career.

[00:35:46] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Yeah.

[00:35:46] Karthik Krishnaswamy: A builder.

[00:35:47] Karthik Krishnaswamy: It's funny.

[00:35:48] Karthik Krishnaswamy: We empower equip builders at trade builders that want to build new business processes, optimize business process.

[00:35:59] Karthik Krishnaswamy: We enable the builders and organizations.

[00:36:02] Jess Bahr: And you're the builder.

[00:36:03] Jess Bahr: You're Karthik the builder, like Bob the builder.

[00:36:07] Jess Bahr: Thank you for joining the podcast.

[00:36:09] Jess Bahr: If anyone is interested in connecting with Karthik or learning more about what he's doing, we'll have links in the show notes below.

[00:36:14] Jess Bahr: We'll also link out to all the tech that we talked about today.

[00:36:17] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Well, thanks.

[00:36:18] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I mean, this was a lot of fun.

[00:36:19] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Like I said, I actually off camera, I was thinking I was telling you how a little nervous I was.

[00:36:24] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I've never done anything like this, this sort of free flowing conversation.

[00:36:28] Karthik Krishnaswamy: I really enjoy talking about product marketing and thank you for the opportunity.

[00:36:32] Jess Bahr: You are so welcome.

[00:36:33] Jess Bahr: I'm glad that you were here.

[00:36:35] Jess Bahr: And to our listeners at home, we'll see you on the next episode.

[00:36:38] Karthik Krishnaswamy: Pew.

[00:36:39] Jess Bahr: Pew.