We All Had Cupcakes

It was an important day, and one that I approached with both excitement and trepidation. Would it go as planned? Had we thought of everything? It had been in the melting pot for more than six months, and we were pretty secure in the thinking. We knew it was the right thing to do, but yet it was scary. In the end — which is really a new beginning — everything worked like clockwork, and I have a lot of people to thank. I am very proud and I realized once again that I have the best job in the world.

On April 13, 2016 we changed the name of our company from The TAS Group to Altify. As my friend Elay said, it is a big and bold marketing move. But for us, it is more than that — it is about restating our vision to help our customers to raise the performance of their sales organization by helping them to put their customers at the center of everything they do.

But the amazing part of last Wednesday’s story is not the strategic decision that we made, but the spectacular way everything came together to turn the first page in this new chapter of our company. I thought about sending an email to all of the company to thank everyone for their efforts, acknowledging the work, the late nights, the complete efforts from so many people, and to remind them that this was just the first step, that we had a lot more to do to build on this new momentum.

You see, that’s what I often do; celebrate too briefly, maybe acknowledge too few, and move on too quickly — because I am restless, impatient and anxious to be the very best that we can be, as quickly as we can, always. I know that I should sometimes take a little more time, celebrate a little longer, and then pause, before moving on. We have the most wonderful people in this company. They care about each other. They care about our customers. They turn up everyday to be the best they can be. They don’t need me to tell them that.

So, who do I thank? Do I call out our CMO who imagined, re-imagined, created and re-created the vision for this, and then worked with her amazing team to create and deliver a brand and new face of the company of which we are all proud. That would be appropriate, very well deserved, but just not enough.

As I am sure you know, there is a lot involved in re-branding a company. Once you’ve been through all of the strategic planning, the real work begins. But on April 13th we were also launching our new Altify Max capability (one of the most strategic product announcements in the company’s history), so all of the product team had a big role to play. Max was unveiled and we are very excited about that. All the engineering folks, the product management team, and the product marketing team stepped up to the plate.

There’s this thing about cupcakes here. I don’t know where it came from or how it started. It never seems planned, (though I’m sure it is) but in every Altify office around the world at 5pm GMT/ 9am PT, Altify cupcakes appeared with champagne to wash them down. Even in the home offices, if there weren’t any ‘corporate’ cupcakes (can I even say that), someone baked Altify cupcakes!

But of course it wasn’t just about the cupcakes. There was a staggering level of effort to make our new website a reality. As our San Francisco offices finished their checks at 9pm PT on the night before, they handed off to the Dublin office, where it was 5am in the morning, to continue final testing, search for typos (there weren’t any) or broken links (no, none of those either).

It was all coming together between 1pm and 2pm GMT on Wednesday. All emails had to be changed. Personal and company LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest etc had all to be updated before the press release (actually three separate releases) hit the wire at 2pm GMT.

But now we had a new company name in multiple operating jurisdictions. Of course the laws are different in each jurisdiction for what you need to do to transact business under a new name. But, as if by magic, the switch was flicked, and we were operational at 2pm.

Did I mention t-shirts? Of course there were t-shirts. Even my son and his friend got in on that action.

So, as all of this was going to be so straightforward (!) we also decided to launch Altify Knowledge on the same day, and publish the Altify Buyer / Seller Value Index 2016. Why not, right? Once again it all worked. The research was completed, the analysis was done, the commentary written up, document publishing completed, all ready to go for Altify Day. And our fabulous research partner updated their site announcing the study on the same day.

As you can see in this video — even the French got excited on the Arc de Triomphe :)

As you will expect, there was so much more going on behind the scenes (marketing, legal, hr, finance, sales readiness, software changes, signs on office building, and on, and on, and on) but it was all managed exceptionally well. I do need to call out the marketing person who owned the overall marketing elements (you know who you are), the website owner, the person who managed the email shenanigans — yes we know — and one of my co-founders who had overall responsibility across the company to make sure it all came together. But everyone in the company turned up everyday to do their bit and make it all happen.

We have great customers (I’m particularly grateful to those who supported us with quotes in our press releases), we have great products and services, but it is our great employees that make this the great company that I am privileged and proud to lead. So, I wanted to acknowledge them publicly here. Thank you.

I also want to thank all of you who send us notes of congratulations and good wishes. My heart is full.

At 5pm GMT on April 13, we all got together on a world-wide video conference to celebrate Altify Day, the first day of our next chapter. Though it was early in the day in some offices, and late in others, we all raised a glass of champagne to mark the moment, raise a toast to our customers and each other, and take the next step in the journey.

And yes, there were cupcakes.