How This Entrepreneur is Revolutionizing Customer Experience and Digital Transformations
Jon Jessup used to think selling online was easy. But when he began helping transform his partner’s brick and mortar retail business into a high-end fashion ecommerce business, he realized just how complex the process could be. After realizing that major organizations were having difficulty making similar transformations, Jon began his entrepreneurial journey and set out to help companies save time by automating and streamlining their customer service and returns process.
For this installment of our Trailblazing Entrepreneurs series, we caught up with Jon Jessup, Founder & CEO at 1440, a company built on the Salesforce Platform, to learn more about his life, career, and entrepreneurial history.
Tell me about your entrepreneurial journey with Salesforce. How were you first introduced to the ecosystem?
Jon Jessup: In 2005, Marc Benioff invested in an eCommerce start-up I was working for in Utah. We built the first B2C AppExchange solution that allowed businesses selling on eBay to use Salesforce as their CRM and manage customer interactions. We actually won an “Appy” award (a hula girl trophy) at Dreamforce in 2006 for that solution.
In 2008, I started my entrepreneurial journey with the mission to help online retailers automate and streamline their customer service and return processes with Salesforce. Our primary focus was originally marketplaces like eBay and Amazon, but we quickly added support for Magento, Shopify, and Demandware (now Salesforce Commerce Cloud).
At that same time, I met my now wife, Megan. She was running a brick-and-mortar retail business in Park City, Utah. I helped her start her eCommerce business, which was one of the first high-end fashion sellers on Amazon, eBay, and Shopify.
I always thought selling online was easy, but realized very quickly that it required a lot of different systems that didn’t talk to each other. So, our goal at 1440 was to help retailers connect the various eCommerce marketplaces and platforms, so they can streamline all of their key business processes.
Let’s talk a little bit about your solution(s). What makes it unique to other solutions in the space?
Every day, more than 100 global brands use 1440’s powerful product features to provide an exceptional customer experience before, during, and after a sale. These businesses are eliminating manual back-office processes with automation and consolidation tools that break down data silos and maximize productivity behind a single Salesforce login.
The 1440 suite of products includes:
- Reputation Studio is the all-in-one review management tool that helps brands monitor, engage and analyze customer ratings, reviews and questions.
- Commerce Studio is a single platform for brands to manage full-circle eCommerce: product information management, inventory, suppliers, dropship, 3PL, orders, returns, exchanges and customer interactions from one tool. ni
- Translation Studio helps businesses grow globally with simple, accurate, automated translations that defy all language barriers.
What was the gap you recognized that led you to that “aha” moment and made you think, “I have an app idea for this”?
The first aha moment for me was when I realized how few large corporations were actually completing the digital transformation. It pained me to see these companies trying to manage everything with spreadsheets and old-school ERP systems like Oracle and SAP that were created before eCommerce ever existed. I knew there had to be a better way.
Why did you build on the Salesforce Platform and what features from the platform are you leveraging in your solution?
I’m very technical and I like being able to leverage a tech stack like Salesforce that has a secure platform, automation capabilities, and robust reporting. We have been able to apply Salesforce technology to enhance B2C capabilities and have found incredible successes within the Retail CPG Industry.
What do you see is the biggest opportunity about being a part of the Salesforce ecosystem?
Being a Salesforce ISV Partner, we have wonderful opportunities and resources to help us fast-track our success. We have participated in the Salesforce Accelerate Grow program twice, won two Service Cloud Demo Jams, and been a sponsor for both Salesforce Connections and Dreamforce.
We are able to partner with industry leaders that are outside of Salesforce, in order to centralize and streamline workflows within Salesforce. We have great partnerships with Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, Bazaarvoice, PowerReviews, Yotpo, and many more. Some of the best programs we’ve built were done by leveraging other large ecosystems and we are then able to solve problems that are cross-platform.
Which Salesforce products do you align to and how?
We started as a team of Service Cloud experts and all three of our 1440 solutions enhance the capabilities of Service Cloud. Commerce Studio connects multi-channel customer communications, order management, and logistics directly into Service Cloud. Our Reputation Studio solution provides customer review and Q&A response capabilities from within Service Cloud. And Translation Studio, our newest solution, actually works with all Salesforce clouds. We’re excited to be working with Salesforce to be able to help translate Einstein Bots and detect language with Einstein Automate. With all this data inside Salesforce, the reporting and analytics are endless with Tableau CRM.
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs that want to be like you?
As a technical founder, it can be extremely hard to get customers, forge partnerships and build new products at the same time. It is important to gain domain expertise, learn about the industry, and find problems that really need to be solved.
Once you have a solution ready to bring to market, I would recommend getting involved in the Salesforce Accelerate program. Mike Kreaden, the Managing Director of Salesforce Accelerate, is a great mentor and resource for startups looking to grow with Salesforce. This is a free partner development program designed to help partners launch and grow Salesforce ISV solutions on the AppExchange. We have enjoyed both of our cohorts and I am now an advisor for the program.
Become a Salesforce partner today.
1440 is a Customer Experience platform for consumer brands. Inspired by the number of minutes in a day, our mission is to help brands delight customers in less time.
Connect with Jon Jessup on LinkedIn.
