How one book led to building Marketo and Engagio
Before speaking with Jon Miller, Co-Founder of Marketo and Engagio I was expecting to chat all things marketing, but actually, it was science that shaped the conversation.
We tee’d up the conversation after looking at the career stories of some of techs most successful founders.
Jon studied physics at University and thought he was going to be a physicist. Safe to say he was pretty good at it too, spending his summers doing fusion research at the Lawrence Livermore national laboratory and successfully landing himself a place at MIT on the Ph.D. programme.
This is where curiosity took over, with no real knowledge of the business world, Jon felt like it was an area he wanted to explore, so deferred his studies for a year and took his first ‘business job’.
“Because of my analytical background, I quickly gravitated to the companies playing in the general space of using lots of data to make the customer relationships better.
“I’d graduated in 1994, but in 1993 a book came out called The One to One Future by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers — and it made a big impact on me,”
The book describes the general store in the 1800s. The local corner stores had customers walking in and the store would know what was going on in their life, what they bought, and what they’re probably likely to buy today.
“It was a deep level of intimacy,” highlights Jon, “but then mass production came along — and while we got much lower costs and greater variety, we lost that individual intimacy.”
“The idea, even back in 1993, was that greater access to data and analytics will allow companies to analyze and understand customers well enough that we can bring back that corner store mentality — but this time, at scale.
“That caught my imagination, the mass component of that being big data and analytics,” he says.
Jon then worked at technology companies and vendors around that vision. He worked at Xchange, the leading marketing technology company of the mid 90s, then got through business school before working at Epiphany, which is arguably the leading technology company of the internet bubble.
“I was not a founder of either of those but I was an early employee. So when Epiphany got sold in 2005, that’s when we founded Marketo — which is arguably the leading marketing technology of the last 10 years and today, “ he explains.
“That’s really been the arc of my career.”
The early days at Marketo
It wasn’t all smooth sailing for Jon, who explains the early days at Marketo were perhaps some of the hardest of his career.
“I started Marketo along with Phil Fernadez, he was the President and COO of Epiphany and when the company got sold, we started talking. We knew there was a need for marketing technology that was easy to buy and easy to use.”
There was a big opportunity for the duo to create a new type of business model that marketing teams could digest. On-Premise solutions could cost hundreds of thousands to purchase, then the same again to get up and running. The opportunity that software as a service presented was something Jon says they wanted to explore; “Most people thought of marketing as a cost centre. So the technology had always been held back because it was just too hard for marketers to buy. They have a budget for other things; events, ads, etc — so we needed something you could digest in a similar way.
“It had to be easy to buy and easy to use.”
The first 12 months focused on funding — not an easy task when trying to prove a category that people didn’t see much opportunity in.
“It was tough, investors just didn’t believe in marketing technology as there hadn’t been a successful example at that point. It’s not something you could sell by the seat, that was new to people. We almost died, multiple times.” He says.
Finally, they met the right investors who believed in the idea of marketing technology and that was enough to get it up and running.
Starting again
Over the next 10 years Marketo grew rapidly, at the time Jon left, they had over 800 employees. He was craving the small business environment and this was his opportunity to leave.
“What I love about a small company is all the variation in what you do. One day you’re figuring out how to get your rent back from the last landlord, a press interview, some strategic planning, work on some web copy for the new website and finish with an all-hands company meeting. That variation keeps me really interested and excited.
“Marketo was big enough, I knew I was ready to go back to a small company. I knew I wanted to stay in marketing technology, in that one to one future concept but I didn’t want to compete with Marketo.”
This is where Jon had to explore potential new ideas in the same space that would be big enough, without competing with Marketo.
“A friend of me spoke about Account Based Marketing, she needed to do certain things and was struggling to on her current solutions. It couldn’t be done on Marketo at that time, and that was the genesis of the idea.”
Jon explained how there are generally two categories when setting up a new company, complete category creation or entering a market where something was already being talked about, but that there was a gap for someone to come in, define it, explain why it matters, show you how to do it and finally amplify that. Similar to what had been done with the Marketing Automation category with Marketo.
The account based generation
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a term that’s been coming up a lot in both the sales and marketing space, Jon highlighted it’s Account Based Everything, he’s going to be focused on in the near future.
“The easy way I explain ABM is that the traditional demand lead generation model is like fishing with a net. You don’t care which specific fish you catch, you just care if you caught enough fish. ABM is fishing with a spear where you’re focusing on the right person at the right company and trying to connect with them.
“People love the net model because it’s cost effective and works well.
“But the sea is getting a bit over fished, so to speak.”
Jon explained how the inbound traditional model doesn’t work as well for larger deals, it was an area that needed more focused efforts, and not a one size fits all.
“Sales have always been account centric, the sales team talks about the accounts they closed, not the leads they got. Marketers have recognised if sales are talking about accounts, maybe I should too.
“It’s really going to be a lot more Account Based Everything, that’s high on the agenda for us.”
For more career stories, check them out @ thesaas.com.au
