(upbeat music) >> Well, good day, everybody. And it's great to have you with us here on the theCUBE. As we continue our CUBE Conversations as a part of the AWS startup showcase. Pleased to welcome Jennifer Johnson in today. Jennifer is the Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer at Amplitude, which is a global leader in product intelligence. And she tells me her friends call her JJ. And so, today it's... Hello JJ, how are you doing? >> I'm doing great, John. How are you? >> I'm doing very well. Thanks for being with us, we appreciate the time. First off, tell us a little bit about Amplitude, about your work in general for those who might not be familiar, and also, I'd like to hear a little more about product intelligence and about that concept, if you will, and how that has certainly taken on probably a pretty different meaning in this digital world that we're in today. >> That's right. Well, so I've been at Amplitude, I joined in October of 2020. So not that long. And let me tell you, anyone who knows me knows that I am a CMO, but I am also a Category Designer. So, I look at companies, I look at opportunities as market creation opportunities. And we're going to talk about that 'cause that's a big reason why I joined Amplitude and why I'm so excited for the future of Amplitude. And so when we think about... Our website today says product intelligence. If you read between the lines and I tell you I'm a category designer, you might understand that maybe that will evolve over time. But what product intelligence actually means is, is that it really connects digital products to revenue. And what do I mean by that? And we all know that everything is digital. I don't need to tell you that everything is digital. The whole world just moved to digital. And it's interesting because, we think about digital and we think about the DoorDashs and the Pelotons of the world, but really it's every company in every industry. Some of our largest customers are 100-year old companies. And they have had to, not just because of the last year in the pandemic, but they've been really thinking about how do we disrupt ourselves, really. It's not even about disrupting the industry. It's actually about disrupting their own business around digital. So digital really, isn't a nice to have anymore. It's existential. And we all, I think we all know that at this point. But, if the whole world has moved to digital and I think I read something that IDC wrote, we're going to spend $6.8 trillion by 2023 on digital transformation. We're spending an enormous, I mean, I think enormous is even an understatement amount of money on digital. So what is the next thing that you have to do, once you've spent all this time and money and effort in probably millions of dollars, billions per company actually transforming, is you have to actually optimize it. And you have to figure out what digital products and digital investments you're making. You have to make sure that they actually connect to business outcomes. Things like, revenue, things like lifetime value, things like loyalty, things that drive your business forward. And that's really where product intelligence and the future where Amplitude is going is so critical. Because if you think about... Actually, one of our customers said it best. The customers of yesterday or the companies of yesterday, they put a website in front of their old way of doing things, their old products, their old way of doing things and called it digital. Like we just put a website in front of it so it's digital. That is no longer the case. Now it's about redesigning your business and transforming value through new digital products and services. So digital products are actually, the future of how businesses will operate in the new era. And so what happens is, companies say, "Okay, we need to go build all these new products "and services. "And we have these goals of growth and revenue "and we hope the revenue comes out the other end." But there's really no way for... Or no really effective way for companies to actually figure out how to manage and measure that in-between. You build a product, you put it out to market, revenue comes out the other end, but how do you actually know if you're building the right things in the first place? How do you know what features, what behaviors, what actions, what combinations of those, actually lead to things like engagement and revenue and loyalty. And then how do you actually go and double down on those? And what I mean by that is adapting the experience. If you know something works, and you know that every customer that looks like that person will do this, and you can predict an outcome, why wouldn't you serve that up to every single person that looks like that? And really that whole notion of prediction and understanding and prediction and adapting, that's really where Amplitude plays a role. And that's what got me really excited about joining Amplitude and really excited about the future is, every company is a digital company and really companies have to completely rethink how they manage digital because it isn't just putting website in front of it anymore. >> Yeah I mean, you've hit on something there. In fact, we've got a lot to unpack here, which is great. But you talk about that digital (mumbles) you got to have. It's existential now to doing your business which I think is absolutely correct. But because it's everybody, and it is everywhere and you've got a lot of categories, as a Chief Strategy Officer, I mean, you can't be all things to all people. You can't go off in every which way, so how are you focusing then in your efforts in terms of identifying maybe key categories or prime categories, as opposed to, looking at this huge landscape, and that can be overwhelming in some respects how are you focusing then? >> Yeah. I mean, there's two ways to look at it. And it is... Every company is a digital company, but really any company that has any kind of a digital product or a digital app, anything that's digital is a relevant target for Amplitude. Traditionally, we have focused with probably no surprise, we focused on the, probably what I'd say the digital native companies, the companies that are more mature, but really they grew up through digital native. Those are the DoorDashs, the Postmates, the Ubers, the Lyfts. And those companies were just built by design to think this way. "We're building products. "Our app is our business. Our product is our business." So we need to make sure that we deeply understand how the interactions with our customers through that experience actually translates, and how do we continue to tweak and test and optimize. And digitally native companies, tend to understand that inherently. So that's been a lot of the early adopters of Amplitude have been those digitally native companies. Now what we're seeing, and no surprise is, there's a really long tail of companies in more traditional industries. I mean, everything from, hospitality and restaurants. Obviously media is going through a huge digital disruption right now. Automotive. I mean, any company that's looking at how do we build new ways to engage and provide experiences to our customers through any kind of a digital means, a digital product, an app, those are relevant targets for Amplitude. So I think people think, "Oh, it's..." Every industry looks very different but the commonality is everyone needs to move to digital. And the great thing for Amplitude and for the market at large is a lot of our customers are these digitally native, what I would call the thought leaders around digital. And so if we can help bring that, bring those best practices and bring that approach to some of the more traditional companies, in traditional industries and help them become more like the Pelotons and the DoorDashs of the world, then that's great for everybody. >> You know, JJ, when you talk about, this transformation that's going on and the spaces in which is going on which is everywhere right now, I imagine there are still some folks who might be a little reluctant. And you talked about slapping a new website on the old material and they think they're done and they wash their hands and they go away. And it's not that simple. So what's that conversation like to people who maybe aren't willing to jump in, to take that "risk" as they see it, whereas you know, it's an essential to their business. >> Yeah. So, I do think that every disruption technologically speaking or other, is really change management. And digital's no different. It's not just about moving to digital, it's changing the way that you're organized. It's changing your business structure, your strategy, your priorities. So, I think that organizations know they have to go there now. And even the ones that are reluctant, I'd say if they're reluctant they're probably going to get disrupted. So I think everyone understands they need to go there. Our role is really to help organizations get there, without... I mean, digital, the word that usually follows digital is transformation. And I think a lot of people think that digital transformation needs to be this, three to five year strategic journey, and cost millions of dollars with armies of consultants. And really what we're helping to do is, help organizations just answer the question, "how is our product tied to our revenue?" And we do that by bringing the data to the teams that actually need it. And it was really surprising to me to understand the process in some of these really large enterprises, around how product and marketing teams get data. And a lot of times if you have a question about something, if you're a product manager obviously you want to understand how is our product doing? What features are resonating? What features are leading to things like engagement or revenue or subscriptions or loyalty or whatever it is. As a marketer you also want to know that. As a marketer you also want to know, what campaigns are we driving that are actually creating value. Are there things that we should be doing? Are there areas we should double down on? And so the process is if you have a question about something or a hypothesis that you want to answer, a lot of times you have to send this request to some centralized data team or a data science team. Organizations have, large B2C organizations. Most of them have armies of data scientists and business intelligence platforms. And you send a request and you might get an answer back in a few weeks, maybe a month and maybe it's the right answer or usually what happens, and I think we can all relate to this. Is you ask a question and you get data back and then it sparks five more questions. And so that whole process is the cyclical thing that I always say, by the time you actually figure out the answer to your question, it's enough time to get Amazoned in the new digital era. And so what we're actually doing is helping to bring that data which we all know is the crown jewel of any organization. We're bringing that data and we're democratizing it and bringing it to all the teams that actually need it. Unlock it from data scientists and BI, and bring it to the teams that need it, whether it's product, whether it's marketing, whether it's sales, whether it's customer success. And the greatest thing is it's not a tool for everyone. And then all of a sudden you have these siloed tools, marketing has their tool, product has their tool, CS has their tool. Is you actually have one platform, one system, and one source of data that all those teams use. So marketing doesn't say, "Well yeah, my mind says this "and it looks at it from this lens." And product says, "Well, my data says this, "but it looks at it from this lens." All of a sudden you've removed that entire conversation or that entire debate. And that changes everything. It changes the way that companies get insights into customer behavior. It changes the way that they build products. It changes the way that the teams work together. Product and marketing can now work off of a common set of data. And so really Amplitude is helping to drive that change. And you don't have to do it through a three-year implementation with an army of consultants that come in. It's something that can be done very easily. And so, I know everyone wants an easy button. It is quite easy though. It's not the three-year or even the one-year transformation. It's actually a way to bring that data to the teams that need it quickly. The other thing I'd say to it is, it's bringing the right data to them. I was reading something from Gartner that said, 85% of marketing analytics tools, now these are tools that usually track things like ad attribution, website visits, and how that relates to revenue. Well in a customer acquisition scenario, well, you just want to know what ads actually lead to a cart. Put someone going to a cart, someone purchasing that was probably sufficient, but in the new world, that's just not answering the same question. Like if you need to answer a question of what features, what behaviors, what actions within the product actually drive business outcomes, knowing what ads people clicked on and what web visits that people had, that's not going to answer... It's just answering a totally different question. And 85% of companies are using marketing analytics tools to actually answer questions like what features, do we need to build? So that's another key point here is, companies need to answer this question. They know they do. They just don't have the tools to do it and the data to do it. So they're using tools that were designed for a completely different purpose. And so really that's another great thing about Amplitude, is we're actually giving them the actual, the right data to answer the questions. >> So, if you're somebody's headlights, for down the road, then in terms of, you're looking for behavior, straights and patterns. You're looking for increased customer engagements, and you have all these wonderful tools now, not that you're missing anything, but where do you think that you could even sharpen the pencil a little bit more so that down the road here, what do you think technologically you are capable or that you would like to be able to deliver, because of making that an even richer engagement, even a bigger, a deeper dig. >> Yeah. Well, I mean, so, we have this immense deep, fast, smart database of customer behavior. So if you think of it, it's almost like the possibilities are endless. Anything that you need to be able to know or any question you could ask of your data to know what combinations of features, what combinations of behaviors actually lead to things like retention or churn or revenue. And then you can actually start to model those into cohorts. If I know that a customer does these five things in this order, and they're five times more likely to churn, well then, any customer that actually, doesn't just look like that based on your demographics, who you are, where you live, et cetera, but based on actually what you do in the product. We can start to cohort them and say, "this person actually looks like this other person "based on their behavior." And therefore we might actually personalize an experience for them. We might send them an offer if we think they're going to churn because we know they're likely to churn base 'cause other people that look like them do. Or we're not going to send them anything because we already know they're loyal. So they're already likely to buy. So it's answering more questions, but then it's also, how do you actually use that to, really personalize experiences? And that word is so overused, but in this way, I mean, it's not about I'm going to serve you a piece of content because I know what industry you work in, or I know where you live. I'm actually going to personalize your experience because I know that you, John, as an individual, do these things and therefore I know that you are either, a loyal customer, or you've got a high likelihood to churn, et cetera. And then I'm going to personalize an experience, that's a good experience for you but also a good experience for the business. So, I think there's more types of analytics. There's more ways to personalize and build experiences. I think in the modern way, not the old demographic way. But also, even every organization around the company, like everyone touches the customer. So, customer experience as we know is, I hate to call it the buzzword. Of course, everybody wants a great customer experience but everybody talks about customer experience. Anyone who touches the customer is part of customer experience, which is basically the whole company. And so if you think about, today, there's obviously product teams, marketing teams, are heavy users of Amplitude. But going forward, I mean, imagine a world where, anytime you have a touch point with a customer, you can use this insight into what they're actually doing in the product to get some level of intelligence that you didn't have before, and use it to proactively give them a better experience. Whether it's, at renewal time, or you know that they're likely to do something so you offer something that gives them a better experience or you're in customer service. And wouldn't it be great to actually know if someone's logging a support ticket. What they're actually doing in the product is going to help you give them a better support experience, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, the options here I think are, because of the data that we have and the way that we can, like you said, build these patterns and pattern match what features and actions lead to outcomes, I think the options are limitless. And I think this is the new way. Like companies that understand this is the Holy grail of the new way of digital and understanding your customers and having this intelligence into the product is the new way to engage, the customers that get that are going to be the customers that win. >> Well, it is a new game, you're right. I think limitless is a really good word too because the capabilities that you're developing and the product and services you're providing, really are limitless. So thanks for sharing the time and the insight, a pleasure to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for being here. >> Thank you. It's been great. Thank you, John. >> You've got John Walls here on theCUBE, CUBE Conversation on the AWS startup showcase. I'm talking with Jennifer Johnson from Amplitude. (soft music)