>> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCube. We're in our Palo Alto studios having a Cube Conversation. We're getting ready for this crazy tidal wave of conferences to hit Fall 2018. We'll be at a lot of them, but there's a new one this year we want to highlight. It's called Smartsheet ENGAGE. It's going to be in Bellevue, Washington first week of October. We're excited as part of the prep for that to have the CEO and president of Smartsheet come down. He's Mark Mader, and Mark, thanks for taking a few minutes and coming down from Seattle. >> Thank you. >> So for folks that aren't familiar with Smartsheet, give us kind of the Smartsheet 101. >> It's instantly deployable software that people can use straightaway with their teams or businesses to improve how they work. Now the power word there is work, what do we mean by that, and it's about how you capture information, how you organize, share it, automate it, and report out on it. Now the key difference here is that we let everyday business people succeed on the platform and improve. It doesn't require technical know-how, it doesn't require coordinating with IT at every turn, it's really business user enabled but also with an enterprise backbone. It does conform to all those things that the IT group does care about. >> Right, so you said getting work done, there's a lot of conversations about the new way to work and getting work done, there's a ton of workflow process tools out there. There's Jira and Slack and we hear new ones all the time. How are you guys different? I was trying to put you in those buckets and then I look at your website and you actually partner and integrate with Slack. You partner and integrate with Jira. How does your solution fit in with some of those ones that maybe people are more familiar with? >> It's really easy to think about it almost as Lego blocks, in the sense that you have a messaging Lego block, you have a storage Lego block, you have an authoring block, and then you have an automate, manage, and report Lego block. Those are all different, so how we communicate on things in Slack or Hangouts Chat or Workplace by Facebook, we're talking about things, we're messaging. Somewhat ephemeral, right, we have a conversation and it comes and goes. That thing that persists, whether it's a plan or a process or a customer list or a piece of feedback, that doesn't get marked as done and goes by the wayside; that stays. That persistent work sits alongside authoring, writing, creative, totally unstructured, and messaging. That's where we fit into that model. >> A lot of exciting stuff going on. You guys IPO'ed earlier this year, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> And the other thing that just kind of jumped out at me doing some homework for this was you have 74,000 customers, was the number, so you guys have been quietly, maybe not so quietly, been at this for awhile. I saw that the last company that you worked at, you were there for 20 years, ended up going through an acquisition. You're in it for the long haul. You don't really jump around too much, so you saw a real opportunity here in Smartsheet. >> I think in Seattle especially Jeff, we have companies that reach great success, most of them not overnight. It's this immediate success ten years in the making. I think what's changed from two decades ago is that the person who wins a category isn't necessarily the kid who shouts the loudest. You earn those 74,000 customers and you earn the right to serve some of the largest companies in the world. Today, business users are casting a very strong vote. If you resonate with them and you deliver value and you deliver that at a price point in a manner that's secure, you're going to land and you're going to grow. >> Right well, one of the focuses you guys have brought up time and time again is this concept of teams and people working in teams, because that is how work gets done, is generally relatively small teams and communications within those teams. That's kind of the roots of the company. That said, an increasing enterprise focus as you go forward. How are you kind of bringing those two things together, where do they overlap, and what are some of the unique challenges as you move, I don't want to say upmarket but kind of upmarket as these bigger deals in the enterprise opportunities. >> Yeah, teams really exist at all sized companies. What changes in bigger companies is that sometimes the scale. I'll give you an example. If you and I work for a small organization that's renovating one hotel. It's pretty fixed. We're going to get that project done. We're going to share with eight people on our outside team and we're good. Let's say we're renovating 500 hotels and we have a model and we need to conform to that model. We're changing that model constantly. How do you manage that across 500 things working in parallel? That's a scale thing that has nothing to do with can you support your 75,000th customer. Can you support those mega caps who have very advanced needs in terms of keeping work consistent and secure. Again, very often what you see is you have team solutions and market that serve small teams beautifully. Then when they start to get to a divisional level or enterprise, they have to tap out. >> A big part of that as you said is really kind of this low code, no code kind of environment where the business user is enabled to actually implement change, create new business processes without having to go in under the covers and get the c-prompt out. >> When you think about the majority of the workforce, the majority of the workforce isn't a coder. The majority of the workforce isn't a citizen developer. How can you unlock the capacity of the majority of your workforce? It's not about just serving them with technology, creating the form and serving them up the form, creating the process and enabling them to participate in it. How do you let them drive the definition and implementation of it. If you can pull that off, it is a very large market because many people have needs. >> The other thing I found pretty interesting was the way you guys bucketize your solution. Obviously you have a platform, you've talked about platform a number of times here, but nobody ever buys a platform, right, they buy an application for a specific problem that they're trying to solve at the time. Hopefully for you, the platform grows like a mushroom in a dark wet place. Really focusing on the roles of individuals, so some of the ones you highlight, whether it's a sales product, manager, obviously if they're working something like a Microsoft Project, but marketing, software development, HR, IT, and Ops. You guys have really taken a role-based approach to the way you build, I presume, pre-configured workflows, pre-configured bundles, pre-configured things, based on best practices, that you've learned across those 74,000 customers. >> Correct, and when we think about how the solution is brought to market, we do have a platform that is configurable, so if you want to come in and build something, you may do that. We have many people, as you said, who come in with no needs. Whether it's on ITPMO, MNA, client-onboarding, retail store openings, these are all workloads that we have solved for in a solution base. The first thing when we have a need, most people don't say, I'm going to go out and build something for three months. They go, I need to fix my issue. That's why the solution orientation is so important to us. When you have as many customers as we have, you have tremendous customer signals. When we build a solution, we have very good intel on whether there's a need for it in the market. >> Right, and again, you guys are a SAS-based solution, everything is in the cloud. >> It is. >> Okay, excellent. Let's talk a little bit about the big event ENGAGE. I think it's the second year. >> It is. >> Before we turned on the cameras, 1200 people last year, expecting to double that number. Still any registration open or is it- >> Yeah, but for the people who waited last year to the end, don't be disappointed, I would go out and register. >> What should people expect, what are some of the highlights, what are you excited about ENGAGE this year? >> I often talk about take-home value, so if I'm going to take myself out of rotation and go to an event, there better be significant take-home value, similar to maybe, the take-home value from the best 10 books I last read. When I think about having a really high compression across two days where you are inundated with understanding what is possible with the platform, I still think that is the biggest takeaway for people. They come in with a known need, they bought our product, they delivered it, they're very satisfied, and then they say, holy smokes, I can deploy this now for three other things. Those are the types of things that we were able to get done last year, and it's not about just sitting in a presentation and listening to Smartsheeters. It's about working with the fellow companies, but also working with experts side-by-side. You come in with your machine, with your need. We will work with you. That is a very interactive model. >> We got so many conferences Mark, we do over 100 a year. We do the big ones with a couple 100 people to the giant ones with a couple hundred thousand. There's nothing quite like those first couple years of a new conference, because everyone is so vested, everyone is so much into sharing information, kind of the vendor overlay and it becomes too much overlay. Doesn't really happen for those first several years because everyone is so into the sharing, to the learning, and seeing kind of best practices from their peers. Such a valuable piece of a conference like ENGAGE. >> It is, and one big thing last year that we did was we made it 100% employee-driven. When you went to register at the front desk, an employee checked you in. When you went for instructions on where to go, an employee guided you. When you went to give feedback, it was an employee who took that. We outsourced nothing other than some of the audio-visual. It's incredible when a customer shows up and they're meeting Smartsheeters at every turn. You get a sense for what makes the company tick and whether you support that company and its mission. When you leave, hopefully you leave energized, believing and trusting our organization. That's very hard to replicate online. >> The closing note, I've read some of the stuff that you've published in terms of culture and talking about culture and hiring practices. There's a lot of that stuff that's out there now as we try to learn from some best practices. You have a very strong opinion about some of the cultural norms and the way that you hire, retain, and keep people. I would imagine for the Smartsheeters that all of them be sitting and interacting with real clients, not just numbers on a page or names on a page, but faces who are asking them questions that have a voice, it's got be a super powerful part of their direct engagement. They're really feeling that they're not just making software. >> Yeah, and the feeling you have, I'm looking forward to a few people who I know are coming back this year, who participated in feedback last year. So the highlight for me this year will be sitting with a number of people who gave us feedback on our new design that we're launching at ENGAGE this year, and showing them, that is your fingerprint in our new product. When you close the loop for someone like that, that is extraordinarily powerful. If you're an engineer for us or a designer, that reaction that you see in that person's face when you hit the mark, it's a lot more than a paycheck. >> Right, that's great, and it builds that engagement, it builds that relationship. I think that's one of the least understood aspects of a SAS business is that it forces you to be engaged with your customer every single month, because they're paying you every single month. You're not taking the check (crosstalk) >> Every day of the year. >> 15% maintenance fee, you got to be engaged. They help you grow and evolve the company, the product, it's a great set-up. All right Mark, well, thanks for taking a few minutes. We're looking forward to the event, our first time. It's October one through four in Bellevue, Washington. We'll be there. >> Thanks very much. >> Thanks for stopping by. All right, he's Mark, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCube. It's Cube Conversation in our Palo Alto studio. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time, take care.