(upbeat music) >> Hello, and welcome to our Palo Alto studios in California. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. This is a CUBE conversation with Jason Zintak, CEO of 6sense. This is part of our next gen conversation series. We talk about the technologies and the news and the people making it happen for the next generation technologies, clouds, and solutions. Jason, welcome to theCUBE conversation. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks, happy to be here. >> So you guys got some news. So you got a couple weeks ago you announced $40 million in funding, which we'll talk about. I want to get that out right away. But I think, more importantly, we're seeing a trend where this next gen blank is happening. You know, I'm watching just the Super Bowl next gen stats is for NFL. You got next gen cloud, you got next gen data. The world of the technology is kind of shifting to a new architecture. You're starting to see visibility into what this next gen looks like. Your company is squarely in the middle of this next gen sales and marketing platform, solutions in the new model. Cloud-scale, data first, this is a core, major shift and it's a huge market. Look at Salesforce, look at all these companies that've been around. And they're incumbents now, you're the new guard. >> Jason: Yeah, yeah. >> Tell us, what's going on with you guys? >> Sure, well you're right. We just raised $40 million. It's our Series C from Insight Partners. Went through a lengthy evaluation process and compete and happy to have announce that last month. And as far as next generation, you're correct. I grew up in a world of email platforms and then big data platforms, marketing automation. And this is a data first strategy, where we allow, we now have compute power that allows us to process huge amounts of data sets. So it's our belief that it should all be data first and driven from AI and ML on top of data that drives a next generation marketing tactic or sales tactic, an email, or a display ad. >> What's interesting is that you mentioned you worked in previous old school technology. You were CEO of Responsys, which was sold to Oracle. That was a great wave that brought in the marketing technology stack. We saw the sales and marketing solutions from Salesforce.com obviously. That was the first wave that you were part of. Now the new wave is going to that next level. This is really the fundamental shift. And it's not so much they're being replaced, but they're just being abstracted away with new capabilities, in some cases being replaced. What's the core problem that customers are having, or the core problem that you're solving because some of these old solutions can't scale. >> Jason: Sure. >> Some of them are because they're big, but what's the core problem in the industry? >> The core problem is that these systems were designed to be contact first, or lead first. And as you know today, no one likes an abundance of emails in their inbox. And so companies have said, hey I want to have a relationship with my customer or prospect. I want it to be a cycle of engagement, an infinity loop. Which means we don't blast emails. We monitor a relationship, what that's like, how we might engage. And the data allows us to do that. We can see what's going on with the activity, and based on that engagement, AI tells us what tactic might be the most appropriate. Which is actually send less but more effective and more targeted. So it's a data-driven approach. It's an account based focus in B2B world, as opposed to old generation which is lead and actually rule based. And so we used to write these, call them journey maps, these if then statements, which were manual. And the second we got done doing weeks of if then statements, they become stale. And so now data helps us and AI helps us understand real time behavior with intent and then the tactic. >> Love the name 6sense. Obviously you want to get a sense of what's going on around you, six degrees of separation. You got network effect. We're seeing a new reality and that is organic kind of user experience is different happening outside the funnel, sometimes inside the funnel, as they talk about in the sales and marketing. But users, at the end of the day, they're downloading Brave browser. They don't necessarily want the ads, and so they're making these decisions based on their experience that they want. So this is changing some of the tactics. >> Jason: Absolutely. >> So talk about that dynamic because the old way was based on see an ad, click on it, go to a landing page, get a lead, throw it in the funnel, matriculate down, and sell them something. And time's not on your side. It's not real time. It's slow, antiquated, you know how to quit. >> Exactly right, so if you don't look at Forrester or Gartner, they'll give you stats that 80% of the B2B sales cycle is done anonymously today. Meaning, they don't want to contact the vendor. There's an abundance of data on the web. And so we appreciate that. We want to actually enable an engagement through learning. We call it the actual dark funnel. This is all the research where it's happening without the vendor being contacted, without someone raising their hand and saying I want a vendor message. Because of this activity that we're able to see and be patient with, we're allowed to engage when the prospect or customer says they want to. But in a nurture format, so it's more respectful of their time. And all the while, this engagement idea is we're giving them content when they want it, when it's on demand, and when it's appropriate. >> And there's all kinds of new data laws coming, so you got to navigate that kind of regulatory environment. But we've been saying on theCUBE, this is our 10th year, and you know the old way and now we got a new way that you're on with company is that people are connected. Everything can be instrumented. This is the big data revelation that started about 10 years ago when the big data movement, and when people said hey data's going to be a big part of it. But with the internet, everyone's kind of connected, so you can technically measure everything. So as a company, how do you look at data? I mean data's fundamental to your vision and your execution. How is that ingrained into the culture and your product? >> Good question and first like to say we respect privacy in the data and personal and companies. So we are GDPR compliant, SOC 2, CCPA, the new California laws as you know. And that is part and parcel to our strategy, respect it. But at the same time, today's consumers generally want to be known in some way, shape or form because they understand the experience of engagement, whether it's an account or an individual customer. The experience is that much richer, if it's personalized and done with taste. Meaning, it's not spam. It's not a thousand emails. It's a meaningful, purposeful, time-based engagement,' content's relative to when they want to know something. >> Well I like what you guys are doing. I like this next gen architecture. It's definitely been valid. You've seen the rise of Amazon. Microsoft's shifted their business model to the cloud. And you're starting to see other ones, other people shifting. IBM shifting to the cloud. So they're all shifting to this new business model. So for you guys, 6sense, talk about and tell me about your target market. What market are you going after? Is it the marketing automation? Is it like the sales platform? What's the market that you're in now, and what market are you expanding into? >> Interesting you say that, so we're classically B2B. We obviously have a bunch of tech customers as our, in the account universe. But also manufacturers, service businesses. We are going after the entire B2B organization because the world as you know it, relative to marketing and sales, is changing. And so it's not just marketing automation that we're replacing, or a next generation of, it's customer success. It's the sellers. Our customers' sales organizations use it with their sales people to understand insights of their accounts and how to engage. So I'd say it's that whole universe, and it's that infinity loop across customer, sellers, marketers. >> You know, I want to just before I get into some of the business model questions and target audience, the buyer, you mentioned customer success. We're seeing a lot of energy around what that is. It used to be customer success was like customer satisfaction, support organization. You're seeing companies bring customer success much further forward into the sales and marketing process for pre-sales and or ongoing engagement as some of these SaaS environments evolve. >> Jason: Yep. >> Are you seeing that, and what's going on with this customer success? I'm seeing a lot more other than lip service. It's pretty integral with companies, organizations these days. What's your thoughts on that? >> I think all of us drive to be customer first, customer happiness, loyalty. Sure, why not? I mean, that's what we should do as organizations. Our software actually, interestingly enough, allows customers to monitor how their customers are engaging with the vendor. And for instance, they may be, if we see a spike in looking at a competitor, the customer will say, hey are you happy? Or product telemetry and usage. We help companies track that usage and see spikes and based on that intent, you might engage with your customer differently, high or low propensity to actually churn. We help with churn mitigation and churn management. >> Okay, let's get in to the product. We're kind of teasing around the product. What is the product? What's the core jewel? What's the IP? What's the main platform look like? What's the product? >> So as mentioned, we're a big data company first. Meaning, we believe it all starts with the data. Because of the compute power available, we're analyzing data, which is your first party data. So all your historical sales and marketing outbound, maybe your CRM system, your marketing automation system, some of the systems that will continue to evolve. And we'll match that data with behavioral data. So what's happening on the web, what's happening through maybe it's cookies, email hashes, display account ID, advertising ID. And we've patented an approach called a company ID graph. And this ID graph is essentially this marriage of people, personas, and accounts and what's going on. Based on the insight that comes from this monitoring, you can create audiences or segments to market to, to sell to. So the insights would be on the marketing side, relative to how do I parse my total addressable market. Or on the seller's side, Oh, I can understand what my count or my prospect might be doing today, therefore I want to execute XYZ tactic, and all led by AI. >> And so I got a, good point there about sales and marketing. In the old way you had a marketing tech, and a sales tech. The lines have blurred, almost seem to be fully integrated now, they're one in the same now, seems like that's the way you guys look at it. Is that true? >> Absolutely, I grew up in sales and marketing and the old world they didn't talk to each other. Today this is absolutely the glue, the connective tissue for sales and marketing so you can start with, whether it's marketing or sales ops, you start with a central plan around your account universe, and then parse from there and segment from there. And so, marketers and sellers will come up with the annual strategy, but allows the conversation. So it's no longer is my lead any good. We've got data around the lead, is the customer responding to an ad campaign. We've got data that it's true. It's not, you know, maybe. >> Yeah, it's always the sales guys always tripping about the leads, these are good leads. The leads are from Glen Gary, Glen Ross, always great quote, good quote that in there. All kidding aside, at the end of the day it's about customer satisfaction. No one wants to be marketed to, so it's a wave of personalization coming. And we're starting to see that now with Big Data, kind of set the tone on that. How are you seeing this new account based marketing and company selling platform. To deliver this kind of personalization it adds value. How do you orchestrate all that? So this is the big challenge, how do you bring that all together? What's your thoughts? >> So, actually our platform allows for that. So as you might imagine, you mentioned the sales funnel, and start with you know customer having initial curiosity, or maybe down at the bottom of the funnel there, actual buying stages through procurement. Based on where we detect someone is in the funnel, you would personalize the content. So if we detect through ID graph, that the company or person might be interested in general awareness, awareness content. If they're down in the buying cycle, far down into the funnel, then it's more related to transactional, meaningful clips that would be more relevant. And that is the personalization, so it's stage appropriate as someone would want to consume it. As there engaging with us. >> Jason give us some of the top use cases that you guys are seeing, as you start to see visibility, you got $40 million in funding, third round venture. You got customer growth, good growth. What's the visibility, what do you see in front of you, what are the use cases? >> Great, so for the capital, I assume you mean. We've had two great years, we've doubled the company two years in a row. We're expanding, so it's actually going to be sort of broad brush, we're expanding our field organization, we're expanding the engineering. We're looking for acquisitions that are strategic, and so our growth will be both organic and inorganic, but it's because of the success and the growth. We want to build the product better to make the customer happier. And that is the general use, of our international expansion. >> So I'm a customer, sell me on this, what's the pitch? >> So-- >> I'm a big tech company, I've got five tons of data. People, internal knife fights going on, I got this platform, we got to get the ROI out of it. How do you, what's the, what's in it for me, pitch me? >> Hey, John is your sales organization happy with the leads? Do they think it's quality? >> The leads are shit. (John laughs) >> The leads are shit, we can help you there, we actually have you know AI helping us understand your account prospects of whose high propensity to buy. We help your sellers. Does marketing talk to sales, John? >> They have meetings, no one want to attend them, I mean this is the kind of thing that goes on. I mean we're talking about, kind of role playing here, but in real time, Hey, no, we're good. It's the sales guys fault, they're not good enough. >> Yeah, exactly, so-- >> The leads are terrible. So there's obviously, again, this is the kind of thing, the tension that goes on. >> Yes, so from the marketers perspective they're looking for a more data driven approach to, and again data helps, data doesn't lie. You know it's sort of math. And so it's no longer speculative, it's we can see the engagement if we run a campaign, whether it be email, ads, social posts, chat bots. All this is collecting data, and showing data relative to efficacy, and that is actually what the marketer wants, and candidly the CEO wants to the see the result of those joint selling and marketing efforts. >> All right, so you got me hooked. Let's do something. How do your clients engage with you? What do they do? A POC? Do they just have a sandbox, is there kind of a freemium tier? can you explain some of the business model and engagement? >> Sure, yeah. We do POC's, we do sandbox. But interestingly enough, we can turn the data on in an hour, an actually a prospect can see what's happening in their universe, they're competitive universe or their own. website, for instance. And so that's a very easy way, tell-tale sign to see data at work. We have low entry points, where companies can come in at 30K at 20K, and start. Or we have million dollar plus contracts that you know span the breadth of sales, marketing and customer success. So it's an easy entry point, you can grow with data, you can grow with users, or you can grow with models. >> So Facebook, and LinkedIn are on, and Twitter, but mainly Facebook and LinkedIn are showing micro targeting as highly valuable. I mean the election train wreck that's happened this past few years, and even this year, I see Facebook has their own issues, but LinkedIn, a lot of people from a B2B standpoint, like LinkedIn. It's network effect kind of distribution, you got targeting, you got a lot of metadata in there. So it's kind of brought up the conversation around micro-targeting. Why can't you just go at the people? You guys do an account based marketing and sales orchestration platform, and you've got these little walled garden organizations out there like LinkedIn. I'm not sure they're selling the data, do they do that? Do you work with LinkedIn, so will there be more LinkedIn? Nope, we got our data, we're going to keep it? Data becomes the key, but if they're going to hoard the data, it's a problem. How do you address that? First of all, do they hoard the data or not? And if so, how do you guys get around that? >> Well you know LinkedIn's got a wonderful business, and they, to agree some of this wall, are a partner of ours, and actually we'll have some announcements pending. So I'll save that for later, but -- >> So they are engaging with platforms, LinkedIn from a data standpoint. >> Very much so, we're an active talks with LinkedIn. And I think we all want to share for the benefit of the ultimate customer experience. And we believe that because we have the Big Data, and we also allow for that micro-segmenting. LinkedIn's another channel, and we want to activate every channel through our platform and that is our strategy. So we allow you as mentioned before, email, display, social sites. >> Do you guys have a program or approach or posture to the marketplace in terms of, if I have a platform, do I engage with you. Can I be a partner or am I a customer? How do you look at the biz dev or partner side of it? >> You know part of the $40 million funding is going to allow us to build out the partner ecosystem that's already in play. We work with agencies, ad agencies. We work with professional service organizations. We work with complimentary software products. We want it to be an open system. We want to be able to bring your own data, and we'll carry it for you to make the AI that much smarter. >> Awesome, great stuff, quick plug of the company, we're you guys at in terms of head count? What are some of your goals this year? And what are you guys looking for, obviously hiring, you said, you mentioned earlier? Give a quick plug for the company. >> Yeah, thank you for that. As I mentioned we doubled the company two years in a row. We've tripled our head count. You know we're hiring everyday in every single segment, looking for people. We'd love to talk to you. We've also tripled our customer base in that same period. So, things are going well, we're happy and I think the big challenge is just keep doing it, and deliver delightful experience for customers. >> Interesting, companies can be very successful Jason if they have a certain you know view. You guys are data first, you got to a horizontal view of the data, but yet providing a specific unique solution to differentiate off that. We're video first, that's our angle. A lot of people having virtual first. Your starting to see this new kind of scale with companies. So I want to ask you about your vision for the next few years. As you look out as the wave is coming in, it's very clear. Cloud-scale, the roll of data, machine learning and AI. It's going to build this Application Layer that has to be horizontally scalable, but yet vertically specialized, for the use cases. Which requires a very dynamic data intensive environment. What's your vision of the next few years? How do you see the world evolving? Because there's a lot of big companies, and start-ups that have been around doing a lot of these point solutions that are features. How do you see this next wave go in the next five years? >> I had a thesis three years ago, I joined the company that these point solutions would go away because they weren't data driven. The hard work is in the large data, the applying the ML and AI on top of that and then doing something with that. We surfaced in applications for the last two years, we've been building the apps that allow marketers, sellers, and customer success organizations to prosecute that data, understand the data and let AI recommend a tactic. So I think it'll just be more of the same but specialized by use case. So where some of our applicability is generic use cases, we'll get specific to telecom on that use case, we'll get more specific in customer success enabling turn mitigation as opposed to just sellers and marketers. >> That's awesome. And if you look at the current events, I got to get your expert opinion. Donald Trump, the Democrats, they've been using social platforms, political ads are being kicked off, but there is a lot more innovation that they're actually doing. So with all that they had actors out there, there's actually an innovation story that's going on under the covers. What's your view of that, I mean the bad stuff's out there, but they're leveraging the new architecture. Facebook's on record saying that Donald Trump ran the best campaign ever. Mentions why he's winning. >> That's the story and back story is sort of history unfolds when we understand it. Is that these election cycles have leveraged data to run their campaigns and it's the new world. And so while there may be bad actors, I think hopefully the world is majority good. And much like our story, we tryna bring a data solution and help decisioning. Obviously, the political campaigns are leveraging it to. >> Yeah, it's disastrous to see the applications fail like they did in Iowa, but the data's there, I mean it's about time. I always say it's going to be on block chain, and Andrew Yang is, just recently came out and said, All the voting should be on block chain. Maybe that's going to happen someday, we'll see. Jason thanks for coming, I appreciate the conversation. >> I appreciate the opportunity, thanks John. >> Jason Zintak, here the CEO of 6sense, industry veteran. Big pedigree, big company with $40 million in fresh funding. We're talking about next generation platforms, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)