Latest / Partnerships Unraveled / Rasmus Holst - Zensai’s Microsoft-First Channel Strategy

Transcript

Rasmus Holst - Zensai’s Microsoft-First Channel Strategy · Partnerships Unraveled

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries of channel and partnerships on a weekly basis.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Effe, I'm your host, and I'm really excited to invite our special guest, uh Rosmus.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Rosmus, how are you doing?
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing great.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in Denmark.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's a sunny day and in autumn, and that's always things you need to be uh very, very happy about here.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: As long as it's not head, wind and raining, it's a good day.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm assuming because I'm based in Amsterdam, it's also kind of sunny here, and it's you know, you're more grateful for it, especially it's in the end of October, which is very rare to find, right?
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: A sunny day.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine it's the same in Denmark.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's exactly what it is.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: So for my morning run with the proper sunrise and everything, nothing beats that.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Rasmus, maybe you could give us a bit of an introduction, a little bit of a rundown where you come from and who you are.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I'm Rasmus, I'm the CEO of a company called Sensi, founded in Denmark, but uh trading globally.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: We play in the human success space or the HI Tech category with an engaged perform and learn platform.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we've been around for quite some time, but at least the last three years have been a bit of a rocket ship in terms of growth and expanding the business.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: So today it's a business north of uh 40 million dollars in ARR.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's global, it has half of our uh revenues in the US, 35 in Asia Pacific or in Europe and 15% in Asia Pacific, um and growing nicely.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's in the essence kind of placing me on a on a map.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: And other than that, uh my life has now taken me beyond 50, but it's taken me also 15 years abroad with seven years in Luxembourg, eight years in the US.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because of uh work I've done, I've been lucky enough to travel to more than 100 countries uh and visit cultures and leaderships in in many different uh ways, and then um been part of the mobile revolution.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so old that I used to work for Nokia, I've been part of the SaaS revolution, and now I'm part of the AI revolution.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like I'm I'm writing a third chapter to that book and been part of uh building in and exiting companies for nearly a billion dollars over the course of my career.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So and but right now building with sensible.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, thank you for the introduction.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's also one of the most fun parts about working in the channel and partnerships.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: You get to travel, you get to meet the people from all parts of the world.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's also one of my favorite things during the podcast as well.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: We get guests from all over the world, and it's so different and interesting to talk to, get to know people from different cultures.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think I think as a human being, that is one of the best things to try and navigate.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and one of the more giving things that when you when you uh when you kind of find your way in this, and and everyone needs to find a way when it's it's across cultures for sure.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, fully agree.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you talked about you know scaling with Zensei, uh, you know, reaching the good numbers.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: One of the growth levers for you was the PACSAID partnership.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, can you share a bit more about you know what that partnership with PECSAID looks like today?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And how has your experience been working with them so far?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so the business where we are today has basically gotten here on a uh direct selling motion.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's gotten here with like a 50-60 partner ecosystem that have been very close to us uh for a long time.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And looking at that, you're also going, okay, to get to the next level, you need something different for the entirety of the business's history.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: We've been closely aligned with Microsoft, which means that we sell to people who operate their business on Microsoft.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: We only built for that.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and obviously, that's been a really good uh key selling point.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you meet the CR the CIO and they go, oh, it's the same cybersecurity perimeter, it's the same storage, it's it all integrated with everything.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Microsoft, you even get this experience within Microsoft Teams or SharePoint or now Copilot.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you can almost say it's been a channel uh channel without actually using it.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because our core market has always been uh like a mid-market SME type uh thing, uh 250 to 2000.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: So obviously, we were looking for how do you how do you then get to the next level and get to 100 million?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you're basically going either you go enterprise, we're not ready for that as a company because we want to make sure that when we go there, we're ready with the product, we're ready with all of the infrastructure and all that.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: So we chose to go uh downstream.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and obviously, here you find someone like Pax8 with 40,000 MSPs uh in their portfolio, global reach, millions of end customers, and you sit with a platform where we normally we sell it as human success, and it has a boatload of components um and is a bit of an uh uh an evangelical sale, whatever you uh evangelizing sale.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um but in this context with PAX8, it was all about how do you then create something that's super easy, that fits the MSP environment, all of that.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, number one, working with the uh PAX 8 team, it was all about how do you tailor a solution.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: Number one problem, a lot or a lot of problems arise currently from a lot of organizations buying Copilot but not getting it adopted.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you need a human success platform for that?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Well, really, you need an adoption hub.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: So target the product to something that's very uh clear, easy to understand, all of those kind of things.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Call it an adoption hub so it actually sits within a package.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: Number two, think about our offering as a uh fries with the burger type of offering.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning as MSPs go out and say, we're selling you uh co-pilot licenses on top of some Office 365 licenses, maybe together with some all kinds of other infrastructure, Azure, those kind of things.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: You go, here's actually the training solution that makes sure that whatever you've bought gets used in your organization, that your employees can find information, and not just find information like go to a website, find a course, check the course, but actually, given the integration we have with Microsoft, you can find it within Teams as you're there, you can find it within PowerPoint when you're there.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a pervasive experience between Microsoft, ourselves, co-pilot, all of those kind of things.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: So an easy user experience, an easy rollout.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have those two things, obviously talking to PEX8, you're very well aligned because that means that they can set it up on their platform, it means that they can package it up with some of their premium copilot packages and basically push that through the channel.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And for us, obviously, scaling by hiring one more salesperson who needs to close a million dollars of business and all of that will take some time to get to 100 million.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: This is a 10x proposition for us.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and um, you were at the PECSAID Beyond uh event recently in Amsterdam.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: How has that been for you?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I I unfortunately couldn't be there.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: My team members were there and I heard great stories.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: But how was the event?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: How was that experience?
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think one of the best things that PECSAID does incredibly well is that that creating that community because MSPs really love them, they really uh also create this community like among MSPs where you know things are shared, where there's a lot of trust involved as well.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: They really um you know they really listen to the partner community really well.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious to hear like how was that experience for you being there and what was the aftermath like aftermath in terms of like how was it a successful event for you?
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: So so let's let's start with the fact that uh the product went live on the PAX8 marketplace like two weeks before Amsterdam.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: So we were also at the event in Denver, but there we had no product live.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so Amsterdam was our first one with a product live.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um we had Robin Daniels, our chief business officer on stage, and famously we always show up in orange, which in uh in Amsterdam is a good thing, it's it's aligned with the national colours and all those kinds of things.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: But uh the orange tsunami showed up on this on stage, and Robin gave the 30-second pitch about what this is, why this is important, why this is important for MSPs, how it's easy to sell, all of that.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And post that uh we had this boost where you had like whatever, three meters wide or something.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: We were plenty of people there, but it was almost like it wasn't the orange tsunami showing up, it was the uh MSP tsunami showing up.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think we could have done many more scans and we've than we than we did.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: But post the launch, we're now talking to about a thousand MSPs and trying to get them then now from from saying that we're fries with the burger to actually get them coming to the counter and figuring out how we get some of those out to the end customers.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um but obviously as an event, I'm seasoned enough that I've been lucky enough to run marketing teams and events, you're always going, Oh, how's that gonna go?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: Are we gonna get any leads?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: Or are we gonna get and when you then see that PAX 8 sets it up so that it's like a two and a half or three hour session at the end of the day, uh post everyone having listened to pitches, you go, oh, that's gonna everyone's gonna leave.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's just gonna be us.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the setup with the food and the MSP community, the PAX 8 team, everyone looking at that and going, I was like, this, this, I've never been at a booth where it was literally just like forming a line to get there to figure out what that is.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: But it also tells you something about the offers that PEX8 brings to the MSPs, create value for the MSPs, they're good at positioning, not make a hard sell.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that that it because I think that's the trick with MSPs, you can't create like solutions of either a lot of explanation, a lot of all of that.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: You need really need to keep the the channel flowing with with based on simplicity, I would say.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you can really feel that when you're when you're at the event.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: So so for us, very positive.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's just like the duck speed underwater trying to uh to get all of that moving and get uh get get business planning in place for 26 and all those kind of things.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: But again, um super happy with with how we how we came out of that and how the launch has gone.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I should say, even from the start, given we're so tightly aligned with the Microsoft ecosystem, we knew they had very few spaces on the platform.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and only if you were really good at at the Azure marketplace, they would pick you, and and and they had like three spaces in the first half of the year for that.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: We got one of those.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think that was also just a great experience because they're so so tightly aligned with that ecosystem, and we are as well, that it was it was quite easy, uh, I would say to get uh get on boarded and get ready.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: The last four weeks was basically just trying to find a launch slot so we didn't launch over summer um when everyone was on vacation, but we launched going up to or leading up to uh to the Amsterdam event.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean it sounds like you're at a great place, thousand MSPs in the pipeline.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Good luck.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's not an easy thing, first of all, to manage.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Good luck to your team as well.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: But I hope you can activate as many as possible.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think it's a close collaboration with PAX 8, right?
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Also to understand who can help us.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure that of the thousand, there are some who can help us better than some others.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we'll obviously try and and and we will certainly make mistakes, but we I'm I'm also very confident we'll make more things go right because there's good guidance, there's good alignment with the PAX 8 team, and again, there's been since the start.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we've gone through like all of the levels from the C level to all implementation, documentation kind of stuff, and and every time it's been a been a good experience, it's been a good push through, and and uh again, given that we're both aligned to Microsoft, it's been easy conversations all the way.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: I want to touch uh on your fries with burger story.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because you deliberately your go-to-market is basically two words, Microsoft and MSP.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's your bread and butter, that's how you go to market.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you kind of deliberately ignored a huge total aggressive marketing by just focusing uh on this channel.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, most founders would say that that's a limiting to do, but why do you think that also focus is uh more powerful than just a total addressable market, and especially when it comes to the channel space?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: We've had this conversation with even with our existing business, right?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: When you go, oh, but you're only focused on the Microsoft ecosystem.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: What about Slack or what about Zoom or someone else?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Couldn't you have Google?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Couldn't you build a business out of that?
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Of course you could.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: But with 300 plus million users, there's no need for it.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: The sales addressable market is big enough.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um the technology stack is super simple, so I I don't end up with a lot of technology depth by just building for one uh for one ecosystem.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the depth that you can get to uh in that ecosystem is vital.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, if if some of the MSPs or PAX 8 they go back and look, we've been on such a Natalia's keynote slide or ignite for the last um for the last uh four years.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: So essentially that was um sorry it just flickered, but um we've been on such a Nadell's keynote, so the MSPs know they can look up, hey, we're so tightly aligned, PAX 8 can look up, we're so tightly aligned, so they know we're not gonna deviate from that.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the fact that you can give a a message to the MSPs that when you engage with us, you're not gonna have somebody who's then two years later gonna go something completely different.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's very clear that that's what we've been doing.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Sales intercible market is big enough to make a$100 million company, half a billion dollar company out of this.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's no limitation on that.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I think it's always about for a founder not to go haywire and try 19 different things.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: It usually ends up in in missed priorities and confusion in the team, confusion in the channel, and I think especially in the channel where you you don't have a direct relationship with everyone, so they need to hear like the broad lines.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And if you go, okay, the Microsoft aligned, number one.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: They're aligned with Copilot, number two.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: Is that is Microsoft Copilot important?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Important for me, good check.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: Where's this their offer?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's super simple, it's super simple price.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: Do I need to learn a lot of stuff to sell it?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Can I trust that they will continue to deliver at this level and on the same platform?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: So my customers don't have an issue two to three years down the road.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I can.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's an MSP proposition because then they don't have to reconsider, oh, Rasmus is saying they're going the Slack route next year, or they've aligned themselves with Salesforce order.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um then it also feels like a safe partnership, even though you don't say it to every single one in front of them and shake their hands and go, you can see me.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Trust me that this is what I'm doing.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is in every communication we've done and backtrack us.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we've done.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now we've just squeezed the proposition for this.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And again, there's there's plenty of sales addressable market.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if we make this work, or rather, when we make this work, it's about finding more of these small propositions that MSPs can then copy because then you go, oh, they did it for Copilot.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: How about they do it for cybersecurity?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or how about they do it for something else that they do these enablement pieces for?
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe simple compliance.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think you can find a lot more fries with the burger.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: I actually don't know what you have as a second side when you have had eaten your fries, but I'll have to come up with an analogy for that.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh maybe it's the dipping sauce or something like that, but it's just that there you could easily add more simple add-ons to that.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I would much rather be known as a partner who does that, uh, because it's simple to understand and the MSPs can trust that that that's how we um that's how we operate.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: So in this podcast, we often talk about MSPs struggling with sales and marketing.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: While resellers might be you know slightly stronger in that area, I'm curious to hear how do you build a partner that supports the MSB sales gap also without overwhelming them with complexity?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: By making the problem simple to solve.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's no doubt that co-pilot push uh is huge for Pac8, it's huge for Microsoft, and it's a pervasive problem for a business leader anywhere.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Whether I run this company, a barrier product company, a clothing company, or whatever, as a CEO I'll have to respond to an AI challenge, which means as they go in front of somebody uh on the other side, it is a problem that every CEO will, or opportunity, uh problem, uh implementation, whatever it is, like and um that they need to make us take a stance on.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: At the point where they do that, the first thing they need to decide is this right for our business.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: And if they say yes to AI is right for our business, then the second question really is, and and you can see that in the public debate as well, how do you then get your organization to adopt that, to be trained in that, to be comfortable that you can use that?
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because the one thing that AI is promising to deliver is productivity gains, it's return on investment, all of that.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: And if your employees only use it for like summarizing your emails, there's not going to be any productivity gains.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: So for any business leader, it's important that their team picks up that that baton and starts to not just create an email summarizing tool, but start to create a tool that maybe has outreach to customers or prepares the newsletter or whatever they want to be using AI for or summarizes the internal financials, whatever these things, or do competitive research.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where we sit very well because we're essentially the people extension of the technology they've just bought.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the question from an MSP to a potential customer is just how are you going to implement this with your people?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm also certain that I'm I'm the fortunate person to be uh DEO of a technology company.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: I have developers who are like billion times better than me at trying to find out how you can orchestrate the new technology.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you're a 20 people law firm in Brighton, I'm not sure you have those people on the team.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: It might actually be the uh 24-year-old intern who needs to tell everyone that you can do stuff with it, right?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think therefore, uh especially for the MSPs and a lot of their market and their MSB market, this enablement is super, super critical also for them to get the renewal of the copilot licenses because otherwise they'll sell, let's say, 50 licenses this year.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Next year, everyone's going, what do we use it for?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh are you using it?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Am I using it?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, okay, let's just terminate that again.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's also to ensure that we have the AI hype now.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Over time, that becomes a renewal risk if it's not adopted.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there is a real renewal risk in that space.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it aligns with long-term value for the MSPs, it aligns with a very simple sales message, it aligns with a very big global general market push for AI.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: And again, we've in the beginning we were talking a lot to PAX8 about also doing it for cybersecurity, but we've toned that down a bit to be very, very direct in the first communication so that MSPs they don't have even have to have a consideration of, oh, you also need this compliance for for for like the cybersecurity.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's it's very closely aligned with Microsoft priorities, PEX8 priorities, the organi uh the MSP sell easy stuff to organization who wants to adopt AI but can buy the technology, but maybe the people don't know how to use it.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you said that um most co-pilot licenses are still just used for summarizing emails.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and as I fully agree with you, I think there is a huge renewal risk coming up.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you talked about kind of from an SMB perspective, you know, you don't have the people in your team to uh figure that out to help that with their adoption.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious to also, explorer, from the enterprise side as well.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think is missing in the enterprise mindset when it comes to turning AI from just you know simple personal productivity and turning it into a company productivity tool?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Ooh, um that's a bigger question because that uh it's probably easiest to answer it in um being the CEO of Sensi on how we're doing it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think we're not too different from anyone else.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: We have access to all the tools, we have a development team, all of that, who are are really good at adopting uh technology and help write code and and fix support tickets and all of that.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then if I take my own experience, I came from I came from sales, I came from product.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: So when we've looked at some of our sales problems, I've gone, hey, but you could do a portfolio planning tool that looks at your portfolio and tells you which ones are renewal risk and all kinds of things.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm technology savvy enough that I can sit and try that out.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I can also, if I get a sample set of data, I can actually make it work and actually suggest things that I know.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I've had to do this with pen and paper and and look at that line by line and all that, those kind of things.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I the the the process I know.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: But what I can't do is I can't product productize it, right?
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of people sit with that knowledge in their mind, they could actually write it down on paper, but they don't know how to productize it.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's that's where the enterprises are at right now.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had to we've we've at this place we've we started out just having every everyone can join calls and tell what they've been doing, and our technology organization were listening in, and the good ideas they would actually product mature.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Now we have a whole setup around um an AI collaboration committee, which is the funniest constellation ever.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's the chief human success officer, so what everyone else calls human resource, but we call success.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's the VP of finance and it's our CTO.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they are basically making the decisions on what's important because it impacts people, it impacts finances, and it needs to be implemented by technology.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Where those would typically not be the ones I've never seen a trifecta which consisted of those three.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think that actually is one effective if I shall give a suggestion to to my peers or to the listeners, uh put these three people together because it comes out with some really interesting perspectives on how do you build the organization from a people perspective, technology perspective, and from uh uh an investment perspective.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um so for for me as a CEO, I'm on a scale-up journey.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm lucky enough that I haven't hired overhired to all those kind of things.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: But essentially what we're looking at is if I compare our journey, one of our great competitors are is Duchelo.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: They got to 100 million with 700 people.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I'll ever need 700 people to get there.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: So we instead of calculating that we need to hire 500 more people, we're calculating we probably need to hire 250 and figure out how to do 250 people's work with AI.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's how we're thinking now, and that's why that trifecta becomes super important.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's my own, and I'm hearing all kinds of things in terms of what people are trying to do.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my CEO peer groups, I hear what they're trying to do.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're all trying to figure out what the right methodology is and the right outputs are.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um and every time I hear about AI, I feel like I'm a million miles behind, and then I hear everyone else, and I'm going, maybe I'm in mind.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it seems like you know, Zensa, you're in like a super relevant and uh niche space.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't say so niche, but like I think it's super relevant right now that we're talking about this.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think it's uh definitely what you said about like the renewal risk, it's an upcoming problem.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: The CEOs, you know, that trifact that you mentioned, they really need to stop, come together and think about okay, how are we going to enable our employees, how are we going to get the most out of our co-pilot licenses.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: For those who are listening, Rasmus, who wants to learn more about ZenSai or who wants to reach out to you, how how can they do that?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they can always go to ZenSai.com uh and learn about ZenSai.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so Rasmus Holst, that would be me uh on LinkedIn.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so also just go there, follow me.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also happy to answer any questions or do follow-ups if anyone wants to do that.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Before I let you go, Rasmus, there's uh we always ask our guests to invite the next guest on the podcast.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's a tradition that we've been going for almost 200 episodes now.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Who do you think we should have next?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I would actually if for channel and partnerships, one of the things that obviously we've been using for a lot long time is the close collaboration with Microsoft.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I actually think it's great to hear the perspective of how they see ISVs like ourselves, the PykeSate type of communities, uh, and the end users, because obviously Microsoft themselves serves the enterprise, but they need this push.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: And given that we're Danish, given that we're anchored in Denmark, either uh Julia Nedelman or Sinus Dout would be a great, uh, great podcast guest to take a different perspective on how they help ISVs find ways to go to market globally, because we would never have been able to do that on our own um without the help of Microsoft.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much, Rosmus, for joining us and thank you for your recommendations.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, see you in the next episode.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.