Evolving Customer Data Platforms

What’s up folks, today we’re extremely privileged to be joined by Boris Jabes, the Co-Founder & CEO at Census.

• Boris is originally from Ottawa, Canada where he went on to study Computer Science at the University of Waterloo 
• He got his start at Microsoft where he spent 7 years in various Program Manager roles leading C++ and 3D graphics for Visual Studio
• He then moved to SanFrancisco to co-found a password manager tool called Meldium, backed by Y Combinator 
• In 2014 he sold the startup to LogMeIn where he became a Senior Director for a year and a half – before jumping into Angel Investing in which he took part in startups like Canvas, Endgame, Lambda and Reflect
• In 2018, Boris Co-founded Census where he’s also CEO today.
• Census is a reverse ETL tool that allows marketers to activate customer data from their data warehouse 
• Boris is also a podcaster, in 2021 he and his team launched The Sequel Show which counts over 30 episodes with some of the smartest minds in data and is one of the greatest resources to help marketers bridge the gap with data teams

The Thread Connecting Password Management and Reverse ETL

Boris's first venture was into password management, but it wasn't out of love for passwords. It stemmed from a frustration with the scattered nature of employee identities across numerous apps. Each login seemed to represent a different version of oneself. The solution? A first-of-its-kind enterprise-grade password management tool designed for teams, aimed at streamlining the login process for any office application.

Boris describes this as a quest to create a federated version of oneself - a concept known as Single Sign-On (SSO). Behind the tech jargon, the aim was simple: to make people's lives easier by reducing the friction caused by hundreds of passwords.

His journey then led to Census, a reverse ETL venture. Again, the core issue was fragmented identities, but this time, it was the customers' identities in question. Why were these identities inconsistent across different divisions within a company?

Just as with the password management venture, Boris saw the need for a central place from which customer identities could be federated. He was addressing the same problem but from a different angle.

Boris's focus has always been on alleviating the pain points created by disparate data. From password management to reverse ETL, he continually seeks to resolve identity disparities, a testament to the power of innovation that lies at the intersection of distinct yet interconnected problems.

Experiencing the Pain Point Firsthand: The Genesis of Census

It was when Boris's first startup was acquired that he truly felt the problem Census would later solve. Joining forces with LogMeIn, a larger company with a keen interest in their software and user base, illuminated a stark issue. The marketers and salespeople at LogMeIn wanted to engage with the users and cross-sell the software, but they struggled. The key issue? They didn't seem to have a clear understanding of what the users were doing.

Despite the availability of tools to connect data, none seemed to coalesce the company around a single version of reality. The tools used by marketers were different from those used by salespeople. These fragmented solutions failed to bring everyone onto the same page, especially considering that product behavior was becoming an increasingly important driver.

The seed for Census was thus sown. Boris and his team envisioned a solution that would work at scale, bridging the gap between different divisions and providing a unified view of customer data. The challenge was technical, but the ultimate goal went beyond that. They aimed to empower various stakeholders – marketers, salespeople, product teams, finance – to take action based on reliable, trustworthy data.

Census was born out of the need to solve a real problem – to provide a single version of truth that would allow different divisions within a company to understand and act upon user behavior efficiently and effectively. This venture underlines Boris's ability to observe, understand, and respond to the intricate problems arising from fragmented data, paving the way for more streamlined operations and decision-making within organizations.

Unraveling the Concept of the Packaged Customer Data Platform

As we delve deeper into the realm of martech, there's no escaping the maze of terminology and definitions, especially when it comes to the concept of the Customer Data Platform (CDP). From a distance, it might seem like yet another acronym tossed into the complex landscape, but understanding it is essential.

In Boris's view, the packaged CDP (or pack CDP) is a lineage of software specifically designed with marketers in mind, most often serving B2C companies (at least initially). But what does it really do? It performs three critical functions:

• It helps collect events from your website and applications.
• It serves as a source of truth for that data specifically for the marketing team.
• It enables the segmentation and personalization of targets based on this data into other marketing tools.

Whether it's channeling information into advertising platforms or feeding into an email or direct mail tool, a packaged CDP is designed to facilitate these processes. But remember, it's not just about the technical definition. It's about building tools that people find genuinely useful, solving real problems and creating value.

A packaged CDP is more than just another piece of software. It's a testament to the evolving world of marketing technology and the efforts to streamline data management and utilization in the B2C sector. It stands as a symbol of how understanding data can help us build more efficient, more effective systems for connecting with customers.

Building a Composable Stack: The Shift in the Martech Landscape

Boris highlights the major shift in the martech landscape, specifically focusing on the evolution of customer data platforms (CDPs). When examining the traditional packaged CDP model, it's clear that these platforms often duplicate data from existing company databases, such as a data warehouse. However, this model assumes that all companies have a data warehouse, which is not always the case, especially for smaller startups.

In recent years, there's been a considerable increase in companies investing in data warehouses or other forms of data platforms. These platforms, such as Google, Snowflake, Amazon, or Databricks, can store a massive amount of data and are used to answer a wide array of questions. Therefore, duplicating this data to solve problems seems counterproductive.

With this in mind, Census was built differently. It was designed from first principles, focusing on giving marketers more trustworthy data without contributing to unnecessary data duplication. The tool connects directly to a company's existing data warehouse, eliminating the need to recreate a separate customer database. This, in turn, saves both the data and marketing teams a significant amount of time.

This shift is part of a broader trend towards composable solutions. Composability, in this context, refers to a philosophy where components of a system are designed to work together seamlessly, fostering flexibility. Each piece of the system can be customized and int...