#89 - Jon Ruby, CEO of Jonar - How a multi-billion$ software market can be disrupted by turning complicated into elegant

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation to democratize possibly the most mature business software category of all: ERP. My guest is Jon Ruby, CEO of Jonar.

Jon is a rare person who thrives at the intersection of business challenges, technology and people. As opposed to most, he relishes the opportunities that uncertainty provides. While working successfully in a variety of industries, he has always tried to learn from each and carry those lessons forward.

Jon’s philosophy for both technology and business is guided by the belief that just because something has been done a certain way in the past is never a reason to keep doing it that way in the future. As such, he is constantly challenging the status quo to find better and more powerful ways to drive business forward.

This is what inspired me, hence I invited Jon to my podcast. We explore what’s broken in the Enterprise Resource Planning category and what could be for innovators if the category was democratized. We also address what’s keeping the industry behind, what could be done to change that, and how this could result in the ability to deliver remarkable impact.

Here are some of his quotes:

We're looking at a ‘value first’ ‘concept first’, which means: just because something needs to be powerful, doesn't mean it needs to be hard to use. So, it's pretty straightforward to come up with a complicated solution for a complicated problem.

To find a simple and elegant solution to a complicated problem is a lot harder to do. And when you try and even succeed a little bit, some exciting things happen.

So, we applied this concept to ERP, probably if not the biggest than one of the biggest software packages out there. It's massively powerful. It's very expensive. It has benefits such as reducing costs or increasing market opportunity. But it's terrible as a whole within the market. It's just awful.

The big idea was that we, as this little company, would be able to change this multi-hundred-billion dollar market from the ground up, start from scratch, and make a real change in what is possibly the biggest behemoth a software market.

During this interview, you will learn three things:

1. That the number one tool in building software is not 3GLs, Databases or Platforms – the number one tools is people, and their perceptions
2. Why you should aim high and end up with a situation where your biggest sales obstacle is: people believing that what you offer ‘is too good to be true’
3. How to build a culture of curiosity – a team that constantly renews itself and push the boundaries of what’s possible.