19. JW Hoh & Andrew Albert, VIIZR

Avanish, JW, and Andrew discuss: 

• The ideation of VIIZR out of Ford’s Greenfield Labs (1:30)
• The critical alignment of technology and go-to-market strategy when picking what platform to build VIIZR’s core product and capabilities on (4:00) 
• Small vs. scalable businesses and how VIIZR supports its customers (7:30) 
• Their view on the most important components of platform building for customers (8:12) 
• How VIIZR tackles knowing where to build and where to partner (10:30) 
• What happens when high tech meets high touch (16:30)
• Ford’s path to investing in VIIZR and the genesis of the company's name (20:24) 
• The power of the democratization of technology over recent history (24:00)
• The biggest obstacles VIIZR has faced and how the team has navigated hurdles (26:23)

And much more! 

Guests: JW Hoh & Andrew Albert

Jian Wei Hoh is originally from Melbourne, Australia and has spent the past two decades globally focused on technology and business growth across startups and enterprises. He is currently the CEO of VIIZR Inc, a field services platform for trade professionals. Prior to VIIZR, Jian Wei served 5 years at Ford Motor Company, most recently as General Manager and Head of Business Design at Ford Greenfield Labs. Previously, Jian Wei was an executive overseeing the growth of rideshare in Scandinavia, social media in China, and omnichannel marketing and digital transformation across Oceania. As a practitioner of Human-Centered design, Jian Wei currently teaches business design thinking to startups, students and executives across various institutions in the United States.

Andrew Albert has over 20 years of CRM, Platform, and Enterprise SaaS experience in engineering, consulting, and platform enablement. Prior to being CTO of VIIZR, Andrew spent 16 years at Salesforce, most recently as the SVP of AppExchange advising and mentoring ISVs on how to architect great applications on the Salesforce platform. Previously, Andrew joined Salesforce as a technical consultant helping ensure Salesforce's early enterprise customers were successful. Prior to Salesforce, spent a few years at Siebel as a Software Engineer and another few years as a Siebel consultant.

Host: Avanish Sahai

Avanish Sahai is a Tidemark Fellow and has served as a Board Member of Hubspot since April 2018 and of Birdie.ai since April 2022. Previously, Avanish served as the vice president, ISV and Apps partner ecosystem of Google from 2019 until 2021. From 2016 to 2019, he served as the global vice president, ISV and Technology alliances at ServiceNow.  From 2014 to 2015, he was the senior vice president and chief product officer at Demandbase.  Prior to Demandbase, Avanish built and led the Appexchange platform ecosystem team at Salesforce, and was an executive at Oracle and McKinsey & Company, as well as various early-to-mid stage startups in Silicon Valley.

About Tidemark

Tidemark is a venture capital firm, foundation, and community built to serve category-leading technology companies as they scale.  Tidemark was founded in 2021 by David Yuan, who has been investing, advising, and building technology companies for over 20 years.  Learn more at www.tidemarkcap.com.

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