Rapidly operating early-stage engineering at global scale, mapping eng workflows to personas & pivoting pricing / business models w/ Scott Woody #158
Dec 5, 2023
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Scott Woody, Co-founder and CTO @ Metronome, shares how they transitioned to operate at a global scale. They discuss creating specialized teams, relationships between finance and engineering, and pivoting business models. They also touch upon the challenges of teaching customers and determining pricing models.
Specialized teams based on personas & workflows are essential for rapidly operating at a global scale and serving complex public companies.
Understanding the value proposition and effectively communicating it during business model pivots is crucial.
Data warehousing offers flexibility, scalability, and ease of access, making it a paradigm shift in enterprise technology.
Deep dives
Transitioning to a Global Scale as a Startup
Scott Woody, CTO at Metronome, shares the challenges of rapidly operating at a global scale while serving public complex companies. He discusses the need to create specialized teams based on personas and workflows, with PMs becoming experts in specific domains. Scott emphasizes the importance of understanding the value proposition and conveying it to customers during business model pivots. He also highlights the shift from seat-based pricing to consumption-based pricing, providing insights on pricing communication and the engineering complexities involved.
Navigating the Relationship Between Engineering and Finance
Metronome serves both engineering and FinOps personas, requiring a successful collaboration between these teams. Scott talks about the complexity of multiple user personas, emphasizing the need to prioritize workflows and specialize teams. He discusses the challenges of mapping engineering and finance workflows, highlighting the importance of customer value and effective communication. Scott also emphasizes the shift in customer engagement when moving to consumption-based pricing models, urging engineering leaders to be prepared for continuous real-time assessment of customer billing and usage.
Lessons in Pricing Model Exploration
Scott shares insights on developing a pricing model hypothesis based on customer value and conducting iterative testing. He explains the importance of leading with customer value in pricing strategy and market communication. Scott highlights the need for ongoing evaluation and refinement of pricing models based on changing market dynamics and competitors. He also advises engineering leaders to focus on understanding the value their product offers and designing pricing models that effectively communicate and align with customer needs.
The Growing Trend of Data Warehousing
Scott highlights the increasing significance of data warehousing and the shift to consumption-based data access over APIs. He emphasizes the benefits of having data in a warehouse for flexibility and ease of access. Scott encourages companies to embrace data warehousing as a paradigm shift in enterprise technology, stressing the importance of understanding how it aligns with customer needs and offers scalable solutions. He urges companies to prioritize data warehouse adoption, both for internal and external purposes.
The Principle of Cutting and Adding Back In
Scott shares a valuable concept of over-engineering prevention by purposefully cutting 10% more and instantaneously adding back the essential parts. He emphasizes the importance of avoiding overbounding and maintaining lean practices. Scott encourages the intentional process of cutting deep and then selectively adding back the necessary elements, promoting efficiency and avoiding unnecessary bloat in projects.
Scott Woody, co-founder and CTO @ Metronome, shares the story of how Metronome, a small startup, made the transition to quickly operate at a global scale while working with complex, public companies. He shares the origin story of Metronome and the roadmap of how they went from early-stage engineering to creating highly specialized teams & in-house experts. Additionally, we cover how to navigate the tension between infrastructure & product eng teams, creating a healthy relationship between finance & eng orgs, and recommendations for strategically considering pivoting business models.
Scott (@l3amm) is currently co-founder and CTO of Metronome, the usage-based billing platform built to help software companies accelerate their revenue. Prior to Metronome, Scott was a Director of Engineering at Dropbox where he led the growth and monetization team. He previously co-founded Foundry Hiring, an ATS system, that was later acquired by Dropbox.
"When we were smaller, we had one giant engineering team. What we realized about nine months ago, especially as we started working with these more public companies, was that the needs of the specific personas were so specific that this concept of engineers being able to fit the entire product and need space in their head was impossible. We had to create those experts and decided to have PMs specialize and embed with these teams to become experts on the workflows.”
- Scott Woody
SHOW NOTES:
The origin story of Metronome & Scott’s transition from Dropbox (3:14)
How Metronome gained & maintained its first customers (5:36)
Metronome’s two products / distinct user personas (7:58)
Challenges from multiple complex stakeholders and users (10:17)
The difficulty in solving & prioritizing user problems (12:23)
Navigating the tension between product eng & infrastructure sides (15:41)
How Metronome created experts in house & built a retainer of consultants (19:29)
Roadmap for going from early-stage engineering to specialized teams (21:10)
Processes for standardizing the knowledge base & communicating the info (23:16)
Using brown bag talks to onboard new hires (26:16)
Implications of a usage-based business model for eng leaders (28:26)
Lessons learned when changing your business model (30:22)
Making the shift to a consumption-based model (32:45)
Strategies for rationalizing which pricing model to follow & knowing when to pivot (36:23)
Developing & testing a value hypothesis (38:19)
Lead with customer value in mind & communicate that value factor (40:59)
Rapid fire questions (42:21)
LINKS AND RESOURCES
Elon Musk - From Walter Isaacson, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter.
Foundation - The first novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series.
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