The Value of Connecting the Dots
Meet Drew Sechrist, the CEO & Co-Founder of Connect the Dots—a company that helps employees understand the full scope of their network.
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Welcome to Inside the Ohana.
I'm Dan Darcy, Chief Customer Officer at Qualified.
And today I'm joined by my friend and longtime colleague, Drew
Sea Christ.
Drew, how are you doing today?
Dan, I'm doing great.
Thanks so much for having me on the show.
Long time listener.
First, I'm guest.
I'm excited to have you.
So I want to dive right into our first segment, Ohana Origins.
Drew, how did you discover sales force and start your journey?
I was working for a small value added reseller,
VAR, in North Carolina, which is where I went to college.
And that company was implementing
is mid-market CRM solutions, like gold mine and sales
logics, if you remember those, and then business intelligence
tools like CGA Crystal Info, which is now business objects,
I believe.
There was a Wall Street Journal article around that time
about the new ASP industry that was developing.
ASP was application service provider.
Later, that term turned into what we know today
as SAS or cloud computing.
But in the early days, they didn't
know what to call it.
They called it ASP.
And in it, Mark Benioff got a footnote in this article.
It was a front page article in the Wall Street Journal.
But if you went back to page A12 or whatever it was,
at the bottom, it talked about Mark Benioff leaving Oracle
with some funding from Larry Ellison
to start this thing called salesforce.com.
And they were going to rewrite CRM software
from the ground up for the internet.
And Amazon or Yahoo, I think were the examples
in that article, if I recall correctly.
And I read that and I was like, huh,
this is a really fascinating idea.
And so I actually cold emailed Mark.
And he basically I said, hey, could we
resolve salesforce.com?
And he said, no, we're not going to have a reseller network.
We're going to have a direct sales team.
And I said, well, maybe we should talk about something else
then, like you hiring me.
And he said, fly out to San Francisco, let's talk.
And so I flew out to San Francisco.
And I, you know, Mark was there and went into Mark's office.
And he said, why are you here?
And I kind of told him, you know, all the problems
we were having with these mid-markets, CRM solutions
that we were implementing.
And I said, I think this is genius.
You get rid of all the complexity of implementing the stuff.
And you just give everybody a web browser.
And they go to it and they get access to the software
they need and you handle it in the background.
And frankly, in some ways, I was like,
I could probably pitch this better than you right now
because I know all the problems that were having with us.
And he's like, you're hired.
And he got up and he opened the door.
And Nancy Connery was there.
I remember she was there.
And I think she was in point number five.
She was ahead of HR.
And she said, Nancy, get through what he wants.
I was like, I don't mean, what does that mean?
What do I want?
So I got hired on the spot and I flew back
to North Carolina, packed up my stuff
and then drove across country and started with Salesforce.
- I love that story.
I mean, so give me more of the details.
Like what was that first job?
What was your title, your initial impression?
- So I was in point number 36.
I was hired as one of the account executives.
And I think, if I ended up correctly,
I think I was probably like the seventh
account executive hired at that point.
But a really interesting thing to note about that is
we hadn't started selling the product yet.
We didn't, you know, where I don't think
we've been at our pricing figured out yet.
We were, we just had beta users that we were getting
to use the product for free to give us feedback,
to figure out what we needed to do
to make it really good for them.
So yeah, my first rule is account executive.
My initial impressions were, I am way out of my league here.
These people are all pros.
A lot of them had come from, you know,
top companies in Silicon Valley.
And I just, I felt incredibly outclassed.
And that was my, and I thought,
there's no way I'm gonna make it here.
They're gonna fire me when they figure out
that I don't know what I'm doing.
- So Drew, I want you to brag because I mean,
there's so many stories that you have had success
with Salesforce about.
And what would you say is your biggest success to date
that you're proud of thus far?
- We created a lot of really successful customers.
And that always felt good, you know,
having a customer that really succeeded
and then they get promoted as a result of having bet on us.
And then they would also go tell a bunch
of other people about us.
And then we would turn them into customers too.
And that virtuous cycle, you know,
it's hard to pick out just one of those
that I'd feel the most proud of.
But I'll be honest with you,
the thing I think I was most proud of is
during my tenure there, when I left,
I was the only person or the first person at that point
who was both the number one individual contributor
as an account executive and then later
as number one sales manager globally.
And so yeah, I was proud about that.
- Now on the opposite side of the spectrum,
what would you say is your biggest lesson learned?
- You know, I was promoted into management really early.
And, you know, during the dot com bubble,
I did really well as an account executive
and then we were growing so fast we needed managers.
And I was thrown into a management role.
And I did okay as a manager,
but the way that I did that job the first time
was I did the job for all of my direct reports.
I did their job.
So I just became like super rep running around, you know,
doing all the closing for everybody.
And in the end it didn't scale.
And I realized that, you know, in retrospect,
these jobs are completely different.
You know, like being a really good individual contributor
and being a really good sales manager
are two very different things.
And I think you have to be a really good sales person.
You have to know the individual responsibility really well
and be able to execute it really well.
But if you really wanna be a great manager of people,
then you need to develop a completely different skill set.
And that is, you know, developing your people,
coaching your people, helping them become amazing.
And I was too early in my career to really understand that.
And we were just moving too fast.
And so I think that was probably my biggest lesson learned.
So the next time around, I think when I became a manager,
again, years later, because I went back
into an individual contributor role for years,
I think I did a better job as a result of having learned
that lesson kind of the hard way.
- So I wanna ask you about the meaning of Ohana.
And I asked this of all my guests
because I feel like everyone describes it
just a little bit differently.
But how would you describe the Ohana
and what does it mean to you?
- You know, what I think of is,
and this is like very personal for me
'cause when I got out to San Francisco in 1999,
I don't think I knew anybody out here at all.
I'm not sure that I'm, you know, at that point in my life,
I'm not sure if I knew anybody west of the Mississippi.
I was an East Coast kid.
And very quickly, you know, my friends became
the Ohana at Salesforce.
And so a bunch of the early employees
and were my, you know, my good early friends
and like to this day are, you know,
if I list my best friends on the planet,
I'd say probably half of them are related to Salesforce.
So, you know, for me, that's, it's like,
and I actually just flew back into San Francisco.
I'm here for a couple of weeks, you know,
Dream Forces next week.
And, and, and I remember just touching down,
by the way, I live in Miami now, as opposed
I don't live in San Francisco now.
And when I touched down, like, this feels like home.
You know, this feels like home.
And it's really because of those friendships
that I made over that decade.
And then they've persisted in my life since then.
- And I love that because, look, I'm, you know,
obviously Mr. Social Guy here in the San Francisco,
Barrie, and I'll just show up to a random friend's party
and there's Drew.
And I'm like, Drew, like, I don't know,
I didn't realize you're in town,
but it doesn't feel like you've ever really moved away.
So, however you do it, Drew, I'd just say kudos to you
because you are everywhere.
So.
- Airplanes, airplanes, make it seem that way.
- It's magic. - Yeah, exactly.
Before we get into our next segment,
are there any special stories or O'Hanna moments,
you know, that are a little behind the scenes
that you would wanna share from your time
back at Salesforce?
- Yeah, I mean, there are all kinds of fun ones.
Like, you know, when, you know,
one of our early friends, Team 12,
got married, he did the same thing.
- Now the CEO Zorrah.
- Yeah, just one. - CEO Zorrah.
He got married in Shanghai.
And, you know, there were a number of us
that flew out from, you know, from the O'Hanna
to be part of that.
And it was super fun, you know,
first time that I had seen China,
and it was a result of that.
I was just talking with my mom,
as I was flying out here, I actually stopped
and saw all my parents.
And she brought up that, you know,
my friend's Clarence and Naa,
she taught them both to swim.
I remember that.
And then she thinks that that's actually when they started
dating, and now they have, you know,
they're married and they've got two kids,
and you know who they are.
- Clarence, though, is still an executive vice president
at Salesforce as well,
and Naa used to work at Salesforce a very long time ago.
Yeah.
- And, you know, so my mom thinks that she's the matchmaker
that made that happen.
And, you know, the beautiful children
are a result of all her hard work.
So, you know, there's just, you know,
clearly these are like, you know,
the best friends that I've made over the years
have like a lot of them have come through this.
Ohana connection.
- Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I mean, just in essence,
Salesforce is really, in a sense, a family to you.
I mean, it is really more that Ohana asked
and the relationships that came along with all of that.
So let's get into our next segment, What's Cooking.
So Drew, you're now the co-founder and CEO
of Connect the Dots.
I want you to talk about how you got to where you are now
and what that journey has been like.
And tell us a little bit about Connect the Dots.
- Yeah. So I left Salesforce in 2010
primarily because I knew that I had a startup in me.
I knew I wanted to do something.
And specifically, it was a startup called Kuzu,
which was ill-fated, but nonetheless,
it was a great startup experience
and that I learned a lot.
I took some time off to think about what I want to do
with the rest of my life.
I lived in Europe for a while.
I lived primarily based out of Barcelona,
traveled a bunch, picked up some hobbies,
did some deep thinking about what I wanted to do next.
And what I decided eventually was,
I want to go back to the States
and work for another technology company
in a chief revenue officer role.
I thought that would be a good fit for me.
Taking something that was early stage
with a really radical idea
and then helping grow that into its market opportunity.
And I did that with a company called RocketTrip
in New York for a year.
And long story short, it was a really interesting idea,
a pretty radical idea, RocketTrip.
Basically, it was pay your employees
to spend less money when they're traveling.
It's really clever concept.
But unfortunately, it's a clever idea,
but it was very hard to make it work really well.
And so we never got to product market set,
which for those of you who are maybe not familiar
with that term, that basically means
never quite had the right product
that the market was ready to buy.
And so I did it for a year and left
and that was unfortunately,
I had kind of a disappointing outcome with that company,
but there was a good lesson in that as well,
which is like don't fool yourself about product market fit
if you're starting a company.
When I was thinking about what to do next,
I looked at a number of things that were happening
in the technology market.
One is that AI was starting to make sense
of previously unstructured data
in ways that was becoming pretty amazing.
Another thing I noticed was, wow,
we've all been piling up lots of email
for the last several decades,
and we don't really do much with it
other than we send the emails back and forth,
and then we kind of forget that it's there.
But we archive those emails,
and those emails pile up in our email accounts,
and they actually represent a history
of all of our relationships with all those people over time.
And it's a completely untapped resource
that we could tap into.
And so I realized that with this untapped resource
and with AI, we could put those two things together
and analyze all the email history
that anybody has ever had with all the people in their lives.
And in doing that, we could pull out all those people,
all those human beings you've communicated with,
and then let you see who they are,
how well you know them, where they are today,
where they're working today,
what title they've got today,
what company they work at.
And then further, I had this insight that we could make a,
essentially a network of people who all do this
and share visibility to their networks with each other.
So because I know you, Dan,
you can see my network and I can see yours
if you'd like to opt into it.
And that's exactly what we built.
So we founded this company about three and a half years ago.
It's called Connect the Dots.
You can find us at ctd.ai.
And the concept is exactly that.
You connect all of your email accounts to it.
We analyze all of the header data
and all the emails that you've ever sent to receive
in your life.
And then we present you this beautiful,
consolidated view organized of all the people
that you've ever communicated with.
And then you can share that visibility with your friends,
your coworkers, you know,
and your extended network to figure out who actually knows who
and leverage that to,
leverage that for warm introductions
into the right people that you wanna get to.
And also just better understand the people in your life
that you've got right now.
- I mean, that's really powerful, Drew,
just to hear that concept alone,
because, you know, just through, you know,
the years of working relationships that you've had
with a lot of people,
I'm sure that is a huge untapped resource
that could be a benefit for other folks at your company
trying to do things that they're trying to accomplish
with their customers or prospects, for example.
- The origin of this idea really goes back
to those early days at Salesforce when I realized,
I don't have any network whatsoever,
but I can tap into my colleagues around me
who have great networks.
And then I can leverage that.
I can leverage their networks to get into the right people
at the right companies that we wanna sell to.
And that's how we did it.
I mean, it was incredibly successful when we did that
over and over and over again.
The problem was the first part of figuring out,
like, who do we know?
That was the hard part.
But once we knew that we knew somebody,
then we could leverage that relationship
and it really changed the game for us.
- And, you know, to your point around not having a network,
I mean, you have built your own network from the ground up
and that's something I know you're extremely proud of
and are more than happy to tap into
when you know that a solution
is gonna be even better for them.
- I love to, you know, find the path in somewhere
and I love to help somebody.
If I, you know, I'm probably like overdue it sometimes
when I find out that somebody's trying
to solve a problem in their lives.
And I'm like, oh, I know the right person for you
to talk to and, you know, maybe I overdo that sometimes,
but I'm always thinking, how can I help this person
find the right person that's gonna help them solve their problem?
I think that there are a lot of us out there on the planet.
- And that's just a testament to who you are
because, you know, you were brought into someone's network
and you were lifted up and therefore you wanna pay it forward
by lifting others up as well.
- You know, like that came top down at Salesforce
and Mark, there are a lot of companies out there
that don't behave like that.
And Mark, you know, absolutely set the tone for all of us
that, and I've been kind of surprised, like,
this is so obvious, like everybody in the company
should help everybody in the company.
It's just good for all of us.
If anybody can, you know, if we can help our team
sell better or recruit better, you know,
or build better relationships with partners,
if anybody in the company can help out, do.
And, you know, Mark and still that in the ethos
of the company from the very beginning.
But I've been surprised that, you know,
when I look around the world over the last two decades
and I see a lot of companies that they don't behave like that.
That's not every company in the world.
And that culture comes from the top.
And I think Mark did just a really amazing job of that.
And that permeates all of the Ohana.
- So Drew, what challenges are you seeing now
at Connect the Dots and how are you applying
what you learned from Salesforce to these challenges?
- You know, from my personal experience
in the very early days of Salesforce,
where I was the seventh account executive hired in
and we weren't selling a product yet.
Now this was 1999.
It was kind of, there were crazy days.
So companies did crazy things like that.
Like hire a bunch of account executives
before you're even selling a product.
So these days are a little bit different.
But what I learned from that is you really wanna get a bunch
of users on your product, banging on it night and day,
banging out hard, telling you what they love
and what they hate about it.
And what they need to see different for that
is to be a really powerful product for them.
So kind of the more the better,
the more input you can get the better.
And we've definitely applied that
in our approach to Connect the Dots.
So we've got a lot of companies that are banging
on it right now and we're hearing all the stuff
that they love and all the stuff that they hate about it.
And it's helping us make a better product faster.
- So what is next for Connect the Dots
and how are you shaping the future?
- We love all of the early adopter users out there
that find that to be a really compelling thing for them.
They wanna leverage their networks better.
So I would say, come to our website, ctd.ai.
And you can click join the waitlist
and we'll let you in as soon as we can.
If you'd, or you can email me directly,
And I can send you a code
that will get you past the waitlist.
You can skip it and get your account set up immediately.
- You heard it here first, everyone.
Email drew and you can get into this like,
selfie program, which is pretty exciting.
So drew, I wanna get into our final segment,
The Future Forecast.
What do you envision as the future
of the Salesforce ecosystem?
- The interesting challenge is gonna be,
how do you grow at this scale?
What are the next thing,
what are the next problems that you can solve?
What are the next markets that you can go tackle?
My honest answer on this is, I bet on Mark,
having watched him up close for a decade
and then watched him from a bit more distance
for the subsequent decade or so.
I think he'll figure it out,
but I don't know where they go
'cause it's, and they're so huge now.
- What advice do you have for any aspiring individuals
looking to come into the Salesforce ecosystem
or just get to know a little bit more
about Salesforce in general?
- Well, at first and foremost,
tune into Inside the O'Hanna.
You'll get all the good old insider stories.
I think another thing that I would say
is this is completely self-serving,
but hey, I'm on your podcast,
set up a Connect the Dots account
and then see who the people are
that you can get introductions to at Salesforce
and in the Salesforce ecosystem.
And then reach out to them.
They tend to be very friendly people.
And if you reach out with a legitimate request
for some insight about how you can become involved
in the Salesforce ecosystem,
I think a lot of people are really willing
to spend a little bit of time with you and help you.
- So true.
I mean, and it goes back to what we were talking about earlier
with the connector language, right?
How a connector really wants to bring you in,
lift you up and connect to other people's.
I feel like somehow the value of just that connector relationship
exists within the Trailblazer ecosystem.
Before letting you go, let's have fun
with a quick lightning round.
You ready for this?
- I'm ready.
- Okay.
Favorite Salesforce product?
- Salesforce.
- Of course.
I was always quick.
Yeah, it was awesome.
Favorite Salesforce character?
- Well, when I was there, I think Sassy was the only one
that existed, so everybody else is new.
So I'm a Salesforce classic guy and I'm a Sassy guy.
- You're an OG, love it.
Favorite brand of anything besides Salesforce?
- Oh, great question.
I am in love with my earplugs.
They're just real simple basic earplugs.
They're Heroes NRR33 earplugs.
Don't get the NRR32, they don't work.
But the 33's are great.
- There you go.
Secret skill, not on the resume.
- I can say a tongue twister and Serbian
that many Serbs can't.
- Please go for it right now, I wanna hear it.
(speaking in foreign language)
- What is that?
(laughing)
- Well, I can say it.
I'm not sure that I know exactly that.
It means something along the lines of like
four blackbirds sitting on a stump chirping.
- Okay, good.
For any Serbians out there, please write us in.
That'd be great.
- Yeah, tell me if I did a good job.
- You just run front row seat tickets to your dream event
through what is it?
- Oh man, well, I'll stick with the Serbian theme
since I spent a lot of time over there now.
I'll say the two, Red Star versus Partes on soccer match.
Those are the two big soccer teams.
- That's awesome.
Drew, this has been so much fun.
It's great to see you, but before I let you go,
will you let the listeners know where they can find you?
I know you talked about it a little earlier,
but anything else you'd like to plug?
- You can find me at [email protected].
That's my email address and I love emails.
So feel free to send me an email.
If I can be of any help.
And our website is obviouslyctd.ai.
Austin Drew, well, thank you so much again for your time
and I'll see you at Dreamforce.
- Look forward to seeing you, Dan.
Thanks, a lot of fun.
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