#CRVPluggedIn: Finding Your Company’s North Star with Izhar Armony and Jason Maynard

What does it take for a highly successful software company to change strategy, to focus its products and go-to-market on its smaller customers, to build a new growth engine, and to create tremendous shareholder value by doing that?

In our first #CRVPluggedIn Speaker Series, General Partner Izhar Armony talked with Jason Maynard, SVP Global Field Operations at Oracle NetSuite. Jason has been an integral part of nearly doubling the company’s customer base to 24,000 businesses over the past three years. Before joining Oracle NetSuite, he spent 15 years as a top-ranked institutional investor, software equity research analyst for Wells Fargo, Credit Suisse, and Merrill Lynch.

So what’s Jason’s secret to success? He focuses on doing less, not more — which in some cases, calls for thinking about margaritas.

In his conversation with Izhar, Jason reflected on his experiences at NetSuite and talks about the most valuable lessons he’s learned, including:

• How going back to the basics can take your business to the next level
• What it takes to maintain a true north
• Why trust is a critical value for every business

Izhar: NetSuite, which was founded in 1998, is known as the first cloud computing company. Like CRV, which recently celebrated its 50th birthday, it has stood the test of time. Will you share a short version of the NetSuite story?

Jason: NetSuite was co-founded by Larry Ellison and Evan Goldberg, who was an ex-Oracle database engineer and is still at the company today. Over 20 years ago, Evan and Larry had the vision to put both the front office and the back office on the internet — but no one called it the cloud back then. Evan brought on some key executives over the years who helped scale the company as one of the first cloud business applications.

We still build products to help entrepreneurs and their businesses, whether they’re the smallest of the small or some of the biggest corporations in the world.

Izhar: You mentioned that when you left the analyst world to join Oracle NetSuite, you thought your job would be to come in and present amazing, creative, and game-changing ideas, but your experience ended up being the exact opposite. Instead, you found yourself streamlining. Tell us a bit more about the first year and how your role has transformed.

Jason: I met the founding team of NetSuite around 2003, and I was an analyst at CreditSuisse when we took NetSuite public. Given my experience covering the company, I was confident that I knew the business really well.

Around 2014, I was looking to do something different. I connected with Zach Nelson, NetSuite’s CEO, who said, “Come work with us.” When I joined, I was running strategy, M&A, and business development, and I thought I had great ideas to help take NetSuite to new places. I was only 60 days into my new role when I realized everything I thought I knew was wrong. In fact, everything I thought we would do turned out to be the opposite.

Surprisingly, my first accomplishment at NetSuite wasn’t introducing something innovative or new; it was shutting down an acquired product line. Then I shut down two more, helping streamline the business.

Izhar: Many founders and CEOs hear that they need to go up market from their board and VCs, yet you did something remarkable, and highly unusual, and moved away from the enterprise. Can you talk us through NetSuite’s journey from SMB to the enterprise, followed by the decision to refocus on SMB?

Jason: When NetSuite was acquired by Oracle, we focused on expanding internationally, adding a volume SMB business, and increasing our vertical footprint. One of the areas that took off the fastest was growth with small businesses. So in 2017, we made a conscious decision to double our efforts in that segment and introduce new offerings that appealed to companies with less than 200 employees.

Since then, we’ve worked to simplify our product and make it easier for small businesses — such as pre-revenue startups and companies that might only have a handful of employees. To do this, we had to rethink everything we did operationally. It’s critical to really understand how and what customers buy from you in the initial sale. We rallied around the idea that we could be the first and last ERP system a company would ever need to use.

In the last three years, we’ve worked together to rethink everything from our SEO strategy, user experience, and customer journey to the sales representatives we hire and our category positioning. One of the things I really love about SMB is that we can do deals as quickly as in a day or a week, something you don’t see in enterprise. Serving the very small business is an exciting and incremental leg to our overall growth story.

Izhar: Why do you think businesses get into a conundrum of spreading themselves too thin, and how can CEOs and founders prevent this from happening — and then snowballing — in their organizations?

Jason: It’s essential to ensure that vision, strategy, and execution are aligned. One of the biggest mistakes a company can make is losing sight of its category. To maintain focus, here are some questions to consider and share with your team:

• Vision: What is your true north and why should people care? What problem/s are your customers facing?
• Strategy: What’s your category? What makes you different? Is it a new category, existing category, or niche? How does this link to your business model?
• Execution: Does your organizational design match your strategy and business model? How do you strike the right balance between short term and long term planning? Is your plan based on a product or sales-led growth strategy? Do you know? How do you drive alignment between product, sales, and finance?

Izhar: Trust is an important value at CRV. In your experience, what actions have you seen people take in your career that has helped foster strong connections within an organization or with customers? What important elements are needed to create a culture of trust?

Jason: Trust encompasses almost everything you do. It starts outside with the customer and works its way in, permeating an organization and its culture.

Putting customers at the forefront of your efforts is one of the best ways to build trust. Ask yourself: How are we thinking about the customer journey? What’s the customer experience like? At NetSuite, we think about things like, “What should we do?” and “What’s the right thing to do?”

Employees trust an organization when they know the company always has customers top of mind. When this is true, everyone is empowered to do their best work and no one has to worry about letting the customer down.

Are you facing similar business challenges? Did this discussion resonate with you? Comment below or use #CRVPluggedIn to share your favorite learning with us on Twitter or LinkedIn.