Transcript:

Rick Currier (00:01.298)

Hey, what's up? I'm very excited. I'm a little disappointed that we're not doing this in person. I'm not going to lie.

Rachel Roundy (00:02.454)

Hello, how's it going Rick?

Rachel Roundy (00:08.302)

I know, I'm very disappointed about that. Someday, someday soon.

Rick Currier (00:11.326)

I, so what day is it? It's, my God, it's, okay, it's Tuesday, it's Thanksgiving week, I guess. Okay, so Friday last week, my mind's all over the place, my mom came in last night, it's Thanksgiving, yeah. So I recorded last week in person, Patrick Goulet, I think he's gonna be the episode before you. But we did yoga together, and then we, he was the actual teacher, he's like, yeah, you gotta come to my yoga class. Yeah, and then we set up an,

Rachel Roundy (00:17.56)

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Roundy (00:24.142)

That's the

Rachel Roundy (00:31.191)

Awesome.

thing.

Rick Currier (00:41.372)

Yeah, and then we went next door and did it in a juice bar, which is not conduit.

Rachel Roundy (00:45.358)

That is the best. And also, did this happen in Boulder? Because...

Rick Currier (00:48.414)

No, it was in downtown Golden. But by the way, Juice Bar is not entirely conducive to a podcast because they have blenders for smoothies. But it wasn't too busy.

Rachel Roundy (00:56.142)

my gosh, yes. So, I like a lot of the full experience.

Rick Currier (01:02.416)

Yeah, I know. But anyways, alas, I wish this was in person, but it's good to have you on. I've been dying to have you on the show.

Rachel Roundy (01:07.486)

Thanks for having me. feel like this is like there are so many amazing humans that come on your show. So I feel honored to be here.

Rick Currier (01:15.868)

Well, now it's plus one, so we're at a good start. And I gotta apologize, I'm in a hoodie sweatshirt. I'm not usually a dress up for these. It is Thanksgiving week, I know, it's super casual, we're having fun. So why don't you introduce yourself for the audience? Who are you? What do you do? Where do you work? You know, everything.

Rachel Roundy (01:18.478)

you

Rachel Roundy (01:22.444)

It is literally Thanksgiving week you opened with that. I think that is loud.

Rachel Roundy (01:34.638)

Sure. My name is Rachel Roundy. I just started a new role that I am stoked about at Snowflake. So I am the product marketing lead for AI. And I'm doing a lot of different things in that role. But the way that I really think about it is being a dot connector, both for our messaging, for our AI story, how are we connecting that to a holistic story instead of shipping by product feature. And then also internally, how are we working best with our sales orgs, our marketing orgs, our demand and ABM orgs, product, et cetera.

That's a space that I get really nerdy about, like building those bridges between teams and really thinking about the entire go-to-market motion holistically. So pretty stoked about it. I am like one plus month in, so it's all brand new. And before that, I was at Intel for four and a half years doing all kinds of things from product marketing to integrated marketing, demand, ABM, et cetera. And before that, I was a B2C marketer for like a long time in my career. So...

been all over the place, but marketing nerd and a huge fan of like the team sport that is partner marketing and like GTM all up.

Rick Currier (02:38.012)

Yeah, that's why I wanted you on the podcast, because I know you don't directly wear a partner marketing hat, but just the podcast in general. mean, the tagline is, God, I should remember my own tagline. It's never go to market alone, and it's tech, marketing, and the human connection. And I know you're really big on all those things.

Rachel Roundy (02:50.722)

But even just the name NeverGTMAlone, like...

Rachel Roundy (02:57.909)

No.

I am such a nerd about that, Rick. I love it. Honestly, well, and we were talking about this before we hit record, but the whole go-to-market motion, nothing happens in a vacuum. There is no single company that is successful without their partner ecosystem. That just does not exist. And we like to have these really official labels of this is partner marketing and this is other marketing, but partner ties into all of it, at different stages of the journey.

when you're talking about your product roadmap, when you're talking about your go-to-market, your segmentation, how you go to market, partner needs to be involved at every one of those levels, right? So I think it's such a critical role. like, yeah, like I said, success doesn't happen without your ecosystem partners. So that's why I love the name of your podcast, honestly. think it's great.

Rick Currier (03:45.72)

I appreciate that. especially with your background at Intel. mean, Intel doesn't sell direct, right? It does it through its partners. So even if you're not wearing a partner marketing hat at Intel, I mean, you're living and breathing partners one way or the other, right?

Rachel Roundy (03:51.07)

Yes.

Rachel Roundy (03:57.752)

All day, every day. Yeah, I always like to describe Intel as an ingredient brand, right? Because it is. Most of the revenue for Intel is not closed by Intel, right? It's closed by our ecosystem partners. And so everything, when I was working there, every single thing that we were building had to be through that lens of going to market with partners. And that means early, early on with the design wins we have with our OEM partners, the ISVs that are building software that's optimized for our stuff.

But then also, who are the audiences? How are we segmenting them? How are we selling with our partners? What campaigns are going to get the right eyeballs? And that's where one of my dear former colleagues on the partner marketing team at Intel, she was helping me with this Tiger team effort. So we have this like 70 plus person team of folks from partner marketing, the field marketing, HQ, all of the different sales orgs, our ops folks.

that we're trying to rebuild the pipes for demand in ABM marketing at Intel. And I was leading this group and, you know, I had people from all over. And the biggest, thorniest problem that we faced was how do we factor in the handoff and the feedback loop with our partners, right? So we're building this demand in ABM engine. We're building all of this cool stuff. And we've got like a solid path from our brand plays through our, you know, nurturing and stuff. Then when we're ready to, you know, qualify someone and hand them off.

most times they're going to a partner and all different kinds of partners, right? That have different needs and different styles. And we needed to understand what happens when we give them to the partners. What happens when we get the, or how do we get the information back? Like what happened? You know, a lot of times it goes into a black hole. I know you've posted about this, but I remember Jess, I brought her up because when we were first trying to map this out, she was like, this is not psychologically approachable. I was like, that is the most accurate thing. And that was like the catch phrase.

Rick Currier (05:39.378)

Yep.

Rick Currier (05:48.359)

Hahaha!

So you started with realistic expectations, okay.

Rachel Roundy (05:53.87)

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It was the catchphrase of the entire Dagger team effort. Like, is this psychologically approachable? It was truly like eating the elephant. But I mean, we did amazing work. I was super proud of it. The team was incredible. But like, especially when it comes to like that partner play, it can be such a quagmire, right? And that's what I think is so cool about what you're serving up with partner visa. That's why when you first told me about it, I was like, obviously, everyone needs this in their life, because it just simplifies so much of those like

mysterious in between bits.

Rick Currier (06:24.902)

Yeah, so got to ask, I mean, did you guys figure it out? Because I know that what that Tiger team was tasked to doing is something a lot of partner teams out there are trying to figure out to do in terms of, okay, we're committing funds, we're generating activities, and we're handing things over into this black hole. You what does the feedback look like? What do the results look like? I mean, were you guys able to solve any of those challenges?

Rachel Roundy (06:43.938)

You know, I think we were really close to there were some organizational shifts that happened, right? When we were getting to the good stuff. But I would say what was really helpful in the approach and that I think is repeatable for other teams is breaking down the different go to market motions. And I know we do this at some level, right? With our partner programs already, but we typically do the breaking down of the different motions in the planning stage and not as much in the execution tactical stage. And we were getting really crisp around, what

are the buckets of partners and how is our motion different with each one of those? And what does that exact path need to look like? And it honestly was the same thing we did for our demand and ABM plays all up that we're going to Intel sellers, that small chunk. And it was essentially you have your types defined, but the more critical piece, and this sounds so simple, it is simple, but most people don't think to just approach it this way, is to take your journey maps.

and just overlay them. So like, what is the customer doing from, you know, point A when they're discovering a problem to when they're going to buy something and what point, like what places are they going to along that journey? Map that out, which a lot of companies have that at some level an idea of that, but then where is marketing activated and where is sales activated? And when you're doing the part from the partner lens, what are partners doing? And just having those layers.

Even just on a slide, we literally just had it in a PowerPoint, having those layers of like, this is the journey and this is where it's happening, you immediately start to see these points of discord or overlap where you're like, know, marketing is weaving and sales is bobbing and we're creating a weird experience for our customers. And then when you add the partner element, that, you know, do one of these maps for each one of those different motions and partner types, then you can say, okay, this is what our partner is trying to achieve. Our customer is trying to do this.

we're actually confusing the situation. Here's where we can get out of our way, lean into our partners a little bit more, or this partner type actually needs us to go all the way to this point in the journey and they're really only interested in the end result, right? Because that's sometimes the case. And just that exercise of simply mapping it and looking at it and like taking a Sharpie, almost of like, overlapped and disconnect, that unlocks so much. And that was the approach that we took where we were able to get really fine tuned.

Rachel Roundy (09:04.749)

in the handoff points, the process, what communication was needed, what tech was needed. You and I were talking about this a little bit ago before we jumped on, but the tech stack plays so much into this now, and that data sharing, and that's often, at least in our experience at Intel, that was the black hole with partners, is we pass over leads, and then we never know what happens to them.

Rick Currier (09:23.015)

Yeah.

Rick Currier (09:29.47)

Let me ask you real quick. know Intel has a ton of partners. So were you doing this individually for top partners or were you taking a generalized approach for most partners? Journey looks like X. And then that was your kind of map.

Rachel Roundy (09:43.051)

Yeah, good question. So it was by type. So it would be like the GSI play, the ISP play, the OEM play, right, broadly. And then like, you you'd have to personalize for each one of those sometimes, right, because not every GSI sells the same way. Again, why my colleague called it not psychologically approachable. like, but there are some standardized things, right, and like how you go to market with those types of partners. And I think

Rick Currier (09:45.658)

Okay. Yeah.

Rachel Roundy (10:08.942)

A lot of organizations probably aren't as complex as Intel with their partner motion, just because by its nature, Intel is just an ingredient brand. It's a very unique thing that makes it so much more complex. If you have one or two partner types, this becomes a much easier exercise.

Rick Currier (10:25.766)

No, but I think that that's still applicable. I mean, a lot of the partner marketers I work with have organizations set up like that. You know, there's an ISV team, a GSI team, know, OEM or separately channel team. So I think it's still applicable. And even the startups we work with, they might not be there yet, but that's kind of the direction they want to go as they grow. Right. And then they hire they hire a hyper scalar marketer. Right. And then so I think I think that's still helpful in terms of OK, it's unique to the partner set and then generalized within there and then, you know, mapping over that

Rachel Roundy (10:43.758)

and

way.

Rick Currier (10:55.806)

that journey to make sure there's no gaps. think that makes a lot of sense. What other challenges or learnings do you have from Intel that are kind of shaping your new exciting job at Snowflake? I you were there for such a while, had your feet in so many different programs, initiatives. How did that shape your approach now?

Rachel Roundy (10:58.988)

Yeah.

Rachel Roundy (11:08.503)

Yeah

Rachel Roundy (11:12.866)

You know, in so many ways, and I keep uncovering new little nuggets that I'm like, it's actually so helpful that I had this specific experience at one point to apply here. I will say one of the things that's like top of mind, and I think this is applicable to all marketers, is the mismatch between the AI hype and your existing audience.

And I see this across the board for products everywhere where you've got a company that has an offering that is solid. You've got your established customer base. You are going out like that's what's making you money. And then you add AI to that in probably a cool way, right? Like it's probably it's at it's a value add. But where we went wrong, and I'll just use an anecdote from Intel, when we launched the AI PC category, we had this very

very specific subset of buyers for our PC offering, which was IT decision makers who are tech critical, right? They're reluctant adopters of new tech. They are not the emerging tech guys. They're not the AI guys. They're bread and butter IT. Like they don't have any tech in their houses, right? Cause they don't want to have to troubleshoot it. Like they're the ones that have to deal with the shenanigans when tech goes wrong, right? So, and they're really reluctant of new AI stuff, but they were our biggest, most important audience driving the most revenue for Intel.

And when we were like, okay, well, we're gonna launch this AI PC, which is a PC that can run AI locally. When we first launched it, we really overshot the AI side of that at the detriment of our existing audience that wanted to hear the consistent message about the platform, the V Pro platform that they knew and loved. And we were, and it was a really interesting learning experience. And we were able to iterate in real time and be like, okay, this isn't landing.

why isn't it landing? And I could go on and on about how I iterated on that. I won't take all the time here. But really connecting the dots back to what does your core audience still care about? And how is your added AI stuff going to just accentuate what they care about? It's not replacing anything. It's not a completely new product. Make sure you don't lose that North Star of what your audience cares about.

Rachel Roundy (13:19.84)

And I see it across the board and the Snowflake AI stuff is still so brand new, but it's so easy to give into the hype of like, this is all the stuff you can do, but don't lose track of who your audience is and what they care about. And that becomes even more complex with the co-marketing stuff, right? And we got that feedback all the time at Intel with the AIPC stuff like...

all of a sudden we were confusing our partners. We're like, well, all of these things that you knew and loved about Vpro are actually core ultra. They're like, wait, what? That's not, like, what are you talking about? And so it was a really like on this massive scale, right? Cause we're launching a brand new category, interesting learning experience of like keeping that connection to what your audiences care about. So that's like, I think one of the biggest things and that's really fun for me in my role now at Snowflake.

Rick Currier (13:46.334)

Hmm.

Rachel Roundy (14:09.003)

is like, have an opportunity to make sure we don't lose sight of that, like of our North Star, of what our audience actually needs, the problems they need to solve for, and how AI is going to help them with that. Not replace their job, not be some extra thing that they have to deal with that's a headache, it's just gonna help them, right? And then you can build on that and add new audiences, et cetera. That's one big thing. I also think like, know, Snowflake is such a cool company in that they, from the start, have always been built in such an open way to enable the ecosystem.

Like the company was built in a way that like assumed that your ecosystem partners are just going to help you grow, right? They don't have everything shut down like some other providers do. They are open intentionally sometimes like probably at a profit loss, but obviously like they're crushing it right now. But you know, but with the intention that like we all go farther together. And I really like that ethos of the company. And you know, I learned a lot about that.

ecosystem power from Intel. So there's a lot of transferable skills as we scale up those motions at Snowflake and the messaging that we need to provide as a product marketing team, make sure that it stays consistent as it goes to all of these partners and that we're keeping that North Star.

Rick Currier (15:17.224)

So let's dive a little bit more into that. So you developed the messaging around that North Star, true to the audience. As you work with some of these ancillary teams, let's say partner teams, regional teams, globally, how do you give them the flexibility to speak to their customers, their partners, their regions, without losing that consistent North Star that you need to be successful?

Rachel Roundy (15:28.77)

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Roundy (15:38.575)

Yeah. mean, like, listen, I won't claim to have like the perfect solution for this, but I will say that, like, I put a lot of thought into this, right, over the years. The way that I've always thought of it when we're giving deliverables to a partner or to the edge, like the field teams, is like this 80-20, right? Like, you're providing 80 % of the story, the inputs, the most important things, but you leave flex for that 20 % where they're going to need to personalize. Now, what does that mean in practice?

That means messaging that is modular by nature, that leaves some space for people to add their own stories or layer them on top. Because listen, like product marketing can't create every single use case that a partner team is gonna need or that the field team is gonna need. But we can make sure that like the core building blocks are consistent. So the way we would deliver that and that I was really stoked about as I was ending my time at Intel and that I'll continue here.

is modular content, like modular building blocks for messaging, for sales enablement, for content itself, where it literally is like a library of modular copy headlines, claims, but it's in a customer first format that can just be copy pasted. So the way we started that was a PowerPoint deck of like, here's by each pillar and each like layer of of depth, of technical depth or buyer's journey stage. Here is,

grab and go stuff so you can just copy paste it, plop it into something, make a PDF, done. And the partner teams and our ABM and our field teams loved it because it's really hard when you're handing over something that's fully baked and done, right? And that happens with co-marketing assets too where it's like, here's an ebook that we made that tells the story of you and me together partner, but it's an ebook and it's a PDF and it's done, you know, it's static.

Rick Currier (17:15.299)

Hmm.

Rachel Roundy (17:29.935)

So how can you do that in a flexible living document, right? Where they can pick and choose because things also move so fast, especially with AI elements now. And so then the next step that I still haven't found my like unicorn tool for, but there's one that I'm eyeballing that I think could be really cool. It's called Vidoso, not a plug for them, but I think it's pretty cool. But I is taking those modular copy blocks.

and using AI to on the fly make a new asset. in the tricky thing, like I was trying to do that with Ryder, with Jasper, with ChatGPT, and you always end up losing some kind of integrity of the message. So like the control of your brand voice, the partner's brand voice, the branding, all of that, making sure that you're not losing trademarks or it's not hallucinating new brands that you didn't even give it.

Rick Currier (18:00.616)

Mm.

Rachel Roundy (18:24.883)

that part I think is still tricky. the reason I mentioned Vidoso is I think they have like multiple models and they use the models to do evals on each other. So when you're like building something, it will like gut check, you can use like open AI to check on Claude. And so that's helpful, but I haven't played around with it too much yet. But yeah, I think there's a future state, whether you're using AI or not, where you can just build those modular assets that are like, choose your own adventure almost, you know?

Rick Currier (18:53.022)

Yeah, that's awesome. I want to ask you a little bit about, okay, so you're developing content, the 80-20 rule, right? I think that's actually a pretty cool way to think about it. What advice do have for teams that need to work with teams like yours? So let's say I'm a partner marketer and I have to work with you, right? What advice do you have for them to make sure that they get the value that they need? They're being serviced in such a way. I'm sure you've seen the good, bad, and the ugly. How do I come to a Rachel and get what I need as a partner marketer or a field marketer?

Rachel Roundy (19:09.742)

Yeah.

Rachel Roundy (19:22.327)

Yeah, I think, man, I've, so there's two ways of thinking about it. Like, I think there's like the infrastructural, like process stuff that you can put in place to enable this, but also like the personal side of things. And this goes both ways. Like I think product marketing sometimes gets really stuck in this head space of like, my job is deck, right? Like I just, make a deck, I check it off, I like hand it over and I'm done, you know, like.

Yes, that was a Barbie movie reference, but that's it. And I'm not saying all product marketers, but it's an easy tendency. You get it done, you're like, OK, my part is done. But it needs to be, I would challenge product marketers or anyone in an HQ marketing role, outside of product marketing, whether you're integrated or other, to not think so binary about what your deliverables are and realize the value of those feedback loops. So starting from my perspective,

It is extremely valuable when I get feedback from partner teams or the field about what's not working. I'm not going to find that out on my own. And I don't want to find that out six months from now when the messaging isn't landing. I want that real time feedback. And so from my perspective, I've always approached it as saying, hey, open feedback loop. Please ping me. Please send me an email. And that's one thing, right? But not everyone has the time.

Rick Currier (20:42.366)

Do you actually get the feedback? Because I know so many times, okay good, because I know so many times I ask for feedback and it's like crickets, even if people are unhappy.

Rachel Roundy (20:45.305)

Yes. I do.

Man, I do, but like Rick, I also, feel like I have an probably like abnormal level of comfort with just being like, tell me. you know, none of her videos that like, I don't know, like not in a like annoying way, but just like I like, will charm people into telling me. But like, I, but not everyone's, that's not everyone's comfort zone, you know, to like, that it's a longer term play of building the relationship and the trust. And that is important regardless of your personality, right?

Rick Currier (20:58.942)

Hahaha

Rick Currier (21:07.75)

Okay.

Rachel Roundy (21:19.001)

for work and life all up. That's something you nail. We've talked about this before. But like, lean into the relationship. 1000%, it can't be transactional, but you also need to build the infrastructure for people to feel like they can provide that feedback. So for us, what that looked like was, know, standing calls where the intention of the call was to get that feedback, right? It doesn't have to be weekly. doesn't have to be, you know, it's at the cadence that makes sense for your organization.

Rick Currier (21:21.79)

Yeah. So you really got to lean in that relationship and get the feedback. Okay.

Rick Currier (21:48.401)

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Roundy (21:48.835)

We need to build a space for people to give that feedback. And I will add to that, you have to be mindful of which cultures or teams you're working with and how they prefer to give feedback. We noticed, I watched a team at Intel that had all of the APAC folks on one call and they would never say anything. Right? Because culturally, it's more respectful to listen and to wait. And then there was some, well, we don't want to give feedback about

our country marketing team that's going to make us look less impressive than the other country marketing team. Whereas other markets, EMEA, they're like, let's throw it all out there. It's a cultural sensitivity. When we figured that out pretty quickly, how can you meet with those teams in a way that you're meeting them where they're at? You just have to feel that out culturally and by the individual.

but building something that is a recurring thing. So you could have a Slack channel that is feedback and just make that normal to get that feedback. Choose a couple of people who are more outgoing and not worried about you taking it poorly to just pepper a lot of stuff in there, watch them, watch you reply with like, that's so cool. And then people will feel more comfortable with it. So it's a muscle like anything that is like process and trust. It has to be like.

the infrastructure and the trust.

Rick Currier (23:11.752)

Yeah. It's funny how much of success comes down to those two things working in parallel, right? You it's not one or the other. I want to ask you about something you and I were talking about this right before I hit record and I was like, save it, save it, save it. It's a big challenge. I come across a lot with partner marketers that are sitting in lot of data, intelligence, you name it, their partners got their own data and there's a lot of things that just make it hard to share, whether it's laws, it's privacy, it's tech.

you know, system integrations or limitations, I should say. And you were talking about something you're doing at Snowflake that can kind of help partners sharing the data. So I want to hear a little bit more about that.

Rachel Roundy (23:50.607)

Yes, and honestly, one of my colleagues is an expert at this, but it's so exciting for me. Yeah, so the current state in this, I'm a martech nerd in general, but the current state is like, and you know this, because you created something to solve for this, but we've got all of these initiatives and all this technology to get something cool going, and then it dies in the handoff because it's like an Excel sheet that's being shared.

or like you don't have the password for it or you've built an integration maybe with like cross beam or something, there's still lot of reluctance on either side of like what people will accept in the data sharing. And it also is like a point in time insight. It's not ongoing updated all the time in real time. So one thing that I think is super exciting about Snowflake,

is the concept of data clean rooms where you can have the CRM, like let's say both partners are using Snowflake, you can have a data clean room that is sharing whatever level of information you want to share between your CRM and the partner's CRM in a clean room that's already governed. It's de-anonymized or it's anonymized. it's, it is secure governed. You're not going to have access to things you're not supposed to see, but it's real time. And it's constantly updating as you update your CRM, they update their CRM.

If you imagine that real-time data that's like living together is like a living, breathing thing, and then you add AI on top of that, that is magical, right? Because you've got solutions like Snowflake Intelligence where you can ask questions of the data and get to different insights. But then you can also build agentic systems on top of that that are going to identify trends and help you stay on top of things and uncover new segments or new things that you might not even notice because it moves so fast, right? So if you have something kind of monitoring,

that shared data, hey, we've unlocked something really interesting that's happening on this type of account that we approach together. Let's poke on that. So I think it's really exciting.

Rick Currier (25:46.15)

Yeah, I think that's the kind of next level of partner marketing is just how do you how do you identify those opportunities and then where we want to come in at partner visas? Like how do we how do we execute on that? Right. Whether it's OK, we got to go out and build content aimed at these 50 accounts that are showing these behaviors based on the shared data, you know, and then all of a sudden generate leads and nurture and qualify. But I think it starts with we got to share the data and how do we do that? And sounds like Snowflake can help. And by the way, Snowflake didn't pay. They're not as sponsors, no paid advertisement. You were just telling me about that. And I was like,

Rachel Roundy (26:12.823)

No, no, I'm just kidding Rachel.

Rick Currier (26:16.038)

I know a lot of people that struggle with this. That would be super cool to share.

Rachel Roundy (26:19.801)

Honestly, that's one of the coolest things. That's why I was so stoked about Snowflake. I know you honestly, just personally outside of podcast land, amazing support when I was looking for jobs. Thank you as a human, as person in my network. I had some cool things out there. I was really stoked, but Snowflake is amazing. Just the idea, as somebody who gets nerdy about AI, the idea of having all of the data locked, because the data is where it falls apart.

always, right? With any AI system, like it's the garbage in garbage out trope, but it's true. And especially when you're thinking about agentic systems where you're going to need agents to go off and do tasks that you're not necessarily supervising and you need to know that they're getting correct inputs for that. That's why I'm so stoked about Snowflake because it's like all of the data and one beautiful place that's like governed, secure, and then you add AI on top of that. So yeah, there's like so many cool use cases, but like as it relates to partner stuff, I think that's going to be a growing space.

Rick Currier (26:48.68)

Yeah.

Rachel Roundy (27:17.485)

Because like, yeah, it's real time. Everyone wants that real time data. Like we're also at a point in time where the technology allows us to have that insight. And you don't need to wait for a quarter later to know what happened, right? So yeah, anyway, it's exciting.

Rick Currier (27:33.482)

If I can ask you on a personal level, your journey leaving Intel to landing at Snowflake. So look, I was talking to someone last night and I asked, how's it going? Because they're looking for a job. It was a one word response, brutal. And I've been hearing that from a lot of people. So if you don't mind, Sharon, I'd love to hear about your journey from leaving Intel to landing at Snowflake. What was it like for you? And maybe if you have any advice of what worked for you.

Rachel Roundy (27:45.091)

Mm-hmm.

Rachel Roundy (27:59.499)

Yeah, for sure. So first of all, like, I just need to say that anyone who's having a brutal time, that is not normal. And like, it is not a reflection of your value at all. Like this market is absolutely insane. Right. And there are so many incredibly smart people that are having a really rough time. So I just want to say like anyone who's having a hard time, even if you're doing all the right things, like that is totally normal and like doesn't mean anything about your value. Just need to say that. Right. Because I think there's a lot of like

clickbait content of like, this magical thing helped me solve my jaw punt. And that's just so tone deaf. Anyway, but the things that worked for me, I will say the most important thing, well, yeah, no, the most important thing was leaning into my network. And I did that in two different ways. So like,

One was grabbing coffee chats with super cool people like Rick or like other humans, you know, and not in a way that's like, hey, I need a job, but like in a curiosity space, because for me, it was a really good opportunity to really evaluate what do I want to do? What is important to me? What gets me excited? I had been spending so much time just heads down getting stuff done that I hadn't really evaluated that in a while of like, what gets me excited about marketing? What do I want to pursue? And having coffee chats with people,

was honestly so incredibly helpful. What do you like about what you do? You gave me the great story about how you knew it was time to go out on your own, right? And honestly, you helped me decide that, no, I still want to work for a company. Like, I love that path for you. For me, like, I still want to do this other thing. But it was really helpful. And approaching those coffee chats with like curiosity mindset to just really understand what people love about their roles or their companies. And then also, like, make sure you're leaving with a couple of bullet points of like, this is what I bring to the table.

Because you never know when that person is going to think of you in another conversation. They're talking to someone else, I need somebody to lead this ABM program. Well, you know, I just talked to this person and they're awesome. You should connect, right? And that stuff is happening all the time and you just don't know about it. So lean into your network. And then the other piece of that was like becoming more active on LinkedIn, which I know feels really cringe for a lot of us. And you don't have to do it in a way that's like posting every single day, but just

Rachel Roundy (30:09.007)

comment on things, get your voice out there, like just experiment, go follow voices that you care about. I've had some incredible conversations with people that I've never met in real life. Two of the job opportunities that I actually declined came to me through my DMs because I was like, you know, commenting. They were through comments, not through my own posts. So I would do that. And then the other thing, so like do that instead, put more effort into the talking to people than into the actually just wrote.

applying to a million things because that's not going to go as far. And it's often the people you know who know the hiring manager that are going to say, yeah, you should talk to this person. And then the other thing too is I will say it is a really rocky ride. And remember that it isn't going to happen immediately. Everything that you're doing, whether it's the coffee chats, whether it's optimizing your resume for each job, whether it's actually applying to things, is planting seeds.

Sometimes like if anyone gardens and I made a very cheesy post about this, like if anyone gardens, like you know when you plant seeds, there's this awkward amount of time when it feels like nothing is happening and that's like so uncomfortable. You put the seeds in, you can only control the environments you can control, right? Like the soil, make sure you water them. You don't know what's gonna happen.

And it takes like a very uncomfortable amount of time before they start to break through, right? And there's magic happening under the soil. And those are the things where like, if you're having a coffee chat and someone's talking about you, you don't even know about it. You're posting on LinkedIn, someone saw your comment and thought it was really smart. You don't realize that. Those are happening. That's germination that's happening, right? And at some point, things are going to sprout and you're going to start seeing things come up. And maybe the first thing is a weed and maybe you have to mitigate because there's like other issues, but.

It is happening and like, just give yourself grace and know that if you're planting your seeds, you're watering them, it's going to happen. Yeah.

Rick Currier (31:59.492)

I love it. love it. It's kind of similar to our approach as a startup. Like we're trying all these different things, not knowing which one's going to work. And when I say try different things, I mean from like a sales and marketing perspective, right? And so we're just putting ourselves out there doing a lot of different things. I think from your perspective, it sounds very similar. Like there's no single magic bullet to getting that next job. You just need to do a lot of different things, do them consistently, because you don't know which one's going to all of a sudden put you in front of that opportunity to move forward. And I love the analogy of gardening. Someone else, I interviewed a

the corporate guy on my last podcast and he had a similar analogy. He said it's like an inchworm. know, sometimes all that's happening is your butt is going higher and higher up in the air and you feel like you're going nowhere and all of a sudden you shoot forward. And then a lot of his progress in life was like that. And then all of a sudden he'd stall and his butt would go higher and higher and then all of a sudden he would shoot forward, right? Yeah.

Rachel Roundy (32:40.045)

Yeah.

Rachel Roundy (32:46.509)

That's funny. Yeah, I mean, for sure. And the other thing I would say just as a long-term piece of advice is always prioritize the relationships that you have in your network because you never know when that's going to really matter to you. I've worked with colleagues that treat agencies or other partner teams transactional and they didn't really curate a relationship or a sense of trust and they have had a much harder time.

I think it's my nature, but also if you put effort into just understanding the human behind it, that's going to make your work better, right? Because you have that shared sense of trust. So it's valuable in the short term. But then long term, I was blown away when I announced, hey, there are these layoffs and this happened to me. How many people came out of the woodworks because I had put effort into that relationship, right? And so it's like the lowest lift thing, just actually care about people.

Rick Currier (33:38.044)

Yeah.

Rick Currier (33:42.471)

No, think that, no, but that's good advice for people out there that aren't looking for a job, right? They're comfortable right now and things are going well, but like you can't stop nurturing that network. You don't want to get value back from that network and you hadn't nurtured it to that point, right? You got to always be giving value, helping people in their training, because at some point in your life, you might reach out to the network and say, need help. And they're like, well, where were you the last 10 years?

Rachel Roundy (34:07.107)

Yes, exactly. It's not transactional and it shouldn't be, right? And honestly, this ties back into like partner marketing, to be honest, like companies that don't nurture those relationships with their ecosystem that don't keep that relationship alive. Like you feel the pain of that without giving anything away from Intel. Like I witnessed that in real time, like in certain motions where like partners felt neglected and we felt that in our bottom line, right? So.

Rick Currier (34:11.208)

Yeah.

Rachel Roundy (34:35.469)

Yeah, just general life advice.

Rick Currier (34:36.862)

Yeah, it's interesting. I'm actually seeing that play out in real time with some companies that are leaning really hard in AI and they're letting a lot of partner marketers leave. I've heard from these people like, the partners are not going to be happy. You know, there's only so much you can do with automation where you need that human touch with that partnership. you know, I'm sure the pendulum will swing and I'm sure these companies will realize they went too far one way and they need that human connection back. But it's interesting to see this play out in real time.

Rachel Roundy (35:03.513)

You know, it's funny, I was talking about this with some other folks the other day, but I think that's like the biggest irony of this AI era is what's actually gonna make companies successful is the humanity, right? Because anyone with AI, it's democratized a lot of motions, right? Like anyone can spin up an SDR, my gosh, Anyone can, can you edit that out? That was gross. It's okay, I'm a human.

Rick Currier (35:26.475)

Maybe we'll see.

Rachel Roundy (35:30.957)

Anyone can set up an SDR outreach sequence. Anyone can like crank out content like you. You can do that so much more easily and a lot of the spend from like paid stuff is actually like getting hit right because it's no longer about who has the biggest ad by who has the biggest ability to buy billboards or light up the sphere. It's actually like what real value are you delivering to the market? There is so much noise because AI allows you to create all that noise that the companies that are breaking through are the ones that are leaning into.

community, like real storytelling, the human to human connection. You see that a lot through like more events and like dinners and things like that. And that's the biggest irony. And so when you talk about like AI cutting partner marketing, that human glue is essential. Like the AI is never going to replace that, right? Like AI is great. I love it. I'm a huge fan. I use it every single day, but it is a value add to like what the humans bring to the table. It can accelerate what you do. It's not ever going to replace the human piece.

And the companies that are going to be the most successful realize that, right? They're leaning into that human element, even if their product is all AI forward, right? It doesn't matter. Like at the end of the day, people want to buy things from other people. They want to believe in a brand. They want to have that level of trust. And honestly with AI, like I think we're at this interesting space too, where the trust is being tested, right? Like that's where the topic of observability and evals for agents right now.

Is it actually hallucinating or is it giving me stuff I can trust? Anyway, I think that's the greatest irony of this AI era. The human brands are actually gonna nail it.

Rick Currier (37:09.246)

I hope so. That's what we're trying to build here at Partner Vista. So this has been awesome. We covered a lot. Anything else you want to talk about or things we missed?

Rachel Roundy (37:16.813)

Much right. I want to like I just have to say what you all are building is amazing. I'm such a huge fan. You know that I'm a super fan, but like I just think it's so exciting. Any partner teams out there would be lucky to have like just the breadth of experience and knowledge that you and Hondo are bringing to the table of like how partner marketing works and just like serving it up on this beautiful platter, right? Like it just removes so much pain for partner marketing teams. So huge fan, excited for you. Like hope you continue to be super successful with it.

Rick Currier (37:45.884)

No, I appreciate that. think a lot of it goes back to what you said earlier in terms of, you know, to be successful, you need a systematic approach and then you need that trust. Right. And so we've been working really hard to build the two, you know, we have, we have the community side of what we're doing and we're not in that community selling, you know, but we are forming relationships. We're getting intelligence. Like we're hearing firsthand, like, what are these real challenges people are facing? What, you know, the nuance of partner marketing and then on the partner Vista side, you know, how are we building a systematic approach?

within the nuance of partnerships to execute alliance, channel, hyperscaler programs, you name it. So, I agree, you need both. You gotta have the relationships and trust and then you gotta have the systems to scale. And so that's what we're trying to do. And we've been doing it with people like you, building from the ground up. You guys are the experts, you helped shape this for us and hopefully it benefits the community is the hope.

Rachel Roundy (38:18.916)

Yeah.

Rachel Roundy (38:34.947)

I think it's awesome. Yeah, it's a great crew of people and great offering. But yeah, this is so fun, Rick.

Rick Currier (38:39.826)

Yeah, well now it's my turn to say you weren't paid to say that so there was no no paid sponsorship on the flip side No, I love it. Thanks for coming on. This was a lot of fun I want to link to that you mentioned a tool earlier for that using for writing. What was the tool again?

Rachel Roundy (38:42.767)

I wasn't, I promise.

Rachel Roundy (38:54.027)

yeah, it's called Vidoso and I'm just starting to play around with it. They started as like a platform to like atomize long form video, but they've got this new like campaign platform functionality. Basically that's got all these different models in it. You can load up all of your like guidelines and stuff and it's got a really strong observability and eval function. So you can create assets and all the stuff, but with the trust that it's not hallucinating. Anyway, it's cool. I'm going to play around with it for those like, yeah, modular components.

Rick Currier (38:56.328)

for do so. Okay.

Rick Currier (39:13.757)

Cool.

Rick Currier (39:23.794)

We'll link to that. We'll link to Snowflake. We'll link to your LinkedIn. You're always putting a lot of great content out there. If you're not following Rachel, please do so. And happy Thanksgiving.

Rachel Roundy (39:32.569)

Thank you, Rick. Happy Thanksgiving. Hope you have the best time with your family. Bye.

Rick Currier (39:36.05)

Thanks, cheers.