Solution Engineering; "I get bored very fast": Work in Progress - with Annie Wachsmuth (Taktile)

[MUSIC] Welcome back to Work in Progress. This week we're going to be diving into the job of solution engineering in B2B's SAS with any Vax mood. We're going to introduce her now before we bring her on the stage. Holly and Annie actually roommates in New York because they all live there with tactile to really bring the business to America as well. So you know her very well. So I'm especially excited to meet her because we haven't met yet. She is our first interview on the more technical side. Annie studied maths in both her undergrad and master's in Munich at Ellen Wohentum. And during university she entered as a data scientist as N26 and VCG Gamma. She was a teaching assistant at the TUM in statistics and worked part-time as a software engineer at Navis. So she really had a full play during her studies. After graduation she joined McKinsey as a data scientist and worked her way to lead data scientists at McKinsey's tech unit, Quantum Black. She was then coached away from McKinsey by none other than parlors husband Mike, Shara to Marisa for making this happen. And she joined Techta where she is now head of solution engineering and customer success. She runs the whole team and yeah also Techta just raised their 54. I saw the number and I knew I'm going to stop a lot of it. They're 54 million dollar series B and has moved a large part of the team to New York among some Annie. Maybe Polly before we dive into the interview can you give a bit of context to what does Techta actually do and then we start interview. Yes. This is an AI driven decisioning platform for financial services. In financial services every decision matters. You can think of some examples of decisions and financial services like credit decisions who actually gets a line of credit fraud. So who is actually flagged as a fraudulent transaction compliance risk etc. Each of these are decisions in financial services and a lot of different data pieces go into those decisions. Techta is a platform to enable all of it. That sounds like a very sensible idea. So Kudos to Mike and thank you for explaining Polly. Mike and Max. Mike and Max of course M&M. And then we will now introduce Annie and she is basically this B2B sales piece that gets quite complex if you do need to do technical implementations with the clients and we will hear all about it now. And yeah, see you on the other side. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Another short hint in its own thing. We make this podcast for you and hope that you like it and support you on your under-example journey. That's why we are very excited about your feedback. There are topics you missed, guests we should invite or things we can improve. Then just write us under www.startup.instrichinseider.com/feedback. The link is always in the show notes. We are excited about your message. Work in progress. So hello, hello and welcome Annie. We're especially honored that you are joining us here today from your vacation. Tell us where you are and maybe also how you unplug. Hello. Thank you for having me. Yes, I'm on vacation right now. I'm on the US West Coast currently in SF and my Airbnb which is why I have a beautiful background. I'm going to be here for the weekend as well. What are you guys doing? What's the itinerary? We started an LA and then made our way up along the coast to SF and then next stop is going to be your 70. I'm very excited for that. I love that. I did the exact same road trip 20 years ago with my family where eight people was chaotic but I do remember that I'm pretty well. I'm quite jealous of you. Yeah, it's really nice. I also want to know because we read your CV and you studied maths which I have high respect for. Can I just say actually I did maths in A levels. I think you did maths to Paula, no? Yeah, we're not just pretty faces. We're not how to calculate. I feel like it's really, it's like very low-balling towards Annie to talk about our A level maths. I know. Especially A levels. I get so much shit for that all the time. Annie, why did you study maths? What was the plan here? Yeah, great question. The funny thing is my reasoning was also I was good in high school in math. The second reason was I wanted to leave myself every option open. I didn't know what I wanted to do. Going into the decision, I actually wanted to do something more creative. I had tried that in a gap here. I worked as a UX UI designer in London because my dad said if you want to do that you need to try it out first. After that, I came to the conclusion I wanted to study something non-creative and then I chose math. You went straight for math. Yeah, from design. Okay, bye. Could have been a total failure. But lucky it worked out. What was the male-female ratio in that class? It was actually fine. It was close to 50/50. Especially because I was at LMU. Afterwards, in my master's, I was at TU and the ratio was shit. But yeah, it was fine. But then at graduation, I think it was more like 30% women, 70%. That's pretty solid. I studied at V.I.U. I think we were one of the, I felt like, 30 women in that whole group of students. Yeah, I think it was much less than 30%. Yeah, but you do get some attention. But it's business. I still don't understand that as well. It's not like super male-coded topic. I think the ratio's gotten much better. So kudos to all the ratios out there. And all right. Kudos to the ratio. Sometimes when I panic, I get nervous. I just laugh at weird things. You should get really used to that. I love it. Awesome. Here's a little fun fact. So Annie, we were just talking about how, you know, how as students, you often live in shared housing and you live with roommates. And then when you're in your 30s, the roommate phase of life kind of goes away. But Annie and I actually are roommate at this very moment in New York. So Annie and I and Diana live together and have sort of a, it's, yeah, like an adult. It's like a tactile. A clubhouse or the adult frat house. I don't know what it is. But so we came together like that in New York. And so one of the things we love to talk about is the differences between being in the US and being in Europe. What would you say is the biggest kind of different or what's the biggest shift you've seen in the business world, in the tech world, coming from Europe to now being in the US? And great question. So I think generally it's bad, like that's especially true for B2B SaaS. There is a lot more like sophisticated or experienced SaaS buyers in the US, which is like it just makes making business and growing fast in the US a little bit easier as a SaaS business in B2B. I think that's like why we're also shifting a lot of focus in terms of go to market there. But I honestly, I mean, I also like Europe and so the thing that I really like there is the talent. It might also be biased because of network or because of ways of working. There's definitely a difference between US and Europe there. But I still think we have really, really awesome talent in Europe, especially also in the tech and the tech scene. Maybe because you already said like your structured worker, we know you studied maths. Charlotte, to all the math students right now because this might be interesting for you to be wondering what to do next. Tell us a bit how you ended up a tech town, especially in the role you are now in. Yeah. Great question. So when I was, so I wasn't really like looking for a job at the time. I was working at McKinsey McKinsey Quantum Black specifically. So that's kind of like the part where you're like working on more data driven work streams. We may be transforming data driven decision making, something like that. And I got connected to Mike via I think one of your friends, Paula. Mike also better paid a good referral fever. That one a nice little dinner or something. Otherwise, Marie's I think she got like a, she got like a gift basket. But Marie's I you should maybe give in how long Annie has been there and how much Mike loves having Annie on the team. You should maybe follow up and get like an additional bonus. Yeah. Now, we got connected and yeah, then after a bit of an interviewing process, I joined tactile. And initially I also joined tactile as something which was called a forward deployed engineer. So at the time, we didn't have like, we're tech, I didn't have that many customers yet. And we were kind of like still building out the product. And so it was like very, very focused on the actual implementation of the product, which was still very technical at the time. So the title is also related to a role title you might know from Palantir. And where also like the technical resources for like both the pre sales as well as post sales. and like the implementation side are also called forward deployed engineers. So yeah, that's what I joined us. - And then you kind of morphed into your new role, which is a NaviList room. I'm very, because I generally actually don't really know that much about it. So talk to me if I'm a 20 year old, which I wish I would be, sadly not. And explain to me your current role, and what it means and maybe a bit of a bigger picture around it. - Yes, okay, no, super happy too. So it was definitely a bit of an organic evolution during the last three years. And so what I'm now leading is called customer solutions and customer success. And maybe we can just walk through a customer journey with TechTile from them maybe seeing a first marketing at somewhere, which is like called an awareness stage. So they kind of know about TechTile. That's like what our marketing team is working on a lot. And then also our business development team is working on that because they're like writing emails, like calling people, going to conferences, also together with our sales team like our AES. And then they might get into the sales funnel because they're saying like, yes, I'm interested. I maybe want to buy the TechTile platform. And that's when like A, D, A, E, so like sales comes in. But also solution engineers are part of that sales process, which is basically then the technical part of the sales process. And it's not always like a super big part for all companies. But if you have a very like complex and a bit more technical product, then it is super important. You kind of like need this additional like technical expert, but also general like maybe the main expert in the sales process. And yeah, then the next stage is ideal, of course, like have you end signature. But like there is of course a lot of work to be done after the signature. It's not just ending like as in the pre-subscription days. But you also like really need to make sure that the customer is getting the value. They like purchase the TechTile from the platform. This is kind of the part that is, I would say, like more generally referred to as customer success. It also has a few different teams and roles underneath it. And like one thing is you have, like the first thing you need to do is actually implementing the platform, like helping the customer configure the platform and also enable them on the platform because TechTile is a platform that's supposed to be used by like actual users on a daily basis. And those people are non-technical. So we actually need to like really train them on the platform as it's a lot of new concepts for them. And this is also a role that we refer to as like post-sales solutions engineering. And so very similar profile to like the pre-sales solutions engineer and maybe a bit more technical sometimes and a bit more focus on like project management, structuring and also enabling the customer. And then there's a role that's like generally referred to as customer success managers. And we call them like little side mode, customer value engineers to add to the confusion of roles. - Very good title. (laughs) - It's also something you might have heard from Salonas. So we did a bit of a copycat there. - You guys are just copying titles. (laughs) - You're just like picking and choosing the most sexy sounding roles. - Yes, but those people are really focused on like ensuring that like the customer gets value and business value continuously even after the initial implementation. So they kind of like have a really great relationship with like what we call our champions at the customer. So like people who really like advocate for TechTile as well, like they are responsible for also really making sure that they are happy with the platform, working with the product team to ensure that like any kind of blockers and feedback is taken into account into prioritization and so on. And then the last role that's like part of this post sales makes like part of this initial post signature lifecycle stage is support. So we also of course have like technical support. And that's ongoing and ensuring that they're like, yeah, any kind of like technical questions get answered in time. - That's great. It's crazy to see how long this value chain is and how many different roles and people are involved. So I can tell they're being very well taken care of TechTile. So we basically just to sum it up, I hope I can get this right. You have sales and business development at the very front of the funnel. I think especially B2B because that's the TechTile market. Then when there's interest that pass it over, you have more sales calls and then solution engineer gets involved if it's a more complex technical setup. And after that, you have the customer success team that is for example training the platform, keeping the customers happy and at the end you have support that are there all the time to make sure the product is being used well. Did I get that right? - Yes. I think that sums up. - Thank God. (laughing) - Sweating there for a second. Okay perfect, that's really cool. And you're basically in the solution engineering part where you kind of go into the technical sales. My question, when you do your job really well, what does that look like from the outside? Like who's happy, who notices? - Mm-hmm. Okay, yeah, great question. So I think there's like a, an internal view of people noticing and then there is probably more like a customer view of course. And so internally people who would notice is for sure like the chief revenue officer VPCs because like one part of making sure that customers are successful with the platform getting the business value is that like a, they typically then also expand and find new ways of using the platform and that gives them value so that like leads to more revenue and they of course ideally also don't turn as much which again is like very good for revenue. And what's also great for the zero on VPC sales is if our customers are advocates. So like if we have a great relationship with them and continuously they also like go to conferences with us, like they host the nurse with us, they yeah, just like do all kinds of like what you would call acts of advocacy. So yeah, that's who's noticing. And then on the customer point of view, I'd say of course like customer teams are enabled on the platform like their time to launch on the platform is ideally quite short and we're kind of like targeting three months on average. And we also have like great relationship on all levels of them like with the customer. And so that's like on the working level so the people are actually using the platform but then also for instance executive sponsors of that like these kind of projects, these implementations. And ideally they also all agree that they get the business value and they want it from the tactile platform and that's like a positive ROI case so to say. - Perfect. So maybe because you already said ROI, if you want to kind of nail it down for us, what did it do to a free KPI's that you really measure your success on? - Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's like very different of course. - Just like sum it up in a very crisp affordable view of it. - Yeah, so what we are tracking, I mean of course we're looking at our error. And I guess that's like what every B2B company is looking at religiously. Then what we are also tracking just because it is like a huge unlock moment for our customers in terms of value is we call it implemented error. So basically customer going live with that first use case and because that's like a huge success moment for them and that's also for us and then net dollar retention. And it's probably like maybe a term I need to explain a bit more and for people who are not in there. - I'm giving you a hard guess. (laughing) B2B SaaS game. So okay, so imagine you sign one, it's kind of like interest rate. You sign one million in ARR right now. So it's like recurring revenue. And most of these contracts run for a year. And so you might like look after a year, you ideally want this to be at say, let's say 1.2 million from this cohort. And so that is net of turn and that is including any kind of expansion of course. And that would then like be 20% net dollar, 120% net dollar retention. And like best in class would probably be something like 1.35 like depending on the segment you're selling to. In SME it's lower, if you go mid market, it should probably be 120% to 130% and then enterprise can actually be much, much higher. - And it mixes together right? The fact that you avoid as much as possible any turn but you make sure you upsell as much as possible and sort of exact numbers are in net dollar retention. And both of those things have a lot to do with how well you do your job because customers are getting the value they want to buy more of the product and they don't leave. - Yes, exactly. Great summary. - Super cool. - Thanks guys for the TBI excursion. - And one more quick question because obviously there were so many steps in this process that you any manage all of them, which is actually insane. Well how big is the team working on all of that process on the technical side under you? - I mean obviously I'm not doing it on my own and we've now have like many different, many different sub teams that we have a couple of sub teams. So like first we have one team in your one team in the US like managing the pre-sales solutions engineering part so they're like working super closely with sales and then we have one really small team unlike the customer success management side. So like these customer value engineers and because we literally just started out splitting this rule out end of last year. year. And then we have one team really focusing on the implementation part. So like a little bit more technical solutions engineers. And then one really small support team as well. Yeah managing support globally. What's the total the total number across those teams? Roughly 30 now. Wow. Yeah. It's a big team. Wow. Maybe because I just want to we have kind of understood the value now and where you come in. And I would pretty like to double click on your specific part. So me 10 more in. I have a deal with TechTur. I found it interesting. Let's say we're pretty complex which is not. And can't just tell me exactly what would happen now when I'm in the state where you get involved. Like what would you discuss in the meeting? Yeah. So I tell you like what is what is happening there? So so the first step where we probably get involved is a demo. So like a demonstration of the product. The initial one is maybe still done by the AE but then if you need it for instance like you really want it very customized to your data to your logic that you already thought about. Then there is like a solution engineer coming in who's working together with the AE to create this demonstration and also of course like make it very focused on like the value you want to get out of the platform. So maybe Helena you're saying I really want to be able to change the logic of my B2B. And I'm not a pilot. I'm not writing. And all the time and I don't want to involve an engineer then they would pick this up and then also like really make this part of the demo story and also show you maybe how you could make a change on the platform yourself. Oh wow. So that's like one thing. It's like really framing everything around the value you're getting but also doing like all the customizations in the product which is a bit more technical. And then maybe you can like really not imagine how it would look like like also in your back-end system then maybe you do also a little bit of a solution architecture session which is also something that the solution engineer would be doing. And then lastly maybe you're saying I still don't trust all I've seen. I really want to get my hands on the platform and test it out myself. Then we start an evaluation like even before initial signature you kind of get a trial period on the platform and you get again like with this solution engineer you maybe do something like a little training on the platform to get you familiar with it and you do some hands-on code development kind of like just working through the evaluation criteria you might have of the platform. So that's like also done by this solution engineer together with the AE. So together with the sales. But yeah those are the steps then it's like off to sales like negotiate the contract because you said yes I'm good I want to launch my binoculator product on on TechTap. Then you sign and everything is great. And then you kind of like get introduced to the people who will be helping you actually implement your your policy on on the platform. Ideally you've already done some of that during evaluation but it's probably like not yet and they're in full detail. So you get a new solutions engineer like who's really focusing on the implementation part and again they like do a full training program with you to like really get you enabled on the platform and they like really make you also develop the things you want to have on the platform and with them. And then at some point maybe maybe there's like more people from the team joining because there's like the two people who will be actually using it in that one. They know join. They get trained. And what is this guy liking it? Yeah that is like I need to buy this just so that someone takes care of me like this. Please, smother me. Solution engineer is okay. I'm sorry. Continue. And yeah then ideally like you go go live on the platform. So basically like the first binoculator decisions run through the platform and after that like any kind of question so you also to make you have like a joint Slack channel with us and any kind of questions that you might have then get entered by our really great support team. And additionally you probably also have something like a monthly check-in or like a quarterly check-in with your customer success manager, your customer value engineer who's taking care of you and ensures that I don't know maybe you have like product feedback something is not working for you. It's really bothering you. And then they work together with our product team to to ensure you're getting that like maybe you also want to launch a B2C binoculator product next and then they help you also get that setup on the platform. Yeah. So that's kind of like yeah and maybe and and what happens what happens? Let's say the engineering team like creates this amazing new feature. So maybe they enable B2C binoculator because that's new on the tactile platform that you could do it. Would it then also be part of your job to make sure like Helen is aware of that and can like buy that feature. Of course. The net dollar retention. Yeah. That is also part of the job. So any kind of like features we're shipping that might be relevant for you. So maybe I don't know. Maybe you're also need to check the documents of the business and now we have this amazing like capability to parse all that information from documents automatically. So no one needs to do the work manually anymore. Then we would like come to you and be like wouldn't that be great. And if you think that's like actually great and and giving you the value you want then maybe you buy it and yeah. And we of course also have product features you get where you don't need to pay it for them extra. You're bleeding me dry people with all these features bleeding me dry. I'm already but and I just think it's the magnitude of it all right then the complexity and the level of service is really crazy in this B2B sales world and but maybe just because he said the solution engineers to this. What do the customer success people then do like where does it hand over a different shape. So the customer success and that I would really think of as your key contact person especially online let's say you are a champion on the Slack channel. The key garlic person on the Slack channel is probably going to be support because it's probably going to be used by the people on your end who are using the platform data. But then let's say like this kind of like I was referring to this monthly or quarterly check ins like that's done by the customer value engineer your your customer success manager. And so it's like your key contact person actually post signature and maybe more in the buyer side. So the value engineer would be more the like the key account manager where it's actually more on the senior level okay what's happening with this contract or like that that would be someone who talks to you Helen and tries to figure out if you're happy overall and if you're going to upsell and not churn and so on and then support would be more sort of on the frontline day-to-day level. Working level. Yeah. So your team Helen would talk to them about why is this feature this button not working. Yeah but for sure it is like always going to be an overlap right. So yeah you really need to have great communication between all the teams and also great visibility on what's going on and for each of the teams to ensure that the other team can do the job like really well. So yeah maybe a little deeper into this because you just said that and you have a Slack channel. Do you have like a clever AI system or ticketing system so something goes into this like like how do you make sure that everyone is aligned. Yeah great question so I think in terms of like Slack channel management for customers especially for support we have a tool we're using and there are like a lot of different ones out out in the market by now there's like we use the now there's also pylon for instance so that's like really helping win with the intake and of course it's also enhanced by AI around like summary suggestive answers and so on and you have like really really course visibility into data in terms of yeah like what are they I mean you of course also need to do the data entry there and manually but like what are the product areas that are maybe affected the most or where customers are like least happy about or like seeing a lot of different issues maybe after release. So yeah that's really great and that's then also helping the customer value engineers and because they know what like maybe this account is currently struggling with and they can then address it proactively. Very cool thank you. Super cool. I would love to deep dive a bit like on what you actually do all day what does Annie's day look like who do you talk to what are sort of the the the key things you would do on a typical day. Yeah okay great great question I think in typical day is very hard to to describe. That's a week. Yeah a week a week is good. Okay so I mean generally I would say I'm still involved in like a couple of customer or also prospects or kind of like in the sales stages and projects but of course like not all of them to pick me maybe the bigger fish or the ones where we are kind of currently selling or implementing something new that we haven't implemented yet to like figure it out and so I would say that's like where I'm involved in problem solvings and in I don't know even like customer facing workshops. My entire Q1 was actually like a lot of that for one and really big big customer and then of course it's also a bunch of like internal meetings in terms of like alignment with our product team and then also like aligning with the team leads and that I have on the team to ensure that we're like doing what we have is like focus off the corridor and and then also of course like working with sales super closely partnerships, marketing, like all these kind of things. So what's I probably like 30 to 50% like externally facing calls per week? I probably have like one afternoon or maybe two of like deep work. And but most deep work is probably done like after hours. And then a little bit of firefighting here and there. What would be something like if someone who doesn't know this role would shadow you for a week, what would be something that would really surprise them? So I think like from from my side personally or like the comment I sometimes get from people is like, wow, I wasn't expecting you to be so deep into like some of the topics. So generally, yeah, I mean, there's some people that might be like micromanaging control. But I would say in some of the topics, not a lot of them. Listen, just some, just some. Yeah, there's like this thing. I think it's kind by our, uh, kind of product who used to be at Brex. And there they had this whole principle around like operating on all levels. And which I think we generally also try to have an our leadership team or like any kind of manager. We're like expecting them to not just be people managers, but actually like still do like content work. I think I think it's a great sign of leadership if they actually have technical expertise, right? If they really know to fly high on strategic, but also can, you know, solve that puzzle on the deep, deep ends of it. I mean, I always love that type of leadership that really knows the same to a certain quality. Yeah. The manager should be the subject matter I also really love that. Yeah, that's also how I how I hire for sure. Yeah. So yeah, I guess that would be um, surprising. And then I guess like if you would come with um, like if your hypothesis would be always like very, very technical work. And then you might be surprised that like a lot of the sales process and even the technical part of the sales process or like more of the expert part of the sales process as you might say it is especially as you sell to more and more mature companies. A lot of it is actually more consultative work as opposed to like very technical work. Like it really requires you to have a very good understanding of the product, but it is in the end a lot of like writing up proposals like really rephrasing like I don't know what what they wanted to value. Yes. So it's a lot about communication. Yes. It is like actually great for consultants who have maybe a bit of a technical spike and especially does like pre sales role. It's like it's becoming more and more enterprise sales as well right where you it's not a standard solution and you need to like do a lot of massaging to the use case and to all the people involved on the client side. Yeah. It's probably where that comes in. Yeah, aligning all the people on the like customers that does they all want the same, especially if there's like many stakeholders involved. So yeah. So you really need like that relationship skill or type on it as well. Yeah. That was not very valuable. You had a podcast. How do you how do you work with the sales team together on that? Because there's probably so much detailed information about each of the clients. There's so many different clients that buying organization involved. How do you keep all of that information together? Because there's the AE. There's maybe one of the founders coming in sometimes. Then there's you like a how do you love to call? Yeah. How do you keep all that straight? Yeah. So generally like the way we have structured our and go to market organization and especially this like selling part is initial sale is we have we call it pods. I think it's also actually like a term that's generally used where you're basically forming cross functional teams that are then getting like really really great at working together and also at producing the revenue that you need for your goals. And so one part for us is like one like BDR so like business development is in there. There's one AE in there and there's a solution engineer in there. Some pods might share some of the resources but you can think of this as like a re-tightening team and that are then going on the mission of like hunting a certain account list or like getting them into the funnel but then also of course and selling to them. And yeah so that way like they they really have full ownership over the revenue goal they have as a pod and thus they would also like keep all of that information in a part and just like honestly probably there is like some things that are very clearly defined in terms of like okay if there's a custom demo that's done by the solution engineer like all of the stakeholder work is typically done by the AE but there's probably also some stakeholder work that's done by the solution engineer and then it's just really really important that these pods like communicate all the time and get really really good at working together to ensure. So the pods stay intact so you have pods that work together often in the same level. Exactly. So we really try to keep them super stable over a longer period of time. Of course you're like we're growing a lot so things change. There's like new people hire. I do need to like form new pods but in general I would say we try to keep them super stable and we have some pods that have been in that like formation for probably like close to a year. So they love pods. You need to make very good matchmaking. Yes you do. Yeah. Who's your favorite who's your favorite AE? No. Savage. Yeah. Who are you currently in a pod with? I'm not in a pod. I'm not in a pod. She's the mother of a pod. I'm doing the matchmaking together with our sales leader and our VD leader. So yeah. Okay what's okay what's a match you've made that is a match made in heaven? We have like or how do you determine it? I mean you can only determine it after like a few quarters right like after you produce the relevant news and of course you also sometimes get feedback like maybe I don't want to be with this person. Is it like vibe based? Is it vibe based how you match them or what is it based? It definitely like and I mean of course by now like there are some pods that just like have great teamwork so we like really also keep them like try to keep them together like try to not break them up because we know it's like it's like never changing a run and running system right that's kind of like the principle here but generally you would of course it needs to match in terms of the seniority right like you cannot match an enterprise with like a super junior solution engineer such as then also be like more of the enterprise caliber here and then you can also think about oh maybe one person like one AE is amazing and project management then maybe you can pair them with a bit of chaotic solution engineer or the other way around maybe you think about like okay is someone really great relationship the other one is like calmer so I think you can really yeah just do it based on the individual traits and try to make great matches. I also I think that's so fun because then people have their team like their functional team but then they also have their pod which just gives so much exposure. It makes me also think of 10 more and because I have to do the closed circle so we always have a class with 150 women and I do closed circles with more women it takes me two days based on another data and videos to really match these pods together so it's very important that if it's I also keep on thinking about work our whales because they always have to work our whales. I'm just I'm just bluffing guys my game. I'm fighting I'm ready to have a spin. Oh my god. Oh my god. Wow. Sorry. I love it. So great. Next. So I'm going to add from the whales. What is like you know obviously you're you you started as a forward deployed engineer now worked worked your way to leading this whole technical solution engineering to success support team. What are things that you've built implemented or optimized a tactile that you're really really you know proud of where you felt your impact maybe from the early days but more from the recent days as well. Okay so they're like actually when I read this question I really had to go back into like okay what did I actually do. So as I was saying when I started we were still in the process of building out the product. So I guess what felt most impactful there is really like working super super closely like having individual customer cases and sitting together with a product team and being like what does it take to get in life on this platform and what does it take to implement this on this platform and what is not working so well yet like what do we need to do so really like a lot of collaboration with the product team there and then also felt like I mean when I joined that was just around the time we raised the series a so what was also really really important there is like figuring out the profile we needed at that point in time which was like covering all the different roles that are now split up into many like individual roles in one person and I think with hindsight we like having myself on the shoulder but I think we hired great people they are still think almost all of them are still in the company some of them are now also in different teams like one person recently joined product and but yeah I think that kind of like post series A team hiring was also quite impactful. Yeah and it's it's a great measure right to say that they're all still there yeah or most of them yeah if they stay then then something must be clicking. Yes and No, for sure and also a little bit. like also it's going well, that's also typically the case. (laughs) Yeah, yeah. Okay, and more recently, I think, yeah, I think there are like many, many different things going on. Like maybe I have like one not so sexy, one, and then one that is a bit more interesting or like a very hot topic right now. And so one is like we focused in Q1 on the customer value engineering side, on really nailing our renewal process. So not super sexy topic, like more on the operational level, but actually can be hugely impactful and it's really important to be on top of. So I think again, for everyone who's not a part of the B2B SaaS game, renewals are basically the time, a contract is up for a renewal. And so going into like a next subscription term, like it's typically after a year, if you're going to enterprise, it's maybe more like two to three years, and maybe sometimes five years, especially if you're excelling to regulated institutions that don't want to change their systems very often. And yeah, so I mean, it just like is important that you A are tracking all of those, that you're like always getting notified when you should be preparing, and we're literally preparing three to six months in advance. And like really have a sync on like, how is this account doing? Like what's our strategy for the renewal? Who do we need to involve? Like what do we still need to work on? What can we push? Because if you're thinking about like sometimes you maybe want to push a new use case because you're thinking, oh, this customer's not yet doing this on a platform, we have other customers doing that. They are successful with it. Like let's bring it to that customer that is renewing, but it will then still take a while for this to materialize. And ideally that happens around the time of renewal so that you can combine it and just have like one cycle with procurement and like all the different signatories, like decision makers involved. So yeah, that was like one thing we focus on. And I mean, of course I didn't do this by myself. Like I have an awesome team need on the customer value engineering side who did a lot of the work there. Yeah, and then a second thing, sexier topic, AI agents. But as I was saying, like I like to be involved when something is like very new and we had a lot of demo building last quarter for especially one enterprise customer around AI agents and also generally because of course there's like a hot topic in the market and we really wanted to test and try the platform with that. And yeah, was of course also very fun and also very fruitful. And did they buy it? Yes, they did. Oh, and we actually have a lot of customers now that are I mean, who are you even if you don't have AI agents these days, I say. Yeah, no, for real, it's really, it's really very hot topic. I am actually currently working on one. Thank you very much. I will keep you posted. I mean, maybe you'll help. No, and maybe you want to start a sales process. Double click because you already said, you, for example, the solution engineers to the demo show really the value you guys can deliver to the customer. But what is actually the skill of a solution engineer? Like if I apply like what is this going to have be able to code or you know, what is the input? Yeah, I have to. Yes. Great question. We're also constantly evolving it. So we're now speaking specifically about the pre-sales solutions engineer and just confirming. And so what we're looking for is basic technical skills. So it doesn't need to be super advanced, but we are doing a life coding challenge in our interviews that is like basic Python. Oh my god. Yes. And since it is really different for different products. So that's just like the requirement for the product we're selling. And then apart from that, like we're really looking for people who are really great at on the spot problem solving. Like you need to be super quick on your feed and sales processes. Like sometimes you're in a room with 20 engineers who are like evaluating the platform and you need to be able to like answer their questions solidly. And then definitely business sadness. So you need to have like a good intuition around like, okay, if you're with, for instance, we're selling a lot of financial services institutions that maybe have lending products like you need to be able to speak the language of the person who's like leading the risk function and all they like what they care about. So that's like really important to have great intuition around that. Then definitely like what you might call analytical thinking from consulting. So like structure thinking being able to break down the like more complex problems as well. And so for the customer and definitely great communication skills. So I would say it's like, I mean, technical concept and profile, basically, easy, easy, easy work. You just listed there. So I'm like, I'm always, I like have been aware of this for a while. So every person that I meet when I come into the tactile office that is on any team, I'm always like very impressed by them. Like just by the fact that they they're on their first day, I'm like, Oh, okay. This is one of these Swiss knife knives. It is true. It's technical and and like very social and like it's it's really like a unicorn profile. Yeah. I might go to imagine how that means this life coding is just disaster. You can do it. You can do it. Really. I can't. I can do an index match for Vila. Excel that I tried my phone since my time. Consult and yeah, also, I must change that job. Massively, especially when it comes to coding and all of that, which definitely makes you like way more and way more efficient. Yeah. Yeah. No, we're using using it a lot. Very good. Yeah. And one day, one day I'm going to do this. I'm going to like spend a week studying for the technical interview with Annie. You could do it to get humbles. Just. You know what I can do. I mean, I learned like coding in my masters. And I think for many people, we hired aren't like the type who learned how to code when they were 13, but more like when they're later on in their 20s, when you should learn it. But that's like, so I'm not like the classical hardcore engineering coder nerd. Basically, exactly. And also just more versatile. We call it more generous. We also like wanted to be able to code and like, yeah, do more complex stuff with code to be better. Like I made to a bit more like the juicy part of this role, because we always like to be really honest about this. So easy one kind of wants the best part of this job, but we love about it. Yes. So I mean, the thing that I love the most about this and that's maybe also because I'm leading all these different roles. Or like see all these different parts of the customer lifecycle is, is like every week is different. And and there are also many, many different topics to work on. And also because this role is at the intersection of so many other roles. Like you have sales, you have product engineering working together with marketing. So yeah, I guess that's like what I like the most. And guess what comes next? What don't you really like about the job? What kind of sucks? What what is like if you would speak to your younger self, what's the brutal truth you would tell? Tell you tell you tell yourself. Yeah. Okay. Great. Great question. I guess like the thing that in general, like especially your own sales, but that's also true of course, post sales is like and you have a lot of rejection. And also that something you need to get really, yeah. You need to get really, really good at dealing with or it just like, yeah, I get used to. But yeah, like, you guys invest so much. Yeah. And you're like, your convinced the product is the perfect fit for a company. And then they're like, no, they just silly. They don't get it. Or they went with a competitor. Like that would I would take that so badly. Like in my case, when we don't win a deal, I find ways to make it all my fault. Every I think about everything I said, especially if you would think, what if you think the product is perfect then then you're just a rejectionist. That's true. I just don't know if that applies. Does that apply for sales when you just want to make more revenue? We have to make it work. There's a reason probably was a really horrible customer. Yeah. I mean, sometimes, right. I mean, there's also this whole concept around like qualifying customers. And maybe they were in just so well qualified, but definitely you also lose deals where you like, okay. Yeah. Should have won that. Yeah. Okay. So that's hard. What else? We've hold it out. We're warning people who might just not where this might not be the right job, you know? Or maybe actually kind of combined it with okay. It's the job grateful and who isn't. Yeah. Yeah. So maybe like one other thing which I guess like I'm okay with, but of course it's like not the best part of the job is like, you sometimes have stressful situations like maybe a customer is putting a lot of pressure on you, but you can just not prioritize like a feature from the product side. And that's deteriorating relationship or. So sometimes you just like stuck in the middle and and dare can of course also be pressure because it's a customer facing role. And so that's like maybe I guess it's it's not something I like don't of course it's not the part I love about the job. and but it's just like, what comes with a job, but if you are a person who cannot like deal with that, then you are probably like not going to like the job so much. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no. Oh, no. But I mean, that's true for any kind of customer-facing role. Imagine you're someone, maybe they're studying math in college or they are this type of profile who's, you know, a generalist but has a little bit of technical skills or is listening to you and is like, oh my god, my role model. I want to be exactly like her. What would be like the very tangible stuff you would tell that person to do? Like, is there some resources, some books, some business content, some newsletter, whatever that you would be, you know, grabbing immediately? Okay. So I think the best way to probably start on the field is actually like just trying out a job like this. So just like looking for a solutions engineering role, especially in a B2B SaaS, like in a B2B SaaS company that selling a complex product because I really want to like point that out as solution engineering is very different if the product is not as technical, like maybe is like more one-time configuration and forgetting about it, like not actually using the product as much as tactile, I think. Yeah. So like really looking for a job there is great. I think what's also a great prep is actually going into consulting. Can't believe I'm saying that. And for a two years or so, like I like honestly, and great prep for the job, then I would also like depending on how good your technical skills already are, but like doing Python courses and projects is great prep. And then in terms of books, I think it's probably like I honestly prefer books that I use more as like reference and like as handbooks basically, but I think one thing to rate is the challenger sale. If you like want to go into this like pre-sales role because it's actually like yeah providing a bit of a different perspective, especially. So again, like Europe versus US, I think there's still a lot of stigma around sales in Europe. But the challenger sale like really points out that it's more consultative, especially for this type of like sales process. And that's more complex and more consultative. And then I really like a book which is called Scaling People, but that's more if you. Oh, that's in my accent right now. It's really great. Yeah. I think we have this book like four times. We have it in every corner. It's from this type. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And I think that's like just great if you need to build out an organization in like actually any kind of organization, but I really liked it. Yeah, it's recruiting performance review, how to deal with people. It's like really done management layer is covered and quite tactile. Not tactile, guys. Any every podcast episode I kind of fuck off some English words. It's just just to give it. It's tactic. But honey, honey, you make it you make it so fun for us. You're welcome. That's super helpful. That's that's really, really helpful. And maybe one one more for the aspiring person on Annie's team. What's something non obvious that a candidate has done that won you over immediately? Okay. Yeah. So like there I have just one story from also in Q1 where I also had a lot of pressure on hiring a specific role. And then we had this one candidate who already had a competing offer. And we hadn't even really started the process. And then he was like, you know what? I can just like count Berlin for a day and just do a full day interviewing process. And I was like, heaven, great. Yes, let's do it. And like a grade because he came in person for like all the interviews which like sometimes I'm like, why isn't this the standard anymore? I think yeah, but like the best thing would be it like it should be in person like for all the interviews. And then like bunching it into one day is like, yes, also would also be great to do this more like very hard in terms of logistics. But yeah, but it's so valuable. We are Timon. We literally, we just started doing that as well. So we had a big interview day for everyone and got it all done in two days. It's just it's just different, especially also in the era of AI, we were like, we need to make sure there's no screen and no nothing near the scan. So we have to need to have an eye on it. But I agree. Yes, it's really great in person. And it's and it's important as well, right? If you have really strong or very high hiring goals for a certain time, then if you're doing it like in these all these stages and then like four days go by, six days go by because I don't know, someone didn't send the scheduling link or whatever. It like makes it very inefficient for both sides. And it's very hard to get people on board, then ramp them up when everything kind of has a time lag. Yeah, and also like it's nicer to discuss it with your hiring committee. They all seem to candid it. It's all fresh in their minds. You can come out with other candidates. So yeah, and the scheduling like just the pure like scheduling, right? And like kind of their matching, especially. So we're yeah, we're ambassador for bringing back in person to hiring everyone. Yeah. And the days, the days, I mean, the assessment centers. The consultants, the assessment centers, the consultants were right. I mean, I remember my assessment center at BCG. It was pure sweat and tears for three days. And I swear when we did the maths test, the person next to me was cheating. She was looking at my results. Wow. Yes. That's how good that's who I am. Was that a good idea? Well, yeah, I wasn't a good idea for them. I actually considered like holding my hand over. I don't want to be that person. But I'm going on to the final new section that we have. It's the click file. Nice. We should actually I'll start up inside it up. We can get like a little fire noise. So let's get started. It's rapid fire questions. We'll try and keep it short and snappy. I'll start and then follow and we also need your answers to be sure. Yes. By the way, we have a and all right. And let's the introduction to this quick fire on is already very slow for care. Okay. Okay. So two traits that help you thrive in your role. Yes. Okay. So I would say first one is I get bored very fast. So constant change is great. True for me kind of start up. And that's going fast. And then the second one is the whole curiosity, liking many different things and at this intersection role of many functions. Great. Favorite tool app productivity hack that you would marry if you could. Yeah. Okay. So if my team listens to that, they're gonna laugh. But I really and it's kind of lame. I really love notion. I'm a kind of person who like organizes their personal life in notion as well. I'm sorry. Let's just say I've heard someone call you process any before. No. I'll add an admin admin. I'll add an any. Yeah. And I feel like that's the notion. The notion makes it to the podcast. I know too much. Yeah. Too much insight knowledge from the flat chair. And we should do the date much deeper. Okay. So that's also the tattoo worthy thing. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Great. And yes. So one work habit you should drop but can't. Yeah. Okay. This is also product of like having this split between Europe and New York is if you wake up in New York, like if you open a Slack, it's full of messages. And I definitely do that like every morning. First thing. Yeah. Yeah. Guilty of that. And then you just sit in the shower and brush your teeth already thinking about all these messages. Yes. Yeah. Meetings necessary evil or creativity killer. Okay. So like two answers to this. Like I think generally I love async communication and being able to problem solve async or align if possible. But I really, really think a lot of, right, some problems are best solved if like everyone's just locked into a room until it is aligned. And I really love problems solving sessions like creative problems solving sessions as meetings. There are definitely meetings that suck and like should be deleted from calendars. Canceled by very good. Okay. Final part. Is our wrap up questions. So we have a community or we call it that is kind of cringe that we call it that. But we post before on social media and get some questions from people out there. And one that I think clicks in really well with what we talked about is from Anna who is actually kind of a former colleague of Helen's. She's my mentee as well. And she's a lazy girl now. And she's a McKinsey girl now. So she wants to know how do you successfully transition from consulting into the startup world, especially we're guarding sort of the, you know, approach of excellence versus going more 80 20. How did you deal with that? What's your tips for come home to my go into startups later. >> Yeah. Okay, super great question. I think again annoying answering and consulting answers like it depends. So it depends on the role you're going or you want to go into. I think like if you want to go into product, for instance, like product management and which might be interesting for her type of profile, like very different from like you wanting to go into sales or into like this kind of solutions and general. And like for me personally, you initially like you really need to I would actually say you like need to drop perfection even more, especially initially when you like don't know what's really gonna work out, especially if you're going like in very early stage. So you shouldn't like perfect anything or not yet set up any like scalable processes like really focus on what matters and don't do like the bells and whistles and like beautiful slides and so on like that really doesn't matter at all. So I think that's probably like the most important thing. And then but I think honestly that's something that consultants are good at is like just doing anything that's like needed at a certain point in time and no matter whether that's your role or not, like if you're good at it and you're like the best person to do it, you should just do it. I think generally that's like what you're anyways doing as a consultant on on projects, especially when you're junior. But that's like also really really important. Yeah. I wish I saying Stephanie Lichter actually asked a similar question. So I'm happy we got two community questions in today. Very cool. I think what so we we have this concept of a blind question from the previous guest. So the previous guest was Jana who is head of BISDEF at Mistral and she said what are your three careers when you look back at age 70? Okay. So 70 is of course like a little bit into the future so what I can say now is there are probably these like two things at the like beginning of my career which was like both the studying math. And I initially really wanted to also do a PhD in like go into academia because I got very obsessed with it. I think that's like a general thing about me. I get very obsessed with something and that like to do this thing like a lot. And then I moved into consulting so I think this combined could be like the first step in getting to to where I am now or where I'll be in the future. And then definitely a second piece would be of course tactile like I joined when we were roughly 20 people and yeah like of course ideally there is like a successful exit at the end and I'll stay until then and Paula is like nodding. So I'm hoping that we don't need to. Actually we're all hobby. We're successful exit from tactile because as a good friend I will hopefully be a beneficiary of so far. We'll be worth it. And then probably the third thing and that's just we're worth it for any of them for you. Hopefully. And the third thing would be probably founding something myself. Yeah. But no concrete idea yet. Okay. I'm amazing. I want to be an angel investor in that company that's for sure. Okay. What's your blind question for our next guest? Okay. So this is actually coming from a thing I do or like a question. I definitely like ask my boyfriend a lot because he's thinking a lot about like founding his own business at some point as well. And we always like played a game of like if you would need to fund a new business right now, what would it be? Yeah. Of course. Of course. I don't know my voice got really deep on. That's an awesome question. Thank you. I just found AI. I would just do AI you know. And never that's a great question. Very original thought. That's what I'm here for. Thank God we're not asking you the question. Okay. Now this is awesome. I love that question. And I think that's it. No. No, there's one. I think we have one more. No. I think it's fine. No, that's it. I think this was another community. That's it. And you think you so much. This was so much fun. Yes. I loved it. Yes. Likewise. Thanks for having me with my little flowers in the background. I know. I love it. We're not gonna make some reels for all of you who want to see us in a non-person on whatever, whatever. We'll show you the flowers. We'll show you the flowers in the videos. Hello, Nitsy. Yes. No. I'm getting it. But Annie, thank you. I really feel like we truly understood now what this whole thing is about. You did a great job at explaining. And we're very curious to see how we continue with our content as we all said in the name of all of us. Please. And some parties. Some parties. Yeah. Some parties. Parties. Yards. You know. And you're really fascinating person. Very cool journey. And obviously very smart. Yes. They can. Hopefully more more time in New York soon. I'm blushing. We have Helena also, by the way, this is the perfect moment to talk. Yes. What am I gonna say? You have to come to New York because you're the best person in this world. Yeah. I will say for your flight. And I will do so. And then it will just be movies with you guys. I'm at the jam. Exactly. See? It's very fun. We have a great time. Joe's coffee. The party. Yeah. Yeah. No, please come. Okay. Some party. Perfect. Thank you so much. Any and you see you very, very soon and have a lovely rest of your vacation. Thank you. Bye. Bye. So, damit's it. In a moment, I will absolutely recommend you to have a good time. I would like to recommend to people who should always be in here. Thank you for all the time. Maybe you should also think about it. Maybe we should not have a spotty-fight. You should like to get to it. And at the best, the same thing. Then you get everything we have here to open a great podcast. And maybe the short term, if you have a startup or someone from a startup known, we have a platform launched. It's really great. And there you can imagine all startups from Germany. That means that it is really the ultimate navigator for the scene. Just put a profile there. Then you will find new employees and employees from investors and in the future also from customers who might be interested in you. As I said, the whole thing is cost-effective. Maybe I will always send a fourth hour to be a profile. There are a few questions that we have to ask, but I promise you it will be easy. Then you are part of the, probably after the first startup community, which is in Germany. You know our podcast and the many great newsletters that we will bring out and about the same level where the platform will also be. Look at the WBB startup.inza.de and then simply put a profile. I can promise it will be easy. Yes, and that was it from my side. I wish you a great day and maybe see you later or see you again. Bye bye.