← The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#829: ActiveCampaign CEO Jason VandeBoom on AI as foundation versus feature
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Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to Season eight of the Agile Brand Podcast. This season we're going all in on Expert Mode, MarTech, AI and Customer Experience, talking with the people and platforms behind the brands you know and love. I'm Greg Kilstrom, your host and I help Fortune 1000 companies make sense of martech, AI and marketing ops. Hit subscribe or follow to make sure you always get the latest episodes and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. And make sure you check out our sponsor, Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services, and real world applications. For more information, go to teksystems.com now let's dive in.
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Interviewer
If you had to start your business
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Greg Kilstrom
over from scratch today, would you build it the same way, or would you build it entirely around an AI? Core agility requires more than just adapting to change. It demands a willingness to proactively dismantle what's working today in order to build what's necessary for tomorrow. It's about challenging the very playbook that brought you success, especially when a fundamental shift like AI arrives. Today we're going to talk about the
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Interviewer
playbook for building a unicorn level business
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Greg Kilstrom
in one era and the courage it takes to reinvent that playbook for the next. We're going to discuss the difference between
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Interviewer
using AI as a feature versus using
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Greg Kilstrom
it as a foundation, and how leadership and team structure need to evolve to not just survive, but thrive during this shift. To help me discuss this topic, I'd like to welcome Jason Vandeboom, founder and CEO at ActiveCampaign. Jason, welcome to the show.
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Jason Vandeboom
Yeah, thanks for having me.
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Greg Kilstrom
Yeah, looking forward to talking about this topic with you.
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Interviewer
Before we dive in though, why don't you give a little background on yourself and your role at ActiveCampaign.
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Jason Vandeboom
Yeah, I'm founder CEO of ActiveCampaign, marketing automation platform that's been around for quite a while and seen a number of different transformations over that time. We help a few hundred thousand customers engage with their customers, create more meaningful connections, ultimately grow their business and save time. Great, great.
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Interviewer
So, yeah, let's dive in here and let's start at the beginning, so to speak, and talk a little bit about your journey with ActiveCampaign from you started from a startup to a unicorn and certainly it's a way known success story. So looking back, what was the maybe the core non negotiable strategic principle that you established early on that was really critical to that initial hypergrowth?
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Jason Vandeboom
Yeah, I think the most critical thing was just the level of product focus, which is like the most cliche thing. I think everyone would say that that's part of everyone's starting story, but it was a combination of both staying really close to the product, but also the customer value and customer problem to be solved. And not necessarily just solving what people are saying, trying to push the boundary on being opinionated, trying to push the boundary on solving it in a different way. Even if it meant, you know, customers or prospects would be like, that's not exactly what I want. It's trying to carve something that has more differentiation. Yeah, I'd say coupled with that, the other benefit I've had throughout time is just like not knowing everything. And I think oftentimes people see that as a negative like you, you know, it'd be helpful to know what is best practice. It'd be helpful to know all these things. I think that's actually allows you to have more innovation, be more opinionated and market. And so trying to like, not necessarily copy other playbooks, trying to have your own uniqueness of what you actually believe and not letting customers, prospects, your team talk you out of that has been a constant from the get go as well.
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Interviewer
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, couple things in that is there's this inertia, right, that happens that you know, you've done this, this is the way we do it, this is our path that we're on. Let's you know, kind of follow this trajectory and you know, to your point that that can almost become a Liability. Because you're kind of beholden to the past, it doesn't mean your values change. It, it just means that you're kind of beholden to this, this way of thinking that, you know, hey, it got us here, right? So how do you, you know, how do you have the right strategic mindset to know when to make those right calls? Like you mentioned, you know, sometimes it's yes, let's listen to the customers and you know, customers always.
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Greg Kilstrom
Right.
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Interviewer
So to speak. And then sometimes we need to show them something right. That they haven't seen.
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Jason Vandeboom
Yeah. And I'd say it's, it's easy at the beginning and it just gets harder and harder and harder and harder.
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Interviewer
Right.
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Jason Vandeboom
More customers, bigger team partners, prospects, you have more competitors in the space and you're trying to fit a mold. Ultimately, I think it's critical a business has someone in the business that is, that, that has fundamental ownership, enough of some of the decisions to be able to be the almost outlier in terms of opinionated innovation. Meaning you need someone that's like borderline. People look at them and they're like this, this person's kind of crazy. They're going to destroy the business. Right, right. I think oftentimes the founder can play that role. Sometimes if the founder's not as much as the product visionary or something like that, you find someone else. I think how you build your team can either help this or actually like create more of a stalling moment for a business as well. And we've seen all these different businesses that go through these cycles, right. Like you, you find some like opinionated differentiation of market, they start to get some growth and then you get to potential stall points. Oftentimes it's not even the business itself, it's the macro, it's competitors, it's, it's changes. I think we're seeing that right now massively through AI and all of that. But if you don't have someone with enough like ownership of decisions and direction, kind of pushing the boundary to a semi scary state. It's almost inevitable where that business goes. Right. It could be still a very good business. I think in past years a business like that that starts to stall out because of lack of innovation or differentiation could remain, I think where we are today, that's changed. I think that timetable for being semi irrelevant in a space is very short compared to prior and that's just because of what is possible with more AI native startups. What's more possible in terms of actually getting to the product, getting to the technology to solve the problem in a unique way, you just need that opinionated, differentiated view and the ability to pull it off. That's far more democratized now. So it's a really either exciting or terrifying time, depending on where you are on that spectrum of opinionated, differentiated, semi crazy to, to wanting to just keep everything calm and stable.
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Interviewer
Yeah. And I definitely want to talk more about the AI component as well. But just to circle back to something that you just said, it almost feels like the tension is necessary. Right. You know, like you, it's not, it's not a problem, it's not a, you know, but it's actually needed like because you need the customers telling you what they want and things, but you also need that, that very opinionated. So the, is the trick just finding what the middle is or I think
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Jason Vandeboom
it's, if it's you being the counterbalance, it's over erring almost. Right. Like I have to catch myself sometimes internally when I'm talking because I'm, I'm, I'm talking like far off to the side. And I have to remind folks like that's that middle we're trying to get to. I think you can support this more though, by who you bring into the business and the leadership team you have, the investors you bring on, if you have investors to make sure that you don't overload to the conservative. Because by design, everyone that has scale, experience, everyone that has like certain patterns they've seen in the past, those are safe, those are no ones. Right. If you're at a time of transformation, if you're a time of like pivotal innovation in market, you can't lean on those. Those are actually what's holding you back. Yeah, yeah.
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Interviewer
So I do want to talk about AI and you know, certainly, you know, one would think that AI was invented sometime in 2022 or 23, but you know, obviously it's been around for, for, for a minute. But you know, certainly there's been this race to, you know, to, to use some of your, you know, bolt on AI to products. I certainly, you know, I see a lot of products, I talk with a lot of people. There's definitely there was a rush to put some kind of, if nothing else, a bullet point on a website, if not a feature in a product. You know, what does bolting on look like versus, you know, truly building a process or a capability around AI?
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Jason Vandeboom
Yeah, so it's, I, yeah, I would agree. Like everyone is kind of rushing to it because I think it's partially macro, partially investor, you know, all of these different elements, but also there's value there. Right. And I think people are trying to figure out how do you take something that's existing and make it more valuable through that lens and you get the uplift of being associated with it. Theoretically. Right. But also more customer value. I would go back to kind of what we were just talking about as well. It's in the way of bolting on something. And a product that's a marketing product would be like, you have an existing workflow, you go into a certain area, you have a content block where people normally type, you allow them to generate text, you allow them to generate the most basic. You don't change the construct, you don't materially create any waves in your ecosystem. Nobody's like truly upset. That means it's bolted on and it's just like, it's like a nice little to have. Right. I think if you're looking to compete with more AI native, if you're looking to actually be innovative, it has to be more foundational than that. And the best way I could describe that is just if you are changing a construct of how people interact and they find value, that is not bolting on, that's actually fundamentally changing a construct. So in activecampaign, instead of just having it be like these little pieces here and there, we're changing the literal, like, how do you create an automation, how do you create full end to end campaigns, how does the system autonomously bring ideas to you? Going to a world where users are not prompting, users are responding and helping guide a system. Now that is very different though. So by definition, if you were going bold, if you're going opinionated, there you have a lot of work to do to try to bring customers, partners and your team along. Because that's pushing on like so much differentiation that it's like pushing the boundary of like where people may be at in terms of understanding what it is and what it can do. And it's up to you to do that extra work. It's a lot more work. I'd say some people would call it riskier because you're by design causing people to ask questions. Maybe not like everything. Right, Right. But if you want to be opinionated, if you want to have innovation, you have to have some people asking questions and not liking it. Otherwise you're not, you can say you are, you're not.
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Interviewer
And so then thinking of this from the, you know, the CMOs, the, you know, the marketers at brands out there listening, you know, fundamentally rebuilding you know, a company from scratch with AI, you know, not, not realistic for at least most companies, but taking steps to get there. Certainly, certainly is. And many, you know, if not all, I would say are taking some steps to get there. What do you see as a, you know, an impactful step that a leader can take that, you know, maybe they've made some, like, baby steps or they've bolted some things on in their own way, but like, what's a, what's a meaningful step that they could take from, you know, being really just AI assisted to becoming more AI native?
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Jason Vandeboom
Yeah. I think if you're trying to lead a team through that change, if you're just like, hey, use more AI and I think a lot of people are just like, AI, do that. Like, it's not very effective. Right?
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Interviewer
Yeah, yeah.
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Jason Vandeboom
At the same time, I don't think people are opposed to faster, more efficient, more valuable solutions. Right. So it's almost like making the framing less about AI and it's more around. We're transforming. Right. There's a transformation in the business. I think fundamentally the business needs to have a overarching focus on this where it's not just one team, it's not just one area, but it's holistic across the entire business. It involves enabling and involves highlighting actual specific successes. So what we've done that's worked pretty well is we've gotten really opinionated about certain areas we want to really push on transforming how we work and how we deliver value to our customers, using those as examples. Every single town hall, every time I'm talking with the business, we're highlighting and I'm not doing it, the people actually building it, working on it, the people actually delivering the value are, are, are showing. It's like a oversimplifying. It's like show and tell of all of these successes, but making that at the center and having that compound. Right. And, and allowing folks to like, have avenues because everyone's at a different like, like level in terms of understanding, adoption, all of that. But I think you probably can't do everything all at once, but find a couple areas where you're really opinionated at. That's going to be far better than trying to roll out one of the main LLMs and saying, like, everybody use this and we're going to watch just like, how many people use it. Yeah, get to customer value. If you get to customer value, it's unarguable. Nobody can argue, should we use AI? It's not about that. It's like we are providing faster, better customer value. That's unarguable. And to get to those points is where I'd say people need to focus first and foremost.
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Interviewer
Yeah. I mean, I do, I do kind of wonder when we're gonna stop using the, the stop saying AI basically. I mean, you know, just like we stop referring to the Internet or the information superhighways, stuff like that. Like probably not this year, you know, but you know, I, I to your point, I mean, I think it's a powerful one. Is what let's focus on the outcomes and the things we really want to accomplish and not the tools. Right.
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Jason Vandeboom
A hundred percent. And it's not just your internal team. You go to all of these B2B SaaS sites now it's just like AI this, AI that. And it's just like if you think through a customer lens, I actually do maybe care about the AI roadmap, that it's more modern, it's more AI first. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to implement something that's like stale. Yeah. At the same time, to your point, it's outcomes. And so that's why like we're focused in a lot of our marketing is like, how do we not even use AI as much and make it more about. Well, we're saving, you know, 13 hours a week on average for marketers. We're having like campaign creations, like, and those are the pieces that would actually drive far more value to the customer. Resonates the fact AI is facilitating it. Awesome. But ultimately they just want the end value. Yeah.
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Interviewer
So I want to get back to how you've built ActiveCampaign and some of the things there. And we talked a little bit about this from a leadership team perspective. But building the right team is important. So having the right pieces, having that innovation and that innovative vision, certainly important. But also the full, well rounded team, you know, also, also critical, you know, what are the mindsets that you look for in a leader to complement the, you know, an existing leadership team to just, you know, keep making it stronger?
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Jason Vandeboom
Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a good, loaded question. I feel like it's based on the stage and based on the type of period you're in matters so much. And, and that's something I've learned over time. But when, when times are going, you know, well, you have a flywheel going, like the market's not fundamentally changing, you're looking for different types of leaders that are basically taking the existing systems, continuing to optimize, continuing to scale. That's a very different structure than transformation time. During both times I think you need to have a blend of folks or you risk sort of maybe not wrecking the business, but wrecking the culture and wrecking what you created and what you enjoy spending time on each and every day. But I'd say the type of leader matters a lot based on that phase and then also just having it be very open and understood throughout the organization of both how the leaders are operating, the why as well as what time are we in. And it's like, you know, it's maybe hard to go to the business like hey, we're in a good time. Hey, we're in a transformation time. Let's like, you know, have to explain it with a little more depth there. But that's where I spend a lot of time is helping explain more of the why. And that's what I'm looking from for my leaders as well. The other thing I'd say in terms of a leadership team is when you go from a normal mode to a transformational time. And it doesn't mean your business is doing great or bad or in between. It's literally market technology can change. We're in it right now with AI. You have to be careful of thinking that just the outside is the answer. And what I mean by that is if you're switching into a transformation time, maybe there's a part of your business that you're like ah, this, this should be better. There is a human instinct I think, to want change, to want people from the outside more and to over error there. Now if your human instinct is that and the leaders you bring in, they look at the business and they're like, we should change these things and start to cycle and change. All of a sudden you can have a whole part of your business that so much amazing, talented folks, even if they're still in the business, have been their voices lowered in terms of what's actually made the business special, the understanding of the customer. And that's the only other watch out as you go through these transformation times that I think has really been a learning point for myself over time as well.
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Interviewer
What role does measurement play in this? You know, I would also imagine that the, the KPIs of success evolve over time. You know, startup, you know, probably very different metrics than, than they may be in a, in a much more mature company. How do you maybe two two questions at once here is like how do
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Greg Kilstrom
you, how do you know when you're
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Interviewer
in a different phase? But also, you know, how do you know, when it's time to rethink your measurements.
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Jason Vandeboom
Yeah. So I think the how you know you're in a different phase, it kind of goes back to that. You need someone like on the edge pushing on that idea, almost always being a little paranoid that we're like about to enter that phase. Yeah, that's where like sort of in traditional times I'd be like your labs type of group or something that's like, you know, really trying to push the boundary as far as the metrics. I think you have to just be, you have to come back to them and be willing to scrap a lot of it and start from scratch. And what I mean by that is, especially during a time where you have a flywheel going, business is growing, you start to think you influence the business more than you actually do. And what I mean by that, if it's a product led business, it can start to take shape and you have all these different things and all these different areas that you're building out that's supporting it, that like, I mean, fundamentally they sound like they should help. Right. But you end up with a ton of different work streams and a ton of metrics that are all claiming influence of something. And I think that's the hardest thing because not everything's directly, you know, attributable. You can't directly influence everything to everywhere. But how do you take a look, an actually honest look at the business. And I think that that's a combination of top down and then bottom up of what you're looking at and questioning and how do you create a culture of questioning? Is this actually something we're supporting and actually helping influence or is it not? And I think people could take that type line of thought and see it as like a negative. But if you build that into the culture, if you build that into how you operate, this isn't a, hey, this thing isn't working, let's just get rid of it. It's like, hey, this thing might not actually have, you know, as much influence on our growth or retention, whatever it may be. There's probably 20 other ideas, some of them crazy, some of them not, of what we could go pursue. Let's try doing that. It's basically taking your capacity and trying to optimize it. And that from a leadership level down is hard to do because there's 50 reasons why people wouldn't want to do it. From empire building to just trying to claim credit for something, to all of that. So when I think of metrics and what to watch that's where my mind goes right away. Because that's the difference of, you know, it'll be fine. It'll be metrics. You're like, oh, I, I like my metrics. They're like, you know, this is right. Or you can get more out of it. And, and I've seen that time and time again, especially with growing businesses that, that I've had an opportunity to, to, to work with and have a lens in on.
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Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. So looking, looking ahead a bit. You know, I know as you've already said, you know, been the, the business has been through several shifts already. You're currently in, in kind of an AI as well. As you look ahead, what is maybe the, the biggest either challenge or opportunity that you're, you know, preparing yourself and the company to meet?
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Jason Vandeboom
Yeah. So I firmly believe that marketers currently are overwhelmed with so many different things. Right. Plus the onslaught of like, do more AI and change everything and it's. Right. And so there is a real need for a marketing team, for a marketer to have an extra set of hands, to have that. It's almost like that always on agency, always on advisor. That's not just like, it can't just be doing what they're telling it to do. It's like it's working with them, working alongside them. That's the idea behind, like, autonomous marketing and where it's like really working together. It's celebrating, empowering and making the marketer far more successful than ever before. That's an opportunity that exists in market. We're already seeing signs of that in terms of the immense time value, the improved performance, all of that. The greatest challenge we have is what we've been talking about, which is really massive transformation and bringing our customers, bringing our car, bringing partners along with that. Because they've been building the company with us. Right. They've been helping build it. Like, it's. I always think of them as like, it's kind of like a portion of the team in a kind of weird way. And so I think in past times, I think businesses like ActiveCampaign and plenty of other businesses are going through a version of what we're going through. I mean, you could have, you know, your, you know, 12, 24 months of like, moving along. If you don't get it right, it, it'll be fine. I think now we're playing all at different stakes, like the opportunity to be able to help in the way that we're looking to help or how other companies are looking to help. It's a pocket of time. And so how do you guide a business maintain what is special about your team, company value, all of that while building? The last thing I'd say on this is I think a lot of people look at this as like if it was just a new business, it would be far easier. It's just an AI native business from the onset. There's a bunch of reasons why that's easier, but fundamentally every existing business has a ton of data that's a moat, a team and understanding the ability to get to opinionated view of actually what is the construct, how to do it. That's what's going to win in a lot of these cases. And so if a business is able to do that, I think they have a, they have even a bigger advantage than just pure AI native startups. So that would be the hope I would throw out into the world.
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Interviewer
Yeah. Love it. Well, yeah, Jason, thanks so much for joining today. Two last questions as we wrap up here. First one, maybe touching a little bit on what we were just talking about, but if we were having this interview one year from today, what is one thing that we would definitely be talking about?
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Jason Vandeboom
We'd be talking about active intelligence, the before after of perception and the transformation. Nice.
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Interviewer
Love it. And last question, what do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
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Jason Vandeboom
So I love talking working with different startups and founders. I'm part of a amazing organization, Future Founders, that helps from middle school, high school and on helping people see the light bulb of entrepreneurship, all of that. And that is possibly the most selfish thing because I get so much out of it. It's so much good for so many people involved. We've had 50,000 students go through the program already. Wow. But it's such an inspiration and it kind of goes back to where I started it, where the things you don't know are oftentimes like the points of differentiation, what could be innovation. Those are the real energy builders. Yeah.
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Interviewer
Love it. Well, again I'd like to thank Jason
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Greg Kilstrom
Vandeboom, founder and CEO at ActiveCampaign, for joining the show. You can learn more About Jason and ActiveCampaign by following the links in the show notes. This episode is brought to you by Tech Systems. They're leaders in full stack tech services, talent solutions and helping companies put it all in action. You can learn more@teksystems.com and thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand podcast. If you liked the episode, hit subscribe and drop a rating so others can find the show too. And if you're interested in consulting, advisory work, or if you need a speaker for your next event, feel free to reach out. Just visit GregKilstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
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Strayer University Announcer
The Agile Brand.
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Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
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Interviewer
Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?
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Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
Oh no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
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Jason Vandeboom
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
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Liberty Mutual Spokesperson
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
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