 Hey everyone, this is Carlos. I am the founder and CEO at Product School today. I'm here with Ryan Glasgow Who's the founder and CEO at Sprig? Welcome Ryan Thank You Carlos and thanks for hosting me once again. I think those are a third or fourth time now doing an interview over the course of many years You and I go way back Even before you started your company, you also have the honor of being the first guest That we had on the podcast when your company was called UserLip and a lot of amazing things have happened since then So let's kind of catch up the audience Can you tell me more about your background and then we'll dive into your current company? Yeah My background has been in product management and I actually really got started with some early-stage companies You know pre-product and you know at the time if they're so early They actually didn't have a product manager. It was too early for these companies you know writing their first lines of code and figuring out their first concepts and so I really cut my teeth as a Product designer and also a front-end engineer But given that there was not a you know product manager at the company I was able to really fill that gap and get that exposure and then quickly moved into formal product management capacity before eventually starting in Sprig where I'm now CEO and And you mentioned front-end development you mentioned design What was the status of user research was waiting that had back in the day? Back then it wasn't done very often because product management was still in the technology Space a new function and product man back You know over a hundred years the problem gamble but in the technology space It is still very new and you know pioneers like product school are helping really bring that role to life and Educating folks in that role. But at the time, you know, it was there weren't very many often would show up at companies They'd ask what does a product manager do? You know, why are you here? And so it was really help actually at the time helping form that role and define that role at many of the companies I was joining I Can imagine that based on your own experience building You will be starting to scratch your own each and create a company that was solving one of your problems So there's a bit more about that problem that you saw in the market that you know, no other solutions out there were really covering You know as a product manager, it was certainly You know research was just so critical for everything that we are working on and You know what I found is that companies either don't have researchers and so the product managers have to do You know the research themselves, but then I'll see if companies where they do have researchers So researchers can only cover a small fraction of the product questions and the research that the product managers are looking for And so a sprig what we're doing is we're just really focused on if you have a research team helping the research team and the product management team work Faster and you know really work together on reliable research and getting research and Insights into all the decisions that you know product teams are making and then for companies that don't have researchers It's really about how we can have the designers product managers marketers conduct their own research and you know as a product manager You know to your earlier question it was up to the product manager to do all the research and you know, I've seen you We always want really great research That can be difficult to do with people who don't have the time or the expertise in that field and so spring We're really focused on really bringing research to life and companies of all sizes Helping include everyone in that research process But also give researchers the full control to support all the stakeholders that they're working with on a day-to-day basis you know I've It sounds to me similar to what happened with a intersection between engineering and product or design and product where Back in the day PMS would have to rely heavily on another team just to get stuff done And that might be the right approach when your company is speaking up and has the resources, but we saw how some Tools were able to bridge the gap and allow PMS to be a little bit more self-sufficient And be able to get some stuff done and at the same time be able to delegate when needed And that usually happened engineering data. I've seen it with design user research Wasn't at the same level at least based on my own experience I'm glad to see that now there is something out there that is allowing PMS and other teams that are not researchers To do a little bit of research and at the same time have the full capability to then go out there and really involve a research team Is that is that's the approach? That's exactly correct. Yeah, and you see engineering We're shifting to no code where everyone can be more involved in the building process You know, I think figma is a great example of bringing more people into the design process You know, I remember ten years ago You know, no one wanted to get your 200 megabyte photoshop file just to review, you know What it looked like or be able to leave a comment It was incredibly cumbersome and difficult to bring other people into the design process And so you know the data analysis process more and more people can be involved by new tools and business intelligence and analysis and you know, absolutely with Sprig It's bringing more people into the research process In some cases bringing people to help do the research themselves But other cases really used to be involved in the data and the results and the insights Just knowing how critical all the data is how can you really ensure this data permeates through every every organization? So let's break down the concept research because from the outside might sound scary like there's so many ways you can approach Research so in your own experience, what are some of the different like avenues for for pms to get some insights from their users We and you know what I hear and talking to Marty Kagan He was on our podcast a couple months ago And and he said that 90% of product management is actually a value to research, you know It's really evaluating the value of whether you should move forward with a particular feature Maybe you have an idea or Hunter hypothesis And so really making sure that this is something that's the top of the prioritization set But the second part of the value to research is actually evaluating existing experiences that you've already shipped and really Understanding that feature that you launched last month or the feature that you're about to launch maybe next week Making sure that it's going to meet customer needs and they're going to understand it And it's going to really achieve the outcomes that you're looking for There's also some genitive research, you know very early on about doing, you know, more one-on-one customer interviews more moderated But given that most product managers, you know You have a set of features that you're looking to build and you're really honing on what maybe the exact prioritization And then again evaluating whether you're delivering those features in the right way And that's really where we focus with sprig is on the evaluative research knowing that's the bulk of what most companies are doing today For me something that was really Transformational was when I realized that it was possible to run research Inside the product what I mean by this is that traditionally when I hear that term I would default to okay Let's run a survey, right? Let's kind of strategize on identifying certain users Sending them something taking them out of the experience give them an Amazon gift card to respond and then get the insights But that was really and of not organic what we are seeing different products now Is that you can get those insights on the spot while the user is to executing any specific action? Like maybe they purchased something and you ask them how was that experience or they found the back you ask them What happened like allowing the user to give you information on the spot? I think it's really really powerful because the time to value is much shorter Yes, and that's the key innovation really was spring and that was really the aha moment for me Is can we actually get the insights in the moment? And I think everyone's tired of getting that 50 question survey You know that you described with that $50 or $100 or even you know $103 Amazon gift card and it's asking you questions about things from three months ago You know with spring what we're doing is in context research and really breaking those research questions up into bite-sized pieces of just one or two questions at a time and really Spreading around all those different questions to thousands of different people and you know Carlos Maybe you you know try a product for the first time or you try it and don't come back And those are great contextual moments where we can ask maybe just one or two questions And it really allows the users to co-create and really help you shape an award-winning product and through in-context research And that's really what again what we're focused on and it really pioneered here at Sprig I like the term used to co-create because I think there's a lot of emphasis on oh We're going to ship something new we should do some research to validate if if users will want it or not And that's that's okay There's also a bunch of other users who are already in your product who are already interacting with it And I think it's also important to apply research to them to understand how you can make the existing product Better to not just bring on new users because at the end of the day as we think about growth Yes, it's important to acquire more, but it's also even more important to retain and provide value for people who are already inside Yes. Yeah, and that's one of the key, you know prior to starting Sprig I had used panels where you talked to hypothetical people and you put them in hypothetical situations and Carlos You could imagine maybe talking to an analyst and let's say they want to switch to you know product management Hypothetically and you did research with them You know you wonder how valuable that would be putting people in those hypothetical situations Where with Sprig, you know our very strong opinions on doing research with people who are actually in those situations And so, you know, let's connect you with people with Sprig in the marketing website You know in your marketing website, maybe if her product school check the people considering product school, you know in that moment right now Let's actually talk to those people and build relationships and ask them questions And so, you know, we see with Sprig Asking people in, you know, the actual situations that they're in and getting those really key Questions asked in front of them as opposed to the hypothetical which have I personally seen, you know steer people the wrong way And so definitely a big focus for us and our customers So Ryan give us an update For your company for the last year like last time we spoke It was a very different stage of your company and I saw a really awesome post and on your LinkedIn recently. So please give us an update It's yeah, thank you. It's been a fantastic 2021 for us. We started the year with 16 You know full-time employees and ended last year with 70 full-time folks and with around 20 to 30 contractors So around a hundred total on our headcount and then also looking at, you know, revenue We grew revenue a thousand percent, you know last year alone and we signed on some really great marquee customers dropbox loom Adobe shift and open door are the ones I can publicly mention. I wish I could mention a Many more, but we don't have unfortunately the logo rights for some really great customers that I Fortunately cannot mention today And then we won five, you know best place to work awards. So we're you know hiring across the board It's a thing that's interested in helping us really evolve and transform the research industry with courage you to apply on our website sprig.com And you know number one on product multiple times. And so that was also nice validation for just the market interest and really what we're working on as a company So let's talk about what's happening in the market because 2021 has been Incredible for a lot of other companies that are targeting product managers. Some of them went public Some of them grace grace amounts of funding you also close an amazing funding round So what do you think it's it's happening across the board for these type of companies We're definitely seeing research being more and more involved in the product development process And again, like, you know, 10 years ago 15 years ago It was just very informal. Maybe some product managers were conducting research But we're seeing a huge growth of research teams And so, you know, people are hiring researchers earlier in the company stages. They're also hiring more researchers They're also encouraging everyone to be involved in that research process designers product managers marketers to really ensure that they're shipping The best possible outcomes for customers And I think the main driver is the end user has far more choice and control than ever And I think product led growth is one of the key trends that's driving that And you talk about, you know, Slack is one of the fastest growing companies and Twilio and Datadog And they're all employing product led growth But what that means that the end user has all the control in the buying process And so, you know, B2C research is becoming more and more critical and research teams are growing significantly within B2C Because there's just more companies, you know, maybe 10 years ago a user had a choice of five, you know Digital banks now there's going to be a hundred different digital banks that they can choose from But I think the more surprising trend is actually the increase in research for B2B companies And what we're seeing again with product led growth is that the buying decision is often made by the end user And so, you know, right now we're even looking at a task management solution for our engineering team Any engineers are the ones actually doing the research and trying the different vendors to see Which ones to choose it's not, you know, our head of engineering who's doing a few sales demos and making that decision And so a lot of B2B companies are now coming to us and saying, hey You know, we we really understand what's working and not working with the decision maker or the buyer with our software But we have hundreds or thousands of end users And they're ultimately making the decision of whether to renew With this vendor or not, you know, with this customer's software And so we're seeing this shift of research increasingly becoming critical for B2B And the product team is actually going out to the end users And actually oftentimes skipping the actual buyers and admins of those accounts Which has been a really interesting trend of how research is now becoming more pervasive In the enterprise and B2B space in addition to historically where it's been mostly run consumer spaces I agree. I've seen this shift in how business is done In many many different industries Based on what you said a product-led growth approach B2B mostly just really allowing the end user Make their own decision because they don't need an approval for that Like we're seeing a lot of these companies that are offering users It could be a free trial It could be even a free version of the product where they can get value They can invite others they can get to a point where they validate that this is good And by the time that bubbles up to actually the person who's supposed to try to sign the check It's just a no-brainer right because the adoption is there And and it's not that we're taking a big risk to sign a big contract and see if people use it Like people are using it the question is what are you going to do about it? Exactly and that's exactly what we're seeing and I think a surprise definitely and that's why we're seeing now And big influx of B2B companies coming to us and where we've been a part of their transformation So give me an example on how you are applying product-led growth for some of those big Enterprise clients who might not be you know like that going through digital transformation They're not like your typical high-tech companies who are really familiar with user research Yeah for us and how we're employing PLG Yes, please. Yeah. Yeah, so um We you know PLG has been critical for us strategy And we want to again just really proud of our product and want to get in the hands of our customers as soon as possible And so that's why today anyone can sign up for a free account They can try a sprig, you know on the room without talking to us And so, you know, that's where we've seen companies, you know fortune 500 You know, some of the fastest growing tech companies all the way down to very early stage startups all Signing up and try and sprig and really experiencing the value on their own And so it's been a part of our growth last year and something that we'll continue to focus on um into 2022 Yeah, and I I want to send a message of um Presurance for the sales folks out there. This doesn't mean that sales is disappearing by any means, right? It means that now There's an entry point for anybody to To to get value from a product directly You need to wait to schedule a demo or see a power point to see if this makes sense or not Ultimately, I I'm sure when when the deal is big enough requires a certain level of customization or anyway Sales team is important to to kind of push through the through the finish line But I think that seeing how the product can be part of that Growth channel how people can use it upfront before they commit to something. It's ultimately good for the user Yeah, and we're seeing the rise of sales assist as well So, you know, anyone can create that account sign up for the product But introducing sales as really someone to help support and answer those discussions And questions along the way and just be a resource as people evaluate Products on their own and so that's you know one area where we've really invested in is how can you really Have our product and our sales team actually work together to ensure that that individual Is able to have all the information that she needs to make a decision So at the beginning of the conversation we talked about how there's some No code tools that are allowing pms to bridge the gap with design with data with engineering Figma was an example for designers data analytics. There are so many examples So, how are you thinking about integrations and making sure that the data that you collect in your product is also easily accessible from other places That's definitely a focus for us in 2022 and last year we established partnerships with amplitude And so, you know, they wrote a fantastic blog post about us at the time. We were called user leap So if you're looking for you'll have to look up user leap and amplitude And did a webinar as well about how companies like open door have been able to really bring together The quantitative and qualitative insights to make better decisions and grow faster And so we did a webinar with a growth lead at open door about some really key insights that helped unlock growth For open door. And so that's accessible If you just google for that and you'll find that webinar and then product board as well Product boards have been a key partner for us and you know at sprig We're really focused on the research space and so we've been Establishing partnerships with other companies that product managers also use and those have been two that are from top of mind for us and Our zapp year integration that we launched last year that was Yeah on product time has been another key way to get all of the Sprig data into all the other tools that product managers use and that could be into a slack instance it could be Into you know, we've seen companies push data into data warehouses as well And what they're able to do is actually look at all their qualitative research data In conjunction with all the other data that they're collecting And so it's something that has been super powerful for our customers because they can pass the user ID and the event And attribute data all into sprig But then when they take the data out of sprig they they know those user IDs They know those emails. They know those events and attributes and timestamps of when that data was collected It's able to get the holistic data of the customer. It's not only the revenue data, but also the The qualitative data the analytics data and pull that all together And and so it's just been fun seeing our customers Take sprig's data Enrich all the other data sets as well And it's that's one of the main ways we've been helping product managers You know not have to do so much coding, you know with traditionally epis and other types of Manual integrations to stitch those data sets together and get a more complete picture of their customer base Yeah, those days are gone like I remember remember those days when we had to piggyback on like a photoshop And power points and like whatever tools, but there was in anything really built from scratch for for pms Now we're seeing an entire product is stuck out there That's allowing pms to really pick the best products for different use cases and that seems to be the the most popular approach where there there seems to be winners In research sprig is a really good example Or in design with figma you mentioned product board for road mapping or amplitude for analytics How all of these tools are making it easy to Integrate with with each other instead of trying to reinvent the wheel and and try to cover all kind of use cases And giving the pms the flexibility To pick what they think is best for each case and at the same time to have a unified view of the data So they can make decisions in an easy way Exactly, yeah, I think the more that you know other companies can forge those partnerships You know we're starting looking for those and if companies think they're the right partner for us Love to hear from them because you know in jobs to be done. You're never going to be the entire You know you're going to be the vendor to complete the entire job There's always the other vendors involved and so you know you you create more value by Building those relationships and then helping the end customer Ideally without any code like you said no code to really complete those outcomes and have that data shared across All the other workflows that someone might be using So if you think about the evolution of user research in terms of technology We went from maybe pen and paper and mystery shopping to some sort of surveys and user groups to now Pure technology that is visual that's allowing people to to see stuff without throwing a single line of code What is kind of the next big way for user research? That's a yeah, so we're obviously a huge believer in in context research And so we think that we're just scratching the surface and getting more and more of the research out of long email surveys and out of You know one hour Interviews that people also don't have time for and getting it more into you know bite-sized in context research experiments You know, hopefully everyone is listening is nodding their head that they would prefer to do You know a short async video question for one or two minutes instead of a one hour Interview and so I think we're just getting started with you know shifting Companies from this longer research that you know, can't really all people don't have time for And customers becoming less and less interested in to more in context, you know bite-sized research Where there's just a huge appetite from the end consumer and and customer to participate in And and so you know, I think that's really the the main focus for us and there's just so many different requests around You know now it's ar and vr headsets How can we actually integrate into those experiences and we have a lot of customers now that have apple tv apps And so integrating sprig into, you know the living room I feel like we're just getting started with you know collecting that research in the moment and something that Is going to take us a while to really accomplish Something that I I saw from your product was Opportunity to gather insights from open-ended questions Just pretty incredible because usually in service you want to put like close-ended questions So you can group information and come to conclusions. So when you mention ai and other technologies How are you able to kind of collect or merge information from people who are giving different answers on an open field? Definitely something that we've been working on since the very beginning of the company is our in-house developed artificial intelligence and so have an amazing team of Ai engineers now we have four folks building this and what it's able to do we had a customer actually Just uh last week they collected four thousand open tech responses in a single day And so many of our customers now at scale they're collecting 10,000 20,000 responses in a given week across their sprig Studies and what the ai is able to do is look through all the responses for a single question And it's able to group all those responses into themes Unique to that survey question And so, you know, it's going to be specific to the customer It'll be specific to the study to be specific to the study question We don't reuse any of the themes across our customers. It's all Custom and really developed by the ai looking through all the responses that, you know, we're collecting And it also does that for the voice and video data as well And so if you do an asynchronous interview and we've seen customers get hundreds of video responses and you know 20 different languages it's able to translate and Transcribe all the audio data Run that through the ai and then surface up the themes across all those responses And so technologically it's something that, you know, we haven't seen done before We're really proud and impressed with what we build and we're seeing so many new use cases from our customers of Having these conversations of voice and video With people around the world in different time zones in different languages And again connecting research in a way that, you know, we haven't seen done before but also Our customers. I've just really enjoyed for the first time really understanding that international audience So as we grab up this interview I want to go back to talk about you because I've known you even before you started this company and you've mentioned How much it's grown right so as a as a founder CEO product person How have you had to evolve to be able to stay to keep it up to continue innovating While also creating space for other leaders in your organization to shape your vision That's a great question And you know one of the biggest things I would say for any high growth startup Whether you're someone who's just joining as an individual contributor, you know in management or you know founder or CEO yourself is That growth mindset You know and Carlos, I think you're the first instructor at product school and you're now you're running a global organization, you know with You know, it's very well funded and it's on this rocket ship growth and I'm sure for you you had to really figure out, you know each step of the way from being an instructor to now, you know managing managers and leaders of instructors themselves and You know spring is no different in the early days I was designing and coding and you know building a product and then the second phase was really selling You know founder led sales and I never worked at a company with a sales person before And so selling a product to you know, high growth tech companies like square and dropbox You know, it's certainly something I had to learn, you know on the fly and no pressure your company You know fails if you can't figure it out Um and then now though we're 70 people and it's really thinking around, you know culture and You know making sure that everyone's you know doing their best work here at sprig and bringing out the right people And and so it's really that growth mindset if you're someone who you know Really enjoys figuring out new things and can really stay ahead of the company needs That's probably going to be the main limiting factor of your company's growth is You know as a CEO or founder or someone on the leadership team How quickly can you figure out the next phase of growth and that's certainly looking outside of you know your company? It could be podcasts or articles or advisors and mentors And so I'm just so focused on the learning, you know, I'm described as a hyper learner Um and that's I think really what's enabled the growth that we've seen at sprig And something that as we grow and cover new uncharted territory will become increasingly important For me to really think through Love that ryan and I can attest to that and and I love that attitude of like, okay This is what we need to figure out. I'm going to go and make it happen And I think it's also very important to realize when when it's enough when it's time to Delegate or hire so you can focus on that next big challenge and I've seen you do that kind of Time after time And and I like you talk about culture because I think that's one of those Underrated terms that sound very wishy-washy especially at the very beginning because the first employees know each other They're working from the same room Maybe and now as you are building a global organization with so many different perspectives in mind It's really important to capture those those insights and kind of drink our own champagne and make sure that people are feeling Productive happy and there's also room for them to to grow So thank you so much for your time ryan. It's it's always a pleasure to see you grow and I hope we can have you again At some point Happy to join any time. Thanks again for having me and yeah cross has been fun Seeing product school grow into what it is and really excited to continue uh following your journey Thank you