 on the ground, presented by theCUBE. Hi everybody, this is Sam Cahane. Welcome to CUBE Conversations. We're here in Boston at the heart of the startup culture at Blue Connick's headquarters. Now, Blue Connick is a startup with a dream to transform the marketing tech stack. We're very lucky to have Corey Munchback here with us today. She's the VP of marketing here. Corey, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. So I've had a great opportunity to talk to you and learn a little bit about your role and what brought you to Blue Connick. Could you tell our audience that story? Sure, I'd be happy to. So I've been here for just over a year now. I joined from Forrester Research, based in Cambridge, so not too far up the river. I've been working in a couple different capacities as you might imagine at a startup. I started as our director of product marketing and now I run our whole marketing organization and dabble in a whole bunch of other things on any given day as well. But yeah, it's been kind of a wonderful ride over the last, I'd say, 15 months or so since I started. Definitely a big transition from a big global research company down to a very small, also global, but far more targeted type of company where there's only 30 of us and we're all wearing different hats, doing a lot of different things. And it's quite been an exciting ride to this point. Fantastic. I can relate. I used to work at IBM and I joined SiliconANGLE Media. So different times and wearing many different hats. And it's fun. It's a lot of fun. It's definitely fun. It's always exciting. I think one of the big things I talk about a lot with a startup is the intensity is so different that everything that happens here, good, bad, ugly, and otherwise, is just that much more intense by virtue of the fact that there's fewer people working more closely together. And that, actually, I love. It's certainly not for everybody, but it makes every day super awesome as far as I'm concerned. Because I get to know people better, learn things deeper, get more involved, and that suits me really well. Right. So the two things I really want to talk about today and that our audience is interested in is, first, you know, to learn about Blueconic, exciting new company, and then also to learn more about the startup culture here. And as you were saying, you get to know everybody at the company really well. I've heard you do something on Fridays. Yeah. That's very unique here. Could you tell us about that? Absolutely. So we call them building the dream sessions. So the backstory is that when I submitted my paperwork that said I was going to join the company, I got a text message from our CEO saying, you know, we got your papers, but hurry up and get here. We've got a dream to build. And I remember being completely, I was already excited, obviously, but totally blown away that that was sort of the mentality that the leader of the company had about what we were doing and what I was embarking on. And so when I got here, that really stuck with me and with something that I kind of wanted to carry on. So what we do on Fridays are what we call these building a dream sessions. And every week, a new member of the Blue Crew, as we call ourselves, gets up and talks for 20 to 30 minutes or so about themselves and where they came from and why they're here, how they came here, what they like about being part of the company. And it's funny, it started last year, but it's amazing how it sort of evolved on its own over the course of everyone who's been here, kind of walking through their presentation. And the way we've all gotten to know each other and obviously, again, you get to know each other well, you work next to each other in a small office every day. But when you start to see pictures of people's childhoods, for example, and they sort of bring those different dimensions in, it adds a whole other layer of kind of personal commitment and personal investment. I talk a lot about how important it is around here that we're in the early stages of a startup. It's hard work to be here. And it's so important that we all trust each other and you know that kind of the guy or the girl sitting next to you is someone that you could link arms with and go into battle with. And the Friday sessions are a great way of kind of making sure that you know that person to your left and your right a little bit better and that you build that confidence and that trust in each other so that you can kind of feel like, we've got a big world to take on and knowing that you've got that camaraderie and that faith in those people is huge. And so that's been, I think probably my favorite thing that we've done since I started is add those in and have that be a Friday session. Everyone grabs a beer or whatever, their drink of choice, we get snacks out and it's also a really just positive way to end the week every week. Not every day is awesome as you might imagine. I have to ask, what is your drink of choice on Fridays? I'm actually, I'll admit I'm more of a seltzer drinker on Fridays. I'm not a big drinker, but we have quite the array. We've got Dutch guys and then the American guys. So the array of drinks of choice is pretty extensive around here and our refrigerator is kind of a hodgepodge. The Cube should have come around Friday. Clearly, next time, we'll do a follow-up. Next time, of course. So your CEO texted you and said, we have a dream to build. So what is the dream? Can you tell me about Blue Connick, the whole vision for the company? Absolutely, sure. So what's cool about the dream is that we've got the company dream and then we've got everyone sort of individually underneath it kind of rowing in that direction. So we are, as we kind of covered, series A, early stage startup, but we actually, as a product, have been around for six years now. We spun out of a company that had been around for a dozen years before that. So we've got a lot of history in spite of also being very new, which is pretty cool. So the dream was to move Blue Connick as a product from the Netherlands to the United States. So part one of the dream so far, so good. Get investors here and build up a company and a product that really changes marketing for today's kind of modern marketer. And that looks at a lot of different sort of key challenges that the marketer has. And our ambition is to make sure that we're getting that message out there and making sure that marketers have those tools that they need to be better, be better prepared and quite frankly, better serve their consumers in what they're trying to do every day. Fantastic. So could you give us, for the viewers out there, to better understand the product? Could you help them understand where Blue Connick would come into the stack? Sure, absolutely. I don't know if it's helpful, but there's the Scott Brinker super graphic extraordinaire that you may or may not have seen, but there's a category in there called the customer data platform. That's where we sit. It's on the lower right of that graphic. So we are a small category. There's I think 12 or 13 vendors just in that little bucket. But our purpose is to help essentially take the data that exists about customers from the web, from your mobile app, from your email, from your CRM, wherever it exists, we collect some of it as well. Put it together in a profile that is data and technology agnostic. So you can actually shuttle all that data wherever it needs to go. So you can recognize those customers when they come to your website or when they interact with your email. That's really, really important. We talk about it's much more than personalization. It's knowing the ability to actually know who you are when you come back, even if you haven't told me who you are yet, and be able to tailor the experience, but also anticipate your needs, derive your intent, essentially let me kind of liken it actually a lot with a sort of when you're going on a date with someone. And theory, right? Every time you meet that person, every time you go on a date, you know more about them. You don't ignore what you learned the last time though, right? It's building up that knowledge, peddling that up to get that deeper relationship. That's essentially what we're doing for marketing. Fantastic. So you're both getting all this data about the person and then do you have the marketing campaigns yourself? Does that come from you reaching out to, you know, whoever you want to go on a date with? Sure. Are you pushing on those next steps? Are you using other software for that? Both. So we think it's really important to exist within the technology that a marketer already has. There's inordinate amounts of money being spent and resources that have been invested in whatever tools you already have. So we are what we call leave and layer. We have a published API that's really important to us that we can slot in where needed and fill in those gaps. But we also have some of those capabilities in-house as well. So as part of the platform, being able to change the website experience for example and do some of that personalization, trigger some of that stuff happening in other channels. So it's sort of we dial up, dial down what the marketer needs on top of that recognition capability. Cause every marketing stack is so unique and so different. We want to make sure that we fit appropriately with whatever the marketer has going on at that given moment and also probably may have in the future. You know, your company's growing quite a bit. The Boston Globe is using BluConnick, is that correct? Yes. And I know my friend from college just joined your team, Connor, very exciting. So my question for you is with all this growth, what troubles are you having? What are the problems you have to overcome? Sure, absolutely, great question. Yeah, the Boston Globe was one of our first customers in the U.S. and very fitting, given how important being in Boston is to us. So that was actually kind of a very cool and apropos first customer for us here in the U.S. side of things. We run into challenges all the time, right? So we compete with, we exist I should say, in large part because there's a lot of technology out there that is really hard for marketers to get to work together and get the value out of it that they should be. The flip side of that coin though is that there's a lot of technology out there and selling into that as an additional thing that they need. You need to really be clear and succinct and compelling in what value you're gonna deliver to get them to sign on board with you. So by virtue sort of of the challenge that we exist to solve, it's also a challenge that's presented to us in terms of communicating that solution out there. So I'd say that's kind of the biggest one is cutting through the very loud clutter of that landscape of whatever it is, 3,800 and counting, other solutions, many of which say they do things one way that maybe isn't actually what they do and we wanna be really clear about the value that we deliver and it's hard to necessarily always get that through when you've got so much competition and kind of other noise in the marketplace to deal with. It's tough. Yeah. So who would your perfect customer be? Is there a mold you look for? Is it a certain size company? Sure. Not just a perfect size company, we focus primarily on very transaction driven companies. So travel, hospitality, retail, publishing, places where there's a lot of interaction, you're trying to drive them to some sort of conversion, whatever that may be, a purchase, a sign up, whatever that conversion represents, that's really important. So that's sort of where we focus and be to see more generally is typically our sweet spot. But yeah, we're looking at trying to help these companies where the vast majority, for example, of the traffic to their websites, which is where the vast majority of their digital interactions happen, is happening by anonymous visitors. So folks that haven't given an email or raised their hand and registered in one way or another. So if the majority of your audience anywhere from 55 up to 97% of the folks coming to your site haven't told you anything about them, you still need to engage with them. They're still potentially really valuable, but a lot of folks can't do anything with that and we've solved that kind of problem. So that's a big area of need that in those industries in particular, we're particularly well suited to help them address. Yeah, I can see that directly. We have a research business and if so many people come to the website and looking around and I wish we could reach out to them, know exactly who we are, provide them with the research they're looking for. Exactly. So a tool like that could make, it would be a great fit for both sides. Absolutely, we should talk about it. After this? Absolutely. You got it. So I want to back up a little bit. You know, I just looked out the window and you know, we're on South Street in Boston. It's the new startup center of the city, I'd say. How have you seen the startup culture grow? Are we rivaling San Francisco now? Yeah, absolutely. As I said, so I was at Foresters in Cambridge before. So even before coming to Blueconic, the startup scene and Boston kind of innovation entrepreneurship was really important to me. I'm a Boston native. I went to Boston College. This is where my heart and soul is. This is your home turf. Yeah, exactly. That dirty water and I are just like this. So that is watching what's happened and changed even over the last just five, 10 years at most is pretty remarkable to look at that, to how we've seen not just the growth of the actual innovation district, that physical space and who's investing there and what kind of startups are going there, but also the diversity of them. So Boston has always had a really strong technology culture, particularly in health and pharmaceuticals given the hospitals, which is amazing. I think that will continue to be an important characteristic and pillar of the whole city and the economy. But what I'm excited about is companies like ours that you would typically find in Silicon Valley or elsewhere that are taking root here. We're finding peers here and really being able to sort of elevate Boston's profile for being a place that VCs should be looking at, that they're gonna get their money's worth when they invest with us. You have some of the smartest, most capable people in this city and in the surrounding area that we're finally kind of giving reason to stick around and make those contributions here as opposed to feeling like they can't be successful and they have to take their companies or go find roles at places outside of the city. So for me and sort of the generation just before or just after me that's sort of coming into this, I couldn't be happier about it and I think we're just gonna continue to see that grow and obviously I take it kind of personally to make sure that we are part of that development and part of that wave of growth that we've seen take off and hopefully you're gonna sustain and won't see Crest for quite a while. There's quite a bit, I just moved to South Boston and just this area is getting so much nicer and a big part of that I think is driven by the startup culture in the South End and over by South Station. No question. Cambridge as well. Yeah, you're just seeing it start to, like I said, there's so the Cambridge pocket of it, the innovation district and just watching, even in terms of rent and prices of buildings in the area, just that space is expanding, expanding because the demand is getting so high which certainly presents its own kind of challenges of where does that stop? We don't wanna price people out or anything but it's at least a great indicator that the demand is high and isn't slowing. So for now I'll take it as a good sign and certainly something that we need to be thinking about to make sure that we don't get too saturated here or anything like that and run the risk of losing people kind of on the other side because we don't have any room anymore. I think we're a ways away from that but it's so exciting to see for the time being. So you went to BC. I did. And there's so many great schools in the area which is driving this innovation. So do you pull a lot of your talent locally? Would you say? We've got a mix actually. Yeah, we've got a lot of folks locally and interestingly a lot of folks who, you know, if they didn't come here or aren't from here, they came to Boston because of this kind of thing. So two folks on my team, one is from New Jersey, one's from Michigan, but both moved to Boston because they knew the opportunity that was here and the types of jobs they could get here. So even if they aren't, like I said, from here originally or kind of already in the city when they were looking, the intention of being in a place like this across the board, that's what drew the folks here who weren't already. And like when we see the applications come in, that's time and time again, the type of profile that we're getting of someone who's new to the city or been here for a while and wants to get in on this type of atmosphere excitement type of project that we have going. And they probably want to watch Tom Brady as well, I would assume. I mean, I can't blame them. It's got to be part of it. Although they might have a problem with at least the first part of the season that things go as they seem to be. So yeah, we've got a lot of draws apart from how awesome our jobs are. Great. So we're running out of time here. I want to give you another chance to talk to the audience. I was thinking maybe leave us with a good success story. Sure. Yeah, we've got a couple already, which is great, given how young we are. We actually had a great article that published just the other day about one of our client's rain optics and some of the work that they're doing with us and the improvements they've seen and conversions that they've witnessed just in three or four months of working with Blueconic. And that sort of thing I'll tell you is probably the most validating, exciting part of working at a company like this is when you see all of it come together and customers coming back and being able to talk to a reporter or to you about the success that they've had. The Boston Globe is an obvious other case. We've written and talked about them and the type of work that they've done. But that's been so validating to see these companies, again, within a couple weeks, months of deploying the platform, already seeing results that they're excited to tell us about and want to know how they can do more. That's a huge testament to our customer success team, obviously, but for all of us here, this is what we're here to do and seeing that makes us feel good when we go home every day. Yeah, the dream's working. The dream is building the world. That's the plan. So if people are watching this website and they're interested, they want to learn more, how would they contact you? Sure, so they can go to blueconic.com. All that information is there and then my email is coraceory at blueconic.com and I love email. So feel free to drop me one, get in touch. I'd love to hear from you. You know, we love Twitter as well over at theCUBE. Do you have a Twitter? Of course I do. I'm at Karin James, this is my Twitter handle. So you can find me there. Fantastic. Well, I really appreciate it. This is a lot of fun for us. We got to learn a lot about Blueconic and talk about the startup culture here. So thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity. Absolutely. Cube Nation, thank you so much for watching. I'm Sam Cahane. We'll see you soon.