Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange, at the corner of wall and broad streets in New York city, you're inside the "ICE House". Our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange, on markets, leadership and vision in global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE, an indispensable institution for global growth for more than 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and seven clearing houses around the world. Now here's your host, Josh king, head of communications at Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
Welcome to the "ICE House". The past few weeks, we've seen a number of tech companies list on the New York stock exchange from Spotify to Zuora, Ceridian, and now Smartsheet. We've had the unique opportunity to play a small role in helping innovators unlock the power of the capital markets. When you think tech, your minds tend to wander to the rolling Hills of San Francisco and Silicon valley. In fact, there's an indelible hunger for entrepreneurism across the entire Pacific corridor from San Francisco to Vancouver. At the center of it all, figuratively and literally is Seattle from aircraft engineering innovations at Boeing to software and supply chain developments at Microsoft and Amazon. Tech is essentially building the city, cranes doting a city's skyline is a good judge of the city's growth. And Seattle has the most cranes out of any city in the U.S. Construction is as frenzied as ever.
Josh King:
The scale of the boom is phenomenal and it's due in part, the innovation that's happening right in Seattle and the surrounding area. You had that feeling today, watching the team at Smartsheet, at the podium of the NYSE as they rang the opening bell and root to their first trade, up as we record this episode, 22.47% to 1840 from their offering price. After the break we speak with Smartsheet, CFO, Jenny Ceran, and SVP of product Gene Farrell, about breaking through in the fastest growing software development area in the nation. Right after this.
Speaker 1:
"Inside the ICE House" is presented this week by ICE global index system or GIS. ICE's index families combine leading reference data, evaluated pricing and analytics along with a track record in index provisioning, spending 50 years to deliver unique cross asset and best in class index solutions.
Josh King:
Smartsheet is a cloud-based platform that promotes more efficient team collaboration, planning, and project management workflow. Launched in 2005, the company has quickly grown from 30 employees just five years ago to more than 600 employees today serving 650,000 paying users, 74,000 paying organizations, and 3 million collaborators. For those unfamiliar with cloud computing applications, if you've watched Netflix stated at a Hilton hotel or used HP or a Cisco product, you've touched on a company that uses Smartsheet solutions. Here with us in the ICE House, just from the floor, from their opening ring, Jenny Ceran, CFO, and Gene Farrell, SVP of Product at Smartsheet. This is Jennifer's second time bringing company public, Gene's first. We're going to jump right in and hear more about their experiences, hot off the IPO and the road show. Welcome Jennifer, Gene to the "ICE House".
Jennifer:
Thank you.
Gene:
Thanks for having us.
Josh King:
How do you feel up there today?
Gene:
Oh, it's exciting.
Josh King:
Take us through the day. I mean- -
Jennifer:
I mean, it's been a journey. So working up today was just another step in that journey the whole week, the last two weeks telling the Smartsheet story and having investors be really surprised at how we are transitioning work execution and making it just so much easier and so much more productive for all of us who we work so much these days. It's super helpful to have something that helps us manage our balance.
Gene:
Yeah. The last two weeks have been amazing experience. This is the first time through the sheet for me. And getting- -
Josh King:
Were you on the road trip toward itself?
Gene:
Yes. Yes. So we started just about two weeks ago here in New York. And we crossed the country, at New York, Boston out to San Francisco and that was week one and then came back and hit Denver, Chicago, LA week two.
Josh King:
Did you find yourself getting better as it went along or getting more tired?
Gene:
I would say that the experience went faster than I expected and I would tell you that the team as a whole we really Jenny, Mark and I, we've worked really closely together, but there's something about, talking to investors eight, nine, 10 times a day for a couple weeks that you really get good.
Josh King:
Did you feel yourself, Jenny being overhanded by the bankers, your team was, I think Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Jeffries and RBC?
Jennifer:
They gave us a lot of coaching up front and really, I don't think we needed all that much because as Gene said, we kind of fed off each other. We all have our particular areas of knowledge and strength. And when we maybe needed some extra help, someone jumped in, but the bankers were awesome. They are here to shepherd us through this entire process. Sometimes it's foreign to you. You're not really sure why you're doing what you're doing, but they've been great. I love all the bankers.
Josh King:
Gene, you told me down on the floor that the process of watching that search for price discovery, that took about an hour and 15 minutes, a lot more human and analog than your perception watching it on TV.
Gene:
Yeah. You've watched stocks open all the time on the exchanges and you just assume that computers have solved all this. And, obviously we come from tech and would assume that there'd be ways to do that, but it's still very much a manual and a judgment process to find that market. So it was fascinating.
Josh King:
You guys will think back for years on the two weeks that you were cooped up together on a plane going from city to city, what was the highlight and lowlight that the road show for you?
Jennifer:
I think one of the highlights besides talking with investors were the sneakers that our CEO gave us. So on Saturday in between week one and week two, Mark called us all up and he's like, "Hey, what's size shoes do you wear?" And I'm like eight. And he's like, okay. And then I had no idea what was happening. And then on Sunday night, when we got to LA getting ready to start the next week, he gave us all shoes to wear. And actually meant a lot. We'd been working out each day together. And so it just brought our team even closer together.
Gene:
Yeah. Mark didn't think our workout gear was colorful enough, so he made sure we were very colorful the second week.
Josh King:
Greg keeps saying best food on the tour.
Gene:
Boy, same case ideas, flying back from San Francisco to Seattle was pretty amazing.
Josh King:
Always getting back home is an important thing. Isn't it?
Gene:
Yeah, that was probably one of the funnest flies. I would tell you, we probably laughed more in these two weeks than I've laughed really long time. Just, a lot of fun things on the road to talk about.
Jennifer:
Can I mention another highlight of the trip?
Gene:
Sure.
Jennifer:
Because it was actually pretty unexpected. So Mark asked me about a week before we went out, if he could stop and visit, he had a meeting he wanted to take that was non IPO related in Boston. And I looked and I said, Mark, we're not going to have any timing from eight in the morning until, eight at night, you're super busy. He goes, Jenny, this is really important to me. And then he shared with me that one of our Boston based employees had come down with leukemia and was in the hospital and was actually having his stem cell transplant in Boston on the day we were there. So we made that, we made time, our last meeting of the day 4:30, Gene, Mark and I went over to see and visit him. And it was just really- -
Josh King:
In the hospital or in the other?
Jennifer:
In the hospital. He had just had his transplant that morning. He's doing really well, but he of course appreciated it. We were just so excited to see him, see that he's on the road to recovery. That was a really special time.
Josh King:
One of the things Mark said, right after the opening trade was what got you here was really all about the company's values. And if it doesn't start with values, what do you really have? And was that emblematic of what the company's like?
Gene:
Totally.
Jennifer:
Absolutely. One of our key values is supportive and, we look out for each other and that's a really huge thing.
Josh King:
Jennifer, the biggest star in the Ceran family, isn't you for today's IPO. I think it's your grand dog, Maddie for being featured in Glassdoor as part of its best places to work, focus on Cisco, your daughter's place of work. Are you proud of Maddie and your daughter?
Jennifer:
I'm very proud of my daughter and Maddie, my grand dog. Golden retriever, she sometimes, most golden retrievers like love you and cuddle, you are golden retriever. Grand dog is own person. So she's growing up now. We're looking forward to her, her not jumping into the pool every time. She jumps outside, we tell her don't go in the pool. And she does anyway.
Josh King:
Jennifer came to Smartsheet two years ago from Box. And before that Cisco, Gene, sort of well publicized shift from Amazon web services. What about those roles prepared you for what you're doing today at Smartsheet?
Jennifer:
What I brought with me from Box was a sense of working as a team. The excitement of this work execution technology that helps improve productivity and collaboration, helps you get work done faster. I think I brought those things and learnings of what it's like to transition from a private company to a public company.
Josh King:
Gene started at AWS making the move over to Smartsheet.
Gene:
Yeah. AWS was an amazing experience. Amazon's an incredible company with, world recognized, amazing leadership. And to get to spend five years in the fastest growing part of Amazon, and really be part of building and scaling that business I got to build new services. I got to see what management and hyper growth really requires. And I think that really prepared me to be able to come into Smartsheet and have an impact.
Josh King:
Your CEO, Mark Mader, I saw him for the first time in person, very compelling presence, obviously Ernston Young's, entrepreneur of the year in technology for the Pacific Northwest. Also, Geek Wires, CEO of the year. What's the about his style?
Gene:
Mark is a incredibly caring person. He cares deeply about his team and his family and that comes through in every interaction. And I think for me personally, I connected with Mark the first time we met and we actually met three years ago. And I think that he just does an amazing job of supporting his team, but also setting really high expectations and having a really clear vision of where he wants to take the company. And I think that combination of driven but supportive, I think really works well in that role.
Josh King:
Jenny, beside buying sneakers for you as a surprise, what are the things that he sort of curve balls that he throws that you don't expect from him?
Jennifer:
Well, I think he is a super awesome listener. And even though, my expectation is, he kind of already knows the answer. He rarely makes a decision without getting the input of everyone in his team. And sometimes he'll ask me opinions about non-finance related things. And so what I love about him is that he is a great listener and that I know that I can go to him for advice and help when I need it. It's safe to say, Hey, I'm not really sure about this. I'd love to get your input. And at other places, maybe that's not always the case. So- -
Josh King:
There's a lot of material on your website, great videos about what Smartsheet is. I want to hear a clip from one of them and on the backside, have you both described, what the product and the company's like?
Speaker 5:
Right now, whether you're a sales manager like me- -
Speaker 6:
A VP like me.
Speaker 7:
Or CIO like me. We all need to see real time information
Speaker 6:
And Smartsheet dashboards give us the insights we need to make better decisions faster.
Speaker 5:
My dashboard gives me a real time view of our sales pipeline so I can adjust my plans quickly to keep my team on target. I can see our critical metrics and drill down for the details I need and make data driven decisions like which prospects to focus on next.
Josh King:
Gene, your LinkedIn page says you're helping create the future of work at Smartsheet.
Gene:
And if you talk to our customers, when they tell you, I couldn't run my business without Smartsheet, I think we're having that impact. Smartsheet really is a different approach to building software. And by that, we do two things different than some of the other folks in tech. One is we're very focused on business users. The 90% of the population that doesn't write script know how to code, or write really complex formulas. When business users are able to configure their work in a way that makes them more efficient. Automate processes that are repetitive, that they spend a lot of time on, be able to build dashboards and reports and see in real time the status of work across all the different initiatives, they feel empowered and it helps them change how they do their jobs.
Josh King:
Jenny, for those who've never used Smartsheet before, what's the experience like I looked at these videos and, it is like your pilot, looking at a dashboard.
Jennifer:
It's an application that in kind of one consolidated capability allows you to do all sorts of different things. The dashboarding functionality is very cool. It's a different way to provide information to people on the project, or your senior leadership team in real time.
Josh King:
You walk into a client's office, you haven't sold them before. What's the biggest hurdle you find from their perspective client in their office? And how do you bridge that hurdle?
Gene:
That's the most amazing thing to me about Smartsheet is we don't make a cold call. We have over a hundred thousand users every month that come to our door, they find us online. They start a free trial. And so we engage them after they've already come to us, indicating that they're tired of the status quo. They want to work better. They want to do things differently. And so when they're coming to you, because they have a problem, it's much easier to then show them how our solution helps connect and solve their problem.
Josh King:
Dive into some you use cases for me.
Jennifer:
I can give you a few examples of Cisco. Cisco is one of our largest customers. And my daughter, actually, the one you mentioned with the dog, she works at Cisco in event marketing. And when I first got the call for Smartsheet, I was doing my own research. And I asked my daughter, if she'd ever heard of Smartsheet or tried Smartsheet. And she basically had her computer out and turned it around and says, mom, I use it all the time. She manages events globally at scale, Cisco does a lot of events for their customers. They power that on Smartsheet.
Josh King:
What will it tell them, like audience, RSVPs, confirmations, flow of the event?
Jennifer:
Basically, to manage an event, create an event, there's all sorts of things that have to happen. You've got internal constituents, you've got external third party vendors that are working with you. You've got executive leadership that needs to be at certain places at certain times, they manage all of that process through Smartsheet. And many of the folks in marketing work from home globally, they're distributed across the world. And so they keep the entire team working closely together.
Josh King:
I can't tell you the number of times being in somewhat of the same business that at different companies that I've been at or different events that I've been involved with, I get the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet trying to do that very thing. And, it drives me nuts trying to read it, trying to print it, trying to make some sense of it. You guys do it in this elegantly graphically beautiful fashion.
Gene:
Thanks. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's one of the things that differentiates us is that ease at which a business user can get started, configure their work, and then start managing it. And, to Jenny's example, we literally have over 2000 use cases, we've documented across almost every major customer type or industry. So whether, it's a pharmaceutical company managing their drug pipeline and the introduction of new vaccines in a market. MOD Pizza, was a customer we talk about a lot that is, Forbes, named them the fastest growing, fast casual restaurant chain in the company or in the country this year. And they use us to manage all of their new store openings. So managing hundreds of stores being built and opened every year. So it's really diverse in how we can serve customers.
Josh King:
Pivoting to where you guys call home, Seattle. It's attracting some of the nation's top talent and software development and engineering, but with so much competition with the big companies in the area, how do you guys attract and retain your talent?
Gene:
I think for us, it's a combination of things. One is that we have an amazing culture. Being voted best large company to work for in Seattle last year, by the Puget Sound Business Journal. We have great Glassdoor ratings people recommending to a friend. We really do create a great balance around culture, and people like to be associated with high growth companies where they can innovate and have an impact. And when you're our size, just over 800 employees that really make it happen every day, every new associate can come in and have an impact right away. And I think that's empowering for people.
Josh King:
What are you looking for when you sort of make the decision or put people through a tough interview process?
Jennifer:
So we look for people first that have the skills that will fit with the job that they're interviewing for, but also very importantly, culture fit. That's super important. And the process works that someone is referred into or they apply, and they start with our recruiting team, our recruiting team gets to know them, assesses whether or not they think they'd be a good candidate for the job, they come in and they do what we call a loop. And then they interview with probably up to 10 people.
Josh King:
In one day?
Jennifer:
It could be over the course of two days, but we try to get them to see a broad group of the team. It's not just beneficial for us, but it's beneficial for them because we want to make sure that- -
Josh King:
People in different levels of the company too.
Gene:
Yeah.
Josh King:
Seniority.
Jennifer:
All sorts of levels. We want to make sure they're successful. It's a two-way street here. And then based on that feedback, the hiring manager will make the decision on, who the best candidate is.
Gene:
I would say one of the things that I think is really unique about how Smartsheet does their candidate assessment process, is that on our loops, many times we will include not just the folks that are hiring that role, but the folks that will be peers of that role, as well as people that may report to that role. And so it's pretty unique to have a company where the employees get to interview the person that may be their manager.
Josh King:
You got 800 people in the shop. Does Mark try and interview most of the major hires, or even minor hires?
Gene:
I think if you look at our history, if Kara Hamilton was here and talking about the history with Smartsheet, she's our senior VP of people ops, she would say, not that long ago, Mark interviewed almost everyone, but now he limits it to just the most senior team or a final interview where we have someone that, the team's a little split on and they want to get kind of additional input.
Josh King:
I often hear and you guys are a global company that companies in Seattle mention that they're equidistant from Europe and Asia, as they're trying to do business. Is this a competitive advantage for companies like Smartsheet as you guys continue to grow?
Gene:
I think today, 75% of our business are just under that is north American, but we do business in 190 countries. So as we focus on expanding the success of momentum that we've had in north America to other parts of the world, we think it's going to be a huge advantage. Now, today, we're not just in Seattle though. We have operations in Boston, and in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Josh King:
And what does Scotland do for you?
Jennifer:
So Scotland, we acquired a company called Converse.ai. It's a chat bot company back in December. So they do engineering related activities. We're planning a tech operation center there as well, and potentially other, some support areas for Europe as we expand locally.
Josh King:
Our conversation with Jenny and Gene will continue after the break, as we get deeper into what they've done before coming to Smartsheet, and some of the products that Smartsheet is thinking about in the future.
Speaker 1:
GIS provides access to top level and constituent data for the complete universes of ICE bam or bond index and convertible index families. GIS has extensive functionality that allows you to view and download current and historical performance data and statistics. With the customization tools on the site, you can analyze relative value of individual bonds, sectors, and indices. Visit the ice.com/indices for more information.
Josh King:
Welcome back to the ICE House. On day one of Smartsheets IPO, we're joined by the company's CFO, Jenny Ceran, and its SVP of product development, Gene Farrell. So Jenny Gene, what happens at Smartsheet Engage 18, it's scheduled for October first to fourth, Bellevue Washington?
Gene:
Engage is our customer conference and we had our first one last year. And we had actually waited to have our first customer conference until we felt we had the right product features and functionality that we wanted to talk about with that particular group. And we had over 1200 folks, we were oversold. Come to Seattle and over a couple of days had just an amazing conference where we introduced a number of new, new pieces of capability or functionality, including our automated actions and a completely new map, completely revamped mobile experience. And the enthusiasm from our customers was absolutely amazing. And so we're going to plan to do that again this October. And we expect to double the size of attendance and we've already seen early strong demand for the conference.
Josh King:
Good opportunity to connect also with the companies that you integrate with like Salesforce. You really have seamless integration with a lot of these different platform companies.
Gene:
Absolutely. And last year, Kirk Debe from Microsoft was one of our keynote speakers on day one. He talked about how the integrations that we have between O365 and Smartsheet make both platforms better. And that's really part of our focus. When you're not one of the big caps, it's really important to be able to work seamlessly across all the other players. We don't really view the market as winner take all, how do we help them execute work in Smartsheet in a way that's seamless. And so it's, for example, our integrations today allow them to do things like attach an email to a row in a Smartsheet or action, a new item in Smartsheet from the context of their inbox or their messaging platform.
Josh King:
All these mid 21st century applications and processes involved with Smartsheet, Jenny, when you got out of Booth school of business at University of Chicago a while back, then into Sara Lee Corp. Pretty long stay there. How did that prepare you for the rest of your career?
Jennifer:
I got a lot of broad experience in different areas of finance. I started out doing corporate development, then I went into financial planning and analysis, and then I went into treasury and I had opportunity to work three years in the Netherlands. But when I got back from the Netherlands and I was thinking about what I wanted to do next, because at that time I aspired to be a treasurer of a big company. I put down three things on paper that I didn't have. And one was, I had been out of sight out of mind. So I was coming back to the U.S and needed to get to know the management team there.
Jennifer:
Again, I didn't understand much about 401k plans, so I needed that experience. And then the third thing was, I really felt that the internet was going to change how we worked, but I didn't know how the internet worked. And so I decided I needed to go work at a tech company, and that was the catalyst for me and ended up getting a call from a banker about an opportunity at Cisco back in Europe. And so I interviewed Cisco systems, and that's how I landed into the next phase of my career.
Josh King:
As you said, on a Smartsheet blog post, you're in the business now at Smartsheet of transforming the way individuals, teams, companies, and marketplaces operate. Could you imagine how things would change while you were slogging over a spreadsheet at Sara Lee?
Jennifer:
I can easily, easily tell you about that. And it was actually an experience at eBay. I was at eBay for 10 years as their treasurer, a couple of other jobs. And one of the jobs I had, we needed to get information to our CFO as quickly as possible. He was a very demanding person and he wanted things faster and faster, and I loved to execute and deliver. And so I went into the IT department and I said, Hey, I'd love to create my boss a dashboard. Of all of the key metrics he needs, rather than delivering it in PowerPoint or Excel or how I was doing it before.
Jennifer:
And of course we had a great IT team, but, they were a little strung up because one, they didn't have budget. They had a lot of demand. And so they said, "Jenny, do you have budget?" And I'll get in the line, because there's like a lot of people ahead of you and it's going to cost you like several hundred thousand dollars. And that was really discouraging because I knew if I had something like Smartsheet, it would've like made his life a lot easier and mine as well.
Josh King:
Three days into your job, two years ago, you marveled on that blog post, " I've only been here three days and have already been shared to more than a hundred Smartsheets and 50 sites or dashboards containing information on everything we do in real time with backup documentation linked to further learnings, that's quite an onboarding". How did that evolve? Did you feel overwhelmed by all those shares?
Jennifer:
Probably felt a little overwhelmed because the pace of information was so rapid, but it made me feel very confident as well because I was able to get up to speed much faster than any other company I'd been at/ I can track information, anything I want to know right now, how much cash is coming in, what procurement contracts are in the pipeline, how IT is performing relative to the number of people on the team. That's all in my CFO dashboard. So the CFO dashboard links to any other places that I want to be at.
Josh King:
Gene, you said at a recent conference and I'm quote, "Developers created spreadsheets for number crunching, not to manage collaborative projects, processes or reporting". Was that drawing a red line with the excel folks?
Gene:
That comment was really pointed to the fact that if you start from the premise of I'm going to build a platform to enable teams in organizations to execute sometimes across internal teams, sometimes across companies. If I start from that premise, but give them that familiar spreadsheet interface, that hundreds of millions of people use around the world, I think it would be a more effective tool than starting with primarily a financial or analysis tool. And then trying to adapt that to fit the collaborative use case.
Josh King:
Talking about formula's Gene, there may be no better expert at formulas. You spent a significant part of your career at Coca-Cola, and you were the man behind the Coca-Cola freestyle, a soda fountain innovation that contemporized soda dispensing. Here's a spot about the product.
Speaker 8:
Introducing the Coca-Cola freestyle app, a new way to customize your drink experience. Mix two or three drinks together, give it a name and share it with your friends. Then connect your phone to a Coca-Cola freestyle machine. Coca-Cola freestyle, changing how we drink.
Josh King:
Why did soda need contemporizing?
Gene:
I would tell you, I had a long career at the Coca-Cola company and I was really, really blessed the last six years. I got to found an internal startup that built the freestyle machine. And one of the things that we talk about at Smartsheet is working backwards from the customer and that's exactly what we did at Coke. And when you look at where consumer demand had shifted over, Coca-Cola was invented in 1886. And in 1886, they had one brand and the fountain machine had one valve. So it worked pretty well. Fast forward to late, I call it 2006, 2007, 3000 brands, fountain machine had six valves. And so the company was really falling down and delivering against consumer demand. And so with consumer insights that we got from the market, we said there's a better way to do this.
Josh King:
Has freestyle continued to be a leader for Coke? How's it doing in your time since?
Gene:
Yeah, I think it continues to grow. It's a incredibly innovative platform. The company really put a huge commitment behind innovation and really delivering on consumer and customer taste. I don't know the exact view today, but last time I looked, I think they were in worth of 50,000 machines deployed around the world.
Josh King:
Did that experience looking at a blank sheet of paper or reverse engineering from what the customer said they wanted and how do you deliver Sprite with some weird tangerine flavor? Did that help you bring a host of Amazon's web services and also Smartsheet to market?
Gene:
Absolutely. Every experience you have in life shapes you or help helps you learn something one way or the other. For me, I had spent the first half of my career in sales, marketing general management roles. And that was the first foray I'd had into really leading and owning product development, and also building and running engineering teams. And so it was an incredibly challenging experience, but I learned and so much, and it gave me the confidence to then make the leap from soft drinks to software. And very, people I get asked all the time, you don't see a lot of career paths where you go from soda salesman to building cloud computing services. So, but yeah, it was a pretty transformative experience for me.
Josh King:
How has your experience in thinking about the customer journey for freestyle helped you at Smartsheet? People are buying their own tailored flavor of soda and now they have their tailored dashboard at Smartsheet.
Gene:
It all starts with the customer. And I would say that I've actually had a consistent experience from Coca-Cola to Amazon, and now Smartsheet, where to build the best products, you really have to understand your customers. And not just what they're asking for as far as a feature or functionality, but really what is the problem they're trying to solve. And then how do you build solutions to solve that problems? Because many times, the customer doesn't actually know the best way to get to the solution they need. They can just tell you where their pain is.
Gene:
And so at Smartsheet, over 90% of our customer product roadmap is driven by customer feedback and then figuring out how do we remove friction, make it easier for them to get started, automate things that get in the way. And our automations are a greatest example that came from an insight where we actually, it was a customer advocate that was super proud of what they were able to accomplish in Smartsheet, but they were going through a particular routine, hundreds of times a week. It was way better than emailing around documents, but it still, we saw way to make it even better. And automations eliminated the all that ever required to do those repetitive, sometimes very high value processes.
Josh King:
One thing Mark said after the opening bell rang and the first trade bell rang, he got on the internal webcast and he was asked, "What's your message back to employees at Smartsheet?" And he said, "We're out, let's celebrate today, come Monday, we're back to executing". Very much in his style, Jenny?
Jennifer:
Very much in his style. Yep.
Josh King:
This is not your first rodeo in the IPO world as we talked about earlier, how has it changed in those years between Box and Smartsheet?
Jennifer:
I don't think it's changed all that much. I think to Mark's point, focusing on execution, focusing on your customers, serving your employees, serving your customers, ultimately help shareholders. One of the things I love about being a public company is really getting that feedback from the market on how you're doing. I really enjoy the conversations I have with shareholders, both ones that own us and ones that are considering us, and ones that have recently sold. You learn a lot from them. And one of the things I think the Smartsheet team does, they go back to the whole thing we listen. It's really important to get feedback. And then it's important to take that feedback and improve whatever you need to improve and then execute. So that's what we're focused on.
Gene:
Jenny's underselling, what an incredible asset she was to us through this process, having gone through road show before market, this is the first time that he's been in the CEO role taking a company public. This is my first time through the process and to go in and meet with investors, whether you're in San Francisco or Chicago or New York or Baltimore, and they know Jenny, they remember her from her experiences at Box. And what was amazing is she's lived in all of those cities. So she connected so well. And I got to tell you that was just a huge asset in helping us connect with investors. And it gave us credibility when we told our story.
Josh King:
Are you- -
Jennifer:
Thank you Gene.
Josh King:
Jenny is the team ready for all of the demands of being a public company?
Jennifer:
We recreated a Smartsheet plan. So that was on the list, making sure that we had the systems that we needed to report, we're going to use Workiva. We're going to use the latest and greatest on that. We actually did a practice session on our Q4. We pretended that we were a public company and we had our board there to listen in. And so, we've done what we can to prepare ourselves. And we also know that we're human. We might make a mistake or two. We'll learn from it and we'll keep moving on.
Josh King:
As we wrap up our conversation, beyond Engage 18, you guys are working with two thirds of the Fortune 500. What's on tap for continued innovation in the solution space and reaching out to different companies in different locals?
Gene:
Yeah, we just came off two weeks talking to investors about the product platform we have today and the roadmap. And we're really excited about a lot of the years that we're innovating. Jenny mentioned Converse AI, the company we acquired in Edinburgh, and their technology around natural language based chat flows, we think has a real opportunity to enhance and improve how we support messaging and messaging platforms and enabling users to do lot more in Smartsheet, through natural language interactions. So you'll see investments and new capabilities launched in that space.
Gene:
I think you'll see us continue to invest in more complete solution capabilities for customers and moving to more package solutions that they can acquire on our platform that help them solve specific use cases, whether that be client onboarding, M and A Integration, IT PMO, retail store operations. We've literally dozens of these that we're really starting to see strong demand signal around expertise that we've developed based on working with customers. So I think you'll see us continue to innovate there and then we'll continue to innovate in our core capabilities. And we've launched a lot of new capabilities this year, improved our user experience, and you'll see us continue to invest based on the demand signal we hear from customers.
Josh King:
Jenny, you've seen a lot of your investors over the last few days. What'll be the ongoing rhythm of keeping those who've made the bet Smartsheet, SMAR, a breast of what's going on, as time rolls on?
Jennifer:
Yeah, so actually we finish up our Q1 on April 30th. So I think Monday, so we're going to be in a quiet period now for the next five or six weeks preparing for our first quarterly report. So the cadence will be to continue you to communicate with transparency, how we did, how we performed, what our plans are for the coming quarters will provide guidance like most other companies do. Then when we have open periods, we'll be communicating through conferences. One-on-ones with investors. We have an IR department. And one of the things that I really think is important in being a public company is to communicate clearly so that people understand what's going on.
Josh King:
Good luck, the rest of the way, enjoy the rest of this day. Hope you can take sometime off this weekend, maybe wear your sneakers around and get a little more exercise in. Thanks so much, Jenny, Gene for joining us in the ICE House.
Jennifer:
Thank you.
Gene:
Thanks for having us.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guests were Jenny Ceran, CFO of Smartsheet and Gene Farrell, SVP of product. If you like, what you heard, please rate us on iTunes. So other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a question or a comment, you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at ICE House, at the ice.com or tweet at us at NYSE. Our show was produced as it always is with excellence in precision, by Pete Ash, Lizette Quang, and Ian Wolf with production assistance from Ken Abel and Steven Portner. I'm Josh king, your host signing off from the library of the New York stock exchange. I'm headed down to the floor to check the ticker one more time to see how SMAR is doing. I'm told it priced at 15, it opened at 1840 and its last cross was 1845. I'm going to go see what's going on down the floor. Thanks for joining us and see you. Next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates, make any representations or warranties express or implied as say the accuracy or completeness of this information and do not sponsor approve or endorse any of the content hearing, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing here in constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation, or an offer to buy any security or recommendation of any security or trading practice.
