Ted Glasnow

We look at [the taxonomy of B2B marketplaces] in a couple of different ways. High-level, there are aggregators, managed marketplaces, channel marketplaces, vertical SaaS-enabled marketplaces, and then tech-enabled brokerages.

- Ben learned more from interviewing executive candidates than anything else 

I do think that bringing the marketplace functionality too early can be a burden on the company, especially one that's not capitalized well... offer something with high intrinsic value and low marginal cost, start getting customers hooked into that workflow, and then expand into other parts of the workflow that leave you well-positioned to launch a... See more

Our process, for example, is very resource light, we can put assets anywhere in the world, it can be close to the end source of demand or production. We're less reliant on a lot of the upstream inputs or agricultural processes, and that probably extends to a lot of these fermentation technologies.

You made a comment about the data warehouse. I think it's the ease and ability to access what I call “gold standard data.” You might say source of record, whatever it is. To me, this is the gold standard that everyone should be using. The ease of getting that data other places and then doing things with it is the value of the modern data stack.... See more

Another way to think about [expanding a company into an adjacent market] is, will this new offering contribute back to your growth function. Let's say that for a marketplace, growth is a function of GMV, take rate, frequency of orders, size of orders, AOV, all that stuff. The new product offering should have a neutral to positive impact on those... See more

Customer.io is mainly focused on serving SMBs and startups