What has been your business/work highlight of 2024 so far?

Who is your business hero and why?

Warren Buffet. His success is obvious, however I admire how he carries himself. His calmness and wise counsel on dealings with the ups and downs of life or business is a never-ending lesson. And it also leads directly to treating people the way I would be expected to be treated which is another hallmark of Buffet.

What’s the biggest business mistake you’ve made and what did you learn from it?

Achieving product/market fit and building an effective route to market are key components of businesses that are scaling, however, it always comes back to people. Not getting it right with people on the senior team is a regular and big mistake. It happens, so the key is to focus on working with the right people for our company’s ambition but who you can work it daily and help them meet their own goals in the process.

What’s the most inspirational book you’ve ever read and why?

The Snowball is a biography of Warren Buffet. The business side is an incredible story but Buffet’s approach to life and people is the real lesson. By sticking to his principals, not just in business, but also in his personal values, he has achieved great success and all those around him experienced the same for themselves.

What’s the biggest challenge you face in your role in 2024?

Our transactable apps on Marketplace are mainly being sold through scale partners including telcos such as AT&T and Calltower in the US, Microsoft Modern Work partners such as ANS in the UK, and distributors such as TDSynnex. Building out this GTM strategy takes time as different partners have different strategies and levers. This is a key focus and challenge for me along with our CCO in 2024 as the demand for apps through these challenges continues to grow.

What technology will have the greatest impact on your business this year and why?

Azure Open AI. Our Customer Engagement apps are all built on Azure and natively available in Teams, Dynamics 365, Salesforce, ServiceNow and shortly Hubspot. By being born on Azure, we use all the relevant Microsoft technologies within our apps and we have used Azure Open AI to create our own Customer Engagement Copilot that is available to any user on our apps. This includes service, sales, subject matter experts, middle and back office. We are rapidly introducing new features through Copilot Studio into the app based on customer feedback and demand. An example is a manufacturing customer in the US using our Teams app for all their service requirements. They have multiple customers in Latin America who use WhatsApp and prefer to converse in Spanish. We added real-time language translation in 180 languages across all the messaging channels in our apps using Azure Open AI which allows the customer’s staff to use English on WhatsApp and still converse with their Latam customers in Spanish.