Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:21:20 · Alexa von Tobel, Brian Distelburger
[00:21:20] S2: In somewhat weird way, Brian, is Windmill almost like an agentic h r... C h r o? [00:21:28] S0: So so... Yeah. Let... So tying it into Windmill. So as Max was saying, we believe there's a missing sort of system of record at every company. As you think about that HR stack, there is the HRIS systems, which is where most of the dollars for HR teams go. And that's basically a list of all the humans, and they're like comp, Ben, and stuff like that. And then there is the bucket of performance management y, learning and development type of systems. And then there's the bigger bucket, which is a majority of a company's software spend or technology spend, which is all the different systems where people actually do their work. And the two are not connected. And so you have people doing their work in all these different systems, and then you have the system at the center of what's supposed to be the HR tech stack that is a dumb system. And what I mean by that is just it doesn't have the context from everywhere else. We believe, sitting in the middle, there needs to be what we're referring to as a context graph for people. That missing system that has the context from both places to truly understand the work that's being done in an organization and how people are contributing to the success of the organization. [00:22:47] S2: Max, what would you add to that?
00:22:47 · Alexa von Tobel, Max Shaw, Brian Distelburger
[00:22:47] S2: Max, what would you add to that? [00:22:49] S3: Yeah. I mean, I think there's, like, two kinda tests you can you can use to, like, figure out does... Doesn't the system exist? One is that I... It was personal for me a bunch of times at Yext is that someone moves from someone's other... A different team in the company to be reporting to you. And you wanna get up to speed on what's this person, what are they good at, what do they need help, how should I set them up for success, how do they like to work. And for anyone who's ever dealt with that, at best, you have a few Slack messages from their previous manager. Maybe you could read a few of their poor... Former performance reviews, but there's no place I can kind of like... Even just get up to speed. Right? It's on the previous manager's memory. Yep. Another kind of quick test is if you take your favorite agent, ChatGPT or Claude or whatever you wanna use and ask, hey. Who on my team should get a promotion? Just put that question in. Ask that question. You will not get a good response. At best, it might not even know who's on your team. At best, you'll get someone on your team, but it will... I guarantee it will not be accurate and will not be reflective of what the true reality is of the day [00:23:57] S0: to day.
00:23:57 · Brian Distelburger, Max Shaw, Alexa von Tobel
[00:23:57] S0: to day. [00:23:57] S3: And that's because... It's not because the models aren't smart smart enough. These models are really smart. It's because the context doesn't exist. There's not a place that is connecting and tying these different pieces together that is accessible to either managers or employees or to agents. And so that that basically makes it all fall fall down. [00:24:15] S2: Just because the traction is so significant so quickly, I I would love... And I actually think it's a relevant data point to how quickly the market is realizing that Windmill is something people need. Can you just give us a sense? And, you know, I remember when we invested, you had a wild number of customers already. What is... When you're selling this in, what does that look like right now? Why are people like, of course, I should get Windmill? [00:24:40] S0: It's honestly... It's like the easiest process I've ever been a part of in my career. [00:24:46] S2: Nobody
00:24:46 · Alexa von Tobel, Brian Distelburger
[00:24:46] S2: Nobody [00:24:49] S0: likes their current performance management process. Every HR leader, it's actually their most hated process. It's like once or twice a year, they have to run this giant thing across the company that everyone hates, and they view it as largely performative as well. And so, when you're able to show up with I honestly think our approach is not 10x better. I think it's 100x better. The hard work of what needs to happen during the performance review process has already been done by our agent, Windmill. He's collected all the information that's needed and can actually put a manager in a position where they can produce a really high quality performance review at a fraction of the price, which employees love. And that is the important thing. And as we're talking to people, they see that from the feedback we get from customers. 93% of employees at a company that participate in our performance review process that use Windmill say it is the best performance review process they've ever been a part of.
00:25:53 · Alexa von Tobel
[00:25:53] S2: By the way, that's really saying something. I can't just state the obvious. That is saying something. If we... So so so again, Brian, fastest selling product you've ever built. If we step back, and I know none of us can predict the future. I had on my podcast a few weeks ago, the founder of ChainGuard, who talked a little bit about just... He said something that really stuck with me, and it it actually is really relevant to Windmill. Basically, it was like, you're not getting rid of engineers. If an engineer was like a a factory worker, now what's happening is the factory worker is now becoming the factory manager and overseeing the entire factory and basically able to get a far bigger purview. I in many ways think that's analogous to where the world could be in five to ten years and and and you just said it's like if today at Max you manage seven people, the two pizza pies I you know that we all have heard in our careers. If you can't, you know, feed your team with two pizzas, you have too many people. You just said it's flattening, right? People are finding all these incredible ways, but that doesn't mean you can't like not have someone report into someone. So what it means is managers are actually getting more people and and more purview, more work, more complexity. So it's almost like you must have a platform like this because how in the hell are you going to manage greater complexity and more people better? In the future, And I'm just trying to get a sense. You guys are really at the bleeding edge of how the role of people will be in the world going forward. And I would just love to get a sense of some of your predictions because again, you're... You've thought about this a lot more than I had. We are gonna have companies with more revenue with fewer people. I think that feels kind of like the bed everyone's making, but those people are gonna, as a result, have way more complexity. So what do you see that's obvious from your perch about how the world is trending over the next decade?
00:28:03 · Brian Distelburger, Alexa von Tobel
[00:28:03] S0: So I think there's a lot of truth to that. Find the conversation around the number of people per company, think that's I clear. I think it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out. I do believe smaller teams will be able to accomplish more, but if you take things out to their maximum, there are going to be companies that know how to leverage those people in phenomenal ways that dramatically increase their value. And so, I don't know. We'll see if companies get smaller not. [00:28:36] S2: That's a hot take. They're like, you're not... And by the way, that makes sense. Maybe companies don't get, you know, the the one person trillion dollar company.