Jessica Alexander: Inside the Playbook Behind CrowdStrike’s AWS Success

Jessica Alexander
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[00:00:00] Jessica Alexander: At CrowdStrike, very much our, one of my early allies internally was our finance team, right?

[00:00:06] Because they were leaning in oh wow, this transaction mechanism is really fast and it's reducing our daily sales outstanding. We initially leveraged our relationships with the finance team to really communicate the value to senior leadership. Hey we're doing business more cost effectively.

[00:00:22] Chip Rodgers: CrowdStrike was really an on-prem product, and so really didn't have the sort of idea or concept with AWS in that way. What were those early days like, making the transition, getting everybody bought into this thing.

[00:00:35] Jessica Alexander: It was a big lift

[00:00:36]

[00:00:40] Chip Rodgers: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Inside Partnering and we are here at it's day, what is it? Thursday day, whatever it is. It's exhausting, right?

[00:00:50] Jessica Alexander: I've lost count. I've lost count for sure.

[00:00:52] Chip Rodgers: Here at re:Invent and man, what a week. It's been fantastic. Awesome.

[00:00:56] Jessica Alexander: Yeah. So many exciting announcements and.

[00:00:59] Amazing events [00:01:00] and fun networking opportunities. It's been a great show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:04] Chip Rodgers: And I heard last year was 65,000 that it was going into it, it was like 65, 60 or 65 last night I heard. 88,000. Oh my.

[00:01:13] Jessica Alexander: Yeah. That's a lot of people. Yeah. But it doesn't feel that way this year for some reason. Yeah, I think they, it's pretty manageable.

[00:01:19] Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:01:20] Chip Rodgers: So anyway really excited to be joined by Jessica Alexander and, Jessica is CEO and founder of Skematic and very excited. So you just launched in August? August.

[00:01:34] Jessica Alexander: We started we founded the company in June. Yeah. Started writing the product in August and we launched our MVP here at Re Invent.

[00:01:41] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. That's fantastic. Congratulations.

[00:01:43] Jessica Alexander: Thank you. Yeah, it's exciting. Yeah. This is, it's a fun experience having, this is my ninth re:Invent, but my first re:Invent as a startup built on AWS and navigating the partner opportunities here, and it's just been a really exciting experience to be here at re:Invent.

[00:01:58] Yeah.

[00:01:59] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. [00:02:00] So that's very exciting. I also, just by way of introduction, 10 years at CrowdStrike, almost nine. Yeah, almost nine, yeah, nine years at CrowdStrike and Jessica, for anyone that doesn't know Jessica was, instrumental in really creating the whole AWS program for CrowdStrike, which was a huge huge transition for CrowdStrike at the time it was yes, but oh my gosh, like $2 billion in, marketplace transactions. That's a lot later. It's what a success story. Yes.

[00:02:27] Jessica Alexander: Yeah, I started in, gosh, 2016 and, CrowdStrike was established, but still, creating a new category of endpoint detection and response.

[00:02:37] A lot of players in the market, and we saw AWS as an opportunity to differentiate ourselves. We were a great AWS customer. We really wanted to get Amazon as a customer, and so the strategy was let's really lean into the opportunity to partner with AWS as an, as a, scaling ISV and then really work on the 360 relationship [00:03:00] and manage it that way.

[00:03:00] So my team manage the buy-froms, sell-through, sell-with. And I worked very closely with our internal engineering team that owned the EDP and the AWS spend. It really was a team sport. Yeah. Buy-in from the tippy top. George Kurtz was bought in from day one. Mm-hmm. And really having the CMO, the COO, CFO everybody very much aligned. Around the mission because it's a very important relationship that you wanna do. You wanna do it the right way. Yeah,

[00:03:30] Chip Rodgers: yeah. And in the early days, that was quite, it was quite a transition, right?

[00:03:34] Because CrowdStrike was really an on-prem product, and so really didn't have the sort of idea or concept with AWS in that way. What were those early days like, making the transition, getting everybody bought into this thing.

[00:03:48] Jessica Alexander: It was a big lift to, because obviously we were a SaaS that was built on AWS, right?

[00:03:53] But our product was deployed on prem endpoints, and so our buying persona was very different than the [00:04:00] traditional AWS customer, which is a CIO, a COO, right? Someone responsible for digital transformation. And so we initially launched our marketplace listing and built it and thought, oh, there's gonna be a whole bunch of people that are gonna show up to buy our product and

[00:04:17] Chip Rodgers: just put up a listing and it just happens. It's magic.

[00:04:20] Jessica Alexander: Yeah. And nobody showed up, so we realized we had some work to do. Yeah. And so it was a, probably a five year journey to really develop that flywheel internally of how do we do private offers? How do we scale marketplace transactions? It also required navigating our customers to figure out who owned the EDP.

[00:04:39] That was not a natural muscle we had internally. The EDP was in a different organization than our buyer. And our teams internally navigated that conversation of not only with AWS sellers, like, why would I sell CrowdStrike? But also with our customers and prospects to say, oh, I didn't know I could use my AWS [00:05:00] bill to buy CrowdStrike. Yeah. This is great. So it was very early days, we did a lot of evangelizing. So I ran a team of global specialists that evangelized AWS, they knew how to speak AWS, they had their professional certifications. And so we, and I'll take a little credit, I think we wrote one of the first playbooks on how do you go to market with AWS and how do you manage a relationship with Amazon from a, holistic perspective that. Where everybody is winning the game together.

[00:05:29] Chip Rodgers: And that's interesting because it is as you say, it's a team sport and it's a, it's something where, you know, as a, and our audiences a lot of, partner leaders, right? Yeah. Partner professionals. Partner leaders. And that's one of the challenges I think a lot of times is you can't just, you can't go it alone and you really it's just something that you need to get out into the whole organization. You have to have the sales team and product and everybody speaking the same language and getting excited about it.

[00:05:56] Jessica Alexander: Yeah, absolutely. And initially I think we think of [00:06:00] partnerships and we think who we're partnering with externally, but I really look at the key to success is how you partner internally, right?

[00:06:06] How are you partnering with product, finance, sales, marketing, and a lot of times the AWS relationship falls into the alliance organization. But they don't necessarily have the influence to change a product roadmap, deliver technical integrations, tweak the roadmap or deliver new marketing messaging.

[00:06:25] So what we're trying to do with Skematic is really very much earlier on in a ISVs journey, is bring that executive team together to say, let's, is this something you should do? Are you ready to do it right? Are you aligned to do it? Is it, do you have an AWS customer? Is there an AWS seller segment that you're, you should approach?

[00:06:45] And then what is that story? What is your better together story? What is your message that you want? That's we will connect with an AWS customer because I think ultimately AWS has all these amazing resources and programs and funding that are [00:07:00] available. But they obviously don't know a software company's business as well as the software company does.

[00:07:05] So it, there's this shared responsibility of. The software company being like, okay, I know where my customer is, I know what the messaging needs to be, so I'm gonna deploy it into these AWS programs. But that's super complex. So we're hoping to simplify that with Skematic and really help ISVs navigate that process a lot faster, a lot earlier with less resources.

[00:07:26] Chip Rodgers: It's not simple. It's not it's non-trivial. But it's also that the messaging that you're delivering internally to AWS is similar to what you're saying to customers, but it's different.

[00:07:39] Jessica Alexander: It's different. Yeah. I call it the AWS wrapper. Yeah. And so we work really hard on figuring out what does that wrapper look like.

[00:07:45] Yeah. Because if the wrapper isn't right, then you're. Not gonna sell any products. And it requires internal collaboration. You have to have agreement from product and marketing. Even marketplace really at CrowdStrike, very much our, [00:08:00] one of my early allies internally was our finance team, right?

[00:08:03] Because they were leaning in oh wow, this transaction mechanism is really fast and it's reducing our daily sales outstanding. We initially leveraged our relationships with the finance team to really communicate the value to senior leadership. Hey we're doing business more cost effectively.

[00:08:19] Yeah.

[00:08:20] Chip Rodgers: I love that. It's so interesting because I was talking to John Brule from FloQast who has partnerships with Flow Cast, and he said, I have trained our sales team to connect with the procurement team because. As soon as the procurement team finds out that you're transactable on AWS marketplace, they're like, oh yeah, let's do it.

[00:08:39] It's, so it's so really interesting that finance can really be your ally.

[00:08:43] Jessica Alexander: Yes. And there's lots of allies in the organization. It's really about figuring out how you can help them. And that's one challenge area. I see. In the way partnerships are structured today, especially internally at companies, a lot of times the alliance organization is measured on originated deals, [00:09:00] source deals, influence deals, right? So the foundational pieces of the partnership usually go un unacknowledged, uncompensated. And so alliance folks are usually put in this position where they're doing a lot of work and creating work for other people in the organization that goes unrecognized and unmeasured.

[00:09:18] So another thing we're doing with Skematic is pulling in how do we create metrics and performance goals for the team, right? So that you can build in. Not only work, but also reward for product and marketing and surface the level of work that's being done across the organization to deliver the partnership.

[00:09:36] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. I, so I, and I, you're touching on it already. I'm really excited to talk about Skematic. It's in my mind, it's like you're taking that nine years of experience and success with CrowdStrike, and everyone wants to, everyone looks at CrowdStrike oh, okay, I just wanna be a CrowdStrike.

[00:09:53] You're taking all that experience and then. Encapsulating it. And you've built a product that's AI based Yes. To help [00:10:00] ISVs do that.

[00:10:02] Jessica Alexander: Yeah. Yeah. We're built on Bedrock using Claude Sonnet initially And of course, of course, of course. And yeah, I would say that I took the nine years of learnings.

[00:10:11] It looks like success on the outside, right? There was a lot of learnings on the inside, and I think, most importantly I have a passion for startup companies. And during my years at CrowdStrike, I would advise startups on how to be the next CrowdStrike, right? Yeah. That's difficult to do and set expectations realistically that, initially there's a lift.

[00:10:32] Maybe your initial goal is to access credits to offset your bill, to build your product. Maybe it's initially MDF to do some marketing campaigns. So really understanding what your goals are from a revenue acceleration standpoint and then using the right programs, the right AWS programs to do that.

[00:10:53] Chip Rodgers: So interesting. The product is its software, but it's also services. Tell me a little bit about

[00:10:59] Jessica Alexander: Yeah, [00:11:00] sure. Yeah. Initially we're launching the product with three months of coaching. Just to make sure that we get the partnership pathways right and that we have agreement from the executive team that this is what we're gonna do, this is the timeline, and keep them on track. The goal is to, not have to have a coach and to really have the platform be prescriptive and personalized

[00:11:20] Chip Rodgers: Self-serve. Yeah.

[00:11:21] Jessica Alexander: Contextually aware of where the ISV is, where their AWS customer is, and then how to market to that AWS customer.

[00:11:28] And obviously how to create this idea of a team sport across the organization. And. And be an enablement and an education tool as well. So the a, there's two components to the AI. There's one that generates the pathways and the content and the analysis. And then there's a, chatting feature where you can talk to Skematic and ask them questions.

[00:11:47] Ask questions, yeah. And say, if based on where I am with my partnership, what should I be doing next year? Yeah. And it will come back with a list of goals and things that suggestions, and then put those into pathways.

[00:11:58] Chip Rodgers: I love that. That's it's [00:12:00] so cool because I, I think when I think of that, it's like the work that Jen Dawson used to do when she was with AWS and she hit, she would run these workshops and that's exactly what they were doing.

[00:12:12] It was a full day workshop and Hey, build your better together story. How, who are your influencers? What executive, all of this?

[00:12:18] Jessica Alexander: Yeah. And we wanna make it programmatic and accessible to more people. Jen's one person. I'm one person. So the idea is how do we scale this across thousands of software companies so that they have the same level of proficiency access to AWS programs.

[00:12:33] And so these, so we begin to utilize the opportunities that AWS can offer us.

[00:12:37] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. That's terrific. Maybe not a fair question 'cause you only launched in August, but how's it going?

[00:12:42] Jessica Alexander: Oh, I love it. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. I liken it too. You jump out of the airplane and. Didn't realize, oh gosh, I don't have a parachute, but I'm to the point now where I realize there's no bottom right.

[00:12:52] It's this experience where, you and I were discussing earlier how we get to be at a point in our careers, our lives where we're really [00:13:00] doing what we love doing. Yeah. And so I'm there, which is great. Yeah.

[00:13:04] Chip Rodgers: That's terrific. So what's next? What's next?

[00:13:08] Jessica Alexander: Yeah, we're gonna continue evolving the platform. Looking to do some more tighter integrations with AWS looking to provide a roll up portfolio view so you can get an idea of where all, where a larger segment of software companies or how they're performing and, just continuing to build and get customers on board.

[00:13:26] Chip Rodgers: That's great. What's been the reception with AWS?

[00:13:30] Jessica Alexander: They love it. Anything that can help software companies adopt their services and benefit from their programs is a win-win. Yeah. Yeah,

[00:13:39] Chip Rodgers: yeah. It basically, it's automating some of the things that they're, trying to do.

[00:13:43] Jessica Alexander: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:43] And it also provides, AWS has wonderful ecosystem of PDMs and PSRs. This extends that capacity to more people earlier, which I think is great. Yeah.

[00:13:55] Chip Rodgers: That's fantastic. Jessica, it's been really thank you for taking some time and [00:14:00] sharing what's your journey with CrowdStrike and, and where you are with Skematic. And congrats on all the success.

[00:14:06] Jessica Alexander: Thank you, Chip. It's nice to talk to you today. Yeah.

[00:14:08] Chip Rodgers: Likewise. Thank you Jessica, and thank you all for joining again. And we'll see you next time. Make sure to like, share and subscribe. Thanks everybody.

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