Rob Castaneda: Why trust, mindset, and brand matter more than size in partnerships

[00:00:44] Chip Rodgers: Hey everyone, Chip Rodgers. Welcome back to another episode of Inside Partnering. So I'm really excited to be joined today by Rob Castaneda. Rob, welcome.

[00:00:56] Rob Castaneda: Thanks mate. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:58] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Yeah. [00:01:00] Gosh, your background, you've been in technology for many years, and I think, you started going back now you're, based in Australia or you were based in, you were born in Australia. Australian. But then around 2008 you moved to the US part of that process, you had started a company founded a company called CustomWare in Australia and then moved to the US and maybe some branding rights issues push you to change the name to ServiceRocket, which is a fantastic name. And so since then, now you know you've company's grown to 250 employees. You're, you were partner of the year last year for Atlassian. And just a great partnering story.

[00:01:47] Chip Rodgers: So love to hear more about it and and look forward to.

[00:01:52] Rob Castaneda: Terrific. Yes, we won the co-sell Excellence award this earlier this year for Atlassian. I have that on the wall back [00:02:00] here. And have a copy of it in my bedside table 'cause it's something I treasure. But all jokes aside, it was a very meaningful thing for us because the evolution that the Atlassian partner program has had over the decades going from partner-led growth to enterprise co-selling and embracing those changes and just the recognitions being great for the team.

[00:02:22] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Congratulations. That's that is amazing. It means you're doing great work both for Atlassian and also for Atlassian customers.

[00:02:30] Rob Castaneda: Yeah I think I, I remember Mike Cannon-Brookes sitting as partner CEOs down and saying, look, if a customer is using a partner, they should buy more, they should be more successful with the product and they should get more out of it, right? To create more value. And and if they're not doing that then something is wrong with that equation.

[00:02:51] Rob Castaneda: And and, we really took those words to, to heart just as a, just as one part of the ecosystem. 'cause I think [00:03:00] over time when you have a long running. Ecosystem. You can get lazy, right? You can get a little bit, okay. Take a few things for granted. So it was a good a good wake up call for a lot of us to okay let's make sure we're adding value as Atlassian has transferred from being just product-led growth to having an enterprise co-sell and enterprise sales motion.

[00:03:21] Chip Rodgers: What's that transition been like? It's that's an interesting, I think it's a lot of companies are. Trying to figure out product led growth. These days because it's so powerful. But it's very difficult making the transition from enterprise to product led growth. That's really tough.

[00:03:36] Chip Rodgers: But what's the transition been from, Atlassian being initially really product led to now being more enterprise?

[00:03:44] Rob Castaneda: And they're having both, right? They're so both motions, work, work really well with each other. And I think it's I would say it's a lot better going from product led growth into enterprise than the other way around. It's very different in terms of the entire ecosystem needs to [00:04:00] think different and there are different roles involved.

[00:04:03] Rob Castaneda: And I guess the phrase what got you here won't get you there is the big one. And because a lot of things in a product-led growth set up, the partners do a lot of the work and a lot of the transaction flow goes through the partners. And so as a channel partner, you end up building a pretty nice recurring revenue base of resell. When you then move into enterprise and some of those accounts then transition that changes. And so you really have to challenge your teams and challenge yourselves to what value are we adding to this equation? And if it's just a procurement relationship, that's not gonna be good enough, like longer term. So I think there, there are some some folks have really adapted and I think it's been challenging for some who have been really good at transactional flow. Almost like product-led growth partners and then saying, great, now you have to think about the enterprise co-sell [00:05:00] motion and more strategic.

[00:05:01] Rob Castaneda: For us, we think about like multi quarter, multi-year roadmaps for our customers and how are we building their centers of excellence. Not just and maybe we don't even do the transaction. And so it's a very different skillset. It's been very challenging in a good way. I love the change in the business.

[00:05:18] Rob Castaneda: I think it's been challenging for others, maybe not in such a good way. 'cause it is a big change. But overall it's been very successful.

[00:05:25] Chip Rodgers: Yeah that's great. So tell us a little bit about your about ServiceRockets evolution, working with largely with with Atlassian, but really, helping, I think, you mentioned at the beginning you helped build some of the partner program for Atlassian.

[00:05:41] Rob Castaneda: Yeah we,

[00:05:42] Chip Rodgers: in the early

[00:05:42] Rob Castaneda: We, yeah, we've been. We've been very close since the beginning, since I think both companies were like 6, 4, 5, 6 people. And when they made the decision to not get into services and just purely focus on product and we were rolling out the product, then more and more work came our way to solve [00:06:00] problems.

[00:06:00] Rob Castaneda: And it was all driven by business challenge. So we, we did a lot of things as first, like we built the first training program for them. We built we actually ran that Atlassian support very early on. So we had one foot behind the firewall, one foot out in the market for a long time. Now we're exclusively we transition a lot of those things back internal and focus on the customers on the outside.

[00:06:23] Rob Castaneda: We built a lot of apps for their, marketplace and for their products. So I think there's been a lot of entrepreneurial fuel and opportunities to say, Hey, go and try something there and prove something out and add value, and then also see how it scales the the ecosystem, I guess how we all played in at the beginning.

[00:06:44] Rob Castaneda: And still to very recently, a lot of the original founders were first time business people and were customers or users of Atlassian and then said, oh great, I can sign up for the partner program. And so a lot of companies were born that way, which is an [00:07:00] interesting kind of open source way to build a partner program that users become the resellers and create companies.

[00:07:08] Rob Castaneda: And some of them are now worth a lot of money or have exited to private equity and taken their. Taking their spoils, which is which is good for them. And but we, very early on, we had a very open source type feel between all the partner founders. 'Cause that was our background. And so there, there definitely wasn't a culture of trying to go out there and win every deal.

[00:07:29] Rob Castaneda: It was like, Hey, let's, we're all wearing the same jersey. Whether it's Atlassian, whether and how do we partner on deals or help each other just make sure that Atlassian does well. 'cause if Atlassian does well, we all do well. And so we, we've been stewards of that and really trying to drive that culture in the partner program.

[00:07:49] Rob Castaneda: Always want to be doing more of that and representing and just encouraging, especially a lot of the smaller businesses that are coming up. That's the next wave of growth for the channel. At the [00:08:00] same time is how do we embrace the global sis and help enable them at areas that they don't have the detail, but also leveraging the fact that they have some coverage that, hey, we'll never get.

[00:08:11] Rob Castaneda: And how do you make those relationships non adversarial? And so that we're growing the whole ecosystem.

[00:08:18] Chip Rodgers: That's interesting. So tell me a little bit about that. How are you working with some of the SIs, GSIs, are you bringing people into, to a projects that are very more deeply, technical and getting into Atlassian technology? What's, how do you distribute the work to be done between what you're doing and what a GSI might be doing?

[00:08:42] Rob Castaneda: Yeah. For many of our customers they use the Atlassian platform. It's really their ERP for innovation. And so they're using the Atlassian tools to make their products, whether those be hardware software. And so it's very critical and it's a little bit unique because if [00:09:00] you are deploying CRMs or finance systems.

[00:09:03] Rob Castaneda: It's controlled, right? Okay, A CRM works a certain way. A marketing automation tool works a certain way. A finance system works a certain way, but the Atlassian platform, it's really a platform for how products are made. And over the last 20 years, there's been just as much innovation and how products are made them, the actual products that are made.

[00:09:22] Rob Castaneda: And so for many of these companies, they're also. They also have as many administrators of these systems and people configuring them internally as they have users, right? So it's almost like everyone can have the finance system and configure the chart of accounts, the way they want it and do that.

[00:09:39] Rob Castaneda: So especially in in the tech sector the innovation heavy areas then because we will roll up our sleeves and get into the detail and make sure that things. Working properly and especially in the large migration to cloud. There's just a lot of things that if they go wrong, they're just very expensive.

[00:09:57] Rob Castaneda: And and so there's a lot of risk [00:10:00] involved. And so we cover a lot of those details that the global SIs just, they just don't have the experience at that level of 20 years doing it. but by the same token we're happy to work with them and partner, and they do some really good work at the, it's the cutting edge of innovation and business and vision setting that I think sometimes is more difficult for a smaller company to, to handle.

[00:10:25] Chip Rodgers: Interesting. Yeah, so that makes sense. So GSI may be doing some of the transformation work or business consulting, some of the strategic consulting kinds of work. And when it's a point where they implementing some Atlassian technology, then they would bring you in to help

[00:10:46] Rob Castaneda: Yeah, some of them have to have some of their own capabilities, but just depends on how in depth and how challenging it is, whether they, whether the customer needs the deep expertise or whether it's high level type stuff. But with over 300,000 [00:11:00] customers, like there is a lot of, there's a lot of work to do not just the width of customers, but just the depth and the problems that people are solving with the Atlassian tool set and the system of work. There, there's really just an endless amount of ROI that you can generate. That so that's a big part of it for us is having the mindset that we can't do everything, but we want to do the best for the customer.

[00:11:26] Chip Rodgers: And you've done very well with that. You ,you have offices literally around the world.

[00:11:33] Rob Castaneda: Yeah. So here in Palo Alto's headquarters we moved the company up here, but yeah, Sydney, Santiago, Kuala Lumpur, London and a few other offices. Toronto and Singapore and Manila. Yeah, so it's been a really good journey. The Rocketeers as I, as we call ourselves, we've, we're all on board with what we're doing, but very blessed to to get to do what we do.

[00:11:54] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. That's terrific. Congrats on the, on, on the success. How have you what [00:12:00] was, what do you think was the what drove you all winning the the co-sell Partner of the

[00:12:06] Rob Castaneda: co-selling excellence. I, it's interesting because every year they have awards that you can apply for, and this one we didn't even know it existed. So I think internally they did some kind of voting mechanism and we didn't even know until we, we got the news. Which I,

[00:12:21] Chip Rodgers: even a better,

[00:12:22] Rob Castaneda: yeah, that's why I feel that's that's really cool because it's.

[00:12:26] Rob Castaneda: There was no influence campaign for us to Hey, we're gonna win this specific thing. And it was the first time they had this award. So I think the first thing to understand is that, as much as we are partners with Atlassian they're also our customer and our brand, which is, the rocket and ServiceRocket and what it represents.

[00:12:48] Rob Castaneda: Has to be something that, that their sales team and their go to market team want to associate with.

[00:12:56] Rob Castaneda: And I think a lot of channel partners forget that and they [00:13:00] get to a point where they think that it's a right to work in the space or we're so big that we, what are you gonna do? We're here we're, the customers come to us.

[00:13:09] Rob Castaneda: And so I think there's this underlying need from us. Or underlying vision or mindset that we have to earn every interaction and have to earn every every deal that we work on, even if it's an existing customer of ours, they're still buying the Atlassian platform, right?

[00:13:29] Rob Castaneda: So I think mindset is very big and we do a lot of work around customer service and the brand we've been working with organizations like the Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center about service and, 'cause we wanna be the Ritz-Carlton, not the Motel Six. And just like where you're positioning the brand and the brand is so important 'cause it's not just how you what, what swag you have or how you even then, represent that brand. But it's every touch. It's what do the customers feel? It's, [00:14:00] and the big one that I think a lot of companies miss out on is how do the employees feel? How do the Rocketeers feel for us?

[00:14:06] Rob Castaneda: And so every interaction, which is how are we treating them? Are we treating them like expendable resources that you can just scale up and scale down? Because how we treat them is then how they're gonna treat the customer. And it's the same thing. You go back to any hospitality business, if the employees are treated well, they're gonna treat the customer well.

[00:14:24] Rob Castaneda: If the they're not treated well, then. You're gonna get that haphazard piece. And and we see this time and time again where, customers will tell us that, Hey, everyone we interact with at ServiceRocket is quality.

[00:14:37] Rob Castaneda: And that's a great thing. And we're still founder led and we're still self-funded.

[00:14:42] Rob Castaneda: And I think one, once companies take on money or the founders exit or whatever, then what you're left with is a venture. And sometimes the bean counters get control of the venture 'cause they're the priority. And what happens to quality down the track is maybe the customers [00:15:00] aren't getting the level of service.

[00:15:02] Rob Castaneda: So what we think about is the level of service we provide. We want Atlassian to be damn proud of what we are doing with their customers

[00:15:10] Chip Rodgers: Yeah.

[00:15:11] Rob Castaneda: their customers. And it's our, it's a blessing to be able to do that, those projects and do that work. It's not a right that we have to do that, and so I think that mindset's really important.

[00:15:23] Chip Rodgers: And I love how you started off talking about how important it is, especially in co-sell, how important it is for the partner sales team, field teams to know, like your audience is not just your customer, your mutual customer, but it's also the, in the internal it's all the partner. Sales teams and the partner teams at Atlassian that

[00:15:49] Rob Castaneda: Yeah.

[00:15:50] Chip Rodgers: Hey, I've got this customer.

[00:15:52] Chip Rodgers: I wanna make sure that it's done i'm gonna bring in ServiceRocket 'cause I've had experience with them before.

[00:15:57] Rob Castaneda: The sales person, account manager, [00:16:00] they're putting their reputation on the line to make an introduction. They're putting their targets on the line, right? Because if things don't go well so they're placing a bet on us. We want that to be a safe bet and the underlying focus for us is not being the biggest or the fanciest, or the one with the most funding, or the most offices, or the most people, or the most whatever. We wanna focus on being the most reliable. And so that's like, how do we be the most reliable?

[00:16:30] Chip Rodgers: Which goes back to brand, right?

[00:16:31] Rob Castaneda: yeah, it's a it's living the brand promise and having the brand promise to start with.

[00:16:37] Rob Castaneda: And then making sure that how are we being the most reliable with with everything we're doing. And so I think referrals then become really important and become very powerful. So then you might get one sales rep or account manager, recommending you to another account manager recommending you to another account manager and and how that works.

[00:16:57] Rob Castaneda: But you're only as good as your last [00:17:00] job, so you gotta keep on your toes.

[00:17:01] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:03] Rob Castaneda: Yeah.

[00:17:04] Chip Rodgers: How much are as you said earlier. Atlassian is there's, there are a lot of capabilities. There's a lot of, it's an enterprise solution, right? It's something that, that you can really turn into, handle a lot of different capabilities and workflows and those kinds of things.

[00:17:22] Chip Rodgers: Are you, and I imagine you're getting very deeply into use cases and. Maybe some very unique kinds of things within a certain industry or whatever. Are you also creating IP as a part of that process, or are you co-innovating where you're saying,

[00:17:38] Rob Castaneda: Yeah.

[00:17:39] Chip Rodgers: You're talking to the product teams and saying, Hey, we're seeing a lot of this kind of come up.

[00:17:43] Chip Rodgers: Think about that. How does that dynamic work with Atlassian?

[00:17:47] Rob Castaneda: Yeah. I think previously the innovation was around apps and what we've been doing is a lot of innovation around code delivery and the environment that, that bill and the team at [00:18:00] Atlassian have set up for how to work together is. Is very rich and they listen. So we are doing innovation around code delivery.

[00:18:08] Rob Castaneda: And what does that mean? It means that we share a lot of what we see and we work with both product teams and services teams over there to give them insights. And we've built some really nice frameworks to help. Customers build confidence in what they've got. And and we share a lot of the learnings that we've got from there.

[00:18:29] Rob Castaneda: So my whole piece is there, there are so many you could, as a partner, you can take a mindset of I, I don't want to share my IP, it's mine and, it's my strategy. And it's ours is pretty much open source, right? We aim to be the most reliable. So we'll take anyone on in the ring.

[00:18:46] Rob Castaneda: We'll just aim to be the most reliable. And then from a IP perspective, we build a lot of stuff. We share it with the teams at Atlassian so they can see what we're doing and where we're going. And I think you have to build trust. If [00:19:00] there's no trust, then you're gonna start competing for the same things for power and control.

[00:19:06] Rob Castaneda: And I think from our side, it's Hey, this is what we're doing. We're gonna be the most reliable and we're gonna move quick. So if you want to replicate what we're doing, go ahead. But you might wanna just put your energy somewhere else, right? Where you might get a bigger return from it.

[00:19:23] Rob Castaneda: So I think there's a lot of opportunity. I think right now I would say we, we have backed off trying to make public apps. Because the platforms are changing, the human computer interface is changing to AI and voice and other things. And I think if you are a partner trying to build bespoke apps and solutions it's all power to you.

[00:19:46] Rob Castaneda: But I can't work out how to how to pitch to my board that we should be doing it.

[00:19:51] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Yeah. How do you mentioned earlier that the, this, the whole product development. [00:20:00] Process has changed so much over the years. Tell me more about that and how has that affected both Atlassian and your services business?

[00:20:13] Rob Castaneda: Yeah. I think early on. It was bug tracking, issue tracking, and that was, that's a predominantly engineering thing on a PC under the desk. And the pattern we identified there was, there were other teams inside of the company that wanted to do what that smart engineer was doing. So we would train, we would not train the early adopter.

[00:20:34] Rob Castaneda: We would trade the next people to copy what that person was doing and spread that. And I think we looked to tech. Then we see that spread through other areas of the business where it be it, and now there's business teams and, deployments are in the cloud and there's a little bit more enterprise setup.

[00:20:50] Rob Castaneda: But ultimately now we're solving business problems, whether it be through Jira service management and service Desk, whether that be still the core [00:21:00] software development or now it's in enterprise strategy and planning and more higher level challenges. To solve. And so I think that this, if you're a company and you're running on the ICM platform to have other and your product business, then that's the core engine of the company.

[00:21:18] Rob Castaneda: So adding more things onto it is actually a lot more natural than trying to build product development software on top of a help desk or on top of, a CRM or something else. So it's the a big part we're doing. The piece which has been really unique for us is being able to work in Silicon Valley with some of the largest, or, the largest companies in the world, both in terms of scale, not just market cap, but just in everything they're doing.

[00:21:43] Rob Castaneda: And then be able to take those lessons to other cities and other countries around the world and those lessons, like when we go to Australia, there's just nothing of that scale. And and so we're able to partner very closely with organizations. And when they give us their metrics, we're like, yeah, that's we'll be okay, [00:22:00] right?

[00:22:00] Rob Castaneda: On that side. So I think it used to be probably an 18 month timeframe between innovation and Silicon Valley and Sydney, for example. Now that's a lot tighter, right? Sometimes may maybe a quarter or two. But in sheer scale it's still, nothing really beats what's happening in Silicon Valley, as

[00:22:18] Chip Rodgers: yeah. Speaking of which I think, you Rob are also very active here in the Bay Area and, with, advisory work. We are on Advisory council, customer councils and then the entrepreneurs Organization. Tell me a little bit about that. What's that?

[00:22:36] Rob Castaneda: So I've been a member of EO, the Entrepreneurs Organization and YPO for some time, I think, 15 and 10 years on respectively. And both of those organizations have been really key for me in learning especially EO in San Francisco great crew, but you to have a peer, a peer group who can help you with challenges and blind spots.

[00:22:58] Rob Castaneda: And I think [00:23:00] actually in building a partner program. The, the software platform is betting on us as a business and really they're betting on me. And so how I show up. How am I learning? How am I getting better as an entrepreneur and as a leader? And so organizations like EO have a really good impact in doing that.

[00:23:19] Rob Castaneda: And I encourage people who are building partner programs to make sure that the CEOs that run those companies, you're relying on them. So you wanna make sure they've got the right support and and the right coaching and and business skills around them. So seen many great companies.

[00:23:35] Rob Castaneda: Financially go off the rails. And that's a risk.

[00:23:37] Chip Rodgers: So you're helping entrepreneurs and founders

[00:23:42] Rob Castaneda: Yep.

[00:23:44] Chip Rodgers: going through that process. Is it like understanding, building products, hiring funding.

[00:23:51] Rob Castaneda: All the above. I think I. Through everything I've learned in eo and I exercise in eo and my EO is not tech centric. It can be [00:24:00] any business, but also within the Atlassian ecosystem. At the the second most recent conference I ran a session for all the newer partners that came into the ecosystem, and I was teaching them mindset and how I run our business and what we do.

[00:24:14] Rob Castaneda: And I was invited to run that session and it, some folks were ping me, like, why are you doing that? Why are you helping all them? I'm like, no, we have to build the ecosystem. It's not us against each other, it's us against all the other solutions that are out there, right? So we can't do all the work, right?

[00:24:29] Rob Castaneda: And so it's the mindset of just paying it forward and doing the right thing is how we conduct our business, and that's how we be the most reliable, right? That we're just trying to live the brand promise.

[00:24:40] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. Rob, this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you taking some time with us today and sharing your story. I know you're doing a half Ironman.

[00:24:53] Rob Castaneda: Oh yes. Sunday.

[00:24:55] Chip Rodgers: up. Good luck

[00:24:57] Rob Castaneda: my challenge. Yes.

[00:24:59] Chip Rodgers: that is I [00:25:00] admire you for, getting yourself ready to be able to do that.

[00:25:02] Chip Rodgers: So that's that's terrific. And then I think you're off on a world tour.

[00:25:07] Rob Castaneda: Yeah, good to get this in before I, I travel, I've got Sydney, then I'll be in Malaysia because we are celebrating 20 years of our office there in Southeast Asia which is a huge milestone. And when you're trying to build in these emerging markets, the longevity is really important for local customers.

[00:25:25] Rob Castaneda: And then from there I will go to the Atlassian conference, team conference in Barcelona, and then I'll, from there, I'll come back here. So it's a definitely, it is an around the world

[00:25:34] Chip Rodgers: It is almost literally.

[00:25:36] Rob Castaneda: how awesome is that? Like I get to do that.

[00:25:38] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. That's terrific.

[00:25:40] Rob Castaneda: It's all mindset. You could be like, I'm gonna be stuck in economy for so long.

[00:25:44] Rob Castaneda: It's okay. It's a blessing to be able to do it.

[00:25:46] Chip Rodgers: Yeah. That's fantastic. Rob, thank you again for joining and sharing your insights with ServiceRocket and congrats on the success and and really appreciate you taking some time with us.[00:26:00]

[00:26:00] Rob Castaneda: yeah, look forward to keeping in touch and if anyone wants to. Reach out for any questions. I'm happy to help.

[00:26:06] Chip Rodgers: Absolutely fantastic, and thank you all for joining another episode of Inside Partnering. I appreciate it. And and Rob, thanks and we'll see you again. See you again soon. Thanks everybody.

[00:26:16] Chip Rodgers: thank you.

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