Ep. 29- How Integrations Impact Your Pre-Sales and GTM Team with Cristina Flaschen, CEO of Pandium

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the High Performing Technical Leader podcast. I'm your host, Arvikarkanji. And as a reminder, we do record this podcast intentionally live and unedited with all of our guests.

Today I'm actually super excited to dig in. I'm joined by Christina Flash, who is the founder of Pandium. And honestly, I'm really excited to dig in and really talk about all the things. I know you've been in pre-sales for a while.

And obviously now you're running and founded your own company too. So with that being said, before I dig into your story, but welcome, Christina. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you for having me.

I'm stoked to talk to you. Love it. I'd love to just kick it off with your story a little bit. If you can tell us and the audience a little bit about how you pretty much ended up in this wonderful world of pre-sales, tech industry in general, you know, and then what led to your product now?

Yeah, yeah. So I've been in tech for a little over 20 years. Um my company does integration infrastructure. So uh B2B software has always been my thing.

But I started my tech career in sales way back uh in the early 2000s while I was in college working at a tech company that would now be considered a startup. But at the time it was just like we have bagels and beer and investors, but it was, you know, it was cluster building. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was it's funny looking back.

I'm like, this was definitely a startup, but it was not like called that at the time. Um, and I was still in college, so I was a BDR in the beginning and then moved onto the sales floor. And this was before uh audit, this was before uh the internet really kind of took off. So we were doing automated dialing, 80 calls a day, physical paper mailers that we were sending out.

So that was like its own uh its own kind of thing. And I did really well on um my first couple months on the sales floor. I was like the highest performing rep and all that. So kind of got the bug with tech from there.

Um, and then kind of fast forwarding through, you know, getting another tech job and starting to work in more technical roles. Um every position that I've had at a software company, I've been in a forward-facing, like customer-facing role. Um, I've not actually done officially been a salesperson since that original job way back in the day, except for here at Pandium, obviously, where I like run our sales org and do a lot of the sales and I'm very involved. But as someone who's reasonably technical and likes talking to customers and is solution-oriented, um, I've been sort of like a de facto sales engineer at like every job.

It's like, oh, we need someone who seems like they can talk to customers and also knows a little bit about technology and also is interested in solving problems, like Christina can do it. And so, um, although I don't think I've ever officially had that title, I have done that role at many companies that did not have that position. So that's sort of like being dragged in, like getting a, you know, a Skype message or whatever, like, hey, can you jump into conference room A? Because they're asking questions about blah, blah, blah, blah.

Um, and I love it. Like, that's like actually my favorite part of my my work. And we started this company as sort of as an extension of loving that type of work, which is like working on difficult problems that require some level of specialization was really like the foundation for founding the company. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

And um, I always think it's unique how, I mean, I know you said like you've never technically held held the pre-sales like title, but uh at the end of the day, you did a lot of the job that you know, pre-sales people do. And I always find it interesting how the journey to get here is like very different for like a variety of people. Sometimes they're teachers, sometimes you know, like yourself in sales, sometimes they're a technical background. And I love that the role is so diverse that you can come and it allows you to come from all these different backgrounds.

Um, one thing that you mentioned though is that for quite some time, obviously you spent customer facing technical roles, and it seemed like integration work kept finding you. Can you walk us a little bit through the journey of like how did you go from implementer in a way to like the person URC's lean on and when they needed to get a technical deal done? Yeah, yeah. That's I think like there's something like broken inside of me that I like these projects, and most companies don't have someone that likes these projects.

So um I started way back uh after sales position, I ended up doing ERP consulting. So working with like Fortune 100 companies to do a digital transformation from paper and pencil to the computer, wasn't even the cloud at that time. And integration work was like really difficult to do like on-prem to on-prem type stuff. And even though it's really difficult, it was in my experience, it's often given to the most junior person because nobody wants to work on it.

So I was consulting, very small consultancy, and brand new. Basically, I was like 22 years old and I was like, I can figure this out. And so they gave it to me. And that's sort of where I got the bug of like doing this integration work.

Um and at every company that I went to after that, there was like this need. There was always deals being lost because integrations, you know, weren't there, or there was a lot of questions. Again, like the sales, um, you know, the sales team would be like, Can we integrate to QuickBooks? Can we integrate to XYZ?

Like they're asking questions. I don't know what to say. And I just have experience and sort of like an affinity for that type of work. And so, like, I have found it and it has found me, but I think it's really more about the fact that this is such an acute problem at so many companies.

And it really, in my opinion, does this really nice sort of dovetail and combination of like really understanding a customer need and their pain point and this sort of technical uh background. So it's like unlike building like a brand new feature that's like greenfield, like we have a theory that a customer wants the blue button. Like the integration stuff has a lot of dependencies. And I think it takes a different kind of mindset to be good at that.

And again, most companies hate it. So, or most folks hate working on it. So the fact that I like working on it um also allowed me to maybe also like punch above my weight at some of these companies a little bit, like be like, yeah, I'll do it. And it's like they're like, Yeah, we're walking into like our first six-figure deal.

And I'm like, Yeah, put me on a plane, let's go. Like, just because no one else wanted to do it, you know. Yeah. Um, and that's always served me really well in my career, just being like, I don't know, let's give it a shot.

And if, you know, if someone really thought I they didn't want me in front of, you know, that potential customer or something, they would say no. But I think most of the time folks are just like, yeah, great. Like you want to do the thing no one else wants to do, and we think you can do it, like get on it, you know. Like, here's here's the here's the ticket.

Um, I don't know if that really answers your question, but that's like no, it does. No, I it's really cool because I always feel like even for my business, honestly, like in terms of like recruiting and pre-sale specifically as an ish, I found a gap that like most recruiting agencies didn't want to do because it was such a hard role to fill. And it seems like the same thing for you. It's like there's gaps in the market for things that people don't like, don't enjoy doing, but they have to get done because there's no other way around it.

And honestly, what's going to lead me to my next question? When we were speaking offline, you said that a lot of leaders view integrations as like just an ops problem, but what it really is is a revenue problem. Can you explain like a little bit more in depth what you mean with that? Yeah, I mean, look, like companies wouldn't build stuff unless it was going to make money, usually.

Like most companies, the goal at some point is to make money, right? And while it is, you know, your customer asking for that QuickBooks integration or your prospect asking for it, like sounds like, oh, it's just like a box we have to check. Increasingly over the last 10 years, it's like it's become table stakes in some industries for these things to exist. And if it's not, if it's table stakes and all your competitors have it, you're just losing deals because you don't have it.

If it's not yet to the point where every one of your competitors has QuickBooks, it will then become a differentiator for you, which can help close deals. And I don't have the stats in front of me, but there's all kinds of statistics around retention. Um, when it comes to integration, the number of apps that are installed affects like your NPS and your customer churn metrics. And it's pretty consistent that when they survey like B2B SaaS buyers, integration is in the top three considerations.

So, like even if your customer is not or your prospect is not telling you we didn't buy because of XYZ, they're just going to your website and looking for the logos or looking for the help docs. Like they're never even getting that far. So I think like all of this leads back to revenue, right? Like if it's trying to reduce churn, upsell opportunities, net new business.

And then there's this whole other sort of part of this of this uh exercise that's not about directly about the technical integration of moving data, it's about the partnership and ecosystem play that you can then have. Like having a large ecosystem of partners that refer you business, that you refer business, not only is like a lead gen tool just straight up, but it also signals like market maturity. Um, it signals that like you're a friendly player in the ecosystem and that you're innovative.

Like there's just all these sort of soft things that I think I will say also can be hard to measure, right? Like it's really hard to get attribution around like, did they buy because of the integration? Like probably not, maybe. But if you didn't have it, they're definitely not going to buy.

So that's that's like a very roundabout way of saying like why I think this is a revenue story. But really, at the end of the day, I always go back to like companies wouldn't do it if it wasn't related to revenue. Like, no one's doing this for the vibes. So the fact that like the most successful companies in the world have these massive ecosystems in terms of tech um says something about the value.

And honestly, from a consumer perspective, I know that when I'm evaluating certain software or certain things, I'm always looking at okay, where do they integrate with? Do I have what they have? Do I need to get a new whatever software because they only integrate with like one, two, three versus five, six, seven? Um, so that is very interesting.

You mentioned that. And I agree that although like I might not directly say, yeah, I didn't sign up with you because you didn't have this integration, it's definitely part of my decision making. Um, and I agree even more to the fact that you said that it is table stakes now. Like it's, I mean, if you don't have anything, it's gonna be really hard, like you're gonna lose customers.

Um, on that topic specifically, let's just assume that, like, for whatever reason, which would again would be really hard for me to think at this point, but if a company has zero integrations, how do you how do you feel like they should start? Like, what do I do to figure out what does my customer want or need, or how do I start implementing them? Yeah, honestly, I think like the cheapest way to do this is like assuming you're in a segment where you have competitors, is just to like go to your largest competitors or like a competitor that's sort of in a like that's a couple stages ahead of you.

Don't go to like your smallest competitor. Go to like the one that's just right right above you and see what they're doing, to be honest. Like you can survey your customers all day or your prospects all day long. You can like look in your Salesforce instance, you could, but like none of that really is going to be well captured.

You can listen to all the gong recordings where someone like mumbles about Salesforce, but like honest to God, I would just go to your competitors, go to don't go to their marketing site, go to their help docs and search for integration because the marketing site might have a thousand logos, but then it's all zapier. So go to the go to their help docs, type in integration and see what they have. And then that'll at least get you like directionally correct, right? Like maybe they have NetSuite integrations, but they sell to like a more um a higher ACV ICP, right?

Like they sell to bigger customers, you don't care about that. But that at least will start to give you like sort of a sense of the segments that they're looking at. And then maybe for you, instead of going with Net Suite, you're gonna go with like a down market ERP or you're gonna go with QuickBooks. You can also get a really good idea of the use cases that way too, right?

So you're not shooting in the dark around like, hey, let me ask my customer what they want. Like if you ask a customer what they want, you're gonna get a thousand different answers because those oftentimes those folks are also not technical, right? They're thinking about like what it could be. I'm a big, big fan.

If you have somebody in your industry that has already done the work, like just go look and see what they're doing. And like integrations are not like a place to get super creative, usually, honestly. Like you want it to be functional and operational. And like it can be snazzy.

I think there's definitely like ways to build better, more flexible integrations that hit more use cases. But like you don't need to get cute in the first couple of implementations of this stuff. Um secondarily, um, I would talk to your sales team and not like be like it has to be in our CRM and like we're gonna run a report because like we all know that folks don't like to enter in stuff in pick lists and stuff. I would literally go and like, if you have a sales team, have like a round table and be like, what are you guys hearing?

Like anecdotally, what are you guys hearing? Yeah and if you're a good product person or implementation or integration person, like you'll be able to derive patterns from that. Um, and then lastly, and I actually think this would be like the very last way that I would do this would be to look at it from the like big fish strategic perspective, which is like, oh, we're gonna go after NetSuite and like we're gonna become that partner. Like you can have that as a goal, but putting all of your eggs into that basket and all of your development effort for potentially months with some of those projects into that basket is can be very dangerous.

Like there are definitely like specific systems that, like, if you're an e-com, you need Shopify. Like, that's just what it is. That's the first one you're gonna do. You gotta do it.

But like outside of some of those like really big players, it's like it can be very tenuous to like really hitch your wagon to that one big complicated system. Um, so that was a very long three-part answer. No, that was actually really useful. And you said something that I really want to ask you a little bit more in depth about because it's a very good point.

You said, look into the help docs for integrations, not for the Zapier one. Explain to me the difference for a company, you know, like, well, is there any pros and cons to Zapier versus like what is a true integration? Because like you said, people might think like, oh, it integrates, but it really is just a Zapier connection. Yeah, yeah.

And let's let's be clear, Zapier, if you're if you're out there, like I love Zapier. I think it's an incredible company. Like they've built such a crazy market for integration. Um, but so if you go to like acmeico.

com and you click on like partners or integrations, there's probably going to be a page with like every logo known to man. And that could mean that all of those integrations are native and one click and all that stuff, or it could mean that they just know they need that for SEO and none of those integrations exist. Or it could be that they're listing every connector that Zapier has because you, as the user, can just go use Zapier if you want. But if you're thinking about like native integrations that can power like real ecosystems and real partnerships, those would be connections that either that company, AcmeCo, has built-in supports or the partner does.

And so the way that I would attack that, the the best way that I've found to determine what's real and what's not is to go to the help, the help docs. So, like, you know, docs.acmeco.com, type in integration.

And if you type in integration and it's one article about HubSpot from three years ago, and yet their website has 9,000 logos on it, like that's a clue, right? Maybe they have private help docs. I have no idea, but that's a clue about like how much of this is real, right? And if on the contrary, or in contrast, if you are a competitor and you're like doing this research and you go and you type in integration and they've got like 70 systems, really great docs, screenshots, they're linking out to partners, like that means that they're probably crushing it.

And like you should really be paying attention to that if this is an initiative that you guys think is important. And again, I'm not like here like poo-poo on Zapier. Like, I think I we always tell folks that work with us that like if you already have a Zap set up, like Zapier is supported, uh supports your system, like definitely keep it because they have like I don't even know how many thousands of support systems. Like you're never gonna natively build to that like CRM in New Zealand that has two users, like you should be in there, but like you're not gonna be building like a really well-integrated partnership with Intuit by you by sending your customers to Zapier.

Yeah. With that being said, tell us a little bit about like how that partnership works. Like if somebody decides to work with you, what does Pandium do? Like, how does it help integrate into these platforms?

Yeah, yeah. So without making it a Pandum commercial, um, so we work with uh like mid-market B2B SaaS companies who want to offer native integrations to their customers, typically um either at a really large scale or with uh more flexibility needs than something like uh either a Zapier or like a low-code thing can um can support. So our customers are building integrations that are like mission critical to their business. It's not like, oh, if a record happens, put it in Slack, which is important, but like maybe not like that important.

Our customers are syncing like tens of millions of records every single second and all day 365, and they require those records to be able to serve their customers. So like the resiliency, the uptime, the flexibility is something that um a lot of other types of tools can't support at a really large scale, right? So like hundreds or thousands of these, hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands of these connections running concurrently. So um what we've really in in relation to this conversation, what we've done is taken like our experience as individuals over, you know, before starting Pandum, and now our experience working with like, you know, companies, there's like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands actually of businesses using Pandum powered apps.

And like we've been able to see the patterns in the best way to design these things and like the best infrastructure and all that, and have productiz that so that if you're a company and maybe you have a handful of integrations, but like it's kind of a nightmare, they're breaking all the time, you don't have alerting, like you don't, it took was supposed to take two weeks, it took six months. Like we want to take that black box element and really reduce it so that you can say, like, yes, we are able to do this and we feel confident that once we build these, they're also going to be running when they're supposed to.

Yeah. Um, on that note, um, you mentioned, you know, like for example, like one if their integration takes like six months instead of two weeks. Is it because they're trying to build it internally, like a build versus buy type of thing? Or why do you see those frictions happening when integrations are not working properly or just take too long to implement?

Yeah, I think I think I may have mentioned this a little bit earlier, but there's there's actually like a lot of dependencies when it comes to building integrations because you're you have your own system that you know, yeah, but you're also interacting with it in like a different kind of way, typically. You're using like APIs that maybe do or don't exist and maybe have maybe have or have not worked well. And then you have another system, like that, and there are companies that will fake the funk and be like, you don't have to learn how you know QuickBooks works.

And I'm like, that's just not true. Like you're gonna have to learn at least a little bit as the product person or whatever about how that system works so that you can build the connection. And then in the middle, you have your customer, right? So it's like you've got to learn, you have you have your own system.

Hopefully, you know how that works. You have to learn a new system, and then you have to try to figure out what your customer is doing in the middle, and not even necessarily what your customer is doing, but what you think they should be doing, which is different than what they maybe are doing. So, like if you ask, as I think I mentioned, if you're like, what do you want to do? Like people will tell you crazy stuff, but like you have to formulate, in my opinion, an you have to formulate like your own opinion about how this thing should function.

And I think that's more challenging than like just building product. And yeah, I think that when when companies start scoping these things, they are like build a QuickBooks integration. Like they have API docs. I know how APIs work, I'll build the auth.

And like, bam, it'll take me a Saturday morning. And maybe the first like really janky version is done in a week, but then you set it out into the world with some beta customers, maybe, or you start to QA it and you realize that you can't like just stupid stuff, like data issues are are messing it up, or like you didn't realize that the docs were wrong for QuickBooks, which uh I love QuickBooks, actually, their docs are usually great, but um, there's just a lot of dependencies.

And so I think that makes the scope or makes the development time bleed out, and it always gets deprioritized because again, this is the type of thing where it's like not nearly as fun as building the new like chat bot using pod. So it's like, oh, if we have to pause something, this is what we're gonna pause, and then a new person picks it up. And like, I've just seen this the amount of companies that I have spoken to over the years here at Pandium, where we talked to them five years ago, and they're like, We're gonna build it in-house.

And I'm like, okay, cool. And then like I get an inbound demo request from somebody three, four years later, and I'm like, it's a different person. I'm like, how'd that uh how'd that NetSuite thing go? They're like, Oh yeah, we never even started it.

And I'm like, Yeah, I know. And like by the time, and I say this internally all the time, I'm like, these a lot of times these companies are spending like more time talking about building it than they could have just like you're spending more money having meetings talking about it, or even just meetings with us. I'm like some of these companies. I've had a dozen meetings with executives, and I'm like, this is already more expensive than it would have been to just build the thing.

Um, and I'm live now, but like that is like my hot take. For this is like, yeah, just go do it. Like and our goal at Pandum is to make it so that you don't have to have like an entire back-end engineering team to do this. You can like throw it to like a junior dev and like let them kind of noodle on it for like a week or two and then have something that you can then start to beta test and like just get that iteration process started so that it's not like, oh no, like we have a prod situation and like we have to pull the senior person that's working on this that hates it anyway and is you're looking for any reason to not work on it.

Um again, long answer to your question, but no, I love it. It's a conglomeration of things. Yeah. No, it's a very good point because especially in a startup, I mean, I I get it.

There's like so many things that go into it, right? Like sometimes it's financial, sometimes it's, you know, like you said, oh, AI is here. They'll probably help us do very do it very fast and easier and take it in-house without spending um the money. But at the end of the day, I think that a lot of companies, and I've been there too, underestimate how much work it takes.

And not only do you have to build it, like you said, but then you have to QA. Like, did it work? Or, you know, how do you manage it when it's not working? Figuring out the problems, and now all of a sudden you just opened up a whole can of worms that you didn't think was going to happen.

And it's true. I mean, as a startup, you do even like just picking on startups, but um, really in any company, you do have to prioritize and you can't be the best at everything, is what I usually like to go, even for my own self. But um, you have to prioritize product, you know, versus integrations, et cetera. So very fair points.

Yeah. Yeah, it'll say too. So like there's the like one end of like, I don't want to work on this, and so like I'm gonna make it as painful as possible. And then the flip side of that is if like you find someone who's like really into like back-end architecture, like instead of just building the integration, like using Pandum, so you don't have to do that, or just like getting it up, they're like trying to build a Pandium internally, they're like really overdoing it and like really like like I'm going to build an entire integration infrastructure platform to build our first QuickBooks integration.

I'm like, that is also not the way you want to go. Like, you could buy buy a Pandium if you like, but even if you don't want to do that, like you don't, there's like there's that nuance of like enough, but not too much. And I've also seen, like, we've gotten, you know, like talked to folks and seen like the architecture diagram that they've built for this integration. And I'm like, like, you literally are building what we have built over the course of five years to host like way more than you will ever need.

Yeah. Um, so funny. Yeah, I mean, this is like also selling software to software companies, right? Is like engineers are tinkerers and like there's that impulse that build versus buy.

Like on one hand, there's the people that really want to not, they don't want to buy, but they also don't want to build. And then on the all the way on the other end, it's like they don't want to buy and they want to build everything. Um, so striking that balance of for us is like we're gonna help you move faster and not have to do annoying things, is how we try to articulate it. Love that.

Um, since you've seen so much from your experience, what would you say are maybe some of the most like common integration blockers that either like pre-sales teams or go-to-market teams are having to navigate? And what does that really do to their ability to actually close deals? Oh man, I think I've sat in enough rooms, like literally in between the CTO and the CRO, where they're like arguing about roadmap versus lost deals, or like it's coming up on end a quarter, end a year.

They're like, we need to commit to this Net Suite thing, or we are not gonna hit our goal. And the CTO is like, I was promised we weren't gonna change the roadmap again. I'm not doing it. And so that's like above the salesperson.

I think like the salesperson, the frontline folks are just being told like yes or no. And the worst thing that happens all the time, in my opinion, is like that friction from the top results in the sales leadership just saying to the team, like, just say yes, and it doesn't matter, like I'll fight it on the other side. And like, if you don't have like maybe not a dedicated team, but like that's the worst that can happen, right? If it's like, hey, we sold this big deal, we can't re can't churn them.

Like the board says we absolutely cannot, we need to build this thing, and now the engineering and product team are pissed off because like they don't want to do it. So, like, I really I always advocate, and again, like I'm like the hammer and every integration problem is a nail to me, but I always yeah, I really very strongly think that there should be like one or two people at a company that are like responsible for this. And it doesn't even have to be like a like a full-time product manager and a full-time engineer, but it's like, hey, like there are going, or we're gonna rotate it, but like we're gonna we're gonna reserve allocation to do these projects because otherwise, again, like the sales team is gonna sell it and like the board is gonna tell them to sell it, and then it just creates more and more friction, and those customers get pissed off after it can't get up and running.

The sales team isn't getting the support that they need from product engineering, so they're promising things that are like not possible sometimes. It's really like a lot of this comes down to internal alignment. Um, the places that I have seen be the most successful, and this is also my bias because I have been this department at a number of companies and we work with these departments, is where there's like a platform team or something that like owns this, and like there they have roadmap, but also there's the ability to force rank.

If it's like it's you know two days before the end of the year, and like we've got to commit to getting this NetSuite thing done next quarter, there's you just have to jockey and figure out how to make that work. And like everyone is everyone just knows and no one is angry. Well, people might be angry, but it's part of the deal. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you know, for us from a technology perspective, like I want to make it so that when that happens, it's not like, oh my god, this is gonna be such a gigantic nightmare. At least some of it, some of the pain can be offloaded onto us. Um, I don't know if that answers your question, but like sales folks are in a really tough position when like, you know, when when the arguments are happening like from above, um, you know, there's also all kinds of other like strategic things, like have an integration roadmap, make sure it's published, actually deliver on it.

But like at the end of the day, if you're trying to close that six-figure end-of-year, end of quarter deal, like we all know that high growth, like top-line revenue growth is key in startups and in most tech companies. And like folks are gonna say whatever they have to say. That is true. I have an interesting question for you since you brought that up.

Do you see companies come to you, or maybe the rooms you've set in, come to you in like a proactive or reactive way when it comes to integrations? Because you know, they had their salesperson promise it and now they're like, Christina, I need it like tomorrow, or you know, we need this to happen, or is it more proactive? Um, it's not typically reactive, like in the moment, like, oh no, we need this thing. Our current, our customers that we have do that a lot, right?

Because they're already using Pandum and they're like, someone's like, I need the thing, and they're like, cool, we'll just go build it real easy. It's it's less we've definitely had that happen where actually like go-to-market teams, like the CRO, will just like buy Pandium and be like, I'm not even involving the engineering team. Like, we're just gonna pay for Pandium to just do this because they get so frustrated. That's a little less common, but that some of our longest running customers started that way.

Yeah, but I think it's more like the sort of uh the culmination of all of the requests. It's like at some point, it's like to go ahead and just use the word like shit, we just need to like do something. Like I'm tired of being asked about this. And like, yeah, you know, it's usually like the head of product or something that's like, hey, PM, like go see if there's a way that we can make this possible so that I don't have to have that argument again, honestly, is like sort of the way that I think about it.

Yeah. For companies that have partnership teams, like where they hire a human who's responsible for partnerships, it's a little more proactive because they know coming into that role, they're like, if I'm in charge of building technology partnerships, there is technology that needs to exist. So, in order for me to do my job and hit my KPIs and keep my job, I need to figure out this in advance. But when it's when it's like, you know, the product or technical leadership that comes in, I think it's usually just like we were just asked for the 15th time about this thing.

Like, I can't talk about it again. Let's just figure out a way to make it work. Yeah, that's fair. That's true.

Yeah, you brought that up. So I was like interesting to know what would that look like. Um, with that being said, I would love to shift your attention a little bit to like building and stealing technical teams. Um, and even when we spoke offline and backstage, we we talked a little bit about this, but you have a really strong perspective when it comes to hiring in tech.

And I know that especially in our line of work, most companies is specifically startups, they have very specific needs and wants about where they want their talent to come from. Where why do you think that is a thing in tech in general? Why do leaders or companies gravitate toward that type of hiring versus being more open? Oh man.

Well, I mean, I think it's sort of like that old adage like no one gets fired for choosing Microsoft, where it's like it's just the safe bet. And if like you hire someone that came out of Stanford or has a PhD from or an HB, you know, from Harvard, whatever business school, and they don't work out, it's like, well, how could I have known? Like there's like plausible deniability when you like really lean hard on the credentialism. Yeah.

And I think there's like hype is not the right word, but there's like an certain amount of clout, I feel like that comes with this. Like I've seen founders bragging about like, oh, we just hired our fourth person from or like our tenth person from Columbia. Now everyone on our team went to an Ivy. I'm like, okay, like what is what have you done for me lately?

Like I'm sort of like, like, that's fine. Yeah. But like, what's the output of that? You know, and like I think there's this, there is like an element of like sort of competitive nature, right?

Of like, if you can hire those people, like you must also be, like, your company must be more um valid than other people's. It must be more innovative. And like, I just don't think that's true. Like, I just truly don't.

There are definitely instances where like you want to have people with deep expertise. And I think that in some instances, that does like education can feed into that, right? Like, there are places where you do want people with PhDs, there are places where you want people that are MDs from great schools. If you're doing like biotech, there are a hundred percent there are reasons for this, but like your average, like you know, uh AI for dog walkers startup, like, do you really need MIT PhDs?

Like, maybe, but like maybe not. And like, even if you do, is that like a point of is that what you should be bragging about? Yeah, like and you know, we've hired folks from Ivy's, like for sure, like because they were great, a great fit and they performed great for us, and we've had these and you know, whatever. Um, but I also think there's just like so much value in looking outside of those cohorts.

Um and it's hard to I was talking to somebody, uh, someone else actually about this recently, and it's hard for me to like quantify because every team that I've hired for over the last like literally 20 plus years has kind of had that same sort of like not ethos, but like that same sort of diversity of like age and thought, not just diversity of like race and gender, but also all the other things, background and stuff. So I don't actually have a good like benchmark for what it would be like if I didn't hire like that.

But I can say that I think that they're very high performing and at come when I've worked at other companies, my teams have been seen as extremely high performing. Is it a result of that? I don't know, but it certainly is working. Um, and you know, again, if someone happened to go to Stanford, like that's great.

But if they went to community college, that's great too, as long as they're able to do the work, you know. Yeah, yeah. I agree. I think that at least what I've noticed in my experience when it comes to hiring from Ivy League backgrounds, they do have the tendency to be um more sought after.

So like if they join your company, the chances of other companies now poaching them is higher. So they do tend to leave more than like quote unquote typical backgrounds, which this kind of sounds bad the way I'm putting it. But um, so I do agree that like when you're hiring, like you said, if they end up being that they went to Stanford, great. But if they didn't, then they still fit every single other box, and that's also great as well.

Um, so I agree with that in the sense, I mean, um, for sure, there's times where they need to be more specialized than others. That's okay. The role requires it, you know, the company or the stage you're in. But other than that, I I've found that people without those backgrounds, they do also tend to stay longer at companies, which is obviously at the end of the day, company turnover it or having turnover in a company is really, really expensive.

I'm sure you've had that happen to you before. You just spend so much time training them, onboarding them, you know, eight, nine months later, they're like, oh, well, I got poached, they're offering offering me more, you know, now I'm working for so and so company. So for sure. Yeah.

And look, like I never, and I tell everybody at Pandame and all the places I've ever worked, advantage people, like if someone moves on to a different position because they're offering something that we can't offer or they think it's a a more exciting opportunity. Like I am always so happy for folks when they move to something that we like can't give them. Even if it's like, I want to go work for like a 4,000-person company. I'm like, great, like that's not us, but you should go do that.

Like, um, like as a leader, I feel like that's the best thing that I can see happen is that someone comes. Hopefully they don't stay for two months, hopefully they stay long enough to like, you know, have some impactful work, but they move on to do something that like we can't give them. Like that is amazing. Um, and I think our track record, my track record has been really good with that.

And like I've seen folks that work for me have started companies and like it's really cool to see they're like managing teams, they're working at like fang companies, and like that's great. Um, but to your point about like folks sticking around and like employee retention, we do a lot of hiring of like second career kind of folks, so folks that have like had a whole nother kind of job at some point um before going into tech. And I love that persona, like I love that background.

Um, if not, I think there's like so many reasons, like these are folks that have had jobs before, they like know how to like interact with humans, like all of that good stuff. And if you like had a whole career and you left it to go back to school or do a boot camp or self, you know, teach yourself to do to get into tech, like in my experience, like you really want it. Like that's like, or at least you really have an interest. Like you you actually have thought about this, and it's not just like, oh, being an engineer, I can get six figures out of undergrad.

Like, that's what I'm gonna do, which is like not even true anymore. But it's more like folks are like really genuinely interested um and very thoughtful, which I think has treated us really well. Um and I to your point about like retention, I think like it also helps with that. Like folks feel like they're being taken care of, they're happy with the work they're working on, they have a lot of pride in the things they're doing.

I hope like that's part of what I want folks to get out of working here. And um yeah, I think like the it helps minimize attrition, um, which is also good for everyone, maybe not good for you as a recruiter, but as long as they make it out of the the the window. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's funny.

Um, I will say though, like in on that end, what are some things? Because obviously, you know, not everybody maybe switching different industries could be a good fit for the tech industry. What are some things or skill set that you look for in their background to really kind of tell you, okay, yes, this person could work here, or I see them, you know, having that curiosity and passion to want to move forward? Oh man, that's a good question because there isn't like one specific thing.

Um when I like review resumes, if we're gonna start like all the way at the top, like I basically don't look at the bot like the education at all. Like I'm looking at the work experience. And I am a service industry girly from the very beginning. Like I was a managed fast food restaurants, I managed retail locations before I got into tech.

Um, like I love service industry folks. And so like when I see that someone has like managed a restaurant or something, or like, or managed like a CX department, I'm like right there. And that's just my personal bias. Um yeah.

But like really the it's hard to tell in a resume. So we sort of like, you know, as you know, if you like open a position, you get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. So we have to just like my co-founder and I just like each comb through them and then we compare and see like who are the people we want to do phone screens. But the phone screens are really where we get to like try to assess if people are curious, as you said.

I think like curiosity is sort of like the number one thing, like ability to communicate clearly, like all of that sort of stuff. Like the basics, yeah. Yeah, like I've interviewed people and I did a um an article with built-in where like I saw somebody using the AI like interview thing because they had glasses on and I could see the reflection. So, like, that's not good, like that type of stuff.

So stupid. Um, but like, you know, the basics, like, can you communicate? Did you show up to the interview on time? But it's really like kind of chatting about like, why do you want to do this type of work?

And like, what about this is interesting to you? And not even, I'm not even trying to do the like five-year goal thing because like who knows? Um another thing that we always ask is like, what is the best day of work look like to you? And maybe you're imagining that because this is your first tech job, and what's the worst day of work for you?

And like, what's a day where you wake up and you like are like, damn, today's gonna suck? And that the answers to that I think are really telling because I can tell if it's gonna align with like how we operate. Like, if someone says, like, oh, I'm in the middle of something and somebody messages me to like jump on a customer call or something, like that's a nightmare for me. I'm like, this is not gonna be a good fit for you because like that is a thing that will happen.

Um, or like I just want tickets and I want to be heads down and not be interrupted for two weeks, like, we're not gonna be a good fit for you. We try not to interrupt, but like, you know, trying to suss out, not necessarily if you're like gonna be a good engineer in life, but like, are you a good fit for how we operate? Um and then like brass tacks, like we have a coding exercise that Sean, my co-founder, and I have been using now across two companies for like 12 years or something.

It's basically the same. And everyone that we hire, like it's an in-person, virtual in-person, we don't do take homes. Um, everyone has to like perform on that. So, like, no matter how great we think you are as a human, like if you can't get at least part of that, like it's just not going to be a good fit.

Yeah, that's a really good point. I'll say something interesting on my end that I've learned the last few years, especially like on the pre-sale side. But um, a lot of people when we screen on our calls, they'll say, you know, well, I'm looking for like a work-life balance. And they used to be like a red flag right away, you know, and it's like, okay, well, this might not be it for you.

What we've learned is to really ask deeper on that question, like, tell me what work-life balance means for you. Because we've noticed that when people say work-life balance, they might not just mean like don't bother me after 5 p.m. They might just mean, well, on a Sunday, or like if I'm actually taking off, unless it's emergency, like I don't want to be bothered, or you know, things like that.

So it's like they're asking for really not a work-life balance, but just more basics, you know, that you would want from a company anyways. Um, so that's something interesting we learned too, because we used to flag those as like, okay, that's not gonna work without asking deeper questions. But the last two years we've been really honing in, okay, tell me what that means for you. And now we're saying, okay, so if a company did come back to you and say, like, hey, me to handle urgent customer need at 6 p.

m., you can do that. And they're like, Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's not what I'm talking about.

Um, so I thought that was something interesting to share because I haven't, I guess, mentioned that before. But yeah, it's been really important lately. It's like, don't be an abusive employer. Exactly.

Yeah. Like, which is so sad that it's like, and yeah, to be fair, if it's like after five, like we work till six, so like you're gonna have to be online. But like, yeah, no, I should not be like, no one should be slacking you at midnight and expecting a response unless it's something like very urgent, and you're on our engineering team and you're on pager duty. Like, yeah, I think the whole like nine nine six, like hustle culture, resurgence, like, yeah, has made people nervous.

And I understand why, because who wants to do that? As like, I'm the CEO of the company, like I'm like a nine nine seven because that's just what we have to do. Oh, but I really expect anybody else. Yeah, yeah, I yeah, 24.

I but I would not expect anybody else to have that level of commitment, even the company. It's like it's a job, right? Like, yeah, I don't know. I agree.

I definitely think there's some um, you know, and it's where the connotation from like the employee side comes in play, where it's like I don't want an abusive, you know, relationship with the owner or founder, etc. Um, and I something I try to live myself to, but if you're if you're the owner, you're expected to be 24 7, like you shouldn't expect them to. To respond to you at 10 p.m.

or you sending them a text message at 10 p.m. without some sort of like, you know, hey, don't respond now or it's not urgent, et cetera, or Slack, you know, whatever that looks like. But I always encourage at least my team to, you know, you're out of office or whatever, you know, make sure Slack is on mute.

If it's something urgent, I'll figure out a way to get to you. But outside of that, you know, you're not expected to respond to every question that I thought at the time. We shame people. If people are on PTO and they're in and they respond in Slack, we all all caps bye, bye, goodbye, goodbye, get out of here.

Like, you know, and again, like we do have we're an infrastructure product, like we have engineers on pager duty and like it's part of the job. Yeah, it's part of the job. And if something is urgent, I will say, like, so sorry to bother you, this is really urgent. Um, guess what, everybody?

If you didn't know, Slack has a scheduled send. So if you have like a 3 a.m. thought, you can schedule it to go out at 9 a.

m. You don't have to immediately bother your team, like and make them stressed out. Like, yes. Okay, good.

We're on the same page on that end. I wanted to shift over to our rapid fire section. Let's do it. Um, these are fast questions, but you don't have to answer them fast.

Obviously, you know, feel free to answer the best way um on your end. But number one, what is one tool you can't live without right now? So I'm gonna be contrarian and have it not be a tech tool. Um, I have an e-bike and I love it so much.

And it like makes me, I live in New York City, and love that. I think it is actually a work tool because it keeps me sane and the ability to like go to meetings in the city, like the subway is great, but being outside and like getting some fresh air is like so helpful before walking into and walking out of a meeting. Like there's just something about it that it really has helped me professionally and personally so much. So e-bike.

I love that. Yeah, and I don't know if anybody said the subway is great. I mean, it does help you get from point A to point B, but I don't know about great because I lived in the city and the subway was not great. Listen, um, but you're very lucky to have it, right?

It's 24 hours a day, it's cheap, it can get you basically anywhere. So, like, I'm not I'm not anti-subway as a rule, but like I will be outside on my bike unless it is like actively blizzarding. I am basically out there. Love that.

Okay, what is your biggest growth lover for SaaS in 2026? Um like humans, like human sales. Um, not relying on you again. Uh is it like not relying on a bunch of AI, like AI SDRs selling AI SDRs?

Like we are, I love enterprise sales, like I love consultative sales. It's like as you can probably tell, my background has been in this, and I think the human connection in a sales process is just gonna continue to become more important as my inbox goes from 70 emails overnight to 170 emails overnight to 200, and it's all AI shenanigans. Yeah, yeah, it sucks. Um, well, here's another contrarian question for you then.

Uh, what is one belief you have that most people would disagree with? Oh god, I have so many. Um most people would disagree with. I think it's like I don't know what the belief is, but it's like anyone can work in this industry.

Like, maybe is that contrary? I feel like sort of like you there, and there's so many different kinds of jobs in tech. And like, I'm not trying to glamorize tech. Like, everyone wants to work in tech.

Most a lot of people don't, most people don't. But I do know a lot of people want to break in, and like there are so many different roles. You don't have I am not an engineer, I cannot write a line of code. I have been working in technical roles for 20 plus years.

Like, I manage, I run a DevOps company, and that is all just from asking why over and over and over, why and how over and over and over when I didn't understand something. So, like, if you want to get a job in tech, there are a thousand different roles that you can start in. Customer support is a great way to start. Like, just go get a job in CX at a tech company that you think is interesting.

If you are good at your job and if you find difficult problems that need solving, you will be able to worm your way into other parts of the org. Don't interview and say that, like, hey, I want this job so that I can then get a different job. Don't say that. But like, if you're good at your job and CX, entry-level CX roles are like you oftentimes you don't need to have a tech background to get those positions.

Yep, very true. Um, what is one hiring mistake that you've made and what did it teach you? Uh, I mean, uh, I'm guilty of this. It's hiring people that are very similar to myself because I like them.

Like people that have like a similar personality. Yeah, and like that's not always good. Um, you know, there's also always the like hire slow, fire fast, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Which, like, I think every founder who's been in business for like any period of time can have a story about like that.

I should have done the thing earlier or whatever. But really, like, I really try to check my bias at the door, be like, I want to be, and I don't ever think I'm gonna be friends with my employees, to be fair. I think like I absolutely am not and don't expect them to be. But if I'm like, wow, damn, I really like that person, I'm like, maybe I should like not that I shouldn't hire them, but like, let's like take a step back and like think about what they're bringing to the table that's complementary to the business, not just like something that's someone who I want to hang out with.

Yes, yeah. That's funny that you mentioned that, uh, which by the way, you're the first person to ever say that. But that is something that me personally also gravitate towards. Um, so I totally understand.

I and I feel the same way. If I'm having like a really good conversation, I'm like, okay, let me just step back for a second and like thicken facts instead of like emotional reaction and like, you know, the chemistry, like the friendship chemistry. Well, it's also like what can they bring to the business? Like it can be both, right?

It can be that like I like this person a lot and they also have all these skills that I don't have that like we need to bring in. And like everyone that we've hired, I like, right? Like, I'm not hiring people I don't like. Right.

But there's definitely like, oh, that person really loves this kind of work and loves these kinds of projects and da-da-da. I'm like, no, no, no, we already have me to do some of that. Yeah, like we need someone who does other kinds of things. Love that.

That's so good. Um really happy that you mentioned that because maybe I thought that was only me that did that. And I hire for a living. So um, in terms of like on this end, I I wanted to end with this question.

Is there anything that's like a specific red flag to you when it comes to candidates? Um, I've honestly heard all sorts of things too, like people not updating their LinkedIn profile or profiles not matching to their resume. Or um I honestly, it's a and I I like to ask this question because hiring is a very human type process. Um, everybody's gonna have their own personal things that they like and don't like as a leader.

I've even had leaders tell me that like if they don't smile on, you know, on our first five minutes interaction, they're probably not gonna fit well working for me. So what is like your one red flag um that you see, you know, that could be like a no-no for you? Oh man. Like I don't care about their LinkedIn.

Like if they have no LinkedIn, that's a red flag. Like if they're clearly obviously like using the AI thing and like, you know, they're hypothetically they live in like Tucson, but like very clearly they don't speak English natively. Like there's all kinds of that type of stuff that happens when you're recruiting people online. Um but I think like can I give you two?

Can I give you two reasons? Yeah, yeah. Um one is when we get on the call, and I always like to ask, like, the very first question I ask is like, why why did you apply for this position? Like, what about this is interesting to you?

And when they clearly have no idea what the company is at all, like they can't even say they're just like, I like technology and you look like you do too. Like, if it like if they clearly didn't even spend 30 seconds looking at the website prior to the call, and I know it's tough out there and people are applying for a billion jobs, like I get it, you don't have to be an expert in Pandium, but you should at least have like a sense of who you're like gonna be speaking to. So that's one.

And the other is if they have no questions at all. And if we've had like a long conversation and they've been asking questions, and like I can at the end, if someone's like, You've really answered all of my questions, like that's okay. But if that is not the case, and at the end they're like, No, no questions. I'm like, there's no possible way that you wouldn't have like question about or like something, like I'm not that good at interviewing, yeah.

Like I've covered literally everything in a 25-minute call. So um, those are really the the two things. Um if you don't smile, like whatever. I think like you know, we're an English speaking company, so like communication is important, like kind of that stuff, but like you don't have to smile, people get stressed out.

Like, yeah, if you look terrified, you're probably not gonna be a good fit here for us, but like yeah, you know, yeah, everybody has their own personality for sure. I'll tell you mine, which was uh tragic from yours, and I know you didn't ask, but I'll say it anyways. Yeah. What and it's not like a you know black and white red flag, but if it's like a very robotic conversation to where they're just answering my questions in like one to two sentences, and then when it comes to the end, they're like, um, yeah, hold on.

I do have a bunch of questions that I wrote down and they're like flipping pages and they're just asking me question, question, question. I don't know. There's just something about that where it's just like not an organic conversation. And it's like you were just kind of like put here to have this conversation with me, but you really didn't want to have it, so you're just doing it to do it.

Again, it's not like the black and white red flag, but it does trigger me to say, like, okay, what let me look further into this. Yeah, I think that's fair. Like, we we try to be like pretty disarming on the first call. And like I try to also ask folks, like, what do you like to do for fun?

Like outside of work. Yeah, yeah. And if they're literally like, I love, I just program, or like, you know, they talk about like something that's very obviously strictly aligned with the job, I'm like, either you're telling the truth and like I don't know if you're gonna make it here because you're gonna get burnt out, or you're just lying, like, yeah, you don't want to tell me that you like like to cook or you have a dog, or like you're a Twitch streamer, like I don't care, like whatever it is.

Um I do think like having that, like for me, like setting that tone in the very first call of like, we want you to be able to feel comfortable bringing whatever you want to bring to work. We're not a family, like we're not, I'm not expecting you to be friends with everybody, but like we are human beings, and I recognize that you're a human being. And statistically, it's unlikely that we're gonna hire this person because we're just doing so many of these calls, but I want them to at least have had a positive experience in the interview.

And like, if you literally can't open up at all, that's probably not a good fit for us. Yeah, love that. Believe it or not, we're been going back and forth for like almost an hour, which is crazy. It flew by really fast, and this was amazing.

Christina, where can people find you? Where can how can they connect with you? You can find me on LinkedIn, Christina Flashon. Uh, you can find us at pandium.

com. We also have a podcast. We have blogs. If you want, oh, love that.

What's your podcast? Uh, it's between product and partnerships. It's on our site. And maybe if you um you can drop a link when uh when you publish this.

Uh, we talk to product and partnership leaders and tech leaders about like the intersection of um partnerships and product, essentially. So we've had some really cool guests on there. And if you want, like, if you want to talk about integrations or learn about integrations, we have so much content: blogs, workbooks, um, podcast videos, all kinds of stuff. So you can find us basically everywhere if you search for Pandum.

We're the only one. I love that. And we're gonna lay in your podcast, your LinkedIn, and Pandium in the in the show notes. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing all your container thoughts, which uh surprisingly, I agreed with a lot of them in a good way.

I appreciate you having us or having me. This is a really good time. Thank you.