Empowering SMBs to thrive in a digital-first world with Irana Wasti

Speaker A: I think it's really important to keep in mind why the customer came to you, what job did they come to solve, how much knowledge they have about the technology you're selling them and how much time do they have to try to use and set up your technology. And I'll give you an example of that. At GoDaddy, we were selling success online, right? So initially in the early days of GoDaddy, it was all about get online, grow your business online. We needed three products to get started to be online domain, a, uh, website and a domain based email.

Speaker B: Welcome to the SMB Tech Innovators Podcast, powered by Gusto. On this show we explore the intersection of fintech, vertical SaaS and how software combats the rising complexity of running a business. Our goal is to share stories, advice and best practices from the leaders and investors behind today's cutting edge platforms. This episode of the SMB Tech Innovators Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Gusto Embedded Gusto has spent a decade building and testing its payroll tax filing and compliance infrastructure, which is available as a robust set of APIs so you can develop custom tailored payroll solutions. For more information go to embedded.gusto.com here's your host, Brian Bush

Speaker C: on this episode of the SMB Tech Innovators podcast. My guest is Arana Wasti, former Chief Product Officer at Bill, a financial operations platform for small and medium businesses and still a board member and advisor for many folks in tech. Arana, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Hi, thanks for having me.

Speaker C: I'm excited to dig into this one. Arana. I think you people have the insights in terms of building great products for small businesses as you do. But first to anchor the audience, you have a very impressive background product. GM, um, C level roles from Build, GoDaddy, Typeform, Intuit, IBM. The list goes on. But I suggest folks just take a look at your LinkedIn for the resume. So for you to get through your background and to anchor the audience just a little bit, maybe. Are there two or three key lessons or experiences from your career that really stuck with you and inform your perspective as both a product and a business leader today?

Speaker A: Thank you for those kind words about my background. There have definitely been a couple of themes that I picked up some earlier on and some later as I went through my career that stuck with me and that I continue to carry through when I make a career decision and kind of what drives me in that career. The number one thing and that one stuck with me early was serving the target customer that you feel passionate about. So early on in my career when I joined Intuit, I Intuit obviously solves problems for small and uh, medium sized businesses and learning how to better understand SMBs and service MBS is something that got me really excited and from that point on continued to be the key theme of all of my career choices and decisions. I've since Intuit, I've served SMBs in every role I've been at anywhere I was in the world. So that's one thing that I got hooked on early on and it became a key theme and a choice in the career. Another thing, and that's the learning that came after into When I joined GoDaddy is at GoDaddy part of the work that we've all done at the time that we joined was to really transform the company and really drive that strategic and growth transformation. And that's the kind of work that really excited me. It's challenging, it's, it makes you really think hard on what you do year after year. How do you reinvent yourself year after year to drive outsized growth results? And that's the kind of work that excited me. And from that point on that's what I would seek for in my career. And last but not least is I had a unique opportunity to go abroad and run a region. So for GoDaddy, while living in London and run the EMEA region and while being in us, I was the international product leader, international gm. Nothing gives you that international perspective. And in my case it was also another hook for me. That excitement of serving companies, businesses and working with teams around the globe and just learning about the different cultures and histories and adjusting what you do to those geographies. And so for me, the international component that became that other hook that, that drives me and drives my choices, my career choices.

Speaker C: Okay, so thank you for that. I will ask maybe to just double click quickly given that this is the SMB Tech Innovators podcast. What was it about the SMB as a customer? It's B2B but smaller folks. What was it about that profile of customer that you found interesting?

Speaker A: So what I find interesting about SMBs, uh, is the following. SMBs and SMB owners and leaders by definition are these extremely passionate people. They're passionate about their business and that's how they started the business. They didn't start the business to get rich, they didn't start the business to conquer the world. They started a business because they were so passionate about something. And that's something can really range, right? It ranges across every possible discipline we can think of and there's so many SMBs, uh, around the globe, in US and around the world, and they all need help. Like you, they serve a, uh, tremendous. They have a tremendous presence in our communities and in our lives. They are important part of any business ecosystem, and they need help. And technology can really help them and make the difference from surviving versus closing, shutting the doors on your business. They need your help to get them through the next stage of their business, whether they're starting their business, growing their business, or just running the business. And so when I had a chance, and this is back with Intuit, to go visit almost all the local SMBs in the town that I live in and hear their stories, hear their background, hear what drives them, um, hear how hard it is to be an SMB owner and how much help they could use and benefit from. Um, it was really memorable. And to this day, I can tell you almost every customer I visited around the world because it's that memorable, because each one of those customers, you know, is making a difference in that community that they're in. So that's where I got hooked on serving this, Serving this population.

Speaker C: Yeah, that resonates so, so deeply with gusto. We had the opportunity to go visit customers as well. And similarly, for me, those experiences really stand out because it makes so tangible, as you said, that impact that these businesses have on the community, the impact they have for that owner, for the founder, even for the employees. There's really something special there that. That is hard to capture if you haven't experienced that. So I appreciate you sharing. I think that listening directly to that customer profile, but in this case, the SMBs will probably be a theme that flows through here. So I want to start there with your experience in terms of what SMBs are looking for, and specifically an anecdote that stands out. You chatted on a different podcast with Zach Miller from Tearsheet, I think, last summer, but you mentioned that you're hearing, and I don't mean just now, but over the course of years of your career, SMBs are asking for more integrated solutions, I think was how you phrased it. And so would love to unpack that just a little first. Correct me if I'm wrong, but unpack that a little bit of what specifically are you hearing from small business owners, and why is it sort of building up to this idea of more integrated solutions?

Speaker A: Yeah, so SMB needs are changing. They continue to change, and we definitely saw a big change in what the SMB needs are over the course of the last five years, because you insert the pandemic and on all the, all of the impacts of the pandemic in there. And so when you, when I was listening to SMBs before pandemic, it was all about understanding all of their manual processes and offline processes and convincing them to automate it and use the technology. Back in the day when I was started with GoDaddy, half of SMBs didn't even have a website. Part of our job was to convince them to have an online presence. Right. Obviously Pandemic changed at all. Everybody has online presence. But what happened during the pandemic is that for SMBs, for those that were able to survive and some even thrive, they were became more reliant on technology solutions. So what you actually see now post pandemic is the problem evolved to where SMBs m could have too many solutions and they're desperate solutions and therefore there's a lot of context switching inconsistent data overhead. That is the current problem that we saw SMBs facing and we visited the customers and you see firsthand the number of tabs switching and remembering what happened here to carry over to this tool. And in fact when we did the study, on average SMBs have seven plus solutions in their tech stack that they're trying to then piece together again somehow manually. So that's where the idea about the concept of the integrated solution came in, is that if we're past the stage where we're trying to convince small businesses to adopt a solution, then we're now in that stage of you've adopted the solutions now what do those solutions talk to each other? Is there a way to integrate the experience? Is there a provider that can provide that integrated experience to the SMB, whether it's in financial operations space or any other job to be done space in a way that makes that solution better? Right. So we know, we worked at larger companies having the data platform and integrated data and uh, the leveraging that data across all parts of your business is important. Again, you can't have that if you have disparate solutions. So that's where that concept of integrated solution came in. And I think what was interesting about again working with a customer like SMB is that SMB won't necessarily tell you what they need. I don't think an SMB can say I need an integrated solution. I think some might and some are more savvy. But on the whole I think what they will say is this, I have too many tools, I have to learn too many different interfaces, I have to copy and paste too many things between these tools. And you as a leader, as a product leader take that information and realize that, oh my gosh, the integration is missing. So that's another interesting part about SMBs is that that observing and hearing their pain points leads to a solution that you have to come up with, with and then bring it back to that small business customer.

Speaker C: That's an incredible synthesis of both the user input and then how it starts to show up in product. So let's take it one step deeper because I know or you have mentioned on previous shows as well that you're a big fan or are a, uh, frequent user of experiments to help get signal for, call it the what's next sort of decisions. What should we build next? Where should we go with? If the solution is an integrated solution, what should that actually look like? So maybe the question is how does an organization do an experiment?

Speaker B: Really? Well,

Speaker A: I think I'm a big believer in experimentation. I think it's the only way to develop products, experiences or go to market strategy, sales, support strategy, everything, everything across the business can benefit from experimentation, both the mindset and the experience of it. I think less and less I see companies that don't believe in experimentation, which is a good thing. But unfortunately there's still a lot of companies who may believe in experimentation but aren't doing it the right way, which is kind of just as useless because if you ran the experiment wrong, if you don't read the results, if you don't have the follow through of an experiment, you're not learning anything. And so that's not helpful. And then hopefully over time we're going to see more and more companies for whom experimentation is the way of doing things. But I think especially in the world of serving SMBs and because when you serve SMBs you tend to have more customers, which affords you more ways to do experiments. Right? It's not like in the world of enterprise where you have your 10 large enterprise customers, you're coming back to the same party to ask for feedback or experiment with you. You're serving in case of GoDaddy, you had 20 million SMBs under management around the world. That affords you a way to really try and test things in a scalable way, learn quickly. You don't have to wait for months to get the result because you have enough volume and then move quickly. And so that's where again that that experimentation mindset comes in handy because you don't have to know all the answers, you don't have to pick the right choice right away. You have the privilege, the Honor of experimenting to learn what's the best solution, what's the best experience, what's the best offer you can experiment with, pricing offers, what's the best reason to believe you can experiment with your marketing messages? Everything can be turned into uh, an experiment. And I believe if you run enough of them, it actually accelerates your progress versus doing things in a big bang approach.

Speaker C: So you've clearly run lots of experiments and I love that you're bringing in the go to market, whether it's the messaging, whether it's the upsell tactics, things like that. Like it's not just the product itself, it's a more holistic take. So I'm curious maybe what are some of the tactics? And we're going to dive into some examples here in just a bit. But for now I'm curious what are some of the tactics that you seem be most successful in terms of persuading, let's say the outside of product things, whether it's selling or marketing, but really let's call it generally persuading small business customers to consider, to trial and then ultimately to adopt more features and more pieces of the product as a platform expands and grows.

Speaker A: I think it's really important to keep in mind why the customer came to you, what job did they come to solve, how much knowledge they have about the technology you're selling them and how much time do they have to try to use and set up your technology. And I'll give you an example of that. At GoDaddy, we were selling success online, right? So initially in the early days of GoDaddy, it was all about get online, grow your business online. We needed three products to get started to be online domain a website and a domain based email. And so we as GoDaddy had to do experiment of uh, what's the right bundle to offer to the customer? Do you offer one product and you know, attach others, do you offer them as a bundle and then how do you set up those products, in what order? So for example, I worked on the domain based email product that was part of our business applications business unit. And one of the things we did is we turned domain based email setup into a task that took seconds, which means you could buy a domain and you can instantly set up your domain based email just in one sitting, right? Building a website again at that time it's evolved a lot since, but at that time took a little bit more time. You had to think through your, your language, your image is the composition of a website. So when we sold a bundle, we guided the customer to set up their email right away, get some return of that investment right away and then drop them into building a website builder. But that also meant if the customer, let's say only chose to buy domain and website builder, the moment they start publishing that Gmail or Yahoo email on their website, we start triggering the messages of you have a domain, you have to represent domain in your name, now go and buy domain based email. So it really depends and this is again where testing comes in is you've got to experiment with what the customer came in for, their mindset, their time that they have. And how do you best guide your customer to really discover the full breadth of portfolio that you as a company offer? Because arguably your customer should have the whole breadth of your portfolio to be the most successful. But those are some examples where we played with uh, what's the front door for us, what's an attached product for us? And when does an attached product show up? Does it show up together with the front door? So domain and email, it doesn't show up later. Those are some of the experiments we run.

Speaker C: Maybe we can find a couple more examples because I want to go back to that comment about integrated solutions and I think a lot of a theme that a lot of listeners will understand that's come up many times on this show is the realm or the world of uh, embedded solutions is now quite large. Whether that's embedded fintech, whether it's the integration between people and money, things like payroll which we do augusto embedded or it's broadly speaking employment data, it's marketing CRM. Like there's a world of embedded solutions. And so when it comes to building that quote integrated solution, there's now a very clear for almost every product or feature need, we could certainly build integrations to other folks kind of the other seven players in that SMB's tech stack or we could try to bring this into our product in a more native way and offer a pretty comprehensive bundle of under our entire brand. So I think we're in a world where the build versus buy versus partner equation has gotten complex to say the least. So I want to understand in this world how you think about that decision and maybe what are some examples you've seen over the past where this was just as you mentioned, this was the reason we chose to say partner or integrate in this case. And here's how we went to drive adoption versus other examples where you may have decided to build on an embedded platform and make the end solution feel more integrated within one platform.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a great question because the build by uh, partner should be that constant decision that goes through with a company both in terms of what they offer, what we offer to our customers, but also in terms of how we distribute our experiences to our customers. Right. Will the customers come to our door? Will they come to your door? And I embed my solution into your business and there are definitely a whole range of choices here to be made that have to align with again your go to market strategy and your product strategy. So I'll give you an example from Bill that's part of the product strategy and automating financial operations, owning experiences like AP and AR which is how Bill was started. But also owning the spend and expense experience was really important both for the sake of providing cohesive experiences across the entire sort of that cash in, cash out management workflow but also for the sake of leveraging the data across all of these workflows to provide an even better solution in cash flow forecasting and others. So that's where Bill acquired a company called Divi and then we've integrated as part of our integrated platform. But another example is from a partner and embed perspective would be from GoDaddy standpoint. When I joined that uh, uh, business applications business at GoDaddy, GoDaddy used to build its own domain based email product and it had a team that whose job was to build a domain based email product. There is absolutely zero competitive advantage in building your own domain based email product. Zero. There is a competitive advantage in allowing SMBs, uh, easier access to set up your domain based email solution. Back when we did it in seconds to do it directly with Microsoft took two days because there's hoops to go through for domain validation and so on. So one of the first decisions as a product leader of that business was maybe an unorthodox one but it was to say we're going to stop building this product. We instead are going to go partner and build value additive solutions on top. So then we partner with Microsoft and embedded it and so on because again there was no value differentiation for us in owning that experience and building that experience versus building the experiences that sit on top. Now one caution with integrations and partnerships is that you have to do them. Our customer never had to worry about that. This was a Microsoft uh, product. We took care of the customer. We own the customer, we own their experience, we own every problem they have and every upside that they need to leverage from this product. That was something really important and that was a philosophy that we used at GoDaddy. When we would embed or integrate products, that it's still our customer, we're still responsible for their success and that's what made that partnership really successful. So again, I think there's just different flavors and different reasons to why you would follow a path of, you know, build or acquire versus partner. And then how you do it is also important.

Speaker C: Yep. And by no means do I want to pin you down to a, uh, one size fits all, but I feel like what I'm hearing is you put a very high premium on that user experience. First, I think it's interesting to hear you say the data integration is a high. Second kind of it may not just be that initial product, but the data, the granular data you can have by feeling like that's a more native solution, by building it, buying it yourself, just making sure you have access to the granular data because that can enrich the broader platform. Like it seems like there's a high premium on that and then you're coming to, hey, is this really our competitive advantage? Which maybe, uh, the interesting thing is I don't hear you saying anything about cost on the back end.

Speaker A: Well, because you figure out that you make the cost work, you figure out what is worth for you and at what capacity. And again to your point about data, data is important but it also, it has to ladder up to the strategy. So again that example of that email integration, it wasn't about data integration, it was about offering capability that completes a suite of being present online. And domain based email does that. Right. So it wasn't about the data, it was literally about completing this offer that we have is we take you online in Bill's case. Right. Data, uh, the feature, the functionality of Divi that Divi brought to the table, which is spend and expense management was important, but the data was also really important because the data completes that look that we can piece together for the customer of like here's an overview of your cash flow. So it really again that those choices ladder up to. And uh, again what you do with whether it's a partnership or an acquisition, it has to ladder up to the sort of the strategy and what you're solving for. And then again the cost of it also follows that strategy. Right. For us, for example, embedding Microsoft, the cost, the licensing cost was very important because we are serving SMBs, there's a limit on how much we can charge and we provide all the support. So there's our own cost to it. So we needed a certain licensing agreement with Microsoft that obviously worked. Not Just for us as a business, but really worked for the customer we were serving. So it's again, it's, to me, it all ladders up to the strategy and the problem you're solving to then figure out how best to solve it.

Speaker C: Well, and I think, I imagine you've seen a lot of early stage pitch decks lately and there are a lot of folks saying, hey, we're seeing X work, say in vertical SaaS, folks are laying around financial services. Of course we're going to build all of that and go to it. And I think what I hear you say is every business, every problem to be solved is a little bit different. You need a dedicated strategy and product decisions should flow pretty intelligently from that strategy.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And look, sometimes partner might be the fastest way to test something. Going back to the experimentation, you can piece things together and offer them as a package and tie them together with shoestring in the back just to test the hypothesis out right before then deciding do I want to acquire, build or continue to partner. But again, I do. I am a big believer that I think partnerships offer sometimes even a lower cost way to experiment against a strategic bet or an opportunity.

Speaker C: I want to go back to the data point just a little bit because I think there's been some chatter around, hey, in a world of generative AI or more advanced machine learning technologies, is there more of a premium on having a data moat? So rather than maybe. And hey, take that question on if you want, but I am curious, just back to that user, back to that integrated solution, back to what the SMBs need. How do you see these technologies showing up in a meaningful way, uh, for that SMB customer?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think there's always been a lot of different technology innovation stages of technology innovation. And I think the businesses that look to bring the benefit of that technology to SMBs can discover and create something special for that customer. Just in the last two days, I was at Fortune Brainstorm AI conference. So AI is definitely very much top of mind, or the AI, generative AI, agentic AI, all of it. In terms of like, here's the next wave, a really strong wave of innovation. And it makes you think of, well, how will the SMB customer experience it? And what's interesting is I was thinking about sort of this podcast and reflecting on what I've learned over the last couple days of the conference is that we talk, and myself included through this AI wave so far. We talk about AI as a feature, an augmentation, um, something that, like, let's build this in, or let's use it for this case. And if we take a step back and look through different technology innovation like when we think about when mobile became a thing, right? Like I was with GoDaddy at the time where you know, a competitive advantage for us meant you have a mobile friendly website builder product or a website that you build, right? Like something has an app was a differentiator. That's no longer the case. Everybody expects mobile, everybody builds for mobile and so on. And I feel like AI is going to become or is becoming one of those things where like it's less of a which feature we can augment with this technology to here's our customer's problem and AI is going to help us solve it better, faster in a more unique way. So that's how I'm, I think how the thinking around this is evolving and how we as service uh, providers for SMB need to think about it. So again it's not about can I make this feature better, can I ah, automate this feature? It's really about my customer's job is the following. And here's all the ways that this latest technology can solve it for them because especially in this. So with Mobile wave it was interesting because at some point SMB customers have their own mobile phones and they get the experience of the firsthand. With this latest wave, of course you can experience AI from a personal standpoint, but from a business standpoint I think the customer, SMB customer especially is going to be really more reliant on the provider to embed the technology to derive the benefits of it in their business. And you started your question with data. And I think data is the base, the foundation of being able to deliver those experience. Now not all of the data has to be in house and there's a lot of models out there you can leverage. So that's a different, probably different discussion and a different decision. But having your in house data in order, which by the way you need for experimentation and now you're really going to need it for AI is really critical.

Speaker C: Okay, appreciate you sharing especially that is a space that's evolving so quickly. I want to turn quickly. You're a member of Forbes Most Powerful Women Network and a senior leader at all these incredible companies. I'm curious how you think about diversity on your teams and especially making sure that you're bringing in the voices of folks who traditionally may have struggled to have their voices heard in an industry like technology.

Speaker A: Yeah, one quick correction. It's Fortune Most powerful. So Fortune runs their list in a conference called Powerful Women. And I've been honored to be part of it for the last several years. But when it comes to diversity, I truly believe that you have to pick the best candidate. Which sounds obvious, but sometimes it isn't the case. Sometimes we pick people we know, uh, versus the best candidate. But then you really have to invest in them and then you get to benefit from the multiplier effect that they bring. Right? Because again, when people, when both PE people bring different networks, but also people, when they learn on themselves that they can grow, they can blossom, they will be invested in, they're more likely to take a chance on someone else that might have a different background or bring a different perspective because they've seen firsthand that it is possible and it is done. I know in my career I've benefited from a lot of my mentors and amazing managers who, who invested in me, who believed in me, who pushed me, and that makes me want to pay it forward and do this for other folks to make sure that they have the same opportunity and there's somebody who believes in them. So that to me is part one and important. But the other part is that I think we need to broaden the definition of diversity. Because one thing I found as I've been going through different life stages of three kids and then little kids and now not so little kids and my, my husband's also works full time and not everybody has a working spouse. For example, I found that the definition of sort of the diversity and like the adversity that you associate with being certain type of, bringing certain type of diversity, it changes, it absolutely changes for me and therefore the people I look up to, the people whose help I look, I seek, the advice I look for, it also changed over. It also changed over time. And that was important for me to recognize. It wasn't about how many men versus women were in the room. Like I said in my case at some point, it was about how many people are in dual career relationships with little kids and how do you manage that and how do you still show up for work and for your family. So that was, that was, that was a learning, as I look back, of what diversity meant for me, and last I would say is sometimes we use the phrase of you can't be what you don't see. I'm not a fan of it. I've never had a female manager in my entire career, never once worked for a woman and, But I, uh, work for the most amazing leaders, managers and mentors. And it never stopped me from achieving my career goals and it never stopped me from thinking because I haven't seen a female manager, I probably, or female this or female, you know, who was in chain of command. I can't be that. So I think there's also a little bit of a lot of the things we're going to be doing and seeing might be something that's done for the first time or maybe there's still, it wouldn't be called minority if it was a, uh, prominent thing. But don't hold yourself back just because you feel like I haven't seen it, therefore I can do it.

Speaker C: I feel like that's particularly savvy advice, if you would call it advice in part. You mentioned your children and I had a friend quip about our children, hey, the jobs that are best for them might not exist today. Things are moving so quickly that it resonates with and connects back to that point of, hey, just because we don't see it happening today or ahead of us or we're not mentored by a person doing X, Y, Z doesn't mean we shouldn't be thinking about it, dreaming and imagining that it could be possible in the future. Arana, I want to wrap up, we're grateful for your time but it was fairly recent that you stepped back um, from your role with Bill. So what is next for you? What are you most excited about either personally or professionally?

Speaker A: Yeah, um, as I wrapped up my role at Bill professionally, over the next phase I'm really excited to do, to take on advisory work and work with technology startups and take on board roles and really help and leverage the skills and the experiences I've learned over the years and help other companies if I can. But I'm um, also really excited for personally to take this time and the reason it's this time and it's this time now with my older son who is a junior in high school and do the college visits and spend that extra time with him traveling, which is something we both love because I know that time is short. I know he's going to be going off to college soon and his life will evolve, will be different and I won't get this moment again. So for me, this time I know it's short lived, I know it's not forever, but it's extremely special to be able to both apply myself from uh, a professional standpoint, but in a much more flexible way and then give that time to my older son at this moment in time to spend that very limited but special time with him.

Speaker C: I love, love, love wrapping up on a reminder of time is short. We have one life and to really cherish the folks in our lives that make things really rich. So, Arana, thank you for joining us today. Thank you for sharing some of your insights, anecdotes, learnings. You mentioned advisorship. You mentioned board roles for folks who want to connect with you, maybe have questions or are interested in some of those types of relationships. How might they connect with you or go deeper?

Speaker A: Please reach out on LinkedIn and I'll respond. Please make that connection.

Speaker C: Fantastic. Well, we'll make sure to include your profile in the show notes. Arana, uh, thank you so much again.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Speaker C: Thanks again for tuning into this episode of the SMB Tech Innovators Podcast list. We'll make sure to link to any resources that were mentioned in today's show in the show notes. Please also feel free to leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcast or to connect with the Gusto embedded team via LinkedIn. In particular, we'd love to hear any future guests you'd like us to have on the show. Thanks again for listening and keep a lookout for the next episode.