The Martech Shift: engineer & Hightouch co-CEO Tejas Manohar shares Rebel Instinct (Ep. 17 | Act-On Software)

Welcome to the Rebel Instinct podcast, everybody. I'm your host, Galen Etlin with Acton Software. Today is all about data and empowering marketers. And our guest today is Tejas Manohar, co-founder and co-CEO of Hightouch.

He's got a background in software engineering and his company helps businesses better harness their customer data. Notable brands that have taken advantage of this are Spotify, GameStop, the NBA, AutoTrader, and many more. Looking forward to our conversation today, Tejas. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks for having me on the show. Really appreciate it, Galen. Yeah, no, of course. I mean, you've got some really interesting perspective, and I want to know all about your career journey up till now, since it sounds kind of like a whirlwind adventure.

But first, let's talk about your company, Hightouch. You've earned top marks in G2 as a leader in the reverse ETL space. And for those unfamiliar like me, what does that mean about the service you provide? There's a process in like data technology, data engineering, data analytics called ETL.

Basically means putting data into the warehouse, into a data warehouse. So data warehouses are databases that companies like to put all their information into from marketing, sales, finance, product data, put all the data into it so that you can analyze all your data in one place in tools like Tableau, Looker, Power BI, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And ETL is just the process of extracting data from sources, transforming it into something that makes sense for the warehouse and loading it into the warehouse.

And it's just a 20, 30-year-old turn ETL data into your warehouse. Reverse ETL, it's the opposite of that. So it's this new idea that we brought to the market, which is like, you have all this data you're using in reporting tools and BI tools in the data warehouse. But there's people who want that data outside of BI tools and analytics tools and reporting tools.

They want to use that data to personalize a marketing campaign, or they want to use it to adjust ad targeting, or they want to use that data to power conversion events inside of an advertising network like Facebook or Google so that your ads can be optimized. And all of those processes I mentioned happen outside of BI tools and the typical tools you use a data warehouse for. So Reverse ETL, pretty simple concept we brought to the market. You don't even need to know why it's called that.

But really all it is is taking data from the warehouse and putting it into all the systems of action and systems of engagement that are used around the company, like Salesforce or Marketo or Facebook ads or Google ads. So you can actually act on the data and operationalize it and use it for personalization versus, you know, just stare at it in a report or a dashboard. So let's dive into that a little bit more. I know the theme in this economy now more than ever is for marketers to do more with less.

And that data is, as you've mentioned, critically valuable in reaching those goals. How can companies turn that existing data warehouse that you mentioned into a more potent marketing engine? Yeah, great question. So honestly, for the average, you know, marketer, data warehouse often wasn't looked at as a tool for them before high touch and before reverse ETL.

You know, it's a tool that you would use just for reporting, but it's never a tool that people thought of when it actually came to running marketing campaigns, except for one use case, which is a lot of marketers would download CSPs from the warehouse, upload them to different systems. and yeah effectively the whole theme of doing more with less is a big part of like what we think about at high touch and I would say that in a couple aspects one it's like doing more with the data you have you know I have a belief personally sales hat off which is that there is tremendous value that companies can can do in their marketing and execute on that is is already can be driven from data that they already have and reports they already have.

I'll give you an example. We pretty regularly walk into large enterprises. I'm not going to name any names here, but you mentioned some of our customers from our website earlier. We find that at some of these really large companies, they're spending tens of millions or hundreds of millions on advertising campaigns, but they're showing a lot of those ads to customers they already have.

Customers that have already purchased their product in the last few months are seeing an ad on Facebook or Google. And you don't have to be a performance marketer to know that that can be a waste of money. If you're allocating budget, it even leads to customers who've already purchased the product and customers who should purchase it. So one of the simplest use cases when you think of doing more with what you have is everyone has a list of their customers in a data warehouse, people who purchased something from their brand recently.

Um, and we, we have this, you know, philosophy at Hitesh, which is like, just start with a suppression campaign. Like if you're not propagating that list of customers that have recently bought your product to all the different ad networks, like all of them, like Facebook, Google, TikTok, Snapchat, you know, line, whatever it is, um, already in a real-time way, then that's like a first use case that you can do, uh, with your existing data through a platform like Hitesh. And it can be set up in about like five to 10 minutes.

Like it's really that easy. So when I think about doing more with what we have, yeah, I really have this philosophy that everyone has some sort of operational uplift that they can provide to their company that meaningfully moves metrics by just using data better or activating their data better in quite a straightforward way. I think that real world, that real world example really does hit home. I've definitely bought something and then seen the advertisement for it later where I'm like, am I really the target audience anymore?

Yeah, I saw an ad for our own product at some point. I was like, we've got to fix that. We're in this space. So I contacted our Dev Engine team to adjust our suppression list and get that corrected.

But yeah, that's an example of clear business impact from just using data you already have. Moving along to the next topic here, but kind of in that same vein of how we're seeing everything trend now in this economy. Curious for your perspective, as MarTech stacks get consolidated and reduced in a lot of companies, how do you feel about the future of the industry And what changes do you anticipate ahead of us to adapt to this landscape I do expect MarTech stacks to have a significant amount of both consolidation so not needing to buy as many tools in the future, as well as simplification.

So I think a lot of MarTech vendors today, we're probably at fault for this somewhere in our marketing too, talk about really big promises and like how they're going to totally change your marketing or the name of the game for personalization, customer experiences. But then you look at what the actual products do and how people actually use them. And a lot of them are pretty similar, even though the claims are quite different or, you know, the product is actually quite simple from a surface area perspective, but people are paying a lot of big, big money for these products due to the promises and stuff like that, that they expose online.

So personally, I believe that over the next few years, we're going to see a lot more clarity brought to the MarTech market where vendors need to stop, you know, we'll have to be forced by the economy to actually stop just promising huge things and being able to charge a lot of money for that. And we'll have to get down to the details of like, what do you actually offer and how does that impact my business? and how do you do that in a way that's best for me from a cost perspective as a company versus alternative solutions I could use.

And I think we're seeing that in the CDP space, right? Customer data platforms space I'm very familiar with. I was one of the first 10 engineers and product folks at Segment, the leader of that category now acquired by Twilio before founding Hightech. And that gave me a lot of inspiration to produce Hightech.

And I see so many companies that are buying a CDP and spending hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and going through all this implementation work. But at the end of the day, their use cases could be accomplished in a much simpler way, like activating data they already have inside of their data warehouse and using a tool like Hightouch that can do a little bit of identity stitching and do a little bit of audience building and then start activating that data you have right away versus a huge pot from like a CDP that takes six, 12 months to set up.

And I think a few years ago when the mindset of companies is growth, growth, growth, buy as much as I can to produce growth. Maybe you didn't care, just bought a CDP anyways, and you maybe bought a reverse retail on top of that and buy whatever comes out next, the ultimate data platform. But, you know, in this day and age, I think people are putting their thinking caps on and then saying, what am I actually buying? And is there a simpler approach to the solution?

I think that'll just change how MarTech companies bring themselves to market. and even before that fully changes, that's our approach at High Touch. Like that's been my approach from the beginning. Like, no, no, no, we're keeping things simple.

We're bringing clarity to this market. And you can see that on the website. Like the title is sync customer data to your tools versus something crazy. And I think that'll be a differentiator in the long-term in this market and the new standard.

Having a really well-defined specific role that is easy to grasp and creates that actionable content for people. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then just like on the homepage itself, clarity on what your product solves and what it looks like to solve that.

Like, what does the actual product do versus stuff? Like, I think I looked at the Salesforce website recently. I'll pull it up. I don't know.

I read something like, you know, calling all trailblazers, like data plus AI plus customer equals outcomes or something like that. I don't really think that's the future of software and that's probably still the future of salesforce but i don't think it's the future of software um and martech personally that is a big conversation at act on software we are marketing automation solution and when we're looking at our product and our competitors you know just in the grand scheme of things it is that same conversation of how can we not make this too complicated how can we be something that adds value to marketers lives how can we make this not just another all-in-one gonna try to do too much for you and be overwhelming for any person who dives into it so that conversation is definitely one that's top of mind for all of us in the industry right now no i mean you guys are doing it right you have like a feature section on the home page you have actual product screenshots like this is um you know this is marketing that will work in a down period.

Glad to hear that. So you tell me, but I personally think so. That's been a big, you know, big part of how we got where we are as a business. Let's take a step back now and dive into how you got here.

Co-founding a tech company in San Francisco is no small feat. I know you're also joining us right now from your new office in New York City. Also very exciting. What led you on this journey to where you are now?

I really started my journey when it comes to both MarTech and the startup space. Worked at a couple of smaller startups before that, but real introduction to Silicon Valley and the startup space and MarTech at Segment. So I was an early engineer at Segment, one of the first 10 at the company. And a couple of years before that, I had actually used the Segment product at an internship of mine.

So I was so fascinated and excited by both the product and the blog posts they were putting out and the product direction and the funding that I reached out to the founders, cold emailed them and said, I want to join the team in any role I could. And when I joined Segment, the CDP space was not called the CDP space. That term hadn't really come about. I think anyone who's been in MarTech in data for a while knows that the ideas of single source of truth, activating your data, audience building, all these things have existed forever, decades actually at this point, but the term CDP really only caught traction in the last five, six years.

And, you know, our growth at segment was phenomenal, super phenomenal. We really became like the hottest tool amongst the, you know, tech stacks of budding startups and stuff like that. But I realized that that later became big companies, DoorDash, famous example of but Instacart, all these things. But one thing I realized is that we were having trouble as these small companies became large enterprises and also having trouble for just like more complex businesses and enterprise businesses in general at segment.

And what was that trouble? It was what Gartner written a lot about actually Yeah Gartner sometimes easy to read sometimes not easy to read but they written a lot about CDPs and it actually pretty good One of the things they talked about is that how 60% of people who bought a CDP in the enterprise can't actually get value from it. They literally are not using it for their marketing use cases. And the reason for that is because they sound great in theory.

You know, get all your data in one place, have a single source of truth, be able to activate across all your channels. great in theory, but it's really hard to actually execute on that when you're in a complicated company that like one already has a ton of data across the business coming from every which angle from product, from sales, from your store, et cetera. There's two reasons why it's really, really hard to implement a CDP. And one of them is that you have to get all your data into the CDP to be able to activate it.

And two is that you have to make your data fit the CDP's format. So, you know, companies like Segment, while they're great, have an idea of what your user should be represented as or, you know, what a product added to cart event should look like or a checkout event should look like, etc. And this is a, you know, this is okay for a small company that's, you know, Shopify store or 500% startup with a very specific focus products. But when you're like a large enterprise, like the NBA or PetSmart or GameStop, and you have all these different facets of your business and decades of data, it's a huge process to go set up something like a traditional customer data platform.

So, you know, with Hightouch, we have a different approach, which is that we allow companies to use the data they already have that's sitting in these data warehouses today and do more with less. And then also have a new level of flexibility when it comes to being used all types of data in your business. So, you know, companies like PetSmart use us so that they can tap into their loyalty system, which tracks pets and not just use users or like checkout data like they would in a typical CDP.

And that's possible with kind of our architecture of using all the tables in your data warehouse. So overall, I had an amazing entryway into technology and customer data and the MarTech space at Segment. But my time there showed me some of the problems that we were seeing as we were scaling up market that eventually led me to found Hitech and realize that there's a different approach that can be brought to the market. That's really cool that that inspired you to make your own solutions from the problems that you were seeing that were not necessarily being met.

Now, we haven't had a whole lot of people on this podcast with roots on the engineering side of things within MarTech. I'm really curious, how has that experience contributed to your approach now as co-CEO? My background is in engineering. You know, I've never been the MarTech person or the marketer myself, I guess, until founding Hightouch.

That was my introduction into marketing, sales, partnerships, finance, all the other parts of the business that me and my co-founders had to learn in starting this business. As a founder, I've always still gravitated towards the product side of things. You know, where is the market heading? what can we do as a company that provides outsized value to our customers?

Where is differentiation possible at a product level? Because I have a belief that, you know, in the long term, you know, these products we're putting on the market have to be differentiated and to provide outsized impact to our customers to be sustained. In the short term, we can get away with sales and marketing and all those things, but the long term product does shine and ultimately will matter. so that's something I brought to to every aspect of the business here at Hightouch but you know being from the engineering side of things I think it's never easy to start a startup you're always going to learn with a few more skills whether you come from the business side you'll have to learn product skills that you come from the product side you'll have to learn business skills it's been a fantastic learning experience on learning how to do category creation from a marketing perspective with reverse CTL and this new idea of composable CDPs or how to build out a marketing and sales and partnerships teams.

And these teams we'd never built before. And it's just honestly been continuous learning. I can say the only thing, the job changes every six months. We've been scaling pretty rapidly.

Over the last few years, we've gone to now over 500 enterprise customers and some of the biggest brands in the world and Fortune 100 and 500. But it wasn't like that from the beginning. So I'd say every six months, the role of a co-CEO has been changing dramatically. And the only thing that stays the same is continuous learning and iteration.

Yeah. I mean, jumping off of that, do you have an approach to when things are kind of cascading like that? I mean, in a good way for you, it sounds like the ball just keeps rolling and maybe is snowballing bigger and bigger. How do you handle that maybe added trajectory as you go?

yeah great question um so there's two things to balance as a startup founder uh one is just keeping up an immense pace of execution right uh they say this they say this in every you know startup incubator or investor blog post or you know post about founding a startup talk about founding a startup online that ideas are great but execution is everything and it's really true And a lot of execution comes down to speed, speed of iteration. That's what differentiates a great startup from an okay startup or from a failed startup in a lot of ways.

How quickly do you take new things to market? How quickly do you make changes based on what you're seeing? How quickly and efficiently can you act like a big company when in reality, you're only 10, 20, 50, now around 100 employee company. and that's been a core strength of ours from the beginning as a founding team we built the product just the three of us initially and we we onboard our first enterprise customers when we just had like a dozen people at the company but one thing I've had to always remind myself that's been a bit harder for me is that speed isn't everything you know speed is a lot it needs to be continued but reflecting and making sure you're going down the right path strategically is also really important.

And you, in the seat of the founder role or the CEO role in the company, are the only person who is really responsible for taking that step back and making sure that we're guiding the ship in the right direction So a trick that I guess a tip or a trick that I would say that really helped me and I continuously have to push myself to do this is just making sure there space and time to reflect on what's going well, what needs to continue, what needs to stop. Well, I think we've heard, you know, how you are a rebel in your work life, you know, in terms of thinking outside the box, really creative, creating your own solutions, and, you know, finding that guiding light, if you will.

Since this is the Rebel Instinct podcast, though, we want to know how you're a rebel in your non-work life, and you can interpret that any way you like. Great question. Interesting one. I've never gotten this before.

The most rebellious thing I can say about myself is probably that very impromptu person. I kind of find joy in not having plans, ironically i have so much plans all the time uh with work you know nine to five every day that's just the core you know business hours is always completely planned so when i when the weekend comes about i always i want to have no plans and just let it go with the flow and um try something new um uh which is sometimes easy and sometimes hard when you're coordinating with other people, as anyone would know.

And then the other thing I would say is that I bring the intensity that I have from a business perspective to my very jack of all trades, hobby, lifestyle perspective. So I love being really intense about things. As you know, as a startup founder, but I like doing those in short stints of like, oh yeah, I'm going to play a lot of table tennis and get a table tennis coach for the next three months okay i'm gonna go really into like power lifting for the next few months okay i'm gonna get really into music and i'm gonna buy a harmonica for the next few months so i'm trying to keep the intensity that brings me joy but um obviously i can't actually get insanely good at anything with the startup job taking up so much time so uh we'll have to jump for how to try different things at the same time but hey i mean at least you're jumping in and and trying everything feet first that's pretty cool most people would never even want to start.

That's fair. All right. So in that vein as well, maybe who's a rebel that inspires you? One that you think needs to be celebrated and why?

One thing that I think is pretty common advice in the startup space, and sorry to keep this somewhat work centric, but I think one thing that's pretty common advice is, you know, founders don't need to obsess over like every little product detail. You need to be like directionally correct. And then you need to work really fast, move fast, ship things left and right, et cetera. But then there are some companies where I think that that's just pure obsession that they have in like product details and every little detail of everything is like their differentiator in a way.

I've always been fascinated by like Steve Jobs, Apple in this way. I read his biography back when I was in school. And I was like super, super inspired by it. And I mean, he's definitely a rebel in multiple walks of life from his Brutarian behavior to the way he breaks his energy to work.

But I think another person that really inspires me who brings the same level of like, I have conviction. This is the future. I am going to just be obsessed about the details and make the differentiation that everything about our company and product is going to be the right way is Guillermo Rush at Vercel, the CEO of Vercel. And I really look up to him as well.

He has this just like maniolical focus on the product and the customer and every little detail when it comes to the marketing and design and product and everything, which is somewhat against the like typical sort of advice of like, you know, move fast, break things. But it's great. And I really respect that. And it's something that I aspire to be able to do.

still at a really high pace. And I'm continuously pushing myself to work on and harness my inner Steve Jobs or Kiermo. There's no right or wrong answer to that one. We've had so many great answers to it.

It sounds like that one's really fitting to your personality and your goals. The fact that you're able to juggle so much, you're taking that step back, looking at the high level of everything that's going on in your company, the minute details. Makes sense for that to be your inspiration. Now it is time for our Honey, I Don't Think So segment.

Looking at something that maybe is annoying you lately and that needs to stop in the marketing or MarTech space. I'm going to give you 60 seconds. So whenever you're ready, just let me know and I'll time you down. Yeah, I think the biggest thing that annoys me in the MarTech space that I've already brought up multiple times is products need to tell you what they actually do.

It's only getting worse with AI, in my opinion. Yeah, I go to the segment website, the company I used to work at. I used to love their website. I used to love it, you know, as a customer.

And now it's the tagline is saying, power your AI with our best data infrastructure. What do you do to actually help me power my AI with the best data infrastructure? I go to the Particle website and now it's, you know, amplify your customer data with AI. I think there's been like radical shift in these companies' websites over the last six months with questionable amounts of changes in the company's products over the last six months.

And that discrepancy just bothers me deeply as a product person. So tell us what you do. All right. So Tejas, where can people find you?

Yeah. So I'm actually quite easy to find. Our company's domain is hightouch.com.

So it's like hi, like high five, and then touch, like the word touch.com. And my email address is my first name. So T-E-J-A-S at hightouch.

com. And then my username on every platform is just my full name. But you can probably just Google Tejas High Touch Twitter and Tejas High Touch LinkedIn. And that might be easier than to spell out my last name here.

Be sure to link to your LinkedIn as well on this episode. So for people watching on YouTube, you'll be able to see it in the description. And people listening, go ahead and click on that description and you'll see them. But in the meantime, again, Tejas, thank you so much for being here.

We'll see you next time. Thanks for having me. Thanks, everyone, for listening to the Rebel Instinct podcast. Be sure to follow Act On Software for updates in upcoming episodes.

And remember to always act on your Rebel Instinct. Until next time.