Background

Questions

1. Tell us about the decision to build a CDP and take a platform approach to building out Customer.io. What's the problem statement from the customer perspective?
2. Can you talk a little about taking a platform approach vs. all-in-one? How do you think about this specific approach that you've chosen?
3. How do you think about interoperability with other SaaS tools? What does it mean to "own" the CDP layer, especially if Data Pipelines works seamlessly with any SaaS? Is it more important that Customer.io "owns" the CDP, or that Segment doesn't and that the CDP is commoditized? I would love to hear, because Customer.io predated the modern CDP and Segment. Right?
4. What are the benefits of vertical integration that customers get from bringing everything onto the Customer.io platform?
5. How does go-to-market (GTM) change with a platform approach? What's it look like now vs. what it will need to become an as-you-go multi-product? How do you see the customer journey in terms of adopting the Customer.io stack as it grows?
6. Right now, the Customer.io platform consists of Journeys (marketing automation) and Data Pipelines (CDP). How do you think about what products you want to add and in what order? How do more products drive more customer value and lock-in?
7. Do you see Journeys as the primary revenue driver with Data Pipelines as more of a loss leader? Are you imagining any new products as revenue drivers? How are you thinking about revenue mix and pricing for individual products and bundles?
8. In our last conversation, you mentioned Customer.io's customer base is mainly SMB and customers churn as they go enterprise. How has that moment of churn changed over time? How do you expect the platform approach to affect churn at the high end?
9. CDP has got a little confusing as a term. It might include ETL, reverse ETL, data enrichment etc. How are you defining CDP at Customer.io? Where do you see the opportunities to build a feature-rich experience at the CDP layer?
10. Customer.io Journeys needs a low latency CDP to make sure messages are sent to users in real-time based on actions they take in the app. Is speed a differentiator among CDPs? If so, does Customer.io intend to compete on that dimension?
11. Is data warehouse sync part of CDP or a separate product? How do you see the relationship between CDP and "modern data stack" in terms of data infrastructure to power things like Journeys? Is the data warehouse sync a differentiator for Customer.io versus competitors like Braze and Iterable?
12. How do you position Customer.io's CDP against standalone products like Segment, mParticle and Rudderstack and the CDPs of other products like Klaviyo, Intercom and Amplitude. Do you intend to win based on vertical integration with Customer.io Journeys? How about price, feature differentiation, and number of integrations?
13. Klaviyo launched its CDP as part of its enterprise platform. Are you primarily thinking about Data Pipelines as driving enterprise lock-in and all-in-one? Do you have a downmarket strategy for Data Pipelines? How do you think about what Klaviyo and Intercom are doing?
14. There’s a common pitfall of going multi-product by selling into multiple buyers. As you launch more products, what do you see as the boundary conditions that define what Customer.io should and wants to be doing vs. what it won't do?
15. Intercom used to have a platform approach, with marketing automation and support built on top of a CRM. It's now decided to focus 100% on customer service. Why is now the right time to try this platform approach and how will Customer.io succeed where Intercom decided to pull back?
16. Where do you imagine that Customer.io can get the most leverage out of AI? How are you thinking about AI at Customer.io re automating writing messages, creating segments, enriching data etc.?
17. To the extent that Customer.io helps enable a specific PLG sales motion for its customers, how concerned are you that the way that customers buy software in general will change with AI? What risk is there that, e.g., marketing automation becomes a lot less effective as a result of a dramatic rise in spam and that tools like Customer.io lose their alpha?
18. If everything goes right for Customer.io in five years, what does it become? How do you see the world change as a result?