Online Reputation Management with Reputation.com CEO Joe Fuca

11/22/20 • 41 min

Welcome back to How I Launched This! Stephanie Wong (@stephr_wong) is back this week hosting Joe Fuca of Reputation.com. Their advanced algorithms based on years of machine learning experience help companies find, manage, and maintain their online brand presence.

With his history growing companies into worldwide successes, Joe starts the show telling us about his fascinating experiences with category creation, from infancy to acceptance to widespread use. His current work at Reputation has brought him to the feedback economy, which he says is still growing. As more users leave reviews for various companies and services, these organizations are beginning to realize the benefits of customer opinions. Reputation.com is able to aggregate feedback from online reviews, surveys, social media, phone calls, and more to create Score X for industry-specific companies. This score allows users to directly compare vendors of the same industry and lets companies know how they're doing relative to their competition. It helps companies be found by customers as they research which doctor to use or car dealership to patronize. In addition, Reputation is providing businesses with specific, real-time metrics they can act upon to enhance the customer experience.

Joe tells us more about the progression of Reputation from novel idea to powerful tool. He talks about how changing technologies have affected the company and how they've been able to adapt and build a better product. From their start in personal reputation management to their current enterprise offering, Reputation.com has taken advantage of cutting edge technology to collect and analyze pertinent data. General Motors, a big client of Reputation, is a great example of how the company has integrated and adapted their platform for their enterprise clients.

Later, we talk about how 2020 has changed Reputation.com and how they're keeping up with the increased traffic the year has brought. Joe offers valuable advice to other company heads as they deal with Covid-19 and drives home how important customer loyalty is in these trying times. The future of Reputation.com will see a fun rebranding that really expands the reputation experience management platform.

Episode Links:
Reputation.com
DocuSign

Episode Links:
Reputation.com
DocuSign

Previous Episode

Perfecting Product with Pendo CEO and Co-Founder Todd Olson

Stephanie Wong (@stephr_wong) and Carter Morgan (@carterthecomic) are back with a new episode of How I Launched This. This week, we talk with Pendo CEO and Co-Founder Todd Olson. With a passion for helping teams build and adapt digital products, Todd and his co-founders from Google, RedHat, and Cisco created Pendo to help companies analyze how their product offerings are used to optimize performance for customers.

Pendo offers analytical tools, messaging features inside products, feedback polls, and customer feedback roadmaps to allow users to impact product development and companies to adjust products to fit real-life user needs. With situations like the global pandemic, this has become especially useful as users adjust to a new way of working with products. Pendo helps them navigate the products in these new ways and provides feedback to companies so they are able to adjust if necessary to ensure user satisfaction

Todd is no stranger to startups, having launched many himself starting from a very young age. With Pendo, he wanted to focus on what users really want, what they really need, and how they're actually using products that digital engineers build. He tells us the process of Pendo's creation, starting with the initial ideas and partnering with like minded individuals. Todd feels it's important and quite honestly, more fun, to have co-founders to help support the mission and bring complimentary skills to a project.

Later, we hear more about Todd's journey through entrepreneurship, from his first company to Pendo. We talk about how a lifetime of entrepreneurialism has changed him, and he tells us lessons he's learned, giving insight into the process of building a company, realizing it's potential, then moving to the next project. He details the evolution of Pendo from inception to edited iterations, to the useful service it is today. We talk about tradeoffs entrepreneurs and their startups invariably have to make and how to make the tough choices.

We dig into the technology behind Pendo later in the show as Todd outlines the tools they use and why. Todd also takes the time to talk about his new book on product-led businesses. The show wraps up with a discussion of how product-led businesses can adjust for the future and embrace the changes that come with it. We end with Todd's thoughts on the future of SaaS companies.

Episode Links:
Pendo
Google App Engine
BigQuery
The Product-Led Organization

Next Episode

Software Delivery Management with CloudBees CEO Sacha Labourey

This week, Carter Morgan (@carterthecomic) speaks with Sacha Labourey about enterprise software delivery company CloudBees. CloudBees enables developers to focus on what they do best: Build stuff that matters, while providing peace of mind to management with powerful risk mitigation, compliance and governance tools. CloudBees streamlines the software delivery management process for companies.

Sacha starts the show with a thorough explanation of how CloudBees saw a need in the market and filled it. Previously, companies would take months or years to get their software products out there, often guessing at what customers need. With CloudBees’ continuous integration and delivery processes, companies can now evaluate customer needs, build and adjust useful products, and get them to market quickly. By allowing companies to codify team roles and knowledge and integrate with hundreds of tools, enterprise software can be automated and secured, decreasing time to market.

Later, we talk about CloudBees’ specific offerings for different types of enterprise customers. Sacha details the process to build, iterate, improve, and deliver software quickly, all while efficiently managing the team members and tools used. We learn about the compliance and security measures in place to help clients not only work quickly but safely.

CloudBees continues to grow and expand their offerings, and we talk about what’s in store for the future. Sacha graciously shared stories of the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, from getting the first customer to continually improving and learning from the lows while celebrating highs. Covid has impacted many businesses, and Sacha shares how CloudBees has handled this curveball.

We wrap up the show discussing the special relationship between CloudBees and Google and the changes customers can expect from CloudBees in the future.

Episode Links:
CloudBeesSoftware Delivery ManagementKubernetes

How I Launched This: A SaaS Story - Online Reputation Management with Reputation.com CEO Joe Fuca

Transcript

MUSIC UP
Joe Fuca [00:00:06] If you're looking at your business during COVID and you start to look at some of the 2020 trends, you're going to see all types of things that jump off the page. Your customer loyalty is never more important than today. And so you're focused on customer loyalty whether that's a customer success group, whether that's a training group, those have got to be front and center.
MUSIC DOWN
Stephanie Wong [00:00:28] Welcome back e