“People are accustomed to instant gratification and results. Businesses need to give consumers what they want.”
Hi, Brendan, could you tell us about your professional journey so far?
I have always been an entrepreneur and a scientist. While in university I started a clothing store and made a bunch of money quickly and lost it just as quickly. After graduating from University with an advanced degree in physics and a secondary degree in geophysics I went to work for Eldorado Nuclear which later was merged with the Saskatchewan Mining and Development Corporation into what is now Cameco. That job was in northern Saskatchewan (Canada) and was “three weeks in and three weeks out”. During my three weeks out I ended up starting a computer company called Delron Computers. In 1989 I quit my job at Eldorado—much to the chagrin of my parents—and grew Delron to $15 million in revenue. In 1995 we became part of the CompuSmart national franchise.
By 1999 I was restless watching other entrepreneurs build software companies like Amazon so I sold my half of CompuSmart to my business partner and went to work at a small local software company called Point2. In 2000, Point2 was partially purchased by Bid.com , a TSX-listed company with a billion dollar market cap. Before we knew it, we were flying high and spending money like water. In the summer of 2000, the dot-com crash happened. Bid.com was bankrupt in six weeks. We ended up buying our shares back from the receiver and doing consulting work for Caterpillar, Komatsu, and John Deere to make ends meet.
I had always wanted to start a software company so John Fothergill—a Point2 employee and later a Vendasta founder—built a prototype of a product for real estate agents. The product allowed agents to have a website they could manage without a webmaster and would send their listings to real estate listing sites. The Point2 CEO let us run with it and by the time I left Point2 in 2007 we had 150,000 realtors in over 50 countries using the product. We had a good percentage paying and we had no salesforce. It was truly a product-led company before that was a thing.
I left Point2 at the end of 2007 to start Vendasta. Point2 was later bought by US-based Yardi and it still runs today. Vendasta was originally going to be a social network for homeowners. It was going to let you share your home online with friends and family for inspiration and ideas, but more importantly, it would help you find a contractor, plumber, painter, electrician, landscaper, designer or any other service provider that your social network had used and trusted. For the service providers, we had a free tool to get their business listed online, manage their reviews, and publish on social media sites. The idea was to connect the homeowner to the service provider and monetize the transaction.
It turned out that people didn’t want to share their home online in 2008 like they would today, and the housing crash happened in the US causing a global financial crisis. However, as luck would have it, our free tool took off. Thousands of service providers signed up. Unfortunately, free products don’t pay the bills. In order to avoid going broke, we pivoted and started providing our listings, reputation, and social media management as a white label tool for newspapers and yellow page companies to sell to their business advertising customers.
Today our business has evolved into an ecosystem to help small businesses get the technology they need from vendors and the experts that implement those solutions. We serve more than six million small businesses through 65,000 of these experts providing over 500 products and services from all types of vendors: advertising, marketing, productivity, ecommerce—even banking and insurance.
What challenges did the COVID-19 pandemic pose for you and your team?
When COVID hit, we had three main objectives. First, we wanted to ensure the safety of our people and our customers. Second, we wanted to help local businesses, many of whom were not able to operate. Lastly, we wanted to come out the other side of the pandemic stronger.
We immediately got our team working remotely and provided our customers with payment relief and credits on our products. As a company, we saw three ways that we could help our customers. We knew they needed remote tools, so we integrated Google Meet, Zoom, and calendaring into our products. We also recognized that many small businesses were not equipped to handle ecommerce, so we built out our ecommerce tools and provided it for free.
Lastly, we recognized that a lot of people were at home with time on their hands and were wanting to learn, so we built a free academy and community for people to become digital experts through learning and engagement. These initiatives turned out to be very effective and we were able to grow our revenue and help our customers at the same time.
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What sets Vendasta apart from the competition?
Small businesses have trouble finding, choosing, and implementing technology. Our ecosystem allows them to connect with an expert they trust and allows the expert to provide them with everything they need from best-of-breed vendors of technology and services.
Businesses get a single login that helps them run their business with the technology they deserve. Our channel experts get a platform to scale their business, and our vendors get a massive distribution channel for their products and services.
How, according to you, has technology in the marketing landscape evolved and will evolve in the coming years?
The marketing landscape is becoming increasingly more complex with the introduction of more products and services, more advertising channels, and the rapid pace of technological innovation. This trend continues to accelerate and in my view will not slow down.
As it stands, small businesses spend only about a third of their time practicing their craft and are going to increasingly need the help of expert marketers.
How do you envisage B2B and B2C SaaS solutions developing in the future?
I think there will continue to be an explosion of new SaaS products and services. The MarTech landscape has grown massively and I think that trend will continue.
How does marketing automation impact the traditional sales and marketing funnels?
Marketing automation is changing and evolving quickly. Artificial intelligence and new technologies are opening the door for increasingly sophisticated marketing that will allow businesses to target the right people at the right time with the right message.
What, according to you, should businesses focus more on to provide a better digital experience to their customers?
People are accustomed to instant gratification and results. Businesses need to give consumers what they want. This includes things like the ability to schedule, buy and pay online, view inventory levels, deliver to their door and curbside pickup.
Could you name one other CEO that you would like to see featured here?
I have to be a bit selfish and suggest the CEO of our subsidiary MatchCraft, Sandy Lohr. I’ve had the honor of working alongside her formally for the past few months and she’s a tremendous leader and visionary.
Your top pick for a book on MarTech that everyone should read?
They aren’t MarTech in particular, but I always recommend these books to anyone working in technology:
- “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Leap … and Others Don’t by” Jim Collins
- “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman
- “Measure What Matters” by John E. Doerr
- “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable” by Patrick M. Lencioni.
- “Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
What is the one piece of advice you would give to those who wish to enter the MarTech world?
I’ll harken back to my geophysics days. F=MA and you can’t push a rope. Failure is just another way to find out how to do it. It’s about figuring things out. You just need to look back at the forces involved. There are a lot of human elements to consider, but some of the work is a math equation.
Thanks, Brendan!
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