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Thea Myhrvold

Founder & CEO

Getbee

play_circle_outline Maximizing Growth Through Microsoft Partnership and GetBe's Live Virtual Selling Platform

play_circle_outline Plug-and-play SaaS solution for quick deployment.

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Thea Myhrvold, Getbee

Thea Myhrvold

Founder & CEO Getbee

At the NYSC Wired event in New York City, John Furrier interviews the founder and CEO of GetBe, a B2B software for live virtual selling on e-commerce websites. GetBe provides personalized and consultative experiences for customers, partnering with Microsoft for success. The platform offers plug-and-play solutions that connect customers with store associates in real-time, analyzing data to improve engagement and empower sales associates with AI tools. GetBe uses a hybrid approach combining video calls and live interactions for personalized customer experiences... Read more

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Thea Myhrvold, Getbee

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>> Hello, welcome back to theCube. We are here in New York City for the NYSC Wired event with theCube. I'm John Furrier, host of theCube. We've got great lineup of guests for the past three days around NRF. It's retail week, basically here in New York. It's become a tech show because technology has invaded the vertical and is changing the business outcomes for people. People are making more money with AI and we're starting to see the beginning phases of the platform shift that is AI. We've got a great guest here, the founder and CEO of GetBe. Love the color, on brand.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Thank you.

>> Great to see you. Thanks for coming in.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Thank you for having me.

>> So first of all, I know you're been talked out at the booth at Microsoft.You mentioned it before you came on camera. Big feature in their startup ecosystem. So congratulations.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Thank you so much.

>> Before we get into the whole NRF, I want to get your perspective of the show.Give a quick introduction to what you guys do. You're the founder, which is great. How'd you get to the idea? What was the story and what do you guys do?

Thea Myhrvold

>> Yeah, so are GetBe a B2B software that enables any brand or business to do live virtual selling or sort of on-assistant demand, on your e-commerce or your website. So think about more consultative selling. I mean, all of us have been frustrated with the chatbot, right? So imagine going online, you see a chatbot, it's on every website today, but imagine if you could just dial in directly to a store and talk to somebody live. That's what we do. So think segments like baby, electronics, home, furniture, luxury. The ultimate luxury today is time. So how do you get that same level of service back to your customers? That's what we do in essence.

>> In NRF, one of the big themes I'll share with you that I'd love to get your perspective on is Covid kind of forced that whole e-commerce way really was a forcing function, kind of a black swan event. Now AI is another forcing function, but there's a business transformation. So you're seeing the nexus of first-party relationships, brick and mortar with digital.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Absolutely.

>> And so not just analytics. If I'm on e-commerce, last thing I want to see is some chatbot that's some knowledge database. I'd like to see a live person or a pre-recorded demo or that could actually give me hyper personalization.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Exactly.

>> We're starting to see this now. Is that something that you see? Is that what you guys are doing? Is that also what you're seeing in NRF?

Thea Myhrvold

>> Fundamentally, commerce is human, right? People have bought from people for thousands of years. So how do we translate that into a digital experience that's seamless but still personal? I think we've seen a lot of hype with AI as you're talking about as well, like these AI sort of chatbots, but also digital humans or digital clones. But at the end of the day, if you're still buying an engagement ring for someone, you want to see the ring. You want to have that level of service. So if you can have that high touch point experience but in a seamless way, that's the beauty of what we do at GetBe.

>> Take us through the founding of the company when you hit that moment of traction.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Yes. So for us, it's been a beautiful experience with Microsoft. I have to give a big shout out to them as one of our top partners. We were very proud to be selected as a part of their Pegasus program, which is their sort of top startup program. So out of 80,000 startups, they've selected 120 to go to market. So I'd say our real traction point came from that momentum that we had with Microsoft. So I have to say last year was my first NRF. This year we're a big part of the Microsoft booth and I've had hundreds and hundreds of conversations with top Microsoft customers coming and demoing today. It's been incredible to see customers use this globally. Customers in Italy, Brazil, the Middle East here in the U.S. So it's beautiful to see again, this commerce is human piece. It's such a global, universal concept.

>> And where are you guys located? Where do you guys, are you guys remote? Do you guys have an office?

Thea Myhrvold

>> Yes.

>> Where are you guys located?

Thea Myhrvold

>> So we're between here and New York in Dubai as well, because there's a big luxury segment there too. But we have team in Europe here in the U.S. And in the Middle East.

>> And how far along are you in your journey?

Thea Myhrvold

>> We are a growth stage company and we're growing very fast now with Microsoft as well.

>> Awesome. Take us through the use case. Take me through I love the idea by the way. So I'm sold. We need more personal relationships. We're back to events. Again, we're way past Covid, but now we're in the AI wave. People are really relishing the experiences of being face-to-face and taking it to digital, which they're now comfortable with. Now, Gen Z, of course, they all want it. They all want it to be personal and interactive at a human level.

Thea Myhrvold

>> At a human level. Yes.

>> Take us through, if I want to adopt this, I want to deploy it. Do I deploy software? It sounds like it's SaaS and Azure. Take me through the specifics of how I would roll this out.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Perfect. It's a plug-and-play solution. So it's a SaaS, software as a service. So it's all branded to look and feel like yours. And we connect to your experts or your stores associates. So again, leveraging the expertise that you already have in-house, and it's super quick to deploy. And the beauty of this, again with Microsoft is we're part of the Azure marketplace. So you could actually acquire this through the Microsoft ecosystem, but we can get you up and running in less than a week.

>> So I have to deploy people. Is it live bodies? Is it pre-recorded videos? What's the mechanics on the video piece?

Thea Myhrvold

>> So it's live people. So you actually dial in straight to a store. So it's a store associate that will answer, and that way we can leverage your existing sales force because again, people aren't always busy in the store. So how can you leverage your expertise to then service your online customers?

>> It's interesting. It's a nice cross-connect too, because one of the themes of NRF is everyone's trying to solve the data problem. And these databases usually treat people in silos. They called in, they visited the store here. And a lot of the times people have a relationship with a brand.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Exactly.

>> Talk about luxury brands, I mean that's the ultimate relationship.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Absolutely.

>> And sometimes the stores don't even know that it's a repeat or loyal customer, and so there's not a lot of understanding of that. The why behind the person.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Exactly.

>> This is where you guys, sounds like you guys, you can route someone in, "Hey, you're a loyal customer." Are you involved at that level of the analytics? Take us through some of those mechanics.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Yes, absolutely. And we believe, and our ethos is how can we use AI to empower people and not replace people? So really empower the sales associate from that perspective. So we transcribe the entire sales conversation as well. We can cross-reference what is recommended versus sold. So imagine if you know what questions do people have before they buy. That's super interesting because you're not recording that physically in the store, but you can cross-reference and analyze this online. So at an aggregate level, you can take this data back to your marketing team, your sales team, and even at a product level as well to say, okay, what questions do people have before they buy or even don't buy too?

>> And give feedback to the brand. So you're an end-to-end feedback mechanism loop. So you can go and say, "Hey, here's our top performers, or this associate's not doing so well." Or maybe change the narrative so you can in real time. Sounds like AI can help that too.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Exactly. So the video is the hook, but the data is the real gold. Absolutely.

>> I love it. So talk about the human response to this. I'm sure people aren't afraid to have a camera. There's probably a camera deployed, little system. "Hi, how can help you?" Take us through that experience for the folks who are the user, the in-store expertise?

Thea Myhrvold

>> The beauty here is we work in a hybrid way. People are used to video calls now, video conferences, FaceTime. So we're taking that human behavior and translating that into a sales experience. So I think the beauty here is that people are very used to this kind of experience anyway in the way that we work, the way that we live. And so yes, you can have a camera, the customer doesn't have to have their camera on, but they can if they'd like. And the beauty here as well, we're seeing in the skincare industry, the average consultation lasts 15 minutes because it's a very emotional purchase. The lifetime value increases here too. So not only are you driving conversion, but you're driving lifetime value, loyalty and retention.

>> Yeah, that intimacy is really critical. What's the big learnings that you've had so far going from startup to now growth phase, you got a great partner in Microsoft. What have been some of the lessons that you've learned?

Thea Myhrvold

>> So many. The entrepreneurship journey is so many lessons, but I would say the first, so this is my third venture, my first venture. I think you think so much about your products and I love problem solving. So I think product is there, but the biggest key I have for any entrepreneur is find a good distribution partner. It's all about distribution and we're very fortunate to have that with Microsoft.

>> Got it. Now talk about NRF now. What's been the observation? I know you had a lot of conversations in the Microsoft booth, as we're in the booth and also looking around the landscape. What's been your takeaway?

Thea Myhrvold

>> I think AI is the theme for every conference that we're seeing, right? And AI, the question I was asking people at NRF was, AI is ready for retail, but is retail ready for AI? But I think now with the technology partners and we have industry experts that are seeing the benefit to both, retail is really becoming ready for AI too. And we're actually seeing things moving from pilot phase to full rollout.

>> If you look at CES last week and then leading up to it, AI big, camera's big, computer vision, multimodal foundation models. So language, gestures. Now you're getting all that data. You can see the facial expressions. Is there computer vision in your future? Is it already there? What's the component with the computer vision?

Thea Myhrvold

>> Sentimental analysis as well, understanding what's being said. So we're capturing all of that.

>> All right, what's next?

Thea Myhrvold

>> Oh, so many things, but stay tuned. We have an announcement yet, but we have some big announcements coming soon.

>> Soon, next couple months?

Thea Myhrvold

>> Next couple months.

>> Next couple months.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Yeah.

>> What's the biggest product feature that's kind of jumped off the page for you? Or business transformational feature. Obviously a sales is great. I mean more revenue. People love it.

Thea Myhrvold

>> People love more revenue.

>> What has been the thing that surprised you the most, or not surprised you or that's been the biggest impact or coolest thing that's happened?

Thea Myhrvold

>> I think especially if we think about retail, we're going from scroll-based shopping to goal-based shopping. So it's really making e-commerce and retail human and translating that again. So we're seeing some phenomenal stories and user stories that are coming out of what we do. I said our average consultation has been 50 minutes, but we've seen some consultations been even longer, but it's been transformational to see how simple this is to deploy, but also make that AI use case simple for retailers too.

>> Well, I really appreciate your entrepreneurial journey sharing. For the folks that are in retail, because some of them already, some aren't. What would your advice be to them? Because they're kind entrepreneurial, they have to be entrepreneurial-like to leverage these technologies. It's happening very fast, and sometimes it comes from the bottom up. The younger generation or progressive leader might say, "Hey, we want to move the needle." What advice would you give to the customers that want to test, do you experiment? What would be your experience that you would share with the folks who want to be aggressive, but they might want to have a high bar or at least get it in there and figure it out?

Thea Myhrvold

>> I would say work with the right partners or technology partners and also be open to collaborating with startups. So that's where I think we see the real innovation happening. And startups are faster to deploy, quicker to pilot or pivot. So if you find the right partner in a startup, and I will give a shout out to Microsoft here because they have a great startup program where they have industry-specific advisors that can then validate and qualify these startups for you. Because I do understand some enterprises are worried to work with startups, but they've done the qualification process. So that's a great way to find the right people to work with.

>> Well, thank you so much for coming into theCUBE and part of our new NYSC Wired, our new set here. Not too shabby here. The NYSC, Brian Baumann at Wired did a great network that's developing. Thanks for coming in, appreciate you.

Thea Myhrvold

>> Thank you so much.

>> Okay. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. You're watching theCUBE coverage of NRF. It's media week. It's basically retail week and all the action here. Managed services, people who are focused on a particular use case are coming into the core operations, creating operational efficiencies and actually business transformation. All happening very, very fast. AI is ready. And are you ready for AI? That's the big question this weekend, and we will see more coverage after this short break.