Dreamforce 2024 | Godard Abel | G2

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Godard Abel

Co-founder & CEO

G2

B2B software matchmaking: G2 aims to empower B2B buyers with peer reviews and real-time insights

Emerging trends show that B2B software buying preferences are changing. Companies are more thorough about new software investments and would welcome as much information as possible to guide buying decisions.G2’s Godard Abel explains the platform’s value for software buyers and vendors.G2.com Inc. streamlines the B2B software buying process with peer reviews and product information, such that a buyer can make informed choices even before contacting a salesperson.“Our primary mission is to serve the software buyer, give them great insights [and then] connect them to software sellers,” said Godard Abel (pictured), co-founder and chief executive officer of G2

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play_circle_outline G2's role in consumerization of B2B software buying

play_circle_outline Adapting B2B Buying Post-Pandemic: Embracing Self-Service and Peer Reviews for Informed Decisions

play_circle_outline G2's mission as a trusted software marketplace and matchmaker

play_circle_outline Maximizing Sales Efficiency with G2 Matchmaker: Leveraging AI and AI Agents at Dreamforce

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Godard Abel | G2

Godard Abel

Co-founder & CEO G2

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>> Hello, and welcome back to Dreamforce 2024. We're really digging into what's going on and what's going on in the market around us because Salesforce touches so much of the ecosystem. And today I'm really excited to have one of our partners in this event with G2 and Godard Abel, who's the CEO and co-founder of G2, to of dig into what's going on in the market around us. And it's talking about sales and you guys help people in that way, but why don't you help people understand a little bit about what G2 is up to, what you do, and how you really are involved in this ecosystem.

Godard Abel

>> Yeah, thanks, Rob. Great to be here with you in San Francisco. Beautiful, nice studio. Kickoff Dreamforce week, and I've been a huge fan of Dreamforce. I think I've been to everyone just about since 2004. And what's been amazing over the last 20 years is seeing the cloud grow because I remember back then, I think it was the first one was just in a small hotel in San Francisco, and maybe 400 people. And I think now it's over 100,000 people every year. So just incredible to see this industry grow. And I think one of the big trends we're fueling at G2 is the consumerization of B2B software buying and selling. And you and I were talking, you and I have both been in B2B forever, and frankly, I think it's been way too hard for software buyers-

>> I would agree....

Godard Abel

>> in the enterprise to discover the best apps and know which apps to trust. And that's really why we started G2. At the beginning, we called it Yelp for software. And we said, why can you get more information, let's say, on a $100 dinner here in San Francisco than you could on a $100,000 CRM package? And so that's what we set out to change at G2 when we started.

>> And I think, again, you're building the community of buyers around these different products. I know having been at multiple startups as well as large companies that have engaged with G2. Because you start to see how these people are coming in and unbiased information is exchanged. What is really interesting, and you just kind of touched on it, is that you probably see how the behaviors are changing from a B2B buying perspective. What have you seen over the past few years?

Godard Abel

>> Yeah, and I think we're seeing B2B buyers much more self-serve. And I think just as consumers, especially post-pandemic, I think we all got used to buying everything on Amazon, buying everything online. And as consumers, we take it for granted. There's always peer reviews. And frankly, I think, on Amazon, a product with no reviews, we'd never buy, right? But if it's got 100 reviews, mostly positive, we buy it right away. And we can also see from peer consumers what it like about the products, what do they dislike, where they're having challenges. And that's really now what G2 enables. And what we're seeing that's kind of amazing, 69% of B2B software buyers now report they're actually making a decision before they even talk to a salesperson.

>> Yeah, that's crazy. Because when you start to look at that, your brand and your reputation gets out in front of you. How do you help those organizations really get a view into that brand reputation? And what are you doing for other companies? Because again, you're servicing both sides of the fence there as well.

Godard Abel

>> True. And we are aiming to build a marketplace. So our primary mission is to serve the software buyer, give them great insights, but then we also want to connect them to software sellers. And it's also true for the buyer. If you're on a site like G2, we always say, you're not there for fun. You're there because you're looking to buy an app or an AI tool to make your business better. And so they ultimately, the buyers want to connect to the seller. So we want to make that real easy. So we also serve over 3,500 software sellers now, they're our customers including the largest ones like Salesforce, IBM, Oracle, they're all G2 customers. And what we do help the brands do is, one, ensure they have enough customer voice. Because I mentioned earlier, no one's going to buy a product with no reviews. And the same is true in software now. If you have no reviews on G2, you're probably not selling anything because no one's going to trust it. So one, we help the software sellers make sure they have enough reviews. We're actually doing that right here at Dreamforce. There's going to be QR codes at the end of a lot of Salesforce keynotes just asking their Trailblazers, "Hey, would you leave a review on G2?" Because it obviously helps them build trust through Trailblazer Voice, and they might get a Trailblazer hoodie in return. So one, we help vendors activate their customers to share reviews. And then two, we also give them all kinds of data on consumer sentiment. What are the reviewers saying? What do they love about their products? Where can they get better? We can give them competitive insights. Why are some buyers maybe engaging more with competitor products? What do they like about those products? And we can also give them what we call buyer intent signals where we can tell them what products, what software solutions are companies shopping for right now on G2.

>> Yeah, I think you hit on a really good topic because I think, even myself being on both sides of the fence there, I was in IT a long time ago, it was really hard to get information about, and I was spending, I had budget of about a million dollars a month in the aspect of it that I worked in. And trying to get insight into that was I reached out to people like myself that are analysts and things of that nature. And that's olden days, right? Now, but today things move so much faster. And it would seem that updating that information and delivering them the right information and working with your customers and to build that marketplace, you're seeing some of the sentiment like, hey, you have five reviews, maybe you should really try to up your reviews, the number of people who are on there. Your competitors have 147, or something like that. Is that where you see some of the conversations going with the CMOs and the chief revenue officers and those people who are concerned about the top of their pipeline and other parts of their pipeline?

Godard Abel

>> For sure. So I think everything is moving faster, as you said. And that's part of the reason we started G2, and I think there's a lot of great analysts, but they couldn't keep up. And I saw this at my first company, BigMachines, eventually it became Oracle CPQ, but I remember it took us nine years to get an analyst report, 12 years to become the leader. And obviously now software's moving so fast. And we do think software buyers are looking for that real-time voice, real-time reviews. And so, one, we do help, obviously vendors encourage that. But then even more now we're talking about how do you take those reviews, once you have good customer voice, how do you turn that into revenue? And I think it's also been a more challenging market for most SaaS vendors the last couple of years. And so I think everyone is looking, how do they better engage buyers? How do they more efficiently sell and market? And we think the G2 intent signals are one of the best ways to do it because also a lot of B2B outreach can be annoying. Because traditionally, we all did spray and pray, where we just kind of email every customer, every target customer that might be a fit. But most of the time we're reaching out at the wrong time. And I remember for many years we sold CPQ software, Configure, Price, Quote software. We actually built SteelBrick, that's now Salesforce CPQ. That was my last company. But I think also our challenge was always we never knew when people were in market to buy CPQ software. And now with our intent signals, we can tell you, "Hey, which companies right now are shopping in the CPQ market?" So obviously if you're a CPQ vendor, that's when you reach out to them. And most people actually only buy a CPQ app, let's say, every five to 10 years. And frankly, so nine out of those 10 years as a vendor, you're wasting your time when they're not in market. And so with G2, you can make sure you target them at the right time

>> Right. Because the actual switching cost of a lot of those products that people are selling is pretty big. So you want to be there at the right moment when they're, hey, you know what? The pain is worth the actual cost to go and make that. So those intent signals. How do you see organizations really leveraging the G2 platform? Because we have a number of your customers on over the course of today and tomorrow, which is fantastic. And bringing that knowledge to people about how they're going to win with signals and understanding that is huge. How do you look at them leveraging that as well?

Godard Abel

>> Yeah. And we do want all those vendors to leverage, we call it, the G2 review to revenue flywheel. And it does start with reviews, right? Make sure they have enough customer voice. And a lot of these vendors already do. Once you have, let's say, 100 good reviews and you have enough customer voice, but then the question is, what do you do with that to turn it into revenue? And as I mentioned, we think one of the best methods is to actually use our intent signals because we have over 2,000 categories of software on G2. And when a company is in market in your category shopping, looking at you, or looking at your competitors, you want to know. And that is also what drove me nuts as entrepreneur. I hate missing a deal. You never want to miss a deal.

>> No. Never want to miss a deal.

Godard Abel

>> And you know a lot of these B2B apps, as you said, they're sticky. Companies might run them for multiple years. So if you missed a deal, you might not get another chance for five or 10 years. And that's where we think using our intent to target at the right time is really important. And then the second thing we give them is, one, right time, but then also the right message. And you've probably also gotten a lot of outreach calls. I know I do as a CEO entrepreneur every day. And what's most effective to me is if they're like, "Hey, here's a peer entrepreneur of yours, a friend of yours." Obviously, ideally it's like Marc Benioff at Salesforce, one of my entrepreneur idols. But if somebody pings me, like, "Hey, Marc in Salesforce loved my app, here's why," I will definitely take the call and listen. And obviously on G2, we have hundreds, if not thousands, of peer reviews. So if you're doing outreach, you can always find a peer. So if you're calling a CEO, find a peer CEO. If you're calling a CRO, a CMO, always lead with a peer message, and, "Hey, here's how I'm delivering value to your peers." Because I think almost any executive will listen to that. Or even what can also work great, hey, I'm delivering a ton of value to your competitor. I'll always take that call because I never want to be at a disadvantage. So we also think we can really help sellers with that right peer message to engage a target buyer.

>> And I think one of the things that, again, you've done is you've not only created the marketplace, but you have such, I would say, people have the experience where they know that these are actual quality discussions that are happening there. So they're quality reviews and things. Talk to that a bit because I think people look at that and go, okay, great, there's a whole bunch of reviews out there, but why should I go here? Why should I trust that on the consumer side of things? How do you talk to people about that?

Godard Abel

>> Yeah. And Rob, you're right, I mean that the reviews are trusted and authentic is really important. And we have all heard a lot of horror stories even on Amazon. The FTC actually just issued a real ruling, making it clear that you can't have fake reviews, like the FTC even's going to come down on you. And so we do spend a lot to make sure that our reviews are authentic and trusted. One of the things we do is we tend to validate them with a LinkedIn profile. Because if I really know it's you, Rob, I can see, oh, well, A, Rob's a real B2B leader, real B2B practitioner, and I can see your context. What company are you working for? What role are you in? And so, one, we validate the reviewer's identity. And it does have to be tied to their business identity. Obviously if somebody only signs up with Gmail and we don't know who they are, we're not going to... We reject actually over 30% of reviews. And either that's because we can't verify the person's professional identity or it's just poor content, or we suspect fraud. And with AI, I mean it's becoming more of a problem. We were joking about avatars. I don't know if this is the real me or an avatar me speaking in this interview. I think it's the real me. But I think it's getting hard to tell, right? And same thing with AI. People are generating more fake reviews at scale now. And so frankly, we're also applying AI to screen all the reviews. And obviously we're not 100%, but I think we catch probably 99% of the bad content. And I'd say, finally, we rely on our community because if you're a buyer on G2, or if you're a software seller and you suspect a review is fake, you can report it right in the review. And we do have a review moderation trust team that will follow up and investigate. So we're always aiming to make sure the content's trusted, because otherwise it doesn't help the buyer.

>> Yeah. Because it happens both for good reviews and bad reviews in the same way. So I think you want to make it secure for both sides of the marketplace so that they can find each other, but there's not a lot of noise in the signal that you're delivering out to them as well.

Godard Abel

>> No, you're right. And actually we have some funny stories, and I won't name names, but we have had some famous CMOs go try to write a review of one of their competitors. But luckily, because we have their professional identity, we can catch that right away. So obviously that's one of the things that's not allowed, but people still try.

>> Yeah. No, I can imagine that. I can imagine people trying to game the system and trying to get a leg up. And I think, like you said, having been at Amazon and understanding, they're very intent on that. And we're here at the NYSE studio, our remote studio at the NYSE this week. And I think one of the things that's fun is that it helps make markets. You're not just making a marketplace, but you're helping new markets. You said you had over 2,000 different categories. How do you see the categories growing? Do they grow exponentially year over year? How do you tune that so there's not too many categories, but there's enough that cover the different marketplaces you're trying to interact in?

Godard Abel

>> Yeah. And you're right, that's always a balancing act. Now we do love to create new categories as new innovations emerge. One of the most exciting areas on G2, no surprise, has been AI. So I think just in the last year, we have 40% more AI listings, and that's both startups launching new AI companies, new AI products, but also all the incumbents. And I think this week, Salesforce is launching Agentforce, all about supporting different AI agents. So also all the leading incumbent vendors like Salesforce are launching AI product. So that part of the taxonomy has really exploded. And we do have 40 new AI categories in about the last year. And obviously two years ago, nobody even knew what an LLM was. I shouldn't say nobody, but you almost had to be an AI researcher. But then obviously post-ChatGPT 3.5, now everyone's interested in AI, and every business person wants to learn more. So we also have categories like vector databases, obviously the underlying infrastructure. And so in some areas like AI, it's actually necessary to create new categories because our software industry is innovating so fast. So there, we've added 40 new ones. But you're right, we also try not to overdo it because the big challenge becomes, for the buyer, you don't even know which category to shop in. It's almost like a supermarket with 2,000 aisles and which aisle do you even shop in?

>> Right. Yeah, I think that that was actually where I was going with that because, like you said, the agenic stuff that Agentforce and Oracle last week announced that they had 51 different agents already as part of Fusion. It's becoming very confusing in that part of the market, to put it mildly. I think this was actually pretty good. We got through a good portion of this without saying AI first. So I think that's a win for anything on the interwebs these days. But when you start to look at the whole, how you're bringing it, and kind of to bring things back around, what's your core mission? What's G2's core mission that you're trying to drive that people should be sitting there going, yeah, that's why I want. On the consumer side, they're going to want to go, and on the vendor side, they're going to want to go and check you guys out.

Godard Abel

>> Yeah. And I think our ultimate vision for G2 is to be the trusted place you go for software, but also really to be a trusted software marketplace. So in some ways, I want to be a dating site and be the ultimate matchmaker for software. And I guess my joke would be it's like, hey, the software buyer and seller fall in love on the first demo. And we are actually applying AI there. So we've launched an AI Monty agent that advises a software buyer because our supermarket now of software with over 2,000 categories or aisles could be confusing. So now we have an AI buying advisor. You could think of it, it's almost like your smartest Accenture consultant in a sentient AI box. But Monty can advise the buyer. And the buyer can now just enter the business problem they're having. So it could be like, hey, you're a CRO and you just don't know how to handle your sales forecasting. And frankly, then G2 will ask more questions, or you just sign up with LinkedIn, we can ask you your company size. Oh wow, you're leading a large sales team at a tech company. And then we can say, hey, based on peer reviews, here's five apps that might really solve this problem. And then the AI conversation can continue because it's also Monty can also be an AI SDR, if you will, and answer all the FAQs the buyer's going to have about that product, including pricing, deployment, time integrations, and really walk the software buyer further and further down the funnel where ultimately the software buyer can self-serve and just buy the perfect app for them. And then because we're the perfect matchmaker, the perfect date, just like a couple falls in love and is happily ever married, that customer never turns. And so I think if G2 really realizes it's stream, then every software buyer will just come to G2, and we'll match them with the perfect app in real time.

>> Yeah, I mean that to me, and I think like you said, get them further and further down the funnel. So on the vendor side, there, SDRs were going from sales-qualified leads to marketing-qualified leads, and it shortens that cycle for them.

Godard Abel

>> Hopefully.

>> And hopefully helps them from an ROI, assuming that they're providing the right information and things of that nature into your system. Do you see that organizations really are trying to use this to help them find higher ROI out of that marketplace and better equilibrium?

Godard Abel

>> Yes. And I think the vendor can get a higher ROI with faster sales cycles because if we walk the buyer much further down to funnel, and they're much more qualified, then hopefully, yeah, it's just kind of one SDR, maybe final qualification, one demo and close. And obviously everyone in sales loves that. Everyone in marketing loves that, kind of inbound demand that converts faster. And so that is our ultimate goal. And I think it's very synergistic. That's why I think the buyer and the seller, they do want to fall in love. They need each other. Because like I said, the buyer, no one's researching software for fun. They're researching because they have a business problem they want to solve better. And almost any business problem today, you're going to solve better with software with AI than without it. And so that's what we see kind of G2's essential role in the world is to be that perfect matchmaker between software buyer and seller.

>> Yeah. No, I love where the AI is really helping drive home what the use case, and bring them to understanding the use case and connecting the dots for them to what's in your corpus of data that you have there. So lots of fun. Last word. We're here, NYSE, beautiful space, Dreamforce is going on. What are you looking forward to this week?

Godard Abel

>> Well, I am looking forward to AI and learning more about Agent Force. And I have heard apparently Marc Benioff, Salesforce, they're truly going all in on this, and apparently it's all Mark's going to talk about in his keynote. And so I'm looking forward to seeing what is the next wave of AI agents, and how can we all in sales and marketing use them to drive more efficiency?

>> Yeah. We actually have MK on who's the CTO across all of that from Salesforce, and he's going to dive really deep into that as well. So I think this is perfect alignment with what you're actually doing in using AI. So again, kudos to that because I think that helps you understand what the buyer's journey is as well, which is I'm sure you're building back into your platform. So that's fantastic.

Godard Abel

>> Yeah. No, thank you. And for sure, Monty, our AI agent gets smarter every day, and I think soon will be that perfect matchmaker and connect every software buyer to the perfect software seller.

>> Well, thank you, Godard. I really appreciate you coming on board and helping us understand and really helping us this week as well as we kick this off here from Dreamforce. So I want to thank you.

Godard Abel

>> Yeah, thank you, Rob. Excited to be here with you.

>> Yep. And thank you and stay tuned from Dreamforce 2024. We have so much more going on over the course of the two days. Stay tuned. We'll be right back from NYSE Dreamforce 2024.

Godard Abel | G2

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>> Hello, and welcome back to Dreamforce 2024. We're really digging into what's going on and what's going on in the market around us because Salesforce touches so much of the ecosystem. And today I'm really excited to have one of our partners in this event with G2 and Godard Abel, who's the CEO and co-founder of G2, to of dig into what's going on in the market around us. And it's talking about sales and you guys help people in that way, but why don't you help people understand a little bit about what G2 is up to, what you do, and how you really are involved in this ecosystem.

Godard Abel

>> Yeah, thanks, Rob. Great to be here with you in San Francisco. Beautiful, nice studio. Kickoff Dreamforce week, and I've been a huge fan of Dreamforce. I think I've been to everyone just about since 2004. And what's been amazing over the last 20 years is seeing the cloud grow because I remember back then, I think it was the first one was just in a small hotel in San Francisco, and maybe 400 people. And I think now it's over 100,000 people every year. So just incredible to see this industry grow. And I think one of the big trends we're fueling at G2 is the consumerization of B2B software buying and selling. And you and I were talking, you and I have both been in B2B forever, and frankly, I think it's been way too hard for software buyers-

>> I would agree....

Godard Abel

>> in the enterprise to discover the best apps and know which apps to trust. And that's really why we started G2. At the beginning, we called it Yelp for software. And we said, why can you get more information, let's say, on a $100 dinner here in San Francisco than you could on a $100,000 CRM package? And so that's what we set out to change at G2 when we started.

>> And I think, again, you're building the community of buyers around these different products. I know having been at multiple startups as well as large companies that have engaged with G2. Because you start to see how these people are coming in and unbiased information is exchanged. What is really interesting, and you just kind of touched on it, is that you probably see how the behaviors are changing from a B2B buying perspective. What have you seen over the past few years?

Godard Abel

>> Yeah, and I think we're seeing B2B buyers much more self-serve. And I think just as consumers, especially post-pandemic, I think we all got used to buying everything on Amazon, buying everything online. And as consumers, we take it for granted. There's always peer reviews. And frankly, I think, on Amazon, a product with no reviews, we'd never buy, right? But if it's got 100 reviews, mostly positive, we buy it right away. And we can also see from peer consumers what it like about the products, what do they dislike, where they're having challenges. And that's really now what G2 enables. And what we're seeing that's kind of amazing, 69% of B2B software buyers now report they're actually making a decision before they even talk to a salesperson.

>> Yeah, that's crazy. Because when you start to look at that, your brand and your reputation gets out in front of you. How do you help those organizations really get a view into that brand reputation? And what are you doing for other companies? Because again, you're servicing both sides of the fence there as well.

Godard Abel

>> True. And we are aiming to build a marketplace. So our primary mission is to serve the software buyer, give them great insights, but then we also want to connect them to software sellers. And it's also true for the buyer. If you're on a site like G2, we always say, you're not there for fun. You're there because you're looking to buy an app or an AI tool to make your business better. And so they ultimately, the buyers want to connect to the seller. So we want to make that real easy. So we also serve over 3,500 software sellers now, they're our customers including the largest ones like Salesforce, IBM, Oracle, they're all G2 customers. And what we do help the brands do is, one, ensure they have enough customer voice. Because I mentioned earlier, no one's going to buy a product with no reviews. And the same is true in software now. If you have no reviews on G2, you're probably not selling anything because no one's going to trust it. So one, we help the software sellers make sure they have enough reviews. We're actually doing that right here at Dreamforce. There's going to be QR codes at the end of a lot of Salesforce keynotes just asking their Trailblazers, "Hey, would you leave a review on G2?" Because it obviously helps them build trust through Trailblazer Voice, and they might get a Trailblazer hoodie in return. So one, we help vendors activate their customers to share reviews. And then two, we also give them all kinds of data on consumer sentiment. What are the reviewers saying? What do they love about their products? Where can they get better? We can give them competitive insights. Why are some buyers maybe engaging more with competitor products? What do they like about those products? And we can also give them what we call buyer intent signals where we can tell them what products, what software solutions are companies shopping for right now on G2.

>> Yeah, I think you hit on a really good topic because I think, even myself being on both sides of the fence there, I was in IT a long time ago, it was really hard to get information about, and I was spending, I had budget of about a million dollars a month in the aspect of it that I worked in. And trying to get insight into that was I reached out to people like myself that are analysts and things of that nature. And that's olden days, right? Now, but today things move so much faster. And it would seem that updating that information and delivering them the right information and working with your customers and to build that marketplace, you're seeing some of the sentiment like, hey, you have five reviews, maybe you should really try to up your reviews, the number of people who are on there. Your competitors have 147, or something like that. Is that where you see some of the conversations going with the CMOs and the chief revenue officers and those people who are concerned about the top of their pipeline and other parts of their pipeline?

Godard Abel

>> For sure. So I think everything is moving faster, as you said. And that's part of the reason we started G2, and I think there's a lot of great analysts, but they couldn't keep up. And I saw this at my first company, BigMachines, eventually it became Oracle CPQ, but I remember it took us nine years to get an analyst report, 12 years to become the leader. And obviously now software's moving so fast. And we do think software buyers are looking for that real-time voice, real-time reviews. And so, one, we do help, obviously vendors encourage that. But then even more now we're talking about how do you take those reviews, once you have good customer voice, how do you turn that into revenue? And I think it's also been a more challenging market for most SaaS vendors the last couple of years. And so I think everyone is looking, how do they better engage buyers? How do they more efficiently sell and market? And we think the G2 intent signals are one of the best ways to do it because also a lot of B2B outreach can be annoying. Because traditionally, we all did spray and pray, where we just kind of email every customer, every target customer that might be a fit. But most of the time we're reaching out at the wrong time. And I remember for many years we sold CPQ software, Configure, Price, Quote software. We actually built SteelBrick, that's now Salesforce CPQ. That was my last company. But I think also our challenge was always we never knew when people were in market to buy CPQ software. And now with our intent signals, we can tell you, "Hey, which companies right now are shopping in the CPQ market?" So obviously if you're a CPQ vendor, that's when you reach out to them. And most people actually only buy a CPQ app, let's say, every five to 10 years. And frankly, so nine out of those 10 years as a vendor, you're wasting your time when they're not in market. And so with G2, you can make sure you target them at the right time

>> Right. Because the actual switching cost of a lot of those products that people are selling is pretty big. So you want to be there at the right moment when they're, hey, you know what? The pain is worth the actual cost to go and make that. So those intent signals. How do you see organizations really leveraging the G2 platform? Because we have a number of your customers on over the course of today and tomorrow, which is fantastic. And bringing that knowledge to people about how they're going to win with signals and understanding that is huge. How do you look at them leveraging that as well?

Godard Abel

>> Yeah. And we do want all those vendors to leverage, we call it, the G2 review to revenue flywheel. And it does start with reviews, right? Make sure they have enough customer voice. And a lot of these vendors already do. Once you have, let's say, 100 good reviews and you have enough customer voice, but then the question is, what do you do with that to turn it into revenue? And as I mentioned, we think one of the best methods is to actually use our intent signals because we have over 2,000 categories of software on G2. And when a company is in market in your category shopping, looking at you, or looking at your competitors, you want to know. And that is also what drove me nuts as entrepreneur. I hate missing a deal. You never want to miss a deal.

>> No. Never want to miss a deal.

Godard Abel

>> And you know a lot of these B2B apps, as you said, they're sticky. Companies might run them for multiple years. So if you missed a deal, you might not get another chance for five or 10 years. And that's where we think using our intent to target at the right time is really important. And then the second thing we give them is, one, right time, but then also the right message. And you've probably also gotten a lot of outreach calls. I know I do as a CEO entrepreneur every day. And what's most effective to me is if they're like, "Hey, here's a peer entrepreneur of yours, a friend of yours." Obviously, ideally it's like Marc Benioff at Salesforce, one of my entrepreneur idols. But if somebody pings me, like, "Hey, Marc in Salesforce loved my app, here's why," I will definitely take the call and listen. And obviously on G2, we have hundreds, if not thousands, of peer reviews. So if you're doing outreach, you can always find a peer. So if you're calling a CEO, find a peer CEO. If you're calling a CRO, a CMO, always lead with a peer message, and, "Hey, here's how I'm delivering value to your peers." Because I think almost any executive will listen to that. Or even what can also work great, hey, I'm delivering a ton of value to your competitor. I'll always take that call because I never want to be at a disadvantage. So we also think we can really help sellers with that right peer message to engage a target buyer.

>> And I think one of the things that, again, you've done is you've not only created the marketplace, but you have such, I would say, people have the experience where they know that these are actual quality discussions that are happening there. So they're quality reviews and things. Talk to that a bit because I think people look at that and go, okay, great, there's a whole bunch of reviews out there, but why should I go here? Why should I trust that on the consumer side of things? How do you talk to people about that?

Godard Abel

>> Yeah. And Rob, you're right, I mean that the reviews are trusted and authentic is really important. And we have all heard a lot of horror stories even on Amazon. The FTC actually just issued a real ruling, making it clear that you can't have fake reviews, like the FTC even's going to come down on you. And so we do spend a lot to make sure that our reviews are authentic and trusted. One of the things we do is we tend to validate them with a LinkedIn profile. Because if I really know it's you, Rob, I can see, oh, well, A, Rob's a real B2B leader, real B2B practitioner, and I can see your context. What company are you working for? What role are you in? And so, one, we validate the reviewer's identity. And it does have to be tied to their business identity. Obviously if somebody only signs up with Gmail and we don't know who they are, we're not going to... We reject actually over 30% of reviews. And either that's because we can't verify the person's professional identity or it's just poor content, or we suspect fraud. And with AI, I mean it's becoming more of a problem. We were joking about avatars. I don't know if this is the real me or an avatar me speaking in this interview. I think it's the real me. But I think it's getting hard to tell, right? And same thing with AI. People are generating more fake reviews at scale now. And so frankly, we're also applying AI to screen all the reviews. And obviously we're not 100%, but I think we catch probably 99% of the bad content. And I'd say, finally, we rely on our community because if you're a buyer on G2, or if you're a software seller and you suspect a review is fake, you can report it right in the review. And we do have a review moderation trust team that will follow up and investigate. So we're always aiming to make sure the content's trusted, because otherwise it doesn't help the buyer.

>> Yeah. Because it happens both for good reviews and bad reviews in the same way. So I think you want to make it secure for both sides of the marketplace so that they can find each other, but there's not a lot of noise in the signal that you're delivering out to them as well.

Godard Abel

>> No, you're right. And actually we have some funny stories, and I won't name names, but we have had some famous CMOs go try to write a review of one of their competitors. But luckily, because we have their professional identity, we can catch that right away. So obviously that's one of the things that's not allowed, but people still try.

>> Yeah. No, I can imagine that. I can imagine people trying to game the system and trying to get a leg up. And I think, like you said, having been at Amazon and understanding, they're very intent on that. And we're here at the NYSE studio, our remote studio at the NYSE this week. And I think one of the things that's fun is that it helps make markets. You're not just making a marketplace, but you're helping new markets. You said you had over 2,000 different categories. How do you see the categories growing? Do they grow exponentially year over year? How do you tune that so there's not too many categories, but there's enough that cover the different marketplaces you're trying to interact in?

Godard Abel

>> Yeah. And you're right, that's always a balancing act. Now we do love to create new categories as new innovations emerge. One of the most exciting areas on G2, no surprise, has been AI. So I think just in the last year, we have 40% more AI listings, and that's both startups launching new AI companies, new AI products, but also all the incumbents. And I think this week, Salesforce is launching Agentforce, all about supporting different AI agents. So also all the leading incumbent vendors like Salesforce are launching AI product. So that part of the taxonomy has really exploded. And we do have 40 new AI categories in about the last year. And obviously two years ago, nobody even knew what an LLM was. I shouldn't say nobody, but you almost had to be an AI researcher. But then obviously post-ChatGPT 3.5, now everyone's interested in AI, and every business person wants to learn more. So we also have categories like vector databases, obviously the underlying infrastructure. And so in some areas like AI, it's actually necessary to create new categories because our software industry is innovating so fast. So there, we've added 40 new ones. But you're right, we also try not to overdo it because the big challenge becomes, for the buyer, you don't even know which category to shop in. It's almost like a supermarket with 2,000 aisles and which aisle do you even shop in?

>> Right. Yeah, I think that that was actually where I was going with that because, like you said, the agenic stuff that Agentforce and Oracle last week announced that they had 51 different agents already as part of Fusion. It's becoming very confusing in that part of the market, to put it mildly. I think this was actually pretty good. We got through a good portion of this without saying AI first. So I think that's a win for anything on the interwebs these days. But when you start to look at the whole, how you're bringing it, and kind of to bring things back around, what's your core mission? What's G2's core mission that you're trying to drive that people should be sitting there going, yeah, that's why I want. On the consumer side, they're going to want to go, and on the vendor side, they're going to want to go and check you guys out.

Godard Abel

>> Yeah. And I think our ultimate vision for G2 is to be the trusted place you go for software, but also really to be a trusted software marketplace. So in some ways, I want to be a dating site and be the ultimate matchmaker for software. And I guess my joke would be it's like, hey, the software buyer and seller fall in love on the first demo. And we are actually applying AI there. So we've launched an AI Monty agent that advises a software buyer because our supermarket now of software with over 2,000 categories or aisles could be confusing. So now we have an AI buying advisor. You could think of it, it's almost like your smartest Accenture consultant in a sentient AI box. But Monty can advise the buyer. And the buyer can now just enter the business problem they're having. So it could be like, hey, you're a CRO and you just don't know how to handle your sales forecasting. And frankly, then G2 will ask more questions, or you just sign up with LinkedIn, we can ask you your company size. Oh wow, you're leading a large sales team at a tech company. And then we can say, hey, based on peer reviews, here's five apps that might really solve this problem. And then the AI conversation can continue because it's also Monty can also be an AI SDR, if you will, and answer all the FAQs the buyer's going to have about that product, including pricing, deployment, time integrations, and really walk the software buyer further and further down the funnel where ultimately the software buyer can self-serve and just buy the perfect app for them. And then because we're the perfect matchmaker, the perfect date, just like a couple falls in love and is happily ever married, that customer never turns. And so I think if G2 really realizes it's stream, then every software buyer will just come to G2, and we'll match them with the perfect app in real time.

>> Yeah, I mean that to me, and I think like you said, get them further and further down the funnel. So on the vendor side, there, SDRs were going from sales-qualified leads to marketing-qualified leads, and it shortens that cycle for them.

Godard Abel

>> Hopefully.

>> And hopefully helps them from an ROI, assuming that they're providing the right information and things of that nature into your system. Do you see that organizations really are trying to use this to help them find higher ROI out of that marketplace and better equilibrium?

Godard Abel

>> Yes. And I think the vendor can get a higher ROI with faster sales cycles because if we walk the buyer much further down to funnel, and they're much more qualified, then hopefully, yeah, it's just kind of one SDR, maybe final qualification, one demo and close. And obviously everyone in sales loves that. Everyone in marketing loves that, kind of inbound demand that converts faster. And so that is our ultimate goal. And I think it's very synergistic. That's why I think the buyer and the seller, they do want to fall in love. They need each other. Because like I said, the buyer, no one's researching software for fun. They're researching because they have a business problem they want to solve better. And almost any business problem today, you're going to solve better with software with AI than without it. And so that's what we see kind of G2's essential role in the world is to be that perfect matchmaker between software buyer and seller.

>> Yeah. No, I love where the AI is really helping drive home what the use case, and bring them to understanding the use case and connecting the dots for them to what's in your corpus of data that you have there. So lots of fun. Last word. We're here, NYSE, beautiful space, Dreamforce is going on. What are you looking forward to this week?

Godard Abel

>> Well, I am looking forward to AI and learning more about Agent Force. And I have heard apparently Marc Benioff, Salesforce, they're truly going all in on this, and apparently it's all Mark's going to talk about in his keynote. And so I'm looking forward to seeing what is the next wave of AI agents, and how can we all in sales and marketing use them to drive more efficiency?

>> Yeah. We actually have MK on who's the CTO across all of that from Salesforce, and he's going to dive really deep into that as well. So I think this is perfect alignment with what you're actually doing in using AI. So again, kudos to that because I think that helps you understand what the buyer's journey is as well, which is I'm sure you're building back into your platform. So that's fantastic.

Godard Abel

>> Yeah. No, thank you. And for sure, Monty, our AI agent gets smarter every day, and I think soon will be that perfect matchmaker and connect every software buyer to the perfect software seller.

>> Well, thank you, Godard. I really appreciate you coming on board and helping us understand and really helping us this week as well as we kick this off here from Dreamforce. So I want to thank you.

Godard Abel

>> Yeah, thank you, Rob. Excited to be here with you.

>> Yep. And thank you and stay tuned from Dreamforce 2024. We have so much more going on over the course of the two days. Stay tuned. We'll be right back from NYSE Dreamforce 2024.