Dreamforce 2024 | Matt Gorniak

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Matt Gorniak

CEO

Threekit

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Matt Gorniak | ThreeKit

Matt Gorniak

CEO Threekit

Christophe Bertrand

>> Hello everyone and welcome to theCUBE from the New York Stock Exchange Office in San Francisco. We're covering Dreamforce 2024. We are talking to customers, Salesforce folks, as well as some partners in the ecosystem. So my name is Christophe Bertrand, I'm a principal analyst at theCUBE and I'd like to welcome Matt Gorniak, who is the CEO of ThreeKit. Welcome.

Matt Gorniak

>> Thank you, thanks for having me. Great to meet you.

Christophe Bertrand

>> Perfect. So Matt, tell us about yourself and tell us about ThreeKit.

Matt Gorniak

>> Yeah, so ThreeKit's a visual commerce platform and we started the company about six and a half years ago. Prior to that we started and built two vendors that were sales tools, if you will. And we had this thought, you know what's missing is the whole customer experience, the whole product experience. That was sort of the thesis, the genesis that one day in the future what's going to be really important is digitally to be able to essentially when you buy products, to be inspired, to be able to explore. It's all going to happen online. So that was kind of the thesis behind it. It's coming true, which is good. And that's sort of the story ThreeKit. I'm the CEO, and that's what we do.

Christophe Bertrand

>> So let's talk about your customer base. Six and a half years. How many customers do you have? Where are they? Who are they? I've heard a couple of big names.

Matt Gorniak

>> Yeah, 150 customers. They're leading global brands, and what's fascinating is it started pretty much in luxury. Luxury is a really fascinating segment. I would encourage anyone who really hasn't looked into, it's amazingly digital forward. I'll leave it at that, so have fun exploring that. And there it's about, how do you capture the essence, the spirit of a brand? These are big words, but they're very real. What does that mean? How do you bring product experiences to the customer? Then we add buzzwords here called Omnichannel, but it's very real to a buyer. You're walking down Champs-Élysées, which maybe in Paris you did. So this would be the traditional experience, and then how you do this digitally is the setup. But you walk down the storefront, how do you see something inspires you? How do you engage in the store? How do you explore? How do you get really interested? And then obviously how do you then really put something together and then buy a product, but also much more than that. You buy confidence, you buy feelings, right? And amazing products. Having said that, you do that digitally. And now what we see is, so back to your question, started with luxury and now two thirds of our business are manufacturers. You think of building materials, you think of sinks and faucets, you think of high-end cabinets. Technology by the way, gaming systems. How do you allow the customer digitally to have that same feeling, right? Because traditionally I think brands and manufacturers outside of luxury looked at products as something you make and you offer it. And that time has changed, right? I offer you stuff, that was cool 20 years ago digitally. Now it's about engage me. Does that-

Christophe Bertrand

>> It makes perfect sense. And I think we're seeing some similar trends actually in business to business, not just in B2C or B2B2C. So it's quite a distance between a design dress and a faucet. But let's talk about some of the mechanics behind this, because I see what you're doing. You're recreating the physical experience in digital, but in order to do that, there's a whole supply chain that happens. How do you engage in the context of Dreamforce with Salesforce, other specific integrations, APIs, that we should know about, how does that all work for the manufacturer, for the client? What do they get from you in order to be able to achieve what you've just described?

Matt Gorniak

>> Yeah, no, thank you for that. I think what's really exciting is two things at Dreamforce this year. I mean, main things. One is Agentforce, which I think is going to be very interesting to really give the customer what they want powered by all this data that most companies already have. So that's number one. Number two is Revenue Cloud Advance. So part of our specific integration is, Salesforce is decomposing some of their products, meaning they're making that data easier available, like configuration, pricing data, quoting. And that sounds... That's tech stuff. But it's powerful because when you talk about a customer experience, customer journey, let's talk again about digitally. You can now take that data from Salesforce and use it across the journey without having to recreate the wheel. So let me give an example. Doors, windows, just let's go there, right? Cabinets, closets, I'm going with something everyone can understand. Online, you use some configuration data, some pricing data. But where ThreeKit comes, you can experience the product, right? You can really feel like you're buying it, get really into it. But then it goes maybe from that experience to a quoting scenario whereby let's say a cabinet, you're not really into it, but the way to buy it is at a dealership. So why would you have to recreate the application all over again at the dealership? Why not reuse, that's the composability and the headlessness that both of our systems bring to the table. Maybe most of what's online, but you have to add or can add additional data that's very useful for the sales rep or maybe not available to the customer like discounts or whatnot. And you can basically create infinite amount of buying journeys. And by the way, as a consumer, that's what we want. You want a certain buyer journey online, at the store, the dealership engages with us. Because what happens is as a buyer, I'm like I want the brand to give me and follow my journey. So where this becomes interesting again is from a data model side, it allows us to reuse that data across the journey.

Christophe Bertrand

>> Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I guess also you talked about Agentic AI here, but AI is going to be... It is a big deal already and I'm very sure it's going to be part of the conversation here. So let's double click a little bit on the Salesforce components here. So who is your buyer? Is it the Salesforce admin? Is it the actual marketing lead for the company in question? Is it the chief revenue officer? Who's your buyer? And walk me through the integration piece. Because I think that's very interesting here to really convert data from Salesforce into an experience and back, which is really the thing. It's a two-way street here.

Matt Gorniak

>> Absolutely. And I'd say it's been really fascinating because from a ThreeKit perspective, the buyer has been, yes sometimes the CRO, CMO or who runs digital, but a lot of times now has been executives. Because what we found is that for the very first time we're actually speaking about the products that pay the bills, which is their products. So it's about engaging the customers with their products just in the right way. ThreeKit is not just a system, it's literally helping you. And actually the way to phrase it is, we actually are very much buyer centric. It's a system that people buy to sell more. We're not confused about that, but it's about the buyer wanting to buy. We fundamentally started the company believing six years ago that selling is over, it's all about buying. And so when you have that mindset, how you architect it, how you have the experiences, that is really pivotal, if that makes sense. Because the buyer doesn't want to get sold anymore. So that's kind of ThreeKit. So what I'm saying is now, you ask who's buying it is, executives right now... We can discuss the economy, I'm not an economy expert, but things may be slowing down a bit. And now is the question, what do we do now? What do we do differently? And the next frontier, what we see is the product itself, the experience. And then back to the integration, didn't lose that, its basically the ability to pull that data out of Salesforce across that journey without having to re-duplicate it. That's really powerful.

Christophe Bertrand

>> So that must convert into additional sales, obviously what I like very much is you're buyer centric, so that makes perfect sense. So you're sort of backing into the Salesforce data by first starting with the buyer.

Matt Gorniak

>> Correct.

Christophe Bertrand

>> Which is very interesting. I think you're right. We maybe have, or tended to be thinking the other way around, how do I sell? Well this is really how do I buy? So I get that part. Now let's go back to the back and forth with the data. Clearly you're enriching the existing data set when somebody starts interacting. I mean you mentioned configuring a cabinet or I can think of a car, everybody's bought a car and changed the colors and add this and add that, right? Same general idea. So how would you say, what type of improvements have you heard your customers report? Maybe you can't share exact numbers, but I would love to get some actual examples.

Matt Gorniak

>> Yeah. And I think the first one is, you want to talk about the integration or just the outcome?

Christophe Bertrand

>> The outcome. And then if you could put this in the context of integration-

Matt Gorniak

>> Of course.

Christophe Bertrand

>> I think it's going to be this back and forth.

Matt Gorniak

>> Integration's all assumed, and then we should talk about Agentforce and AI as well-

Christophe Bertrand

>> Absolutely.

Matt Gorniak

>> Because I do believe we're seeing huge... We're applying it, we're very much into applying that. But let me tell you this. So let's talk about B2B or products that are... We focus on high-value, high complex. Not luxury, what I'm saying. But again, things in this room, chairs and table, this is not a T-shirt you're buying, okay. Multiple products, there's a consideration of configuration, multiple products together. There's style, there's materials, all that, all right. So let's start with lead generation. That sounds like a very basic word. How do generate lead when you have a complex product? So again, think of manufacturing, online. There's a lot of studies including ours, which is essentially this. Most manufacturers put some pictures up and the resistance to click the contact sales button is tremendous. We've done studies ourselves where the B2B buyer, I'm thinking what I just told you, could be forklifts, could be conference room equipment, okay? This is who we cover, customers of ours. They will go through incredible amounts of pain to find it themselves online before they contact the seller. So what you have to do is you have to do a visual configuration. You have to do a visual solutioning, visual experience online to give you a sense of I have something that will solve your problem and now talk to my seller. Naturally you could buy it online as well. So we do this a lot. But let's say you don't because business reasons, that's the new way. So then what happens is now that you are a high quality lead, the next step is, well someone has to help you transact it. Maybe in the store, maybe it's a dealership. So the question, back to the integration is, how do you carry that experience to the next channel? Today, these are different applications. As a buyer, what happened? I had this wonderful experience here, now I go to this partner or your sales team and it feels very different, very jarring. So by the way, you get higher quality leads, people tend to buy more because they want to buy more. They're here to solve a problem. So the average transaction goes up and people buy faster because in essence you've taken the risk out. There's these hurdles across the buying process. Some things could be very, very simple that just stop it in the process. And by the way, that's not just online, that's also the sales team. By the way, let me talk about sales teams for a second. A lot of sales teams right now, they are struggling with information. They're just as confused as the buyer, many products. So their ability to explain and show kind of almost let it buy itself. So that's kind of the arc. But those are three higher quality leads, higher average basket of goods and faster transactions.

Christophe Bertrand

>> And that's a big deal because essentially you've hit fundamentally what drives a business, which is margin and sales. So top line and bottom line. So clearly the next combination of technologies will be agents and AI.

Matt Gorniak

>> Before we go there, but just to make it very simple is, let's say this room, you want a conference room equipment. And let's say it's really important for our interview. What you want, you have a budget, I want to see this room, I want to see a table, show me the equipment. I see, I experience it, I want to buy right now. It's honestly that simple. It's hard to do. Does that make sense? Versus looking at some pictures of the brand and talking to a sales rep. You know what you want already. Anyway, sorry. Back to the agents.

Christophe Bertrand

>> Well I would say, is it hard to do? I don't know if it's hard to do, but it's hard to translate into something that caries through the whole life cycle. I think that's really the trick here.

Matt Gorniak

>> Agree.

Christophe Bertrand

>> That's really the trick. Because the visual render is things we've had for many years, but you're right, can I click it and then as a distributor, do I get this information or do I have to put you through the whole configuration again? At which point I'll probably lose you as a potential client. So that makes perfect sense to me. But I want to go back to AI. Let's talk about AI, I know it's a hot topic, it's a buzzword. Literally, I think Mark Benioff said we should have called this edition Agentforce. So what are you doing with the agents? What's your take on Agentforce? How are you going to use the agents and what are you already doing today?

Matt Gorniak

>> Yeah, I think it's very powerful. I mean we have started building our AI product, Visual Discovery, in Visual Commerce AI starting last year already. For us it was very clear that you as a consumer, as a buyer, I'm using both. So direct consumer or buyer B2B, you want the best sales rep helping you out across the whole journey. And that sounds like very hokey, but the reality is, online, in store you want... Ideally that you have a thousand reps, there's a small portion who are just amazing, they know everything. But now with Visual Commerce, you have the whole product at your disposal. They can ask you questions and get you what makes sense for you, the budget and availability. And that's what AI is, the promise that we're delivering today. So when you're online and you're just like, "Hey, I'm trying to figure out for this conference room, what should I think about?" It's not about lots of questions, it's about very quickly getting to something that makes sense, including in the store. And why AI is so powerful is that the training and the setup is so much easier than if you had to declare all that, in the context it knows. What's really incredible for us with Agentforce is that we can tap into Salesforce and leverage that agent that has a much broader context of the customer, all these interactions. Much broader, which makes that experience even richer. So we in Vision have built our product that it basically engages with that agent and becomes like a specialized product visual commerce agent.

Christophe Bertrand

>> It makes perfect sense. And I like the broader context because clearly there's another aspect which is, I don't want you as a customer just this one time. I want create a relationship with you. If you remember what I bought before, maybe we can start from there, et cetera. So there's a whole idea behind this. And probably, that's another metric. The lifetime value of a customer probably increases with this because you keep them for longer and they buy more. This is great technology, I know we didn't go too much into the details technically, there will be plenty of time at Dreamforce to do that. Thank you so much for stopping by. It was great talking to you and discovering this great integration. And to our viewers, thank you very much for joining us. We're covering Dreamforce 2024. My name is Christophe Bertrand. I'm a principal analyst here at theCUBE Research, and we'll talk to you on the next one.

Matt Gorniak | ThreeKit

Christophe Bertrand

Matt Gorniak

>> Thank you, thanks for having me. Great to meet you.

Christophe Bertrand

>> Perfect. So Matt, tell us about yourself and tell us about ThreeKit.

Matt Gorniak

Christophe Bertrand

>> So let's talk about your customer base. Six and a half years. How many customers do you have? Where are they? Who are they? I've heard a couple of big names.

Matt Gorniak

Christophe Bertrand

Matt Gorniak

Christophe Bertrand

Matt Gorniak

Christophe Bertrand

Matt Gorniak

>> Correct.

Christophe Bertrand

Matt Gorniak

>> Yeah. And I think the first one is, you want to talk about the integration or just the outcome?

Christophe Bertrand

>> The outcome. And then if you could put this in the context of integration-

Matt Gorniak

>> Of course.

Christophe Bertrand

>> I think it's going to be this back and forth.

Matt Gorniak

>> Integration's all assumed, and then we should talk about Agentforce and AI as well-

Christophe Bertrand

>> Absolutely.

Matt Gorniak

Christophe Bertrand

Matt Gorniak

Christophe Bertrand

>> Well I would say, is it hard to do? I don't know if it's hard to do, but it's hard to translate into something that caries through the whole life cycle. I think that's really the trick here.

Matt Gorniak

>> Agree.

Christophe Bertrand

Matt Gorniak

Christophe Bertrand