We have a check-in with Mark Alayev, co-founder of Thread. A great summer listen! In the past - I've called this emerging small-medium business (SMB) in the Managed Services space as "one to watch." It's got an agressive internal and external culture charging ahead and this summer the pace tripled on a couple fronts including engineering producitivty and weekly feature releases. And while we do discuss the technology side, Mark waxes poetically on the philosphy side too. That's a rare quality in our space as so many founders in our space are myopically focused on product and never really elevate to a true industry leadership role. Let's rock!
Highlights:
- Engineering productivity tripled
- A new feature every week
- Biggest feature was SUPER MAGIC
- Product-led v. Partner-led Growth
- Mark shares Thread's SUPER POWER - must watch!
- We end with speeds and feeds
- Super Magic is not task-oriented, it's job oriented
- Spoiler - Thread is engaged in remote monitoring primarily via partner integrations
- Late September conference in Seattle! - Focused smaller show
- Less about what do people have as solutions and more importantly where are you going..
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation
Nation, Nation! Harry here in the dog days of summer. It's starting to get a little bit roasty where I live in Central Texas. And I'm with Mark. Hi Mark, and your last name again.
Mark Alayev 1:50
I'm Alayev.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 1:52
So you're the co-founder of Thread. And man, you guys have been busy as bees this last couple of months. I'm just going to hand it over to you. You're doing super magic and super duper magic and that kind of thing. What's going on, man?
Mark Alayev 1:56
So...I'll go deep, Harry.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 2:15
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Mark Alayev 2:17
We are selling digital transformation while undergoing digital transformation internally. It's the craziest time to be alive . We doubled the size of our engineering team because we raised a round of capital in November.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 2:37
You did!
Mark Alayev 2:38
We did, yeah, 18 million from kind of the best investors because they still own the whole company. It's still founder led. But what I noticed was that the engineering team
Almost tripled their releases, even though the human capital doubled.
Until we got to the stage, was like, okay, we're building faster than we ever thought.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 3:13
Yeah.
Mark Alayev 3:13
What does that mean?
Well, it sounds like we need to give all of that to our customers.
And that's where we came up with the Summer of Magic.
Our team is on fire.
And what we want to be for our MSPs is we want to show them what it looks like to be AI productive.
And we are massively productive.
We have launched a new feature every week.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 3:53
I, I know, I know, I'm tracking you.
Mark Alayev 3:54
And our biggest feature release was...magic.
So Super Magic is...
I would say it's less of a feature release. It's more of how we think about things.
And Super Magic is the platform.
It's a platform where technicians can delegate work.
It's not like, hey, I'm gonna go to the cloud and ask for a thing. It's, oh, I have a call. I need to prepare for it. Can you look through the last nine days of issues? Look at...
The Windows updates, look at what's going on. Are there any security issues?
And we pull that all in. So, we've had a major leap.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 5:00
You have.
Mark Alayev 5:00
We've had a major lift.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 5:01
Yeah, yeah, couple questions. Um, and again, this is just no, but I, we do well with this. I, you know, I don't have a list of questions.
Mark Alayev 5:16
I love you, Harry.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 5:17
Yeah, I've written before about product-led growth versus partner-led growth. And both are good. But because you're a relatively early-stage startup in a pretty exponentially growing technology, we can talk about this.
And I do, as I'm able, pop into your weekly meetings. I'm going to mention that as partner-led growth. But this is good, I've been on product teams, that you're kind of engaged in product-led growth right now, which is not a surprise. You're early stage, it was the same for us with small business server in the 90s.
Mark Alayev 5:49
Oh.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 5:59
And then what tends to happen is partner-led growth tends to come a little bit later. And finally, once the product reaches maturity with service packs and updates, it all becomes about the partner. So I want to throw that out. Now, that said, you know, and I'm not ambushing you…
Mark Alayev 6:01
Sure.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 6:18
I think you also have some partner-led growth with that weekly Thursday, 10 a.m. Central meeting. Because two weeks ago when I was able to attend, man, you pulled over 150 partners on a Thursday. And I've only seen a couple companies that have that momentum for a weekly meeting.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 6:38
And that is magic. I mean, you're taking people's time, dude, but let's go back. How do you size yourself up? Partner versus product-like growth or a little bit of both?
Mark Alayev 6:42
Yes. The reality is, the partners make or break our business.
Mark Alayev 7:01
And obviously we have like these gimmicks and like these big launches.
But the reality is, if we can deliver value, partners will follow. And so thank you so much for mentioning that, Harry. I've worked.
Jennifer, the team, Amanda, Matt, Emilio, Casey, Kristof.
Have worked our ***** off.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 7:31
I'll give you that.
I
Mark Alayev 7:36
And so, where we are is...
Actually, to get the detail, hey, we need to deliver values.
And I think that's what we've achieved. We are delivering value. We're giving a place for people to come in every week and say, okay, what haven't I thought of?
Where am I not using AI?
That is our superpower. It's not AI for the sake of AI, but it's AI for the sake of outcomes.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 8:15
I like it.
I like it because that in the analyst community, that's debate, you know, and it's, this sounds stupid, but, and again, not related to this call, but we will sit around in this very space, in the tech space.
and ask a really high level question is, you know, what is AI? Right? We're still defining the paradigm.
Is it cartoon characters? Is it cancer research? You get the point. We're still defining the paradigm. And I think you're bringing definition. And Mark, you and I both know it's going to look different in five years, right? The definition's going to change.
Mark Alayev 8:59
I think we all hope so. Yeah.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 8:59
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, but you got, you know, you have a, you planted a flag. And well, hey, let's take a couple more minutes. I'm sorry to kind of derail us and get into philosophy, but the, why don't you give it your best shot on a couple of, let's do some speeds and feeds. So
With the releases you had, because we are a technical audience, give me a handful of examples of speeds and feeds, right? What are you doing? I love your Thursday meeting because you guys dropped down to the keystroke level, but give it your best shot on the tech side.
Mark Alayev 9:40
What I love are the antidotes, right? So...
We had a customer say, we've been dealing with a recurring ticket from a UPC, a battery, in a closet. And it kept coming up, kept coming up. And when they got access to Super Magic, they asked Super Magic, like, what is the problem?
What is the problem?
And Super Magic is not task-oriented, it's job-oriented. It will work through for as long as it needs to.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 10:16
Okay.
Mark Alayev 10:23
And you know what it said?
There's A 90% likelihood that this battery pack will fail; you need to replace it.
And that customer replaced it.
It is truly the difference between asking AI to translate.
We have a problem. Is it happening a lot? Is it recurring? How do we deal with it?
And that is the future.
There is truly an agentic approach to IT service delivery.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 11:11
Yep, yep.
Mark Alayev 11:14
And that's what we're pioneering.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 11:17
Yeah, let me ask you a question. So I get the battery failure and all that. Now, are you also engaged in remote monitoring at this point? I know you as service tickets, but do you have a RMM agent that will say your battery's failing or, you know, your servers?
Mark Alayev 11:21
Sure.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 11:36
Warranties expiring, or you, you know, these tools, I, I OK.
Mark Alayev 11:40
Yeah, yeah.
So, we launched 4 integrations in the last four weeks.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 11:50
Okay.
Mark Alayev 11:51
ConnectWise Automate, ConnectWise RMM, Ninja One to name three.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 11:54
Yeah.
Okay.
Mark Alayev 11:59
And so what we're doing is we're giving tools to the AI.
To make the best decision, like...
Hey, if something's wrong, find out about it.
All they need is access to the tool set.
So yes, absolutely our men are caught in a romance.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 12:27
Yeah, I never, I never thought of it that way.
Mark Alayev 12:27
But Thread is right there.
Yeah, I can see you right now.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 12:34
Yeah, yeah, no, this is good. So let's continue the conversation. Probably need to, you know, bring this plane in for a landing. But the folks, a shout out, late September Thread is having their event in Seattle. You can find it on their site.
It's one of my favorite events because, Mark, what I really like is a small event format, you know, a couple hundred people, handful of vendors. And I'm hearing that from my community that, you know, like RSA was perhaps the worst, 45,000 people in San Francisco.
Mark Alayev 12:59
We have a lot left to do there.
We still need to, I mean, we're just kind of kicking it off.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 13:17
You know, that's like a pro football game or a World Cup game. I mean, that's not real. That's not real. And you are real. So folks, give them, you know, give Thread a look. And then the other thing, I'm glad you said Ninja One, because perhaps, because I'm here in Austin,
Mark Alayev 13:20
Yeah.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 13:37
Mark, perhaps, I don't know, but perhaps I'll see you, and I believe it's the second half of October. They are having their first conference in Austin. And so maybe...
Mark Alayev 13:48
Sal told me so. Yeah, absolutely.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 13:50
Yeah, maybe we'll have the good fortune to see each other. And you know what, that'd be a good check-in. That'd be another good check-in. Obviously, the conference is going to generate its own activity. But Mark, I'll tell you what, let's end on a giggle. You know, I think in rehearsal, I started out, but
It's hot here, dude. It's summer in Austin. What I know you guys got some heat, and then more importantly, you got the smoke from the Canadian wildfires. They were all worried about the game. What's going on up there, weather-wise?
Mark Alayev 14:21
So finally, I was able to go to a pool with my kids. I have three kids. But yes, Canadia is definitely struggling up north.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 14:43
Yep.
Mark Alayev 14:46
But we're doing our best.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 14:48
Ha ha.
But yeah, I think your temps are okay. You got hit by the dome, the heat dome. But I, you're in an okay category for heat right now and we'll call it good.
Mark Alayev 15:01
Yeah, absolutely. Harry, look, I really appreciate you.
I think the big thing right now.
is less about what do people have, more like solutions. I think what folks need to be thinking about is, where are you going? What's your philosophy?
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 15:21
Yeah.
Mark Alayev 15:25
And...
I stand by, I stand by our philosophy. We'll do the right thing any day of the week, whether it's smoke from Canada or anything else, we will do the right thing.
Harry Brelsford | CEO | SMB Nation & O365nation | 15:42
So, Mark, I want to thank you for your time, Jennifer, over in the radio control room. And thank you so much, Mark. We'll see you soon.
Mark Alayev 15:58
Thanks, Harry