BMT 009 | Martech in Asia
foreign [Music] the show where we talk about the big ideas and the big topics in the marketing technology industry I'm Juan and I'm Scott let's recap uh reverse ETL there's a new trend there's so many moving pieces happening right now but with your Reflections from uh last week's episode yeah wow you know I couldn't help but keep coming back to the thought here that you know a year ago hardly anyone in martek had really heard of reverse CTL you know this year okay yeah whole wave lots of discussion whether you agree with it disagree with it it's certainly a topic a lot of people are discussing um but already like some of the announcements you covered uh you know in the update last week where it's like okay well now there are non-reverse ETL companies that are incorporating reverse ETL like capabilities either the data warehouse layer or up in the app layer and so even this thing that goes like this hottest trend is now also having this fluidity uh you know how these architectures might evolve and uh I know I think this is just one example of why Mario Tech is such a challenging space right now is it just it's a moving Target uh what did what didn't you think yeah I think that um it is moving very quickly like 12 months ago yet we weren't talking about reverse ETL um but out of nowhere we've had got these really interesting startups like high touch data and census that have this conviction that uh yeah you should be able to do more on the data warehouse and it's a data warehouse in terms of like data activation using customer data is the Primitive like it's this sort of growing Trend right it's like the cloud all over again in terms of how um companies are thinking about orchestrating their data or using it um yeah I actually wrote an essay as you alluded to Scott about reverse etls I mean is it it what's the changing pieces in this big landscape of customer data management and it's not just reverse ETL which is sort of in this picture right now it's also um you know Warehouse native analytics platforms I mean Google recently acquired looker um it's a really good example here look over as a sort of Warehouse native analytics bi tool and Google saw that they've got Google Cloud platformer said wow what a great opportunity for us to integrate Luca into our data data ecosystem in a deeper way um and so that's one side the other side is you've got of course data activation and reverse ETL and about yourself identity Solutions like DBT as well that are going and saying well yeah you can do all of your data in Richmond and identity Solutions write a new Warehouse I mean um a snowflake that is very cheeky article and of course snowflake is perhaps one of the most interesting players in the data warehouse space right now uh they had this cheeky article and they said um you know you can go and build your own CDP and snowflake you don't need to buy this package software anymore and so I mean I think part of it is why it's so fast moving is that I think it feels like a bit of a land grab right now you have new startups you have the data warehouse companies um you know obviously very large companies like Google and Amazon that are seeing the opportunity to grab more data and obviously marketing and advertising is a treasure Trove of data and compared to other parts of your business so that's why I think it's very vendor driven but I actually think there's a lot of really valuable use cases here I think that there's some really good perspective on how much do you actually own your data as a business but what are your thoughts on that in terms of data ownership well you know uh Jeff Bezos famously uh you know said that his philosophy uh you know with Amazon was not like trying to figure out what's going to change uh but actually start with well what isn't going to change what is going to hold true for the next decade in two decades and so on you know and I feel like there are two things here that aren't going to change one is there's going to be a data warehouse layer there has been for decades there's going to be decades ahead like people are going to want to centralize you know all of the data ultimately that flows into their organization um the other thing that isn't going to change is the actual Frontline applications uh that engage with employees and customers the things that are actually generating data using data I mean I should say the specific apps and what they do is going to constantly change but the layer itself isn't going to go away you know I think where things get challenging you know we talked about uh you know the just the nature of middleware um is between that layer that isn't good between those two layers that aren't going to change there's got to be stopping between them but I don't know I would be hard-pressed to say like oh yeah there's some facet of what sits between these two things that I can say isn't going to change over the next decade yeah I I think that there's like one of the drivers here which I don't think it's talked about enough is um this idea of data ownership I mean as you say like martech is this kind of world of middleware right like software as a service right so you buy software you use it it's a service it's doing something for you that you cannot currently do in your business you know you don't have companies out there building their own marketing automation platforms because they've they have MailChimp they have um clavio they have um you know Marketo they've got these marketing automation platforms why build your own one when you can just take this service as software and use it right but there's always trade-offs with that and I think the big Trend here that yeah is under under talked about is using the data warehouse gives you the flexibility and the extensibility to do what you need to do that's specific to your brand and that's why you see I think with cdps is that there's all these different cdps and different verticals right like you got box ever it's an airline specific CDP you have other cdps like a master's sap that are very geared towards um e-commerce right in retail right and so you see that like cdps have to sort of morph into the different use cases for different types of Industries and that's why I think the data warehouse is so powerful because it doesn't really think in those categories it thinks yeah you can store your data and then you can activate it on your terms in the way that you want to do it and so I think that sort of radical ownership of your data is one of the sort of driving Trends here how much data do you actually own when it's all steps stored in middleware I think is one of the most important questions but let's dive in to a totally different topic we are talking about martech in Asia and uh I might set us up for this conversation because I think it's a uh one that uh Scott uh you and I both been talking about non-stop for like four weeks now and we're finally here and we are very very excited and interested in in how um parts of uh Asia like India and Singapore and China are building all these different and very interesting marketing Technologies but we don't hear a lot about that and so we wouldn't have shown a lot on what's happening in that part of the world in terms of the region the great entrepreneurs the founders the marketers that are obviously building and um and also taking a lot of these interesting companies global but I guess where we can start is why I wrote this article well uh I obviously with what I do with my check weekly and um my other Ventures I have a number of startups that pitched me all the time um I get cold emails in my inbox um I get I jump on calls and learn about different marketing Technologies so I love it but recently almost all the different um interesting Technologies I've been um sort of advising and looking at have all been founded and continue to be headquartered out of India um it's a few great examples there's factors AI fantastic B2B SAS platform that uses AI to drive B2B analytics and attribution they're solving an extremely hard problem they've got incredible traction there's other platforms like Castle data which is going into reverse ETL but with a radically different Viewpoint to say you can actually build marketing automation on top of the data warehouse and that's what Castle data are doing and so um and not only just startup founded startups founded out of India but also Indian entrepreneurs I mean there's so many incredible Executives now that have that that grew up and were born in India are now living in different parts of the world so that's where I'm thinking like what do you see in that space Scott do you see a lot of traction what are some of the interesting Technologies out of that out of India or out of Asia that you're seeing at the moment yeah it's fascinating so uh 100 agree with you like I think uh India has become incredibly successful and not just um generating a tremendous amount of you know martech Innovation but they've been very successful at exporting it um you know I think certainly across uh the us but I also see it uh you know in emea you know there are a lot of products that people adopt uh that are Indian uh from Indian companies uh and what's interesting is I suspect actually in the vast majority of cases people don't even realize it um which you could take them in a couple of different ways but I actually look at that as progress you know I mean I've always kind of been in this camp that like you know the myth-making of you know oh well if it comes out of Silicon Valley you know then you know it's like the gods themselves came down from Olympus and gave it to us you know I'm much more in the camp of like listen there are smart people everywhere and you know this sort of like more distributed uh kind of innovation just felt like one of the benefits we would get out of a totally connected digital world and I think the success you're seeing in so many Indian market companies is a testament to that's absolutely true there's a related topic here that again I'm curious to get your perspective on which is you know martech coming out of China and I'm sure we'll have to talk a bit about Tick Tock and WeChat because these are kind of you know big big deals um but like in in more like core martech the sort of stuff that we think of like oh what am I doing for my marketing automation what is my CRM like how am I managing social media you know I've had the honor to go and present in China a number of times a more Tech conferences have been hosted there and I understand sadly after studying Chinese for like three years in college uh yeah I've still barely got the ability to like you know learn some food um but one thing that's clear is there are hundreds and hundreds of martech companies it's almost like a Chinese mirror you know of what we think of a you know the martech landscape uh you know uh here in the you know outside of China and it's fascinating to me both a how little martek from the West seems to make itself into uh you know the Chinese martech Stacks but also vice versa how little Chinese martech I've seen appear anywhere outside of martech but I'm curious I mean you you live uh in this hemisphere yeah you know like what are you seeing yeah well as an Australian I mean we're so closely linked with um with southeast Asia just by proximity um you know but uh that I mean by just cycling back on India for a minute I mean I think one of the things that you mentioned is that there's the ability to export uh marcheck out into the rest of the world is one of the big differentiators uh with India as a global superpower and China as a global superpower two radically different obviously political environments right which which Drive different types of innovation so for example FDI intelligence uh they're saying that India alone 44 unicorns so billion plus valued companies were created in 2021 more than 72 billion dollars in exits um which is 38 times greater than in 2020. so there are a lot of big technology companies that are being built out of India um as you say the the Silicon Valley Gods on high right like they're everything good everything has to come out of Silicon Valley I think these stabs alone completely changed that that whole narrative I'm seeing a lot of people that are moving to the US to go and study in places like Stanford and Harvard and MIT and then move back to India because um there's a huge opportunity right like the population of people is organs of magnitude was it like more than what is it uh 1.4 billion people who live in India and then in China it's sort of comparable as well in terms of just the sheer volume of people in this Rising middle class that's happening so that's my view on the India stuff to tie that up by moving into China I mean look China and by dance which is an AI company headquartered in China um and it's run run by Chinese people they gave us Tick Tock one of the most successful that's the social media platforms that's happening right now I mean they came in out of nowhere and in the span of four years and completely disrupted uh meta Facebook Instagram um and then you know almost all other social media platforms and they did in a really unique way I mean they had a radically new and Innovative way on social media native to video vertical scrolling or video and then the ability to integrate virality by giving users ability to export content which is unique and sharing that out into different social media platforms that is innovation now that is pure change in the social media landscape and so I just don't think we can discount Asia I think you know the U.S Centric martech is probably a thing of the past it's going from west to east I don't know if you're seeing that as well Scott but I think Tick Tock is an interesting one it's probably the most notable right now yeah okay so this is where uh there's a part of me that agrees with you and a part of me that yeah I just don't see it the part of me agrees with you 100 on uh bite dance with Tick Tock specifically with Tick Tock because bike dance has a lot of other businesses not all of which are very well known outside of China um you know but you could also put WeChat is another one of these platforms you know um so I think this idea saying like yes China has created some game-changing Global platforms social media wise 100 with you again I'll push back like the martech stat the software that companies actually buy to run marketing inside the organization not platforms they're connecting with you know on uh you know consumers the things they're using to run their business what Chinese martech products are you seeing in Western SAS almost none of them and that's my point is I agree with you there in that uh I don't see I see a lot of Indian companies um as we talked about before that are building martech and I think there's a sort of a western um very Western perspective in from my tech founding perspective out of India which is yeah we go our big Market is the US um you know we put our headquarters in the US if we're if we're launching out of India and you know um and so I think that that connection um culturally and politically is actually really quite strong between India and us um but yeah I don't see a lot of Chinese martech companies um because I think it I think the political Landscapes are so different I mean what a great example here with Tick Tock is that uh Tick Tock is the Western version of bite dance native Chinese social media app which looks exactly the same so they've got two social media apps that do exactly the same exactly the same thing one is Tick Tock and one is a Chinese native one and why they do that well yeah uh the Chinese government is very very constraining I mean you probably saw in the news I think it was last year with a through jack ma into prison from Alibaba because Alibaba was becoming the next Amazon a beer global company and so I think the political environment you know India is more democratic India is more open in terms of borders and trade and most importantly um they're most they are very open in terms of internet connectivity whereas China are very closed as a country um even though they're obviously they have Global influence um technology wise uh there's a real constraint there in terms of how Global you can actually take some of these martech startups so I actually think that's one of my big betas on India actually is because it's a better environment um for Technologies to grow and the startups to launch and actually connect with the broader world yeah I'm well I'm totally working on that like I can today go through a bunch of martech stacks of major companies and I can point out to you the software that they're using uh that comes from Indian companies I'm not sure they would always recognize that but that's okay on The martech Narrative of course I would know that stuff um and at some level right it should have mattered it shouldn't matter to the business people they're picking the best software you know for purpose I love it China though yeah it's like you know these I mean I again I've talked to folks in China like there's a group I don't have it handy but like they they do a martech map in China and it's got hundreds of different products and all these different things you know but there is clearly a very real barrier between you know uh Western martek um you know uh being adopted in China and you know Chinese uh you know martech being adopted you know outside of China and again to your point maybe some of that's just the political realities um but I don't know call me uh you know uh John Lennon you know imagine uh Optimist but you know at some point you would feel like that there is just so much I mean there's so many smart people you know who are like doing so much Innovation that boy I would love for a lot of reasons there to be a greater cross-pollination uh between yeah uh you know martech creators uh you know in China Marquette creators in the rest of the world and I don't know uh can we aspire to get there in our lifetime yeah well I mean look uh you know people in the tech sector in out of China were just as hard as people in the US who work in the tech sector I mean you know Jack ma set this rule of um uh 996 not yeah it was a 996. I think it was where
you work six days a week nine a.m to 9 00 p.m basically and that's just normal right so you've got people that are working really hard long hours and some of these tech companies um a funny story actually um I was I actually just came back from Singapore a few weeks ago and I went and joined um Tech week Singapore there big data and AI world and uh Scott I completely agree with you that like when I was there it was overwhelming it was two levels uh there are Marina Bay Sands there was 30 000 people over two days there were hundreds of vendors 10 different stages for them different topics and technology companies that have never even seen before um after spending all this time researching and my reflection of that was wow I really don't know much about this part of the world I mean perhaps this episode is everything we don't know about that part of the world in terms of martech but um but my view is that well one story that came out of that I sat down with it I was just sitting um and catching up on emails and then a guy sat next to me and he worked for this company for called Moloko Moloko is a um a ad Tech Network as a service so think of like retail media they build the software for you they use AI to programmatically drive advertising but they'll go to a Marketplace an e-commerce um company and then they'll plug that software on to drive a whole new Revenue stream for that company and that technology blew my mind I was like whoa that's incredible like it's a whole retail media Network a whole new Revenue stream that's extremely low margin for e-commerce businesses um you know I found that completely fascinating but as I got to know the guy a little bit more and we're talking he said well uh you know we were working um and obviously Alibaba was in India for a long time and I was working with that team to bring Alibaba to India alibaba's the Chinese e-commerce platform but when Flipkart in India started to really take off the Indian government completely cut India out of um out of India and um they couldn't function so he actually lost his job and then he started working in this new company and you know you can see there's all these massive Titanic shifts you know it's like the massive you know these huge platforms that are really juking it out for a Supremacy in different parts of Asia but you never hear about that stuff I mean you know we hear so much about nedder and Google and all the other big platforms so you don't hear a lot about these massive shifts in um in technology but that's kind of where my head's at is well I I just think that there's so much to explore there and I do think that I'm very bullish that's going to be a very important Locale of innovation in martech I'm definitely convinced of that at this point I'm I'm I remain very curious to see how it uh evolves um you know again this is the um you know the uh the great app explosion uh we see uh everywhere um and it's hard to imagine that there's any country in the world that is you know going to be immune from uh entrepreneurs who are seeking to come up with the next idea and uh software is the the way in which we create uh so any of these ideas in a digital world so um I would say uh yeah how bullish on what will come but actually so so I know where everyone boy we could go on this topic in so many different directions but I wonder in the interest of time do we close out with like a question for our audience like what do we what do you want to ask them yeah I think my my question to the audience um is if you're building martech out of Asia if you're living in Singapore India Indonesia China um you know other parts of Southeast Asia we want to hear from you um what are you working on what martech product what software are you building um you can drop into the comments in YouTube you can drop into the LinkedIn and Twitter posts as we as we post them out there'll be links in the show notes for those things as well but we want to know what are you working on we're going to shout out a few with our next episode uh next week but we would love to see some great founders of shouting out their products I'm looking forward to that all right well listen thanks for joining us for another big week in martech uh don't miss an episode by subscribing at bigmartech.com and go do big thing Juan and I are rooting for you [Music]
2022-11-26 05:04
