The Future of Communication with Dialpad’s Mike Kane

Scott Kinka:

Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of the Bridgecast. We’re truly excited about this one. We’re joined by Mike Kane, who is the SVP of global partner sales at Dialpad. He’s also the head of international sales. We’ll talk about what that means. Mike also was a 2024 CRN channel chief, I think, for the third consecutive year. Guys, a little bit of a legend in our space. Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Kane:

Scott, it’s awesome to be here. I am looking forward to it. I listen to your podcast quite a bit, so I’m excited to be here.

Scott Kinka:

Well, thank you for the listen. I appreciate that. Like, listen, five stars. Appreciate that. That goes for everybody out there online as well. If you’re enjoying this, make sure to follow us, subscribe, and give us some good commentary. Helps us get this content to others. I appreciate that, Mike. Thanks for the shameless plug there. Mike, you’ve been at Dialpad for, like, I don’t know, seven and a half years or something like that. Do I have that right from my LinkedIn math? 

Mike Kane:

Yeah, it’s been quite a while. Yeah, a good run. That’s right.

Scott Kinka:

That’s uncommon in this space. Why? Tell me why you’re still there.

Mike Kane:

Well, number one, I love it. Dialpad’s been an awesome place to work. The culture is awesome. A lot of people say that, but I think it does start with our founder and CEO, Greg Walker. He started the company. He’s been there for 12 years. He’s extremely involved in the business, and he’s been really supportive of our program. So, as folks who run programs, if you have the support of the top and then as well as the executive suite. Just makes your job a lot easier. And then, you know, it’s always changing. You can imagine what’s happened in seven and a half years and how much the business has changed in seven and a half years. So you never get bored. You’re always growing and striving. So, yeah, that’s the main reason that you always try to keep growing as a person and as a pro, and that’s never changed. So once that happens, then you can always look around, but yeah, it’s really fun.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. No, I love that. And we’re gonna, we’ll get into Dialpad in a minute for our listeners who aren’t familiar. But let’s just finish on you first. So you were at PING, I think, before that?

Mike Kane:

I was, yeah, Ping Identity. That was an awesome run. We had an exit there. But I ran actual sales teams there and then pivoted to the channel, kind of inherited a program and then led that for a year. And, you know, Identity and Access Management, as you know, is an extremely hot space. And we were pretty. This was early. So this was, you know, I think 2014 when Identity Perimeter was just kind of starting and, you know, identifying who’s coming into the perimeter. So, that was a lot of fun. Learned a ton and know cybersecurity is about as high as you can get

Scott Kinka:

Well, you already hit on something that I had scribbled here in my notes about being there early, right? And we don’t need to explore, you know, identity and access management. It’s just more of a macro-level topic because you’re talking on a day-by-day basis to our listeners, who are IT leaders in their businesses. And I think when you were at Ping, you probably spent as much time explaining the concept of identity and access management is the same as you did when selling that platform versus others. You’re nodding, so I’m guessing that’s right. That’s right. Tell me what that’s like as a, you know, obviously a super hyper-technical sales executive, but talking to IT leaders more around a concept than sort of this well-defined product set that they’re looking for a best-of-breed solution in.

Mike Kane:

100%. Yeah, I found it over the years, and we’ll go with my background. I started in ’97. So right when, you know, dotcom and the internet were starting. And so you’ve seen all the different ways throughout the years, from mobile to cloud to SAS, et cetera, and the most recent security to AI. And when you’re explaining to a CIO, I always try and go to the use cases because without understanding the use case and how it impacts their business, a lot of it just starts to get lost, and you get more into the speeds and feeds and then it gets confusing for the different line of business owners to really understand what you’re trying to accomplish for them. Yeah, so pretty early on, you always talked about the use cases, believe it or not. Back then, in 2014, MFA, known as multi-factor authentication, was brand new. You know, we had this thing called the swipe, and instead of before, like your face or your fingerprint, it was literally a swipe. So, stuff like that, right? So, we always got back to the use case.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. We’ll hold onto that concept of use cases because I find that to be one of the most interesting things about the way that Dialpads go into the market. But I want to wrap up on you, and then we’ll get to that in a minute. So, I know the well-known channel chief, who has been there for quite a while. Ping before that. Step aside, and there’s something behind you. There’s a drum set or something behind you, right? Is that what I’m looking at? Atta guy. Right size for the office. How long have you been playing drums?

Mike Kane:

Yeah, the electric sunset. My whole life since I was a kid. I’ve always been really into music. Played the drums, played the guitar, you know, I was a music major when i actually started, believe it or not. So, I’ve always been in music.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. Wow. Favourite drummer?

Mike Kane:

Neil Peart.

Scott Kinka:

Of course, right? God rest his soul. And then, just before we jump on that, you’re in LA with family, who you work hard for every day.

Mike Kane:

Yeah. Yeah, my wife and three kids. My kids are starting to age out. I used to do a lot of coaching for their sports, you know, the ESO and all that kind of good stuff. And they’re all aged out. So now you see me on the weekends, kind of tinkering around the house. Cause I don’t have, you know, all that kid stuff anymore. They’re still around, but you know, now they’re all teenagers. Right, dad, you know, go away.

Scott Kinka:

Yep. Sure. Yeah. We’re filming this right around Thanksgiving. You know, this won’t air right around Thanksgiving, but my kids are descending. So, as I got onto the studio with our producer, Gene, before you popped in here, all my kids hopped on camera to say hi to Gene. So they don’t live. None of them live with me right now. So you’re a couple of years behind me on that. I will. Let’s jump into it. 

Mike Kane:

So you know what I’m going through.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah, man, you’re going to get there. Let’s jump into, I’m sorry. One more thing for you before we jump into that. What do you think is your superpower? As an IT executive and as a sales leader.

Mike Kane:

Good question. I think probably a lot of sales leaders say this kind of naturally comes with the job, but emotional intelligence. I would argue sometimes for me, almost painfully, EQ because I understand the other person so much. But yeah, that’s always been a strength of mine. You know, trying to understand the other person and what they’re trying to accomplish and align my efforts with theirs has always been a good trade.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. Okay. So, I know I have a bunch of stuff behind me here, but one of these little groups over here is amongst my favourite business books. This one is the emotional intelligence quick book. I’m totally with you. I have to keep going back and reminding myself. But I love that book and I certainly love the concept there. So that’s awesome. Let’s talk about Dialpad then quickly. I’m going to ask you the same question, right? I mean, we try, you know, these aren’t commercials per se, but obviously, everybody who watches the show knows that the people that, you know, we bring on work someplace, right? We generally have a relationship with them. Give me the Dialpad story, but just focus on the superpower. If you would for me, give me that, give me that pitch.

Mike Kane:

I think a big piece of what you think about Dialpad is that you gotta look at the history of the company. So, the company was a spin-out of Google. I’m wearing the Google Cloud Dialpad, you know, partnership and, so we’re a spin-out of Google. Google Ventures was the first VC for Dialpad. Craig Walker, our CEO and founder, who I mentioned earlier, was the founder of Google Voice. And so when they built that out, they built it for scale. When you work at Google, when you launch a product, you literally have to launch it so it can support hundreds of millions from day one. So he learned a lot. Tells, I’m telling his story, but he learned a lot. And so when he built Dialpad, he built it the same way. So you have the same infrastructure built on GCP, and it was built for scale and international from day one. So that’s a big piece of it. If you just look at its scale, it was built from the early days to scale at a broad level. Over the years, you know, we started first with video conferencing, then UCAS, then CCAS, and then we acquired an AI company and weaved that into the entire platform. And then now, like, you know, so much in the space, it’s evolved so much in terms of how AI is truly changing the game and opening up so many different avenues. So we’re going to get into it, but that enables us to have different products that a lot of folks don’t have because you’re able to leverage that AI data to specific use cases that open up all kinds of avenues.

Scott Kinka:

Hold on to that for one minute because I think that’s probably the meat of what we’re going to chat about. Let’s just talk quickly about where you guys are succeeding. I don’t want to say crowded space because you guys specialize down to the point where it’s not crowded, which I think is one of the genius parts of your business. But in general, people are just thinking, hey, communications. At the end of the day, I bought a bunch of stuff. Started doing meetings online during COVID, like whatever, let’s just make this simple. And look, in a lot of our conversations that I have, we’re being frank. Start with how we rationalize our investment around Teams and simplify, or investment around Zoom and simplify and things like that. Even spinning out of Google, right? With the, by the guy who started Google Voice, right? You know, there are some ways to bring a knife to a gunfight, right, from an R&D perspective. You know, how do you compete in that space, and what makes you different?

Mike Kane:

I think, yeah. Yeah, so Teams is obviously the elephant in the room that is dramatically taking share. If you look at what Satya just announced on the most recent earnings, I can’t quote the exact number of millions of users on Teams using Teams voice or phone. I forgot the brand for it, but you know, obviously, it’s growing, and we’re fine with that. So, you know, we have many customers, and most of the enterprise uses Teams. However, where they would argue and where they can sometimes struggle would be the external calling and contact center. So, what we do is have a great Teams integration. So you’re making those external calls, but what we’re able to do is use our AI. And we’ll talk about that as well, but that’s proprietary. That’s our own large language model. We’re able to capture all of the data that’s happening in those Teams calls and then put it back in the Salesforce or dynamics or the CRMF record and all the different integrations that we have. So we’re fine with that. I mean, we understand that, especially the way Microsoft bundles. They’re going to use that, and they want to have it for their internal meetings. They’re going to be using Teams. Totally understand that, and we don’t want to displace that, but we work very well with Teams because we understand, especially in the enterprise, it’s so prevalent.

Scott Kinka:

Got it. Got it. Let’s stay on the AI track for a minute, and then we’ll get back into verticalization and specialization. As you mentioned, today, you guys call yourself an AI-powered customer communications platform. What does that mean?

Mike Kane:

Yeah, so AI is getting crowded, and I am a pod listener. So I’ve listened to some of your other guests come on over the past couple of years. And I heard one of your guests say how AI has levelled the playing field for a lot of folks in the CX space and not trying to be difficult, but I would say, well, no, I don’t think it’s, it’s levelled it maybe to some degree, but when you actually get into the specifics, and you go down into the use case, this is where someone like us, would argue would stand out. Again, I’m not trying to do a sales pitch, but I’ll tell you this. Having your own large language model, which Dialpad does, we call it Dialpad GPT. It’s comprised of 7 billion minutes of long-form business conversations. So, since 2017, we’ve been transcribing every single phone conversation that hits the platform. So that could be a UCAS call or a one-to-one peer call when folks are not using Teams. Obviously, the contact center is the no-brainer, where any kind of customer call coming into the support center is being transcribed. Sales calls, which is what I do for a living, Scott, you’re, and I haven’t got a chance to talk about you. You’ve been a legend for two days at EvolveIP. And, the first time we met, we were, no, it’s true. And so I know you are extremely good on sales calls, but all that’s happening on those conversations we’ve been able to transcribe now since 2017. So we used all that data with our customer’s permission, of course, right? That’s another big one. Everybody opts in. We’ve been able to use that long-form business conversation and create a really strong language model, we would argue. That’s just for business. So it’s not going to be the open AI. Some of the others, again, all have their strengths, but ours is faster because it’s our own. It’s within the old four walls. It’s specific to the business, acronyms, and long-form conversations. It’s not a, Hey Siri, what’s the weather? Hey Google, play the Google.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. And it’s not crowded with, you know, all of the information on the internet, from a, from an information, from a learning perspective on the AI, but I guess that goes the other way too. Right. So, should customers think about this differently? Like, Hey, I mean, I love you. You know, what you said earlier about when we integrate, we’re also consuming the audio from the team’s calls and amending it. I mean, is this also a safer place than co-pilot and Microsoft’s public GPT to have all that lives and inform the business AI?

Mike Kane:

At least our opinion is 100%. Because, again, it’s within your full walls. You can control that data, too. It’s your data. So you have the ability to customize it. Going back to the ability of scraping. So, in our case, you’re scraping against your own knowledge base. Right now, there are some key learnings in there for our customers and the CIOs out there that you obviously have to have your knowledge base up to date. And that in itself is when partners can help. Strategists can come in and help with that process because you’re pointing back to data. And if it’s old internal data from a couple of years ago, it’s not going to be impacting very much to make those agents more productive because you’re looking at old data. So that’s a big piece of it, right?

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. Yeah. Let’s, let’s explore that for a minute because I think, you know, a lot of ways businesses are, I want to take it out of the communications room for a half a minute, and then we’ll bring it back in. You know, businesses are thinking, Hey, GPT, right? Chat, GPT, co-pilot, Gemini, whatever it is that they’re using. And they’re like, you know, beginning to open their eyes to the risks of, certainly open their eyes to the value, but also to the risks of using public model because if you, public models, because if you obviously inform it with good business information to make your agents or your sellers or your folks on the phone more useful, you’re also potentially giving away company secrets and internal data, maybe protected customer information, et cetera. So they’re thinking about private large language models here. And, You know, this even just occurred to me. I mean, maybe, you know, this is almost now bringing it back to communications, almost an easy button to some extent, because you are one, you’re informing it on your calls. Of course, that assumes that everybody’s saying the right things, right? But what you’re saying right now about the knowledge base is, you know, it’s not just that data. You can inform it on the knowledge base. You can inform it with your processes. You can inform it. So you’re talking about taking all your minutes and all your team’s voice communications. The knowledge base, documents, and repository are to inform really what a private LLM for the customer is that’s based around communications. Do I have that right?

Mike Kane:

Now think about this: how many acronyms do you think me and you talk about in our daily business lives? I mean, business speak is all acronyms.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. I mean, probably on this podcast alone, I break every acronym rule there is. So I agree with you. Hundreds, if not thousands.

Mike Kane:

That’s right. Think about acronyms. Think about business terms that are specific to your business, right? If you’re in auto, you’re an automotive or recruiting, and you go down a list, including insurance and healthcare. So you’re able to customize everything within your own data set, which is, again, really powerful. I would argue for it, calling it real AI, right? It’s actual. You work using today, and folks all day long using our platform have real AI that they’re using every single day. It’s not a conceptual idea, like, Hey, this can impact your business. So many CIOs out there are being asked by the board, by their CEO, Hey, what’s our AI strategy? How are you pulling an AI so broad? That’s why we try to get very specific to the use cases. Here are real-world practical applications of how you can use this technology. And then you talk about it even further, and we go into sales. I use it every single day with my big distributed team of 80 folks from all around the globe. I’m using the product, and I’ll give you examples of how I use it. But I’m telling you right now, sitting in this home office in Los Angeles, I’m able to coach folks globally that was just not possible, you know, a couple of years ago.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. It’s just wild. Shameless plug, too. I mean, you did just mention this being the era where, you know, boards are asking CIOs, you know, the listeners, what are we doing around AI right now? And in some ways, it’s sort of a solution looking for a problem because we’ve got this sort of board-level edict coming down. We explored quite a bit of that on a live episode that we recorded at our summit a couple of weeks ago. And Dialpad was represented on that panel. Great work there. That was awesome. Super excited about those episodes coming out.

Mike Kane:

Yeah. Nick’s letter or CRO. Yeah. And what’s interesting about Nick’s background, he also was a COO at a company called Concur, which everybody knows from travel and experience management. So he brought, he brings a real kind of real world, breath to it. And so it’s a good listen. I would urge everybody to listen to that episode.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. Well, we’ll make sure that those episodes, two of them actually, are linked in the line or notes on this episode as we go. I do want to explore a little bit more. Let’s stay on this AI topic for a minute. So now we’re building a private LLM around voice calls but also informed via knowledge base. Let’s talk about sort of the partner. You mentioned the partner help, assistance, opportunity in there. I mean, how often do you get into scenarios where the customer, they’ve got all the minutes, and they’ve got all the calls, but they just don’t have the processes documented well enough to inform the AI or the data isn’t organized in a place to, know, do those things kind of get in the way for customers in your mind of really making the best use out of a business focused, you know, AI-led communications platform like this?

Mike Kane:

Yeah, CIOs, line of business owners, CMOs, know, chief customer officers, they understand their business very well. They understand the problem they’re trying to solve, but in many cases they don’t understand an expert on the technology and all the different options that are there. And, you know, we didn’t talk about my time before Ping, but for 18 years, I worked for, you know, basically a strategist, where I went for many years, you know, working with CIOs and understanding their business and then trying to map up the correct technology to solve their business problems. And, you know, I’d lost my train of thought on the AI side about where we’re going with that. Forgive me.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. No, no, no worries. We’re talking primarily about use cases. I was going to be moving towards sort of this.

Mike Kane:

Yeah, yeah, sorry. Yeah. Bridgepointe, you know, just to do a shameless plug for Bridgepointe, but you guys have best-in-class strategies, like legit. And what you guys do very well is mirror up now, not in an endless. Every single one of the technologies has a place, and it’s a massive market. Right. And so you’re just aligning your folks are very good at aligning the right tech based on the existing integrations that are needed, the existing, you know, technologies that are already in place and then aligning that with the business problems. So yeah, it’s a huge opportunity. I’ll give you an example. Take the sales, CROs are now part of the equation, which they weren’t previously. Most partners weren’t working too many with; a Bridgepointe advisor wasn’t working too much with a CRO, potentially, but not really as much. It was typically with the CIO. Well, now you’re able to go out and align a different sales playbook and put that in place. Now it’s a natural conversation because like you, Scott, you know, we’ve been selling our whole lives and you know, like different sales methodology, medic, go down the list of different bands, spiced, you go down the list of different ways of a sales methodology and you’re able to map that up with the CRO to then go show real business outcomes and revenue growth. That’s a big deal.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I think I find that the most interesting. You guys sell sort of a couple of different products. You’ve got the communications and collaboration platform. You’ve got what you call the support platform, which I do find interesting because everybody else is using different, you know, contact center or CX. And then you’ve got your effective sales cloud. I know you have a relationship with Salesforce as well, and you do things there; you have integrations, but I find that to be super interesting to your point about the CRO. I mean, are use cases how you’re really distinguishing what it is that you guys do from kind of the big monolithic communications platforms? Like we talked about Teams earlier as an example.

Mike Kane:

Yeah, so, you know, what if you could, you know, copy and paste your best sales rep? Every organization has typically one or two of the best sales reps and they always kind of stand out from the crowd. And what if you’re able to take what they are saying in business conversations and then apply that to the rest of the sales force? That would have a major impact, right? What we’re able to do now is capture all those conversations in real-time. Keep that in mind as well, right? That’s the other big thing. It’s not just being recorded and looked at after. Of course, we do that. But most impactfuthing l is that in real time, you’re able to capture what that best sales rep sad, and apply that to a playbook. And then when the other sales reps were on their own conversations, it’s reminding them to follow the same adherence of the script, if you will, of what that other rep said previously that we know generates a good outcome. So if they haven’t said it yet, it’ll pop up a reminder and say, Hey Mike, don’t forget to cover this. If an objection comes up, it’ll say teams, example, it’ll say the AI hears teams. Hey, Mike, here’s how you handle the objection of teams and you go down the list and so where we’re seeing a lot of heavy adoption, would say in specific verticals is automotive is a big one. So if you think about who sells a lot, you know, automotive sales reps are always on the phones. They’re always texting. They’re always calling. that’s been a heavy adoption. you know, you go down the list. Real estate is a big one for us. If you think about a real estate agent, how much of that is on their personal cell phone, right? A remax is a big customer of ours. how much of that is on their personal cell phone. Now, Remax has all their agents using Dialpad and they’re able to track all those texts that go into the CRM. They’re able to track all those phone calls. They’re able to apply those playbooks of what you should say, what you shouldn’t say. And then it’s all searchable. That’s the other big thing, Scott, is that you can search it all. So interest rates, go down the list, HOA, all searchable, yeah, that you can then put into the CRM.

Scott Kinka:

So huge. Yeah, I mean, think, know, getting back, let’s tie this back to part of the conversation we had earlier, like in some ways AI and businesses is a solution looking for a problem, right? Cause the board level edicts in the whole nine yard, you know, and and I’ve heard from CIOs who were like, yeah, well, you know, a lot of what you guys are talking about, you guys, meaning on the Bridgecast and Bridgepointe and consultants and advisors, and certainly, you know, the pundits out there, they have a tendency. And in fact, it came up on stage a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about, is it like, We’re thinking CX is the path, right? Like the way, most appropriate place to use AI in a business is in the support organization. And then you talk to CIOs who are like, well, I don’t really have a big support organization, right? I just, you know, but I’m being asked to go get AI. So, you know, now you’re like, I got to go do the employee productivity stuff. I mean, turn on co-pilot and T-FIL, but that’s hard to quantify. It’s a good use case, but it’s hard to quantify. Everybody sells. I mean, that’s a really interesting takeaway for me in this episode is that like, I’ve always defaulted back to, all right, well, you don’t have this. You don’t really do support. Let’s think about, you know, employee productivity. And that’s certainly valuable. But wow, I love your comment around copying the best sales rep. That really seems to be why you guys, at least from a marketing perspective, have broken that out sort of as its own product offering, it seems to me. Really good stuff. Any other comment on that sales channel piece?

Mike Kane:

Well, answer. Yeah, well, just answer your question on support, because it is a great question. We had a big internal debate about versus a contact center or CX. The reason why we say support is that support just isn’t for a agent in a contact center. Everybody supports a customer from the receptionist calling into the receptionist. So we’ve made it more as the verb of what you were doing. You are supporting your customers. That’s your point. Everybody is selling. are selling to a customer, right? And it’s not just the sales rep. could be the sales engineer. It could be the CEO, many, you various roles. so that was the idea behind it.

Scott Kinka:

Got you. So, great answer. Before we get into some fun, I just want to ask you a question. you’re pretty public. You’re out there on LinkedIn. You’re quoted in articles. There was a recent article on Channel Futures where you were quoted saying that the role of the partner is changing. And partner can mean a lot of things, certainly to the IT people in the business that are watching the podcast. You’re like, partner, okay, so, you know, in the interest of full disclosure, and I think it’s pretty clear at this point, Bridgepointe, and our strategists are partnered with you guys to deliver product and customers. What do you mean there by the role of the partner is changing?

Mike Kane:

80 % of CIOs are typically leveraging a partner or an advisor or a strategist, to help them in that, in that process. And that has very, very broad. And I think that’s why it is changing because it’s coming way more broad than it was. Like when me and you were coming up, you know, you were just, it was very much centered on IT and it was very much within a certain scope and it was selling again, Cisco’s fantastic, but it was selling Cisco or very, you know, now it’s branched out into the line of business and it’s much more fun. I would argue, right? You’re able to have real business conversations and you’re really to understand you’re not just going in there talking about one project, you’re understanding the entire scope of their business and the best ways to help a CIO navigate that. So that’s the biggest change I would argue over the years.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. Yeah, it’s broadened. Yeah, super interesting. I think that the, you know, there’s many different types of partners out there, right? But I think the channel that has focused kind of grew up out of comms and network, you know, has really become this advisory channel, which is being seen, I just from, you know, our engagement, you know, we’re engaging in Fortune 25s. You know what mean? That was the place that was reserved for the Accenture’s and Deloitte’s of the world. think that business CIOs are now realizing that they don’t need to pay that freight potentially. You know, that there’s value in those organizations, don’t get me wrong, but on every decision, maybe they’re not the most appropriate partner and that other types of partnerships and advisory businesses around IT are valuable. 

Mike Kane:

That’s right, get sized, yeah.

Scott Kinka:

Well, listen, Mike, this was an unbelievable call and a great chat. want to have some fun before we go. I promised you a half hour and I know that we’re going to be over because I have some fun questions for you. let’s start with one that is sort of the bridge between the technical conversation we’re having maybe and some fun questions. You can answer this in whatever way you want, but I need a shameless prediction. You’ve watched the pod. So, you know, I ask everybody that something in the next 12 to 18 months that excites you, what’s going to, what’s going to happen, whether it’s in tech or sports or you name it, fire away.

Mike Kane:

Yeah. I think we’re going to see consolidation in the tech space. Everybody’s been saying that for quite some time, but I just think if you look at the AI, you got Anthropic, Coheer, give me the other, there’s so many names, Google’s in there with, so I think you’re going to see some, I just think naturally we saw this in all the different trends throughout the years. We talked earlier about SaaS and cloud and think about all the consolidation that happened, but I think now you’re going to see a lot of consolidation happening.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah, Gemini. Okay, super interesting. And then we’re going to see how that affects AI, which is really interesting, right? Because these large language models have grown and built their own base and made their own like connections between data. And now you’re going to go, you know, do you maintain them separately and to support them with the same technology or do you start doing this and then seeing what happens? Is that going to create more hallucinations? Is that going to create, or do we get an exponential?

Mike Kane:

Which is going to be interesting for everybody. That’s right. That’s right.

Scott Kinka:

Number of connections that it’s going to be really, really interesting. All right. Another business one I’m going to pick from one of these. Most recent leadership lesson that you’ve gotten that you should have known, but you really just learned.

Mike Kane:

Yeah, I shouldn’t even say this out loud if my boss is watching.

Scott Kinka:

That’s okay. Hey man, listen, it’s all about, you know, admitting our growth, right?

Mike Kane:

Yeah, let’s talk about international sales and how I lead those efforts for the company and Man, there are so many cultural differences and so many of these markets that you just need to really understand our American style, which I’m a shameless American. Doesn’t always translate well in some of the other cultures in the world

Scott Kinka:

You’re totally right. Yeah, I’ve spent quite a bit of time, as you know, we talked about that in our history, doing the same. That’s a great lesson. I was engaged in a boondoggle into Germany from a Netherlands beachhead until I realized that Germans don’t buy from people who aren’t in Germany. What did we just do? Just those little cultural things there. You know what I mean? And you can make you can make hay there. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just it’s but you need to really understand just border by border. Things are really, really interesting. And then, you know, listen, we’re in comms to, you know, particularly in your business, like the regulatory environment, border to border in, you know, throughout the world and in particular, kind of the edges around the EU are just really interesting, you know, to navigate. So that’s a good one. I appreciate that. You know, and your honesty there. What are you reading right now? Like, is there a book that we should be pointing to?

Mike Kane:

Yeah, I just finished Frank Slootman, Amp It Up. Have you heard of that one? It’s a really good one. It’s great. He obviously was the CEO of Snowflake. He retired and then he did Data Domain before that and NetApp, I believe. It’s a really good book. It’s about urgency in everything that you do. Obviously, Amp It Up. It’s a really good read. I highly recommend it.

Scott Kinka:

I have it. Love it. We’ll locate that, put that in the line of notes. Gene, our producer’s making a note right now. Two more questions. You’ve heard this one, I’m sure, because you’ve watched it. So maybe you’ve thought of an answer, but the dystopian future descends on us, whichever one you think is gonna happen. One app still works on your phone. Which one do you pick?

Mike Kane:

I haven’t heard you ask this one. One app. Shoot, man. I guess you would have to say right now X because it’s so crazy and there’s so much it’s I mean you get anything on there and I guess that’d be the one way to get a feed of real time but what’s happening I guess I would say X.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. Got it. Has your experience with X changed since it’s been X as opposed to Twitter in your mind? There’s a lot of debate going on right now, whether it’s like more open or less, without getting political, has your experience changed?

Mike Kane:

100%. Well, there’s two, right? If you go to the ones you’re following, that’s pretty much the same. But then if you get into for you, which is the open algorithm, or maybe not, but yeah, it’s wild. It’s the stuff I see on there. so.

Scott Kinka:

Yeah. Yeah. I’m not really sure what truth is, but we’re gonna figure that out soon. All right. I haven’t asked this question in forever. I’ve asked you more fun questions than I thought I was gonna ask. So that’s fine. Because you’re answering quickly. This was the one that Gene mentioned earlier in our pre-show. And you would have had to watch back to like season one to have heard me ask this question. All right. You get to be like the backup guy. All right. In one of these three situations, you get to choose. All right. You’re either. I’m just gonna riff on this one, because I’m answering slightly different. You’re either the VP pick, all right, to whatever president, and it’s not a political question, just the VP pick. You’re the base player in your favorite band, right? Or you’re like, I’ll use the sports analogy, you’re like the scat back, like the third down, not every down back on your favorite football team. Like which one is your ultimate second fiddle job?

Mike Kane:

Dude, that is, I mean, those are all so great. You gotta go rock star, right? I I mean, I don’t know. mean, access to power, imagine your JFKs VP. I mean, there’s so many, somebody like that, but no, I think you have to go rock star.

Scott Kinka:

Okay. Yeah. I figured you were going to say bass player, but I almost a rock star, but I almost pulled away from bass player one because you’re a drummer and two, mentioned Neil Pert earlier. So I’m like, is really the bass player in rush the second fiddle guy? No, he’s the guy. Right. So, but, all right, but you want to be the rock star. I appreciate that.

Mike Kane:

I mean, Paul McCartney was a bass player. Sting was a bass player. 

Scott Kinka:

Sting was a bass player. Paul McCartney was a bass player. I think Paul McCartney invented the way we play bass today, to be honest with you. I mean, everybody, if you listen to every good bass player, you listen back and you’re like, yeah, there’s a little bit of Paul in there. My favorite artists ever, you know, the Beatles. So, 100 % there with you. Well, we went way over and, I still appreciate it, Mike, cause it’s always fun talking to you. We grew up in this industry in many ways and it’s great to be partnered with you guys now. We’re thrilled at what Dialpad’s doing. It was great to see you a couple of weeks ago and don’t be a stranger. We’ll get you back soon.

Mike Kane:

You’re the best Scott. Thanks man. Appreciate it. was fun. Thanks.

Scott Kinka:

All right, man, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot.