SmartBear (SoapUI)

So we're going to be diving into that with Justin Collier.

He's the vice president of product at SmartBear, known for its testing and QA solutions.

Justin, thanks for being here.

Yeah, David, thanks for having me.

Excellent.

Okay.

Justin Collier, Vice President of Product at SmartBear.

Interesting conversation.

I help startups hire great talent in product management, marketing, and customer success.

And I helped you hire a great product leader at SmartBear many, many moons ago.

So it's great to reconnect.

Yeah.

You know, is this a one plus one is greater than two? What would it mean to both sides of the organization? And then the corp dev people are more the transactional side of it as well.

So, yeah, that's how both Anaro and vKernel came about.

With SmartBear, which was after those, we actually ran a formal process.

We were actually looking to sell the company at that point.

Can you tell-

... relations manager at SmartBear.

A what now? A who, where, what? That doesn't sound like a testing job.

[laughs]

Well-

Um-

... there's, there's a, well, there's a couple things, right? So what is SmartBear and what is developer relations? Which one do you wanna start with?

Let's start with SmartBear.

My guest today built two billion dollar companies on the opposite idea.

Jason Cohen is the founder of WP Engine and SmartBear, two unicorns, and for almost 20 years he's been writing with unusual honesty about the inner life of building companies at a site called A Smart Bear.

His new book is called Hidden Multipliers.

It's ostensibly about restarting growth with the team and the budget you already have, thinking about churn, pricing, profit, all of it.

Logo churn is death, and it's exponential.

Jason Cohen is the founder of two unicorns, WP Engine and SmartBear.

He's written about startups for 18 years at A SmartBear, all of it free, and he's invested in 60 companies along the way.

His new book, Hidden Multipliers, is about growing with the team and budget you already have.

In this conversation, we get into why showing customers your weaknesses can actually help you sell more, why the customers you lose matter more than the ones you win.