BC Startup Sales Podcast – Creating Engineering Urgency During Your Sales Cycle with Michael Katz (mParticle)

This week, the Bowery Capital team hosted Michael Katz, CEO and co-founder of mParticle, to discuss “Creating Engineering Urgency During Your Sales Cycle.” mParticle provides a single API to connect a company’s entire marketing stack, giving customers the freedom and flexibility to build a modern data infrastructure to reduce the complexity of multiple API connections. The Company’s technology offers customers access to up to 150 (and growing) different APIs, creating turnkey data connections and providing enterprise-grade security while improving market outcomes and maximizing IT productivity. Trusted by many of the world’s leading brands, including Airbnb, Spotify, Jet, EA, and Gilt, mParticle offers a single customer view and the ability to quickly test and coordinate marketing engagements across vendors.

In our episode today, Mike joins us in the studio to discuss the way that firms can create engineering urgency during your sales cycle. He discusses mParticle’s value proposition and his team’s core sales KPI: the total cost of ownership. This factor includes a customer’s labor hours to enable multiple API connections, the ongoing cost of API maintenance, and the opportunity cost of an engineering team not focusing on client-facing features. Additionally, Mike addresses proof points in the sales cycle, the ways that mParticle has overcome engineering obstacles to closing sales, and techniques to balance the difference between business and engineering needs (sometimes engineers just want to hear from other engineers). He unpacks the push-and-pull relationship between the internal divisions and and the real cost of bringing a developer into even a short brainstorming meeting. Mike also discusses when is the right time to incorporate engineers into the sale process, the role of sales engineers, and how effective salespeople often need to function as Product Managers in creating engineering urgency during your sales cycle. Listen here, and make sure to subscribe for a new episode every Friday!

Michael Katz is Founder of mParticle, Inc. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer and Director. Michael Katz is responsible for creating and overseeing the execution of mParticle’s vision of becoming the premier mobile data solution. Michael Katz served as Vice President of Optimization & Analytics at Yahoo where he came via the acquisition of interclick, the company he founded. As former CEO & co-founder of interclick, Michael led the business as it grew organically to $140M in revenue, while expanding gross margin % and EBITDA before its sale to Yahoo for $270 million in 2011. He was also responsible for building and maintaining analyst, auditor, and investor relationships. Prior, he was an Analyst at Accenture and ZEFER.