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The pace at which technology is becoming obsolete is ever increasing. What was cutting-edge a decade ago, gathers dust in storage sheds today. Or, at least, most of the tech should be gathering dust in storage. Unfortunately, many organizations are lagging behind in upgrading their systems and while they may be able to stay afloat now, where will they be in another decade?
Marc Murphy is the CEO of Atlatl Software, a growing tech company that provides visual configuration and CPQ tools to enable a better, more efficient sales process through the use of VR and AR. Atlatl sells to the top 10% of companies looking to move away from manual processes and commit to a digital transformation. Investing in technology can create huge ROI and improve efficiencies across an organization, and it’s something Marc sees as necessary for success in the future.
“We’re moving the sales process for B2B complex and industrial products outside of brick and mortar and into a virtual and augmented reality space. And we really believe that as our consumer lives change and we become more comfortable operating in a virtual space and buying and selling in a virtual space, B2B is going to move in the same direction as it has for other technologies. We’ve spent time creating a really unique enterprise-level capability to do B2B commerce.”
Marc loves the fast-paced start-up culture, likely due to experiences throughout his life and career. First, he served as a captain in the U.S. Army, then in the private sector as a director and partner at Deloitte, and then as the CEO of Sparc, which was acquired by Booz Allen Hamilton. Marc took note of all the ways he worked as a leader, what he did well and what he would do differently if he ever got the chance to lead another company.
On this episode of Mission Daily, Marc and Ian discuss all of that and more, including the importance of integrations and why he is so passionate about life in the start-up world.
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Quotes from Marc:
“There’s just so many unknowns in this role. I think a start-up CEO is probably the best job you can get as far as excitement level and the pace of the activity, and the pace you have to learn. But there certainly isn’t a full playbook to execute, but you benefit from lessons, and I have learned significantly along the way.”
“I love building things and I loved the process of building something and I think building a company — even a software company — is a very tangible, process and it’s something where you can go to work, you can see this place building. You can see other people contribute to it…. In our work lives that opportunity, not a lot of people get to do that. And it’s certainly not easy, but I think it’s about the opportunity to build something so tangible and hopefully you can point back on value or some kind of accomplishment. That is just really very rewarding for me.”
“There needs to be efficiencies if you’re going to scale in enterprise and being able to do repeatable integrations and keep those integrations well maintained. It’s so important to get right, particularly as a startup, if you have an interest in going into high or mid-market enterprise, and you have to have a plan and be able to execute against it because you will get asked, you will get those requirements and you have to be able to execute it efficiently.”
“The term start-up, I think, gets thrown around on different occasions that it really doesn’t fit. I think we have an enterprise product that is well beyond what I would call the tech risks that usually come with a true startup. So I think we’ve definitely matured beyond start-up in the fact that we have an enterprise platform, we’re servicing public companies, and we have all the security and platform infrastructure in place to scale at that level. I think in that aspect we are a mature company. But I think we are still operating very much in startup speed and I’d like to keep it that way. I think we’re still very flat like a more traditional start-up.”
