What do Apple Pay, WhatsApp, and Crypto have in common? They are all preferred channels of payments and messaging that customers may prefer to use. Michael Affronti, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Payments and Messaging at Salesforce, shares his perspective on how companies should evolve their options for communication and payments to build better, more personalized relationships with their customers.
Tune in to learn:
- About Michael’s patents (05:15)
- What international payments trends will be emerging in the US (14:30)
- Why Michael is keeping a close eye on cryptocurrency (24:00)
- How brands should reevaluate their messaging systems (29:00)
Mentions:
- Stat for preferred payment method
- “Innovation Stack: Building Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time” by Jim McKelvey
- “The Innovation Stack: How Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey Thinks About Disruption” – James’ Episode on Up Next In Commerce
- Character.AI – Character bot
- WhatsApp – Free, world-wide messaging and calling app
- Michael Affronti’s LinkedIn
About the Guest:
LinkedIn Bio: “Member with more than 18 years of success building and leading high-performing organizations across the entire product life cycle from incubation to $1B+ in revenue. His areas of passion include product strategy, enterprise SaaS platform design, telecommunications, and payments technologies. He specializes in the critical interlock between sales, marketing, and product development to generate aligned and effective GTM strategies, and is an expert in bring product strategy to life through transformative business models.
Michael is currently the SVP & General Manager of the Payments & Messaging businesses at Salesforce. He is responsible for the product development, strategy, and GTM for a suite of services that allow customers to process, manage, and grow payments as a part of their businesses, and use Salesforce’s omni-channel communications capabilities to engage with their customers.
Prior, Michael was the SVP of Product at Dataminr, recognized as one of the world’s leading businesses in AI and Machine Learning innovation. Dataminr is pioneering groundbreaking technology for detecting, classifying, and determining the significance of public information in real time.
Before that he was the SVP of Product at Fuze, a leading enterprise collaboration platform, where he ran the product and design organization while being a member of Fuze’s Executive Leadership Team. He joined Fuze (formerly ThinkingPhones) via the acquisition of AI startup Contactive, where he was a founding member and VP of Product. Contactive was a mobile sales productivity platform that used machine learning and big data to show a detailed dossier of any customer calling your phone across hundreds of data sources.
Michael also spent 10 years at Microsoft, working in Product & Design building collaboration experiences in Lync, Office365, Outlook, and Exchange that were used by over 500 million customers.
He enjoys rolling up his sleeves to help advise and mentor startups in product design and strategy. He has previously written a monthly column on Inc.com, and taught a course at General Assembly on Entrepreneurship. He holds four U.S. patents and has 11 pending for innovation in the enterprise productivity space.
In past lives Michael was a DJ and a personal trainer, and still enjoys infusing his love of music and well being into his leadership style and organizations. He lives in Brooklyn, NY, with his wife and is still in the same neighborhood as his family’s 60-year-old Italian butcher shop.”
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