Podcast · Business

How We Got There

Are you trying to get ahead in the Salesforce ecosystem and just wish someone would tell you what to do (and what not to do)? Join Mike Davis as he picks the brains of leaders at successful ISVs and people in the ecosystem to bring you insights you can use.

New episodes: Monthly
Typical length: 34 min
Latest: 11 Sep 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

11 Sep 2026 · 44 min

How We Got There: Sienna Quirk, Head of Marketing at Thread and general Salesforce ISV expert

Sienna Quirk has worked on GTM motions and product marketing for at least 30 Salesforce apps, probably many more. On this episode of How We Got There , we speak with the Head of Marketing at Thread about all things Salesforce ecosystem for ISVs. Sienna’s underinvested recommendation for ISVs is not getting more mileage out of product releases - it can be a strong demand gen engine. “A solid go-to-market strategy for your release, whether that be your quarterly release, whether that be a new product release, it can be a super big opportunity to re-engage with current customers, to reach out…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

S4 · E15 · 10 Aug 2026 · 41 min
How We Got There: Josh Koshy, VP of Sales at Appiphony
You’ve gotta be boots on the ground, doing it yourself first before you build out a team to help you sell. He needed to be the one selling, partnering, and figuring out the messaging before scaling the team. This episode of How We Got There , I am joined by Josh Koshy who is the VP of Sales at Appiphony . If you aren’t aware of Appiphony, they are both a top PDO and an ISV after launching their first app a few years ago with Josh at the helm of GTM the whole time. Josh shares lessons learned from their own journey of building their own ISV, which they also bring to their projects on the PDO…
S4 · E10 · 7 Jul 2026 · 36 min
How We Got There: Heather Mason, Founder of ISV Accelerators
Heather asks and helps answer “How do you create a point of view about your solution in a way that will talk to Salesforce about how it works together for that specific customer?” For ISVs so they can take a strong point of view about a specific customer vs. approaching with just questions. “It’s easier to find this information than it’s ever been. Don’t be lazy and use the tools and you will have much better conversations.” This episode of How We Got There features a conversation with Heather Mason , Founder of ISV Accelerators . Heather brings their clients her knowledge forged by…
S4 · E4 · 22 May 2026 · 46 min
How We Got There: Mark Rutledge, Chief Storyteller | Global ISV Partner Solutions at Salesforce
This episode of the How We Got There podcast features a conversation with Mark Rutledge , Chief Storyteller | Global ISV Partner Solutions at Salesforce . The builder advocacy program that he works on is one that every ISV should learn about and explore if they might be a fit for working with them. Fun fact - I worked with Mark Rutledge when he as a client of my former business, GTM Guides, while he was building on the Salesforce platform for at Moody’s. Thanks to Codescience (now Bridgenext ) for bringing us together. Mark shares his journey of being in the ecosystem to working at…
S4 · E3 · 29 Apr 2026 · 34 min
How We Got There: Jeff Freund, Founder & CEO of Akoonu
I got introduced to Jeff Freund , Founder & CEO of Akoonu , a number of years ago and I finally got to hear his full story on How We Got There earlier this year. Jeff has been in the ecosystem in 2003 and founded the business in 2014 as a native Salesforce app to solve b2b sales - inspecting pipeline and then forecasting. Jeff lays out the story and the why of Akoonu so clearly - overnight, in Salesforce, a large portion of the opportunities in the pipeline disappeared. Which deals were they? What happened to them? Are they lost or delayed? We all have been there. I used to (try to) solve…
S4 · E2 · 31 Mar 2026 · 40 min
How We Got There: Brittany Hart, Founder of Communiscape
I met Brittany Hart , founder of Communiscape , from an introduction from Blakely Graham . I was planning to interview her on How We Got There about her experience scaling an SI ( Fortimize ) as employee 2 before starting/exiting her own Salesforce SI ( Platinum Cubed ) but then I got to listen to her present via a professional leadership community I am a part of called Arcadia and I knew that I had to expand the conversation to have her share a bit about how ISVs can help your customers digest your app through “change architecture”. Brittany shares her experience around industry focus and…
S4 · E1 · 4 Mar 2026 · 36 min
How We Got There: David Young, Director of Solution Engineering, Pharma and Key Accounts at Salesforce
Salesforce Solution Engineers are like general contractors, according to David Young , who leads a team of them at Salesforce . They need skills like carpentry and framing and plumbing but also know when to stop and call in an expert. In the Salesforce world this might be knowing when to bring in a service cloud or an Agentforce expert. They need to know enough to see the business challenge and know who to tap for help. I have always advocated that ISVs spend time thinking about SEs, even moreso than AEs, because the math just maths. AEs have shorter tenure at Salesforce than SEs. AEs have…
S3 · E12 · 8 Jan 2026 · 37 min
How We Got There: Steve Simpson, VP of Global Enablement & Learning at Copado, Co-Founder of Catcusforce and Certified Architect Instructor
Wondering what SIs care about and how they approach implementing ISVs for the first (or hundredth) time? This episode if for you! In the latest episode of How We Got There, I speak with Steve Simpson , VP of Global Enablement & Learning at Copado , Co-Founder of Catcusforce and Certified Architect Instructor. Steve and I dive deep on the reality of the complex deal cycles that Salesforce ISVs experience and how best to posture in them, especially with new to you SIs. It’s a timely episode as Cactusforce and Architect Dreamin’ are coming up in Phoenix in late January and it’s not too late to…
S3 · E11 · 18 Dec 2025 · 27 min
How We Got There: Igor Stosic, CEO of Quadrix Soft the makers of Goat
Agentforce is everywhere and everything but in speaking to many ISVs, they are still wondering when is the right time to lean into AI with more than just a story. Where in the hype cycle are we is something I wonder about a lot. So I set out to find an ISV that is actually succeeding in the Agentforce world and that journey led me to Igor Stosic , CEO of Quadrix Soft who make Goat Email on the AppExchange, as my next guest on How We Got There. They are actually selling the first Agentforce use cases for customers, which has to be making AEs covering those accounts VERY happy. Igor is based…
S3 · E10 · 17 Nov 2025 · 50 min
How We Got There: Part 2! Jason Hoult, Founder and former CEO of Anvil App Works
On this episode of How We Got There, I am joined again by Jason Hoult , the Founder and former CEO of Anvil App Works who was acquired by Tractor Zoom in 12/2023, for part 2! If you missed it, give our first episode together from July 2023 a listen. It was an excellent episode where we talked about a wide range of topics, but my highlight was his approach to company building & nailing a niche. You don’t have to start a business that is a massive multi-trillion TAM. Jason got great advice to stick with what he knows well, Salesforce & John Deere dealerships. You can later expand from there,…
S3 · E9 · 4 Nov 2025 · 29 min
How We Got There: Rey Perera, CEO & Co-Founder of Gridmate
On this episode of How We Got There, I am joined by Rey Perera who is the Co-Founder and CEO of Gridmate . He shares his story as moving from an SDR to an enterprise AE at another Salesforce ISV before jumping into co-founding Gridmate along Hicham El Mansouri . Rey talks about how they build a business with diversity as if you look at their team, they are located all across the world and come from a number of cultural backgrounds. It helps deliver outstanding customer support that is clear to see in their AppEx reviews . I met Rey years ago but you will see him and his team at many of the…
S3 · E8 · 9 Oct 2025 · 34 min
How We Got There: Alex MacKay, Executive Chairman & Co-Founder of Tequity Advisors
On this episode of How We Got There, I am joined by Alex MacKay , Executive Chairman & Co-Founder of Tequity Advisors . He shares his start in CRM when running Siebel Canada and found his way into sell-side advisory for M&A at Tequity, with deep experience in the Salesforce ecosystem with 28 companies and counting. *If you are at Dreamforce next week, make sure to reach out to Alex or Mahnoor Naeem if you will be there too* They take a long-term view of the relationship, oftentimes getting to know a company over a period of 2-3 years to help them get ready to sell. They help demystify the…
S3 · E7 · 30 Sep 2025 · 38 min
How We Got There: Melanie Kruger, Chief People Officer, helping Founders scale
I am joined by Melanie Kruger , one of the best people leaders that I ever had the chance to work with. She has deep understanding of helping to scale Salesforce ISVs of all sizes. She actually found her way into the Salesforce ecosystem via networking between her husband and J Manning , bringing her to the Head of People at Conga. I got to work with Melanie twice at Conga and TaskRay and was so impressed with how she helped set culture and nurture culture so the companies could grow. Melanie shares that when she joined Conga, lots of people were generalists - Conga had a number of Business…
S3 · E6 · 9 Sep 2025 · 31 min
How We Got There: Ben McCarthy, Founder of SalesforceBen and Lab.Club
I am joined by Ben McCarthy , Founder of Salesforce Ben , Lab.club and advisor to a number of great companies in the ecosystem like AscendX , Tequity Advisors , and PipeLaunch . We talk about his journey from university to stumbling upon Salesforce and then after being called SalesforceBoy grew into Salesforce Ben. We talk about how to approach thought leadership, holding nothing back from the reader. Give back and give value and best practices without selling first. Obviously your offering will help more, but for basic use cases consider helping those salesforce users solve their problem…
S3 · E5 · 21 Aug 2025 · 37 min
How We Got There: Sean Lewis, Director of Partnerships at Vicasso and Serviceblazer User Group Leader for AMER
I am joined by ⁠Sean Lewis⁠ , Director of Partnerships at Vicasso and the Serviceblazer User Group Leader for AMER. We talk about his journey from customer support to sales to partnerships and everything in between. When he was selling, a Salesforce AE sent them a referral to a F100 company that really opened his eyes to the value of the partnership. Now Vicasso has two FTEs focused on partnerships to drive further top of the funnel growth. The partner team at Vicasso focuses on Salesforce AEs, SEs and leaders but has started to explore SI partnerships as well since Vicasso no longer…
S3 · E4 · 6 Aug 2025 · 27 min
How We Got There: Ryan Sieve, CTO of Accounting Seed
I am joined by ⁠ Ryan Sieve , the CTO at Accounting Seed⁠ . We get to talk about his journey from consulting in the Salesforce ecosystem to his time at Salesforce itself, before heading to Accounting Seed to lead their technology group as CTO. And thank you to Jon Schultz for the suggestion to be joined by Ryan! We start out talking about positioning products to buyers in ways that focus on solving problems vs. the speeds and feeds of a product. We touch on feature prioritization at a mature ISV like Accounting Seed and how best to collect feedback from internal and external constituents.…
S3 · E3 · 14 Jul 2025 · 45 min
How We Got There: Blakely Graham, board advisor to ISVs and Founder and former CEO of TaskRay
I am joined by Blakely Graham , who is a board advisor to Left Main REI , host of the Not All Business Podcast , Founder and former CEO of TaskRay⁠ . This one was a long time coming. On a personal note, my time at TaskRay was some of my most formative. I found a balance while there between my previous experience of excellence with true work life balance and a focus on values that stays with me. I am so grateful that Blakely and team took a chance in hiring me for a role that I was almost kind of qualified for and her friendship since then. I'll do my best to summarize this episode, but it's…
S3 · E2 · 20 Jun 2025 · 30 min
How We Got There: Heather Cooper, COO at Baker Law Group and former CEO of Cloud Coach
I am joined by Heather Cooper , the COO at Baker Law Group and the former CEO at Cloud Coach . Heather and I didn't know each other when we competed against each other (TaskRay and Cloud Coach) but have gotten to know each other since, which has been really fun. She is starting a podcast with one of my favorite work people, Blakely Graham , that will launch later this year. While Heather was at Cloud Coach, they found a great talent pipeline by running an internship program recruiting heavily from the local university near their HQ, Colorado State in Fort Collins, CO. She shares lessons…
S3 · E1 · 27 May 2025 · 31 min
How We Got There: Sam Yarborough, Chief Growth Officer at Invisory and Co-Founder of Arcadia
I am joined by Sam Yarborough , the Chief Growth Officer at Invisory and a co-founder at Arcadia. Sam and I met at a New York World Tour years ago where she shared her experience at PFL and taking a much more focused approach to partnerships than is typical in the ecosystem. Treat partners (AEs, SEs, RVPs, SIs, etc.) like customers by leveraging the CRM to track activities for them and give them a great partner experience. We talk about being like Tommy Boy and getting overly excited about things like Financial Services Cloud and Work.com when it was good for Salesforce but not necessarily…
S2 · E20 · 19 Feb 2024 · 29 min
How We Got There: George Kenessey, CEO of Appiphony
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with George Kenessey who is the CEO of Appiphony . Appiphony is a Product Development Outsourcer (PDO) and more recently an ISV themselves with Drive Connect on the AppExchange. George is one of the best humans and business leaders in the ecosystem. This conversation took place wayyyy back pre-Dreamforce but I finally got around to releasing it and it’s one of the most insightful ones. George shares his experience of helping companies launch on the AppExchange over the last 15 years as well as their own apps, taking their learnings from the PDO…
S2 · E19 · 8 Sep 2023 · 33 min
How We Got There: Stephanie Betters, Founder and CEO of Left Main REI
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Stephanie Betters who is the Founder and CEO of Left Main REI . Left Main REI is an OEM and (now) ISVforce partner of Salesforce focused on building for companies in the real estate vertical. As a fellow SUNY alum, it was great to hear Stephanie’s story of how she stumbled her way into the Salesforce ecosystem. As many founder stories go, she created Left Main REI after experiencing challenges (and an expensive SOW) in building out Salesforce to fit her business needs. After realizing what she built had a market need in the Salesforce…
S2 · E18 · 6 Sep 2023 · 22 min
How We Got There: Andrew Walker, Founder of Sanitas Accounting
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Andrew Walker , who is the Founder at Sanitas Accounting . I consider Andrew a friend after our time together at TaskRay where he was our full-time CFO after starting as a fractional CFO. His business is now focused on helping smaller software companies with accounting and finance so they can focus on running their business. We reminisce about our learnings alongside each other at TaskRay (where I headed up sales along with other revenue activities) from when he joined the business, including what he worked on in the first 90 days. Andrew…
S2 · E17 · 5 Jul 2023 · 29 min
How We Got There: Jason Hoult, President of Anvil App Works
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Jason Hoult , who is the President at Anvil App Works . We talk about the origin story of the business solving problems for his own business before launching as an OEM of Salesforce for a very specific niche. I am consistently inspired by the quality of businesses like Anvil App Works that can be built with an intentional focus like Jason and his team have done. As he puts it, “an overnight success, five years in the making”. Jason shares how building the business bootstrapped helped them at the start then moved to raise a round to…
S2 · E16 · 5 Apr 2023 · 20 min
How We Got There: Sam Yarborough, SVP of Partnerships at PFL.com
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Sam Yarborough , (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-yarborough-a96b3326/) who is the SVP of Partnerships at PFL (https://www.linkedin.com/company/pflcom/). We talk about rebooting a partnership program but starting with working on their Trailblazer partner score to build momentum and aligning closely with their Partner Account Manager (PAM) to build deep rapport. From there, they started diving deeply into an industry-specific approach vs. just having a horizontal message. Sam and team has built an impressive solution in their instance of…
S2 · E15 · 29 Mar 2023 · 23 min
How We Got There: Cynthia LeCornu, Global Leader of the Salesforce Alliance at Avalara
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Cynthia LeCornu ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthialecornu/ ) who is the Global Leader Salesforce Alliance at Avalara ( https://www.linkedin.com/company/avalara/ ). We talk about aligning to Salesforce’s Customer360 vision, SI partnerships in the ecosystem, how to drive your ISV partner score, and more. Cynthia brings a great energy and depth of experience to her partnerships. Here’s a closer look at the episode: 1:30 What Avalara does and Cynthia's role 2:20 How did your experience inform your approach at Avalara or working with SI as an…
9 Feb 2023 · 29 min
How We Got There: Tal Frankfurt, Founder and CEO of Cloud For Good
Before we hop in, thank you for your support on our journey. GTM Guides is now part of InVisory ! (https://home.invisory.co/press-release) In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Tal Frankfurt , who is the founder and CEO of Cloud For Good . He shares his journey to the Salesforce ecosystem and to the the US from the early days of Salesforce consulting, starting 13 years ago. Cloud For Good is a Salesforce SI focused on Non-profits, higher ed, and more that now has over 200 employees on their team, Tal is passionate about helping unlock talent by upskilling people to add to the…
S2 · E13 · 4 Nov 2022 · 28 min
How We Got There: Mike Getchis, former VP of Sales at Zenkraft and now Partner Solutions Engineer at Bringg
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Mike Getchis, who was the VP of Sales at Zenkraft. They were acquired by Brinng earlier this year and he is now Partner Solutions Engineer. Mike was at the helm of Zenkraft’s sales organization which bootstrapped their way to a strategic exit but started his Salesforce journey with hands on keyboard. Zenkraft’s top gtm strategies included working with SIs, Salesforce, and other ISVs. They found that their AppExchange listing was the starting point for the SI community, so focused on giving them partner-ready materials and a quick way to get…
S2 · E12 · 13 Sep 2022 · 35 min
How We Got There: Bethany Blackwell, VP at Carahsoft
In today’s episode of How We Got There, I talk with Bethany Blackwell, who is a VP at Carahsoft . Bethany runs the Salesforce channel for Carahsoft, which includes Salesforce, Slack, Mulesoft, Tableau, ISVs, and SIs. Carahsoft has worked with Salesforce for the past 15 years as a Value-Added Reseller and got there start on the GSA schedule to help Salesforce sell to the public sector here in the US. They help with sales, marketing, and contracting for Salesforce and it’s partners to federal, state, and local government organizations. If you have public sector demand for your application that…
S2 · E11 · 12 Sep 2022 · 39 min
How We Got There: Doug Landis, Growth Partner at Emergence Capital
In today’s episode of How We Got There (which was recorded earlier this year, before the downturn), I talk with Doug Landis, who is a Growth Partner at Emergence Capital. Doug spent some time at Salesforce and Box before moving into his current role in helping Emergence’s portfolio companies with go-to-market assistance. He was working in the early days of sales enablement and now recommends hiring rev ops and sales enablement roles earlier than you think, even at Series A, to drive productivity in the sales organization. Emergence Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in B2B…
S2 · E10 · 11 Aug 2022 · 33 min
How We Got There: Jon Schultz, Director of ISV Sales at Salesforce
In today’s episode of How We Got There (which was recorded earlier this year), I talk with Jon Schultz, who is a Director of ISV Sales at Salesforce. Jon has spent his career in partnerships, including the last 6 years at Salesforce. He got a PAM role at Salesforce after moving with his now wife across the country without a job! His team works with horizontal ISV partners who are high growth partners and/or partners who have been in the ecosystem for a long time. His team serves native, high growth, and enterprise partners in the ecosystem. Jon shares the differences in ISV team alignment…

About How We Got There

How We Got There is a English business podcast from Mike Davis. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Mike Davis
Language: English
Category: Business
New episodes: Monthly
Typical length: 34 min
Latest episode: 11 Sep 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1543986180
Rights: Mike Davis

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