- Hello, and welcome to Community Chats.
I'm Aley Hammer,
and today we're interviewing Tessa Court,
the Founder and CEO from IntelligenceBank.
Tessa, welcome to the show.
Can you start by telling our audience
a little bit about IntelligenceBank?
- Yeah, sure.
So thanks for having me.
Super excited to talk a little bit
about IntelligenceBank and what we're doing.
So we are a content governance platform,
and our, I guess our premier product
is marketing operations.
And basically what we do is we help clients
and marketing clients not get fired and not get sued
based on the creative that walks out the door.
So really our reason for being
is to put a process around content governance
and how people create content, get it approved,
and then also distribute it seamlessly
to their customers or partners or whoever it is
and just putting a process around that content.
- Wow, I mean, Tessa, you were recently rated
the best marketing resource management software
for advanced search and media.
So what I wanna know is what is it that sets you guys apart
from most of your other competitors?
- Yeah, I mean, look,
I think there's things that we really focus on.
So, we're a relatively smaller company
in a very large market,
and we have operations here in Australia,
but also in the U.S. and Canada as well.
And we've got lots of clients in Europe.
And so for us, it's about focusing on the product.
So, I have an analogy.
When you think about the coffee shops that have,
they're a little hole in the wall,
but they have a line around the corner,
it's just because the product's great.
And so we are very much a product-first organization.
So that's really important for us.
Also, I think, I guess tapping into what I said before,
geo-expansion
and being able to service clients wherever they are.
We have lots of clients who've got multinational users.
We've got users in 55 countries.
So I guess also for us,
being global first and having that approach,
and obviously AWS with its footprint everywhere
is able to help us do that as well.
And I guess the last thing for us,
and what's made us pretty successful from that perspective,
is building our partner network and relationships as well.
- Well, I definitely agree with you,
and I love your analogy with the coffee shop,
'cause it's so true.
You always get that coffee shop that has a huge line,
and it's just 'cause the coffee tastes great.
So, testament to your product.
And Tessa, last year for you guys was huge.
You had the investor, Five Elms, supporting your growth
both here in Australia and the U.S.,
and you had some huge things going on.
So what I wanna know is what's next
for IntelligenceBank in 2022?
- Yeah, so for us, it's really continuing
on that product journey, first and foremost.
So again, we do believe
if we have the best product in the world,
everything else stems from that.
So, really doubling down on that.
So I think we've doubled our dev team
in the last six months.
So we received investment in June 30th, 2021.
So we're only about seven and a half months in right now.
So that's really our focus,
and we have done a lot of hiring.
So, obviously having that level of investor join,
I guess, us as a partner,
what's great about that is that
we're able to then execute
and hire the team to deliver on this.
So in addition to doubling our dev team,
we really doubled everyone else as well at the same time.
So, and I guess this year it's about,
I guess this calendar year it's about execution.
So we put a lot of the building blocks in place,
and it's about just having a strategy and sticking to it.
- Well, I love that you guys are so focused on the product.
It's really amazing.
And Tessa, what do you think will be
some of the biggest challenges and threats
facing your industry I guess in the next couple of months,
six to 12 months?
- Yeah, I mean, I think with any industry,
especially in software, there's a lot of noise
at the lower end.
And sometimes I say to clients,
"If you squint your eyes
"sometimes all the products look the same out there."
So for us, I think differentiation
is a really really important part of what we do,
and I guess for our company,
we are really focused on regulated industries.
So we service everyone.
So we've got clients in cosmetics and fashion
and lots of places,
but our sweet spot, like we're very clear about that,
in the sense that we work closely with financial services,
government, education, and healthcare,
because that's where there's a lot of talent involved,
or if you make claims on advertising
or communications that you can't substantiate
that you've gone through an approval process,
that's really where the problem lies.
So, again, we do have a sweet spot,
and that's really helped us be,
I guess, a shining light through a lot of the noise.
So I think for clients where they say,
oh, you can handle
a new regulation that's come out of
some sort of Royal Commission,
that we can handle that, that they know that,
but it's also serves as a guiding light for us
as kind of more noise comes into the market.
- Yeah, absolutely.
There's so much opportunity right now,
which is really exciting for your business,
and IntelligenceBank has a great foothold in governments,
as you mentioned.
You briefly touched on it,
but what other sectors are critical
to the next phase of your growth at IntelligenceBank?
- Yeah, so as I mentioned before,
we are focused on clients in regulated industries.
So, again, in going back to that concept,
if you can get fired, fined, and sued
for the creative that walks out the door,
I mean those are our ideal clients.
The good news is with more regulations,
there's more of those.
And what we're seeing in the market right now
is that there's really this blending of
compliance and also MarTech.
So it's like if MarTech and RegTech had a love child,
you'd get IntelligenceBank,
and that's kinda how we like to think about it.
So, I guess for government, I mean,
those sorts of clients have to be very, very specific
on talent usage and how they're even portraying,
even if it's a construction project
sponsored by the government,
do you have a hard hat on in an ad, as an example?
Or a piece of communication?
'Cause if you don't, you're in all sorts of strife,
as as an example.
And then the security comes into that.
So, a lot of our clients as well,
especially in government, really appreciate,
I guess, some of the hosting flexibility
that we're able to provide.
So, as an example, we have clients where,
a cloud, a traditional cloud service
would not be viable just given the sensitivity of the data.
But in partnership with AWS,
we're able to offer a concept called Private Cloud
where we're still hosting and managing the software
from IntelligenceBank's side,
but it's in their account,
or it's a segmented account away from others.
So that just gives government departments
with very sensitive data peace of mind as well,
which is great.
- Tessa, thank you so much.
I always love it when I have a female on the show.
You're such an inspiration,
and it's a really great partnership
between AWS and IntelligenceBank.
So I will be following your journey very closely.
If anyone has any questions,
please pop them in the comment section below,
and we'll get back to you.
Thanks so much, Tessa.
- Thanks.