Working at Quickbase: A No-Code Operational Agility Platform

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Ed, thanks so much for joining us. 

Ed Jennings, Quickbase  

Thanks, Keith. I look forward to talking today. 

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

And I'm excited to talk to you because we're gonna talk about Quickbase, which is one of the fastest growing areas of technology. And that is the use of no code. So let's talk about Quickbase. And what the company does.

Ed Jennings, Quickbase  

Great. Thanks, Keith. Yeah, so low code, no code is out to solve a fundamental business problem, which is, all businesses are digitizing, they're trying to automate, then now out of sorts of companies that are becoming either technology companies and software companies is huge. But there are enough developers to help them do that. So there are roughly, you know, 30 million professional developers in the world. But that isn't nearly enough to solve all these sorts of technical challenges that businesses face. And so low code, no code is saying, let's close that gap. Let's give tools so non developers can write production-level code to digitize and run businesses, all the way up to the fortune 10 to the startup.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

So there's a lot of momentum at Quickbase in terms of this platform, so talk about like the use case, or different verticals that you guys are working with.

Ed Jennings, Quickbase  

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you look at our legacy, we have almost 6000 customers, they're using us for a range of things. And that's super exciting. But when we really broke it down, like sort of independent of vertical or company size, or even function that was using us, the pattern that we found that we really stand out that we really differentiate our low code, no code offering from all the others in the market is, is we talk about seeing so visibility, connecting different systems, and controlling and managing see connecting control, really complex projects, and ones that we would argue are changing the world. So a great example. Amazon's a great customer, they rebuilt 500 distribution facilities over the last few years on our platform. That was a big messy project, with lots of locations, lots of subcontractors, lots of people involved in construction, preconcert preconstruction construction, facilities, management, you name it. Similarly, Intel is changing computing as we know it, they're building out brand new semi-fabs all over. And so those are mega-complex, highly regulated, super specialized construction projects, that they're leveraging our platform and working with various subs. We're also customers of ours, folks like Skanska, and Jacobs, engineering and others. CVS in healthcare, you know, they they're one of our most sort of distinguished longest customers. And they joke there that they use us everything from sort of critical Aetna claims, you know, forms processing and renewals to like who's bringing, you know, a bundt cake to the holiday party. I mean, we are in the fabric of how they engage at work over 7000 Quickbase applications used today. And so they're using us for a range, especially as they try to transform from being sort of a pharmaceutical company with 9600 locations to a true health care services provider. So a really big vision that Karen Lynch has, and, and we're part of the platform to help the people, the citizens, the employees, you know, reengineering, we think that organization so, so a range of industries, but that seem connecting, controlling complex projects are where we really stand out.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Now, you're the CEO of QuickBase. So talk about your background, and what led you to join the company.

Ed Jennings, Quickbase  

Yeah, absolutely. So I found probably about a decade ago or more than where I think I can help a company where I sort of have tremendous passion and energy, or particular teenage companies, and I times internally use that movie analogy was super bad. I don't know if you're a super bad fan. I love that movie. Oh, it's great. It's great. And it's like, I've got teenagers. So I know what it is. It's like some days teenagers show up, like really starting to become adults and maturing and other days, you know, there's sort of a long way to go. And what I love about a teenage companies, there's such promise, great technology, there are so amazing customers, the market starting to really unfold, but they have a long way to go to become an adult. If you're adding hundreds of people you're typically expanding globally, you're typically adding more than one product, you might start be starting getting the m&a a little bit you're getting into hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of 1000s of employees that that transition from Teenage to adult company is super exciting. And that's where we are that's sort of what I've done in the past the last several companies and either for a public outcome like an IPO or an acquisition or just to remain independent business those, that stage is really exciting to me.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

So let's bring our audience up to speed on Quickbase. What's the size of the company in terms of number of employees and growth plans ahead in terms of hiring?

Ed Jennings, Quickbase  

Yeah, so we have about 700 employees. We've added a couple 100 employees in the last year. I mean, we're dramatically growing, both mostly here in the Boston area. But in the world of of hybrid and remote we no longer put those sort of geographic boundaries. We have people now representing 40 different states. We have our whole presence in Europe as we expand into the UK, in India and even in other countries as well. So So we're becoming more and more distributed, and looking for great talent wherever they want to be.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

In terms of that hiring, looking ahead, is that across all different functional areas?

Ed Jennings, Quickbase  

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think our biggest hiring has been more on the go-to-market side, you know, on the sales side marketing side, but on the engineering as well, we've had a tremendous number of nearly 100 of that, you know, the hires in the last couple months work specifically around, you know, product and engineering talent. And, and so yeah, and again, geographically distributed.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Let's talk about the values that Quickbase because I think that's a key piece to what makes the culture unique and what it's like to work there.

Ed Jennings, Quickbase  

Yeah, totally. Keith, I appreciate the question. So we spent some time when I first arrived with the team saying like, what are we about, let's, let's actually get them down. And let's, let's sort of bounce them off of people that's talking to a bunch of different people across the business and to make sure they're authentically who we are. And so the first and when we talked about a lot is just we win together. And so I think we've all been a part of companies that have been super high performing and intense, but maybe tough environments to work in and, and the opposite, where they've been really fun. And people have been really enjoyable and but haven't necessarily been performing companies, we want to achieve both, we want to be high performing, growing, like we're growing, adding people expanding adding products, but at the same time, environment, you want to be in working with people you like that, that challenge you that you want to collaborate with, I think that combination is really hard to manage. And so by focusing on value, I think we do a great job of, of getting there. So we work together as a huge one. And other ones just taking ownership. You know, I'm a huge Jocko willing fan, like owning it as a leader owning as a person. And this is personal life, this is professional life, just people taking responsibility and doing the best they can and, and hold each other accountable. You know, it's about saying, hey, like, that was great, I wonder if we could do it this way. And, and seeking out that feedback and advice, because we all we all can, we all can get better. And, and that's the third like we improve every day, we don't have to be perfect. But if each day, you just do a little bit better, and you're always striving to be better than we were yesterday. And that's true. If you're in sales. That's true. If you're in development, that's true. If you're a first time leader, that's true, no matter where you sit in the organization, and where we as an organization are in the industry that we serve, just getting better a little bit every day. It's, it's easy at first, and it gets harder as you go. But it's a commitment we made. So win together, take ownership and prove every day.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Now, the job market is very competitive out there. There are lots of opportunities for people to explore, which is a good thing. So why is now the ideal time to join Quickbase

Ed Jennings, Quickbase  

There are a couple of things about our stage back to that teenager, what's really exciting is we are at a low growth, low code, no code, super high growth category. We are I believe the single largest independent player in that space, we're private, we have great potential where we could go as a business. So on the sort of the rational side of things, it makes a ton of sense. But also, there's so much growth for individuals, we have nearly 100 people who are managing other people, the vast majority of them are getting that first opportunity to lead as a part of the Quickbase team. So we love internal promotions of people, especially in the leadership, we spend a lot of time and energy on leadership programs trying to not only give them the chance to lead, but given them the mentoring, the tools, the support, you know, so we're very focused on that. The others I talked earlier about Unlocking Potential. That's a big part of our ethos of how we help our customers Unlocking Potential of sort of knowledge workers to write code, but also internally, how do we unlock potential of people to try something new to step into a new role, we have a great program that sort of takes people from their first sales role in business development all the way through to sort of inside sales, the field sales, and so developing others is another huge part of our ethos.

Keith Cline, VentureFizz  

Well, if you are interested in exploring opportunities at Quickbase, you need to go to their company page on venture Fizz, which has all their job listings, go to venturefizz.com/quickbase and you'll see all their listings there. And thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through all the great things happening at the company. 

Ed Jennings, Quickbase  

Keith, thanks so much. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai