President/CEO, Buzzbold
In which sector is your company most closely aligned?
SAAS/TAAS
What does your company do?
At Buzzbold, we are a longtime Salesforce Implementation partner with a focus on serving Nonprofits and Educational organizations. Our team comes with decades of experience working in those areas, understanding the unique needs and how technology can power their expanded impact. We are with our customers every step of the way to partner with them on continued innovation in fundraising, grantmaking, program management, care for others, student services, and much more!
How long has your company had a presence in St. Louis?
11 years
What makes the St. Louis region an ideal home for your company/organization? Why do you choose to operate your business here?
With Saint Louis ranking high on the GivingUSA list for philanthropy and volunteerism it is a a natural home base for us to serve those organizations looking to expand their impact by using technology in innovative ways. There is also a strong sense of community that makes it welcoming and engaging for many of our team mambers that call Saint Louis home.
What has been the most valuable resource (person, tool, organization) for helping your company grow? How did you find it? How do you utilize it?
Our most valuble resource for company growth has come from our partnership with Salesforce.org and being in their incubator program cohort. This has given our team the opportnunity to connect with those in the Salesforce ecosystem, collaborate with other leaders in technology, learn from new ideas, and refine our Go to Market strategy.
What advice would you give new tech companies that are trying to navigate the current market?
The two recommendations I would give would be to first love your work, and second, work with the right partners.
Partnering is something I would have pursued earlier if I had known what I do now. I see higher levels of performance, reach, and success when sharing investments of time, capital, or passion with others.
And ‘love your work’ is like an insurance policy for your emotions and energy. I think most businesses have points in time where they’re stretching, and unexpected environmental changes can add stress when you’re feeling stretched thin. If you love what you do, you’re more likely to be able to turn your passion into motivation for others, even when it’s hard.
What new practice or policy did you put into place over the pandemic that has positively impacted your company?
Under our coaching and consulting engagement with the Institute of Generative Leadership over the past two years, our leadership team has been practicing new conversational skills to help us build clarity about our promises. As a result, we have found new ways to simplify processes and increase our throughput, and we’re finding that we have new levels of trust in each other, and we’re better able to understand where and how breakdowns happen. And that’s been especially helpful for us because even though most of our team lives and works in St Louis, we are operating primarily virtually, and I believe these new skills have helped us increase the satisfaction with our virtual meetings.
Tell us about the next big thing in your technology sector. How will this affect your business?
Short term, the most important trends nonprofits and educational organizations will be facing are around optimizing technology spend, more fully utilizing the products and features they often already have, and increasing the trust and reliability in their data. This is especially critical for those nonprofit and education Salesforce customers that may not have dedicated salesforce talent on staff, or have a longer wishlist than their internal teams can process.
One reason the optimizations and data quality needs are so important is that in the next five years, we’re expecting to see a dramatic shift in data automation and AI-driven workflows. Historical data will become the training data, and we’re going to have a higher level of trust in those AI outputs if we can trust the data going in.
For our business at Buzzbold, this really highlights an important scaling up of the work we are skilled at: data modeling, process analysis and design, and analytical work for discovering insights and operational decision-making support. We’re doing much more with Tableau and Slack, and we’re building up our training and educational offerings to help make sure our customers are ready to embrace the new capabilities the future will bring.
What is the accomplishment you are most proud to share from 2022?
I’m just so proud of our team and the good work we do, and I’m thrilled in our 11th year of business–a year of restructuring, we still saw a 50% increase in revenue and are increasing our forecasts again for the next year.
What exciting development is on the horizon for your company in 2023?
Our team has ambitious goals for expanding our knowledge and offerings to serve the technology needs of an even more diverse group of nonprofits and educational organizations. It’s also not just about growing our knowledge internally but sharing that with the broader community through events and learning opportunities. We are here to empower others and learn from each other. Ultimately to be a piece of building a social impact-focused technology community, rooted in St. Louis.
How can people learn more about your company or get involved in what you are doing?
To learn more and keep up on the latest at Buzzbold, give us a follow on LinkedIn.
For getting involved, we’d love to get a cup of coffee with you! You can drop us a line here: https://buzzbold.com/contact-buzzbold/, and we’ll be in touch soon.
The more connections, the merrier, as we are looking to expand our community involvement, volunteerism, partnerships, and the team this year. What a perfect way to kick off 2023 by expanding our network!
