Becker Business Minute: Thomas Fredell, Chief Product Officer at Datasite

• A brief profile of Datasite's CPO and his remit over product.

A quick read on who runs product at Datasite.

This is Scott Becker with the Scott Becker Business Podcast.

I'm thrilled today to be joined by Thomas Ferdell.

Thomas is the Chief Product Officer of DataSite, one of these great companies that does a ton of work in the back end for dealmakers, so forth and so on.

A great platform.

He's also a Wharton grad.

He's a UVA grad.

He's going to give us advice for leadership and talk about what he does as Chief Product Officer.

Thomas, can you take a moment and introduce yourself?

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Yeah, Scott, great to meet you.

Great to be here.

You know, I'm someone who started off my career as an engineer.

I was an individual software developer and building products, solving problems for people.

And over time, I've worked myself into a position where I've been able to innovate and solve problems for millions of customers.

So I'm really happy to be able to share what that journey has looked like for me.

Thank you very much.

, who doesn't know.

Give us 30 seconds on what DataSite is.

Yeah, DataSite provides technology for mergers and acquisitions.

So what DataSite does is it helps people who are involved in deals, regardless of whatever type of role they're in, to succeed across the deal life cycle.

The company was founded 50 years ago, but has really shifted its focus from what originally was financial printing to 100% M&A.

And I've been there for about five years now and have been able to build out the industry's best technology platform, fueling some amazing growth.

So we increased our revenue by over 30% in 2019.

We've got about 15% global market share for what we do, up four points.

And we're used by people across the whole world, over 180 countries, for their most critical M&A deals.

: Now, it's really a fascinating story, because I know this, because I'm a lawyer by background, and at one point an M&A lawyer, and knew in the old days the financial printers, the people who won't know these names anymore, but the Donnellys, the Mirals, the Bounds, and so forth.

And all of those ended up largely extinct.

Datasite, which grew up maybe out of one of those, ended up being the sole remaining company that totally transformed itself into a complete leader in sort of the digital side.

And it's really an amazing transformation story.

, that when the world changed and people stopped using these financial printers in the same way, there was almost nobody that made that transition like DataCite did.

So congratulations, and really magnificent.

Take one moment further, Thomas, and a couple points of pride in DataCite.

Yeah, so DataCite, I mean, when I joined, you know, when I first came to the company, I thought, wow, this seems like an old-fashioned company.

It was in the middle of, this incredible transformation led by Rusty Wiley, who's the CEO now.

And, you know, I joined the company because I really bought into Rusty's vision.

But, boy, it was taking something that, you know, a company that, you know, hadn't evolved that much and really taking it to the next level.

And that's what we did.

I'm super proud to be part of Rusty's team.

And, you know, in my role, it's not really , it's not been me, it's been the fact that I've been able to pull in such great people and harness the most out of those people.

And doing it all with customers in mind, you know, this sort of philosophy of focus on customers, you know, along with great people and, you know, empowering great people to do great things, you know, it's led to us creating this, like, unbeatable platform.

I am super proud of that because our platform, has enabled us to go from one product to four products.

It's enabled us to get rid of entirely our old technology platform, which, you know, if you look at transformation, usually it takes a long time to get rid of old platforms.

But we had more than 90% of our business on our new platform within 90 days of the launch of that platform.

So I can tell you that our investors were thrilled.

Our customers were thrilled because they had something a lot better.

I was thrilled because it was the culmination of all this work and energy.

Time spent motivating people and getting them focused on building the future.

That was one of the biggest proof points for us.

Take a moment and talk about something you talked about a moment ago.

You talked about building teams and leadership.

DataSite had this magnificent transformation to become a complete market leader in what they do.

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You've mentioned it well.

It's really built on great team, great leaders.

Talk about what advice you would have for leaders.

What three or four pieces of advice would you have for leaders?

You know, step one is just get started.

So there's power in starting things.

You know, most people are super intimidated by like an empty whiteboard or a blank sheet of paper or that presentation that doesn't have a single slide in it yet.

And there is some magic and power in just getting going.

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the people around me, I get the best results.

So, you know, my perspective is just get started and then you'll have people starting to react and then you'll get, you know, these amazing solutions that you never would have, you would have thought of, but it all starts with that first push.

And I love that advice.

Let me get started.

Most people don't even, they have an idea, but they never really get started.

They never really commit to it.

So I love that you were going to keep on going.

So let me let you keep on going.

Yeah, so that's the first one.

You know, the second one is have the conversation.

So what I mean by have the conversation is, you know, if you're a leader or if you're growing in your leadership role, you know, there are times when it can be really intimidating to talk to your boss about things, you know, things that you care about, responsibility that you want, you know, maybe it has to do with, you know, your goals in life and what you need to achieve with the company.

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Maybe it has to do with things like compensation.

I've met so many people that don't have the conversation with their boss.

They end up looking for opportunities outside.

A great example, a good friend of mine, a former Wharton student with me, we had this conversation about how he wanted to take on more responsibility within his company, but he hadn't really spoken to the owner and founder of it, so he was looking and thinking about and I just encouraged him to have the conversation and he ended up becoming the CEO of that company so that's kind of an extreme case but have the conversation don't let your ideas or your thoughts linger just make sure you have that conversation with your boss because your boss probably doesn't know and I think that's actually magnificent advice as well because most people don't realize their boss is relying on them so much they want them staying they want them happy but they're afraid to ask for something and sometimes they go out the door when they really shouldn't.

Is that a fair statement?

That's a totally fair statement, yeah.

And, you know, it's frustrating, too.

You know, when you're in a position of leadership, you know, if you've got a lot of people on your team and maybe you don't know about the things that that person is dreaming of.

So as a leader, you know, you can ask them questions about it.

But, you know, for heaven's sake, you know, people shouldn't, you know, move on.

They should have that conversation first.

And then maybe they end up moving on, but at least they have that conversation.

They had the opportunity for solutions or for the future to emerge from that conversation.

I have a follow-up question for you.

I introduced you as a Wharton grad, so it's fair for you to throw in your other colleague from Wharton.

Who is more guilty of this?

Are Harvard people more guilty of saying they went to Harvard, or are Wharton people more guilty of always telling people they went to Wharton?

That's a really good question.

I tell you what, I don't mention that I went to Wharton.

I think shortly after I graduated, I did.

I was super proud of it.

Based on my experience, I don't really know.

That's really my fault.

I opened the door to the question by introducing you as a Wharton grad and the UVA grad.

Another question for you.

As Chief Product Officer, what's the chief role of Chief Product Officer?

, commercializing things.

What does a chief product officer do?

What a chief product officer does is really understand what are the key problems to solve for customers and which ones are the most important ones to solve.

I look at it in terms of you want a big impact.

You've got a market.

You've got people that you're looking to serve.

Ultimately, the way I think about it, just to use a simple analogy, .

I think about overall product development as being like a chef.

You know, I want to prepare a meal that people love and I want to see that they enjoy the meal.

And that's kind of the analogy for product development.

You know, first and foremost, it's about, you know, having a deep understanding and empathy for customer problems.

So, you know, you want to get in their shoes.

You want to, you know, sort of understand, you know, how they think about things, what's important to them.

Prioritize those problems and make sure you're going after the ones that really have the most , you know, biggest impact for them that are valuable for them, you know, that they find enough meaning from that they want to pay for, you know, those, you know, to have those problems solved.

And then it's about taking those problems and envisioning the solutions and creating the solution.

So, you know, for me, that involves product management, design, and engineering.

So, it all starts with that insight from the customer.

And, you know, in the sort of, is that old days of technology definition, you know, what would happen is you would have a conversation with technology people, they would disappear and they would come back, you know, maybe six months later, 12 months later with a solution.

And sure enough, you know, over that period of time, maybe your needs changed a little bit, you know, or maybe they didn't really understand, you know, the problems that you had.

And they came back, they might come back with something and it sucks, you know, and it doesn't meet your needs.

And that has played out over and over again in the software.

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So for me, recognizing that and seeing that play out, my whole view is that I want to simulate what the future is, and I want to have lots of conversation and engagement with customers.

So what that means to me is you take the problem, you envision the space of potential solutions.

Today, this is called design thinking, where you rapidly take the problem , you envision all these different concepts, you sort of iterate and refine and come up with the one that's the best one.

And then, you know, I take that and, you know, we simulate it through a prototype.

So, we take prototypes out to customers that look and feel exactly like what the ultimate product will look like, but it's kind of like the equivalent of like a movie set.

So, you can see that there's buildings, but behind the building, there isn't really anything.

So, you know, these prototypes allow us to get a reaction.

to gauge whether or not we're solving the customer problem.

And take a moment on this issue, and then I'll let you go in a second, Thomas.

We have this issue.

Some companies, technology companies, have done this horrible job of trying to develop solutions and then try and selling them.

Others do a very, very good job of really getting close to the customers, understanding what the customer's problem really is, and then solving that problem.

is very successful.

In the other case, the technology companies foisting the solution, they're very not successful.

And I agree with what you said, and I just tried to summarize some of that right there.

One thing that I now realize is Datacyte is the evolution of Merrill.

Is that correct?

Merrill was one of the great financial printers, and it's really the only financial printer that was able to transform itself like you folks did.

That's about correct, isn't it?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, you know, it's come from, , you know, Merrill, as it once was, to this software service juggernaut.

I mean, we are all software service today.

Our entire business is that.

Totally focused on M&A and totally focused on the customers.

Focused on solving the most important problems for the dealmakers.

You know, that's, I mean, that's what I train my team to do.

That's what I'm focused on.

And, you know, that involves a lot of time going out there and talking with people who are dealmakers.

You know, I mean, candidly, part of it is to understand the problems that, .

They don't realize that there's a problem to be solved because they're so used to just doing it a certain way.

It's not until you're close up to them and you can really think about and invent and innovate.

No, no, we could solve that in a lot easier way.

Yeah.

And you almost have to take, you have to sort of like, they can't tell you the solution.

Sometimes they can, but they can tell you very clearly the problem and then you have to really work through what's a great solution.

, and then try and figure it out.

But it's really amazing.

Now that I understand the story, and I understand that Datasite is the evolution from Mirol, it's a magnificent transformation.

It's one of the great ones in American business.

Yeah, well, thank you.

I really appreciate it.

I mean, I'm super proud of that.

And, you know, there's this one aspect that I really feel like we've gotten right, which, you know, in what you were laying out about the software companies, you know, you kind of nailed it.

But I'm going to sort of put a little bit more of a point on that, which is that what happens is you've got, , you've got software people that understand how to construct things and build things.

And you've got business people that understand the business.

And the problem in so many companies is that those two are disconnected.

Through my whole career, the software and the business people, for me, like in my background, cognitive science and computer science at University of Virginia with an MBA, those two things together helped me to understand customers, their needs, what to do about it, you know, how you can build solutions.

And in companies where those two things are disconnected, it gives them, you know, a really hard time to deliver solutions that are meaningful for customers.

And in today's world, there's actually a third piece that very recently has become important, which is math and statistics.

And the reason why I mentioned that is because artificial intelligence, AI, is such an important thing today.

And what's important about AI is that, you know, it allows you to do things that you never could have done before because in the past things were built with rules and there's only so many rules you can program into a system versus AI, things are done with learning.

So the real magic happens for products when you've got this combination of the business understanding, the technology, the ability to get it done, and this math and statistics view so you can bring AI into the picture as well.

So the companies that do that really well, in my opinion, those are the ones that are going to win.

is a huge huge issue and it's easier for a certain scale to put the work well although I hope that it's getting easier for smaller companies as well Thomas magnificent to talk to you it really is and now as I understand the situation a little bit better and understand is one of the great transformations ever in American businesses transformation of the financial printer from a completely paper-based in-person thing to a data site software-as-a-service business and and magnificent success Thomas for now I , I appreciate you so much joining us.

I also, I know what you said about this connectivity, be able to connect dots between your undergraduate education and your business education, but a lot of it has to also be your intuitive ability as well.

Not just your educational background, that ability to actually see how I connect different things.

It's probably what makes you a Magnificent Chief Product Officer as well.

Well, I appreciate that.

I mean, thanks for bringing that up.

Hey, I think that there's match in.

, you know, nonlinear thinking.

I think there's magic in synthesis.

You know, for my, like, the equivalent of Facebook, you know, the original, like, you know, like book that goes when you go to college, they've got these little profiles of you.

In that, you know, I put my two favorite things were chest and weightlifting.

And normally those two things don't go together.

But I just bring it up because the thing is, you know, what you mentioned, you know, taking different things, combining them together in a meaningful way.

, you know, innovation, knowledge of the customer, the customer problem, and design, it does make magic.

And, you know, at the end of the day, if I can make people's lives better, you know, the lives of people better who use our products, you know, then I'm personally passionate and motivated by that.

So my way of getting there is through that sort of creative synthesis of stuff.

So I really appreciate you pointing that out.

Well, it's a critical skill.

It's one of the real winning skills in business, .

It's really a magical skill.

Thomas, we appreciate you.

I got to let you go.

I appreciate you so much joining us today.

Just fantastic.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for shedding light on your career, data site, and more.

Thank you.

Scott, thank you.

That was so much fun.

Really appreciate it.