Author: Mayfield

Quantum computing itself can be loosely thought of as a new class of supercomputers for certain specialized types of use cases and problems, notably: machine learning, optimization, chemical simulations, and more. Manufacturers are continuing to announce exponential increases in the number of available qubits – the basic unit of processing capacity for these machines. And since the capacity of a quantum computer increases exponentially with each qubit instead of linearly, what does that mean for the future of quantum in the enterprise? We believe that quantum will be a gamechanger for the computing industry – and that IT leaders have the opportunity to take a perspective now, on how they plan to leverage it, while we’re still in the early innings.

Our latest CXO Insight Call explored this topic, and more, with an excellent panel of speakers including:

• Scott Buchholz, Global Lead for Quantum Computing, Deloitte
• Aparna Prabhakar, VP Quantum Partner & Alliances, IBM
• William “whurley” Hurley, Founder & CEO, Strangeworks

A Brief Background on Quantum

To start with, a beginner’s take on quantum is that it essentially represents a different method of computation than what computers use today – which is math (very quickly). Unfortunately, we’re starting to reach the tail-end of what we can do with just math on its own. Quantum represents an opportunity to use physics and quantum mechanics to solve problems instead. Quantum computers are essentially next generation supercomputers – they will be able to perform calculations in hours that might have taken decades. Classical computers scale linearly, but quantum computers use “qubit” (quantum bit) which increases computing power exponentially by 2n (where “n” is the number of qubits). For some classes of problems, quantum computers may be able to compute exact answers instead of providing “best guess” approximations and heuristics.

Organizations working on the hardware have exciting plans to support production systems as soon as the next 3-5 years, and software vendors are working hard to simplify the education and onboarding of new users. These new computers are likely to supplement (not eliminate) today’s computers, in the same way that CPUs compliment GPUs.

Now, while this is all very exciting, progress in the space will come with some real difficulties. For one, solving a problem with physics is quite different from solving a problem with math. This is important because as quantum gains increasing capability, industry will need to think about where and how this might be useful to leverage.

There’s a classic problem in mathematics known as The Steiner Tree Problem, where, if given an arbitrary number of points – one must try and connect them using the minimum amount of materials. A practical use case here would be a road between cities – how could an engineer ensure that the county is using the shortest amount of road? Chances are, if you try and intuit the answer, you will probably be wrong. There’s a huge amount of math you can actually do to solve this, and the answer is unintuitive.

So you can work using math to solve problems like this one, or you can actually do this with a children’s setup. You can take a board, put four nails into it, cover it in a bucket of soapy water, turn it upside down, and the soap film will show you the exact answer. Nature also likes to minimize! This is using physics to solve a problem instead of math. Physics gives the answer almost instantaneously. But using physics is hard because you have to formulate the problem in a way that physics is able to solve. And it turns out that’s what’s so hard about quantum computers. How do you formulate the problem? How do you put the nails in the board and think of using soap film?

Where Could Quantum Be Applied in the Future?

When we think about what we might use these physics problems for, or how we might use quantum computers in the future, there are four big categories people are currently looking at (and many other smaller ones):

Credit: Deloitte

These categories can span industries ranging from aerospace and automotive, to financial services, to healthcare and life sciences. Today, there’s actually a narrow quantum advantage that can be found in the area of optimization – depending on where you’re looking and what sorts of problems you have. There’s a possibility you can do better logistics and routing, better feature selection in ML, which wasn’t possible even a few years ago. And although the advantage is narrow today, it will continue to grow over time – we have 60 years of classical techniques behind us that we spent optimizing math. Imagine where we’ll be with quantum in another 60.

Why Now?

This is the biggest step in computing since the outset of computing – but when will it actually fall into place? How can businesses fund and approach the topic? What is the future of research computing and where does this fall within your org? Where is the funding going?

To start with, over 30B dollars in funding has now been invested in quantum – but the trend is more important. Pessimists used to say that large advances are 20 years out, now 5-10. Realists are preparing today. If you’re going to get people prepared to do this in your org, it takes a good chunk of time just to get them to proficiency. So if you see your org wanting to do quantum in the next five years, you need people working on these new machines already.

The acceleration curve is dramatically changing – and that includes the funding. From 2000-2013 there was almost no funding, but starting in 2014-2015 there has been a drastic increase, which led to where we are today. In 2021 alone there was over 3.2B invested by venture capital and private equity, a billion in Q4. There used to be no publicly traded quantum companies but now we have Rigetti, D-Wave Systems, and many others.

So is it the time to invest? Sure, but how do you determine what that investment is? There are still no stellar use cases, but there are incremental ones. Some you can do today, others tomorrow. Right now, practical breakthroughs in quantum machines are ultimately what has driven these investments. Unlike with classical computers, with quantum computers, you can get to a few hundred qubits and start using them to solve fundamental physics problems. So the ramp is going to look more like a step function than this gradual increase. 2023 is going to look like 1963, in 1959 Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit. By 1963, it had gotten a bit more popular, and it ultimately led to modern computers that we use today. 2023, based on IBM’s roadmap, could look a lot like that inflection point in 1963.

10 years ago there were only a handful of quantum computing startups, now there are over 800, there were only 4 masters programs and now there are 37 – just tons of new patents and new technologies coming out of all this – it’s a really interesting time.

As an enterprise if you haven’t already started down this path – you might want to start thinking about it, otherwise you could wind up being too late. Like was mentioned above, this won’t be a gradual increase: some players will become kings of the hill. Governments around the world are seeing the importance of this (China has invested $15B), but industry is being slow to follow.

A Brief History of IBM Quantum

This is the first time in the history that the field of computing has branched. When we look back, we say there is quantum and classical. This is huge as it changes what it means to compute (or quantum is wrong). Breaking the 100-qubit barrier has placed us into uncharted territory – we’re crossing the boundary of what is possible today. Given the fast pace at which quantum computing technology and the exploration of its applications to use cases are accelerating, IBM considers this to be the Quantum Decade. A relatively small investment in quantum readiness today could deliver immense returns in the future.

In May 2016, IBM set out with the goal of putting quantum in the hands of everyone – with the first 5 qubit machines displayed in public for everyone to use and touch. In 2017, as they were already seeing a lot of traction and interest, they launched their quantum network to bring together an ecosystem focused on advancing quantum computing. Today, IBM has a fleet of over 20 quantum systems, with around 410,000 users, 190 network members, and 3.5B daily executions (1.3T lifetime executions).
From day one, for IBM, it has always been about adoption. There must be enough people working on quantum computing in a democratized fashion to really engage the community and generate exponential growth.

The key to remember is that quantum isn’t just a technology or a tool – it’s a strategic industry – and there’s a whole workflow that goes with this:

• Research and Development – Advance fundamental quantum research and technology
• Workforce and Enablement – Drive quantum research and quantum industry
• Quantum Services and Infrastructure – Provide quantum computing as a tool
• Industry and Economic Development – Bring the innovation enabled by quantum to impact society

Credit: IBM Quantum

IBM introduced the first quantum computing roadmap in 2018 and enhanced it further in 2022, expanding the boundaries on both hardware and software. They are pushing the limits on hardware processors and are introducing scalable architecture which allows tens of thousands of qubits, with lower errors and faster speeds.
The classical communications on hardware enable IBM to bring the same classical concepts in high performance computing (e.g. threaded primitives, error mitigation techniques) to quantum computing.

Furthermore, IBM wants to enable access to different kinds of infrastructures by combining different types of classical resources (CPU clusters, GPU clusters) with quantum and make that accessible with very simple code constructs (quantum serverless).

Today, IBM has four offerings (free, pay as you go, premium, and consulting services for enterprise readiness) and many others will likely emerge as well. People should begin to learn, use, and think about quantum via the open plan, which is free.

IBM has made a strategic decision to work with their partners and industry experts to find applications that are difficult to solve classically but which can be tackled with quantum circuits. Today they have over 190 members/industry partners and 40+ startups, and no one can truly imagine what quantum will ultimately be capable of. In 1963, would we be talking about the internet or autonomous vehicles? IBM is working with these 190+ partners to explore & accelerate quantum and across a range of different industries and applications.

Credit: IBM Quantum

Getting Started

In terms of evaluating whether or not quantum is right for a specific use case – think about this from both a technical and a business lens. What is the size of your problem? What about the compute time? Does the problem statement that you have serve better with an annealer? On the business side: will this give you a competitive advantage in the market? Is it worth it in terms of resources? Can you do this with a fractional team or should you wait?

One way to approach team building is to take somebody who is already an expert in the domain and have them actually teach and bring the rest of the team along. How do you formulate a problem differently? How do you interact with the abstraction layers created to date? How do you think a little differently about atomic interactions? It’s a shift in mindset and it just takes time. A lot of free learning is available for teams out there today, we list some of it in the free resources at the bottom.

Another issue will be creating the right mindset for an organization to start thinking bigger and more fundamentally about problems that have never been solved before. There are certain problems you can solve brilliantly fast but economically make no sense.

Consider that there are usually three types of thinkers in orgs: the practical standpoint, the visionary standpoint, and the people who have to actually implement things from a process standpoint into workflow. Today, this is something that is mostly falling into the innovation office or the office of the CTO, and not enough people looking at it in terms of practical implications. The communities today are physicists here and developers there, not communities of business leaders. This is a paradox when it comes to people looking at the implementation. Every org has different levels of risk tolerance and how much they’re willing to innovate. So ultimately, this will be case by case at each org:

• What are the problems?
• What is the value of the problems?
• How do you scope those problems and put them into the physics perspective of quantum?

This becomes one of those journeys of a thousand steps – people want to jump to the final answer, and unfortunately, in most cases it’s a journey that you have to go on. People can give you ideas on where to look for problems in the abstract – but wheels will turn – and things will occur to people. People will realize those kinds of things will be doable?

A global CIO can start investigating the big questions:

• How is the business model being reshaped by quantum?
• Where does quantum actually supercharge some existing AI and classical workflows?
• What is a killer app that is currently applicable in their industry?
• What is the best way to start deepening their org’s capability?

Once the big picture is formulated – talent will need to be nurtured to educate internal stakeholders. Have people do quantum as a side project, on Friday afternoons (you don’t need to ask the CFO for budget straightaway!). Poll your developers and see who is already excited about this topic – you might be surprised. And partnerships will be needed with other deep tech and quantum resources. And there are many different ways to do that: start with free quantum resources, or you can start with paid resources from the ecosystem. So, think about the big questions (formulating the problems will be the toughest challenge), have a point of view, nurture the talent, then tap into the ecosystem to start the journey. You don’t need millions of dollars to get started in quantum – you need time more than anything. You can’t make a developer or material sciences person, and hook them up to quantum overnight (it can take as many as 12-24 months to train a new hire) – but you can start today. We have gone from 17 qubits to a thousand in the last few years. The acceleration of these technologies will catch a number of orgs across the world off-guard.

Integrating Quantum with the Modern Tech Stack

As we look towards offerings for quantum from cloud providers like Microsoft, there is hybrid compute available where classical code and quantum code are mixed to allow each to do what they do best. And this new hybrid approach is exactly right: businesses are going to have classical quantum orchestration – so when workflows are considered, there will be certain things that are perfect for quantum, and others that have to be computed classically. IBM’s roadmap includes something called quantum serverless – with the goal being to let developers divide their workflow into these two categories.

Quantum’s Impact on Security

Many fear that there will be a number of bad actors that plan to leverage quantum. And companies have to consider a twofold problem: First, will they introduce new vulnerabilities themselves via quantum? And second, will bad actors use quantum to launch cyberattacks? It’s important to start thinking about these things now from a cyber perspective.

Will and others urge a more relaxed approach: the reality is that security is an ever-evolving dance between threat and remediation. Tech moves on, things get broken, and it’s not a bad thing. Most people have the idea that quantum computers will come along and all encryption will end overnight. But, you can’t just break everyone’s keys all at once. It will happen at a gradual pace that is slow enough for proper responses and remediation to take place. Bad actors will want to break info on an atomic bomb first, not your bank account. Consider the stack rank of threats.

One thing to consider though is that bad actors will probably start to take a “save now, decrypt later,” approach – so having some plans in place can’t hurt. But this is more of a preparedness issue (vs. technology).

The Future of Computing

Quantum is the next evolution of computers – but it won’t just be quantum, it will be all kinds of exotics computers. So maybe you’ll have quantum, maybe neuromorphic, DNA-based storage, a return to some analog compute – all kinds of things are coming down the pipeline. This is why CIOs and CTOs should start preparing today since quantum is just the tip of the spear. And so, this blended hybrid model won’t just be classical quantum – it will include other things that are already emerging, or are yet to emerge. Because ultimately, you want to make sure you are adequately using resources – so you take Shore’s Algorithm, which has five steps, and you can write an iPhone app that does 4 of the 5 steps of Shore’s model so blindingly fast, that it would be a waste of money and resources to do that on a quantum computer.

Furthermore, quantum computers can’t store data – there is no quantum memory. So everything is going to have to be a hybrid model. Using a quantum algorithm on a GPU is a fine way to dip your toe into that world – but you can access pay as you go very effectively at IBM and with others. Take a blended approach to get better informed. A machine of over 1000 qubits coming out next year is a real machine, a real device.

Educational Resources
A business leader’s guide to quantum technology | Deloitte Insights
Preparing the trusted internet for the age of quantum computing | Deloitte Insights
Quantum chemistry – quantum computing’s killer app | Deloitte Insights
Quantum computing potential ethical risks | Deloitte Insights
The Quantum Decade | IBM Institute for Business Value
IBM Quantum Client Case Studies
Strangeworks Syndicate

 

We recently hosted our latest roundtable to hear from our local CIO and CTO peers on how they are planning on weathering the downturn. Will there be a kickback on cloud budgeting? Spring cleaning? Alternative methods of planning? How are management models being impacted by the market, and by this new, hybrid world?

With Gartner signaling increasing economic pressures – including persistent inflation, talent scarcity, global supply constraints, rising interest rates, and a strong dollar, – we wanted to hear the group’s perspective on how they plan to respond to some of these difficulties (although, the takeaway remains – companies are still investing in IT and digital spend). Along the way, we got an introduction to our friend Prith Banerjee’s new book: The Innovation Factory, which is a no-nonsense take on partnerships, that intends to offer a historical perspective as well as practical guidance on how large companies can successfully collaborate to achieve innovation goals and initiatives.

We also heard from Mark Settle, who spoke on his recent piece “A CIO’s Guide to Weathering the Downturn,” featured in Forbes, with a lot of counterintuitive and fascinating advice around the upcoming downturn. For example: managing fear (maybe raise your performance standards rather than lowering them) or reassuring your top performers (they need it more than you might think!).

Budget & The Recession

• September and October Will Be Turbulent – While most budgets are expected to stay flat or even slightly increase, it’s an ambiguous environment to be sure
• The Recession is Real – Companies are seeing this via layoffs, even if tech buying has persisted. Investors are moving from the rule of 40 to the “rule of 60” when making investments in order to mitigate risk or split their orgs into separate teams for investment and re-investment. That being said, much of tech is somewhat sheltered from it. D2C companies are heavily impacted, consumer behavior has changed dramatically (although premium brands can still raise prices). B2B and tech companies however still have large pent up demand
• SG&A are the First Staff Getting Cut – Research and engineering are fairly safe, but unnecessary AWS and platform costs are being re-evaluated. Hyperscalers might see a shrinking customer base
• Quid Pro Quo Deals are the Norm – Everyone has deals with everyone, or their cloud provider has a special vendor, etc.
• There is More Margin Pressure – Everyone wants margins up, a lot of cost saving and rationalization going on. Grow at all costs is dead for now

The Changing Work Environment

• Command and Control Management Philosophy is Dead – …but we’re not quite sure what to replace it with yet? Culture in modern organizations must be encouraged, not demanded – how do you entice employees to want to be a part of something? Bring people to the office without forcing them via social/cultural incentives (and spend on this, it’s important). Virtual work environments can kill culture if companies don’t properly manage them, they require a lot more active communication and effort than the passive relationship-building that used to take place at 5-day a week office settings. Leadership will also need to uplevel to meet the current generation where they are at – employees are demanding more collaboration, thoughtfulness, encouragement, sensitivity, etc. A lot of extra effort is required for new graduates
• Different Strokes for Different Folks – Certain groups thrive on being together physically (e.g. SDRs), others don’t (e.g. Developers). There is not necessarily a one-size-fits-all work culture – you must be able to accommodate different cohorts. Middle management has become the new HR in terms of deciding whether or not teams can or can’t be remote. Furthermore, HR policies are good stakes in the ground, but there’s often flexibility for top performers
• Stay Open to Experimentation – Try things and see if they work – experiment (Float Away Thursdays, Spike Week, etc.)
• Hardware, Not Just Software is Needed for Hybrid Work – OWLs, whiteboarding, etc.
• Consider a Renewed Focus on Top Performers – They often don’t get the attention or reassurance that they need. Now is a time when employees are getting jittery and might want to jump (consider the alternative as well: Now is a good time to scoop up top talent that is getting jittery at other places)
• New Employees are More At-Risk – New people onboarded during the pandemic and working remotely have never met their team or manager in-person. As a result, they have less loyalty or ties to the company culture, which in turn, impacts the staying power of employees, and morale more broadly
• How Will the Role of the CIO Keep Changing? – Business first, tech second / Business not IT. CIOs will have to be bilingual and speak both languages going forward, now more than ever. Additionally, internally, there is a new focus on creating alignment vs. the old focus on execution
• Startups Struggle the Most with New Working Models – Work from home negatively impacts early-stage companies the most
• We are Running a Giant Experiment – What are the 3-5 year effects of new working models and different companies taking different approaches? While productivity is up now, will this change? It will take time for things to pan out. For the moment though, the 9-5 is dead and it’s clear that most employees do not want to spend five days in the office

Where is Technology Headed?

• The Goalposts are Constantly Shifting – Digital transformation today is table stakes tomorrow. Expectations continue to rise all the time
  We’re moving from the internet economy (3G), to the cloud economy (4G), to the industry economy (5G) – everyone won’t just have compute in their hands, they will have environments in their hands. The mobile economy is exploding internationally. Most CIOs are focused on internal administration still today, but they will increasingly have to branch out and be a part of this increasingly connected world (the distributed workforce is just the first step). Access to information is the great enabler
• Workplace Apps – Who is Winning? – Google inside the valley, Microsoft outside the valley (competing on cost). Many companies are ditching Slack on this basis as well, Salesforce still hasn’t properly integrated it
• Data Management/Governance and Vendor Neutrality – It’s important for companies to s or tay mindful of cloud providers pushing their own products – they are often not vendor neutral
• Large Companies Need to Become Better at H3 Innovation – H1/H2 are usually covered by large R&D teams that have the process down to a science. H3, however, remains elusive – and it’s more important now more than ever to be considering, given the uncertainties in the future

Geopolitics & Education

• Education is Divorced From Industry – Publishing has become the only avenue for professors to access tenure. As a result, they spend most of their team publishing and very limited time teaching. They don’t update their materials, and they certainly don’t collaborate with, or keep up with industry (no domain experts at all). Furthermore, today you can’t even get tenure from doing IT research, which is such an important area. There needs to be better programs to get industry into universities
• America’s Long Term Innovation Challenge – The best innovation will no longer come to the US as other countries achieve parity on PhDs (China already has). The top 10 AI/ML companies today, as ranked by MIT, are nearly all from China – this is happening across many fields including AV, EV, IoT, etc. As a country, we will need to update our immigration policies in order to retain foreign talent. Many students come to the US, and then leave, because the visa policies are so restrictive. And now, even the students themselves are starting to dry up
• Government / Business Collaboration – China and Taiwan have an easier time coming up with unified business strategies than the United States, on account of top-down leadership and better government/business collaboration. For example, in the 80s, Taiwan’s leadership decided on a 5 year plan for semiconductor manufacturing and implemented it. They got TSMC in there and did the work on developing talent around chips. Today, they have some of the most concentrated talent in this space and have made it really hard to relocate it elsewhere. Innovation takes time, and short term thinking kills it
• The Silicon Valley mindset will be key for America – Problems are not just problems, they are puzzles to be solved

Today we were joined for a in-depth virtual discussion with Tom Eschbacher, who built out the LinkedIn Marketing for Startups group (aimed at accelerating high-growth companies’ demand generation success on the platform), on how B2B startups are best leveraging LinkedIn. Today, LinkedIn is a fantastic (and often overlooked) channel for growth in early-stage B2B startups. As of Q3 2022, they have 59M registered companies, 850M members, and 443B feed updates.

And in 2022, with some gravitational forces working against startups including the economy and funding environment, it’s more important now more than ever for companies to be driving ROI and responsible growth through all of their marketing efforts – and LinkedIn is one channel where teams can make that happen.

First, a few high level considerations for companies that don’t want to dive deep:

Optimize Your Company Page: Your team is leaving meat on the bone if your company page isn’t all the way optimized – and this feature is completely free. There are many optimizations to drive traffic to your site and bolster your company’s brand and reputation. If you Google or Bing your company’s name, you will likely see some competitive ads, then your website, then your LinkedIn profile. That is a really powerful organic channel where prospects, employees, or even investors will be attempting to learn more about you. It’s very important, therefore, to use your company page to your advantage.

Take a Peak at the Tools LinkedIn Has Available Today: There is an unbelievable suite of audience and analytics tools that will make teams so much smarter, not just in terms of marketing, but even in terms of sales efforts. Work the company page, campaign manager, etc. You can do something as simple as applying a single pixel on your website to get smarter about your initial customer profile (or ICP).

Consider LinkedIn as a Customer Acquisition Channel: Today, when everyone is looking to drive revenue positive investments, you can acquire customers on LinkedIn. When you think about LinkedIn from a marketing POV think: That’s where I can acquire customers.

Startups today typically use LinkedIn for three primary purposes: Connect with Stakeholders, Understand their Prospects, and Acquire Customers. These are all fundamental to early-stage growth in a B2B company, and we jumped in on a high-level on how to quickly leverage LinkedIn to help.

Connecting with Stakeholders

The opportunity here begins with telling a good story. After all, these stories are how different stakeholders will experience your product and your brand. The three primary stories that must be socialized are:

Your Origin Story – Did you start in a garage? Who are the people involved? Why?

The Customer’s Problem + Your Solution – Don’t rush to specs and product features, talk about customer pain points, then how you fit their need

Your Vision – How can your company create a better future?

These three stories can all be a part of your company page. Furthermore, there’s already a lot of content you’re likely already sharing today – content in your blog, your Substack, or your company newsletter. That content can be repurposed and posted on LinkedIn. Companies with active LinkedIns have a 5x lift in page views, a 7x average increase in impressions per follower and 11x more clicks per follower. And this is free for you to do! You do not need to create content specific for LinkedIn, a lot of the good content marketing you’re already doing will meet an eager audience without any editing at all.

Furthermore, you can add a custom call-to-action (or CTA) to drive the right kinds of leads where you want to drive them (e.g. learn more, visit us, contact us). Do what matches the main purpose of your page – are you doing it for recruiting? Marketing/sales opportunities? Investors? etc. Do you as a company want to bring visitors to your home page, careers page, or requested demos page? Obviously you want to drive people back to your site – but what CTA best matches the content you are sharing?

A new addition here is that you can now go in as the page admin and see the individuals who follow your page – this is definitely worth checking every month or so. Maybe some angel investors, or a few folks from X company are visiting (are they in your sales process?). There is good intel in there for FP&A partners or sales partners. Furthermore, consider the content that you are posting. What sort of content should it be? LinkedIn has a content suggestions tool on your company page where you can build a specific audience – what are your buying personas? – match it to that. You can narrow it down to industry, location, city, etc. and figure out what is trending with them right now.

What other types of stories should you be considering in order to connect with stakeholders? Besides the three up top, consider:

Thought Leadership – For example, a third party website highlighting your founder’s vision

Product/Market Fit – Promoting a case study

Company Culture – Highlight cool things about your company to appeal to new hires

Finally, consider that people respond better to content when it’s coming from a person – there is just a natural relatability there – so take advantage of LinkedIn features to emulate that. You can share directly from your company page with your CEO or Head of Sales posting and showing up as a “repost” on that page. Soon, companies will also have the ability to promote these posts, which wasn’t historically available, but LinkedIn has started to realize just how important the creator/influencer recommendation is.

Understanding Your Prospects

This is especially important for seed and pre-seed companies. Most founders begin by getting feedback from their first-party network, but are otherwise not sure where to start. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that ICPs are discoverable and you can use LinkedIn to better understand your audience! On the company page, you can see who is looking and where you are getting traction – sort by a multitude of fields including company name, industry, size, job title, job seniority, job function, etc. Your ads platform/campaign manager lets you place a pixel on your website which will marry the LinkedIn members who are visiting your site from all channels and create an aggregate/holistic view – these are the folks who are coming to your site. You can use these engagement reports once you begin advertising – this way you can take a look at the different companies who are engaging with you across organic, paid, and your website. This is one of the biggest enhancements LinkedIn offers in helping sales and marketing align more closely.

Reps need to know what is piquing a customer’s interest so that they can better understand how the audience wants to engage and what they want to engage with. This can greatly improve conversion. Your LinkedIn rep can also help by using insights tools to create a map for you of where you’re getting deeper penetration compared to your competitors (e.g. look at your engagement vs. your six competitors for key audiences – what percent of mindshare are you with groups A, B, C, D, etc.). The goal is to feed insights with competitive intel.

Acquiring Customers

Today, LinkedIn is currently the number one social platform for lead generation -and there’s a good reason for that! The data shows that compared to other social platforms LinkedIn users are 4x more likely to use LinkedIn to improve their career and learn, and when people are in a learning mindset, they’re more likely to resonate with the content. Furthermore, a whopping 71% of professionals use it to inform business decisions, and it remains the top channel to find relevant, safe, and quality business content.

Right now, 80% of all leads generated on social media come from LinkedIn, and for 40% of seed companies, their primary ad objective was lead generation. It would seem that seed and pre-seed startups are no longer able to just stay heads down working on an MVP. And, LinkedIn is further optimizing for these needs by improving their product suite to better optimize for the changing landscape.

Right now, there are a huge number of categories for customer targeting:

Company name
Company Industry
Company Size
Location
Job Title
Job Seniority
Job Function
Years of Experience
Member Skills and Interests
Member Groups
Member Age
Member Gender
Account Targeting
Content Targeting
Retargeting
Lookalikes

In today’s discussion, we primarily wanted to focus on the three bolded categories which may not be as immediately obvious as the rest. These are all second-party data, meaning data that is coming from you. For example, for account targeting you can say something like “Tom on my sales team has these 500 accounts, so we want to run account-based marketing (ABM) to move them through the sales funnel.” With content targeting you can do that for individuals as well. This becomes more valuable the larger your CRM becomes. Conversely, if you are a product-led growth (PLG) company, and you are doing a bottoms-up motion, you could do contact targeting on all of your free users, and run a conversion campaign to convert people into paid.

The other good PLG tactic companies often implement is getting into sales assist – you can take the company names of your free users, load them into the platform, and then layer in the right seniority to find the decision makers at those companies, to let them know: “Hey, your teams are using the free version, and you can get more efficiency by launching whatever the next tier is.” This is more of a middle-out strategy.

Finally, there is also retargeting. You can run a video that says something like “Hey Customer, this is what we know is your problem,” and you can then retarget a certain percentage of users who completed that video (or watched part of the video) with a single image ad that talks more about the value prop. Anyone who engages with that, you can retarget with a lead gen form, ebook, or whitepaper (could ask them to download this, and then you have their contact info). And once you get their info, it’s not just on LinkedIn anymore, it’s also through your CRM. The ultimate goal is to gradually push folks down the funnel into a demo.

One other feature that’s worth talking about are lookalikes – you can take any of these lists and go and find more people who are “alike.” Foe example, people or companies who have purchased your product. The difference with doing this on LinkedIn is that LinkedIn is building those lookalikes based on a company’s business DNA. Of course, the process isn’t perfect, you want to put in exclusions on top of the lookalikes. If there are certain audiences you know you don’t want to speak to, be sure to exclude them. For example, perhaps you want sales but not business development, put up some guardrail.

Q&A

What is the LinkedIn Audience Network (LAN) and Lead Gen Forms? 

This is where your ads are being distributed – you can find people when they are not on LinkedIn, for example (the same people, different places). This is great if you have upper funnel or straight-to-site goals. Are you trying to increase brand awareness or drive people to your website to engage with something? LAN is really effective because you know you’re reaching the right people. LinkedIn has invested a lot in brand safety, so you have controls on what sites you’re reaching people on. Where it can fall short is trying to reach people for mid-funnel lead gen. You can’t do lead gen forms for LAN and lead gen forms are important because you increase lead volume, quality and speed. They are very popular because it sucks to click on an ad, open a new site, and fill out information all over again just to reach something you’re only mildly interested in. There’s normally a huge bounce rate for this – a 3-5% conversion rate max when you send people to your own site. Lead Gen Forms, however, change the game. They can 3-4x those numbers with the benchmark being at around 12% – because it’s only two taps (tap to learn more, tap to get a pre-filled submission form that goes directly into your CRM). There’s just better volume and better accuracy. 89% of startups that advertise with them use Lead Gen Forms.

How many filters should you use for Lead Gen Forms? What are the best practices there?

Change the question to what should my audience size be? You could add 20 filters and still have an audience of 20 million if they’re not the right filters. It will always come down to the tradeoffs of having a large vs niche audience. One of the things you hear is that startups really want a very tight audience when they are starting a campaign. You do a list and get to like 12K people. You won’t get the exit you want if your audience is 12K people. You’re missing out on your buying committee. 7 people are involved in B2B buying decisions, not even including influencers. Assuming you’re not just selling to 10 large pharma companies, get the first audience north of 30,000 just to see what happens. The risk is that if you have too small of an audience, 1) you won’t reach them, 2) you will have to pay a lot to reach them, and 3) they will fatigue so quickly. That being said, don’t go too broad either, work with sales on the right exclusion filters.

How are webinars doing right now?

Webinars were super hot in the summer/fall of 2020, but then there was a big backlash, and what LinkedIn saw happen (and what is still a best practice) is on-demand content. You can gate on-demand content and that tends to play. People just want to watch things on their own time. Unless you can guarantee a great audience and some benefit for being live, then do it on-demand. Just do 2-3 a year and have them continue to live on as evergreen pieces.

What should time to touch look like on leads coming in through LinkedIn?

The first follow-up should be universal, and time to touch is super important. A lot of this will depend on the size of your sales team, but at the very minimum you want same-day. Their time to touch on the LinkedIn team is down to 18 minutes. The biggest mistake the sales team makes is not customizing their outreach to the channel that the lead came through (and this is dependent on marketing to make sure that sales know what content they downloaded or engaged with, and where). It should say “Hi NAME, I saw you engaged with X on Y, I’m following up…” That will elevate it immediately from all the other cold inbound that decisionmakers get.

Also, mix your channels. It shouldn’t just be email as a follow-up. Use sales navigator to follow-up as well as a nice compliment.

Further Materials

Today’s Deck and Other LinkedIn for Startups Marketing Collateral

About Tom

Leading the New + Emerging Business org within LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, Tom Eschbacher has built out a 25-person group dedicated specifically to helping startups achieve their demand gen goals. Each half, the LinkedIn Marketing for Startups team partners with ~800 VC-backed B2B startups to build an ROI-positive channel strategy.

Tom has been at LinkedIn since 2016. Prior to that, he worked in ad sales at Vevo, Shazam and the National Basketball Association. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two young sons.

IT leaders cite skill shortages as a top priority and risk in 2022. Building a team with a diverse set of talents from various cultural and gender backgrounds can bring numerous strategic advantages for a company. However, realizing those goals can be difficult and require new approaches to hiring that often challenge existing processes.

For our latest CXO Insight Call, we invited an excellent panel of speakers including:

• Teresa Shea, VP at Raytheon
• Dr. Diane Janosek, Deputy Director of Compliance at the NSA
• Vimesh Patel, Chief Technology Advisory Defense and Intelligence at World Wide Technology
• Bryan Ware, CEO at LookingGlass Cyber Solutions
• Mary Beth Borgwing, President at The Cyber Guild
• Anoop Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO at SeekOut

Our goal was to really dive into this topic and explore best practices on how firms can really work to go beyond the corporate diversity statement, and create real results.

Why is diversity important?

• Building a Better Business – The data shows that diversity in ideas and thought makes a big difference for the bottom line. “Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homogeneity simply does not,” wrote Columbia Business School Professor, Katherine Phillips, as she described hers and other research for Scientific American in “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter.”
• Inclusivity and Workplace Appeal – Having a highly varied workforce helps a wider range of employees feel more included and be a part of the conversation – this can be crucial in terms of attracting new employees into the space – particularly gen Z
• Raw Numbers – Appealing to a wider range of candidates enables companies to recruit from a much broader and deeper pool of people

What are some immediate ways to begin developing a more diverse workforce?

• Take a Risk With Talent – It’s hard to hire at the exact level/skillset that you need for specialized roles – instead, consider training employees that you hire at the 85% level – it can be a risk, but also quite rewarding, and it opens the door to a much wider range of candidates. One example might be building out an associate engineering program and just moving further down in the employee life cycle. Grow and develop talent that you will use tomorrow (e.g. a 12-14 week boot camp for recent grads, convicts, or ex-military), then follow them along in their first year of assignments. Can you start with somebody who is not 100% and build in the institutional processes in your org to get them there?
• Get Different Kinds of People Working Together – Companies should be conscious of how their teams are composed and consider the full spectrum of traits. For example, stratifying across ages can be very beneficial – it helps new employees learn, and older employees see things from an entirely different perspective
• Start With Those You Have – Help make your current employees comfortable and excited about being there, and let them know that they have a place to belong. Once that’s accomplished, and employees feel like they are making a difference, the team that you currently have can then reach back and bring in others: The word is out that it’s a great place to be, where people will invest in you
• Don’t Focus on Diversity and Forget About Inclusion – Consider how to make your office a maximally inclusive environment. This extends to concepts such as language–as forming reality through words is important (white list, black list, etc.). How do you make sure that you’re actually setting up everyone for success and not expecting people to assimilate into a culture that already exists?
• Start Today – It gets harder and harder to have diversity the longer you decide that there are bigger problems to solve. And everyone has big problems to solve
• Consider Leaning on Tech – How can technology be an advancing tool to help with this dynamic? While data is everywhere inside the enterprise, when it comes to people, many companies are back to spreadsheets and putting things together. And data can be a true ally for diversity – understanding the talent pools, understanding how to write job friendly descriptions and conversations for managers, etc. Companies are seriously lacking data to help make great decisions. One of our portfolio companies, seekout.com, helps address diversity on the recruitment side of the house in a very in-depth way. Exploring what’s currently out there can be hugely beneficial to your programs.

How can you make the conversation around DE&I more tangible at the executive level?

• Walking the Talk – Does your executive team demonstrate your corporate diversity statement? Do you include a diverse range of hires in succession planning, or even entry level jobs? What are you doing to change the pipeline?
• Time Investment – If executives spend time focused on these initiatives – then it shows that the leadership is truly engaged. Being present even if you are busy is an important element of this

How early in the pipeline do you need to go to attract diverse talent?

You can’t just rely on job boards and wait for people to reply. You have to search, source, find people, and excite them. Recruit for diversity in leadership first – if your leadership is diverse, then they automatically bring in other diverse leaders. Good intentions aren’t enough – making a diversity pledge and hiring a DE&I leader doesn’t necessarily translate into actionable behavior. Having at least underrepresented candidates can make a huge difference.

Proactive college recruiting really helps here as well.

Why don’t we always see the kind of diversity you would expect?

Not everyone has the same level of access to STEM education. An important element to consider in terms of your diversity goals is bringing the data forward – what’s realistic in terms of hiring for a given position? And if you can’t fill people in one role, what other roles could there be open doors for?

There are a lot of pathways to becoming the CEO or an executive leader – they are not all tech founders. So even if the statistics aren’t working for you in CS hires – HR, accounting, sales, marketing, etc. are all needed to make your company successful – so make sure that as you’re building things up, you’re taking advantage of your entire workforce, and building your diversity across it. As you get to your exec ranks, you can then build that diverse board, C-suite, leadership team, etc.

Furthermore, a lot of these imbalances start all the way back in elementary and middle school – STEM has to be promoted with children right off the bat – cyber and IT can be not only fun, but also be very fulfilling in that you can make a huge difference across a broad swath of industries. But today, there are definitely gaps in children’s education. And the research is definitely out there in terms of when you can get children involved in the technology space – usually with boys it’s in high school (as long as they’re interested in 9th grade, and then stick with it through junior year, they will stay with it). With girls, it’s different. You have to really get the girls in middle school – the Hechinger Report covers this in more detail.

How can companies resolve hiring bias and have uncomfortable conversations in a productive manner?

• Reduce Hiring Protocols – Big corporate has so many hiring protocols. You can bring DE&I into a smaller company fairly easily – but the large companies get tripped up by these complicated protocols. There are too many “No”s and you need to get creative about “Yes”es.
• Reduce the Recency Bias – Interviewers tend to have a recency bias – companies look at a candidate and consider what they’re doing most recently. But how can you evaluate potential vs. value-add right now? What has this person accomplished over the scope of their career? How flexible have they been with new roles and opportunities?

How do you make sure that people who you hire from diverse backgrounds actually survive? How do you provide a community for them once they are in?

• Robust ERGs – There should be robust employee research groups inside of a company, and there should be a specific group focused on diversity – their entire function should be to provide a voice to HR or to the CEO for their particular constituency. This helps people think about how their policies impact the company from a diversity POV, a diversity recruiting POV, etc. It’s crucial that robust ERGs are in place and that there is internal support before a company embarks on a huge diversity push
• DE&I Expertise on the Board – The CEO and senior leadership have to reflect and care about this in their day to day actions. You need a diversity expert on the board – or someone who is adept at how to build workforce. Workforce is the biggest expense and asset in any company, and it tends to get glazed over. Furthermore, the C-suite and the board are really important in this conversation – the first thing that people look at is the board and leadership team. Without DE&I it’s kind of an indicator. Great that there’s an ERG and a statement on diversity, but without the cred to back it up, it gives people pause.