From IPO to AI: Mike Burkland Chronicles the Five9 Journey of Transformation

I'm doing great, Evan. How are you?

Yeah, happy to, Evan. And thanks again for having me. You know, I joined 16 years ago, and our vision quite frankly has always been pretty consistent. We've evolved obviously, we've grown from a company that was 10 million in annual revenue, and this year we'll cross one billion in annual revenue. So it's been an exciting 16‑year journey, but sometimes I feel like we're just getting started. Our vision really has always been to bring joy to customer experience, or CX as many people call it these days. And when we think about bringing joy to CX, this is not just in contact center and customer service; this extends to really the entire broader customer journey from first touch in marketing to sales and commerce and eventually to service and support. And most of the brands that we do business with are attempting to deliver true joyful CX, and that means a seamless, effortless, connected, and frankly personalized customer journey from end to end. And that is our mission in life, that is our vision, and we're well on our way to delivering it for some of the largest brands in the world.

Yeah, a lot of joy happening there as well.

Yeah, thanks Evan, that's a great question. You know, I've always said this to our team here at Five9 — we have 3,000 employees today — and I've always said business is the ultimate team sport. So just like in sports, to build that winning team, the one that wins year after year and creates a dynasty, it requires three things. And in business it requires the same thing. We've been winning for 16 years, and we are in a competitive race every day. To deliver that franchise that wins year after year really requires three things. Number one, you've got to have the best talent, the right players on the field in the right positions. That's a really important ingredient to a winning sports team, and it's also really important to a winning business. Secondly, you've got to have the right playbook or strategy, without the X's and O's and the right strategy you're not going to have success season in and season out. Third, and probably most importantly, is team chemistry or culture. From a leadership standpoint, I always focus on that last piece. Obviously we're delivering the first two by making sure we have the right talent and strategy, but that third one can be kind of elusive. We've always focused on it here at Five9, and I think it's one of our biggest competitive differentiators — our culture. It comes down to living by our values every single day. We spend a lot of time defining those core values, but it's not just talking about them; it's living them every single day, 100% of the time. Our best leaders at Five9 do that — they live by our values every day. It's how we treat each other, it's how we treat customers and partners, it's how we behave. And when you do it the right way, with honesty, without ego, with team success in mind over individual success, what that results in is an amazing winning culture. It's a team culture, a passionate culture, and it allows us to execute year in and year out and quite frankly win.

Yeah, I am really excited. I believe that this market has never been better. Large enterprises, brands, know how important CX is to their business. They've got to deliver a great customer experience; it drives business outcomes for them in terms of NPS scores, customer sat, retention, revenue growth, etc. And we are changing the game when it comes to CX. As you know, this world is evolving very rapidly, especially in AI. We are delivering an AI‑driven platform. Our CX platform is unique. In fact, just last week we introduced GenAI Studio, which is the industry's first generative AI platform for ingesting and accessing enormous amounts of contextual data. The key word there is contextual — it's not just data, it's contextual data that these brands are leveraging: contextual data around their offerings, products, services, and also contextual data around the end consumer they're interacting with in a given interaction, whether that's digital, self‑service, or voice. We're providing a platform to handle all of those interactions, but because we're leveraging that contextual data, it isn't secondhand models from industry data. They are firsthand models from that brand's contextual data, and that is the key to delivering connected, effortless, personalized customer experience.

There sure are, Evan. This Thursday, April 4th, is our ten‑year anniversary — the ten‑year anniversary of our IPO — and we are ringing the opening bell at NASDAQ to celebrate. I am so proud of the Five9 team. As I said, 16 years ago we were a pretty small company, we went public ten years ago, and have grown dramatically ever since. It is really on the efforts and execution of our team — I call them Five9ers. So this IPO anniversary celebration is for the Five9ers, for all of the people that have been part of the Five9 journey. I want to celebrate them. Many of them will be there at the NASDAQ bell ringing. We've got a lot of folks joining us, a lot of Five9ers, and it's going to be a great opportunity for us to celebrate their success.

Yeah, Evan, I'd be happy to. I look back on our history and think about what really led to our success, and it does always start from values and culture. So I would encourage any leaders out there, aspiring leaders, existing leaders, to start with values, live by those values every day. It really drives culture and behavior for the long run. At Five9, we recently rolled out six leadership principles that we want our leaders to focus on as they lead teams: leading by example, taking ownership, communicating and collaborating, developing your people, driving results, and solving problems. Those are just some examples. In the end of the day, I always say to anyone that wants to be a leader: be yourself. So many people get caught up trying to emulate someone else who's been a successful leader, but you've got to do it your own way, be yourself, don't try to be something you're not. I always say the definition of a true leader is very simple: it's someone that others want to follow. If you just think of it simply that way, be a good person, do it right, do it thoughtfully, and the rest will take care of itself.