The Woman Behind WP Engine's Global Success: Learn Heather Brunner's Leadership Lessons and Insights

Oh, thank you, Rand. It's just really an honor to be here, and I'm so excited to talk with you today.

I love it. It's awesome.

It was really, if you would have asked me when I was about 20, when I was dreaming my dream job, I thought I was going to go work at the World Bank. I was fascinated with international economics, international business. My father was always doing international business and travel, so that was kind of my passion. And so I actually had an international economics degree and actually studied abroad. And serendipity did kind of play a role where I met a partner who came and spoke at one of the classes. I was studying abroad and had the fortune to go to an economics study program at Cambridge University in England. This partner came from Anderson Consulting at the time, which is now Accenture. He came and spoke and talked about what they were doing in technology and how it was really transforming business. And I was just fascinated. I stayed afterwards, went and talked to him, and said, 'Wow, I really want to learn more.' It opened my eyes to a whole new possibility, and that kind of started my journey. So I sure enough wound up, kind of like many people did in the technology industry. It started as a lowly staff consultant doing COBOL coding with my economics degree, learning how to code, learning how to write SQL queries. And it turned out that I was a really bad coder, but I was awesome at talking to customers. I was awesome at figuring out their business requirements and the why behind the changes. At the time, a lot of big companies were working with large organizations around how to actually get them to use technology to do basic things that they were doing manually, back-office financials, insurance claims, all different kinds of things that right now we totally take for granted. And so there I was able to see, throughout my early career, the really rapid acceleration of technology and how it was impacting business, from green screen technologies to client-server, going to the rise of ERP, the beginning of the ASP model, which is really like Coremetrics. We have a common passion around analytics. So the ASP model, and then that kind of moving into the rise of the Internet and mobile and social. And the experience I had at Bazaarvoice and seeing the difference around how consumers... I've been able to be part of technology industry's changes. In fact, I thought it might be kind of fun to show you my first cell phone.

This is my first cell phone, and I keep it in my office as a reminder of how fast technology changes. But it was quite the stuff back in 1992 with my Okie 900. So anyways, but again, it's just been such an incredible journey over the last 24 years, and I kind of feel like I'm just still getting started because there's just so much exciting things going on. So it's so fun.

Oh, I think you kind of sense part of many... Basically, almost for my whole career, basically for 20 years, so since I became a manager of teams basically in like 1994. So literally for 20 years I've been a part of managing teams. And as I've had the opportunity to work with very large organizations like Accenture and Oracle, to companies where kind of more medium-sized like Trilogy or Coremetrics, which at the time I joined it was still post-startup, really a larger and growing company. I've been able to be a part of 12-person startups, part of my things like Bazaarvoice, now here at WP Engine, very growth situations. And in those situations, I've been able to throughout my career have the opportunity to work and manage and be accountable for everything from product, the whole innovation cycle, engineering, finance, HR, client services, which has been kind of my sweet spot. That's really how I grew up, was really through customer experience, through customer service, professional services, and consulting, and that kind of growing into creating the services experiences for SaaS-based, enterprise SaaS-based companies like Trilogy, Coremetrics, and Bazaarvoice. And then at Bazaarvoice also had the opportunity to be responsible for the first time that was not for professional services sales, but actually software sales at a large scale. And so I've kind of had that opportunity to really have a really good grounding in general management across all the different functions. And that really has opened up a lot of opportunities for me. And so the opportunity to be CEO has just been like, I feel like I'm in my dream job right now. I love it.

She's great.

Right, absolutely. So I think that, as you know, as being a founder and founder CEO, it is a very big decision. It's not just a business decision, it's an emotional... this is your baby. And so there, you know, I always say that people kind of go through different, no matter any relationship, whether it's a customer relationship, a friend, whoever it is, going to go through stages of a relationship. And the first stage is, are you credible? Do you have the skills, the aptitudes to be able to do what we need to do? Or like a customer looking at, can your product or service actually meet my criteria? Or in a relationship, a friend, are you somebody that I want to hang out with? And then the next step is respect. So are you someone that I really respect? Is your word good? Are you somebody who I kind of feel like, wow, there's a level of respect here around when I hear you give me ideas or maybe things if I had... there's a value that you give me that I maybe didn't have on my own, and it creates that level of respect. And then the next stage is trust. So trust is just like, wow, you've got my back, I've got yours. I trust you. I kind of feel like I can kind of let go with you, maybe be vulnerable. And there's a level of if things go wrong, I know that we're going to get through it together. And then the final stage is kind of like the thing in a relationship would be to get married, or this is my best friend, where you're going to tell... which I call kind of advocate, where you're actually basically you're willing to put your brand and reputation next to that person and with that person. And so kind of this, no matter again any relationship, are you credible, do I respect you, is there a level of trust, and is there this level of I'm willing to kind of tie my brand to your brand? And I feel like with Jason, he was very open and willing to basically, very quickly we were able to kind of, he was able to say, 'Hey, here's what I'm good at, here's the things that are working really well, and here are the things where I'm struggling.' And putting himself into a place where he's saying, 'I'm struggling because I don't have these experiences, I haven't seen this before,' despite being a very, very successful entrepreneur, this being his fourth successful startup in a row, which is just amazing and it blows me away. But I think for Jason and I, we were able to kind of very quickly get to the point of like, yes, we're both credible, yes, we can get that level of respect, and then that gave us time to just quickly get into the trust, which is all about spending time together. You can't rush trust. You have to earn it. You have to really kind of do the dance, you have to be there and do those kinds of things. And so I think that with that relationship with Jason, we were able to... so how it all kind of happened is I was asked if I would consider joining the WP Engine board, and that's kind of how our relationship started. And basically I was at Bazaarvoice, had a lot of my plate, etc., but I kind of find myself constantly, like nights and weekends, all my spare energy, I kept thinking about WP Engine and was helping Jason think about recruiting and kind of building out the next logical thing at that time, back in the winter of 2012, beginning of 2013, was building out the executive team to take the company to the next level and take advantage of all the success that the company was realizing, and thinking about going from the small gangly startup into something to start to specialize and bring the right functional expertise and leadership to the team. And so that was kind of where my passion was. And so we just kind of through that process started working together. And one night I remember sitting in my office at Bazaarvoice and I got this phone call and I saw that it was Jason. He's like, 'Hey, this is Jason. Kind of had this crazy idea. What do you think about coming over to join?' And it was like this moment, I was like, 'That sounds really cool,' and it just felt natural. I said, 'Great, well let's talk about it.' And so that kind of started the whole thing. And then from there I talked to him, I said, 'You know what, it doesn't make sense for me to come in right away as a CEO. I think it makes more sense for me to come in, really learn the business, and earn that role not only in your eyes and the board's eyes, but also in the team's eyes.' Jason had built at that time, and we continue to build together, an incredible culture, an incredible team. And I really wanted it to be very organic and natural. I was not in a hurry. I was able to just kind of say, 'Let's do this the right way.' And then this kind of became this natural evolution of our relationship, my relationship with the business and the company, our customers. And we just kind of felt the time when it said, 'Okay, this feels right,' and we made the call and haven't looked back since. It's been a lot of fun. So I became CEO formally in October of last year.

Yeah, so basically the company, so just to kind of give you a sense around growth trajectory, we don't typically share revenue, but I'll kind of give you a sense around size with certain metrics. I joined the company in May. I was roughly employee 40. We are now, as of just now, a little over a year later, over 170 employees. We were just under 7,000 customers. We are now over 21,000 customers. It's globally. We are continuing to grow very rapidly. We have shared that revenue has been growing 25% quarter over quarter or greater since inception, and that phenomenon still continues. So it really has been really an opportunity. And again, that's why I feel so blessed to have met Jason, to be part of this organization, and to now have the opportunity to kind of help lead the organization and help build out our leadership team for the next leg of the journey.

Yeah, yeah.

Absolutely. So today, Jason's scope is our CTO. So anything related to our innovation, so product strategy, product vision, strategy, and anything related to execution, innovation is under Jason's purview. And we do though operate, and this has been something we kind of started by necessity and then became something that we really liked, which is when I first joined the business, one of the first hires that I was fortunate to make was our superstar CFO, April Downing. And so both April and I have been, we've got a lot of scar tissue, we've been around the block a lot. And we knew that we just needed our time to ramp was super... basically what we decided was that we were going to meet basically six hours a week, we're going to have white space, and we basically said we're going to dedicate three hours twice a week and we are just going to download. And that was invaluable. And so basically by Jason just giving us that time, we were able to very quickly do the things, and also we actually became sounding boards for him because he was the CEO. So it kind of became almost like the office of the CEO, myself and then being COO, April the CFO, and then Jason the CEO. So they would basically be meeting... well, then once we all kind of got into our roles and everything had to download, we just said, 'You know, this has just been such valuable time.' We decided to keep it, and we basically have now to the state of it being three hours, two times a week, so six hours a week. But basically Jason, myself, and April meet together for basically four hours a week, and it's our sacred time to be bouncing off each other what's going on. And so now it's myself as CEO, Jason and April are both involved in strategy, vision, key things we're working on, and that helps me to then form up and really focus on a big thing I'm really big on, which is goal setting, is for us to really lock and load on what are the key goals for the near period, then the interim period, as well as for kind of the forward six months. So that has been just an incredible use of time, and that to me is now something I would replicate no matter for as long as I can here. And I would recommend it to anyone. And if I ever were to go anywhere else, I would do that again because I think it's just so valuable to have that time.

Just another quick thing is we just keep a little, you know, you could use whatever tools that you guys have, whether it's Basecamp or Trello or Asana or whatever you use. We just have a board, a virtual board. So whenever this is my mind around something I want to share at the white space session, I just write it on the board. And then my role as facilitator, kind of like the chair of that meeting, is just to kind of organize it, prioritize it, and talk to the person. Then when we get there, we can kind of go through it, or we can just have there be... sometimes we don't have anything new and we just kind of riff off each other and talk about what's on our mind. Hey, what's going on? What are we thinking? Etc.

Right, right. Well, to me, I think conflict is really good. So I always say lean into the conflict. So I think that, so again back to the whole thing around a lot of people, and I think also a lot of organizations, definitely don't like conflict or they don't want... there's kind of like this concern, okay, it kind of feels bad, those kinds of things. And I'll kind of... can I take it because in no time... so this is not something that I... this is something that to me has been something I've had to learn, that saying no, conflict is good, disagreement is healthy. It helps to kind of understand where there might be disconnects. How I look at something, my point of view might be I'm taking a certain set of data and inputs that might be different than what you see. And so the fact that we disagree, to me, is like, that's good. Okay, so great, let's dig into that, why, and let's really kind of facilitate that and draw it out. But then, that old adage, between husbands and wives, like don't go to bed angry, it's like right, just like don't let anything fester.

Yeah, I think we've been very fortunate that we haven't really had any places where we have been where there's been like the place where you say, 'We're going to agree to disagree and we're going to go to this path' in the future. And I think, you know, I know with my role I need to take responsibility sometimes in terms of they say this is the way to go. My style is definitely to try to make sure that everybody understands why, and then that we can kind of agree to disagree. And then also that we can also agree that we can all be wrong. So we could go out and say, 'You know what, okay, I was wrong,' or 'You know what, a lot of times what will happen is I'll mention things and at first it's like, hmm, you know, I don't think it's been... okay, you were onto something there.' And I think that there's kind of the whole thing around us being open and vulnerable with each other to basically number one not be afraid to have conflict, not be afraid to be decisive and make a call when we need to, but also not be afraid to course correct and say, 'You know what, I should have done something differently,' or 'We didn't take this information into consideration,' and that's okay. And so I think that we can't let disagreements kind of go on, and at some point you do kind of have to say, 'Okay, this time we're going to go and move forward.' Again, fortunately here, because and I think also because we're investing in that white space together to really talk about different things going on, typically we're all on the same page around when we're moving forward. And also there are different things that we're not... we're not managing by committee. So even though we're coming together, it doesn't mean that everyone's having to vote on where we're going. So everyone has a separate responsibility, very clear, and everyone has their ownership. But it's really more that time to say, 'Let's stay together, let's stay in sync as we're driving this very fast-moving train.'

Yeah, well, it is a very... at the time, I mean, it was very just scary. It was kind of thing like, here you are, particularly Coremetrics, who had really kind of helped to... it was really kind of a leader in kind of obviously like same book with Omniture, kind of defining a category, defining a space, and kind of coming out with it. And then, so kind of happen, Coremetrics was really founded pre-bubble. So by the time you have, basically, Coremetrics is about seven, eight, nine years, I guess about this time, because this is basically 2006 time frame, so they're about seven years really fully into their journey. And Coremetrics had really been dominating around e-retailing. And what we found in metrics is that once you have the online retailers, at first it wasn't very... and it was just kind of crazy to believe now... evangelical, you want to have web analytics. So kind of the first chapter of the history is basically, 'Evangelical, you need web analytics, we're defining where you've got to have this.' Okay, now how do you take it? Both the product level had to come up as well as the process level had to come up around integration and all the best practices. So now my site is all instrumented, what do I do with it? How do I make it sing, etc. So that's kind of the next chapter. And then I think from there, the sophistication of products like Coremetrics and Omniture around pathing and insights around SEO, it just became kind of inextricably tied into the workflows of the customers, which was exciting. And so here comes Google Analytics, and we're like, 'Uh oh, this is gonna...' again, both Coremetrics and Omniture, who are kind of like basically the one and two players, are pretty tied to enterprise, enterprise SaaS-oriented web analytics. And so we're like, 'What's it going to do? It's going to drop, you know, customer attrition and retention issues, we're going to have pricing pressure.' So those were all the fears, of course. And what we found is actually that when Google launched this, in their style, which is meant to be kind of very much the long tail, kind of the freemium model with zero services, with very lightweight functionality, with a lot of basically deltas between what people who had become to rely on their best-in-class services from Coremetrics were very different. So there's kind of this cloud around it that was very favorable for us. But then Google learned, they kind of got their act together. But basically the net of it is, it created a level of market awareness. It's so interesting, validation. So it was kind of a boost to us. It basically created this sharp contrast between freemium, not a lot of capability, no service, no best practices, no real ecosystem yet around it, versus a Coremetrics which was basically defining the space, setting the best practices, deep functionality, growing roadmap. And so some people are like, 'Okay, well great, I'm glad I'm here.' So for that time zone I was there, it created that contrast and actually goosed the visibility.

That's right. And I think, and again too, then for any company, in terms of like, if at the end of the day, if you have a premium product, you have to be able to justify that premium every day. So the difference between, for example, Coremetrics, the difference between Coremetrics and Google Analytics was around the service, it was around the best practices, it was around the workflows, and the fact that there was this... things that Google Analytics just didn't do. And that value differential is so important. And yes, people can ride a bike to work, but most people want a car, right? So you've got to make sure that that cost-to-value equation is always top of mind.

Right, what's the... this is like the big, you know, for me, this is what was so fascinating to me about this opportunity to be part of WP Engine, was because it'd be an opportunity for me to learn this, you know, because I came in and to kind of bring some of the best practices that I have around what I've learned from being deep in enterprise to bear here at a place that was very much more looks like more like a B2C, self-service type of company, which is dynamic. So to me, that was part of what was energizing to me about this, is this contrast. So to me, what has been so interesting to see in this space, and what is this business, and again, like why, the self-service, the real importance of viral, the real importance of people talking and basically word of mouth. I was preaching from the highest mountains, you know, user-generated content, ratings, reviews, the power of the consumer, and basically WP Engine is realizing that. I mean, in terms of like, WP Engine is a social business, and that virality really matters, and it's really what has been really kind of just continues to draw the flywheel of the company. And why are people talking about WP Engine? Well, and so I think part of it goes back to the whole thing is like, if you're coming to WP Engine, you have reached a point, there's lots of different options, but for whatever reason, you are willing to pay a premium to have WP Engine's access to our technology platform to create, launch, manage, evergreen your site, and for us to basically manage the back end on your behalf as a host. And so if you've made that decision within a sea of different alternatives, we have to deliver on that promise every day. So we have to deliver that value. And that value comes again not only through the experience with our technology, which just has to be there and deliver and continue to evolve with all the things that are happening in the web publishing space to make our customers' jobs easier, but also we have to do every interaction you have with us, whether it's a chat you might be having or a call you have with one of our support folks or somebody you're talking to from our inside sales team, whoever it is, every touch matters around the experience that our customer has with us. So I think the combination of really a product that is delivering on the promise with people that are passionate and customers can feel their energy and their excitement about what we're doing and their desire to help them is really what has been fueling this business. And to me, that comes from having... it is really important around how we hire, how we train, how we onboard, how we make our values and our culture top of mind for everyone and everyone's role in making that happen. If every single employee is feeling like a business owner and they're feeling like they're treated like an adult and their voice matters, they can be empowered to make the decision at the front line around what's best in that very moment and that the company has got their back, it creates a level of just energy that customers feel. And customers also know when something doesn't go right, because in this business, things happen, right? And so we have to be able to kind of say we have to own up to it and do the right thing. And so I think that's something that to me, I think all those dimensions have created a customer experience that's been something worth talking about, worth sharing, where saying, 'Wow,' and that then leads to another customer who then has a great experience who leads to another customer. And again, in this kind of business, we're dealing with so many customers, not everybody has a great experience. So we always have to basically be in the mode of what can we learn from those experiences to make the plurality of experience the best we possibly can. So I think the real difference around this business is, and I had not experienced in this degree, is the power of word of mouth.

Totally, totally makes sense.

The cop-out, but the reason why is you need to have teams that... as you grow, you have to have teams that are thinking about run and scale, and you have to have teams thinking about leading the business and being a market leader. Leaders need to be breaking glass and to swing the norm, and the people are worried about keeping everything going and this and that. So what do you think about that?

Yeah, this is a place where I don't think I've ever been happy. No, I think the place I've seen it work the best, and where I feel like we're striving to here at WP Engine, is where you start to kind of, where I alluded to earlier, is get into small teams, specialized teams with charters that can move swiftly, that are surrounded by QA and the engineers can kind of really move rapidly. And so when that specialization, that's when I can see you can really start to move faster. But as long as you're kind of in the where everyone's like the kids playing soccer and all the kids are running to the same ball, that just slows everything down.

Yeah, I think really again, I think for us at the end of the day, we are a software-enabled business. So I think the secret sauce of WP Engine is the technology that really Jason invented and that we have been innovating on top of now for over four years. And so that product, that platform, and all of the ways it allows us to manage the cloud infrastructure on behalf of our customers and allows our customers to manage their websites in a more elegant, easy way with more confidence, that really is a differentiator. There's really no one out there that has the capability that we have at that platform level. And that's why to us that pace of innovation, of us disrupting ourselves, of us advancing and predicting what's coming at the same time keeping it very stable, is really what's really made the difference. And that software, that technology, that innovation is really what's making it. And then I think on top of that, you kind of like I've already, when I draw this for our team and I talk about our technology and the whole stack, I draw a big heart around it. And that big heart around all that is our heart around being servant leaders for our customers. So I think that's the difference. So technology, you can replicate, but at the same time you can't replicate customer experience. That takes time in terms of the experience, expertise that you have.

Yeah, I think we have different personas of customers that are in terms of their spectrum and sophistication with technology. And some customers are really just basically like, 'I don't, I just want the outcome. I don't even think about it as being WordPress, I don't think about it even being WP Engine. I just think about it as this is the platform that I get rapidly get new campaigns to market, that I do new product pages, I get new social campaigns out the door.' And they just think of it as being kind of their publishing platform. And then we have members who are very, very expert in WordPress, expert in development, and they are a different persona for us. And we call those kind of makers. We have makers and we have marketers. Marketers just want the outcome, they just want us to be like electricity, they come in, they turn the lights on, it works, and we have to make it easy for them. And then the makers, they really want to be able to tinker, they'll understand, go deep, they want to be able to do customizations, they want to be able to do a lot of things, advanced development. So it's another very, very important set of customers that we have to delight as well.

For us, for now, I mean, and I think that's also true for us, not only do we have this dynamic of makers and marketers, but we have this dynamic also in terms of what I would call like a prosumer. Because everyday consumers typically would not choose WP Engine, their site doesn't demand, doesn't need a premium platform or host. But if I'm a prosumer, I'm someone who's a really well-known VC like David Skok, and my site has tremendous traffic, he's not a business, but to keep a key is somebody who his friends, like, really matters. And so you have that whole spectrum. So not only do we have the spectrum of prosumers, small, mid-market business, and enterprise, so we actually have this Rubik's Cube that we talk about every day is around should we specialize, when should we be the other. And right now, all of them, right now, we're seeing growth, all of them, we're seeing high customer satisfaction. We are, I think, getting... we've traditionally have been a maker company, thinking more about because again as we're going up into the higher end of smaller businesses and into enterprise, that marketer persona, you know, the why behind all these websites, why are all these websites, why is WordPress now 22% of the web, is because of the push that's happening across that entire spectrum of segments. And so for us, we've been able to succeed across those. Will we be able to continue to succeed? Well, time will tell. How do we execute? Are we able to do that, or do we have to kind of narrow into a sweet spot? That's something we talk about all the time. Very interesting. Right now we're seeing success, the success with the eyes of our customers in terms of retention and satisfaction, and success in terms of growth across all those segments.

Yeah, well, I think the biggest thing for me has been kind of, I've been so used to being the person who operationally like owns the number, or owns the data, owns the satisfaction, or owns retention. So it's kind of being able to kind of look back and kind of say, 'No, I need to abstract myself and remember I'm the coach. I'm the coach of an elite team.' And so my job is to be thinking ahead, giving them the space to... I need to be very, we need to all together be very clear on what are our goals, what are objectives, or the metrics that say we're going to hit those goals, both quantitatively, qualitatively. And then I kind of need to get out of the way. But my job is to be thinking ahead and be bringing those ideas to bear around setting our next set of goals. And I think for me that's been one thing, like, okay, they've got it, my team's got it, I can then be thinking and predicting and getting ahead and using my time that way. And that gives, you know, when I can come to the table to the exec team meeting and based on, hey, I've kind of given the thought of a straw man of our next set of goals and everybody to go like, 'Yeah, go ahead and field that, makes sense,' because you know, and kind of being able to think like that, that's exciting and a good use of my time as CEO. And again, the importance of who, you know, they always say as you get further in your career you go from thinking about the how to the what to the who. And so me spending as much time as I can on the who, being the leaders that we have, the leadership team that we've been able to develop, the leaders that they're developing, how much time I'm spending with those leaders, just again, if I say doing the dance, just getting to know them, talking with them, thinking about what's on their mind, those kind of things. Audible, just to be that kind of free radical around and be listening to all the different things across all the different teams and then bringing that information and those thoughts and ideas back in has been fun. So I'm really enjoying that. And having a lot of fun with it, but also again, as you know, as being the CEO, at the end of the day sometimes the buck stops with you and you've got to make difficult decisions and you have to be the one that takes responsibility for everything. So I have to and everyone in my exec team needs to know that I've got their back. If something goes sideways, it's going to be the blame is going to be on me. When something goes good, the sunshine is going to be on them.

I do tweet. I tweet at Heather J Brunner, and my aspiration for this year going forward is to blog more, not only on WP Engine but actually to dive into the blogosphere myself.

Awesome, Rand. It's been a pleasure.

Take care, everybody.