Hugo Azevedo - GitLab - Open source and continuous learning as a competitive advantage.

The current chat on First Value is with Hugo Azevedo, Senior Solutions Architect at GitLab. More than just a conversation, it was a lesson on how to connect company culture, strengths, and strategy to leverage the customer experience. But before we begin, let's talk a little about Hugo's career aspirations, which emerged long before his adult life.

His interest in technology started at around 11 years old. His father used to sell personal computer leasings, which was very common at the time. And for every batch of leasings sold, he would receive one, which he gave to Hugo to play with. It was there that he became interested and started getting his hands dirty thinking about how to improve the computer for various uses. His father was also an entrepreneur, where Hugo also helped him with some operational activities, including using his own computer, already bringing his bias to help businesses through technology. After completing high school, Hugo didn't know exactly what he wanted to do. He started working for a private university in telemarketing in exchange for a salary and a scholarship. And since he liked computers, he started studying information systems and computer networks. He didn't stay there for long. That's because a friend invited him to work for a Spanish energy company in Rio de Janeiro, and the work routine was incompatible with his studies. However, this never stopped him from studying, as he obtained several certifications in the field of networks and systems administration sponsored by the new company. Looking to advance his career, he moved to the United States in 2005 with a student visa seeking an Associate's degree, initially in networks and then in administration, but had to stop due to costs. In 2007, he married his American wife, which allowed him to stay and work legally in the US. After working for several other companies, he returned to working as a technical support for Voice over IP at Polycom, where he was introduced to agility in 2011 and found the entire context, technology, business, and connected processes very interesting. With this idea in mind, he applied to Rally Software, which was a technology company focused precisely on this market and located in Boulder, Colorado. He started out working as a technical support for the product, which automatically led him to learn more about agile software development frameworks and methodologies, which was the purpose that Rally addressed in its solution. In a few years, he moved to post-sales, providing consulting services to Rally's strategic customers such as Ford, Cisco, Intel, and Amex, among others, as a product specialist, until he became a consultant focused on business and processes beyond just the product. That fueled his desire to bring this knowledge to Latin America. Hugo always voiced this interest, in case the company expanded its markets, making himself available. In the meantime, CA Technologies acquired Rally and Hugo made a 3-year agreement to return to Brazil to leverage agility products in the region as a specialist for Latin America. Before that, during this period, he completed his Associate's Degree in Business at Front Range Community College in 2015. During his season in Brazil, he was successful in acquiring customers from all planned countries. Upon returning to the US, he felt the need to look into a more technical context, not just in agility. More focused on software delivery, such as integration and continuous delivery, like DevOps, which led him to GitLab where he is today. Also working with the Latin American market, initially in post-sales, he eventually moved back to pre-sales to help leverage this market, as he had done previously at CA.

Today, GitLab in Brazil operates through channels with partners, but has a future desire to create a structured operation in this market as well as throughout Latin America, especially with delivery services. Essentially, GitLab aims to be an open-source company. Post-IPO, the CEO opened a venture capital focused on starting companies focused on open-source software, called Open Core Ventures. It is a philosophy that Sid Sijbrandij believes that in the future companies will follow in this collaborative and open universe. So anyone in the world can help co-create all of GitLab, not just the product's source code, but also in the mission statement, processes, etc. Just by making a merge request. It may not necessarily be accepted, but it leads to collaboration in open source for the entire company, not just the software. So the Customer Success team, which is currently composed of Pre-sales, Professional Services, and Post-sales, also has a CS Vision Page, where the entire customer journey is shared with everyone and is open.

https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/customer-success/vision/

This journey directs all GitLab teams on how to drive value generation for the customer. In the sales process, there is a solution alignment and a Tech Win linked to an initial value proposition. The sale is accompanied by a success plan, with involved services, training, and how to get the customer ready to use the solution independently. Then, enter an adoption journey linked to various use cases. Previously called Technical Account Managers, it changed to Customer Success Managers because it should be focused on real customer gain, solving problems, measuring real gains, and not just a technical solution. Its goal is to design a panorama and sell a vision to the customer regarding GitLab and its business and keep the customer informed about what they could gain in value.

GitLab also places a strong emphasis on Customer Advocacy, based on references, use cases, Customer Advisory Boards (CAB), as well as expanding contributions from the wider community, as it is at the core of the company. GitLab has a Core Team, a group of dedicated contributors who have been recognized and given a voice, which is also part of the vision.

https://about.gitlab.com/community/core-team/

Apart from that, GitLab works with Adoption Journeys. Naturally, a customer or community starts with a freemium version. But soon it leads to an enterprise need, especially in the context of security for their source code. And after that, it expands to SCM, CI/CD, and so on for the entire DevSecOps context.

All of this is covered in GitLab's Customer Success Vision, which is used to align all contributors within the company and to accelerate and standardize the customer experience. And this was not built overnight. GitLab has also opened up how the roadmap for implementing these capabilities has been and is being developed.

A journey started in 2019 and that the company makes a point of keeping open not only for the community to help evolve it, but also with the value of helping other companies conceive their capabilities through this open source guide.

Expanding on the Systems and Tools issue, there is a large team dedicated to systematizing this journey, providing indicators, data, and tools for CS teams to better manage their portfolios. There is a strong focus on product telemetry, to measure usage by features, lines, and internal breaks that feed product strategy, commercial strategy, as well as CS automated playbooks to act based on customer behavior. In portfolio management, they usually work with a 5-pillar Health score. Metrics for product usage, renewal risk/CS sentiment, customer value generation (ROI), customer voice (surveys), and customer engagement (participation in events, schedules, certifications) also feed the playbooks, and everything leads to the main metric, which is the Net Retention Rate, which is currently above 130%. This is a very relevant number, which shows that the customers acquired not only stay but also use GitLab solutions more.

Another way to engage the community was the launch of an LXP (Learning Experience) platform in 2021, so that people can get to know and deepen their knowledge of GitLab's products as well as get certified. The demand was so high at the beginning that it created bottlenecks and difficulties, but it validated a hypothesis that there was pent-up demand for this type of content and today they have a more consistent platform.

All of this defines the Open Core Company that is part of GitLab's culture, as well as continuous learning. And Hugo, connected to this culture and recalling the beginning of his career, finally took advantage of one of the few benefits of the pandemic to complete his Bachelor's of Science in Business Administration from the University of Colorado Denver, and continues to study and improve himself.

And an extra: GitLab has an open position in Latin America for a Solution Architect. Anyone interested?

https://boards.greenhouse.io/gitlab/jobs/6649663002?gh_src=89acfa6b2us