Why we have not yet failed as a startup.

Here is the short answer. I am a data point of one who is just sharing my experience. This is a thank you note to my team and our shareholders. Forum 360 is my third startup and the reason we have come so far, working with very difficult technology, is by running lean with a diverse and passionate team. Read on for more context or message me on LinkedIn to discuss in more detail. We can show you what good measurement looks like in the context of business relationships or you can view yourself at www.forum360.com.au .

I read this op-ed from Bill on a cold winter's morning in New York back in 2013 while typing up feedback to a CEO who I had just taken on a roadshow to meet with investors. While less noble, it struck me at the time that we were missing good measurement for what really matters when earning an investment or selling a product or service - trustworthiness. More broadly, feedback itself is often third party handled making it subjective and latent. All meeting or call notes that are entered into a CRM are subjective. Self-assessment surveys are also subjective and surveys that focus on NPS do not measure any of the factors needed to determine whether you are a trusted advisor. Over 88% of business buyers ultimately transact with someone they regard as a trusted advisor (LinkedIn, 2020 State of Sales Report).

Bill's quote has remained with me ever since and through all of our ups and downs these last six years, my team and I draw our passion from helping our customers better measure what really matters in any sales or IR strategy.

Working with live video communications has been difficult for us. Its much easier today thanks to the advances in webRTC and the steps taken by video platforms to open their technology to third party providers via their respective marketplaces. For us though it has been quite the journey. We started researching the problem and solutions with our network, forming the company, around the same time webRTC was embraced by Safari. It would be another five years before the technology was ready for scaling on mobile devices. It was not until four years after we started our research that the major video platforms launched their marketplaces for third party apps. And it is only this year where we can share detailed analytics and recommendations on trustworthiness, minutes after a customer facing representative has finished their meeting or call. So, it took a while for the technology to get to where we needed it to be to deliver good measurement at scale in a timely manner. During this time, our team became more diverse with deep expertise around compliance, cybersecurity, vendor management, architecture and AI. Our team today has a diverse range of skills with deep expertise solving the challenges that we have faced.

The advances in live video communication have been nothing short of remarkable. Today, we reach meeting attendees no matter where they are located at their convenience using the browser they use every day to read the news on the internet, or the video communications platform they prefer. While we believe that the majority of sales meetings will move to video, in-person meetings remain very important and a great place to measure what really matters in the sales process. Here, we reduce subjectivity and duplication making it easier for customer facing representatives to collect, measure and share feedback direct from the customer.

Throughout our journey we have remained lean and heavily reliant on the goodwill of our team. Let me emphasize the point, we have only made it this far thanks to the goodwill of our team. That is the team who work on Relate every day but also shareholders. Our company operates with a burn rate 30% of the average San Francisco Bay Area startup at the same stage. Our shareholders have been happy to reward the hard work of our team with sweat equity and our team believe passionately in the economic improvement that good measurement will bring to business relationships. Thank you to my team. Thank you to our shareholders and stay tuned for a major announcement from us this week.