The following interview is a conversation we had with Sam Fonoimoana, Founder & CEO of Datajoin, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: Sam Fonoimoana, Founder & CEO of Datajoin: $3.5 Million Raised to Help Brands Leverage Customer Behavioral Insights
Sam Fonoimoana
Hey, Brett, thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, I really appreciate it.
Brett
Yeah, no problem at all. And just so our listeners can search your name later on, would you mind saying your last name for us? We talked about that in a pre interview. I was a bit nervous to try Brownson. It’s a long name.
Sam Fonoimoana
No worries, Brett. Start every day. You probably have someone last name you got to pronounce. So it’s Sam Funoy moana Sam Fonoimoana.
Brett
That’s helpful. Thank you. And now let’s start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background.
Sam Fonoimoana
Sure. So Sam Fonoimoan. I’m the founder and CEO of Datajoin. I’m an island boy, born in Hawaii, grew up in Hawaii and in California as well. And I come from a big family, and I know what it’s like to have to fight for food at dinnertime since I was a kid. But I really enjoyed growing up in Hawaii and La. With my family. And when I left home to go to college, I came here to Utah, which is where I live now, here in the Rocky Mountains. And it’s beautiful. I live here in Orum, which is about 40 minutes south of Salt Lake City. We’re close. We’re right here in what’s called Silicon Slopes, kind of our self dubbed tech community title. But there’s a great tech community here in Utah Valley and then in the city of Utah together. I went to school at BYU, which is right down the road here.
Sam Fonoimoana
If you can see me, you will see my alma mater. I’m wearing my alma mater hoodie right now. Go Kugs. And, yeah, I went to school, and I studied entrepreneurship as an undergrad, and then I also went back for the MBA program, also here at BYU out of the Marriott School of Management. And I studied finance, so I think my career has been in data analytics and in finance. But, yeah, I think I got a lot of my ideas and a lot of my skill set just from those early college years where a lot of seeds were planted. My wife’s from Tahiti, so I’m Samoan Hawaiian. My wife’s Tahitian, so we definitely have a Polynesian home here with our seven beautiful kids. And, yeah, people, when I meet them. They say, hey, you’re crazy. I mean, you’re pretty busy, you’re running a startup and you got seven kids.
Sam Fonoimoana
And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I really love my family. I love what I do and I love doing what I do for my family to be able to succeed. So, yeah, that’s a little bit about myself.
Brett
Brett wow, that’s amazing. Seven kids. What’s the age range?
Sam Fonoimoana
Yeah, so the oldest is 21. She’s actually married and they have a daughter. So I’m a grandpa, my wife and I. And then the youngest is three, so we’ve still got our own little semi baby. Big baby now, just walking around the house. Yeah, it’s great. It’s never quiet here. I’m glad we did the podcast at this time before the kids get home from school. And it might get a little noisy.
Brett
We’re used to background noise, so we can manage if it does get noisy. So take me back when you moved to Utah, did you move directly from Hawaii to Utah or did you do La. In between?
Sam Fonoimoana
Yeah, so I was born in Hawaii and then we stayed there until I was eight, and then my dad got a new job, actually, with my grandpa. I had a family business in La of boarding care homes for mentally ill and mentally retarded people. So my family just picked up and when I was eight years old, we moved from Hawaii to La. And then, yeah, I spent from eight years old all the way to when I graduated high school in La County. And then from there I got accepted into BYU, one of the only kids in my high school in our part of La. Not many get out and make it a college back in those days. But, yeah, I applied to BYU here in Provo, Utah, and came up here and it really changed my life.
Brett
That’s amazing. And are you seeing more Hawaiian entrepreneurs come to the mainland US and try to build startups? Or how do you view that demographic that you fit in?
Sam Fonoimoana
That’s a good question. So I took my family back in 2016 to Hawaii and helped take care of my parents and to give my kids a taste of island life. And while I was out there, that’s when I ventured off on my own, started doing my own consulting. That’s when I was a full time entrepreneur and I really wanted to try and grow the business out there and stay out there. I mean, that was the life. I would have my meetings in my Ford F 150. I would be parked at the beach of my favorite surf spot, take some meetings, go cast some waves. But no, it never really grew out there. I kept getting more and more business on the mainland and was basically I was almost forced to come back here because I was traveling here so much. That was my story right there.
Sam Fonoimoana
I definitely had to move to the mainland. Adobe is our huge partner. They’re right up the street from us. And so it just made sense for me to be back here on the mainland. Keep that dream alive, though, that one day I’ll be able to return home to the islands once I make it big and all that stuff, right?
Brett
Amazing. I love it. Well, I’m sure you’re definitely an inspiration then as well to some of the other tech entrepreneurs in Hawaii now to go big and to build a tech company. So I’m sure that feels good on your end, I’m guessing. Yeah.
Sam Fonoimoana
You know, when we made the announcement and just over the years, I would get comments just from friends and family, and it’s kind of stressful and heavy. I do things because I love to do them and I want to take care of my family. But I do also recognize that I am just more than myself and my family, but I represent my culture. I just do my best to try to represent as best I can.
Brett
Amazing. I love that. Two questions we like to ask just to better understand what makes you tick as a founder. What CEO do you admire the most and what do you admire about them?
Sam Fonoimoana
Let’s see. I’ve been working with my CEO coach since I’ve got some funding, and that’s one thing that the investors that they recommended. And so just in working with my CEO coach, we’ve talked about a few different CEOs. And one that I really like is the CEO of DoorDash, Tony. I can’t remember his last name. So my CEO coach used to work under Tony, used to run HR over at DoorDash, and I really like his style. For me, personally, I don’t consider myself like a Tony Robbins type or anything of the sorts, like a super high energy guy. Like, you see, some of these CEOs, I consider myself someone who’s efficient. I definitely love relationships. I’m not saying I’m an introvert by any means, but when my coach was talking about his ex CEO, Tony from DoorDash, he really resonated with me. Because Tony, as he describes him, is just someone who’s really efficient, who’s able to get things done, who’s able to challenge people, who also doesn’t necessarily have that high energy persona in many CEOs.
Sam Fonoimoana
And so when my coach told me that, I said, hey, great, that’s good. I was starting to think I’m kind of by myself. Here one of these lower energy efficiency first type of CEOs, but that’s one that comes to mind when I think of CEOs. I’ve been thinking a lot about him in my trainings with my coach.
Brett
Nice. That’s a great call out. DoorDash is. That definitely a great company. What about books? Is there a specific book that had a major impact on you as a founder? And this can be a business book, or it can just be a personal book that really influenced how you view the world?
Sam Fonoimoana
Yeah, this is a good question. I’ve read a lot of different business books. I’m trying to remember the author. I think his name is John Maxwell. He writes a lot of different leadership books and I just really like his approach to leadership. I mean, it’s only recent that I’ve been at this CEO level pretty much since I’ve been running the company and I spent a long time at the director level, but I spent a lot of the time before as analyst. And I really like his message about leadership. He talks a lot about how leadership is not necessarily your title, but it’s really influence. Like influence is leadership. And the way that you get influence, he says, is by being a good partner, doing good work with others, you start to become the go to for those people that are around you. You start to build that trust with them, that’s leadership.
Sam Fonoimoana
And so I feel like I was able to rise up pretty quickly in my career. I’ve read his books now for the last 15 years and I feel like those principles have always stuck with me. You know, what if I just partner well and try to do what’s right for the company, I stand up for what I feel is right for the company and I’m dependable, then people rely on me and that’s leadership. So. Yeah, I think his name is John Maxwell.
Brett
Yeah, I think I’ve read a few of his books as well. It was like very irrefutable Laws of Leadership or something along those lines. But I do recall his books are always very free of fluff and BS and it’s just like very simple and straight to the point, which is very refreshing.
Sam Fonoimoana
Oh yeah, it’s good stuff. I really like it. So anyone, even if you’re not in a leadership role, you definitely could be a leader.
Brett
Cool. Let’s switch gears here and let’s talk about data join. So let’s start with the origin story behind the company.
Sam Fonoimoana
So, data join, I guess let me just rewind. In my early career, my first tech company that I worked for was One one Marketing over here in Utah and I got hired on as the chief statistician for them. I didn’t run hardly any statistics for that company. What I ended up doing is combining different data from different data sources. So that company was a lead gen company for the University of Phoenix and these other for profit universities. And the marketing team in our company was trying to find leads that we can sell off to the University of Phoenix, for example. And the success metric really is if those leads ended up enrolling for school at the University of Phoenix or whatever in university it was. So we had a case where our clients had half of the data, they really had all the success metric data right.
Sam Fonoimoana
If the leads actually enrolled and our team had all the marketing spend data, all the campaigns that drove the leads. So I really learned the ins and outs of doing data engineering and being able to connect two different data sources correctly and accurately so that we could see that full picture. And I left one one marketing to go to Ancestry.com, then I left to go to Domo. And I saw the same situation at each of those companies where there’s disparate data sets that they had valuable data in each system, but they just didn’t talk to each other at all. And so connecting those data sets together, those systems, that became my bread and butter and yeah, bread, I couldn’t get away from it even if I wanted to. At this point, this is what I know how to do. I would put myself up I don’t really like to brag or challenge what I put myself up against anyone in this particular task.
Sam Fonoimoana
And that’s where Datajoin comes from. It’s really the evolution of that.
Brett
Nice. I love that background story. And when it comes to the customers, and I see you have some amazing customers on the site, how would they describe the problem that you’re solving for them specifically and then the benefits that they’re seeing from the platform?
Sam Fonoimoana
Sure. So I think at a high level marketers, they want to be able to see the fruits of their labor. So they want to be able to see not just how much they spent that’s easy, but they want to see how much, especially if you’re a B, two B marketer, they want to see how much pipeline that they’ve driven. They want to see how many close deals, not only to optimize, but really to get that credibility and respect from the rest of the stakeholders of the company. So I think that was the early days of Datajoin. All were doing was integrating Salesforce pipeline data and deal data back into marketing systems like Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics or Google Ads. And then that way they can get that full 360, that full customer journey, closed loop view of their efforts. I still think that stands true today.
Sam Fonoimoana
There’s a lot of marketers out there. They want to be able to see the fruits of their labor, show the fruits of their labor to everyone in the company and especially to the stakeholders. Because at B two B, you probably know this, but sales takes the cake normally because it’s easy to say, hey, we closed 20 deals this quarter, or whatnot. So I would say, yeah, that’s the early days. Although I would definitely say that our use cases are pivoting this last year or two.
Brett
With Datajoin, you’ve got some incredibly impressive logos. H and R block, ARP, Adobe Equifax, VMware, and that’s just a few of the logos that you have. How are we able to land logos like that? As an early stage startups, I think that’s something that all early stage startups that we talk to on the show. Struggle with?
Sam Fonoimoana
Yes, nobody really knows data join. At least not yet. So what we had to do, because we’re kind of a small fish in a huge pond, is that we partnered with one of the biggest fishes in the pond. And that’s Adobe. So Adobe, this comes back to kind of my leadership with John Maxwell. But I have a few friends in my career who I’ve worked closely with back at Domo and at Ancestry. We did everything together. We solved LinkedIn optimization problems together. We played horse together on the basketball hoop outside of the office. We did quite a bit of things together. And long story short, those guys became product managers at Adobe. They know what I can do, they know my skill about connecting data sources together. And basically got me in as an Adobe partner. I was able to show the Adobe ecosystem what data joint could do with these integrations.
Sam Fonoimoana
And because of that, our official Adobe partnership we have, Adobe CSMS will bring us some of their customers who are looking to integrate the systems because they got that level of trust and understanding with us. And so that’s how this tiny goldfish was able to get some of those big names that you said.
Brett
Wow, that’s amazing. And are there any numbers that you can share that highlight attraction that you’re seeing?
Sam Fonoimoana
Sure. I think none of our numbers are public in terms of revenue. But I can just tell you that up until the time of fundraise, were able to acquire 15 Fortune 500 companies on our own as customers. And I can tell you this year that Adobe has asked us to present at Summit, which is huge for us. This will be our first time ever doing that. And that Adobe has just yesterday, actually, we had this offer, this joint promotion with the Adobe product marketing teams and the marketo product marketing teams, marketo is owned by Adobe to be able to push out our product to the joint customer base. And so for us, that’s huge that Adobe believes in us this much and what we can do for them that they’re willing to push us out to their customer base like this. So yeah, those are some of our biggest wins right now.
Sam Fonoimoana
That kind of talk about the traction over the last couple of years. And we’re really excited. It just heading into Adobe Summit in Vegas in March.
Brett
Nice. That’s amazing. And that’s super impressive too. Landing 15 enterprise accounts before you had any funding, that’s something that I think every founder listening probably dreams of being able to achieve. So, congrats on the success there.
Sam Fonoimoana
Oh, thank you.
Brett
Now, what about market categories? How do you think about market categories? Is this a new category creation play? Or is this really chipping into and transforming an existing market category?
Sam Fonoimoana
That’s a good question. I do feel like we are in a crowded space. If you think of integration, data integration tools, there’s going to be a ton that come to mind. If you think about marketing analytics tools, there’s going to be also a ton that come to mind. But yet we’re doing something different here at Data Join. So I believe we are creating our own niche in this marketing analytics space because if you look at those integration tools, they almost always focus on what I’ll call easier integrations, where you can just integrate middle of funnel and bottom of funnel tools together. Like, for example, to integrate Marketo and Salesforce, well, to integrate any two systems, you need some sort of common key between the two systems so that you can connect data or join data properly. So for Marketo and Salesforce, that’s easy because Marketo has an email address, salesforce has an email address, so you’ve got an easy primary key between both systems.
Sam Fonoimoana
So that’s what I call an easy integration. And what most of pretty much all the integration tools are focused on those type of integrations. What we do is all around your web behavioral data, and this is a much tougher task of taking anonymous visitor IDs on your website and trying to connect those to an email address in Salesforce. So this is a task if you try to go into Zapier and plug in this potential combination, it’s not going to pop up. But for us, that’s what we lead out with. This is my area of expertise is B to B. This is what we’re trying to package up in our what we’re calling micro integrations, which is just a fast, much faster integration than, say, like a mule. Soft that’s out there.
Brett
Nice. So is that how you’re describing the platform then? Is it a micro integrations platform or just when you’re looking at the platform side, how do you describe it?
Sam Fonoimoana
Yeah, so for the platform, we call each connection a micro integration because it’s fast, it’s quick. We call our platform though, we’re starting more and more internally to refer to it as a behavioral data platform because we’re basically connecting behavioral data from your web analytics, whether that’s Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics. We are pushing that into Salesforce so that the sales reps know like, hey, what are the latest interesting signals that my customers are doing on the website? Push it over to marketo so that you can have automated triggers or better lead scoring because you’ve got very high intent signals that you’re capturing. So, yeah, more and more internally, we’re starting to refer to it as like a behavioral data platform.
Brett
Amazing. Love that. And when we’re talking about just breaking it through the noise, I know the Adobe partnership there has been critical in helping you rise above all the noise that’s out there these days. What else do you think you’ve gotten right when it comes to rising above the noise?
Sam Fonoimoana
Yeah, I think for us, I don’t think we have the Flashiest crew. I don’t think we have the Smoothest Stalkers or anything like that. But what I think we do have is our ability to build strong working relationships with our customers. And we’re trying to scale this now with Data Join. But that’s one thing. Like, if you were to talk to any of our customers, we have a very high renewal rate. I mean, I will say like 90% plus renewal rate. We have several expansion. Several of our customers have expanded to other micro integrations. And that’s because if you talk to them, I was going to say they love working with Nate Jackson on my team. They love working with Cameron Warren and with myself. We just have a good time solving these problems for them and trying to do more than just set up the integration, but really partner with them and say, hey, this is what great.
Sam Fonoimoana
Now you got the data flowing. This is what’s going to knock their socks off and move the needle for you guys. So I would say that’s our strong suit is that our customers love us. We definitely love them. We send all of our customers. I’m Hawaiian, and if you can see my desk, I’ve got a ukulele right here at my desk, right? Playing it. So we send them all Yukes for Christmas because they know that’s our style. There’s a lot of our employees here. We’re all polynesian. And so I sent them that and I said, hey, man, let’s just jump on a zoom. I’ll give you a 30 minutes lesson. That’s the type of relationship we have with our customers and something that we’re happy about.
Brett
That’s so fun. I love that. And as you brought this product to market, what would you say has been the greatest challenge that you’ve had to overcome?
Sam Fonoimoana
Yeah, it’s tough. I mean, like I mentioned earlier, we’re entering what they call a red ocean back in my entrepreneurship class. It’s full. I mean, it’s very packed with other products that look like us. They even sound like us, but they’re not us. And so I think for us trying to crack the code to be able to differentiate us from the rest of the alternatives out there yeah, that’s an ongoing challenge for us. They say data join. Oh, well, we already use Zapier or data join.
Brett
Oh, yeah.
Sam Fonoimoana
We already have MuleSoft, an enterprise data moving tool. But it’s a great challenge. It’s really helped us to refine our message, really just buckle down with our customers and our prospects in the market to get their feedback. So I think it’s definitely making us stronger. It’s a hard nut to crack, I’ll definitely say that.
Brett
Yeah, I can imagine. And last question here, what’s the vision for the company? This could be the Pivot that you’re working on currently and just what that three year mission and vision really looks like for us.
Sam Fonoimoana
I mean, my vision and my mission for Data Join, if I take it to that 30,000 foot level. If you look at the state of marketing today, if you look at all the emails that you got in your inbox this morning at A.m., all of you at the same time, you’ll see that most of them are completely irrelevant to you. Or they could be relevant, but just the wrong timing. And the same for the ads that you see as you surf the Internet. And so for us at Data Join, we have a vision of a better world of marketing, a higher level of targeting so that marketers don’t spam and anger the market and dilute their brand, but they can really just do intelligent, safe targeting for those who are just truly interested in learning more about your product. And so we feel like more than any other tool out there that we could facilitate this because companies are already sitting on this data that they need to be able to accomplish this.
Sam Fonoimoana
They just need to connect it up in all their other systems. And we’re the only tool out there that’s really focused on doing this. And so that’s our vision to make marketing not suck. Marketing is not very good. I mean, sure it still drives a lot of pipeline and drives billions and trillions of dollars, but it could be a lot better to where you still can generate that money but not bug everybody in the process. So that’s the long term vision as far as the platform is concerned. Yeah, we are really trying to build out for Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics right now. We can send that data to certain marketing automation platforms and certain CRMs and certain ad platforms. Our goal is within three years we’ll be able to send it to every send your web analytics behavioral data to every platform in your stack and you can go bi directional, bring it back into your web analytics as well.
Sam Fonoimoana
And then not just that, but once we have that connection in place, then you can build some very powerful customer journey, customer profile reporting similar to what the CDPs are trying to do, but they just don’t do the groundwork of getting all the underlying connections in place to do it well. So we’re kind of taking the different approach. We’re trying to do all the connections first and then we’re going to snap on this customer profile that is going to be super powerful first for marketers.
Brett
Nice. I love that. And as the consumer of a lot of marketing emails, I hope it does get better because it’s pretty messy right now. All right, Sam. Well, unfortunately, that’s all we’re going to have time to cover for today’s interview.
Sam Fonoimoana
Before we wrap up.
Brett
If people want to follow along with your journey as you build, where’s the best place for them to go?
Sam Fonoimoana
So you can find me on LinkedIn, that’s where I’m most active. I post several times a week. You could also check out our website datajoin.com. And once again on LinkedIn, it’s Sam Fonoimoana. I’m the only Sam Fonoimoana on LinkedIn, so it should be easy enough to find me. Yeah, that’s where I hang out.
Brett
Awesome. Sam, thank you so much for taking the time to chat and share your vision. This is all super exciting and I wish you the best of luck in executing on this vision.
Sam Fonoimoana
Hey, appreciate it, Brett. Thanks again.
Brett
No problem. Let’s keep in touch.
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