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Beyond the Blueprint: Redefining Incident Management with JJ Tang

JJ Tang is the co-founder and CEO of Rootly, a company redefining how organizations approach incident management and reliability. Rootly is powering 100s of customers like Figma, NVIDIA, Canva, and more.

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Guest Resources

Rootly – Visit their website and get a free demo.

JJ’s LinkedIn – Connect with JJ on LinkedIn.

3 Value Bombs

1) Solve the problem from many angles. Go out, source and find your customers where they are and work ruthlessly.

2) All good leaders need to be operators. If the CEO can’t do it, you can’t expect anyone to do it.

3) Efficiency is the best force and function for prioritization.

Sponsor

YT 100: Email JLD to learn more about making YouTube magic in 100 days: john@eofire.com

Show Notes

**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.

Today’s Audio MASTERCLASS: Beyond the Blueprint: Redefining Incident Management

[1:13] – JJ shares something that he believes about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

  • All good leaders are in the details and operators at heart. You’ll lose a lot of the real magic when it comes to building a business so it is important to maintain that magic even it it feels that it doesn’t scale, it does, there’s just different versions and flavors in it.

[2:22] –  JJ talks about the importance of seeing the problem firsthand.

  • The context of their business is they build an on call incident management solution used by companies like LinkedIn, Figma. They begin with an internal tool to take the the problem in the company and after they have gathered momentum, they will talk to somebody outside of the company. Then they start to realize that they are not the only ones who are running into incidents and that there is a general solution to their problem.
  • They were able to see the problem and was able to find the solution and it turned out to be a hit and became a product and a business for them.

[4:02] – JJ talks about how does one go from Idea to MVP.

  • You have to solve the problem from many angles. You need to go out, source and find your customers where they are and work ruthlessly.
  • In the early stage of their business, he spends 8 hours per day in pool calling and sending emails even if he didn’t sold anything. That is how they find their MVP or what the customers are buying.

[5:33] – JJ  talks about embracing the hard moments.

  • All good leaders need to be operators. He didn’t want to hire sales people and he need to make sure that he can do that job eventhough he has never sold anything before. He believes that if the CEO can’t do it, you can’t expect anyone to do it.
  • They gained early traction in bringing customers and ended up with a global footprint. They supported customers in San Francisco, New York, London, Portugal, Australia and Japan. They needed to provide world class support and in order to provide global coverage they have to work 24 hours. They set up every 2 hours round the clock to check and answer every question that their customers have and they did it for 400 days.
  • That paid a dividend today because now he has an immense amount of empathyfor the things that their customers are building and solving and they were able to evolve their product faster than before.

[9:12] – JJ talks about their early interaction with their customers.

  • For their first 100-200 customers, there is a tendency to get distracted by the metrics in the dashboard instead of looking at it as customers insights. For him, it is an injustice so what he did was he deleted every dashboard and told his team to talk to each and every customer  and ask what they love and hate about their tool.

[10:48] – A timeout to thank our sponsor!

[11:45] – JJ talks about scaling a product while scaling the business.

  • The reality is raw hours really matter when you wear all the hats in your business. If you become that person for the longest time then you have the luxury to scale it more and more because it will give you the right empathy in your business.
  • Efficiency is the best force and function for prioritization.
  • They had a breakthrough in their messaging. They notoiced that their messaging was not resonating because not many people are converting from a demo to doing a trial because they advertise they product as a big all in one incident management platform for big and small companies. Customers tell them that it is a good product but just not for them at that time.
  • They changed their messaging form an all in one incident management platform to help you manage incident on slack. People got it and resonated with it and majority of those who took the demo also went to trial and ended up buying the tool.
  • They didn’t change anything in the product side but only played around their messaging. His competitors copied that playbook because it works.

[14:47] – JJ  talks about the mistakes he and others have made whilst scaling.

  • They have no shortage of mistakes and the most costly and expensive mistake is hiring the wrong people into the business. People who are interested in a paycheck and a lifestyle rather than being part of a mission and the excitement.
  • Another mistake they made was betting to several leaders they expected that will build and function but turned out that they can build it better than them.
  • Leaders that were too eager to just replicate the exact playbook they did from their previous successes. The reality is, your business is unique and you need to define it in you own way and that one size fits all doesn’t exist.

[18:32] – JJ talks about the future of Rootly.

  • The future of Rootly is very exciting. They spent the last 2 years on how to help companies to be consistently fast in their incident management processes, and more reliable as they go to the market and make liability as a superpower in their organization.
  • As technology shifts, they are leaning into how to help companies be more proactive, thinking through challenges and issues before they even arise and be more predictable from that standpoint.
  • They invest in things that are not going to change like the level of care and attention to customer support.
  • People, process and culture are important. Think with the team and set goals for the year.

[20:39] – JJ gives his key takeaway.

  • You will always feel an impostor every single day but just have the confidence, believe and bet in yourself and embrace the challenges.
  • Life is really boring when you play it on easy mode. It is an underrated privilege to be stressed or be in a position of vulnerability when tackling problems but in time you will appreciate it.

[22:09] – Call to action.

[23:07] – Thank you to our Sponsor!

Killer Resources!

1) The Common Path to Uncommon Success: JLD’s 1st traditionally published book! Over 3000 interviews with the world’s most successful Entrepreneurs compiled into a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment!

2) Free Podcast Course: Learn from JLD how to create and launch your podcast!

3) Podcasters’ Paradise: The #1 podcasting community in the world!

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