Keith Cline, VentureFizz
EriK, thanks so much for joining us.
Erik Mirandette, Tulip
Hey, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, Keith.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
I'm excited to talk to you because we last chatted like three years ago about Tulip. And it's awesome to do these videos where we can see progress three years later. So if people aren't familiar with the company, Tulip, you know, your tagline, you're building the premier frontline operations platform. So what does that mean? What does the company do?
Erik Mirandette, Tulip
Yeah, at the end of the day, we want to give people who run the frontline of operations, the right tools to do their job better. So, you know, we believe deeply in citizen development, we believe that the people who are closest to the problem who know their operations inside and out are also the best physician to solve these problems. We're all about giving them the right tools and making their jobs easier.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So this is obviously focused on the manufacturing industry, which is a very complex industry. And this is a complex platform. So how does it all work?
Erik Mirandette, Tulip
Yeah, well, the way it works is, that our platform is a no code app platform. What that means is that if you know how to use PowerPoint, if you're comfortable with Excel, and you understand if then logic, you can build applications that solve very specific problems in your operational environment, you can then connect these applications with one another, to create this, you know, this mesh network of software that solves very specific problems in the operation, but also captures really important in hard to capture production data. So you know, if a line went down, why did the line go down? You know, if a machine is off, why is machine off, a lot of times this information has to be combined across both, you know, the machines and the people who are actually working in these environments. So like first pass yield of a product quality, defect data production tracking, you know, these are some of the use cases that our customers take on to
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
It's working in an industry that's vastly underserved. That'd be in manufacturing. So I think Tulip has really made a major impact to the ability to automate a lot of the processes.
Erik Mirandette, Tulip
Yeah, it's pretty wild, you know, you step into many of these production environments. I mean, if you think about it for a moment, you know, everything that we interact with, in our day to day lives was built somewhere by someone. I mean, it sounds kind of obvious. But if you actually stop to reflect on that, for a moment, it is massive on a scale that kind of defies comprehension. If you were to step foot in any of these environments, what you see, it's like stepping back in time, it's as if the internet never happened, you know. So you see, you know, pen and paper, you see checklists, you see visual, you know, like printed word constructions, you see grease boards, you see stopwatches and tickers. You know, it's, it's, it's kind of wild to think that if you were to approach an engineer today and say, Hey, I've got to solve this very complex data problem, you know, they're gonna say, Okay, put the supercomputer in your pocket away, put that down. And let's pick up a pen and paper and start doing some manual calculations. But that is actually the reality that 99% of manufacturing operations and life sciences operations globally are actually in today.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
It's you've been with the company for about eight years now. I thought it'd be helpful to talk about, you know, how did you get involved with a company in your career progression? Since joining?
Erik Mirandette, Tulip
Yeah, well the company has certainly changed a lot in the last eight years. So when I joined, we were just fresh out of lab, I think we had, you know, five engineers and three dogs or something like that. And when I first you know, jumped in with the team here, I really led a lot of our business development work. So you know, think first 1020 Customers figuring out what their pain points were, and how we could help partner with them to solve their problems. And then, you know, about a year or so, and that moved over, and built out and ran our post sales operations for what ended up being almost, you know, four or five years, this is customer success. This is professional services, Application Engineering, support out management, project management, as well as some other teams that evolved under the post sales operation. And then a few years ago, about two and a half years ago, moved over to my current role, which is head of product and ecosystem, head of product is fairly straightforward. So that's product management, design and operations. ecosystem is a little bit unique to look, but this basically describes all the domains that are adjacent to the core platform. So think about our product, education to university, the knowledge base, our community, the developer program, our library of best practices, and things like this.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
I think that's a perfect testament for how someone can shape and really grow their career at Tulip. And that speaks highly about your culture. So let's bring everyone up to speed on the state of the state of the company. Where do things stand since we last chatted three years ago?
Erik Mirandette, Tulip
Yeah, well, I think last time we had this call, we were all working remote, you know, you know, taking calls from our bedrooms and figuring out how to navigate the pandemic. But we've been busy these last couple of years. So I think when we last spoke, we had probably just under 100, folks. We're north of 300 employees today. Our headquarters is here in Boston. We've got about 30,000 square feet here in Boston. We also have offices in Budapest in Budapest and Munich. So we've, you know, we've really explained it's expanded into a global company in the last couple of years since we've talked and our customer base has, you know, sort of followed a similar track So, you know, north of 10x scale factor in terms of total customer served, as well as the total number of individuals interacting with our platform day to day to solve their problems.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Right. So you're continuing to grow, which is amazing. What's the culture like working at Tulip? What's the day to day like?
Erik Mirandette, Tulip
Well, we, first of all, I think we're, you know, we're a very aggressive company. So we have ambitious goals, we work really hard to achieve that, you know, we look at the scope and the scale of the problem that we're solving, you know, as I said, before, massive, massive, total addressable market for us and massive opportunity to solve this problem, you know, across frontline operations generally. And I think that that sense of mission, and that opportunity really drives the sense of urgency, the sense of focus in the sense of mission back here to look. So Tulip is very transparent place. It's a meritocracy through and through, there's very, you know, we don't we don't do politics, we, you know, we're here to get the job done. And we're here to work collaboratively to get that done. So, you know, blameless post mortems, we celebrate the ideas that are best, and you know, and oftentimes, it's hard to figure out exactly where that idea originated from. But we work together and we work hard.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Right? So regardless of economic conditions, you know, the top tier talent, there's always options in front of them to choose where they want to work next. So why should Tulip be on somebody's radar?
Erik Mirandette, Tulip
I mean, if you want to come in, yeah, I think you said, you know, you alluded to it a little bit earlier, but, you know, if you want to come in and you want opportunity, and you want responsibility, and you want to grow, the best place to do that is a company that solving a really big hairy problem that is also growing. And that's certainly the case with Tulip. So, you know, I think this is a place where if you come in and you you know, you want to be challenged, you want to grow, you want to increase, you know, your total responsibility and the types of problems that you're going to be solving to have, it's a great place to do that. The other thing I would say is, this is a the smartest crew of people I've ever worked with in my life, you know, maybe I shouldn't say this on record, but it's totally true. So, but like it's not, I often walk into a room and feel like Man, I've got to be the dumbest person in this room. Because there are a lot of just brilliant, brilliant people here. And they're brilliant in all sorts of effective ways. Across the board. We've got phenomenal engineers from phenomenal product thinkers, phenomenal project managers and sales experts. So if you want to get in and be exposed to truly the best people who are working on really interesting and hard problems grow very quickly. But then also maybe you don't know where you want to be in five years or 10 years. And you're sort of figuring this out. Tulip is still at the stage where you can see what are all these other roles, and we very much support lateral moves promotions from within. So I think it's a really special place in that regard.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Well, if you are interested in exploring opportunities at Tulip, just to reiterate what Eric said, this is a massive opportunity. The manufacturing industry is going through radical transformation and Tulip has the platform to make it all happen. So go to their company page on VentureFizz to see all their job listings, go to venturefizz.com/tulip, and you'll see their job listings there. Eric, thanks so much for taking the time to bring us up to speed on all the great things happening at the company.
Erik Mirandette, Tulip
Hey really my pleasure, Keith, thanks for having me.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
