Ultimate Partner® 293 – The $500B Cloud Commitment Opportunity Are You Being Left Behind?
Master the $500B Cloud Marketplace Engine
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In this compelling discussion, Vince Menzione sits down with Dexter Hardy, founder of Ntegral and the visionary behind Spark, to deconstruct the massive transformation happening within the cloud ecosystem. Dexter shares his journey of evolving from a traditional systems integrator to a marketplace powerhouse with over 300 solutions and customers in 100 countries, revealing the “Marketplace Operating System” that drives global sales without a massive headcount. They dive deep into the Spark GTM methodology, discussing how companies can bridge the gap between building a solution and actually driving “Get It Now” transactions while navigating the $500 billion committed cloud-spend landscape. From the nuances of multi-party private offers to the critical role of AI in becoming a “frontier firm,” this episode provides a high-level masterclass for any partner looking to turn the marketplace into their most effective revenue stream.
Key Takeaways
- The cloud marketplace represents a potential $500 billion in committed spend that partners cannot access without MAC-eligible, transactable solutions.
- Marketplace as a Service (MaaS) helps traditional SIs pivot to becoming SDCs or ISVs by providing a strategic roadmap for IP conversion.
- Successful marketplace strategy requires a “Marketplace Operating System” that aligns digital sales with your internal operations and business goals.
- The “Get It Now” economy allows for 24-hour global sales and lead generation without the need for traditional manual email or phone chains.
- Becoming a “Frontier Firm” means combining human experience with AI to do things faster, better, and more efficiently than the competition.
- Co-selling is evolving beyond just the hyperscalers to include rich, multi-party private offers involving resellers and distributors.
If you’re ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community.
At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins.
Key Tags:
Integral, Spark, Marketplace as a Service, MaaS, Marketplace Operating System, Marketplace Strategy, Transactable Offers, Get It Now button, SI to ISV pivot, SDC, Microsoft Marketplace, AWS Marketplace, Google Cloud Marketplace, IP Co-sell, MAC eligible, Multi-party private offers, REO, Reseller enabled offers, Cloud Committed Spend, Frontier Firm, AI agents, Spark GTM methodology, Marketplace Optimization, Digital Sales Flywheel.
Transcript:
Dexter Hardy Audio Episode
[00:00:00] Dexter Hardy: AI in the hands of someone who has no idea what they’re doing is just a, it’s a faster way to failure, right? Yeah. ’cause they have, they
[00:00:06] Vince Menzione: still don’t understand the concepts.
[00:00:11] Vince Menzione: We just finished Ultimate Partners Winter Retreat here in beautiful Boca to a sold out crowd. Today I’m joined by Dexter Hardy, the founder of Integral for a compelling discussion. Dexter, welcome back to the podcast. Great to be here, Vince. It’s
[00:00:29] Dexter Hardy: always a pleasure.
[00:00:30] Vince Menzione: It is so good to have you back in Boca.
[00:00:33] Vince Menzione: Uh, we just wrapped up our ultimate partner executive winter retreat. We call it the Winter Retreat now.
[00:00:39] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:00:39] Vince Menzione: It’s still February when this airs. It’ll probably be March or April.
[00:00:43] Dexter Hardy: Okay.
[00:00:43] Vince Menzione: But, um, yeah, the weather in the north has been, they’ve had a tough winter.
[00:00:49] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. It’s been brutal
[00:00:50] Vince Menzione: for, it’s been brutal. Even, even Atlanta where you are.
[00:00:53] Vince Menzione: Had a little bit of winter this year as well.
[00:00:54] Dexter Hardy: I was happy to get on the flight. Yeah. It was like 29 degrees the day out, so,
[00:00:59] Vince Menzione: so, um, this is your second time Yeah. On Ultimate Partner. And we’ve been friends for, we’re just talking about this. You’ve been to every single one of our Ultimate Partner events.
[00:01:10] Vince Menzione: Nine events,
[00:01:12] Dexter Hardy: yep.
[00:01:12] Vince Menzione: Three times here in Boca and then in other cities like Dallas and Las Colinas. Seattle, Seattle and Reston. Oh my goodness. And we’re back in Seattle again in May. So, uh, we’ve been, we’ve been busy. We’ve been busy. Both of us have
[00:01:27] Dexter Hardy: Scott Myer
[00:01:28] Vince Menzione: up and we’ve been, and we were introduced. We’ve been friends and worked together.
[00:01:31] Vince Menzione: And so I would love to get caught up on you and Integral.
[00:01:35] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:01:36] Vince Menzione: Um, the first time we sat down, we talked about Integral as a marketplace. Uh, customer base or, or, or vendor supporting the marketplace.
[00:01:45] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:01:46] Vince Menzione: And you were, you’ve been, uh, showcased at Microsoft with the Marketplace organization. You’ve done some astounding things in terms of driving business without like a big sales force, you know, and driving marketplace sales, uh, to very high levels.
[00:02:02] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:02:03] Vince Menzione: And, uh, and now you, I’ll call it a little bit of a twist and turn, but now. You’ve taken all the great learnings, and I’m probably sharing some of your thunder here, but you’ve taken all the great learnings that you’ve had in marketplace and your business
[00:02:16] Dexter Hardy: mm-hmm.
[00:02:16] Vince Menzione: And now you’re like looking at all these other companies, they’re probably trying to do the same thing and finding ways to help them.
[00:02:21] Vince Menzione: So let’s, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about where you’re going.
[00:02:25] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So, so thanks for that. And it’s always a pleasure to be, you know, in the room with you, especially on the podcast, uh, seeing it grow over the years. And, um, to kind of double click on. How did we get to where we are with, uh, spark Bi Integral?
[00:02:40] Dexter Hardy: Um, it’s our marketplace as a service offering. Um, we
[00:02:46] Vince Menzione: marketplace as a service. You get that? I just wanna make sure people are listening and watching. Get that. That’s a, that’s a new acronym for me.
[00:02:53] Dexter Hardy: That’s a new one. But, but what we, how do we get there? So to your point, yes, we. We’re a, um, marketplace first organization looking at the digital sales leaned in heavily on marketplace.
[00:03:08] Dexter Hardy: Um, and what we were doing internally was we created our marketplace operating system. Like literally, how do we run our business? How do we digitize, how do we get those, uh, how do we turn the marketplace into our 24 hour sales guy? Yeah. Taking all those lessons learned how you deal with the hyperscale or how do you understand, you know, the, the signals that’s happening in the market.
[00:03:33] Dexter Hardy: Uh, coupling that with, because we’ve been a member of this wonderful organization and getting into the partner community ecosystem, we get asked a million times, I bet. What do you do? How do you do it? That’s help us understand marketplace and so what we. What we saw there was an opportunity to both lean into the challenges that other partners are facing.
[00:04:00] Dexter Hardy: If you’re an SI that’s trying to pivot
[00:04:02] Vince Menzione: yep,
[00:04:03] Dexter Hardy: and be in the marketplace, you’re already established company, how do you create Transactable offers? How do we take the the marketplace opportunity and leverage AI and put our agents in the marketplace? Our aha moment was this is, this is an en enablement opportunity that we can get into and basically be the first ones in because we leaned into it, we understand it.
[00:04:35] Dexter Hardy: What makes us different from the other companies is we actually use that methodology every day.
[00:04:43] Vince Menzione: For those who maybe didn’t listen to the last podcast we did together, I know this story, but I want others to know the context of it. Tell us about your transformation to a marketplace firm.
[00:04:54] Dexter Hardy: Okay, for sure.
[00:04:56] Vince Menzione: Maybe the shorter version.
[00:04:57] Dexter Hardy: The shorter version,
[00:04:57] Vince Menzione: but I, I do know that there was some, you were in business for a long time before this became the business strategy.
[00:05:03] Dexter Hardy: Yeah, so the shortened version business founded 2002, Microsoft partner for many years. Yep. 2020. Si. Si as an si. 2020 COVID.
[00:05:16] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:05:16] Dexter Hardy: Consulting 2.0.
[00:05:17] Dexter Hardy: How do you do what you do at scale for others? Taking your ip, converting it. We did that at 2020. Embraced the marketplace. We created our solutions, deploy them to the marketplace. The rest is history. We leaned in how
[00:05:32] Vince Menzione: many solutions in the
[00:05:33] Dexter Hardy: marketplace, over 300 solutions. I wanna
[00:05:35] Vince Menzione: make sure people
[00:05:35] Dexter Hardy: got that.
[00:05:35] Dexter Hardy: Over a hundred, 300
[00:05:36] Vince Menzione: solutions.
[00:05:37] Dexter Hardy: Over 300 solutions. Yeah. Uh, we have. Customers in over a hundred countries. I mean, and
[00:05:42] Vince Menzione: yeah.
[00:05:43] Dexter Hardy: You know, continuing to build and expand our customer base on a daily basis. And so,
[00:05:48] Vince Menzione: and they’re, and they’re buying when you, while you sleep. I mean, we, we’ve known each other pretty well for a number of years.
[00:05:54] Vince Menzione: And
[00:05:54] Dexter Hardy: yeah,
[00:05:54] Vince Menzione: you have customers like, um, I’ll throw out a number, like 25,000 customers, probably, maybe beyond that. And these customers are buying your solutions. All hours of the day and night,
[00:06:06] Dexter Hardy: right? Yeah. I I love the get it now button in the marketplace. Literally all they have to do to work with us or transact with us is click on, get It Now, and that’s the transactable offer that everyone, there’s this mystique around.
[00:06:19] Dexter Hardy: People are like, well, we don’t have any leads. We can, you know, our, we have an offer in the marketplace and nobody’s clicking on it. And I’m like, Hmm,
[00:06:27] Vince Menzione: yeah,
[00:06:27] Dexter Hardy: we can help you with that. Right? And so, um, you know, that’s how we. Our, our story with that, our background with that was it’s our 24 hour sales guy. We drive our campaigns, we align with the solution plays.
[00:06:41] Dexter Hardy: We’re getting those clicks with, to your point, without this huge army of people. Yeah. And so now we’re saying from a marketplace strategic advisory, a lot of people were saying it earlier, like, you know, marketplace isn’t this adjacent thing to business. How do you strategically think about it as. Um, part of your business all up.
[00:07:03] Dexter Hardy: How do you add that as a revenue stream, uh, for your organization? And yeah, there may be some changes that you need to make, you know, how do you incorporate the channel? How do you add in all of the things that you’re currently doing, but create that as a flywheel for this. Get it now economy.
[00:07:22] Vince Menzione: So all the, I’m, I’m thinking out loud, like there’s probably a lot of people watching you up on stage at these events talking about how you evolved your company and grew it.
[00:07:31] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:07:32] Vince Menzione: Going, that’s me.
[00:07:33] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:07:33] Vince Menzione: That’s me. The old, the old version of you absolutely is them.
[00:07:37] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:07:38] Vince Menzione: And they all, they all want help.
[00:07:39] Dexter Hardy: They all,
[00:07:40] Vince Menzione: everybody wants help in marketplace.
[00:07:41] Dexter Hardy: Right. And
[00:07:43] Vince Menzione: yeah.
[00:07:43] Dexter Hardy: And, and to that end. Because I was them. I understand how their mind, it’s a mindset shift, right? You’re saying, okay, we have these traditional sales, we’re a systems integrator, we have all this ip, these, there are all these things that we can do.
[00:07:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:07:58] Dexter Hardy: I don’t, how do we convert this to transact ability? How do we get our sales teams enabled to sell it? And I was, and my, my feedback and my response to that is, well, one, we have a service for that. It’s our marketplace advisor services. I’m sorry for the plug, but not sorry.
[00:08:16] Vince Menzione: No, we’re, no, we’re gonna plug today as well.
[00:08:18] Vince Menzione: Much as you want.
[00:08:19] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:08:20] Vince Menzione: And then I think about this too, because a lot of these sis are developing, we’re just, uh, talking with Agua about MSPs, developing agents for their customers and then making ’em repeatable.
[00:08:30] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:08:31] Vince Menzione: And so you have other sis that are creating AI tools and agents. Microsoft is created and the, and so has AWS and Google, they’ve created space in their marketplaces for agent AI tools.
[00:08:44] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:08:45] Vince Menzione: And so now you’ve got all these companies that were traditional sis that are now becoming what we would call ISVs or, or SDCs. And they need help in getting these solutions to the marketplace.
[00:08:57] Dexter Hardy: Absolutely.
[00:08:58] Vince Menzione: So, so talk about what you’re doing with Spark.
[00:09:00] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So our concept with Spark is. When you look at enablement, so you’ll have platforms that are enablers and a lot of people will say, well, what makes Spark different?
[00:09:12] Dexter Hardy: Why? Why you versus Tackle Or Sugar?
[00:09:15] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:09:15] Dexter Hardy: Any of the other work span. Work span or any, they’re all friendlys to us because we’re meeting you where you are. Right. In order for you to use their platform, you gotta already have the solution together.
[00:09:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:09:30] Dexter Hardy: Right. They can help you deploy. There’s Deploy. They are a deployment firm or
[00:09:35] Vince Menzione: Right.
[00:09:36] Dexter Hardy: Um, platforms We’re saying
[00:09:38] Vince Menzione: they’re middleware in many respects. Correct. Between the, they’re,
[00:09:41] Dexter Hardy: they’re integrated into the marketplace. They’re highly embedded into the systems behind it, and we’re saying what happens before that? I have no idea what solution to build. I have no idea how we’re gonna take advantage of Marketplace.
[00:09:58] Dexter Hardy: How is Marketplace gonna change? Again, we had these conversations at dinner. Um,
[00:10:04] Vince Menzione: yeah,
[00:10:04] Dexter Hardy: all of the big players are saying, we have channel, we have our sales teams, we have all these things already. How does marketplace play into that for us? And so that Marketplace strategic advisory goes into it and says, here’s how.
[00:10:19] Dexter Hardy: Right. We have a. Our Spark GTM methodology goes into how do those things play together? What are your KPIs or what are your business goals as an organization all up? And then we marry this, basically a Venn diagram of how we marry marketplace with your current objectives. Okay. To not just be this, uh, ubiquitous thing that’s kind of sitting over on the side, like, let’s just put it in marketplace because we need to, and nobody knows it’s there and nobody knows it’s there.
[00:10:49] Dexter Hardy: It’s part of. Everything all up. Your messaging, your sales organization, your, um, documentation that you have for your organization. So now everyone understands, not just you as the, let’s say you’re an SI that you were, but you, the si with your agents and how that plays into your bigger value proposition.
[00:11:10] Dexter Hardy: So take
[00:11:10] Vince Menzione: us through the, go to the methodology you described the Spark methodology.
[00:11:15] Dexter Hardy: Yep. So, um, a lot of people, when they think about. The methodology, you’ll say we’re a, we’re an si. I’m just going to use an example. You’re an si. How, how do I get somebody to click on my, my opportunity? How do I get somebody to understand what we have as a value proposition?
[00:11:39] Dexter Hardy: And I’d say to people, well, there’s this, it’s part of the methodology. There’s product viability. Can you build something? Versus should you build something. Right.
[00:11:50] Vince Menzione: Interesting.
[00:11:51] Dexter Hardy: If you are, if you are out there today and you’re saying, I mean, everybody’s seeing Claude, the agents, you can, you can ask AI to build you pretty much anything.
[00:12:00] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:12:00] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:12:01] Dexter Hardy: Now the question scary and that, that’s a, that, that introduces a new problem. But it’s, can you do it or should you do it?
[00:12:08] Vince Menzione: Yes.
[00:12:09] Dexter Hardy: And and what I’ll tell people is part of our advisory, so the steps are. What is your North Star right now and what is the software that would enable you to get on that AI rocket ship to propel you even further with where you are?
[00:12:27] Dexter Hardy: Those are the solutions that we would try to
[00:12:29] Vince Menzione: Okay.
[00:12:30] Dexter Hardy: That out, pull out of, uh, as part of that marketplace. Um, advisory Second, what partner or partner organizations are you a member of? Is it Microsoft? Is it the AWS? Is it, you know, Google Cloud? Google Cloud, what have you, and let’s say Microsoft. What are solution plays?
[00:12:51] Dexter Hardy: What is Microsoft focused on? How does what you’re doing as an organization align with that go to market? Mm-hmm. Because now you have that jet power of what they’re, um, promoting along with your organization.
[00:13:06] Vince Menzione: Nice.
[00:13:07] Dexter Hardy: And then the final piece is, well, now that you’ve done that, how do I get it into market?
[00:13:12] Dexter Hardy: How do I, uh, get people to click on it? And that’s where some of the secret sauce that I won’t divulge on this,
[00:13:19] Vince Menzione: uh,
[00:13:20] Dexter Hardy: but there is some secret sauce to getting the ICPs to lean in, getting the
[00:13:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:13:25] Dexter Hardy: You know, you’re listing to light up inside of that. And so that’s. You know, that’s at a high level. That’s kind of how the marketplace,
[00:13:32] Vince Menzione: I think what you’re alluding to, and I, I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, but I do think you’ve done a very good job on what I would call maybe digital marketing, maybe.
[00:13:41] Vince Menzione: Would that be the right terminology? Yeah. To make your solutions discoverable, to make people understand that they’re out there and to lean in and be able to purchase them.
[00:13:51] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:13:52] Vince Menzione: Which I think I would say that’s probably part of the secret sauce, probably of Spark. That is what you’re saying because a lot of organizations struggle here.
[00:13:59] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:14:00] Vince Menzione: They put something in the marketplace and nothing ever happens with it. Even even big companies do that. They don’t know how to do it.
[00:14:06] Dexter Hardy: So, so yeah. Without divulging the secret sauce, I had a gentleman ask me yesterday, um, during the conference, so how is this different from SEO? I said, good question.
[00:14:20] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Is is SEOS? Is, is SEO involved? Sure, but that’s not the final answer. Because you could do SEO, that doesn’t mean anybody. That just gets you, doesn’t mean anything. Doesn’t mean anything. And so. That’s why I keep going back to this methodology of really aligning it with, uh, what it is you’re trying to accomplish, who it is you’re trying to get to lean in, and then what is the value proposition?
[00:14:42] Dexter Hardy: Because at the end of the day, Vince, I think even with any service, like I said, we did our first offerings with our R zero offerings and now we’re doing this. It’s what is the value, right? Um, it’s a hard. Thing to do to really wrap your brain around how your, how your business is going to change from, if you’re doing direct sales and you got your bag and you’re out there selling to now, you mean I don’t have to pick up the phone and call you?
[00:15:15] Dexter Hardy: There’s not an email chain that goes out. It’s literally people are just clicking on Get it now to get it
[00:15:21] Vince Menzione: and getting it.
[00:15:22] Dexter Hardy: That’s a, that’s a mind shift change and that’s. To your point, there is some market, there is some marketing expertise that is required.
[00:15:29] Vince Menzione: And we’ve also talked about, I know you and I went down a journey on the co-sell business
[00:15:34] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:15:34] Vince Menzione: And how difficult it can be to get a, a seller from a Microsoft or a Google and Amazon involved, unless it’s, you know, a $10 million transaction, they don’t want to get involved.
[00:15:45] Dexter Hardy: Right.
[00:15:46] Vince Menzione: Uh, you really wanna reach the customer. Because you know, the hyperscalers is great. If you’re driving a ServiceNow or an ADO a big solution, it’s gonna be tens of millions of dollars.
[00:15:56] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:15:57] Vince Menzione: But if you are an SI and you’re selling this as part of maybe a services offering, or you’re selling it as, you know, you’re just selling as a standalone.
[00:16:04] Dexter Hardy: Right?
[00:16:05] Vince Menzione: Um, you want as much eyeballs and transactions as possible and you’re not gonna get that just going co-selling.
[00:16:12] Dexter Hardy: Right. And, and the other part of that I will say about co-sell.
[00:16:17] Dexter Hardy: I think co-sell has gotten like a dirty rap or bad rap around it. Co-sell is with the hyperscaler, but it’s with other partners too.
[00:16:28] Vince Menzione: Sure,
[00:16:28] Dexter Hardy: right? Oh yeah, absolutely. So, um, being in the marketplace gives you the option of co-selling would, not just the hyperscaler, but co-selling with other orgs. And so now anytime that you’ve give, you’ve given yourself that X factor on top of your existing ability to deliver.
[00:16:44] Dexter Hardy: That’s where you’re seeing the true power of marketplace.
[00:16:47] Vince Menzione: And yesterday you were on stage with Jason Rook.
[00:16:50] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:16:51] Vince Menzione: And this was part of the conversation. It was you, Jason Rook and Amit Sinha at, at uh, work Span.
[00:16:58] Dexter Hardy: Mm-hmm.
[00:16:58] Vince Menzione: And part of the conversation was around the, uh, reseller enabled offers. And I think what that’s somewhat of what you’re alluding to is that you have other wait routes to market channels to market.
[00:17:10] Dexter Hardy: Right
[00:17:11] Vince Menzione: through building other partnerships for co-selling. Yeah. That what you, you were alluding to. Yeah.
[00:17:15] Dexter Hardy: So, so yeah, there, there are a million ways to, once you’re in, once you have a transactable offer, that’s when you get the magic unlocks. Right. You, the barrier to entry is being in marketplace with a transactable offer.
[00:17:31] Dexter Hardy: And if you’re outside of that loop, again, the REO. You’re not available. Guess who? Guess who can’t do that?
[00:17:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:17:40] Dexter Hardy: If you’re not in the marketplace, you can’t do that.
[00:17:41] Vince Menzione: Can’t do that.
[00:17:43] Dexter Hardy: Multi-party private offers can’t do that. ’cause you’re not in the marketplace.
[00:17:47] Vince Menzione: No.
[00:17:48] Dexter Hardy: Right. And so what we’re saying is think about all up, how you’re missing out on.
[00:17:56] Dexter Hardy: All of these wonderful opportunities to, I think, I think the number got thrown out a couple of times. Jason ran away from it when you said it’s like a $300 billion number on, he
[00:18:07] Vince Menzione: didn’t want, he didn’t, he didn’t want me sharing or he wasn’t, he, he didn’t want to, uh, what, what did he say? Validate that that was the right number, but $300 billion in potential cloud budgets.
[00:18:21] Vince Menzione: That you could have access to. We know the number across the three hyperscalers is north of 500 billion.
[00:18:27] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:18:27] Vince Menzione: It’s just that Microsoft doesn’t break out their numbers and make them public, and so we, you know,
[00:18:32] Dexter Hardy: and, and
[00:18:33] Vince Menzione: estimates.
[00:18:33] Dexter Hardy: What I would tell everyone that’s listening, I would invite you to consider
[00:18:37] Vince Menzione: Yeah,
[00:18:38] Dexter Hardy: the following.
[00:18:39] Dexter Hardy: If you’re not in the marketplace with a IP, co-sale or MAC eligible solution, you’re not eligible for that.
[00:18:49] Vince Menzione: That’s right.
[00:18:50] Dexter Hardy: Spend. And so is that worth it for you as an organization to say, yes, we need to figure out this and get involved with that?
[00:19:01] Vince Menzione: So I’m an SI and I raise my hand. I’m like, Dexter, help me.
[00:19:06] Vince Menzione: What happens next?
[00:19:08] Dexter Hardy: I would say. Let me introduce you to my team.
[00:19:12] Vince Menzione: I love it. I love it.
[00:19:13] Dexter Hardy: Um,
[00:19:14] Vince Menzione: and you’ve been building your team since, uh, we go back now four years, but like yeah. You, you’ve been growing your business, hired some incredible people in your
[00:19:22] Dexter Hardy: team. Yeah, we have some rock stars on our team. I’m really, really happy with my team.
[00:19:25] Dexter Hardy: Uh, you know, we’re still growing and it’s, it’s a wonderful thing to be in this economy and still growing. Yes. Um, and like I said, yes, we, I would introduce you to my team and my team would then help you, uh, through. The marketplace advisory. We can help you with the health check. We can do the strategic advisory, the alignment around, here’s what we’re doing.
[00:19:47] Dexter Hardy: Another thing that I’ll go ahead and put in here, if you already have listings in the marketplace and people aren’t clicking on them, we have marketplace optimization as well.
[00:19:58] Vince Menzione: I love that
[00:19:59] Dexter Hardy: because we, again, that conversation comes up all the time. Yeah. We put, we, we invested in Marketplace and we have our listing out there.
[00:20:08] Dexter Hardy: Nobody’s clicking on it. Well, we can help you with that too.
[00:20:11] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:20:12] Dexter Hardy: Right, because to your point, it’s not just building an ar, arbitrarily writing something about it, putting it in marketplace. Right. That’s, that’s an arbitrary approach. We’re saying how do you turn those into a lead gen, revenue gen, um, operation arm of your business.
[00:20:29] Vince Menzione: Nice.
[00:20:29] Dexter Hardy: Which is what we call market marketplace operating system.
[00:20:33] Vince Menzione: Marketplace operating. Okay. So we got another, I got another word I need to learn. Another acronym I need to learn.
[00:20:38] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. You know, I
[00:20:39] Vince Menzione: less,
[00:20:40] Dexter Hardy: I’ve been around Microsoft too long, I guess.
[00:20:42] Vince Menzione: Yes. I
[00:20:42] Dexter Hardy: created all these,
[00:20:45] Vince Menzione: so, um, just perspective could, because you’ve been in the marketplace since we talked about COVID.
[00:20:50] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:20:51] Vince Menzione: Really. So that’s five years. Five
[00:20:52] Dexter Hardy: years. Yeah.
[00:20:54] Vince Menzione: Um, talk about how it’s changed from your perspective. I mean, I, we talk about it all. We talk, we have leaders like Jason and Cyril comes here and. Does, uh, speaks about some changes going on, but tell us your perspective on how it’s evolved.
[00:21:08] Dexter Hardy: Um, so the marketplace is always evolving really.
[00:21:12] Dexter Hardy: Um, from, from when we got in early in the marketplace. Uh, REO didn’t exist. Multi, multi-party. Private offers didn’t exist. The amount of committed spend on hyperscalers little was, wasn’t there. Um, the seller, the field sellers within the hyperscalers. Marketplace wasn’t part of their thing. So, um, you know, when that, when that frontier, not just that, not to confuse terms when that frontier opened up Yeah.
[00:21:43] Dexter Hardy: Like there were, you know, it, it really wasn’t a clear path on how do you channel, how do you do sales, how do you integrate with the team? Um, and now there’s a lot more options, uh, for organizations that want to keep some of those motions together. Disti are now able to get involved with the conversation.
[00:22:05] Dexter Hardy: They were kinda locked out for a while, but now with the s and the multi-party private offers and disti are in the conversation,
[00:22:12] Vince Menzione: it’s lit up the disti like crazy. Yeah. In fact, we were, we just spent time with a few and some friends there and
[00:22:19] Dexter Hardy: yeah.
[00:22:19] Vince Menzione: Yeah, it’s been wild to watch this.
[00:22:21] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:22:21] Vince Menzione: We haven’t talked about AI very much.
[00:22:24] Vince Menzione: I mean, we talked about it from a solution and something you put in the, the market as an agent. But we haven’t talked about the change in a big way. Um, what’s your perspective for the partners out there and how they need to think about AI and embracing it and where they are in the journey?
[00:22:41] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Um, I really, AUL said something, uh, in his, in the panel discussion that he had the other day and it, it just really resonated with me.
[00:22:53] Dexter Hardy: Uh, will AI take your job? Probably not. The person who’s using AI
[00:23:00] Vince Menzione: will take
[00:23:00] Dexter Hardy: the job. Will take you
[00:23:01] Vince Menzione: job. Yes.
[00:23:02] Dexter Hardy: Same thing. That’s really
[00:23:04] Vince Menzione: so true.
[00:23:05] Dexter Hardy: Same thing for, same thing for companies. Yeah. If you don’t have, and I, I’ll, I’m, I, I’m really gonna ask, I should have asked Jason this question. Why isn’t there a badge for frontier firms for SDCs?
[00:23:21] Dexter Hardy: That’s a solution. Partner badge, not a frontier firm.
[00:23:24] Vince Menzione: Yeah,
[00:23:24] Dexter Hardy: but I’ll say if your company isn’t investing in combining people and ai, you’re missing the boat.
[00:23:36] Vince Menzione: Yeah. So be a frontier firm.
[00:23:37] Dexter Hardy: Be a frontier firm where it doesn’t matter if you’re an si, SDC, if you are not leveraging that superpower of how do we do things faster, better, quicker.
[00:23:50] Dexter Hardy: Make that part of your go to market and your operating total operations, you’re going to get left behind.
[00:23:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. We’re hearing it loud and clear. I mean, all the sessions we had yesterday.
[00:24:02] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:24:02] Vince Menzione: All the people like yourself that have been here are all frontier firms. They’re all companies that have leaned in, in a big way.
[00:24:07] Dexter Hardy: Right.
[00:24:08] Vince Menzione: Um, and in some respect, I mean, we we’re, I’m, I’m saying proceed with caution because I, I know by 2030 our world is gonna look very radically different than it looks today.
[00:24:17] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:24:18] Vince Menzione: Uh, we just, I need to make sure we have the security and the governance and the data structure the right way so that we just don’t, things don’t just go crazy in some respects.
[00:24:27] Vince Menzione: Right?
[00:24:27] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. And I, I do think that, um, to your point, you have to, we still have to keep the human factor in everything that we’re doing. Um, there is, again, it’s AI plus your experience that makes you better.
[00:24:46] Vince Menzione: Yeah, agreed.
[00:24:47] Dexter Hardy: AI in the hands of someone who has no idea what they’re doing is just a, it’s a faster way to failure, right?
[00:24:53] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Because they have, they still don’t understand the concepts. And so I really want to make sure that, you know, when you think about ai, think about it from the context of experience, right? Yeah.
[00:25:06] Vince Menzione: And yeah, we can go, we can go down a, a whole discussion point here about ethics and what I’ll call AI for good.
[00:25:14] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. Like I said, having the right approach, having an ethical approach. We talked about Microsoft on stage yesterday with people like Brad Smith, who, uh, there’s people that have this, this right philosophy and approach to ai. Right. That
[00:25:29] Dexter Hardy: right.
[00:25:29] Vince Menzione: It will do good for the world and not bad for the world.
[00:25:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:25:33] Dexter Hardy: And I think that has to be, well, I’ll just speak for myself. Can you do something and should you do something
[00:25:42] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:25:43] Dexter Hardy: You have to, that should be a question that you’re asking yourself. You should be evaluating and you have to have whatever your moral compass is that has to align with your moral compass.
[00:25:53] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. Because they’re, you know, because with AI the can you do something becomes a lot bigger. Yeah.
[00:26:02] Vince Menzione: Good point. Good point.
[00:26:03] Dexter Hardy: Should you do it well, you know, greater good. I think as a, as a collective, one of the things that’s. If it hasn’t rained true. Uh, we all live on this planet. We all are part of the, we’re all in part of a connected ecosystem.
[00:26:21] Dexter Hardy: Um, and so can we do it? Should we do it? Those are questions that we need to, you know, really think about as we continue to leverage AI and do the things that we’re doing. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of opportunities.
[00:26:36] Vince Menzione: Good points, good points. So for partners watching, listening today, um, two, couple things.
[00:26:43] Vince Menzione: First of all, it’s changing fast. We need like, what would be, we’re at the beginning of 2026. We’re the first quarter, 2026, maybe the end of the first quarter at this point.
[00:26:53] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:26:54] Vince Menzione: What is the one or two or three things that partners need to go do differently or better? And then, um, what would you say to them about marketplace and embracing marketplace?
[00:27:09] Dexter Hardy: So I’m gonna answer the second question first.
[00:27:12] Vince Menzione: Okay. Sounds good.
[00:27:14] Dexter Hardy: Get in the marketplace.
[00:27:15] Vince Menzione: Get in the marketplace,
[00:27:17] Dexter Hardy: period.
[00:27:17] Vince Menzione: Like why wouldn’t you be in the marketplace?
[00:27:20] Dexter Hardy: Every hyperscaler has doubled down, tripled down. Yeah. On their marketplace. Microsoft had multiple marketplaces, now it’s just one.
[00:27:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:27:29] Dexter Hardy: Writing should be all over the wall. Not that
[00:27:31] Vince Menzione: one. There is, there is no market without marketplace. I mean, literally today, the old way, days of selling, the old days of co-selling are gone.
[00:27:39] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:27:39] Vince Menzione: Like the days when we, we got pos and we, we sent a, an Excel spreadsheet to Microsoft to tell ’em about the deals that were co-sell.
[00:27:47] Vince Menzione: Ready? Those days are gone. So you’re saying we’ve gotta be in the marketplace now and then, what would you say maybe the one thing that’s, let’s limit it to one for all of our amazing viewers, listeners, and ultimate partner guests, when when you, when I see you in Bellevue again, ’cause you’re gonna be in Bellevue, May 11th to the 13th again.
[00:28:08] Vince Menzione: Absolutely. With us helping lead the marketplace conversation. What do they need to be doing now? Right now? Besides getting the marketplace?
[00:28:18] Dexter Hardy: Besides getting the marketplace, I, I would, I would do a hard look at operations.
[00:28:24] Vince Menzione: Operations.
[00:28:25] Dexter Hardy: Like a lot of companies, they’re growing and they, what is it? How are we looking internally in our organizations to figure out again, can we do it?
[00:28:34] Dexter Hardy: Should we do it? Companies need to focus on their superpower, even, even the big ones, right? Um, being. Not having the focus, not look, looking at or listening to your why as an organization can, can put you in a, in a really weird space. And so, uh, with everyone being able to grow and do what we’re doing, I would say lean into your why,
[00:29:01] Vince Menzione: like into your why.
[00:29:02] Dexter Hardy: Lean into your why.
[00:29:03] Vince Menzione: I think too, I think what you, what you’re saying here, and I’m, my, my reaction to it too is that, uh, we’re, we’re so caught up in the moment right now. And things are changing, so it feels like they’re changing so fast, like coming back to philanthropic and
[00:29:20] Dexter Hardy: yeah.
[00:29:20] Vince Menzione: What’s evolved just in the last month or so that people are taking their eye off the why or the wall, so to speak and reacting?
[00:29:29] Vince Menzione: Is that, is that your point?
[00:29:31] Dexter Hardy: Yeah, that’s my point and, and I’ll give you an example. So AI is different from the following technology, but. And I both were around for the blockchain, blockchain, blockchain conversation.
[00:29:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:29:45] Dexter Hardy: And if you weren’t doing blockchain, you weren’t part of the conversation. I invite you to consider how many conversations have you heard about blockchain do?
[00:29:56] Dexter Hardy: Again, AI is a little bit different because it’s, it’s an enabler. It’s, it’s, it’s, it, it does a lot more than that. But I, I will say. AI is gonna become table stakes. And that’s why I say you have to, you have to embrace it as an organization. Yeah. And if you’re not, you’re gonna get left behind.
[00:30:13] Vince Menzione: Okay. It’s a drop.
[00:30:14] Vince Menzione: Drop the mic moment there. So drop the mic. I’m gonna ask you one more question, personal question. Yeah. I’d love to ask this of every single one of my guests.
[00:30:22] Dexter Hardy: Yep.
[00:30:23] Vince Menzione: I probably have asked this to you before, but I’m gonna ask it to you again.
[00:30:26] Dexter Hardy: Yes.
[00:30:28] Vince Menzione: You are hosting a dinner party. You can have this dinner party anywhere in the world.
[00:30:32] Vince Menzione: We could talk about locations as well, and you can invite any three guests from the present or the past to this amazing dinner party.
[00:30:41] Dexter Hardy: Mm-hmm.
[00:30:42] Vince Menzione: Whom would you invite today and why?
[00:30:48] Dexter Hardy: Wow. So the last time I answered that question, for those who didn’t hear the first podcast, it was Barack Obama.
[00:30:56] Vince Menzione: Yeah. Nelson
[00:30:57] Dexter Hardy: Mandela.
[00:30:58] Dexter Hardy: And my great-grandparents.
[00:30:59] Vince Menzione: Your great-grandparents. I remember your great-grandparents
[00:31:02] Dexter Hardy: In this conversation, it’s gonna be more than three people. I’m sorry.
[00:31:07] Vince Menzione: All right. But
[00:31:07] Dexter Hardy: it make
[00:31:08] Vince Menzione: some exceptions here. We’ll make them.
[00:31:10] Dexter Hardy: It would be my great-grandparents. Still
[00:31:13] Vince Menzione: nice.
[00:31:14] Dexter Hardy: My parents and my children.
[00:31:18] Vince Menzione: Very cool.
[00:31:19] Dexter Hardy: Because I want to look back and let them see the same reason that I had them there before.
[00:31:25] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:31:26] Dexter Hardy: Look at what you started.
[00:31:27] Vince Menzione: Nice. I love that.
[00:31:29] Dexter Hardy: Look at the continuation of your legacy in my parents.
[00:31:32] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:31:32] Dexter Hardy: Look at what I have been able to build because of the investments and the things that you’ve poured into the love, the energy, the effort, the sacrifice, and then the sacrifices that I’m making to pass into that legacy.
[00:31:46] Dexter Hardy: The next legacy. So this would be a. This is why I would say leaning to your why, like understand the importance of family.
[00:31:54] Vince Menzione: Tell us about your great, your great grandparents. You told me about this on the last podcast for those who didn’t, didn’t listen in.
[00:32:01] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:32:02] Vince Menzione: And don’t have the inclination to go back.
[00:32:05] Dexter Hardy: Yeah.
[00:32:05] Vince Menzione: But I think it’s a great story.
[00:32:06] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So, you know, growing up in the south
[00:32:10] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:32:10] Dexter Hardy: Alabama specifically, uh, my great grandparents were part of, you know, slavery era.
[00:32:16] Vince Menzione: Yep.
[00:32:16] Dexter Hardy: Jim Crow. Jim Crow. Crow. Yeah. The whole.
[00:32:21] Dexter Hardy: The history of the United States and what, how it was built, you know,
[00:32:26] Vince Menzione: an important part of the history of the United States, by the way, that we all should never forget.
[00:32:29] Dexter Hardy: Yeah. So again, some of those, some of the ceilings that are out there now, there wasn’t even an option for.
[00:32:36] Vince Menzione: Yeah.
[00:32:36] Dexter Hardy: And so that’s why I really wanted them to, I would really want them to be here to see something that they probably could never even conceive as an option of, of it being.
[00:32:47] Dexter Hardy: Uh, to be able to see where things are and then to, you know, why my kids, if this is where we are right now, I want you to dream big. The same amount of energy it takes to think small is the same amount
[00:33:04] Vince Menzione: of energy it takes to think big. Dream big. Dream big. Dream.
[00:33:09] Dexter Hardy: Dream big.
[00:33:10] Vince Menzione: I think we’re gonna leave on that message.
[00:33:12] Dexter Hardy: Yeah,
[00:33:12] Vince Menzione: that’s a great message.
[00:33:13] Dexter Hardy: Awesome.
[00:33:14] Vince Menzione: So great to see you, my friend. It’s
[00:33:16] Dexter Hardy: always a pleasure
[00:33:16] Vince Menzione: to be with you, so always a real pleasure for me as well.
[00:33:19] Dexter Hardy: Yeah,
[00:33:19] Vince Menzione: and I want to thank you for watching and listening and being part of Ultimate Partner and the Ultimate Partner YouTube channel and our great guest and friend, Dexter Hardy.
[00:33:30] Vince Menzione: Great to see you again.
[00:33:31] Dexter Hardy: Always a pleasure us. Thank you,
[00:33:33] Vince Menzione: sir.
[00:33:33] Dexter Hardy: All right. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks.
[00:33:35] Vince Menzione: Don’t forget, ultimate Partner Live is coming soon, May 11th through the 13th in beautiful Bellevue, Washington. I hope to see you there.