Eric Schrenker may not have been a part of Sumo’s founding team in 2010, but he got there as soon as he could. A self-described fan of the company for years before joining the squad, Schrenker signed on as product management lead in February last year.
“Since I was young, I always had a passion for business and entrepreneurship,” said Schrenker. “I saw Sumo as a company helping empower people to start their own companies. Working for them was a dream come true. It was a chance to be around small-business owners on a daily basis and help them do more of what they loved.”
Sumo’s suite of free tools today helps power more than 720,000 websites. But it didn’t start off that way.
We caught up with Schrenker to learn how Sumo’s product has transformed over the past eight years, and what it’s like to work for the company.
We support one another, challenge each other [and] eat lots of tacos together.”
Sumo first launched in 2010. How has the product evolved?
Sumo originally launched to help grow our sister company AppSumo, a daily deals website. The early team came up with innovative ways of collecting email addresses, including popups, smart bars and welcome mats. When people noticed what we did and started asking for similar tools, Sumo was born.
More recently, we’ve launched features that drive more customers and sales. This includes discount codes and closer integrations with e-commerce platforms.
And how has the product team changed along with it?
We’ve become a lot more focused on our target customer. We have a clearer grasp on exactly who they are and what their needs are. Everything we do is with them in mind. We’ve also worked to incorporate more process into our software development lifecycle. We push ourselves to have both long-term and short-term roadmaps, to speak with customers throughout the entire development process, and to make life easier for more types of business owners.
Can you give us the scoop on what it’s like to be on your team?
There’s a lot of opportunity to help steer not just the vision for the product, but the company as a whole. If you have an idea and have vetted it out, there’s a good chance to get it accomplished. There’s a lot of opportunity here to make your mark.
As far as the product team goes, we’re really just starting to build it out. We’re constantly pushing ourselves while having each other’s backs. We support one another, challenge each other to have tough conversations, laugh and, of course, eat lots of tacos together.
Did anything surprise you about working at Sumo?
What blew me away when I got here was the team. They were incredibly strong and able to do so much with so few people. Everyone was just as passionate as me about helping small businesses, and it was clear that this was not a job for just anyone. They worked harder than any team I’d seen before and pushed each other to be the best they could be.
What’s one of Sumo’s recent wins that resulted from team collaboration?
Sumo Shortcuts was one of our biggest projects ever. We spent hundreds of hours talking with our customers to understand their pain points. Then sales, customer experience, product, marketing and UX came together to help gather and summarize the feedback.
From there, the design team worked tirelessly to conceptualize the solution, and our engineers pushed themselves to get it out in a reasonable timeframe. It’s epic to see the entire company get behind a goal and work towards it to help our customers — especially when this goal helps us push the future of Sumo.
What’s one of the biggest challenges your team is battling right now?
Balance. Every week, we need to prioritize talking with customers, building out short-term and long-term roadmaps, keeping an eye on the industry, thinking strategically, grooming backlogs, leading sprints, and tons more. What takes priority? There’s no shortage of things to do around here.
How do y’all address that challenge?
We’ve gotten much better at saying “no” and prioritizing our work. Before starting any new project or task, we ask ourselves, “Will this help small businesses grow?” If it doesn’t, we put it aside. We’re also planning to add more members to our product team throughout the next year.
Speaking of hiring, what do you look for in new employees?
One of the most important aspects we look for is culture fit. New hires must be passionate about helping small businesses grow. It’s also important that candidates strongly fit our core values: work hard and have fun together; customer success is our success; be your own CEO; fail fast to succeed; and stay true to small business.
After that, it’s important that every team member is coachable and detail oriented. Being technically proficient and having e-commerce experience is always a plus as well.
