Podcast – Interview with Scott Voigt, Founder and CEO, FullStory
Part of our special series of episodes of the c-suite podcast that was recorded in partnership with the European PR Agency Tyto and their own Without Borders podcast, this interview is with Scott Voigt, Founder and CEO, FullStory.
FullStory is a digital experience intelligence company that uses technology to identify and solve issues that result in poor digital experiences.
In this Unicorn Leaders series episode, FullStory's Founder and CEO, Scott Voigt, discussed the company’s background, his own entrepreneurial journey and communication as well us much more.
FullStory’s technology helps website owners improve their digital experiences by identifying and fixing problems, lowering support and engineering costs and enabling faster website building.
Scott Voigt and co-founders, Bruce Johnson and Joel Webber, all met while working on a startup at Georgia Tech in 2004.
This company was eventually required by Google and Bruce and Joel went on to lead and build out Google’s engineering presence in Atlanta, while Scott worked for another SaaS company.
They always wanted to work together again and ended up leaving their day jobs to pursue their idea of perfecting digital experience with a novel piece of technology that didn’t exist before.
FullStory’s technology sits on clients’ browsers or native devices helping site owners pinpoint and quantify problems and providing workflows to fix them. By improving conversion rates, lowering support and engineering costs and enabling faster website building, FullStory helps businesses make more money while perfecting the digital experience.
With the bulk of the funding and investment that FullStory received, it was put back into the product to ensure customer satisfaction. As a software as a service company, they prioritise hiring smart product managers, engineers and designers to create amazing experiences for customers.
FullStory has been leaning into the enterprise market and expanding globally with offices in Germany and Singapore and a strong presence in Australia and Europe. With 33,000 paying customers worldwide, FullStory is committed to serving big companies with complex problems.
FullStory is a successful global company that requires great leadership to continue to grow. Scott emphasised the importance of communication and hiring skilled people who are smart and more skilled than himself.
Focusing on leaders who are masters of their craft and still enjoy practicing it is how FullStory hire the best, be it it engineering to sales roles. In terms of individuals who have had an impact on his development as a leader, Scott mentioned his parents Nick and Starr Voigt.
When a company gains unicorn status, the perception of that company can change regarding communication and culture. Scott emphasised that FullStory focus has always been on building a great product and improving customer experience, regardless of its valuation.
The company culture has remained constant throughout its growth, with a strong emphasis on empathy, clarity, bionics and trust. As the company grows, they screen heavily through the interview process to ensure that new hires align with these cultural values.
Scott discussed the influence of his fathers time at HP on FullStory’s culture. He admired the lack of hierarchy and the open-door policy for former employees. He hopes FullStory can maintain a similar culture. Winning is essential for FullStory but he makes a point that they don’t have to be jerks about it.
When thinking about differentiation from competitors Scott emphasised the importance of the company’s technology and product as they have invented a way to capture, structure and index data automatically, eliminating the need for time consuming and often flawed event instrumentation.
They capture all data in a privacy-friendly way, structure it, and index it, making it easy to access and analyse retroactively.
Being a leader in this current age requires a person to be genuine as this maintains confidence in the company and transparency across the hierarchy. He doesn’t believe in adjusting his communications approach and always aims to be himself.
To avoid coming off as corporate speak, Scott prefers to give talks that are not scripted and titled “Scott Rambles”. He prefers not to overload his slides with text but rather uses images, or emojis to convey his points effectively.
He has mixed feelings about being an external spokesperson, and although he enjoys chatting with people he dreads the preparation and worries about saying something stupid. Despite this, he feels a certain energy from doing it.
Throughout his journey, Scott faced significant communication challenges. The first was his struggle with written communication which he overcame through practice and perseverance.
The second was transitioning from small company communications to communicating with larger groups where it was impossible to read the room and know everyone. Scott believes in rolling with the punches and avoiding scripted communication to maintain authenticity.
However, if they became a public company, he admitted that he might have to consider scripted communication.
Finally, Scott shares his advice on communication, saying that if he could go back in time and speak to his old self, he would “say less”.
Scott’s communication approach emphasises authenticity, concise communication and avoiding corporate speak to build trust with stakeholders.