Growth Stage - Keynote #2 - Chat and Beyond: Five Steps to Building Digital Connections

Summary

In this insightful presentation, Mike Cha, Lead Product Manager at Sendbird, shares a longitudinal case study of strategic product choices over four years. Starting as a chat company, Sendbird expanded its portfolio by identifying key customers, exploring unexpected verticals, and leveraging generative AI to create a smart assistant. The company's mission to 'build connections in the digital world' led to the development of voice/video calls, support software, and notifications, emphasizing the importance of adapting to market needs and technological advancements.

Takeaways

• 😀 Mike Cha, the lead product manager at Sendbird, shared insights on product development choices over the last four years.
• 🌐 Sendbird is a B2B API company that provides various types of user-to-brand connections, with a global customer base.
• 📈 The company's mission is to 'build connections in the digital world', which has guided its evolution and product expansion.
• 🔍 Sendbird started with chat and found a key customer, Reddit, which helped scale the product and introduced the importance of moderation features.
• 📱 They expanded into unexpected verticals, such as social plus payments, where chat became an integral part of user interaction.
• 📞 Sendbird later introduced voice and video calls, recognizing that building connections also involved these communication methods.
• 💡 The company identified popular features within their chat product and decoupled them into standalone products, like Sendbird Desk for customer support.
• 📣 Another feature, announcements, was transformed into Sendbird Notifications, allowing businesses to send broadcast messages to users.
• 🤖 With the rise of generative AI, Sendbird created a smart assistant that integrates with various AI engines and can be deployed as a chatbot in apps.
• 🛠️ Sendbird's approach to product development emphasizes adapting to market needs, leveraging existing technology to create new products, and maintaining a scalable infrastructure.
• ❓ The script concludes with a Q&A, addressing the risk of expanding into new verticals and emphasizing the importance of calculated risks for growth.

Q & A

What is the primary focus of Sendbird as a company?

Sendbird is a B2B API company that focuses on providing various types of connections between users and brands through chat and other communication services.

What is the mission of Sendbird?

Sendbird's mission is to build connections in the digital world, which has evolved to include chat, voice, video, and other forms of digital communication.

How did Sendbird initially start and what was its primary product?

Sendbird initially started with Sendbird Chat, positioning itself as a chat company aiming to provide the best chat experience through an API and SDK.

Who is one of the key customers that helped Sendbird scale?

Reddit is one of the key customers that helped Sendbird scale by partnering with them to provide chat services for their community.

How did Sendbird's partnership with Reddit influence the product development?

The partnership with Reddit led Sendbird to develop moderation features to foster safe communities, highlighting the importance of operational aspects beyond superficial chat features.

What was the unexpected demand Sendbird discovered in growing their business?

Sendbird discovered an unexpected demand from verticals that traditionally did not require chat, such as social plus payments, where chat became an integral part of user interaction.

Can you provide an example of how Sendbird expanded into new product offerings?

Sendbird expanded into calls by developing a call SDK and APIs, allowing for one-on-one video calls, group chat calls, and other features, thus broadening their connection offerings.

What is Sendbird Desk and how does it differ from the original Sendbird Chat?

Sendbird Desk is a lightweight support software that provides excellent chat functionality and an agent interface for ticket management, analytics, and more, focusing specifically on customer support interactions.

What is the concept behind Sendbird Notifications?

Sendbird Notifications is a product that allows companies to send persistent, customized notifications to their users within their applications, enhancing user engagement and communication.

How does Sendbird's Smart Assistant leverage generative AI?

Sendbird's Smart Assistant integrates with various generative AI engines, allowing users to create chatbots with predefined or dynamic data ingestion, function calling, and a low-code implementation for quick deployment.

What advice does Mike Cha give for product managers looking to expand their product offerings?

Mike Cha advises product managers to find customers they can scale with, explore other verticals that may need their solution, relook at their mission for different technologies or mediums, identify if popular features can be standalone products, and adapt to technological changes in the world.

What is the potential risk associated with exploring other verticals for business expansion?

The potential risk is high as it involves venturing into markets that may not have been initially targeted, but it is a calculated risk that can lead to new opportunities if the solution is applicable to those markets.

How does Sendbird ensure that its chatbots stay within the realm of predefined knowledge?

Sendbird allows users to upload documents or enter URLs for the chatbot to ingest and learn from, ensuring that it stays within the predefined knowledge realm and does not answer outside of it.