LightSource

Who needs a birthday cake 🎂 when you have a flight of deviled eggs? 🥚🤣 Thanks Madeleine who always goes above and beyond (both for team b-days and also LightSource customers!) -- A few sentimental thoughts for the day: Ever since I was a kid, I was acutely aware of the "accelerating" passage of time. "the time between my 2nd and 3rd birthday was forever, but now the time between my 3rd and 4th is much faster" -- I actually had this thought and articulated it to my parents. - When you're 2 years old, a year is 50% of your life so far. - When you're 3 years old, a year is 33% of your life - When you're in your 30's, a year is only 3% of your life to date. --> so each passing year "feels" like a lot less With this logic, by 25 you're already half way through your "perceived" life. This is the reason why I love the quote from novelist Doris Lessing: “Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.” When I left Waymo, that was really scary. But what was even *scarier* was the thought of staying within the comforts of Google and not pursuing my dream to create a category-defining software in the procurement space. (we're not even close yet, but have made incredible strides in that direction). Taking an annual pulse (on my bday, not by our fiscal year), I'm extremely proud of our team at LightSource and grateful to our customers for helping us make that dream a reality. It's the best birthday gift I could ever wish for 🎉

“If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional, wait until you hire an amateur.” I love this quote. And indeed, one of the worst-kept secrets of LightSource's success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world. Ross is truly one of these people. Welcome Ross Bagley to the LightSource team! Ross has 2+ decades of software engineering experience, from companies like ServiceNow and 12-yrs at Google. Ross is kind, thoughtful, extremely sharp, and exemplifies what an truly senior engineering mind looks like. So thrilled to have you on the team. And moreover, excited for our customers for the kind of product innovation and development acceleration you'll bring to LightSource!

Proud to announce LightSource was awarded the "High Performer (2024)" distinction by G2! According to the G2 definition, "Products in the High Performer quadrant in the Grid® Report have exceptionally 𝘩𝘪𝘨𝘩 𝘊𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘳 𝘚𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘴𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 scores and rapidly 𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵 𝘗𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 compared to the rest of the category" -- Some ad-hoc thoughts: While G2 doesn't have the same brand "prestige" of Gartner or Forrester, I am actually especially proud of this achievement for two reasons: - (1) it's based on ratings from actual users - (2) it's free I've had a few conversations with other market research groups. And the conversations always seem to go the same way: "We'd love to include you in our {market report, quadrant, content}, which is available to our premium software partners" -- aka give us money, and we'll rate you well. Sometimes the prices are as little as $10k, but often crest over the $100k+ range for being truly "recommended." For innovative, growth-stage companies -- we spend our funding on engineering (to drive the product) and customer success (to drive value for customers). 95+ cents of every dollar we spend falls into one of those two buckets. By contrast, legacy or mature software platforms often have large budgets to spend on sponsorship. So... by definition, when you read those kinds of reports you're 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 seeing legacy-tech, not new-tech. Just some (highly biased) food for thought! Does this align with your experiences? Curious, have you seen examples where market research groups truly align themself with ratings accuracy over sponsorship dollars?