Yael Zheng, MBA 92 – The Art & Science of Marketing

(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)

[00:00:00] Sean Li: Welcome to the OneHaas Alumni Podcast. I’m your host, Sean Li. And today, we have the privilege of speaking with Yael Zheng. She is a distinguished alumna of our Haas School of Business. And she, previously, was a seasoned executive with over two decades of experience in the tech industry, known for expertise in marketing, serving as the CMO of multiple companies, helping them go public.

Currently, Yael serves on the board of several prominent companies, including Meridian Link, Billtrust, Splashtop. Her experience spans across various sectors, from cloud-based software to financial technology, and she also serves on the advisory board for our University of California Berkeley Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, and also the Berkeley Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation.

Welcome to the podcast.

[00:01:08] Yael Zheng: Thank you, Sean. Great to be here.

[00:01:09] Sean Li: Yael, we love to start these podcasts sharing your origin story — where you’re from, how you grew up. But even before that, because your name is so unique, I have to ask, how did this name come about for Yael, spelled Y-A-E-L?

[00:01:26] Yael Zheng: Yeah. This is actually part of my story of coming to the United States. I came to the United States at a time when my family wasn’t here and I thought that I have complete freedom. I have a chance to reinvent myself with a new name. So, I wanted to keep my Chinese first name, which started with the initial Y. So, I just, kind of, searched around, looked for English name with the Y start and didn’t really find too many names.

And then I, kind of, thought one day, well, Yale University, that, kind of, has a nice ring to it. So, I will just adapt that name and switch the letter order. And then voila, I have this name, Y-A-E-L. And a little bit later, I found out that it’s actually a Hebrew name. So, you know, every so often, I get the question, like, “You have a Hebrew first name and a Chinese last name. Like, what are you?” So, it’s a new conversation piece, icebreaker.

[00:02:28] Sean Li: That’s so funny. And it was purely accidental, right?

[00:02:32] Yael Zheng: Purely accidental, yeah.

[00:02:32] Sean Li: The little pun, the Hebrew.

[00:02:35] Yael Zheng: Yeah.

[00:02:35] Sean Li: I love the creativity aspect. And, yeah, I’d love to hear where you were born and how you grew up.

[00:02:41] Yael Zheng: That’s right. I grew up in China. Actually, I grew up in Shanghai. I came to United States way back — way, way back. I date myself 1981. And when I left China, I think that, you know, China was just starting, kind of, in the early days of the reform, and things were still pretty isolated.

And when I came to this country, I went to New Jersey and was finishing up the last few years of high school. And it was such a completely weird experience. Eye-opening would be an understatement. And I remember going to a local supermarket and finding the shelves just, like, full of stuff, like, everything was stocked with stuff. And I was telling my sister, like, “Oh, my gosh. Like, how could there be so much stuff in the store?” You know, of course, I came from a country back then, stuff was still scarce.

And, you know, I remember during some of the time of years, like, you know, we’ll be riding our bicycle on the streets and you’d see a bunch of people waiting in front of a store, waiting in line. And you don’t even know what they were waiting for. You just know that, if there are a whole bunch of people lining up in front of a store, expecting something, it’s got to be good. So, you stop your bicycle, and you go join the line, and do whatever it is. Because everything, I mean, so many things were rationed, you know, going back the years. But anyway.

So, we’re now in New Jersey. And I finished the last two years of high school. You know, I, kind of, remember thinking, what do I want to study? I wasn’t really completely sure what I wanted to study, but I, kind of, thought that, you know, since I was new to the country, I didn’t really have the language skills. So, I, kind of, thought that maybe I should just study STEM, you know, science, engineering, math. It’s something I was pretty comfortable with. So, I applied to MIT and got in. And off I went studying engineering.

[00:04:49] Sean Li: What kind of engineering? There’s so many.

[00:04:50] Yael Zheng: Material science and engineering. And I specialize in semiconductor electronic materials, which, kind of, paved the way later for working in the semiconductor industry after I graduated.

[00:05:02] Sean Li: I see. I’m actually really curious who your parents were. They sound so progressive. Like, what do they do? Because for them to send you to the U.S. for high school back in ‘81, that’s very progressive.

[00:05:16] Yael Zheng: Great opportunity. So, my parents had an interesting backstory of their own. So, my father was a professor of media study and communication, journalism, and all that. And my mother was a professor at a conservatory. They came to United States to study for their graduate degree way, way back in the late ‘40s. And so, they were going to school in Iowa. And then I think it was around 1951, my grandparents were ill, so they made plan to go back to China for a short visit with my sister at the time. She was only a couple years old. So, my parents and my oldest sister, who was a toddler, went to China, planned a couple months visit. And then the Korean War broke out and they weren’t able to secure a visa to come back to the States. So, their short visit turned out to be, like, a 30-year stay.

[00:06:25] Sean Li: You know, when you first moved to the U.S., I’m really curious what it was like in the ‘80s as an immigrant, that transition, coming from China to the U.S., anything, I guess, that sticks out in your memory?

[00:06:36] Yael Zheng: Yeah, definitely. I was just thinking about that the other day. I think if you lived in many suburban towns or smaller cities, smaller towns, in those years, especially where I was, about an hour outside of New York City, it was just like your very typical suburban town. It’s very rare to see Asians when you walk around. And so, once in a while, when you actually see someone in a store on the street, and I remember my sisters and I would be, like, really excited, like, “Hi!”

And then, once I went out to college, obviously, that was a very different experience altogether. Definitely, you have people coming from all over the world. But going back, every holiday, when I went back to New Jersey, there’s still that kind of reminder, like, “Oh, this is actually really different, you know.”

[00:07:36] Sean Li: Okay. So, you study engineering, semiconductors. Is that how you found your first job? And did you move to the West Coast immediately?

[00:07:43] Yael Zheng: No, actually, I worked for a small semiconductor company on Long Island that was started by an MIT alumnus. And I worked there for three years. And for much of that time, I, kind of, felt that that was probably not really my zing. I felt that, you know, I need to find my zing, whatever that zing is. But I think, like a lot of people, business school is such a great way to acquire some new skills and also use that as a platform to find other career paths and other career opportunities, right?

So, while at MIT, I think it was the summer after my sophomore year, I did an internship at the IBM Research Center in San Jose and just had a fantastic time, you know, discovering the San Francisco Bay Area, the culture and everything. And I just felt so drawn to it. And I, kind of, said to myself, “I really love to find my way to come live in California.” So, when I was applying to business school and I saw that, you know, it would be great to actually come to Berkeley to study. And that’s how I ended up here.

[00:09:00] Sean Li: So, you went to business school shortly after coming out of undergrad. How did you, and why did you transition into, I guess, marketing?

[00:09:11] Yael Zheng: Right. Before I graduated, I had two offers. One was an offer for a marketing job. Another offer was something in corporate finance. I, kind of, thought about it and I, kind of, thought, like, well, I don’t really know that much about either career track; but relatively speaking, I feel like I was just more intrigued by the marketing role because, for the finance role, I, kind of, feel like I don’t even like managing my own money, you know, taking on the greater responsibility of managing someone else’s money. So, I, kind of, thought, like, okay, I will give marketing a shot.

[00:09:55] Sean Li: Coming into the business school, did you have any idea of what direction you wanted to take?

[00:10:00] Yael Zheng: Not really. The one thing I, kind of, knew was I wanted to pivot towards more of the business side. But exactly what form that will take, I didn’t really know.

[00:10:10] Sean Li: I see. So, where did you land your first job?

[00:10:13] Yael Zheng: It was a Canadian telecommunication company. And it was a really big company. And I worked in a couple of the offices they have in the Bay Area, where their U.S. headquarter was in Texas. So, that was, kind of, my early start introduction into marketing. And, kind of, for people who are familiar with different aspects of marketing, there’s, kind of, the product marketing part that you spend most of your time trying to, kind of, figure out the customer needs and requirements and then the product capabilities and, you know, try to decide on, kind of, the product market fit and the TAM and SAM and all of that stuff.

And I thought it was a really good way for me to, kind of, get my foot into marketing. Having that product marketing training from early on, sort of, instilled the way of thinking that almost everything about the business starts with understanding what customer pain there is, you know, what problems that exist that customers are hoping to find solutions to solve that, and then how you are going to solve that problem and how well your products actually address their needs and how you’re actually going to communicate with the customers and help them actually get comfortable with the idea that there’s a better way to solve their pain and problem. So, I feel like that’s something that really drilled into, sort of, my way of thinking for everything I’ve taken on since then. It’s just a kind of marketing fit.

[00:11:59] Sean Li: You’ve worked across a bunch of companies. Kind of, walk us through that, you know. I see Sun Microsystems, VMware, Medallia. How did your career path develop?

[00:12:12] Yael Zheng: I would say, like, early on, I was largely with larger companies. I tell people starting out, you know, early on in their career that there are different paths to get to where you want to go, assuming that you know where you want to go. But, you know, first thing is to, kind of, maybe figure out where you want to go. And then there are different paths to get there.

For me, what I thought worked really well is the experience of working at some of these larger companies and the scope and the scale of these operations, kind of, exposed me to a lot of things, you know, the good and bad and ugly. But learn the discipline, learn the structure, learn the process, learn a lot of things of what it takes to run a well-functioning, high-functioning organization.

And then you, kind of, accumulate that kind of knowledge along the way. Gradually, that, kind of, becomes the foundation for your playbook. And different businesses, different companies had different successes or challenges. I think it was really good to, kind of, learn as much as possible early on, kind of, the best practices and sometimes the not-so-great practices. But it’s like cooking, actually. You know, you, kind of, know, like, you know, for baking or for grilling or for whatever it is, like, these are some of the things, foundation techniques or foundation sauces. And then once you, kind of, have been exposed to a lot of these things, then you can, kind of, create your own mixes, your fusion cuisine, or, you know, different kinds of styles of different types of food that you can bring together.

That’s, kind of, how I feel that being exposed to a lot of these good practices, best practices, over time, kind of, allow me to say, “Yeah, I think that, you know, this is, kind of, how I’m going to approach, figuring out what the right mix should be for this new company I join.” Each company is different. And each company has, kind of, their own strengths and their own challenges. So, the best business person, kind of, comes up with a bespoke strategy for that company.

You know, I mean, over the years, I’ve worked with people. They probably have spent too much time at one company, maybe one very successful company. So, like, their playbook is just, like, from the one company. So, even, you know, you come to a company, you come from a $5 billion company to a company that’s $50 million, you still think, like, “Well, when I was at X, Y, Z, I did that. So, therefore, it should be applicable to this new company, right?” It doesn’t always work.

[00:15:17] Sean Li: I see.

[00:15:18] Yael Zheng: Yeah. And also, going back to what we talked about earlier of understanding really how big the market opportunity is, is so important. You know, I have worked with people, or I’ve known people, I should say, who, kind of, feel like, “Oh, you know, you seem to have got pretty lucky with several companies that have really gone somewhere.”

I think luck is definitely a big part of it, but I think, like anything, as we all know, you improve your luck or increase your luck by really doing your homework ahead of time, right? You try to see, “Okay, this company is really trying to attack a problem that’s really big.” A lot of customers, right, a lot of businesses feel the pain. And so, there’s a really potentially big opportunity to try to solve that problem. That’s, like, the first thing.

The second thing, which also is really big, is whether most of the potential customers are already aware that this pain is really big versus people are, kind of, feeling like, “Yeah, it’s, kind of, a pain. But, you know, I’m, kind of, used to the status quo. You know, I think I’m just going to, kind of, tolerate it a little bit longer. I don’t think I’m ready to really make that change. I’m not quite ready to, kind of, adopt a new way of doing things.” So, if there’s that kind of psychology among the potential customers, then it just means that it’s going to take a little bit extra effort a little bit longer, right, for the market condition to become more ripe.

So, before I decide I’m going to join a new company, that’s, kind of, the homework that I take pretty seriously to really understand what’s ahead.

[00:17:11] Sean Li: I have a load of questions, coming from what you just shared. I mean, one thing, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m looking at your career history, mostly B2B sales, right?

[00:17:23] Yael Zheng: B2B, go to market.

[00:17:25] Sean Li: Go to market, okay.

[00:17:25] Yael Zheng: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:26] Sean Li: Nothing B2C.

[00:17:27] Yael Zheng: Yeah. There’s sometimes B2B2B, sometimes it’s B2B2C, but largely, the direct customers are usually the business side. For many years, I worked largely with customers that I would describe as mid enterprise to very large enterprise, mid to very large.

And then my last full-time role was with a company that really specialized working with SMBs. And so, that was very, very interesting in a different manner.

[00:17:56] Sean Li: And that was Bill.com, right?

[00:17:58] Yael Zheng: Correct, yeah.

[00:17:59] Sean Li: Where you were the CMO?

[00:17:59] Yael Zheng: Yeah. 

[00:17:59] Sean Li: So, one of the many questions that popped my mind as you’re sharing, you know, your experiences and your learnings was around, as a business, right, they have a vision, they have an idea of a problem, clearly, of a problem they want to solve. How did you differentiate what the company wanted to do and who they wanted to potentially serve and whose problems and pain points you want to serve, versus what the actual pain points were of the customers? If that question makes sense. Like, how do you separate that? Because I personally feel, you know, as a founder myself, sometimes we get so entrenched in what we think the pain point is and who we want to sell to, that we ignore that, you know, pain point may not be there and may be somewhere else with another, you know, department or something.

[00:18:49] Yael Zheng: I would say that’s a fantastic question. I would say almost all founders have a vision, right? Having that vision is what really starts the whole journey for a business or a company. So, you really have to start with a vision of something.

And unfortunately, sometimes, it’s the right vision. Sometimes, it’s, I wouldn’t say the wrong vision, but maybe a vision that wouldn’t lead to a fantastic aspirational, kind of, a dream as, you know, the founder might initially hope it would be. And sometimes, that vision may be a little bit too nichey. Sometimes, that vision may be not best timed, you know, whatever. There’s so many different reasons.

And when you are evaluating an opportunity, I mean, this is no different from, let’s say, a VC with, look at whether it’s a business that they want to invest in. I think you look at the broader market and you look at, kind of, what the current situation is in terms of how customers, the potential customers are dealing with the problem, whatever the vision is aiming to solve. And you see if there’s some competition already out there. Maybe there’s some competition. Maybe the competition is still doing one dot all types of work. But maybe there’s not a whole lot of competition. Maybe the competition is against the status quo, you know, that businesses still feel like they don’t feel the acute pain to change and adapt to something new right away. And so, then you are dealing with, kind of, very much the early adapters, which is fine. You just have to, kind of, expect that time horizon to go from the early adopter stage to, sort of, the later stage. It’s going to take a little bit longer. You know, just, kind of, the Gartner cycle, the hype curve. So, that has to be taken into consideration.

[00:21:03] Sean Li: I mean, the role of the CMO, a chief marketing officer, I’ve learned to appreciate more and more and just really recognize challenge of this role, in that you’re not there to just market whatever is being.

[00:21:16] Yael Zheng: Absolutely not. Exactly. And I think that’s, like, one of the biggest misconceptions about what marketing does.

[00:21:22] Sean Li: Yeah. Like, you’re not just trying to sell what is offered. You’re trying to figure it out.

[00:21:27] Yael Zheng: This notion, like, okay, we build this product and you just go find me the leads and then give the leads to sales. That couldn’t be far from the truth. It’s so grossly oversimplified. And when I think about how marketing has evolved over the years that I have been working in marketing, on one hand, I feel that it’s fantastic that we now have so many more tools to measure marketing’s contribution to the pipeline, to the business, to the ROI, whatever. A lot of these tools didn’t exist 10 years ago, 15 years ago, certainly not 20 years ago. Marketing was always seen as, kind of, more like, I sense, I feel, you know, a little more too soft, too touchy feeling.

And with so many of these tools now, from the very early stage of when you’re tracking your initial engagement with customers and all the way tracking the journey of a lead from the very top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel, and then, sort of, repeat that, you know, they become loyal customers, they refer you to other potential customers, they buy more stuff from you, in an industry term, cross-sell and up-sell, right? That whole loop, you can measure so much better now. So, that’s huge improvement for go to market.

On the other hand, I still, kind of, see and hear so often when people, kind of, when they talk about marketing, they see it in, still, sort of, like, it’s like a partial slice of what good marketing really should be about, which is exactly what you said earlier. It’s not about just taking a product and then, you know, go put out a website and some blogs and whatever.

[00:23:17] Sean Li: Market advertising.

[00:23:17] Yael Zheng: Market advertising, yeah. I mean, that’s, kind of, the tactics far more important and far more interesting, is really figuring out, behind all the tactics, what strategy you need to adopt, how you price it, how you package it, you know, the classic piece. I have my own Cs, right? Michael Porter have four Ps. I’ve got my four Cs, which is the contact, which I think is another way to say who your ideal customer profile is, right. Like, what does that customer look like? Is it a mid size business, small business, large business, what vertical they’re in, and what type of responsibilities they have in an organization. You know, all the things about what we call ICP, that’s, kind of, the contact, right?

And then the second C is the content. And the content is, kind of, what story you tell to the customers. And we don’t just mean, like, you know, put some web page content together and string together a bunch of, like, words about improve your efficiency and, you know, reduce waste and AI everything. I mean, that’s not really a story. A story is you understand what customers are looking for and you know what your products are capable of doing. And you, kind of, connect the dots in a way that customers say, “Oh, yeah, they do speak my language. They understand what I’m looking for. It sounds like this product is going to solve this problem and that problem,” right? A good compelling story, that’s the C.

The third C is the channel. And channel is the communication channel that you undertake to talk to your customers. It could be a YouTube video. It could be a TikTok thing. It could be your website, whatever. It could be Google AdWords, right? That’s, kind of, the channel. What is the most effective channel to reach a particular set of customers? For consumers, it’s straightforward. We know, you know, it’s social media platforms that influence a lot of the purchasing decisions. But for enterprise, it’s a little bit different, right? And then you need to, kind of, figure out what the most effective channel it is.

And then the last C is you measure the effectiveness. At the end of the day, whatever it is you do, however much you spend, you have to really measure the conversions. When customers, I should say prospects, right, they go from early stage, being, kind of, sort of, curious to becoming more interested to actually making the leap of actually making a purchasing decision, right? And then, so on and so forth. So, like, the conversion.

So, I remind myself that constantly when I’m evaluating either a new business or I’m engaging with an existing business. Like, how do these things, kind of, stack up? I guess my own little framework of the four Cs.

[00:26:35] Sean Li: So, the four Cs of customer.

[00:26:37] Yael Zheng: Yeah, customer or contact, either way, the people. Yeah, the content, the story. And then the communication channel. And then lastly, conversion.

[00:26:47] Sean Li: Conversion. I love that. So, we can deep dive into this for hours, but I’ll just ask one burning question, which is, you know, throughout your years of experience as a CMO for so many companies, what’s some advice to know when you should stick it out and when you need to change strategies? Because when we talk about conversion, right, and measuring conversion and things like that, the question in my head is always, what’s the timeline that we’re looking at? Because obviously, for small companies, they have a shorter runway. So, they need to convert very fast. Larger companies have a little bit more time, potentially. But what are your thoughts around that, or any advice?

[00:27:29] Yael Zheng: That’s such a great question. I don’t think there’s an easy answer. I would say that it depends a lot on the type of customers you’re selling to, your marketing to, and the sales cycle. So, if your sales cycle is a relatively fast turnaround, kind of, a cycle, you know, in days, weeks, or maybe no more than a couple of months, you can actually tell a lot faster, whether something you’re doing, you know, the strategy or the tactic, whether they’re on track. You can just get your signals back much more quickly. But if you’re doing large enterprise sales with sales cycle that could be many quarters, it’s a lot harder to tell whether things are working, kind of, working, or not really working. And whether it’s the strategy is a little bit off, or maybe the execution needs to improve. That’s a little bit harder.

So, I think that, in that kind of situation, you probably want to, sort of, incrementally test, you know, like, here’s a strategy we’ve committed to, maybe in terms of the execution you might want to have, sort of, a control group, and then you might have, sort of, a slight variation of the control group, so that it might actually give you some kind of ways to test out something; because otherwise, it will be more costly if you say, “Okay, we’re committed to this for five, six quarters.” And then, after five or six quarters, you feel like, “Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best strategy or path.” That’s just not very satisfying, right?

[00:29:13] Sean Li: Yeah, it’s a very tough question. But it’s one thing that’s always burning my head because it’s that question of, especially, from marketing perspective, when should you stick it out with a strategy? And when do you need to pivot? I have another tough question. Throughout your career as a chief marketing officer, how often did you have to go back to the development side and say, “Hey, this is not what the customer wants?” Or, you know, who you thought you were developing this for, there’s actually somebody else within this company needs this and we need to make these changes.

[00:29:51] Yael Zheng: I’m very, very happy to say, at the macro level, never. And at the macro level, directionally, for the products, the product suite, I’ve been very, very fortunate to always work with the companies that the product team, engineering team, and go to market team are in pretty good sync in that macro direction.

Below that, if you double-click a couple levels, there are, sort of, differences in opinions about which area of the product to lean in a little bit more. You know, maybe, somebody feel like, “We need more features that are more enterprise-worthy, it’s more customizable, it’s more, you know, feature-rich,” or whatever. And then somebody else might say, “I think we might be better off for mid-enterprise, where things are a little bit more templatized. It’s a little bit easier to implement,” you know, something like that.

[00:30:49] Sean Li: I see.

[00:30:49] Yael Zheng: Or somebody might say, “We are well-established in the United States. We should expand overseas.” And then, you know, maybe everybody agrees that the overseas expansion strategy makes sense, but maybe people would have some disagreement on which geography, which countries to prioritize first, which might have implications on localization strategy and regulatory, kind of, priorities and that sort of thing.

[00:31:18] Sean Li: I see.

[00:31:18] Yael Zheng: So, yeah, I’m glad to see that never really had to go back to the product team and say, “You know what? We really…” 

[00:31:27] Sean Li: “We don’t have a product market fit. We’re way off on our product market fit.” Okay, that’s fantastic. Anything else you wanted to share about your experiences, you know, as a chief marketing officer, that I think might be helpful for people to hear, that I didn’t ask potentially?

[00:31:44] Yael Zheng: No. I think it’s a such a fun area to work in. Every business seems to be so different. At the same time, I think that when you go back to the basics of what makes a business really shine, you know, the basics are, kind of, almost the same. Yet, what it takes to make a company shine, it’s, kind of, the balance of art and the science that, I think, that’s, kind of, the mystery but the really fun part of being a marketing person and going to market person to, kind of, figure it out.

The science part, you can measure, you can track, you can analyze, you can whatever. Very, very data-driven. And then there’s the art part. It’s, kind of, like, what does your instinct tell you, you know? And how do you actually tell this story in a way that it will, kind of, connect with people at a more emotional level? That’s really the more creative side of how to figure things out. I find it interesting that some of the most brilliant marketers that we have probably heard about and, you know, familiar with, a lot of them actually don’t have so-called marketing title or role. I mean, we all know what Steve Jobs has done, right? I mean, in a sense, that’s, like, the most brilliant type of marketing, combining, kind of, the brilliance of science engineering with the brilliance of that emotional appeal of the ER side.

[00:33:18] Sean Li: That is very true.

[00:33:19] Yael Zheng: Yeah. And just to finish up, you know, I spent most of my career as a bit of a market person. And what I really enjoy is, you know, after working with the big companies, the second half of my career was mostly going into earlier-stage companies. And work with the team to, kind of, figure out, like, how do we really grow and scale? And all the thinking and the work that went behind, kind of, figuring out how to scale that up, that was just, like, such an exhilarating experience, you know. Rinse and repeat, small to large and small to large. It’s just a really great experience.

And after my last full-time operating role, sort of, came the next pivot, which is, I want to do a board service. And that paved the transition into, kind of, a different chapter of my career.

[00:34:14] Sean Li: And can you share a little bit more about that? You serve on the board of… I see here…

[00:34:19] Yael Zheng: Yeah. I mean, I have six or seven different companies at different time and public companies and private companies. It’s a very different type of work as being an operator. You know, I think that we are constantly reminded, as board directors, that it’s not our job to actually run the company. That’s the job of the leadership team, the management team, right? We’re supposed to provide oversight and governance.

And so, having been an operator for many years, you know, I have to constantly remind myself, kind of, it’s like, nose in then fingers off, you know. So, it’s our job to ask questions and ask good questions to, kind of, help the management team to make sure that they have the right strategy in place and that, you know, they’re executing effectively. It’s a very different kind of role.

What I’m happy about is, you know, for many years, and even now, to some degree, relatively speaking, there’s not as a high percentage of people with go to market background sitting on boards. And that trend is definitely moving in the right direction with more people with very strong go to market background joining the boards. And I think that’s, really, a good welcoming trend because you, kind of, balance out the people with lots of financial expertise and operational experience with people who are also very used to, kind of, thinking about, so what a customer thinking, and how do we actually, kind of, get the customers to feel more comfortable and adapting faster and all the things that, kind of, come with it.

[00:36:07] Sean Li: Two immediate questions that pop up. One is, any advice on how to ask good questions?

[00:36:13] Yael Zheng: I think, sometimes, it’s just asking, like, the why. You know, people are saying, everything is going great. And people might come tell you, you know, things are happening as exactly the way they’re intended. And asking the basic questions. Is it really working… everything is working as intended? And why are things happening or not happening?

So, I think that just, maybe, asking the why and how, but listen really intently and closely to what you’re being told without any preconception, kind of, maybe push for questions to just double-click and even triple-click a little bit.

[00:36:59] Sean Li: That makes sense, yeah. When people ask me about how… and I learned this through, you know, other interviewers. You know, how do I come up with questions for podcasts? I just listen. I just listen very intently.

[00:37:12] Yael Zheng: Like, many of the questions you’ve been asking that, you know, we’ve been talking about, what I find that the questions are thought-provoking, right? And then with respect to the board service, you know, I really admired some of the really seasoned directors. I, kind of, watch and listen how they ask questions in a way that they don’t put the people they’re asking questions on the defensive. You know, sometimes, if you ask a bad question immediately, you put people, kind of, on guard, like, “Oh, so and so is questioning my leadership ability or someone’s questioning our strategy.” I think there’s a certain art of asking questions that, you know, you’re being curious and inquisitive, but you’re also asking in an unassuming kind of way. So, the person answering the question will actually feel comfortable to share.

[00:38:07] Sean Li: Right. That’s really interesting. Thank you so much for sharing that. And the second question that popped up was, any books or materials that you recommend on learning more about go to market?

[00:38:19] Yael Zheng: I can’t think of anything off top of my head. What I have found really useful from time to time is HubSpot has such a great library of content about marketing and everything, the A to Z related to marketing. And it’s not all about HubSpot. You know, a lot of it is just content in an intrinsic kind of sense about how to think about doing marketing better marketing. So, yeah, I find it to be very, very useful.

[00:38:51] Sean Li: Is it… do you know if it’s free?

[00:38:53] Yael Zheng: Oh, yeah. It’s, like, on their website, there’s, like, a whole repository of a lot of these current and past blogs. And they made this commitment in, you know, having such a rich set of assets. That, kind of, helps. That’s part of their strategy that pulls people into the website, right? When they come in to read the blog and read the white paper, but in doing so, they also bring more potential customers in. But I think, for the rest of the community, it’s just, I think, good content to be educated on.

[00:39:27] Sean Li: That’s awesome. So, you mentioned you’re serving as a board member for, you know, all these companies with that go to market experience. What is your intention or your role as the advisory board member for the SCET for Sutardja Center and the Jacobs Institute?

[00:39:47] Yael Zheng: Yeah, I’ve been really enjoying my involvement with both programs, aside from the fact that it gives me even more excuses to show up at Berkeley every so often, in addition to showing up for the football game. You know, I feel like the experience they’re providing to students, it’s so close to the kind of things I have been learning and improving for all my career. I feel like I’m still constantly learning new things. And I feel like, early on in my career, or even now, there are a lot of people who have, kind of, helped me to figure some things out.

[00:40:24] Sean Li: Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, Yael. Really appreciate having you on and sharing your life story and experiences.

[00:40:32] Yael Zheng: My pleasure. And we will talk soon, then.

[00:40:36] Sean Li: See you.

[00:40:36] Yael Zheng: Thank you.

[00:40:39] Sean Li: Thanks again for tuning in to this episode of the OneHaas Podcast. If you enjoyed our show today, please hit that Subscribe or Follow button on your favorite podcast player. We’d also really appreciate you giving us a five-star rating and review.

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OneHaas Podcast is a production of the Haas School of Business and produced by University FM. Until next time. Go, Bears!