“PEOPLE ARE THE ULTIMATE PLATFORM”

As VP of product at Zendesk, Maksim Ovsyannikov played a key role building the company from a small start-up with an innovative software application into a major player in the help desk space with more than 10,000 customers. Today, the Rypple Team is excited to welcome Maksim as our new VP, Product Management.

1. Despite your youthful appearance, you’ve amassed an amazing breadth of experience in the software world. Tell us about what you did before joining Rypple.

My expertise is with software that improves business productivity. I’ve been involved in supply chain management at IBM; payroll at ADP; HCM at Saba; and the help desk platform at Zendesk.

2. What brought you to Rypple?

It’s a funny story. I was looking for an innovative HCM solution for Zendesk, and posted a thread on Linked In. I wanted to find something social — something more in keeping with the way we worked at Zendesk. [Rypple co-CEO] Daniel [Debow] jumped into the thread, and we started talking about a Zendesk integration for Rypple. By the end of the conversation, we were talking about me joining Rypple.

3. What is it about Rypple’s Social Performance Software that captured your imagination?

We have all these different platforms. Platforms for enhancing customer satisfaction, like help desk. Platforms for improving sales, like CRM. But people are the ultimate platform. They underlie everything you do.

In spite of this, so much of the technology for managing people doesn’t really support them. No one has ever used HR software because they wanted to. They always used it because they had to. By definition, that’s not the kind of software that is successful.

Rypple set out to build HCM software people actually want to use. It’s a timely, powerful idea. Social software is different. People only use it because they want to use it. I was impressed that Rypple really lives the idea of social, real-time feedback through its product. They take the time to understand the needs of their customers and to incorporate those needs into its software.

4. What can social software bring to the enterprise?

Serendipity! James Joyce famously said “I have not told half of what I saw.”  If enterprise social networks are meant to fuel social learning and improve productivity and performance, accidental learning — via social discovery and recommendations — becomes a key component of a good platform.

5. What lessons have you learned along the way that you plan to bring to Rypple?

First, when it comes to social software, don’t focus on building something new. Focus on building something relevant. So much business software out there doesn’t enhance or improve performance.

Second, don’t build software with the purpose of selling a perpetual license. In today’s real-time world, we barely know what our requirements will be a month from now, never mind a year from now.

And finally, if you want to ensure that your software will lead to real increases in productivity, build it based on a philosophy of easy onboarding and adoption.

To learn more about Maksim’s insights about the future of enterprise software, check out his first post with us here.