Selling Real Time Value Through Technical Enterprise Marketing | Jaime López from Ververica

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Letting the artificial intelligence do all the work and increase conversions while you keep doing marketing as usual. Check us out on Pathmonk.com and welcome back to another episode of Pathmonk Presents. Hey everybody. We’re really looking forward to today’s episodes because we’ve got Jaime Lopez, director of Marketing over at Ververica. How you doing today, Jaime?

Jaime López: I am doing great. Thanks Kevin for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about some marketing,

Kevin: really looking forward to chatting about it. we’re really looking forward to talking about what you guys have been doing from a marketing initiative over there and what sort of, marketing ideas you have going on. But before we dive too deep, maybe you can give our audience a little bit of a background. tell us a little bit about Ververica and what you guys are up to up there.

Jaime López: Absolutely. and it’s a question that I get all the time because Ververica is a very, kept secret in a way. you don’t see us, but we are behind a lot of the brands that you trust and love every day. what do we do? We, provide the software that is great at processing extremely large amounts of data, extremely quickly in milliseconds. we say ourselves that we are building the nervous system for real time ai. And think that there are large companies out there, like one of the big credit card processors, banks, insurance companies, entertainment companies that use us as part of that nervous system that allows them to make those decisions that are extremely important for them in milliseconds.

Kevin: That’s really interesting. And yeah, coming into this conversation, Ververica wasn’t not necessarily something that I was 100%, Sure, about what you guys were doing. I was looking at all the different solutions and then I realized once I started seeing some of the names and brands that you guys work with, okay, yeah, you guys are really behind some of that big stuff. So let’s dive a little bit deeper into that. question number two. What sort of companies are you guys supporting or serving, and what are some of those main problems that you’re solving for them?

Jaime López: So I’ll answer the, problem, we don’t really sell software. We sell time back. We sell time to detect fraud before it happens. Time to detect, a user’s behavior pattern and personalize a, an e-commerce website before the customer clicks away. Time to decide on a trading strategy before the market shifts. So in a way we work with enterprises where real time isn’t a nice to have, it’s their. Existential kind of need, as I said, FinTech, telecom, eCommerce platforms where a second of delay is really the difference between winning or losing.

Kevin: Interesting. And because we’re talking about milliseconds here, right? Maybe you can give us an example. if you not having to say names or anything like that. Is there a specific instance that has been really valuable, that sticks out to you as something that viveka solved because of the time you’ve been able to, save for one of your clients?

Jaime López: Yeah. something that’s very tangible for an everyday listener is fraud detection on credit card payments, which many of our customers do. You know when you go to a store and you tap your card to pay in about 250 milliseconds, run trip. the bank or the card issuer has to make a decision on whether to authorize that purchase. You tapped to ask for your pin or to deny it. and think that 250 milliseconds is roughly as long as a human blink. So, that’s how long they have to make that decision. And if they get it consistently wrong, that’s gonna show it in the bottom line.

Kevin: That is. It is something that I have a hard time processing in my own brain when we talk about these decisions, going from one location to another on the other side of the world and coming back to whatever that, point of sale processing system is, right? And all of that happening in about a blink that is just in it is just crazy. And you guys being The tool in the background that makes this all possible and being able to make sure that the processing is correct and valid before any sort of, let’s say fraud happens. That’s really, impressive.

Okay. Maybe we can talk a little bit more from a marketing standpoint about how you guys are reaching your audience. So how do your clients currently find out about you? are there any sort of major or top acquisition channels?

Jaime López: Yeah, I would say that, our top channel probably is dark social. So people discuss either on Slack channels, private, whatever, their Slack community, developer meetups and. We sell a lot to data engineers that are very tribal. When one of them solves a streaming problem with our technology, they will, tell the network. And then the first instance where we actually see them is our website, obviously, but I believe that in B2B Enterprise, your audience finds you before you find them. And that’s what all of our website is geared towards, so that when they come in. we know that they’re more or less further along the path and if we have to build awareness and we are trying to address them at that point when they know the problem that this can solve, but they don’t know it enough specifics about it.

Kevin: And am I right in guessing that the main type of, let’s say person that you guys are, marketing towards or trying to sell towards is more of a, an engineer of sorts?

Jaime López: It’s a bit of both or it’s both kind of a developer that is going to build and use This sort of application at a bank insurance company, trading company, hedge fund. But it’s also the manager or the data product owner that’s going to own and be accountable for the success of that product. And that puts us in a pickle very often, because. Our website can be too technical for a buyer and too commercial for the developer, and it’s something that we’re still coming to terms with, like how to tow that line.

Kevin: I’ve, seen this before with some previous clients of my own where how do you quickly convert a client who. The typical information that they are looking to consume on the product is such a highly educated level of information. They’re not just looking for, blanket statements, oh, we are the best at X, Y, and Z. Or, something like, here’s a case study, study on whatever happened. Typically, these high level engineers and high level developers. Are so well educated and they’re looking for specific data points that prove, okay, this tool really knows what they’re talking about, or they’re clearly getting the results that they say they are. How do you guys balance that? How do you talk about, the, marketers versus, the really detail oriented engineers and developers?

Jaime López: It’s tricky, and I think it’s the enterprise B2B curse. A way of coming out of this is to have kind of both available and let the users self-select kind of what path do they want to take. that’s pretty obvious. There are companies that do it pretty well. another way that, that we have thought about solving this problem is that we have also a PLG version of our software. that is very easy to start using. Is it gonna be the dual and all for large enterprise? No. But it’s going to be a very quick and accessible proof of value where you can, when you know enough, you can just go sign up for it, get a 30 day free trial, and say ah, it actually works. It actually would solve this problem. I’m gonna test it with a toy use case, but actually solve a, production use case.

Kevin: That is really interesting. Yeah. I think, does this work here, try it yourself, prove that it works, run it in a real use case. and yeah, any sort of a free trial, especially in something like this, it’s, it’s gonna be important.

Let’s talk a little bit more about the website, so Obviously it’s a place where you’re saying that you want, your audience typically finds you first before you find them, right? Yeah. Which I think is really interesting. But you have to make sure That when someone lands on the website, they are seeing what you want them to see in a way that makes them feel comfortable moving forward with some sort of a conversion eventually. Yeah. So what are some of the major strengths and weaknesses of the website at the moment?

Jaime López: I would say a major strength is definitely the depth of technical content. And for us, it has been clear that kind of, it’s non-negotiable. If somebody that is mature enough to consume that deep technical content goes to website and doesn’t find it, it’s a lost sale, basically. so we start building from there.

Not that exists. We are trying to build some scaffolding around it that shows that kind of proof of value, TCO calculators, that sort of stuff that would appeal to, somebody on a different persona, on a more commercial persona. and maybe what we. What differentiates us from some of our competitors is that we also carry a positive burden that ver are the original creators of Apache Flink, which is the open source project that kind of gave birth to a number of companies. So often somebody comes to us looking to learn more about this open source project, and at that point we have our website set up to educate a category, educate a future user that might need this in 2, 3, 4 years.

Kevin: Interesting. Really cool. Okay, so it sounds like making sure that the people that are visiting the website are finding the information that’s specifically designed for them, whether it be The person who is ultimately gonna be using it. The person that might be managing it, or maybe even the person that might be taking this open source technology and using it to, correct. Create the foundation of something else they’re gonna do with the future.

Jaime López: Yeah. And that would be perfect for us in the end, is one more convert to the philosophy of real time. They might be our customers or become our customers later, but if not, anyways, like it is building critical mass for the shift that we stand behind.

Kevin: Really. said. So now that I’ve got a pretty good understanding about what Ververica is doing, from a marketing standpoint, I want to start talking a little bit more about Jaime as the marketing director, marketing professional. So switch things over a little bit, and I wanna get things started with a little bit of a segue, but staying on the website.

With your experience, what do you think makes a great converting website? are there any sort of tools or tips, methods, maybe like a certain approach that you would recommend?

Jaime López: I still keep one thing front and center when we develop our website, which is, time to proof or time to value. Like how quickly can I give a user that comes to the website the first time? Enough proof, and be it social proof in customer logos or reviews or metrics or case studies, how quickly can I give that to the user? And the quicker I can give it to them, the higher the conversion rate and we’re typically gonna see, and the higher the dwell time on page is typically going to be. and nowadays we don’t really have much time, like it’s about five to eight seconds where like we would see whether that user. Builds a long journey or whether they drop off forever. So focus on the, those first five seconds is my biggest piece of advice.

Kevin: Yeah, if you can get, if you can build more of that top of funnel interest, it’s just gonna end up making a bigger difference down at the bottom of the funnel. And yeah, if you just assume, oh, these people drop off after five to eight seconds and then we’ll deal with the people that actually did stay and try to get as much as we can out of those. you’re still losing a pretty decent amount of that. A big chunk, first chunk, right? Yep.

So yeah, I think focusing and focusing to try to make that early five to 8% of or five to eight second visitors to convert, or at least come back for a second visit and start to build that journey. Yeah. You might not convert them immediately, but can you get them to stick around just a little bit longer? I think that pays off big dividends down at the bottom of the funnel.

Jaime López: Correct. I absolutely agree. because you go from the category of websites they’ll never remember. To the other bucket, which is websites, they will remember and at some point come back to, it’s a massive shift.

Kevin: I’ve never heard people put it that way. And I like that, that visualization and I would, yeah, making sure that you’re in the bucket that people might remember and then Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you nurture them. Send them an email. Send them a newsletter. Okay. Now you’re in the. Place that they do remember and then maybe they come back. Yeah. So that’s a really good way to think about it. I’m gonna, I’m gonna start using that. Think about of

Jaime López: your day, how many tabs did you leave open, and how many of them did you never come back to? the vast majority of them. So you just try to be in the somewhat relevant one.

Kevin: That’s a really good visualization tool. I’m definitely stealing that moving forward, just so you know.

okay, next question. Being, the director of marketing over there, but also being a trained engineer. I know you’re probably doing a million different things over there, so maybe you can tell us like, what does a typical day to day look like? Like where are you putting your time and focus throughout the day?

Jaime López: So typically my mornings go to signals. So consuming data, looking at what’s working, what isn’t, how are my website metrics, my lead conversion metrics going and then building a plan for which of these am I going to action today and how am I gonna action? Normally I’ll look at a bajillion dashboards, but there’s typically two to three things that is okay, I actually think we could make a difference in, I dunno. Average number of pages per session in the blog. Alright. Then I’m gonna take it to my afternoon.

When I’m gonna go to my systems and see which of which levers can I pull to increase this 12, 10 page? Can I build a better recommendation engine? Can I retarget somebody with a new blog post? So it’s going to typically go from looking at patterns and data early in the day to building. The systems that are going to action those data points. Later in the day. And then as every team lead, there’s a whole team component of looking after my people and my team and making sure that they’re set up for success in what we ask them to do.

Kevin: Of course. And I would imagine a lot of that. Early stuff you’re doing earlier in the morning, the data review, how much of that is, a b testing or even A, B, CDEF testing, right? Like we, what did work, what didn’t work? But based on what we learned last week, and then we tried a different approach, is that doing any better than it was last week? Like, how much of the time is not just reviewing the data, but then making little tweaks and changes to the data that you’re finding?

Jaime López: An amount of that, but being very honest, it knows the, it’s not the largest share. I would love to have super extensive experimentation operations. For example, booking.com is known for having thousands of experiments live at the same time. We don’t, we’re a much smaller player in that sense. Then we might have two or three, and in order to get enough data, and normally I’m gonna have these experiments running for a week or two before I can make a decision. Did this creative work, did this tag line work? Did this. Recommended or page work. So less time that I would like to spend, but still some.

Kevin: Awesome, good way to put it. I think everyone’s always curious about how much time is spent throughout the AB testing period, but you’re right, not everyone has that, amount of availability. you’ve got a lot of other stuff to do. So testing sometimes falls, a little bit lower on the priority list.

okay. Next question. We know nowadays, 2025, almost 2026, there are so many different places out there to consume content because we’re always trying to improve upon ourselves and learn and grow and become a better marketing director. Where are the places that you are going to consume this content or kind of find the information that you’re looking to? to be a part of in, these communities or these newsletters or these LinkedIn posts, what are the places that you, the what, where are the places that you’re going to find this information?

Jaime López: I consume a healthy diet of LinkedIn or Of LinkedIn. I gotta admit that, but I tend to follow thinkers more so than to follow kind of topics or themes. There are a few people who are extremely, Good and have consistent content volume on their path. For example, April Dunford for positioning Tom Goodwin with a contrarian view on the rise of ai.

And then I do a lot of studying things outside the marketing field, be it learning how to build, a rag algorithm that I can build from scratch or how to implement this other thing. and it’s in the. Crossing or intersection between those two things. Something extremely related to my job and something vaguely related to my job that I tend to find what I what interests me in those kind of gems of knowledge that are actually developing me as a, person.

Kevin: It’s interesting to hear because. You almost give me this idea, almost this realization that when you find there, it’s oftentimes when you’re not looking for something that you might a

Jaime López: a hundred percent

Kevin: find what that is and it a light bulb goes off and then you apply it to something else, right? So you might be looking over to your left, but it totally applies to something over on your right.

Jaime López: It’s definitely the shower thought, that comes together when you’re least expecting it. Yeah.

Kevin: Good way to put it.

okay. we’re running towards the end of this conversation and I want to run into our, final section of the call. where we’re gonna have some more playful, thought provoking questions. and it’ll be a little less business focused, but still focused around your responsibilities.

question number one. A pretty easy one. what’s the last book that you read?

Jaime López: So I tend to have always a fiction and a nonfiction one at the same time. last nonfiction that I’ve read is, Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book. is it The Revenge of Tipping Point? Pretty good recommended. And latest fiction is, by Nathan Hill called Wellness. Very nice novel.

Kevin: I’ll have to add both to the list. Thank you for the recommendations.

Okay. next. If there were no boundaries in technology, and I mean anything is possible, snap your fingers, it’s magically done for you, what would be the one thing that you would want to have fixed for your role as a marketer?

Jaime López: Give me auto magical attribution throughout the funnel from like subconscious to deal signed, please. That would be

Kevin: even the, yeah, the Unattributable data, right? Yes. Yeah, Bring it all into one place so that you can. See the real journey.

Jaime López: Exactly.

Kevin: Oh, that, yeah. But I don’t know,

Jaime López: tell me like of the 42,000 touch points, like how did they come to happen? In what order? Where were they, what made them happen? That, would be my dream.

Kevin: What friend mentioned something to them at a bar, something like this. if you could bring that all together, it would be amazing. Maybe one day there’ll be microchips in our heads and we’ll be able to do that, or something like that. maybe, not too far down the line.

okay. Next one. If there was one repetitive task that you could automate out of what I’m sure is quite a few of them, what would that one thing be?

Jaime López: it would probably be content repurposing.

Kevin: can you explain a little more?

Jaime López: Sure. in B2B Tech, it’s very common that you start from like a content. Pillar or content prick, which is a very heavy, deep asset written by subject matter experts like solution engineers about one big problem. And from there, you derive 5, 6, 7 smaller kind of. Shorter pieces of content, like whatever, if you are solving fraud detection, and you’re gonna see fraud detection for payments, fraud detection for e-commerce, fraud detection for live betting, and from each of those, you still have to distill, one pagers, ads, social media content, presentation decks for salespeople, et cetera, et cetera.

So from the one big. Push of content, you’re gonna end up with a hundred assets in different formats, and that takes a lot of effort and a lot of time to do well. If we could automate that, it would be amazing.

Kevin: Okay. And not to mention, something I’ve heard related to the same question with other, guests on the show. Each one of these additional pieces of content that you’re creating out of these topics, depending on the. Let’s say the avenue or the channel that you’re posting them to, it might be a very similar message or even the same message, but tweaked slightly depending on the audience, right? So if you’re posting it on LinkedIn versus if you’re posting it on, I don’t know, let’s say somewhere else, it might be a very slight, subtle change in the messaging and those types of things can be so time consuming, right? You’re looking at the same information over and over but with slight variance and slight differences.

Jaime López: Then you have to track each one of those variations, which is a nightmare. So

Kevin: yeah, what’s better to make changes for each channel and see how they do or post the same thing to each channel and see what the data tells you. Like it’s a two, two ways of thinking about the same issue.

Jaime López: Yeah, it is.

Kevin: Because there are some issues. If you change it ahead of time, it’s a different message. And you can’t necessarily say it’s the same result. Oh man. We’re going down a rabbit hole.

Okay. The la the last question before we wrap things up. if there was one piece of advice that you could give yourself, if you were to restart your journey as a marketer What would it be?

Jaime López: Spend more time getting deep into technical skills in marketing and don’t be afraid to use those and foster those in your team. as a marketer, I’ve always found slightly unfair edge in that I am comfortable with very technical things, but I see that is still maybe not enough, and it’s also a big disadvantage for. A lot of people who you have around in a, marketing team. So being able to raise overall the kind of technical competence of the team would be a massive boon, I think, not just for me as a team lead, but for everybody.

Kevin: I think that’s a really good answer and I think everyone can take that to heart.

hi Mai, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate My pleasure, appreciate having you on the show. It was awesome. But before we, before we get going, maybe you can tell everyone, what is Ververica and where can they find you?

Jaime López: Sure. So Ververica, our original creators of Apache Flink. we’re a German software company. we have our offices in triple in Germany. You can find us on Ververica.com or on social media. It’s Ververica, particularly on LinkedIn.

Kevin: Awesome. Thank you for the time. Hey, me,

Jaime López: my pleasure. Thank you very.