When I joined Thought Industries in October, I spent my first weeks doing what I believe every new CEO should do: listening.
I sat down with customers who have built impressive academies and learning programs on our platform. I spoke with customer success and learning leaders who are on the front lines every day. I also spent time with our own teams across customer success, product, engineering, marketing, and operations, asking one simple question:
Where does Customer Learning need to go next?
The answers were consistent and clear:
- First, it is getting harder to connect learning to business outcomes like adoption, retention, and revenue.
- Second, customers are facing disconnected tools and data, while their end users expect simple, intelligent experiences.
- Third, courses and content alone are no longer enough. Learning has to be dynamic, personalized, and connected to real value.
Those conversations led us to a fundamental conclusion: Thought Industries needs to lead what comes next.
Today, I want to share more about that direction, and why we expanded our leadership team with two exceptional leaders, Chief Product Officer Sarah Phoenix and Chief Strategy Officer Julien Denaes, to help bring it to life.
The Problem: Learning Is Everywhere, But Intelligence Is Locked
Many of the learning teams I have spoken to follow a similar pattern.
They have invested in customer education: academies, onboarding programs, certifications, communities and more.
Yet when they are asked a simple question, “How is learning impacting customer growth?”, getting to the answer is complicated.
Learning lives in one system. Product usage lives in another. Customer health lives somewhere else. Teams try to glue everything together with spreadsheets, manual analysis, and tribal knowledge.
At the same time, end customers are asking for more.
- They want faster time to value.
- They expect guided, personalized experiences, not just a library of courses.
- They move across channels, in LLMs, product, email, help center, community, and they expect those interactions to be connected.
We see an opportunity, and a responsibility, to help fix that.
Our Vision, Mission, and North Star
We have aligned the company around three statements that guide every decision we make.
Vision: Empower every business to grow through the success of its customers.
Mission: Transform customer interactions into intelligence, and that intelligence into growth.
North Star: Build an AI-first Customer Intelligence & Growth Platform that unifies learning data, customer behavior, and intelligent actions to deepen loyalty, grow revenue, and unlock continuous value creation.
In other words, we are evolving from a Learning Platform into an AI-powered Customer Intelligence & Growth Platform that connects learning to measurable business outcomes.
One that starts with learning, and does not stop there.
From Content for Customers to Intelligence With Customers
Traditionally, customer education has focused on pushing content: courses, videos, articles, certifications. Those are still critical, and they will remain a core part of what we do.
But the next chapter is about what we can learn from those interactions, and how we use that intelligence to drive outcomes.
We are anchoring our strategy in two outcomes our customers consistently tell us matter most:
1) Proving value for businesses
Helping companies ensure their customers realize and recognize value from the products they buy, then tying that value to adoption, retention, and revenue.
2) Delivering “right value for me” for end users
Guiding end customers to the next best step with experiences that are timely, relevant, and highly personalized across the customer journey.
To deliver on these outcomes, we are focused on three capability areas:
Unifying data:
Bringing together customer learning interactions, and behavioral signals into a single intelligence layer.
AI-powered insights and actions
Using AI to surface insights and recommend actions, so they know which customers need what, and when.
Orchestrating next best step experiences
Helping companies deliver the right experience, a course, a micro-lesson, an in-product guide, or a support path, at the right moment, across channels.
Our goal is simple: every interaction should deliver value in the moment and generate intelligence that improves the next moment.
Building the Vision
We are not starting from zero. Thought Industries already powers customer learning for organizations across software, manufacturing, financial services, life sciences and more. We are proud of that foundation, and we will keep investing in it.
What changes is how we build from here.
Over the coming year, building in partnership with customers, you will see us:
- Enhance our core learning experiences to be more adaptive and personalized – meeting customers where they are, in the moments and channels that matter most.
- Invest in analytics and intelligence that make it easier to connect learning to key metrics like adoption, expansion, and churn.
- Introduce AI-driven workflows that help teams move from insight to action faster, with more confidence.
Welcoming Sarah Phoenix as Chief Product Officer
To execute on this vision, we expanded our leadership team, starting with the product. I am thrilled to welcome Sarah Phoenix as our new Chief Product Officer.
Sarah joins us with deep experience building and scaling data-driven, customer-centric products for global audiences. Most recently, she served as SVP of Product at BILL, where she led teams responsible for highly engaging user experiences serving nearly 500,000 customers. Prior to BILL, she held senior product leadership roles at Twitter and GoDaddy, with a consistent focus on data, AI, and customer-centered design.
Sarah will lead our product vision and execution as we advance our Customer Intelligence & Growth roadmap, ensuring every step we take is grounded in customer value and real-world outcomes.
In her words: “Customer education is no longer just about courses and content. Our opportunity is to connect learning signals, product usage, and customer behavior so our clients can see, measure, and shape the value their customers get from their products in real time. I’m excited to build on Thought Industries’ strong foundation and help define this next category of Customer Intelligence & Growth.”
Welcoming Julien Denaes as Chief Strategy Officer
We also added a critical partner in strategy and long-range planning.
Julien Denaes joins Thought Industries as Chief Strategy Officer to lead corporate strategy, long-term planning, and strategic initiatives, ensuring tight alignment between our product investments, market opportunities, and customer needs.
Julien comes to us from BILL, where he most recently served as Senior Director of Product Management after joining through the acquisition of Finmark. At Finmark, he led Business Development and helped scale financial planning and analytics solutions for high-growth businesses. That experience gives him a deep understanding of how SaaS companies think about growth, metrics, and value.
Here is how Julien describes the opportunity “Our customers are living in a fragmented world of tools and data, while their end users expect simple, powerful, intelligent experiences. Thought Industries is uniquely positioned to connect those dots, starting from learning and extending into customer intelligence and growth. I’m thrilled to join at this moment, with a clear North Star and a leadership team committed to moving with urgency and focus.”
What This Means for Our Customers and Partners
If you are a current Thought Industries customer, here is what you can expect:
Continuity in what works today
We will continue to invest in the platform you rely on to power academies, certifications, and customer learning programs.
More visibility into impact
Over time, you will see richer analytics, clearer reporting, and better ways to connect learning to the outcomes your business cares about.
Smarter, more personalized experiences
We will introduce new capabilities that help you deliver “right value for me” experiences guided by AI, informed by behavior, and tailored to each customer’s journey.
The Road Ahead
This moment is about a shift in how we think about customer learning, not as a single initiative, but as a core driver of customer intelligence and growth.
It is a shift from content for customers to intelligence with customers. We are bringing together product innovation and strategic clarity to execute on our North Star and help define a category that finally connects customer learning to customer growth.
I’m proud of the work our team has done to get us here, and even more excited about what we will build next, together with you.
If you would like to learn more about where we are headed, or explore how this strategy maps to your roadmap, please reach out to your Thought Industries contact or connect with me directly.
– Irana
