Chris Bryce: All right, we are live on the 33rd episode of Beyond the CMS. We started this project about three years ago as a way of giving CMOs and other folks who are responsible for large digital content decisions an opportunity to meet some of the minds behind the products out there, and also to ask us anything.

Chris Bryce: The industry's changing rapidly with all of this AI stuff going on, but the idea was call-in style, if you're listening and making some time during your lunch hour in the West. Pieter, our special guest here, is checking in from the Netherlands. So thank you very much, but really feel free to ask us anything.

Chris Bryce: We appreciate your time, if you're watching now or in the future. So let's get started. We've got a great special guest today, Pieter Versloot of Plate CMS and Plate Delta. You're going to tell us all about these great products that you have over there. But maybe, if you don't mind, tell us a little about yourself and the company and what you've been up to lately.

Pieter Versloot: Yeah, thanks for having me here, Chris. It's a pleasure. Thanks. Yeah, my name's Pieter. I'm one of the founders of Plate, a content management solution vendor based here in the Netherlands, as you said. I met my co-founder Johannes twelve years ago.

Pieter Versloot: And we started out creating a website builder. So we did not, let's say, enter the content management space really on purpose, but we did it more or less accidentally by creating a website builder. It was a time where tools like Wix, Weebly, Squarespace were popping up and we thought, okay, quite naively, we will create a Dutch alternative for that. So we did, and that's the basis of the company, doing that with twenty people at this moment. And we are focusing on the European markets with our partner network over here.

Chris Bryce: Well, that sounds really cool. What was a little bit about your journey along the way to founding the company?

Pieter Versloot: Yeah, it's a nice one because my co-founder studied journalism, I studied marketing, and content is both telling stories and having impact on the business. That's where we met. I think the first five years we did a lot of things wrong because we were still young back in the days, ten years ago we were even younger. So we had to do it, let's say, our way. That meant when COVID hit, we thought, okay, let's go e-commerce, for example. We thought, okay, yeah, e-commerce and content are sort of the same, so let's do it all together. So we made a lot of, let's say, mistakes.

Pieter Versloot: But in the end, what stuck was a product really focusing on the multi-site challenges that a lot of companies were having. A lot of CMSs out there were not serving that specific need really, really well. And so we pivoted our company, which started as a website builder, more into that dedicated multi-site CMS direction. And then with all the lessons we've learned, the 1,400 implementations that have been done on the platform, both by ourselves and by our partners, we thought, two years ago, let's put all our learnings and our lessons into practice and do it over again. And that's where we started a new side project, Plate Delta, as a new CMS alongside Plate Multisite, to serve a slightly different audience. And that's a bit of the company where we are today. So we have 1,400, 1,500 customers, in two, let's say, buckets, two different product-market combinations.

Chris Bryce: And when you talk about multi-site and how there wasn't a product, or CMSs weren't really serving that use case, can you just break that down into layman's terms a little bit? Like what's the perfect use case? Who typically needs a multi-site implementation?

Pieter Versloot: Yeah, it's hard to say what's a typical multi-site customer, but what we are seeing is that you have more the enterprise multi-site, and then more the lower, let's say, mid-market and smaller. And what a lot of companies are doing is trying either to really use big systems and do a really, really heavy implementation with a big digital experience platform, for example, or pick an open source CMS and customize the hell out of it and try to fit those needs.

Pieter Versloot: And with Multisite, what you see is that a lot of the organizations using the website are relatively small. Because, for example, an educational institution, also a school. Managing a website for a particular small school is not, let's say, a main function. It is something that someone who is a teacher does, the website management as well. And therefore, he or she should have a system that is sort of a website builder, so easy to just go in and edit the text and the things. But you, as a whole organization, you want to have control over your content, your GDPR, the WCAG stuff. And therefore, Multisite is quite interesting because on the top level, you have a lot of, let's say, the big organization and the bigger things in mind. But from a really content management and website management perspective, you just need a simple, easy-to-use tool that you go into once or twice a week and do some edits. And that's kind of a challenging situation, how to be the best for the boards, I'd say, for the organization, and for the individual website.

Chris Bryce: Okay, interesting. And you were talking about, through that journey, lots of lessons learned, and how did those translate into Plate Delta? Maybe talk a little bit about that.

Pieter Versloot: Yeah, so how we came up with the idea for Plate Delta, because at the core of our products it's always been a website builder. So a super easy to use environment to create pages. In a headless CMS you don't have pages, or you should not be, let's say, oriented as a page builder thing, but more as a headless thing with a separation between content and experience. But we see a lot of companies struggling with creating, or with the mindset that comes with the headless approach, and with the headless implementation.

Pieter Versloot: And therefore we thought, okay, what if we can create a CMS where you can really start unstructured, in a really website-builder form, and then structure the content later on? Right in the editor, or later on in the content library. Because what you want, if you have a content-heavy organization, is content governance. You want to keep control of your content. If you talk about, let's say, a certain topic, you should at least know that this topic relates to a sort of cluster or to other topics that are related to it, instead of thinking about it and having it all in your head. You should put that stuff in the system. And we invented, we call it Content Analysis Services, where you can just work unstructured, so in a way that it just seems like page-oriented, but in the backend, we are able to structure everything, even down to an individual word. So, for example, you told me before the show that you are a fan of Max Verstappen.

Chris Bryce: Perfect timing.

Pieter Versloot: A little proud Dutchy here.

Chris Bryce: Yeah, absolutely.

Pieter Versloot: But if you, for example, select the word Max Verstappen, even though it is not a title in your content library before, you can just structure it from the unstructured page and then save it as either a reusable content type, or map it immediately on the content type, for example person, or expert, or whatever. And then if someone else on your team types in Max Verstappen, even within a text as unstructured text, that person gets a message: do you mean Max Verstappen, as being a reusable content value that's stored in the library? And that's super important for a bigger organization with a lot of content, because if something changed, for example Max Verstappen is not a four-time world champion but, probably he'll become a five-time world champion, you don't want to go over all those pages to add that. You want to go to the library and say, okay, now Max Verstappen is not only four-time world champion, but he's five-time world champion. And I think that's the beauty of our origin with website building: it's still possible for me, as a non-technical guy, to create a page and to even structure stuff for repurposing and reusing purposes. And from a more governance perspective, that team can control everything that is being done on the website, all no-code. So there is no need, for example, to go to the GraphQL and go into code and see everything, because that's possible, we've had the CMSs, but we can also do that, let's say, no-code right within the CMS, and try to get the right story first.

Pieter Versloot: And we even get a, we did a prototype a couple of weeks ago where we said, okay, for example, Chris Bryce from Dotfusion, that company has over 300 customers, and if you say, okay, 300 customers, on page one, and on a different page your colleague says, Dotfusion has 400 customers, we recognize that there's a potential link between those, and we say, okay, one of you is right, tell us who's right, 300 or 400, and let's save the amount of customers or the amount of references straight in the library so we can control every aspect or every little detail on the website that's incorrect.

Chris Bryce: Interesting. Can you talk a little bit about the infrastructure, the architecture of this?

Pieter Versloot: Yeah, so everything is based on GraphQL, so it's, let's say, a modern technique. Of course compared to our first product, that was more of a monolith. This is all been built, let's say, with the latest standards. It's composable, it's API-first, it's headless. And we picked GraphQL, the Neo4j database, and then add some layers on top of that, and we call it Content Analysis Services, to really, let's say, be able to structure it down to that micro level, and to give organizations control and grip on their content again.

Chris Bryce: Yeah, okay. I'm just thinking, if I'm a CMO listening into this, what's kind of signaling to me to reach out to you to learn a little bit more, to get a demonstration? Is there kind of a situation where your product is like this obvious answer that maybe people don't know about?

Pieter Versloot: Yeah, no. I think there will be a very good use case coming up quite now if you want to have control over your own content. But even in the future, I think, for example, you've probably heard about AI, but the way we generate and consume content is changing quite fast. And nowadays people aren't going to Google as much anymore, even though they're still going to Google, but they see more the AI overview, or you're going to ChatGPT. And I think this is going to be, maybe, a really amplifier of the headless thing, because before AI, headless was nice for companies that have, let's say, a multi-presentation layer and going omnichannel, but mainstream, the mainstream customer was just using a headless CMS for a plain and traditional website, or a traditional thing.

Pieter Versloot: Now, with AI, it is way more likely that the content you have in your CMS is not only visible on your website, but also within a story that's created in chat. And if you ask ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever what is the key ingredient for you, as an AI or as an LLM, to receive content from a company perspective, one of the four things that AI will tell you is structured content. So structured content has already been possible for a couple of years, but it's very rigid, you have to model out everything in those headless CMSs. And what we've created is a way that you can work very creatively and very, let's say, loosely, but then structure it afterwards and map all the schema.org data and the W3C data set on it, right in the CMS, without going to your front-end developer. You map it and you make it, let's say, knowledge-graph ready, right in the CMS. And all that content is, let's say, the best content or the best data set that you can push to an AI and say, okay, if you have any questions about, let's say, our company or our products, this is the data set that you are going to use.

Pieter Versloot: So I think structured content has been there already for a couple of years, but I think that will become more and more mainstream, also for the marketing side of organizations and the more commercial side of organizations, instead of being more of a techy development thing up until now. So for potential customers, I think there will be, let's say, a nice hook in why this will be more and more important. But honestly, Chris, I'm speaking to a lot of CEOs, and the last thing that they want to do is replatforming.

Pieter Versloot: So we are a bit in thinking mode about, are we going to, let's say, push Plate Delta only as an all-in-one CMS, although it's composable, but an all-in-one CMS where you have to store your content and your contact experience and everything in it, and then have the best of our structuring assistant, structuring agent slash content governance, or are we able to, for example, get our content governance and our structuring assistant as a vertical, or as an add-on, and put it on a different CMS. So there's no need for replatforming. The only thing that we need is all your content and all your data. But I have to be nice to our CTO in the coming months to figure out a way to say, okay, I want to have all my content in Optimizely, but how can we make use of the way our structuring engine works, but still use Optimizely, for example, as the CMS, but get our, let's say, content intelligence and analysis into that CMS in the form of a widget or an app or so.

Pieter Versloot: So I think probably our company will look a bit different in a year or so, and I think there's a big chance that we'll have, let's say, two different products, more of an add-on division, focusing on the bigger CMSs out there for the bigger customers that want more grip on content, and, for the companies that are just in market for a replatforming thing, then say, okay, yeah, I want it all.

Chris Bryce: Interesting. Yeah, I'm just thinking that the product itself, I just don't know how many folks even know something like that exists. They're almost not aware of the problem of having folks that are more creative or kind of loose, as you mentioned, who just want to get some content in there, but having, essentially, kind of systemizing that content and structuring it later.

Pieter Versloot: That's my biggest problem. I don't know if it's correct English, but a Latin problem. So it's not, let's say, people are not familiar with the problem they're having until, but they're all having it.

Chris Bryce: Yeah.

Pieter Versloot: And so I'm sometimes more, let's say, a preacher, a pastor, to just tell them, okay, you probably have three people on your team now doing stupid work, so to say, updating manually everything that's going wrong in your content, and you think that this is just the case, you think, okay, when I have a website with over 10,000 pages, I need two or three of those people and I need a content engineer. But in fact, with our tool set, you don't need those roles anymore in your team to have the same impact and get the same stuff done as an organization. And that's why we are now a bit trying to get more into that agent thing and say, okay, yeah, we have a structuring assistant as an agent in your CMS, and also more of a content governance agent, to make tangible for organizations that they probably have those two roles on the payroll and they're not needed anymore, they can do other stuff. Or for an organization that says, okay, yeah, it is probably a good idea for you to have both disciplines on your team, and you don't have them, and therefore your content is not as impactful as you'd like. But here we have a tool set with those, let's say, two inbuilt things ready in the system.

Chris Bryce: Interesting. And so you're kind of in the opportunity zone of figuring out, can you layer this on existing content platforms, which would be a great service, or does this stand alone, maybe both. As a potential customer now, someone who maybe, after listening in, realizes that they have this problem that they've had all along, what does it look like from an engagement perspective? We're not scripted around here, so we're just kind of freestyling stuff, but often the follow-up is, well, how do we get involved? Do we check out a demo? What kind of situation do I need to check this stuff out? What happens?

Pieter Versloot: Yeah, typically, if you reach out to us, you will get, let's say, a thirty-minute demo. And at this moment we are doing a lot of, let's say, custom demos. So I spend two or three hours building a demo, try to convince them during the demo, and if it's convincing enough, I give them access to that, let's say, demo environment, and they can play along with it for, let's say, thirty days or whatever.

Chris Bryce: Cool.

Pieter Versloot: But after that, it is more, let's say, an opportunity for us to onboard a partner or an implementer, because we are a software company and we are only focused on our core and roadmap development. So, for example, if someone is listening in from whatever country, we should say, okay, yeah, do you already have a good connection with your local implementer? And we can train them. And because it's a headless system, it's quite easy, right, because they can work in the framework where they like. And we have good tutorials and documentation.

Pieter Versloot: But the way you think about content is quite different than the competition, so I think there will be some more, so I think from a product perspective, we have a slightly different monetization or project-delivery side of the company, because we want to bring autonomy to the end user. And that means that you don't use the partner or implementer for every single thing. For example, that schema.org example that I gave you, if you want to add schema.org to your front-end app in any other CMS, you have to reach out to your partner, to your implementer. And with us, it's just part of the platform, and you can do that no-code in your CMS. And that means that a partner should have a slightly different monetization model, and our model, than the traditional thing with, oh, a customer asks for ten or twenty hours a month and we are serving them.

Pieter Versloot: Did I freeze, or was it you, Chris?

Chris Bryce: No, you look great. Everything was fine there, somewhere in between there, our connections. Super cool. What's in mind for the future? How are you feeling about AI? Where do you think it's going? How are you implementing this into your roadmap? Where are you taking all of this into the future?

Pieter Versloot: Yeah, AI is both a chance and also a risk, to be honest, even for the whole content management scene. And we are part of the Boye & Company group, so we frequently have talks with other CMS vendors over there. And what I am seeing over there is we are trying very much to be relevant with our CMSs. And I still think, we, as a CMS vendor, we have relevance and we can add value to it. But the amount of layers that AI is, even away from content creation to front-end implementation and to content modeling, it is going fast.

Pieter Versloot: And I think that this is more and more a risk, but I don't know only for the CMS vendor perspective, but definitely for the implementer and any partner perspective. Because how much time are people willing to pay you for the designing of a homepage where you, let's say, have four times lower traffic than before, because a lot of people are now just stuck in ChatGPT, and do the whole discovery thing, not only on your website and your competitors' website, but do it now in a more, let's say, agent or conversational thing in another platform.

Pieter Versloot: And I think that is a risk, and you need to change, and you need to be updating and educate yourself about how people are consuming content. And I think browsers and websites will still be relevant in a couple of years, but I think there will be a next thing created, like social media, it was not there fifty years ago, but now it has eaten a lot of the, let's say, budget away from a marketing perspective. I think also that will be the same for AI, with the generation of content, or the discovery phase of content.

Pieter Versloot: And I think that is relevant for us as CMS vendors, because AI and LLMs should be fed, and it should be going some content data into the thing. But all of a sudden, ChatGPT just opens up a thing where you can store all your product and your company information, and it owns it all. And then just says, okay, no, we are not scraping websites anymore, just give us like a Google My Business sort of thing. We have a lot of comparison and reviews and whatever, and they decide whether or not they will list you as the top three, if people are asking. So I think that is super difficult to judge, whether or not the way we think about content management is still relevant within one year, let's say, in three years. And also for website budgets, and for, let's say, budgets for search engine optimization, and for design, because why should you, let's say, pay 100,000 euros on the design of a homepage when that homepage barely gets any visitors anymore, or people are just, let's say, going to a search function.

Pieter Versloot: So I think search will have a kind of renaissance within websites, to filter through all that content. And people are now used to consuming content more in a conversational way, influenced by ChatGPT. Probably this is a chance for the CMS market, but also for the implementers, to jump on the renaissance of search and say, okay, yeah, we are going to have, let's say, your own GPT environment within your website, instead of going to the top menu and filtering down pages where you want to go, and spending four minutes before you probably don't find the information that you want.

Pieter Versloot: So yeah, I think AI is a threat but also a chance, because if people will use AI more, what we are losing on the website, let's say, in percentage, or the website market share, it'll increase how much content there is needed, and being stored. So that's a chance for us, but we should be relevant, and be in the loop about not only content for the web or for websites, but also for different platforms. Yeah, it's hard, hard to predict, Chris.

Chris Bryce: It is, it's kind of, it's exciting and scary, and we're an agency, and you just pinpointed four areas of our business that are impacted. Yeah, yeah. And we have to make these decisions. What we've done, is as a way of kind of, I guess, managing the future, we've decoupled all of our AI kind of services into a new company. So that's going to be kind of, all right, we're hedging on AI and engineering teams and stuff like that to deal with that, and we're staying true to websites, but we're already getting questions from customers like, well, we know you're probably doing some prototyping in AI, you're coding with AI, so is that going to be faster and cheaper and way better, like, yeah, I'm not too sure. But we're embracing it, and it's going to be interesting times.

Chris Bryce: Sorry for whoever is listening now or in the future, I didn't get a chance to kind of thank you and reach out. But our time seems to go by quickly as the expanse of ideas starts flowing here. I don't mind running just a little bit over here, but I'd just love it if you have any last words. Just leave us with something about the company, how to get a hold of you. And then we'll follow up and share this with everyone on the social channels afterwards.

Pieter Versloot: Yeah, so I think if you're reaching, or if you are listening in, or watching this episode, I think that it is, even for the marketing, for commercial startup companies, it's interesting to put, let's say, structured content on your agenda. So I'm not, let's say, preaching for our own company, but I think the world and machines need more structure, because otherwise it's hard to consume the content and to influence, let's say, the AI. So the machine learning part and the machine reading part of content will be a thing to watch out for. And of course, yeah, I'm sharing a lot of content on LinkedIn, on YouTube as well. So feel free to just follow either Plate or myself on LinkedIn. I'm not only, let's say, pushing my own company, but also more the importance of thinking of a more technical part of content.

Pieter Versloot: And that's also new for me, because I'm a creative guy, I hate structure, I say just give me a blank canvas, and that's the best thing. But throughout the years I've learned and appreciate that without structure, it's hard to control and to get grip, and to really have impact with content. Because if I set something up as a marketer, I should think about it in a sustainable way, that a colleague, or soon-to-hire colleague, should build up on top of my work. And if you did not document something, if you did not structure something, it's super hard to really build on top of what I've created in the past. And I think structure is therefore super important in a fast-changing world, and also in the marketing scene, because a typical marketer is not in a company for a couple of years, the tenure is relatively short. So you should better ensure that it is impactful and lasting for people following you up.

Chris Bryce: Super cool. And I just wanted to mention too that the Plate companies are bootstrapped, so you don't need to bend and weave at the back of private equity.

Pieter Versloot: It's a good thing, but also a risk.

Chris Bryce: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we really support also running a small, smaller-size shop over here, and a little mini CMS. So I wish you all the best. Thank you very much. It's been super cool having you on the show. Thanks everyone.

Pieter Versloot: Thanks for inviting, yeah, for having us, of course, international now, so super cool. And you already have been, so if you'll be in the Netherlands in the future, you'll always be welcome to drink some coffee, or some tea, or what do you already call it, boom.

Chris Bryce: Awesome. Well, thanks again. Have a great day, everyone. Be cool. Bye-bye. Thank you very much. See you. Bye.