Anu Hariharan works with hundreds of startups annually as Managing Director at Y Combinator. Through experience, she explains five company-altering learnings from B2B startups that founders should consider at the earliest stages of their businesses.

Full video: https://youtu.be/pPgtmFaxkrc

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Product-led growth (PLG) is the consumerization of software—a strategy B2B software companies can learn from growth teams at successful consumer tech companies. 

Stage 2 Capital’s Co-Founder and Managing Director, Mark Roberge, breaks down what a consumer tech growth team looks like and how they operate. He advises bringing these features to a B2B growth team and then shares mistakes that B2B companies make while adding go-to-market (GTM) to PLG.

Full video: https://youtu.be/prLzBINL4tI

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Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

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Bessemer Venture Partners unpacks the most important trends of the cloud economy, and explores the new milestone entrepreneurs need to value above all else—reaching Centaur status, or $100M in ARR—and the paths to get there. Releasing insights for founders with big ambitions, Sameer Dholakia, Elliott Robinson, and Mary D’Onofrio share the insights from cloud benchmark data and dive into the strategies that three Centaur companies took to scale their cloud businesses to $100M ARR.

Full video: https://youtu.be/pUKwyAxwAqI

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Join Mailchimp Co-Founder Ben Chestnut and SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin in a follow-up to their popular fireside chat held during SaaStr @ Home 2020. Ben and Jason will chat about the highlights–and the challenges–of scaling a company like Mailchimp to $1B ARR.

Full video: https://youtu.be/5fx3qFD62ak

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This session will explore the approaches and measures that founders and leadership teams can take to successfully scale their business and expand into new markets. It will be led by Harry Briggs, a founder turned VC with experience both in building his own business with customers in over 35 countries and supporting his portfolio founders in executing their international expansion plans. OMERS Venture Managing Partner Jambu Palaniappan led Uber's EMEA expansion and Harry also shares some of Jambu's learnings from Uber.

Full video: https://youtu.be/I56lkBqi5yI

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As reaching $100 million in ARR continues to be a critical milestone for SaaS players, UserZoom CEO Alfonso de la Nuez and CMO Sophie Chesters will explain how they have taken UserZoom's business to the next level since its founding in 2007 and share ten relevant lessons learned during UserZoom's journey to $100 million in ARR in the user experience management space.

Full video: https://youtu.be/ldf7eOfuDkg

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Fundraising with a successful VC firm is a huge goal for entrepreneurs, especially in the early stages of the business. But the path to a deal isn’t always as straightforward as it may seem. During an enlightening session at SaaStr Europa 2022, Zach Coelius (Managing Partner at Coelius Capital) and Tiffany Luck (Investor at GGV Capital) share the secrets and lesser-known players in the world of venture capital. As Luck says, “There are many players in the VC ecosystem, and so your entry point to fundraising might be with any one of these players.”

Full video: https://youtu.be/xKb4ORuFDSc

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How do you build a sales organization from scratch? How do you go from $0 to $1M ARR and beyond? What about moving from founder-led sales to building a sales team and scaling your revenue growth?

Demodesk’s CEO, Veronika Riederle, and VP of Revenue, Lauren Wright, answer the most pertinent questions on scaling a SaaS start-up as they take us through lessons learned from the three stages of growth.

Full video: https://youtu.be/sAXI0nP2YW4

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As a founder, there are different ways you can set your start-up apart from other companies at the venture and growth stages. Investors look for specific metrics to see whether you stand out from the crowd, ranging from your market expansion potential to your product vision and product-market fit.

Atomico Partner, Irina Haivas, and Principal, Hillary Ball, explore what investors are looking for from the early stage through growth.

Full video: https://youtu.be/gP87MIf7Vbk

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As Showpad is close to crossing $100 in ARR PJ will share his most important learnings from scaling Showpad as its CEO. 

He'll cover the hard lessons learned, the highs and the lows on hiring, board dynamics, raising money, internationalization and personal growth.

Full video: https://youtu.be/YGfjHVAMFQ0

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As SaaStr Europa 2022 drew to a close, attendees took one more opportunity to ask Jason questions about topics like how to navigate the current market, the future of work, playing in a crowded space, and hiring your first VP of Sales.

Podcast episode 585 is an excerpt from the AMA. You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/AGHRqE54hTg

Transcript of full AMA here: https://www.saastr.com/the-answers-to-scaling-hiring-and-everything-else-a-saastr-europa-ama-with-saastr-ceo-jason-lemkin-pod-585-video/

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Most software startups rely on ARR as the first indicator of success. However, not every company understands the power of trust and credibility your first customers bring. Eleonore will speak about Pigment’s customer growth strategy and the approach to build a raving ambassador community. She will also share insight into bringing the trust philosophy into early product development.

Full video: https://youtu.be/GpRBa7e6IKs

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Jason recently opened up an AMA on Twitter Spaces to answer questions about scaling faster. This episode is an excerpt of that AMA.

Jason answers questions about

• marketing and customer acquisition
• customer onboarding
• M&A as a growth strategy
• sales comp plans
• sustainable scaling
• sales cycles 
• the fake question that won't go away: "build vs buy"

Transcript of the full AMA: https://www.saastr.com/scaling-faster-part-2-an-ama-with-saastr-founder-ceo-jason-lemkin-pod-583/

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We’ve learned Saas companies strive to achieve the T2D3 model. Join Bill Binch, Former EVP Sales, Marketo (currently Operating Partner at Battery Ventures) as he discusses Marketo’s success and why the same old playbook needs to be adapted for today. Learn from Bill on how the CEO & CRO relationship shapes this and what new ideas founders need to think through.

Full video: https://youtu.be/MS3e6_T5RYs

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Jason recently opened up an AMA on Twitter Spaces to answer questions about VC funding and scaling in SaaS. This episode is an excerpt of that AMA.

Transcript: https://www.saastr.com/vc-funding-scaling-saas-an-ama-with-saastr-ceo-jason-lemkin-pod-581/

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In conversation with Matthew Jacobson, Partner at ICONIQ Growth, Miro Founder and CEO Andrey Khusid will share his real-time revelations from growing Miro— which he likens to “building a plane while flying"—and what it takes to create a company that will endure for the longterm.

Full video: https://youtu.be/s1Wz1nwASGM

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SaaStr’s own Poya Osgouei has a great Uncharted podcast that does a deeper dive with many SaaS execs. 

Up this week is our own Jason Lemkin, Founder and CEO of SaaStr. 

We're cross-posting this great deep dive episode where they discuss how SaaStr has evolved over the last 10 years, and discuss the importance of focusing on field marketing now that folks are eager to get back together.

Which metrics matter and which can distract you when building a fast growth SaaS startup? Index Ventures Partner Molly Alter shares benchmarks for the most important metrics that will accelerate your growth and attract investors in your next round. She will explain how these differ by stages of the business, from Seed to Growth, and for different types of SaaS businesses.

Full video: https://youtu.be/UtfXQx4zc7o

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Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

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Jason recently opened up an AMA on Twitter Spaces to answer questions about scaling faster. This episode is an excerpt of that AMA.

Read the full transcript of the AMA: https://www.saastr.com/scaling-faster-an-ama-with-saastr-founder-ceo-jason-lemkin-pod-577

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Although core to the European economy, accounting for around 11M companies and 99.8% of businesses in Western Europe, the SMB market has largely been underserved by software providers. Now, companies like PayFit are on a mission to meet this underserved audience’s needs. With its unique and flexible cloud architecture, PayFit has already met the payroll and HR management demands of 7,000+ SMBs across four countries and grown to 900+ employees. Getting to this point from just 40 team members and 200 customers back in 2017 takes more than just grit, vision and a great product. It takes a solid GTM strategy focused on launching and growing the company’s competitive advantage in each core market, an in-depth knowledge of your target audience and the ability to hire exceptional team members along the way. In this session, Philippe Botteri, Partner at Accel, and Firmin Zocchetto, co-founder and CEO at PayFit, discuss the seven secrets behind the company’s SMB GTM strategy.

Full video: https://youtu.be/HZDBNg8JQ8w

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The last few years have certainly tested marketers, but 2022 serves up a brand new array of challenges. Uncharted territory stretches ahead, but the unknown can also present opportunities for growth and greatness. 

At Mutiny's The Second Lever digital conference, SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin hosted a star-studded CMO panel featuring Salesforce President & CMO Sarah Franklin, Box CMO Chris Koehler, and Attentive CMO Sara Varni. In the eye-opening session, these marketing leaders discuss the market pulse, impactful branding, and strategies for the future.

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Scale-up seems easier than start-up in many ways. You've established product-market fit. You've sold $5 or $10M in ARR. You've found a buyer persona to sell and problem (aka, use-case) to solve. You've answered all the hard questions. Now, all you have to do is scale it up. Easy-peasy, right? Not so fast. In this presentation, I'll cover what I see as the top 5 mistakes made during the scale-up phase based on my experience as a CEO of two startups in the $0 to $100M range, CMO of two in the $50M to $1B range, advisor to dozens of startups, and EIR at Balderton capital where we work with scores of startups at both the early and growth stages. We'll discuss: premature scaling, US expansion, insufficient enablement and support, inexperienced management, and the delicate topic of reacceleration after a stall. As a bonus, we'll talk about when your "second album" (i.e., product) should come out and how to maintain focus in a world of market- and sometimes board-driven distractions.

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Jason recently opened up an AMA on Twitter Spaces to answer questions about scaling from $1M to $10M. This episode is an excerpt of that AMA.

See the full transcript: https://www.saastr.com/scaling-from-1-to-10m-an-ama-with-saastr-ceo-and-founder-jason-lemkin-pod-573

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In this episode of the SaaStr Podcast, Insider Co-Founder and CEO Hande Cilinger will dive into 10 mistakes to avoid in building out a revenue organization. Tune in to this week's episode for Hande’s take on how to best hire, enable, sell, and grow.

Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/tnBklWSZJ-g

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n this session, ZoomInfo founder and CEO Henry Schuck shares how he built a business from scratch and grew it into one of the most successful IPOs of the 21st century. Join this session with Henry and SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin to learn where he went wrong, what he would do differently, and how to avoid making the same mistakes he did. 

This is Part 2 of Jason and Henry's interview. Part 1 can be found in Episode 570.

Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/YLSNCjAqDW0

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In this session, ZoomInfo founder and CEO Henry Schuck shares how he built a business from scratch and grew it into one of the most successful IPOs of the 21st century. Join this session with Henry and SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin to learn where he went wrong, what he would do differently, and how to avoid making the same mistakes he did. 

This is Part 1 of Jason and Henry's interview. Part 2 can be found in Episode 571 to be released on June 8, 2022.

Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/YLSNCjAqDW0

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

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Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

To celebrate 10 years of SaaStr, we’re revisiting some classic podcast episodes. Up today: a 2016 interview with Harry Stebbings and Front Co-Founder and CEO Mathilde Collin. Just this week, Front announced their Series D at a 1.7 billion dollar valuation that makes Front one of only 11 SaaS Unicorns founded and led by women.

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

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In the last few weeks, the VC funding environment has changed dramatically. In this session, Christoph will share tactical advice on how to weatherproof your financial plan for the funding downturn.

You can see Christoph's slides here: https://www.slideshare.net/saastr/mind-the-gap-balancing-growth-and-efficiency-in-tougher-times-with-point-nine

Full video: https://youtu.be/vIOZ5T0HaNc

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Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

To celebrate 10 years of SaaStr, we’re revisiting some classic podcast episodes. Up today: Harry Stebbings interviews Shippo Co-Founder and CEO Laura Behrens Wu. In April 2016, Shippo had only 22 employees and was just beginning to scale. They've since opened new hubs in Austin and Dublin and in 2021, hired Employee number 200.

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

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At SaaStr Europa 2022, Jason shared the results of 16 SaaStr LinkedIn polls and discusses where he thinks SaaS companies are on track or need improvement.

Full video: https://youtu.be/ra3g8XEJFs0

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To celebrate 10 years of SaaStr, we’re revisiting some classic podcast episodes. Up today: a 2016 interview with Harry Stebbings and Gusto Co-Founder and CEO Josh Reeves. At the time of this interview, Gusto had 350 employees serving 40,000 customers. Today, it's grown to more than 2,000 employees serving over 200,000 businesses.

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RevenueCat's API handles subscriptions for more than 8 million mobile subscribers and is the subscription infrastructure for more than 4000 apps. Join Miguel Carranza, Co-founder and CTO to hear his top learnings on designing and scaling a high throughput API.

Full video: https://youtu.be/LOkTz0cvwS8

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To celebrate 10 years of SaaStr, we’re revisiting some classic podcast episodes. Up today: a 2016 interview with Harry Stebbings and Flexport Founder and CEO, Ryan Petersen. In October 2016, Flexport was a single-product company with a valuation of 300 million. Today, it's a multi-product platform valued at 8 billion.

Ryan discusses why NPS isn't just a customer measurement, and how empowering your employees makes for happier employees and customers.

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Looking to scale revenue, get funding from a VC or private equity firm to grow your business, or take your company public? Marketing plays a key role in making any of that happen. Noreen Allen will share tips from her experience at five different tech companies, which includes three IPOs, multiple fundraising rounds, and several M&A events. She’ll walk you thru how to turn your marketing organization into a growth driver.

Full video: https://youtu.be/7I21W5NEFsY

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Companies that have access to more accurate financial data have the ability to develop seamless exchanges of information, providing consumers with improved ways to manage their finances. But how do companies gain secure access to that data in the first place? Enter the platform company. Hear from Plaid co-founder and CEO, Zach Perret, as he walks through his lessons learned building Plaid and how it found itself at the center of the fintech ecosystem.

Full video: https://youtu.be/cUIahrKfOq0

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The community industry is booming. Now, more than ever, companies are realizing the importance of community and the impact it can have on their businesses. Learn from a community professional with over 10 years of experience in building community for SaaS companies about what community is, who you build community for, why it's important, when to start, and how to kick things off.

Full video: https://youtu.be/CHV_GUO_FZw

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When marketing teams spend the bulk of their time completing manual tasks, data gets siloed, workflows break down, and leaders do not have the visibility they need to make customer-focused decisions.

Airtable’s CMO Archana Agrawal shares how marketers can tackle these challenges to develop solid marketing foundations for rapid customer acquisition and growth. She reveals how customer centricity, operational rigor, and data-driven strategies drove Airtable to scale and serve over 300,000 organizations, including 80% of the Fortune 100.

Full video: https://youtu.be/2aAT8-Omcqc

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Organizations need livable values that drive the business and employees. If appropriately discussed and embedded, a values playbook can be the hallmark of your organization and one of the most strategic tools founders and managers have.

Emery Wells, co-founder of Frame.io, discusses how to set results-driven company values and why it's essential to embed those values into every part of the employee lifecycle.

Full video: https://youtu.be/CwoHIZ16ess

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Key Takeaways:

#1. VC remains open — at least for deals < $1B valuation.

#2. So many top, mid, and later-stage SaaS companies raised tons of capital in 2021, so much … that few really need to go back to market and raise again this year.

#3. VCs are taking more time, but more “back to normal” time Growth deals can still be done in 3-4 weeks, just not 1 week now.

#4. Not only is there is plenty of money in venture — but even more is coming. Top funds are continuing to raise huge funds.

#5. The biggest issue in venture today is just that founders haven’t changed their expectations

#6. 2016 was tough, too. 

#7.  Watch What the Big PE Firms like Vista, Thoma Bravo, etc. do in SaaS.  They know.

Full video: https://youtu.be/WehTJ4RNBaQ

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From a remote-first company founded in 2005 to a $7B valuation in 2022, 1Password grew for 14 years through word-of-mouth marketing and a core focus on its customers. Today the company has grown to over 600 employees, serves over 100,000 businesses, and counts individual customers in the millions. The processes have changed and the teams have grown, but the core focus on customers remains. CEO Jeff Shiner and Board Advisor Carilu Dietrich will dive into the seven most meaningful tactics that have brought 1Password to this stage.

Full video: https://youtu.be/HpNsBsnafBo

Building a revenue marketing engine provides an invaluable asset to a company’s growth by harnessing the combination of people, data, and instinct. The problem is most companies have fragmented go-to-market efforts that prevent them from seeing the power of connecting these dots. In this session, Tracy Kraft, VP of Global Revenue Marketing at Demandbase, will provide key considerations and a proven formula that go-to-market teams can use to establish, grow, and scale their revenue marketing strategies…and directly link it to company growth.

Full video: https://youtu.be/gosmIylk4AM

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We know the secret to SaaS is technology that scales, but what about the people? Effective collaboration between go-to-market and R&D teams is critical, and it all starts with understanding how the other side operates.

Product-led organizations are made up of “builders and sellers,” two parts of your organization who inherently approach their work differently. To get the entire organization on the same page, a different playbook is required.

From introducing more effective communication practices to finding shared purpose in disparate operating models, there are required shifts that need to be made at each stage of growth.

In this talk, 20+ year SaaS entrepreneur and CircleCI CEO, Jim Rose, will share:

1. Understanding what product-led growth really means and how to find harmony during rapid expansion

2. How to build and use a data-driven engine to get R&D and GTM teams speaking the same language

3. How to look for the key signals that drive critical decisions at various stages of growth

Full video: https://youtu.be/39NqdMTKUC8

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• Why being a serial entrepreneur in SaaS is a bad idea
• Why hiring VPS is critical to really growing your startup

This episode is an excerpt from Jason and Lloyed's discussion. You can see the full video here: https://youtu.be/RqgjBMlQ6ik

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Podium's EVP of Sales, Than Hancock shares his insights on how to maximize and grow your sales organizations for every stage of growth from seed round to global scale. He will be joined by Regional Sales Manager, Carlie Adams to discuss both the challenges and opportunities for setting up your sales organization for success, particularly during hyper growth. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/MFB8X9mvFM8

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Managers often grapple with how to create and scale a global product team. Scaling a team isn’t about increasing the size, rather it’s about increasing the output of the teams and producing tangible value. For that reason, scaling teams require different leadership chains inside the company.

Poorvi Shrivastav, GM and VP of Products at HubSpot, shares her passion for team development and discusses her journey of leading cross-geographical product teams and revealing how to execute the scaling plan successfully.

Full video: https://youtu.be/jWCbO87OEgc

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Category creation involves dreaming up a new suite of products that can sell via traditional channels or methods. It’s a process that demands more than a game-changing product, as it takes having the right talent on your team and a consistent vision that drives all aspects of your business.

Mark Ghermezian, the co-founder of Braze, takes us through his journey of reinventing a category and building Braze from an idea into a dominant player in the mobile lifecycle marketing space.

Full video: https://youtu.be/pVsmB8nhneE

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Kiren Sekar joined Samsara’s founding team as a CPO after working with the co-founders at their previous company, Meraki. Calling on more than twelve years of product work between Meraki and Samsara, Kiren shares valuable and actionable insights on innovating in underserved markets.

Full video: https://youtu.be/3ZrNFs4uQfA

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Every sales leader struggles to retain their talent - especially in today's employee market. In this session, Alice Katwan, Twilio's SVP and GM of North America Sales, will reveal her strategies for building a high-performing sales team that sticks around for the long haul. If you are spending too many cycles recruiting, onboarding, and worrying about retaining your top sales reps — this session is for you.

Full video: https://youtu.be/iKhWflFcU-U

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In this episode, Spencer discusses:

* Focusing on the product and expansion

* Taking your company public

This is the second half of Spenser's session from 2022 SaaStr Build. You can find the first half in Episode 546 here: https://sites.libsyn.com/77527/saastr-546-the-secrets-to-going-big-going-multi-product-and-going-public-with-amplitude-ceo-spenser-skates-part-1

Full video: https://youtu.be/2UPMCcC3OHQ

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Spenser Skates is the CEO of Amplitude, one of the leading customer analytics services for enterprises and product makers. But getting customers like Twitter, Instacart, Match, and IBM didn't happen overnight. Spenser lays out the mistakes young companies will often make as they grow, and how he positioned Amplitude for growth and success. He found these lessons essential for founders to learn on their way to $100 million ARR and beyond.

In this episode, Spenser will discuss laying the right foundation for long-term success:

* Find the right product-market fit

* Build the best founding team for growth

* Hire a team of people more talented than you

* Surround yourself with a well-rounded board of advisors

Full video: https://youtu.be/2UPMCcC3OHQ

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Full video: https://youtu.be/Qu6wr3u2-yU

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This episode is an abbreviated version of Madhu's session at SaaStr Build. You can see the full video here: https://youtu.be/kxgox905lho

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Raise.Work is a leader in planning, leasing, and sourcing tech real estate spaces.

Full video: https://youtu.be/0MnlhVXUo3Q

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The SaaS world is competitive, and standing out in a highly saturated market takes remarkable hard work and skill. However, the companies that adapt and create transformational change tend to survive. COO Anu Bharadwaj’s years of experience at Atlassian have shaped her outlook on how to thrive in the market. 

In this session, Boast.AI Co-Founder Lloyed Lobo interviews Bharadwaj as she shares Atlassian’s five building blocks to win.

This podcast is an excerpt of the full interview, which you can find here: https://youtu.be/zQCdwoT7Kak

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Sam Blond, Chief Revenue Officer at Brex, shares how to set and hit revenue targets for your sales team, when to adjust, and how to structure and hire your team around your sales KPIs and goals. 

SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, shares the top 15 ways to help the sales team close more right now, this year -- with the same number of leads you already have!!

Customer feedback is an essential road map to guide a company toward success. When you have a customer-centric culture, your business has a greater chance of growing and thriving. But how can businesses create spaces for customers to engage in productive dialogue? 

Mapistry sought out feedback about its direction by organizing a Customer Advisory Board (CAB).

Mapistry received commendations for the process from participants of its CAB—executives and practitioners from diverse industries. Maya Colato, Vice President of Customer Experience at Mapistry, outlines how you can build a successful Customer Advisory Board. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/OfjP01RmuvQ

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OpenPhone and AgentSync are two SaaS businesses with very different growth strategies, but the same ultimate goal: to continue selling while simultaneously problem-solving for current customers. They are a perfect example of implementing a growth model, mastering it, and then expanding horizons into other growth strategies with strategic testing and experimenting. Contrary to the title of this article, the two brands prove that product-led growth is neither panacea nor boondoggle, but rather a winning strategy for the appropriate product when thoughtfully implemented. OpenPhone and AgentSync are two SaaS businesses with very different growth strategies, but the same ultimate goal: to continue selling while simultaneously problem-solving for current customers. They are a perfect example of implementing a growth model, mastering it, and then expanding horizons into other growth strategies with strategic testing and experimenting. Contrary to the title of this article, the two brands prove that product-led growth is neither panacea nor boondoggle, but rather a winning strategy for the appropriate product when thoughtfully implemented. Jenn Knight, Co-founder and CTO of AgentSync, and Daryna Kulya, Co-founder of OpenPhone, discuss how different approaches have helped each brand reach its target audience and accomplish its goals, the potential of product-led growth, and how to scale growth strategies to yield desirable results. Session moderated by Craft Ventures Partner & COO Brian Murray, discuss how different approaches have helped each brand reach its target audience and accomplish its goals, the potential of product-led growth, and how to scale growth strategies to yield desirable results. Session moderated by Craft Ventures Partner & COO Brian Murray.

Full video: https://youtu.be/L4oRfut9ufI

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What do you remember about your experience in the workplace prior to 2020? Is it the moments of collaborative synergy and collective achievements? Is it the feeling of solving complex problems and hitting milestones with your team? Perhaps it’s the joy of closing deals and celebrating with your colleagues?

It’s been more than two years since the pandemic interrupted our daily work life, and companies are taking stock and preparing for a return to the workplace. How can company leadership retain these important experiences of collaboration in the workplace and pair them with the opportunity and flexibility we’ve discovered since working remotely?

Raise CEO and co-founder, Justin Bedecarre, and president, Felipe Gomez-Kraus, discuss how SaaS companies can build successful hybrid workplaces that are empathetic while incentivizing their team to return to the office.

Full video: https://youtu.be/ohe10zViLdw

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Reaching the first billion is a milestone for every SaaS company, so what’s the best way to get there? During his SaaStr Annual presentation, Tom Clayton, CRO of Bill.com shared his insights and advice for growing revenue streams to maximize business success. 

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Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

All high-growth startups reach a point in scaling their business when their processes and operations start to inhibit their growth. From SendGrid to DigitalOcean, Yancey Spruill is the person these startups brought in when they were ready to graduate to the big leagues. In his presentation, Yancey will discuss the most common mistakes startup founders make and how to overcome hurdles at different stages of growth.

Full video: https://youtu.be/MD_wD5hp7r0

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

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Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Panelists:

Katrina Wong, VP Marketing and Demand Generation Segment

Asawari Samant, Head of Marketing, Anyscale

Jeffrey Yoshimura, CMO and Customer Experience Officer, Snyk

Three marketing leaders discuss the importance of community, data, and experimentation, as well as the do's and don'ts of using agencies.

This episode is an abbreviated version of the session. You can see the full session here: https://youtu.be/7wucuUQSQvQ

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

In this episode, Marilee Bear, SVP North America Enterprise Sales at Zendesk sits down with SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser, to talk about the best practices to deploy in motivating and organizing your sales team in Q1. 

Upwork CEO Hayden Brown addresses common myths around working with freelancers, such as, "Freelancers aren't reliable," and, "I can't build my company culture with freelancers."

She'll share how Upwork has scaled by including freelancers in every part of the company and treating them as part of the team rather than outsiders, and how it can benefit every company to have access to the talent it needs, when it needs it, regardless of geography or business ebbs and flows.

Full video: https://youtu.be/APgXDu37UIk

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Full video: https://youtu.be/OAxJvk04JKU

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

SaaS is evolving rapidly. In many ways, we are witnessing the equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion in terms of the number of SaaS companies created each month. And these startups look different than their predecessors. Trends like vertical SaaS, Product-led Growth, and payment make the industry almost unrecognizable compared to the era of the SaaS pioneers more than a decade ago.

Yet many companies are still adopting Customer Success practices - like fixed size-based segmentation and activity-based "check-ins" - that were created in the 2010s.

Modern cloud businesses are rethinking Customer Success in many ways. They are looking at it as a growth engine, shifting focus from purely looking at churn to increasingly emphasizing Net Dollar Retention. They are recognizing the need for CSMs, in some cases, to be deeply technical. And they are, particularly in Product-led Growth companies, integrating Sales and CS motions and organizations tightly together.

In this talk, Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta will cover 10 best practices that represent the cutting edge of Customer Success. Check it out to save your company from becoming a SaaS dinosaur.

Full video: https://youtu.be/PzCnKSL2kx8

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

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Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Postman CEO Abhinav Asthana shares how community, product, data can power marketing, customer success, and sales are the key elements for the next generation of SaaS software leaders.

Full video here: https://youtu.be/jK8trhy5i-k

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Full video: https://youtu.be/s4WZcgL5fc0

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

The world of product-led growth is a highly dynamic space. Join this session with Calendly CMO Patrick Moran and Head of Marketing Growth & Demand Gen Garrett Scott to learn more about these changes and how they are reflected in Calendly’s evolution as a SaaS company.

Full video: https://youtu.be/ey9aiYOupSg

In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, shares his best advice for all first-time VPs coming into a SaaS startup. 

When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. But what are the essentials of scaling up, and how do you navigate obstacles along the way to function as a high-impact organization?

Cathy Gao, Partner at Sapphire Ventures, and Anoushka Vaswani, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, moderated a panel with Carlos Delatorre, CRO at TripActions, and Latané Conant, CMO at 6sense to discuss how you can scale your startup from $20 million ARR to $200 million ARR through go-to-market execution, talent, and culture.

Hootsuite CRO Melissa Murray Bailey shares secrets to running a successful SaaS sales team and reducing employee turnover. 

Every high-growth organization inevitably reaches the point of pivoting its strategy and offerings to capture new audiences—a journey made more complex with the new demands emerging this past year. In this session, Dorian Stone will share lessons learned from Grammarly’s evolution from consumer to SMB to enterprise, address common assumptions and pitfalls in the process of scaling, and reveal must-know strategies to drive efficient growth this year and beyond.

Vimeo went public in May as an $8 billion powerhouse in video software. Better known as the indie version of YouTube for more than a decade, the company has redefined itself from a B2C destination to the B2B solution that empowers any business to create, collaborate and connect with professional-quality video. Join Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud for a conversation with Brent Thill, Financial Analyst @ Jefferies about spotting potential in what is now a $70 billion market, and how operating as a founder within a 16-year old company helped her take bets on a strategy that’s paying off.

Building out a marketing channel is like building product. It takes countless iterations and constant market feedback to get right. This session will introduce tactics on how to slowly and methodically test, assess success, and eventually scale a marketing channel until it hits a ceiling and it's time to move to the next one.

When sales teams succeed, the company succeeds. Revenue goes up, productivity increases, and ideally, the team continues to grow. But running a high-performing sales team isn’t an easy task. How can you ensure success within your sales organization in a way that scales with you?

Heather Akuiyibo, VP of Sales at Databricks, shares her four adaptable frameworks for high-performing sales teams and how those frameworks helped Databricks’ sales teams succeed.

Full video: https://youtu.be/9tn-I4f9Va4

Zach joined Canva in 2013 as one of Canva’s earliest employees and has worked across product management, communications and human resources before establishing the global marketing function. Eight years later 50 million people are now using Canva every month and the company recently approached $1 Billion in Revenue. In this podcast, Zach and Jason dive into the initial growth marketing strategies and framework behind Canva’s exponential growth as a start-up, the strategies for targeting and growing into the enterprise, and how to build out a global marketing function.

No one word strikes more terror in the heart of product-, engineering-, or even sales-oriented founders and CEOs than "marketing." How to understand marketing? How to drive marketing? How to measure marketing? What to look for in a marketing leader? In this session, we'll talk about how CEOs (and other startup execs) should think about, charter, direct, and support marketing.

Full video: https://youtu.be/ggUwcE600xU

Learn more about Box's journey to reaccelerate growth and march toward $1B in SaaS ARR and their CRO's lessons learned along the way.

Full video: https://youtu.be/RQ6gom-lLxE

Amy Appleyard, SVP Global Sales @ Malwarebytes, Michelle Benfer, VP, Head of North America Sales @ HubSpot Tony Benvenuto, SVP of Sales West @ Seismic, and Anna Baird, CRO @ Outreach share lessons learned when scaling their sales teams, the importance of BDRs, key hires and when to prioritize them, and more.

GitLab started as an open-source project that expanded into a public company with a buyer-based open-core business model. With over 300+ code contributions per month, innovating with the wider community is key to accelerating development efforts. Join GitLab CEO, Sid Sijbrandij, as he discusses GitLab’s journey, choosing the right business model that balances high revenue potential and community contributions, and co-creating the product with the wider community to deliver safer software faster.

Over the past ten years, Zapier has grown from a weekend side project to global unicorn, serving millions of small and medium businesses around the world. But Zapier isn’t your typical startup story and their roots aren’t in Silicon Valley. Come hear what Zapier’s early employees learned from building the foundation of one of today’s most successful startups.

Many start-ups today start with an amazing Product Led Growth (PLG) engine that hasn’t required an outbound sales and marketing motion. As amazing as this is, if your company wants to move into the mid-market or enterprise business, you’re going to have to build and hire a Sales team, and expand the capabilities of your Marketing function. How can you add this GTM motion effectively, without cannibalizing your existing business? How do you balance the two for the right target markets and audiences? Product-market fit, pricing, packaging, messaging, strategic investments, culture, evangelism all play a critical part and will change as soon as you add this team.

Hear from the CMOs of top tech companies on they helped Freshworks, Twilio, Salesforce, 1Password, Atlassian, Litmus, CircleCi, Coda and many others have faced this challenge and led their companies through this successful transition.

Stacey Epstein, CMO @ Freshworks

Sara Varni Bright, CMO @ Twilio

Carilu Dietrich, Fractional CMO @ 1Password

Viviana Faga, General Partner @ Coda

Pricing can kill your product, or make it soar. To start with, create pricing tiers and make pricing easy and convenient for your customers. Beyond that, the decisions are difficult, such as usage-based vs. predictable pricing. In this presentation, we discuss the key principles of pricing and app or online service, showing the pros and cons of your choices.

Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/picking-the-perfect-pricing-model-that-fits-your-app-with-hackerone-ceo-marten-mickos-podcast-508-and-video/

When is the best time to find your next gear of growth? Now. Whether you are growing rapidly or seeing growth start to slow, this talk will share proven ways to accelerate.

Karen Peacock, CEO of Intercom and former SVP of Small Business at Intuit, will discuss how putting customers at the forefront of your business is the key to hitting that next level.

She’ll cover how to segment your customer base and analyze the health of each part as input to strategy, design and package your product based on value and build highly contextual and personalized customer experiences that lead to happy customers, retention, expansion, and growth.  

Karen will share stories based on her experience at Intuit building one of the world’s largest SaaS product lines from $500M to $2.5B and in her current role leading Intercom’s high growth on the path to IPO.

Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/shifting-to-the-next-gear-proven-strategies-to-accelerate-growth-with-intercom/

Treasure Data was founded as a big data platform company, but struggled to compete against larger tech companies. After pivoting to a more vertical solution (CDP - Customer Data Platform), revenue growth accelerated, going from $20m to $100m in 3 years. Kazuki will share the struggles and decisions a part of pivoting the company.

Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/100-million-arr-pivot-with-treasure-data-ceo-kazuki-ohta/

A lot of startups and SaaS companies that build a business around an open source technology struggle to commercialize in a way that is both profitable and scalable, while also supporting the open source community that is so critical to innovation. Join Ali Ghodsi, CEO and Co-Founder of Databricks and Nithya Ruff, Head of Open Source at Comcast and Chair of The Linux Foundation Board, who are both open source thought leaders, for a fireside discussion about the value open source software has delivered for enterprises and their perspectives on the current state of the open source landscape.

Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/the-future-of-ai-open-source-databricks-ceo-ali-ghodsi/

In this episode, Bryan Smith, Co-Founder at Leon Health sits down with SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser, to talk about the best techniques to overcome Q4 and end-of-year stress in sales teams.

Gone are the days of Sales and Marketing building their own tech fiefdoms. In this podcast, Sydney Sloan, CMO at SalesLoft shares a holistic approach to adding technology that powers your revenue engine and shares examples of tech stacks, best practices, and org designs from successful companies at different growth stages.

Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/the-revtech-stack-playbook-going-from-1m-to-100m-with-salesloft/

There are countless ways for founders to learn how to build strong teams, strengthen go-to-market processes, and focus on growth and customer success. But a topic that's becoming more important, especially after such a challenging year, is founder well-being. Shopify President Harley Finkelstein shares insight on how successful entrepreneurs approach personal change, coaching, and ongoing development to achieve work-life harmony. Harley will be joined by Felicis founder and Managing Partner Aydin Senkut and Felicis' Head of Founder Success Dasha Maggio. They will discuss what founders should ask for and how focusing on personal development can lead to stronger teams and better outcomes for the business.

Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/why-founders-should-prioritize-personal-development-with-shopify/

The state of software buying has changed. SaaS spending dipped in the first half of 2020 but has since accelerated and increased as we reach the end of 2021. Amanda Malko, CMO at G2, shares a fascinating look at the data that reveals shifting patterns in the way consumers purchase software.

Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/the-state-of-software-buying-from-smb-to-enterprise-with-g2s-cmo/

We're celebrating episode 500 of the SaaStr Podcast! Our SaaStr 'OG' podcaster, Harry Stebbings, Founder of The 20 Minute VC and, Jason Lemkin, SaaStr CEO and Founder discuss the future of the markets and how to build a successful SaaS sales team from the ground up. 

Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-scale-saas-sales-team-with-harry-stebbings-jason-lemkin/

Sponsors:

https://shortcut.com/saastr

https://www.litmus.com/saastr

https://flatfile.com/saastr/

In this episode, Mark Jung, VP Marketing at Dooly, and Zoë Hartsfield, Community Manager at Dooly, sit down with SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser, to talk about best practices for brand re-launches and the cutting edge techniques for an impactful live event strategy. 

Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/saas-live-event-strategy-dooly/

Sponsors:

https://calendly.com/

https://www.invoca.com/

https://stripe.com/

https://www.ontheclock.com/

Mark Roberge is the Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital, Sr. Lecturer at Harvard Business School, and author of the bestselling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula. In this podcast, he'll outline some of the most common SaaS sales potholes when scaling from $0 to $100 million and how to avoid them.

Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/the-most-common-saas-sales-potholes-and-how-to-avoid-them-with-mark-roberge-podcast-498-and-video/

Sponsors:

https://shortcut.com/saastr

https://www.litmus.com/saastr

https://flatfile.com/saastr/

Featuring 3 prominent Founders - from Calendly, Coda and LaunchDarkly - that have achieved scale, at "Founder Confidential" you will hear about the highs and lows of fundraising, working with a VC board, and real talk about what it really is like to be a true Founder.

Moderator: Lloyed Lobo, Co-Founder, Boast.AI

Panelists: Shishir Mehrotra, Cofounder and CEO, Coda Edith Harbaugh, Cofounder and CEO, LaunchDarkly David Barrett, Founder and CEO, Expensify Jason Lemkin, Founder and CEO, SaaStr

Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/founder-confidential-saas-fundraising-expensify-launchdarkly-coda-boast-saastr/

Sponsors:

https://www.invoca.com/

https://stripe.com/

https://www.ontheclock.com/

In today's SaaStr podcast, we present the Cutting Edge. Where SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser sits down with the best revenue leaders in SaaS to share cutting-edge tactics and strategies. In this episode, Doug Landis, Growth Partner at Emergence Capital talks about the art of business conversations and how your customers should inform your go-to-market messaging. 

Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/business-conversations-doug-landis-emergence-capital/

Sponsors:

https://shortcut.com/saastr

https://www.litmus.com/saastr

https://calendly.com/

https://flatfile.com/saastr/

In this podcast, Aaron Levie, CEO, and Co-founder of Box will discuss "what's next in hybrid work," leading through a dynamic economy, the lessons learned from 2020, what technology needs to exist to bridge the gap between in-person and virtual, and what the office will look like whenever we return.

Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/the-secrets-behind-creating-scalable-products-with-boxs-ceo-aaron-levie/

Sponsors:

https://www.invoca.com/

https://stripe.com/

https://www.ontheclock.com/

Reaching unicorn status is goal #1 for many startups. In this podcast, Tope Awotona, CEO at Calendly, Bernadette Nixon, CEO at Algolia, Steve Sloan, CEO at Contentful and by Casey Renner, Partner at OpenView discuss how high-growth companies can strive for profitability while growing responsibly to reach unicorn status.

Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/demystifying-the-unicorn-buzz-with-the-ceos-of-calendly-algolia-and-contentful/

Sponsors:

https://shortcut.com/saastr

https://www.litmus.com/saastr

https://flatfile.com/saastr/

Jack Ryan, Sr. Partner Manager @ SaaStr, and Bryan Elsesser, VP Sales @ SaaStr talk about Jack's incredible journey from being completely paralyzed to climbing Mt. Whitney and sourcing over $1M in revenue for SaaStr.

Full video: https://youtu.be/c3-Kzs81uD0

Sponsors:

https://www.invoca.com/

https://stripe.com/

https://www.ontheclock.com/

As Marqeta’s CMO, Vidya Peters drives marketing strategy and execution including brand, PR, corporate marketing, product marketing, events, and demand generation. Prior to joining, Vidya ran marketing for MuleSoft where she helped scale the business from pre-IPO to one of the most successful and fastest-growing public enterprise software companies and later one of the most significant enterprise acquisitions. In this podcast, learn why intent is the new lead and Vidya's hard-earned marketing lessons from Marqeta and Mulesoft.

Sponsors:

https://shortcut.com/saastr

https://www.litmus.com/saastr

https://flatfile.com/saastr/

You’re the founder of a nicely growing SaaS startup that has just raised a Series A, Series B, or Series C funding round. You need to hire rapidly to seize the opportunity. But how much should you hire, what roles should you hire, and what should the org chart look like when you’re done? 

David Sacks, co-founder and general partner at Craft will share what works from the 20 unicorns he's invested in, including AirBnB, Bird, ClickUp, Eventbrite, Facebook, Houzz, Lyft, OpenDoor, Palantir, Postmates, Reddit, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter, Uber, and Wish.

Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/the-saas-org-chart-by-series-with-david-sacks/

Sponsors:

https://shortcut.com/saastr

https://www.litmus.com/saastr

https://www.ontheclock.com/

Product-led scaling isn’t about growth hacking. Scaling 10X is really hard…no matter if you are starting at $1M, $10M, $100M or $1B ARR. Join Dropbox GM, Rachel Wolan, as she shares hard-earned, practical lessons learned through product-led scaling at Dropbox, LiveRamp, and Talkdesk.

Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/beyond-product-led-growth-7-lessons-learned-in-product-led-scaling-podcast-490-and-video/

Sponsors:

https://www.invoca.com/

https://stripe.com/

https://www.ontheclock.com/

In today's SaaStr podcast, we present the Cutting Edge. Where SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser sits down with the best revenue leaders in SaaS to share cutting-edge tactics and strategies. In this episode, Abby Hammer, Chief Customer Officer and Head of Product at ChurnZero talks about what it takes to build a genuinely authentic and customer-centric support team.

Sponsors:

https://shortcut.com/saastr

https://www.litmus.com/saastr

https://www.ontheclock.com/

Michael Seibel has spent the last eight years advising thousands of startups at Y Combinator. In this podcast, he'll talk about the advice that he's found to be most transformative for startups.

Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/the-essential-startup-advice-for-founders-with-y-combinators-michael-seibel-podcast-488-and-video/

Sponsors:

https://www.invoca.com/

https://stripe.com/

https://www.ontheclock.com/

At the heart of product-led growth is the user. And in this podcast, Olivia Nottebohm, CRO of Notion ($10B valuation), will delve into the more complex aspects of product-led growth, and why they're essential for building a successful business that will thrive for years to come.

Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/how-community-led-growth-drives-product-led-growth/

Sponsors:

https://shortcut.com/saastr

https://www.litmus.com/saastr

https://www.ontheclock.com/

In today's SaaStr podcast, we present the Cutting Edge. Where SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser sits down with the best revenue leaders in SaaS to share cutting-edge tactics and strategies. In this episode, Amy Frampton, Head of Marketing at BambooHR shares high-impact best practices for scaling SDR teams.  

Sponsors:

https://www.invoca.com/

https://stripe.com/

https://www.ontheclock.com/

PagerDuty's CEO, Jennifer Tejada, and Sameer Dholakia, former CEO of SendGrid and current PagerDuty Board Member share what fellow founders can learn from PagerDuty's post-IPO reality, and the realities of operating as a public company, two years later. 

Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/hyperscaling-post-ipo-with-pagerdutys-ceo-jennifer-tejada-podcast-485/

Sponsors:

https://shortcut.com/saastr

https://www.litmus.com/saastr/

https://www.ontheclock.com/

BVP partners Byron Deeter, Mary D’Onofrio, and Elliott Robinson share a state of the cloud economy, tactical lessons and case studies for early-stage founders, private market analysis, alongside key predictions and trends driving innovation in SaaS around the globe. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/HZDOQAGW6-E

Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/the-state-of-the-cloud-2021-how-to-build-a-cloud-unicorn-with-bessemer-venture-partners-podcast-484-and-video/

Sponsors:

https://www.invoca.com/

https://stripe.com/

https://www.ontheclock.com/

In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, sits down will Bill.com CEO, René Lacerte. Bill.com has become an SMB powerhouse, with 120,000+ customers and a stunning $25B+ market cap.  All while selling at a $2k ACV!

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/10-learnings-from-rene-lacerte-ceo-of-bill-com/

Sponsors:

https://terminus.com/

https://checkr.com/

A great deep dive on Vimeo at $330m+ in ARR, and especially, on how they do self-serve and enterprise at the same time with their CEO Jason Lemkin.

Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/10-learnings-from-anjali-sud-ceo-of-vimeo/

As companies grow while sharing a single, common SaaS infrastructure, their security, reliability, and integration needs evolve. In this podcast, Asana's Head of Engineering, Prashant Pandey, will outline how to advance your infrastructure to support and grow with your largest customers, including tips on how to:
- Earn enterprise trust with robust infrastructure
- Give admins control over product usage
- Build data isolation into your architecture and
- Support customers by interconnecting their data

The financial services industry – banking, lending, insurance – has long benefited from deep competitive moats that limited competition and stifled innovation. Now with digital finance, innovation is occurring at lightning speed. New developments are popping up so quickly that it's hard to keep track of what's out there, and what isn't. In this session, Eric Sager, COO of Plaid will make clear what digital finance has enabled thus far, and what else is to come.

Blog post + video: https://www.saastr.com/non-obvious-observations-about-the-future-of-fintech-with-plaid-coo-podcast-480-and-video/

Enterprise players are not born overnight, and the march upmarket cannot come at the cost of the customers that helped get you there. Zendesk’s ability to balance Enterprise customer needs with SMBs has allowed it to thrive and become one of the very few SaaS companies to exceed $1B in annual revenue.

In this podcast, Adrian McDermott, Zendesk’s Chief Technology Officer, will explore the importance of balance in pursuing fast, sustainable growth. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/XQe6KI5aebc

Over the last decade, Square has introduced a variety of new hardware, software, and financial services offerings targeted at businesses of all sizes -- and yet, many still think of Square as only serving farmer markets and local coffee shops. In this session, you'll hear from Square's Global Head of Sales, Ashley Grech, on the challenges and learnings of Square’s work to move upmarket and serve multiple customer segments at once.

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/moving-upmarket-and-serving-multiple-segments-with-square-global-head-of-sales-saastr-podcast-478-and-video/

In today's SaaStr Insider episode, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares the Top 10 Interview Questions to Ask VP of Marketing Candidates

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/top-10-questions-to-ask-a-vp-of-marketing-in-an-interview/

Recently, Vidya ran both the marketing and revenue functions for Marqeta, during a critical time as the company prepped for an IPO. This podcast will discuss the nuances of building a cohesive marketing and revenue strategy and share advice for other organizations seeking to align these functions during a critical time of growth for their companies.

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/secrets-to-aligning-marketing-revenue-strategy-with-marqeta-cmo-saastr-podcast-476-and-video/

The role of Chief Customer Officer only continues to rise and become an integral role for scaling in the Cloud. As HubSpot's first Chief Customer Officer, and now CEO, Yamini Rangan shares her top lessons for focusing on the Enterprise customer experience and the different approaches required for the Enterprise customer journey.

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/3-ceo-lessons-in-scaling-enterprise-cx-with-hubspots-ceo-saastr-podcast-475-and-video/

In today's SaaStr Insider episode, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares 10 ways to build a moat in SaaS.

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/whats-your-moat/

Chime wasn't the first digital bank, but it has become the largest one in the United States. In this episode, hear from Chris Britt, co-founder, and CEO, about Chime's journey in a highly competitive market and what it took to win.

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/ringing-the-bell-on-competition-with-chime-ceo-chris-britt-and-satya-patel-homebrew/

In just 5 years, TripActions has grown to be a leader in the travel management space. Michael Sindicich, GM of TripActions Liquid, a new expense management platform, that serves companies including Lyft, Toast, and Zoom will explore sales tips, tricks, and his lessons learned.

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-472-and-video-5-tips-to-reduce-the-enterprise-sales-cycle-with-tripactions/

A great deep dive on why the Cloud is on fire right now, and what it means for founders. Learn more at TheCloud100.com, a free digital event with the Top 100 private Cloud and SaaS companies on Aug 10!!

Video + notes: https://www.saastr.com/25-of-the-cloud-100-is-growing-100-at-100m-arr-woah/

In today’s digital age, product management and marketing need to have an integrated and collaborative relationship. In this podcast, hear from PagerDuty CPO, Sean Scott, and CMO, Julie Herendeen, on how PagerDuty has embraced a product-led growth model and the success they’ve seen since doing so.

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-470-and-video-how-product-marketing-should-work-together-with-pagerduty/

Everyone loves a unicorn, but how do you keep innovation alive past the start-up phase? Pushing past the awkward “teen years” and igniting the next wave of growth means rethinking your culture, organizational structure, and innovation investments. Join Workday’s EVP of Product Pete Schlampp as he shares how he’s accelerating product innovation on the hunt to $10B.

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-469-and-video-fueling-product-innovation-on-the-path-to-10-billion-with-workday/

In today's SaaStr podcast, we present the Cutting Edge. Where SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser sits down with the best revenue leaders in SaaS to share cutting-edge tactics and strategies. In this episode, Kevin Dorsey, VP of Inside Sales at PatientPop shares how to build trust in today's competitive market.

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/kevin-dorsey-patientpop-cutting-edge-sales/

As the SaaS landscape becomes more and more crowded, companies must improve retention, and adding analytics is the key. In this session, ThoughtSpot CEO Sudheesh Nair shares how embedding modern, consumer-grade analytics delights customers and drives revenue.

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-467-and-video-bottom-up-vs-top-down-selling-in-the-enterprise-with-thoughtspot/

In today's SaaStr insider episode, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin Shares 11 Simple Tips To Drive Down Churn.

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/what-can-you-do-to-lower-your-customers-churn-rate/

The value of investing in technology has only been heightened throughout the past year. In this podcast, Okta CIO Alvina Antar and SurveyMonkey CIO Eric Johnson share how to best move your company forward and create new opportunities across the enterprise.

Hear from Elastic founder and CEO, Shay Banon, about his founder story and key takeaways he learned when growing Elastic from an open-source platform moderated from his living room to an $11B global enterprise. 

20 years ago, Atlassian pioneered the direct-sales model in the B2B software space based on the belief that software should be bought, not sold. Join Cameron Deatsch, Atlassian’s Chief Revenue Officer, in conversation about the challenges and benefits of building a flywheel powered by word of mouth and amplified by data-driven touchpoints. 

At her last startup, which she founded and scaled from $0 to $50M ARR, Clara Shih experienced first-hand the pain of a customer support issue costing her business one of their largest customers. Now as the CEO of Salesforce Service Cloud, she has vowed to help other organizations avoid these same mistakes.

In part two of this series, Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki discusses the nitty-gritty details of the journey from the company’s origins to its incredible $9.5 billion valuation.

Full video: https://youtu.be/zwzV0muXB64

What does success look like for SaaS founders? Whatever the answer is, it rarely happens overnight. Meet Klaviyo –– a heavyweight industry player in the next generation of eCommerce and customer communication. In this podcast, Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki discusses the nitty-gritty details of the journey from the company’s origins to its incredible $9.5 billion valuation.

Full video + episode notes: https://www.saastr.com/klaviyo-ecommerce-ceo-andrew-bialecki/

Join ServiceNow’s Chief Customer and Partner Officer, Lara Caimi, and VP of Strategic Operations for the Customer and Partner Organization, Aneesa Sayall, as they discuss how hitting the gas on how they deliver partners is fundamental to how ServiceNow scales to $10B and beyond.

Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-459-and-video-the-role-of-partners-to-scaling-to-15-billion-with-servicenow/

Zig Serafin, CEO @ Qualtrics shares his lessons in scaling with Julia Laroche, Correspondent @ Yahoo Finance. Hear how Zig focuses on building the right team, simplifies organizational design, and scales from the ground up.

Video and episode notes: https://www.saastr.com/qualtrics-ceo-zig-serafin-on-high-growth-and-scale/

In this episode, get ready to learn from Carilu Dietrich, Advisor at 1Password, Isabelle Papoulias, CMO of Mediafly and VP of Product Marketing and Demand Gen, Katrina Wong of Segment on both the importance and effective tactics in building the ideal customer profile.

Episode notes: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-457-and-video-building-your-ideal-customer-profile/

Full video: https://youtu.be/7dsouVBpYr8

In today's SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares 5 interesting learnings from ServiceNow, Palantir, and Snowflake. 

Video and episode notes: https://www.saastr.com/5-interesting-learnings-with-servicenow-palantir-and-snowflake/

This dynamic duo from Duo Security share best practices on how they transformed the go-to-market motion by simplifying the customer experience to help build Duo Security to $100M ARR.

The VP of Product is a critical hire to drive the product strategy, road-mapping, and execution across the organization. Shiven Ramji, the Chief Product Officer at Auth0, has dedicated years to being a VP, Product himself and has hired and mentored others into this role. In this session, he will share tips on what to look for and expect out of a great VP+ of Product.

Full video: https://youtu.be/9sT5wp_HUvo

Episode notes: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-454-and-video-what-to-expect-from-a-great-vp-of-product/

Serial entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal founded AppDynamics, a company sold to Cisco in 2017 for $3.7 billion but didn't stop there. He went on to launch Harness which gained Unicorn status this year. Hear from Jyoti about the lessons he's learned from building not one but two unicorn companies.

Full video: https://youtu.be/LMAxG-ddDkU

Episode notes: https://www.saastr.com/harness-founder-jyoti-bansal-on-building-a-second-unicorn/

In today's SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares 5 interesting learnings from Squarespace at $700M ARR.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/5-interesting-learnings-from-squarespace-at-700000000-in-arr/

Partnerships can fuel company growth. Co-founder and CEO of Gorgias.io, Romaine Lapeyre, and Axelle Heems, Growth Ops Manager at Gorgias will share how they built a partnership program that powered incredible growth for Gorgias.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-leveraging-partnerships-can-double-your-saas-growth/

Sandi Lin, CEO of Skilljar, shares how she successfully hired her first CRO. Then we will take an inside-out view and hear from Kathy Lord, CRO of Skilljar, about being the first CRO and what it really means.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-hire-your-first-chief-revenue-officer/

Two years ago, Notion was just 10 people building a product that had a few dozen diehard fans. In conversation with Hustle Crew's Abadesi Osunsade, Ivan will share how he thinks about community as one of Notion's unfair advantages, and why this has been a game-changer for the business.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/notion-saas-community-building/

In today's SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares 5 interesting learnings from Slack at $1B ARR.

Find notes for this episode on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/5-interesting-learnings-from-slack-at-1b-in-arr/

As Head of Experience Research at Asana, Beth Toland will share different ways to make customer insights a deep part of product development and strategy from ideation to delivery.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/asana-product-development-strategy/

In today's SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares 5 interesting learnings from UiPath at $600m in ARR.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/5-interesting-learnings-from-uipath-at-600000000-in-arr/

In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, Joe Thomas, CEO of Loom, shares how a focus on user experience helped Loom build its flywheel and grow to 10 million users without paid marketing.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/loom-ceo-joe-thomas-on-how-speed-simplicity-can-fuel-your-flywheel/

Jeff Lawson, Twilio CEO and the author of  “Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century,” shares secrets on bridging the gap between your technical team and leadership team to maximize success.

This episode is an excerpt of Jason and Jeff’s session from SaaStr Build. You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/WPvjG-44zJ4

Denise Persson, the CMO of Snowflake, shares the five secrets to a winning marketing strategy to grow your company’s revenue and cement customer loyalty.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/building-your-marketing-to-100m-with-snowflake-cmo-denise-persson/

In today's SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares 5 interesting learnings from MongoDB as they accelerate past $700M ARR. 

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/5-interesting-learnings-from-mongodb-at-700000000-arr/

Monday.com wasn't always worth billions. Its Co-Founders, Roy Mann and Eran Zinman share the top 5 things they'd repeat and the 5 they wish they'd done differently.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/top-5-dos-and-donts-of-scaling-with-monday-com/

In today's SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares 8 Ways to Motivate the Sales Team After a Rough Quarter.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-do-you-motivate-your-sales-team-after-a-disastrous-month/

In today's SaaStr podcast, Tomasz Tunguz, Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures shares the 5 metrics and benchmarks you should track to maximize your company’s valuation. 

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/5-metrics-you-should-track-to-maximize-your-companys-valuation/

Webflow, a no-code website builder, doubled its customer base last year, pushing the company's valuation to $2.1 billion. Webflow CEO Vlad Magdalin openly shares the struggles and triumphs they endured along the way to their success.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/webflow-ceo-vlad-magdalin-on-building-a-four-billion-dollar-company/

In today's SaaStr insider episode, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares 5 interesting learnings about Zoom as they reach $4 billion.

Video + blog post (including full transcript): https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-437-5-interesting-learnings-on-zoom-at-4b-with-saastr-ceo-jason-lemkin/

In today’s SaaStr podcast the team at Bessemer Venture Partners unveils the 2021 state of the cloud. Listen in as Byron Deeter, Elliott Robinson and Mary D’Onofrio share the latest trends and predictions for the cloud marketplace.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/state-of-the-cloud-2021-with-bessemer-venture-partners/

In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, chats with Sam Blond, Chief Revenue Officer at Brex. Together they discuss the future of SaaS sales and buying cycles in a post-covid marketplace.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/future-of-sales-post-covid-with-brex/

In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, Garrett Langley, CEO @ Flock Safety and Alex Latraverse, VP Growth @ Flock Safety discuss How to Build out a Sales Organization from 0 reps to ~100 in 18 months.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/building-a-sales-organization-from-0-to-100-with-flock-safety/

Is your marketing team struggling to deliver the right kind of prospects and accounts that actually convert into revenue for your company? In this episode of the SaaStr Podcast, Latane Conant, CMO at 6Sense shared her 6 steps for building marketing campaigns that deliver pipeline and revenue. 

This episode is an excerpt of Latané’s session from SaaStr University: Spring Semester conference. Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/UW9fl1Z6Jac

Transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-433-with-6sense-cmo-latane-conant-what-it-really-takes-to-have-your-marketing-team-deliver-pipeline-and-revenue/

Is getting compliant with a SOC 2 report on your company's 2021 roadmap? Vanta automates the tedious and time-consuming process of collecting evidence for an audit. So you can get focused on growing your business. On average Vanta customers are SOC 2 compliant in just two to four weeks compared to three to five months without Vanta, learn more and redeem a $1,000 off coupon at Vanta.com/SaaStr.

In today's SaaStr insider episode, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares 5 interesting learnings about Wix as they cross $1 billion ARR.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/5-interesting-learnings-from-wix-at-1-billion-in-arr/

Want to accelerate your SaaS growth? Start by prioritizing your Net Revenue Retention (NRR). In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, Tim Kopp, the CEO of Terminus, shares his playbook for boosting net retention to fuel your business growth.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/the-playbook-to-boosting-net-retention-quickly-with-terminus/

In today’s SaaStr insider episode, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin catches up with Brian Halligan, CEO and Co-founder of HubSpot. Together they discuss: why partners are a moat, why HubSpot avoided going more enterprise, building vs. buying, and building an eco-system. 

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/brian-halligan-ceo-and-co-founder-at-hubspot-the-secrets-to-1b-arr-and-beyond/

In this episode, ProfitWell Founder & CEO Patrick Campbell shares benchmarks from over 23,000 companies and offers a helpful framework to re-evaluate your retention strategy and increase your CLV (Customer Lifetime Value) between 10 and 60%.

This episode is an excerpt of Patrick’s session from SaaStr University: Spring Semester conference. Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/-hybaFIV964

Transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-429-with-profitwell-founder-ceo-patrick-campbell-the-current-state-of-saas-companies-subscriptions-and-retention-in-2021/

If your startup doesn't have a SOC 2, you can't close major customers, it's that simple. Vanta integrates with the tools you already use, from cloud providers to task trackers, to automate the complex, time-consuming and expensive process of preparing for a SOC 2 audit, so you can focus less on compliance and more on growing your business. Learn more and unlock a $1,000 off coupon at Vanta at vanta.com/saastr.

In today's SaaStr insider episode, SaaStr SVP and GM, Amelia Ibarra sits down with Naomi Rozenfeld, VP of Revenue @ Wix Answers. Together they discuss how to execute a winning self-service strategy, including when to launch, cross-functional implications, and how to find the right balance between self-service and customer support.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-execute-a-winning-self-service-strategy-with-wix-answers/

Internships have sparked millions of successful careers, and they can be a valuable talent pool from which companies can eventually hire full-time employees. But it’s critical to build your internship program the right way. Farhan Thawar, the VP of Engineering at Shopify, has dedicated years to perfecting his internship program and shares his insider tips for launching a successful initiative of your own.

Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-build-a-great-intern-program-from-scratch-with-shopify/

In today's SaaStr insider episode, Harry Stebbings sits down with Ryan Bonnici, Chief Marketing Officer at Whereby to chat about how to market at scale.

Together, they cover how to hire marketers at scale and how to use marketing to set your brand above the rest.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-market-at-mass-scale-with-whereby/

Atlassian has always done things a bit differently.  With a relatively small sales team and a huge investment in R&D since inception, Atlassian is proof that you can build a decacorn from anywhere.

Listen in to the 5 Interesting learnings we can take away from Atlassian at $2B in ARR.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/5-interesting-learnings-from-atlassian-at-2b-in-arr/

Each year, Point 9 Capital surveys founders and investors to explore what it takes to raise capital for SaaS companies. In this episode, Christoph Janz, a Founding Partner at Point 9 Capital, gives his data-backed insight into what investors are looking for in the year ahead. 

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/what-it-takes-to-really-raise-capital-in-2021/

When you’re ready to take your enterprise marketing to the next level, you may run into some common pitfalls that hinder optimal performance. In this episode, Menaka Shroff, the Director of Global Marketing at Google, shares her observations of the misunderstandings she has seen during her career and how to avoid them.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/7-common-enterprise-marketing-mistakes/

After a newly minted $1.1B valuation, Kyle Porter, CEO of SalesLoft, sits down with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin to talk about the twists and turns along the way to building SalesLoft into the Unicorn it is today. From completely pivoting the product early on, to becoming an essential software tool for inside sales reps -- learn how SalesLoft landed some of the Cloud giants like Shopify, Google, and Slack as its customers, and what it takes to build a Unicorn company in today's changing market. 

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/salesloft-unicorn-valuation-story/

One of the easiest ways to consistently grow revenue is to make your customers happier. They buy more and churn less when you do. Here are 11 actionable steps and tips that always work in SaaS companies to drive NPS and happiness up from SaaStr CEO & Founder Jason Lemkin. 

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-do-you-build-strong-relationships-with-customers/

Product-led growth is a disruptive go-to-market strategy adopted by the most successful companies in the subscription business, including Slack, Dropbox, Twilio, and Shopify. Drawing on his personal experience building innovative SaaS products, Mickey Alon, the creator of Gainsight PX, and Ciara Peter, VP Product at Gainsight, will cover the principles of Product-led growth strategy, how to build a product growth team, and how product teams can apply this strategy as part of their 2021 roadmap.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/mastering-the-art-and-science-of-product-led-growth-with-gainsight/

At his core, Jeff Lawson is a software developer first, and a CEO second. He knows both sides of the executive & engineering equation intimately. He gets what goes on in a developer's brain and the detailed process of building software, but he understands that businesses are motivated to move quickly. And in turn, developers need to adapt.

An all-time SaaStr fan-favorite, Jeff recently chatted with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin to discuss his thoughts on collaborating, managing, and working with developers.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-collaborate-manage-and-work-with-developers-featuring-jeff-lawson-twilio/

Reducing churn in SaaS, along with increasing new ARR is the backbone to growing your business. In this guide, Andrea Webb, the SVP of Customer Success & Retention at Solarwinds, and Tim Willey, the SVP of Commercial Strategy & Operations at ForgeRock, share their tips for understanding and combating churn. 

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/10-rules-for-defining-churn-with-forgerock-and-solarwinds/

In this episode, Sahir Azam, Chief Product Officer at MongoDB, and Javier Molina, SVP at MongoDB, share their journey to increasing company revenue through their cohesive sales and product relationship. When sales and product work together, amazing things happen.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-sales-and-product-really-should-work-together-with-javier-molina-vp-corporate-sales-americas-mongodb-and-sahir-azam-chief-product-officer-mongodb/

As your company grows, so does the focus on enterprise deals. Learn from Zendesk senior management about how to balance your needs and organization’s focus on enterprise wins to reach $1B in revenue without ever forgetting the importance of catering to your original customer base and extending those learnings into new market segments.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/the-secret-sauce-to-scaling-to-1b-with-zendesk/

Customer churn is the bane of online businesses, and data can help you understand the causes of churn and take action to reduce it. In this podcast, you'll discover powerful customer metrics that help your entire organization. 

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/fighting-churn-with-data-in-saas/

Sponsors:

GuideCX is a client onboarding and project management platform that helps you invite, guide, and engage internal and customer teams in a transparent way that delivers value faster. (Pause) You can start a free fourteen-day GuideCX trial today or take a virtual tour at GuideCX.com.

SaaSMQL helps high-ticket SaaS startups generate opportunities and recurring revenue from target accounts. Their Account-Based Marketing approach has proven to be effective at engaging decision-makers from Fortune one thousand companies. SaaSMQL’s clients include Intellimize, Side, Travelbank, Alphonso, Alloy.ai, and many more. Book your intro call at SaaSMQL.com/SaaStr.

To help revenue and sales leaders navigate and identify ways to leverage cloud marketplaces, join Sapphire Ventures, Snowflake, Sumo Logic, and Crowdstrike to understand: How to successfully sell enterprise software through the major cloud marketplaces, what investments and alignment you need at your company need to be successful transacting on cloud marketplaces, and how to cultivate and enable a successful co-sell relationship with cloud marketplaces.

Panel:

Colleen Kapase, VP of WW Partner & Alliances, Snowflake
Jessica Alexander, Senior Director Cloud Technology & OEM Partnerships, Crowdstrike
Jabari Norton, VP WW Partner and Alliances, Sumo Logic
Rico Mallozzi, Sr. Director of GTM Ops, Sapphire Ventures

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Scale. You can view the full video here: https://youtu.be/k4KEth7sNzw

Transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-414-how-to-leverage-the-cloud-giants-to-scale-to-100-million-arr-and-beyond/

Visit Dell.com/SaaStr for exclusive savings on Dell products and more information about the Dell for entrepreneurs program. Everything from Dell financial services to Dell rewards, Dell for Entrepreneurs wants to help your business run smarter through technology.

Bandwidth makes it easy to add enterprise-grade voice calling, text messaging, and emergency calling to your platform all backed by the power of a fully owned and operated tier-one carrier network that gives you direct to carrier pricing with better quality, control, and insights that other API providers can't. See why the biggest brands in the world rely on bandwidth and sign up for a free trial at bandwidth.com/SaaStr.

Join four-time Founder and CEO Auren Hoffman as he breaks down how businesses can become the right model for explosive growth, emulate their strategy, and join the path to Unicorn potential in eight simple, hand-made steps.

This episode is an excerpt of Auren’s session at SaaStr Scale. You can view the full video here: https://youtu.be/d6tnt2a12ZY

Transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-413-with-safegraph-ceo-auren-hoffman-how-to-build-a-unicorn-in-8-simple-steps/

If you don't have a SOC 2 report, you aren't going to be able to sell to major customers. Secureframe helps startups get and maintain SOC 2 compliance in as little as two weeks. Join companies like Stream, Hasura, Benepass, and unlock more sales with Secureframe. SaaStr listeners get 10% off at secureframe.com/SaaStr.

2020 has been a wild ride, but Sales teams are still expected to deliver. Hear from 3 companies on how they delivered in a year riddled with challenges, and what those battle scars have taught them as they plan to turbocharge their sales in 2021. Walk away from this episode with the tactics and tips you and your Sales team need for the upcoming year.

Pablo Dominguez, Operating Partner, Insight Partners
Ellen Kindley, Chief Transformation Officer, Keyfactor
Brooke Treseder, SVP, Revenue Operations, Checkout.com
Gordana Vuckovic, EVP Global Sales & Partnerships, Contentstack

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/the-secrets-to-turbo-charging-sales-in-2021/

Tamar Yehoshua is the Chief Product Officer @ Slack, the company providing a place where people get work done, together. Prior to their direct listing in June 2019, Slack raised over $1.3Bn from the likes of Accel, Thrive, Softbank, Kleiner, IVP, T Rowe, GV, and a16z to name a few. As for Tamar, previously, Tamar was a Vice President at Google, holding product and engineering leadership roles on Google’s most important products, including Search, Identity, and Privacy. Prior to that, she was the Vice President of Advertising Technologies at Amazon’s A9. If that was not enough Tamar is also on the board of 2 public companies in the form of Yext and ServiceNow.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Tamar made her way from Google and Amazon into the world of bottoms up SaaS with one of the leading companies of our generation, Slack?
• What were Tamar’s biggest takeaways from her time with Amazon and Google? How did Jeff Bezos’ approach to “the customer” impact Tamar’s operating mindset? How does Tamar analyse customer responses to product changes? How important a role does the press play in customer’s responses? 
• How does Tamar think about effective product design today? How does Tamar structure the customer development process? What questions does she ask? What is she looking for? Where do many people go wrong with customer discovery? What channels can teams put in place to have this real-time dialogue with their customers?        
• How would Tamar describe her management philosophy today? What have been some of Tamar’s biggest lessons on giving effective feedback? How should it be structured? When should it be given? To what extent does Tamar agree with “radical candour”? Where do many go wrong in giving their feedback?

Tamar’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. The most challenging element of Tamar’s role with Slack?
2. What would Tamar most like to change about the SaaS industry?
3. What moment in Tamar’s life has served as an inflection point and changed the way she thinks? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-411-with-slack-chief-product-officer-tamar-yehoshua/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

In today's SaaStr insider episode SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin catches up with Todd McKinnon, CEO and co-founder of Okta. Together they discuss what it takes to build, maintain and grow a high-performance organization.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/10-learnings-from-talking-with-todd-mckinnon-ceo-of-okta/

As one of the early champions of "low-code”, Howie Liu shares the lessons he's learned building and scaling a company in an entirely new category. He'll discuss how Airtable focuses on solving customers' increasingly complex needs, all with products that are easily adoptable.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/lessons-in-scaling-a-low-code-platform-with-airtable/

SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin catches up with Therese Tucker, Founder, and CEO at BlackLine about her SaaS journey, going long and surviving black swan events.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/going-long-the-20-year-journey-of-being-a-ceo-founder-with-blackline/

Trends are fleeting and hard to pin down. Or are they? Learn how you can leverage the science of trends and better understand market behavior. 

This episode is an excerpt of Allen’s session at SaaStr @ Home 2020. You can view the full video here: https://youtu.be/v1c08Ztdrss

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-407-with-the-creative-curve-author-allen-gannett-the-secrets-of-market-timing-and-how-to-develop-the-right-idea-at-the-right-time/

Visit dell.com/saastr for exclusive savings on Dell products and more information about the Dell for entrepreneurs program. Everything from Dell financial services to Dell rewards, Dell for Entrepreneurs wants to help your business run smarter through technology.

Bandwidth makes it easy to add enterprise-grade voice calling, text messaging and emergency calling to your platform, all backed by the power of a fully owned and operated, tier-one carrier network that gives you direct to carrier pricing with better quality, control, and insights that other API providers can't. See why the biggest brands in the world rely on Bandwidth and sign up for a free trial at bandwidth.com/saastr.

Kate Taylor is Head of Customer Experience at Notion, one of the fastest-growing startups of the last 5 years with over $68M in funding from some of the best in the business including Index, Daniel Gross, Elad Gil, Lachy Groom, Josh Kopelman and Aydin Senkut to name a few. As for Kate, prior to making the move to Notion just last month, she spent an incredible 8 years at Dropbox including holding roles such as Head of Sales Development, North America and Director of Global SMB Revenue and Operations. Before Notion, Kate spent 2 years at Salesforce in the corporate sales and enterprise business units. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Kate made her way into the world of SaaS with Salesforce, how that led to her 8 year tenure at Dropbox before joining the breakout, Notion?
• Why does Kate not believe that in startups you can “do it all”? How to discover the problems people care about? How to think through prioritisation of problems at the early stage? Where do many people make mistakes here?
• How does Kate approach delegation at scale? When is the right time to start? How can founders let go and entrust others to do the role they have been doing? How can leaders build trust with the people they work with? How can leaders empower employees with act with conviction and invest in them?        
• What is the role of sales in a product-led growth organisation? How can sales and product work effectively well together? Where do many mistakes happen in sales and product? How can product and marketing also collaborate productively? What can one do to shorten the feedback cycles as much as possible?

Kate’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Most challenging element of Kate’s role with Notion?
2. What would Kate like to change about the world of SaaS?
3. What does Kate know now that she wishes she had known from the beginning? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-406-with-notion-head-of-customer-experience-kate-taylor/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

In today's SaaStr insider episode SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin catches up with Bernadette Nixon CEO at Algolia and together they share 6 learnings on scaling to $100M ARR and what it really takes selling to customers small, medium and large.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/6-learnings-from-algolia-on-the-way-to-100000000-arr/

The benefits of managing upwards and downwards are frequent management topics. However, managing sideways and inward are also important skills for a successful leader. Learn new ways to build strong teams by managing in all directions from Arquay Harris at Slack.

This episode is an excerpt of Arquay’s session at SaaStr @ Home 2020. You can view the full video here: https://youtu.be/q40RWMgZgIo

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-404-with-slack-sr-director-engineering-arquay-harris-the-secrets-to-managing-in-all-directions/

Visit dell.com/saastr for exclusive savings on Dell products and more information about the Dell for Entrepreneurs program. Everything from Dell financial services to Dell rewards, Dell for Entrepreneurs wants to help your business run smarter through technology.

Bandwidth makes it easy to add enterprise-grade voice calling, text messaging and emergency calling to your platform, all backed by the power of a fully owned and operated Tier 1 carrier network that gives you direct-to-carrier pricing with better quality, control, and insights that other API providers can't. See why the biggest brands in the world rely on Bandwidth and sign up for a free trial at bandwidth.com/saastr.

Sam Taylor is the VP of Sales and Success @ Loom, the startup that helps you get your message across by making it easy to record instantly shareable videos. To date, they have raised over $73M from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst and Point Nine to name a few. As for Sam, prior to Loom, Sam spent over 4 years at Salesforce following their acquisition of Quip, a startup Salesforce acquired for $750M where Sam was also the 1st sales leader. Before Quip, Sam spent an incredible 3 years at Dropbox where he was the first enterprise sales rep in the entire company. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Sam made his way into the world of SaaS with Dropbox and how that led to his leading the sales and success team today @ Loom?
• What was Sam’s biggest lesson from scaling the sales team at Dropbox? How did his 4 years at Salesforce change his operating mentality? Thinking of Dropbox, how does Sam justify the role of sales in a world of product-led growth? How do product and sales work together most efficiently? What can one do to structure that relationship?       
• Does Sam agree that the founder is the one who has to create the sales playbook? When is the right time to hire the first sales rep? Should you hire 2 at a time? What does one look for in their first sales hire? What measurements should be used to determine their success? How does this change when selling to SMBs vs enterprise?      
• How does Sam think about the relationship between sales and marketing? Are marketing becoming the new sales team with their content being used more and more in the sales funnel? How should the success of marketing be measured? Does it have to be tied to a number related to revenue?

Sam’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Biggest challenge of Sam’s role with Loom today?
2. What would Sam most like to change in the world of SaaS?
3. What is Sam’s biggest weakness as a sales leader? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-403-with-loom-vp-of-sales-sam-taylor/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Marten Mickos, CEO of HackerOne, explains their innovative approach of packaging customer value derived from a variety of activities into an annually recurring subscription offering that delivers outstanding value to customers while simplifying the buying process and the customer journey. 

This episode is an excerpt of Mårten’s session at SaaStr @ Home 2020. You can view the full video here: https://youtu.be/GAw4vKbMevk

Full transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-402-with-hackerone-ceo-marten-mickos-customers-want-value-simplicity-the-must-haves-to-deliver/

Want to see why Adobe, Salesforce, and Marketo use Outgrow? Try building quizzes, ROI calculators, and assessments on Outgrow. Find out how you can build these tools with Outgrow's powerful builder, learn more at outgrow.co/saas.

If you don't have a SOC 2 report, you aren't going to be able to sell to major customers. Secureframe helps startups get and maintain software compliance in as little as two weeks. Join companies like Stream, Hasura, Benepass, and unlock more sales with Secureframe. SaaStr listeners get 10% off at secureframe.com/saastr.

In this session, you will learn how to make the Freemium model work while also incorporating the traditional sales-driven strategy. Olof Mathe will share how the two strategies can blend together and specific lessons he has learned from his experience.

Full video: https://youtu.be/9dIaJpuBCU4

Transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-401-with-mixmax-ceo-olof-mathe-the-secrets-to-doing-freemium-and-sales-driven-sales-at-the-same-time/

Bandwidth makes it easy to add enterprise-grade voice calling, text messaging, and emergency calling to your platform, all backed by the power of a fully owned and operated tier-one carrier network that gives you direct-to-carrier pricing with better quality control and insights that other API providers can't. See why the biggest brands in the world rely on Bandwidth, and sign up for a free trial at bandwidth.com/SaaStr.

Dell for Entrepreneurs is here to help your business scale faster through technology. Reach out to startups@dell.com for a free IT consultation. From laptops, desktops to servers and cloud, Dell Technologies is there for you.

In today's SaaStr insider episode SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin catches up with Ben Hindman, Co-Founder & CEO at Splash to talk about the future of digital events.

This interview was part of Splash’s Boom, a video series about the innovation explosion in events and the tech stack.

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-400-with-splash-ceo-ben-hindman-and-saastr-ceo-jason-lemkin-the-future-of-digital-events/

Building the world's largest and most trusted software developer and technologist community and going from 0 to 120 million users happened rapidly for Stack Overflow. Hear four steps from its CEO, Prashanth Chandrasekar, on how your product-led startup can grow its community and its revenue.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/four-steps-to-scaling-to-250m-from-stack-overflow/

Rob Gonzalez is the Co-Founder & CMO @ Salsify, empowering brand manufacturers to deliver the product experiences consumers demand at every point in their buying journey. To date, Salsify has raised over $250M in funding from the likes of Venrock, Underscore, Warburg Pincus, Matrix Partners & Greenspring to name a few. As for Rob, prior to founding Salsify, he was the first-ever product manager at Cambridge Semantics and before that was a Senior Product Manager @ Endeca helping grow the company to it’s $Bn exit. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Rob made his way into the world of SaaS as a product manager and how that led to his founding Salsify over 8 years ago?
• How does Rob think about the bundled vs unbundled thesis within SaaS? When is it right for SaaS companies to turn down potential customers? How can they do that the right way? What is the right way to think about customer segmentation? How should startups decide which customer segment to focus on?      
• How should startups think about implementing partnerships? When is the right time? What is the right way to onboard them? How can they be trained in implementation efficiently? What does great change management look like to Rob? What does Rob believe are the biggest misconceptions around change management?       
• How does Rob think through pricing today in a way that encourages land and expand? What can you do to make the land as frictionless as possible? What does it take to expand effectively? How does Rob think about usage vs seat-based pricing in SaaS? How should sales and marketing work together on pricing?

Rob’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Most challenging element of Rob’s role with Salsify?
2. What would Rob most like to change in the world of SaaS today?
3. What does Rob know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-398-with-salsify-co-founder-cmo-rob-gonzalez/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Rob Gonzalez

In today's SaaStr insider episode SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin catches up with Michael Pryor, the Co-Founder of Trello to talk about going upmarket, and how things have changed in the last decade as Trello crosses 50M+ users. 

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/going-upmarket-and-how-things-have-changed-in-a-decade-at-trello-with-founder-michael-pryor/

As digital business and collaboration models have been permanently accelerated by the events of 2020, our panel of SaaS experts discuss who's buying in the Enterprise, and how to drive conversions across multiple business functions.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/buying-patterns-in-the-enterprise/

Andy MacMillan is the CEO @ UserTesting, the company that provides real-time feedback, from real customers, wherever you work. To date, they have raised over $200M in funding from the likes of Accel, Greenspring, Openview and Insight to name a few. As for Andy, prior to UserTesting, he was the Chairman and CEO @ Act On Software and before that held several positions at Salesforce, including COO - Products Group. Before Salesforce Andy spent close to 5 years at Oracle as VP Product Management. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How did Andy make his way into the world of SaaS? How did he come to be CEO at the market leader, UserTesting?
• Why does Andy think the seat-based pricing model in SaaS will die? What are the downsides of it? Why is volume-based pricing optimal? How does one instil volume based pricing without disincentivizing usage? How does Andy think about discounting? How does Andy view the importance of offering trials?       
• What does it take to scale a sales team successfully? How can one determine a closer in the interview process? Should one hire sales reps 2x2? How does Andy think about hiring sales reps from adjacent companies and industries? How does Andy think about minimizing and optimising sales ramp times? How does Andy think about payback period?      
• How does Andy structure the pipeline meetings? Who is invited? How are the meetings structured? How does Andy advise on the right segmentation of pipe? How does Andy evaluate the closability of the pipe? Where do many people go wrong in pipeline meetings? What have been his biggest lessons on running them successfully?

Andy’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. The hardest element of Andy’s role with UserTesting?
2. What Andy would most like to change about the world of SaaS?
3. The hardest role to hire for today and why? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-395-with-usertesting-ceo-andy-macmillan/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Andy MacMillan

Where is Venture Capital today? And how do you hack it? SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, sits down with Sunil Dhaliwal, General Partner at Amplify Partners to discuss.

Full video: https://youtu.be/8w6K7slhLX4

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-394-with-sunil-dhaliwal-and-jason-lemkin/

The journey for a company to move upmarket can be daunting and varies widely depending on the internal and external factors that inspire a shift in go-to-market strategy. Join these incredible sales leaders are they share their experiences in the evolution from SMB to Enterprise.

Kelly Del Curto, Senior Director of Sales at Lever
Tammy Aguillon, Area Vice President, Commercial Sales at DocuSign
Kate Jensen, Head of Platform Sales at Stripe
Lauren Schwartz, Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Fivetran

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-sell-upmarket-in-saas/

In today's SaaStr insider episode SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin shares 10 Simple Steps To Help Any Sales Exec Close More.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/10-simple-tips-to-help-any-account-executive-close-more/

Learn how Flodesk bootstrapped to $5M in ARR by focusing on customer-driven growth: from kickstarting growth by empowering new customers to share, to creating product viral loops that amplify and optimize these customer-led funnels.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-bootstrap-to-5m-arr-in-less-than-a-year/

Randy Rayess is the Co-Founder @ Outgrow, a growth marketing platform that enables marketers to build interactive content/tools to increase customer engagement and boost demand generation. Prior to founding Outgrow, Randy co-founded VenturePact, an invite-only marketplace that connects companies with trusted software development firms. Before VenturePact Randy held roles at Ampush and then on the investor side at SilverLake. If that was not enough, Randy is also an investor having invested in the likes of SmartyPal, Nooch, Alie and AirCare Labs to name a few. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Randy made his way from the world of PE with SilverLake to changing the game of digital marketing with Outgrow?
• What does interactive content mean? What are the most common forms? When should one start to use interactive content What resources and team does one need to engage with an interactive content strategy? Where do many people make mistakes with using interactive content?     
• How should one think about idea generation for interactive content? How does one know what interactive content works best? How should we test it’s effectiveness? How should interactive content be promoted? Where should it be placed? How many text inputs is it optimal to request for?     
• How does it convert more leads? How does Randy think about using interactive content to maximise sales rep efficiency? How should customer success engage with interactive content? What can be done to make the sales and customer success teamwork so well together?    

Randy’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. The hardest element of Randy’s role with Outgrow today?
2. Hardest role to hire for today? Why?
3. What would Randy most like to change about the world of SaaS?  

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-390-with-outgrow-co-founder-randy-rayess/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Randy Rayess

Mikael Cho, CEO of Unsplash shares his lessons learned from starting Unsplash as a side project and growing it to a market leader, and disrupting an industry of giants like Shutterstock, Getty, and Adobe Stock with a free business model.

Full video: https://youtu.be/t3nmvxlybJM

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-389-with-unsplash-ceo-mikael-cho-and-morning-brew-business-editor-kinsey-grant-how-to-really-disrupt-the-big-guys-with-free/

Ryan Carlson is the CMO @ Okta, the leading independent provider of identity for the enterprise. Prior to their incredibly successful IPO in April of 2017, they raised funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, a16z, Greylock, Khosla and Floodgate to name a few. As for Ryan, he has spent an incredible 9 years at Okta in numerous different roles starting with running the product marketing team before moving to run the marketing team, leading to his promotion to CMO close to 5 years ago now. Before Okta, Ryan was the Co-Founder and CEO @ Sproost, a bootstrapped online expert recommendation system. 

  In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Ryan made his way into the world of enterprise SaaS? Why was joining Okta the most challenging interview process he has experienced? How did it impact how he assesses candidates today?
• How does Ryan distinguish between the company story vs the product story? When do they align and when do they separate? How should your strategy change as they move apart? How does the structure of your marketing team need to change with the evolution?     
• What should the first marketing hire look like? What experience should they have? Why does Ryan believe you should hire two in marketing to start? How do you want them to work together? How does Ryan ensure cross-function working seamlessly from the very beginning with marketing?     
• How does Ryan think about measuring success when it comes to product marketing? How does Ryan think about marketing attribution today? How should we think through SAL vs closed revenue as indicator of marketing success? Where does Ryan believe many go wrong with regards to marketing funnels?    

Ryan’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Ryan know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. What makes Frederic Kerrest the special leader he is?
3. What is the most challenging element of Ryan’s role with Okta?  

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-388-with-okta-cmo-ryan-carlson/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Ryan Carlson

In this CEO to CEO catch up, Nick Mehta and Jason Lemkin discuss how to do product extensions, how to sell a second product, and where product development overall is heading. 

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/saas-customers-have-never-been-happier-a-discussion-with-nick-mehta-ceo-of-gainsight/

How do you compete in a tough marketplace with thousands of other competitors? Join Adam Blitzer as he shares insights from launching a company in an already crowded marketing automation space and zig-zagged the way to market leadership.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-win-with-1000-players-in-your-market/

Paul Rosania is the Founder & CEO @ Balsa, the company that recognises that builders move the world forward and so they are building the best second screen for builders, integrating tools you already use like Jira, GitHub, and Figma. Coming out of stealth today with their seed round being led by Andrew Chen @ a16z and joined by former CPO @ Slack, April Underwood, Chapter One’s Jeff Morris Jr and then of course, 20VC Fund. Prior to founding Balsa, Paul was Senior Director of Product @ Slack and before Slack was a Group Product Manager @ Twitter where he was responsible for the home timeline, including timeline ranking.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Paul made his way into the world of startups with Twitter and Slack and how that led to his founding SaaS company, Balsa?
• Paul was central in the decision-making around changing the Twitter timeline from chronological to ranked, how did he think about that decision? How does Paul approach such large product decisions today? What were his biggest operating takeaways from seeing the internal mechanics of Twitter & Slack?     
• What does really effective product marketing mean to Paul? How does Paul think about driving really effective change management? When engaging with bottoms up sales models, where does Paul identify the tipping points of going from bottoms up to top down?     
• Why does Paul believe that the builders are the new pro athletes? How will the structure of orgs change around them? How will the support they receive change? How will their training change? How will their comp change? How does on do this and not discourage other functions in the org?    

Paul’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Paul believe is the hardest role to hire for today?
2. What would Paul most like to change about the world of SaaS today?
3. What do the next 5 years hold for Paul and for Balsa?  

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-385-with-balsa-founder-ceo-paul-rosania/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Paul Rosania

We caught up with one of the SaaStr community’s favorite speakers, Dharmesh Shah CTO and co-founder of Hubspot on lessons learnings launching a second product.  Hubspot recently expanded its Sales products and the learnings were top of mind.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-when-and-why-to-launch-a-second-product-a-deep-dive-with-dharmesh-shah-cto-hubspot/

Nick Caldwell has built and grown product and engineering organizations at PowerBI (0 to 300 engineers), Reddit (500M MAU) and Looker ($2.7B sale to Google). Nick will share 5 big lessons he's learned along the way that you can use as you build your company's product and engineering functions from its earliest days to its largest successes.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/growing-product-and-engineering-orgs-from-zero-to-ipo-with-twitter-and-redpoint-ventures/

In today's SaaStr Insider, SaaStr SVP & GM, Amelia Ibarra, sits down with Alon Alroy, Co-Founder & CMO at Bizzabo on What's Next For the Future of B2B Events. 

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/whats-next-for-b2b-saas-events-2021/

There are a lot of problems with calculating churn rates. Moreover, public companies don't generally release churn rates. Learn what they are and how to calculate them correctly.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/churn-is-dead/

Ryan Sandler is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Truework, the company that gives employees control over employment, income and other identity data. To date, Ryan has raised over $44M with Truework from the likes of Sequoia, Khosla, Menlo and from the founders of companies such as Plaid, Seatgeek, Mino Games and Checkr. Prior to founding Truework, Ryan spent 3 years as a Senior Product Manager @ LinkedIn.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Ryan made his way from LinkedIn Product Manager to founding Sequoia backed Truework and changing the world of identity data?
• Why does Ryan believe it is such an advantage to sell into mid-market? Where do most people go wrong here? How can startups show credibility to mid-market when they are so small? How can founders use case studies and references to build social credibility early on?     
• What have Ryan’s lessons been when it comes to pricing? How does Ryan think about and approach discounting? How does Ryan feel about pilot plans? What elements can founders negotiate on to get the best pricing?    
• Why does Ryan believe SEO is the best-kept secret in SaaS? How has Ryan structured his content and marketing team as a result? How can one automate as much of the content creation process as possible? How long should one expect in terms of lead times to see returns on the SEO strategy?    

Ryan’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Hardest element of Ryan’s role with Truework?
2. What would Ryan most like to change about the world of SaaS?
3. What does Ryan know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-380-with-truework-co-founder-and-ceo-ryan-sandler/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Ryan Sandler

From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/SrHKclELBEg

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-379-with-saastr-ceo-and-founder-jason-lemkin-the-top-10-mistakes-founders-make-when-hiring-their-first-sales-team/

Sponsor message: Are you looking to better educate your audience on the value you deliver? Build products or service recommendation tools, create assessments to identify areas they can improve, and build savings calculators? Find out how you can build these same tools for your business at outgrow.co/saas.

Investment can create more problems than it solves and founders may trick themselves into thinking they have product-market fit when they don't. Michael Seibel, CEO @ Y Combinator explores the top risks founders should be aware of after funding and his best tips to avoid them.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/5-things-that-kill-startups-with-y-combinator/

Dave McJannet is the CEO @ Hashicorp, one of the fastest-growing enterprise companies of our time providing consistent workflows to provision, secure, connect and run any infrastructure for any application. To date, the company has raised $349M in funding from some of the best in the business including Bessemer, Redpoint, True Ventures, IVP, Mayfield, TCV and GGV to name a few. As for David, prior to Hashicorp, he held some incredible roles including VP Marketing at Github and Hortonworks, Senior Director of Product Marketing @ VMWare and then also spent over 5 years at Microsoft. 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-377-with-hashicorp-ceo-dave-mcjannet/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

In part two, ZoomInfo founder and CEO Henry Schuck shares how he built a business from scratch and grew it into one of the most successful IPOs of the 21st century—and what it was really like...the good, the bad, and most of all, the ugly. He reflects on where he went wrong, what he would do differently, and how to avoid making the same mistakes he did.

This episode is an excerpt from Jason and Henry’s session at SaaStr Annual @ Home.

Full video: https://youtu.be/WKODWISCL7A

Transcript of this podcast: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-376-with-zoominfo-ceo-henry-schuck-10-mistakes-the-ceo-of-zoominfo-made-on-his-journey-to-ipo-part-2/

Part 1 of this interview can be found in episode 374.

GitHub’s COO, Erica Brescia, shares her experiences and lessons learned from her former life on the front lines of being a co-founder of her own company, and how those lessons apply to her current position overseeing operations for GitHub. 

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/5-leadership-lessons-everyone-needs-right-now-from-github-coo-erica-brescia/

ZoomInfo founder and CEO Henry Schuck shares how he built a business from scratch and grew it into one of the most successful IPOs of the 21st century—and what it was really like...the good, the bad, and most of all, the ugly. He reflects on where he went wrong, what he would do differently, and how to avoid making the same mistakes he did.

This episode is an excerpt from Jason and Henry’s session at SaaStr Annual @ Home. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/WKODWISCL7A

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-byron-deeter-elliott-robinson-henry-schuck-and-jason-lemkin/

Bessemer's 5th Annual State of the Cloud Report returns for a definitive look at the cloud industry today. Byron Deeter and Elliott Robinson, partners at Bessemer Venture Partners, offer macro trends in the public and private cloud markets, strategic advice to cloud founders, and insights into why entrepreneurs should feel auspicious about the future.

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Annual @ Home. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/WrGhD0qaIow

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-byron-deeter-elliott-robinson-henry-schuck-and-jason-lemkin/

Latane Conant is the Chief Marketing Officer at 6Sense, the company that allows you to achieve predictable revenue growth by identifying accounts looking for your solution, prioritise efforts and then engage the right way. To date, the company has raised $120M in financing from Battery Ventures, Insight, Venrock, Costanoa, Bain Capital and Salesforce Ventures to name a few. As for Latane, before 6Sense she was CMO and sales leader at Appirio where she drove 5X more effective field marketing programs and an increase in inbound leads by 300%. If that was not enough, Latane is also on the Advisory Boards of both Mediafly and Atrium. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How did Latane make her way into the world of SaaS and come to be the rockstar CMO and ABM thought leader she is today with 6Sense?
• What does the preparation process look like pre-sales kick off week? What is involved? Who is involved? What needs to be ready? How does Latane feel about putting comp plans as part of the week?     
• How important is a theme to having an engaging week of content? What can teams do to bring their themes to life? How does Latane advise others when it comes to keeping the content fresh and exciting?  
• What is the right way to end the week? What are the right follow up steps to take? Where do many people go wrong here?    

Latane’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Hardest element of Latane’s role today with 6Sense?
2. What would Latane most like to change about the world of SaaS?
3. What does Latane believe that most around her disbelieve? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-372-with-6sense-cmo-latane-conant/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Latane Conant

It’s no secret that businesses today are struggling with an unpredictable economy. In this session, Mailchimp Co-founder and CEO Ben Chestnut will share the story of Mailchimp’s founding amidst—and despite—the dot-com bubble burst, and how the company navigated a number of inflection points in the first 10 years of its founding. 

This episode is an excerpt from Jason and Ben’s session at SaaStr Annual @ Home.

Full video: https://youtu.be/LfLZzakn2r0

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-jennifer-tejada-ben-chestnut-and-jason-lemkin/

As organizations race to achieve relevance and a competitive edge in the digital era, automation is fueling the fight. Join PagerDuty’s CEO, Jennifer Tejada, as she discusses the need for agility and innovation and how automation is aiding adaptability and allowing enterprises to surge ahead.

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Summit: Enterprise. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/7mHQotsErWc

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-jennifer-tejada-ben-chestnut-and-jason-lemkin/

In today’s SaaStr Insider episode, SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin and the Co-founder and CEO of HireSweet, Robin Choy, share their experiences building and scaling their companies.

Today's SaaStr insider originally aired on A-Players, a new podcast that teaches you how to hire, retain, and train top performers for your team! You can listen to A-Players on Anchor.fm, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-scott-belsky-robin-choy-and-jason-lemkin/

Success in the Enterprise means ensuring consumerization is a part of your strategy. Scott Belsky, CPO, EVP of Creative Cloud at Adobe will explore key tactics to focus on the user experience.

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Summit: Enterprise.

Full video: https://youtu.be/FPMKXanghWM

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-scott-belsky-robin-choy-and-jason-lemkin/

Hilary Headlee is Head of Global Sales Operations and Enablement @ Zoom. Prior to joining Zoom, Hilary was VP of Global Sales Operations and Productivity @ MindBody and before that enjoyed similar roles with Alteryx, Invoca and Lynda.com. At Lynda.com, Hilary grew the support teams from 6 to 60 people and supported more than 60 net new reps in just 3 years. If that was not enough, Hilary is also a Limited Partner in Stage 2 Capital, the venture firm focused purely on go-to-market. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How did Hilary make her way into the world of SaaS and come to be the sales leader she is today with the global communications leader, Zoom?
• When thinking about sales ops vs revenue ops, what are the 4 key points to consider for founders? How does lead management and onboarding alter the question of sales ops vs revenue ops? Where does Hilary see operational debt the most? How does she advise founders on removing it?    
• Given the broad scope of sales ops and engagement, is it not just rebalancing culture, comms and change? As a business scales does there not come a time where it unbundles and scales out of sales vs revenue ops? How do the roles change with time and scale? Where do the breakpoints occur? 
• Why does Hilary believe documentation is so important today? What is the toolset Hilary uses for documentation? How does Hilary train her team around the right strategy to document their processes? Where do many go wrong here? Where can you pick up small wins?   

Hilary’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What is the hardest element of Hilary’s role today with Zoom?
2. What would Hilary most like to change in the world of SaaS today? 
3. What does Hilary believe that most around him disbelieve? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-367-with-zoom-head-of-global-sales-operations-and-enablement-hilary-headlee/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

The buzz that accompanies digital transformation trends is infinite. Cut through the noise with Aaron Levie, CEO of Box and Jason Lemkin, CEO & Co-founder of SaaStr as they share insights on what will make a lasting impact and what may fail to materialize in the future of work.

This episode is an excerpt from Jason and Aaron’s session at SaaStr Summit: Enterprise.

Full video: https://youtu.be/vBQR7G6YHFQ

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-justin-bedecarre-jen-nguyen-jason-lemkin-and-aaron-levie/

Centralized HQs with all the perks and amenities “under one roof” have traditionally been used as recruiting tools to attract and retain top talent. In this episode, Justin and Jen discuss what the Office of the Future will be like. 

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Summit: Enterprise. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/dT04zc22ZH4

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-justin-bedecarre-jen-nguyen-jason-lemkin-and-aaron-levie/

Kyle Parrish is the Head of Sales @ Figma, the company that helps teams create, test and ship better designs from start to finish. To date the company has raised over $132M in financing from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, a16z, Index, Greylock and Kleiner Perkins to name a few. As for Kyle, prior to Figma he spent over 5 years at Dropbox achieving some incredible milestones including launching and scaling the Austin, Texas office from 3 to 80 people and being responsible for growing Dropbox’s leading partner ecosystem. Before Figma, Kyle spent close to 3 years as an Account Executive at ADP. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Kyle made his way into the world of SaaS and sales and came to be Head of Sales at one of the fastest-growing companies in Figma?
• Kyle was in charge of creating the Austin, Texas sales team @ Dropbox, what were some of his biggest lessons when it comes to moving sales outside of HQ? What worked? What did not work? At what stage does culture and process really start to break?    
• Why is it so hard moving from 0-1 in sales? How does Kyle advise founders when it comes to making your first sales hire? Does Kyle agree that it has to be the founder who develops the sales playbook? How does one create sales targets that are both ambitious but also achievable? What is the balance? 
• What does it take to create a performance led sales culture? Where do many people go wrong here? How is the best way for sales and product to work together? What can one do to proactively make those discussions with sales and product both frequent and productive?   

Kyle’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What is the hardest element of Kyle’s role today with Figma?
2. What would Kyle most like to change in the world of SaaS today? 
3. What does Kyle believe that most around him disbelieve? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-364-with-figma-head-of-sales-kyle-parrish/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Kyle Parrish

The future of work is here and digital automation is now essential for today’s workforce. Tools have improved, but companies are STILL using outdated and manual processes to conduct business. Enter Pipefy. Pipefy is a workflow management software that makes business processes such as purchasing, onboarding, and recruiting—hassle-free, so requesters, processors and managers are more efficient. Pipefy seamlessly integrates with other tools in your toolchain to ensure a completely automated experience with a low to no code implementation. Dispersed or remote team members? NO PROBLEM! Pipefy can automate your requests from anywhere. Scroll over to pipefy.com/saastr to try it out and get 10% off your first 3 months. Empower your teams everywhere with Pipefy.

Small, Medium, or Enterprise, SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with Shopify Plus GM, Loren Padelford, to discuss how to keep your customers happy at all stages.

This episode is an excerpt from Jason and Loren’s session at SaaStr Summit: Enterprise.

Full video: https://youtu.be/kQPjPiVbcqk

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-bernadette-nixon-jay-snyder-nick-mehta-loren-padelford-and-jason-lemkin/

Customers' expectations are higher than ever with more access to information and options. This dynamic trio of SaaS experts share how to stay customer-centric and set yourself apart in today's rapidly changing environment.

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Summit: Enterprise. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/DNMId8gYj80

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-bernadette-nixon-jay-snyder-nick-mehta-loren-padelford-and-jason-lemkin/

Lara Caimi is the Chief Customer and Partner Officer @ ServiceNow, the company that allows you the power to make work, work better. Prior to their IPO, ServiceNow raised funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia Capital and Greylock. As for Lara, she joined ServiceNow in 2017 and spent 3 years as Chief Strategy Officer before assuming her current role just this month. Before ServiceNow Lara spent an incredible 17 years at Bain & Co across a variety of different projects and roles.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Lara made her way into the world of ServiceNow and SaaS having spent an incredible 17 years at Bain & Co?
• What does the role of Chief Strategy Officer really entail? How did the role change in Lara’s 3 years in the position? What is the optimal relationship between the Chief Strategy Officer and the CEO? How does Lara advise founders on when to hire their Chief Customer Officer?  
• How does Lara see the 4 phases of startup growth? What are the most challenging elements within each? How does one instil process and discipline without losing agility and speed? How does one set targets that are a stretch but also not a stretch too far? What is the right balance? 
• How does Lara think about what great change management looks like today? How does that change in a COVID world? How does Lara approach the right way to address enterprise customer communications? Why has that been made easier in COVID times?  

Lara’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What would Lara most like to change in the world of SaaS today?
2. What is the hardest element of Lara’s role with ServiceNow today?
3. The biggest surprise for Lara internally since the start of COVID? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-361-with-servicenow-chief-customer-and-partner-officer-lara-caimi/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

The future of work is here and digital automation is now essential for today’s workforce. Tools have improved, but companies are STILL using outdated and manual processes to conduct business. Enter Pipefy. Pipefy is a workflow management software that makes business processes such as purchasing, onboarding, and recruiting—hassle-free, so requesters, processors and managers are more efficient. Pipefy seamlessly integrates with other tools in your toolchain to ensure a completely automated experience with a low to no code implementation. Dispersed or remote team members? NO PROBLEM! Pipefy can automate your requests from anywhere. Scroll over to pipefy.com/saastr to try it out and get 10% off your first 3 months. Empower your teams everywhere with Pipefy.

Digital transformation marks a radical rethinking of how companies use tech, people, and operations to fundamentally change their business performance. Coupa CEO, Rob Bernshteyn, and SaaStr CEO, Jason Lemkin, will discuss how the Cloud has changed in 2020.

This episode is an excerpt from Jason and Rob’s session at SaaStr Summit: Enterprise.

Full video: https://youtu.be/t9sSY6owgTo

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-matt-garratt-trisha-price-david-schmaier-rob-bernshteyn-and-jason-lemkin/

From strategies in recruitment and team building to sales tactics, these leaders from Salesforce, nCino, and Vlocity, will discuss the top tips for moving beyond horizontal SaaS and building a billion-dollar SaaS company.

Matt Garratt, SVP, Managing Partner, Salesforce Ventures

Trisha Price, Chief Product Officer, nCino

David Schmaier, CEO & Founder, Vlocity

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Summit: Enterprise.

Full video: https://youtu.be/ZxmCVOTW1lQ

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-matt-garratt-trisha-price-david-schmaier-rob-bernshteyn-and-jason-lemkin/

Chen Amit is the Founder & CEO @ Tipalti, the only global payable automation platform that scales with you and now remitting $5Bn annually across 3M suppliers. To date, Chen has raised over $146M with Tipalti from the likes of Oren Zeev, Dan Rose, Mike Chalfen and then Greenspring, Truebridge and 01 Advisors to name a few. Previously, Chen was CEO of Atrica, acquired by Nokia-Siemens. He also was co-founder and CEO of Verix. At ECI Telecom, Chen founded its ADSL business unit and led it from inception to $100 million in annual sales. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Chen made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found the leader in account payables with Tipalti?
• Why does Chen believe so much of his success is derived from saying no to customers? How does Chen determine which customer feedback to ingest vs to reject? If rejected, how can startups do this in a polite and respectful way? How can startups give the appearance of a large company to enterprises?   
• Given the infinite supply of capital, how does Chen think about unit economics? How does Chen think the right way to calculate LTV is? Where do many go wrong? What can we learn from Amazon when it comes to LTV? How does Chen advise founders to think about annual dollar churn? 
• How does Chen think about optimising pricing models today? How can SaaS companies have variable pricing mechanisms without disincentivizing usage? How does Chen think about aligning revenue scale to your customers? How can this be done? What are the benefits?  

Chen’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What is the hardest element of Chen’s role today with Tipalti?
2. What would Chen most like to change in the world of SaaS today? 
3. What does Chen believe that most around him disbelieve? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-358-with-tipalti-founder-ceo-chen-amit/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

The future of work is here and digital automation is now essential for today’s workforce. Tools have improved, but companies are STILL using outdated and manual processes to conduct business. Enter Pipefy. Pipefy is a workflow management software that makes business processes such as purchasing, onboarding, and recruiting—hassle-free, so requesters, processors and managers are more efficient. Pipefy seamlessly integrates with other tools in your toolchain to ensure a completely automated experience with a low to no code implementation. Dispersed or remote team members? NO PROBLEM! Pipefy can automate your requests from anywhere. Scroll over to pipefy.com/saastr to try it out and get 10% off your first 3 months. Empower your teams everywhere with Pipefy.

Therese Tucker breaks through the dogma behind what it takes to build a successful tech company. With stories based on the founding of BlackLine — to the company’s successful IPO – you’ll learn the most common myths behind success and why they may be holding you back.

This episode is an excerpt from Therese’s session at SaaStr Annual 2018. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/fKptGJZcfFk

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-357-with-blackline-ceo-founder-therese-tucker-busting-the-myths-about-startup-success/

Pete Kazanjy is the Co-Founder @ Atrium, the startup providing proactive, always-on insights for sales operations, managers, and leaders. Stop asking questions. Start getting answers. Alongside Atrium, Pete is also the Founder of Modern Sales Pros, a community of 15,000 focused on sales operations and sales management. Pete is also the author of Founding Sales, the canonical writing on early-stage startup sales. Prior to founding Atrium, Pete founded TalentBin, culminating in their exit to Monster Worldwide in February 2014. Finally, before TalentBin, Pete founded Honestly.com building the world's first professional reputation clearinghouse and raising funding from CRV and First Round in the process. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Pete made his way into the world of SaaS and how he came to be one of the leading figures on sales operations and management that he is today?
• Why do founders have to sell the product themselves at the start? When is the right time to hire their first sales reps? What profiles should founders look for in these first reps? What are the most common mistakes founders make when hiring their first reps? How should they structure their comp plans?   
• How do the best onboard their sales reps? What can be done to minimise ramp time of new reps? How is the documentation used most effectively? How can sales calls be used for new rep onboarding? How does Pete think about optimising payback period on a per rep basis? 
• What are the leading indicators that a sales rep is successful? What are the core metrics founders should measure to determine the effectiveness of their reps and sales teams? How does this differ between SMB and enterprise? What are the challenges with enterprise given the long sales cycles? 

Pete’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Hardest element of Pete’s role today with Atrium?
2. What would Pete most like to change in the world of SaaS?
3. What sales leader does Pete most respect and why?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-356-with-atrium-co-founder-pete-kazanjy/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Pete Kazanjy

Despite the global pandemic, seed investing remains hyperactive amongst VCs. Satya Patel of Homebrew shares his expert advice on how to raise seed capital in 2020. 

This episode is an excerpt from Satya’s session at SaaStr Summit: The New New in Venture. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/xXNLUKzcESg

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-355-with-homebrew-partner-satya-patel-the-ppp-you-really-need-for-raising-capital-during-a-pandemic/

Whether you've just raised your first round or are in hypergrowth mode, here are the 10 things SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, wishes his board and investors had told him. 

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/10-things-wish-board-vcs-told/

Keith Rabois (Paypal, Linkedin, Square) and SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin talk about the landscape of SaaS & Cloud fundraising and valuation in 2020. 

This episode is an excerpt from Keith and Jason’s session at SaaStr Summit: The New New in Venture.

Full video: https://youtu.be/KxTZfx_QpjY

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-keith-rabois-and-jason-lemkin/

Decacorns ($10B+ valuation) are everywhere in SaaS, despite the downturn.  SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin discusses what the new landscape of SaaS means for you in 2020. 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-chris-oneill-and-jason-lemkin/

Chris O'Neill (Google, Evernote) shares his lessons from previous downturns and how to chart a new course for growth in today's changing market.

This episode is an excerpt from Chris’s session at SaaStr Summit: The New New in Venture.  

Full video: https://youtu.be/ZYdcMpAFQas

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-chris-oneill-and-jason-lemkin/

Neha Sampat is the Founder and CEO @ Contentstack, a modern content management system bringing business and tech teams together to deliver personalised, omnichannel experiences. Atypical in our world, but Neha scaled the business to well over $1M in ARR before raising funding. Now Neha has raised over $31M from the likes of Insight Partners and Illuminate. Prior to Contentstack, Neha was the Founder and CEO @ Built.io and before that spent 10 years as the Founder and CEO @ Raw Engineering, building a leading digital transformation consultancy.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How did Neha make her way into the world of SaaS and content management systems having previously built a digital transformation agency?
• How the heck did Neha scaled Contentstack to over $1M in ARR without raising capital, whilst being based in the Bay? What were the signals that made Neha realise she had a scalable software business? What did Neha look for in her first seed round investors? How did that profile change when she went out to raise the Series A?  
• How has being a sommelier helped Neha break the glass ceiling of business? What are some lessons Neha has learned in terms of build true and genuine relationships with customers beyond the transaction? What are the counter-intuitive strategies Neha has found works when it comes to motivating remote teams?
• Why did Neha decide to build out so much of the tech team well outside of the Bay in a town outside of Mumbai? Does Neha believe the future of tech is in the valley or decentralised?  

Neha’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Neha’s biggest strength and biggest weakness as a leader?
2. What does Neha believe that many around her do not?
3. The biggest obstacle to the success Neha has achieved?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-350-with-contentstack-founder-ceo-neha-sampat/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Neha Sampat

Startups can get messy. Especially in growth. David Sacks (Yammer, PayPal) shares how to navigate from 50-500 employees.

This episode is an excerpt from David’s session at SaaStr Summit: The New New in Venture. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/G0sMviH3G24

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-349-with-craft-ventures-general-partner-david-sacks-how-to-turn-your-saas-startup-into-an-army/

Kurt Muehmel is the Chief Customer Officer @ Dataiku, the platform democratizing access to data and enabling enterprises to build their own path to AI in a human-centric way. To date, the company has raised over $146M in funding from some of the best in the business including ICONIQ, Firstmark, Battery Ventures and CapitalG to name a few. As for Kurt, he joined the company over 5 years ago and has risen from AE to VP EMEA to VP Sales Engineering to today as Chief Customer Officer. Before Dataiku, Kurt spent 5 years at Deloitte as a Manager advising primarily European public authorities on sustainable development policies.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Kurt made his way into the world of enterprise SaaS with Dataiku having started his career at Deloitte in Paris?
• What does it take to go from 0-1 in implementing both AI and data science disciplines in 20th-century companies? Where do many go wrong with their first steps? How can one assist them in the right way? How does Kurt feel about services revenue? At what stage or ratio does it become too much? 
• How does Kurt approach the challenge of change management? What does great change management look like? Where do so many go wrong? How can content be used to efficiently scale change management practices? How does one need to engage different teams for effective change management? 
• How does Kurt think about the right pricing mechanism for the customer today? How does one find a mechanism that does not disincentivize the customer with usage? How does Kurt feel about discounting? To what extent is Kurt and Dataiku willing to engage with pilots and POCs? Where do many go wrong here? 

Kurt’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Biggest challenge of Kurt’s role with Dataiku today?
2. What does Kurt know now that he wishes he had known when he entered the world of SaaS?
3. Who does Kurt look up to in the world of customer experience? Why?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-348-with-dataiku-chief-customer-officer-kurt-muehmel/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Kurt Muehmel

Ready to hire your first VP Sales?  But haven’t done it before? SaaStr CEO, Jason Lemkin shares his interview checklist. 

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/10-great-questions-to-ask-a-vp-sales-during-an-interview-2/

Aileen Lee is a U.S. seed investor. A venture capital investor, she is the founder of Cowboy Ventures. Lee coined the often-used Silicon Valley term unicorn in a TechCrunch article "Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups."

In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, Aileen and SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin take a deep dive on how Aileen finds deals, her tips for a winning pitch, and the state of VC in 2020. 

This episode is an excerpt from Aileen and Jason’s session at SaaStr Summit: The New New in Venture.

Full video: https://youtu.be/J5bhChbqcLU

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-aileen-lee-and-jason-lemkin/

Julie Herendeen is the CMO @ PagerDuty, the real-time operations platform ensuring less downtime and fewer outages, meaning happier customers and more productive teams. Prior to their IPO in 2019 PagerDuty raised funding from some of the best in the business including Accel, a16z, Baseline, Bessemer and Harrison Metal to name a few. As for Julie, prior to PagerDuty she was Vice President of Global Marketing @ Dropbox. Before Dropbox Julie was CMO @ Lookout and before Lookout, Julie enjoyed VP roles at both Yahoo and Shutterfly. If that was not enough, alongside her role at PagerDuty today Julie is also an angel with Broadway Angels and a Board Member @ Hubspot. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Julie made her way from the world of consumer into the world of enterprise and came to be CMO @ PagerDuty today? What were some of Julie’s biggest lessons from her time as VP Global Marketing at Dropbox?
• Does Julie believe that marketing should be held accountable to a number tied directly to revenue? How does Julie believe sales and marketing should work in unison? How can sales be involved in pipeline generation meetings? Should AEs make themselves responsible for sourcing new leads also? What does the ideal handoff look like? 
• How does Julie see the best marketing and product teams working together? What can marketing do to collect the most valuable data to inform product decisions? In what forum should they be relayed to product teams? How should product and marketing leaders interact most efficiently? 
• How does Julie think about the relationship of customer success and marketing? Does Julie agree that with the increasing amount of marketing content used post-sale, marketing is doing much of the work of CS? Where does Julie see many going wrong when investing heavily into thought leadership and content marketing?

Julie’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Which marketing leader does Julie most respect and why?
2. What would Julie most like to change about the world of SaaS today?
3. What is the optimal relationship between the CEO and the CMO?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-345-with-pagerduty-cmo-julie-herendeen/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Julie Herendeen

Given that so many VC pitches are over Zoom now, we thought it would be worth sharing the things it’s easy to get wrong when pitching investors.

Pitching VCs is like anything.  You’ll get better at it over time.  Later, you’ll even get great at it.  Once you know how it works, it’s not even that hard to knock it out of the park.

But until then, so many founders make unforced errors.   Rookie errors.  Here are 16 that you can easily avoid / fix right now today.

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-344-with-saastr-founder-jason-lemkin/

On today's episode, Christoph shares his five tips for fundraising during a pandemic. 

1. Have a clear COVID-19 assessment 
2. Start with an extra-long "long list"
3. Disqualify ruthlessly
4. Have a killer deck 
5. Build trust remotely 

Christoph has invested in more than 20 SaaS startups and lives and breathes SaaS, everything from “A as in AI-enhanced B2B software” to “Z as in Zendesk”. Christoph co-founded Point Nine Capital in 2011.

Before that, he co-founded two Internet startups (DealPilot.com in 1997 and Pageflakes in 2005). In 2008 he became an angel investor and discovered Zendesk, Clio, FreeAgent – and his love for SaaS.

You can find the podcast transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-343-with-point-nine-capital-managing-partner-christoph-janz/

This episode is an excerpt from Christoph’s session at SaaStr Summit: The New New in Venture. You can see the full video here: https://youtu.be/2VGglwbl_Gs

On this episode of the SaaStr podcast, our CEO, Jason Lemkin, chats with Zapier CEO, Wade Foster, on Distributed Teams and Building a Cloud Product.

Zapier is a global remote company that allows end-users to integrate the web applications they use. Although Zapier is based in Sunnyvale, California, it employs a workforce of 250 employees located around the United States and in 23 other countries.

This interview was recorded in February 2020.

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-342-with-zapier-ceo-wade-foster/

David Politis is the Founder & CEO @ BetterCloud, the company that helps IT discover, manage and secure the digital workplace. To date, David has raised over $186M in funding with BetterCloud from the likes of Accel, Warburg Pincus, Greycroft, Flybridge and Dropbox to name a few. Before founding BetterCloud, David was an early employee of Cloud Sherpas (acquired by Accenture), where he led the company to become the leading cloud services partner to SMB worldwide. Prior to Cloud Sherpas, David was a founding employee and General Manager of Vocalocity (acquired by Vonage), which he grew into one of the top providers of cloud PBX technology.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How David made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found BetterCloud? How has David seen the rate of cloud adoption within enterprise over the last 5 years? Has it been faster or slower than he thought? 
• People often suggest operators are suited to certain stages of a company lifecycle, does David agree with this? What are the leading indicators an individual is struggling to scale? How does one communicate that to them effectively? How does David think about the decision to move an individual to another role vs release them? 
• What does radical transparency really mean to David? How does the ability to have radical transparency within your org change when the org is 10 people vs 100 people? What are the biggest challenges of scaling transparency? From a meeting structure view, what can leaders do to encourage transparency? 
• How does David feel about the method of OKR setting? How has his mindset changed towards OKRs? What does the decision-making process look like for deciding which OKRs to focus on? What OKRs do they focus on at BetterCloud? How does one know when they need to change their OKRs?

David’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What would David most like to change in the world of SaaS?
2. How has David seen himself emerge and develop as a leader?
3. What is the biggest challenge of David’s role within BetterCloud today?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-341-with-bettercloud-founder-ceo-david-politis/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

David Politis

Mark Suster is a managing partner at Upfront Ventures, the largest venture capital firm in Los Angeles, and a prominent blogger in the startup venture capital world.

In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, he shares his learnings on the current landscape of funding in the time of Coronavirus, including:

• Valuation and compression 
• Forecasting market trends
• The slowdown in VC
• His best advice for surviving the downturn and raising a round of funding 

You can find the full video and transcript of this talk on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/funding-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-with-mark-suster-video-transcript/

Michael Katz is the Founder & CEO @ mParticle, the customer data platform for brands leading the customer data revolution with clients from Airbnb to Spotify to Postmates. To date Michael has raised over $120m in funding with mParticle from GV, Social Capital, Greylock, Bain Capital Ventures and a friend of the show in Zach Coelius. Prior to founding mParticle, Mike was the Founder & CEO @ Interclick, where he organically grew revenue to over $140m in 5 years. The company went public in 2009 and was acquired by Yahoo in 2012 for $270m, a 50% premium on existing share price. If that was not enough, Michael is also on the board of Brightline and a mentor with Techstars.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Michael made his way into the world of SaaS and enterprise SaaS having founded and IPO’d an adtech business previously?
• Why did Michael make the move to CRO 8 months ago? How does Mike think about when is the right time to hire your first CRO? How does this hire correlate to your hiring in sales enablement? What are the different CRO profiles Mike has seen? How does Mike advise founders on those that work best for early-stage?
• Why does Mike believe that playbooks are for suckers? What is the reasoning for the reductionism towards the power of the playbook? How does Mike think about the relationship between playbooks and predictability? 
• How does Mike make sales data really actionable within the company? What is the right way for founders to do post-mortems on won and lost deals? What is the right way to structure their sales pipeline? Who should be involved in analysing this data? What can be done to incentivize sales to be accurate in their sales data?
• Why does Michael believe that most sales meetings are unproductive? What is the right way to structure your sales meeting? Who should be brought into the meeting other than the sales team? How does Michael advise sales reps to maintain customer relationships post-sale? Where do many go wrong here? 

Michael’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What would Michael most like to change about the world of SaaS?
2. What is the hardest element of Michael’s role today with mParticle?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-339-with-mparticle-founder-ceo-michael-katz/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Michael Katz

These are unique times. In some ways, we can use our playbooks, make adjustments, and in other ways, things are very different. What isn’t likely to be very different is that recurring revenue … recurs. This is the bedrock of SaaS.

Hear how Slack CEO, Stewart Butterfield, is adapting to change and his advice on how to take care of your team and customers. 

This podcast is an excerpt from Stewart’s session at SaaStr Summit. You can see the full video here: https://youtu.be/5kG3WfUyBJc

Christine Trodella is Head of Americas for Facebook’s Workplace product, the communication tool that connects everyone in your company, through Groups, Chat, Rooms and Live video broadcasting. Prior to Workplace, Christine was Head of America’s for Facebook’s Audience Network and before that spent 5 years as a Group Director across multiple different sales and account teams within Facebook’s mid-market channel. Before Facebook, Christine was an Executive Director @ WebMD and before that spent close to 3 years in media sales at Yahoo. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Christine made her way into the world of SaaS as part of a non-SaaS company and how that led to her leading Americas for Workplace by Facebook?
• What have been the biggest benefits of scaling a SaaS company within a non-SaaS company? What are the biggest challenges or misalignments of scaling Workplace within Facebook? What have been some of the core and early mistakes the team made in their strategy to build out the Workplace sales and marketing machine? 
• What have been Christine’s biggest lessons on what it takes to sell really effectively to some of the largest enterprises in the world? What do CIOs most want in pricing? How does Christine think about the pricing problem of having a variable pricing mechanism without disincentivizing usage? How does Christine think about and approach discounting?
• Does Christine believe remote is the new normal? What really interesting data have Christine and the Workplace team seen since the world has move to work from home? How has behaviour changed on the platform with the rise of remote work? 

Christine’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What would Christine most like to change in the world of SaaS?
2. When I say success, who is the first person that comes to Christine’s mind?
3. What is the biggest challenge of Christine’s role within FB today?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-facebook-workplace-and-slack-may-29-2020/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Christine Trodella

Lower your burn by leveraging AI to claim R&D tax credits for a flat fee. Cash on hand is more important than ever, CrossBorder Solutions helps you keep more of your money. See why AI is the rational choice, request a demo today. [crossborder.ai/20]

Leveraging survey data from 66+ enterprise SaaS companies, Matt Garratt, Managing Partner of Salesforce Ventures shares the landscape of how businesses are shifting their sales & GTM strategies to react to today's uncertain times. Adnan Chaudhry, SVP of Sales at Salesforce then provides actionable takeaways on how to refocus your sales teams, engage with customers, adjust your sales comp and how you can properly forecast in today's new landscape.

This podcast is an excerpt from Matt and Adnan’s session at SaaStr Summit. You can see the full video here: https://youtu.be/3Li7tuLQidY

David Spinks is the Founder @ CMX, the premier network for community professionals. In 2019, CMX was acquired by Bevy, where David now serves as the VP of Community. Bevy is a customer-to-customer community management platform, building products that brands use to build, grow and manage their community event programs, both virtual and IRL for companies like Slack, Twitch, Salesforce, Atlassian, and Duolingo. Prior to CMX, David founded 2 prior startups centred around different forms of community building and before that was Community Manager in the early days of LeWeb the largest tech/startup conference in Europe.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How David made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found CMX? Why David believes that community is so central for all SaaS companies today?
• How does David advise teams on expectation setting around virtual events? How ambitious should they be? What big mistakes does David often see in the early days of the planning? How does this differ if you have an existing cohort of users vs are starting new with no audience?  
• How dependent is the success of the community on the platform it is hosted on? What is the ideal size for Slack, Telegram and Whatsapp communities? Should the host seed the discussion or allow it to be natural? How important is it to establish a handbook of expected actions and behaviours? Should you cull members who are inactive? 
• What does David believe separates good from great when it comes to discussion groups? What innovative strategies has David seen work when it comes to bringing a virtual event to life? What is the right amount of people in that discussion group? What is the core role of the moderator for the group?

David’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Biggest misconception around virtual events?
2. Virtual events: Permanent tide change or purely in the COVID world?
3. What has been David’s favourite virtual event? Why?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-cmx-media-and-salesforce-may-22-2020/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

David Spinks

Lower your burn by leveraging AI to claim R&D tax credits for a flat fee. Cash on hand is more important than ever, CrossBorder Solutions helps you keep more of your money. See why AI is the rational choice, request a demo today. [crossborder.ai/20]

Hear from Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and COO of Cloudflare. Michelle started the company during an economic downturn in 2009. Now, Cloudflare runs one of the world's largest networks that helps make the Internet more secure, fast, and reliable, with a market cap of more than $6B. Despite the challenges of uncertainty, money not flowing, and a generally dark mood, she was able to do it and learned a lot along the way. In this talk, Michelle will share how she made her business idea come to life and some lessons learned that can help other entrepreneurs—from solving a real, meaningful problem, to communicating in a crisis, prioritizing when there's a true lack of resources, and more.

This podcast is an excerpt from Michelle’s session at SaaStr Summit. You can see the full video here: https://youtu.be/WplZkOLl-k4

Bridget Gleason is the Head of Sales and Customer Success @ Tidelift, the company providing managed open source, backed by maintainers. Tidelift has raised over $40M from some of the best in the business including Foundry Group and General Catalyst. As for Bridget, she has the most incredible track record. Before Tidelift, Bridget was VP of Sales @ Logz.io and before that was VP of Corporate Sales @ Sumo Logic where she drove ARR up by a record 237%. Prior to SumoLogic, Bridget was VP of Sales @ YesWare where she increased MRR per rep by 450%. Finally, before YesWare, she was VP of Sales @ Engine Yard, where she tripled monthly recurring revenue, over the course of her 3+ year tenure, in 3 key leadership roles.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Bridget made her way into the world of SaaS and Sales and came to be Head of both Sales and Customer Success at Tidelift?
• Why does Bridget believe the best starting point for customer success is “company culture and value”? How does company culture impact the quality of customer success? In practice, what can one do to improve it? Who has done this well? How does value drive customer success forward? 
• How does Bridget think Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs drives the roadmap for customer success? What core elements does it change? Where do most teams go wrong in implementing the role out of their CS strategy? When should one hire their first CS rep? What should that hire look like from an experience perspective?
• How does Bridget advise her CS reps the best ways for them to build trust with their clients? What works? What does not work? Does Bridget believe CS teams should be involved in the upsell process? Does that endanger the element of trust?

Bridget’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Bridget know now that she wishes she had known when she entered the world of SaaS?
2. What would bridget most like to change about the world of SaaS today?
3. What is the most challenging element of Bridget’s role with Tidelift?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-tidelift-and-cloudflare/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Bridget Gleason

Lower your burn by leveraging AI to claim R&D tax credits for a flat fee. Cash on hand is more important than ever, CrossBorder Solutions helps you keep more of your money. See why AI is the rational choice, request a demo today. [crossborder.ai/20]

Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Hear from Garry Tan, co-founder and managing partner at Initialized Capital, about how to protect your business during a crisis. He'll cover remote work, team management, sales, marketing, product development and more.

This podcast is an excerpt from Garry’s session at SaaStr Summit. You can watch the full video on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/lIZDFQscwQM

Jessica Lin is a Co-Founder and General Partner @ Work-Bench, one of New York’s leading early-stage enterprise funds with a portfolio including the likes of Cockroach Labs, X.ai, Dialpad, VTS and Catalyst to name a few. Prior to Work-Bench, Jessica was a Learning and Development Manager at Cisco Systems, where she worked with the Engineering organization on Agile transformation, innovation and culture. Jessica is actively involved with the education and workforce development community in New York City and as chair of the Industry Advisory Board at Opportunities for a Better Tomorrow.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Jessica made her way from learning Swahili into the world of enterprise and into the world of venture with the founding of Work-Bench?
• How should founders expect to see their new business pipe be impacted by COVID? What does Jessica believe is the right way to do proper pipe reviews? What specific elements does Jessica really double click on in reviews? Where does Jessica find managers and founders do pipe reviews wrong?
• What does Jessica believe is the right way for sales reps to engage with new customers during this time? What is the right tone to adopt that achieves both empathy and a business objective? How should sales teams and CS respond to requests for discounts? What should be the compromise with discounts? 
• What specific and deliberate things can startups do not just to prevent churn but also to increase usage and upsell? Does Jessica agree with the rule of thumb that in enterprise, on an annual basis, 95% of your customers should retain? What other strategies has Jessica seen work really well for retention?

Jessica’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What would Jessica most like to change about the world of SaaS?
2. What is the hardest element of Jessica’s role today with Work-Bench?
3. The NYC ecosystem, pros and cons?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-work-bench-and-initialized-capital-may-8-2020/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Jessica Lin 

Lower your burn by leveraging AI to claim R&D tax credits for a flat fee. Cash on hand is more important than ever, CrossBorder Solutions helps you keep more of your money. See why AI is the rational choice, request a demo today. [crossborder.ai/20]

The true test of marketers. Are you a revenue driver or a cost center? You cannot afford to be the latter. Marketing leaders must focus their teams on the areas that will drive revenue while they cut costs - the biggest impact for the business. Join TripActions CMO Meagen Eisenberg at SaaStr Summit as she highlights her approach to ensuring Marketing delivers on its mission-critical role even in times of uncertainty or crisis.

This podcast is an excerpt from Megan’s session at SaaStr Summit. You can find the full video and transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/making-trade-offs-in-marketing-with-meagen-eisenberg-video-transcript/

Navin Chaddha is the Managing Director @ Mayfield who just last month announced $750M in new funds split across their core and select funds. As for Navin, under his leadership Mayfield has raised over $2.2Bn in new funds and he has backed some of the best of the last decade including Poshmark, Lyft, Hashicorp, CloudGenix and more. During his career Navin has invested in 50 companies, 17 have gone public, 20 have been acquired. Prior to VC, Navin was an entrepreneur where he co-founded or led 3 startups, all of which had successful exits with one being acquired by Microsoft. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How did Navin make his way into the world of venture from successfully founding and exiting 3 businesses? What made him take the jump into investing full-time from being an EiR?
• How does Navin expect the B2B landscape to be impacted by COVID-19? How does Navin advise B2B founders to think about how renewals will be impacted? How does Navin advise founders to think through how to approach the topic of discounting with their customers? In what situations does Navin agree to provide discounts to customers?
• How does Navin foresee the B2C landscape to be impacted? How does Navin advise founders to think through the level of aggression with which they pursue traditional marketing channels, now with much lower CACs? Will these CACs remain low priced? How does Navin expect company pricing to change over the next few months?
• How has Navin seen himself evolve and change as a board member over the last decade? What have been his major moments of learning? What advice would he give to new board members joining their first boards? What can board members do to build a relationship of trust and intimacy with their founders? What works? What does not?

Navin’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Navin know now that he wishes he had known when he entered the world of venture with Mayfield in 2004?
2. What is the hardest element of Navin’s role with Mayfield today?
3. What would Navin most like to change about the world of venture? Why?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-mayfield-and-tripactions-may-1-2020/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Navin Chaddha

Romain Lapeyre is CEO of Gorgias. Gorgias is the leading help center on the Shopify platform, and that gives them a pulse into a large segment of SMBs in particular. They have almost 2,500 customers in segments both struggling (fashion, luxury), and growing (electronics, etc.). They are coming up on $10m ARR but aren’t there quite yet, so a lot like a lot of you, or where you’ll be soon enough.

You can find the video and notes from this discussion on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/what-are-you-seeing-001-with-romain-lapeyre-ceo-of-gorgias-2500-smb-e-commerce-customers/

John Mellor is Chief Strategy Officer @ Domo, the company that allows you to leverage BI at scale to empower your team with data. Prior to their IPO, Domo raised funding from the likes of Benchmark, Founders Fund, a16, Greylock and IVP to name a few. As for John, prior to Domo he served as vice president for strategy and business operations for Adobe’s Digital Experience business, driving more than $3 billion in annual revenue. John joined Adobe through the company’s acquisition of Omniture in 2009, where he served as executive vice president of marketing, driving all marketing efforts to strategically advance the industry’s largest standalone web analytics business.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How did John make his way into the world of SaaS over 2 decades ago and how did that lead to his running a $3Bn ARR business line at Adobe and lead to his joining Domo? What were John’s biggest takeaways from his decade at Adobe?
• Why does John believe that COVID will be a bigger accelerant than any other C-level led initiative? For vendors going through that digital transformation with their customers, what is the right tone to adopt that is both empathetic and achieves business objectives? Is digital transformation a technology challenge or a behavioural challenge?
• How will a 100% virtual event environment impact physical events when and if they do come back? What were John’s biggest takeaways from running Domo’s annual event virtually? What worked? What did not work? On a conversion basis, how did it compare to in-person events? How should we structure content for these virtual events?
• How does John think about the role of leadership in a crisis such as this? What is the right tone for the leader to adopt? Where does John believe many leadership teams go wrong in times such as this? How can leadership teams ensure that a crisis is not self-fulfilling and how can one prevent that mindset?      

John’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does John know now that he wishes he had known when he entered the world of SaaS?
2. What is the optimal relationship between the CEO and Chief Strategy Officer?
3. What would John most like to change about the world of SaaS 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-domo-and-gorgias-april-24-2020/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

John Mellor

Gusto's Lexi Reese walks you through scaling high performance teams. Is trust earned or given? How do you communicate for impact?

This podcast is an excerpt from Lexi’s session at SaaStr Scale. You can find the full video and transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/high-performance-teams/

Carolyn Guss is VP of Corporate Marketing @ PagerDuty, the company keeping your digital operations running perfectly with their real-time operations platform. Prior to their IPO in April 2019, PagerDuty had raised funding from some of the best in the business including a16, Bessemer, Meritech, Harrison Metal and Elad Gil to name a few. As for Carolyn, prior to joining PagerDuty she spent 5 years as the GM of Method Communications San Francisco Office and before that spent time on the other side of the pond with a close to 7-year stint at Orange as Head of Corporate PR and Head of US Communications.

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Carolyn made her way across the pond from Head of US Communications at Orange to GM of Method in SF to then playing a key role in the marketing team at PagerDuty?
• How does Carolyn think startups and larger companies can replace the leads that are lost from having no events in a COVID world? How are PagerDuty shifting their strategy? How does PagerDuty think about brand marketing? Does it have to be tied to a number directly tied to revenue? What are the challenges with brand marketing?
• What does Carolyn believe is the right tone to approach customers within this time? How can one be supportive but also drive towards business objectives? In terms of tone, what is the right tone to approach the broader team with? How does PagerDuty gain a sense of company morale at scale? What tools do they use?   
• How does Carolyn think about the benefits of transparency both with employees and with customers? Is there an extent to the benefits of transparency? Can one ever been too transparent? How does one think about this in a very corporate perspective with PagerDuty now being a public company?      

Carolyn’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Carolyn know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning of her time in marketing?
2. Hardest element of her role with PagerDuty today?
3. Who is killing it in the world of SaaS marketing? Why? 

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-pagerduty-and-gusto-april-17-2020/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Carolyn Guss

Join SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Bessemer Venture Partners Partner Byron Deeter for a deep dive on what's going on in Venture Capital and Cloud.

This podcast is an excerpt from Jason and Byron’s webinar “Bridging the Gap: The Current State of Venture Capital and Cloud.” You can find the full webinar on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/UDfIC5prskA

Bhavin Shah is the Founder & CEO @ Moveworks, the cloud-based AI platform, purpose-built for large enterprises, that resolves employees' IT support issues⁠—instantly and automatically. To date Bhavin has raised over $108M with Moveworks from the likes of Mamoon Hamid @ Kleiner Perkins, Arij Janmohamed @ Lightspeed, Bain Capital, Sapphire Ventures and ICONIQ. Prior to Moveworks, Bhavin was the Founder and CEO @ Refresh which was later acquired by LinkedIn and then before that founded Gazillion Entertainment, a company he scaled to over 200 employees. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Bhavin made his way into the wonderful world of SaaS and came to found Moveworks?
• What are the core challenges IT teams are facing as a result of the move to remote work? Where do many make mistakes here? What can one do from a structural perspective to set them up for success when moving to remote? 
• What does great change management look like in Bhavin’s mind today? Where do so many go wrong here? How does this change in the world of remote? Who should be involved in executing on the change management plan?  
• How does Bhavin think about the role of customer success today? Why does Bhavin believe that customer success and product should be in one org? How does Bhavin think about the interplay of marketing and customer success? Is marketing moving closer and closer to customer success with their content?      

Bhavin’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What is the hardest element of Bhavin’s role with Moveworks today?
2. Hardest role to hire for today? Why? 
3. If Bhavin could change one thing in the world of SaaS today, what would it be?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-moveworks-and-bessemer-venture-partners-april-10-2020/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Bhavin Shah

Many people make the false assumption that the path for a highly successful SaaS company is straight “up and to the right”. Of course, for those involved, the reality of the journey is characterized by a series of obstacles that must be navigated. Fmr. Shasta Ventures Doug Pepper will share the key challenges that were overcome to allow Marketo to become a $5B SaaS Category Leader in Marketing Automation.

This podcast is an excerpt from Doug’s session at SaaStr Europa. You can find the full video and transcript on our blog.

Anthony Kennada is the CMO @ Front, the startup that provides your team with better email so they can treat every customer like your only customer. To date, Front have raised over $138M from some leading names including Sequoia, Eric Yuan @ Zoom, Ryan and Jared Smith @ Qualtrics, Michael Cannon-Brookes and Jay Simmons @ Atlassian and Frederic Kerrest @ Okta to name a few. As for Anthony, prior to Front Anthony was the founding CMO at Gainsight where he and his team are credited with creating the Customer Success category. At Gainsight Anthony and the team developed a new playbook for B2B marketing that fueled the company’s growth from $0 to over $100M of ARR. If that was not enough, Anthony is also the author of Category Creation: How to Build a Brand that Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love. The book debuted as a number one new release on Amazon.

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Anthony made his way into the world of SaaS starting in the sales team at Box and how that led to his entering the world of marketing and creating the customer success category?
• How does Anthony marketing playbook change when making the move from Gainsight with higher ACV’s and longer sales cycles to Front with lowers ACV’s and much higher volume? How does Anthony think about ABM today with Front given the lower ACVs? At what ticket size does ABM make sense?
• How does Anthony feel about brand marketing? Why did Anthony and Front decide now was the right time to engage with billboards? How does Anthony think about data and tracking for brand marketing? Does Anthony believe that all marketing has to be tied to a number directly related to revenue?  
• How does Anthony seeing a changing relationship between customer success and marketing? How is marketing being pushed further into the realms of CS? What is the optimal relationship between CS and marketing? How does this compare to the relationship of sales and marketing more traditionally?       

Anthony’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Anthony know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning of his time in marketing?
2. What is the hardest element of Anthony’s role with Front today?
3. Who does Anthony think is killing it in the world of marketing today?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Anthony Kennada

We’re obviously in a very unique situation today. The pace at which Corona is impacting us all right now is so fast, it’s hard to keep up.

Today is different from other times but in SaaS. It will probably be like ’08-’09 downturn — just faster.

Join Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder of SaaStr, and Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, as they take a look back at what happened to them as a SaaS vendor in ’08-’09, and what learnings you can leverage.

This podcast is an excerpt from Jason and Nick’s webinar “What We’re Doing Now. And How We Got Through ’08-’09.” You can find the full replay here.

May Habib is the Founder & CEO @ Qordoba, the platform that helps everyone at your company write with the same style, terminology and voice. To date, May has raised over $21M in funding with Qordoba from the likes of Upfront Ventures, Aspect Ventures, Bonfire Ventures and Michael Stoppelman to name a few. Before entering the world of SaaS, May was a vice president at one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds, where she was the first employee on the technology investment team, building a portfolio now worth over $20B. Before that, May started her career in the New York Office of Lehman Brothers raising capital for software companies.  

In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How May made her way into the world of startups and SaaS from being a VP at one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East?
• How does May think about and assess operational survival in times of such uncertainty? Why does this downturn feel so different to prior downturns? Operationally, what needs to fundamentally change about your processes?
• How does May think about when is the right time to engage with pre-emptive burn cuts? Where does one look first in the organisation when making these cuts? How does one structure those discussions? What is the right way to do it? What is the right way to communicate the cuts to the team, customers and investors? 
• How does one keep the existing teams spirits high when they have just seen many of their friends be released? What is the right way to manage those discussions? What can founders do to build unity in their team now everyone is WFH? What has worked well for the Qordoba team? Where do many go wrong here?       

May’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What is the most challenging element of May’s role with Qordoba today?
2. What does May know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning?
3. If May could change one thing about the world of SaaS, what would it be and why?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

May Habib

The first step in success with SMB clients is to recognize that it’s not a one size fits all scenario. Companies need a specialized approach for SMB accounts, different than the tactics used for Enterprise. Andrei Brasoveanu will sit down for a conversation with Agnes Bazin, CDO of Doctolib, on how to create a targeted and effective sales process tailor-made for SMB.

This podcast is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Europa 2019. You can find the full video and transcript on our blog.

Rachel Hepworth is VP of Marketing @ Pilot, the startup that offers the best bookkeeping, tax and CFO services for growing businesses. To date they have raised over $58M from some of the best in the business including Index Ventures, John Collison, Paul English, Drew Houston, Frederic Kerrest, Diane Greene and more incredible names. As for Rachel, prior to joining Pilot, she saw the hyper-growth of Slack firsthand enjoying a couple of different roles including Head of Growth Marketing and then also Head of Self Service and Platform Marketing. Before Slack, Rachel spent 4 years at LinkedIn where she led the product marketing team for content experiences. Finally, before LinkedIn, Rachel spent close to 3 years at Climate Corporation, prior to their $1Bn exit to Monsanto. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Rachel made her way from marketing manager at Climate Corporation to VP of marketing at Pilot today? What were Rachel’s biggest takeaways from her time seeing the hyper-growth at Slack?
• How does Rachel think about organic growth and inciting word of mouth today? How does Rachel think they can be more accurately tracked and measured? How does Rachel think about the optimal ratio of paid to organic in growth? Would Rachel agree in paid, your payback period doubles every $5M you spend?
• With the rise of product-led growth, are we seeing a fundamental shift in the structure of sales and marketing? How does Rachel see marketing move ever close to the function of customer success today? What is the optimal way for customer success and marketing to work together? 
• How does Rachel think about the importance of getting in front of your customers? Why does Rachel believe that data tells you the what and customer conversations tell you the why? What is the right way to structure your customer conversations? Where do so many people go wrong here?      

Rachel’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Hardest element of your role with Pilot today?
2. If Rachel could change one thing about SaaS today, what would it be?
3. Who is killing it in SaaS marketing? Why?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Rachel Hepworth

The startup journey moves in waves—whether you’re ready or not. After finding funding and product/market fit, your next steps as a founder in the hypergrowth phase can determine the future of your company. Harry Stebbings of Stride.VC and Robert Vis of MessageBird will walk through lessons learned to survive hypergrowth and what will make a difference when it comes to scaling. Hear how to navigate fast growth and how to look ahead as you travel forward.

This podcast is from Harry and Robert's SaaStr Europa 2019 session. You can find the full video and transcript on our blog.

Harry Hurst is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ Pipe, the startup that gives you control of your cash flow by giving you access to the full annual value of your monthly subscriptions, upfront. This month they announced their $6M seed round led by David Saks @ Craft and joined by Fika, Weekend Fund, Naval Ravikant and WorkLife Ventures to name a few. Prior to Pipe, Harry co-founded Skurt raising over $11M in the process before being acquired by Fair.com. Harry has also angel invested in the likes of BreathePod and Try.com. 

 In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

• How Harry made his way from the UK to founding one of Silicon Valley’s hottest SaaS startups with the founding of Pipe?
• How does Harry think about when is the right time for a startup to raise VC funding? How does Harry stress test the alignment between the founder and the VC/ Opposingly, when is the right time for a founder to take non-dilutive capital from Pipe instead?
• Pipe’s lending model is so centred around churn prediction, what does their churn analysis look like at Pipe? How does Harry think about the right way to structure churn post mortems? Why does Harry believe investing in customer success is far more important than customer acquisition? 
• How does Harry think about the importance of brand for enterprise startups today? Do you have to invest in it from Day 1? What mistakes does Harry see many founders make when it comes to investing in their early brand?      

Harry’s 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Harry know that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. What does Harry believe is the hardest role to hire for today? Why?
3. What does Harry believe that most around his disbelieve?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Harry Hurst

According to a study from SiriusDecisions, the majority of buyers (81%) today make purchase decisions based on buying experience, over product or price. To meet buyers’ high expectations and manage the challenging sales landscape, companies must involve their entire organization in maturing the sales process- including after prospects sign on the dotted line. This session will outline a practical approach to growing revenue and retention by aligning sales, marketing, and customer success.

This podcast is an excerpt from Theresa’s session at SaaStr Europa 2019. You can see the full video on our YouTube channel.

Today we deep dive into what startups can learn from the large SaaS incumbents of today. 

Sara Varni: CMO @ Twilio on her biggest takeaways from her time at Salesforce.

Erica Schultz: President of Field Operations @ Confluent on her biggest takeaways from her time at Oracle.

Whitney Bouck: COO @ Hellosign on her biggest takeaways from her time at Box.

Leyla Seka: Partner @ Operator Collective on her biggest takeaways from her time at Salesforce.

Ryan Bonnici: CMO @ G2 on his biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce.

Ryan Barretto: SVP @ Sprout Social on his biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce

Tien Tzuo: Founder & CEO @ Zuora on his biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce.

Paul Albright: Board member @ Clarizen on his biggest takeaways from his time at SuccessFactors.

Jaleh Rezaei: Founder & CEO @ Mutiny on her biggest takeaways from her time at Gusto.

Eugenio Pace: Founder & CEO @ Auth0 on his biggest takeaways from his time at Microsoft.

Liat Bycel: VP @ Airtable on her biggest takeaways from her time at Twitter.

Mark Goldberg: Partner @ Index on his biggest takeaways from his time at Dropbox.

Read the full transcript on our blog.

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr