Shows
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 392: 10 Simple Steps To Help Any Sales Exec Close More with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason LemkinIn today's SaaStr insider episode SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin shares 10 Simple Steps To Help Any Sales Exec Close More. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-10-3017 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 390: How To Crush It With Interactive Content, What Type, Where and When To Use It Most Efficiently and Where Many People Make Mistakes with Randy Rayess, Founder @ OutgrowRandy 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...2020-10-2825 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 388: Okta CMO, Ryan Carlson on How To Measure Marketing Attribution Effectively, Why People Think About Category Creation Incorrectly Today & How You Have To Think Through The Product vs The Company StoryRyan 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...2020-10-2033 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 387: Where Product Development is Going in 2021 with Nick Mehta, CEO @ Gainsight and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStrIn 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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-10-1623 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 385: How To Approach Core Product Decisions in SaaS, Why Storytelling is a Lost Art in SaaS & How Product and Marketing Can Work Together Most Efficiently with Paul Rosania, Founder & CEO @ BalsaPaul 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...2020-10-1432 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 384: When to Launch a Second Product with Dharmesh Shah CTO and Co-Founder @ Hubspot and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStrWe 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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-10-0932 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 380: How To Effectively Sell Into Mid-Market, Why SEO Is The Best Kept Secret In SaaS & How To Show Credibility To Enterprise Customers as a StartupRyan 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...2020-09-2923 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 379: The Top 10 Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring Their First Sales Team with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason LemkinFrom 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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-09-2516 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 377: Hashicorp CEO Dave McJannet on Scaling Remote Teams; What Breaks and When, How To Successfully Execute Multi-Product Strategies and How Leadership Style Evolves with Company StageDave 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. If you would like to...2020-09-2429 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 376: 10 Mistakes the CEO of ZoomInfo Made on His Journey to IPO with Henry Schuck, CEO @ ZoomInfo and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStr (Part 2)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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-09-1834 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 374: 10 Mistakes the CEO of ZoomInfo Made on His Journey to IPO with Henry Schuck, CEO @ ZoomInfo and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStr (Part 1)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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-09-1130 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 372: Sales Kick-Off Week: How To Prepare, How To Structure, How To Organise Content, How To Keep Teams Engaged with Latane Conant, CMO @ 6SenseLatane 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...2020-09-0827 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 371: Learning from the Lows, How Mailchimp Navigated Economic Uncertainty with Ben Chestnut, CEO @ Mailchimp and Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder @ SaaStrIt’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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-09-0424 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 369: How to Hire an A-Player VP Sales and Scale Your Team with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin and the Co-founder and CEO of HireSweet, Robin ChoyIn 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! Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-08-2834 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 367: Zoom's Head of Global Sales Operations on Sales Ops vs Revenue Ops, The Biggest Areas of Operational and Strategic Debt for Sales Teams Today & The Importance of Documentation and The Dangers of Dirty Data 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...2020-08-2634 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 366: Digital Transformation At Warp Speed with Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder @ SaaStr, and Aaron Levie, CEO, Co-founder and Chairman @ BoxThe 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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-08-2252 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 364: Figma's Head of Sales, Kyle Parrish on Why Scaling From 0-1 In Sales Is So Damn Hard, The Biggest Lesson From Moving Sales Outside Core HQ & How To Create A Performance Led CultureKyle 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...2020-08-1838 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 363: How to Make 1,000,000 Customers Happy with Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder @ SaaStr, and Loren Padelford, General Manager @ Shopify PlusSmall, 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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-08-1449 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 361: The 4 Phases of Company Growth & What Breaks At Each Stage, How To Instill Process with Scale Without Adding Barriers and What Great Change Management in a COVID World Looks Like with Lara Caimi, Chief Customer and Partner Officer @ ServiceNowLara 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...2020-08-1031 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 360: What’s Changed Since March 15 The Cloud at Hyperspeed. The World in Flux with Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder of SaaStr, and Rob Bernshteyn, CEO and Founder of CoupaDigital 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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-08-0751 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 358: Why Ignoring Customer Feedback Can Be Critical To Success, Why Founders Need To Change The Way They Think About LTV and How To Create a Pricing Model That Aligns Your Success To Your Customer's with Chen Amit, Founder & CEO @ TipaltiChen 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:...2020-08-0336 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 356: When To Hire Your First Sales Reps, What To Look For In Those Hires, What Good Sales Rep Onboarding Looks Like, Leading Indicators of Sales Rep Success and more with Pete Kazanjy, Co-Founder @ AtriumPete 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...2020-07-2841 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 354: 10 Things I Wish My Board and Investors Had Told Me with Jason Lemkin, CEO, and Founder of SaaStrWhether 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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-07-1719 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 353: Unicorns and Decacorns in 2020: What's Changed and What Hasn't with Keith Rabois, General Partner at Founders Fund and Jason Lemkin, CEO, and Founder of SaaStrKeith Rabois (Paypal, Linkedin, Square) and SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin talk about the landscape of SaaS & Cloud fundraising and valuation in 2020. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-07-1628 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 352: SaaS Decacorns and The Covid Beneficiaries with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason LemkinDecacorns ($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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-07-1014 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 350: Scaling SaaS To Well Over $1M ARR with No Funding, How Being A Sommelier Helped Neha Break The Glass Ceiling of Business & How to Successfully Scale Remote Teams EfficientlyNeha 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...2020-07-0635 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 348: How To Align Your Pricing To The Success of Your Customers, What Does Great Change Management Look Like and The Right Balance Between Software vs Services Revenue with Kurt Muehmel, Chief Customer Officer @ DataikuKurt 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...2020-07-0131 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 347: Top 10 Questions to Ask a VP of Sales with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason LemkinReady to hire your first VP Sales? But haven’t done it before? SaaStr CEO, Jason Lemkin shares his interview checklist. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-06-2617 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 346: What Nobody Tells You About Seed Investing, The Inside Scoop with Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures and Jason Lemkin of SaaStrAileen 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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-06-2519 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 345: PagerDuty CMO Julie Herendeen on Attribution and Accountability within Marketing Teams, The Optimal Relationship Between Marketing & Product & Why Customer Success and Marketing Have Never Been CloserJulie 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...2020-06-2333 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 344: 16 Mistakes Founders Make Pitching to VCs with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason LemkinGiven 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. Get on...2020-06-1922 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 342: Zapier CEO, Wade Foster, and SaaStr CEO, Jason Lemkin, on Distributed Teams and Building a Cloud ProductOn 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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-06-1125 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 341: Leading Indicators Individuals Can/Can Not Scale with the Company, What Radical Transparency Truly Means and How To Implement It & Enterprise Adoption Of Cloud During COVID Times with David Politis, Founder & CEO @ BetterCloudDavid 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...2020-06-0933 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 339: Why SaaS Playbooks Are For Suckers, How To Make Sales Data Truly Actionable & The Right Way To Run Sales Meetings with Michael Katz, Founder & CEO @ mParticleMichael 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...2020-06-0229 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 337: Scaling A SaaS Business Within A Non-SaaS Business, What CIOs Want To See In Pricing Models and What Great Change Management Looks Like with Head of America's for Facebook's Workplace, Christine TrodellaChristine 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...2020-05-2625 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 335: How To Plan, Organise and Execute A World Class Virtual Event in a COVID World with David Spinks, Founder @ CMX MediaDavid 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...2020-05-1935 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 333: How To Create and Structure Your Customer Success Strategy, How Customer Success Teams Can Build Relationships of Trust with Customers and How Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Drives Customer Success Roadmaps with Bridget Gleason, Head of Sales & CBridget 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...2020-05-1137 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 331: The Right Way To Structure Enterprise Pipeline Reviews, How COVID Is Impacting New Enterprise Deals, How SaaS Companies Can Not Only Decrease Churn But Increase Upsell Today with Jessica Lin, Co-Founder @ Work-BenchJessica 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...2020-05-0629 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 329: How Renewals and Discounting Will Be Impacted by COVID & How Enterprise Founders Should Approach Capital Allocation & Efficiency Today with Navin Chaddha, Managing Director @ MayfieldNavin 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’...2020-04-2924 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 328: SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Gorgias CEO Romain Lapeyre on What They're Seeing with SMB E-commerce CustomersRomain 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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-04-2322 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 327: Domo's Chief Strategy Officer, John Mellor on Why COVID Will Do More For Digital Transformation Than Any Other C-Level Initiative, What Great Change Management Looks Like In Practice & How To Gain True Bottoms Up Adoption When Also Selling TopJohn 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...2020-04-2132 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 325: How Marketing Teams Can Replace The Leads Lost From Events in A COVID World & The Right Tone To Adopt With Clients That Is Caring and Achieves Business Objectives with Carolyn Guss, VP Corporate Marketing @ PagerDutyCarolyn 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...2020-04-1429 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 324: SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Bessemer Venture Partners' Partner Byron Deeter on The Current State of Venture Capital & CloudJoin 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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-04-0939 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 323: The Core Challenges in Moving To Remote Work Overnight, What Does Great Change Management Look Like & The Optimal Position For Customer Success In The Organisation with Bhavin Shah, Founder & CEO @ MoveworksBhavin 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...2020-04-0631 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 321: Front CMO Anthony Kennada on Adapting Marketing Playbooks To Changing ACV's and Sales Cycles, The Right Way To Think About Brand Marketing and How To Fundamentally Build a Challenger BrandAnthony 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...2020-03-3030 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 320: SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta on What It Was Like in 2008-2009 and What We Can Expect for 2020We’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. Get on the email list at cloud.substack...2020-03-2633 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 319: How To Think About And Make Pre-Emptive Burn Cuts, Operational Survival In Times Of Uncertainty & Managing Your Psychology As Founder & CEO with May Habib, Founder & CEO @ QordobaMay 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...2020-03-2331 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 317: How To Encourage, Grow and Track Word of Mouth Marketing, How The Rise of Product-Led Growth Changes The Structure of Sales and Marketing & The Biggest Takeaways on Paid vs Organic Marketing From Seeing The Hyper-Growth @ Slack with Rachel HepRachel 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...2020-03-1633 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 315: Pipe Co-Founder, Harry Hurst on Creating A New Asset Class Securitising Software Contracts, Why Customer Success Is More Important Than Customer Acquisition & How To Think Strategically About Brand Building in SaaS TodayHarry 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:...2020-03-0923 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 313: What The World's Largest SaaS Incumbents Taught Me About Founding & Scaling SaaS BusinessesToday 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...2020-03-0222 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 311: When To Hire Generalists vs Specialists, How To Retain Agility With Scale and Process and How To Always Keep Your Hiring Funnel Full with Karl Sun, Founder & CEO @ LucidchartKarl Sun is the Founder & CEO @ Lucidchart, a visual workspace that combines diagramming, data visualization, and collaboration to accelerate understanding and drive innovation. To date, Karl has raised $114M with Lucidchart from some of the best in the business including K9 Ventures, Meritech, Iconiq, GV and Kickstart in Utah. As for Karl, prior to founding the company he spent 6 years at Google in some fascinating roles including Head of Patents, Head of Business Development in China and running Google’s energy investments. As a result of his success, Karl was recently announced as EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year. 2020-02-2431 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 310: EZPR Founder Ed Zitron on the Secrets of PRSaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and EZPR Founder Ed Zitron sit down to talk about all things PR. Who actually gets into these outlets? Is PR just pitching and getting articles? Take a listen for more. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2020-02-2021 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 309: David Skok on The 9 Stage Model To Get A B2B Company To Get Repeatable, Scalable & Profitable GrowthDavid Skok is a General Partner @ Matrix Partners, the firm with a portfolio including the likes of Hubspot, ZenDesk, Quora, CloudBees and more incredible companies. As for David, he started his first company in 1977 aged just 22. Since then David has founded a total of four separate companies and performed one turn-around. Three of these companies went public. David then joined Matrix from SilverStream Software, which he founded in June 1996. Prior to its July 2002 acquisition by Novell, SilverStream was a public company that had reached a revenue run rate in excess of $100M, with approximately 800 employees and offices in more...2020-02-1750 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 307: What Gusto Taught Me About How To Build and Maintain Great Culture, The Biggest Problem in B2B Marketing & How To Truly Determine The Effective of Marketing Today with Jaleh Rezaei, Founder & CEO @ MutinyJaleh Rezaei is the Founder & CEO @ Mutiny, the startup that allows you to personalise your website for each and every visitor. Jaleh has raised from some of the best in the early stage business with Mutiny including the likes of Y Combinator, Uncork Capital and Cowboy Ventures on the fund side and then Mathilde @ Front, Henrique @ Brex and Shan-Lyn Ma @ Zola on the operator side. Prior to founding Mutiny, Jaleh spent an incredible 4 years at Gusto seeing their hypergrowth first hand as one of the first 10 employees. If that was not enough, Jaleh has also enjoyed advisory roles at...2020-02-1132 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 305: Lessons From Scaling Box From 5 Employees To IPO & The Right Way For Startups To Approach Partnerships with Karen Page, General Partner @ B Capital GroupKaren Page is a General Partner @ B Capital Group with a portfolio including the likes of Bird, Branch, Icertis, Evidation Health and Ninja Van to name a few. Prior to joining the world of venture, Karen was a Senior Director at Apple and before Apple, Karen spent an incredible 9 years at Box as a founding member of the executive team, where she was responsible for defining and leading Box's Industry GTM strategy. Plus, from 2007 until 2013, Karen ran all of Box's business development, partnership, and strategic alliance activities. If that was not enough, Karen is also on the board of...2020-02-0335 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 303: What It Takes To Build Dev Communities and Early Developer Adoption, How To Structure Trials and Freemium For Optimum Success and The 4 Different Pricing Variables To Consider with Eugenio Pace, Founder & CEO @ Auth0Eugenio Pace is the Founder & CEO @ Auth0, the startup that allows you to rapidly integrate authentication and authorization for web, mobile, and legacy applications so you can focus on your core business. To date, Eugenio has raised over $213m with Auth0 from some of the best in the business including Meritech, Sapphire, Manu Kumar @ K9, Bessemer and Trinity. Prior to founding Auth0, Eugenio spent an incredible 12 years at Microsoft leading the Program Management team in the patterns & practices group at Microsoft. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Eugenio made his way into the world of...2020-01-2734 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 301: BigID’s Founder Dimitri Sirota on Raising $105M In The Last 5 Months of 2019, How To Know When To Pour Fuel On The Fire & How Founders Should Think About Runway and If There Is Cash On The Table, Whether You Take It?Dimitri Sirota is the Founder & CEO @ BigID, the startup that provides advanced data discovery and intelligence for the data centre and cloud. To date Dimitri has raised over $145M for BigID from some of the best in the world of enterprise including Boldstart, Scale Venture Partners, Bessemer, Salesforce Ventures and Tiger Global who just a couple of weeks ago, led their latest $50M Series C. Before to BigID, Dimitri founded 2 prior businesses, the first in 1999 being a VPN security company called eTunnels and then the second being Layer Technologies where Dimitri enjoyed an incredible 10 year journey leading to their...2020-01-2026 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 280: SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Mixmax Head of Revenue Don Erwin on The Secrets to Managing a Successful Sales TeamHow do you manage a sales team when you're at a company with both Free and Freemium Sales-Driven Segments? What about SMB vs. Enterprise Sales? SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with Mixmax's Head of Revenue Don Erwin to discuss it all. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2019-11-0422 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 277: SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Shopify Plus GM Loren Padleford on Revenue, Ecosystems and The Right Time to Go UpmarketWhen is the right time to go upmarket and how do you serve small, medium and large customers in the same company. SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with Shopify Plus GM Loren Padelford to discuss. Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2019-10-2544 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 275: SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta on Founder Struggles from Imposter Syndrome to VulnerabilitesSaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta to discuss what it means to be a SaaS leader. What are the day-to-day struggles? The fears and the worries and what it means to be "crushing it" today. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin SaaStr Get on the email list at cloud.substack.com2019-10-1731 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 266: Zoom CMO Janine Pelosi on Why MQLs and SQLs Are Not Helpful As Labels, How To Create Alignment Between Sales and Marketing & How The Role of CMO Has Changed So Dramatically Over The YearsJanine Pelosi is the CMO @ Zoom, the next-generation enterprise phone system. Prior to their very successful IPO, Zoom raised funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, Emergence Capital, Horizons Ventures and 2 of my favourites in the form of Matt Ocko @ Data Collective and Dan Scheinman. As for Janine before joining Zoom, she spent 11 years at Cisco where among many incredible achievements she led worldwide demand gen for WebEx and led their worldwide digital marketing team with a $25M annual budget. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Janine made her way into...2019-09-1622 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 245: The Ultimate Guide To ACV's; When and How To Increase Them, Revenue Optimisation Per Lead & What It Means To Truly Be An ARR First CompanyDavid Skok is a serial entrepreneur turned VC at Matrix Partners. He founded four companies: Skok Systems, Corporate Software Europe, Watermark Software, and SilverStream Software and did one turnaround with Xionics. Three of the companies he founded went public and one was acquired. Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr, the world’s largest SaaS community and leading early-stage SaaS fund with investments in Automile, TalkDesk, Algolia and more. Jason Vandeboom is the Founder of ActiveCampaign, a sales and marketing automation platform that enables small businesses around the world to meaningfully connect and engage with their...2019-06-2426 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 231: Why SQLs and MQLs Are Redundant, Why You Have To Eliminate Hand Offs Between Go-To-Market Teams & Why One North Star For The Whole Company Can Be Damaging with Jason Reichl, Founder & CEO @ GoNimblyJason Reichl is the Founder & CEO @ GoNimbly, the first SaaS consultancy to focus on revenue operations. Currently growing 100% year over year, working with companies to un-silo their operations and create one strategic revenue ops team to support their Go To Market strategy. In the past, Go Nimbly has helped companies like Zendesk, Twilio, PagerDuty and Coursera to achieve alignment and increase revenue by 26%. As for Jason, prior to co-founding GoNimbly, he was Director of Product Management @ TradeShift and before that was VP of Product Management @ Lanetix. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Jason made his...2019-05-0626 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 215: Qualtrics Co-Founder and CEO Ryan Smith on The Things Nobody Tells You About an $8 Billion AcquisitionQualtrics Co-Founder and CEO Ryan Smith sits down with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin as Ryan reflects on the survey software maker's acquisition by SAP this year. The company was acquired this November in an $8B deal ahead of its planned IPO. This is SaaStr’s founder favorites series where you can hear some of the best of the best of SaaStr Annual’s Speakers. Missed the session? Here’s what Jason and Ryan talk about: Why did Qualtrics turn down a $500M acquisition offer in 2012? What did Qualtrics’ path to fundraising look like? How...2019-03-0720 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 212: Who Must Fundamentally Own Renewals Within Your Organisation, Why Burying Customer Success Under Sales Does Not Work & The Biggest Truisms On Talent That Are False and So Dangerous with Nick Mehta, CEO @ GainsightNick Mehta is the CEO @ Gainsight, the #1 customer success platform for corporate services, turning your customers into your best growth engine. To date Gainsight have raised over $156m from some of the world’s best VCs in the form of Lightspeed, Bessemer, Insight Venture Partners, Battery Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. As for Nick, prior to Gainsight he was the CEO @ LiveOffice where he grew cloud archiving ARR from $2m in 2008 to $25m in 2011 and drove and negotiated the acquisition by Symantec for $115m in cash. Before LiveOffice Nick was Senior Director of Product Management @ Symantec where he led $378 MM...2019-02-1938 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 207: 13 Years To 20 People; 3 Years Later 350 People and $50m ARR, Why Thinking There Is A Price Point You Need For A Rep Is BS & Why SMB First Works And You Must Not Design For EnterpriseJason VandeBoom is the Founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign, a sales and marketing automation platform that enables small businesses around the world to meaningfully connect and engage with their customers. Jason founded the company in 2003 and under Jason's leadership, ActiveCampaign has flourished from a successful but small company and then in 2013, they transition to SaaS, since they have grown to more than $50 million in ARR in less than five years, while still maintaining profitability and its culture. They have also only raised a single $20m PE round to accelerate their growth, making them a market leader in terms of...2019-01-1530 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 201: How To Prioritise Your Sales Pipeline, Why You Should Spend Your Time on the 10% Least Likely Leads & Why The Secret To Success In Sales Is "Calls Between The Calls" with Hannah Willson, VP Sales @ Rainforest QAHannah Willson is the VP of Sales @ Rainforest QA, the on-demand QA solution that allows companies to discover problems that affect the customer experience before the code hits production. To date, Rainforest have raised over $40m in funding from some of the very best in SaaS including the legendary Byron Deeter @ Bessemer, Jason Lemkin @ SaaStr, Marc Benioff himself, Andreesen Horowitz and YC. As for Hannah, she has over 10 years of experience leading sales and customer teams at both startups and publicly traded companies including seeing the first hand hyper-growth of Zenefits in their heyday and being VP of BD...2018-11-1928 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 184: Step by Step Guide To Scaling Your Sales Team, Why Founders Need To Spend More Time On Top of Funnel & Why Discounting Is A Great Tool with Sam Blond, Chief Sales Officer @ BrexSam Blond is Chief Sales Officer @ Brex, the startup that provides corporate cards for startups. To date they have raised over $57m in funding from the likes of Y Combinator, Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Yuri Milner, Elad Gil and many more incredible names. Prior to Brex, Sam Was Chief Revenue Officer at Rainforest QA. Before Rainforest, Sam saw firsthand the hypergrowth scaling of Zenefits as VP of Sales where he saw the company grow from 18 employees and $1m in ARR to over 1,800 employees and over $70m in ARR. Sam got his start in the SaaS industry with Jason Lemkin...2018-07-1630 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 180: David Skok on Why You Should Not Focus On CAC/LTV In The Early Days, What Is The Right Way To Analyse Sales Rep Productivity & The Leading Indicators Early Stage VCs Use to Assess Product Market FitDavid Skok is a serial entrepreneur turned VC at Matrix Partners. He founded four companies: Skok Systems, Corporate Software Europe, Watermark Software, and SilverStream Software and did one turnaround with Xionics. Three of the companies he founded went public and one was acquired. In 2001 David joined Matrix Partners, who had backed his last two startups, as a General Partner. David’s successful exits as an investor at Matrix include: HubSpot, JBoss, AppIQ, Tabblo, Netezza, Diligent Technologies, CloudSwitch, TribeHR, GrabCAD, OpenSpan and Enservio. David currently serves on the boards of Atomist, CloudBees, Digium, Meteor, Namely HR, Salsify, and Zaius. You...2018-06-1830 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 175: Lemkin's Lesson on How To Approach Long Sales Cycles, When Is The Right Time For A Founder To Take A Step Back From Selling & How To Deal With Being Cloned with Jason Lemkin, Founder @ SaaStrJason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr, the world’s largest SaaS event with over 20,000 of the world’s best SaaS founders and investors attending every year. Jason also invests from SaaStr’s debut $70m fund and has made prior investments in the likes of Algolia, TalkDesk, MixMax, Rainforest QA and many more incredible companies. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How does Jason think founders should approach long sales cycles in the early days? Why does Jason believe that ultimately long sales cycles do not matter? What can the truly great VPs do to impact...2018-05-1418 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 173: Lemkin's Lesson on What To Look For In Your First Sales Reps, How to Approach Variable Compensation, The Right Way To Acquire Customers When Starting Paid Marketing and more with Jason Lemkin, Founder @ SaaStrJason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr, the world’s largest SaaS event with over 20,000 of the world’s best SaaS founders and investors attending every year. Jason also invests from SaaStr’s debut $70m fund and has made prior investments in the likes of Algolia, TalkDesk, MixMax, Rainforest QA and many more incredible companies. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: When is the right time to hire your first sales rep? What characteristics must those sales have? Why does Jason believe it is impossible to poach a rockstar from another fast scaling startup? Should you...2018-04-3016 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 136: What Role Should The CEO Play With The Marketing Strategy, What Do CEOs Most Often Get Wrong About CMOs & What Makes The Optimal CEO-CMO Relationship with Stacey Epstein, CEO @ ZincStacey Epstein is the CEO @ Zinc, the secure communications platform for workers in front of customers, not computers. They have backing from some of the best in SaaS investing including the likes of Jason Green @ Emergence, CRV with George Zachary and GE Ventures. Prior to Zinc, Stacey was CMO at Banjo. Before Banjo, Stacey was CMO at ServiceMax where she helped fuel 5 consecutive years of triple-digit growth. Finally, before ServiceMax, Stacey was the Vice President of Global Marketing Communications at SuccessFactors. During her tenure with SuccessFactors, Stacey pioneered the marketing function in 2005, and was instrumental in the company’s...2017-07-3124 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 131: The Secret To Selling To SMBs & Creating A Sales Model That Scales with Jens Nylander, Founder & CEO @ AutomileJens Nylander is the Founder and CEO @ Automile, the startup that makes fleet and asset management much much easier. They have backing from some of the best in the business including Godfather of SaaS himself Jason Lemkin, the wonderful team at Point Nine, Justin Kan and Dawn Capital in London. As for Jens, he really is a serial entrepreneur with past endeavours including creating Sweden’s largest music player and founding Jays, the manufacturer and developer of innovative headphones that went public and is listed on the NASDAQ. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How...2017-06-2622 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 128: Algolia's Nicolas Dessaigne on The Journey To $10m in ARR, Why You Must Separate The Work You Do From The Culture You Build & How To Successfully Create A Developer CommunityNicolas Dessaigne is the Founder & CEO @ Algolia, the most reliable platform for building search into your business. Just last week they raised $53m in funding led by Accel with participation from Jason Lemkin @ SaaStr, Point Nine Capital, AppDynamic’s Jyoti Bansal, Intercom’s Des Traynor and InVision’s Clark Valberg and more incredible investors. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Nicolas made his way to YC and came to found Algolia? What are the key things that change when you cross the 10m in ARR milestone? What have been the fundamental learnings in the...2017-06-1220 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 127: Why $1-2m ARR Is Not The Hardest Phase Of A SaaS Startup, Why Your Developer Talent Pipeline Is Broken & How To Approach Regrettable and Non-Regrettable Churn with Ryan Carson, Founder & CEO @ TreehouseRyan Carson is the Founder & CEO @ Treehouse the startup that teaches you to code and learn the skills needed to launch a new career. They have backing from some of the best investors in the business including the likes of Social Capital, Greylock Partners and then notable individuals such as Reid Hoffman, Josh Elman and Mark Suster just to name a few. As for Ryan, prior to Treehouse he was the creator of famous The Future of Web Apps Conference, showing his unparalleled access to the top tier of West Coast founders. Due to the success of the conference...2017-06-0524 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 122: How To Successfully Scale The 1-10 Customer Phase Of Any SaaS Business, The True Signs Of A Great Sales Person & How To Analyse NPS Effectively with Edith Harbaugh, Founder & CEO @ LaunchDarklyEdith Harbaugh is the Founder & CEO @ LaunchDarkly, the startup that allows you to fearlessly and swiftly release software by separating feature rollout from code deployment. They have raised over $10m in funding from many previous guests of The Twenty Minute VC including Andy McLoughlin @ SoftTech, Josh Stein @ DFJ and the wonderful team at Bloomberg Beta. As for Edith, prior to LaunchDarkly, she was a Director of Product @ Tripit and Concur. Edith also holds two patents in deployment from her time in engineering at Vignette. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Edith made her way...2017-05-1525 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 108: Growing To $500m In ARR & How To Hit 7 Figure Sales with Veeva Systems Founder, Peter GassnerPeter Gassner is the Founder & CEO @ Veeva Systems, the industry cloud for life science systems. With just $4m in capital raised, Peter has taken Veeva to almost $500m in ARR and a prominent force in the rising tide of enterprise SaaS. As for Peter, prior to Veeva, Peter was a Senior Vice President of Technology at Salesforce where he experienced the successful IPO of the company and their rise into the most successful SaaS platform in the industry. Before Salesforce, Peter was with PeopleSoft for 9 years where he led a team of 450 professionals to support PeopleSoft’s technology platform...2017-03-2722 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 103: Why You Must Sell Your Product Before It's Done Being Built, Why Product-Organisation Fit Is Key & Why The Best Sales Process Is The Customer Success Process with Matin Movassate, Founder & CEO @ HeapMatin Movasatte is the Founder and CEO @ Heap. the startup that provides analytics infrastructure to automate away the annoying parts of user analytics. They have raised funding from some of the best in the business including our friends and former guests of The Twenty Minute VC including Pejman Nozad, Alexis and Garry @ Initialized, Josh Reeves at Gusto, Redpoint and more incredible investors. As for Matin, prior to Heap Matin was a product manager at Facebook and spent time at both Google and Mozilla. I would like to say a big thank you to Jason Lemkin for the intro today.2017-03-1022 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 091: Jason Lemkin on Why Hire Fast Fire Fast is BS, Why He Never Invests In Quarterly MRR & Why The Key Is Successful ReinventionJason Lemkin is the Founder and VC @ SaaStr, or more accurately put Jason is a 2x founder, 1x VC, and constant SaaS enthusiast. He led or sourced the first VC investments in many leading enterprise/SaaS start-ups, Greenhouse.io, Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, RainforestQA, Automile, and more. He is also an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, FrontApp, Influitive, BetterWorks, and other SaaS leaders. Jason has co-founded two successful start-ups selling to the enterprise. Before SaaStr and VC investing, he was CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web’s most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by...2017-01-2015 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 090: SaaStr's Own Jason Lemkin on The Specific Characteristics Jason Looks For In Founders? What Levels Of ACV Suggest The Potential For A Unicorn? Why Founders Always Undersell & How You Should Hire Your First Sales Reps?Jason Lemkin is the Founder and VC @ SaaStr, or more accurately put Jason is a 2x founder, 1x VC, and constant SaaS enthusiast. He led or sourced the first VC investments in many leading enterprise/SaaS start-ups, Greenhouse.io, Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, RainforestQA, Automile, and more. He is also an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, FrontApp, Influitive, BetterWorks, and other SaaS leaders. Jason has co-founded two successful start-ups selling to the enterprise. Before SaaStr and VC investing, he was CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web’s most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by...2017-01-1624 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 073: David Skok Part 2: What Is Negative Churn? How To Get Different ACV's From The Same Product? Should Customer Success Be Involved In The Up Sell Process?Part 2 with David Skok, now David is a serial entrepreneur turned VC at Matrix Partners. He founded four companies: Skok Systems, Corporate Software Europe, Watermark Software, and SilverStream Software and did one turnaround with Xionics. Three of the companies he founded went public and one was acquired. In 2001 David joined Matrix Partners, who had backed his last two startups, as a General Partner. David’s successful exits as an investor at Matrix include: HubSpot, JBoss, AppIQ, Tabblo, Netezza, Diligent Technologies, CloudSwitch, TribeHR, GrabCAD, OpenSpan and Enservio. David currently serves on the boards of Atomist, CloudBees, Digium, Meteor, Namely HR...2016-11-1115 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 072 Part 1: David Skok, SaaS Legend on How Long Should Your Payback Period Be, How To Assess Sales Rep Productivity & What Is A Good LTV In Relation To CACDavid Skok is a serial entrepreneur turned VC at Matrix Partners. He founded four companies: Skok Systems, Corporate Software Europe, Watermark Software, and SilverStream Software and did one turnaround with Xionics. Three of the companies he founded went public and one was acquired. In 2001 David joined Matrix Partners, who had backed his last two startups, as a General Partner. David’s successful exits as an investor at Matrix include: HubSpot, JBoss, AppIQ, Tabblo, Netezza, Diligent Technologies, CloudSwitch, TribeHR, GrabCAD, OpenSpan and Enservio. David currently serves on the boards of Atomist, CloudBees, Digium, Meteor, Namely HR, Salsify, and Zaius. You...2016-11-0729 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 071: 5 Steps To Building A Cohesive Team & How Founders Should Structure Off-Sites with Taro Fukuyama, Founder & CEO @ AnyPerkTaro Fukuyama is Founder & CEO @ AnyPerk. Born and raised in Tokyo, Taro is a Y Combinator graduate with AnyPerk and part of the first Japanese team ever to be admitted to YC. He was also named one of Business Insider’s “Silicon Valley 100 Coolest People in Tech Right Now.”Fun fact, Taro co-founded AnyPerk in a Taco Bell car park! What a story! They also have investment from the likes of DCM, YC, Gary Vaynerchuk, previous SaaStr guest Nick Mehta and many more incredible people. I would also like to say a huge thanks to Jason lemkin for the...2016-11-0422 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 068: Flexport's Ryan Petersen on Why NPS Is The Most Important Metric, How To Structure Internal Compensation Schemes & How To Implement @ Bottoms Up Decision Making OrganisationRyan Petersen is the Founder and CEO of Flexport, the freight forwarder for the internet age. Flexport recently raised a phenomenal $65m Series B from the likes of Founders Fund, First Round, Felicis, Bloomberg Beta, Yuri Milner, Susa Ventures and more incredible investors. With none other than YC founder Paul Graham stating ‘Ryan has the rare ability to not just satisfy the market but grow it’. Prior to Flexport, Ryan was Founder and CEO of ImportGenius.com, the largest provider of business intelligence to the import-export industry. A huge hand to Chad Byers @ Susa and Jason Lemkin for the...2016-10-2422 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 067: Gusto's Joshua Reeves on How To Optimise The Hiring & Interview Process, How To Build Create An Ownership Culture & Why Every 6 Months A Company Becomes A New CompanyJosh Reeves is the Founder and CEO @ Gusto. Gusto reimagines payroll, benefits, HR, and personal finance and it is this reimagination that has led to their recent addition to the unicorn club with investors including Google Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Data Collective and General Catalyst, just to name a few. As for Josh, he was selected for the 2012 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Prior to co-founding Gusto, he was the CEO and co-founder of Unwrap, a SaaS startup which was acquired in 2010, and he began his career as an early employee at Zazzle. I would also like to give a big hand...2016-10-2123 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 063: The Sales Script That Increases Conversion By 80%, How To Optimise Events Increasing Leads & Demos & How Bootstrapped Startups Can Scale Teams Alongside Revenue with Brandon Bruce, Founder & COO @ Cirrus InsightBrandon Bruce is the Co-Founder and COO @ Cirrus Insight, the plugin for Gmail and Outlook that automatically updates Salesforce as you work. Cirrus is a bootstrapped startup with triple-digit yearly growth since it's founding 4 years ago and has grown from 2 co-founders in 2011 to a team of 55 people today. And I have to say a huge thanks to Aaron Ross, Author @ Predictable Revenue for the intro to Brandon today. Likewise, if you want to join me and Jason for mojitos at SaaStr Annual 2017 and also want an incredible 20% off ticket prices, then all you have to do is click here!2016-10-0729 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 051: Hire Slow & Fire Fast & Why scaling Product Is All About Consistency with Kristen Koh Goldstein @ HireAthenaKristen Koh Goldstein is the Co-Founder @ HireAthena, the on demand workforce specialising in accounting, HR and payroll. Prior to Hire Athena, Kristen was the Co-Founder @ Scalus, where she raised millions of dollars in venture capital from top VCs including Google Ventures and Sherpa Capital. Before that Kristen was the Co-Founder @ BackOps, the world’s fastest growing back office solution. If you enjoy the show with Kristen today and would like to join Jason and I @ SaaStr Annual 2017 next year, then all you have to do is checkout SaaStr and buy your tickets for SaaStr Annual 2017. In Today’...2016-08-2625 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 047: How To Increase Leads & Conversion Through Optimising Your Marketing Funnel with Meagen Eisenberg, CMO @ MongoDBToday’s episode is taken from SaaStr Annual 2016, featuring Meagen Eisenberg, CMO at MongoDB and former VP Demand Gen at DocuSign, sharing her playbook for optimizing the funnel at every stage and converting leads into real, paying customers. If you want to join me and Jason @ SaaStr 2017 then head to saastr.com where you can buy tickets. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: Why you need to think about more than just pipeline? What are the other elements of the funnel you should focus on? How to optimise your forms for data capture...2016-08-1231 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 046: Predictable Revenue’s Aaron Ross on The Importance of Sales Specialisation and How Companies Scale Into Hyper-Growth mode?Aaron Ross is the author of the best selling book, Predictable Revenue, providing the framework for the outbound process & sales team Aaron created for Salesforce.com. During his time at Salesforce as Director of Corporate Development and Acquisitions, he added an extra $100 million in revenue in just a few years. In today’s show we discuss his and Jason Lemkin’s fantastic new book, From Impossible To Inevitable, which outlines how hyper growth companies create predictable revenue? If you are a founder asking why aren’t we growing faster, how do we go into hyper-growth mode and then how...2016-08-0823 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 043: Why You Should Focus More On Upsell Than Customer Acquisition & Forget The MBA, Take A Psychology Degree with Kirsten Helvey, COO @ Cornerstone On DemandToday we bring you one of the highlights from SaaStr Annual 2016 with Jason Lemkin talking to Kirsten Helvey, COO of Cornerstone Ondemand, a cloud-based learning and talent management solutions provider. in the episode Kirsten discusses her 11 years of experience with rising up in the ranks from employee #30 to her current position in the company, which is now 1500-strong, it is a phenomenal scaling story and so many insights nuggets of wisdom from Kirsten here. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: Why you should always be thinking about building, no matter the scale? ...2016-07-2929 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 041: Hubspot's Dharmesh Shah onToday we bring you a highlight from SaaStr Annual 2016 featuring a conversation between Hubspot's Dharmesh Shah and SaaStr's own Jason Lemkin. Prior to founding HubSpot in 2006, Dharmesh was founder and CEO of Pyramid Digital Solutions, which was acquired by SunGard Data Systems in 2005. In addition to co-authoring “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs”,Dharmesh published HubSpot’s Culture Code, which has garnered over 2.5 million views on SlideShare. Named an Inc. Founders 40 in 2016, he is an active member of the Boston-area entrepreneurial community, an angel investor in over 60 startups, and a frequent speaker on startups and...2016-07-2229 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 038: Rainforest QA's Fred Stevens-Smith on Firing Fast, The Transition From Founder To CEO & Why You Should Spend The Most Time with Your Highest PerformersFred Stevens-Smith is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Rainforest QA, which if you listened to 20VC with Byron Deeter, you will remember he discussed them and their amazing trajectory. So for QA first, it is essentially QA as a service making it fast and easy to test your webapp in multiple browsers and they are backed by some of the best as we said there Byron Deeter @ Bessemer, our own Jason Lemkin, Y Combinator, previous guest Kris Duggan @ Betterworks and Marc Benioff just to name a few. As for Fred he is the man at the helm as Co-Founder & CEO and...2016-07-1130 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 037: Why The Whole SaaS Pricing Model Is Going To Change with Quang Hoang, Co-Founder @ BirdlyQuang Hoang is the Co- Founder @ Birdly, Birdly are convinced by the power of messaging within organizations, they decided to build a broader service that connects your favorite business softwares to messaging apps. It is this vision that has led to them being named one of the hottest startups from YC Winter 2016 batch and has led to funding from some of the best in the industry including our own Jason lemkin, Slack, previous guest Nicolas Dessaigne and prestigious french investors Alven Capital and Partech Ventures. In Today’s Episode with Quang We Discuss: How did Quang...2016-07-0821 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 036: Point Nine's Christoph Janz on The War For Talent, When To Move To The US & The Importance Of Local InvestorsChristoph Janz is the Co-Founder and the Managing Partner @ Point Nine Capital, one of Europe’s best early stage venture funds and Christoph himself specializes in all things SaaS at Point Nine and has made more than 20 SaaS startup investments. Prior to Point Nine, Christoph co-founded two Internet startups and in 2008, became an angel investor and discovered Zendesk, which was his first angel investment. Also if you would like to congratulate Jason for the raising of the incredible new SaaStr Fund then you can click here to send him a congratulations tweet. In Today’s Episode with...2016-07-0427 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 035: Matt Garratt on The Strategy Behind Salesforce VenturesMatt Garratt currently runs Salesforce Ventures with the mandate to build out salesforce’s ecosystem of partners with equity investments. Matt has led key strategic investments at Salesforce in companies such as former guests Gainsight, and Invoca as well as Anaplan and Insidesales.com just to name a few. Prior to salesforce Matt was a VP at the prestigious SaaS investor Battery Ventures. Also in the show today we mention Jason Lemkin and Aaron Ross new book From Impossible to Inevitable: How Hypergrowth Companies Create Predictable Revenue and if you have not read that, that is a must and...2016-07-0122 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 030: Building & Training a Non-Technical Sales Team & Why A Heavy Inbound Model Is Like 'Driving A Racecar' with Harry Glaser, Co-Founder @ Periscope DataI am delighted to welcome my first ever Harry to the show today in the form of Harry Glaser, Co-Founder & CEO @ Periscope Data, the worlds fast analysis suite providing data analysts with the tools they need to improve their analysis by over 150X and an astonishing fact here they have doubled their revenue every 3 months ever since launch. Periscope’s investors include Ellen Pao, Matt Ocko @ Data Collective, Chad Byers @ Susa Ventures, Wes Chan @ Felicis, Benjamin Ling at Khosla and many more. Also in the show today we mention Jason Lemkin and Aaron Ross new book From Impossible to...2016-06-1324 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 029: Having Jason Lemkin As An Investor & Selling Sexy SaaS To The Legal Space with Andy Wilson, Founder & CEO @ LogikcullAndy Wilson is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Logikcull, where he really is the visionary behind Logikcull’s product and marketing strategy focusing on simplifying and democratizing the discovery process into three simple steps: upload > search > download. Andy leads the company it its mission to put an end to eDiscovery with the use of Discovery Automation. In Today’s Episode with Andy We Discuss: The origin story of Logikcull for Andy and what a-ha moment was for him? How did Andy approach the transition from service based business to SaaS business? Does the increase of customer success...2016-06-1024 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaaStr 020: What Do Salesforce Look For In Potential Investments with John Somorjai, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development & Salesforce VenturesTo Commemorate the 3 month anniversary of the best conference ever, SaaStr Annual 2016. We thought we would take a trip back to the conference with one of our favourite discussions featuring Jason Lemkin, Founder @ SaaStr and John Somorjai, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development & Salesforce Ventures. Salesforce Ventures invests in the next generation of enterprise technology. The Salesforce Ventures portfolio includes companies such as Box, DocuSign, Dropbox, Evernote, GainSight, MongoDB, MuleSoft, Stripe, SurveyMonkey, Twilio, and Xactly. Salesforce.com has invested in more than 150 enterprise cloud startups in 11 countries since 2009. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: What...2016-05-0927 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaastr 009: What Makes A Truly Great SaaS CEO with Josh Stein @ DFJThis episode was recorded at Saastr Annual 2016 featuring Jason Lemkin, Founder @ Saastr and Josh Stein, Partner @ DFJ. For those that do not know, Josh is arguably one of the most successful investors in the SaaS space having backed the likes of Box, Twilio, Yammer and many more from the very earliest of stages.In Today's Show We Cover:What is the fundamental differing between a great and a good CEO in SaaS?Is it possible to learn to become a great CEO?What did Aaron Levie do to enable Box to...2016-04-0117 min
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | InvestorsSaastr 008: Hiring 101 with Keith Rabois @ OpenDoor & Khosla VenturesThis episode was recorded at Saastr Annual 2016 and it is an incredible conversation whereby Jason Lemkin deep dives into the career and wisdom of Keith Rabois. For those that do not know, Keith is a legend of the tech industry having helped build some of the most important companies in Silicon Valley including Paypal, Square and Linkedin. He is also a very prominent VC with Khosla Ventures and has recently rejoined the world of operations, looking to disrupt the world of property with OpenDoor.For your chance to win a signed copy of Jason's new book...2016-03-2833 min