Aaron Levie co-founded Box with three high school friends in 2005 when they discovered there wasn’t a modern solution for sharing and collaborating on work.They created Box to provide businesses with an easy way to share, access and manage information with enterprise-grade security, compliance and governance.Eleven years later, Box has been adopted by nearly 65% of the Fortune 500 and has nearly 70,000 paying business customers. The company went public in January 2015, and remains one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Aaron with 3 friends from high school come to found one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies in Box?
• How does Aaron view the convergence of enterprise and consumer products in the coming years? How does this convergence effect IT providers?
• How does Aaron view transparency within organisations? How does this affect information flow? What must CEO’s consider when contemplating transparency within their organisation?
• How does Aaron evaluate the inflection points in the growth of Box? What were the challenges in overcoming these hurdles? How did he have to change as a CEO to combat these changes?
• What does the rise of AI mean for businesses and enterprise? What does the rise of VR allow the enterprise that was not previously possible? How do these emerging technologies affect the product and strategic roadmap at Box?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Aaron’s favourite SaaS reading material?
2. What will it take for Box to be 10x from here?
3. What does Aaron know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
4. What does Aaron spend most his time on that he would like to change?

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

Aaron Levie

Luke Retterath is the Director of Demand Generation @ Duo Security, the most loved company in security. They have the backing of some of the best investors in the business including Benchmark, Redpoint, Google Ventures and True Venture just to name a few. As for Luke, his role is to develop, execute, and manage demand generation programs assessing the effectiveness of all marketing programs as well as defining goals, metrics and ROI’s for the differing programs.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Luke make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found unicorn startup, Namely?
• What are the 3 practical tests Luke uses to assess demand gen candidates in the hiring process? What are the right questions to ask? Is it right to look for badges on the CV?
• Once the demand gen team is in place, how do we get the team jump started? Where should the focus be placed?
• What are the 5 things that have helped drive growth at Duo? How can founders implement these into their demand gen strategy to 3x revenue for 3 years?
• How should one plan and forecast when it comes to demand gen? How does Luke approach the topic of MQLs? How does this change for the inside sales team?

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

Douglas Hanna is the GM of the Developer Platform @ Zendesk, one of the world’s fastest growing SaaS startups. Before joining Zendesk, Douglas was the Founder & CEO @ Help.com where he grew the business from 1 to 16. Prior to Help, Douglas was the CEO of A Small Orange, the web hosting firm that was acquired by Endurance International Group where Douglas was on the Executive team when they went public on the NASDAQ.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Douglas make his entry into the world of SaaS and Zendesk?
• What were the big adjustments that Douglas had to make from founding and working in smaller companies to working at Zendesk? What is the core to making the successful move?
• How can companies go about building a platform? What are the fundamentals to consider once you have decided on the platform approach? What are the challenges?
• How can a startup measure the success of their platform? What are the benchmarks and metrics that must be observed? How does testing and iteration play a role in platform success?
• How does Douglas approach the go to market element with regards to platforms? How has the world of platform go to market changed in the world of omni-channel?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Biggest mistake companies make with their platform approach?
2. Fave SaaS reading material?
3. What does Douglas know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?

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

Douglas Hanna

Jonathan Lehr is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Work-Bench, where he focuses on early stage enterprise technology investments in areas including big data analytics, machine learning, data-defined security and more. Prior to Work-Bench, Jon founded the NY Enterprise Technology Meetup in January 2012 and organizes monthly meetups of the 5,000+ person group as a way to promote collaboration for the enterprise tech ecosystem in New York. Jon has also worked at Morgan Stanley on the Office of the CIO team in IT. In that capacity, he partnered with internal technology clients to facilitate the selection and on-boarding of emerging technology vendors. He has also written about enterprise technology trends for publications such as The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal and TechCrunch.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Jonathan make his way into the world of enterprise investing with WorkBench?
• Jon has previously said that enterprise tech is like chess, so what are the rules to play by? What can startups do to increase their chance of winning the game?
• How can startups build scalable and natural relationships with decision makers in large enterprise clients? What are the fundamentals to doing this successfully? What does this conversation look like?
• What does the buying decision making process look like in large corporates? How does that differ from space to space? How does that affect the sales cycle?
• Why is NYC the best place in the world to start an enterprise tech company? What are the pros and cons of being in NYC?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Greenfield opportunities in enterprise technology?
2. What does Jonathan know now that he wishes he had known at the start?
3. Jonathan’s fave SaaS reading material?

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

Jonathan Lehr

JD Peterson is CMO of Trello where he heads the company's marketing and customer service teams. A true child of Silicon Valley, J.D. has been helping startups for nearly 20 years.  Before Trello, he held positions as the CRO and interim CEO at Scripted, the VP of Marketing at Zendesk, and the VP of Products at Marketo. JD takes pride in building world-class teams, helping companies accelerate growth, and ensuring the customer remains at the center of every strategic effort.  

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did JD make his slightly unconventional entrance into the world of SaaS?
• Having picked Marketo and Zendesk, what does JD assess when picking companies? Once picked, how does JD evaluate culture? How does JD measure this?
• How does JD approach lead qualification? How does JD measure the effectiveness of lead generation, revenue or amount of leads? How does JD unify the sales and marketing team?
• JD has previously said that now is ‘the best but hardest time to be a marketer’. Why is this and what is behind this thesis? What are the pros and cons of the data driven marketing world? What are the commonalities among the best marketeers?
• JD has seen many companies scale into hyper-growth, when does JD believe is the right time to hire and expand aggressively? What roles should be filled first? What does JD optimize for in the hiring process? When is the transition point needed to have a VP?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Is SaaS marketing B2B or B2C?
2. What does JD know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
3. Biggest mistake companies are enacting with their current marketing plans?

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

JD Peterson