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The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

The Official SaaStr Podcast is the latest and greatest from the world of SaaStr, interviewing the most prominent operators and investors to discover their tips, tactics and strategies to attain success in the fiercely competitive world of SaaS. On the side of the operators, we center around getting from $0 to $100m ARR faster, what it takes to scale successfully and what are the core elements of hiring. As for the investors, we learn what metrics they hone in on when examining SaaS business, what type of metrics excites them and what they look for in SaaS founders.
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The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
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Now displaying: Category: business
Oct 23, 2017

Rajeev Batra is a Partner at Mayfield, a firm that has championed bold entrepreneurs since 1969. Rajeev’s investments at Mayfield include the likes of Crunchbase, SmartRecruiters, Marketo (IPO then taken private by Vista Equity), ServiceMax (acquired by GE Digital) and more incredible companies. Prior to Mayfield, Rajeev was at Mobius (Softbank) Venture Capital and Austin Ventures. Before making the move into VC, Rajeev was on the operational side as an entrepreneur and executive with three of the companies he worked with going public and later being acquired, including the very notable Siebel Systems.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Rajeev made the transition from successful operator with 3 IPOs under his belt to investing in the next generation of enterprise companies with Mayfield?
  • What does Rajeev mean when he says “startups do not die of starvation, they die of indigestion”? How does this realisation affect Rajeev’s approach to customer profiling and segmenting customers?
  • Why does Rajeev believe that “early product market fit can be misleading”? How does Rajeev look to provide context and action from numbers and analytics in the early days?
  • How does Rajeev feel that founders should approach gross margin from the early days? How should this relationship and thought process towards gross margin change over time?
  • Why does Rajeev believe that retention is the number 1 metric for SaaS founders to focus on? In the stack of metrics, how does this compare to gross margin, CAC/LTV and payback period?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. Enterprise investing is spreadsheet investing: True or false?
  2. How does Mayfield use an internal budget to align themselves to entrepreneurs?
  3. What does Rajeev mean when he says “I look for 2 act opportunities”?

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

Rajeev Batra

Oct 16, 2017

Shan Sinha is the Founder & CEO @ Highfive, the startup that quite simply makes insanely simple video conferencing. They have raised over $45m in funding from some of the best in the business including a16z, Lightspeed General Catalyst and Founder Collective and then individuals including Aaron Levie, Drew Houston and Marc Benioff. Prior to Highfive, Shan was the Group Product Manager for Google Apps for Enterprise, which he joined following Google’s 2010 acquisition of his prior company, DocVerse, which later became part of Google Drive.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Shan made his way from being one of the foundations of Google Drive to changing the world of video conferencing with Highfive?
  • As a successful second time founder, how has Shan’s thesis around customer success changed? When is the right time to hire your first CS personnel? What profile should those first CS hires have? How does this vary to differing profiles in the scaling journey?
  • Logos or expansion? What does Shan believe is crucial in the early days of SaaS scaling? What metric is the true determinant of whether a customer is attaining consistent value from your product?
  • Why does Shan believe that not everything has to scale from Day 1? What are the benefits of implementing a model that is unable to scale? What does this show and teach the startup? How does Shan think about capturing the perfect customer experience?
  • Why does Shan believe that payback period is the single most important metric for SaaS startups? How does Shan think about payback and margins when selling to the traditionally smaller ACV marker of SMB? What are the challenges in doing so?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. When is a stretch VP a stretch too far?
  2. What does Shan know now that he wishes had known when he started Highfive?
  3. Challenges of doing both hardware and software simultaneously?

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

Shan Sinha

Oct 9, 2017

Chris Caren is the CEO @ Turnitin, the company revolutionising the experience of writing to learn with backing from the likes of IVP, Norwest Venture Partners and GIC. Chris has scaled the company to serve over 25m students and 2m teachers across 15,000 institutions. Prior to joining Turnitin in 2009, Chris spent 4 years with Microsoft as a General Manager and before that 3 years at Business Objects as a VP of Product Marketing.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Chris made his way into the world of SaaS and came to be CEO @ Turnitin?
  • What were Chris’ biggest takeaways from watching both Business Objects and Microsoft as they scaled into hyper growth mode? What were his big lessons in management from Bernard Liautaud? What marketing takeaways did he have from working with Dave Kellogg?
  • Why does Chris believe management team upgrade is the most important role a CEO can perform? What are the core characteristics that upgrade candidates must have for them to be an attractive hire? What culture must be built into the fibre of the leadership team?
  • How does Chris look to manage internal discontent when bringing in external managers? How does Chris look to involve internal candidates for the role in the search for their next boss? What are the benefits of this?   
  • When is a stretch VP a stretch too far? What are the signs of potential strain? How does the team convey this? Once identified, what is the right post-mortem chain to take place?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What should founders consider before selling their company?
  2. What does Chris know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
  3. What is Chris’ favourite SaaS reading material and why?

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

Sep 25, 2017

Andy Byrne is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Clari, the startup that helps sales teams drive more revenue and increase forecast accuracy through improved deal execution and predictive analysis. They have raised over $30m in venture funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia and Bain Capital Ventures. Prior to Clari, Andy was part of the founding executive team at Clearwell Systems—Gartner's highest ranking e-discovery company—which he helped grow from pre-product & pre-revenue in 2005 to $100 million run rate until its acquisition by Symantec (SYMC) in Q2 2011. Prior to joining Clearwell, Andy co-founded Timestock, Inc., acquired by Computer Associates (CA) via the acquisition of Wily Technology.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Andy made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found Clari? What were the key takeaways from his two prior successful founding experiences?
  • Why is it important for startups to look larger than life to potential “whale” customer? What is the methodology that startups can use to gain this appearance? What role does the website play in this?
  • Why is it important for startups to understand the risk the buyer is undertaking at large corporates when becoming a customer? How does this mean that startups should convey the product roadmap? How can startups sell the product vision and the instant value add simultaneously?
  • How can startups look to “create theatre” with their product? What does this really mean? How can startups do this when the product is in MVP stage?
  • Why is it so important for the startup to make the switch from vendor to partner? How can startups use execution time as the key way to achieve this?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What hires does Andy wish he had made earlier with Clari?
  2. Recruiting in the valley, how hard and top tips?
  3. What is the most challenging element in the day to day running of Clari?

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 Byrne

Sep 18, 2017

Ben Uretsky is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Digital Ocean. Under Ben’s leadership, DigitalOcean has risen from a cloud startup for developers to the second largest and fastest growing cloud computing platform. To date, more than 1m developers have deployed more than 50 million cloud servers, and the company has expanded its worldwide infrastructure footprint with multiple datacenter locations around the globe. The company has raised $123 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Access Industries, IA Ventures, CrunchFund, and Techstars. Prior to DigitalOcean, he co-founded and built a managed hosting provider that supported some of the top websites online and generated million-dollar annual revenues.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Ben made the move from co-founding a bootstrapped startup competing with Rackspace to co-founding DigitalOcean and competing with Amazon?
  • What have been Ben’s big learnings in raising $123m for DigitalOcean? How does Ben suggest building a trusted relationship with VCs?
  • How have DigitalOcean scaled to over 1m customers without a sales team? What are the core tenets that have made this possible? How does the team prioritise customer acquisition channels at DigitalOcean? How does Ben say is the right way to build a community?
  • Sean Rad has said before the hardest part is scaling with the firm. How has been seen his scaling as CEO with the firm? How has his personal relationship to the company changed with the scaling? Hear an inflection point in the scaling of DigitalOcean and how Ben’s leadership changed as a result?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What hire des Ben wish he had made earlier?
  2. What does Ben know now that he wishes he had known earlier?
  3. What are the key inflection points in SaaS businesses?

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

Ben Uretsky

Sep 11, 2017

Dave Kellogg is the CEO @ Host Analytics, the leader in cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM). Previously, Dave was SVP/GM of Service Cloud at Salesforce and CEO at unstructured big data provider MarkLogic. Before that, Dave was CMO at Business Objects for nearly a decade as the company grew from $30M to over $1B. Dave has also worked in various capacities with the likes of Breeze, GainSight, Tableau and MongoDB and previously sat on the boards of ag tech leader, Granular (acq by DuPont for $300M)  and big data leader Aster Data (acquired by Teradata for $325M).

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Dave made his way into the world of SaaS with Salesforce, came to be CMO at Business Objects and now running his own SaaS company as CEO at Host Analytics?
  • What does David believe is the single most important metric in SaaS? How should SaaS companies structure the first four lines of their financial statements? Why is retention and renewal not always an accurate sign of customer satisfaction?
  • How does Dave look to analyse churn? What is the post-mortem? What is more important, logos or expansion? If a startup’s churn is too high, what is the top 3 things they should do? Why must you have a “standard taxonomy” for churn? How can you construct this?
  • How does David think about taking existing customer and up-selling them? How does he view this in contrast to cross-sell? Does Dave agree with David Skok on the need for more than 1 variable pricing mechanism? Why does Dave not encourage usage based pricing?
  • How does Dave analyse the benefits of multi-year contracts paid upfront? How does this distort TCV and inflate the figures? Does upfront payment misalign the provider and the consumer, in terms of care and support? With that in mind, how does David view billing frequency? Contract durations?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What does Dave know now which he wishes he had known at the beginning?
  2. What is the 90 day rule? Why is it important?
  3. How much ARR should a good sales rep add in relation to comp?

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

Dave Kellogg

Sep 5, 2017

Scot Chisholm is the Founder & CEO @ Classy, the world's leading  fundraising platform for nonprofit organizations As a result they have raised close to $50m in VC funding from the likes of Salesforce Ventures, our friends at BullPen Capital, Mithril Capital and many more great investors. With support and funding like this, since 2011, Classy has helped more than 3,000 nonprofits and social enterprises raise hundreds of millions of dollars and be named to "The World's Most Innovative Companies in Social Good" and to the "100 Brilliant Companies" by Entrepreneur Magazine. As for Scot, he is also a prolific angel investor, investing out of a fund called Mixture that includes investments in Change.org, inDinero, Iodine, Casetext and more.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Scot made his way into the world of SaaS and how a “pub crawl” came to be the founding story for Classy?
  • What have been the key learnings for Scot in raising $50m for Classy, in an industry that is maybe not so sexy for investors? Why did Scot choose to raise both the seed and A round from angels? What advice would Scot give to aspiring founders, looking to raise?
  • How has Scot seen the evolution of his sales team? What are the key inflection points in the scaling when elements tend to break? How important is it to segment the sales team? When should this be done? At what speed is optimal?
  • How does Scot evaluate startups looking to move upmarket? How does the decision to move upmarket change the internal decision-making with regards to product roadmap and strategy? How does it change the role of CEO in the organisation?   
  • How does Scot look to balance the attainment of short term objectives with holding the vision for the future? How far is too far to plan ahead? How should founders think about investing in areas of the business ahead of time?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What does Scot know now that he wishes he had known when he started?
  2. Challenges as a first time CEO/entrepreneur?
  3. The key challenges of building a SaaS company in San Diego?

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

Scot Chisholm

Aug 28, 2017

Mark Organ, Founder & CEO at Influitive. Influitive helps B2B companies mobilize their army of advocates for more rapid and profitable revenue growth. They have raised close to $50m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Lightspeed, First Round Capital, prior guest Cindy Padnos @ Illuminate and Nick Mehta @ Gainsight, just to name a few. Prior to Influitive, Mark was the founding CEO of Eloqua, growing the business to over 150 people, hundreds of clients and a major presence around the world in 7 years. Eloqua was eventually bought by Oracle in 2012 for a reported $810m.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Mark made his way into the world of SaaS, came to found Eloqua and then what the catalyst was for the founding of Influitive?
  • How did Mark make the decision to make profitability a goal? How did Mark communicate his desire to focus on profitability and unit economics over aggressive growth to his investors? What type of SaaS startups should consider this route more?
  • To what extent is “landing whales” crucial to getting to cash flow positive? What are some of Mark’s big learnings in how to attain those “whales”, having done it so successfully before with Eloqua? Where do most founders go wrong and how should they approach pricing whales?
  • Why does Mark believe paying sales reps on signing misaligns incentives? Why does he believe it is optimal to pay half on signing and half on cash being received? How do you communicate that to your sales team?   
  • To what extent should SaaS startups consider debt financing as a respectable and appropriate form of company financing? What type and stage of SaaS company does debt make perfect sense for? When is it wrong in the lifecycle to take debt?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What hire does Mark wish he had made earlier?
  2. What does Mark know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
  3. Pros and cons of running a SaaS startup not in Silicon Valley?

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

Mark Organ

Aug 21, 2017

Mike Dauber is a General Partner @ Amplify Partners, the fund that backs technical founders, building technical products for technical buyers. Their portfolio consists of the likes of DataDog, Fastly, Engagio and many more incredible companies. As for Mike, prior to joining Amplify he spent more than six years at Battery Ventures, where he lead early-stage enterprise investments on the West Coast. While at Battery, he was on the Boards of Cask, Duetto, Interana, and Platfora (acquired WDAY). Mike also lead Battery’s investment in Vera, which is also in Amplify’s portfolio. He also previously invested in Splunk (SPLK) and RelateIQ (acquired CRM). As a result of this success, Mike was named to Forbes’ Midas Brink List in 2014.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Mike made his way into the world of early stage enterprise investing with Battery and came to be a GP with Amplify?
  • What does Mike mean when he says he looks for “practitioner founders”? What are the benefits of these types of founders? Why do they find product market fit faster? Does this tunnel vision not sometimes mean a lack of naivete, which can be good?
  • Why does Mike believe that hiring sales people is like being thirsty? How can founders discover the optimal cadence for expanding the sales team? Why must founders differentiate between customers and money?
  • Why does Mike believe that everyone needs to find their Hobbesian advisor? What characteristics should this person have? How can you find this advisor? What should their incentives be?  
  • Why does Mike believe that founders need to set the hook for VCs in the first meeting? How does this compare to how founders traditionally pitch? What should they look for in those early VC meetings?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. Why does Mike disagree with deal attribution in VC?
  2. Cyber investing: Should you invest if not a domain expert?
  3. Is enterprise investing spreadsheet investing?

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

Mike Dauber

Aug 14, 2017

Vineet Jain is the Founder & CEO @ Egnyte, the startup that delivers smart content collaboration in the cloud or on-premises. They have raised over $60m in VC funding from the likes of Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures and one of our favourites here, Mike Maples @ Floodgate. Prior to Egnyte, Vineet founded and successfully built Valdero, a supply chain software solution provider, funded by KPCB, MDV and Trinity Ventures. Before that, Vineet held a variety of senior operational positions at KPMG and Bechtel.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Vineet made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found his second startup in Egnyte?
  • Vineet states that it is not all about top line growth, how does he look to satiate VC appetitie for growth with this mentality? Why does he think that we should discuss EBITDA margins more often within business models in Silicon Valley?
  • Considering this conservative approach, how does Vineet determine when is the right time to put the “pedal to the metal” and raise a large round of funding and really look to gain the market? What metrics suggest product market fit to this extent?
  • Why does Vineet argue that land and expand is all wrong? What alternative does Vineet offer for those looking to sell to enterprise?
  • How does Vineet evaluate “The Rule of 40% For A Healthy SaaS Company”? What are the inherent flaws in this model? How can this model be gamed by posting enormous growth figures? What figures should startups input into this ratio?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What does Vineet know now that he wishes he had known earlier?
  2. How long is long enough to give someone who is not performing?
  3. What hire does Vineet wish he had made earlier?

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

Vineet Jain

Aug 7, 2017

Max Yoder is the Founder & CEO @ Lessonly, the modern learning software used by teams to translate important work knowledge into Lessons that accelerate productivity. They have raised funding from the likes of former ExactTarget CMO Tim Kopp, OpenView Ventures and New York Times Bestseller Jay Baer just to name a few of the impressive figures involved. Fun tact; they are based in Indianapolis and so Max brings a fantastic perspective on scaling and operating a growing SaaS business outside Silicon Valley.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Max made his way into the world of startups and came to found Lessonly, one of the hottest SaaS startups outside of Silicon Valley?
  • Max has previously stated that ‘SaaS scaling happens in 3 stages’. What are those stages? What is the most challenging stage? How does the CEO need to transition with each stage?
  • How does Max view the scaling of the team? Why does Max think it is bad to give large and often inflated titles in the early days? How can CEOs most effectively look to place people in the right place to ensure the most productive of scaling?
  • What does Max most look for in potential Lessonly employees? Why is it so fundamental that candidates have experienced some form of professional hardship before?
  • How does Max view the role of the board in the scaling of a SaaS organisation? What are the components that make the best boards? What are the components that make the best board members?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What one hire does Max wish he had made sooner?
  2. What SaaS reading material can Max not live without?
  3. Pros and Cons of running a SaaS startup outside the valley?

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

Max Yoder

Jul 31, 2017

Stacey 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 successful IPO in 2007, which led to a $3.4B acquisition by SAP in 2010.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Stacey made her way from Executive Assistant working for another Executive Assistant before moving to CMO and today as CEO?
  • What were the fundamental lessons Stacey took from her career as CMO to now being CEO/ What were some of the hardest elements of the transition?
  • What role should the CEO play in the marketing strategy and execution? What do CEO’s most often get wrong about CMO’s?What is the optimal and most efficient working relationship between CEO and CMO?
  • How does Stacey create alignment and strong and successful communication between the traditionally conflicting sales and marketing? How does transparency help drive better business results?
  • How can one look to instill these values and communication standards on inherited organisations they they did not found? Are there any drawbacks to transparency and communication?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What hires does Stacey wish she had made earlier?
  2. What can females do to master the art of negotiating?
  3. Recruiting in the valley today, how tough and top tips?
  4. When is the right time to hire your CMO?

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

Stacey Epstein

Jul 24, 2017

Auren Hoffman is the Founder & CEO @ Safegraph, the startup that is unlocking the world’s most powerful data so that machines and humans can answer society's toughest questions. They have backing from likes of Naval Ravikant and prior guests of the show including SignalFire, IDG Ventures and David Rodnitzky just to name a few. Prior to Safegraph, Auren has an astonishing 5 successful exits under his belt with one being, LiveRamp (sold to Acxiom for $310m in 2014). If that was not enough, Auren is also a prolific angel investor with a portfolio including the likes of ThumbTack, Rainforest QA, Brightroll and Groupon.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Auren made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found his 6th SaaS startup in Safegraph?
  • Auren has said before there are two types of successful sales people, what are these two types and what are their character profiles? What type of company should have each different profile? How does each profile interact differently with the rest of the company?
  • Why does Auren take the contrarian view and saying that highering your price is not always the right answer? In what markets is it right to higher or lower your price? When is it the wrong time? What percentage of revenue should sales and marketing be at a healthy SaaS startup?
  • Why does Auren believe that you can actually grow faster by having fewer employees? In what situation and start does this work and when does it not? ?
  • Why does Auren believe that the CEO should never delegate HR? What does Auren mean when he says the best HR professionals are real capital allocators?

60 Second SaaStr

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

Auren Hoffman

Jul 10, 2017

Ashu Garg is a General Partner @ Foundation Capital whose portfolio includes the likes of Uber, Lending Club, Adroll and Netflix, just to name a few. As for Ashu, at Foundation he has led investments and naming just a few of them here, in the likes of Conviva, Localytics and TubeMogul, later going public in 2014. Prior to Foundation, Ashu was the General Manager for Microsoft’s online advertising business.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Ashu made his way from completing to the Rubik's cube as a kid in 25 seconds to being a leading SaaS VC?
  • How does Ashu really define scaling a SaaS company? What does product market fit really look like with regards to ARR growth?
  • What are the 3 fundamentals that SaaS founders have to nail if they are to scale to $30m+ ARR? Why does Ashu believe it is so important to have a single insertion point? What does this mean for SaaS founders?
  • What does Ashu advise first time founders making their first foray into the world of SaaS? How should they think about obtaining and building an ecosystem of mentors? How should they manage weaknesses within their own skill sets? Does Ashu believe with Aaron Levie @ Box, “anyone can learn to be a great CEO”?
  • Where do technical founders most often struggle? What can be done to help them go from 0-1 on customer acquisition? Where do business led founders most often struggle? How must they think of the engineering element as a core part of the founding team?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What does Ashu know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
  2. Chats: Fad in the enterprise or here to stay?
  3. Biggest inflection points and breaking points in SaaS company growth?

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

Ashu Garg

Jun 26, 2017

Jens 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 did Jens make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found Automile?
  • How does Jens look to build a repeatable scalable sales process with Automile? What are the core infrastructure requirements needed to make the process as automated as possible?
  • How does Jens evaluate selling into the SMB market? How does Jens look to optimise the onboarding process to maximise conversion? How does Jens look to minimise churn with a market as potentially unstable as SMB’s?
  • Why does Jens prefer technology minded sales teams? What benefits do they bring in terms of process to the sales cycle? What should founders look for in potential new engineering led sales teams?  
  • Jens is increasing transparent, posting numerous figures on Twitter, what are the benefits of such transparency? How does that help the team to achieve the wider goal? Are there any cases, such as fundraising or exits, where transparency has negative consequences?

60 Second SaaStr

  • What was the hardest element of leaving Europe to go big in the US?
  • What does Jens know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
  • What hires does Jens wish he had made earlier?

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

Jens Nylander

Jun 19, 2017

Steve Loughlin is a Partner @ Accel in San Francisco, one of the leading funds with prior investments in the likes of Facebook, Dropbox, Atlassian, Slack and many more incredible companies. Prior to Accel, Steve was the CEO and co-founder of RelateIQ, later named SalesforceIQ following the acquisition of the company by Salesforce in 2014 for $390 million. Steve was also president and CEO of Affinity Circles, a professional social network that connected more than 18 million professionals. Steve has also advised or invested in the likes of Palantir Technologies, Addepar, and Roam Analytics.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Steve made his way into the world of SaaS with the founding of RelateIQ and then came to be a Partner at Accel on the other side of the table?
  • Why does Steve believe the hardest balance a founder has to consider is the balance between building for the future and building for the present? How can this short to long term dichotomy be considered effectively by the team?
  • RelateIQ was early to the AI/ML landscape, what does Steve think they did so right with RelateIQ? Does Steve agree that for an enterprise ML play to be interesting it must fundamentally change the go to market strategy?
  • What were the key learnings from working so closely with Marc Benioff on the Salesforce exec team? What is it about the internal structure and operations of Salesforce that make it the massively profitable behemoth that it is today?  
  • Having been a founder himself and now a VC, how does Steve look to help founders specifically? Where has Steve found that early stage founders need the most help? Where do VCs proclaim to help the most but really do not at all? 

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What is the worst advice Steve often hears being given?
  2. What is something that Steve has changed his mind radically on over the last few years?
  3. What is Steve’s favourite SaaS reading material?
  4. What does Steve 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

Steve Loughlin

Jun 16, 2017

May Habib is the Founder & CEO @ Qordoba, the best platform for building truly localized products across apps, websites and marketing content. It is the fastest, most scalable way to grow from one market to many. We do also want to say a big congratulations to May for recently raising a fantastic Series with the likes of Upfront Ventures and Rincon Partners leading the round. Prior to founding Qordoba, May was Director of M&A at Mubadala and an investment banker at Lehmann Brothers and Barclays in New York. May has also been named to the 30 Under 30 and CEO of the Year award.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How May made her way from North Lebanon to founding one of the hottest early stage SaaS companies on the West Coast?
  • May has quadrupled her MRR growth since last year through ‘turning her SDR’s into the smartest people in the space’. What does this mean? How can this be done and replicated? What “SDR best practices did May follow that damaged her?
  • May has a unique approach to scaling prospect search, how does this play out Does May agree with Mark Suster with regards to always calling high on customer outbound? Why does May think there is only value in outbound to seriously qualified leads?
  • Why does May believe that startups are wrong to think that they have to start at SMB and then move up to enterprise? How can startups immediately start with enterprise? What advice does May have in terms of asking for those big ACV’s as a small startup?
  • What advice did May receive during her fundraising that she found particularly jarring? What other than funds does May believe fundraising can be particularly good for? 

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What does May know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning?
  2. What is May’s favourite SaaS reading material?
  3. Hardest moment in the journey with Qordoba?

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

Jun 12, 2017

Nicolas 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 march to $10m in ARR?
  • Jason Lemkin has said before that ‘the first 10 unaffiliated customers you get is the first sign of pre-success’. Does Nicolas agree with him here? When are the first signs of pre-success for Nicolas?
  • Does Nicolas agree with Jason that $1m-$2m in ARR is always the hardest for a scaling SaaS startup? Which element did Nicolas find most challenging? How has Nicolas seen himself change and develop as a leader with these inflection points?
  • What are the fundamental to building a successful developer community? What have Algolia done to do this so successfully? What mistakes do other startups normally make in their pursuit of this? 

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What hires does Nicolas wish he had made earlier?
  2. What does success look like for Nicolas with Algolia?
  3. What does Nicolas 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

Nicolas Dessaigne

Jun 5, 2017

Ryan 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, Ryan later sold the event to another events company.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Ryan made his way into the world of startups and came to found Treehouse?
  • How does Ryan think all founders can build a truly diversified pipeline for developer talent? How does Ryan detect the seeds of potential in young engineers? How does he nurture them to grow and fit the desired role?
  • How does Ryan approach regrettable and non-regrettable churn? What is the dunning process? Why is it so important to instantly increase retention and reduce churn?
  • Does Ryan agree with Jason Lemkin that the hardest element of SaaS scaling is the $1-2m phase? Does Ryan agree with Jason in suggesting that your first 10 unaffiliated customers is the first sign of product market fit?
  • Ryan has previously said, ‘as a founder, there is one thing you need, otherwise you will quit’. What is the one thing? Why is it so important?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. Why does Ryan know now that he wishes he had known when he started?
  2. What is Ryan’s favourite SaaS reading material?
  3. Freemium in SaaS: What are the pros and cons?

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 Carson

May 29, 2017

Jeetu Patel is Senior Vice President of Platform and Chief Strategy Officer of Box where he leads the Box Platform organization, driving the strategy of the platform business and developer relations. He also oversees the corporate strategy and development organization for Box. Before joining the company, Patel was General Manager and Chief Executive of EMC's Syncplicity business unit. Prior to EMC, Patel was president of Doculabs, a research and advisory firm focused on collaboration and content management across a range of industries.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Jeetu made his way into the world of SaaS and came to be one of the key executives at Box?
  • What are Jeetu’s 3 tips to startup founders looking to build high performing teams? Why does Jeetu believe that team sizes must always remain small? What are the inflection points in team size when dynamics change?
  • What does Jeetu argue that founders must pursue really hard problems? What are the benefits of this when hiring new people to the team? How does Jeetu balance between visionary hard problems and unrealistic?
  • What does Jeetu mean when he says, ‘do things that do not scale so you can do things that sustainably scale? What are some examples of how this has been done effectively? Where do most startups go wrong in scaling sustainably?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What does Jeetu believe that most around him do not?
  2. Fave SaaS reading material?
  3. Why businesses will find the rules of the future very different to the rules of the past?

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

Jeetu Patel

May 26, 2017

Laura Bilazarian is the Founder & CEO @ Teamable, the startup that allows you to recruit the best talent from your network. They have raised funding from some stellar investors including the likes of True Ventures and SaaStr. As for Laura, she started out her career on Wall St before making forays into the world of Vietnamese hotel building and being a National Rugby Champion. Laura has also spent time with the likes of Fairmount Partners where she worked on dozens of M&A transactions to large public companies.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Laura make her way from Wall St to rugby captain to founder of SaaS startup, Teamable?
  • Why does Laura believe that “you should always be premium”? What are the benefits to this? How does this affect how Laura views both freemium versions of products and free trials?
  • Why does Laura believe that you have to “create an outbound sales culture as early as possible”? Why is this? Does this change according to the differing customer profiles?
  • How can SaaS businesses aid in the closing of their clients? What can they do to make this process as seamless and easy as possible? What are the requirements for this process?
  • Why does Laura believe there are only ‘2 ways to hire’? What are those 2 ways? What methods of inbound applications must be ignored? How can founders ensure continued quality when hiring at scale?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What does Laura know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning?
  2. What is Laura’s fave SaaS reading materials?
  3. Competitive advantages of being a female CEO?

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

Laura Bilazarian

May 22, 2017

Mark Suster is Managing Partner at Upfront Ventures which he joined in 2007, having previously worked with Upfront for nearly 8 years as a two-time entrepreneur. Before joining Upfront Mark was Vice President, Product Management at Salesforce.com following its acquisition of Koral, where Mark was Founder and CEO. Prior to Koral, Mark was Founder and CEO of BuildOnline, a European SaaS company that was acquired by SWORD Group. Mark is also the writer of one of my favourite VC blogs, Both Sides Of The Table which is a centre piece to the whole VC community and is a must read for all interested in entrepreneurship and VC.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How Mark made his way into the world of startups and came to invest in SaaS with Upfront today?
  • What are 4 reasons why startups should prioritise professional services in the early days? Why do most VCs disagree with this? How did Salesforce do this right in their period of hyper-growth?
  • How should early stage startups approach the topic of pricing? How can they evaluate whether to call high or low? What are the pros and cons of doing both?
  • Mark has previously discussed the importance of finding your champion in the buying process. How can startups determine whether your champion is a decision-maker? What questions can you ask to find this out?
  • What changes as a SaaS business scales? What are the key inflection points of company development? How does Mark view the amount B2B startups are raising today? How does Mark evaluate responsible and right spend?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What should your first sales reps be really good at?
  2. How has Mark seen early stage SaaS startups go wrong most often?
  3. IPO markets, frothy or fantastic?
  4. What does Mark know now that he wishes he had known before?

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

Mark Suster

May 19, 2017

Today’s show is centred around The Top 10 VP of Sales Lessons Learned In Scaling To $100M ARR. Leading this conversation is Aaron Ross, author of 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, Aaron added an extra $100 million in revenue in just a few years. Joining Aaron from the sales perspective we have Andrew Bothwell, VP of Sales @ TalkDesk and Aaron Schilke, VP Enterprise Sales @ Talkdesk, one of the fastest growing SaaS startups today. Providing insight from the other side of the table we have Josh Stein, Partner @ DFJ where his current board responsibilities include Box (NYSE: BOX), Chartbeat, LaunchDarkly, LendKey, SugarCRM, and previous guest with me on SaaStr in Talkdesk. But enough from me so without further ado I am going to hand over the reigns to Aaron Ross.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • What does Josh Stein believe is the toughest growth stage in SaaS? Which stage separates the men from the boys?
  • Why is growing to 100 a case of simple maths? How does this maths affect how you should think about your sales hiring pipeline? How does this maths affect your view of forecasting?
  • How do TalkDesk look to build a repeatable and scalable sales process? What have been their major learnings? Where do most startups make mistakes and falter?
  • How should VPs of sales approach feedback with their reps? Why has a VP failed if a rep is blindsided by a particular piece of feedback?

 

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 15, 2017

Edith 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 into the world of SaaS and came to found LaunchDarkly?
  • Does Edith agree with Jason Lemkin that the hardest element is the 1-10 customer phase? How has Edith navigated this process with her differing companies?
  • How does Edith look to structure her sales team to successfully close Fortune 500 deals? What is the fundamental difference in selling to enterprise rather than SMB?
  • What can founders do to make NPS a more intelligent metric? How can NPS be analysed effectively to tell you more about the state of your business?
  • What are the signs of a truly great sales person? How do they aid not only their company but the customer they are serving? What is their required knowledge base?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What is Edith’s fave SaaS resource?
  2. What does Edith know now that she wishes she had known before?
  3. Oakland Office: Why not SF? What are the benefits?

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

Edith Harbaugh

 

May 12, 2017

Lauren Vacarrello is VP of Marketing @ Box, one of the leading enterprise B2B brands today. At Box, Lauren leads a 50 person team that involves demand generation, global campaigns, events and more. Prior to Box, Lauren was VP of Marketing @ Adroll, where she built and scaled a 25 person global marketing team from the ground up. If that was not enough, Lauren is also the Co-Author of “The Retargeting Playbook” and “Complete B2B Online Marketing”.   

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How does Lauren view the relationship between sales and marketing? Why does Lauren believe the ARR pipeline is not just the responsibility of the sales team?
  • Why is lead nurturing not just about email? What are the other core components to ensure successful progression of leads through the funnel?
  • How does Lauren view successful lead segmentation? Why does Lauren like to segment leads into 3 distinct buckets? How does this strategy play out at different ends of the market?
  • What is the role of marketing post-purchase? How has Lauren seen this change since the early days of her career? How does this differ when comparing SMB to enterprise?

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

Lauren Vaccarello




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