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.
http://www.saastr.com
SaaStr 257: How To Scale Sales Culture Successfully and Sustainably, The Leading Indicators of Burnout and What To Do & The 2 Inflection Points In SaaS Growth Where Things Start To Break with Justin Welsh, Former SVP Sales @ PatientPop
Justin Welsh is the former SVP Sales @ PatientPop, the startup that offers the first all-in-one practice growth platform that’s HIPAA-compliant and is proven to grow your practice. During his 5 years at PatientPop, Justin grew sales from $0 to $56m alongside the full build-out of the sales team. Before PatientPop, Justin was one of the first 10 employees at ZocDoc, where he spent 4 years in different roles including Director of Strategic Sales. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Justin made his way into the world of Sales and came to be one of the industry's leading scale up Sales leaders with PatientPop and ZocDoc? How did Justin experience burnout? What were the first indications and signals for him that he was suffering from it? How did it manifest itself in how he carried himself and his behaviour? How did Justin communicate the situation to his bosses? What does Justin advise others in communicating burnout to their superiors? As a manager observing their team, what are signs that an individual is burning out? What is the right way to approach them to discuss the situation? What options do managers have available to them when faced with a burned out employee? How does micro-management fit into the signals that suggest clear burnout of the individual? Justin has said before that “culture must precede performance”, what did he mean by this? What actions and communications must they adopt to ensure that this feeling of culture over performance is accepted by the team? With that in mind, how does Justin think about KPI and goal-setting? What can leaders do to create an environment of safety for their team? Where do many leaders go wrong here? Having seen multiple scaling culture, where do SaaS organisations tend to break down both in terms of culture and process? What are those inflection points? What can be done to actively mitigate these 2 significant points of failure? Justin’s 60 Second SaaStr: What does Justin know now that he wishes he had known when he started at PatientPop? Sales leader Justin most respects and why? If Justin could change one thing about the world of SaaS today, what would it be? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Justin Welsh Ever feel like you can’t really connect with prospects or have an organized workflow to get deals closed? Outreach.io, the leading Sales Engagement platform, supports sales reps and their managers by making it simple to humanize and personalize communication at scale; automating the soul-sucking manual work; and dramatically increasing the productivity and efficiency of all revenue-generating teams. You can check them out at outreach.io/saastr to chat with them and receive a free copy of their new book -- Sales Engagement: How The World's Fastest-Growing Companies are Modernizing Sales Through Humanization at Scale.
SaaStr 256: Google Cloud VP of Engineering Eyal Manor and Zenoss CMO Megan Lueders
As a global technology provider powering thousands of SaaS companies, Google is at the forefront of driving exciting and innovative technologies to market. Eyal Manor and Megan Lueders host a fireside chat between Google Cloud and Zenoss, a leader in software-defined IT operations. They discuss the most common and emerging challenges facing SaaS companies today. You’ll also learn how leading SaaS companies are able to scale and thrive in this complex, dynamic environment. Join us for this lively discussion between two innovators. Missed the session? Here’s what Eyal and Megan talks about: How to develop software faster The emergence of new A.I. services Why the “strongest” conversations need to happen between engineering and marketing 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
SaaStr 255: Why Enablement Must Be An Early Investment and How To Structure It, Why The SaaS Incumbents of Today Are Not As Strong As We Think & How To Build A Sales Culture of Confidence Without Arrogance with Vikas Bhambri, SVP Sales and Customer Experi
Vikas Bhambri is SVP Sales and Customer Experience @ Kustomer, the startup providing Real-time, actionable views of customers with continuous omnichannel conversations and intelligence that automates repetitive, manual tasks. To date they have raised over $113m in financing from some of the best in the business including Tiger Global, Battery Ventures, Boldstart, Canaan, Cisco and Redpoint just to name a few. Prior to Kustomer, Vikas spent over 20 years implementing, consulting, marketing, and selling CRM and ContactCenter solutions with companies like LivePerson and Oracle. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Vikas made his way into the world of SaaS and came to be at the rocketship that is Kustomer? Why does Vikas believe that a wave of SaaS incumbents are about to be displaced or disrupted? What about the changing tech stacks and infrastructures makes them vulnerable to up and comers? Does this not lead to a consolidatory environment? How does Vikas see the space play out in the coming years when it comes to acquisitions? What have been the dramatic changes that have happened in sales over the last few years? What is the right way for startup founders to address sales rep onboarding? Why is it so crucial to invest in enablement in the early days? How should this enablement be structured? How does this change sales rep payback periods? What is a good payback period? How does Vikas feel about discounting? If accepted, what must the startup ask for in return? How does Vikas think about multi-year deals? When are they good? What sort of terms make them less beneficial for the vendor? How does Vikas think about professional services? What is a good margin for professional services? What ratio of revenue is healthy for professional services to account for? When should one look to hire their first customer success reps? What should they look for in those reps? Vikas’ 60 Second SaaStr: What does Vikas know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? What is his secret to building diverse teams? The sales leader Vikas most respects and admirers and why? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr
SaaStr 254: HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan on The Funnel is Dead, Long Live the Flywheel.
The age-old sales funnel has worked fine for decades…until now. Flaws are being exposed, and a new model is imminent. Why is the sales funnel alone no longer an appropriate way thinking about customers? What will emerge to supplement or replace it? HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan and NEA's Hilarie Koplow-McAdams explore the evolution of the marketing and sales funnel you’ve been using for decades to generate traffic and convert and leads into customers. Missed the session? Here’s what Brian talks about: Why a flywheel instead of a funnel? What does the Grateful Dead have to do with Marketing…? What role do T shaped people play? 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 Brian Halligan
SaaStr 253: TaskRabbit Founder Leah Busque on Lessons Learned from a Product Reboot
Leah Busque is currently a General Partner at Fuel Capital, an early stage venture fund located in Silicon Valley. She likes to invest across consumer, B2B saas, and technology infrastructure companies at the earliest stages. In 2008 Leah founded TaskRabbit, the leading on-demand service marketplace in the world. She spent nearly a decade involved with the company as CEO and Executive Chairwoman before she sold the company to IKEA in October of 2017. Hear about her takeaways from a product reboot with TaskRabbit. Missed the session? Here’s what Leah talks about: What are the lessons learned from a product reboot? When bringing a product to market - what are the BHAGs? How to navigate a product pivot. 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 Leah Busque
SaaStr 252: How To Make The Transition From Founder Led Sales To Sales Team, The Truth About Raising a Series A Round As a Non-Bay Area Company and Why Employee 50 Is Such a Big Turning Point
Eric Christopher is the Founder and CEO @ Zylo, the software management system built for the cloud pioneering a new standard in software management. To date, Eric has raised over $12m for Zylo from some of the best in the business including Byron @ Bessemer, Salesforce, GGV, Semil @ Haystack and the team at High Alpha. Prior to founding Zylo, Eric was the VP of Sales @ Sprout Social leading the revenue operations for over 11,000 customers. Before Sprout Social he was VP of Sales at Shoutlet, responsible for global direct and channel sales teams and developing and managing strategic relationships. Finally, prior to Shoutlet, Eric spent over 7 years at ExactTarget as a Senior Business Development Manager which is where he met High Alpha’s Scott Dorsey. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Eric made his way into the world of startups and SaaS? What were his biggest takeaways from working with Scott Dorsey @ ExactTarget? What was the founding moment with Zylo? What have been Eric’s biggest lessons when it comes to making the transition from founder led sales to sales team? What would we have done differently with the benefit of hindsight? What were the biggest challenges in the process? How does Eric think about the importance of quantity vs quality of logos when acquiring your first few customers? Do big logo brand names really provide social validity or is it over-hyped? How does Eric think about discounting in the early days? What can founders do to really extract the most value from the discount they are giving away? Why does Eric believe that hitting the employee 50 mark is a huge moment for founders and the scaling of the company? What fundamentally changes? What gets harder? What gets easier? How has Eric seen his role evolve with the scaling of the team? How does Eric think about goal and KPI setting with a much larger team? What needs to change? How does one create and retain accountability and ownership at scale? Why does Eric believe that the bar for execution in SaaS in 2019 is so much higher than in 2009? What has changed? How does this make Eric change the way he approaches benchmarking, capital allocation and growth? How did Eric find raising the Series A as a non-Bay area company? Eric’s 60 Second SaaStr: What does Eric know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? What is the toughest role to hire for today? If the money is on the table, take it. Agree or not? Why? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Eric Christopher
SaaStr 251: Y Combinator Michael Seibel on a Decade of Learnings from Y Combinator
Michael Seibel is CEO and a partner at Y Combinator and co-founder of two startups – Justin.tv and Socialcam. He has been a partner at Y Combinator since 2013, advised hundreds of startups, and has been active in promoting diversity efforts among startup founders. Hear his take on the future of work with a decade in learnings from YCombinator. Missed the session? Here’s what Michael talks about: How quickly should you hire? When is the right time to sell a startup? How large a differentiator will investors make in your company? 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 Michael Seibel
SaaStr 250: Why Enterprise Is Hard Again, Why To Be Successful in SaaS Today You Have To Find The Crumbs Falling From Incumbent Mouths and Why Large Orgs Are So Dysfunctional and How To Poach Talent From Them
Peter Yared is the Founder & CEO @ InCountry, the startup that allows you to operate globally with data residency as a service meaning they store your mission-critical data in it’s country of origin, without compliance. To date, Peter has raised $8m for InCountry from some of my very favourites including Bloomberg Beta, Felicis, Ray Tonsing @ Caffeinated and CRV just to name a few. Prior to InCountry, Peter founded six and sold 6 enterprise software companies that were acquired by Sun, Citrix, VMware, Oracle, Sprinklr and Prograph. Previously, Peter was also the CTO/CIO of CBS Interactive where he brought CBS into the cloud. At Sun, Peter was the CTO of the Liberty identity consortium that designed SAML 2. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How did Peter make his way into the world of enterprise SaaS with the founding and selling of 6 companies and how did InCountry come about? What is that founding moment? Why does Peter feel like it enterprise is really hard again? Why is it no longer to come into large enterprises with a small contract and expand? How does Peter think about enterprise pilots today? Do they really mean anything? What proof points suggest an enterprise is really bought in? What benchmarks should startups bake into the agreements? How does Peter think about and approach market sizing today? Why is market risk no longer a risk he is willing to take? Where do many entrepreneurs make mistakes when it comes to market timing? In terms of timing, how should entrepreneurs think about whether to start at SMB and move to enterprise or start enterprise and move to SMB? What are the considerations? Why does Peter believe that large orgs are so dysfunctional today? What can founders do to extract the truly special talent out of these large orgs with big pay packets and troves of options? How has Peter found the transition from CTO to CEO this time? What have been some of the challenges? Where has he asked for external help? Having built numerous successful remote teams, what have been Peter’s biggest learnings in what it takes to successfully build remote teams? Where do many people go wrong? Does it have to be from Day 1? When is the right time to start thinking about this as a startup? Peter’s 60 Second SaaStr: What would Peter most like to change about the world of Silicon Valley and tech? Who is the biggest rockstar in the valley that is less well known? Hire fast, fire fast, agree or disagree? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Peter Yared
SaaStr 249: New Relic CRO Erica Ruliffson-Schultz on Five Critical Steps to Scaling Enterprise
CRO Erica Ruliffson-Schultz has led New Relic through massive growth, scaling the company’s enterprise business 10x since she joined the business pre-IPO. Growing a company’s revenues, customer base, team, process, and product doesn’t just happen without major work and strategy. Erica will share the five critical steps (and some lessons learned along the way) for scaling in the enterprise. Missed the session? Here’s what Erica talks about: How to change up your marketing mix How to transition from SMB to enterprise Identifying your sweet spot target customers and leveraging your network to access those companies. 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
SaaStr 248: What Early Stage SaaS Companies Can Learn Most From Late Stage SaaS Co's, How Marketing Functions Change In SaaS Co's With Scale & Why The Most Powerful Mentorship Is Mentorship From Below with Joe Chernov, VP of Marketing @ Pendo
Joe Chernov is the VP Marketing @ Pendo, the startup that understands and guides your users allowing you to create products they cannot live without. To date they have raised over $108m in funding from some of the best in SaaS including Meritech, Salesforce, Battery, Spark Capital and Sapphire just to name a few. Prior to Pendo Joe was Chief Marketing Officer at Robin and before that he was the CMO @ InsightSquared where he led the transition from an email-driven leads model to an account-based marketing model. Before InsightSquared, Joe was Head of Content Marketing at Hubspot where he increased blog traffic by more than 1M visits/month and increased leads by 40%. Finally, pre-Hubspot, Joe held VP of Marketing roles at Kinvey and Eloqua. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Joe made his way into the world of startups and SaaS marketing many years ago? Does Joe really believe in the saying that, “no one really knows what they are doing?” Where are the nuances to it? Joe has been CMO and then #2 and alternated between the 2 roles many times, so what the continuous alternating? How does switching from CMO to VP of Marketing prepare you better for each subsequent role? Does Joe agree with the saying that the best in marketing are able to “throw the playbook out of the window”? What does Joe mean when he says, “the most powerful mentorship is mentorship from below”? What makes the best #2’s just so good? What do they do? What advice would Joe give to a #2 in a role today? What can the individuals do to foster a relationship of deep trust and transparency? Having worked at both early and late stage companies, what does Joe believe the early companies can learn from later stage companies? Does installing very severe ops not reduce the creativity of a young company? What does Joe believe that later stage companies can really learn and take from early-stage companies? How do the marketing functions differ in both structure and process when comparing early to late stage? What does Joe find to be the biggest challenge within each respective stage? How has Joe seen the content landscape evolve and change radically throughout his career alternating between early and late stage companies? Joe’s 60 Second SaaStr: Who does Joe believe is killing it in SaaS marketing now? Why? ABM, total BS or real meaning to it? If Joe could change one thing about SaaS today, what would it be? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Joe Chernov
SaaStr 247: Hired CEO Mehul Patel on How to Move from Transactional to Recurring Revenue
Hear from Hired's CEO Mehul Patel on how to move from transactional to recurring revenue. Hired is a marketplace that matches tech talent with innovative companies. Hired combines job matching with unbiased career counseling to help people find a job they love. Through Hired, job candidates and companies have transparency into salary offers, competing opportunities and job details. Missed the session? Here’s what Mehul talks about: How to leverage your company values to drive stability. Hiring people, strategically. Finding your pricing sweet spot. 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 Mehul Patel
SaaStr 246: Dropbox CCO Yamini Rangan on 5 Myths That Stop SaaS Companies From Moving Upmarket
Dropbox Chief Customer Officer Yamini Rangan draws on 20 years of experience to challenge five common misconceptions about SaaS success. From beating the competition to over (or under) relying on Outbound, she offers a practical perspective on the frameworks that are holding businesses back from reaching their full potential in a changing landscape. Missed the session? Here’s what Yamini talks about: How to increase the odds of reaching $1B in ARR What is the pull upmarket, why do companies focus their attention there? Common go-to-market myths and lessons. 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
SaaStr 245: The Ultimate Guide To ACVs; When and How To Increase Them, Revenue Optimisation Per Lead & What It Means To Truly Be An ARR First Company
David 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 customers. Since 2013 with their transition to SaaS have grown to more than $50 million in ARR in less than five years, while maintaining profitability. Dave Kellogg is a leading technology executive, independent board member, advisor and angel investor. In his most recent role, Dave was the CEO @ Host Analytics where he quintupled ARR, halved customer acquisition costs and increased net retention rates before selling the company to a private equity sponsor. Fred Shilmover is the CEO and co-founder of InsightSquared, one of Boston’s premiere tech startups paving the way in the sales intelligence space. Throughout the InsightSquared journey, Fred has raised over $25m in VC funding from the likes of DFJ, Bessemer, Salesforce and Atlas Venture. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: Does David Skok believe that ACV should sit at the top of the metrics stack? What are the 4 metrics that fundamentally matter in your business? What can founders do to their pricing model to extract as much value from each customer? How do the very best businesses structure their pricing for value extraction? If ACV increase is a core focus for our startup, should we hire a sales rep solely selling to enterprise? What are the biggest mistakes founders make in this scenario? What can founders do to optimise revenue per lead? How does on need o approach lead targeting according to the individual skills of their reps? Is it best to start at enterprise and work down to SMB or does SMB and work up to enterprise work best? How does the product have to change with the scaling to enterprise? How does the messaging need to change with the scaling to enterprise? How do you need this change to be reflected in your pricing? What does it truly mean to be an ARR first company? What is the right way for founders to calculate their differing ACVs? What is the right way to present that when pitching VCs? Where do many founders go wrong in how they present and discuss ACVs with investors? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Harry Stebbings Jason Lemkin SaaStr David Skok Jason Vandeboom Dave Kellogg Fred Shilmover
SaaStr 244: Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen on How to Build a Truly Global Business from Day One
Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen will share what he has learned about scaling culture, expanding globally, raising venture capital (or not), and using technology to improve legacy industries. Missed the session? Here’s what Ryan talks about: How Flexport grew to a multibillion-dollar business. How the company broke into the $2T freight forwarding industry. 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 Ryan Petersen
SaaStr 243: Twilio CMO Sara Varni on The 1 Question That Must Be Top Of Mind For All Marketers, The Truth About Enablement and How It Can Be Used Effectively & The Marketing Playbook, When To Use It vs Throw It Out Of The Window
Sara Varni is the CMO @ Twilio, the company building the future of communications allowing you to engage customers like never before on voice, SMS, WhatsApp or Video. Prior to their IPO in 2016, Twilio had raised over $250m in VC funding from some of the best in venture including USV, Bessemer, Salesforce and Techstars just to name a few. As for Sara, prior to Twilio she spent 10 years with Salesforce in numerous roles including SVP of Marketing for Salesforce’s Sales Cloud and CMO @ Desk.com, among other roles. If that wasn’t enough, Sara is also an advisor @ Anthos Capital. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How did Sara made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be one of the industry’s leading CMOs with Twilio today? What were Sara’s biggest takeaways from her 10 years at Salesforce seeing the incredible hyper-growth first hand? What does Sara mean when she says, “you have to have a creative plan to get your message to market”? Does Sara really believe that there is a playbook when it comes to marketing? How does Sara determine when to throw the playbook out of the window? What resounding question do you always have to ask yourself when thinking messaging? Messaging is very dependent on the customer being targeted, how does the messaging need to be different when targeting SMB vs enterprise? How does the creative plan to get the message to the target customer change dependent on SMB vs enterprise? Where does Sara see most people go wrong here? Why does Sara so strongly believe in the power of customer stories? What makes the very best customer stories? What would Sara’s advice be to someone who is wanting to start creating them? Where does Sara see so many people go wrong? What are Sara’s tips for creating this alignment between the marketing team that make the stories and the sales team that sell them? Where are there often points of tension? What does the very commonly used term, “enablement”, really mean to Sara? Does it mean you can hire lower quality candidates and upgrade them? How does Sara distinguish between a stretch VP and a stretch too far? What questions does Sara find most revealing in the interview process? 60 Second SaaStr: What does Sara know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning? Who is crushing it in the world of SaaS marketing today? What is the most common reason for the breakdown of an efficient funnel? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Sara Varni
SaaStr 242: Namely CEO Elisa Steele on How to Win the Talent War
It’s the employees’ market. There are more jobs than there are qualified people to do them. SaaS companies face sustained headwinds in the attracting, cultivating, driving productivity, and retaining talent. Your market competitors are your adversaries, but so is the entrepreneur sitting right next to you whose business is in a completely different sector. Namely CEO Elisa Steele shares practical advice on how to win three key Talentshare battles, which are essential to winning the Marketshare war. Missed the session? Here’s what Elisa talks about: How to win Talentshare when the system is stacked against you. How to drive synchronization, productivity when your needs are constantly evolving and the talent mix is incredibly fluid and diverse. How to use Culture as the lever to maximize the ROI that you get out of the biggest investment your business will ever make. 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 Elisa Steele
SaaStr 241: Dave Kellogg on The BIggest Takeaways From Being In The Room For Sequoia’s “RIP Good Times”, Why Founders Should Raise As Much As Possible But Spend According To Plan & The Right Way To Think About Effective Quota Construction
Dave Kellogg is a leading technology executive, independent board member, advisor and angel investor. In his most recent role, Dave was the CEO @ Host Analytics where he quintupled ARR, halved customer acquisition costs and increased net retention rates before selling the company to a private equity sponsor. Before that Dave was SVP/GM of Service Cloud @ Salesforce where he led the $500m line of business for customer service applications. Finally pre-Salesforce, Dave was CEO @ MarkLogic where he grew the team from 40 to 240 and revenues from $0 to an $80m revenue run rate. If that was not enough, Dave currently or has previously sat on the boards of Nuxeo, Alation, Aster Data and Granular. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How did Dave make his way into the world of SaaS over 20 years ago? How did seeing the boom and bust of the dot com and 2008 affect Dave’s operating mentality? What were his biggest lessons from being in the Sequoia boardroom when they presented “RIP good time”? How does Dave think about when is the right time to raise? How does Dave advise founders on how much is the right amount to raise? Does Dave agree that if the money is on the table founding teams should take it? Why does Dave believe 99% of companies die? The first step in being acquired by a PE house is “making the book”, what goes into “making the book”? Who is involved? How long does it take? What are the clear differences between a good book and a bad book? How should execs think about making exciting enough go-forward plans for it to be attractive to buyers but also realistic enough that they can hit it in the acquisition process? How does the selection for who receives the book look? Who decides this? What is the fundamental aim in the distribution of the book to many parties at the same time? What does Dave know now about the world of PE that he wishes he had known at the beginning? IOI’s is the next step, what are they? How do they set up the process from there? How do management meetings with potential PE acquiring firms compare to founders meeting VCs in the early days? How many meetings is normal to have in this process? How long do they last? What does Dave believe is crucial to achieve in these in person meetings? How much of a role does price play in selecting the ultimate acquiror? How much of a role does their brand and reputation play? 60 Second SaaStr: What does Dave know about the process that he wishes he had known at the beginning? The biggest misconception about the world of PE and acquisitions? Burn rate is a function of the personality of the CEO? Agree or disagree? Why? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Dave Kellogg
SaaStr 240: SaaStr 240: Brex Founder and CEO Henrique Dubugras on Lessons From a Second-Time Founder: How Brex Went From 0 - $1B in Under 2 Years
Brex Co-Founder and CEO Henrique Dubugras will talk about what he's learned building the fastest-growing B2B company. Henrique started his first company at 16 and has now built two successful companies from nothing. Learn what he did differently the second time around and the specific decisions he made to drive growth among B2B companies with Brex. Missed the session? Here’s what Henrique talks about: How Brex grew from a few basic functionalities to a corporation Growing from $0 to $2B in ARR in less than two years. 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 Henrique Dubugras
SaaStr 239: How To Raise Prices and Still Leave Money On The Table, How To Analyse The Pros and Cons of Monthly vs Annual Deals & The Leading Indicators That Your Sales Machine Is Working with Amit Bendov, Founder & CEO @ Gong.io
Amit Bendov is the Founder and CEO @ Gong.io, the startup that provides you with powerful visibility into your customer conversations with conversation intelligence. To date, Amit has raised $68m in funding for Gong from the likes of Norwest, Battery Ventures, Cisco Investments and Wing Venture Capital just to name a few. As for Amit, prior to founding Gong, Amit was the CEO @ SiSense BI software that enables business users to connect to multiple databases of any size. Before that Amit was the CMO @ Panaya, helping companies that use SAP or Oracle to reduce 80% of their ERP upgrade. Finally before that Amit was the Founder & CEO @ SparkThis, an outsourced marketing and sales service for cloud companies. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Amit made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found Gong, the leader in conversational intelligence driving deal conversion and rep success? How does Amit approach the process of idea validation? What can founders do to make sure their idea is a hit before they start work on it? How many customer conversations should they have? What questions are crucial to ask? What are the answers they want to hear? What is enough proof that there is a ready and willing customer base for this idea? With many products starting as free, how does Amit think about when is the right time to start charging for your product? What does Amit think about the differing variable price mechanisms that one can choose? How does one have a variable pricing mechanism without disincentivizing users to use the product? What does Amit advise founders should charge in the early days? Should they leave money on the table? How does Amit think about monthly/vs annual deals? What are the core benefits and drawbacks of each? How important is it that multi-year deals are paid upfront? What must you account for with regards to multi-year deals? How do you know when you have the right pricing mechanism in place from the sales cycles of the reps? 60 Second SaaStr: What does Amit know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning? The hardest role to hire for today? The hardest element of Amit’s role as CEO of Gong? SDR is the most important function in the sales org, agree or not and why? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Amit Bendov
SaaStr 238: Salesforce Mobile EVP Leyla Seka and Sr. Director of Global Equality Programs Molly Ford on How They Did It: Gender Equality, Equal Pay and Racial Equality
Join Molly Ford, Salesforce Global Equality Programs Senior Director, and Leyla Seka, Salesforce VP of Mobile for actionable advice they have applied on their own journey. Here are their lessons learned on driving change in gender equality, equal pay and racial equality within Salesforce. Missed the session? Here’s what Molly and Leyla talk about: Building a community of allies and allyship How to drive equality What you can be doing as an employee to help drive the culture you want 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 Molly Ford Leyla Seka
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Web編集者、ブロガーとして人気の2人が話すポッドキャスト番組です。最近話題のニュース、日常に役立つ面白ネタなどを話します。主にライター、編集者の方にオススメの内容になっています。 ・お便りは https://goo.gl/p38JVb まで ・リスナーコミュニティ「裏ドングリ」は以下からどうぞ https://community.camp-fire.jp/projects/view/206637 https://donguri.fm/membership/join BGMと最後の締めの曲はフリーBGM・音楽素材「 http://musmus.main.jp 」より。
近藤淳也のアンノウンラジオ
株式会社はてな創業者であり現在もITの第一線で働く近藤淳也が、京都の宿UNKNOWN KYOTOにやって来る「好きなことを仕事にしている人」を深堀りすることで、世の中の多様な仕事やキャリア、生き方・働き方を「リアルな実例」として紐解いていきます。 . 【ホスト：近藤淳也】 株式会社OND代表取締役社長、株式会社はてな取締役、UNKNOWN KYOTO支配人、NPO法人滋賀一周トレイル代表理事、トレイルランナー。 2001年に「はてなブログ」「はてなブックマーク」などを運営する株式会社はてなを創業、2011年にマザーズにて上場。その後2017年に株式会社ONDを設立し、現在もITの第一線で働く。 株式会社OND: https://ond-inc.com/ . 【UNKNOWN KYOTO】 築100年を超える元遊郭建築を改装し、仕事もできて暮らせる宿に。コワーキングやオフィスを併設することで、宿泊として来られる方と京都を拠点に働く方が交わる場所になっています。 1泊の観光目的の利用だけではなく、中長期滞在される方にも好評いただいています。 web: https://unknown.kyoto/ . こちらから本文を読んだりコメントが書けます！ https://listen.style/p/unknownradio
オカンの話なんて誰が聞くん？
これがオカンの日常
一日一配
声の日記。自分の声で日記を書く、LISTENならではのポッドキャスト。