SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

David Friend is the co-founder and CEO of Wasabi, the hot cloud storage company that delivers fast, low-cost, and reliable cloud storage. Prior to Wasabi, David co-founded Carbonite, one of the world's leading cloud backup companies. He has been a successful tech entrepreneur for more than 30 years.

Karnell is a serial entrepreneur and has founded 4 companies, including one which he scaled to more than $100M in gross revenue. He has significant business expertise in operating and scaling digital platforms and has helped run significant operations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. Presently, Karnell is the President and COO of Truelytics.

Founder and CEO of Hopin, the online events platform. Hopin has grown from 1 person to a 40 person remote company in 5 months and grew in revenue from 0 to $1m+ ARR in three weeks.

Chris Savage is the co-founder and CEO of Wistia, a web-based software solution that helps marketers turn viewers into brand advocates to grow their businesses. After graduating from Brown University, Chris and his co-founder Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Brendan's living room in 2006. They founded the company with the goal of helping businesses effectively market their products or services more creatively through video. Recently, Savage and Schwartz turned down an offer to sell Wistia and took on $17.3M in debt instead, which allowed them to buy out their investors, gain full control of Wistia, and take the path less traveled in the tech industry. Now, more than 500,000 businesses across 50 countries depend on Wistia's products to build their brands and their businesses, including HubSpot, MailChimp, Sephora, Starbucks, and Tiffany & Co.

Clay is the CEO at Ripl, a marketing software company used by millions of small business and independent marketers worldwide. Clay has spent most of his career at the intersection of software, marketing, and emerging media. He lives in Seattle and rides his bike in the rain.

Vasil is a growth marketing and startup event entrepreneur, who has produced over 500 in-person and virtual events, as well as built a 90K+ network of tech entrepreneurs and marketers. He's the founder of Growth Marketing Conference, one of the leading growth marketing events in the industry, and he's the CEO of startup professional network Startup Socials (as seen in Forbes). He's worked with big brands like IBM, Adobe, Microsoft, and Delta Airlines, high growth startups such as Intercom, Pantheon, Gainsights, Instapage, and Zendesk, and digital marketing thought leaders like Neil Patel, Rand Fishkin, and Larry Kim to help them produce high-quality, successful events.

Prasanna Sankar is the co-founder and CTO of Rippling, where he's scaling the engineering team across two continents. Previously he was Director of Engineering at Zenefits, and co-founder and CTO of LikeALittle, a social media app that attracted two million users in six weeks. Prasanna is a former competitive programmer and was ranked #1 in India on TopCoder. Today he codes for fun, and lives in the Bay Area with his wife and son.

Naeem is a serial entrepreneur and the founder & CEO of TeleSense. Naeem is 7X startup entrepreneur and 5X CEO with successful exists. He is deeply ingrained in the Silicon Valley ecosystem and frequently speaks about innovation and entrepreneurship. Naeem has authored five books on entrepreneurship and he teaches entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley and Northeastern University. He has a graduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota. More about him at www.NaeemZafar.com

Co-founding CTO, now CEO of MarketMuse. Former VC Associate at OpenView Partners, Big Data focus. Associate, Analytics practice within Diamond Management & Technology Consultants (now PWC Diamond Advisory). Michigan Ross BBA '07. Computer Science, Washtenaw Community College '03. Born in Debrecen, Hungary.

John S. Kim is the Co​founder and CEO of SendBird (Y Combinator W16), a B2B startup providing a messaging solution for enterprises. The platform currently serves tens of millions of monthly active users and many of the best-known logos around the world, like Yahoo! Sports, GO-JEK, Hinge and one of the most active websites in the world. John is a serial entrepreneur and an expert in the messaging space. Little known about John is that he was Korea's no.1 pro-gamer for Unreal Tournament.

Joost de Valk is a web developer, SEO and open source fanatic from The Netherlands. He is the founder and CEO of Yoast, which provides software and training for website optimization i.e. SEO. Yoast SEO, Yoast's main software product, currently runs on over 10 million WordPress websites.

A successful entrepreneur with a 20+ year track record, Yuryi was previously CEO and founder of YMF, a leading financial software company with 300 employees that was later sold to TOTVS. A well respected authority in the Brazilian technology sector, Yuryi is often called upon to advise firms and individuals on IT best practice and solutions. Before founding YMF, Yuryi spent 8 years in the Investment Bank GARANTIA as a Trader and Portfolio Manager.

A.J. Altman is founder & CEO of HOVER, a mobile app that is transforming homeownership by creating 3D home models from smartphone photos. Prior to founding HOVER, A.J. was an engineer at Intel Corporation and served as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps.

Kurt has served as CEO of Ubersmith since 2014 and Venture Partner at NextGen Venture Partners since 2017. Previously, he helped build and scale three startups - Parallels, Worklight (acquired by IBM) and MongoDB (IPO) - into companies worth $6 billion. Earlier, Kurt was a Lead Product Manager at Microsoft.

Dave Lee is a marketing automation pioneer, entrepreneur, and best-selling author. He's the CEO of PlusThis, the #1 campaign toolkit for marketing automation users. Dave has been featured on NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox television affiliates speaking on marketing automation and small business success. Outside of work, he's usually skiing, kitesurfing, wakesurfing or creating amazing experiences with his wife and three boys.

Hates to go to, and to go home from parties. Loves skiing and the beer that comes with it. Love travelling with my family and friends. Background in small tech companies, advertising companies, and leadership training. Spiritual but not religious. Optimist and self-critical. Co-founded Learnifier but change how learning happens. Product guy with a passion for aesthetics and ease-of-use.

CEO of Vindi. SaaS & Fintech entrepreneur focused in payments industry in Brazil. Former executive at Itau (major Brazilian bank), angel investor of 5 companies.

Wade Foster is the CEO and co-founder of Zapier, a workflow automation tool used by over three million people to connect the work apps they use every day. Prior to Zapier, Wade worked as a customer development lead for The Idea Works, Inc. in Missouri. He is an alumnus of Y Combinator and has degrees in industrial engineering and business administration from the University of Missouri-Columbia.

CEO and co-founder elastic.io, before Talend, DHL and Nokia, geek, father of 3

I am a software engineer and entrepreneur who is currently down the blockchain rabbit hole. I have worked in various industries such as Travel and Sports. I started my company Zastrin last year to teach developers blockchain programming through real world projects. I love my family, food and travel.

Leif is the co-founder, CEO of AND CO. The #1 freelancing software in the world, which was acquired by Fiverr in 2018. He is also a Parter at Prehype, a venture development firm in New York and investor in companies like Ro Health. He also co-founded Pay with a Tweet, which was acquired by the German company builder Hanse Ventures in 2013. Served as Director of Product for West Studios in San Francisco, where he worked with start ups like Rdio and Venmo. He also worked as Creative Director at R/GA. Leif was named one of the "Top Minds in Digital" by AdWeek and earned numerous awards including two Cannes Lion Grand Prix and a MTV OMusic Award. He's also an advisor to Venture Capital firm Urban.Us and a number of early stage companies.

I just hate wasting time or doing unnecessary tasks, doing things over because the first job was not good enough is event better. This happens again and again in construction projects. As a Computer Engineer, born and raises in the construction industry, I saw that I could solve this. It's not done until it is CHECKD!

Sonny Patel is the Founder & CEO at Insurmi, a white-labeled conversational A.I. platform that enables carriers to generate new business online, streamline claims, and provide excellent A.I. driven customer service. He is also a proud #YESPHX business leader who is passionate about helping other founders make their entrepreneurial dreams a reality!

>15 yrs software developer. In 2016 I quit my job with Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, to found CodeLingo and tackle the Technical Debt crisis head on. In a 40hr work week, a developer spends over 17hrs on Tech Debt (https://bit.ly/2MSQr7b). I've become obsessed with fixing this and unlocking the true potential of development teams. CodeLingo does this by transforming the whole software stack into a big data problem, detects anti-patterns and then automates common development tasks, such as code reviews, bug fixes and generating contributor guidelines - to name a few. As developers, we're good at scaling up anything except ourselves. CodeLingo unlocks code quality at scale.

Scott Weiss is the Founder of Referagig and President of Makena Partners, a technology recruiting firm. Both companies are based in Seattle, Washington.

Awareness Technologies, Inc. (ATI) provides endpoint security solutions for both home and business. With over 50 employees and offices in Westport, CT and Bristol, UK, ATI both develops and acquires market leading solutions trusted by millions of parents and thousands of businesses.

Originally a software engineer, and now serial entrepreneur, I love applying technology to solve real world problems, and like the best of ideas, Shine is an idea borne of frustration and real world experience of the recruitment process.

Franz Riedl, co-founder of Styla, an agile Content Management System. Styla automates design and unifies content and e-commerce to create seamless inspiration and shopping experiences. Today, Styla works with more than 100 brands and retailers such as Footlocker, Otto Group, Thomas Sabo or OBI. Prior to Styla, Franz cofounded several gaming companies and worked as a consultant in strategy and innovation - supporting enterprises in tackling the challenges of digital transformation.

David spent 25 years in global equity research in both senior banking and asset management roles. He has watched the world's best presenters in action and designed a solution to enhance presentation impact while capturing all interaction details.

Working with our brilliant team. Leading the commercialisation and growth of our award-winning global employee leave tracking / absence management solution. Leading from start-up phase to our current market leading position, and securing Private Equity backing to further accelerate growth.

Entrepreneurial leader and team motivator with ability to proactively identify business opportunities and solve challenging business problems. Passion for and proven track record of successfully developing breakthrough business and product strategies, managing product implementation, streamlining business operations, and establishing strategic partnerships that drive business growth. Demonstrated success in start-ups, midsize and Fortune 100 companies. Keen sense of market needs, employee motivation, time-to-market and the bottom-line.

findCRA makes Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) compliance easy for banks through powerful, data-driven software that cuts out countless hours of complicated, manual research and delivers actionable insights in seconds. As co-founder and CEO of findCRA, Ben leads the company's overall product vision and design as well as business strategy.

Rob Heiser is the co-founder and a Vice Chairman of Segmint Inc, an innovative financial technology company based in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Rob was awarded Crain's Cleveland 40 under 40 and currently serves on the Advisory Board of Kent State University's LaunchNET entrepreneurship program. Rob has been awarded 10 U.S. and international patents for Segmint.

Dmitriy Pavlov is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Stitched Insights. Dmitriy has over a decade of nose-to-tail experience creating consistent category growth through data with prior leadership roles at large corporations like ADP and enterprise startups like Duda & Conduit.

MedStack's CEO Balaji is an educator and thought leader in platform and software product strategy, is passionately driven by the role of technology in addressing societal problems. MedStack supports many digital health companies in protecting patient, and has been awarded accolades by the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance and Techcrunch.

Eugene was one of the first investors to spot SEMrush. After joining the company as a Chief Strategy Officer he helped to more than quadruple company revenue and raised over $40m from Tier 1 investors. Before SEMrush, Eugene was a partner at Target Global, pan-european venture fund that invests in consumer Internet space. There Eugene was in charge of late stage pipeline and worked on number of notable transactions including Lyft and Delivery Hero. Eugene started his VC career as Senior Associate and then Partner at Foresight Ventures. Foresight Ventures was focused on early stage US technology companies and was ranked top 10 Russian VC Firm by Forbes In 2013.

Through Exponea, Peter spread his personalized, customer-focused experiences to over a billion consumers. Under his leadership, Exponea has become one of the fastest growing European SAAS companies. Exponea's product vision was fuelled by his CEO experience from Slevomat which became number one daily deal site in 6 countries, with revenues of over €100 mil in less than 4 years. Peter's philosophy is to help his employees to become future business leaders and founders, while instilling them with strong personal and business ethics.

I started in the Internet Marketing space in 2000, when I co-founded one of the world's first email service providers, CoolerEmail. As a pioneer in responsible email marketing, we grew CoolerEmail into a global software company specializing in marketing communication with over 1,500 clients. In 2010, after spending several years designing and implementing a more comprehensive way to meet the needs of small and mid-sized businesses, I launched GreenRope, a cloud-based platform that simplifies and consolidates a company's sales, marketing, and operations. GreenRope currently provides technology solutions to over 3,000 companies worldwide. In 2017, I had the opportunity to write and publish, CRM For Dummies, part of the globally acclaimed "For Dummies" series of books. In the book, I cover strategies and tactics that help businesses design and implement a successful CRM strategy.

Knak is the first email creation platform built for enterprise teams. We empower marketers, writers, and designers to collaborate and create beautiful, responsive, on-brand emails quickly - no coding required. Knak integrates with the most popular marketing automation platforms, including Marketo, Eloqua, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud.

Rocket scientist with 25 yrs experience helping enterprises make 100s millions in net income gains using AI. My mission is to reduce poverty as companies invest these gains to lowering prices which lowers cost of living for you and I.

Erik Matlick guides vision and corporate strategy at Bombora, bringing over 15 years in founding, board and executive management experience. Prior to Bombora, Erik was the founder and CEO of several advertising technology companies including Madison Logic. He also founded IndustryBrains and MediaBrains. Erik began his career in ad sales at Ziff-Davis and divides his time between Miami and New York.

Steve Pockross brings 20+ years of startup, Fortune 500, and nonprofit experience to his role as CEO Verblio. He has also served in leadership roles at LiveOps, Tendril, Western Union, Marketing Technologies Group, and HSBC. Steve received his MBA from Kellogg School of Business and his MA from Wesleyan University.

Ray joined RedSeal as CEO in February 2014. Prior to RedSeal he was a general partner at Venrock, one of RedSeal's founding investors. At Venrock he invested in 53 companies including over a dozen in cybersecurity including Vontu, PGP, P-Cube, Imperva, Cloudflare, CTERA, and Shape Security. He is on the board of Check Point Software Technology, Ltd. an original Venrock investment, and Team8, both Tel Aviv–based companies.

Mark Organ is a serial creator of multi billion dollar software categories and companies. He coaches CEOs on how to discover, develop and dominate their categories. He is also creating the largest global community of category creating leaders, the Categorynauts. Mark is currently the Chairman and was previously founder and CEO of Influitive, the creator of the the advocate marketing and community category. Influitive creates communities of customer advocates, mobilizing advocates to produce massive increases in referral leads, reference calls, social media participation and more. Mark first revolutionized B2B marketing as the founding CEO of Eloqua (ELOQ), the world leader in marketing automation software, which was recently acquired for $871M. In between, he was a go-to-market consultant for SaaS companies in North America and Asia. Mark has also helped over a dozen software companies successfully go to market in asymmetrical or disruptive ways as a consultant and entrepreneur. With an M.S. in Neuroscience from Northwestern University and a passion for understanding human psychology, Mark is a dynamic speaker with a unique vision centered not only in business success and technological innovation, but also how and why people think, act and interact the way they do. Mark enjoys sharing his observations, regularly writing and speaking on entrepreneurship, marketing and advocacy. He has energized professional audiences at a number of recent events, including DemandCon, Influence HR Summit, The Globe and Mail Small Business Summit, InsideSales Virtual Summit and many more. Please see testimonials and video samples here: http://influitive.com/founder-and-ceo