SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Emilie Cushman is the Founder and CEO of Kira Talent. Cushman founded the company in 2012, and since launching Kira she has been named the HSBC Woman Leader of Tomorrow and one of Canada's Top 100 Most Powerful Women.

Brad has been building Customer Support companies for more than 20 years. Previously he was the Co-founder of Assistly, which was acquired by Salesforce and became Desk.com. Prior to that he was CTO for Talisma and Co‑founder & CTO of eShare Technologies.

Originally from Denver, Andrew studied history and was Phi Beta Kappa at Yale before dropping out his senior year to pursue RippleMatch. He listens to clients, runs sales, and is obsessed with helping students and companies find the right match.

I am the founder and chief software architect at Konnect Insights - a SaaS product that is widely used by many top brands and agencies. My core strengths are technology, marketing and sales. I started my career back in 2004 as a software programmer and when I started my company in 2012 I started donning many caps such as strategy, marketing, sales and legal. I have experience of working on financial domain and today I am a digital analytics expert.

From Slovenia/Europe. B.S. Electrical Engineering. 31 years old. This is our third startup. First failed miserably. Second became lifestyle business. Love sports and creativity. I'll produce a movie by 2025.

Born in USSR, got a war there, was refugee, moved to Ukraine, co-founded TemplateMonster.com. Grew it to 100M company and then sold out to PE. Started Weblium to build a McDonalds in Web Design Industry. Married, four kids, two wife's, three dogs, five homes, 10 700 phonebook contacts, 100 conferences a year, military business and lots of fun. When the war started in Ukraine, founded the largest crowdfunding platform Peoplesproject.com to help wounded souldiers, became an advisor to the Minister of Defense, civil activist. Recently started to join a blockchain world first as an advisor and planning to complete some government projects based on a blockchain.

In previous careers Nathan has been a designer, author, and blogger. After learning the power of email marketing he gave up a successful blogging career to build ConvertKit. Outside of work Nathan spends his time playing soccer, woodworking, and chasing after his two little boys.

Joe is a lifelong entrepreneur and founded two successful internet companies before Contently. In 2012, Joe and his co-founders were named to Inc.'s 30 Under 30 list.

CloudKPI is entrepreneur Maeve Kneafsey's ( pron; May-V Kneef-Sea) fourth start up. Her latest venture addresses the frustrations involved in setting up and maintaining cross-business metrics for SaaS businesses, a segment growing to a multi-billion dollar value. CloudKPI, which is raising a seed round, has completed programs at Plug & Play Tech and Womens' Start-Up Lab. Maeve previously founded Amas, Ireland's first digital marketing and analytics agency (exit 2003), digital marketing agency Elucidate (exit 2015) and Fintech SaaS benchmarking solution MarketFinder. A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin she now splits her time between offices in Dublin, Ireland and San Francisco, USA.

Dale Beaumont is an Award-Winning Technology Entrepreneur, International Speaker and the Author of 16 Best-Selling books. Dale started his first business at 19 and has been building companies ever since. One of those companies is now a multimillion dollar enterprise, which has enabled Dale to become an Investor, Philanthropist and to step foot in more than 80 countries. Today Dale is the founder and CEO of Bizversity – a revolutionary product, which gives you direct access to 'The World's Best Business Training. Anywhere, Anytime.

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (BSCS), post graduate in project management and co-founder of Intuitive Intelligence, a CRO company sold in 2016 to PMWEB, a Wunderman Company. Entrepreneur for 10 years. After Intuitive Intelligence exit, founded Intellibrand, a leading B2B tech company with a SaaS business model focused on data intelligence and analytics. Our vision is to disrupt the current collaboration model between brands and retailers globally and become the authority in digital trade marketing offering a new collaborative business model to help brands and retailers thrive in ecommerce.

Ben is the founder of Privy.com, a marketing automation platform used by over 250,000+ marketers around the globe. Ben has worked with companies like Leesa, Hubble Contacts, Life Time Fitness, the Ellen Show, Dr. Axe and many more to rapidly accelerate ecommerce conversions and sales.

James McDonough is a passionate entrepreneur, technology CEO and past top tier management consultant. James' unique ability is being able to clearly see and deconstruct an entire complex situation, envision a better future and take practical action to blaze new trails. Using his unquenchable curiosity, structured problem solving and bold creativity, with a smile he energetically and relentlessly hunts opportunities to push boundaries. Over the past 15 years James has been the founder and CEO of an early stage venture capital backed tech company, led strategy and operational excellence engagements as a management consultant and got dirty on the shop floor of industrial operations. Industry experience includes Internet Technology, Oil & Gas, Mining, Forest & Pulp & Paper, Government and Consumer Goods. James' international experience includes Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Malaysia and the USA. James has had the pleasure of being invited to deliver speaking engagements at a number of industry forums and top universities all over the world on a range of topics including entrepreneurship, innovation, industrial internet of things (IIoT), and was an honorable mention in Australia's 30under30. James has earned a MBA - Master of Business Administration, Honours in Business Management, and a Black Belt in LEAN Six Sigma. James is an obsessive book-a-week learner, a passionate traveler and enjoys kiteboarding, snowboarding and ice hockey.

Aayush Jain is the co-founder and CEO of Greendeck, which helps online retailers increase their profits by implementing dynamic pricing. Before Greendeck, Aayush co-founded TrueMD (an online pharmacy) and HealthOS(APIs for healthcare data) and lead to its acquisition by a giant Indian IT firm.

3x SaaS Founder/CEO and Startup Advisor. Isaac was Co-Founder/CEO of Central Desktop (iMeet Central) a SaaS collaboration platform aimed at marketers and creative teams. Central Desktop was acquired by PGI (NYSE: PGI) in 2014. Isaac is currently CEO/Founder of SalesInsider, a Talent Marketplace for SaaS Sales Professionals.

CEO @PrestaShop, leading eCommerce solution worldwide

Steve Pockross is the CEO of Verblio, leading content creation marketplace platform. Steve previously served as VP of BD & Strategy at crowdsourcing pioneer LiveOps, and held leadership roles at Tendril, Western Union and multiple startups and nonprofits. Steve has an MBA from Kellogg and a BA from Wesleyan University.

Kristján is CEO & Co-Founder of 50skills.com which is transforming the way businesses find and hire people. Prior to 50skills, Kristjan was VP of Marketing Products at Meniga (2014-2017), which he helped grow into serving more than 50 million people in 20 countries. Before joining Meniga in early 2014 Kristján was CEO of Icelandic Startups, which focuses on empowering the Icelandic Entrepreneurial Eco-system. For several years, he has played a leading role in Iceland´s vibrant startup scene. He managed StartupReykjavik (2012-2013), the #1 Seed Accelerator in Iceland. He is also an accredited Global Facilitator for Startup Weekend (2009-), who has facilitated more than 10+ Startup weekends in diverse places, ranging from Reykjavík, Iceland to Tehran, Iran (2012-). He was the global partner for Global Entrepreneurship Week in Iceland (2009-2013), TEDxReykjavik licensee (2011-2013) and the former manager of Iceland's largest idea competition, the Golden Egg (2009-2011).

Brendan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Skycision, an award-winning technology provider that helps enhance the productivity and profitability of the global agriculture industry. Brendan completed his undergraduate degree at the country's oldest private military school, Norwich University. He played four years of collegiate football and emerged with his B.S. in Computer Security and Information Assurance. From there, he joined Big-4 financial services firm Ernst & Young (E&Y) and worked over a dozen engagements across Florida and the Asia Pacific region. Shortly thereafter, he joined global investment bank Credit Suisse in New York. Brendan decided to go back to school and was admitted to the number one Information Systems Management program in the country at Carnegie Mellon. It was there that Skycision was conceived, and upon finishing his degree, he set out full time to build Skycision into what it is today.

Mark Simon is the co-founder of Brax where he helps performance marketers scale, automate and simplify native advertising. Previously he helped e-commerce and software companies acquire customers through organic & paid search. He loves data visualization, nutrition and everything outdoors which is his excuse for taking his kids on crazy adventures.

CEO and Co-founder of RoomChecking. I've been working with software engineering since the late 1990s, survived the dotcom burst and continued building great products like myDitto (CES award 2010) and Zpen (Macworld Award 2011). Enjoying working with hoteliers and the great RoomChecking team to help improve the work and results of hotel operations staff.

An accomplished, published, and recognized academic leader in Data Analytics and a Business Visionary, Derek spearheaded techniques to analyze structured and unstructed data from resources around the web in order to create predictive algorithms for companies across the globe. This knowledge became the foundation of his passion, Stratifyd.

Richard Rabins focuses on strategy, accelerating global growth and scaling the organization. Richard also served as CEO of SoftQuad International from 1997 to 2001, when it owned Alpha. In addition to his 30 years with the company, Richard played a key role as co-founder, and served as president and chairman of the Massachusetts Software Council (now the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council), the largest technology trade organization in Massachusetts. Prior to founding Alpha, Richard was a project leader and consultant with Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), and a management consultant with Management Decision Systems, Inc. Richard holds a master's degree in system dynamics from the Sloan School at MIT, and a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and master's degree in control engineering from University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He has served on the boards of Silent Systems, Legacy Technology and O3B Networks, and is co-founder of Tubifi www.tubifi.com.

Mike Arenth serves as CEO at HotSchedules. Prior to being named CEO, Mike joined HotSchedules in October 2016, focusing on implementing key leadership changes to support innovation and growth at HotSchedules. Other previous roles include Senior Advisor at Silver Lake, Executive VP for SAP, and SVP & General Manager at Ariba. Mike received a B.A. in economics from John Hopkins and his M.B.A. from George Washington University.

Serial entrepreneur with 7 years expertise in marketplace businesses. From Paris but currently settled in New York I am a marketer always looking for new markets to conquer.

Anil Chawla is the Founder & CEO of ArchiveSocial. ArchiveSocial's technology ensures that organizations can maintain legal records of their social media, and is most often used to promote transparency in government. In 2017, ArchiveSocial collaborated with the Obama White House to launch the first-ever archive of presidential social media.

CEO of Fruit Street Health a digital diabetes prevention program. Managing Director of Hippocrates Ventures - the first physician funded social impact digital therapeutics venture capital fund.

Create, share, localize & track customer facing videos & GIFs in minutes Built for Support, Sales, Training, HR, and Product teams No camera, production crew, narrator, or hosting.

Matthew is the founder and CEO of Qebot, helping businesses across the globe access and utilize software in a more productive way. Prior to Qebot, Matthew established a presence in mobile advertising and SMB marketing. His time with a very predominant marketing agency led Matthew to found and build Qebot.

Entrepreneur, SaaS Enthusiast, Behavioral Economics Fan, has strong Sales background, leads one of the largests SaaS in Brazil and fosters the local start-up and tech ecosytem since the early 2000s. Has Business Administration degree and specializations in Sales and Marketing.

CheeTung is committed to bring the same level of analytics, sophistication, and scientific rigour to managing people as is currently applied to managing finance and customers. He is the CEO of EngageRocket. Before becoming an entrepreneur, he was Regional Director of Gallup in Southeast Asia. He read Economics at the University of Cambridge, and has an MA in Political Science from Columbia University.

James is the co-founder and CEO of Shufflrr, the leading presentation management SaaS that transforms presentations from one-and-done decks to enterprise assets. From creation, to distribution, to presentation and sharing, to reporting and then updating, Shufflrr streamlines the presentation process, so clients get higher ROI on their investment in content, better control of their message and overall increased productivity.

Shruti, Founder & Managing Partnerof Array, brings a strong mix of operating and investing experience. Previously, Shruti was an early stage venture capital investor at True Ventures, Samsung Electronics, Lightbank, HighBAR Partners, and the i2A Fund. Shruti started working with Machine Learning algorithms while working on her master's thesis in computer science from Columbia University on understanding user behavior on instant messaging platforms. While at IBM she worked on self learning algorithms that detected user location based on IP addresses, which she later incorporated into the Lotus Sametime product. Later, her company Penseev helped users make better connections with their friends based on social data. When not investing, she is hacking on some app or thinking about ways she can be in many places at one time. Shruti also has an MBA from the University of Chicago, where she polished her finance skills before making the switch from engineer/founder to investor.

Based out of India, I'm a self-taught entrepreneur who started the online marketing journey at the age of 17. Coming from a Business family, entrepreneurship is rooted in my blood. At the age of 18, I launched my first WordPress security plugin that did 6 figures after which I launched Power Up Hosting in the year 2012 which is now an ISP and a seven-figure business. During my entire Journey, As a CEO, I am the sole Growth Hacker/Marketer in the company responsible for all the customers. My name got very popular in the SEO industry as the PBN guy which led me to launch GoPBN, the very first of its kind PBN Hosting company which does over $70k in monthly revenue which let me two more ventures FlameDomain and Funnelbake.

CEO and co-founder of Detectify. Background as geek with MSC in applied physics, went to management consulting, but then back to technology again with Detectify. From Sweden, lived in multiple countries including US and India.

Samir, the CEO and founder of GetAccept who believes that great companies are built by passionate individuals who focus on execution and teambuilding. Husband and father of 2 kids who is convinced that the day has 28 hours. You can sleep when you die!

David Okuniev was born in Belgium and later educated in England, David Okuniev started his professional career as a musician. Expression through music soon turned to expression through product and brand design, which led to David founding the Barcelona-based design studio, Fat-Man-Collective. From working in the same co-working space, David later met Robert Muñoz, and the two co-founded Typeform. Today, David is joint CEO and sweats over everything Vision, product & design related.

Hi! I am a 32 yo french entrepreneur and startup advisor. Former COO of Mailjet which I co-founded in 2010, I raised 17M$ and built a team of 25 people on 4 continents. I am now entirely focused on my new venture – Onvey.io – which aims to grow into a SaaS Hub.

Patrick is a life-long entrepreneur who has successfully built multiple companies and salesforces, always with an interest in leveraging technology to improve on processes. Energetic and inventive, Patrick is passionate about people's ability to completely change; by changing the story they tell themselves. A self-confessed "freak" about studying habits, routines and easier ways to do things, Patrick's purpose in life is to always be learning and helping others. He loves to seek out new concepts and strategies to improve his own life, find out what works and then share them. Patrick originally created the ideas behind RapidFunnel to help his own salesforce. They were so incredibly effective that it spawned the idea for RapidFunnel, the company. Personally speaking... Patrick has had a life long interest in good health, shaped by his Mom who owned a chain of health food stores. He enjoys mountain biking, crossfit, yoga and pilates. He loves bouncing ideas off of his wife, skiing with his three kids and watching superhero movies with his son. He also admits to holding on to his collection of superhero comics, which carried him through his childhood struggles with dyslexia.

Adam Robinson is Co-Founder and CEO of Hireology, a venture-backed hiring and talent management platform named a Top 50 Best Workplace by Inc., a Top Company Culture by Entrepreneur, and #94 in 2016 and #332 in 2017 on the Inc. 500 list of America's fastest-growing private companies. He's the author of The Best Team Wins: Build your Business Through Predictive Hiring, the host of The Best Team Wins Podcast, and a weekly columnist for Inc. He was named a top 25 Industry Game Changer by Workforce and in 2017 was a finalist for E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year. Adam has a BA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received his MBA from DePaul University. He's a member of the Economic Club of Chicago, and lives in Chicago's Rogers Park community with his wife and four children.

CEO of Bookafy since 2014... Formerly at another Real Estate technology startup. Lives in Seattle, WA.

CEO and co-founder of Burt, where we build data intelligence companies. In a previous life, I hustled in e-commerce, developed award winning marketing campaigns and spent way too much at advertising and internet technology conferences, presenting at events such as Cannes Lions, Web 2.0, DEMO and Techcrunch50.

Founder and Managing Director of uptime ITechnologies GmbH, since its inception in 1994. Also responsible for World Check, the banking financial crime prevention software used toady by most of the world's banks bought by Thomson Reuters. CEO and founder of Pipeliner Sales, Inc., the sales company for Pipeliner CRM. Author of over 100 ebooks on sales, sales management, entrepreneurship and leadership. Kimla studied Protestant Theology in Los Angeles and Vienna, graduating with a Master'sDegree. He is married and father of 3 children.

Chris Ronzio built a nationwide video production company that sold over $3 million in youth sporting event videos before he was 25 years old. In 2013, he sold that business and founded an Operations Consulting firm that helps other entrepreneurs create scalable systems and processes. Over the last 5 years, the firm, Organize Chaos, has worked with hundreds of companies in dozens of industries and invested in building 6 of those businesses to over $30 million in annual revenue. Now, Chris' third business, Trainual, is an online platform for business owners and employees to document what they do in simple step-by-step processes. Chris and his team are on a mission to systematize 25,000 small businesses through their technology.

Mike is the co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, the world's #1 cloud accounting software for self-employed professionals and their teams. Built in 2003 after he accidentally saved over an invoice, Mike spent 3.5 years growing FreshBooks from his parents' basement. Since then, over 10 million people have used FreshBooks to save time billing, and collect billions of dollars. A lover of the outdoors, Mike has been bitten so many times it's rumoured he's the first human to have developed immunity to mosquitoes.

As CEO, Clate is leading Infusionsoft on its mission to simplify growth for millions of small businesses worldwide. Under Clate's leadership, Infusionsoft has landed four rounds of venture capital. Clate is a national speaker, and co-author of the New York Times bestseller "Conquer the Chaos". Clate has a BA in Economics from Arizona State University, an MBA and a JD from Brigham Young University.

As CEO of AdRoll Group, Toby Gabriner oversees both divisions of the company's growth platform business, AdRoll and the recently launched RollWorks. Gabriner has a proven track record as an industry veteran who is not afraid of taking risks that drives transformational vision and breakout growth for tech businesses. With leadership experience at high-growth companies that spans two decades, Gabriner's been at the forefront of positioning AdRoll as a key company in the marketing technology sector. His experience includes serving as president of Carat Interactive, one of the first large digital agencies, CEO of [x+1], one of the first demand side platforms, and president and CEO of Adap.tv. Under his leadership, Adap.tv saw revenue grow from $200K to over $200M in just four years and was acquired by AOL in 2013 for $465M. Gabriner has also served as a board member and investor of a number of early and mid-stage technology companies. He earned his MBA at Boston University but is a San Francisco native, who enjoys a myriad of fitness activities, reading, volunteering and hanging out with his wife and three children in the sunny state.

Greg Segall is the founder and CEO of Alyce, an AI-powered corporate gifting and incentive platform. Founded in December 2015, Alyce tells a corporate gifter exactly what to send and the most impactful times to send. Prior to Alyce, Greg was the founder and CEO of One Pica, one the the premier global e-commerce agencies. Greg also invested, scaled and aided the acquisitions of several smaller retailers. One Pica was successfully acquired in December 2012 by a holding company in San Francisco. Greg received his BA in Graphic Design from Boston University in 2001, with a strong focus on computer science.

UCLA B.S. Complex Systems Goldman Sachs, Investment Banking Analyst Valiant Capital, Investor Stanford Graduate School of Business, MBA Everlance, Cofounder and CEO

Neil brings more than 25 years of experience in Software, Hardware and Cloud Technologies to Sailthru. As President and Chief Executive Officer, he leads the development and execution of the company's strategic vision and daily operations. Before joining Sailthru, Neil served as President and CEO of Vendavo, a leading provider of revenue and price optimization and management solutions. Prior to joining Vendavo, Neil successfully directed Ariba's North American field operations and, previously, European operations; preceded by 16 years at IBM, serving in a variety of sales and sales management roles in ecommerce solutions. Neil is a native of New York City and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from State University of New York at Albany.