SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

Roy Raanani is the CEO of Chorus.ai and an engineer with a passion for business and sales. He's spent his career working with start-ups and advising technology companies on strategy and operations. Roy started his career at Bain & Company, and holds a BASc in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto, and an MBA from Stanford. He was the first hire at Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavors.

Brad Palmer is the CEO and co-founder of Jostle. He has more than 30 years of experience leading multidisciplinary teams and driving the commercialization of technology businesses. Brad loves helping organizations create extraordinary workplaces by putting people at the heart of it.

Rob is the Chief Executive Officer of Coupa, and drives the company's strategy and execution. Rob has over two decades experience in the business software industry. He came to Coupa from SuccessFactors, where he ran Global Product Marketing & Management, as a member of the executive management team, as the company scaled from an early start up to a successful public company. Prior to that, Rob directed Product Management at Siebel Systems, where he helped build Siebel ERM into one of the company's fastest growing product lines. Rob also did a stint in management consulting at McKinsey & Company, and spent four years at Accenture, where he focused on global SAP systems implementations. Rob is a guest lecturer at Harvard and Stanford business schools, and a frequent contributor to Forbes and Fortune magazines. He can often be heard providing commentary on major news channels including Bloomberg and NPR. Rob earned a BS in Information Systems from the State University of New York at Albany and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Scot is the CEO & Co-Founder of Classy, a social enterprise that creates world-class online fundraising tools for nonprofits, modernizing the giving experience to accelerate global social impact. Since 2011, fundraising on the Classy platform has doubled each yearâ€"resulting in thousands of nonprofits collectively raising over half a billion dollars.

Adam Toll was set on solving a big problem for video gamers: internet lag. Adam invented Haste with cofounder Taric Mirza, which uses next-generation network software that reduces lag and improves overall network stability. Adam was the first Haste investor and previously Co-Founder and COO of BigChampagne.

Shawn Riegsecker founded Centro in 2001 intent on building software to eliminate operational inefficiencies, solve growing complexity and fragmentation challenges, and help marketers make smarter decisions. He has built Centro into one of the largest providers of media operations software and managed services in the industry.

Rob is a former medical doctor turned Internet entrepreneur who is now running Timedoctor.com and Staff.com. He is from Sydney Australia and has grown to love all things SaaS.

Tyson Quick is a digital marketing wiz who’s focused on perfecting the landing page optimization process. Tyson founded Instapage in 2012 after seeing how marketers were losing money in wasted ad spend. His vision since then has been to create a landing page platform that maximizes returns through advertising personalization.

Eric Esfahanian is CRO of Gryphon Networks, a Boston-based Saas company that specializes in driving phone-based sales effectiveness for large distributed sales teams. With over 30 design and process patents covering every aspect of advanced telephony, Gryphon counts ADT, Sprint, Santander, and New York Life among over 700 enterprise clients.

Vitaly is a co-founder of StackAdapt, a venture-backed advertising technology company that helps brands accelerate customer acquisition. StackAdapt was named Top 20 Most Innovative Emerging companies in Canada in 2017 by CIX. StackAdapt was a part of STARTUP 50 of Canada’s Top New Growth Companies in 2017 by CanadianBusiness.

With over 20 years of executive-level experience, Rick has a unique vantage point on the business shift to ecommerce, asserting that business society is still very early in the transition to ecommerce, with less than 10% of retail and even less of B2B transactions currently conducted in online commerce.

Toby Olshanetsky is the CEO and cofounder of prooV, the first Pilot-as-a-Service platform, which helps companies find, test-drive and implement new technologies. In the past 20 years, he has led several successful businesses, and is an active board member and mentor to numerous startups.

Disappointed with digital video's inability to rise to its potential, Erika started Rapt Media. Erika has worked to build a business positioned at the top of emerging video technologies, providing interactive solutions to enterprise companies. Erika has solidified an A-list customer portfolio including companies like PwC, Samsung, Accenture, and Vodafone.

Peter Friedman is a social media visionary and veteran with over 30 years of experience in the space. He's the founder, Chairman, and CEO of LiveWorld. He's also the author of 'The CMO's Social Media Handbook, A Step By Step Guide For Leading Marketing Teams in the Social Media World'.

Andrew Gazdecki is the founder and CEO of Bizness Apps, a do-it-yourself mobile app builder and mobile website creator for small businesses with over 500,000 customers worldwide.

Ross Andrew Paquette is the founder and CEO of Maropost, ranked as one of North America's fastest growing tech companies by Deloitte. After starting Maropost in 2011, Ross has grown the company from a one-man-operation in his apartment, to an international business valued at $160M USD, in just six years.

Tango Card Founder and CEO. Cofounder and SVP Sales and Strategy FiberTower. On Board of Mighty Oakes Heart Foundation and prior Board member at Summer Search. Father of 2 and SoundersFC fan/atic.

Seth is the founder and CEO of SnapApp. As a repeat entrepreneur, Seth was previously the founder & CEO of Pangea Media (acquired by AdKnowledge) and co-founder & CEO of Focalex, (acquired by Intermix / MySpace). He started out as a banker at Credit Suisse First Boston.

Brian Co-Founded InMotion Software in 2008 with the vision of a studio focusing on mobile development. He has lead the studio to create over ~30 mobile titles, with 6 reaching the top 100, including a #1 hit in the AppStore. Today Brian leads a team of 60+ developers and designers

CEO & Co-founder of Fuse, a cutting-edge UX tool suite for mobile app designers and developers. Currently in beta, for Mac and PC.

Erik Matlick guides vision and corporate strategy at Bombora, bringing over 15 years in founding, board and executive management experience. An online performance marketing pioneer, Erik's insights about the confluence of data analytics, media operations, ad serving technology, sales and marketing processes are the driving force behind Bombora's value proposition.

Josh Melick is CEO and Co-Founder of Broadly.com, a review generation platform focused on local business online reputation. Prior to founding Broadly, Josh was Director of Product at DemandForce, which was acquired by Intuit in 2012. Josh also held leadership roles with Ingenio, which was purchased by AT&T in 2007.

Co-founder and CEO of Zapier

Enterprise software veteran, worked for Oracle and Cashedge (now part of Fiserv) prior to founding Apptivo. Working to change the way small businesses will run their business to minimize costs, optimize business processes and make better business decisions.

Max lives in Indianapolis serving as the Co-Founder and CEO of Lessonly. Max and Lessonly are focused on building and delivering team learning software that helps people do better work. Every day, Max is grateful for being cut from the basketball team two years in a row.

Eugene Woo is the CEO of Venngage, an infographic design tool. His mission is to help businesses tell their stories with compelling and memorable visuals. He enjoys reading and writing about content marketing, entrepreneurship, and data visualization. You can read more of his articles on the Venngage blog.

David Erickson is the Founder and CEO of FreeConferenceCall.com. His simple ideas and deft execution have transformed the telecommunications industry to better suit the needs of consumers and businesses worldwide. Dave founded FreeConferenceCall.com on the simple principle that collaborative communication should be available to everyone, both affordably and efficiently. He purchased a $10 URL, which sparked the first viral movement in the telecommunications industry to support free conferencing around the globe.

Unite and automate all the moving parts of your business so that you can do the work you love from one smart platfrom.

Victor Ricci has always loved the Internet and creating things. He had experimented in different areas of technology and business to find what he was passionate about. During this process he started a half dozen web companies before founding one he loved, TrendPie.com.

Segment's co-founder and CEO; He studied Aerospace Engineering at MIT and fell into the world of customer data and analysis when he and three of his college friends started Segment in 2011 as part of Y Combinator. He and his wife Erika, who he met at MIT, live together in San Francisco.

Andrew Blachman is the COO of Tophatter, the world's fastest, most entertaining marketplace for mobile shoppers, where he oversees ongoing business operations within the company. Previously, he was the CEO of GET ME IN! Blachman has both a B.A. and M.S. degree from Stanford University.

25 years-old French entrepreneur. Turned a grad-school side-hustle into a +$20K monthly recurring business in a few months. I founded LeadGuru.io to stop B2B companies from spending hours building bad, boring, low-yielding cold-emailing campaigns. We come in and pump their cold-emailing capacities to the next level. They just sit and watch hot leads flooding their inbox.

Joe Prusz is Global Head of Revenue at Rubicon Project, responsible for all revenue-related activities across Publishers, Demand-side Platforms, and Global Agency Relationships, tasked with the goal of continuing the adoption and growth of automated advertising across all screens and devices, driving more than $1B in advertising spend. Formerly he was Head of Seller, Americas, responsible for Rubicon Project's largest revenue region for publishers across North America and LATAM. Prior to that, he was the Head of Mobile globally, where he was responsible for general management and strategic oversight of the Mobile business, the fastest growing division of the company. Charged with building the Mobile revenue team and product, analyzing M&A opportunities for both Mobile and the company at large, and overall was an evangelist for both the company and the mobile advertising technology industry. Under his leadership, the Mobile business unit grew from $0 to over $325M in Managed Revenue globally, catapulting Rubicon Project to become the world's largest independent mobile advertising marketplace in less than four years. His greatest joys are his wife and two children.

Building social media automation and more for SMB's around the world. Jack of all trades, master of some. Lean startup enthusiast. Strong opinions weakly (& weekly) held.

Gal Dubinski and Tomer Aharon: We're both 28 years old. Co-founders of Poptin (SaaS) and Ecpm (a digital agency). We met in a gifted class in high school and have been best friends since then. Started our business as university students while living together in the same apartment with our girlfriends (today wives).

Founder of Vuture, the 16th fastest SAAS business in the world (2017) Finalist of the Shell Livewire Young Entrepreneur of the year. London based entrepreneur, who has lived and worked in New York and Sydney. A bootstrap expert, with a strong belief in the fundamentals of underpinning profitability with growth.

Ulrik is GenieBelts Chief Genie, and part of the coolest start up team in Copenhagen. With a long commercial background and experience with various startups, he's bringing GenieBelt to a construction site near you. Ulrik's favourite tool: nail gun

Daniel is a father of 2 and has been married to his wife Samantha for almost 10 years. Daniel left school at 15 to work full-time. From there, he learned design and started freelancing. Marriage life and children meant focusing on a more secure method of employment, so he secured a Telecoms & Networks Engineer role. After 5 years, he knew that working for somebody else wasn't his calling. With his co-founder Matthew Spurr, they started a branding agency using Daniel's skill of design and Matt's skill of sales and marketing. This venture was cut short though because of Quuu. The rest is history :-)

Aaron Bird is the full-stack CEO at Bizible, a venture-backed startup that makes marketing measurement and planning software for B2B companies. He holds an MBA from Pepperdine University and a B.S. in Computer Science from UCSB. Previously, Aaron worked at Microsoft on Bing Ads.

Bob Gilbreath is Co-Founder and CEO of Ahalogy, a data-driven social and influencer marketing company with clients such as Nestle, Kraft and Costco. He is the author of The Next Evolution of Marketing (McGraw-Hill) and was named an Advertising Age Top 50 Marketer. Bob has degrees from NYU and Duke.

JazzHR CEO Pete Lamson explains how the company uses $25 Amazon giftcards to drive customer conversions. It's working. The company has over 3000 paying customers today and $6m in ARR.

JD Graffam makes an interesting argument for buying companies instead of starting new ones.