The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

When sales teams succeed, the company succeeds. Revenue goes up, productivity increases, and ideally, the team continues to grow. But running a high-performing sales team isn't an easy task. How can you ensure success within your sales organization in a way that scales with you? Heather Akuiyibo, VP of Sales at Databricks, shares her four adaptable frameworks for high-performing sales teams and how those frameworks helped Databricks' sales teams succeed. Full video: https://youtu.be/9tn-I4f9Va4

Zach joined Canva in 2013 as one of Canva's earliest employees and has worked across product management, communications and human resources before establishing the global marketing function. Eight years later 50 million people are now using Canva every month and the company recently approached $1 Billion in Revenue. In this podcast, Zach and Jason dive into the initial growth marketing strategies and framework behind Canva's exponential growth as a start-up, the strategies for targeting and growing into the enterprise, and how to build out a global marketing function. Full video: https://youtu.be/CEoam_9sHt0 Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/lessons-learned-scaling-canva-to-1-billion-with-zach-kitschke/

No one word strikes more terror in the heart of product-, engineering-, or even sales-oriented founders and CEOs than "marketing." How to understand marketing? How to drive marketing? How to measure marketing? What to look for in a marketing leader? In this session, we'll talk about how CEOs (and other startup execs) should think about, charter, direct, and support marketing. Full video: https://youtu.be/ggUwcE600xU Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/a-ceos-guide-to-marketing-with-dave-kellogg-five-things-every-founder-should-know-podcast-515-and-video/ Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Learn more about Box's journey to reaccelerate growth and march toward $1B in SaaS ARR, and their CRO's lessons learned along the way. Full video: https://youtu.be/RQ6gom-lLxE Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/reaccelerating-growth-at-scale-with-boxs-cro-mark-wayland-podcast-514-video/ Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Amy Appleyard, SVP Global Sales @ Malwarebytes, Michelle Benfer, VP, Head of North America Sales @ HubSpot Tony Benvenuto, SVP of Sales West @ Seismic, and Anna Baird, CRO @ Outreach share lessons learned when scaling their sales teams, the importance of BDRs, key hires and when to prioritize them, and more.

GitLab started as an open-source project that expanded into a public company with a buyer-based open-core business model. With over 300+ code contributions per month, innovating with the wider community is key to accelerating development efforts. Join GitLab CEO, Sid Sijbrandij, as he discusses GitLab's journey, choosing the right business model that balances high revenue potential and community contributions, and co-creating the product with the wider community to deliver safer software faster.

In today's SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares 5 interesting learnings from Samsara at $500M ARR, growing 72% year-over-year. Video and episode notes: https://www.saastr.com/5-interesting-learnings-from-samsara-at-500000000-in-arr/

Over the past ten years, Zapier has grown from a weekend side project to global unicorn, serving millions of small and medium businesses around the world. But Zapier isn't your typical startup story and their roots aren't in Silicon Valley. Come hear what Zapier's early employees learned from building the foundation of one of today's most successful startups.

Many start-ups today start with an amazing Product Led Growth (PLG) engine that hasn't required an outbound sales and marketing motion. As amazing as this is, if your company wants to move into the mid-market or enterprise business, you're going to have to build and hire a Sales team, and expand the capabilities of your Marketing function. How can you add this GTM motion effectively, without cannibalizing your existing business? How do you balance the two for the right target markets and audiences? Product-market fit, pricing, packaging, messaging, strategic investments, culture, evangelism all play a critical part and will change as soon as you add this team. Hear from the CMOs of top tech companies on they helped Freshworks, Twilio, Salesforce, 1Password, Atlassian, Litmus, CircleCi, Coda and many others have faced this challenge and led their companies through this successful transition. Stacey Epstein, CMO @ Freshworks Sara Varni Bright, CMO @ Twilio Carilu Dietrich, Fractional CMO @ 1Password Viviana Faga, General Partner @ Coda

Pricing can kill your product, or make it soar. To start with, create pricing tiers and make pricing easy and convenient for your customers. Beyond that, the decisions are difficult, such as usage-based vs. predictable pricing. In this presentation, we discuss the key principles of pricing and app or online service, showing the pros and cons of your choices. Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/picking-the-perfect-pricing-model-that-fits-your-app-with-hackerone-ceo-marten-mickos-podcast-508-and-video/

When is the best time to find your next gear of growth? Now. Whether you are growing rapidly or seeing growth start to slow, this talk will share proven ways to accelerate. Karen Peacock, CEO of Intercom and former SVP of Small Business at Intuit, will discuss how putting customers at the forefront of your business is the key to hitting that next level. She'll cover how to segment your customer base and analyze the health of each part as input to strategy, design and package your product based on value and build highly contextual and personalized customer experiences that lead to happy customers, retention, expansion, and growth. Karen will share stories based on her experience at Intuit building one of the world's largest SaaS product lines from $500M to $2.5B and in her current role leading Intercom's high growth on the path to IPO. Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/shifting-to-the-next-gear-proven-strategies-to-accelerate-growth-with-intercom/

Treasure Data was founded as a big data platform company, but struggled to compete against larger tech companies. After pivoting to a more vertical solution (CDP - Customer Data Platform), revenue growth accelerated, going from $20m to $100m in 3 years. Kazuki will share the struggles and decisions a part of pivoting the company. Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/100-million-arr-pivot-with-treasure-data-ceo-kazuki-ohta/

A lot of startups and SaaS companies that build a business around an open source technology struggle to commercialize in a way that is both profitable and scalable, while also supporting the open source community that is so critical to innovation. Join Ali Ghodsi, CEO and Co-Founder of Databricks and Nithya Ruff, Head of Open Source at Comcast and Chair of The Linux Foundation Board, who are both open source thought leaders, for a fireside discussion about the value open source software has delivered for enterprises and their perspectives on the current state of the open source landscape. Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/the-future-of-ai-open-source-databricks-ceo-ali-ghodsi/

In this episode, Bryan Smith, Co-Founder at Leon Health sits down with SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser, to talk about the best techniques to overcome Q4 and end-of-year stress in sales teams.

Gone are the days of Sales and Marketing building their own tech fiefdoms. In this podcast, Sydney Sloan, CMO at SalesLoft shares a holistic approach to adding technology that powers your revenue engine and shares examples of tech stacks, best practices, and org designs from successful companies at different growth stages. Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/the-revtech-stack-playbook-going-from-1m-to-100m-with-salesloft/

There are countless ways for founders to learn how to build strong teams, strengthen go-to-market processes, and focus on growth and customer success. But a topic that's becoming more important, especially after such a challenging year, is founder well-being. Shopify President Harley Finkelstein shares insight on how successful entrepreneurs approach personal change, coaching, and ongoing development to achieve work-life harmony. Harley will be joined by Felicis founder and Managing Partner Aydin Senkut and Felicis' Head of Founder Success Dasha Maggio. They will discuss what founders should ask for and how focusing on personal development can lead to stronger teams and better outcomes for the business. Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/why-founders-should-prioritize-personal-development-with-shopify/

The state of software buying has changed. SaaS spending dipped in the first half of 2020 but has since accelerated and increased as we reach the end of 2021. Amanda Malko, CMO at G2, shares a fascinating look at the data that reveals shifting patterns in the way consumers purchase software. Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/the-state-of-software-buying-from-smb-to-enterprise-with-g2s-cmo/

We're celebrating episode 500 of the SaaStr Podcast! Our SaaStr 'OG' podcaster, Harry Stebbings, Founder of The 20 Minute VC and, Jason Lemkin, SaaStr CEO and Founder discuss the future of the markets and how to build a successful SaaS sales team from the ground up. Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-scale-saas-sales-team-with-harry-stebbings-jason-lemkin/ Sponsors: https://shortcut.com/saastr https://www.litmus.com/saastr https://flatfile.com/saastr/

In this episode, Mark Jung, VP Marketing at Dooly, and Zoë Hartsfield, Community Manager at Dooly, sit down with SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser, to talk about best practices for brand re-launches and the cutting edge techniques for an impactful live event strategy. Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/saas-live-event-strategy-dooly/ Sponsors: https://calendly.com/ https://www.invoca.com/ https://stripe.com/ https://www.ontheclock.com/

Mark Roberge is the Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital, Sr. Lecturer at Harvard Business School, and author of the bestselling book, The Sales Acceleration Formula. In this podcast, he'll outline some of the most common SaaS sales potholes when scaling from $0 to $100 million and how to avoid them. Blog post & video: https://www.saastr.com/the-most-common-saas-sales-potholes-and-how-to-avoid-them-with-mark-roberge-podcast-498-and-video/ Sponsors: https://shortcut.com/saastr https://www.litmus.com/saastr https://flatfile.com/saastr/

Featuring 3 prominent Founders - from Calendly, Coda and LaunchDarkly - that have achieved scale, at "Founder Confidential" you will hear about the highs and lows of fundraising, working with a VC board, and real talk about what it really is like to be a true Founder. Moderator: Lloyed Lobo, Co-Founder, Boast.AI Panelists: Shishir Mehrotra, Cofounder and CEO, Coda Edith Harbaugh, Cofounder and CEO, LaunchDarkly David Barrett, Founder and CEO, Expensify Jason Lemkin, Founder and CEO, SaaStr Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/founder-confidential-saas-fundraising-expensify-launchdarkly-coda-boast-saastr/ Sponsors: https://www.invoca.com/ https://stripe.com/ https://www.ontheclock.com/

In today's SaaStr podcast, we present the Cutting Edge. Where SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser sits down with the best revenue leaders in SaaS to share cutting-edge tactics and strategies. In this episode, Doug Landis, Growth Partner at Emergence Capital talks about the art of business conversations and how your customers should inform your go-to-market messaging. Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/business-conversations-doug-landis-emergence-capital/ Sponsors: https://shortcut.com/saastr https://www.litmus.com/saastr https://calendly.com/ https://flatfile.com/saastr/

In this podcast, Aaron Levie, CEO, and Co-founder of Box will discuss "what's next in hybrid work," leading through a dynamic economy, the lessons learned from 2020, what technology needs to exist to bridge the gap between in-person and virtual, and what the office will look like whenever we return. Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/the-secrets-behind-creating-scalable-products-with-boxs-ceo-aaron-levie/ Sponsors: https://www.invoca.com/ https://stripe.com/ https://www.ontheclock.com/

Reaching unicorn status is goal #1 for many startups. In this podcast, Tope Awotona, CEO at Calendly, Bernadette Nixon, CEO at Algolia, Steve Sloan, CEO at Contentful and by Casey Renner, Partner at OpenView discuss how high-growth companies can strive for profitability while growing responsibly to reach unicorn status. Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/demystifying-the-unicorn-buzz-with-the-ceos-of-calendly-algolia-and-contentful/ Sponsors: https://shortcut.com/saastr https://www.litmus.com/saastr https://flatfile.com/saastr/

Jack Ryan, Sr. Partner Manager @ SaaStr, and Bryan Elsesser, VP Sales @ SaaStr talk about Jack's incredible journey from being completely paralyzed to climbing Mt. Whitney and sourcing over $1M in revenue for SaaStr. Full video: https://youtu.be/c3-Kzs81uD0 Sponsors: https://www.invoca.com/ https://stripe.com/ https://www.ontheclock.com/

As Marqeta's CMO, Vidya Peters drives marketing strategy and execution including brand, PR, corporate marketing, product marketing, events, and demand generation. Prior to joining, Vidya ran marketing for MuleSoft where she helped scale the business from pre-IPO to one of the most successful and fastest-growing public enterprise software companies and later one of the most significant enterprise acquisitions. In this podcast, learn why intent is the new lead and Vidya's hard-earned marketing lessons from Marqeta and Mulesoft. Sponsors: https://shortcut.com/saastr https://www.litmus.com/saastr https://flatfile.com/saastr/

You're the founder of a nicely growing SaaS startup that has just raised a Series A, Series B, or Series C funding round. You need to hire rapidly to seize the opportunity. But how much should you hire, what roles should you hire, and what should the org chart look like when you're done? David Sacks, co-founder and general partner at Craft will share what works from the 20 unicorns he's invested in, including AirBnB, Bird, ClickUp, Eventbrite, Facebook, Houzz, Lyft, OpenDoor, Palantir, Postmates, Reddit, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter, Uber, and Wish. Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/the-saas-org-chart-by-series-with-david-sacks/ Sponsors: https://shortcut.com/saastr https://www.litmus.com/saastr https://www.ontheclock.com/

Product-led scaling isn't about growth hacking. Scaling 10X is really hard…no matter if you are starting at $1M, $10M, $100M or $1B ARR. Join Dropbox GM, Rachel Wolan, as she shares hard-earned, practical lessons learned through product-led scaling at Dropbox, LiveRamp, and Talkdesk. Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/beyond-product-led-growth-7-lessons-learned-in-product-led-scaling-podcast-490-and-video/ Sponsors: https://www.invoca.com/ https://stripe.com/ https://www.ontheclock.com/

In today's SaaStr podcast, we present the Cutting Edge. Where SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser sits down with the best revenue leaders in SaaS to share cutting-edge tactics and strategies. In this episode, Abby Hammer, Chief Customer Officer and Head of Product at ChurnZero talks about what it takes to build a genuinely authentic and customer-centric support team. Sponsors: https://shortcut.com/saastr https://www.litmus.com/saastr https://www.ontheclock.com/

Michael Seibel has spent the last eight years advising thousands of startups at Y Combinator. In this podcast, he'll talk about the advice that he's found to be most transformative for startups. Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/the-essential-startup-advice-for-founders-with-y-combinators-michael-seibel-podcast-488-and-video/ Sponsors: https://www.invoca.com/ https://stripe.com/ https://www.ontheclock.com/

At the heart of product-led growth is the user. And in this podcast, Olivia Nottebohm, CRO of Notion ($10B valuation), will delve into the more complex aspects of product-led growth, and why they're essential for building a successful business that will thrive for years to come. Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/how-community-led-growth-drives-product-led-growth/ Sponsors: https://shortcut.com/saastr https://www.litmus.com/saastr https://www.ontheclock.com/

In today's SaaStr podcast, we present the Cutting Edge. Where SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser sits down with the best revenue leaders in SaaS to share cutting-edge tactics and strategies. In this episode, Amy Frampton, Head of Marketing at BambooHR shares high-impact best practices for scaling SDR teams. Sponsors: https://www.invoca.com/ https://stripe.com/ https://www.ontheclock.com/

PagerDuty's CEO, Jennifer Tejada, and Sameer Dholakia, former CEO of SendGrid and current PagerDuty Board Member share what fellow founders can learn from PagerDuty's post-IPO reality, and the realities of operating as a public company, two years later. Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/hyperscaling-post-ipo-with-pagerdutys-ceo-jennifer-tejada-podcast-485/ Sponsors: https://shortcut.com/saastr https://www.litmus.com/saastr/ https://www.ontheclock.com/

BVP partners Byron Deeter, Mary D'Onofrio, and Elliott Robinson share a state of the cloud economy, tactical lessons and case studies for early-stage founders, private market analysis, alongside key predictions and trends driving innovation in SaaS around the globe. Full video: https://youtu.be/HZDOQAGW6-E Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/the-state-of-the-cloud-2021-how-to-build-a-cloud-unicorn-with-bessemer-venture-partners-podcast-484-and-video/ Sponsors: https://www.invoca.com/ https://stripe.com/ https://www.ontheclock.com/

In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, sits down will Bill.com CEO, René Lacerte. Bill.com has become an SMB powerhouse, with 120,000+ customers and a stunning $25B+ market cap. All while selling at a $2k ACV! Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/10-learnings-from-rene-lacerte-ceo-of-bill-com/ Sponsors: https://terminus.com/ https://checkr.com/

A great deep dive on Vimeo at $330m+ in ARR, and especially, on how they do self-serve and enterprise at the same time with their CEO Jason Lemkin. Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/10-learnings-from-anjali-sud-ceo-of-vimeo/

As companies grow while sharing a single, common SaaS infrastructure, their security, reliability, and integration needs evolve. In this podcast, Asana's Head of Engineering, Prashant Pandey, will outline how to advance your infrastructure to support and grow with your largest customers, including tips on how to: - Earn enterprise trust with robust infrastructure - Give admins control over product usage - Build data isolation into your architecture and - Support customers by interconnecting their data

The financial services industry – banking, lending, insurance – has long benefited from deep competitive moats that limited competition and stifled innovation. Now with digital finance, innovation is occurring at lightning speed. New developments are popping up so quickly that it's hard to keep track of what's out there, and what isn't. In this session, Eric Sager, COO of Plaid will make clear what digital finance has enabled thus far, and what else is to come. Blog post + video: https://www.saastr.com/non-obvious-observations-about-the-future-of-fintech-with-plaid-coo-podcast-480-and-video/

Enterprise players are not born overnight, and the march upmarket cannot come at the cost of the customers that helped get you there. Zendesk's ability to balance Enterprise customer needs with SMBs has allowed it to thrive and become one of the very few SaaS companies to exceed $1B in annual revenue. In this podcast, Adrian McDermott, Zendesk's Chief Technology Officer, will explore the importance of balance in pursuing fast, sustainable growth. Full video: https://youtu.be/XQe6KI5aebc

Over the last decade, Square has introduced a variety of new hardware, software, and financial services offerings targeted at businesses of all sizes -- and yet, many still think of Square as only serving farmer markets and local coffee shops. In this session, you'll hear from Square's Global Head of Sales, Ashley Grech, on the challenges and learnings of Square's work to move upmarket and serve multiple customer segments at once. Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/moving-upmarket-and-serving-multiple-segments-with-square-global-head-of-sales-saastr-podcast-478-and-video/

In today's SaaStr Insider episode, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares the Top 10 Interview Questions to Ask VP of Marketing Candidates Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/top-10-questions-to-ask-a-vp-of-marketing-in-an-interview/

Recently, Vidya ran both the marketing and revenue functions for Marqeta, during a critical time as the company prepped for an IPO. This podcast will discuss the nuances of building a cohesive marketing and revenue strategy and share advice for other organizations seeking to align these functions during a critical time of growth for their companies. Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/secrets-to-aligning-marketing-revenue-strategy-with-marqeta-cmo-saastr-podcast-476-and-video/

The role of Chief Customer Officer only continues to rise and become an integral role for scaling in the Cloud. As HubSpot's first Chief Customer Officer, and now CEO, Yamini Rangan shares her top lessons for focusing on the Enterprise customer experience and the different approaches required for the Enterprise customer journey. Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/3-ceo-lessons-in-scaling-enterprise-cx-with-hubspots-ceo-saastr-podcast-475-and-video/

In today's SaaStr Insider episode, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin shares 10 ways to build a moat in SaaS. Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/whats-your-moat/

Chime wasn't the first digital bank, but it has become the largest one in the United States. In this episode, hear from Chris Britt, co-founder, and CEO, about Chime's journey in a highly competitive market and what it took to win. Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/ringing-the-bell-on-competition-with-chime-ceo-chris-britt-and-satya-patel-homebrew/

In just 5 years, TripActions has grown to be a leader in the travel management space. Michael Sindicich, GM of TripActions Liquid, a new expense management platform, that serves companies including Lyft, Toast, and Zoom will explore sales tips, tricks, and his lessons learned. Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-472-and-video-5-tips-to-reduce-the-enterprise-sales-cycle-with-tripactions/

A great deep dive on why the Cloud is on fire right now, and what it means for founders. Learn more at TheCloud100.com, a free digital event with the Top 100 private Cloud and SaaS companies on Aug 10!! Video + notes: https://www.saastr.com/25-of-the-cloud-100-is-growing-100-at-100m-arr-woah/

In today's digital age, product management and marketing need to have an integrated and collaborative relationship. In this podcast, hear from PagerDuty CPO, Sean Scott, and CMO, Julie Herendeen, on how PagerDuty has embraced a product-led growth model and the success they've seen since doing so. Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-470-and-video-how-product-marketing-should-work-together-with-pagerduty/

Everyone loves a unicorn, but how do you keep innovation alive past the start-up phase? Pushing past the awkward "teen years" and igniting the next wave of growth means rethinking your culture, organizational structure, and innovation investments. Join Workday's EVP of Product Pete Schlampp as he shares how he's accelerating product innovation on the hunt to $10B. Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-469-and-video-fueling-product-innovation-on-the-path-to-10-billion-with-workday/

In today's SaaStr podcast, we present the Cutting Edge. Where SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser sits down with the best revenue leaders in SaaS to share cutting-edge tactics and strategies. In this episode, Kevin Dorsey, VP of Inside Sales at PatientPop shares how to build trust in today's competitive market. Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/kevin-dorsey-patientpop-cutting-edge-sales/