The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

OpenPhone and AgentSync are two SaaS businesses with very different growth strategies, but the same ultimate goal: to continue selling while simultaneously problem-solving for current customers. They are a perfect example of implementing a growth model, mastering it, and then expanding horizons into other growth strategies with strategic testing and experimenting. Contrary to the title of this article, the two brands prove that product-led growth is neither panacea nor boondoggle, but rather a winning strategy for the appropriate product when thoughtfully implemented. OpenPhone and AgentSync are two SaaS businesses with very different growth strategies, but the same ultimate goal: to continue selling while simultaneously problem-solving for current customers. They are a perfect example of implementing a growth model, mastering it, and then expanding horizons into other growth strategies with strategic testing and experimenting. Contrary to the title of this article, the two brands prove that product-led growth is neither panacea nor boondoggle, but rather a winning strategy for the appropriate product when thoughtfully implemented. Jenn Knight, Co-founder and CTO of AgentSync, and Daryna Kulya, Co-founder of OpenPhone, discuss how different approaches have helped each brand reach its target audience and accomplish its goals, the potential of product-led growth, and how to scale growth strategies to yield desirable results. Session moderated by Craft Ventures Partner & COO Brian Murray, discuss how different approaches have helped each brand reach its target audience and accomplish its goals, the potential of product-led growth, and how to scale growth strategies to yield desirable results. Session moderated by Craft Ventures Partner & COO Brian Murray. Full video: https://youtu.be/L4oRfut9ufI 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

What do you remember about your experience in the workplace prior to 2020? Is it the moments of collaborative synergy and collective achievements? Is it the feeling of solving complex problems and hitting milestones with your team? Perhaps it's the joy of closing deals and celebrating with your colleagues? It's been more than two years since the pandemic interrupted our daily work life, and companies are taking stock and preparing for a return to the workplace. How can company leadership retain these important experiences of collaboration in the workplace and pair them with the opportunity and flexibility we've discovered since working remotely? Raise CEO and co-founder, Justin Bedecarre, and president, Felipe Gomez-Kraus, discuss how SaaS companies can build successful hybrid workplaces that are empathetic while incentivizing their team to return to the office. Full video: https://youtu.be/ohe10zViLdw 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

Reaching the first billion is a milestone for every SaaS company, so what's the best way to get there? During his SaaStr Annual presentation, Tom Clayton, CRO of Bill.com shared his insights and advice for growing revenue streams to maximize business success. Video: https://youtu.be/AY5NFn1CSVo Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/the-path-to-a-billion-dollars-how-to-create-multi-revenue-streams-with-bill-com-cro-tom-clayton-pod-536-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

All high-growth startups reach a point in scaling their business when their processes and operations start to inhibit their growth. From SendGrid to DigitalOcean, Yancey Spruill is the person these startups brought in when they were ready to graduate to the big leagues. In his presentation, Yancey will discuss the most common mistakes startup founders make and how to overcome hurdles at different stages of growth. Full video: https://youtu.be/MD_wD5hp7r0 Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/hacks-for-founders-of-high-growth-startups-with-digitaloceans-ceo-yancey-spruill/ 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

Panelists: Katrina Wong, VP Marketing and Demand Generation Segment Asawari Samant, Head of Marketing, Anyscale Jeffrey Yoshimura, CMO and Customer Experience Officer, Snyk Three marketing leaders discuss the importance of community, data, and experimentation, as well as the do's and don'ts of using agencies. This episode is an abbreviated version of the session. You can see the full session here: https://youtu.be/7wucuUQSQvQ Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/marketing-secrets-to-hypergrowth-from-building-elastic-zuora-and-segment/ 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

In this episode, Marilee Bear, SVP North America Enterprise Sales at Zendesk sits down with SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser, to talk about the best practices to deploy in motivating and organizing your sales team in Q1.

Talent Acquisition to Talent Access: Building a winning culture with a workforce that is 75% freelancers Upwork CEO Hayden Brown addresses common myths around working with freelancers, such as, "Freelancers aren't reliable," and, "I can't build my company culture with freelancers." She'll share how Upwork has scaled by including freelancers in every part of the company and treating them as part of the team rather than outsiders, and how it can benefit every company to have access to the talent it needs, when it needs it, regardless of geography or business ebbs and flows. Full video: https://youtu.be/APgXDu37UIk Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/the-secrets-to-scaling-a-public-company-with-a-75-freelancer-workforce-with-upworks-ceo-hayden-brown-pod-532-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

Joe will share four case studies of companies that have achieved transformational growth using asynchronous communication. You'll hear how they've rebuilt sales processes, won talent wars, delivered best-in-class products, and fully reimagined the employee experience. He'll also highlight the work principles fueling these initiatives and the opportunities ahead for companies that employ them across their teams. Full video: https://youtu.be/OAxJvk04JKU Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/4-ways-to-get-to-10-billion-by-working-async-without-burning-out-with-loom-ceo-joe-thomas-pod-531-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

SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, shares the top 20 PLG (product-led growth), Self-Serve, Free, and Freemium lessons we can learn from everyone from Asana to Slack, Monday to Zoom, and Shopify to Squarespace.

SaaS is evolving rapidly. In many ways, we are witnessing the equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion in terms of the number of SaaS companies created each month. And these startups look different than their predecessors. Trends like vertical SaaS, Product-led Growth, and payment make the industry almost unrecognizable compared to the era of the SaaS pioneers more than a decade ago. Yet many companies are still adopting Customer Success practices - like fixed size-based segmentation and activity-based "check-ins" - that were created in the 2010s. Modern cloud businesses are rethinking Customer Success in many ways. They are looking at it as a growth engine, shifting focus from purely looking at churn to increasingly emphasizing Net Dollar Retention. They are recognizing the need for CSMs, in some cases, to be deeply technical. And they are, particularly in Product-led Growth companies, integrating Sales and CS motions and organizations tightly together. In this talk, Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta will cover 10 best practices that represent the cutting edge of Customer Success. Check it out to save your company from becoming a SaaS dinosaur. Full video: https://youtu.be/PzCnKSL2kx8 Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/10-things-changing-now-in-the-world-of-customer-success-with-gainsight-ceo-nick-mehta-pod-529-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

Postman CEO Abhinav Asthana shares how community, product, data can power marketing, customer success, and sales are the key elements for the next generation of SaaS software leaders. Full video here: https://youtu.be/jK8trhy5i-k Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/building-a-5-6b-company-with-a-product-led-flywheel-with-postmans-ceo-abhinav-asthana-pod-528-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

A crucial part of any business model is customer acquisition. In order for a company to optimize their customer base, data must be intrinsic to their strategy. Join Gorgias CEO Romain Lapeyre as he discusses how the company acquired 10,000 SMB customers from just data alone. Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Video: https://youtu.be/5OJZM-uH4uE Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/acquiring-10000-smb-customers-solely-from-data-with-gorgias-ceo-romain-lapeyre-pod-527-video/ 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

The biggest challenge in building a data infrastructure company over the next decade will be to redefine strategies for awareness, activation, user-centricity, and growth. While all of this is possible in theory, building categories with staying power in the age of the public cloud remains a lofty goal. Emil Eifrem, CEO and co-founder of Neo4j, will discuss the blueprint that's emerging and some of the lessons he's learned after launching Neo4j Aura, the company's fully-managed graph database as a service. Video: https://youtu.be/6vay3Ny3o0M Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/modern-infrastructure-companies-in-the-cloud-lessons-learned-building-a-2-billion-database-company-from-scratch-with-neo4js-ceo-emil-eifrem/ 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

Marketing isn't one size fits all, particularly at a hyper-growth company. In this session, Kady Srinivasan, SVP, Global Head of Marketing at marketing automation unicorn, Klaviyo, will pull from her 20+ years of experience and share actionable tips on how you can scale your team, your campaigns and more. Full video: https://youtu.be/s4WZcgL5fc0 Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/6-steps-to-managing-marketing-hyper-growth-at-scale-with-klayvio-global-head-of-marketing-kady-srinivasan-pod-525-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

The world of product-led growth is a highly dynamic space. Join this session with Calendly CMO Patrick Moran and Head of Marketing Growth & Demand Gen Garrett Scott to learn more about these changes and how they are reflected in Calendly's evolution as a SaaS company. Full video: https://youtu.be/ey9aiYOupSg Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/whats-changed-in-product-led-growth-with-calendly-cmo-patrick-moran/ 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

We've talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales. And we'll keep talking about it — so long as 70% of first-time VPs of Sales don't make it 1 year. In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, shares his best advice for all first-time VPs coming into a SaaS startup. Video: https://youtu.be/_gWZxKwV44w Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-not-to-fail-as-a-first-time-vp-of-sales/

When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. But what are the essentials of scaling up, and how do you navigate obstacles along the way to function as a high-impact organization? Cathy Gao, Partner at Sapphire Ventures, and Anoushka Vaswani, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, moderated a panel with Carlos Delatorre, CRO at TripActions, and Latané Conant, CMO at 6sense to discuss how you can scale your startup from $20 million ARR to $200 million ARR through go-to-market execution, talent, and culture.

Driving peak sales performance is a mission most SaaS companies strive to accomplish. Yet, sales team targets are often set extremely high, with management expecting their teams to miss. This might bring success for the company, but it leads to negative experiences for the sales rep, and your teams may ultimately fail to perform to their fullest potential. Hootsuite CRO Melissa Murray Bailey shares secrets to running a successful SaaS sales team and reducing employee turnover. Video: https://youtu.be/wl1Qx4KHqMo Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-create-a-high-performing-saas-sales-organization-with-hootsuite-cro-melissa-murray-bailey-pod-521-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

Every high-growth organization inevitably reaches the point of pivoting its strategy and offerings to capture new audiences—a journey made more complex with the new demands emerging this past year. In this session, Dorian Stone will share lessons learned from Grammarly's evolution from consumer to SMB to enterprise, address common assumptions and pitfalls in the process of scaling, and reveal must-know strategies to drive efficient growth this year and beyond.

Vimeo went public in May as an $8 billion powerhouse in video software. Better known as the indie version of YouTube for more than a decade, the company has redefined itself from a B2C destination to the B2B solution that empowers any business to create, collaborate and connect with professional-quality video. Join Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud for a conversation with Brent Thill, Financial Analyst @ Jefferies about spotting potential in what is now a $70 billion market, and how operating as a founder within a 16-year old company helped her take bets on a strategy that's paying off. Full video: https://youtu.be/9JgkbS4FgjQ Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/from-b2c-to-billions-how-vimeo-executed-a-b2b-pivot-that-redefined-their-future-with-vimeo-ceo-anjali-sud/ 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

Building out a marketing channel is like building product. It takes countless iterations and constant market feedback to get right. This session will introduce tactics on how to slowly and methodically test, assess success, and eventually scale a marketing channel until it hits a ceiling and it's time to move to the next one.

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/