The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

David Skok is a serial entrepreneur turned VC at Matrix Partners. He founded four companies: Skok Systems, Corporate Software Europe, Watermark Software, and SilverStream Software and did one turnaround with Xionics. Three of the companies he founded went public and one was acquired. In 2001 David joined Matrix Partners, who had backed his last two startups, as a General Partner. David’s successful exits as an investor at Matrix include: HubSpot, JBoss, AppIQ, Tabblo, Netezza, Diligent Technologies, CloudSwitch, TribeHR, GrabCAD, OpenSpan and Enservio. David currently serves on the boards of Atomist, CloudBees, Digium, Meteor, Namely HR, Salsify, and Zaius. You can also find David’s amazing blog here! Huge thanks to Hardi Meybaum and Jason Lemkin for the intro to David today. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did David make his way into the world of SaaS? What was it about Matrix that made him want to make the transition from operations to VC? Why are metrics so important? What role do they play in an organisation? How do good founders respond to questions on not achieving sales targets? Why are SaaS businesses immune from being measured on standard financials like GAP financials? What metrics in SaaS really determine the trajectory of the business? How can founders examine unit economics to determine whether they have a sustainable SaaS business? How does David address sales rep productivity? How much in ARR should they be booking in relation to their annual comp package? 60 Second SaaStr If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr David Skok This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Taro Fukuyama is Founder & CEO @ AnyPerk. Born and raised in Tokyo, Taro is a Y Combinator graduate with AnyPerk and part of the first Japanese team ever to be admitted to YC. He was also named one of Business Insider’s “Silicon Valley 100 Coolest People in Tech Right Now.”Fun fact, Taro co-founded AnyPerk in a Taco Bell car park! What a story! They also have investment from the likes of DCM, YC, Gary Vaynerchuk, previous SaaStr guest Nick Mehta and many more incredible people. I would also like to say a huge thanks to Jason lemkin for the intro to Taro today. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Taro make his way to San Francisco and come to found AnyPerk? As a first time founder, how did Taro look to build out the management team? What were the inherent challenges and what did Taro look for in his core executive? What are the 6 questions that will determine whether you have clarity in your organisation? Why is clarity so important to unify the team? What does this clarity allow? What are the 5 steps to building a cohesive team? How can CEOs be both vulnerable and authoritative as a leader? How should founders approach offsites? What is the necessary preparation? How should they be structured for optimal productivity? What can be done to ensure they produce meaningful outcomes? 60 Second SaaStr Favourite SaaS reading material? What does Taro know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? The biggest mistake companies make with employee happiness? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Taro Fukuyama This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Matt MacInnis is the Founder & CEO @ Inkling, the company that brings policies and procedures to life for your desktop workers. The company has backing from some of the best investors in the world with the likes of Sequoia, Felicis and Kapor Capital behind them. As for Matt, prior to Inkling, he spent 7 years at the one and only Apple Inc. I would also like to say a huge thank you to Taro Fukuyama, Founder @ AnyPerk for the intro to Matt. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Matt make his way into the world of SaaS and Inkling from Apple Inc? Does culture in sales really matter? Is it not just about hitting the f*****g number? What are the two opposing culture that exist in the world of sales team? Why is missionary always better? How can a sales leader instill a competitive element into a missionary sales culture? What are the inherent challenges and how does Matt approach them? Is it possible to have a fantastic sales and a fantastic engineering culture? How can the two live under the same roof and what needs to happen to ensure this works? In terms of measurement, how can a founder know whether they have a strong culture? What are the signs and indications? 60 Second SaaStr Productivity Tools What does Matt know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning? Biggest mistake most SaaS companies are enacting with their sales process? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Matt MacInnis This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Whitney Sales is the VP of Sales at TalentIQ, has been involved in bringing products to market and managing high growth sales teams for over a decade. She is the creator of the Sales Method, a strategic framework for launching products, which she used to help three companies earn a place on the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies list. Prior to joining TalentIQ, Whitney held executive positions at Wanelo and SpringAhead and currently serves as a mentor at StartX, Alchemist, and previous guest Acceleprise and a huge thanks to Michael Cardamone @ Acceleprise for the intro to Whitney today. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Whitney make her way into the world of SaaS and more specifically sales? What are the 5 key criteria that founders need to consider before embarking on the sales process? How specific and targeted should a customer profile be? How many profiles can they have? What are the best questions to determine the optimal customer segment? How can founders identify which buyers are innovators? What tools are best for this? Once discovered, how should founders approach these innovators? Founders learn about gaps in customer information from selling. So how close should the integration of content marketing and selling be in the early days? 60 Second SaaStr What are Whitney’s preferred tools for her tech stack? What does Whitney know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning? Does the proliferation of sales tools make it harder or easier? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Whitney Sales This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Ryan Petersen is the Founder and CEO of Flexport, the freight forwarder for the internet age. Flexport recently raised a phenomenal $65m Series B from the likes of Founders Fund, First Round, Felicis, Bloomberg Beta, Yuri Milner, Susa Ventures and more incredible investors. With none other than YC founder Paul Graham stating ‘Ryan has the rare ability to not just satisfy the market but grow it’. Prior to Flexport, Ryan was Founder and CEO of ImportGenius.com, the largest provider of business intelligence to the import-export industry. A huge hand to Chad Byers @ Susa and Jason Lemkin for the intro In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Ryan make her way into the world of SaaS and come to found Flexport? How does Ryan view NPS? Why is he so bullish? Why is it the most important metric? What are the downsides to relying on NPS? What is the optimal method to structure internal compensation structures? Why is compensation based on NPS and Net not effective and what are the dangers of this? How can founders look to implement bottoms up decision making in their organisation? What are the benefits of this and what are the challenges to it’s implementation? Ryan is hiring his first VP of Marketing? What should founders look for in their VP of Marketing? Why is now the right time and what challenges has Ryan faced in the process? 60 Second SaaStr Fave SaaS reading material? What does Ryan know now that he wishes he had known when he started? What has been his biggest learning throughout the Flexport journey? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Ryan Petersen This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Josh Reeves is the Founder and CEO @ Gusto. Gusto reimagines payroll, benefits, HR, and personal finance and it is this reimagination that has led to their recent addition to the unicorn club with investors including Google Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Data Collective and General Catalyst, just to name a few. As for Josh, he was selected for the 2012 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Prior to co-founding Gusto, he was the CEO and co-founder of Unwrap, a SaaS startup which was acquired in 2010, and he began his career as an early employee at Zazzle. I would also like to give a big hand to Jason Lemkin and Phil Libin for the intro to Josh today. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: HR and Payroll is not sexy so how did Josh make his way into the industry and what was the a-ha moment for Gusto? Josh has said before ‘he lives and breathes how a company is built.’ How has Josh looked to grow and develop his own internal organisation at Gusto? How does this vary with stage? Josh has hired over 300 people at Gusto, how does he approach the interview process? What is the right way for employers to approach the ‘making offers’ stage? How important does Josh feel it is to have an ownership culture and internal entrepreneurialism? How can this environment be fostered and developed? 60 Second SaaStr How employers can ensure new employees have an amazing first day? What does Josh know now that he wishes he had known when he started? The biggest mistake SaaS companies make with their HR and payroll organisation? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Josh Reeves This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Jeff Fernandez is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Grovo, the enterprise learning solution that allows you to educate and empower your employees. At Grovo, Jeff oversees sales, investor relations, and the building of Grovo’s award-winning culture. Prior to founding Grovo in 2010, Jeff served as product manager at Clickable (acquired by Syncapse). From 2006 until 2009, he led business development and sales for Doostang (acquired by Universum Global), an online career networking community. Jeff is also a bit of a rockstar off the field getting the highest honours from Harvard penning his thesis on human performance and then playing semi pro football for the New York Rebels in 2008. I would also like to say a massive thank you to Greg Sands @ Costanoa Venture Capital for the intro to Jeff today. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Jeff came to found Grovo? What was the a-ha moment for him? Jeff is renowned to ‘lead from the heart’. What are the advantages of this as a CEO? How does this affect the company, the culture? What are the inherent challenges? Question from Greg Sands: Jeff likes to ‘work the sales floor’, how does that work? What does Jeff actually do? What have been Jeff’s observations having seen the sales floor up close? How does Jeff look to structure the compensation for his sales team? How does this vary with time and stage? What does Jeff mean when he says ‘sometimes you have to go slow to go fast’? How does that play out in his management style? 60 Second SaaStr Jeff’s biggest productivity tips? Biggest challenge for Jeff in being CEO @ Grovo? What does Jeff know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Jeff Fernandez This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Sangram Vajre is the Co-Founder & CMO at Terminus, the leading account-based marketing platform. Prior to Terminus, Sangram was the Head of Marketing @ Pardo, prior to it’s acquisition by Salesforce. Sangram is also the brains behind the marvel that is Flip My Funnel which challenges the status quo of traditional B2B marketing practices and transform how B2B marketers approached driving revenue in their organization. You might remember in a recent episode Tim Kopp @ Hyde Park Ventures cited Sangram and his revolutionary approach with Flip My Funnel as one to watch. If that was not enough, Sangram is also the author of "Account-Based Marketing For Dummies". In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Sangram came to found Flip My Funnel and Terminus? What was the a-ha moment and origin story for Sangram? Why does Sangram believe the funnel needs to be reinvented? Where are the inefficiencies? What can be done to optimise the funnel and what are the steps to do so? How did Sangram establish such a strong brand in the B2B space on a shoe-string budget in such a short space of time? What tactics can be done to exert your authority over a domain? How does Sangram look to create an ownership culture of internal entrepreneurs at Terminus? Why is it so important to try and hire people who know more than you? Why did Sangram decide to hire a customer success rep before any other function? What did he look for in his first CS person? What does Sangram thinks is fundamental to being successful at CS? 60 Second SaaStr Biggest learning from founding and scaling Terminus? Sangram’s Favourite SaaS reading material? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Sangram Vajre This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Matt Murphy is a Managing Director @ Menlo Ventures where he focuses on multi-stage investments across cloud infrastructure and AI-first SaaS applications. Since joining Menlo, Matt has led investments in Heap Analytics, Usermind, and Veriflow. Previously, Matt was a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins for over 15 years. Matt was also an observer at Google (from initial investment to IPO), launched the iFund in ’08 (a collaborative initiative with Apple to build the defining applications on the iOS platform), and led KPCB’s investments in AutoNavi (Nasdaq: AMAP, 2010) and Aerohive Networks (Nasdaq: HIVE, 2014). Before joining KPCB, Matt worked at semiconductor startup Netboost (acquired by Intel) and prior to that at Sun Microsystems. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Matt made his way into the world of VC and enterprise investing? What were his biggest takeaways from working alongside John Doerr @ Kleiner Perkins? How is the enterprise investing landscape changing? What fundamental shifts have we seen and what have been the dominant repercussions of this? Nakul Mandan stated that ‘we would see the 2nd wave of consumerisation of enterprise through business model’. Does Matt agree with this and what key trends is Matt most excited about in SaaS? How does Matt look to evaluate early stage SaaS valuations? What are people fundamentally misvaluing and how should the topic be approached? Is it harder now for SaaS companies to raise than ever before? What metrics does Matt look for in a Series A investment opportunity? 60 Second SaaStr Matt's Fave SaaS reading material? What are the greenfield opportunities in SaaS today? What was Matt's biggest takeaway from working with John Doerr @ Kleiner Perkins? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Matt Murphy This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Brandon Bruce is the Co-Founder and COO @ Cirrus Insight, the plugin for Gmail and Outlook that automatically updates Salesforce as you work. Cirrus is a bootstrapped startup with triple-digit yearly growth since it's founding 4 years ago and has grown from 2 co-founders in 2011 to a team of 55 people today. And I have to say a huge thanks to Aaron Ross, Author @ Predictable Revenue for the intro to Brandon today. Likewise, if you want to join me and Jason for mojitos at SaaStr Annual 2017 and also want an incredible 20% off ticket prices, then all you have to do is click here! In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Brandon make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found Cirrus Insight? What does Brandon mean he says he likes to take the road less travelled in Sales? What have been his learnings from his interactions on the front line of sales? How has it changed how he approaches sales? How are Cirrus so efficient at events in terms of getting more leads, meeting and sales? What is the strategy going into events? How can we optimise this? Speaking of events in general there, how does Brandon look to define prospect and buyer personas? How important is this for events? How narrow and specific do these personas have to be? Brandon has stated before in the importance of learning and doing manual before automatic with the future in mind. What do he mean by this and how does it affect his roadmap and thought process to the future going forward? 60 Second SaaStr Favourite SaaS reading material? What does Brandon know now that he wish he had known at the beginning? The biggest challenge of running Cirrus and how Brandon looks to combat it? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Brandon Bruce This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

John Barrows is essentially the Godfather of Sales. We often have VPs of Sales from tech titans on the show but who trains those VPs and sales reps to be the best in the world at sales? That is where John Barrows comes in, with clients including Dropbox, Box, Marketo, Twilio and many more, John has amassed a wealth of knowledge and experience allowing him to provide the most proactive sales tips and strategies to optimise the sales process. If you have not checked out his blog, that really is a must and can be found here. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did John make his way into the world of SaaS and more specifically sales optimisation? How has John seen the sales landscape evolve? What has been the effect of the segmentation of roles pioneered by Salesforce? What will be the catalyst that causes teams to shift from current sales methods and teams to AI replacing the sales team? What does this depend on? How does John view the integration of sales and marketing? How does the rise of ABM change this? How can sales reps perfect the balance of being direct and being rude? How important is a summary email? What is the optimal structure and how should sales reps follow up on summary emails? 60 Second SaaStr The most common question asked to John by VPs of Sales? What are the benefits of Top Down prospecting? Do execs need structure? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr John Barrows This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

John Gleeson is VP of Customer Success @ Affinio where John was employee #1. 2 years and a half years later, John is the VP of Customer Success following their Series A and has seen the team expand to over 40 people and have offices in New York, Toronto, Halifax and Ireland. John has written a special blog post just for SaaStr listeners today outlining his ultimate guide to customer success reading, it is my go to guide for customer success. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did John make his way into the world of SaaS and more specifically customer success? John has previously described customer success as ‘The Analogue of Sales’, what does he mean by this? How does it affect the way he views customer success How does John view the role of sales vs customer success in large accounts? How do they partner to drive expansion? How customer success managers be truly productive at the enterprise level? How can they measure their success with this productivity increase? Moving downstream, why does John believe the $2m benchmark per CSM is the hardest phase? What skills do you need to be successful at this stage? With so many accounts, is it possible to be proactive? 60 Second SaaStr The biggest mistake most companies make when it comes to customer success? Most common questions asked by CSM leaders? Measuring customer success? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr John Gleeson This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Lawrence Coburn is the Founder & CEO @ DoubleDutch, the category leader for event marketing automation. If you are at SaaStr and have the pleasure of using the SaaStr app, yep that is DoubleDutch! They have raised more than $75m in VC funding from some of the best VCs in the world including Index Ventures, Bessemer, Floodgate and Bullpen. As for Lawrence he is a three time entrepreneur, Lawrence also founded RateItAll, a top ten consumer review property, and LocationMeme, a blog about location based services. Lawrence is also the geo-location editor for The Next Web, is a mentor at IO Ventures, a San Francisco based incubator, and on the advisory board for the Enterprise 2.0 conference. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Lawrence made his way into SaaS and then came to found DoubleDutch, the category leader for mobile social events? How does Lawrence look to use SDR as a growth engine and does he think it is important to invest in this early to build the machine? How has Lawrence found the transition in terms of moving upmarket from SMB to Enterprise? How does Lawrence look to differentiate himself in such a crowded market? How has Lawrence seen the evolution of the team? Does he agree there are different people for different phases of the growth cycle? How does Lawrence look to use customer success as a bridge to cover gaps in product? 60 Second SaaStr Fave SaaS resource? What does Lawrence know now that he wish he had known at the beginning? What is the biggest challenge Lawrence faces to this day? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Lawrence Coburn This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Michael Cardamone is the Managing Director of Acceleprise, a SaaS focused accelerator based in San Francisco and backed by leading operators. He is also an advisor to and angel investor in early stage SaaS companies. Prior to Acceleprise, Michael was one of the first 30 employees at Box in a business development role and then led partnerships at an EdTech company called AcademixDirect. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Michael make his way into the world of SaaS and then start Acceleprise in SF? How can founders know when is the right time to ship product? Does Michael agree with Reid Hoffman, ‘if you are not embarrassed by your V1, it is too late’? How should startups look to establish a pricing mechanism at such an early stage? What are Mike’s thoughts on freemium? Before Mike has said founders can charge more than they think. Why does he think this and how can founders know when they have reached their price ceiling? Do founders need to sell their own product? How should founders approach the sales learning process? What questions should they be asking How important is it for a startup to have an ideal customer profile? Should founders be looking for influential customers early or just getting as many dollars in as possible? How impactful can big brands and companies be as customers to early stage companies? 60 Second SaaStr Scrappiness: good or not as it just simply isn’t scalable? Most common challenge for Mike’s companies? Fave SaaS reading material? Entrepreneur optimism: Let it run or be wary? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Michael Cardamone This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Eoghan McCabe is CEO and co-founder of Intercom. The customer communications platform that has taken the saas world by storm in the last few years with 116m in VC funding from truly some of the world’s best including Bessemer, Social Capital and Index Ventures. He previously founded Contrast, an award-winning software design consultancy, and co-founded Exceptional, a developer tool startup acquired in 2011 and now a part of Rackspace. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Intercom break out in the early days with seemingly lots of competition and an install before you buy process? In terms of category creation, in the early days how did Eoghan convince people of a product that had previously never existed? At what stage did Eoghan and Des stop selling the product themselves? When is the right time to hire your VP of Sales? How did Eoghan establish a pricing mechanism for Intercom? Why is Eoghan such an advocate for value based pricing? Why it is so important for founders and sales teams to have empathy for the customer? How can you practice empathy? How can you cheat empathy? How does Eoghan manage a distributed workforce so well? What does he do to create links and culture between both the Dublin and SF office? 60 Second SaaStr Biggest advice to SaaS founders? Fave SaaS reading material? Most proud moment of Intercom’s journey? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Eoghan McCabe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Louis Jonckheere is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ Showpad, the company that enables sales teams by making content, findable, presentable and trackable. They have raised from some incredible investors including Dawn Capital, Hummingbird Ventures and Insight Venture Partners who more recently led their Series C $50m fundraise earlier this year. As for Louis, Showpad is his second company. He and his co-founder, Pieterjan, founded the mobile development agency, In The Pocket in 2010, where Louis still serves on the board. Prior to In The Pocket, Louis was a Strategic Partnership Manager at Netlog, where he first met Pieterjan. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Louis come to found Showpad? What was the a-ha moment for him? How did Louis look to build out the core executive team? What have been the big lessons learnt? What have been the big mistakes and how has Louis changed his approach since? How did Louis look to scale the customer success team? At what stage did Louis hire his first CSM? Is $2m ARR the right benchmark? Do customer success teams need to be product specialists? How has Louis looked to build a scalable and repeatable sales process with Showpad? At what point did Louis decide to hire sales reps for the first time? What benchmark was this? Did Louis hire the first 2 reps at the same time? 60 Second SaaStr Louis’ Fave SaaS resource? Louis’s biggest advice to SaaS founders? What does Louis know today that he wishes he had known at the start? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Louis Jonckheere This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Tim Kopp, Tim is a Managing Partner with Hyde Park Venture Partners one of the leading early stage VCs in the Midwest. Prior to joining Hyde Park Venture Partners, Tim was the CMO of ExactTarget for 6+ years, leading a global team of nearly 300 amazing marketing leaders. Tim helped grow ExactTarget from $47M to $400M in revenue, through IPO, and ultimately to a $2.7B sale to Salesforce. He previously spent 10+ years in consumer marketing with P&G and Coca-Cola. You can follow his advice for startup executives and marketing leaders at his newly launched website:www.cmovc.com. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Tim made his way into the world of B2B marketing and then made the transition into the world of venture? Why does Tim believe marketing in B2B is unbuilt and uninspired? What would Tim like to see change? What are SaaS CEO’s doing wrong with regards to organisation and scaling of their marketing team? What questions should they be asking? Why does the best B2B marketers come from the world of B2C? What makes them more effective than current B2B marketers? Why is ABM the most revolutionary thing to happen to marketing for the last decade? How can startups and CEOs integrate ABM into their current marketing forecasts? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Tim Kopp This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Jim Stoneham is VP of Infrastructure Products @ New Relic and Jim joined New Relic when the company acquired Opsmatic, where he was co-founder and CEO. Prior to Opsmatic, Jim was CEO of Payvment, a social commerce platform for SMB sellers that was acquired by Intuit in early 2013. He joined Payvment from Yahoo, where he led Communities (Flickr, Answers, Groups, Delicious) as well as the integrations of Facebook and Twitter into Yahoo products. Prior to that, he spent several years building consumer products at Kodak and Apple. A huge thanks to Cindy Padnos @ Illuminate for making the introduction, without which this interview could not have happened. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Jim came to found Opsmatic and why he decided to sell to New Relic over other acquirers? Why does Jim have a preference toward hiring senior experienced individuals over young talent to the founding team? At what stage should startups look to bring on fresh, inexperienced candidates who are passionate for the job but in need of mentoring and guidance? Question From Cindy Padnos: John is a master of employee onboarding, so how does John look to onboard new employees in the most effective and fast manner? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Jim Stoneham This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Chad Arimura is the Founder & CEO @ Iron.io, where he drives the team to build the world's best cloud infrastructure services. Now they do have some pretty sizeable clients including the likes of Google, Zenefits, Twitter, Whole Foods and they have the backing from the likes of Steve Anderson’s Baseline Ventures, Bain Capital, Matt Ocko from Data Collective and our friends at Sapphire Ventures just to name a few and Prior to co-founding Iron.io, Chad was CIO and founder of AllDorm Inc., a collegiate media and marketing company that provided fundraisers and viral marketing campaigns for clients such as Volkswagen, Domino's Pizza, and Visa. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Chad came to found Iron.io ? With a complex product like Iron, how much of a role does education play in the onboarding process for prospective new clients? To what extent does content marketing play the dominant marketing function for Iron both in terms of educating customers and converting potential customers? How does Chad view the balance of much larger ACV clients with long sales cycles compared to SME’s with smaller ticket sizes and shorter sales cycles? What are the challenges when selling to large corporates and CIO’s in the traditional corporates? 60 Second SaaStr What does Chad know now that he wish he had known at the beginning? What is Chad’s favourite reading material? How does Chad deal with stress as a Founder & CEO? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Chad Arimura This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Greg Sands is the Founder and Managing Partner of Costanoa Venture Capital. Prior to founding Costanoa Venture Capital, Greg was a Managing Director at Sutter Hill, where he was an early investor in the likes of Feedburner, AllBusiness, and Return Path just to name a few. Before Sutter Hill, Greg was the first hire at Netscape after its founding engineering team. As Netscape’s 1st Product Manager, Greg wrote the initial business plan, coined the name Netscape, and created the SuiteSpot Business Unit, which he grew from zero to $150m in revenue. He also served as Manager of Business Development at Cisco where he architected a global channel management plan. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Greg made his way into the world of VC from Netscape? Why did Greg see the opportunity for an early stage B2B fund like Costanoa? Why did this fund not exist in B2B but was becoming popularised in B2C? To what extent does Greg agree SaaS investing is ‘traction capital’? When investing pre metrics, what are the signs of promise Greg looks for? How does Greg assess product market fit? Why is customer segmentation and customer archetypes so important? What does Greg make of the ‘full stack CEO’? Is it better to be specialised or jack of all trades? When is the right time to specialise? 60 Second SaaStr Greenfield opportunity in SaaS? Biggest advice to startup founders in SaaS? Easier or harder to raise money now than before? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Greg Sands This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Jon Herstein is the Senior Vice President of Customer Success at Box where Jon works to ensure that all of Box's Enterprise and Business customers are phenomenally successful. Jon has worked with some of the biggest names in the tech world, including Accenture, Informatica and most recently NetSuite, where he served as VP of Professional Services for North America and EMEA. Before NetSuite, Jon led the turnaround of Informatica's European consulting practice during a multi-year expatriate assignment, which eventually led to a 65% jump in revenue. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Jon made his way into the newly created category of customer success? How does Box define customer success and how does that impact their view and approach to the SaaS industry? Box has gone through the definition of private hypergrowth and is now in the next phase as a public company - how has that affected the CSM strategy? Box now have some very large accounts, how do you distinguish between the role of sales vs CS in large accounts? How do they partner to drive expansion? Jon is renowned for prioritizing career paths for his team, how does he accomplish this and balance this with wider operational and strategic goals of box? 60 Second SaaStr: What's the most common question Jon hears from CSM leaders? What's one innovative idea Jon has tested that might be shared with the audience, vis-a-vis Customer Success? What do you know now that you wish you had know when you started? The biggest mistake current saas companies are enacting with their CS process? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Jon Herstein This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Kristen Koh Goldstein is the Co-Founder @ HireAthena, the on demand workforce specialising in accounting, HR and payroll. Prior to Hire Athena, Kristen was the Co-Founder @ Scalus, where she raised millions of dollars in venture capital from top VCs including Google Ventures and Sherpa Capital. Before that Kristen was the Co-Founder @ BackOps, the world’s fastest growing back office solution. If you enjoy the show with Kristen today and would like to join Jason and I @ SaaStr Annual 2017 next year, then all you have to do is checkout SaaStr and buy your tickets for SaaStr Annual 2017. In Today’s Episode Kristin Discusses: Why it is that the faster you hire, the longer it takes to build your business? How to make the transition from a family to a village with your team? Why it is imperative to hire slowly and fire fast? How to communicate new hires to the existing team to ease onboarding friction? Why hiring outside of your circle is full of risks? What you can do to mitigate those risks? What happens when you wake up one day and realise you are the problem in your own business? What really is scaling with regards to the product? How important is product consistency in the scaling process? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Kristen Koh Goldstein This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Matthew Bellows is the Founder @ Yesware and a specialist in helping sales people close more deals faster. Yesware serves more than 750,000 salespeople at companies like IBM, Groupon, Salesforce, Twilio, Yelp, VMWare, and Zendesk. Prior to Yesware, Matthew was the VP of Sales at Vivox. Before that, he was GM at Floodgate (acquired by Zynga) and Founder/CEO of WGR Media (acquired by CNET Networks). In Today’s Episode with Matthew We Discuss: How Matthew came to be Founder and CEO @ Yesware? What was the a-ha moment for him? Whether sales is an art or a science and what makes Matthew feel this way? Why all founders should do sales until $1m ARR? What were Matt’s personal learnings from scaling the sales team with Yesware? Why a CEO cannot also be a VP of Sales? When is the right time to hire an exec to run the sales team and begin sales specialisation? How Matthew approaches the hiring process? What is the best way to receive high quality candidates? What does his interview process look like? With the array of data on sales activity how can managers balance management with micro-management? What are the inherent problems? 60 Second SaaStr: If Matthew could do the process again, what would he redo? How does Matthew deal with rejection in business and sales? Strategies to optimise email open rates? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Matthew Bellows This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Ryan Fyfe is the Founder & CEO @ Humanity, the employee scheduling software that allows you to value your employees. Ryan has built Humanity to serve more than half a million users across 87 countries, with a team exceeding 100 people and continually growing across 3 continents. They have raised funding from our friends at Point Nine and a huge thank you to Christoph @ Point Nine for making the introduction today. In Today’s Episode with Ryan We Discuss: How did Ryan come to be founder and CEO at Humainty? How does Ryan and Humanity use data to affect the marketing decisions they make with regards to customer acquisition? How does Ryan look to integrate customer success into the pre-purchase period to facilitate adoption? How does Ryan view free trials with Humanity? How do they A/B test free trials to optimise for conversion? How can startups ensure efficient time to value in a trial period and what is the role of customer success in this? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Ryan Fyfe This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Michael Litt is the Founder & CEO @ Vidyard the video intelligence platform that allows you to create, measure and strengthen engagement of your video content. Vidyard are based in Canada and have raised over $60m in VC funding from the likes of Battery Ventures, Bessemer, SoftTech, Salesforce Ventures, some incredible names there and the list goes on but I would like to say a huge thanks to Matt Garrett @ Salesforce Ventures for making the intro. In Today's Show with Michael We Discuss How did Michael come to found Vidyard, as Paul Graham described, ‘The Google For Business’? How does Michael assess value based pricing and how has his views transition with the growth of Vidyard? What does Vidyard’s internal sales organisation look like? How does Michael look to optimise this structure? How does Michael view the utility of the freemium model? What are the inherent advantages and disadvantages that need to be considered? In a round we call the 60 Second Saastr, we also hear: Productivity tips and tricks? Cool hobbies, what are they? Fave SaaS material? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Michael Litt This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Today’s episode is taken from SaaStr Annual 2016, featuring Meagen Eisenberg, CMO at MongoDB and former VP Demand Gen at DocuSign, sharing her playbook for optimizing the funnel at every stage and converting leads into real, paying customers. If you want to join me and Jason @ SaaStr 2017 then head to saastr.com where you can buy tickets. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: Why you need to think about more than just pipeline? What are the other elements of the funnel you should focus on? How to optimise your forms for data capture to allow your sales team to follow up successfully? How marketing can provide support to sales to attract new customers? How does nurturing align the buyer with your sales team? How do you accurately measure success within email marketing? How can startups on a tight budget maximise exposure through content and social media? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Meagen Eisenberg This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Aaron Ross is the author of the best selling book, Predictable Revenue, providing the framework for the outbound process & sales team Aaron created for Salesforce.com. During his time at Salesforce as Director of Corporate Development and Acquisitions, he added an extra $100 million in revenue in just a few years. In today’s show we discuss his and Jason Lemkin’s fantastic new book, From Impossible To Inevitable, which outlines how hyper growth companies create predictable revenue? If you are a founder asking why aren’t we growing faster, how do we go into hyper-growth mode and then how do you sustain growth then this book really is for you. In Today’s Episode with Aaron You Will Learn: How did Aaron enter the world of SaaS and come to be a Senior Director @ Salesforce? What were his biggest takeaways from seeing Salesforce scale into hypergrowth mode? WHat does Aaron mean by saying ‘nail a niche’? Does this mean go small? How much of a role does iteration play in this process? How does Aaron assess product market fit? How do you really know when you have that focus? Are there any clear signs that suggest you have achieved product market fit? Aaron has said before “people at the company will always be busy. they just might not be busy on the right things”? How important is sales specialisation? At what point does the original generalist sales team fragment into specialised elements? What are Aaron’s thoughts on ownership and how you ensure that a sense of ownership is instilled upon the team to enhance productivity? I have never heard a Founder on the show before saying ‘my team is just achieving too much!’. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Aaron Ross This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

As VP of Sales and Marketing at Atlassian for three years before becoming President, Jay Simons has a broad perspective on what it takes to build a successful company. Sometimes, ignoring conventional wisdom is what will differentiate you from the competition. Bootstrapping from day one, launching and supporting multiple products, and doing it all without traditional Sales team - Atlassian's approach (and wild success) has always been a curious anomaly in SaaS. After 13 years of being an exception to every rule, Atlassian went public in late 2015 with a total market capitalization of $4.37B at the time of the IPO. In this session, Jay answers our burning questions: 1.) Why does Jay believe in most cases the best run companies are public companies? What does being public bring to the organizational structure of a firm? 2.) How important is it for early stage startups to have board members and outside perspectives? How should they select those inputs? 3.) How important a role does customer support and success play in the conversion of customers from trial to paid versions? 4.) How does Jay focus on 4 products with such a differentiated suite of products? Does this not contradict the often cited fundamental, focus. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Andy Sparks is the Co-Founder and Head of Sales @ Mattermark. He was previously the Technology Editor at Referly before the company pivoted to become Mattermark. Andy joined the Referly team via an acqui-hire of his company, LaunchGram, by Referly in February of 2013. Now I am going to leave the bio there as Andy does a much better job of it in the show than I do! In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Andy came to be a 1st time Head of Sales with Mattermark? What are the requirements for stretch VPs to be successful? How can Head of Sales clearly and efficiently communicate with their reps? What are the 3 things all sales reps have to be trained on? What are the must haves when looking at sales reps? Are there different types of reps for different stages in the business? How to effectively establish a compensation structure for your sales team that is incentivising to them and to the company? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Andy Sparks This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Today we bring you one of the highlights from SaaStr Annual 2016 with Jason Lemkin talking to Kirsten Helvey, COO of Cornerstone Ondemand, a cloud-based learning and talent management solutions provider. in the episode Kirsten discusses her 11 years of experience with rising up in the ranks from employee #30 to her current position in the company, which is now 1500-strong, it is a phenomenal scaling story and so many insights nuggets of wisdom from Kirsten here. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: Why you should always be thinking about building, no matter the scale? Why we should all stop talking about company culture? Why you should forget the MBA and take a psychology degree? How to give direct and consistent feedback with employees in order to get the most out of them? Why we should focus more on upsell and less on customer acquisition? How to build, integrate and scale a customer success team into a 1,500 person organisation? You can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Kirsten Helvey This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

David Yuan is a General Partner at Technology Crossover Ventures, where he has enjoyed no less than 4 IPOs and 5 acquisitions. Some of David’s investments include the likes of Facebook, Linkedin, Exact Target (acq by Salesforce), Splunk and many more incredible companies. He also sits on the board at Act On, App Nexus, Merkle and Site Minder and is an advisor to Pinterest. Pior to TCV, David had stints at JP Morgan and Bain & Company. In Today’s Episode with David You Will Learn: How did David make his way into the investing world in 2000? How has David seen the evolution of SaaS revenue multiples over the last decade? How can VCs balance the drive for profitability with their need for big wins over a short 5-7 year investment cycle? How does David approach investing cadence in correlation to market cycles? Does his strategy alter according to down-turns and booms? Why does David find the monetisation models of the consumerisation of SaaS to be the most exciting? Does David agree that the original hires might not be the hires as the stages progress? How can founders transition them out without a lack of respect and gratitude? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr David Yuan This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Today we bring you a highlight from SaaStr Annual 2016 featuring a conversation between Hubspot's Dharmesh Shah and SaaStr's own Jason Lemkin. Prior to founding HubSpot in 2006, Dharmesh was founder and CEO of Pyramid Digital Solutions, which was acquired by SunGard Data Systems in 2005. In addition to co-authoring “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs”,Dharmesh published HubSpot’s Culture Code, which has garnered over 2.5 million views on SlideShare. Named an Inc. Founders 40 in 2016, he is an active member of the Boston-area entrepreneurial community, an angel investor in over 60 startups, and a frequent speaker on startups and inbound marketing. In Today's Episode wth Dharmesh You Will Learn: What were the biggest growth catalysts in the scaling of Hubspot from Day 1 to IPO? What were the biggest mistakes made and lessons learnt by Dharmesh and the team throughout the journey? How does Dharmesh think about churn? How does he define pre-churn? What is the customer happiness index and how can it be implemented? How can founders inform prospects their product is a must have not a nice to have? Why has the SMB space been so difficult for so long? Why is that changing now? Why Dharmesh and Hubspot focus on consumer behaviour not consumer feedback? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Dharmesh Shah This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Allison Pickens carries the customer success torch as the VP of Customer Success & Business Operations at the category leaders, Gainsight. Allison’s organization @ Gainsight includes all post-sales functions: CSMs, Support, Onboarding, Services, and Operations. Prior to Gainsight, she started her career in management consulting for Fortune 500 companies while at Boston Consulting Group and later worked in private equity investing at Bain Capital. Allison decided that she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work at Gainsight when Bain Capital led the Series B. In Today’s Episode With Allison You Will Learn: 1.) So let’s start with managing customer churn and I think the first and most important thing is assessing what is regrettable vs non-regrettable. How do you approach this? What is the internal post mortem? How do you identify why they churned? Is there a blame game that follows? How do you instill ramifications but not fear? How do you then look to fix the original problem that caused the churn? 2.) To do the above we need to have a great customer success team so iw ant to talk about the process of building this out and with CS being a new category this is an aspect a lot of founders are addressing at this time. So starting with the obvious? When do you need a customer success team? Where in the organization should the team sit? What's the playbook for rolling it out? How big does the team need to be? Does this vary on sector or funding availability? What are the levels of seniority within the team? What's your budget? How do you account for the costs of your team? What teams sit within the customer success umbrella? 60 Second Saastr produced by Nick Mehta: What surprises you most about customer success now vs a year ago? Importance of fast iterating team? Fave SaaS material, book, blog, podcast? What element of the journey have you found most challenging? Carrying the CS torch? What is it like do you feel the pressure? 3.) Now I want to finish today by discussing the segmentation of your customer base, so at what point in the company's life do you begin segmenting the customers? Why is it important to segment customers? How do you decide the best way to segment them? Should these segments align with the sales team? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Allison Pickens This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Cindy Padnos is the Founder and Managing Partner at Illuminate Ventures where she focuses on all things Enterprise/B2B cloud and mobile computing sectors. Prior to founding Illuminate in 2009, she was one of three investment professionals at Outlook Ventures responsible for committing the firm’s $140 million fund. Cindy also has extensive experience in the world of operations, where she founded and sold one of SaaS’ first on demand startups in the form of Vivant. In Today’s Episode with Cindy We Discuss: How Cindy made her way into the world of SaaS and later SaaS investing? Why does Cindy think SaaS is a democratiser for entrepreneurship? Is the proliferation of Sales and Marketing tools not a challenge for startups in terms of competing for the same VC dollars? Is it easier or more challenging for startups to raise VC funding today than in previous years? If so, why? How does Cindy assess product market fit with her portfolio companies? When is the right time to put pedal to the metal? What does Cindy make of the Micro VC market at the moment? How prominent are party rounds? Will we see consolidation? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Cindy Padnos This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Fred Stevens-Smith is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Rainforest QA, which if you listened to 20VC with Byron Deeter, you will remember he discussed them and their amazing trajectory. So for QA first, it is essentially QA as a service making it fast and easy to test your webapp in multiple browsers and they are backed by some of the best as we said there Byron Deeter @ Bessemer, our own Jason Lemkin, Y Combinator, previous guest Kris Duggan @ Betterworks and Marc Benioff just to name a few. As for Fred he is the man at the helm as Co-Founder & CEO and absolutely smashing it I might add. In the show Fred mentions his favourite reading material to be Jason Lemkin and Aaron Ross’s new book From Impossible to Inevitable: How Hypergrowth Companies Create Predictable Revenue and if you have not read that, that is a must and can be found here! In Our Discussion with Fred You Will Learn: How did Fred come to found Rainforest QA? What was his origin story to YC? How did Fred look to establish the pricing model with Rainforest? Why does Fred believe most software companies undervalue their software? What are the challenges of going upstream? How does it affect product? Sales cycle? Does Fred agree with Mark Organ that in a new category, the company CEO must be the category CMO? How much of a role does content play in Rainforest QA’s education funnel for customers? Why does Fred believe you should spend the most time with your best people? Similarly, the least amount of time with your worst people? How has Fred gone about building out the sales team? What did Fred look for in sales reps and Heads of Sales? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Fred Stevens-Smith This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Quang Hoang is the Co- Founder @ Birdly, Birdly are convinced by the power of messaging within organizations, they decided to build a broader service that connects your favorite business softwares to messaging apps. It is this vision that has led to them being named one of the hottest startups from YC Winter 2016 batch and has led to funding from some of the best in the industry including our own Jason lemkin, Slack, previous guest Nicolas Dessaigne and prestigious french investors Alven Capital and Partech Ventures. In Today’s Episode with Quang We Discuss: How did Quang come to found Birdly? What was the a-ha moment? What did Quang learn from pivoting to Birdly? What is it important for founders to consider before a pivot? How does Quang approach the challenging topic of a business model for bots? Why does Quang believe that the whole pricing model for SaaS will change? What were the main benefits of the YC experience and how did it impact his fundraising? When is the right time for European startups to make the move to SF? How important is it to be close to your customers? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Quang Hoang This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Christoph Janz is the Co-Founder and the Managing Partner @ Point Nine Capital, one of Europe’s best early stage venture funds and Christoph himself specializes in all things SaaS at Point Nine and has made more than 20 SaaS startup investments. Prior to Point Nine, Christoph co-founded two Internet startups and in 2008, became an angel investor and discovered Zendesk, which was his first angel investment. Also if you would like to congratulate Jason for the raising of the incredible new SaaStr Fund then you can click here to send him a congratulations tweet. In Today’s Episode with Christoph We Discuss: How did Christoph make his way into the world of early stage SaaS investing? When should startups consider making the move to the US? Is it always necessary? How important is it for SaaS startups to have a local US investor? What are the benefits? Where are there talent gaps in European SaaS? What can European founders do to find those experienced VPs of Sales and Marketing? Question from Jason: What made Zendesk seem like such a winner and what did that teach you? Where does Christoph see the next wave of the consumerisation of SaaS? Is it harder to get funded as a SaaS startup in today’s environment than in previous years? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Christoph Janz This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Matt Garratt currently runs Salesforce Ventures with the mandate to build out salesforce’s ecosystem of partners with equity investments. Matt has led key strategic investments at Salesforce in companies such as former guests Gainsight, and Invoca as well as Anaplan and Insidesales.com just to name a few. Prior to salesforce Matt was a VP at the prestigious SaaS investor Battery Ventures. Also in the show today we mention Jason Lemkin and Aaron Ross new book From Impossible to Inevitable: How Hypergrowth Companies Create Predictable Revenue and if you have not read that, that is a must and can be found here! In This Episode With Matt You Will Learn: How Matt made his entry into the world of VC and came to run Salesforce Ventures? What did Salesforce do right to give Matt the ability to formalise the fund? What did Matt learn in the less formal stages of investing? What are the benefits that startups receive from being portfolio companies of Salesforce Ventures? How does matt view Salesforce Ventures in the early stage investing landscape? Does Matt like to co-invest with other prominent funds? How does M&A work within Salesforce Ventures? Are you willing to sell to your competitors? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Matt Garratt This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

I am delighted to welcome the new Head of Sales @ Front App, Cailen D’sa, to The Official SaaStr Podcast today. Cailen might just be the Head of Sales every SaaS startup founder is dreaming of having previously been the first sales hire @ Dropbox where he launched Dropbox’s first B2B product, prior to that he was a director at Box where he helped pioneer and operationalize the freemium land-and-expand sales model, which is now a core SaaS sales methodology. Now if you enjoy the episode with Cailen today and want to hear more from him then you must headover to Front’s blog where you can find Mathilde’s written interview with Cailen. In This Episode With Cailen You Will Learn: How did Cailen come to be the first Sales hire @ Dropbox? What was it about Front that enticed him? What were Cailen’s biggest takeaways from his time at Dropbox and Box? How does the Sales process differ when selling a freemium product like Dropbox, compared to an enterprise product like Front? What does Cailen look for when hiring sales reps? What are Cailen’s sourcing strategies for new sales reps? How does Cailen incentivise the best talent to choose Front over other options? With the rise of data and it’s role in sales, to what extent does Cailen still believe sales to be an art and not a science? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Cailen D’sa This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Villi Iltchev is a Partner @ August Capital and prior to joining August Villi was a member of the leadership teams at Box and Lifelock. Before that Villi was a Vice President @ Salesforce where he led the strategy and acquisitions teams; being directly responsible for over 30 investments in the likes of Hubspot, Box, Mulesoft and many more amazing companies. In Today’s Show with Villi We Discuss: How Villi made the transition from the world of operations to investing with August? What were Villi’s biggest takeaways from working with titans of SaaS; Box, Salesforce? What was the M&A environment like back in the 2000s? What was the driver behind mass consolidation? What did the on premise perpetual license business model enable companies? Where did customer success lie in this environment? Multiple Clouds: What is the challenges of this? How will this evolve over time? What are the current solutions? Customer success lies with the vendor: What do you think caused this pivotal transition? How central should customer success be to an early stage SaaS company’s strategy? What are the main benefits of customer success to you? SaaS distribution: Why do reseller arrangements not work? How would you like to see this evolve in the future? Sales productivity: What is the productivity effect of giving another product to sales? What happens to aggregate sales? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Villi Itchev This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Luke Kervin is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ PatientPop, where he has scaled the team from 10 to over 130 in just 12 months. As a result, PatientPop recently raised their Series A led by Toba Capital, allowing them to further ramp up their customer base and expand the employee ranks to over 200 people. In Today’s Show with Luke We Discuss: How Luke came to found his first SaaS business in PatientPop? What is Luke’s criteria for selecting a potential business idea? What does the idea need to have? What elements of an idea will concern Luke? How did Luke go about validating the idea for PatientPop? What are the most common methods founders get product validation wrong? Why did Luke build a fake product, a fake website and fake business cards to validate the idea? PatientPop has grown from 10 to 130, so how did they scale so fast? What are the inherent challenges of company culture maintenance with such hyper-growth. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Blake Bartlett is a Partner @ Openview Ventures where he helps identify value and lead investments in product-led businesses driving market dislocation. Prior to joining OpenView, he was a Vice President at Battery Ventures, where he focused on growth-stage software and Internet businesses. Blake joined Battery in 2009 and helped lead 10 investments including the likes of Wayfair, Optimizely, Sprinklr, and Glassdoor. In Today’s Show We Discuss: Why Blake decided to invest in SaaS over other sectors? Whether the rise of the bottoms up SaaS sales model means customer fickleness for SaaS products will increase? Does product led growth contradict tradition SaaS sales beliefs? How can they work in unison? Is product market fit and customer value a binary result? Are there varying degrees of customer value? How important is time to customer value? How can startups look to pull product-led growth off? What were Blake’s biggest takeaways from watching the likes of Optimizely and Expensify? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Blake Bartlett This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

I am delighted to welcome my first ever Harry to the show today in the form of Harry Glaser, Co-Founder & CEO @ Periscope Data, the worlds fast analysis suite providing data analysts with the tools they need to improve their analysis by over 150X and an astonishing fact here they have doubled their revenue every 3 months ever since launch. Periscope’s investors include Ellen Pao, Matt Ocko @ Data Collective, Chad Byers @ Susa Ventures, Wes Chan @ Felicis, Benjamin Ling at Khosla and many more. Also in the show today we mention Jason Lemkin and Aaron Ross new book From Impossible to Inevitable: How Hypergrowth Companies Create Predictable Revenue and if you have not read that, that is a must and can be found here! In Today’s Episode with Harry We Discuss How Harry came to be the founder of Persicope Data and what the a-ha moment was for him? How did Harry look to establish a pricing model with Periscope Data as a first time SaaS founder? What are Harry’s learnings of hiring and building out the initial sales team? How did Harry build out the institutonal training program to allow non technical people to sell a very non technical product? What are the inherent pros of having an inbound heavy model and what are the fundamental problems? Why are companies suddenly seeing the need for data analysts and what are the opportunites that data analysts present? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Harry Glaser This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Andy Wilson is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Logikcull, where he really is the visionary behind Logikcull’s product and marketing strategy focusing on simplifying and democratizing the discovery process into three simple steps: upload > search > download. Andy leads the company it its mission to put an end to eDiscovery with the use of Discovery Automation. In Today’s Episode with Andy We Discuss: The origin story of Logikcull for Andy and what a-ha moment was for him? How did Andy approach the transition from service based business to SaaS business? Does the increase of customer success not transition the customer into the client? What was the effect of having Jason as a investor and what are the biggest value adds that Jason provides? On outbound vs inbound, how did Andy increase outbound in such an established space? Where did he find the major breakthroughs? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Andy Wilson This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Super excited to welcome a heavy weight of the SaaS industry today as we have Mark Organ, Founder & CEO at Influitive. Influitive helps B2B companies mobilize their army of advocates for more rapid and profitable revenue growth. Prior to Influitive, Mark was the founding CEO of Eloqua, growing the business to over 150 people, hundreds of clients and a major presence around the world in 7 years. Eloqua was eventually bought by Oracle in 2012 for a reported $810m. In Today’s Episode with Mark We Discuss: The founding story behind Influitive? What was the a-ha moment behind the concept? What were Mark’s biggest takeaways from watching Eloqua scale into the global force that it became? Influitive are creating a category, so how is that for Mark? What are the inherent challenges? What are the commonalities of successful category creators? What is the difference between good and bad competition? Why does Mark try and encourage good competition? Why are brand advocates crucial to the success of a business? Is it a really scalable solution? How did you figure out the model for making customers successful? In a round we call the 60 Second Saastr, we also hear: Mark’s fave SaaS resource and reading material? Thought leadership: Fundamental or unnecessary? Target Markets; Go large or be specific and niche? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Mark Organ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Laura Roeder is the Founder & CEO @ Edgar, the social media automation tool that essentially allows your social media queue to fill itself up. Now Edgar is not the usual startup story we are all familiar with as Edgar has taken some unusual steps, they have not raised VC funding, they do not have a sales team, their founder, Laura, was pregnant on launch and after all this, Edgar is a startup that actually makes money at 2.9m ARR. In Today’s Episode with Laura We Reveal: How did Laura come to found Edgar? What was the a-ha moment for Laura? How did Laura assemble and build the team, with te restraint of being pregnant during launch? How did this hiring mindset benefit the process? Why does Laura deliberately not have a sales team? How does the SaaS math differ for bootstrapped vs venture funded SaaS startups? HOw does the exit strategy change when bootstrapped? Why should SMs approach social media platforms one at a time? How can startups measure their social media performance and engagement? In a round we call the 60 Second Saastr, we also hear: Fave SaaS resource and reading material? Hardest hire in the Edgar process? Going up the enterprise funnel: Potential or not going to happen? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Bill Binch is a leader and expert in the SaaS sales industry. Bill was the senior vice president of worldwide sales at marketo for 8 years and he joined when it was a small venture backed startup with a mission to reinvent marketing automation, it was his sales leadership and expertise that formed a critical component in building Marketo into one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies in the world. Recognized through his being awarded worldwide VP of sales in 2011. In today's show with Bill we discuss: What were Bill’s biggest takeaways from his time scaling the sales organisation at Marketo?? Why did Bill find it enticing selling to sales and marketers with Marketo? How can startups go about approaching the topic of the sales cycle? What does the right cadence look like? How can sales leaders look to establish a quota that is achievable and confident? Why is it about deal frequency not dollar size? How can we optimise the hiring process for sales professionals? What are the benefits to over hiring? Is this sustainable in a downturn? Does Bill agree that customer success will be the new sales, as Nick Mehta stated? In a round we call the 60 Second Saastr, we also hear: SaaS tools that Bill could not live without? Creating your own scorecard? What does Bill know now that he wished he had known at the beggining If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Bill Binch This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

I am delighted to present Part 2 of our feature of Gainsight. Joining me today I have Anthony Kennada, the founding VP Marketing at Gainsight where he is responsible for managing the company’s global marketing strategy, from demand generation to brand marketing, and is credited with creating the “Pulse” community of Customer Success leaders. Anthony began his career as an early employee at Box. He later joined LiveOffice and managed their OEM partnership with Symantec from contract signature to acquisition for $115M. Prior to joining Gainsight, Anthony led the Emerging Cloud Products division at Symantec, and was responsible for the first organic product development effort that spanned both consumer and enterprise market segments. In today's show with Anthony we discuss: How Anthony came to be VP of Marketing at one of the hottest startups in the valley? Being the founding VP of Marketing, how did Anthony look to grow the team? What were the actual steps Anthony used to scale the marketing at Gainsight? How has B2B marketing changed, from Box to today? With this evolution, what are Anthony’s marketing learnings in creating new categories vs. new players in existing categories? How should we be thinking about marketing, both Demand Gen and Corporate, differently in crowded spaces? ? How can marketing help support going up market and driving ACVs up? Both Box and Gainsight did this. How should CEOs and VPMs think about, and budget events? What if they don't have all the capital Gainsight does? In a round we call the 60 Second Saastr, we also hear: Billboards: Stupid or effective? Fave SaaS resource and why? 3 Biggest Tips For Running a Successful Event? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Anthony Kennada This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

This week on SaaStr we are celebrating the rise of GainSight with a special feature week dedicated to Gainsight and joining me today we have Gainsight CEO, Nick Mehta. Since Nick has been at the helm of Gainsight, it has experienced a meteoric rise to the top of the world of SaaS having practically created the category of customer success and revolutionising business work processes in doing so. Due to this, Gainsight has raised funding from the likes of Battery Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. In today's show with Nick we discuss: What were the solutions before Gainsight? Why were these inefficient and what the market opportunity for Gainsight? Why has the power shifted from the hands of the vendor to the hands of the customer? What can vendors to do optimise this shift? Is the proliferation of available tools and the resulting competition not dangerous as there is only so low prices can go? To what extent does Gainsight have a monopoly over the customer success market? How much should startups spend on customer success in the early days? How can one measure that success and return on investment? What does the hiring of a customer success officer look like for Nick? How can we optimise this process? In a round we call the 60 Second Saastr, we also hear: ACV is everything: Explain? Being a specialised CEO: Right or wrong? On again, off again hiring in sales? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Nick Mehta This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Joining us today on The Official Saastr Podcast is Nakul Mandan, Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, where he focuses on early stage SaaS investments. At Lightspeed, Nakul led the firm’s investments in Gainsight and Reflektive. Previously, Nakul worked at Battery Ventures, where he helped lead the firm’s investments in category defining companies such as Marketo, BlueJeans Networks, Gainsight, Intacct, 6Sense and Yesware. Prior to Battery, Nakul worked at Blue River Capital, a growth stage investor focused on India. In today's show with Nakul we discuss: How Nakul came to be one of the leading SaaS investors in the US? What will the 2nd phase of the consumerization of the enterprise entail? What innovation will we see in business model? How important is predictable revenue for early stage startups? Hoe can they mitigate the circumstances of losing it? What more needs to be done to ensure the continuation of consumerising traditional enterprise software? What does Nakul hone in on when considering investing in a SaaS startup for Series A? What are the metrics and requirements that matter? At this stage are there large data sets and metrics to rely on? In a round we call the 60 Second Saastr, we also hear: Fave SaaS reading material? Greenfield Opportunities in SaaS? SaaS Founder Nakul most respects and admires? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Nakul Mandan This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com