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The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

The Official SaaStr Podcast is the latest and greatest from the world of SaaStr, interviewing the most prominent operators and investors to discover their tips, tactics and strategies to attain success in the fiercely competitive world of SaaS. On the side of the operators, we center around getting from $0 to $100m ARR faster, what it takes to scale successfully and what are the core elements of hiring. As for the investors, we learn what metrics they hone in on when examining SaaS business, what type of metrics excites them and what they look for in SaaS founders.
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The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
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Now displaying: 2017
Mar 20, 2017

Alex Rosen is a Managing Director with IDG Ventures where he focuses on investments in cloud infrastructure, SaaS applications, ad tech, and consumer marketplaces. Alex currently serves as board director at Chubbies, Krux, MindMeld, Minted, Smartling, Tempered Networks, and Uplift. He also led IDG Ventures’ investments in multiple companies including Appboy, Datanyze, Indiegogo, Nuzzel, The League and many more incredible companies. Previously, he was a General Partner at Sprout Group, where he was head of the Internet and Software group. Huge thanks to the team @ Sapphire Ventures for the intro to Alex today.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Alex make his way into the world of SaaS investing and come to be Managing Director @ IDG?
  • SaaS businesses can be massively affected by changes in a few very small data points. So what would you say is one of the single most important metric points?
  • What is a booking?  How should we break it down into the 3 different MRRs? What element of those metrics do you want to see growing?
  • How important a role does unit economics play? What are the couple of forms: customer + sales person? How much ARR should a good sales rep add to in ARR in relation to comp?
  • What is negative churn? How can you take a customer you have already sold and make more money from them? Upsell or cross-sell? What does this to the pricing axis? Why do you want more than 1 axis?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What does Alex know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
  2. What are the greenfield opportunities in SaaS for Alex?
  3. What is Alex’s fave 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

Alex Rosen

Mar 17, 2017

Nadim Hossain is the Founder and CEO @ BrightFunnel, the startup that shows marketing true impact on revenue. They are backed by many past guests of the show including Matt Garratt @ Salesforce Ventures, Tim Kopp, and James Cham @ Bloomberg Beta. As for Nadim, prior to founding BrightFunnel, Nadim was VP of Marketing and Sales Development at PowerReviews, paving the way to a $170M exit. He was also a product marketing executive at Salesforce.com during their hyper-growth years.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Nadim make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found BrightFunnel?
  • To what extent is marketing an art or a science in today’s data driven world? How can marketers use and analyse data to drive decision making?
  • How can founders determine which channels are a must have as opposed to a nice to have? What metrics should determine this? Does brand building not count in the revenue driven world today?
  • Nadim has previously said, ‘marketing is eating sales’. What does Nadim mean by this? How does Nadim evaluate the expansion of the marketing funnel?
  • What are the biggest mistakes B2B companies make in today’s environment? How can they rectify this and sustain a brand that will deliver for the long term?

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

Nadim Hossain

Mar 13, 2017

Michael Pryor is Co-Founder & CEO @ Trello, now Head of Product with Trello at Atlassian following their recent acquisition. For those that do not know, Trello lets you work more collaboratively and get more done. Prior to the acquisition they raised from some of the best in the business including the likes of Spark Capital, Index Ventures and Box Group. Michael is also a board member at StackOverflow.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Michael make his way into the world of startups and come to found Trello?
  • What does Michael believe is fundamental to making a market transition successfully? What were the challenges of the early market transition with Trello?
  • What does Michael believe are the 3 key elements that make a great CEO? How does Michael approach the element of cash burn? Does Michael agree for the need of sustainability within growth?
  • How does Michael look to continually recruit the best talent? What are the secrets to running a 60% remote workforce so efficiently?
  • How did the Atlassian deal come about? What was the thought process behind the sales vs raise more venture funding? How did Michael broach the process with regards to transparency within the team?

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

Michael Pryor

Mar 10, 2017

Matin Movasatte is the Founder and CEO @ Heap. the startup that provides analytics infrastructure to automate away the annoying parts of user analytics. They have raised funding from some of the best in the business including our friends and former guests of The Twenty Minute VC including Pejman Nozad, Alexis and Garry @ Initialized, Josh Reeves at Gusto, Redpoint and more incredible investors. As for Matin, prior to Heap Matin was a product manager at Facebook and spent time at both Google and Mozilla. I would like to say a big thank you to Jason Lemkin for the intro today.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Matin make his way into the world of SaaS having been at Facebook and Google?
  • What were Matin’s biggest takeaways from seeing how Facebook operate? What were the pros and cons of their operations? How has this influenced how he builds Heap today?
  • Why does Matin believe that you should always sell your product before it is done being built? What benefits does this have in terms of pricing and iteration? What are the dangers of asking for payment upfront?
  • Why does Matin think it is crucial to hire your customer success team before your sales team? How do customer success drive customer acquisition?
  • What does Matin mean when he says that “product organisation fit” is so important? How can startups determine the fit? What can be done to optimise 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

Matin Movasatte

Mar 6, 2017

Didier Elzinga is the Founder & CEO @ CultureAmp, the world’s most powerful employee feedback and analytics platform. They have raised funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Index Ventures, our friends at Felicis Ventures and Blackbird Ventures. As for Didier, he previously co-founded technical academy award winning Rising Sun Research and is non-executive director at Tourism Australia, the Atlassian Foundation and Slingsby Theatre. I also have to say a huge thank you to Ilya @ Index and Niki @ Blackbird for the intro, without which the show would not have been possible.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Didier make his way into the world of SaaS? What was the a-ha moment for him with CultureAmp?
  • What were Didier’s biggest takeaways from watching Scott and Mike build Atlassian? How did that affect and alter how he structured CultureAmp?
  • How does Didier evaluate product market fit? What are the signs? What metrics determine whether you have it or you do not? Why did Didier decide to bootstrap until $1m ARR?
  • Why does Didier believe there is so little innovation in the go to market strategies of today? What would he like to see change and where does he see opportunity?
  • Why does Didier not believe in paying sales teams commission? How does this affect his ability to hire? How does this affect the internal compensation structure of the firm?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. Didier’s Fave SaaS resource?
  2. What does Didier know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
  3. What has been the most challenging element of the CultureAmp 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

Didier Elzinga

Mar 3, 2017

Fayez Mohamood is the Founder and CEO @ Bluecore, the company that is transforming the way eCommerce marketers use data and automation to communicate with customers. They have raised nearly $30m in funding from some of the best in the business and past guests of the show including the teams from FirstMark Capital and Felicis Ventures just to name a few. As a result they have enjoyed some rapid scaling having seen the team grow from 50 to over 100 in just 10 months. As for Fayez, prior to Bluecore he was Head of Product at BigDoor and before that he founded, Gameday Tycoon, a fantasy sports game that runs on Facebook.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Fayez make his way from fantasy sports game to successful SaaS founder with Bluecore?
  • To what extent does Fayez consider B2B marketing an art or a science with the rise of data? How can SaaS startups use data to drive conversion and upsell? What metrics does Fayez hone in on?
  • What 2 methods does Fayez use to harmonise the sales and marketing team? How can these teams be structured to ensure for a clear communication channel and culture of transparency?
  • With the team growing from 30 to over 100, what does the hiring process look like for Fayez? How has this altered and developed over time? What have been the big lessons in the rapid scaling of the team?
  • How does Fayez view efficiency within organisational structures? What must founders watch out for in the scaling process of their companies?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. Advantages and disadvantages of being a SaaS firm in the US?
  2. Fayez’s fave SaaS reading material?
  3. What does Fayez know now that he wishes he had known when he started?

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

Fayez Mohamood

Feb 27, 2017

Aaron Levie co-founded Box with three high school friends in 2005 when they discovered there wasn’t a modern solution for sharing and collaborating on work.They created Box to provide businesses with an easy way to share, access and manage information with enterprise-grade security, compliance and governance.Eleven years later, Box has been adopted by nearly 65% of the Fortune 500 and has nearly 70,000 paying business customers. The company went public in January 2015, and remains one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Aaron with 3 friends from high school come to found one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies in Box?
  • How does Aaron view the convergence of enterprise and consumer products in the coming years? How does this convergence effect IT providers?
  • How does Aaron view transparency within organisations? How does this affect information flow? What must CEO’s consider when contemplating transparency within their organisation?
  • How does Aaron evaluate the inflection points in the growth of Box? What were the challenges in overcoming these hurdles? How did he have to change as a CEO to combat these changes?
  • What does the rise of AI mean for businesses and enterprise? What does the rise of VR allow the enterprise that was not previously possible? How do these emerging technologies affect the product and strategic roadmap at Box?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. Aaron’s favourite SaaS reading material?
  2. What will it take for Box to be 10x from here?
  3. What does Aaron know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
  4. What does Aaron spend most his time on that he would like to change?

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 Levie

Feb 24, 2017

Luke Retterath is the Director of Demand Generation @ Duo Security, the most loved company in security. They have the backing of some of the best investors in the business including Benchmark, Redpoint, Google Ventures and True Venture just to name a few. As for Luke, his role is to develop, execute, and manage demand generation programs assessing the effectiveness of all marketing programs as well as defining goals, metrics and ROI’s for the differing programs.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Luke make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found unicorn startup, Namely?
  • What are the 3 practical tests Luke uses to assess demand gen candidates in the hiring process? What are the right questions to ask? Is it right to look for badges on the CV?
  • Once the demand gen team is in place, how do we get the team jump started? Where should the focus be placed?
  • What are the 5 things that have helped drive growth at Duo? How can founders implement these into their demand gen strategy to 3x revenue for 3 years?
  • How should one plan and forecast when it comes to demand gen? How does Luke approach the topic of MQLs? How does this change for the inside 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

Feb 17, 2017

Douglas Hanna is the GM of the Developer Platform @ Zendesk, one of the world’s fastest growing SaaS startups. Before joining Zendesk, Douglas was the Founder & CEO @ Help.com where he grew the business from 1 to 16. Prior to Help, Douglas was the CEO of A Small Orange, the web hosting firm that was acquired by Endurance International Group where Douglas was on the Executive team when they went public on the NASDAQ.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Douglas make his entry into the world of SaaS and Zendesk?
  • What were the big adjustments that Douglas had to make from founding and working in smaller companies to working at Zendesk? What is the core to making the successful move?
  • How can companies go about building a platform? What are the fundamentals to consider once you have decided on the platform approach? What are the challenges?
  • How can a startup measure the success of their platform? What are the benchmarks and metrics that must be observed? How does testing and iteration play a role in platform success?
  • How does Douglas approach the go to market element with regards to platforms? How has the world of platform go to market changed in the world of omni-channel?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. Biggest mistake companies make with their platform approach?
  2. Fave SaaS reading material?
  3. What does Douglas 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

Douglas Hanna

Feb 14, 2017

Jonathan Lehr is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Work-Bench, where he focuses on early stage enterprise technology investments in areas including big data analytics, machine learning, data-defined security and more. Prior to Work-Bench, Jon founded the NY Enterprise Technology Meetup in January 2012 and organizes monthly meetups of the 5,000+ person group as a way to promote collaboration for the enterprise tech ecosystem in New York. Jon has also worked at Morgan Stanley on the Office of the CIO team in IT. In that capacity, he partnered with internal technology clients to facilitate the selection and on-boarding of emerging technology vendors. He has also written about enterprise technology trends for publications such as The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal and TechCrunch.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Jonathan make his way into the world of enterprise investing with WorkBench?
  • Jon has previously said that enterprise tech is like chess, so what are the rules to play by? What can startups do to increase their chance of winning the game?
  • How can startups build scalable and natural relationships with decision makers in large enterprise clients? What are the fundamentals to doing this successfully? What does this conversation look like?
  • What does the buying decision making process look like in large corporates? How does that differ from space to space? How does that affect the sales cycle?
  • Why is NYC the best place in the world to start an enterprise tech company? What are the pros and cons of being in NYC?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. Greenfield opportunities in enterprise technology?
  2. What does Jonathan know now that he wishes he had known at the start?
  3. Jonathan’s fave 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

Jonathan Lehr

Feb 3, 2017

JD Peterson is CMO of Trello where he heads the company's marketing and customer service teams. A true child of Silicon Valley, J.D. has been helping startups for nearly 20 years.  Before Trello, he held positions as the CRO and interim CEO at Scripted, the VP of Marketing at Zendesk, and the VP of Products at Marketo. JD takes pride in building world-class teams, helping companies accelerate growth, and ensuring the customer remains at the center of every strategic effort.  

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did JD make his slightly unconventional entrance into the world of SaaS?
  • Having picked Marketo and Zendesk, what does JD assess when picking companies? Once picked, how does JD evaluate culture? How does JD measure this?
  • How does JD approach lead qualification? How does JD measure the effectiveness of lead generation, revenue or amount of leads? How does JD unify the sales and marketing team?
  • JD has previously said that now is ‘the best but hardest time to be a marketer’. Why is this and what is behind this thesis? What are the pros and cons of the data driven marketing world? What are the commonalities among the best marketeers?
  • JD has seen many companies scale into hyper-growth, when does JD believe is the right time to hire and expand aggressively? What roles should be filled first? What does JD optimize for in the hiring process? When is the transition point needed to have a VP?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. Is SaaS marketing B2B or B2C?
  2. What does JD know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
  3. Biggest mistake companies are enacting with their current marketing plans?

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

JD Peterson




Jan 30, 2017

Tien Tzuo is the Founder and CEO @ Zuora, one of the fastest growing SaaS companies that has been at the forefront of the rise of subscription business models. They have funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Benchmark, Sequoia, Redpoint and Marc Benioff, just to name a few. As for Tien, before Zuora, Tzuo was one of the 'original forces' at salesforce.com, joining as employee number 11. In his 9 years at salesforce.com, served in numerous different roles including as Chief Marketing Officer for two years, and most recently as Chief Strategy Officer.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Tien make his way from being an early employee at Salesforce to founding Zuora?
  • What were the big takeaways for Tien from seeing the meteoric rise of Salesforce? How has that experience moulded his running and strategy with Zuora today?
  • What does Tien see as the fundamental benefits of a subscription model? What products and services does it work best for? What are the keys to assembling this model successfully?
  • Tien has previously referred to scaling as ‘the climb’. How does he approach this analogy What was the most challenging element of scaling for Tien? How did he overcome it?
  • Tien has previously said that market strategy is the $100m question all founders must ask. So how does Tien approach go to market? What are the fundamentals to think when considering different go to market options?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. Biggest mentor and how the relationship came about?
  2. What does Tien know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
  3. Highlight of the Zuora journey so far?

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

Tien Tzuo

 

Jan 27, 2017

Lexi Reese is the Chief Customer Experience Officer at unicorn startup, Gusto and is one of the top female executives in Silicon Valley. Lexi’s passion for serving customers was sparked by her early career in microfinance as a public policy advocate with ACCION International—giving loans to people living in poverty to start their own ventures. She later worked at Google for eight years, most recently serving as Vice President of Programmatic Sales and Strategy globally. Lexi also started the Cambridge AdWords team for Google's small business organization. Now at Gusto, Lexi ensures that Gusto is continuously going above and beyond to serve all customers.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Lexi make her way from the world of Google and Facebook to SaaS with Gusto?
  • What were the biggest takeaways from spending 8 years at Google and seeing the immense hyper-growth there? How has Lexi applied those learnings to Gusto today?
  • How does Lexi look to put the ‘customer first’ thesis into practice? What does this look like in reality and from day 1?
  • How can one maintain such high levels of customer service with an ever increasing customer base? How can one insert elements of repeatability to make this easier?
  • Question from Hunter Walk: How do you fundamentally measure customer satisfaction? What benchmarks do you calibrate against to consider success?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What does Lexi know now that she wishes she had known in the beginning?
  2. Most challenging aspect of Lexi’s role?
  3. Question from Tien @ Zuora: How do you look to avoid the hype culture that pervades the valley?

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

 

Jan 23, 2017

Eric Yuan is the Founder & CEO @ Zoom, the video and web conferencing service that just last week raised $100m in venture funding from Sequoia Capital. Prior to founding Zoom, Eric was Corporate Vice President of Engineering at Cisco, where he was responsible for Cisco's collaboration software development. As one of the founding engineers and Vice President of Engineering at WebEx, Eric was the heart and soul of the WebEx product from 1997 to 2011. Eric proudly grew the WebEx team from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide, and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. Eric is a named inventor on 11 issued and 20 pending patents in real time collaboration.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Eric make his way into the world of SaaS? What was a-ha moment and founding story of WebEx?
  • How does Eric think about building products, customer first? What does that mindset and approach look like What are the main questions to ask? What are the challenges in doing so?
  • How should one approach growth with startups? Is growth ever in need of control? If so, what can be done to control growth? How can this be done without angering investors?
  • Eric has said before that founders must ‘spend more and burn less’. What does he mean by this? What does that look like in reality? What should be the main focus?
  • Does Eric agree with the notion that founders always undersell? How does Eric approach the situation of leaving money on the table? What are the challenges of doing so?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. What does Eric know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
  2. Eric’s Fave SaaS Reading Material?
  3. Biggest advice to SaaS founders?

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

Eric Yuan

Jan 20, 2017

Jason Lemkin is the Founder and VC @ SaaStr, or more accurately put Jason is a 2x founder, 1x VC, and constant SaaS enthusiast. He led or sourced the first VC investments in many leading enterprise/SaaS start-ups, Greenhouse.io, Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, RainforestQA, Automile, and more. He is also an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, FrontApp, Influitive, BetterWorks, and other SaaS leaders. Jason has co-founded two successful start-ups selling to the enterprise.  Before SaaStr and VC investing, he was CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web’s most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc. He then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where he oversaw the growth of EchoSign and Adobe Document Services to $50,000,000 in ARR in 2012 and $100,000,000+ ARR in 2013. Prior to EchoSign and Adobe, he co-founded one of the only successes in nanotechnology, NanoGram Devices, which was acquired for $50m just 13 months after founding. Other than SaaS he is like me, no known hobbies.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Jason make his way into the world of SaaS and come to be Founder and VC @ SaaStr?
  • ACV: What levels of ACV and characteristics suggest potential for a unicorn? How does Jason look to help founders attain higher ACVs? Why is stay focused horrible advice with regards to increasing your ACV with differing customer demands?
  • Does Jason believe that founders always undersell? What advice would Jason give to founders that are nervous to ask for more? What customer response would excite Jason and what would make him concerned?
  • Jason has previously said that ‘founders have to be 110% committed to sales’. What does this mean? How does this look when assessing a founder? Should founders be happy to pay their sales hires more than them? How quickly should the payback period be on these reps?
  • Jason has also previously said that some founders financials are ‘simply ridiculous’. What makes him say this? What financials are fundamental to have very accurately pin pointed? Why is 100% gross margin impossible?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. Why does Jason like it when startups have clients that are not in tech?
  2. What does Jason know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
  3. What should SaaS founders look for in their investors?
  4. Why does Jason only invest out of the SaaStr community?

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

Jan 16, 2017

Jason Lemkin is the Founder and VC @ SaaStr, or more accurately put Jason is a 2x founder, 1x VC, and constant SaaS enthusiast. He led or sourced the first VC investments in many leading enterprise/SaaS start-ups, Greenhouse.io, Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, RainforestQA, Automile, and more. He is also an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, FrontApp, Influitive, BetterWorks, and other SaaS leaders. Jason has co-founded two successful start-ups selling to the enterprise.  Before SaaStr and VC investing, he was CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web’s most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc. He then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where he oversaw the growth of EchoSign and Adobe Document Services to $50,000,000 in ARR in 2012 and $100,000,000+ ARR in 2013. Prior to EchoSign and Adobe, he co-founded one of the only successes in nanotechnology, NanoGram Devices, which was acquired for $50m just 13 months after founding. Other than SaaS he is like me, no known hobbies.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Jason make his way into the world of SaaS and come to be Founder and VC @ SaaStr?
  • ACV: What levels of ACV and characteristics suggest potential for a unicorn? How does Jason look to help founders attain higher ACVs? Why is stay focused horrible advice with regards to increasing your ACV with differing customer demands?
  • Does Jason believe that founders always undersell? What advice would Jason give to founders that are nervous to ask for more? What customer response would excite Jason and what would make him concerned?
  • Jason has previously said that ‘founders have to be 110% committed to sales’. What does this mean? How does this look when assessing a founder? Should founders be happy to pay their sales hires more than them? How quickly should the payback period be on these reps?
  • Jason has also previously said that some founders financials are ‘simply ridiculous’. What makes him say this? What financials are fundamental to have very accurately pin pointed? Why is 100% gross margin impossible?

60 Second SaaStr

  1. Why does Jason like it when startups have clients that are not in tech?
  2. What does Jason know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
  3. What should SaaS founders look for in their investors?
  4. Why does Jason only invest out of the SaaStr community?

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

Jan 13, 2017

Leo Widrich is the Founder & COO @ Buffer, the Simple and powerful social media scheduling, publishing & analytics. They have raised funding from some of the best including Scott and Cyan Banister, Hubspot’s Dharmesh Shah, Hiten Shah and Eric Ries just to name a few. Now in today’s talk with Leo he breaks down his and the Buffer teams Top 10 Learnings in Growing to 10m ARR.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • What are the 3 questions Leo asks his customers to understand them best? When is the right time to ask them? How should you follow up from this?
  • How to experiment with weekly masterminds? How do masterminds work? When is the right time to do them? What is important to remember in entering a mastermind?
  • How does Leo assess pricing structure? Why does he think it is important to experiment with different pricing? How do you do so without losing customers or trust?
  • Why does Leo advise startup founders to get advice from mentors with conflicting opinions? Why is this important and how should a decision be reached?

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

Leo Widrich

Jan 9, 2017

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?
  • What are the key points all reps must cover in their first calls with new leads? Why is expectation setting so crucial?
  • Why does John believe the best client to rep relationships are those that are equal? How can reps continue to provide value with every interaction?
  • In the case of leads going dark, how can sales reps engage with the lead to ensure conversion? What words must be avoided and how should this conversation be structured?
  • 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

  1. The most common question asked to John by VPs of Sales?
  2. What are the benefits of Top Down prospecting?
  3. 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

Jan 6, 2017

Michael Driscoll is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Metamarkets, the startup that provide interactive analytics for programmatic marketing. They have raised over $38m in VC funding from our good friends at Data Collective, Founder Collective, IA Ventures and more incredible investors. As for Michael, prior to Metamarkets, he started two other companies: Dataspora, a life science analytics company (acquired by Via Science in 2011), and CustomInk.com, an early pioneer in e-commerce. Fun fact: Michael is also a founding Partner of the previously mentioned VC fund, Data Collective.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • How did Michael make his way from data lover to Silicon Valley SaaS Founder?
  • Why does Mike believe in the inherent value of customer focus and product focus? What are the measurable benefits of being so specialised?
  • Why does Mike believe it is so hard to be a cost leader in software? What are the fundamental challenges? What role does open source play in this?
  • How does Mike view the alignment of the sales and the engineering team? Is it possible to have a harmonious relationship between the two?
  • What should SaaS startup founders look for in potential seed investors? How can they determine whether they have these qualities? What should they look at in particular?

60 Second SaaStr

  • Mike’s fave productivity tools?
  • What most companies are doing wrong in their approach to data science?
  • What does Mike know now 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

Michael Driscoll

Jan 2, 2017

Auren Hoffman is best known for being the former CEO and Founder @ LiveRamp, the leading data onboarder that was acquired by Acxiom for $310m. Today’s talk focuses on the 5 core lessons Auren took from that incredible journey with LiveRamp. Auren was also an angel investor and board member at BrightRoll, prior to it’s $610m acquisition by Yahoo. Today, he is the CEO at SafeGraph, the startup that is unlocking the world’s most powerful data so that machines and humans can answer some of society’s toughest questions.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

  • What is Auren’s thesis towards hiring all round athletes as opposed to position players? When do it make sense to do either? What stage of the company is right for which persona?
  • What are the two different types of sales personas? At what type of company should you hire a relationship driven sales team and then what type of company for a product driven sales team?
  • Why does Auren believe you should target a very small niche of the market? What are the benefits of such focus? How can you sell such a small market to VCs?
  • How does Auren perceive the future of enterprise software? How has the rise of bottoms up sales affected the SaaS environment? How many more SaaS companies and buyers of SaaS are there today, compared to 10 years ago?

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

Auren Hoffman

Algolia the robust search API that allows developers to integrate lightning fast, typo-tolerant search into their SaaS product. Out of the box, Algolia offers developers a powerful platform for building great search experiences. By owning the entire stack from engine to server, Algolia free up development teams to focus on adding intuitive search that delights users. This is perfect for existing search teams looking to spend less time on maintenance and infrastructure management and more time on user experience. For small SaaS teams, Algolia is a great investment on top of your existing stack that requires no specialist engineers. And you can learn more about how Algolia helps SaaS Scale Search and get started on their 14-day Free Trial at Algolia.com/SaaStrPodcast



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