Aaref Hilaly is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital, one of the world’s most successful VC funds with investments in the likes of Apple, Google, Paypal, Whatsapp and LinkedIn just to name a few. As for Aaref he came to the valley with 2 suitcases and the ambition to start a company. That he did and had 2 companies that were Sequoia backed, first CenterRun and then ClearWell Systems where Aaref was instrumental in the company’s growth from 0 to a $100m revenue run rate in just 4 years, prior to their $410m acquisition by Symantec. Today Aaref draws on this incredible operational success to illustrate how to manage up and have a very happy board.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• Why does Aaref advocate for founders not to manage the board but to engage them? How can this be done effectively?
• What does Aaref state are the dangers of focussing on metrics with your board? Why should you focus on product instead? How does this shift change the dialogue with the board?
• When things do go wrong and the company misses a quarter, how should the founder react? Why does Aaref suggest that founders need to own the miss? How should they structure these conversations? What should they not do when they miss a quarter?
• How can founders most effectively put their board to work? How should this be communicated and then followed up on by the founder? Where has Aaref found the board can provide the most value?

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

Aaref Hilaly

Mark Roberge is a Senior Lecturer @ Harvard Business School where he teaches entrepreneurial sales and marketing. Prior to his role with HBS, Mark was the Chief Revenue Officer @ Hubspot where he increased revenue over 6,000% and expanded the team from 1 to 450 employees. As a result, Mark has been named Forbes' Top 30 Social Sellers in the World and awarded the 2010 Salesperson of the Year by MIT.

Michele Law is an investor and advisor specialising in building and executing on go to market strategies, creating new revenue models and the operations to support them. Michelle has sat on both sides of the table having been a Principal at Greylock for 8 years before moving to be COO at OpenDNS where she led the sales and customer success team growing enterprise revenue from $0 to $20M ARR in 4 years, prior to the company’s acquisition by Cisco for $635m. Michele then moved to Castlight Health where she grew revenue from $13 to $75m.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• Why it is fundamentally dangerous to prematurely focus on growth? How can founders know when is the right time to focus on growth? What does the path to growth phase look like?
• How should founders assess and structure the core components: customer success, unit economics and growth? In which order should they be prioritised? What does the funnel look like?
• What should the profile of your first sales hire be? How can founders understand who and when to hire? From Hubspot days, when has Mark seen the transition from generalist to specialist?
• What should your sales compensation plan look like in the early days of the company? Why does Mark believe that churn is rooted in the sales compensation plan?

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

Todd Olson is the Founder & CEO @ Pendo, the startup that allows you to capture all user behaviour, gather feedback and then provide contextual support.  They have raised over $30m in VC funding from some of the very best in the business including Neeraj @ Battery Ventures, Megan @ Spark and Matt @ Salesforce Ventures just to name a few. As for Todd, prior to Pendo he held various different roles in product as well as co-founding 2 prior startups.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Todd make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found Pendo?
• Why does Todd believe that there is inherent tension between customer success and product teams? How has this changed from sales and marketing team tension? What does Todd suggest to mitigate this tension?
• How does Todd evaluate his hiring process? At what stage does one become a specialist vs a jack of all trades? Why does Todd always believe that you should hire ahead of where you are?
• Todd has previously said that ‘money is not all the same’. How does Todd look to select his investors? What value adds are most desired for Todd? What do the best investors do that make them so?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Todd know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
2. What is Todd’s favourite SaaS reading material: Mattermark Daily, Tom Tunguz
3. Creating a startup culture for adults?

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

Todd Olson

Amit Agarwal is the Chief Product Officer @ Datadog, the startup that provides cloud scale monitoring that tracks your dynamic infrastructure and applications. They have raised over $140m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including Index Ventures, IA Ventures, OpenView and RRE just to name a few. As for Amit, before Datadog, Amit was the Director of Product Management at Quest Software (now Dell), where he led the team responsible for application performance monitoring. Previously, Amit held product management roles at Datamirror (now IBM) and Embarcadero Technologies.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Amit make his way into the world of SaaS and come to be Chief Product Officer @ Datadog?
• Why did Datadog not have a marketing strategy for the early days? What would Amit advise early stage founders with regards to optimising their marketing in the early days?
• Obviously a multi-product line is crucial for a SaaS startup to be successful, what is Amit’s take on how, when and why to launch a second product? What have been his big learnings on this from Datadog?
• Amit has said before that it is tough to sell to large enterprises in the early days, does that mean startups should always start with SME’s? At what price point does it become a challenge? Does Amit agree that if you are between 25K-100K you are in the valley of death price wise?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Amit know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
2. What is Amit’s favourite SaaS reading material?
3. When is the right time to hire a CPO and why?

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

Amit Agarwal

Tim Eades is the CEO @ at vArmour, the industry's first distributed security system that provides application-aware micro-segmentation. Tim joined vArmour as CEO in October, 2013. Prior to that, he was the CEO at Silver Tail Systems until the company was acquired by RSA, the security division of EMC in late 2012. Prior to leading Silver Tail Systems, Tim was CEO of Everyone.net, an SMB focused SaaS company that was acquired by Proofpoint. Tim has also held sales and marketing executive leadership positions at BEA Systems, Sana Security, Phoenix Technologies and IBM.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Tim make his way from punk rock fan in the UK to leading Silicon Valley CEO?
• Why does Tim believe Incremental Account Opportunity (IAO) is one of the most important metrics for a growing startup?
• Why does Tim believe that most founders are far too late to ship their second product? How can they identify adjacent markets? When exactly is the right time to know when to ship your second product?
• What does it take in terms of sales team structure to successfully orchestrate the 7 figure deals that Tim does? What does that look like in terms of sales team compensation?

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 Eades

David Rodnitzky is founder and CEO of 3Q Digital, a leading digital agency that was acquired by Harte Hanks in 2015. Prior to 3Q Digital, he held senior marketing roles at several Internet companies, including Rentals.com (2000-2001), FindLaw (2001-2004), Adteractive (2004-2006), and Mercantila (2007-2008). David currently serves on advisory boards for several companies, including Marin Software, MediaBoost, Mediacause, and a stealth travel start-up.

Loretta Jones is the vice president of marketing at Delighted, the fastest way to gather customer feedback and put it into the hands of those who can act on it.  Prior to Delighted, Loretta's marketing programs grew Insightly, a CRM for small business, from 100,000 users to over 1.2 million users. Prior to Insightly, Loretta worked at Adobe Sign (formerly Adobe EchoSign) and grew the EchoSign brand to $25 million.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• Should all companies invest in SEM?
• How does SEM differ for SaaS SMB businesses vs enterprise SaaS businesses?
• How much of a role should iterating and testing play with regards to SEM? What are the strategies that can be used to ensure for maximal dollar efficiency?
• David has said before that ‘no demand channel is an island’. How does SEM work together with the other channels (SEO, display ads etc) to form a cohesive marketing strategy?
• As LTV takes a considerable time to figure out and can be inaccurate, should startups focus on their CPA (cost per acquisition) more than any other metric?

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 Rodnitzsky

Tom Tunguz is a Partner at Redpoint Ventures and one of the pre-eminent thought leaders in the rise of SaaS. Tom has made investments in the likes of Demio, Axial, Chorus.ai and more incredible companies. Tomasz is also the co-author of Winning with Data: which explores the cultural changes big data brings to business, and shows you how to adapt your organization to leverage data to maximum effect. Before joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google’s AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization. If you have not checked out Tom’s blog that is a must and can be found here.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• What are the 4 dominant ways startups are incorporating machine learning into their feature set? Why does Tom not believe in AI and discuss prefers to discuss machine learning?
• What 3 things have caused the rise of machine learning? Why now will machine learning happen in core categories in SaaS? What role does deep learning play in this rise?
• What are the 5 precepts of the type of companies that Tom wants to invest in using ML in SaaS? Why should startups discuss their value proposition over their technology?
• How does Tom advise startups can gain access to proprietary datasets? How would Tom like to see data access change in the coming years?
• How does Tom approach the aspect of building out a team of experts in machine learning for your startup? What should founders look for?

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

Tomasz Tunguz

Dan Adika is the Founder and CEO @ Walkme, the cloud-based service designed to help professionals guide and engage prospects and customers, and complete online tasks. They have raised over $90m in VC funding from some of the greats of the industry such as Rory O’Driscoll @ Scale Venture Partners and the team at Insight Venture Partners. As for Dan, prior to Walkme, he spent time at HP as a software engineer and before that spent 5 years in The Israeli Army’s elite computing unit.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Dan made his way from the elite computing unit of the Israeli army to San Francisco to found Walkme?
• What does Dan believe are the most important metrics to assess the growth and potential of a SaaS startup? What does Dan believe is a good customer payback period?
• What does Dan consider a good retention rate? How does Dan calculate sales rep productivity? What metric would suggest a successful rep and at what level should one be concerned?
• What is the KPI that Dan uses to measure customer success? When is the right time to hear your first CS rep?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Dan know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. Fave SaaS reading material?
3. When is the right time for startups to look to acquire other startups?

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

Dan Adika

Brad Feld is one of the world’s leading VCs having Co-Founded Foundry Group, Brad has made investments in the likes of Zynga, Makerbot and Fitbit, just to name a few. Brad is also Co-Founder of Techstars, one of the world’s most prominent startup accelerators, whose portfolio companies have raised over $1.3bn in funding. If that wasn’t enough Brad is also a best selling author having co-authoured Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and VC and Startup Communities: Building An Entrepreneurial Ecosystem In Your Community.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Brad made his way into the world of VC and came to found Foundry Group?
• Brad has previously stated that companies can be segmented into 3 different core components? What does he mean by this? How can startups be structured internally for scalability?
• Why does Brad hate the word culture? How should culture be viewed and approach internally within startups?
• How has Brad seen his personal development with regards to being a board member? What has he got better at? What does he believe makes a great board member?
• Why is CAC the easiest metric to game in SaaS? How should the CAC/LTV ratio be approached? How can entrepreneurs use this to attract VC investment?

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

Brad Feld

Dan Burkhart is the Founder & CEO @ Recurly, the startup powering much of the subscription success, trusted by the likes of Twitch, CBS Interactive and Hubspot just to name a few. They have raised over $20m in VC funding from leading investors including Greycroft, Freestyle, Harrison Metal and more. As for Dan, his background spans 14 years with the likes of eBay and NBC Internet in the marketing, business development and strategic partnership realm.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Dan make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found Recurly?
• How does Dan perceive a good CAC/LTV ratio? Does he agree with the hallowed 3:1 often cited by founders and investors?
• How does Dan manage and measure customer churn? How does he approach regrettable and non-regrettable customer churn?
• What is the post-mortem analysis of customer churn? How does Dan insert an element of accountability without creating a sense of churn?

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

Dan Burkhart

Scott Friend is a Managing Director @ Bain Capital Ventures where he has made investments in the likes of Jet and Rent The Runway. Scott joined Bain Capital Ventures in 2006 after selling the company he co-founded, ProfitLogic, to Oracle. At ProfitLogic, Scott saw the immense scaling of the company from its initial three founders to a 300 person global software and solutions business serving the retail industry. As a result, in 2005, Scott was named a winner of the Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year Award”.  Following the acquisition, Scott was Chairman of the Executive Advisory Board and VP of Marketing and Science for Oracle Retail.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Scott make the transition from building a 300 man SaaS startup, ProfitLogic to being a VC with Bain Capital Ventures?
• What are the 3 fundamental ways SaaS has changed over the last decade? What does this mean for SaaS founders and investors today?
• What is the single most important metric for Scott when evaluating a SaaS investment opportunity? Why is this and how has that thought process changed?
• How can startups optimise for sales efficiency? Where does Scott see most startups make mistakes in this field?
• When is the right time to hire your first customer success rep? Does it have to be embedded within the founding team? How can startups look to scale this and analyse risk over time?

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

Scott Friend

Mat Ellis is the Founder & CEO @ Cloudability, the startup that provides cloud cost efficiency at scale and they have raised close to $40m in VC funding including from our good friends at Foundry Group and Data Collective. As for Mat, prior to Cloudability, Mat held executive positions with four startups, and key technology roles at Frito-Lay, Pepsi Cola and Goldman Sachs and he currently sits on the boards of the Oregon Entrepreneurs Network and the Technology Association of Oregon.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Mat make the move from the UK to SaaS startup founder in Portland, Oregon?
• How has Mat seen elements change within the business when moving through the stages of company growth? What were the challenges when going through these strategic inflection points?
• At present, many SaaS founders are looking to hire COOs, what does Mat believe about this hire? When is the right time to make the hire? What should one look for in their first COO?
• How does Mat assess the balance of sustainability and growth? How does Mat balance between this tough line? What are the inherent challenges?
• What are Mat’s thought on culture maintenance when startup move into hypergrowth? What is core to retain this startup culture with the scaling through stages?

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

Mat Ellis

Peter Gassner is the Founder & CEO @ Veeva Systems, the industry cloud for life science systems. With just $4m in capital raised, Peter has taken Veeva to almost $500m in ARR and a prominent force in the rising tide of enterprise SaaS. As for Peter, prior to Veeva, Peter was a Senior Vice President of Technology at Salesforce where he experienced the successful IPO of the company and their rise into the most successful SaaS platform in the industry. Before Salesforce, Peter was with PeopleSoft for 9 years where he led a team of 450 professionals to support PeopleSoft’s technology platform. I do also want to say a big thank you to Jason Lemkin for the intro to Peter today without which the episode would not have been possible.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Peter make the move from Salesforce to founding one of the leaders in SaaS, Veeva?
• Why did Peter not want to be CEO in the beginning? What was the catalyst for his changing mindset? How has view of CEOship evolved over the Veeva journey?
• How does Peter assess the attractiveness of a market? What are the 2 questions Peter asks before going into a market? Is it wrong to move into smaller adjacent markets?
• How does Peter assess the suitability of potential board members? What does he mean when he says all founders should use the ‘grocery store rule’?  
• What is required to close 7 figure enterprise deals? How can sales teams look to build this relationship with large co’s in a natural and non-transactional way?

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

Daniel Ruch is the Founder and CEO @ Rocketrip, the startup that reduces travel spend by rewarding employees to save. They have backing from some incredible investors including the likes of Bessemer Venture Partners, Canaan Partners and Y Combinator. Prior to Rocketrip, Dan was a VP in Europe for Tremor Video and before that he held several director and managerial level positions at TACODA until TACODA’s sale to AOL.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Dan make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found Rocketrip?
• How important is accountability for the founder and CEO? How do you convey this commitment and responsibility to the team? Are there any downsides?
• At what stage does Dan believe the generalist transitions to the specialist? How has Dan seen his team evolve from stage to stage? What have been the challenges within each stage?
• How does Dan approach hiring strategy? How does he look to determine people/company fit? Dan has said before that he ‘would not hire without a track record’, why is this?  
• How does Dan view internal budgets? What are the fundamentals to cost saving within the business? How does Dan think one can cut cost without lowering morale?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What is Dan’s fave SaaS reading material?
2. What does Dan know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
3. Carrot or stick, what does Dan prefer to implement?

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

Dan Ruch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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