The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders

Latest Episodes:

SaaStr 148: Why Startups Die of Indigestion Not Starvation, Why Early Product Market Fit Can Be Misleading & Why Gross Margin Is So Crucial For SaaS Businesses From Day 1 with Rajeev Batra, Partner @ Mayfield Oct 23, 2017

Show notes

Rajeev Batra is a Partner at Mayfield, a firm that has championed bold entrepreneurs since 1969. Rajeev's investments at Mayfield include the likes of Crunchbase, SmartRecruiters, Marketo (IPO then taken private by Vista Equity), ServiceMax (acquired by GE Digital) and more incredible companies. Prior to Mayfield, Rajeev was at Mobius (Softbank) Venture Capital and Austin Ventures. Before making the move into VC, Rajeev was on the operational side as an entrepreneur and executive with three of the companies he worked with going public and later being acquired, including the very notable Siebel Systems.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

How Rajeev made the transition from successful operator with 3 IPOs under his belt to investing in the next generation of enterprise companies with Mayfield?
What does Rajeev mean when he says "startups do not die of starvation, they die of indigestion"? How does this realisation affect Rajeev's approach to customer profiling and segmenting customers?
Why does Rajeev believe that "early product market fit can be misleading"? How does Rajeev look to provide context and action from numbers and analytics in the early days?
How does Rajeev feel that founders should approach gross margin from the early days? How should this relationship and thought process towards gross margin change over time?
Why does Rajeev believe that retention is the number 1 metric for SaaS founders to focus on? In the stack of metrics, how does this compare to gross margin, CAC/LTV and payback period?

60 Second SaaStr

Enterprise investing is spreadsheet investing: True or false?
How does Mayfield use an internal budget to align themselves to entrepreneurs?
What does Rajeev mean when he says "I look for 2 act opportunities"?

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

SaaStr 147: Why Payback Period Is The Critical Metric, Why There Is No "No Man's Land In SaaS Pricing" & When Is A Stretch VP, A Stretch Too Far with Shan Sinha, Founder & CEO @ Highfive Oct 16, 2017

Show notes

Shan Sinha is the Founder & CEO @ Highfive, the startup that quite simply makes insanely simple video conferencing. They have raised over $45m in funding from some of the best in the business including a16z, Lightspeed General Catalyst and Founder Collective and then individuals including Aaron Levie, Drew Houston and Marc Benioff. Prior to Highfive, Shan was the Group Product Manager for Google Apps for Enterprise, which he joined following Google's 2010 acquisition of his prior company, DocVerse, which later became part of Google Drive.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

How Shan made his way from being one of the foundations of Google Drive to changing the world of video conferencing with Highfive?
As a successful second time founder, how has Shan's thesis around customer success changed? When is the right time to hire your first CS personnel? What profile should those first CS hires have? How does this vary to differing profiles in the scaling journey?
Logos or expansion? What does Shan believe is crucial in the early days of SaaS scaling? What metric is the true determinant of whether a customer is attaining consistent value from your product?
Why does Shan believe that not everything has to scale from Day 1? What are the benefits of implementing a model that is unable to scale? What does this show and teach the startup? How does Shan think about capturing the perfect customer experience?
Why does Shan believe that payback period is the single most important metric for SaaS startups? How does Shan think about payback and margins when selling to the traditionally smaller ACV marker of SMB? What are the challenges in doing so?

60 Second SaaStr

When is a stretch VP a stretch too far?
What does Shan know now that he wishes had known when he started Highfive?
Challenges of doing both hardware and software simultaneously?

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

SaaStr 146: Why Management Upgrade Is The Most Important Thing A CEO Can Do, Why You Must Hire More Generalists with Scale & How To Hire People with 3-4 Years Runway with Chris Caren, CEO @ Turnitin Oct 09, 2017

Show notes

Chris Caren is the CEO @ Turnitin, the company revolutionising the experience of writing to learn with backing from the likes of IVP, Norwest Venture Partners and GIC. Chris has scaled the company to serve over 25m students and 2m teachers across 15,000 institutions. Prior to joining Turnitin in 2009, Chris spent 4 years with Microsoft as a General Manager and before that 3 years at Business Objects as a VP of Product Marketing.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

How Chris made his way into the world of SaaS and came to be CEO @ Turnitin?
What were Chris' biggest takeaways from watching both Business Objects and Microsoft as they scaled into hyper growth mode? What were his big lessons in management from Bernard Liautaud? What marketing takeaways did he have from working with Dave Kellogg?
Why does Chris believe management team upgrade is the most important role a CEO can perform? What are the core characteristics that upgrade candidates must have for them to be an attractive hire? What culture must be built into the fibre of the leadership team?
How does Chris look to manage internal discontent when bringing in external managers? How does Chris look to involve internal candidates for the role in the search for their next boss? What are the benefits of this?
When is a stretch VP a stretch too far? What are the signs of potential strain? How does the team convey this? Once identified, what is the right post-mortem chain to take place?

60 Second SaaStr

What should founders consider before selling their company?
What does Chris know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
What is Chris' favourite SaaS reading material 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

SaaStr 145: Mulesoft CEO, Greg Schott on The Challenges & Lessons of Scaling from 20 to 1,000 People & Where Most Companies Go Wrong In The Hiring Process Oct 02, 2017

Show notes

Greg Schott is the Chairman and CEO @ Mulesoft, provider of the leading platform for building application networks. They have raised over $250m in funding from some of the best investors in the world including NEA and Lightspeed and then some of the largest companies of the day in Cisco, Salesforce and SAP. Greg joined Mulesoft in 2009 when the company only had 20 employees, over the last 8 years Greg has scaled the team to over 1,000 today in 18 countries. A real software industry veteran with over 20 years of experience building and leading high growth technology companies from early stage through IPO.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

How Greg made his way into the world of SaaS and came to be CEO @ Mulesoft?
Greg has seen Mulesoft scale from 20 to 1,000 employees today, what have been the biggest challenges in scaling the team? Where are the breaking points? What are the signs of those impending breaking points? How does that show through the team behaviour?
Where do most companies go wrong in the hiring process? What is the right and wrong way to respond when a bad hire has been made? How long is long enough to determine whether a bad hire is a bad hire? Does Greg agree with the hire fast, fire fast thesis?
If Greg could go back to 2009 when he joined the firm with 20 employees, what would Greg change about the way he approached hiring? What hiring advice would Greg give to an early stage SaaS company?
How does Greg think about scaling sales teams? How does Greg view specialisation in the scaling of sales? When is the right time? What should CEO's look for in their sales leaders? How does that alter at different points in the journey?

60 Second SaaStr

How have things changed since IPO?
When is the right time to expand product line and enter new segments?
Biggest challenge with Mulesoft today?
Which SaaS CEO does Greg most admire and why?

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

SaaStr 144: 7 Steps To Land $100K+ "Whale" Clients with Sequoia Backed, Andy Byrne, Founder & CEO @ Clari Sep 25, 2017

Show notes

Andy Byrne is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Clari, the startup that helps sales teams drive more revenue and increase forecast accuracy through improved deal execution and predictive analysis. They have raised over $30m in venture funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia and Bain Capital Ventures. Prior to Clari, Andy was part of the founding executive team at Clearwell Systems—Gartner's highest ranking e-discovery company—which he helped grow from pre-product & pre-revenue in 2005 to $100 million run rate until its acquisition by Symantec (SYMC) in Q2 2011. Prior to joining Clearwell, Andy co-founded Timestock, Inc., acquired by Computer Associates (CA) via the acquisition of Wily Technology.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

How Andy made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found Clari? What were the key takeaways from his two prior successful founding experiences?
Why is it important for startups to look larger than life to potential "whale" customer? What is the methodology that startups can use to gain this appearance? What role does the website play in this?
Why is it important for startups to understand the risk the buyer is undertaking at large corporates when becoming a customer? How does this mean that startups should convey the product roadmap? How can startups sell the product vision and the instant value add simultaneously?
How can startups look to "create theatre" with their product? What does this really mean? How can startups do this when the product is in MVP stage?
Why is it so important for the startup to make the switch from vendor to partner? How can startups use execution time as the key way to achieve this?

60 Second SaaStr

What hires does Andy wish he had made earlier with Clari?
Recruiting in the valley, how hard and top tips?
What is the most challenging element in the day to day running of Clari?

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

SaaStr 143: DigitalOcean CEO, Ben Uretsky on Scaling To 1m Customers with No Sales Team, Key Learnings From Raising $123m & Why It Is Not Just About Culture Fit Sep 18, 2017

Show notes

Ben Uretsky is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Digital Ocean. Under Ben's leadership, DigitalOcean has risen from a cloud startup for developers to the second largest and fastest growing cloud computing platform. To date, more than 1m developers have deployed more than 50 million cloud servers, and the company has expanded its worldwide infrastructure footprint with multiple datacenter locations around the globe. The company has raised $123 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Access Industries, IA Ventures, CrunchFund, and Techstars. Prior to DigitalOcean, he co-founded and built a managed hosting provider that supported some of the top websites online and generated million-dollar annual revenues.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

How Ben made the move from co-founding a bootstrapped startup competing with Rackspace to co-founding DigitalOcean and competing with Amazon?
What have been Ben's big learnings in raising $123m for DigitalOcean? How does Ben suggest building a trusted relationship with VCs?
How have DigitalOcean scaled to over 1m customers without a sales team? What are the core tenets that have made this possible? How does the team prioritise customer acquisition channels at DigitalOcean? How does Ben say is the right way to build a community?
Sean Rad has said before the hardest part is scaling with the firm. How has been seen his scaling as CEO with the firm? How has his personal relationship to the company changed with the scaling? Hear an inflection point in the scaling of DigitalOcean and how Ben's leadership changed as a result?

60 Second SaaStr

What hire des Ben wish he had made earlier?
What does Ben know now that he wishes he had known earlier?
What are the key inflection points in SaaS businesses?

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

SaaStr 142: Why CAC/LTV Is The Most Important Metric In SaaS, How To Analyse Churn Correctly & Why Bookings Are Inaccurate and Easy To Manipulate with Dave Kellogg, CEO @ Host Analytics Sep 11, 2017

Show notes

Dave Kellogg is the CEO @ Host Analytics, the leader in cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM). Previously, Dave was SVP/GM of Service Cloud at Salesforce and CEO at unstructured big data provider MarkLogic. Before that, Dave was CMO at Business Objects for nearly a decade as the company grew from $30M to over $1B. Dave has also worked in various capacities with the likes of Breeze, GainSight, Tableau and MongoDB and previously sat on the boards of ag tech leader, Granular (acq by DuPont for $300M) and big data leader Aster Data (acquired by Teradata for $325M).

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

How Dave made his way into the world of SaaS with Salesforce, came to be CMO at Business Objects and now running his own SaaS company as CEO at Host Analytics?
What does David believe is the single most important metric in SaaS? How should SaaS companies structure the first four lines of their financial statements? Why is retention and renewal not always an accurate sign of customer satisfaction?
How does Dave look to analyse churn? What is the post-mortem? What is more important, logos or expansion? If a startup's churn is too high, what is the top 3 things they should do? Why must you have a "standard taxonomy" for churn? How can you construct this?
How does David think about taking existing customer and up-selling them? How does he view this in contrast to cross-sell? Does Dave agree with David Skok on the need for more than 1 variable pricing mechanism? Why does Dave not encourage usage based pricing?
How does Dave analyse the benefits of multi-year contracts paid upfront? How does this distort TCV and inflate the figures? Does upfront payment misalign the provider and the consumer, in terms of care and support? With that in mind, how does David view billing frequency? Contract durations?

60 Second SaaStr

What does Dave know now which he wishes he had known at the beginning?
What is the 90 day rule? Why is it important?
How much ARR should a good sales rep add in relation to comp?

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

SaaStr 141: How To Scale & Segment Your Sales Team Efficiently, How To Move Upmarket With Speed & How To Raise Over $50m in an "Unsexy" Industry with Classy Founder, Scot Chisholm Sep 05, 2017

Show notes

Scot Chisholm is the Founder & CEO @ Classy, the world's leading fundraising platform for nonprofit organizations As a result they have raised close to $50m in VC funding from the likes of Salesforce Ventures, our friends at BullPen Capital, Mithril Capital and many more great investors. With support and funding like this, since 2011, Classy has helped more than 3,000 nonprofits and social enterprises raise hundreds of millions of dollars and be named to "The World's Most Innovative Companies in Social Good" and to the "100 Brilliant Companies" by Entrepreneur Magazine. As for Scot, he is also a prolific angel investor, investing out of a fund called Mixture that includes investments in Change.org, inDinero, Iodine, Casetext and more.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

How Scot made his way into the world of SaaS and how a "pub crawl" came to be the founding story for Classy?
What have been the key learnings for Scot in raising $50m for Classy, in an industry that is maybe not so sexy for investors? Why did Scot choose to raise both the seed and A round from angels? What advice would Scot give to aspiring founders, looking to raise?
How has Scot seen the evolution of his sales team? What are the key inflection points in the scaling when elements tend to break? How important is it to segment the sales team? When should this be done? At what speed is optimal?
How does Scot evaluate startups looking to move upmarket? How does the decision to move upmarket change the internal decision-making with regards to product roadmap and strategy? How does it change the role of CEO in the organisation?
How does Scot look to balance the attainment of short term objectives with holding the vision for the future? How far is too far to plan ahead? How should founders think about investing in areas of the business ahead of time?

60 Second SaaStr

What does Scot know now that he wishes he had known when he started?
Challenges as a first time CEO/entrepreneur?
The key challenges of building a SaaS company in San Diego?

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

SaaStr 140: Key Requirement To A Cash Flow Positive SaaS Business, How To Land Your First "Whale" & How To Incentivise Your Sales Team Aligned To The Company Mission with Mark Organ, Founder & CEO @ Influitive Aug 28, 2017

Show notes

Mark Organ, Founder & CEO at Influitive. Influitive helps B2B companies mobilize their army of advocates for more rapid and profitable revenue growth. They have raised close to $50m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Lightspeed, First Round Capital, prior guest Cindy Padnos @ Illuminate and Nick Mehta @ Gainsight, just to name a few. 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 You Will Learn:

How Mark made his way into the world of SaaS, came to found Eloqua and then what the catalyst was for the founding of Influitive?
How did Mark make the decision to make profitability a goal? How did Mark communicate his desire to focus on profitability and unit economics over aggressive growth to his investors? What type of SaaS startups should consider this route more?
To what extent is "landing whales" crucial to getting to cash flow positive? What are some of Mark's big learnings in how to attain those "whales", having done it so successfully before with Eloqua? Where do most founders go wrong and how should they approach pricing whales?
Why does Mark believe paying sales reps on signing misaligns incentives? Why does he believe it is optimal to pay half on signing and half on cash being received? How do you communicate that to your sales team?
To what extent should SaaS startups consider debt financing as a respectable and appropriate form of company financing? What type and stage of SaaS company does debt make perfect sense for? When is it wrong in the lifecycle to take debt?

60 Second SaaStr

What hire does Mark wish he had made earlier?
What does Mark know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
Pros and cons of running a SaaS startup not in Silicon Valley?

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

SaaStr 139: Why Hiring Sales People Is Like Being Thirsty, Why You Have to Separate Between Customers and Money & Why Time Kills More Companies Than Dollars with Mike Dauber, General Partner @ Amplify Partners Aug 21, 2017

Show notes

Mike Dauber is a General Partner @ Amplify Partners, the fund that backs technical founders, building technical products for technical buyers. Their portfolio consists of the likes of DataDog, Fastly, Engagio and many more incredible companies. As for Mike, prior to joining Amplify he spent more than six years at Battery Ventures, where he lead early-stage enterprise investments on the West Coast. While at Battery, he was on the Boards of Cask, Duetto, Interana, and Platfora (acquired WDAY). Mike also lead Battery's investment in Vera, which is also in Amplify's portfolio. He also previously invested in Splunk (SPLK) and RelateIQ (acquired CRM). As a result of this success, Mike was named to Forbes' Midas Brink List in 2014.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

How Mike made his way into the world of early stage enterprise investing with Battery and came to be a GP with Amplify?
What does Mike mean when he says he looks for "practitioner founders"? What are the benefits of these types of founders? Why do they find product market fit faster? Does this tunnel vision not sometimes mean a lack of naivete, which can be good?
Why does Mike believe that hiring sales people is like being thirsty? How can founders discover the optimal cadence for expanding the sales team? Why must founders differentiate between customers and money?
Why does Mike believe that everyone needs to find their Hobbesian advisor? What characteristics should this person have? How can you find this advisor? What should their incentives be?
Why does Mike believe that founders need to set the hook for VCs in the first meeting? How does this compare to how founders traditionally pitch? What should they look for in those early VC meetings?

60 Second SaaStr