In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond wraps up the founder-led sales series with one of the most accomplished sales leaders in the world, Ben Cassidy. Cassidy was Blond’s VP of Sales at Echosign and, before that, was one of the first sales leaders at LinkedIn. Post-Echosign, he was the first sales leader at Talkdesk, valued at $10+B. Cassidy is now a co-founder at CoSell, a.k.a. the relationship platform designed to organize your intro efforts. The point of CRO Confidential ...
May 17, 2023•42 min
We exist in a market where things are tougher. It’s year two of the venture downtown, meaning it’s flat, and the value of each dollar in the public market is at 5-6-year lows, making it hard for VCs to invest. Jason Lemkin, SaaStr Founder and CEO, shares nine types of CEOs that are hard for VCs to work with. Why does it matter what VCs think? They play a small role, but it’s an important one. It matters today because happy VCs mean it’s easier to get that next check. Watch the video: https://you...
May 12, 2023•13 min
Omni Co-Founder and CEO Colin Zima and CRO Confidential host Sam Blond discuss how leveraging your network can supercharge sales and recruiting in the early days. You don't have to be a former founder or be part of YC to have a great network. Everyone will have friends, family, former college classmates, former work colleagues, or other sources. Colin encourages founders to find your particular "cheat code," whether that's your network or an amazing skill, and lean into it. Watch the video: http...
May 10, 2023•51 min
Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta shares his top 10 mistakes in 10 years of running Gainsight. This is the second half of a Workshop Wednesday session in which SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin chats with Nick about his top mistakes as a CEO. You can hear the first half in episode 656. You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/dtdh2Dkhpig ***** SaaStr Annual will officially be back in 2023. Join 12,500 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue leaders, and investors. Annual 2023 will take place September 6-8, 2023 in...
May 05, 2023•24 min
Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta shares his top 10 mistakes in 10 years of running Gainsight. This is the first half of a Workshop Wednesday session in which SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin chats with Nick about his top mistakes as a CEO. You can hear the second half in episode 657, which will air on May 5. You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/dtdh2Dkhpig ***** SaaStr Europa is back! And this time, we’re heading to London for 2 fun-filled days of content, networking, and SaaS. Join us June 6th an...
May 03, 2023•29 min
In this episode of CRO Confidential, Roam Founder & CEO Howard Lerman sits down with Sam Blond to talk about Roam's unconventional approach to acquiring its first customers. Full video: https://youtu.be/dGj6VZoi0Kw ***** What if you could prospect in a single click?And what if that click came with accurate, intent data you need to meet your goals? Meet Klarity with One-Click Prospecting by DemandScience. Let’s make your job easier. Visit demandscience.com Sage Intacct is a powerful cloud-based f...
Apr 28, 2023•48 min
Growing and scaling your customer base requires robust systems, teams, and playbooks that work in lockstep with one another. One of the most impactful teams, yet often least invested in, is customer marketing. From determining the ideal org structure to understanding clear KPIs, the playbook for customer marketing is still being written and is often misunderstood. In this session, we’ll discuss key strategies that can be leveraged to build and scale a high-performing customer marketing team. You...
Apr 26, 2023•29 min
If you’re looking for a marketing strategy to grow your SaaS business, SaaStr’s very own Jason Lemkin has five things you can do today, this week, or this month that always work. And the great news is that almost everything costs little to no money. Most SaaS companies need to spend more on marketing. To save money, many freeze marketing spend, which is cool for a few months, but if it becomes the norm, they won’t have enough pipeline for the rest of the year. No matter what, you need to do more...
Apr 21, 2023•40 min
If you’re looking for a marketing strategy to grow your SaaS business, SaaStr’s very own Jason Lemkin has five things you can do today, this week, or this month that always work. And the great news is that almost everything costs little to no money. Most SaaS companies need to spend more on marketing. To save money, many freeze marketing spend, which is cool for a few months, but if it becomes the norm, they won’t have enough pipeline for the rest of the year. No matter what, you need to do more...
Apr 19, 2023•33 min
Arnaud Bonzom, Founder and Managing Director @ Black Mangroves moderates a panel with Carmen Yuen, General Partner @ Vertex, Jenny Lee, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital, and Piruze Sabuncu, Partner @ Square Peg Capital on what founders should look out for when raising a Series A. In this panel, Carmen, Jenny, and Piruze will discuss the lessons learned at Vertex, GGV, and Square Peg on the common pitfalls to look out for when you are raising your Series A. For each pitfall, they will provide tips ...
Apr 14, 2023•27 min
Generative AI has taken the world by storm, and VCs and SaaS founders are looking at new opportunities it can bring. Even considering the more conservative fundraising market in 2023, there are opportunities for startups to get investor attention with AI. Tomasz Tunguz, Founder & General Partner at Theory Ventures, believes that with the right GTM plan and capital efficiency, it is still possible to get funding. It’s simply a matter of watching your burn: “The main difference in the market betwe...
Apr 12, 2023•22 min
In a crowded and distracted world, it can be hard to break through with customers, the media, recruiting and investors. Capturing the zeitgeist is more important than ever in making you stand out. In this session Josh will share his story building DoNotPay and how building a movement has given his company an advantage and the non-traditional lessons that he has learned. Video: https://youtu.be/kORBMIxRLs4 Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscrib...
Apr 07, 2023•25 min
Not every leader is created equally. A bad experience with a revenue operations leader might taint your view of the position at all future companies, but that would be a mistake, as CRO Confidential podcast host Sam Blond learned first-hand. In this week’s CRO Confidential episode, Blond talks to one of the best revenue operations leaders on the planet, Cherishma Shah, where she shares insights into the Rev Ops role, why your startup might need one, and how to maximize impact with this powerhous...
Apr 05, 2023•56 min
The SMBTech economy is very different from enterprise software, and there is massive opportunity to capture it. There are over 400M small businesses worldwide. That’s more than 90% of companies and 40-50% of GDP. In this episode, Jeff Richards and Tiffany Luck, Managing Director and Partner at GGVCapital, share what it takes to win as a SMBTech startup in today’s economy. Full video with Q&A: https://youtube.com/live/pcgXYRMX2XU Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community fo...
Apr 01, 2023•31 min
There is plenty you could go deep on when talking about what it takes to scale a business from 1m to 1bn+, but in this session you'll hear 30 years of experience doing exactly that - compressed into a handful of key focus areas that really matter - principles that have proven to make the difference when surrounded by options and chaos. Video: https://youtu.be/CQdAzSfhz54 Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.s...
Mar 29, 2023•20 min
Significant strides in digital technology combined with the COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted the world of corporate summits, events, and tradeshows. Many businesses changed their strategy to incorporate virtual or hybrid events recently. Before the pandemic, hybrid and virtual gatherings accounted for only 18.9% of all events . But after the pandemic, the number shifted, with 59.5% of event planners stating that they will focus more on hybrid events. Is there still room for in-person events in...
Mar 24, 2023•23 min
Back in the early 2000s, people didn’t entirely accept that a virtual machine could be as good as a physical one. Of course, we all know how that turned out. Ed Lenta, the SVP and GM of Databricks, had the rare opportunity of scaling three hypergrowth companies — VMware, AWS, and Databricks. All of which were disruptors when they first came on the scene. Is there a recipe or formula that will predict the success of a pre-growth, high-potential company? Lenta shares his lessons learned through sc...
Mar 22, 2023•25 min
Buying software has changed significantly over the past 27 years. Despite the economic headwinds we’ve seen, buyers still buy a lot. The average mid-size company has 111 SaaS applications. By next quarter, that’s estimated to rise to 119. Of course, companies are experiencing some economic impact, and average spend is coming down slightly. Chris Perrine, the Vice President of G2, Asia Pacific, shares what’s holding up buyers in today’s economy and how you can meet them where they are. Video with...
Mar 17, 2023•23 min
If you’re on the path to building a startup, you know what it means to fail. In this week’s Workshop Wednesday, Tracy Young, CEO and Co-Founder of TigerEye and PlanGrid, says that “everything is going to fail.” Young took PlanGrid from nothing to $100M ARR before passing the baton and shares the biggest lessons learned, the biggest failures, and how to navigate them. Full video with Q&A: https://youtube.com/live/w9-lMhAyJeo Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B...
Mar 15, 2023•18 min
With product-led growth, your product is the main driver of revenue growth; companies can scale up faster while keeping sales and marketing costs low. Conversely, sales-led growth puts human interaction at the center of sales processes. But sometimes, choosing a single path when it comes to a sales-led or a product-led growth model isn’t enough. In this session, Amplitude's Mark Velthuis will share how companies can embrace a mix of the two strategies, how it will affect our traditional understa...
Mar 10, 2023•24 min
How did the largest product-led growth enterprise company in the world find success? In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, Cameron Deatsch, CRO of Atlassian, shares his wisdom with Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond. Atlassian is trading at over $40B with revenue north of $3B. When the company started 20 years ago, it didn’t hire salespeople. Not because they planned to start as a product-led company but because they couldn’t afford to. So what should earlier-stage companies do: immediately b...
Mar 08, 2023•40 min
Having scaled the APAC region for 3 US companies, with a big emphasis on building culture as a foundation for success, Scott will speak of his learnings and lead a discussion for: Recruiting Enabling Creating Culture Video: https://youtu.be/CfW0W0E3F4A Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Grou...
Mar 03, 2023•29 min
Chris Merritt, Chief Revenue Officer of Cloudflare joined Cloudflare nearly a decade ago when annual revenue was around $1M with one sales person — and has since been scaling the sales organization and helping grow Cloudflare into the multi-billion dollar business it is today. When building a sales team and business at scale, organizations go through various stages of growth with key milestones along the way—from 1-10 million in revenue, to 50-100 million, to 100 million, and onward. While no tw...
Mar 01, 2023•32 min
In this illuminating session, ICONIQ Growth general partner Doug Pepper and head of analytics Christine Edmonds will share some of the latest insights from ICONIQ's annual “Growth and Efficiency Study” which utilizes aggregated operating data from a large set of enterprise SaaS companies, about half of which have gone on to IPO and/or been named to the Cloud 100 list. From the metrics most indicative of healthy business fundamentals and what top quartile performance looks like across these KPIs,...
Feb 24, 2023•28 min
Stripe CTO David Singleton shares insights from the company's focus on going the extra mile to obtain user feedback and even more extreme lengths to turn that feedback into successful products. He’ll show how one simple rule helped the company grow from a single API to a sophisticated platform, and discuss the challenges of managing change, defining product-market fit, and designing infrastructure that can scale. Video: https://youtube.com/live/N2BPdAk_riU Want to join the SaaStr community? We'r...
Feb 22, 2023•26 min
While the allure of customer acquisition can pull a founder’s attention, it’s equally important to dedicate resources to fighting churn and expanding revenue from existing customers. One company that has unlocked the secret to solid retention and revenue expansion is Brex , an easy-to-use corporate cards and spend management software in an integrated global solution. In this edition of CRO Confidential, Sam Blond (former CRO at Brex and current Partner at Founders Fund) hosts his former colleagu...
Feb 17, 2023•39 min
What do some of the most successful PLG companies have in common? How do you build a best-in-class go-to-market model to get to 100mn ARR and beyond? Iconic PLG companies share how they integrated GTM into their growth strategy to go from single digits to over a billion in ARR. Lightspeed Partner, Anoushka Vaswani, is joined by Raj Sarkar, CMO at 1Password, Kim Walsh, SVP, Sales, Partnerships and Customer Success at Apollo.io, and Chris De Vylder, CRO at Sentry, to pass along key lessons from th...
Feb 15, 2023•34 min
As Chief Product Officer at DigitalOcean and a developer-turned-entrepreneur himself, Gabe Monroy is deeply familiar with some of the pitfalls that founders encounter on the road of product development. In this session, Gabe will discuss how founders can avoid the trap of over-engineering products, as well as why focusing on the must-haves (developing “painkillers” for your customer’s problem) will better serve your business versus focusing on the nice-to-haves (developing “vitamins”). Video: ht...
Feb 10, 2023•29 min
Every week, more and more companies are doing big layoffs. As news of layoffs continues, many are left wondering what happened and how to shift course. Many startups missed 2022 revenue goals and are forecasting slower growth for 2023, especially compared to the explosive growth of teams and revenue during the Boom of 2021 and early 2022. In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, Founders Fund Investor Sam Blond sits down with the SVP of Sales at Modern Health, Hannah Willson, to discuss how c...
Feb 08, 2023•33 min
Jason recently joined Harry Stebbings on 20VC to discuss VC in 2023. Hear why you shouldn't wait to raise (if you're fundable), even though the venture landscape will look better by the end of 2023. This episode is an excerpt of Jason and Harry's discussion. You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/dHIWdwljt7Q Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.co...
Feb 03, 2023•28 min
