The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors - podcast cover

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.

Episodes

SaaStr 540: 15 Ways to Help the Sales Team with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, shares the top 15 ways to help the sales team close more right now, this year -- with the same number of leads you already have!! Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/can-help-sales-team/ 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 Group: https://www.quora.com/q/clo...

Mar 23, 202227 min

SaaStr 539: The Journey to Building a Successful Customer Advisory Board in the Enterprise with Mapistry VP of Customer Experience Maya Colato

Customer feedback is an essential road map to guide a company toward success. When you have a customer-centric culture, your business has a greater chance of growing and thriving. But how can businesses create spaces for customers to engage in productive dialogue? Mapistry sought out feedback about its direction by organizing a Customer Advisory Board (CAB). Mapistry received commendations for the process from participants of its CAB—executives and practitioners from diverse industries. Maya Col...

Mar 18, 202228 min

SaaStr 538: Product-Led Growth: Panacea or Boondoggle? with AgentSync Co-Founder & CTO Jenn Knight and OpenPhone Co-Founder Daryna Kulya

OpenPhone and AgentSync are two SaaS businesses with very different growth strategies, but the same ultimate goal: to continue selling while simultaneously problem-solving for current customers. They are a perfect example of implementing a growth model, mastering it, and then expanding horizons into other growth strategies with strategic testing and experimenting. Contrary to the title of this article, the two brands prove that product-led growth is neither panacea nor boondoggle, but rather a w...

Mar 16, 202225 min

SaaStr 537: How Hybrid is Working in Practice....What the Data Shows with Raise Commercial Real Estate CEO Justin Bedecarre and Felipe Gomez, President @ Raise

What do you remember about your experience in the workplace prior to 2020? Is it the moments of collaborative synergy and collective achievements? Is it the feeling of solving complex problems and hitting milestones with your team? Perhaps it’s the joy of closing deals and celebrating with your colleagues? It’s been more than two years since the pandemic interrupted our daily work life, and companies are taking stock and preparing for a return to the workplace. How can company leadership retain ...

Mar 11, 202223 min

SaaStr 536: The Path to a Billion Dollars: How to Create Multi-Revenue Streams with Bill.com CRO Tom Clayton

Reaching the first billion is a milestone for every SaaS company, so what’s the best way to get there? During his SaaStr Annual presentation, Tom Clayton, CRO of Bill.com shared his insights and advice for growing revenue streams to maximize business success. Video: https://youtu.be/AY5NFn1CSVo Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/the-path-to-a-billion-dollars-how-to-create-multi-revenue-streams-with-bill-com-cro-tom-clayton-pod-536-video/ Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest comm...

Mar 09, 202224 min

SaaStr 535: From SendGrid to DigitalOcean: Hacks for Founders of High-Growth Startups with DigitalOcean CEO Yancey Spruill

All high-growth startups reach a point in scaling their business when their processes and operations start to inhibit their growth. From SendGrid to DigitalOcean, Yancey Spruill is the person these startups brought in when they were ready to graduate to the big leagues. In his presentation, Yancey will discuss the most common mistakes startup founders make and how to overcome hurdles at different stages of growth. Full video: https://youtu.be/MD_wD5hp7r0 Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/hacks-f...

Mar 05, 202225 min

SaaStr 534: Marketing Secrets to Hypergrowth from Building Elastic, Zuora, and Segment

Panelists: Katrina Wong, VP Marketing and Demand Generation Segment Asawari Samant, Head of Marketing, Anyscale Jeffrey Yoshimura, CMO and Customer Experience Officer, Snyk Three marketing leaders discuss the importance of community, data, and experimentation, as well as the do's and don'ts of using agencies. This episode is an abbreviated version of the session. You can see the full session here: https://youtu.be/7wucuUQSQvQ Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/marketing-secrets-to-hypergrowth-fro...

Mar 02, 202223 min

SaaStr 532: The Secrets to Scaling a Public Company with a 75% Freelancer Workforce with Upwork CEO Hayden Brown

Talent Acquisition to Talent Access: Building a winning culture with a workforce that is 75% freelancers Upwork CEO Hayden Brown addresses common myths around working with freelancers, such as, "Freelancers aren't reliable," and, "I can't build my company culture with freelancers." She'll share how Upwork has scaled by including freelancers in every part of the company and treating them as part of the team rather than outsiders, and how it can benefit every company to have access to the talent i...

Feb 25, 202224 min

SaaStr 531: 4 Ways to Get to $10 Billion by Working Async (Without Burning Out) with Loom CEO Joe Thomas

Joe will share four case studies of companies that have achieved transformational growth using asynchronous communication. You’ll hear how they’ve rebuilt sales processes, won talent wars, delivered best-in-class products, and fully reimagined the employee experience. He’ll also highlight the work principles fueling these initiatives and the opportunities ahead for companies that employ them across their teams. Full video: https://youtu.be/OAxJvk04JKU Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/4-ways-to-...

Feb 23, 202226 min

SaaStr 529: Ten Things to Avoid Being Blindsided By In Your Pursuit Of Customer Success Nick Mehta, CEO @ Gainsight

SaaS is evolving rapidly. In many ways, we are witnessing the equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion in terms of the number of SaaS companies created each month. And these startups look different than their predecessors. Trends like vertical SaaS, Product-led Growth, and payment make the industry almost unrecognizable compared to the era of the SaaS pioneers more than a decade ago. Yet many companies are still adopting Customer Success practices - like fixed size-based segmentation and activity-ba...

Feb 18, 202226 min

SaaStr 528: Building a $5.6B company with a Product-led Flywheel with Abhinav Asthana, CEO @ Postman

Postman CEO Abhinav Asthana shares how community, product, data can power marketing, customer success, and sales are the key elements for the next generation of SaaS software leaders. Full video here: https://youtu.be/jK8trhy5i-k Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/building-a-5-6b-company-with-a-product-led-flywheel-with-postmans-ceo-abhinav-asthana-pod-528-video/ Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com...

Feb 16, 202224 min

SaaStr 527: Acquiring 10,000 SMB Customers Solely from Data with Gorgias CEO Romain Lapeyre

A crucial part of any business model is customer acquisition. In order for a company to optimize their customer base, data must be intrinsic to their strategy. Join Gorgias CEO Romain Lapeyre as he discusses how the company acquired 10,000 SMB customers from just data alone. Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Video: https://youtu.be/5OJZM-uH4uE Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/acquiring-10000-smb-customers-solely-from-data-with-gorgias-ceo-romain-...

Feb 11, 202223 min

SaaStr 526: Lessons Learned Building a $2 billion Company from Scratch with Neo4j CEO & Co-Founder Emil Eifrem

The biggest challenge in building a data infrastructure company over the next decade will be to redefine strategies for awareness, activation, user-centricity, and growth. While all of this is possible in theory, building categories with staying power in the age of the public cloud remains a lofty goal. Emil Eifrem, CEO and co-founder of Neo4j, will discuss the blueprint that’s emerging and some of the lessons he’s learned after launching Neo4j Aura, the company’s fully-managed graph database as...

Feb 10, 202228 min

SaaStr 525: Marketing Hyper-Growth at Scale with Klaviyo Head of Marketing Kady Srinivasan

Marketing isn't one size fits all, particularly at a hyper-growth company. In this session, Kady Srinivasan, SVP, Global Head of Marketing at marketing automation unicorn, Klaviyo, will pull from her 20+ years of experience and share actionable tips on how you can scale your team, your campaigns and more. Full video: https://youtu.be/s4WZcgL5fc0 Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/6-steps-to-managing-marketing-hyper-growth-at-scale-with-klayvio-global-head-of-marketing-kady-srinivasan-pod-525-and-...

Feb 04, 202225 min

SaaStr 524: From New Relic to Salesforce to Calendly: What's Changed in Product-led Growth with Calendly CMO Patrick Moran

The world of product-led growth is a highly dynamic space. Join this session with Calendly CMO Patrick Moran and Head of Marketing Growth & Demand Gen Garrett Scott to learn more about these changes and how they are reflected in Calendly’s evolution as a SaaS company. Full video: https://youtu.be/ey9aiYOupSg Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/whats-changed-in-product-led-growth-with-calendly-cmo-patrick-moran/ Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subs...

Feb 02, 202221 min

SaaStr 523: How to Succeed as a First-Time VP of Sales or First-Time SaaS VP with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin

We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales. And we’ll keep talking about it — so long as 70% of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it 1 year. In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, shares his best advice for all first-time VPs coming into a SaaS startup. Video: https://youtu.be/_gWZxKwV44w Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-not-to-fail-as-a-first-time-vp-of-sales/

Jan 31, 202222 min

SaaStr 522: Scaling Your Startup 10x From $20M to $200M with Sapphire, Lightspeed, TripActions, and 6Sense

When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. But what are the essentials of scaling up, and how do you navigate obstacles along the way to function as a high-impact organization? Cathy Gao , Partner at Sapphire Ventures, and Anoushka Vaswani, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, moderated a panel with Carlos Delatorre , CRO at TripActions, and Latané Conant, CMO at 6sense to discuss how you can scale your startup from $20 million ARR ...

Jan 28, 202224 min

SaaStr 521: How To Create a High Performing Sales Organization: Five Strategies for Driving Peak Performance Through Reimagined Management with Hootsuite CRO Melissa Murray Bailey

Driving peak sales performance is a mission most SaaS companies strive to accomplish. Yet, sales team targets are often set extremely high, with management expecting their teams to miss. This might bring success for the company, but it leads to negative experiences for the sales rep, and your teams may ultimately fail to perform to their fullest potential. Hootsuite CRO Melissa Murray Bailey shares secrets to running a successful SaaS sales team and reducing employee turnover. Video: https://you...

Jan 26, 202224 min

SaaStr 520: 10 Learnings Scaling from Consumer to SMB to Enterprise with Grammarly Head of Organizations Revenue Dorian Stone

Every high-growth organization inevitably reaches the point of pivoting its strategy and offerings to capture new audiences—a journey made more complex with the new demands emerging this past year. In this session, Dorian Stone will share lessons learned from Grammarly’s evolution from consumer to SMB to enterprise, address common assumptions and pitfalls in the process of scaling, and reveal must-know strategies to drive efficient growth this year and beyond.

Jan 21, 202222 min

SaaStr 519: From B2C to Billions: How Vimeo executed a B2B Pivot that Redefined Their Future with Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud

Vimeo went public in May as an $8 billion powerhouse in video software. Better known as the indie version of YouTube for more than a decade, the company has redefined itself from a B2C destination to the B2B solution that empowers any business to create, collaborate and connect with professional-quality video. Join Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud for a conversation with Brent Thill, Financial Analyst @ Jefferies about spotting potential in what is now a $70 billion market, and how operating as a founder wi...

Jan 19, 202221 min

SaaStr 517: Proven Leadership Frameworks for a High-Performing Sales Team with Databricks' VP of Sales Heather Akuiyibo

When sales teams succeed, the company succeeds. Revenue goes up, productivity increases, and ideally, the team continues to grow. But running a high-performing sales team isn’t an easy task. How can you ensure success within your sales organization in a way that scales with you? Heather Akuiyibo, VP of Sales at Databricks, shares her four adaptable frameworks for high-performing sales teams and how those frameworks helped Databricks’ sales teams succeed. Full video: https://youtu.be/9tn-I4f9Va4...

Jan 12, 202220 min

SaaStr 516: Lessons Learned in Scaling with Canva's CMO Zach Kitschke and SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin

Zach joined Canva in 2013 as one of Canva’s earliest employees and has worked across product management, communications and human resources before establishing the global marketing function. Eight years later 50 million people are now using Canva every month and the company recently approached $1 Billion in Revenue. In this podcast, Zach and Jason dive into the initial growth marketing strategies and framework behind Canva’s exponential growth as a start-up, the strategies for targeting and grow...

Jan 11, 202230 min

SaaStr 515: A CEO's Guide to Marketing with Dave Kellogg

No one word strikes more terror in the heart of product-, engineering-, or even sales-oriented founders and CEOs than "marketing." How to understand marketing? How to drive marketing? How to measure marketing? What to look for in a marketing leader? In this session, we'll talk about how CEOs (and other startup execs) should think about, charter, direct, and support marketing. Full video: https://youtu.be/ggUwcE600xU Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/a-ceos-guide-to-marketing-with-dave-kellogg-fi...

Jan 07, 202225 min

SaaStr 514: Reaccelerating Growth at Scale with Box CRO Mark Wayland and SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin

Learn more about Box's journey to reaccelerate growth and march toward $1B in SaaS ARR, and their CRO's lessons learned along the way. Full video: https://youtu.be/RQ6gom-lLxE Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/reaccelerating-growth-at-scale-with-boxs-cro-mark-wayland-podcast-514-video/ 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.linke...

Jan 05, 202221 min

SaaStr 512: How To Innovate Faster with Community, Insights From GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij

GitLab started as an open-source project that expanded into a public company with a buyer-based open-core business model. With over 300+ code contributions per month, innovating with the wider community is key to accelerating development efforts. Join GitLab CEO, Sid Sijbrandij, as he discusses GitLab’s journey, choosing the right business model that balances high revenue potential and community contributions, and co-creating the product with the wider community to deliver safer software faster....

Dec 29, 202122 min
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