My guest today is Mahesh Rajasekharan, CEO of Cleo, a software platform for supply chain system integrations. A few months ago I asked a few friends which sales-focused CEO they admired most and they all unanimously said Mahesh. With Mahesh at the helm, Cleo has grown from a single-digit ARR business in 2012 to nearly $100 million in ARR today, with even greater ambitions for the future. He has built some of the most robust and high-performing sales and product teams I've seen and is a value-adding investor and advisor to many other CEOs.

Mahesh and I talk about the story of Cleo and how they drive customer value, pivot points along the growth journey, building best-in-class sales and product orgs, growth while remaining profitable, private equity ownership, and so much more. Please enjoy this fantastic conversation with Mahesh Rajasekharan.

Listen weekly and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn.

Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

I want to tell you about our audience survey we are currently running. These surveys help us create the best content for listeners and better understand your needs and interests. Thank you in advance for sharing your feedback, we greatly appreciate it. After 30 days we are giving $250 cash to 4 survey responders, just add your email at the end of the survey.

Take the survey here: https://bit.ly/3QLBB1N

Links:

Cleo

Mahesh on LinkedIn

Topics:

(00:04:06) Cleo and how Mahesh has evolved the business

(00:11:37) Identifying customer needs

(00:14:04) Growing and coordinating a product team

(00:18:17) Communicating with customers

(00:21:20) Building and scaling a Sales organization

(00:37:15) How the CEO role has changed

(00:39:02)Self-evaluation

(00:42:49) Defining profitable growth

(00:48:56) Themes for companies who can't become profitable

(00:52:17) An example of a project that wasn't working initially but learned it would down the road

(00:54:13) Experiences as a private equity-backed CEO

(00:58:21) The most enjoyable part of the CEO role

(00:59:27) M&A

(01:03:47) Advice for software CEOs in scaling