By Ray Rike
B2B SaaS and Cloud founders, CEOs, and Go-To-Market operating executives share their journey as they scaled their business from $0M ARR to $100M and beyond. The guests share their insights on measu
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The podcast currently has 199 episodes available.
As SaaS pricing evolves to be more variable in nature, such as in Usage-Based Pricing or Value-Based Pricing the requirements for a more flexible billing platform that also enhances the customer experience and also becomes a foundational component of financial reporting.
Apurv Bansal, founder at Zenskar is converting that evolving need into a next generation billing platform. During this conversation with Apurv, our host Ray Rike covers the following topics with Apurv:
Recent benchmarking research indicates that over 50% of B2B SaaS companies are leveraging some level of variable pricing, such as Usage-Based Pricing and Value-Based Pricing. If a company's billing is not based upon a flat-rate subscription model, such as a "seat-based" model, the vendor knows the # users BEFORE the next months or years invoice is being calculated - because it is based upon the contact.
In a Usage-Based Pricing model - the number of units required to create the bill/invoice needs to come from both the agreement and the "store of usage". This adds a significant level of nuance and complexity to the next generation of SaaS billing.
When monthly invoicing is highly variable and dependent the latest usage - not only is calculating the monthly charges become more complex - the customer now needs a more detailed "customer usage report", which may also may need to be provided by user, by system or by whatever triggers a usage based trigger leading to a charge.
If you are currently using or considering introducing a highly variable pricing model, and are considering both the infrastructure and the customer experience resulting from monthly invoices which vary materially based upon usage - this conversation is a highly informative and educational on the evolution of pricing models and the resultant billing technology required.
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As B2B SaaS companies scale beyond $20M the complexity of their internal process, systems and SaaS metrics calculations become much more complex. As companies begin to consider a next round of financing and/or evaluate the strategic acquisition option, being able to quickly and reliably provide potential investors the metrics that matter to them is a key factor in how investors will determine not only the "if they will invest" but also "what the enterprise value" is.
During this episode, Ray discusses the below topics with J.T. Cecchini, CEO of LevelUp Finance:
If you are a CEO, CFO or Revenue Operations leader who is responsible for ensuring the financial reporting and metrics infrastructure, data and processes are ready to scale and stand up to the scrutiny of potential investors, this episode is a great listen!!!
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Godard Abel, CEO of G2 and Chad Gold, CFO at G2 led a session at SaaS Metrics Palooza 24'. This is an audio only version of their fireside chat with Metrics that Measure Up host, Ray Rike.
During this episode, Godard, Chad and Ray discuss the following topics:
If you are a B2B SaaS company, you already know G2 and this conversation is a great opportunity to learn how they use metrics to lead the company to the next level of success!
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Imagine a career journey starting as a software developer at NASA, then a B2C video service developer, moving on to the role of a general manager at game developer Zynga, and next heading to be the Head of Growth at Postmates - an early to food delivery service and now founding an FP&A platform company for the Office of Finance - that is the journey of Siqi Chen, Founder and CEO at Runway!
During this conversation, we cover three topics with Siqi including:
Siqi highlighted his lack of comfort with company financials as a primary catalyst for founding a Financial Planning and Analysis software company. During Covid, Siqi was required to quickly "re-plan" his company financials to present to his VC investor, Andreessen Horowitz and began to understand the pain of existing financial planning processes and the associated software.
One of the primary beliefs that Siqi brings to FP&A is that finance has historically been about reporting, but going into the future will become a strategic function and requires a deeper level of business understanding and the ability to model multiple possible scenarios to develop clarity of the path forward.
Siqi highlighted the importance of providing the board a solid forward-looking plan, but also the ability to leverage real-time data across multiple systems to aid the decision-making process. As a company evolves, the number of business systems increases materially and creates a real challenge in using spreadsheets to model business scenarios that depend upon data from multiple systems.
Viewing a model as a "business simulation", using strategies from game development is a unique perspective that Siqi's experience in gaming company Zynga. One of the barriers in moving beyond Excel is that as companies scale, it is not about eliminating the use of Excel, it is about highlighting the existing pains of using Excel for financial modeling including the increasing challenges of ingesting data from multiple systems, collaboration across multiple departments and being able to plan on a segment by segment basis.
Another challenge in growing companies is that every department has its own "excel model" to plan its function, which is great for a smaller company, but makes it almost impossible to bring 4 - 5 different department models together into one master "company plan". Hence the requirement for a company-wide FP&A solution that can facilitate collaboration between every department in building a company-wide plan.
Finally, we discussed how the learnings from the B2C world help in running a B2B company. First, Siqi highlighted that "unlearning" is a key trait as some strategies that work for building a consumer product do not easily translate into a B2B business. One of the key insights is the importance of speaking to the target users versus using your intuition. Another key un-learning is that the "users" of B2B software are typically NOT the buyers of the software, so the approach to both user experience and messaging must reflect the needs of the economic buyer and the users.
If you care about measurements, care about data and are looking for a better way to manage business modeling and having real-time data available to facilitate decision making - this conversation with Siqi is a great listen!
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Bill MaCaitis the former Chief Revenue Officer at Slack, and previously the CMO at Slack, CMO at Zendesk, and SVP of Marketing at Salesforce joins our host Ray Rike to share the Marketing Metrics Framework he developed during his experience as a multiple time Chief Marketing Officer. During today's episode Bill and Ray discuss various topics including:
Starting his career in more traditional B2C media brands, Bill learned the importance of brand, advertising, and awareness building; He then leveraged that experience in his first B2B Marketing leadership role at Salesforce which was the foundation for his roles as the Chief Marketing Office at Zendesk, Slack, and ultimately the Chief Revenue Officer at Slack.
What were the lessons Bill learned at three leading SaaS companies? He started with a lesson he learned at his first company out of college, and that was learning how to drive efficient growth from day one. One of the first things Bill noticed in his first role in a B2B technology company was that Marketing was viewed primarily as a lead generation function. Bill believed that a great B2B company also needed to think about how to build a unique brand and infuse that brand into the voice of the company and the product. He brought that belief and experience into creating amazing brands at Salesforce, Zendesk, and Slack.
One of the questions Bill answered was how to measure ROI for Marketing investments into brand and awareness in a B2B company. Bill stated that CFOs want hard-hitting, ROI measurements that prove the return on Marketing investment. Brand may be harder to measure in the short term, but when you view a brand as impacting long term leads. Shorter term metrics to measure brand include unaided recall, aided recall, share of voice, and even brand sentiment.
Bill then shared the six categories of metrics that best-in-class B2B Marketers should measure including:
If you are a B2B Marketing professional and are being asked to provide more details about the Metrics that Matter to the CEO and CFO, this conversation is a great listen!
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Brad van Leeuwen, Co-Founder and COO- Cledara has built a business helping 1,000 customers in over 30 countries manage their SaaS expenses. This provides Brad with a very unique insight into the state of the total spend in SaaS and the most recent SaaS purchasing trends.
During today's episode, we cover four primary topics with Brad:
The first point Brad shared is that buyers are focused on increasing the relationships with their current vendors and the number of new SaaS solutions purchased has decreased by 50% over the last two years. In addition, existing buyers are looking to renew for longer periods and are looking to extend the agreement term in consideration of lower pricing. Thirdly, buyers are being much more discerning in what products they keep, and which they do not renew which increases the churn rate many SaaS vendors are experiencing.
One data point Cledara captures is the SaaS momentum index which measures if companies are spending more or less on SaaS in the current year versus the previous year. For the 1H-24 the Index has stayed level at around 100 which means most buyers are not increasing their spend on SaaS products. This is confirmed by the lower growth guidance that many public SaaS companies are providing to the market.
Is SaaS consolidation of point solutions happening in companies? The data says yes, companies are looking to consolidate multiple SaaS solutions into larger platforms, except native AI products which are leaning heavily towards point solutions.
Next, we asked Brad how "AI purchasing" trends are evolving. Brad says the headlines are that companies are buying lots of different AI products, but when looking at what teams are really buying it starts with Marketing which is allocating 5% of their software purchases to AI. Sales is allocating about 1.3% of their budget to AI tools, but this is increasing quickly having increased from .3% in January 2024.
Who is the primary decision maker when buying AI products? Based upon a survey of over 300 company CFOs, AI software is viewed as experimentation, and no tangible ROI has been delivered yet. At the same time, Cledara data shows that user adoption is increasing dramatically being primarily driven by individual contributors which is not seen by the CFO.
What are some of the most popular native AI solutions being purchased in 2024? Brad highlighted that Cledara customers are adopting 30-40 new vendors per month across their 1,000+ customers. Once the first customer adopts a particular AI native solution, Brad sees the virality happening very quickly across the customer base...but the issue is churn is happening almost as fast as new solution adoption.
AI spend now comprises about 3.5% - 4% of total software spend to AI point solutions, which includes ChatGPT/OpenAI.
What is the primary benefit of AI solutions? Brad highlighted that many of the tools bring everyone in a department up to the same level of capabilities. The challenge is when users are forced to increase their productivity/effectiveness beyond the baseline created by everyone using similar tools.
Brad highlighted how he used ChatGPT to write an article on the top 100 AI solutions in less than 60 minutes, on a task that would have traditionally taken days. Finally, we asked Brad his perspective on how AI solutions can decrease the staff required to produce the same level of output. Brad believes that the increase in productivity delivered by using AI tools will not primarily lead to a decrease in the amount of employees - rather it will result in more output from the current staff leading to faster revenue growth or growth efficiency.
If you are interested in how total SaaS spend is being impacted by the emergence of AI point solutions and/or how AI will impact productivity as measured by increased efficiency and effectiveness - this episode is a great listen!
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Kris Rudeegraap, co-founder and co-CEO at Sendoso viewed the emergence of Sales Engagement Platform technology as the beginning of the end for email based outbound demand generation for B2B Sales professionals. This catalyzed him to take the leap to cfound Sendoso, a next-generation direct mail and corporate gifting platform. In today's conversation, we will discuss the history and business impact of Sendoso and corporate gifting including:
The first question we discussed was the most surprising learning Kris has had as a first-time founder and CEO. Kris highlighted that even after 8 years he is still as passionate about the business and vision as ever, and he found that his background in Sales has been extremely valuable in both recruiting employees and raising over $150M in Venture Capital funding. Kris highlighted that there were several similarities between conducting a fundraising effort and enterprise-class sales. One of the advantages Kris felt he had due to his background in sales and that his "founder-led sales" efforts became direct inputs to the product roadmap.
Next we pivoted to the reality of today's pipeline generation. First, Kris highlighted that with so many email sequencing tools and now AI tools to send emails that buyers are becoming numb to demand generation emails, as their inboxes become saturated.
A common recommendation that Kris provided to any B2B Sales professional is to make every outreach, be it email or a corporate gift to ensure it is personalized to the target buyer. One advantage of corporate gifting is due to it being more expensive than sending an email, the majority of organizations and sales professionals are much more targeted and personalized when sending a "physical gift" to a target prospect.
Kris shared that they use the power of AI to determine what type of physical gift would most resonate with different buyer types based upon function and/or title. Next we move onto the performance metrics behind the use of corporate gifting as a key component of pipeline generation programs.
Kris shared that corporate gifting programs increase pipeline generation programs as measured by the following benchmarks from research by HockeyStack:
If you are responsible for generating pipeline in your company, or for managing the budget allocation to grow revenue profitably, this conversation with Kris provides a lot of great insight into the Return on Investment of integrating corporate gifting into your new customer acquisition and customer retention programs.
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How have product demonstrations evolved in today's buyer self-directed buying process? Andrea Wunderlich leads the product and customer marketing function at Maxio and recently introduced their virtual product tour. In today's self-directed buyer journey, it's good to break down how virtual product tours can be leveraged to serve the buyer, when and where they prefer.
During this episode, several topics regarding launching a virtual product tour center include:
When should a product demonstration be used in a considered B2B selling environment? Andrea highlighted the commonly used process of first doing a discovery call and then moving into a demonstration call. Over the past two years, corporate buyers have wanted a more "B2C" buying experience and the sooner the better is the time to show the basics of the software and then move into a more tailored demonstration once the vendor better understands the unique requirements of a specific customer. If 65% - 70% of the buyer's journey is completed before they speak to a salesperson - why not ensure the potential buyers can understand the basic feature/function of your software?
The genesis of the Maxio Virtual Tour Center was introduced by a new marketing hire who highlighted the trend for B2B SaaS companies to offer a virtual product tour to ensure potential buyers do not "self-qualify out" before they see the details of the product's capability. Using video is an expensive option, and in addition as products evolve quickly the entire video often needs to be recorded again and again. A virtual product tour platform primarily uses product screen shots and if a feature evolves, only one screenshot needs to be updated, and it is automatically inserted into the existing virtual product tour. A KEY criteria to make the virtual product tour successful was having a champion who was passionate about making the virtual environment a reality.
Gated or non-gated virtual product tours? Andrea strongly believes that removing all friction to get potential buyers to engage early in the buying process is critical to ensure that many companies can understand the product's features and function. Experiencing the Maxio solution without having to engage with sales was a key criterion to providing a low-friction, non gated approach to the virtual product experience.
One of the interesting findings was the product tour center is used more in the middle of the funnel, versus a top of funnel first-time experience. Maxio has found that the tour center is used and then shared more by potential customers after a first sales call. With the target buyers of both the CFO and the product leader thinking about how to monetize (bill) their product, the virtual tour center was a better way to get the majority of the buying committee members to understand the capabilities of the product.
How to measure the business impact and value of a virtual product tour center? One of the hard things about trying something new is the long tail aspect of the virtual product tour. Andrea highlighted that expectations were set that this would be at least a six-month timeframe before the ROI could be validated and that with the virtual product tour being a lower-cost initiative, the longer term ROI was acceptable. Initially, the engagement rate was the primary measurement, and then over time (6+ months), they could look into their attribution tool to see how the virtual product tour users were converting into qualified pipeline and new ARR.
If you have a SaaS product and you are looking for new, innovative ways to get the potential target buyers to understand how your product aligns with their unique requirements - this is a great conversation to hear!
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Greg Galant, Founder and CEO at Muck Rack created the industry's first Public Relations (PR) marketplace for journalists looking for great articles and for the companies producing those topics interesting to a target audience.
Greg's journey started in 2005 when he launched the Venture Voice podcast with amazing guests including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Yelp Founder, and many more including Ed Williams, Founder Odeo - a first-generation podcast directory. The catalyst for starting a podcast was Greg's experience at CNN.com as an associate producer where he was looking for ways to download news stories from CNN onto his iPod. In fact, the term podcast emanated from Apple and the iPod using RSS feeds to link to an audio clip.
The above experience at CNN.com was the catalyst for creating his own podcast to highlight the stories of successful entrepreneurs. Venture Voice continued 2005 -2010 and Greg discontinued producing new episodes until Covid hit in 2020, and the additional free time created by being locked into his apartment stimulated Greg to restart the podcast with the first new episode guest - Mark Cuban!
This experience highlighted the need for a website that could amplify those social media influencers that people should be following and an associated event named "The Shorty Awards".
In 2009, Greg and his co-founder launched Muck Rack to help journalists find interesting founders and topics that would be great for their publications. At the same time, businesses started to use Muck Rack to identify those journalists they could pitch for an article that supported their business and increased their brand awareness.
Today, Fortune 500 companies, publications, and journalists alike use Muck Rack as a match-making platform for public relations-centric content.
If you are a fellow entrepreneur and love learning about other founders' journey to creating a new company or media asset, this conversation with Greg is a great listen!
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How to create a "metrics-centric" business culture - a topic that Jay Topper, Chief Customer Officer at Fabric, and Ray our host cover in great detail on this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. During this episode, Jay and Ray discuss the following topics in detail:
Jay started his career in the military and then became a Chief Information Officer in multiple retail businesses. He then launched the third stage of his career as the Chief Customer Officer at Fabric, a leading Omni Channel e-commerce optimization platform.
The first thing Jay shared was the need to fully immerse himself in the corporate world after leaving the military. His experience in helping to deploy an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system forced him to learn the basics of business processes from the ground up. This experience created his passion for learning, and seeking out ways to learn something new about business every day.
What are the top challenges when companies begin their metrics journey? First, you need to know what to measure and why you need to measure it. These might be the top 2 or 3 measurements that are most important to your company, and then begin to drill down into how those metrics are impacted by each level of the business. A common theme is to keep the metrics simple to avoid the complexity and noise of too many measurements, especially if they are not connected to each other.
Another best practice is to socialize the priority across the company to gain cross-department buy-in which leads to every organization having a common understanding and commitment to the same performance measurements.
How to create a "metrics-centric" culture? It starts with ensuring the entire company knows why a metric is important - not only internally but also for the customers you are serving! One step further can even be understanding what is important to your customers customers. In retail and eCommerce this is extremely important as the value you are adding to your "corporate customer" is to enhance and improve how they are treating/serving their retail customers.
The more people in your company who can articulate and understand the top measurements (metrics) for the company and the company's customers will inherently lead to a better-performing company as measured by revenue, profitability, and customer satisfaction.
Another key is to ensure that Finance and the Go-to-Market functions such as Marketing, Sales and Customer Success define, calculate, and discuss every metric using a commonly defined calculation foundation.
How to communicate your understanding or even assumptions of your customer's business and measurements of success? The number one trait is the ability to "listen" to your customers, especially in understanding the business process and measurements they are trying to improve. Though you may have your own perspectives and templates on the business process your solution automates and enhances - the value proposition should include the customer's priorities, measurements, and goals for their business...and the buyer's personal objectives.
If you are involved with how your company uses metrics or a senior leader trying to create a metrics-centric culture, this episode is a great listen!
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The podcast currently has 199 episodes available.
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