SaaShimi

Anadelia Fadeev, Director of Demand Generation and Growth at Teleport, discusses lead gen and brand awareness, how she measures the effectiveness of campaigns, and "must-have" online tools.

BIO

Anadelia is a Director of Demand Generation and Growth at Teleport, a Kleiner Perkins-backed software company that allows engineers and security professionals to unify access to Servers, web applications, and databases.

Prior to Teleport, Anadelia was Demand generation at several tech startups, including LightStep, InfluxData, ToutApp (acq. by Marketo), and Inkling. She started her career at Visage Mobile where she oversaw all aspects of marketing.

TIMESTAMPS

00:10 Anadelia and Teleport 

3:13 Brand Awareness

6:50 Lead Generation

8:00 Measuring effectiveness of campaigns

10:02 Anadelia’s Tech Stack

11:20 Case Study

14:00 Bowtie Funnel

16:00 Looking for leads

Sam Richard, Senior Director of Growth at Openview Partners, discusses product-led growth, types of companies that can leverage the strategy, and how traditional SaaS metrics can be misleading when applied to PLG.

BIO

Sam Richard is Senior Director of Growth at OpenView, helping its portfolio accelerate top-line growth through establishing best practices and processes to support product led growth. At OpenView, Sam works closely with portfolio leadership teams to discover and implement the most impactful strategies for growth, including onboarding and retention optimization, expansion strategy, funnel optimization and channel/partner strategy.

Prior to joining OpenView in 2019, Sam worked as Director of Growth and Engagement at Dispatch, where she was on the founding team. She spent four years leading growth strategy and customer success teams with a focus on small to medium-sized businesses. During her tenure, Dispatch was acquired by Vista Equity Partners. She also previously worked at Catalant and Abt Associates.

TIMESTAMPS

00:10 Intro

03:42 Three Eras of Software purchase

06:20 Characteristics of Product Led Growth companies

10:50 Retention at PLG

12:45 Traditional Metrics are misleading / Natural Rate of Growth

15:30 Who can leverage PLG

Andy Bane, CEO of Element Analytics talks about the company's unique founding story and an important mission of changing how industrial firms unify OT and IT data.

BIO

Andy oversees the vision, strategy, and growth of Element Analytics, and is a veteran of the Industrial sector. He’s held executive roles at leading enterprise software companies, including EVP & Chief Strategy Officer for ABB Enterprise Software, EVP of Product Management. and CMO at Ventyx, a Vista Equity Partners company, acquired by ABB for over $1 billion and SVP of Product Mgmt. and Mktg. at P2 Energy Solutions.

TIMESTAMPS

00:10 Intro

02:00 Element Analytics value proposition

06:45 Element’s pricing

08:10 Net Retention

10:30 How Series B funds is being spent

12:10 Joining Element

15:00 Pricing and first client

18:32 First Sales person

20:00 First Marketing hire

21:23 First Customer Success hire

25:00 PE vs VC backed companies

26:15 Long-term vision for Element

Alok Ajmera, CEO of Prophix takes us to journey of converting the company's software offering from on-prem to a cloud. The transition is particularly impressive because Prophix completed it while being bootstrapped, and only after the conversion did they take outside investments from HG Capital (leading European PE firm).

BIO

Alok joined Prophix in 2004 as a consultant, and after wearing nearly every hat in the company was first promoted to President and COO, and most recently to CEO.

TIMESTAMPS

01:00 Alok and Prophix

04:50 Pricing model

05:45 Moving from on-prem to a cloud

12:00 Incentivizing clients to move to a cloud

16:00 Change in a compensation model

18:00 Customer Success and cross-sell

20:00 NPS and customers' satisfaction 

23:50 Choosing investors

31:00 Advice to companies that plan to convert their software from on-prem to a cloud

Deb Muller, Founder and CEO of HR Acuity, takes us back to the company's early days when it was primarily her providing independent advice to large companies regarding workplace investigations. Despite not having a tech background, she decided to build a software solution for her clients to use internally on a day-to-day basis. Deb walks us through the challenges she experienced with a bootstrapped business, the growth of the firm, today's profile of HR Acuity (size, retention, org. structure), tailwinds of the industry, and COVID's impact. Lastly, she walks us through the decision of taking on investments (which she didn't think she needed) and her criteria of choosing investors.

BIO

Deb is a Founder and CEO of HR Acuity, a Software company that provides solutions for employee relations and investigation services.

After serving in executive HR roles at numerous Fortune 500 companies like Honeywell, Citibank, and Marsh & McLennan, Deb launched HR Acuity to create technology with built-in expertise and equip organizations to manage employee relations more strategically.

Special thanks to Jesse Barovick for his help on sound!

Steve Wolfe of Growth Street Partners shares the firm's approach to investing in SaaS companies. He talks about criteria they look for, the importance of a founder's experience in the industry, general view on valuations, and other subjects.

BIO

Steve is a Co-founder of Growth Street Partners, a San Francisco based growth equity fund. He currently sits on the boards of ChildCareCRM, Visual Lease, Suralink, HR Acuity, Hotel Effectiveness, and BoardBookit.

Prior to Growth Street, Steve was a Partner at Mainsal Partners, and was a board member at PayLease, Netchemia, 3PL Central, Ncontracts, and nCourt.

Dave Kellogg returns to SaaShimi to share his experience working with Venture Capital and Private Equity firms. He compares VC's and PE's investment approaches, due diligence processes, and roles in a boardroom among other things.

BIO

Dave Kellogg is a technology executive, investor, advisor, and blogger (if you don't read www.kellblog.com, you should start after you are done with SaaShimi!).

Previously, he held CEO positions at Hostanalytics and MarkLogic, and prior to that SVP/GM of Service Cloud at Salesforce and CMO at Business Objects.

Dave has worked in varied capacities with companies including Breeze, GainSight, MongoDB, and Tableau. He currently sit on the boards of Alation, Nuxeo, and Profisee. Dave previously sat on the boards of agtech leader Granular and big data leader Aster Data (both got acquired).

For more than two decades, Phil Wainewright has chronicled the rise of cloud computing and its impact on business. In 1998, he launched ASPnews.com, the SaaS industry's first dedicated news website, and later became ZDNet's lead blogger on SaaS. In 2013, he co-founded the tech media website Diginomica to provide in-depth coverage of how enterprise applications are evolving and changing the way business operates in the digital era. 

Dave Kellogg is a technology executive, investor, advisor, and blogger (if you don't read www.kellblog.com, you should start after you are done with SaaShimi!).

Previously, he held CEO positions at Hostanalytics and MarkLogic, and prior to that SVP/GM of Service Cloud at Salesforce and CMO at Business Objects.

Dave has worked in varied capacities with companies including Breeze, GainSight, MongoDB, and Tableau. He currently sit on the boards of Alation, Nuxeo, and Profisee. Dave previously sat on the boards of agtech leader Granular and big data leader Aster Data (both got acquired).

Jacco is the founder of Winning By Design and author of Blueprints of a Sales SaaS Organization and seven other books. He is a Sales Mentor across several VC firms such as Notion Capital, Reach Capital, Astella and Storm Ventures, where he helps accelerate the development of sales teams across their portfolios. Prior to founding Winning By Design, Jacco held roles of VP of Worldwide Sales and VP Strategy at Qumu (acquired by Rimage), Kontiki, and Technicolor. He is proud to have helped marquee customers over the years, including Amazon, AT&T, Dish, and Disney.

Jacco holds a BScEE in Electrical Engineering and an Executive MBA from the University of Leicester. Jacco’s insights have been featured in Harvard Business Review, and he is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences around the world including Dreamforce, SaaStock (Dublin), SaaS Growth (London) SalesHacker (virtual), and RD Summit (Brazil).