The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Chris O'Neill (Google, Evernote) shares his lessons from previous downturns and how to chart a new course for growth in today's changing market.

This episode is an excerpt from Chris's session at SaaStr Summit: The New New in Venture.

Full video: https://youtu.be/ZYdcMpAFQas

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-chris-oneill-and-jason-lemkin/

Neha Sampat is the Founder and CEO @ Contentstack, a modern content management system bringing business and tech teams together to deliver personalised, omnichannel experiences. Atypical in our world, but Neha scaled the business to well over $1M in ARR before raising funding. Now Neha has raised over $31M from the likes of Insight Partners and Illuminate. Prior to Contentstack, Neha was the Founder and CEO @ Built.io and before that spent 10 years as the Founder and CEO @ Raw Engineering, building a leading digital transformation consultancy.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

• How did Neha make her way into the world of SaaS and content management systems having previously built a digital transformation agency?
• How the heck did Neha scaled Contentstack to over $1M in ARR without raising capital, whilst being based in the Bay? What were the signals that made Neha realise she had a scalable software business? What did Neha look for in her first seed round investors? How did that profile change when she went out to raise the Series A?
• How has being a sommelier helped Neha break the glass ceiling of business? What are some lessons Neha has learned in terms of build true and genuine relationships with customers beyond the transaction? What are the counter-intuitive strategies Neha has found works when it comes to motivating remote teams?
• Why did Neha decide to build out so much of the tech team well outside of the Bay in a town outside of Mumbai? Does Neha believe the future of tech is in the valley or decentralised?

Neha's 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Neha's biggest strength and biggest weakness as a leader?
2. What does Neha believe that many around her do not?
3. The biggest obstacle to the success Neha has achieved?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-350-with-contentstack-founder-ceo-neha-sampat/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Neha Sampat

Startups can get messy. Especially in growth. David Sacks (Yammer, PayPal) shares how to navigate from 50-500 employees.

This episode is an excerpt from David's session at SaaStr Summit: The New New in Venture.

Full video: https://youtu.be/G0sMviH3G24

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-349-with-craft-ventures-general-partner-david-sacks-how-to-turn-your-saas-startup-into-an-army/

Kurt Muehmel is the Chief Customer Officer @ Dataiku, the platform democratizing access to data and enabling enterprises to build their own path to AI in a human-centric way. To date, the company has raised over $146M in funding from some of the best in the business including ICONIQ, Firstmark, Battery Ventures and CapitalG to name a few. As for Kurt, he joined the company over 5 years ago and has risen from AE to VP EMEA to VP Sales Engineering to today as Chief Customer Officer. Before Dataiku, Kurt spent 5 years at Deloitte as a Manager advising primarily European public authorities on sustainable development policies.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

• How Kurt made his way into the world of enterprise SaaS with Dataiku having started his career at Deloitte in Paris?
• What does it take to go from 0-1 in implementing both AI and data science disciplines in 20th-century companies? Where do many go wrong with their first steps? How can one assist them in the right way? How does Kurt feel about services revenue? At what stage or ratio does it become too much?
• How does Kurt approach the challenge of change management? What does great change management look like? Where do so many go wrong? How can content be used to efficiently scale change management practices? How does one need to engage different teams for effective change management?
• How does Kurt think about the right pricing mechanism for the customer today? How does one find a mechanism that does not disincentivize the customer with usage? How does Kurt feel about discounting? To what extent is Kurt and Dataiku willing to engage with pilots and POCs? Where do many go wrong here?

Kurt's 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Biggest challenge of Kurt's role with Dataiku today?
2. What does Kurt know now that he wishes he had known when he entered the world of SaaS?
3. Who does Kurt look up to in the world of customer experience? Why?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-348-with-dataiku-chief-customer-officer-kurt-muehmel/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Kurt Muehmel

Ready to hire your first VP Sales? But haven't done it before? SaaStr CEO, Jason Lemkin shares his interview checklist.

Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/10-great-questions-to-ask-a-vp-sales-during-an-interview-2/

Aileen Lee is a U.S. seed investor. A venture capital investor, she is the founder of Cowboy Ventures. Lee coined the often-used Silicon Valley term unicorn in a TechCrunch article "Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups."

In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, Aileen and SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin take a deep dive on how Aileen finds deals, her tips for a winning pitch, and the state of VC in 2020.

This episode is an excerpt from Aileen and Jason's session at SaaStr Summit: The New New in Venture.

Full video: https://youtu.be/J5bhChbqcLU

Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-aileen-lee-and-jason-lemkin/

Julie Herendeen is the CMO @ PagerDuty, the real-time operations platform ensuring less downtime and fewer outages, meaning happier customers and more productive teams. Prior to their IPO in 2019 PagerDuty raised funding from some of the best in the business including Accel, a16z, Baseline, Bessemer and Harrison Metal to name a few. As for Julie, prior to PagerDuty she was Vice President of Global Marketing @ Dropbox. Before Dropbox Julie was CMO @ Lookout and before Lookout, Julie enjoyed VP roles at both Yahoo and Shutterfly. If that was not enough, alongside her role at PagerDuty today Julie is also an angel with Broadway Angels and a Board Member @ Hubspot.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

• How Julie made her way from the world of consumer into the world of enterprise and came to be CMO @ PagerDuty today? What were some of Julie's biggest lessons from her time as VP Global Marketing at Dropbox?
• Does Julie believe that marketing should be held accountable to a number tied directly to revenue? How does Julie believe sales and marketing should work in unison? How can sales be involved in pipeline generation meetings? Should AEs make themselves responsible for sourcing new leads also? What does the ideal handoff look like?
• How does Julie see the best marketing and product teams working together? What can marketing do to collect the most valuable data to inform product decisions? In what forum should they be relayed to product teams? How should product and marketing leaders interact most efficiently?
• How does Julie think about the relationship of customer success and marketing? Does Julie agree that with the increasing amount of marketing content used post-sale, marketing is doing much of the work of CS? Where does Julie see many going wrong when investing heavily into thought leadership and content marketing?

Julie's 60 Second SaaStr:

1. Which marketing leader does Julie most respect and why?
2. What would Julie most like to change about the world of SaaS today?
3. What is the optimal relationship between the CEO and the CMO?

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-345-with-pagerduty-cmo-julie-herendeen/

If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:

Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Julie Herendeen

Given that so many VC pitches are over Zoom now, we thought it would be worth sharing the things it's easy to get wrong when pitching investors.

Pitching VCs is like anything. You'll get better at it over time. Later, you'll even get great at it. Once you know how it works, it's not even that hard to knock it out of the park.

But until then, so many founders make unforced errors. Rookie errors. Here are 16 that you can easily avoid / fix right now today.

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-344-with-saastr-founder-jason-lemkin/

On today's episode, Christoph shares his five tips for fundraising during a pandemic.

1. Have a clear COVID-19 assessment
2. Start with an extra-long "long list"
3. Disqualify ruthlessly
4. Have a killer deck
5. Build trust remotely

Christoph has invested in more than 20 SaaS startups and lives and breathes SaaS, everything from "A as in AI-enhanced B2B software" to "Z as in Zendesk". Christoph co-founded Point Nine Capital in 2011.

Before that, he co-founded two Internet startups (DealPilot.com in 1997 and Pageflakes in 2005). In 2008 he became an angel investor and discovered Zendesk, Clio, FreeAgent – and his love for SaaS.

You can find the podcast transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-343-with-point-nine-capital-managing-partner-christoph-janz/

This episode is an excerpt from Christoph's session at SaaStr Summit: The New New in Venture. You can see the full video here: https://youtu.be/2VGglwbl_Gs

On this episode of the SaaStr podcast, our CEO, Jason Lemkin, chats with Zapier CEO, Wade Foster, on Distributed Teams and Building a Cloud Product.

Zapier is a global remote company that allows end-users to integrate the web applications they use. Although Zapier is based in Sunnyvale, California, it employs a workforce of 250 employees located around the United States and in 23 other countries.

This interview was recorded in February 2020.

Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-342-with-zapier-ceo-wade-foster/