The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Dave Kellogg is a leading technology executive, independent board member, advisor and angel investor. In his most recent role, Dave was the CEO @ Host Analytics where he quintupled ARR, halved customer acquisition costs and increased net retention rates before selling the company to a private equity sponsor. Before that Dave was SVP/GM of Service Cloud @ Salesforce where he led the $500m line of business for customer service applications. Finally pre-Salesforce, Dave was CEO @ MarkLogic where he grew the team from 40 to 240 and revenues from $0 to an $80m revenue run rate. If that was not enough, Dave currently or has previously sat on the boards of Nuxeo, Alation, Aster Data and Granular.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

• How did Dave make his way into the world of SaaS over 20 years ago? How did seeing the boom and bust of the dot com and 2008 affect Dave's operating mentality?
• What were his biggest lessons from being in the Sequoia boardroom when they presented "RIP good time"? How does Dave think about when is the right time to raise? How does Dave advise founders on how much is the right amount to raise? Does Dave agree that if the money is on the table founding teams should take it? Why does Dave believe 99% of companies die?
• The first step in being acquired by a PE house is "making the book", what goes into "making the book"? Who is involved? How long does it take? What are the clear differences between a good book and a bad book? How should execs think about making exciting enough go-forward plans for it to be attractive to buyers but also realistic enough that they can hit it in the acquisition process?
• How does the selection for who receives the book look? Who decides this? What is the fundamental aim in the distribution of the book to many parties at the same time? What does Dave know now about the world of PE that he wishes he had known at the beginning? IOI's is the next step, what are they? How do they set up the process from there?
• How do management meetings with potential PE acquiring firms compare to founders meeting VCs in the early days? How many meetings is normal to have in this process? How long do they last? What does Dave believe is crucial to achieve in these in person meetings? How much of a role does price play in selecting the ultimate acquiror? How much of a role does their brand and reputation play?

60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Dave know about the process that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. The biggest misconception about the world of PE and acquisitions?
3. Burn rate is a function of the personality of the CEO? Agree or disagree? Why?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

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

Dave Kellogg

Brex Co-Founder and CEO Henrique Dubugras will talk about what he's learned building the fastest-growing B2B company. Henrique started his first company at 16 and has now built two successful companies from nothing. Learn what he did differently the second time around and the specific decisions he made to drive growth among B2B companies with Brex.

Missed the session? Here's what Henrique talks about:

• How Brex grew from a few basic functionalities to a corporation
• Growing from $0 to $2B in ARR in less than two years.

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

Jason Lemkin

SaaStr

Henrique Dubugras

Amit Bendov is the Founder and CEO @ Gong.io, the startup that provides you with powerful visibility into your customer conversations with conversation intelligence. To date, Amit has raised $68m in funding for Gong from the likes of Norwest, Battery Ventures, Cisco Investments and Wing Venture Capital just to name a few. As for Amit, prior to founding Gong, Amit was the CEO @ SiSense BI software that enables business users to connect to multiple databases of any size. Before that Amit was the CMO @ Panaya, helping companies that use SAP or Oracle to reduce 80% of their ERP upgrade. Finally before that Amit was the Founder & CEO @ SparkThis, an outsourced marketing and sales service for cloud companies.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

• How Amit made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found Gong, the leader in conversational intelligence driving deal conversion and rep success?
• How does Amit approach the process of idea validation? What can founders do to make sure their idea is a hit before they start work on it? How many customer conversations should they have? What questions are crucial to ask? What are the answers they want to hear? What is enough proof that there is a ready and willing customer base for this idea?
• With many products starting as free, how does Amit think about when is the right time to start charging for your product? What does Amit think about the differing variable price mechanisms that one can choose? How does one have a variable pricing mechanism without disincentivizing users to use the product? What does Amit advise founders should charge in the early days? Should they leave money on the table?
• How does Amit think about monthly/vs annual deals? What are the core benefits and drawbacks of each? How important is it that multi-year deals are paid upfront? What must you account for with regards to multi-year deals? How do you know when you have the right pricing mechanism in place from the sales cycles of the reps?

60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Amit know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
2. The hardest role to hire for today?
3. The hardest element of Amit's role as CEO of Gong?
4. SDR is the most important function in the sales org, agree or not and why?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

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

Amit Bendov

Join Molly Ford, Salesforce Global Equality Programs Senior Director, and Leyla Seka, Salesforce VP of Mobile for actionable advice they have applied on their own journey. Here are their lessons learned on driving change in gender equality, equal pay and racial equality within Salesforce.

Missed the session? Here's what Molly and Leyla talk about:

• Building a community of allies and allyship
• How to drive equality
• What you can be doing as an employee to help drive the culture you want

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

Jason Lemkin

SaaStr

Molly Ford

Leyla Seka

Parker Conrad is the Founder & CEO @ Rippling, the startup that gives you back your time from payroll to employee computers, Rippling makes it unbelievably easy to manage your company's HR and IT - in one system. To date Parker has raised over $59m in funding from some of the best in the business including Mamoon @ Kleiner Perkins, Garry Tan @ Initialized, Justin Kan, SV Angel and Y Combinator, just to name a few. As for Parker, prior to founding Rippling, he was the Founder & CEO @ Zenefits, the startup he built from $0 to $60m in ARR in just 3 years. Before that he co-founded Sigfig where he grew assets on the platform to over $35Bn across 500k users.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

• How Parker made his way into the world of startups and SaaS, came to found Zenefits and what was that a-ha moment for the founding of his most recent company, Rippling?
• What does Parker do with regards to operational scaling that is unconventional but works? Why does Parker believe it is fundamentally better to wait for as long as possible before hiring customer support? Why should engineers also be doing customer support?
• Why should your engineers be heavily involved in the customer support hiring process? What are the benefits of this? How can one prevent their customer support team from being a wall of protection for the product and eng team? How can you ensure seamless collaboration and communication flow between product and customer support?
• Stripe last week recently announced their 5th office would be… "remote", so how does Parker feel about the building of remote teams? What are the most important things when establishing your first remote team? What do you look for in those hires? What can be done to ensure a greater feeling of community and closeness despite the distance? What have been some of the biggest challenges for Parker in building out the remote team?
• Parker has been a CEO with 3 different companies now and so how has he seen his style and approach change over the years? What has Parker found the hardest to get good at? When advising founders on fundraising, what advice does he give? How can founders know when is the right time to raise? How should they look to build relationships with investors between raises?

60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Parker know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
2. What one thing would Parker like to change about tech and Silicon Valley?
3. Biggest mentor and what has Parker learned from them?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

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

Parker Conrad

Join Logikcull's CEO and Co-Founder Andy Wilson as he takes you through the mistakes made going from $0 to $10M in 19 months.

Missed the session? Here's what Andy talks about:

• Selling the way your customers want to buy.
• What you need to know about hiring, firing, advisors, and culture
• Why SaaS is your business model, not your mission.

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

Jason Lemkin

SaaStr

Andy Wilson

Andrew Filev is the Founder & CEO @ Wrike, the cloud based collaboration and project management software that scales across teams in any business. In Dec 2008, Vista Equity Partners acquired a majority stake in Wrike for a deal reportedly valuing the company at $800m. Before this transaction, Andrew had raised over $45m in funding from the likes of Rory @ Scale and Bain Capital Ventures just to name a few. As for Andrew, he started his first software development company at the age of 18 and has been running Wrike for the last 13 years alongside advisory roles with both Ditto and Appulate.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

• How Andrew made his way into the world of SaaS from his starting his first software business at the age of just 18 and how that led to his founding of Wrike?
• How does Andrew advise founders on the question of whether to start in enterprise or SMB? What are the benefits of starting in SMB? How does the founder know when is the right time to start moving to enterprise? What are those leading indicators? How does the product and what you invest in proactively need to change as you move into enterprise?
• Andrew has been the CEO for the last 13 years, how has the role of CEO changed over those years? What has been the most challenging phase? If the CEO is the guardian of the culture, what does a great guardian look like? What 3 elements does Andrew focus almost exclusively on today within his role as CEO?
• What does Andrew think are the major breaking points in the scaling of companies? Where does culture begin to breakdown? What can be done to mitigate this? How does Andrew think about using employee satisfaction surveys internally? How can one accurately determine the strength of your manager set?

Andrew's 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Andrew know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. No man's land in SaaS pricing, does it exist?
3. Sales rep productivity, what is good to Andrew?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

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

Andrew Filev

Duo Security Co-Founder and CEO Dug Song and PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada discuss building, enabling, and leading great teams through 10K+ customers, $100M+ ARR, $1B+ valuation and beyond - all while earning 4.5+ Glassdoor company ratings and 98%+ CEO approvals from 500+ total employees!

Duo Security is a cloud-based provider of unified access security and multifactor authentication was acquired by Cisco for $2.35 billion in October 2018. PagerDuty is a leading digital operations management platform for organizations announced new financing in September 2018 at a $1.3 billion valuation.

Missed the session? Here's what Jennifer and Dug talk about:

• When is the right time to raise money?
• How can you better manage the board?
• Should you worry about competitors?

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

Jason Lemkin

SaaStr

Jennifer Tejada

Dug Song

Godard Abel is the Founder & CEO @ G2, the company helping millions of business make better product buying decisions every month. To date, Godard has raised over $100m in funding with G2 from the likes of Accel, IVP, High Alpha, Pritzker Group and Chicago Ventures just to name a few. As for Godard, he founded his first business, BigMachines, in 2000, a business he scaled to $50m in revenue and over 300 people up until it's acquisition to Oracle 11 years later for $400m. Godard then became CEO @ Steelbrick where he took them from 5 to 200 employees and increased bookings by 37x in 7 quarters. Steelbrick was ultimately acquired by Salesforce where he spent a year and a half before starting G2.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

• How did Godard make his way into the world of SaaS over 20 years ago? What was the a-ha moment for the founding of G2 for Godard?
• Having been a Founder through the bust of 2000, how did seeing that macro environment impact his operating mentality today? What did it teach him about capital efficiency and investing ahead of time? Taking the team from 70 to 20, what were his lessons on the right way to let someone go? Where do many people get it wrong today?
• Why does Godard advocate for working with people that you have worked with before? How can you find the zone of genius for the people that you work with? How does Godard set a culture of ambition and determination around goals but also prevent dejection if the goals are not hit? How often should rep quota be hit? Why is that the right ratio?
• Where does Godard believe that things really start to break down in the scaling of an organisation? What can you do to get ahead of those moments and minimise their impact? How many direct reports does Godard believe is the optimal and then the maximum for a manager to have? How have his thoughts on this changed over time?

Godard's 60 Second SaaStr:

1. What would Godard like to change in the world of SaaS today?
2. What does Godard know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
3. If an investor can provide one value, what would it be and why?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

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

Godard Abel

Dave Kellogg is CEO of Host Analytics and prolific blogger. Join him as he takes you through lessons learned from Host Analytics on the top questions every SaaS CEO wrestles with. Dave was CEO of Host Analytics from 2012 to 2018 where he quintupled ARR while halving customer acquisition costs in a highly competitive market, ultimately selling the company in a private equity transaction.

Missed the session? Here's what Dave talks about:

• When is the right time to raise money?
• How can you better manage the board?
• Should you worry about competitors?

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

Jason Lemkin

SaaStr

Dave Kellogg