The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Auren Hoffman is the Founder & CEO @ Safegraph, the startup that is unlocking the world’s most powerful data so that machines and humans can answer society's toughest questions. They have backing from likes of Naval Ravikant and prior guests of the show including SignalFire, IDG Ventures and David Rodnitzky just to name a few. Prior to Safegraph, Auren has an astonishing 5 successful exits under his belt with one being, LiveRamp (sold to Acxiom for $310m in 2014). If that was not enough, Auren is also a prolific angel investor with a portfolio including the likes of ThumbTack, Rainforest QA, Brightroll and Groupon.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Auren made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found his 6th SaaS startup in Safegraph?
• Auren has said before there are two types of successful sales people, what are these two types and what are their character profiles? What type of company should have each different profile? How does each profile interact differently with the rest of the company?
• Why does Auren take the contrarian view and saying that highering your price is not always the right answer? In what markets is it right to higher or lower your price? When is it the wrong time? What percentage of revenue should sales and marketing be at a healthy SaaS startup?
• Why does Auren believe that you can actually grow faster by having fewer employees? In what situation and start does this work and when does it not? ?
• Why does Auren believe that the CEO should never delegate HR? What does Auren mean when he says the best HR professionals are real capital allocators?

60 Second SaaStr

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

Auren Hoffman

Promise Phelon is the CEO @ TapInfluence, bringing the first ever influencer marketing platform to the Fortune 1000. Under Promise's leadership the company has enjoyed a 300% increase in revenue in 2015 alone, they made the successful transition from a services to a SaaS model and were successful in raising a fantastic $14m Series B. Prior to TapInfluence, Promise was the Founder and CEO at 2 startups, one of which, The Phelon Group, grew to 8 figure revenues and was successfully acquired in 2009. Before that, Promise got her start at BEA systems.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

• How Promise made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be at BEA systems, one of the most exciting companies in the valley at the time?
• How does Promise view the importance of building long lasting relationships with colleagues? How does Promise suggest is the right way to leave a job and sustain the best communication and relationship with former employers and colleagues?
• What does Promise mean when she states the importance of upward empathy? What are the benefits of installing this in your organisation? What is the right way to breed a culture of upward empathy?
• How does Promise differentiate between 'advocate' and 'mentor'? What is the right way to attain each of these? At what point in one's career is the right time to have each of these?
• What does Promise believe is the formula for making the successful transition from a services based business to a SaaS business? How can one make the change without significant customer churn and revenue loss?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Promise know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning?
2. How does motivating people differ when outside of the valley?
3. Should customer success be able to upsell?

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

Promise Phelon

Promise Phelon is the CEO @ TapInfluence, bringing the first ever influencer marketing platform to the Fortune 1000. Under Promise’s leadership the company has enjoyed a 300% increase in revenue in 2015 alone, they made the successful transition from a services to a SaaS model and were successful in raising a fantastic $14m Series B. Prior to TapInfluence, Promise was the Founder and CEO at 2 startups, one of which, The Phelon Group, grew to 8 figure revenues and was successfully acquired in 2009. Before that, Promise got her start at BEA systems.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Promise made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be at BEA systems, one of the most exciting companies in the valley at the time?
• How does Promise view the importance of building long lasting relationships with colleagues? How does Promise suggest is the right way to leave a job and sustain the best communication and relationship with former employers and colleagues?
• What does Promise mean when she states the importance of upward empathy? What are the benefits of installing this in your organisation? What is the right way to breed a culture of upward empathy?
• How does Promise differentiate between ‘advocate’ and ‘mentor’? What is the right way to attain each of these? At what point in one’s career is the right time to have each of these?
• What does Promise believe is the formula for making the successful transition from a services based business to a SaaS business? How can one make the change without significant customer churn and revenue loss?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Promise know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning?
2. How does motivating people differ when outside of the valley?
3. Should customer success be able to upsell?

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

Promise Phelon

Ashu Garg is a General Partner @ Foundation Capital whose portfolio includes the likes of Uber, Lending Club, Adroll and Netflix, just to name a few. As for Ashu, at Foundation he has led investments and naming just a few of them here, in the likes of Conviva, Localytics and TubeMogul, later going public in 2014. Prior to Foundation, Ashu was the General Manager for Microsoft's online advertising business.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

• How Ashu made his way from completing to the Rubik's cube as a kid in 25 seconds to being a leading SaaS VC?
• How does Ashu really define scaling a SaaS company? What does product market fit really look like with regards to ARR growth?
• What are the 3 fundamentals that SaaS founders have to nail if they are to scale to $30m+ ARR? Why does Ashu believe it is so important to have a single insertion point? What does this mean for SaaS founders?
• What does Ashu advise first time founders making their first foray into the world of SaaS? How should they think about obtaining and building an ecosystem of mentors? How should they manage weaknesses within their own skill sets? Does Ashu believe with Aaron Levie @ Box, "anyone can learn to be a great CEO"?
• Where do technical founders most often struggle? What can be done to help them go from 0-1 on customer acquisition? Where do business led founders most often struggle? How must they think of the engineering element as a core part of the founding team?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Ashu know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. Chats: Fad in the enterprise or here to stay?
3. Biggest inflection points and breaking points in SaaS company growth?

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

Ashu Garg

Ashu Garg is a General Partner @ Foundation Capital whose portfolio includes the likes of Uber, Lending Club, Adroll and Netflix, just to name a few. As for Ashu, at Foundation he has led investments and naming just a few of them here, in the likes of Conviva, Localytics and TubeMogul, later going public in 2014. Prior to Foundation, Ashu was the General Manager for Microsoft’s online advertising business.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Ashu made his way from completing to the Rubik's cube as a kid in 25 seconds to being a leading SaaS VC?
• How does Ashu really define scaling a SaaS company? What does product market fit really look like with regards to ARR growth?
• What are the 3 fundamentals that SaaS founders have to nail if they are to scale to $30m+ ARR? Why does Ashu believe it is so important to have a single insertion point? What does this mean for SaaS founders?
• What does Ashu advise first time founders making their first foray into the world of SaaS? How should they think about obtaining and building an ecosystem of mentors? How should they manage weaknesses within their own skill sets? Does Ashu believe with Aaron Levie @ Box, “anyone can learn to be a great CEO”?
• Where do technical founders most often struggle? What can be done to help them go from 0-1 on customer acquisition? Where do business led founders most often struggle? How must they think of the engineering element as a core part of the founding team?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Ashu know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. Chats: Fad in the enterprise or here to stay?
3. Biggest inflection points and breaking points in SaaS company growth?

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

Ashu Garg

Kurt Bilafer is the CRO @ WePay, the most complete payments solution for platforms. To date, they have raised close to $75m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including Max Levchin and August Capital just to name a few. As for Kurt himself, prior to WePay he has had experience both in startups and large corporations with his founding of Pilot Software, sold to SAP in 2007, where he spent a further 7 years holding titles such as a Global Vice President of Sales and Director of Strategic Accounts.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Kurt make his way into the world of SaaS? What were Kurt's big takeaways from seeing the internal machinations of SAP?
• What is the one metric that guides Kurt's thinking? How can you calculate your "magic number" for your business? Why must SaaS founders switch from activity based metrics to KPI's?
• How does Kurt assess scalability and repeatability of revenues? What is a reasonable ratio for sales and marketing expense to revenue?
• Why should SaaS founders focus on the LPI of "time to money". How can they look to optimize this? How has Kurt seen the enterprise sales cycles change since his time with SAP?
• How does Kurt assess conflict within the sales and marketing teams and customer success and product teams? How can managers look to implement an element of prioritization into what sales teams submit to product teams?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Kurt know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. What is the worst piece of SaaS advice that Kurt commonly hears being given out?
3. What should one look for in their VP of Sales?
4. What mistake does Kurt see most in the world of SaaS?

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 Bilafer

Kurt Bilafer is the CRO @ WePay, the most complete payments solution for platforms. To date, they have raised close to $75m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including Max Levchin and August Capital just to name a few. As for Kurt himself, prior to WePay he has had experience both in startups and large corporations with his founding of Pilot Software, sold to SAP in 2007, where he spent a further 7 years holding titles such as a Global Vice President of Sales and Director of Strategic Accounts.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Kurt make his way into the world of SaaS? What were Kurt’s big takeaways from seeing the internal machinations of SAP?
• What is the one metric that guides Kurt’s thinking? How can you calculate your “magic number” for your business? Why must SaaS founders switch from activity based metrics to KPI’s?
• How does Kurt assess scalability and repeatability of revenues? What is a reasonable ratio for sales and marketing expense to revenue?
• Why should SaaS founders focus on the LPI of “time to money”. How can they look to optimize this? How has Kurt seen the enterprise sales cycles change since his time with SAP?
• How does Kurt assess conflict within the sales and marketing teams and customer success and product teams? How can managers look to implement an element of prioritization into what sales teams submit to product teams?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Kurt know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. What is the worst piece of SaaS advice that Kurt commonly hears being given out?
3. What should one look for in their VP of Sales?
4. What mistake does Kurt see most in the world of SaaS?

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 Bilafer

Jens Nylander is the Founder and CEO @ Automile, the startup that makes fleet and asset management much much easier. They have backing from some of the best in the business including Godfather of SaaS himself Jason Lemkin, the wonderful team at Point Nine, Justin Kan and Dawn Capital in London. As for Jens, he really is a serial entrepreneur with past endeavours including creating Sweden's largest music player and founding Jays, the manufacturer and developer of innovative headphones that went public and is listed on the NASDAQ.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Jens make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found Automile?
• How does Jens look to build a repeatable scalable sales process with Automile? What are the core infrastructure requirements needed to make the process as automated as possible?
• How does Jens evaluate selling into the SMB market? How does Jens look to optimise the onboarding process to maximise conversion? How does Jens look to minimise churn with a market as potentially unstable as SMB's?
• Why does Jens prefer technology minded sales teams? What benefits do they bring in terms of process to the sales cycle? What should founders look for in potential new engineering led sales teams?
• Jens is increasing transparent, posting numerous figures on Twitter, what are the benefits of such transparency? How does that help the team to achieve the wider goal? Are there any cases, such as fundraising or exits, where transparency has negative consequences?

60 Second SaaStr

• What was the hardest element of leaving Europe to go big in the US?
• What does Jens know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
• What hires does Jens wish he had made earlier?

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

Jens Nylander

Jens Nylander is the Founder and CEO @ Automile, the startup that makes fleet and asset management much much easier. They have backing from some of the best in the business including Godfather of SaaS himself Jason Lemkin, the wonderful team at Point Nine, Justin Kan and Dawn Capital in London. As for Jens, he really is a serial entrepreneur with past endeavours including creating Sweden’s largest music player and founding Jays, the manufacturer and developer of innovative headphones that went public and is listed on the NASDAQ.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Jens make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found Automile?
• How does Jens look to build a repeatable scalable sales process with Automile? What are the core infrastructure requirements needed to make the process as automated as possible?
• How does Jens evaluate selling into the SMB market? How does Jens look to optimise the onboarding process to maximise conversion? How does Jens look to minimise churn with a market as potentially unstable as SMB’s?
• Why does Jens prefer technology minded sales teams? What benefits do they bring in terms of process to the sales cycle? What should founders look for in potential new engineering led sales teams?  
• Jens is increasing transparent, posting numerous figures on Twitter, what are the benefits of such transparency? How does that help the team to achieve the wider goal? Are there any cases, such as fundraising or exits, where transparency has negative consequences?

60 Second SaaStr

• What was the hardest element of leaving Europe to go big in the US?
• What does Jens know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
• What hires does Jens wish he had made earlier?

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

Jens Nylander

Steve Loughlin is a Partner @ Accel in San Francisco, one of the leading funds with prior investments in the likes of Facebook, Dropbox, Atlassian, Slack and many more incredible companies. Prior to Accel, Steve was the CEO and co-founder of RelateIQ, later named SalesforceIQ following the acquisition of the company by Salesforce in 2014 for $390 million. Steve was also president and CEO of Affinity Circles, a professional social network that connected more than 18 million professionals. Steve has also advised or invested in the likes of Palantir Technologies, Addepar, and Roam Analytics.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

• How Steve made his way into the world of SaaS with the founding of RelateIQ and then came to be a Partner at Accel on the other side of the table?
• Why does Steve believe the hardest balance a founder has to consider is the balance between building for the future and building for the present? How can this short to long term dichotomy be considered effectively by the team?
• RelateIQ was early to the AI/ML landscape, what does Steve think they did so right with RelateIQ? Does Steve agree that for an enterprise ML play to be interesting it must fundamentally change the go to market strategy?
• What were the key learnings from working so closely with Marc Benioff on the Salesforce exec team? What is it about the internal structure and operations of Salesforce that make it the massively profitable behemoth that it is today?
• Having been a founder himself and now a VC, how does Steve look to help founders specifically? Where has Steve found that early stage founders need the most help? Where do VCs proclaim to help the most but really do not at all?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What is the worst advice Steve often hears being given?
2. What is something that Steve has changed his mind radically on over the last few years?
3. What is Steve's favourite SaaS reading material?
4. What does Steve know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?

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

Steve Loughlin