The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Tien Tzuo is the Founder and CEO @ Zuora, one of the fastest growing SaaS companies that has been at the forefront of the rise of subscription business models. They have funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Benchmark, Sequoia, Redpoint and Marc Benioff, just to name a few. As for Tien, before Zuora, Tzuo was one of the 'original forces' at salesforce.com, joining as employee number 11. In his 9 years at salesforce.com, served in numerous different roles including as Chief Marketing Officer for two years, and most recently as Chief Strategy Officer.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Tien make his way from being an early employee at Salesforce to founding Zuora?
• What were the big takeaways for Tien from seeing the meteoric rise of Salesforce? How has that experience moulded his running and strategy with Zuora today?
• What does Tien see as the fundamental benefits of a subscription model? What products and services does it work best for? What are the keys to assembling this model successfully?
• Tien has previously referred to scaling as 'the climb'. How does he approach this analogy What was the most challenging element of scaling for Tien? How did he overcome it?
• Tien has previously said that market strategy is the $100m question all founders must ask. So how does Tien approach go to market? What are the fundamentals to think when considering different go to market options?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Biggest mentor and how the relationship came about?
2. What does Tien know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
3. Highlight of the Zuora journey so far?

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

Tien Tzuo

Tien Tzuo is the Founder and CEO @ Zuora, one of the fastest growing SaaS companies that has been at the forefront of the rise of subscription business models. They have funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Benchmark, Sequoia, Redpoint and Marc Benioff, just to name a few. As for Tien, before Zuora, Tzuo was one of the 'original forces' at salesforce.com, joining as employee number 11. In his 9 years at salesforce.com, served in numerous different roles including as Chief Marketing Officer for two years, and most recently as Chief Strategy Officer.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Tien make his way from being an early employee at Salesforce to founding Zuora?
• What were the big takeaways for Tien from seeing the meteoric rise of Salesforce? How has that experience moulded his running and strategy with Zuora today?
• What does Tien see as the fundamental benefits of a subscription model? What products and services does it work best for? What are the keys to assembling this model successfully?
• Tien has previously referred to scaling as ‘the climb’. How does he approach this analogy What was the most challenging element of scaling for Tien? How did he overcome it?
• Tien has previously said that market strategy is the $100m question all founders must ask. So how does Tien approach go to market? What are the fundamentals to think when considering different go to market options?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Biggest mentor and how the relationship came about?
2. What does Tien know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
3. Highlight of the Zuora journey so far?

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

Tien Tzuo

Lexi Reese is the Chief Customer Experience Officer at unicorn startup, Gusto and is one of the top female executives in Silicon Valley. Lexi's passion for serving customers was sparked by her early career in microfinance as a public policy advocate with ACCION International—giving loans to people living in poverty to start their own ventures. She later worked at Google for eight years, most recently serving as Vice President of Programmatic Sales and Strategy globally. Lexi also started the Cambridge AdWords team for Google's small business organization. Now at Gusto, Lexi ensures that Gusto is continuously going above and beyond to serve all customers.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Lexi make her way from the world of Google and Facebook to SaaS with Gusto?
• What were the biggest takeaways from spending 8 years at Google and seeing the immense hyper-growth there? How has Lexi applied those learnings to Gusto today?
• How does Lexi look to put the 'customer first' thesis into practice? What does this look like in reality and from day 1?
• How can one maintain such high levels of customer service with an ever increasing customer base? How can one insert elements of repeatability to make this easier?
• Question from Hunter Walk: How do you fundamentally measure customer satisfaction? What benchmarks do you calibrate against to consider success?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Lexi know now that she wishes she had known in the beginning?
2. Most challenging aspect of Lexi's role?
3. Question from Tien @ Zuora: How do you look to avoid the hype culture that pervades the valley?

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

Lexi Reese is the Chief Customer Experience Officer at unicorn startup, Gusto and is one of the top female executives in Silicon Valley. Lexi’s passion for serving customers was sparked by her early career in microfinance as a public policy advocate with ACCION International—giving loans to people living in poverty to start their own ventures. She later worked at Google for eight years, most recently serving as Vice President of Programmatic Sales and Strategy globally. Lexi also started the Cambridge AdWords team for Google's small business organization. Now at Gusto, Lexi ensures that Gusto is continuously going above and beyond to serve all customers.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Lexi make her way from the world of Google and Facebook to SaaS with Gusto?
• What were the biggest takeaways from spending 8 years at Google and seeing the immense hyper-growth there? How has Lexi applied those learnings to Gusto today?
• How does Lexi look to put the ‘customer first’ thesis into practice? What does this look like in reality and from day 1?
• How can one maintain such high levels of customer service with an ever increasing customer base? How can one insert elements of repeatability to make this easier?
• Question from Hunter Walk: How do you fundamentally measure customer satisfaction? What benchmarks do you calibrate against to consider success?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Lexi know now that she wishes she had known in the beginning?
2. Most challenging aspect of Lexi’s role?
3. Question from Tien @ Zuora: How do you look to avoid the hype culture that pervades the valley?

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

Eric Yuan is the Founder & CEO @ Zoom, the video and web conferencing service that just last week raised $100m in venture funding from Sequoia Capital. Prior to founding Zoom, Eric was Corporate Vice President of Engineering at Cisco, where he was responsible for Cisco's collaboration software development. As one of the founding engineers and Vice President of Engineering at WebEx, Eric was the heart and soul of the WebEx product from 1997 to 2011. Eric proudly grew the WebEx team from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide, and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. Eric is a named inventor on 11 issued and 20 pending patents in real time collaboration.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Eric make his way into the world of SaaS? What was a-ha moment and founding story of WebEx?
• How does Eric think about building products, customer first? What does that mindset and approach look like What are the main questions to ask? What are the challenges in doing so?
• How should one approach growth with startups? Is growth ever in need of control? If so, what can be done to control growth? How can this be done without angering investors?
• Eric has said before that founders must 'spend more and burn less'. What does he mean by this? What does that look like in reality? What should be the main focus?
• Does Eric agree with the notion that founders always undersell? How does Eric approach the situation of leaving money on the table? What are the challenges of doing so?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Eric know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. Eric's Fave SaaS Reading Material?
3. Biggest advice to SaaS founders?

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

Eric Yuan

Eric Yuan is the Founder & CEO @ Zoom, the video and web conferencing service that just last week raised $100m in venture funding from Sequoia Capital. Prior to founding Zoom, Eric was Corporate Vice President of Engineering at Cisco, where he was responsible for Cisco's collaboration software development. As one of the founding engineers and Vice President of Engineering at WebEx, Eric was the heart and soul of the WebEx product from 1997 to 2011. Eric proudly grew the WebEx team from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide, and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. Eric is a named inventor on 11 issued and 20 pending patents in real time collaboration.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Eric make his way into the world of SaaS? What was a-ha moment and founding story of WebEx?
• How does Eric think about building products, customer first? What does that mindset and approach look like What are the main questions to ask? What are the challenges in doing so?
• How should one approach growth with startups? Is growth ever in need of control? If so, what can be done to control growth? How can this be done without angering investors?
• Eric has said before that founders must ‘spend more and burn less’. What does he mean by this? What does that look like in reality? What should be the main focus?
• Does Eric agree with the notion that founders always undersell? How does Eric approach the situation of leaving money on the table? What are the challenges of doing so?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Eric know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. Eric’s Fave SaaS Reading Material?
3. Biggest advice to SaaS founders?

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

Eric Yuan

Jason Lemkin is the Founder and VC @ SaaStr, or more accurately put Jason is a 2x founder, 1x VC, and constant SaaS enthusiast. He led or sourced the first VC investments in many leading enterprise/SaaS start-ups, Greenhouse.io, Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, RainforestQA, Automile, and more. He is also an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, FrontApp, Influitive, BetterWorks, and other SaaS leaders. Jason has co-founded two successful start-ups selling to the enterprise. Before SaaStr and VC investing, he was CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web's most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc. He then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where he oversaw the growth of EchoSign and Adobe Document Services to $50,000,000 in ARR in 2012 and $100,000,000+ ARR in 2013. Prior to EchoSign and Adobe, he co-founded one of the only successes in nanotechnology, NanoGram Devices, which was acquired for $50m just 13 months after founding. Other than SaaS he is like me, no known hobbies.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Jason make his way into the world of SaaS and come to be Founder and VC @ SaaStr?
• ACV: What levels of ACV and characteristics suggest potential for a unicorn? How does Jason look to help founders attain higher ACVs? Why is stay focused horrible advice with regards to increasing your ACV with differing customer demands?
• Does Jason believe that founders always undersell? What advice would Jason give to founders that are nervous to ask for more? What customer response would excite Jason and what would make him concerned?
• Jason has previously said that 'founders have to be 110% committed to sales'. What does this mean? How does this look when assessing a founder? Should founders be happy to pay their sales hires more than them? How quickly should the payback period be on these reps?
• Jason has also previously said that some founders financials are 'simply ridiculous'. What makes him say this? What financials are fundamental to have very accurately pin pointed? Why is 100% gross margin impossible?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Why does Jason like it when startups have clients that are not in tech?
2. What does Jason know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
3. What should SaaS founders look for in their investors?
4. Why does Jason only invest out of the SaaStr community?

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

Jason Lemkin is the Founder and VC @ SaaStr, or more accurately put Jason is a 2x founder, 1x VC, and constant SaaS enthusiast. He led or sourced the first VC investments in many leading enterprise/SaaS start-ups, Greenhouse.io, Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, RainforestQA, Automile, and more. He is also an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, FrontApp, Influitive, BetterWorks, and other SaaS leaders. Jason has co-founded two successful start-ups selling to the enterprise.  Before SaaStr and VC investing, he was CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web’s most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc. He then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where he oversaw the growth of EchoSign and Adobe Document Services to $50,000,000 in ARR in 2012 and $100,000,000+ ARR in 2013. Prior to EchoSign and Adobe, he co-founded one of the only successes in nanotechnology, NanoGram Devices, which was acquired for $50m just 13 months after founding. Other than SaaS he is like me, no known hobbies.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Jason make his way into the world of SaaS and come to be Founder and VC @ SaaStr?
• ACV: What levels of ACV and characteristics suggest potential for a unicorn? How does Jason look to help founders attain higher ACVs? Why is stay focused horrible advice with regards to increasing your ACV with differing customer demands?
• Does Jason believe that founders always undersell? What advice would Jason give to founders that are nervous to ask for more? What customer response would excite Jason and what would make him concerned?
• Jason has previously said that ‘founders have to be 110% committed to sales’. What does this mean? How does this look when assessing a founder? Should founders be happy to pay their sales hires more than them? How quickly should the payback period be on these reps?
• Jason has also previously said that some founders financials are ‘simply ridiculous’. What makes him say this? What financials are fundamental to have very accurately pin pointed? Why is 100% gross margin impossible?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Why does Jason like it when startups have clients that are not in tech?
2. What does Jason know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
3. What should SaaS founders look for in their investors?
4. Why does Jason only invest out of the SaaStr community?

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

Jason Lemkin is the Founder and VC @ SaaStr, or more accurately put Jason is a 2x founder, 1x VC, and constant SaaS enthusiast. He led or sourced the first VC investments in many leading enterprise/SaaS start-ups, Greenhouse.io, Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, RainforestQA, Automile, and more. He is also an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, FrontApp, Influitive, BetterWorks, and other SaaS leaders. Jason has co-founded two successful start-ups selling to the enterprise. Before SaaStr and VC investing, he was CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web's most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc. He then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where he oversaw the growth of EchoSign and Adobe Document Services to $50,000,000 in ARR in 2012 and $100,000,000+ ARR in 2013. Prior to EchoSign and Adobe, he co-founded one of the only successes in nanotechnology, NanoGram Devices, which was acquired for $50m just 13 months after founding. Other than SaaS he is like me, no known hobbies.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Jason make his way into the world of SaaS and come to be Founder and VC @ SaaStr?
• ACV: What levels of ACV and characteristics suggest potential for a unicorn? How does Jason look to help founders attain higher ACVs? Why is stay focused horrible advice with regards to increasing your ACV with differing customer demands?
• Does Jason believe that founders always undersell? What advice would Jason give to founders that are nervous to ask for more? What customer response would excite Jason and what would make him concerned?
• Jason has previously said that 'founders have to be 110% committed to sales'. What does this mean? How does this look when assessing a founder? Should founders be happy to pay their sales hires more than them? How quickly should the payback period be on these reps?
• Jason has also previously said that some founders financials are 'simply ridiculous'. What makes him say this? What financials are fundamental to have very accurately pin pointed? Why is 100% gross margin impossible?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Why does Jason like it when startups have clients that are not in tech?
2. What does Jason know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
3. What should SaaS founders look for in their investors?
4. Why does Jason only invest out of the SaaStr community?

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

Jason Lemkin is the Founder and VC @ SaaStr, or more accurately put Jason is a 2x founder, 1x VC, and constant SaaS enthusiast. He led or sourced the first VC investments in many leading enterprise/SaaS start-ups, Greenhouse.io, Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, RainforestQA, Automile, and more. He is also an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, FrontApp, Influitive, BetterWorks, and other SaaS leaders. Jason has co-founded two successful start-ups selling to the enterprise.  Before SaaStr and VC investing, he was CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web’s most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc. He then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where he oversaw the growth of EchoSign and Adobe Document Services to $50,000,000 in ARR in 2012 and $100,000,000+ ARR in 2013. Prior to EchoSign and Adobe, he co-founded one of the only successes in nanotechnology, NanoGram Devices, which was acquired for $50m just 13 months after founding. Other than SaaS he is like me, no known hobbies.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Jason make his way into the world of SaaS and come to be Founder and VC @ SaaStr?
• ACV: What levels of ACV and characteristics suggest potential for a unicorn? How does Jason look to help founders attain higher ACVs? Why is stay focused horrible advice with regards to increasing your ACV with differing customer demands?
• Does Jason believe that founders always undersell? What advice would Jason give to founders that are nervous to ask for more? What customer response would excite Jason and what would make him concerned?
• Jason has previously said that ‘founders have to be 110% committed to sales’. What does this mean? How does this look when assessing a founder? Should founders be happy to pay their sales hires more than them? How quickly should the payback period be on these reps?
• Jason has also previously said that some founders financials are ‘simply ridiculous’. What makes him say this? What financials are fundamental to have very accurately pin pointed? Why is 100% gross margin impossible?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Why does Jason like it when startups have clients that are not in tech?
2. What does Jason know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
3. What should SaaS founders look for in their investors?
4. Why does Jason only invest out of the SaaStr community?

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