The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Lars Nilsson is the VP of Global Inside Sales for Cloudera and with over twenty-five years of sales and operations experience, Lars Nilsson is a global leader in enterprise software and selling solutions. One of Lars many incredible achievements was he and his team at Cloudera built the sales methodology Account-Based Sales Development (ABSD), which has transformed how businesses approach high-value targets. Prior to Cloudera, Lars founded SalesSource, a business services consulting firm specializing in CRM customization and sales process development. Lars has also served in sales executive roles at ArcSight/Hewlett Packard, Riverbed Technology and Portal Software – all three of which achieved IPOs, in addition to Cloudera (2017). As Special Advisor at True Ventures, Lars helps True portfolio companies develop sales compensation plans from the ground up, implement best-of-breed sales technologies, and rapidly scale sales teams to meet demand.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Lars make his way into the world of enterprise sales back in 1995? How has Lars seen the industry change so significantly over the last 22 years?  
• Why does Lars believe that SDRs are the most important role in sales? How does their role of ensuring a full pipe compare to the role of demand gen and marketing?
• How does Lars think about setting a quota that ensures a desired behaviour beyond pure revenue chasing? What is his framework for setting and optimising the right quota? Why does Lars believe that ales is all about activities? What activities is Lars most eager to measure and test?
• What is Lars’ biggest advice to someone looking to build out their SDR team from the ground up? What core characteristics should one look for in those initial SDR hires? What is and has been Lars’ biggest challenge in building out his SDR team? Why is building SDR teams in the bay so hard?
• How does Lars think about setting ideal customer profiles? How big a TAM is large enough to be excited, yet narrow enough  to be achievable and solve a true and inherent customer need?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Lars know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. What is Lars favourite piece of SaaS reading material?
3. Sales rep productivity, what does Lars believe is the scale from exceptional to poor?

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

Lars Nilsson

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Jyoti Bansal is the former Founder & CEO @ AppDynamics, backed by the likes of Lightspeed, Greylock and Kleiner Perkins just to name a few before it’s ultimate acquisition by Cisco for $3.7Bn. Today, Jyoti is the Founder and CEO @ BIG Labs essentially a laboratory for creating, developing and launching innovative ideas. The first of these ideas being turned into companies being, Harness.io the industry’s first continuous delivery as a service platform, where Jyoti is the Founder & CEO. As a result of his tremendous success, Jyoti has been a recipient of many leadership awards including, "Best Cloud Computing CEO to Work For", "Best CEO" by San Francisco Business Times.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Jyoti made his way from selling agricultural machinery with his father in India to creating one of the fastest growing enterprise companies with AppDynamics?  
• $0-3m ARR: What is the key goal and objective for startups scaling through this phase? How can startups look to accurately determine what their North Star in this stage? To what extent should the founder involve the customer in product roadmap and development?
• $10-15m ARR: What are the core objectives for the business in this stage of the cycle? How should founders view competition through this phase? What does Jyoti mean when he says about “go-to-market strategy fit”? How can this be determined most accurately?
• $60-80m: What should be front and centre of the mind of the entrepreneur at this stage? Why does Jyoti believe it is here that it is crucial to get sales execution right? WHere are the breaking points that occur in the team scaling at this phase? How does the role CEO change here?
• Pre-IPO: Why is operational efficiency so crucial in this stage of the business? What did AppDynamics do best at this stage of the business? Where would Jyoti say AppDynamics could have done better in the progression through this stage?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Jyoti know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning of Appdynamics?
2. What is Jyoti’s must read SaaS material?
3. Payback period is the most important metric?

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

Jyoti Bansal

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Paul Albright is one of the valley’s most experienced SaaS execs with extensive operational and capital management experience, including 3 IPOs. Most recently Paul was the Founder & CEO @ Captora, the marketing acceleration software solution that raised over $25m in VC funding from the likes of NEA and Bain Capital Ventures. Prior to Captora, Paul was Chief Revenue Officer at Marketo where he drove the overall revenue strategy across sales and marketing that delivered global revenue growth over 100% year-over-year, from $14m to $58m. In a similar position at SuccessFactors, he grew revenues to more than $200m and over 80% year-over-year growth. Previously, Paul led worldwide marketing at NetApp and at Informatica, which he joined pre-revenue through their successful IPO. If that was not enough he has also served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Greylock.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Paul made his way into the world with the likes of SuccessFactors and Marketo? What were his big lessons from seeing both companies scale into hyper-growth mode?  
• Does Paul agree with Dave Kellogg in stating, “CAC/LTV is the single most important metric for SaaS startups? What other metrics must all VPs of Demand Gen and Sales be watching constantly?
• What does an efficient sales and marketing engine look like? What are the core components to build that? What are the requirements to both run this engine and scale it quickly? How does the growth of this engine affect hiring in other parts of the business?
• Why does Paul believe that it is much harder to go SMB up than enterprise down? What are the changes that are required on both ends? For this in “no man’s land of pricing” what does an efficient sales process timeline look like from lead to conversion?

60 Second SaaStr

1. How does Paul think about picking the investors he works with?
2. Is customisation always wrong?
3. What is “good sales rep productivity” to Paul?
4. What does Paul 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

Paul Albright

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Jack Altman is the Founder & CEO of Lattice, the #1 performance management solution for growing companies.They have raised close to $10m in funding from some of our favourites in industry including the likes of Miles Grimshaw @ Thrive, Khosla Ventures, Elad Gil, Alexis Ohanian and YC’s Daniel Gross. Prior to founding Lattice, Jack was the Head of Business Development @ Teespring where he saw the firm move into hyper scaling. Jack has also build an incredible angel portfolio including the likes of Gusto, OpenDoor, Instacart, Zenefits and Soylent.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Jack made his way from seeing the hypergrowth of Teespring to starting Lattice?
• What does Jack identify as the 2 core challenges to rapid scaling in SaaS? Does Jack agree with Chris Caren in stating you have to hire for 3-4 years ahead of the role? How does Jack see the role and structure of communication change with the scaling of a firm?
• How did the early days of selling look with Lattice? How did Jack incorporate the team into his learnings and development within the world of SaaS? What should founders look for in the first sales hire? How does that profile change with the scaling?
• Why does Jack believe that each and every department should have their own North Star as well as a company North Star? Does Jack concur with Eric Ries’ believe that every department must also have their own budget?
• In terms of metrics, how does Jack prioritise within the metric stack? What is most important for Jack to focus on? How has Jack seen this change with time? Does Jack agree with Shan Sinha @ Highfive that it is “always about payback”?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Jack’s Favourite SaaS reading material?
2. What does Jack know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
3. How much time does Jack spend talking to customers?

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

Jack Altman

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Rajeev Batra is a Partner at Mayfield, a firm that has championed bold entrepreneurs since 1969. Rajeev’s investments at Mayfield include the likes of Crunchbase, SmartRecruiters, Marketo (IPO then taken private by Vista Equity), ServiceMax (acquired by GE Digital) and more incredible companies. Prior to Mayfield, Rajeev was at Mobius (Softbank) Venture Capital and Austin Ventures. Before making the move into VC, Rajeev was on the operational side as an entrepreneur and executive with three of the companies he worked with going public and later being acquired, including the very notable Siebel Systems.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Rajeev made the transition from successful operator with 3 IPOs under his belt to investing in the next generation of enterprise companies with Mayfield?
• What does Rajeev mean when he says “startups do not die of starvation, they die of indigestion”? How does this realisation affect Rajeev’s approach to customer profiling and segmenting customers?
• Why does Rajeev believe that “early product market fit can be misleading”? How does Rajeev look to provide context and action from numbers and analytics in the early days?
• How does Rajeev feel that founders should approach gross margin from the early days? How should this relationship and thought process towards gross margin change over time?
• Why does Rajeev believe that retention is the number 1 metric for SaaS founders to focus on? In the stack of metrics, how does this compare to gross margin, CAC/LTV and payback period?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Enterprise investing is spreadsheet investing: True or false?
2. How does Mayfield use an internal budget to align themselves to entrepreneurs?
3. What does Rajeev mean when he says “I look for 2 act opportunities”?

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

Rajeev Batra

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Shan Sinha is the Founder & CEO @ Highfive, the startup that quite simply makes insanely simple video conferencing. They have raised over $45m in funding from some of the best in the business including a16z, Lightspeed General Catalyst and Founder Collective and then individuals including Aaron Levie, Drew Houston and Marc Benioff. Prior to Highfive, Shan was the Group Product Manager for Google Apps for Enterprise, which he joined following Google’s 2010 acquisition of his prior company, DocVerse, which later became part of Google Drive.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Shan made his way from being one of the foundations of Google Drive to changing the world of video conferencing with Highfive?
• As a successful second time founder, how has Shan’s thesis around customer success changed? When is the right time to hire your first CS personnel? What profile should those first CS hires have? How does this vary to differing profiles in the scaling journey?
• Logos or expansion? What does Shan believe is crucial in the early days of SaaS scaling? What metric is the true determinant of whether a customer is attaining consistent value from your product?
• Why does Shan believe that not everything has to scale from Day 1? What are the benefits of implementing a model that is unable to scale? What does this show and teach the startup? How does Shan think about capturing the perfect customer experience?
• Why does Shan believe that payback period is the single most important metric for SaaS startups? How does Shan think about payback and margins when selling to the traditionally smaller ACV marker of SMB? What are the challenges in doing so?

60 Second SaaStr

1. When is a stretch VP a stretch too far?
2. What does Shan know now that he wishes had known when he started Highfive?
3. Challenges of doing both hardware and software simultaneously?

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

Shan Sinha

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Chris Caren is the CEO @ Turnitin, the company revolutionising the experience of writing to learn with backing from the likes of IVP, Norwest Venture Partners and GIC. Chris has scaled the company to serve over 25m students and 2m teachers across 15,000 institutions. Prior to joining Turnitin in 2009, Chris spent 4 years with Microsoft as a General Manager and before that 3 years at Business Objects as a VP of Product Marketing.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Chris made his way into the world of SaaS and came to be CEO @ Turnitin?
• What were Chris’ biggest takeaways from watching both Business Objects and Microsoft as they scaled into hyper growth mode? What were his big lessons in management from Bernard Liautaud? What marketing takeaways did he have from working with Dave Kellogg?
• Why does Chris believe management team upgrade is the most important role a CEO can perform? What are the core characteristics that upgrade candidates must have for them to be an attractive hire? What culture must be built into the fibre of the leadership team?
• How does Chris look to manage internal discontent when bringing in external managers? How does Chris look to involve internal candidates for the role in the search for their next boss? What are the benefits of this?   
• When is a stretch VP a stretch too far? What are the signs of potential strain? How does the team convey this? Once identified, what is the right post-mortem chain to take place?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What should founders consider before selling their company?
2. What does Chris know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
3. What is Chris’ favourite SaaS reading material and why?

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

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Greg Schott is the Chairman and CEO @ Mulesoft, provider of the leading platform for building application networks. They have raised over $250m in funding from some of the best investors in the world including NEA and Lightspeed and then some of the largest companies of the day in Cisco, Salesforce and SAP. Greg joined Mulesoft in 2009 when the company only had 20 employees, over the last 8 years Greg has scaled the team to over 1,000 today in 18 countries. A real software industry veteran with over 20 years of experience building and leading high growth technology companies from early stage through IPO.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Greg made his way into the world of SaaS and came to be CEO @ Mulesoft?
• Greg has seen Mulesoft scale from 20 to 1,000 employees today, what have been the biggest challenges in scaling the team? Where are the breaking points? What are the signs of those impending breaking points? How does that show through the team behaviour?
• Where do most companies go wrong in the hiring process? What is the right and wrong way to respond when a bad hire has been made? How long is long enough to determine whether a bad hire is a bad hire? Does Greg agree with the hire fast, fire fast thesis?
• If Greg could go back to 2009 when he joined the firm with 20 employees, what would Greg change about the way he approached hiring? What hiring advice would Greg give to an early stage SaaS company?   
• How does Greg think about scaling sales teams? How does Greg view specialisation in the scaling of sales? When is the right time? What should CEO’s look for in their sales leaders? How does that alter at different points in the journey?

60 Second SaaStr

1. How have things changed since IPO?
2. When is the right time to expand product line and enter new segments?
3. Biggest challenge with Mulesoft today?
4. Which SaaS CEO does Greg most admire and why?

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

Greg Schott

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Andy Byrne is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Clari, the startup that helps sales teams drive more revenue and increase forecast accuracy through improved deal execution and predictive analysis. They have raised over $30m in venture funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia and Bain Capital Ventures. Prior to Clari, Andy was part of the founding executive team at Clearwell Systems—Gartner's highest ranking e-discovery company—which he helped grow from pre-product & pre-revenue in 2005 to $100 million run rate until its acquisition by Symantec (SYMC) in Q2 2011. Prior to joining Clearwell, Andy co-founded Timestock, Inc., acquired by Computer Associates (CA) via the acquisition of Wily Technology.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Andy made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found Clari? What were the key takeaways from his two prior successful founding experiences?
• Why is it important for startups to look larger than life to potential “whale” customer? What is the methodology that startups can use to gain this appearance? What role does the website play in this?
• Why is it important for startups to understand the risk the buyer is undertaking at large corporates when becoming a customer? How does this mean that startups should convey the product roadmap? How can startups sell the product vision and the instant value add simultaneously?
• How can startups look to “create theatre” with their product? What does this really mean? How can startups do this when the product is in MVP stage?
• Why is it so important for the startup to make the switch from vendor to partner? How can startups use execution time as the key way to achieve this?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What hires does Andy wish he had made earlier with Clari?
2. Recruiting in the valley, how hard and top tips?
3. What is the most challenging element in the day to day running of Clari?

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

Andy Byrne

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com

Ben Uretsky is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Digital Ocean. Under Ben’s leadership, DigitalOcean has risen from a cloud startup for developers to the second largest and fastest growing cloud computing platform. To date, more than 1m developers have deployed more than 50 million cloud servers, and the company has expanded its worldwide infrastructure footprint with multiple datacenter locations around the globe. The company has raised $123 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Access Industries, IA Ventures, CrunchFund, and Techstars. Prior to DigitalOcean, he co-founded and built a managed hosting provider that supported some of the top websites online and generated million-dollar annual revenues.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Ben made the move from co-founding a bootstrapped startup competing with Rackspace to co-founding DigitalOcean and competing with Amazon?
• What have been Ben’s big learnings in raising $123m for DigitalOcean? How does Ben suggest building a trusted relationship with VCs?
• How have DigitalOcean scaled to over 1m customers without a sales team? What are the core tenets that have made this possible? How does the team prioritise customer acquisition channels at DigitalOcean? How does Ben say is the right way to build a community?
• Sean Rad has said before the hardest part is scaling with the firm. How has been seen his scaling as CEO with the firm? How has his personal relationship to the company changed with the scaling? Hear an inflection point in the scaling of DigitalOcean and how Ben’s leadership changed as a result?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What hire des Ben wish he had made earlier?
2. What does Ben know now that he wishes he had known earlier?
3. What are the key inflection points in SaaS businesses?

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

Ben Uretsky

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cloud.substack.com