The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Jeppe Rindom is the Founder & CEO @ Pleo, the simple spending solution for your company automating expense reports and simplifying company expenses. To date, Jeppe has raised over $78m in funding for Pleo from some European favourites of mine in the form of Creandum and Vaestfonden and then also their most recent round led by Stripes Group in NYC. As for Jeppe, prior to founding Pleo he was the CEO @ Nodes, a design and development house that worked with brands including Loreal, BMW and Lego. Before that, Jeppe was the CFO @ Tradeshift where he first hand saw their scaling to 190 countries with offices in 6 different locations. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How did Jeppe make his way into the world of startups and SaaS with his becoming CFO @ Tradeshift? What were his biggest learnings from Tradeshift and how did that impact his operating mentality? What was that a-ha moment for him with Pleo? Why did Jeppe decide to focus on SMBs from Day 1? How does the product build in the early days differ when building for SMB vs enterprise? Why does Jeppe believe that building for SMB makes it easier to build a great culture internally? How does Jeppe think about when is the right time to move into enterprise? What changes? How does Jeppe respond to 3 common concerns VCs have with SMBs: The price points are so low that it takes huge volume to scale to meaningful revenue? The mortality rate of SMBs is so high that you are going to always have high churn due to the customer segment? Serving SMBs in the way that Pleo does is an intensely competitive space, is this a winner-take-all market? How does Jeppe think about competition? How does Jeppe think about NPS today? How does Jeppe approach the problem of agency when the buyer is not the user? How does Jeppe think about being customer informed but not customer-driven? Pleo has a part-remote work structure, why does Jeppe advocate for this structure in the face of many saying it either has to be remote or not? What has Pleo done to make it work? What tool stack do they have to ensure seamless communication between remote and non-remote? Where are the challenges? What must one always do? How does leadership change for Jesse in the face of scale? How does Jesse think about scaling humanity and the personal touch with the scaling of his leadership? What are the challenges? When do they start to arise? How has raising in the US compared to raising in Europe? What are the core differences? Jeppe's 60 Second SaaStr: What does Jeppe know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? How did raising from the US differ from raising with European investors? What would Jeppe most like to change about the world of SaaS today? Read the 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 Jeppe Rindom

Gorgias CEO Romain Lapeyre discusses automating customer support using data insights, building a data-driven growth machine for SaaS companies, and tailoring onboarding to customers.

Ryan Bonnici is the CMO @ G2, the company that allows you to get the right software and services for your business with over 897,000 user reviews to help you make smarter buying decisions. As for Ryan, prior to G2 he was Senior Director of Global Marketing at Hubspot where among many other achievements, he scaled HubSpot's marketing-generated sales revenue by 330% year-over-year. Before Hubspot, Ryan was Head of Marketing @ Salesforce (APAC) where he led his team to achieve 227% YoY net-new sales sourced through marketing. Due to his success, Ryan has been named to Forbes' List of World's Most Influential CMOs. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How Ryan made his way into the world of SaaS from Sydney, Australia and came to be one of the world's leading CMOs with G2 today? What were Ryan's biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce? How did it change his mindset? What are the core differences when comparing marketing functions at the likes of Salesforce to smaller companies like G2? What can they learn from each other? Where does Ryan sit on whether marketing is an art or a science today? How did Ryan turn a $6,000 initiative at Hubspot into a product that generated $64m net revs? What have been Ryan's biggest lessons in what it takes to acquire the best talent? How does Ryan build candidate pipe? What works most effectively? How does Ryan structure and run the process? What core questions does Ryan ask and find most revealing of the individual's character? What does Ryan love to see in a candidate? Does Ryan agree that marketing teams should always be held directly accountable to a number tied to revenue? What type of CMO would Ryan bucket himself as; demand gen or brand? How does Ryan think about the relationship between the two? Ryan's 60 Second SaaStr: What does Ryan know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning of his career in marketing? What is the biggest BS that Ryan often hears in the world of marketing? Which marketing leader does Ryan most respect and admire 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 Ryan Bonnici

Naomi Ionita, a Partner at Menlo Ventures and a seasoned expert in SaaS monetization, shares invaluable insights into pricing strategies. She emphasizes the importance of matching product value with pricing to avoid underpricing. Naomi discusses how understanding target audiences and user segmentation can dramatically enhance sales, using ride-sharing as a compelling example. She also highlights the need for structured pricing processes and cross-functional engagement to optimize pricing based on customer feedback.

Janine Pelosi is the CMO @ Zoom, the next-generation enterprise phone system. Prior to their very successful IPO, Zoom raised funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, Emergence Capital, Horizons Ventures and 2 of my favourites in the form of Matt Ocko @ Data Collective and Dan Scheinman. As for Janine before joining Zoom, she spent 11 years at Cisco where among many incredible achievements she led worldwide demand gen for WebEx and led their worldwide digital marketing team with a $25M annual budget. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How Janine made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be one of the leading CMOs today with Zoom? How has the role of the CMO changed over the last 5 years? Would Janine agree with Jason Lemkin that "the role of the CMO is to execute the vision of the CEO"? What makes Janine and Eric's relationship so successful? What makes Eric the special leader that he is? How does the changing power of the CMO affect their relationship with the CEO? When is the right time for startups to hire their first CMO? What should they look for in that ideal candidate? What should they have in place in terms of infrastructure, prior to hiring the candidate? What does the right onboarding process look like for a CMO? Where does Janine see many going wrong when hiring their first CMO? How does Janine look to create alignment between sales and marketing? Why does Janine not believe in having the labels of "MQLs and SQLs"? How does Janine look to reduce the friction when handing off between marketing and sales? What are the common causes? How are we seeing marketing also blend with customer success? Janine's 60 Second SaaStr: What does Janine know now that she wishes she had known at the start of her time at Zoom? Who does Janine most respect in the world of marketing today? Why? What would Janine most like to change about the world of SaaS today? 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 Janine Pelosi

Matt Schatz is SVP of Sales at WPEngine, responsible for defining and executing the global sales strategy. Matt has nearly two decades of senior leadership experience in sales and customer growth, specifically for technology companies with customers around the world including Bazaarvoice, CityVoice and Rackspace. Missed the session? Here's what Matt talks about: Getting your "first story" What is a lucky lead and how does that turn into predictable growth Building trust across time zones This podcast is an excerpt of Matt's session at SaaStr Annual 2019. You can watch the full session 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 SaaStr WP Engine Today's sponsor: Traditional customer beta testing can't keep up with the speed of Agile or the demands of continuous delivery. Centercode's approach to real-world Delta Testing fuels product and engineering teams with actionable quality and UX insights before every new release. Visit Centercode.com to learn more.

Allison Pickens, COO at Gainsight, discusses the importance of strategic planning in customer success, the alignment of customer success and product management, and strategies for building a CS team on a tight budget. She also highlights the growing importance of product marketing and customer success in driving sales and marketing.

Building a company made up of distributed teams presents a plethora of complex challenges that can derail productivity and impact employee retention. But with it comes immense benefits and competitive advantages such as the diversification of ideas, speedier product development, and representation in important regions and time zones. Come and hear about the typical pitfalls (and how to avoid them) from Eventbrite SVP of Platform Pat Poels, an executive with over seven years under his belt leading Eventbrite's now 300+ strong engineering team that sits across North America, South America, and Europe. Missed the session? Here's what Pat talks about: Engineering your own luck How to build an engineering team 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

Jon Herstein is the Chief Customer Officer at Box, the company that provides one platform for secure content management, workflow and collaboration. Prior to their IPO, Box had raised funding from some of the best in the business including Andreesen Horowitz, Bessemer, DST, Emergence and Meritech, just to name a few. As for Jon, prior to being Chief Customer Officer at Box, he was Senior VP of Customer Success, responsible for all post-sales services Box provides from implementation to user adoption and more. Before Box, Jon spent 4 years as VP of Professional Services at NetSuite and prior to that, close to 8 years as Senior Director of professional services at Informatica. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How did Jon make his way into the world of SaaS and come to be one of the leading figures in the rising tide of the customer success movement? What does Jon mean when he says, "you have to constantly bring your customers to the forefront of your employees minds"? For non-customer facing roles, what can one do to give them that perspective? Does it work to ensure every function spends time in customer support? What is challenging about that? What can be done in the onboarding phase to ensure the individual has the most empathy for the customer, regardless of function? For those in CS, what is the right communication cadence to check in with their accounts? What should the agenda look like? What outcomes should they drive towards? Should they be involved in the upsell process? How does Jon think about post-mortems on churned clients? How do they structure them? What lost client stands out to Jon and what would he have done differently to retain them? From Jon's experience seeing Box in hyperscaling, at what stages do SaaS orgs start to break down? Why does Jon think that is? What can be done to proactively try and mitigate this? How does Jon think about the structuring of roles and responsibilities with scale? What does this done well look like? Where do many people go wrong here? Jon's 60 Second SaaStr: What does Jon know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning of his time with Box? What motto or quote does Jon frequently revert back to? What is the most challenging element of Jon's role with Box today? 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 Jon Herstein

Tom Bogan, CEO of Adaptive Insights, a Workday company, will review the key principles to building a successful SaaS company. From team to vision to metrics to funding and more, these principles provide the framework for high-growth, high performing SaaS companies. How can you develop a winning culture? How can you set aggressive but realistic goals? What's needed to build the right team in SaaS today? Missed the session? Here's what Tom talks about: The important maxims about team building Insights on fundraising and why you might not want to always raise at the highest valuation Personal stories from his time building Adaptive Insights 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