The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Aaron Levie co-founded Box with three high school friends in 2005 when they discovered there wasn't a modern solution for sharing and collaborating on work.They created Box to provide businesses with an easy way to share, access and manage information with enterprise-grade security, compliance and governance.Eleven years later, Box has been adopted by nearly 65% of the Fortune 500 and has nearly 70,000 paying business customers. The company went public in January 2015, and remains one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: How did Aaron with 3 friends from high school come to found one of the fastest growing enterprise software companies in Box? How does Aaron view the convergence of enterprise and consumer products in the coming years? How does this convergence effect IT providers? How does Aaron view transparency within organisations? How does this affect information flow? What must CEO's consider when contemplating transparency within their organisation? How does Aaron evaluate the inflection points in the growth of Box? What were the challenges in overcoming these hurdles? How did he have to change as a CEO to combat these changes? What does the rise of AI mean for businesses and enterprise? What does the rise of VR allow the enterprise that was not previously possible? How do these emerging technologies affect the product and strategic roadmap at Box? 60 Second SaaStr Aaron's favourite SaaS reading material? What will it take for Box to be 10x from here? What does Aaron know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning? What does Aaron spend most his time on that he would like to change? 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 Aaron Levie

Luke Retterath, Director of Demand Generation at Duo Security, shares insights on hiring demand gen candidates, jump-starting the team, driving growth, and planning and forecasting in demand gen. Topics include practical tests for candidates, focus areas for growth, and optimizing strategies through data analysis.

Douglas Hanna is the GM of the Developer Platform @ Zendesk, one of the world's fastest growing SaaS startups. Before joining Zendesk, Douglas was the Founder & CEO @ Help.com where he grew the business from 1 to 16. Prior to Help, Douglas was the CEO of A Small Orange, the web hosting firm that was acquired by Endurance International Group where Douglas was on the Executive team when they went public on the NASDAQ. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: How did Douglas make his entry into the world of SaaS and Zendesk? What were the big adjustments that Douglas had to make from founding and working in smaller companies to working at Zendesk? What is the core to making the successful move? How can companies go about building a platform? What are the fundamentals to consider once you have decided on the platform approach? What are the challenges? How can a startup measure the success of their platform? What are the benchmarks and metrics that must be observed? How does testing and iteration play a role in platform success? How does Douglas approach the go to market element with regards to platforms? How has the world of platform go to market changed in the world of omni-channel? 60 Second SaaStr Biggest mistake companies make with their platform approach? Fave SaaS reading material? What does Douglas 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 Douglas Hanna

Jonathan Lehr is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Work-Bench, where he focuses on early stage enterprise technology investments in areas including big data analytics, machine learning, data-defined security and more. Prior to Work-Bench, Jon founded the NY Enterprise Technology Meetup in January 2012 and organizes monthly meetups of the 5,000+ person group as a way to promote collaboration for the enterprise tech ecosystem in New York. Jon has also worked at Morgan Stanley on the Office of the CIO team in IT. In that capacity, he partnered with internal technology clients to facilitate the selection and on-boarding of emerging technology vendors. He has also written about enterprise technology trends for publications such as The Wall Street Journal's CIO Journal and TechCrunch. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: How did Jonathan make his way into the world of enterprise investing with WorkBench? Jon has previously said that enterprise tech is like chess, so what are the rules to play by? What can startups do to increase their chance of winning the game? How can startups build scalable and natural relationships with decision makers in large enterprise clients? What are the fundamentals to doing this successfully? What does this conversation look like? What does the buying decision making process look like in large corporates? How does that differ from space to space? How does that affect the sales cycle? Why is NYC the best place in the world to start an enterprise tech company? What are the pros and cons of being in NYC? 60 Second SaaStr Greenfield opportunities in enterprise technology? What does Jonathan know now that he wishes he had known at the start? Jonathan's fave SaaS reading material? 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 Jonathan Lehr

JD Peterson is CMO of Trello where he heads the company's marketing and customer service teams. A true child of Silicon Valley, J.D. has been helping startups for nearly 20 years. Before Trello, he held positions as the CRO and interim CEO at Scripted, the VP of Marketing at Zendesk, and the VP of Products at Marketo. JD takes pride in building world-class teams, helping companies accelerate growth, and ensuring the customer remains at the center of every strategic effort. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: How did JD make his slightly unconventional entrance into the world of SaaS? Having picked Marketo and Zendesk, what does JD assess when picking companies? Once picked, how does JD evaluate culture? How does JD measure this? How does JD approach lead qualification? How does JD measure the effectiveness of lead generation, revenue or amount of leads? How does JD unify the sales and marketing team? JD has previously said that now is 'the best but hardest time to be a marketer'. Why is this and what is behind this thesis? What are the pros and cons of the data driven marketing world? What are the commonalities among the best marketeers? JD has seen many companies scale into hyper-growth, when does JD believe is the right time to hire and expand aggressively? What roles should be filled first? What does JD optimize for in the hiring process? When is the transition point needed to have a VP? 60 Second SaaStr Is SaaS marketing B2B or B2C? What does JD know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning? Biggest mistake companies are enacting with their current marketing plans? 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 JD Peterson

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 Biggest mentor and how the relationship came about? What does Tien know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning? 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 What does Lexi know now that she wishes she had known in the beginning? Most challenging aspect of Lexi's role? 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 What does Eric know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? Eric's Fave SaaS Reading Material? 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 Why does Jason like it when startups have clients that are not in tech? What does Jason know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? What should SaaS founders look for in their investors? 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 Why does Jason like it when startups have clients that are not in tech? What does Jason know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? What should SaaS founders look for in their investors? 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