AI to ROI (fka Metrics that Measure Up)

In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast, we speak with Alex Theuma, the founder and CEO of SaaStock and the SaaS Revolution podcast.Alex started his career as an enterprise sales professional, and identified his passion for SaaS as he started to write a blog on all things SaaS, called SaaScribe.  SaaScribe quickly morphed into a community blog, and enabled Alex to build deep and broad connections across the SaaS ecosystem.Based upon the community of SaaS entrepreneurs that developed, Alex identified the opportunity to launch a European SaaS event.  Even though Alex was preparing to be a first time father in three months,  Alex  jumped head first into launching SaaStock and the first event in 2016 included 700 attendees from over 34 countries.Alex's initial vision behind SaaStock remains consistent to today - to help SaaS founders grow and find success in their SaaS based entrepreneurial venture.  The SaaStock Mission is to make a real difference to those participating  in the SaaS industry across the world.  Being global was not part of the initial vision, as SaaStock was started to focus on SaaS founders across Europe.   However, the first SaaStock event in Dublin attracted attendees from 34 different countries.  With that as the backdrop, SaaStock expanded quickly to be the first global events company for SaaS founders with events in multiple countries around the world.  As the event began to grow, Alex started to partner with communities, initially in Brazil to develop a global footprint.  In fact, SaaStock started their global expansion by partnering the Brazil SaaS Forum and now has expanded to SaaStock LATAM.  Then, Alex expanded into Asia-Pacific.  One material finding was that most SaaS companies in Asia-Pacific need to think globally early on to have a meaningful Target Addressable Market.  With the largest SaaS event competitor being headquartered in Silicon Valley, SaaStock initial decided to enter the US market with conferences in New York.  Then in 2019 they identified the opportunity to hold an event in downtown San Francisco.2020 brought the reality of needing to pivot from in-person events to virtual events, and was the catalyst for SaaStock Remote.  True to their global vision, SaaStock remote could not be conducted just in the 8AM - 5PM US time. So, they pulled the time forward to start at noon in Europe to 10PM in Europe, allowing for European and US SaaS entrepreneurs all to attend.  SaaStock Remote LATAM and SaaStock Remote APAC are being held as focused, dedicated virtual events for those specific geographies.Even though 2020  was a down economic period due to the impact of COVID, the SaaS economy continued to thrive.  Much like the larger, public SaaS companies, after an initial reaction to cut expenses in March, SaaS start-ups started to quickly emerge into hyper growth in 2H20.  Hopin is an example of a European SaaS company that experienced hyper growth, which grew to a $2B valuation within 18 months of launching!When I asked Alex which area of the world he saw the fasted growing for SaaS companies, he first answered that the SaaS world is becoming much flatter, and that San Francisco is not longer the only place to start a SaaS company.  Alex did highlight Latin America as a force to be considered for great SaaS unicorns over the next few years.If your goal is be a global SaaS company, this is a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, we discuss the revolutionary concepts of Revenue Intelligence and Advanced Sales Math with Todd Abbott, CEO at InsightSquared.Revenue Intelligence and Advanced Sales Math are critical competencies to successfully maneuver in todays B2B SaaS reality of compressed sales cycle and the changing customer buying journey.The good news - traditional metrics including lead conversion rates, close rates, pipeline coverage ratio, and sales rep productivity still are helpful to calculate basic sales math. Basic sales math is essentially what level of “X” inputs are required to achieve “Y” outcomes.  X being primarily marketing + sales investments and Y being new revenue.Advanced Sales Math takes this concept to another level, and will dramatically increase the performance of the #1 reason why B2B SaaS CRO’s and VP Sales lifespan is less than 18 months. The #1 reason the average CRO / VP Sales tenure is so short - the inherent challenges and low performance of FORECASTING!Research highlights that only 54% of opportunities forecasted to close actually close in the original “closing” accounting period. The average number of times an opportunity “pushes” or changes forecasted close data is 3+ time.A key, new variable in advanced sales math is the ability to factor in buyer engagement metrics, across each step of the buying process across every resource at both the buyer and the seller.  The challenge of traditional “event” based sales processes and forecasting were dependent upon the accuracy and timeliness of data  in CRM systemsThe proliferation of point solution in martech and salestech has led to even more complexity of filtering through the noise to find the right signals to increase forecast accuracy.  Having  integrated Go-To-Market teams coupled with an integrated and unified GTM data source is mandatory to enhance revenue intelligence leading to improved forecast performanceThe concepts covered in this episode of Metrics that Measure Up are thought provoking, and even possibly career preserving for any CEO, CFO and CRO in todays B2B SaaS ecosystem.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you are contemplating VC funding, this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast is like receiving a master's degree in pitching to VCs from Bill Reichert and his book "Getting to Wow"Key concepts covered include: Ensure your pitch follows the three C's- Clear- Compelling- CredibleCLEAR is removing the complexityDo not fall into the "experts curse" - only you have the depth of expertise on the topic- Ensure anyone can understand what you do in 1-2 sentences- Test your message with fresh brains before your pitch to VCsCOMPELLING - Investors are human - they invest with their "heart" - not just their "head"Ensure your pitch invokes emotional engagement- Go beyond the facts and use short stories ofhow customers are being positively impacted- Imagine if..."CREDIBLE - phrases like "disrupt the entire health care industry" or "we can capture 10% of the market and have $1B in revenue" - can negatively impact your credibility- real life customer stories and proof points go much fartherPITCH DECK - their is no template that fits every pitch but a common theme is - LESS slides is much better (15 or fewer)STORY TELLING - Do not use a single story arc or start with a personal story that led to your creation-use small stories to highlight key pointsEnsure you highlight the SPEED and EFFICIENCY of your Customer Acquisition to highlight your customer acquisition process is repeatable and scalable.  Key metrics go beyond just sales cycle length and customer acquisition cost, but also efficiency metrics like Customer Lifetime Value to CAC ratio and your gross margin.Getting to WOW is based upon observing and participating in thousands of entrepreneur pitches to VC's and has been distilled into a guide for any first time or even experienced founder evaluating VC funding.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Imagine the experiences gained and lessons learned from founding your own SaaS company, selling it to Saleforce and then becoming the CEO of a Salesforce  Business Unit.That was the journey Mike Micucci, who recently left Salesforce eleven years after selling his start-up to Salesforce in 2009 and ultimately rose through the ranks to be the CEO of the Commerce Cloud business.Mike shares the story behind founding GroupSwim, an early B2B collaboration platform that became the foundation for Salesforce Chatter.  Then Mike shares the story behind how community cloud and commerce cloud came together, with both a B2B and B2C - or even a B2B2C offering.  Over the last 10 years, Commerce Cloud has grown to be over a $1B business  and you can rest assured that Metrics were at the heart of most of Mike's strategic decisions.Mike's experiences started when I first met Mike in the initial "vortex" of B2B eCommerce in 1997 - 2001  where he was an integral part of the product management senior leadership teams at Netscape and Commerce One.  Then in 2005 he founded GroupSwim, and had firmly established Product Market Fit by the beginning of 2009 when he received two different offers to purchase GroupSwim.Following the GroupSwim acquisition, Mike decided to accept the opportunity to be part of the Corporate Social Network initiative within Salesforce - yes Chatter which launched in 2010.  From that experience, Mike pitched the concept of "Community Cloud" to Marc Benioff and Parker Harris. The vision was to build a solution to connect the different "communities" within Salesforce to other communities and companies.By 2020, Community Cloud had reached 650 million users.  Interesting that Community Cloud is measured by usage, growth and how much revenue they influence on the other core clouds. Mike shares the Salesforce relentless focus on customer input and feedback into the product lifecycle, especially through the use of Customer Advisory Boards (CAB's) which provides a primary to the product roadmap.  In fact, the concept of Commerce Cloud was originally stimulated by a customer who had built their own commerce capability into Community Cloud in 2014.Later in 2014 Salesforce launched Commerce Cloud at Dreamforce.  By 2016 Community Cloud and Commerce Cloud became one Salesforce Cloud business unit.  Mike share how Digital Commerce grew more in 2020 then in the past few years combined.  When COVID first hit, Mike saw his dashboards showing how volume on Commerce Cloud spiked starting in March. Finally, Mike shared he segments metrics into usage metrics and operational metrics.  Operational metrics on commerce starts with GMV (Gross Merchandise Value)  which hit over $50B GMV in 2020.  DAU/MAU  (Daily Average Users/Monthly Average Users) was a key metric used to evaluate the health of his business unit.  ACV (Annual  Contract Value), AOV (Average Order Value)  and churn was also tracked daily as key operational metrics.   Mike also shares why "branding" and "pricing" are the two hardest aspects of building a Cloud business.  In fact, he went into detail on the benefit of a blended pricing model that uses both a  subscription model plus usage based pricing levers.  One of the hardest parts of a variable usage based pricing model is how best to forecast variable revenue.Mike's story reflects the opportunity, reality and journey that so many corporate leaders in the Cloud have experienced over the last 20+ years.  If you are looking for inspiration coupled with detailed insights into how an entrepreneur's journey can evolve from the corporate world to being a founder and then on to the CEO of a $1B+ cloud business, this is a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Breaking into B2B Sales, especially Enterprise level B2B sales is still a challenge for many in todays Cloud and SaaS industry.  Even more difficult for those who do not have relevant experience,  ore connections and thus the access and opportunity that comes with many forms of inherent privilege.Gidget Pugh broke through those barriers, not in 2021 but beginning in 1998 with the power of self-confidence, drive and often the most important stimulus of all - a compelling reason to bet on yourself.In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up, we speak with Gidget Pugh a 20+ year veteran in B2B sales who has recently transitioned into founding and launching her own social media agency focused on the community that she is so passionate about - small business - starting in the town that made Gidget who she is - Oakland, California.Gidget shares her journey from mortician - yes a mortician to her first role in B2B Sales at QRS.  QRS was the world's largest subscription platform for sharing UPC codes in their product catalogue across the retail industry supply chain in 1998. Then she leverage that experience to working at household technology brand names including Oracle and Facebook.One of the main topics we discussed was how Gidget maneuvered within an industry and companies where often she was the only female, African American in the sales organization if not in the entire company.  A recurring theme of "self-confidence" and "color blindness" were critical to her in every environment she entered.We then move on to her decision to leave the corporate world to launch her own social media agency, Socially Focused to help small and medium size businesses to harness the power of social media and on-line engagement building to counter the impact of COVID on their physical presence business and prepare them for the world of digital commerce that has been accelerated by the experiences and resultant digital transformations of every industry.This is an amazing story of drive, determination and self-confidence that provides everyone looking to move beyond the environment of their current state into the future of opportunity a great story of inspiration and reality all in one.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

M.R. Rangaswami is an enterprise software executive, angel investor, entrepreneur, corporate eco-strategy expert, community builder, and philanthropist.  Wow, is right as his accomplishments are admirable.  M.R., as he is known across the software and Cloud/SaaS industry, and around the globe founded the Sandhill Group and sandhill.com in 1997.   In fact, the Wall Street Journal placed MR on their front page to highlight his early commitment and success as a leading angel investor in the early days of the Enterprise software movement in Silicon Valley.  With over forty years in Silicon Valley,  M.R.  is probably the most networked person in the industry, through his experiences and connections from founding the Enterprise Software Conference, the Enterprise Retreat for the top SaaS CEOs, the Eco-Forum which is a membership only community of the top 100 executives responsible for driving sustainable green initiatives in Fortune 500 companies, and most recently, Indiaspora to transform the success of Indian American's into meaningful impact worldwide.In this episode, MR discusses the secrets to building his network in Silicon Valley and beyond.  He highlights the importance of understanding the difference in building your network versus networking.  A key attribute to building a strong, lasting network is to have no expectations beyond helping those in your professional network.  Don't sell, don's solicit business, just identify how you can help each person in your network and watch the dividends pay back over the long term.MR and I cover the evolution of the Enterprise software industy to the Enterprise Cloud/SaaS market, the impact that leading cloud and technology companies are having on energy efficiency and green initiatives.  If you are a fan of the Silicon Valley experience, and curious to understand how one of the industry's best and most well respected connectors has built his network and reputation, this is a must listen.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If you are responsible for driving revenue growth at a SaaS company that is preparing to raise Series A or Series B funding, what are the key metrics investors will expect you to know cold?That is exactly what Doug Landis,  Growth Partner at Emergence Capital shares on this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast.Doug's journey to becoming Growth Partner at Emergence Capital, the first Venture Capital firm created specifically to invest in SaaS companies, is one of pedigree. Starting at Google as a skills productivity manager, then on to corporate sales productivity at Salesforce, followed by the position of Chief Story teller at Box and now, Growth Partner at Emergence Capital.During this episode, we discuss a wide variety of topics including the top metrics that every Chief Revenue Officer and SVP Sales should now before having a meeting with a growth stage fund, when trying to raise a Series A or Series B round of financing.The conversation moves on to the importance of understanding your customer acquisition and retention metrics on a cohort by cohort basis.  Sales and Marketing integration versus alignment became a critical topic, and one that directly impacts the role of the CRO and the performance of the key customer acquisition performance metrics.Finally, we discuss the concept of pattern recognition, which is a key skill that VC's and experiences revenue leaders alike must develop to be successful.  An element of pattern recognition is that it is critical to understand industry benchmarks that are relevant and appropriate for your company, including stage, size, annual contract value and distribution model.This is a fast moving, high energy discussion that highlights why Doug is known as an excellent story teller!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As businesses shift towards the Cloud, SaaS has become the de facto distribution method for modern day software solutions across the US and increasingly so in Europe. Joyce Mackenzie Liu, Founder of Pegafund which provides go-to market strategy and financial planning services to early stage, high growth B2B SaaS companies shares her perspective on the European ecosystem.In this episode, Joyce shares that the majority of investment volume in European SaaS companies occurs in the pre-seed, seed and Series A stages of funding in large part thanks to generous government support. European and country-specific governments remain the largest investor in technology and entrepreneurship, providing direct and indirect funding in the form of individual tax credits, startup grants, and VC equity and debt fund managers.The beauty and challenge of scaling an European SaaS company is the fragmentation of the continent and the distinct business cultures in each region. Europe can be broken down into 8 smaller "target markets" : 1) UK and Ireland; 2) Scandinavia/Nordics; 3) Baltics; 4) Germany and DACH; 5) Benelux (Netherlands and Belgium); 6) Spain and Portugal; 7) Italy; and 8) Eastern Europe. Each country within a sub-region has its own legal and tax framework as well as business customs. This market reality requires different go-to market motions for each region, making it more difficult to scale across Europe. This phenomenon encourages more creative and out-of-the-box thinking which Joyce believes leads to a relative higher likelihood of European SaaS companies having successful US expansion when go-to market fit has been achieved across Europe.The main KPI's for SaaS companies across Europe are very similar to the U.S.; the metrics also evolve in tandem at each stage of business maturity: < $2M ARR, $2-5M ARR, $5-10M ARR and > $10M ARR. In order to get to the right metrics, it requires a business, its leaders and Board members to invest early into data quality and SaaS reporting & metrics, ideally before raising an institutional Series A funding round.We also talked through some examples of private and public B2B software companies in Europe and the US, and how those with impressive growth metrics and unit economics command much higher valuations from investors and buyers alike. In fact, at over $400 million in ARR, UiPath, a business founded in Romania, is one of the fastest growing global enterprise software companies today.The episode closes off with some tips and best practices for European SaaS companies launching and expanding into the U.S. market.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Brewster Kahle, Founder of the Internet Archive and creator of the Wayback Machine, is a visionary advocate for universal access to knowledge. He talks about the Archive's staggering scale, including 516 billion web pages and 70 petabytes of storage. Brewster emphasizes the need for diverse media preservation as we face increasing barriers in digital archiving. He also discusses the importance of metadata and provenances in combating disinformation, while advocating for a nonprofit model that promotes an equitable and resilient internet.

The most interesting dilemma for a CEO?  The decision that comes with having the option to go public or accept a strategic acquisition offer.Tom Reilly, former CEO at Cloudera has been a CEO with the experience of selling a company to IBM, another company to HP and then taking Cloudera public after raising $766.5M from strategic partner, Intel.Tom says a CEO should invest 20% - 30% of their time working with strategic partners - do not outsource to your partnership team.  In fact, this advice comes from the experience of Tom working closely with the CEO at Intel which led to their strategic investment in Cloudera.Strategic buyers use partnerships to evaluate the value and fit of a strategic acquisition.  It is critical to have well defined performance metrics for strategic partnerships, including close rates, annual contract value, gross and net dollar retention rate and CAC payback period to highlight the financial performance and efficiency of strategic partnerships.We then turned to discuss the decision to go public versus accepting a strategic acquisition offer.  Tom shares that IPOs  and being a public company do have their challenges - and that there are many great options including Private Equity, Growth Equity and now SPACS!Being public comes with heightened scrutiny on quarterly performance and transparency - which can be distracting.  Developing the capability and culture of being able to accurately forecast quarterly revenue, margins and provide longer term guidance needs to a be a focus and competency developed three to four quarters before an IPOHot take #1 - being capital constrained can led to learning how to operate more efficiently - it may not always be best to take a lot more capital than needed OR at least ensure the culture of efficiency is maintained even after taking a large sum of investmentHot take #2 - companies have to start early to instrument, capture, analyze and make metrics informed decisions earlier and faster - numbers do not lie!!!#IPO #SaaS #cloud See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.