Yes. But the later stage you are, the easier it is. (Personally, I’ve invested in the “late seed” stage in companies from France (5), Estonia, UK, Portugal, Sweden, Armenia, etc. Although in almost all cases, the CEO was already here at least part-time.) Once you...
SaaS has been global from the earliest days, although how and when you go global can vary. Salesforce went very early into Japan (it takes a lot longer to add a lot of Japanese customers for most of us), which quickly accounted for almost 10% of their revenue in the...
We were very happy to have the Salesforce “Mafia,” consisting of four executives–three who have since moved onto their next ventures–on the Strategy Stage so they could discuss some important lessons learned from being a part of the 19-year-old SaaS...
No. I would love to do some investments based out of Asia in general, and Indonesia would be great. I have made a ton of European investments, but unfortunately no Asian investments yet. My one criterion is that the CEO is often here (in SF). Not necessarily resident,...
Scaling from $0 to a few million is already tough enough as it is, but many companies face the seemingly impossible hurdle of breaking through that $5-$6 million ARR wall. Laura Bilazarian, CEO at Teamable, leads this session with Louis Jonckheere, Co-CEO at Showpad,...
No matter what market your company is playing in, no matter how big your company is, scaling is something that all SaaS founders and C-suite executives need to think about. Elay Cohen (Co-founder, Saleshood) sits down with Hilarie Koplow-McAdams (President, New Relic)...
From 0 to 1 million, 1 to 10 million, 10 to 100 million, and 100 million to now. Zendesk, a company with the lofty goal of making customer service and engagement enjoyable, has gone through many transformations to become the company it is today. Devdutt Yellurkar,...
Jason Lemkin sits down with Stripe COO Claire Hughes-Johnson to discuss what it’s like to scale a fast-growing company and how to manage hypergrowth. Having over 10 years of experience with Google and being intrinsically motivated by Stripe’s mission certainly helps....
I wasn’t on the inside — but I’m not sure that was the case. HP hired a software CEO (Leo Apotheker) from SAP (a huge software company) to turn HP into a newer-age huge software company. How do you do that — quickly? You go buy something. It’s the only way. And it has...
Who wouldn’t want to “take over the world” by expanding globally? As exciting as it can be to have customers and offices across the pond, you have to be mindful of the many differences between countries and the complexities that come along with creating an...
To me, the biggest difference I’ve observed is you can be strong in just one European country. There’s nothing quite like this in the U.S. You can be strong just in the U.K.. Or just in France, in Sweden, in Belgium etc. You’ll have customers in other countries too,...
There are really only two problems with investing in start-ups outside the U.S. (minor legal and tax issues aside, which can be resolved): It’s more work. Most VCs don’t want to constantly be on planes, especially long flights. Hey, me included. Access to future...
What are some of the pitfalls that go along with selling your product overseas? Let me just throw out a few thoughts in SaaS. Because even if you do nothing, unless your product has some sort of regulatory or other limitations … you’ll end up...
The Wall Street Journal asked me to write about a topic which I think is critical to all scaling SaaS companies: talent, and talent outside the U.S. The reality is almost every SaaS company I’ve worked with, including my own, just can’t get enough...