Welcome to Episode 84! Alex MacCaw is the Founder & CEO of Clearbit, the startup that is building a suite of business intelligence APIs to help companies find more information on their customers in order to increase sales and reduce fraud. They have backing from some of the best early stage investors including the likes of First Round Capital, SV Angel, Intercom’s Eoghan McCabe, Hubspot’s Dharmesh Shah, and many more incredible investors. As for Alex, as well as being a fellow Brit who loves tea, he also worked at the likes of Twitter and Stripe prior to founding Clearbit.
In today’s episode you will learn:
How did Alex make his way into the world of SaaS and came to found Clearbit in SF having grown up in the UK?
Should API driven companies have sales teams? Should they do outbound? What’s the most effective way to generate leads?
Alex has said before that the trouble is, ‘everyone is treating their customers the same.’ What does he mean by this? How do the smart companies differ? How possible is it to address customer specific needs at scale?
How does this scalability alter when elements like freemium and self service models are added to the equation? How effective have freemium tools been for Alex as a lead gen to on board new customers?
Why did Alex choose the same pricing structure as the likes of Stripe and Twilio? What was the thought process behind this?
60 Second SaaStr:
How important is it for SaaS startups to be in SF?
What does Alex know now that he wishes he had known when he started?
Biggest mentor to Alex and how it came about?
Fave SaaS reading material?
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