Ep. 333: Bridget Gleason is the Head of Sales and Customer Success @ Tidelift, the company providing managed open source, backed by maintainers. Tidelift has raised over $40M from some of the best in the business including Foundry Group and General Catalyst. As for Bridget, she has the most incredible track record. Before Tidelift, Bridget was VP of Sales @ Logz.io and before that was VP of Corporate Sales @ Sumo Logic where she drove ARR up by a record 237%. Prior to SumoLogic, Bridget was VP of Sales @ YesWare where she increased MRR per rep by 450%. Finally, before YesWare, she was VP of Sales @ Engine Yard, where she tripled monthly recurring revenue, over the course of her 3+ year tenure, in 3 key leadership roles.

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In Today’s Episode We Discuss:

* How Bridget made her way into the world of SaaS and Sales and came to be Head of both Sales and Customer Success at Tidelift.
* Why does Bridget believe the best starting point for customer success is “company culture and value”? How does company culture impact the quality of customer success? In practice, what can one do to improve it? Who has done this well? How does value drive customer success forward?
* How does Bridget think Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs drives the roadmap for customer success? What core elements does it change? Where do most teams go wrong in implementing the role out of their CS strategy? When should one hire their first CS rep? What should that hire look like from an experience perspective?
* How does Bridget advise her CS reps the best ways for them to build trust with their clients? What works? What does not work? Does Bridget believe CS teams should be involved in the upsell process? Does that endanger the element of trust?

 

Ep. 334: Hear from Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder and COO of Cloudflare. Michelle started the company during an economic downturn in 2009. In this talk, Michelle will share how she made her business idea come to life and some lessons learned that can help other entrepreneurs—from solving a real, meaningful problem, to communicating in a crisis, prioritizing when there’s a true lack of resources, and more.

This podcast is sponsored by Guru.

 

SaaStr’s Founder’s Favorites Series features one of SaaStr’s best of the best sessions that you might have missed.

This podcast is an excerpt from Michelle’s session at SaaStr Summit. You can see the full video here.

 

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
Harry Stebbings
Bridget Gleason
Michelle Zatlyn

Below, we’ve shared the transcript of Harry’s interview with Bridget or you can jump to the transcript of Michelle’s podcast.

Transcript of Harry’s interview with Bridget:

Harry Stebbings: Hello, and welcome back to the official SaaStr podcast with me, Harry Stebbings. I always love to see behind the scenes, you can do that on Instagram at @HStebbhings1996, with two Bs. 

But, time for the show today. We’ve spent a lot of time in the world of marketing lately, and so I wanted to switch it up today, and move to the sales and customer success side. So, with that, I’m delighted to welcome back to the show Bridget Gleason, Head of Sales and Customer Success at Tidelift, the company providing managed open source, backed by maintainers. Tidelift has raised over $40 million from some of the best in the business, including Foundry Group and General Catalyst.

As for Bridget, she has the most incredible track record. Before Tidelift, Bridget was VP of Sales at Logz.io, and before that was VP of Corporate Sales at Sumo Logic, where she drove ARR up by a record 237%. Before Sumo Logic, Bridget was VP of sales at Yesware, where she increased MRR per rep by 450%. And finally, before Yesware, she was VP of sales at Engine Yard, where she tripled monthly recurring revenue over the course of her three year tenure, in three key leadership roles. 

But, that’s quite enough from me, so now without further ado, I’m so excited to hand over to Bridget Gleason, Head of Sales and Customer Success at Tidelift.

Harry Stebbings: Bridget, I have to say, it is such a joy to have you back on the show. Thrilled to see about your recent move to Tidelift, and such exciting times ahead there. But, thank you so much for joining me today, Bridget. 

Bridget Gleason: Well, Harry, it was great. You know, the last time we did this, it was, I think, February 2019, so just a little over a year ago. Really great to connect, and get caught up. 

Harry Stebbings: Absolutely it is. Listen, I loved that episode so much, when we did the first one. But, hit me, for those that maybe missed our first episode, which was so great, tell me, how did you make your way into the world of SaaS, and how did you come to be the rockstar head of sales and CS at Tidelift today? 

Bridget Gleason: I love it, I love the rockstar name that you give me, whether it’s true or not. But, Harry, I like to tell people that I took the jungle gym route here, meaning that it wasn’t this straight line from rep, to manager, to VP, mine was nothing like that. I was an English business major in school, but I taught in the engineering, I was a [inaudible 00:04:08] in the engineering school. 

I went into product marketing for the commercial arm of Xerox Park, which is a big computer research company here. Then, I went into sales school, Xerox sales school. Then, I started a company, which I sold in early 2000. Did a lot of consulting for high tech startups, I really love the startup space. Ended up taking VP of sales role with one of my customers, and then, gosh Harry, I did all sorts of things. I opened an office in Ireland for one of the companies, I was the first US employee for an Israeli company. 

And now at Tidelift, which interestingly, the CEO reached out to me after he heard the podcast that you and I did more than a year ago. 

Harry Stebbings: That is amazing to hear. I did not know that, but I’m absolutely to thrilled to hear that. He clearly has great tastes in podcasts. 

Bridget Gleason: Well, he does have great taste in podcasts. And, I don’t know that I would have found Tidelift, and it’s just been a career defining role and move for me, and really, really inspiring. So, thank you, thank you Harry, for doing what you’re doing. 

Harry Stebbings: I absolutely love doing it. But, I do want to start on a really interesting aspect, because when we spoke last time, you were head of sales. And now, with the new role with Tidelift, CS, customer success, has been incorporated into your purview. 

With that, we have to have a starting point for the strategy and the plan, and when we spoke before you said the best starting point for customer success is company culture, and value. What did you mean by this? Maybe, is it better to take it turn by turn, and how does company culture play into the level and quality of customer success? 

Bridget Gleason: There’s always been this discussion. Does customer success start after you close a sale? Should the handoff start before the customer becomes a customer? Should customer success start when reps are reaching out? 

My belief, Harry, is that customer success starts with the culture of the company. I read a book, God, it was years ago, about Marriott. JW Marriott was notorious for this, and he said, “If we treat our employees right, they’ll treat the customers right.” I think Marriott started in 1927, and in the early ’30s, they were one of the earliest companies to give healthcare benefits to their employees. They really had an employee first, and by extension, a customer first orientation. I believe that 100%, that if we’re not treating each other well, and we don’t have a culture that is engaging, and respectful of the individual, it’s going to be very hard for us to extend that to the people who we’re dealing with.

When you look at, just in statistic, Harry, of it, companies that have employees who are highly engaged are 22% more profitable. So, how did we do that? You’ve got to have a culture where employees not only survive, but they have to thrive. 

Harry Stebbings: Can I ask, if we take that to a practical level, because I totally agree in terms of that career development, and the thriving. We’ve seen the chastising of the foosball tables, and La Croix provisions that are deemed culture, often. What can one do, on a practical level, that you’ve seen work in terms of building that culture and company value so inherently into how we think about, also, customer orientation? 

Bridget Gleason: Well, I think there’s a lot of different pieces of it. 

I know, just at a manager level, one of the things that I try to do with my direct reports is, first of all, how are they doing? Just, how are they doing as humans? Especially now, around COVID-19, how we’re doing, we’re all under a lot of stress, so checking in with how people are doing. As well as their professional desires and aspirations, those are always top of mind. One thing we did as a company was … It was last Monday, our executive team said, “You know what? We need a Maintain Ourselves Monday.” Everybody just got a day off. It’s an allowing of people to bring their whole selves. 

This leads to the next part, Harry, when you asked about value. I believe that values lead to value. So, values lead to more, also, value creation. Tidelift is unique in my experience, in terms of values. There is not a person in the company who couldn’t rattle off the four values, we talk about them every day, and have them integrated into their work. We don’t need to have them posted, we don’t need to have them, really, reviewed, they are so woven into our brand. So, that’s how we deal with one another internally, as well as externally. 

I’ll tell you what they are really quickly, because I think they’re interesting. There’s four of them. So, optimistic, we see an amazing future. We deal in open source, we provide managed open source for large companies. We believe that open source is really awesome, and we want to be part of it. So, we’re optimistic, and as it relates to customer success, we believe that for our customers. We’re practical is value number two. We know that the words in these lofty ideals aren’t enough, so we try to be very pragmatic, and very honest, and have a really honest assessment of ourselves and our product. The third is additive. We have a growth mindset, that we’re capable of learning and doing more. Then finally, is around inclusivity and diversity, and we believe the world is a better place with diverse voices. 

Those are the things that we practice internally, but also bring those to the table when we’re dealing with customers. 

Harry Stebbings: I love the four values. I am really interested by one especially there, and it’s the element of open source. Now, you’ve been involved in both sales and customer success is closed source also. How does it differ, in terms of traditional enterprise software, versus open source? Specifically, when it comes to customer success, is there a core differentiator? 

Bridget Gleason: Well, I’ll tell you, for us what’s a core differentiator is open source is an amazing phenomenon, of all of these people contributing with no expectation to get anything back. When we talk about additive, as it relates to open source, there’s been a history of companies harvesting the value from open source, but not, then, added back to it. So, when we think about customer success, we don’t want to just harvest the best things of open source, and not contribute back. But, we also want to be ones that are adding to the value, that’s a core, underlying mission. 

So, our products and services are around how can we help companies utilize open source more effectively, more securely, more responsibly, as well as contribute. And then, it’s a two-sided marketplace, so we’ve got subscriber companies that we provide support for the open source that they use. And on the other side, we have the maintainers themselves, that we pay to keep their open source that they are responsible for secure, et cetera. We’re trying to add back in both ways, and make both parties successful. 

When you have a commercial product, you don’t have this two-sided marketplace, where you’re trying to balance both. Making sure that we’re not just harvesting, but that we’re really contributing in a meaningful way back to the community, and we engage in that also with our customers, which I think is really, really powerful. 

Harry Stebbings: Speaking of engaging with your customers in that way, I am really interested if we take the hat of head of sales that you have worn before, now incorporated the head of CS also. A lot of questions that I get asked from early stage founders is, “Okay, I’m always told that I need to develop a sales playbook before I can hire my first sales rep, and then I pass it onto them. With customer success, is it the same? Is there a customer success playbook that I have to develop? And, when should I hire my first rep?” 

I guess, there’s three separate questions there, that are kind of integrated. How do you think about that requirement for CS playbook, and when to hire your first? 

Bridget Gleason: So, I see sales and customer success as a continuum. I don’t see them as distinct, perhaps, as some might see them. When the sales team is engaging early on, what we’re trying to identify is what is the success criteria of this particular prospect, what are they trying to achieve? How might we be able to help them do that? By extension, then, that after the commercial are completed, we’re just extending what that looks like. 

I think a highly functional, evolved team is one that starts the criteria really early on, and is just rolling it out, and playing it out. If you don’t do a good job on the sales side early on, and setting those expectations, it will be very difficult for you to do a good job on the customer success. So, the playbook needs to be written as you’re working this out with prospects.

In fact, Harry, I’m working right now on some big proposals. Some of the sales reps and I are working on some big proposals, and customer success is highly involved because in these proposals is the success plan. What we do is we send out, in a Google doc, a proposal. We ask that the prospect to review it with us, and tell us where we have it wrong before we submit something formal. It’s not just pricing, it goes all through the rollout, Harry, of what it’s going to look like as we rollout. Not just rollout and onboarding, but then, what does success look like? We start really, really early. 

Then, to your question about when to hire, because it’s a continuum … Again, we’re an early stage company, so what we did, as you’ve probably seen before, is founder’s really involved, everybody’s involved. Founder’s really involved, then you have the sales team that’s managing it as it extends. And then, we got to a point, also … Again, we sell to very large, primarily regulated industries. Because we’re selling high, six figure deals, we just need to make sure that we’ve got enough resources on the ground to deliver a really incredible experience to them. 

Harry Stebbings: How do you think about professional services, and the challenges that naturally occur in terms of delivering that in a COVID world? 

Bridget Gleason: We’re all learning. We’ve had to adjust a lot of our delivery mechanisms, and these are things that we’re doing in conjunction with our customers.

It’s interesting, Harry. Because we sell a technical product to technical people, they’ve actually been distributed for quite some time because in order to get great talent, you’ve got to be distributed. You don’t have to be, but it helps if you can be, in terms of getting talent. I don’t know that we’re facing as much of a challenge, because the teams that we work with are often highly distributed anyway.

But, it’s going to continue to evolve, it’s continuing to evolve. It’s something, I think, we’re all really grappling with. 

Harry Stebbings: Pulling on that thread, I’m really interested to dive in here. A lot of founders say “Hey, our professional services is growing, and it’s becoming 30, 35 percent of revenues.” At what point do you think professional services becomes too heavy weighted on the revenue front? And, how should founders think about that balance and tipping point? 

Bridget Gleason: Well, I guess it’s what function is professional services performing, in terms of the sale, the implementation, and then the ongoing maintenance. And, how big a part of your business do you want that to be, do you want to be a services organization?

If delivering services is fundamental to your product, if it’s a core competency, keep it. Keep it, keep, keep, keep it. If it’s not, if it’s something that you’re delivering but it’s not really part of your core competency or differentiator, there would be an argument to bring in partners. Because there’s some benefits that you can’t achieve you’re also using partners, and letting them take on some of the professional services revenue.

I look at it, just how core is it to what you’re delivering, the value that you deliver? 

Harry Stebbings: Yeah, absolutely. I love the integration there, of partnerships. 

I do want to stay on CS though, so apologies for that drifting off. But, we discussed the first stating point. If we then think about enacting that, and putting a roadmap of success together, you’ve previously stated the importance of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a roadmap for customer success. A bit of a cliffhanger for me, with that one. So, talk to me about this one, Bridget. How is the Hierarchy of Needs a roadmap for customer success in your mind? 

Bridget Gleason: It’s an interesting one, and our CEO Donald Fisher is the one who first started talking about this, with prospects and customers. If you think, Harry, at the very base level of the hierarchy, the basic needs, which are physiological and safety, what that translates to customer success as I look at it is implementation, onboarding, you answer my questions quickly, you handle my basic needs. And Harry, I think for too long, we’ve looked at these basic needs as, “I’m doing great customer success! They’re implemented, they’re onboarding, I answer their questions,” and we measure things by that. 

If you go up a level, though, the next two levels in Maslow’s Hierarchy are belonging and esteem. Those, in the customer success world, they map to adoption and insights. Is there more that I can get? Because on the esteem side, and the belonging, and what are other people doing, that fits in there. Is there more, are a lot of people using it, do I feel good because I’ve gotten great adoption in the company? That’s better, customer success when it moves up to that, and you’re helping companies extend the adoption as well as get more insights, that’s good. I think most companies, if they get to that, they’re going to give themselves an A.

At Tidelift, we’re not stopping with those. The very tip is the self actualization, and what that looks like is a thought partner. For Tidelift specifically, how are we, together, making open source better, this community? We have an amazing community. Again, specific to Tidelift, there’s a movement, when you get to this level, of open source consumption. So, how are we, as a company, consuming open source in a way that is efficient, and secure, and responsible to an external contribution? 

Harry, what is so amazing, and what’s so thrilling about being part of Tidelift is the companies who we are engaging with, they have a strong desire to move beyond the harvesting of open source, and getting whatever they can out of it because they know it’s amazing, so they want to keep using it. But, they also want to be contributors, and to give back to this community. That’s where you get this self actualization. 

I think, in other companies, it’s similar, it’s not going to map in the same way that Tidelift will map. But, where do you find, at the tip of the pyramid, that you can engage with your customer to do something greater, and to be really a thought partner in whatever it is that they’re doing because they’re the star of the show. 

Harry Stebbings: I totally love that positioning as the thought partner. Can I ask, in terms of check-ins, I think a lot of CS teams get this wrong. What does the right check-in structure look like to you? And, how do you think about really structuring that conversation ahead of time, without being too formulaic, and objective, and maintaining that human element of the relationship? 

Bridget Gleason: I’m not a fan, Harry, of, “Hey, just calling to check in,” where there’s no structure to it.

If we go back to what we were talking about earlier, this success plan that we put in place before they become a customer, it does give you a roadmap. They often have a roadmap of what they’re trying to achieve, so we do two things. One, with good tooling, we try to understand as much as we can about what’s happening in their environment without having to ask them. Again, not being creepy, they need to know, “Hey, we’re looking at your dashboards,” or whatever it is, whatever kind of tooling makes sense. We learn as much as we can through tooling, because in SaaS you have a great opportunity for that.

Then, number two is, we really stick to and look at what they’re trying to achieve in the success roadmap, and use that as a template when we have these conversations. Has that shifted, have things changed? COVID-19 changes a lot of things for how things are going to be rolled out, how we implement things, and it’s a continual conversation. 

We also let our customers guide, in terms of the frequency of check-ins, and the mode. Sometimes it’s phone, sometimes it’s Zoom, sometimes it’s Slack, sometimes it’s text, sometimes it’s email, sometimes it’s a report, sometimes it’s an in-app message. But, we work with them to develop the communication cadence and style that works for them. 

Harry Stebbings: Sorry, you said there about the impact of COVID. I do just have to ask, with both hats on I’m sure you have such amazing purview, but I have so many SaaS founders who say, “Hey, Harry, so far, my sales pipe hasn’t been impacted.” I guess, how would you respond and advise that founder? How have you seen your sales pipe be impacted? And, how do you think a head of sales should be thinking now in enterprise, when looking at that pipe? 

Bridget Gleason: When you’ve got founders who say the sales pipe hasn’t been impacted, that, to me, means if you think about an axis of companies that are least affected to most affected, and the financial strength, they’re selling into a quadrant that is financially strong, and not as affected. Which aren’t very many companies, by the way, not very many companies that haven’t had a supply chain disruption in some way. So, I think that’s great. I mean, that surprises me a little bit, but I think that’s great. 

Harry Stebbings: But in enterprise, the contracts are long, the clients are slow moving, generally speaking. 

Bridget Gleason: Right. 

Harry Stebbings: So with heavy enterprise, my concern is … I go, the big point here is, so far. Actually, we haven’t had the first round of renewals, and we haven’t had the first discussions on this accounting. This is going to be more painful than you think, don’t go into this thinking so far, we’ve been fine, so we can expect the same moving forward. Batten down the hatches is my advice. 

Bridget Gleason: Yes. 

Harry Stebbings: Would you agree with that?

Bridget Gleason: Yes! Yes, 100% because the plans are still evolving, the plans are still evolving. What one hears from a prospect or a customer may have been said to them with 100% integrity. “This is going to happen, in this timeframe,” 100% integrity. But, things can change because we’re not through it yet to know, nobody knows. 

I agree with you, that we need to move through with a measure of caution, and realism. Again, one of our core values … Okay, I can’t get through the day without talking about one of our core values, but being practical. And just flexible, build that into the plan, that things are not going to go exactly as planned. They’re not going to. 

Harry Stebbings: If we have that in mind then, a willingness to accept uncertainty, say, when we think about rollouts, the other big thing that I’m seeing is slippage, especially at the enterprise level. From the customer success perspective, what kind of core things are you seeing in terms of slippage, in terms of delayed rollouts, that you think COVID has really impacted? 

Bridget Gleason: Well, COVID affects people, and people are part of these rollouts. People are getting sick, they’ve got family members who are sick, they are working in environments that they’re not used to working in. So, I think we see slippage, and time frames extended because of the very human element of what’s happening, and a lot of uncertainty. 

Harry, people are more stressed, there’s more anxiety, they can handle less. Zoom fatigue is a real thing. You factor in the human element of all of it, and things are going to take a little longer. We’ve got to accommodate for the human part of the businesses that we’re selling into, that we’re not selling to robots. Again, just keeping that in mind, and having some buffer built in as we think about it. It’s a great muscle right now, that we can learn to flex as an organization, of being flexible, and resilient, and learning how to have some buffer but still keeping things going down as predictable a path as we can. 

Harry Stebbings: You said there, flexible and resilient. The question that I get a lot from different founders is, “How much should we be willing to give when it comes to discounting?” When you think about discounting, and that flexibility and resilience in mind, you’ve got to meet your business objectives, but you also need to be flexible. How do you think about the right level of discounting to accept? 

Bridget Gleason: God, it’s so funny, Harry, I haven’t thought about discounting at all. 

Harry Stebbings: Really?

Bridget Gleason: Well, I haven’t. I haven’t thought about it because we’re delivering against value. We’re really trying to look at what the value creation. I do understand how some companies would think about some discount, based on the new reality. It’s not my go-to place, it’s not my go-to place. We try to price things fairly from the outset, so we don’t get into that. 

I don’t know, it’s a good question. I get it, but that’s not my go-to place. 

Harry Stebbings: I mean, speaking of that pricing fairly though, it does take me something that you said to me before. Which is, the centrality of trust, for a CS team to be successful. So, I guess the biggest for me is, absolutely that makes sense, me the customer, you with Tidelift, how do we build trust in this relationship? And, what really work in building that relationship of trust? 

Bridget Gleason: Well, I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone that trust is a key factor in driving customer engagement and loyalty, it’s a key factor. Threading this pricing issue and trust, a great way to erode trust is to offer a customer a price, then when they ask for a discount, you give them one without asking for anything in return. Because what that says to them subconsciously is, “Oh, I thought you were giving me the best price, but then you give me this other one.” That sows a seed of distrust. 

A way around that is a give to get. “All right, I can give you a discount, if you can close it this month because this is important for us.” Or, volume discounts are normal. Or, in exchange for a testimonial, there are things that you can do to give to get. What’s hard, also, about this give to get in this environment is if I were to tell a customer, “I’ll give you a discount if you can do it this month,” that doesn’t seem like it’s really taking into account their realities, also. I may be better off giving them extended terms, just to do it that way. Okay, that’s threading the two together. 

Ways to establish this trust. I tell the team, “You have to be trustworthy in order to get trust.” Like, you have to be trustworthy, you have to tell the truth, first and foremost. Second, it’s okay, and in fact I often encourage it, Harry, to tell a prospect or a customer things that you can do and things that you can’t do, because it lets them know that you’re not just trying to sell them swampland in Florida. Also, another way to develop trust is to say, for example, “I will deliver this proposal to you by Friday at four PM,” and you put in a date and a time, and you deliver on it. That starts to say, “Oh okay, they do what they say they’re going to do.” Conversely, if you make commitments that you can’t keep, you’ll erode trust in that way. 

Harry Stebbings: Totally aligned, in terms of … It sounds, I don’t mean it badly, but so people would do as you said, what they said they would do. “I’ll email you tonight,” and it comes through tomorrow. It’s like, you said tonight, build that trust in that really important way. 

I guess, the biggest way that trust is often deemed to be eroded within the realm of customer success, or often a lot of people think it is, is when customer success is heavily involved in upsell processes. I’m interested to hear your thoughts here. Does being involved in an upsell process erode that element of trust? And, should customer success be involved?

Bridget Gleason: I don’t think it should erode trust at all, if a customer success person is involved in an upsell, because we shouldn’t be talking about an upsell if we don’t think that there is some value, based on that upsell. There needs to be a lot of integrity in the process. If there’s integrity in the process, I don’t see that there’s any issue with a customer success person also being involved in an upsell. 

I think, sometimes where I see a separation as being helpful, is sometimes customer success people, if they’re more technical than not, they just don’t feel as comfortable, or as fluent around that process in the commercials. I don’t see that as a problem, I would rather them be clunky, and just be honest, because customers see that, and they respond well to it. But, sometimes I can see just a separation of roles, that you want one person that you just know, if it’s a highly technical product, that they just handle the technical side, and they like to have that handoff, a division of work. Because getting involved in the commercials, you’re involved in a lot of other pieces of the business. 

So, I see it not as an issue of trust, as much as just a division of labor. 

Harry Stebbings: Totally agreed, in terms of the division of labor. I’m glad we’re aligned on that. 

I do want to dive into my favorite though, Bridget, which is a quick fire round. So, I say a short statement, and then you give me your immediate thoughts, in about 60 seconds or less. Are you ready to rock and roll? 

Bridget Gleason: Yes. 

Harry Stebbings: Okay. I love this one, actually. What motto or quote do you most frequently revert back to, and why? 

Bridget Gleason: Okay. Well, I’ll tell you my most recent, and these change. So, the one that I’ve been quoting most recently is, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I just finished this great book called Boys in the Boat, about this rowing team that won the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. I so believe, Harry, that we can do so much more if we do it together, I’m a big believer in teamwork. Again, at Tidelift we’ve got this opportunity to work together as a team, to work together teams within the company, to work together as teams within this larger open source community, and I just really believe that we’ve got this great opportunity if we work together. COVID-19’s another great example, let’s figure out how to do this together. 

Harry Stebbings: What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you entered SaaS? 

Bridget Gleason: I’m probably not giving a good answer here, but I love surprises. I love the unknowing. For me, I’m so curious, so to learn something new, so I’m glad I didn’t know any more than I knew so that I would have the privilege of discovery. Which, I think, is just a fantastic journey. 

Harry Stebbings: Oh my word, it sounds wonderful. But no, I don’t enjoy the privilege of discovery, I’d much rather get to the endpoint much quicker. 

Bridget Gleason: That’s funny. 

Harry Stebbings: I do want to ask, biggest surprise about the move to Tidelift? 

Bridget Gleason: I didn’t know that a company could be so rooted in values, and what that does to how we work together as a team and how we show up in the world, it is one of the greatest privileges of my professional career. This founding team are inspiring, they move me to tears what they’re trying to do in the world. I just feel really committed to what they’re doing, and who they are, and really wanting to bring about more diversity. Here are four individuals who don’t have to care who do, and are using their background to do it. So, just that I could be so inspired by a company. 

Harry Stebbings: Building a team outside of the Bay, what’s the biggest pro, and the biggest con? 

Bridget Gleason: Well, we’re 100% remote, so we’re all over the place. We’ve got a core of people in Boston, where I sit now. I think one of the pros is when you’re building all over the place, you’ve got a larger talent pool so we get great talent. Also, at this time, COVID-19, we’re all used to working remote. 

The biggest con is, oh gosh, Harry, there’s nothing that can replace the in-person. We do get together as a company, several times a year. But, the camaraderie in an office, and that in-person, is probably the biggest con. 

Harry Stebbings: If you could change one thing about the world of SaaS today, what would it be and why? 

Bridget Gleason: It’s probably the one thing, and the one thing I hate. So, I think sometimes with SaaS, there’s the ability to leave something quickly, that you can be in and out because it’s easy to rip and replace. I think sometimes companies may not stick with a product or service long enough, and it puts a lot of pressure on quicker wins. I think we lose something if you’re not able to establish a longer term relationship, and moving to that point, like I said, of self actualization, really developing something great together. 

Harry Stebbings: Do you think time to value can actually be quite an erosive, problematic principle? Essentially, you could try and gamify it to create short term value creation, to reduce the time to value pendulum. But actually, there might be more value, or an optimal situation created with just a little bit more time, and slower to value, but more value. 

Bridget Gleason: Yes, plus one to that, I agree. 

Harry Stebbings: Yeah, it’s something that always annoys me when people go, “Oh, it’s all about time to value.” Totally aligned there. 

Final one. Who in SaaS customer success today do you think is killing it? And, why do you get inspired by them, in terms of their approach? 

Bridget Gleason: A couple of companies come to mind, one is Outreach. The CEO, Manny Medina, I knew early on. What inspires me about them is they really are working with customers to try to get to that tip of Maslow’s Hierarchy, and partner to try to figure out what are sales teams trying to do. Okay, so that’s one. 

Zapier, I think, is another one. I know the team there, and the woman that’s running customer success. Again, what inspires me about them is this close collaboration with their partners, and really pushing the envelope in terms of trying to help them do more, and the customers really being the star of the show. 

Then finally, there’s a company, Catalyst, which is a startup. These two brothers, Edward and Kevin Chiu, that are creating a new customer success platform. I’m just really anxious to see what they’re going to come out with, but I love that they’re trying to change things up a bit. 

Harry Stebbings: Totally with you, I think Catalyst are great. But Bridget, listen, as I said, I’ve wanted to do this episode for a while, since I saw about the move. Thank you so much for joining me today, and this has been so much fun. 

Bridget Gleason: Likewise, Harry. 

Harry Stebbings: I always so love my discussions with Bridget, and I want to say a huge thank you for her for giving up the time today to be on the show. If you’d like to see more from us, behind the scenes, then you can on Instagram at @HStebbings1996, with two Bs, it’s always so great to see you there.

As always, I so appreciate all your support, and I can’t wait to bring you a phenomenal set of episodes next week. 

 

Transcript of Michelle’s podcast:

Announcer: This is SaaStr’s Founders Favorite series, where you can hear some of the best of the best from SaaStr speakers. This is where the cloud meets.

You know the deal. Your project is due EOD, but the stakeholder with the answers you need is MIA. Well, there’s a better way. Guru is the knowledge management solution that delivers the information you need when and where you need it. Guru lets your team capture information instantly, wherever it surfaces. Slack, Gmail, Salesforce, Microsoft Outlook coming soon, and more.

Up today, CloudFlare COO Michelle Zatlyn.

Ben Dahl: Hi everybody. We are very lucky to have Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder of CloudFlare here today, to talk about starting a business in the midst of some economic headwinds. Clearly we have a little bit of a headwind at this point, and I think Michelle’s perspective as a founder during that sort of time period will be really useful. I think it would be really helpful for Michelle to just give a little bit of an overview about CloudFlare and about herself.

Michelle Zatlyn: Sure. Thanks, Ben. Thanks so much for being here everyone. I’m Michelle Zatlyn. I’m one of the founders and CEO of a company called CloudFlare. And we started CloudFlare during the economic downturn right after the financial crisis in 2008. And so we started to work on this in 2009. And while it’s different, it’s definitely a different thing going on in the world today. I do want to say that there are a lot of companies that actually started with us, that class of companies, and many of them have turned into big great companies today. So if you’re one of those entrepreneurs who are working on your ideas and thinking, “Man, is now the time to start?” it’s definitely possible. So we started CloudFlare in 2009 and today we have about 1400 people around the world. Our customers are internet properties, so websites, apps, APIs, and those customers come to CloudFlare to be fast, safer, reliable online.

So we built a service that does cybersecurity, global performance and reliability for any intranet property. And in these last 10 years, we have 26 million internet properties that use our service on any given day. So a huge scale. We stop about 50 billion cyber attacks daily on behalf of those 26 million internet properties. And we make the internet faster, safer and more reliable for a lot of people, so we’re really proud of that and our whole team is really proud of that. And so that’s some of the things we’ve done in the last 10 years.

And one thing that’s been really cool, starting the company 10 years ago in an economic downturn to today, about six months ago, Matthew and I and our team took the company public on the New York Stock Exchange. So we went from an idea that started during the economic downturn to a company that went public about six months ago. And today we’re about a 6, $7 billion market cap company.

Ben Dahl: So Michelle, as you think about starting CloudFlare in the midst of an economic downturn and you fast forward to today, do you have a sense or major tips for entrepreneurs as they’re thinking about either starting a new business, or extending their current business?

Michelle Zatlyn: Yeah. Sometimes I think it’s easier if you’re starting than extending. So I’m going to answer your question with that frame of mind. Because I think back to 2009 and it was really hard to get a job. I was doing my MBA at grad school, and so many of my classmates couldn’t get jobs. I had done my summer internship at Google. And I remember getting the call from Google, my manager at Google saying, “Hey, we’ve decided not to extend any of our summer internships a full time offer.” Because again, it was 2008. There was this huge financial crisis and people just were not hiring. And in many ways, when it’s hard to find a job, it’s actually, out of necessity it’s actually a really good time to start a company, the right company anyhow. Because I wasn’t competing with a lot of other offers. It wasn’t like you had a choice of a hundred things to go and do and you had to say no to a hundred things to go pursue this one thing.

So if I think back to our year at business school, a lot of amazing companies came out of that. And I think part of it is because the job prospects were kind of gloomy. And so for entrepreneurs who are starting to think about starting, again, I think for the right idea that you’re really passionate about and if you really think you’re solving a big meaningful problem of a big market with tailwinds to your back, it can be a really good time. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s still really hard and there’s lots of things that was hard about it. You got to be really frugal and you got to innovate your way out of problems.

But I do think the mindset of, it’s almost like your option B or your other options, it’s almost easier to walk away from it because there aren’t that many other good things going on, so let me go create this thing that I just can’t stop thinking about. And so that’s for the people who are currently… And then the second thing I will say, I remember we raised, our first round of money from Ben who was one of the partners who helped us raise our series A, and then Venrock. And we raised $2 million, which, today people laugh. That’s like nothing for a series A. But back then, that was kind of the size of rounds.

And I just remember Matthew and Lee and I, and our team of the original eight people who really worked on this idea, we spent every dollar so wisely because it was a scarce resource. And when you only have a little bit of money, you really innovate your way out of problems or engineer your way out of problems. And we had this great engineering team and we really innovated our way out a lot of problems and tried to figure out ways to do things cheaper, better than we would instead of throwing at the problem. We used to have a saying, “Don’t throw money at the problem. Let’s innovate our way out of the problem.” And again, in a downturn like today, where money is still going to be hard to come by, that’s actually I think a really good, it can take you very far when you’re building your company.

Ben Dahl: I recall in the beginning that your rule used to be that the answer when someone wanted to spend additional dollars to solve a problem, was the first answer was always no. And that in the future, to the extent that you couldn’t solve it through creative programming or what have you, that potentially you’d loosen the purse strings. But the reality is, is that smart engineering was an important part of how you approached building the business.

Michelle Zatlyn: That’s exactly right.

Ben Dahl: In terms of when you were ideating on CloudFlare, how did you get to a conviction on the scale of what you were solving and the size of the market? Because largely at that point, particularly on both the content delivery, but also the web security side, this was not a problem that people were really focused on.

Michelle Zatlyn: I’m going to answer this question, but I want to make one caveat to my answer. When Matthew and Lee and I started CloudFlare, we really wanted to build a big company. That was our desire. And so a lot of my perspective is always behind building big companies. Again, a multibillion dollar public company. That’s what we wanted to do. And so I’m going to answer your question, because that was the frame of mind of what I was looking for. I was looking for a big, meaningful, hairy problem to solve that was going to turn into a big company. But there’s lots of different ways to build businesses, and there’s lots of amazing companies that never become a multibillion dollar company that are equally great and profitable, they’re just different.

So the advice that I’m going to share is really related to this swing for the fence model, and that works for some people and less for others. And so when we think back to what was happening when we started back in 2010 when we were working on this idea in 2009, we just saw there’s this huge shift going on, where we were going from a world from hardware and software that you owned, to services in the cloud that you rented. And I remember AWS was growing really quickly. And at the time there was a big debate of, will big companies ever really use AWS? Well fast forward 10 years later, that seems like such a naive thing to say today. I mean, them and Azure, they’ve just had tremendous success. But 10 years ago that wasn’t a given.

And so this huge shift was going on. There was all these software companies and then the advent of all these SAS application companies like Salesforce and Workday that were breakout successes. And we saw the same thing happening at the network layer where, yeah businesses have always wanted to be fast, safe, and reliable and I used to buy a lot of hardware boxes. And we said, can we turn that into a global service in the cloud that customers rent from us? And we knew that was a big idea. And there was just this huge shift going on. So again, kind of this idea there was a big market and there was a tailwind and there was this macroeconomic shift, which creates opportunities for new entrants. So that was the first kind of aha.

And the second thing that I was really proud of, and I think that if you’re a founder that can find both, it’s like, wow, there’s a big business here. Because the first thing you have to ask yourself, is there a business here because businesses are what sustain.

The second aha that we had was our go to market where we wanted to start with all of the startups and small businesses and nonprofits and developers out there, who today were using nothing. Because they didn’t have the budget or technical resources to buy these enterprise-grade services that existed for big companies. And so we had this big aha, like wow, we’re going to start with small businesses and small websites, and developers and startups and nonprofits who need to be fast, safe, and reliable around the world, and today they’re using nothing. So when we launched, our competitor was nothing. We were trying to get people to go from using nothing to something. And so we had to make it ridiculously easy to sign up and attractive. And if we did, it would kind of become a flywheel, knowing that our end goal is not only do we want to help startups and entrepreneurs and small businesses and developers and nonprofits, but over time, we also wanted to go help medium-sized businesses and large organizations and big enterprises and government organizations. And again, fast forward to today, we do all of that.

But early on we really started with a different go to market, and that allowed us to build our product and our technology and get momentum, so that we can then go compete more heavily with current competitors among large enterprises. And so it was those two things, it was like, “Wow, there’s a big macroeconomic shift. If we can help make the internet better for all these people around the world who currently have nothing, I’d be really proud to work on that.” And so it’s this idea of, I thought there was a big business opportunity and something that I think Matthew and Lee and I were really proud to show up every day and work really hard on.

Ben Dahl: One thing that I think it’s worth spending a brief moment on is just the distinction between good technology and a good business. And I think one thing that you and Matthew have always been focused on, is building both, really solid technology and a good business. But I think for people that are thinking about building a business in this environment, it’s not just solving a hard technological problem, but it’s also creating a real business out of it. And I think it’s worth you talking about that for a few minutes.

Michelle Zatlyn: Yeah. So again, when you start a company and then now we’ve scaled it to, in 2019 we did about we did 287 million in revenue last year. So just to give you a sense of going from 0 to 287 million in revenue last year. And some time along the way you realize as a founder, it’s all about mission and your vision, and do I have a problem here and how can I get people to come work for me? And how do I make sure that people love where they’re working? But at some point I remember having this big realization of “Wow, we’re founders and a business owner.” And it’s really hard for a company, you cannot, tech is amazing. I mean, we’re an engineering-driven company and that’s where we love and we celebrate it. But it is so hard to compare technology between one company and another. It’s way easier to compare business metrics.

And so at some point we had to keep all the great things about our technology. It is about the tech. We love that. It’s differentiation. We live that on a daily basis. But at the end of the day we also had to put our business owner hats on, and the questions we ask ourselves as business owners are different. They’re like, how fast can we acquire a customer? Do they renew our service? Do they want to adopt more of our services? How happy are they? How much does it cost us to deliver this service to them? And it turns out you really need to do both. And I think some founders forget about caring about the business metrics and I actually think that’s a real mistake. Because at the end of the day, if you have a really great business around awesome technology, that’s when magic happens.

And so I did not realize this on day one. And I wish someone had kind of come up to me in the face and told me really directly, “Michelle, at some point you got to think about the business metrics.” And for us it was around 50, 60, 70, 80 million in revenue that I really had an aha of like, “Oh wow, we are going to get compared on these KPIs and these metrics.” A, I got to know what they mean. And B, which ones are we good at today and which ones are we bad at? And the ones that we are bad at, how are we going to get better at them? And then over time we slowly moved them in a direction that we’re proud of. And even today there’s some that are better than others and we continue to work at it. But I think the faster that founders can realize that they’re also running a business, I hope that that means you’ll get to 80, 100 million in revenue faster than we did.

Ben Dahl: So as you think about that evolution as a company, how did you instill a culture that was about leveling up and continuing to evolve, and surrounding yourself with the people that you needed to build that business?

Michelle Zatlyn: Well, there’s kind of two points to that. There’s both the people you bring in to hire, to be part… Again, it doesn’t matter how great the founders are, you need a team to go really far. And I think trying to get that first team to come join you and then scaling the team. And who you need to be your first 20 teammates, who you need to be 20 to 100, who you need to go from 300 to 2000. Actually, people look different in those stages. And some things are the same, people matter. They make a huge difference. And there’s a huge difference between a great hire and a good hire at all those stages. But the types of person that we used to hire when we had 50 people in the company looked different than what we look for today.

Today it’s all about people who understand process and repetitive motion and automating things so we can do those things really efficiently so we can free up time and resources to do other things that help give us leverage in our business, versus when you’re employee number 20 or 30 or 40, you just need a lot of doers to roll up and do the actual work because you’re in build mode, build, build, build. And I think that the types of people you look for along the way are different. Once you have great people on your team, you want to make sure that they stay.

I was talking to one founder a couple of weeks ago, and they were really proud that they had 30% attrition of their team last year. And I said, “30%? That’s really high.”

And they said, “No, no, no. In a startup it’s normal for people to leave that often.”

I was like, “Well it’s true. People leave more frequently than a larger company, but 30% annual attrition, there’s something wrong. Either you’re not hiring the right people in, or you’re not a very good place to work.” I think most high-growth tech companies have annual attrition of 10 to 20%, and maybe 15 to 20% is considered average. So you want to be less than 25 and you want to be less than 20. And maybe in a nano point of time, it spikes because you’re going through some really important transition. But again, most of your peers are at 15 to 20% annually and you’re up at 25 to 30, something is wrong. Either you’re not spending enough time on the hiring side, or once they’re at your company, they feel like they can’t contribute or it’s not a good place to work, or the culture is bad or something is broken. And I really encouraged that founder to go back rethink what they thought was good there.

And at the end of the day that’s a leadership decision from founders of saying, “What kind of place do we want this to be for people to work?” And I think there’s lots of great stories. And then recently in the news, the last few years, there’s been some terrible stories. And I actually think it’s upon all of us as leaders in the tech industry to show there’s lots of ways to create a work environment, and some can be really healthy and be a place where people choose to work and want to be and have huge success stories. So that’s for the team and getting people in.

I would say one thing that we’ve done that worked really well for us that isn’t always well-appreciated or agreed upon, it just worked for us, is that hiring managers. We have a belief that people come work for their manager, and they stay if they like their manager. And so our hiring managers are heavily involved with hiring. And early on we didn’t have any managers so that meant the founders did most of the hiring. And then we hired managers and they did it. And when we were at less than 100 people, 50% of my time was hiring. So you just feel like you’re always looking for people to join. And I also had all my other things I had to do so it just meant I was working all the time.

And today of course, we have a recruiting team. We have a great recruiting team and they partner with the hiring managers. But even to this day, hiring managers are responsible for building their teams. And again, we have a much bigger organization today, and the recruiters partner with them to build great people in. And even to this day our hiring managers spends about 20% of their time hiring every week. And that might not sound like a lot, that’s like one day a week, or two hours every single day. And I just don’t believe you can outsource it. Good people, and we think there’s a big difference and a great hire and a good hire, and great people want to work for great people, and they need to know their manager.

So that’s a little bit about getting great people to come into your company. I think if you’re thinking about a founder scaling and how do you scale yourself through all these different phases, it’s slightly different. Because it’s rare to start a company and then still be running the company as a public company. And I’m really proud of that, and I know Matthew’s really proud of that. And I hope that, we have role models above us, whether it’s Marc Benioff and Parker Harris. Or whether it’s the Shopify founders or Atlassian or Jeff Lawson at Twilio. They are definitely people that we can look up to and I hope there’s a whole other class of companies coming up behind saying, “Wow, they did it. We want to do it too,” because I definitely think it’s possible.

And I guess there’s a couple of things I’d say about scaling yourself as a founder is, I remember someone said this to me once and they were totally right. They’re like, “Either you’re running your business, or your business is running you, and you got to decide which one it is.” And I mean, I’m a competitive person. Obviously I want to run the business. I don’t want the business to run me. And this is kind of going from a founder hat to a business owner hat. And so you got to do things to scale with the business because what matters at 20 million in revenue is different than a 100 million. It’s different at 300 million. And I think that if you can be a sponge, that is like, if I can only give you one piece of like advice, it’d be, be a sponge, this growth mindset, constantly learning. Read.

At SaaStr, Jason Lemkin and his team do an amazing job getting people here to help you. And if you just show up and listen for free, you will avoid making so many mistakes and grow as a leader. That’s what I did. I went to a lot of things like this and I learned from people ahead of me and we got to where we were faster. So there’s so many resources today that help you learn as a founder, way more than 10 years ago. It’s pretty phenomenal. You can read books and whatnot. I think as you hire your leadership team, sometimes people don’t want to hire people as good as them because they’re worried that they’re going to look bad. That’s rookie mistake 101. You need to hire a leadership team that’s better at you than everything you do. Because, as long as you’re confident that you’re the vision, you’re the founder, you’re going to care about this more than anyone ever does. And if you can partner with these amazing leaders who are so good, the best head of product, the best head of engineering, the best CMO and the best chief revenue officer, and you all get everyone rowing in the same direction, that’s how you build an amazing business, as a team together. And so you’ve got to really hire a leadership team better than you.

Ben Dahl: Well, Michelle, thank you for answering my questions.

Michelle Zatlyn: Yeah, likewise. And thanks to everyone who listened in and hopefully it was helpful. And I can’t wait to see everything you build and I hope you all build big companies quicker because you learned something today.

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