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Career Growth & Advice, Leadership, SaaStr Events, VideosLessons Learned from Enterprise Leaders on Growing and Evolving $1M to $100M ARR (Video + Transcript)
In this panel from Annual 2018, successful enterprise CEOs and Presidents Yvonne Wassenaar, CEO of Airwave, Godard Abel, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of G2, and Marc Diouane (one of our…
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Career Growth & Advice, Featured Videos, Growth, Leadership, SaaStr Events, VideosFireside Chat with Anurag Gupta and Paul Hsiao (Video + Transcript)
In this Fireside Chat from Annual 2018, Anurag Gupta (VP, Amazon Web Services) and Paul Hsiao (General Partner, Canvas Ventures) discuss the current proliferation and importance of customer data, trust…
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Career Growth & Advice, Customer Success, Growth, Hiring, Leadership, VideosThe #1 Reason COO Hires Fail & Other Lessons from Intercom COO Karen Peacock at SaaStr Annual
Karen Peacock, COO at Intercom, has a passion for helping companies grow and succeed. And she’s pretty darn good at it too. At SaaStr Annual 2018, Karen took to the…
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Company Culture, Growth, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Videos“Being Yourself Makes All the Difference” & Other Lessons from MailChimp CMO Matt Klein at SaaStr Annual
MailChimp CMO Matt Klein knows a thing or two about how to thoughtfully market a product, earn a customer’s trust, and build relationships that last. So what’s his secret? Luckily,…
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Career Growth & Advice, Featured Videos, Growth, Leadership, Tech News, VideosState of the Cloud: 2018 Edition with Bessemer Venture Partners (Video + Transcript)
Having invested in public cloud unicorns such as Shopify, Twilio, SendGrid, and Box (just to name a few), we think it’s safe to say that Bessemer Venture Partners has its…
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Career Growth & Advice, Featured Videos, Leadership, Scale, VideosRealizing the Business Impact of Partnerships with Box (Video + Transcript)
When Karen Appleton Page first joined Box, it was an eight-person startup who still held most of their meetings at Starbucks. Together with Aaron Levie and their small team, Karen…
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Career Growth & Advice, Early, Featured Videos, Fundraising, Leadership, VideosTo Be Funded or Not to Be Funded with Medallia (Video + Transcript)
One company, two sides of the funding debate. Medallia, #7 on Forbes’ 2017 top 100 private SaaS companies, bootstrapped for 10 years, then took $255M in investment from Sequoia Capital…
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Career Growth & Advice, Featured Videos, Leadership, Scale, VideosTales of a Modern CEO with Atlassian and Trello (Video + Transcript)
What keeps CEOs up at night? Shareholders, competition, the next big thing? Sure, but there are many other challenges. Modern CEOs are also thinking about how to build inclusive workforces,…
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Career Growth & Advice, Featured Videos, Leadership, Scale, VideosFounder to Founder: 10 Toughest Lessons Getting to the First $100m ARR with Cloudflare (Video + Transcript)
What’s it really like to scale a business from a few users to $100m ARR and 7 million users? Michelle Zatlyn, co‑founder and COO of Cloudflare, sits down with Laura Bilazarian,…
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Career Growth & Advice, Featured Videos, Growth, Leadership, SaaStr Events, VideosRe-Imagining the Workplace of the Future: In Conversation with Stewart Butterfield, Slack (Video + Transcript)
We were so excited to have Slack’s very own CEO and Co-Founder, Stewart Butterfield, back on our stage this year to kick off SaaStr Annual 2018! Alongside Forbes reporter, Alex…
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Career Growth & Advice, Growth, Leadership, SaaStr Events, VideosTomasz Tunguz + Jason Lemkin Talk “State of SaaS in 2018”
A little while back at the 2018 SaaStr Annual, Tomasz Tunguz and our own Jason Lemkin kicked off Day 3 with a fun look at 5 of the Top Trends…
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Company Culture, Hiring, International Expansion, Scale, VideosThe Salesforce MBA: What We Learned with FinancialForce, Twilio, StitchFix (Video + Transcript)
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…
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Growth, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Sales Strategy, VideosDavid Spitz, Managing Director at Pacific Crest Securities: Measure Your Success: Tell Your Story Using SaaS Metrics (Video + Transcript)
SaaS metrics, such as LTV and CAC, are key to telling your story. Unit economics are destiny, however, you need to be careful. Don’t use convenient metrics just so your…
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Company Culture, Hiring, Sales, Sales Strategy, Scale, VideosSales AMA with Mark Roberge: Your Burning Questions Answered (Video + Transcript)
Mark Roberge, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School and former CRO at Hubspot, takes the Deep Dive Stage to answer burning questions that we all have about sales and running…
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Early, Fundraising, VideosLP Confidential: Secrets from the Folks that Give VCs Money (Video + Transcript)
We all know who VCs are and what they do, but where exactly do they get their money? The investors that give them their money–the funds that could eventually end…
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Popular Q&A
What is the best piece of advice on closing deals for a new, inexperienced salesman?
Add value. Most new salespeople focus a lot on the transaction. What’s your budget? Do you need a discount? How big a discount? Can I give you a bigger discount? What questions do you have? If I give you an even bigger discount, can you sign right now? Your discount...
What is the difference between running a 10 person startup and a 100 person startup?
The biggest structural difference is you have to hire all the VPs by employee 50–100. You won’t be able to scale this far without a full management team — VPs of Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering, Customer Success at least. But the toughest personal challenge for...
What were aspects of your startup that were easier than you anticipated?
The part I didn’t originally get was how relatively easy is it to grow exising accounts and account size if your customers are happy. We segmented customer retention by Small, Medium and Large accounts after about 24 months and saw a pattern that I now know is fairly...
What should B2B SaaS companies do to ensure the success of their customers and reduce churn?
I know this sounds overly simple, but the answer is: Measure it. Set goals to improve it. Pay people to improve it. Too many start-ups don’t even know their CSAT and NPS. Too many start-ups don’t even visit their customers in person. Too many start-ups don’t know why...
What are some rookie mistakes founders make during VC meetings?
A few that are easy to fix: Not standing (when you present to > 2–3 folks). When you stand, you present better. Period. Standing turns you into the center of the audience, into the owner, the presenter. Sitting is great for a small convo, but sucks all the energy out...
How should I design sales reps compensation plans for my SaaS company at $10kMRR?
Figuring out your very first sales comp plan when you don’t have a repeatable process or much revenue is confusing. I was exactly in the place you were (first rep at $10k MRR) and everyone faces some similar challenges: There’s no way this early you can expect a rep...
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