Saket Saurabh defied standard SaaS advice by skipping SMBs and selling directly to Enterprise giants like Instacart and LinkedIn from day one. Here is the "Enterprise First" strategy that allowed Nexla to become cash flow positive with multiple 7-figures in revenue before their Series A.
In this episode, Saket (Co-founder & CEO of Nexla) breaks down exactly how to navigate complex corporate buy-cycles without a track record. Learn how he used "consultative selling" to close 6-figure contracts, the "Magic Moment" live-coding tactic that won Instacart, and the painful "Zero Salary" pivot the founders took to save the company and hit profitability.
🔑 Key Lessons
- 🏢 The "Enterprise First" Bet: Why targeting SMBs would have failed and why he went straight for the Fortune 500.
- 🪄 The Magical Moment: How his co-founder live-coded a fix during a pitch meeting to close Instacart.
- 📉 The Hard Reset: Cutting founder salaries to $0 and downsizing to achieve cash flow positivity.
- 🤝 Founder-Led Sales: How to sell "Build vs. Buy" to technical buyers who think they can do it themselves.
- 🧠 Nvidia Lessons: The "Critical Path" advice from Jensen Huang that guides his leadership today.
📖 Chapters
- Introduction & The "Profit" Quote
- What is Nexla? (Solving the Data Fragmentation Problem)
- The Origin: From Ad Tech to Data Infrastructure
- The Contrarian Strategy: Why "Enterprise First"?
- Landing the First Customer (Instacart)
- The "Live Code" Sales Demo Strategy
- Figuring out Enterprise Pricing & POs
- Founder-Led Sales: Closing the First 15 Customers
- Overcoming the "We Can Build It Ourselves" Objection
- The Pivot: Going "Zero Salary" to Hit Cash Flow Positive
- The Impact of AI on Data Engineering
- Lightning Round: Best Advice & Productivity Tools
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Resources:
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