Selling into non-discretionary operations budgets

Dominic defines non-discretionary operations budgets and explains stickiness and average 8x ROI from deployments.

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In this episode of Run the Numbers, CJ sits down with Dominic Phillips, CFO of Samsara, to unpack what it takes to scale a capital-intensive SaaS business from startup to public company in under a decade. Dominic reflects on his six-plus years at Samsara through hypergrowth, COVID disruption, supply chain constraints, a down-round survival raise, and an IPO at the very end of the 2021 tech window. Drawing on his earlier career at ServiceNow under Mike Scarpelli, he shares how experience across FP&A, IR, corp dev, and treasury shaped his approach to capital allocation, investor education, and analyst management. The conversation dives into asset-based pricing, selling into non-discretionary operations budgets, balancing hardware and software economics, and building credibility with a broad analyst base while scaling past $1B in ARR.

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LINKS:

Dominic on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominicphillips/

Company: https://www.samsara.com/

CJ on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/

Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com

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