The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Back in the early 2000s, people didn’t entirely accept that a virtual machine could be as good as a physical one. Of course, we all know how that turned out.  Ed Lenta, the SVP and GM of Databricks, had the rare opportunity of scaling three hypergrowth companies — VMware, AWS, and Databricks. All of which were disruptors when they first came on the scene.  Is there a recipe or formula that will predict the success of a pre-growth, high-potential company? Lenta shares his lessons learned through scaling these early-stage companies.    Full video: https://youtu.be/FvYovHfm7rs   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8    

Buying software has changed significantly over the past 27 years. Despite the economic headwinds we’ve seen, buyers still buy a lot. The average mid-size company has 111 SaaS applications. By next quarter, that’s estimated to rise to 119.    Of course, companies are experiencing some economic impact, and average spend is coming down slightly. Chris Perrine, the Vice President of G2, Asia Pacific, shares what’s holding up buyers in today’s economy and how you can meet them where they are.   Video with Q&A: https://youtu.be/S9yQ1Oe30zU   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8    

If you’re on the path to building a startup, you know what it means to fail. In this week’s Workshop Wednesday, Tracy Young, CEO and Co-Founder of TigerEye and PlanGrid, says that “everything is going to fail.” Young took PlanGrid from nothing to $100M ARR before passing the baton and shares the biggest lessons learned, the biggest failures, and how to navigate them.   Full video with Q&A: https://youtube.com/live/w9-lMhAyJeo   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8    

With product-led growth, your product is the main driver of revenue growth; companies can scale up faster while keeping sales and marketing costs low. Conversely, sales-led growth puts human interaction at the center of sales processes. But sometimes, choosing a single path when it comes to a sales-led or a product-led growth model isn’t enough. In this session, Amplitude's Mark Velthuis will share how companies can embrace a mix of the two strategies, how it will affect our traditional understanding of sales, marketing, and product, and how leaders can get everyone on board.   Video: https://youtu.be/7DQPNB6AU2o   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8    

How did the largest product-led growth enterprise company in the world find success? In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, Cameron Deatsch, CRO of Atlassian, shares his wisdom with Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond. Atlassian is trading at over $40B with revenue north of $3B. When the company started 20 years ago, it didn’t hire salespeople. Not because they planned to start as a product-led company but because they couldn’t afford to. So what should earlier-stage companies do: immediately build out a big sales team or focus on product-led growth?   Video: https://youtu.be/s897t3MSAxM   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8    

Having scaled the APAC region for 3 US companies, with a big emphasis on building culture as a foundation for success, Scott will speak of his learnings and lead a discussion for: Recruiting Enabling  Creating Culture Video: https://youtu.be/CfW0W0E3F4A   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8    

Chris Merritt, Chief Revenue Officer of Cloudflare joined Cloudflare nearly a decade ago when annual revenue was around $1M with one sales person — and has since been scaling the sales organization and helping grow Cloudflare into the multi-billion dollar business it is today. When building a sales team and business at scale, organizations go through various stages of growth with key milestones along the way—from 1-10 million in revenue, to 50-100 million, to 100 million, and onward. While no two businesses are the same, we’ll dive into a few areas that are most likely to change, with Chris sharing some findings along the way to help others effectively scale their organizations.   Full video with Q&A: https://youtu.be/YkmDl59sDkg   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8    

In this illuminating session, ICONIQ Growth general partner Doug Pepper and head of analytics Christine Edmonds will share some of the latest insights from ICONIQ's annual “Growth and Efficiency Study” which utilizes aggregated operating data from a large set of enterprise SaaS companies, about half of which have gone on to IPO and/or been named to the Cloud 100 list. From the metrics most indicative of healthy business fundamentals and what top quartile performance looks like across these KPIs, to how those core metrics may be impacted in the current environment and where leaders are focusing in response to the macroeconomic uncertainty of today, Doug and Christine will share what strength looks like at all stages of company growth.   Updated slides: https://www.slideshare.net/saastr/unveiling-the-data-behind-effective-scaling-with-iconiq-growth-253098692   Video: https://youtube.com/live/oRtla9psS_8   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8    

Stripe CTO David Singleton shares insights from the company's focus on going the extra mile to obtain user feedback and even more extreme lengths to turn that feedback into successful products. He’ll show how one simple rule helped the company grow from a single API to a sophisticated platform, and discuss the challenges of managing change, defining product-market fit, and designing infrastructure that can scale.   Video: https://youtube.com/live/N2BPdAk_riU   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8    

While the allure of customer acquisition can pull a founder’s attention, it’s equally important to dedicate resources to fighting churn and expanding revenue from existing customers. One company that has unlocked the secret to solid retention and revenue expansion is Brex, an easy-to-use corporate cards and spend management software in an integrated global solution.   In this edition of CRO Confidential, Sam Blond (former CRO at Brex and current Partner at Founders Fund) hosts his former colleague Lucas Fox (GM of Brex for Startups). They discuss how Fox helped build a churn-fighting, upselling, and cross-selling machine that continues to generate revenue.   Video: https://youtu.be/_dfDqPJqqFU Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/cro-confidential-how-customer-first-focus-drives-retention-and-revenue-with-brex-gm-of-startups-lucas-fox-pod-635-video/   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8