
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
The Official SaaStr Podcast is the latest and greatest from the world of SaaStr, interviewing the most prominent operators and investors to discover their tips, tactics and strategies to attain success in the fiercely competitive world of SaaS. On the side of the operators, we center around getting from $0 to $100m ARR faster, what it takes to scale successfully and what are the core elements of hiring. As for the investors, we learn what metrics they hone in on when examining SaaS business, what type of metrics excites them and what they look for in SaaS founders.
Latest episodes

Feb 4, 2022 • 25min
SaaStr 525: Marketing Hyper-Growth at Scale with Klaviyo Head of Marketing Kady Srinivasan
Kady Srinivasan, SVP and Global Head of Marketing at Klaviyo, brings over 20 years of marketing experience to the discussion. She delves into scaling marketing teams during hyper-growth, emphasizing the importance of brand storytelling and strategic hiring. Kady explores how to align marketing efforts with leadership while navigating customer insights. She also highlights the need for a culture of experimentation and intuition in marketing, balancing accountability with compassion to meet evolving demands.

Feb 2, 2022 • 21min
SaaStr 524: From New Relic to Salesforce to Calendly: What's Changed in Product-led Growth with Calendly CMO Patrick Moran
Patrick Moran, CMO of Calendly with a rich background from New Relic and Salesforce, dives into the evolving landscape of product-led growth. He discusses how strategies have shifted from traditional sales to user-centric approaches, emphasizing the importance of flexibility in product offerings. Moran shares insights on adapting to market disruptions and the need for companies to focus on both individual developers and enterprise buyers. The conversation highlights the cultural shifts necessary for embracing this new paradigm in the SaaS industry.

Jan 31, 2022 • 22min
SaaStr 523: How to Succeed as a First-Time VP of Sales or First-Time SaaS VP with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin
We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to hire a Great VP of Sales. And we’ll keep talking about it — so long as 70% of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it 1 year. In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, shares his best advice for all first-time VPs coming into a SaaS startup. Video: https://youtu.be/_gWZxKwV44w Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-not-to-fail-as-a-first-time-vp-of-sales/

4 snips
Jan 28, 2022 • 24min
SaaStr 522: Scaling Your Startup 10x From $20M to $200M with Sapphire, Lightspeed, TripActions, and 6Sense
When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. But what are the essentials of scaling up, and how do you navigate obstacles along the way to function as a high-impact organization? Cathy Gao, Partner at Sapphire Ventures, and Anoushka Vaswani, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, moderated a panel with Carlos Delatorre, CRO at TripActions, and Latané Conant, CMO at 6sense to discuss how you can scale your startup from $20 million ARR to $200 million ARR through go-to-market execution, talent, and culture.

Jan 26, 2022 • 24min
SaaStr 521: How To Create a High Performing Sales Organization: Five Strategies for Driving Peak Performance Through Reimagined Management with Hootsuite CRO Melissa Murray Bailey
Driving peak sales performance is a mission most SaaS companies strive to accomplish. Yet, sales team targets are often set extremely high, with management expecting their teams to miss. This might bring success for the company, but it leads to negative experiences for the sales rep, and your teams may ultimately fail to perform to their fullest potential. Hootsuite CRO Melissa Murray Bailey shares secrets to running a successful SaaS sales team and reducing employee turnover. Video: https://youtu.be/wl1Qx4KHqMo Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-create-a-high-performing-saas-sales-organization-with-hootsuite-cro-melissa-murray-bailey-pod-521-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

Jan 21, 2022 • 22min
SaaStr 520: 10 Learnings Scaling from Consumer to SMB to Enterprise with Grammarly Head of Organizations Revenue Dorian Stone
Every high-growth organization inevitably reaches the point of pivoting its strategy and offerings to capture new audiences—a journey made more complex with the new demands emerging this past year. In this session, Dorian Stone will share lessons learned from Grammarly’s evolution from consumer to SMB to enterprise, address common assumptions and pitfalls in the process of scaling, and reveal must-know strategies to drive efficient growth this year and beyond.

Jan 19, 2022 • 21min
SaaStr 519: From B2C to Billions: How Vimeo executed a B2B Pivot that Redefined Their Future with Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud
Vimeo went public in May as an $8 billion powerhouse in video software. Better known as the indie version of YouTube for more than a decade, the company has redefined itself from a B2C destination to the B2B solution that empowers any business to create, collaborate and connect with professional-quality video. Join Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud for a conversation with Brent Thill, Financial Analyst @ Jefferies about spotting potential in what is now a $70 billion market, and how operating as a founder within a 16-year old company helped her take bets on a strategy that’s paying off. Full video: https://youtu.be/9JgkbS4FgjQ Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/from-b2c-to-billions-how-vimeo-executed-a-b2b-pivot-that-redefined-their-future-with-vimeo-ceo-anjali-sud/ 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

Jan 14, 2022 • 27min
SaaStr 518: Slow and Steady Wins the Race: Building Marketing Channels Slowly to Achieve Massive Scale with Datadog's CMO Alex Rosemblat
Building out a marketing channel is like building product. It takes countless iterations and constant market feedback to get right. This session will introduce tactics on how to slowly and methodically test, assess success, and eventually scale a marketing channel until it hits a ceiling and it's time to move to the next one.

Jan 12, 2022 • 20min
SaaStr 517: Proven Leadership Frameworks for a High-Performing Sales Team with Databricks' VP of Sales Heather Akuiyibo
When sales teams succeed, the company succeeds. Revenue goes up, productivity increases, and ideally, the team continues to grow. But running a high-performing sales team isn’t an easy task. How can you ensure success within your sales organization in a way that scales with you? Heather Akuiyibo, VP of Sales at Databricks, shares her four adaptable frameworks for high-performing sales teams and how those frameworks helped Databricks’ sales teams succeed. Full video: https://youtu.be/9tn-I4f9Va4

4 snips
Jan 11, 2022 • 30min
SaaStr 516: Lessons Learned in Scaling with Canva's CMO Zach Kitschke and SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin
Zach joined Canva in 2013 as one of Canva’s earliest employees and has worked across product management, communications and human resources before establishing the global marketing function. Eight years later 50 million people are now using Canva every month and the company recently approached $1 Billion in Revenue. In this podcast, Zach and Jason dive into the initial growth marketing strategies and framework behind Canva’s exponential growth as a start-up, the strategies for targeting and growing into the enterprise, and how to build out a global marketing function. Full video: https://youtu.be/CEoam_9sHt0 Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/lessons-learned-scaling-canva-to-1-billion-with-zach-kitschke/