The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Paul Rosania is the Founder & CEO @ Balsa, the company that recognises that builders move the world forward and so they are building the best second screen for builders, integrating tools you already use like Jira, GitHub, and Figma. Coming out of stealth today with their seed round being led by Andrew Chen @ a16z and joined by former CPO @ Slack, April Underwood, Chapter One’s Jeff Morris Jr and then of course, 20VC Fund. Prior to founding Balsa, Paul was Senior Director of Product @ Slack and before Slack was a Group Product Manager @ Twitter where he was responsible for the home timeline, including timeline ranking.  In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Paul made his way into the world of startups with Twitter and Slack and how that led to his founding SaaS company, Balsa? Paul was central in the decision-making around changing the Twitter timeline from chronological to ranked, how did he think about that decision? How does Paul approach such large product decisions today? What were his biggest operating takeaways from seeing the internal mechanics of Twitter & Slack?      What does really effective product marketing mean to Paul? How does Paul think about driving really effective change management? When engaging with bottoms up sales models, where does Paul identify the tipping points of going from bottoms up to top down?      Why does Paul believe that the builders are the new pro athletes? How will the structure of orgs change around them? How will the support they receive change? How will their training change? How will their comp change? How does on do this and not discourage other functions in the org?     Paul’s 60 Second SaaStr: What does Paul believe is the hardest role to hire for today? What would Paul most like to change about the world of SaaS today? What do the next 5 years hold for Paul and for Balsa?   Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-385-with-balsa-founder-ceo-paul-rosania/ If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Paul Rosania  

We caught up with one of the SaaStr community’s favorite speakers, Dharmesh Shah CTO and co-founder of Hubspot on lessons learnings launching a second product.  Hubspot recently expanded its Sales products and the learnings were top of mind. Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-when-and-why-to-launch-a-second-product-a-deep-dive-with-dharmesh-shah-cto-hubspot/

Nick Caldwell has built and grown product and engineering organizations at PowerBI (0 to 300 engineers), Reddit (500M MAU) and Looker ($2.7B sale to Google). Nick will share 5 big lessons he's learned along the way that you can use as you build your company's product and engineering functions from its earliest days to its largest successes. Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/growing-product-and-engineering-orgs-from-zero-to-ipo-with-twitter-and-redpoint-ventures/

In today's SaaStr Insider, SaaStr SVP & GM, Amelia Ibarra, sits down with Alon Alroy, Co-Founder & CMO at Bizzabo on What's Next For the Future of B2B Events.  Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/whats-next-for-b2b-saas-events-2021/

There are a lot of problems with calculating churn rates. Moreover, public companies don't generally release churn rates. Learn what they are and how to calculate them correctly. Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/churn-is-dead/

Ryan Sandler is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Truework, the company that gives employees control over employment, income and other identity data. To date, Ryan has raised over $44M with Truework from the likes of Sequoia, Khosla, Menlo and from the founders of companies such as Plaid, Seatgeek, Mino Games and Checkr. Prior to founding Truework, Ryan spent 3 years as a Senior Product Manager @ LinkedIn.  In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Ryan made his way from LinkedIn Product Manager to founding Sequoia backed Truework and changing the world of identity data? Why does Ryan believe it is such an advantage to sell into mid-market? Where do most people go wrong here? How can startups show credibility to mid-market when they are so small? How can founders use case studies and references to build social credibility early on?      What have Ryan’s lessons been when it comes to pricing? How does Ryan think about and approach discounting? How does Ryan feel about pilot plans? What elements can founders negotiate on to get the best pricing?     Why does Ryan believe SEO is the best-kept secret in SaaS? How has Ryan structured his content and marketing team as a result? How can one automate as much of the content creation process as possible? How long should one expect in terms of lead times to see returns on the SEO strategy?     Ryan’s 60 Second SaaStr: Hardest element of Ryan’s role with Truework? What would Ryan most like to change about the world of SaaS? What does Ryan know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?  Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-380-with-truework-co-founder-and-ceo-ryan-sandler/ If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Ryan Sandler

From how many reps to hire, to compensation models, here are the top 10 mistakes founders make when hiring their first sales teams and how to avoid them.  Full video: https://youtu.be/SrHKclELBEg Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-379-with-saastr-ceo-and-founder-jason-lemkin-the-top-10-mistakes-founders-make-when-hiring-their-first-sales-team/   Sponsor message: Are you looking to better educate your audience on the value you deliver? Build products or service recommendation tools, create assessments to identify areas they can improve, and build savings calculators? Find out how you can build these same tools for your business at outgrow.co/saas.

Investment can create more problems than it solves and founders may trick themselves into thinking they have product-market fit when they don't. Michael Seibel, CEO @ Y Combinator explores the top risks founders should be aware of after funding and his best tips to avoid them. Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/5-things-that-kill-startups-with-y-combinator/

Dave McJannet is the CEO @ Hashicorp, one of the fastest-growing enterprise companies of our time providing consistent workflows to provision, secure, connect and run any infrastructure for any application. To date, the company has raised $349M in funding from some of the best in the business including Bessemer, Redpoint, True Ventures, IVP, Mayfield, TCV and GGV to name a few. As for David, prior to Hashicorp, he held some incredible roles including VP Marketing at Github and Hortonworks, Senior Director of Product Marketing @ VMWare and then also spent over 5 years at Microsoft.  Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-377-with-hashicorp-ceo-dave-mcjannet/ If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr

In part two, ZoomInfo founder and CEO Henry Schuck shares how he built a business from scratch and grew it into one of the most successful IPOs of the 21st century—and what it was really like...the good, the bad, and most of all, the ugly. He reflects on where he went wrong, what he would do differently, and how to avoid making the same mistakes he did. This episode is an excerpt from Jason and Henry’s session at SaaStr Annual @ Home. Full video: https://youtu.be/WKODWISCL7A Transcript of this podcast: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-376-with-zoominfo-ceo-henry-schuck-10-mistakes-the-ceo-of-zoominfo-made-on-his-journey-to-ipo-part-2/ Part 1 of this interview can be found in episode 374.