The SaaS Revolution Show

It was early on in his time at Salesforce that Frederic Kerrest knew SaaS was going to be huge. On paper, enterprise on-premise software ruled the world, banking $500B in revenue a year. In comparison, Salesforce, which in 2002 was the only one charging on a subscription basis, had an ARR of around $25M. But Frederic knew that was destined to change. The tables would turn. He spent five years at Salesforce, working in sales and business development. He started and built the Latin America sales organization, Mobile group and OEM / Reseller programs. This week’s guest on the SaaS Revolution Show, Frederic Kerrest, left Salesforce when he had learned a huge amount about SaaS and in 2009 co-founded Okta, a company that brought identity management to the cloud. The company went public last year on NASDAQ, an experience Frederic covers extensively on the podcast. Listen on to learn: What the road to IPO has been like for Frederic and Okta What is essential in the preparation for it What has played the biggest role in its success Inspired by Okta and Frederic’s story we want to bring one lucky SaaS Revolution Show listener to SaaStock and SaaS.City for free, with something money can’t buy on top - an invite to our Speaker’s dinner. It’s a once in a lifetime chance to meet exceptional founders and have up-close conversations with them. To enter, go to saasrevolution.show and sign up for the raffle until Wednesday, September 19th at midnight. We will announce the winner at next week’s episode.    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

On this week’s episode of The SaaS Revolution Show, we take you back to the SaaStock New York stage. David Skok, Managing Partner, Matrix Partners is in conversation with Seth Besmertnik, CEO of Conductor, which was recently acquired by WeWork. They chat about the journey of 10 years to get to this exit. Speaking of journeys - our own SaaStock journey is only 6 weeks away from hitting a major milestone - our 3rd annual conference! There are still a few passes available so grab yours at saastock.com if you haven’t yet, it’s going to be epic. When WeWork acquired Conductor, Seth mentioned to WeWork’s CEO, Adam Neumann that he Adam may have built a billion dollar company very fast but Seth had made many more mistakes than him. He wasn’t exaggerating. Starting Conductor straight out of college, Seth messed up in a myriad of ways and had on many occasions almost given up and closed the company. Almost. But he never actually gave up. Seth has learned to play the long game and it paid off for him. Sitting for a chat with David Skok, he now wants to help you do the same. Listen on to learn: How he dealt with a very high churn How he made sure customers understand his product What Seth wishes he knew in the early days of Conductor David Skok is coming to SaaStock18 again this year, featuring in 2 sessions. Firstly a keynote - Get inside your buyers head to improve funnel conversion rates and then he’s moderating a fireside chat with Corey Thomas, CEO of Rapid 7 entitled From $15M to $250M - Scaling with Soul. You don't want to miss either. David doesn't leave back to Boston after his talks. He will stick around meeting with as many early Stage SaaS Founders as possible, looking for the next HubSpot. Maybe that’s you. if you do want to join us at SaaStock18- grab your ticket online ASAP https://www.saastock.com/tickets    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

On this week’s episode of The SaaS Revolution Show, we talk with Lidia Lüttin, VP Marketing at Happeo, a company hailing from Helsinki, which aims to connect the global workforce of enterprises. Lidia has always been a marketer. The kind that prefers the early scrappy days of starting up than the arguably settled clear days of scaling up. It’s why she recently moved from 300-person Bynder to the 20-person Happeo, formerly known as Universe. It was the employee count plus the vision of the CEO that convinced Lidia to join the company. However, there was also a drive in her to implement what she calls revenue-driven marketing from scratch. At Bynder, Lidia had learned that just looking after vanity metrics such as lead numbers, engagement and awareness was not a way to have a real impact on the business. Rather it had to be directly connected to revenue, something she now is fully subscribed to. Listen on to learn: What is revenue-driven marketing What does the marketing team focus on when doing revenue-driven marketing What are some of the best channels to use when doing revenue-driven marketing and why Linkedin isn’t one of them At SaaStock Lidia will take us through her experience in building and scaling marketing operations and teams. There will be much more marketing wisdom at SaaStock and SaaS.City from the likes of Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift, Megan Eisenberg, CMO, MongoDB, Ryan Carlson, CMO at Okta, Kieran Flanagan, VP Marketing at HubSpot, April Dunford and many more. We are offering a special end of summer discount for podcast listeners. Use code SUMMER20 and get 20% off tickets. Head over to saastock.com/tickets now.    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

After he left Eloqua and before starting Influitive, Mark Organ tried really hard not to go back to SaaS. The experience of seeing Eloqua, the company he had built with his two hands, go public without him as the CEO had been too painful. He didn’t want to inflict that sort of pain on himself once again. No matter what he tried, it never really brought him contentment. So he decided to do it once again. But do it right. The start of Influitive was slow as they were introducing a completely new category but once it took off it really took off. For awhile Influitive was one of the fastest growing SaaS companies in the world. There was a time their LTV to CAC ratio was 6 to 1. Everything was going stellar until it stopped. Just like that. Influitive hit a ceiling, which as it turns out is a common occurrence for many other MarTech SaaS companies. It was time for some major changes. Employees had to be let go, perks had to be stripped down, costs reduced severely. But to truly survive and prevail, Mark had to implement fundamental strategic and operational changes, affecting customer base and the product. In this truly honest conversation, Mark talks about all that, offering numbers and emotion and not sugar coating anything. He has been very successful in what he has achieved so far, cutting churn rathe and burn by 70%. And he has managed to keep the promise he made to himslef when he started Influitive - none of this at the expense of company culture and morale. On the contrary. As Mark says during the interview, SaaStock is one of his favourite conferences to attend because instead of chest bumps it brings honesty and intimate conversations between founders. A lot of the changes he implemented came as a result of conversations he had had at SaaStock 17. Also some international clients he has recently closed. To see him speak, have similar valuable conversations in a friendly and fun environment and meet new potential customers join us in Dublin, 15th to the 17th of October https://www.saastock.com And if you are a startup, we have just launched the application for our Global pitch competition so head over to https://www.saastock.com/global-pitch/ and apply before September 16th.    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

On this week’s episode of The SaaS Revolution Show, Ryan Bonnici, CMO at G2Crowd talks about empowering the voice of the customer in marketing activities. Before Ryan headed the marketing activities of G2Crowd, he used it as one of two main sources of figuring out whether to apply for a certain company. The kind of reviews a company got was a clear indication of upward growth or lack thereof. This is how he would determine if it was worth the leap. Ryan career choices have taken him from ExactTarget and Salesforce all the way to HubSpot and now, G2Crowd. Through all that he has tasted very different flavours of marketing - from spending big enterprise budgets to building a frugality ROI muscle in SMBs. As a marketplace which is as much about B2C as it is about B2B, in G2Crowd Ryan gets to combine skills from each of his jobs. And he loves it. What unites his efforts is empowering the voice of the customer through reviews. Listen on to hear: How the customer voice evolves as a company grows and how to be prepared for some common pitfalls Where to start with getting reviews How to measure the effect of word-of-mouth At SaaStock Ryan will take us through his decade-long experience in marketing, picking up the five most important lessons he learned. We will hear much more marketing wisdom on the SaaStock stage from the likes of Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift, Megan Eisenberg, CMO, MongoDB, Ryan Carlson, CMO at Okta, Kieran Flanagan, VP Marketing at HubSpot and many more. You can catch Ryan together with Dave and Kieran at the Growth Marketing bootcamp during SaaS.City on October 15th where they will share practical tactics and frameworks to achieve hypergrowth. Places are limited so grab a ticket for SaaStock and claim your spot at the bootcamp now https://www.saastock.com/tickets    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

On this week’s episode of The SaaS Revolution Show, I talk with Jonathan Kim, CEO and Founder of Appcues about the user onboarding that acquires, wins and retains customers. While working as a front-end engineer at HubSpot, Jonathan got increasingly frustrated by the fact that B2B companies didn’t have the sort of seamless self-service onboarding that the likes of Facebook or Twitter had. Whether it was salespeople, account managers or customer success reps, they all did the same thing day in and day out manually onboarding users. Before long Jonathan decided to leave HubSpot and pursue finding a solution on his own, fulfilling his dream to be an entrepreneur. That was five years ago and Appcues was born. Today, the company based out of Boston has 55 employees and has just raised a Series A funding. Listen on to hear: Why user onboarding is important How to go about creating great user onboarding What are the effects of good user onboarding Appcues Director of Marketing, Ty Magnin will be joining us on the SaaStock 18 growth stage where he will talk about product-led growth. For the three days of the conference, he will be joined by speakers such as Morten Primdahl, Co-founder, Zendesk; Heather Zynczak, CMO, Pluralsight, Corey Thomas, CEO Rapid7 and many more. Grab a ticket for the conference now and sign up for the bootcamps and workshops we will be running on Monday the 15th, which are limited in capacity https://www.saastock.com/tickets User onboarding is such an important part of any SaaS success that we are collaborating on the creation of the most extensive onboarding book to date. We will be presenting 30 case studies from companies like Intercom, Drift, Buffer, Clearbit and Typeform among others during SaaStock18. We still have a few more case study slots so if you are particularly proud of your user onboarding you should get in touch. Be quick and Send an email to irina@saastock.com stating your interest.    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

On this week’s episode of The SaaS Revolution Show, Stan Massueras, Intercom EMEA Sales Director talks about sales and customer acquisition at Intercom. Born and raised in a small village in France, as soon as Stan Massueras graduated college he decided Dublin was the place to be. He bought a one-way ticket and with a thousand euros in his back pocket he went on to experience the booming tech scene in the Irish capital. That was back in 2004 and Stan immediately fell in love with Dublin and has never looked back. His career path has passed through Xerox, HP, Facebook and Twitter before joining Intercom. In each of these companies, he has built European sales operations from the ground up, never expecting the successes they would reach. When he joined Intercom, there was already a small Sales team but Stan ramped up the EMEA sales efforts to new highs. The conversation traces back how Intercom’s sales thinking has evolved and how currently Stan enables everyone to do the best work they can. Listen on to hear: How Stan has organised the sales team What is the winning formula of doing great sales His secret to keeping the team motivated and engaged Stan is one of many speakers we will welcome to SaaStock18 for what will be three epic days of learning, connecting and bringing your SaaS to new highs. You can still save €200 on tickets before the end of the day August 3rd. Head over to https://www.saastock.com/founder-exec and grab a single ticket or a team bundle now.    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

Andrus Purde, Founder and CEO of Outfunnel has been a marketer for 21 years. Yet he would tell you he is only getting the grips of it now. That, though, is more humbleness than reality as he has been instrumental to the growth of Pipedrive where he was the VP of Marketing for 7 years and helped the company reach 70,000 customers. Before he knew what Outfunnel would become, he embarked on a massive customer development exercise. Listen on to hear: How Andrus conducted his customer development interviews What were some of the biggest challenges on the way How he gathered everything he knew about marketing to kickstart Outfunnel’s GTM strategy Andrus is one of many speakers we will welcome to SaaStock18 where he will give us a live update of where Outfunnel is. We released our agenda last week so check out the myriad of keynotes, bootcamps and fun loving opportunities that await you for three days in Dublin. https://www.saastock.com/agenda We still have a few discounted tickets available for you, our devoted listeners. Tune in to get it and a grab a ticket before July 31st https://www.saastock.com/tickets    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

This week of the SaaS Revolution Show, we devote the entire episode to Customer Success. Alex Theuma takes you on a journey that spans from the stages of SaaStock 16 and 17 through to SaaStock on Tour Helsinki and New York to pick up some of the best stories and advice from Customer Success practitioners. The episode is divided into four parts. The first part defines Customer Success, helps you figure out when is the best time to start with it, and looks at how companies like Slack and Drift kicked it off. In the second part, our speakers cover how to build and scale a customer success team and how to figure out the compensation for CSMs. We then look at the all important metrics that measure the efforts and help you adjust. Finally, the episode brings you ideas about what customer success programs could look like and how to enable them. Some obvious, some not so. Throughout the episode, you will hear quotes and excerpts from Dan Steinman from Gainsight, David Apple from Typeform, Rav Dhaliwal from Slack, Julie Hogan from Drift, Dave Blake from Client Success, Michelle Danis from Datadog, Jane Medeiros from NewsCred and Lauren Crocetti from Yext. Listen on to hear: When should companies start thinking about it and implement it How do you start with building the team and then scale and evolve it What are the different metrics throughout the different stages of the company you should look at How to enable customer success initiatives Almost everyone you will hear from on the Customer Success Radio Hour will join us at SaaStock18. A 100 other speakers will bring tons of valuable content during the three days in Dublin. We have just released our full agenda - https://www.saastock.com/agenda As a listener, we genuinely want you to be part of the SaaStock global community we are building. For one time only, we are offering 300 euros off of passes until the end of July. Go to https://www.saastock.com/tickets, use code JULY300 and join 3000 new friends in Dublin in October 15th to the 17th.    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)

Workplace by Facebook was launched in October 2016. Heading it was Julien Codorniou in London, who had been working with Facebook since 2011. On this week's episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we sat with Julien, to get a unique peek into the workings of how a company such as Facebook operates in the SaaS B2B scene and the ways it breaks and reinvents the B2B sales and marketing rules. Listen on to hear: How Julien and Workplace turned the marketing and sales playbook upside down How they sell into giant corporations such as Walmart How the vision of a company can sell the product Julien is one of many speakers we will welcome to SaaStock18. We are excited to release our full agenda next week. Head over to https://www.saastock.com and sign up to be the first one to get a sneak peek at it.    Check out the other ways SaaStock is helping SaaS founders move their business forward: 🇮🇪 SaaStock Europe: 14-15 October 2025 | Dublin, IrelandBook tickets: https://saastock-europe.com/tickets/🇺🇸 SaaStock USA 2025: April 2026 | Austin, TexasBook tickets: https://saastock-usa.com/🤝 SaaStock Founder Membership: A private members group of B2B SaaS founders between $100K - $10M ARR who are committed to growth and helping others (https://www.saastock.com/founder-membership/)🌎 SaaStock Local: Monthly meet-ups in cities all around the world, bringing together SaaS enthusiasts and experts to discuss the most pressing topics in SaaS (https://local.saastock.com/home)