Brad van Leeuwen, Co-Founder and COO- Cledara has built a business helping 1,000 customers in over 30 countries manage their SaaS expenses. This provides Brad with a very unique insight into the state of the total spend in SaaS and the most recent SaaS purchasing trends.During today's episode, we cover four primary topics with Brad:State of SaaS Spend ManagementThe Impact of AI Native Software on SaaSThe Top AI Native CompaniesThe Impact on AI on Sales and MarketingThe first point Brad shared is that buyers are focused on increasing the relationships with their current vendors and the number of new SaaS solutions purchased has decreased by 50% over the last two years. In addition, existing buyers are looking to renew for longer periods and are looking to extend the agreement term in consideration of lower pricing. Thirdly, buyers are being much more discerning in what products they keep, and which they do not renew which increases the churn rate many SaaS vendors are experiencing.One data point Cledara captures is the SaaS momentum index which measures if companies are spending more or less on SaaS in the current year versus the previous year. For the 1H-24 the Index has stayed level at around 100 which means most buyers are not increasing their spend on SaaS products. This is confirmed by the lower growth guidance that many public SaaS companies are providing to the market.Is SaaS consolidation of point solutions happening in companies? The data says yes, companies are looking to consolidate multiple SaaS solutions into larger platforms, except native AI products which are leaning heavily towards point solutions.Next, we asked Brad how "AI purchasing" trends are evolving. Brad says the headlines are that companies are buying lots of different AI products, but when looking at what teams are really buying it starts with Marketing which is allocating 5% of their software purchases to AI. Sales is allocating about 1.3% of their budget to AI tools, but this is increasing quickly having increased from .3% in January 2024.Who is the primary decision maker when buying AI products? Based upon a survey of over 300 company CFOs, AI software is viewed as experimentation, and no tangible ROI has been delivered yet. At the same time, Cledara data shows that user adoption is increasing dramatically being primarily driven by individual contributors which is not seen by the CFO.What are some of the most popular native AI solutions being purchased in 2024? Brad highlighted that Cledara customers are adopting 30-40 new vendors per month across their 1,000+ customers. Once the first customer adopts a particular AI native solution, Brad sees the virality happening very quickly across the customer base...but the issue is churn is happening almost as fast as new solution adoption.AI spend now comprises about 3.5% - 4% of total software spend to AI point solutions, which includes ChatGPT/OpenAI.What is the primary benefit of AI solutions? Brad highlighted that many of the tools bring everyone in a department up to the same level of capabilities. The challenge is when users are forced to increase their productivity/effectiveness beyond the baseline created by everyone using similar tools.Brad highlighted how he used ChatGPT to write an article on the top 100 AI solutions in less than 60 minutes, on a task that would have traditionally taken days. Finally, we asked Brad his perspective on how AI solutions can decrease the staff required to produce the same level of output. Brad believes that the increase in productivity delivered by using AI tools will not primarily lead to a decrease in the amount of employees - rather it will result in more output from the current staff leading to faster revenue growth or growth efficiency.If you are interested in how total SaaS spend is being impacted by the emergence of AI point solutions and/or how AI will impact productivity as measured by increased efficiency and effectiveness - this episode is a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kris Rudeegraap, co-founder and co-CEO at Sendoso viewed the emergence of Sales Engagement Platform technology as the beginning of the end for email based outbound demand generation for B2B Sales professionals. This catalyzed him to take the leap to cfound Sendoso, a next-generation direct mail and corporate gifting platform. In today's conversation, we will discuss the history and business impact of Sendoso and corporate gifting including:The catalyst for founding SendosoThe current State of Pipeline GenerationThe impact of corporate gifting on Pipeline GenerationThe impact of corporate gifting on Customer RetentionThe first question we discussed was the most surprising learning Kris has had as a first-time founder and CEO. Kris highlighted that even after 8 years he is still as passionate about the business and vision as ever, and he found that his background in Sales has been extremely valuable in both recruiting employees and raising over $150M in Venture Capital funding. Kris highlighted that there were several similarities between conducting a fundraising effort and enterprise-class sales. One of the advantages Kris felt he had due to his background in sales and that his "founder-led sales" efforts became direct inputs to the product roadmap.Next we pivoted to the reality of today's pipeline generation. First, Kris highlighted that with so many email sequencing tools and now AI tools to send emails that buyers are becoming numb to demand generation emails, as their inboxes become saturated.A common recommendation that Kris provided to any B2B Sales professional is to make every outreach, be it email or a corporate gift to ensure it is personalized to the target buyer. One advantage of corporate gifting is due to it being more expensive than sending an email, the majority of organizations and sales professionals are much more targeted and personalized when sending a "physical gift" to a target prospect.Kris shared that they use the power of AI to determine what type of physical gift would most resonate with different buyer types based upon function and/or title. Next we move onto the performance metrics behind the use of corporate gifting as a key component of pipeline generation programs.Kris shared that corporate gifting programs increase pipeline generation programs as measured by the following benchmarks from research by HockeyStack:3x increase in meeting rates6x increase in second-call rates1.84x increased win rates13% larger deals29% faster sales cycle lengthIf you are responsible for generating pipeline in your company, or for managing the budget allocation to grow revenue profitably, this conversation with Kris provides a lot of great insight into the Return on Investment of integrating corporate gifting into your new customer acquisition and customer retention programs.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How have product demonstrations evolved in today's buyer self-directed buying process? Andrea Wunderlich leads the product and customer marketing function at Maxio and recently introduced their virtual product tour. In today's self-directed buyer journey, it's good to break down how virtual product tours can be leveraged to serve the buyer, when and where they prefer.During this episode, several topics regarding launching a virtual product tour center include:The Genesis of the Maxio Virtual Tour CenterOvercoming concerns of competitors knowing about your product feature/functionThe opportunities and challenges of leveraging “open source” demonstration venues and channelsMeasuring the impact of buyer self-directed solution toursWhen should a product demonstration be used in a considered B2B selling environment? Andrea highlighted the commonly used process of first doing a discovery call and then moving into a demonstration call. Over the past two years, corporate buyers have wanted a more "B2C" buying experience and the sooner the better is the time to show the basics of the software and then move into a more tailored demonstration once the vendor better understands the unique requirements of a specific customer. If 65% - 70% of the buyer's journey is completed before they speak to a salesperson - why not ensure the potential buyers can understand the basic feature/function of your software?The genesis of the Maxio Virtual Tour Center was introduced by a new marketing hire who highlighted the trend for B2B SaaS companies to offer a virtual product tour to ensure potential buyers do not "self-qualify out" before they see the details of the product's capability. Using video is an expensive option, and in addition as products evolve quickly the entire video often needs to be recorded again and again. A virtual product tour platform primarily uses product screen shots and if a feature evolves, only one screenshot needs to be updated, and it is automatically inserted into the existing virtual product tour.  A KEY criteria to make the virtual product tour successful was having a champion who was passionate about making the virtual environment a reality.Gated or non-gated virtual product tours? Andrea strongly believes that removing all friction to get potential buyers to engage early in the buying process is critical to ensure that many companies can understand the product's features and function. Experiencing the Maxio solution without having to engage with sales was a key criterion to providing a low-friction, non gated approach to the virtual product experience.One of the interesting findings was the product tour center is used more in the middle of the funnel, versus a top of funnel first-time experience. Maxio has found that the tour center is used and then shared more by potential customers after a first sales call. With the target buyers of both the CFO and the product leader thinking about how to monetize (bill) their product, the virtual tour center was a better way to get the majority of the buying committee members to understand the capabilities of the product.How to measure the business impact and value of a virtual product tour center? One of the hard things about trying something new is the long tail aspect of the virtual product tour. Andrea highlighted that expectations were set that this would be at least a six-month timeframe before the ROI could be validated and that with the virtual product tour being a lower-cost initiative, the longer term ROI was acceptable. Initially, the engagement rate was the primary measurement, and then over time (6+ months), they could look into their attribution tool to see how the virtual product tour users were converting into qualified pipeline and new ARR.If you have a SaaS product and you are looking for new, innovative ways to get the potential target buyers to understand how your product aligns with their unique requirements - this is a great conversation to hear!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Greg Galant, Founder and CEO at Muck Rack created the industry's first Public Relations (PR) marketplace for journalists looking for great articles and for the companies producing those topics interesting to a target audience.The catalyst for creating Muck RackOvercoming Friction between Marketing, PR Agencies, and the PressWhat role does the Press play in a Content Marketing Strategy The future of PR in the “AI” eraGreg's journey started in 2005 when he launched the Venture Voice podcast with amazing guests including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Yelp Founder, and many more including Ed Williams, Founder Odeo - a first-generation podcast directory. The catalyst for starting a podcast was Greg's experience at CNN.com as an associate producer where he was looking for ways to download news stories from CNN onto his iPod.  In fact, the term podcast emanated from Apple and the iPod using RSS feeds to link to an audio clip.The above experience at CNN.com was the catalyst for creating his own podcast to highlight the stories of successful entrepreneurs. Venture Voice continued 2005 -2010 and Greg discontinued producing new episodes until Covid hit in 2020, and the additional free time created by being locked into his apartment stimulated Greg to restart the podcast with the first new episode guest - Mark Cuban!This experience highlighted the need for a website that could amplify those social media influencers that people should be following and an associated event named "The Shorty Awards".In 2009, Greg and his co-founder launched Muck Rack to help journalists find interesting founders and topics that would be great for their publications. At the same time, businesses started to use Muck Rack to identify those journalists they could pitch for an article that supported their business and increased their brand awareness.Today, Fortune 500 companies, publications, and journalists alike use Muck Rack as a match-making platform for public relations-centric content.If you are a fellow entrepreneur and love learning about other founders' journey to creating a new company or media asset, this conversation with Greg is a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this engaging discussion, Jay Topper, Chief Customer Officer at Fabric, shares insights from his diverse career in the military and retail. He delves into the importance of establishing a metrics-centric culture, emphasizing the need for simplicity in measurement. Jay highlights three key pillars: Accuracy, Relevancy, and Presentation, pivotal in maximizing business impact. He also discusses the challenges companies face in their metrics journey and the significance of adaptability and curiosity in professional growth.

Niclas Lilja, Founder and CEO at Younium recently joined our host, Ray Rike on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast to discuss his decision to re-locate from Sweden to the United States to better understand the U.S. buyer's market for recurring revenue billing solutions. During this fast-moving 30-minute conversation, Nic and Ray discuss the following topics:The Evolution of SaaS Pricing (yesterday, today and tomorrow)Global Expansion - The Cultural ChallengesHow Usage-Based or Hybrid Pricing Impacts SaaS Metrics CalculationTop 3 learnings as a European Founder and CEO entering the U.S. MarketWhy is there an opportunity for another SaaS billing and revenue management solution? The story begins with the evolution of SaaS pricing and where it is heading? Niclas highlighted the evolution to more complex product-led growth and usage-based pricing models, especially in AI solutions is creating a more flexible billing solution that can handle the nuances of every pricing model. Moreover, the ability to "experiment" with new pricing models will be critical for companies to test and identify the best pricing model for this solution and their target market(s).Why do companies evaluate a new or different billing solution? Though the evolution of hybrid pricing is one good catalyst, having billing software that can manage the revenue recognition process to compress the time to close the financial books is also an important variable. Though it is hard to believe, many SaaS companies do not have a robust billing and revenue management infrastructure leading to time-consuming manual mistakes and the associated time required to close the books. Another catalyst is when companies evolve into different markets with different pricing, a more comprehensive and flexible billing and revenue management reporting capability is required.Younium has a very focused Go-to-Market strategy, including a decision to focus primarily on the recurring revenue technology industry.  This dedicated Ideal Customer Profile focus required entering the U.S. Market if they can achieve their dream of being a $100M ARR company.What are some of the differences between selling to U.S. companies and selling to European companies? The first thing Niclas highlighted is that U.S. companies are quicker to adopt new trends and technologies. At the same time, U.S. companies are more focused on "what are" the benefits of a new technology versus in Europe, it's more about "how do we achieve" those benefits including a road map on how to move from the current state to the future state the software enables.If you are a B2B SaaS company evaluating how to increase the pace of pricing experimentation, shorten the financial close process, enhance revenue management and reporting, or are an international SaaS company considering entering the U.S. market this conversation is full of great insights, experience, and ideas.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michelle Valentine, Founder and CEO of Anrok is taking on the Sales Tax compliance challenges for B2B SaaS companies. Global Sales Tax compliance is a critical obstacle to successfully deploying a global Product-Led Growth strategy.Michelle's conversation with our host, Ray Rike covers a wide array of topics including:Evolution of Sales Tax and Compliance in SaaSChallenges of Global Sales Tax ComplianceDynamic Nature of SaaS Sales TaxEvolution from Investment Banking to Venture Capital to B2B SaaS Founder/CEOWhat was the catalyst for Michelle to found Anrok? Michelle's experience as a SaaS investor was on a run with a founder along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, and she was sharing their company's challenge with tax compliance which sparked the idea. Thinking back to the early days of Amazon, most states did not initially tax e-commerce sales - but that has changed dramatically over the last 10+ years and Michelle saw the same change to B2B SaaS in the future!Michelle provided the history of State sales tax in the 1920s, which was introduced on physical retail store sales as a revenue source for States. In 2018, a similar concept began to be deployed by States on cloud-delivered software (SaaS) - though it is to be noted that California never charged for software sold in the state. Stimulated by COVID-19, a new reality was introduced - if you had an employee, even a remote employee in a state, you had to charge Sales Tax in that state. Based upon a Supreme Court case in 2018 (South Dakota vs Wayfair), there is also a "revenue threshold" that requires companies to collect sales taxes in the state of the customer that bought software/SaaS from the company. Think about the challenge of staying on top of each state's Sales Tax laws, and then how much more difficult that becomes when expanding globally.Many countries worldwide will require sales tax on even the first sales in that country.  VAT ID validation is one approach to determine if a specific transaction requires sales tax collection - but each country does have different local thresholds.Why is now the time for next-generation sales tax compliance software? The majority of sales tax compliance software was built for consumer companies, and was not developed to understand global sales tax compliance, was not built with recurring revenue in mind and thus did not have the data model flexibility to expand and adapt to a rapidly changing regulatory environment. Even cities like Chicago are now requiring software purchased and/or used in their jurisdiction to be taxed.If you lead a B2B SaaS company that is selling your solution to companies in states outside of where your company is headquartered, and especially if you are considering selling to companies around the globe, this conversation with Michelle is full of amazing Sales Tax compliance insights that make for an insightful listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Henry Schuck, Founder and CEO has been leading ZoomInfo since he first founded the company in his law school dorm room through multiple funding rounds leading to an IPO in 2020. Henry shares his journey and his leadership evolution which continues today as he maneuvers the industry's choppy waters of 2023 and 2024!The journey from founding DiscoverOrg to the ZoomInfo IPO…and beyondData-driven processes and decisions - how they are used at ZoomInfoLessons learned from leading a public company during an industry correctionHenry founded ZoomInfo 17 years ago in his law school dorm when he was 23 years old.  The goal was and continues to be to provide Sales and Marketing professionals with the most up-to-date data to inform them who their prospects are who their buyers are and if they are in the market for their category of solutions.The journey started as a boot-strapped business with two first-time founders including $50,000 of personal credit card funding! TA Associates was the first outside capital brought into the company when the company hit $30M Run Rate revenue, which allowed for investing into the business including acquisitions and scaling Go-to-Market.In 2017 they acquired RainKing and then acquired ZoomInfo in 2019 and that was when the original company - DiscoverOrg became ZoomInfo. The primary market had traditionally been the B2B Technology industry, and the ZoomInfo acquisition enabled a more horizontal focus across additional industries focused on B2B Selling.On June 4, 2020 ZoomInfo went public - how did that change Henry's role as the CEO? The first statement was you do not want being in a public company to change you as a leader much, but at the same time, there are new responsibilities including a new set of investors. Moreover, as a public company, you are constantly fundraising as you need to meet the institutional investors regularly and the public stakeholders are more transient, and building trust with them is critical.Staying focused on what is most important in running the business and executing is still an important role of the CEO, which does not change dramatically as a CEO. One of the things that does change materially as a company scales is to hire people who can take on the majority of day-to-day execution of the strategy. At the same time, the CEO focuses more on setting the strategy and hiring great executive leaders. The acquisition of RainKing required Henry to build the skills of integrating a competitive company and its employees into the company, and then the acquisition of ZoomInfo made the company much larger which requires an additional skill set of leading a larger workforce.Henry shared how does a CEO know if an executive can scale to the next level of the company's growth.  One, they need to learn quickly and simultaneously they need to build a great team underneath them to help scale their function. A great team allows the department head to take additional time to learn the skills required at that stage of the company's evolution. Without a great team, that learning process is compressed and may not afford the department executive the time to grow on the job without negatively impacting the business.One of the most important parts of the executive leadership team's role is to be very aligned with the CEO to intimately understand the vision and then to ensure you are executing the priorities that align with the vision.How does the role of the CEO of a public company change during a period of economic uncertainty (post ZIRP) and decreasing growth? The difference in leadership when growth decelerates is you can not spend as much, so the need to build the muscle to determine the best way to prioritize investments increases.  Another key change is the need for "transparency" increases as growth decelerates, including providing the narrative so it is not developed out of thin air.  Things like here is where we are succeeding, here is where we are struggling, and then monthly updates on how the company is performing as measured against the priorities, the strengths, and the threats.Henry says that in 2024 they have their best people ever, and the best level of engagement which he credits to having a higher level of transparency.Henry shared the importance data plays in their decision-making. Henry highlighted one area is if there is a data source that identifies prospects that will convert into customers at a higher rate and with an increased velocity. One example was to identify prospects that did not show up to a scheduled meeting and then take a systemic, data-driven approach to follow up with those no-shows and get them back into an active sales cycle. This "play" became a material source of new customer ARR every month!If you are a founder, a CEO, or a Go-to-Market executive this conversation with Henry is full of great insights and ideas on how to scale a company and increase GTM efficacy in today's changing purchasing environment.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Matthew Blumberg, author of the Start-Up CEO Field Guide and founder of Bolster provides his insights and highlights from his series of books for start-up executives. Our host, Ray Rike, and Matthew discuss many of the main topics in the Start-Up CEO and directly from Matthew's experience as a multiple-time founder and CEO including:Lessons from being the founder & CEO at the same company for ~ 20 yearsImportance of Authentic Leadership in Changing TimesMoving beyond Storytelling to Execution to Selling your companyEach book in the "Start-Up" series was written specifically to help founders and CEOs use each book as a guide along their journey as a founder and as a CEO.What are the unique experiences gained from founding and running the company for almost 20 years? Learning how to pace yourself for the long term is key. Moreover, if you want an organization that is engaged and vibrant it starts with YOU...keeping yourself engaged and vibrant is served well by viewing each day, month, and year as a new opportunity to learn grow, and evolve as a leader. This is especially important as each stage of growth requires a different skill set than what got you there.One of the challenges of leading a company for an extended period is keeping those employees who have also been around for a long time to keep them fresh and get good at rotating people into different departments. One of the advantages of this approach is that they already have tribal knowledge and share the company's values.The Start-Up CEO is broken into six sections, and one is "Managing yourself so you can manage others". Why was this an important topic to Matthew? One was his journey to learning how to receive feedback gracefully, which is hard for everyone, and took Matthew a while to become good at receiving feedback. One of the key lessons Matthew learned was the need to "act upon" the input to make sure the person sharing the feedback is assured it was heard and accepted.Another learning was that Matthew's orientation to "think by talking" and "manage by walking around" could be a double-edged sword. Sometimes employees will take a conversation that the CEO thinks is an idea vetting opportunity that can be viewed as a "decision" versus "discussion", especially with people lower in the organization.Another example of needing to be careful of your natural orientation is being a "pacesetter", who is more focused on getting stuff done versus building long-term relationship capital.Why did Matt write a second edition of the "Start-Up CEO"? It was because he had recently sold Return Path, and he wanted to finish the book including his company being sold, and he also wanted to capture many of the social learnings from leading a company during COVID and the resultant change in the workforce that evolved during the remote work era.One of the final topics Matthew and Ray discussed was the value of collecting data from both internal resources and external sources, especially customers. Matthew highlighted his use of "active eavesdropping" to hear how employees communicated the company messaging to prospects and customers, and also hear what customers were saying to the rank and file that may not be shared with the CEO.If you are a first-time CEO or preparing for the next phase of growth in leading your company, this episode and conversation is a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Julio Martinez, Founder and CEO of Abacum has been involved in Finance for most of his career. He then transitioned into the technology industry and was responsible for launching products for 4 years before founding Abacum.During this episode, we will cover 4 primary topics with Julio:The vision behind founding AbacumThree common FP&A mistakesFP&A’s role in developing corporate strategyUnique challenges of a start-up in a crowded categoryWhat was the catalyst for founding Abacum? After 20 years working with Finance teams across hundreds of companies, Julio saw and felt his client's pain of managing the financial planning and modeling process which was an area that Julio had seen challenges repeating again and again for his clients.What are the most common challenges facing the FP&A leader in 2024? The most important one is that FP&A teams need near real-time access to financial and operational data to deliver near real-time insights based on the metrics that matter to the senior leadership team. Today, it is a very manual process for most FP&A teams.The above need suggested that FP&A is being asked to go beyond period-specific modeling, planning, and budgeting and be able to have insights on near real-time performance, at least every week, and highlight the metrics trends quickly to the executive decision-makers.Over the last 10 years, FP&A's role has been elevated to a more strategic function that is involved in analyzing performance trends and metrics "in-period" to accelerate how their insights are factored into the next period's operating decisions and priorities.One of the recent posts that Julio made on LinkedIn focused on the most common mistakes that FP&A organizations make. A classic first mistake under indexing the importance of partnering and building strong relationships with other departments and their leadership. This "relationship capital" will result in gaining additional insights into the issues impacting the financial performance trends. A second challenge is the FP&A professional is great at modeling and using analytical tools, but often does not understand the business well enough to gain a seat at the executive table to go beyond reporting on performance trends, but also on what to do about the challenges facing the business.Many finance teams are spending 60% - 80% of their time gathering and modeling financial performance trends, and if they could flip that time to 60% - 80% of their time being spent on the analysis and then solution ideation specific to what the financial operations reports are surfacing.Next, we discussed the unique challenges of introducing a new product into a function and process that has been using technology and mature vendors for many years and even decades in certain industries. Julio says it starts with diving deep into your target market's and prospects' business to answer how your product meets their highest priority pain points and the challenges that are specific to their environment. Secondly, Julio highlighted having a "strong opinion" and "innovation" into how technology can address business processes and challenges that still exist even after using alternative technologies or approaches. Another key factor is to ensure that some of the key customer-facing resources are "domain experts" who have served in the role of their buyers and users and can quickly develop shared experience and trust-based relationships with both the customers and the internal product team.If you are responsible for leading an FP&A team, or use the outputs of the FP&A team to plan, manage, and improve your operational function this conversation with Julio Martinez, Founder and CEO Abacum is a great listen!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.