AI to ROI

In Episode #1 of this 2-episode conversation, Ray discusses the key findings from the Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) annual "State of the Cloud" report for 2023 with Janelle Teng, Vice President and co-author of this year's report. Janelle is involved in many different research programs at BVP, including the "State of the Cloud" and the "Scaling to $100M ARR" reports. In this first episode of the...

Former VP of Marketing at Hopin and event industry thought leader Julius Solaris joined me on the latest episode of the Metrics that Measure Up Podcast. Julius has been involved in the event industry for over two decades, and has been involved in the creation and successful exits of two different event technology platforms - so provides a very unique perspective on where the event industry has bee...

Excel is the #1 tool B2B SaaS companies use for many financial tasks, including calculating SaaS metrics to surface insights for operating decisions and investor updates. Ali started his career in tech as an auditor at Ernst and Young, with a priority focus on revenue recognition and reporting. While auditing a top tier B2B SaaS company, he was provided multiple spreadsheets with thousands of rows...

The Alexander Group works with many of the leading companies in the B2B SaaS industry, and I was recently joined by Ted Grossman, their co-lead of the technology industry practice, and Davis Giedt, Director of Research and Analytics. Based upon Ted and Davis' unique insights and understanding of B2B SaaS due to the discussions and data from over one hundred customers, coupled with their historic S...

Matt Wolach is the founder of Xsellus and host of the Scale your SaaS podcast. Matt is one of those guests that have taken over a year to be on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast. Matt has hosted over 250 episodes of "Scale your SaaS" and was one of the inspirations for this podcast. The first question I asked Matt was about the common attributes that successful SaaS founders exhibited. By being...

Eric Christopher, the founder, and CEO of Zylo is sitting on top of one of the industry's largest SaaS spend data repositories and thus benchmarks, a key reason I knew I needed to have Eric as a guest on the podcast. What was the catalyst for founding Zylo? It started with Eric's experience as a revenue leader in two social media platform companies. Eric realized that by introducing new solutions...

In 2023 many SaaS companies are searching for what market(s) are going to drive their next phase of growth - and international markets, especially English-speaking countries are often considered by U.S. B2B SaaS companies. Rick Pizzoli, moved to Europe over 25 years ago to launch the European presence for U.S. based software companies. Based upon that experience, Rick and Sales Force Europe has he...

SaaS Spend Management is an emerging and rapidly evolving category - yet Ryan Neu, Co-Founder, and CEO of Vendr has a unique vision for how the category needs to evolve. Ryan has a background in public accounting, and then transitioned to software sales, including a role in the early days at Hubspot. During his career selling, he realized that selling great products is hard, takes too much time an...

If you have ever been frustrated with the forecasting process and accuracy at your company - this episode is for you! Guy Rubin is the founder and CEO of ebsta, a leading provider of Revenue Intelligence - the next generation of forecast management. Guy founded ebsta to automate the logging of sales rep activity directly into their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) like Salesforce and Hubspot...

Friday, March 10th, 2023 - a moment in B2B Technology and Start-Up ecosystem history that many will never forget and hopefully provides a foundation for learning the risks and rewards of venture-backed, early-stage entrepreneurship. Todd Gardner founded SaaS Capital in 2007, the industry's first "recurring revenue credit facility". Before names like Salesforce, Workday, and Snowflake were wel...

Over February and March 2023, we spoke with several founders, CEOs, and executives at SaaS Spend Management vendors. In this episode of the Metrics that Measure Up podcast, we discussed the evolution, best practices, and ideas on how to introduce a SaaS Spend Management program with Brad Van Leeuwen, Co-Founder and COO at Cledara. Brad stated that his own experience as an entrepreneur with the cha...

Planning in 2020 continues to be chalked full of uncertainty based on the current macroeconomic reality. Assuch, being a finance leader in 2023 is even more challenging, and unpredictable -  but developing an operating plan and budget is an important and critical component of the CFO's job. First, is being "hyper-realistic" is the theme of the year, especially on top-line revenue. Understanding re...

How does writing a 400-page novel lead to founding a SaaS Spend Management company? It was the start of David Campbell's journey which including breaking into B2B technology sales where he saw the challenges companies of all sizes have with buying technology. What is the definition of "SaaS Spend Management" according to David? David defines it as "spend management for the most important asset cat...

Oded Zehavi has global payment experience from his time as an executive at leaders including PayPal and Payoneer. With Spend Management, especially SaaS Spend Management, becoming such a hot topic in 2023 - we wanted to start our conversation with Oded to understand his definition of "Spend Management"? Oded defines spend management as enabling finance teams to automate, control, and increase visi...

Have you ever met someone in their "early career" that you just knew was going to be successful? That was my feeling when I first met Guy Yalif, Founder and CEO of Intellimize almost 20 years ago! Guy has been both a Marketing and Product leader, which led to his creation of a company focused on optimizing full funnel conversion. Guy's vision is to personalize each website visit at the moment to c...

How many times have you visited a B2B website and cringed at being asked to provide your contact information, including your email just to download a white paper or watch a video? Why is this a reality in 2023 on most B2B SaaS websites? Because "leads" are still a primary measurement of Marketing success and marketers have not yet invested in the processes and instrumentation to focus on both the...

Media-Led Growth (MLG) is a term first introduced here on the Metrics that Measure Up podcast and the central theme of this episode. Who better to discuss this topic than Patrick Campbell, Founder, and CEO of ProfitWell, recently purchased by Paddle for an unofficial $180M+ Patrick was a pioneer in building brand media assets inside a B2B SaaS company at ProfitWell - what led to the decision to in...

Product-Led Growth is one of the hottest topics and trends in the B2B SaaS industry. Heading into 2023, most company will be evaluating their usage of every SaaS tool, and as a vendor understanding how customers are using your product is foundational to understanding and forecast customer retention metrics. Todd Olso founded Pendo, the leading Product Analytics solution provider, over 9 years ago....

Mark Roberge is the founder and Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital and previously was the Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot from 2007 to 2016.  Mark is also the author of the best-selling book "The Sales Acceleration Formula". The lessons learned over his nine years leading revenue at HubSpot have led to several new endeavors including creating a Sales curriculum being taught at Harvard Business...

Imagine having your founder and CEO working weekends to develop leads and a calling list for the VP Sales in an early-stage B2B SaaS company.  That was Mark Kosoglow's experience when he first joined Manny Medina, the founder, and CEO at Outreach - the leading Sales Engagement Platform company in the industry. I asked Mark about the reality of leading Sales at an early-stage B2B SaaS company, and...

Heading into 2023 companies are preparing for larger buying teams, and increased scrutiny on every purchase. I could not think of a better backdrop to speak with Brent Adamson, the author of The Challenger Sale and The Challenger Customer. The Challenger Customer is based on research focusing on the different "profiles" of the buying team in a considered "SaaS" purchase. This i...

Heading into 2023, B2B SaaS CFOs are doubling down on using performance metrics to guide the 2023 operating budget. A key question is what metrics they use to help evaluate the Marketing budget, and what metrics they wish they had from Marketing to help inform budget allocation and investment decisions. Chris Golec, the founder, and CEO of intent data and account-based program platform leader Dema...

Mergers and Acquisition analyst to FP&A professional to SaaS CFO. This is the path that CJ Gustafson took on his journey to becoming the CFO at Parts Tech. The common thread across each step of his journey was metrics, a perfect subject for CJ's appearance on the show. CJ developed his excel and financial chops during his first role as an M&A analyst, which served as the foundation fo...

STOP if you do not think that the concept of "Kind Folks Finish First" is applicable in corporate America! Sam Jacobs, the founder, and CEO of Pavilion realized that getting fired for the third time was the catalyst for finally understanding that pursuing his real passion "to help others" was the key to finding both success and fulfillment. Sam credits a shift in "mindset&...

Nick Franklin is the Founder and CEO of ChartMogul, a leading SaaS Metrics Reporting, and Subscription Analytics Platform. Nick worked for five years at ZenDesk, where he led both Europe and then Asia-Pacific before founding ChartMogul eight years ago. With 2,500 B2B SaaS companies as customers, Nick's insights around how companies use metrics to inform decision-making are unmatched. Nick&apo...