SaaS Connect - SaaS Partnerships & SaaS Leaders

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Sophia Sithole , Head of Customer Success and Partnerships at CloudApp at the time of this presentation and now Senior Partner Marketer, Platforms at Zapier, explains what made a small startup abandon tradition to develop a channel sales strategy; how they did it; what worked; what didn't work. CloudApp, an instant video and image sha...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Alex Fala, Chief Executive Officer at Vend at the time of this presentation and now Chief Executive Officer at Syft Technologies, presents a conversation on how to win a vertical, and shares some of the successes, failures, and observations of their partners and what’s worked for them at Vend. Vend, a company that provides point of sa...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Herman Man, VP of products and partnerships (Americas) at Xero at the time of this presentation and now chief product officer at BlueVine, talks about cloud and services and how SaaS can enable the success and transformation of SMBs. Xero, cloud accounting software, is very focused on small businesses and looks particularly at how to...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , we’re joined by Cory Snyder, VP of Sales and Partnerships at Maropost, and Bob Moore, Co-Founder and CEO at Crossbeam. Crossbeam raised $76 million for partnership tech, even though it had not written a single line of code yet, nor did it have any customers. Crossbeam, founded in 2018, helps companies build more valuable partnerships;...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Ross Garrett explains how to become a profitable platform with the superpowers of the network economy. At the time of the recording, which occurred during a 2018 SaaS conference, Ross was the Chief Product Officer at Cloud Elements. Today, he is Head of Product at Volkswagen Automotive Cloud. Here is what’s included in the presentatio...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Sandeep Srinivasan, Evangelism and Presales - Reseller Partners at Talkdesk at the time of the recording, but now Senior Product Manager - AI at Amazon Web Services, shares how Talkdesk got their PS (Professional Services) to break even. Talkdesk specializes in delivering contact center software. When Sandeep joined the company in 201...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Jeff Gardner, head of platform partnerships at Intercom at the time of the recording, and now VP of product and partnerships at api.video, shares Intercom’s journey making the transition from a product-first company to a platform-first company. The following points are shared: The problem with products, and the problem with platform-f...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Avanish Sahai, global VP, ISV and technology alliances at ServiceNow at the time of the recording, and now a member of the board of directors at HubSpot, shares a decade’s worth of experience around building platform ecosystems. Discover: Avanish’s career journey; how he got to where he is today. How he watched Salesforce grow in five...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Jamie Tharp, vice president of partnerships and business development at Justuno at the time of the recording, and now head of partnerships, Americas at Amazon Pay, provides a high-value presentation on how to understand your ideal agency profile in order to be more effective at marketing and sales in the SaaS space. Ideal agency profi...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Zach Svendsen , Senior Director of Alliances and Business Development at Tipalti, and Simon Bouchez , CEO & co-founder at Reveal, share their combined experience in SaaS partnership programs. Zach built his partner team at Tipalti, an accounting software financial technology business, from scratch starting in 2019 when there were...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Stu Richards, CEO of Bredin, shares some of the research they've conducted in the small to mid-size business space, specifically around how companies feel about SaaS-based applications. Bredin focuses on providing businesses with original research to understand, engage, acquire, and retain SMB customers, and it conducts a monthly surv...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Rob Belcher, managing director of SaaS Capital, shares findings from a B2B SaaS survey that the company produces, which details data on the state of the market and channel. SaaS Capital helps SaaS businesses fund their growth without selling more and more equity. To ensure they remain on top of B2B SaaS trends, metrics, and benchmarki...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Naresh Venkat, head of ML/AI Product Partnerships at Google at the time of the recording, but now co-founder and COO at Osmos, discusses how SaaS can supercharge with Google AI products. Google is an AI business, and this presentation covers the unique value of machine learning within partnerships as well as Google AI opportunities: T...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Nam Le, head of sales, Embedded Platform at Workato, an expert in partnerships and getting executive buy-in, explains how to get buy-in into the idea of partnerships. Nam Le is a salesperson who's met every stakeholder, every objection, and every motivator that you can imagine. The reason he’s our guest on this show is that he only de...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Nikita Zhitkevich, Director of Channel Partnerships and Alliances at PartnerStack, and Tyrone Lingley, Head of Partnerships at Ally.io, enjoy a conversation about what partnerships look like today and how to scale them. Some of what you can look forward to hearing about: Challenges in partnerships and obtaining quick growth. Partnersh...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Sachin Agarwal, principal product manager at LaunchDarkly at the time of this recording and now senior product manager at Google, shares from the product manager’s point of view the best methods of getting PM buy-in for partnership initiatives: What to know about good product managers, e.g. they are motivated by solving problems, they...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Craig Klemp, who was Sr. Director of Global Partnerships at Evernote during the time of recording, and is now VP of Strategy and Partnerships at EZ Texting, shares the lessons learned from international partnerships. Evernote, a productivity tool with 60,000 installs a day, boasts 225 million users worldwide, with 80% of those located...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Kyle Jenke, who at the time of this presentation was working in Global Partnerships at Intuit and is now Director of WhatsApp Partnerships at Facebook, talks about the three main things Intuit does within the partnering sphere that is different to other companies. A bit of background: Intuit poured massive amounts of resources into pa...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Rajiv Ramanan, Director - Startup Program and Technology Alliances at Freshworks, shares how the company turned its tech partnership strategies into a predictable revenue machine. Rajiv is joined by Jake Wallace, who at the time of the episode was Head of Strategic Partnerships at SignEasy and is now Head of Global Technology Partners...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , guests Patrick Oborn, co-founder and CPO at Telarus, and Michael Sterl, president at Mobile Solutions at the time of this interview and now SVP of Sales at Intelisys—talk about how the telecoms industry really knows how to sell complicated, variable cost subscription digital products, and how SaaS can learn from the Telecoms channel....

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Kyle Porter, CEO of Salesloft, provides rich information about how organizational health, values, mission, vision and alignment are the greatest competitive advantages a company can have. Kyle shares how he never used what he was taught from his wise mentors and ended up running his business into the ground, burning $250,000 of invest...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Ryan Walsh, Channel Chief and Chief Product Officer of Pax8—with its 3,000 partners, 200 employees, 20 vendors, and 900 supported products—shares how the company grew when it added the channel, and how you can, too. Some of the points that are discussed in this profitable presentation include: Why do you need a channel? There are a fe...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , we interview Amelia Kirby, Head of Global Technology and Platform Partnerships, Facebook Workplace. We discuss the partnership program which was launched earlier this year; their plans to grow the platform by integrating with vendors; and what they are looking for in technology partners. Facebook Workplace, currently boasting around 8...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by the Cloud Software Association , Emily Litwin, then from Strategy and Partnerships, and now Head of Business Development at Squarespace, discusses how the company, an all-in-one website building platform and product-centric company, thinks about and executes partnerships. Emily explains some of the best practices they learned along the way and how they consistent...

In this episode of SaaS Connect by Cloud Software Association , Daniel Saks, Co-CEO and President of AppDirect uses his many years of experience to share with you how to build, monetize, and scale your ecosystem. A value-packed episode, here are some of the points about what’s covered: How to enable ecosystems around content training enablement, so your customers can get value from those partners...