The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Managers often grapple with how to create and scale a global product team. Scaling a team isn't about increasing the size, rather it's about increasing the output of the teams and producing tangible value. For that reason, scaling teams require different leadership chains inside the company.   Poorvi Shrivastav, GM and VP of Products at HubSpot, shares her passion for team development and discusse...

Category creation involves dreaming up a new suite of products that can sell via traditional channels or methods. It's a process that demands more than a game-changing product, as it takes having the right talent on your team and a consistent vision that drives all aspects of your business.   Mark Ghermezian, the co-founder of Braze, takes us through his journey of reinventing a category and build...

What are the key product and organizational learnings from taking a company to $500 million in annual recurring revenue in just six years? Kiren Sekar joined Samsara's founding team as a CPO after working with the co-founders at their previous company, Meraki. Calling on more than twelve years of product work between Meraki and Samsara, Kiren shares valuable and actionable insights on innovating i...

Every sales leader struggles to retain their talent - especially in today's employee market. In this session, Alice Katwan, Twilio's SVP and GM of North America Sales, will reveal her strategies for building a high-performing sales team that sticks around for the long haul. If you are spending too many cycles recruiting, onboarding, and worrying about retaining your top sales reps — this session i...

Spenser Skates is the CEO of Amplitude, one of the leading customer analytics services for enterprises and product makers. But getting customers like Twitter, Instacart, Match, and IBM didn't happen overnight. Spenser lays out the mistakes young companies will often make as they grow, and how he positioned Amplitude for growth and success. He found these lessons essential for founders to learn on...

Spenser Skates is the CEO of Amplitude, one of the leading customer analytics services for enterprises and product makers. But getting customers like Twitter, Instacart, Match, and IBM didn't happen overnight. Spenser lays out the mistakes young companies will often make as they grow, and how he positioned Amplitude for growth and success. He found these lessons essential for founders to learn on...

Carly Brantz scaled marketing at SendGrid to grow company revenue from $5M to $200M. Now as DigitalOcean CMO, she's focused on marketing to its developer and startup audiences and helping them on their growth journeys. Carly will share lessons learned as a marketing leader – and how simplicity, community, credibility and happiness – provide a powerful platform for growth. SaaStr GM & SVP, Marketin...

Being a product leader is different at every company, and learning to lead at every company can widely vary. After leading product teams at Twitter, Oculus, and Robinhood, and working with companies of all sizes at McKinsey, TechStars, and now as an investor — here's exactly how Madhu approaches his first 90 days on the job as CPO at Notion, step-by-step. He'll walk through foundations, learnings,...

SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with Raise Commercial Real Estate CEO Justin Bedecarre and Head of Raise's New York office, Jamie Katcher, to discuss the future of work. Raise. Work is a leader in planning, leasing, and sourcing tech real estate spaces. Full video: https://youtu.be/0MnlhVXUo3Q Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly...

The SaaS world is competitive, and standing out in a highly saturated market takes remarkable hard work and skill. However, the companies that adapt and create transformational change tend to survive. COO Anu Bharadwaj's years of experience at Atlassian have shaped her outlook on how to thrive in the market.  In this session, Boast. AI Co-Founder Lloyed Lobo interviews Bharadwaj as she shares Atla...

Sam Blond, Chief Revenue Officer at Brex, shares how to set and hit revenue targets for your sales team, when to adjust, and how to structure and hire your team around your sales KPIs and goals.  Video: https://youtu.be/NXKvxb1AoPU Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-set-and-hit-revenue-targets-with-brex-cro-sam-blond-pod-541-video/   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest com...

SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, shares the top 15 ways to help the sales team close more right now, this year -- with the same number of leads you already have!! Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/can-help-sales-team/   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter....

Customer feedback is an essential road map to guide a company toward success. When you have a customer-centric culture, your business has a greater chance of growing and thriving. But how can businesses create spaces for customers to engage in productive dialogue?  Mapistry sought out feedback about its direction by organizing a Customer Advisory Board (CAB). Mapistry received commendations for th...

OpenPhone and AgentSync are two SaaS businesses with very different growth strategies, but the same ultimate goal: to continue selling while simultaneously problem-solving for current customers. They are a perfect example of implementing a growth model, mastering it, and then expanding horizons into other growth strategies with strategic testing and experimenting. Contrary to the title of this art...

What do you remember about your experience in the workplace prior to 2020? Is it the moments of collaborative synergy and collective achievements? Is it the feeling of solving complex problems and hitting milestones with your team? Perhaps it's the joy of closing deals and celebrating with your colleagues? It's been more than two years since the pandemic interrupted our daily work life, and compan...

Reaching the first billion is a milestone for every SaaS company, so what's the best way to get there? During his SaaStr Annual presentation, Tom Clayton, CRO of Bill.com shared his insights and advice for growing revenue streams to maximize business success.    Video: https://youtu.be/AY5NFn1CSVo Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/the-path-to-a-billion-dollars-how-to-create-multi-revenue-streams-w...

All high-growth startups reach a point in scaling their business when their processes and operations start to inhibit their growth. From SendGrid to DigitalOcean, Yancey Spruill is the person these startups brought in when they were ready to graduate to the big leagues. In his presentation, Yancey will discuss the most common mistakes startup founders make and how to overcome hurdles at different...

Panelists: Katrina Wong, VP Marketing and Demand Generation Segment Asawari Samant, Head of Marketing, Anyscale Jeffrey Yoshimura, CMO and Customer Experience Officer, Snyk Three marketing leaders discuss the importance of community, data, and experimentation, as well as the do's and don'ts of using agencies. This episode is an abbreviated version of the session. You can see the full session here:...

In this episode, Marilee Bear, SVP North America Enterprise Sales at Zendesk sits down with SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser, to talk about the best practices to deploy in motivating and organizing your sales team in Q1. 

Talent Acquisition to Talent Access: Building a winning culture with a workforce that is 75% freelancers Upwork CEO Hayden Brown addresses common myths around working with freelancers, such as, "Freelancers aren't reliable," and, "I can't build my company culture with freelancers." She'll share how Upwork has scaled by including freelancers in every part of the company and treating them as part of...

Joe will share four case studies of companies that have achieved transformational growth using asynchronous communication. You'll hear how they've rebuilt sales processes, won talent wars, delivered best-in-class products, and fully reimagined the employee experience. He'll also highlight the work principles fueling these initiatives and the opportunities ahead for companies that employ them acros...

SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, shares the top 20 PLG (product-led growth), Self-Serve, Free, and Freemium lessons we can learn from everyone from Asana to Slack, Monday to Zoom, and Shopify to Squarespace.

SaaS is evolving rapidly. In many ways, we are witnessing the equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion in terms of the number of SaaS companies created each month. And these startups look different than their predecessors. Trends like vertical SaaS, Product-led Growth, and payment make the industry almost unrecognizable compared to the era of the SaaS pioneers more than a decade ago. Yet many companie...

Postman CEO Abhinav Asthana shares how community, product, data can power marketing, customer success, and sales are the key elements for the next generation of SaaS software leaders.   Full video here: https://youtu.be/jK8trhy5i-k Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/building-a-5-6b-company-with-a-product-led-flywheel-with-postmans-ceo-abhinav-asthana-pod-528-video/   Want to join the SaaStr communi...

A crucial part of any business model is customer acquisition. In order for a company to optimize their customer base, data must be intrinsic to their strategy. Join Gorgias CEO Romain Lapeyre as he discusses how the company acquired 10,000 SMB customers from just data alone. Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.   Video: https://youtu.be/5OJZM-uH4uE Blo...