SaaStr

The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

The Official SaaStr Podcast is the latest and greatest from the world of SaaStr, interviewing the most prominent operators and investors to discover their tips, tactics and strategies to attain success in the fiercely competitive world of SaaS. On the side of the operators, we center around getting from $0 to $100m ARR faster, what it takes to scale successfully and what are the core elements of hiring. As for the investors, we learn what metrics they hone in on when examining SaaS business, what type of metrics excites them and what they look for in SaaS founders.

Author

SaaStr

Category

Technology

Podcast website

www.saastr.com

Latest episode

Jul 10, 2026

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Episodes

SaaStr 075: Domo CMO, David Thompson on Why B2B Branding Is Both Consumer & Enterprise & Why Facebook & SEM Is Crucial For B2B Branding 18.11.2016

David Thompson is CMO at Domo , the company that allows customers to turn data into opportunities. David is a highly accomplished branding expert and recognized leader in demand generation, having served as longtime CMO of WebEx, where he named the company, helped create the cloud-based conferencing category and positioned the company for its IPO and subsequent buyout by Cisco. He also co-founded...

SaaStr 074: The 4 Step Playbook To Expanding Distribution Outside of Early Adopters & How Humans Really Want To Buy Software With Daniel Saks, Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ AppDirect 14.11.2016

Daniel Saks is the Co-CEO of AppDirect , which he founded in 2009 . AppDirect is the leading commerce platform for selling cloud services and at the firm, Daniel plays a key role in the growth and development of AppDirect, from attracting a leading team, to nurturing relationships with customers and partners. AppDirect has backing from some of the leading investors in the world including the likes...

SaaStr 073: David Skok Part 2: What Is Negative Churn? How To Get Different ACV's From The Same Product? Should Customer Success Be Involved In The Up Sell Process? 11.11.2016

Part 2 with David Skok , now David is a serial entrepreneur turned VC at Matrix Partners . He founded four companies: Skok Systems, Corporate Software Europe, Watermark Software, and SilverStream Software and did one turnaround with Xionics. Three of the companies he founded went public and one was acquired. In 2001 David joined Matrix Partners, who had backed his last two startups, as a General P...

SaaStr 072 Part 1: David Skok, SaaS Legend on How Long Should Your Payback Period Be, How To Assess Sales Rep Productivity & What Is A Good LTV In Relation To CAC 07.11.2016

David Skok is a serial entrepreneur turned VC at Matrix Partners . He founded four companies: Skok Systems, Corporate Software Europe, Watermark Software, and SilverStream Software and did one turnaround with Xionics. Three of the companies he founded went public and one was acquired. In 2001 David joined Matrix Partners, who had backed his last two startups, as a General Partner. David's successf...

SaaStr 071: 5 Steps To Building A Cohesive Team & How Founders Should Structure Off-Sites with Taro Fukuyama, Founder & CEO @ AnyPerk 04.11.2016

Taro Fukuyama is Founder & CEO @ AnyPerk. Born and raised in Tokyo, Taro is a Y Combinator graduate with AnyPerk and part of the first Japanese team ever to be admitted to YC. He was also named one of Business Insider's "Silicon Valley 100 Coolest People in Tech Right Now." Fun fact, Taro co-founded AnyPerk in a Taco Bell car park! What a story! They also have investment from the likes of DCM, YC,...

SaaStr 070: Whether You Should Have A Missionary or Mercenary Sales Team, Does Culture In Sales Really Matter & How To Make Sales and Engineering Work In Unison with Sequoia Backed Inkling Founder, Matt MacInnis 31.10.2016

Matt MacInnis is the Founder & CEO @ Inkling, the company that brings policies and procedures to life for your desktop workers. The company has backing from some of the best investors in the world with the likes of Sequoia, Felicis and Kapor Capital behind them. As for Matt, prior to Inkling, he spent 7 years at the one and only Apple Inc. I would also like to say a huge thank you to Taro Fukuyama...

SaaStr 069: 5 Key Elements Founders Must COnsider Before Embarking On The Sales Process with Whitney Sales, VP of Sales @ TalentIQ 28.10.2016

Whitney Sales is the VP of Sales at TalentIQ, has been involved in bringing products to market and managing high growth sales teams for over a decade. She is the creator of the Sales Method, a strategic framework for launching products, which she used to help three companies earn a place on the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies list. Prior to joining TalentIQ, Whitney held executive positions at...

SaaStr 068: Flexport's Ryan Petersen on Why NPS Is The Most Important Metric, How To Structure Internal Compensation Schemes & How To Implement @ Bottoms Up Decision Making Organisation 24.10.2016

Ryan Petersen is the Founder and CEO of Flexport , the freight forwarder for the internet age. Flexport recently raised a phenomenal $65m Series B from the likes of Founders Fund, First Round, Felicis, Bloomberg Beta, Yuri Milner, Susa Ventures and more incredible investors. With none other than YC founder Paul Graham stating 'Ryan has the rare ability to not just satisfy the market but grow it'....

SaaStr 067: Gusto's Joshua Reeves on How To Optimise The Hiring & Interview Process, How To Build Create An Ownership Culture & Why Every 6 Months A Company Becomes A New Company 21.10.2016

Josh Reeves is the Founder and CEO @ Gusto . Gusto reimagines payroll, benefits, HR, and personal finance and it is this reimagination that has led to their recent addition to the unicorn club with investors including Google Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Data Collective and General Catalyst, just to name a few. As for Josh, he was selected for the 2012 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Prior to co-founding Gus...

SaaStr 066: Why CEO's Should Lead From The Heart, Walk The Sales Floor, Pay The Sales Team Well & Why Sometimes, You Have To Go Slow To Go Fast with Jeff Fernandez, Founder & CEO @ Grovo 17.10.2016

Jeff Fernandez is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Grovo , the enterprise learning solution that allows you to educate and empower your employees. At Grovo, Jeff oversees sales, investor relations, and the building of Grovo's award-winning culture. Prior to founding Grovo in 2010, Jeff served as product manager at Clickable (acquired by Syncapse). From 2006 until 2009, he led business development and sales...

SaaStr 065: How To Create An Ownership Culture, When To Hire Your First Customer Success Rep and Why The Funnel Needs To Be Re-Invented with Sangram Vajre, Founder & CMO @ Terminus 14.10.2016

Sangram Vajre is the Co-Founder & CMO at Terminus, the leading account-based marketing platform. Prior to Terminus, Sangram was the Head of Marketing @ Pardo, prior to it's acquisition by Salesforce. Sangram is also the brains behind the marvel that is Flip My Funnel which challenges the status quo of traditional B2B marketing practices and transform how B2B marketers approached driving revenue in...

SaaStr 064: Why Now Is A Really Good Time For SaaS Startups To Raise, How SaaS Startups Can Innovate Their Business Models & The Biggest Takeaways From Working With John Doerr @ Kleiner Perkins with Matt Murphy, Managing Director @ Menlo Ventures 10.10.2016

Matt Murphy is a Managing Director @ Menlo Ventures where he focuses on multi-stage investments across cloud infrastructure and AI-first SaaS applications. Since joining Menlo, Matt has led investments in Heap Analytics, Usermind, and Veriflow. Previously, Matt was a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins for over 15 years.  Matt was also an observer at Google (from initial investment to IPO), launche...

SaaStr 063: The Sales Script That Increases Conversion By 80%, How To Optimise Events Increasing Leads & Demos & How Bootstrapped Startups Can Scale Teams Alongside Revenue with Brandon Bruce, Founder & COO @ Cirrus Insight 07.10.2016

Brandon Bruce is the Co-Founder and COO @ Cirrus Insight , the plugin for Gmail and Outlook that automatically updates Salesforce as you work. Cirrus is a bootstrapped startup with triple-digit yearly growth since it's founding 4 years ago and has grown from 2 co-founders in 2011 to a team of 55 people today. And I have to say a huge thanks to Aaron Ross, Author @ Predictable Revenue for the intro...

SaaStr 062: Why Unprofitable Customers Must Be Fired, Segmentation in Sales Breeds Laziness & The Future of Sales in an AI Driven World with John Barrows, Godfather of Sales 03.10.2016

John Barrows is essentially the Godfather of Sales. We often have VPs of Sales from tech titans on the show but who trains those VPs and sales reps to be the best in the world at sales? That is where John Barrows comes in, with clients including Dropbox, Box, Marketo, Twilio and many more, John has amassed a wealth of knowledge and experience allowing him to provide the most proactive sales tips a...

SaaStr 061: The Optimal Relationship Between Customer Success & Sales, Why CS Is Not A Playbook Function & Why The Best CSMs Are Like Good Parents with John Gleeson, VP Customer Success @ Affinio 30.09.2016

John Gleeson is VP of Customer Success @ Affinio where John was employee #1. 2 years and a half years later, John is the VP of Customer Success following their Series A and has seen the team expand to over 40 people and have offices in New York, Toronto, Halifax and Ireland. John has written a special blog post just for SaaStr listeners today outlining his ultimate guide to customer success readin...

SaaStr 060: How To Use SDR As A Growth Engine a & Customer Success As A Bridge For Gaps In Product with Lawrence Coburn, Founder & CEO @ DoubleDutch 26.09.2016

Lawrence Coburn is the Founder & CEO @ DoubleDutch , the category leader for event marketing automation. If you are at SaaStr and have the pleasure of using the SaaStr app, yep that is DoubleDutch! They have raised more than $75m in VC funding from some of the best VCs in the world including Index Ventures, Bessemer, Floodgate and Bullpen. As for Lawrence he is a three time entrepreneur, Lawrence...

SaaStr 059: How To Measure Sales Team Success, Test New Pricing, Build Culture From Day 1 & The Biggest Learnings From Watching Box Scale Into Hypergrowth with Michael Cardamone, Managing Director @ Acceleprise 23.09.2016

Michael Cardamone is the Managing Director of Acceleprise , a SaaS focused accelerator based in San Francisco and backed by leading operators. He is also an advisor to and angel investor in early stage SaaS companies. Prior to Acceleprise, Michael was one of the first 30 employees at Box in a business development role and then led partnerships at an EdTech company called AcademixDirect.   In Today...

SaaStr 058: Intercom's Eoghan McCabe on Why There Are No Rules For Building a SaaS Company, How To Turn Every Challenge Into An Opportunity & Why You Will Never Have As Much Empathy For Others As You Do For Yourself 19.09.2016

Eoghan McCabe is CEO and co-founder of Intercom. The customer communications platform that has taken the saas world by storm in the last few years with 116m in VC funding from truly some of the world's best including Bessemer, Social Capital and Index Ventures. He previously founded Contrast, an award-winning software design consultancy, and co-founded Exceptional, a developer tool startup acquire...

SaaStr 057: Building & Scaling Your Core Execs from VPs of Sales to CSMs with Louis Jonckheere, Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ Showpad 16.09.2016

Louis Jonckheere is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ Showpad , the company that enables sales teams by making content, findable, presentable and trackable. They have raised from some incredible investors including Dawn Capital, Hummingbird Ventures and Insight Venture Partners who more recently led their Series C $50m fundraise earlier this year. As for Louis, Showpad is his second company. He and his co...

SaaStr 056: What SaaS CEO's Are Doing Wrong With Their Marketing, What Questions They Should Be Asking & Why B2C Marketers Make The Best B2B Hires with Tim Kopp, General Partner @ Hyde Park Venture Partners 12.09.2016

Tim Kopp , Tim is a Managing Partner with Hyde Park Venture Partners one of the leading early stage VCs in the Midwest . Prior to joining Hyde Park Venture Partners, Tim was the CMO of ExactTarget for 6+ years, leading a global team of nearly 300 amazing marketing leaders. Tim helped grow ExactTarget from $47M to $400M in revenue, through IPO, and ultimately to a $2.7B sale to Salesforce. He previ...

SaaStr 055: New Relic's Jim Stoneham on Why Your Core Exec Team Should Be Senior Experienced Individuals & When Is The Right Time To Bring On Younger Less Experienced Candidates 09.09.2016

Jim Stoneham is VP of Infrastructure Products @ New Relic and Jim joined New Relic when the company acquired Opsmatic, where he was co-founder and CEO. Prior to Opsmatic, Jim was CEO of Payvment, a social commerce platform for SMB sellers that was acquired by Intuit in early 2013. He joined Payvment from Yahoo, where he led Communities (Flickr, Answers, Groups, Delicious) as well as the integratio...

SaaStr 054: Why You Should Hire A Product Leader From Day 1 & How To Navigate 12-18 Month Sales Cycles With Only 18 Months Runway 05.09.2016

Chad Arimura is the Founder & CEO @ Iron.io , where he drives the team to build the world's best cloud infrastructure services. Now they do have some pretty sizeable clients including the likes of Google, Zenefits, Twitter, Whole Foods and they have the backing from the likes of Steve Anderson's Baseline Ventures, Bain Capital, Matt Ocko from Data Collective and our friends at Sapphire Ventures ju...

SaaStr 053: Assessing Product Market Fit, Why Customer Segmentation Is Crucial & The Rise Of The Full Stack CEO with Greg Sands, Founding Partner @ Costanoa Venture Capital 02.09.2016

Greg Sands is the Founder and Managing Partner of Costanoa Venture Capital . Prior to founding Costanoa Venture Capital, Greg was a Managing Director at Sutter Hill, where he was an early investor in the likes of Feedburner, AllBusiness, and Return Path just to name a few. Before Sutter Hill, Greg was the first hire at Netscape after its founding engineering team. As Netscape's 1st Product Manager...

SaaStr 052: Building & Scaling Box's Customer Success Team with Jon Herstein, SVP Customer Success @ Box 29.08.2016

Jon Herstein is the Senior Vice President of Customer Success at Box where Jon works to ensure that all of Box's Enterprise and Business customers are phenomenally successful. Jon has worked with some of the biggest names in the tech world, including Accenture, Informatica and most recently NetSuite, where he served as VP of Professional Services for North America and EMEA. Before NetSuite, Jon le...

SaaStr 051: Hire Slow & Fire Fast & Why scaling Product Is All About Consistency with Kristen Koh Goldstein @ HireAthena 26.08.2016

Kristen Koh Goldstein is the Co-Founder @ HireAthena , the on demand workforce specialising in accounting, HR and payroll. Prior to Hire Athena, Kristen was the Co-Founder @ Scalus, where she raised millions of dollars in venture capital from top VCs including Google Ventures and Sherpa Capital. Before that Kristen was the Co-Founder @ BackOps, the world's fastest growing back office solution. If...

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