The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

I am delighted to present Part 2 of our feature of Gainsight. Joining me today I have Anthony Kennada , the founding VP Marketing at Gainsight where he is responsible for managing the company's global marketing strategy, from demand generation to brand marketing, and is credited with creating the "Pulse" community of Customer Success leaders. Anthony began his career as an early employee at Box. H...

This week on SaaStr we are celebrating the rise of GainSight with a special feature week dedicated to Gainsight and joining me today we have Gainsight CEO, Nick Mehta . Since Nick has been at the helm of Gainsight, it has experienced a meteoric rise to the top of the world of SaaS having practically created the category of customer success and revolutionising business work processes in doing so. D...

Joining us today on The Official Saastr Podcast is Nakul Mandan, Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, where he focuses on early stage SaaS investments. At Lightspeed, Nakul led the firm's investments in Gainsight and Reflektive. Previously, Nakul worked at Battery Ventures, where he helped lead the firm's investments in category defining companies such as Marketo, BlueJeans Networks, Gainsight,...

I am so excited to welcome Russ Hearl, Head of Sales @ Datahug. Datahug is a pipeline management and forecasting solution within Salesforce and backed by the likes of DFJ and Salesforce Ventures. Prior to Datahug, Russ was the VP of Sales at DoubleDutch where he built a sales machine that delivered over 1,500 new customer wins and took the business from $0 to over $20 million ARR in less than thre...

I am so excited to welcome Johnny Chin , Founder & CEO @ Bannerman to The Official SaaStr Podcast today. Bannerman is the company that provides on demand security staff and bouncers to some of the world's biggest companies including Spotify, Y Combinator, Weebly, Optimizely and many more incredible firms. Bannerman are also an alum of YC having been in their YC S14 Class. In Today's Episode You Wi...

To Commemorate the 3 month anniversary of the best conference ever, SaaStr Annual 2016. We thought we would take a trip back to the conference with one of our favourite discussions featuring Jason Lemkin , Founder @ SaaStr and John Somorjai , Executive Vice President of Corporate Development & Salesforce Ventures. Salesforce Ventures invests in the next generation of enterprise technology. The Sal...

Following our meeting at SaaStr Annual 2016, I am thrilled to welcome David Cancel . Now David really is a serial entrepreneur having founded 5 companies, with the last, Performable, being acquired by Hubspot, resulting in his taking up the position as Chief Product Officer at Hubspot. Now David is the CEO @ Drift. Drift allows you to talk to your website visitors and customers in real time. David...

Delighted to welcome Jon Miller to The Official SaastrPodcast today. John is the Founder & CEO @ Engagio, the all inone account based marketing platform that allows you to accelerateyour move to account based marketing, streamline account basedreporting and analytics and map salesforce leads to targetaccounts. Prior to Engagio, Jon was the Co-Founder and CMO atrocketship, Marketo .   Intoday's sho...

Joining us today on The Official Saastr Podcast is Laura Behrens Wu, Laura is the Founder & CEO @ Shippo, the API and dashboard for all your shipping needs. They have raised from the likes of SoftTech, 500Startups, SLow Ventures and many more incredible investors. In today's show with Laura we discuss:   What are APIs and what do they allow us to do? With APIs developer adoption is crucial, what h...

Welcome to  Episode 15  of The Official Saastr Podcast. Joining me today, I am delighted to welcome, Nicolas Dessaigne . Nicolas is the CEO and Co-Founder of Algolia , Algolia are a brilliant case study for the successful pivot, having started off life as an offline search engine for mobiles but really took off by helping companies deliver an  intuitive search-as-you-type experience  on their webs...

On the show today I am thrilled to welcome Russell Glass, Head of Products For LinkedIn Marketing Solutions. Formerly founder, president and CEO of Bizo, a B2B audience marketing and data platform which he, from founding in 2008 to $50mm+ revenue run-rate and over 150 employees before being acquired by LinkedIn for $175mm in August of 2014 he really is a Serial technology entrepreneur, having foun...

Joining us today, I am delighted to welcome Mark Woodward CEO @ Invoca  - software that helps marketers drive revenue with call intelligence. Invoca has built a platform that addresses the top concern for enterprise CMOs today — delivering personalized customer experiences across devices and channels. They have backing from the likes of Upfront Ventures who wrote this on Invoca's recent $30m raise...

Joining us today, I am delighted to have Daniel Chait, Founder & CEO @   Greenhouse  - software that gives people the power to build great companies. Greenhouse automates and simplifies the best practices for recruiting top talent, continuously monitors your recruiting activity, and automatically suggests improvements. They have backing from the likes of Social Capital, Benchmark and Felicis Ventu...

I am thrilled to welcome, Ajay Agarwal , Managing Director @ Bain Capital Ventures , where he focuses on early stage application software and SaaS investing. Included in his immense portfolio are the likes of Optimizely, SendGrid and GainSight, just to name a few and prior to crushing the world of investments, Ajay was an early employee at Trilogy, where as Head of Sales and Marketing he was instr...

Welcome to  Episode 10  of The Official Saastr Podcast. To celebrate this milestone, we have a very special guest: Mathilde Collin . Mathilde is the CEO and Co-Founder of Front , one of the world's most innovative young SaaS startups working in the space of email collaboration and in today's show with Mathilde we discuss: Mathilde's experience as a young founder and CEO in the enterprise space? Ho...

This episode was recorded at Saastr Annual 2016 featuring Jason Lemkin, Founder @ Saastr and Josh Stein , Partner @ DFJ. For those that do not know, Josh is arguably one of the most successful investors in the SaaS space having backed the likes of Box, Twilio, Yammer and many more from the very earliest of stages. In Today's Show We Cover: What is the fundamental differing between a great and a go...

This episode was recorded at Saastr Annual 2016 and it is an incredible conversation whereby Jason Lemkin deep dives into the career and wisdom of Keith Rabois. For those that do not know, Keith is a legend of the tech industry having helped build some of the most important companies in Silicon Valley including Paypal, Square and Linkedin. He is also a very prominent VC with Khosla Ventures and ha...

I am thrilled to welcome, Doug Pepper, Partner @ Shasta Ventures to the show today. Doug is a master when it comes to SaaS investments with his companies generating over $500m in revenue in 2015, having funded the likes of Marketo, Optimizely and Flurry. In today's show with Doug we discuss:  How Doug made his approach into investing? What metrics are required for startups to get Series A investor...

Joining us today, I am delighted to have Russell Fujioka, US President at Xero, the world's fast growing SaaS company making accounting software beautiful . Prior to joining Xero, Russ was the Global Vice President of Marketing at Dell, EIR at Bessemer Venture Partners and held executive roles at the likes of Adobe. In today's show with Russ we discuss: How Russ came to be US President at the worl...

It is a huge honour to welcome, Mamoon Hamid, Partner @ Social Capital. One of the world's best performing funds with investments in the likes of Slack, Box, Intercom, Yammer and many more incredible companies . Prior to joining Social Mamoon was a Partner at US Venture Partners (USVP) and in today's show we discuss: How Mamoon made his way into the world of investing and VC? What were Mamoon's bi...

I am thrilled to welcome, Shardul Shah, Partner @ Index Ventures to the show today. Shardul is the sole member of the Index team to have worked in all Index's offices around the world in Geneva, London and SF. Now in SF, Shardul focuses on security, software and infrastructure with investments in the likes of Squarespace, DropBox and Adaloom, just to name a few.  Discussed In Today's Show: How Sha...

Joining us today, I am thrilled to welcome, Mark Geene, CEO @ Cloud Elements the cloud API integration service that uses uniform APIs to connect your application with entire categories of services . Prior to joining Cloud Elements, Mark has had over 20 years experience in the industry including executive roles with IBM and Oracle and in today's show with we discuss: What was the origin story behin...

Joining us today, I am thrilled to welcome, Andy Lark, CMO at Xero, the world's fast growing SaaS company making accounting software beautiful . Prior to joining Xero, Andy work with the likes of Dell, Sun Microsystems and The CommonWealth Bank Of Australia and in today's show with Andy we discuss: How Andy came to be CMO at the world's fastest growing SaaS company? How Andy structures his team? W...

Welcome to Episode 1  of The Official Saastr Podcast, the show will delve behind the scenes of the latest and greatest SaaS rocketships talking to the founders and operators themselves. We will also be chatting with the investors and VCs funding these hyper growth companies to reveal their tactics and strategies when it comes to deciding whether to invest.  To celebrate, we have a very special gue...