The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

SaaStr 726: How to Build Out Your SDR Function in 2024 with Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and Host of SaaStr CRO Confidential How do you build out a Sales Development (SDR) function at your SaaS company? Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and host of SaaStr's  CRO Confidential  shares his advice for building an SDR function in 2024 based on his experience as CRO at Brex.  We'll cover everyt...

SaaStr 725: Mastering High-Volume, Low-CAC Marketing: Strategies from Gorgias, Vercel, and Hypergrowth Partners In today's world, there's a clear shift in what founders, boards, and investors are all after — scalable, low-CAC (customer-acquisition cost) growth strategies.  In a panel, Guillaume Cabane (G) and Martin Gontovnikas (Gonto), co-founders of HyperGrowth Partners, Axelle Heems, Senior Dir...

SaaStr 724: CRO Confidential: Bringing Product-Led and Sales-Led Growth Together For Go-To-Market Success with Giancarlo Lionetti, CRO of Zapier. Hosted by Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund In this latest episode of  CRO Confidential , Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with the CRO of Zapier, Giancarlo Lionetti (GC), to chat about Product-Led Growth (PLG) and...

SaaStr 723: Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, and Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder of SaaStr: Answer Your Top 10 2024 Customer Success Questions In 2024, for customer success in SaaS, what's "good" NRR? What's a "good" NPS? Who should Customer Success report into? Questions like this and many others are the most common questions asked of SaaStr Fan Fave and expert on Customer Success,  Gainsight  CEO Nic...

SaaStr 722: 2024 State of SaaS: Trends and Predictions with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin At Pavilion's CEO Summit, SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin, took the stage to do something .. a little bit different. Typically on SaaStr.com, we try to focus our content on mistakes to avoid, lessons learned and how to scale faster, but for the CEO Summit, Jason addressed the audience with what's m...

SaaStr 721: How Revenue Leaders at Box, Calendly, and Lattice Scaled From $0 to $100M+ and Beyond Mark Roberge , SaaStr fan-favorite and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital brought together some of the top CROs in SaaS during the SaaStr Annual to share some of their greatest learnings and pivotal moments leading some of the Cloud 100 SaaS companies.  Dini Mehta, former CRO at Latti...

SaaStr 720: CRO Confidential: What It Really Takes to Be Successful in Enterprise SaaS Sales with Christian Smith, CRO of Splunk. Hosted by Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund In this week's episode of CRO Confidential , Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with the CRO of Splunk, Christian Smith. Splunk is a 20-year-old Enterprise software  giant  that has accompl...

This is SaaStr's What's New series where our very own CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, sits down with the top CEOs and leaders in SaaS to discuss What's New, what's top of mind, and what every SaaS founder should be thinking about. In today's episode, Jason sits down with Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automatic and Co-Founder of WordPress on what's new at WordPress.  ---------------------------------------...

SaaStr 718: Predictions for Venture, IPOs, and the State of SaaS in 2024 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin and Harry Stebbings, Founder and Host of the 20 Minute VC Harry Stebbings, Host of the 20VC, recently hosted SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin for one of the first podcasts of the year. Together, they talk about the best of SaaS from 2023, the state of SaaS in 2024, and their predic...

SaaStr 717: How Enterprise SaaS Companies are Buying AI (or Not) with ContextualAI, Anthropic, and Glean While AI seems to have gone mainstream for consumers and smaller SaaS companies, but what about the big guys? While the first generation of Generative AI is great, it's not quite ready to solve Enterprise problems. So, where are we now in the adoption cycle for the Enterprise world?  We brought...

SaaStr 716: The Future of Customer Success in 2024: Insights and Predictions from Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta and SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin Is it the end of an era in SaaS customer success? It seems like some of the biggest changes to the human side of SaaS are happening right now. What does the AI revolution and SaaS spending cuts mean for the future of Customer Success and support? In thi...

SaaStr 715: The 7 Biggest Mistakes CMOs Make (And How to Avoid Them) with the CMOs of Databricks, Zoom, and Okta In this CMO panel, Rick Schultz, CMO at Databricks, Janine Pelosi, Former CMO at Zoom, and Ryan Carlson, Former CMO at Okta, joined Carilu Dietrich, Advisor at Hypergrowth B2B Startups to talk about the seven biggest mistakes CMOs make. These CMOs have all taken their companies from the...

SaaStr 714: From Zero to Hero: How to Dominate Outbound SaaS Sales with Rippling and Founders Fund on CRO Confidential. Hosted by Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund. With Ashley Kelly, VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling. In the latest episode of SaaStr's CRO Confidential series, host Sam Blond, partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with Ashley Kelly, VP of Global Sale...

SaaStr 713: Why the Future of Customer Success, Sales and Marketing Has Changed: Ask-Me-Anything Part 2 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin In part one of this Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) with SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin, he answered the community's questions about whether all anyone cares about is AI anymore, investor appetites going into 2024, vertical SaaS, and thriving as a solo founder...

SaaStr 712: Is AI the Only Thing in SaaS that Anyone Cares About Anymore? Ask-Me-Anything Part 1 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin Ask Me Anything with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin Part One. In the first part of this open AMA, Jason shares his thoughts on the current state of sales and marketing, if anyone really cares about anything other than AI anymore, how to hire great partners,...

SaaStr 711: 5 Lessons from Scaling Six Products to $100M+ with Samsara's Chief Strategy Officer Kiren Sekar For any Cloud and SaaS Founders or execs seeking practical strategies and inspiration to stay ahead of the curve, this episode's for you. At the SaaStr Annual, Kiren Sekar, Samsara's Chief Strategy Officer and founding chief Product Officer shared five lessons he learned along the way from s...

Welcome to the Official SaaStr Podcast Episode 710: Running a PLG and Sales-Led Motion at the Same Time: What's New at ZoomInfo with CEO Henry Schuck and SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin In the latest installment of SaaStr's What's New series – where we sit down with the leaders in SaaS and Cloud for the inside scoop on what's top of mind and what's new, SaaStr CEO and Jason Lemkin chats with t...

SaaStr 709: 15 Signs You Have A SaaS Metrics Problem (and How to Fix it) with Dave Kellogg, EIR at Balderton Capital In this episode of the SaaStr Podcast, SaaStr OG and fan fave, Dave Kellogg, EIR at Balderton Capital, walks you through the complexities of SaaS metrics. With a wealth of experience leading major SaaS and enterprise software firms, Dave delves into the art of leveraging metrics for...

The Top 10 Mistakes People Make When Hiring a VP of Sales with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin Hiring a VP of Sales isn't new, but the conversations have evolved as the world has. SaaStr's own Jason Lemkin shares the top 10 mistakes he sees during the hiring process during Workshop Wednesday, held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST.  Jason has written about the cheat codes for hiring VPs of Sales...

SaaStr 707: The Where, When, and How of AI with Theory Ventures, Open AI, MotherDuck and Lamini Hear the latest insights on AI from leading VC Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures Theory Ventures, joined by Jordan Tigani, Founder and CEO of Mother Duck Maggie Hott, GTM at  OpenAI , and Sharon Zhou, Co-Founder and CEO of Lamini. Together they discuss the new architecture for building Software as a Serv...

In our 'What's New' series, SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin sits down with the top CEOs from leading SaaS companies to discuss What's New and what's top of mind. In this episode, Jason sits down with Aaron Levie, CEO and Co-Founder of Box, and also a SaaStr-fan fave from speaking at various SaaStr events in-person and digitally. Together they discuss: How to go long as a CEO and Founder in Saa...

A holistic and well-executed go-to-market strategy is one of the key pillars that drives sustainable, long-term growth for software companies. But there is a dearth of data that leaders can leverage to inform building out the best team, strategies, and tactics to scale their go-to-market organization. Leveraging proprietary data from over 200 leading GTM executives and tens of thousands of data po...

We had a party in 2020 and 2021 where valuations and growth were crazy. Then, we had a hangover in 2022 and the first half of this year. Now, investing is coming back, public markets have returned, and we're almost back to normal.  Jameson Yung, SVP of Sales at Gong, and Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and previous CRO at Brex, share five tactical ways to get back to growing and hitting revenu...

As AI continues to reshape the way businesses operate, it has become a critical differentiator in gaining a competitive edge. Stage 2 Capital Co-founder and Managing Director Mark Roberge dissects the advantages and challenges faced by both startups and incumbents in leveraging AI for Go-to-Market strategies. Uncover the unique capabilities that startups bring to the table and how they disrupt est...

From seed funding to reaching $100M ARR to going public in 2021, Spenser Skates knows about growing and scaling a business. But for many founders, the question becomes: how do you maintain hypergrowth? In this podcast, Spenser will share key lessons around maintaining long-term, sustainable growth, including when to expand your product suite, why iteration matters more than perfection, where AI fi...