The Saas Revolution Show

This week of the SaaS Revolution Show, we devote the entire episode to Customer Success. Alex Theuma takes you on a journey that spans from the stages of SaaStock 16 and 17 through to SaaStock on Tour Helsinki and New York to pick up some of the best stories and advice from Customer Success practitioners. The episode is divided into four parts. The first part defines Customer Success, helps you figure out when is the best time to start with it, and looks at how companies like Slack and Drift kicked it off. In the second part, our speakers cover how to build and scale a customer success team and how to figure out the compensation for CSMs. We then look at the all important metrics that measure the efforts and help you adjust. Finally, the episode brings you ideas about what customer success programs could look like and how to enable them. Some obvious, some not so. Throughout the episode, you will hear quotes and excerpts from Dan Steinman from Gainsight, David Apple from Typeform, Rav Dhaliwal from Slack, Jul

Workplace by Facebook was launched in October 2016. Heading it was Julien Codorniou in London, who had been working with Facebook since 2011. On this week's episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we sat with Julien, to get a unique peek into the workings of how a company such as Facebook operates in the SaaS B2B scene and the ways it breaks and reinvents the B2B sales and marketing rules. Listen on to hear: How Julien and Workplace turned the marketing and sales playbook upside down How they sell into giant corporations such as Walmart How the vision of a company can sell the product Julien is one of many speakers we will welcome to SaaStock18. We are excited to release our full agenda next week. Head over to https://www.saastock.com and sign up to be the first one to get a sneak peek at it.

On this week’s episode of The SaaS Revolution Show, we take you to the SaaStock on Tour New York stage for what was one of the most entertaining and well-received panels on the day. Ben Hindman, CEO of Splash talks with Tomer Tagrin, CEO of Yotpo and Alexis Le Quoc, CTO of Datadog about some of the fundamental challenges they have faced in the course of growing their companies and how they have addressed them. Listen on to hear: What is the right set up for scaling a company? What is the main job of the leader of a scaling company? How to fundraise and stay frugal at the same time? One of the benefits to being based in New York rather than Silicon Valley is the fact that founders don’t have to spend crazy money on having the most impressive conference rooms and perks in the neighbourhood to attract talent. A sentiment valid for many other places in the world where founders and executives built their companies without unnecessary bells and whistles. We will gather 3000 of them from over 50 countries in Dubli

In September 2016, Adrien Menard, CEO of Paris-born Botify packed his bags and moved together with his wife and two kids to New York to open Botify's US office. He had chosen New York mainly due to the slightly shorter time difference with Paris in comparison to the much more unsurmountable 9 hours with the West coast. Adrien was leaving 24 employees behind and venturing into the new world all by himself. Visas took more time, the advice his lawyer gave him was wrong multiple times, and Adrien would have to reinvent overnight how Botify communicated and made decisions. Despite all that, there was not a grain of doubt that he was doing the right thing. He had a $7 million Series A funding round and a 10% US-based customer base to give him confidence as the going got tough. Fast forward almost two years later after Adrien moved to New York, US customers now represent 60% of the revenue, and the Botify employee count has risen to 100 with 25 of them based in the New York office. How did all that work out? Listen

On this week’s episode, as part of The SaaS Revolution Show Episode 100 special, we are taking you to that SaaStock New York stage for the chat Nic Poulos, Partner at Bowery Capital had with David Cancel, CEO of Drift about the stellar journey of reaching 70,000 customers in three years in an incredibly oversaturated vertical. David Cancel needs no introduction. The five-time founder who has achieved 4 exits in his 20-year career had three options in front of him as he left HubSpot where he served as Chief Product Officer. He could do nothing, he could get into the venture capital world or he could do the whole rollercoaster ride one more time. He opted for the third and Drift was born. What it has grown to be is a whole new category of conversational marketing, shifting the buying process in B2C and B2B. Inherently slow and passive, Drift is turning it into a real-time two-sided conversation. David and Nic’s conversation is a treasure trove of insights about hyper growing, something possible and attainable e

For the past three years and 99 episodes, we have talked to the founders, operators and investors leading the SaaS Revolution around the world. In that time, we have seen it get stronger and more impressive in an incredible fashion. The SaaS Revolution Show has aimed to showcase their achievements and unravel the story behind the growing momentum of SaaS with vital lessons and tactics attached. For this 100th episode, we are taking you back to some of our pivotal episodes and the practical advice bursting from them. After careful selection, we chose seven of them, picked the key pieces of advice from them, and montaged them together to create what is the ultimate audio guide on How to grow your SaaS. We feature Mark Roberge, Pieterjan Bouten, April Dunford, Nadim Hossein, Neeraj Agrawal, Eric Santos, and Laura Roeder. Listen on to hear: How to build successful sales organisations How to set up marketing teams and do demand generation right How to do positioning right How to set up organisations for growth Ho

On this week’s episode of The SaaS Revolution Show we take you to the SaaStock Paris stage where Rachel Delacour, VP Startups at Zendesk talks with Marie-Hortense Varin, Principal at Partech Ventures, Samantha Jerusalmy, Partner at Elaia and Evgenia Plotnikova, Principal at Dawn Capital about what it takes to become a billion-dollar company and what’s the role of the VC in this beyond funding the journey. With many promising companies coming out of Europe, there are important things to keep in mind on the road to scaling successfully, which Samantha, Marie-Hortense and Evgenia have picked and share on the panel. Listen on to hear: While there is no science to becoming a unicorn, there are patterns. What are they? What are the signs a company has unicorn potential? What is the role of the VC in helping a company grow to a billion dollar? As Marie-Hortense mentiones in the end, if your VC isn’t helping you hire your SVP, you should get another VC partner. We will tackle the topic of finding the right VC partn

What does it take to build global SaaS companies? With 13 years of experience in the VC world and having invested in some of the greatest SaaS companies out there, Alex Ferrara is one to say. Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, based out in New York City, Alex has worked with companies such as Shopify, Wix and Pipedrive. Bessemer itself has been investing in companies in over a 100 years and has over 100 SaaS investments to date. Throughout the experience Alex has seen what constitutes a global company and how it makes decisions about the when and where of scaling. That has given him an uncanny view of what makes companies successful when they cross borders, oceans and continents in any direction. Listen on to hear: What are the features of truly global companies The trouble with moving to the US too late When does it make sense for US companies to open offices overseas As part of our upcoming Episode 100 anniversary, we will be recording a live podcast with David Cancel of Drift during SaaStock New York.

Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss, CEO and Co-founder of omni:us, learned very early on she was destined to build companies. She had the knack for it as well as the determination. It's how she built three companies before founding omni:us. But it is her latest that is the one she is determined to really grow and scale. With four co-founders and a new address in Berlin, the Viennese entrepreneur began her journey into AI. As important as it was to train her bots to "read" digital documents, what was even more key was finding the use cases and product-market fit that would allow her to monetize omni:us. It took selling into two industries before finding the one, which would truly benefit from the value proposition of omni:us - making sense of and structuring digital documents. Finding it was a combination of listening to inbound signals and being disciplined to apply the criteria that helps rule out the unfit choices. Listen on to hear: The criteria to find product-market fit A key learning Sofie picked about

When Jack Beaman, CEO and Co-founder at Syft, decided to disrupt the temp worker industry, he thought he would be building a marketplace. He started off with a clear idea - create a marketplace where hospitality industry employers and temp workers would be able to find each other. What he didn’t suspect was that they would find each other so efficiently that employers would experience 400% increase in workers. And they would need new efficient ways to manage them. An invaluable opportunity to create a SaaS platform they were prepared to pay for presented itself on a silver platter. Entrepreneurial Jack jumped on. Listen on to hear: How to sell and get customers in traditional industries What has helped with the adoption of tech Does traditional advertising work in SaaS Jack is one of many speakers that we will host in Dublin this October at SaaStock18. He will be joined by the likes of Corey Thomas, CEO of Rapid7, David Skok, Managing Partner at Matrix Partners and Meagen Eisenberg, CMO of MongoDB. As we ar

Canadian Dan Martell believes that the three least boring things on the planet are growth, happiness and influence. As such, a road paved with frameworks and processes to reach them is anything but boring. It is a road he has been navigating and paving with 5 companies, 3 exits and 39 angel investments. One of the things he has perfected throughout his experience is the art of the product demo, which he talks about extensively on this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show. Listen on to hear: What almost everyone gets wrong when it comes to product demos What is a simple framework for executing a product demo How to ask for a close with confidence What is the impact on the business when you don’t ask for a close on the call How to deal with objections After you have listened to it, download Dan’s rocket demo framework https://www.danmartell.com/saasrevolution Dan is one of many speakers that we will host in Dublin this October. In his own words, “There is nothing more powerful than meeting many founders who ar

On the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we host Marta Sjögren, Partner at Northzone, one of Europe’s oldest VC companies. Having been around for a few decades, Northzone has had a chance to put bets on many companies that are now bright tech superstars. Many of them are SaaS. Trustpilot, StepStone and HappyOrNot are just a few notable examples. Marta has been with Northzone for almost 6 years. In the conversation, Marta covers a lot of the valuable lessons that lay in Spotify’s story that can be applied to B2B companies, from fundraising to pricing, packaging and scaling. Listen on to hear: What it means to be a "Born Global" company and how the home market should be used Key lessons from Spotify’s pricing and packaging The secret to scaling successfully as Spotify At SaaStock on Tour Helsinki, Marta will host a fireside chat with the CEO of HappyOrNot, one of her portfolio companies. They will talk about the fascinating story in building a Hardware-first SaaS company. On the day, she w

Seven startups. All seven of them acquired. 16 launched products. All 16 of them repositioned. Roles as varied as CEO, CMO and COO. There has never been a dull moment in April Dunford’s career. Throughout all that, she has become the world’s foremost expert on positioning. Improving the context a product creates for its customers became April’s lifelong passion. It’s why she has taken on seemingly very different roles in the various startups and their acquirers she joined. As she puts it, positioning encompasses the entire organisation. Currently, April is working on a book, which she hopes will offer the first scalable methodology for doing positioning right. Listen on to hear: Why so many startups and companies fail at positioning What are the signs you are having a positioning problem How to start fixing your positioning and create the right context for your customers Examples of product repositions April has executed What is the best way to track the effect of repositioning April is one of many speakers

According to Alexis Prenn, CEO and co-founder of Receipt Bank, SaaS is a bit like playing a video game — every 9 months or so you move to the next level. Each level is as difficult as the one before. Alexis began playing the Receipt Bank game nearly 8 years ago. For the first three years, they went the bootstrapping way, not so much out of strong conviction to do so but because they were too hard on themselves. They feared rejection more than anything else. The two co-founders believed that they had to make themselves a little more beautiful and their metrics a little better before they asked anyone for a penny. Eventually, both realised that this mentality was missing the point of what it means to be a growing SaaS company. On February 10th, 2011 they decided to be serious and not make any more excuses. And pursue a realistic growth rate. Three percent at a time, Receipt Bank has reached 2,964% growth. It’s on a path to reaching $25 million ARR and has banked $65 million in funding. Listen on to learn: How

Simon Grabowski, CEO and Founder of email marketing automation platform GetResponse is the latest guest on the SaaS Revolution Show, hosted by Alex Theuma. Simon started his first Internet business back in 1996, aged 16. Frustrated with how tedious and boring sending emails manually to prospects was, he decided to write a little script to automate the process. With 1000 Polish zloty in his back pocket, by 1998 Simon decided to turn the script into GetResponse, which would become the first email and marketing automation platform in Europe. Selling globally from Gdansk, Poland early on and fueling the growth through an early affiliate program, GetResponse has grown to 350,000 users spread over 180 countries, and 400 employees on three continents. Celebrating the company’s 20th anniversary this year, Simon has achieved this by being completely bootstrapped. Listen on to hear: How to achieve growth when you don’t have the money What was the opportunity that opened the enterprise market for GetResponse How Simon

A Math PhD dropout, Florian Douetteau, was only 20 when he first got the startup bug. The practical ways of learning through immersing himself into startups appealed more to him and he has never looked back. The SaaS Revolution Show latest guest, Florian started Dataiku, his latest venture, five years ago in Paris. The collaboration platform for data scientists was profitable from the early onset. Florian had seen the struggle of growing a company in France, where there is a steady growth up until a few million in revenue but then a stagnated growth when it comes to getting to the next stage. Maybe it was because the European market was not dynamic enough or the companies would become almost too European. Listen on to hear: How he initially scaled into the US when Dataiku was very small -What were the factors that helped Dataiku with American customers, including NPR How he organises his time between the three locations and spends enough time at each P.S. Florian is one many excellent speakers we will host

Back in 2003, tech wasn’t exactly having its most glorious days. The bitter taste of the dot-com crash was still pungent. Few entrepreneurs would be blamed for not willing to take a punt by starting a new tech company. Peter Bauer, however, didn’t succumb to that too much. He sensed SaaS would outlive that and become the next big thing. Peter placed a bet on a cloud-based email management system and Mimecast was born. From the early days, Mimecast defied rules and expectations. While everyone advised Peter to focus on just one aspect of email, he and his co-founder were religious about creating a supercategory. 15 years on the journey, Peter has had the rare chance to lead the company through all stages, including an IPO. He knows equally well the problems of having 5k in the bank and 35 people on the payroll as well as having 140 million in the bank and figuring what is next. Listen on to hear: How does the thinking behind the product change over time How do you know it’s time to move to a new market How Mi

Bjoern Zinssmeister is the co-founder and CEO of Templarbit, a San Francisco-based developer-oriented security platform. Started less than a year ago, it has already been through Y Combinator, has raised $3 million in funding and is successfully conquering the Asian market, starting with Japan. Bjoern left Germany for San Francisco as soon as he graduated university. In 2010 there simply wasn’t enough interesting tech coming from Europe to keep him around. It was all in Silicon Valley. Before he founded Templarbit, a developer-oriented security platform, Bjoern took seven years to learn the trades of building and running tech companies. His journey started at Match.com up and concluded in Design Inc where he was the CTO. Listen on to hear: How to pitch to Y Combinator with confidence Does going to Y Combinator help  How to go global as an early stage company How to conquer the Asian market Why closing a company even with a million in the bank may be the right thing to do P.S. Bjoern is one of many speakers

Dave Grow always considered himself an operator. When he joined Lucidchart seven years ago, shortly after co-founders Karl Sun and Ben Dilts had built the product, he was there to take care of the business side of things. From answering customer support tickets and doing digital marketing to hiring and setting up partnerships, Dave did it all. Currently the company's COO and President, back then he did not dare put a C-level title in front of his name. “I was always convinced that someone more experienced will come down the line who will take it over,” he says. As COO and President, Dave has seen the transformation Lucidchart underwent, from offering freemium plans to single users all the way to signing up Enterprise customers such as Box, Dropbox, Accenture, and Groupon. Listen on to hear: How the pricing plans have evolved to reach 10 million users What are the different GTM strategies to get to that sort of scale and what has worked for Lucidchart? Should SaaS companies nowadays have a Freemium model? How

On this week’s episode, we take you back to one of the panels we hosted on the SaaStock17 stage. Benedicte de Raphelis Soissan, founder of Clustree, Phil Chambers, CEO and co-founder of Peakon, and Jonathan Anguelov, co-founder and COO of Aircall discus the power of people, and how to hire, keep and develop people for the success of the company. Benedicte shares how she has grown Clustree to 25 people in the past three years, carefully crafting a hiring plan and an idea who is a right fit. Phil eludes to the importance of alignment, which Peakon has aimed to get from the first moment and has scaled to 70 people spread between three offices. Jonathan shares how Aircall has developed an outcome based onboarding process, where every employee has a bespoke and detailed plan, making sure that they get quickly on track with everything they need to know and be able to execute. Listen on to hear: What are the recruiting processes of three of the most exciting European SaaS companies How to onboard people so they fee