EPISODE IV - Building a Marketing Org

Tracy Eiler is a revenue-driving CMO with “core DNA” in demand generation and awareness. She is the CMO at InsideView and has more than 25 years of experience with enterprise and SaaS software companies. She co-authored the best-selling Aligned to Achieve: How to Unite Your Sales & Marketing Teams into a Single Force for Growth. Tracy was recently recognized as one of the 15 Most Influential Women in B2B Marketing.

EPISODE V - Building a Customer Success Org

Ed Daly is a Senior Vice President of Customer Success and Growth at Okta. Ed previously led Cisco's Global Customer Success team designed to accelerate software and cloud revenue.

EPISODE VI - Raising Capital

Bruce Cleveland is a Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners where he focuses on early stage software startups that enable digital transformation across business, government, and education markets. Bruce enjoys working with companies that use technology and data to increase revenue and decrease costs.

Bruce held senior executive roles in engineering, product management and product marketing with companies, such as Apple, AT&T, Oracle and Siebel Systems. Bruce’s last operational role was as a member of the founding executive team of Siebel Systems, where he served as senior vice president and general manager of Marketing and Products. In this role, Forbes and IDC credited him with creating the most effective B2B alliance program in the software industry. Bruce began his venture capital career at InterWest Partners, where he was the first investor and a former board member of Marketo, which held an IPO in 2013 and was acquired by Adobe in 2018 for $4.75 billion.

Bruce is also the author of the best seller, Traversing the Traction Gap and lectures on the Traction Gap Framework at various universities and industry events.

EPISODE 1 - VC and PE investments in SaaS companies

Dave Kellogg returns to SaaShimi to share his experience working with Venture Capital and Private Equity firms. He compares VC's and PE's investment approaches, due diligence processes, and roles in a boardroom among other things.

Biography

Dave Kellogg is a technology executive, investor, advisor, and blogger.

Previously, he held CEO positions at Host Analytics and MarkLogic, and prior to that SVP/GM of Service Cloud at Salesforce and CMO at Business Objects.

Dave has worked in varied capacities with companies including Breeze, GainSight, MongoDB, and Tableau. He currently sits on the boards of Alation, Nuxeo, and Profisee and previously sat on the boards of agtech leader Granular and big data leader Aster Data.

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EPISODE 2 - Growth Investments in SaaS Companies

Steve Wolfe of Growth Street Partners shares the firm's approach to investing in SaaS companies. He talks about criteria they look for, the importance of a founder's experience in the industry, general view on valuations, and other subjects.

Biography

Steve is a Co-founder of Growth Street Partners, a San Francisco-based growth equity fund. He currently sits on the boards of ChildCareCRM, Visual Lease, Suralink, HR Acuity, Hotel Effectiveness, and BoardBookit. 

Prior to Growth Street, Steve was a Partner at Mainsal Partners, and was a board member at PayLease, Netchemia, 3PL Central, Ncontracts, and nCourt.

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EPISODE 3 - Bootstrapping and Choosing Investors

Deb Muller, Founder and CEO of HR Acuity, takes us back to the company's early days when it was primarily her providing independent advice to large companies regarding workplace investigations. Despite not having a tech background, she decided to build a software solution for her clients to use internally on a day-to-day basis. Deb walks us through the challenges she experienced with a bootstrapped business, the growth of the firm, today's profile of HR Acuity (size, retention, org. structure), tailwinds of the industry, and COVID's impact. Lastly, she walks us through the decision of taking on investments (which she didn't think she needed) and her criteria of choosing investors.

Biography

Deb is a Founder and CEO of HR Acuity, a Software company that provides solutions for employee relations and investigation services.

After serving in executive HR roles at numerous Fortune 500 companies like Honeywell, Citibank, and Marsh & McLennan, Deb launched HR Acuity to create technology with built-in expertise and equip organizations to manage employee relations more strategically.

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Special thanks to Jesse Barovick for his help on sound!

EPISODE 4 - Converting On-Prem to a Cloud

Alok Ajmera, CEO of Prophix takes us to journey of converting the company's software offering from on-prem to a cloud. The transition is particularly impressive because Prophix completed it while being bootstrapped, and only after the conversion did they take outside investments from HG Capital (leading European PE firm).

Biography

Alok joined Prophix in 2004 as a consultant, and after wearing nearly every hat in the company was first promoted to President and COO, and most recently to CEO.

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EPISODE 5 - Unifying OT and IT data in industrials

Andy Bane, CEO of Element Analytics talks about the company's unique founding story and an important mission of changing how industrial firms unify OT and IT data.

Biography

Andy oversees the vision, strategy, and growth of Element Analytics, and is a veteran of the Industrial sector. He’s held executive roles at leading enterprise software companies, including EVP & Chief Strategy Officer for ABB Enterprise Software, EVP of Product Management. and CMO at Ventyx, a Vista Equity Partners company, acquired by ABB for over $1 billion and SVP of Product Mgmt. and Mktg. at P2 Energy Solutions.

EPISODE 6 - Product Led Growth

Sam Richard, Senior Director of Growth at Openview Partners, discusses Product Led Growth, types of companies that can leverage the strategy, and how traditional SaaS metrics can be misleading when applied to PLG.

Biography

Sam Richard is Senior Director of Growth at OpenView, helping its portfolio accelerate top-line growth through establishing best practices and processes to support product led growth. At OpenView, Sam works closely with portfolio leadership teams to discover and implement the most impactful strategies for growth, including onboarding and retention optimization, expansion strategy, funnel optimization and channel/partner strategy.

Prior to joining OpenView in 2019, Sam worked as Director of Growth and Engagement at Dispatch, where she was on the founding team. She spent four years leading growth strategy and customer success teams with a focus on small to medium-sized businesses. During her tenure, Dispatch was acquired by Vista Equity Partners. She also previously worked at Catalant and Abt Associates.

EPISODE 7 - Brand Awareness and Lead Generation

Anadelia Fadeev, Director of Demand Generation and Growth at Teleport, discusses lead gen and brand awareness, how she measures effectiveness of campaigns, and "must have" online tools.

Biography

Anadelia is a Director of Demand Generation and Growth at Teleport, a Kleiner Perkins-backed software company that allows engineers and security professionals to unify access to Servers, web applications, and databases.

Prior to Teleport, Anadelia was Demand generation at several tech startups, including LightStep, InfluxData, ToutApp (acq. by Marketo), and Inkling. She started her career at Visage Mobile where she oversaw all aspects of marketing.

EPISODE 8 - VC investing in SaaS

Scott Beechuk, Partner at Norwest Venture Partners discusses his experience as a startup founder and his move to VC, the latest market trends, Scott’s investment process, as well as qualitative and quantitative characteristics of companies he likes to invest in.

Biography

Scott brings more than 20 years of product, engineering, and SaaS expertise to his role as a partner on Norwest’s enterprise team. He focuses on early- to late-stage investment opportunities in enterprise SaaS with a focus on companies building business applications taking advantage of human-assisted AI, advanced behavioral analytics, client-agnostic platforms and industry-specific solutions. He currently serves on the boards of Bluecore, Leanplum, MindTickle, Qualified, Singular, and Socrates AI.

Scott most recently served as Senior Vice President of Product Management for Salesforce Service Cloud, the industry’s #1 enterprise customer service platform. While at Salesforce, he also served as Head of Engineering, Product, UX, and Documentation for Desk.com.

Before joining Salesforce, Scott cut his entrepreneurial teeth building multiple consumer and enterprise software companies including a multi-brand e-commerce service with an integrated multi-channel customer service platform, an enterprise privacy middleware platform and consumer metasearch engine.

EPISODE 9 - RevOps and

Go-To-Market Strategy

Mark Znutas, Vice President of Go-to-Market Strategy and Operations at HubSpot, discusses HubSpot’s RevOps and how it aligns Sales, Marketing and Customer Success. We also covered HubSpot’s go-to-Market strategy, which has changed drastically over the years.

Biography

Mark Znutas is a VP of GTM Strategy and Operations at HubSpot, where he leads Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success. Mark has held several key roles in RevOps at HubSpot, when the company started expanding beyond its core Marketing software. Prior to HubSpot, Mark was a Manager of Global Field Solutions at Affinnova (acquired by Nielsen).

EPISODE 10 - Revenue-Based Loans for SaaS companies

Tom Meister, Co-Founder, COO, and General Counsel at NepFin, discusses Revenue-Based Financing for SaaS (and eCommerce companies), typical terms of such financing, profiles of the companies that should consider it as an option, and many other things.

Biography

As COO and General Counsel, Tom manages NepFin's legal affairs and oversees its business operations. Prior to co-founding NepFin, Tom served as Senior Counsel, Capital Markets & Finance at Funding Circle, where he was responsible for the structuring, execution and distribution of Funding Circle's offerings to institutional and accredited investors. Earlier in his career, Tom practiced law as a debt finance attorney at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC and Goodwin Procter LLP.

EPISODE 11 - SaaS Pricing

Patrick Campbell, Founder and CEO of ProfitWell, discussed pricing strategies for SaaS companies. We covered wide variety of topics, from selecting a right price for your software to breaking news to your clients about increasing their price 2x.

Biography

Patrick is a Founder & CEO of ProfitWell, the software for helping subscription companies with their monetization and retention strategies, as well as providing free turnkey subscription financial metrics for over 20,000 companies. Prior to ProfitWell Patrick led Strategic Initiatives for Boston-based Gemvara and was an Economist at Google and the US Intelligence community.

EPISODE 12 - “Outshopifying” Shopify

Faisal Masud, a CEO of Fabric, a cloud-native e-commerce platform for middle market and enterprise clients. Faisal discusses the history of Fabric, what’s behind the company's incredible growth, and what they plan to do with $150M capital they raised in less than a year. You would also be interested to hear his take on ebay, Amazon, UPS, and today’s Silicon Valley.

Biography

Faisal Masud is a CEO of Fabric, which he joined in 2020. Prior to Fabric, Faisal was COO at Wing (Alphabet), advisor to Google [X], and CTO at Staple. He also held roles at Groupon, eBay, and Amazon, and sits on several boards.

EPISODE 13 - Selling your SaaS Company

Michael Lyon, is a Founder and Managing Director of Vista Point Advisors, an investment bank exclusively focused on Software and internet. In this episode, he discussed main drivers of SaaS valuation and how revenue models may influence it, Private Equity funds that are active in the space, what founders need to fix prior to selling SaaS companies, how they should handle inbound calls from potential investors, and many other things.

Biography

Michael Lyon is the Founder and Managing Director of Vista Point Advisors. Michael has spent 24 years as a technology investment banker and chemical engineer. Prior to founding Vista Point Advisors, Michael worked at Citigroup where he was a senior member of the technology M&A team. Prior to Citigroup Michael was an engineer for ExxonMobil and BP where he managed chemical plant operations.

EPISODE 14 - ScaleUp SaaS

Shelley Perry is an investor, board director, and advisor that specializes in the uniqueness of the SaaS ScaleUp Stage. In this interview we discussed ScaleUps, compared the mindset of investors and operators, and touched on the European SaaS space.

Biography

Shelley Perry is a Managing Director at Scalelogix Ventures. Over her career in SaaS she was an Operating Partner at Insight Partners, CEO of Bynder, Chief Product Officer at NTT, CTO Industry Solutions at Hewlett-Packard, among other things. Shelly sits on boards of Chargebee, Bynder, Foresite MSP, Airbrake.io, and Trove.

EPISODE 15 - SaaS Marketing

Erinn Tarpey is a CMO at Visual Lease, a software provider that helps companies stay compliant with lease accounting standards. In this episode, Erinn discussed her role as a marketer, the structure of her team, how she measures the effectiveness of different marketing functions, her take on NPS, and many other things. She also shared a case study – Visual Lease’s call-to-action with a 65% conversion rate.

Biography

Erinn has expertise scaling up organizations in SaaS companies during periods of high growth and has driven marketing efforts around proprietary research development, mergers and acquisitions, and channel sales.

Before joining Visual Lease, Erinn served as a member of the senior leadership team at iCIMS. Prior to joining iCIMS, Erinn directed marketing efforts at Aquiire and PurchasingNet, Inc., both of which provide SaaS solutions designed to streamline procure-to-pay processes at global Fortune 1000 organizations.

EPISODE 16 - Investing in a Lower-Middle Market SaaS

Vlad Bespozvany, Founder of Next Equity discusses lower-middle market SaaS space, competition in the field, Nexa's deal sourcing, due diligence process, deal structures, and exit strategies. He shares a case study about Nexa's acquisition of AutoReturn, whose software connects law enforcement and towing companies.

Biography

Vlad Besprozvany is a Founder and Managing Partner of Nexa Equity, a private equity firm that invests in lower-middle market software and fintech companies. Prior to founding Nexa, Vlad was a Managing Director at Greater Sum Ventures, where he focused on investments in software companies. Previously, he was a software and fintech investor at Insight Partners and Thoma Bravo.

EPISODE 17 - Integration Platform-as-a-Service

Jan Arendtsz, Founder and CEO of Celigo, shares the Company’s story, discusses iPaaS, touches on the the org structure and functions, and how he manages the fast-growing company with an exceptional retention profile. 

Biography

Jan Arendtsz is a veteran of the software industry with more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing, product development, and customer success. He founded Celigo with the goal of simplifying how companies integrate business applications together for a connected enterprise. Prior to Celigo, he worked at NetSuite and Cambridge Technology Partners.

EPISODE 18 - Past, Present, and Future of Data Analytics

Bruno Aziza, Head of Data & Analytics at Google Cloud, discusses the evolution of the Data Analytics space, its current trends, and shares his view on what lies ahead. 

Biography

Bruno Aziza is a recognized authority on Business Intelligence and Information Management. He is a Data & Analytics industry veteran with more than two decades of experience in leading technology companies of various sizes - from startups (Alpine Data) to behemoths (Oracle, Microsoft, and now Google).

EPISODE 1 - Crossing the Chasm: 30 Years Later

Geoffrey Moore, the author of numerous marketing books (including the all-time classic – Crossing the Chasm), discusses how COVID affected the Chasm and how SaaS companies should apply the blueprint to SMB and Enterprise target markets. He also speaks about Geoffrey’s newest book, Zone to Win, written for later-stage technology companies. 

Biography

Geoffery Moore is a best-selling author, speaker, and advisor who splits his consulting time between start-up companies in the Wildcat Venture Partners portfolios and established high-tech enterprises, most recently including Salesforce, Microsoft, Autodesk, Gainsight, Google, and Splunk.

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EPISODE 2 - Building a SaaS Holding Company

Mark Strauch discusses Alpine Investors and Alpine Software Group, a unique holding company they have built by acquiring SaaS companies within several verticals. He also shared Alpine's take on talent, the profile of companies the firm invests in, and SaaS 2.0.

Biography

Mark Strauch is a founding partner at Alpine Investors and Chairman of Alpine SG, the firm's vertical SaaS aggregation platform. Prior to Alpine, Mark served as CEO of EDC, a financial technology company that was acquired in 2011. Previously, he served as CEO of Business Engine, a venture-backed software company that was acquired in 2007.

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EPISODE 3 - Customer Success in SMBs

Scott Salkin discusses the rise of Customer Success, Gainsight Essentials, its GTM strategy, and the most common mistakes by SMBs when it comes to CS.

Biography

Scott Salkin is SVP & GM, Gainsight Essentials at Gainsight. He is a seasoned entrepreneur, CEO, and senior B2B sales and marketing executive. Prior to joining Gainsight, Scott was the founder and CEO of Allbound, a B2B SaaS platform dedicated to helping businesses accelerate revenue through channel partners and ecosystems.

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EPISODE 4 - Alternative Financing for SaaS

Miguel Fernandez discusses the story of Capchase, typical profile of SaaS clients, terms of financing they provide, and how investors and lenders view such financing. 

Biography

Miguel Fernandez is a Co-Founder & CEO of Capchase, an alternative finance provider that enables SaaS companies to access their future contract payments upfront. Prior to launching Capchase, Miguel worked in management consulting and then moved into SaaS. He headed sales and customer success at Geoblink, a Location Intelligence SaaS and scaled it from 0 to $2m in ARR. 

EPISODE 5 - Software for Boards

Marion Lewis shares her experience of being a serial entrepreneur, the challenges of raising funds, as well as founding and growing Govenda. We discussed the company’s product, customer base, go-to-market strategy, and everything in between.

Biography

Marion Lewis is a serial entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of Govenda, a board management platform that enables effective corporate governance. Prior to Govenda, she was a co-founder and CEO of Tachyon Solutions, a custom application development and interactive marketing firm.

EPISODE 6 - SaaS Valuation

Diamond Innabi discusses SaaS valuation and how multiples have changed over the past several years, the main drivers of multiples, and M&A market trends.

Biography

Diamond Innabi is a Vice President at Software Equity Group, a boutique investment bank focused on B2B software companies. Over her nearly a decade career at SEG, she was instrumental in numerous M&A transactions involving public and private companies as well as private equity funds.

EPISODE 7 - Expanding to the US Market

Francois Laborie shares his experience of bringing the Norway-based Cognite to the US market, discussed the most significant challenges he has faced along the way, and compared corporate cultures in the US and Europe.

Biography

Dr. Francois Laborie is the President of Cognite North America, overseeing Cognite’s expansion and operations in the US, Canada, and Latin America. He has had an extensive career in the technology industry, serving in both research and executive roles. Francois has been at the heart of the transformation of the media industry through technology. He spent 11 years as COO and CCO of Vizrt, where he focused on disrupting journalism by empowering media content creators with visual storytelling tools. Before that, Francois managed research projects on collective decision-making and human-computer interfaces at the Airbus Group Corporate Research Center.

EPISODE 8 - Financial Diligence of SaaS companies

Sean St. Germain discusses the financial diligence process of SaaS companies, common mistakes in ARR, Gross Profit, and EBITDA calculations, the effects capitalized software and capitalized commissions have on cash EBITDA, and many other things.

Biography

Sean St. Germain is a Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal. He focuses on transactions in the software and technology industry. He has advised clients on domestic and cross-border transactions, including traditional buy-side transactions, portfolio company add-on transactions, public-to-private acquisitions, asset purchases, and sell-side divestiture processes, including carve-outs. Sean is an expert in software revenue recognition, including the new revenue recognition standard (ASC 606, Revenue from Contracts with Customers).

EPISODE 9 - Hiring with Artificial Intelligence

Barb Hyman discusses Sapia’s unique product, the role of artificial intelligence in unbiased hiring, the Sapia data set based on a billion words and 2 million candidate profiles, the initial dataset that Sapia utilized, its first client, go-to-market strategy, and many other things. 

Biography

Barb Hyman is the Founder and CEO of Australia-based Sapia. Prior to Sapia, Barb was a Head of HR and Marketing at Boston Consulting Group. She received her Bachelor's degree from Monash University and MBA from Melbourne Business School.

EPISODE 10 - Building Software for 144,000 Barbershops

Dave Salvant discusses Squire’s product, the history of the company, how Squire successfully navigated through the early days of COVID, and the role institutional and celebrity angel investors play in the Company.

Biography

Dave Salvant is a Co-Founder and President of Squire Technologies, a provider of an all-in-one barbershop management platform. Prior to Suire, Dave was a sales associate at AXA and private banking at JP Morgan. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University at Albany (SUNY) and MBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

I am Aznaur Midov - the host of SaaShimi that was created for SaaS enthusiasts.

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