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
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
Release Date: 02/02/2024
SaaStr 739: The Three SaaS Metrics That Matter in 2024 and Will IPOs Be Back? with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
SaaStr 739: The Three SaaS Metrics That Matter in 2024 and Will IPOs Be Back? with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin What are the three most under-discussed metrics on social media, with VCs, and especially with founders? SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin shares his top three SaaS metrics that matter in 2024: Net new customer count Growth vs. efficiency The bar to IPO -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet. Join us in 2024 at: SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area....
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SaaStr 738: How Shopify Implements AI Across Sales and Product with Mike Tamir, Head of AI at Shopify
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
SaaStr 738: How Shopify Implements AI Across Sales and Product with Mike Tamir, Head of AI at Shopify, and Rudina Seseri, Managing Partner at Glasswing Ventures At SaaStr , Mike Tamir, Head of AI at Shopify, and Rudina Seseri, founder and Managing Partner at Glasswing Ventures, level-set about where we are in the cycle for Enterprises adopting AI and the critical work being done at Shopify to leverage AI and solve real problems. Mike and Rudina do a great job of explaining the complex AI terminology for everyday non-technical founders and leaders to understand and apply to their...
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SaaStr 737: How to Build Go-to-Market Efficiency in SMB Sales with Owner.com CRO Kyle Norton
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
SaaStr 737: How to Build Go-to-Market Efficiency in SMB Sales with Owner.com CRO Kyle Norton How do you build GTM efficiency in SMB sales? The CRO at Owner.com, Kyle Norton, shares his learnings and strategies for building better efficiency into your GTM motion. While this title is SMB-oriented, the advice applies to Mid-Market and Enterprise, too. The three topics we’ll cover in today's podcast are: The importance of staying focused and how to say no. Ways to scale that don’t include rampant inefficiency and burn. How to build operational excellence into your organization at...
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SaaStr 736: What I Learned Selling My Company for $130M with Harry Glaser Founder of Periscope Data and ModelBit
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
Harry Glaser was the co-founder and CEO of Periscope Data, which raised a seed round before finding customers, yet didn’t run out of money before becoming an overnight success 3-4 years later. They grew like crazy when they found product-market-fit and raised a big Series A and B. When you’re growing fast, everything can feel like it’s breaking constantly, and you’re hiring and rehiring people fast. During those rapid growth years, someone would reach out every once in a while and ask if Harry would consider selling. He always said no. But then growth flatlined for a couple of...
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SaaStr 735: How to Navigate the Shift to Generative AI with PagerDuty’s CEO Jennifer Tejada
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, discusses the influence of AI on business workflows, focusing on automating operations, maintaining customer trust, and navigating generative AI challenges. Together with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin, they addresses the role of AI in managing incidents, improving efficiency, and changing decision-making in enterprises. Lastly, we delve into how AI and human roles can coexist, foreseeing a shift towards high-value work as automation increases, with a call for leaders to embrace AI's potential while adapting to technological advancements. --------------...
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SaaStr 734: The Latest in Series A Rounds, AI Growth Rates and More with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
SaaStr 734: The Latest in Series A Rounds, AI Growth Rates and More with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin So Redpoint Ventures published some of the slides they recently presented to their Limited Partners (their own investors) . There’s a ton of good data there, but this one slide stood out to me, because it was put together in a really clear fashion, better than other data sources I’ve seen. And what it says is that even though Seed stage investing remains arguably as strong as ever … Series A hasn’t bounced back. Not at all. ...
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SaaStr 733: Advice Every SaaS Founder Needs to Know in 2024 with Sam Blond and Jason Lemkin
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
SaaStr 733: Advice Every SaaS Founder Needs to Know in 2024 with Sam Blond and Jason Lemkin At SaaStr Miami, former Founder’s Fund Partner and CRO of Brex Sam Blond — host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential Podcast — sat down with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin for a fireside chat about finding success as a SaaS company in 2024. They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions. Sam just finished 18 months at Founders Fund after joining in mid-to-late 2022. We were coming off...
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SaaStr 732: What It’s Like Running a Profitable $400M Public SaaS Company with Vimeo CEO Adam Gross and SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
SaaStr 732: What It’s Like Running a Profitable $400M Public SaaS Company with Vimeo CEO Adam Gross and SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin CEO and SaaS veteran Adam Gross and Jason Lemkin, SaaStr founder and CEO, recently hosted a fireside chat at SaaStr Miami, talking about running a profitable public company with $400M in revenue, including themes around: Using a combination of self-serve and sales-led motions How to juggle and manage several different ICPs How to avoid over-monetization during tough times Who owns “free” What to expect from AI in the near future ...
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SaaStr 731: 10 Things Founders Should Know About Getting Acquired with Brett Goldstein, Former M&A at Google
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
SaaStr 731: 10 Things Founders Should Know About Getting Acquired with Brett Goldstein, Former M&A at Google Former member of the M&A team at Google, Brett Goldstein, now Founder at Micro and Co-Founder & CEO of Launch House Ventures, shares the nine things founders should know about getting acquired. It’s a common dream for founders to hope their startup be acquired one day, but what is a company, like Google, really looking for in their acquisitions? And what should all founders know about the process if the time comes? First, there are three types of acquisition...
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SaaStr 730: How to Price and Package AI SaaS Products with Sandhya Hegde, General Partner at Unusual Ventures
The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors
SaaStr 730: How to Price and Package AI SaaS Products with Sandhya Hegde, General Partner at Unusual Ventures With everything in AI moving so rapidly, what’s the best way to price products or SaaS tools with custom AI features and integrations? Should it be subscriptions, usage, solutions, or something entirely different? While companies are scrambling to roll out these new tools, they also want reliability and predictability in the value they’re getting from your products, which can make pricing extremely difficult. So we asked the expert, Sandhya Hegde, General Partner...
info_outlineSaaStr 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 accomplished many things — a 2012 IPO, a $28B+ Cisco acquisition in 2023, and $3.7 billion of ARR last year, with a market cap of $25.7 Billion.
Splunk’s core product is a platform for collecting and analyzing high volumes of machine-generated data. Over the years, Splunk has expanded its offerings through acquisitions and product development. As Christian shares on the pod, the company’s current customer list includes many notable companies, with 92 of them being on the Fortune 100. A feat!
As Christian’s been the CRO of Splunk for over seven years now, he’s a wealth of knowledge on what it really takes to be successful in Enterprise SaaS Sales.
Together with Sam, in today’s episode, they discuss everything Enterprise SaaS sales including:
- Pipeline health
- Enterprise pipeline generation
- How to create demand in the Enterprise when new business slows
- The pros and cons of a product-led pipeline
- And of course, Customer Success with Enterprise-level customers
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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.
Join us in 2024 at:
- SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
- SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200
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