The Saas Revolution Show

On this week’s episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we host Dan Adika, CEO and Co-Founder of WalkMe about how he has raised the whopping $217 million in the past 7 years. Dan follows a somewhat familiar path that has bread many excellent Israeli entrepreneurs. He spent 6 years working for tech unit of the Israeli Defence Forces. He then had a year in HP, before realizing that to truly follow his passion for making things, improving them, all the while solving some thorny problems, he had to build his own company. In 2011 Dan did just that. Together with his co-founders Eyal Cohen and Rephael Sweary they started WalkMe. In February 2012, the three raised their first round of funding that wasn’t coming from friends and family. There were no customers at the time but there was a dream, a bold one - allow people to “walk” the digital world, the way they did the physical one. That bold dream would not always be enough to convince funders but for those times, Dan and his co-founders learned the art of metrics, benc

This week on the SaaS Revolution Show, we talk with Sarika Garg, Chief Strategy Officer at Tradeshift about walking the tightrope between tactics and strategy. Sarika was raised in Africa and India and moved to Silicon Valley about 20 years ago. Fifteen of them she spent working between SAP and Ariba, moving up the ranks of product management. When she felt she had gotten too used to the comfy life that big organisations can create, Sarika jumped into the deep end joining Tradeshift, first as VP of product marketing and then raising up to Chief Strategy officer two years ago. At the time, the company employed 100 people and she was the first CSO. Nowadays the company employs 1000 people and at its last Series E funding round led by Goldman Sachs, it was valued at $1.1 billion. No wonder then, that Tradeshift is one of the fastest growing Fintech companies in Silicon Valley. That has been achieved by navigating the complex network that Tradeshift offers to businesses and having both a disciplined long term vie

On this week’s episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we talk with Natalie Nagele, Co-founder and CEO of Wildbit about how she and her co-founder and husband, Chris Nagele have run the company for the past nearly 19 years and have created both an effective and calm environment. During those 19 years, Natalie and Chris have built a lot of products and have shut down many of them. The ones that have stood the test of time have often been SaaS. Currently the company maintains Postmark, Beanstalk and Conveyor. Wildbit currently employs 30 people who are spread between 6 countries. Natalie’s main goal throughout all this time has been to keep the company a sane place to work. She has never taken VC funding and has never imposed high growth, or unsustainable goals for the company. At the start of the year, however, Natalie and Chris introduced The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to help the company become more effective and productive. So far the experience has been great and they are already seeing great resu

On this week’s episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we take you back to the SaaStock18 stage for a special Ask Me Anything session with William McQuillan, Partner at Frontline. Without any preselected questions, William answers everything on the spot at the Traction stage. After leaving university, William was one of the founding employees of Ondra Partners, a startup investment-banking boutique. William’s work at Ondra led him to discover his passion for rethinking an industry, and he shortly thereafter co-founded Osmoda, a fashion e-commerce company creating a new way for young and up-and-coming designers to sell online. During the same time, William was also the Global Ambassador for the Sandbox Network, a community of over 1000 innovators under 30. It was through his work at all those places that William experienced firsthand the difficulty that European founders have when fundraising. This inspired him to join the other two partners, Will Prendergast and Shay Garvey to set up Frontline, a fund that would

On this week’s episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we talk with Nazma Qurban, Chief Revenue Officer of Cognism about how she has managed to build a predictable outbound sales machine in the past 2.5 years. When Nazma joined Cognism she was the first sales employee. The company had one paying customer so the world was hers to conquer and bring in the revenue. Nazma knew the way to go was outbound so she started building a predictable outbound strategy. Driven and ambitious, Nazma would go to every networking event she could and knock on many doors to get a ton of advice and spur as much interest about Cognism as possible. Two and a half years later she has built a team of 25, mostly comprised of graduates that she carefully upskills. The learning mentality is still present among them and you would be hard-pressed to go to a meetup in London and not run into someone from Cognism. The efforts have paid off. The retention of employees is incredibly high and nowadays Cognism earns $5M in ARR. Cognism’s is a truly

On this month’s episode of the Struggle, with talk with Joachim Klein, President of ThreeKit. Originally from Germany, Joachim has been living in San Francisco for the past three years.  ThreeKit is Joachim’s fourth foray into Enterprise SaaS, a field he is fully subscribed to at this point. He started off his path in a company called BigMachines, the subject of the conversation on this episode.   Joachim joined it in September 2000 as EMEA MD, nine months after BigMachines had been started. The startup helped manufacturing companies provide the best possible quotes for their big machines. Joachim remembers the first year as particularly exhilarating. They were receiving a lot of interest from prospects, had many great conversations with them and all in all got a lot of praise for the problem they were tackling. On top of that, they had raised $30 million in funding so there was plenty of money in the bank. Bullish about the future of the company, BigMachines hired a lot of people that year, preparing for the

This week’s guest on the SaaS Revolution Show is John Doran, Director of Engineering at Phorest Salon Software, a cloud-based management solution and marketing suite for salons and spas.  Born and bred in Dublin, John has always loved building product and iteratively improving it. Phorest is the first SaaS product he was involved with, jumping in from professional services. which he found far more unsatisfactory. When John joined Phorest four years ago, there were only 5-6 engineers who all reported to Ronan Perceval, CEO and Founder of Phorest.  Two years into his tenure, John became the Director of Engineering. For a while, he continued operating under the flat structure he inherited but quickly that began to cause problems. Individually siloed and not in sync, the engineering development suffered. John and his team began to experiment with changes and are on a journey of continuous improvement. Listen on to learn: The warning signs that the engineering team will need to be restructured One change John and

On the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show we chat with SalesLoft CMO, Sydney Sloan. She shares lessons from her vast experience in customer-focused marketing and the metrics she has learned to swear by and report.  Sydney has always been customer focused. Even back in the 90s when there were no CRM systems and no one spoke about the importance of myopically focusing on the customer. At the time she was doing what would end up a 15 year stint at Adobe - the place Sydney says she grew up in a way. At trade shows she would stand beside her sales colleague and have long conversations with people who visited their booth about their problems and challenges. Towards the end of her time in Adobe, she finally had a more customer experience role, leading the Customer Marketing. From then on, there was no going back. Her career would see her work for companies such as Jive Software and Alfresco. A little over a year ago, she joined Salesloft where she has been building a strong relationship between Marketing and

This week’s guest on the SaaS Revolution Show is Sophia Eng, VP of Growth Marketing at Trade the Fifth and Founder of Women in Growth, a support group for female executives. In August 2017 an article she wrote in response to an internal memo that a Google engineer had written to discredit the ability of women to be in STEM careers, became viral overnight. Quoting outdated facts, the internal memo was leaked to the public and as soon as Sophia read it, she wrote a manifesto to urge women and other minorities to speak up and tell their stories so the facts can be straightened.  On the episode, Sophia shares more about the experience and what has happened since. She talks in detail about the continued importance that people of diverse backgrounds tell their story, how vital it is not too give up on efforts to bring more diversity and inclusion in tech as we are only at the tip of the speer and one characteristic that women and other minorities possess that is essential for innovation. A child of Vietnamese immig

The start of Dan Martell entrepreneurial path has all the markings of a Hollywood film - driving a stolen car, chased by police, with a gun beside him. The latest guest on the Struggle, the Canadian 5-time founder has quite the story of trials, tribulations on the way to success. Beyond being a dad, a husband and a Canadian, Dan would tell you that his defining characteristics are someone who is driven, someone who constantly asks what is possible and what does he need to do to fulfill his dreams and goals. We know where, when and how his entrepreneurial story begins but what has followed since is as interesting, tough and educational. A lot of it was, in his words, soul crushing. It took him nearly 10 years and 2 failed companies to get a better idea of how to do business right. That coupled with coming across the book “Love is the killer app” gave him the knowledge to be successful. 15 years and three more companies after, Dan has managed to achieve successful exits all the while learning a massive amount o

On the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we host Rory O’Driscoll, Partner of Scale Venture Partners and talk about the things he believes SaaS entrepreneurs should be mindful of even as the SaaS industry seems to be thriving. Originally from Ireland, Rory moved to California 28 years ago. For 25 of those, he has been investing in enterprise software with Scale Venture Partners and its predecessor. In that time he has learned a lot of things about the world of venture funding, starting with the fact of just how deceivingly easy all of it seems, yet how difficult it is to make the right decisions about entrepreneurs and their companies and have the conviction to see them through the tough times.   Rory has also learned to count his blessings and remember that a lot of the successful bets he has made have a lot to do with luck. That humbleness is what keeps him cautious even in the best of times for SaaS and in this interview he shares some of his reservations about valuations, market saturation, the i

One of the last sessions at SaaStock18 was a bonus chat that brought a double dose of Canadian accents - April Dunford, the world’s foremost expert on positioning sat for a conversation with Mark Organ, CEO and founder of Influitive. Even though they spoke at 4;20 on the day weed was legalised in Toronto, the topic they covered on the day was slightly different - category creation. On this week’s episode we are bringing you their entire chat. Category creation had been coming up again and again during the two days of the conference. It’s something that Mark, who has started 7 companies in his career, two of which category creators, is all too familiar with. His first one was Eloqua, which he founded 20 years ago and the second is his current company, Influitive, which he started 8 years ago. In their conversation, April and Mark talk about the origin story of each, to what extend Mark realized he was creating categories at the time, how he sold the idea to funders and customers, and many other. Both agree jus

On the latest episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we speak with Alison Murdock, CMO of SocialChorus, a platform for planning, creating, publishing, and measuring employee communications. Alison has spent the last 25 years in Silicon Valley working in a variety of media and SaaS companies. She started her career wanting to be a writer and her very first job was writing for a magazine in Paris. As she transitioned more into marketing, writing remained a fundamental skill for her and to this day, Alison believes that what companies choose to write or speak about matters most. Everywhere she has worked, she has always aimed to find the crux of the issue that companies are trying to nail with content and the story they are trying to tell. When it comes to Social Chorus that is a particularly important thing to focus on as they sell to a plethora of companies, that are often undergoing digital transformation. In this interview Alison shares many nuggets from her experience including: How to stand out in the sea o

On this month’s episode of the Struggle, Alex Theuma speaks with Liam Boogar-Azoulay, Head of Marketing at MadKudu, a predictive lead scoring solution for SaaS companies. Liam has had somewhat of an unusual path professionally and personally. When everyone was moving to Silicon Valley, he moved away from it, landing in Paris. While most people would hone their skills in a particular area first and then dare to start their own company, Liam’s first job was starting Rude Baguette, a blog devoted to startups.   He had started it almost as soon as he moved to Paris. Rude Baguette would end up being one of the biggest startup publications in France, which employed 10 people. That is until Liam brought it to bankruptcy, a slow one as you will hear him describe in this interview, but a bankruptcy nevertheless. In retrospect, he knows exactly what went wrong but at the time some of his flaws were hidden. One thing he realized from the experience is that he had enjoyed building the brand far more than being a CEO. Wit

On this week’s episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we talk with SaaStock East Coast speaker Eran Ben Shushan. He is Co-Founder and CEO of Bizzabo, a holistic event management platform, and shares how to make better hiring decisions​ as a company grows. Originally from Tel Aviv, Israel, Eran moved to New York, three and a half years ago, as soon as the company found product-market fit. A former air force officer and a system’s engineer, Eran had his first experience with the magic and challenge of events over 12 years ago. His fascination with events was so intense that he decided to dip his toe in building a platform for them. He started Bizzabo with two other co-founders 7 years ago. Initially it was improving networking at events and aiming to engineer serendipity for attendees. However, early on, Eran and his two co-founders saw a far bigger opportunity. Nowadays Bizzabo boast two offices, an employee count of 120 and has to date raised $57 million in VC funding. The growth has been tremendous but what Er

On this week’s episode of the SaaS Revolution Show we speak with Diane Adams, Chief Culture and Talent Officer at Sprinklr and author of the book It Takes More than Casual Fridays and Free Coffee. Diane has devoted her career to building and studying the role of culture in a company’s success. As the Chief Culture and Talent Officer at Sprinklr, Diane and her team are charting the course for building a high-performing and inclusive culture. No wonder then that the word her colleagues would use to describe her is obsessive in relation to figuring the puzzle that is company culture. When asked what company culture is, Diane says it’s the consistent set of behaviours displayed inside an organization, rather than the words, the culture decks or the free coffees. Actual culture starts by understanding what people truly care about. When she first joined Sprinklr over a year ago, she found a situation often observed in high-growth companies. The company culture had been great until it wasn’t anymore. Diane rolled he

On this month’s episode of The Struggle, we speak with Janna Bastow, Co-Founder and CEO of ProdPad, a SaaS platform for product management that helps product managers develop product strategy. It took Janna about a week on the job as a product manager to realize that she didn’t have the tools necessary to do her job. Creating roadmaps, managing a backlog of features and writing specs was all done in Powerpoint and Excel, tools never created for such purposes. Yet for two years that is exactly what Janna used. Until one day she decided she had had enough of waiting for better tools and together with what would become her co-founder, Simon Cast, began building the tool she never had. Initially, Janna and Simon used it just for themselves but it didn’t take long until they realized that many other product managers just like them would find it useful. In 2012 they quit their jobs and in February 2013 ProdPad was officially launched. They signed their first customer within the month, a customer that is still with

On this week's episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, we are bringing you the Growth Stage fireside chat Nathan latka had with Adrien Menard, CEO and Co-Founder of Botify. Adrien unravels a host of interesting data behind Botify’s growth - when they became profitable, what is their ACV and net churn, how their sales and customer success organizations look like and many other.  Botify is a search engine optimization platform designed to optimize websites for Googlebot. Started in 2012 in Paris, the company currently has 450 customers and is spread between three offices. Adrien established the New York HQ. He moved there in 2016. We spoke with him about the experience of moving there and establishing US operations about a year ago on the podcast. Have a listen. Nathan Latka has an unmatched ability to extract data and information from SaaS founders and has over 3000 podcast episodes under his belt, making him incredibly knowledgeable on the subject of what it takes to be a successful SaaS company. It’s why we are

To mark the launch of our fourth flagship conference, SaaStock19, we are bringing a special radio hour episode collating the wisdom from 5 speakers we hosted at SaaStock18, who will be joining us again at SaaStock19. We have gathered tactical advice from Patrick Campbell, CEO and founder of ProfitWell, April Dunford, Founder of Ambient Strategy, Bridget Harris, CEO and Co-Founder of youcanbook.me, Eris Siu, CEO of Single Grain, and Steli Efti, CEO and Founder of Close.io who in different ways and for different reasons would agree on the essential importance of speaking to customers. As you are listening it may seem like they are talking about something completely separate, yet they always get to the same conclusion: whatever the challenge, part or the resolution is directly connected with talking to your customers. That is as valid for building better products and improving them, as it is to positioning your product better, getting more traffic to your website and improving your sales emails. Super early bird

On this week’s episode of the SaaS Revolution Show, fresh off the SaaStock LatAm stage, we bring you one of the favourite panels of the day - best practices in hiring for culture creation. Maira Gracini, LatAm Marketing Director at Zendesk moderates the panel, which hosts Valeria Porto, HR Director at PayPal, Gabriela Viana, LatAm Marketing Director for Adobe and Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist at Zoho. They share how their respective organizations are rethinking their recruitment process: opening up candidate pools to cater to diverse groups, from ethnicity through gender, and all the way to ability and neurodiversity. What they share, clearly proves how hiring with diversity in mind, shortens recruitment cycles and creates tangible benefits to both company culture and the bottom line. Among other powerful nuggets, you will learn how and why Zoho abandoned the requirement for college degrees, why referral programs are the best way to recruit according to PayPal, why Adobe was the first company in Silicon Vall