Claire Hughes-Johnson: Build, Break, Stretch, Repeat Lessons from Scaling Google & Stripe (Video + Transcript)
Jason Lemkin sits down with Stripe COO Claire Hughes-Johnson to discuss what it’s like to scale a fast-growing company and how to manage hypergrowth. Having over 10 years of experience with Google and being intrinsically motivated by Stripe’s mission certainly helps. When you’re the COO of a global company that only continues to expand across […]
Why I Usually (Not Always) Prefer Customer Success to Report to the CEO
Ah, who should Customer Success report to? It’s not super simple. There are generally 3 options in the early and middle days: CEO VP of Sales (once you have one) VP of Something Else. Finance sometimes. Product on occasion. Other “business” co-founder. There are clear Pros and Cons to reporting to a VP of Sales. […]
The 10-Year (And Longer) Customer
Salesforce likes to talk about “Customers for Life”, and while that’s sort of catchy, it’s a little hard to grok what it really means. It finally sunk in for me a bit the other day. At EchoSign, now Adobe Sign, there’s a large group of well-known customers that I closed, Back in The Day … […]
The Two Things to Do. When You Don’t Know What to Do.
There may come a time, or two, in your company when you just don’t know what to do. You aren’t growing fast enough. or The competition seems to be getting the best of you. or You can’t raise financing. or You just lost an important deal. Or maybe more than one. or That great new […]
Anthony Kennada (Gainsight), Menaka Shroff (Betterworks), Aaron Levie (Box): Running The Box Playbook – Even Better The Second Time (Video + Transcript)
(TWO DAYS to SaaStr Annual 2017. Do you have your tix yet?!?!) Having worked at Box in its early days before branching off into new startups, Anthony Kennada and Menaka Shroff took the lessons they learned there to Gainsight and BetterWorks, respectively. Along with Jason Lemkin, they’re joined by their former boss, Box CEO Aaron Levie, […]
What I’m doing about the Tech Backlash
This week I posted The Coming Tech Backlash, on how my industry is due for a reckoning with the job destruction caused by automation. The article struck a big chord. A question to ask is: what can I do about it? As a small startup founding CEO, here’s my answer. I signed an entrepreneur pledge […]
A Fresh Look at How to Measure SaaS Churn Rates
It’s been nearly three years since my original post on calculating SaaS renewal rates and I’ve learned a lot and seen a lot of new situations since then. In this post, I’ll provide a from-scratch overhaul on how to calculate churn in an enterprise SaaS company [1]. While we are going to need to “get […]
Zuora moves to the center
Zuora, the company that made its bones in subscription billing and payments held its annual user meeting in San Francisco last week and staked out some new turf. It had always been back office focused but its latest messaging includes elements of the front office. Perhaps it’s no surprise given co-founder and CEO Tien Tzuo’s […]
How to Think About The Huge Expenses of Events and Tradeshows
Events and trade shows. They’re expensive. You don’t get enough booth traffic. The folks that do come by are too junior. It sucks up days at a time. The air is convention-center nasty. Too much ice cream, too much alcohol, too many almost-all-dudes parties. How can it be worth it? Even just $25,000 for […]
![Pick Up The [D**n] Phone](https://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/mimirogers-300x159-100x100.jpg)
Pick Up The [D**n] Phone
We’ve talked quite a bit on SaaStr about Customer Success, and there’s a very specific reason for it. It’s one of the most non-obvious drivers of revenue growth in Years 3, 4, 5 and beyond of your SaaS start-up. More on that here. Customer Success can feel like a cost center in Year 1 (and […]
