SaaStr Podcast #142: Dave Kellogg, CEO @ Host Analytics On Why CAC/LTV Is The Most Important Metric In SaaS
Dave Kellogg is the CEO @ Host Analytics, the leader in cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM). Previously, Dave was SVP/GM of Service Cloud at Salesforce and CEO at unstructured big data provider MarkLogic. Before that, Dave was CMO at Business Objects for nearly a decade as the company grew from $30M to over $1B. […]
Big Companies Don’t Churn. They Quit You.
“Churn” is a term we all use in SaaS as a core metric, but its roots, as near as I remember and can tell, come from our B2C colleagues. In a low-end subscription model for a tool, not a solution (e.g., semi-commodity storage, semi-commodity hosting, etc. etc.), individuals and small businesses, often paying on their […]
The Secrets of Net Negative Churn: Customer Advocacy (Video + Transcript)
Nick Mehta, CEO at Gainsight, moderates this panel with what he calls three of the sharpest people in customer success: Catherine Blackmore, GVP Customer Success at Oracle Marketing Cloud; Maria Pergolino, Senior VP Marketing at Apttus; and Emilia D’Anzica, VP Customer Engagement at WalkMe. Through their professional experience in companies of all different sizes, they’ve […]
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 […]
