Leaders of Growth: Recent Episodes
Arthur Nobel
Leaders of Growth is the first podcast that helps B2B SaaS companies scale to $25M ARR and beyond. Every week, Arthur Nobel from Knight Capital brings you insights from SaaS thought leaders, founders, and experts from fast-growing software companies to help you grow your business. Each episode covers different startup challenges such as scaling teams, Go-to-Market, and the changing role of the founder in a growing organization. Leaders of Growth is brought to you by Knight Capital. Get the summary of these interviews in the Leaders of Growth book (leadersofgrowth.co) or at the Knight Capital blog (knight.capital/blog).
In this insightful episode, we sit down with Maurits Stuyver, the founder of Vondel Venture Development.
Maurits has spent over a decade guiding tech companies to master international expansion and commercial acceleration. He brings her extensive experience working with diverse businesses, from B2B marketplaces to SaaS companies and technical software solutions.
In our conversation, we delve into:
- The nuances of sales management, from the role of qualitative and quantitative coaching to strategic forecasting.
-Advice on building a replicable sales model.
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Hiring and building a successful Sales team.
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Insights on international expansion in the software industry.
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The significance of setting success metrics in Sales and the importance of localization.
Tune in!
Leaders of Growth is brought to you by Knight Capital.
In today's episode, we embark on the journey of scaling a startup to an international company with Bas Smeulders, the Co-Founder and CFO of SendCloud.
Bas shares invaluable insights from his decade-long experience transforming a garage-based startup into a thriving startup.
In our conversation, we explore:
• Scaling Challenges of SendCloud and Hiring Strategies,
• The beginnings of SendCloud and how the founders started out in a garage selling smartphone accessories.
• Mastering market dynamics, securing funds, and synergizing,
• Achieving a balance between having a flexible culture and building strong processes,
• The challenges of growing too quickly or too slowly.
• Pivoting to a subscription model,
• Diversifying customer segments and distribution channel
• And more!
In today's episode, we delve into the world of scaling a business from a service to a product model with Pieterjan Bouten, the Co-founder and chairman of Showpad.
PJ shares insights from his entrepreneurial journey, starting from his initial consulting career to co-founding two companies - Netlog and In The Pocket, and ultimately crossing the challenging line to a product business with Showpad.
In our conversation, we explore:
• The journey of Showpad through various stages of growth - from bootstrapping to international expansion, hyper-scaling, and maturation.
• The strategic diversification of distribution channels, navigating from PLG motion to direct and outbound sales.
• PJ's personal journey as a founder of Showpad, transitioning from the role of CEO to Chairman, and the self-discovery and growth that came with it.
• The importance of trusting one's intuition and surrounding oneself with the right people.
Let's dive in!
Leaders of Growth is brought to you by Knight Capital.
In this episode of "Leaders of Growth", we engage in an in-depth conversation with Sahin Boydas, the entrepreneur behind RemoteTeam, which was acquired by Gusto, a $10 billion company that focuses on providing payroll, benefits, and human resources management solutions for small businesses.
In this conversation, we cover:
- Sahin’s entrepreneurial journey: From Turkey to Austin
- Unlocking growth with Fidle: A transformative tool for businesses
- Inside Gusto's acquisition of RemoteTeam: Lessons from the trenches.
- How to prepare for an integration
- Balancing career growth and personal satisfaction in remote teams
- Embracing the shift to remote work.
Tune in to gather invaluable insights and strategies for navigating the ever-evolving B2B software landscape.
Our latest episode features Marcin Majewski, Founder and Managing Director of Aventis Advisors, an M&A advisory firm focusing on technology and growth companies, who shares his insights and experiences from the front lines of technology mergers and acquisitions.
Recently, Aventis Advisors launched comprehensive research on valuation trends and multiples in the Public and M&A market for SaaS companies.
In this episode, we dive deep into Marcin's research and discuss:
• How does the current market environment impact tech M&A valuations, and what should investors consider?
• The differences between public and private multiples.
•Why are SaaS businesses valued higher than on-premise software businesses, and how have their premiums changed recently?
• How the "small company discount" market valuation trends.
• Valuation Drivers: How does business size affect valuations, and what factors contribute to higher valuations for larger companies?
• Valuations from private deals vs. those from public markets.
• Revenue multiples vs. EBITDA multiples.
• How should founders approach understanding their company valuation.
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In today's episode, we dive into strategy, execution, and performance management for scaling your business with Asia Orangio, the CEO and founder of DemandMaven, a growth consulting firm.
Today we discuss:
• Scaling a Company Across Series A to C and common challenges.
• Choosing the right KPIs . How focusing on the wrong KPIs can hinder growth.
• Aligning Strategy, Execution, and Performance
• Sales-led Growth vs. Product-led Growth
• Value of customer research in driving growth
• OKR, Wigs, and JTBD framework
• Understanding Acquisition Channels for Growth
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In this episode, we had an insightful conversation with Barbara Gago, founder and CEO of Pando and former CMO of Miro.
We discussed:
• The significance of aligning marketing and sales teams and experimenting with different channels.
• Why you should tie marketing compensation to revenue results.
• How to approach employee progression for retaining talent.
Join us for an inspiring episode that delves into Barbara's founding journey.
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In this episode of Leaders of Growth, Arthur Nobel from Knight Capital interviews Scott Stouffer, CEO and co-founder of Scale Matters.
Scott shares valuable insights on optimizing the sales and marketing efforts of early and growth-stage B2B companies.
Scott and Arthur discuss several topics, including:
· The common inefficiencies in sales and marketing efforts of early and growth-stage companies.
· A data-driven approach for determining the number of salespeople needed to achieve revenue goals.
· Go-to-market management.
· GTM maturity and how to leverage data according to your stage.
· Go-to-market tech infrastructure
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This podcast is brought to you by Knight Capital.
In this episode, Arthur delves into Category Creation with his guest, Joe Sawyer, the Chief Marketing Officer of Mirakl, a renowned enterprise marketplace SaaS platform that has raised $948 million.
- Importance of balancing vision and execution.
- When should companies start with category creation?
- How to compete against category creators.
- Elements of category creation.
- Challenges of category creation.
- Whether category creation is the right strategy for businesses.
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In this episode, Arthur speaks with Lowell Ricklefs, the Founder and Managing Partner of Traction Advising, a B2B SaaS-focused M&A firm.
The conversation delves into the topic of Acquisitions, touching upon the following points:
- Scaling challenges
- How to prepare your company for an acquisition
- The rationales behind acquiring a company
- Differences between Private Equity funds and Strategics
- A step-by-step understanding of the acquisition process
- Working with an advisor vs. selling the company on your own
- And more!
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This podcast is brought to you by Knight Capital.
In this episode of Leaders of Growth, Arthur Nobel sits down with Johanna Småros, Founder and CMO of the unicorn software company Relex Solutions, a supply chain & retail planning platform.
They discuss:
• How Relex Solutions was born and the company's roots in academic research that laid the foundation for its success.
• The importance of aligning customer and vendor interests.
• Why "pursuing your passion" isn't always the best career advice.
• The company's growth and evolution, including the decision to raise capital and the development of the founder's role as the company grew.
• The importance of customer obsession and happiness and how they relate to the company's success.
• Focusing on the problem instead of the competition.
• Why the company raised $500 Million last year and how it helped them to grow and expand.
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This podcast is brought to you by Knight Capital.
𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘦: 𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘔𝘢𝘺 2022, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥.
Today, we had Brian Requarth on the show. Brian is the Co-Founder of Latitud, a company that provides community, infrastructure, and capital to tech companies. Additionally, he founded and exited VivaReal for $550m+. Brian is the author of the Amazon best-selling book Viva the Entrepreneur.
In this episode, Arthur from Knight Capital and Brian discuss:
• The challenges of scaling his company
• Balancing speed and growth
• Metrics to assess the company’s performance
• When does it make sense for a start-up to look at mergers and acquisitions?
• Running efficient boards
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Leaders of Growth is brought by Knight Capital.
In this episode, Arthur Nobel, Principal at Knight Capital, chatted with Arun Mani, CRO of Pleo, a spending management solution that offers smart payment cards for employees to buy work-related products while keeping the company in control of spending. The company is based in Copenhagen, raised over $420M, and has around 1000 employees.
Arun scaled sales organizations at two successful companies (Appnexus & Freshworks) and served as s a C-level strategy adviser at Mckinsey and Accenture. He also founded “NIA - A ray of hope”, a non-profit organization to promote women's education in developing countries. NIA has helped over 1000 underprivileged girls reach for the stars through education.
In this episode, Arthur and Arun discussed
His background and career
- Typical challenges in companies at different stages - $20-$50, $50-100, and >$100
- Focus vs. Diversification (new markets and products)
- Scaling lessons
- Internationalization
- Pitfalls of expanding to the US
- Channel Sales
- Serving mid-market vs. serving enterprises
- Having a Country Manager vs. VP of Sales
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Leaders of Growth is brought to you by Knight Capital
In this episode, Arthur Nobel, Principal at Knight Capital, chatted with Arun Mani, CRO of Pleo, a spending management solution that offers smart payment cards for employees to buy work-related products while keeping the company in control of spending. The company is based in Copenhagen, raised over $420M, and has around 1000 employees.
Arun scaled sales organizations at two successful companies (Appnexus & Freshworks) and served as s a C-level strategy adviser at Mckinsey and Accenture. He also founded “NIA - A ray of hope”, a non-profit organization to promote women's education in developing countries. NIA has helped over 1000 underprivileged girls reach for the stars through education.
In this episode, Arthur and Arun discussed
His background and career:
- Typical challenges in companies at different stages - $20-$50, $50-100, and >$100
- Focus vs. Diversification (new markets and products)
- Scaling lessons
- Internationalization
- Pitfalls of expanding to the US
- Channel Sales
- Serving mid-market vs. serving enterprises
- Having a Country Manager vs. VP of Sales
Like the episode? Subscribe and don’t miss out on the next one!
Leaders of Growth is brought to you by Knight Capital.
In this episode, Arthur sat down with Jacco Van Der Kooij, Founder and Co-CEO at Winning by Design, which was the second-fastest-growing private company in Silicon Valley in 2021.
They discussed:
- How the go-to-market strategy aligns with the price of the product you are selling.
- What different kinds of people do you need sales organization grows through the stages.
- The essential factors to survive and grow as a SaaS
- New deals vs. Upselling
- The most important metrics for the Sales Organization
- Churn
- How can a sales leader set the stage with the help of the sales rock stars
- The differences between US and European startups
Like the episode? Subscribe to Leaders of Growth or get the summary of this interview in the Leaders of Growth book.
This podcast is brought to you by Knight Capital
Ante Spittler is the Co-Founder and CEO at Moss, an all-in-one spend management solution with headquarters in Berlin, Germany.
Moss allows companies to pay all business expenses with virtual and physical credit cards, keep track of employee expenses without chasing receipts, and automate their accounting.
Moss reached its Series B stage and raised over $150 M in funding and quadrupled its team in the last 12 months.
In today’s episode, Ante and our host Arthur discussed how Moss was born, the challenges and learnings from scaling the company, and how they approached international expansion and scaling the team.
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Leaders of Growth is brought by Knight Capital.
Dan Balcauski is the founder of Product Tranquility, a consulting that helps B2B SaaS companies define pricing and packaging for new products.
Dan has 15 years of experience managing multiple products throughout their life cycles, from startups to publicly traded multinational enterprises.
In this episode, Arthur and Dan discuss:
- Common pitfalls in pricing
- Setting a pricing strategy
- The 3C's of pricing
- The SVCS Model for SaaS pricing
- How to approach targeting different industries and segments
- How to create good packaging
- Price classification
- Who should be responsible for pricing in an organization?
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Leaders of Growth is brought to you by Knight Capital.
In today's episode, we sat down with Matías Rodsevich, Founder & CEO of PRLab. This award-winning PR agency serves both tech startups and corporates and is one of the top five PR agencies in The Netherlands.
Matías is also the author of The PR Paradox, where he shares his insights and learnings on mastering PR as a startup or scaleup. He's also the PRLab community's founder, comprising over 1,300+ PR and marketing professionals.
In today's episode, Arthur Nobel from Knight Capital, and Matías, discuss:
2:25 The difference between PR for startups and corporates
4:20 The PR Paradox
5:45 PR myths and a model to succeed in PR
7:50 How much time should it take to see results?
10:40 How to get PR right
15:20 Strategies for getting featured in the media
26:00 How to build relationships with journalists
29:00 Should I hire a PR agency or have someone in-house?
33:00 The most common PR Mistakes
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Marija Dzemionaite is the Head Of Brand Communications at NordLayer (Nord Security.)
Nord Security is an internet privacy and security provider for individuals and businesses that raised over $100M in funds and reached the unicorn status in April.
Marija is an ex-Googler, marketer, and social media expert who led the rebranding of NordLayer. She is also an instructor at Domestika.
In this episode, Arthur and Marija discuss:
- What is great branding in 2022?
- What is branding and rebranding, and why it’s important
- Why implement a rebranding strategy and its goals
- Do’s and don’ts of rebranding
- How to balance demand generation and branding activities
- Brand as a competitive advantage
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Leaders of Growth is brought to you by Knight Capital
Thomas Inhelder is the Co-Founder and CFO of Yokoy; an AI-based spend management platform for medium and large enterprises.
Yokoy has raised over $100 M in funding and is at its Series B stage.
In this episode, Thomas and Arthur from Knight Capital discuss:
2:30 The current state of the market from a CFO perspective
4:50 Approach to Cash Burn and Growth
6:50 Break even
7:40 Cutting costs during a recession?
9:00 KPIs to monitor
11:45 Dos and Don’ts of Scaling
14:15 How the company structure evolved
15:50 Scaling and productivity
20:40 Tool Stack
25:40 Processes
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Leaders of Growth is brought to you by Knight Capital
Christopher May is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Finoa, a regulated custodian for crypto-assets, that offers custody and staking services to institutional investors and corporations.
After working for over 4 years as a consultant at McKinsey, he founded the company in 2018.
Finoa is at the Series A stage and raised over $20M in funding and its team tripled in the last year.
In this episode, Arthur from Knight Capital and Christopher touched upon:
2:40 Finoa's Story
4:40 Scaling Challenges
6:40 The Business Model
10:00 Learnings of Fast-Scaling
15:50 Hiring & Culture
19:20 Building Culture Remotely
27:00 Hiring For Remote Roles
32:00 Evolving as a Founder
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Leaders of Growth is brought to you by Knight Capital
72% of entrepreneurs are directly or indirectly affected by mental health issues according to a study by Dr. Michael Freeman (UC Berkley).
There’s no doubt that founders' mental health matters for startups. That’s why in this mental health month, we sat with the author of this research.
Dr. Michael Freeman is a psychiatrist, a fourth-generation serial entrepreneur, and an executive coach, who serves on the faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. He has held CEO and C-level leadership positions in several public and private sector health care organizations, and he is currently the founder of ECcona, a global center for entrepreneur mental wellness.
In this episode Arthur Nobel, from Knight Capital and Michael Freeman, sat down to discuss:
5:00 The three dimensions of mental health
7:00 The mental differences that entrepreneurs have
11:00 The importance of self-awareness and self-efficacy
16:20 Medication for mental health conditions
19:50 How your environment affects mental health
22.45 Resilience strategies to increase mental health
31:50 How can companies manage the mental health of their employees
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Leaders of Growth is brought to you by Knight Capital
Henrik Grim is a General Manager of Capchase (Europe). Capchase is a revenue-based financial provider for recurring revenue businesses. Capchase has raised $549.6M in funding over 7 rounds and achieved unicorn status.
In this episode, we delve into revenue-based financing. We explore what is it, how it works, how is the process, and if it’s suitable for your business.
5: Do's and don'ts of scaling
9:00 scaling to new geographies
15: What is revenue-based financing?
22:00 entry requirements
27:00 how the process works
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In this episode, our host Arthur Nobel sat down with Steffen Vollert, COO of Volt.io.
Volt.io is an open payments gateway that aims to reduce the cost and complexity of point-of-sale transactions.
Volt acts as a global Open Banking payments aggregator and technology developer to scale merchant organizations. The company was founded in 2019 and raised over $27.8 M.
They touched upon topics such as:
5:30 Steffen’s experience in scaling Volt
8:53 The challenges in scaling the Engineering organization
10:15 How the team is structured
12:10 How to decrease interdependence
18:00 Extreme ownership and HR challenges
24:00 headcount planning
30:00 tracing the performance of the product team
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In today’s episode, Arthur discusses M&A with Thomas Smale. Thomas is the CEO of FE International, an award-winning global M&A advisor of SaaS, e-commerce, and content businesses that has completed over 1000 acquisitions. Thomas began building and selling online companies in his early 20s and now has over a decade of experience in the SaaS Space.
In this episode of Leaders of Growth, we cover:
5:00 The acquisition process
11.20 Do's and don'ts of the acquisition process
13:40 Strategic acquires vs PE acquisitions
20:00 Deal Structures
27:00 Drivers in exit valuations
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In this episode, Arthur Nobel discusses the role of the CPO with Gijo Mathew, Chief Product Officer at VTS, a real estate CRM software company. VTS has raised over $330M in funding over 9 rounds, and its currently in its Series D.
Gijo has been a Product Leader for over 25 years in companies such as CA Technologies and Web.com.
Today, they touch upon topics such as the role of the CPO, differences between a CPO and a VP of Product, the evolution of a CPO from a startup to scaleup phase, how to evaluate the success of a CPO, and how to keep the organization aligned.
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Explore more insights on Scaling SaaS companies at knight.capital
Louis Coulon is the co-founder of CleverConnect, an HR Tech that helps companies attract, convert and assess candidates. The company offers SaaS solutions for resume matching, video interviews, and smart career websites. CleverConnect started bootstrapping and is now at its Series B Stage and raised $35.5 M.
Arthur Nobel, Principal at Knight Capital, interviews Louis in this episode. They touch upon topics such as:
4:20 The State of the HR Market
13:30 The Scaling Challenges of CleverConnect
16:30 Key Learnings of Louis in his Journey
19:00 Merging with another Company
24:00 Things to Consider Before Merging
27:00 Changing Roles as a Founder
31:00 How Did the Team Develop Over Time
Christian Gabriel is the CEO and founder of Capdesk, an equity management platform for private companies. Capdesk is currently at its Series A stage and raised $15M in funding.
In this episode, Christian shares his journey and touches upon topics such as:
1:20 How Capdesk was born
7:30 Scaling challenges
10:00 Recruiting
15:00 Trends in startup equity
18:50 Giving equity to employees
28:00 What you should watch out for in a funding round
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Hugo Wernhoff is the CEO and Founder of Kognity, an EdTech from Sweden that allows teachers to make more efficient use of teaching time and empowers students to take ownership of their learning. Kognity raised over $27 million and is currently in the Series B stage.
In this episode, we delve into Hugo's role as a CEO and Founder and how self-awareness allowed him to make his job sustainable, build culture and grow his company.
Listen out for:
3:23 Learnings from Scaling Kognity
5:48 Struggles of Being a Founder
7:28 How to Overcome Personal Challenges
12:00 Dealing with Uncertainty
15:00 Personal Development For Founders
18:26 How To Become Self-Aware
20:18 How To Make The Founder Job Sustainable
24:40 How To Assess Your Company Culture
27:13 How To Create Culture Consciously
32:30 The Importance of Diversity
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"Life is too short to permit yourself the luxury of living it badly." That's Chris Zadeh's motto.
Chris is an entrepreneur turned Angel Investor. He joined the founders of BinckBank in 2000 as employee number six, and in 2003 he became managing director of the Netherlands.
After eight years at BickBank, he left the company and traveled the world. He got a vision of cloud-based administration factories for banks on his trip. That was how Ohpen, the world's first cloud-native core banking platform, was born. Ohpen raised over $80M.
Chris made his passions part of his routine as an entrepreneur. Being a founder didn't stop him from traveling and doing other activities such as yoga and martial arts.
Today, Chris is an angel investor and non-executive board member. He walks his shepherd dogs Yucca and Myza before doing yoga and advises companies on how to scale via his company Whangai.nl.
In this episode, Chris shares his story and learnings from scaling Ohpen, his approach to building company culture, and his passion for extreme activities.
The 29th episode of Leaders of Growth features Dave Martin, Co-Founder at RightToLeft, where he leads the Momentum program to help scale SaaS products faster and bigger.
Dave brings over two decades of Product leadership experience to his role as an executive coach. He has held C-suite roles including achieving 9 figure SaaS revenues leading to successful exit and worked on products for Google, Tes Global, PepsiCo, Bauer Media, CompareTheMarket, and various startups.
Listen out for:
2:00 Typical challenges of scaling Product
4:45 Developing an ROI mindset in Product
14:53 How to assess if Product and Engineering are collaborating effectively to drive ROI
19:40 Taking “product impact bets” to drive business value
24:00 Launching a new market
32:30 How to make the handover of Product: From Founder to CPO/ VP of Product
36:40 Key metrics to assess if you have a strong product
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In this episode, we cover a fundamental element for SaaS companies: positioning. Arthur Nobel, Principal at Knight Capital, sat down with Bob Wright, Partner at Firebrick Consulting. Bob has been at the vanguard of innovative positioning and sales enablement strategies for the industry and is a frequent speaker and guest lecturer on these topics.
Over his career, Bob has successfully driven category leadership and differentiation strategies for over 300 B2B technology companies including VMware, Microsoft, SAS, Citrix, as well many new category disruptors such as PLEX, Workday, HootSuite and New Relic.
This time, we cover how to assess if you're solving a significant pain, how to build and operationalize a positioning strategy, how to monitor your strategy, good and bad examples, and more.
Listen out for:
5:00 Quantifying the value proposition: is it necessary?
6:00 How to assess if you are solving a real pain
7:30 Creating urgency
11:00 Painkillers vs. Vitamins vs. Candies
14:20 How to build and implement a positioning strategy
19:40 How to compete in red oceans
24:50 Good and bad examples of positioning
29:50 How to operationalize positioning
34:30 How to monitor your strategy
37:40 Positioning to different targets in a company
In today’s episode, we sat down with the B2B SaaS Marketer Edward Ford, Demand Gen Director at Supermetrics. Edward helped double the Marketing team size and quadruple ARR in 2 years.
In this episode we cover:
3:00 Do’s and don’ts of scaling Marketing
7:50 Developing you people and reinventing yourself as the company grows
17:00 How to pick the right distribution channels
21:00 How Supermetrics added new layers of distribution as they scaled
24:00 Building your content strategy
30:40 Structuring the Marketing team
36:00 How to manage Marketing localization when expanding
39:50 Which Marketing metrics Supermetrics use
Today, we sat down with one of the Most Influential Women in Sales (AA-ISP). Sally Duby is the Chief Sales Officer and Partner at The Bridge Group, and in this episode, she brings insightful advice on how to set up Sales for success.
Arthur and Sally discuss how SaaS companies can assess if they have a replicable sales model, training and onboarding Sales Frontline Managers, how to set Quotas, how to evaluate the health of your pipeline, and ramp-up times for SDR/AEs. Additionally, she shares 3 common mistakes to avoid when scaling Sales.
Listen out for:
3:50 Lessons from Sally Duby
7:00 The importance of Alignment in the company
14:00 Do I have a replicable sales model?
16:00 Three Mistakes to Avoid
18:00 Training and Onboarding Frontline Managers
27:00 How to Set Quotas
32:00 How to evaluate if you have a healthy pipeline
42:30 Which is a good ramp-up time for SDR/AEs?
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In the 25th episode of Leaders of Growth, we’re thrilled to have Jonathan Anguelov, Founder & Managing Partner of Aircall. Aircall is a cloud-based call center and phone system. Aircall was founded in 2014 and has raised over $226 million in funding. The company reached unicorn status, becoming the 16th French unicorn.
Listen out for:
0:43 Background
4:00 How to Find a Balance Between Growth and Cash Efficiency? / The Rule of 40
6:13 Do’s and Don’ts of Scaling
10:06 How to Hire your Early Employees
15:14 How to Develop as a Founder as the Company Grows
25:00 How Aircall got to $50M ARR with Partnerships
32:30 How to Align the Different Departments with the Sales Team
35:20 Having Side Projects as a Founder
Allan Adler is a Managing Partner at Digital Bridge Partners and a world-class Ecosystems coach supporting managers, and executives to understand and incorporate partnership best practices. Allan is the creator of the GoToEcosystem Framework that helps companies unlock the potential of Ecosystem Orchestration.
Listen out for:
1:00 Background
4:20 The four-wall syndrome and how digital transformation changed the SaaS industry
9:25 What are channel ecosystems; upstream/downstream activities
14:10 When to get started with ecosystems?
22:40 How to activate an ecosystem partner?
26:30 How to get started with Go-to-Ecosystem?
In today's episode, Arthur Nobel discusses how to build and evaluate the Customer Success team with our guest Dave Blake.
Dave is the Founder & CEO of ClientSuccess, a Customer Success platform that helps companies drive customer retention. Previously, Dave has been the VP of Global Customer Success at Adobe.
In this episode, we dive deep into the common mistakes in Customer Success, metrics to assess a CS team on, what to look for in a VP of Customer Success, compensation structures, and more!
Listen out for:
5.10 Common mistakes companies make in Customer Success
6.30 How to create a culture of Customer Success from day 1
8.05 How to evaluate the CS team?
14:25 Quantifying the value proposition
18:20 How to listen to the customer's voice
20:00 the golden standard of Customer Success
21.30 What to look for in a VP of Customer Success
26.35 how to structure the Customer Success organization
27.40 Career progression plans in CS
29.00 Revenue Driven Organization and Compensation
35.20 Compensation Structure
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In this episode, Jordi Romero, Founder and CEO at Factorial HR, shares his journey on scaling his company to its Series B, raising more than $100M and growing to over 400 employees. Factorial is an all-in-one HR software that helps you spend less time doing administrative tasks.
Listen out for:
1:00 How Factorial was born
3:00 Jordi's journey
6:00 The do's and don'ts of scaling
8:35 Motivating the team after one year without revenue
12:15 Internationalizing the company
16:30 Scaling: differences between in scaling to Series A and B
19:15 Maintaining your culture when scaling
20:45 Promoting people from within the company
21:50 Developing your culture internationally
25:30 Driving happiness in the organization
26:45 The fundraising process at Factorial
31:30 What to look for in a VC
36:20 Differences between raising a Series A round and a Series B round
42:40 Should you use playbooks?
In this episode, Arthur Nobel discusses the OKR framework with our guest Zack Ross. They touch upon topics like implementing the OKR framework, do's and don'ts, how to determine priorities, OKR based compensation, the role that management plays, and more.
Zack Ross is an OKR consultant and the founder of OKRWorkshop.com and OKRsTraining.com. He is also a Senior Technical Program Manager at VMware and a Global OKRs Coach and Mentor at Google.
Listen out for:
00:00 Background
5:10 Getting Started With OKRs
11:00 Common Challenges When Implementing OKR
14:20 How to Determine Priorities
16:40 Setting OKR Across the Organization
21:00 To What Extent Do CEOs should get involved in defining OKRs?
23:40 How to get Commitment
29:00 OKR-based Compensations
37:30 Committed OKRs vs. Aspirational OKRs
40:10 How to use this framework in contexts of high uncertainty?
45:00 Tools and Content Recommendations
In this episode, Arthur discusses scaling the Customer Success department with our guest David Sakamoto. They touch on topics like scaling best practices, aligning Customer Success with other departments, CS OPS, CS metrics, and much more!
David is the VP of Customer Success at GitLab and former Head of Customer Success at Cisco (The Americas).
Listen out for:
00:00 Background
4:30 Scaling Best Practices and Common Mistakes
7:30 How to Align CS with other departments
11:50 Structuring the Handoff Between Sales and CS
16:10 CS Ops
19:20 How Does the Customer Input Goes All the Way to the CEO
23:20 Customer Success Metrics
25:50 Building a Revenue Driving Function in CS
27:40 Incentive Structure
31:00 The importance of Role Modeling and Leadership
37:00 Content Recommendations
Felix Eichler is the CTO and Founder of Userlane, a company that helps organizations tackle digital transformation by automating user onboarding. Felix is also Forbes 30 under 30.
Listen out for:
00:00 Background
1:50 Pitfalls for companies in Series A and B
3:50 Keeping a balance between not micromanaging and not letting go too much
6:00 Founder Challenges when going from Series A to B and B to C
8:30 How to develop and maintain a startup culture
9:40 Writing down culture
15:15 Launching different sales models
18:20 Moving up-market
22:20 Final thoughts
In this episode, Arthur Nobel discusses Category Creation, Partnerships, and Go-to-market with our guest, Jill Rowley.
Jill was one of the first 100 employees in Salesforce and the 13th employee in Eloqua, where she helped the company grow to its IPO and exit to Oracle. Moreover, she has been an advisor for the CEO of Marketo. Jill is currently a GTM advisor at Guild Education and Fund Advisor and LP at Stage 2 Capital.
Listen out for:
1:00 Background
4:15 How do you define Go-to-market?
8:30 Recommendations for Founders on GTM
11:30 The Do’s and Don’ts of Scaling
14:10 Becoming a Platform
18:20 Category Creation
29:00 When to start with Partnerships
32:30 Activating a Channel
36:10 Incentivizing Partners
39:40 The importance of work-life balance
46:00 Content Recommendations
In this episode, Arthur Nobel discusses Marketing with our guest Brian Kardon.
Previously, Brian has been the CMO at Forrester, Eloqua, Lattice Engines, Fuze, and InVision and has +20 of experience in the field.
He has joined several of these companies in the early days and scaled some of them to IPO level. Brian is considered as one of the 50 most influential CMOs according to Forbes.
Listen out for:
01:00 Background and career
13:00 The role of the CRO
15:00 Learnings on scaling a Marketing department
17:50 Marketing Budgets
20:50 Bringing new logos vs. Upselling
22:10 Marketing Compensation
25:00 Building a Marketing Team
28:00 The importance of focus
32:20 Marketing tech stack: adopting new tools
37:40 How to structure Sales & Marketing across different industries
40:00 Learnings
In today's episode, we discuss Internationalization with our guest Gernot Schwendtner. Gernot is the founder of WeGrow, a firm specialized in helping startups launching abroad.
Listen out for:
00:40: Background
2:55: Common Mistakes of Internationalization
7:20: The right time to expand
9:40: Where to expand?
17:40: Expanding to Germany
19:10: Internationalization Playbook
24:40: How much time does it take to test a market?
29:15: To how many countries expand at the same time?
33:40: Head of Internationalization
28:00: Models for Internationalization
40:10: Hire local departments or internationalize remotely?
42:40: SWAT teams
46:10: Five personal learnings on internationalization
41:40 Content recommendations
In this episode, Arthur Nobel, Principal at Knight Capital, interviews Jonno Southam.
Jonno is the Venture Capital Business Development Manager - Region Lead at Google. Previously, he worked for AWS and founded two companies that he exited.
Listen out for:
- 0:40 Background
- 5:10 Biggest HR Challenges
- 7:10 Hire now or wait for “the right candidate”?
- 12:10 The Bar Raiser role
- 21:40 How to assess Cultural Fit
- 26:50 Talent Development
Like this episode?
Get your copy of the Leaders of Growth book on Amazon and learn from 47 first-hand stories on Growing Companies Across Series A to C: https://amzn.to/3w7hygA
All proceeds of the book will be donated to Princess Maxima Centrum.
Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Podcasts and stay tuned.
Konstanty Sliwowski is the Founder and Managing Director of Caissa Recruitment, a Berlin-based recruitment company focusing on leadership and executive search within the tech and product fields. He has been in the recruitment industry for almost 20 years.
Listen out for:
- 00:40 Background
- 2:30 Learnings from being an entrepreneur
- 5:10 When to hire the first HR person
- 6:40 Mistakes in attracting senior tech talent
- 12:40 Winning “the war for talent”
- 16:40 Which senior talent to hire depending on the stage of your company
- 21:30 Hiring Remote Senior Leadership
- 27:00 How to hire a CTO. Working with Recruitment Partners
- 33:10 Running retrospectives and Learning
Matt Chappell is the VP of Sales at Silo and former VP at JP Morgan. When we had this conversation, he was still the SVP of Sales at Legion Technologies.
Listen out for:
00:40 Background
3:10 Common pitfalls of scaling
5:10 Product-market fit
7:20 Best practices for scaling sales
10:20 Launching a new distribution model with a different customer segment
12:00 Compensation plans for teams that validate a new market
14:10 Best practices for upselling
16:40 Best practices and common pitfalls for churn
20:10 Determining pricing levels
25:30 Best practices for Sales Compensation
Like this episode?
Get your copy of the Leaders of Growth book on Amazon and learn from 47 first-hand stories on Growing Companies Across Series A to C: https://amzn.to/3w7hygA
All proceeds of the book will be donated to Princess Maxima Centrum.
Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Podcasts and stay tuned.
Dan Steinman is an expert in Customer Success and the Chief Evangelist of Gainsight.
Listen out for:
00:50 Background
4:10 How to figure out if you are the right person to run the startup across the stages
15:20 How teams and people evolve across the stages
19:40 How to help your employees to stretch across the company’s growth
22:20 How Customer Success evolves as the company grows
28:30 The Subscription Economy vs. The Consumption Economy
32:40 Usage-Based Pricing
37:20 How to determine your value metric
46:20 How much to spend on Customer Success
Andrew Michael is the Founder and CEO of Avrio and the host of Churn.FM.
Listen out for:
00:50 Background
2:50 Developments in the Churn space
5:40 Best practices
8:10 Upselling: mistakes and best practices
10:50 Pricing: Are you charging too much?
11:40 How the different departments influence churn
15:35 Aligning the departments
16:45 Andrew’s experience at Hotjar and Success Stories
21:00 How Customer Success can prevent churn
23:45 Tool Stack for Customer Success
28:20 Final thoughts and recommended content
Like this episode?
Get your copy of the Leaders of Growth book on Amazon and learn from 47 first-hand stories on Growing Companies Across Series A to C: https://amzn.to/3w7hygA
All proceeds of the book will be donated to Princess Maxima Centrum.
Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify or Google Podcasts and stay tuned.
Micha Breakstone is Cofounder and CEO at Neuralight, Cofounder at Chorus.ai, and Angel Investor.
Listen out for:
00:40 Background
02:35 Drivers for being an entrepreneur
04:00 Founders’ challenges
05:30 Best practices for founders
07:30 How to prioritize initiatives
09:00 How to hire Senior Management
10:35 The challenges for each stage of growth
12:30 Final thoughts
Like this episode?
Get your copy of the Leaders of Growth book on Amazon and learn from 47 first-hand stories on Growing Companies Across Series A to C: https://amzn.to/3w7hygA
All proceeds of the book will be donated to Princess Maxima Centrum.
Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify or Google Podcasts and stay tuned.
In this episode, Arthur Nobel, our host and Principal at Knight Capital, interviews Katie Christian, Head of Customer Success at Calendly, the leading platform in automated scheduling.
Listen out for:
- 00:50 Background
- 2:32 What is Customer Success
- 4:18 Lessons from scaling a fast-growing company
- 6:28 How to prevent churn
- 9:36 Growth pains and how to deal with them
- 11:20 CS in B2B vs. B2C companies
- 13:36 Scaling Customer Success
- 17:39 Metrics
Like this episode?
-Get your copy of the Leaders of Growth book on Amazon and learn from 47 first-hand stories on Growing Companies Across Series A to C: https://amzn.to/3mSFyDo. All proceeds of the book will be donated to Princess Maxima Centrum.
-Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify or Google Podcasts and stay tuned.
Mark Roberge is a serial entrepreneur and the former Chief Revenue Officer of Hubspot. At the moment, he is a Managing Partner at Stage 2 Capital.
Listen out for:
00:40 Background
3:00 The Science of Scaling
9:00 Expanding the sales team
14:00 Building a Predictable Revenue Machine
Like this episode?
Get your copy of the Leaders of Growth book on Amazon and learn from 47 first-hand stories on Growing Companies Across Series A to C: https://amzn.to/3w7hygA . All proceeds of the book will be donated to Princess Maxima Centrum.
Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Podcasts and stay tuned.
Ben Murray is the Founder of TheSaaSCFO.com and TheSaaSAcademy.com. Ben has more than 25 years of experience in finance, and more than 8 years of experience as a SaaS CFO.
In this episode, Ben Murray discusses with Arthur Nobel, host and Principal at Knight Capital, his insights about finance, metrics and processes and tools for Software-as-a-Service companies.
Listen out for:
00:50 Background
3:10 Which metrics should matter at which stage
5:10 What financial metrics do companies cope with in a suboptimal way
8:30 How to set up strong processes for reporting on metrics
12:00 The stages of financial management and when to hire a CFO
13:50 Cost allocation in expansion stages
19:20 Suggestions on forecasting headcounts
21:50 LTV to CAC ratio
Like this episode?
-Get your copy of the Leaders of Growth book on Amazon and learn from 47 first-hand stories on Growing Companies Across Series A to C: https://amzn.to/2WNd02Y. All proceeds of the book will be donated to Princess Maxima Centrum.
-Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Podcasts and stay tuned.
Herbert Sablotny is the current CFO at Beekeeper. Herbert was also formerly CFO and MD at SPARK networks, where he was involved with leading the company to IPO on the NYSE.
In today's episode of Leaders of Growth, Herbert Sablotny discusses the role and evolution of the finance function within a startup, as well as general and strategic scaling challenges.
Discussion topics:
0:50: background
2:30: The role and evolution of finance in a startup
6:11: General challenges in scaling
10:00: How to keep alignment between overall goals and department goals
13:20: Trade-offs between efficiency and growth
17:50: Early stage strategic challenges
20:00: Organizational design
Nathan Latka is a number one WSJ Best-Selling Author of How to Be a Capitalist without Any Capital with over 30k copies. He is also an entrepreneur, having launched his first SaaS company at 19, to be sold to Heyo in 2016. Nathan is also founder at The Top Entrepreneurs podcast.
In today's episode of Leaders of Growth, Nathan Latka discusses his views on financial metrics, valuations, and fundraising options.
Discussion topics:
0:45: Background
3:30: Metrics at different growth stages
8:30: Future of SaaS versus usage-based pricing
12:40: Valuation and valuation drivers
24:50: Alternative funding options
Sterling Snow is the Chief Revenue Officer at Divvy, which raised €380m to date from a.o. Andreessen Horowitz and Insight Partners.
In today's episode of Leaders of Growth, Sterling shares his views on systemization in startups, setting up the go-to-market strategy, and the role of the CRO function.
Discussion topics:
0:45: Background
2:30: How did you manage to re-invent yourself along your journey
3:50: What is your story about growing a company, what best practices did you see?
5:15: What challenges do you see at the separate stages of funding and how do you systematize?
10:50: What is your advice for implementing your go-to-market model?
15:25: When is the right moment to hire a CRO and what to look for in a CRO?
21:15: How do you build a growth organization?
27:00: When do you diversify channels?
João Graça is the Co-Founder and CTO of Unbabel, the Portuguese AI-driven translation platform that raised € 83 million from a.o. Notion Capital and Matrix Partners to overcome language barriers for teams.
In today's episode of Leaders of Growth, João shares some of the main tech-engineering challenges, the importance of structure for an organization, and quality of mind for founders.
Discussion topics:
0:50: Background of João Graça
2:48: Can you share some of the challenges you faced while scaling Unbabel?
7:08: Was there a specific period in time where documentation became more relevant?
9:25: What were some of the challenges at Unbabel from a tech-engineering perspective?
13:00: What would be your advice to smaller startups now?
18:07: Did you have certain mentors or support along the founder journey?
20:17: How do you keep quality of mind as a founder?
Alex Theuma is the Founder and CEO of SaaStock, the media and events company that helps SaaS companies all over the world supercharging their growth.
In today's episode of Leaders of Growth, Alex describes his own best practices and challenges on scaling a company, interesting lessons learned from other entrepreneurs, and the importance of brand building for SaaStock.
Discussion topics:
0:51: Background of Alex Theuma
3:55: Can you share your best practices and challenges on scaling SaaStock?
11:56: Do you think there is such thing as 'Process-Stage-Fit'?
13:59: Can you share some of the best lessons from all SaaS founders you have spoken to?
22:08: How did you build your brand at SaaStock? And what learnings can you share about this?
26:02: How did you determine your tone of voice to your audience?
27:38: Do you have anything particular to share that I did not ask for?
30:14: Do you have some final advice or content recommendations for the audience?
Adam Tesan is the current CRO of Chargebee, the subscription and management billing platform which recently raised $125 million of Series G funding from among others Insight Partners and Tiger Global Management.
In this episode, Adam Tesan shares his insights on amongst others SWAT teams, aligning the customer's buying journey and the sales process, and building a revenue organization.
Discussion topics:
0:58: Background of Adam Tesan
4:16: What have you learned about scaling companies in your career?
7:28: Do you use a certain framework for running experiments?
10:05: How do you look at the concept of a revenue organization?
13:34: How have you approached aligning the different departments within the revenue organization?
15:46: Can you share the most important metrics on which you align the teams within the revenue organization?
21:05: Can you share your advice to early-stage companies with limited data to still draw conclusions on the customer journey?
25:39: How do you align the acquisition process and the buying journey?
27:18: Do you have some final advice or content recommendations for the audience?