SaaStr 761: How to Build Pipeline and GTM Alignment with Datadog's CMO Sara Varni
SaaStr 761: How to Build Pipeline and GTM Alignment with Datadog's CMO Sara Varni
Sara Varni, Datadog's CMO, shares how to build pipeline and create alignment across sales and marketing. The CMO role at Datadog covers the usual aspects of marketing, including product marketing, corporate communications, events, partnership marketing, and solutions marketing.
While these insights seem like pipeline 101, they aren't always implemented. Let's look at some quick facts about Sara's experience. She spent a decade at Salesforce before moving on to Twilio as CMO when they were at about $400M ARR with 30 sales reps. They had a healthy self-service motion, but growth was flattening.
About four years later, she joined Attentive as CMO, a late-stage startup in the SMS marketing space. Now, she's the CMO at Datadog. Each of these companies had different GTM motions.
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Hey everybody - thanks to the 10,000 of you who came out to SaaStr Annual. We had a blast and big news -- we'll be back in MAY of 2025. That's right, the SaaStr Annual will be a bit earlier next year, May 13-15 2025. We'll still be back in the same venue, in the SF bay area at the 40+ acre sprawling san mateo county events center. Grab your tickets at saastrannual.com with code jason50 for an extra discount on our very best pricing. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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This episode is sponsored by: Anrok
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#166 Executive Chairman & Former CEO Attentive, Brian Long: Problem Hunting
Guest: Brian Long, former CEO of Attentive and author of Problem Hunting: The Tech Startup Textbook
Brian Long’s most recent company, Attentive, was originally designed to help clients communicate with their distributed workforce — but about six months in, he and his co-founder realized that that business would not grow as quickly as they had hoped. So, they decided to pivot to SMS marketing, at the cost of a few dubious employees and a well-known Fortune 500 client. The successful pivot confirmed Brian’s belief that it’s possible to over-commit to one solution, when in fact there may be bigger and better problems to solve. “I’ve just seen so many entrepreneurs spend years of their life building something being stuck with it,” he says, “and then trying to figure out how to fit it into something that doesn’t work.”
In this episode, Brian and Joubin discuss zero to one building, the problem with how entrepreneurs solve problems, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Matt Mochary, Tom Mendoza, transactional relationships, the dangers of ego, optimists and realists, best man speeches, defining a unique culture, reverse selling, Lunar Holdings, Peter Reinhardt, marketing conservatively, and business book sales.
In this episode, we cover:
New York vs LA (00:54)
How Brian feels, six months after stepping away from the CEO role (02:37)
Product-market fit and TAM modeling (06:07)
Build last (09:05)
The qualities of great entrepreneurs (13:24)
Tap Commerce and starting in sales (15:49)
Listening and remembering names (20:40)
The day after selling Tap Commerce (23:32)
Starting another company, Attentive (25:07)
Resilience and optimism (29:21)
Fear, doubt, and the worst-case outcome (32:50)
What Brian would tell his 29 year old self (37:13)
Hiring and pivoting at Attentive (41:17)
Text message marketing (45:49)
How Brian interviews people (50:12)
His new holding company, Lunar and its first startup (51:52)
Don’t go social (55:21)
What Brian is personally excited about and what “grit” means to him (01:01:57)
Links:
Connect with BrianLinkedIn
Buy Brian’s book, Problem Hunting: The Tech Startup Textbook
Connect with JoubinTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
SaaStr 623: Removing Friction: How to Turn More Than 40% of Your Prospects Into Long Term Enterprise Customers with Attentive Co-founder and CEO Brian Long
In any given day, the enterprise buyer has many priorities that will come before your product. How do you ensure your solution gets implemented and retained?
In this session, we walk through some of the lessons learned at Attentive on their path to over 5,000 customers in 5 years. We will dig into real world examples for reducing friction in sales, product and customer success.
Full video: https://youtu.be/47ReBgKEgEY
Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.
Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform
Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976
Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/
Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh
Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8
SaaStr 575: The State of SaaS Marketing in 2022: Mutiny & SaaStr CMO Panel
The last few years have certainly tested marketers, but 2022 serves up a brand new array of challenges. Uncharted territory stretches ahead, but the unknown can also present opportunities for growth and greatness.
At Mutiny's The Second Lever digital conference, SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin hosted a star-studded CMO panel featuring Salesforce President & CMO Sarah Franklin, Box CMO Chris Koehler, and Attentive CMO Sara Varni. In the eye-opening session, these marketing leaders discuss the market pulse, impactful branding, and strategies for the future.
Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.
Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform
Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976
Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/
Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh
Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8
CMO Attentive, Sara Varni: Cold Beer and Cheeseburgers
B2B marketing powerhouse, Sara Varni joins this episode on her final day at Twilio to discuss her journey and what lies ahead as she steps into her new role as Chief Marketing Officer at Attentive. Sara demonstrates a stellar track record of marketing know-how and creativity and has a refreshing take on the ever-changing marketing landscape.
In this episode, Sara shares insight on what it means to speak to your audience and uses an example from her Twitter to show how products can market themselves. She reflects on her time at Salesforce and Twilio, discusses why it’s important for marketers to recharge, and explores how her disciplined mindset contributes to her success. Sara and Joubin also discuss their shared love of bowling and Sara shares her thoughts on joining Attentive at the beginning of its next phase of growth.
In this episode, we cover:
“The full slice of life at the bowling alley”: Sara and Joubin connect over their love for bowling. (04:26)
How Sara learned from her father’s disciplined mentality - and what it means to create a home for her children. (07:17)
Sara follows up on her tweet about product marketing - and she shares why her 10 years at Salesforce was “the best marketing training.” (15:14)
A look back at the marketing structural changes at Salesforce and Sara’s role as CMO - and a conversation about writing memorable copy and earning “the right to speak to your audience.” (26:14)
Sara’s insight on why managers play a key role in cultivating a motivated team - and her take on the balancing act of working remotely. (35:39)
Why it’s important for marketers to recharge and how that mindset led Sara from Salesforce to Twilio. (39:53)
Twilio’s aggressive customer-centric values and go-to-market approach - how Sara navigated her son’s autism diagnosis during that stressful time of her career and what gives her peace of mind. (48:31)
Advice Sara received from her career coach and the benefits of a consistent feedback loop for people at any stage in their career. (56:16)
Reflecting on Sara’s last day at Twilio and why she loves being a CMO. (01:02:49)
Links:
Connect with SaraLinkedIn
Twitter
Attentive
Connect with JoubinTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: gtmg@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
SaaStr 313: What The World's Largest SaaS Incumbents Taught Me About Founding & Scaling SaaS Businesses
Today we deep dive into what startups can learn from the large SaaS incumbents of today.
Sara Varni: CMO @ Twilio on her biggest takeaways from her time at Salesforce.
Erica Schultz: President of Field Operations @ Confluent on her biggest takeaways from her time at Oracle.
Whitney Bouck: COO @ Hellosign on her biggest takeaways from her time at Box.
Leyla Seka: Partner @ Operator Collective on her biggest takeaways from her time at Salesforce.
Ryan Bonnici: CMO @ G2 on his biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce.
Ryan Barretto: SVP @ Sprout Social on his biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce
Tien Tzuo: Founder & CEO @ Zuora on his biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce.
Paul Albright: Board member @ Clarizen on his biggest takeaways from his time at SuccessFactors.
Jaleh Rezaei: Founder & CEO @ Mutiny on her biggest takeaways from her time at Gusto.
Eugenio Pace: Founder & CEO @ Auth0 on his biggest takeaways from his time at Microsoft.
Liat Bycel: VP @ Airtable on her biggest takeaways from her time at Twitter.
Mark Goldberg: Partner @ Index on his biggest takeaways from his time at Dropbox.
Read the full transcript on our blog.
If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:
Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
SaaStr 243: Twilio CMO Sara Varni on The 1 Question That Must Be Top Of Mind For All Marketers, The Truth About Enablement and How It Can Be Used Effectively & The Marketing Playbook, When To Use It vs Throw It Out Of The Window
Sara Varni is the CMO @ Twilio, the company building the future of communications allowing you to engage customers like never before on voice, SMS, WhatsApp or Video. Prior to their IPO in 2016, Twilio had raised over $250m in VC funding from some of the best in venture including USV, Bessemer, Salesforce and Techstars just to name a few. As for Sara, prior to Twilio she spent 10 years with Salesforce in numerous roles including SVP of Marketing for Salesforce's Sales Cloud and CMO @ Desk.com, among other roles. If that wasn't enough, Sara is also an advisor @ Anthos Capital.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
How did Sara made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be one of the industry's leading CMOs with Twilio today? What were Sara's biggest takeaways from her 10 years at Salesforce seeing the incredible hyper-growth first hand?
What does Sara mean when she says, "you have to have a creative plan to get your message to market"? Does Sara really believe that there is a playbook when it comes to marketing? How does Sara determine when to throw the playbook out of the window? What resounding question do you always have to ask yourself when thinking messaging?
Messaging is very dependent on the customer being targeted, how does the messaging need to be different when targeting SMB vs enterprise? How does the creative plan to get the message to the target customer change dependent on SMB vs enterprise? Where does Sara see most people go wrong here?
Why does Sara so strongly believe in the power of customer stories? What makes the very best customer stories? What would Sara's advice be to someone who is wanting to start creating them? Where does Sara see so many people go wrong? What are Sara's tips for creating this alignment between the marketing team that make the stories and the sales team that sell them? Where are there often points of tension?
What does the very commonly used term, "enablement", really mean to Sara? Does it mean you can hire lower quality candidates and upgrade them? How does Sara distinguish between a stretch VP and a stretch too far? What questions does Sara find most revealing in the interview process?
60 Second SaaStr:
What does Sara know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning?
Who is crushing it in the world of SaaS marketing today?
What is the most common reason for the breakdown of an efficient funnel?
Read the full transcript on our blog.
If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:
Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Sara Varni
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