SaaStr 694: Unlock Profitability and Growth - The Key Strategies with Expensify's COO Anu Muralidharan
In the dynamic landscape of SaaS startups, pursuing rapid customer growth while achieving and maintaining profitability is an art that requires flexible strategies and, more importantly, employees that are eager for the challenge.
In this episode, Expensify COO Anu Muralidharan will share how Expensify became profitable on its way to securing millions of users in less than 15 years.
You'll hear real-world examples and walk away with specific tactics they can immediately deploy at their own companies, including:
a.) when, where, and why to outsource
b.) a new, more bullish approach to testing and launching products with confidence
c.) how to leverage automation to reduce expenses while simultaneously supporting growth.
Why David Barrett, CEO of Expensify, still takes his turn on PagerDuty
Expensify is an expense management solution that integrates with your travel, ERP, and finance/accounting software. Check out their full list of integrations.
Expensify engineers rely on Stack Overflow for Teams to make knowledge accessible and shareable, rather than wading through swathes of documentation. Read the case study.
Flat organizations like Expensify have minimal or no middle management, meaning there’s no management layer between staff and executives. A similar model for decentralized management is Holacracy.
Find David Barrett on LinkedIn here.
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SaaStr 497: Founder Confidential, The Highs, and Lows of Fundraising From Founders That Raised $1B with Coda, Expensify, LaunchDarkly, Boast.Ai and SaaStr
Featuring 3 prominent Founders - from Calendly, Coda and LaunchDarkly - that have achieved scale, at "Founder Confidential" you will hear about the highs and lows of fundraising, working with a VC board, and real talk about what it really is like to be a true Founder.
Moderator: Lloyed Lobo, Co-Founder, Boast.AI
Panelists: Shishir Mehrotra, Cofounder and CEO, Coda Edith Harbaugh, Cofounder and CEO, LaunchDarkly David Barrett, Founder and CEO, Expensify Jason Lemkin, Founder and CEO, SaaStr
Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/founder-confidential-saas-fundraising-expensify-launchdarkly-coda-boast-saastr/
Sponsors:
https://www.invoca.com/
https://stripe.com/
https://www.ontheclock.com/
20VC: Why Valley Investors Are Really Gamblers, Why The Business Model of Selling To The Biggest Sucker Is Wrong & Why The Best Potential Hires Don't Care Who Your VC is with David Barrett, Founder & CEO @ Expensify
David Barrett is the Founder & CEO @ Expensify, the startup relieving the world's frustrations, one expense report at a time. With 35,000 companies and more than 5 million users, David has raised close to $30m from the likes of Redpoint, OpenView, Travis Kalanick, Baseline and SV Angel. However, David certainly does not have traditional views on funding, something we very much touch on in the interview today! Prior to Expensify, David built a peer-to-peer file transfer technology called Red Swoosh with Uber's Travis Kalanick, which was acquired by Akamai in 2007.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How David went from founding Red Swoosh with Travis Kalanick to changing the sexy world of expense reporting with Expensify?
2.) Why does David want to change the cult of the second time entrepreneur? Why does David believe that Silicon Valley fundamentally changes exits in the wrong way? How does David define true operational success?
3.) Why does David believe that Silicon Valley investors are not investors but gamblers? Why does David believe that the business model VCs have created is not only not optimal for founders but poor business practice with "profit" being a dirty word?
4.) What does David believe are the fundamental benefits of capital constraints? How does having financial independence influence your stance when speaking with investors? When does the decision of financially lean or VC backed need to be taken?
5.) Why does David believe the more hiring you do, the more problems you have? What are the core issues of revenue being tied to headcount growth? Why does David believe Silicon Valley is poor for hiring and you must look further afield?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
David's Fave Book: Guns, Germs, and Steel, Enders Game
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and David on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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