Gainsight

SaaStr 794: The Top 10 Customer Success Metrics Investors Care About in 2025 with Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta Nick Mehta is the CEO of Gainsight, the customer success platform that helps businesses deliver value to customers and drive scalable growth. Over the past 12 years, Nick has met with more than 5,000 companies and hundreds of investors, becoming one of the foremost authorities on customer success strategies. In this engaging presentation, Nick discusses the crucial role of customer success in driving business growth and securing investments. He breaks down the top 10 questions investors grill companies about, covering key metrics like net retention, gross retention, and early warning indicators. Nick also highlights the importance of customer stickiness, value demonstration, and efficient customer success operations. Additionally, he shares a personal story of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, drawing parallels between the entrepreneurial journey and the challenging yet rewarding climb to success. ---------------------- Alright everybody in SaaS, this is it. The biggest, best, most action-packed SaaS + AI event of the year—SaaStr Annual 2025—is coming this May. Three full days. 10,000+ SaaS and AI leaders and more tactical, no-fluff content than you'll find anywhere else. If you want to scale faster—$10M, $50M, $100M ARR and beyond—you need the right playbooks, the right connections and the right people in your corner. And SaaStr Annual is where it all happens. We'll have 100's of Legendary speakers from companies like Snowflake, HubSpot, OpenAI, Canva, and more. More networking than you can handle—meet your next investor, co-founder, or biggest deal. A New AI Demo & Pitch Stage— with your chance to win up to $5M in funding! So don't wait—grab your tickets now at SaaStrAnnual.com with my code jason100 to save $100 on tickets before prices go up. That's jason 100 at saastrannual.com See you in May! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Do you know what would make your customer service helpdesk dramatically better? Dumping it and switching to Intercom. But, youʼre not quite ready to make that change. We get it! Thatʼs why Fin, the worldʼs leading AI customer service agent, is now available on every helpdesk. Fin can instantly resolve up to 80% of your tickets, Which makes your customers happier. And you can get off the customer service rep hiring treadmill. Fin by Intercom. Named the #1 AI Agent in G2ʼs Winter Report. Learn more at : inter.com/saastr --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

SaaStr 723: Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, and Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder of SaaStr: Answer Your Top 10 2024 Customer Success Questions In 2024, for customer success in SaaS, what's "good" NRR? What's a "good" NPS? Who should Customer Success report into? Questions like this and many others are the most common questions asked of SaaStr Fan Fave and expert on Customer Success, Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta, and SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin. While we recently published an episode on what will change for Customer Success in SaaS in 2024 with Jason and Nick, we ran out of time to answer some of the top questions both get and what their answers would be now in 2024. So in the latest installment of the official SaaStr Podcast, we did exactly that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet. Join us in 2024 at: SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20 SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200 -------------- This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

SaaStr 716: The Future of Customer Success in 2024: Insights and Predictions from Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta and SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin Is it the end of an era in SaaS customer success? It seems like some of the biggest changes to the human side of SaaS are happening right now. What does the AI revolution and SaaS spending cuts mean for the future of Customer Success and support? In this episode, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, and SaaStr fan-favorite, Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight share their insights and predictions on what the future of customer success will hold in 2024 and beyond. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet. Join us in 2024 at: SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20 SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200 -------------- This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

In this episode, Nick Mehta will share ten significant mistakes he made during his career, and how these failures shaped his journey as CEO of Gainsight. Mehta will impart valuable lessons on resilience and growth, offering attendees actionable takeaways for their own entrepreneurial ventures. This is a must-listen for anyone seeking to learn from real-life experiences and turn failures into opportunities for success in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) world. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet. Join us in 2024 at: SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave50 SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

Guest: Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta describes himself as “the person who goes all in, on whatever.” So when he had a personally difficult year, he didn’t just go to therapy — he also talked to a professional coach, and read about religion, and experimented with (legal) ketamine therapy. All of that led to him “better understanding the inner self ... [and] helping to find ways to suppress the exterior.” In other words, even though Gainsight’s culture is suffused with Nick’s values, he is consciously trying to unpack a “new version of myself” that is greater than his company: “There’s a lot more to me than I realized,” he says. In this episode, Nick and Joubin discuss Mike Moritz, golf clubs, Don Valentine, eclectic fashion, loneliness, Enneagram types, setting the tone, moments of vulnerability, Vista Equity Partners, talking to customers, Jack Dorsey, building others’ brands, startups as kids, Marc Benioff, and the ship of Theseus. In this episode, we cover: The mystique of Sand Hill Road (00:58) Un-measurable marketing (05:07)  Launching Chipshot.com (09:17) I-banking culture and fitting in (13:14) Getting help after a rough year (19:48) Immigrant achievers and the meaning of work (21:32) Fueling success and belief in institutions (24:44) Winning while being human-first (30:19) Founder-defined values and culture (3 5:41) What happened to Chipshot? (40:46) Empathy for all entrepreneurs (44:11) Growing & selling LiveOffice (46:03) The new Nick (48:53) Selling Gainsight for $1.1 billion (51:56) Coda and time management (55:20) Ghost notes (59:01) When the spotlight goes away (01:02:17) Philosophy and science books (01:05:45) Deleting work apps every weekend (01:09:23) Who Gainsight is hiring and what “grit” means to Nick (01:10:26) Links: Connect with NickTwitter LinkedIn Coda Connect with JoubinTwitter LinkedIn Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com  Learn more about Kleiner Perkins This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta shares his top 10 mistakes in 10 years of running Gainsight. This is the second half of a Workshop Wednesday session in which SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin chats with Nick about his top mistakes as a CEO. You can hear the first half in episode 656. You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/dtdh2Dkhpig ***** SaaStr Annual will officially be back in 2023. Join 12,500 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue leaders, and investors. Annual 2023 will take place September 6-8, 2023 in the SF Bay Area. Podcast listeners can use code FAVE100 to save 100 off tickets. Use FAVE100 when you buy your tickets at saastrannual2023.com ***** 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

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta shares his top 10 mistakes in 10 years of running Gainsight. This is the first half of a Workshop Wednesday session in which SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin chats with Nick about his top mistakes as a CEO. You can hear the second half in episode 657, which will air on May 5. You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/dtdh2Dkhpig ***** SaaStr Europa is back! And this time, we're heading to London for 2 fun-filled days of content, networking, and SaaS. Join us June 6th and 7th for SaaStr Europa 2023. Use code FAVE100 for $100 off tickets at saastrlondon.com. ***** 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

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

SaaS is evolving rapidly. In many ways, we are witnessing the equivalent of the Cambrian Explosion in terms of the number of SaaS companies created each month. And these startups look different than their predecessors. Trends like vertical SaaS, Product-led Growth, and payment make the industry almost unrecognizable compared to the era of the SaaS pioneers more than a decade ago. Yet many companies are still adopting Customer Success practices - like fixed size-based segmentation and activity-based "check-ins" - that were created in the 2010s. Modern cloud businesses are rethinking Customer Success in many ways. They are looking at it as a growth engine, shifting focus from purely looking at churn to increasingly emphasizing Net Dollar Retention. They are recognizing the need for CSMs, in some cases, to be deeply technical. And they are, particularly in Product-led Growth companies, integrating Sales and CS motions and organizations tightly together. In this talk, Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta will cover 10 best practices that represent the cutting edge of Customer Success. Check it out to save your company from becoming a SaaS dinosaur. Full video: https://youtu.be/PzCnKSL2kx8 Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/10-things-changing-now-in-the-world-of-customer-success-with-gainsight-ceo-nick-mehta-pod-529-video/ 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

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

Nick Mehta is the CEO @ Gainsight, the leader in all things customer success helping you put your customer at the heart of your business. Last year, as a result of their incredible success, Gainsight was acquired by Vista for a reported $1.1Bn but prior to that had raised over $156M from Lightspeed, Battery, Bessemer, Insight and Bain to name a few. As for Nick, he has been named one of the Top SaaS CEOs by the Software report three years in a row and holds one of the highest Glassdoor approval ratings for CEOs. Prior to Gainsight, Nick was the CEO at LiveOffice, which grew substantially and eventually sold to Symantec. In Today's Episode with Nick Mehta You Will Learn: 1.) When did mental health really become a prominent thought for Nick? When was the first time Nick feels he really showed true vulnerability in leadership? 2.) Self-Worth: Does Nick feel like he is enough? What does he do when he questions himself severely? How does he talk to his wife about these challenging thoughts? Where does Nick believe this comes from? What are the dangers of people-pleasing? How does Nick try and counter people-pleasing in his role as a leader? 3.) Identity: How does Nick think about his own identity when it is so attached to Gainsight? In what ways does he try to detach? What has worked? What has not worked? How have children helped Nick in this way? 4.) Striving: Why does Nick believe that hunger and striving are fundamentally a good thing? How does Nick try and factor gratitude and appreciation into the work and success he experiences? How does Nick encourage this same striving in his children? 5.) Relationship to Money: How would Nick evaluate his relationship to money? How has it changed over time? How does Nick try to imbue the same values he had growing up in his children? Does Nick believe it is possible to "change" your children and have that impact?

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

Product-led growth is a disruptive go-to-market strategy adopted by the most successful companies in the subscription business, including Slack, Dropbox, Twilio, and Shopify. Drawing on his personal experience building innovative SaaS products, Mickey Alon, the creator of Gainsight PX, and Ciara Peter, VP Product at Gainsight, will cover the principles of Product-led growth strategy, how to build a product growth team, and how product teams can apply this strategy as part of their 2021 roadmap. Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/mastering-the-art-and-science-of-product-led-growth-with-gainsight/

Mickey Alon

Founder and CTO

Gainsight

Ciara Peter

VP of Product

Gainsight

In this CEO to CEO catch up, Nick Mehta and Jason Lemkin discuss how to do product extensions, how to sell a second product, and where product development overall is heading. Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/saas-customers-have-never-been-happier-a-discussion-with-nick-mehta-ceo-of-gainsight/

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

When Nick Mehta joined Gainsight in 2013, customer success as a category did not exist. There were no tools, no job titles, no conferences. He did not just have to sell software - he had to convince the entire SaaS industry that customer success was a thing worth investing in. Nick shares the four-question framework for creating a new category: why anything, why technology, why now, and why us. Most SaaS founders only address the last question. He explains why Gainsight found its first customer success buyers among early adopters of other innovative products like Box, Zuora, and Anaplan. Nick reveals how community events became Gainsight's primary customer acquisition channel, why reducing churn requires six diagnostic questions, and how he grew the company to 700+ employees and $156M in funding by educating buyers before selling to them. Sponsored by Typeform: Create friendly surveys and forms. Start a free trial and get 20% off: saasclub.io/typeform Key Lessons 🎯 New categories require answering four customer success questions: Most founders only address "why us" but category creators must answer "why anything," "why technology," and "why now" first. 🤝 Build community before pipeline for customer success: Gainsight's events attracted professionals isolated in their companies but similar across companies, creating a natural pool of early adopters. 📉 Avoid discounting to create customer success urgency: Nick warns discounts never get rolled back. Quantify the daily cost of SaaS churn delay instead. 🏢 Target early adopters of other innovative products: Companies buying Box and Zuora were naturally innovative and also likely to buy customer retention technology. 💰 Six diagnostic pains qualify customer success buyers: Are you surprised by churn, failing at adoption, lacking visibility, throwing people at problems, delivering fragmented experiences, or missing expansion? Chapters Introduction Nick's favorite quote from Albert Einstein What Gainsight does and who it serves Nick's background: from on-premise software to SaaS Joining Gainsight as CEO with a beta product The biggest challenge: creating a new customer success category Four questions buyers ask in new categories Finding early adopters among innovative SaaS companies The four-question framework: why anything, why tech, why now, why us Answering "why anything" through content and influencers Answering "why now" with ROI, goals, and implementation dates The danger of discounting to create urgency Community and events as customer acquisition channels Customer success 101 for early-stage SaaS companies Six diagnostic pains that signal you need CS technology Lightning round Wrap up Resources Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/267 Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

Customers' expectations are higher than ever with more access to information and options. This dynamic trio of SaaS experts share how to stay customer-centric and set yourself apart in today's rapidly changing environment. This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Summit: Enterprise. Full video: https://youtu.be/DNMId8gYj80 Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-bernadette-nixon-jay-snyder-nick-mehta-loren-padelford-and-jason-lemkin/

Bernadette Nixon

CEO

Algolia

Jay Snyder

Chief Customer Officer

New RelicUiPath

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

Anthony Kennada is the CMO @ Front, the startup that provides your team with better email so they can treat every customer like your only customer. To date, Front have raised over $138M from some leading names including Sequoia, Eric Yuan @ Zoom, Ryan and Jared Smith @ Qualtrics, Michael Cannon-Brookes and Jay Simmons @ Atlassian and Frederic Kerrest @ Okta to name a few. As for Anthony, prior to Front Anthony was the founding CMO at Gainsight where he and his team are credited with creating the Customer Success category. At Gainsight Anthony and the team developed a new playbook for B2B marketing that fueled the company's growth from $0 to over $100M of ARR. If that was not enough, Anthony is also the author of Category Creation: How to Build a Brand that Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love. The book debuted as a number one new release on Amazon. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How Anthony made his way into the world of SaaS starting in the sales team at Box and how that led to his entering the world of marketing and creating the customer success category? How does Anthony marketing playbook change when making the move from Gainsight with higher ACV's and longer sales cycles to Front with lowers ACV's and much higher volume? How does Anthony think about ABM today with Front given the lower ACVs? At what ticket size does ABM make sense? How does Anthony feel about brand marketing? Why did Anthony and Front decide now was the right time to engage with billboards? How does Anthony think about data and tracking for brand marketing? Does Anthony believe that all marketing has to be tied to a number directly related to revenue? How does Anthony seeing a changing relationship between customer success and marketing? How is marketing being pushed further into the realms of CS? What is the optimal relationship between CS and marketing? How does this compare to the relationship of sales and marketing more traditionally? Anthony's 60 Second SaaStr: What does Anthony know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning of his time in marketing? What is the hardest element of Anthony's role with Front today? Who does Anthony think is killing it in the world of marketing today? 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 Anthony Kennada

Anthony Kennada

CMO

FrontGainsight

We're obviously in a very unique situation today. The pace at which Corona is impacting us all right now is so fast, it's hard to keep up. Today is different from other times but in SaaS. It will probably be like '08-'09 downturn — just faster. Join Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder of SaaStr, and Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, as they take a look back at what happened to them as a SaaS vendor in '08-'09, and what learnings you can leverage. This podcast is an excerpt from Jason and Nick's webinar "What We're Doing Now. And How We Got Through '08-'09." You can find the full replay here.

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta to discuss what it means to be a SaaS leader. What are the day-to-day struggles? The fears and the worries and what it means to be "crushing it" today. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin SaaStr Nick Mehta This episode is sponsored by Owl Labs.

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

Allison Pickens is the COO @ Gainsight, the company that provides everything you need to turn your customers into your biggest growth engine. To date Gainsight have raised over $184m from some of the world's best VCs in the form of Lightspeed, Bessemer, Insight Venture Partners, Battery Ventures and Salesforce Ventures just to name a few. As for Allison, in her 5 years at Gainsight her list of achievements in endless from running all functions that drive value for Gainsight customers, now a 150 person team, to building out the corporate development function to being the right hand to the CEO. Allison is also an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Bessemer Venture Partners and sits on the board of RainforestQA. Before Gainsight, Allison started her career in NYC with stints at Bain and The Boston Consulting Group. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How Allison made her way into the world of SaaS with Gainsight from her start in finance at Bain in New York? What does a strategic plan really mean to Allison? What is included in it? How should it be structured? In terms of ambition, how does one set ambitious enough plans to be a stretch but not a stretch too far? How does one tie their strategic plan to their financial plan? What is the right way to communicate this throughout the organisation? Why does Allison believe product marketing and customer success are the new sales and marketing? What have been Allison's biggest lessons on how to effectively measure adoption? Who is accountable to this number? CS or product management? Does Allison believe that marketing needs to be held accountable to a number directly tied to revenue? How does Allsion respond to the common negative of "services revenue"? What is an acceptable ratio of services to software revenue? How can one approach setting up a services team for scale? Why is having such a great CS team actually bad for product development in the long run? How can one mitigate this? Allison's 60 Second SaaStr: What does Allison know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning of her time with Gainsight? How often should CS check in with their customers? What does that look like? If on a tight budget, how should one staff a CS team? 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 Allison Picken

Allison Pickens

Chief Customer Officer

Gainsight

Nick Mehta is the CEO @ Gainsight, the #1 customer success platform for corporate services, turning your customers into your best growth engine. To date Gainsight have raised over $156m from some of the world's best VCs in the form of Lightspeed, Bessemer, Insight Venture Partners, Battery Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. As for Nick, prior to Gainsight he was the CEO @ LiveOffice where he grew cloud archiving ARR from $2m in 2008 to $25m in 2011 and drove and negotiated the acquisition by Symantec for $115m in cash. Before LiveOffice Nick was Senior Director of Product Management @ Symantec where he led $378 MM market-leading email archiving / security businesses managing over 180 people across 3 continents. I do also have to say a huge thank you to both Byron Deeter and Jason Lemkin for the intro to Nick over two years ago. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How Nick made his way into the world of SaaS and came to lead the charge in the category creation of customer success as CEO with Gainsight? What were some of his big lessons from being CEO at 2 companies during 2 macro market crashes? What does Nick mean when he says, "customer success will fail if it is just a role and not a strategy?" What can the leader and CEO do to imbue this company wide approach to customer success? What tangible actions are on offer? What works? Where do many make mistakes? Nick has previously said, "burying customer success undel sales does not work". Why does this have such a high rate of failure? What should the optimal sales to customer success relationship look like? What does Nick mean when he says, "product is to customer success what marketing is to sales". How should product and customer success work together? Why does Nick believe the mythology of the "A player" when business building is fundamentally dangerous? What can leaders and CEOs proactively do to ensure a diverse and differentiated talent pipeline? What question does Nick find most revealing in terms of one's character and potential? Where do many go wrong in building and scaling their teams in SaaS? Why does Nick push back against the "hire fast and fire fast" thesis? What are the negative consequences of it? Why is it short-sighted and premature in many cases? What does Nick suggest for individuals struggling to find their optimal role within an organisation? How much time does one give someone struggling to find their role? Nick's 60 Second SaaStr: Who must fundamentally own the renewal, sales or customer success? What Nick know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? What would Nick most like to change in the world of SaaS? Most surprising action that has moved the needle for a company in terms of retention? 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 Nick Mehta

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight

There's a new C-level role in town: the CCO, or Chief Customer Officer. This episode (based on a previous event) is all about the rise of this new role, why it's so important -- and what the actual scope and function of the role should be. a16z's Matt Levy, partner on the exec talent team, discusses with (CCOs all) Allison Pickens of Gainsight; Krista Anderson-Copperman from Okta; and Hatima Shafique from Databricks why it is that the Chief Customer Officer is becoming more prevalent across a number of different kinds of companies; what the strategic value of a CCO is (and how it's actually very different from a VP of Customer Success!); and finally, the career pathing of the Chief Customer Officer. Stay Updated: Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube Find a16z on X Find a16z on LinkedIn Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Allison Pickens

Chief Customer Officer

Gainsight

Krista Anderson-Copperman

Chief Customer Officer

Okta

Hatima Shafique

Chief Customer Officer

Databricks

Allison Pickens carries the customer success torch as the VP of Customer Success & Business Operations at the category leaders, Gainsight. Allison's organization @ Gainsight includes all post-sales functions: CSMs, Support, Onboarding, Services, and Operations. Prior to Gainsight, she started her career in management consulting for Fortune 500 companies while at Boston Consulting Group and later worked in private equity investing at Bain Capital. Allison decided that she couldn't pass up the opportunity to work at Gainsight when Bain Capital led the Series B. In Today's Episode With Allison You Will Learn: 1.) So let's start with managing customer churn and I think the first and most important thing is assessing what is regrettable vs non-regrettable. How do you approach this? What is the internal post mortem? How do you identify why they churned? Is there a blame game that follows? How do you instill ramifications but not fear? How do you then look to fix the original problem that caused the churn? 2.) To do the above we need to have a great customer success team so iw ant to talk about the process of building this out and with CS being a new category this is an aspect a lot of founders are addressing at this time. So starting with the obvious? When do you need a customer success team? Where in the organization should the team sit? What's the playbook for rolling it out? How big does the team need to be? Does this vary on sector or funding availability? What are the levels of seniority within the team? What's your budget? How do you account for the costs of your team? What teams sit within the customer success umbrella? 60 Second Saastr produced by Nick Mehta: What surprises you most about customer success now vs a year ago? Importance of fast iterating team? Fave SaaS material, book, blog, podcast? What element of the journey have you found most challenging? Carrying the CS torch? What is it like do you feel the pressure? 3.) Now I want to finish today by discussing the segmentation of your customer base, so at what point in the company's life do you begin segmenting the customers? Why is it important to segment customers? How do you decide the best way to segment them? Should these segments align with the sales team? 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 Allison Pickens

Allison Pickens

Chief Customer Officer

Gainsight

I am delighted to present Part 2 of our feature of Gainsight. Joining me today I have Anthony Kennada, the founding VP Marketing at Gainsight where he is responsible for managing the company's global marketing strategy, from demand generation to brand marketing, and is credited with creating the "Pulse" community of Customer Success leaders. Anthony began his career as an early employee at Box. He later joined LiveOffice and managed their OEM partnership with Symantec from contract signature to acquisition for $115M. Prior to joining Gainsight, Anthony led the Emerging Cloud Products division at Symantec, and was responsible for the first organic product development effort that spanned both consumer and enterprise market segments. In today's show with Anthony we discuss: How Anthony came to be VP of Marketing at one of the hottest startups in the valley? Being the founding VP of Marketing, how did Anthony look to grow the team? What were the actual steps Anthony used to scale the marketing at Gainsight? How has B2B marketing changed, from Box to today? With this evolution, what are Anthony's marketing learnings in creating new categories vs. new players in existing categories? How should we be thinking about marketing, both Demand Gen and Corporate, differently in crowded spaces? ? How can marketing help support going up market and driving ACVs up? Both Box and Gainsight did this. How should CEOs and VPMs think about, and budget events? What if they don't have all the capital Gainsight does? In a round we call the 60 Second Saastr, we also hear: Billboards: Stupid or effective? Fave SaaS resource and why? 3 Biggest Tips For Running a Successful Event? 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 Anthony Kennada

Anthony Kennada

CMO

FrontGainsight

This week on SaaStr we are celebrating the rise of GainSight with a special feature week dedicated to Gainsight and joining me today we have Gainsight CEO, Nick Mehta. Since Nick has been at the helm of Gainsight, it has experienced a meteoric rise to the top of the world of SaaS having practically created the category of customer success and revolutionising business work processes in doing so. Due to this, Gainsight has raised funding from the likes of Battery Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. In today's show with Nick we discuss: What were the solutions before Gainsight? Why were these inefficient and what the market opportunity for Gainsight? Why has the power shifted from the hands of the vendor to the hands of the customer? What can vendors to do optimise this shift? Is the proliferation of available tools and the resulting competition not dangerous as there is only so low prices can go? To what extent does Gainsight have a monopoly over the customer success market? How much should startups spend on customer success in the early days? How can one measure that success and return on investment? What does the hiring of a customer success officer look like for Nick? How can we optimise this process? In a round we call the 60 Second Saastr, we also hear: ACV is everything: Explain? Being a specialised CEO: Right or wrong? On again, off again hiring in sales? 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 Nick Mehta

Nick Mehta

CEO

Gainsight