SaaStr 764: State of the Cloud 2024: The Cloud AI Era with Bessemer Venture Partners, Anthropic, Jasper, Abridge and EvenUp
SaaStr 764: State of the Cloud 2024: The Cloud AI Era with Bessemer Venture Partners, Anthropic, Jasper, Abridge and EvenUp
Bessemer Venture Partners is committing $1 billion in capital to back AI-native companies and founders at the bleeding edge.
Sameer Dholakia, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners speaks with Julia Chapin, COO at Abridge, Kate Jensen, Head of Revenue at Anthropic, Rami Karabibar, CEO and founder at EvenUp, and Timothy Young, CEO at Jasper, on the impacts of AI on the State of the Cloud.
The discussion delves into the integration of AI into SaaS, marketing, healthcare, and legal industries, with a focus on the challenges and opportunities of implementing AI solutions. Key topics include building defensible business models, embracing multimodal capabilities, and strategizing change management for successful AI adoption.
Gain valuable insights into the importance of trust, partnerships, and user-centric applications in leveraging AI for sustainable business growth.
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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.
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: remote.com
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This episode is sponsored by: Anrok
A question for SaaS finance leaders, do you know where your customers are? Anrok tracks where your sales are creating exposure, and automates tax calculation and filing worldwide. Built for high-growth software companies, Anrok protects your revenue and saves you time. Visit anrok.com/saastr to learn more.
SaaStr 735: How to Navigate the Shift to Generative AI with PagerDuty's CEO Jennifer Tejada
Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, discusses the influence of AI on business workflows, focusing on automating operations, maintaining customer trust, and navigating generative AI challenges. Together with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin, they addresses the role of AI in managing incidents, improving efficiency, and changing decision-making in enterprises. Lastly, we delve into how AI and human roles can coexist, foreseeing a shift towards high-value work as automation increases, with a call for leaders to embrace AI's potential while adapting to technological advancements.
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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
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This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com
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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent
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2024 Forecast: What Can Developers Expect in the New Year?
In the past year, developers have faced both promise and uncertainty, particularly in the realm of generative AI. Heath Newburn, global field CTO for PagerDuty, joins TNS host Heather Joslyn to talk about the impact AI and other topics will have on developers in 2024.
Newburn anticipates a growing emphasis on DevSecOps in response to high-profile cyber incidents, noting a shift in executive attitudes toward security spending. The rise of automation-centric tools like Backstage signals a changing landscape in the link between development and operations tools. Notably, there's a move from focusing on efficiency gains to achieving new outcomes, with organizations seeking innovative products rather than marginal coding speed improvements.
Newburn highlights the importance of experimentation, encouraging organizations to identify areas for trial and error, learning swiftly from failures. The upcoming year is predicted to favor organizations capable of rapid experimentation and information gathering over perfection in code writing.
Listen to the full podcast episode as Newburn further discusses his predictions related to platform engineering, remote work, and the continued impact of generative AI.
Learn more from The New Stack about PagerDuty and trends in software development:
How AI and Automation Can Improve Operational Resiliency
Why Infrastructure as Code Is Vital for Modern DevOps
Operationalizing AI: Accelerating Automation, DataOps, AIOps
How AI and Automation Can Improve Operational Resiliency
Operational resiliency, as explained by Dormain Drewitz of PagerDuty, involves the ability to bounce back and recover from setbacks, not only technically but also in terms of organizational recovery. True resiliency means maintaining the willingness to take risks even after facing challenges. In a conversation with Heather Joslyn on the New Stack Makers podcast, Drewitz discussed the role of AI and automation in achieving operational resiliency, especially in a context where teams are under pressure to be more productive.
Automation, including generative AI code completion tools, is increasingly used to boost developer productivity. However, this may lead to shifting bottlenecks from developers to operations, creating new challenges. Drewitz emphasized the importance of considering the entire value chain and identifying areas where AI and automation can assist. For instance, automating repetitive tasks in incident response, such as checking APIs, closing ports, or database checks, can significantly reduce interruptions and productivity losses.
PagerDuty's AI-powered platform leverages generative AI to automate tasks and create runbooks for incident handling, allowing engineers to focus on resolving root causes and restoring services. This includes drafting status updates and incident postmortem reports, streamlining incident response and saving time. Having an operations platform that can generate draft reports at the push of a button simplifies the process, making it easier to review and edit without starting from scratch.
Learn more from The New Stack about AI, Automation, Incident Response, and PagerDuty:
Operationalizing AI: Accelerating Automation, DataOps, AIOps
Three Ways Automation Can Improve Workplace Culture
Incident Response: Three Ts to Rule Them All
Four Ways to Win Executive Buy-In for Automation
SaaStr 664: What You Need to Change at $10M to Scale to $100M with Sameer Dholakia, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners
Building a company for $0-$1M in revenue differs wildly from $1-10M ARR. And scaling from $10M to $100M is wildly different still.
Sameer Dholakia, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners with decades of operational experience, shares what you need to change as you scale from $10M to $100M ARR.
The short answer is almost everything.
Keep an open mind as you move into the next chapter of your company.
"Everything that got you to where you are isn't going to get you where you want to be," says Dholakia.
Watch the full video, including Q&A: https://youtu.be/ucgtUQiyEJE
Sameer's slides: https://www.slideshare.net/saastr/sameer-dholakia-saastr-workshop-wednesdays
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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.
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Combining Community and Company Employees with Matty Stratton
Matty Stratton, Director of Developer Relations at Aiven, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud for a friendly debate on whether or not company employees can still be considered community members. Corey says no, but opens up his position to the slings and arrows of Matty in an entertaining change of pace. Matty explains why he feels company employees can still be considered community members, and also explores how that should be done in a way that is transparent and helpful to everyone in the community. Matty and Corey also explore the benefits and drawbacks of talented community members becoming employees.
About Matty
Matty Stratton is the Director of Developer Relations at Aiven, a well-known member of the DevOps community, founder and co-host of the popular Arrested DevOps podcast, and a global organizer of the DevOpsDays set of conferences.
Matty has over 20 years of experience in IT operations and is a sought-after speaker internationally, presenting at Agile, DevOps, and cloud engineering focused events worldwide. Demonstrating his keen insight into the changing landscape of technology, he recently changed his license plate from DEVOPS to KUBECTL.
He lives in Chicago and has three awesome kids, whom he loves just a little bit more than he loves Diet Coke.
Links Referenced:
Aiven: https://aiven.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattstratton
Mastodon: hackyderm.io/@mattstratton
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattstratton/
#113 CEO PagerDuty, Jennifer Tejada: The Re-Finder
PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada has mixed feelings about how she is often portrayed in the press, as a “badass woman CEO.” The scarcity of female executives in enterprise means that it’s often the first thing anyone wants to talk about — not her performance leading a $2 billion company, or her team. She has specifically designed that team to include more under-represented people like her, so that she is not “the only one in the room” — but one executive team isn’t enough. “In my peer group, there’s still not enough Hayden Browns, there’s not enough Yamini Rangans, there’s not enough Safra Katzes,” Jennifer says. “And that is a failing of the industry.”
In this episode, Jennifer and Joubin discuss IPO chasers, the P&G Mafia, reward-centered leadership, participation trophies, serving others in a crisis, working women, plate spinning, perfect girl syndrome, unconscious bias, competitive offshore yacht racing, disconnecting from work, “re-finders,” interrupt work, consistent high standards, beginner’s mind, talent identification, weird but beloved brand names, and dealing with grief.
In this episode, we cover:
The good side of market corrections, and investing in people (00:58)
Learning how to fail and where Jennifer’s work ethic came from (05:28)
Her father’s death and how she adjusts “when shit hits the fan” (13:03)
Recognizing your own limits and working for your family (17:43)
The double-edged sword of being a visible female CEO (23:13)
Taking a break from your career to work on yourself (28:42)
Identity in Silicon Valley and getting put in a box (35:09)
How Jennifer got to PagerDuty and delivering value to customers (40:17)
PagerDuty’s IPO in the middle of a major pivot (45:23)
Responsibility overload and self-criticism (49:36)
Founder-led companies and the advantages of being a “re-finder” (52:55)
PagerDuty’s transition from one product to many (57:56)
The “unfathomable loss” of Phylicia “PJ” Jones and being vulnerable with coworkers (1:00:36)
Why grit is a requirement for success (01:06:52)
Links:
Connect with JenniferTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: jennifer@pagerduty.com
Connect with JoubinTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
SaaStr 593: State of the Cloud 2022: The Centaur Report with Bessemer Venture Partners Sameer Dholakia, Mary D'Onofrio, and Elliott Robinson
Bessemer Venture Partners unpacks the most important trends of the cloud economy, and explores the new milestone entrepreneurs need to value above all else—reaching Centaur status, or $100M in ARR—and the paths to get there. Releasing insights for founders with big ambitions, Sameer Dholakia, Elliott Robinson, and Mary D'Onofrio share the insights from cloud benchmark data and dive into the strategies that three Centaur companies took to scale their cloud businesses to $100M ARR.
Full video: https://youtu.be/pUKwyAxwAqI
Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.
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Pulumi Pursues Polyglotism to Expand Impact of DevOps
VALENCIA – The goal of DevOps was to break down silos between software development and operations. The side effect has become the blurring of lines between dev and ops. For better or for worse. Because the role of software developer is just continuously expanding causing cognitive overload and burnout. This is why the developer tooling market has exploded to automate and assist developers right when and where they need to build, in whatever language they already know.
In this episode of The New Stack Makers podcast, recorded on the floor of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2022, Matty Stratton, staff developer advocate at Pulumi, talks about this recently universal Infrastructure-as-Code and that impact on both dev and ops teams.
Earlier this May, Pulumi released updates that took the platform closer to becoming a truly polyglot way to enforce best cloud practices, including support for:
Full Java ecosystem
YAML
Crosswalk for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in all Pulumi languages
Deploying AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) in all Pulumi languages
These are significant updates because they dramatically expand the languages that are available in this low-code way of creating, deploying and managing infrastructure on any cloud.
"A lot of times, in Infrastructure-as-Code, we're using domain-specific language using a config file. We call it Infrastructure as Code and are not actually writing any code. So I like to think about Pulumi as Infrastructure as Software." For Stratton, that means writing Pulumi code using a general purpose programming language, like TypeScript, Python, Go, .NET languages, or now Java. "The great thing about that is, not only do you maybe already know this programming language, because that's the language you use to build your applications, but you're able to use all the things that a programming language has available to it, like conditionals, and loops, and packages, and testing tools, and an IDE [integrated development enviornment] and a whole ecosystem. So that makes it a lot more powerful, and gives us a lot of great abstractions we can use," he continued.
Pulumi now follows the low-code development trend where, Stratton says, "We're enabling people to solve a problem with just enough tech." But specifically in their common coding language, to limit the tool onboarding needed.
This is not only attractive to new customers but specifically to expand Pulumi adoption across organizations, without much adaptation of the way they work. Just making it easier to work together.
"I've been part of the DevOps community for a long time. And all that I want to see out of DevOps and all of this work is how do we collaborate better together? How do we be more cross functional?"
SaaStr 485: Hyperscaling Post-IPO with PagerDuty's CEO, Jennifer Tejada
PagerDuty's CEO, Jennifer Tejada, and Sameer Dholakia, former CEO of SendGrid and current PagerDuty Board Member share what fellow founders can learn from PagerDuty's post-IPO reality, and the realities of operating as a public company, two years later.
Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/hyperscaling-post-ipo-with-pagerdutys-ceo-jennifer-tejada-podcast-485/
Sponsors:
https://shortcut.com/saastr
https://www.litmus.com/saastr/
https://www.ontheclock.com/
SaaStr 470: PagerDuty's CMO and CPO Share How Product & Marketing Should Work Together
In today's digital age, product management and marketing need to have an integrated and collaborative relationship. In this podcast, hear from PagerDuty CPO, Sean Scott, and CMO, Julie Herendeen, on how PagerDuty has embraced a product-led growth model and the success they've seen since doing so.
Video + show notes: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-470-and-video-how-product-marketing-should-work-together-with-pagerduty/
CRO PagerDuty, Dave Justice: The Principles of Successful Crisis Leadership
Dave Justice knows a lot about crisis leadership. Over his almost 21 years in sales, he’s successfully navigated through the dotcom and housing bubble crashes — and now, the COVID-19 pandemic.
After 18 consecutive years working in various sales roles at Cisco, Dave became Executive Vice President of North America Enterprise Sales at Salesforce before transitioning in 2020 to his current role as Chief Revenue Officer at PagerDuty, a company that produces an incident response platform for IT departments.
On this episode of Go to Market Grit, Joubin and Dave talk about the leadership lessons Dave learned while working through crises, the opportunities and challenges for PagerDuty’s go-to-market operation, and how to successfully transition into a company as a new leader.
In this episode, we cover:
Dave's sales career before joining PagerDuty. (3:27)
'The platform for real-time work': What is PagerDuty? (12:09)
Market opportunity and happy customers: Why Dave left Salesforce for PagerDuty. (14:44)
The importance for leaders to rally an organization around a shared vision. (18:36)
Go-to-market challenges: Learning how to articulate a product's business value to the customer. (22:17)
Go-to-market opportunities: The 'virality' of PagerDuty's business model. (28:00)
The value of listening to employees and customers before making decisions as a new leader in a company. (34:05)
Why Dave believes leaders must own their own personal development and career. (37:28)
Communication and empathy: How to successfully lead through a crisis. (40:05)
How Dave defines grit. (48:45)
Links:
Connect with Dave JusticeTwitter
LinkedIn
Connect with JoubinTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: gtmg@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
SaaStr 370: Automation, The Digital Transformation Accelerator with Jennifer Tejada, CEO @ PagerDuty
As organizations race to achieve relevance and a competitive edge in the digital era, automation is fueling the fight. Join PagerDuty's CEO, Jennifer Tejada, as she discusses the need for agility and innovation and how automation is aiding adaptability and allowing enterprises to surge ahead.
This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Summit: Enterprise.
Full video: https://youtu.be/7mHQotsErWc
Podcast transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-jennifer-tejada-ben-chestnut-and-jason-lemkin/
20VC: PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada on A Leader's Relationship To Risk, Insecurity, Making Decisions with Imperfect Data & What Successful Board Management Looks Like
Jennifer Tejada is the CEO @ PagerDuty, the company that provides a real-time operations platform ensuring less downtime for your digital services. Prior to their IPO in 2019 PagerDuty raised funding from some of the best in the business including Accel, a16z, Baseline, Bessemer and Harrison Metal to name a few. As for Jennifer, prior to PagerDuty, she was CEO of Keynote Systems leading to their acquisition by Dynatrace. Before Keynote, Jennifer was Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Mincom, leading them to their acquisition by ABB. If that was not enough, Jennifer is also on the The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL).
CLICK TO LISTEN ON ITUNES
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Jennifer made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be one of the leading enterprise CEOs today with PagerDuty? How does Jen advise graduates on joining a startup vs large incumbent?
2.) How does Jen analyse and evaluate her relationship to risk? What does Jen do to remove herself from her environment and make the clearest decisions? How has Jen's decision-making process changed? How does Jen encourage debate and free thought sharing internally?
3.) How does Jen think about the role of insecurity within leadership? What would Jen say are her biggest insecurities? How does Jen manage them and mitigate them today? What works? What does not? Why does Jen believe data is the key to overcoming insecurities?
4.) What have been Jen's biggest lessons on what successful board management looks like? What separates good vs great board members? How can CEO's structure their board in an optimal way? What do they need? What do they not need? How does scale change this?
5.) How does Jen think her style of leadership has changed over the years? What have been Jen's lessons on what it takes to both acquire and retain the very best execs? Where do many go wrong here?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Jennifer's Fave Book: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
SaaStr 345: PagerDuty CMO Julie Herendeen on Attribution and Accountability within Marketing Teams, The Optimal Relationship Between Marketing & Product & Why Customer Success and Marketing Have Never Been Closer
Julie Herendeen is the CMO @ PagerDuty, the real-time operations platform ensuring less downtime and fewer outages, meaning happier customers and more productive teams. Prior to their IPO in 2019 PagerDuty raised funding from some of the best in the business including Accel, a16z, Baseline, Bessemer and Harrison Metal to name a few. As for Julie, prior to PagerDuty she was Vice President of Global Marketing @ Dropbox. Before Dropbox Julie was CMO @ Lookout and before Lookout, Julie enjoyed VP roles at both Yahoo and Shutterfly. If that was not enough, alongside her role at PagerDuty today Julie is also an angel with Broadway Angels and a Board Member @ Hubspot.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
How Julie made her way from the world of consumer into the world of enterprise and came to be CMO @ PagerDuty today? What were some of Julie's biggest lessons from her time as VP Global Marketing at Dropbox?
Does Julie believe that marketing should be held accountable to a number tied directly to revenue? How does Julie believe sales and marketing should work in unison? How can sales be involved in pipeline generation meetings? Should AEs make themselves responsible for sourcing new leads also? What does the ideal handoff look like?
How does Julie see the best marketing and product teams working together? What can marketing do to collect the most valuable data to inform product decisions? In what forum should they be relayed to product teams? How should product and marketing leaders interact most efficiently?
How does Julie think about the relationship of customer success and marketing? Does Julie agree that with the increasing amount of marketing content used post-sale, marketing is doing much of the work of CS? Where does Julie see many going wrong when investing heavily into thought leadership and content marketing?
Julie's 60 Second SaaStr:
Which marketing leader does Julie most respect and why?
What would Julie most like to change about the world of SaaS today?
What is the optimal relationship between the CEO and the CMO?
Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-345-with-pagerduty-cmo-julie-herendeen/
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
Julie Herendeen
SaaStr 325: How Marketing Teams Can Replace The Leads Lost From Events in A COVID World & The Right Tone To Adopt With Clients That Is Caring and Achieves Business Objectives with Carolyn Guss, VP Corporate Marketing @ PagerDuty
Carolyn Guss is VP of Corporate Marketing @ PagerDuty, the company keeping your digital operations running perfectly with their real-time operations platform. Prior to their IPO in April 2019, PagerDuty had raised funding from some of the best in the business including a16, Bessemer, Meritech, Harrison Metal and Elad Gil to name a few. As for Carolyn, prior to joining PagerDuty she spent 5 years as the GM of Method Communications San Francisco Office and before that spent time on the other side of the pond with a close to 7-year stint at Orange as Head of Corporate PR and Head of US Communications.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
How Carolyn made her way across the pond from Head of US Communications at Orange to GM of Method in SF to then playing a key role in the marketing team at PagerDuty?
How does Carolyn think startups and larger companies can replace the leads that are lost from having no events in a COVID world? How are PagerDuty shifting their strategy? How does PagerDuty think about brand marketing? Does it have to be tied to a number directly tied to revenue? What are the challenges with brand marketing?
What does Carolyn believe is the right tone to approach customers within this time? How can one be supportive but also drive towards business objectives? In terms of tone, what is the right tone to approach the broader team with? How does PagerDuty gain a sense of company morale at scale? What tools do they use?
How does Carolyn think about the benefits of transparency both with employees and with customers? Is there an extent to the benefits of transparency? Can one ever been too transparent? How does one think about this in a very corporate perspective with PagerDuty now being a public company?
Carolyn's 60 Second SaaStr:
What does Carolyn know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning of her time in marketing?
Hardest element of her role with PagerDuty today?
Who is killing it in the world of SaaS marketing? Why?
Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-pagerduty-and-gusto-april-17-2020/
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
Carolyn Guss
SaaStr 234: PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada and Duo Security CEO Dug Song on The Top Things No One Really Tells You About Scaling
Duo Security Co-Founder and CEO Dug Song and PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada discuss building, enabling, and leading great teams through 10K+ customers, $100M+ ARR, $1B+ valuation and beyond - all while earning 4.5+ Glassdoor company ratings and 98%+ CEO approvals from 500+ total employees!
Duo Security is a cloud-based provider of unified access security and multifactor authentication was acquired by Cisco for $2.35 billion in October 2018. PagerDuty is a leading digital operations management platform for organizations announced new financing in September 2018 at a $1.3 billion valuation.
Missed the session? Here's what Jennifer and Dug talk about:
When is the right time to raise money?
How can you better manage the board?
Should you worry about competitors?
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
Jennifer Tejada
Dug Song
SaaStr 218: Twilio Founder, Jeff Lawson & SendGrid CEO, Sameer Dholakia on Why Developer First Is A Maturation In The Supply Chain Of Software & Why With Software Innovation Costs Being Lower Than Ever, Operators Must Maximise The Number of "At Bat" Oppor
Jeff Lawson is the Founder & CEO @ 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 Jeff, prior to founding Twilio, Jeff was the Founder & CTO @ Nine Star Inc and enjoyed a spell at Amazon as a Technical Product Manager.
Sameer Dholakia is the CEO @ SendGrid, the category leader in email delivery, reaching half of the world's digital users every 3 months. Last year Twilio acquired SendGrid bringing email into one seamless customer engagement platform. As for Sameer, prior to joining SendGrid, he spent 4 years at Citrix, where he drove the company's product strategy for cloud infrastructure and server virtualization. Sameer joined the company in 2010, when Citrix acquired VMLogix, where he served as CEO and doubled revenues during each year of his tenure. Before that, he worked for 12 years at Trilogy, where he held key leadership roles helping the company grow from a start-up to a $300 million business.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
How Jeff came to found Twilio and what was that a-ha moment for him? How did Sameer enter the world of SaaS and come to be CEO @ SendGrid?
How did Jeff and Sameer assess the culture fit between the 2 companies when deciding whether or not to join forces? How did they formulate and approach creating a new set of values with the 2 companies coming together? How do they distinguish between culture and values? How can leaders both be authoritative and vulnerable simultaneously?
What does Jeff mean when he says, "the developer first approach is a maturation of the supply chain of software"? How has Jeff seen his original thesis for "developer first" evolve and change with time? What does truly special customer experience look like in the developer first model?
In terms of product strategy, how do Jeff and Sameer approach when is the right time to release a second product? What does Jeff mean when he says, "you have to maximise the number of at bat opportunities you have"? Why does Sameer think that SendGrid waited too long to release additional product lines? What were his core learnings from that?
How do Jeff and Sameer think about what what truly special leadership looks like today? How do they approach speaking so that people will remember? What are some of their biggest tips to aspiring entrepreneurs with regards to that and team empowerment? Why do both Jeff and Sameer believe that so much of the management wisdom today is outdated?
60 Second SaaStr:
What do Jeff and Sameer know now that they wish they had known at the beginning?
The book they have gifted most often and why?
What does it take to truly be a great board member?
What do the next 5 years look like for Twilio? How big could it get?
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
Jeff Lawson
Sameer Dholakia
Episode 39: Give 10 Bad Talks All in a Row and Then Get Fired
Do you like to hear yourself talk? Especially while on a stage and in front of a lot of people? How do you come up with ideas to talk about? What process do you use to build a conference talk or presentation?
Today, we’re talking to Matty Stratton of PagerDuty. His job involves building conference talks and finding ways to continuously improve them. Public speaking can be intimidating, so he shares some tips and tricks that have worked for him.
Some of the highlights of the show include:
Avoid creating something brand new for every event
Don’t tell flattering stories about things that happened to you; may be uplifting, but doesn't resemble reality
Failure stories are fantastic because people relate to making terrible decisions
Everyone who gives a talk panics, gets nervous, and thinks they’re about a sentence away from stammering and falling off the stage; almost never happens
Audience wants you to succeed because they're there to learn; no one is hoping a presenter messes up
Preparation is key; could build a talk at the last minute, but it would be much better, if you prepared for it
Don’t intentionally try to think of something; have conversations with people and listen to other talks to develop anecdotes, stories, and cold opens
Humor can be tricky; what you think is funny, other people might not
Make things memorable; show good ideas by showing bad ideas - it’s the ‘don't do this, do this instead’ model
Submit early and often, but submit appropriately; if you are always submitting stuff that’s inappropriate for an event, your stuff starts to be ignored
Sometimes, you may want to avoid slides that auto advance; if you trip over yourself: Stop, repeat, back up, take questions, etc.
Try not to read from notes or slides; takes the life and engagement out of the talk
People can only do one thing at a time - listen or read
Practice: Record yourself every time you practice and watch it; focus on blocking and tackling
You have about 45 seconds to grab people's interest before they look at their phone; get them engaged via a story, picture, or anecdote
Links:
Matty Stratton’s Presentations
Matty Stratton on Twitter
PagerDuty
Arrested DevOps
Hot Takes, Myths, And Fake News—Why Everyone Is Wrong About DevOps, Except For Me
DevOps Dispatch
LastWeekinAWS
Jez Humble
Robert Rodriguez
Rebel Without A Crew
Adam Jacob from Chef
Terrible Ideas in Git
Azure DevOps
Emily Freeman
Decker Communications
Don't You Know Who I Am?!
Datadog
.
a16z Podcast: Boards, from Both Sides of the Table
A board veteran who has sat on both sides of the table, CEO of PagerDuty Jennifer Tejada shares what you gain from board membership (vs. being only an operator). How does being a board member change you as a CEO, and vice versa?
Recorded as part of our annual Director's College held at Stanford University in April 2017, Tejada (in conversation with a16z operating partner Margit Wennmachers) in this episode of the a16z Podcast offers advice about the importance of diligence on both sides, subject matter expertise, and complex dynamics among fellow board members. Tejada also talks about how to make the best use of your board as a CEO... including what's most important when managing them (hint: no surprises!).
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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.
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a16z Podcast: Harnessing the DevOps Movement -- Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls
In this, world of massive cloud-based applications and services, rolling out software has moved from an episodic event to an almost continuous release cycle. In that environment, software products aren’t as “done” as they used to be -- they can’t be -- so the focus has shifted to reversibility. Building a development organization with the design tools and processes that can aggressively iterate while also creating safety nets. So if things do get screwy they can be fixed before customers even notice.
Call it DevOps or application operations, Steven Sinofsky leads a discussion with Karthik Rau from SignalFx and Alex Solomon from PagerDuty about the evolution of I.T. operations – and the requirements and challenges that modern distributed applications pose for a development organization.
The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.
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