SendGrid

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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This episode is sponsored by: remote.com When the right person for the job is a world away, Remote Talent brings the world to you. As the top job board for remote-first companies, we give you powerful tools to post your listings and reach the world's top candidates and remote professionals. Start building your dream team from anywhere—visit Remote.com/jobs today. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.

Sameer Dholakia

Partner

Bessemer Venture PartnersPagerDutySendGrid

Julia Chapin

COO

Abridge

Kate Jensen

Head of Revenue

AnthropicStripe

Rami Karabibar

CEO & Founder

EvenUp

Timothy Young

CEO

Jasper

Guest: Anne Raimondi, COO and Head of Business at Asana Asana COO Anne Raimondi feels pressure to perform in her job “every day, all the time.” But that pressure doesn’t come from her fellow executives; she imposes it on herself, trying to think carefully about how much each of her decisions will impact her team. “I have a lot of privilege and choice,” Anne says, “of how I spend my time, the resources available to me, and am I doing enough? ... Am I doing the most with the opportunities I have, and making as positive an impact as I can?” In this episode, Anne and Joubin discuss returning to the office, Scott McNealy, the dotcom bust, Myers-Briggs, Star Trek: The Next Generation, empowering leaders, Blue Nile, Robert, Chatwani, tech leaders with children, Bain Capital, time management, being “in the moment,” Dave Goldberg, Dustin Moskovitz, staying curious, and being prescriptive. Chapters: (01:05) - Hybrid remote policies (05:34) - Employees’ emotional journey (09:39) - Thoughtful answers and betazoids (13:17) - Anne’s immigrant parents (14:50) - Regrettable feedback (17:46) - Leaders who cast a shadow (19:36) - Company-hopping (24:14) - Startups and stability (28:42) - Pressure to perform (31:08) - Insecurity and parenthood (37:12) - Allocating your time (39:43) - Co-founding One Jackson (45:36) - Amanda Kleha (47:01) - Great founders (52:18) - “It is not glamorous” (54:03) - From board to operating at Asana (57:10) - Feedback for founders (01:00:25) - Recurring meetings (01:03:07) - Who Asana is hiring Links: Connect with AnneLinkedIn Connect with JoubinTwitter LinkedIn Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com  Learn more about Kleiner Perkins This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Anne Raimondi

Board Member

SendGridAsana

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 ***** 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

Sameer Dholakia

Partner

Bessemer Venture PartnersPagerDutySendGrid

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. 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

Sameer Dholakia

Partner

Bessemer Venture PartnersPagerDutySendGrid

Mary D'Onofrio

Partner

Bessemer Venture Partners

Elliott Robinson

Partner

Bessemer Venture Partners

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/

Jennifer Tejada

CEO

PagerDuty

Sameer Dholakia

Partner

PagerDutyBessemer Venture PartnersSendGrid

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

Jeff Lawson

CEO and Co-founder

TwilioThe Onion

Sameer Dholakia

Partner

Bessemer Venture PartnersPagerDutySendGrid

Anne Raimondi has more than 20 years experience driving growth at startups and building them into nationally recognized brands. She has served as a leader and executive for technology innovators including Zendesk, Survey Monkey, Blue Nile, and eBay. Anne is also a Lecturer in Management at Stanford Graduate School of Business, teaching two popular courses, "Startup Garage" and "POWer: Building the Entrepreneurial Mindset." She currently serves on the board of directors for SendGrid (NYSE: SEND) and MyHealthTeams. If that was not enough, Anne is also an active angel investor with an incredible portfolio including the likes of Canva, ipsy, and Minted just to name a few. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How Anne made her way into the world of startups with Zendesk? How did seeing the hyperscaling of Zendesk impact Anne's operational approach and mindset? Does Anne agree that certain individuals are destined for certain stages of company development? What are the leading indicators that one can or cannot scale? What are the inflection points in company growth where process tend to break? What can managers do to provide security in these times of change? Why does Anne believe that everyone should be a product person in SaaS? What are the inherent benefits of this product centricity? How does the element of product centricity change when catering to 2 customers, CIO and consumer? How does Anne advise on this issue of agency? How does Anne approach optimising internal decision-making processes? Where do many leadership teams make mistakes here? What is the right way for leadership teams to communicate their decisions to the wider team? How does Anne approach ensuring cross-functional communication at scale? How has Anne seen her style of board membership change over the last 8 years? What has been an inflection point that has changed the way she thinks about what it takes to be a great board member? Who has been the best board member Anne has worked with? What made them so special? Anne's 60 Second SaaStr: What does Anne know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning? The right way for founders to view competition? What would Anne most like to change in the world of SaaS 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 Anne Raimondi

Anne Raimondi

Board Member

SendGridAsana