Janine Pelosi

SaaStr 715: The 7 Biggest Mistakes CMOs Make (And How to Avoid Them) with the CMOs of Databricks, Zoom, and Okta In this CMO panel, Rick Schultz, CMO at Databricks, Janine Pelosi, Former CMO at Zoom, and Ryan Carlson, Former CMO at Okta, joined Carilu Dietrich, Advisor at Hypergrowth B2B Startups to talk about the seven biggest mistakes CMOs make. These CMOs have all taken their companies from the early stages through IPOs and have been apart of multi-billion dollar organizations. Here are the 7 big mistakes they made, so you can avoid them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.

Rick Schultz

CMO

Databricks

Janine Pelosi

Former CMO

Zoom

Ryan Carlson

Former CMO

Okta

Janine Pelosi is the CMO @ Zoom, the next-generation enterprise phone system. Prior to their very successful IPO, Zoom raised funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, Emergence Capital, Horizons Ventures and 2 of my favourites in the form of Matt Ocko @ Data Collective and Dan Scheinman. As for Janine before joining Zoom, she spent 11 years at Cisco where among many incredible achievements she led worldwide demand gen for WebEx and led their worldwide digital marketing team with a $25M annual budget. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How Janine made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be one of the leading CMOs today with Zoom? How has the role of the CMO changed over the last 5 years? Would Janine agree with Jason Lemkin that "the role of the CMO is to execute the vision of the CEO"? What makes Janine and Eric's relationship so successful? What makes Eric the special leader that he is? How does the changing power of the CMO affect their relationship with the CEO? When is the right time for startups to hire their first CMO? What should they look for in that ideal candidate? What should they have in place in terms of infrastructure, prior to hiring the candidate? What does the right onboarding process look like for a CMO? Where does Janine see many going wrong when hiring their first CMO? How does Janine look to create alignment between sales and marketing? Why does Janine not believe in having the labels of "MQLs and SQLs"? How does Janine look to reduce the friction when handing off between marketing and sales? What are the common causes? How are we seeing marketing also blend with customer success? Janine's 60 Second SaaStr: What does Janine know now that she wishes she had known at the start of her time at Zoom? Who does Janine most respect in the world of marketing today? Why? What would Janine most like to change about 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 Janine Pelosi

Janine Pelosi

Former CMO

Zoom