SaaStr 422: The Twists and Turns Along the Way to Building a Unicorn with SalesLoft CEO, Kyle Porter, and SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin
After a newly minted $1.1B valuation, Kyle Porter, CEO of SalesLoft, sits down with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin to talk about the twists and turns along the way to building SalesLoft into the Unicorn it is today. From completely pivoting the product early on, to becoming an essential software tool for inside sales reps -- learn how SalesLoft landed some of the Cloud giants like Shopify, Google, and Slack as its customers, and what it takes to build a Unicorn company in today's changing market.
Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/salesloft-unicorn-valuation-story/
SaaStr 191: Salesloft Founder Kyle Porter on Scaling A SaaS Business to $40m ARR Outside of Silicon Valley, Pivoting a Product Generating $7m in ARR & How To Fundamentally Create Cohesion In A Leadership Team
Kyle Porter is the Founder & CEO @ Salesloft, the leading sales engagement platform delivering a better sales experience. To date, Salesloft have raised over $75m in funding from some of the best in the business including Emergence, Insight Venture Partners, Techstars and even LinkedIn. As for Kyle, he has led the team from 4 employees in 2014 to over 320 today where they have also been awarded Atlanta's No 1 best place to work. Prior to founding Salesloft, Kyle was the Founder @ B2B camp, a conference focused on B2B revenue generating professionals. Before that he was Vice President of Marketing @ NanoLumens.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
How Kyle made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found Salesloft?
Kyle made the decision to pivot the product when it was at $7m in ARR, what was the thinking behind that? How does Kyle think about pivots more broadly? How does one know when it is truly not working? How long did it take Kyle to get the core Salesloft product to $1m in ARR?
With the pivot, what were Kyle's core learnings on migrating from a prior product and platform to a new one? What were his big lessons on seeing the change in buyer persona? What does Kyle mean when he says "selling is hard but buying is even harder"?
Does Kyle agree with many CEO's the most important role of the CEO is "management upscaling"? What elements does he find most challenging? What have been Kyle's big lessons in the building out of his exec team? What is the fundamental element for a successful exec team to function?
Salesloft is in an immensely competitive space, what would Kyle's advice be in standing out in an intensely competitive space? Where do many go wrong? What are the pros and cons of being in Atlanta and not SF? What advice would Kyle give to founders operating their HQs external to the core hubs?
Kyle's 60 Second SaaStr
Is it important to have early champions? How does one get them?
How has having kids changed your perspective on work?
Tell me a moment in your life that has served as an inflection point and changed the way you think?
When I say success in SaaS who is the embodiment of this to you?
What does Kyle know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
Read the full transcript on our blog.
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Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Kyle Porter