June 8, 2023
What Taylor Swift and My Teenage Daughter Taught Me About the Future premium
If you know anything about me or my leadership style, one thing is for certain: my strategies for being a CEO and a dad have some overlap. For both, I have the same five Taylor Swift puns ready to go on repeat (It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me), I will always try to capture Brené Brown’s empowering vulnerability, and I will always look to my family for inspiration.
premium
My Top 10 Mistakes in 10 Years: Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta premium
“I never make the same mistake twice. I make it 5 or 6 times, just to be sure.” – Random quote I found on the Internet If that doesn’t describe the CEO experience, I don’t know what does. In February 2023, I hit my 10 year anniversary (or “Gainaversary,” as we say) of running Gainsight. […]
premium
February 8, 2023
Why Customer Success Should (and Shouldn’t) Own Account Management premium
We’re officially two months into the new year, which means it’s time for a common annual tradition in tech: Reorgs. Though to be fair, reorgs seem constant these days. Yet amidst the usual shuffling and strategic planning for the new year, I’ve seen a new trend emerge: companies are combining their Customer Success Management (value/adoption) […]
premium
January 28, 2023
The Ultimate Chief Customer Officer (CCO) Job Description premium
The Chief Customer Officer (CCO) role is crucial for virtually every SaaS company. Hiring one moves Customer Success (CS) from a function to a company-wide strategy, offering a customer voice in the boardroom and a peer to your Sales and Product leaders. Yet if you asked 100 SaaS CEOs to define a CCO’s roles and […]
premium
January 18, 2023
Five Takeaways From SaaS CEOs on 2023 Priorities premium
Given the uncertainty in the world right now, it’s hard to predict what will happen this January—let alone all of 2023. Besides the Taylor Swift Eras concert being epic, of course! So, I decided to get the scoop. A couple of weeks ago, I sent out a survey to hundreds of growth-stage SaaS CEOs to […]
premium
December 16, 2022
Five Reasons Why SaaS Benchmarks Can Be Dangerous Without Context premium
I get an email almost every day from other CEOs or CXOs that goes something like this: “What’s a good metric for… [Growth Rate / Net Revenue Retention / Gross Margin / ARR / Employee]?” Often the message provides no context on the leader’s business. They just want to know what “good” is. As a […]
premium
December 16, 2022
Three Reasons Why a High Churn SaaS Business Will (Probably) Never Make Money premium
How will we look back on 2021 and 2022 years from now? I’m sure partly, we will reflect with shock. How did we ever think GameStop was worth tens of billions of dollars? Why did we believe in crypto scams like FTX? And whoever thought an NFT of a “Bored Ape” would be valued at […]
premium
October 20, 2022
The One Thing Billionaire Frank Slootman Got Wrong premium
This article was originally published on All Business. I’ve always longed for an archnemesis. I know that may sound strange, but I’ve seen enough superhero movies to know that every great hero needs an antihero. We all know that Superman isn’t anything without Lex Luthor, and that Batman can’t quit the Joker. via GIPHY Somehow, […]
premium
September 22, 2022
Six Reasons Why Community Is The Most Important Part of Your Product premium
One of my favorite TV shows ever is the 2000s comedy Community. The show features six-ish community college students who become unlikely friends. I love the program for many reasons. First of all, it’s one of the most meta TV series ever, in that it’s mainly self-referential about TV tropes. And if you know me, […]
premium
August 31, 2022
5 Takeaways from this Year’s Pulse Conference premium
Just before Pulse, I shared my (slightly biased) opinion on why Pulse is the Best SaaS Event of the Year. And our time together at the Moscone Center proved that again ten times over. We laughed together. We suffered through far too many of my dad jokes and Taylor Swift references. We celebrated all the […]
premium
August 26, 2022
How SaaS “Growth At All Costs” Costs Us All premium
This article was originally published on Fast Company. My morning mental health best practices includes things to not check: My phone. My email. My stock portfolio. If you’ve accidentally done the latter lately, you know things are very different than they were a few months ago for SaaS stocks. While the next few quarters are […]
premium
August 24, 2022
The Five Phases of SaaS Product Management premium
This article was originally published on Fast Company. My first real job was as a Product Manager at a software company in 2002. I remember sitting in my tiny, windowless office and launching my Windows XP laptop for the first time. And I remember asking the PM in the office next door to help me […]
premium