Leadership

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. […]
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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 […]
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June 30, 2022
5 Lessons From Surveying SaaS CEOs About the Downturn premium
The paranoid CEO in me has been feeling better since last week’s survey results on what investors thought of the SaaS valuation collapse. Still, I wanted a more complete picture of SaaS’s trajectory in the economic downturn. Private Equity and Venture Capital firms may be aligned on priorities, but what about CEOs? Are there meaningful […]
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June 25, 2022
3 Takeaways from Surveying SaaS Investors About the Downturn premium
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m an annoyingly-positive optimist. But like every CEO, I’m also constantly paranoid. So two narratives are constantly battling away in my brain right now: “The market opportunity for SaaS has never been better.” “The stock market is down by how much?” After reading the 732nd memo from a VC […]
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December 17, 2021
7 Reasons Why Chief Customer Officers Need To (Eventually) Own Revenue premium
“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” – Albert Einstein “I don’t care about that Einstein quote. What’s the ROI of Customer Success?” – Your CFO If you want to start a fight (or at least a spirited debate) at a Customer Success conference,  yell the following […]
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October 29, 2021
What My Mom And Ted Lasso Taught Me About Leadership premium
I know what you’re thinking. What do Ted Lasso and my mom have to do with leadership? Or worse, you might be asking, “Who is Ted Lasso?” Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t seen Ted Lasso yet, stop reading and subscribe to Apple+, so you can watch the best. Show. Ever. Ted Lasso (portrayed by Jason […]
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October 11, 2021
Why (Nearly*) Every SaaS Company Should Have A Chief Customer Officer premium
SaaS is on fire. We all know that, but it strikes me every day. It used to be that you couldn’t name a SaaS company that I didn’t know. Now, I hear about ten new ones a day that I’ve never heard of. And companies and investors have realized that Net Retention – keeping and […]
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5 Stages of CEO Acceptance of Customer Success premium
For software companies (and all companies eventually), Customer Success isn’t an “if,” but rather a “when” and “how.” I’ve been fortunate to witness thousands of companies go through this journey of transformation. During this process, I’ve seen the “movie,” in terms of how most CEOs go through a predictable “maturity curve” as they take Customer […]
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July 28, 2021
All Aboard: Loneliness and Leadership premium
Let me start this discussion by saying leadership is a massive privilege. And I am fortunate to be in a job that I love. I feel that gratitude every day and know many would do anything to have what I have. But I also believe in being vulnerable about what I feel, to normalize the […]
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April 30, 2021
7 Takeaways from CCO Organizational Structure Survey premium
One of the best parts of the Customer Success community is the feeling that we are all in it together as CS evolves. No one is an expert, and everyone must adopt the philosophy of the Beginner’s Mind as we innovate and discover more about our field. Customer Success peers help each other out more […]
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April 22, 2021
So You’ve Raised a SaaS Mega Round: Now What? premium
By Nick Mehta – CEO, Gainsight [Special thanks to Ajay Agarwal at Bain Capital Ventures, Nakul Mandan from Audacious Ventures, Roger Lee from Battery Ventures, Jeff Lieberman from Insight Venture Partners and Byron Deeter from Bessemer Venture Partners for their feedback on this post] It’s an incredible time to be in SaaS. I don’t know […]
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6 Things I Learned About PLG and Customer Success premium
Have you ever heard the one about the client that “was a little different than your other customers?” In the Customer Success world, this scenario has become a bit of a joke. Indeed, we even wrote a parody song last year about this (“every client’s like a snowflake”). So when a Customer Success leader, as […]
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