There’s been a lot of panicked discussion lately in SaaS. The Venture Capital market has adjusted downward, and SaaS businesses everywhere are feeling the effects. 

But Ajay Agarwal says there’s no need to panic. He is the Managing Director for Bain Capital Ventures in the Bay Area, focusing on early-stage application software and SaaS investing. His portfolio companies include SaaS standouts like Optimizely, Gainsight and SendGrid. He explained that the reality of the market has changed, but it’s not the end of the world. In the latest episode of Ramp, Ajay explains why the SaaS market is changing, and how your business can not only survive, but thrive in the new environment. 

Ajay Agarwal on the Upside to the SaaS Downturn

When your customers are quantitative analysts, data drives every aspect of your product, according to Karen Rubin.

Rubin is the VP of Product at Quantopian, a crowd-sourced hedge fund that encourages freelance analysts to develop, test, and use trading algorithms to buy and sell securities. Before joining Quantopian, Rubin was a Product Manager at HubSpot, as well as the Entrepreneur-in-residence at Matrix Partners. She has a background in computer science, and data is behind every decision she makes regarding her company’s product. 

In this episode, Rubin explains how data can improve the outcomes for your SaaS product.


How Karen Rubin Builds a Product for Data Analysts

Last year, Sujan Patel met in person with 368 people to talk SaaS marketing.

Why did he spend so much time and effort? It all comes down to building personal relationships.

Sujan is the co-founder of bootstrapped startup ContentMarketer.io, which offers tools that help you scale and automate your social media and content marketing efforts. He has over 12 years of Internet marketing experience, including as former VP of Marketing at When I Work and founder of a digital marketing agency where he helped clients like Salesforce, Mint, TurboTax, and LinkedIn. 

Sujan decided to invest in building personal relationships with his target market, and then turning those relationships into business growth. Once people feel a connection with him, he explained, it’s incredibly easy to share his newest free tool to get their feedback or drive a successful launch. 

In this episode, learn why SaaS marketing doesn’t have to be impersonal.

Sujan Patel Gets Personal with Growth Marketing

Sean Burke is standing up for the most underappreciated members of a SaaS team: the Sales Development Reps. 

Burke is the CEO of KiteDesk, a Florida-based software platform that makes sales prospecting easier. He is a serial entrepreneur and has acted as founder or core leadership team member in nine different early stage companies across technology, financial services and consulting. 

After nearly two decades of sales experience, Burke completely understands the struggle of SDRs. Prospecting is mentally tough, and all he wants is to help make their job better and more productive.

In this episode, Burke shares how to help your SDR team, and drive better sales performance. 

Sean Burke of KiteDesk Fights for Sales Development Reps

Ask anyone in sales today, and they’ll agree: B2B selling has become increasingly complex. Bob Apollo wants to help sales teams handle that complexity, and break it down into more manageable and understandable processes. 

Apollo is the Founder and Managing Partner at Inflexion-Point, the UK-based B2B sales process experts. He has worked for many of the world’s most respected technology companies, including HP. Apollo now uses his experiences in sales to help tomorrow’s tech companies cut through the complexity. 

In the latest episode of Ramp, Bob Apollo shares how you can improve your sales processes to drive better forecasting, higher revenues, and a more efficient sales team. 

Bob Apollo Makes Complex Sales Simple

Jim McDonough knows that on a SaaS team, it’s vital for sales and customer success to work as one.

He is the VP of Sales and Customer Success at Attend, the event management and engagement platform. McDonough spent the past 10 years building out sales teams at three early/expansion stage software companies including Mashery, which was acquired by Intel in 2013, SmartBear Software, and Acronis. 

Now, he’s turned his attention to aligning the goals of sales and customer success. In this episode, McDonough shares how he helps sales and customer success work together to drive down churn, and drive up revenue. 


Aligning Sales and Customer Success with Jim McDonough

In this exclusive 23 minute episode, Laura Roeder explores the importance of list building in marketing a new SaaS product, succeeding without a freemium model, and finding the right price for your SaaS product. Learn how to drive a healthy SaaS business without VC funding in the latest episode of Ramp.

Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup with Laura Roeder

In the latest episode of Ramp, Mark Birch, founder and organizer for the Enterprise Sales Meetup, explains why so many startups get sales wrong, and how to get it right at your company.


Driving Powerful Startup Sales with Mark Birch

Ramp is the SaaS analytics podcast that explores the stories of how people use data to transform and rapidly grow their business. Host Cara Hogan interviews thought leaders, sales experts and data analysts to understand how analytics can ramp up your SaaS business.

Learn more at insightsquared.com/podcast

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