SaaStr Speaker Series with Sameer Dholakia and Ajay Agarwal: The rule of 40 and more

 Jason Lemkin introducing Sameer Dholakia and Ajay Agarwal

Greg Hoffman (Hoff) and I showed up early and furthered our Continuing Education in SaaS yesterday at the May SaaStr CSS Speaker Series. Last night's event featured Sameer Dholakia, CEO of Pre-IPO SendGrid and Ajay Agarwal, Managing Director at Bain Capital Ventures.

SaaStr Omiyage: 100% Kona Coffee

  Dropping off 100% Kona coffee with Jason Lemkin

Showing up early yields facetime with Jason Lemkin, the face and brand behind today's SaaS industry. Since I've read he likes everything from Hawaii, I brought him an omiyage from my recent trip back home- a bag of 100% Kona coffee. Despite having been turned down twice from his SaaStr fund, we don't give up and we show our appreciation for leveling up via SaaStr events. I told Lemkin I bought four copies of his book "From Impossible to Inevitable" for key managers at Paubox. I also asked for advice on establishing comp plans for our Customer Success and Marketing departments. He suggested we make sure our comp plans are accretive. Duly noted.

SEE ALSO: From Impossible to Inevitable: Chapters 1 – 8

  Signature SaaStr: Tasty beverages

How to Build a Highly Capital Efficient SaaS Company

  Sameer Dholakia and Ajay Agarwal recollecting early days at Trilogy

Here are my takeaways from their excellent talk:

• "Invest in great people you know." [Jason Lemkin]
• Sameer's first job out of college was at Trilogy at a Produt Manager (1995). He met Ajay Agarwal there.
• Sendgrid has 50,000 paying customers and is doing $100M ARR.
• Over one million developers using their platform.
• "How do you drive value to the customer?" [Ajay Agarwal]
• "Build a company culture that has edge, is unique and one that does not fit for everyone." [Sameer Dholakia]
• "Every single hire you make is mission critical. You can't get those wrong." [Sameer]
• Who is doing your recruiting? It's a privilege, not an obligation.
• Sendgrid has an extraordinary go to market business model. Solving product buyer fit.
• Sendgrid solves a pain point for a particular persona who can put their credit card down and buy it.
• 99% of Sendgrid customers sign up via self service.
• Look at keyword search for determining whether or not to do self service.
• Email Marketing is a $5B TAM with hundreds of competitors.
• Sendgrid was crazy focused on buyer personas. For example, they give away 10,000 Sendgrid t-shirts per year.
• "I believe email will outlive us all." [Sameer]
• "Profitability is a choice, not an outcome." [Sameer]
• Efficiently acquire and serve customers. Go to market strategy is key.
• Rule of 40: Take your growth rate as a percentage and add profitability metric. They should equal 40 (or more).
• Sameer and Ajay learned about the 3 Horizon Product Strategy from Trilogy: Cash cow, Growth engine, and Moonshot.
• 70% of Sendgrid email read on mobile. (That probably holds true for all email!)
• $38 ROI for every dollar spent on Email Marketing.
• Sendgrid sends 35 billion emails every month.
• Sendgrid explicitly does not sell to the enterprise (yet).
• 95% of Sendgrid customers on monthly plans.
• "Cloud is here and it's opened up so many new opportunities." [Ajay]
• The 4 H's of Sendgrid's company culture: Happy. Hungry. Humble. Honest.
• Defining your company's culture: The sooner the better.

  Always a full house at SaaStr events

SEE RELATED: My Continuing Education via SaaStr CSS Speaking Series