Weekly Walk

Here’s What We Learned from Casey Renner’s 2021 #WeeklyWalks

December 21, 2021

We’re coming to the end of 2021–a lot has changed in the world of SaaS. One thing that has remained a constant? Operating Partner Casey Renner’s WeeklyWalk series. Each Wednesday, Casey walked – virtually and then in person – with PLG and SaaS leaders to learn more about who they are and how they run their businesses. 

Casey has some awesome guests (and accessories) already planned for 2022. Be sure to follow her on LinkedIn to be the first to see them live. 

Picking some favorites is way too difficult, but we are sharing a few key lessons learned from this year. 

Leading a team? Incorporate these tips.

VTEX COO, Ashta Malik, on active listening and showing vulnerability. 

 

“Your intent should be to develop a team who can bring their best selves to work and for that you have to listen to them instead of continuously telling them what to do”

Want more insights from Astha? Check out her episode of BUILD with Blake Bartlett.

Atlassion’s VP of Product, Joff Redfern, on how to structure large teams. 

“I want them to have independence and autonomy in their work and from there making sure they have enough of a vision or mission so that each leader should feel like they’re running a startup.”

Clearbit’s CEO, Ross Moser, on the overlaps between product leaders and CEOs. 

“Product Managers have to deliver value through others, and as a CEO you can do very little by yourself, and more about how you coordinate everyone’s priorities and focus.”

Loom’s SVP of Marketing, Rebecca Kline, on finding the right person to build your marketing team. 

 
“The worst question in the world I get asked is ‘What are you? Are you a brand person?’ I like to build businesses.”
 

How to build a sales org from scratch.

Sentry.io’s CRO, Chris de Vylder, former head of global SMB sales at Atlassian, shares four steps to grow a sales operations function in your organization.

 
“The first thing we wanted to do is see how to we leverage Atlassian’s core differentiators, the flywheel and channels that we had, and build an enterprise sales motion off of that.”


Stripe’s Head of Americas Revenue, Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, on choosing the right metrics to  move from self-serve to upstream.  

 
“Our number 1 thing on a weekly basis, are we consistently creating enough opportunities to keep the sales teams covered.” 

Jeanne DeWitt Grosser talks about customer segmentation on our miniseries BUILDing To Boss.
 

Be customer-focused.

Snyk’s CMO and CXO, Jeff Yoshimura, on customer-led growth. 

 
“The natural extension of PLG is customer-led growth and one of the most important metrics is net retention.” 

ServiceTitan’s CMO, Chris Petros, on the most important factor in developing a marketing strategy in a vertical SaaS market. 

 
“As a manufacturing engineer, you are in an environment of builders…in my position now, I’m exposed to entrepreneurs cut from the same cloth.” 

KIND CIO, Selvam Ratinasabapati, on strategies for bringing customers to new platforms and keeping them there. 

 
“Our vision is not just an ecommerce platform, but how do we bring more content, more users to the site, so they can have a complete experience.” 

Gong’s Director of Customer Success, Linda Lin, on how the pandemic has changed her team’s focus. 

 
“Being a long time good partner has been trying, it’s also given us the opportunity to step up as a CS team at Gong for our customers”