lexicamp_full.txt

S07 Fox, thank you very much for joining us this morning, and Jean, thank you for making time
S07 in the evening.
S07 Jean is the Head of Revenue and Growth for the Americas at Stripe, and we all know Stripe,
S07 they build economic infrastructure for the internet.
S07 She leads teams that drive new business acquisition, customer success, technical sales, and platform
S07 partnerships for customers ranging from seed stage, like most of us in this room, to global
S07 100 corporations.
S07 I'm going to let Jean just talk about the work she's done in the past, and then we will
S07 do a round of intros and get started.
S07 Jean, over to you.
S07 Thank you for joining us today.
S03 Yeah, thanks for having me.
S03 Really excited to chat with everybody.
S03 So quick background on me, and thanks for the overview there, Joy.
S03 So I started my career in tech at Google.
S03 First product I ever worked on was Gmail about two months after it had launched.
S03 Actually, my first job was answering support emails, so people writing in being like, are
S03 you reading my emails?
S03 Why don't you have this feature?
S03 So on and so forth.
S03 That was me who answered you.
S03 So did that for four years, ended up managing the team, sort of the big things I learned
S03 there, Google being very engineering-centric company at the time, was how to work really
S03 effectively with product and engineering teams to kind of bring your frontline user insights
S03 to the table.
S03 After four years, I left Google and got my MBA at Stanford and then came back to Google.
S03 This was in 2010, joined what is now the Google Cloud team.
S03 But in 2010, believe it or not, cloud wasn't yet totally an industry term.
S03 So I was helping sell what's now G Suite, at the time it was called Google Apps.
S03 So helped them build out their S&B sales team.
S03 And then I went out and ran S&B in mid-market in the APAC region.
S03 So Joy and I were talking before you all arrived.
S03 One of the things I drove while I was out there was actually an expanded investment
S03 in India, which was a market that was high growth for us, but we were not appropriately
S03 serving.
S03 So after that, I came back and ran S&B in mid-market for the Americas at Google.
S03 And then after four years left and joined a Series B SaaS communications startup, sort
S03 of like Google Voice for Business effectively, I was their chief revenue officer, so did
S03 all of sales, marketing, business development.
S03 And then after a year and a half of that, ended up going to Stripe, where Stripe's COO
S03 was actually my first boss when I was 22.
S03 So she gave me a call when she joined Stripe.
S03 And I joined in 2016, almost exactly five years ago, to help them build, at that time,
S03 their new customer acquisition.
S03 So just focused on building the teams that would go out and get customers we weren't
S03 working with yet.
S03 And so over the course of the last five years, have helped us build our sales motion from
S03 really only selling to like Series A companies, to Series B company would have been like a
S03 whale for us back in 2016, to now working with global 1000 type companies, and have
S03 built out sort of all your sales functions along the way.
S03 When I arrived at Stripe, we had account executives, and we had account managers, and nothing in
S03 between, didn't have anybody doing prospecting, technical sales, integration, anything like
S03 that.
S03 So built all of those out too.
S03 So happy to chat about anything along those journeys that you might have questions about.
S03 Awesome.
S07 Awesome.
S07 Thanks.
S07 Thanks, Jean.
S07 Just so that you know, Jean has a sense of your companies as well.
S07 We'll start with Binny.
S04 Sure.
S04 Hi, Jean.
S04 Good evening.
S04 So I'm Binny, I'm the co founder of Project Pro.
S04 We help data scientists get their work done faster.
S04 And the way we do that is we give them these ready made templates that they can reuse.
S04 About 70% of our customers are in the US, 30% in India and Southeast Asia.
S04 And the business model is largely a B2C to B2B, bottoms up evangelizing kind of sales
S04 where we first build a loyal base of B2C customers, and then we work with them to sell it to their
S04 teams.
S04 Yeah, that's that's at a high level.
S04 Yeah.
S07 Yeah.
S07 Thank you.
S07 You are on mute.
S02 Okay.
S02 That's what we're trying to do.
S02 We spent a lot of time coaching them in the sales call, the selling process.
S02 That's what we're doing.
S02 That is a team that we are trying to build right now.
S02 So we brought on some SDRs, we brought on some BDRs.
S07 Thanks Durai.
S07 I can see Saurabh and Abhishek from Plum.
S07 So I'm going to hand over to one of them to introduce quickly.
S01 Go ahead, Abhishek.
S01 Hey, this is Abhishek here from Plum.
S01 With Plum, we are making employee health insurance accessible, affordable and usable for companies
S01 as small as five employees.
S01 What we are changing in India is the employee health insurance as a product was generally
S01 available to mid to large sized companies.
S01 We are changing that in terms of how it is underwritten and how it is distributed.
S01 We have a good traction in certain segments of the market.
S01 These are tech first companies, early adopters of employees with five to a few hundred employees.
S01 We are on the path to scale up that sales slash marketing that we have.
S01 And we are figuring out what kind of leadership that we build in that segment.
S01 In addition, we are figuring out the next set of segments that we can reach out to.
S01 Jean, good to see you.
S01 Just a bit of background.
S01 I also did a lot of SMB work at Google.
S01 This was back in 2013, 14, 15 on the product side.
S03 Oh, awesome.
S03 Good stuff.
S03 Nice.
S07 We have Asad and Jay from LambdaTest.
S07 Asad.
S07 Asad.
S11 We are building the tool for developers and testers to perform testing, test execution
S11 online.
S11 It's an in-flight service company.
S11 We are doing bottom-up sales since last two years, and we have organic traction.
S11 And we just started top-down as well, outbound sales reaching out to the enterprises.
S11 We're excited to have you in this session to understand how it works for you in Google
S11 as well as in Stripe.
S11 Looking forward.
S11 Thank you.
S11 Indus?
S11 Indus?
S09 We are a spend management for SaaS purchases.
S09 We do this by optimizing SaaS consumption, consolidating invoices, and providing an expense
S09 card to pay for ad hoc SaaS purchases.
S09 We're still in private beta for most six to eight months now, launching actually in March.
S09 Awesome.
S03 Awesome.
S03 Are you a Stripe issuing user?
S08 Sorry?
S09 We are using Marketa, Jean.
S03 Oh, no.
S03 You and I have to talk after this.
S03 Yes.
S03 I like this.
S07 I like this.
S07 Always be selling.
S07 Yeah, exactly.
S07 All right.
S07 I'll withhold.
S07 All right.
S07 Folks, let's just do this quickly.
S07 So we have Deepak from Slintel.
S07 Would you like to go next?
S07 And then we do Gaurav, Saurabh, and Nishant.
S07 And Divyesh, yes.
S07 Yeah.
S07 Go ahead.
S07 Hi, Deepak.
S07 Hi, Jean.
S07 This is Deepak, founder, CEO of Slintel.
S07 So Slintel is a go-to-market intelligence platform for basically for sales and marketing
S07 teams.
S07 teams.
S07 We focus a lot on buyer intent and uncovering buyer journeys, buyer purchase behavior, buying
S07 patterns, and buyer themes.
S07 And we've been doing this for over a year now.
S08 And we've been doing this for over a year now.
S08 And we're still in private beta for most six to eight months now, launching actually
S08 in March.
S07 in March.
S07 Awesome.
S07 All right.
S08 All right.
S08 Folks, let's just do this quickly.
S08 So we have Deepak from Slintel.
S08 Would you like to go next?
S08 And then we do Gaurav, Saurabh, and Nishant.
S08 And Divyesh, yes.
S08 Go ahead.
S08 Hi, Jean.
S08 This is Deepak, founder, CEO of Slintel.
S08 So Slintel is a go-to-market intelligence platform for basically for sales and marketing
S08 teams.
S08 We focus a lot on buyer intent and uncovering buyer journeys, buyer purchase behavior, buying
S08 patterns, and buyer themes.
S08 We believe the world is moving more towards buyer-powered approaches than seller-driven
S08 approaches.
S08 So that's the context.
S08 80% of our customers are in the U.S.
S08 Most of them are SMB and mid-market customers.
S08 And we're slowly growing enterprise.
S08 So what I would like to learn is, when you talked about the initial sales team at Stripe,
S08 so we are pretty similar.
S08 We have a sales team at Stripe.
S08 We have a sales team at Stripe.
S08 We have a sales team at Stripe.
S08 We have a sales team at Stripe.
S08 We have a sales team at Stripe.
S08 We have a sales team at Stripe.
S05 I'm the founder of Procall.
S05 Procall is a procurement technology company.
S05 We provide a source to award SaaS platform for large enterprises to optimize their prices,
S05 bidding, and just negotiations.
S05 We have something called dynamic negotiations, where you can create online negotiation strategies.
S05 Right now, we are probably one of the leading technology procurement startups in India and
S05 used by about 10 or 15 Fortune 500s in the country.
S05 We are yet to go out in the U.S. and get exploring how do we see what sort of platform or customer
S03 In the procurement department, in the salesperson's least favorite, or?
S03 Okay.
S03 I'm definitely going to have to go check out your product.
S07 Nishant, of Last9, yeah.
S01 Yeah.
S01 Hey, Jean.
S01 I'm Nishant, founder of Last9.
S01 We're building a reliability engineering platform to help SREs remove the toil in their everyday
S01 life.
S01 It's a job that probably expects 40% engineering and 60% operations, but they end up doing
S01 about 80% operations and 20% sleeping because they never have enough of it.
S01 So we're trying to empower them to have enough productive time and regain their lives.
S01 We're early.
S01 We're just a year into the journey, have built out the product, and are looking at the U.S.
S01 GTM in a more active way.
S01 We've got enough interest organically, trying to see how do we go ahead building that out
S01 with a good GTM.
S00 Awesome.
S00 Thanks.
S07 Thanks.
S07 Awesome.
S07 Go for it, Saurabh.
S10 Hi, everyone.
S10 I am the founder of Mesh.
S10 So Mesh is a performance management system for enterprises.
S10 So we usually target companies between 300 employees to 2,000 employees.
S10 We are also very early stage, one year into our journey, and at this point, it's primarily
S10 And we have just hired a couple of SDRs because we have figured out to some extent LinkedIn
S10 So that's the early start.
S10 in India.
S10 And in U.S., we have seen that 200 to 2,000 employees is the sweet segment in U.S. at
S10 this point.
S07 And Saurabh, Divyash?
S10 Yes.
S10 Hi, everyone.
S10 I'm Divyash from Gumball.
S10 We are image and video optimization service.
S10 So how we differentiate is that instead of giving developers API and letting them build
S10 their own pipelines, we have a plugin-based approach which automates developer pipelines
S10 with minimum integration.
S10 So kind of like what Stripe did for payment that no one else will use anything after that
S10 simplicity is there.
S10 We want to do that for image and video management.
S10 And because of pandemic and the growth of online, we were able to grow 10x last year.
S10 And in India, we follow direct sales strategy for enterprises.
S10 And outside India, we have very good referral rates and inbound traffic.
S10 I would like to know more about how to scale this up effectively in combination or one
S10 after another in the outside Indian market.
S07 Thank you.
S07 Do we have anyone else?
S07 I think Karthik is here.
S07 Karthik?
S07 Incredible?
S07 Dev?
S06 Dev?
S06 Hey.
S06 I'm Karthik, founder of Incredible.Dev.
S06 And we are trying to simplify the process of technical video content creation.
S06 And we are at a super, super early stage.
S06 In fact, it's been just a week since we closed the pre-seed check from Sequoia.
S06 And we are at a pre-PMF stage.
S06 We are still figuring out our GTM.
S06 us to focus on the niche and conquer the niche before we target the broader audience.
S06 I think we would love to understand more on what is the strategy at this super early stage
S06 for a startup to identify that niche they want to go after.
S07 Awesome.
S07 Thank you.
S07 All right.
S07 Thank you, everybody.
S07 Let's get right into it.
S07 And I think, Jean, as you would have seen, most of our companies focus on the bottoms-up
S07 And I think Stripe started there, right?
S07 Just when they hit the market, massively self-serve, huge bottoms-up distribution.
S07 So then how did sales come into the picture?
S07 And then where did sales start off?
S03 Yeah.
S03 So the interesting thing about Stripe is we've had a really powerful self-service business.
S03 But I wouldn't say, actually, we had a bottoms-up one.
S03 Because if you think about it, in order to use Stripe, you've got to give us your bank
S03 account, which isn't the same as developer going and putting down their credit card.
S03 So we started out mostly serving Series A, Series B, C, seed stage companies where the
S03 founder would come in and do that.
S03 But actually, one of the things that I think we realized relatively early on was the buyer
S03 of our product was actually going to be pretty senior.
S03 At the end of the day, it was probably going to be a CFO, someone in finance, when you
S03 moved into sort of a Series C and on up into enterprise account.
S03 And those people wanted to negotiate rates, wanted to redline contracts, wanted to feel
S03 confident that we weren't going to lose their money.
S03 And so to do all that, you really had to talk to a person.
S03 So I think for us, and it sounds like a lot of you have this dynamic, too, of actually
S03 having some relatively robust inbound.
S03 We started really focusing on serving inbound better.
S03 I think at the start, this isn't uncommon, but the first sales people at Stripe were
S03 actually in our support organization and basically were doing sales via email.
S03 And then we hired some actual sales people who still kept doing stuff via email.
S03 And then I showed up and said, we will never negotiate a contract over email ever again.
S03 You're going to talk to a human.
S03 So within that, then we looked for patterns.
S03 And so as you all are thinking about, hey, inbound is great, but I want to scale that
S03 much more rapidly.
S03 I want to layer in sales.
S03 The key is to direct those resources.
S03 And so we started trying to figure out what was a pattern within the inbound that we
S03 were getting.
S03 Was it certain verticals, certain buyer personas, certain sizes of companies?
S03 A lot of you have referenced the size that seems to be your sweet spot.
S03 Because then that was the type of person we could go or company we could go and
S03 prospect into more efficiently as you wanted to augment what was happening
S03 electronically.
S07 Got it.
S07 I had a follow-up question, but I think Binny's question overlaps with that,
S07 which is when you have self-serve and sales, how do you balance that?
S07 And Binny, do you want to ask your question?
S04 Thanks.
S04 Thanks, Joy.
S04 Hey, Sheen.
S04 Like I was saying, most of our customers today are the B2C, the individual
S04 developers paying for it.
S04 And it's completely self-serve, there's zero touch.
S04 Now, we're trying to decide if adding a couple of inside sales reps,
S04 trying to balance out the potential increase in conversion versus the change
S04 it does to our CAC economic structure.
S04 Also, in terms of a small team's focus, do we invest behind the product and
S04 enable more self-side or put resources behind like putting more inside sales
S04 people?
S03 So, when I was at Google on G Suite, we had this super, super robust
S03 online self-serve SMB model.
S03 And so, there were a couple of things we did.
S03 So, I should start by saying, and actually, yeah, Binny, it's you because
S03 you were talking about data scientists.
S03 So, I am like a very hardcore data-driven salesperson.
S03 I really only want to put humans against something that's going to drive
S03 exactly what you're saying, incremental uplift.
S03 So, at Google, we had this, which was you had all these people signing up
S03 online and X percent would convert to paid and then others would drop off.
S03 And so, we did a bunch of work with our data science team to actually
S03 figure out what were the activities within that account that were
S03 predictive of this is obviously going to convert, no point in talking to
S03 them.
S03 And then similarly, this is obviously not going to convert.
S03 Similarly, no point in talking to them because we really only wanted to
S03 put humans against the part in the middle, which is like this will convert
S03 if you talk to them and convince them, right?
S03 So, that was sort of one thing is like how do you basically pull that
S03 middle tier people out and have your sales people work on those where
S03 it's not a waste of their time, but it also is going to drive incremental
S03 lift.
S03 Now, in your case, you have a slightly different scenario, right, because
S03 your signups aren't necessarily companies, they're people.
S03 So, I mean, one of the things I'd probably consider doing if I were you
S03 would be like one, just run an A-B test, right?
S03 So, siphon your signups into two groups and put sales people against
S03 some and not against the others and see how much lift you get and does it
S03 pay for itself.
S03 But then two, you can just goal your sales people on something that is
S03 definitely incremental, right?
S03 So, you know, you only get higher quota if you add a minimum of 20 seats
S03 or if you sign an enterprise level agreement, right?
S03 So, you maybe like one of the things Slack did here was you would lock
S03 them into like an annual agreement where they agreed to purchase a
S03 minimum number of licenses versus being able to just come and go as
S03 they please, right?
S03 So, that way you know you're getting something for what you're paying
S03 for.
S03 Uplift.
S03 Yep.
S00 Yep.
S08 Uplift.
S08 Uplift.
S08 Okay.
S00 Okay.
S00 Great.
S00 Thanks.
S08 Thanks.
S04 sales development, especially for Outrun.
S07 How did you think about that?
S07 How did that come about?
S07 And how do you think about how you're going to be able to do that?
S07 And how do you think about how you're going to be able to do that
S07 with Outrun?
S07 How did you think about that?
S07 How did that come about?
S07 Yeah, I would love to know more.
S07 Yeah.
S07 And how are you thinking about data science and Outrun sales?
S03 Yeah.
S03 So, we, what we, there's a, if some, if folks are super interested
S03 in this, you can like Google me and there's a podcast specifically
S03 on all the data, like deep data-driven stuff we've done around
S03 outbound prospecting.
S03 But basically, when I joined Stripe, John and Patrick were very,
S03 very concerned about doing any sort of outbound prospecting,
S03 because as I'm sure all of you had experienced,
S03 it can be pretty darn spammy, right?
S03 And they were really concerned about damaging the Stripe brand
S03 by having some random salesperson go email, you know,
S03 a Sequoia-backed company with, you know, lame content, right?
S03 And so basically, and then on top of that,
S03 Stripe just didn't fund a very large sales team.
S03 So I knew that there was no way I was ever going to be able to go to
S03 John and Patrick and say, hey, you know, I've got 20 sales reps.
S03 I need 10 SDRs.
S03 Like that just wasn't going to happen.
S03 So I needed to find a way to drive more scale and really be able to
S03 control the message so that it was always on brand.
S03 And so what we did was we started to develop what we were calling the
S03 company universe.
S03 And so you can think of it as basically there's a row for every single
S03 company in the universe.
S03 And then columns are a bunch of different attributes.
S03 And those attributes are things, my cat is about to join.
S03 Those attributes are things that you would use to determine propensity
S03 to buy or determine what you might say to them.
S03 You know, so their industry might be,
S03 help you figure out higher propensity to buy,
S03 but it also might help you figure out what are the reference customers or
S03 the value proposition I should mention.
S03 And so the thinking was, you know,
S03 we would run a bunch of campaigns and experiments and, you know, see,
S03 see what turned into opportunities and not,
S03 and use that to feed this learning model.
S03 And then meanwhile,
S03 be able to sort of automate a bunch of the messaging by almost creating
S03 like a Mad Libs, right?
S03 So like a pre-written paragraph,
S03 but we'd pull in different snippets or data sort of based on these
S03 attributes.
S03 So that's what we've been pursuing and how I sort of got the data science
S03 investment was also because you can imagine that this company universe is
S03 wildly useful to the product team, to the marketing team, et cetera,
S03 as we try to understand, you know, our,
S03 our customer base and what to do with it.
S03 Now, what I will say is I think that this is like a grand vision and it
S03 probably will take us five years to actually get it into like a truly oiled
S03 machine,
S03 which was probably my mistake at the outset of being like a little too
S03 audacious on how quickly we might turn this into something.
S03 And so my learning was that you want to couple that with some SDRs and
S03 basically have your SDRs go out and do traditional outbound prospecting,
S03 but be very hypothesis driven.
S03 So rather than being like here are 500 accounts, you know,
S03 please just go spray and pray, you know, we would have them do, you know,
S03 target this specific set of accounts that we think have, you know,
S03 are within our ideal customer profile, use message one, message two,
S03 message three, you know, and we'll test different things.
S03 And that way we could one,
S03 generate some pipeline a little bit more rapidly and then have more to kind
S03 of feed into this ongoing database.
S07 Well, awesome.
S07 So you actually had like a marketing campaign where you just pulled in
S07 paragraphs and lines based on who the customer was.
S03 Yeah, exactly.
S03 Basically, you know, sort of like, you know,
S03 if an industry X pull these three reference customer references,
S03 if Y these ones, you know,
S03 if industry X put these three bullet points of value proposition,
S03 if it's buyer X put, you know, this term, not that term.
S03 And so you can actually create a ton of variations that feel hyper
S03 customized, but you know, we wrote them on mass.
S07 That's pretty cool. Folks, any questions here?
S02 So if we could elaborate a little bit more on that outbound campaigns,
S02 right, what we are trying to do right now,
S02 we used to have, as we said, fully vertical stack sales guys,
S02 they had to do everything. We kind of realized that's not working.
S02 It was working because we said, wait, the founders did it. You can do it.
S02 Right.
S02 But so then we started,
S02 then we got into a lot of issues on message going out,
S02 like because they would select some outbound campaigns.
S02 We did it more on the base of installed base. If they're on Zendesk,
S02 craft a message like that. If they're on Gorgias, craft a message like that.
S02 So that's, that's what we were trying to do.
S02 So now what we're trying to do is
S02 kind of create a BDR team
S02 and say,
S02 we'll give you the messages for these kinds of installed base.
S02 So you will run the campaign.
S02 and they're not running the campaigns when they,
S02 when they got a deal that's down the pipeline, you know?
S02 Yep.
S00 Yep.
S00 So that's the approach we are taking.
S02 Any suggestions on how we might want to set that up?
S02 Because what we are struggling with right now is we got the sales guys.
S02 Yeah.
S02 We got the, on the SDR side, one person,
S02 we got a couple of BDRs coming in.
S02 What is the sequence in which we might want to hire the product marketing or
S02 the growth marketing role? You know,
S02 do we separate the roles into product marketing and growth marketing?
S02 Do we try to bring in a very senior person so we could kind of hand the
S02 task to them? You know, the founders,
S02 Hey, you guys kind of go hire all these people under marketing.
S02 Or do we go for a junior marketing role for each of the functions and the
S02 founder stays still in control of it? Like
S02 the founder is leading the marketing and product for us and I'm leading
S02 sales and success for us. So we're trying to figure that out.
S02 And we've been kind of going back and forth.
S02 There are days we say, let's hire the functional people.
S02 We'll do something like that.
S02 And then we'll do something like that.
S02 And then we'll do something like that.
S02 We'll hire the functional people.
S02 We'll do somebody for growth, you know, like a search.
S02 We'll just hire a bunch of content writers and then we'll wait on the VP of
S02 marketing.
S02 And then there are other days where we say,
S02 let's get a good VP of marketing.
S00 Yeah.
S02 Yeah.
S02 So it's very related to the industry you are in.
S02 We are going after the e-comm vertical.
S02 So, you know, you might've gone after the same vertical yourself.
S03 Yeah.
S03 Yeah. Well, there are a lot of questions in there.
S03 So.
S03 I, I mean, look, there's no one right answer to that, but I probably.
S03 If you, the challenge with hiring somebody super senior,
S03 when you don't really know what you want is you're unlikely to get what you
S03 want in that super senior person.
S03 And probably they haven't done an actual job in a long time.
S03 So they won't be valuable to you at all unless you then put a team under
S03 them. So if you're going to go the super senior route,
S03 I feel like you have to have a strong point of view on the skills they need
S03 to really spike in.
S03 And you also need to then be willing to give them a legitimate team.
S03 You know, versus if you're still sort of trying to figure out like,
S03 where are the right investments?
S03 I would probably lean for more of like a mid-level person, you know,
S03 not super junior where you've got the blind leading the blind,
S03 but not necessarily somebody who's been a VP for 10 years. And frankly,
S03 like their job has been to attend meetings probably for the last five of
S03 them.
S03 So I'd probably be trying to go for something in the middle while you
S03 figure out really what it is that you need.
S03 And, you know,
S03 and then you can go super senior once you have a stronger point of view and
S03 are ready to make the investment.
S00 Yeah.
S03 That's that's sort of, I mean, at dial pad,
S03 that was kind of what we did. I mean, senior people are also expensive
S03 and it often takes a while to figure out, you know, like a year, if,
S03 if you got a good one or, or a bad one. Right.
S03 And so I just see a lot of startups sort of like churn through senior,
S03 go-to-market people. And it's also really hard,
S03 I think sometimes to isolate when do you have a function, you know,
S03 you're a problem with your functional leader versus you're actually having a
S03 product market fit problem.
S03 And so it just sort of creates this like vicious cycle.
S03 So that's sort of my bias when,
S03 when you're in the early stages sort of grow into some of those super senior
S03 Sorry, you're muted.
S02 And I think that's where we are coming out after this, you know,
S02 it looks like that's kind of seems to be where we seem to be coming out as
S02 well.
S02 Yeah.
S08 Yeah.
S00 Yeah. You know, not the real senior person,
S02 not the blind leading the blind.
S02 Yeah. You know, people that could actually do the work.
S02 Take, take the direction and kind of figure out the task rather than
S02 Yeah. I mean, I do think there's a little bit, you know,
S02 with tech companies,
S03 general athletes and go-to-market is a skill just like writing code is a
S03 skill.
S03 So I think a mistake people commonly make is,
S03 is leaning too long on smart general athletes.
S03 And really, if you get somebody that's, you know,
S03 in those like 10 years of experience, they know some stuff,
S03 but they don't know how to do it.
S03 You know, I think that helps people get through some of these earlier
S03 stages.
S03 So, thank you.
S03 Jay, you had a question.
S07 On setting a date. Yeah.
S07 Okay.
S03 Okay.
S03 The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,
S00 the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,
S00 the, the, the, the.
S00 Nice to meet you.
S00 I just wanted to get some more insights on what kind of metrics do you
S03 how does it change when you start scaling this outbound efforts?
S03 And similar to the inbound as well.
S03 Yeah.
S03 I mean, so.
S03 I think I'm going to go with the, the first answer ever, but.
S03 So it can depend on the segment you're going after and,
S03 and what you think is more most important,
S03 sort of given the complexity of your sale. So let,
S03 let me give you an example.
S03 If you're mostly going after S and B's,
S03 I would probably be looking at opportunity creation.
S03 So that's a, that's a, that's a,
S03 that's a really good opportunity to create.
S03 And then you're looking at potential opportunities to, you know,
S03 be, be worth pursuing.
S03 If you're going after a larger account,
S03 you actually may be more interested in just get me meetings with
S03 
S03 And then you want to pass the baton off to the E to do any sort of
S03 qualification discovery because, you know,
S03 there's enough complexity there.
S03 So having pipeline associated with what the outbound person did,
S03 isn't necessary.
S03 So, and then also I think it can be, what do you, you know, what are,
S03 where are you in your learning curve? Right.
S03 So if like really right now you're trying to get a lot of at bats to
S03 actually figure out how to do this again,
S03 you might want to do something more like meetings.
S03 Versus if you're now scaling and want to feel confident that this is
S03 going to fund itself,
S03 then I do something a little bit further down the funnel, right.
S03 And then you're going to be more in tune with what the pipeline is
S00 going to be.
S03 So you're going to be more interested in figuring out what's going to
S03 fund itself.
S03 And then you're going to be more like closer to an opportunity.
S03 To get.
S03 Some context here. So like at that stripe.
S03 We started out just with,
S03 we were mostly.
S03 Doing outbound and sort of like a lower mid market segment.
S03 And so we gold on opportunities created.
S03 But we didn't go on pipeline because you know,
S03 we weren't totally sure what.
S03 What we wanted to do.
S03 And we wanted to keep it super simple. And after 18 months,
S03 we've now added in.
S03 The pipeline creation target to make sure people are really pursuing,
S03 you know, the.
S03 The size of opportunity that's worth us.
S00 Putting an outbound head against.
S03 That helps. Thanks a lot.
S07 But you know, before that I was reading how,
S07 when you set up a sales team at stripe, for example,
S07 you didn't try to differentiate between SDRs.
S07 And you actually had reps who carried through the entire.
S07 Process.
S07 Talk us through that.
S07 I think we'll use that as a segue into sales teams.
S03 I will also I'll talk through what we did at stripe, which.
S03 Had its pros. I would not say it's like,
S03 probably the industry best practice standard way of doing things.
S03 So, like I said, when we started.
S03 We basically had account executives.
S03 Their job was to get brand new business.
S03 On the stripe. And then you had account managers.
S03 Who are mostly customer success. Honestly,
S03 it wasn't a particularly commercial job.
S03 They would do renewals, which as we got bigger, got.
S03 Harder over time.
S03 So I think that simplicity worked when we were mostly again,
S03 selling to series a and series B companies.
S03 I think the takeaway I would,
S03 I would have is like just because you hear in sales, like, Oh,
S03 you should have an SDR. You should have an AE.
S03 You should have a sales engineer, right?
S03 You'll hear all these roles you should have.
S03 You need to figure out what your S your sales motion actually requires.
S03 So to, to give you a sense, right, we're selling an API.
S03 It is a technical product.
S03 We did not hire a single sales engineer.
S03 Until we had like 30 salespeople.
S03 And the reason we didn't was because we were selling to founder
S03 developers.
S03 You know, at series a and series B companies who would just read the
S03 docs and figure it out on their own.
S03 And so because Stripe had invested so much in our docs, like,
S03 we just didn't need a sales engineer.
S03 Whereas when I walked in the door at Stripe, I was like,
S03 We're selling an API and we have no SEs. Like how is this humanly possible?
S03 My knee jerk reaction was like,
S03 the first thing I got to do is go hire SEs.
S03 And then when I went and I listened on a bunch of calls, it turned out,
S03 Hey, if you ran your smart AEs through, you know,
S03 for training sessions on how APIs and, you know, work, they could,
S03 you know, be relatively credible.
S03 So it wasn't actually until we started getting into these larger
S03 accounts where they were going to rip something out and put Stripe in
S03 and needed confidence that they could replicate their architecture on
S03 Stripe, that we actually needed a sales engineer.
S03 So, so basically kind of what I,
S03 I kept doing over the course of time,
S03 if you really want to understand your sales funnel, right.
S03 So you've got to create pipeline.
S03 Then you've got to convert those to close deals.
S03 You got to get them live and you've got to expand them and renew them.
S03 And if you look at the different metrics along those,
S03 you can start to see where your funnel is breaking.
S03 So, like I said, as we started moving up market,
S03 the integrations got more complicated.
S03 So historically our AEs had helped companies onboard, you know,
S03 a company would write in, I don't know how to do XYZ.
S03 Our smart account executive would troll through the docs,
S03 figure out the right point thing to point them through, you know,
S03 send it to them. And they, you know, since they were a founder developer,
S03 they'd figure it out.
S03 When we got into the series C and series D size companies,
S03 those questions were too complicated.
S03 So all our time to live started ballooning and we had a lot of cases
S03 where we'd sign a deal and it would never deploy.
S03 And so at that point I was like, huh,
S03 we probably now need an integration function.
S03 And so basically what we've been doing each year is more specializing of
S03 the types of functions and the types of accounts you talk to, you know,
S03 which is typically associated with either going up market, you know,
S03 or broadening product suite that gets more complicated.
S07 Do you want to go in?
S08 Yeah, I think a part of it was answered just now by Jin, but you know,
S08 there's also a part of it that I'm a little curious about.
S08 So, you know,
S08 we sell majorly to SMB mid-market and we're trying to go up market.
S08 I think like you mentioned Stripe did, but also there's also the skepticism
S08 that, you know, you need to be SOC 2 certified.
S08 You need to have the right team in place.
S08 Enterprise EEs have different skillset compared to SMB EEs.
S08 So just wanted to understand what are prerequisites that are required before
S08 going and starting, start targeting enterprise accounts in US.
S03 Yeah.
S03 So definitely things like SOC 2, like there's a bunch of certifications.
S03 They'll differ slightly, you know,
S03 based on exactly what industries you're selling into.
S03 I bet folks at Sequoia could give you like a quick rundown of typical
S03 certifications.
S03 But there are some of those that are just going to be table stakes.
S03 I remember when I was at Dow pad and we first started selling into
S03 enterprise, we didn't have those yet. And so literally on the first call,
S03 I basically would try to DQ them, you know, be like,
S03 we don't have any of these things.
S03 So I don't think you're going to buy from us because you're an enterprise and
S03 you're not going to be willing to buy without, you know, a SOC 2 audit.
S03 You know, is that going to be a blocker? Because if it is like,
S03 I'm happy to talk to you in a year,
S03 but that was basically kind of what we would do in Dow pad is just like,
S03 you know,
S03 you'd give them a pitch so that they're excited enough and then be like,
S03 here are the 10 reasons I don't think you'll buy from me.
S03 You sell me on why you think you're going to buy from me.
S03 And then I will proceed, but you'll,
S03 you'll waste cycles on these types of things. So, so those that's,
S03 that's a set of things.
S03 The second thing is you're going to have to redline contracts.
S03 So if you haven't, you know,
S03 taken a look at your enterprise agreement and sort of understand typical
S03 things that go in there and have a lawyer who can edit it for you.
S03 There's no way an enterprise is going to sign your online terms.
S03 So that's another big one that comes up. You know,
S03 it depends on your product,
S03 but certainly your security requirements and your uptime requirements are
S03 going to be higher. You know,
S03 you'll have to figure out from your buyer exactly where the line in the
S03 sand is going to be.
S03 But I would expect that it is higher than what your current requirements
S03 are today.
S03 And then from an, from an AE perspective you know,
S03 I think you can, you need somebody who's sold before most likely,
S03 but you don't need to go out and like buy somebody's Rolodex necessarily
S03 because you're still in learning mode.
S03 So I sort of like when you're first trying to get into enterprise,
S03 these like BD like salespeople, right.
S03 Who are one part salesperson and one part R and D right.
S03 Their job is just as much to help you understand, you know, what,
S03 what is and isn't working as it is to actually make money. You know,
S03 like I'm not that into going out and getting just like a, you know,
S03 20 year vet mercenary wants to make a million dollars by blowing it out.
S03 And you're one, you can get that. Once you have,
S03 you think you have something like your first goal should be to learn.
S03 But don't let that learning phase go on too long because sales is a skill.
S03 And so at certain point,
S03 unless you have enough people internally to train them,
S03 you've got to hire people with the skill.
S08 Sure.
S08 So just one follow up question to that Jen is when you bring these
S08 enterprise customers on board,
S08 would you talk about how the customer success team,
S08 like did you have implementation specialists who would separate from
S08 account managers to customer success managers and how,
S08 how was the post sale team looking like?
S03 Yep. Yeah. So I think this one, again,
S03 it can depend on your level of technical complexity. So for Stripe,
S03 you know, the implementation itself is quite technical. You know,
S03 you're, you're sitting in somebody's production code base.
S03 And so we actually use integration engineers or,
S03 or in my organization. And these are folks with CS degrees in many cases,
S03 they were engineers before they decided they wanted to be in the sales
S03 organization. And so that role needed to be hyper-technical,
S03 but once deployed,
S03 you then could have a less technical CSM type role still is like more
S03 product oriented than I would say your typical CSM, but that,
S03 that was true of Stripe, right?
S03 There are a lot of companies where the person who implements can be the
S03 exact same as the person who then does customer success type work.
S03 So just sort of depends. And then in a lot of cases, you know, you,
S03 once you've sort of mastered the craft of what's the approach to deploying
S03 that can be a good opportunity for partner. You know,
S03 not everybody wants to spend their head count on, you know,
S03 building out a more professional services oriented role.
S03 So we always had at Google the saying of master the craft,
S03 create the assets, scale through partners.
S03 So you needed to do it in-house first to like get it really down pat,
S03 know how to do it. Then you codify it, right? Like create the assets,
S03 document it, all that.
S03 And then we normally would start building out a partner ecosystem to do the
S03 deployments, you know, going forward.
S08 Sure. Thank you.
S10 we love using Stripe with that.
S10 When Stripe launched in India next month,
S10 we were the first customer because it just makes things very easy for us.
S10 So that's where the question comes in.
S10 So, I mean,
S10 Stripe is definitely pursuing the PLG growth, right?
S10 The product led growth. People buy Stripe because product is so good,
S10 but at the same time, it doesn't mean that Stripe is going to be the
S10 same.
S10 It's just that the product is so good, but at the same time,
S10 it does not have that inherent virality that some other PLG companies have
S10 like Calendly, et cetera.
S10 And so I guess that is why there is also sales function at Stripe.
S10 Fine.
S10 So given that what are the right channel pairings when you are pursuing
S10 PLG,
S10 when your marketing is entirely focused on showing that the product is
S10 great and 10X better than whatever alternative is available,
S10 at the same time,
S10 what would be the right channel in sales side to pursue pair with this kind
S10 of marketing?
S03 Yeah. I mean, so again, it sort of depends.
S03 And let me give you like an example here, which is, you know, Stripe,
S03 we want to market to startups, but not necessarily SMBs, right?
S03 So for us,
S03 like a typical company selling to SMBs might invest a lot in search SEM,
S03 like AdWords, you know, search engine marketing for us, that's,
S03 that's going to cast too broad of a net. And, you know,
S03 most of the money we would spend an SMB would end up clicking on seeing
S03 and we'd pay for rather than the folks like you all in this room.
S03 So we've actually ended up having to do just hyper targeted marketing,
S03 you know, like an event like this.
S03 So I actually think it depends on who you're trying to market to.
S03 Like, so where, where do you,
S03 what are you guys targeting at your company?
S03 Cause I think you guys have a decent amount of overlap in some of the.
S10 Yeah. So fine. We have two sort of market segments.
S10 So our product is such that it can be used widely.
S10 So there is one WordPress segment,
S10 where WordPress having large number of SMB websites,
S10 we have a click and install plugin, which does everything.
S10 So that is one segment for which we do mostly go with referrals and
S10 ratings and, you know, influencer based marketing.
S10 And then there is a mid to high tier enterprise.
S10 So publishers and e-commerce who have lots of images and lots of,
S10 people visiting the ideal customers for them.
S10 As of now we do the direct sales, but that works because in India that works.
S10 I mean, when we go cross border, we go, when we go global, the feed,
S10 actually in India, we follow the same template that you say,
S10 we create a company universe, calculate propensity and role.
S10 And based on role and vertical, we use templates.
S10 But when we go globally, I guess sending LinkedIn messages or,
S10 or sending cold emails may not work.
S10 So what are the right sales channels which can go along with the
S10 marketing?
S10 Yeah. I mean, if you're going more after that mid market segment,
S10 again, it's sort of,
S03 again, it's sort of,
S03 you can do broad based tactics that everyone's doing, right.
S03 Like different types of, of online marketing,
S03 search marketing, et cetera.
S03 A lot of what we try to do are like integrated campaigns, right?
S03 So you'll at the same time have your BDRs or SDRs sending a set of
S03 messages to a set of accounts that your marketing team is specifically
S03 plugging into LinkedIn to target with, you know, ads there.
S03 You know, then you're,
S03 you're doing retargeting based on your website when you get people to show
S03 up. Right.
S03 So we also do a lot of,
S03 we do a lot of, you know,
S03 You know,
S03 I think is important is actually thinking through these umbrella campaigns
S03 that can last for a longer period and you can keep building on, right.
S03 Rather than sort of like, you know, we're going to do some narrow,
S03 you know, quick thing.
S03 So an example here would be like Stripe this summer launched the,
S03 you know,
S03 the new, you know,
S03 the new, you know,
S03 the new, you know,
S03 the new, you know,
S03 the new, you know,
S03 the new, you know,
S03 the new, you know,
S03 I think is important is actually thinking through these umbrella campaigns
S03 that can last for a longer period and you can keep building on,
S03 right.
S03 Rather than sort of like, you know,
S03 I think is important is actually thinking through these umbrella campaigns
S03 that can last for a longer period and you can keep building on,
S03 right.
S03 So an example here would be like Stripe this summer launched the adaptive
S03 business campaign, which is sort of like, you know,
S03 piggybacks on historically there've been, you know,
S03 everyone focused on digital transformation,
S03 right.
S03 And so we've had a variety of LinkedIn campaigns.
S03 We've had specific webinars where we've highlighted different.
S03 You know, types of adaptation that might be relevant to people,
S03 but it's like a campaign that now has been building on itself for six
S03 plus months.
S03 So again, like there's no one perfect answer.
S03 It's sort of like, where do you think your buyer is hanging out?
S03 What are some of the messages that you need to get in front of them?
S03 And then, you know, what's the right media for that?
S03 Given there's, you know,
S03 the complicatedness of the, you know, of the message.
S07 I get it. Thanks.
S10 Okay.
S07 Books. Any other questions here?
S10 I'm following up on the last question that Vivesh had.
S10 So you mentioned that the multi-prod strategy works well,
S10 but you're trying to target even campaign ads by LinkedIn.
S10 You're sending inmates on LinkedIn.
S10 You're running these webinars targeting the same audience early on.
S10 Do you happen to remember early on at Stripe?
S10 Were you focusing on multi-prod strategy at that point as well?
S10 Was it slightly more expensive on the pocket to kind of experiment
S10 across what channels are working well before narrowing down?
S10 And what was the sweet stage?
S10 Or let me rephrase.
S10 Did you do this post product market fit or did you even try it even
S10 early on the same strategies?
S03 Yeah.
S03 Okay. So on product market fit, I mean,
S03 I think Stripe basically had product market fit from day one.
S03 So I would say by the time I showed up that, you know,
S03 it was doing a fair amount of revenue, but at Dialpad, that was different.
S03 I would say we had to fight for everything we sold.
S03 And so we started out, you know,
S03 with just the email tactics because that was relatively, you know,
S03 inexpensive if you had a couple SDRs or BDRs,
S03 whatever you want to call outbound folks.
S03 So we started out only with that and doing campaigns.
S03 And then we did a layer in the integrated approach,
S03 somewhat similar to what we did at Stripe, actually the exact same at Stripe.
S03 When we first did outbound,
S03 it was sales driven because we actually Stripe didn't have a marketing team
S03 at that point. And so we just did, you know, multi-touch email campaigns.
S03 And then when marketing came, we layered in LinkedIn. And for us,
S03 the reason LinkedIn made a lot of sense was it, you know,
S03 the buyer for us in these larger companies is typically the CFO.
S03 And so they were very targetable on LinkedIn. It's a very obvious title.
S03 And so that made a lot of sense for us versus like,
S03 we basically never advertised on like Facebook or Twitter. It just doesn't,
S03 it's not a great place for us,
S03 even though it can be great advertising for a lot of folks. So mostly like,
S03 I think thinking through, you know,
S03 who is your buyer and what is the company and where do those people hang out
S03 is probably the broadest useful advice I can give.
S03 And then, you know, we,
S03 we tried to do like different tactics independently to see where we were
S03 getting ROI. Stripe still doesn't spend very much money on marketing at all.
S03 But and our founders have been like very careful as we've added budget that
S03 you have to prove that it actually has a return. So, you know,
S03 with these campaigns, we test a lot of different tactics. So, I mean,
S03 generic as well, but that honestly would be my other recommendation is,
S03 is testing, you know,
S03 does doing an online webinar or something like that actually work, you know,
S03 versus just a cold email versus needing some sort of other asset.
S03 I haven't found that there's universally one answer in anything I've done.
S10 Got it. Thanks. One more slide to follow up on this one.
S10 or what is the ideal cost per click on LinkedIn ads?
S10 This will go across all companies.
S10 Like we get a response rate of around 5% but we don't know,
S10 are we good enough? Are we bad enough on that particular front?
S10 Should we aim from rather than 5% should it be 20% or should it be higher or
S10 what is that ideal?
S03 but it is low single digits is the industry standard.
S03 And then cost per click that there isn't a generic answer to that.
S03 Cause it's basically kind of like,
S03 what can you spend from like a CAC perspective?
S03 So like to give an example at Dialpad,
S03 like we had certain words that were so key keywords that were so well
S03 targeted that actually we could spend a hundred dollars on those versus
S03 other like long tailed ads.
S03 You know, we basically couldn't spend more than 50 cents on.
S03 So it is sort of specific to, to what you are selling.
S03 The only other thing I would add to on like the response rates and you
S03 actually can,
S03 most of these things you can just download white papers on that give you
S03 all of the benchmarks.
S03 But like at Stripe, as an example,
S03 when we do campaigns to the startup community,
S03 we don't have a specific response rate.
S03 Like at Stripe as an example,
S03 when we do campaigns to the startup community,
S03 if we don't have super high response rates, you know,
S03 we find find that problematic.
S03 So like our response rate might actually be double the industry standard,
S03 but we still consider it too low because we really, really,
S03 really want it to be the case that anytime we put content in front of a
S03 startup, it's exceptionally high quality.
S03 So some of it also is like, what are you optimizing for? Right.
S03 Cause you can spray it,
S03 cast a really broad net if you just want revenue and then maybe you don't
S03 care that you're only getting a 1% response rate,
S03 but that might be somewhat brand damaging. Right.
S03 So some of it I think also is, is what are you looking to do?
S10 Thank you. Thanks.
S07 Folks, any other questions?
S07 I have a question on how Stripe thinks about building out sales teams in
S07 new markets.
S07 But before that,
S07 But before that,
S07 if anyone has questions,
S07 if anyone has questions,
S07 I know we're almost out of time.
S07 I know we're almost out of time.
S07 So I'm also cognizant of that, but Jean, you know, this is a question,
S07 right? You guys have hyper-local teams in many markets.
S07 And how do you think about this?
S07 How do you think of the sales team and process when it comes to launching
S07 in new markets? Do you think of inside sales first?
S07 Is it feet on the street first?
S07 How do you think of the profile, the cost effectiveness?
S07 And when do you think is that,
S07 is that the right time to hire a sales team in new and especially
S07 unproven markets? Right. How do you think of that?
S07 Yeah, that's a great question.
S03 And something that I think most people at Stripe would agree,
S03 we have not necessarily consistently gotten right.
S03 So Stripe has bias towards putting people in market because payments is so
S03 hyper-local.
S03 But some of the mistakes I think we've made, you know,
S03 one is when you are putting people in market,
S03 typically it's because, you know, COVID aside,
S03 like you need to meet face-to-face. So a lot of times, you know,
S03 sales can be done inside, right over the phone or, or Zoom or whatever.
S03 So we've increasingly moved to like a hub and spoke model.
S03 So we have a hub, you know, in SF and Chicago in the U S,
S03 Dublin, none of, you know, these are all pretty typical Dublin for EMEA,
S03 Singapore for APAC, Mexico city for Latiam.
S03 And so the bulk of sales can be done inside.
S03 And, and so you'll do them from that hub.
S03 When it comes to the spoke,
S03 one of the big learnings that we've had is when you're going to go put
S03 them in a quote in the field.
S03 So when we put people in France, as an example,
S03 you really need to think of them, you know,
S03 you really need to think of them.
S03 You've got to deploy them with what we call a minimum deployable unit which is
S03 to say, if you let's,
S03 let's say you know your sales motion in the United States and it takes an
S03 account executive,
S03 a sales engineer and a customer success manager.
S03 If you now go into France,
S03 but you don't also have a French speaking sales engineer,
S03 your account executive in France, isn't going to be very successful.
S03 And so we were consistently, you know, adding a ease into markets,
S03 but then just not giving them the types of resources that they needed to be
S03 successful. And so we basically decided, you know,
S03 if we don't think a market has enough potential that we're willing to do,
S03 you know, one minimum deployable unit,
S03 it's not time to enter it yet.
S03 And we should just be doing inside sales from a different country.
S03 The other thing that would happen when we sent people into region too
S03 quickly was inevitably they had product asks that you were never going to
S03 prioritize. And so, you know, you,
S03 they get really great, you know, not to pick on France, but like,
S03 so in France, right.
S03 We'd be able to talk to the number one company in France that you would of
S03 course want to land. But they would have a set of requirements, you know,
S03 and so either, you know,
S03 you'd wind up with them on your roadmap when you didn't really want that,
S03 or you'd wind up losing the deal.
S03 So that was the other thing that I don't think we were very good at was
S03 being super clear about,
S03 do you have enough product market fit to have somebody in that country?
S03 Right. And then it's related to that too.
S03 Do you have enough traction or do you think there's enough market
S03 opportunity that you're willing to fund the set of roles that you need to
S03 actually be successful?
S03 Well, that's, I think super helpful. And I know we are a minute over,
S07 over here.
S07 Well, I did want to close by saying we're, we're obviously Stripe is a,
S03 a very close, I don't know if partner's the right word,
S03 but Sequoia has been very influential at Stripe.
S03 And if any of you are, you know,
S03 on Stripe or considering using Stripe,
S03 we do have a startup partnership with Sequoia.
S03 And so if you're not availing of, you know, office hours,
S03 discounts, implementation services, et cetera,
S03 you should do that from us. You can email Sagar at Stripe.
S03 He is our APAC startup partner person,
S03 and we'd love to engage with you all to make you sure you have an amazing
S03 Stripe experience.
S03 But I'm thrilled to have him on the call.
S03 This is actually my first event with Sequoia. So hopefully, you know,
S03 one of many more.
S03 No, this is great. Thank you so much for doing this, Jean.
S03 This was super helpful.
S07 We may have follow-up questions from founders,
S07 in which case I'd probably just forward them to you. Yeah. Okay.
S07 Yeah. I'm Jean at stripe.com. So feel free to shoot me an email.
S07 And thank you everybody for joining us today. Thank you.
S03 Thank you. Have a great day.
S03 Thank you.
S03 Bye.
S07 Have a great day.
S07 Thank you.
S07 Bye.
S10 Bye.