Anish Dhar

I'm a big believer in POCs. Back in 2021 buyers could move fast with little proof.   Now buyer rigor has returned. The bar is high. That means vendors like Keyplay have to deliver "proof before purchase."   I spend a lot of time on our POC process.   Instead of promising that we can model your ICP, we show you. We roll-up our sleeves, analyze historical data, recommend a model, and run a backtest.   It's more work upfront (and can slow pipeline).   But I think it's worth it. It made my day to see Kyle Ceraolo say "no brainer to buy" after Anyword’s test drive with Keyplay.   i.e. The proof was clear.   I also love to see another hot AI company onboarding with us.   They see the value of an ICP program. The AI gold rush is on. But with all the excitement and competition, there is a lot of noise! AI companies get large volumes of inbound leads, but they aren't always the best-fit accounts. That's why so many are moving to ICP Marketing. They want to get focused. And that’s where Keyplay can help.   #ICP #marketing #sales

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Insights rich session from #GTM leaders using #colaunch strategy with success. Lots to learn to get you started. Registration below Expert panelist: Lisa Ann Edwards Elena Kennedy Neeti Gupta Dana Howard Chaitra Vedullapalli

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The Forbes 2024 Cloud 100 List is live ☁ Congrats to all the honorees – the world's top 100 private cloud companies –including the 3 healthcare and life sciences companies featured this year: • Benchling - biotech R&D platform • Komodo Health - healthcare data analytics • Abridge - AI for clinical documentation For more on how AI is colliding with cloud computing, check out Bessemer Venture Partners's 2024 Cloud 100 report. Personally I'm focused on advancements in multi-modal AI, as applied to biomedical applications (Trend 3!): https://lnkd.in/euzurvQV

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As Slack blazed the trail in the market, Microsoft leveraged its expansive proprietary distribution network to rapidly propel Teams to widespread adoption. Hemant Mohapatra from Lightspeed explains this with a valuable framework: 1. Proprietary distribution wins: Comcast vs. Netflix. 2. Commoditized distribution? Best product wins: Chrome vs. Internet Explorer. 3. Commoditized product? Best service wins: Amazon vs. the rest. 4. Commoditized service? Best network wins.

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GTM tech is acutely painful for modern software businesses combining PLG, sales-assist, and scaled/AI-enabled outbound motions. Austin Hay (Clarify, Reforge, Ramp) joined Growth Unhinged to share his framework on how to build a stage appropriate tech stack that lasts. #RevenueTechnology #startups #SalesTechnology #AI #B2Bsales #revops #salestools #revenueenablement #techstack #martech #revenuetools #revenueleadership #salesleadership #marketingleadership #salesorganizations #revtech #gtmtech #gotomarket #SaaS #business #gtm #entrepreneurs #ceo #cxo #founders #scalingup #businessexpansion #gtmmotion #gtmplays #growthjourney #salesenablement #cro #technology #organizationalleadership #businessautomation #businessapps #startupecosystem #crm #salesforce #aipowered #artificialintelligence #aiapps #aiadoption #aienabled #framerwork #businessautomation #businessapps #marketing #plg #softwarebusiness

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Your founding or first engineer might be the toughest hire you ever make. So, here are four tips to make the search easier. 1) Determine what the ideal profile of your founding engineer would look like. Your founding engineer is responsible for building your product and tech team from scratch, so you'll want to know if they: - Need expertise in a specific area/tech stack - Have the managerial experience necessary to be the CTO 2) Lean on your investors, your network and developer meetups to find the right candidate. If you're non-technical, it can be difficult to find a suitable engineer. That's why developer meetups, your investors, and your network are the best places to start your search. Developer meetups show that you're invested in professional development and emerging trends, while your investors and network can grant you legitimacy through referrals. 3) Hire engineers with design experience. Trust me on this, hiring an engineer with design experience makes things much, much easier.  The last thing you want is an awesome framework and no UI or optimized user experience. 4) Have them work on an actual part of your code base. If they pass initial interviews and screenings, invite them to work with your team on the codebase for a day. There’s no better assessment of culture and company fit than throwing them in the ring. This should get your search started, but if you want the full guide on how to hire engineers, check out our blog article 👇 https://lnkd.in/erUBdKSK

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As VP of #engineering at Tile, I proposed building a subscription infrastructure. The other execs agreed, but it never got funded to be implemented by the devs. In hindsight, here's what I could have done differently to be more effective in getting this project funded. 1. TIE THE PROJECT OUTCOMES TO BUSINESS RESULTS It was clear to me that managing our web and mobile subscriptions more effectively would eliminate the need to deal with duplicate subscriptions across different platforms. 💥 What I could have done differently ↳ Use simple, relatable language to explain how technical goals align with business objectives. 2. EXPLAIN THE LONG-TERM IMPACT OF NOT DOING IT I foresaw the time and effort the engineering team would spend dealing with bugs and errors without the subscription infrastructure. 💥 What I could have done differently ↳ Use data and storytelling to show how investing in the new infrastructure would translate to increased revenue. 3. CONNECT IT TO CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND RETENTION I saw a clear connection between customer satisfaction and retention and how we handled subscriptions. 💥 What I could have done differently ↳ Share stats such as churn rates, number of tickets handled by the support team, NPS score, etc., and how the new infrastructure would impact these. . . . Obviously, it's easier to look back now and see what I could have done differently. But I know that for many of us #womeintech even taking one hour a week to think strategically and plan can feel impossible. This is why having a #coach to hold that space can be invaluable. . . . Let's chat if you, too, are a woman in #technology leadership struggling to tie engineering priorities to business outcomes. I know how powerful coaching can be in shifting your mindset, perspective, and strategy. Message me "STRATEGY CALL" on LinkedIn to book a complimentary call and explore if coaching together is a fit. #executivecoach #leadershipcoach

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“Our AEs have a quota which is 5x their OTEs or 4x their total costs because everyone does it like that.” 🤔 🌟 When talking to other B2B SaaS founders or executives about their sales compensation, I often get an answer like the one above. While these rules of thumb have worked in the last years of horizontal SaaS, the new age of SaaS sales and vertical markets force us to have a more nuanced approach. Let’s work backwards: 🔍 As a SaaS business, I can look at my organization as the “growth engine” (how much € in ARR am I getting for €1 investment in GTM) and the “cash engine” (how much € in cash am I generating from €1 in ARR). The metric for the growth engine is “sales efficiency”, where e.g. a sales efficiency of 0.75 would indicate that I get €0.75 of ARR in the first year for every €1 in GTM expenses. 📊 Let’s break down the GTM costs into the following blocks: 1. AEs: On-target earnings (OTE) of quota-carrying Account Executives (AEs) plus the employer costs (i.e. 20% in Germany). 2. SDRs/RevOps: Other total salary costs of potential SDRs or Rev/SalesOps staff. 3. Sales Overhead: All other costs that are added to AEs, SDRs, and Ops costs, i.e., tooling, travel. 4. Marketing Costs: All costs of the marketing team. 📈 We can progressively get from the “AE costs” to the full “GTM costs” by looking at the following adders or multipliers: 1. AE to SDRs/RevOps: Companies usually spend around 80% for additional staff, supporting the AEs. (1.8x) 2. Sales Payroll to Sales Overhead: Overhead adders are usually around 40%. (1.4x) 3. Sales Costs to Marketing Costs: Varies based on the GTM motion. Often, we see marketing adding 60% of costs. (1.6x) ⚙️ So the ratio of Total GTM costs / AE costs can be written as: (AE to SDRs/RevOps) * (Sales Payroll to Sales Overhead) * (Sales Costs to Marketing Costs) In our example, we end up with: 1.8x * 1.4x * 1.6x = 4.032x Sales efficiency now is nothing else than: Quota Multiplier / GTM Costs Multiplier, so in our example 4 / 4.032 ~ 1.00 → If everyone hits quota, we could get to a sales efficiency of 1. ⚡At Luminovo, we are operating in a vertical market, where efficiency gains through more spend on SDRs and marketing are limited. So what do we do? • No SDRs, only RevOps: We believe in vertical markets, sellers need to demonstrate top knowledge from day 1. Instead of junior SDRs, our RevOps team is equipping sellers from the sidelines to run efficient full-cycle sales. Multiplier: 1.2x • Lean on overhead: We invest in travel and tooling, but try to keep most of the other things lean: 1.25x • ROI-driven in marketing: No spray-and-pray, but pointed marketing campaigns with a clear ROI: 1.4x This results in GTM costs / AE costs of 2.1x. So we could get away with setting seller quotas to 2.2x their costs and still achieve better results. ❓How are you calibrating your B2B SaaS GTM organization? #transformationtuesday #B2BSaaS #GTM #sales

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Hot Take… RIP #PLG, Long Live #SLG But before you throw shade, let me explain… 🔹 There are undoubtedly exceptions, I’m sure many will highlight monday.com, Freshworks, etc. 🔹 PLG works well for low ACV deals with low CAC… think SMB and mid-market customers. Target CAC payback <12 months 🔹 PLG is a fantastic top of funnel marketing channel for enterprise sales ⭐ But for 6-figure enterprise sales, you need enterprise salespeople pressing the flesh with customers

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We are quite proud to share that CoreStack has made the Inc 5000 ranking for the second consecutive year! This year, CoreStack ranks #12 in the Greater Seattle area, #14 in Washington State, #121 in all of Software in North America, and #1013 on Inc. 5000 complete listing. Being on the list of America's fastest-growing private companies twice in a row is indeed an honor. Thanks to our valued customers, partners, investors, advisors, employees, and well-wishers for the continued trust! Our vision at CoreStack is to help customers embrace the cloud, AI, and security with confidence, helping them go further and faster, realizing their digital ambitions. We’ll do so by being the world’s most admired, advanced, and valued intelligent cloud governance platform. We invite you to learn more about how we can help you cloud with confidence today! Sridhar Krishnakumar Sabapathy Suren Raj Venkata Robert Bala Mohan Parthu Perumal Satyabrat poornodhaya Rodrigo Davide Samad Gurpreet Shridhar Riz Dayakar Arun Abhay Mohanjit Abidali Gowri Haresh Gokul Shyam Anand Vishal #cloudcomputing #devops #finops #cloud #cloudmanagement #cloudgovernance #cloudoperations #cloudnative #digitaltransformation #automation #compliance #cloudsecurity #cybersecurity #security #cio #ciso #azure #aws #googlecloud #gcp #oci #artificialintelligence #machinelearning #ml #ai #corestack

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The "Anti-AI SDR Company," Rox, came out of stealth today. It's a world-class team, building agentic workflows natively on the data warehouse. Here's why you shouldn't write them off as simply playing Silicon Valley buzzword bingo: 1. Account-based agents Rox's central idea is account-based agents for quota-carrying reps. Traditionally, we think about task-specific agents or assistants - eg: an email-writing assistant, a research bot, a CRM plugin, etc. Rox flips this on its head. Instead of having agents for different tasks, Rox provides one dedicated agent per account that can scour: - public data - third-party data partners - first-party tools like your CRM and data warehouse and - can even leverage a team of humans who can be used to manually research and verify important data. 2. Software that gets smarter with time I joke that gtm tech gets worse the more you use it, not better. (Looking at you, Salesforce… after several years of usage, it starts to look more like a 59-year old Mike Tyson trying to fight a 27-year old YouTuber… tired and past its prime) With Rox, it gets smarter the more you use it. Over time, the tuning kicks in and the more context you share with it, the better it will get. 3. Results, not "demoware" Over 35 of the best-performing enterprise sales teams have adopted Rox organically. What impresses me the most is how Ishan, Rox's Co-founder/CEO responded when I congratulated him on the fundraise. He said: “It doesn't matter. What matters is: do reps find it useful? Does it make them more productive? And hopefully the productivity is significant enough where it changes the fundamental unit economics of the market. That's pretty much our sole focus.” 4. Anti-AI SDR My dumbed-down explanation of the product: Perplexity/Claude Projects + Clay-lite + a slick workflow layer (plus… it uses dark mode — my kinda people). It’s built for quota-carrying reps. Rox is explicitly anti-AISDR. It's not trying to replace the human touch with automation. Their approach is to help you save time on: information gathering, wrangling and reasoning. 5. Supercharge your best reps Rox’s arbitrage is around the fact that reps don’t spend time in Salesforce anymore. And, maybe more interestingly, the data is not all in Salesforce anymore (this is a very big deal). Ramp has saved 200+ hours of time by automating previously manual work - things like: pre-meeting research, note-taking, follow-up reminders, and more. Ramp is re-allocating those hours into pipeline generation. This is a great example of how software will enable teams to do more, with less. I think we’re still very early here. –––––––––––– My full breakdown on Rox on today's deep dive sponsored post on The Signal: https://lnkd.in/gc8tB5Rg PS - Don't take my word for it. You can sign up for free today, at run.rox.com 

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Industry Insider – California hosted a fantastic event with CDPH and their IT leadership. If you are not a member, you should join. Not only do you get access to a broad cross section of the tech community, but you also get to hear directly from agencies. Here are four take aways I shared with our team. IT decision making involves policy and program people not simply IT leadership. They participate and inform the process, but they are not the sole decision-makers. They have a very pro-Microsoft disposition. Their history of AD Hoc, program driven technology spend means their technology stack is very complicated. They view building on a Microsoft platform as a major driver of efficiency and cost savings. Their technology budgeting process is changing which offers opportunities to capture larger sales across program areas in the future. CDPH has massive privacy and security concerns they need help addressing.

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She helped Slack go from $100M - $700M ARR then  go public. Previously at Google and now currently advising high-growth SaaS startups like Miro, Loom, ServiceNow, Holly Chen is a GTM force. In the latest episode of The GTM Podcast, Holly and I got to break down her journey in tech and notably branding, pricing and customer success for AI startups. We cover: -Strategies for AI startups to differentiate, drive retention, and optimize pricing -The importance of strong branding and concrete use cases for AI market penetration -Evolving customer success models to maximize value in AI deployments -Transitioning from sales-led to product-led growth and key considerations -The rising role of influencer marketing in B2B and how to leverage it effectively -etc etc Have a listen wherever you 🎧 to your pods.

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Ready for 2025? My latest post covers my Ulitmate SaaS Metrics Playbook. Scale your SaaS with confidence using my proven framework. #SaaS https://lnkd.in/gDUMJEAY

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Generative AI is changing the data storage landscape as file sizes continue to grow. My latest piece for Fast Company Executive Board on why file sizes are growing and what organizations can do to manage them in a cloud environment. https://lnkd.in/gNDT3-Fh #GenerativeAI #Cloud #ContentManagement

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Great conversation with Joey Brodsky! Definitely one of the sharpest guys I know. I love his passion, drive and unique perspectives. I have followed his podcast for a long time and was super happy to be able to be a guest. I will share more insights from our time together but wanted to post a quick thank you to Joey and share the episode. #NextGenSales

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Izhak Zimmermann, My friend: "I’m glad to see the impressive implementation you’ve achieved in offering granular visibility into #customer-specific resource usage across various resources. Your work has not only enabled precise cost attribution but also provided actionable insights through detailed reports, helping customers optimize their budgets and refine their strategies, all without causing any disruption to ongoing operations. Wishing you continued success with future customers! Thank you for taking the time to chat and explain how you reached this significant milestone." #finops #cloud #costoptimzation #digitaltransformation

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