Leyla Seka is the executive vice president of the Salesforce Mobile platform experience. Over Leyla’s incredible 11 year journey with Salesforce she has seen the team scale from 1,800 to over 40,000 and revenue scale from $500m to over $16Bn. In Leyla’s role today, she leads the charge on extending the power of Salesforce with a full portfolio of mobile apps, and is responsible for driving product, go-to-market and other key programs around Salesforce’s mobile offerings. Prior to her current role, Leyla was executive vice president of the Salesforce AppExchange, where she launched a refreshed AppExchange storefront, a new partner program, and built an entire AppExchange-focused team, resulting in more than 4,000 solutions, installed nearly 6 million times. Beyond her day-to-day role, Leyla is also the executive sponsor of BOLDforce, Salesforce’s organization for expanding and empowering the black community at Salesforce.
In Today’s Episode We Discuss:
How Leyla made her way into the world of SaaS with Salesforce when it had 1,800 people and $500m in revenue? What were Leyla’s biggest learnings on people and business model through seeing the first hand hyper-scaling of Salesforce from $500m to $16Bn? How did Leyla evolve and scale as a leader herself in those 11 years? What advice does Leyla give to young people considering whether to found a startup, join a startup or join a hyper-growth company? Where do things start to break in the scaling of SaaS companies? What needs to be put in place to prepare for hyper-scale? What are the commonalities of where many founders go wrong in the scaling process? What does Leyla mean when she says, “growing up in product, you have to lead through influence”? How does Leyla think this influence can be created and maintained? How does Leyla think about the balance between effective influence and excessive influence? Why does Leyla believe that, “you can teach skills but you cannot teach empathy”? What have been her learnings from scaling teams when it comes to hiring and detecting candidates with true empathy? What can one do to nurture that empathy in the culture of the company?60 Second SaaStr:
What does Leyla know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning? What is the hardest element of Leyla’s role at Salesforce today? What does Leyla believe in SaaS that most around her disbelieve?If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:
Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Leyla Seka
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SaaStr 502: Why Founders Should Prioritize Personal Development with Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein
SaaStr 501: The State of Software Buying From SMB to Enterprise with G2 CMO, Amanda Malko
SaaStr 500: How to Scale a Successful SaaS Sales Team with Harry Stebbings, Founder @ 20 VC, and Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder @ SaaStr
SaaStr 499: The Cutting Edge Techniques for an Impactful Live Event Strategy with Mark Jung, VP Marketing at Dooly, and Zoë Hartsfield, Community Manager at Dooly
SaaStr 498: The Most Common SaaS Sales Potholes and How to Avoid Them with Mark Roberge, Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital
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SaaStr 495: The Secrets Behind Creating Scalable Products with Box's CEO and Co-Founder, Aaron Levie, and SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin
SaaStr 494: Demystifying the Unicorn Buzz with the CEOs of Calendly, Algolia, and Contentful
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SaaStr 490: Beyond Product-led Growth, 7 Lessons Learned in Product-Led Scaling with Dropbox's GM
SaaStr 489: The Cutting Edge Techniques for Building Customer-Centric Support Teams with Abby Hammer, Chief Customer Officer at ChurnZero
SaaStr 488: The Essential Startup Advice for Founders with Y Combinator's Managing Director and Group Partner, Michael Seibel
SaaStr 487: How Community-Led Growth Drives Product-Led Growth with Notion's CRO, Olivia Nottebohm
SaaStr 486: The Cutting Edge Techniques for Scaling SDR Teams with Amy Frampton, Head of Marketing at BambooHR
SaaStr 485: Hyperscaling Post-IPO with PagerDuty's CEO, Jennifer Tejada
SaaStr 484: The State of the Cloud 2021, How to Build a Cloud Unicorn with Bessemer Venture Partners
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