Craig Walker is the Founder & CEO @ Dialpad, the startup that provides a business phone system for the modern workplace. To date, Craig has raised over $120m in VC funding with Dialpad from some of the best in the business including Iconiq, Andreesen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Felicis and Bill Marris’s Section 32. Prior to Dialpad, Craig was an EiR @ Google Ventures and founded and product managed Google Voice. Before that Craig founded Grand Central Communications, a personal communications startup that was acquired by Google. Finally prior to that, Craig enjoyed roles in the world of VC as General Partner @ Sterling Payot Capital and Founder & Senior Director of Yahoo Voice.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
How Craig made his way into the world of SaaS following time as both a GP in the world of venture and then as the creator of what would become Google Voice? Why does Craig think go-to-market is the most challenging element of being a CEO? How does Craig think about when is the right time to go large on go-to-market? Where does Craig believe most founders make mistakes here? How does Craig look to balance aggressive scaling of team with the maintaining of early company culture? What are the foundations to doing this successfully? How does Craig approach the element of hiring external talent vs promotion from within? How does Craig think about managing the internal discontent if hiring an external candidate? How does Craig assess the effectiveness of trials in attracting large enterprises? What are the parameters that must be set for a trial, before it is agreed? What must founders learn to say no to when it comes to trials? How does Craig approach discounting? Why does Craig argue if your client asks for aggressive discounts, you have not explained your core USPs successfully?Craig’s 60 Second SaaStr
What does Craig knows now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? When I say success in SaaS, who does Craig first think to and why? Quality or quantity of logos and why?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
Craig Walker
SaaStr 637: Unveiling the Data Behind Effective Scaling with ICONIQ Growth General Partner Doug Pepper and ICONIQ Growth Partner & Head of Analytics Christine Edmonds
SaaStr 636: Extreme Product Design: Building Things People Actually Use with Stripe CTO David Singleton
SaaStr 635: CRO Confidential: How Customer-First Focus Drives Retention and Revenue With Brex GM of Startups Lucas Fox
SaaStr 634: Scaling a Product-Led Growth Model with 1Password, Apollo.io, Sentry, and Lightspeed
SaaStr 633: Why You Want to Develop Product Painkillers, Not Vitamins with DigitalOcean CPO Gabe Monroy
SaaStr 632: CRO Confidential: How To Adapt Your Sales Strategy To The Current Sales Environment with Sam Blond and Hannah Willson, SVP of Sales at Modern Health
SaaStr 631: What Is Going On In Venture Capital in 2023 with SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin and 20VC Host Harry Stebbings
SaaStr 630: Sales-led vs. Product-led? Today’s Startups Need Both with Jason Eubanks, CRO at Harness
SaaStr 629: CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment in 2023 For Candidates and Hiring Managers With Flexport's Ben Braverman
SaaStr 628: Revenue Alignment: How to Pull Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Together with Divvy CRO Sterling Snow
SaaStr 627: Move Over, Sales: Why Product & Marketing are the C-Suite's New Power Partnership with Checkout.com CMO Leela Srinivasan and CPO Meron Colbeci
SaaStr 626: 10 Lessons Learned Scaling to $1B Valuation with Drift Co-founders David Cancel and Elias Torres
SaaStr 625: True Story: What Breaks Going from $0-$100M ARR in Less Than 2 Years with Wiz CRO Colin Jones
SaaStr 624: Investing and Venture Capital in 2023 with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin and Atrium Founder and CRO Pete Kazanjy
SaaStr 623: Removing Friction: How to Turn More Than 40% of Your Prospects Into Long Term Enterprise Customers with Attentive Co-founder and CEO Brian Long
SaaStr 622: CRO Confidential: What's Changed for Hiring a VP of Sales in 2023 with Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond and Stage 2 Capital LP and Former Lattice CRO Dini Mehta
SaaStr 621: Big Numbers from Small Customers: How DigitalOcean Accelerated at Scale with DigitalOcean Senior Vice President of Revenue Cliff Bockard
SaaStr 620: 8 Ideas on How to Motivate the Sales Team After a Rough Patch with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin
SaaStr 619: 3 Lessons from Building a Marketing Engine to Grow Pipeline from Millions to Billions with Samsara CMO Sarah Patterson
SaaStr 618: Scaling for the Enterprise: Top 5 Lessons on the Upmarket Journey with Airtable CEO Howie Liu and Coatue Management General Partner Caryn Marooney
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Insight Story: Tech Trends Unpacked
Zero-Shot
Fast Forward by Tomorrow Unlocked: Tech past, tech future
Black Wolf Feed (Chapo Premium Feed Bootleg)
Bannon`s War Room