We concluded the second and final day of the 2nd Annual CXO Summit in Austin, TX. Below is a recap of the sessions.
Best Practices in Customer Success
Ashvin Vaidyanathan – Director of Customer Success, Gainsight
“The overlap between vendor success and customer success is increasing as the subscription economy grows. There is also increasing joint ownership of the outcomes.”
Below are Gainsight’s 5 Pillars of Customer Success. How are you implementing customer success in your startup?
ABM: The Connective Tissue for Land & Expand
Srihari Kumar – CEO & Founder, ZenIQ
Biz Dev to Corp Dev Strategy
Sach Chitnis – Managing Partner, Jump Capital
Blair Garrou – Partner, Mercury Fund
“The only way corporates pay a strategic multiple is if they are reacting to another deal in the market – or if you have their buy-in and they are comfortable with your intangibles (e.g. pilot, efficacy, etc.)”
Strategic Capital Panel
Matt Garratt – VP, Salesforce Ventures
Sunil Kurkure – Director, Intel Capital
Karen Kerr – Executive Director, GE Ventures
Leo de Luna – Managing Director, Microsoft Ventures
“Money is everywhere. People come to us when there’s something more we can do besides providing capital.”
Insperity HR Panel
Kurt Abrahamson – CEO, ShareThis
Sam Hernandez – VP Finance, TrendKite
“As a startup CEO, your first creation is a product, your second creation is a company.”
Growth Capital Panel
Alan Taetle – Title, Noro-Moseley Partners
Arun Singh – Associate, Updata Partners
Mike Zappert – Partner, Adams Street Partners
Sonia Nagar – Vice President, Pritzker Group
“It’s never too early to start building a relationship with later-stage investors. There’s nothing wrong with starting 6, 12, 18 months before you need to raise capital.”
Sales Forecasting & Reporting
Jason Felger – Executive in Residence, Jump Capital
“Get a rigorous, repetitive deal qualification framework. This will provide you the biggest opportunity to dial-in your forecasting.”
Machine Learning & AI:101
Matt Cohen – President & Founder, OneSpot
“You could argue that all of knowledge is the ability to make predictions.”
