Closing a 60K ARR deal in person
“It was a 60 k deal ARR when our largest deal previous was about $1,500 ARR.”
Founder conversationUnicorn $50m+
The $100m Pendo Story
... The Crazy Not-Scaleable Stuff We Did At Every Stage
Todd Olson · Pendo
Published September 1, 2022About this resource
Todd Olson, CEO and Founder of Pendo, shares:
- Crazy one-off projects we did early on
- How I maintained culture as we added offices
- Pendo’s CSM to customer ratio
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What you’ll learn
Pendo founder and CEO Todd Olson explains why doing unscalable things helped Pendo pass $100 million in ARR. He covers flying out to close an early deal himself, staying close to customers through support tickets and NPS follow-ups, interviewing hires and holding 90-day check-ins, and signing large customers before the system could handle their scale.
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Learning from a single user
“So this is the value of doing unscalable things is by going direct to the user, direct to the customer, you derive all sorts of learnings that inform new feature developments.”
Pick up the phone with customers
“if you find yourself like trading emails with a customer, like pick up the phone.”
Interviewing nearly every hire
“I interviewed nearly every person at the company up until 500 employees.”
Let scale break, then fix it
“Sometimes things have to break and fall over to actually see what you need to fix.”
Do unscalable work at every stage
“… before you can scale You must do unscalable things at every stage”
Insane customer support
“Unscalable customer things Running at key early customers Insane customer support I’m going to show you $0-10M $50-100M $100M+ What it looks like to swarm NPS High CSM: customer ratios Product-led CS experiments”
Obsess over NPS
“Obsess over NPS”
Interview nearly every person
“Unscalable People things Why I interviewed nearly every person for the first 7 years of Pendo I’m going to discuss: $5-10M $50-$100M $100M+ How I preserved culture by visiting every office quarterly The importance of detailed talent reviews.”
Conduct detailed talent reviews
“Conduct detailed talent reviews”
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The $100m Pendo Story - Slide Deck
Todd Olson is the co-founder and CEO of Pendo, a platform that accelerates and deepens software product adoption. Before Pendo, Todd served as VP of Products at Rally Software where he served through its public offering. Todd joined Rally via its acquisition of 6th Sense, a company he founded and led as president and CTO.
- Company revenue
- $130M
- Team size
- 1000
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Slide text
Find a passage in the slides and open the original deck.
16 passages
Pendo growth premise
Founder500 Sept 2022 Todd Olson CEO, Founder of Pendo The $100m Pendo Story … and the crazy unscalable stuff we did at every stage
2005, My Garage in Seattle
Unscalable work before scale
… before you can scale You must do unscalable things at every stage
Pendo Revenue Growth
Early customer experiments
Crazy one-off projects we did early on PEOPLE CUSTOMER What insane customer support looks like Our CSM to customer ratio My calendar when I interviewed nearly every person How I maintained culture as we added offices The talent review template we use today Over the next 20 minutes: I’m going to show you unscalable things we did at each stage to be ready for scale:
Insane customer support
Unscalable customer things Running at key early customers Insane customer support I’m going to show you $0-10M $50-100M $100M+ What it looks like to swarm NPS High CSM: customer ratios Product-led CS experiments
Building for Amy @Invoca
CD Rom I used to build all my computers to save money 2005, My Garage in Seattle Full bleed image template
Provide insane customer support
NPS and customer focus
Obsess over NPS
What maniacal focus on the customer looks like today
Unscalable people practices
Unscalable People things Why I interviewed nearly every person for the first 7 years of Pendo I’m going to discuss: $5-10M $50-$100M $100M+ How I preserved culture by visiting every office quarterly The importance of detailed talent reviews.
Conduct detailed talent reviews
Conduct detailed talent reviews
… before you can scale You must do unscalable things at every stage
Sept 2022 Todd Olson CEO of Pendo