Never Give Up: The Conductor story — a 10-year journey to Exit
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SaaS Revolution Show is a weekly podcast that brings insights and tactics from leading SaaS entrepreneurs and operators across the world. Hosted by Alex Theuma, the show is brought to you by SaaStock. You can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Overcast.
On this week’s episode of The SaaS Revolution Show, we take you back to the SaaStock New York stage. David Skok, Managing Partner, Matrix Partners in conversation with Seth Besmertnik, CEO of Conductor, which was recently acquired by WeWork.
They chat about the journey of 10 years to get to this exit. Speaking of journeys — our own SaaStock journey is only 6 weeks away from hitting a major milestone — our 3rd annual conference! There are still a few passes available so grab yours if you haven’t yet, it’s going to be epic.
When WeWork acquired Conductor, Seth mentioned to WeWork’s CEO, Adam Neumann that Adam may have built a billion dollar company very fast but Seth had made many more mistakes than him.
He wasn’t exaggerating.
Starting Conductor straight out of college, Seth messed up in a myriad of ways and had on many occasions almost given up and closed the company.
Almost. But he never actually gave up.
In the history of the company, Seth faced every challenge possible — people, churn, leadership, sales execution, etc. It was early on that he understood the unfortunate truth about the human existence, entrepreneurial or else — challenges are an inevitable part of life and the sooner you prepare yourself mentally for them and accept rather than fight them, the better you will be at addressing them.
So he did.
And on the way he built a company earning $30M in ARR, worthy of an acquisition by WeWork.
Could he have done it faster and better?
Undoubtedly.
But what matters is that when faced with what Ben Horowitz calls The Struggle, sitting in a boardroom about to pull the plug despite the happy faces sitting on the other side of the window, he never did. Seth has learned to play the long game and it paid off for him. Sitting for a chat with David Skok, he now wants to help you do the same.
Listen on to learn:
- How he dealt with a very high churn
- How he made sure customers understand his product and were not too baffled from the data complexity
- What Seth wishes he knew in the early days of Conductor
David Skok is coming to SaaStock18 again this year, featuring in 2 sessions
Firstly a keynote — Get inside your buyers head to improve funnel conversion rates and then he’s moderating a fireside chat with Corey Thomas, CEO of Rapid 7 entitled From $15M to $250M — Scaling with Soul.
You don’t want to miss either. David won’t leave back to Boston straight after his talks. He will stick around meeting with as many early Stage SaaS founders as possible, looking for the next HubSpot. Maybe that’s you? If you do want to join us at SaaStock18 - grab your ticket online and you can meet David Skok, alongside 300+ other SaaS VCs looking to invest in the next big thing.
