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Learn From 15 CEOs of YCombinator’s Top Companies: Sessions at SaaStr Annual and Europa

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YCombinator recently put out its list of its Top 50 YC companies of all time based on revenues.  We’re fortunate that over the years so many of their founders and CEOs have spoken at SaaStr Annual and Europa!  More than half of them, in fact!

Let’s take a look at their top sessions:

#1.  Algolia’s CEO and CRO:  “The Playbook To Achieving CEO-CRO Harmony”

We were lucky that SaaStr Fund was the first U.S. investor in Algolia, and CEO Bernadette Nixon came to SaaStr Annual with CRO Michelle Adams to talk about a critical but under-discussed topic:  How to Get CEOs and CROs trulys on the same page.

#2.  Amplitude’s CEO: “Hitting Hypergrowth with Amplitude’s CEO, Spenser Skates: Take Your SaaS Company from $25M to $100M+”

A really great SaaStr Annual session on when and how to go multiproduct, how to hire the top execs, and so much more!

#3.  Bird’s CEO: “Early Gains, Early Pains: 5 Lessons for Surviving Hypergrowth” Harry Stebbings and Robert Vis”

Bird’s founder-CEO and Harry Stebbings did a deep dive on the top learnings from hypergrowth at the SaaStr Europa in Paris.

#4. Brex’s Co-CEO Henrique Dubugras: “Lessons From a Second-Time Founder: How Brex Went From 0 – $1B in Under 2 Years”

Brex has been part of SaaStr since it’s earliest days and this was perhaps one of the most interesting sessions, as it’s a look back at the early-ish days, as growth was just starting to take off, but before the category became more mature.

#5.  Checkr: “Why Fair Chance is Fueling the Gig Economy | Checkr CEO Daniel Yanisse + SVP Sales Solutions”

Founder CEO Daniel Yanisse couldn’t make it in 2020 Annual in the end when a few issues impacted events, so he came to our digital event to do a deep dive on the Gig Economy with his SVP of Sales.

#6.  Deel’s COO: “$1M to $100M in 20 Months: How Everything Breaks in Hypergrowth | Deel Co-Founder & CRO Shuo Wang”

This session ended up extremely popular on how rocketship Deep went from $1m to $100m in revenue … in just 20 months (!)

#7. DropBox CCO — and now HubSpot CEO — Yamini Rangan: “5 Myths That Stop SaaS Companies From Moving Upmarket with Dropbox”

Yamini Rangan is now the CEO of HubSpot but before that she was CCO at DropBox and came to SaaStr Annual to talk about myths around going upmarket.

#8. Flock Safety: “How to Build out a Sales Org from 0 reps to ~100 in 18 months | FlockSafety ‘s CEO Garrety Langley”

This was a fun one as Flock Safety was rapidly scaling.  Founder CEO Garrett Langley brought his VP Growth to talk about how they added 100 sales reps … in just 18 months!!

#9.  GitLab’s CEO: “How To Innovate Faster with Community: Insights From GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij”

Sid was kind enough to join us to do a workshop on how community-driven growth really works.

#10. Gusto’s CEO Josh Reeves: “How Focusing on Delivering Customer Value Generates Business Value”

We’re fortunate Josh has been a part of SaaStr since the early days, from our podcast to multiple SaaStr sessions.  Here was a great deep dive on how to truly translate customer happiness into revenue.

#11.  Podium’s CEO Eric Rea: “Going from $0 to $60M ARR in 4 Years”

Podium CEO and co-founder Eric Rea was kind enough to join us at the second SaaStr Europa in Paris to share his top learnings and mistakes going from $0 to $60m ARR in just 4 years.

#12.  Rippling’s CEO Parker Conrad: “Why The First Rule You Know About Building Software is Wrong”

Parker has been kind enough to be part of SaaStr since the first SaaStr Annual, and came back to SaaStr Europa last year for a deep dive on building “compound startups”.  Ones that go multiproduct from Day 1.

#13.  Stripe’s COO Claire Hughes Johnson: “Avoid Trapdoor Decisions: 5 Lessons Learned from Scaling Stripe”

Claire Hughes Johnson was Stripe’s first COO through the craziest growth and she was kind enough to share her learnings several times at SaaStr Annual. This session was a great one on avoiding “trapdoor decisions” — one of the top mistakes we all make as founders and leaders.

#14. Webflow’s CEO Vlad Magdalin: “How to Build an Enduring Company, One Hard Lesson at a Time”

This was an excellent session on the really tough learnings from a first-time founder.

#15.  Zapier’s CEO Wade Foster: “The Secrets to Scaling to 500 Employees”

We’ve done so many great deep dives and collaborations with Wade over the years, this one is just one of several great ones.  But it’s a terrible deep dive on how start-ups truly scale to the First 500 Employees.

 

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