Lessons in leadership and SaaS innovation with Contentstack CEO Neha Sampat

0:00When people say, what do you regret about the journey? I sometimes wish we would have raised sooner because we were limited in what we could do from a go-to-market perspective and a hiring perspective. But I would say that it builds a discipline in building something that's very sustainable. Welcome to the SaaS Revolution Show, a podcast by SaaS.com. Here we interview SaaS founders from around the world who've been there and done that. as they share the ins and outs of how they built their businesses, their operations, their path for securing investment, and more. Our mission with the podcast is to help you, the founder, learn how to scale your SaaS, maintain your well-being, and navigate the complexities of this ever-changing industry.

0:44I'm your host, Alex Duma, and together we'll explore the good, the bad, and the ugly in the journey to SaaS success. All right, welcome back to the SaaS Revolution Show. I am your host, Alex Duma, founder and CEO of SaaStock, also general partner at BackFuture Ventures. Today, I'm delighted to be joined by somebody who's speaking at SaaStock USA. We'll actually be in Austin together next week on the 13th and 14th of May. And I'm delighted to be joined by Neha Sampats, who is the CEO and founder at ContentStack. How are you doing? Hey, Alex. I'm great. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Are you currently in Austin today?

1:22I am in Austin. It is pouring rain. Hopefully, we get better weather next week fingers crossed I I always assume naively because I mean I've been to Austin many times and there it does have a lot of good weather a lot of good hot weather but that it will always be the case but I know when it rains it really does rain and freakishly in or maybe it's not if you can tell me but end of February I came to Austin came to do some meetings, filming, and I just packed shorts and a t-shirt and was just thinking, you know, it's going to be glorious. And this is going to be the first time I see sunshine for about six months because I'm in the UK and the winters are long.

2:04And pretty much the morning that I woke up in the hotel in Austin, it was almost snowing. It was minus five. And I was shocked. Probably a little disappointed. I was a little disappointed. We've had 90 degree weather in February and we've had below zero in February. So it's very unpredictable. Well, fingers crossed. I mean, I feel actually we're probably close enough now that we'll be able to see an accurate forecast for the weather next week. And feeling positive that it's going to be nice and sunny in Austin and we can enjoy the splendor that the city has to offer. um now i we we always start with a a question to try and get to know our guests a little bit better um so uh we won't buck the trend we'd love to know who is neha sampat um well i am an entrepreneur probably first um born in the u.s indian american um one of the few females that have gone through the journey i've gone through so I love to be able to tell that story and bring other women along for the journey as well.

3:17Generally, I've built companies and I love to do that. And when I do it, I feel excited and it gets me up in the morning. And it's usually about seeing people change as they participate in the growth of a company or in making changes inside their organizations, which typically happens with their customers and partners. So that's what gets me excited. That's kind of what gets me going. Outside of that, I am a family person. I don't have my own children, but I've got lots of nephews and a niece who I love dearly and siblings that I love. And so I try to spend a lot of time with friends and family when my CEO world avails that.

3:58You mentioned entrepreneur first and obviously CEO of ContentStack at the moment. So have you, Is this the first business? Have you been the CEO or founder of previous businesses? Yes, I've been the founder of many businesses, some which have failed miserably and some which have had some success. And I've been essentially building businesses from pretend when I was a child all the way through my first profitable company, which was when I was in elementary school, all the way through trying things throughout high school and college, and really built my first kind of major enterprise business back in 2000.

4:40And I guess it was around the beginning of the time of this journey. So I started this journey 2007. It's kind of continued on to multiple iterations. We built a product called Built.io, which was an integration platform. If you know the company Zapier or MuleSoft, it was sort of like right in the center of that integration platform as a service. Sold that in 2018 to Software AG and have since been on the journey with content stack. So the last seven and a half to eight years has been really focused on building up content stack. So just a variety of companies from fan clubs to local Olympics to a PR agency that I ran for a while to enterprise software and SaaS companies.

5:29So certainly an entrepreneur first and an entrepreneur at heart. You mentioned as a child, like feeling entrepreneurial, like starting some businesses or ideas. Can you share, was this the fan clubs that you mentioned or was this something else? And then maybe second part to that, do you think all entrepreneurs kind of have this within them when they're a child, like thinking about the sort of different ideas and thinking about business in that way? There's a thing that I like to call era, which is exposure, relatability and access. And for me as a child, I was exposed to entrepreneurship. My father ran a lot of businesses, none of which really saw the light of day in the long run.

6:14But I loved watching him do it. I loved participating and helping. And so it was kind of just something I was exposed to that you can start something and you can try to build it. And I loved that. I always did. And so as a kid, when other kids were playing house, I would grab my friends and we would play factory or we would play fashion design or, you know, whatever. And we pretended to get phone calls and orders and place those orders and go ship them out. And that evolved into a fan club in junior high for the new kids on the block. I said it out loud. And and we actually like placed some ads in some teen bopper type magazines.

6:52And we got checks in the mail or cash in the mail to build little fan items, promotional items for people. And so I'm sure we were breaking some trademark law at the time. You didn't really realize it, but it turned into a business that yielded some profits. And then we turned that into Olympics in our neighborhood. And I did this with a friend throughout my childhood. I've always had like a partner in crime as I've gone along the journey and have always enjoyed the process of building with someone. Maybe this is a first on the SAS Revolution show after 10 years. but I'll have to come clean and also say that I liked New Kids on the Block.

7:35I had an older sister. She's three years older than me. And when I was younger, the music that I liked was what she liked and what she was playing and she was a big New Kids on the Block fan. Did you have a favourite? I think I always liked Danny. I think it was for some reason. I was a Joe McIntyre girl. I can't remember all their names now, but it's certainly recognizable. But I do remember that era. And you mentioned Build.io was the company that you had an exit, successful exit from, right? Was that like a life-changing exit that meant that you didn't really need to start again? And if so, why did you, I guess being an entrepreneur at heart maybe, But why did you decide to, you know, continue to build, continue to be a CEO?

8:30Because it is hard, right? I'm not sure everybody has multiple businesses in them, like some do, but for some, maybe one is enough. Yeah, it takes a really weird personality to do this to yourself, I would say. But it's a really good question. I started a software consulting company in 2007, fully bootstrapped alongside my co-founder, who I happen to be married to. And one of us decided that we would quit our job and start the business and the other would pay the bills. And so I had taken a full time job at another enterprise software company doing something really cool, building out their e-commerce platform, which I loved.

9:11and my paycheck was funding the beginning of our consulting company. And within three and a half years, I left to run the consulting company alongside my husband who was running all of the tech. And in doing that, we took a lot of risks and we pulled back a lot on our costs. And, you know, we took mortgages out on our home to pay bills and it was stressful, but like we were all in. And so fast forward about 10 years into the journey to have the opportunity to have some liquidity really just gave us the freedom to have like our bases covered, to take care of some of the people that had been on the journey with us as well.

9:51We had fully bootstrapped. So there were no investors or bankers or anyone else involved. And that gave us enough to say, okay, now our bases are covered. We've taken care of our families. We've taken care of our employees that have been super loyal to us in the journey. Let's go build something bigger. And that was just like a really important milestone because it did give you that freedom to just focus on growth and like actually going out and getting some investor dollars into the business and doing it differently than we had before. And ContentStack, am I right? So it's over seven years old now?

10:27Yes, we started officially when we spun out of the consulting company January 1st of 2018. So yeah, we're going on eight years. And can you paint a picture for the audience, maybe share some data about the company to bring it to life a little bit? Sure. Yes. So when we spun out, we were about 25 employees and 25 customers and a little bit of cash in the bank and fully bootstrapped. Fast forward to where we are today, we're approximately 600 employees worldwide in 15 countries. We've got hundreds of customers, many of which are Fortune 1000 customers. We've raised$169 million of venture capital over the years and really just focused on high growth and helping brands to revolutionize how they're doing digital in their worlds.

11:16You've built an amazing business there and congrats. And having been a bootstrapper and also having raised venture capital, I know that I guess both different have some similarities. But is there anything that you kind of prefer? Would you have been able to build the business also that you have with ContentStack today without going down the VC route? I think it would have been tough to grow as fast. And when people say, would you regret about the journey? I sometimes wish we would have raised sooner because we were limited in what we could do from a go-to-market perspective and a hiring perspective.

11:54But I would say that it builds a discipline in building something that's very sustainable. And so having that discipline going into deploying capital in a very responsible way has been an important part of who we are and how we scale the company. And so I think it was like a unique combination of having that experience that we had in how do you do things in a really scrappy way. But then when you want to turn the dials up because something's working, having the resources to do so. And so I don't know if I would necessarily change that stacking of experience. I might change the timing of it. And you mentioned sort of earlier a little bit around your journey as a female entrepreneur and around that.

12:37And I know I think you give back to the community and also, you know, supporting that, trying to get more, I think, women in tech and more senior kind of positions. What has that been like, your sort of journey there in terms of what you can share and maybe any of the challenges, but how you've kind of like overcome any of that and how you're helping and how you view the state of the market, you know, in tech and with women in tech? Yeah, it's a weird time right now because somehow DEI has become a bad word and it really shouldn't have ever been looked at that way. I always look at the balance of DEI and NEI as important.

13:20They're not different and they're not distinctive. They coexist and you don't hire people just because they are of a certain background. You widen the pool of people that you choose to hire from. And that's the misnomer around DEI versus MEI. In terms of like, I went, go back to that, that thing I mentioned earlier era. So exposure is like knowing that entrepreneurship exists or, you know, certain careers exist. The other two are relatability and access and relatability is being able to see other people that you can relate to that look like you, that you would look up to going down a path and understanding that that path might also be available to you.

13:58And so seeing other women in positions of power and positions of authority and board roles in C-suite roles on the stage, you know, being able to speak to others that hopefully inspires people that haven't really seen themselves in that yet. And so that's the relatability piece, which I try to put myself out there, but also encourage a lot of other women to get out there and speak at events like Fast Stock USA. say. And then the access pieces about education funds and really mentorship and network. A lot of people that have come up in the traditional path of building SaaS companies have come out of like, you know, traditional Silicon Valley, Stanford grads, and people that have been around the community that understand how venture capital works, that have friends, neighbors, parents, peasants that can help read a term sheet and help them determine how to negotiate it.

14:51a lot of people don't have that. And so the access is being able to provide that kind of access to people that might not otherwise get access to it. And so that's where I've focused is, you know, those three, those three sort of pillars. And it's been through speaking at events, it's been mentorship, it's been trying to bring other women along for the journey. And when I see women who are successful highlighting them, I'm a part owner of Austin Woman Magazine. I'll make sure you get a copy when you come into town next week. And in that magazine, we highlight small business owners, but also really successful women that have rised the ranks in their organizations or built companies that are really interesting to know about.

15:30We have a women's award program, which is actually happening this week, where we have several categories where we identify a winner and recognize them in a room full of 500 people. And that's something that stays with them and lifts them up. And hopefully they pass that on to others. And so just several ways of giving back and like just recognizing that we all deserve the opportunity to do our best work and have our best careers. And so I try to extend the ladder down and sideways and up wherever it makes sense. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you doing that and, you know, paying it forward. And then also by, you know, doing things like speaking at Sasquatch USA and being on the on the stage there.

16:11I think, you know, like this is our 10th year of SaaS stock and I always feel like we try but never quite, you know, do enough. And it's also quite hard to measure. You know, we partner with organizations like Wednesday Women and we try and get as many, you know, women entrepreneurs and CEOs and C-suite on stage as possible. But, yeah, it's very hard to kind of measure the impact there. But hopefully we're making some impacts and I'm sure you are as well. by both coming on the podcast and speaking at events like SassDoc. Yeah, I really appreciate that you guys put that effort in too. And I know Wednesday Women has been a big player in bringing women to the table at SassDoc, which is really cool.

16:56Yeah, definitely. And so we would go back to or now talk about sort of content stack and the significant business that you've built there. uh i i know um like getting to where you are sort of like at the moment we'll have uh like different let's say eras within that you know you're zero to one and you're one to ten etc maybe you can just share um some of the key lessons that you've uh that you've learned and how you've been able to build you know a successful company uh this time with content stack yeah so So if we think back to the early days, like right before I spun out, we did have a handful of customers.

17:37A lot of them were doing much smaller use cases. And just to kind of set the stage for what content stack is, it's a digital experience platform, which consists of a content management system and then various other components that add on to making it more of a digital experience platform. So a content management system traditionally is powering a website or a mobile app, any type of digital experience, even a billboard inside an arena or something to that effect. And it's the technology layer behind it. It's not the design of the front end. And so content stack essentially powers that for brands today like Asics and Callaway and Mattel and Alaska Airlines and Crocs and a lot of other companies that no one's ever heard of.

18:16but it's essentially helping brands that are trying to get away from the old way of connecting with their end users and audiences to a much more modern and new way leveraging her personalization AI cool experiences that are you know dynamic and sometimes you get the physical and the digital co-relating and co-existing and when we started it was really as a services company trying to solve of a problem for many brands that were coming to us for services use cases. We were essentially implementing various website management systems before, and we found that they were getting stuck. Like they couldn't do what they wanted to do because the world had changed around them and their audiences were expecting more personalized experiences, more dynamic experiences, mobile experiences.

19:05So Omnichannel was a big driver. So we built this like really simple at that time, just a form-based CMS that would allow you to change content in a mobile app. And in doing that, we essentially found that we were sitting on a product that was really needed in the market. And many brands were trying to figure out how do I do omni-channel? How do I actually take forward this digital experience that I've built on the web that's pretty static and make it much more interesting? And so we started with smaller brands. And over time, we essentially learned that there was this credibility we were building.

19:40And now we've gotten to the point where Fortune 1000 brands see us when we're a leader in the market. And if you talk about zero to one, it was really like, how do you land your first 10 to 15 customers that believed in you and took kind of a chance, they were early adopters of new technology to where we are today, which we would say is early mainstream adoption of the more modern approach to building digital experiences, which means when you're looking at like the two incumbents in the market that have been there for 30 years, we're still looked at as the third, but the most modern. And so when you're deciding to make a change in your organization, do you go with the most modern, cool, innovative, and interesting, or do you go with nobody ever gets fired for buying X?

20:23And so that's essentially what the journey has been like. And we believe that we're at a cusp but we're going to go onto the other side of that and become the mainstream leader because we will be the modern and the best and the most innovative. With the Fortune 1000 customers and therefore selling to the enterprise, can you share anything about maybe a story about, and you don't have to name the particular name, like landing that first Fortune 1000, how long it took, what you needed to be able to get that done, and maybe just share a bit of an insight there? Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the ones that really stands out to me, and I won't mention the name, but it's a large toy manufacturer.

21:06And they started with a use case that could not address their omni-channel needs because they had an incumbent in seat that was powering most of their digital experiences. So they bought us specifically to do one small thing. And, you know, that at this point was about a tenth of the contract size that it is today. When they did that, they found that it was so easy and they got so much value out of it so quickly that they immediately decided they wanted to bring that to the rest of their digital platform. And so over the last few years, we've moved away from them using something across all of their sites to going off of all of those things and moving into using content stack for everything.

21:51And so there has been a bit of a sort of land and expand situation in a lot of the larger companies because they do have a lot of legacy systems that they've invested in, that they've integrated with, that they've built other systems and processes around. And most importantly, that their people are comfortable with because that's what they've been using for a long time. And so there's this whole concept of like change management, which is one of the topics I'll be focused on at next week's conference. But it's sort of making a shift to buying something much more modern is more than just buying the technology.

22:26It's really thinking about how does this impact the entire business and how we work and how people show up and how they shine. And all of that has to be taken into consideration when making a decision like this. So if you think about a Fortune 1000, it essentially is thinking about all of that in a holistic way, which is not an overnight decision. It's time consuming. It's thinking through the multiple stages of a rollout. It's a phased approach, typically. And so the sales cycle can often be long. And we try to play a consultative role in helping them make that decision and thinking through the pros and cons and the challenges they're going to go through and not oversimplify it because it's not easy.

23:06You touched on the topic or one of the things you'll be speaking about, Sasso USA next week. Can you share more about what the talk is, what you'll be covering, why people should attend this particular talk? Yeah, absolutely. So what I'm super passionate about and what I've always been passionate about from the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey is seeing people being able to do their best work. And to me, that means that if you're making a big change inside an organization, you have to focus on the human side of change. And so I'll be talking about how we as SaaS vendors typically forget about the importance of the human side of change in helping our customers to be successful.

23:50And essentially what that means is you're making a technology decision, but really you're also making a people decision at the same time. And if you're not thinking about both, you're less likely to be successful with your technology decision. And just to give you an example of that, a brand that has invested in technology for 20 years, and I'll use Air France KLM because it's a public use case. And they just celebrated their success recently with ContentStack. And they were using two different really large content management systems, one at Air France and one at KLM. And they were under this mandate to bring the two together under one umbrella and under one CMS.

24:30And so they chose ContentStack to do that. If you think about the systems and processes and languages and tools and methodologies and cultures that have an impact on that, bringing them together under one umbrella, learning a new technology, also changing the process by which they do things, and then also making it consistent across two really large brands while the plane is still moving and people are still buying tickets and all that's still going is challenging. And they did that very methodically and spent time investing in the people and investing in their training and helping them to get excited about the journey so that everybody looked at it as like the other side of this is going to be a big celebration rather than this sucks, that's hard, this is difficult.

25:14It's more like we're learning, we're learning, we're learning and we're going to win. And so it's really a lot of it is mindset and a lot of it is having the right team, people, resources, partners to be successful in doing it. Awesome. I'm looking forward to the full talk. I'll be there for that. So thank you for obviously putting this together and sharing that at Sass Talk. For those maybe that are listening who haven't been to Austin before, what's a couple of insider like Austin tips, things that people must do? I know like barbecues are like an obvious one, but something non-barbecue. Everybody loves barbecue.

25:57I'm a vegetarian, so I'll throw out the fact that the best thing to eat in Austin is a breakfast taco. You can't come to Austin and not have a breakfast taco. And breakfast tacos can be had 24 hours a day. So you can have a breakfast taco for lunch and it's totally cool. And very affordable as well. Very affordable. And they're available at the airport, but they're also available like at every coffee shop and store in town. It's just like a culture here. And of course, live music. We're known for live music. Austin claims to be the live music capital of the world. And certain streets, if you walk down 6th Street, for example, which is codenamed 36th because it gets rowdy late at night.

26:35is every bar has some live music going on almost every night of the week. So it's a really fun place to get some good music in. Yeah, definitely. I think there certainly has been the influence in us choosing Austin for Sastok in the fact that the city has good food, good culture, great people. I was going to say weird people, but, you know, it's part of the vibe there. great music, lots of nightlife. So lots of fun things to do and getting 1 ,500 SaaS founders and their teams together in a fun city. I think it's a nice recipe for learning, lifting your head up, coming to the conference, meeting a lot of good people, listening to some great content and continuing the fun in the evening while still doing some business, of course.

27:32So yeah, I'm very excited to come back and glad the rain is today, not next week. Hopefully it'll clear up for you all next week and it'll be nice and green. Yeah, fingers crossed. A couple of quick fire sort of questions for you before we wrap up. What's the best advice you've ever received? There's two, and I know rapid fire is only one, but I'm going to give you both. One is that you should not live your life asking for anything in return. You should live your life giving. and that's been really good for me. And I feel like my father taught me that, but I've also learned it from really successful people.

28:06And it's kind of the way I live my life. And then the other thing, which relates back to change management is really, I don't know if you've seen the pep talk that Kara Lawson, the coach at Duke University's women's basketball team gave. It's really good. It's on YouTube. It's that things never get easier. You just learn how to do hard better. And so do hard things. And that's something I use a lot when I talk to my team that, But things that, you know, if everybody could do, if it was easy, everybody could do it. But really doing things that are hard is where you learn resilience and grow. Yeah, I mean, I love both of those.