SaaStr 158: 3 Core Skills of The Best Performing SaaS CEOs & The Inflection Points In The Scaling of SaaS Teams & How To Mitigate Them with Mike McDerment, Founder & CEO @ Freshbooks

Mike McDerment is co-founder and CEO of FreshBooks, the #1 cloud-based accounting software designed exclusively for service-based small business owners. Starting from his parent’s basement, Mike has grown Freshbooks to more than 10m users worldwide and raising over $75m in VC funding from the likes of Accomplice and Georgian Partners. Mike is also the co-author of Breaking the Time Barrier, downloaded more than 250,000 downloads since its release.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Mike came to enter the world of SaaS with the founding of Freshbooks from his parent’s basement?
• Why does Mike disagree with the common notion of the “pivot”? How does Mike balance between realism when something is not working and vision?
• From Mike’s conversation with USV’s Fred Wilson, what does he believe are the 3 most important roles of the CEO?
• Why is the No 1 rule in SaaS, you do not replatform your software? What are the inherent dangers? How does it affect your ability to drive revenue? Where do most SaaS startups make big mistakes when replatforming?
• Where are the inflection points in SaaS team scaling? What is the biggest challenge at 20 people? How does collaboration change when your team hits 40 people? How can one maintain seamless communication when one hits 80 people?

60 Second SaaStr

1. Why is Mike so bullish on SaaS outside of Silicon Valley?
2. How does being outside the Valley affect his ability to hire?
3. What does Mike know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?

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Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Mike McDerment