SaaStr 169: The Secret To Ensure High Conversion On Trials, How To Start and Scale A Remote Team Successfully & Lessons From Amazon and Netflix on A Culture of Achievement and Goal-setting with Kolton Andrus, Founder & CEO @ Gremlin

Kolton Andrus is the Founder & CEO @ Gremlin, the failure as a service startup finds weaknesses in your system before they cause problems. To date, they have raised over $8m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Mike Volpi @ Index Ventures and Mike Dauber @ Amplify Partners. Prior to Gremlin, Kolton was a Chaos Engineer at Netflix improving streaming reliability and operating the Edge services. Fun fact, Kolton also designed and built Netflix’s failure injection service. Before that he improved the performance and reliability of the Amazon Retail website. At both companies he has served as a ‘Call Leader’, managing the resolution of company-wide incidents.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How a conversation in the hallway of a conference with a VC gave Kolton the confidence that he could leave the corporate world of Netflix and Amazon and start a startup?
• What were Kolton’s biggest takeaways from seeing the first hand scaling of behemoths like Amazon and Netflix? How did they fundamentally alter how he views goal setting today? How does Kolton look to achieve the balance of ambitious goal setting without the team losing motivation if they do not hit the goals?
• Why does Kolton believe that a decentralised workforce is merely an evolution in how we do business? What are the core fundamentals to achieving success in creating and scaling a remote workforce? What have been some of the biggest challenges in structuring the team this way?
• What is the single biggest tip Kolton has for other founders in ensuring high conversion rates from trials? Where do most founders go wrong with this? Today, is engineering buy in the only necessity to succeed in a bottoms up sales world?  

60 Second SaaStr?

1. What does Kolton know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. If an investor can provide one thing, what is most important for Kolton?
3. What are Kolton’s favourite SaaS reading materials?
4. When is a stretch a stretch too far for a team member?

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Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Kolton Andrus