SaaStr 181: How To Gain Enterprise Clients As A Startup, How To Approach Multi-Year and Prepaid Deals with Those Mega Companies & How To Balance Fast Growth Expectations with Profitability with Jerry Jao, Founder & CEO @ Retention Science

Jerry Jao is the Founder & CEO @ Retention Science, the startup that brings intelligence to your marketing automation through artificial intelligence that delivers a personalized customer experience, at scale. To date, Jerry has raised over $10m in VC funding with Retention Science from great friends of the show in Forerunner Ventures, Upfront Ventures, Clark Landry, Andy Rankin and more fantastic names. Prior to founding Retention Science, Jerry founded two other e-Commerce marketing technologies and served as Strategic Innovation Officer to Clear Channel Radio. Jerry is also a Guest Lecturer at The Kellogg School of Management and sits on the board of Penango.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Jerry make his way into the world of SaaS with the founding of his first company? What have been the top 3 mistakes that Jerry has made since founding Retention Science?
• With P&G, Unilever and Olay all as enterprise clients, how did Jerry first sell into them as a small startup? What is required to give these large enterprises confidence in buying from startups? What does the perfect case study look like to convert these mega accounts? In the early days is it a quality or quantity of logos game?  
• How important is it for the founder to be really actively involved in the sales process to these mega corporations? How does Jerry divide his time now between new and existing customers, as well as team and investor management How does Jerry approach multi-year and prepaid deals with these incumbents? What is the line of reasoning for suggesting prepaid is fair?
• Retention Science have been profitable since 2018, how does Jerry look to balance the mindset of fast growth and profitability? How does Jerry think about payback period for enterprise sales reps with this profitability mindset? How does this affect his thoughts and views on internal asset allocation?

Jerry’s 60 Second SaaStr

1. A moment in Jerry’s life that has changed the way he thinks?
2. When I say success in SaaS who embodies this to Jerry?
3. What does Jerry know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?

Read the full transcript on our blog.

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Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Jerry Jao