BUILD
Listen to Season 7

For Season 7 of BUILD, we’re coming back to a topic we’ve become increasingly passionate about, product led growth. (You can catch up on Season 6 here.)

You’ll hear from leaders at prominent PLG companies like Zapier, Clearbit, GitLab and more about what they’ve done to build and scale their companies, advice they would give their younger selves and some pretty surprising fun facts. Happy Listening! 🎧


New This Week

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Featured This Week

The final episode of Season 7 features Tope Awotona, Founder & CEO of Calendly. He shares how they balance feedback with such an expansive user base, why he felt like he had an unfair advantage in the scheduling space and why they provide support even for free users.

Upcoming Guests
Who's on BUILD

This season features an amazing lineup of leaders from well-known product led growth businesses. You’ll learn about the motivation behind building these companies, how they think about data and experimentation and the PLG principles they’ve embraced since the beginning. 

Episode Guide
<p style="line-height:1.4">Wade Foster</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Co-Founder & CEO<br>Zapier</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Kyle Poyar</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">VP of Market Strategy<br>OpenView</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Sean Fanningr</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">VP of Market Strategy<br>OpenView</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Tom Kelly</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Senior Director Product Marketing<br>NetSuite</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Rajat Bhargava</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Co-Founder & CEO<br>JumpCloud</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Alex MacCaw</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Co-Founder & CEO<br>Clearbit</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Ashik Ahmed</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">CEO, CTO & Co-Founder<br>Deputy</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Sid Sijbrandij</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Co-Founder & CEO<br>GitLab</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Alexandros Marinos</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Founder & CEO<br>Balena</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Todd Olson</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Founder & CEO<br>Pendo</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Abhinav Asthana</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Founder & CEO<br>Postman</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Eugenio Pace</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Co-Founder & CEO<br>Auth0</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Vlad Magdalin</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Co-Founder & CEO<br>Webflow</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Tope Awotona</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Founder & CEO<br>Calendly</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">Liat Bycel</p>
<p style="line-height:1.4">VP of Customer Engagement<br>Airtable</p>
Episode Guide
BUILD: Episode 68
BUILD: Episode 69
BUILD: Episode 70
BUILD: Episode 71
BUILD: Episode 72
BUILD: Episode 73
BUILD: Episode 74
BUILD: Episode 75
BUILD: Episode 76
BUILD: Episode 77
BUILD: Episode 78
BUILD: Episode 79
BUILD: Episode 80
Meet the Host
Wade Foster
<p style="line-height:2">BUILDing Zapier with Wade Foster</p>

Season 7 of BUILD focuses on the design principles and practices behind market leading product led growth companies. We're kicking it off with the CEO and Co-Founder of Zapier, Wade Foster. Find out why Wade puts such a strong emphasis on the customer and how Zapier has managed to scale quickly with capital efficiency.


Sean Fanning, Kyle Poyar & Tom Kelly
<p style="line-height:2">OpenView's 2019 Expansion SaaS Benchmarks</p>

Our 2019 Expansion SaaS Benchmarks are live! This year we surveyed over 500 companies, ranging from pre-revenue to $150M+ ARR with nearly half of respondents coming from outside the U.S. On this episode, OV’s Kyle Poyar and Sean Fanning along with NetSuite’s Tom Kelly, share the findings and some advice for founders. Follow along here.


Rajat Bhargava
<p style="line-height:2">JumpCloud’s Core Values with Rajat Bhargava</p>

JumpCloud is an OpenView portfolio company that's focused on building the next generation of directory services. Rajat Bhargava, Co-founder and CEO, shares what they value most as a company and the two things he looks for when building a new business.


Alex MacCaw
<p style="line-height:2">The 6 Principles of Clearbit</p>

Alex MacCaw is the Co-founder, CEO and office DJ for Clearbit. Find out how he learned to love management, the most difficult period he went through as a CEO and their biggest competitive advantage as a company (spoiler: it has to do with their people).


Ashik Ahmed
<p style="line-height:2">Deputy's Journey to Serving 160,000+ Businesses</p>

This episode features Ashik Ahmed, CEO, CTO and Co-founder of OV portfolio company, Deputy. Find out how product led growth fueled their expansion into more than 100 countries and how flying inspired him to believe in this model. You'll also find out how their growth team operates and the best business advice he's ever received.


Sid Sijbrandij
<p style="line-height:2">Inside GitLab's Values: Results, Iteration & Transparency</p>

On this episode, Sid Sijbrandij, Co-founder & CEO of GitLab, shares their top three values and how they came to be. Find out why they're so public about how the company operates and Sid's perspective on why values shouldn't be universally positive. You'll also get a sense of what they do to ship more features every month than some competitors do in a full year.


Eugenio Pace
<p style="line-height:2">How Auth0 Scales with Simplicity</p>

Eugenio Pace is the Co-founder & CEO of Auth0. Fundamentally, their product answers two questions: Are you who you say you are, and what can you do? Find out how they've managed to answer these questions in a way that gives users the flexibility to tailor the solution to their specific needs with the simplicity to scale.


Todd Olson
<p style="line-height:2">Pendo's Culture and the Power of the Product Experience</p>

Pendo was founded on three main principles: delivering an incredible product, putting customers first and creating a culture that attracts the best people possible. Todd Olson, Founder & CEO, shares exactly how they've executed on each principle and how the product empowers customers to deliver amazing experiences to their users.


Alex Marinos
<p style="line-height:2">Systems Engineering for Platforms & Organizations</p>

This episode of BUILD features Alex Marinos, Founder & CEO of one of the newest members of the OV portfolio, balena. Find out how they pivoted to a product led growth strategy and the solution they built to minimize pain for employees as a distributed team.


Liat Bycel
<p style="line-height:2">How Airtable Navigates Hypergrowth with the Customer First</p>

Liat Bycel is the VP of Customer Engagement at Airtable. She shares how they made the decision to bring all customer-facing teams under one roof and how that decision has furthered their growth and made the customer experience more cohesive.


Abhinav Asthana
<p style="line-height:2">The Road to 7,000,000+ Users with Postman</p>

Abhinav Asthana is the Co-founder & CEO of Postman, a collaborative environment for API development that has scaled to more than 7 million users. Abhinav shares how they balance empathy and data, and how a product led growth approach leads to fundamentally better products.


Vlad Magdalin
<p style="line-height:2">Webflow's Mission to Empower as Many People as Possible</p>

This episode features Vlad Magdalin, Co-founder & CEO of Webflow, a business that took four tries to get off the ground. Find out how they think about creating a product that's applicable to as many people as possible and why adding incremental value is more important than shipping a perfect product.


Tope Awotona
<p style="line-height:2">How Calendly Serves 5,000,000 People on a Monthly Basis</p>

The final episode of Season 7 features Tope Awotona, Founder & CEO of Calendly. He shares how they balance feedback with such an expansive user base, why he felt like he had an unfair advantage in the scheduling space and why they provide support even for free users.


Mackey Craven

Mackey is a Partner at OpenView focusing on enterprise infrastructure and data-driven application software. Prior to joining OpenView, Mackey was an Associate at Bessemer Venture Partners focusing on investments in cloud computing, consumer Internet and data infrastructure. At Bessemer, Mackey was a Board Observer at Twitch (acquired by Amazon), Zapier, Xtime (acquired by Cox Automotive), and Apperian (acquired by Arxan), and was involved with Bessemer’s investments in Infinio, Liazon (acquired by Towers Watson), and Intigua.

Connect with Mackey on LinkedIn.

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