SaaStr 174: How To Make It Big In The US As A Non-US SaaS Startup, How To Manage Distributed Teams Effectively At Scale & How East Coast, West Coast and European VCs Fundamentally Differ In Mentality with Timo Rein, Founder & CEO @ Pipedrive

Timo Rein is the Founder & CEO @ Pipedrive, the startup that helps sales people focus on actions that close deals. To date, Timo has raised over $30m from the likes of Atomico, Bessemer Venture Partners, TransferWise Founder Taavet Hinrikus and Andy MCloughlin and has scaled the team to over 330 people across multiple continents. Prior to founding Pipedrive, Timo was a Partner @ Vain & Partners acting in a consultancy role on how to get the best ROI from your sales process and before that was himself a door-to-door salesman with SouthWestern Company selling high ACV products.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How Timo made his way into the world of SMB CRM with the founding of Pipedrive from the days of being a door-to-door salesman of high ACV products?
• Why did Timo choose to go global with Pipedrive from day 1? What are the benefits of founders having this global mindset from the start? What are Timo’s biggest learnings in terms of acquiring customers globally early on? What worked? What did not work? How did Timo think about pricing on an individual country perspective? What are the challenges with this?
• Having raised from both US and UK VCs, how does fundraising differ when comparing Europe to the US? If Timo had to say the West Coast, East Coast and European VCs each had one area they focus, what would that area be? What are the challenges with these inherent focus points? What advice would Timo have for foreign founders looking to make it big in the US?
• How does Timo look to manage a team so spread across the globe? What are the core challenges of this? What works? What does not work? What functions can be split up by geography? What must remain in one location? Now at 300 people, how does Pipedrive ensure for the same values fit when hiring at scale?
• Many VCs say with such low ACV and such high churn, the SMB market is too difficult. How does Timo respond to this? How does Timo think about ensuring the continuous refilling of top of funnel? How does Timo think about acquiring such small customers in a cost efficient manner?    

60 Second SaaStr?

1. What does Pipedrive look like at $100m ARR?
2. What keeps Timo up at night?
3. Who is Timo’s favourite angel investor?
4. What does Timo know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?

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Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Timo Rein