SaaStr 132: Why The 1 Metric You Have To Know Is "Magic Number", Why Measuring The "Time To Money Is Crucial" & Why You Must Switch From Metrics to KPIs with Kurt Bilafer, CRO @ WePay

Kurt Bilafer is the CRO @ WePay, the most complete payments solution for platforms. To date, they have raised close to $75m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including Max Levchin and August Capital just to name a few. As for Kurt himself, prior to WePay he has had experience both in startups and large corporations with his founding of Pilot Software, sold to SAP in 2007, where he spent a further 7 years holding titles such as a Global Vice President of Sales and Director of Strategic Accounts.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Kurt make his way into the world of SaaS? What were Kurt’s big takeaways from seeing the internal machinations of SAP?
• What is the one metric that guides Kurt’s thinking? How can you calculate your “magic number” for your business? Why must SaaS founders switch from activity based metrics to KPI’s?
• How does Kurt assess scalability and repeatability of revenues? What is a reasonable ratio for sales and marketing expense to revenue?
• Why should SaaS founders focus on the LPI of “time to money”. How can they look to optimize this? How has Kurt seen the enterprise sales cycles change since his time with SAP?
• How does Kurt assess conflict within the sales and marketing teams and customer success and product teams? How can managers look to implement an element of prioritization into what sales teams submit to product teams?

60 Second SaaStr

1. What does Kurt know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
2. What is the worst piece of SaaS advice that Kurt commonly hears being given out?
3. What should one look for in their VP of Sales?
4. What mistake does Kurt see most in the world of SaaS?

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Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Kurt Bilafer