Everything Ara Mahdessian said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Mahdessian: Product quality drives customer success more than CSMs
“The customer success, by the way, doesn't happen just from customer success teams. There's only so much a customer success manager can do. If the product isn't good enough, like how many workarounds is a CSM going to advise each customer on if the product does…”
Mahdessian: Entering new markets or launching products requires founder leadership
“Anytime you're doing something new, going up market, going down market, building a new product, going into a new customer segment, you know, you're going from, you know, residential to commercial, or you're going from, I don't know, plumbing to roofing. I thin…”
Ara Mahdessian: Very few software companies successfully switch market segments
“Very few software companies have successfully gone from down market to up market. And very few have gone from up market down market. So it is just very hard to do.”
Mahdessian: Build second products immediately after achieving product-market fit
“As soon as the product You are currently building has great product market fit. You have a high degree of success with customers that buy your current product. Then I think you should absolutely, you know, entertain the idea of building the next product.”
Ara Mahdessian: ServiceTitan Should Have Launched Payments Earlier
“Yeah, I would say that was an example of us not seeing the opportunity to build a great payment solution. And we should have done it earlier.”
Mahdessian: Doubts about executive hires are always justified
“In every case where there was doubt about an individual, that doubt has it every single time. Proven to be justified. And it turned out that that person was the wrong guy. It has never happened where given an extra six months, nine months, there's been some tr…”
Mahdessian: Great leadership relies on one strategy choice and hundreds of execution decisions
“So great leadership is about one thing. Deliver extraordinary outcomes. That typically involves one decision about where to play. Successfully executing where to play involves hundreds of great decisions on execution.”
Mahdessian: All B2B software purchases are driven strictly by ROI
“So this applies to all B to B software. It's ultimately all about ROI. The only reason the business spends any money on anything is because there was this expectation. Of, I am going to get some very significant return in exchange for some, you know, significa…”
ServiceTitan leads sales pitches with its founding story before focusing on ROI
“In our pitch, we lead with our founding story. There's a lot more credibility that it establishes I think behind anything we say following that, but the rest of the quote unquote pitch, the product demonstration is all ROI.”
Mahdessian: ServiceTitan prices products based on estimated customer ROI
“In any product that we are building, we always envision the ROI case of roughly How much ROI do we think this can generate for the customer? And then depending on confidence rate in that ROI, we will then determine what percentage of that ROI we think, you kno…”
Ara Mahdessian: Customer-Pull Expansion Beats Brute-Forcing New Markets
“Expanding into new customer segment, like going up market, down market, going residential to commercial, going into a new trade. Most of those, I think we got the timing right. When we're being pulled into those markets, it's a lot easier than trying to brute …”
Mahdessian: Raising a Family as an Immigrant Is Harder Than Building a Startup
“As hard as building and operating a startup is, I suspect that is significantly harder.”
Mahdessian: ServiceTitan took over a decade to achieve success
“For us, it was similar. The overnight success story, that overnight piece was like over a decade long.”
Mahdessian: Knowing the difficulty beforehand might have stopped him starting ServiceTitan
“I'm almost glad I didn't know how hard it would be because there's a good chance I may not have done it.”
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