Dave Kellogg
Executive in Residence, Balderton Capital. On 3 shows, 7 appearances, plus 2 compilation re-airs not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executiveoperatorauthorinvestorhost@kellblog ↗LinkedIn ↗kellblog.com ↗
Dave Kellogg is an enterprise software executive who previously served as CEO of Host Analytics and MarkLogic, and CMO of Business Objects. He advises high-growth SaaS startups and publishes widely read analysis on go-to-market strategy and metrics on his site, Kellblog.
3shows
7appearances
161statements
7resolved
3supported
0contradicted
43%fully supported
24said about them ↓ Everything Dave Kellogg said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Kellogg: ARR is a fact while churn rates are an opinion
“There's a semi-famous quote that but cash is a fact, profit is an opinion. I feel the same way about ARR and churn, that ARR is a fact churn, And churn rates are an opinion.”
Kellogg: Net Dollar Retention Shows Almost Zero Correlation With SaaS Multiples
“The R squared is only .O six between net dollar retention and enterprise value to next 12 months revenue.”
Kellogg: NDR Is a Financing Enabler, Not a Valuation Driver
“So it's not a valuation driver. I now think of it as a financing enabler, right? Okay. So a higher one isn't necessarily by itself going to drive a higher valuation, but I could tell you if you don't have a high enough one, you're not going to be able to raise…”
Horizontal SaaS startups facing heavily funded rivals must out-raise them or pivot
“If you're in some horizontal platform category, people may throw hundreds of millions, maybe even billions, of VC at the category. And you don't get to not play. So, if you find yourself in this situation, it's probably a sign that you're in a really good cate…”
CEOs must proactively assign board members work or risk unhelpful meddling
“If I'm not keeping the board busy, Helping me drive the company, they are going to come in with ideas and ways to help that I may not find helpful.”
Startups must be publicly vision-driven, culturally customer-driven, and strategically competitor-driven
“Avoid this fake either or framing, which is you need to speak like you're vision driven. So when you're talking to customers and analysts, the markets, talk about the desired end state. Talk about the vision. Don't talk about competition. When you're building …”
Kellogg: Customer Success Should Not Report to Sales or the CRO
“By the way, for whatever it's worth, I don't actually think customer success should report to sales. I think that's a stress reaction to save money. I think the company hits a downturn. There's too much sales expense, which customer success is usually classifi…”
Kellogg: Startups Should Copy Standard Pricing Models Unless Disrupting
“Unless your business plan is predicated on price model disruption, do what everybody else does.”
Kellogg: Enterprise software manages pricing friction via consistency or complexity
“There's two ways to solve that problem. One is to have super consistent pricing, which in my experience in enterprise is very difficult. The other is to have very complicated pricing. So it's very hard for them to figure out who got the better deal.”
Kellogg: Ideal customer profile evolves from aspiration to regression
“An ICP, ideal customer profile. ICP starts out as an aspiration, and over time it becomes a regression, right?”
Kellogg: Good CAC ratio benchmark is 1.5 for enterprise, 1.0 for SMB
“I'd say a 1.5 or less is in enterprise. I mean, here we are back to your question. The bigger the deals, the more permission you have. So an enterprise, I might go one five. In SMB, I might go one O.”
Kellogg: SaaS operators should calculate CAC ratio with new ARR, not net new ARR
“As an operator, I actually just do it on new ARR. My first order CAC is just, it's not net new, because net new introduced churn. You just made my metric more complicated, right? You made it easier to cheat. You took away some of its meaning.”
Dave Kellogg: Churn forecasting is easier than new sales forecasting
“Churn forecasting to me is actually easier than new sales forecasting.”
Kellogg: A good sales forecast gently upslopes to actual sales, not quota
“And a good forecast looks like this, gently upsloping to the actual number you sell. Notice I've never talked about quota. Because forecast is not about quota.”
Kellogg: Pressuring reps into higher commits ruins sales forecasting accuracy
“Some sales managers use the forecast as a club to kind of push the reps around. Like if I could just in a moment of week is get you commit to one 20, then I can hold it against you for the rest of the quarter. First, I don't think that's great sales management…”
Dave Kellogg: Startups should hire sales reps in groups of three
“So I like hiring three at a time but not for the Hunger Games effect, for the controlled experiment effect.”
Dave Kellogg: Evaluating enterprise sales reps takes six to twelve months
“I would say somewhere between six and 12 months in enterprise.”
Kellogg: CEOs are negligent if not deeply involved in material quarterly deals
“As a CEO founder, I think you just need to look at the materiality of the deal to the quarter. And like, are you What's the word? But negligence in your duties. Like at some level, if the deal is material of the quarter, you better be in it deep.”
Kellogg: Sales reps' sole job is forecasting and closing on time
“You don't make the software. So your only job is to sell the software. You're not a technical resource. You don't help customers deploy. So this is kind of the, you had one job argument, right? Like you had one job. And it's like, let's just remember, that's w…”
Kellogg: Deal slips are only excusable due to unforeseen acts of God
“The company got acquired on the last day of the quarter, all purchasing got frozen. Okay! Right? That we couldn't have seen coming, right? But it needs to literally be that level of act of God, right, before It's before it's an excusable reason for a slip.”
Dave Kellogg: Using customer references as sales negotiating chips is flawed
“I don't love it as a negotiating chip because if I'm doing right by your business and if I'm delivering value and if we have a good relationship, you should do it anyway. And if you're only doing it because of a gun to your head, because you promised you'd do …”
Kellogg: Outbound sales worked significantly better four years ago than today
“I think Outbound actually worked better four years ago than it does today, because I think everyone's doing it, and people are getting flooded with it, and they don't like getting called on their cell phone, they're not answering their regular phone, and you c…”
Kellogg: Buyers purchase software when they see similar peers using it
“I mean, I can summarize all of Jeffrey Moore in one sentence, which is people buy when they think people like them use your solution, period.”
Kellogg: Expanding across verticals or use cases is high-friction for startups
“The other thing, so I imagine this all as a matrix of vertical versus use case, and every time you're hopping a cell, it's danger, right? Like you know how to sell the custom publishing use case to publishers. Can I sell it to airlines? First, the first one is…”
The other half of the tape: Dave Kellogg's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 24 times in 11 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 8Scott Beechuk 4Jason Lemkin 4Nathan Latka 2Bill Binch 2Sophie Chesters 1Doug Song 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the Official SaaStr Podcast 12
20VC 8
Top Founders 4
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 7 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- Ben Fiechtner: 12-Week Step-by-Step Framework to Crush Every Sales Quarter | E1185 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Mark Roberge: The Framework for How Startups Should Scale into the Enterprise -Stage 2 Capital|E1176 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Larry Shurtz: How to Hire, Train & Retain the Best Vertical Teams | E1151 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2022 13 mentions in 5 episodes 3 per episode
- Increasing Runway Without Sacrificing Growth with Norwest Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz
- 16 Ways to Level Up in 2022 with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin | SaaStr Software Community
- Largest SaaS Founder Event in Europe Will do $3m+ This Year, Starts Oct 17th!
- SaaS Secret Sauce: How the CEO/CRO Dynamic Drives Growth | Marketo’s Former EVP Sales Bill Binch
- 10 Lessons Learned Along the Path to $100M ARR | UserZoom's CEO and CMO | SaaStr Software Community
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2017 2 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Dave's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SAASTRLEDGER | Executive in Residence, Balderton Capital | 5 +2 | 111 | 50% 2/4 | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Executive in Residence, Balderton Capital | 1 | 40 | 50% 1/2 | full record on 20VC → |
| TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Executive in Residence, Balderton Capital | 1 | 10 | 0% 0/1 | full record on Top Founders → |