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: Customer Success Belongs in Sales Rather Than COGS
“Customer success, in my opinion, does not belong in COGS. They, it belongs in sales. And most companies will put customer success in sales.”
Kellogg: SaaS Companies Experiencing Mid-Contract Churn Should Stop Multi-Year Deals
“To a certain extent, I'd also stop doing multi-year deals, because if you're giving someone a price lock for a multi-year deal and they're not renewing, you gave something and got nothing.”
Unchanneled venture capital board members will pattern-match a startup to death
“And one of the things VCs do is pattern match, and if you don't channel their energy, you are likely to be pattern matched to death.”
Debates over being product- or sales-driven are purely internal company politics
“The last three I just exclude is politics, period. Because what you're saying is you want your function to be more important than the other function.”
Dave Kellogg: Analyzing sector performance is low-hanging fruit for efficient growth
“The low-hanging fruit on efficient growth is a dispassionate, calm analysis of what sectors do we sell to.”
Kellogg: Marketers focus on correctness while salespeople navigate room politics
“Now, I think the difference between a salesperson and a marketing person is I tended to be more theoretical. What is correct? What is right? Whereas a seller is reading the room very closely. Who cares about what? Who has what interests?”
Kellogg: Investors need compound metrics for screening; operators need atomic metrics for fixing
“If I were screening companies I would, I tend to want to use compound metrics. The more I'm trying to fix broken things, the more I want atomic metrics.”
Kellogg: Sales reviews must be split into three distinct, specialized calls
“In my world, there's three different types of calls. Let me just define them. I think the There's a forecast call, there's a pipeline scrub, and there's a deal review. Purpose of forecast call is to come up with a forecast. Should be all numbers. One of my sid…”
Kellogg: Sales teams must update close plans whenever deal excuses arise
“By the way, everyone should have a closed plan, and every time you hear one of those excuses, it should go on in the closed plan.”
Dave Kellogg: Selling through curiosity works better than trying to act smart
“Selling through curiosity is just amazing, because most salespeople are, in some ways, they're too busy trying to prove how smart they are, be tough and confident, and it's just so humble a place to come from”
Kellogg: Enterprise sales teams must draw a firm line on discounts
“There's a great metaphor, Harry, which is when do you stop squeezing a wet rag? When the water stops coming out, right? So as long as there's water coming out, I'm going to keep squeezing, and then even then, when the water stops coming out, what do you do? On…”
Kellogg: Vertical sales strategies succeed despite higher implementation costs
“Look, vertical strategies work, because the people like me effect, they're inherently limited, and they're a little bit high cost, because you now have to learn a lot about all your customers in that industry”
Dave Kellogg: AI sales tools market will consolidate within 18 months
“So if I were a founder of one of these companies, I'd be very aggressive right now to get myself known and established in the market, because this market will organize, right? We're in the chaos phase of the market, and so from the vendor side, this will organ…”
Kellogg: Expanding into Enterprise Fails When Founders Ignore Enterprise Requirements
“They think that the product will work in enterprise without understanding the requirements.”
Kellogg: Asking 'Why' Questions Reveals Whether Sales VPs Drove Past Success
“I think if you ask why questions about how decisions got made, you tend to find out if they were making them.”
Kellogg: The most common metric deception in SaaS is cherry-picking
“The most common form of misleading is what I call cherry picking, right? You just don't put up the bad numbers, right? You put up different numbers every quarter.”
Kellogg: A 90% confidence sales forecast allows missing once every 2.5 years
“And when I give the forecast to the board, I want to give a 90% confidence interval. So I'm giving them the lower bound of a 90% confidence interval. Now people hate that. And if people get scared when you use those words, I have advice. Just say you get to mi…”
Kellogg: Board members recalculating metrics indicates broken trust in management
“I have one of my MBA is recalculate everything. And I'm like, this is a symptom of a very serious problem, right? We don't trust the management team to present the correct numbers. We don't correct them to do the trust them to do the right formulas.”
Kellogg: Missing ARR while pipeline metrics look good signals measurement failure
“If the top two important numbers are not being achieved and you can't see why in all the other numbers, I can't diagnose what the problem is, but I can tell you have a problem and it does happen from time to time.”
Kellogg: Only CFO and RevOps knowing metrics signals organizational innumeracy
“The symptom is very simple. You go to a board meeting or QBR or management meeting, and the only two people who ever asked numbers, answer numbers questions are the CFO and the head of rev ops.”
Kellogg: High growth increases enterprise SaaS CAC due to ramping resources
“That's going to drive your CAC up because CAC is a function of growth rate in enterprise software because you're carrying unproductive slash ramping resources, right?”
Kellogg: SaaS Benchmarks Should Be Segmented by Company Aspiration
“I actually think the best way to segment them is by aspiration. That, that if we could, and nobody offers these yet, but I want you to just consider this concept that we should segment benchmarks by aspiration, which is if I want to sell for 18 times EBITDA in…”
Kellogg: Competitor Used One-Dollar Renewals to Manipulate Churn Metrics
“I competed against the company that did one dollar renewals. And they would juice their churn rate so they could offset their SAS metrics.”
Kellogg: Establishing SaaS metric foundations takes quarters, not 30 days
“Even layer one has taken me with certain companies I work with quarters. And I walk in every time I have this kind of entrepreneurial blind spot going, this is going to be easy. Me, head of FP&A, CFO, we'll get this nailed in 30 days, 60 days. Every time I do …”
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 → |