Kyle Porter
Founder & Chairman, Salesloft. On 2 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutive@KylePorter ↗LinkedIn ↗salesloft.com ↗
Kyle Porter co-founded Salesloft in 2011 and served as its long-time CEO, leading the sales engagement platform past $100M in ARR. He currently serves as the company's Chairman of the Board.
2shows
3appearances
37statements
5resolved
4supported
0contradicted
80%fully supported
29said about them ↓ Everything Kyle Porter said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Porter: Salesloft invented the sales engagement software marketplace
“We really invented this sales engagement marketplace, and what that means is companies come to codify their go-to marketplace.”
Porter: Salesloft will double ARR to $100M next year
“We'll hit a hundred million next year, sitting around the fifty million mark, growing a hundred percent, a 120% net expansion.”
Porter: We killed a $7M data product 18 months in to pivot
“Had a data product that went from zero to seven million in about 18 months that I canceled and completely changed the business on.”
Porter argues conversation intelligence is a feature, not a standalone software category.
“We didn't see that as a standalone category. It had a lot of dependencies on sales engagement on our product. So we went out, acquired one and built it.”
Porter claims Salesforce High Velocity Sales lags SalesLoft by three years.
“I mean, the Salesforce HVS is a, you know, one of 20 plus SKUs, right? And they've got Tableau to digest. Now they've got Slack to digest. It's going to be hard for them to, and they got a hundred million dollar deals they're out there doing with their other p…”
Porter predicts the digital sales system of record will replace traditional CRMs.
“Companies will have a digital sales you know, application of record, and, you know, that's not going to be the CRM because the CRM is really an enterprise database, but that digital sales application of record will cover all revenue activities from the top of …”
Porter claims startups betting heavily on AI for sales have mostly failed.
“You've seen a lot of companies that have really bet on AI for sales really heavily. You see a lot of marketing from them. You see less results and those companies have petered out or, you know, not really, you know, made a big impact.”
Porter: Salesloft's current round could be last before IPO
“All of our financial projections have us with the possibility of taking this round to be the last round. Now that doesn't mean we might not raise again, depending upon the market.”
Porter: Salesloft won't file for IPO until hitting $140M–$150M ARR
“I don't think we would look at filing at that level when we were, if we were there and want to do that, I think it'd probably be one 41 50 where you start having this conversation.”
Porter: Sponsoring Sales Hacker conferences didn't yield superior ROI
“Oh, that wasn't really a distribution channel for us. That was just a content marketplace. I mean, we paid, like we sponsored their conferences and went to their conferences, but they weren't that much. They weren't like Higher ROI than the other conferences t…”
Porter: Outreach's CEO and Sales Hacker cross-invested before their acquisition
“I think Manny I think they were investors in each other's businesses. So that, that was kind of already baked in from early on.”
Porter: We are not building Salesloft to sell it
“Not in acquisitions talks with anyone. We're not building this business to sell it.”
Porter shut down SalesLoft's initial product despite hitting $7.5M in revenue.
“We were leveraging data that existed on social media to help companies generate lists of contacts to communicate with. And we knew from the beginning that this wasn't the long-term play for us, but it went from zero to four million in less than two years. And …”
Porter jokes VCs constantly claim AI in sales is two years away.
“If you go back to every, you know, time we've sat in an investor's office and raised a round of capital, you know, going back five, six years ago, the investors would say something along the lines of, you know, AI is not here right now for sales, but it will b…”
Porter aims to keep SalesLoft bookings from existing customers under 50%.
“Well, first on the mix on the mix, we want to be less than 50% bookings from current customers to just kind of give you that mixed perspective.”
SalesLoft requires specific user engagement metrics to mark implementations complete.
“That's why we have, you know, we really harp on having graduation metrics. When these metrics and milestones are hit engagement across users, volume of usage of these modules in the product, when those get hit, then that's a graduation date, and that's when im…”
Porter argues sales personalization should focus on job objectives, not shared trivia.
“And you see a lot of junk of like, you know, we shared the same high school, or I like this football team, and that stuff's like personalization, but it's not relevant to them achieving the objectives of their job. So what we like to do is coach our customers …”
Porter: Salesloft customer contract values span from $15K to $1M
“So it's everything from a 15 K customer to a million dollar customer.”
Porter: Personally closed around $150k ARR before hiring first Salesloft rep
“Yeah, I don't remember the exact number. I would say it's probably somewhere around A hundred and 150 K ARR, something like that.”
Porter: Salesloft did $200k ARR on its new product in 2015
“Cause in 2015, we were 200 K on the new product.”
Porter: Salesloft bookings are a 50/50 split between new and existing customers
“And we're doing about 50, 50 on net new logo bookings and current customer bookings today.”
Porter: Salesloft operates roughly 2 AEs per SDR in enterprise
“As we brought on Sean Murray to run sales, I think it's more balanced to closer to I think it's a two to one, two AEs to one SDR in the enterprise. And it's like three AEs to two SDRs in the commercial market. So I think that's probably roughly.”
Porter: Salesloft Acquired Conversation Intelligence Startup Note Ninja
“We did acquire a company last year. We bought a company called note ninja that played in the conversation intelligence space. So competitors of that product would be like chorus and gong. You might be aware of them. So we rolled that into sales loft and that's…”
The other half of the tape: Kyle Porter's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 26 times in 15 episodes across the shows. 3 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Jason Lemkin 7David Cummings 7Nathan Latka 4Dave Curry 2Chris Federspiel 2Pete Kazanjy 1Kyle Norton 1
Statements about Kyle Porter, by other people (3)
Lemkin: Salesloft abandoned $7M in revenue after LinkedIn threatened litigation
“His first product, before Salesoft was the product that it stayed, a different product called Prospector that had seven million in revenue. LinkedIn threatened to sue them, and they had to abandon seven million revenue and start from scratch.”
Latka: Kyle Porter's Salesloft Has an $80M War Chest
“Kyle Porter right there with them with an eighty million dollar war chest to go after it as well.”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the Official SaaStr Podcast 18
Top Founders 8
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 6 mentions in 5 episodes 1 per episode
- Pivot City! How we pivoted 6 times on our way to $20m in revenue
- Why the Future of Customer Success, Sales & Marketing Has Changed with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin
- The Most Important SaaS Metrics with Monday.com Co-Founders and SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin
- Why You're Unfundable Today: The Cold, Hard Truths About SaaS Part 2 with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin
- Investing and Venture Capital in 2023 | SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin + Atrium Founder/CRO Pete Kazanjy
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2022 2 mentions in 1 episode
2021 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- Nick Mehta CEO Gainsight + Jason Lemkin CEO SaaStr on "The Latest in Leveling Up Customer Success"
- How He Built The Largest Rev Ops Community In The World (and $500k of revenue!)
- Former Top Sales Rep Will Help You Hire First SDR at Your SaaS Company for $2,500/mo
- every mention in 2021, scene by scene →
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 7 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Kyle's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SAASTRLEDGER | Founder & Chairman, Salesloft | 2 | 20 | 100% 2/2 | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |
| TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Founder & Chairman, Salesloft | 1 | 17 | 67% 2/3 | full record on Top Founders → |