Pieterjan Bouten, co-founder of Showpad, analyzes market trends and remaining headroom in the sales enablement software industry.
Insight
Bouten: Strong competitors help create categories by spending VC dollars on evangelism
“I think here it's really important when creating a category, it's actually good to have some really strong and good competitors. I actually think it's, it really helps to, you know, you can basically use some of their VC dollars as well to eventualize the spac…”
Disclosure
Bouten: Replaced entire GTM leadership at once, resulting in 18 direct reports
“At some point basically the entire go-to-market leadership, I decided to replace them, but I didn't have, like, any new people yet. So, I ended up with, like, 18 direct reports.”
Insight
Bouten: Category classification aids sales and fundraising, but takes immense time
“You know, if people are able to put your company, your software into a category, it actually helps with selling more deals, it helps with closing funding rounds, because people have a better understanding in which space you're in. It impacts, ah, attracting ce…”
Disclosure
Showpad's gross churn jumped from 8% to 15-16% following LearnCore deal
“Up until that point, always had, like, single digit gross churn amazing net retention, but suddenly, like, Or gross churn was like double digits. It was like, we had a year of like, you know, going from like eight percent to like 15 or 16% because we were chur…”
Insight
Bouten: Retraining 100+ GTM Staff for Post-M&A Platform Shifts Is Severely Underestimated
“The challenge is if you at that At that time, if you have, like, more than a hundred people in your go-to-market organization who have, for the last couple of years, have been going to market with a certain message, with a certain, you know, how the way, how w…”
Prediction Partly held up
Bouten: Showpad should cross $100M ARR by end of 2022
“Since then we've grown the company by the end of the year, we should cross that magical one hundred million dollar ARR mark.”