Oct 18, 2021 · 41m · top-founders
Can Mode Beat Looker? 140% Net Dollar Retention and 600+ Customers Say Yes!
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this interview with Nathan Latka, Mode CEO Derek Steer details the company's product philosophy, go-to-market overhaul, capital efficiency, and path to achieving top-tier net dollar retention.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 23% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 5.9 Guest teaching 4.3 Guest disagreement 2.3 Nathan pushing back 4.3
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 21:00 Derek rejects the premise that NDR fundamentals dictate valuations
Derek dismisses Nathan's claim that high net dollar retention is the primary valuation driver, arguing that market multiples are driven by hype and low interest rates.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 10:44 Nathan refuses to accept unclear technical pricing termsNathan halts Derek's explanation of Helix pricing to demand a clear explanation of how individual query thresholds differ from aggregate throughput.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 10:53 Derek explains memory limits versus monthly throughputDerek educates Nathan on database performance limits, explaining why pulling a 10GB single dataset into memory is restricted differently than monthly aggregate data volume.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 32:55 Nathan demonstrates domain expertise with revenue-per-employee dataNathan demonstrates SaaS metric authority by citing exact industry benchmarks ($90k vs $200k+ revenue per employee), which Derek admits his executive team was reviewing that week.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Derek Steer on Mode's Core Value Proposition | 4 | 3 | 1 | 3 | Nathan inquires about Mode's value proposition and recent headcount growth. Derek explains the expansion of their engineering, product, and design teams to support their technical complexity. | |
| Integrated Product Philosophy and User Seat Pricing | 5 | 5 | 3 | 4 | Nathan probes how Mode packages SQL, Python, and dashboards into different pricing tiers. Derek corrects the premise, explaining that Mode intentionally integrates these features into a single product rather than selling them à la carte. | |
| Monetizing Helix In-Memory Engine and Enterprise Features | 6 | 6 | 2 | 5 | Nathan challenges Derek on the distinction between throughput and data set size limits for the Helix in-memory engine. Derek clarifies how aggregate monthly bandwidth differs from single-query memory thresholds. | |
| Domain Acquisition, Viral Product Growth, and CS Evolution | 6 | 4 | 2 | 5 | Nathan pushes Derek on the cost of the mode.com domain and examines user ratios across accounts. Nathan catches a discrepancy between a 10:1 ratio mentioned earlier and Derek's 20:1 general benchmark, prompting Derek to explain organizational differences between tech and media companies. | |
| Pandemic Logo Churn and Rebounding Net Dollar Retention | 6 | 5 | 4 | 6 | Nathan presses Derek on logo count and pandemic churn numbers. When Nathan suggests NDR is the single biggest driver of private valuations, Derek pushes back, arguing that current market valuations are primarily driven by hype and excess capital rather than business fundamentals. | |
| Go-to-Market Overhaul and Sales Org Restructuring | 7 | 3 | 2 | 5 | Nathan methodically breaks down Mode's sales structure, mapping out quotas, OTE ratios, and headcount across BDRs, AEs, and customer success teams. Derek shares the strategic decision to scale BDRs to accelerate inbound conversion. | |
| Capital Efficiency, Market Valuations, and Future Fundraising | 8 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Nathan brings proprietary benchmark data to evaluate Mode's capital efficiency, highlighting that Mode generates over $200k in revenue per employee compared to the $90k VC-backed average. Derek validates that his leadership team actively manages against that metric. | |
| Executive Coaching and Strategic Realignment Facilitation | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Nathan asks Derek about executive coaching and leadership scaling as Mode approaches potential liquidity milestones. Derek outlines how bringing in strategic facilitators helped structure company-wide alignment and quarterly planning. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Mode refuses to unbundle SQL and Python features to preserve seamlessness
“I don't ever want to separate SQL from, you know, Python in mode because the point of the product is that you can move seamlessly between the two. If we break those into separate a la carte items, you know, I don't want our customers to have to choose.”
Steer: Looker and Tableau are Mode's most frequent competitors
“Yeah, those are the two that we see most frequently.”
Mode monetizes enterprise tiers by upselling security features like Okta SCIM
“From a feature perspective, the way that we upsell is on standard enterprise stuff like Okta skim.”
Mode bought mode.com before announcing Series D to avoid price gouging
“Well, we did it after the round before announcing the round. Which is the right time because like, you don't want someone to be able to go look up the financing amount and be like, these people can pay more.”
Steer: Mode has over 10,000 editor users across its customers
“It's above 10,000. It's not in the huge millions.”
Steer: Mature Mode deployments average 15 to 20 viewers per editor
“You're looking at, for most companies, right, even just a potential set of people, you're looking at between 15 to 20 viewers per editor at, like, a mature mode organization, and it's just based on team size and what's happening, right?”
Steer: Mode charges a flat list rate of $25 per user monthly
“Well, the thing is that by charging for viewers, we're able to lower the editor price too. So we charge one price across everyone, which is 300, a 10th of what I described to you. Right. So, so 25 dollars per user per month is the list rate.”
Mode operated without an experienced customer success leader for six years
“Like we introduced customer success as a department very late in mode's lifetime. And in fact, the old, the first true customer success leader who actually had customer success experience has been at the company for two years.”
Mode maintained >100% NDR in 2020 despite churning 20% of logos
“So even churning, you know, more than 20% of logos last year, we still had net dollar retention above a hundred because that's incredible. So the way that the product works, right? Like we've never had net retention under a hundred percent.”
Derek Steer predicts Mode will end 2021 with NDR exceeding 110%
“Yeah, I guess I'll just say we'll end the year way, way, way north of one 10, like in a true best in class net dollar retention.”
Mode grew as a 95% inbound business and remains primarily inbound
“At the time we were a 95 plus percent inbound business. We've added some outbound into that since, but not a ton, right? It's primarily an inbound business still.”
Steer: Workflow virality, not Mode's product alone, drives strong NDR
“A big part of what drives our strong net dollar retention is just the natural virality of the workflow, right? It's not even our product. It's the workflow that we are attached to.”
Derek Steer: $500M mega-rounds are defensive plays to declare category winners
“Once you get into rounds that are this, as big as like this five train round, you know, five hundred million bucks. Part of that investment is defensive where you were essentially declaring yourselves the winner of the space and like excluding other folks from…”
Steer: Startups should bring in strategy facilitators at 30 to 40 employees
“I think it's probably never too early for this to really like think deeply about the strategy and then kind of codify that into quarterly cadence and goal setting. I would start maybe as early as like 30 or 40 employees doing this kind of thing with a facilita…”