Dec 11, 2017 · 22m · top-founders
870 SaaS: $190m Raised, 150 Customers, $60m+ ARR for Supply Chain Management
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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, TradeShift CEO Christian Lanng breaks down how the cloud supply chain platform scaled past $60 million in ARR by raising $190 million, securing multi-million dollar enterprise contracts, and leveraging BPO partner distribution channels.
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 42% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 4.0 Guest teaching 2.0 Guest disagreement 1.0 Nathan pushing back 2.8
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 2:48 Rejecting legacy supplier-charging models
Christian forcefully dismisses the traditional industry practice of monetizing suppliers, comparing it mockingly to charging users to upload photos to Facebook.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 11:26 Interrupting to demand specific payback leversNathan cuts Christian off mid-sentence to insist on knowing whether payback period reduction came from raising prices or cutting acquisition costs.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 17:37 Explaining the go-live trough and conversion dynamicsChristian educates the audience on why customer onboarding hits an inevitable low point right at go-live and how hyper-care around early supplier transaction volume prevents churn.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 13:58 Deconstructing channel partner margin structureNathan demonstrates sharp domain expertise by breaking down the differing margin profiles between system integrator professional services and SaaS software, drawing direct parallels to HubSpot's ecosystem.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Host Welcome and getlatka.com Announcement | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | Nathan introduces the show and his guest with an extensive bio, making a light remark about corporate jargon moving slowly, which Christian amicably clarifies. | |
| Monetization Model, Enterprise ACV, and Expansion through Apps | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Nathan pushes Christian to provide concrete ACV numbers rather than generic ranges and questions how expansion works with a flat fee. Christian clarifies that enterprise buyers pay rather than suppliers, comparing supplier fees to Facebook charging for photos. | |
| Growth Trajectory, Contract Expansion, and Avoiding the Mid-Market Death Zone | 5 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Nathan and Christian align on enterprise sales strategies, with Nathan asserting that low-price B2B SaaS models fail in public markets and Christian adding Greylock's mid-market death zone analysis. | |
| Raising $190M and the Strategic Value of Capital in B2B | 6 | 3 | 1 | 5 | Nathan cuts in to press Christian on the exact operational levers used to compress payback from 18 to 12 months. Nathan demonstrates SaaS expertise by analyzing partner margins versus platform gross margins and drawing parallels to HubSpot's model. | |
| High-Touch Enterprise Sales Execution and Global Team Structure | 5 | 3 | 1 | 3 | Christian outlines his company's zero churn on live accounts and explains the post-sale drop in customer sentiment. Nathan breaks down the mathematical and strategic validity of tracking activation over mere sales bookings. | |
| Scaling Past $60M ARR Toward the $100M Milestone | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Nathan calculates ARR based on customer counts and ACV, confirming Christian is over $60M ARR and pressing on the timeline to hit $100M before moving through the Famous Five. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Tradeshift charges enterprise buyers, keeping its platform free for suppliers
“So, I mean, in this industry, there's for many years been this idea that the supplier should pay for it, but it doesn't really make any sense. The suppliers are trying to get online. The suppliers are trying to do business. The buyers are the one that really g…”
Tradeshift's average enterprise ACV starts at $500K
“Oh, I would say we're probably in the high end of the public listed SAS B to B companies. So something like five on the K CV annual contract value and upwards.”
Change management costs enterprises more than the software itself
“And the reason that makes a ton of sense is for enterprise customer, the most expensive part is actually not the software. It's the change management.”
Most Tradeshift enterprise contracts expand to over $1 million ACV
“And then over time of the contract, we see most contracts move into the one, 1.5 million dollar range, some even more, right?”
Selling a $50K enterprise deal takes the same time as $500K
“What you find is it's the same sales cycle to sell 50 K to enterprise. This is to sell 500 K. The only difference is really how much revenue capture, right?”
Latka: No top public B2B SaaS company caps pricing at $100/mo
“Well, I challenge you to go find any publicly traded B to B SAS company that's done very, very well that has as their highest price point, a hundred bucks per month. You won't find any.”
B2B software must target high volume or enterprise, avoiding mid-market
“No touch, low conversion cost, digital sales, or you want to do very high value capture enterprise sales force and the death zone is the middle.”
B2B software success directly correlates with access to capital
“Look in B to B, capital is everything. You can literally draw a straight line between the best performing B to B public companies today and how much capital they have access to.”
Tradeshift's enterprise CAC payback period is roughly 12 months
“We're pretty much on par that an enterprise account, It costs essentially first year revenue before you before alive, right? So it's a one-to-one factor.”
Half of Tradeshift's revenue comes through channel partners
“50% of our revenue today arrived through partners, and the brilliant thing about partners is they typically already have, and this is BPOs, SIs, you know, they have a relationship with the customer.”
Tradeshift uses Palantir-style forward-deployed engineering for pre-sales
“Where we spend the time is with the salespeople. We do a lot, almost like Palantir did in the early days. So for what deployed in years, prototyping with the customer, going out and showing concepts for what it can be and what it can look like.”
Tradeshift has 600 employees, with one-third in sales
“So we totally, we are out 600 people doubling roughly year over year. And right now around a third of that is our sales force, right?”
Tradeshift has never lost a customer after go-live
“We never, ever lost a customer that got on live.”
SaaS customer sentiment hits its absolute lowest point at go-live
“Every sales SaaS account goes through, like a value, it's almost like the hype cycle. In the beginning, you have the honeymoon, everybody's happy you've done the sale, and the lowest, absolute lowest point in that journey is go live. Because that's where all t…”