Leyla Seka is the executive vice president of the Salesforce Mobile platform experience. Over Leyla’s incredible 11 year journey with Salesforce she has seen the team scale from 1,800 to over 40,000 and revenue scale from $500m to over $16Bn. In Leyla’s role today, she leads the charge on extending the power of Salesforce with a full portfolio of mobile apps, and is responsible for driving product, go-to-market and other key programs around Salesforce’s mobile offerings. Prior to her current role, Leyla was executive vice president of the Salesforce AppExchange, where she launched a refreshed AppExchange storefront, a new partner program, and built an entire AppExchange-focused team, resulting in more than 4,000 solutions, installed nearly 6 million times. Beyond her day-to-day role, Leyla is also the executive sponsor of BOLDforce, Salesforce’s organization for expanding and empowering the black community at Salesforce.
In Today’s Episode We Discuss:
How Leyla made her way into the world of SaaS with Salesforce when it had 1,800 people and $500m in revenue? What were Leyla’s biggest learnings on people and business model through seeing the first hand hyper-scaling of Salesforce from $500m to $16Bn? How did Leyla evolve and scale as a leader herself in those 11 years? What advice does Leyla give to young people considering whether to found a startup, join a startup or join a hyper-growth company? Where do things start to break in the scaling of SaaS companies? What needs to be put in place to prepare for hyper-scale? What are the commonalities of where many founders go wrong in the scaling process? What does Leyla mean when she says, “growing up in product, you have to lead through influence”? How does Leyla think this influence can be created and maintained? How does Leyla think about the balance between effective influence and excessive influence? Why does Leyla believe that, “you can teach skills but you cannot teach empathy”? What have been her learnings from scaling teams when it comes to hiring and detecting candidates with true empathy? What can one do to nurture that empathy in the culture of the company?60 Second SaaStr:
What does Leyla know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning? What is the hardest element of Leyla’s role at Salesforce today? What does Leyla believe in SaaS that most around her disbelieve?If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:
Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Leyla Seka
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SaaStr 407: The Secrets of Market Timing and How to Develop the Right Idea, at the Right Time with Allen Gannett, Author of the Creative Curve
SaaStr 406: Notion's Head of Customer Experience, Kate Taylor on How To Approach Delegation at Scale, How Leaders Can Truly Empower Their Team Members & The Role of Sales in a World of Product-Led Gro
SaaStr 405: 6 Learnings on Scaling to $100M ARR with Bernadette Nixon, CEO @ Algolia and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStr
SaaStr 404: The Secrets To Managing in All Directions with Arquay Harris, Sr. Director Engineering @ Slack
SaaStr 403: Loom's VP Sales, Sam Taylor on Sales' Role in a Product-Led-Growth Organisation, How Sales Can Most Effectively Work With Marketing & When To Hire Your First Reps When Selling Bottoms Up
SaaStr 402: Customers Want Value + Simplicity: The Must Haves to Deliver with Marten Mickos, CEO @ HackerOne
SaaStr 401: The Secrets To Doing Freemium and Sales-Driven Sales at the Same Time with MixMax CEO, Olof Mathe
SaaStr 400: The Future of Digital Events with Ben Hindman, Co-Founder & CEO @ Splash and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStr
SaaStr 399: Four Steps to Scaling to $250M, While Keeping Community at Your Center with Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO @ Stack Overflow
SaaStr 398: How To Price To Maximise For Upsell and Expansion, Why and When To Engage with Partner Programs & How To Correctly Segment Customer Profiles Most Efficiently with Rob Gonzalez, Founder & C
SaaStr 397: Going Upmarket and How Things Have Changed in a Decade, @ Trello, with Co-Founder Michael Pryor and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStr
SaaStr 396: Buying patterns in the Enterprise: CEOs and More- Who's Really Buying & Why with Godard Abel, Co-founder & CEO @ G2, Mike Weir, Chief Revenue Officer @ G2 and Samantha DeStefano, Vice Pres
SaaStr 395: Why Seat Based pricing Will Die and Volume Based Pricing Is Optimal, How To Structure Pipeline Meetings Most Effectively & How To Think Through Demand Gen Strategically with UserTesting CE
SaaStr 394: How to Hack Venture Capital with Sunil Dhaliwal, GP @ Amplify Partners and and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStr
SaaStr 393: 3 Secrets to Selling Up-Market with the Leaders of Fivetran, Stripe, and Docusign
SaaStr 392: 10 Simple Steps To Help Any Sales Exec Close More with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
SaaStr 391: The Secrets to Bootstrapping to $5M ARR in Less than a Year with Martha Bitar, CEO @ Flodesk
SaaStr 390: How To Crush It With Interactive Content, What Type, Where and When To Use It Most Efficiently and Where Many People Make Mistakes with Randy Rayess, Founder @ Outgrow
SaaStr 389: How To Really Disrupt the Big Guys With Free with Mikael Cho, CEO @ Unsplash and Kinsey Grant, Business Editor and Podcast Host @ Morning Brew
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