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
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
SaaStr 388: Okta CMO, Ryan Carlson on How To Measure Marketing Attribution Effectively, Why People Think About Category Creation Incorrectly Today & How You Have To Think Through The Product vs The Co
SaaStr 387: Where Product Development is Going in 2021 with Nick Mehta, CEO @ Gainsight and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStr
SaaStr 386: How to Win When There are 1000 Players in Your Market with Adam Blitzer, EVP & GM @ Salesforce Digital Marketing Cloud
SaaStr 385: How To Approach Core Product Decisions in SaaS, Why Storytelling is a Lost Art in SaaS & How Product and Marketing Can Work Together Most Efficiently with Paul Rosania, Founder & CEO @ Bal
SaaStr 384: When to Launch a Second Product with Dharmesh Shah CTO and Co-Founder @ Hubspot and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStr
SaaStr 383: Growing Product and Engineering Orgs from Zero to IPO with Nick Caldwell, VP of Engineering @ Twitter, and Tomasz Tunguz, Managing Director @ Redpoint Ventures
SaaStr 382: What's Next For B2B and Cloud Events in 2021 with Amelia Ibarra, SVP & GM @ SaaStr, and Alon Alroy, Co-Founder & CMO @ Bizzabo
SaaStr 381: Churn is dead. Long Live Net Dollar Retention Rate with Dave Kellogg, Principal @ Kellogg Consulting
SaaStr 380: How To Effectively Sell Into Mid-Market, Why SEO Is The Best Kept Secret In SaaS & How To Show Credibility To Enterprise Customers as a Startup
SaaStr 379: The Top 10 Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring Their First Sales Team with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
SaaStr 378: The 5 Things That Kill Startups After Their Seed Rounds and How to Avoid them with Michael Seibel, CEO @ Y Combinator
SaaStr 377: Hashicorp CEO Dave McJannet on Scaling Remote Teams; What Breaks and When, How To Successfully Execute Multi-Product Strategies and How Leadership Style Evolves with Company Stage
SaaStr 376: 10 Mistakes the CEO of ZoomInfo Made on His Journey to IPO with Henry Schuck, CEO @ ZoomInfo and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStr (Part 2)
SaaStr 375: What Being a Founder Taught Me About Leadership - Lessons from GitHub’s COO, Erica Brescia
SaaStr 374: 10 Mistakes the CEO of ZoomInfo Made on His Journey to IPO with Henry Schuck, CEO @ ZoomInfo and Jason Lemkin, CEO @ SaaStr (Part 1)
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Insight Story: Tech Trends Unpacked
Zero-Shot
Fast Forward by Tomorrow Unlocked: Tech past, tech future
The Unbelivable Truth - Series 1 - 26 including specials and pilot
Elliot in the Morning