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 257: How To Scale Sales Culture Successfully and Sustainably, The Leading Indicators of Burnout and What To Do & The 2 Inflection Points In SaaS Growth Where Things Start To Break with Justin W
SaaStr 256: Google Cloud VP of Engineering Eyal Manor and Zenoss CMO Megan Lueders
SaaStr 255: Why Enablement Must Be An Early Investment and How To Structure It, Why The SaaS Incumbents of Today Are Not As Strong As We Think & How To Build A Sales Culture of Confidence Without Arro
SaaStr 254: HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan on The Funnel is Dead, Long Live the Flywheel.
SaaStr 253: TaskRabbit Founder Leah Busque on Lessons Learned from a Product Reboot
SaaStr 252: How To Make The Transition From Founder Led Sales To Sales Team, The Truth About Raising a Series A Round As a Non-Bay Area Company and Why Employee 50 Is Such a Big Turning Point
SaaStr 251: Y Combinator Michael Seibel on a Decade of Learnings from Y Combinator
SaaStr 250: Why Enterprise Is Hard Again, Why To Be Successful in SaaS Today You Have To Find The Crumbs Falling From Incumbent Mouths and Why Large Orgs Are So Dysfunctional and How To Poach Talent F
SaaStr 249: New Relic CRO Erica Ruliffson-Schultz on Five Critical Steps to Scaling Enterprise
SaaStr 248: What Early Stage SaaS Companies Can Learn Most From Late Stage SaaS Co's, How Marketing Functions Change In SaaS Co's With Scale & Why The Most Powerful Mentorship Is Mentorship From Below
SaaStr 247: Hired CEO Mehul Patel on How to Move from Transactional to Recurring Revenue
SaaStr 246: Dropbox CCO Yamini Rangan on 5 Myths That Stop SaaS Companies From Moving Upmarket
SaaStr 245: The Ultimate Guide To ACVs; When and How To Increase Them, Revenue Optimisation Per Lead & What It Means To Truly Be An ARR First Company
SaaStr 244: Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen on How to Build a Truly Global Business from Day One
SaaStr 243: Twilio CMO Sara Varni on The 1 Question That Must Be Top Of Mind For All Marketers, The Truth About Enablement and How It Can Be Used Effectively & The Marketing Playbook, When To Use It v
SaaStr 242: Namely CEO Elisa Steele on How to Win the Talent War
SaaStr 241: Dave Kellogg on The BIggest Takeaways From Being In The Room For Sequoia’s “RIP Good Times”, Why Founders Should Raise As Much As Possible But Spend According To Plan & The Right Way
SaaStr 240: SaaStr 240: Brex Founder and CEO Henrique Dubugras on Lessons From a Second-Time Founder: How Brex Went From 0 - $1B in Under 2 Years
SaaStr 239: How To Raise Prices and Still Leave Money On The Table, How To Analyse The Pros and Cons of Monthly vs Annual Deals & The Leading Indicators That Your Sales Machine Is Working with Amit Be
SaaStr 238: Salesforce Mobile EVP Leyla Seka and Sr. Director of Global Equality Programs Molly Ford on How They Did It: Gender Equality, Equal Pay and Racial Equality
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