Metric Stack Klipfolio Inc.

In this episode of the Metric Stack podcast, James Neufeld, CEO of Samdesk, digs into the critical role metrics play in communication between company leadership and board members, particularly post-Series A and B funding rounds. James talks about the universality of metrics as a language for investors, who often lack deep domain expertise and rely on financial, user, and adoption metrics to gauge opportunities.
James shares insights from his experience with the board, describing how they evolved from merely tracking performance to understanding the underlying drivers of their key metrics. He talks about Samdesk’s initial struggles in determining which metrics were leading and lagging indicators and the challenges of measuring success based solely on a first-principles driven culture. Lessons learned from these early days inform current practices at Samdesk, where they focus on actionable metrics that directly influence business outcomes. As an example, he describes how measuring customer satisfaction, with metrics like Time to Customer Complaints (TCC) speeds up innovation at Samdesk, while combining first principles and common sense actions to derive meaningful insights.
Since preparing for and achieving Series A and B funding Samdesk has grown from using a primarily first-principles approach to one that combines those principles with a metrics-focused strategy. They’ve also dealt with the rapid and pervasive changes brought about by COVID-19 by adapting and continuously learning, from both successes and failures.
James describes how Samdesk communicates with the board by combining qualitative (customer experiences) and quantitative (metrics like ARR and Churn) information. His final bit of advice – pay attention to your metrics but don’t be paralyzed by them. They’re not a substitute for talking to your customers. You need to do both.

In this podcast interview, Allan Wille and Lauren Thibodeau discuss tech company valuations with Ed Bryant, President and CEO of Sampford Advisors. Ed defines valuation as the price a buyer will pay for your business either by purchasing it outright or as part of a merger and acquisition transaction. He suggests the only way to learn the true value of your company is to actually go to market and get bids from potential buyers. He distinguishes between financial buyers (private equity, venture capitalists) and strategic buyers (companies acquiring other companies), noting that the lines between them are blurring due to strategic buyers often being backed by financial players.
We look at factors that influence valuation (scale, growth, profitability, and retention), with Ed stressing the importance of profitability for later-stage investors and acquirers. The conversation touches on the cyclical nature of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and how market conditions significantly impact the valuation environment. Ed also describes some common mistakes founders make, such as being overly focused on technology and not paying enough attention to key business metrics like growth and customer retention.
The interview concludes with Ed sharing his perspective on the current state of the market, describing it as a bifurcated market with healthy businesses receiving strong valuations while others face challenges. He predicts a recovery in 2024, anticipating increased activity and a positive market for software M&A transactions.
For those interested in current valuation trends, Ed suggests resources like Sampford Advisors' monthly market report, content from venture capitalists like Tomasz Tunguz, and content generated by the broader VC, private equity, and M&A communities.

Today's guest is Alex Nazarevich, Vice President of Growth at Unbounce. We dive into the marketing strategies and principles behind the company's success. Alex’s team uses the Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost (LTV to CAC) ratio, not just as a marketing metric, but as a unifying force across departments. This approach underscores the importance of collaboration and strategic alignment for sustainable growth and profitability.
Alex and his team significantly reduced Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) at Unbounce. Their approach of starting at the conversion point and methodically working backwards was instrumental in achieving these reductions. This strategy, balancing impactful changes with the team's execution capabilities, epitomizes practical and efficient digital marketing.
By customizing the way they approach different company sizes and industry types, Unbounce creates impactful campaigns that resonate strongly with the targeted customer base.
Alex's journey at Unbounce is best described as continuous experimentation and learning from successes and failures. He suggests an adaptive strategy, revisiting fundamental marketing elements and balancing immediate results with long-term insights into customer retention.
Finally, he champions a culture of curiosity and data literacy, encouraging a mindset where challenging established norms and harnessing data-driven insights are essential to forging successful marketing pathways. His advice is clear and simple: Just start. This approach, embracing experimentation and taking the initiative, is key to uncovering new insights and making meaningful progress in marketing.

Today's guest is Greg Boyd. He's the VP of Customer Excellence at Uvaro, a company that helps people transition into careers in tech sales through subscription based education and networking programs. In his role, Greg is responsible for the end-to-end revenue generation and retention strategy for the business. Today, we're going to chat with Greg about how he and his team have moved the needle on Customer Return on Investment, first at Exonify and now at Uvaro.
"With return on investment, you can be academic about it. I always have thought about it as some sort of data-supported return on investment. You spent $100. You got at least $100 back. So you have the data to back. That's easy. But the way I've always thought about it is combining that with the feeling of value that your customer gets some. So return on investments always came down to this word of value. And I learned really quickly that I would have lots of customers that are happy to talk to me. I think I'm a nice guy. We're having a great conversation today. But ‘happy’ doesn't drive renewal, and it doesn't drive a deal. On the customer side at Exonify, we started to see that happiness does not equal value. And so understanding what is the driver of the return is what's going to be the driver of the growth that's going to come. When you're looking at the return on investment metric, a great way to look at whether they're getting value is: Are they growing?"
Greg has also shared with us an excellent article that outlines some of the topics he discussed in the episode. Learn why your customers avoid talking to you, and how to change that: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-your-customers-avoid-talking-you-how-change-greg-boyd-bwczc

In this interview, Allan Wille, CEO at Klipfolio, sat down with Johan Baltzar, co-founder and CEO of Steep. Klipfolio and Steep share the same vision. They believe in a new generation of analytics products that enable business users to work with centrally-defined metrics in a self-serve environment.
Their conversation explored the ever-evolving landscape of data analytics, the role of the semantic layer in simplifying data accessibility, the changing relationship between data teams and business users, metrics literacy, and the integration of semantic layers with existing BI tools.

Allan Wille, CEO at Klipfolio, sat down with Brian Kotlyar, VP of Marketing & Growth at Hightouch, a reverse ETL solution that makes data manipulation, extraction, and moving smooth, easy, and fun for data engineers. Their conversation explored the potential of reverse ETL, the pressing challenges of modern business intelligence (BI), and the exciting prospects that are emerging as AI meets data analytics.