SaaStr Podcast #225: Stephen Burton, VP of Smarketing at Harness Discusses How To Create True Alignment Between Marketing and Sales
Update: 2019-04-17
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This post is by Harry Stebbings from SaaStr
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Stephen Burton is VP of Smarketing at Harness, the industry’s first continuous delivery as a service platform. To date, Harness has raised $20m in funding from the wonderful Matt Murphy @ Menlo Ventures and BIG Labs. Prior to Harness, Stephen was VP of Marketing at Glassdoor, managing a team of 52 in product marketing, helping grow B2B revenue from $19m to $90m in just 2 years, leading to their $1.2Bn acquisition. Before Glassdoor, Stephen was VP of Product Marketing at AppDynamics where he helped grow B2B revenue from $0 to $100m in a staggering 3 year period, resulting in their $3.9Bn acquisition by Cisco.
In Today’s Episode We Discuss:
- How Steve made his way into the world of SaaS and came to be VP of marketing at 2 of the larger B2B exits of the last decade in AppDynamics and Glassdoor? What were Steve’s biggest takeaways from the hyper-scaling at AppDynamics?
Steve has previously said, “Sales and marketing must be one team.” Why does he believe this is so important? What can leaders do to turn this into reality? What works? Where has Steve seen many make mistakes? Where does Steve find common points of tension between sales and marketing? What are the 3 elements that marketing comp should be tied and aligned to? * What does Steve mean when he says, “marketers need to embrace the developer first mindset?” What does this mean for the processes used by marketing teams? Speaking of developer-first, how can startups compete in a war for talent against FB and Google? How can they integrate autonomy into their hiring process as a core advantage?
For Steve, what does devops really mean? What does Steve believe is the right culture for devops teams? Does it differ from traditional dev teams? How can a CEO determine when is the right time to fundamentally invest in devops? What are the required steps to make devops teams as successful as possible?
60 Second SaaStr:
- What does Steve know now that she wishes he had known at the beginning?
When is the right time to pour fuel on the company fire?
The playbook? Is there one? Dangers? Copyability?
What would Steve most like to change in the world of SaaS?
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Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Stephen Burton
Transcript:
Harry Stebbings: Welcome back to another week on the official SaaStr podcast with me, Harry Stebbings. It would be great to take you behind the scenes of all things SaaStr and the podcast. You can do that on Instagram at hstebbings1996 with two Bs. I would love to see you there, but to our episode today, and it has been a long time since I had a fellow Brit on the show, and so I’m thrilled to change that today as we welcome Stephen Burton to the hot seat today.
Harry Stebbings: Stephen is the VP of Smarketing, something we’ll be discussing later, at Harness.io, the industry’s first continuous delivery as a service company. To date, Harness has raised over $20 million in funding from the wonderful Matt Murphy at Menlo and BIG Labs, and prior to Harness, Stephen was VP of Marketing at Glassdoor, managing a team of 52 in product marketing, helping grow to B2B revenue from $19 million to $90 million in just two years, leading to their $1.2 billion acquisition.
Harry Stebbings: Before Glassdoor, Stephen was VP of Product Marketing at AppDynamics, where he helped grow B2B revenue from naught to $100 million in a staggering three-year period, resulting in their $3.9 billion acquisition by Cisco.
Harry Stebbings: I do also want to say a huge thank you to AppDynamics and Harness founder, Jyoti Bansal, for the intro to Stephen today. I really do so appreciate that. And mojitos on me to thank you.
Harry Stebbings: But you’ve heard quite enough from me now, so I’m delighted to hand over to Stephen Burton, VP of Smarketing at Harness.io.
Harry Stebbings: Steve, it is absolutely fantastic to have you on the show, having heard so many great things from Jyoti Bansal, so thank you so much for joining me today, Steve.
Stephen Burton: Great to be here, Harry. Can’t wait.
Harry Stebbings: Oh, I would love, though, to kick off with a little bit about you, so tell me, Steve, how did a true Brit make your way into the world of SaaS and come to be one of the leaders in the world of SaaS marketing with Harness today?
Stephen Burton: It’s actually an interesting story. I mean, my career started as a software engineer, and out of frustration, I went into sales. I was a sales engineer, so I got fed up a little bit of salespeople overselling things and having to work weekends to deliver, and then when I got into sales engineering, I did product management ’cause I felt the products we were building didn’t meet the needs of the customer, and then once we built the products, I got frustrated that marketing didn’t really position them or message them properly in the market.
Stephen Burton: Cut a long story short, I was working for a monitoring company in the UK, and I was looking at the next big thing in monitoring, and I came across two vendors, AppDynamics and New Relic, and I just emailed Jyoti and a guy called Steve Roop and said, “Hey, you’ve got an evangelist position open. Can I come and talk to you?”
Stephen Burton: Two weeks later, they paid for my visa, my green card, and I was lucky enough to relocate in San Francisco, and that’s where I kinda began my journey in marketing at AppDynamics.
Harry Stebbings: I absolutely love that. Can I ask an off-the-schedule question? What do you think you did in the interview there that impressed them so much, having flown from the UK, sitting in front of them for that evangelist position? What do you think it was that made them go, “Yeah, this is the guy we want?”
Stephen Burton: I think my intro email. I spent a long time drafting the email and personalizing it. I was like, “Look, I know the market. I know your competition. Been doing this for a while. I downloaded the product. I love it,” and just the excitement, the will to want the job, and then when I presented in front of them, I was just myself. I tried to make it interesting. I tried to make it fun. I tried to make myself different to other candidates, and ultimately, they picked me, and yeah, I mean, I was lucky and thankful, really.
Harry Stebbings: I’m not sure about lucky. I think skilled and deserving, but what can I say? I do wanna touch on though, the time you spend both at AppDynamics and then at Glassdoor. I have to ask. I’m a massive fan of takeaways and learning, so what were some of the biggest takeaways from really seeing the hype
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