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Nick Mehta
Professional based in Palo Alto, California, United States
Nick Mehta
CEO, Gainsight
Nick Mehta (he/him), is the CEO of Gainsight, the platform that helps companies of all sizes and industries drive durable growth through customer-led and product-led strategies. He works with a team of over 1400 human beings who together have helped create the Customer Success category that's currently taking over the SaaS business model worldwide.
Gainsight is a five-time Forbes Cloud 100 recipient and Nick has been named the #2 CEO by the Software Report, has a 99% approval rating on Glassdoor, and was named Entrepreneur Of The Year for Northern California Award. He is a member of the Board of Directors at F5 (NASDAQ
Prior to Gainsight, Nick was the CEO of LiveOffice, where he led the Inc. 5000 company's profitable growth to $25 million in revenue and successful sale to Symantec. Nick has held senior operating roles for public and private companies in the enterprise and consumer technology markets, including Veritas Software (acquired by Symantec), Symantec Corporation, and XDegrees (acquired by Microsoft). Mehta also served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Trinity Ventures and Accel Partners.13
In a recent talk at SaaStr Annual 2023, Nick shared his top 10 failures as a CEO while growing Gainsight to over $200M ARR. Some key lessons he learned include:
- Not holding leaders to the highest standard of the company's values early on25
- Trying to do too much and not focusing on the most important priorities5
- Hiring too fast without enough rigor and cultural fit5
- Letting politics and ego get in the way of doing what's best for customers and employees5
Despite these challenges, Nick has led Gainsight to become a market leader in Customer Success software. He is passionate about building a values-driven culture and helping other SaaS founders learn from his experiences, both successes and failures.4
Highlights
How to Fail In B2B Sales: Poor Exec Alignment
If you're a founder, a simple KPI for your personal impact on sales is simple: the # of client/prospect execs with whom you text.
Too often, lack of exec alignment is a failure mode in B2B:
- The Deal that Never Was: Salesperson works on a deal with a prospect's functional buyer. Everything is going "great." They needed it "yesterday." It's "down to formalities." Last day of the quarter: "the boss decided they need more time."
- The Churn That Always Was: Exec sponsored the deal but wasn't involved. Deployment starts. Functional user in charge. Sets it up based upon his 100 requirements, none of which the exec cares about. Exec logs in 3 months before renewal and says "WTF is this?" Forgets why they bought in the first place. Surprise churn.
How do you do it the right way? The best CROs know WAY more about it than I do, but here are some things that worked for us at Gainsight:
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Mid-stage deal exec check-in from founder: Email (you usually don’t have a texting relationship at that point) to the effect of “I’ve heard our teams are working on a project to [business goals]. I’ve found most software deployments succeed or fail based upon alignment to the client’s business strategy. Do you have 15 min to make sure we understand your personal objectives? We’ve heard them from your team but would love to hear what’s on your mind.” Ideally do it as a phone call so it’s more intimate. Text afterward a thank you. If they text back, you now have a texting relationship. BTW if they write back to the email and say “I haven’t heard about this project” (which will happen), you’ll have good forecasting data! There is a risk that your functional buyer gets pissed. Be careful and coordinate with your rep on it. Sometimes, the strategy works with the rep feigning plausible deniability (“my founder did what? I’m so sorry.”) Def don’t reach out without coordination on big deals.
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Focus the call on them: It shouldn’t be about selling your product. What are the challenges they’re facing now? Asking in the right way is key. “What are your goals?” sounds naive. But something like “I’ve found that a lot of execs I talk to are struggling with showing the ROI of AI projects - is that something you’re dealing with?” demonstrates you’re an expert.
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Make each call value add: What can you bring that truly helps them? An intro for the exec to a peer at another company? An article about a best practice unrelated to your product? A survey they can use for budgeting?
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Don’t overuse: Be careful about contacting too many times. I’d say 1-2 in the deal cycle is plenty.
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Kickoff call: Join the first implementation call and invite the exec. It’s so powerful when they share their vision to both teams.
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Escalation: Get personally involved in escalations. Do not delegate. Send proactive regular updates on status.
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Launch: When the product is rolled out, help them make it a win. We’d do launch videos for clients with me speaking. I’d join their All Hands. We even dressed up in costume if the client had a theme (e.g., Avengers) for the deployment!
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See them: Go to events where you’ll bump into them. Fly to their office. Meet them at a local Starbucks. Don’t wait to be asked. “I’m in [their city] next week - you around for a walk?” Meet 100% of your large, early clients face-to-face.
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Celebrate: When their team does something awesome, share it. “My team mentioned your team is one of the fastest adopters of our software. Congrats - that’s all on the leadership of your company.”
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Be there: Be ULTRA-responsive. Ideally shoot for minutes to get back to them.
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Have fun: The human relationships I built with our clients was one of the most satisfying parts of my job. Many are friends to this day.
Those worked for us. Mileage may vary. Obviously none of that scales to a low end price point. But for complex, high-value software, exec alignment is everything.
Perplexity Computer is a good example that it's dangerous to write off innovative companies. Super impressed with the product and I have become a hard core DAU now.
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