SaaStr 2018: Rob Bernshteyn – Lessons Learned Redefining a Really Big Category with Coupa

After attending Justin Kan’s presentation, “Why I Now Love B2B More Than B2C”, I hustled over to Studio B at SaaStr 2018 to hear a fireside chat with Rob Bernshteyn and Jason Lemkin.

Rob Bernshteyn is CEO of Coupa, a cloud platform for business spend management (BSM).

Here are my takeaways from Rob Bernshteyn and Jason Lemkin’s fireside chat:

• Coupa was founded 10 years ago. Currently has 600 customers and 1,000 employees. Went public 13 months ago (NASDAQ: COUP).
• Rob: “Our #1 competitor is ourselves.”
• Spirit of execution drives the company and gives it competitive edge.
• If you’re able to deliver value for a customer, you should be able to keep them forever (customer for life).
• Focus on delivering indisputable value to your customers.
• Rob is big on Value as a Service.
• Rob: “Customer success is not an afterthought for us.”
• Don’t react to investor sentiment.
• Coupa is cash flow positive and high growth.
• According to Rob Bernshteyn, Coupa still struggles with brand awareness.
• Coupa IPO was primarily done as a stamp of legitimacy and to build market awareness.
• Coupa: C is for comprehensive, O is for open, U is for user centricity, P is fr prescriptive, A is for accelerated.
• Coupa defines value for the customer at the pre-sale stage.
• “The mindset has to be remove any barrier to friction.”
• Have vision lock with the prospect. In other words, what is the business impact our solution will have on your organization?
• “How will we know in 100 days from now if we’ve achieved our goal?” (great framing question)
• I got the feeling Rob is a big fan of the book, “Crossing the Chasm.” He mentioned the term early majority customers several times.

About SaaStr Annual

SaaStr Annual is the largest non-vendor confab in the world, uniting the global B2B SaaS community both online and off. SaaStr Annual aims to help everyone scale faster and with less stress.

In 2018, over 10,000 Founders, Senior Executives, and VCs will come together over three action-packed days of high-quality networking, learning from those who’ve done it, and of course, great food, generously-poured drinks, and plenty of fun.