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Ramin Sayar. He\u2019s currently the president and CEO of Sumo Logic, an industry-leading SaaS-based company backed by some great VCs and he has an impressive list of customers and partners. Previously, he was the senior VP and GM at VMware, where he developed the product and business strategy and led the fastest growing aspect of that business. Previously, he had multiple executive roles with leading companies such as HP Software, Mercury Software, Tibco software, iPlanet Software, AOL and Netscape.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? \u2013 Good to Great
• What CEO do you follow? \u2013 Tom Reilly
• Favorite online tool? \u2014 Twitter and LinkedIn
• How many hours of sleep do you get?\u2014 Around 6-7
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \u2013 Ramin would tell himself that the flow and steady path will pay off in the long run

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 02:22 \u2013 Nathan introduces Ramin to the show
• 03:32 \u2013 Sumo Logic helps customers build, run and secure modern apps in a simple and easy to consume service of profitability
• 03:57 \u2013 Sumo Logic is a SaaS business
  • 04:04 \u2013 Priced and licensed depending on the data ingested and the duration of retention
• 04:25 \u2013 Average RPU varies
• 05:35 \u2013 Sumo Logic has a mass of service for their customers
  • 05:45 \u2013 Sumo Logic has some free services
• 06:18 \u2013 Customers\u2019 buying pattern is consistent
• 06:43 \u2013 $15K-150K is the average contract price
• 07:34 \u2013 Sumo Logic has over 1300 paying customers
  • 07:42 \u2013 51% is enterprise and the other half is midmarket and SMBs
• 08:22 \u2013 Sumo Logic was capitalized through 5 rounds
  • 08:34 \u2013 Total amount raised is over $160M
• 08:52 \u2013 Nathan had Tim Draper at Episode 129 from DFJ which Ramin mentioned
• 09:14 \u2013 Sumo Logic is 7 years old
• 09:33 \u2013 Sumo Logic\u2019s founding roots came from the security roles
  • 09:38 \u2013 Not all users have access to data being generated
  • 09:48 \u2013 The founders believed that there should be a simpler way for more users to access data
  • 10:32 \u2013 The team initially felt that there was a competitive advantage in technology and an innovative way to deliver data analytics as a service
• 11:03 \u2013 Sumo Logic currently has 30K users
• 11:17 \u2013 Their vision was to democratize machine data
• 11:50 \u2013 Visa has been with Sumo Logic for a few years now
  • 12:04 \u2013 Visa started with their fraud detection cases
  • 12:23 \u2013 A few years ago, Visa launched a service with Apple
  • 12:32 \u2013 Visa uses Sumo Logic for business insights such as activation and patterns regarding how users use multiple credit card applications
• 12:58 \u2013 Medidata is trying to disrupt the pharmaceutical industry in the clinical trial process
  • 13:23 \u2013 Medidata used Sumo and decided they\u2019re going to transfer to the public cloud infrastructure service
  • 13:42 \u2013 Medidata is an example of a different, non-tech company using the technology that Sumo Logic provides
• 14:10 \u2013 Sumo Logic assimilates, collects, ingests and analyzes different sources of data
  • 14:25 \u2013 Sumo Logic then purposely tailors the analysis through their machine learning algorithms to address 3 distinct use cases
  • 14:52 \u2013 Sumo Logic helps in continuous development
  • 15:07 \u2013 Sumo Logic provides one single platform that analyses information and puts it into context so that developers and other teams can get the 360 degree, holistic view of the information
  • 15:39 \u2013 Sumo Logic analyses a lot of patterns
• 16:34 \u2013 Ramin joined Sumo Logic 2 years ago
• 17:06 \u2013 In choosing a CEO, it comes with understanding the core values and culture of the company and how they relate to what the founders want
  • 17:20 \u2013 If there are odds, make sure to address them
  • 17:25 \u2013 Second is to make sure that there\u2019s an alignment syndicate in founding members in terms of what the outcomes would be
  • 17:36 \u2013 Some CEOs are brought in to scale the company and in other cases, they are brought in to turn over the team or change the company\u2019s direction
• 18:10 \u2013 One of the 2-3 founders of Sumo Logic is still on the team
• 19:00 \u2013 Average ARR
• 19:30 \u2013 \u201cWe don\u2019t try to make consumers consume what they can\u2019t initially\u201d
• 19:40 \u2013 SaaS companies often have to prove their value and constantly fight to earn the business
• 19:56 \u2013 More customers are now signing multimillion year deals with Sumo Logic
  • 20:09 \u2013 The customers are seeing Sumo Logic\u2019s value
• 21:12 \u2013 The enterprise segment for Sumo Logic is broad
• 21:26 \u2013 When Ramin first came to Sumo Logic, the focus was security
  • 21:43 \u2013 Ramin realized that most of their customers are development ops, tech ops and liability engineers, so they pivoted a bit
• 22:25 \u2013 For a SaaS company, the LTV to CAC that modern investors look for are the payback period and the magic number has to be 3.0 and more
• 22:50 \u2013 The other metrics that Sumo Logic tracks
• 24:09 \u2013 Sumo Logic\u2019s payback period is between the 1-2 year mark
  • 25:13 \u2013 The enterprise, midmarket and SMBs have different payback periods
• 25:39 \u2013 Team size is 250
• 27:33 \u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

1. Create guidelines when it comes to looking for your CEOs\u2014they should align with the company\u2019s cultures, beliefs, and goals.
2. SaaS companies often have to prove their value and are constantly fighting to earn business.
3. Users\u2019 access to data can be very limited and complicated; however, simpler and more innovative ways are being discovered as technology continues to advance.

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Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox \u2013 The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Organifi \u2013 The juice was Nathan\u2019s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
• Klipfolio \u2013 Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Acuity Scheduling \u2013 Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he\u2019s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Freshbooks \u2013 Nathan doesn\u2019t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives