Kendra Niedziejko

Employee terminations: they're a topic no one wants to discuss but that every company has to navigate. Thankfully, Melanie Naranjo and wonderful Ethena advisor (& Gusto's former People Leader) Jess Yuen are tackling this tricky topic for the next Ethena webinar. Register if you want to learn more about these topics: How to pressure test whether or not termination is the right course of action Best practices for communicating termination decisions How to minimize risk and choose the best course of action when things get tricky Critical pitfalls to avoid

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Sometimes there's a regular cadence in place, sometimes they're required unexpectedly and sometimes you may not even know that you're in need of one! No matter the reason behind your next audit, it is essential that you have a good grip on what you need to prepare and how to make your next audit as stress free and cost efficient as possible! With this said, join Tifanis Eu from Carta and Wanyi Wong from PwC Singapore on August 22nd at 2pm SGT/4pm AEST/11.30 am IST/10am GulfST as they dive into: •Understanding key stages and milestones in the audit process •Efficient pre-audit preparation, including documentation and internal reviews •Overcoming common audit challenges •Selecting the right auditor for your organization •Best practices for communicating with auditors See you there!

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Over the past year, we've been busy building the most seamless payroll and compliance platform for founders. Today, we're announcing another major step in that direction. Enter our Worker's Comp product. More on why this is big deal below: What is Worker's Comp? Worker's comp is a type of insurance that protects the Employer and Employees in case there's a job related injury. If you're hiring and paying people in the US, most states require some form of Worker's Compensation insurance. These are often mandatory Do I need Worker's Comp? If you're a startup founder with at least 1 non-owner Employee, chances are you need to get Worker's Comp asap. What happens if I don't get Worker's Comp? You get a letter from the state saying your business is in violation of department of labor rules, and you are being fined $5K-$20K. This really happens. All the time. How does Warp make it easy to protect against these penalties? With our new Worker's Comp product, Warp can now - detect when your startup needs this insurance - alert you ahead of time - allow you to get covered in 5 mins We've partnered with Next Insurance – the # 1 modern insurance company in the space – to easily get you the coverage you need. The best part is that it's fully integrated with your payroll and team data. Any changes to your team's makeup or wages are auto-synced to your Worker's Comp, eliminating the need for manual uploads. If you're a startup founder who's ever gotten one of those scary notices from the state, or you just want to protect your company going forward, feel free to check us out Warp, or just DM me.

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The engineering team at SaaSGrid pumps out features faster than I can write about them, but I wanted to highlight one thing we released recently that has made a big impact for our customers. SaaS leaders are used to looking at monthly ARR, but that can leave them in the dark to the day-in-day-out changes in their customer base. Are new customers getting signed? Are renewals happening (and happening on time?) Is there organic expansion or contraction? Our new ARR Movements timeline gives day level granularity for every change in ARR, down to the specific products and quantities that were updated. Keeping track of data in real time lets our users move from reactive proactive, and never get surprised at the end of the month. If you're a SaaS leader, you're constantly faced with hard decisions about how to grow your business. SaaSGrid can't make those decisions for you, but everything we build is designed to deliver you the right data at the right time, and hopefully make those decisions a little easier.

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Growth Strategy Advisors is a boutique consulting firm headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Our mission is to empower startup founders and early-stage companies as they navigate the complex landscape of Go-To-Market (GTM) strategies and sales acceleration. Here’s how we do it: Founder-Led Sales: We recognize that founders often play a pivotal role in the initial sales process. However, as companies scale and GTM motions become more intricate, a strategic shift is necessary. Our team steps in to guide founders through this transition, ensuring seamless growth without the typical pains associated with siloed teams and fragmented data1. GTM Strategy Definition: We work closely with founders to define their GTM strategy. This involves identifying target markets, customer segments, pricing models, and distribution channels. By aligning these elements, we create a cohesive plan that maximizes revenue potential. Sales Enablement: Our experts equip founders with the tools, training, and processes needed to build a high-performing sales engine. From lead generation to closing deals, we optimize every step of the sales cycle. Performance Tracking: Metrics matter! We help founders establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and track progress against them. Whether it’s pipeline growth, conversion rates, or customer lifetime value, we ensure data-driven decision-making. Cross-Functional Alignment: Effective GTM requires collaboration across departments. We bridge the gap between marketing, sales, finance, and legal teams, ensuring everyone is on the same page and working toward shared revenue goals.

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I was fortunate enough to attend a great Talentful and HIGHER Community event on the state of TA in New York, a few takeaway 👇 - Still some uncertainty, many teams aren't planning HC very far out - Knowing talent inside org is just as key for hiring plan and staffing, but truly getting a handle on this is still a hard nut to crack for many large orgs - There's a growing conversation about tapping into fractional talent, at least amongst growth-stage companies, one panelist noted how Hollywood movies are an interesting source of inspo on assembling great talent for a project - Talent density & QoH is a big focus, but 53% of co's don’t have a way to measure them — those that do most commonly rely on periodic reviews - Jessica Z. mentioned a really interesting take on the above, a Q posed to hiring managers: “If you could go back in time would you pay 100% of the persons salary to keep them, 50%, or cut ties altogether” - Although 87% of orgs think TA is at or under capacity, 75% of orgs aren’t planning to hire recruiters, big discussion is AI and how it impacts staffing   - Overall panel felt like AI was a copilot that’ll change roles, but people will re-skill and find new areas of focus in their roles   - DEI fallen off since 2023 (aligns to BrightHire data) but it’s still up dramatically from pre-pandemic levels, but there was a big discussion about how DEI leaders won't have impact w/out the power to make real biz change Thanks so much Talentful HIGHER Community Chris Abbass Jessica Z. for the lively discussion!

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Who owns your end to end GTM system? What about the Bowtie data model? This was a key question during our two-day Revenue Architecture Summit in Santa Cruz. Marketing owns awareness. BDRs or equivalent own education. Sales owns selection. Finance oversees the mutual commit/contracting. Professional services do onboarding. CS helps with retention. Account managers focus on expansion. So do we even need somebody to own and optimize the overall #bowtie process and data model? YES! "But my marketing is great at increasing leads and sales is increasing close rates, so why worry about an overall owner?", you might say. What if the new leads are low quality and sales is rushing through the sales cycle, ultimately yielding high onboarding and ongoing churn? Whether you like it or not, revenue production is a closed loop system. Something you do on the left side of the bowtie impacts the right side and the other way around. Best to assign an unbiased data owner who does that personally have anything to gain by making the data tell any particular story. The most likely owner for the overall system, or at least for the overall data model, lives in operations or finance. We see new titles around GTM Strategy and Operations. We also see RevOps moving from CRO to COO or CFO. So hence my question: In your company, who owns the end-to-end revenue production system? Who owns data definitions and brings together your teams to decide on next actions to improve revenue production based on the data? #revenuearchitecture #bowtie #revops Photo courtesy Jill Guardia (she/her)

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Looking forward to tomorrow's PeakSpan Capital Master Class with Rashaqa Rahman and Karen A Chiang from Ibbaka. In a difficult economic environment for SaaS companies (see Kyle Poyar's recent post of SFDC's results) being able to measure value is a core skill. Karen and Rahaqa do this every day and have built the value models used by many otp companies. They will show how it is really done. https://lnkd.in/gjsAWhSq #SaaS #pricing #growth #valuemodeling #valuebasedpricing

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Last week at #SaaStockUSA, AJ Eckstein and I had a great conversation about what it takes to build a differentiated go-to-market approach. Here’s a bit of what I shared with the founders in the room: 1. Deeply knowing your customer is critical. As you grow, your customers may get more diverse with more use cases for your products, and therefore your GTM strategy moves from a one-size-fits-all strategy to a more tailored, segmented strategy. 2. When hiring, it's easy to focus just on skills. While experience matters, you can’t lose sight of your values. At Klaviyo, we prioritize people who are ambitious, always learning, and put our customers first. 3. There are plenty of quotes that say something like: “the perfect strategy, poorly executed, will fail.” Truth is, execution is strategy. You have to think about execution on a daily basis while carving out time to think about how that ladders up to your north star.

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More data from Vendr 👀 via our May SaaS Trends Report Congrats to Wiz (Kelly Allbright Mike Earnest) on your recent funding and all the success you're having with Vendr customers purchasing your products. Vendr Verified partners 1Password and NetSuite made the top 5 new purchased products and there's a lot of great data and insight via the link below

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Walking along the San Francisco Bay with an experienced operating exec and active board member, Paul Schaut, was both invigorating and informative. We swapped learnings from companies we'd been involved with, and talked about what's next. Most importantly, Paul reminded me how important it is to be intentional in a job search. Focus on the roles, industries, and company stages that best fit your passions and experience. For me, it's SaaS and consumer digital services companies between $20M-200M in revenue. My last five roles were CEO, COO, or President and I love the transformations that companies go through as they scale. Who's ready for their next challenge? #jobsearch #scalingcompanies #SaaS #digital #transformation

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Save the date to learn more about how we are redefining crowd-sec for on-chain code

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At Carta your account director is your fund’s advocate and point of contact for all fund administration-related questions or concerns. Our most experienced account directors have been in the field for decades (🙋🏻‍♀️). Check out this article written by our own Kristi Nyamathi and meet some of the Carta ADs!

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Come meet Daniel Han and Michael Han Unsloth AI today at The Marriott Marquee in SF to learn about LLMs and optimizations!

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Want to learn more about the role of the business user in low-code. Watch this fun episode of Low down on Low-code!

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We know revenue leaders are under a ton of pressure to create, convert, and close more pipeline. Today we’re sharing our 5 biggest learnings on how to run revenue. For context, Clari just passed $4 trillion in revenue under management. That’s how much revenue is flowing through the Clari Revenue Platform. And thanks to our customers, we know more about how to run revenue than any company on earth.

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Implementation Fatigue: It's Real, and We Get It I've been talking to a lot of Finance and Accounting leaders lately, and there's one thing that comes up over and over: we're all exhausted trying to get new tools up and running. Some of us have software sitting unused for months because implementation is such a headache. I feel your pain – it's frustrating to invest in tools that should make your life easier, only to have them become another source of stress. That's why at InScope, we've made it our mission to make implementation painless for you. We know you don't have time for weeks-long implementations or multiple training sessions. Here's our promise:  If you're using NetSuite, we'll have the integration set up in just 20 minutes of your time. Yes, I timed it. No, that's not a typo.  And if you don’t need a NetSuite integration? 10 minutes is all it takes to get you set up on InScope. We built InScope because we believe your tools should work for you, not the other way around. You've got enough on your plate – it’s our job to make sure our solution fits seamlessly into your existing workflow. If you're curious about how we might be able to support your financial reporting goals, let's chat! We're not just automating financial reporting – we're making it smart, intuitive and effortless.

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🌟 SVB's Streamlined Closing Form is here to simplify your venture debt process. The micro point is that this should help save $10,000+ legal fees when a founder raises venture debt. The macro point is that SVB is more or less back in business. 💡 Don't miss out on this startup-friendly option. Link to the article in the original Kruze Consulting post. #Startups

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Early Adopters: The Unsung Heroes Right after we jumped into building InScope, we reached out to a few folks in our network to see if they needed help with financial reporting. One of our earliest customers was not just excited to be an early customer but he was disappointed that he was customer#2 and not customer #1. True story! In every industry, we have these brave souls who step forward before anyone else. They see potential where others see risk. At InScope, we've been fortunate to work with a number of amazing early adopters. They are not just customers—they are truly our partners in this journey. So what do these early adopters all have in common? 1. Early adopters can see beyond the present. They understand that today's ideas are tomorrow's standards. 2. Early adopters are opinionated, provide valuable feedback and influence product roadmap. A big thank you to our early adopters at InScope. Speaking of early - today, we’re excited to announce the release of InScope's Disclosure Library. The library is a simple and user-friendly resource that provides access to accounting topics, direct link to relevant FASB guidance, access to disclosure templates, and public company peers' disclosures from their recent filings. Did I mention it’s FREE? DM me to get you set up with a free account.

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