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

Time Stamped Show Notes:

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

3 Key Points:

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

Resources Mentioned:

The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia
Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t 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

674: Sumo Logic Passes 1300 Customers, $140M+ Raised, Flirting W/ $100M ARR with CEO Ramin Sayar

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders