OpenView

Katie shares the advice she’d give a friend or family member who is deciding to stay in a role or recruit for a new one. Most of the advice today is focused on leaders and companies. Katie’s advice for you, the employee, is fresh and spot on.

Results-driven people professional passionate about combining culture, innovation, leadership, and inclusiveness to create workplaces that people love and employee experiences that are truly remarkable. Proud to lead HubSpot's global People Operations team and to have a team recognized by Glassdoor, Comparably, Fortune, and Great Places to Work as a Best Place to Work for Women, Parents, Diversity, Culture, and Employee Choice.

Katie Burke

Chief People Officer at HubSpot

Katie shares the advice she’d give a friend or family member who is deciding to stay in a role or recruit for a new one. Most of the advice today is focused on leaders and companies. Katie’s advice for you, the employee, is fresh and spot on.


Katie Burke (HubSpot): How Should Employees Navigate Today’s Macro Environment?

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It takes 3 ingredients to build a software startup in today’s wild market: people, product and growth. Easier said than done. BUILD is here to help by featuring conversations between venture capitalist Blake Bartlett and the smartest folks in software. OpenView is a VC firm that invests in amazing companies like Datadog, Expensify and Calendly. Visit ov.vc for more details.

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Katie has been Chief People Officer at HubSpot since 2017. She has helped the company grow to thousands of employees globally. Katie outlines her top priorities in today’s uncertain macro environment — both for existing employees and for recruiting new talent. Must listen for any leader today! Conversation highlights: <ul><li>[01:40&nbsp;-&nbsp;03:04] What is happening in the talent markets given the macroeconomic environment</li><li>[03:04&nbsp;-&nbsp;03:58] Is top talent pronounced more in one area or industry than another?</li><li>[04:01&nbsp;-&nbsp;05:47] Three factors leaders should be thinking about in regard to existing talent inside their organization</li><li>[05:56&nbsp;-&nbsp;08:32] Great storytelling is important right now especially, and the idea of cartoon clarity</li><li>[08:33&nbsp;-&nbsp;14:05] Prioritization in the age of downsizing, focusing on what matters most</li><li>[15:02&nbsp;-&nbsp;19:12] What people need to keep top of mind for their current team: transparency and communication around decisions</li><li>[19:17&nbsp;-&nbsp;22:24] Switching gears to recruiting and new talent</li><li>[22:26&nbsp;-&nbsp;24:52] Screening for adaptability in the hiring process</li><li>[24:54&nbsp;-&nbsp;29:56] Creating culture after the covid new normal</li></ul>

Katie has been Chief People Officer at HubSpot since 2017. She has helped the company grow to thousands of employees globally. Katie outlines her top priorities in today’s uncertain macro environment — both for existing employees and for recruiting new talent. Must listen for any leader today!


Katie Burke (HubSpot): Leading & Hiring People in a Recession

Krista was CCO at Okta for 6 years, and held a similar role at Salesforce before that. But this is a relatively new role at large software companies. What does it mean exactly? And what makes for a good CCO?&nbsp; Conversation highlights: <ul><li>[01:20] What is the Chief Customer Officer</li><li>[02:22] The glue between an organization and its customers</li></ul>

Krista is a Board Director and Customer Success executive with 20 years of experience building and scaling success solutions at the leading edge of the SaaS market boom. Her leadership has been critical to the success of Salesforce and Okta, two of the world’s most innovative, category-creating app and infrastructure businesses. At both companies, Krista delivered first-of-kind, record-breaking lines of revenue, propelled differentiated, lasting customer growth, and built industry-defining customer success organizations within high-pressure hypergrowth environments.

As Chief Customer Officer at Okta, Krista transformed the company’s customer success culture into a competitive differentiator, helping to scale the business from $20M to $586M and through a successful IPO in 2017. Key accomplishments include growing Okta’s customer success team from 20 people to an organization of 400, delivering 120% net retention, building a wildly successful, first-of-its-kind success product portfolio, and establishing the company’s “Love our Customers” culture.

Before joining Okta, Krista spent 14 years at Salesforce writing the SaaS industry playbook for customer success, renewals, and growth. She helped the business scale from $5M to $4.7B in revenue, from 200 to 13,000 employees, and through its 2004 IPO. As Senior Vice President of Customers for Life and Senior Vice President Customer Success and Support, Krista launched and sold Salesforce’s first dedicated success products and built the first technical support and CSM operating models for SaaS across support, success, education, and professional services. She began her career at the company in 2000 as a Customer Support Representative.

Krista now uses her immense experience to help businesses insulate themselves from risk, see around corners, and swiftly identify and address pitfalls across the enterprise. She is a Board Director at Benchling, a cloud-based software platform for biology researchers and R&D organizations, and at Drift, the world's leading conversational marketing and sales platform. She is also a Board Director at nonprofit The Advocates for Survivors of Domestic Abuse and an advisor to Gainsight, which builds technology solutions to enable customer success.

Krista Anderson-Copperman

Advisor, Board Member and former CCO

Krista was CCO at Okta for 6 years, and held a similar role at Salesforce before that. But this is a relatively new role at large software companies. What does it mean exactly? And what makes for a good CCO? 


Krista Anderson-Copperman (Asana): What is a Chief Customer Officer?

Let’s face it. Statistically, your current team is not likely to be your future team. It’s incredibly rare for any single leader to stay with a company through multiple phases of growth. As a board member and advisor to companies like Asana, Krista’s job is to assess teams and help CEOs determine who’s gonna make it and who isn’t. What she looks for to determine this may surprise you.&nbsp; Conversation highlights:<ul><li>[00:09] Intro —&nbsp;Meet Krista</li><li>[02:11] Having a team for the future</li><li>[05:09] Common traps people fall into when building their teams</li><li>[10:15] Addressing and assessing whether or not you have a team for the future</li><li>[12:37] Lean on others, and learning what your business should be solving for</li><li>[15:03] Characteristics to look for in future-proofing your team: passion and curiosity</li><li>[19:24] Embracing and loving change</li><li>[22:31] Finding the truth and not just hearing the right answer</li><li>[25:29] The challenge of scale and growing teams with the business</li><li>[27:33] A good starting point for looking at teams and defining if they're tomorrow's team</li></ul>

Statistically, your current team is not likely to be your future team. It’s incredibly rare for any single leader to stay with a company through multiple phases of growth. As a board member and advisor to companies like Asana, Krista’s job is to assess teams and help CEOs determine who’s gonna make it and who isn’t. What she looks for to determine this may surprise you. 


Krista Anderson-Copperman (Asana): Today’s Team vs. Tomorrow’s Team

Kyle is a one-man content machine. If you follow him on LinkedIn or subscribe to his Substack, you know this is true. How does Kyle approach content? What is his personal brand strategy? How did he win at Substack?&nbsp;

Kyle helps OpenView’s portfolio companies fuel growth and become market leaders. Specific areas of interest include: Product Led Growth (PLG), pricing & packaging, go-to-market strategy, SaaS benchmarks and value-add in VC.

Check out Kyle's thoughts on SaaS growth by subscribing to Growth Unhinged, his biweekly newsletter: https://kylepoyar.substack.com/

Kyle Poyar

Operating Partner

Kyle is a one-man content machine. If you follow him on LinkedIn or subscribe to his Substack, you know this is true. How does Kyle approach content? What is his personal brand strategy? How did he win at Substack? 


Kyle Poyar (OpenView): How I Do Content

PLG breaks traditional SaaS top of funnel. Why? Trusty channels like content marketing, email nurture and in-person events don’t translate to PLG. Kyle has identified what works for PLG leaders like Zapier, Figma and Calendly, and shares a new top of funnel playbook built for the PLG era. Conversation highlights:<ul><li>[01:54] Problems PLG companies face when it comes to top of funnel</li><li>[04:16] Thinking about building for the end user, and building to be discovered</li><li>[08:19] Full empathy and finding solutions to user problems, the customer perspective</li><li>[11:33] SEO and Organic Search: How to get discovered and what things folks should focus on bringing to their business</li><li>[12:57] What SEO best practices should PLG companies consider</li><li>15:15[] Opportunities for PLG businesses and the RFP template</li><li>[16:13] Viral loops in products, and what they look like</li><li>[22:11] What role community plays in top of funnel for PLG businesses</li><li>[24:42] What app stores and distribution channels look like for users</li><li>[27:05] Where should folks get started</li></ul>

Operating Partner at OpenView

PLG breaks traditional SaaS top of funnel. Why? Trusty channels like content marketing, email nurture and in-person events don’t translate to PLG. Kyle has identified what works for PLG leaders like Zapier, Figma and Calendly, and shares a new top of funnel playbook built for the PLG era. 


Kyle Poyar (OpenView): Top of Funnel for PLG

PLG breaks traditional SaaS top of funnel. Why? Trusty channels like content marketing, email nurture and in-person events don’t translate to PLG. Kyle has identified what works for PLG leaders like Zapier, Figma and Calendly, and shares a new top of funnel playbook built for the PLG era.


Everyone today claims to be an expert in their social media profile. But truly being a world-class expert requires extremely narrow focus. Harini argues that range and breadth is just as important, but often overlooked today.

As a technology executive, investor, and civic leader, Harini is a recognized thought leader in leveraging cloud solutions to accelerate customer transformation. She build, grows, and scales cloud businesses. Harini is passionate about delivering best-in-class customer experiences, and building high performing teams. She is a strategic leader, recognized for thinking big, sound business judgment, and scaling businesses. Having lived and worked across 3 continents, Harini is highly adaptable, loves the challenge of building from scratch and navigating complexity. 

With a 20-year history of progressive leadership roles at Microsoft, Amazon and IBM, she has built, grown, and scaled cloud businesses, and served as a key force in helping drive cloud strategy, adoption, and enablement on a worldwide basis for customers, ranging from Fortune 500 enterprises to startups. In addition to her primary focus on customer success and go-to-market strategy, she has led numerous policies, programs, and outreach efforts aimed at building trust in the cloud and addressing data privacy, ethics, and security challenges associated with these emerging technologies.

Harini leverages her expertise to advise private technology companies, and is an active participant within multiple Pacific Northwest, European, and Indian startup organizations. She is also extensively involved in community leadership and the field of social impact, serving as an elected member of the Medina City Council and donating extensive time to accelerate the success of technology firms founded by women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs. She is a keynote speaker on accelerating women in the workplace.

Harini Gokul

Head of Custom Success at AWS (Amazon Web Services)

Everyone today claims to be an expert in their social media profile. But truly being a world-class expert requires extremely narrow focus. Harini argues that range and breadth is just as important, but often overlooked today. 


Harini Gokul (AWS): The Importance of Range for Leaders Today

Harini leads customer success at AWS, which is arguably the most important enterprise technology vendor today. She says customer success needs to play proactive offense more than reactive defense. By starting with your customer’s customer, you can align your strategic initiatives with your customers’ to achieve win-win outcomes. Key Takeaways:[ 00:07 ] Overview of episode[ 02:47&nbsp;] What customer centricity means to Harini[ 06:44&nbsp;] Customer success as offense vs. defense[ 15:50&nbsp;] How customer success should partner with other teams, and should they partner with customer success?[ 22:54&nbsp;] How to get a good interface between CX and product, and correctly prioritizing what needs built[ 27:27&nbsp;] What you can do to move from defense to offense in your CX org

Harini leads customer success at AWS, which is arguably the most important enterprise technology vendor today. She says customer success needs to play proactive offense more than reactive defense. By starting with your customer’s customer, you can align your strategic initiatives with your customers’ to achieve win-win outcomes. 


Recent Episodes

SEASON 11

Katie Burke (HubSpot): Leading & Hiring People in a Recession

Krista Anderson-Copperman (Asana): What is a Chief Customer Officer?

Krista Anderson-Copperman (Asana): Today’s Team vs. Tomorrow’s Team

Kyle Poyar (OpenView): How I Do Content

Kyle Poyar (OpenView): Top of Funnel for PLG

Harini Gokul (AWS): The Importance of Range for Leaders Today

Harini Gokul (AWS) Customer Success as Offense

About The Show

BUILD with Blake Bartlett

Blake Bartlett

Partner at OpenView