October 22, 2024 • 40 mins
Dan Balcauski interviews Simon Taylor, CEO and founder of HYCU, the world's fastest-growing multi-cloud data protection company. With over 20 years of experience, Simon shares his insights on risk-taking, securing funding, and scaling HYCU to industry leadership. He emphasizes the importance of customer success, retention, and innovation, highlighting HYCU's groundbreaking use of generative AI for SaaS data protection. The conversation covers Simon's entrepreneurial journey from Eastern Europe to Silicon Valley, mentorship, and personal strategies for staying at the top of his game.
01:06 Early Entrepreneurial Journey
03:45 The First Big Risk
07:45 Founding HYCU: The Name and Mission
09:41 Challenges and Growth at HYCU
13:21 Fundraising Lessons and Strategies
17:20 Focus on Customer Retention
21:13 Customer-Centric Approach to Business
21:29 The Role of Customer Success Teams
24:39 Balancing Innovation and Customer Needs
25:45 Contrarian Approach to AI
27:10 Leveraging AI for SaaS Data Protection
29:47 Vision and Strategy for SaaS Companies
34:39 Rapid Fire Questions and Personal Insights
Guest Links
www.hycu.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
dan balcauski (00:20):
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast
that dives into the trencheswith leaders of the best scale
up B2B SaaS companies.
I'm your host, Dan Balcauski,founder of Product Tranquility.
Today, I have the privilege ofinterviewing Simon Taylor.
Simon is the CEO and founder ofHYCU, the world's fastest
growing multi cloud dataprotection company.
With over 20 years of experiencein go to market strategy,
product Marketing and ChannelSales.
(00:40):
Simon has led HYCU to secure 140million in funding, become a
leader in the data protectionspace.
Join me as we explore Simon'sunique stories, uncover the
secrets to his success, revealtheir strategies to scale HYCU
successfully.
Let's dive in.
Welcome Simon to SaaS ScalingSecrets.
simon taylor (00:56):
Well, thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to be here andthank you for having me on the
show.
dan balcauski (01:00):
I'm very excited and very appreciative of you
spending some time with ustoday.
On another podcast, I heard youquote, Hemingway.
Live on a knife's edge until 30and then spend the rest of your
life writing about it.
What does that mean to you?
simon taylor (01:18):
It's one of my favorite quotes and I'll tell
you what it does not mean.
It certainly doesn't mean thatyou should do nothing after the
age of 30.
I think there's a whole lifetimeof possibilities there.
But I think what happens before30 is you can live with a really
high risk tolerance.
And so, I went out to EasternEurope when I was about 24 years
old, started my first company inPrague in the Czech Republic.
(01:38):
I sold that by the time I was 26and then started another
company, built a whole suite ofdifferent business partners,
mentors, and really started tobuild my network.
And so when I think about wouldme, myself at 44 years old, Take
that risk, sell everything theyhad, move to Eastern Europe,
with sort of a hope and a prayerand see what happens, maybe not.
(02:00):
So, I always encourage youngerpeople take that risk early on,
do the wild, bold, crazy thingsand set yourself up for success
so that later on in your lifeyou can build upon those amazing
experiences.
But maybe do something that's alittle bit more risk mitigated.
dan balcauski (02:16):
Yes.
Do not take away that life endsat 30.
We are, we're both resemble
simon taylor (02:20):
I hope
dan balcauski (02:21):
that age.
Love that.
Well, you said you mentionedstarting a company as early as
24, look, if we could go backand even earlier in your life,
like it just put a microscope.
Would we have noticed anythingunusual if we observed your
early days, say from between 12and 18?
simon taylor (02:37):
I'll go back even further.
I was a really big fan of showand tell in the second grade.
So I, I love this idea ofgetting to go into class and
sell your best toy.
And I really did look at it thatway.
I would not just pick the toy.
I would come up with the storythat I was going to tell about
it.
I remember when I was five orsix, maybe seven.
(02:58):
It was when Atari was firstcoming out, maybe Nintendo.
I can't remember which one.
And I stood on the fireplacewith a ready made presentation
and I pitched to my parentsabout hand eye coordination.
They quickly shot me down andsaid there was no way I was
getting one.
But I think those earlyexperiences of really, Trying to
get a handle on what a pitchlooked like were definitely
(03:20):
germane to sort of, how I kindof grew up in form myself.
Yeah,
dan balcauski (03:28):
Shark Tank contestant have your children
give post Thanksgiving dinner,they have to make the pitch for
their Christmas toys.
Coming.
Oh, man.
Well, I could see howentrepreneurship was in your
future for that story.
Well, look, entrepreneurs talk alot about.
The importance of taking risk,looking back on your
entrepreneurial journey.
(03:49):
Could you share an example of arisk that paid off
significantly?
Obviously you've had a bunch ofsuccess, but like, those don't
always look, they're not alwaysguaranteed going up front.
Like what was it kind of at thetime you thought was a really
large risk that ended up workingout for you?
simon taylor (04:02):
I mean, as I was sort of saying in the beginning,
my first company, I, Raised alittle bit of money, half a
million dollars.
I wrote a business plan, and thebusiness plan was essentially
around how you would buildalmost like a business oriented
dating app that would help tobring together engineers and,
customers in the us.
And so what I essentially had todo was build an algorithmic
(04:22):
matching engine put a wholebunch of characteristics in.
And then make it, and then buildan enormous database of software
engineers, and then a wholebunch of clients in the U.
S.
so they could find each other.
And it was a kind of wild idea,in the early aughts.
And I literally had to selleverything I had to do it.
So I raised this little bit ofcash, I sold my car, my house.
I moved over to Prague in theCzech Republic.
(04:44):
I remember staying in a hostelfor the first month or two.
Trying to figure out how youeven rent a room in Prague.
It was not quite as westernized,back then as it is today.
And, when I look back on thatadventure and I look back on all
the things I didn't know, Imean, I think I still don't know
a lot now, but back then Icertainly did.
There was a whole world ofthings I didn't know.
(05:06):
I still wouldn't trade it foranything.
I think there was so much.
So much excitement in doingthat, but it was also I remember
calling up some friends andsaying, I'm doing this.
I'm selling everything.
I'm going over there.
And one of my friends said to mewhy on earth do you think you're
going to be successful?
What makes you think that thisis a good idea?
And I said, well, I know it's agood idea.
I don't know if I'll besuccessful, but I know it's a
(05:27):
good idea.
And so I think if you haveconviction and you have the
ability to show that convictionin a meaningful way to others.
You can do a lot.
You really can, even at a youngage.
And so for me, that wascertainly one of the bigger
risks that I've taken in mylife.
dan balcauski (05:45):
Wow.
That is, well, and a good friendbecause I had the exact same
question in my head, like, whatpossibly gives you the at 24
and, I've done quite a bit oftraveling in my life and I got
to say, pre smartphone era verydifferent especially early
2000s, Central Europe, EasternEurope, very different, not as
(06:06):
well trafficked as today, asyou're, you pointed out Hey,
what an incredible what anincredible move.
Well, I want to
simon taylor (06:12):
really was, and I'll tell you there was Yeah, go
ahead, sorry.
dan balcauski (06:15):
No, carry on.
simon taylor (06:18):
Well, I was just going to say that there's
nothing as entrepreneurial asgoing to a country That is sort
of post revolution and is reallytrying to figure out what
capitalism looks like.
There were so many unansweredquestions in the minds of the
Czech people at that point,right?
Because they knew they had anamazing talent pool.
They knew they had thisbeautiful fairytale city in the
(06:38):
form of Prague.
And it was just a world ofpossibilities.
I imagine that it was sort ofsimilar to, Coming to the U.
S.
after World War II, maybe in thefifties, when everything was
sort of bright and bold and newand sort of, sort of play a very
tiny hand in working with folksover there at that time.
It was an experience like noother.
It was a little crazy for sure.
(06:59):
I mean, I mean, it was not aneveryday decision but I took it
very seriously.
And so I think you've got tohave, again, that word
conviction always comes to mind.
If you're going to do somethingintense.
Make sure you've got a lot ofconviction because in those hard
moments, you're really going towant to make sure that you can
achieve what you set out to doand you can take it as far as
you possibly can.
dan balcauski (07:19):
Oh man, that is fantastic.
Yeah.
And that reminds me of justtalking to another CEO also on
this podcast and you're talkingvery much around he was based
out of Estonia and coming outof, living in, USSR based
Estonia into the, fresh shootsof capitalism coming out of that
world and just very much yeah,very different Wild West
(07:42):
frontier that was what came openin that space.
So, look I do want to pivot moreto, modern day.
And we've mentioned a couple oftimes the company HYCU and it,
it is spelled a little bitdifferently than it sounds.
So I was curious, like, wheredid this name come from?
Are you going to elaborate iffolks are out there, like,
trying to type into Google whatwe're talking about they, they
(08:04):
may stumble on some Japanesepoetry and not your company.
So, help us understand who wherethe name came from.
simon taylor (08:10):
So I'll tell you, it is pronounced Haiku.
It's spelled H Y C U.
And it is based on the Japanesepoem, which is spelled very
differently.
And HYCU is a company that wefounded so that we could make it
really easy to back up andrecover every kind of data in
the world.
We wanted to make it accessibleand easy to protect companies,
(08:30):
data, organizational data,whether it was in the cloud,
whether it was in a SaaS servicelike Salesforce or 365, or even
whether it was, your sort oflegacy server data sitting in a
basement somewhere.
And so, so when I was coming upwith the name, I was thinking
about, What is a word that meanstaking all of the data in a
language and making it reallysimple and easy to manage?
(08:54):
And I thought about a haiku poemand about how you take all the
data in all the words in alanguage and you kind of boil it
down to this small elegantpackage.
And then I thought, well, we'reprobably not going to be able to
buy haiku.
com.
And I said, so, so what is anacronym That means the same as
what we do, but sounds likehaiku.
(09:15):
And I came up with Hybrid CloudUptime because we keep hybrid
cloud data up and running.
H Y C U pronounced haiku soundslike the poem.
And that's how I came up withthe name.
dan balcauski (09:28):
very nice.
So, so, building on thetradition with the limited
resources of a startup toactually go by the domain name
that helps everybody find you.
And out of that invention isborn.
Well, look every CEO founderfaces challenges along the way.
Has there been a specificchallenge HYCU faced during its
growth that was particularlydifficult to overcome?
(09:50):
Maybe a crucible moment that hasmade the company what you think
it is today?
simon taylor (09:55):
Yeah, absolutely.
There's a lot, right?
I mean, certainly every companyhas lots of challenges that they
go through.
A friend of mine who's anentrepreneur described being the
CEO of a startup like, Acascading set of challenges that
are constantly water fallingdown on your back and you either
really like swimming or youshould just get out of the
water.
And I do very much agree withthat sort of conceptually.
(10:17):
I think that is what it is.
The first challenge, majorchallenge that comes to mind is
when I first founded thecompany, I did so with a
business partner who owns a lotof different companies.
He's since left the business.
But remains a great mentor andfriend to me.
His name is VeselinEvrasimovich.
And he and I decided that he wasgoing to go in a different
direction and that I would goout and raise some institutional
(10:39):
capital from venturecapitalists.
I'd never raised money fromventure capitalists before.
And, I remember going out thereinto the marketplace and every
single venture capitalist I metwith Was so friendly.
They were so nice.
I mean, every singleconversation ended with, we love
this.
This is great.
This is fantastic.
And I thought, wow, I'm reallygood at this.
(11:00):
This is this rate, raisingmoney, things pretty easy.
And then they wouldn't callback.
And so for about a year, thiskind of went on and I finally
said to a friend of mine, whatis the deal?
They all love what we're doing.
And he said, Simon, in venture,they're never going to tell,
what they're either going tolean in and move forward.
Or they're just going to stop.
(11:21):
And what you're looking for issomebody who wants to lean in.
I recommend you change yourpitch and change your story and,
change the way that you'retelling this story.
Cause it's a great story.
You're doing amazing things.
You've got to change the wayyou're telling it.
And, it was just about then thatCOVID hit and we were fortunate
that we grew 450 percent becauseour solution.
enabled people, our platformenabled IT decision makers to
(11:45):
move from on premises, so, datain the basement, to the public
cloud without going into theoffice.
So suddenly the IT departmentdidn't have to come in the
middle of COVID, and they couldstill do their job.
And so we grew 450 percent as aresult of that.
Change the sales pitchcompletely, change the
fundraising pitch, change thepitch deck and started to just
(12:05):
have conversations withinvestors.
When I would talk to investors,instead of pulling up the whole,
fancy PowerPoint, I just startedtelling the story of why we grew
so fast and what we had builtand why it was so different in
the industry.
And I realized that really wasresonating with folks.
So, we went through an entireyear of lots of wonderful, great
company and then never hearingback to all of a sudden, raising
(12:28):
87.
5 million from Bain CapitalVentures.
So, so, so it was and then afollow on, 53 million round with
A Crew as well.
So, so, so, I mean, I think thatthe sort of moral of that story
is, A, don't never give up.
But it's also, don't let yourego get in the way, right, of
the work that you're doing.
If you're not seeing tangibleresults, go ask someone, why
(12:50):
not?
Go get great advice from peoplethat you trust.
And first and foremost, makesure you have that network in
place so you can really besuccessful.
dan balcauski (12:59):
Well, I'm sure there's so many great parts of
that story of like, yeah, well,they're all being super
friendly.
The beautiful story of of anaive founder in the B to C
world.
But I it probably not the firstor last time that's happened
either.
I think probably made it a loteasier when you have a 450
percent revenue growth.
Number to talk to you probablyneed to modify your story a huge
(13:20):
amount.
I'm curious cause you, you haveraised a couple of rounds and
sizable ones at that did yourview on fundraising and sort of
what was important changebetween those rounds?
Because I, I think that's somewhere, different companies.
Get caught out.
And I think you're seeing a lotof it now where, especially in
those, head easier interest ratetimes where maybe it was, quote
(13:42):
unquote, easier to raise an A ora B.
And now it's, definitely harder.
Right.
Is it the hardest it's everbeen?
Who knows?
But people maybe felt likemasters of the universe.
Cause Oh man, I closed thisgiant round before I could do it
again and then go out and like,now it's like, Oh, the P these
people are looking for maybesomething different, or maybe, I
they're Now they're lookingdeeper into the numbers or like
(14:03):
something where I didn't expectthat going for the last round.
Did you learn any lessons likethat?
simon taylor (14:08):
I mean, I think we probably remembered some
lessons.
I mean, my father used to saygrowing up, he would always say
no free lunch.
It was a very Common expression,no free lunch.
Dad, what does that mean?
Well, it means nobody's going togive you a free lunch.
And I think, this happened in 99or 98.
It happened in 21, which isthat, you started to see these
(14:29):
valuations that were reallydivorced from reality.
And I think there was a coupleof different ways to approach
that.
One was to go, great, somebody'sgiving me a free lunch.
I'll take the big valuation andI'll Put on the unicorn hat and
dance around the office.
The other way to look at it was,well, what are you really asking
me for?
Are you asking for a, tripleliquidation preference?
Are you asking for a lot ofstructure in this deal?
(14:51):
Are you asking to change thenature of the deals so that my
employees who have worked sohard are going to be less
compensated as a result ifthere's an outcome, when there's
an outcome?
I think all of that sort of canget put on hold if you don't
really kind of grab the table.
And look yourself in the eye andsay, what do I really think this
is worth?
(15:12):
I think having a logical.
Practical approach to valuationsis first and foremost, one of
the most important things inrunning a business, you need to
know who you really are, you cansell a bit, you can tell people
things you can do, et cetera.
But at the end of the day, youneed to really care about your
business and about the employeeswho are in your business and
make sure that they're going tohave an amazing outcome at some
(15:34):
point as well.
That's your responsibility as afounder.
So I think that's part one.
And I think we really moved awayfrom that.
And I started having meetingswith people with 2 million in
ARR who were telling me thatthey had a billion dollar
company.
And you sort of, you think toyourself like, well, okay I'm, I
don't understand it, maybe I'mjust not that smart.
And I think when those thingsstart to happen more and more,
(15:54):
you realize how frothy theenvironment really was.
I think that the biggest shiftin terms of sort of, let's call
them key metrics, what reallymatters.
And it's not that these thingswere not important before, they
always were.
But I think there's a massivefocus on them right now, which
is gross retention rate and netretention rate.
So when you think about how youmanage a business, you care
(16:15):
about your top line ARR growth,your subscription revenue
growth.
But you also need to look at ifI have a hundred dollars of
revenue at the beginning of theyear, at the end of the year
with those same customers, howmuch is left?
How many of my customers haveleft?
How many have churned andstopped using my product?
And if that number is higherthan, let's say, I don't know,
(16:35):
10, 12 percent, you may have anissue.
You've got some things youreally got to care about.
HYCU's been really successful inthat we've really tried to keep
a gross retention rate of 90percent or above for, for the
sort of entirety of thebusiness.
That's been a real focus for us.
In fact, when people would sayto me, well, what are you going
to spend the money on in our Bround?
I remember saying to people,it's not just going to be a
(16:56):
bunch of salespeople orexpensive marketing.
I'm going to invest in a reallygood customer success team,
because I think that it's notjust about retaining and
attracting, excuse me, it's notjust about attracting customers.
It's about retaining thosecustomers and making sure that
the revenue you have is highquality revenue.
That you can count on for thefuture.
(17:18):
That's how you build.
That's how you scale.
dan balcauski (17:20):
Well, I love that focus on retention.
I say like, cause series B Iwould say even that's pretty
unique.
I don't see a lot of CEOs sortof pounding the table of we're
going to go focus on our grossretention number with our B
round for better or worse, I'm ahuge fan of that, but was that,
did that cause any sort of Likefriction with with your
(17:42):
investors, like was, or werethey just like, oh yeah that's
we're totally aligned with
simon taylor (17:45):
Trust me, every, everybody wants you to have
revenue that stays revenue.
But you've got to be high growthin this game.
I mean, if you're not growingfast, then you're going to have
a tough time.
So I think that kind of goeswithout saying.
So you've got to, you've got to,have really solid growth, but if
the if you're growing and you'rechurning a lot of your customers
out the back end, It means threethings.
One, your sales process is goingto be really inefficient.
(18:07):
Two, you've got to spend muchmore time, money, and resources
to make up for what you justlost, right?
And so I think in a high growtheconomy with low interest rates,
it was all about grow at allcosts.
And I think there's been a shifta little bit towards, path to
profitability to some degree,but also this idea that you want
to retain as much of your baseas possible because you don't
(18:30):
want to spend money to do ittwice.
I mean, again, it's just commonsense.
And I think that's somethingthat's, that I'm a big fan of
actually, and I know my board isas well.
dan balcauski (18:38):
Well, I wanna break.
That's a super, not an area Iwas planning on going into, but,
I'm super interested in, thiswhole idea of focusing and
investing on that retentionside.
So you already mentioned you hadthis idea to, take some of that
series B money and invest incustomer success.
I'm curious kind of, of how youreally thought about.
Your investments on theretention side, how did you
(19:01):
really think about, like, okay,what do we need from, maybe it's
only customer success and,they'd love to learn kind of how
you thought about that.
But, maybe it's other areas oflike, are we attracting, is
marketing sort of targeting theright people initially?
Do we have to look at, thingslike our pricing?
Are we looking at things likeour product investments?
How did you sort of think aboutapproaching that and how does
that sort How has that lived outsort of day to day in HYCU?
(19:24):
Like, do you have a, do you havea cross functional Tiger team
that sort of is responsible forthat number?
Like how are you looking atthat?
simon taylor (19:30):
So I think it's a great question.
So let me start by saying this,HYCU has 4, 000 customers in 78
countries.
And so when you think aboutretention, you're also thinking
about expansion.
And so I think your customersuccess team need to be the
honest brokers in your businessthat are not.
Not directly going out andselling.
When they interact with acustomer, you want the customer
(19:53):
to know, not just feel, but knowthat this customer success
individual has their bestinterests in mind.
But you do still need to expandthe business.
So how do you do that?
The way you do it is you, onceyou have enough scale and enough
customers, you have your AE teamthat does all of the new
business acquisition.
The hunters.
And then you've got yourfarmers, your expanders, your
(20:15):
account management team, who area little bit more technical
sometimes, really understand theproduct portfolio, work with
customer success to identifyopportunities, and then jump
into the customer and say, Hey,I, I spoke to my customer
success team.
I understand what it is thatyou're going through.
We've got a service or anadditional product that you can
turn on right now.
(20:35):
That's going to solve thatproblem for you.
And so all of a sudden, Theaccount management team and
customer success teams areworking together.
They're driving net retentionrate through expansion.
They're reducing churn becausethe customer feels highly
satisfied.
And you're driving up yourrevenue and your ARR and getting
better growth.
And it's more efficient growthbecause you're not having to pay
to acquire a new customer.
(20:56):
And I think the proof is in thepudding always.
You gotta really measure thesethings with key metrics.
And one of my favorite metricsis our NPS score, Net Promoter
Score.
We have a 90 NPS score.
It's actually a 90.
2.
And we track that.
Constantly.
Constantly.
We have a whole Slack channel.
I can see every single NetPromoter response that comes in.
We know every single customer onthat Vol 4, 000 plus of those
(21:19):
customers.
We know when a customer is not a10.
And we change the road map.
We work with them.
We make sure that we are puttingthe customer first.
And I think when you take acustomer first approach, when
you have an honest brokercustomer success team, when your
account management team is doingthe right thing, it's All of
those pieces sort of worktogether along with sales
(21:40):
operations and finance, etcetera, to really build and
craft a structure for youroperational business that's
going to drive up your MPSscore, drive your GRR.
Hello, Dan.
Dan, really nice to talk to youtoday and it's Schnell.
dan balcauski (21:54):
Well, yeah, NPS of 90 is fantastic and a GRR of
greater than 90 or greater isalso fantastic.
So you've done a fantastic jobon both of those.
So, so in that thread that youjust outlined, So you, your
customer success person is theydon't have quota carrying
responsibility in thatrelationship.
Walk me through that decision.
(22:15):
Cause I think that's a bigdecision for folks.
And it's something that I thinka lot of.
CEOs constantly sort of strugglewith is like, it's like I've got
because customer success couldlook like, okay.
simon taylor (22:25):
Muy buenas tardes Michael.
So I want to kick us off with alittle bit about what you do.
You have a really le name thatyou've gotten as an Knick name.
Enterprise Software, right,through SaaS.
I mean, it's a SaaS service, butwe are backing up mission
critical data, right?
So, if you're selling somethingthat may not contain such
mission critical data, it'spossible that you don't need
what I'm describing.
But, my view is that in a B to Benterprise software company,
(22:50):
what you really need to be ableto do is make sure that you
understand what every customeris going through so that you can
figure out your roadmap, so thatyou can figure out, where, how
to prioritize, how to make tradeoffs on the product side, where
your pricing is failing you,where you need to improve
pricing, even things likepackaging.
When I hear from customersuccess, oh my gosh, they read
(23:10):
all the marketing and they stilldidn't really understand that
they could get this out of theproduct.
It's wow, okay, now my productmarketing team can improve the
product marketing.
So to me having this group ofhonest broker, customer success
folks in the company and makingsure that their data is locked
down.
They've got connective tissue toall the other departments in
many ways, they become the nervecenter.
(23:33):
They know where the pain is,they know where the challenges
are.
They know why customers love us.
I'll sometimes go to my head ofcustomer success and just say.
Hey, where, what's the wowmoment for this?
And he'll say, well, it's whenwe show them this in the demo,
this is the wow moment, right?
Or, well, some, it's funnybecause the wow moment is not
even in the sales process.
(23:54):
It's way afterwards when they'redoing this.
And all of a sudden you canstart to, you can start to sort
of re imagine.
The way the entire sort ofcustomer journey looks from the
perspective of the customer.
Now what I would say is thatthis is really important as you
scale the business.
I probably would not have takenthis approach in the A round
because you really need to goand grow and you don't have
(24:16):
enough customers.
You should build a customeradvisory board at that point.
People are wearing six to 10different hats each.
It's very different in the earlystages, but as you get a bit
bigger and you start to havedepartments, et cetera.
What you're going to be lookingto do is make sure that you
protect those customers.
Because again, you don't want togo out, you do not want to go
out and have to sell them twice.
(24:36):
And you don't want to buildthings that people don't need.
I think as you start to scaleyour business, there's a lot of
pressure to start to innovateand keep innovating and keep
adding this and keep addingthat.
And as your engineering groupexpands and your product group
expands, everybody's saying, oh,we got to have this, we got to
have this.
And at some point you got tostop and go, well, wait a
second.
Does the customer actually wantthis or do we just think it's
(24:58):
cool?
Right.
And I think customer success,again, I always call them the
honest broker in the businessbecause they're going to provide
you with some of those insightsto really help you make those
decisions.
And you might say, you knowwhat, nobody's asked for it, but
I think it's going to be amazingand take the bet.
And that's fine.
That's innovation.
That's great.
But know that you're taking arisk.
Don't do it blindly.
(25:19):
Don't do it because you thinkthat every customer is asking
for it.
Go and ask those questions.
And I think customer success arethe right folks in the
organization to really do that.
dan balcauski (25:27):
Well, I, man, so many breadcrumbs you dropped
there that I all look tasty anddelicious.
And I would love to follow up oneveryone, but I don't think we
have enough time.
Thinking of.
This idea of innovation andlike, where should we place our
bets?
Versus like, what are customersasking us to do versus, how do
we go invest in innovativetechnologies?
Well, there's probably nothingmore buzzy or hype right now
(25:49):
than AI.
Is there like, how do youapproach that with HYCU?
Is, do you have any sort ofcontrarian take on AI at the
SaaS world?
simon taylor (26:00):
So, so how we start, so, so we, how do I start
this?
I have a very contrarian take onthis which is we started out by
saying, yeah what I said to theteam was, We're not going to,
when AI started to become reallyhot, and the LLMs were
exploding.
I said, I saw everybody elsecoming out with a co pilot and I
(26:21):
said, I'm not going to launchsomething that is AI because
you're supposed to launch AI.
Right.
I said, if we find a realproblem and then we discover
organically that the solution tothat problem includes AI, great.
But I don't want to go thereverse end.
We're not going to just, sort ofsay, Hey, I've got to have an AI
(26:41):
approach or I can't raise money.
I've got to have an AI approachor I can't, look cool, on the
internet, or I can't, get a goodpress release.
That's not good for yourcustomers.
It's actually not good for yourinvestors.
You're wasting a lot of money,time, and resources.
So, so, so while everybody elsecame up with these co pilots
that did things like, Hey, my AIwill help you walk around our
website.
Well, I can do that myself,right?
(27:03):
I don't really need an AI to dothat for me.
What we ultimately thoughrealized, about six months
later.
We were looking at the way thatwe develop our integrations
without getting too technicalhere.
What we ultimately do is we arethe number one, world's number
one leader in SaaS dataprotection.
There's about 30, 000 SaaSservices in the world.
You ultimately want to back upand be able to recover about 250
(27:25):
of them.
And only about five of thoseSaaS services are backed up by
anybody in the world.
And HYCU now backs up 96 and theway we were able to back them
all up, the way we were able tocreate integrations in our
marketplace was using a reallyspecial and unique partnership
with Anthropic.
We actually built on the Cloud2model and then leveraged their
(27:48):
model to automate the process ofbuilding these integrations.
So we were actually able to getour engineering time on these
integrations down from, Twoyears to about three weeks.
I mean, it was a massiveimprovement.
And then we were able to open upthose APIs.
And we now let third parties usethe model so they can write
their own integrations.
So now we've got partners andSaaS vendors who are actually
(28:10):
using our model with ourenriched Cloud2 model so that
they can now build on top of ourmarketplace.
And I guess all of that is tosay, not, it's not a sales pitch
about HYCU.
The reason I bring it up is, Istarted from a position of we're
not gonna go out and just buildai, and we ended up becoming the
world's first generative AIbased data protection platform.
dan balcauski (28:32):
that's amazing.
So, I mean, I could just imagineyou've got a technical,
founders, leaders who justlistened to you say, well, our
development on theseintegrations went from two years
ish to three weeks.
And they just went, did the thescooby doo and then just said
like, wait, so, so, I love thisexample, help me understand, and
(28:54):
like, How is, how did you evensort of realize that this was an
opportunity and like, how doesthe team get this sort of into
reality?
Because I think this is abeautiful example of leveraging
these technologies, I mean,effectively under the hood,
right?
Like to make your own.
Development IncrediblyEfficient, right.
(29:14):
And so, which is not, again youcontrasted it very well with,
it's not just a co pilot forexternal folks, but we're able
to deliver these solutions tothe market faster by really
understanding these capabilitiesthat are available.
And you even mentioned you weredoing it with cloud too, or for
those of you who are nottracking, we're now on cloud
three, five.
So this is a couple of modelsago.
We're.
Probably before most folks evenrealized Anthropic was a going
(29:35):
concern.
So I've just, what was the sortof genesis of that?
simon taylor (29:40):
I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this a little bit
circuitous path to answer thequestion because I think it'll
be helpful.
I always think that a c journey.
Yeah.
I always think A CEO has onlythree jobs, right?
You build a vision, you sell thevision, and you hire a great
team.
Those are the only three jobs aCEO is really responsible for.
They're not easy jobs, but likethat, ultimately, when you
(30:01):
really boil it down, if you'vegot an amazing vision, you're
able to sell that visionyourself and your team is
incredible, you're probablygoing to do pretty well.
And so, I think our vision wasto protect the world's data.
And the way that we thoughtabout how you would do that was
different than everybody else.
(30:21):
We said, there's, 30, 000 SaaSservices in the world.
And It was leaving this massivegap in data that was, it was not
backed up.
So meaning like in the old days,all the data was in their
basement.
You could buy a piece of backupsoftware.
It was all in the servers.
You'd move the data from oneserver to another and you'd go,
okay, so my data is backed up.
And that's how companies didthat.
(30:42):
If you have an iPhone, how doyou back up your data?
You use iCloud backup.
You just turn the little thingand it just backs up all the
apps on your phone.
Companies don't have iCloudbackup, right?
So companies are runninghundreds and hundreds of these
SaaS applications and they werecompletely unable to protect
them.
And so, so what we said is like,How would you go about building
(31:03):
a platform that could protectall of them?
And not just the ones thatexisted today, but the ones that
were going to exist tomorrow.
And we said, well, It's anendless number, like it's
infinite.
You would need an infinitenumber of engineers, infinite
time, infinite money, infiniteresources.
That is not a solvable problem.
Okay.
And then we thought, okay, soif, what if we didn't try to
(31:26):
build it ourselves?
We built a platform that we hadopen AIs excuse me, open APIs.
and was able to allow thirdparties to actually build
integrations onto us.
So instead of us building backupand recovery for 30, 000 SaaS
services, what if 30, 000 SaaSservices came to HYCU and
(31:46):
actually built in a low codedevelopment platform and
integration in our marketplacethat allowed them to protect
their own services.
So we kind of flipped theproblem on its head, we inverted
the problem, the data protectionproblem, we inverted that
challenge, and we created thisplatform called rCloud, letter r
dash cloud, stands for recoverycloud.
(32:07):
And what it essentially does isit allows you to build.
So let's say I'm, I manage, orI'm Workday or I'm Salesforce.
I can now go or I'm Office 365or whoever it is, Box.
com.
I can go to HYCU.
I can spend a couple of daysusing this artificial
intelligence platform, and now Ican build an integration onto
HYCU's platform.
(32:28):
And by doing that, I can nowgive my customers a simple
service, which will allow themto backup and recover and
restore.
All of their data, right?
So, so this was the vision.
So remember I said, a CEO needsthree things.
They need a vision.
They got to sell the vision andthen they got to hire a great
team.
So that was the vision, right?
So, so protect the world's dataand we want to make, we want to
(32:52):
ultimately eliminate the SaaSdata security hole.
Those were the two things wewanted to accomplish.
And so we built this platform,right?
We went out and raised 140million to do it.
So sell the vision.
And then we hired an incredibleteam that said, okay, how would
we get third parties to buildour marketplace for us?
(33:13):
And that's when.
Our incredible team, my chiefproduct officer, my CTO, myself
sort of sat down together andsaid, well, what if we used AI
for that?
Like, what if we actually wereable to create connective tissue
between our low code developmentplatform and the SaaS vendor, so
we could expedite that path tobuilding an integration.
(33:33):
And so I think that was kind ofour journey was start with the
vision with a, identify a realproblem in the marketplace.
See a real solution for thatproblem and then expedite the
fulfillment of that solutionusing AI.
dan balcauski (33:49):
Oh, I that I love that whole arc.
Thank you for elaborating thatwhole thing.
'cause there's so many goodpoints in there from Yeah.
Right.
I mean, obviously you're not inthere writing all the lines of
code.
And so it, it don't expect that.
But making sure that, I've beenin that situation before as a
product leader where you have,just all these different.
Third party integrations you'vegot to do.
And you've, you could tackle 1percent of this long tail.
(34:12):
Right.
So I, I love the well businessmodel or business problem
inversion that you guys pulledoff and then being able to sort
of, use that as a foundation forlike, okay, can we apply
technology in a smart way hereto, even accelerate or leverage
up the capabilities that we havein house.
That's fantastic.
We're about to run out of time.
(34:32):
So I want to wrap up.
There's so many threads wedidn't even get to today.
We might have to have you on fora round two at some point, but I
want to finish out with somerapid fire questions.
Are you ready?
simon taylor (34:42):
Sure.
Hit me.
dan balcauski (34:44):
Simon, I give you one year to study any subject in
depth.
All your other responsibilitiesare taken care of.
You don't got to worry about,the company will be on the same
trajectory, whether you're thereor not.
You can go off and study, onesubject, like just dedicate
yourself to it.
What do you study?
simon taylor (35:00):
History.
dan balcauski (35:01):
History.
Any particular part or just allof history.
simon taylor (35:04):
I would go nuts on empire building historical
ramifications of warfare.
How generals, typically deployedarmies in various different
situations and how they overcameadversity in various different
sort of David and Goliath kindof situations as well.
dan balcauski (35:21):
Awesome.
Fantastic.
Look, when you think about allthe spectacular people you've
had a chance to work with, isthere anyone that just pops to
mind who's had adisproportionate effect on the
way that you think aboutbuilding companies now?
simon taylor (35:31):
I get asked this question.
A few people have asked me thisquestion and my answer,
continuously changes.
I mean, I feel like it'schanging constantly and I have
been really fortunate to, tosort of meet a lot of different
and interesting people.
Gosh, what's funny is it reallyhas changed a few years ago.
I would have said Elon Musk.
I'm not so sure now, But here'swhat I would say.
(35:52):
I think that folks who havereally disrupted industries and
massively shaken things up arewhere I care the most, so when I
think about like a Reid Hoffman.
When I think about, some of thefolks who have really shaken up
industries, I think that'sfantastic.
Even a Mark Benioff, fromSalesforce.
I think what he did, not justby, rebuilding CRM as we know
(36:15):
it, by building a marketplacethat really.
supports, not just billions ofdollars in revenue, hundreds and
hundreds of different companiesthat have really made their way
based on the Salesforceplatform.
I think things like that arereally exciting.
dan balcauski (36:30):
Well, nobody of any success gets there alone.
Has there been a close mentor orother leaders really helped you
on your journey?
simon taylor (36:38):
Yeah.
I actually have a pretty decentgroup of mentors that, that I
really care about.
And I really do.
I mean, I mean, it's, thesementorships can't be one way
streets.
I mean, it has to be reciprocalon some level.
You may not be as smart as theyare, or have the experience.
But what you can certainly do isyou can really care about the
time that they are investing inyou.
The folks that have invested alot of time in me are Al
(37:01):
Montserrat, who was the CRO atCitrix for many years and went
into PE.
BJ Jenkins, the president ofPalo Alto Networks.
Enrique Salem and Teresa Gao,who are now, I'm fortunate
enough to have on my board.
I mean, I've just, I've beensort of surrounded with pretty
incredible individuals.
I mean, Enrique was the CEO ofSymantec for many years.
Chairman of FireEye, DocuSign, Imean, so many companies I can't
(37:22):
even count.
And with folks like this, youjust learn constantly if you let
yourself.
And I think that really is thetrick to it all.
It's not a trick, but it's just,if you ever stop learning,
you're dead.
The moment you think you'rethere, you need to retire that
second.
I always think that, you have toearn the seat every single day
(37:43):
and every single minute of everyday because the you that was in
the seat yesterday cannot runthe company today.
The company's bigger and betterthan you and you just have to
keep up.
You've got to keep up and keepgetting better so you can
actually service all theincredible customers, partners.
And employees who have given uptheir time to make this a
reality.
dan balcauski (38:03):
Well, besides your interactions with Enrique
and Al and the other folks thatyou mentioned, are there, being
a CEO and trying to keep upcould be very demanding.
Are there any other ways thatyou've kept yourself on the top
of your game, whetherintellectually, emotionally,
physically?
A
simon taylor (38:20):
Yeah, I hired a trainer finally.
That was a big shift for me.
Here's what I would say,actually, in all seriousness, I
think making space for yourselfis really hard when you're doing
this job.
And it took me a long time,probably longer than it should
have, to realize that when Imake space for myself, that old
(38:41):
adage of.
Putting the air mask on yourselfbefore you give it to your
child.
It's like the company.
If you aren't making space foryour own life and for your own
time and you are so heads downin the business every second
that you're not you're just notgoing to perform as well.
And so I take some time now tomeditate every day.
I try to be at peace with, theidea that I'm going to step out
(39:03):
of the office for an hour to goand do a jog or run or
something.
And I think it has made me abetter leader and certainly a
more balanced leader.
So for me, I think that'sprobably the most important
thing.
dan balcauski (39:15):
big fan of meditation.
I'll add plus one to that.
Look, if you could, if I cangive you a billboard and you
could put any advice on therefor other B to B SaaS CEOs
trying to scale their companies,what would you say?
simon taylor (39:25):
Keep earning your seat, right?
You have to earn your seat everyminute of every day, and I think
it's easy to think typicallywith startups, there's a little
bit of a.
Kind of a step up.
Like it's like steps.
It's almost like plateaus thatyou're climbing up.
You kind of climb up a steephill and then it feels flat for
a few hours.
And then, oh, there's anotherhill.
You got to climb that one.
And I think it's when itflattens out for a few minutes
(39:48):
don't get complacent, keepearning your seat because that's
how you're going to get better.
That's how your company's goingto get better.
And that's how you're going to,you're ultimately going to have
an outcome that you want.
dan balcauski (39:58):
Keep earning your seat.
I love that.
Well, this has been absolutelyfantastic.
If our listeners want to connectwith you, learn more about HYCU,
how can they do that?
simon taylor (40:08):
Just simply go to www.
hycu.
com.
dan balcauski (40:12):
I will put that link in the show notes for our
listeners.
Everyone that wraps up thisepisode of SaaS Scaling Secrets.
Thank you to Simon for sharinghis journey insights and
valuable tips.
For our listeners, if you foundthis conversation as
enlightening as I did, rememberto subscribe so you don't miss
out on future episodes.
Welcome to SaaS Scaling Secrets, the podcast
that dives into the trencheswith leaders of the best scale
up B2B SaaS companies.
I'm your host, Dan Balcauski,founder of Product Tranquility.
Today, I have the privilege ofinterviewing Simon Taylor.
Simon is the CEO and founder ofHYCU, the world's fastest
growing multi cloud dataprotection company.
With over 20 years of experiencein go to market strategy,
product Marketing and ChannelSales.
(00:40):
Simon has led HYCU to secure 140million in funding, become a
leader in the data protectionspace.
Join me as we explore Simon'sunique stories, uncover the
secrets to his success, revealtheir strategies to scale HYCU
successfully.
Let's dive in.
Welcome Simon to SaaS ScalingSecrets.
simon taylor (00:56):
Well, thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to be here andthank you for having me on the
show.
dan balcauski (01:00):
I'm very excited and very appreciative of you
spending some time with ustoday.
On another podcast, I heard youquote, Hemingway.
Live on a knife's edge until 30and then spend the rest of your
life writing about it.
What does that mean to you?
simon taylor (01:18):
It's one of my favorite quotes and I'll tell
you what it does not mean.
It certainly doesn't mean thatyou should do nothing after the
age of 30.
I think there's a whole lifetimeof possibilities there.
But I think what happens before30 is you can live with a really
high risk tolerance.
And so, I went out to EasternEurope when I was about 24 years
old, started my first company inPrague in the Czech Republic.
(01:38):
I sold that by the time I was 26and then started another
company, built a whole suite ofdifferent business partners,
mentors, and really started tobuild my network.
And so when I think about wouldme, myself at 44 years old, Take
that risk, sell everything theyhad, move to Eastern Europe,
with sort of a hope and a prayerand see what happens, maybe not.
(02:00):
So, I always encourage youngerpeople take that risk early on,
do the wild, bold, crazy thingsand set yourself up for success
so that later on in your lifeyou can build upon those amazing
experiences.
But maybe do something that's alittle bit more risk mitigated.
dan balcauski (02:16):
Yes.
Do not take away that life endsat 30.
We are, we're both resemble
simon taylor (02:20):
I hope
dan balcauski (02:21):
that age.
Love that.
Well, you said you mentionedstarting a company as early as
24, look, if we could go backand even earlier in your life,
like it just put a microscope.
Would we have noticed anythingunusual if we observed your
early days, say from between 12and 18?
simon taylor (02:37):
I'll go back even further.
I was a really big fan of showand tell in the second grade.
So I, I love this idea ofgetting to go into class and
sell your best toy.
And I really did look at it thatway.
I would not just pick the toy.
I would come up with the storythat I was going to tell about
it.
I remember when I was five orsix, maybe seven.
(02:58):
It was when Atari was firstcoming out, maybe Nintendo.
I can't remember which one.
And I stood on the fireplacewith a ready made presentation
and I pitched to my parentsabout hand eye coordination.
They quickly shot me down andsaid there was no way I was
getting one.
But I think those earlyexperiences of really, Trying to
get a handle on what a pitchlooked like were definitely
(03:20):
germane to sort of, how I kindof grew up in form myself.
Yeah,
dan balcauski (03:28):
Shark Tank contestant have your children
give post Thanksgiving dinner,they have to make the pitch for
their Christmas toys.
Coming.
Oh, man.
Well, I could see howentrepreneurship was in your
future for that story.
Well, look, entrepreneurs talk alot about.
The importance of taking risk,looking back on your
entrepreneurial journey.
(03:49):
Could you share an example of arisk that paid off
significantly?
Obviously you've had a bunch ofsuccess, but like, those don't
always look, they're not alwaysguaranteed going up front.
Like what was it kind of at thetime you thought was a really
large risk that ended up workingout for you?
simon taylor (04:02):
I mean, as I was sort of saying in the beginning,
my first company, I, Raised alittle bit of money, half a
million dollars.
I wrote a business plan, and thebusiness plan was essentially
around how you would buildalmost like a business oriented
dating app that would help tobring together engineers and,
customers in the us.
And so what I essentially had todo was build an algorithmic
(04:22):
matching engine put a wholebunch of characteristics in.
And then make it, and then buildan enormous database of software
engineers, and then a wholebunch of clients in the U.
S.
so they could find each other.
And it was a kind of wild idea,in the early aughts.
And I literally had to selleverything I had to do it.
So I raised this little bit ofcash, I sold my car, my house.
I moved over to Prague in theCzech Republic.
(04:44):
I remember staying in a hostelfor the first month or two.
Trying to figure out how youeven rent a room in Prague.
It was not quite as westernized,back then as it is today.
And, when I look back on thatadventure and I look back on all
the things I didn't know, Imean, I think I still don't know
a lot now, but back then Icertainly did.
There was a whole world ofthings I didn't know.
(05:06):
I still wouldn't trade it foranything.
I think there was so much.
So much excitement in doingthat, but it was also I remember
calling up some friends andsaying, I'm doing this.
I'm selling everything.
I'm going over there.
And one of my friends said to mewhy on earth do you think you're
going to be successful?
What makes you think that thisis a good idea?
And I said, well, I know it's agood idea.
I don't know if I'll besuccessful, but I know it's a
(05:27):
good idea.
And so I think if you haveconviction and you have the
ability to show that convictionin a meaningful way to others.
You can do a lot.
You really can, even at a youngage.
And so for me, that wascertainly one of the bigger
risks that I've taken in mylife.
dan balcauski (05:45):
Wow.
That is, well, and a good friendbecause I had the exact same
question in my head, like, whatpossibly gives you the at 24
and, I've done quite a bit oftraveling in my life and I got
to say, pre smartphone era verydifferent especially early
2000s, Central Europe, EasternEurope, very different, not as
(06:06):
well trafficked as today, asyou're, you pointed out Hey,
what an incredible what anincredible move.
Well, I want to
simon taylor (06:12):
really was, and I'll tell you there was Yeah, go
ahead, sorry.
dan balcauski (06:15):
No, carry on.
simon taylor (06:18):
Well, I was just going to say that there's
nothing as entrepreneurial asgoing to a country That is sort
of post revolution and is reallytrying to figure out what
capitalism looks like.
There were so many unansweredquestions in the minds of the
Czech people at that point,right?
Because they knew they had anamazing talent pool.
They knew they had thisbeautiful fairytale city in the
(06:38):
form of Prague.
And it was just a world ofpossibilities.
I imagine that it was sort ofsimilar to, Coming to the U.
S.
after World War II, maybe in thefifties, when everything was
sort of bright and bold and newand sort of, sort of play a very
tiny hand in working with folksover there at that time.
It was an experience like noother.
It was a little crazy for sure.
(06:59):
I mean, I mean, it was not aneveryday decision but I took it
very seriously.
And so I think you've got tohave, again, that word
conviction always comes to mind.
If you're going to do somethingintense.
Make sure you've got a lot ofconviction because in those hard
moments, you're really going towant to make sure that you can
achieve what you set out to doand you can take it as far as
you possibly can.
dan balcauski (07:19):
Oh man, that is fantastic.
Yeah.
And that reminds me of justtalking to another CEO also on
this podcast and you're talkingvery much around he was based
out of Estonia and coming outof, living in, USSR based
Estonia into the, fresh shootsof capitalism coming out of that
world and just very much yeah,very different Wild West
(07:42):
frontier that was what came openin that space.
So, look I do want to pivot moreto, modern day.
And we've mentioned a couple oftimes the company HYCU and it,
it is spelled a little bitdifferently than it sounds.
So I was curious, like, wheredid this name come from?
Are you going to elaborate iffolks are out there, like,
trying to type into Google whatwe're talking about they, they
(08:04):
may stumble on some Japanesepoetry and not your company.
So, help us understand who wherethe name came from.
simon taylor (08:10):
So I'll tell you, it is pronounced Haiku.
It's spelled H Y C U.
And it is based on the Japanesepoem, which is spelled very
differently.
And HYCU is a company that wefounded so that we could make it
really easy to back up andrecover every kind of data in
the world.
We wanted to make it accessibleand easy to protect companies,
(08:30):
data, organizational data,whether it was in the cloud,
whether it was in a SaaS servicelike Salesforce or 365, or even
whether it was, your sort oflegacy server data sitting in a
basement somewhere.
And so, so when I was coming upwith the name, I was thinking
about, What is a word that meanstaking all of the data in a
language and making it reallysimple and easy to manage?
(08:54):
And I thought about a haiku poemand about how you take all the
data in all the words in alanguage and you kind of boil it
down to this small elegantpackage.
And then I thought, well, we'reprobably not going to be able to
buy haiku.
com.
And I said, so, so what is anacronym That means the same as
what we do, but sounds likehaiku.
(09:15):
And I came up with Hybrid CloudUptime because we keep hybrid
cloud data up and running.
H Y C U pronounced haiku soundslike the poem.
And that's how I came up withthe name.
dan balcauski (09:28):
very nice.
So, so, building on thetradition with the limited
resources of a startup toactually go by the domain name
that helps everybody find you.
And out of that invention isborn.
Well, look every CEO founderfaces challenges along the way.
Has there been a specificchallenge HYCU faced during its
growth that was particularlydifficult to overcome?
(09:50):
Maybe a crucible moment that hasmade the company what you think
it is today?
simon taylor (09:55):
Yeah, absolutely.
There's a lot, right?
I mean, certainly every companyhas lots of challenges that they
go through.
A friend of mine who's anentrepreneur described being the
CEO of a startup like, Acascading set of challenges that
are constantly water fallingdown on your back and you either
really like swimming or youshould just get out of the
water.
And I do very much agree withthat sort of conceptually.
(10:17):
I think that is what it is.
The first challenge, majorchallenge that comes to mind is
when I first founded thecompany, I did so with a
business partner who owns a lotof different companies.
He's since left the business.
But remains a great mentor andfriend to me.
His name is VeselinEvrasimovich.
And he and I decided that he wasgoing to go in a different
direction and that I would goout and raise some institutional
(10:39):
capital from venturecapitalists.
I'd never raised money fromventure capitalists before.
And, I remember going out thereinto the marketplace and every
single venture capitalist I metwith Was so friendly.
They were so nice.
I mean, every singleconversation ended with, we love
this.
This is great.
This is fantastic.
And I thought, wow, I'm reallygood at this.
(11:00):
This is this rate, raisingmoney, things pretty easy.
And then they wouldn't callback.
And so for about a year, thiskind of went on and I finally
said to a friend of mine, whatis the deal?
They all love what we're doing.
And he said, Simon, in venture,they're never going to tell,
what they're either going tolean in and move forward.
Or they're just going to stop.
(11:21):
And what you're looking for issomebody who wants to lean in.
I recommend you change yourpitch and change your story and,
change the way that you'retelling this story.
Cause it's a great story.
You're doing amazing things.
You've got to change the wayyou're telling it.
And, it was just about then thatCOVID hit and we were fortunate
that we grew 450 percent becauseour solution.
enabled people, our platformenabled IT decision makers to
(11:45):
move from on premises, so, datain the basement, to the public
cloud without going into theoffice.
So suddenly the IT departmentdidn't have to come in the
middle of COVID, and they couldstill do their job.
And so we grew 450 percent as aresult of that.
Change the sales pitchcompletely, change the
fundraising pitch, change thepitch deck and started to just
(12:05):
have conversations withinvestors.
When I would talk to investors,instead of pulling up the whole,
fancy PowerPoint, I just startedtelling the story of why we grew
so fast and what we had builtand why it was so different in
the industry.
And I realized that really wasresonating with folks.
So, we went through an entireyear of lots of wonderful, great
company and then never hearingback to all of a sudden, raising
(12:28):
87.
5 million from Bain CapitalVentures.
So, so, so it was and then afollow on, 53 million round with
A Crew as well.
So, so, so, I mean, I think thatthe sort of moral of that story
is, A, don't never give up.
But it's also, don't let yourego get in the way, right, of
the work that you're doing.
If you're not seeing tangibleresults, go ask someone, why
(12:50):
not?
Go get great advice from peoplethat you trust.
And first and foremost, makesure you have that network in
place so you can really besuccessful.
dan balcauski (12:59):
Well, I'm sure there's so many great parts of
that story of like, yeah, well,they're all being super
friendly.
The beautiful story of of anaive founder in the B to C
world.
But I it probably not the firstor last time that's happened
either.
I think probably made it a loteasier when you have a 450
percent revenue growth.
Number to talk to you probablyneed to modify your story a huge
(13:20):
amount.
I'm curious cause you, you haveraised a couple of rounds and
sizable ones at that did yourview on fundraising and sort of
what was important changebetween those rounds?
Because I, I think that's somewhere, different companies.
Get caught out.
And I think you're seeing a lotof it now where, especially in
those, head easier interest ratetimes where maybe it was, quote
(13:42):
unquote, easier to raise an A ora B.
And now it's, definitely harder.
Right.
Is it the hardest it's everbeen?
Who knows?
But people maybe felt likemasters of the universe.
Cause Oh man, I closed thisgiant round before I could do it
again and then go out and like,now it's like, Oh, the P these
people are looking for maybesomething different, or maybe, I
they're Now they're lookingdeeper into the numbers or like
(14:03):
something where I didn't expectthat going for the last round.
Did you learn any lessons likethat?
simon taylor (14:08):
I mean, I think we probably remembered some
lessons.
I mean, my father used to saygrowing up, he would always say
no free lunch.
It was a very Common expression,no free lunch.
Dad, what does that mean?
Well, it means nobody's going togive you a free lunch.
And I think, this happened in 99or 98.
It happened in 21, which isthat, you started to see these
(14:29):
valuations that were reallydivorced from reality.
And I think there was a coupleof different ways to approach
that.
One was to go, great, somebody'sgiving me a free lunch.
I'll take the big valuation andI'll Put on the unicorn hat and
dance around the office.
The other way to look at it was,well, what are you really asking
me for?
Are you asking for a, tripleliquidation preference?
Are you asking for a lot ofstructure in this deal?
(14:51):
Are you asking to change thenature of the deals so that my
employees who have worked sohard are going to be less
compensated as a result ifthere's an outcome, when there's
an outcome?
I think all of that sort of canget put on hold if you don't
really kind of grab the table.
And look yourself in the eye andsay, what do I really think this
is worth?
(15:12):
I think having a logical.
Practical approach to valuationsis first and foremost, one of
the most important things inrunning a business, you need to
know who you really are, you cansell a bit, you can tell people
things you can do, et cetera.
But at the end of the day, youneed to really care about your
business and about the employeeswho are in your business and
make sure that they're going tohave an amazing outcome at some
(15:34):
point as well.
That's your responsibility as afounder.
So I think that's part one.
And I think we really moved awayfrom that.
And I started having meetingswith people with 2 million in
ARR who were telling me thatthey had a billion dollar
company.
And you sort of, you think toyourself like, well, okay I'm, I
don't understand it, maybe I'mjust not that smart.
And I think when those thingsstart to happen more and more,
(15:54):
you realize how frothy theenvironment really was.
I think that the biggest shiftin terms of sort of, let's call
them key metrics, what reallymatters.
And it's not that these thingswere not important before, they
always were.
But I think there's a massivefocus on them right now, which
is gross retention rate and netretention rate.
So when you think about how youmanage a business, you care
(16:15):
about your top line ARR growth,your subscription revenue
growth.
But you also need to look at ifI have a hundred dollars of
revenue at the beginning of theyear, at the end of the year
with those same customers, howmuch is left?
How many of my customers haveleft?
How many have churned andstopped using my product?
And if that number is higherthan, let's say, I don't know,
(16:35):
10, 12 percent, you may have anissue.
You've got some things youreally got to care about.
HYCU's been really successful inthat we've really tried to keep
a gross retention rate of 90percent or above for, for the
sort of entirety of thebusiness.
That's been a real focus for us.
In fact, when people would sayto me, well, what are you going
to spend the money on in our Bround?
I remember saying to people,it's not just going to be a
(16:56):
bunch of salespeople orexpensive marketing.
I'm going to invest in a reallygood customer success team,
because I think that it's notjust about retaining and
attracting, excuse me, it's notjust about attracting customers.
It's about retaining thosecustomers and making sure that
the revenue you have is highquality revenue.
That you can count on for thefuture.
(17:18):
That's how you build.
That's how you scale.
dan balcauski (17:20):
Well, I love that focus on retention.
I say like, cause series B Iwould say even that's pretty
unique.
I don't see a lot of CEOs sortof pounding the table of we're
going to go focus on our grossretention number with our B
round for better or worse, I'm ahuge fan of that, but was that,
did that cause any sort of Likefriction with with your
(17:42):
investors, like was, or werethey just like, oh yeah that's
we're totally aligned with
simon taylor (17:45):
Trust me, every, everybody wants you to have
revenue that stays revenue.
But you've got to be high growthin this game.
I mean, if you're not growingfast, then you're going to have
a tough time.
So I think that kind of goeswithout saying.
So you've got to, you've got to,have really solid growth, but if
the if you're growing and you'rechurning a lot of your customers
out the back end, It means threethings.
One, your sales process is goingto be really inefficient.
(18:07):
Two, you've got to spend muchmore time, money, and resources
to make up for what you justlost, right?
And so I think in a high growtheconomy with low interest rates,
it was all about grow at allcosts.
And I think there's been a shifta little bit towards, path to
profitability to some degree,but also this idea that you want
to retain as much of your baseas possible because you don't
(18:30):
want to spend money to do ittwice.
I mean, again, it's just commonsense.
And I think that's somethingthat's, that I'm a big fan of
actually, and I know my board isas well.
dan balcauski (18:38):
Well, I wanna break.
That's a super, not an area Iwas planning on going into, but,
I'm super interested in, thiswhole idea of focusing and
investing on that retentionside.
So you already mentioned you hadthis idea to, take some of that
series B money and invest incustomer success.
I'm curious kind of, of how youreally thought about.
Your investments on theretention side, how did you
(19:01):
really think about, like, okay,what do we need from, maybe it's
only customer success and,they'd love to learn kind of how
you thought about that.
But, maybe it's other areas oflike, are we attracting, is
marketing sort of targeting theright people initially?
Do we have to look at, thingslike our pricing?
Are we looking at things likeour product investments?
How did you sort of think aboutapproaching that and how does
that sort How has that lived outsort of day to day in HYCU?
(19:24):
Like, do you have a, do you havea cross functional Tiger team
that sort of is responsible forthat number?
Like how are you looking atthat?
simon taylor (19:30):
So I think it's a great question.
So let me start by saying this,HYCU has 4, 000 customers in 78
countries.
And so when you think aboutretention, you're also thinking
about expansion.
And so I think your customersuccess team need to be the
honest brokers in your businessthat are not.
Not directly going out andselling.
When they interact with acustomer, you want the customer
(19:53):
to know, not just feel, but knowthat this customer success
individual has their bestinterests in mind.
But you do still need to expandthe business.
So how do you do that?
The way you do it is you, onceyou have enough scale and enough
customers, you have your AE teamthat does all of the new
business acquisition.
The hunters.
And then you've got yourfarmers, your expanders, your
(20:15):
account management team, who area little bit more technical
sometimes, really understand theproduct portfolio, work with
customer success to identifyopportunities, and then jump
into the customer and say, Hey,I, I spoke to my customer
success team.
I understand what it is thatyou're going through.
We've got a service or anadditional product that you can
turn on right now.
(20:35):
That's going to solve thatproblem for you.
And so all of a sudden, Theaccount management team and
customer success teams areworking together.
They're driving net retentionrate through expansion.
They're reducing churn becausethe customer feels highly
satisfied.
And you're driving up yourrevenue and your ARR and getting
better growth.
And it's more efficient growthbecause you're not having to pay
to acquire a new customer.
(20:56):
And I think the proof is in thepudding always.
You gotta really measure thesethings with key metrics.
And one of my favorite metricsis our NPS score, Net Promoter
Score.
We have a 90 NPS score.
It's actually a 90.
2.
And we track that.
Constantly.
Constantly.
We have a whole Slack channel.
I can see every single NetPromoter response that comes in.
We know every single customer onthat Vol 4, 000 plus of those
(21:19):
customers.
We know when a customer is not a10.
And we change the road map.
We work with them.
We make sure that we are puttingthe customer first.
And I think when you take acustomer first approach, when
you have an honest brokercustomer success team, when your
account management team is doingthe right thing, it's All of
those pieces sort of worktogether along with sales
(21:40):
operations and finance, etcetera, to really build and
craft a structure for youroperational business that's
going to drive up your MPSscore, drive your GRR.
Hello, Dan.
Dan, really nice to talk to youtoday and it's Schnell.
dan balcauski (21:54):
Well, yeah, NPS of 90 is fantastic and a GRR of
greater than 90 or greater isalso fantastic.
So you've done a fantastic jobon both of those.
So, so in that thread that youjust outlined, So you, your
customer success person is theydon't have quota carrying
responsibility in thatrelationship.
Walk me through that decision.
(22:15):
Cause I think that's a bigdecision for folks.
And it's something that I thinka lot of.
CEOs constantly sort of strugglewith is like, it's like I've got
because customer success couldlook like, okay.
simon taylor (22:25):
Muy buenas tardes Michael.
So I want to kick us off with alittle bit about what you do.
You have a really le name thatyou've gotten as an Knick name.
Enterprise Software, right,through SaaS.
I mean, it's a SaaS service, butwe are backing up mission
critical data, right?
So, if you're selling somethingthat may not contain such
mission critical data, it'spossible that you don't need
what I'm describing.
But, my view is that in a B to Benterprise software company,
(22:50):
what you really need to be ableto do is make sure that you
understand what every customeris going through so that you can
figure out your roadmap, so thatyou can figure out, where, how
to prioritize, how to make tradeoffs on the product side, where
your pricing is failing you,where you need to improve
pricing, even things likepackaging.
When I hear from customersuccess, oh my gosh, they read
(23:10):
all the marketing and they stilldidn't really understand that
they could get this out of theproduct.
It's wow, okay, now my productmarketing team can improve the
product marketing.
So to me having this group ofhonest broker, customer success
folks in the company and makingsure that their data is locked
down.
They've got connective tissue toall the other departments in
many ways, they become the nervecenter.
(23:33):
They know where the pain is,they know where the challenges
are.
They know why customers love us.
I'll sometimes go to my head ofcustomer success and just say.
Hey, where, what's the wowmoment for this?
And he'll say, well, it's whenwe show them this in the demo,
this is the wow moment, right?
Or, well, some, it's funnybecause the wow moment is not
even in the sales process.
(23:54):
It's way afterwards when they'redoing this.
And all of a sudden you canstart to, you can start to sort
of re imagine.
The way the entire sort ofcustomer journey looks from the
perspective of the customer.
Now what I would say is thatthis is really important as you
scale the business.
I probably would not have takenthis approach in the A round
because you really need to goand grow and you don't have
(24:16):
enough customers.
You should build a customeradvisory board at that point.
People are wearing six to 10different hats each.
It's very different in the earlystages, but as you get a bit
bigger and you start to havedepartments, et cetera.
What you're going to be lookingto do is make sure that you
protect those customers.
Because again, you don't want togo out, you do not want to go
out and have to sell them twice.
(24:36):
And you don't want to buildthings that people don't need.
I think as you start to scaleyour business, there's a lot of
pressure to start to innovateand keep innovating and keep
adding this and keep addingthat.
And as your engineering groupexpands and your product group
expands, everybody's saying, oh,we got to have this, we got to
have this.
And at some point you got tostop and go, well, wait a
second.
Does the customer actually wantthis or do we just think it's
(24:58):
cool?
Right.
And I think customer success,again, I always call them the
honest broker in the businessbecause they're going to provide
you with some of those insightsto really help you make those
decisions.
And you might say, you knowwhat, nobody's asked for it, but
I think it's going to be amazingand take the bet.
And that's fine.
That's innovation.
That's great.
But know that you're taking arisk.
Don't do it blindly.
(25:19):
Don't do it because you thinkthat every customer is asking
for it.
Go and ask those questions.
And I think customer success arethe right folks in the
organization to really do that.
dan balcauski (25:27):
Well, I, man, so many breadcrumbs you dropped
there that I all look tasty anddelicious.
And I would love to follow up oneveryone, but I don't think we
have enough time.
Thinking of.
This idea of innovation andlike, where should we place our
bets?
Versus like, what are customersasking us to do versus, how do
we go invest in innovativetechnologies?
Well, there's probably nothingmore buzzy or hype right now
(25:49):
than AI.
Is there like, how do youapproach that with HYCU?
Is, do you have any sort ofcontrarian take on AI at the
SaaS world?
simon taylor (26:00):
So, so how we start, so, so we, how do I start
this?
I have a very contrarian take onthis which is we started out by
saying, yeah what I said to theteam was, We're not going to,
when AI started to become reallyhot, and the LLMs were
exploding.
I said, I saw everybody elsecoming out with a co pilot and I
(26:21):
said, I'm not going to launchsomething that is AI because
you're supposed to launch AI.
Right.
I said, if we find a realproblem and then we discover
organically that the solution tothat problem includes AI, great.
But I don't want to go thereverse end.
We're not going to just, sort ofsay, Hey, I've got to have an AI
(26:41):
approach or I can't raise money.
I've got to have an AI approachor I can't, look cool, on the
internet, or I can't, get a goodpress release.
That's not good for yourcustomers.
It's actually not good for yourinvestors.
You're wasting a lot of money,time, and resources.
So, so, so while everybody elsecame up with these co pilots
that did things like, Hey, my AIwill help you walk around our
website.
Well, I can do that myself,right?
(27:03):
I don't really need an AI to dothat for me.
What we ultimately thoughrealized, about six months
later.
We were looking at the way thatwe develop our integrations
without getting too technicalhere.
What we ultimately do is we arethe number one, world's number
one leader in SaaS dataprotection.
There's about 30, 000 SaaSservices in the world.
You ultimately want to back upand be able to recover about 250
(27:25):
of them.
And only about five of thoseSaaS services are backed up by
anybody in the world.
And HYCU now backs up 96 and theway we were able to back them
all up, the way we were able tocreate integrations in our
marketplace was using a reallyspecial and unique partnership
with Anthropic.
We actually built on the Cloud2model and then leveraged their
(27:48):
model to automate the process ofbuilding these integrations.
So we were actually able to getour engineering time on these
integrations down from, Twoyears to about three weeks.
I mean, it was a massiveimprovement.
And then we were able to open upthose APIs.
And we now let third parties usethe model so they can write
their own integrations.
So now we've got partners andSaaS vendors who are actually
(28:10):
using our model with ourenriched Cloud2 model so that
they can now build on top of ourmarketplace.
And I guess all of that is tosay, not, it's not a sales pitch
about HYCU.
The reason I bring it up is, Istarted from a position of we're
not gonna go out and just buildai, and we ended up becoming the
world's first generative AIbased data protection platform.
dan balcauski (28:32):
that's amazing.
So, I mean, I could just imagineyou've got a technical,
founders, leaders who justlistened to you say, well, our
development on theseintegrations went from two years
ish to three weeks.
And they just went, did the thescooby doo and then just said
like, wait, so, so, I love thisexample, help me understand, and
(28:54):
like, How is, how did you evensort of realize that this was an
opportunity and like, how doesthe team get this sort of into
reality?
Because I think this is abeautiful example of leveraging
these technologies, I mean,effectively under the hood,
right?
Like to make your own.
Development IncrediblyEfficient, right.
(29:14):
And so, which is not, again youcontrasted it very well with,
it's not just a co pilot forexternal folks, but we're able
to deliver these solutions tothe market faster by really
understanding these capabilitiesthat are available.
And you even mentioned you weredoing it with cloud too, or for
those of you who are nottracking, we're now on cloud
three, five.
So this is a couple of modelsago.
We're.
Probably before most folks evenrealized Anthropic was a going
(29:35):
concern.
So I've just, what was the sortof genesis of that?
simon taylor (29:40):
I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this a little bit
circuitous path to answer thequestion because I think it'll
be helpful.
I always think that a c journey.
Yeah.
I always think A CEO has onlythree jobs, right?
You build a vision, you sell thevision, and you hire a great
team.
Those are the only three jobs aCEO is really responsible for.
They're not easy jobs, but likethat, ultimately, when you
(30:01):
really boil it down, if you'vegot an amazing vision, you're
able to sell that visionyourself and your team is
incredible, you're probablygoing to do pretty well.
And so, I think our vision wasto protect the world's data.
And the way that we thoughtabout how you would do that was
different than everybody else.
(30:21):
We said, there's, 30, 000 SaaSservices in the world.
And It was leaving this massivegap in data that was, it was not
backed up.
So meaning like in the old days,all the data was in their
basement.
You could buy a piece of backupsoftware.
It was all in the servers.
You'd move the data from oneserver to another and you'd go,
okay, so my data is backed up.
And that's how companies didthat.
(30:42):
If you have an iPhone, how doyou back up your data?
You use iCloud backup.
You just turn the little thingand it just backs up all the
apps on your phone.
Companies don't have iCloudbackup, right?
So companies are runninghundreds and hundreds of these
SaaS applications and they werecompletely unable to protect
them.
And so, so what we said is like,How would you go about building
(31:03):
a platform that could protectall of them?
And not just the ones thatexisted today, but the ones that
were going to exist tomorrow.
And we said, well, It's anendless number, like it's
infinite.
You would need an infinitenumber of engineers, infinite
time, infinite money, infiniteresources.
That is not a solvable problem.
Okay.
And then we thought, okay, soif, what if we didn't try to
(31:26):
build it ourselves?
We built a platform that we hadopen AIs excuse me, open APIs.
and was able to allow thirdparties to actually build
integrations onto us.
So instead of us building backupand recovery for 30, 000 SaaS
services, what if 30, 000 SaaSservices came to HYCU and
(31:46):
actually built in a low codedevelopment platform and
integration in our marketplacethat allowed them to protect
their own services.
So we kind of flipped theproblem on its head, we inverted
the problem, the data protectionproblem, we inverted that
challenge, and we created thisplatform called rCloud, letter r
dash cloud, stands for recoverycloud.
(32:07):
And what it essentially does isit allows you to build.
So let's say I'm, I manage, orI'm Workday or I'm Salesforce.
I can now go or I'm Office 365or whoever it is, Box.
com.
I can go to HYCU.
I can spend a couple of daysusing this artificial
intelligence platform, and now Ican build an integration onto
HYCU's platform.
(32:28):
And by doing that, I can nowgive my customers a simple
service, which will allow themto backup and recover and
restore.
All of their data, right?
So, so this was the vision.
So remember I said, a CEO needsthree things.
They need a vision.
They got to sell the vision andthen they got to hire a great
team.
So that was the vision, right?
So, so protect the world's dataand we want to make, we want to
(32:52):
ultimately eliminate the SaaSdata security hole.
Those were the two things wewanted to accomplish.
And so we built this platform,right?
We went out and raised 140million to do it.
So sell the vision.
And then we hired an incredibleteam that said, okay, how would
we get third parties to buildour marketplace for us?
(33:13):
And that's when.
Our incredible team, my chiefproduct officer, my CTO, myself
sort of sat down together andsaid, well, what if we used AI
for that?
Like, what if we actually wereable to create connective tissue
between our low code developmentplatform and the SaaS vendor, so
we could expedite that path tobuilding an integration.
(33:33):
And so I think that was kind ofour journey was start with the
vision with a, identify a realproblem in the marketplace.
See a real solution for thatproblem and then expedite the
fulfillment of that solutionusing AI.
dan balcauski (33:49):
Oh, I that I love that whole arc.
Thank you for elaborating thatwhole thing.
'cause there's so many goodpoints in there from Yeah.
Right.
I mean, obviously you're not inthere writing all the lines of
code.
And so it, it don't expect that.
But making sure that, I've beenin that situation before as a
product leader where you have,just all these different.
Third party integrations you'vegot to do.
And you've, you could tackle 1percent of this long tail.
(34:12):
Right.
So I, I love the well businessmodel or business problem
inversion that you guys pulledoff and then being able to sort
of, use that as a foundation forlike, okay, can we apply
technology in a smart way hereto, even accelerate or leverage
up the capabilities that we havein house.
That's fantastic.
We're about to run out of time.
(34:32):
So I want to wrap up.
There's so many threads wedidn't even get to today.
We might have to have you on fora round two at some point, but I
want to finish out with somerapid fire questions.
Are you ready?
simon taylor (34:42):
Sure.
Hit me.
dan balcauski (34:44):
Simon, I give you one year to study any subject in
depth.
All your other responsibilitiesare taken care of.
You don't got to worry about,the company will be on the same
trajectory, whether you're thereor not.
You can go off and study, onesubject, like just dedicate
yourself to it.
What do you study?
simon taylor (35:00):
History.
dan balcauski (35:01):
History.
Any particular part or just allof history.
simon taylor (35:04):
I would go nuts on empire building historical
ramifications of warfare.
How generals, typically deployedarmies in various different
situations and how they overcameadversity in various different
sort of David and Goliath kindof situations as well.
dan balcauski (35:21):
Awesome.
Fantastic.
Look, when you think about allthe spectacular people you've
had a chance to work with, isthere anyone that just pops to
mind who's had adisproportionate effect on the
way that you think aboutbuilding companies now?
simon taylor (35:31):
I get asked this question.
A few people have asked me thisquestion and my answer,
continuously changes.
I mean, I feel like it'schanging constantly and I have
been really fortunate to, tosort of meet a lot of different
and interesting people.
Gosh, what's funny is it reallyhas changed a few years ago.
I would have said Elon Musk.
I'm not so sure now, But here'swhat I would say.
(35:52):
I think that folks who havereally disrupted industries and
massively shaken things up arewhere I care the most, so when I
think about like a Reid Hoffman.
When I think about, some of thefolks who have really shaken up
industries, I think that'sfantastic.
Even a Mark Benioff, fromSalesforce.
I think what he did, not justby, rebuilding CRM as we know
(36:15):
it, by building a marketplacethat really.
supports, not just billions ofdollars in revenue, hundreds and
hundreds of different companiesthat have really made their way
based on the Salesforceplatform.
I think things like that arereally exciting.
dan balcauski (36:30):
Well, nobody of any success gets there alone.
Has there been a close mentor orother leaders really helped you
on your journey?
simon taylor (36:38):
Yeah.
I actually have a pretty decentgroup of mentors that, that I
really care about.
And I really do.
I mean, I mean, it's, thesementorships can't be one way
streets.
I mean, it has to be reciprocalon some level.
You may not be as smart as theyare, or have the experience.
But what you can certainly do isyou can really care about the
time that they are investing inyou.
The folks that have invested alot of time in me are Al
(37:01):
Montserrat, who was the CRO atCitrix for many years and went
into PE.
BJ Jenkins, the president ofPalo Alto Networks.
Enrique Salem and Teresa Gao,who are now, I'm fortunate
enough to have on my board.
I mean, I've just, I've beensort of surrounded with pretty
incredible individuals.
I mean, Enrique was the CEO ofSymantec for many years.
Chairman of FireEye, DocuSign, Imean, so many companies I can't
(37:22):
even count.
And with folks like this, youjust learn constantly if you let
yourself.
And I think that really is thetrick to it all.
It's not a trick, but it's just,if you ever stop learning,
you're dead.
The moment you think you'rethere, you need to retire that
second.
I always think that, you have toearn the seat every single day
(37:43):
and every single minute of everyday because the you that was in
the seat yesterday cannot runthe company today.
The company's bigger and betterthan you and you just have to
keep up.
You've got to keep up and keepgetting better so you can
actually service all theincredible customers, partners.
And employees who have given uptheir time to make this a
reality.
dan balcauski (38:03):
Well, besides your interactions with Enrique
and Al and the other folks thatyou mentioned, are there, being
a CEO and trying to keep upcould be very demanding.
Are there any other ways thatyou've kept yourself on the top
of your game, whetherintellectually, emotionally,
physically?
A
simon taylor (38:20):
Yeah, I hired a trainer finally.
That was a big shift for me.
Here's what I would say,actually, in all seriousness, I
think making space for yourselfis really hard when you're doing
this job.
And it took me a long time,probably longer than it should
have, to realize that when Imake space for myself, that old
(38:41):
adage of.
Putting the air mask on yourselfbefore you give it to your
child.
It's like the company.
If you aren't making space foryour own life and for your own
time and you are so heads downin the business every second
that you're not you're just notgoing to perform as well.
And so I take some time now tomeditate every day.
I try to be at peace with, theidea that I'm going to step out
(39:03):
of the office for an hour to goand do a jog or run or
something.
And I think it has made me abetter leader and certainly a
more balanced leader.
So for me, I think that'sprobably the most important
thing.
dan balcauski (39:15):
big fan of meditation.
I'll add plus one to that.
Look, if you could, if I cangive you a billboard and you
could put any advice on therefor other B to B SaaS CEOs
trying to scale their companies,what would you say?
simon taylor (39:25):
Keep earning your seat, right?
You have to earn your seat everyminute of every day, and I think
it's easy to think typicallywith startups, there's a little
bit of a.
Kind of a step up.
Like it's like steps.
It's almost like plateaus thatyou're climbing up.
You kind of climb up a steephill and then it feels flat for
a few hours.
And then, oh, there's anotherhill.
You got to climb that one.
And I think it's when itflattens out for a few minutes
(39:48):
don't get complacent, keepearning your seat because that's
how you're going to get better.
That's how your company's goingto get better.
And that's how you're going to,you're ultimately going to have
an outcome that you want.
dan balcauski (39:58):
Keep earning your seat.
I love that.
Well, this has been absolutelyfantastic.
If our listeners want to connectwith you, learn more about HYCU,
how can they do that?
simon taylor (40:08):
Just simply go to www.
hycu.
com.
dan balcauski (40:12):
I will put that link in the show notes for our
listeners.
Everyone that wraps up thisepisode of SaaS Scaling Secrets.
Thank you to Simon for sharinghis journey insights and
valuable tips.
For our listeners, if you foundthis conversation as
enlightening as I did, rememberto subscribe so you don't miss
out on future episodes.
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