Recall Sessions: Building a $1.1B Category That Didn't Exist | Nick Mehta (Gainsight)

About this episode

Nick Mehta discusses his journey as CEO of Gainsight and the creation of a new category in customer success.

Nick Mehta is the former CEO of Gainsight, the platform that helps companies drive durable growth through customer-led and product-led strategies. Vista Equity Partners acquired Gainsight for $1.1 billion. Nick ran the company as CEO for 13 years before stepping into a board role last year. Nick has also co-authored four books on customer success, was named Entrepreneur of the Year for Northern California, and currently sits on the boards of F5 and PubMatic. Before Gainsight, he was CEO of LiveOffice, which he grew to $25 million in revenue and sold to Symantec. Somrat Niyogi and Nick cover how a meetup with cheap wine and a cheese tray on a ping pong table became the seed of a category, why community mattered more than product in the beginning, what it was like selling software into a role that barely existed, the Box deal that involved a music video parody and memorizing the lobby Wi-Fi password, what happened when Salesforce announced they were the "customer success platform," how to think about category creation vs. joining an existing one, and why Nick got on stage at Pulse coming off pneumonia to talk about being lonely as a kid. In loving memory of Summer Devi Mehta…

People in this episode

Guest: Nick Mehta

Topics covered

• customer success
• category creation
• software sales
• community building

Keywords

• Gainsight
• Vista Equity Partners
• Entrepreneur of the Year
• Pulse

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Gainsight, LiveOffice

Places: Northern California, Village, Silicon Valley

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