About the Instructor
Shiv is the Founder and CEO of How To SaaS, a Marketing Strategy Consulting firm that works with leading Private Equity Investors and CEOs. As an advisor, consultant and fractional CMO, Shiv has helped client B2B companies create hundreds of millions of dollars in enterprise value with marketing and demand gen. Shiv has been a CMO / Marketing Advisor / Strategic Consultant to companies like Wrike, Chargebee, BigCommerce, Litera, Fortra and PE firms like TA, HG, STG and many more.
Shiv is also a 2x bestselling author. His first book, Post-Acquisition Marketing, provides PE investors a framework to grow their portfolio investments faster in the first 100 days. His second book, Exit-Ready Marketing, gives Founders a 9-step process to improve their marketing sophistication and eventual valuation upon exit.
Shiv's Story
Before founding How To SaaS, Shiv was the CMO of Wild Apricot, which he grew to $20 million in ARR before its acquisition by Personify and Rubicon Technology Partners in 2017.
He knew through painful personal experience how crucial it is for marketers to think strategically by really first understanding the business context of their organizations and then plan what happens at the department and functional levels.
Almost got fired
In 2016 when the BDR/SDR/AE model was popular, Shiv attended SaaStr where the theme was building sales teams, and promptly hired a sales leader and sales reps. Twelve months later, he was forced to fire the sales leader, reassign the sales reps, and get rid of a very expensive Salesforce implementation—almost getting fired himself. He realized if he had understood the business context, he would have seen that the company’s ACV was too low to support a sales team, it had lots of untapped marketing potential and a healthy CAC payback period on a small marketing budget. Despite that, he had bet on a costly sales team. It was a huge learning moment for Shiv. He reversed course, doubled down on what was working, grew the business to 20 million and sold it. The fact that he was lucky to get the chance to go through this journey when most would get fired wasn't lost on Shiv.
Noticing a crucial marketing gap
After Wild Apricot's acquisition, the Private Equity sponsors started pulling Shiv into their portfolio investment to help with marketing. He learnt that the marketing function in even large companies is often immature, under budget and understaffed. A key reason is there’s little understanding of what the role of marketing is in the enterprise value creation process because marketers don't provide the data needed at the board level.
The birth of the C-Level Marketing Training Program
These reasons inspired Shiv to create the C-Level Marketing Training Program. How to SaaS was originally envisioned as a training platform offering courses on marketing, product and sales, but the consulting took off and kept him occupied. Five years later, with a larger team, an audience on social media, and established B2B client base and PE partnerships, the timing was finally right for Shiv to focus on training as an offering. The goal: Equip marketers with the skills to think like C-Level Marketers and get the tools and frameworks to act as enterprise value drivers.
