Doug Camplejohn
(00:00)
Hello, everyone. This is Doug Camplejohn and welcome to this week's episode of Revenue Renegades. This week, we have the CEO of Gainsight, Nick Mehta. I don't know if Nick gets a royalty every time Zuckerberg mentions Meta, but that would be nice.
Nick Mehta
(00:16)
The check or the $100 million offer would be even better.
Doug Camplejohn
(00:19)
That would be good—a hundred million dollar signing bonus. But Nick is the one who kind of single-handedly created the customer success category. Gainsight is by far the leading platform for managing your post-sales customer success journey. So, Nick…
Nick Mehta
(00:39)
Definitely not single-handedly, Doug, and definitely not just Gainsight, but thank you for the kind words. I have two hands, not just one.
Doug Camplejohn
(00:44)
You get the lion's share of credit, my friend, and we'll talk about category creation as well. So good to see you, and welcome to the show.
Nick Mehta
(00:55)
Doug, thanks, I appreciate it.
Doug Camplejohn
(00:57)
Let's kick it off. Go back in time and think about the beginning of Gainsight. What was the spark? Where did the idea come from?
Nick Mehta
(01:07)
It was an interesting convergence of random things, as is all entrepreneurship. I ran a SaaS company before Gainsight—small, but it was great. In those years, I learned the world is very different when you shift from selling on-prem software, where you could just walk away after the sale, to SaaS. I was an executive at Symantec. Our products were traditional enterprise software; you sell it, and then move to the next customer. The world of SaaS was new to me when I ran my last company. I remember sitting in a conference room, asking, “This is awesome, it’s in the cloud, so now we must know everything about our customers—how do we know?”
How do we know what's going on with the customers? So, we projected a spreadsheet on the screen. Even though companies were moving to the cloud, practically, they were still doing things the way they always did: focusing a ton on getting new customers and then being reactive after the sale. It so happened that a couple of other entrepreneurs had the same idea—Jim Eberlein and Sridhar Pettanenny. They were working on their idea, I was working on mine. I was an EIR at Accel at the time, then Battery Ventures. Battery said, “Nick, you're thinking about this—you should meet these two guys.” We met up, hit it off, and that was 2013—way more than a decade ago, pre-LLM, pre-transformer. But that's how it started. All we knew was that as more companies moved to SaaS, they'd need to focus on keeping and growing customers, not just getting them. We thought that was a way to over time disrupt the broader space of CRM. That was our little wedge.
Doug Camplejohn
(02:59)
I call it BC—before ChatGPT.
Nick Mehta
(03:23)
We didn't realize how little TAM there was back then—frankly, there weren't that many SaaS companies, and we were selling to this new role: customer success manager, which we didn’t create—the term came from Salesforce. When we started, there were probably a thousand CSMs in the world. If our software was just a few thousand dollars a seat, our core product, so our TAM was like a million bucks, two million bucks. Thank God we didn’t know that—otherwise, we never would have done Gainsight. We figured out our job wasn’t just to evangelize our company, but evangelize a whole new way of thinking, a new job. And we can talk more about category creation: creating a conference and a book, writing a number of books. We got really good at category creation—not out of desire, out of necessity.
Doug Camplejohn
(04:18)
I admire that because I remember those days—you were the evangelist, you were the “Bible thumper.” You were up there…
Nick Mehta
(04:26)
I remember coming to you when you were doing your startup—I totally remember that.
Doug Camplejohn
(04:30)
Yeah—it was just, and so maybe talk a little bit about category creation. We have Chris Lochhead coming on this show, one of the fathers of category creation. All entrepreneurs used to think it would be great if there was a three-letter acronym named after us about the category. I think you and I have enough “road miles” now to realize that's a non-trivial task, but you took it on out of necessity. So tell me how you thought about the value of the conference, whether startups should do that, the book, and building your category.
Nick Mehta
(05:14)
“Road miles”—I'm picking up something here, Doug. Is that what I say when my kids call me old? Do I just say I have road miles?
Doug Camplejohn
(05:19)
Yeah—experience miles, road miles.
Nick Mehta
(05:24)
Experience miles—that’s what the gray hairs are. Early on, we wondered, is there a category for this? An acronym? Is there a magic quadrant from Gartner? For those watching, Gartner’s “magic quadrant” is a way to measure software spaces. So, was there a category, was there a buyer? The answer was no on all fronts. But there was this emerging underserved group—customer success managers—who came from various jobs but were converging into this new thing. One of the seminal moments in Gainsight history wasn't Pulse, our big event—it was something before Pulse. We were just starting, had an office above a bar in Mountain View—a crappy little 3,000-foot office, peeling carpet, one men’s and one women’s bathroom, about 40-50 people. We thought: "We have this software for customer retention, there's a new role: customer success manager, so let's throw a meetup in our office.” We used a meetup link, probably forwarded around a bunch, went to Safeway—grocery store in California—for a cheap cheese tray and wine, put it on a plastic table. The office was packed, we expected 20 people, but 75 came. The two bathroom situation was even worse with all these people. But they weren't coming for the wine or food—they were coming for each other. I remember that night vividly—they just kept talking, it went on to 11 pm; it was like, “finally, people like me.”
Then Anthony Kennada, our first CMO—one of my dearest friends—had an idea. In early 2013, he showed me a presentation, called it “Gold Rush”—very ambitious. He pitched doing a new kind of category-creating conference. We thought a small event, maybe 50-100 people. We booked a ballroom in San Francisco—using venture capital, so I’m pretty sure it was the Four Seasons—kind of absurd with little revenue. We sat down and 300 people came. I had some CEO friends, invited you, Aaron Levie was there, a great friend to Gainsight, and Jeffrey Moore (author of Crossing the Chasm) spoke. The room was buzzing, much better food, Four Seasons catering, but the same energy. We called it Pulse—because we didn’t want it to be about Gainsight, we wanted it to be about the industry. That was huge—could have been the Gainsight Conference, but it was called Pulse from then to now. We've done it every year since 2013—virtual during COVID, everywhere: San Francisco, Vegas, Moscone Center, Oakland, London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Sydney. Add up unique attendees, probably 30,000 to 50,000 have come over time—it’s the industry event for this space. We made it all about the community. Ask anyone after an event what the biggest value was, and most say:"There are other people like me; I’m not alone or on the wrong track." They learn things too, but it’s really community first. I enjoy building community, bringing people together with big events, small events, and road shows. Another thing early on—how do we share the knowledge? We weren’t experts, but we talked to many companies and learned what they were doing. Our first Chief Customer Officer, Dan Steinman—who came from Marketo—talked to tons of teams and helped them learn this craft. We canonized knowledge into a PDF, “The 10 Laws of Customer Success,” a cheesy ebook. There was so much resonance. We got a cold email—2014—from Wiley Publishing, asking if we'd write a book. I thought a friend was pranking me, because we weren't qualified. Thank goodness Dan did most of the work—he took the “10 Laws” and expanded it into a book. It got over 100,000 copies sold. My guess: half of CSMs in the world read it at some point. Then we wrote four more books on customer success. We've also done internship programs, online CS university training, all kinds of community things. None of this you can ascribe a lead value or ROI to, but with 12 years of hindsight, everything we have today—all business, $230 million in revenue—is because of Pulse, the book, and all those early things. So the ROI of that Safeway wine and cheese is the highest you could ever have.
Doug Camplejohn
(13:11)
It all leads back to the Safeway wine and cheese. I love the take. Box has done this for years with Boxworks. Marc Benioff is the master with Dreamforce. But the thing I love is that, yes, it’s a platform for Gainsight, and you make product announcements, but it's really about the audience. Especially for you at the time, that audience didn't have other venues—it was like being the weird kid in high school asking, "Where do the other weird kids hang out?"
Nick Mehta
(13:50)
That's it! We got so much inspiration from Dreamforce, HubSpot Inbound, Marketo’s conference, Boxworks, etc. Probably the most similar in vibe was HubSpot’s Inbound—it’s not called HubSpot; it’s called Inbound. Ours is not called Gainsight; it’s called Pulse. There’s always this thing: every year I’ll get an SDR from somewhere emailing, “Congratulations on being selected to speak at Pulse,” and I’m like, “That’s a battle, I’m proud!” It’s a humblebrag, but it’s cool—it shows Pulse has a life of its own beyond Gainsight. It brings up morale in the company, too.
Doug Camplejohn
(14:51)
I love it. It’s definitely a playbook I’m watching. Let’s shift gears to AI, because you posted recently that you’ve shifted the Gainsight roadmap to 70% AI and this belief that dashboards are dead or will be. Talk more about that. First, how does AI product development differ from traditional SaaS product development? Also, why do you think dashboards are dying?
Nick Mehta
(15:27)
Let me do the “why” then the “how.” What I posted specifically is that every software product eventually builds reports, dashboards, report builders. Every product does something like, “The customer wants to sort the report this way or create a pie chart, or multi-column…” You end up rebuilding Tableau or Power BI. Why does a business person look at a report? Not to look at a report, but to make a decision: invest more in X, less in Y, focus on these customers, not those. So, the report, the analyst, and the BI system are just intermediaries between data and a decision. Pre-generative AI, you had two ways: run the reports yourself using a reporting tool, or have an analyst do it. Now, what if it could just give me the answer? I hope everyone here uses ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or similar. You can take a spreadsheet and say, “What are the top trends here?” or "Who are my top customers/problems?" Generative AI allows us to finally fulfill that pitch we've always had: “Buy our software, and you'll get more revenue or reduce costs.” In Gainsight’s case, it’s about reducing churn, improving onboarding, adoption, scalability, automation, and so on. But it’s a tool—you only get the value if you know how to use it. In marketing automation, great products are all dependent on the quality of the marketer operating them. With agents, you can deliver the end result to the client. In our case, we’re building our Atlas family of agents, taking tasks in the customer journey (onboarding, adoption, EBR, renewal) and tackling them with agents. For example, DocuSign, a pilot customer, has a long tail managed by a team in Sao Paulo that handles hundreds of millions of ARR with 130 people—they'd love to redeploy that team to higher-touch customers. What if agents could do that for you? Pre-generative AI, they used our workflow and reporting software but had to operate it themselves. Post-generative AI and agents—what about a world where we can actually do the renewal for them, for the low end? Huge opportunity—TAM expands, more value for the client. There’s a radical change in what a software company can do. We’ve always pitched revenue/cost impact, but we’ve really delivered just a tool—it’s like somebody says, “I’ll build you a house,” hands you a toolkit, and you’re like, “That’s not a house, that’s a toolkit.” Now, you can build the whole house for them—or part of it.
Maybe I build part of the kitchen, you build the rest, and it’ll be progressive. Now, how to do it is challenging because as incumbents—not huge incumbents, but not startups either—we have assets (customer relationships, data, workflow, domain knowledge) but also the liability of the existing business, and ways of working. The assets are powerful; if you can create a new team to go after new initiatives, maintain your core business but have people focused on the future, we can radically deliver value to customers.
Doug Camplejohn
(20:33)
Yeah, I love the reporting side. If you remember Fred Shilmover at InsightSquared, the breakthrough in that product was just that they added a “what’s the question this report answers” label. I didn't have to decipher a bar chart—I was told this report is answering this question.
Nick Mehta
(20:41)
Yes, I remember that.
Nick Mehta
(20:49)
Some people love their charts. Some of my favorite people at Gainsight will make these inscrutable charts with 17 series, multi-column, combo bar charts, slide up on a screen. Now, instead of trying to figure out the chart, I take a picture, send it to ChatGPT, and ask, “What does this mean?” It gives me the answer. Just like when InsightSquared added summaries to their reports. This is where LLMs are really good.
Doug Camplejohn
(22:00)
Yeah. Do you think this will be in your products, or is this just an MCP interface and people will interface through those?
Nick Mehta
(22:07)
We've done both: built prompt-based reporting—where you type in a question, it translates into SQL or a metadata query and runs a report. That’ll be everywhere. MCP (Model Context Protocol)—for those who don't know, it came out about six months ago. Anthropic pioneered it. It's a new standard for LLMs to connect to data sources and apps without a lot of custom code. In the future, we’ll have: users using our UI, agents using our software on behalf of customers, and customers prompting Gainsight via MCP protocol from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, etc. We have to be ready for all these use modes; the UI is just one now.
Doug Camplejohn
(23:26)
I’m not a believer that we won’t need SaaS software, that everything will run through MCP interfaces to different data stores. There’s still an organizing principle: collection, normalization, all those pieces.
Nick Mehta
(23:46)
The most powerful term is “domain.” Business is about taking chaos and organizing around a premise: marketing, selling, etc. HR is a good example—every company could run totally bespoke HR, or you can use standard processes: recruiting, performance management, etc. Companies like Workday, their IP, in addition to the UI, is the data model. Salesforce: it's the data model. The schema, data model, domain knowledge—that’s where the IP will be long-term, less so the UI.
Doug Camplejohn
(24:33)
Let’s talk about the role of CSM. Some people say we won’t lose jobs—people will just be happier and do higher value work. Amanda from OneMind was just on the show and said, “That’s bullshit. Jobs are going away.” Already, CSMs are being asked to take on more accounts, and now there’s more automation. What do you think happens to the CSM role in the future?
Nick Mehta
(25:07)
I know Amanda well—she’s a great entrepreneur. She and I probably have a similar mindset. There's one camp that says, "Technology always creates more jobs than it destroys." Then there's the "We're all doomed" camp. I'm in between. Most likely, there will be all kinds of dislocation: some will thrive, some won’t. In CS, on the high end, you'll still need humans working with customers—maybe we’ll value those relationships more, and roles like CSM and sales will probably merge since there are too many roles in companies now. On the low end, humans aren’t very effective anyway; we take talented people and turn them into robocallers. That’s where agents will do better. So there will be parts of the stack where agents outperform and parts where humans outperform. In a world where AI is outperforming math Olympiad finalists and chess grandmasters, it’s fair to think AIs could outperform on contract renewals and outreach. Does that mean no jobs? No. Does it mean everything is “business as usual”? Also no. I’m between those extremes.
Doug Camplejohn
(26:52)
Yeah, I agree. A lot of low-value tasks in these roles are just going to be better done by AI. Jason Lemkin described his recent interactions with low-level sales reps and CS reps—all would have been better with AI.
Nick Mehta
(27:10)
Totally. The bar for the low end is really low. The jobs agents will most easily do are also those companies have outsourced—if you can outsource it to a BPO or call center, you can outsource it to an agent. There’ll also be hybrid worlds with “human in the loop” for certain edge cases; building this stuff is non-deterministic. Having humans as backup is good. But the huge industries around outsourcing—with terrible customer experience—will be replaced by agents. No doubt.
Doug Camplejohn
(28:17)
We use Intercom for our support—it handles it beautifully; thin AI engine is amazing. Living in the Bay Area, I use Waymo a lot. As a product person, I never realized not having a driver was a feature. My kids would much rather ride in a Waymo than an Uber.
Nick Mehta
(28:53)
Exactly. Uber has different tiers, but if you’re taking an UberX in some random city, the value prop is hit or miss. Some drivers have just smoked four packs before pickup, or are learning to drive. My daughter said she was in an Uber where the driver was livestreaming on TikTok—totally illegal. Waymo is just going to drive.
Doug Camplejohn
(29:26)
Exactly. Sometimes, you just want to get a question answered without a meeting or call. Sometimes you don’t want to talk to anyone; just send me the QBR results, and I’ll decide if I need to meet someone to interpret them.
Nick Mehta
(29:57)
Yes.
Nick Mehta
(30:08)
Right now, everything is a meeting. Executives, especially, would check out your product or service on a Saturday afternoon or Friday night—agents can give access you normally wouldn’t get. That’s interesting.
Doug Camplejohn
(30:37)
Let’s shift to culture—something we’re both passionate about. You’re known for your fun videos, Taylor Swift impersonations, and more. When did those start? Do you ever look at the ROI, or is it just your creative outlet?
Nick Mehta
(30:58)
There’s no way to measure the ROI. It’s stuff I love. That creativity and community stuff—Pulse, the books, things you can’t measure—are why Gainsight exists. All our company’s value comes from that. Few silly stories: Early on, in our Mountain View office, I wanted to do a parody video. I grew up listening to Weird Al, so I love parodies. We did a “Wake Me Up When September Ends” spoof—about going to Dreamforce. In hindsight, one of the dumbest things we ever did! I rewrote the song to “Wake Me Up When the Keynote Ends,” used it for Dreamforce promotion—not realizing Marc Benioff would not like that. We took it down, but there’s still a version on YouTube.
We tried to get Box as a customer by parodying "What If God Was One Of Us?"—we did “What If Box Was One of Us?” Over the years, our production value went up. We’ve done rap video spoofs, Ted Lasso, Backstreet Boys, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, Wicked, and more. At every Pulse conference, we do something big—like a full Wicked-themed event. Wearing wizard outfits. And, on the business side, customers want to buy from people they like—people who feel real. Silliness, humor, vulnerability—it resonates. Early on, people told me big companies wouldn’t want to see that, only professionalism. But it’s the big company execs closing out the karaoke floor at our events! These companies barely get together in person themselves. This is foundational to Gainsight. It’s my passion and fun, but also big for our business.
Doug Camplejohn
(35:14)
It shows—you’ve got over 100,000 LinkedIn followers now. In your posts, vulnerability and authenticity are key themes. How do you approach posting, writing, and what to share?
Nick Mehta
(35:46)
Worst time ever to be on LinkedIn—so much “slop.” But yes, I write everything myself; I love writing. After interesting conversations, I’ll think: “Should write about that.” For example, I was at a roundtable with other SaaS founders building agents. I realized agents are great for SMB tech—since SMBs can’t build their own AI agents—so I’ll probably post about that soon. I keep a running list of ideas in Apple Reminders or Google Tasks. Every weekend, I write four or five; post them the coming week. On United flights with no wifi, I’ll write a bunch. Now, deciding what to share and vulnerability—that’s been a journey. The biggest unlock for me was in 2016. We launched in 2013; by 2016, we’d done Pulse three years, it was always zany and fun. But that year, we brought the company to Napa for an offsite. I had to close out an internal event. I could have done the CEO thing: charts and “we’re crushing it,” but instead, I shared who I am. People are surprised to hear, but I was an extremely lonely kid—no friends, ate alone K-12, felt out of place. Still have imposter syndrome as a human, not just as CEO. I told our company that. People were really kind. Then, at that event, everyone else opened up. Our product manager, Julia—she shared her own vulnerabilities. And people were just so supportive of her. It was infectious. A few months later, we had Pulse, and I closed out by talking about being lonely as a kid. First time I’d done anything like that. Afterward, I wasn't sure how it went. One employee said anonymously, "I don’t want my CEO talking about that—I want him tough, strong." But customers and employees loved it. I wrote a blog post about it then, turning 40—called “Vulnerability, Vanilla Ice, and Turning 40.” Every year since, I’ve closed Pulse by talking about hard stuff: my dad’s dementia and passing, my first kid going to college, all the feelings of not being successful enough, time passing. It connects deeply with people, and even if it didn’t, I’d still do it because it feels right to me.
Doug Camplejohn
(40:57)
I love that. When I started posting on LinkedIn, I wrote about always feeling I don’t belong—grew up feeling like an outsider. Vulnerability is so vital, and I really appreciate leaders like you. I’ve had the privilege of working with Jeff Weiner, who’s legendary for that. We’re running short on time, but one more on culture. You talked about “culture 2.0” for Gainsight. What was wrong with “culture 1.0,” or what needed to change?
Nick Mehta
(41:51)
Culture 1.0 was built during the bubble. That’s the short answer. Gainsight launched in 2013, venture backed, hot company, then we slowed, then sold to Vista, then reaccelerated in 2021—the best time ever to sell to tech companies. Then came the downturn everyone faced. Some of the early iconic people moved on, naturally. But then, where do you find that next edge? In 2020, we started a “Gainsight 2.0.” Same with me—called it “Nick 2.0.” I was good at some things, but not naturally candid, and I had to get better at feedback. A funny side note: I was such a prude, my kids would laugh, since I’d say “H-E double hockey sticks” like it was the 1950s. Like Taylor Swift’s lyrics, as she’s grown, her candor and “swear words per album” go from zero to sky-high. I became more candid, gave more feedback. My president, Chul Onopathy, and others helped—they’re better at it. Gainsight had to be tougher and more candid. We adopted a new mascot: the honey badger—for toughness. We did that at the start of the generative AI era, before we knew how big a change that would be. Now, every SaaS company is in flux—either you realize it or not. We need a 2.0 and we are working on it—not all the way there, but I’m proud of the people making the transition.
Doug Camplejohn
(44:28)
Thank you for sharing. Let's wrap up with some rapid-fire questions about you. What do you do for fun?
Nick Mehta
(44:43)
I'm a really weird dude. I'm super into music, creative stuff, musicals, and I’m a huge Steelers fan—you can see back there. Haven’t missed a game since 1996. I love writing, especially poetry and fiction. Over the past year, I've written over a hundred poems. They’re inspired by songs or movies, like "Die With a Smile” (Bruno Mars/Lady Gaga song), but each is “Nick’s version.” They're never just about the song or inspiration—maybe about quantum physics and company culture, or death and Paul Simon. They're all in a massive Google Doc. I exported it to PDF and asked ChatGPT for feedback—of course, it said, “brilliant.” You have to account for the sycophantic nature of LLMs. But I love writing—I really do.
Doug Camplejohn
(46:29)
You covered two questions in one—fun and something we’d be surprised to know about you.
Nick Mehta
(46:34)
I’m just weird, and I own it.
Doug Camplejohn
(46:42)
Let’s geek out on products. Besides Gainsight and ChatGPT, what's a product in your personal life that you use and love?
Nick Mehta
(46:54)
A few random ones: The new wave of AI-coding tools are really awesome, even if raw. Every time I show Replit or a vibe coding tool to a family member, it throws an error, but they're amazing to play with. I love next-gen wearable stuff. As I've gotten older, sleep isn’t automatic, so I use Pulsetto—a device that stimulates your vagal nerve to help you sleep. Connects to your iPhone, pulses gently on your neck. There will be an explosion of wearables, and AI can process that data in real time for insights. Aura ring, too. I love wearables; things are going to change a lot.
Doug Camplejohn
(48:14)
Finally, how can listeners stay in touch with you and help you on Gainsight’s journey?
Nick Mehta
(48:20)
If you're on LinkedIn, you can’t avoid me—even if you tried! So, follow or message me on LinkedIn, or go through Doug.
Doug Camplejohn
(48:35)
Thanks so much, Nick, for joining. Always a pleasure; we could talk for hours, but thanks for taking the time.
Nick Mehta
(48:38)
Same here, Doug. I really enjoyed it—thank you.
