Selling Spiff to Salesforce for $419 Million w/ Jeron Paul

Collin Cadmus Podcast

Hello and welcome back to the Collin Cadmus Podcast. Today I’m joined by Jeron Paul.

Jeron studied economics and philosophy at Brigham Young University and then received his MBA at Harvard. After school he spent 3 years as a consultant before starting his first company Boardlink, which was acquired by Thomas Reuters. Jeron then spent 5 years in venture capital before starting his next two companies Scalar and Capshare, both with successful exits.

With all of that experience behind him, in 2018 Jeron founded Spiff which was acquired by Salesforce in February of this year for $419 million. In episode 9 I spoke to Spiff’s Chief Marketing Officer, Anna Fisher and I sat on their GTM advisory board for 3 years until the acquisition.

Jeron believes every person has an infinite potential to do good and his goal in life is to unlock as much of that potential in himself and others as possible. He believes in fighting group think, the Socratic method, and the power of humility. One of the things he’s most proud of is sharing larger than normal equity stakes with those who are bold enough to build businesses with him, and I can say after having been an advisor on the receiving end of the Salesforce acquisition equity, he practices what he preaches in that regard and that’ll be one of the topics we’ll dive into today.

It’s been 7 months since Spiff was acquired. Since then, Jeron has served as the SVP of Product at Salesforce, presumably continuing to oversee Spiff, but without further adieu, let’s dive in and learn more about what it took to build Spiff and sell it to Salesforce in just 5 and a half years.

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TOPICS:

00:00:00 Intro

00:01:49 What is Spiff

00:07:39 GTM Advisory Board

00:16:01 Equity Philosophy

00:27:16 M&A

00:30:04 Growth Channels

00:37:40 Doing it again today

00:42:06 Who should use Spiff

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QUESTIONS:

1. What is Spiff and why did you build it?

2. You decided early on to build a GTM advisory board; what were your main motivations and goals behind doing this and was it worth it in hindsight?

3. We often hear stories of founders finding creative ways to screw people out of their equity at the time of acquisitions and IPOs, but you did the opposite. Talk me through your philosophy on equity and the decisions you had to make during the acquisition as it pertains to employees and advisors liquidating their shares.

4. Was M&A always the plan? Or did the pandemic and financial crisis play a role in the decision to sell?

5. What were your main growth channels and can you share roughly the split of revenue that came from each, like inbound, outbound, channel partners, etc.?

6. If you were to start Spiff today would you do anything different?

7. Is Spiff still a product for non-Salesforce users or is it now specifically for Salesforce users?

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LINKS:

Spiff: https://spiff.com

Jeron on X: https://twitter.com/jerondanielpaul

Collin on X: https://x.com/collincadmus

Modern Outbound System: https://www.collincadmus.com/the-modern-outbound-system

Sales Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/sales-coaching

Founder Coaching: https://www.collincadmus.com/founder-coaching

Collin Cadmus Podcast: https://www.collincadmus.com/podcasts/collin-cadmus-podcast

Revenue Growth Blog: https://www.collincadmus.com/blog

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Sit back, relax, enjoy the episode, and thank you for listening, viewing, and subscribing.

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