Liat Bycel's guest appearances

Liat Bycel

The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Punk CX with Adrian Swinscoe

Steve Lucas

Nick Mehta

Fred Shilmover

Andy MacMillan

David Cancel

Mikkel Svane

Todd Olson

Dorian Stone

Michael Sharkey

David Politis

Brad Feld

Kleiner Perkins

John Doerr

Jack Altman

Mathilde Collin

OwlTail

Airtable

Today’s interview is with Liat Bycel, the VP of Sales at Airtable, the no code collaboration platform, and the person responsible for building the customer engagement organization which comprises team members from sales, customers success, support, support ops, sales ops and strategy. Liat joins me to today to talk about the ‘messy middle’ syndrome, being well-prepared when the pandemic hit, how she built their customer engagement organization, adopting a new hybrid work pattern and why we need to consider onboarding for everyone again. This interview follows on from my recent interview – Ineffective communication is a silent killer of customer service performance – Interview with Dorian Stone of Grammarly Business — and is number 396 in the series of interviews with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

Today’s interview is with Liat Bycel, the VP of Sales at <a href="https://airtable.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Airtable</a>, the no code collaboration platform, and the person responsible for building the customer engagement organization which comprises team members from sales, customers success, support, support ops, sales ops and strategy. Liat joins me to today to talk about the ‘messy middle’ syndrome, being well-prepared when the pandemic hit, how she built their customer engagement organization, adopting a new hybrid work pattern and why we need to consider onboarding for everyone again. This interview follows on from my recent interview – <a href="https://www.adrianswinscoe.com/2021/07/ineffective-communication-is-a-silent-killer-of-customer-service-performance-interview-with-dorian-stone-of-grammarly-business/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ineffective communication is a silent killer of customer service performance – Interview with Dorian Stone of Grammarly Business</a> — and is number 396 in the series of <a href="https://www.adrianswinscoe.com/category/interviews/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">interviews</a> with authors and business leaders that are doing great things, providing valuable insights, helping businesses innovate and delivering great service and experience to both their customers and their employees.

A good customer experience starts with having the right tools - Interview with Liat Bycel of Airtable

Liat Bycel is VP of Customer Engagement @ Airtable, the startup that works like a spreadsheet but gives you the power to organise anything. To date, Airtable has raised over $170m in funding from some of the best in the business including Thrive, Coatue, Founder Collective, CRV and individuals like Patrick Collison, Ashton Kutcher and Raymond Tonsing to name a few. As for Liat, prior to Airtable, she was the Chief Revenue Officer @ Assist. Before Assist, Liat spent 6 years at Twitter where she first hand saw their hyper-growth, managing a team of 40 across New York and SF and also Liat achieved 102% to quota on average every year. Finally before Twitter, Liat was VP of Sales @ Revolution Prep where she led and managed 7 offices.   In Today’s Episode We Discuss:  How Liat made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be VP of Customer Engagement at one of Silicon Valley’s hottest startups in Airtable?  What were Liat’s biggest lessons from Twitter on how to hire successfully? What were some of the key takeaways from that experience on how, why and when to fire? Is there ever a right way to do it? How does Liat think about aligning both the personal ambitions of the person with the wider objectives of the company? Why does Liat reject the notion of “hands off leadership?”   Companies often worry about whether to go horizontal or vertical, how does Liat personally think about this choice? What does she advise founders as a result? What are the core questions they should ask to determine their strategy? What are the biggest challenges of having such a vertical product? How does it impact messaging and brand? Product roadmap? Pricing? How does Liat think about challenging the traditional sales model? How does that challenge the structure of the conventional AE and SDR structure? How does Liat think Airtable is pushing up against the traditional customer success model? How has having children impacted how Liat thinks about operating today? What changes with children?   Liat’s 60 Second SaaStr:  What does Liat know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning of her time with Airtable? What are Liat’s biggest strengths and weaknesses? What are the challenges of prioritization?  Read the  full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Liat Bycel

<a href="https://twitter.com/liatbycel" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Liat Bycel</a> is VP of Customer Engagement @ <a href="https://airtable.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Airtable</a>, the startup that works like a spreadsheet but gives you the power to organise anything. To date, Airtable has raised over $170m in funding from some of the best in the business including Thrive, Coatue, Founder Collective, CRV and individuals like Patrick Collison, Ashton Kutcher and Raymond Tonsing to name a few. As for Liat, prior to Airtable, she was the Chief Revenue Officer @ Assist. Before Assist, Liat spent 6 years at Twitter where she first hand saw their hyper-growth, managing a team of 40 across New York and SF and also Liat achieved 102% to quota on average every year. Finally before Twitter, Liat was VP of Sales @ Revolution Prep where she led and managed 7 offices.   In Today’s Episode We Discuss: <ul> <li>How Liat made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be VP of Customer Engagement at one of Silicon Valley’s hottest startups in Airtable? </li> <li>What were Liat’s biggest lessons from Twitter on how to hire successfully? What were some of the key takeaways from that experience on how, why and when to fire? Is there ever a right way to do it? How does Liat think about aligning both the personal ambitions of the person with the wider objectives of the company? Why does Liat reject the notion of “hands off leadership?”  </li> <li>Companies often worry about whether to go horizontal or vertical, how does Liat personally think about this choice? What does she advise founders as a result? What are the core questions they should ask to determine their strategy? What are the biggest challenges of having such a vertical product? How does it impact messaging and brand? Product roadmap? Pricing?</li> <li>How does Liat think about challenging the traditional sales model? How does that challenge the structure of the conventional AE and SDR structure? How does Liat think Airtable is pushing up against the traditional customer success model? How has having children impacted how Liat thinks about operating today? What changes with children? </li> </ul> Liat’s 60 Second SaaStr: <ol> <li>What does Liat know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning of her time with Airtable?</li> <li>What are Liat’s biggest strengths and weaknesses?</li> <li>What are the challenges of prioritization?</li> </ol> Read the <a href="https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcasts-for-the-week-with-airtable-and-shopify-plus-october-25-2019/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> full transcript</a> on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: <a href="https://twitter.com/jasonlk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jason Lemkin</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Harry Stebbings</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/saastr" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">SaaStr</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/liatbycel" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Liat Bycel</a>

SaaStr 276: Airtable's VP of Customer Engagement Liat Bycel on Why "Hands Off Leadership" Does Not Work, How To Align The Ambitions Of An Individual With The Objectives of The Company & Unpacking The Dilemma of Whether To Go Horizontal Or Vertical When It