Revenue Interview: Alex Chapko at Piano

The Interview

Kluster's Take

Josephine spoke with Alex Chapko, VP of Sales at Piano. He shares his deep insight into the SaaS ecosystem. Alex has had sales roles in a few different companies, then co-founded his own company.

He explains that when working as a co-founder, you need to do almost everything yourself. Now his approach is to rely on the strengths of other people. His philosophy is to understand your own strengths as well as those of your team. He has had to wear many hats and is letting other people in the team do that as well.

There is a lot of conversation around product-market fit, Alex defines this as the moment you are ready to scale. He explains that it’s hard to find the perfect moment where you are ready to put money into scaling what you have.

Alex stresses that there are lots of differences between different regions. Different cultures need a different approach. Alex looks at the way that people buy in certain verticals, such as technology and B2B. He wants to know who are the people making decisions regarding the product you sell. He tells us that you should be able to repeat your process with a valid product, without changing it too much in the context of the culture of the market.

Alex believes it’s important for the company to establish itself as a thought leader in the industry. When you’re scaling your processes are changing all the time. He tells us that it’s important not to be satisfied with the phase of growth you have.