Saket Saurabh defied standard SaaS advice by skipping SMBs and selling directly to enterprise giants like Instacart and LinkedIn from day one. In this episode, early-stage B2B SaaS founders will learn the "Enterprise First" strategy that helped Nexla become cash flow positive before raising a Series A.

Saket breaks down exactly how to navigate complex corporate buy-cycles without a track record. You will learn how to overcome the "we can build this ourselves" objection from technical buyers, why a "Zero Salary" founder pivot was necessary to reach profitability, and the "Critical Path" leadership advice he learned directly from Jensen Huang at Nvidia.

In this episode, Saket also shares the "Magic Moment" sales tactic where his co-founder live-coded a fix during a pitch meeting to close Instacart, and why consultative selling beats pitching when you are a technical founder.

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🔑 Key Lessons

• 🏢 The "Enterprise First" Bet: Why targeting SMBs would have failed and why he went straight for the Fortune 500.
• 🪄 The Magical Moment: How his co-founder live-coded a fix during a pitch meeting to close Instacart.
• 📉 The Hard Reset: Cutting founder salaries to $0 and downsizing to achieve cash flow positivity.
• 🤝 Founder-Led Sales: How to sell "Build vs. Buy" to technical buyers who think they can do it themselves.
• 🧠 Nvidia Lessons: The "Critical Path" advice from Jensen Huang that guides his leadership today.

Chapters

• Why Nexla started with enterprise customers instead of SMBs
• Landing Instacart as the first customer
• Founder-led sales without a sales background
• Consultative selling vs. pitching
• Overcoming the “we can build this ourselves” objection
• The live-coding demo that closed Instacart
• Going zero salary to reach cash flow positivity
• Lessons from Nvidia and the critical path mindset

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Resources

• Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/464
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