--- Transcript: Anna Gong: [00:00:00] We tried higher hiring from some of the legacy or old school technology guys – you know from, IBM, SAP, and Oracle, and so forth. And no offense to any of these companies, but I think if you are so used to selling a commodity, or even traditionally to the IT [department], this this is very much about the business … C-level … you know … head of marketing, head of commercial, head of PnL … it’s a very different selling cycle, and also selling point. So it takes a different DNA. I think we're now primed for high growth and blitzscaling in a way … and not in the way that B2C companies actually think of blitzscaling. But in our B2B terms, you know. Two to three hundred percent. Stephen Cummins: That’s massive. Anna Gong: Any of these large companies would salivate over it. And so now we're just not hiring fast enough, and we can't find the right talents to cover .. we're getting like … 60 percent of our leads are coming from inbound … we’re not even spending that much money on digital marketing. And so, you know, there's a massive need in this market. And so when people ask me ‘Why are you not in the US?’ …  Why do I need to go to the US when I'm drowning in pipeline right now. Right! Stephen Cummins: [00:01:15] I'm Stephen Cummins, and this is part two of a three part interview with Anna Gong, the CEO and a board member of Perx - it took place for 14 minutes of SaaS at RISE in Hong Kong. She talks about a baptism of fire when taking Perx over, and transforming it from B2C to B2B. She gives sales standards in Oracle, SAP, and IBM an absolute roasting, saying she couldn't hired people of the right standard from these old school companies. Anna’s projections and targets for growth are incredibly aggressive. She's also very transparent about issues with creating employee success in the early days of the company transition. Stephen Cummins: [00:02:01] Welcome to 14 minutes of SaaS! The show where you can listen to the stories and opinions of founders of the world's most remarkable SaaS scale-ups! Anna Gong: [00:02:19] And I realized that I needed to move on after nine years, right? … Over nine years with company start to finish. It's a long time. So you learn a lot … now to unlearn a lot going back to a startup after being in corporate for a dozen years. Going back to a start-up again. Wow! What a difference! I'm exercising so many uncomfortable muscles. You have no idea. Stephen Cummins: [00:02:44] And ... your stoty … those challenges pale in comparison to what you experienced when you first went to Perx Technologies. Tell us all about that. Anna Gong: [00:02:57] Oh, yes. So I was brought in in a very unconventional way. Right. So I'm the growth CEO … supposedly to come in and help change the company. Scale it. But when I came in, it wasn’t a business that was scalable or sustainable. So then you have to present a really negative picture to the board. That is what you learned. This is what's going to happen. We gotta do something drastic. So eventually, I think, you know, that the founders … the original founders of the Perx B2C business left. We made a decision to move forward without them. And then thereafter, 18 months on, I had to wind down the business, shut it down … and then completely re-founded the company to an Enterprise B2B SaaS platform. Now we focus on selling to tier one enterprises. Stephen Cummins: [00:03:48] Amazing! So it couldn't be any more different. The same base technology, but instead of a volume B2C play, an enterprise level, high touch B2B. Anna Gong: [00:04:01] It's high value. Low volume. Stephen Cummins: [00:04:03] Absolutely. And so tell me, you know, since you essentially almost founded a new company within Perx Technologies, how have the last few years gone for you there?