34: Peter Reinhardt, Founder and CEO of Segment

The rise of SaaS has liberated the enterprise stack. Products are now brought into an organization at the atomic level and decentralized decision making has enabled modern tech companies to move incredibly quickly to solve specific problems. The challenge of this speed however is the complexity that a web of unrelated applications creates.  Glossier, a recent entrant to the unicorn club, uses 14 different analytics tools across 12 different platforms such as their website, their mobile app and their brick-and-mortar store. Each tool has its own copy of the customer data and history of privacy preferences; the complexity to uncover key insights becomes an impediment to how effectively a business can operate.  Enter Segment. The analytics tool to end all integrations. Segment has raised over $250M from leading investors including Accel, Google Ventures, Y Combinator Continuity Fund and Thrive Capital. Segment raised its Series D ($175M) last month and the venture community is excited about the company being the defacto layer of stitching together disparate customer data for organizations.  It was a pleasure to have Peter on the podcast. We talked about the early days of Segment, pivoting with only $100K left in the bank and scaling a business that has now raised over $250M. Some of my favorite moments included: (1) how Peter thinks about speed vs. process at different junctions of growth, (2) the characteristics of true product market fit, (3) how Peter has shifted his time as the company has scaled and (4) the unique value system that has been implemented at Segment.