Nick Mehta, CEO @ Gainsight
Nick Mehta (he/him), is the CEO of Gainsight, The Customer Success Company—a five-time Forbes Cloud 100 recipient. He works with a team of 800 people who together have created the customer success category that's currently taking over the SaaS business model worldwide. Nick has been named one of the Top SaaS CEOs by the Software Report three years in a row, one of the Top CEOs of 2018 by Comparably, and was named an Entrepreneur Of The Year 2020 Northern California Award winner. On top of all that, he was recently rated the #1 CEO in the world (the award committee was just his mom, but the details are irrelevant).
He is a member of the Board of Directors at F5 and has also co-authored two books on the customer success field, Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue, and The Customer Success Economy: Why Every Aspect of Your Business Model Needs A Paradigm Shift. He is passionate about family, football, philosophy, physics, fashion, feminism, and SaaS customer success. People told him it’s impossible to combine all of those interests, but Nick has made it his life’s mission to try.
In this episode we spoke with Nick about the following:
The story of why he goes by “Nick” instead of “Nikhil”
Having his visible identity be represented in tech but not feeling like he completely belonged
Why going through similar experiences is an antidote to loneliness
You can listen to him below, on Spotify, or wherever else you get to your podcasts.
How Nick thinks about intersecting parts of his identity
“I no longer think of parts of my identity as being strengths and/or weaknesses. Sometimes people say that their weaknesses are that they work too hard or that they feel lonely. I do not believe in this idea of normalizing what is good and bad. For example, I am somebody who wants to fit in with people and is at times lonely.
I believe in observing when those feelings happen and looking at myself, and distancing myself from them. I can then see, okay, wow, I am feeling lonely right now; how do I feel more connected? Part of it is that I have learned who I am, and I do not want those things to change. It all fits together like a weird puzzle. Like, that’s me, and I like it.
[..] so some combination of loneliness and having immigrant parents who want me to achieve is who I am. And I don't criticize that. I'm not ashamed of it, it doesn't control me either. I can notice when it's happening and decide, is that what I want to do?”
Getting rid of the term “A-Players”
“I am on a passionate campaign to eliminate the term “A-Players”. You hear people say, hey we need to hire A-Players, don’t hire B-Players, don’t hire C-Players. Like it is this idea that somehow people are magically graded on some universal system. I totally disagree in my own experience. I believe in that the vast majority of situations that come up, it’s actually about getting the right person in the right situation where they can be successful.
That includes the manager, the culture, the onboarding, etc. The right role for who they are. I think a lot of companies miss out on management’s responsibility in making people great versus just finding great people, I think that whole concept is totally wrong. A-Player is a term I just don't love; I'd love to get rid of it.”
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Until next time,
Jay and Angie