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ClearSlide

Acquired by Corel

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ClearSlide Reviews

3.0

51% would recommend to a friend

(172 total reviews)

Patrick Nichols

49% approve of CEO

43% positive business outlook

ClearSlide has an employee rating of 3.0 out of 5 stars, based on 172 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an average working experience there. The ClearSlide employee rating is 22% below average for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

172 reviews
2.0
1 Dec 2015

Read this for an honest review of sales

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

I wouldn't suggest working here, for any position, but there were some positive take aways. I sold here for several years, and I got good at it - I was too young and green to realize what I was truly going through. I cranked out ~40 cold calls + cold emails per day to companies I personally prospected while managing ~30 active opportunities. Cold calling, navigating orgs, learning legal process and security, running entire trial cycle, on-boarding new businesses, training countless reps, negotiating across departments, finding budget, creating urgency - All things you will learn, in part, in your first 90 days or you WILL be fired. I'd say it's not for the weak, but that's an encouraging statement. Truth be told, it's not for the weak or smart. If you're a shark, who can kill it anywhere... Then go anywhere and kill it; you'll make more money and be happier.

Cons

There is too much to cover here. At ClearSlide it's not fair to point to any one thing, person, or department and call it a bad name. The blame is shared across departments, managers, buyers market, investors, historical culture, etc. It does not take a genius or MBA to understand why employees at Facebook and Google are happier - people are buying/consuming/adopting their products. This is the mechanism that often drives a positive culture. When the money is coming in, it allows a company to focus on retention and well being. At ClearSlide, the money is not coming in, and there was too much external investment to let it fail. I have never seen the sales department achieve a single investor goal set out for them. This is not a sales problem, this is a company problem - if people aren't interested in buying what you're selling at the price you are selling it, change. And that doesn't mean raise the price further. Here is just a small example. You designed a product, that stores a large amount of sensitive information for a company, in a single location, with little privacy and even less security. In doing so, you have just roped legal, IT and marketing into the conversation. 1 if not all 3 are going to be upset. All you were trying to do was sell to a VP of sales. Who, by the way, will have to borrow budget from one of these other departments. That = Tough sell.

1.0
9 Sept 2015

The blind leading the blind

Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Excellent company culture and the most talented group of sales people I've been around, until most of them along with half the company were laid off.

Cons

ClearSlide was the undisputed leader in a new space since its founding in 1999, signing up big name clients and many early adopters. Hard nose reps accomplished this on their own with no help from marketing. Skip to August 2014. The company hit a road block since most early adopters had been sold to. Reps couldn't "cross the chasm" on their own without marketing help. Dustin Grosse (former CMO from Docusign) was brought on as COO to get the company over the hump. Within a year, Grosse recycled the marketing department twice (as in firing and rehiring the entire department) and made numerous changes to sales compensation and processes. Result: Reps still had no help from marketing. Sales were down 50% during his charge as COO and many tenured reps left. Skip to September 2015: ClearSlide was hemorrhaging cash due to lack of growth. Half the employees was laid off. Grosse was promoted to CEO because of his stellar results during his one year tenure. A day after the layoff, Grosse organized a companywide toast celebrating poor performance and the complete destruction of our company culture.

2.0
22 Jan 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Awesome central location in Downtown SF. Great camaraderie amongst peers and colleagues. Good office break room perks. Promising space and the product delivers a lot of great sales insight and has a lot of use case potential. Market competitive salary.

Cons

The upper management has continued to undermine productivity and morale in a multitude of ways, with poor optics and no sense of perception. The first and most obvious being painting over our old company mottos during business hours. Another prime example being the "10 hours/sense of urgency" email sent a few months prior that many in their GlassDoor reviews have spoken of. Everyone working at a startup already understands that there should be sense of urgency, but by putting a hard number in a department-wide email, you pushed many who value work/life balance out the door, and demoralized those already putting in way more than 10 hours a day. This policy came direct from the CEO and when confronted by media denied it altogether and threw the VP of Engineering under the bus. Another example of terrible optics is a C-level staff shakeup that occurred few months back and "pressing the reset button" layoff was followed 48 hours later with a round of champagne and open-mic toasts to "here's to a fresh start." The company just forced out both co-founders and 15% of the company...what are we toasting exactly? How is this even remotely appropriate given the circumstances of some of my fellow colleagues who just lost their jobs? Anecdotal conversations with many current and former employees after my departure also uncovered that little to no raises were given to many team members despite years of tenure, and advancement opportunities were scarce. Empire building is rampant and politics rules the day.

Viewing 1 - 3 of 172 Reviews

Glassdoor has 176 ClearSlide reviews submitted anonymously by ClearSlide employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if ClearSlide is right for you.