SaaStr

JULY 21, 2021

Secrets to a solid interview: 1/ Interview your heroes 2/ Do an hour of research 3/ Write out 5 great questions + 5 back-up questions 4/ Listen, and ask +1 follow-up question on the great responses 5/ Share questions ahead of time. Most will read them, some will add good ideas. 5/ Share questions ahead of time.

Interviewing 284

Interviewing Content Marketing Startup Marketing 284

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 9, 2023

So the open question with any great SaaS business is the Rule of Large Numbers. Most SaaS businesses will grow almost forever, but you do exhaust your customer base, and then your ability to upsell them, and then even your ability to effectively add and acquire other products and businesses. They still add together to the Rule of 40.

SaaS 224

SaaS Software Strategy Business 224

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2024

That’s a great reason to add a Free edition, in fact. That’s a real issue with sales tools per the question. So if you do add a Free edition, make sure you don’t overindex on feedback. But putting up a sign that says “Free” doesn’t attract users. It hasn’t in a very long time. Same day ideally.

Strategy 224

Strategy Onboarding Enterprise Startup 224

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What are some benefits you can add to get people to buy a product besides discounts and add-ons? Get and find out honest answers to questions and make sure potential product limitations are addressed. The post Dear SaaStr: What Are Some Things Sales Can Do Besides Discounts And Add-Ons to Get a Customer to Buy?

Sales 266

Sales 266

SaaStr

OCTOBER 28, 2023

Would it add value to some of your customers, and increase conversions, if they could try on their own before they bought? If the answer is yes to these questions, definitely at least try a free trial. If it needs a ton of data, can a “demo org” adequately convey that value? Would you yourself want a free trial first, before buying?

Startup 262

Startup Payment Solutions Business Model Enterprise 262

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2023

Fourth, add “load”. So it often adds at least 20% or so to the model. 30 sales professionals to add that net $10m in new revenue, even with a $600k quota! 30 sales professionals to add that net $10m in new revenue, even with a $600k quota! that only 75% of your reps, as a group, hit their quota. 60% is OK, too.

Scale 257

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 257

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

However, the reality is you can always add more shares. Anyhow, net net you can always add more shares later. The question is just who takes the dilution. That typically will also last you at least until the next venture round, if there is one. All that matters is the board and shareholders (in most cases) agree.

Pricing 228

Pricing Investment Metrics Compensation 228

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

Loom Added Just 326 $10,000+ a Year Customers, But 33,000 Total Customers So how much revenue did Loom add? The big question will be how do Loom look in 3-4 years. They increased $10k+ customers by less than 1%. But they increased total customer count by 10%. Measured by that, Atlassian got a good deal!

SMB 234

SMB Enterprise Scaling Trends 234

Payrix

APRIL 24, 2024

By providing an Embedded Payments solution, software companies not only add value to their platform but also increase its criticality to their customers’ day-to-day operations. “We Andy suggests that there is an immediate and discernible value-add for software companies to embed payments as a means for retention of SaaS revenue.

Payments 162

Payments Embedded Payments Merchant Services Payment Solutions 162

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 8, 2022

Situational judgement questions add another trenchant arrow to a hiring manager’s quiver. Structured interviews, meaning interviews that screen for preparation, adaptability, & domain experience at Hubspot, triple the predictive power of an interview from 8% to 24%. What would the chart above look like for your sales team?

Sales Hiring 343

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Marketing 343

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

In this Ask Me Anything Part 1, Lemkin answers the questions: Many VCs talk about funding, yet you’re so focused on sales. Question #1: Why Are You So Focused On Sales When Other VCs Are Focused On Funding? Question #2: When Do You Know You Have A Good SDR Or AE? Question #3: What Is A Content Strategy For SaaS?

Outsourcing Services 213

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 213

SaaStr

APRIL 12, 2024

One question Douwe often gets regarding RAG is long context windows. For example, say you put an entire Harry Potter book in the context window of a language model and then asked a simple question like, “What’s the name of Harry’s owl?” You don’t have to read the entire book to find the answer to a simple question.

AI Search 255

AI Search Artificial Intelligence AI Enterprise 255

SaaStr

AUGUST 6, 2022

Ask yourselves these questions today: Would your customers’ business grind to a halt without your app? Are you an application a core group of customers adds to their “app stack” almost by default? And an IPO is out of the question. And relentlessly drive to add more value. variant of point 1).

Scale 282

Scale SMB Mobile Acquisition 282

SaaStr

DECEMBER 28, 2023

At a recent Workshop Wednesday , SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin answered the community’s most pressing questions about SaaS — from investor appetites and IPOs in 2024 to managing and hiring a Head of Sales as a solo founder to AI and the future of customer success. Let’s jump right into part one. Over 80% of investor money is in AI.

Payment Solutions 230

Payment Solutions Sales Hiring AI SaaS Payments 230

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

Millions From One Or Thousands From Many The million-dollar question every company should answer as early as possible: Is your goal to have a few thousand customers and make millions from each or have hundreds of thousands of customers and make tens of thousands from each? A “land and expand” model is how Atlassian does it. .

Sales Hiring 227

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 227

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2024

So, the question then is, “Okay, well fine, you guys have put a deck out there, you’ve put some philosophies out there, but how do you know if its actually working?” ” And as it turns out, that’s a really good question. You can raise concerns or questions, you can ask us. How do you measure it?

Part-Time CTO 264

Part-Time CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 264

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2021

Q: Do salespeople add to the value received by customers? Questions and issues are important, but pretty simple. You can see in a transactional sale, the buyer often just has a few key questions and is ready to move on. Does sales add value? They do in the enterprise. At least the good ones do. Well, often not so much.

Sales 259

Sales Enterprise Pricing Data 259

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

The consensus within the data ecosystem is that many will start with more expensive large-language models which are robust to many types of questions, but perhaps too expensive to run for most applications at scale. If this data point is real, then AI could very well add several percentage points to GDP.

AI 201

AI Azure Artificial Intelligence Generative AI 201

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

In Part 2 of Ask Me Anything, Lemkin will answer these questions: How do you balance being authentic as a new startup and getting customers to buy into your vision vs. appearing well put together with everything going on? Question #3: Will There Be Any New Categories In The Next 5-10 Years? To grow 20%, they needed to add $300M a year.

Sales Hiring 238

Sales Hiring SaaS Banking AI 238

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 18, 2021

Regulatory regimes demand greater data security and integrity, and add complexity. To answer that question, Redpoint Office Hours will host Todd Smithline on Wednesday, April 21 at 9AM PT. We will collect questions from participants ahead of time, and cover some subset of them during the session.

compliance 261

compliance Technical Review Startup Technology 261

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 22, 2024

That said, we’ve outlined how we’re thinking about pricing and packaging in a part of the market that’s debating how to monetize their new genAI feature— B2B SaaS and prosumer companies —and how we’re seeing other companies approach the same question so you can better understand where your strategy fits in today.

Generative AI 125

Generative AI AI B2B Pricing 125

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2022

With the rise of “Product Led Growth” as such a key concept in SaaS, it brings up an age-old question in business software: Should all pricing be transparent? Certainly “Contact Me” in pricing adds a human element, an additional step, and in many cases, friction to a sales process.

Pricing 245

Pricing Enterprise Cloud B2B 245

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2021

We’ve going to give away 10 full passes at NO COST to 2021 SaaStrAnnual to the top answers to a simple question : “What’s Your Favorite Part of SaaStr?” ” Just add your answer here at SaaStr University , it just takes a minute or two. Thank you!! And we’ll pick the Top 10 or so by June 30.

267

267

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2022

This is often called “add-on pricing.”. Add-ons must meet two criteria: Customers must ascribe value to the add-on. Customers must understand that there is a business value in that specific feature they can add-on. If it’s simply a commodity, it should not be sold as an add-on. It’s an exchange of value.

Pricing 242

Pricing Strategy SaaS Forecasting 242

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2021

Sales teams add the most value at the Enterprise level when selling to department heads and C-Suite executives. The big question you might be wondering: at what time does establishing a sales team in a PLG company add the most value? Without the answers to these questions, it will be much harder to succeed with a PLG model.

Engineering 235

Engineering Marketing Sales Systems Review 235

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2023

In part one of this week’s Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) with SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin, he answered the community’s questions about whether all anyone cares about is AI anymore, investor appetites going into 2024, vertical SaaS, and thriving as a solo founder. Catch up on the first half here if you missed it. But it’s all in flux.

Scale 237

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success AI 237

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 20, 2020

But it’s another metric to add to the toolkit. The magic number answers the question: if we invest $1 in sales and marketing, how much new bookings can we generate? ZCP answers the question: if we invest $1 in sales costs (e.g., Within it, Adil Syed, (a former Redpoint VC!), Month Zero Cash-on-Cash Payback is a mouthful.

Metrics 343

Metrics Payments Banking Sales 343

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2023

Good enough to do well, make good money, and add real value in SaaS. Ask the questions. Put together a list of 10 Things I Still Don’t Understand Yet and get those questions answered. None of these folks am I super close to, but all of them I’ve known just enough over time to know they are at least good. Put in the time.

Marketing 234

Marketing Sales Interviewing Enterprise 234

User Pilot

OCTOBER 9, 2023

Follow-up questions serve as a valuable hack for collecting additional feedback from your in-app surveys. That’s why we made this guide, so you can fully understand what’s a wise use case for follow-up questions and how you should frame them to maximize their value. Avoid complicated, jargon-filled questions.

Software Review 94

Software Review Onboarding Scale Churn 94

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2021

So with that, let’s add to our classic Top 10 Interview Questions for a VP of Sales and also our Top 9 Interview Questions for a VP of Customer Success with … Our Top 10 Interview Questions for a VP of Marketing! I used to think the next question was my #1, but now I’ve seen this is so telling.

Interviewing 355

Interviewing Sales Hiring Marketing Branding 355

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

Sometimes they want a more passive experience, where they can consume a demo and a discussion without having to answer a bunch of qualifying questions up front. And upcoming webinars are a great thing to add to both your sales and marketing drip campaigns. Instead, invite them to something that adds value.

Branding 315

Branding Marketing Sales SaaS 315

The Daily Egg

MARCH 27, 2020

These days, it’s the most popular question and answer site. Users are required to verify their names and can add bylines identifying their expertise like “Digital marketer and consultant” or “Web developer with 8 years of experience”. Quora can bring you tons of traffic and customers.

Strategy 288

Strategy Web Development Web Developers Consulting 288

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

A long-time reader wrote in to ask a question that pretty much everyone asks some variant of: If you had to force rank these items in terms of what we should primarily be looking for in these first sales reps, how would you rank them? ” These are the right questions. Or at least, don’t add points for it.

Sales Hiring 341

Sales Hiring Sales SaaS Churn 341

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

We recently did a New New in Venture event and I asked the question of many top VCs including David Sacks, Keith Rabois, Aileen Lee and more. “Let’s add a Freemium Edition.” ” “Let’s Add a Super Cheap Edition.” An owner will add more net new revenue than her salary. Find a way.

Part-Time VPE 305

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 305

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 27, 2022

I used to have a clear answer to a founder’s question, “How do you value a company?” ” The question is just as important in conversations within a VC partnership as with founders. Add a quarter or two of burn as an insurance policy. A valuation must have some justification to be compelling.

Startup 257

Startup Venture Capital Pricing Investment 257