SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2024

If you’ve been an operator in the SaaS industry for a long time, you’ve probably considered starting your own company. His day-to-day role as a first-time founder involves a lot of work around creating and building the MVP product and filtering out all of the noise in this SaaS ecosystem. What problem are we trying to solve?

Headcount 195

Headcount Scaling Finance Engineering 195

Payrix

APRIL 10, 2024

User experience has become a cornerstone in shaping the world of SaaS. Dedication to delivering an exceptional user experience ensures your software is something that your customers can’t live without in their business day-to-day. As consumers, we’ve grown accustomed to seamless experiences.

Merchant Services 130

Merchant Services Payment Services SaaS Payments Payments 130

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Best Ways to Retain Your Customers in SaaS? A few things that always work to drive down churn in the early days — and later: Make sure you have a strong Head of Customer Success … whose #1 goal is reducing churn. Far fewer customers churn if you visit them in person. Don’t resist them.

Sales Hiring 236

Sales Hiring SaaS SMB Churn 236

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2023

G2 had us back for another great deep dive on just where SaaS investing is there days, and it was a great panel: Accel Partner Arun Mathew Inspired Capital Founder & Managing Partner Alexa von Tobel Salesforce Ventures Managing Partner Paul Drews and Jason Lemkin! Are things any better in venture than twelve months ago?

B2B 208

B2B Investment Venture Capital SaaS 208

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

PST, Bo Borland, founder, and CEO of playbuilt, shares four steps for creating repeatable success at every stage of growth, specifically in B2B Enterprise. Let’s look at Borland’s approach to aligning and executing B2B team selling motions for a rinse-and-repeat process for growth. Why is teaming the new selling?

Enterprise 218

Enterprise B2B Scale SMB 218

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2023

B2B buyer cycles continue to evolve, and more and more SaaS companies will embrace RevOps to drive profitability. How customers come into the sales funnel, when, where, and how they’re engaged are becoming increasingly digitalized. Now, the product is the funnel and an integral part of the customers’ evaluation experience.

Enterprise 217

Enterprise Sales Sales Funnel Compensation 217

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2022

At the time of this interview, Gusto had 350 employees serving 40,000 customers. Many SaaS companies talk about creating a strong culture and smooth hiring process, but how can they actually live up to it? However, there comes a time when additional expertise is needed to keep serving your customers the best way you can.

Interviewing 290

Interviewing Development Churn SaaS 290

SaaStr

AUGUST 28, 2023

Discover how three breakout SaaS companies scaled from an idea to hundreds of employees and $1B+ valuations, all while living their values along the way. As we dive into these three highly successful companies, we’ll talk about their values, the process of creating them, and the right time for founders to create their own values.

Company Culture 193

Company Culture Scaling Interviewing Startup 193

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

70% of customers are in the Enterprise and mid-market space, and 30% are SMBs. Customers range from AWS skills-builder platforms with billions of users to Zoom using it for customers and employees. Customers range from AWS skills-builder platforms with billions of users to Zoom using it for customers and employees.

Sales Hiring 193

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Outsourced Development 193

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2022

10.000 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue Leaders, and VCs will join us for 3 days of tactical content, networking, and epic evening events when the Cloud comes to San Mateo. Find out how the steps they took not only helped nurture a company’s success, but also allowed its leaders to retain a growth mindset long after they hit the $1B milestone.

Scale 235

Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service B2B 235

User Pilot

APRIL 16, 2024

In SaaS, a product experience strategy provides the building blocks for making customers stay, engage with your app, and eventually become loyal advocates for your product. Use analytics to monitor feature usage, spot behavior patterns , and identify what contributes to customer success. And where do you start?

Strategy 98

Strategy Customer Lifetime Value Onboarding User Experience 98

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 14, 2022

During the dotcom crash in 2001, the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, and the SaaS corrections in 2014, 2016, and 2018, Lee was either COO/CFO or CFO at Twilio, SAY Media, and Ofoto. In addition to his experience navigating financial markets, Lee oversaw the finance function at one of the most successful usage-based billing companies.

Management 262

Management Finance Subscription Payment Features 262

User Pilot

APRIL 22, 2024

In SaaS, it’s advised to follow customer success best practices to ensure that users achieve their desired outcomes with your product and become loyal advocates for your brand. TL;DR Customer success builds long-lasting relationships, increases customer retention , lifetime value , and advocacy, and informs product development.

Customer Success 83

Customer Success Retention Software Review Customer Lifetime Value 83

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Welcome to the latest installment of our “ What’s New ” series where SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with some of the top leaders and founders in SaaS and Cloud to discuss What’s New and what should be top of mind for fellow founders. This creates a multiple effect because you cross-sell to their customer base.

AWS 199

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 199

User Pilot

APRIL 24, 2024

SaaS renewals can be a breath-holding moment. It’s when a customer decides whether to continue paying for your product or not. If you want to ensure customers renew each time, continue reading ahead. In this article, we’ll share everything you need to know for increasing customer renewals.

SaaS Payments 78

SaaS Payments Retention Payment Services Payment Solutions 78

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2022

In 2015, SaaS cloud-based content management tool Box went public. Especially with the coronavirus pandemic, Box—like many other SaaS companies—saw a decline in growth year over year. Mark Wayland, CRO of Box, discusses Box’s journey to reaccelerate their growth, what made them successful, and the lessons he learned along the way.

Scale 252

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Software Review 252

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2023

It won’t be an overnight success, and you’ll likely experience failures. Challenge #1: Starting with Product-Led Growth and Deciding If It’s Worth It If you start with PLG and want to move your customer base and prospects to Enterprise deals, you might ask yourself: Should I go for it? The warning — You have to be patient.

Scale 182

Scale Enterprise readiness compliance Enterprise 182

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2022

That’s when a customer moves to a paid account to access more services and advanced features from the platform. This model worked early on because every customer purchased the ?same The transition from a traditional SaaS-based model to a usage-based model fundamentally ? Big customer asks. The caveat?

Scale 229

Scale Payments SaaS Payments Payment Services 229

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2023

As one of the most successful, slightly under the radar, pre-IPO “trueicorns” (not fake-icorns), the CEO of Navan , Ariel Cohen, disrupts an old space of expense and travel management and remakes things. They learned from some of the biggest in SaaS — Aaron Levie and Jeff Lawson. Is Rebranding Okay When You Have Brand Equity?

Payment Solutions 210

Payment Solutions Payments Travel Scale 210

SaaStr

AUGUST 6, 2023

As a VP of sales at early stage SaaS companies, what’s your best advice for reducing churn rate? A few things that always work to drive down churn in the early days — and later: Make sure you have a strong Head of Customer Success … whose #1 goal is reducing churn. Far fewer customers churn if you visit them in person.

Churn 175

Churn Sales Hiring Customer Success Onboarding 175

SaaStr

JANUARY 18, 2023

Unicorn companies often need to scale quickly to meet the demands of their rapidly growing customer base. To achieve this level of success, startups need a combination of strong financial performance, innovative products or services, and a favorable market environment. Give it everything you have every single day.

Scale 202

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Scaling Interviewing 202

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

1 Thing That Changes in Marketing As You Scale: The Product Maturity Curve Determines Marketing Strategy Your marketing strategy should be extremely tightly aligned to the product maturity curve. What type of customer understands intuitively what you’re trying to give them, and how do you make sure they get to know you exist?

Scale 189

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Marketing 189

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2023

There are two types of SaaS companies in the world: those that are category creators and the challengers of incumbent technology. Enablement — setting your team up for success and investing in their professional growth. Let’s look at five tips to consider for successful recruiting. Define your hiring profile. Don’t overhire.

Scale 212

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 212

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

Moving from a traditional SaaS to a pure consumption model was a challenging but fun transition for MongoDB. What Is A “Consumption” Business In the old days of software, you had a company like Oracle that popularized the perpetual license where customers own the software and vendors own the market. This is MongoDB’s approach.

Compensation 164

Compensation Sales Azure AWS 164

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

In SaaS, we talk a lot about hyper-growth, uber-successful companies, but many founders, including hyper-growth founders, make mistakes over and over. Maybe you feel SaaS is crushing it this year, but it’s not easy for a lot of folks. The Takeaway: Be really careful about custom deals that feel tempting in the moment.

Scale 227

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Scaling 227

SaaStr

JANUARY 19, 2023

We’ll see 2,500+ of the best SaaS founders, execs, and VCs June 6-7 at 2022 SaaStr Europa ! Cyclr is an embedded integration platform (embedded IPaaS) for SaaS applications. Vendr is forever changing how companies buy and renew SaaS. Grab tickets here. With over $1.5B

Sales Hiring 203

Sales Hiring Scale Cloud Churn 203

User Pilot

JANUARY 17, 2024

Scaling SaaS is not for the faint of heart. If you do not scale, you will be unable to reach a new pool of customers and your competitors will leave you in the dust. If you scale prematurely, you may struggle to satisfy customer expectations. Create flexible pricing packages that are aligned with the needs of all customers.

Scale 102

Scale Scaling SaaS Underperforming Technical Team 102

SaaStr

MAY 30, 2022

Having high net revenue / dollar retention is the magic of SaaS. If you have 120% NRR, you double in 5 years, even with no new customers! High NRR can hide mediocre growth in new logos and customers. You need to be careful in a high NRR environment that customer count is still growing fast enough. It can mask: 1.

Retention 259

Retention Customer Success Churn Trends 259

SaaStr

AUGUST 6, 2021

They bring together their respective strengths to drive remarkable product-led growth for PagerDuty, the incident response SaaS that’s been invaluable to tech teams since 2009. Sean’s product department is responsible for engaging and delighting users—for making the happy customers that become the proponents of the brand.

Product Marketing 264

Product Marketing Marketing B2C Strategy 264

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Many of the fundamental business models that were once engraved in the SaaS playbook are now changing thanks to a tougher macro environment and a maturing market. PST, Stephanie Opdam, Partner at Notion Capital, shares four business model changes that will allow SaaS companies to build resilience and staying power over time.

Business Model 238

Business Model SaaS Payments Payments Headcount 238

User Pilot

APRIL 26, 2024

Customer success is a core growth driver for any SaaS business. The SaaS market is crowded with tons of similar products and the best ones that stand out are those who delight their customers regularly. Are you wondering how to retain your customers and make them love your product? No worries!

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Customer Lifetime Value SaaS Churn 52

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2023

Divvy’s CRO, Sterling Snow, created a structure aligning these two teams with others to create a formidable revenue team. In this episode, Snow shares the journey to realizing the strength of revenue alignment through sales, marketing, and customer success and the principles for implementing this structure to yield tremendous results.

Customer Success 215

Customer Success Revenue Marketing Sales 215

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2021

Q: I’m starting a job at a SaaS company after years in consumer apps. You have to love customers and all the struggles and dramas around making and keeping them happy. B2C folks can write off individual customer complaints unless in the aggregate they impact virality, usage, etc. Customers will complain. Constantly.

B2C 265

B2C SaaS Revenue Metrics 265

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2021

The other day I saw a VP of Sales flame out and resign with no notice from a SaaS company doing $10m ARR growing quickly. Not only were they not remotely aligned on anything, clearly they weren’t even communicating. Ability to Recruit a Large and Successful Team. Segmenting customers. Coordinating FUD and anti-FUD.

Sales Recruiting 300

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Revenue 300

SaaStr

JUNE 12, 2022

If you’re a SaaS sales rep with a $500k annual quota, doing $5k ACV deals … you have to close 100 deals a year. But I knew this was the wrong way to build a customer-centric company. There was another one I hated on the Customer/Client Success side. Yes, I guess it’s technically true.

Compensation 236

Compensation Customer Success Interviewing Sales 236

User Pilot

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Userpilot's webinar “5 Ways How to Use Microsurveys in Your SaaS" covers efficient feedback collection with microsurveys , seamless integration into user journeys , and data interpretation for insights. You'll learn: The strategic value in gathering customer feedback. Watch how to use microsurveys in your SaaS.

Sales Hiring 104

Sales Hiring Generative AI AI Leadership 104

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2021

Relative to any other sector, the SaaS industry is uniquely transparent. In my opinion, the most informative and useful SaaS content “speaks for itself” and is well suited for future reference. And are very aligned with OpenView’s research on usage-based pricing. Bonus: More SaaS “Rule of 40” Data.

Scale 296

Scale Cloud Forecasting Pricing 296