SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2023

So many mistakes you'll look back in VC But the #1 you'll probably regret was letting those founders leave the room, leave the pitch, leave the Zoom … that you >knew< were going to win There's a reason why even Sequoia gets those ones a term sheet the same day — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin  ?? Be cool always.

Investment 281

Investment Cloud SaaS Management 281

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

Not that they are just "great at sales" — Jason Be Kind Lemkin  (@jasonlk) January 12, 2023. The ones you hire yourself. You wouldn’t buy from them yourself. Earlier stage startups: – Have no brand – Have no/little training – Have very few resources. Then don’t make the hire.

Sales Hiring 253

Sales Hiring Startup Underperforming Technical Team Branding 253

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2023

Typically, you have to have some kind of sales team or sales engine to run before you can hire someone to run it. VCs are looking for outliers, so make yourself an outlier as much as possible. We don’t all think about horizontal to vertical to horizontal, but most startups kind of do that. Is that a good approach?

Sales Hiring 234

Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital Generative AI 234

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2021

Well, this is kind of the traditional way we think about sales in SaaS. Olof Mathé: And so typically, you have kind of two ways to differentiate yourself. And what that typically means is layering on some kind of sales experience or human attention on the buying experience. It’s the wine and dine.

Sales 242

Sales Pricing Enterprise Outsourced Development 242

FastSpring

APRIL 4, 2024

Set up a demo or try it out for yourself. John Eitel 02:03 Gosh, the first thing I bought online, it’s hard for me to remember back to that, like, it’s so it’s like, you know, kind of like asking about the first time you took a breath, right? Jump to video. Jump to transcript.

Scale 122

Scale Sales Payment Methods Merchant Services 122

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2024

Dharmesh Shah : The way I think about it, in the Trump Culture Code, people think of it as a code of conduct kind of thing, and that’s the automatic assumption, but I’m my mind at the time, the deck was being crafted, I thought of it as actual code. ” That was the original kind of genesis of it. It will be awesome.”

Part-Time CTO 252

Part-Time CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 252

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

Failure #1: Not Holding Leaders To The Highest Standard As a founder, CEO, or leader, you need to hold other people to the standards you hold for yourself. But you have to hold yourself to the highest standards because your team relies on it. Maybe you feel SaaS is crushing it this year, but it’s not easy for a lot of folks.

Scale 227

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Scaling 227

SaaStr

AUGUST 28, 2023

But you have to find a way to pick yourself up after that and grow again, for real. That’s probably about 20%-30% of them, based on rough data I can see at SaaStr. And so VCs went into triage mode. All of a sudden, massive changes had to be made when it was clear another round of venture capital was never coming. So pick up the pace.

Venture Capital 204

Venture Capital AI Startup Mobile 204

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2022

— Jason Be Kind Lemkin  (@jasonlk) December 19, 2022. And then, share what you are doing this week yourself. If you'd rather not do any of your 1-on-1's, Something is off. Goes for both sides. For the first time in my career, I’ve worked with amazing first-time managers as CEOs. And then a VP. At a set time.

Communication 305

Communication Engineering Management Company Culture 305

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 23, 2022

It’s up to the CRO to keep a company’s marketing and product strategy in the kind of lockstep that drives it to produce the revenue it needs. You don’t have to get a deal at any price—at the cost of yourself, your team, or your customers. The CRO role is much more expansive than that of, for example, a VP of sales.

Underperforming Technical Team 262

Underperforming Technical Team Leadership Outsourced Development Finance 262

SaaStr

MAY 26, 2023

But if you attach yourself too much to a specific thing, it will become too closely associated with your identity, and it will be harder to let go as things change and you are needed elsewhere. Strategy Should Be “Obvious” SaaS Is Checkers, Not Chess “Strategy for a SaaS company, I argue, should look kind of obvious.

CTO Coach 175

CTO Coach CTO Hire CTO Leadership 175

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2023

Businesses have a strange expectation that they can fire people at any time, but if a teammate leaves, they think of it as some kind of betrayal.” Do you want to avoid the common pitfalls of scaling a startup? Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, shares part two of his 10 top mistakes in 10 years at the company. This is true for employees and churn.

Scale 207

Scale Leadership Scaling Customer Success 207

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2020

You may even think they are kind of lame, or at least, low priority. After all, how often do you check your Slack dashboards yourself? Challenge yourself here. And even when you do check “dashboards” from SMB-y apps, they often don’t even look like dashboards. They look like summary pages.

SMB 332

SMB Enterprise Innovation Communication 332

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

OK, now, if it’s a true second product — ask yourself if the buyer is the same buyer as your existing core product, or a different one Having a sales team sell 2 very different products is hard enough when its to the same buyer. ” If that works for your new product, sell it with your existing team.

Scale 206

Scale New CTO CTO AI 206

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2023

Hold yourself accountable to how well the go-to-market engine is working across the whole team.” When these areas come together as a single team, everyone should begin seeing themselves as one, pushing towards the same goal, and taking collective responsibility for the company’s wins and failures.

Customer Success 215

Customer Success Revenue Marketing Sales 215

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2023

Lesson: Believe in yourself. These are also the people, btw, who are far more likely to fit culturally, because that kind of passion is contagious and inspires people and teams. I mean, who doesn’t love hearing positive, even wildly enthusiastic, customer feedback? Lesson: Be the skeptic and interrogator. Tell me more. Experiment.

Technical Review 172

Technical Review Leadership Company Culture Startup 172

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2022

Then when everything super boomed in 2H’20 and ‘21 it went kind of like this: Do 3-4 solid interview for a position, not 30. And if nothing else, ask yourself if you’d be better off with a few less hires that were better. The truth is, it’s not just VCs that lowered their standards in the boom of ‘20-‘21. So did startups. Probably.

Sales Hiring 248

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Startup 248

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2022

This chaotic energy is often a source of pride for start-ups, as it can breed a kind of excitement and innovation that motivates their workforce while concurrently attracting capital. . The moment growth accelerates, ask yourself why and be thoughtful. Process is a friend, not a foe, in order to scale. Start-ups can be chaotic places.

Startup 243

Startup Leadership Innovation Scaling 243

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2022

Double Down on Yourself. This one took me a little while to figure out (thanks to Auren Hoffman for helping me see this clearly), but if you’re a founder, the best investment you can make is in yourself. This was a lesson I learned in my first startup, but then kind of forget with EchoSign. This can be hard. All of Them.

Scale 360

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Startup 360

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

It’s going to end in a firesale, an asset sale, or some kind of sale where nobody makes any money. If you think 50% of the startups you look at can win, then you need to surround yourself with people you trust who will help steer you right. It had 2,398 likes and clearly hit a chord with people. Have an open mind around hiring.

Sales Hiring 286

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Startup Sales 286

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2023

Some questions you can ask yourself when determining the right time to make a rev ops hire are: What is the right level of growth for my company? To determine what kind of profile you should hire for, figure out the answer to these two questions: What are the responsibilities you want this person to own?

Sales Hiring 186

Sales Hiring Education Scale Strategy 186

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2024

At SaaStr AI Day , Mike Tamir, Head of AI at Shopify, and Rudina Seseri, founder and Managing Partner at Glasswing Ventures, level-set about where we are in the cycle for Enterprises adopting AI and the critical work being done at Shopify to leverage AI and solve real problems. People will have one leg up if they’re leveraging intelligent tools.

AI Search 157

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 157

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

Set up a demo or try it out for yourself. Developers can advertise these kinds of discounts and user accounts on their websites. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself. Thanks to Tony Markov for contributing to this article! Interested? Why Not Just Pick an Even Lower Cost Solution Like Stripe?

Payment Methods 118

Payment Methods Payment Solutions Merchant Services Payment Services 118

SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2023

Greer emphasizes, “The reason we care about ecosystem activity is that ecosystem is kind of a precursor to stickiness.” The relationships you build and the opportunity to align yourself with other companies in an ecosystem can help edge out your competition and open up more options for the future of your product.

Investment 199

Investment Startup Branding Acquisition 199

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 26, 2020

“You kind of have to go that journey, you kind of have to prove yourself wrong before you can do the harder work” “What do we mean by chip on your shoulder? But you kind of have to go that journey, you kind of have to prove yourself wrong before you can do the harder work.”

Leadership 211

Leadership Scale SMB Innovation 211

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

At this stage, your marketing team should be laser-focused on finding out what resonates with your ICP: what are their needs are, how to serve this market, how to differentiate yourself vs competition. In last week’s Workshop Wednesday , held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST, Kady shares the ten things that change in marketing as you scale.

Scale 189

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Marketing 189

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2023

And David Sacks was kind enough to join us and compare and contrast the Yammer experience to Slack! In a kind of analogous way, everyone uses the Internet now, which wasn’t true certainly, when we started Flickr, in late 2003. From PLG innovator at $30m ARR t o a top SLG+PLG leader at $1B in ARR. It’s taken off.

Scale 336

Scale Sales Hiring PayPal Development Team Review 336

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2023

I feel like kind of like Stephen Colbert taking over The Daily Show. You had all the reps and SDRs reporting to you, managed it all yourself. Sales, marketing, kind of everything? Look a little different. Went for a tan during the break. I’m Nick Mehta. Excited to moderate the panel of 20 percenters. No pressure here.

Sales Hiring 226

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 226

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2023

— Jason Be Kind Lemkin  (@jasonlk) January 3, 2023. Force yourself to do them with all your reports. Folks that complain consume about 20x the energy of those that just get sh*t done. Simplify the team for 2023. So we just updated our SaaStr New Year’s Resolutions here , and it’s a great list. The #1 you need.

Scale 244

Scale Retention Scaling Revenue 244

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2022

So growth of the kind of subscription, eCommerce industry has been over 100% year on year for the past five years, according to McKinsey. If you kind of that question, thinking about the stakeholders and the decisions and companies of using SaaS products, there’s kind of three types. MRR, obviously. Transcript.

SaaS Payments 228

SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 228

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2023

You gotta know where you stand here to challenge yourself. Yes, you can Example: quiet SaaS learning software Docebo: pic.twitter.com/jtGwErBPu6 — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin  (@jasonlk) January 11, 2023 (Top 10 image from here ) The post Top 10 SaaStr Tips for Founders & CEOs appeared first on SaaStr. Again, to point 1.

Sales Hiring 198

Sales Hiring Sales Software Marketing 198

Payrix

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

In the context of the first two components of the conveyor belt, that’s kind of how I think of it.” If you’re thinking about Embedded Payments for your platform, make time to listen to this episode of the PayFAQ Embedded Payments podcast. He says most software companies struggle with the back-end service and support piece as well.

Payments 100

Payments Merchant Services Embedded Payments Payment Services 100

SaaStr

OCTOBER 13, 2023

The Mythical Entity of High Growth and Profitability Could Be Your Company It’s not exactly uncool to make money, and all kinds of companies experience high growth and profitability. If a growth opportunity is in front of you, ask yourself the following questions. Expensify didn’t become cash-positive by accident.

Outsourcing Services 231

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale SaaS 231

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2022

Take a read if you are still running finance yourself, or just have an part-time outsourced resource. This SaaStr Classic post didn’t much of an update, but we added a few things to it. — Jason, ed. In the old days, we didn’t have to worry about finance too much. Your focus expands.

Finance 323

Finance Outsourcing Services Systems Review Technical Review 323

FastSpring

MARCH 15, 2024

In this episode of Growth Stage, host and CMO of FastSpring David Vogelpohl interviews Todd about his thoughts on: Why marketplaces can be a difficult way to attract new players. How to cost effectively leverage video game influencers in order to get access to existing player audiences. And joining us for that conversation.

Payment Methods 179

Payment Methods Marketplace as a Service Payment Solutions Payments 179

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2023

Narrowing down what you do doesn’t lend itself to solving these kinds of problems. #2 Seamless integration means reduced systems complexity for clients, a common UX for clients, and you don’t have to repeat yourself. Parker shares a few problems with this conventional wisdom. #1 2 – Everything’s already been picked over.

Startup 206

Startup Software Sales Hiring Pricing 206

Sales Hacker

MAY 3, 2023

Sam and Colin discuss the challenges facing sales leaders, how Pavilion can help executives, and how you can succeed with kindness. Sam is the author of Kind People Finish First and has also hosted the Sales Hacker Podcast. ” Being direct is not the opposite of being kind. .

Development Team Review 70

Development Team Review Business Consulting Compensation 70