SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve done for a wide variety of roles, from SDR to COO, where the candidates literally were guessing what the company really did during the interview: Not too long ago, I did a final CRO interview to help a portfolio company. CRO, SaaS Elevator “Yeah and this isn’t even hard.

Interviewing 258

Interviewing Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Consulting 258

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

Is it the end of an era for customer success in SaaS? We just wrote up how some of the biggest changes of SaaS are now coming, specifically in Customer Success and Sales. Back in 2015, when didn’t have the data or NRR or GRR of 115 public SaaS companies. Some other key learnings included: The power of the SaaS model.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 284

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2022

One of the most exciting and terrifying things a SaaS founder can do is raise seed funding. Timing is different for everyone, but you will need to take time to show the metrics and tell the story that VCs want to see. Do you understand the potential of your product? Do you understand the potential of your product?

Sales Funnel 231

Sales Funnel B2B Interviewing Investment 231

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2024

In the latest episode of our What’s New series, Founder and CEO at Secureframe, Shrav Mehta, sits down with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin to share what’s new at Secureframe, a rising SOC-2 and compliance software company breaking out in SaaS. Even if your product’s not there, they’ll buy from you.’

AI 152

AI SMB compliance Sales Hiring 152

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2023

Data Doesn’t Have to be Hard: Three Data Myths and How to Bust Them with Mailchimp with John Humphrey, former Head of Data Platform Product at Mailchimp John Humphrey, former head of data platform product at MailChimp and current principal at mfact, joined SaaStr live at Workshop Wednesday to discuss three data myths and how to debunk them.

Technical Advisors 238

Technical Advisors Data Technical Review Sales Hiring 238

Buffer Resources

APRIL 22, 2024

Unlike traditional startup founders who seek to grow headcount and scale a product, solopreneurs often are the product. Certain sub-niches and communities thrive on Twitter—think spaces that change rapidly, like investing, SEO, cryptocurrency, SaaS, and global news.

Social Media 97

Social Media Scale Growth Hacking Headcount 97

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

A great product, while necessary, isn’t sufficient to build a market leader and eventually a public company. Companies that win a market are just as good at Go-to-Market as they are at building great products. But to develop a GTM strategy, you must have Product Market Fit. Without it, you don’t have a business.

Scale 262

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 262

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. In this talk, Nick shares his top 10 failures as a CEO while getting to $200M ARR. This list goes on.

Scale 270

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Scaling 270

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 10, 2021

The good news is if you get anywhere at all in SaaS in the early days, you’ll have a handful of customers. Who needs to buy yet another product in their business? Because SaaS compounds. . — Harry Stebbings (@HarryStebbings) January 26, 2017. Which is great. In fact, it’s amazing. And you did it. And easier.

Branding 317

Branding Scale Innovation Enterprise 317

User Pilot

APRIL 21, 2024

Wondering how to build a conversion path for your SaaS product or e-commerce site? From the moment they learn about the product until they complete a desired action, like a demo booking, and beyond. Focus on their JTBDs, pain points , and gains from using your product. Userpilot is a product growth platform.

SaaS Payments 85

SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Methods Payment Solutions 85

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

The journey to $100M ARR may seem like a typical success story in Silicon Valley, but that doesn’t make it simple or easy. This research will tell you whether your “genius idea” is filling a real market gap and whether you’re disrupting or creating a new category. Fall in love with “solving a problem”. And if it’s the latter?

Scale 239

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring SMB 239

SaaStr

AUGUST 17, 2022

Consider not only how many reps you have and how many you’ll hire, but also incorporate attrition and productivity metrics that give you insight into the health of your organization. Centering your work on customer experience helps train the whole organization in the process and hones your product-market fit. Product tour.

Sales Hiring 228

Sales Hiring Sales SaaS B2C 228

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2021

Recently, I met with a great SaaS founder doing about $1.5m She was telling me about her VP of Marketing who, in the Bay Area, she was paying $95,000. Sometimes a marketing lead with a corporate marketing or even product marketing background actually signs up for a lead or other commit. I was a bit skeptical. More on that here.

Sales Recruiting 344

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SMB Engineering 344

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2021

A little while back, I gave a great SaaS Founder CEO a Gift. In B2C, it may make sense to have a lot of “Heads of This” and “Heads of That” If you have matrix-type teams, and a lot of individual contributors who are hyper-productive. But in SaaS, I say it’s generally a mistake. A real gift.

VP of Engineering 347

VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 347

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

No, I would not have bought a product. When you hire your first couple reps, they do need to have sold a software product. And when I first wrote this on LinkedIn, I got a hundred comments with everyone telling me who their magical sales rep is too. He had come from a failed SaaS company and was mid-pack at best.

Sales Hiring 256

Sales Hiring VP of Engineering Payment Methods Scale 256

Unbounce

AUGUST 4, 2021

Long story short, you can’t rely on flashy visuals alone to convert. This blog post will cover four methods for better landing page copywriting and five examples to spark your inspiration. Every character could make or break your landing page. You gotta sell with your copy, too. No pressure, right ? Avoid using jargon when you can.

B2C 144

B2C AI B2B Benchmarks 144

SaaStr

AUGUST 3, 2019

Because these days in SaaS, there are just too many. If they tell you a start-up is doing incredibly well, and has one of the best teams she’s ever met … of course you want to take that meeting. More on the story (and how the first cold email didn’t work at all) here: How I Turned A Cold Email Into A $2.5M

Investment 193

Investment Metrics Strategy SaaS 193

Baremetrics

AUGUST 1, 2021

Acquiring customers for SaaS is a completely different ball game altogether than, say, for the traditional business models (think: eCommerce, for instance). In the SaaS industry, acquiring new leads through short-term marketing promotions will not cut it--which works as a killer strategy for the eCommerce business model.

Acquisition 98

Acquisition Strategy SaaS Underperforming Technical Team 98

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

They were aware of it, but startups that I work with closely or invested in, if they got all the way to 25 million with 75% NRR, I would tell them to quit today. And it really makes no sense because I’ve asked so many of the best SaaS CEOs that are public how to go multi-product. Setting goals. Technical debt. Transcript.

Outsourcing Services 219

Outsourcing Services Banking CTO Hire New CTO 219

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. While I hate the term “alignment” from my days as a F500 VP, if the term ever were to be used in a useful way in a SaaS start-up, it’s the way your VP Sales and VP Marketing should be joined at the hip.

Sales Recruiting 306

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Revenue 306

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2021

Peter sat down with Jason Lemkin to share the story of Veeva and his journey as CEO. While it can be frightening to think differently, doing so has helped him make Veeva the biggest vertical SaaS success story of all time. Tell us your version of the history. As Veeva grew, that’s when the long-term vision came into play.

Sales Hiring 337

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Headcount 337

User Pilot

JULY 11, 2023

TL;DR The best customer experience videos about user onboarding include: A Userpilot video about SaaS onboarding (with an AI-generated avatar). The best videos about customer service include: Valuetainment stories about great customer service. One of which is about creating the best SaaS onboarding experience.

Technical Review 79

Technical Review Onboarding Mobile Retention 79

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

There are many stories of legendary exec hires. “I never make the same mistake twice. I make it 5 or 6 times, just to be sure.” Random quote I found on the Internet If that doesn’t describe the CEO experience, I don’t know what does. In February 2023, I hit my 10-year anniversary (or “Gainaversary,” as we say) of running Gainsight.

Sales Hiring 301

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Customer Success 301

ChurnZero

MAY 6, 2022

It’s easier to build products that buyers have budgets for. Oftentimes, people build great products. B2B products must impact ROI. “If If your product or service can have an impact on ROI, that’s what you really need to do. Slack is a productivity tool and did really well. That’s a good story to tell.

Retention 98

Retention Revenue Entrepreneurship B2C 98

Sales Hacker

MARCH 1, 2024

GTMnow is the media extension of GTMfund – sharing insight on go-to-market from working with hundreds of portfolio companies backed by over 350+ of the best in the game executive operators who have been there, done that at the world’s fastest growing SaaS companies. Why are SaaS companies embracing it?

VP of Engineering 71

VP of Engineering Scale SaaS AI Search 71

SaaStr

JANUARY 7, 2021

In this episode, David Skok , General Partner @ Matrix Partners , uncovers the crucial step missing when it comes to finding product-market fit for B2B companies, how to set-up your sales team for success early on, and what metrics really matter when it comes to a payback period. Interested in what our most popular episodes were last year?

Scale 278

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling B2B 278

SaaStr

OCTOBER 7, 2022

For example, Zoom, a cloud-based video conferencing platform, grew tremendously and emerged as one of the most prominent corporate success stories. This has resulted in investors telling founders what they think founders want to hear instead of the hard truth necessary for successful growth. The recent downward movement.

Venture Capital 241

Venture Capital Marketing Startup Construction 241

SaaStr

OCTOBER 2, 2019

The other day, I had an experience I’ve never had in 14 years of building and buying SaaS: I became That Angry Customer. We never used it in production. Dozens of prospects and customers reached out to share their similar stories of frustration. They tell your partners if you fail them. Again and again and again.

Churn 205

Churn B2C Interviewing Software Review 205

User Pilot

JANUARY 8, 2024

Best practices for effective customer acquisition and product-led growth. This is particularly important in SaaS, where the CAC payback period is anything from a few months to over one year. This is particularly important in SaaS, where the CAC payback period is anything from a few months to over one year.

Acquisition 101

Acquisition Strategy Social Media Underperforming Technical Team 101

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 1, 2018

About 50 percent of my time was spent communicating with potential users, whether that was asking them to try Intercom over email, meeting them at conferences, responding to them in blog comments or talking to them on Hacker News. There’s a great story in Dr. Seuss’ “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.” Absolutely not.

Startup 201

Startup Strategy Marketing Social Media 201

Neil Patel

MARCH 26, 2021

When we write a blog post or appear on a podcast , we’re presenting. According to a global survey from PR and marketing consultancy Edelman, it boils down to three key factors: Product experience: The most important factor, 87 percent of respondents cited their experience with a product as a reason to trust a brand.

Marketing 131

Marketing Branding Social Media Sales Funnel 131

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2023

You have to understand: what people are searching for what their intent is what the product is that you’re building It’s a marrying of company vision and go to market. Monday has always been a platform, and now it’s transitioned into multi-product with monday CRM and monday Dev. How is that possible? “You Their first round was $1.4m.

Scale 169

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Banking 169

Kraftblick

JUNE 28, 2018

But if what you want is great quality content that draws readers who are potential leads, we have a checklist that will help you make your company blog more popular. They are a product of a well-thought marketing strategy, well-tuned processes, and well-deserved experience. Tell your reader what he or she will get after reading it.

Artificial Intelligence 40

Artificial Intelligence Education Strategy Marketing 40

Baremetrics

MAY 14, 2020

Instead, we focused on building a stellar product to solve a problem people are willing to pay for. If you’re considering starting a SaaS business or are recently starting out, you may get something out of our story. Canny (then called “Product Pains”) started as one of my thesis projects. Not really.

Sales Recruiting 90

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Branding Business Model 90

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 19, 2018

Intercom, the product, continued to develop at a fast pace with hundreds of new features big and small – from an entirely reimagined Messenger to a thriving Intercom App Store to next generation chatbots, Custom Bots and Answer Bot. The best of the blog. Significant digits: 240 blog posts, 18 videos.

Scale 150

Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring 150

ProfitWell

MAY 27, 2020

Plus, a SaaS company we've long-term admired grows its software to $50M in ARR, fully remotely. and just about everyone in SaaS now integrates with Zapier. And what makes this story even more intriguing right now, is that from day one, the Zapier crew has cranked it all out—remotely. It all started with a text conversation.

Software Review 98

Software Review B2B Trends SaaS 98

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 3, 2019

Every SaaS company should be sending a welcome email – not from the company or the team, but from a real person telling a bit of the company’s story and values. Can you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself? I like that analogy, because I started my professional career in theater production.

Onboarding 143

Onboarding Sales Hiring Churn Consulting 143