SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2021

How long does it take to negotiate a term sheet? What are the top tips for entrepreneurs preparing for a term sheet negotiation? It shouldn’t take more than a week, or even just a few days, to negotiate a term sheet, once a VC decides they want to do a deal. By the term you approach a term sheet, there should be No Surprises.

Pricing 232

Pricing Investment Sales 232

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 7, 2021

Usually, there’s already a 33%-95% chance you’ll get a term sheet if it goes well. If you’re brought in front of the full partnership — your champion most likely wants to get you a term sheet. You are selling. The “all hands”, “all partners” pitch is, at most firms, the final step to getting a term sheet.

Business 225

Business Leadership 225

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2021

Year after year, VCs show up to SaaStr Annual locked and loaded, term sheets in hands , on the hunt for soon-to-be Unicorns to add to their portfolios. And make sure you have your team’s tickets to SaaStr Annual 2021 — you can’t meet the VCs if tickets sell out before you’ve purchased them!

Banking 273

Banking Finance Investment Innovation 273

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2023

Mistake #5: You’re Selling To The Wrong Market Choose your market wisely. You can sell to great companies as first users and engage in founder-to-founder sales, but close to series A, you need to keep your eyes on more developed markets to achieve VC-type tech company growth. Do you want to fire a rocket into space? Absolutely.

Development Team Review 224

Development Team Review Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team SMB 224

SaaStr

MAY 17, 2022

Dear SaaStr: Will Peloton Be Filing Bankruptcy or Selling Within 2022? Sell : 50/50 chance. …. Even now, its subscriptions are still growing, albeit with some churn and other headwinds: But the hardware side is just hemorrhaging cash: The balance sheet challenge has been managing inventory. Bankruptcy : No.

Subscription 215

Subscription Payment Features Churn SaaS 215

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2023

Prior to SaaStr, Jason was an entrepreneur, selling EchoSign to Adobe for $100M where it is now a $250M ARR product. What are the ARR benchmarks required to get a good growth round term sheet today? “Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr one of the best-performing early-stage venture funds focused on SaaS. Will they come out?

Benchmarks 225

Benchmarks Investment Pricing Product Marketing 225

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2021

Selling your company too early. Many founders that sell post-traction are haunted when they look back and see they in fact had a 10+ year run ahead of them. But while it rarely kills startups, it ends up wounding them far more than a lost customer or term sheet. A bit more here. A bit more here. A bit more here.

Startup 323

Startup 323

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2024

1 Sell Hard You really need to convince the acquirer that your company is going to dramatically catapult their company and their personal objectives. This is great because it puts pressure on acquirers when they see a term sheet for the next round. During M&A: Sell hard. What are the three things you should do?

Software Review 226

Software Review Technical Review Acquisition Scale 226

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

As a VC maybe I get 3 weeks to get to know you before a term sheet. I guess my point is when VCs at least see that you are thinking about your start-up 24×7 … no matter how often you actually code/sell/market in terms of hours worked … that is incredibly reassuring. Sometimes, less. There isn’t any. Not really.

Banking 235

Banking Investment Communication Marketing 235

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2022

“Managing a Thin Balance Sheet: 4 Lessons Learned From a 2 Billion Acquisition | Laika Founder + CFO “ How to Go Big — With Less! #8. “Big Numbers from Small Customers: How DigitalOcean and its CRO Accelerated at Scale” How do you “sell” a product priced as low as $50 a month? .

Scale 185

Scale Scaling Engineering Acquisition 185

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

The Four More Important Questions to Ask an Early Stage VC are: what price is it OK to sell at? Often, a term sheet at a good price from a top brand is all founders really care about. You can only sell so much of the company, so it’s wise to pick the best partner at each stage. what if we fail? But ask it anyway.

Venture Capital 338

Venture Capital Branding Pricing Investment 338

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2020

A Mixed Day: Selling. It’s great if it grows, if it quadruples and quintiples, after you sell. If your gut says you’ll never look back if you sell your company, sell it. Term sheets don’t really explode. It’s your life work, your baby. But then, when you see that — you know what could have been.

Sales Hiring 355

Sales Hiring SaaS Revenue Churn 355

SaaStr

JANUARY 25, 2022

If you have 2 signed term sheets, for sure, go in strong. Not having the >first< slide sell the company, and really, even the first email. If it sells the whole deal. Do not do this, unless asked. Assume VCs understand what is “happening in the cloud”. This not only is a waste of precious time … I’ll fade away.

Consulting 287

Consulting Investment Cloud Data 287

SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2021

First, even if you sell another 20% of your company in the Series A, that still leaves 30% for the founders and employees. But they’ll typically just put whatever restructuring needs to be done in their term sheet. Q: How do I go from seed funding to series A funding if I already gave away 49% of my company in the seed funding?

Startup 163

Startup 163

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2021

So if you are offered a big term sheet — who should you pick? You can only sell so many slices of the cap table, so many times. So when you do sell a big chunk of that cap table — pick who can help you the most. Unicorns every week. Times are good — well, at least for the select few. No, you don’t.

Branding 234

Branding Pricing Cloud Startup 234

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2021

When they are ready to raise the next round, be in Seed-2, Series A, B, C or whatever … they just send out a few emails, and in a week or so, have a few offers and even term sheets. and 3 re: selling your product. How did they do it? What sort of magic is this? Well, it ain’t magic. They put in the time, folks.

Sales Funnel 363

Sales Funnel Investment Metrics Customer Success 363

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

If you’re a new startup, maybe you have your first couple of AEs, or you’re figuring out product market fit, or you just don’t have a big enough brand or cash in the bank to sell to big companies, you need to strike a balance. If you exaggerate too much, you’ll get caught. Big Enterprises are taking a risk on you.

Sales Hiring 235

Sales Hiring SaaS Banking AI 235

SaaStr

JUNE 8, 2020

If you are the one selling, don’t put hurdles in front of getting a check. And you are selling shares of stock. If you have 2 signed term sheets, for sure, go in strong. Not having the >first< slide sell the company all on its own. Make it easy on them. And send it as a PDF. Make it easy. Send the deck.

Consulting 339

Consulting Investment Cloud Data 339

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2020

Selling is selling. Selling to Google, in the end, isn’t more glamorous or better than selling to Waste Management, Inc. Selling to Google, in the end, isn’t more glamorous or better than selling to Waste Management, Inc. If You Have Something Good, maybe don’t sell.

Startup 191

Startup Acquisition Cloud Strategy 191

Baremetrics

AUGUST 30, 2021

In fact, many of these owners remain in the industry for years, while others sell their businesses for a healthy profit. The owner’s equity is used to obtain investment loans or when selling a company as an investment. How is owner’s equity shown on the balance sheet? How is owner’s equity shown on the balance sheet?

SaaS 97

SaaS Outsourced Development Payment Services Payments 97

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 16, 2021

You can still buy tickets here before we sell out. Yousuf Khan, Partner – Ridge Ventures – presenting “Selling to the Modern CIO”. The overwhelming participation by both Founders and Investors at the upcoming SaaStr Annual 2021 exemplifies this. Email us here if you have questions. . We raised our $2.8m

Scale 235

Scale Venture Capital Innovation Banking 235

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2020

Complex, multi-page term sheets for an angel investment are signs of problems to come. If you are selling > 20% of your company, granting a board seat to the investors is fair. Too much focus on control. Money should have checks-and-balances. No one should have to worry that founders will misuse funds. in an angel round.

Technical Review 253

Technical Review Investment Pricing 253

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2020

The ones that immediately take the first Series A term sheet offered out of a bit of panic, I’ve seen that decreases the odds of success. Selling some founders shares later, as the valuation passes $100m, makes a ton of sense. But selling too early, at too low a valuation, is a risky sign the founders don’t 100% believe.

Technical Cofounder 230

Technical Cofounder Investment New CTO CTO 230

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2021

In the annals of Blog Posts About Things I Don’t Care About, Convertible Debt versus Equity is high on the Top 10 List. Basically all the VC term sheets I’ve written just say “+1 Board Seat representing All The Preferred Stockholders” or something similar. I mean, whatever, right? Here’s the thing.

Systems Review 264

Systems Review Government Investment Pricing 264

Neil Patel

FEBRUARY 26, 2021

Your Two-Minute Cheat Sheet. Here’s your quick cheat sheet. For instance, if you plan on selling pizza, it would make sense to add pizza somewhere in the domain. There are hundreds of companies that sell web hosting services and tons of companies that allow you to register a new domain name. Those are further below.

Marketplace as a Service 129

Marketplace as a Service Underperforming Technical Team Subscription Payment Features 129

Neil Patel

JANUARY 23, 2021

What can I sell? Your 2-Minute Cheat Sheet. Want to skip the details and get a quick cheat sheet? You have to decide what you want to sell and how you’re going to get the products. After all, why would you want to sell a product nobody wants to buy? Where do I begin? Where do I source your products from?

Payment Methods 132

Payment Methods Payments Marketplace as a Service Payment Services 132

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2021

And if your start-up is early, struggling, with a tiny balance sheet, what great CEO #2 is going to join anyway? So if you are worried: Don’t sell too many shares. The more you sell, the more control you give up. Who are they going to find that is “better”? But in general, in 2018, that’s a lot less common. I never have.

Venture Capital 168

Venture Capital Finance Engineering Branding 168

Sales Hacker

MARCH 1, 2024

Owned media refers to content distributed through a brand’s channels , including self-hosted video, company blogs, and email campaigns. Of course, SaaS products can be a harder sell than Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty, but the same strategy applies: build value for your network before selling to them.

VP of Engineering 71

VP of Engineering Scale SaaS AI Search 71

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2019

On Wednesday, March 11, we’re bring the CIOs and CXOs from Adobe, Intuit, Google Cloud, Nutanix, Zendesk, Zoom, Box, Pagerduty, Coupa and 100s more together with 150+ CEOs that sell to the enterprise and are at $15m+ ARR. Do you sell to the enterprise? If so, CXO Summit is for you. 3000+ Mentorship Sessions. The Cantina.

New CTO 261

New CTO Sales Recruiting CTO Coach Scale 261

Buffer Resources

NOVEMBER 7, 2023

One helped me set up a contract template that I use when onboarding new clients, and now sell for other freelancers to use.  It means I look like I went “backwards” on my balance sheet, but it feels very much like forward progress to me.    Accounting software: I’d also be lost without QuickBooks.

Scale 111

Scale Scaling Payment Solutions Payment Services 111

Neil Patel

JANUARY 14, 2020

I was talking with my friend who works at Keap (formally known as Infusionsoft) and he was breaking down how people still make millions of dollars selling info products and ebooks. Now, I don’t sell info products as heavily as I used to, but when I focused on it 100% of the time, my numbers were great. Don’t worry about traffic.

Payment Methods 145

Payment Methods Payments Business Payment Services 145

Neil Patel

JUNE 23, 2020

And just like SEO Unlocked, E-Commerce Unlocked will contain worksheets, cheat sheets, PDFs, spreadsheets, and everything else you need. Once you complete the 4 weeks (12 videos), you’ll know how to market any e-commerce website and even how to sell products online on sites like Amazon. Lesson #2: Sales Channels.

Marketing 145

Marketing Social Media B2C Scale 145

Kellblog

APRIL 29, 2021

I’ve already blogged about one way to solve this problem: encouraging your CRO think probabilistically about the forecast. The rep-level forecast tells you what you’d sell if every rep hit their current forecast. The manager-level forecast tells you how much we’d sell if every CRO direct report hit their forecast.

Forecasting 97

Forecasting Scale Software Review Churn 97

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2023

So, whether you’re hiring or you’re selling or you’re running a leadership meeting, a lot of the time you’re banking on your natural skills and experience to get you to a good result so you can move on to the next thing. One would-be investor offered us a term-sheet that was, let’s just say, less than inspiring. Let’s sell.

Technical Review 184

Technical Review Leadership Company Culture Startup 184

Sales Hacker

MARCH 25, 2021

Imagine you sell HR software designed to help HR managers run their teams efficiently. Presenting your personas, handing out copies, and sticking them to notice boards are great ways to engage your sales reps and keep persona-based selling at the forefront of their minds, but to keep up the momentum, you need to take it a step further.

Scale 112

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Outsourcing Services Sales Enablement 112

OPEXEngine

SEPTEMBER 21, 2021

It is found on the top line of your balance sheet and income statement. It shows as a liability on the balance sheet. Furthermore, even with money in the bank account, high deferred revenue on the balance sheet won’t point to a healthy financial status. This will be impacted by your team selling annual or monthly subscriptions.

Payments 52

Payments SaaS Payments Revenue Deferred Revenue 52

Sales Hacker

JUNE 8, 2022

By reaching out when you see a role posted that’s relevant to what you sell, you open up a host of new opportunities. Related reading: Selling to Executives: 10 Essential Sales Presentation Tips (Sales Deck Ideas Included!). Or, you want to track just their LinkedIn, Crunchbase, or even their company blog. Funding rounds.

Sales Hiring 92

Sales Hiring Sales Communication Investment 92