SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

So we’ve spent a ton of time over the years on SaaS talking about hiring a great VP of Sales. So I thought I’d come back to the classic topic and make a list of the Top 10 Mistakes I See Founders Make When Hiring a VP of Sales: #1. Because SaaS is getting to be 20+ years old. But sell themselves? We call this Mr/Ms.

Sales Hiring 229

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 229

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2023

But we have enough revenue now (tens of millions) to think of it as a.bootstrapped startup And the #1 thing I’ve learned is … how different bootstrapping really is. You can still count it as bookings, as hitting the MRR target, etc. It may have some, if it adds value, builds your brand, etc. But that’s it.

Sales Hiring 195

Sales Hiring Headcount Startup Revenue 195

User Pilot

JUNE 13, 2022

Are you looking for the best SaaS blogs and influencers to follow in 2022? We curated a list of the best SaaS blogs and influencers to help you learn more about SaaS and increase your revenue. We covered the best blogs on SaaS growth, product marketing , UX analytics, venture capital, and sales.

Venture Capital 52

Venture Capital SaaS Data Scale 52

SaaStock

MARCH 26, 2019

As we have showcased in previous pieces, there are many reasons to be excited about the Latin American SaaS ecosystem. Not only is the region producing superstar SaaS contenders, but the interest from local and international VCs is increasing. However, our interest goes beyond the current state of SaaS in Latin America.

Startup 210

Startup Artificial Intelligence SaaS Construction 210

Sales Hacker

JUNE 23, 2021

Here are the seven best sales blogs (and five bonus sales newsletters!) Best article to read: RevOps is taking over how B2B SaaS companies look at sales. Focus areas: Predictable Revenue provides tactical advice from sales leaders, founders, and even academia. Haven’t you listened to the latest podcast episode? Sales Hacker.

Sales 79

Sales Technical Review Outbound Sales Team Interviewing 79

SaaStr

APRIL 12, 2023

Generative AI has taken the world by storm, and VCs and SaaS founders are looking at new opportunities it can bring. Even considering the more conservative fundraising market in 2023, there are opportunities for startups to get investor attention with AI. Startups must determine an action plan with AI if they hope to grow.

Generative AI 182

Generative AI AI Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 182

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2023

For Todd White, Co-Founder of GUIDEcx, the answer to both questions is a resounding yes. For Todd White, Co-Founder of GUIDEcx, the answer to both questions is a resounding yes. Not only can real-life events drive business value, but they can also deliver a desirable pool of leads –– especially for B2B SaaS businesses.

Sales 196

Sales Technical Review Systems Review Engagement 196

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2022

Most startups just wait way too long to get finance right: They wait too long to get collections right, and have to write off a lot of bookings. Most outsourced finance resources aren’t great at collections, and aren’t perfect at SaaS revenue recognition. — Jason BeKind Lemkin #???????????? But that’s OK.

Scale 204

Scale Finance Churn Startup 204

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

One of the open secrets behind a lot of great SaaS companies is going multi-product. Jack Altman, CEO and co-founder of Lattice, firmly believes that many more companies should be multi-product, and many should go multi-product earlier than they think. Startups are no longer fringe. What Caused This Crowded Software Market?

Scale 231

Scale Scaling Startup Sales Hiring 231

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

Debt for SaaS companies done right is a gift. Few folks have more data than Nathan Latka and he offers up some insights on how to properly leverage up in SaaS. Geoffrey Moore calls this group the Late Majority and the Laggards in his book Crossing the Chasm , a secret bible for many SaaS CEO’s. . — ed.

Venture Capital 220

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 220

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2022

More importantly, it’s a great chill opportunity to meet a few other SaaS execs by the sea before things really rev up. We’re so close now to the official start of SaaStr Europa 2022 on 7-8 June in Sunny Barcelona! This is our ultimate guide for everyone attending, to make the most of this year’s Europa.

Mobile 220

Mobile Scale SMB Travel 220

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2021

These truly are the best of times in SaaS. And there are just so, so many startups today. You think all they do is look for startups like yours? And most importantly, now that initial pitches are all over Zoom, VCs are meeting with 2x-5x more startups than they used to. And yes, some are. In fact, it’s harder?

Scale 281

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Headcount 281

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2023

Most founders want to expand their TAM. The one thing founders don’t do early enough is scope, engage, and nurture all stakeholders involved, not just the economic buyer or technical champion but the broader organization. By going upmarket, you can land bigger deals with more opportunities to upsell and lower churn. The lesson learned?

Scale 188

Scale Enterprise readiness compliance Enterprise 188

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 246

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 246

Buffer Resources

APRIL 22, 2024

Unlike traditional startup founders who seek to grow headcount and scale a product, solopreneurs often are the product. For these folks, reaching scale means maximizing their book of business. For example, if you create a blog post, flip the same content into a 10-tweet thread covering the biggest takeaways from the article.

Social Media 98

Social Media Scale Growth Hacking Headcount 98

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 3, 2021

Being the first salesperson into a start-up in a rewarding — but very tough job: Your Founder Boss likely will never have managed a salesperson before. Your Founder Boss may have strong views on what you should be doing. Whichever founder was doing sales, likely thinks that may be the way to do sales going forward.

Sales Hiring 265

Sales Hiring Startup Sales SaaS 265

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2020

Upcoming Dates to Know: August 18 – Session registration goes live (make sure you’re on the first to book sessions! Meet A VC is one of our most popular networking programs at the conference and helps connect hundreds of SaaS startups with a curated list of elite VCs attending the show for 1:1, virtual meetings.

Startup 214

Startup SaaS 214

SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2024

In this week’s latest episode of CRO Confidential , Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with the CRO of Splunk, Christian Smith. As Christian’s been the CRO of Splunk for over seven years now, he’s a wealth of knowledge on what it really takes to be successful in Enterprise SaaS Sales.

Enterprise 245

Enterprise Scale Sales SaaS 245

SaaStr

MARCH 21, 2021

But … many if not most founders I work with make life harder on themselves by not doing easy things to “manage up” a bit. Many founders just don’t reply at all to emails from their largest investors. Really, there shouldn’t be that many surprises in SaaS … because the revenue recurs.

Sales Hiring 241

Sales Hiring Forecasting Churn Metrics 241

SaaStr

OCTOBER 7, 2020

As you scale up in SaaS, one thing I can almost guarantee is that you are going to hire some VPs who were either fired or quit their last role. Especially in Bay Area-centric startups. And more importantly, change happens at start-ups as they scale. VPs that do a great job at $1m in ARR rarely are the perfect leader at $100m ARR.

Sales Hiring 322

Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing Startup 322

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 15, 2019

The most gratifying thing writing this blog is the feedback from readers who say the content is useful. A Clever Hack to Reading More Books : There's so much knowledge in books, and as a society we're spending less and less time with books. One way of reading more books is to reduce the cost of them.

Scale 110

Scale Innovation Acquisition Churn 110

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2021

* This guest blog post was contributed by Mark Faggiano, CEO of Taxjar. . I’ve learned plenty from books and classes, but as a startup founder, there are a few lessons I’ve had to work out on the job. I’m a lifelong learner — and I like to surround myself with lifelong learners. It’s a mindset. They try new things.

Scale 151

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS compliance 151

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2020

I think it would be a tremendous exercise to share these ideas with your team and see what folks think they should change / implement at your startup. “We added slack for customer support and on boarding” — Adam Livesay, founder, Elevat. “Sell to the right people” — Jen Abel, Co-founder, Jjellyfish.

Sales Hiring 337

Sales Hiring Sales Outsourced Development Technical Review 337

SaaStock

JANUARY 25, 2019

The Latin American SaaS landscape is hustling and bustling, having seen more IPOs in the last 6 months than the previous 20 years combined. We will gather 300 leading SaaS founders, executives and investors for three days packed with opportunities and rich exchange of knowledge to push the whole ecosystem forward.

SaaS Payments 257

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Methods Payments 257

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 4, 2023

I’ve gone through a mix of emotions, reliving the insane 10-year journey that came out of a young Max being naively intellectually curious about how to scale sales at a startup. Beginning: I began my career at a startup in San Francisco called Udemy. Startups needed to figure out how to scale sales while dealing with finite resources.

Scale 61

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Payments 61

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 21, 2018

Whether you’re at an early-stage startup that’s just made its first sales hires, or part of a fast-moving sales team in a large organization, the key to success often comes down to efficiency. But I couldn’t raise the money for the startup; this was 2009, right after the recession. Then, the sales team went to work.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

Tom Tunguz

MAY 7, 2014

Some of the best content to be found about startups is locked in books. Thomas Kjemperud asked me yesterday for a 140 character recommendation of one book for founders. Reducing my list to just one and condensing an argument for why founders ought to read it in just 117 characters was just too great a challenge for me.

Underperforming Technical Team 154

Underperforming Technical Team New CTO CTO Government 154

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2019

Getting to $50 million: How to avoid the SaaS Valley of Death. Just four percent of SaaS companies reach $1 million in revenue, and only.04 and booked $70m in revenue last year. The SaaS products are growing at 200% a year. ". Microsoft Gives 500 Patents to Startups. As It Approaches $1b in ARR. MESSAGE BIRD.

Cloud 136

Cloud Azure Scale Software Engineering 136

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 19, 2018

“The journey from startup to scale-up is a fascinating story, and we thoroughly enjoy sharing our perspective, our insights and our experiences” The journey from startup to scale-up is a fascinating story, and we thoroughly enjoy sharing our perspective, our insights and our experiences as we continue on that journey.

Scale 150

Scale Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring 150

Point Nine Land

AUGUST 17, 2021

About a year and a half into my degree, I co-founded a company in the MedTech space and had a fun journey learning all about the startup world but with a scientist’s lens on. Alongside Christoph, I’ll also be looking at everything SaaS and hope to one day release a napkin! What are some of your favourite books?

Venture Capital 97

Venture Capital Startup Trends Marketplace as a Service 97

Baremetrics

AUGUST 30, 2021

Blogs and information sharing Workshops and mentorship Tip 2: create a word-of-mouth buzz Collaborations Get featured in influencer content Tip 3: make (ostensibly) high-touch contact Use technology to customize your communication Conclusion Approach people as people, not as prospects New technology makes new methods Be meaningful.

Payment Methods 98

Payment Methods SaaS Payments Strategy Marketing 98

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 12, 2021

The plethora of solutions or blogs may not be useful when it comes to gaining insight and knowledge. SaaS (software as a service) companies have seen an exponential growth in the business sphere. There is some insightful content around SaaS that can be an inspiration to readers. The 20 Best SaaS Blogs You Must Follow.

SaaS 23

SaaS Entrepreneurship Technical Review Social Media 23

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 14, 2021

I got an MBA and tried several startups – some failures under my belt there – and then ended up at a company in the business intelligence space called GoodData. It’s a B2B SaaS application, think of it as a CRM. Information from the front lines is critical when helping product decision-makers prioritize what to build next.

Strategy 225

Strategy Scale Systems Review Technical Review 225

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 20, 2018

In the early stages of most SaaS startups’ lives, the CEO or founder often acts as the initial head of sales. As Jason Lemkin puts it , “The CEO/founder should close at least the first 10 (or 20 or whatever) customers. Without this awareness, there are too many blindspots, which will ultimately hinder growth.

Startup 178

Startup Sales SaaS Systems Review 178

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

Before reading through yet another “Top-29 SaaS billing platforms” feature comparison post, decide how you want the billing tool to play with the rest of your operations stack. This post is part of an ongoing series for SaaS founders and CEOs on setting up their financial stack in a scalable manner.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Payments Software Review 52

CustomerSuccessBox

DECEMBER 6, 2021

In this blog, we bring you to a few of those Customer Success leaders, our very own mentors, and popularly known influencers. His blog is highly credited as one of the richest sources of actionable information and guidance on Customer Success and SaaS growth. Lincoln Murphy. He is a complete customer-centric growth mastermind.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success VP of Engineering Scale Consulting 52

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

This post will walk you through what SaaS companies need to know about sales tax compliance, how to know when and from which customers you should collect sales tax, and best of all, how to automate sales tax so you can check “Do something about sales tax” off your to-do list once and for all. Why is sales tax such a pain for SaaS companies?

Merchant Services 172

Merchant Services Scale Technical Review Sales Hiring 172