SaaStr

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Should Co-Founders Issue Themselves 100% Vested Shares at Founding, Or Vest Over 4 Years? More here: A Simple Commitment Test For You And Your Co-Founders The post Dear SaaStr: Should Co-Founders Issue Themselves 100% Vested Shares at Founding, Or Vest Over 4 Years? Ideally, 6-7 years or even a decade.

242

242

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2024

They were the first to get to millions of users at scale and found that their key differentiators in selling to sellers were: Sales leaders and reps needed to see value quicker. They also actively encourage users to trial competitive apps either alongside or directly against their product and have found success in winning these trails.

Scale 183

Scale Sales Hiring Pricing AI 183

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2023

Dave Duffield made $10 billion when Oracle took over Peoplesoft … but he still had to go and co-found Workday. So he founded Yammer and sold it for $1B+ cash. What should I do? It’s crazy, but … you’re not alone. And sometimes it almost never ends. David Sacks made tens of millions at PayPal but had to do more.

PayPal 233

PayPal Startup Management Leadership 233

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2024

I’ve found that while sharing Gong calls is very common in certain departments, and with managers and reports, almost no companies do this simple exercise and share them every week … with everyone. More on that here: Everyone in SaaS Needs to Do Customer Support. At Least Until You Have 50-100 Employees. But Ideally, Forever.

Customer Support 241

Customer Support Engineering Startup SaaS 241

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 17, 2022

A round extension that sells another 15% of the company leaves a modern founding team with more ownership than its older brothers founded five or ten years ago. Across financing rounds, dilution from capital has fallen by 30-50% in that decade. Cumulative Dilution Points.

Finance 348

Finance Startup 348

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2024

You aren’t aligned and “thinking as one” co-founding entity. If your co-founder isn’t willing to take the dilution that comes with raising capital and you are — that could be a sign you are misaligned here on how — and if — to Go Big. This is much harder to fix. Still, it’s better to know now. So I suspect you aren’t. Not always.

Communication 179

Communication Data Leadership 179

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

But whatever company you found, you are its founder forever. Leaving Some of Its Smaller Customers Behind As Blackline standardizes around $250k+ deals as growing mid-market and enterprise companies, it’s found its tough to support the smaller ones. #8. But, but — only a founder CEO can execute a vision over 20+ years.

Payment Features 198

Payment Features Scale Enterprise Software 198

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2024

Procore in fact was founded way back in 2002. Founded in Santa Barbara, Still HQ’d There Today Yes, you can build a great SaaS company from anywhere. He founded Procore in 2002. And it’s a great story of going long. Today though, it’s worth a stunning $10 Billion. Not Procore. So it’s not just you ?

Scale 201

Scale Payment Services Payment Features Construction 201

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2024

While the circumstances may be different, I will always have that perspective in common with founders and founding teams. I have found this to be a unique attribute of NEA and find our Founders really appreciate the level to which they feel supported. #6. What’s an “exit” you’re particularly proud of? I am not sure there is just one!

Scale 222

Scale Software Review Payment Features AI 222

SaaStr

DECEMBER 21, 2023

What it looks like: Founded 2012, service management software for HVAC and more $250,000,000 in ARR in 2021, growing almost 50%, per Reuters $460,000,000 in ARR at 12/31/23, per The Information Today? Assuming they grew 40% this year, that would put them at $600,000,000+ ARR.

SaaS 286

SaaS Software Marketing Management 286

SaaStr

AUGUST 5, 2023

Usually, the founding partners or the more senior partners control both (1) most of the profits, the “carry” and (2) own the management company, and keep more of the “fees”. Many folks are “general partners” but the founding investors still run the place. Dear SaaStr: Why Do VCs Leave Their Firms to Start Their Own Funds?

Leadership 181

Leadership Management 181

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

They found: Comp is higher Work-life balance is better Benefits spending has gone up 20% More freedom And yet: Employees are the unhappiest they’d been at least since 2020, and probably longer 34% of employees now dread the start to the workday — up 11% from 2020 (!) I don’t have any great suggestions, or magic answers.

Retention 231

Retention Data 231

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 24, 2024

A 2020 MIT study found 1 robot in a manufacturing facility replaced 3.3 In 2016, the question was easy to answer : sell Ironman not Robocop. Technology hadn’t reached the level of sophistication we have attained today where AI is 90% as capable as a high-school student, the MMLU benchmark for AI is precisely this. more productive.

AI 158

AI Software Engineering Benchmarks Startup 158

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2023

He found new bookings in Q1’23 were down about 33% on average from Q4’22: Yes, these are slightly different time frames, but the same basic trends. Growth rates down about 33% from the peak 2 years ago, and maybe 20% from a year ago: Jamin Bill of Altimeter did a different analysis looking at the top public SaaS and Cloud companies.

Cloud 277

Cloud Startup Trends SaaS 277

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

All of our Managing Directors on the early team have both founded companies and operate at scale. Founding a company feels the same way. She founded Bitnami, which was acquired by VMware, and served as the former chief operating officer at GitHub. What’s different about your fund / how you invest and support founders?

Management 213

Management CTO Hire New CTO AI 213

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2023

So everyone knows Salesforce, founded in 1999, originally to manage your salesforce. But there’s another SaaS leader that almost everyone in B2B software also uses also founded in 1999 — to manage their events. It’s still around, too. A lot of it is a bit old, and hard to use, and expensive.

Marketplace as a Service 272

Marketplace as a Service Software Review Cloud B2B 272

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2021

Still, I was wondering — how old are founders of top SaaS companies at IPO (when the real job starts in some ways), and at founding? The answer: of the current batch of newer public SaaS companies, the average CEO is 43 at IPO and 32 at founding. Just some food for thought. You be you.

SaaS 311

SaaS Cloud Startup Scaling 311

SaaStr

MAY 4, 2021

It’s old, founded in 2001. But Five9 found a way to reignite new logo growth. And today, 20 years after founding, it’s a $12B category leader. And in many cases, pre-Covid, they’d been working on decades-old server-based phone systems. Pre-Cloud systems, really. Five9 is particularly interesting. Not too bad!

Systems Review 341

Systems Review Technical Review Software Review Cloud 341

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Founded back in 2010, it had steady growth to $100m ARR, IPO’d quietly in 2019, then has grown 30%+ annually every year since. So sometimes steady and even is the right path. SproutSocial is one of those. That’s compounded to $360m in ARR today, and a market cap of $3.4 Billion, so about 9x ARR. 5 Interesting Learnings: #1.

Social Media 210

Social Media SMB Enterprise Scaling 210

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2021

A few: eLance was founded in 1998 as an early freelancing website. More here : GoDaddy was founded in 1997 remains a leader in domain names but expanded into web sites, ecommerce and more — and is worth $13B today ! More here : On24 was founded in 1998 is a niche Zoom competitor you might have heard of if you do webinars.

SaaS 273

SaaS B2B Enterprise Revenue 273

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

Only Founded in 2011. Ok times are tough for many out there But not Crowdstrike: – Almost $3B in ARR – Growing 37% (!) – 26% Free Cash Flow – 125% NRR – $48B Market Cap — Up 94.58% this year (!) nottooshabbby pic.twitter.com/VOlpHaWcVd — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin  ?? 5 Interesting Learnings: #1. . #8.

Cybersecurity 249

Cybersecurity AWS Benchmarks Cloud 249

SaaStr

APRIL 10, 2024

Many in SaaS have found a way to drive their ACV and ARPU up over the past 18-24 months with price increases, more products, and more. But it’s just about saturated the market. New customers did grow 2% year over year, but actually decreased last quarter for the first time. #2. ARPU Up 4% at $139.38 At least not yet.

Scale 215

Scale Churn Scaling Pricing 215

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

or at least cash flow positive) all just in Year 10 since founding. They were $1.7B+ ARR in October , so let’s call it close to $2B at the end of the year, growing 40%+ at that scale –and profitable! (or That’s … pretty epic. 4,000 Employees, So About $500,000 in Revenue Per Employee That’s very efficient.

AWS 245

AWS B2C AI Scaling 245

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

But I found it interesting how Salesforce has come up with 2 clear policies on engineering vs. sales & marketing. So most everyone is still working on figuring out just how distributed, hybrid, etc. we all want to be — and can be. ” These are tough issues and I don’t think there are perfect answers. 3 Days a Week.

Scale 169

Scale Engineering Marketing Sales 169

SaaStr

OCTOBER 5, 2023

In my second start-up, I found this help more in my management team. I n my first start-up, my co-founder and I met for 20 minutes at the end of every single day, and had lunch as often as we could. 50% of this was just dealing with stress and unscripted issues. It helped each of us so much. Get to cash-flow positive. 1 To Start.

Startup 245

Startup Management Business Leadership 245

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2022

I found and hired my VP of Marketing). I went to meet with one of my angels and mentors when things were probably toughest at my last start-up. My co-founder had walked out the door. We had about 4 months left of cash. I was out of ideas. Yes, we had customers — hundreds — but not nearly enough. Enough, he said. Go get on some jets, he said.

Pricing 310

Pricing Marketing 310

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

It worked out but maybe I should have found at least one person who would hire me before I did that. Dear SaaStr: What Has Been Your Biggest Career Mistake? Maybe not slowing down just a little bit. I had no idea what I would do next and had zero savings. The moment I realized I would be half decent at investing I should have just chilled.

Venture Capital 236

Venture Capital Startup Investment Leadership 236

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

Long-term marketing spend Holding customer success spend flat The study found that 62% of CS teams are maintaining or decreasing their non-headcount budget. At Hubspot, they’ve found great AI use cases within CS and can replace human intervention with AI by understanding the customer’s journey. What’s the next deal?

Customer Success 224

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale AI 224

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2023

Founded back on April 1, 1972? The ones folks want, but could cut because they already have some of that functionality in their core suite. Who’s winning these days: often the core suite itself. Salesforce is back to aggressive hiring. And ooooold SAP? Their Cloud business is on fire. From a vendor they truly trust. And rebuild.

Cloud 222

Cloud Scale Sales Hiring Business 222

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2021

We took a look at this a while back on SaaStr, and found that roughly 20% had a “core founder” or solo founder. E.g., companies like Elastic, Fastly and Twilio weren’t literally solo founded, but in the end basically ended up that way. More on that here: At the Top SaaS Companies, Founder-CEOs Own ~15% at IPO.

Startup 237

Startup Cloud SaaS 237

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 24, 2023

Previously, she co-founded Fraiche Yogurt, a successful chain of yogurt stores in the Bay Area. Other than your own, what app would you never let anyone take away from you no matter what: Asana is essential for me. #4. What’s your top “undiscovered gem” — an app you love but others may not have heard of?

Marketing 242

Marketing Leadership Engineering Enterprise 242

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2021

But those early customers that somehow found you, with no brand, no PR team, no Platinum Booth at Dreamforce. They had an extreme need, so they found you, and … you won’t lose them. before you get to 10 employees. Because your early customers, your first customers … they will not churn if they are for real.

Sales Hiring 271

Sales Hiring Customer Success Headcount Churn 271

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2023

But I wish I’d found a way to take another 60 or 90 days to solidify the team before we truly hit the ground running. I’ve made so many, it’s hard to boil it down to two. But let’s focus on the earliest days, in Year 1. The biggest two mistakes I made as a founder-CEO in Year 1, I not only made once. Not really.

SaaS 224

SaaS Management Marketing Leadership 224

SaaStr

MARCH 14, 2024

Prior to Inspired Capital, Lucy was on the founding team at Paperless Post, where she spent a decade as COO building the company to serve over 100M hosts and guests. Lucy is a General Partner at Inspired Capital.

Scale 187

Scale B2B Investment Acquisition 187

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 18, 2021

Founded by Sanjit Biswas, former CEO at Meraki and John Bicket former CTO at Meraki[link] Samsara builds software to manage physical operations: truck fleets, mining, food & beverage, oil & gas. Founded in 2016, Samsara has grown explosively from $119.9m Average Customer Value, $k. -. ACV, Core Customers. -. ARR per Employee.

CTO Hire 361

CTO Hire CTO Coach Benchmarks Scale 361

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2023

He found it didn’t really matter how long the trial was, 14 vs 21 vs 30-day free trials didn’t matter. So what’s generally most important is investing in on-boarding , both programmatic and human assisted and driven. Not arguing over how many days goes into the trial. Just do what creates the best user experience there.

SaaS 189

SaaS User Experience Startup Investment 189

SaaStr

OCTOBER 1, 2023

Prior to Skyflow, Sean worked with the World Health Organization to help modernize development of the International Classification of Disease, founded Proven.com, and led developer relations and experience for Google’s Business Communication products. What’s your top “undiscovered gem” — an app you love but others may not have heard of?

Marketing 209

Marketing Engineering Communication Development 209