Trending Articles

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Dear SaaStr: We’re at $13m ARR and Growing — But Our GRR is Slipping. What Should We Do?

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: We’re at $13m ARR and Still Growing — But Our GRR is Slipping, Down to 88%. What Should We Do? First off, congrats on hitting $13M ARR and 1,000 clients—that’s no small feat. But yeah, 88% GRR is a red flag, especially at your scale. If your CEO instincts are telling you it’s going south, you’re probably right. Here’s what I’d do tomorrow morning: 1.

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Clouded Judgement 7.25.25 - TAMs Lie

Clouded Judgement

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now TAMs Lie One of the easiest traps I fall into as an investor (which is even harder during platform shifts) is trying to evaluate a startup through the lens of the existing market. But early in big transitions, TAM analysis often leads to the wrong conclusions.

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Dear SaaStr: What is RevOps Responsible For in a B2B Company?

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: What is RevOps Responsible For in a B2B Company? Managing revenue operations (RevOps) in a SaaS company is all about aligning sales, marketing, and customer success to drive growth efficiently. Here are some best practices that I’d recommend: Centralize Data and Metrics RevOps thrives on data. Build a single source of truth for all revenue-related metrics—pipeline, churn, CAC, LTV, NRR, etc.

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How to Embed Payment Functionality in Your AI SaaS: A Practical Guide

USIO

If you’re building an AI-powered SaaS product, your focus is likely on creating amazing AI features — whether that’s smart automation, AI co-pilots, or data-driven insights. But at some point, you need to figure out how your customers will pay you. More than that, how you can embed payments seamlessly inside your app to deliver a smooth user experience and open new revenue streams.

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Airflow Best Practices for ETL/ELT Pipelines

Speaker: Kenten Danas, Senior Manager, Developer Relations

ETL and ELT are some of the most common data engineering use cases, but can come with challenges like scaling, connectivity to other systems, and dynamically adapting to changing data sources. Airflow is specifically designed for moving and transforming data in ETL/ELT pipelines, and new features in Airflow 3.0 like assets, backfills, and event-driven scheduling make orchestrating ETL/ELT pipelines easier than ever!

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Why Seed Rounds Are Growing as Startups Shrink

Tom Tunguz

Why is the sub-$5 million seed round shrinking? A decade ago, these smaller rounds formed the backbone of startup financing, comprising over 70% of all seed deals. Today, PitchBook data reveals that figure has plummeted to less than half. The numbers tell a stark story. Sub-$5M deals declined from 62.5% in 2015 to 37.5% in 2024. This 29.5 percentage point drop fundamentally reshaped how startups raise their first institutional capital.

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The Complete History of HubSpot’s Net Revenue Retention: From 88.6% at IPO to 115% Peak — And Why 102% Today Is Still Strong

SaaStr

A deep dive into one of SaaS’s most dramatic NRR transformations and what it teaches us about scaling retention in the SMB/mid-market When HubSpot filed for their IPO in August 2014, their S-1 revealed a sobering metric that would have made many investors pause: an 88.6% annualized subscription dollar retention rate. For a SaaS company aspiring to go public, this was well below the magic 100% threshold that signals healthy unit economics.

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New Product Announcement Examples in SaaS: Email, In-app & Mobile

User Pilot

How are you currently making your new product announcement? Email newsletters & blog posts Basic in-app messages We don’t have a set process yet How do you measure the success of those announcements? Mainly by email open/click rates We look for usage spikes, but it’s mostly guesswork Honestly, we’re not really sure How are you targeting those in-app messages?

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SaaS management metrics: Essential guide for IT leaders

BetterCloud

In today’s fast-paced digital world, managing SaaS applications is a complex task for IT leaders. The sheer volume of tools can overwhelm even the most seasoned professionals. Yet, mastering SaaS management metrics is crucial for optimizing software ecosystems. These metrics provide insights into application performance, security , and cost-effectiveness.

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How Secure Are Digital Disbursements Platforms?

USIO

As businesses continue to modernize their payment operations, digital disbursements have become a powerful alternative to traditional methods like checks and wires. They offer speed, flexibility, and seamless automation—but with that convenience comes heightened scrutiny around security. When you’re moving funds at scale, safeguarding sensitive data and protecting against fraud isn’t just a best practice—it’s imperative.

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Build the Case: Quantify the Real Costs of In-House Testing and QA Gaps

Underinvesting in software testing costs more than you think, and now you can prove it. This guide helps you quantify hidden costs like developer time, support overhead, tech debt, and lost revenue. Use the companion calculator to model your own data, and present your findings with a ready-to-edit presentation template. Whether you're making the case to leadership or validating outsourcing, this toolkit gives you the numbers and tools you need.

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Spotting customer churn risks in 2025: the six Churn Monsters to watch

ChurnZero

Quick Summary: Churn in 2025 looks different. The biggest risks are often subtle, strategic, and often outside your product’s control. Meet “DIY”, ChurnZero’s newest Churn Monster, and get re-acquainted with five others who are especially relevant this year. Customer churn risks in 2025 aren’t coming from where they used to. Yes, effective onboarding still matters.

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5 Interesting Learnings from ServiceNow at $12.5 Billion in ARR

SaaStr

Don’t look now but guess who’s crushing it in the frenetic age of AI? Oracle. SAP. And enterprise leader ServiceNow. Crushing it. 22% growth at $12.5 Billion in ARR — and accelerating. And AI is the accelerant. Even for some of the established leaders in SaaS and enterprise software. ServiceNow: the renewal rate every B2B company dreams of Even at $12.5B ARR, they just … never leave pic.twitter.com/6oGigsHnON — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) July 23,

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Affordable Link-Building Packages Compared: A SaaS Founder’s Guide to Getting Quality Backlinks for ≤ $1.5 K a Month

How To Buy Saas

Why “affordable” link packages tempt (and trick) SaaS founders Affordable link packages promise “50 backlinks for $500,” and to a lean SaaS team that sounds like instant authority—higher rankings, more demos, easy win. Reality check: most bargain bundles rely on thin blog networks that Google’s SpamBrain now ignores [1]. Pay for spam, lose the cash, stay marooned on page three.

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Build a Subscription Experience Designed for Your Business with FastSpring’s Latest Subscription Feature Launches

FastSpring

Today’s subscription businesses demand more than one-size-fits-all workflows. Software companies, SaaS platforms, mobile apps businesses, and AI solutions need flexible tools that adapt to their business. At FastSpring, we’ve always operated as a developer-first platform, building tools and services to help you create, customize, and optimize every part of the subscription lifecycle.

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Agent Tooling: Connecting AI to Your Tools, Systems & Data

Speaker: Alex Salazar, CEO & Co-Founder @ Arcade | Nate Barbettini, Founding Engineer @ Arcade | Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO @ Aggregage

There’s a lot of noise surrounding the ability of AI agents to connect to your tools, systems and data. But building an AI application into a reliable, secure workflow agent isn’t as simple as plugging in an API. As an engineering leader, it can be challenging to make sense of this evolving landscape, but agent tooling provides such high value that it’s critical we figure out how to move forward.

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HIPAA Compliance Made Simple: Step-By-Step Checklist

Scytale

If you’re running a SaaS company, especially one in or even remotely related to healthcare, you’ve probably come across HIPAA compliance by now. And if you’re like most businesses, that word likely triggers one thing: stress. While HIPAA is a serious regulation with real consequences , it doesn’t have to be overly intimidating. In fact, once you break it down, achieving and maintaining HIPAA compliance is very doable – especially with the right roadmap and support.

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GTM 155: How to Build a GTM Motion from Scratch — Using AI, Community, and Data as a Moat | Erica Anderman

Sales Hacker

The GTMnow Podcast is available on any major directory, including: Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Erica Anderman is the co-founder and COO of Foodini, an AI-powered platform solving food allergy and dietary transparency through data infrastructure. With over 15 years of go-to-market experience across foodtech and vertical SaaS, Erica has led revenue at companies like Slice, Seated, and Odeko, and held roles across sales, customer success, partnerships, and RevOps.

AI
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Dear SaaStr: What Are The Top 10 Things To Put in a Series A Deck?

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Top 10 Things To Put in a Series A Deck? The most important components of a Series A pitch deck are: The One-Slide Summary. Make The First Slide Sell The Deal : Your first slide should sell the entire company on its own. It needs to answer the “Why You Should Invest in Me” question in one glance. Include your tagline, key metrics, team highlights, product, and financial goals.

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PageRank in the Age of AI

Tom Tunguz

The internet is about to look a whole lot more like the online advertising world. No, I don’t mean there’ll be more ads. In fact, I think there’ll be far fewer. But the technology stack for content distribution will mirror the architecture that has been implemented in the online ad world. As we’ve reached the AI search tipping point , publishers face an existential challenge : ensuring AI systems use their content in answers to maintain relevancy.

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State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.

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5 Best Tools for Churn Prevention

Teamgate

Explore essential tools for reducing customer churn, leveraging predictive analytics, and improving retention strategies for sustainable growth.

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Should founders care about startup branding?

Chart Mogul

Startup branding isn’t just for later-stage companies with big budgets. It’s something early-stage startups can (and should) care about from day one. The reason is simple: you already have a brand. The question is whether you’re shaping it on purpose. So, a better question would be: Why should early-stage startups care about branding? Branding happens, … Startup branding isn’t just for later-stage companies with big budgets.

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Best Segment Competitors for SaaS

User Pilot

If you’re interested in Segment competitors, you’ve probably considered Segment for gathering your first-party event data. It promises the 360-degree customer view that every product manager needs. However, Segment isn't perfect. It has no native product analytics feature. It’s one of the slower CDP options. And its pricing punishes experimentation.

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Free Trial Marketing Strategy: How to Convert More Users

The Daily Egg

Free trials are one of the most effective ways to earn trust, reduce friction, and get your product in users’ hands fast. But giving away. The post Free Trial Marketing Strategy: How to Convert More Users appeared first on The Daily Egg.

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From Start to Scale: Driving Growth Through Seamless Payments Implementation

Speaker: Michael Veatch, Senior Director, Implementations & Ella Aguirre, Director of Solution Consulting

Embedding payments can be a transformative step for software companies looking to enhance their platform capabilities, boost customer satisfaction, and drive long-term growth. However, the success of payments hinges on a single thing: implementation. Drawing on real-world insights and experiences, payments implementation experts Michael Veatch and Ella Aguirre will explore actionable strategies that can lead to a transparent, friction-free launch and mitigate potential challenges like technical

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Privilege Escalation: Attack Techniques and 5 Defensive Measures

Frontegg

Key takeaways Privilege escalation lets attackers gain unauthorized access by exploiting software flaws, misconfigurations, or credentials. Vertical and horizontal escalation affect both system control and peer-level data. Preventive measures include least privilege, patching, MFA, and continuous monitoring. In this article: What is privilege escalation?

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The Rise of Mobile App Monetization: Building a Case for Direct Web Subscriptions

FastSpring

TL;DR: More mobile apps are monetizing by selling subscriptions on their websites to drive user acquisition, keep more revenue, and own their user relationship, especially now that steering iOS users to your site is allowed in the US. Giants like Netflix, Spotify, Disney+, and others already monetize directly. While the approach changes the user journey, it can boost revenue margins by more than 30%.

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Speak's Andrew Hsu on the CTO's Role in AI Tooling Adoption

Crafty CTO

The Latent Space podcast had an excellent interview with Andrew Hsu , cofounder and CTO at AI-generation language learning platform Speak. While the main conversation centered around Speak’s story and AI’s role in that story, I was most struck by a side exchange where Hsu explained what he sees his role to be, as CTO, around promoting the use of AI tooling within Speak’s engineering team: So I think as the CTO, I view it as part of my responsibility to really set expectations,

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Dear SaaStr: What Will Need to Change The Most As We Approach $100m ARR?

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: What Will Need to Change The Most As We Approach $100m ARR? At $100M ARR, everything changes. It’s a whole new game. The challenges you face at $50M ARR will feel like a warm-up compared to what’s ahead. Here’s what you can expect as you scale to $100M: Your TAM Will Be Tested By $50M ARR, you’ve likely saturated your initial ICP (ideal customer profile).

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What’s New in Apache Airflow® 3.0—And How Will It Reshape Your Data Workflows?

Speaker: Tamara Fingerlin, Developer Advocate

Apache Airflow® 3.0, the most anticipated Airflow release yet, officially launched this April. As the de facto standard for data orchestration, Airflow is trusted by over 77,000 organizations to power everything from advanced analytics to production AI and MLOps. With the 3.0 release, the top-requested features from the community were delivered, including a revamped UI for easier navigation, stronger security, and greater flexibility to run tasks anywhere at any time.

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5 Interactive Elements That Users Love Today

The Daily Egg

An interactive element is a UI feature that users actively engage with. Think something like a pricing calculator for a SaaS company that charges based. The post 5 Interactive Elements That Users Love Today appeared first on The Daily Egg.

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What Tech Startups Can Learn from the Logistics Industry About Operational Scalability

Sylvia Ng

If you’re building a tech company and thinking about scale, chances are you’re focused on your servers, product-market fit, or maybe your marketing funnel. But here’s something you might not have considered: some of the best lessons in scalability don’t come from the tech world at all. They come from logistics. Think about it. Logistics companies, especially freight forwarders, have been scaling operations across countries, borders, and time zones long before tech startups began talk

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Is Traditional SEO Becoming Obsolete?

The Moz Blog

Is traditional SEO still worth it in an AI-first world? Learn how marketers are adapting to declining traffic, LLM search, and platform-specific strategies that work.