SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

From that point on, we built a product and we launched it in February of 2008 out of a back of a coffee shop with one employee. It had all been enterprise software, no SaaS. In enterprise software, it’s all about contracts, long term contracts. So we launched the company in February of 2008. I said, I got this.

Scale 172

Scale SMB VP of Engineering Leadership 172

Kellblog

JULY 25, 2020

2008) it can get well below 5x. 2008, 2015) it’s not outrageous to think that multiples could drop towards the middle or bottom of that range, i.e., closer to 5 than 10 [6]. Looking at the blue line, you can see that while it’s pretty volatile, eyeballing it, I’d say it normally runs in the range between 5x and 10x.

Technical Review 96

Technical Review Software Review Pricing Metrics 96

OpenView Labs

APRIL 16, 2020

Those who went through the 2001 and 2008 economic downturns emerged with valuable lessons on navigating a crisis—not to mention a heck of a lot of resilience. So we had to prune back even as we were pivoting the teams and the leadership to chase a new opportunity. Did that period influence how you manage a software company?

Leadership 70

Leadership Business Model Healthcare Acquisition 70

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

When I was starting as a first time entrepreneur in 2008, I got rejected by a lot of VCs. So let me start with the basics on like, what do you look for when you have to hire someone in a sales leadership role, what do you look for? So I think it plays on both dimensions. Jyoti Bansal: Yeah. So I’ve learned the hard way.

Sales Recruiting 246

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale VP of Engineering 246

OPEXEngine

JULY 28, 2020

They define a bold path to leadership, they make difficult portfolio choices, they allocate resources strategically and they build strong capital structures. Since 2008, its revenue has tripled and its stock price has soared 14-fold in response. What they don’t do is get bogged down in process or complexity.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Strategy Payment Services Scale 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 19, 2020

Portag3 Ventures Partner Chris O’Neill discusses leadership and teamwork lessons he’s picked up in his career through a hobby and a metaphor of sailing. So over the course of those 20 or so odd years in technology leadership roles. Chris O’Neill | Partner @ Portag3 Ventures.

Scale 252

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Leadership 252

Tom Tunguz

JULY 29, 2015

Netsuite’s revenue per customer averaged $19k in 2008, and $23k in 2009, the last years for which the company provided customer counts. The combination of high gross margins in software which in 2014 were 85%, and the zero gross margins in professional services average out to 69%, which is right on the median for public SaaS companies.

Benchmarks 101

Benchmarks Outsourced Development Metrics Scale 101

SaaStr

JULY 16, 2019

I’ve been a software investor for pretty much my entire career. On Vista we are the largest, most prolific Enterprise Software investor in the world, with over 45 billion dollars of cumulative capital raised. But, the fundraising in 2008, 2009 was pretty difficult. René Stewart: A little bit about myself.

Scale 131

Scale Product Marketing Scaling Marketing 131

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

MARCH 23, 2020

I leveraged many of the 52 mental models while working at various software as a service (SaaS) companies, but in truth, they can be applied anywhere, regardless of industry. Customer > Team > Individual During my time at HubSpot, the leadership team shared this mental model to help with decision-making.

Underperforming Technical Team 213

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service 213

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 21, 2021

Join us for an engaging conversation about language, sales, career success, and embracing cultural differences in leadership. With over 35 years of sales and leadership experience, she’s an accomplished linguist and knows a lot about how companies should expand regionally to maximize growth. powered by Sounder. What You’ll Learn.

Artificial Intelligence 76

Artificial Intelligence Sales Hiring Technical Review Machine Learning 76

InsightSquared

MARCH 8, 2021

I transitioned from education to software in 2008, and I have held roles in everything from project management to sales. I pursued a leadership path that eventually led to a consulting role, where I built my client management and data analysis skills. Amy Noack – Field Enablement Director.

Technical Review 62

Technical Review Development Team Review Underperforming Technical Team Systems Review 62

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2021

We’ve done a ton of terrific sessions with the Twilio leadership over the years, including 4 different deep dives with Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder. Twilio is a cloud communications platform that allows software developers to embed communications into the apps that they’re building. Jeff : Yeah, I saw one.

Scale 292

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Engineering Wireless 292

Chargify

AUGUST 6, 2019

Then, they offered their software solution to online marketers who were interested in this “new way” of marketing. . HubSpot wasn’t just preaching inbound marketing to get people to sign up for their software. 2008: 317 customers. 2008: 42 employees. How HubSpot used inbound marketing to grow their business.

Subscription 40

Subscription Payment Features Revenue Software Review 40

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2019

New Relic, provider of real-time insights for software-driven businesses has this formula figured out. And that allows our customers to build better software, much more perfect software, to have better relationships, and to also build better businesses. The company started back in 2007, 2008.

Scale 174

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 174

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2020

And he also has the, I don’t know, benefit or dubious distinction, but lived through this before in 2008 and 2009. So we have over 260 portfolio companies globally, it’s all enterprise software, predominantly SaaS. We’ve had to really self organize, and a lot of this was informed by some lessons we learned in 2008.

Sales Hiring 164

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services 164

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2020

Michelle : During the economic downturn right after the financial crisis in 2008. There were all these software companies and then the advent of all these SaaS application companies like Salesforce and Workday that were breakout successes. You need to hire a leadership team that’s better than you in everything you do.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Recruiting 171

BetterCloud

AUGUST 25, 2020

When the economy collapsed in 2008, I was unemployed for about 11 months, which was pretty brutal, but I took the time to start learning IT from some friends. I decided I needed to fill the leadership void on my own. So my leadership style is to focus on what my staff wants. It was always a hobby of mine. My team is fantastic.

Leadership 52

Leadership Scale Innovation Finance 52

How To Buy Saas

OCTOBER 27, 2023

The emphasis here is on offering software companies a holistic approach to marketing, ensuring that all aspects, from strategy to execution, are covered. Their expertise is particularly tailored to cater to various sectors, including crypto, startups, B2B, software, and fintech. Website: www.nogood.io

B2B 52

B2B Scale SaaS AI Search 52

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2019

WePay is a payments company for platform businesses like marketplaces, crowdfunding sites & small business software. Bill Clerico : We, I think are going after super exciting part of the market, which is software companies trying to embed payments. And it’s also a company that employees 50,000 software engineers.

Payment Services 134

Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Solutions Payments 134

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2020

Finally, before YesWare, she was VP of Sales @ Engine Yard, where she tripled monthly recurring revenue, over the course of her 3+ year tenure, in 3 key leadership roles. How does it differ, in terms of traditional enterprise software, versus open source? ” Because again, it was 2008. Loving our podcast content?

Sales Hiring 200

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Outsourcing Services 200

Valuize Consulting

AUGUST 6, 2021

The challenge that many B2B software companies face is determining the right blend of strategy, technology and data and leveraging each individual element to drive sustainable and scalable revenue growth. Soon after, I was presented with an incredible opportunity to join Splunk and be a part of an innovative software organization.

Scale 52

Scale Customer Success Interviewing Scaling 52

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2019

235: Andrew Filev is the Founder & CEO @ Wrike, the cloud based collaboration and project management software that scales across teams in any business. In Dec 2008, Vista Equity Partners acquired a majority stake in Wrike for a deal reportedly valuing the company at $800m. So that turned out to work well for everybody.

Sales Hiring 150

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Sales Recruiting 150

OpenView Labs

JANUARY 22, 2020

In 2008, InformationWeek painted a bleak picture of CIOs under siege. As it turns out, the CIO has a lot to offer to both internal teams and the software companies who are trying to get a foot in the door. While this play is advantageous up to a point, it doesn’t allow a software company to scale up effectively.

Technical Review 53

Technical Review Scale B2C compliance 53

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2020

Basically I was recruiting engineers for Bay area based startups and the problem with it was that the year was 2008, and it was a really tough time for hiring, but an even worse time for recruiters. I think it’s hard to identify a bigger TAM in enterprise software. And I think the second one is when do you bring someone on.

Sales Recruiting 180

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Branding 180

SaaStr

MAY 8, 2020

Is that shortsighted of me given the huge amount of software that CIOs and the stakeholders have to engage with today, or do you think it is right to have that very rigid prioritization in mind? And she said that, with Tableau in 2008 during the financial crisis, they actually didn’t change their messaging.

Sales Recruiting 181

Sales Recruiting Technical Review Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 181

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2020

And that led me to co-founding a company called RJ Metrics in 2008 with my co-founder Jake Stein, who was also at Insight. With the business model of SaaS itself, it’s really fundamentally different than the business model of a traditional software licensed maintenance model. Is that not? Bob Moore: It absolutely is.

Sales Hiring 131

Sales Hiring Scale Outsourcing Services CTO Hire 131

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2019

As for Krish, under Krish’s leadership the team has grown to over 300 people and over 5,000 clients making it one of the next generation in truly global SaaS businesses started in India. Billion story from its launch in 2008 to its 2018 acquisition by Recruit Holdings. Krish Subramanian: We are software engineers by training.

Scale 132

Scale SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting Payment Services 132

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

You may have been at Box in 2006 or LinkedIn in 2008. So I would say that’s a leadership failure for a lot of CEOs, right? QUESTION 6: My company is a very technical product and somebody serious software and it’s a new category you were creating like scratch. So coach toward the leadership piece of it.

Sales Hiring 155

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire 155

SaaStr

AUGUST 6, 2019

We have a background doing software and standards for trade, and we thought that there’s a massive opportunity in this space. ” Around 60% of enterprise software features are never used, so as a customer, you just pay for maintaining them. We sell enterprise SaaS software. We really wanted to simplify supply chains.

Payment Solutions 151

Payment Solutions Payments Outsourcing Services SaaS Payments 151

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 22, 2019

His comment to us was that the software is just too expensive, too inaccessible, too hard to use and so on,” recalled Jack. Law practice management software existed, but it required on-premise service and tens of thousands of dollars in annual upkeep, which meant only the big law firms had access to it.

Technical Review 40

Technical Review Scale Sales Hiring Business 40

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2020

We got started in 2008 when we first spotted this sort of new place in investing, which we called seed. But leadership is about what you do in those moments, not when you hit the lucky truck, and you’re able to ride a wave, right and you will see some really inspiring examples of leadership over the next 6,12,18 months.

Venture Capital 221

Venture Capital Investment Travel Marketplace as a Service 221

Incredo

NOVEMBER 1, 2019

This means that such companies are product-oriented as well, but also include a small inside account management team to help them catch and convert by providing real-time assistance during the software purchase process. Besides selling a high-priced SaaS software, Passkey also makes multi-year deals that can be worth millions of dollars.

SaaS Payments 157

SaaS Payments Payment Methods Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring 157

Andreessen Horowitz

OCTOBER 16, 2023

And this was before the phrase you guys coined, on “software is eating the world.” This was 2008, right? But it was clear that software is eating the world, right? And to me, it’s like, okay, if everything is going to be software, something goes wrong in software, someone needs good tools to troubleshoot and fix it.

Product Marketing 78

Product Marketing Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 78

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2020

How are they thinking about growing the company and the leadership team? Karen Page: How does this leadership team gel? Given the wide variety of vendors and software that CIOs have to really engage with? It was in 2008 and it was when the little mini computers were the rage. Karen Page: Yeah, the pitch is just one of it.

Scale 179

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Investment Sales Hiring 179

Outseta

SEPTEMBER 18, 2019

More tactically, Enspiral started as a loose collaboration of freelancers supporting one another and sharing resources in New Zealand back in 2008. Founder Rob Walling also founded MicroConf , a conference for self-funded software entrepreneurs. Both of these purposes still ring true and very much drive the work that we do today.

Entrepreneurship 58

Entrepreneurship Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review Government 58

SaaStr

DECEMBER 31, 2019

I think that there’s a lot of history in enterprise software with UIs that people don’t exactly enjoy using. And one of the challenges with enterprise software is there’s a lot of face time and there’s a lot of time spent on the customer, typically a little less spent with the users. Ciara : Yeah. Ciara : Craig.

Enterprise 131

Enterprise Underperforming Technical Team Scale B2B 131

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2019

As for Amit, prior to founding Gong, Amit was the CEO @ SiSense BI software that enables business users to connect to multiple databases of any size. As for Amit, prior to founding Gong, Amit was the CEO at SiSense, a business intelligence software that enables business users to connect to multiple databases of any size.

Outsourced Development 137

Outsourced Development Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale 137