Expert insights. Personalized for you.
I was curious the other day how many of the recent Cloud and SaaS IPOs had founders that were equal co-founders from an equity perspective. That was how I was brought up (the first start-up job I had, the founders were equal shareholders). MORE
So, despite SaaS multiple and the public markets being at near record highs, we’ve seen things start to … wobble a bit overall in tech: The WeWork IPO simply failed , and the Peloton and Direct Smile IPOs were broken. No one really expected this. MORE
Neeraj Agarwal of Battery Ventures a few years back simplified a lot of the journies top SaaS companies go on to TripleTripleDoubleDoubleDouble, T2D3. That the top SaaS companies triple in the early years, and then double after that to get to $100m+ in ARR. MORE
Q: Are there any examples of a unicorn startup that was bootstrapped? From the 2019 Forbes Cloud 100, here are the SaaS/Cloud “start-ups” that are bootstrapped, i.e. $0 in disclosed capital raised: Mailchimp. Closing in on $1,000,000,000 in ARR and 1,000+ employees with no outside capital raised. MORE
Progress in SaaS is never as linear as it looks years down the road. Everyone has rough quarters (often at least 1 in 5). And we almost had a full Year of Hell, often during a tough transition. I certainly did (twice). More on that here: The SaaS Year of Hell. And Then – Reignition. MORE
When a great SaaS business starts to come together, and crosses Initial Traction ($1-$1.5m), growing nicely (8-10%+ Month-over-Month Growth) … often times, the founders start to see the first bit of real economic returns on the model. It finally starts to make sense, this SaaS stuff. MORE
Probably once a week I’ll meet with a founder of a great early-ish stage SaaS start-up. Great logo customers, great early traction, at least some capital in the bank, in a good space. And after all the good news, I’ll hear, “And we win almost every deal.” MORE
You could spend days reading about pricing and pricing strategies in software on the web, but a lot of this content doesn’t really hit one, basic fundamental point — there is no real reason any particular piece of software should cost anything in particular. Or something. Or a lot. MORE
We kicked off our 5 Interesting Learnings series with “newer” SaaS companies for the most part, and learnings as they IPO’d: 5 Interesting Learnings from PagerDuty, as It IPOs. 5 Interesting Learnings from Slack at $700m in ARR. 5 Interesting Learnings from Zoom. As it IPOs. MORE
With Dreamforce and SaaStr Europa and Scale behind us, little tiny Team SaaStr is 100% focused on 2020 SaaStr Annual. It will be in March this year for one year in 2020, before we go back to February for 2021 on. March 10-11-12 in San Jose, CA just south of San Francisco. MORE
Being a founder is easy. You just start something. Grab a smart friend, hop on over to WeWork, hit 99 Designs for the logo, and you’re off to the races. Being a CEO is tough. You have to convince people to join you. To drag the troops up the hill. MORE
Why If You Can Get to $10m ARR, You Can Get To $300m ARR. That may sound controversial, or even silly. VCs may mock this. But hold on. Let me prove it to you. If you can get to $10m ARR, with positive revenue retention, you can indeed get to $300m ARR. In fact, the odds might even be seen as high. MORE
SaaStr just crossed 300 (!) podcasts led by our good friend and family Harry Stebbings. The first one launched on March 1, 2016 with Tiago Paiva, CEO of unicorn Talkdesk: SaaStr Podcast #001: Tiago Paiva, Founder On How Talkdesk Reached $3m in Sales Without Spending $1 on Marketing. MORE
So at little old team SaaStr, we historically did not really track social followers as a core metric. We’re B2B folks ?? But as SaaStr grew, first we started to build a list. That became our core community metric (list growth). But we also wanted to track engagement on Quora more closely. MORE
We’re back to Miami for our second ever SaaStr meet-up there, this time bigger and better than ever during Art Basel!! Come join us on December 5 hosted at 500 Startups Miami for an evening of SaaStr talk, mentorship, unicorns, VCs and more. MORE
So you had a great December, added a great VP or two last year, won some bigger deals, and in general — you’re feeling good. You’ve even got a decent financial plan for this year in place. Even better. MORE
Q: As a venture capitalist, what are some red flags that would make you reject a startup immediately? First, there is a lot of marginal behavior that doesn’t lead to an immediate rejection, but does lead to immediate skepticism: Metrics that don’t quite make sense. MORE
This post is such an important one, I took a moment update it for 2019. Just when it sarts to get good, again and again, I see the same thing: the number of leads each month stalls out. MORE
Today, there is 1 $100B+ SaaS Company, Salesforce. Just one. We could add older companies like Adobe, Microsoft, etc. but they aren’t pure SaaS plays. Salesforce is the “only” $100b+ pure-play SaaS company. But it won’t be the last. MORE
Q: Should Google acquire Salesforce? Maybe. It would move the needle. A key question for the Cloud infrastructure leaders (Amazon, MSFT, and Google) is how deep do they want to go on the application layer. The PaaS layer is huge and has become a bit of an oligopoly of a Big 3. MORE
We’re getting close! Our agenda is finished for 2020 SaaStrAnnual March 10-11-12, and it’s epic! The CEOs and CXOs of Box, Zoom, Pagerduty, Squarespace, Coupa, Zapier, Mixmax, Gainsight, Github, Stack Overflow, Figma, Shopify, Dropbox and so many other leaders!! MORE
Are you already a fan of the Impossible to Inevitable book? You’re in luck. The audiobook has been released and we’ve saved a few FOR FREE just for our readers. Read more to find out how! Impossible Goals, Inevitable Successes. MORE
Q: What is the proper way to do due diligence on a VC firm? Here are the things IMHO and IME that are most important. First, if you want to do it right, you should diligence both (1) the firm and (2) the individual partner leading the deal. MORE
SaaStr Annual 2020 is almost here and we’ve got: 200+ speakers. 3 days of packed content. Small group mentoring with Braindates. One on one networking with Brella. Workshops for hands on learning. MORE
A few seasons back, we wrote a post on hitting how in SaaS, you have to be putting the resources in place by Q3 to hit the plan for the next year. We update this post a bit annually as we head into next year’s planning procress. MORE
Salesforce likes to talk about “Customers for Life”, and while that’s sort of catchy, it’s a little hard to grok what it really means. It finally sunk in for me a bit the other day. MORE
Gartner has its latest Cloud report out , and while one can always pick at any report, it’s at least a well-resourced and reasoned source on the size of SaaS and the Cloud. The big learnings for SaaS founders and execs: Cloud overall will grow 17% next year to $266 Billion. MORE
Heading into the 6th SaaStr Annual, we feel like we’ve perfected part of the formula. We’ll have 4,000+ SaaS CEOs and founders, 1000+ VCs, and 3,000+ mentorship sessions this year alone. But we want to make sure we also include the next generation. MORE
(Note this is an update / refresh of our classic 2014 post). There are some real mysteries in SaaS. Even now that I understand them, I still see them as a bit of a mystery. Let me list a few: Why do customers buy a ton of seats up front , when they could start with a few and buy more later? MORE
SaaStr
DECEMBER 29, 2019
Salesforce likes to talk about “Customers for Life”, and while that’s sort of catchy, it’s a little hard to grok what it really means. It finally sunk in for me a bit the other day.
SaaStr
JANUARY 18, 2020
SaaStr just crossed 300 (!) podcasts led by our good friend and family Harry Stebbings. The first one launched on March 1, 2016 with Tiago Paiva, CEO of unicorn Talkdesk: SaaStr Podcast #001: Tiago Paiva, Founder On How Talkdesk Reached $3m in Sales Without Spending $1 on Marketing.
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SaaStr
NOVEMBER 22, 2019
Gartner has its latest Cloud report out , and while one can always pick at any report, it’s at least a well-resourced and reasoned source on the size of SaaS and the Cloud. The big learnings for SaaS founders and execs: Cloud overall will grow 17% next year to $266 Billion.
SaaStr
JANUARY 10, 2020
Q: As a venture capitalist, what are some red flags that would make you reject a startup immediately? First, there is a lot of marginal behavior that doesn’t lead to an immediate rejection, but does lead to immediate skepticism: Metrics that don’t quite make sense.
Speaker: Teresa Torres, Product Discovery Coach, Product Talk, David Bland, Founder and CEO, Precoil, and Hope Gurion, Product Coach and Advisor, Fearless Product LLC
If you want to build what matters, you can't move forward blindly. But to make progress, you can't let things slow to a crawl while you focus resources on gathering data. This is where continuous discovery and experimentation come in. Join Teresa Torres (Product Discovery Coach, Product Talk), David Bland (Founder, Precoil), and Hope Gurion (Product Coach and Advisor, Fearless Product) in a panel discussion as they cover how - and why - to build a culture of discovery and experimentation in your organization.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 3, 2019
Today, there is 1 $100B+ SaaS Company, Salesforce. Just one. We could add older companies like Adobe, Microsoft, etc. but they aren’t pure SaaS plays. Salesforce is the “only” $100b+ pure-play SaaS company. But it won’t be the last.
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SaaStr
SEPTEMBER 26, 2019
So, despite SaaS multiple and the public markets being at near record highs, we’ve seen things start to … wobble a bit overall in tech: The WeWork IPO simply failed , and the Peloton and Direct Smile IPOs were broken. No one really expected this.
SaaStr
DECEMBER 28, 2019
So you had a great December, added a great VP or two last year, won some bigger deals, and in general — you’re feeling good. You’ve even got a decent financial plan for this year in place. Even better.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 26, 2019
Neeraj Agarwal of Battery Ventures a few years back simplified a lot of the journies top SaaS companies go on to TripleTripleDoubleDoubleDouble, T2D3. That the top SaaS companies triple in the early years, and then double after that to get to $100m+ in ARR.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 13, 2019
Q: Are there any examples of a unicorn startup that was bootstrapped? From the 2019 Forbes Cloud 100, here are the SaaS/Cloud “start-ups” that are bootstrapped, i.e. $0 in disclosed capital raised: Mailchimp. Closing in on $1,000,000,000 in ARR and 1,000+ employees with no outside capital raised.
Speaker: Terhi Hanninen, Senior Product Manager, Zalando, and Dr. Franziska Roth, Senior User Researcher, Zalando
It's important to know your users - what are their preferences, pain points, ultimate goals? With user research and usage data, you can get a great idea of how your users act. The tricky part is, very few users reliably act the same way every time they use your product. Join Terhi Hanninen, Senior Product Manager, and Dr. Franziska Roth, Senior User Researcher at Zalando, as they explain how they were able to reach a new level of user understanding - by taking their user research and segmenting their users by point-in-time intent. You'll leave with a strategy to change how your product team, and organization at large, understands your users.
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SaaStr
NOVEMBER 9, 2019
Being a founder is easy. You just start something. Grab a smart friend, hop on over to WeWork, hit 99 Designs for the logo, and you’re off to the races. Being a CEO is tough. You have to convince people to join you. To drag the troops up the hill.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 12, 2019
Progress in SaaS is never as linear as it looks years down the road. Everyone has rough quarters (often at least 1 in 5). And we almost had a full Year of Hell, often during a tough transition. I certainly did (twice). More on that here: The SaaS Year of Hell. And Then – Reignition.
SaaStr
JANUARY 16, 2020
We’re getting close! Our agenda is finished for 2020 SaaStrAnnual March 10-11-12, and it’s epic! The CEOs and CXOs of Box, Zoom, Pagerduty, Squarespace, Coupa, Zapier, Mixmax, Gainsight, Github, Stack Overflow, Figma, Shopify, Dropbox and so many other leaders!!
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 17, 2019
Probably once a week I’ll meet with a founder of a great early-ish stage SaaS start-up. Great logo customers, great early traction, at least some capital in the bank, in a good space. And after all the good news, I’ll hear, “And we win almost every deal.”
Speaker: Richard Cardran, Chief Creative Officer and VP Strategy, HIA Technologies
Innovation is both a process and an outcome. The best way to begin innovating your products is by innovating your internal process. We'll explore the challenges, solutions, and hands-on techniques for becoming a successful "agent of change" within a well-established product culture. We'll examine the importance of UX and user-centric feature analysis, the adaptation of Agile Methodologies to the creative process, as well as a way to drive successful culture change for setting expectations and winning approvals with cross-functional stakeholders. Innovation and Leadership go hand in hand. Join Richard Cardran, Chief Creative Officer and VP Strategy, HIA Technologies, as we assess some case studies to see how to lead with a clear strategy well-defined tactics, and an unbiased understanding of the fundamental question: "why are you innovating?"
SaaStr
DECEMBER 27, 2019
You could spend days reading about pricing and pricing strategies in software on the web, but a lot of this content doesn’t really hit one, basic fundamental point — there is no real reason any particular piece of software should cost anything in particular. Or something. Or a lot.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 25, 2019
With Dreamforce and SaaStr Europa and Scale behind us, little tiny Team SaaStr is 100% focused on 2020 SaaStr Annual. It will be in March this year for one year in 2020, before we go back to February for 2021 on. March 10-11-12 in San Jose, CA just south of San Francisco.
SaaStr
OCTOBER 6, 2019
When a great SaaS business starts to come together, and crosses Initial Traction ($1-$1.5m), growing nicely (8-10%+ Month-over-Month Growth) … often times, the founders start to see the first bit of real economic returns on the model. It finally starts to make sense, this SaaS stuff.
SaaStr
OCTOBER 8, 2019
We’re back to Miami for our second ever SaaStr meet-up there, this time bigger and better than ever during Art Basel!! Come join us on December 5 hosted at 500 Startups Miami for an evening of SaaStr talk, mentorship, unicorns, VCs and more.
Speaker: Dean Yao, Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Logi Analytics
Businesses are run with analytics - but companies continue to struggle with interpreting, analyzing, and distributing data. Operational reports help get information to the people who need it most, in formats they understand, and in a timeframe that matters. Join the webinar to learn how embedding operational reports can give your users a precisely formatted, ready-to-analyze view of their operational activities. World-class software teams are embedding operational reports to empower end users with interactive data visualizations, detailed information, and highly precise formats that can be shared via email, PDF, print, or online.
SaaStr
JANUARY 11, 2020
So at little old team SaaStr, we historically did not really track social followers as a core metric. We’re B2B folks ?? But as SaaStr grew, first we started to build a list. That became our core community metric (list growth). But we also wanted to track engagement on Quora more closely.
SaaStr
DECEMBER 19, 2019
We kicked off our 5 Interesting Learnings series with “newer” SaaS companies for the most part, and learnings as they IPO’d: 5 Interesting Learnings from PagerDuty, as It IPOs. 5 Interesting Learnings from Slack at $700m in ARR. 5 Interesting Learnings from Zoom. As it IPOs.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 18, 2019
Heading into the 6th SaaStr Annual, we feel like we’ve perfected part of the formula. We’ll have 4,000+ SaaS CEOs and founders, 1000+ VCs, and 3,000+ mentorship sessions this year alone. But we want to make sure we also include the next generation.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 4, 2019
This post is such an important one, I took a moment update it for 2019. Just when it sarts to get good, again and again, I see the same thing: the number of leads each month stalls out.
Speaker: Sam McAfee, Product Development Consultant, Startup Patterns
You know what they say: what's measured improves. As product managers we're in a golden age of being able to get all sorts of metrics and run all sorts of experiments. But what are your measurements and analytics focused on? Are they really truly objective? Do they contribute to the ultimate vision of your product? And is everybody clear on that vision? Join Sam McAfee, Product Development Consultant, as he takes you through a two-part measurement audit. First, you'll learn how to make sure your measurements actually align with your product strategy. And second, you'll learn how to evaluate your culture of using measurements, so future experiments will more consistently provide high-value results.
SaaStr
OCTOBER 18, 2019
A few seasons back, we wrote a post on hitting how in SaaS, you have to be putting the resources in place by Q3 to hit the plan for the next year. We update this post a bit annually as we head into next year’s planning procress.
SaaStr
NOVEMBER 16, 2019
Q: What is the proper way to do due diligence on a VC firm? Here are the things IMHO and IME that are most important. First, if you want to do it right, you should diligence both (1) the firm and (2) the individual partner leading the deal.
SaaStr
JANUARY 9, 2020
The point of SaaStr Annual is to learn. March 10-11-12 in SF Bay Area. To learn how to scale. Faster, with less stress, and more success. We’ll have 300+ speakers and workshops. 3,000+ braindates and mentoring sessions. And 1,000+ VCs.
SaaStr
DECEMBER 18, 2019
Are you already a fan of the Impossible to Inevitable book? You’re in luck. The audiobook has been released and we’ve saved a few FOR FREE just for our readers. Read more to find out how! Impossible Goals, Inevitable Successes.
Speaker: Sari Harrison, Product Management Instructor, Product School
As a product manager, it's your job to realize your product’s vision by executing your chosen strategy. It’s also your job to deliver value to the business. Ultimately, these two outcomes are aligned so the temptation is to focus primarily on business metrics. Doing this can cause you to lose focus on the real value you are trying to achieve, in favor of moving the vanity metrics such as launches and time spent. Join Sari Harrison, Product Management Instructor at Product School, as she explains how to use immeasurable success criteria along with your more standard KPIs to deliver products that don't just get used a lot, but deliver real value.
SaaStr
SEPTEMBER 19, 2019
I was curious the other day how many of the recent Cloud and SaaS IPOs had founders that were equal co-founders from an equity perspective. That was how I was brought up (the first start-up job I had, the founders were equal shareholders).
SaaStr
JANUARY 2, 2020
Why If You Can Get to $10m ARR, You Can Get To $300m ARR. That may sound controversial, or even silly. VCs may mock this. But hold on. Let me prove it to you. If you can get to $10m ARR, with positive revenue retention, you can indeed get to $300m ARR. In fact, the odds might even be seen as high.
SaaStr
DECEMBER 9, 2019
We’re heads down for SaaStr Annual 2020 in March (and SaaStr Europa in Paris June, tracking to 3,000+). But you wanted us to come to Asia, so we are — finally! SaaStr East is a GO!
SaaStr
DECEMBER 9, 2019
(Note this is an update / refresh of our classic 2014 post). There are some real mysteries in SaaS. Even now that I understand them, I still see them as a bit of a mystery. Let me list a few: Why do customers buy a ton of seats up front , when they could start with a few and buy more later?
Speaker: John Little, Head of Product Marketing, Centercode
When it comes to delivering a solid product/market fit, customer validation is key. After all, you want to provide customers with a product that not only fills the need, but is delightful -- right? To get there, you need to commit to a vital blend of market research, strategy, and user testing. Join John Little, Head of Product Marketing at Centercode, as he explains a two-part approach to customer validation. First, how do you strategically identify your top product areas that need attention prior to release. And second, how do you turn user data into strategic priorities that help the right teams make the right decisions.
SaaStr
JANUARY 9, 2020
Q: Should Google acquire Salesforce? Maybe. It would move the needle. A key question for the Cloud infrastructure leaders (Amazon, MSFT, and Google) is how deep do they want to go on the application layer. The PaaS layer is huge and has become a bit of an oligopoly of a Big 3.
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