SaaStr

article thumbnail

HubSpot Co-Founder and Chairman Brian Halligan on SaaS Markets, Board Meetings, and AI’s Impact

SaaStr

SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin recently sat down with HubSpot Chairman and co-founder Brian Halligan , who shared valuable insights on the current state of SaaS, evolving board meeting formats, and how AI is reshaping the industry. Here are the key takeaways from part 1 of this interview. Reflecting on Company Outcomes as a Founding CEO We started with Brian flipping the tables a bit and asking Jason a question to kick off the interview: “I know this is a podcast supposed to be interv

AI 284
article thumbnail

The Early Days: How Veeva Hit $100m ARR With Just $3m Raised — And a Deep Vertical Focus

SaaStr

Veeva is the dominant cloud software provider for life sciences – serving pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies with mission-critical applications for drug development, clinical trials, regulatory compliance, and commercial operations. Started as “Salesforce for Pharma” in 2007, now the essential technology backbone for companies bringing medicine to market.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

The 30-Day Test: How to Know if Your VP of Sales Will Succeed

SaaStr

Here’s an uncomfortable truth about SaaS companies: the majority of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it past 12 months. As someone who has both succeeded and failed at making this critical hire, I can tell you that when it works, it’s transformative. When it doesn’t, it’s potentially catastrophic. A failed VP of Sales hire doesn’t just cost you immediate revenue—it creates a devastating ripple effect: You lose the second-order revenue (up to 6x the initial l

article thumbnail

PE Loves SaaS Again: Thoma Bravo Buys Olo for $2 Billion

SaaStr

The SaaS PE market is heating up again, and Thoma Bravo just made a big statement buying SaaS restaurant pioneer Olo for $2 Billion. Yesterday, Thoma Bravo announced they’re acquiring restaurant tech platform Olo (NYSE: OLO) for $2 billion in an all-cash deal. That’s $10.25 per share — a whopping 65% premium over Olo’s closing price on April 30th (the last trading day before acquisition rumors started swirling).

article thumbnail

Dear SaaStr: How Should Founders Build Their First Customer Success Team?

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: How Should Founders Build Their First Customer Success Team? Building a Customer Success (CS) team early is critical for SaaS startups. Here’s how early-stage founders should approach it: Hire Early, Even Before It Feels Necessary Don’t wait until churn becomes a problem. Customer Success should be a single-digit hire—ideally, your first 5-10 employees should include at least one CS hire.

article thumbnail

The $10M to $1B Vertical SaaS Playbook: Key Lessons from Procore’s Chief Product Officer Wyatt Jenkins

SaaStr

Meet Wyatt Jenkins: From Construction Sites to Chief Product Officer If you want to understand how vertical SaaS companies scale to $1B+ in revenue while staying true to their customers, there’s no better person to learn from than Wyatt Jenkins, Chief Product Officer at Procore Technologies. Wyatt’s journey is uniquely suited to leading product at a construction technology company.

article thumbnail

5 Interesting Learnings from Klaviyo at Almost $1 Billion in ARR

SaaStr

So the latest SaaS leader to cross $1B ARR is Klaviyo. Klaviyo dominates marketing in the Shopify ecosystem and in ecommerce, and just keeps on scaling. It was the only SaaS IPO on 2023. The only one! And at almost $1B ARR, it’s still growing a stunning 34% (!). In the words of founder CEO Andrew Bialecki: “There’s no downturn at Klaviyo.” 5 Interesting Learnings: #1. 110% NRR from 157,000 SMBs Yes, it can be done, 110% NRR from SMBs.

Scale 301