INDUSTRY INSIGHTS YOUR PEERS ARE READING
Join Derek Anderson, Co-Founder of Bevy alongside Atlassian Sr. Director of Customer Engagement, Leslie Lee, Salesforce VP of Community Erica Kuhl and Slack Developer Marketing Manager Elizabeth Kinsey for a session on building communities. Want to see more content like this? MORE
Much has been written about Zoom’s impressive financials as it prepared to IPO, growing > 100% at $425m+ in ARR! MORE
A few thoughts at least: The stronger the brand, the more complex the pricing page can be. So yes, copy Salesforce, Twilio, Slack, and other iconic leaders. But bear in mind their brands make them a default choice. That means their prospects will be more patient with complex pricing. MORE
The age-old sales funnel has worked fine for decades…until now. Flaws are being exposed, and a new model is imminent. Why is the sales funnel alone, no longer an appropriate way of thinking about customers? What will emerge to supplement or replace it? MORE
CEOs get fired all the time. Founder-CEOs getting fired seems rarer these days, though. Two that would be hard to imagine happening today: Pushing Steve Jobs out of Apple. Pushing Sergey Brin + Larry Page “down” to bring in an Outside CEO. MORE
In 2019, the average enterprise buyers has deployed over 100+ SaaS apps, per Okta numbers. And the average SMB buyer has already purchased 50+ apps. So your prospects and customers are veterans. The general pyschology thus is different than it used to be in SaaS. MORE
Consistently ramping your ARR is a whole lot harder if your customers don’t stick around. In an age where earning customer loyalty and trust is harder than ever, the road to lifetime value is paved with customer feedback. MORE
The key to truly motivate a sales team, to excellence, is two-fold: They need to see the top reps making real money. Like, really good money. That will show everyone it is possible. That is can be done. And that maybe it isn’t even that hard if you hustle, listen and learn. MORE
I’m not aware of any huge successes in SaaS that were active side projects while the founders worked at different companies. But there are a bunch that were side projects at the same company: Mailchimp was a side project while the founders ran a web-design agency. MORE
Join Tomasz Tunguz, Managing Director with Redpoint Ventures as he takes you through a quantitive analysis of 600 Freemium Soon companies. Want to see more content like this? Join us at SaaStr Annual 2020. Tomasz Tunguz, Managing Director @ Redpoint Ventures. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW. MORE
It’s complicated. Having a “good exit” is a special thing. You will make some money, perhaps even life-changing money. It will prove you can do it. It will Level You Up in the hierarchy of founders. You will have beaten the odds, and be a “winner”. But as time goes by, you may see it all differently. MORE
Like many things, my thinking on this has evolved over time. I used to think co-CEOs was almost always plainly a bad idea. But now I think maybe it’s only a bad idea when done for the wrong reasons. The drawbacks of co-CEOs are large and clear: No one knows who the boss is. MORE
Xero is one of those SaaS companies most of us have heard of and know is a big success and sort of know about, but, not really ??. What lessons can we learn from this huge Kiwi SMB success, for other founders? MORE
Do you have your ticket for 2019 SaaStrEuropa.com? We are Sold Out at 2,500 total attendees, but will continue to release a handful of tickets from the waitlist, so sign up here asap to get on. We will dribble out a handful of final tickets each day as sponsors release any surplus passes. MORE
My gut was that equal splits were more common than non-equal — but I just looked and I’m wrong. Of the 25+ investments I’ve made, less than half have equal splits. And it looks like only a minority of the SaaS companies to IPO had equal splits. And looking at them, most seem “fair”. MORE
243: Sara Varni is the CMO @ Twilio, the company building the future of communications allowing you to engage customers like never before on voice, SMS, WhatsApp or Video. MORE
SurveyMonkey is one of the Old School SaaS companies that has followed an interesting path. Founded back in 1999 (like Salesforce) in the Web 1.0 days, for years it was run by a tiny team and dominated the self-service side of surveys. MORE
In this session, the audience will learn about Adyen’s journey from a Dutch payments startup, to a global public company with more than 15 offices around the world working with large global companies like Facebook, Spotify, Uber and Microsoft. MORE
I’ve watched many bridge rounds over time from a far, and took $500k in bridge capital at EchoSign myself when our seed round didn’t end up being quite enough to get us to the Series A. But I haven’t really seen bridge rounds from the other side, as an investor, until recently. That’s mainly because over the past 2 years I’ve invested in more early-ish seed companies (vs later seed companies), that often end up needing a second seed, or bridge. MORE
Join Algolia CEO Nicolas Dessaigne and Segment VP of Marketing Hollie Wegman for a session discussing best practices for growing your ARR in your SaaS. Want to see more content like this? Join us at SaaStr Annual 2020. Nicolas Dessaigne, CEO @ Algolia. Hollie Wegman, VP of Marketing @Segment. MORE
A few thoughts in the early and early-ish days: Segment your leads, once you have enough reps to do so. At least, by Small, Medium and Larger leads (if they aren’t all the same size). Let reps specialize at the business process changes, questions and needs of customers of a specific size. MORE
The cloud’s biggest days are yet to come. The rise of the public cloud is driving a massive replatforming of the tech stack and customer experiences for every company. What’s next? A deep dive with Ophelia Brown, Founder of Blossom Capital. Want to see more content like this? MORE
SaaS as we know it probably started in 1999. Salesforce was founded then, NetSuite just before that. SurveyMonkey was founded in 1999, one of the few SMB survivors of that era. There were apps before that (e.g., MORE
By: Rob Nathan, EVP, Integrated Solutions at CardConnect. With thousands of new startups emerging everyday and the average turnover rate for business applications trending at 39% annually, the SaaS industry couldn’t be more competitive. MORE
When I started off as a SaaS founder, the #1 SaaS company’s market cap was … $2.6 billion. Yup, Salesforce was worth just a bit more than $2 billion. And their largest acquisition to date at the time was (drumroll, please) $15m. Fast forward to 2019. MORE
We’ve talked quite a bit about the pros and many cons of raising prices on existing customers on SaaStr. Our general view, and experience, is that until you are fairly mature, raising prices on existing customer isn’t worth it. It impacts your NPS and relationships. MORE
Almost all of our 4,000+ pieces of content and 300+ SaaStr sessions and 250+ podcasts are really just about how to do … better. A smidge better. A bit better. Since SaaS compounds, even doing just 5% better now can compound dramatically over time. MORE
With Slack’s IPO data and financials finally public, what is left to know about the app we all use and have been reading about for years? What’s interesting to know about Slack … that we didn’t already know? ??. Slack is obviously a rocketship going from $0 to ~$600m+ ARR (!) MORE
Meet SaaStr’s Most Respected Leaders of 2019. Our most popular CEO, COO’s and Presidents that spoke at SaaStr Annual 2019. Curious how we came up with this list? MORE
Fastly isn’t quite as well known as the others in this 5 Interesting Learnings Series — Zoom, Slack, PagerDuty, etc. But it has some very interesting learnings for founders. Especially on how bigger deal sizes can work with free, freemium, self-service, etc. MORE
Salesforce was an outlier (as you’d) expect from the #1 largest player in the industry. Look at their growth rate in the early years — even when Cloud was 100x smaller than it is today: Winning Strategies for Scaling Your Sales Team | SaaStr. Today, this type of growth, while crazy, is more common. MORE
Keith Rabois is an investment partner at Khosla Ventures where he focuses on consumer Internet, education, enterprise, financial services, and digital health investments. MORE
I remember the first customer I lost due to not showing up in person. They were a Fortune 50 customer. We did a CSAT survey, and every user loved us. The implementation was flawless. There were zero issues. And … we lost them at renewal. MORE
A few signs: Lack of organization. You can get to $5m being only sort of organized. After that, you gotta get really organized. Either by yourself, or with a Sales Ops / Marketing Ops / Some Sort of Ops leader under you. MORE
We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to find a great VP of Sales, what the risks are, what risks to take, etc. We’ve also summarized a few critical factors that will tell you, within 30 days, if your VP of Sales won’t work out. MORE
SaaStr
JUNE 23, 2019
I remember the first customer I lost due to not showing up in person. They were a Fortune 50 customer. We did a CSAT survey, and every user loved us. The implementation was flawless. There were zero issues. And … we lost them at renewal.
SaaStr
JUNE 24, 2019
It’s complicated. Having a “good exit” is a special thing. You will make some money, perhaps even life-changing money. It will prove you can do it. It will Level You Up in the hierarchy of founders. You will have beaten the odds, and be a “winner”. But as time goes by, you may see it all differently.
SaaStr
JUNE 13, 2019
Join Tomasz Tunguz, Managing Director with Redpoint Ventures as he takes you through a quantitive analysis of 600 Freemium Soon companies. Want to see more content like this? Join us at SaaStr Annual 2020. Tomasz Tunguz, Managing Director @ Redpoint Ventures. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.
SaaStr
JUNE 5, 2019
CEOs get fired all the time. Founder-CEOs getting fired seems rarer these days, though. Two that would be hard to imagine happening today: Pushing Steve Jobs out of Apple. Pushing Sergey Brin + Larry Page “down” to bring in an Outside CEO.
Speaker: Steve Johnson, VP of Products, Pragmatic Institute
Product Management is one of the most exciting - and most misunderstood - functions in technical organizations. Is it strategic or tactical? Is it a planning role or a support role? Many product professionals are unclear about what is (and isn't) product management. After all, product management spans many activities from business planning to market readiness. In this session, we’ll examine many product activities and artifacts for product strategy, planning, and growth, and introduce a simple tool that you can use in your organization to clarify the roles of product management and others. Steve Johnson explores the many roles of Product Management in this fun talk focused on why product managers should obsess on problems instead of solutions.
SaaStr
MAY 26, 2019
SurveyMonkey is one of the Old School SaaS companies that has followed an interesting path. Founded back in 1999 (like Salesforce) in the Web 1.0 days, for years it was run by a tiny team and dominated the self-service side of surveys.
SaaStr
MAY 19, 2019
Xero is one of those SaaS companies most of us have heard of and know is a big success and sort of know about, but, not really ??. What lessons can we learn from this huge Kiwi SMB success, for other founders?
|
SaaStr
APRIL 28, 2019
With Slack’s IPO data and financials finally public, what is left to know about the app we all use and have been reading about for years? What’s interesting to know about Slack … that we didn’t already know? ??. Slack is obviously a rocketship going from $0 to ~$600m+ ARR (!)
SaaStr
MAY 29, 2019
Meet SaaStr’s Most Respected Leaders of 2019. Our most popular CEO, COO’s and Presidents that spoke at SaaStr Annual 2019. Curious how we came up with this list?
SaaStr
JUNE 16, 2019
Salesforce was an outlier (as you’d) expect from the #1 largest player in the industry. Look at their growth rate in the early years — even when Cloud was 100x smaller than it is today: Winning Strategies for Scaling Your Sales Team | SaaStr. Today, this type of growth, while crazy, is more common.
SaaStr
JUNE 7, 2019
By: Rob Nathan, EVP, Integrated Solutions at CardConnect. With thousands of new startups emerging everyday and the average turnover rate for business applications trending at 39% annually, the SaaS industry couldn’t be more competitive.
Speaker: Azmat Tanauli, Senior Director of Product Strategy at Birst
By creating innovative analytics products and expanding into new markets, more and more companies are discovering new potential revenue streams. Join Azmat Tanauli, Senior Director of Product Strategy at Birst, as he walks you through how data that you're likely already collecting can be transformed into revenue!
SaaStr
JUNE 11, 2019
Keith Rabois is an investment partner at Khosla Ventures where he focuses on consumer Internet, education, enterprise, financial services, and digital health investments.
|
SaaStr
JUNE 18, 2019
Join Algolia CEO Nicolas Dessaigne and Segment VP of Marketing Hollie Wegman for a session discussing best practices for growing your ARR in your SaaS. Want to see more content like this? Join us at SaaStr Annual 2020. Nicolas Dessaigne, CEO @ Algolia. Hollie Wegman, VP of Marketing @Segment.
SaaStr
MAY 6, 2019
A few thoughts in the early and early-ish days: Segment your leads, once you have enough reps to do so. At least, by Small, Medium and Larger leads (if they aren’t all the same size). Let reps specialize at the business process changes, questions and needs of customers of a specific size.
SaaStr
MAY 29, 2019
We’ve talked quite a bit about the pros and many cons of raising prices on existing customers on SaaStr. Our general view, and experience, is that until you are fairly mature, raising prices on existing customer isn’t worth it. It impacts your NPS and relationships.
SaaStr
JUNE 17, 2019
In 2019, the average enterprise buyers has deployed over 100+ SaaS apps, per Okta numbers. And the average SMB buyer has already purchased 50+ apps. So your prospects and customers are veterans. The general pyschology thus is different than it used to be in SaaS.
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.
SaaStr
APRIL 6, 2019
Much has been written about Zoom’s impressive financials as it prepared to IPO, growing > 100% at $425m+ in ARR!
SaaStr
MAY 12, 2019
Fastly isn’t quite as well known as the others in this 5 Interesting Learnings Series — Zoom, Slack, PagerDuty, etc. But it has some very interesting learnings for founders. Especially on how bigger deal sizes can work with free, freemium, self-service, etc.
SaaStr
JUNE 19, 2019
The key to truly motivate a sales team, to excellence, is two-fold: They need to see the top reps making real money. Like, really good money. That will show everyone it is possible. That is can be done. And that maybe it isn’t even that hard if you hustle, listen and learn.
SaaStr
APRIL 29, 2019
A few signs: Lack of organization. You can get to $5m being only sort of organized. After that, you gotta get really organized. Either by yourself, or with a Sales Ops / Marketing Ops / Some Sort of Ops leader under you.
Advertiser: Birst
In this 4-part series, product and technology leaders share insights for successfully going to market with a data product. Download the eBook now, and find out how you can embed analytics in your solution, from building your business case to designing and launching your product.
SaaStr
JUNE 24, 2019
Like many things, my thinking on this has evolved over time. I used to think co-CEOs was almost always plainly a bad idea. But now I think maybe it’s only a bad idea when done for the wrong reasons. The drawbacks of co-CEOs are large and clear: No one knows who the boss is.
SaaStr
JUNE 20, 2019
Just assume your competitor is cold calling all your existing customers. They should be. Yes, sometimes the yield here can be low if your customers are very happy. But it is worth a shot if you have the resources and are in a competitive space.
SaaStr
MAY 28, 2019
Join Derek Anderson, Co-Founder of Bevy alongside Atlassian Sr. Director of Customer Engagement, Leslie Lee, Salesforce VP of Community Erica Kuhl and Slack Developer Marketing Manager Elizabeth Kinsey for a session on building communities. Want to see more content like this?
SaaStr
MAY 31, 2019
My gut was that equal splits were more common than non-equal — but I just looked and I’m wrong. Of the 25+ investments I’ve made, less than half have equal splits. And it looks like only a minority of the SaaS companies to IPO had equal splits. And looking at them, most seem “fair”.
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
JUNE 5, 2019
Do you have your ticket for 2019 SaaStrEuropa.com? We are Sold Out at 2,500 total attendees, but will continue to release a handful of tickets from the waitlist, so sign up here asap to get on. We will dribble out a handful of final tickets each day as sponsors release any surplus passes.
SaaStr
MAY 14, 2019
The cloud’s biggest days are yet to come. The rise of the public cloud is driving a massive replatforming of the tech stack and customer experiences for every company. What’s next? A deep dive with Ophelia Brown, Founder of Blossom Capital. Want to see more content like this?
SaaStr
MAY 12, 2019
I’m not aware of any huge successes in SaaS that were active side projects while the founders worked at different companies. But there are a bunch that were side projects at the same company: Mailchimp was a side project while the founders ran a web-design agency.
SaaStr
MARCH 19, 2019
When I started off as a SaaS founder, the #1 SaaS company’s market cap was … $2.6 billion. Yup, Salesforce was worth just a bit more than $2 billion. And their largest acquisition to date at the time was (drumroll, please) $15m. Fast forward to 2019.
Advertiser: Birst
Find out which industries, use cases, and business applications are the best opportunities for data monetization. Understand what data is being monetized, who wants it, and why. Use data you already own to create new revenue sources. Download the eBook today!
SaaStr
JUNE 21, 2019
243: Sara Varni is the CMO @ Twilio, the company building the future of communications allowing you to engage customers like never before on voice, SMS, WhatsApp or Video.
SaaStr
MARCH 8, 2019
The age-old sales funnel has worked fine for decades…until now. Flaws are being exposed, and a new model is imminent. Why is the sales funnel alone, no longer an appropriate way of thinking about customers? What will emerge to supplement or replace it?
SaaStr
MAY 25, 2019
SaaS as we know it probably started in 1999. Salesforce was founded then, NetSuite just before that. SurveyMonkey was founded in 1999, one of the few SMB survivors of that era. There were apps before that (e.g.,
SaaStr
JUNE 20, 2019
In this session, the audience will learn about Adyen’s journey from a Dutch payments startup, to a global public company with more than 15 offices around the world working with large global companies like Facebook, Spotify, Uber and Microsoft.
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
APRIL 23, 2019
We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to find a great VP of Sales, what the risks are, what risks to take, etc. We’ve also summarized a few critical factors that will tell you, within 30 days, if your VP of Sales won’t work out.
SaaStr
JUNE 4, 2019
Consistently ramping your ARR is a whole lot harder if your customers don’t stick around. In an age where earning customer loyalty and trust is harder than ever, the road to lifetime value is paved with customer feedback.
SaaStr
MAY 18, 2019
Almost all of our 4,000+ pieces of content and 300+ SaaStr sessions and 250+ podcasts are really just about how to do … better. A smidge better. A bit better. Since SaaS compounds, even doing just 5% better now can compound dramatically over time.
SaaStr
MARCH 21, 2019
A few thoughts at least: The stronger the brand, the more complex the pricing page can be. So yes, copy Salesforce, Twilio, Slack, and other iconic leaders. But bear in mind their brands make them a default choice. That means their prospects will be more patient with complex pricing.
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.
225 
Let's personalize your content