Intercom, Inc.

JULY 3, 2019

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208

208

Zuora

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

The post What Goldilocks Can Teach Us About Fending Off Amazon appeared first on Zuora. And when you commit to that subscription offering, there’s lots you can do. Getting Pricing ‘Just Right’, 2. Goldilocks’ Return, 3. Be The Bear.

Subscription 45

Subscription Payment Features Pricing Business 45

Casey Accidental

MAY 18, 2020

One of the more interesting, but less talked about, dynamics in the video games industry in the last few decades is that the product they initially ship to customers is no longer the final product. But our tools for nerfing are incredibly crude today, so I’m going to talk more about how to effectively nerf in an organization.

Underperforming Technical Team 52

Underperforming Technical Team Management Sales Hiring Scale 52

Casey Accidental

MAY 18, 2020

One of the more interesting, but less talked about, dynamics in the video games industry in the last few decades is that the product they initially ship to customers is no longer the final product. But our tools for nerfing are incredibly crude today, so I’m going to talk more about how to effectively nerf in an organization.

Underperforming Technical Team 52

Underperforming Technical Team Management Sales Hiring Scale 52

Andreessen Horowitz

JULY 9, 2019

Those of us obsessed with the stock market — or even just our retirement funds — often tune in to watch a parade of characters standing behind a makeshift dais with their company logo proudly displayed, cheering wildly to the …

Marketing 77

Marketing 77

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2024

So many of us feel like we gave it all, but got laid off. Or that that CEO let us down. Or the cofounder that abandoned us. It’s a game yes, but it’s also about the game. Sometimes, it’s even the best advice I can give to myself. Or that the VCs overfunded the company. Or the plan was too hard.

Business 238

Business 238

SaaStr

APRIL 22, 2024

And even more of us think about it. Heck, I’ve thought about it several times over the years. Folks recover a bit from the end-of-year push, reflect, and sometimes … decide it’s time to bring in someone new. A CEO to take things to the next level. I always try to talk founders out it handing over the reigns.

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242

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2024

They talk about the culture code that was created in HubSpot’s early days and how they have continued to have strong retention rates and overall happiness in their employees. Two years ago, if you were here, Dharmesh was one of the most popular speakers, and shared a lot about their journey. Dharmesh Shah : Wow. Hello everyone.

Part-Time CTO 252

Part-Time CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 252

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2024

At Saastr Annual, we hosted an Enterprise panel of AI leaders to share their experience and knowledge to help others understand how big companies think about and leverage AI. Sure – the rise of ChatGPT has gone mainstream for consumers and smaller companies, but what about the big guys? ’ That’s really incredible.

AI 228

AI Enterprise Artificial Intelligence compliance 228

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 31, 2023

In the last two years, M&A has totaled about $49b & it surges to above $60b driven by AI acquisitions. We see the first broadly successful tokens with dividends (likely outside the US). Valuations remain relatively steady except for AI businesses, which command a premium to market of about 10-25%. 3 KnowBe4 4.6

AI Search 238

AI Search AI Scale Headcount 238

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2024

So we’ve probably covered HubSpot more than any other SaaS and Cloud leader on this 5 Interesting Learnings series, but there’s a good reason for it: First, HubSpot is a lot like most of us. And second, so many of us use HubSpot. The majority of the SaaStr community uses HubSpot! How about you?

Scale 232

Scale Cloud Pricing Scaling 232

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 4, 2024

They help us understand how builders are engineering AI applications today & which components may be important in the future. If you have ideas about other design patterns or improvements to the current ones, please contact us. These design patterns are simple mental models. The first design pattern is the AI query router.

AI 332

AI Artificial Intelligence User Experience Engineering 332

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 10, 2023

Wave #1: Creativity Is The New Productivity If you think about it, productive tools have been deployed in organizations large and small for the past few decades. Creative professionals will still apply a lot of creative controls, but the rest of us are being taught how to fish. It will be tailor-made for us.

AI 238

AI VP of Engineering Generative AI Social Media 238

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 31, 2022

But how about the volumes of US dollars being exchanged into crypto each month? The net amount of stablecoin creation over time should provide us a directional sense of dollar flow. The total US money supply, which includes physical cash, traveler’s checks, deposits, and all other forms of money has surged to about $20.5T.

Travel 361

Travel Marketing 361

SaaStr

DECEMBER 17, 2023

It helped us improve win rates from 38% to 53% in a 10 week period in Q2 of this year. Game changing addition for us. #3. Other than your own, what app would you never let anyone take away from you no matter what: Has to be SalesForce because everything else is built on top of and integrated into it and it’s the only CRM I’ve used.

Scale 236

Scale AI Leadership Innovation 236

SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2024

Second, understand how you think about inflation. Third, be honest about your risk tolerance. It is almost impossible for 95% of us to do better. With VTI, you are done in about 60 seconds. Most of us are just happier buying a home. No kooky ideas. A few start-up investments are fine, but don’t do much.

Acquisition 190

Acquisition Investment Startup Marketing 190

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 25, 2024

A one percentage point share shift represents about $750 million of spend or about $5b in market cap. " Copilot growth implies about a $500 million ARR product growing 35% QoQ - tripling annually. Vector databases : “So AI projects obviously start with calls to AI models, but they also use a vector database.

Azure 124

Azure AI Search Marketing AI 124

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2024

But our B2C friends obsess about Product-Led Retention. And usually — that’s almost about it. I’m not saying the best product leaders don’t think about retention all the time at the product-level. But that’s not most us. And obsess about GRR and logo retention. But far from all.

Retention 258

Retention B2C B2B Churn 258

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2023

And David Sacks was kind enough to join us and compare and contrast the Yammer experience to Slack! Jason Lemkin : A lot of stuff, a lot of fun and mostly we want to talk about tactical stuff here. It’s about scale and revenue. David Sacks : We’ve launched about September of ’08. We’re groupies.

Scale 336

Scale Sales Hiring PayPal Development Team Review 336

SaaStr

DECEMBER 12, 2022

So I’ve written a bit about a topic that a lot of folks challenge me on. A Huge Vendor Asked Us If We Were Even a Customer. A second multi-billion dollar vendor gave us 8 days to pay a massive price increase without notice. If you don’t pay us five figures immediately, we shut off your service in 8 days.

Customer Success 241

Customer Success Systems Review AWS Software Review 241

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2024

Yes, most of us at first under-price and then slowly raise prices as we gain confidence. It’s because (1) we aren’t trained sales leaders, and (2) we worry most about not losing the deal. Dear SaaStr: Why Do Most Entrepreneurs Under Price Their Offerings Initially?

Pricing 239

Pricing Sales Revenue 239

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2023

So we’ve been writing about the power of a strong, funded, dedicated customer success organization since the beginning of SaaStr way back in 2012. Just a few of the recent emails and calls we’ve gotten: A random person in CS emailed us they are increasing our pricing more than 10x. But … things have change in the past 24 months or so.

Customer Success 238

Customer Success Pricing Revenue Sales 238

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2023

We leverage Chili Piper for a few different use cases but the most powerful is the ability to let prospects schedule meetings directly from our website when they are requesting a demo or pricing. What’s your top “undiscovered gem” — an app you love but others may not have heard of?

Leadership 298

Leadership B2B Branding Revenue 298

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 24, 2024

Thank you for joining us & sharing your insights, Steven! Open-source companies like Elastic ($13b), Confluent ($10b), MongoDB ($33b) have been phenomenally successful. Along the way, many of them have changed their licenses to shield themselves from copycats.

Government 246

Government Compensation Development Technology 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 22, 2024

And yet, most of us only half listen. And these days, when almost all of us run distributed teams, this advice is ignored again and again. We’re all so used to communicating all day on Zoom and Slack … that why shouldn’t tough news be delivered that way? There’s no one to talk to about their jobs, even if they have a big team.

Management 244

Management Sales Hiring Pricing Communication 244

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2024

My view in so many discussions is simple: many of us lost our sense of purpose the past 18 months. There really are only a few places to find happiness other than inside yourself (which is tough for those of us that are driven): Home life. But most of us Pirates and Romantics can only have so many hobbies. Even billionaires.

Sales Hiring 201

Sales Hiring Startup Sales 201

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2024

For most of us, especially if the acquisition is after years of doing it “our way” — that can be very frustrating. Get your arms around what they care about. You may still have an important role, but the ultimate decisions are not yours. You will have a boss. The product will evolve in different ways than you’d planned, or even, hoped.

Acquisition 215

Acquisition Business 215

SaaStr

JANUARY 9, 2024

And so did a bit of laziness that creeped into many of us during the past few years. Things really were easier for many of us in 2021. They thought the first 90 days was about “learning” and process, not visiting. But one we sort of forgot about the past few years in our rush to get our VP hires done. A simple point?

Sales Hiring 237

Sales Hiring Interviewing Startup Customer Success 237

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 19, 2023

” How much might US GDP grow assuming large-language models enable US workers to do more? The BEA estimates US GDP is $26.2t. If we assume the OpenAI study implies workers spend 50% less time on the tasks impacted by large-language models, the US should benefit from a 4% GDP improvement which is about $1.05t.

Artificial Intelligence 209

Artificial Intelligence AI Search Government Banking 209

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

At first, it seemed like the world would end for all of us. That lasted about seven weeks, and then all of a sudden the world exploded. Forget about how you get there: Bootstrapped, overfunded, underfunded. Think about it, OpenAI can pay pretty much anything it wants right now for engineers. “2023 was nuts, right?

Sales Recruiting 278

Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Software Review 278

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2023

I’ve got a meta takeaway from this for everyone out there that’s a bit unsettled, unhappy, wistful about their tech role: If you’re respected, well paid, and have a good job — see if you can come in fresh in 2024 with a better attitude. All the changes in the world from March 2020-December 2023 will be behind us in 2024.

SaaS 226

SaaS Management 226

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2023

Well, fast forward to eight years to 2023, and all 4 are doing about or above $200m ARR! We’ll talk more about that in a second. What we’ve talked about is 20 percent, and companies growing 20 percent. Six months ago, Tiago was the only US employee. Take us through that. That was huge for us.

Sales Hiring 226

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Payment Methods 226

SaaStr

OCTOBER 13, 2023

LinkedIn for us, like many others, has really taken off the past 24 months or so, and we have 250,000+ followers for Jason’s account, and another 50,000+ for SaaStr itself. LinkedIn has now named us a Top Voice, one of 300 new ones. Should you follow us on LinkedIn? Each is a bit different, based on the medium.

Scaling 204

Scaling SaaS 204

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2024

SaaStr’s CRO Confidential podcast host Sam Blond chats with the CRO of Apollo, Leandra Fishman, about just that. But if people want to talk to salespeople, you can ask them a question that makes talking about competitors better received, and it goes something like this… ” I understand you’re evaluating us vs. XYZ competitor.

Scale 183

Scale Sales Hiring Pricing AI 183

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

woke us all up to the Wall Street mantra : Don’t fight the Fed. The US Federal Reserve Banking system is about 115 years old. It was en vogue like Panama Hats & frock coats , but the US had no central bank to coordinate a bail-out. 12 years of zero-interest rate policies & then a sudden increase to 5.5%

Banking 186

Banking Government Marketing 186