Tom Tunguz

MARCH 20, 2024

Will AI sofware companies operate with better or worse profitability than a classic SaaS company? Initially, I thought worse since the expense of serving AI as a product is signficantly higher. AI SaaS may be much more profitable than the -10% average net income margins of the current crop of public businesses. Deflationary.

AI Search 185

AI Search AI Scale SaaS 185

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

As companies scale, they evolve, so how should marketing evolve accordingly to add maximum value? PST, Kady shares the ten things that change in marketing as you scale. PST, Kady shares the ten things that change in marketing as you scale. The reality is that a lot of things change as we scale. The answer isn’t simple.

Scale 186

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Marketing 186

User Pilot

JANUARY 17, 2024

Scaling SaaS is not for the faint of heart. If you do not scale, you will be unable to reach a new pool of customers and your competitors will leave you in the dust. If you scale prematurely, you may struggle to satisfy customer expectations. Provide the necessary training for your sales teams.

Scale 86

Scale Scaling SaaS Underperforming Technical Team 86

SaaStr

MAY 30, 2024

Sales-Led vs. Product-Led vs. Hybrid What are the pros and cons of different motions? Let’s start with a sales-led motion, which is traditionally how B2B software has been sold. Hybrid combines product-led and sales-led motions, and they work closely together. How does that collaboration and hand-off with sales work?

Scale 225

Scale AI Search Azure AI 225

SaaStr

DECEMBER 18, 2023

AI adoption has grown exponentially over the past year and it has likely doubled from its more than 2.5x At SaaStr Annual , IBM’s VP of Software and Technology Raj Datta and Director of Startups Kylie Rutherford shared how AI is changing the game for companies of all sizes. How to scale AI across your business.

AI 225

AI Technology Scale Startup 225

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2024

In it, we cover the SaaS community’s most pressing questions about Artificial Intelligence (AI), pricing, efficiency, and funding. On Wednesday, March 27th, SaaStr is hosting AI Day, you can sign up for free at this link. The biggest thing on many of our minds is what the future of AI will be in B2B. It’s disruptive.

AI 223

AI Pricing Artificial Intelligence Scale 223

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 1, 2023

If we assume some basic productivity gains in a typical SaaS company from AI in the next 12-24 months, how much more profitable will the business be? Sales development, content marketing, & software engineering strike me as the workstreams that will benefit immediately. Content marketing 30% 5% 1.5% Content marketing 30% 5% 1.5%

AI 310

AI Startup Scale Headcount 310

Tom Tunguz

MAY 11, 2023

What is the distribution advantage AI confers to startups? Novel content creation techniques used the right way might enable a new form of inbound lead acquisition. AI enables ABM-at-scale. The first time a user visits a site AI asks “What do you want to accomplish today?”

AI Search 169

AI Search AI Scale Cloud 169

SaaStr

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Product-led scaling isn’t about growth hacking, and it can be challenging no matter where you’re starting. Rachel Wolan, Dropbox GM, shares wisdom from her years of experience in product-led scaling at Talkdesk, LiveRamp, and Dropbox to help you better scale your company. . What is Product-Led Scaling? 7 Lessons Learned.

Scale 229

Scale Scaling Growth Hacking Systems Review 229

Totango

MAY 17, 2024

Some believe AI is overhyped. A recent poll taken during the Higher Logic Super Forum SPARK conference in April says 61% of CS professionals sometimes use AI platforms alongside other systems, while 11% always leverage AI in various instances and workflows. But there are proven, compliant ways to drive impact with AI today.

Innovation 96

Innovation AI Underperforming Technical Team Scale 96

SaaStr

MAY 29, 2024

So UiPath was early to what we now think of as “AI”, but blazed the path in automation. Which is what a lot of SaaS and B2B AI is really about. NRR Holding Up at an Impressive 119% 100%+ NRR really can scale well past $1B ARR. Sales & Marketing expense is up 9.8% — but that’s on 22% revenue growth.

Scale 192

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring AI 192

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2024

The post The Top 8 SaaStr Tips to Building an Effective First Sales Team (per Perplexity) appeared first on SaaStr. I think it did a pretty good job The summaries we do might be better, but this is a great place to start.

Sales Hiring 194

Sales Hiring Scale AI Search Compensation 194

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2023

10+ Actionable Things You Can Do To Scale Faster In The Early Days The Chat GPT Growth Story: How AI is Changing the Way We Work The Challenge with SMB SaaS: High Growth Can Only Mask High Churn For Just So Long (Updated) Dear SaaStr: My Top Sales Rep Made $600,000 a Year — And Just Quit! What Happened?

ChatGPT 226

ChatGPT Scale SMB AI 226

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2023

For some context on the company, Weights & Biases is an AI developer platform to help train and deploy all Machine Learning models. Funnels lead to linear growth. Weights & Biases went to places where ML engineers were hanging out at scale — like schools. It’s building a machine that leads to scalable, repeatable growth.

Scale 206

Scale Scaling AI Search Social Media 206

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2024

As the kickoff to our first fully digital SaaStr AI Day, Jennifer Tejada , the CEO of PagerDuty, chatted with Jason Lemkin, SaaStr CEO and Founder, about navigating the shift to Generative AI and what Artificial Intelligence in SaaS might look like in the next 6 months, as well as years to come. How to Buck Up and Go Long in SaaS?

Generative AI 222

Generative AI AI Technical Review Software Review 222

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 10, 2020

If a company has lots of small customers, then managing those touchpoints can become challenging as you scale. As Nick explains, timing is everything: “So automation is clearly critical in scaling, but then the second thing is you want to do the right thing at the right time. Understanding customer outcomes at scale.

Scale 223

Scale Customer Success Scaling B2B 223

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

This brings me to AI (everything leads to AI these days…). When it comes to AI there is now another BIG culprit in misused ARR which I’m calling ERR (we use this term internally). A huge portion of AI revenue today is truly experimental! If retention deteriorates, the terminal value may very well be 0.

AI 183

AI Revenue Cloud Technical Advisors 183

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 26, 2022

Conversational AI (artificial intelligence) is technology that simulates the experience of person-to-person communication for users, either through text-based or speech-based inputs. The AI component is crucial. In the case of conversational AI, these outputs are the responses it provides to users.

Artificial Intelligence 118

Artificial Intelligence AI Scale Machine Learning 118

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 20, 2024

This conversation is part of our AI Revolution series, which features some of the most impactful builders in the field of AI discussing and debating where we are, where we’re going, and the big open questions in AI. Find more content from our AI Revolution series on www.a16z.com/AIRevolution. David George: Sure.

AI Search 138

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 138

Andreessen Horowitz

SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

This conversation is part of our AI Revolution series, which features some of the most impactful builders in the field of AI discussing and debating where we are, where we’re going, and the big open questions in AI. Find more content from our AI Revolution series on www.a16z.com/AIRevolution.

AI Search 120

AI Search AI Scale Scaling 120

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

Let’s deep dive into how combining innovative demand gen strategies with a modern tech stack and specific team setup can provide a winning formula for scaling B2B growth, even with low budgets of greater than a 2x burn multiple. In this playbook we’ll share: Automated outbound at-scale strategies. No humans involved.

Scale 215

Scale Sales Hiring Strategy Marketing 215

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

10 Things That Always Work in SaaS Marketing with SaaStr’s Jason Lemkin A popular hands-on session on what always works to get you more leads. #3. What You Need to Change at $10M to Scale to $100M: Sameer Dholakia, Partner Bessemer Sameer’s session was A+. For B2B Generative AI Apps, is Less More? Harness.io

Scale 219

Scale SMB Generative AI AI 219

SaaStr

OCTOBER 8, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: How Is AI Impacting The SaaS Landscape with a16z GP Kristina Shen What To Do if Your TAM is Too Small for VCs Making Less, But Working Less. SaaStr 690: From $5M to $100M: How to Scale a Multi-Product Startup with Lattice CEO Jack Altman   2.

Scale 243

Scale Sales AI Startup 243

SaaStr

MAY 8, 2024

Sales is much harder than in 2021. Therefore, sales and marketing practices made no sense in 2020. How Does That Impact Sales and Marketing? In 2021, many sales folks were marginally efficient. If you have a good sales and marketing team, they will respond. Exactly as hard as it always used to be,” Jason shares.

Metrics 199

Metrics Scale Sales Hiring SaaS 199

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. While the first generation of Generative AI is great, it’s not quite ready to solve Enterprise problems. Enterprises are looking for two big themes.

AI 225

AI Enterprise Artificial Intelligence compliance 225

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2023

The SMB markets can test out features that aren’t built to scale yet, and as they succeed, Greenhouse invests in them and rolls them out to Enterprise customers. Now, over the next decade, they need to think about other things their customers do in hiring that aren’t done well and could be scaled. There’s so much bias in AI models.

Sales Hiring 200

Sales Hiring AI SMB Scale 200

Tom Tunguz

MAY 15, 2023

A product manager today faces a key architectural question with AI : to use a small language model or a large language model? the company has no plan/interest to staff a team to manage AI infrastructure or develop deep machine learning experience / expertise in-house. The pace of innovation in the field clouds the answer.

Artificial Intelligence 196

Artificial Intelligence AI Machine Learning Scale 196

Intercom, Inc.

JANUARY 12, 2021

This post is an adaptation of a talk I recently gave at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) community day event in Dublin about the technical strategies I’ve experienced that don’t work and the ones that have helped us to grow and scale at Intercom. Building for scale. Optimizing costs.

Technical Review 269

Technical Review Scale multi-cloud Kubernetes Scaling 269

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 21, 2024

Generative AI took the consumer landscape by storm in 2023, reaching over a billion dollars of consumer spend 1 in record time. Some naysayers doubted that genAI could scale into the enterprise at all. Budgets for generative AI are skyrocketing. Aren’t we stuck with the same 3 use cases? Isn’t this all hype?

Generative AI 145

Generative AI AI Enterprise Artificial Intelligence 145

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 12, 2020

Scaling Your Personalization. This is the downside of the modern Sales Assembly Line — both buyer and seller feeling like a cog in the wheel. AI and machine learning haven’t officially passed the Turing Test (even though I want to believe I have when it comes to email). Building the System. The 3 Parts of Personalization.

Scale 109

Scale Scaling AI Search AI 109

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Lower interest rates lead to SaaS multiple reflation, likely during 2H’24 It’s not clear how truly tight the link is between interest rates and SaaS multiples, but the overall correlation is clear. Lower inflation and the fed lowering interest rates should lead to an expansion of SaaS multiples.

Scale 241

Scale SaaS AI Innovation 241

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2023

In part one of this week’s Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) with SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin, he answered the community’s questions about whether all anyone cares about is AI anymore, investor appetites going into 2024, vertical SaaS, and thriving as a solo founder. Now, everyone wants AI to do it. The market wants it.

Scale 219

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success AI 219

SaaStr

DECEMBER 28, 2023

At a recent Workshop Wednesday , SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin answered the community’s most pressing questions about SaaS — from investor appetites and IPOs in 2024 to managing and hiring a Head of Sales as a solo founder to AI and the future of customer success. Over 80% of investor money is in AI. Why is that?

Payment Solutions 212

Payment Solutions Sales Hiring AI SaaS Payments 212

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 8, 2024

Ever since ChatGPT catapulted generative AI into public consciousness over a year ago, we’ve been introduced to thousands of new consumer products that incorporate the magic of AI — from video generators to workflow hacks , creativity tools to virtual companions. More on what’s behind the spike in AI companionship below.)

AI Search 145

AI Search AI ChatGPT Mobile 145

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

So to serve both segments at the simultaneously, ZoomInfo has been rolling out a Product-led sales motion, that gives the ability for an SMB customer to sign up directly on their website for a free trial and grow into a paid customer, without ever having to talk to an sales rep or go through a demo process. So, what’s new at ZoomInfo?

New CTO 237

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring AWS 237

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 5, 2024

This feels like the year that many companies have now realized that sales-led and product-led aren’t exclusive; they’re more of a spectrum. Factors to Consider for Product-Led Sales There are important factors that make a purely product-led growth motion easier. Happy New Year! 2024, we’re officially here. Let’s get into it.

Scale 99

Scale Sales AI Social Media 99

Sales Hacker

JULY 26, 2023

Love it or hate it, artificial intelligence is massively changing the game in sales — and has huge potential for account executives. And AI (particularly ChatGPT) has supercharged my productivity and learning — and helped me get back some of my oh-so-precious time. Intimidated by AI? Don’t worry.

ChatGPT 76

ChatGPT Scale AI Search AI 76