Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 28, 2022

Hyperscalers Report Quarterly Earnings This week we saw AWS (Amazon), GCP (Google) and Azure (Microsoft) report earnings. Overall, it wasn’t pretty… AWS grew 28% when expectations were 30-31%. Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date!

Cloud 130

Cloud Azure AWS Cost optimization & reporting 130

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2023

Ed Lenta, the SVP and GM of Databricks, had the rare opportunity of scaling three hypergrowth companies — VMware, AWS, and Databricks. To “soften the beach,” you need to expend as little energy and investment as possible while learning as much as possible. Invest in and put that into the market to start softening the beach.

Scale 198

Scale Scaling AWS Sales Hiring 198

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2024

Some things to think about as you craft your offer are: Does it align with your sales motion? You don’t want conflict with the sales team. This is where they started, but startups weren’t adopting the product as much with a discount, and there was a lot of conflict with the sales team. What is the size of the company?

Startup 183

Startup Scale Underperforming Technical Team AWS 183

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

So for the audience, cloud giants are turbocharging startup sales, and the predominant reason for this is because they’re fundamentally changing IT budgets at the customers that we’re all selling to. And it’s one of the three large cloud vendors that we all know: Microsoft, AWS, and Google. Jabari Norton. Crowdstrike.

Scale 200

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 200

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 30, 2022

And more importantly – which ones are really going to deliver a return on investment for your precious (and limited) budget? AWS – Cloud computing. Many of the biggest and best companies in the world use AWS – and many of them were once startups using AWS, too. Look for tools that can scale with you. HubSpot – CRM.

Scale 163

Scale Payment Services Startup AWS 163

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

Or of my investments, ones like Algolia and Salesloft, that yes, in theory, were playing in larger markets, but in practice, their entry points were quite narrow. How many sales reps, how much marketing spend, how many engineers will you really need? Worth hiring a sales team, raising some venture capital (even a modest amount).

Scale 205

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital AWS 205

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

Why did sales-driven Qualtrics get to $100m+ in ARR without ever raising a nickel, and generating more than $20m a year in free cash flow ? Does it cost so, so much to host a few million lines of code on AWS? Sales, done right, should be accretive (although expect sales efficiency to ultimately decline post-Initial Scale).

Scale 278

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 278

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2021

The Treasure Data platform instantly analyzed large amounts of data, which meant that companies didn’t need to hire lots of computer scientists or put up a considerable upfront investment for data projects. . million revenue quarter…In reality, though, we were still the founder-led sales company.”. million and $1.2

Sales Hiring 265

Sales Hiring Data AWS Leadership 265

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 9, 2021

Ten years ago, we built the initial Intercom infrastructure in AWS’ us-east-1 data center in North Virginia, USA. As a first step, we’re delighted to announce that we now offer European data hosting – allowing your most important data to remain entirely in Europe, stored in the AWS-eu-west-1 region.

Data 181

Data AWS Scale Engineering 181

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2020

An open discussion with Sam Blond, CSO at Brex, and Kristen Habacht, VPS at Atlassian, about adjusting their sales process during Covid-19. Kristen Habacht runs EDR sales at Atlassian, which I got a check today, $40 billion-$50 billion company. Four, people in the sale? Kristen Habacht: Well, there’s none in sales.

Merchant Services 175

Merchant Services Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 175

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2022

The role of AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Marketplace is becoming increasingly important. “45% What each of these shares in common is a reflection of the immediate post-sales experience. Categories like customer success, learning management platforms, and onboarding software are witnessing increased investments. . Ease of use .

Software Review 198

Software Review Software Azure Cloud 198

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 30, 2024

Previously, Amit led marketing efforts at startups like Tact AI (1st AI Assistant for Sales backed by AWS, Microsoft, and Salesforce), HP Inc (next-gen computing) and Spire AI (Human Capital SaaS). Amit Pande is CMO and EVP of Strategy at Aviso AI, a leading revenue intelligence platform.

AWS 80

AWS AI Advertising Finance 80

Clouded Judgement

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

” We saw some green shoots in AWS and a few other consumption names, and overall sentiment seemed more positive. Meanwhile, FCF margins stayed quite strong, with a median Q2 FCF margin of 12% Sales efficiency also dramatically improved in Q2. I’ll post a much longer recap soon, but today I wanted to post the highlights.

Cloud 169

Cloud Software Review AWS Trends 169

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

I thought it might be helpful to assemble a checklist of 22 reasons I almost immediately pass on investing in start-ups that are still interesting. You’re in sales. CEO Doesn’t like Sales — and The Hunt. The converse is, a bad arse hacker/engineer that has also learned to love sales. And/or Late.

Sales Recruiting 334

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 334

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

Flex is a finance super app built around a credit card with unique Net-60 day terms that enables businesses to make an investment today and pay it back 60 days later with zero percent interest. Can also be responsible for PQLs, if there is a sales motion to upsell self-serve. Driving pipeline for sales (SLG). Efficiency.

Metrics 93

Metrics Revenue Scale Marketing 93

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 9, 2019

To invest in you when there’s no logical reason to. But they are often just awful managers. Stay late with the sales team when they’re trying to close the last deals of the quarter, and take ’em out for drinks after. You have to convince people to join you. To drag the troops up the hill. Do dinners.

Sales Hiring 279

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting AWS Churn 279

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

I’m talking about product-led growth as an investment strategy, but really my background is 10 years of operating experience in the product-led growth world. Now I’m investing in that. I say investment strategy, but really it’s like how do you build a company that’s focused on product-led growth?

Investment 100

Investment Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Software Review 100

Sales Hacker

JUNE 1, 2020

Publicly-traded, PLG businesses grow faster than their peers and are less reliant on expensive sales and marketing investments to fuel their growth. With PLGs massive growth, many wonder if PLG and self-service solutions will replace Sales. Sales Isn’t Going Anywhere. That includes nearly 20 publicly traded companies.

Sales Hiring 76

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 76

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

This is why we’re seeing more and more SaaS companies—Datadog, Twilio, AWS, Snowflake, and Stripe, to name a few—find success with product led growth paired with usage-based pricing. It requires shifts in go-to-market strategy, sales compensation, financial planning, billing, and much more. Then they tell their boss what to buy.

Scale 98

Scale Pricing Scaling AWS 98

Chart Mogul

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Updating the data engineering stack streamlined data processing; reducing the time and effort invested in manual data handling. Nowadays, these are packaged and deployed in docker images, and executed via AWS lambda or EKS pods each day. We used our daily AWS RDS snapshots and loaded them daily to Snowflake tables.

Engineering 52

Engineering K8S orchestration (Kubernetes) Data AWS 52

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

I’m referring to the full spectrum of business execution, from product management to design to engineering to marketing to sales to support and all the other functions needed to scale a business. Investing in things that enable us to move faster and leaner for the long term. The second army are your main competitors.

Outsourcing Services 224

Outsourcing Services Software Review Software Outsourced Development 224

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 3, 2019

The Data-Driven Sales Manager. The average tenure of a sales VP these days is just 19 months, according to Xactly CEO Chris Cabrera, who expects that number to drop lower as businesses become increasingly data reliant. Here’s how he sees data changing sales management. Use data to show sales reps their commissions in real time.

Sales Enablement 86

Sales Enablement Artificial Intelligence Branding Sales Hiring 86

Scytale

MAY 15, 2024

Automation Platform To streamline compliance, you’ll want to invest in a compliance automation platform. Plus, we offer tons of integrations with your favorite tools, including GitHub, Google Workspace, AWS, ClickUp, and more. With the right preparation and partners, you’ll be compliant and cyber-resilient in no time.

compliance 52

compliance Technical Review Systems Review Software Review 52

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 31, 2023

The majority of COGS (revenue less COGS = gross profit) fall in hosting costs (ie AWS), and some customer support. They have massive distribution (installed customers + sales teams), and margin to play around with. Companies could end up hiring less SDRs but booking more sales demos. What do I mean by this? The list goes on.

Cloud 130

Cloud Sales Hiring AI Headcount 130

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2021

How sales worked, how pricing worked, how billboards work, and more. At the end of the day, Twilio still sells communications, AWS still sells servers, but the way we’re selling it is different than how it was done in yesteryear. You’d have an enterprise sales force, a song and dance and maybe some steak.

Scale 284

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Engineering Wireless 284

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 16, 2023

Another important detail to note is how Average Sales Price (ASP) and Expenses have changed over time. Our Average Sale Price (ASP) in 2014 was $13, while our total Operating Costs were $3,575,897. Our hosting costs include service providers like AWS, Cloudflare, MongoDb, Twitter, etc. Stripe payments make up 98.5

Merchant Services 82

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Features Payments 82

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 30, 2024

Then I went into banking, specifically investment banking in the early ’90s. What areas in both technology investing as well as distribution or sales do we really need a bolster to really take the company to the next level? I think we were doing something like $3 billion of revenue a year in software sales.

Payment Solutions 77

Payment Solutions Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments 77

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2021

It’s a brutal, awful slog in the start. I would say, it’s always good to call out just how awful it is to be a founder, to be an entrepreneur, because that is a unique perspective that you bring to the board room that no one else shares. The angel investors are people who invest their own money. David : Here we go.

Underperforming Technical Team 243

Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring AWS Business Model 243

Chart Mogul

DECEMBER 6, 2023

Capital will return to SaaS markets, and M&A activity will accelerate Yoram Wijngaarde , CEO and Founder of Dealroom “VC investment into SaaS companies could start growing again in 2024. SaaS investment will close at around $100B this year, a four year low, and down from $264B in 2021.

AI Search 52

AI Search SaaS Generative AI ChatGPT 52

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 11, 2023

“New logo and new product bookings and deal cycles haven't been impacted by the period of optimization and we continue to see healthy growth on the sales side. The hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP) are seeing some uptick, but this is largely from selling compute (ie cloud GPUs). However, it’s not showing up in the data yet.

Cloud 130

Cloud Trends Azure GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 130

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 7, 2021

Women in sales often have a polarizing experience. In the Sales Hacker video series Aha Moments , I asked 10 women: “What is one ‘aha moment’ you’ve had in your sales career?”. The conversations that followed were so authentic and encouraging that we decided to expand this conversation to other badass women in the sales world.

Scale 130

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 130

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2022

As SaaStr Europa 2022 drew to a close, attendees took one more opportunity to ask Jason questions about topics like how to navigate the current market, the future of work, playing in a crowded space, and hiring your first VP of Sales. It was funny for Henry to say he segmented his sales team at 80 million in ARR. Transcript.

Sales Hiring 207

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling 207

Casey Accidental

DECEMBER 11, 2023

To continue its growth, instead of investing in new product value, Eventbrite kept grafting new growth loops onto this core loop to acquire more event creators and drive more ticket sales per event, creating a much more complicated growth model that looks like the below. And we probably needed them yesterday.

Payments 113

Payments Scale Payment Solutions Technical Review 113

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 18, 2023

The Sales Hacker Newsletter has now merged with The GTM Newsletter to make one of the largest newsletters in the space. As always, you’ll hear real stories/strategies/tactics from real revenue operators spanning: sales, marketing, customer success, operations/enablement, product and hiring. Needs more pre sales support.

Scale 68

Scale VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Enterprise 68

OpenView Labs

DECEMBER 15, 2020

Cloud marketplaces like AWS Marketplace, Azure Marketplace and Google Cloud Platform Marketplace are digital storefronts where companies can list their offerings for software buyers to find, purchase and provision software. . Tackle’s survey found that 70% of sellers are ready to invest more in marketplaces as a go-to-market strategy.

Marketplace as a Service 52

Marketplace as a Service Cloud Scale B2B 52

Baremetrics

DECEMBER 7, 2023

Benefits of using Expense Categories in SaaS The main expense categories for any SaaS company are: Cost of Revenue Research & Development Sales & Marketing General & Admin These four categories are the standard for describing costs and expenses of any SaaS company from Salesforce to Zoom to your startup. New Gross Margins?

Merchant Services 90

Merchant Services Startup DevOps as a Service SaaS 90

ChurnZero

OCTOBER 16, 2020

Whether Customer Success or Sales should own the renewal, expansion, and upsell is a hot-button issue in today’s SaaS sphere. That was followed by the undecided (24%) leaving only 13% of participants who voted against the motion (believing that Sales should own the renewal). If you don’t fully understand these cases yet, that’s OK.

Scale 98

Scale Customer Success SaaS Payments Sales 98