Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 14, 2019

Buyers were forced to depend on salespeople to provide the details they needed to make their purchasing decisions – everything from pricing to product specs to customer evidence. Products like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the rise of engineering talent globally have reduced the barrier of entry for software startups in recent years.

Software Review 162

Software Review AWS Social Media Artificial Intelligence 162

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

It was around that time about 12 years ago that Jeff Bezos launched AWS, and some of you may remember that, when he did this, Wall Street analysts were looking at him and saying, “Why would you take what’s already a very unprofitable business and drive it further into the red by investing in this AWS initiative?”

Cloud 101

Cloud Scale AWS Artificial Intelligence 101

User Pilot

JULY 14, 2024

Bonus points : Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP). new features, pricing models). Data Science Manager/Director (10+ years) : This leadership role requires extensive data science experience combined with strong business management and communication skills. Experience with data visualization tools (e.g.,

Data 52

Data Technical Review Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning 52

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2020

Then we went on to build another company called SteelBrick, another SaaS configure price quoting solution. And G2 Gives, we partner with philanthropies, we partner with some of our customers like AWS and Google Cloud, who can then make donations for every review, to thank their customers. And that company grew very quickly.

Software Review 174

Software Review Scale Technical Review SaaS 174

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2024

Everything you have now will probably look different upmarket, including pricing. Pricing is a big one. You have your pricing strategy for down-market customers, such as how you price the bundle, packaging, etc. You want to test pricing by going to the market and seeing if it works. It’ll also likely be wrong.

Sales Hiring 250

Sales Hiring Scale SMB compliance 250

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2021

The reality was that they were heavily relying on the enterprise deals closed by the leadership team. Even after that exciting third year of growth, leadership at Treasure Data began noticing the lack of product-market fit. Commoditization From AWS & Google Cloud. million and $1.2 million deals led by the founders.

Sales Hiring 269

Sales Hiring Data AWS Leadership 269

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. At VMware, they priced based on physical CPUs customers chose — a hugely transactional service that constrained growth. Of course, we all know how that turned out. But it also defines your GTM efforts.

Scale 209

Scale Scaling AWS Sales Hiring 209

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

They told us they would do tons of all this pricing stuff and help us with hiring and introduce us to customers, and all of these things. If people can just go to your website, click sign up and run, so much easier than going to a startup’s website that has no pricing listed, has no way to sign up, it just has contact sales.

Investment 101

Investment Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring Software Review 101

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2020

And I remember being at that Dreamforce in 2009, which was awful. ” I’m like, that sounds awful. And he increased the price from 12K to 18K during the buying process because he said the discount expired, which she didn’t know about. And every vendor was just staring at each other like the world’s dead.

Sales Hiring 195

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 195

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

You can have all of this, the entire Enterprise pricing column, on day one of launch. If you go back 10-15 years, when people ask about build vs. buy for the long-term, people would consider building their own data center if they were spending $100k/month on AWS. And you should. In a new category, you’d win the deals.

Enterprise readiness 233

Enterprise readiness Payment Solutions Enterprise Payments 233

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2020

Finally, before YesWare, she was VP of Sales @ Engine Yard, where she tripled monthly recurring revenue, over the course of her 3+ year tenure, in 3 key leadership roles. It’s not just pricing, it goes all through the rollout, Harry, of what it’s going to look like as we rollout. Loving our podcast content?

Sales Hiring 186

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Outsourcing Services 186

Sales Hacker

JUNE 20, 2022

consumer price index (CPI) increase in April. This is an awful place from which to make decisions. Present a united leadership front. In a recession, sellers will also look to the whole leadership group (HR, Product, IT etc.) 68% of buyers who see personal value will pay a higher price. Don’t panic.

Sales Hiring 84

Sales Hiring Strategy Sales Leadership 84

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2020

How does John think about the role of leadership in a crisis such as this? Where does John believe many leadership teams go wrong in times such as this? How can leadership teams ensure that a crisis is not self-fulfilling and how can one prevent that mindset? You’ve got executive people who want thought leadership.

Scale 205

Scale Leadership Technology Strategy 205

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2024

Maybe endless price increases,” Jason says. You can see the growth on the platform side with Azure, Google, and AWS and how much it’s accelerating in AI. The chart estimates spend will grow 20% to $675B. If we’re adding 20%, where is the money going? To some extent, it’s not clear. A lot of it is moving to versions of AI.

CTO Hire 136

CTO Hire AI Venture Capital Sales Hiring 136

FastSpring

DECEMBER 21, 2020

In about 2002, I got into more of a leadership position for satellite offices of larger companies. When we were trying to sell a service, we wanted a tool that would replace proposals and create a faster buying process that would initiate engagement when displaying our pricing. But I do enjoy running an awful lot.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Development Team Review Software Review AWS 78

SaaStr

JUNE 15, 2021

We’ve done a ton of terrific sessions with the Twilio leadership over the years, including 4 different deep dives with Jeff Lawson, CEO and co-founder. How sales worked, how pricing worked, how billboards work, and more. It’s an obviously a great way to differentiate your pricing. Jason : The entry point.

Scale 278

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Engineering Wireless 278

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 7, 2021

Bringing Sales & Leadership with Heart and Ladies Happy Hour to the sales community. I went through a VP of Sales Program with SaaSy Sales Leadership — the moment I realized I didn’t want to be a VP of Sales. She is a Speaker and Hostess for LinkedIn Live. What is one a-ha moment you’ve had in your sales career?

Scale 130

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 130

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2019

And what that has resulted in is that you have CIOs and their leadership teams are basically involved in architecting systems across the company and what those basically mean. What would you advise in terms of that trade off of discount for testimonial versus no, we’re holding far more price? Harry Stebbings: Totally.

Technical Advisors 167

Technical Advisors Scale Technical Review Payment Solutions 167

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2019

And those of us and those of you who are involved in these companies, even the successful ones look an awful lot more like this. There were a dozen super well-funded, really good software companies trying to be the market leader in marketing automation and that lengthened sales cycles, and it reduced pricing, it reduced margins.

SaaS 136

SaaS Sales Hiring Scale Innovation 136

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2019

And we were using a solution from Amazon AWS… We had one big issue first, which was a number of regions they were supporting were not the same vendors. Nothing was perfectly a good for our problem and especially our scale was so big, we were already processing billions of API code that the price was too high for us.

Scale 120

Scale Scaling CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 120

BetterCloud

MARCH 31, 2020

Is there transparent pricing listed on the website? If it’s hosted on AWS and some AWS AZs go down, do they have continuity built in? Does using it remind me of Windows XP/2000? (No No seriously, this is a real litmus test that otherwise modern applications sometimes fail.). Administration. Does it support SSO? Is there an API?

SaaS 59

SaaS AWS Software Review Systems Review 59

ProfitWell

SEPTEMBER 25, 2019

One of the most famous lines from Citizen Kane is, “It's no trick to make an awful lot of money, if that's all you want is to do is make a lot of money.” It is vital for mapping out values: what value to offer in the market, how it’s priced, and how it’s paid for by your customers. If only that statement were as true as it seemed.

Payments 40

Payments Revenue Payment Methods SaaS Payments 40

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2022

I’m going to get the numbers wrong, I think Amazon has 10,000 open positions out in AWS. Frankly, product and even engineering, marketing, and sales are all pretty darn similar at a price point. That’s not helping the lack of hiring, and everyone that’s big is hiring like there’s no tomorrow.

Sales Hiring 220

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling 220

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2019

We had a great easy-to-use pricing model. Sameer Dhokalia: It turns out if you do ask those two basic questions of 100 people in your business, you will learn an awful lot about what needs to be focused on. And that was an important shift, I think, for our leadership team. It was still a ubiquitous market. That was perfect.

Scale 125

Scale Acquisition Scaling Sales Hiring 125

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2019

That’s certainly true in developer tooling (AWS), sales and support (Salesforce), MarTech (Adobe), commerce (Square), HR tech (Workday) and even vertical markets (Veeva). We’re seeing three drivers of lower lifetime value: feature commoditization, less pricing power (price wars), and worsening churn. Now it’s table stakes.

Scale 70

Scale Startup Technical Review Software Review 70

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2019

That’s certainly true in developer tooling (AWS), sales and support (Salesforce), MarTech (Adobe), commerce (Square), HR tech (Workday) and even vertical markets (Veeva). We’re seeing three drivers of lower lifetime value: feature commoditization, less pricing power (price wars), and worsening churn. Now it’s table stakes.

Scale 51

Scale Startup Technical Review Software Review 51

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2019

That’s certainly true in developer tooling (AWS), sales and support (Salesforce), MarTech (Adobe), commerce (Square), HR tech (Workday) and even vertical markets (Veeva). We’re seeing three drivers of lower lifetime value: feature commoditization, less pricing power (price wars), and worsening churn. Now it’s table stakes.

Scale 40

Scale Startup Technical Review Software Review 40

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2020

And I remember like AWS was growing really quickly. And at the time there was a big debate of, “Will big companies ever really use AWS?” And at the end of the day, that’s a leadership decision from founders of saying, “What kind of place do we want this to be for people to work?” As a team together.

Sales Hiring 173

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Recruiting 173

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2024

Also, don’t miss out on discounted prices for SaaStr Annual 2024 tickets. ” “I hated Katie at that company meeting, it was awful.” Katie Burke: I mean it’s really hard, and the reality is it needs to be someone that your leadership team respects, listens to, and responds to. It’s really tough.

Part-Time CTO 261

Part-Time CTO CTO Hire CTO Coach CTO 261

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2019

Why does Liat reject the notion of “hands off leadership?”. Pricing? * I think in general it’s only fair to the team, especially to those top performers, for the leadership of that organization to address performance issues as soon as possible. I think our pricing strategy will continue to evolve. Product roadmap?

Sales Hiring 113

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Underperforming Technical Team 113

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2020

I’ve held a bunch of technology leadership roles in startups, in rocket ships and turnarounds, including about 10 years at Google, and just over three years leading efforts at Evernote. So over the course of those 20 or so odd years in technology leadership roles. Shifting to the fifth is around pricing.

Scale 186

Scale Sales Hiring Pricing Sales Recruiting 186