Clouded Judgement

MARCH 28, 2025

Fast forward to the launch of AWS and the public cloud. And now, engineering and distribution (go-to-market) constraints are greatly reduced with AI. Someone could build a better solution in a short period of time and commoditize the market. That juxtaposition is what makes investing in venture markets these days so fun!

Cloud 302

Cloud AI Scale Scaling 302

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2022

From seed funding to going public, Spenser Skates, CEO, and co-founder of Amplitude will discuss his journey building Amplitude’s Digital Optimization System from the ground up and empowering organizations of all sizes — from startups to Fortune 100 companies — to build better products. Why Customer Success and Product Should be Best Friends.

AWS 246

AWS Customer Success Scale Sales Hiring 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2024

ARR, Zendesk today gets 14% of new business from startups. On top of that, if you look at their top accounts globally, 33 of the top 50 customers by ARR are startups. You have to think about how you will differentiate and craft your offers from the rest of your marketing. At Zendesk, startups got six months free.

Startup 262

Startup Scale Underperforming Technical Team AWS 262

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

These early conversations helped shape Databricks product, pricing, and go-to-market strategy. For startups looking to land their first big customers, Rons advice is simple: Leverage existing user communities. Because thats how their customerswho were used to AWS, Azure, and GCP pricingexpected to buy. Ron recalls.

Scale 176

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 176

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2023

Dear SaaStr: I’m an Early Employee and Have a Chance to Sell Some of My Startup Shares. Marc Benioff sold a huge amount of his Salesforce stock before its run from $2b to $100b+ in market cap. Note: an updated SaaStr Classic answer) The post Dear SaaStr: I’m an Early Employee and Have a Chance to Sell Some of My Startup Shares.

Startup 273

Startup AWS Pricing Marketing 273

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 6, 2023

There are 4 questions a startup should ask themselves about building a startup that uses generative AI. There are 4 questions startups should ask themselves about building with generative AI. Market : how to compete with incumbents? I had a blast putting this deck together. Moats : how to develop competitive advantage?

Generative AI 228

Generative AI AI GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Startup 228

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2021

A lot of our SaaS older times don’t quite know what to make with a lot of B2B startups these days, let alone some public SaaS companies. So many startups these days are claiming they have “ARR” from revenue that … doesn’t recur. 220m in ARR, $13B market cap. Well of course it does. Only half does.

Merchant Services 360

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 360

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Alison brings the perspective of all sides of a startup, from investing to SaaS to Cloud. With the marketing team, there are a lot of the classic functions — brand marketing, product marketing, and partner marketing. What they’re seeing with GenAI and Google Cloud is an opportunity to grab share from AWS.

Cloud 309

Cloud Scale AWS AI 309

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 8, 2020

Recently, we welcomed Lisa Lawson to SaaS Office Hours to talk about building a channel go-to-market strategy for SaaS companies. The first place to start is to learn to sell your startup’s product well. The first place to start is to learn to sell your startup’s product well. Here are my notes. Where to Start.

Scale 349

Scale AWS Consulting Sales Enablement 349

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2024

1: How Sales and Marketing Have Shifted Since 2020 Expectations and the types of people working in SaaS have shifted over the past few years, and much more in sales, marketing, and customer success. He had a friend help him hire an email marketer to send ticket emails to the events. You can listen to the full podcast here. #1:

Sales Hiring 302

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Marketing Scale 302

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

This function can be outsourced in the early days of a startup, but it is usually brought in-house after Series B. The team is typically highly cross-functional, working together with sales, product, engineering, and marketing, and the goal is to help the other teams make better decisions through data and financial modeling.

Scale 239

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 239

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 30, 2022

By building a strong business tech stack for your startup – covering everything from incorporation to growing long-lasting customer relationships – you can not only win back time and establish best practices, but create a solid foundation for your business to grow. Ready to take your startup to the next level?

Scale 164

Scale Payment Services Startup AWS 164

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

Well, certainly it exploded in 2021, in my portfolio at least, if perhaps not as dramatically as in the public markets. The startup I invested in that were acquired by PE in the 2020-2021 Boom were acquired for 8x in one case, 12x in another, and 15x in a third. So what do they pay on average? You might be worth less ?

AWS 318

AWS SaaS Pricing Acquisition 318

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Datadog, ZoomInfo, Atlassian, AWS: Epic Growth — But Some Real Headwinds For The First Time. When You Fall Out of Product-Market Fit. The Simple Reason Startups That Just Raised $100s of Millions Are Doing Layoffs.

Sales Recruiting 291

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 291

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2023

I’m using Google Workspace (Gmail, Drive), AWS , Vercel , Slack , Figma , Notion , Salesforce , HubSpot , Secureframe , Clari , and Zapier. #2. Last week we had a great one with Luca Penati, CMO & CCO of BEE, check it out here. This week we have Shrav Mehta, Founder and CEO of Secureframe! #1. What’s your core stack of apps today?

AWS 298

AWS compliance AI Startup 298

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

" As with many other companies reporting strength in the market, AI & unstructured data workloads are fueling growth. ” For startups operating within data, which tops buyers’ lists , this news further signals a stronger market in 2024. ” “We are seeing stability in customer expansion patterns.

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 187

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Azure Data Startup 187

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 19, 2024

My hope is that this analysis can provide startup entrepreneurs with a framework for how to manage their businesses around SaaS metrics (e.g., It’s worth pointing out that Azure is a bit above the long term trendline, while AWS is still below (but accelerating up). Either a run up, or a draw down from market factors.

Cloud 320

Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Azure 320

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2024

Salesforce and Marc Benioff at first said the core market, security identity, was too small of a market. They are overall benefitting here from the growth in Cloud and security budgets, even if smaller companies and startups and scaleups are struggling more. AWS alone generated $175m of contract value for Okta, growing 130%.

Fractional VPE 282

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Scale SMB 282

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 259

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 259

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

Innovative startups. The first army are innovative startups. 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. Basic marketing and selling at a global scale is becoming easy too.

Outsourcing Services 224

Outsourcing Services Software Review Software Outsourced Development 224

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 25, 2023

In addition, Microsoft & Snowflake announced a deeper AI go-to-market partnership with Snowflake. For startups building LLM-based applications & infrastructure, this alters the calculus of selecting a cloud. Five years ago, many startups defaulted to AWS for the generous credits, broad catalog, & rapid pace of innovation.

Artificial Intelligence 240

Artificial Intelligence AI AWS Cloud 240

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2021

As a startup, you’re doing a million things at once: building a product, answering customer tickets, developing a sales playbook, trying out different marketing hacks, and keeping the lights on. The reality is all large companies, and more and more mid-market companies, will require a SOC 2 report from their vendors.

Enterprise 278

Enterprise Software Review GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Azure 278

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2022

So the public markets are in tumult. This is just starting to roll through the private markets and is going to make a bumpy rest of the year. Revenue multiples are how much VCs, investors, and ultimately, an IPO and public markets will value each dollar of revenue. And indeed there is today! A Covid Hangover in SaaS stocks.’

SaaS 348

SaaS Azure Cloud AWS 348

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

Even If It’s Awful for Series A-E Rounds. Why VCs Love Founders That Respond to Email Almost Instantly 90%-95% of Salespeople Won’t Make It At Your Startup. SaaStr 628: Revenue Alignment: How to Pull Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Together with Divvy CRO Sterling Snow  2. Really, Really, Low.

Sales Recruiting 244

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AWS 244

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

The real conflict is around trying to serve both sets of messaging and marketing at the same time since how you market to SMBs is very different than Enterprise customers. So, that’s where the battle happens of going to market for Enterprise customers without neglecting SMBs. Is it Cheaper or Better to go PLG?

New CTO 312

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 312

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

TJ Nahigian, co-founder and Managing Partner of Base10 Partners, and Luci Fonseca, Partner, deep dive into the current GenAI landscape, incumbents vs. startups, and the six questions founders should ask themselves to drive value from GenAI. Startup platforms are OpenAI, Hugging Face, and Cohere. How are they doing this?

Generative AI 293

Generative AI Outsourcing Services AI Software Review 293

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. Is there a big Total Addressable Market? Does this market need disruption? The commercial market you choose to build and offer your customers defines you, yes.

Scale 259

Scale Scaling AWS Sales Hiring 259

Clouded Judgement

OCTOBER 11, 2024

Coming out of that, every company from the largest enterprise to the smallest startup started thinking very critically about cost optimizations. Multiples shown below are calculated by taking the Enterprise Value (market cap + debt - cash) / NTM revenue. So why was it stronger than normal last year? Where was wasted spend with low ROI.

Cloud 170

Cloud Cost optimization & reporting GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Review 170

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2023

AWS re:Invent : AWS re:Invent is Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) annual conference, focused on cloud computing and SaaS-related services. The event brings together developers, architects, and IT professionals to explore the latest AWS developments.

ChatGPT 189

ChatGPT AWS SaaS CTO 189

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

A problem many founders are trying to solve right now is going upmarket to Enterprise, and Lemkin and Grinich have a passionate perspective that every startup should take steps to check those Enterprise boxes in their first year. WorkOS is evolving, so how can they build a Go-To-Market function that satisfies all these people?

Enterprise readiness 283

Enterprise readiness Payment Solutions Enterprise Payments 283

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2021

From AWS to Vimeo: this year’s speaker lineup is packed with incredible speakers and content. A Marketer’s Playbook for Building a Sustainable Growth Strategy with Datadog’s CMO Alex Rosemblat. Why Intent is the New Lead: 2021 State of Marketing Technology with Marqeta’s CMO Vidya Peters.

Scale 201

Scale AWS B2C SaaS 201

Chargify

AUGUST 17, 2020

However, with the introduction of Events-Based Billing by Chargify, this event-based billing model is now available to small and medium-sized businesses, giving them the ability to offer the same pricing models and bill customers just as precisely as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or the popular voice and messaging platform Twilio.

AWS 98

AWS Payment Services SaaS Payments Payments 98

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2024

A lot of you reading SaaStr are probably more B2B SaaS oriented and may not be paying attention to the consumer market, but it’s already massive and is continuing to grow quickly. Back to the consumer market. You can tune into Workshop Wednesday every single Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST to connect with top execs from companies like.

Payment Features 301

Payment Features Subscription B2B Mobile 301

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

I’m an investor in maybe 30 SaaS startups. Does it cost so, so much to host a few million lines of code on AWS? And your marketing costs should be manageable as your mini-brand kicks in. 18 in marketing? Because you end up basically having to pay the same in sales and marketing, no matter what.

Scale 293

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 293

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

That you absolutely, positively, have to only hire “Rockstars” in your startups. If you don’t think you need a great VP of Sales, Product, Marketing, Customer Success, and Engineering — then all that all that means is you’ve never worked with a great one. Head of Marketing – Where Can I Settle?

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 284

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 3, 2014

Startups benefit from a booming public market for three reasons. As a consequence of higher stock prices, stock increases in value and cash becomes easier to raise and relatively less expensive, both of which entice tech publics to acquire startups, extending the current vibrant M&A market.

Startup 100

Startup Trends AWS Marketing 100

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 28, 2020

If you’ve used the AWS IAM (identity access management) console, you realize how complex access control has become. Salesforce expects marketing data in a particular place in the database and reads it directly. Cloud is more expensive for larger enterprises. The second is control. Instead, it’s done at the database.

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 223

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) Cloud Enterprise Data 223