SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: It’s Now Year 2 of the Venture Downturn Clawbacks and Tracking-to-Cash: Two Sales Management Tools to Be Thoughtful With 8 Things That Are Just Harder in SaaS Now Tier 1 VC is Great. But More Money May Be Even Better. What’s Holding Up Buyers?:

Scale 223

Scale AWS Scaling Enterprise 223

SaaStr

JULY 26, 2021

Q: Dear SaaStr: Should a Startup Founder Handle Sales Themself When First Getting Started? The “best” sequence for building a repeatable sales engine is roughly: The CEO/founder should close at least the first 10 (or 20 or whatever) customers. It’s to scale a tiny engine into something bigger. That way, she knows.

Sales Hiring 265

Sales Hiring Scale Startup AWS 265

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Scale. 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. AWS’s marketplace has seen 1.5 Rico Mallozzi, Sr.

Scale 191

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 191

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2024

Seat Contractions Have Brought NRR Down From 120% to 111% While 111% NRR is still quite an engine at this scale, the drop in NRR from seat contractions explains a good chunk of the headwinds Okta has seen. #2. AWS alone generated $175m of contract value for Okta, growing 130%. Way, way too many startups focus 100% on direct sales.

Fractional VPE 208

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Scale SMB 208

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Pursuing Two Different Segments: The Tale of Startups vs. Google Cloud Platform, on the other hand, is in a very different set that also competes with Microsoft, but AWS is considered their biggest competitor in the market. What they’re seeing with GenAI and Google Cloud is an opportunity to grab share from AWS.

Cloud 230

Cloud Scale AWS AI 230

Hitenism

NOVEMBER 7, 2016

In 2006, after Amazon Web Services (AWS) helped pioneer what we now call the cloud, product development changed forever. Today, one-third of daily internet users visit websites built on top of AWS. AWS is now an $11.5B Working backwards isn’t a silver bullet that guarantees you success on the scale of AWS.

AWS 189

AWS New CTO Scale CTO 189

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2023

Still, always helpful to see how any leader does free to paid at scale. Spending a Hefty 50% of Revenue on Sales and Marketing. They spend a pretty high 50% of all revenue on sales and marketing — and that’s up from last year. And interesting to see they are growing the top of the funnel, Free, faster than Paid: #3.

Scale 188

Scale AWS Scaling Revenue 188

Sales Hacker

APRIL 23, 2024

Lessons learned from scaling innovative products and go-to-market motions at AWS. 32:49 – Challenges faced and insights gained during Linda’s time at AWS. Why a modern go-to-market approach requires moving beyond legacy CRM systems. How Common Room unifies siloed data to enable a 360-degree view of the customer.

Sales Recruiting 81

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Management 81

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 6, 2023

If you’re selling sales and marketing software, like Zoominfo, it can seem a lot tougher than 12-18 months ago. Growth in public cloud services (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Snowflake, etc.) If you’re selling cloud infrastructure, for the most part, growth may be down a smidge but is still strong, e.g., MongoDB.

Merchant Services 257

Merchant Services Azure Software AWS 257

Baremetrics

OCTOBER 31, 2021

When you first get started, effectively any hosting setup will do the trick: your application is small, you have relatively few customers, and perhaps (depending on your sales process) expectations around performance and reliability are a bit lower during the beta phase. Are you growing and want to scale? Over time all of that changes.

AWS 115

AWS DevOps as a Service Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review 115

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

The SaaS sales model seems so well-established, as hundreds of founders build their businesses and raise funding. Mark Roberge, Founder of Stage 2 Capital and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, shares insights from his years of experience into common SaaS sales missteps and how you can avoid them.

Sales Hiring 182

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 182

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

Even If It’s Awful for Series A-E Rounds. SaaStr 628: Revenue Alignment: How to Pull Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Together with Divvy CRO Sterling Snow  2. SaaStr 629: CRO Confidential: Sales Recruitment in 2023 For Candidates and Hiring Managers With Flexport’s Ben Braverman   3. Really, Really, Low.

Sales Recruiting 179

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AWS 179

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. Ready to scale to $100+ million ARR?

Scale 98

Scale Pricing Scaling AWS 98

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2023

AWS is seeing this, and so is Snowflake. But it’s the $1M+ ones that are fueling the big numbers at this scale. Also you can see sales & marketing headcount is basically flat, while hiring is almost all in engineering / R&D. So when CFOs and others tighten budgets, they’ll also try to buy less Snowflake.

Headcount 192

Headcount Scale Sales Hiring AWS 192

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 11, 2024

It looks at the YoY dollar change in quarterly revenue from the hyperscalers (just looking at Azure / AWS because the data goes back further) going back a few years. If we break this down and look at Azure and AWS independently (graphs below), you’ll see how the AWS “swings” were a lot more volatile.

Cloud 177

Cloud Software Azure AWS 177

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 279

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 279

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 20, 2021

So we’ve had a lot of fun in our 5 Interesting Learnings profiling the top SaaS and Cloud companies at scale, from Slack to Zoom, from Shopify to Datadog, from Box to DropBox. But are AWS, Azure and Google Cloud just too big for us to learn from? And it’s gone much more aggressive in its sales motions.

Cloud 207

Cloud Azure AWS Scale 207

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

Customers range from AWS skills-builder platforms with billions of users to Zoom using it for customers and employees. When a new sales leader comes in, they usually say the data is messed up, difficult to comprehend, and unclear about where leads are coming from. The bigger you scale, the harder this can be.

Sales Hiring 193

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Outsourced Development 193

FastSpring

NOVEMBER 9, 2023

Since 2016, SaaS North has been recognized as THE Canadian hub for rapidly-scaling SaaS founders and their teams. It is the largest in-person event in the country—2,000+ attendees, 800+ companies, and 100+ speakers—along with features such as Betakit Keynote Stage, AWS Pitchfest, Workspaces Tradeshow.

Merchant Services 126

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Methods Payment Services 126

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. It amounted in a lot of wasted time.

Startup 178

Startup Scale Underperforming Technical Team AWS 178

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2022

Patricia Hanna, VP Americas Sales Ops @ Confluent. Shradha Kothari, Chief of Staff, SVP & GM North America Sales @ Twilio. Jen Dawson @ AWS. Dale Chang, Operations Partner @ Scale Venture Partners (panel). Patricia Hanna, VP Americas Sales Ops @ Confluent. Lars Nilsson, VP, Global Sales Development @ Snowflake.

CTO 200

CTO Scale New CTO AWS 200

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 8, 2020

To make a partnership successful, your startup will need to teach another sales team to sell your product. The sales team asks for more leads. After scaling sales enablement successfully, the next step is to understand where your customers are. Marketplaces: AWS marketplace, Heroku marketplace, Salesforce marketplace.

Scale 321

Scale AWS Consulting Sales Enablement 321

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2021

3 days, more than 100+ sessions and 300 expert speakers, who will be sharing their best practices to help you scale faster, build smarter, and close more customers. From AWS to Vimeo: this year’s speaker lineup is packed with incredible speakers and content. We just launched the entire SaaStr Annual 2021 Agenda !!

Scale 256

Scale AWS B2C SaaS 256

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2022

Patricia Hanna, VP Americas Sales Ops @ Confluent. Shradha Kothari, Chief of Staff, SVP & GM North America Sales @ Twilio. Jen Dawson @ AWS. Dale Chang, Operations Partner @ Scale Venture Partners (panel). Bonney Pelley, SVP, Strategy + Operations @ New Relic. Farrah B, VP Business Operations @ Cribl.

New CTO 178

New CTO Scale CTO AWS 178

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

How can that scale over time? How many sales reps, how much marketing spend, how many engineers will you really need? Does it make sense, and scale, from an input-output perspective? Worth hiring a sales team, raising some venture capital (even a modest amount). What will your ACV really be? appeared first on SaaStr.

Scale 198

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital AWS 198

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2022

Its PLG-assisted sales motion has kept it capital efficient, and today it’s worth $2.7 But let’s step back a bit … the damage hasn’t been even, and capital-efficient SaaS stocks in many cases have held up pretty well. A few case studies: * Sprout Social IPO’d in December 2019 at an $800m market-cap. It’s tripled. It’s doubled.

AWS 209

AWS SaaS Cloud Scale 209

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

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 Sales – What Corners Can I Cut? A bad VP of Sales is a total disaster. And to some extent, vice-versa.

Sales Hiring 271

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 271

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 20, 2016

Call me when it scales.” The point is that getting to $1-2 million in ARR probably has less predictive value concerning a company’s ability to get to true scale than most people think – or at least thought some years ago. Being a seed investor I’m trying to find SaaS companies that can scale before they have scaled.

Scale 192

Scale Scaling SaaS AWS 192

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. Basic marketing and selling at a global scale is becoming easy too. The second army are your main competitors. Mid-stage startups.

Software Review 224

Software Review Outsourcing Services Software Outsourced Development 224

Chart Mogul

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Analyze our performance and identify problem points Highlight the best performing lead sources Run sales forecasting Facilitate strategic decision-making Run our sales process and communicate with customers In addition, ChartMogul teams use various tools to manage go-t0-market functions, including Zendesk, Customer.io, and Livestorm.

Engineering 52

Engineering K8S orchestration (Kubernetes) Data AWS 52

CloudGeometry

MARCH 22, 2022

In this blog series, we explore how these three dimensions figure into key technical recommendations which enable scale in pursuit of SaaS business growth. Similarly, there’s a lot to learn from talking to the people who talk to your customers in sales, marketing, and customer success.

DevOps as a Service 130

DevOps as a Service Software Delivery Well Architected Framework AWS 130

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 8, 2023

While many gravitate towards major industry events for announcements, Joseph has a hot take (and we love a spicy take): do not announce a major new feature at a major industry conference (such as RSA Conference or AWS re:Invent). Now organizations can customize demos at scale even easier. You will get lost in the noise.

Sales Recruiting 99

Sales Recruiting Generative AI AI AWS 99

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2024

When you take the data, you may have a business goal of making more sales or delighting the customer. What should founders know about the modern AI stack that Enterprises can scale on? Being able to size up what kind of training you need and making choices based on that answer will determine the stack Enterprises can scale on.

AI Search 204

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 204

The Angel VC

MAY 12, 2018

Before reading the S1, I didn’t know if Dropbox has become somewhat more focused on enterprise sales over the years. Salesforce.com generates a similar (actually, even higher) amount of revenue per employee, but the company is almost twice as old and has much bigger scale, so you’d expect them to be more efficient. 9 – Eleven 9s?

AWS 187

AWS Scale Subscription Payment Features 187

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

This is the final episode of season two of Scale, our series exploring the minds of brilliant leaders and thinkers from the likes of Google, Yelp, and Udemy: folks who have each successfully propelled their company to a new stage of growth. . are all-in on personalization and the massive potential to serve customers more intimately at scale.

Scale 181

Scale Marketing AWS Machine Learning 181

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2021

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. This is sort of awful. Otherwise, you’ll stall out somewhere between $1m and $5m in ARR, when you need to build a real set of VPs. And/or Late. I’m out.

Sales Recruiting 336

Sales Recruiting Scale AWS Investment 336

Sales Hacker

MARCH 1, 2019

Sales Engagement: How the World’s Fastest Growing Companies are Modernizing Sales Through Humanization at Scale is a labor of love. I’m so proud to be sending it into the world at just the right time, when it can make a big difference for a lot of sales organizations. Why a Book on Sales Engagement?

Scale 58

Scale Engagement Sales AWS 58