Point Nine Land

JANUARY 30, 2019

If building the infrastructure of a SaaS product seems easy nowadays (with AWS and the myriad of developer APIs available), it was not the case fifteen years ago. From web hosting (AWS) to email (Sendgrid) or search (Algolia), there’s no shortage of infrastructure tools available to build a SaaS. Infrastructure. Integration.

AI Search 70

AI Search AI B2B Software 70

FastSpring

MARCH 10, 2023

And then at project management and at opportunities for making estimates and doing sales stuff and all this is linked up together and you only need one solution which Jaya, it has changed, I think, as a special specialist in that area would say, this was my maybe attracted me because it was the idea of the 90s. And Daylite does exactly that.

Consulting 78

Consulting Underperforming Technical Team Interviewing Software 78

Outseta

MAY 8, 2020

There’s an awful lot of nuance here and the devil is in the details. For example, if the product isn’t up to snuff or if the onboarding process is just a bit rough, even perfect execution by the sales and marketing teams will yield lackluster results.

Part-Time VPE 102

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 102

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2019

And if you’ve just hired a cohort of 10 sales reps six months ago and everybody’s failing? The board doesn’t want people learning how to be VP of Sales. There’s a bunch of people across the street who’ve raised 75 million dollars or 150 million of venture capital and they are trying to kill me.

Sales Hiring 119

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Scale Startup 119

Outseta

AUGUST 23, 2017

We don’t have any agreed upon budgets, or any sales reps with quotas. Sales quotas and forecasts can hurt your business… and we’ve all seen it Let me start by saying that I live in the same world that you do, one where it’s nearly impossible to avoid being beaten over the head with messaging citing the importance of goal setting.

Forecasting 52

Forecasting Scale Underperforming Technical Team Technical Review 52

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 1, 2019

Which means we’ve sort of blanketed the ecosystem of early stage accelerators, early stage venture capital firms, and been able to – from that entire startup life cycle perspective, across all different types of marketing – stay in front of the customer. Level One is marketing, sales or BD.

Strategy 36

Strategy Payment Methods Payment Services Startup 36

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2019

I’ve been in venture capital for about 20 years, made my first SaaS investment about 18 years ago and have really been focused on this space for a long time. I work at a firm called Shasta Ventures. And Marketo very, very early on had to make a very significant team change in our first VP of sales.

SaaS 144

SaaS Sales Hiring Scale Innovation 144

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

394: Where is Venture Capital today? Sunil Dhaliwal: I was at one of the biggest firms around and I think we had a $200 million fund and people were like, I can’t believe we’re running $200 million in venture capital. The first is: It’s the best proxy for AWS growth in the private markets.

Sales Recruiting 167

Sales Recruiting Development Team Review Technical Review Sales Hiring 167

SaaStr

DECEMBER 24, 2022

So this was a Truly Terrible, Very Bad, Just Plain Awful year for SaaS IPOs — and IPOs in general. The downstream effects on venture capital and more are still to come. And they paid 10x+ TTM sales for these deals. The IPO window is closed. Shut, mostly. since 2021. Today, it looks like almost no one will.

Venture Capital 284

Venture Capital AWS SaaS Acquisition 284

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2020

Oracle Squares Up to AWS with Cloud Cost Calculator. A very interesting look into how “distributions” work in venture capital, i.e. when VCs share their gains with their own investors. A $400m sale to Facebook sounds amazing. Shopify, Twitter and Square have announced folks never have to go back to the office.

Cloud 280

Cloud Venture Capital AWS Pricing 280

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2019

I’m a vice president at Bessemer Venture Partners, which is a venture capital firm, which was very lucky to be a part of SendGrid’s journey. We were signing up hundreds of new paying customers every month with five sales reps. I’ve never been behind a table before so I feel very talk show hosty.

Scale 132

Scale Acquisition Scaling Sales Hiring 132

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 it’s basically for every 100 million in SaaS revenue, you need about 300 to 350 people to make that happen, regardless of how they’re allocated in sales or R & D.

Sales Hiring 172

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Recruiting 172

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2019

78 times in the AWS … ADABAS was referenced in the Amazon press release and earnings announcement. Carbon Black, DocuSign, SurveyMonkey, Tenable, Smartsheet, Dropbox; fantastic names that in aggregate, when you put together the three ways to buy stocks, public, IPOs, private venture capital dollars and then outright acquisitions.

Cloud 167

Cloud Scale Finance Retention 167