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

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

For SaaS businesses that target smaller SMB customer segments, gross retention is typically in the mid to low 80’s with net expansion in the ~105% range. This is why the consumption players (Snowflake, Mongo, Confluent, Azure, AWS, etc) so more variability in the macro slowdown.

AI 183

AI Revenue Cloud Technical Advisors 183

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 100

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 100

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

So to serve both segments at the simultaneously, ZoomInfo has been rolling out a Product-led sales motion, that gives the ability for an SMB customer to sign up directly on their website for a free trial and grow into a paid customer, without ever having to talk to an sales rep or go through a demo process.

New CTO 250

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring AWS 250

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 13, 2018

I saw we had the opportunity to do that in London and to do something that will be new for Facebook, in the same way that AWS was a new business model and product line for Amazon and a bet that paid off very well. We are going from having an enterprise business to having a mid-market business to investing in an SMB business.

Scale 151

Scale Marketplace as a Service Mobile Sales Hiring 151

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2020

And then I spent a year at Salesforce working on Marc Benioff’s extended leadership team, and really had a chance to learn how important trust can be, and also really learn from Salesforce, from Mark, how do you really build a global SaaS leader at scale? It’s most severe in the SMB world.

Software Review 185

Software Review Scale Technical Review SaaS 185

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2020

And I remember being at that Dreamforce in 2009, which was awful. So on a scale of one to 10, what type of feedback do you want? The CEO says SaaStr scale is really important that everyone drops everything, and it’s not that important. ” I’m like, that sounds awful. I mean, literally.

Sales Hiring 210

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 210

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

The other thing that dropped our odds of success was the fact that we were focused on small business, on the SMB market, and everyone we talked to, literally everyone. Do not…,” and the reason is no one hardly ever has succeeded in building a big business in SMB. I’m paraphrasing… [laughter]. It got better.

Part-Time VPE 220

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 220

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2022

I just thought that if there was anybody left at the end of day two that had anything they wanted to talk about, scaling SaaS, fundraising, hiring, anything, and I could be helpful, we could do a little extra Q&A. I’m going to get the numbers wrong, I think Amazon has 10,000 open positions out in AWS. It works out.

Sales Hiring 198

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling 198

Casey Accidental

DECEMBER 11, 2023

In a previous post , I talked about how product work post-product/market fit shifts from zero to one innovation to features, growth, and scaling work. Pinterest and Snapchat were compared a lot because we started scaling at around the same time. You can read parts 1 and 2 here and here. I have written more about platforms here.

Payments 113

Payments Scale Payment Solutions Technical Review 113

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 18, 2023

Whether you’re trying to scale your business or scale your career – you’re in the right spot to learn from the best of the best. Best case is that you validate your fit and scale and worst case is you have great product feedback to go build before you try again. Remember this is an experiment.

Scale 68

Scale VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Enterprise 68

OpenView Labs

MAY 5, 2021

Related podcast episode: How MongoDB Scaled Their Open-Source Product with a Bottom-Up and Top-Down Sales Motion. However, a good question to ask yourself when considering the reduced friction is: Could you get the same benefit with a scaled-back, freemium offering? Are you targeting enterprise or mid-market/SMB?

Business 52

Business SMB Scale DevOps as a Service 52

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2020

Then, we’ll end of the day with me and Stewart Butterfield and obviously Slack is doing well, but Slack also has a massive SMB base and its challenges. For example, we’ve got like Roman from Gorgeous that Sam knows at the end of the day talking about dealing with SMB turns, they did something interesting at Gorgeous.

Merchant Services 179

Merchant Services Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 179

Mucker Capital

APRIL 6, 2023

But if you target SMBs or consumers, PLG is a fantastic way, and you have a very large user base to reach out to as well. If you have a very complicated product–for example you sell AWS or you sell Snowflake–those are infrastructure products. Then, any marketing budget or any acquisition effort you do at large scale is not wasted.

Startup 52

Startup Scale CTO Hire Outsourced Development 52

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2020

We’ve all seen AWS and what they’ve done with their platform. Even at spectacular scale, they’re still growing at 30%. Law number one, in the cloud economy, scale wins. Everyone knows Shopify for what it is today, but in the earlier days, it really was the best SaaS platform for SMB eCommerce providers.

Sales Hiring 156

Sales Hiring Scale Payments Cloud 156

OpenView Labs

JUNE 17, 2019

Think about the last time you went to buy something and had an awful experience with a sales rep (in any capacity – the mall, a store, online, or at work). And candidate experience is essential if you want to scale quickly. There is a big difference between the Enterprise market and the SMB market. How did you feel?

Sales Recruiting 53

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 53

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 7, 2021

Cassie is an operating partner at Primary Venture Partners, where she works closely with Primary’s portfolio companies to help them build, scale and optimize their go-to-market efforts. It took me a long time to admit to myself that I don’t enjoy transactional SMB sales. What you do matters, but character matters more.

Scale 130

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 130

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2019

I do want to dig in there, because you were such a transformational moment in Twitter’s trajectory, and so kind of diving in there and really starting on the people side, I’d love to hear what were your biggest lessons on how to hire successfully at such scale? Often early stage startups post raise need to scale and hire quickly.

Sales Hiring 108

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Underperforming Technical Team 108