SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2024

So clearly AI is rapidly changing the way we do sales, but how will it all shake out? Over in the contact center and post-sales space, we can already see 20%+ of customer support execs been routinely replaced by AI. But what about the more personal sales side?

AI 328

AI B2B Engineering Customer Support 328

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What Are Some of the Most Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make Pitching VCs? I’ve invested almost $200m as part of SaaStr Fund / 2024. A few top mistakes founders make: #1. Not making cold email truly great. Don’t ask to pick someone’s brain, or coffee. Make the cold email so great, you’d want to invest based on just it alone.

CTO 320

CTO Investment Revenue Marketing 320

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2024

Here’s an uncomfortable truth about SaaS companies: the majority of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it past 12 months. As someone who has both succeeded and failed at making this critical hire, I can tell you that when it works, it’s transformative. When it doesn’t, it’s potentially catastrophic.

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Headcount 306

SaaStr

DECEMBER 31, 2024

So I caught up the other day with the CTO of a leading SaaS company with tens of thousands of customers, growing quickly. AI is all over their homepage and website and comms. I asked him about a particular use case for AI, and his answer shocked me a bit: Honestly, our AI is basically still in beta.

AI 331

AI CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO 331

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

So the latest SaaS leader to cross $1B ARR is Klaviyo. Klaviyo dominates marketing in the Shopify ecosystem and in ecommerce, and just keeps on scaling. It was the only SaaS IPO on 2023. The only one! And at almost $1B ARR, it’s still growing a stunning 34% (!). ” 5 Interesting Learnings: #1.

Scale 306

Scale SMB Scaling Enterprise 306

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2024

SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin recently sat down with HubSpot Chairman and co-founder Brian Halligan , who shared valuable insights on the current state of SaaS, evolving board meeting formats, and how AI is reshaping the industry. Here are the key takeaways from part 1 of this interview.

AI 290

AI Marketing SaaS Interviewing 290

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

When Marc Benioff started Salesforce, he codified the sales playbook. Then Mark Roberge , former Hubspot CRO, wrote The Sales Acceleration Formula with deep insights into quota structures. For the subsequent ten years in software, we’ve optimized every little bit of how we sell it.

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 333

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2025

So the overall “project management” space has seen widely disparate impacts from the SaaS partial downturn of 2022-2024. Asana, strong in B2B2B and selling to tech, was perhaps hit hardest, with growth slowing to 10%. Monday.com by contrast, selling mainly outside of tech, saw growth remain strong at 34%.

AI 306

AI B2B Scaling Trends 306

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2024

What are the most common mistakes I see first time SaaS founders make? Second-time SaaS founders make other mistakes. They think they know more than they do. They spend too much. They often struggle to do things a new way. First-time founders have many positives. But they also make mistakes we tend not to make with experience.

Scale 312

Scale SaaS Social Media Business Model 312

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2024

So it’s interesting how folks craft headlines from data. Carta release its latest funding data the other data for 2024 Year-To-Date here : What you can see is that large, hot AI later stage deals overall are indeed driving venture capital deployments up ~ +17% the year. But that’s for late-stage capital. Most of it AI driven.

Venture Capital 306

Venture Capital AI Data 306

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2024

We’re obviously written up a lot about Fundraising and Investing here on SaaStr.com, but time and time again, SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin has seen so many Founders sign a bad term sheet based on gut instinct, VC celebrity or vibes, and while that may be fine, it’s not enough.

Venture Capital 316

Venture Capital Software Review Investment Startup 316

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2025

The success rate for executive hires at high-growth SaaS companies can be surprisingly low – you’re often lucky if 50-60% of your management team works out long-term.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Scale Systems Review Interviewing 290

SaaStr

OCTOBER 23, 2024

In 2006, BILL CEO and Founder René Lacerte set out to define a category around financial operations for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). Needless to say, he succeeded. At SaaStr’s AI Summit during the SaaStr Annual , René chatted with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin about how BILL has reached half a million customers and $1.3B

SMB 312

SMB Payment Services Payments Payment Methods 312

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Much Should a SaaS Company Invest in Professional Services? A rough yardstick is that most enterprise-focused SaaS companies tend to get about 8%-10% of their revenues from professional services. A few data points: At $800m ARR, Qualtrics was still getting 25% of revenue from professional services.

Investment 304

Investment SaaS SMB Enterprise 304

SaaStr

OCTOBER 18, 2024

SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin joined ZoomInfo’s Season 2 of its ZI Labs Podcast as the opening guest alongside ZoomInfo CEO Henry Schuck. Along with co-host Ben Salzman, Jason and Henry discuss the transformative power of AI within SaaS and the evolving dynamics that are reshaping the landscape of software as a service.

Sales Recruiting 310

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AI 310

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2024

So Thomasz Tunguz put together a great chart summarizing one of my top worries over the past 24+ months in SaaS. He summarized the M&A (acquisitions) of The Top 10 Software Acquirers. And what you can see is there is really almost no liquidity for startups and scale-ups in SaaS and Cloud at the moment.

SaaS 316

SaaS Acquisition Cloud AI 316

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2024

Pricing is more than just a number on a contract — when used thoughtfully, it can become a strategic tool for your SaaS product that can drive product adoption, customer satisfaction, and business growth.

Payments 290

Payments Pricing Scale Revenue 290

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2024

I know for many, this seems a much harder time to find a new job What I can tell you is this. It’s not the crazy hiring market of 2021.

Sales Hiring 289

Sales Hiring Scale Marketing SaaS 289

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2024

Salesforce, Nov 2024: We're hiring 1,000 new sales execs to sell AI!

Sales Hiring 311

Sales Hiring AI Headcount Sales 311

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What’s It Like Being Beaten Up by Investors? It’s a gift, if you view it in the right context. First, don’t take it personally. Everyone that is smart can be tough critic. Everyone with a High IQ that’s been in tech a while can come up with 10-20 reasons why you will fail.

compliance 304

compliance Mobile Sales 304

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2024

So one of the quiet SaaS leaders that has just crushed it in 2024 is Doximity: At $550m in ARR, it’s worth a cool $10.4 Billion (!) — or 20x ARR. And its stock it up a stunning +90% this year. What’s going on? A combination of: Growth re-accelerating. Doximity is growing 20% now, vs. 18% at $450m ARR. Insane profitability.

Business Model 279

Business Model SaaS Revenue Marketing 279

SaaStr

OCTOBER 16, 2024

So RingCental is both an incredibly impressive SaaS and Cloud company — but also a bit of a cautionary tale. It’s been around for decades but has continued to iterate, expanding into the enterprise, the contact center, and so much more. Fast forward to today, it’s at: $2.43 ARR Now they have $1.5

Scale 289

Scale Compensation SMB Cloud 289

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2024

Gong has its 2025 State of Revenue out. You can grab it here. In general, the report ties to what were seeing everywhere in SaaS. Were ending the year in general with stronger growth that the prior year. Gong also looked across its entire customer base to measure deal velocity.

Scale 289

Scale Benchmarks B2B Enterprise 289

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 4, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What’s the #1 Reason You See Sales Reps Fail These Days? The #1 reason I see sales execs struggling today in new roles: they are convinced their playbook is better. And refuse to run the one that is already working. They are convinced they know better.

Sales Hiring 289

Sales Hiring Sales 289

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What Was Your First Step When You Decided to Do a Startup? For me, both times, it was to find my co-founder. In my first start-up, arguably I invented the idea of the company , but my co-founder invented the technology. It was really all her. Step 1 was seeing if we wanted to do this crazy idea together.

Startup 278

Startup Technology Revenue Leadership 278

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2025

So when Microsoft paid $26 Billion to buy LinkedIn, it seemed like they were getting a pretty good deal. Fast forward to today, it looks like a great one. LinkedIn is at $17 Billion in ARR, still growing 10%, and its whole division is wildly profitable with 50%+ operating margins! There may be better M&A deals in the history of B2B.

Acquisition 321

Acquisition B2B 321

SaaStr

OCTOBER 14, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What is The Strangest Thing You Have Learned About Entrepreneurship? To me the “strangest” thing I learned is that you get pretty good around Year 3–4. Almost automatically. And somewhere around Year 5 at least, if you make it that long — you know exactly what to do. I always had imposter syndrome as a CEO and founder — and still do.

Entrepreneurship 288

Entrepreneurship Revenue Management 288

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2025

Kiren Sekar, Chief Strategy Officer and founding team member at Samsara, came to SaaStr Annual to do one of our best deep dives even on going multi-product. Samsara was intentionally multi-product from the earliest days, and they carefully planned out scaling 5+ products to $100M+ ARR.

Scale 263

Scale Transportation Scaling SMB 263

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 3, 2025

50 cents of compute for 500 dollars of value — Sam Altman (@sama) February 3, 2025 So just how much will AI remake classic B2B software? We are still learning. On the one hand, new AI-first entrants are rocketing to $10m ARR in a year.

AWS 299

AWS AI Software Business 299

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2024

So the other day on Workshop Wednesday Andy Wilson, founder CEO of Logikull , and I did a deep dive on what it’s really like selling your company to Private Equity for almost $300,000,000!

Sales Hiring 299

Sales Hiring Banking Sales SaaS 299

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2024

Top Posts: #1. The Bar Has Gone Up: The New Era of HyperFunctional SaaS with Jason Lemkin #2. 5 Pros, and 5 Cons, to Taking a VC Round at a Very High Valuation #3. Pitchbook: The Number of Active VCs is Down 62% From Its Peak. And Down Again in 2024. #4. Zuora Goes Private for $1.7 Why This is Good News for SaaS. #5.

AI 298

AI Cloud Startup SaaS 298

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2024

So we have a classic set of New Year’s Resolutions in SaaS that we update every year. Over the years, so much has changed in SaaS. The best grow faster than ever. And yet, many are still struggling to get over the Crash of 2022. AI is remaking so many categories, but it’s often murky exactly … how.

Sales Hiring 286

Sales Hiring SaaS Venture Capital Healthcare 286

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 14, 2024

Dear SaaStr: I Just Got My First SaaS Job 6 Months Ago and Now I Want to Quit. How Do I Tell My Boss? Almost everyone quits these days without giving a cr*p about the company: Zero notice. Instead, give 30 days if you can. No help finding a replacement. Instead, if you know someone else for the role, make the intro. No transition memo.

SaaS 290

SaaS Management 290

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2024

Most startup companies in earlier stages don’t have the most mature product. While differentiating your product against the competition is important, you have to differentiate yourself elsewhere as you build your company. This is where customer success comes in.

Customer Success 290

Customer Success Scaling Social Media Enterprise readiness 290

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2025

So some folks are going to disagree with me on this post, but I’m close to 100% right on it, and it will save you a ton of pain and time and money. Never hire someone who describes themselves as a “Strategist” unless that’s what you really, really want. Especially today.

Consulting 278

Consulting Strategy 278

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 10, 2024

Top SaaStr Posts of the Week: #1. “A Lot of Great Sales Leaders — Just Aren’t Great at Selling Anymore. And Why You Really Need a VP of Sales, and Not a CRO.” ” #2. The Cloud Bubble Lasted About 18 Months. How Long Will the AI Bubble Last? #3. 83% Percent of You Haven’t Gotten AI SDRs to Work … Yet #5.

Cloud 306

Cloud AI Startup Strategy 306