TechEmpower SaaS

DECEMBER 11, 2023

Our blog post 53 Questions Developers Should Ask Innovators has a list of questions any good development team would ask. Inquisitiveness: Prior to starting the project, you should receive an estimate of the work effort. To provide an accurate estimate, the firm should ask a multitude of questions.

Software Development 443

Software Development Development Software Review Software 443

SaaStr

OCTOBER 14, 2024

Here’s a subtle but very important mistake so many VCs, blogs, social media, etc. Sometimes, the market just isn’t big enough for Product #1 alone to get you to $100m+ ARR growing at a decent clip. Your customer acquisition costs need to be low — in all segments of the market.

Scale 215

Scale Social Media SaaS Acquisition 215

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 15, 2024

When I program computers, I don’t want to work at the level of lines & functions & arguments, but the style of a webpage like this blog’s theme. Can it draft an email, or critique a blog post well? That’s step one. Running Llama3.3

AI 163

AI Engineering Revenue SaaS 163

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2024

Look at what they’re posting on social media or on the blog. But one-off highly custom outbound almost always works. Find your 10x feature. And highlight how you can solve a problem for your prospect with this. Research 100 prospects who truly need that feature.

Scale 201

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Social Media 201

Payrix

JANUARY 10, 2025

Check out this helpful blog: The essential elements of merchant underwriting for software companies. Merchant underwriting and onboarding is just the very first step in what should be a multi-year, if not multi-decade experience and relationship for you and the merchants.

Merchant Services 130

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Solutions Payments 130

FastSpring

JANUARY 9, 2025

Justin Sacks (18:00) Other places that have done really well is when you build communities and you have a blog or you have leaderboards that people check or there’s some sort of outside of the game resource that the players go to. So your Twitter or Facebook or whatever it might be. David Vogelpohl (FastSpring) (17:59) chord.

Payments 112

Payments Mobile Payment Methods Revenue 112

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 275

Sales Hiring Scale Systems Review Interviewing 275

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 277

AI CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO 277

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2025

Have we lost interest in investing in the human side of sales? Not in hiring sales execs themselves, but in giving them more tools to be more efficient. It sort of seems like it. AI has hardly rendered the sales professional obsolete. Not yet, at least. Salesforce itself is hiring 2,000 sales execs this year to sell its AI platform, AgentForce.

Sales Hiring 293

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount AI 293

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 237

AI Marketing SaaS Interviewing 237

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2025

In the latest episode of our SaaStr CRO Confidential podcast, host Sam Blond sat down with Lindsey Scrase, COO of Checkr (and former CRO), to discuss her tactics for driving growth at the background screening unicorn.

Revenue 274

Revenue Scale Sales Hiring Compensation 274

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 285

AI B2B Engineering Customer Support 285

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 243

AI B2B Scaling Trends 243

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 261

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Headcount 261

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2025

So does being a solo founder … work in SaaS? We’ve dug into this topic several times at SaaStr. Of the post ~40 SaaS IPOs, only 5 or so had solo co-founders. So let’s call that 10%-12% or so. Still, they are some good ones: Zoom, Scaler, New Relic, Elastic, etc.

Cloud 276

Cloud SaaS Data 276

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2023

Have a strong M&A offer? Not sure what to do? Look at this pic or a similar one Do you want it? If so, say No If not?

Acquisition 361

Acquisition Venture Capital Scale Generative AI 361

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 253

Scale SMB Scaling Enterprise 253

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2023

A life poorly lived is a trap Go for it at least once — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin  (@jasonlk) May 5, 2023 BusinessInsider had a great story a ways back on Datto’s $1b exit to Vista Private Equity (more on the role of PE in SaaS here ).

Banking 352

Banking Travel Acquisition Startup 352

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2024

There’s so much debate on social media and elsewhere on bootstrapped vs VC. Bootstrapped you maintain control, and the unit economics. But many see it as so much harder. And it’s almost always longer. VC can let you go faster, but it can become an addiction. And the dilution all-in generally ends up being 60%-70% by the time you approach an IPO.

Venture Capital 315

Venture Capital Social Media Startup Strategy 315

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 267

Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 267

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

So just as supply chain logistics juggernaut Flexport was beginning to scale, founder CEO Ryan Petersen came to SaaStr Annual to share his top lessons — and mistakes. And we’ll have 200+ sessions like this at 2024 SaaStr Annual, Sep 10-12 in SF Bay!!

Sales Recruiting 311

Sales Recruiting Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 311

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 241

CTO Investment Revenue Marketing 241

SaaStr

OCTOBER 16, 2024

The era of hyper-functional SaaS is here, and it’s reshaping the landscape of SaaS companies. At a recent SaaStr Workshop Wednesday , held every Wednesday at 10 a.m.

Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hiring Scale AI SaaS 255

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 256

Scale Social Media SaaS Business Model 256

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 212

Consulting Strategy 212

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2024

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

Sales Hiring 239

Sales Hiring AI Headcount Sales 239

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

So who’s doing well in SaaS today? Well, one of those hero companies is Samsara. Few companies have achieved the level of impact and growth as Samsara. Powered by the overall strength of the U.S. economy, by shipping, by trucking, by industrial applications, and more … there’s no downturn at Samsara.

Scale 255

Scale CTO Coach AI New CTO 255

SaaStr

JANUARY 9, 2025

Every time I see a CRO that doesn't sell themselves, they fail. Every time I see a CTO that doesn't code themselves, they fail. Every time I see a CMO that doesn't market themselves, they fail.

Part-Time VPE 239

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 239

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 222

Scale Benchmarks B2B Enterprise 222

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 10, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What’s Your Best Advice for Struggling Entrepreneurs? Having struggled a lot myself in the early days several times … just a few thoughts to summarize my learnings: 1. Get help & upgrade the team. This is the #1 thing you can do to move the needle. Don’t be ashamed to ask for help.

Startup 297

Startup Investment Product Marketing Revenue 297

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2024

So we took a look at some of the data from Emergence Capital’s survey of 600+ venture-backed software startups the other day , and they updated it with a bit more data on the Top Decline of Venture-Backed Startups Here: The summary data of the Top Decline leads to a rough conclusion: only the top 10% or so of venture-backed start-ups can likely raise (..)

Startup 297

Startup Metrics Data Software 297

SaaStr

DECEMBER 23, 2024

So for a while, it did feel like SaaS was dead in VC. Somewhere from March 2024 to October 2024 or so. The, the SaaS leaders started to re-accelerate growth, and their market caps in many cases went up 40%+ or more. AI was often the accelerant. And it’s clear now, at least for now, SaaS is back. So the latest data from Carta is helpful.

SaaS 219

SaaS AI Data Marketing 219

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2024

So Redpoint Ventures published some of the slides they recently presented to their Limited Partners (their own investors) here. There’s a ton of good data there, but this one slide stood out to me, because it was put together in a really clear fashion, better than other data sources I’ve seen.

AI 295

AI Pricing Investment Data 295

SaaStr

DECEMBER 18, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What is the best way to deal with an “unauthorized signer” on a contract in SaaS sales? A large company signed a contract to buy about $30K worth of software from us, and then the person who signed the contract said he didn’t have the authority to. I’ve been there, on both sides of it.

Outsourcing Services 214

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Software Sales 214

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 242

Payments Pricing Scale Revenue 242

SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2024

So is it a downturn in SaaS or Cloud — or not? There are so many mixed signals: Unicorn product is up 2x over last year, but layoffs continue AI spend is fast and furious, with Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc. seeing record acceleration in growth.

Azure 292

Azure SMB Cloud AI 292