SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

If you are a SaaStr reader, you’ll know how passionate I am about Customer Success, since Day 1. What it all means is that if you do it right, you’ll make 6x or more the revenue from your customers after the sale itself. And about measuring and identifying Almost Churn.

Customer Success 308

Customer Success Compensation Churn Enterprise 308

SaaStr

APRIL 22, 2021

that you don’t actually have to do everything yourself anymore. As you add your first VPs, build out that sales and success team, it’s a natural time to step back from some of the minutiae. Which you should. But make sure you still do enough. They don’t get you lots of leads. And mean it.

Metrics 286

Metrics Onboarding Sales Engagement 286

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2023

Many people at this year’s SaaStr Europa wondered about the future of customer success, motivation during hard times, and how to grow in this new era of efficiency. If you missed part 1, catch that here. Q: How Do You Think The Founder Playbook Has Changed For Bootstrapped Founders In 2023? “The You were lame.

Sales Hiring 243

Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success SaaS 243

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 2, 2023

Let me just throw out a few things I’ve learned that being a CEO of start-up isn’t, or isn’t as you’d expect: It isn’t glamorous until you are At Scale and Hot, at the very minimum. The Zero Cash Date when you run out of money will be burned in your brain. People will gravitate to that, and follow you.

Startup 249

Startup Scaling Revenue 249

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2023

If you aren’t spending money on marketing, it’s time to step it up. As you decide which ideas to implement, remember you don’t have to do all of them. Lemkin says, “If it doesn’t work for you, you didn’t do it right.” Every customer has a clone. You have to do the research. Keep doing it.

Outsourcing Services 220

Outsourcing Services Scale Outsourced Development Marketing 220

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

It took us about 5.5 Then I started investing and I came up with a basic ruie that the best startups needed to grow at least 8% a month once they crossed $1m ARR. Then I started investing and I came up with a basic ruie that the best startups needed to grow at least 8% a month once they crossed $1m ARR.

SaaS 254

SaaS Benchmarks Startup Investment 254

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

For the first time in twenty years, we have a blank canvas, complete artistic freedom to reimagine everything in B2B software. The question entrepreneurs and founders need to ask themselves is… Is Your Company Still Relevant In A Post-AI World? But how do you achieve true disruption that sustains the next few decades?

AI 281

AI Technical Review Startup Management 281

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2024

In this CMO panel from SaaStr, Rick Schultz, CMO at Databricks, Janine Pelosi, Former CMO at Zoom, and Ryan Carlson, Former CMO at Okta, joined Carilu Dietrich, Advisor at Hypergrowth B2B Startups to talk about the seven biggest mistakes CMOs make. Here are the 7 big mistakes they made, so you can avoid them.

Sales Hiring 272

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Leadership 272

SaaStr

MARCH 14, 2023

If you’re on the path to building a startup, you know what it means to fail. In this week’s Workshop Wednesday , Tracy Young, CEO and Co-Founder of TigerEye and PlanGrid, says that “everything is going to fail.” Early on at PlanGrid, they tried to be creative about organizational structure. And they weren’t.

Startup 247

Startup Communication Leadership Engineering 247

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2024

Former member of the M&A team at Google, Brett Goldstein, now Founder at Micro and Co-Founder & CEO of Launch House Ventures, shares the nine things founders should know about getting acquired. And what should all founders know about the process if the time comes? Brett breaks this up into three sections. #1

Software Review 245

Software Review Technical Review Acquisition Scale 245

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Many of you are familiar with this visual, most likely created by an investment firm. It has become much cheaper to build software — You can build high-quality products cheaply in your dorm room with a laptop. The wrong way to build multiple products is… Building random products you think your buyer might want.

Scale 255

Scale Scaling Startup Sales Hiring 255

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

70% of customers are in the Enterprise and mid-market space, and 30% are SMBs. For context, Docebo is a learning management platform addressing the needs of corporations that train an audience internally and externally. At Docebo, 65% of their customers use it both externally and internally. Let’s dive into it.

Sales Hiring 222

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Outsourced Development 222

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2024

As the kickoff to our first fully digital SaaStr AI Day, Jennifer Tejada , the CEO of PagerDuty, chatted with Jason Lemkin, SaaStr CEO and Founder, about navigating the shift to Generative AI and what Artificial Intelligence in SaaS might look like in the next 6 months, as well as years to come. How do you go long in SaaS?

Generative AI 260

Generative AI AI Technical Review Software Review 260

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

SaaS businesses are discovering that customers choose and recommend them based not on flashy marketing or super fancy product features but on the experience of engaging with the company and the value it delivers. Delivering a cohesive and die-hard customer experience doesn’t happen accidentally. You need to be accountable.

Sales Hiring 253

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scaling Construction 253

Payrix

APRIL 3, 2024

We know it and you do too – Embedded Payments are growing in popularity among software companies. When done correctly, they can create a seamless user experience, improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, and add an exciting monetization opportunity. At a very high level, a referral partnership is an integrated payments model.

Payment Services 100

Payment Services Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Facilitation 100

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

Random quote I found on the Internet If that doesn’t describe the CEO experience, I don’t know what does. But much more interesting than the short list of Kodachrome-colored successes that are easy to recall are the gloomier-toned failures I try to forget. Maybe they need more coaching. Maybe they just need more time.

Sales Hiring 287

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Customer Success 287

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2023

For a quick rundown, Gainsight is the leading platform for customer success. Their mission is to help companies drive better customer success and improve net retention for businesses through different products like scaling teams, driving better in-app adoption, and building customer communities.

Sales Hiring 190

Sales Hiring Scale Pricing Customer Success 190

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

20X year 1⃣ 12X year 2⃣ 5X year 3⃣ #deelspeed @deel [link] — Shuooo (@shuoshuooshuooo) January 23, 2023 When we look at SaaS companies’ success stories, everything looks great on their growth maps. However, the truth is that every company has tried, failed, and restarted before getting to success.

Sales Hiring 251

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 251

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2022

Sales +Marketing Expenses < First Year ACV = Success ? Great rule — if you have the capital to fund it. But maybe not while you are scaling, you can often afford to invest more if you have funding. And you may not be able to afford this if you are bootstrapped or running lean.

Scale 256

Scale Customer Success Sales Hiring Scaling 256

Sales Hacker

JUNE 23, 2021

What, you didn’t have time to watch that webinar replay in between reading those two articles you’ve had open in a tab for three days? Haven’t you listened to the latest podcast episode? There’s more sales content than ever before – how do you sort through the noise? Sales Hacker. Predictable Revenue.

Sales 79

Sales Technical Review Outbound Sales Team Interviewing 79

SaaStr

APRIL 1, 2023

Can you believe that? And then the iPhone changed everything. Instead of walking into places or calling on the phone to speak to someone, businesses could reach customers through social media and other software. What It Takes To Win With small businesses, you will have more churn and business volatility than with an enterprise.

Scale 216

Scale SMB Merchant Services Payment Methods 216

Payrix

MARCH 13, 2024

No matter your industry, keeping up with the latest technology and payments trends is essential for any software company looking to stay competitive and keep their customers satisfied. What are the top drivers of customer satisfaction today and conversely, where are they feeling the most pain? Customer satisfaction (and plenty of it).

Merchant Services 100

Merchant Services Payments Embedded Payments Payment Solutions 100

SaaStr

JULY 17, 2023

A few objections reps think they can overcome … that they can’t: We literally do not need this product now. There’s the classic rule that only about 10% of prospects are truly in-market at any given time, and that’s about right in my experience. It’s not just about the deal to the customer. They should.

Sales 226

Sales compliance Enterprise Pricing 226

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Customer success is all about outcomes. If you’ve raised venture capital, you know net revenue retention is important. What does NRR have to do with customer success? Everything! What Does NRR Aim To Answer Most people know the formula for NRR. Get more new customers.

Scale 169

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success Scaling 169

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2023

The sales cycle is important because it cascades into a bunch of critical metrics for you and investors, including revenue. The sales cycle is important because it cascades into a bunch of critical metrics for you and investors, including revenue. You need to be transparent with the sales process with champions within companies.

SaaS Payments 241

SaaS Payments Payment Services Payments Payment Features 241

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2022

Wherever you are in your revenue journey, adopting certain growth strategies can help you keep growing fast. The demographic, environmental, and behavioral attributes of companies you expect to be your most valuable customers make up your ideal client profile (ICP). Spotlighting the success of an ICP-focused strategy .

Payments 205

Payments Payment Methods Embedded Payments Scale 205

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2023

Jason has written about the cheat codes for hiring VPs of Sales since 2012 and realized it was worth a deeper dive. Read the Ultimate Guide to Hiring a Great VP of Sales ebook or What Makes a Great VP of Sales and How to Hire One blog post. While this topic isn’t new, you want to avoid getting this hire wrong.

Sales Hiring 152

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 152

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2022

A gap opens up when: – Sales abandons the customer the moment deal is closed – Support too reactive & slow to solve real issues – Deployment harder than should be. So as I’ve written about before, I’ve interviewed a ton of folks for CS roles in the past 12 months. Maybe you need gap fillers for now, primarily.

Customer Success 306

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing 306

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2022

And even harder to think about Going Long. Instead, it sort of makes you think about taking the First Good Offer for your startup. If you can get to $10m in ARR, growing 80-100% or more Year-over-Year, and have happy customers AND a good team … if … then you can’t be stopped.

Scale 362

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Startup 362

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

What does success look like for your customers? . The definition of success will vary from business to business, from customer to customer. That said, customer success is evolving, and the importance of customer success continues to grow. It is about constantly delivering more value.

Customer Success 255

Customer Success Retention Company Culture Metrics 255

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2022

But, over the years as both a founder and a start-up exec, I have raised over $40m in Venture Capital across 4 successful start-ups. And this informs almost everything I think about VCs “adding value”, fundamental change-the-company value. We had too many customers, too much going on, and there wasn’t any fat.

Venture Capital 249

Venture Capital Technical Review Finance Investment 249

Scytale

FEBRUARY 6, 2024

73% of consumers are more concerned about their data privacy now than they were a few years ago. But the importance of data security and compliance is old news, and customers no longer prefer companies with robust security standards – they demand it. Fortunately, you do. Need a quick recap on the ins and outs of SOC 2?

compliance 111

compliance Technical Advisors Data SaaS 111

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 23, 2022

The success of an executive team often depends as much on their interpersonal harmony as their professional expertise. Know the role of the CRO (hint: it’s not sales). It’s up to the CRO to keep a company’s marketing and product strategy in the kind of lockstep that drives it to produce the revenue it needs.

Underperforming Technical Team 294

Underperforming Technical Team Leadership Outsourced Development Finance 294

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Any founder you talk to likely remembers every investor who said no to them. If you’re a seed-stage startup, Michael shares the best ways for you to present your company to startup investors. If you’re a seed-stage startup, Michael shares the best ways for you to present your company to startup investors. What Do You Do?

Payment Methods 245

Payment Methods Startup Payment Solutions Sales Hiring 245

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2020

I hear again and again from SaaS founders growing to $5m, $10m ARR or even more that they don’t need a certain VP — with the exception of a VP of Sales. That they can get away without no one in the role, or a just a junior person in marketing, in product, in success, in biz dev, etc. I Need a VP of Sales.

Sales Hiring 362

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Sales Recruiting Scale 362

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2023

Learn about the most important SaaS metrics for founders in 2023 with the CEOs of the most metric-oriented company, monday.com, and the founder of SaaStr. You can read more about real-world ARR examples here. CAC stands for Customer Acquisition Costs and measures how much it costs to buy a new customer.

Metrics 211

Metrics SaaS Sales Hiring Finance 211

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2024

The Journey of Selling Your Startup Harry was the co-founder and CEO of Periscope Data, which raised a seed round before finding customers, yet didn’t run out of money before becoming an overnight success 3-4 years later. But then growth flatlined for a couple of years, and it was time to talk about selling. They’re bought.

Underperforming Technical Team 169

Underperforming Technical Team Data Development Team Review Technical Review 169