SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

I t’s been a wild growth experience, and Google Cloud is considered the fourth or fifth-largest Enterprise company in the world. They’re selling from SMBs, especially with Workspace, all the way through some of the largest Enterprises in the world.

Cloud 241

Cloud Scale AWS AI 241

SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2024

Splunk is a 20-year-old Enterprise software giant that has accomplished many things — a 2012 IPO, a $28B+ Cisco acquisition in 2023, and $3.7 As Christian’s been the CRO of Splunk for over seven years now, he’s a wealth of knowledge on what it really takes to be successful in Enterprise SaaS Sales. His answer?

Enterprise 250

Enterprise Scale Sales SaaS 250

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2023

But there’s a single metric that can reflect market demand, product market fit, how well a GTM engine is executing, and the quality of the product- and that is the CAC (customer acquisition cost) payback period. This spend is your lead gen, marketing, SDRs, and sales team salary and commission. Going multi-product early.

Scale 252

Scale Scaling Strategy Sales Hiring 252

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2023

As Managing Director of Salesforce Ventures, Nowi Kallen , shared at last week’s Workshop Wednesday, there are five main challenges of moving upmarket and tips to follow if you want to succeed at Enterprise sales in today’s macro environment. It’s important to create conditions to get pulled upmarket.

Scale 192

Scale Enterprise readiness compliance Enterprise 192

Chart Mogul

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

For years we have been reading and hand-picking the best SaaS blog posts to share with 24K+ SaaS Roundup subscribers. Subscriber or not, anyone who wants to increase their SaaS knowledge will benefit by reading the … For years we have been reading and hand-picking the best SaaS blog posts to share with 24K+ SaaS Roundup subscribers.

Scale 52

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring SaaS 52

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

Let’s deep dive into how combining innovative demand gen strategies with a modern tech stack and specific team setup can provide a winning formula for scaling B2B growth, even with low budgets of greater than a 2x burn multiple. Sales-assisted, product-led growth strategies that close Enterprise leads.

Scale 229

Scale Sales Hiring Strategy Marketing 229

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2024

SaaStr AI Day is starting soon and will be live streaming today! Use the links below at each session’s designated time to tune-in live and join the Zoom session room. Or you can also watch the livestreams on the SaaStr YouTube Channel. Speaker: Brian Thomas, CPO @ Customer.io Speaker: Brian Thomas, CPO @ Customer.io

AI 218

AI Generative AI Engineering Enterprise 218

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

If you haven’t read it yet, head on over to Part 1 of Ask Me Anything with SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin to learn about sales in SaaS, how to create great SDRs and AEs, developing an impactful content strategy, and potential SaaS trends for the next 12-18 months. How do you fix GTM? They’ll know the risks they’re taking.

Sales Hiring 235

Sales Hiring SaaS Banking AI 235

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2024

At Saastr Annual, we hosted an Enterprise panel of AI leaders to share their experience and knowledge to help others understand how big companies think about and leverage AI. While the first generation of Generative AI is great, it’s not quite ready to solve Enterprise problems. Enterprises are looking for two big themes.

AI 241

AI Enterprise Artificial Intelligence compliance 241

SaaStr

OCTOBER 20, 2023

OpenAI’s Head of Sales, Aliisa Rosenthal, joined OpenAI a year and a half ago — before ChatGPT launched. How did they get here? Aliisa took to the stage at SaaStr Annual to share how far AI has come since the launch of ChatGPT, how it can change the way we work for the better, and what the future holds.

ChatGPT 241

ChatGPT AI Search Scale Sales Hiring 241

SaaStr

JULY 6, 2022

Founding a SaaS company is already a significant challenge for any entrepreneur, but targeting the enterprise space can be an entirely different beast. So how can you break into the market successfully? So until I had written my first blog post, I had sold my first product, I had hired my first salesperson, etc.,

Enterprise 218

Enterprise Sales Hiring Social Media Communication 218

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2024

Vimeo has never had any advertising, so how did they make money? How Does Vimeo Handle Long-Tail PLG vs. a Very Sales-Led Motion? This is how Adam ended up at Vimeo. It’s more work in some ways to get all the pieces synchronized. What’s It Like Running a Company Like Vimeo Today? By being a video platform.

AI Search 229

AI Search SaaS Advertising Sales Hiring 229

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Sales execs can screw up so many things and still close a lot if they just get 1 thing right If they just are a true subject matter expert in the product they sell Yet so many aren't — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin  ?? jasonlk) January 26, 2024 I remember my first embarrassing sales meeting. I walked in alone.

Sales Hiring 238

Sales Hiring B2B Engineering Enterprise 238

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What are the signs that an enterprise SaaS startup is ready to scale by hiring more sales people? For a higher-velocity, in-bound driven SaaS product, most sales reps will have trouble processing more than 50 or so truly qualified leads a month. Pretty soon, everyone just gets dropped into a crappy cadence.

Scale 272

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 272

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

In this new SaaStr series called “What’s new at…,” Jason Lemkin chats with WorkOS CEO and founder Michael Grinich about what it takes to be Enterprise ready in SaaS, building vs. buying, and who the stakeholders are in a B2D motion. Let’s look at how big WorkOS is today and what they’re solving for. WorkOS is 4.5 No, you can’t.

Enterprise readiness 229

Enterprise readiness Payment Solutions Enterprise Payments 229

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

PST, Bo Borland, founder, and CEO of playbuilt, shares four steps for creating repeatable success at every stage of growth, specifically in B2B Enterprise. Finding Product Market Fit — Typically has a marketing or sales leader, or you’re doing founder-led sales and product engineering and building.

Enterprise 231

Enterprise B2B Scale SMB 231

SaaStr

JANUARY 22, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: 5 Interesting Learnings from Docebo at $145,000,000 in ARR Fractional CROs and CMOs: The Only Times I’ve Ever Seen Them Work 90%-95% of Salespeople Won’t Make It At Your Startup. A 6 Part Test to Help You Get It Right.

Scale 198

Scale Customer Success Venture Capital Sales Hiring 198

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2023

And we ended the day with an incredible combo of the hottest app at that time (and one of the hottest ever), Slack, who likely was around $30m ARR or so … and hadn’t yet added a sales team! David, I want to start with you to get some of your thoughts. There was no way actually to get the work email address book.

Scale 347

Scale Sales Hiring PayPal Development Team Review 347

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2024

Shrav added that if you want to close bigger deals, not just Enterprise, but mid-market and SMB as well, that the moment you’re ready to Go-To-Market, you need to become compliant. “He was doing a freemium product and I was like ‘Why don’t you just walk into an Adobe or a Cisco and just close a six-figure deal? .

AI 148

AI SMB compliance Sales Hiring 148

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2024

Fastly , an Enterprise CDN at $500M in revenue is only growing its customers 1%. You may have to tweak the ratio based on how Enterprise or SMB you are, but roughly speaking, if your new customer growth is not growing half of your top line, you are shrinking in relevance and market share, and your future is at risk. We are not.

Metrics 186

Metrics SaaS Scale Social Media 186

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions. It was more like 1 out of 100, and the filter to get into that top 100 is extremely high. That’s how hard it can be to get funded.

Sales Hiring 259

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 259

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

How is AI going to impact the software and SaaS landscape of the next couple of years and also the next 5-10 years? That info could be: high volumes of text like blogs contracts how to respond to a customer images video We’re in the early innings of what it means to generate or have GenAI. sending a meme in Discord).

AI 258

AI Generative AI Venture Capital SaaS 258

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

They are all avoidable : #1: Stepping Out of Sales Ok really this is mistake #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5. I see way too many founders, in the transition from founder-led sales to their first (or second) VP of Sales, look to get that time back. Founders never get that time back. The teams all get bigger.

Sales Hiring 267

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling 267

SaaStr

JULY 24, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Gartner: Software Spend Will Still Grow by $100 Billion in 2023. The Ultimate Guide for Hiring a Great VP of Sale s. If sales are down — be honest about the root cause. A SaaStr Classic. Most Likely, It’s Not The Market.

Scale 244

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Pricing 244

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

For part one of this Ask Me Anything session, Jason covers everything you need to know about hiring your first VP of Sales, what he really thinks about AI, what the future of lead generation in 2024 looks like, and much more. You’re not building a product or getting any new customers. Let’s jump right into the questions.

Scale 245

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 245

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2023

The new app was extremely customer-focused and solved problems for people, like Doordash or Netflix might do, but within Enterprise and SMB. It’s possible and even wonderful to create products for Enterprise and B2B that users love to use. Enterprise doesn’t care too much because they’re huge. Navan used to be TripActions.

Payment Solutions 223

Payment Solutions Payments Travel Scale 223

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

You Have to Train Sales Reps 3–10. You have to start formal sales training by rep #3. How does a CEO/founder/owner pick his salary? Jason notes that a VP of Sales may still succeed elsewhere, but if they are not a good fit for a particular startup, that is the founder’s responsibility. And you can start very small.

Sales Hiring 233

Sales Hiring Technical Advisors Compensation Outsourced Development 233

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 19, 2022

SurveyMonkey was relatively slow to go enterprise, which suited it well for a long time. How they buy, when they buy, why they buy. Calendly for example waited until about $50m ARR to build out an enteprise sales team. Zoom similarly started off almost 100% self-serve and SMB, and then later added an enterprise team.

SMB 336

SMB SaaS Enterprise Software 336

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

Go-to-Market matters because sales and marketing spend remain the biggest proportion of SaaS spend, so honing in on that spend to build an engine and drive growth is paramount. Because founder-led sales worked really well for most of the early stages, but you eventually start running out of juice around $15M ARR.

Scale 237

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 237

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

In this Ask Me Anything Part 1, Lemkin answers the questions: Many VCs talk about funding, yet you’re so focused on sales. How do you build high-quality content that’s consistent and repeatable? Do you see any segments getting stronger in the next 12-18 months? That VP of Sales came out of Salesforce. Why is that?

Outsourcing Services 211

Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting 211

SaaStr

DECEMBER 28, 2023

At a recent Workshop Wednesday , SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin answered the community’s most pressing questions about SaaS — from investor appetites and IPOs in 2024 to managing and hiring a Head of Sales as a solo founder to AI and the future of customer success. People build more products in sales, which spurs more innovation.

Payment Solutions 228

Payment Solutions Sales Hiring AI SaaS Payments 228

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2022

5 Critical and Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups with Y Combinator : Anu Hariharan , Managing Director at Y Combinator, will share key learnings from top B2B startups and how these pivotal lessons help founders build in any sector. If you haven’t already, sign up here for tickets before we sell out.

Scale 248

Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service B2B 248

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

But what I’ve learned over the past years is some founders get more ahead of a small-ish TAM than others. But what I’ve learned over the past years is some founders get more ahead of a small-ish TAM than others. What I won’t share is a few that did OK, but didn’t quite get to that level. Something big.

SMB 309

SMB Enterprise Government compliance 309

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

And that challenge some of your assumptions on how to scale. 60% of Asana’s customers come from self-service, 40% from sales. This is trending to 50/50 now that Asana has crossed $400m in ARR, but still a reminder a self-serve motion combined with sales jumping on the bigger deals can scale very, very far.

Scale 348

Scale SMB SaaS Scaling 348

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2023

Getting off the ground is one thing — an easy pitch of being an HR tech startup focused on improving hiring. It’s easy to get to $10M or $15M ARR, but the problem is… What happens next? The problem is if you’re in business for any amount of time, the product gets a bit older. You could do vanilla 101 SaaS practices and succeed.

Sales Hiring 214

Sales Hiring AI SMB Scale 214

SaaStr

DECEMBER 21, 2022

If you run a successful, scalable business, the word “enterprise” will inevitably come up at some point—and for good reason. To survive, businesses need to evolve, and creating an enterprise offering for customers is part of the evolution of a business. Build the right foundations. Choose your competitors wisely.

Scale 200

Scale Enterprise Scaling Management 200

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

How do you build a best-in-class go-to-market model to get to 100mn ARR and beyond? Iconic PLG companies share how they integrated GTM into their growth strategy to go from single digits to over a billion in ARR. Be proactive about sales and add a sales-assist motion to make the journey frictionless for your customers.

Scale 194

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scaling 194