SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

PST, Stephanie Opdam, Partner at Notion Capital, shares four business model changes that will allow SaaS companies to build resilience and staying power over time. Keep reading to learn what changes your SaaS company can adopt to stay relevant in today’s environment. What does PLG bring to the table?

Business Model 259

Business Model SaaS Payments Payments Headcount 259

SaaStr

OCTOBER 8, 2021

As OpenView and many others have documented, Product Led Growth (“PLG”) is one of the dominant themes of the SaaS marketplace today. Intriguing Session Slides: PLG SaaStr Session #2: “From the Desk of ClickUp’s VP of Operations: Hold Onto Your SaaS: How ClickUp Rocketed from $4M to $70M ARR in Two Years with Product-Led Growth”.

Scale 358

Scale Engineering Revenue Scaling 358

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Mark Roberge , SaaStr fan-favorite and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital brought together some of the top CROs in SaaS during the SaaStr Annual to share some of their greatest learnings and pivotal moments leading some of the Cloud 100 SaaS companies. Can you start and stop a PLG motion?

Scale 238

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 238

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

Product-led growth (PLG) is the consumerization of software—a strategy B2B software companies can learn from growth teams at successful consumer tech companies. . He advises bringing these features to a B2B growth team and then shares mistakes that B2B companies make while adding go-to-market (GTM) to PLG.

Technical Review 252

Technical Review Technical Advisors Scale Compensation 252

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2023

Here are 10 great sessions to study, and we will have tons of incredible sesssions, speakers and braindates on PLG at SaaStr Annual 2023 in September! You can learn a lot of non-traditional thinking on churn, ICPs, CAC, CLTV, and so much more in a PLG-first, bootstrapped environment from Ben. …

Scale 188

Scale Engineering Churn Enterprise 188

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2022

More companies are embracing product-led growth (PLG), but these transitions can come with some serious growing pains. Our target market is US-based enterprise sales, marketing teams, and companies with software. Our target market is US-based enterprise sales, marketing teams, and companies with software. Train sales.

Scale 302

Scale B2C Enterprise Acquisition 302

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 6, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: The Simple Reason Startups That Just Raised $100s of Millions Are Doing Layoffs. Figma: “We’d Been Talking to Adobe Since 2012” Half of Public SaaS Companies Trade At Under 6x ARR Today.

Sales Recruiting 240

Sales Recruiting Compensation Cloud Retention 240

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2023

Soon, we’ll launch all kinds of PLG/Prescriptive notifications to enable our reps to provide more tailored outreach during trial-driven sales processes. Lots of companies do that (MK does it very well), but they also integrate with segment for PLG-driven engagement scores. Rattle is the reason I added Slack to the list above.

Consulting 201

Consulting Enterprise Sales Engagement 201

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

Some of the benefits of PLG are: The ability to grow faster A more accessible product for potential customers Greater communication and closeness with customers At this week’s Workshop Wednesday — held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. Some companies go really hard,” he shares. Shifting towards more PLG initiatives is supposed to help you!

Scale 195

Scale Strategy Marketing Sales 195

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2024

Today, that tech stack would be different because of AI-enabled companies like Apollo. How to Differentiate from the Competition in a Crowded Space When you think of companies like Hubspot and what they did with inbound marketing in a crowded space, they offered a better in-house solution that wasn’t cobbled together.

Sales Hiring 199

Sales Hiring Scale Pricing SMB 199

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: The Broken State of SaaS Sales Rep Comp. Live from SaaStr Annual 2022: Optimizing GTM for PLG with Stage 2 Capital Managing Director Mark Roberge. How to Build a Super High-Retention Sales Team with Twilio SVP & GM Alice Katwan.

Scale 202

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital B2B 202

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2021

Top Blog Posts This Week: Dear SaaStr: What Do The Top 1% of Sales Reps Do … That The Other 99% Don’t? At the Top SaaS Companies, Founder-CEOs Own ~15% at IPO. Ok so what was Big on SaaStr.com this week? And Most Co-Founders Are Not Equal (And That’s OK).

VP of Engineering 249

VP of Engineering Cloud Scale Churn 249

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

If you’re a new startup, maybe you have your first couple of AEs, or you’re figuring out product market fit, or you just don’t have a big enough brand or cash in the bank to sell to big companies, you need to strike a balance. Everyone talks about PLG, but old-timers agree that when people say PLG, it’s just instrumented premium.

Sales Hiring 243

Sales Hiring SaaS Banking Enterprise 243

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 6, 2022

Top Blog Posts This Week: 20 Interesting PLG Learnings from The Leaders in SaaS. How to 10x Your SaaS Company: A Deep Dive With Jason Lemkin + Lloyed Lobo of Boast.ai. Top 7 Regrets in Hiring VPs. Firing Them Is Not One of Them. You’ll Know if That New VP is Going to Fail at the First Board Meeting.

Scale 213

Scale Sales Hiring AI Innovation 213

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

Most companies use all 3 strategies to some extent. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) allows companies to reach more users with their content. Paid advertising, like PPC or display ads, is another common marketing strategy used by SaaS companies. They allow companies to reach broad audiences and increase brand awareness.

Strategy 105

Strategy Marketing Social Media AI Search 105

SaaStr

JULY 21, 2022

David Cancel and Elias Torres, co-founders of Drift , share their insight on steering a company to a $1B valuation with both the tenacity to problem-solve and a fearlessness to fail. Optimizing GTM for PLG with Stage 2 Capital. Your Real Valuation: The Value You Provide vs. the Value You Extract with Gusto’s Co-Founder.

Venture Capital 262

Venture Capital Enterprise Cloud Pricing 262

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

For context to kick us off, some of the top SaaS companies have 41% lower CAC than the rest. Another example, for them, would be when a company starts using another tool in the eComm SaaS world, either competitive or complementary to their product. Sales-assisted, product-led growth strategies that close Enterprise leads.

Scale 237

Scale Sales Hiring Strategy Marketing 237

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2022

The Power of PLG. Many view PLG as the sexier option, as it often results in rapid growth and increases initial offerings. Product-led growth strategies work exceptionally well for companies selling an easy-to-understand solution that can benefit a broad audience, such as OpenPhone. How are you going to sell your service?

New CTO 214

New CTO CTO Scale Innovation 214

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

5 Metrics Every SaaS Company Should Care About with Salesforce Ventures A hands-on, practical session on the top SaaS metrics #2. CRO On Why You Need Both I really loved this one with Harness’ CRO on how to rule a PLG and sales-led playbook at the same time: #6. A few great ones to catch up on: #1. Sales-Led or Product-Led?

Scale 242

Scale SMB Generative AI AI 242

Kellblog

AUGUST 18, 2023

I put blog ideas into a to-write folder which today contains more than 300 files full of brain dumps, outlines, and rants, all in various forms of disrepair. In that folder, there are 21 posts with PLG (product-led growth) in the draft copy and 5 with PLG in the title. It’s my process. Stop, will you?

Benchmarks 75

Benchmarks Systems Review Enterprise Software Review 75

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 13, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: The 10 Keys to A Successful Board Meeting: How to Make Them Great and Not Something Everyone Dreads from Ajay Agarwal, Bain Capital Partners. 20 Interesting PLG Learnings from The Leaders in SaaS. Even if Epic Growth is Still To Come.

Scale 203

Scale SMB Sales Cloud 203

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

GitLab may have a PLG motion and a lot of self-serve customers, but it still doesn’t sell and market itself. Sales & Marketing expenses are as high as pure B2B companies without a PLG motion. #4. No, it’s not profitable yet and will likely need to get to $1B in ARR like many SaaS companies to get there.

Scale 227

Scale Scaling Cloud B2B 227

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

How did the largest product-led growth enterprise company in the world find success? When the company started 20 years ago, it didn’t hire salespeople. Not because they planned to start as a product-led company but because they couldn’t afford to. Now they have sales reps, but still consider themselves PLG. Here’s why.

Sales Hiring 231

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 231

SaaStr

JULY 16, 2022

Check out the sessions: Optimizing GTM for PLG with Stage 2 Capital Co-Founder / Managing Director Mark Roberge. Amidst the volatility of today’s economic climate and market, GTM leaders need to be especially savvy when it comes to their company growth strategies and earning their customers’ love.

B2B 226

B2B Cloud Enterprise Startup 226

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

VCs only see a handful of truly great companies per month and hundreds that are almost there with a hint of something interesting. Or let’s go PLG. PLG aren’t magic letters that fix a broken business model. We’re going to invest, and we’re going to make a freemium or PLG or low-end edition a top-three corporate priority.

Part-Time VPE 192

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 192

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2023

B2B buyer cycles continue to evolve, and more and more SaaS companies will embrace RevOps to drive profitability. Take a look at a few figures that illustrate this truth: 80% of interactions between companies and buyers occur on digital channels . 73% of digital natives are responsible for B2B decision-making at their companies .

Enterprise 237

Enterprise Sales Sales Funnel Compensation 237

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2023

Most companies go upmarket to expand their TAM, land bigger deals, and find more opportunities. Going upmarket drives category leadership because you establish yourself as the company that the Fortune 500 logos use. How do we do that if we’re busy enough driving PLG and it’s going well?” We’ve already mentioned the why.

Scale 198

Scale Enterprise readiness compliance Enterprise 198

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. In other words, companies need to sell a vision – not a product.

Scale 255

Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service B2B 255

User Pilot

DECEMBER 10, 2023

TL;DR Product-led growth (PLG) uses product usage as the main driver of customer acquisition and account expansion. PLG is cost-efficient and promotes retention and long-term growth. Product-led sales (PLS) combines PLG and SLG tactics. Usage retention is a key metric to track for PLS companies. Let’s dive right in!

Scale 105

Scale Sales Software Review Retention 105

SaaStr

OCTOBER 26, 2022

Grammarly CEO Brad Hoover shares the keys to unlocking product-led growth in the enterprise through learnings from the company’s 13+ year journey helping 50,000 teams and 30 million individuals refine their writing and accomplish their goals. Values help accelerate teamwork and innovation—and thus PLG—at scale.

Enterprise 184

Enterprise Scale Sales Communication 184

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2022

” A great look at how to leverage a PLG motion at scale. #4. “Leveraging Product-led Growth to Drive Sales Pipeline with Asana’s GM and Head of Revenue Marketing” A great session on how Asana does PLG at scale. #7. “10 Tips for Startups to Create Powerful Partnerships with Big Companies with SAP.”

Scale 192

Scale Scaling Engineering Acquisition 192

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2022

Never thinking small and instead made decisions that were bold and audacious for a company of their revenue size. Does PLG really help scale by a large amount? To get from $20 million to $200 million, you’ll take bigger deals with huge companies. This makes us completely aligned with what the company cares about.

Scale 188

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 188

User Pilot

JANUARY 18, 2023

In this guide, we’re going to go over what PLG marketing is and why it just might be the perfect approach for your business. There are four main criteria (Market, Model, Channel, and Product) you need to consider to determine if PLG is the right approach for your company. What does PLG stand for in marketing?

Strategy 98

Strategy Marketing Scale Software Review 98

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2023

SaaS Companies Are Still Paying 5%-20% Higher OTEs in “Tier 1” Cities like SF, NYC, etc. Most SaaS companies have not really gone flat at scale, although many now do at the earlier stages. And a few other small notes I found helpful: 53% of SaaS companies use clawbacks. Only 14% of SaaS companies cap commissions.

Scale 276

Scale Compensation Sales SMB 276

SaaStr

DECEMBER 8, 2022

They have 3 motions — PLG (for 1-10 sized businesses), Sales-led, and Channel-led. For HubSpot, it was Going from SLG to PLG. Key is that the Free users and the Free edition is one of the Top 5 Goals for the company. Yamini made the key point that Direct isn’t a moat, but Channel is. This is very rare.

Scale 248

Scale SMB Scaling Customer Success 248

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2023

So we’ve covered hero company Atlassian many times on this series. Through PLG motions, through partner-led motions, and through a modest sales team as well. Atlassian already spent less on sales and marketing than virtually ever other public SaaS company. First, it’s an epic bootstrapping success story.

Sales Hiring 201

Sales Hiring Scale Cloud Scaling 201

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

Along with more PLG efficiency on low end. ZoomInfo is a true category leader, and if you’re in their space and struggling and not seeing a turn-around yet … at least know you are in great company. Done right, even with a sales-led motion, ZoomInfo is simply insanely profitable. Growth will reaccelerate at ZoomInfo.

Scale 219

Scale Cloud Scaling Subscription 219