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. SaaStr 602: Secrets To Combining PLG and Enterprise Sales with Grammarly CEO Brad Hoover. ?. Hosted by Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund. ? ? ?.

Sales Recruiting 253

Sales Recruiting Compensation Cloud Retention 253

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. When you get to the phase of wanting to sell to Enterprise, it often breaks down at Enterprise needs.

Scale 209

Scale Enterprise readiness compliance Enterprise 209

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! 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!

Scale 195

Scale Engineering Churn Enterprise 195

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

Sales-assisted, product-led growth strategies that close Enterprise leads. It worked well and they quickly started moving upmarket to Enterprise and hired 15 outbound SDRs in just six months to help them transition from inbound demand to outbound Enterprise. How to use community as a driver of product-led growth.

Scale 248

Scale Sales Hiring Strategy Marketing 248

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2023

And so many different strategies, from more enterprise to more SMB, from more tech focused (Asana) to less tech focused (Monday). Asana isn’t totally enterprise, but its $100k+ deals are the top engine of growth. A s that one great way to drive up deals size and go upmarket is to create “a more enterprise” edition. #9.

SMB 263

SMB Outsourced Development Enterprise Scale 263

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

At SaaStr Miami, former Founder’s Fund Partner and CRO of Brex Sam Blond — host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential Podcast — sat down with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin for a fireside chat about finding success as a SaaS company in 2024. What he’s learned on both sides of the VC table is that the bar is really high for most VCs.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 278

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. Free user acquisition.

Technical Review 264

Technical Review Technical Advisors Scale Compensation 264

SaaStr

JULY 21, 2022

A renowned enterprise software leader that has led revenue organizations and spearheaded the cloud GTM strategies at companies such as Oracle, New Relic and now Confluent, Erica Schultz is Confluent’s President of Field Operations and will share what she has seen evolve in enterprise GTM and tips on how to thrive in the current environment.

Venture Capital 276

Venture Capital Enterprise Cloud Pricing 276

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2022

Can you even have a mostly self-service motion in PLG with “Contact Me” in your pricing? I took a quick look at many of the recent IPOs and other Cloud leaders that were especially PLG-ish, from Calendly to Notion, from Zoom to Slack, and more. Doesn’t that just remove a huge amount of friction from buying?

Pricing 264

Pricing Enterprise Cloud B2B 264

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 194

Enterprise Scale Sales Communication 194

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. So how do you go toward PLG after you’ve already scaled the company through an SLG motion?

Scale 203

Scale Strategy Marketing Sales 203

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

How did the largest product-led growth enterprise company in the world find success? Atlassian’s PLG Model To understand and potentially replicate Atlassian’s success, it helps to understand what made them different. Now they have sales reps, but still consider themselves PLG. Here’s why. Directly off the website.

Sales Hiring 240

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 240

SaaStr

JULY 16, 2022

Check out the sessions: Optimizing GTM for PLG with Stage 2 Capital Co-Founder / Managing Director Mark Roberge. From PLG and consumption-based pricing, to value-based selling and driving efficient growth, Erica will share veteran insights that will help you develop your own successful GTM strategy. Don’t have your tickets yet?

B2B 236

B2B Cloud Enterprise Startup 236

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2023

Your enterprise must grow, and profitably. Kate Ahlering, CRO at Calendly, shares how revenue operations are every CRO’s secret weapon to revolutionizing enterprise sales growth. . Product-led growth (PLG) is taking center stage in response to these changing buying patterns and flipped the sales funnel we’ve come to know.

Enterprise 245

Enterprise Sales Sales Funnel Compensation 245

SaaStr

AUGUST 25, 2023

If you hire a VP of Engineering who wants a $250k comp package, all you have to do is ship two more huge features that let you close two big enterprise deals, and they’ve paid for themselves. Or let’s go PLG. PLG aren’t magic letters that fix a broken business model. PLG is not a GTM strategy. It never works, folks!

Part-Time VPE 200

Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 200

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2023

There are two personas you’ll likely reach out to when you combine a PLG strategy with a sales-led growth motion. . Two benefits you can expect from focusing on both PLG and SLG are: Optimizing customer acquisition costs. Maximizing the breadth of customers you can reach through small, medium, and large enterprises .

Startup 250

Startup Sales Sales Funnel Education 250

SaaStr

DECEMBER 6, 2022

The first real PLG model for us to all emulate. Slack was much bigger, and more B2B by this point, with a large enterprise sales team, and Stewart was in a much more contemplative mode: Then … Covid and lockdown hit in 2020. @stewart moving on in Jan 2023, the quiet end of an era. The first "rocketship" of SaaS 2.0.

Entrepreneurship 244

Entrepreneurship SaaS Travel Acquisition 244

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

I think it would be interesting and helpful to pull out the Top 20 PLG / Self-Serve learnings from the series. self-service subscribers at an average of $214 year, (y) combined with 3,300 enterprise customers that go through the sales team that pay $22,000 a year on average. Shopify isn’t getting more enterprise.

Scale 357

Scale SMB SaaS Scaling 357

SaaStr

JUNE 8, 2022

ARR, Zoom was an SMB powerhouse, with Enterprise growing. SMB is now saturated at $4B ARR and not growing, but Enterprise is picking up the slack and growing faster than ever. 5 Interesting Learnings: #1 Sales & Marketing Spend Still Tiny at 25%, But Up From 20% As Zoom Goes More Enterprise. It will take some time.

SMB 300

SMB Enterprise Engineering Scale 300

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. I grew up in enterprise. It’s my process.

Benchmarks 76

Benchmarks Systems Review Enterprise Software Review 76

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2022

A renowned enterprise software leader that has led revenue organizations and spearheaded the cloud GTM strategies at companies such as Oracle, New Relic, and now Confluent, Erica Schultz is Confluent’s President of Field Operations and will share what she has seen evolve in enterprise GTM and tips on how to thrive in the current environment.

Scale 266

Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service B2B 266

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Leveling Up PLG to Accelerate SMB Customers, Including More Attention to Onboarding I love seeing this, it can seem hard to invest heavily in small customers, but if you don’t especially invest in onboarding, that’s a big shame.

SMB 271

SMB AI Onboarding Cloud 271

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2023

Top 100 Customers are 33% of Revenue, and Enterprise Customers are 75% of Revenue. 75% of their revenue is Enterprise, even though it’s a small percent of total customer count. Yes, Mongo is PLG, at least in part. Despite having a partial PLG motion and very high NRR, Mongo has invested in growth. Keep them happy.

Scale 200

Scale cloud efficiency Cloud Business Model 200

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2023

Enterprise Quota:OTE ratios are higher (5x+), SMB is a bit lower, but at the end of the day, you need to close 4x-5x what you take home. #2. Enterprise SDRs Typically Have to Book 5 SQLs Per Month, Mid-Market SDRs About 20. My top take-aways: #1. Corners were cut in the boom times of 2021, but we are back to sane sales models.

Scale 287

Scale Compensation Sales SMB 287

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. However, it’s not ideal for complex products or enterprise clients where customers aren’t the end users. Book the demo to see how!

Scale 95

Scale Sales Software Review Retention 95

SaaStr

AUGUST 17, 2022

Enterprise/SDR. But B2B and PLG are much more streamlined, reducing friction for everyone involved. As you grow towards enterprise status, you may change your focus from inbound leads to accounts. How to get CEOs and CROs on the same page. As an operating partner at a venture firm, Bill gets this question a lot. User telemetry.

Sales Hiring 215

Sales Hiring Sales SaaS B2C 215

SaaStr

OCTOBER 5, 2022

Combine product-led and enterprise-led growth. Combining product-led growth (PLG) with enterprise sales is a multiplier effect. Combining product-led growth (PLG) with enterprise sales is a multiplier effect. Most companies, however, think they must choose between product-led and enterprise sales.

VP of Engineering 216

VP of Engineering Scale Scaling Sales Hiring 216

SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2023

Bigger accounts and enterprise pricing in some cases is going up much more: Shopify’s increases are much, much bigger. Important to note they did not raise prices for Shopify Plus, their $2,000+ and up enterprise edition. They’ve raised prices 33%! That customers are happy to pay for. At best, they tolerate it.

Pricing 262

Pricing Merchant Services Payment Solutions Payments 262

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

Marketing-led growth strategy vs. product-led growth strategy Product-led growth (PLG) is a business strategy that uses the product as the main driver of growth. MLG uses a range of marketing channels, like content marketing or paid adverts, while in PLG, it’s the product and its virality that attracts customers.

Strategy 90

Strategy Marketing Social Media AI Search 90

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

Turning a free sign-up into an enterprise logo involves a multi-step process that requires careful planning, design, and execution. Hubspot recently released a blog on how to effectively optimize the freemium conversion rate; see link/visual below: 5 key steps in the process: 1. Anyway, let’s get into it. Focus on customer success.

Enterprise 88

Enterprise Scale Generative AI SMB 88

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2023

Second, it showed early you can build a SaaS and enterprise leader from anywhere. Through PLG motions, through partner-led motions, and through a modest sales team as well. First, it’s an epic bootstrapping success story. And third, it’s a SaaS and Cloud leader we all have opinions on. We have a sense of.

Sales Hiring 209

Sales Hiring Scale Cloud Scaling 209

SaaStr

MAY 18, 2022

Freemium and PLG models don’t always work. We know this is common with many B2D models, but a reminder that freemium works in the enterprise, too. Q: Dear SaaStr: Does Freemium Always Work? And sometimes, they only work partially. For Freemium to work, you need at least 2 things: The ability to get 50,000,000+ users at scal e.

SMB 254

SMB Pricing B2B Engineering 254

SaaStr

JULY 12, 2023

Its market cap is $945m, but that’s including $450m in cash, so the net enterprise value is closer to $500m, or a bit less than 4x revenues. Free and PLG remain a big part of the playbook. It’s now at $160,000,000 in “ARR” growing a healthy 33% year-over-year. 49% Gross Margins, and Going Down. Go Global, folks! #4.

Subscription 174

Subscription Payment Features Revenue Software 174

SaaStr

JANUARY 20, 2022

But its less precise than it used to be, with more startups highly funded, and others leaner due to PLG than before. You still need about $400k per AE to hit the plan for SMBs, maybe $600k for SME, and up to $1m per AE for enterprise: Search on LinkedIn for how many sales reps a competitor has. It’s still a decent hack though.

SMB 269

SMB Scale Startup Enterprise 269

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

From $100k+ ACV, marketing runs the enterprise playbook. The most classic example I see is a more enterprise SaaS startup hire a mid-market or SMB VP of Marketing that runs a playbook mainly based on paid Google, Facebook, etc. But they don’t get you into enterprise deals, not really. Big events. Sponsoring Gartner.

Sales Hiring 290

Sales Hiring Growth Hacking B2C SMB 290

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2022

So while Atlassian has plenty of enterprise customers, it hasn’t gone that enterprise. I might have expected more $1m+ customers, but Atlassian is sticking to its PLG motion that have been wildly successful for decades. And importantly — Atlassian sees and is currently forecasting no slowdown. And a few more: #6.

Scale 250

Scale Headcount Cloud Business Model 250

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2022

Commercial open source in many ways is a classic PLG strategy, and one might expect lower sales and marketing costs at COSS leaders. HashiCorp has plenty of room to run in the enterprise, and is a great case study of land-and-expand. A $6B valuation today sure seems cheap with those numbers, and the ones below.

Scale 263

Scale Cloud Scaling Revenue 263