FastSpring

DECEMBER 18, 2019

To recap a fantastic year at FastSpring, we want to take a look back at our top 10 blog posts from 2019. As a partner in growth for thousands of software companies around the world, one of our goals is to provide blog content that is helpful, interesting, and informative. Subscription Finance: What is MRR?

Merchant Services 78

Merchant Services Payment Methods Payment Services Payment Solutions 78

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2024

Get to know as many of the senior folks at your potential universe of acquirers as you can. This is good for your business anyway. But in SaaS, as you cross $10m, $15m, $20m ARR … Private Equity firms will start to reach out. They have money to buy good SaaS companies not burning too much cash.

Strategy 273

Strategy Acquisition Startup Engineering 273

SaaStr

MAY 28, 2024

Mistake #1: A VP of Sales that Can’t Sell or Demo the Product “Whatever you do, do not hire a Head of Sales who can’t demo the product before day one,” Jason says. The same is true for your first 5-10 reps. A huge mistake founders make is hiring someone who hasn’t sold in your space before. Don’t make the hire.

Sales Hiring 194

Sales Hiring Scale AI Search AI 194

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Does A Salesperson Need To Do To “Earn Your Business”? The beauty to sales in SaaS is as sales professionals, for the most part, you aren’t selling a commodity or a fungible product. Who else like me is also your customer? Solve my problem. Just truly solve my problem.

Business 279

Business Pricing SaaS Sales 279

Sales Hacker

JUNE 23, 2021

Here are the seven best sales blogs (and five bonus sales newsletters!) that provide tactical and strategic sales advice to pair with your coffee – one for every day of the week. Best article to read: RevOps is taking over how B2B SaaS companies look at sales. Automating your lead generation. Sales Hacker.

Sales 80

Sales Technical Review Outbound Sales Team Interviewing 80

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2022

10.000 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue Leaders, and VCs will join us for 3 days of tactical content, networking, and epic evening events when the Cloud comes to San Mateo. If you haven’t already, sign up here for tickets before we sell out. In other words, companies need to sell a vision – not a product.

Scale 261

Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service B2B 261

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2023

Probably just say Yes pic.twitter.com/K483lKnyzd — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin  (@jasonlk) April 21, 2021 So I wrote a version of this post years ago, about when to think about selling your startup, if you do get an attractive offer. M&A (mergers & acquistions) can be very confusing in SaaS. Vaguely.

Acquisition 361

Acquisition Venture Capital Generative AI Scale 361

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

So I’ve been doing SaaS for a while, and the costs of doing business have just gone up. SaaS sales execs with even a little bit of experience at other SaaS companies are looking for higher and higher OTEs, often with lower effective attainment and high support costs. if they are selling to U.S. customers?

SMB 286

SMB Scale Sales Hiring Sales 286

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What Were Some of the Toughest Lessons You Learned About How to Build a Successful SaaS Business? Especially at your stage. Your first and even second release likely won’t be good enough. Almost no products just sell themselves. Actually, investors that seem too nice are often just selling something.

Business 348

Business SaaS Marketing 348

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2024

So you’re hiring your first few sales reps in the early days? If you honestly wouldn’t buy from them — well neither will your prospects. The #1 trick to making sure your first sales reps work out? But they’re gonna struggle to understand and sell your product, too. #6. Or worse. #5.

Sales Hiring 249

Sales Hiring Sales Interviewing compliance 249

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 3, 2020

The 9 Disciplines of Great SaaS Companies remains one of the most popular posts on marketing on this blog. It includes: market intelligence: what are your competitors doing? company positioning: what is the narrative of the business? who does it sell to? Business Development. Business Development.

Underperforming Technical Team 290

Underperforming Technical Team Marketing Scale Social Media 290

SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2024

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. Where do you start, and which data cuts should you look at to assess the health of your pipeline? So check your biases, because you don’t know yet.”

Enterprise 265

Enterprise Scale Sales SaaS 265

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. From a GTM execution standpoint, they weren’t focused.

Scale 245

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 245

SaaStr

MAY 4, 2023

So Cloudflare is one of our hero Cloud / SaaS companies and even under tougher macro conditions, still grew a stunning 37% at $1.2 But new business is a lot tougher than 12 months ago, let alone 24: Founder CEO Matthew Prince was refreshingly honest about what was happening in sales. Billion in ARR ! They only contributed 4% of reps.

Sales Hiring 281

Sales Hiring Scale Cloud Sales 281

User Pilot

JUNE 13, 2022

Are you looking for the best SaaS blogs and influencers to follow in 2022? We curated a list of the best SaaS blogs and influencers to help you learn more about SaaS and increase your revenue. We covered the best blogs on SaaS growth, product marketing , UX analytics, venture capital, and sales.

Venture Capital 52

Venture Capital SaaS Data Scale 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2021

Top SaaStr Blog Posts This Week : The Top 10 Questions to Ask a VP of Marketing in an Interview. 10 Marketing Tactics That Always Work for Early-Stage SaaS StartUps. The Top 100 Private Cloud and SaaS Companies Now Have an Average Valuation of $5.2 Take a look back at his classic session on Building a SaaS Army here: #3.

Interviewing 218

Interviewing Cloud Startup Strategy 218

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

In a lineup of all Enterprise B2B SaaS companies with similar features, investors can only choose one or two per year. A Founder’s Story Nine years ago, Akriti was the founder of a B2B company that sold accounting software to small to medium-sized businesses in India. So what drives that decision? Culture, culture, culture.

B2B 222

B2B Enterprise Communication Technology 222

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Dave Kellogg, EIR at Balderton Capital and 25-year C-level veteran, shares the top 14 signs that you have a SaaS metrics problem, the five reasons those symptoms exist, and a SaaS metrics maturity model with five layers to help you move the needle at every stage. The 15 Types of Misuse and Abuse of SaaS Metrics #1: Bludgeoning.

Metrics 315

Metrics Sales Hiring Benchmarks SaaS 315

SaaStr

DECEMBER 17, 2023

“My App Stack” is a new series where we dig in with top CMOs, CROs, CTOs and CEOs on just what apps they’re really using to run their business. What’s your core stack of apps today? What’s your top “undiscovered gem” — an app you love but others may not have heard of? This week we have Kyle Norton, CRO at Owner! #1.

Scale 263

Scale AI Leadership Innovation 263

SaaStr

JULY 26, 2022

So in theory, SMB SaaS is better than enterprise, at least 9 times out of 10: Deals close much faster. There is often just 1 stakeholder to sell to. But beyond all the other Pros and Cons of SMB vs enterprise, there’s one looming issue with SMB SaaS: Churn. SMBs go out of business, and quickly. Endemic churn.

SMB 362

SMB Churn Payment Services SaaS 362

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

Founder and General Partner of Craft Ventures, David Sacks, shares his perspective on what to expect from SaaS in 2024. Can you raise a Series A if you’re not “AI SaaS?” Can You Raise A Series A If You’re Not AI SaaS? So, can you raise a Series A if you’re not “AI SaaS?” Is everything going to be focused on AI?

SaaS Payments 236

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions AI SaaS 236

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2024

They really are a great checklist when you are starting to scale sales in SaaS: #1. Hire your first salesperson when you have closed the first 10 customers and are spending more than 20% of your time on sales. Make sure your VP of Sales actually wants to sell, not just manage. It’s a tough job. More here. #4.

Sales Hiring 265

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 265

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2023

At SaaStr’s APAC 2023, Vertex Ventures General Partner Carmen Yuen, GGV Capital Managing Partner Jenny Lee, Square Peg Capital Partner Piruze Sabuncu, and moderator Arnaud Bonzom (Co-Founder and Managing Director of Black Mangroves) discuss the common pitfalls to look out for when you are raising your Series A. Have they done it before?

Development Team Review 238

Development Team Review Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team SMB 238

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Go-to-market (GTM) design and efficiency are sometimes overlooked, but they’re a critical driver of any SaaS business. Rajeev Dham and Karan Singh, Partners at Sapphire Ventures, and Jane Lee, Vice President at Sapphire walk us through how to double your “Magic Number,” a shorthand for your sales and marketing efficiency.

VP of Engineering 241

VP of Engineering Scale Marketing Benchmarks 241

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Does Bootstrapping Through an Agency/Services Business Work? Running two businesses at once well is really, really hard. Mailchimp started as an agency, but then moved 100% into SaaS once they could afford to. Can the top execs in the services business only work on software and basically drop services?

Business 241

Business Investment Software Scaling 241

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2022

An SMB had, on average, 248 business applications—a volume that proved necessary to keep up with the explosive growth of customers in the new digital era. The challenge rests with how these businesses connect their solutions and navigate the tension between “needs” versus “nice-to-haves.”. This pace cannot be sustained forever.

Scale 241

Scale SMB Scaling Innovation 241

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

Check out the session here: Algolia also summarized their Top 5 take-aways here , and below: Most SaaS founders start out the same way— armed with ample expertise of the technical details that go into a product and with limited experience of other aspects of scaling, such as sales. And then, there are your superpowers. And then boom!”

Scale 245

Scale Sales Hiring Technical Advisors Scaling 245

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2021

Love email mktg at scale – Sr AE: Make real $$ selling to CMOs – Head Digital Events: love ‘em now? So after a crazy 2020 — including being the first major SaaS event to be cancelled due to Covid in March — SaaStr is stronger than ever. social followers, and blog views are up, and more. SaaStr Inc.” We have the list.

Technical Review 219

Technical Review Social Media Software Review Cloud 219

SaaStr

OCTOBER 24, 2023

Their Cloud business is on fire. SAP expects to close the year out with their Cloud and SaaS businesses at a $15 Billion run-rate. Fairly far away from a lot of apps startups sell. If that’s not you, be honest if your app is truly valuable enough. Their $15 Billion Cloud Business is Accelerating.

Cloud 251

Cloud Scale Sales Hiring Business 251

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

The current public market environment might look like a great SaaS crash for many people. As things appear to slow, how do we get back to the fundamentals, find the things that are great about SaaS that are measurable, and help people see the value in your business? The fundamentals make your business attractive.

Metrics 229

Metrics Marketing SaaS SMB 229

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. Without it, you don’t have a business. Your first Head of Sales will do everything they can to change the culture into a sales-oriented one.

Scale 250

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 250

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2024

“Doubling Down” is a new series where we hear from top B2B SaaS investors on their most recent activities and takes on the current market. What’s your most recent disclosed investment? What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? And how big is your current fund?

Technical Review 283

Technical Review Scale Management Sales Hiring 283

SaaStr

APRIL 15, 2021

For someone just starting out in SaaS sales (entry-level Salesforce in November), what are your tips to accelerate growth/ability in early stages? A few thoughts to excel as someone new to SaaS sales: Really learn the product cold. You can only solve a customer’s problems if you know the product you are selling cold.

Sales 361

Sales SaaS Startup Branding 361

SaaStr

APRIL 10, 2023

B2B SaaS companies often aim to land large enterprise clients that can bring with them long relationships and large deals. However, what many businesses may overlook is the startup segment. Earlier on, selling was easy since it often involved personalized, CEO-to-CEO relationships. Others may seek to corner the SMB market.

Startup 224

Startup Scale SMB Venture Capital 224

SaaStr

DECEMBER 12, 2023

Traditional Sales Teams Vs. Modern Sales Teams Traditionally, most people learned to sell by taking a product, showing the sales team with a demo of how to use it, and then sending them off to sell it. The reality is that the way we sell now should be focused on the buyer. What is your Ideal Customer Profile?

Point of Sale 263

Point of Sale Forecasting Technical Review SMB 263

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

In the latest installment of SaaStr’s What’s New series – where we sit down with the leaders in SaaS and Cloud for the inside scoop on what’s top of mind and what’s new, SaaStr CEO and Jason Lemkin chats with the CMO of Google Cloud, Alison Wagonfeld.

Cloud 256

Cloud Scale AWS AI 256

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2023

All of these components will ultimately drive your valuation. Challenge #1: Starting with Product-Led Growth and Deciding If It’s Worth It If you start with PLG and want to move your customer base and prospects to Enterprise deals, you might ask yourself: Should I go for it? Show and deliver business value upfront.

Scale 205

Scale Enterprise readiness compliance Enterprise 205