SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What Are Some of the Biggest Changes for SaaS Founders and Startups in 2024? The Rise of One-and-Done Fundraising as a Vibe Founders will get back to only planning to raise one round to truly get to product-market fit for real. A few I’m watching: #1. Not just more efficient growth, but slower growth too.

SaaS 236

SaaS Startup Scaling Product Marketing 236

SaaStr

JUNE 26, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Be Careful Hiring “Dualies” — Folks That Are a VP of More Than One Thing. SaaStr 562: How Marketing Can Be Your Secret Sauce to Fundraising and Growth with Bandwidth CMO Noreen Allen. Big Companies Don’t Churn.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire CTO Sales Hiring Scale 227

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

At this year’s SaaStr Annual, Mark Roberge, co-founder and Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital, takes the stage to have a bake-off between startups and incumbents when it comes to who will win the AI Go-to-Market race. So, consider what the innovator’s dilemma is today as you rethink your startup in an AI-first world in a hyper cycle.

AI 262

AI Technical Review Startup Management 262

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 17, 2022

Fueled by this capital, startup company formation rates touched fifteen-year highs in 2021. Many of the greatest companies have been founded during difficult market conditions. I’ll share more on my plans soon. After more than 14 years at Redpoint, I’m starting a new chapter. This era will be no exception.

Venture Capital 202

Venture Capital Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Innovation 202

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

Believe It Or Not, It’s Time for Your First User Conference One thing that always works in marketing is bringing your customers and prospects together IRL. This is the same mistake so many of us make again, and again. . “Jason lists 10 warning signs that a VP of Sales may not work out at a startup. Corporate Blogs Always Work.

Sales Hiring 235

Sales Hiring Technical Advisors Compensation Outsourced Development 235

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2023

To convert an idea into a successful venture, startups need to be equipped to scale. They need to act fast and take first-mover advantage to compete in the dynamic market. Hiring a reliable team is an all-encompassing issue where startups dive in head-first but fail to optimize it for success. . Startups have ups and downs.

Scale 207

Scale CTO Hire Cloud Scaling 207

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

Sales-driven SaaS startups end up with about half their headcount in sales and marketing. One thing that sneaks up on you in SaaS is just how many sales, marketing and revenue professionals you are going to need: First it sneaks up on you in the early days because the initial tiny team become so efficient. Sales doesn't.

Scale 342

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 342

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2020

As we begin strategic planning season for next year, there one topic a lot that comes up a lot: Should We Just Let Our Smallest Customers Go? And so you start to get push back from your team on marketing budgets, on sales priorities, on support and success. “The small guys take too much time.” ” Which is true.

SMB 351

SMB Sales Hiring Marketing Enterprise 351

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2024

Especially as you then try to move into the mid and upper markets, security becomes table stakes for the buying committee. 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.

AI 148

AI SMB compliance Sales Hiring 148

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2023

companies: Start marketing, supporting and talking to European customers as a distinct segment once you have 10 of them. As the CEO of Braze put it at SaaStr Europa this year, they could close tech startups as customers without a local office. Expect it to happen, and plan for it. Plan for it. Europe and the U.S.

Sales Hiring 243

Sales Hiring SaaS B2B Revenue 243

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2022

So there’s a moment in time I’ve gotten pretty darn good at spotting in SaaS startups. A few tells: Blaming marketing, especially for not enough leads. Blaming a lack of product-market fit. Saying they need more resources to hit the same or a reduced plan. This isn’t how startup sales works.

Sales Hiring 249

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Startup 249

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 10, 2022

In some cases, yes companies just planned for growth that never came. More often, they planned for a Series B-F that isn’t coming. Sales teams hired way, way ahead to hit huge plans, and in many cases, ended up with a tough combo of lower quota attainment and higher comp structures. It was all masked.

Sales Hiring 280

Sales Hiring Pricing Cloud Startup 280

SaaStr

DECEMBER 9, 2020

We try to use Twitter, in part, as a true micro-blogging platform to share some learnings and insights in 280 characters or less. Let’s take a look: Folks join startups for many reasons. It's generally about 12 months after an investment that I really, truly understand what the startup does. Career advancement.

Sales Hiring 275

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Investment 275

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2023

Building and scaling a startup isn’t for the faint of heart and often comes with many ups and downs that SaaS veterans have experience in. A first-time founder of a Generative AI startup is struggling with the question of going vertical vs. horizontal. Before you get halfway to those numbers, you need a plan to go multi-product.

Sales Hiring 247

Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital Generative AI 247

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What Are the Danger Signs a Startup Isn’t Going to Work Out? It’s more about things I worry about after : Founders’ understanding of market doesn’t get deeper. I really worry when 9–12 months later, the founders do not understand their market better. When the burn rate may grow larger than plan.

Startup 279

Startup Scaling SaaS Revenue 279

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2022

No, this SaaS Crash is so tough on VCs and public market investors because the market was just so, so high for Cloud stocks from mid-2020 to late 2021: You can see above in the BVP Nasdaq Cloud Index that while these are still Great Times in SaaS, they aren’t the crazy days that peaked around Thanksgiving 2021. Especially now.

Venture Capital 363

Venture Capital Cloud Startup SaaS 363

SaaStr

OCTOBER 12, 2022

Many founders think first of their product and then the market. But according to McJannet, it’s actually better to begin with the market. Pick the Market: Choose your target audience, and create a product they need. Picking the market is actually what we do, not building products. Product-Market Fit. Phase 2: $30M.

Scaling 213

Scaling Leadership Startup Product Marketing 213

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2023

can invest in marketing that takes a little while to pay off). Yet, I see most “Hybrid SaaS” startups ignore this and spend as if they had 80% margins. Even today, I’m seeing way way too many venture-backed startups with hybrid, less than 100% recurring, and/or SMB models spending money like … they have enterprise SaaS metrics.

SaaS Payments 209

SaaS Payments Metrics Payments SMB 209

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 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. It’s one of the top 3 pain points of mid-market and enterprise CFOs. This is not suitable for the mid-market and lower enterprise segments, which remain underserved.

Payments 209

Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions Scale 209

SaaStr

APRIL 12, 2023

Even considering the more conservative fundraising market in 2023, there are opportunities for startups to get investor attention with AI. Tomasz Tunguz, Founder & General Partner at Theory Ventures, believes that with the right GTM plan and capital efficiency, it is still possible to get funding.

Generative AI 188

Generative AI AI Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 188

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2023

Secret #3: Solve your biggest challenges with customers, not cash When building a startup, whether you’re working with two, 20, or 200 team members, the common thread is that you’ll encounter many problems and opportunities. For instance,the number one reason that startups fail is because they have no market need.

Strategy 222

Strategy Scale Sales Hiring Startup 222

SaaStr

MARCH 14, 2023

If you’re on the path to building a startup, you know what it means to fail. It’s no different in the startup world. There’s a natural tension in startup environments. Marketing is focused on generating leads while salespeople are closing them. Things don’t go right at startups often. They blame all their peers.

Startup 235

Startup Communication Leadership Engineering 235

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

Co-pilots — Co-pilots are where startups and founders can do new things that big companies won’t go after. Sacks believes there will be a co-pilot for every professional job category and also horizontal job functions like marketing and sales. As a founder, if you plan on 80% success, that’s crazy. Seed is no longer a bargain.

SaaS Payments 222

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions AI SaaS 222

Kellblog

MARCH 18, 2024

If you get stuck, ping me on LinkedIn , Twitter , or leave a blog comment here. This terminology is actually fairly common in finance orgs because most financial planning solutions are multidimensional in nature and built atop hypercubes as the data abstraction and/or underlying database model. [3]

Marketing 81

Marketing Finance AI B2B 81

SaaStr

APRIL 10, 2023

Others may seek to corner the SMB market. However, what many businesses may overlook is the startup segment. Often, startups are lumped in with small businesses, yet this approach fails to recognize what motivates and attracts these early-stage companies. Why Seek Out Startups? Acquire : Create a Compelling Offer.

Startup 210

Startup Scale SMB Venture Capital 210

SaaStr

AUGUST 22, 2023

Your market research is probably wrong, or at least off. If you want to understand if your initial market really needs your product, don’t shoot from the hip. If time and money don’t matter, sure, just push a product out to market. Double-down on your market understanding, research, and customer interviews. Do more of it.

Interviewing 227

Interviewing Market Research Business Model Startup 227

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. “It was always thinking about the company first,” said Janine Pelosi of Zoom.

Sales Hiring 252

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Leadership 252

SaaStr

JUNE 11, 2022

How frozen the venture markets are, roughly, by stage: Crossover: 95% Growth: 85% Series C: 75% Series B: 65% Series A: 50% Seed: 33%. But with SaaS and Cloud stock prices way, way down, venture markets are reacting far more to that than epic revenue growth. The IPO market is basically closed. But the public markets aren’t.

Investment 296

Investment Cloud Startup Pricing 296

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2022

Startups: THIS IS THE WORSE RECESSION SINCE THAT TULIP THING I READ ABOUT IN SCHOOL pic.twitter.com/qGKuXLchFQ. And on a related note, CMO marketing budgets are still up across the board. Gartner: businesses will spend $100,000,000,000 more on software in 2023 than 2022. Yes, $100B more in 2023.

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Software Cloud Forecasting 334

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2022

And yet, the stock market has taken a big tumble, leading among other things to dramatic change in the VC ecosystem. Lack of a (realistic) plan. What’s your realistic plan to grow faster? Not having a realistic financing plan, and/or needing for existing investors to bail out the company. Sometimes, the market is down.

Finance 267

Finance Startup Cloud Communication 267

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2022

We need the money to get sales and marketing going.” But have a plan in place to address it before you pitch VCs. But have a plan in place to address it before you pitch VCs. “We You need to make sure your startup is at least structurally attractive to the VC fund you talk to. Our market is pretty small.”

CTO 293

CTO Engineering Startup Revenue 293

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2021

A Deep Dive on Account-Based Marketing (ABM ) with Ashley Deibert, CMO @ Piano. To help facilitate meetings between up-and-coming startups with top VCs, we’re bringing back our super popular Meet a VC program. We have hundreds of investors joining us for SaaStr Annual 2021, not to mention hundreds of post-revenue startups.

Stax 280

Stax Cloud Startup Metrics 280

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2022

For whatever reason, the company is ready to exit startup status and prepare to scale-up. Dave Kellogg, Executive-In-Residence at Balderton Capital, breaks down the most common mistakes companies make when going from startup to scale-up. Accelerating on a go to market expansion too rapidly can cripple a business’s momentum.

Scale 199

Scale Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Technical Review 199

SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2021

The best startup pitch decks almost all have great competition slides. Even if they plan to destroy them. It helps simplify learning, due diligence, and market positioning. They not only explain all the key competition, but optimistically but honestly present the whitespace where the startup can and is still winning.

Startup 272

Startup Marketing 272

SaaStr

APRIL 10, 2020

As a startup, there are few things more important than Being Present: Your customers need to believe. OK, you missed the plan. Make sure that the $2m or $5m or $20m you ended the year with at least renews as a cohort, even if for not as much revenue as you’d planned. Startups are a journey. Cut everything quietly.

Sales Hiring 325

Sales Hiring Startup Investment Revenue 325

SaaStr

JANUARY 20, 2023

The relationship between product and marketing has always been a part of the C-suite’s success mantra but has historically not been discussed enough. If a startup’s marketing and product teams merge their resources, they can fill industry gaps present in satisfying the target audience and enable more sales.

Technical Review 230

Technical Review Marketing Social Media Sales 230

SaaStr

JULY 15, 2021

Even if fewer employees are in the office, there are just so many more startups. And so many more unicorns and scaling startups. “Companies have announced reentry plans and some companies have removed their space from the market with the intention of reoccupying, accounting for approximately 300,000 sqft.

Scale 265

Scale Cloud Startup Trends 265