Neil Patel

MARCH 12, 2021

Running a blog is a lot of work. On top of all that, there’s promoting and monetizing your blog, which is even more work. It’s hard for anyone to manage, and the larger your blog grows, the worse the situation becomes. ” If so, there’s a few ways to do this. It depends.

Outsourcing Services 141

Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Sales Hiring VP of Engineering 141

Neil Patel

SEPTEMBER 19, 2020

Whether you want to become a blogger for a big-time news publication, share your independent thoughts online, make millions as a blogger, or something in between, it all starts with a blogging platform. And choosing the right one sets precedence for everything else you do. How to choose the best blogging platform for you.

Software Review 145

Software Review Social Media Government Branding 145

SaaStr

MAY 14, 2024

At SaaStr’s inaugural AI Day, the Senior Director of Product Management at Panoptica by Cisco, its incubation team, Alex Jauch, talks about how GenAI is powering app security, how Cisco is using it, and how you can use GenAI to protect other businesses. GenAI does change everything. So, two truths can, and do, exist.

AI 193

AI Cloud compliance Innovation 193

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 2, 2018

What you’re experiencing is the result of almost a year’s work, designed not just to showcase the breadth of content we publish, but to make it easy for you to discover and consume it. We still love that audience, but we now offer products for sales , marketing and support teams and have been going deep on those topics as well.

Sales Hiring 162

Sales Hiring Scale Social Media Content Marketing 162

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2024

Will LPs allocate to new venture managers? Lemkin , Founder SaaStr on what the f happens in 2024 with many predictions… 1. Many will pull the chord and say, we have to do it. There will be less direct competitor buys and more ancillary product buys. They will continue to commit to new managers. And A Few Worries.

SMB 297

SMB SaaS AI Software Review 297

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2024

At SaaStr’s AI Day, George Kreitler, Global IBM Embeddable AI Sales Leader, talks about the paradox of AI, three equations that relate to the world productivity and AI, a little math to help guide the next decade, top use cases, and the importance of responsible AI. That leaves one variable we can leverage — productivity growth.

AI 222

AI Outsourcing Services Outsourced Development Government 222

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

How do you scale a product organization quickly? VP of Product at Drata Brian Elmi and Director of Product Management Dana Mauger share five not-so-secret secrets of product velocity at SaaStr Annual this year. Let’s see how Drata does it — a relatively young company of only 2.5 1: Ship Fast.

Scale 221

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Construction 221

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. They also compete with Microsoft in a big way.

Cloud 237

Cloud Scale AWS AI 237

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

A SaaS Founder’s Guide to PR Why PR works, when it doesn’t, and what to expect. Customer success teams are critical for SaaS companies as they own the customer relationship from start to finish, managing up to 75% of revenue through renewals and upsells. How does a CEO/founder/owner pick his salary? Or they fail.

Sales Hiring 225

Sales Hiring Technical Advisors Compensation Outsourced Development 225

SaaStr

JANUARY 9, 2024

Perhaps the biggest change though is how many folks want to manage a team, versus do the work themselves. Not just hire and manage people?”. And I also see so many VPs and Directors and Managers flame out when they take a start-up role … and don’t really want to do all the hard work themselves. Constantly.

Sales Hiring 244

Sales Hiring Interviewing Startup Customer Success 244

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

In this latest episode of CRO Confidential , Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with the CRO of Zapier, Giancarlo Lionetti (GC), to chat about Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Go-To-Market (GTM). Let’s dive into what’s making that hybrid model successful: PLG and Sales Led? At the same time?

Scale 258

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Marketing 258

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. What you need to do instead is leverage more content and intent data. What is your Ideal Customer Profile?

Point of Sale 243

Point of Sale Forecasting Technical Review SMB 243

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2024

What does it take to become a founder, and how does it differ from operations? His day-to-day role as a first-time founder involves a lot of work around creating and building the MVP product and filtering out all of the noise in this SaaS ecosystem. But building a product isn’t the only thing your energy is focused on.

Headcount 201

Headcount Scaling Finance Engineering 201

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

Eric Paley is the Managing Partner at Founder Collective , one of the world’s most successful seed funds with investments in the likes of Uber , The Trade Desk, Coupang and Airtable. Why does Mike Maples believe no company with true product-market-fit has ever failed? Why does Eric Paley not focus on ownership?

Venture Capital 233

Venture Capital Investment Pricing Startup 233

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

In a recent Workshop Wednesday, Tolithia Kornweibel, CRO, and Jamie Edwards, Head of Go-to-Market Operations and Tools, share how Gusto maximizes revenue so that you can do the same. Making sure you’re putting the right account in front of the right person at the right time requires a more dynamic approach to territory management.

Scale 207

Scale Sales Marketing Construction 207

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2024

It’s a common dream for founders to hope their startup be acquired one day, but what is a company, like Google, really looking for in their acquisitions? And what should all founders know about the process if the time comes? Talent + Asset — Taking everything t o expand the business or some core piece of the product.

Software Review 218

Software Review Technical Review Acquisition Scale 218

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2022

One only has to read Twitter or any VC blog post to know that things have changed in the funding environment. At SaaStr Europa, Point Nine Managing Partner Christoph Janz shared tactical advice on how to weatherproof your financial plan for the funding downturn. What to do if you’re already dangerously close to sinking.

Scale 229

Scale Management Metrics Startup 229

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2020

I certainly don’t do it well enough. Let me share some learnings, and what I do now to force myself to be a better recruiter. And what I wish I’d done better as a SaaS CEO: Force yourself to interview 30 candidates for each VP position. Great things will happen if you do. Recruiting is tough. But plan on 30.

Sales Recruiting 361

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Interviewing Scale 361

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

As a founder, you may wonder what venture capitalists are looking for these days. So what drives that decision? Akriti has spent six years doing VC with thousands of teams. She’s also sat on boards with 15 or 16 companies, figuring out what does and doesn’t work for her as an investor. Only three came back.

B2B 202

B2B Enterprise Communication Technology 202

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What Are Some Lies Founders Tell Themselves? #1 This does let you breathe. You don’t have to do it all yourself anymore. At some point, your product isn’t terrible anymore. But it’s nice when the basic core product finally is sort of great. You never do. That it will get easier. Not easier.

Startup 322

Startup Branding Management Leadership 322

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Numbers don’t lie, but sometimes the stories we tell around them do. Numbers are used to bludgeon management. Boards do it to CEOs, and CEOs pass it along to CROs. Instead of avoiding the hard numbers, have a conversation about what is and isn’t working and set goals to work on them. 2: Misleading. But they didn’t.

Metrics 292

Metrics Sales Hiring Benchmarks SaaS 292

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. What he’s learned on both sides of the VC table is that the bar is really high for most VCs. And that’s what makes the bar that much higher.

Sales Hiring 253

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 253

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

A great product, while necessary, isn’t sufficient to build a market leader and eventually a public company. Companies that win a market are just as good at Go-to-Market as they are at building great products. But to develop a GTM strategy, you must have Product Market Fit. What do these look like from an early-stage standpoint?

Scale 229

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 229

Crafty CTO

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

Yes, I needed to replatform my blog, but I also needed a web presence for my new fractional CTOing entity. Yes, I needed to replatform my blog, but I also needed a web presence for my new fractional CTOing entity. Back in 2019, I launched ThinkFractional.blog and took advantage of the opportunity to learn a new platform – Ghost.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Software Engineering 40

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2023

Those founders hold a special kind of “not hatred,” says Michael Seibel, Managing Director and Group Partner at Y Combinator, but a special kind of something for those investors and a desire to prove them wrong. This is the same advice they give YC companies to become much more successful at fundraising when they’re pre-product market fit.

Payment Methods 218

Payment Methods Startup Payment Solutions Sales Hiring 218

Buffer Resources

APRIL 9, 2024

  Enter: these AI productivity tools, all of which help me streamline, automate, and optimize as much as possible.   Of course, productivity tools are nothing new — but with the addition of artificial intelligence, they’ve become even more powerful. These are the ones I keep coming back to. 

AI Search 105

AI Search AI Social Media ChatGPT 105

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

Yet, we don’t know what the new world is, but it won’t be the same. If there were one or two metrics or data points that Nick learned at Gainsight by sitting in on board meetings, what were they? Cash flow sounds obvious, but if you do it right, SaaS companies generate a ton of cash over time. The world has changed.

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 245

SaaStr

MARCH 25, 2023

So one recent survey we did really brought out a healthy debate: does your VP of Sales really need to be a product expert? Many of the comments said it was more important a VP of Sales understand process and leadership more than the product itself. I say, you just gotta know the product. A true product savant?

Scale 225

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 225

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2023

Many startups crash and burn when they hit the Series A crunch — that do-or-die time where many seem to lose their footing even if they’ve been successful up to that point. When building a product, organizations are solving a specific need. Ask yourself these simple questions: Does the investor know what you’re doing?

Development Team Review 214

Development Team Review Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team SMB 214

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2024

As the kickoff to our first fully digital SaaStr AI Day, Jennifer Tejada , the CEO of PagerDuty, chatted with Jason Lemkin, SaaStr CEO and Founder, about navigating the shift to Generative AI and what Artificial Intelligence in SaaS might look like in the next 6 months, as well as years to come. How do you go long in SaaS?

Generative AI 232

Generative AI AI Technical Review Software Review 232

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

Hiring a VP of Sales Who Never Really Understands Your Product During The Interview Process Ok I know some even many will disagree, but I’m right here :). Or puts in the effort to do so. Way too many folks give managers a pass here that never understand the product. Or you just plain never do once you start.

Sales Hiring 228

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 228

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2023

As buyers grapple with expanding technology, higher prices, and a need for efficiency, SaaS companies need to deliver what their audience is looking for to win in the market. Many net-new purchases are for data security, compliance, risk management, and AI-powered tools. So, what’s driving these purchasing trends? Why is this?

VP of Engineering 238

VP of Engineering Trends Cybersecurity Sales Hiring 238

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2023

So a little while back we had a deep dive on just how much of a product expert your VP of Sales needs to be, and your sales team in general. The bottom line is while views weren’t consistent, I can tell you VPs of Sales that don’t know the product close to cold … fail. More problem process managers.

Customer Success 193

Customer Success Scale Sales Hiring Leadership 193

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2020

We’ve written a lot on SaaStr on how to increase the odds your first management team is a success. What a great VP of sales really does. What a great VP of marketing really does (tons on that here ). How to manage customer success. How to hire a great VP of product. All good stuff.

Sales Hiring 353

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Engineering 353

SaaStr

OCTOBER 20, 2023

She joined a team of two, and there was a lack of product-market fit beyond small groups of researchers. 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. From there, the pace picked up rapidly.

ChatGPT 234

ChatGPT AI Search Scale Sales Hiring 234

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Welcome to the latest installment of our “ What’s New ” series where SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with some of the top leaders and founders in SaaS and Cloud to discuss What’s New and what should be top of mind for fellow founders. How Do You Decide Who to Partner with? Otherwise, it falls apart.

AWS 205

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 205

Subscription Flow

APRIL 23, 2024

Invest in the right billing and subscription-management software to automate your workflows after carefully assessing three of the best options in the market. Understanding Paddle in 2024 Catering to more than 3000 SaaS clients in over 200 markets, Paddle is a market-leading billing and revenue management software.

Payment Solutions 78

Payment Solutions Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments 78