Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 7, 2020

“Support isn’t just a cost center, but a strategic investment that increases customer retention and reduces churn” Indeed, if you look at the broader financial models of customer support, you’ll see that support isn’t just a cost center, but a strategic investment that increases customer retention and reduces churn.

Customer Support 196

Customer Support Investment Scale Retention 196

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2023

This year, many companies, including Gong, have been focused on how to optimize and drive value with existing tech stack investments, rather than adding new tools. Last week we had a great one with Jack Moberger, Director of Enablement at Algolia, check it out here. This week we have Udi Ledergor, Chief Evangelist at Gong! #1.

Leadership 311

Leadership B2B Branding Revenue 311

SaaStr

APRIL 19, 2024

He’s invested in startups as a VC since 2013 and has 10x his fund. EchoSign, which Adobe bought, had $12M in ARR, growing 100%, with 120% revenue retention and cash flow positive. The Adobes, Microsofts, and Intuits made $1M of revenue per employee. Now, every public SaaS company is at $300k to $400k of revenue per employee.

Engineering 250

Engineering Business Model Pricing Scaling 250

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 18, 2022

After implementing, onboarding and working with hundreds of clients on aligning their Outreach instances to drive revenue efficiency, the Outbound Funnel team is sitting down with SalesHacker to share key concepts on how to make sure your investment in Sales Engagement Platform delivers on its ROI. You’ll Learn.

Branding 81

Branding Onboarding Engagement Investment 81

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 12, 2021

He’s been the Chief Revenue Officer and Chief Strategy Officer at Dialpad, the cloud communication platform, since the spring of 2018, but his fascination for conversations and natural language processing came even sooner. Push support to drive revenue. Could this trend be changing? Reduce the complexity of your tech stack.

Revenue 223

Revenue Scale AI Search Customer Support 223

Mucker Capital

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

Mucker’s first meeting with Emotive happened in November of 2018, though our initial investment wouldn’t happen until 18 months later in May 2020 when we would lead their Series A. Today, Emotive announces their $50M Series B closed just 7 months after to accelerate growth after a transformative year for eCommerce brands.

Investment 90

Investment Technical Review Scale Branding 90

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2023

If you’ve raised $10m-$15m, I’m assuming you are somewhere between $2m and $10m in ARR (revenue). Tiny experiments are OK, and investing in segments that are just starting to take off is good. Spend more on demand gen — to any customer segment that makes up more than 10% of your revenue. Have a customer conference.

Scale 265

Scale Sales Hiring Banking Engineering 265

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2024

Coming in early on to start the marketing function at Zoom, it was all about driving revenue and surviving. Leading him to some of his biggest mistakes when hiring: Not investing enough time. And for his marketing team, it didn’t just apply to marketing, demand gen, or brand, or PR. They needed to move quickly.

Sales Hiring 251

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Leadership 251

Predictable Revenue

AUGUST 1, 2019

Having alignment between brand and outbound sales is essential. Not only can sales help measure the power of and investment made in a brand, but brand can also help empower prospectors with great content, sales assets, and ensure that messaging is always spot-on.

Branding 124

Branding Sales Investment Revenue 124

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2023

Jason re-takes the stage in Part 2 of the series to answer questions about the right time is to invest in a new product line, building vertical vs. horizontal, multiples in 2024, and much more. With two caveats… They have to close a significant amount of revenue themselves. Q: When is the Right Time to Invest in a New Product?

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital Generative AI 246

User Pilot

MARCH 20, 2024

This article will go through 13 software monetization solutions to help your software product create great revenue streams and drive product growth. TL;DR Software monetization helps generate revenue using various new business models to reinvest in development and enhancements.

Software 59

Software Revenue Strategy Advertising 59

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2022

Dorian Stone , Head of Organizations Revenue at Grammarly, is here to share lessons from his experience of scaling the company from consumer to SMB to Enterprise to help you steer your expansion efforts in the right direction. When Dorian stepped into his current role, they promised the board a strong growth on the revenue line.

Scale 210

Scale SMB Enterprise Sales Hiring 210

Neil Patel

MARCH 22, 2021

Huge volumes of traffic can make it harder for brands to stand out and reach consumers in the most effective way possible. What’s more, it’s challenging to generate income from a platform with over 25 million brand accounts to compete with. There’s no need to buy fancy cameras or invest in new technology. The problem?

Branding 133

Branding Social Media Interviewing Education 133

Chart Mogul

JULY 8, 2020

Betty wasn’t a brand mascot or advertising gimmick, she was the embodiment of a brand’s voice. By allowing customers (or users, if you prefer) to interact directly with the Betty Crocker brand voice, General Mills fostered strong brand loyalty and a rich, active community around its products.

Branding 133

Branding Churn Underperforming Technical Team Retention 133

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? Stage 2 Capital invests $4M to $6M in first checks into B2B software companies that are around $1M ARR. These investments typically occur between the seed and the A round. Check that out here.

Technical Review 275

Technical Review Scale Management Sales Hiring 275

Baremetrics

SEPTEMBER 30, 2021

The pre-revenue startup phase has a host of stresses that hopefully disappear as the company begins to earn revenue. Depending on the amount invested, it is possible that all members of the team are working full time jobs to support themselves and then doing that again to push their startup onto the market. Table of Contents.

Payments 110

Payments Revenue Startup Development Team Review 110

SaaStr

DECEMBER 7, 2023

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? We recently invested in Respondology. The company provides a platform for brand and audience protection via social media comment moderating. Foremost, we invested in the company as they put together a world-class team with experience and knowledge in the space.

Development Team Review 226

Development Team Review Management Technical Review Social Media 226

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 17, 2022

What sales investments should you focus on in 2022? Revenue intelligence. Revenue intelligence is a developing area when it comes to this, and one to watch. With revenue intelligence technology working for them, companies have a much more complete picture of their customers, which always boosts ROI on any sales initiatives.

Scale 89

Scale Investment Sales Forecasting 89

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Alison brings the perspective of all sides of a startup, from investing to SaaS to Cloud. At the time, they were less than a billion or two in revenue, and now, they just crossed over a $30B revenue run rate. For Google Workspace, they invested in expanding and building Google Meet and the rest of the workspace during 2020.

Cloud 241

Cloud Scale AWS AI 241

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

Most SaaS companies, once they have a mini-brand, start to get some amount of organic, “free” leads. You need to invest there, too. So my rule from all of this is basically, invest in any marketing program that even returns $1 for $1 spent. Don’t Shortchange Second-Order Revenue. Let me dig in a bit.

Scale 224

Scale Scaling Marketing SaaS 224

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 7, 2021

Join us for a candid conversation about leveraging feedback to understand your internal brand. What your internal brand is. Building your internal brand [20:19]. The first is Outreach , the first and only engagement and intelligence platform built by revenue innovators for revenue innovators. Look at your brand.

Branding 79

Branding Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring 79

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

The list of problems is endless (this is one of the hardest parts of the job), but let me try to order a few of the biggest challenges roughly based on stage: Pre-Revenue: Finding a Truly Great Co-Founder That is Just as Committed as You. Then their collective revenues often only add up to Cappuccino money. It never ends.

Sales Recruiting 257

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 257

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 2, 2023

So that has many of us questioning which direction we should be heading toward in our modern day revenue tech stack? Which AI tools are going to make revenue operators’ lives immensely easier? Where do you think revenue technology is heading? —- Robert Simmons – VP of Sales A lot more automation and AI.

AI 78

AI Revenue Scale ChatGPT 78

Sales Hacker

APRIL 26, 2022

Kathleen is SVP of Marketing at Tradeswell , where she’s on a mission to empower a new generation of digital-first marketplace brands. How to turn your marketing department into a revenue generator. Turning a marketing department into a revenue generator [15:44]. We grew top line revenue by 54% in a year.

Revenue 80

Revenue Sales Hiring Marketing Marketplace as a Service 80

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 11, 2021

Sales teams feel constant pressure to speed up time-to-revenue and quickly close deals. To help take some of the pressure off, companies focus on technology investments to help their sales teams increase win rates and accelerate revenue while automating a lot of the tedious, manual processes that prove to be a bottleneck in the sales cycle.

Payments 85

Payments Payment Services Revenue Payment Solutions 85

How To Buy Saas

JULY 8, 2023

In the world of software, the growth and success of a company are often determined by its ability to establish a strong brand. SaaS companies rely on their brand reputation to attract and retain customers, maintain customer loyalty, and stay ahead of the competition. However, building a strong SaaS brand is no easy feat.

Branding 40

Branding Sales Hiring Social Media Marketplace as a Service 40

SaaStr

MARCH 4, 2021

Corporate Marketing is all about protecting and reinforcing the brand once you are Way Past Scale. Corporate Marketing at Google, at Adobe, at Salesforce isn’t about getting the brand out there. Everyone that might buy has already heard of the brand, for the most part. Which means there’s a real brand to manage.

Sales Hiring 356

Sales Hiring Scale Marketing Branding 356

SaaStr

JULY 23, 2023

I am OK investing 5% of the fund in the first check. I believe all my investments will be pretty darn successful. For many startups I’ve invested in, I’ve helped put in first VP of Sales, Marketing, Controller, etc. Top VCs have funded almost all the companies I’ve invested in, at much higher next-round prices.

Investment 217

Investment Startup Pricing Branding 217

SaaStr

JULY 16, 2022

With >50% of new revenue acquired from zero-cost marketing, i.e. viral, ether, word-of-mouth, whatever … because these compound. Well it means two things: >> First, that your SaaS product’s customer base (and revenue) is compounding. >> And Second, it means that you’ve begun to build a brand.

Scale 263

Scale Venture Capital SaaS Branding 263

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2022

That’s 10% of all the invested capital!! Let’s talk about why it’s a good investment: Trade shows / events produce a lot of so-called “leads”, but a lot of cr*p leads and long lead time leads. This is some of the magic in the math of the investment. So as a % of revenue, it never gets cheaper.

Scale 328

Scale Investment Retention Customer Success 328

Sales Hacker

MARCH 17, 2021

Getting past the first stage of revenue growth and building an initial customer base is the easy part, but what happens when you hit a revenue plateau and can’t seem to take that next step? Combatting missed revenue growth for second-stage startups. 5 revenue growth mistakes second-stage startups make. And why blame them?

Scale 93

Scale Revenue Startup Sales Recruiting 93

ProfitWell

MAY 15, 2020

Today on the show, brand affinity amid a pandemic is apparently top of mind for many. So how can you make your brand top of mind as well? We’ve also seen new revenue for B2B continue to accelerate today, up almost 5% over the last 24 hours. How are churn and new revenue trending over time? Love, your brand.

Branding 52

Branding B2B Growth Hacking Entertainment 52

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2023

I fell so in love with support automation, when I invested, I did a ton in support, from Talkdesk (first VC), to Front, to Gorgias (#1 e-commerce contact center) to MaestroQA and more. Revenue Down 1%, More and More Reliant on Services as Part of their Enterprise Customer Base. About 30% of their Revenue from Outside U.S.

Scale 248

Scale AI Scaling Enterprise 248

Sales Hacker

JULY 12, 2021

For years, the work of many revenue operations (RevOps) teams have largely been determined by immediate customer needs. For organizations undertaking their first revenue operations initiative, this reactive approach is natural and necessary. The popularity of revenue operations should come as no surprise.

Revenue 83

Revenue Outsourced Development Systems Review Customer Success 83

A Smart Bear

JANUARY 4, 2018

Late last year we passed $100M in annual recurring revenue. That revenue is thanks to 75,000 customers, earned through the hard work of 500 employees across six offices on three continents. We just announced a few more things. We have never been in a stronger position. This moment in WP Engine’s saga is one of those.

Engineering 70

Engineering Investment Revenue Technical Review 70

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2021

Part of my job when I invest in a start-up is to get folks excited about the company. Or I wouldn’t make the investment. But once you have a brand, one way or another, the leads come. They all have brands, yes. This is when Second Order Revenue really kicks in. More on second order revenue here.

SaaS 363

SaaS Venture Capital Churn Branding 363

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

This is the stage where best-in-class companies can double or triple revenue in the first few years of growth. This might feel early to some, but on average, the sales leader at the time of IPO has been with the company for around three years to have time to build out the maturity and sophistication in that revenue repeatability.

Scale 237

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 237