SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2023

So I’ve been investing since 2013, and have done fairly well. Some of my top investments at seed stage include Pipedrive, Salesloft, Front, Talkdesk, Algolia, Gorgias, Greenhouse and more: But 2022 was a quiet time. My first year with no brand new investments, only follow-ons. So we’re behind.

SaaS 259

SaaS Investment Startup Branding 259

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2023

SaaS buying has changed. 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. SaaS Market Snapshot In Q1 of 2023, Vendr gathered data on SaaS Spending and yielded some pretty interesting results.

VP of Engineering 247

VP of Engineering Trends Cybersecurity Sales Hiring 247

Neil Patel

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

It’s no secret that the field of marketing is constantly evolving, and SaaS brands are not immune from the challenges that arise due to the fast-paced nature of the field. One great way SaaS companies can keep up is through brand advocacy. 2021 SaaS Trends that Affect Brand Advocacy.

Branding 143

Branding Scale Social Media SaaS 143

Kellblog

JULY 17, 2022

What does our brand stand for? What promise does our brand make? These are some of the questions that quickly come up when thinking about branding. In general, I think branding is a potential marketing rathole for startups, particularly early-stage ones. Do want to build a brand? Do want to build a brand?

Branding 130

Branding Startup Software Sales Recruiting 130

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 7, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Can great SaaS salespeople seamlessly switch between industries? Only the very best reps that have sold sales or marketing tools, which are very similar to the tools they use every day already, can sell vertical saas or developer tools. Sales is always hard, but it’s just very different at a top brand.

Sales Hiring 180

Sales Hiring Sales SaaS SMB 180

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

You know what’s back in fashion today in SaaS? And that’s a lot rarer in SaaS. But so many SaaS leaders aren’t really profitable at $1B ARR even, Why not? And it’s not just public SaaS companies that are often struggling to get profitable. I’m an investor in maybe 30 SaaS startups. So is SaaS cursed?

Scale 289

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 289

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2021

In theory, many things can kill a SaaS startup after $4m-$5m ARR. In theory, many things can stop a SaaS startup after $4m-$5m ARR from getting to $100m. Part of my job when I invest in a start-up is to get folks excited about the company. Part of my job when I invest in a start-up is to get folks excited about the company.

SaaS 363

SaaS Venture Capital Churn Branding 363

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What Are Some Signs That Your SaaS Marketing Programs Won’t Scale Well? Most SaaS companies, once they have a mini-brand, start to get some amount of organic, “free” leads. All paid marketing is expensive in SaaS. You need to invest there, too. Let me dig in a bit. It flatters marketing.

Scale 224

Scale Scaling Marketing SaaS 224

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 Churn 196

SaaStr

JULY 16, 2022

Because I don’t think Initial Traction is at all nebulous in SaaS — and I think it occurs earlier than many think. Well it means two things: >> First, that your SaaS product’s customer base (and revenue) is compounding. And that’s where the power and leverage is in SaaS. >> And invest.

Scale 267

Scale Venture Capital SaaS Branding 267

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 5, 2021

The “Magic Number” is one of those metrics in SaaS that has always sort of vexxed me. To grow faster in general, and to expand into segments where maybe you are less competitive (and thus have to invest more in sales and marketing). Critical to adjust Magic Number for SaaS businesses with lower gross margins.

Scale 268

Scale SaaS Acquisition Benchmarks 268

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. For companies in the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry, this is particularly true. However, building a strong SaaS brand is no easy feat. Why is growing your SaaS brand important?

Branding 40

Branding Sales Hiring Social Media Marketplace as a Service 40

User Pilot

FEBRUARY 25, 2024

Analyzing user behavior can help you understand how users perceive your product and brand. Personalized experiences are becoming standard in the SaaS world. More users are adopting micro-SaaS products for the specialized value and low cost that they offer. In a nutshell, it analyzes software usage patterns.

SaaS Payments 105

SaaS Payments Trends Payment Solutions Payment Methods 105

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2024

Building a Brand Building a brand is essential for long-term success. Once a double-digit percentage of the core customer base has heard of the company, it’s time to invest in brand marketing. Brand marketing helps sustain word-of-mouth growth, which is a key driver of customer acquisition.

Sales Hiring 264

Sales Hiring Startup Marketing Technical Review 264

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 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? The team, led by Deepinder Singh Dhingra, has deep enterprise SaaS experience and truly understands their customer’s needs.

Innovation 248

Innovation Wireless Acquisition Technology 248

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2021

Dear SaaStr: What is The Typical Conversion from Paid Pilot to Annual Contract in SaaS? Having said that, I’m not sure there is a “typical” number for only one reason … as you grow and scale and become a bigger player and a more established brand … you don’t need to do as many. 70%+ once you are doing it right.

Scale 257

Scale SaaS Mobile Branding 257

User Pilot

APRIL 29, 2024

Mastering SaaS renewals’ best practices can transform a routine administrative task into a strategic opportunity to drive customer success and propel your business toward sustainable growth. TL;DR The SaaS renewal process involves a series of actions on/before the renewal date that lead to a customer’s renewal.

SaaS Payments 102

SaaS Payments Business SaaS Payment Solutions 102

SaaStr

MAY 1, 2021

How does a SaaS company reach enterprise buyers? Abadesi Osunsade, the VP of Global Community & Belonging at Brandwatch and Notion’s CEO and Co-Founder, Ivan Zhao, share their secrets on how to grow an enterprise audience by building a community around your brand. A Different Way to Approach Enterprise Leads . Enable storytelling.

Enterprise 243

Enterprise Scale B2C SaaS 243

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

“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? Check that out here. Why did you do the deal?

Technical Review 280

Technical Review Scale Management Sales Hiring 280

User Pilot

MAY 13, 2024

Is your team struggling to determine the return on investment (ROI) of product marketing strategies? Social listening – Stay on top of real-time conversations about your product/brand using Hootsuite Streams and Talkwater. Pricing of Zoho Social It offers a forever-free plan that’s limited to 1 user and 1 brand.

Software 104

Software Marketing Scale Social Media 104

SaaStr

DECEMBER 7, 2023

“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? We recently invested in Respondology. What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal?

Development Team Review 230

Development Team Review Management Technical Review Social Media 230

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2024

It’s one thing to invest in an area where only 5% of your business is today. Because as you start to develop a mini-brand, you should start being considered for deals you never would have even been part of the selection process before. Your happy customers beget more happy customers in SaaS. Or at least, maybe $10m-$20m ARR.

Scaling 280

Scaling Revenue Underperforming Technical Team Market Segmentation 280

User Pilot

MARCH 25, 2024

TL;DR User sentiment is the feeling a person has about your brand, product, or service quality. There are five steps to tracking and measuring user sentiments: Invest in the right sentiment analysis tools. Brand24 – best for brand sentiment analysis. Gather user sentiment data from multiple sources.

Social Media 105

Social Media Software Review Technical Review Machine Learning 105

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2023

Catch up on part one here , where he deep dives into what he really thinks about AI, Sales and lead Gen for SaaS in 2024. 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. How do they succeed?

Sales Hiring 247

Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital Generative AI 247

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

So times aren’t tougher for everyone in B2B and SaaS, but they’re tougher for many. Marketing is a variable cost with generally medium-term benefits in SaaS and B2B. Because the reality in SaaS, most things won’t “perform” at all. Keep investing there. So marketing gets cut.

Marketing 230

Marketing Scale B2C B2B 230

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

Debt for SaaS companies done right is a gift. Few folks have more data than Nathan Latka and he offers up some insights on how to properly leverage up in SaaS. Geoffrey Moore calls this group the Late Majority and the Laggards in his book Crossing the Chasm , a secret bible for many SaaS CEO’s. . — ed.

Venture Capital 227

Venture Capital Technical Review SaaS Scale 227

How To Buy Saas

MARCH 25, 2024

In this guide, we will explore the core advantages that SEO offers to one of the constantly growing industries, software as a service (SaaS). SEO is a neat way to start a successful SaaS business and remain competitive in the market. What is SaaS SEO ? Optimize your website for specific keywords aligned with your SaaS product.

Outsourcing Services 52

Outsourcing Services Customer Lifetime Value Business SaaS 52

SaaStr

APRIL 19, 2024

How do you reverse-engineer your first million as a SaaS startup founder? He’s invested in startups as a VC since 2013 and has 10x his fund. Now, every public SaaS company is at $300k to $400k of revenue per employee. What you do is: Build your business and brand. Historically, we were at $1M per employee.

Engineering 253

Engineering Business Model Pricing Scaling 253

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2023

We just did our latest Workshop Wednesday with Omers Growth, and they only did one growth investment last year. A great deep dive on later-stage SaaS investing here: And look venture is a mess today. Crypto investments are going bankrupt. Second, top funds (including Sequoia this week) have brand-new Seed funds.

AWS 308

AWS Venture Capital Finance Cloud 308

SaaStr

AUGUST 31, 2023

Amazing smaller, deep dive sessions with top leaders in SaaS and Cloud. Demystifying AI for SaaS: Practical Steps to Drive Innovation with Bessemer Venture Partner’s Anant Vidur Puri #5. These are the smaller, intimate conversations you always wanted to have with other SaaS execs. That now you can have IRL!

Venture Capital 221

Venture Capital Acquisition AI Innovation 221

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]. I’ve seen a lot of SaaS market growth from the days when Larry Ellison said the cloud was like fiction. Look at your brand. powered by Sounder.

Branding 81

Branding Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team Sales Hiring 81

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2022

So those of us who know Vista Equity Partners (and many of you may not) think of it as one of the largest Private Equity firms buying SaaS companies. But I hadn’t really thought of them as a proxy for all SaaS companies until I saw the CEO’s interview from a few weeks back. Vista has a pretty broad look at SaaS.

Cybersecurity 304

Cybersecurity SMB Interviewing Enterprise 304

SaaS Metrics

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

Multistreaming, the practice of simultaneously broadcasting your content across multiple platforms, has revolutionized how brands reach audiences. The benefits of spreading your message to various platforms are evident, but how do you ensure you’re getting the maximum return on investment (ROI) for your efforts?

SaaS 52

SaaS Branding Investment Metrics 52

User Pilot

AUGUST 6, 2023

In this guide, we’re going to go over why the omnichannel customer experience is important and how you can build a consistent brand experience across multiple channels to keep customer satisfaction levels as high as possible! Build loyalty. User acquisition. On the other hand, growth teams usually work throughout the journey.

Investment 97

Investment Banking Social Media Customer Lifetime Value 97

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 31, 0001

All the while, this brand building effort is a substantial investment in reducing cost-of-customer-acquisition. Many SaaS websites feature customer stories very prominently. Throughout this process, the company is building a brand for itself and a product. Customer success teams can employ the same playbook.

Startup 100

Startup SaaS Acquisition Branding 100

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2023

So the markets are still down and multiples are still low, but growth rates in SaaS and Cloud are slowly creeping back. AI has driven a number of rapid unicorns, and at SaaStr Europa 2023, Iconiq Growth noted that while they did 0 brand new growth investments in 2022, they’d already done 5 in the first half of 2023.

Cloud 217

Cloud AI Acquisition Branding 217