FastSpring

DECEMBER 7, 2023

As the Director of Corporate Development & Strategic Partnerships at WP Engine , Carl has worked on many acquisitions and partnerships, including brands like Flywheel, Perfect Dashboard, Block Lab, and recently, Delicious Brains. “This is everyday for me, so I love talking about it,” says Carl Hargreaves about mergers and acquisitions.

Software Review 136

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Branding 136

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2022

Scale-ups are exciting. Scaling to satisfy customers’ demands depends on innovation and foresight combined with enterprise-ready technology and the right partners. On top of considerable dedication, creating a scale-up requires a functional edge—a unique and unreplicable capability compared to the players in the industry.

Scale 227

Scale Scaling Marketplace as a Service Entrepreneurship 227

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 17, 2022

She reveals how customer centricity, operational rigor, and data-driven strategies drove Airtable to scale and serve over 300,000 organizations, including 80% of the Fortune 100. In the digital age, customers have a multitude of touchpoints with brands. Invest in your tech stack so that you keep growing while you scale.

Engineering 228

Engineering Scaling Marketing Acquisition 228

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2021

Here’s the advice they had to offer on scaling your SaaS company. Adam #18: Invest in a strong hiring and onboarding process from day one. In the early days, Zapier invested a lot into all-hands support. Do things like create team brands to allow employees to feel a part of something larger than themselves.

Scale 290

Scale Scaling Innovation Investment 290

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2022

After a couple of years in building out Canva’s people functions, he is now investing in growing the company as a CMO. Solve for that moment and niche, and then iterate for scale once you’ve validated. . For example, Canva Pro was developed when Huffington Post reached out with an interest in creating branded assets with Canva.

Scaling 215

Scaling Social Media Innovation Branding 215

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

APRIL 19, 2024

He’s invested in startups as a VC since 2013 and has 10x his fund. You Need A Business Model with Economies of Scale As you’re trying to reverse engineer whether your business model makes sense, you have to look at your business model. Certain business models have economies of scale, and some don’t.

Engineering 250

Engineering Business Model Pricing Scaling 250

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2022

You might feel confused about where to begin, how to scale up, which mistakes you should avoid, and things you should consider before expanding. Now, let’s look at ten learnings that Dorian gathered while scaling Grammarly from a Consumer to an Enterprise brand with B2B offerings. Redefine your guiding principles.

Scale 210

Scale SMB Enterprise Sales Hiring 210

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 24, 2021

If your business is preparing for a new phase of growth, you need to make sure that your support team is set up for success from the outset, and that you’re creating the right support infrastructure to deliver exceptional customer experiences at scale. Are the tools you’re using capable of scaling with you? to your resolution time.

Scale 129

Scale Customer Support Scaling Headcount 129

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2023

A great VP of Sales to keep the engine scaling A great VP of Marketing to keep the leads coming in A great VP of Customer Success to make all those hard won customers happy After $5m-$6m in ARR or so, it’s really hard to scale without a strong VP heading most core functions. Even if you really want to enter those areas.

Scale 265

Scale Sales Hiring Banking Engineering 265

Chart Mogul

APRIL 3, 2018

These SaaS companies are raising the table stakes for business software by leveraging the power of brand experience. So what does it take to build a standout B2B brand in 2018? These recent subtle shifts in approach to B2B branding have snowballed into a full scale rethink of what it means to produce and sell B2B software.

Branding 97

Branding B2B Investment User Experience 97

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

Trint

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

They want to hear a brand story they can believe and they can buy. But numbers alone won’t get investment. You need to have the brand story. You need to have the brand story. What I didn’t realize at the time was that storytelling would be one of my greatest assets as the CEO of a tech scale-up. They got it.

Branding 130

Branding Advertising Underperforming Technical Team VP of Engineering 130

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. On finding product-market fit in the early stages.

Scale 234

Scale Sales Hiring Technical Advisors Scaling 234

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

The hardest phase of SaaS, at least for the founders, is the phase from Initial Traction ($1-$2m in ARR + 80%-100% YoY growth) to the next phase — Initial Scale. Once you hit this point, you have a brand, you have a fully baked team, you have a robust product, and you have a self-generating stream of new leads and new business.

Scale 254

Scale Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scaling 254

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

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

Let’s deep dive into how combining innovative demand gen strategies with a modern tech stack and specific team setup can provide a winning formula for scaling B2B growth, even with low budgets of greater than a 2x burn multiple. In this playbook we’ll share: Automated outbound at-scale strategies. Let’s discuss an example.

Scale 229

Scale Sales Hiring Strategy Marketing 229

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2024

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 didn’t hire a big branding agency or hire a research firm. Brand awareness does not equal throwing money at billboards.

Sales Hiring 251

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Leadership 251

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 13, 2018

Those investments have felt good for those in it for the ride, have raised an eyebrow for those on the sidelines, hitting budgets hard and somewhere along the line, have made business sense. Product positioning, knowledge and brand awareness are your first ports of call in the early days. Use existing channels to your advantage.

Branding 205

Branding Outsourced Development Scale Travel 205

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

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 2, 2019

However, that means there is a huge opportunity for businesses who are able to scale personal, effective support. But for those willing to invest in a comprehensive multilingual support strategy, the payoff is huge: improvements in customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Benefits of multilingual customer support.

Scale 209

Scale Outsourcing Services Scaling Technical Review 209

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. 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.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital Generative AI 246

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

Keep investing there. And second, importantly, you’ll get a lot of customers for free in SaaS as you scale. Word of mouth and your mini-brand will kick in, referrals will ramp up, and you’ll get 20%-80% of your leads for basically free, or close to free.

Marketing 227

Marketing Scale B2C B2B 227

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 309

AWS Venture Capital Finance Cloud 309

Neil Patel

NOVEMBER 3, 2021

With scaled data labeling, you can train your algorithm to analyze customer review sentiments. Is it really any surprise that consumers trust other consumers more than the brands they buy? That’s why 51 percent of consumers trust user images over brand creatives, according to a survey by Olapic and Cite Research.

Scale 125

Scale Outsourcing Services Artificial Intelligence Scaling 125

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Strong SaaS Startups Misjudge the Market, Even They Can’t Raise Post Series A/B Growth investors need the multiple reflation in point 1 to happen to get the late-stage investing engine going again. Everyone at scale can be cash flow positive if they want to be. To scale up sales, and get back to marketing again.

Scale 258

Scale SaaS AI Innovation 258

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. Slowly driving up ARPU core metric at scale, but challenging with low NRR. Everyone can use it, especially if you localize your product at scale.

Scale 248

Scale AI Scaling Enterprise 248

Buffer Resources

NOVEMBER 7, 2023

But, she’s also made the intentional decision to scale back over the past couple of years, stopping her work with subcontractors, cutting down client projects to what she could manage on her own, and reducing her revenue by over $100,000.    Location: Appleton, Wisconsin Initial capital invested: Very little!

Scale 109

Scale Scaling Payment Solutions Payment Services 109

Unbounce

JULY 21, 2020

Let’s face it: brand marketers get a bad rap. At the same time, brand became less exciting—and sometimes an afterthought. Companies have found their edge by investing in incredible brands, and a company’s brand has become its differentiator. What Goes Into a Brand? It was too “fluffy.”

Branding 145

Branding Underperforming Technical Team Scale Growth Hacking 145

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2019

Freemium can help software companies gain users quickly—but what happens when it’s time to scale back or up? Join Joaquim Lecha, CEO at Typeform, and Christoph Janz, Managing Partner at Point Nine, as they delve into freemium at scale. The first one is brand exposure. The second one is customer feedback at scale.

Scale 135

Scale Scaling Payment Methods SaaS Payments 135

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Alison brings the perspective of all sides of a startup, from investing to SaaS to Cloud. With the marketing team, there are a lot of the classic functions — brand marketing, product marketing, and partner marketing. 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

MARCH 31, 2022

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Scale. It’s definitely an investment that requires that kind of executive level visibility. So we’ve doubled down our investment and hired very aggressively a technical team that is responsible for what we call tip of the spear. Rico Mallozzi, Sr. Colleen Kapase.

Scale 203

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 203

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 5, 2019

Unarguably one of the biggest brands in the world today. On this week’s episode of Scale, Matt Rogers, Head of SaaS Initiative at Google, is here to enlighten us. This is Season Two of Scale , Intercom’s podcast series on moving from startup to scale-up. And so the more proven you are, the better.

Scale 118

Scale Scaling Artificial Intelligence Business 118

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

Later, once you have a brand, you’ll be competing with Hot Startups nipping at your heals for top VPs. As you finally begin to scale, you’ll have enough revenue to hire some great folks, but not enough to build very redundant teams. More here: From Initial Traction to Initial Scale (~$10M in ARR): The Hardest Phase.

Sales Recruiting 257

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 257

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 16, 2023

However, scaling a business into a seven-figure enterprise is a completely different ball game altogether. So, how could these startups scale while others struggled to find their footing? So how did I scale my PR agency to a coveted seven-figure powerhouse? To scale and truly stand out, I needed to niche down.

Scale 78

Scale Scaling Strategy Social Media 78

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2023

to the firms that send over a dozen of their Partners and Associates — everyone who invests in SaaS has a presence at SaaStr Annual. From the Founding Partners, Managing Directors and big name SaaS VCs who grace the stage. And they want to meet YOU.

Venture Capital 200

Venture Capital Banking Cloud Investment 200

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 13, 2021

Its definitely at least a Cloud infrastructure and applications company for SMBs: And its also a great case study of learning how to sell and market to SMBs at scale. At $4B of revenue of scale. SaaS is profitable at scale. Huge investment in marketing. GoDaddy is a marketing engine, investing $439,000,000 (!)

SMB 300

SMB Cloud Scaling Investment 300