Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

The traditional SaaS business model of annual prepaid contracts based on seats faces challenges when a human is no longer operating the software. 3x as productive as humans, software pricing will need to evolve.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

Tom Tunguz

MAY 5, 2013

Kenny van Zant drew this diagram for me on white board and I think it’s the best visualization of how SMB SaaS freemium business grow. The diagram highlights a few important mechanics of the SMB SaaS business model. But most paying users for freemium services are SMBs. A Different Animal.

SMB 100

SMB Scale SaaS Mobile 100

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Its business model of going global and going inbound from India is the differentiation. Big Bet #4: Go After Bigger Fish — Overlay Field Motion Over Inbound People often assume inbound is all SMB, but one of the things Freshworks realized early on is that you can close larger deals with inbound. Burger King was 300 seats.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Scale SMB SaaS 284

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2022

Another top mistake SMB folks make trying to sell enterprise. “Dig deep about their business model before sending them a proposal.” This sounds so basic, but again it often isn’t, especially if you are using less experienced and/or SMB trained sales reps to sell into the enterprise.

CTO Hire 325

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 325

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2023

With nine figures in revenue, Ariel and SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin talk about all things Navan, rebranding when you have brand equity, building B2B software for people, pricing and business models, and much more. They also have a business model that only connects to one content source.

Payment Solutions 282

Payment Solutions Payments Travel Scale 282

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 14, 2022

But you can’t base your business model purely on gut instinct: you need to understand the problem by conducting serious research. In the early days, UserZoom struggled with deciding whether its target market should focus on enterprise or SMB. UserZoom CEO Alfonso de la Nuez and CMO Sophie Chesters have a few suggestions.

Scale 246

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring SMB 246

SaaStr

DECEMBER 21, 2022

It takes a lot of intentional investment to scale with enterprise customers in addition to self-serve or SMB markets. It’s much easier to stick to an older business model and playbook—enterprise software companies have been doing it for decades.

Scale 245

Scale Enterprise Scaling Management 245

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

For SMB-facing companies, over 110% should be your goal. The beauty of SaaS as a business model is its asset-light nature, selling bits, not atoms. This number should always be great than 100 and is typically measured as a percentage. For enterprise-facing companies, great than 120% is a good number.

Metrics 261

Metrics Marketing SaaS SMB 261

Payrix

SEPTEMBER 25, 2024

This growing market is switching up how small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) access financial products, creating exciting new opportunities for software companies to reimagine their business models and restructure their product offerings.

Payments 130

Payments Payment Solutions Embedded Payments Trends 130

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2019

About the episode: Tien Tzuo is the Founder and CEO of Zuora, one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies that has been at the forefront of the rise of subscription business models. They have funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Benchmark, Sequoia, Redpoint and Marc Benioff, just to name a few.

Technical Review 204

Technical Review Development Team Review Software Review Scale 204

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

No matter what your business model, we meet you where you are. With over eight years of experience in SaaS, the large majority of which are within SaaS payments and billing, Tony is constantly immersed in growth driven projects and dialogues with SMB and Enterprise SaaS companies looking to scale. About Our Presenters.

Pricing 146

Pricing Payment Solutions Payment Services Scale 146

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 29, 2019

You can’t find email lists using Job-to-be-Done, but you can find ones for B2C subscription businesses that have a high volume of website traffic. Sales: Be able to route prospects to our self-service flow or the most appropriate team within Sales, e.g. startups, SMB, MME, based on well-defined customer segments.

Business 184

Business B2C Scale Headcount 184

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

In it's truest form, ARR is used by pure SaaS business models to describe the aggregate annual value of the entire customer set. Many laude the SaaS business model because ARR is inherently predictable - you know what you’re revenue will be over the coming 12 months, and sometimes even further out than that.

AI 193

AI Cloud Revenue Technical Advisors 193

Blulogix

JUNE 13, 2025

Here’s why we stood out: Broad and Deep Monetization Capabilities BluLogix supports a wide range of business models—from recurring subscriptions to usage-based and hybrid structures. The Cost of Getting It Wrong Too many enterprises are running billing on SMB-era infrastructure—or worse, fragmented systems patched together by IT.

Payment Features 52

Payment Features Enterprise Traceability Scale 52

Andreessen Horowitz

APRIL 23, 2024

Alex: Let’s dive into your business models. Both of you sell into SMBs, which is a notoriously difficult segment. One of the holy grails of SMB software is, how are you going to acquire customers? One of the criticisms of SMB software is that each customer can only provide so much revenue.

Payments 110

Payments Forecasting Payment Services Sales Hiring 110

SaaStr

JULY 2, 2019

Over time, it leads to a really healthy business model as well. Dannie : The way we specialized is we segmented, so SMB originally, enterprise, large enterprise. Dannie : I think I mentioned this earlier, but when I was hired on, I hired onto lead an SMB team that was newly formed. We saw Box on one end.

Enterprise 163

Enterprise Scale Sales Hiring SMB 163

OPEXEngine

MAY 18, 2021

SaaS metrics are viewed differently at different stages of growth and for different sales models, primarily whether a company is selling into an SMB or enterprise marketplace. Growth Stage – Scaling the Business, and . NRR benchmarks depend on whether you are selling into the SMB or enterprise market. .

SaaS Payments 98

SaaS Payments Metrics Payments Payment Services 98

Aaron Beashel

MARCH 9, 2018

Their marketing team may be using Account Based Marketing tactics to generate some leads, but majority of business is won by the Sales team prospecting, outreaching and closing deals and marketing plays more of a supporting function. Zenefits is a great example of business model innovation. Business Resources.

Scale 192

Scale SaaS Payments B2B Strategy 192

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2020

Adnan Chaudhry: And at first, I just want to acknowledge that we’re going to talk about the business models of some of our broader customers, some of the things Salesforce is going through. It’s a business crisis. It’s the SMB space. But this is a public health crisis. It’s an economic crisis.

Sales Hiring 199

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services 199

FastSpring

JANUARY 27, 2022

While the above “small change” examples are compelling, maybe you’re looking for help with a very common SaaS struggle: optimizing your revenue stream by experimenting with new pricing models. If you’re trying to find the best SaaS business model and incentives for your company, here are nine tips to optimize your recurring billing.

Merchant Services 146

Merchant Services Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 146

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2019

This is a mobile solution for SMB’s to send an invoice and get paid. I think it’s such an interesting window into the company’s business model and I bucket companies into one of three buckets. We hired a data scientist and started building models. You’d be shocked how often I hear this.

Payments 109

Payments Pricing Compensation Scale 109

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 2, 2020

“It doesn’t take a genius to understand that business model failure comes when CAC (the cost to acquire customers) exceeds LTV (the ability to monetize those customers.)” . “To compute the LTV, you would look at the Gross Margin that you would expect to make from that customer over the lifetime of your relationship.

Scale 148

Scale Payment Methods Payments SaaS Payments 148

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 18, 2024

We’ve made a number of changes and realigned our business model in 2024 to make our AEs full cycle. As a result, AEs are now operating more frequently in a full-cycle capacity. Feedback from GTM leaders echoes this notion. For a startup, I believe full cycle is the only way to go.

Sales Hiring 121

Sales Hiring Scale Sales AI Search 121

Neil Patel

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

While the two agencies don’t work together much, they trade referrals if the SMB branch can better help specific clients meet their goals. Between the two agencies, we work hard to have something for everyone, small and large businesses alike. NP Digital Small Business Marketing Services. SMB Digital Marketing Case Studies.

VP of Engineering 135

VP of Engineering Marketing Marketplace as a Service Social Media 135

OPEXEngine

JUNE 11, 2020

Pros and Cons: SaaS SMB vs. Enterprise Models. SaaS companies selling in the SMB market are structured operationally very differently from SaaS companies selling in the enterprise market. At OPEXEngine, we pull apart the different nuances of each business model to make sure we are benchmarking companies correctly.

SMB 59

SMB SaaS Benchmarks Payment Features 59

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 29, 2018

To grow, the company needs to structure its resources into two initiatives; SMB and MidMarket, each requiring a different approach. As the business grows, new markets are discovered, and new PODs are launched to call on these markets. . Use of PODs with Different Business Models. Week 4: Pursue A-leads.

Sales Recruiting 89

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Sales 89

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Of course, we always excelled in SMB at Slack as well. It’s not analogous, but there are learnings you can take in your SMB business as you think about going up or getting into bigger companies and bigger deployments. When I left, we were just bridging the $1 billion mark. It was really an incredible learning journey.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Sales Hiring Strategy 177

SaaStr

JULY 29, 2022

There was another company I invested in called Automile, that for a while was quite successful in SMB fleet tracking, tracking where your fleets of vehicles are. And they sold right after COVID hit, when their business got impacted, for a billion Swedish somethings. It was a decent outcome, but they were coming up on 20 million.

Scale 273

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Enterprise 273

FastSpring

OCTOBER 18, 2018

In other words, we are now in an era of subscriptions, in which businesses are progressively moving towards subscription-based business models. How is your digital business keeping up? Always remember the number one rule of subscription businesses: it’s all about the relationship, and relationships are a two-way street.

Payment Features 68

Payment Features Payment Services Subscription Payment Methods 68

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2019

Contrast that with companies that might also sell into the SMB segment of the market where the ASPs, the average deal sizes are lower. SMB businesses just go out of business much more frequently, and so their gross retention numbers are going to be lower.

Cloud 109

Cloud Scale AWS Machine Learning 109

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 7, 2018

One of the keys to growth in today’s business model is to identify the most effective and efficient GTM model using a variety of sales and marketing channels. Pursue new accounts for example from SMB to Mid Market to Enterprise. Competitors were increasing their market share and Randy was falling behind.

Scale 99

Scale Growth Hacking Scaling Sales Hiring 99

Aaron Beashel

MAY 5, 2014

It’s important to note that SaaS is a product delivery model, not a business model. Salesforce, Xero and Unbounce are all SaaS products but their business models are VERY different. I’ve never seen a business sell a $10,000 per month SaaS product on a touchless acquisiton model.

Engineering 100

Engineering Scale SaaS Acquisition 100

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

Nikos : In your case, I understand your company also shifted slightly on the market, like from SMB to bigger customers. He deals with everything that was very, very difficult. If anything, I’d say do that a little sooner than you think. Do you need to get different people for something like that? Craig : Yeah. Nikos : Yes.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 261

Payrix

MAY 14, 2024

They’re moving to a subscription-based model. And they’re leveraging payments as a way to move that transition where they’re changing their whole business model and customer base and revenue line, payments are playing a very strategic part in that. They’re moving to a subscription-based model.

Payments 147

Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions SaaS Payments 147

ChurnZero

JUNE 11, 2021

Another example is creating a health score based on tiered implementation: SMB onboarding versus Enterprise onboarding. Your segment and timeframe may differ depending on your business model. Explore weighting factors differently for greater insight into a specific product or service. .

Software Review 96

Software Review Systems Review Underperforming Technical Team Scale 96

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 18, 2021

Three-quarters of SMB (small and medium business) decision-makers understand that using digital technology effectively is key to business success in today’s digital era. It requires a shift in how you think about, operate, and manage the business to make it more valuable and relevant—and ultimately, to improve performance.

SMB 49

SMB Cloud Business Model Technology 49

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 21, 2018

For most business models, it’s much better to get current customer to really love your product and to upsell them than it is to get new customers. There’s not really a lot of SMB, which is more like growth hacking rather than breaking into bigger deals. Max: Getting people to create a second course was part of sales.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183