SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What are some common reasons for the failure of startups? My experience across leading 30+ seed investments, including 4 billion+ exits so far, on why startups fail: Not 200% committed to winning no matter what. That might be OK for a few months, but beyond that, startups fall into a decay curve they don’t recover from.

Startup 212

Startup Scale CTO Pricing 212

SaaStr

DECEMBER 28, 2023

Q: What will the early and mid-investor appetite for SaaS startups in sales look like in 2024? “For We’re in a world today where NASDAQ is at a record (great growth), S&P is at a record, but startups have the lowest growth overall. When you add sales and marketing, you can see they were the most impacted category in many ways.

Payment Solutions 223

Payment Solutions Sales Hiring AI SaaS Payments 223

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2023

Scaling a tech startup doesn’t come easy, and when you’ve tried all the conventional SaaS advice, it might be tempting to give up. And they mostly did this by ignoring four pieces of traditional startup advice. Blosser explains, “If you think about WorkRamp and traditional startup advice, we ignored that.

Scale 192

Scale Scaling SMB Marketing 192

SaaStr

MARCH 21, 2023

With public market valuations down 70%+ from their peaks, for startups, that means going twice as far on each dollar. Discretionary categories are hard hit. Some categories in SaaS are holding up well, e.g. Some categories in SaaS are holding up well, e.g. Cloudflare, Adobe, etc. That buying has been put on hold.

Venture Capital 288

Venture Capital SaaS Startup Marketing 288

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 16, 2024

He asked himself a question : whether the startup was increasing, decreasing, or maintaining the market size? (I I added that question to my diligence list when meeting startups. Now much later, having seen many companies create categories or reinvigorate aging ones, the question I ask myself has evolved.

Marketing 112

Marketing Finance Startup Business 112

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2024

TJ Nahigian, co-founder and Managing Partner of Base10 Partners, and Luci Fonseca, Partner, deep dive into the current GenAI landscape, incumbents vs. startups, and the six questions founders should ask themselves to drive value from GenAI. By observing these segments, you can glean lessons if you’re building in the same category.

Generative AI 238

Generative AI Outsourcing Services AI Software Review 238

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

Co-pilots — Co-pilots are where startups and founders can do new things that big companies won’t go after. Sacks believes there will be a co-pilot for every professional job category and also horizontal job functions like marketing and sales. So even startups good at getting renewals were getting seat contractions.

SaaS Payments 214

SaaS Payments Payment Solutions AI SaaS 214

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 5, 2020

Which startup sectors are most affected by coronavirus? Roger Lee is maintaining Layoffs.fyi , which is a table of all the startups who have unfortunately cut staff. On the brighter side, it is a resource for startups looking to hire as they grow. But starting that week, startups began reducing headcount by about 700 per day.

Sales Recruiting 325

Sales Recruiting Startup Headcount Sales Hiring 325

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2022

The Simple Reason Startups That Just Raised $100s of Millions Are Doing Layoffs. SaaStr 601: What It Takes to Forge Your Own Category with Braze Co-Founder and CEO Bill Magnuson. ? ? ?. SaaStr 599: Growth vs. Efficiency: How to Weatherproof Your SaaS Startup for Tougher Times with Point Nine Founder and Partner Christoph Janz. ?

Sales Recruiting 276

Sales Recruiting CTO Compensation Software Review 276

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 16, 2024

Alex Kayyal and Julie Kainz, Partners at Lightspeed, shared at SaaStr Annual a framework they developed around how to think about this new era of Artificial Intelligence in SaaS, what opportunities are out there for startups, and how to think about incumbents. CRM wasn’t a new category, but they were done on-premise.

AI 214

AI Artificial Intelligence Healthcare New CTO 214

Kellblog

MAY 3, 2024

Remember, the enemy for most startups isn’t the competition. Now before you stop reading, perhaps thinking that this is one specific, dated case study, let me say that I could easily write such a parody for about a quarter of the twenty-something startups I work with today. It’s confusion.

Marketing 105

Marketing AI Search Sales Hiring Engineering 105

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 4, 2022

With the summer of Defi behind us and a new year for web3, I wondered which categories of web3 startups generate the most revenue. L1 revenue will remain dominant but other categories will wrest share. Exchanges place second. Right behind, NFT exchanges rank third. Revenue and age correlate weakly.

Payments 363

Payments Revenue Payment Solutions Blockchain 363

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

This showcases a narrow segment of a niche market, and it’s missing a lot of startups. Any startup in any reasonable category likely has dozens of competitors, and Altman believes the best strategy to compete in 2023 and beyond is multi-product. Startups are no longer fringe. How can a startup compete with a big company?

Scale 228

Scale Scaling Startup Sales Hiring 228

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2024

It was mixed actually, even if startups didn’t seem to get a breather, it wasn’t so bad for most public SaaS leaders. Many in impacted categories saw growth fall to 0%. The post Last Year Was a Pretty Rough Year for Many SaaS Startups. So 2023 was a weird year. 2021 was nuts, with crazy growth and crazy multiples.

Startup 183

Startup SaaS AI Pricing 183

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2023

So two discussions this week were reminders to me of how much marketing has changed in the early and “pre-brand” stages: Two very successful founders ($1B+ exits) with new startups pushed me really hard to promote their new startup you’ve never heard of our our podcast + at SaaStr Annual. No one cares you have a new or new-ish app.

Startup 169

Startup Sales Hiring AI Content Marketing 169

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2022

We did an analysis of SaaS startups that had IPO’d and about 70% were new versions of something new, and 30% were truly new categories: So VCs like to do both. More on that here: This has fueled a lot more large funding rounds in spaces that are or can be large, often with 10+ startups raising tens of millions and more.

Startup 234

Startup B2B Investment SaaS 234

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2023

VCs know there is competition in every segment, category and industry. And that new startups disrupt every segment, category and industry, as well. The Best Founders embraced competition and know it cold. And know how to beat it. In fact, I always do a deep dive here with every founder I meet with.

Startup 184

Startup 184

SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2023

Founders are responsible for ensuring a startup always has enough money, setting the vision for the company, and driving things forward. Lesson #1: If You Aren’t Making Mistakes, You Aren’t In A Startup If you do things that always work and maintain the status quo, you’re likely at a major company like Microsoft.

Sales Recruiting 244

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Pricing 244

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2023

On his journey from Marketer #1 to Gong’s Chief Marketing Officer, he led the creation of the revenue intelligence category, pioneered an iconic, human-centric brand, and led Gong’s Marketing efforts from zero to hundreds of millions in revenue.

Leadership 300

Leadership B2B Branding Revenue 300

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2022

So it’s less representative of raw startups, but more representative of overall enterprise and mid-market spend. It’s harder than it was, and some categories are seeing more headwinds than others. Revenues are down in some categories, and not others, Growth is probably 20% more challenging than in the best of times.

Cybersecurity 298

Cybersecurity SMB Interviewing Enterprise 298

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

Categories like this will make incredible apps for LMs and AI because of the high volume of tickets and high signal-to-noise. Will it be existing companies embedding AI smartly or new startups who can meaningfully adopt AI faster? The easiest example is always customer support. Where will value accrue in a company? Only time will tell.

AI 252

AI Generative AI Venture Capital SaaS 252

Kellblog

AUGUST 27, 2022

In extreme distillation, Play Bigger argues: Category kings (companies who typically define and then own categories in the minds of buyers) are worth a whole lot more than runner-ups. Therefore you should be a category king. Because it’s ultimately about value creation which is, after all, exactly what VCs do.

Strategy 134

Strategy Marketing Startup Customer Success 134

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 22, 2022

For web3 startups to thrive, their marketing teams will need to spend marketing dollars to acquire users efficiently. There’s an entire marketing ecosystem for startups to build - and it will explode as all the venture dollars web3 startups have raised rushes to find new users. This is my mental model for it today.

Marketing 348

Marketing Blockchain Advertising Government 348

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

Last Year Was a Pretty Rough Year for Many SaaS Startups. But for the classic SaaS startup, selling to tech or even “worse”, mostly tech start-ups, had a tough year. Spending on many SaaS categories resumes, but more slowly. OpenAI apparently got to $1.4 Billion in ARR — most of that in just 1 year (!)

Sales Hiring 257

Sales Hiring Cloud AI Startup 257

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2023

G2 is a unicorn startup that’s stayed in the game for over a decade. Instead of trying to use a clunky, forms-based search box, you can now have a conversation with Monty to discover the best app, even if you don’t know the best category (there are over 2,000 on G2). Startups have to have a plan. can find it from G2.

AI Search 189

AI Search AI ChatGPT Scale 189

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2023

What are some qualities of a bad startup CEO/founder in Silicon Valley? Sometimes, in a new or emerging category you can be slow at first. The post Dear SaaStr: What Are Some of the Qualities of a “Bad” Startup CEO? This doesn’t so much make you a “bad” CEO as one that likely won’t get much past $2m-$10m in ARR.

Startup 194

Startup New CTO CTO Investment 194

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 3, 2023

The Typical Startup Saw a 24% Increase in Sales Cycle in 2023. The first two quarters of this year were rough for startups. Why Every Startup Needs an AI Strategy. Much like mobile technology became a de facto part of every startup, AI is now no longer a category but the core or a component of every product.

Artificial Intelligence 153

Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT AI Generative AI 153

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Things Startups Just Have to Get Right? Many startups don’t start off with particularly amazing software. Most in fact are new versions of old categories. You can do a single co-founder startup. But more broadly, Successful Startups can be built a lot of ways. Let’s break it down.

Outsourcing Services 221

Outsourcing Services Startup Outsourced Development Technology 221

Tom Tunguz

JANUARY 23, 2023

Expected growth across segments is muted with an average of 5% growth across these B2B categories. Microsoft’s Ability to Cross-Sell its Suite is Driving Dominance in Many Categories GitHub is now home to 100 million developers. Azure ML revenue alone has increased more than 100 percent for five quarters in a row 4.

Azure 243

Azure Underperforming Technical Team Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 243

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 13, 2022

Thanks to the many readers who wrote in to Guess the Startup on Friday. I had three goals for the Guess the Startup Post. But, there are many questions to answer about the differences between equity and tokens before the valuation multiples across these two categories reach a consensus. Red Company is Ethereum.

Startup 279

Startup Scale Retention Enterprise 279

SaaStr

MAY 16, 2024

Wade Foster, founder and CEO of Zapier, runs a category-creating brand that makes all your tech work together seamlessly – no coding required. AI is the fastest-growing category at Zapier. There’s this tech VC debate of whether startups vs. incumbents will win, but the fun thing about AI is that both will win in the short term.

Sales Recruiting 196

Sales Recruiting AI Search B2B Sales Hiring 196

SaaStr

JUNE 14, 2023

At SaaStr Europa, UiPath’s Dines shared five insights from growing a company from nothing, so other founders can learn what it takes to scale a SaaS startup to $1B+ ARR. So Dines actually urges founders not to try and invent their own category. When you have the courage to be bold, people will take you seriously.”

Scale 196

Scale Artificial Intelligence Technical Review Software Review 196

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

PE wants to invest in leaders, if not necessarily always #1 in a category. The startup I invested in that were acquired by PE in the 2020-2021 Boom were acquired for 8x in one case, 12x in another, and 15x in a third. Products that are as close to an annuity as possible, that are amenable to efficiency gains.

AWS 246

AWS SaaS Pricing Acquisition 246

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: About 70% of SaaS Public Companies Are New Versions of Existing Categories of Software (Updated) Growth Slowed Down About 33% On Average For Everyone in Q1 The Top 20 SaaStr Tips to Getting a SaaS Start-Up Going When Should You Add a Second Product?

CTO Hire 195

CTO Hire New CTO CTO Scaling 195

SaaStr

AUGUST 28, 2023

VCs stopped pushing, pushing, pushing for ever higher growth, and basically left startups alone that weren’t burning much. Net net, every VC-backed startup with mediocre growth but a low burn and a long runway got a pass in 2023. The bad news is some startups won’t readjust. That pass is now ending. It’s time to grow again.

Venture Capital 205

Venture Capital AI Startup Mobile 205

SaaStr

JULY 28, 2023

If you are truly disrupting a large category, you’ll grow quickly. You can download the full report here : The post Capchase: The Best SaaS Startups Are Still Growing 100%-200% To $10m ARR and Beyond appeared first on SaaStr. And the very best are growing even faster. This just makes sense. Good years and bad.

Venture Capital 187

Venture Capital Startup SaaS Data 187

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

They don’t have the bandwidth to support five sub-partners in their category. Look at the most important categories that surround your category. Drata also has a dedicated product marketer to help sales, and they have one for each major segment: Enterprise sellers, the startup team, and the CS team.

AWS 205

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 205