SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2025

My general rule of thumb for title and when to hire various finance leaders for a typical SaaS company is below: There are a lot of roles that will go under the top finance role, but getting the right top finance person at the right time is the crucial first step in building a successful finance team. It gets expensive fast!

Scale 314

Scale Finance Headcount Leadership 314

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2025

This affects everything from GP compensation to LP allocation strategies. #5. International Developer Talent Is Reshaping SaaS Economics The Surprise : About 60% of companies already outsource app development , and India is expected to overtake the US in number of developers by 2030.

Outsourcing Services 163

Outsourcing Services Venture Capital Outsourced Development Data 163

Clouded Judgement

NOVEMBER 18, 2024

”” Benchmark Data The data shown below depicts how the ServiceTitan data compares to the operating metrics of current public SaaS businesses. We go to market with our platform in three ways: Core, Pro and FinTech products. Together, we refer to our Pro and FinTech products as “add-on products.””

Benchmarks 299

Benchmarks Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments 299

SaaStr

JUNE 9, 2025

Setting sales rep quotas in a SaaS business depends heavily on your stage of growth and ARR. More here: A Framework For Your First SaaS Sales Comp Plan 2. More here: Sales Reps Really Do Have to Close 4x-5x What They Take Home, and More: Iconiq’s Sales Compensation Guide 4. Here’s how I’d break it down: 1.

Scale 163

Scale B2B Benchmarks Sales 163

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2021

2021 will be the year SaaS sales evolves the most since the Appexchange ecosystem started to take off ~15 years ago, which spawned the entire notion of a true sales app stack. Almost every SaaS VP of Sales and CRO I’ve talked to in the past few months isn’t going back. What’s the change? The permanent move to distributed sales teams.

Sales Recruiting 354

Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review Sales 354

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2023

CEO hires 2 reps, in the beginning, each barely pays for themselves, but by months 4–6 they are able to close 3x or more of their total compensation. By 8-10 sales reps, you probably need a first head of rev ops / sales operations to handle training, onboarding, compensation, quotas, etc. appeared first on SaaStr.

Sales Hiring 326

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Compensation 326

SaaStr

AUGUST 24, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Do Enterprise SaaS Companies Deal With Late Payments? Because Customer Success — they’re compensated on avoiding churn. image from here ) The post Dear SaaStr: How Do Enterprise SaaS Companies Deal With Late Payments? Yes, in the end, you have to be willing to switch off the platform.

SaaS Payments 284

SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions Payments 284

SaaStr

JUNE 4, 2025

HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan just laid it bare at a recent conference, and it should make every SaaS leader uncomfortable. A few examples from SaaStr speakers: David Sacks (Craft Ventures, Yammer ) has talked about how, in early-stage SaaS, even with a small sales team, you often see only 50%-60% of assigned accounts getting proper follow-up.

Scale 227

Scale AI Underperforming Technical Team Sales 227

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

So things got a bit broken with SaaS sales exec comp in the run-up up until 2020 … and then it got really broken in the crazy times of late 2020 and 2021. SaaS companies and fintechs and pseudo-SaaS companies could end up paying out more than the entire year’s margin in the commission check. This wrecks the unit economics.

Scale 345

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring Sales 345

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2020

I’m not ashamed to admit that when I set up our first SaaS sales comp plan, I had no idea what I was doing. SaaS Enterprise Sales Compensation Pl an. This can be hard in the early, learning days of a SaaS start-up. First, I did an analysis of what inside sales reps at SaaS companies are usually paid.

Scale 363

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 363

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2025

90% of SaaS companies that IPO … IPO with the founder as CEO. That data here: SaaS CEOs That Go The Distance, To IPO … Tend To Be Founder-CEOs (Updated) Are you sure the better answer isn’t to go find a great VP or two to help you scale? Dear SaaStr: We’re Thinking of Bringing in an Outside CEO to Help Us Scale.

Scaling 163

Scaling Compensation Retention Startup 163

Tom Tunguz

JULY 11, 2024

The SaaS business model of the last 20 years for SaaS is a beautiful one. It will require changing sales compensation plans & customer contracts, which database companies have navigated successfully. If an AI agent replaces an SDR who is compensated for meetings, then why not charge this way?

AI 240

AI Pricing Software Compensation 240

SaaStr

MARCH 29, 2025

Transitioning from founder-led sales to a commissioned sales team is one of the most criticaland trickysteps in scaling a SaaS business. Compensate Relatively Generously. Use the early months to refine your process, adjust compensation plans, and learn what works. Heres how to approach it: 1. Dont Rush the Transition.

Scale 180

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Compensation 180

SaaStr

DECEMBER 2, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Is The Optimal Structure of an Initial SaaS B2B Sales Team? Where, roughly speaking, each sales rep brings in at least 4x-5x the total compensation they take out. The sales-driven SaaS companies that are very capital efficient generally end up at 4x-5x or greater as a ration of average quota attainment / average OTE.

Sales Hiring 273

Sales Hiring Scale B2B Sales 273

SaaStr

OCTOBER 4, 2023

Founder and CEO of SaaStr Jason Lemkin deep dives into the current state of SaaS and the Cloud. Lemkin and David Sacks touched on whether SaaS is making a cautious recovery , and Lemkin shares a slightly different perspective here. Before March 2020, it was almost the only single-seat SaaS product with over 100% NRR.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring SaaS Headcount Compensation 284

SaaStr

OCTOBER 29, 2021

No marketing budget can compensate for a substandard SaaS product. Why should they tie their career and compensation to a second-tier offering? Why should they tie their career and compensation to a second-tier offering? Presented By: Henrique Dubugras – CEO – Brex – @hdubugras.

Compensation 343

Compensation Scale Enterprise Software 343

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2025

In our most recent episode of CRO Confidential , hosted by Sam Blond , Graham Moreno , VP of Worldwide Sales at Codium, shared invaluable insights on what drove this growth, the challenges they faced, and how other SaaS companies can replicate this success. 7 out of our first 10 sales hires are already over their annual quota, Graham notes.

Sales Hiring 174

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting AI 174

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2023

Dear SaaStr: When Bootstrapping a SaaS Product, What Should You Be Aware Of? Just a few observations from bootstrapped SaaS companies I’ve had some involvement with: It probably will take 3–4 years longer to get to $10m ARR or so. More here : The Average SaaS Unicorn Raises $370,000,000. You may have a harder time seeing it.

Scale 52

Scale SaaS Compensation Startup 52

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2022

Hiring has never been easy in SaaS. Today, it’s hard because there are 1000x more SaaS startups before. Transparent compensation information is concern #1. Second, many of us worry about being fully transparent with compensation. Concern #1 was a lack of transparent compensation information. Not later. #4.

Revenue 301

Revenue Sales Hiring Compensation Startup 301

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2020

Q: What is a typical organizational structure for a SaaS startup with sales reps? CEO hires 2 reps, in the beginning, each barely pays for themselves, but by months 4–6 they are able to close 3x-5x their total compensation. A rough structure from 1–25 sales reps: Early days: CEO acts as VP of Sales. Earlier if you can afford it.

Sales Hiring 302

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 302

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

The SaaS sales model seems so well-established, as hundreds of founders build their businesses and raise funding. Mark Roberge, Founder of Stage 2 Capital and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, shares insights from his years of experience into common SaaS sales missteps and how you can avoid them.

Sales Hiring 254

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 254

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2023

What’s changed is the majority of startups that are venture-backed don’t seem to get the CEO’s and founders’ compensation packages approved by the board anymore. Eventually, everyone does when the company adds a true CFO and outside directors and even a compensation committee pre-IPO. But they care again.

Compensation 274

Compensation Government Finance Startup 274

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 19, 2022

Sales compensation planning can be a tricky beast to tame — but know that you’re not alone. I asked 12 incredible sales leaders across the SaaS industry to share their biggest challenges with comp planning and how to overcome them. Related: New to sales compensation planning? Top 10 sales compensation challenges.

Compensation 121

Compensation Sales Recruiting Sales Finance 121

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2022

Lots of SaaS founders are preoccupied with employee headcount as an important growth metric, but this indicator is not always true. Compensate Democratically: Managing up culture brings us all down. At Expensify, every single employee gets a say in the compensation of every other employee.

Compensation 261

Compensation Leadership Company Culture Headcount 261

SaaStr

APRIL 15, 2025

I’ll dig in, but a really great deep dive with MongoDB’s head of sales ops here: Four Sales Compensation Tactics for Consumption-Based GTM with MongoDB’s SVP of Sales MongoDB us a blended commission model for their consumption-based GTM. using 20 out of 25 features).

Scale 144

Scale Compensation Retention Churn 144

SaaStr

APRIL 27, 2023

QuotaPath is the most adaptable compensation solution to bring Sales, RevOps, and Finance all on the same page. Motivate reps and retain top talent with a better way to design compensation structures and automate commissions. Companies waste up to 30% of their SaaS spend. That equates to 40B+ in waste.

Cloud 260

Cloud Scale Startup Sales Hiring 260

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2023

Dear SaaStr: As a salesperson, if you sell a multi-year SaaS deal, does the whole amount count towards your current year quota? On commissions / pay-out: For start-ups where cash matters, I strongly suggest compensating the reps mainly on cash brought in. Or just the part attributed to your current year? Approaches vary here.

Compensation 281

Compensation Churn Revenue SaaS 281

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: SaaS Multiples Are Down 75% From a Year Ago. SaaStr 603: SaaStr CRO Confidential Presents the Ultimate Guide to Sales Compensation, Quotas and Recruiting with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin. Customers Love a Good Product Roadmap Review.

Sales Recruiting 301

Sales Recruiting CTO Compensation Software Review 301

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 12, 2023

A SaaS Founder’s Guide to PR Why PR works, when it doesn’t, and what to expect. Customer success teams are critical for SaaS companies as they own the customer relationship from start to finish, managing up to 75% of revenue through renewals and upsells. Tie compensation to these metrics to incentivize performance.

Sales Hiring 283

Sales Hiring Technical Advisors Compensation Outsourced Development 283

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2025

It’s a different world today, AI-fueled, often distributed and hybrid, and with inflation both in titles (CRO or VP Sales) and compensation expectations. Now if you are ready, but haven’t done it before in SaaS, here are 13 good screening questions to see if you have a real VP, Sales candidate in hand or not. Not usually.

Sales Recruiting 184

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing 184

Sales Hacker

MAY 9, 2019

A great sales compensation plan needs to accomplish quite a lot. It needs to provide fair compensation to employees in customer-facing roles. The Process for Creating a Sales Compensation Plan. Plan Compensation for Onboarding and Training. Example Compensation Plans. Establish Role Levels. Keep it Simple.

Compensation 110

Compensation Sales Hiring Development Team Review Sales Recruiting 110

SaaStr

JUNE 12, 2022

If you’re a SaaS sales rep with a $500k annual quota, doing $5k ACV deals … you have to close 100 deals a year. And that was customer success managers who were really just farmers — compensated 100% or close to it for Upsells, not Retention. SaaS Compounds. WebEx-type environments). ” Sigh.

Compensation 293

Compensation Customer Success Interviewing Sales 293

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

B2B SaaS investors, founders, and growth teams skip ahead to monetization and expansion early and focus disproportionately on them. Mistake #3: Not designing a sales compensation plan for PLG. “We We are using the sales compensation models from the 1970s, and these models drive quota-fulfilling behavior.”.

Technical Review 284

Technical Review Technical Advisors Scale Compensation 284

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 8, 2015

See also: Innovator’s Solution for SaaS Startups. There’s a familiar path now to SaaS companies that start in the SMB (small-to-medium business) part of the market. Total Compensation, $k 75 250. Over time, they seem to inevitably begin serving larger customers. Why does this happen? Inside Outside.

Innovation 208

Innovation Startup Scale SMB 208

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 6, 2022

Figma: “We’d Been Talking to Adobe Since 2012” Half of Public SaaS Companies Trade At Under 6x ARR Today. SaaS Multiples Are Down 75% From a Year Ag. SaaStr 603: SaaStr CRO Confidential Presents the Ultimate Guide to Sales Compensation, Quotas and Recruiting with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin.

Sales Recruiting 291

Sales Recruiting Compensation Cloud Retention 291

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

Gartner: SaaS Spend In the Enterprise Will Grow 17% to $195 Billion in 2023. SaaStr 603: SaaStr CRO Confidential Presents the Ultimate Guide to Sales Compensation, Quotas and Recruiting with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin. Live: SaaStr Workshop Wednesday with Battery Ventures on SaaS Metrics. Top Videos This Week: 1.

Sales Recruiting 289

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 289

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

The Seven Things all Founders Should Know About Sales. The Seven Things all Founders Should Know About Sales. Tunguz, MongoDB, Nick Mehta, Bessemer and More!!

Generative AI 284

Generative AI Scale Compensation AI 284