SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2025

Fresh data from Ramp’s AI Index suggests that the meteoric rise in business AI spending might be showing signs of deceleration, raising questions about whether we’re witnessing market maturation or beginning to hit a potential adoption ceiling: The numbers tell a nuanced story. While overall AI penetration among U.S.

AI 281

AI Payment Services Payments Scale 281

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2025

Billion PostgreSQL Battle for AI Agent Supremacy Brief Overview : Two data giants are making strategic moves to dominate the AI agent infrastructure market through major PostgreSQL acquisitions. This acquisition builds on previous AI investments, including the 2023 purchase of Neeva, a generative AI search startup.

VP of Engineering 188

VP of Engineering AI Search AI Data 188

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

I’ve playing with a new mental model for early-stage startups: a pendulum. There only two limiting factors in this mental model: product and go to market. At the moment a startup is founded, the business is product limited. After the company establishes product market fit, the pendulum swings to go-to-market.

VP of Engineering 279

VP of Engineering Startup Sales Hiring compliance 279

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

Joselyn Goldfein , Managing Director at Zeta Venture Partners, which invests in AI and data infrastructure-focused startups from inception through seed stage And see everyone at 2025 SaaStr Annual, May 13-15 in SF Bay!! What VCs Are Funding in AI Today The AI funding landscape has evolved rapidly in 2023-2024. The actual tech stack matters.

Technical Review 179

Technical Review Artificial Intelligence AI Marketplace as a Service 179

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 5, 2024

It’s striking that most of them already have a significant number of AI startups pursuing their ambitions to change workflows. Public & private company diligence, compliance analysis Marketing & PR 0.9 Public & private company diligence, compliance analysis Marketing & PR 0.9 Sales Managers 0.4

Software Review 239

Software Review Technical Review Scale Construction 239

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2024

From startup to $500M CARR, Spencer Burke, SVP of Growth at Braze, shares how Braze scaled a growth and customer success team. At the time, the app store apps were calculators and sound boards before brands and streaming hit the market. As an early startup team, you’re doing every job under the sun. But that was it.

Scale 291

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 291

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2024

Is Generative AI going to be transformative or incremental for your startup? Is time-to-market absolutely critical for you? The beauty of startups is you’re agile, and with LLMs, it’s language-driven. So, as a startup, you need to think deeply about the customer experience and what GenAI can do for you.

Generative AI 272

Generative AI AI Cloud Startup 272

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2025

When market pull is incredibly strong and your brand is #1, just hiring experienced folks may be enough. Security compliance? " pic.twitter.com/1TSGIUwLRA — Jason SaaStr 2025 is May 13-15 Lemkin (@jasonlk) February 1, 2025 And a related post here: 90%-95% of Salespeople Won’t Make It At Your Startup. Voice APIs?

Sales Hiring 179

Sales Hiring Sales compliance Interviewing 179

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 6, 2023

There are 4 questions a startup should ask themselves about building a startup that uses generative AI. There are 4 questions startups should ask themselves about building with generative AI. Market : how to compete with incumbents? I had a blast putting this deck together. Moats : how to develop competitive advantage?

Generative AI 228

Generative AI AI GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Startup 228

TechEmpower SaaS

JULY 24, 2023

At TechEmpower, we frequently talk to startup founders, CEOs, product leaders, and other innovators about their next big tech initiative. How will you be taking this to market? What are your key Startup Metrics ? eCommerce Does your startup run on a subscription model? Often this ties to marketing support.

Innovation 780

Innovation Development CTO Hire Technical Review 780

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

The 5 Key Things You Need to Know About Modern Go-To-Market Adam Gross, former CEO of Vimeo and Heroku and and veteran of Salesforce and Dropbox joined SaaStr Annual for a deep dive on the evolution of SaaS go-to-market strategies. What he shared was pure gold for any SaaS founder trying to navigate the complex world of GTM motions.

Enterprise readiness 141

Enterprise readiness Enterprise compliance Acquisition 141

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

In the new episode, Jason sits down with Drata CMO Sydney Sloan to talk about what’s new at Drata, the role of CMO at Drata vs. Salesloft, partner marketing, customer marketing, and more. Sydney pulled someone from Salesloft with a product marketing background who understands operations, running programs, and being strategic.

AWS 279

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 279

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2023

What’s your top “undiscovered gem” — an app you love but others may not have heard of?

AWS 298

AWS compliance AI Startup 298

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 30, 2022

By building a strong business tech stack for your startup – covering everything from incorporation to growing long-lasting customer relationships – you can not only win back time and establish best practices, but create a solid foundation for your business to grow. Ready to take your startup to the next level?

Scale 163

Scale Payment Services Startup AWS 163

Tom Tunguz

MAY 15, 2023

the company uses proprietary or sensitive data within its models and needs strict controls / guarantees for compliance or legal reasons. As the nascent market matures, customers will elect their preferred deployment option. The company doesn’t believe sensitive data masking & indexes provide enough security.

Artificial Intelligence 227

Artificial Intelligence AI Machine Learning Scale 227

SaaStr

DECEMBER 6, 2022

Brex is a company that provides credit cards for startups, and Alloy provides financing for small businesses. On Balancing Compliance and Growth: Compliance, for any sub-category in SaaS, whether it’s marketing following GDPR compliance or your product team following FinTech compliance – it’s binary.

Scale 274

Scale Scaling compliance Forecasting 274

SaaStr

JULY 14, 2022

So generally, as an investor, you don’t want to worry too much about TAM — Total Addressable Market. Even if the initial market sweet spot is small. And if your market itself is growing rapidly, sometimes you can just ride that wave without truly growing your TAM. Getting better at sales and marketing.

SMB 329

SMB Enterprise Government Startup 329

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2023

Mercury offers banking* for startups — at any size or stage. Launched in 2019, Mercury is trusted by more than 100,000 startups. At Rattle , we are redefining the way revenue teams and leaders interact with their go-to-market systems! Join these incredible companies to experience all the value of SaaStr!

Scale 244

Scale Banking compliance Forecasting 244

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2021

Marketing can be tempted to hide certain editions that generate less revenue. There’s one rule I’ve come up with to help unite sales, customer success, marketing and product: Assume Every Customer Knows Everything. Assume your customers know every cut corner you’ve cut on compliance, security, redundancy, etc.

Scale 289

Scale compliance Engineering Customer Success 289

SaaStr

DECEMBER 2, 2021

They help B2B SaaS marketers turn organic search into a source of repeatable revenue through software and coaching. Panther helps remote startups hire anyone, anywhere, in just a click. Panther helps remote startups hire anyone, anywhere, in just a click. Demandwell is redefining the space to drive results.

Payment Features 259

Payment Features Payment Services Payments Sales Hiring 259

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

The Accounting Team Responsibilities: Financial recording and reporting Compliance, Audits Accounts Payable/Accounts Receivable Tax, Treasury Your accounting team makes sure every financial transaction is recorded correctly and categorized. Accountants are responsible for ensuring the company has clean financial statements and data.

Scale 239

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 239

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2021

Come hear from Chris Britt, co-founder, and CEO, about Chime’s journey in a highly competitive market and what it took to win. Secrets to Aligning Marketing and Revenue Strategies with Marqeta’s CMO. 4 Secrets to Using Data Security and Compliance as a Competitive Advantage with Very Good Security’s CEO.

Payments 274

Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments Banking 274

Chart Mogul

JANUARY 9, 2025

Here, customers usually find your brand through marketing channels and then engage with it through tools like interactive self-guided demos, free trials, or freemium versions of your product. Its not just about knowing who your customers areits about having clear hypotheses that you can test on your journey to find product-market fit.

Scale 52

Scale Sales Hiring Startup Sales Recruiting 52

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2021

Pipeline Generation (PG): Traditionally, SDRs and marketing teams find the leads and sales reps close the sale. Stop Selling Like a Startup. Enterprise clients expect a high level of security, compliance and legal protections as a given, so you should have things in place, like GDPR and certifications like SOC-2, PCI, etc.

Scale 293

Scale Sales Hiring Enterprise Sales 293

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2022

Atlassian’s Chief Revenue Officer, Cameron Deatsch, walks us through how Atlassian grew over the course of 20 years and became one of the most successful startups today. They have grown to over $3 billion in revenue while keeping sales and marketing spending under 15% of revenue for all 20 years they’ve been in business. Be patient.

Scale 261

Scale Scaling Marketplace as a Service Entrepreneurship 261

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2022

With early revenue, you start thinking about churn and scalability of every aspect of the business, including product, infrastructure, customer support, sales and marketing. Mistake #9: Don’t forget about compliance. Compliance can be complicated. Advice: Your compliance responsibility doesn’t end after you incorporate.

Finance 332

Finance Outsourcing Services Systems Review Technical Review 332

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 8, 2018

I’ve written quite a bit about the public market software multiples. As the public markets have appreciated, something has happened that I didn’t expect. I thought valuations between the markets would normalize because of a deflation in both public and private. Aside from compliance efforts, not much.

Software 170

Software Marketing Acquisition compliance 170

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2021

As a startup, you’re doing a million things at once: building a product, answering customer tickets, developing a sales playbook, trying out different marketing hacks, and keeping the lights on. The reality is all large companies, and more and more mid-market companies, will require a SOC 2 report from their vendors.

Enterprise 278

Enterprise Software Review GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Azure 278

USIO

JUNE 24, 2025

Built for Compliance : PCI Level 1, SOC II, Nacha certified — backed by in-house regulatory teams. No revenue share at modest or startup levels. 5 Competent support for big clients — but not built for startups or mid-market partners. Best-in-Class Support : Dedicated onboarding specialists, U.S.-based Support Rating: 3.5/5

Payments 100

Payments Payment Services Embedded Payments Merchant Services 100

SaaStr

MAY 4, 2022

Market trends: why is it easier than ever to build an online business? Software companies have realized how much of the market can be tapped by servicing horizontal use cases with vertical functionality. Plan for compliance implications of your growth. How can you use software to manage compliance for you? Key takeaways.

Payment Features 259

Payment Features Payment Services Outsourcing Services Payment Solutions 259

Scytale

NOVEMBER 21, 2023

These companies come into contact with lots of sensitive data in one way or another and so, data security compliance has pretty much become a must in this digital and tech day and age. A careful compliance strategy is non-negotiable for SaaS businesses. However, successful compliance management doesn’t just happen.

compliance 96

compliance Technical Review SaaS Systems Review 96

SaaStr

APRIL 12, 2023

Even considering the more conservative fundraising market in 2023, there are opportunities for startups to get investor attention with AI. It’s simply a matter of watching your burn: “The main difference in the market between 2021 and today is that efficiency matters more than growth.” 3: What Moat Will You Create?

Generative AI 242

Generative AI AI Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 242

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2023

Hypergrowth in today’s highly competitive and budget-constrained SaaS world may be less frequent now, but Vanta, the software tool empowering security companies to achieve compliance and manage risk, has defied the odds. For instance,the number one reason that startups fail is because they have no market need.

Strategy 246

Strategy Scale Sales Hiring Startup 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

This insight led Deel to focus on solving payments and compliance. Deel solved this by scaling the revenue operations team in conjunction to support sales, design quotas, and go-to-market strategies, and leverage data to identify the best strategies. As a startup, it’s hard to know if the timing is right and what to expect.

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 274

SaaStr

MAY 7, 2025

International Revenue Remains Flat Twilio continues to generate about a third of its revenue from international markets, the same as 12 months ago. These tools are designed to help customers build AI-driven voice agents and automate complex tasks like call scoring and compliance monitoring. 85% of Its Inbound Leads Handled By AI (!)

Headcount 169

Headcount AI Scale compliance 169

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 18, 2018

The M&A market slows meaningfully , especially at the multi-billion dollar level. The recent seasickness in the public markets forces most CEOs adopt a more conservative approach to acquisitions. This will force startups to move up-the-stack into the platform and application tiers. SaaS fundraising remained strong.

Blockchain 208

Blockchain Technical Review Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning 208

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 12, 2024

Current market trends in Asia that can affect expansion and the challenges associated with those market trends. In simple terms, we handle everything from payments to fraud management, to custom support and tax compliance, so that sellers can focus on growing their business.

Merchant Services 193

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Methods SaaS Payments 193