SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2024

In it, we cover the SaaS community’s most pressing questions about Artificial Intelligence (AI), pricing, efficiency, and funding. The average public SaaS company is marching toward $400k in revenue per employee. Is the CTO involved in these decisions? When you’re mature, raising prices by $1 might make sense.

AI 232

AI Pricing Artificial Intelligence Scale 232

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

While Baremetrics was fulfilling the desire for public transparency, internally the team was using Looker almost exclusively to track and report revenue metrics. Joel had what he calls “an honest conversation” with Buffer’s CTO Dan. Joel shares that at the time, the Average Revenue per Account (ARPA) was only $18-19.

Payment Solutions 113

Payment Solutions Payment Features Payments Social Media 113

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2020

Why does Yousuf believe now more than ever, the buyer experience is more important than the price? How does Yousuf advise CIOs to approach pricing strategy when pitching CIOs? What must startups remember about how CIOs think about price? What other elements of the contract should startups really spend a lot of time focusing on?

CTO Hire 132

CTO Hire compliance Scale Startup 132

SaaStock

MARCH 29, 2019

Which is why you should sign up for the 2 for 1 Insider Sale and get two people for the price of one. Thanks for everyone who took the time to write their impressions and share with the community. Hire Game Changers to Propel Growth. In his own words: Notion Capital organised an excellent panel event focusing on hiring.

Scale 103

Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire Social Media 103

Point Nine Land

APRIL 9, 2021

A technical co-founder or CTO is always a great-to-have at this stage and becomes a must-have as the business scales beyond seed. An intransparent market: The lower the transparency of a given market, the greater the opportunity for marketplaces to add value by providing access to clear pricing and information.

Marketplace as a Service 59

Marketplace as a Service Payments B2B SaaS Payments 59

Chart Mogul

MARCH 9, 2020

While Baremetrics was fulfilling the desire for public transparency, internally the team was using Looker almost exclusively to track and report revenue metrics. Joel had what he calls “an honest conversation” with Buffer’s CTO Dan. Joel shares that at the time, the Average Revenue per Account (ARPA) was only $18-19.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Payment Features Payments Outsourcing Services 52

OpenView Labs

JULY 2, 2020

Pricing is a SaaS company’s most efficient profit lever, but it’s also one of the easiest things to screw up. Nailing your SaaS pricing strategy requires more than just picking the optimal price and forgetting about it. It includes the latest and greatest SaaS pricing resources, as well as some timeless staples.

Pricing 135

Pricing SaaS Payments Payments SaaS 135

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2020

Brendon introduces his playbook to hiring the first VP of Sales from his experiences as VP of Sales at LinkedIn, EchoSign, Talkdesk and more. Learn the dos and don’ts to make the correct hire the first time and not rush into hiring the wrong VP of Sales, which can cost the company months or even years. Roughly 90%.

Sales Hiring 154

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire 154

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2021

Co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah shared with us how they got there — and the top mistakes they made — just 3 quarters after their IPO. We have someone that probably 98 percent of you know virtually or socially in some sense, Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO of HubSpot. But of course, it wasn’t always quite that big!

Part-Time VPE 216

Part-Time VPE Technical Cofounder CTO Hire New CTO 216

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2019

Megan Leuders: And when you were talking to CEOs and CTOs today, what do you believe is the biggest technology challenge that they are facing as a SaaS company? What is their biggest challenge and what should they be focused on, whether they’re a CEO or a CTO, what would you say they should be focused on today?

Cloud 171

Cloud Scale Trends Machine Learning 171

SaaStr

APRIL 9, 2019

Quick recap: Keep your pricing simple. Mallun Yen : So, you were an engineer by training and then you became an engineering leader, as the CTO of Webex, and then you became a CEO. You’ve got to learn about sales, about marketing and, otherwise, you need to hire a lot of other people around you to help. Eric Yuan: Yep.

Sales Hiring 136

Sales Hiring Scale CTO Hire Marketing 136

Mucker Capital

APRIL 6, 2023

Obviously if you target enterprise customers, you usually have a very large ACV (Annual Contract Value) and the product usually is complex. We talk about using the product complexity, your target customer size, your contract value, and whether there's individual use case–those four things--to help you decide if PLG is a fit.

Startup 52

Startup Scale CTO Hire Outsourced Development 52

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020

Immediately told them to hire 50 reps in a different city, in a different city, and they did. The CEO was deferential because that was 10 times what he’d ever raised before, and did all of it. Jason Lemkin: 50 reps in a new city that you’ve never met, and hired in 60 days when you’re in the low millions ARR.

Sales Hiring 238

Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale Investment 238

ProfitWell

JANUARY 2, 2020

One of the best examples of this type of sales is Netflix—its pricing strategy paved the way for many modern subscription platforms. Because the contracts are typically much higher in these sales agreements, B2B subscriptions often require a much longer sales process before your customer will consider making a purchase. B2C pricing.

B2C 52

B2C Subscription Payment Features Payments 52

ProfitWell

FEBRUARY 4, 2020

In this episode of RevOps and Hops we discuss what revenue operations is, how long it’s actually been around, and why it’s become so relevant today. RevOps is a centralized function that helps recognize and align revenue from sales, marketing, and customer success. You need a RevOps team or manager focused on revenue.

CTO Hire 98

CTO Hire Sales Hiring New CTO CTO 98

SmartKarrot

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

One of the top SaaS influencers is Dharmesh Shah , co-founder, and CTO of HubSpot. Seth writes on content marketing, SaaS marketing, positioning, products, pricing, etc. His insights on SaaS sales, hiring sales reps, and finding customers are a gold mine for anyone in the SaaS space. Dharmesh Shah. Steli Efti. Pierre Lechelle.

VP of Engineering 10

VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Venture Capital 10

Baremetrics

MARCH 16, 2021

QuikNode wants to see technology transform decentralized applications, smart contracts, decentralized governance, voting systems, and more. The Problem: Data for Investors Shklovsky and his teammates started building QuikNode in 2018 as a fun project during spare time, nights and weekends. Reduce failed payments.

Blockchain 90

Blockchain Payment Solutions Artificial Intelligence Payment Services 90

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2020

Loren, among other things, has spearheaded Shopify Plus, which is Shopify’s enterprise platform from the early days, to now announced today almost 30% of the revenue. And they had no choice because their revenue went to zero. From contract signature to launch. It was 20 something percent when we did the podcast, right?

Payment Methods 192

Payment Methods Merchant Services Scale Payments 192

Andreessen Horowitz

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

We were talking to Sean Place, who was the co founder and CTO, and it turned out that they were just giving gift cards to these drivers, but they had no way to authorize the right transaction at the right time for the right amount. And we were doing great in revenue. We doubled revenue every year since 2015.

Merchant Services 76

Merchant Services Payment Methods Payments Payment Solutions 76

Upscope

JANUARY 5, 2020

However, it became flooded with competitors who described themselves the same way and they found that competing on price for high value complicated work is difficult. If you position around "time saved" you lose money Jason Cohen has built and sold several companies and is the Founder and CTO of WP Engine.

Strategy 128

Strategy Marketing Sales Hiring Engineering 128

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2018

At our inaugural SaaStr Europa last June, podcast host-with-the-most Harry Stebbings sat down with MuleSoft Founder and CTO Ross Mason to discuss the organization’s sales strategy, building a strong company culture, how to think about international expansion, and much more. Harry : MuleSoft’s revenue has to be Malta’s GDP.

Technical Advisors 159

Technical Advisors Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 159

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 18, 2020

We’ve got an interview with Brandon Meyers , the chief revenue officer of ADARA. He even managed to help pivot the company from a programmatic transactional revenue model to a subscription model over the course of, not just the last three months during COVID, but over the course of the last few years. Show Agenda and Timestamps.

Subscription 106

Subscription Payment Features Scale Underperforming Technical Team 106

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

Accurately forecast revenue retention and expansion. Through this work, it can drive new revenue opportunities. A health scoring system helps prioritize customer interactions, so your CS team can be more strategic with their time. Did you change your pricing? Identify ideal customers and hone sales personas.

Startup 91

Startup Scale Systems Review Technical Review 91

Hull

JANUARY 22, 2019

These roles are filled by engineers that roll up to the CMO/COO (not CTO) as part of a growth team. Selling has changed since Predictable Revenue was published. In 2002, Aaron Ross's Predictable Revenue playbook from his time at Salesforce was published. Here comes the problem with the Predictable Revenue playbook.

SaaS Payments 77

SaaS Payments Technical Advisors Engineering Payment Solutions 77

Sales Hacker

MAY 5, 2021

Here are just a few topics that our RevOps leaders talk about in Linkedin posts, articles and podcasts: Revenue acceleration plans. Pricing and packaging strategies. A career in RevOps is a great way to help your career, and have a big impact on revenue. Asia Corbett Director of Revenue Operations, Postal.io.

Scale 99

Scale Technical Cofounder Technical Advisors Sales Hiring 99

SaaStr

AUGUST 22, 2020

One of the things that you and I talk about a lot is hiring for skill and impact over proximity, right? Jason Lemkin: Box Shield has a rule-based hire, I can pick rules. And then obviously, I think there’ll be more remote hiring in this environment. So, that’s effectively what we’re working on.

Sales Recruiting 147

Sales Recruiting Cloud CTO Hire Scale 147

SaaStr

APRIL 18, 2019

” We had to do that three times. We burned through $23 million in venture capital and only had 1 million in revenue to show for it. And I thank a lot of that to actually Met Gourniak, who I hired at that time. We’re starting to having lay people off.” And by 2003 we were almost out of business.

Sales Recruiting 169

Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale SaaS Payments 169

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2019

And by business technology function I want to define that because sometimes there’s a overlap with the CTO from an engineering side. Harry Stebbings: So given the centrality of that role there and the ever increasing prominence of it, I guess my next question is for operators listening, when is the right time to hire that first CIO?

Technical Advisors 152

Technical Advisors Scale Technical Review Payment Solutions 152

Outseta

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

There’s typically direct responsibility for revenue performance, although the marketer’s impact on a business’ bottom line is less cut-and-dry than their counterparts in sales. Full-time Head of Marketing I’ve been hired to lead marketing teams at four companies in a full-time capacity now.

Sales Hiring 50

Sales Hiring CTO Coach CTO Hire Underperforming Technical Team 50

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 21, 2020

We were part of the office of the CTO. At that time, Marc Andreessen, the founder was the CTO of the company and there were only three of us in the group. It was pretty easy being an SDR for Marc Andreessen because he’d been on the cover of Time magazine.

Payment Methods 55

Payment Methods Scale CTO Coach SMB 55

Hacking Revenue

AUGUST 4, 2016

We can put together a WordPress website and we have some fancy badges in CodeAcademy, but no CTO in his right mind will let either of us touch their production environment and/or keyboard. We know the tools, we know the methods and we know how to hire and manage people. With the full BOOK of instructions, we get busy hiring.

Software 75

Software CTO Hire Scale New CTO 75

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2021

As part of the run up to 2021 SaaStr Annual in the SF Bay Area Sep 27-29, we’re taking a look back at some of our top sessions of all times. Get best price tickets here!!! Which role should you hire for first? I am guessing it’s probably the hardest problem to solve, hiring a job, let alone at this level.

Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Development Team Review CTO Hire 255

Chart Mogul

JULY 1, 2020

We tend to believe that the technical aspects of our product are the most important differentiator because that’s what our CTO says. And most of the time, the unseen features will provide a better product positioning or marketing message against competitors. As people or members of the same team, we’re biased.

Interviewing 76

Interviewing B2B Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 76

Chart Mogul

JULY 1, 2020

We tend to believe that the technical aspects of our product are the most important differentiator because that’s what our CTO says. And most of the time, the unseen features will provide a better product positioning or marketing message against competitors. As people or members of the same team, we’re biased.

Interviewing 52

Interviewing B2B Marketing Underperforming Technical Team 52

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2022

While startups have ups and downs, if you tell the VCs you’re going to hit $250,000 in revenue this month … make 100 percent sure you hit that projection. The real goal here is to push up the effective price by having the VCs “pay” for an increase to the pool after the financing closes. Sometimes that’s fine.

Finance 280

Finance Technical Review CTO Hire New CTO 280

SaaStr

JANUARY 14, 2020

Should I sell a $20,000 engagement for a one week training course in a classroom or should I try to sell individual subscriptions to individuals around the world for only $100 a month, which was our initial starting price point, and we knew we had to burn the boats. Then another really interesting thing happened.

B2B 132

B2B B2C Scale New CTO 132

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 20, 2024

You could either spend, you know, you raise some venture funding, you could either spend some of that funding on hiring out a whole team and developing all those competencies, or you can spend that on making your model even better. And so almost no other platforms provide this kind of revenue share today. Adam: Yeah.

AI Search 141

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 141