Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 4, 2024

The AI Demo isn’t easy. Many of the major AI companies have demoed their AI systems, first starting with pre-recorded, & now pushing into live demos. Multiply Murphy’s Law by a non-deterministic system & it’s not unreasonable to expect AI demos to nearly always hiccup.

AI 195

AI VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) Benchmarks Interviewing 195

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 22, 2024

and attend their demos. Would you actually buy based on their demos? I bet most of their demos fail this test, too. and read those emails they are sending. Would you buy your own product based on those emails? You can do better than 99% of everyone in sales doing #1 and #2 well. It will move the needle.

Sales 297

Sales Cloud Enterprise SaaS 297

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2024

Then the question is what is the lead-to-opportunity ratio … A different way to back into it is that it’s hard for a rep to have too many more than 50 thoughtful, deep, qualified conversations a month, that include multiple demos, follow-ups, etc. 3 demos a day is a lot to prep for, x 20 working days + holidays = 50 good demos a month.

Sales 246

Sales Business 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2024

The 90-Day Revenue Test While 30 days is enough to evaluate their hiring decisions, you should see clear revenue improvements within 90 days (or one full sales cycle).

Sales Hiring 297

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Headcount 297

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2024

But first timers that have an easy time raising after Demo Days, don’t grock that the bar goes up for each round. Capital “Hubris” (if angel / seed rounds are easy). I don’t see this always, but I almost never see it in second time CEOs. They also assume their existing investors will bail them out.

Scale 304

Scale SaaS Social Media Business Model 304

SaaStr

APRIL 16, 2025

LAST CHANCE: Apply for the Mayfield AI Demo Stage & Pitch Competition! Pitch your startup at the Mayfield AI AI Demo Stage at SaaStr. Selected founders will demo their innovation to leading SaaS CEOs, founders, and investors at SaaStr Annual (May 13-15, SF Bay Area). Screenshot Building the next AI breakthrough in SaaS?

AI 217

AI Travel Consulting Startup 217

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2025

The company uses a customer Advisory Board and a growth Advisory Board to test new slides, messaging, product demos, and get quick reactions from customers and advisers. The company’s product marketing team is constantly testing and iterating on new messaging, with the goal of getting market feedback as quickly as possible.

AI Search 244

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Technical Review 244

SaaStr

MAY 1, 2025

And Can They Demo It Before They Start? Don’t hire any reps in the early days at least that can’t demo your product well, and understand it well — before they start. Do They Understand Your Product? They dont need to be engineers, but they need to learn your product inside and out.

Sales Hiring 258

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Interviewing 258

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2025

This year, the SaaStr AI Summit is taking over two stages, featuring 100+ top AI startups demoing their products live. We’ve also got 20 of the top AI Ycombinator start-ups in a special demo pavillion. Explore demos booths from 150+ sponsors and partners showcasing the latest AI, B2B and SaaS tools and solutions!

AI 208

AI B2B Startup Interviewing 208

SaaStr

MAY 29, 2025

The ideal AI-augmented sales day: 4 demos 2 strategic follow-ups Healthy white space for pipeline generation and opportunity advancement Zero time on CRM hygiene, note-taking, or administrative tasks But here’s the critical caveat: poor AI orchestration creates terrible customer experiences. The result?

Sales Hiring 236

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team AI Scale 236

SaaStr

MAY 26, 2025

You might have a team that just does live demos, together with the AI sales team. Perhaps even 50%. Because they’ll be expected to close 2x as many deals with their AI teammates. Sales Teams Ironically May Specialize More. Or in many cases, one that just handles issues kicked up by AI sales reps. It may be less than you think.

Scale 243

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales 243

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2025

During pre-revenue, they hired ADRs to book demos specifically for product managers to gather feedback before writing code. Embed Customer Feedback Into Your Systems, Not Just Your Process Rather than treating customer feedback as a periodic exercise, Sekar built it directly into the infrastructure of both Meraki and Samsara.

Scale 259

Scale Transportation Scaling SMB 259

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2025

With a New, AI Demo Stage from 100+ Top AI Start-Ups! With 200+ top AI demos and sessions from leaders like Perplexity, Google Cloud, GitHub, Rubrik and more, youll get the most comprehensive look at how AI is reshaping B2B. And we’ve got an AI Demo Stage running all day, every day this year, right in the heart of Annual.

VP of Engineering 204

VP of Engineering CTO Coach VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) Scale 204

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2025

Prepare Relentlessly Great sales reps spend 10x more time preparing for meetings, demos, and calls than mediocre ones. Be Efficient with Your Time The best reps maximize their time by focusing on high-value activitiesmore meetings, more demos, more follow-ups. And try to do a demo for each of them.

Sales 172

Sales Enterprise Business 172

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2025

That’s what will take us from demos to real products that deliver value. Companies like Paragon are building the infrastructure layer to make this possible – giving AI agents access to thousands of tools through a single API. Want to learn how other companies are implementing these strategies? Join us at SaaStr Annual in May.

AI 239

AI Artificial Intelligence SaaS User Experience 239

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2025

And our full AI Summit will be back and we’re adding a full AI Demo Stage you can apply to present at (more details soon!) There are many more speakers, workshops and braindates we’ll announce soon. It’s going to be one of our most epic line-ups ever!

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) 271

VPCs (Virtual Private Cloud) CTO AI Innovation 271

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 8, 2025

With Demo Day approaching this week & inspired by Jamesin Seidel’s YC Series A analysis , I wondered how YC investment patterns have changed since 2020. Cybersecurity and industrial/manufacturing are the two fastest growing categories.

Investment 191

Investment Venture Capital Cybersecurity AI 191

FastSpring

NOVEMBER 27, 2024

Set up a demo or try it out for yourself. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself. We provide an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital product businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and award-winning consumer support.

Payment Methods 158

Payment Methods Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payments 158

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Annual includes structured networking opportunities with VCs, dedicated AI demo pitch stage, and all founders attending many apply to our Meet-a-VC Program. AI Demo Stage SaaStr Annual provides a comprehensive view of the current B2B landscape, emerging trends, and competitive movements.

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

JUNE 9, 2025

Balance Quality and Quantity : Early on, focus on quantity—getting more demos and deals in the pipeline. Review them quarterly or monthly, especially in the early days, to ensure they’re driving the right behavior and are achievable. As you scale, shift to quality metrics like closed-won revenue and opportunity-to-close percentages.

Scale 172

Scale B2B Benchmarks Sales 172

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2025

Look at quota attainment, activity levels (calls, emails, demos), and conversion rates. AI can reduce forecasting errors by 20-50%, so if youre still relying on guesswork, its time to upgrade your approach. Rep Performance : Dive into individual and team performance metrics. Identify top performers and those who need coaching.

Technical Review 182

Technical Review Sales Forecasting AI 182

User Pilot

OCTOBER 10, 2024

When users sign up for Miro, they don’t want to wade through tutorials or book a demo to learn advanced features—they want to dive right into designing and collaborating. ‹ › Miro’s onboarding process. It offers clear installation guidance and an interactive demo so users can explore its features before committing to full integration.

Onboarding 105

Onboarding SaaS Software Communication 105

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2025

SaaStr & Mayfield AI Demo Pitch Competition LIVE Finale 13. Ramp & More: The Journey to $200M ARR+ and AI Strategies 10. Scaling AI-Driven Data Strategies: Snowflake’s CEO + Observe CEO 11. How to Build a Category-Leading Product: Owns CEO 12. AI for Growth: Building AI-Powered SMBs with Gustos CEO & CTO 14.

Scale 172

Scale New CTO CTO AI 172

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2025

This could mean running better demos, asking for higher deal sizes, or simply being more aggressive in closing. This includes more demos, more contracts being drafted, and a noticeable increase in closed deals. If they cant sell the product better than anyone else on the team, theyre not the right hire 1 15.

Sales Recruiting 161

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Sales Leadership 161

SaaStr

DECEMBER 7, 2020

A Web Demo. They want to sit back at their Dell desktop, and get a demo, while they watch with a cup of coffee or such. So they want a demo where you show them how you solve their problem. So: If you don’t have a Contact Me, if you don’t do enough Demos, do them now. How you provide a real solution.

Pricing 363

Pricing Enterprise Innovation Revenue 363

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2024

Everything from the demo all the way through support, onboarding and implementation can benefit from AI assistance.

AI Search 281

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence B2B 281

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 20, 2021

The best reps tailor the pitch, the demo, the functionality shares, the case studies, etc. The best reps just get more meetings, more demos, more interactions done. Great salespeople learn their prospects’ needs, issues and pain. They can adjust the pitch and story to suit the prospec t. Every prospect is a bit different.

Sales 358

Sales SaaS 358

SaaStr

JULY 16, 2024

How much of it is prospecting, cold emails or cold calls, reaching out through network, giving demos, trying to close deals, etc.? This is emails and reachouts for next steps, demos, follow-up on leads, deep dive calls (see below), sometimes flights, trying to increase the odds of a close. Helping on billing, renewals, etc.

Scale 285

Scale Sales SaaS Travel 285

SaaStr

APRIL 12, 2025

Engagement : The lead has shown meaningful interest, such as attending a discovery call, requesting a demo, or engaging with high-value content. For example: High-Intent Actions : Visiting your pricing page, requesting a demo, or engaging with a case study. Direct Signals : Explicitly stating interest in a discovery call or demo.

Systems Review 123

Systems Review SMB Engagement Sales 123

FastSpring

JANUARY 28, 2025

Switch to FastSpring ASAP The fastest way to get emergency assistance from our sales and onboarding specialists is to fill out this form: FastSprings demo form is routed by geography and priority. Fill out our demo form to contact our team of specialists for immediate assistance transitioning to FastSpring for payments and subscriptions.

Merchant Services 142

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Solutions SaaS Payments 142

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

Pretty quickly, it generated a demo website using my uploaded blog that allowed me to click between the four different themes. Instead of diving into code and wrestling with JavaScript, I screenshotted my current blog and showed it to an AI. “Reformat this to resemble The Wall Street Journal,” I said. Then The Economist.

Artificial Intelligence 185

Artificial Intelligence AI Engineering Investment 185

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

Sometimes they want a more passive experience, where they can consume a demo and a discussion without having to answer a bunch of qualifying questions up front. You can alternate the format every week, but doing one every week will force you to do it and level things up: Some can be product demos. Do these every week.

Branding 358

Branding Marketing Sales SaaS 358

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2022

But in the end, you can only do so many qualified calls and demos a day. Maybe 3–4 demos max for deals in process a day. It’s really tough if it takes more than 2 calls to close a deal, and more than 1 demo. Usually all inbound. 10–15 deals a month if $5k-$25k ACV (i.e., transactional, but not 1–2 call close).

Sales 312

Sales SMB Enterprise SaaS 312

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2025

Are there more demos, more contracts being drafted, and more deals in the works? If theyre not moving the needle, its time to seriously evaluate whether theyre the right fit. Heres what Id look at: Pipeline Growth : Have they increased your pipeline metrics? If your pipeline hasnt improved, thats a red flag.

Sales Hiring 167

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Onboarding 167