SaaStr

NOVEMBER 20, 2024

Elizabeth explained: “We continued doggedly poking at this problem of where else can Copilot help developers be more creative and more satisfied, and so we integrated Copilot then across the command line, across our pull request features, across issues and documentation, and that became the basis for CoPilot Enterprise.”

Scale 261

Scale AI Scaling Marketing 261

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 4, 2025

Document thoroughly : Use video, Loom, or detailed documentation to transfer knowledge effectively. Scaling Management Invest in managers : Great companies invest disproportionately in developing their managers. Balance autonomy and alignment : Give teams freedom within clear strategic boundaries.

Startup 270

Startup Management Scale Construction 270

TechEmpower SaaS

OCTOBER 9, 2023

Utilizing AI, the tool interprets the queries, scans through a broad range of documents spread across different repositories, and delivers relevant answers. Utilizing AI, the tool interprets the queries, scans through a broad range of documents spread across different repositories, and delivers relevant answers.

AI Search 519

AI Search Artificial Intelligence Generative AI AI 519

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2025

You need to: Engage with procurement early – don’t treat them as a rubber stamp Build relationships with 20+ key accounts in year one Get executive sponsorship on both sides Never negotiate price with the business buyer Document clear ROI and business cases Remember: The actual buyer is often not the end user.

Enterprise 244

Enterprise Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 244

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2025

Invest early in supporting functions Don’t underestimate the importance of enablement and revops in driving growth. ” Delayed investment in enablement “I wish we’d hired our first enablement person two months earlier. We let sellers ramp without proper resources for too long, which cost us deals and momentum.

Sales Recruiting 230

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AI 230

SaaStr

MAY 26, 2025

Meeting Preparation : AI teammates will prepare complete briefing documents, competitive intelligence, and suggested talking points based on the prospect’s latest activities, earnings calls, and industry developments. Upskill Your Team : Invest in training that helps sales professionals collaborate effectively with AI systems.

Scale 236

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales 236

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 10, 2021

Some structures discount the investors' allocation by a negotiated percentage: e.g., 66% warrant coverage per equity dollar invested. Classic startup investing documents cohered around standards sometime in the late 2000s. The NVCA model documents and the YC standard SAFE documents.

Payment Solutions 346

Payment Solutions Payments Payment Services Investment 346

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

In a daring feat of economic analysis, I asked it to calculate if the after-tax returns of two ETFs were statistically significant & to compare the energy portfolios using the 13-Fs of a few hedge funds for investment ideas. ” The AI’s memory has become a living document. Weave it in.”

Artificial Intelligence 185

Artificial Intelligence AI Engineering Investment 185

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

The result was a 5x increase over initial projections – growing from an $8M revenue target to $40M actual results – driven by a belief that market demand justified the investment. This approach required immense trust from the CEO to invest millions ahead of proven results.

Scale 179

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 179

SaaStr

MAY 2, 2025

Human + AI + Executive Teams Are The New Normal Marc Benioff revealed he’s been working with AI agents for nearly three years, particularly when creating his V2MOM documents (Vision, Values, Methods, Obstacles, Measures). AI Budgets Are a Red Flag Where are AI budgets actually coming from? Top 4 Mistakes Marc Made 1.

AI 236

AI Enterprise Scale Airlines 236

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2021

If your prior investors aren’t 100% positive, or at least, 90% positive on the investment … usually … the Next Round guys simply won’t invest. They will almost instantly smell the lack of commitment, and see it as a sign not to invest. Usually, no matter what the legal documents say, each VC gets a veto.

Venture Capital 353

Venture Capital Banking Finance Investment 353

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 24, 2025

For example, a tailored model could streamline compliance checks by scanning internal documents for potential policy violations or regulatory gaps. This is for information purposes and should not be construed as an investment recommendation. Altimeter is an investment adviser registered with the U.S.

Enterprise 159

Enterprise AI Cloud Artificial Intelligence 159

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 30, 2024

What I do know is many of the billion+ SaaS companies I invested in a decade ago would not be remotely competitive today. Products that were complex to extract data before, especially documents, can now be organized in real-time by AI. It unlocks all your documents. And that’s how it should be. Search was sleepy for years.

AI Search 300

AI Search SaaS Headcount AI 300

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 11, 2021

As an organization, we foster a culture of iterative delivery, and we continuously invest in our delivery pipeline to make deployments delightful and easy. At Intercom, we invest in our auto-instrumentation, exposing high-quality tracing telemetry data out of the box. Document and share your plan and actions.

Software Review 282

Software Review Engineering Systems Review Technical Review 282

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2024

By scaling your PLG motion, you can achieve higher revenue per employee because you aren’t investing as many dollars in messaging, marketing, and building the big sales teams. Does this integrate with all the other tech my company has invested in? Great support comes through documentation and within the product itself.

Underperforming Technical Team 282

Underperforming Technical Team Enterprise Scale Payments 282

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

To do this, Lucid invested in a growth team tasked with iterating on all aspects of pricing, packaging, click pathing, and CTAs. For a PLG motion, you have standardized documents, terms of services, and security documents. They had to invest a lot upfront to make sure they were ready to meet the needs of a global user.

Scale 307

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring compliance 307

SaaStr

AUGUST 21, 2020

Don’t use Docsend generally to gauge interest — it’s a gate that will deter opening a document. A really good potential investment: Opened, read, and replied in 3 minutes. Here’s a really, really good email I just sent to one of the top VCs on the planet. And one of the busiest. But — it was a really, really good email.

Investment 301

Investment 301

Clouded Judgement

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

This is for information purposes and should not be construed as an investment recommendation. Altimeter is an investment adviser registered with the U.S. The information provided is believed to be from reliable sources but no liability is accepted for any inaccuracies. Past performance is no guarantee of future performance.

Systems Review 146

Systems Review Cloud AI Artificial Intelligence 146

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2022

Even with these market wobbles, if you’re fortunate enough to be a “hot” startup in SaaS today you may find yourself oversubscribed in a fundraising round, and/or with investors that really want to invest between rounds when you don’t want or need any more money. Investing in essence now, but at the price of the next round.

Finance 283

Finance Pricing Startup Investment 283

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2023

Invest In PLG and SLG Simultaneously. When you’re going to stand up a PLG motion, you have to invest in other aspects of sales and marketing, which include: Building a dev relationship team or community that lives in Product or Marketing. . You have to invest in both of these strategies simultaneously. . Increase revenue.

Startup 297

Startup Sales Sales Funnel Education 297

Clouded Judgement

JULY 16, 2024

A S-1 is a document companies file with the SEC in preparation for listing their shares on an exchange like the NYSE or NASDAQ. The document contains a plethora of information on the company including a general overview, up to date financials, risk factors to the business, cap table highlights and much more.

Benchmarks 298

Benchmarks Data Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning 298

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 16, 2019

Over the past few months, we’ve been working on solidifying our incident response process and documentation. Even with the best documentation and the most robust processes in place, the reality is that outages are inherently unpredictable events where it is impossible to anticipate every situation you may find yourself in.

Scale 215

Scale Technical Review Management Software Review 215

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2020

Invest in the top tools for your sales team. Leverage document templates to speed-up creation and increase brand compliance. Build, send, track, and collaborate on these documents with your prospects. Surprisingly, our research suggests that sellers over-invest in building “trust” with buyers.

Technical Review 315

Technical Review Marketplace as a Service Construction Software Review 315

Payrix

JANUARY 10, 2025

Merchant underwriting and onboarding tips for software platforms David advises software platforms to prepare users early by setting clear expectations about merchant documentation , timelines, and process stages. Ultimately, it’s an investment in a long-term relationship.

Merchant Services 130

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Solutions Payments 130

SaaStr

APRIL 12, 2025

The point at which a lead should convert to an opportunity or deal is when it meets specific qualification criteria that indicate its worth investing sales resources. These criteria should be documented and agreed upon by both marketing and sales teams to avoid disputes over lead quality.

Systems Review 120

Systems Review SMB Engagement Sales 120

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2024

Lesson #2: Invest in Prospect Data Way Earlier So, now that you know what the customer looks like, you need to know how to target them. Invest way earlier than you think in prospect data. The key takeaway: hire and invest in rev ops and enablement earlier than you think. Find a way to document. This is big takeaway #2.

Scale 301

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Sales 301

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2020

Klue , which operates an AI-based competitive analysis platform, announced a $15 million Series A investment this week. The round also saw investments from angels like Frederic Kerrest, who is the co-founder of Okta. . The main value prop is treating competitive intel as a living cloud document,” said Murray.

Consulting 274

Consulting Interviewing AI Innovation 274

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 28, 2024

In the last 10 years, investments in big data have become increasingly expensive & focused on very large data volumes. We use vectors to find similar documents & images & content to help AI answer questions better or generate inspiring images. Here are some of the themes & predictions from the group.

Trends 248

Trends Data New CTO CTO 248

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2024

Lesson #1: Invest In Customer Support Early Cloudinary strongly believes that customer success and support are enablers of PLG growth and aren’t just a cost center. Blogs Documentation That was how they drove visibility through Google searches and how developers found them. It wasn’t the focus. This is where the big mistake came in.

Scale 312

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Development 312

USIO

JUNE 9, 2025

Going full PayFac can be more profitable— if you hit significant scale and have the capital to invest upfront. We focus on payments. Monetization: Who Makes More? Here’s where it gets nuanced. ️ Developer Experience: What Will You Actually Build?

Payment Services 130

Payment Services Merchant Services PayFac as a Service SaaS Payments 130

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2023

They invest in the right tools, and in the right team, to understand the impact. Then they really invest in recovering the CAC as soon as possible. Forecasts should be living documents that you are constantly updating. On process, there is a standard punch list of documents that most investors are going to ask for.

SaaS Payments 246

SaaS Payments Technical Review Software Review Venture Capital 246

SaaStr

MARCH 30, 2020

More here: How to Invest in Customer Marketing: The 10+10 Framework | SaaStr. But QBRs are more formal, documented processes around feedback. Spend a bit more of your marketing budget on existing customers, not just demand gen. Quarterly Business Reviews. They can be combined with the above meetings and Zooms.

Pricing 280

Pricing Customer Success Investment Marketing 280

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 14, 2020

Engineers prefer to spend time in Github evaluating a product’s technical prowess, in the documentation to learn how to wield the technology, and in the forums understanding the nature of the community. Technical acumen, applied content marketing, and superlative documentation build that trust. Side-door is documentation.

Scale 205

Scale Engineering Content Marketing Technology 205

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 2, 2023

Once a company has decided it wants to embark on the journey to become public, the first thing it must do is select a group of investment banks. At the end of the day each company only goes public once, while investment banks have taken hundreds (if not thousands) of companies public and have a wealth of experience to tap into.

Cloud 49

Cloud Marketing Banking Pricing 49

Tom Tunguz

JULY 19, 2019

The same dynamic is occuring at most stages of venture investing. And this means that the financial product that we call the Series Seed or Series A is meaningless; it’s just the header on the fundraising documents.

Finance 270

Finance Innovation Startup Investment 270

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

Each of the many documents, presentations, missives, notes, and posts we do in the course of our days would likely be more effective — and certainly more enjoyable to receive — if they were aesthetically interesting. Unfortunately, not all of us either have the time or acumen to engage deeply in creative work.

Investment 108

Investment Underperforming Technical Team Innovation User Experience 108

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2021

What types of due diligence are undertaken by VCs before investing in a company? He has met Adam Neumann for only 4 minutes and decided to invest $4.4 Does some HR rep take them into a room and offer them a severance package and legal document which they are basically forced to take? How much does a VC make? What should I do?

Software Review 293

Software Review CTO Coach Technical Review Sales Recruiting 293