SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2024

How do you build GTM efficiency in SMB sales? While this title is SMB-oriented, the advice applies to Mid-Market and Enterprise, too. The growth engine from both sales and marketing should to be working before you add gas to it. They’re the engine of the business. Kyle made this mistake in his first startup.

Scale 304

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Sales 304

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2025

Net Dollar Retention >110% and GDR of >95%: The Power of Being a True Operating System ServiceTitans NRR consistently exceeds 110%, even with SMB-heavy customers. While ServiceTitan started as an SMB-focused platform, theyve steadily moved upmarket. Just above non-GAAP break-even (3% non-GAAP margins) 110% NRR and 95% GRR $10.5B

Payments 146

Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 146

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

During SaaStr Annual , Eric Huff, VP of Sales Strategy and Programs, and Theresa Stevens, Regional VP of the SMB sales team, shared an “under the hood” look at how Salesforce does its internal forecasting using Salesforce.

Forecasting 287

Forecasting SMB Sales Technical Review 287

FastSpring

FEBRUARY 6, 2025

In this episode, we’re going to be talking about how SMB digital brands can win the best talent Joining us for that conversation is someone who knows quite a bit about that. If I’m Google and I breathe into the wind, 500 engineers apply for my job. How do SMBs compete? I’d like to welcome Lizzie Mintus.

SMB 108

SMB Sales Recruiting Branding Sales Hiring 108

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Gorgias CEO Romain Lapeyre has successfully scaled the Gorgias SMB customer base from 1,000 to 10,000 by relying on data. Lapeyre believes that you should consider your strategy as a growth engine. Inputs into the engine include things like prospects and partners that yield outputs like customer value and ARR. Build A Map.

SMB 246

SMB Scale Data Scaling 246

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2022

If a SaaS business hopes to win over the SMB market successfully, it will need a precise GTM approach. Founded in 2015, PayFit is a software company that empowers entrepreneurs and SMBs to digitize payroll and HR processes. Without an autonomous-first approach, you will miss out on many SMBs.

SMB 244

SMB Sales Hiring Scale B2C 244

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2025

AI Speakers: CEO Snowflake + CEO Observe: Where B2B Applications Are Going CEO Box Aaron Levie: AI, Agents and The Next Era of SaaS COO Google Cloud Francis deSouza: Hyperscalers: The Future and More CTO Rubrik: Co-Founder & CTO, Arvind Nithrakashyap CTO Neo4j: Philip Rathle (Valuation $2B+): How Revolut Left Salesforce and More: Rolling Your (..)

VP of Engineering 204

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

SaaStr

JUNE 8, 2022

ARR, Zoom was an SMB powerhouse, with Enterprise growing. SMB is now saturated at $4B ARR and not growing, but Enterprise is picking up the slack and growing faster than ever. 100k+ customers are now the engine, not self-serve SMBs. The greatest PLG engine of all time, at least up to $4B in ARR.

SMB 339

SMB Enterprise Engineering Scale 339

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2022

Dorian Stone , Head of Organizations Revenue at Grammarly, is here to share lessons from his experience of scaling the company from consumer to SMB to Enterprise to help you steer your expansion efforts in the right direction. The admin, influential decision-makers, and consumer sales reps can be the same people in a Consumer or SMB setting.

Scale 246

Scale SMB Enterprise Sales Hiring 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2023

Well, fast forward to today and it’s truly an SMB powerhouse. How is SMB SaaS doing today? Most SMB-focused businesses need shorter CACs to make the model wok, but with 111% NRR, Bill can invest at > 12 months here. Sales & Marketing, Engineering (R&D), and G&A expenses actually all went up in 2023.

Payment Services 339

Payment Services Payments SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 339

SaaStr

OCTOBER 22, 2021

Sometimes, the self-serve / PLG engine stalls out at a certain scale. Still, 119% NRR from SMB is world-class even for 5+ seats accounts and sometime to strive for if you have similar sized customers. #4. Fintech is the engine of growth at scale. An SMB sale, but less and less a single seat sale. Oftentimes, even.

Scale 327

Scale SaaS Payments SMB Payment Solutions 327

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2023

Osmany says, “Building an outbound engine is something that I think is really important. So many teams are hiring SDR/BDR teams, and it’s really tough to make that work in SMB sales. The post 10 Learnings on High-Velocity Sales to SMB with Gorgias CEO and VP of Sales appeared first on SaaStr. Who is the likely and ideal buyer?

Sales Hiring 202

Sales Hiring SMB Sales Recruiting Payment Methods 202

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2021

This may sound obvious to more enterprise folks, but many Very Small Business and SMB focused SaaS companies still focus more on churn than NRR. It’s part of the legacy of B2C and SMB having a lot of similarities in SaaS. How often do you meet with individual top AEs, or CSMs, or engineers? Not enough. And of note: #4.

Metrics 62

Metrics SMB Scale B2C 62

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 17, 2024

As the co-founder and CEO of Intellimize (acquired by Webflow), Guy brings a unique perspective from his journey through iconic companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and Twitter, as well as his background in aerospace engineering. And then originally trained as an aerospace engineer. Jin, my co-founder, was an engineering leader.

Scale 101

Scale Engineering Acquisition Scaling 101

SaaStr

JULY 31, 2022

The Challenge with SMB SaaS: High Growth Can Only Mask High Churn For Just So Long. SMB SaaS has a lot going for it, but one big existential challenge — inherent churn. 7 Secrets to a Successful SMB GTM Strategy with PayFit and Accel. A deep dive on selling to SMBs and more from SaaStr Europa. It’s not as fun anymore.

New CTO 303

New CTO CTO SMB Venture Capital 303

SaaStr

MARCH 28, 2025

SMB customers. For SMB SaaS, aim for 6 quarters of LTV:CAC, not 4 Ren adjusted the traditional benchmark because SMB customers stay longer than typically measured. ” This commitment to compliance requires a dedicated team of approximately 100 engineers and product managers working full-time on the payment engine.

SMB 130

SMB Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments 130

SaaStr

MARCH 29, 2020

They include: Auren Hoffman and Safegraph hiring 3 in sales and 5 in engineering. DocuSign is hiring for a Senior Director of SMB Marketing. is looking for a Solutions Engineer. Matt Mullenweg and Automattic hiring 100s. VP/Director of Sales at Chargebee. Airtable hiring AEs and more. SmartRecruiters and Interface.ai

Sales Hiring 298

Sales Hiring SaaS SMB Content Marketing 298

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2024

Founder CEO Todd McKinnon was VP of Engineering at Salesforce and left to start Okta in the depths of the last downturn. Seat Contractions Have Brought NRR Down From 120% to 111% While 111% NRR is still quite an engine at this scale, the drop in NRR from seat contractions explains a good chunk of the headwinds Okta has seen. #2.

Fractional VPE 285

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Scale SMB 285

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2021

Because SaaS requires so many functions beyond engineering, especially if it’s sales-driven … outbound, SDRs, inbound, field sales, marketing, customer success, support, more complex product management, etc. >> OK we’re up to ~70 without a single engineer! Really, 4 would be a lot better than 3.

Sales Hiring 349

Sales Hiring Headcount Scale Engineering 349

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

But a great head of demand gen (or maybe growth hacking if you are SMB) should be very accretive at even $20k in MRR. You need someone who spends 50 hours a week planning the roadmap, triaging customer feedback, nudging the engineering team. You’ll need a VP of Engineering by $8m-$10m ARR. Plan for it. It’s a gift.

Part-Time VPE 363

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring CTO Hire Scale 363

SaaStr

AUGUST 6, 2022

The Challenge with SMB SaaS: High Growth Can Only Mask High Churn For Just So Long. SaaStr 576: 7 Secrets to a Successful SMB Go-To-Market Strategy with PayFit Co-Founder and CEO Firmin Zocchetto and Accel Partner Philippe Botteri. From Burn-Out to $100M in ARR with Jason Cohen, Founder of WP Engine. Top Podcasts This Week: 1.

SMB 275

SMB Startup Scaling Churn 275

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 9, 2022

Five9 has fully moved from an SMB product to a true enterprise one, now with well over 100 million dollar customers. #2. Lower Gross Margins Compress Amounts to Spend on Sales, Marketing, and Engineering. To get profitable, Five9 is only spending 10% of its revenues on R&D, i.e. engineering, much less than the 15%-20% others do.

SMB 63

SMB Cloud Engineering Enterprise 63

SaaStr

MARCH 9, 2022

DigitalOcean is growing an impressive 37% at $500,000,000 in ARR, and staying very SMB with 600,000+ customers, but still driving deal sizes up a bit. From so-so NRR (101% in 2020) to Top-Tier for SMBs (116%) in 2 years. DigitialOcean doesn’t want to take AWS, Azure and Google on in the enterprise and doesn’t really try.

Azure 275

Azure AWS SMB Cloud 275

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2021

A head of product that doesn’t take over the roadmap, and redirect the engineering team to do something better, faster and bigger. A head of engineering that doesn’t increase story point output, or similar new feature velocity in the first 90 days … never really will. Never will. He can’t. He never will.

Sales Recruiting 349

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring SMB Engineering 349

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

The core product is very B2C, but the upgrade to paid has very SMB B2B metrics, and 80% of the revenue is subscription based. While the average Cloud stock has fallen almost 50% in 2022, Duolingo’s has stayed up, and is down just 10% in the past 6 months. So it’s doing what Wall Street wants today. But is Duolingo SaaS?

Scale 320

Scale B2C SMB B2B 320

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

It still has very strong NRR for a still muchly SMB and mid-market product at 135%, with no decline since the same 135% at $400m in ARR. #2. 50k+ customers are biggest engine of growth. While Monday still serves tiny customers, its focus isn’t really the smaller SMBs anymore. $50k+ This slide below I found interesting.

Headcount 320

Headcount SMB Engineering Scaling 320

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2021

7:00 AM (50 MINS) – Acquiring SMB 10,000 Customers Solely from Data with Gorgias’ CEO Romain Lapeyre. 8:00 AM (50 MIN) – The Secrets to Building Your Marketing Engine To Drive Scale with Airtable CMO Archana Agrawal. All times are in Pacific Time. 7:00-8:00 AM PT. 8:00-9:00 AM PT. 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PT.

Scale 276

Scale VP of Engineering Scaling SMB 276

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 6, 2021

These days your VP of Sales has to roll up their sleeves and get that outbound engine going themselves — including the first SDRs. Even in SMB and mid-market. You can’t outsource great outbound, and a VP of Sales that’s not good at it or has never done it can’t just go find a unicorn Director of Outbound.

Scale 342

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SMB 342

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2022

The Secrets to Building Your Marketing Engine To Drive Scale with Airtable CMO Archana Agrawal. The 4 V’s of Sales: Volume, Value, and Velocity with Waze Head of SMB Sales Fernando Belfort and Head of Sales Enablement Kendra Wrightson. SaaStr 528: Building a $5.6B company with a Product-led Flywheel with Abhinav Asthana, CEO @ Postman.

Scale 303

Scale Sales Hiring SMB Sales Enablement 303

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2022

SaaStr 619: 3 Lessons from Building a Marketing Engine to Grow Pipeline from Millions to Billions with Samsara CMO Sarah Patterson.   . SaaStr 616: Secrets to SMB at Scale with Hubspot CEO Yamini Rangan and SaaStr Founder & CEO Jason Lemkin. . Secrets to SMB at Scale with HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan and SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin.

Scale 260

Scale Venture Capital SMB Scaling 260

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

For context, Mathrubootham shares that everyone in India gets an engineering degree and then figures out what to do with life. So, if he wanted to hire customer support, it could be a biomechanical engineer. The average SMB customer would buy 4-5 seats of Freshdesk. Inbound isn’t just about SMB customers. The lesson?

Sales Hiring 287

Sales Hiring Scale SMB SaaS 287

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2021

“From Burn-Out to $100M in ARR with Jason Cohen of WP Engine” A SaaStr Classic on how to really cope with the long road to scale. #5. “Lessons from Gorgias: How to Close your First 1000 Customers Based Solely on Data” Gorgias is now the fastest-growing contact center solution, with 5,000+ SMB customers. .

Scale 263

Scale SMB Scaling Engineering 263

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

Positions Needed: Enterprise AEs, Mid-Market & SMB AEs, SDRs, Sales Ops, Sales Engineer. Positions Needed: Enterprise CSM, Mid-Market & SMB CSM, Customer Support Reps, Implementation/Solutions Engineer. Head of Marketing. Team Size: 5 – 6. Director of CSM. Team Size: 4 – 8. Director of Finance.

CTO Hire 287

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 287

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Makes capacity planning harder : With less visibility into maximum usage requirements, engineering teams may struggle to provision infrastructure appropriately. Teams must reinvent their GTM strategy with new quota structures, sales materials, and margin calculations.

SaaS Payments 283

SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 283

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2023

And so many different strategies, from more enterprise to more SMB, from more tech focused (Asana) to less tech focused (Monday). 135% NRR from larger customers and 120% for $5k+ customers remains top-tier, especially for a vendor with plenty of small SMB customers. You can just learn so much.

SMB 308

SMB Outsourced Development Enterprise Scale 308

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

100k+ customers are the engine now. Channel model and organic approach to SMB and mid-market yields a fairly efficient Sales & Marketing motion. But it’s not enough to hit the scale and growth rate they’ve achieved. Fast forward to today, 94% of their customers are multi-product. #4. We’ve seen this before.

Scale 295

Scale SMB Software Development Cloud 295

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2024

Almost every founder regrets using capital to keep a high-burn rate engine going that isn’t scaling rapidly. #2. It can take years for some SMB SaaS companies to hit and cross 100% NRR, for example. But there’s a fine line between investing and keeping a leaky boat and set of metrics afloat.

Trends 315

Trends Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital 315