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Dear SaaStr: What’s The Number One Challenge for Scale-Up Stage Founders?

SaaStr

In SaaS, once you have even a few million in ARR, the #1 challenge is recruiting top-tier VPs and building a truly top-tier management team: SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. Marketing is also an art and science.

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Everything is Sort of the Same at a Given ACV (Annual Contract Value)

SaaStr

But there’s one thing I can tell you in SaaS, at least: Almost Everything Except the Product Itself is Sort of the Same at a Given ACV (Annual Contract Value) Level. Customers will expect more services, more account management, more configuration. You may need solutions architects, more sales engineers, more support.

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5 Interesting Learnings from Okta at $2.5 Billion in ARR

SaaStr

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.

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What’s The #1 Challenge After $1m-$2m ARR?

SaaStr

In SaaS, it is recruiting your VPs and management team : SaaS products mostly don’t sell themselves. You can hack managing and finding 1–3 reps yourself, but after that, you really need a VP of Sales. You’ll need more than 5–6 core engineers to go big. Q: What’s the number one challenge for scale-up founders?

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Meet the SaaStr Europa 2022 Speakers!

SaaStr

Dave Kellogg, Principal @ Dave Kellogg Consulting. Krista Moroder, Director of Engineering @ Checkr. Pierre Alain Bouchard, VP of Engineering @ Zendesk. Giorgos Ampavis, VP of Engineering @ Tide. Zach Coelius Managing Partner @ Coelius Capital. Harry Briggs, Managing Partner @ OMERS Ventures.

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What were 5 distinct milestones that you encountered on the road to becoming a CEO?

SaaStr

But I got to part of the management team and make mistakes, and work cross-functionally with the other leaders and managers. Third, I then managed a small team. This was critical to learning what management really was. The first team I managed I inherited, and I was terrible at it. I didn’t build it myself.

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The Founder’s Guide to Developer-led Growth with WorkOS (Video)

SaaStr

WorkOS CEO Michael Grinich, Developer Success Manager Betsy Calender, and VP of Developer Experience Zeno Rocha share how to price your product for developers, how to market it to developers, how to how to support them as they scale and use the products. Management might even know that they’re using a product.