Tom Tunguz

JUNE 26, 2022

The difference is starkest in headcount: Coinbase employs more than 5,000 people while Uniswap counts fewer than 100. But revenue growth is more sensitive to market swings, the company discloses fewer operating metrics, and their token offers fewer rights than COIN stock. Centralized exchanges hold or custody user accounts.

Benchmarks 240

Benchmarks Headcount Government Business Model 240

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 14, 2018

Sales KPIs versus sales metrics: Is there a difference? Some might argue that there are fine-grained distinctions to be made between KPIs and metrics. You can think about it this way: your KPIs are the key metrics you use to measure sales performance. In my world, they’re just two sides of the same coin. Beware of headline KPIs.

Sales Hiring 188

Sales Hiring Metrics Revenue Sales 188

InsightSquared

MAY 7, 2019

When scaling the business, sales typically averages roughly 30% of revenue, so therefore sales spend is one of the biggest investments a company can make. For these reasons, accurately tracking key sales metrics and benchmarking your performance against peers and market leaders is critical to getting the most out of your sales resources.

Scale 102

Scale Sales Hiring Metrics Sales 102

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 20, 2021

Here are three ways to know if it’s time to invest in customer support operations (if you’re looking to scale, it probably is), and a few simple things your organization can do to get started. There are a lot of metrics you can use to measure your customer support team’s performance. Sound good? What is customer support operations?

Scale 156

Scale Customer Support Scaling Headcount 156

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2022

While these aren’t great metrics if Weave was enterprise, they are still solid for SMBs. Fairly low revenue per headcount, although being headquartered in Utah with a large presence in India does seem to bring costs down. #7. A reminder growth investing isn’t a space you automatically make money at.

SaaS Payments 222

SaaS Payments Scale Payment Methods Payments 222

Sales Hacker

JULY 24, 2018

Decreased revenue per rep, High turnover as you scale headcount. We made our machine more efficient even as we scaled, grew headcount, and skyrocketed our revenue. In the first six months of the year, our team’s headcount grew by almost 60%, yet our revenue outpaced that, growing by 142%.

Scale 55

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring Scaling 55

SaaSOptics

JULY 20, 2020

5 SaaS Metrics You’re Calculating Incorrectly . SaaS metrics : the performance indicators that startups love to hate. Whether you’re the CEO or an analyst at your company, SaaS metrics play a huge role in your day to day. Frequently miscalculated SaaS metrics. The Hidden Costs of Miscalculated SaaS Metrics .

Technical Review 56

Technical Review Metrics Deferred Revenue SaaS 56

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin also wrote how Customer Success has now morphed into part of the sales team and that the 2024 trends in CS include everyone wanting to eliminate humans from support to replace that headcount with AI and bots. This chart says never stop investing in customer success for real. The world has changed.

Sales Hiring 231

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 231

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 10, 2021

What to do: Increase your efficiency without increasing headcount using bots and automation. Monitor your most important metrics in one place with our new real-time dashboard. By investing in these areas, your business can build strong customer relationships even in the face of supply chain disruptions and concerns.

Headcount 195

Headcount Customer Support Scale AI 195

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 26, 2020

The majority (78%) want to move to a proactive approach, and 50% are deepening their investment in automation. With more than half (52%) of companies planning to reduce the size of their team as a result of the current economic downturn, support leaders are turning to technology, not headcount, to scale their efforts.

Trends 233

Trends Scale Headcount Technology 233

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 31, 2023

If we believe that AI will ultimately allow us to do “more with less,” we may see headcount growth slow for traditional roles. Given most software companies are not profitable, or not generating meaningful FCF, it’s the only metric to compare the entire industry against. What do I mean by this?

Cloud 130

Cloud Sales Hiring AI Headcount 130

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2023

Pepper shares that ICONIQ, a venture capital firm with $10B under management, made fewer investments last year than ever before. Many of them said headcount management and spend were common levers they pulled, given the immediate and significant impact they have on spend. PST, to unveil the data behind effective scaling.

Outsourcing Services 161

Outsourcing Services Scaling Venture Capital Forecasting 161

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

How is the company’s go-forward budget split across platform investments and program-specific spend? It divides the total financing proceeds into G&A functions (both headcount and categories like real estate), platform R&D, and program-specific R&D (often further subdivided by each stage of development, CMC, etc).

Development Team Review 119

Development Team Review Technical Review Finance Systems Review 119

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2022

More than 50% of companies have negative net dollar retention metrics, so expanding because you’re under the assumption that it’ll be easy because others are successfully doing it can be a dangerous one and lead to a tricky organizational, economic structure. Overhaul and invest in your people strategy. Rethink operational excellence.

Scale 191

Scale SMB Enterprise Sales Hiring 191

OpenView Labs

MAY 24, 2021

Like OpenView’s coverage of SaaS metrics and benchmarks? This new way of thinking about R&D spend also requires companies to rethink the relevance of classic SaaS metrics like CAC payback, which only consider Sales and Marketing costs as part of customer acquisition.). Disclaimer: I do not provide personal investment advice.

Scale 98

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring Benchmarks 98

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

You’re investing resources in hiring and training the right people, tracking different metrics at different stages, adding more and more complexity with each increase in headcount, use cases, and customers. And I don’t necessarily mean 10X in terms of headcount – I mean 10X in terms of efficiency.

Scale 206

Scale Software Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 206

CustomerSuccessBox

DECEMBER 3, 2021

New areas of investment have been identified and you are ready to speak with the CEO/CFO about additional budget requirements. You may find yourself protecting your headcount, rooting for investments you want in tech, and giving suggestions for new product features. Areas for Customer Success investment. Revenue growth.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Data Technical Review Headcount 52

Valuize Consulting

OCTOBER 7, 2021

You Just Need An Effective Customer Success Metric To Prove It. For many Chief Customer Officers and Customer Success (CS) leaders, this marks the beginning of a very stressful time as you prepare to have the challenging conversation with your CFO about how to properly invest in your Customer Success teams. What are your CSM ratios?

Customer Success 52

Customer Success New CTO Scale Headcount 52

The Angel VC

MARCH 23, 2016

If you have a SaaS startup with a higher-touch sales model where revenue growth is largely driven by sales headcount, the plan needs to be modified accordingly. With the exception of the VP of Sales role, sales staff headcount planning is done on the separate "Sales Team Hiring Plan" tab (re-using a model that I've built for this post ).

SaaS Payments 217

SaaS Payments Headcount SaaS Payment Methods 217

Sales Hacker

DECEMBER 9, 2022

Scoring accounts based on meaningless metrics. Sales leadership needs to understand capacity at the aggregate level to better assess revenue projections and headcount decisions. Model options to improve capacity where needed (enablement, coaching, marketing promotions, headcount, etc.). Connect your entire go-to-market strategy.

Scale 97

Scale Headcount Sales Forecasting 97

BetterCloud

DECEMBER 13, 2022

CIOs are being asked to accelerate time to value on these new investments, which include SaaS and other cloud-based services. This places a big burden on IT teams, who almost never get headcount even as expectations increase. However, this comes with high expectations for IT. Download the Guide.

Operational efficiency. 52

Operational efficiency. Headcount Cloud Technology 52

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

By allowing support teams to get ahead of known problems and provide help to customers before they need to reach out, proactive support has enabled major companies to scale their support without increasing headcount, drive down inbound conversation volumes ( in some cases by up to 80% ), and maintain incredible customer satisfaction ratings.

Scale 118

Scale Customer Support Headcount Engagement 118

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 23, 2022

burn) by failing to invest in the second half of 2023 for growth in 2024. The first slide is focused on the ARR leaky bucket, metrics derived from ARR, and ARR-related product.ivity measures. Slide 1: The Leaky Bucket of ARR and Related Metrics. The next block focuses on headcount: Total employees, at end of period.

Technical Review 118

Technical Review Software Review Forecasting Churn 118

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 7, 2020

Employee productivity is up for the moment, as companies reduced headcount. Savings in travel and rent/facilities have been invested in other areas; we haven’t seen any significant reduction in G&A yet. We will be publishing new benchmarks on these metrics for our customers in early November. 2020 Flash.

Trends 96

Trends Technical Review Headcount SaaS 96

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 18, 2022

In our webinar, “ Convincing your CEO to invest MORE in Customer Success ,” Jeff shares how to win more budget for your CS team by backing up your requests with the right research and data. This is something that I’m doing with fractional headcount allocation. I’d look at efficiency metrics and profitability. CFO is on it.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Hiring Headcount Scale 98

OPEXEngine

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

Take this example of working with Sales on how many account executives to add in the upcoming year: “Our current sales headcount is 30% higher than the sales headcount benchmark for SaaS companies our size and growth rate, and our ARR per sales rep is 30% lower than the benchmark. Budgeting Best Practices.

Benchmarks 52

Benchmarks Sales Hiring Headcount Customer Lifetime Value 52

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Measuring Usage Since Day One Since the beginning, monday.com built and has used a BI tool called Big Brain — a major investment for that size of company. All the metrics we’re using — LTV to CAC, CAC return rate — don’t take cash into account. You don’t want to overwhelm SMB customers, and Monday made this a focus from day one.

Scale 161

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Banking 161

OPEXEngine

DECEMBER 13, 2022

Companies with an equivalent commercial operation- sales headcount, marketing spend, and customer acquisition cost (CAC). For SaaSco, this may mean comparing their sales headcount to other enterprises IT vendors selling a similar average contract value. Companies at a similar stage of growth and maturity.

Benchmarks 52

Benchmarks Scale Headcount Software Review 52

OPEXEngine

MARCH 9, 2022

Most companies track R&D as a % of revenue, and maybe a few metrics about activity, but few CFOs can answer the question of what’s the ROI on their R&D investment. For over a decade, we have been benchmarking R&D expenses and headcounts. Perhaps even more importantly, what are the levers for improving R&D ROI?

Software Review 59

Software Review Development Team Review Technical Review Outsourced Development 59

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 11, 2016

As SaaS startups scale, sales execution becomes the most tangible metric of a business’ success, and the one by which the business’ health is benchmarked. When is the right time to invest in sales training? And how much should a business invest? Not to mention how the head of sales is evaluated.

Scale 100

Scale Sales Hiring Startup Headcount 100

Point Nine Land

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

But remember, this is a hierarchy of goals, so the way to read it is that the team should hire as many outbound AEs as possible as long as the CAC payback time for outbound stays below 15 months and should maximize SEO investment so long as the CAC payback period for inbound is below 9 months.

Sales Hiring 59

Sales Hiring Headcount Startup Churn 59

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 28, 2022

And for Intercom’s VP of Sales EMEA, Sanj Bhayro , scaling is just what you need to invest in to ensure growth becomes as constant and linear as it can be. Attract and develop talent and invest in supporting resources like onboarding, sales enablement, and sales engineering. The second moment was after I became a leader.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2019

Specialization works — but it’s an up-front investment. But specializing across the sales process will take more headcount. You’ll need a couple of folks in sales ops just to keep up with the team and growth. You’ll need more consistent collateral for the sales team. More SDR: AE pairing.

Sales Hiring 220

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Venture Capital 220

Sales Hacker

JUNE 16, 2022

Even if you don’t control the headcount and even if layoffs come later, help them find a new role. While that poses a number of challenges, it’s also an opportunity for revenue leaders to look at systems, processes, data, and tech to make sure you’re investing your time and energy as efficiently as possible. Invest in training.

Scale 91

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 91

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 11, 2019

You should spread those kinds of cuts more evenly and try to then invest in your customers, so you can come out of that downturn a little bit better. Why customer service is worth the investment. But where else can you be investing outside of headcount to maintain that customer centricity? Source: HubSpot Research.

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 188

Chart Mogul

AUGUST 15, 2019

New investment structures are gaining traction in the early-stage SaaS financing market. Bigfoot Capital invests in initial-scale SaaS companies using both RBF and venture debt investment structures. Here’s an example of how an RBF loan facility can work: We invest $300k with a 36-month payback term. This is how it works.

Finance 85

Finance Payments Revenue Payment Solutions 85

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 31, 2019

SaaS companies tend to have more Finance headcount than traditional, non-Cloud companies. The metrics that drive SaaS are not GAAP metrics and companies need a strong Finance department to be the one source of truth about the financial AND the operating metrics. Skills & Experience.

Finance 40

Finance CTO Hire Headcount SaaS 40