SaaStr

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

Sales-driven SaaS startups end up with about half their headcount in sales and marketing. One thing that sneaks up on you in SaaS is just how many sales, marketing and revenue professionals you are going to need: First it sneaks up on you in the early days because the initial tiny team become so efficient. Sales doesn't.

Scale 332

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 332

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Some of the changes we’ve seen in the last year or two include: CAC reduction Headcount optimization Price complexity Quality of revenue A different environment means a different strategy, and Notion Capital lays out four business model changes that could be helpful based on what peers are doing. Strive for $150k of revenue per FTE.

Business Model 237

Business Model SaaS Payments Payments Headcount 237

SaaStr

APRIL 7, 2024

Unlike building a product team, there is no efficiency when building a sales org: half of your headcount will be in sales at $10m, $50m, or $100m in revenue. It’s tough for founders to grok 40%+ of their headcount forever may be in sales. Add more structure here, and everything gets better. #6.

Sales Hiring 236

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 236

SaaStr

MAY 30, 2023

And very few of you are doubling headcount, vs everyone in 2021. There’s just so much more revenue to close. Hiring has way slowed down, but many folks are still hiring, albeit at a reduced rate. 56% of you aren’t hiring, or barely hiring. But a good chunk of you are still hiring, albeit in moderation.

Sales Hiring 218

Sales Hiring Headcount Engineering Revenue 218

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 22, 2023

market cap (11x) – Growing 29% a year — efficiently – Only 30% of revenue from software, rest payments + services – 20% Free Cash Flow, 16% non-GAAP margins – Frozen… pic.twitter.com/8PLvYP1JRz — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin  ?? Freezing Headcount is How They Got So Much More Efficient Again, a common story.

Payment Services 227

Payment Services Payment Solutions SaaS Payments Payments 227

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 18, 2022

There is almost no software and non-headcount budget for CS. 64% of CS teams spend $200,000 or less a year on non-headcount, with growth stage companies spending the least, just 0.1% of revenue. 41% of CS Teams Own Revenue Expansion — More Often Than Sales. This data is interesting. This really surprised me.

Customer Success 289

Customer Success Headcount Churn Revenue 289

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 13, 2022

So, did headcount at the Series A. In 11 years, the median headcount at Series A swelled from 15 to 28. [1]. Series A dollars provided the business 17 months’ of runway at constant burn assuming no revenue. 1] Thank you to the Pitchbook team for running the headcount analysis data. [2] Round sizes ballooned.

Headcount 325

Headcount Venture Capital Finance Startup 325

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2023

It’s one of the few still commanding a premium multiple in today’s world, and still growing at tremendous rates: Snowflake is also a barometer of everything in SaaS and Cloud, because a significant amount of its revenue is consumption-based, at least in part. Growing Headcount, But Much More Slowly That Revenue.

Headcount 190

Headcount Scale Sales Hiring AWS 190

SaaStr

JANUARY 4, 2023

Very Few Professional Services — Only 3% of Revenues. ProServ is only 3% of Okta’s revenues. International Revenue Steady at 22% of Revenues — and EMEA is strong. Customer Count Up 22%, While Revenues Up 37%. High NRR leads to revenue growing faster than your new customer count. #7.

Scale 273

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring SMB 273

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

Do you have to double your headcount to make it from $10M to $20M or even $2M to $5M? For headcount specifically, make sure that the constraint to growing faster is that you don’t have enough salespeople to work the demand that exists for your business. When those outcomes are achieved, the hire gets their headcount.

Sales Hiring 244

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 244

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2023

Revenue Up 30%, but Employee Count Only up 10%, to 7,055. At the end of the day, in SaaS, efficiency really comes from growing revenue faster than headcount. Almost everyone is doing more with … yes, more headcount, but only a smidge more. 40% of Their Revenues Comes from Partners. Including HubSpot. #4.

Scale 244

Scale SMB Headcount New CTO 244

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Free Cash Flow up from 3% of revenue at $400m in ARR to 10% at $550m in ARR. From $11m in annual revenue in 2017 to $500m+ in 2022. 50k+ customers are 26% of revenue today, and 10+ seat deals are 76%. Still, a quarter of their revenue is still from smaller customers. And a few other interesting learnings: #6.

Headcount 281

Headcount SMB Engineering Scaling 281

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2021

They all either have in their back pocket, and/or are constantly on the prowl for, the next 2-3 great reps because sales is a lead-driven but headcount-closed business. In sum -> Learning and understanding how to maximize the revenue per lead. >> The VP of Sales and VP of Marketing need to be the Mom and Dad of Revenue.

Sales Recruiting 300

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Revenue 300

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

Atlassian is trading at over $40B with revenue north of $3B. Don’t Tie Revenue To Headcount “You want to get away from a business model where every incremental dollar requires incremental hiring,” says Deatsch. So instead of focusing on scaling headcount quickly, work toward growing revenue quickly.

Sales Hiring 210

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 210

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 19, 2024

Unlike building a product team, there is no efficiency when building a sales org: half of your headcount will be in sales at $10m, $50m, or $100m in revenue. This regular interaction ensures that both teams are aligned on priorities and helps prevent last-minute disruptions.

Sales Hiring 238

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Headcount 238

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2024

It’s a SaaS startup that basically fell out of product-market fit after the 2021 boom … but has enough revenue and high enough NRR to keep going. They did layoffs and froze headcount. So that revenue and cash will keep coming in for years. It’s the “NRR Zombie”. What’s that? They cut marketing spend to $0.

Headcount 213

Headcount Finance Startup Trends 213

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 6, 2022

The chart above shows the combined Sales & Marketing + Research & Development Costs divided by revenue. PLG companies spend 9 percentage points of revenue more on S&M + R&D than sales driven companies (p value < 0.001 since Covid). S&M Spend / Revenue. R&D Spend / Revenue. Total Spend / Revenue.

Headcount 344

Headcount Market Research Acquisition Education 344

Totango

APRIL 6, 2023

Our latest platform enhancements and solutions help you scale without needing to add headcount, and make CS a company-wide initiative that drives predictable revenue growth. The post Totango product innovations help CS drive predictable revenue growth appeared first on Best Customer Success Blog: Articles for Enterprise Growth.

Innovation 85

Innovation Scale Revenue Technical Review 85

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2021

You can back into it: First, figure out how much revenue you need to close in the next twelve months. But in theory, higher quotas should “pay” for specialization so in theory, this won’t impact headcount too much. But in practice it often adds 20% or so to the headcount in the model. Because that’s a lot more than now.

Scale 299

Scale Sales Hiring Headcount Sales 299

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

Recurring software revenue is now recognized as a great way to generate tons of cash for investors,” says Gerety. Do public markets understand recurring revenue and SaaS models?” Fast forward, and Box is over $1B in revenue. They’re at $700M in revenue and growing 50%. By freezing headcount for a year.

Sales Hiring 218

Sales Hiring Headcount Finance Technical Review 218

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 25, 2020

Marketing teams spend 5-10% of ARR on programs (non-headcount expenses), and this is pretty consistent across ARR. Engineering:Account Executive headcount ratios scale from about 3:1 down to 1:1 as a company scales revenue. Most sales teams ramp AEs (both inside and outside) on six month time periods. This was surprisingly low.

Scale 364

Scale Headcount Benchmarks Retention 364

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

Building revenue operations to support sales Deel had onboarded nearly 100 clients, reports showed good traction, and it was time to leverage this opportunity. Deel solved this by scaling the revenue operations team in conjunction to support sales, design quotas, and go-to-market strategies, and leverage data to identify the best strategies.

Sales Hiring 218

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 218

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2022

30% New Customer Growth Fueling 37% Revenue Growth. 30% of their revenues are still from customers running Jira and friends on their own servers. Headcount up 7%, while revenue is up 37%. But that only increases total headcount 7% which revenues went up 37%. 5 Interesting Learnings: #1. Impressive leverage.

Scale 285

Scale Marketplace as a Service Headcount Cloud 285

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 6, 2023

That’s a big difference, especially when you layer in the growth in headcount from 2021 to 2022. Essentially companies grew headcount significantly to add less ARR. We’re obviously seeing the rightsizing of this now with headcount reductions. Revenue multiples are a shorthand valuation framework.

Cloud 130

Cloud Headcount Subscription Payment Features 130

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 13, 2023

49% of Revenue From New Customers, 51% From Existing It’s great to see a public SaaS leader break this out so clearly. Keeping headcount flat got everyone to be more efficient. That’s even with going profitable. Not for Samsara. #2. To me, this is the Magic Ratio. Adding Back Sales Capacity Now. I.e., Hiring More Reps.

Sales Hiring 227

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Engineering 227

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 31, 2023

The winter forced many companies to evolve from open-source projects to revenue-generating businesses. Companies & startups in particular begin to report meaningful improvements in productivity from AI, reducing their headcount growth, butn growing revenue just as much as projected.

AI Search 240

AI Search AI Scale Headcount 240

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 2, 2023

So that has many of us questioning which direction we should be heading toward in our modern day revenue tech stack? Which AI tools are going to make revenue operators’ lives immensely easier? Where do you think revenue technology is heading? —- Robert Simmons – VP of Sales A lot more automation and AI.

AI 78

AI Revenue Scale ChatGPT 78

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. When Dorian stepped into his current role, they promised the board a strong growth on the revenue line.

Scale 196

Scale SMB Enterprise Sales Hiring 196

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2023

First, figure out how much revenue you need to close in the next twelve months. In theory, higher quotas should “pay” for specialization so in theory, and this wouldn’t impact headcount too much. 30 sales professionals to add that net $10m in new revenue, even with a $600k quota! Dear SaaStr: How Many Sales Reps Do I Need?

Scale 241

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 241

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 26, 2022

The market values COIN, Coinbase’s stock, and UNI, Uniswap’s token at about 3x trailing 12-month revenues. As the market has corrected, so have the trailing 12-month revenues (TTM)/Market Cap multiples. Coinbase and Uniswap generate billions in revenue. Coinbase’s trailing revenue in Q1 2022 approached $7.5b

Benchmarks 309

Benchmarks Headcount Government Business Model 309

SaaStr

JULY 25, 2021

First, figure out how much revenue you need to close in the next twelve month s. But in theory, higher quotas should “pay” for specialization so in theory, this won’t impact headcount too much. 30 sales professionals to add that net $10m in new revenue, even with a $600k quota! You can back into it. SDRs, BDRs, etc. 22 heads /.75

Scale 287

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 287

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

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2023

And that’s a big reason revenue growth has slowed so dramatically. A Third of Revenue from International. A Third of Revenue from International. Headcount Down 25% Since September 2022, But Revenue Still Up. For the first time ever, Twilio isn’t getting the 120%-130%+ NRR “boost” #3.

Headcount 163

Headcount Cloud Communication Acquisition 163

SaaStr

JUNE 19, 2023

So SaaStr itself had no revenue at all for the first few years and still almost everything we do is free. But we have enough revenue now (tens of millions) to think of it as a.bootstrapped startup And the #1 thing I’ve learned is … how different bootstrapping really is. even if the quality of that revenue is low.

Sales Hiring 185

Sales Hiring Headcount Startup Revenue 185

ChurnZero

JANUARY 8, 2024

At most SaaS companies, the line item for customer success budgets is dedicated to headcount. This is why on our annual survey of customer success leaders , we ask about “non-headcount budgets.” This non-headcount approach is a technique for understanding how SaaS companies are investing in the needs of their customer success teams.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Headcount Benchmarks Leadership 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2020

And Box’s revenues are now 99% through the sales team, from 0–1% when it started as a pure freemium product. You don’t need 100% sales-driven revenue to Go Big. Many of Twilio’s bigger customers go through sales, but then a huge amount of the downstream revenue is “automatic” as customers use more. Hybrid models can be great.

Scale 336

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Headcount 336

ChurnZero

JANUARY 11, 2024

Most company budgets that earmark dollars for customer success intend for it to go towards headcount. ChurnZero refers to that portion of the budget as the “non-headcount budget.” 2023 non-headcount customer success budgets as a percentage of revenue: Most non-headcount customer success budgets range from 0.08% of revenue to 0.2%

Headcount 52

Headcount SaaS Leadership Benchmarks 52