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% I generally see CS reporting to a CRO as a recipe for conflicts, but sometimes it’s the best option: #2. This data is interesting.

Customer Success 299

Customer Success Headcount Churn Revenue 299

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 31, 2023

With the end of the fiscal year approaching for many software companies, management teams are running the numbers for different scenarios. Software purchasing activity seems to be trending up, which should instill more confidence in their pipelines. Software spending should increase 15% - the fastest rate in the last three years.

Headcount 180

Headcount Sales Hiring AI Cloud 180

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2023

Everyone is basically doing more with not much more headcount (see next point). #4. Growing Headcount, But Much More Slowly That Revenue. Headcount is up 29% year-over-year, but revenue is up 50%. Also you can see sales & marketing headcount is basically flat, while hiring is almost all in engineering / R&D.

Headcount 202

Headcount Scale Sales Hiring AWS 202

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 17, 2023

Data teams are becoming software engineering teams. Like the Devops movement, the Dataops movement aims to scale the use of data within companies without increasing the headcount of the data team. I learned a tremendous amount about the way modern data teams, who leverage software engineering disciplines, operate.

Data 213

Data Government Scale Headcount 213

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 6, 2022

Profitability or net income margin has become the most important correlate to public software company valuations. Across every quartile, public software & infrastructure companies have seen a 5 percentage point drop in net income since Covid. Sales-lead teams cut headcount when account executives don’t attain numbers.

Headcount 300

Headcount Market Research Acquisition Education 300

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2024

They did layoffs and froze headcount. If the founders are truly committed and truly want it, then that existing $2m-$20m in ARR becomes customer funding for the next generation of products and software. That’s the beauty of true software. That they had to get to cash-flow positive, because no more money was coming.

Headcount 220

Headcount Finance Startup Trends 220

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 5, 2020

But starting that week, startups began reducing headcount by about 700 per day. ClassPass, one of the fitness startups to reduce headcount, reported a 95% drop in sales in 10 days. Software startups sold to human resources, security, legal, IT, and product teams are at the bottom of the list. Friday spike to more than 1800.

Sales Recruiting 325

Sales Recruiting Startup Headcount Sales Hiring 325

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. Natasha Ratanshi-Stein is the founder of Surfboard , a software company that offers scheduling tooling for customer support teams.

Scale 206

Scale Outsourcing Services Software Sales Hiring 206

SaaStr

MAY 9, 2024

Our focus is on enterprise software and commerce infrastructure such as fintech, and logistics. Until recently, founders would describe their growth rate by how fast they were growing their company headcount. Activant Capital is thrilled to have invested in Owner multiple times already. #2. And how big is your current fund?

Scale 205

Scale Headcount Travel B2B 205

FastSpring

AUGUST 13, 2020

Companies selling software, SaaS, and digital products have had to handle evolving consumer habits, emerging privacy regulations combined with an unprecedented global pandemic and economic uncertainty. Take a look at the infographic below to learn more about these key software ecommerce trends: The increased demand for software.

Trends 113

Trends Software Headcount B2B 113

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2023

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. For Atlassian, it was for teams within organizations.

Sales Hiring 221

Sales Hiring Enterprise Headcount Scale 221

SaaStr

DECEMBER 18, 2023

At SaaStr Annual , IBM’s VP of Software and Technology Raj Datta and Director of Startups Kylie Rutherford shared how AI is changing the game for companies of all sizes. AI has been with IBM for 20 years, and now they have Enterprise-grade software. growth in the last few months alone. How to create a competitive advantage.

AI 237

AI Technology Scale Startup 237

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

Recurring software revenue is now recognized as a great way to generate tons of cash for investors,” says Gerety. By freezing headcount for a year. Mathematically, if you keep the headcount flat and continue growing 50% like Monday or 30% at $2B like Hubspot, you get wildly more efficient. But that wasn’t always the case.

Sales Hiring 228

Sales Hiring Headcount Finance Technical Review 228

FastSpring

MARCH 14, 2023

It takes an enormous amount of time, money, and headcount for SaaS companies to handle VAT, GST, and sales tax (and any other form of indirect tax) in-house. That’s why most businesses turn to tax software and/or tax consultants to help them manage indirect tax.

Payment Solutions 89

Payment Solutions Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Methods 89

Clouded Judgement

APRIL 6, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. The median software company added nearly 20% LESS net new ARR in Q4 ‘22 vs Q4 ‘21! That’s a big difference, especially when you layer in the growth in headcount from 2021 to 2022. Follow along to stay up to date!

Cloud 130

Cloud Headcount Subscription Payment Features 130

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 31, 2023

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. Private equity acquires 10% of the 70+ publicly traded software companies by the end of the year. The prediction said 7 PE public take-outs.

AI Search 224

AI Search AI Scale Headcount 224

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2022

Headcount up 7%, while revenue is up 37%. But that only increases total headcount 7% which revenues went up 37%. That’s the way software works — without a salesteam. But it’s now finally in decline, shrinking 12%. #5. Impressive leverage. You get leverage.

Scale 296

Scale Marketplace as a Service Headcount Cloud 296

Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

Sales teams have started using software that identifies leads, researches them, identifies commonalities (a shared university affiliation or a passion for a sports team), drafts the email, & sends it. will quotas for SDRs & BDRs increase but headcount remain the same? What about an artisanal email?

Artificial Intelligence 146

Artificial Intelligence Scale Headcount Scaling 146

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2020

We can derive the table above if we look over the entire respondent base and bucket headcount by ARR. Software companies invest in engineering early and then the product matures, complement that engineering and product investment with go to market teams to commercialize the product.

Scale 353

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Software Review 353

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2023

Some define it by headcount, typically around 200-2000 employees, and others by revenue, generally $10M to $1B annual recurring revenue. In rapidly growing companies, the headcount can go from 500-3000 in a matter of months. Often, your champion might not know how their company buys software. They’ll think it’s them.

Scale 187

Scale Enterprise Scaling SMB 187

Clouded Judgement

DECEMBER 8, 2023

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Subscribe now Q3 ‘23 Earnings Summary Preview The vast majority of all software companies have now reported Q3. I posted the same chart last week, but updating it here for the final set of software companies who reported earnings this week.

Cloud 161

Cloud Software Review Headcount Trends 161

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

I’m watching public company earnings to identify early trends in the software market to inform startups’ plans for 2023. But it may also suggest that many resellers with large sales teams looking to sustain their transactional businesses are able to drive additional software bookings. Yesterday, Cloudflare announced earnings.

Cloud 225

Cloud Azure Headcount Software Review 225

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2024

Customers are being much more cautious, not buying ahead of their needs or being able to anticipate things like headcount growth or budget certainty as effectively as they had in the past. Everything in the industry runs on software. GenAI will make for better software, too. They just build better software,” Jason says.

Generative AI 233

Generative AI AI Technical Review Software Review 233

SaaStr

JULY 31, 2020

Last year, the company doubled its headcount, tripled revenue and landed on G2’s Top 100 Global Software list. . And some of the marquee customers include MongoDB, Gitlab and Qualtrics. . The funding comes at a point when Chorus is in the hypergrowth mode.

Scale 351

Scale Artificial Intelligence Payments Payment Services 351

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Enterprise software businesses strive for 90-95% gross retention (generally the percent of revenue that sticks with you vs churns altogether), with net expansion in the 120%+ range (the aggregate change in expansion - contraction - churned revenue).

AI 183

AI Revenue Cloud Technical Advisors 183

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 5, 2022

Software & Infrastructure companies are more optimistic than web3 and consumer founders, who average 4.8. About 20% of those polled will conduct a layoff, and on average will reduce headcount by 20%. The typical founder feels 6.0 scale, just slightly better than neutral about the market.

Startup 208

Startup Scale Headcount Compensation 208

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 23, 2020

Massive headcount growth presages large software purchases and expansion. The ideal scenario is one where purely external signals confer a prospect’s propensity to buy. A prospect experiences hypergrowth is perfect example. A company anoints a new department head catalyzing change.

Scale 237

Scale Headcount Sales Startup 237

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

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2022

Atlassian plans to double its headcount over the coming few years. The end state goal for software is 20%+. #7. And half of Atlassian’s employees now live 2 or more hours from the office. This is the secret sauce to Atlassian’s business model. And its doubling down on being hybrid and distributed. #4. This is epic.

Scale 225

Scale Headcount Cloud Business Model 225

Sales Hacker

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

Avoid These 3 Things 3 pitfalls to avoid when growing and scaling a sales team 1) Thinking that more sales headcount = more revenue This is a pitfall and simply not true. As Brian Weinberger (SVP of Global Sales at Sisense ) expresses, this thinking is like taking an old model and applying it to a new software company.

Sales Hiring 106

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 106

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. In the bubble, people gorged on software and entitlements. The world has changed.

Sales Hiring 245

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 245

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 30, 2022

This is especially important for small teams, where you need to operate at a scale far beyond your headcount (without burning out your team by working around the clock). Using Brex also saves time for your finance team (or, depending on headcount, your finance person ??) Look for tools that can scale with you.

Scale 163

Scale Payment Services Startup AWS 163

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2022

” But it’s also a reminder how hard it is to combine services, hardware and software and make money from SMBs. #3. Fairly low revenue per headcount, although being headquartered in Utah with a large presence in India does seem to bring costs down. #7. Majority (59%) of its customers still pay monthly. Series C ($5.35

SaaS Payments 239

SaaS Payments Scale Payment Methods Payments 239

FastSpring

JANUARY 31, 2023

payment processing, gathering and remitting taxes, and subscription management) and what additional software you’ll need to add to your tech stack. Table of Contents What areas of the payment lifecycle will you be able to manage and what other software will you need for a complete payment solution? Like FastSpring, Paddle is an MoR.

Payment Services 139

Payment Services Payment Methods Merchant Services Payment Features 139

ChurnZero

JUNE 26, 2020

It’s easy to get overwhelmed or stumped when you’re not sure where to start, especially when purchasing a newer product, such as Customer Success software, for the first time. What software/tools does your Customer Success team currently use? Writing anything from scratch can be intimidating, much less a request for proposal (RFP).

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Software Review Software Scale 98

IT World

MAY 26, 2022

Microsoft is pulling back on hiring quotas for its Windows, Office and Teams chat and conferencing software groups. Microsoft will continue to grow headcount in the year ahead and it will add additional focus to where those resources go,” the company said in a statement. The move was first reported by Bloomberg. "As

Headcount 95

Headcount Pricing Software 95

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2021

All software slowly but surely gets out of date. If nothing else, you can pretty reliability track headcount growth on LinkedIn). Your competitors have the same seasons. You can’t blame it on market changes. Again, they play in the same market. It challenges you, in the right way, to avoid complacency.

Azure 202

Azure Headcount AWS Education 202