FastSpring

APRIL 26, 2022

Last week, I canceled an annual SaaS subscription (I had three weeks left until renewal). In the language of SaaS, I churned. In part two, we’ll cover five churn-prevention strategies that have been successful in other SaaS businesses. Part I: SaaS Churn Benchmarks. Is There an Ideal Churn Rate for SaaS?

Benchmarks 141

Benchmarks Churn Payments SaaS Payments 141

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2023

My list: Not committing to 24 months upfront to getting to Real Revenues and a Minimum Sellable Product. It takes 7–10 years to build something real, and the first stage is the 18–24 months it takes to get real revenues and something off the ground. More here: Planning to Do a SaaS Startup? That’s tough. Go talk to 20–30 first.

SMB 222

SMB SaaS B2C Interviewing 222

Kellblog

AUGUST 24, 2021

I recently gave a presentation at SaaSBoomi , an India-based SaaS founder community, which was structured as an interview by Freshworks social media evangelist Jayadevan P K (aka, JPK). In the interview I answer the following questions: How do you look at ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) and its relation to the valuation of a company?

Interviewing 128

Interviewing Metrics Social Media SaaS 128

Subscription Flow

APRIL 18, 2024

How do you keep increasing your revenue in a marketplace that has reached its point of saturation? What is a customer engagement model and how can SubscriptionFlow help you devise effective customer engagement models for SaaS? 3. Stability and Predictability in Revenue Streams In any business, consistency really is key.

Engagement 84

Engagement Customer Lifetime Value Revenue Subscription 84

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

Mark Roberge , SaaStr fan-favorite and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital brought together some of the top CROs in SaaS during the SaaStr Annual to share some of their greatest learnings and pivotal moments leading some of the Cloud 100 SaaS companies.

Scale 220

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 220

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

At SaaStr Miami, former Founder’s Fund Partner and CRO of Brex Sam Blond — host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential Podcast — sat down with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin for a fireside chat about finding success as a SaaS company in 2024. The real question is which avenue will generate the most revenue for the business.

Sales Hiring 248

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 248

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2023

For the first time ever in 2024, SaaStr is hosting its first Demo Day – a completely live, digital event that will bring the global SaaStr community together with the brightest innovators in SaaS for the inaugural Demo Day on Tuesday, January 30th. We have limited space for a handful of Gold sponsors to host 15-minute demos.

Scale 235

Scale Interviewing Trends Innovation 235

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2024

Where SaaS Meets AI SaaStr AI Day will be a completely immersive, live digital event for Founders and Revenue Leaders to explore the intersection of where SaaS Meets AI and the intersection of the two. We’ll bring the global SaaStr community together with the brightest innovators in SaaS for the inaugural AI Day.

AI 199

AI Artificial Intelligence Social Media Innovation 199

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2020

A little while back we put together some of the top sales & marketing mistakes SaaS companies and founders make, especially in the early days. Yes, Box is SaaS. But if they say in an interview they “don’t really care about money” … well … they aren’t sales people. Hiring a B2C marketer for SaaS. That’s not you.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Marketing 363

OpenView Labs

JANUARY 8, 2021

Great interview questions tell you who a person is, what motivates them, how they think and solve problems, and what they’d be like as a teammate. To help us all conduct better interviews, we asked some of the smartest leaders in SaaS to share their favorite questions. Leandra Fishman, Chief Revenue Officer at Intercom.

Interviewing 75

Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Scale 75

User Pilot

JANUARY 29, 2024

A good SaaS UX design is critical to a successful SaaS product in today’s constantly evolving and competitive market. In this article, we will examine what an effective SaaS UX design is, why it’s important, and the best practices to produce a well-crafted design that works. What is SaaS UX design?

SaaS 105

SaaS Interviewing User Experience Onboarding 105

User Pilot

OCTOBER 29, 2023

WTP helps SaaS companies choose optimum prices for their products to maximize profit. SaaS product teams also use it to prioritize features and evaluate the feasibility of new motions. Effective customer research techniques include interviews and focus groups as they allow you to collect qualitative feedback.

SaaS 105

SaaS Interviewing Pricing Market Research 105

SaaStr

MAY 4, 2022

Roughly — very roughly — you want to be multiproduct in SaaS by the time you have 10,000 customers. So a top theme across SaaStr CEO interviews since 2017 or so, and across our 5 Interesting Learnings series with public SaaS companies, is … when should you go multi-product? Each did 40% of its revenue.

Scale 244

Scale SaaS SMB Scaling 244

User Pilot

APRIL 8, 2024

If it’s the latter, then you’ve already experienced what bottom-up SaaS is! Our guide explains what exactly bottom-up SaaS is and covers the main growth strategies and tactics used by bottom-up companies. TL;DR In the bottom-up model, a SaaS company promotes the product to individual end-users and teams.

Strategy 100

Strategy Business SaaS Customer Lifetime Value 100

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 5, 2023

We also give you a bunch of tips on how to implement it in your SaaS. By delivering valuable products that meet user expectations, SaaS organizations can better retain customers and increase their lifetime value. This helps SaaS companies understand how well the product satisfies user needs in comparison to its competitors.

Management 105

Management Scale Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 105

SaaStr

AUGUST 22, 2023

Double-down on your market understanding, research, and customer interviews. More here: Planning to Do a SaaS Startup? Don’t Forget the 20 Interview Rule. #3. 12 months is almost never enough in SaaS to get to a great product “enough” customers pay for. Give yourself 24 months to get to a Minimum Sellable Product.

Interviewing 215

Interviewing Market Research Business Model Startup 215

FastSpring

MARCH 3, 2023

This is one of the primary reasons why growth expert Fred Linfjärd encourages SaaS companies to consider using a merchant of record instead of a DIY solution. I interviewed him live on LinkedIn about four signs that SaaS companies have outgrown Stripe. Related post: Can SaaS Companies Afford to Ignore Sales Tax and VAT?

Merchant Services 147

Merchant Services Payment Services Outsourcing Services SaaS Payments 147

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

20X year 1⃣ 12X year 2⃣ 5X year 3⃣ #deelspeed @deel [link] — Shuooo (@shuoshuooshuooo) January 23, 2023 When we look at SaaS companies’ success stories, everything looks great on their growth maps. Shuo Wang is the CRO and co-founder of Deel, one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies.

Sales Hiring 222

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 222

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

So we’re finally, almost back from the IPO Drout in SaaS. The last SaaS leader to IPO was HashiCorp back in Dec 2021. After that, the public markets began a precipitous decline — leading to an almost 2 year pause in SaaS IPO. But the metrics, especially for an SMB-focused SaaS business, are breathtaking.

Scale 218

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Interviewing 218

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2022

So those of us who know Vista Equity Partners (and many of you may not) think of it as one of the largest Private Equity firms buying SaaS companies. But I hadn’t really thought of them as a proxy for all SaaS companies until I saw the CEO’s interview from a few weeks back. Vista has a pretty broad look at SaaS.

Cybersecurity 298

Cybersecurity SMB Interviewing Enterprise 298

Incredo

APRIL 8, 2020

Almost all industries witness decline in revenue because of the coronavirus crisis. And SaaS companies aren’t exceptions. Did your SaaS company launch any special campaign to support its community or customers during coronavirus? Let us know and we may include your initiative in our post.

Sales Recruiting 269

Sales Recruiting Travel SaaS Sales Hiring 269

FastSpring

AUGUST 19, 2022

According to an OpenView survey, by 2023, 56% of SaaS companies will be using or expecting to test usage-based pricing, which they define as “a pricing model that enables customers to pay for a product according to how much they use it.”. SaaS pricing is tough to optimize. Here’s my take on it in a nutshell: ? Why Is UBP Trending?

Pricing 147

Pricing SaaS Technical Review Forecasting 147

Valuize Consulting

AUGUST 2, 2021

As the pioneer of this new mode of business, Customer Success (CS) has increasingly become the most important team in propelling customer retention and expansion and the biggest driver of economic growth in SaaS organizations. I think the customer success space is still in its infancy in terms of what it means to a recurring revenue company.

VP of Engineering 52

VP of Engineering Interviewing Metrics Scale 52

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2022

If there really is a slowdown (and I’m not sure will be in SaaS), folks will have to work harder. So I’m not yet convinced times are really tougher for SaaS companies. But buyers are still buying more SaaS than ever, far more than just last year and far, far more than even 2 years ago. — Jason BeKind Lemkin #????????????

Sales Hiring 250

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Interviewing Startup 250

Navint

APRIL 18, 2019

This is an excerpt of the article Key SaaS Lessons to Maximize Revenue from VentureBeat that featured an interview from Sean Joyce. If you have a complex integration that requires maintenance every time you want to make a change to pricing or creating a bundle, then [SaaS] companies just don’t do it,” Joyce says.

Revenue 64

Revenue SaaS Finance Interviewing 64

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2023

So there’s a situation I see happening with many (not most, but many) SaaS companies as they build out the first management team: They hire a VP of Sales that doesn’t think much of the VP of Marketing. Second, when I interview VPs of Marketing candidates, I always ask how they like to work with the sales team.

Sales Hiring 201

Sales Hiring Marketing Sales Interviewing 201

User Pilot

MARCH 14, 2024

Looking for customer analytics use cases that can significantly improve your SaaS? This article lists key use cases for SaaS and explains how to implement them to unlock customer satisfaction and product growth. 9 use cases for customer analytics in SaaS: Test your onboarding flows with A/B testing. You’re at the right place.

Customer Lifetime Value 105

Customer Lifetime Value SaaS Underperforming Technical Team Churn 105

User Pilot

JANUARY 10, 2024

User research methods for SaaS: Usability testing User testing User interviews Focus groups Session replays First click testing User feedback surveys Card sorting A/B testing Product analytics Heatmaps Userpilot can help you conduct user experience (UX) research and easily interpret the data. Choose the appropriate research method.

User Experience 105

User Experience Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team SaaS 105

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

In the latest installment of SaaStr’s What’s New series – where we sit down with the leaders in SaaS and Cloud for the inside scoop on what’s top of mind and what’s new, SaaStr CEO and Jason Lemkin chats with the CMO of Google Cloud, Alison Wagonfeld.

Cloud 231

Cloud Scale AWS AI 231

SaaStr

MARCH 28, 2021

But here’s my list of things I don’t think you should do, almost always, in SaaS/B2B: Committing for less than 24 months to get to product-market fit. Less is almost never enough in SaaS. More here: If You’re Going to Do a SaaS Start-Up … You Have to Give it 24 Months | SaaStr. 12 or 18 aren’t enough.

Sales Hiring 280

Sales Hiring Interviewing B2B Product Marketing 280

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 22, 2020

By mastering your sales interview questions. As a longtime recruiting leader, I’ve worked with countless hiring managers looking to fill sales roles , and I’ve had a firsthand look at their interview process. 6 Sales Interview Questions to Find the Best Talent. How do you make sure your potential new hires have the right skills?

Sales Hiring 76

Sales Hiring Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team Sales Recruiting 76

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2022

They aren’t scientific, but they do poll out 25,000+ LinkedIn followers, who consist mainly of SaaS executives. discount on average for multi-year deals. Notwithstanding the drama in the public markets, most SaaS companies and startups are growing faster than ever. #6. Hire a great VP of Sales, and revenue goes up.

Sales Hiring 280

Sales Hiring Pricing Scale Interviewing 280

User Pilot

JULY 27, 2023

Confused about trying to understand SaaS roles? SaaS companies have many moving parts, and it can be difficult to determine who does what. TL;DR SaaS, or “Software as a Service,” is a business model that delivers centrally hosted software to subscribers over the internet. What is a SaaS business model?

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Sales Recruiting CTO Hire 98

Sales Hacker

JUNE 7, 2022

So how are sales and revenue leaders at high-growth startups solving these challenges? I’ll share some practical tips from revenue leaders at high-growth startups in the US. Competitive hiring tactics for revenue roles. – Sales Director at $1bn+ Series D StartUp, on their interview task for AEs. Proof of concept.

Sales Hiring 73

Sales Hiring Revenue Marketing Interviewing 73

User Pilot

DECEMBER 7, 2023

It will also guide you through uncovering and harnessing these insights in your SaaS business. For example, customer surveys and interviews may reveal that language learners want an interactive app with a personalized experience. It helps SaaS companies to track user interactions on their website, app, and more.

Payment Methods 105

Payment Methods SaaS Payments Data Payments 105

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 5, 2023

Wondering how to scale customer success in SaaS and drive product growth ? If you’re a leading SaaS company, you know that growth is directly tied to helping customers achieve their desired outcomes. An effective customer success team can, thus, drive revenue growth, reduce churn, and increase customer satisfaction.

Scale 104

Scale Customer Success Scaling SaaS 104

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2022

This isn’t an epic insight, but I did the poll because I find so many SaaS founders underestimate how many reps you have to hire. But most of you are getting from 10%-30%+ of your revenues from partners. Most of you think sales reps you interview need to know your product at least well enough to ask good questions.

Sales Hiring 206

Sales Hiring Interviewing Revenue Sales 206