SaaStr

NOVEMBER 9, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What are some of the “ultimate sins” in marketing and sales and success in SaaS in the early stages? My list of some bad ones: Sales: Hiring any reps you wouldn’t buy from. Later, once you have a strong VP of Sales, it’s fine though. Your sales reps need to eat. A bit more here.

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Sales Hiring Scale Startup Marketing 226

OpenView Labs

NOVEMBER 9, 2021

Once dominated by relationships, sales today (especially SaaS sales) are equally propelled by technology. With the broad adoption of CRM, the rise of the sales tech stack, and the advent of social selling and other digital sales channels, the sales landscape has shifted dramatically. Scaling SaaS Sales.

Scale 91

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Technical Review 91

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

The hardest phase of SaaS, at least for the founders, is the phase from Initial Traction ($1-$2m in ARR + 80%-100% YoY growth) to the next phase — Initial Scale. Inevitability in SaaS comes around $10m in ARR , plus or minus. That’s the power of compounding SaaS revenue. Lead qualification reps?

Scale 254

Scale Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scaling 254

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. On the sales side, people hired way too much. More salespeople do not equal more sales.

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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.

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Scale Interviewing Trends Innovation 235

SaaStr

MAY 25, 2019

SaaS as we know it probably started in 1999. WebEx was founded in 1995), but Salesforce kicked off the current era, and is the biggest player in SaaS. SaaS: Maybe Plan for 30+ Years as a Founder. Inside Sales teams didn’t use to have products like Mixmax or Salesloft or Chorus or Gong. SaaS is 20 years old.

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Interviewing Scale SaaS Construction 190

SaaStock

FEBRUARY 26, 2019

The invite-only event has only one prerequisite: SaaS founders need to have achieved either $3M+ in ARR or have secured Series A funding. Away from the crowds for two days and nights, founders exchange stories about their journeys, the triumphs, failures and the challenges of scaling a SaaS business. What happens at SaaSociety.

Scale 155

Scale Scaling Entertainment Travel 155

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? For enterprise, this could be $300m-500m in ARR.

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Scale SaaS SMB Scaling 244

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2021

Gorgias is the leading contact center for e-commerce and it’s been a fun one to track at SaaS, from 1,000 to 3,000 to now 7,000 customers. Their CEO will join us at SaaSr Scale 2021 on December 15 to talk about using data to get to 10,000 SMB customers! From those nine interviews, I received four offers.

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Scale Sales Hiring Sales SMB 255

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

And in fact, about 90% of SaaS companies that IPO still have their founder as CEO : SaaS CEOs That Go The Distance, To IPO … Tend To Be Founder-CEOs (Updated) Ultimately I see only one problem with founder CEOs: If they can’t constantly recruit, and recruit again, and recruit again , a world class management team.

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Scale Interviewing Engineering Content Marketing 250

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2021

Finding the perfect VP of Sales position can be daunting, especially in the middle of a global pandemic. Candidates need to find opportunities that not only fit their sales experience and stretch goals, but also companies that are coming out of the pandemic with momentum. Who is looking to hire a VP of Sales in January / Q1?

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Sales Hiring Scale Payment Solutions Payments 318

ChurnZero

JULY 22, 2022

As Donna Weber , the world’s leading expert in customer onboarding, knows, onboarding is about more than completing product training and filling out checklists. I recommend you interview customers. I would interview 5 to 10 customers and ask what ah-ha moment made them glad they bought your product.

Scale 98

Scale Onboarding Scaling Underperforming Technical Team 98

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. at this scale (!!) at this scale (!!) But now we’re almost back.

Scale 218

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Interviewing 218

FastSpring

APRIL 4, 2024

As an experienced sales and GTM leader, John Eitel has more than witnessed how product-led growth (PLG) has affected the tech and SaaS space in the last few years — he and his teams have been up close and personal with how PLG increased in popularity as a sales strategy. “I What success looks like for using both together.

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Scale Sales Payment Methods Merchant Services 150

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.

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Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 222

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2022

Incredibly, ZoomInfo has scaled to IPO with an entirely sales-driven motion. He breaks down how GTM efficiency drives their ability to scale with sales-driven motion and other insights you can apply to scale your SaaS business. Mistake 4: Not getting your product and engineering team on sales calls.

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Scale Sales Hiring Interviewing Engineering 214

Valuize Consulting

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

Achieving Customer Success At Scale. As your customer base grows, the need to lead operations transformation, scale your CS team, manage intricate customer relationships and reach your customers across multiple touchpoints, is compounded. Q: What was your first job? How did you get started in Customer Success?

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Scale Technical Review Technology Interviewing 52

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2019

Join Anish Shivdasani, CEO of Giraffe, as he provides unique African experiences learned from scaling to 1M users. Now, unfortunately there are a lot of constraints in Africa, major constraints when you’re talking about setting up and scaling a startup. Well, you have to build a direct sales force. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW.

Scale 159

Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling SaaS Payments 159

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.

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Cloud Scale AWS AI 231

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2020

The basic idea was to help folks who haven’t hired a VP or Director of Marketing hire the right one for a pre-Scale sales-driven SaaS company. Someone that knows, lives and breathes leads, funnels and funnel management, drip marketing, and all the rest. A Lead Commit. Or SQL commit. ” Pass.

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Marketing 300

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Flock Safety’s Founder and CEO, Garrett Langley, and its VP of Growth, Alex Latraverse, know a bit about sales. Enough to go from 0 to 100 sales reps in about 18 months — and they’re looking to be well beyond 100 by the end of this month. Flock Safety is a hardware-enabled SaaS company dedicated to stopping crime.

Sales Recruiting 171

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 171

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. And this leads to our third point. Most of this process is invisible.

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Merchant Services Payment Services Outsourcing Services SaaS Payments 147

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2023

As Managing Director of Salesforce Ventures, Nowi Kallen , shared at last week’s Workshop Wednesday, there are five main challenges of moving upmarket and tips to follow if you want to succeed at Enterprise sales in today’s macro environment. For many, moving upmarket makes sense to scale. We’ve already mentioned the why.

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Scale Enterprise readiness compliance Enterprise 183

CustomerSuccessBox

JUNE 21, 2022

The general agreement is that successfully onboarding a customer on a B2B SaaS platform involves ensuring the customer knows how to use your product. Yet, it’s often easy said than actually done, especially, when you’re looking for Customer Onboarding at Scale. 8 Best Strategies for Customer Onboarding at Scale.

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Scale Onboarding Scaling Strategy 52

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2019

Scaling the company’s employee base, sales teams, marketing, and operations—all while preserving its culture—has required a laser focus on first principles, smart processes, and effective hiring. In this talk, Claire will share these and other lessons for scaling high-growth organizations. Dare I say SaaS. Names stick.

Scale 152

Scale Payment Services Payment Methods Scaling 152

FastSpring

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

In two one-hour interviews, FastSpring sales leaders Todd Stellfox and Tony Markov each interviewed Kurt about pricing strategies that work in volatile markets and beyond. Stream both interviews below and see highlights from each. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help you scale across borders to go farther faster.

Pricing 138

Pricing Payment Solutions Payment Services SaaS Payments 138

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 11, 2023

Before we get into it, curious to hear your thoughts on last weeks Sales Hacker/GTMnow announcement ?! This week I sat down and interview the VP of Sales at Crunchbase , Ang McManamon. Ang shares her 5 P’s of Sales Leadership: Professionalism Preparation Process Performance Play More on these below. Grit is a must-have.

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Scale Leadership Sales Hiring Sales 64

Point Nine Land

OCTOBER 23, 2023

P9 Panel on Hiring Sales Leaders — Founders Summit 2023 “You are going to fire your first sales manager!” — A lesson too many founders learn the hard way. The Founder isn’t willing to be the first salesperson Many of the best founders we work with don’t have a sales background and are either product or engineering focused.

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Sales Hiring Scale Technical Advisors Technical Cofounder 125

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. Sales reps can use the knowledge to shift sales negotiations from price to value.

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Management Scale Customer Lifetime Value SaaS 105

User Pilot

MAY 2, 2024

You will also learn how to build a retention strategy, what metrics to track, and 10 bulletproof retention tactics for SaaS companies. It’s crucial for SaaS businesses because it drives revenue growth, increases customer lifetime value , reduces customer acquisition costs , and fosters positive word-of-mouth marketing.

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Retention Metrics Strategy Scale 111

SaaStr

JANUARY 7, 2021

We were fortunate enough to interview CEOs who were in the trenches navigating the COVID-19 pandemic, investors who were advising companies on how best to move forward, and operators who saw explosive growth given the shift to working from home. . Out of its headquarters in Utah, Podium scaled from 5 employees to over 300 employees.

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Scale Sales Hiring Scaling B2B 238

Natalia Luneva

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

On this episode of the podcast, I interview Arthur Nobel and we discuss scaling SaaS companies. What we discovered is companies sometimes struggle with scaling so we dived into the reasons for that. Levers of scaling a SaaS company. He is passionate about enabling entrepreneurs to realize their vision.

Scale 52

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting SaaS 52

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2019

Alexandr Wang is the Founder & CEO @ Scale, the startup providing high quality training and validation data for AI applications. To date, Alexandr has raised over $23m with Scale from some of the best in the business including Index, Accel, Y Combinator, Dropbox’s Drew Houston, Justin Kan, Thumbtack’s Jonathan Swanson and more.

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Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Customer Success 126

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. More wisdom from SaaS leaders.

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Interviewing Underperforming Technical Team SaaS Scale 75

SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2022

We’ve recently been posting polls on SaaStr’s LinkedIn account to get a feel for what SaaS companies are doing in the current environment. In the video below, he discusses the results and where he thinks SaaS companies are on track or need improvement. #1. Your best sales reps can close so much more than your average rep.

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Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Customer Success 206

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2022

They aren’t scientific, but they do poll out 25,000+ LinkedIn followers, who consist mainly of SaaS executives. 41% of you have sales do some customer onboarding, not just CS or other specialists. Should sales just disappear once the contract is signed? #5. Hire a great VP of Sales, and revenue goes up.

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Sales Hiring Pricing Scale Interviewing 280

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2022

A gap opens up when: – Sales abandons the customer the moment deal is closed – Support too reactive & slow to solve real issues – Deployment harder than should be. So as I’ve written about before, I’ve interviewed a ton of folks for CS roles in the past 12 months. They are the Great Gap Fillers in SaaS.

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Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing 275