SaaStr

JUNE 24, 2025

It’s about fundamental organizational redesign —from pricing models (hybrid consumption/subscription) to team structures (forward-deployed engineers vs traditional CSMs) to investment priorities (94% AI spend increases among high-growth companies). The message is clear: The Age of AI isn’t coming—it’s here.

Scale 194

Scale AI B2B SaaS 194

SaaStr

MARCH 16, 2025

Follow the Pilot-Repeat-Enlarge Methodology Pilot : Start small with minimal investment. Create systems that can onboard quickly when you find successful channels. Negotiate with vendors for smaller initial commitments. Repeat : If successful, run the campaign again to ensure it wasn’t a fluke.

Scale 242

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Marketing 242

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2025

When AI can handle customer onboarding, support, and success functions that traditionally required human intervention, you can scale revenue without proportionally scaling teams. But here’s what’s really interesting: This efficiency advantage seems to fade as companies get larger.

Scale 157

Scale AI Headcount Sales Hiring 157

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 17, 2020

Because of this, localization can seem unattainable to many small and medium-sized businesses that may not have the capital to invest in localization – or the resources to maintain it. The post Not investing in localization is costing you more than you think appeared first on Inside Intercom.

Investment 276

Investment Scale Software Review Systems Review 276

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2025

You can hear our deep dive with Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot, on how she is doing this at HubSpot here: A Better Approach: Democratize AI Investment Instead of concentrating AI expertise in one highly-paid executive, consider this alternative approach: Create AI experiment budgets for every team. Make AI fluency a core competency.

Sales Hiring 249

Sales Hiring Artificial Intelligence AI Sales Recruiting 249

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 20, 2024

Once they brought it to market, they knew they needed better user admin features, onboarding capabilities, SSO integration, etc. Don’t underestimate the investments you need to make here to be compelling to your customers. Another big investment during rapid growth is digital moments.

Scale 261

Scale AI Scaling Marketing 261

ChurnZero

APRIL 11, 2025

Your customer onboarding strategy is the foundation of your future retention and expansion revenue. The right onboarding strategy means more than just getting a customer using your product. But how do you know if your onboarding tactics really work? Is your onboarding process a framework or a free-for-all?

Onboarding 86

Onboarding Strategy Technical Review Customer Lifetime Value 86

SaaStr

MARCH 9, 2025

Previously, he led design teams at LinkedIn where he built recommendation products for product onboarding and developed AI chatbots. The 86% loyalty factor : Companies that provide strong onboarding and continuous educational experiences see 86% higher customer loyalty rates – making AI-powered personalization a critical retention tool.

AI 202

AI Scale Education User Experience 202

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

The result was a 5x increase over initial projections – growing from an $8M revenue target to $40M actual results – driven by a belief that market demand justified the investment. This approach required immense trust from the CEO to invest millions ahead of proven results.

Scale 185

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 185

User Pilot

JUNE 30, 2025

At times, even a great in-app onboarding flow isn’t enough. That’s where an onboarding email sequence comes in. In this guide, I’ll show you 8 onboarding email types that drive activation, with real examples and templates you can use. Together, these email examples can serve as a blueprint for your customer onboarding sequence.

Onboarding 71

Onboarding Software Review Engagement Churn 71

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2025

Focus on: Building robust security and compliance (SOC 2, ISO 27001) Automating customer onboarding/offboarding Creating enterprise-grade support processes Developing procurement relationship expertise Having clear data handling procedures 5. Master Enterprise-Grade Operations The operational bar is much higher in enterprise.

Enterprise 244

Enterprise Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 244

SaaStr

JULY 2, 2025

Have them shadow customer success calls, onboarding sessions, and even product team meetings. Invest in Tools and Resources Don’t skimp on tools like Gong (for call recording and analysis), Apollo, or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. At seed stage, every dollar counts, but investing in the right tools can dramatically improve ramp time.

Sales 142

Sales Leadership Customer Success Investment 142

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2025

Plan to spend at least two weeks of intensive training, just like onboarding a new hire. The Bottom Line AI SDRs can work incredibly well, but only if you’re willing to invest the time to train them properly. What We’re Looking to Do Next We’re literally onboarding two more AI sales tools this week. The upside?

AI 194

AI Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 194

User Pilot

JUNE 30, 2025

86% of customers say they’d be more likely to stay loyal to a business that invests in onboarding content that welcomes and educates them after they’ve bought. This includes writing the perfect email onboarding sequence that guides your customers through the user journey. What does an onboarding email sequence look like?

Onboarding 59

Onboarding Retention Engagement AI 59

USIO

FEBRUARY 19, 2025

Usio PayFac-as-a-Service Without the Drama Best for: SaaS companies that want revenue share, fast onboarding, and actual human support. Payrix Flexible, but Bring a Developer (or Five) Best for: SaaS companies willing to invest developer time into embedded payments. Want revenue share and fast onboarding? Lets break it down.

PayFac as a Service 179

PayFac as a Service Merchant Services Payfac Payments 179

SaaStr

MAY 29, 2025

Do you invest in upskilling your middle performers, or do you focus resources on amplifying your stars? The result? More specialization in human roles, with AI handling the connective tissue between specialized functions. This creates a talent strategy challenge. The window for competitive advantage is narrowing fast.

Sales Hiring 239

Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team AI Scale 239

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2025

The Result : After pivoting from “payments only” to “payments + compliance,” they onboarded their first 100 clients and raised Series A. Onboarding became “very inefficient.” We test all of them with very light investment, very simple models. Three months later: Series B.

Payment Services 189

Payment Services Sales Hiring Payment Solutions SaaS Payments 189

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2025

Product Will Need to Be More Self-Serve As AI handles more of the sales and onboarding process, there will be increased pressure to make products truly self-deployable. Companies will need to invest more in seamless onboarding, intuitive UX, and automated implementation to match the efficiency of their AI sales process.

AI 244

AI Underperforming Technical Team Sales Technical Review 244

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2025

Customers expect AI to be baked into your product, whether its automating workflows, improving onboarding, or delivering predictive insights. Onboarding should feel seamless, emails should write themselves, and insights should be delivered without lifting a finger. Now It’s Time to Make It S-Tier. Mediocre AI wont cut it. #2.

AI 147

AI Trends SaaS AWS 147

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2024

Invest in People You want to keep the bar high on talent, especially in hypergrowth, and not just in the early stages. Invest Heavily in Onboarding Your typical employee takes about three to six months to get ramped. Invest Early in Your Marketing When scaling the GTM engine, you want to invest early in marketing.

Sales Recruiting 299

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Engineering 299

USIO

JUNE 9, 2025

At its core, a Payment Facilitator is a master merchant that onboards and manages sub-merchants under its own payment umbrella. In plain English: You, as the platform, take full responsibility for underwriting, onboarding, monitoring, and settling payments for your customers. First, What Is a Payment Facilitator (PayFac)? With PFaaS?

Payment Services 130

Payment Services Merchant Services PayFac as a Service SaaS Payments 130

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 7, 2024

So one of SaaStr Fund’s latest investments is Mangomint, a vertical SaaS platform for spas and salons. Onboarding has to be much slicker for SMBs. One of the lesser-discussed challenges with more complex SMB SaaS is there’s often no one to implement and managing onboarding and business process change.

SaaS Payments 312

SaaS Payments Payments Payment Methods SMB 312

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2021

Adam #18: Invest in a strong hiring and onboarding process from day one. Adam attributes the caliber of the people at Zapier to hiring and onboarding. In the early days, Zapier invested a lot into all-hands support. Mike #2: Don’t forget to invest in innovation, or you’ll risk getting left behind.

Scale 332

Scale Scaling Innovation Investment 332

SaaStr

MAY 4, 2025

Heres where I think its heading based on 100,000+ conversations already on SaaStr’s own AI , and my experience investing in so many contact center and post-sales leaders: 1. It’s already fundamentally remade the contact center and post-sales. And it’s just getting there in sales.

AI 157

AI Scale Sales SMB 157

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 26, 2024

For example, one customer pointed out that the ability to automate processes around new customer onboarding is a revenue-accelerating outcome because it enables them to serve more customers. We’re quick to think of time and cost savings, but the impact is much larger.

Investment 130

Investment Healthcare AI Business Model 130

SaaStr

OCTOBER 10, 2022

Most for SaaStr itself (a lot of learnings there, but we have $30m+ of sponsors to keep happy), but also for a number of my investments and more. A chat bot isn’t going to solve my onboarding challenges. So as I’ve written about before, I’ve interviewed a ton of folks for CS roles in the past 12 months. They don’t have time.

Customer Success 332

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Interviewing 332

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Leveling Up PLG to Accelerate SMB Customers, Including More Attention to Onboarding I love seeing this, it can seem hard to invest heavily in small customers, but if you don’t especially invest in onboarding, that’s a big shame.

SMB 293

SMB AI Onboarding Cloud 293

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 30, 2024

What I do know is many of the billion+ SaaS companies I invested in a decade ago would not be remotely competitive today. Even complex onboarding to be fully automated. Why can’t my payroll app handle onboarding and 401k and pension and contractors? And that’s how it should be. Not in a week or a month.

AI Search 300

AI Search SaaS Headcount AI 300

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

In addition, this year Mayfield is sponsoring our VC AI Pitch Stage and will invest from $500k-$5m in the winner! From optimizing your sales process to improving customer onboarding or refining your pricing strategy, the tactical takeaways often deliver ROI that far exceeds the cost of attendance. Meet and Find Your Next VP / CXO!

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

SaaStr

JULY 17, 2020

It’s tools that facilitate collaboration and distributed project planning and remote onboarding and much more. Why would you invest anywhere else? But VCs only want to invest in the 4/10 in the above portfolio. It’s contact centers and call centers. It’s tools that help us build more apps. Is this fair?

Airlines 343

Airlines SaaS Travel Cloud 343

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

To do this, Lucid invested in a growth team tasked with iterating on all aspects of pricing, packaging, click pathing, and CTAs. Complex Adoption, Usage, and Engagement Onboarding and training look different for a customer vs. a user in PLG. With PLG, you’re onboarding your users, and their journey is defined on day zero.

Scale 307

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Systems Review 307

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2024

If you don’t already do self-onboarding and procuring, it’s wildly difficult to add later. Are Marketing Agencies Worth Investing In? VCs looking for founders to invest in is a little different from founders hiring executives and VPs. What percent are onboarded in the fastest time possible?

Sales Hiring 285

Sales Hiring Scale Marketing Interviewing 285

User Pilot

OCTOBER 31, 2024

These issues might range from low engagement with specific features to a high churn rate or poor user onboarding. To address this, you could meet with your team to agree on metrics related to onboarding, such as activation rate , time-to-value, and so on. This process may reveal gaps such as: Insufficient raw data. Outdated technology.

Strategy 105

Strategy Underperforming Technical Team Government Customer Lifetime Value 105

User Pilot

JANUARY 19, 2025

At first, this seemed like a smart investment for my company, so I invested. Reasons why you shouldn’t invest in standalone session recording tools You might think standalone session replay tools have one flaw, but theres more to the story. Reasons for not investing in standalone session recording tools.

Investment 52

Investment Scale Software Review Technical Review 52