Tom Tunguz

SEPTEMBER 16, 2017

How much should a SaaS startup invest in sales and marketing at different stages of the business? Sales and marketing investment depends on many different factors including establishing product market fit, the business’s sales model (inside, field, freemium), and not least, cash balance and fundraising capacity.

Investment 274

Investment Startup Marketing SaaS 274

User Pilot

SEPTEMBER 4, 2023

Despite its large demographic market, Apple focuses on users who value innovation, quality, and a premium user experience. As a result, its products are designed for lovers of sleek design, cutting-edge tech, and brand status. Apple also invests in understanding how users interact with their devices and why.

Product Marketing 104

Product Marketing Strategy Marketing Market Research 104

Tom Tunguz

JULY 19, 2018

As a product manager, I’d never thought about this type of roadmap segmentation before. When a startup has established product market fit, the differentiator is clear. It is the reason customers prefer the product to alternatives. “Your product is missing this feature. But it made a lot of sense to me.

Investment 212

Investment Startup Churn Engineering 212

User Pilot

MAY 17, 2021

Are you tracking the right Product Marketing KPIs? With so many product growth insights available to every product marketer, it’s sometimes hard to understand which metrics are relevant and which you should be tracking to measure the success of your product marketing. What is Product Marketing?

Product Marketing 98

Product Marketing Metrics Customer Lifetime Value Marketing 98

OpenView Labs

APRIL 3, 2019

The researchers blame “premature scaling” as the root cause, pointing out that 70% of startups in the study scaled before they were ready and that startup founders substantially underestimate how long it takes to validate their market. It’s no wonder that the startup community obsesses over finding product-market fit.

Product Marketing 63

Product Marketing Pricing Scale Marketing 63

Mucker Capital

FEBRUARY 24, 2021

Mucker’s first meeting with Emotive happened in November of 2018, though our initial investment wouldn’t happen until 18 months later in May 2020 when we would lead their Series A. In the case of Emotive, we were fortunate enough to have expanded our investment strategy just as they were expanding their business.

Investment 90

Investment Technical Review Scale Branding 90

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 23, 2021

What 14 startup investors & advisors taught us about chasing (and finding) product-market fit. It’s been a long-held notion in startup circles that lack of product-market fit will doom even the scrappiest of founders to fail. The problem with defining product-market fit. And this is what we heard.

Product Marketing 52

Product Marketing Marketing VP of Engineering Scale 52

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 23, 2021

What 14 startup investors & advisors taught us about chasing (and finding) product-market fit. It’s been a long-held notion in startup circles that lack of product-market fit will doom even the scrappiest of founders to fail. The problem with defining product-market fit. And this is what we heard.

Product Marketing 52

Product Marketing Marketing VP of Engineering Scale 52

Brian Balfour

JUNE 28, 2017

I’ve been lucky to have been part of building, advising, or investing in 40+ tech companies in the past 10 years. It’s Not Just Product Market Fit The second “go-to” answer is product market fit. While product market fit is a component of the framework, it is far from the answer. Some $100M+ wins.

Product Marketing 111

Product Marketing Growth Hacking Marketing Construction 111

The Angel VC

AUGUST 7, 2014

Product/market fit is a topic that I've touched on a few times on this blog. It's that extremely crucial but somewhat hard to define (and even harder to measure) step which every startup needs to cross as it goes from an idea to a product to a real, scalable business.

Product Marketing 133

Product Marketing Startup Marketing SaaS 133

User Pilot

AUGUST 6, 2023

Using customer relationship management (CRM) software to centralize your customer data is a worthwhile investment since it will prevent the formation of data silos and streamline the process of ensuring everyone has access to the information they need. Join the Userpilot Product Marketing & Growth Facebook group here!

Investment 97

Investment Banking Social Media Customer Lifetime Value 97

The Angel VC

AUGUST 25, 2017

Over the last couple of weeks and months we spent some time putting our investment thesis on paper. The purpose of this exercise was to challenge and discuss our implicit assumptions and to get everyone on our team aligned on what kind of investments we seek. Thanks for contributing this section, Pawel.

Investment 118

Investment Marketplace as a Service Blockchain Machine Learning 118

SaaSOptics

JUNE 9, 2022

By investing in you and your venture, they’ve put their money on the line, and they want to see a return. Without money, the actual fruition of their idea into a product would not be possible. In this case, investors would be investing in your idea rather than an MVP. But this is not necessarily the case. Venture capital.

Investment 82

Investment Scale Venture Capital SaaS 82

SaaStr

DECEMBER 21, 2023

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? Their product increases enrollment and utilization while reducing employee costs and providing a substantially better experience. #2. What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? What’s different about your fund / how you invest and support founders?

Scale 208

Scale Venture Capital AI Generative AI 208

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? I have known Deepinder for several years, and he has great product instincts and hustle. I have known Deepinder for several years, and he has great product instincts and hustle. What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? Check that out here.

Innovation 223

Innovation Wireless Acquisition Technology 223

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

The report’s authors already laid out how to get back to hyper-growth , and their article inspired me to share my predictions for 2021’s most important product marketing trends: 1. More SaaS companies will adopt product-led growth. It’s a key driver for the oldest form of marketing: word of mouth.

Product Marketing 58

Product Marketing Trends Scale Marketing 58

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? For over two decades, Creandum has specialized in early-stage investing, Seed and Series A. Some of our most notable investments include Spotify, Klarna, Bolt, Neo4j, Pleo or Factorial.

Payments 189

Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions Scale 189

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 8, 2022

Startups create products. After product-market fit, product teams hew the product roadmap from a panoply of options to the features best aligned with the company’s plans. In much the same way, CEOs architect the organization that builds, markets, sells, and supports the product.

Startup 353

Startup Acquisition Product Marketing Scaling 353

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

So Harry Stebbings was kind enough to have us back in the new group format on 20VC with 2 of the legends in seed investing, Eric Paley of Founder Collective and Mike Maples of Floodgate: While both aren’t pure SaaS investors, they’re both in the top 1% (!), with investments in The Trade Desk, Okta, Airtable, Slack and much more!

Venture Capital 216

Venture Capital Investment Pricing Startup 216

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 12, 2024

Many companies raised rounds in 2021 who thought they had product market fit. Or who thought their market was 10x bigger than it actually was. For founders - it’s perfectly ok to come to the conclusion that you don’t have product market fit. Altimeter is an investment adviser registered with the U.S.

Cloud 284

Cloud Venture Capital Acquisition Metrics 284

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Alison brings the perspective of all sides of a startup, from investing to SaaS to Cloud. With the marketing team, there are a lot of the classic functions — brand marketing, product marketing, and partner marketing. From there they created an entire marketing studio in six weeks using Vertex.

Cloud 220

Cloud Scale AWS AI 220

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Sydney pulled someone from Salesloft with a product marketing background who understands operations, running programs, and being strategic. This person has built out a partnership marketing team within the product marketing team. Pick your strategies, invest in them, and start tiering. It won’t work.

AWS 191

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 191

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2023

In the past, Jason has led investments in Algolia, Pipedrive, Salesloft, TalkDesk, and RevenueCat to name a few. Prior to SaaStr, Jason was an entrepreneur, selling EchoSign to Adobe for $100M where it is now a $250M ARR product. What has changed in what investors expect and want to see in potential Series A and B investments?

Benchmarks 205

Benchmarks Investment Pricing Product Marketing 205

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 7, 2015

Is it worth more or less than X product? Ascertain whether the customer believes the return on investment is wildly in their favor. ” All of these questions are customer and product discovery questions, almost identical to the ones product managers use to understand if the company has unlocked product-market fit.

Product Marketing 114

Product Marketing Development Team Review Software Review Startup 114

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

Going-To-Market With Budget Constraints Giancarlo joined Zapier as CRO when it was a more mature business, and admittedly, later than many hire their first CRO. So when’s the right time to invest more in sales and marketing when we’re all trying to become radically efficient ?

Scale 241

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Marketing 241

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2021

At medium-sized funds, each partner often does 2 investments a year. Even in seed funds, each partner often just does 3–4 investments a year. Slow growth after a certain point is a sign of a lack of product-market fi t. You may be close, but you don’t really have a product the market is demanding.

Sales Hiring 313

Sales Hiring Investment Acquisition Product Marketing 313

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 10, 2024

This is a mistake many entrepreneurs make once they have the tiniest bit of product-market fit. If you got 10, 50, 100 businessess to actually buy Yet Another SaaS Product — that is something. In my toughest times, it was always adding one great leader that turned things around in the end. Just one great one.

Startup 289

Startup Investment Product Marketing Revenue 289

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

From an R&D perspective, they invested in what they called vertical solutions to support those new use cases. So, Calendly decided to invest in going Enterprise. Kate has a simple framework for going upmarket: Product, People, and Process. From a product standpoint, you might think you have product market fit.

Scale 208

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 208

Tom Tunguz

MAY 23, 2021

The market feels different. Investment processes last a few days. Pricing rounds on multiples like public market investing. Vibrant secondary markets. Index investing and the entrance of hedge funds. Preemptive rounds have become a norm. A few years ago, raising a large venture round anointed a winner.

Software Review 363

Software Review Venture Capital Cloud Pricing 363

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

with Olivier Adam, Chief Growth Officer at ReferralCandy Successful Scaling Across Markets, Lessons in Marketing & Building GTM with IvyCap’s MP with Ashish Wadhwani, Co-founder and Managing Partner.

VP of Engineering 221

VP of Engineering Technical Cofounder Outsourcing Services CTO Coach 221

SaaStr

JUNE 30, 2023

Braze didn’t find a true product-market fit until around 2014-2015. If you’re struggling to see product-market fit, it can be nerve-wracking. But if the market isn’t ready, it isn’t ready. If you spend too much too early when you lack product-market fit, you’re pushing rope.

Scale 181

Scale Mobile Venture Capital Scaling 181

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

I’ve had the privilege to invest one way or another in about 35 SaaS companies, both as a VC and as angel. They understand why they got “No”s in the early, pre-traction days, and even, in the early-ish days when they had a handful of customers but wasn’t really taking off yet (my favorite time to invest).

Scale 336

Scale Sales Recruiting Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 336

The Marketing & Growth Hacking Publication

MARCH 3, 2019

If you have that, it means you’ve managed to offer the market exactly what it needs or, in other words, achieved a product/market fit (PMF). What are the steps you need to take to identify your product/market fit? Let’s begin with the basics, and, first of all, understand the product/market fit definition.

Product Marketing 40

Product Marketing Marketing Underperforming Technical Team Customer Lifetime Value 40

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2024

Experimentation and learning still have to happen, and there is a need for smart, strategic employees to monitor how AI is working to improve the product market fit, application, and safety for their customers. It depends on the utility of your product and platform as it is. Can You Be Competitive as a Vendor Without AI?

Generative AI 216

Generative AI AI Technical Review Software Review 216

User Pilot

APRIL 18, 2024

In SaaS, getting users to value quickly matters a lot, so invest in onboarding and self-service support. Userpilot is a product onboarding platform that can help you with that. Try Userpilot and Take Your Product Marketing to the Next Level Get a Demo 14 Day Trial No Credit Card Required What is a conversion path?

Payment Methods 104

Payment Methods Marketing SaaS Payments Payments 104

SaaStr

MARCH 4, 2021

Well, for SaaS companies, marketing broadly speaking breaks into three species — Corporate Marketing, Product Marketing and Demand Generation. With the larger software companies Corporate Marketing Is King, and Product Marketers are the Princes. Because the market barely even knows you exist.

Sales Hiring 356

Sales Hiring Scale Marketing Branding 356

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Lattice has launched four product suites in the last eight years, and the ideas that drove their growth apply to most companies today. Many of you are familiar with this visual, most likely created by an investment firm. This showcases a narrow segment of a niche market, and it’s missing a lot of startups.

Scale 212

Scale Scaling Startup Sales Hiring 212