SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

General Partner Doug Pepper and General Partner and Head of Analytics at ICONIQ Growth, Christine Edmonds, share the art and science of scaling GTM at this year’s SaaStr Annual. This is the stage where best-in-class companies can double or triple revenue in the first few years of growth. What does that mean?

Scale 224

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 224

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

Subscribe now ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) vs ERR (Experimental Runrate Revenue) ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) is one of the most popular SaaS (Non-GAAP) metrics. Many investors laugh (and some rightly so) at the fact that software companies’ valuations are often described as a multiple of revenue.

AI 183

AI Revenue Cloud Technical Advisors 183

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 26, 2022

A former venture capitalist, Mark Leonard started Constellation in 1995 with $15m of outside investment & a goal of buying vertical software companies with a moat & good unit economics. From 2003 to 2014, Constellation’s revenues compounded from $80m to more than $5b, an average of 25% annually. Growth Source. Net Growth.

Software Review 283

Software Review Investment Software Acquisition 283

SaaStr

DECEMBER 30, 2022

DigitalOcean has done that and grown beyond $150M in revenue in Q3 2022. Cliff Bockard, Senior Vice President of Revenue at DigitalOcean, joined us at SaaStr Scale to discuss how businesses can serve SMBs and still bring in large numbers of revenue. . Market understanding. Key takeaways.

Scale 189

Scale Scaling Revenue Enterprise 189

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2022

You might feel confused about where to begin, how to scale up, which mistakes you should avoid, and things you should consider before expanding. Now, let’s look at ten learnings that Dorian gathered while scaling Grammarly from a Consumer to an Enterprise brand with B2B offerings. Enter your email below for the latest SaaStr updates.

Scale 197

Scale SMB Enterprise Sales Hiring 197

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 26, 2024

Tyler (who was the fastest promotion to engineering director at his previous firm) scaled the systems data pipelines so that training and inference could work at scalable economics for the average business. Diego designed and built an elegant product to make these applications practical and usable for non-technical teams.

Investment 118

Investment Healthcare AI Business Model 118

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What Are Some Signs That Your SaaS Marketing Programs Won’t Scale Well? You need to invest there, too. So my rule from all of this is basically, invest in any marketing program that even returns $1 for $1 spent. Don’t Shortchange Second-Order Revenue. Let me dig in a bit. Yes, that’s expensive.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Marketing SaaS 210

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2020

Today, we’re answering the question: how do teams grow as a startup scales? 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. But in sales, a CRO is often hired at the $20-50M ARR range.

Scale 361

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Software Review 361

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2023

Despite what we’ve seen post-2020/2021, there has been a surge in AI investments, with AI companies at the infrastructure layer hitting a hundred times valuations at early funding stages. We are in the era of efficiency – as a 10% QBR attendance is no longer adequate for achieving a 140% net revenue retention.

Investment 148

Investment Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 148

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 28, 2022

And for Intercom’s VP of Sales EMEA, Sanj Bhayro , scaling is just what you need to invest in to ensure growth becomes as constant and linear as it can be. By the time he left to join Google Cloud as EMEA VP of Operations and Customer Growth, Salesforce had around 17 billion dollars in revenue and almost 50,000 employees.

Scale 210

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

SaaStr

OCTOBER 12, 2023

Harry Stebbings of 20VC was kind enough to have us back on the latest VC Roundtable with 2 of the very, very best in growth / late-stage investing — the leaders of Insight Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures. They’ve led later stage investments in the best in SaaS and Cloud. And how are they seeing today? New normal?

Investment 221

Investment AI Cloud Scale 221

SaaStr

APRIL 19, 2024

He’s invested in startups as a VC since 2013 and has 10x his fund. EchoSign, which Adobe bought, had $12M in ARR, growing 100%, with 120% revenue retention and cash flow positive. Certain business models have economies of scale, and some don’t. If you want to go really big, you want ones with economies of scale.

Engineering 229

Engineering Business Model Pricing Scaling 229

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2021

Battery Ventures’ data says while VC investment $$$ are on fire — they aren’t going into more startups. Revenue growth slowed in 2020 for the average public SaaS company — but accelerated for the largest ones. The average SMB SaaS company has $295k in revenue per employee, and $450k in the enterprise.

Investment 231

Investment SMB Acquisition Cloud 231

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2022

Co-founder and CEO of Insider , Hande Cilingir, talks about what it takes to write a successful revenue growth story. She draws from personal experience scaling a global product company to $1B and shares common mistakes. The establishment of the enablement function is vital in scaling a business.

Scale 212

Scale Sales Hiring Revenue Marketplace as a Service 212

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Monday has gone from $7m in 2017 to over $700m in revenue today, showcasing the sheer power of compounding revenue. Eran Zimman, monday.com’s co-founder and co-CEO, shares his secrets to scaling and growth in an unpredictable market. Big Brain was an internal tool to track revenue, marketing expenses, and usage of the product.

Scale 164

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Banking 164

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2022

Scale-ups are exciting. Scaling to satisfy customers’ demands depends on innovation and foresight combined with enterprise-ready technology and the right partners. On top of considerable dedication, creating a scale-up requires a functional edge—a unique and unreplicable capability compared to the players in the industry.

Scale 214

Scale Scaling Marketplace as a Service Entrepreneurship 214

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2022

But maybe not while you are scaling, you can often afford to invest more if you have funding. This is pretty much where most of us end up at, at scale. say $300-$500k in customer revenue per segment). The sales team only brings in a minority of the lifetime revenue per customer. Well — Maybe.

Scale 241

Scale Customer Success Sales Hiring Scaling 241

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2021

How do you scale a company based that can be collaborative for everyone in your org — from finance to marketing? Lastly, as a platform business, he had to avoid the temptation to optimize visible, short-term metrics such as revenue. The post Lessons in Scaling a Low Code Platform with Airtable appeared first on SaaStr.

Scale 191

Scale Software Review Scaling Sales Hiring 191

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2023

The average public SaaS company now has hit $300,000 in revenue per employee or so on average. Almost Everyone’s Gotten Radically More Efficient in SaaS That’s a good metric to think about at scale now. But now, almost everyone at scale has the same incentive — they have to be cash-flow positive.

Venture Capital 268

Venture Capital Scaling AI Investment 268

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

They are seeing no slowdown at all in revenue growth from $100k+ customers. 100k+ Customers Are Key To Growth at Scale. Revenue There Growing a Stunning 64% (!). But the big ones are growing fast faster by revenue at scale. They’re still trading off some margin expansion to invest in growth.

Cloud 224

Cloud Scaling Investment Revenue 224

SaaStr

APRIL 17, 2024

But they are ar $780,000,000+ in ARR, with an 86 NPS and strong revenue growth at 29% overall and 49% in subscriptions (yes, it’s confusing). New Customers Still Growing 22% at Scale. For me, Net New Customer Count has become the metric I obsess the most about at scale. 68% of Revenue in U.S.,

Scale 220

Scale Pricing Scaling Cloud 220

SaaStr

JULY 4, 2021

This was my first venture investment. One of the earliest posts I did on SaaStr was back in 2013 when I made my first venture investment, co-leading the seed round in Pipedrive. I also made a lot of mistakes on this investment I’ll share in another post. Lemkin invest in Pipedrive? So I said — invest in that one .

Investment 250

Investment Scale Scaling SaaS 250

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2023

This means you can raise prices, add modules, and expand, increasing the average revenue per customer account (ARPA). Not only did they bring in and convert more leads, but they also moved part of the customer base upmarket, increasing LTV and revenue. Otherwise, things will slow down. What does that mean for your organization?

Scale 220

Scale Strategy Scaling Outbound Sales Team 220

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2022

He highlights the three key strategies that helped TripActions scale and boost their revenue. With a clear strategy for direction, stakeholders, employees, and customers can remain loyal and invest confidently, even during a crisis. Let’s take a look at how TripActions built smart products that they were able to scale: .

Travel 194

Travel Revenue Underperforming Technical Team Scale 194

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 2, 2020

And it makes sense: in order to be around to support your customers well into the future, you need a solid foundation for scale. . For Pam, it all stems from a long-held belief that investing in the customer’s success will chart a direct path to the company’s. Listen to the full episode above or get Pam’s key takeaways below.

Outsourcing Services 253

Outsourcing Services Investment Underperforming Technical Team Outsourced Development 253

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 24, 2023

Doug Pepper, General Partner at ICONIQ Growth, has invested in software and SaaS companies for 22 years, from seed to growth stage. They initially double their ARR each year in scaling post $10M. Over the last ten years, ICONIQ Growth has partnered with over 90 companies, seeing them grow through critical phases.

Scale 197

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Venture Capital 197

SaaStr

MAY 17, 2021

We overindex on the inside information, and how quickly we assume they could scale up … and because of that, we let their other weaknesses slide in candidates we otherwise wouldn’t hire. Sales reps don’t have to scale in a day. More here: How to Close More Revenue Today — With The Leads You Already Have. Not Training Reps.

Scale 224

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 224

SaaStr

MARCH 27, 2024

Revenue Growth is Up Just 24%. HubSpot’s revenue growth of 24% (21% in constant currency) is basically equal to its net new customer count. ACV Basically Flat at $11,365 This is likely a “macro” impact as well in part — as well as the fact that HubSpot continues to invest in its smaller starter customers.

Scale 232

Scale Cloud Pricing Scaling 232

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2022

Yamini Rangan, CEO at HubSpot, has many insights on how to serve SMB customers at scale. But because SMBs are rarely digital-first, their recent challenges allowed HubSpot to leverage their years of experience in marketing automation, as it became a core feature of how these companies worked to scale.

Scale 215

Scale SMB Scaling Innovation 215

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 7, 2020

“Support isn’t just a cost center, but a strategic investment that increases customer retention and reduces churn” Indeed, if you look at the broader financial models of customer support, you’ll see that support isn’t just a cost center, but a strategic investment that increases customer retention and reduces churn.

Customer Support 196

Customer Support Investment Scale Retention 196

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Additionally, they had to figure out how they would sustain the revenue stream to retain the staff. They also hired a VP of Partners who knew how to scale B2B software. Partner: investing in different partnership channels. A way of onboarding new employees and equipping them with the right tools. Self-service.

Scale 186

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 186

SaaStr

JANUARY 31, 2024

at that scale, with 1,900 $1m+ customers. If you'd just invested in ServiceNow's IPO You'd be up 3,094.02%!! 63% of Revenue from North America Global revenues are slowly creeping up as a percent of total. #7. But like most other leaders today, it’s hiring more slowly than it’s growing revenue.

Enterprise 264

Enterprise Scaling Churn Engineering 264

SaaStr

JULY 13, 2020

Q: What was your failed investment experience and where will you never invest funds again? I’ve made about 30 material investments. Most have been successful, but of course not all have and I’ve been reflecting on the ones that didn’t, because they still had attractive elements when I invested. More on them here.

Technical Cofounder 226

Technical Cofounder Investment New CTO CTO 226

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

They were $1.7B+ ARR in October , so let’s call it close to $2B at the end of the year, growing 40%+ at that scale –and profitable! (or Canva hasn’t seen any “macro impacts” to revenue growth, nor have a number of other SaaS leaders that sell in large part outside of tech. #2. But Canva is doing it right.

AWS 245

AWS B2C AI Scaling 245

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 17, 2023

While the allure of customer acquisition can pull a founder’s attention, it’s equally important to dedicate resources to fighting churn and expanding revenue from existing customers. They discuss how Fox helped build a churn-fighting, upselling, and cross-selling machine that continues to generate revenue. Set Up Tracking Processes.

Retention 200

Retention Revenue Startup Sales Hiring 200

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. That’s the power of compounding SaaS revenue. Because it will get so much better once you are at Scale, say $8-10m in ARR, say 50+ employees.

Scale 254

Scale Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scaling 254

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

Check out the session here: Algolia also summarized their Top 5 take-aways here , and below: Most SaaS founders start out the same way— armed with ample expertise of the technical details that go into a product and with limited experience of other aspects of scaling, such as sales. On finding product-market fit in the early stages.

Scale 227

Scale Sales Hiring Technical Advisors Scaling 227