SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2022

Investments I've made that didn't work out: – Momentum investment – CEO a bit of bulls**t artist – CEO good at sales but weak product team / CTO. Investments I've made that had so-so outcomes: – CEO not better than me – CEO couldn't control burn rate – Not really SaaS.

Investment 253

Investment Sales Recruiting CTO Startup 253

Tom Tunguz

JULY 30, 2023

Earlier today, New Relic announced its sale to Francisco Partners & TPG for $6.5b. Second, New Relic’s sale price is close to the recent highs measured on January 1st of each year New Relic benefitted from multiple expansion that pushed its valuation higher - admittedly less than the top quartile.

Payment Services 211

Payment Services Sales Acquisition SaaS 211

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2023

So SaaS Capital put out its latest report on SaaS retention and NRR after having surveyed over 1,500 SaaS companies and professionals. Median NRR is 102% across all SaaS companies, Media Gross Retention is 91%. This is consistent with my experience and across 30+ investments. You can download it here.

Startup 308

Startup SaaS Retention Churn 308

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2024

Lemkin expresses concern about the changing work ethic and loyalty of sales and marketing professionals, observing a trend of multiple job-holding and lack of commitment. Jason Lemkin shares his experience of hiring and investing in his business, which has revitalized his passion for work and brought him renewed purpose and excitement.

Sales Hiring 235

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Technical Review Scale 235

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

The backup of 2020 was great, 2021 comes in and somehow we have 600 unicorns and everyone can burn 500 million a year or have huge sales teams. By this we mean, that Jason interviewed sales and events candidates recently and started to notice a pattern in the candidates he was speaking with. This starts to get tough.

Sales Recruiting 274

Sales Recruiting Trends Sales Hiring Software Review 274

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2022

Q; Dear SaaStr: I Just Received a $1M investment for My 3-year old Industrial SaaS Product to Scale. To hire a true sales & marketing team, you’re going to need about $3m-$4m. You can hire a sales rep or ideally two to help you sell. If you are very careful, 1m will let you invest in your first sales team.

Scale 182

Scale Sales Hiring Investment Scaling 182

FastSpring

MAY 20, 2024

Moving some, all, or simply more of your software offerings from a one-time perpetual license model to a software as a service (SaaS) subscription model can be daunting, but it’s so powerful for building dependable, recurring revenue. Are you looking for a merchant of record that will partner with you to grow your SaaS business?

Payments 144

Payments SaaS Payments Merchant Services Payment Solutions 144

ChurnZero

APRIL 1, 2024

When companies think about investing in their customer base, they are usually thinking about driving product adoption, reducing churn, or even delivering expansion revenue. Customer success is one of the most impactful teams on the post-sale experience. This is a guest post by Todd Busler, CEO of Champify. This is a missed opportunity.

Investment 92

Investment Sales Funnel Customer Success B2B 92

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Lower interest rates lead to SaaS multiple reflation, likely during 2H’24 It’s not clear how truly tight the link is between interest rates and SaaS multiples, but the overall correlation is clear. Lower inflation and the fed lowering interest rates should lead to an expansion of SaaS multiples.

Scale 241

Scale SaaS AI Innovation 241

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2022

As you scale up a business, you’ll see an increase in demand for product, followed by an inevitable increase in sales. But how should you proceed when it comes to scaling your sales team? 5 ways to scale your SaaS and sales team. 5 ways to scale your SaaS and sales team. Leverage every channel.

Scale 219

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 219

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2023

SaaS buying has changed. As buyers grapple with expanding technology, higher prices, and a need for efficiency, SaaS companies need to deliver what their audience is looking for to win in the market. SaaS Market Snapshot In Q1 of 2023, Vendr gathered data on SaaS Spending and yielded some pretty interesting results.

VP of Engineering 228

VP of Engineering Trends Cybersecurity Sales Hiring 228

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

As a growing SaaS company, there is a lot to think about in a day: How is my ARR doing? And, when you do, do you even think about sale tax compliance? vary on how they handle sales tax and SaaS. It can be confusing to understand how and where you should charge sales tax. Are we delighting our costumes?

Payment Services 254

Payment Services compliance SaaS Payments Scale 254

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

So I’ve been doing SaaS for a while, and the costs of doing business have just gone up. based SMB sales positions. SaaS sales execs with even a little bit of experience at other SaaS companies are looking for higher and higher OTEs, often with lower effective attainment and high support costs.

SMB 256

SMB Scale Sales Hiring Sales 256

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

The “Rule of 40” is one of the most commonly cited valuation benchmarks in SaaS for both public and private companies. The SaaS “Rule of 40” has gained popularity due to its simplicity, requiring only two common financial metrics to be added together. What Is The SaaS “Rule of 40”?

SaaS 251

SaaS Technical Review Benchmarks Azure 251

SaaStr

DECEMBER 29, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How Long Should a Free Trial Be for SaaS Products? What I mean is, this is one of those things in SaaS that is over-analyzed, as if it will make a magical difference. The sales team will like a shorter period, often, to help them close a deal that month, to shorten sales cycles. It doesn’t really matter.

SaaS 188

SaaS User Experience Startup Investment 188

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2024

How do you build GTM efficiency in SMB sales? Lesson #1: Just Say No Once he joined, Kyle quickly discovered that Owner had a leaky bucket and had either bad or no targeting on prospects, was closing a lot of poor-fit customers, and there were a lot of miss set expectations from sales so customer handoff was sketchy at best.

Scale 243

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Sales 243

Baremetrics

OCTOBER 11, 2021

Once users are in a position to invest in such a service, your SaaS should be the first that comes to mind. This wide net will primarily grow your web traffic, not sales – but that in itself is an important step in moving up the SEO ranks. Whatever marketing strategy you choose, use Baremetrics to monitor your sales data.

Content Marketing 113

Content Marketing SaaS Payments Investment Marketing 113

SaaStr

MAY 20, 2024

A Burn Rate That is Too High Venture capital is meant for investing, for sure. But there’s a fine line between investing and keeping a leaky boat and set of metrics afloat. It can take years for some SMB SaaS companies to hit and cross 100% NRR, for example. Will marketers really buy your product if sales execs do?

Trends 274

Trends Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital 274

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2023

The new year has officially begun, and since the markets have become more unpredictable over the past few years, SaaS founders are likely wondering what the VC landscape will look like in 2023. Since 2016, he prefers to make about three or four investments per year, usually within the $1 – $4 million range. . The Backstory.

Venture Capital 175

Venture Capital Investment Sales Hiring Entrepreneurship 175

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2023

Each year, tens of thousands of SaaS fans attend SaaStr Annual. For part one of this Ask Me Anything session, Jason covers everything you need to know about hiring your first VP of Sales, what he really thinks about AI, what the future of lead generation in 2024 looks like, and much more. You have to learn it yourself.

Scale 230

Scale Sales Hiring AI Sales Recruiting 230

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

Moving from a traditional SaaS to a pure consumption model was a challenging but fun transition for MongoDB. Meghan Gill, SVP of Sales Ops and Sales Dev at MongoDB, shares different consumption-based compensation models that drive the right behaviors. There are still some complexities around SaaS-based approaches.

Compensation 159

Compensation Sales Azure AWS 159

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2024

SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin shares his top three SaaS metrics that matter in 2024: Net new customer count Growth vs. efficiency The bar to IPO Net New Customer Count is Your North Star One of the most important metrics in SaaS today is net new customer count. They’re the LeBron James of SaaS. They’re all at $2.5B

Metrics 237

Metrics SaaS Scale Social Media 237

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Many of the fundamental business models that were once engraved in the SaaS playbook are now changing thanks to a tougher macro environment and a maturing market. PST, Stephanie Opdam, Partner at Notion Capital, shares four business model changes that will allow SaaS companies to build resilience and staying power over time.

Business Model 234

Business Model SaaS Payments Payments Headcount 234

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.

Sales Hiring 242

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 242

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 Churn 196

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

You know what’s back in fashion today in SaaS? And that’s a lot rarer in SaaS. But so many SaaS leaders aren’t really profitable at $1B ARR even, Why not? And it’s not just public SaaS companies that are often struggling to get profitable. I’m an investor in maybe 30 SaaS startups. So is SaaS cursed?

Scale 274

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 274

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

So there’s a sort of org chart you’ll probably end up with at least twice as you start scaling in SaaS: The “Headless” Sales Org. It’s a bunch of sales reps without anyone to manage them other than … you. But if you end up not hiring a VP of Sales at that perfect moment in time (and most don’t), you’ll end up headless.

Sales Hiring 199

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Sales 199

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 3, 2021

Ah, the first sales rep. Whichever founder was doing sales, likely thinks that may be the way to do sales going forward. Whichever founder was doing sales, likely thinks that may be the way to do sales going forward. The sales “hacker”. You don’t want your first sales reps to be terrible at sales.

Sales Hiring 262

Sales Hiring Startup Sales SaaS 262

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 22, 2022

Dear SaaStr: How Can I Give Better SaaS Product Demos? With most SaaS companies, for a while, demos get worse: At first, founders do all the demos. Many VPs of Sales aren’t great at demo training. Almost all of us don’t invest in serious, systematic sales training until much later than we should.

Sales Hiring 250

Sales Hiring SaaS Investment Sales 250

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

So we’ve spent a ton of time over the years on SaaS talking about hiring a great VP of Sales. Not only because it really matters, but because hiring the wrong VP of Sales can set you back a year — or longer. They never invest the time after they start, either. Sales is hard. Don’t make this hire.

Sales Hiring 217

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Interviewing 217

SaaStr

AUGUST 18, 2023

So while the media is full of stories of unicorns doing layoffs and massive cutbacks, the story is a bit different with leading public SaaS companies. Yes many public SaaS companies have done some sort of layoffs the past 12 months, they were often more really reorgs, though, without any net decrease in headcount. Billion in ARR!

Scale 190

Scale Headcount Point of Sale SaaS 190

Incredo

JANUARY 14, 2020

What just happened is that you entered another SaaS company’s sales funnel. And after a few days they will ask you to try their software for free. If you read our today’s post, you’ll know 1) how to setup your SaaS marketing funnel, 2) what stages to include, and 3) how to get the most out of it.

Sales Funnel 239

Sales Funnel SaaS Sales Social Media 239

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2024

Let’s talk about Vimeo and what it’s really like to make a large public SaaS company profitable in a short amount of time. How Does Vimeo Handle Long-Tail PLG vs. a Very Sales-Led Motion? How do you invest in the positive attributes of the community while protecting that special connection with people? Jason interjects.

AI Search 215

AI Search SaaS Advertising Sales Hiring 215

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2023

Good enough to do well, make good money, and add real value in SaaS. I remember I first started to see this with one company I invested in where some folks described it as “Gong for XYZ”. And it particularly appealed to SaaS execs because everyone knows Gong. A sales rep, a marketer, that doesn’t truly get the product today?

Marketing 219

Marketing Sales Interviewing Enterprise 219

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2021

In theory, many things can kill a SaaS startup after $4m-$5m ARR. In theory, many things can stop a SaaS startup after $4m-$5m ARR from getting to $100m. Part of my job when I invest in a start-up is to get folks excited about the company. Part of my job when I invest in a start-up is to get folks excited about the company.

SaaS 363

SaaS Venture Capital Churn Branding 363

Stax

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

For modern Software as a Service (SaaS) companies, the automobile is replaced by primarily digital and cloud-based solutions and software. And because of the digital nature of SaaS businesses and their subscription-based business models, the ability to collect data on how the company is performing is easier and faster than ever.

SaaS Payments 88

SaaS Payments Payments Payment Services Stax 88

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2023

In SaaS, we talk a lot about hyper-growth, uber-successful companies, but many founders, including hyper-growth founders, make mistakes over and over. Maybe you feel SaaS is crushing it this year, but it’s not easy for a lot of folks. A Head of Sales who was a sales rep nine years ago. Your average sales quota is $1M.

Scale 225

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Scaling 225