SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2023

Many of you are familiar with this visual, most likely created by an investment firm. Naturally, demand is going to lead to a ton of supply. Think about the growth curve inflecting more at the top of the funnel with more leads. And almost all of it was lifted by better conversion rates and more leads. That’s unbelievable!

Scale 243

Scale Scaling Startup Sales Hiring 243

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. Sanj has plenty of experience scaling sales teams at growing businesses, and that’s precisely why, as of November of last year, he‘s overseeing EMEA sales at Intercom.

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Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting 210

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2021

“My CEO Told Me To Stop Selling So Much” Recently, I met with a sales leader I’ve known for years, and he told me The Most Curious Story. The freemium ones really have no acquisition costs at this point (the main lead source is mini-brand). And here, they just couldn’t safely invest. Balance Sheet Rule.”

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Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Construction 338

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

Dear SaaStr: What Are Some Signs That Your SaaS Marketing Programs Won’t Scale Well? Most SaaS companies, once they have a mini-brand, start to get some amount of organic, “free” leads. Paid lead services at $100 a lead? Adwords at $5 a click, and $1000 an effective lead? You need to invest there, too.

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Scale Scaling Marketing SaaS 231

SaaStr

MARCH 26, 2024

So when I started writing venture checks in 2013, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had a strong start: First was Pipedrive co-leading seed, then acquired for $1.5B cash Second was Algolia leading U.S. cash Second was Algolia leading U.S. Since then, I’ve made some pretty good other investments as well.

Investment 288

Investment Scale Churn SaaS 288

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 22, 2020

This year, we launched Scale , a new content strand focusing on how industry leaders are propelling their companies forward by keeping their customers front and center. . When we created Scale, we had no idea what the year would hold in store; we simply knew that investing in long-term customer relationships was the key to success.

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Scale Scaling Customer Support Interviewing 220

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2022

Q; Dear SaaStr: I Just Received a $1M investment for My 3-year old Industrial SaaS Product to Scale. 1m isn’t enough to scale anything, at least not in the U.S., 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. Not to “scale”.

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Scale Sales Hiring Investment Scaling 200

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 234

Scale Scaling Marketplace as a Service Entrepreneurship 234

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

Everything from hiring on the GTM side to layering in a sales-led motion into PLG. Let’s dive into what’s making that hybrid model successful: PLG and Sales Led? Given this, you must understand the role that each facet of the business plays in promoting that product, from marketing and sales to customer service.

Scale 272

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Marketing 272

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Eran Zimman, monday.com’s co-founder and co-CEO, shares his secrets to scaling and growth in an unpredictable market. Serve customers a CRM or project management first, and as they scale and use it more, they’re exposed to more features. They kept doing it after the economy changed, and they also scaled it. It’s cheap.

Scale 164

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Banking 164

SaaStr

APRIL 4, 2023

How CAC targets drive GTM strategies: If Your CAC Target Is Low You’ll likely focus on small-to-medium businesses and use tools like inbound sales and low-touch or no-touch self-service. The sales cycle at this stage may be very short. The sales cycle will be slightly longer at this stage. But over time, things change.

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Scale Strategy Scaling Outbound Sales Team 236

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2021

How do you scale a company based that can be collaborative for everyone in your org — from finance to marketing? Ultimately, they developed a more hybrid sales approach because there are good parts to each experience. Invest in your own personal growth similar to how you would actively solicit venture investment for capital.

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Scale Software Review Scaling Sales Hiring 208

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2023

Scaling a tech startup doesn’t come easy, and when you’ve tried all the conventional SaaS advice, it might be tempting to give up. But before the years of rapid scaling, it took the company a little while to hit its stride. What Did WorkRamp Do Differently to Scale? But sometimes, the road less traveled is the path to success.

Scale 212

Scale Scaling SMB Marketing 212

SaaStr

JANUARY 7, 2021

Zendesk’s Sharon Prosser, VP Worldwide SMB Sales & XDR, and Astha Malik, VP GTM Strategy, Planning, and Enablement share some guiding principles about how their company has grown and enriched many markets. Move your sales teams into different areas of focus and get them to need each other. 3 Invest in people.

Scale 202

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring SMB 202

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 239

Scale Sales Hiring Technical Advisors Scaling 239

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 19, 2021

It’s a familiar problem for all companies that scale fast – how do you keep your core technologies manageable for the increasing number of teams that depend on them? How our core technologies were being used was also diverging, leading to needlessly increased complexity in our systems. Scaling to Rails.

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Scale Technical Review Technology Scaling 216

SaaStr

DECEMBER 30, 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. . Transparent pricing makes their life easier than going on sales calls every day only to find out that your product is not financially viable for them. .

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Scale Scaling Revenue Enterprise 209

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2022

E.g., Sales +Marketing Expenses < First Year ACV = Success ? 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. The sales team only brings in a minority of the lifetime revenue per customer. More on that below.

Scale 252

Scale Customer Success Sales Hiring Scaling 252

SaaStr

OCTOBER 5, 2022

Confluent’s President of Field Operations, Erica Schultz, explores different tactics businesses can employ to scale revenue and increase efficiency in the current macro environment. As you look to scale your business and make your processes more efficient, it’s essential to foster a shared understanding of who your target customer is.

VP of Engineering 209

VP of Engineering Scale Scaling Sales Hiring 209

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 218

Scale SMB Enterprise Sales Hiring 218

SaaStr

JULY 5, 2022

By moving from Freemium to “Contact Me” only (albeit with transparent pricing), sales went way, way up. He got into conversations with top prospects, and got them to buy bigger, better editions. So many sales leaders get frustrated with Free editions, very low-cost editions … and the Long Tail in general.

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Scale Sales Engineering Acquisition 302

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2023

Dear SaaStr: How Do You Become Successful at Enterprise Sales? If you haven’t done enterprise sales before, the biggest thing to understand: you can do it. Many founders want the customers and leads and users to come to them. Learn your prospects’ business processes in detail, and how your product enhances them.

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Scale Sales Hiring Enterprise Sales 263

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2022

generate momentum, they will inevitably need to scale up. For whatever reason, the company is ready to exit startup status and prepare to scale-up. Dave Kellogg, Executive-In-Residence at Balderton Capital, breaks down the most common mistakes companies make when going from startup to scale-up. Be realistic in self-assessment.

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Scale Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Technical Review 204

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2021

Scaling your SaaS company isn’t just about hitting the right growth metrics –– it requires a thorough understanding of your business goals, company culture, and leadership dynamic. Roy Mann and Eran Zinman, Co-Founders and CEOs of monday.com, look back at their incredible growth and share the dos and don’ts of scaling. Key Takeaways.

Scale 211

Scale Scaling Leadership Company Culture 211

SaaStr

APRIL 25, 2023

In last week’s Workshop Wednesday , President Sales & Field Engineering Chris Donato and SVP Business Development & Ecosystem Shelli Vivona shared how to scale out a go-to-market org. They’ve invested in in-person training, a three-day offsite where the training went deep and resulted in certifying.

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Scale VP of Engineering Sales Hiring Engineering 192

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Their first step to achieving this was hiring a sales leader to build a sales team. They also hired a VP of Partners who knew how to scale B2B software. Partner: investing in different partnership channels. When StoryBlok got to this stage, they made the switch from a self-service to an enterprise model. Self-service.

Scale 207

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scaling 207

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2021

Here’s the advice they had to offer on scaling your SaaS company. Adam #18: Invest in a strong hiring and onboarding process from day one. In the early days, Zapier invested a lot into all-hands support. It’s hard to re-engineer your business at scale. Instead, understand the strong foundation and then scale from there.

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Scale Scaling Innovation Investment 297

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. On the other hand, the sales expenses form a larger share of operating expenses as the GTM motion is leveraged.

Scale 218

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Venture Capital 218

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 25, 2023

A great VP of Sales to keep the engine scaling A great VP of Marketing to keep the leads coming in A great VP of Customer Success to make all those hard won customers happy After $5m-$6m in ARR or so, it’s really hard to scale without a strong VP heading most core functions. Upgrade the management team.

Scale 272

Scale Sales Hiring Banking Engineering 272

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

Or do you actually have something worth scaling?”. This doesn’t simply mean that you’ve had a lot of sales, but instead that you’ve won over lots of repeat customers and have demonstrated a strategy that works. Build sustainable scale models. Do you have it right in your first market?

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Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Marketing 217

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. Balanced Growth Drivers.

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Scale SMB Scaling Innovation 235

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. Once you hit this point, you have a brand, you have a fully baked team, you have a robust product, and you have a self-generating stream of new leads and new business.

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Scale Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Scaling 254

SaaStr

APRIL 25, 2019

It’s never remotely easy until you have a steady stream of leads and a decent 1.0 Don’t expect a sales magician. You ideally need to close the first 10–20 customers yourself, and then hire sales folks to help. Probably a few prospects will find it. It’s still a great investment. Invest in your long tail.

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Scale Sales Hiring Scaling SaaS 201

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2023

G2 had us back for another great deep dive on just where SaaS investing is there days, and it was a great panel: Accel Partner Arun Mathew Inspired Capital Founder & Managing Partner Alexa von Tobel Salesforce Ventures Managing Partner Paul Drews and Jason Lemkin! Low investment multiples pose a key challenge.

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B2B Investment Venture Capital Scale 228

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2022

A few ideas on how to help the sales team make this your best year so far: Hire dedicated sales / revenue ops. Many of you will have little to no dedicated help in sales operations , even up to $10m ARR or beyond. Getting routing the right leads? Invest (more) in training and onboarding. But don’t waste leads.

Scale 246

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Enterprise 246

Sales Hacker

JUNE 29, 2022

The challenge many sales and post-sales teams face is finding the balance between volume and precision. They’re seeking the sweet spot between reaching people at scale and personalizing touchpoints for a high return on investment. Read: Sales Hacker’s Complete Guide to Personalization at Scale.

Scale 79

Scale Scaling Investment Strategy 79

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. Almost every founder regrets using capital to keep a high-burn rate engine going that isn’t scaling rapidly. #2.

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Trends Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital 292