SaaStr

MAY 23, 2023

I didn’t so much learn from it as confirm — confirm things I’ve seen, known, and put into practice, and seen it confirmed across many SaaS startups. Enterprise Quota:OTE ratios are higher (5x+), SMB is a bit lower, but at the end of the day, you need to close 4x-5x what you take home. #2. My top take-aways: #1.

Scale 255

Scale Compensation Sales SMB 255

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

You Mon Tsang, CEO and co-founder of ChurnZero, Colleen O’Sullivan, VP of Integrated Customer Experience at Hubspot, and Jason Lemkin, SaaStr founder and CEO, give their take on where the customer success industry is headed and shares data from the Customer Success Leadership Study done by ChurnZero at the close of 2023.

Customer Success 221

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale AI 221

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Most startup founders are either pirates or romantics , and Mathrubootham was foolish enough to believe they could start in that small suburb while building a global software company. At the end of that $45k spend, they had 70 customers, which was great for a startup. The average SMB customer would buy 4-5 seats of Freshdesk.

Sales Hiring 223

Sales Hiring Scale SMB AI 223

SaaStr

OCTOBER 3, 2023

In startups, founders and teams often wear many hats — figuring out what to prioritize, developing and implementing all types of demand gen strategies, attending events and networking, and founder-led sales. Your Startup is in One of Four Stages As a startup, you fall into one of four stages. Through customer stories.

Enterprise 215

Enterprise B2B Scale SMB 215

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2023

Personality, startup skills, and softer skills are all important — grit and resilience are key for Pugh and should be for any startup SaaS salesperson. A scalable buddy system allows people to learn coaching and leadership skills. Don’t discount empathetic leadership. For SMB mid-market, it’s typically around 2-3 months.

Scale 211

Scale Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scaling 211

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What do startup founders typically get wrong when starting a business? More here: Planning to Do a SaaS Startup? SMB folks want to go upmarket because there is too much churn in SMB. There are probably 10–100 other startups with the same idea. 8–12 months is almost never enough time. That is important.

SMB 219

SMB SaaS B2C Interviewing 219

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 2, 2016

Channel distribution represents one of the biggest and most important changes in customers acquisition for SMB SaaS startups in quite a while. One of the most interesting examples is Microsoft’s Office 365 SMB business. It’s the most successful SMB SaaS acquisition channel ever built. by Thomas Hansen.

Outsourcing Services 109

Outsourcing Services SMB Acquisition Scale 109

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

. #4: Too Much — or Too Little — Outside DNA If you hire everyone from outside the company to your leadership and senior teams, you lose what makes you special. But you also need them to inject new thinking and new experience into your startup. Incredibly agile startups tend to find a way to stay that way even as they scale.

Sales Hiring 250

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Scaling 250

SaaStr

MAY 8, 2024

As a SaaS veteran who built and sold a software company for nine figures, invested in startups since 2013, 10x-ing his fund, and continues to build a powerhouse community of SaaStr fans, he offers some hot takes on the communities’ burning questions. In most startups, your payback time and magic number don’t matter.

Metrics 199

Metrics Scale Sales Hiring SaaS 199

Kellblog

MAY 7, 2024

The venture capitalists who invest in startups. The 95%+ of the staff not on the executive leadership team (ELT) but who, paraphrasing George Bailey , do most of the working and paying and living and dying in the company. The entrepreneur(s) who found a company. The executives who build and run companies Investors.

Sales Hiring 98

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Startup 98

Sales Hacker

SEPTEMBER 25, 2019

Enterprise sales is hard, which is why most businesses start as an SMB org and grow into an enterprise org. And those that do often struggle through the transition, leaving behind a churn of leadership and sales resources after every funding milestone. 2 rules for transitioning from SMB to enterprise. That’s not hard to believe.

SMB 74

SMB Enterprise Strategy Compensation 74

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2023

You don’t want to overwhelm SMB customers, and Monday made this a focus from day one. Since starting the company in 2014, there wasn’t a lot of money you could raise in a startup. There wasn’t a “business person,” like many startups have. How do you get over 100 for SMB? Zinman calls this a gradual discovery.

Scale 159

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Banking 159

Kellblog

JANUARY 1, 2023

If you live in the country and see someone out walking a smaller dog, once in a while it will be dressed like this : Does your startup need a coyote vest? The post Fighting Envelopment Strategies: When and How To Don Your Startup Coyote Vest appeared first on Kellblog. Examples: Gong, Clari, Amplitude [10].

Strategy 114

Strategy Startup Software Review Government 114

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2023

Going upmarket drives category leadership because you establish yourself as the company that the Fortune 500 logos use. You always have to build more relationships within the customer organizations Gong, as an example, started as an SMB platform and went to Enterprise. Let’s look at the why, the when, and a warning. That works great!

Scale 180

Scale Enterprise readiness compliance Enterprise 180

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2020

So, the company starts getting divided up into functional areas, or silos, product management, sales, customers support, marketing and so on, and this siloing of the org chart I think means that not everyone knows what everyone else is doing, and there’s a general feeling of disorganization or chaos in most startups.

Startup 268

Startup Software Review Scale Systems Review 268

SaaStr

OCTOBER 4, 2019

In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How did Jeppe make his way into the world of startups and SaaS with his becoming CFO @ Tradeshift? Why did Jeppe decide to focus on SMBs from Day 1? How does the product build in the early days differ when building for SMB vs enterprise? How does leadership change for Jesse in the face of scale?

Scale 132

Scale SMB Technical Review Software Review 132

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

David’s first foray into SaaS was in 1999 when he joined a startup that would become PayPal, starting as the product leader and later as the COO. Positions Needed: Enterprise AEs, Mid-Market & SMB AEs, SDRs, Sales Ops, Sales Engineer. Email * The latest SaaStr updates straight to your inbox. Head of Marketing. Director of CSM.

CTO Hire 234

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 234

SaaStr

OCTOBER 4, 2023

Then everyone in the world was on Zoom selling flowers and yoga and things meant to be sold in person, so churn peaked at 3.6%, which isn’t terrible for SMB, but was higher than none. This is more of a look at startups. Everyone has gotten much fitter, which will be a fundamental change to how we think and build startups.

Sales Hiring 225

Sales Hiring SaaS Headcount Compensation 225

Sales Hacker

APRIL 21, 2022

In the early days, most SaaS companies sell to other startups for a number of reasons. Startups are more willing to be early adopters of a new product. Startups are less demanding than a big company both from a services and product perspective. But as SaaS startups mature, they usually start moving up-market.

Marketing 86

Marketing Sales Hiring SaaS SMB 86

Sales Hacker

JUNE 9, 2020

Of course, we’re talking about what’s going on during the pandemic, but also just about his leadership skills and his experience. But I was determined to do it and found a technology startup that was willing to give me a shot. Barrett’s an incredible leader and just an inspiring human. But it made me stronger.

Leadership 78

Leadership Scale Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering 78

SaaStr

OCTOBER 4, 2019

In Today’s Episode We Discuss: * How did Jeppe make his way into the world of startups and SaaS with his becoming CFO @ Tradeshift? Why did Jeppe decide to focus on SMBs from Day 1? How does the product build in the early days differ when building for SMB vs enterprise? How does leadership change for Jesse in the face of scale?

Scale 118

Scale SaaS Payments SMB Sales Hiring 118

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 16, 2020

Under his leadership, Shopify Plus have grown to support 7,000 brands – including Kylie Cosmetics, Fashion Nova, Steve Madden, Staples and more – who process 11,000 checkouts per minute. Few recent startups talk about themselves in these terms, but Shopify aims to become a 100-year company.

Sales Hiring 226

Sales Hiring Scale Artificial Intelligence Enterprise 226

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2022

Jason Lemkin: So you have like a great profile irrespective of what your startup’s doing. And so combine all that, the stress, markdowns… Blackbird today announced they’re marking down Canva, which is one of the most iconic startups out there. Colin here, CEO of a startup, B2B SaaS, and raising a seed round right now.

Scale 187

Scale SaaS Payments Scaling SaaS 187

SaaStr

AUGUST 7, 2023

Jason Lemkin, Founder of SaaStr, and co-founders and CEOs, Eran Zinman and Roy Mann of the wildly successful monday.com chat with Startup For Startup about ARR, NRR, CAC, and what it takes to beat the odds in a tougher environment. That works for a hyper-SMB model. For a quick recap on SaaS metrics: What is ARR in SaaS?

Metrics 185

Metrics SaaS Sales Hiring Finance 185

Sales Hacker

OCTOBER 30, 2018

#GirlsClub helps women sales reps navigate the tricky path to sales leadership with their management training, mentoring, confidence building, and community. She’s a sales leader with an accomplished background at several tech startups. She has strong leadership experience in inside sales, field sales, operations, and marketing.

Sales Recruiting 111

Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering Scale Sales Hiring 111

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2020

403: Sam Taylor is the VP of Sales and Success @ Loom, the startup that helps you get your message across by making it easy to record instantly shareable videos. As for Sam, prior to Loom, Sam spent over 4 years at Salesforce following their acquisition of Quip, a startup Salesforce acquired for $750M where Sam was also the 1st sales leader.

Scale 167

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales 167

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

As a startup, it’s tempting to try and do everything. Scaling Enterprise vs. Mid-Market Sales: Key Takeaways from Calendly It’s a common blueprint to start with SMB and mid-market accounts as your ideal customers. Lattice had limited resources and a small team, which meant they needed to focus in. In the early days, you have to.

Scale 216

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 216

Chart Mogul

DECEMBER 8, 2022

This year alone, I shared over 200 curated reads on leadership, growth, pricing, SaaS metrics, benchmarks, and much more. This year alone, I shared over 200 curated reads on leadership, growth, pricing, SaaS metrics, benchmarks, and much more. You’re the founder of a fast-growing SaaS startup that has just raised funding.

Sales Hiring 52

Sales Hiring SaaS Scale Benchmarks 52

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2019

First company was Greenfield startup to IPO. So I went down the hall, met with the head of marketing, and I discovered a lot about in bound SaaS, about SMB, the importance of building this machine as I call it now that generates all these lovely leads. My background is 25 years in health care IT. Liberate some operating expenses.

Scale 166

Scale SMB VP of Engineering Leadership 166

SaaStr

JULY 11, 2019

Jason Lemkin: You’ll get to see some early stuff that you don’t usually get to see with a startup. You go from the leanest organization and very small SMB, to closing seven figure TCVLs for enterprise. Doing a product for SMB is fairly simple. Tiago Paiva: Oh yeah. Jason Lemkin: I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

Sales Hiring 255

Sales Hiring SMB Scale Cloud 255

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2019

When we were SMB focused in the early years, our sales cycles were quick. Product org changes quite a bit as well and as one chief product officer shared with me, he said, “You know, when we made the transition from SMB to enterprise, we went from being kind of in control of our own destiny and certainly of our own time.

Scale 167

Scale Enterprise Scaling Sales Hiring 167

Kellblog

NOVEMBER 6, 2022

Ensure your leadership team is part of the solution , not part of the problem. Ensure Leadership is Part of the Solution . As you move forward, you need to ensure that your leadership team is part of the solution and not part of the problem. Agree on the Problem. These are hard questions. There are few easy answers.

Sales Recruiting 132

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Marketing Scale 132

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

When it comes to launching sales teams in hyper-growth startups, few people have walked the walk as much as Maggie Hott. “Give away your legos” and other commandments for scaling startups. I’m now Director of Sales, leading sales globally for Webflow, which is a really, really fast-growing startup.

Scale 118

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team 118

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 5, 2019

When done correctly, your sales strategy will help your sales team execute with focus – SMB or enterprise, inbound or outbound, hunting or farming. Keep in mind, as your business matures from startup to scale-up, your sales strategy will need to evolve too. Can you describe it for your startup? The Ideal Customer Profile.

Scale 177

Scale Strategy Sales Underperforming Technical Team 177

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

SMB Sales vs Enterprise Sales Process. SMB Sales vs Enterprise Sales Process. Deep knowledge and understanding of your prospects’ industry is the key difference between SMB sales , where you’re ‘churning and burning’ 10 demos a day, 5 days a week. Rule #4: Establish Familiarity & Thought Leadership.

Scale 96

Scale Enterprise Marketing Sales 96

SaaStr

AUGUST 19, 2022

And look, what happens with almost every B2B startup is your initial little micro… The way you get to your initial group of customers, how you acquire them, plateaus. I talked to another and it says, “Look, you’ve done some sales at the SMB and up side, so bring in a sales lead.” So thanks for the questions. .

Scale 201

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling VP of Engineering 201

Sales Hacker

JUNE 27, 2019

I typically see this happen for one main reason: Startups often think (consciously or subconsciously) that scaling or building a sales team is as simple as “getting bodies in the door yesterday.”. The reality is not all salespeople are created equal (and neither are startups). If I’m honest, most startups hire salespeople too soon.

Sales Hiring 66

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale SMB 66