SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2023

That’s not just pretty epic growth at almost $7 Billion in revenue, it’s one heck of a comeback. But a Smaller and Smaller Percentage of Revenue. Overall subscription solutions revenue is up just 21%, while payments and merchant solutions are up 35% — from a much, much larger base. #2. A tough transition.

Payments 223

Payments Merchant Services Payment Solutions Revenue 223

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 28, 2023

While Zoom Enterprise is growing at a healthy clip, churn is over 3% a month for its SMB customers As a result, it’s now predicting 1% growth next year 1% pic.twitter.com/i2k2W9QbVX — Jason Be Kind Lemkin  (@jasonlk) February 27, 2023 So Zoom has just been the craziest story of all time in SaaS. Good Times, indeed. Truly insane.

SMB 207

SMB Churn Enterprise Engineering 207

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. For SaaS businesses that target smaller SMB customer segments, gross retention is typically in the mid to low 80’s with net expansion in the ~105% range.

AI 183

AI Revenue Cloud Technical Advisors 183

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2021

SaaStr Scale 2021 is starting soon. 7:00 AM (50 MINS) – Acquiring SMB 10,000 Customers Solely from Data with Gorgias’ CEO Romain Lapeyre. 8:00 AM (50 MIN) – The Secrets to Building Your Marketing Engine To Drive Scale with Airtable CMO Archana Agrawal. LIVE TODAY! All times are in Pacific Time.

Scale 209

Scale VP of Engineering Scaling SMB 209

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. You don’t want to overwhelm SMB customers, and Monday made this a focus from day one.

Scale 161

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Banking 161

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2022

BowtiedCocoon: Top SaaS SMB AEs have $125k OTEs. Navigating the CRO and CMO Relationship with G2 and SalesLoft: Mike Weir, Chief Revenue Officer, G2; Steve Goldberg, Chief Revenue Officer, SalesLoft; Amanda Malko, CMO, G2. Revenue Marketing: Build for Scale with Podium’s SVP, Revenue Marketing Jess Weimer.

Sales Hiring 262

Sales Hiring Revenue Scale SMB 262

SaaStr

MARCH 10, 2024

Because beyond WFH, RTO, and all the tactical changes of the past few years, the biggest structural one really is — The March To $400,000 in Revenue Per Employee. Even SMB leaders like Monday are there. In fact, almost every SaaS leader at scale is hitting $300,000 in Revenue Per Employee at the pre-IPO phase.

SMB 225

SMB Cloud Startup Scaling 225

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

And that challenge some of your assumptions on how to scale. This is trending to 50/50 now that Asana has crossed $400m in ARR, but still a reminder a self-serve motion combined with sales jumping on the bigger deals can scale very, very far. 80% of Datadog’s revenue at $1.2B 80% of Datadog’s revenue at $1.2B

Scale 331

Scale SMB SaaS Scaling 331

SaaStr

JULY 27, 2022

If a SaaS business hopes to win over the SMB market successfully, it will need a precise GTM approach. Founded in 2015, PayFit is a software company that empowers entrepreneurs and SMBs to digitize payroll and HR processes. Without an autonomous-first approach, you will miss out on many SMBs.

SMB 177

SMB Sales Hiring Scale B2C 177

SaaStr

MAY 10, 2023

HubSpot’s operating margins have scaled into the double-digits the past two quarters for the first time. Revenue Up 30%, but Employee Count Only up 10%, to 7,055. At the end of the day, in SaaS, efficiency really comes from growing revenue faster than headcount. 40% of Their Revenues Comes from Partners.

Scale 238

Scale SMB Headcount New CTO 238

SaaStr

DECEMBER 3, 2023

Shopify, whose blended gross margins with payments even at its scale are still less than 50%. Non-Recurring Revenue Doesn’t Count, At Least Not as Much. If your revenue from any stream can go down in a given month or quarter, it’s not recurring. Pass-Through Revenue Simply Doesn’t Count. It depends. They don’t.

SaaS Payments 191

SaaS Payments Metrics Payments SMB 191

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2023

Self-serve products can and should be quite profitable at scale. Only 32% of Revenue From Websites. The majority of its revenue comes from ecommerce. Their pure website revenue, which they call “Presence”, is just 32% of their revenue. #2. 28% of their revenue from outside the U.S.

Scale 211

Scale SMB Churn Pricing 211

Sales Hacker

AUGUST 29, 2023

Previously, he served as the VP of Sales & Services at Mixpanel, where he ran the more than 100-person global revenue team. Before Mixpanel, Meka spent four years at Stripe and scaled and matured its sales organization during the company’s rapid growth from 250 to 2000 people. by Slack), Snackpass and Stytch.

SMB 73

SMB Scale Compensation Finance 73

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2024

Efficient, steady, profitable growth at scale. 300,000 Total Paying Customers, With 43,000 Paying $10k or More The vast majority of Atlassian’s customers pay less than $10k a year, but the $10k+ ones make up the bulk of the revenue. And also how important it is to go a smidge upmarket if you sell to SMBs and smaller customers.

SMB 211

SMB Enterprise Scaling Trends 211

SaaStr

AUGUST 30, 2021

Started 10 years ago as “Freshdesk” and a low-end / SMB helpdesk to rival Zendesk, Freshworks has since expanded its product footprint across IT management (Freshservice) and CRM (Freshsales) to a stunnning 49% growth rate at $350m in ARR. Going a smidge upmarket is key to Freshworks’ putting up the big numbers at scale.

Scale 340

Scale SMB Scaling Subscription 340

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

We’re getting excited for the third annual SaaStr Scale on December 15. It’s all digital, and all free.

Scale 195

Scale Scaling SMB Strategy 195

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

These two departments are a SaaS company’s most important; without their alignment, there is no growth or scale. From 2010 until 2015, the SaaS world was becoming more complex with the introduction of static bundles and recurring revenue as an addition to the annual/monthly subscription model. Era 2, SaaS 2.0: Era 3, SaaS 3.0:

Scale 186

Scale Finance Sales Hiring Scaling 186

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. They had SMB positioning with an unfavorable LTV to CAC ratio.

Scale 215

Scale Strategy Scaling Outbound Sales Team 215

SaaStr

MAY 18, 2022

RingCentral is a very interesting case study in SaaS of starting very SMB, way in the early days of SaaS in 1999, keeping at it … and then tilting upmarket to going much more enterprise post-IPO. Fast forward to today, they are 27% SMB and 63% Mid-Market and Enterprise at $2B in ARR growing 33%. of revenue.

SMB 241

SMB Enterprise Scaling Revenue 241

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 1, 2023

at this scale (!!) 119% NRR from SMBs Profitable, and only burned $15m net to date 130,000 total customers There’s not much to not love here! But the metrics, especially for an SMB-focused SaaS business, are breathtaking. Getting above 100% NRR from true SMBs is tough. 36% of Revenue Outside the U.S.

Scale 209

Scale SMB Sales Hiring Interviewing 209

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 2, 2023

The higher a company’s retention, the easier it is to grow, as the company doesn’t have to replace as much lost revenue. Increasing Net Revenue Retention (NRR) from the 90% to 100% range to the 100% to 110% range improves growth rate by 9 percentage points. This wasn’t obvious to me.

Startup 234

Startup SaaS SMB Banking 234

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2023

Well, fast forward to today and it’s truly an SMB powerhouse. How is SMB SaaS doing today? are realtively low, as a huge amount of their payments revenue goes out to the payment processors. 111% NRR from SMBs. . #5. 15% Customer Growth Leads to 48% Revenue Growth Always helpful to me to see this math broken out.

Payment Services 272

Payment Services Payments SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 272

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

As we’ll see below, going upmarket and more enterprise has been key to SproutSocial’s growth at scale. But, it hasn’t left behind its SMB and MidMarket roots, which together are still as large a revenue segment as Enterprise. And 20% or so of its revenue importantly comes from agencies, i.e. partners.

Social Media 203

Social Media SMB Enterprise Scaling 203

SaaStr

AUGUST 24, 2022

SMB sales (most of Toast) is very tough to do without a highly efficient and effective sales force. At least 20% of your customers from referrals and second-order revenue. #4. Many SMB leaders have to get very, very good at outbound because of the limited deal sizes. 20% of new customers / locations come from referrals.

SaaS Payments 272

SaaS Payments Scale SMB Payment Solutions 272

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2024

The path to Cheif Revenue Officer (CRO) is different for many people. Tracy Young , CEO and co-founder at TigerEye, sits down with three CROs to talk about how they navigated the journey to revenue leader. After switching to SaaS, she started as an SMB sales leader with no prior management or SMB sales experience.

Scale 222

Scale Underperforming Technical Team SMB Finance 222

SaaStr

APRIL 8, 2023

Here’s a list of some of the most popular to dig into: Atlassian’s CRO Cameron Deatsch: “How The Biggest Product-Led Enterprise Company In The World Did It” Skilljar’s CRO: “An Inside View on Hiring Your First CRO” Rippling’s CRO: “Entering a Hyper-Competitive Market” DigitalOcean’s (..)

Scale 235

Scale Sales Hiring SMB SaaS 235

SaaStr

JULY 31, 2022

The Challenge with SMB SaaS: High Growth Can Only Mask High Churn For Just So Long. SMB SaaS has a lot going for it, but one big existential challenge — inherent churn. SaaStr 574: 5 Scale-Up Mistakes for Startups with Dave Kellogg. A great panel on just where marketing at scale in SaaS is today.

New CTO 229

New CTO CTO SMB Venture Capital 229

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2022

Podium has grown from a 1 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) company to doing over 100 million in ARR in their time there. . With scale, though, these priorities can change. Principle #4: At Scale, Focus is Critical. Taking the time to think through these tradeoffs and create focus can only help your sales org scale. .

Scale 203

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 203

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2021

That’s the power of compounding revenue right there: 5 Interesting Learnings: #1. 180,000 revenue per employee. We’ve seen this with sales-drive SMB and SME leaders like Xero as well. If you are selling to SMBs, you have to be very efficient. Long-tail look at how partners drive revenue.

Scale 321

Scale SMB compliance Churn 321

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2021

And as startups scale, many try to automate away support and success for the smaller accounts. If your SMB product requires or has a salesperson involved in closing, that’s a clear sign you also want a human being involved in making sure that customer is a success post-sale, too. The post Do SMBs Need Customer Success?

Customer Success 307

Customer Success Scale SMB Sales 307

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

It still has very strong NRR for a still muchly SMB and mid-market product at 135%, with no decline since the same 135% at $400m in ARR. #2. Free Cash Flow up from 3% of revenue at $400m in ARR to 10% at $550m in ARR. From $11m in annual revenue in 2017 to $500m+ in 2022. Marketing engine getting more efficient at scale.

Headcount 274

Headcount SMB Engineering Scaling 274

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2022

SaaStr 618: Scaling for the Enterprise: Top 5 Lessons on the Upmarket Journey with Airtable CEO Howie Liu and Coatue Management General Partner Caryn Marooney. . SaaStr 616: Secrets to SMB at Scale with Hubspot CEO Yamini Rangan and SaaStr Founder & CEO Jason Lemkin. . It Only Makes Things Worse. Just This Week.

Scale 183

Scale Venture Capital SMB Scaling 183

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2022

It’s moved beyond its tiniest customers, of an ACV of < $1k, but other than that, it’s going upmarket without giving up its SMB roots. In fact, Q’22 was Zendesk’s highest first-quarter revenue increase in history. Even though Zendesk still has thousands and thousands of SMB customers. #2.

SMB 251

SMB Scale B2B Metrics 251

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2022

Weave started off as a dental ERP and comms platform (including VoIP / phone), and then expanded beyond that as it scaled. It’s a tough outcome for a team that is working hard to scale well into the nine figures of ARR. While these aren’t great metrics if Weave was enterprise, they are still solid for SMBs.

SaaS Payments 223

SaaS Payments Scale Payment Methods Payments 223

SaaStr

APRIL 19, 2023

One leader in SMB commerce is Lightspeed Commerce, founded way back in 2005. And their mix of software, payments and hardware revenue drives up the total deal size — but puts a lot of pressure on margins. 39% of their revenues from software, and going down. Driving up ARPU at scale key to growth with SMBs.

Payment Solutions 222

Payment Solutions Point of Sale Payments SaaS Payments 222

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2020

Let’s look at some of the top public SaaS companies: Shopify — very SMB: 100%. Hubspot — mostly SMB: 100%. Surverymonkey — fairly SMB, but going more enterprise: 100%. Zendesk — 116%, mix of SMB and enterprise. 119% net revenue retention. Asana, 130% net revenue retention. And mostly SMBs.

Retention 318

Retention SMB SaaS Enterprise 318

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

The core product is very B2C, but the upgrade to paid has very SMB B2B metrics, and 80% of the revenue is subscription based. They have almost 40 million free users to get to their scale. #2. Duolingo spends a lot on engineering — more than most in SaaS, at 39% of revenues, that’s much more than the 20%-25% average.

Scale 287

Scale B2C SMB B2B 287