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Most startups play defense when discussing pricing with customers. Startups operate in newer markets where pricing standards haven’t been set. But throughout this turmoil, startups must adopt a process to craft a good pricing strategy, and re-evaluate prices periodically, at least once per year. AWS, Twilio, Heroku, etc.
SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin recently sat down with HubSpot Chairman and co-founder Brian Halligan , who shared valuable insights on the current state of SaaS, evolving board meeting formats, and how AI is reshaping the industry. Our revenue team went on to be the CROs of Brex, Rippling ,Gong, so many SaaS leaders, like 10 of them.
So Thomasz Tunguz put together a great chart summarizing one of my top worries over the past 24+ months in SaaS. And what you can see is there is really almost no liquidity for startups and scale-ups in SaaS and Cloud at the moment. And 2021 was a record year for Saas IPOs. What will the future bring for SaaS liquidity?
The post Battery Ventures: Startups Are Actually Far More Overvalued Now Than in 2021 appeared first on SaaStr. A lot more than we’ve ever seen before. We’ll need some of that additional trillions in overall spend to make the math pencil out. There’s just not enough IT budget otherwise. We’ll see!
Speaker: Brian Chang, Managing Director of Warburg Pincus & Scott Schwan, Chief Product Officer of A-LIGN
Scaling your SaaS business to the growth stage requires a strong product/market-fit, an optimized marketing funnel with repeatable sales processes, and a strategy for customer retention. But how do you truly get to that coveted phase of continued growth and profitability? Land marquee customers and build loyalty with them.
Dear SaaStr: Should SaaSStartups Really Have CROs or COOs? Theres no way a SaaSstartup needs a CRO or COO or other C-level Officers Without a Clear, Single Functional Area to Own Until $40m-50m+ in ARR. As weve all gotten more experienced in SaaS, weve specialized more. Is That Too Many Management Layers?
Tomasz Tunguz , General Partner at Theory Ventures, shares nine observations from a Go-To-Market survey Theory Ventures did with hundreds of startups, 68% of them early-stage, well-funded, mostly mid-market ACV, and 25% remote. Six months ago, security was the number one prohibition preventing businesses and software companies from buying AI.
Fast forward to today, the “average” SaaS company that IPO’s … takes 13.6 The post Dear SaaStr: What Is The Shortest Time It Took for a Startup to Go From Launch to IPO? billion in ’95. Not too shabby. years to get there. Some clearly could have IPO’d much earlier. Years Or More For The Next Batch.
Per OpenAI: The #1 event in SaaS is widely considered to be SaaStr Annual. Its the largest community-driven SaaS event, bringing together 12,500+ founders, executives, and VCs. Features 300+ speakers from top SaaS companies like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Snowflake. Why SaaStr Annual?
The landscape of startup financing is changing. One of the most important job requirements for a startup CEO is being diligent about financing growth while navigating the ebbs and flows of business. Learn why SaaS founders are turning to debt capital options like revenue-based financing.
Lemkin Change his Point of View on The Value of a COO for Earlier Stage Startups? I found, when I was a SaaS CEO, that the CEOs that complained about needing a COO early, that it was too hard (which it is), etc. Lemkin Change his Point of View on The Value of a COO for Earlier Stage Startups? Dear SaaStr: Why did Jason M.
Dear SaaStr: How Big Should The Addressable Market Be to Go into Vertical SaaS? I try to look at two things in Vertical SaaSstartups, at least when investing : Will everyone in the vertical / industry use it? It’s just hard to get most vertical SaaS start-ups to scale if they can’t get to a $10k ACV.
When talking to startup founders or other innovators, we always ask questions to better understand their business as a core. Conclusion Startup metrics are an invaluable tool for founders and innovators. Focus on building an MVP to gather startup metrics. cto , infotech , innovation , product , project , saas
What “Working” Means in the Era of AI Apps: The New Enterprise Benchmarks That Matter One of the most common refrains in the generative AI era is that “startups are growing faster than ever” — often with fewer resources. But the data is telling. Some notable examples? The median enterprise AI company now reaches $2.1M
If you’re like many SaaSstartups, billing and payment management is a big challenge. With this playbook, we’ll show you how to implement an AR management process to handle late payments, subscription renewals, and other recurring billing functions.
Along with co-host Ben Salzman, Jason and Henry discuss the transformative power of AI within SaaS and the evolving dynamics that are reshaping the landscape of software as a service. ” The post The Future of AI in SaaS Sales with Henry Schuck, CEO of ZoomInfo and SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin appeared first on SaaStr.
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%. You can download it here. And as time goes on, that doesn’t really help you much. This data confirms that.
What does it mean to be a CTO for a startup? Should a startup CTO spend their time programming? Here’s a graphic from Socal CTO that illustrates the roles as they change over time: In its earliest days, a startup’s top need is often to produce a product. cto , infotech , innovation , product , project , saas It might be.
Each leader started by sharing their unique perspective on how they approached adding AI into their SaaS products: How GitHub Built an AI Copilot to 1.8M ” How Ramp Reached $300M in 3 years and Uses AI to Save 25,000 Customers a Billion Dollars Ramp’s VP of Design Diego Zaks has a different take on AI in SaaS.
As you scale your SaaS business, you want to be armed with all the necessary tools to ensure optimal growth, which ultimately stems from how effective your sales team is. Join Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Predictable Revenue Collin Stewart to learn how to use this formula to fast-track your startups’ growth journey.
Dear SaaStr: How Much of a Threat is AI to Traditional B2B Startups Today? AI isn’t yet slowing down the big leaders in SaaS, from Salesforce to HubSpot to Workday. link] — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) March 29, 2025 In most cases, AI wont outright kill SaaS B2B startups now or even soon. Have you stepped up?
SaaS Capital surveyed 1,000 B2B startups of varying sizes to find out just how much today they are spending in sales and marketing in this new era of efficiency. That full report here: 2025 Spending Benchmarks for Private B2B SaaS Companies The answer? Its not just Marc Benioff hiring more sales execs in the AI era.
Don’t try to evolve into a compound startup later – Unlike conventional wisdom about starting focused and expanding, Conrad believes it’s “really hard” to transition from a point solution to a compound startup: “You kind of have to almost refound the company.” The advantages are substantial: 1.
Parker Conrad, founder CEO at Rippling, has done a great job including at SaaStr Europa talking about building compound startups. But in the end, nothing in SaaS is really more sad than finally getting to $50m, $100m, $200m ARR … which is so rare and hard … and then finding out growth has slowed down not because the product wasn’t great.
Dear SaaStr: Does a SaaSStartup CEO Need to Have Sales Skill? The post Dear SaaStr: Does a SaaSStartup CEO Need to Have Sales Skill? Yes, if you have customers that talk to humans. Possibly no, if you only have “users” and/or are a freemium + no-touch model. Customers Love to Talk to the CEO. Do More of That Now.
The Bar Has Gone Up: The New Era of HyperFunctional SaaS with Jason Lemkin #2. Why This is Good News for SaaS. #5. One Thing is Clear: AI Is Leading to 1000+ New Competitors in SaaS Top Videos and Pods: #1. “How To Perfectly Pitch Your Seed Stage Startup With Y Combinator’s Michael Seibel” #2.
Note I did take out a few that would have made the list but were a bit dated etc: #1, 279,000 Views: “How To Perfectly Pitch Your Seed Stage Startup With Y Combinator’s Michael Seibel: Ycombinator is pretty popular #2. So if you want to catch up, here are The Top 10 Most Popular SaaStr YouTube Sessions of All Time.
Based on Carta’s latest startup funding data (Q2 2024-Q1 2025), here are the Top 5 SaaS Learnings that every founder needs to know: #1: The Bay Area Still Owns B2B and SaaS (And It’s Not Even Close) The Bay Area dominates SaaS funding with 54.2% more SaaS capital than Boston. of all SaaS funding.
We’re on the top 1% on Spotify overall and just added video there, and our YouTube has become a great stream of the best of the best in SaaS, Cloud and AI. How To Perfectly Pitch Your Seed Stage Startup With Y Combinator’s Michael Seibel at SaaStr Annual #2. appeared first on SaaStr.
So the latest SaaS leader to cross $1B ARR is Klaviyo. It was the only SaaS IPO on 2023. New Startups and Companies and Enterprise Strong. Klaviyo dominates marketing in the Shopify ecosystem and in ecommerce, and just keeps on scaling. The only one! And at almost $1B ARR, it’s still growing a stunning 34% (!).
Randy combines deep operational expertise in SaaS with a unique perspective on B2B growth metrics, having analyzed data from thousands of private companies through Maxio’s platform. He’s a regular speaker at SaaStr and other leading SaaS conferences, focusing on helping founders navigate growth and monetization challenges.
So things aren’t all “bad” in SaaS. But for many startups, the hangover from the Excesses of 2021 is a real and tough one. Startups shutting down are up 238% this year — already. Startups shutting down are up 238% this year — already. And the latest Carta data here supports that. But Be Kind.
SaaS products and services like Pilot track the finances of 1,000s of SaaS and other startup so they’re an interesting source of hard data. Something that’s both not surprising but also pretty impactful: 57% of venture-backed startups will have to go “back to market” in 2024 to raise more capital.
Dear SaaStr: Should We Introduce Freemium in Our B2B SaaSStartup to Boost Growth? Lucid Software: How 10 Million Freemium Users Built Our Enterprise Sales (Video + Transcript) | SaaStr View original question on quora The post Dear SaaStr: Should We Introduce Freemium in Our B2B SaaSStartup to Boost Growth? Probably not.
Is SaaS Back? (TL;DR: 4 Truly Great SaaS IPOs Since 2021! 5 Things That Are Working and 5 Things That Arent in B2B SaaS AI with Ironclad’s CEO and a16z #2. 5 Things That Are Working and 5 Things That Arent in B2B SaaS AI with Ironclad’s CEO and a16z #2. How Many Sales Reps You Really Need for Next Year #4.
Lemkin (@jasonlk) May 27, 2025 10 Unexpected Learnings from SVB’s 2025 State of the Markets Report Beyond the AI boom headlines, the 1H’25 data reveals surprising shifts that could reshape how we think about venture capital, startup operations, and the innovation economy. Companies are reaching the end of their options.
This is epic opportunity to showcase your AI Startup. The winner(s) will receive funding from the Mayfield AI Garage, who are at the forefront of investing in cutting-edge tools at the intersection of SaaS and AI. If you’re building the next AI breakthrough in SaaS, pitch your startup at the MayfieldAI AI Demo Stage at SaaStr.
Dear SaaStr: What Are The Top 5 Things I Should Know Before Starting a SaaSStartup? The post Dear SaaStr: What Are The Top 5 Things I Should Know Before Starting a SaaSStartup? My Top 5: It will take you at least 24 months to really get anywhere. Everyone mentally budgets 10–12 months. It’s never enough.
Even as the world has gone more remote and distributed, there are unique advantages to being based here—especially for startups that want to build something really big. Even as the world has gone more remote and distributed, there are unique advantages to being based here—especially for startups that want to build something really big.
Top SaaStr Podcasts & Videos of the Week: #1. “What Really Matters in SaaS in 2025 with Jason Lemkin and Dave Kellogg” #2. The Top Marketing Strategies for 2025 Growth with the CMOs of Snowflake, LinkedIn, and Carta #4. 83% Percent of You Haven’t Gotten AI SDRs to Work … Yet #5.
This helps your startup stay agile and competitive in a fast-paced marketplace. A Fractional CTO bridges the gap between founders and developers to help keep your tech strategy aligned with your business goals.
Revenues Multiples Are Down Even the best public SaaS companies are worth ~10x revenue today. And it also makes it harder to meet the “ask” of a startup that might want a much higher revenue multiple. . In 2021, they were often worth 40x revenue. But those are the biggest two. appeared first on SaaStr.
The AI Team at many SaaSstartups makes 30%-40% more. What I often see is many SaaS companies arent truly AI-native and often just have 1 or 2 true AI magicians on the team. It creates issues and drama. But probably not paying their premium will create just as many issues and drama as well.
Dear SaaStr: What does a COO do in a tech startup/company? Image from here ) The post Dear SaaStr: What Does a COO Typically Do at a SaaSStartup? How would the team be structured? Can you give an example? COO is a bit of a made-up job. What I mean is, there is no organizational “need” for a COO per. You need a CEO.
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