SaaStr

JANUARY 27, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What are some common reasons for the failure of startups? My experience across leading 30+ seed investments, including 4 billion+ exits so far, on why startups fail: Not 200% committed to winning no matter what. That might be OK for a few months, but beyond that, startups fall into a decay curve they don’t recover from.

Startup 218

Startup Scale CTO Pricing 218

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2022

Q: Dear SaaStr: What are Some Common Decisions SaaS Startups Make that Hurt Their Ability to Scale? Hire someone above your team members that can’t scale as soon as they stop scaling. How do you scale from 5 to 50 employees, and beyond? My partial list: Hiring “too low” to save money. But not before. Transparency.

Scale 244

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 244

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 26, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What is The Biggest Difference Between Running a 10 Person Startup and a 100 Person Startup? You won’t be able to scale this far without a full management team — VPs of Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering, Customer Success at least. But the toughest personal challenge for many CEOs is letting go.

Sales Hiring 275

Sales Hiring Startup Scale Scaling 275

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 8, 2022

Startups create products. When a business is ready to scale, a startup ought to develop an organizational roadmap. The question for early-stage startups is how to start building this structure. Most startups begin either with a product marketer or a demand generation specialist.

Startup 353

Startup Acquisition Product Marketing Scaling 353

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 18, 2023

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. Carpe Diem.

Startup 313

Startup Venture Capital Azure AWS 313

Andreessen Horowitz

MAY 10, 2023

A16z recently brought together a group of early-stage CEOs to talk shop and learn from their peers who have successfully navigated the journey from scrappy startup into large growth-stage or even public companies.

Enterprise 130

Enterprise Scaling Startup Interviewing 130

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2024

ARR, Zendesk today gets 14% of new business from startups. On top of that, if you look at their top accounts globally, 33 of the top 50 customers by ARR are startups. This is where they started, but startups weren’t adopting the product as much with a discount, and there was a lot of conflict with the sales team. A free term.

Startup 186

Startup Scale Underperforming Technical Team AWS 186

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What are the signs that an enterprise SaaS startup is ready to scale by hiring more sales people? The post Dear SaaStr: What Are The Signs We’re Ready to Hire More Sales People to Scale? In the early days, it’s simply that you have a few more leads than you can currently handle. appeared first on SaaStr.

Scale 271

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 271

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 19, 2024

If founders have been at it for 5+ years, and the business is truly at scale, and past the risk stage, then helping them sell some shares can be just the right thing to help them go long. I don’t see it at the truly most successful startups. But investing in startups requires a tremendous amount of trust.

Startup 232

Startup Venture Capital Investment Scaling 232

SaaStr

APRIL 8, 2024

Dear SaaStr: Why Do VC Backed Startups Seem To Almost Always Be Running Out of Money? But as you scale, after 40 or 50, sometimes you don’t know. Better too few great ones than too many not quite great ones: (image from here ) The post Dear SaaStr: Why Do VC Backed Startups Seem To Almost Always Be Running Out of Money?

Sales Hiring 197

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Venture Capital 197

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.

Scale 196

Scale Technical Advisors Sales Hiring Technical Review 196

SaaStr

APRIL 10, 2023

However, what many businesses may overlook is the startup segment. Often, startups are lumped in with small businesses, yet this approach fails to recognize what motivates and attracts these early-stage companies. Why Seek Out Startups? How is it that you want to sell to startups differently than the rest of your customer base?”

Startup 207

Startup Scale SMB Venture Capital 207

Predictable Revenue

MAY 17, 2022

Harpaul Sambhi joins the Predictable Revenue podcast to discuss the importance of founder-led sales to scaling repeatable revenue for startups. The post The Importance of Founder-Led Sales to Scaling appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Scale 253

Scale Scaling Sales Startup 253

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2023

is a number to back into, at scale. It’s a reminder CSM staffing overall is actually fairly thin at scale. And some great related data from Churn Zero here : Where Customer Success Reports To Typically, Who Really Owns Renewals, And More from ChurnZero The post At Scale, Customer Success On Average is Paid 5.3%

Customer Success 188

Customer Success Scaling Management Churn 188

Predictable Revenue

DECEMBER 17, 2020

Having worked with many diverse corporations, Claire Chandler has experienced most companies fall apart once they start to scale. The post How to Scale Your Business So It Sells Like a Fortune 500, With The Culture And Agility of a Startup appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Scaling 279

Scaling Startup Business Revenue 279

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How often will a sales engineer also wear a customer success hat in an early stage of an SaaS startup? And as you scale, the role should likely end there. The biggest issue often is this just doesn’t scale. Pretty darn common. But it can work just fine on the way to $10m ARR, or even beyond.

Scale 233

Scale Engineering Customer Success Startup 233

Tom Tunguz

MAY 15, 2022

As the fiscal quarters of many startups draw to a close, board members and management teams are having one of four conversations: The World is Your Oyster, Time to Strategize, Chewing Gravel, or Go Big/Go Profitable. The x-axis is the Zero Cash Date: when the startup runs out of money. The north star should be efficiency.

Startup 323

Startup Outsourced Development Scale Banking 323

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Biggest Problems You Face as a Startup Founder? Later, once you have a brand, you’ll be competing with Hot Startups nipping at your heals for top VPs. As you finally begin to scale, you’ll have enough revenue to hire some great folks, but not enough to build very redundant teams. It never ends.

Sales Recruiting 256

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Startup Scale 256

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What Is A Good Demo Conversion Rate for a SaaS Startup? And thus a lot of your conversion metrics will actually fall as you scale. A related post here: 7 Simple Ideas to Immediately Improve Your Conversion Rates in SaaS The post Dear SaaStr: What Is A Good Demo Conversion Rate for a SaaS Startup?

Scale 235

Scale Startup Sales Hiring SaaS 235

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 25, 2022

We are building for the long term – that means ensuring reliability by default, and the ability to accommodate massive scale as we grow. . As these existing customers have grown, and we’ve welcomed bigger and bigger customers, we’ve always focused on saying yes to scale. . We’re growing alongside our customers. Can Intercom do that?

Scaling 252

Scaling AWS Software Review Technical Review 252

Tom Tunguz

MAY 16, 2023

Startups operate with a broader variance with commercial teams : Canva & Databricks should paint the ends of the spectrum. The correlation with scale is effectively zero, meaning that ratio holds throughout the life of a business, barring the pre-commercialization epoch in a startup’s lifespan.

Headcount 238

Headcount Startup Scale Engineering 238

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2024

Blitz scaling. They weren’t a 3H startup. pic.twitter.com/3K7wUTiyul — Fan Bi (buying $5-30M DTC brands) (@lifeofbi) February 20, 2024 The post The Riskiest Venture-Backed Startups Are 3H’s: High Growth, High Churn and High Burn appeared first on SaaStr. And High Burn. VCs often enable these models.

Churn 229

Churn Startup SaaS Payments Venture Capital 229

SaaStr

DECEMBER 18, 2023

At SaaStr Annual , IBM’s VP of Software and Technology Raj Datta and Director of Startups Kylie Rutherford shared how AI is changing the game for companies of all sizes. AI is a very competitive landscape, so startups have to ask themselves how they’re going to gain a competitive advantage with it.

AI 241

AI Technology Scale Startup 241

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 2, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What’s It Really Like to Be CEO of a Startup? Let me just throw out a few things I’ve learned that being a CEO of start-up isn’t, or isn’t as you’d expect: It isn’t glamorous until you are At Scale and Hot, at the very minimum. Even if you have never scaled before, never hired before.

Startup 230

Startup Scaling Revenue 230

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 13, 2022

Thanks to the many readers who wrote in to Guess the Startup on Friday. I had three goals for the Guess the Startup Post. growth rate in a year would be the envy of most seed stage startups. It’s truly unprecedented at the scale of hundreds of millions of revenue. Here’s the early revenue chart again.

Startup 252

Startup Scale Retention Enterprise 252

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 7, 2018

When a startup takes form, the first weeks and months and years are spent furiously. The startup raises capital. However, continuing this way isn’t the path to huge scale. As the business increases it scale, the management team needs to plan further and further out in time. It’s the same with a startup.

Scale 209

Scale Scaling Sales Recruiting Startup 209

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2021

You need startup folks to succeed at a startup. Many startup folks have no idea how to work at scale. And SaaStr Annual is just too big and too complicated for anyone to work on that doesn’t have experience at scale. It’s a reminder the same is true of SaaS startups. They know how to scale.

Sales Hiring 301

Sales Hiring Scale Startup Scaling 301

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 18, 2022

Sales-driven SaaS startups end up with about half their headcount in sales and marketing. Then, it sneaks up on you again as you scale and you realize you need to have about 1.5x-2x So as you begin to scale, say past $2m-$3m ARR, first do the math. It sounds high at first, until you realize that's just how the math works.

Scale 341

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 341

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 2, 2023

If a startup raised a top quartile Seed round, Series A, B, & C, they typically would have grown headcount by about 6% in the last twelve months. Startups with more business than they can handle should be scaling their teams to satisfy market demand. The headcount growth rate for all other companies? About double at 12%.

Headcount 201

Headcount Startup AI Scaling 201

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2022

When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. But what are the essentials of scaling up, and how do you navigate obstacles along the way to function as a high-impact organization? Does PLG really help scale by a large amount? The go-to-market playbook.

Scale 180

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 180

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2024

She was hired because they saw a bit of softening in new business growth, and she came to help diagnose what was going on and help scale the business. As a startup, it’s tempting to try and do everything. It’s better to find the best ICP to get to $5M-$10M and scale from there. In the early days, you have to.

Scale 230

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 230

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

At this year’s SaaStr Annual, Mark Roberge, co-founder and Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital, takes the stage to have a bake-off between startups and incumbents when it comes to who will win the AI Go-to-Market race. So, consider what the innovator’s dilemma is today as you rethink your startup in an AI-first world in a hyper cycle.

AI 259

AI Technical Review Startup Management 259

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? Great Startups Create Their Own Categories.”

Scale 204

Scale Scaling SMB Marketing 204

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2020

Today, we’re answering the question: how do teams grow as a startup scales? The median startup with between 1-5M in ARR will have 12 engineers, 6 in sales and 3 in marketing. And at that scale or higher, CROs lead the go-to-market for more than 50% of respondents.

Scale 337

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Software Review 337