TechEmpower SaaS

JULY 12, 2023

A Fractional CTO bridges the gap between founders and developers to help keep your tech strategy aligned with your business goals. This helps your startup stay agile and competitive in a fast-paced marketplace.

CTO Hire 975

CTO Hire CTO Startup Development 975

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2025

The New Rules of AI Investing: Why Speed Beats Strategy and Labor Budget Is the New Software Budget The pace of AI advancement has fundamentally broken our traditional frameworks for thinking about technology adoption, market timing, and competitive moats. “There’s just so much leverage for startups in leveraging AI themselves.”

Software Review 225

Software Review Technical Review AI Development Team Review 225

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2025

Dear SaaStr: What Is It Like After Your Startup is Acquired? Its a shift from managing a startup to managing within a corporate structure, which can be both exciting and frustrating. Decisions about branding, strategy, or product direction might not align with your vision. Its different. Go into it knowing that, clearly.

Startup 136

Startup Scale Acquisition Leadership 136

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 10, 2024

The Top Marketing Strategies for 2025 Growth with the CMOs of Snowflake, LinkedIn, and Carta #4. . “A Lot of Great Sales Leaders — Just Aren’t Great at Selling Anymore. And Why You Really Need a VP of Sales, and Not a CRO.” ” #2. The Cloud Bubble Lasted About 18 Months. How Long Will the AI Bubble Last? #3.

Cloud 301

Cloud AI Startup Strategy 301

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 355

Startup Outsourced Development Scale Banking 355

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

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.

Venture Capital 331

Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 331

SaaStr

AUGUST 24, 2021

Q: What are the best marketing techniques for an early stage SaaS startup? But in general, most startups find that at best 1–2 channels really work for them. Free isn’t (usually) a marketing strategy. But don’t waste too much time thinking Free is marketing strategy per se. Do 6 customer Zooms a week as CEO.

Scale 343

Scale Startup Marketing SaaS 343

Tom Tunguz

AUGUST 14, 2022

Bill & I exchanged emails about Deliberately Underselling as Sales Strategy. Most startups operate between 0.15-0.25. Top startups will record 200-300% NDR as PLG becomes a dominant go-to-market strategy. I asked him to share his views on land & expand team structure & quotas. But we covered much more.

Startup 342

Startup Construction Sales Compensation 342

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2025

Offers workshops, networking, and investor matchmaking for startups and enterprises. Large Audience: Considered the biggest SaaS conference with a large number of attendees from leading SaaS companies, startups, and venture capital firms. Features 300+ speakers from top SaaS companies like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Snowflake.

Software 231

Software Scale Venture Capital SaaS 231

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 269

Startup Scale SMB Venture Capital 269

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

Dear SaaStr: In B2B Startups, How Useful is Cold Calling? 50 calls a day x 10% connect rate = a winning strategy 50 calls a day x 0.5% = ??? The post Dear SaaStr: In B2B Startups, How Useful is Cold Calling? Look, I hate getting those calls. Especially the really pushy, dumb ones from SDRs that barely know their own products.

B2B 304

B2B Startup Outbound Sales Team Branding 304

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 27, 2022

Before a startup is founded, no stock exists. The startup can inflate share count by creating shares. As more crypto companies launch, many will define their token strategy that should consider: the purpose of the token: utility v governance. Conversely, the company can deflate share count by buying shares and destroying them.

Startup 319

Startup Sales Hiring Government Outsourced Development 319

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 1, 2023

Workstreams within SaaS companies are specialized : content marketing, a valuable GTM strategy for many businesses, represents a low-single digit percentage of the employee population. Startups should focus on AI for Execs (perhaps why legal has been a heavily funded category) & AI for common workstreams (code autocompletion).

AI 321

AI Startup Scale Headcount 321

SaaStr

JANUARY 19, 2025

2: Adding AI to SaaS: Inside the AI Product Strategies of Figma, Cloudflare, GitHub and Ramp #3: Crunchbase: 50% of VC Capital Went to SF Bay Last Year, Q4 Roared Back for Venture Capital #4: 8 Quick Ways to Get More High Quality Leads. Top SaaStr Posts: #1. AI Should Kill Contact Me in 2025. Its Long Since Time. #2: Right Now. #5:

AI 274

AI Sales Hiring Venture Capital Startup 274

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Do You Build a Real Exit Strategy? The vast majority of startups will never get one acquisition offer, let alone a good one. You’d be surprised how leaders at Big Tech Cos hear of startups, and who they know about, and who they don’t. The post Dear SaaStr: How Do You Build a Real Exit Strategy?

Strategy 284

Strategy Acquisition Startup Engineering 284

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 255

Startup Scale Underperforming Technical Team AWS 255

SaaStr

JUNE 6, 2025

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. They’ll pay higher valuations and take bigger risks on ambitious startups. It’s expensive, competitive, and not every startup needs to be here.

Sales Recruiting 210

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring AI 210

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 3, 2024

Your startup almost certainly isn’t a soft-landing place. That’s somone that optimizes process and team and strategy. If he doesn’t even exactly know what an A+ company I introduced him to does … he’s just looking for a soft landing place. No matter how much you’ve raised.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Sales Interviewing Startup 284

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2025

Their conversation offers a rare, insider view of the strategies, challenges, and opportunities driving the next wave of technological innovation. The company’s strategy is focused on staying competitive by delivering value on top of the increasing capabilities of Transformers, a type of AI technology.

AI Search 243

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Technical Review 243

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2024

Marketing Strategies and Best Practices Successful marketing strategies are not simply replicable tactics but a combination of factors including timing and luck. Founders should support their hires’ strengths rather than undermining them, even if they personally don’t believe in the strategy.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Startup Marketing Technical Review 300

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2024

From startup to $500M CARR, Spencer Burke, SVP of Growth at Braze, shares how Braze scaled a growth and customer success team. As an early startup team, you’re doing every job under the sun. We get lazy writing job descriptions, and taking shortcuts is a luxury most startups don’t have. But that was it.

Scale 289

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 289

SaaStr

OCTOBER 18, 2024

You can talk about the roadmap or sales strategy until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t have the team to do it at scale, there’s no point in talking a ‘big game.’ It’s recruiting five or six.” ” Founders should spend 20-30 percent of their time soft recruiting execs.

Sales Recruiting 304

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AI 304

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2024

Most startup companies in earlier stages don’t have the most mature product. Your customer success strategy has to evolve as your organization grows. Your company is going to change business goals every year, and your customer success strategy has to move towards and align with those priorities.

Customer Success 284

Customer Success Scaling Social Media Enterprise readiness 284

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2025

Kiren Sekar, Chief Strategy Officer and founding team member at Samsara, came to SaaStr Annual to do one of our best deep dives even on going multi-product. Samsara leveraged this strategy to build a powerful enterprise business with 1,500+ customers paying $100K+ annually, while maintaining a healthy mid-market foundation.

Scale 260

Scale Transportation Scaling SMB 260

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2023

What is the right Go-To-Market strategy for a startup getting out of the gate? What’s his response to startups figuring out which strategy to begin with, product-led or sales-led? “It There are two personas you’ll likely reach out to when you combine a PLG strategy with a sales-led growth motion. .

Startup 295

Startup Sales Sales Funnel Education 295

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2024

I try to look at two things in Vertical SaaS startups, at least when investing : Will everyone in the vertical / industry use it? Roughly, there are two main strategies: One way is with 5,000 customers paying you $20,000+ a year. Dear SaaStr: How Big Should The Addressable Market Be to Go into Vertical SaaS?

Payment Solutions 261

Payment Solutions Inbound Sales Team Marketing Scale 261

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 8, 2025

An analysis of their investment patterns since 2020 doesn’t just reveal the accelerator’s strategy—it provides a map to the entire startup ecosystem’s next chapter. Similarly manufacturing startups have seized on the tariff-induced reshoring opportunity.

Investment 200

Investment Venture Capital Cybersecurity AI 200

SaaStr

JUNE 2, 2025

” Snowflake’s Enterprise-Focused Approach Snowflake’s strategy targets enterprise customers and government agencies. .” ” Snowflake’s Enterprise-Focused Approach Snowflake’s strategy targets enterprise customers and government agencies.

VP of Engineering 183

VP of Engineering AI Search AI Data 183

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2025

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.

Outsourcing Services 163

Outsourcing Services Venture Capital Outsourced Development Data 163

SaaStr

APRIL 12, 2024

Dear SaaStr: When You Sold Your Startup, What Were the Downsides? The post Dear SaaStr: When You Sold Your Startup, What Were the Downsides? When you sell: it’s not yours anymore; and your upside is capped. Start with Challenge #1. Ask yourself 4 “Are You OK With” questions: The name being changed? I was the first time.

Startup 293

Startup Acquisition Business Strategy 293

SaaStr

OCTOBER 16, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Why Do Many Startup CEOs Quit After Their Companies Are Acquired? I left my first startup after 20 days, post-acquisition. Acquirers should recognize this and turn the CEOs into 50%-time consultants and “non-executive chairpeople” of their startups, until the help isn’t needed anymore. That can be tough.

Startup 292

Startup Consulting Acquisition Retention 292

User Pilot

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

Best customer success software for startups and small companies. Review scalability & adaptability : Lastly, pick a tool that can grow with your business and adapt to changing needs, allowing you to expand functionalities as your customer success strategy evolves. Zapscale Best for : Early-stage startups. G2 rating : 4.8

Customer Success 105

Customer Success Enterprise Software Review Startup 105

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 27, 2025

Here are the highlights : Define Your ICP Before Anything Else The most fundamental decision for any startup is determining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). " When launching a startup, narrowly defining your ideal customer profile (ICP) is not just helpfulit’s essential for survival. We want to be completely different.”

Marketing 207

Marketing Scale Startup Branding 207

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2025

Top Posts: #1: The Top 10 Mistakes SaaS Startups Make: The 2025 Edition #2: When You Raise Venture Capital, A Clock Starts Ticking. At First, Softly. Then Louder and Louder. #3: 3: What Works Better for Field Marketing: Small, Intimate Events? Or the Big Mega Industry Events? #4: 4: AI is the Best Thing to Ever Happen to SaaS.

Sales Hiring 213

Sales Hiring Venture Capital AI Startup 213