TAM is Great. But What Really Matters is That You Believe You Can Hit $100m ARR in 7 Years.
I have a strong, semi-proven thesis that in SaaS, market size doesn’t matter that much … at least in the traditional tops-down sense. If you can get to $2m in ARR in 2 years, you can get to $4m the next. From there, it’s on to $10m in ARR. And if you can get to [...]
Pulse 2013: A Full-Day Conference on Customer Success on May 30 in S.F. I Think You Should Go.
As SaaStr readers know, I think people put a little too much into sales, and not quite enough into customer success, especially as they hit first Traction. It’s natural. It’s the hunt. The hunt is the new logo, the new
If You Get Acquired, You’ll Need to Learn to Move from Persuasion to Alignment
I’ve had a chance to semi-objectively watch a number of folks go through the M&A process over the past 18 months, and compare and contrast their experiences with mine. Some acquisitions thrive. YouTube, PayPal, Android. Others of course die. GeoCities, Broadcast.com. Perhaps most actually meander in the middle. Flickr. Take a look at this interesting [...]
By The Time You Give Them a Raise, They’re Already Out The Door
There’s an endless amount written on the ‘net about hiring Rockstars. Finding them, not settling, and all that. That you need to spend 20%+ of time recruiting (I said that myself here). That the #1 most important thing you can do is put together a great team. Which is absolutely true. But the #2 most [...]
SalesLoft Interviews SaaStr on Metrics, Leads, VP Sales, Deer and Elephants, and More
Kyle Porter, CEO of SalesLoft, just posted a very well put together video interview with SaaStr (cut into bite-sized snippets) on so many of the topics we’ve talked about. He did a great job, so if you have time, click
In The Early Days, Don’t Forget To Pay Yourself, Too
When I co-founded my first company, way back in the dark stretch between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, we got a terrible deal, from a dilution and valuation perspective. Yes, we raised $9m to get the company off the ground, but we had to sell just about everything to pull it off. The trade-off from [...]
If You Sell Your Company, Use a Banker
When I sold my first company, I used a banker, an M&A advisor. When I sold my second, I did not. Not using a banker the second time was a mistake. The benefits are nonobvious, somewhat counterintuitive — and large. You don’t get THAT much from a banker for their seemingly huge fees: They don’t [...]
Xeround, and a tale of evolving business models
Cloud database company Xeround announced that they’re shutting down the version of their service hosted in public clouds such as Amazon, Rackspace, GreenQloud, and others. Users of the free service have until 8 May to move elsewhere, whilst paying customers have until 15 May. The company describes this as an attempt to “re-focus,” with the [...]
Great Free Tool from SalesLoft: Daily Job Change Alerts (via LinkedIn API)
Kyle Porter, CEO and co-founder of SalesLoft, recently did a great in-depth interview with SaaStr. We’ll repost some of that and you can see it now here. While doing the interview, I had a chance to check out a great free tool SalesLoft has. It connects with your LinkedIn account and then sends you a [...]
The SaaS Year of Hell. And Then – Reignition.
I was recently at an event with a SaaS-ish CEO who was, clearly, miserable. His business was doing $30m+ and growing nicely. He was about to introduce a new product that he thought could be game-changing. And, he had a strong team (according to him) that he truly enjoyed working with. What was so bad? [...]
Why Hiring From Your Direct Competitors Usually Doesn’t Work Out
The time will come when you are first tempted to hire someone from your competitor. They must know so many things we don’t. Have so many skills. It’s pretty tempting. People will tell you about the risks in litigation, trade secrets, etc. I don’t think any of those are necessarily a big deal or a [...]
SaaS Business Model Competitive Advantage Revisited
What is SaaS? We seem to need to ask this question every couple of years, because the answer is a bit of a moving target. It was simple enough when SaaS was merely software applications pushed through a Web browser, but now we have to contend with the cloud, mobile and even social. Recently, Scott [...]
5 Non-Obvious Things To Know About VCs
I was catching up with a VC friend the other day and asked him about a company I’d referred to him. They’d passed on the investment (which is of course fine), despite the company meeting basically every investment criteria I knew about the firm. I asked the partner why. His answer was simply — timing [...]
In SaaS, You Have to Love the One You’re With
Recurring revenue businesses are hard. You need so many different types of people (sales, support, client success, demand gen, product, engagement, dev). The customers complain, especially your most loyal ones. You have to get on planes. You have to grovel. It’s tough. And for a lot of us … well … it just turns out [...]
Why You’ll Want to Raise $100,000,000 for Your SaaS Start-Up: The Incremental Customer
With all the SaaS companies raising big, later-stage rounds these days you may wonder … why? I mean, just because you can raise $100m or whatever epic number … should you? Today, I think the answer is yes. Though perhaps not for the reasons you might think. There are a couple of standard reasons companies [...]
