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 [...]
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 [...]
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? [...]
The Future Employee Must Posses the Skill and Will to Learn
Thomas Friedman recently wrote an article for the NYT titled, “Need a Job? Invent It” which addresses how our educational institutions are not teaching students the skills that value most. He goes on to point out that in today’s economy there is no such thing as a high-wage, middle-skilled job. Things are changing quickly and by time [...]
The $64,000,000 Question: When Things Become Unstoppable
A little while back, a VC asked me what I thought of a prospective mid/late stage investment. I was/am reasonably familiar with this company as it is adjacent to EchoSign. My answer was, well, I’d probably pass — certainly at the valuation (12x+ ARR). I said the product was ooooold and the platform dated, the [...]
Post-Traction, You Need to Spend 20% of Your Time Recruiting
Love him or hate him, Nick Saban is the most successful college football coach of the current generation. Winner of 3 out of 4 of the last national championships. And how often is he recruiting? Every. Single. Day. In fact, every single day he and his team go into their Recruiting War Room, and analyze [...]
How To Know You’ve Hit First Traction In SaaS. The Moment When You’ve Got A Real Company.
There’s a common meme in Venture Capital that traction is tough to quantify, but you know it when you see it. Well, let’s take a stab at it anyway. Quantifying it. Because I don’t think Initial Traction is at all nebulous in SaaS — and I think it occurs earlier than many think. Here’s a [...]
SaaStr on TechCrunch! The M&A “Nibble” And What To Do When You Get One
Hopefully, you saw us last weekend on TechCrunch. We’re trying to do our small part and hopefully save you a few headaches and mistakes as you scale your SaaS start-up from $0 to Initial Traction to $10m in ARR, $20m in ARR, and beyond. We’re glad — on a good day — to get as [...]
A Simple Commitment Test For You And Your Co-Founders
As we’ve talked about before, the great thing about SaaS, is it compounds. Once you have something, it builds on itself. But it takes time. It takes 7-10 to build something real. If you are reading this, you’re probably up for that 7+ year commitment, assuming you’re fortune enough to get there. >> But what [...]
The All-In Dilution from an Outside CEO: Just Make Sure You Do the Math
First, before we get into the math and the pie chart below, let me be clear: I am in NO way against bringing in an outside CEO to run your SaaS company. #1: If you lack CEO skills on your team, you should do this on Day 1. #2: And even if you have enough [...]
If You Have 10 {Unaffiliated} Customers in SaaS — You Have Something.
One of the tough things in SaaS, a downside of the fact that it compounds, is that you’re always running on the Habitral. That makes it really hard to see your moments of success, and perhaps even more importantly — really hard to see and internalize and process pre-success. So I’d like to highlight a few [...]
Start-Up Success in SaaS? You Have to Bend the Odds In Your Favor. Some Thoughts on How to Do It.
Mark Suster put together a presentation (and a blog post) a few weeks ago that has really stuck with me me. I never, perhaps intentionally, looked at the odds of achieving a solid exit in a start-up. Actually it’s just this one slide that has really stayed with me … It turns out the odds of [...]
