Jason M. Lemkin
Co-Founder and CEO of EchoSign from inception through tens of millions in cash-flow positive SaaS revenue and acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc.
Jason then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where EchoSign was named the most successful acquisition of 2011-12, posting 199% YoY growth.
Is Growth Bad for Startups? Feat. Think3 (Video + Transcript)
Alex Western, Managing Director at Think3, talks about the problem he has seen consistently across SaaS startups that have VC funding – overgrowth. Overgrowth normally happens because of misalignment in VC initiatives and founder initiatives. Because VCs want to make 15x on their investments, founders aren’t realizing that overgrowth is actually dangerous for their companies. […]
The Journey to the Billion Dollar Exit with ServiceMax and Emergence Capital (Video + Transcript)
Hear how Dave Yarnold, CEO of ServiceMax, in partnership with Jason Green, General Partner and Founder at Emergence Capital, navigated the challenges that every CEO faces when building a billion dollar business. Also, don’t miss out on SaaStr Annual happening in less than one month!. FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW Dave Yarnold– CEO of ServiceMax Jason […]
Why Culture is a Key Criterion for Raising Capital and Driving Growth with Idinvest partners (Video + Transcript)
What are you doing to build and maintain the culture in your startup? Or has culture been put on the backburner as you have scaled? Well, it’s time to put culture at the forefront of your startup if you are looking for more funding in 2019. Jonathan Userovici, VC at Idinvest Partners, talks about culture […]
Why a Great Rep Can Close 9x More Than a Poor Rep, and Even 2.5x More Than a Good Rep
We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about great sales professionals, on driving up Revenue Per Lead, on not capping sales comp systems, and on why you need to manage out your worst reps (because leads are precious). What we haven’t done yet is put it all together in a simple, quantitative spreadsheet. Let’s do that […]
Building Great SaaS Companies Everywhere with SaaStr and Point Nine Capital (Video + Transcript)
Jason Lemkin, Founder & CEO at SaaStr and Christoph Janz, Partner at Point Nine Capital, had an opening session at SaaStr Europe earlier this year. They talk about the state of SaaS, pros and cons of SF vs Europe and more. Also, if you didn’t attend SaaStr Europa, we’re doing it bigger and better in […]
9 Things First-Time Founders Get Wrong About The Journey
Want to start your own SaaS company? Do it. It is hard, harder than you can imagine. But if you do it right, and for real — it can last 30+ years. If you haven’t done it before, though, here’s my list of the top 9 things founders get wrong before they start: It almost […]
From Burn-Out to $100M in ARR with Jason Cohen of WP Engine (Video + Transcript)
Metrics are important, but so is making the tough, gut-wrenching decision to part ways with a key employee. Product strategy is important, but a fixation on the competition is counter-productive. A successful exit can set you up financially, but how do you avoid the fate of (statistically) the majority of founders who become sad and […]
Your Top 5% Employees … And Bottom 5%
In my relatively brief tenure as a VP at a Fortune 500 tech company, I struggled a bit dealing with the processes, systems and bureaucracy. But in the time since, I’ve mellowed a bit and realized a lot of the processes actually made a lot of sense, especially when you have 15,000+ employees. You have […]
The $1 Billion+ ARR Club
It’s time to redefine “Unicorn”. It’s not about a billion+ valuation, as crazy high as that seemed 5 years ago. Now it’s about $1b in ARR. The above chart is a rough attempt to estimate ARR from some of the top Cloud/SaaS public companies. The estimates will all be off / wrong a bit, but […]
5 Traits to Look For When Hiring An Early Marketing Team For Your Startup
As the CRO at SaaStr, I am doing a lot of hiring these days! A lot. And that means spending countless hours skimming through resumes, taking phone screens, and meeting candidates in person. Quick shameless plug–seriously, I am hiring for a lot of people, so if interested in working at SaaStr–check out our open jobs […]
Matt Straz, CEO, Namely: What Changes At Employee 200 (Video + Transcript)
As we’re all aware, when your company grows, things start to change dramatically. The way you run a 20-person company is vastly different than how you run a 200-person company. Caroline Fairchild, New Economy Editor @ LinkedIn, sits down with Matt Straz, CEO at Namely, to discuss what exactly changes at 200 employees and how […]
The One Best, “Secret” Hack to Getting Venture Funding
I am fairly confident there are at least 10,000 Medium posts, 20,000 WordPress articles, and over well over 1,000,000 Tweets on How to Get Funded. It bores me personally, but I know it’s an important topic. Raising money for many CEOs is one of the their top 5 priorities. Without venture capital, I’d be nowhere. […]
10 Amazing Sessions on Bootstrapped Startups at SaaStr Annual 2018
One request from last year’s SaaStr Annual was to add even more content for bootstrapped (vs venture funded) startups. We have! We’d like to think 100% of SaaStr content and speakers applies to bootstrapped startups just as well as any other type — but there are differences. So a few sessions to highlight: Ryan Smith, […]
Should I Sell for $50m … Or Push On And Try to Build a Unicorn?
BusinessInsider had a great story this week on Datto’s $1b exit to Vista Private Equity (more on the new role of PE in SaaS here). So much of it resonated with me, especially the story of the CEO’s 10 year journey, and turning down a $100m offer to sell. A decent offer to buy your […]
When to Stop Doing It All Yourself
Perhaps the biggest difference between most first-time founders and most second-time founders is how long they try to do it all themselves. This isn’t a criticism first time you usually sort of have to. You have less capital to hire a team, and less experience building teams. But then after that there are at least […]
