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.
One Simple Rule on When to Build a “Custom” Feature
“Custom” features … I feel this is perhaps the point founders get the worst advice of all. Especially from VCs, B2C folks, and folks that have never sold bigger deals and into the enterprise. One-off customization per se is bad. This is SaaS, not a services business. But Being paid a lot to build something […]
The Two Things to Do. When You Don’t Know What to Do.
There may come a time, or two, in your company when you just don’t know what to do. You aren’t growing fast enough. or The competition seems to be getting the best of you. or You can’t raise financing. or You just lost an important deal. Or maybe more than one. or That great new […]
One Tough (But Rewarding) Job: Being the First Sales Rep at a SaaS Startup
Ah, the first sales rep. Being the first salesperson into a start-up in a rewarding — but very tough job: Your Founder Boss likely will never have managed a salesperson before. She likely won’t know what you are supposed to do 40+ hours a week. Your Founder Boss may have strong views on what you […]
Jyoti Bansal and The AppDynamics Story: From Idea to $3.7B (Video + Transcript)
Jyoti Bansal, Founder & Chairman of AppDynamics joined Jason Lemkin on stage at SaaStr Annual 2017 to give us the inside scoop on his 11th-hour decision to sell to Cisco rather than going public — and the path he took to get IPO-ready. Jason opened the ‘17 Annual with an acknowledgment of the global nature […]
Last Minute Tips & Tricks for The SaaStr Annual!
It’s almost here. The 2017 SaaStr Annual. Just a few extra last minute tips: It Will Be Packed. We’ll have ~10,000 nominal attendees which realistically means about 5,000 on-site at any given time at the Bill Graham (not everyone will be there at all times, etc). The Bill Graham is a super fun venue, the […]
Why The Law of Large Numbers is Just an Excuse
Everyone has tough quarters, and usually, at least one tough year (more on that here). As we approach $10m, and then again as we approach $20m, and then again as we approach $X0m … we often blame a factor that I believe rarely is really real — The Law of Large Numbers. The Law of […]
The Top 10 Worst Pieces of SaaS Advice
Advice is very context sensitive, so take this post with a grain of salt. But for me, it’s “Blue Monday” … so I thought I’d take a stab at the Top 10 Pieces of Classic SaaS Advice … that in my experience at least are usually Just Plain Wrong. The advice and thinking that leads you […]
10 SaaS New Year Resolutions For You. A Pick List.
So you had a great December, added a great VP or two last year, won some bigger deals, and in general — you’re feeling good. You’ve even got a decent financial plan for this year in place. Even better. With all that behind you … let me challenge you to 10 SaaS New Years Resolutions. […]
Time Doesn’t Kill All Deals. But It Puts Them At Risk.
There’s a little bit of death-by-a-hundred cuts that many SaaS companies box themselves into. As they scale, they get out of the hackey way they do contracts, NDAs, proposals, and other documents. They have their controller, then their VP of Finance, then their CFO review things, then hand off to the General Counsel. Which takes […]
Josh Stein, Partner @ DFJ: What Makes a Great SaaS CEO (Video + Transcript)
As a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Josh Stein has invested in some of the most well-known SaaS companies in the world like Box and Yammer and spent plenty of time with truly remarkable SaaS CEOs. In this session he and Jason Lemkin sit down and dive into what really makes a great CEO, and how that […]
A Newbie’s Guide to Dreamforce. Hint: You Can Go For Free. And You Will Learn at Ton.
Next week is the largest SaaS event on Planet Earth: Salesforce’s Dreamforce. (The SaaStr Annual ’17 will be #2). I’ve been going since 2005, from ’06-’11 as a vendor, and ’12-today as a participant / speaker / etc. I went first in ’05, when I knew nothing about SaaS. Back then, I think it just […]
7 Things We’ve Learned in Hybrid Revenue SaaS
By Tony Knopp, CEO & Co-Founder of InviteManager, which makes planning your client entertainment easy. Building an enterprise SaaS is a challenging proposition. Doing so with a services business attached can be even more interesting. Here are seven things we’ve learned about building, raising money for, and growing an enterprise SaaS with a hybrid services […]
My First Big Sales Deal
In my first start-up, I was mostly hunting whales — seven figure and eight figure deals. I had no experience doing any of this. For our First Big Customer, we’d been negotiating a $6m/year contract for quite some time (they always take time). We finally had the “all hands” meeting with all the C-level and […]
Dharmesh Shah of Hubspot: From Day 0 to IPO. What Went to Plan. What Most Certainly Didn’t (Video + Transcript)
In anticipation of the upcoming SaaStr Annual 2017, we’ll be releasing the full series of transcripts and videos from all the awesome 2016 sessions. There are rules in starting an enterprise software company. You will fail if you: 1) try to build a suite of products out of the gate, 2) focus solely on SMBs, or 3) […]
Why Some SaaS Companies Stall Out at $20m ARR
Part of my job when I invest in a start-up is to get folks excited about the company. It’s not that hard. Because I am genuinely excited. Or I wouldn’t make the investment . And part of the picture I try to paint for the The Next Investor is where they’ll be in 12-18 months. E.g., […]
