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 […]
What Can You Learn From Ring’s Astounding Success?
Many people will write the history on why Ring became an enormously successful company and why it became a real-world unicorn in a world when many startups are anointed that merely on paper. Since I had a ringside seat to the company before it really existed all the way through the end I thought I’d […]
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 […]
How I Became a Tech Evangelist
Two questions I get asked quite often are: 1. How did you get to be where you are with your blogging? You’re not a native English speaker, nor a trained writer…. 2. What kind of name is “iamondemand?” So I figured it’s time to share my “tech evangelist” story. (In the feature picture of this […]
Comcast: How customer experience drives product development
Customer experience is one of those buzzwords that has come to mean anything, everything, and yet nothing at all. Although hype-mongers and tricksters have co-opted customer experience, in truth, the concept is profoundly important. At its heart, customer experience means all touchpoints or interactions between an organization or brand and its customers. It’s a simple […]
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. […]
What Happens When Startups Turn from Their Innovation Stage to Operational Excellence?
Nearly every successful tech startup I’ve observed over the past 20 years has gone through a similar growth pattern: Innovate, systematize then scale operations. An alternate outcome that I also unfortunately observer in some cases are companies who had extreme early success with an initial product adoption but failed in key areas that limited the […]
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 […]
