An Insider’s Guide to Convertible Debt vs. Equity
In the annals of Blog Posts About Things I Don’t Care About, Convertible Debt versus Equity is high on the Top 10 List. It’s not higher than How to Have a Great Bored [sic] Meeting, but it’s high up there. I mean, whatever, right? All that matters is investing in great companies at a fair, […]
One Simple Paragraph Every Entrepreneur Should Add to Their Convertible Notes
I’m so tired of seeing young entrepreneurs get screwed by their angel investors on convertible notes and I know I can’t convince you not to do it so I’d like to offer one simple bit of advice to help you avoid getting screwed (at least on one part of your note). When you do a […]
Join Us Live on FounderLine Today at 5pm PST
At 5pm today, grab a beer or a bourbon or a cappucino (you know you’ll be ready for a break by then anyway) and join me on FounderLine. You can ask questions live and/or Tweet them in. Click here just before to join us, and/or submit any and all questions here ahead of time: Submit a […]
Come to the SaaStr Annual and Make a Week of It
It’s not often you get an opportunity to join 5,000 of your peers in SaaS in one location for a week. Sure we gather at Dreamforce, wave as we run across Moscone to our next customer meeting or maybe catch up for 5 minutes at one of the 17 parties that night, but rarely do […]
What is The Best Way to Explain Your Startup?
The best way to get across what your startup does is through video, too. In 30-90 seconds you can use visuals, story-telling, music, stats and humor to get across your message
A Quiet Plan B For When The Good Times Are a Smidge Less Good
“So my answer was: Nothing. No change.”
The Most Important Advice I Could Give You About Unicorns
The thing about narratives is that they drive behavior in ways that are more powerful and profound than people readily acknowledge – for good and bad.
Why Lawsuits Are On the Rise at Startups and What To Do About It
Lawsuits. I’m so tired of the nature of the legal system in the United States where bullying, intimidation and mobster-like shake-downs are becoming prevalent. As I write these words I already imagine my next deposition in which I’m asked to read this out loud. Lawsuits are becoming so prevalent these days. Even when I’m not […]
Why VCs Need Unicorns Just to Survive
One of the most tiring things for founders can be always being compared to Unicorns. Certainly sometimes it’s inspirational. I loved it when many of the founders I work with came out of the ’15 SaaStrAnnual saying they needed to grow faster, at a Zenefits-like level: But the reality is there are different ways to make […]
Just Remember, We Don’t Really Need Any More SaaS Products. Then You’ll Do Far Better.
I guess in some ways SaaStr is a digest of mistakes we all make in recurring revenue businesses, how to avoid them, or at least, make fewer. There’s one important mistake folks tend to make consistently in the early days. It’s the mistake of thinking anyone, any company, actually needs their product. And because they […]
Aaron Levie of Box: “If We Just Sold to Silos-in-the-Enterprise, We’d Only Be a $25,000,000 Business”
Missed the 2015 SaaStr Annual? We’ve got your back. We’ll do a series where we publish both the videos and full transcripts of all the sessions. First up is Aaron Levie of Box, where we had a wide-ranging, 45 minute deep dive on how Box scaled from $0 to $250m in ARR. As you’re reading […]
Building the Cult of You
You may have noticed LinkedIn recently made its largest acquisition so far, of Lynda.com for $1.5 billion. If you haven’t heard of Lynda.com, it’s a SaaS / subscription service for training and e-learning. One thing to note is who its co-founder is: Lynda Weinman. The Wall Street Journal called her “the mother of the Internet.” […]
Don’t Worry About Losing All Your Investors’ Money
In both my start-ups, I was constantly worried about losing all my investors’ money. The first time, my first start-up which we haven’t talked about, NanoGram Devices, I mainly worried about it because I realized we’d almost never have enough capital to achieve our long-term goals. So, FBOW, we sold for $50,000,000 after 12.5 months. […]
See How Far Your VPs Can Take You. You May Be Surprised.
The other day, I met with a great founder who talked with me about how he was about to top his VP of Sales. This VP had gotten him from $0 to $1.5m in ARR in pretty short order, recruiting a great small team of reps under her, and had really nailed the formula. But […]
Your VP Sales Has a Sales Quota. Your VP Marketing Needs a Lead Quota. Period.
A ways back, we did an extremely popular post entitled, Hire the Right Type of VP Marketing or You’ll Just End Up With a Bunch of Blue Pens with Your Logo On Them. The basic idea was to help folks who haven’t hired a VP or Director of Marketing hire the right one for a […]
