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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Defense contractor: IT must embrace radical transparency and culture change
Although innovation and being responsive to customers is the lifeblood of every technology organization, maintaining the spark of innovation inside a large company is hard. To gain insight into how to drive change and innovation at a large company, I spoke with a senior executive at L3 Technologies, which is the eighth largest defense contractor […]
Be Careful Not to Lose Twice
There are times to fight. No great startup has been built without getting one’s knuckles bloody at times. This is especially true because incumbents now know how much is at stake when they let a startup get a huge head start in a market. So if you’re in a battle, if you’re right, if you […]
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 […]
CIO playbook: Citizen development is your ‘most important’ tool
A citizen developer in action. Photo by Michael Krigsman. The topic of low-code platforms and citizen development has come up a lot lately during my discussions with Chief Information Officers. Given the mandate to innovate while spending less money, interest in this topic is not surprising. The heart of citizen development is giving knowledgeable end-users […]
CIO playbook: Citizen development is your ‘most important’ tool
A citizen developer in action. Photo by Michael Krigsman. The topic of low-code platforms and citizen development has come up a lot lately during my discussions with Chief Information Officers. Given the mandate to innovate while spending less money, interest in this topic is not surprising. The heart of citizen development is giving knowledgeable end-users […]
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. […]
Artificial intelligence: McKinsey talks workforce, training, and AI ethics
As I talk with the many extraordinary guests on CXOTalk, an interview discussion forum that brings together the most innovative thinkers in the world, three key business aspects of artificial intelligence have emerged. First, AI is a vague umbrella concept that ties together data and a set of technologies, such as pattern recognition and other […]
