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 […]
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 […]
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) […]
Cornerstone OnDemand’s Kirsten Helvey: Scaling from 30-1,500 in SaaS: Lessons From the Frontlines (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. In this session, Jason Lemkin receives some valuable insight from Kirsten Helvey, COO of Cornerstone OnDemand, a cloud-based learning and talent management solutions provider. Drawing from her 11 years of experience […]
Marketo: Winning, IPOing, and Going Upmarket (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. We were super excited to have Phil Fernandez, CEO and co-founder of Marketo, sit down and talk to us about the triumphs (and struggles) leading Marketo from inception to IPO. Phil […]
Mamoon Hamid of Social+Capital: Why Sh*t Really Gets Funded (Video + transcript)
We’re publishing the full series of both the videos and transcripts from all of the SaaStr Annual 2015 sessions (check out the Zenefits and Slack/Yammer posts if you missed them). Today we’ve got Mamoon Hamid, Co-founder and General Partner at Social+Capital, an early stage Venture Capital firm that funds breakthrough healthcare, education, financial services, mobile, and enterprise software companies. Mamoon has […]
David Sacks (Yammer) Stewart Butterfield (Slack): Unicorns or Bust
Missed the 2015 SaaStr Annual? We’ve got you covered! We’re publishing the full series of both the videos and transcripts from all of the 2015 sessions. Today we’ve got David Sacks, Co-founder of PayPal and Yammer, now COO at Zenefits, and Stewart Butterfield, President/Co-founder of Slack, where we had a wide-ranging, 40 minute discussion on […]
Andy Wilson, CEO of Logikcull: “8 Things Learned Going from a Services Business to a SaaS Business”
Earlier this year, I violated Yet Another Rule of Venture Capital. Don’t invest in services businesses, They Say — and that includes SaaS businesses that born out of services business. Yes, Hootsuite and others have made this transition work well in the end, growing out of agencies and the like. But generally, they say, founders that come […]
Gadi Shamia, COO of Talkdesk: “8 Things I Learned After Joining a Hyper-Growth SaaS Startup”
One of the things I want to do between the ’15 SaaStr Annual, the SaaStr blog, and the ’16 Annual is do true, longitudinal, hands-on SaaS case studies. Not just one-and-done podcasts, posts, and the like. But to go further, to check in repeatedly with (x) very successful, (y) soon-to-be very successful, and (z) pre-successful SaaS […]
We All Get To Our First 50 Customers Our Own Way. Then It’s All The Same.
Recently I was fortunate enough to moderate the founders panel at BoxDev ’15. We had 5 great founder-CEOs on the panel, all post-Initial Traction (all 50+ employees), but with very diverse backgrounds and stories. Everyone got to $1m in ARR a different way. Some were first timers, several were second timers. I don’t think […]
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 […]
In SaaS, Your Burn Rate is Muchly a Function of Your Chosen Competition
I’ve been doing this SaaS thing for a solid decade now, with some success, and plenty of mistakes, and yet there are some questions that are at some level, almost a mystery, mostly around “average” CACs and “average” burn rates in SaaS: Why was Veeva able to burn only ~$10m net on its way to an IPO? […]
The Second-Timers: Mark Organ, CEO/Founder of Influitive and Eloqua: “10 Hard-Won Lessons”
We’ve had a lot of fun with our Second-Timers series, from successful SaaS CEOs who are now on their second SaaS company. It started with our overview here, and since then, we’ve had Lessons Learned for The Second Time from Nick Mehta from Gainsight, Kris Duggan from Betterworks, and more. Up next is one of […]
You’ll Know in One Sales Cycle If Your VP Sales Won’t Work Out: Four Case Studies.
Just about a year ago, we did a post that proved, at the time, to be somewhat controversial. That in Just 30 Days, or at least, just one full sales cycle — you’ll know if your VP Sales isn’t going to work out. This isn’t intuitive, and is something I had to learn the hard way. […]
Customer Focus: the Constellation Supernova Awards
Constellation Research, founded by fellow Enterprise Irregular and star analyst Ray Wang has just announced the ambitious Supernova Awards program, focusing on – what a twist! – customer champions of innovation, rather than vendors. Krish and I both feel honored to have been invited as Judges for the Cloud Computing category. Below is the official […]
