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 […]
Don’t Fear Business Process Change. It’s (Usually) a Good Thing.
Recently I was having a discussion, not quite a debate, but a discourse with an extremely smart VC — far smarter than me — who was relatively new to SaaS, having spent more time in B2C. Like a lot of folks tip-toeing from B2C to SaaS, his first stop was in freemium. He was obsessed with […]
Customer Success Is A Single Digit Hire
We’ve talked on SaaStr about leaning in on Customer Success as much as possible. We’ve walked through why Second Order Revenue (i.e., the revenue ultimately generated or supported by Customer Success) is the key to growing a SaaS business. We’ve talked about how all the Second Timers are hiring in customer success way early, ahead of sales, […]
Avoiding Poor SaaS Customer Alignment
When I’m not completely absorbed with my agile marketing software startup, I do a bit of SaaS consulting on the side. SaaS colleagues come to me with a wide variety of problems from positioning to sales compensation to churn analysis, but lately I’ve noticed a common theme: poor SaaS customer alignment. SaaS businesses develop intimate, […]
Kindred Disciplines: Growth Equity and Growth Hacking
Growth hacking is now a mainstream term in tech circles, particularly those that are consumer-focused. Growth hackingdefinitions abound, but generally emphasize a data driven, creative and flexibly opportunistic approach to customer acquisition. Many would argue that growth hacking is simply a new term for an old concept – marketing. While the functions, tools and skills […]
The Metrics-Driven SaaS Business | New Ebook!
The SaaS community has gained a solid understanding of SaaS financial metrics, as well as many of the operational principles required to achieve them. However, there has always been an obvious gap between what happens on the top line and what happens on the ground. This is about to change! The SaaS industry is maturing […]
The SaaS Metrics Maturity Model
Becoming a Metrics-driven SaaS Business is no easy task. It takes time, commitment and plenty of customers. However, the financial rewards of moving beyond standard SaaS financial metrics to SaaS customer success metrics and ultimately to sophisticated predictive analytics are significant. Each step toward SaaS metrics greatness builds upon the last. The stages of development […]
Driving SaaS Customer Acquisition with Success Metrics
As a SaaS business matures, the importance and value of SaaS metrics increase. Most SaaS businesses begin their journey down the SaaS metrics path by tracking recurring revenue in relation to customer acquisition costs. After building a solid customer base, churn becomes a priority. These fundamental SaaS metrics are all apparent in the standard SaaS […]
The Promise of SaaS Customer Success Metrics
Over the past few years, the SaaS community has gained a solid understanding of SaaS financial metrics, as well as many of the operational principles required to achieve them. However, there has always been an obvious gap between what happens on the top line and what happens on the ground. It’s one thing to claim […]
Bluenose Enables the Metrics-driven SaaS Business
We are witnessing a dramatic change in the way SaaS businesses are managed. While SaaS financial metrics, such as recurring revenue, acquisition cost, service cost, churn, growth and lifetime value have dramatically increased our understanding of the economics of SaaS businesses, they have proven inadequate for managing them. As useful as they may be, SaaS […]
The Metrics-driven SaaS Business
My first serious lesson in the criticality of SaaS metrics was about six years ago when I was unexpectedly stumped in a board of directors meeting. I had just presented the booking plan for the year and one of the Director’s in the meeting said that the plan was good, but we really needed to […]
Your Customer Success Team. Hire Early. And No Squishy Goals — It’s All About the Numbers.
If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Client Success team. This one isn’t nearly as risky as a VP of Sales, or a VP of Marketing hire. If you hire a great, experienced Client Success leader as your first hire here, and you like him/her, and […]
