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. […]
5 Tips To Make The Journey More Fun
Really, there’s nothing I’ve done in my life that is harder than being a founder CEO. Nothing. It’s 100x harder than being a VP. Even if the actual work is easier. It’s 100x harder than being a VC. Even if delivering top returns as a VC is maybe even harder than as a founder. But I […]
SaaStr Podcast on Time, Core Metrics and More on “Million Dollar Insights”
Do you podcast? If so, Cara Hogan of InsightSquared has kicked off a great SaaS podcast series of which I was fortune enough to participate. We talked quite a bit about the learnings on the SaaS Journey. Feel free to listen below or download on iTunes here. The draft notes and script I used (we went […]
One Weird Trick to Build a Personal Brand
My long-time friend Jason Lemkin is on the verge of launching a spectacular SaaS conference called SaaStr this week. What Jason has achieved in no time flat in VC is astounding. Without inventing the browser he has single-handedly created a personal VC brand on a shoestring. And as I’ve written about before – building a […]
All These Enterprise IPOs: Why It’s Just Getting Good. Why These are The Best of Times for SaaS.
Reading the tech press you might get the sense that The Enterprise is something they are sort of forced to write about because it’s having a good run. We had a great Consumer run, a nice set of Multi-Billion Dollar deals around Social Networking, a WhatsApp/Snapchat fad around mobile messaging, an Alibaba, Instacart, Fab-ulous e-commerce […]
The Low Viral Coefficient of SaaS, And Why That’s Just Fine
We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about how to get from $1m to $10m, $2m to $5m, $10m to $30m, etc. etc. One area we haven’t talked as much about is getting from say $100k in ARR to Initial Traction, or $1-$2m in ARR. A bit, but not as much. The reason is while I […]
Don’t Fire Your “Worst” Customers. Hire Them a Psychiatrist Instead.
There’s a lot of Internet advice that makes a lot of sense, but not necessarily in SaaS. Somewhat bad advice that entrepreneurs share again and again, without having really tested the ideas behind that advice. One bit of advice you hear again and again, that I 93% disagree with, is “Fire The Customers That Don’t […]
SaaStr on RedditAMA (“Ask Me Anything”) Tomorrow, Th 3/27, at 2pm PST
If you have time, tomorrow at 2pm PST I’ll be online at Reddit answering your questions on SaaS, or I guess, about just about anything. Since it’s called Ask Me Anything. I’ve set aside at least 2 hours so if you want to ask anything you haven’t gotten an answer to, please come by and […]
Is 5x the New 2x in SaaS?
Back in 2012, when the SaaStr audience was about 1/30th of what it is today, I wrote a post that a lot of folks didn’t like: ”Workday is Growing 90% this Year. At $250m in ARR. So Wake Up: You Probably Need to Do A Lot, Lot Better.“ In fact, it was the first post […]
Don’t Ever Make Anyone “Head of Sales / Marketing / Engineering / Whatever” in SaaS
A few months ago, I gave a great SaaS Founder CEO a Gift. A real gift. This founder CEO was at about $1m in ARR, doing well, but with only a smidge of angel funding and limited resources. And I gave him an insanely great VP of Sales candidate. An amazing fit for his company, […]
I’m Presenting at Dreamforce. Right Before Marissa Mayer. Come See the Hottest Two Speakers at Dreamforce ’13.
OK maybe SaaStr doesn’t quite have the following of Marissa Mayer. But it’s a solid pairing, don’t you think? In any event … If you are in SaaS and haven’t been to Dreamforce before, let’s stop the discussion here: You Should Go to Dreamforce. You need to Go. Why? Dreamforce is the #1 largest SaaS […]
The $2 Million Dollar Man (/Woman): How to Think About Scaling Your Customer Success Team
In SaaS, there are a lot of great “rules” that do make sense overall but can be confusing or borderline misleading at times. E.g., Sales +Marketing Expenses < First Year ACV = Success? Great rule — at Scale. But maybe not while you are scaling. E.e.g., if Churn > 2% = Bad, Just Terrible. Well […]
An Initial Sales Rep Comp Plan to Lower Your Stress Level, Increase Cash, and Make Everyone a Lot of Money
I’m not ashamed to admit that when I set up our first SaaS comp plan, I had no idea what I was doing. In my first start-up, yes I sold to the enterprise. I sold $6m our first year (man, that sounds good looking back on it). But I did all the sales myself, and […]
Don’t Confuse Room at the Bottom with Disruption
Recently, a very wise VC asked me what I thought about a small but scrappy competitor in the space of my last company, EchoSign. I told him I didn’t know the company that well, but from what I’d seen, some things might seem appealing. I bet the freemium metrics appeared good, with positive growth and […]
When Big Companies Can Kill You. And When They Can’t.
I remember every day, every moment, of both my start-ups with hyper-lucidity. But a few moments especially stand out. Those times when BigCo calls you up to their fancy office, and tells you they are going to enter your space and kill you. It happened to me twice at EchoSign. I’m not going to share […]
