When to Stop Doing It All Yourself
Perhaps the biggest difference between most first-time founders and most second-time founders is how long they try to do it all themselves. This isn’t a criticism first time you usually sort of have to. You have less capital to hire a team, and less experience building teams. But then after that there are at least […]
One Tough (But Rewarding) Job: Being the First Sales Rep at a SaaS Startup
Ah, the first sales rep. Being the first salesperson into a start-up in a rewarding — but very tough job: Your Founder Boss likely will never have managed a salesperson before. She likely won’t know what you are supposed to do 40+ hours a week. Your Founder Boss may have strong views on what you […]
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 […]
Don’t Let Them (Your Best Employees) Go
Now that a handful of next-generation SaaS companies have IPO’d, you can start to see the turnover more viscerally that you can observer at quieter, privately-held start-ups. You see the VPs moving on. 6-12 months after almost any IPO, and especially after one that doesn’t create a slew of millionaires … folks leave. It’s a […]
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 […]
When the Player-Coach is Just That. And No More.
We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about not screwing up that VP of Sales hire. Done right, it will accelerate your company to the next level. Done wrong — you can lose the better part of a year, and half of your last round of capital. And we’ve talked a lot about the trade-offs in […]
SaaS Financial Plan 2.0 (from Christoph Janz)
Recently on SaaStr, we did an important post on a simple Trailing Four Month Financial Model. This is one of my best hacks. If you average the growth rate over your last four months, and keep updating it — you’ll have a real-time model that keeps you honest. More on that here. But what about just […]
