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 […]
Why Culture is a Key Criterion for Raising Capital and Driving Growth with Idinvest partners (Video + Transcript)
What are you doing to build and maintain the culture in your startup? Or has culture been put on the backburner as you have scaled? Well, it’s time to put culture at the forefront of your startup if you are looking for more funding in 2019. Jonathan Userovici, VC at Idinvest Partners, talks about culture […]
Building Great SaaS Companies Everywhere with SaaStr and Point Nine Capital (Video + Transcript)
Jason Lemkin, Founder & CEO at SaaStr and Christoph Janz, Partner at Point Nine Capital, had an opening session at SaaStr Europe earlier this year. They talk about the state of SaaS, pros and cons of SF vs Europe and more. Also, if you didn’t attend SaaStr Europa, we’re doing it bigger and better in […]
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 […]
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 Simple Rule on When to Build a “Custom” Feature
“Custom” features … I feel this is perhaps the point founders get the worst advice of all. Especially from VCs, B2C folks, and folks that have never sold bigger deals and into the enterprise. One-off customization per se is bad. This is SaaS, not a services business. But Being paid a lot to build something […]
Last Minute Tips & Tricks for The SaaStr Annual!
It’s almost here. The 2017 SaaStr Annual. Just a few extra last minute tips: It Will Be Packed. We’ll have ~10,000 nominal attendees which realistically means about 5,000 on-site at any given time at the Bill Graham (not everyone will be there at all times, etc). The Bill Graham is a super fun venue, the […]
Why The Law of Large Numbers is Just an Excuse
Everyone has tough quarters, and usually, at least one tough year (more on that here). As we approach $10m, and then again as we approach $20m, and then again as we approach $X0m … we often blame a factor that I believe rarely is really real — The Law of Large Numbers. The Law of […]
The Top 10 Worst Pieces of SaaS Advice
Advice is very context sensitive, so take this post with a grain of salt. But for me, it’s “Blue Monday” … so I thought I’d take a stab at the Top 10 Pieces of Classic SaaS Advice … that in my experience at least are usually Just Plain Wrong. The advice and thinking that leads you […]
Time Doesn’t Kill All Deals. But It Puts Them At Risk.
There’s a little bit of death-by-a-hundred cuts that many SaaS companies box themselves into. As they scale, they get out of the hackey way they do contracts, NDAs, proposals, and other documents. They have their controller, then their VP of Finance, then their CFO review things, then hand off to the General Counsel. Which takes […]
A Newbie’s Guide to Dreamforce. Hint: You Can Go For Free. And You Will Learn at Ton.
Next week is the largest SaaS event on Planet Earth: Salesforce’s Dreamforce. (The SaaStr Annual ’17 will be #2). I’ve been going since 2005, from ’06-’11 as a vendor, and ’12-today as a participant / speaker / etc. I went first in ’05, when I knew nothing about SaaS. Back then, I think it just […]
Small Deals at Large Companies. Hooray!! And 100% At Risk.
Every customer you close, the next day, is at risk of churn. A month-to-month customer can basically cancel anytime. An annual contract customer can sort of cancel anytime, but really probably won’t for a year, or even 3 (more on why Year 3 is the biggest risk for bigger customers here). You know this, of […]
e-Staff Meetings and 1-on-1s: You Gotta Do Them
For the first time in my career, I’ve worked with amazing first-time managers as CEOs. Before I was a CEO, I was a mid-level manager, a director. And then a VP. Across a few start-ups. Before I was first a founder. Those management team weren’t perfect, and I wouldn’t copy everything they did. But at […]
