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 […]
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 […]
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) […]
How to Avoid Being Replaced as CEO by Your VCs
Worried about a bunch of VCs replacing you? You should be a little worried, probably. Just the other day, a CEO that I know fairly well was fired by a VC. Strange thing was, the VC didn’t talk to the rest of the board. Who didn’t agree. So he got un-fired. Awk. Ward. CEOs getting […]
The Difference Between Very, Very Good Founders. And Truly Great Founders.
I consider myself a “Magna Cum Laude Minus” founder. Nothing I’ve done has ever failed (although I’ve almost failed many times). I returned 5x to my investors — twice. Look, that’s pretty good. And I think I was a pretty good CEO. But not the very, very best. And I didn’t really know what […]
Faking Being in the Bay Area
There’s an endless and lively debate about the advantage of being in the SF Bay Area in SaaS. I’ve done 22 investments. The vast majority got started outside of SF, and all but 2 moved here. I’ve invested in founders from Paris (3x), Estonia, Portugal, London, Sweden, Belgium, Washington D.C., Chicago, New York, and more. […]
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 […]
So Your App Is Just a “Nice to Have”
In the old days, folks would criticize start-ups as “just a feature”. Oh Google/Salesforce/Microsoft will just build that. Back in the day when the world was a desktop OS, there was a lot of truth to that. When the web became our OS, that started to fade. The reality is, in SaaS, Salesforce has built […]
Raising More Than $20m in Venture Capital? It’s All Good — If You Are Even Better Than Box
For the past few years, it’s been pretty confusing trying to understand what’s going on in SaaS fundraising. Starting in ’13 through mid-’15, rounds dramatically grew in size and pace, and dozens of unicorns were minted. Things then slowed down dramatically in Q1 ’16, as the SaaS public markets crashed … and then recovered in […]
At $50k in MRR, Running Out of Money Is No Longer an Excuse
We’ve talked a lot about SaaStr on the challenges in getting from nothing to that first $1m-$1.5m in ARR, “Initial Traction”. That is takes longer than you think. That if you get 10 customers, you can get another 10, 100, and so on. There’s a particular moment in time I want to focus on here […]
Quality of Life: What Does It Mean For A Start-Up?
Recently, I spent several hours with a new but great friend who has been on a vaguely similar journey to me. This friend is one of the hardest working people in the industry. 20×7, near as I can tell. On jets. Investing at a breathtaking pace. Innundated with calls, Slacks, emails, and all the rest. […]
My 4 Year Anniversary. Thoughts on Selling Your Company.
So I’ve sold thrice. Twice as a founder, once as part of the management team of a start-up. And been through one failed Web 1.0 IPO. I’ve learned a lot. One time, the sale was clearly a friggin’ mistake. We sold to eToys for $900 million on paper, instead of a more complex deal with […]
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. […]
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 […]
