7 Things We’ve Learned in Hybrid Revenue SaaS
By Tony Knopp, CEO & Co-Founder of InviteManager, which makes planning your client entertainment easy. Building an enterprise SaaS is a challenging proposition. Doing so with a services business attached can be even more interesting. Here are seven things we’ve learned about building, raising money for, and growing an enterprise SaaS with a hybrid services […]
Why Some SaaS Companies Stall Out at $20m ARR
Part of my job when I invest in a start-up is to get folks excited about the company. It’s not that hard. Because I am genuinely excited. Or I wouldn’t make the investment . And part of the picture I try to paint for the The Next Investor is where they’ll be in 12-18 months. E.g., […]
Do You Have a Weak Investor Syndicate?
Now that we’re in a Touch Less than The Best of Times, an important but subtle issue is coming up for a lot of start-ups. A Weak Investor Syndicate. What does this mean? A Weak Investor or Syndicate, or group of investors: Is all tapped out and has no more money to invest in […]
Right Co-Founder … Wrong CEO
On the investing side of life, the toughest meeting of all for me at least is probably the Right Co-Founder, Wrong CEO start-up. Great product, driven team, good early product-market fit, great vision. Check, check, check and check. But clearly — the Other Co-Founder should be CEO. I always have to pass. And I […]
The Power of a Blank Page
This week was jam packed with Board meetings. During one of them, I experienced a presentation tactic I had not seen before. Before sharing the tactic, a brief word on board meetings and presentations. Board meetings are necessary, frequently productive, but all too often miss the mark in terms of their focus. Many Board meetings I attend […]
Meet the winners of the US video competition
The envelope please… And the winners for the SaaSiest startups in the US are… Startups from all over the US created videos telling the SaaStr community why they should win free tickets to the SaaStr Annual. We’d originally planned to award prizes to the top vote getters in 5 US regions, but since the […]
Meet 1:1 with a top SaaS investor at SaaStr Annual
Ok, we are SUPER excited about this one. We’ve lined up 50 of the best VCs in SaaS for a full day of 1:1 meetings with 150 lucky startups attending the SaaStr Annual. Each investor has committed to taking three 30 minute meetings on-site on Wednesday, February 10th. We’re pretty sure it’s unprecedented. But… This is an […]
Part 4 of “Predictable Revenue Guide to Tripling Your Sales” with Aaron Ross+SaaStr is Out Now
It’s getting there. The fourth and final part of the 1.0 version of the “Predictable Revenue Guide to Tripling Your Sales”, the SaaStr + Aaron Ross + SaaStr sequel to the original Predictable Revenue, is out now. You can download it here. The next step is a final revision of what we have on the way to […]
Come See 3 Epic Sessions at Dreamforce on Predictable Revenue, Benchmarking, and “The Best of SaaStr”
Salesforce has put together another pretty epic founder / entrepreneur track this year at Dreamforce. You can check out the schedule here. There are three sessions I wanted to highlight in particular, that I’ll either be at or leading. First, on Day One, Monday October 13 at 1:30pm, Aaron Ross, my good friend, colleague and […]
Money, Bonuses, “Customers That Waste My Time”, and Greed: You Get What You Pay For
There was one thing prospective sales reps would say in an interview that always chilled my spine. It would especially come from sales reps from larger companies in high-velocity in-bound environment (e.g., WebEx-type environments). They’d say this: “Those type of leads just Wasted My Time.” Sigh. Yes, I guess it’s technically true. If you’re a […]
How to Hire A Great VP Sales: The Full Video (and Transcript)
Recently in New York I was invited to give the keynote at the New York Enterprise Tech Meet-Up (thank you to John Lehr and Work-Bench for setting this up). It turned out to be a great event, with the maximum 250 capacity hit days earlier and unfortunately a lot of folks didn’t get to attend. […]
At About $2m in ARR, Every Great Hire Will Be Accretive.
Recently, I was talking to the CEO of a pretty successful SaaS company doing ~$3m in ARR, growing nicely, in a good space. Doing just fine. And he was proud he’d just hired a VP of Sales at a below-market rate. Dude. I told him. That’s a negative. Because at your size and growth rate, […]
SaaStr Hits The Big Apple: Keynote at Enterprise Tech Meetup this Wednesday, Office Hours, Work-Bench, More
Today SaaStr’s hit the Big Apple. I’ll be in town for several weeks, hanging out at Enterprise workspace / accelerator Work-Bench and a few other places around town. We’ll try to do a few events. First, this Wednesday, I’ll be doing the keynote at the New York Enterprise Tech Meetup, at Cooley LLP. I’ll be talking […]
If You Sell Your Company — Prioritize Dollars Over Prestige
Recently I did a founders-only event sponsored by ExitRound. It was off the record, so I won’t go into anything we spoke about. But there was one theme the audience told me from all 4 speakers. They didn’t know selling was so emotional. If you haven’t sold a start-up before, you think it’s a combination of […]
Acquisitions — If You Do Sell, Try to Make Sure It’s At a Local Maximum
Over the past 6 months or so, I’ve met with a series of entrepreneurs that turned down pretty attractive acquisition offers, relatively early in their lifecycle: SaaS Co. #1 turned down an $85m offer on $50k in MRR. SaaS Co. #2 turned down an $80m offer on $2.5m in ARR. SaaS Co. #3 turned down […]
