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Samsara S-1: How 7 Key Benchmarks Stack Up

Tom Tunguz

Founded by Sanjit Biswas, former CEO at Meraki and John Bicket former CTO at Meraki[link] Samsara builds software to manage physical operations: truck fleets, mining, food & beverage, oil & gas. The first is the company sell 3 or 5 year contracts that are non-refundable and non-cancellable at relatively small ACVs of $35k.

CTO Hire 343
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Top 10 GTM Mistakes Founders Make Again … and Again with SaaStr’s Jason Lemkin 

SaaStr

They hire a VP of Sales who doesn’t want to sell or learn the product. You also don’t want to hire a VP of Sales who won’t carry a bag. If you joined a startup at $2M and wanted to get to $6M with reps doing $400k, that VP of Sales would need to hire ten reps. 90% of the time, sales falls when a founder steps out of it.

CTO Hire 207
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80 Founders Share The Moment They Knew … When They Really Had Something

SaaStr

— Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) February 6, 2021. ” — Jason Riedel, founder/CTO of Aspireship. “When on New Year’s Eve, customers kept sending us signed contracts.” “When on New Year’s Eve, customers kept sending us signed contracts.” 20% conversion. 20% conversion.

CTO Hire 277
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5 Interesting Learnings from Amplitude at $150,000,000 in ARR

SaaStr

There, Amplitude has become part of the core product stack for many SaaS and software leaders for product analytics. They were founded in 2011 and IPO’d ten years later in 2021 at $150,000,000 in ARR, growing 57%, and have rocketed to a $7B+ valuation. From 41% in 2020 to 51% in 2021! 5 Interesting Learnings: #1.

Scale 266
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Bet On Up-and-Comers. But Add One Veteran For Each $10m ARR.

SaaStr

. — Elkanah Carnell Reed (@ElkanahReed) April 6, 2021. The first type is the kind of management team hired by second+ time founders. And if you are, you are going to naturally start off hiring up-and-comers to your first leadership team. That CTO that doesn’t quite have the traditional background.

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SaaStr is Turning 10! How a Blog Turned into A Global SaaS Community for 250,000+

SaaStr

Fast forward 1 year, 8 digital events, and 2 shots later, we announced in May 2021 that SaaStr Annual 2021 was on ! We had Lew Cirne, Founder & CEO of New Relic, Dharmesh Shah, Co-Founder & CTO of HubSpot and for the first time at Annual, we added office hours with the top VCs in SaaS. We took it outside.

Scale 281
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The Cold, Hard Truths About SaaS In 2023: Part 1 AMA with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

SaaStr

Startups come in all shapes and sizes on various stages of a timeline, yet it’s not surprising how many have the same questions and concerns about how to scale from x to y to z, the right time to hire and fire, and how to keep a team motivated during hard times. Then things got worse in 2021 because everything was easier.

CTO Hire 172