SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2021

Examples include AWS, Adobe, Microsoft, and Google Cloud. This early phase is where you’re still looking for that perfect product-market fit and scaling the product to market. Also, they had a direct sales team mainly selling to enterprises in a top-down sales motion. “[The And remember to scale. But it pays off!

Outsourcing Services 284

Outsourcing Services Scale Scaling Outsourced Development 284

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2024

Dear SaaStr: What are the best 5 points to improve poor sales performance? Here are my 5 simplest ideas to quickly improve sales performance. Concentrate leads in those who can close. Leads are too precious. Not to save money, but to concentrate the leads you do have in those that can close them. Let them go.

Scale 273

Scale Sales Hiring Sales AWS 273

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Scale. So for the audience, cloud giants are turbocharging startup sales, and the predominant reason for this is because they’re fundamentally changing IT budgets at the customers that we’re all selling to. AWS’s marketplace has seen 1.5 Rico Mallozzi, Sr.

Scale 259

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 259

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2023

Scaling Early-Stage to Hyper-Growth Companies With Ed Lenta, SVP and GM of Databricks Back in the early 2000s, people didn’t entirely accept that a virtual machine could be as good as a physical one. Ed Lenta, the SVP and GM of Databricks, had the rare opportunity of scaling three hypergrowth companies — VMware, AWS, and Databricks.

Scale 259

Scale Scaling AWS Sales Hiring 259

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

The team is typically highly cross-functional, working together with sales, product, engineering, and marketing, and the goal is to help the other teams make better decisions through data and financial modeling. In 2014, storage had historically been Dropbox’s most significant cost driver, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on AWS.

Scale 239

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 239

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2023

Whether you’re going from nothing to something or already scaling and thriving beyond $10-100M, healthy, sustainable growth in SaaS is on every founder’s mind. Cockroach Labs’ CEO Spencer Kimball shares hard-won lessons from scaling from $0 to $5B and his time as an angel investor for more than 80 different startups. Ideas Are Cheap.

Scale 243

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Cloud 243

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2022

With so many incredible sessions to choose from, we thought we’d highlight a few for you here: Building & Scaling Global Product Teams. Why Customer Success and Product Should be Best Friends: Lessons Learned with AWS’ Head of Customer Success Harini Gokul. Why Customer Success and Product Should be Best Friends.

AWS 246

AWS Customer Success Scale Sales Hiring 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 16, 2022

But even there, to truly scale, they went more enterprise and built out a full enterprise sales and marketing function. What works to get you leads? The magic is in getting them together, and inviting a bunch of prospects. And invite all your prospects and your customers. At least for a while. But I was wrong.

Scale 331

Scale Sales Hiring Marketing SaaS 331

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 30, 2020

Prior to HashiCorp Adam was the Head of Worldwide Developer Marketing at AWS and held senior positions at Pivotal, VMware, and SpringSource. My partner Astasia Myers will be leading the discussion. She writes often on topics like these on our blog Memory Leak.

Development 318

Development Scale AWS Scaling 318

Hitenism

NOVEMBER 7, 2016

In 2006, after Amazon Web Services (AWS) helped pioneer what we now call the cloud, product development changed forever. Today, one-third of daily internet users visit websites built on top of AWS. AWS is now an $11.5B Rewrite the blog post until you have something you’d be happy publishing.

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AWS New CTO Scale CTO 189

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Pursuing Two Different Segments: The Tale of Startups vs. Google Cloud Platform, on the other hand, is in a very different set that also competes with Microsoft, but AWS is considered their biggest competitor in the market. What they’re seeing with GenAI and Google Cloud is an opportunity to grab share from AWS.

Cloud 309

Cloud Scale AWS AI 309

SaaStr

APRIL 2, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: It’s Now Year 2 of the Venture Downturn Clawbacks and Tracking-to-Cash: Two Sales Management Tools to Be Thoughtful With 8 Things That Are Just Harder in SaaS Now Tier 1 VC is Great. But More Money May Be Even Better.

Scale 246

Scale AWS Scaling Enterprise 246

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

Many have used Digital Ocean at the cheaper, simpler version of AWS-Azure-Digital Ocean to get going fast and quickly. Or at least, maybe like many, tougher times meant holding the line on costs and people, leading to even more efficiency. But at scale, even the slightly less long version of the tail is where the money is.

Scale 291

Scale AWS Azure Cloud 291

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

So to serve both segments at the simultaneously, ZoomInfo has been rolling out a Product-led sales motion, that gives the ability for an SMB customer to sign up directly on their website for a free trial and grow into a paid customer, without ever having to talk to an sales rep or go through a demo process. So, what’s new at ZoomInfo?

New CTO 312

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring AWS 312

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

The SaaS sales model seems so well-established, as hundreds of founders build their businesses and raise funding. Mark Roberge, Founder of Stage 2 Capital and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School, shares insights from his years of experience into common SaaS sales missteps and how you can avoid them.

Sales Hiring 257

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 257

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2024

At Glasswing Ventures, they tell their AI-native companies not to lead with AI because it’s such a superficial indication of interest. When you take the data, you may have a business goal of making more sales or delighting the customer. What should founders know about the modern AI stack that Enterprises can scale on?

AI Search 287

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 287

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 20, 2021

So we’ve had a lot of fun in our 5 Interesting Learnings profiling the top SaaS and Cloud companies at scale, from Slack to Zoom, from Shopify to Datadog, from Box to DropBox. But are AWS, Azure and Google Cloud just too big for us to learn from? And it’s gone much more aggressive in its sales motions.

Cloud 294

Cloud Azure AWS Scale 294

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Why Now is a Great Time to Raise Seed Funding. Even If It’s Awful for Series A-E Rounds. SaaStr 628: Revenue Alignment: How to Pull Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Together with Divvy CRO Sterling Snow  2.

Sales Recruiting 244

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AWS 244

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

The Challenges and Pitfalls of a Partner Ecosystem Drata attributes much of its success to its partner ecosystem, which is an interesting case study for most, so how do they break up marketing, sales, and resource allocation vs. a more direct-sales modeled business? AWS can’t support 20 partners equally.

AWS 279

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 279

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2021

If you don’t think you need a great VP of Sales, Product, Marketing, Customer Success, and Engineering — then all that all that means is you’ve never worked with a great one. Here again, we have the same problems as the Customer Success lead hire, but worse. To me the first question is — do you have leads?

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 284

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

CloudKeeper from TO THE NEW, is a cloud spend optimization solution that guarantees to cut down your AWS bills by 5-15%. With CloudKeeper, we have helped 200+ of our customers optimize their AWS spend with a guaranteed reduction in their AWS bills. No lock-ins. Savings from Day 1. RI pricing for On-demand usage.

Cloud spend optimization 260

Cloud spend optimization AWS Scale compliance 260

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2023

In this post , SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin shared five super simple ways to generate more leads and grow your company that always work. Now, he has five more marketing strategies that are sure to generate more leads if done right. Now, go find 30 other prospects exactly like them. Customers and prospects will come.

Outsourcing Services 259

Outsourcing Services Scale Outsourced Development Marketing 259

SaaStr

AUGUST 3, 2024

Overall Cloud spending has bounced back off lows for sure: AWS at a $105B run rate growing 19% Quarterly YoY growth trends below. Yes, AI has fueled Nvidia and Google Cloud and Microsoft and AWS to massive growth, and growth that has accelerated the past few quarters. OneStream had an epic SaaS IPO at $500m ARR, growing 34%.

AWS 235

AWS Scale Social Media SaaS 235

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2020

An open discussion with Sam Blond, CSO at Brex, and Kristen Habacht, VPS at Atlassian, about adjusting their sales process during Covid-19. Kristen Habacht runs EDR sales at Atlassian, which I got a check today, $40 billion-$50 billion company. Four, people in the sale? Kristen Habacht: Well, there’s none in sales.

Merchant Services 259

Merchant Services Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 259

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2023

Still, always helpful to see how any leader does free to paid at scale. Spending a Hefty 50% of Revenue on Sales and Marketing. They spend a pretty high 50% of all revenue on sales and marketing — and that’s up from last year. And interesting to see they are growing the top of the funnel, Free, faster than Paid: #3.

Scale 258

Scale AWS Scaling Revenue 258

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2024

Seat Contractions Have Brought NRR Down From 120% to 111% While 111% NRR is still quite an engine at this scale, the drop in NRR from seat contractions explains a good chunk of the headwinds Okta has seen. #2. AWS alone generated $175m of contract value for Okta, growing 130%. Way, way too many startups focus 100% on direct sales.

Fractional VPE 282

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Scale SMB 282

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2022

Patricia Hanna, VP Americas Sales Ops @ Confluent. Shradha Kothari, Chief of Staff, SVP & GM North America Sales @ Twilio. Jen Dawson @ AWS. Dale Chang, Operations Partner @ Scale Venture Partners (panel). Patricia Hanna, VP Americas Sales Ops @ Confluent. Lars Nilsson, VP, Global Sales Development @ Snowflake.

CTO 280

CTO Scale New CTO AWS 280

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 25, 2021

The Intercom team is looking forward to showcasing our latest features and improvements to the world’s leading Business Messenger and powerful customer support product. Our leading customer communication platform is used by the most innovative companies worldwide, such as Unity, Spendesk, (add approved customer logos in here).

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AWS Scale Innovation Startup 198

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

Customers range from AWS skills-builder platforms with billions of users to Zoom using it for customers and employees. When a new sales leader comes in, they usually say the data is messed up, difficult to comprehend, and unclear about where leads are coming from. The bigger you scale, the harder this can be.

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Sales Hiring Scale SMB Outsourced Development 277

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2024

1: How Sales and Marketing Have Shifted Since 2020 Expectations and the types of people working in SaaS have shifted over the past few years, and much more in sales, marketing, and customer success. . #1: In the early days, back when SaaStr was just a blog and an email, it was a sense of creating meaning and contributing to the world.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Marketing Scale 302

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2024

One way is by talking to your customers and prospects. Either way, ensure the demand gen team sits down with sales and decides which accounts to go after. Ensure you’re aligned with the sales team on what you want to accomplish as you go upmarket and build these demand gen strategies. #2: How do you figure that out?

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Sales Hiring Scale SMB compliance 300

SaaStr

MAY 31, 2023

AWS is seeing this, and so is Snowflake. But it’s the $1M+ ones that are fueling the big numbers at this scale. Also you can see sales & marketing headcount is basically flat, while hiring is almost all in engineering / R&D. So when CFOs and others tighten budgets, they’ll also try to buy less Snowflake.

Headcount 246

Headcount Scale Sales Hiring AWS 246

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2022

Patricia Hanna, VP Americas Sales Ops @ Confluent. Shradha Kothari, Chief of Staff, SVP & GM North America Sales @ Twilio. Jen Dawson @ AWS. Dale Chang, Operations Partner @ Scale Venture Partners (panel). Bonney Pelley, SVP, Strategy + Operations @ New Relic. Farrah B, VP Business Operations @ Cribl.

New CTO 262

New CTO Scale CTO AWS 262

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2021

3 days, more than 100+ sessions and 300 expert speakers, who will be sharing their best practices to help you scale faster, build smarter, and close more customers. From AWS to Vimeo: this year’s speaker lineup is packed with incredible speakers and content. We just launched the entire SaaStr Annual 2021 Agenda !!

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Scale AWS B2C SaaS 201

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

How can that scale over time? How many sales reps, how much marketing spend, how many engineers will you really need? Does it make sense, and scale, from an input-output perspective? Worth hiring a sales team, raising some venture capital (even a modest amount). What will your ACV really be? appeared first on SaaStr.

Scale 279

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital AWS 279

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

I’m referring to the full spectrum of business execution, from product management to design to engineering to marketing to sales to support and all the other functions needed to scale a business. Basic marketing and selling at a global scale is becoming easy too. I highly encourage you to read his blog post and watch his talk.

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Outsourcing Services Software Review Software Outsourced Development 224

SaaStr

AUGUST 20, 2019

In this session, Anna and Sameer will highlight SendGrid’s journey from growth stage through acquisition and why focusing on people and culture is mission critical to success as a company goes through the scaling process. We were signing up hundreds of new paying customers every month with five sales reps. Anna Khan | VP @ BVP.

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Scale Acquisition Scaling Sales Hiring 155