SaaStr

AUGUST 16, 2022

We’d all love to run 100% PLG SaaS companies that magically self-replicate customers. 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? It took me a while as a SaaS CEO to see that a customer conference was worth it.

Scale 331

Scale Sales Hiring Marketing SaaS 331

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

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

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.

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Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Cloud 243

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

The role of finance in SaaS is changing. 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. You must build a lean, impactful team to help your business scale.

Scale 239

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 239

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

You know what’s back in fashion today in SaaS? And that’s a lot rarer in SaaS. But so many SaaS leaders aren’t really profitable at $1B ARR even, Why not? And it’s not just public SaaS companies that are often struggling to get profitable. I’m an investor in maybe 30 SaaS startups. So is SaaS cursed?

Scale 293

Scale SaaS Banking AWS 293

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.

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AWS Customer Success Scale Sales Hiring 246

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

The Angel VC

FEBRUARY 20, 2016

Call me when it scales.” Now let’s talk about SaaS. In the last few years I’ve come to the realization that Josh’s observation can also be applied to the SaaS world: Building a SaaS business with $1-2 million in ARR is not that hard and not that valuable. Let me rephrase that.

Scale 192

Scale Scaling SaaS AWS 192

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 8, 2020

Recently, we welcomed Lisa Lawson to SaaS Office Hours to talk about building a channel go-to-market strategy for SaaS companies. To make a partnership successful, your startup will need to teach another sales team to sell your product. The sales team asks for more leads. Here are my notes. Where to Start.

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Scale AWS Consulting Sales Enablement 349

SaaStr

AUGUST 3, 2024

So a lot of good stuff has happened in SaaS recently. OneStream had an epic SaaS IPO at $500m ARR, growing 34%. Overall Cloud spending has bounced back off lows for sure: AWS at a $105B run rate growing 19% Quarterly YoY growth trends below. Sapphire Ventures, a leading growth-stage VC fund, has some good data. #

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AWS Scale Social Media SaaS 235

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

So is it possible to be too efficient in SaaS and Cloud? 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. It’s gotten crazy good.

Scale 291

Scale AWS Azure Cloud 291

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

DECEMBER 20, 2023

In the latest installment of SaaStr’s What’s New series – where we sit down with the leaders in SaaS and Cloud for the inside scoop on what’s top of mind and what’s new, SaaStr CEO and Jason Lemkin chats with the CEO of ZoomInfo , Henry Schuck. So, what’s new at ZoomInfo? ” And there can be some truth to that, right?

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New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 312

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

In the latest installment of SaaStr’s What’s New series – where we sit down with the leaders in SaaS and Cloud for the inside scoop on what’s top of mind and what’s new, SaaStr CEO and Jason Lemkin chats with the CMO of Google Cloud, Alison Wagonfeld. Right now, 70% of the GenAI startups are using Google Cloud.

Cloud 309

Cloud Scale AWS AI 309

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

Welcome to the latest installment of our “ What’s New ” series where SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with some of the top leaders and founders in SaaS and Cloud to discuss What’s New and what should be top of mind for fellow founders. AWS can’t support 20 partners equally. Otherwise, it falls apart.

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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. What you really want is someone that has (x) successfully managed at least a small team of CSMs before, (y) ideally to quota, and (z) in SaaS.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Part-Time VPE Scale Sales Recruiting 284

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.

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Scale AWS Scaling Enterprise 246

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2023

We’ll see 1,000+ of the best SaaS founders, execs, and VCs February 22-23 at SaaStr APAC 2023 ! CloudKeeper from TO THE NEW, is a cloud spend optimization solution that guarantees to cut down your AWS bills by 5-15%. Pepper is a powerful content marketing platform that helps you create high-quality content at speed and scale.

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Cloud spend optimization AWS Scale compliance 260

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

In this new SaaStr series called “What’s new at…,” Jason Lemkin chats with WorkOS CEO and founder Michael Grinich about what it takes to be Enterprise ready in SaaS, building vs. buying, and who the stakeholders are in a B2D motion. That’s unheard of in other SaaS categories. 50% of SaaS sales are outside of North America.

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Enterprise readiness Payment Solutions Enterprise Payments 283

SaaStr

MAY 21, 2022

The markets for SaaS and Cloud stocks are down 50%+ in just a few months, and it hasn’t spared even the leaders. But let’s step back a bit … the damage hasn’t been even, and capital-efficient SaaS stocks in many cases have held up pretty well. Its PLG-assisted sales motion has kept it capital efficient, and today it’s worth $2.7

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AWS SaaS Cloud Scale 289

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. Get a Front Row Seat to The Best in SaaS! Will you be there?

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Scale AWS B2C SaaS 201

SaaStr

JUNE 28, 2023

So there was a quiet SaaS IPO you may have missed in the craziness of 2021 — SEMRush, a tool your marketing department quite likely uses to keep track of the performance of your SEO and marketing site. Still, always helpful to see how any leader does free to paid at scale. And again a challenge to everyone in SaaS to go global. #4.

Scale 258

Scale AWS Scaling Revenue 258

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2024

So Okta is one of our favorite SaaS and Cloud leaders. 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%.

Fractional VPE 282

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Scale SMB 282

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. Most SaaS companies don’t spend enough on marketing, and that’s a mistake best avoided.

Outsourcing Services 259

Outsourcing Services Scale Outsourced Development Marketing 259

SaaStr

JUNE 3, 2020

It’s 2020 and SaaS buyers are more skeptical and suspicious, more disbelieving, more unconvinced than they were in 2019. The SaaS Trust Crisis is making it harder to market and sell software and services than ever before. And what I’d like to talk to you about today is the SaaS Trust crisis we’re seeing.

Software Review 254

Software Review Scale Technical Review SaaS 254

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2023

Customers range from AWS skills-builder platforms with billions of users to Zoom using it for customers and employees. Docebo was started and funded in 2005 and became a SaaS player in 2012. 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.

Sales Hiring 277

Sales Hiring Scale SMB Outsourced Development 277

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

MAY 31, 2023

It’s one of the few still commanding a premium multiple in today’s world, and still growing at tremendous rates: Snowflake is also a barometer of everything in SaaS and Cloud, because a significant amount of its revenue is consumption-based, at least in part. AWS is seeing this, and so is Snowflake. Not none, just less.

Headcount 246

Headcount Scale Sales Hiring AWS 246

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

I have a strong, semi-proven thesis that in SaaS, market size doesn’t matter that much … at least in the traditional top-down sense. Yes, many of the big winners in SaaS entered already large markets, from CRM (Salesforce) to ERP (Workday) to Collaboration (Workday, Asana). How can that scale over time?

Scale 279

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital AWS 279

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 19, 2024

My hope is that this analysis can provide startup entrepreneurs with a framework for how to manage their businesses around SaaS metrics (e.g., It’s worth pointing out that Azure is a bit above the long term trendline, while AWS is still below (but accelerating up). net retention and CAC payback).

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Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Azure 318

SaaStr

MAY 3, 2022

Ok we’re all gearing up for 2022 SaaStr Europa in Barcelona — join us there at the beach with 2,500 of your SaaS BFFs on June 7-8! Patricia Hanna, VP Americas Sales Ops @ Confluent. Shradha Kothari, Chief of Staff, SVP & GM North America Sales @ Twilio. Jen Dawson @ AWS. Olga Perez-Bonnelly @ Elastic.

New CTO 262

New CTO Scale CTO AWS 262

SaaStr

MAY 15, 2024

A lot of you reading SaaStr are probably more B2B SaaS oriented and may not be paying attention to the consumer market, but it’s already massive and is continuing to grow quickly. So, let’s look at the state of subscription apps and how B2B SaaS can learn from it. You can tune into Workshop Wednesday every single Wednesday at 10 a.m.

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Subscription Payment Features B2B Mobile 301

SaaStr

APRIL 30, 2022

So the first question is what made SaaS so successful. If you kind of that question, thinking about the stakeholders and the decisions and companies of using SaaS products, there’s kind of three types. Customers love SaaS products and tools because it simply works. Why do developers love SaaS products? Why is that?

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SaaS Payments Metrics Payment Methods Scale 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2022

So are we in a downturn in SaaS? And inflation is awful. But where is SaaS are we really today? Alteryx, a leading public SaaS ETL company, announced it was growing 33% at $730m in ARR! It’s just, the forces that are propelling SaaS to grow like never before haven’t changed.

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Venture Capital AWS Cloud Scale 326

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, 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: Folks are either burnt out or came in during the boom, and they don’t know what the real world of SaaS looked like before.

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Marketing Scale 302