SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2022

From seed funding to going public, Spenser Skates, CEO, and co-founder of Amplitude will discuss his journey building Amplitude’s Digital Optimization System from the ground up and empowering organizations of all sizes — from startups to Fortune 100 companies — to build better products. Why Customer Success and Product Should be Best Friends.

AWS 246

AWS Customer Success Scale Sales Hiring 246

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2024

ARR, Zendesk today gets 14% of new business from startups. On top of that, if you look at their top accounts globally, 33 of the top 50 customers by ARR are startups. This is where they started, but startups weren’t adopting the product as much with a discount, and there was a lot of conflict with the sales team. A free term.

Startup 267

Startup Scale Underperforming Technical Team AWS 267

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2023

Dear SaaStr: I’m an Early Employee and Have a Chance to Sell Some of My Startup Shares. Note: an updated SaaStr Classic answer) The post Dear SaaStr: I’m an Early Employee and Have a Chance to Sell Some of My Startup Shares. Congratulations on the change for some liquidity. It’s both exciting — and confusing.

Startup 278

Startup AWS Pricing Marketing 278

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

For startups looking to land their first big customers, Rons advice is simple: Leverage existing user communities. ” Building the Right Sales Motion In Databricks early days, the sales team was largely inside sales, selling to tech startups in Silicon Valley. We went to the open-source community and asked, What would you pay for?

Scale 182

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Revenue 182

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 6, 2023

There are 4 questions a startup should ask themselves about building a startup that uses generative AI. There are 4 questions startups should ask themselves about building with generative AI. Startups have negative time to launch in many markets with Adobe, Microsoft, & Salesforce launching Gen AI enabled software in weeks.

Generative AI 227

Generative AI AI GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Startup 227

Tom Tunguz

JULY 24, 2024

AWS & others have stopped charging to move data. AWS cut prices more than 100 times in its first five years. AWS cut prices more than 100 times in its first five years. Plus, data movement is less expensive than in the previous era. New data formats like Iceberg simplify data movement. Both have decreased switching costs.

AI 303

AI Artificial Intelligence AWS Innovation 303

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 14, 2022

Some of the brightest minds in data founded MotherDuck including BigQuery founding engineer Jordan Tigani & a broader team from Snowflake, Databricks, AWS, Meta, Elastic & Firebolt, among others. Because of these advantages, MotherDuck is the best place for startups to build their first Modern Data Stack.

Cloud 356

Cloud AWS Data Analysis Benchmarks 356

SaaStr

APRIL 24, 2021

A lot of our SaaS older times don’t quite know what to make with a lot of B2B startups these days, let alone some public SaaS companies. So many startups these days are claiming they have “ARR” from revenue that … doesn’t recur. Doesn’t ARR stand for Annual Recurring Revenue? Well of course it does.

Merchant Services 360

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 360

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2023

Alison brings the perspective of all sides of a startup, from investing to SaaS to Cloud. Pursuing Two Different Segments: The Tale of Startups vs. Enterprise From a marketing perspective, the GTM marketing position and product market messaging differ between Google Workspace and Google Cloud.

Cloud 313

Cloud Scale AWS AI 313

Tom Tunguz

JULY 19, 2022

Here’s my mental model: Imagine a startup that sells sports cards. We swapped the transaction database from PostGres to a blockchain like Ethereum or Sui , and the file storage from AWS S3 to a decentralized storage provider, perhaps Filecoin or ArWeave. What is the difference between web2 & web3, really?

Blockchain 332

Blockchain AWS Engineering Startup 332

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 30, 2022

By building a strong business tech stack for your startup – covering everything from incorporation to growing long-lasting customer relationships – you can not only win back time and establish best practices, but create a solid foundation for your business to grow. Ready to take your startup to the next level?

Scale 163

Scale Payment Services Startup AWS 163

Tom Tunguz

MARCH 8, 2020

The first place to start is to learn to sell your startup’s product well. To make a partnership successful, your startup will need to teach another sales team to sell your product. Marketplaces: AWS marketplace, Heroku marketplace, Salesforce marketplace. Here are my notes. Where to Start. But, there’s a tradeoff.

Scale 349

Scale AWS Consulting Sales Enablement 349

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2023

I’m using Google Workspace (Gmail, Drive), AWS , Vercel , Slack , Figma , Notion , Salesforce , HubSpot , Secureframe , Clari , and Zapier. #2. Last week we had a great one with Luca Penati, CMO & CCO of BEE, check it out here. This week we have Shrav Mehta, Founder and CEO of Secureframe! #1. What’s your core stack of apps today?

AWS 303

AWS compliance AI Startup 303

SaaStr

JANUARY 20, 2023

We’ll have dozens and dozens of workshops, braindates, and much more! It will be the #1 place to talk SaaS, learn SaaS, and share SaaS learnings in APAC in 2023!

AWS 298

AWS Cloud Trends Startup 298

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2024

AWS can’t support 20 partners equally. When partnering with big folks like Drata does with AWS, you have to bring business to them. Drata was one of three companies mentioned on stage by AWS’ Head of Partnerships because they did the most transactions on the marketplace than any other company. That’s a high value for AWS.

AWS 285

AWS Scale Sales Hiring Marketing 285

SaaStr

JANUARY 26, 2023

While the data ends here, here’s what I can tell you I am seeing in growth rounds today: Very few growth rounds are happening at all When the do happen, they are for capital efficient startups growing > 50% at scale And … the peak valuation is about 15x. Even If It’s Awful for Series A-E Rounds. For the best ones.

Venture Capital 67

Venture Capital AWS SaaS Startup 67

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2023

The startup I invested in that were acquired by PE in the 2020-2021 Boom were acquired for 8x in one case, 12x in another, and 15x in a third. Products that are as close to an annuity as possible, that are amenable to efficiency gains. So what do they pay on average? The prices would be lower today for the latter two I suspect.

AWS 321

AWS SaaS Pricing Acquisition 321

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2022

Check out this week’s top blog posts, podcasts, and videos: Top Blog Posts This Week: Datadog, ZoomInfo, Atlassian, AWS: Epic Growth — But Some Real Headwinds For The First Time. The Simple Reason Startups That Just Raised $100s of Millions Are Doing Layoffs. 5 Interesting Learnings from Duolingo at $360,000,000 in ARR.

Sales Recruiting 296

Sales Recruiting AWS Compensation Enterprise 296

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 29, 2024

YCombinator is having a renaissance, with 4 batches of 100s of top tier startups being hatched in Dogpatch in SF. But SOMA and much of the financial district are still awful. It’s clearly the center of the AI Boom, even if many are based outside of it, in Paris and elsewhere. Most will stay. Some parts are great though.

AWS 299

AWS B2B AI Startup 299

Tom Tunguz

OCTOBER 22, 2022

They will manage their own servers to reduce the $3m annual AWS bill by 60%. For a hypothetical startup, a 60% reduction in infrastructure costs boosts sales efficiency by 11% & net income margin by at least 12%. For many high-growth startups, the juicy 11% improvement in sales efficiency likely isn’t worth the squeeze.

Sales Hiring 266

Sales Hiring Cloud AWS Sales 266

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 28, 2023

" Here’s another insight : Google’s cloud is more expensive for customers than others : " One of the reasons why GCP is not as big as just so much more expensive for our customers to operate in GCP than it is in AWS and Azure. And as a result, our salespeople are really not inclined to do much in GCP.”

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 185

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Azure Data Startup 185

SaaStr

AUGUST 4, 2022

And inflation is awful. And startups that had planned on a big up round this year are in many cases, really struggling. . — Jason 2022 SaaStr Annual Sep 13-15 Lemkin (@jasonlk) August 3, 2022. So are we in a downturn in SaaS? Certainly, segments are. eCommerce, video, and more are having post-crazy growth hangovers.

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital AWS Cloud Scale 328

Intercom, Inc.

FEBRUARY 26, 2018

Innovative startups. The first army are innovative startups. Understand the potential consequences of outsourcing to young startups. Young startups go out of business regularly and their security and reliability is often worse than more mature companies. Best in class Late-stage Startups (e.g. Mid-stage startups.

Outsourcing Services 224

Outsourcing Services Software Review Software Outsourced Development 224

Tom Tunguz

JULY 7, 2022

At some point, startups tinker enough with the new technology to discover the applications customers value most. In a few years, data startups, consumer apps, and software vendors will rise and grow - the same as today. Web3 will disappear just the same. This is the great exciting and invigorating puzzle today.

AWS 242

AWS Government Innovation Cloud 242

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

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. And it’s one of the three large cloud vendors that we all know: Microsoft, AWS, and Google. Jabari Norton. Crowdstrike.

Scale 262

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 262

SaaStr

MARCH 6, 2024

They are overall benefitting here from the growth in Cloud and security budgets, even if smaller companies and startups and scaleups are struggling more. AWS alone generated $175m of contract value for Okta, growing 130%. Way, way too many startups focus 100% on direct sales. Their multi-million dollar contracts are 30%. #5.

Fractional VPE 287

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Scale SMB 287

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).

Cloud 318

Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Azure 318

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 25, 2023

For startups building LLM-based applications & infrastructure, this alters the calculus of selecting a cloud. Five years ago, many startups defaulted to AWS for the generous credits, broad catalog, & rapid pace of innovation. Cloud infrastructure players are picking teams within the infrastructure layer.

Artificial Intelligence 239

Artificial Intelligence AI AWS Cloud 239

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2021

As a startup, you’re doing a million things at once: building a product, answering customer tickets, developing a sales playbook, trying out different marketing hacks, and keeping the lights on. Unfortunately, the process is long and can feel like a blackbox for startups starting from scratch. 5 – Configure Your Infrastructure.

Enterprise 284

Enterprise Software Review Azure GCP(Google Cloud Platform) 284

SaaStr

APRIL 26, 2024

If it is a small startup, it may just be a single GPU, or it’s bigger with a cluster of GPUs where you need infrastructure management. Historically, Cloud platforms like AWS and Azure help with the sporadic needs of renting a GPU for a few hours for training vs. long-term use, which would cost thousands of dollars. They’ll need GPUs.

AI Search 293

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Scale 293

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 25, 2021

On November 3rd, our co-founder Des Traynor will be on the stage sharing his keynote on “ How to grow up without growing old “ Later that evening we partner with AWS and Aircall for a “Startups Happy Hour” party, where you can decompress and have one (or a few!) drinks on us and celebrate a little taste of normality.

AWS 198

AWS Scale Innovation Startup 198

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2023

Even If It’s Awful for Series A-E Rounds. Why VCs Love Founders That Respond to Email Almost Instantly 90%-95% of Salespeople Won’t Make It At Your Startup. 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. Really, Really, Low.

Sales Recruiting 244

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AWS 244

SaaStr

MAY 6, 2022

Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and even Google Cloud are on fire, adding insane amounts of revenue this year. Personally, I’m betting on #2 (The Bull Case), planning using #3 (The Rational-Positive Case), and advising startups to extend the cash they do have at least another 6 months. Customers are buying more than ever.

SaaS 348

SaaS Azure Cloud AWS 348

SaaStr

AUGUST 8, 2023

This function can be outsourced in the early days of a startup, but it is usually brought in-house after Series B. In 2014, storage had historically been Dropbox’s most significant cost driver, with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on AWS. They will also take charge during an audit if the situation arises.

Scale 239

Scale Finance Outsourcing Services Sales Recruiting 239

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

A problem many founders are trying to solve right now is going upmarket to Enterprise, and Lemkin and Grinich have a passionate perspective that every startup should take steps to check those Enterprise boxes in their first year. Today, companies spend over $10M/month on AWS — companies like Lyft, Pinterest, and Stripe.

Enterprise readiness 289

Enterprise readiness Payment Solutions Enterprise Payments 289

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2023

Henry’s found that with SMBs and startups, they’re typically consuming content on social media, primarily LinkedIn, while Enterprise customers aren’t consuming that messaging on social media. So, that’s where the battle happens of going to market for Enterprise customers without neglecting SMBs.

New CTO 316

New CTO Scale Sales Hiring CTO Hire 316

Chargify

AUGUST 17, 2020

However, with the introduction of Events-Based Billing by Chargify, this event-based billing model is now available to small and medium-sized businesses, giving them the ability to offer the same pricing models and bill customers just as precisely as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or the popular voice and messaging platform Twilio.

AWS 98

AWS Payment Services SaaS Payments Payments 98