SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2024

Are we thought the endless price increases we saw in 2023? A stunning 76% of you are raising prices in 2024. Personally, I’m a fan of only raising prices if you’ve earned it, and focusing on raising prices on new customers, not just the base. Apparently not. That’s up from 54% in 2023.

Pricing 296

Pricing SaaS 296

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 3, 2025

There have been so many price increases since 2021, many apps are 40% or more expensive than they were in 2021. To raise prices even more? DeepSeek has, at least in theory, cut the price of AI for SaaS as much as 90% overnight. And in Classic B2B you are raising my prices this quarter again ? But will it hold?

AWS 294

AWS AI Software Business 294

SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2023

Dear SaaStr: Should SaaS Pricing Be Adjusted for Different Geographical Markets? Your public pricing? Second, your users will see the pricing is “cheaper” somewhere else and get mad. Make the pricing roughly comparable. And you should do this And finally, the biggest “exception” is non-transparent pricing.

Pricing 293

Pricing Marketing SaaS Development 293

SaaStr

MARCH 14, 2024

Mobile Subscription Pricing is Flat, Not Up This is interesting. I suspect it’s because of the huge friction in mobile of moving beyond organic price points like $9.99 a month to pricing, especially for the existing base. #3. It’s actually even harder over there. So in many ways, they have to be better.

Mobile 320

Mobile Subscription Payment Features Pricing 320

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 10, 2022

The post We’re All Paying the Price Now for Massive Overhiring appeared first on SaaStr. And all of this will surface a ton of inefficiency that grew up in tech and SaaS and Cloud in 2021 and early 2022. That’s leading to a lot of pain, even at the best of the best.

Sales Hiring 322

Sales Hiring Pricing Cloud Startup 322

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Do I Increase Pricing Again Without Angering Customers? First, plan to increase pricing in general once a year, each year for new customers. So increase pricing annually to reflect that. Try to increase pricing annually for new customers. Don’t increase pricing beyond what you’ve earned.

Pricing 284

Pricing Branding Sales 284

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2024

AI SDRs have taken off more quickly than AI AEs (although personally, I suspect more value will be in AI SEs and AEs that can answer my deep product and pricing questions instantly, without games). But what about the more personal sales side? But is it working yet, these AI SDRs?

AI 326

AI B2B Engineering Customer Support 326

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 6, 2024

Seat Expansion Driving Growth, Along with Cross-Sell of New Products Long live per-seat models and pricing! A Big AI Push, But Being Very Conservative on Consumption Pricing For now, Atlassian is sticking mainly to per-seat pricing. It’s split 50/50 at Atlassian. #5. And a few other interesting leanings: #6. $10k+

Enterprise 290

Enterprise Pricing Cloud AI 290

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2024

And that includes pricing. One caveat: if your product requires significant onboarding and business process change, monthly pricing sometimes just doesn’t work. Be flexible in the beginning at least. Once you have a brand that customers trust, more will prepay annually.

Payment Features 261

Payment Features SaaS Churn Pricing 261

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2022

Series B and later prices are down across the board from their peaks in 2021 and Q1’22, down 30% or more. Fenwick’s blended numbers see overall Series B and later round pricing down about 30%. #3. But overall, valuations and prices post-Series A still remain way ahead of where they were up until 2018.

Pricing 326

Pricing Social Media B2C Startup 326

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2024

Dear SaaStr: Why Do Most Entrepreneurs Under Price Their Offerings Initially? Yes, most of us at first under-price and then slowly raise prices as we gain confidence. The post Dear SaaStr: Why Do Most Entrepreneurs Under Price Their Offerings Initially? But maybe not in the beginning. appeared first on SaaStr.

Pricing 284

Pricing Sales Revenue 284

SaaStr

MAY 27, 2022

59% of you have raised prices this year. I think most of us have found our pricing is more elastic than we thought. The related question then becomes do you raise prices on existing customers — or just new customers? It’s a challenge to get your logo retention rate up to 90% or higher. #8. and North America.

Sales Hiring 339

Sales Hiring Pricing Scale Interviewing 339

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2024

How to price and package AI SaaS products with Sandhya Hegde at Unusual Ventures Pricing is always a super popular topic and this was a great one from Unusual Ventures on pricing in the AI age. Watch / listen and you will do better in GTM. I guarantee it. #5.

AI 329

AI Pricing Scale Scaling 329

SaaStr

MARCH 19, 2024

And only 1/3 of these have an exit for 3x-10x the price of the last round, i.e. enough for anyone to make any money. The post What Are The Odds You Get Acquired Within 5 Years for a Good Price? What’s less clear is how many were acqui-hires or acquisitions for a very small amount. So my educated guess from this data: 1%-1.5%

Pricing 332

Pricing Acquisition Startup Education 332

SaaStr

MARCH 8, 2024

With everything in AI moving so rapidly, what’s the best way to price Artificial Intelligence products or SaaS tools with custom AI features and integrations? So we asked the expert, Sandhya Hegde, General Partner at Unusual Ventures to share her best practices and trends for pricing and packaging AI products. Why is pricing so tricky?

AI 268

AI Artificial Intelligence Pricing SaaS 268

SaaStr

JULY 1, 2024

Generally speaking, there are two paradigms: Buy them out at Common Stock price (which is what they in fact own), based on the lastest option pricing. And they can figure out the price and discount. The post Dear SaaStr: If You Want to Buy Shares from a Founder That Has Left the Company, What Price Do You Use?

Pricing 293

Pricing Investment Leadership Strategy 293

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2025

I was advised to push back and ask for a significantly higher price. I asked for something like $7m-$8m at a significantly higher price. Not a very good today given the early traction we had, but fair enough for the time. I went and asked some folks what to do. Without even thinking about it. The details I sort of forget.

Pricing 274

Pricing Metrics Marketing 274

SaaStr

APRIL 28, 2025

If a prospect asks about integrations, pricing details, or implementation requirements that you’re unsure about, you’ll simply ask your AI, and it will provide the perfect answer in real-time. It can handle pricing questions, objections, and proposals without emotional baggage or commission pressure.

AI 244

AI Underperforming Technical Team Sales Technical Review 244

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

But SMBs in the middle have become more cost and price-sensitive. #10. SMB Weaker. Klaviyo is seeing strengths in its entrepreneur segment (new companies) and enterprise ($50k+ deals) as noted above. Going More and More Multi-Product is the Key To $2 Billion in ARR As it is for almost all of us. Some earlier, some later.

Scale 301

Scale SMB Scaling Enterprise 301

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2024

Pricing and Monetization The industry hasn’t yet settled on a dominant pricing model for AI capabilities, making this an area of ongoing experimentation.

AI Search 284

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence B2B 284

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 3, 2025

Well, first, let’s be clear — it’s tough if your core goal is to get acquired for a big price in most cases. But don’t raise so much that your valuation precludes an acquisition at a tolerable price for certain acquirers. There really aren’t that many good acquisitions done a year.

Strategy 266

Strategy Venture Capital Acquisition Pricing 266

SaaStr

OCTOBER 20, 2024

That’s really 200x from the price they pay, because typically over the lifetime of an investment, total dilution is about 50%. If it’s just 1 Big Winner out of 50 angel investments, to even just double your money, that winner has to do 100x. So most successful angels in tech are seeking startups that can 100x their money.

Investment 284

Investment Startup Pricing 284

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2024

The good news is, you can support these price points effectively with a very efficient inbound sales team, and/or a mix of self-serve and sales-led. At two different price points. There’s a whole other category of apps SMBs and SMEs can afford that cost $99-$299 a month or so. There are a ton of apps that end up being $3k-$6k a year.

Payment Solutions 261

Payment Solutions Inbound Sales Team Marketing Scale 261

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 7, 2024

The price for inference has massively plummeted this year, so you have more powerful models to build into your application, and they cost less every time you use them. Pricing Will Move Away From Per Seat You can’t just add AI into your product for free because there’s a real dollar cost to add it to your existing offering.

AI 261

AI Artificial Intelligence ChatGPT Mobile 261

SaaStr

MAY 1, 2025

Have They Sold at Your Price Point? Make sure theyve sold at a similar price point before. Leads are too precious in the early days to waste on someone you dont trust to clos. Selling a $100/month product is very different from selling a $100,000/year solution. Early on, theres no time for them to learn this on the job.

Sales Hiring 261

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Interviewing 261

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2024

How to Leverage Pricing and Packaging to Drive Revenue with Miro, Loom, OpenAI, and Splunk #3. How to Train Your Sales Leaders with Michelle Benfer, ex-CRO Bill and HubSpot The post Top SaaStr Posts and Vids of the Week: GitHub’s CRO, OpenAI on Pricing, A16Z on AI in SaaS, and More! appeared first on SaaStr.

AI 259

AI Sales Hiring Pricing Scale 259

SaaStr

DECEMBER 17, 2024

And as stock prices rip higher, growth VC floods back in. 2021 prices were certainly inflated in many cases from valuations today. So SaaS is back. Top SaaS stocks are on fire the past few months, and the SaaS downturn in B2B2B appears to be behind us. It’s natural. But how aggressive will late stage investors be?

SaaS 261

SaaS AI Pricing Metrics 261

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2025

Or will they expect it to be included in the already in many cases expensive purchase price for the core product? So will buyers really pay more for AI? We’re still learning.

AI 227

AI Data Pricing SaaS 227

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 5, 2024

The price for a booth is just a small part of the overall soft and hard costs. But — every category works. So maybe don’t break your budget. That’s a reminder. Spend what you can afford. Because all categories work. At the end of the day, events are a ton of work. So if you are doing them, the data suggest lean is as much as you can.

Data 273

Data Pricing Revenue Marketing 273

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 2, 2025

Companies need to: Ensure secure data handling Maintain clean data for model training Integrate effectively across multiple systems Enable real-time data access where needed Evolution of Business Models The integration of AI is driving changes in how vertical software companies approach pricing and business models: Pricing Strategies Traditional subscription-based (..)

AI 222

AI Technical Review Artificial Intelligence Systems Review 222

SaaStr

MARCH 29, 2024

The post Can You Still Get Acquired for a Decent Price if Growth Has Slowed or Even Stopped? But even if you’re out of ideas for now, don’t give up all hope of a potentially decent M&A offer, especially if you are cash-flow neutral and haven’t raised too much (that’s important).

Pricing 293

Pricing Scale Startup Acquisition 293

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2025

And while the Wiz deal hasn’t closed yet, seeing a record M&A deal price fuels more VC investment. I asked founder Ryan Smith at SaaStr Annual what he thought of that record price? In part, because they see the absolute potential exit sizes just going up and up. “The next one will be even higher.

Acquisition 242

Acquisition Cloud Pricing Investment 242

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 2, 2024

A ton of time is invested negotiating price, and then way, way too much time on inconsequential legal terms, and then … it closes. Having been through 4 acquisitions in different forms (founder, exec, etc), it’s a lot like a venture capital investment. Usually, there isn’t actually a ton of time to really get to know each other first.

Venture Capital 261

Venture Capital Acquisition Investment Pricing 261

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2024

But Andy got 3 other firm offers through the bank he hired — along with a price more than $10m higher. But I don’t find they often truly bring you other buys, more just stalking horses once you have one already. So the bank more than paid for itself. #3. You Need 3 Strong Quarters in a Row to Sell to Private Equity.

Sales Hiring 293

Sales Hiring Banking Sales SaaS 293

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2024

Even if you dont get a better price with >1 offer, you at least will dramatically simplify the process. Not literally months to do the homework that doesnt take long but sometimes months to see enough progress for the investment to make sense to me, to connect enough dots. Second, multiple offers are better.

Investment 246

Investment Pricing Leadership 246

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2024

Raising prices may or may not work for you. All the best are now multi-product. And most of us regret not having gone there a bit earlier. A related post here. #6. Launch a truly more valuable, new higher-end edition. Be thoughtful. But launching a new, more enterprise / more powerful / better edition? Thats a value-add, done right.

Sales Hiring 280

Sales Hiring SaaS Venture Capital Healthcare 280

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2024

Existing distribution channels: While startups are racing to build distribution, incumbents already have it However, the business model disruption around AI pricing remains a challenge for larger players to navigate.

AI 284

AI Marketing SaaS Interviewing 284