SaaStr

FEBRUARY 9, 2022

Dear SaaStr: Is It Worth It To Try to Get 2-3 Name Brand VCs Into My Round? For as long as I’ve been in start-ups, having a name-brand VC on your cap table has mattered. Brands do matter. But … brands are a proxy for value. Brands are in flux. This isn’t to say 2-3 name-branded VCs are bad.

Branding 283

Branding Benchmarks Cloud Investment 283

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2021

Q: I run a bootstrapped software company and our biggest customer (60% of our revenue) has offered on several occasions to invest in the company. Taking an investment from your largest customer certainly will complicate things. Rarely keep investing after the initial investment. But a VC investment is.

Investment 293

Investment Software Review Acquisition Pricing 293

SaaStr

JUNE 8, 2022

B2B marketing has a reputation for being more performance-oriented than brand-oriented. But I think that’s unfair — B2B is just as concerned with brand, but generally speaking, lacks the same level of creativity when compared to the B2C world. And beyond your brand campaign, this is critical to your business more broadly. .

B2B 300

B2B Branding Marketing B2C 300

SaaStr

APRIL 5, 2025

SEO: How Rupa Health Dominated Search with Programmatic SEO and AI Rupa Health invested heavily in search, aiming to own the top spots for specific lab tests and biomarkers. Twitter and Facebook : On Twitter, Rupa leveraged their CEOs personal brand, as people tend to follow personalities over corporate accounts.

Scale 229

Scale AI Search Sales Hiring Acquisition 229

SaaStr

MARCH 9, 2025

The New AI ROI Framework Before investing in AI, Calendly’s team evaluates four key factors: Customer value (will this meaningfully improve outcomes?) Continuous Education is the New Retention Strategy 86% of customers stay loyal to brands offering educational experiences. Users preferred their existing, efficient core product.

AI 202

AI Scale Education User Experience 202

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

The result was a 5x increase over initial projections – growing from an $8M revenue target to $40M actual results – driven by a belief that market demand justified the investment. This approach required immense trust from the CEO to invest millions ahead of proven results.

Scale 185

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Headcount 185

FastSpring

APRIL 3, 2025

Your personal brand is more than a polished LinkedIn profile its how you stand out, connect with customers, and build long-term credibility as a founder or executive. But how do you create an authentic personal brand that actually works? Rachel shares: What makes up a strong personal brand (and why every founder already has one).

Branding 87

Branding Social Media AI Search Outsourcing Services 87

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 28, 2025

If you, as a software company, got to a certain scale and brand awareness, it was really hard for others to catch you. It simply took too much time to start a competitor, build a product, build a brand, and compete. That juxtaposition is what makes investing in venture markets these days so fun! So what was the implication?

AI 184

AI Cloud Scale Scaling 184

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2025

Most smaller VC firms just have a couple of investing professionals. Its not necessarily lonely, because you tend to co-invest with other investors and that can be a lot of fun, because its a share journey. Almost every VC, even the very best, lacks a surplus of A++ level investment candidates. Maybe even one.

Banking 185

Banking Investment Branding Startup 185

SaaStr

APRIL 6, 2025

This created personal investment and accountability that no executive mandate could achieve. Today, with an established brand and product, other characteristics have become more predictive of success. By visualizing both perspectives in word clouds, the team could immediately see alignment gaps and opportunities.

Scale 202

Scale Sales Hiring Sales Outsourced Development 202

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

First, like almost all of us, founders are attracted to brands. 90%+ of founders want a top brand investor. Often, a term sheet at a good price from a top brand is all founders really care about. Actual value is more important than brand, but brands are a proxy for some sort of value. Two reasons. A bit more here.

Venture Capital 360

Venture Capital Branding Pricing Investment 360

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2025

“We just need one great CMO who can do it all” – Founders often search for a marketing unicorn who excels at brand, demand gen, product marketing, and digital programs. This isn’t just about priceit’s about the importance of the purchase and how much time/energy buyers will invest in making the right decision.

Sales Hiring 202

Sales Hiring Marketing Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team 202

SaaStr

JANUARY 28, 2025

Brand Building and Human-Centric Approach The company’s vision is to empower people and transform work, making it utterly unrecognizable, and its brand is based on The Human Experience at work.

AI Search 244

AI Search AI Artificial Intelligence Technical Review 244

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2021

Part of my job when I invest in a start-up is to get folks excited about the company. Or I wouldn’t make the investment. But once you have a brand, one way or another, the leads come. They all have brands, yes. And you’ll stall out once you have a real brand, and it’s just getting good.

SaaS 363

SaaS Venture Capital Churn Branding 363

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2023

So I’ve been investing since 2013, and have done fairly well. Some of my top investments at seed stage include Pipedrive, Salesloft, Front, Talkdesk, Algolia, Gorgias, Greenhouse and more: But 2022 was a quiet time. My first year with no brand new investments, only follow-ons. So we’re behind.

SaaS 316

SaaS Investment Startup Branding 316

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2021

We’re all attracted to brands. Brands do matter. There are good reasons to take money from the Top Brands in VC. Their brand will accrete to your brand. Someone that hasn’t been investing that long? Proven VCs with strong track records have a ton of folks that want to invest in their companies.

Venture Capital 293

Venture Capital Branding Investment Startup 293

TrackStreet

MARCH 28, 2025

The global trade landscape is shifting, and brands that rely on eCommerce and omnichannel distribution are feeling the pressure. For brand executives and eCommerce leaders, this is a moment of strategic decision-making. For brand executives and eCommerce leaders, this is a moment of strategic decision-making. The good news?

Branding 52

Branding Pricing Technical Review Investment 52

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2021

If your prior investors aren’t 100% positive, or at least, 90% positive on the investment … usually … the Next Round guys simply won’t invest. They will almost instantly smell the lack of commitment, and see it as a sign not to invest. You can game this. At least, almost always, most usually. VPs won’t want to join.

Venture Capital 353

Venture Capital Banking Finance Investment 353

SaaStr

JANUARY 11, 2022

That’s 10% of all the invested capital!! Let’s talk about why it’s a good investment: Trade shows / events produce a lot of so-called “leads”, but a lot of cr*p leads and long lead time leads. This is some of the magic in the math of the investment. How could that make any sense? And I said do it.

Scale 337

Scale Investment Retention Customer Success 337

SaaStr

MARCH 4, 2021

Corporate Marketing is all about protecting and reinforcing the brand once you are Way Past Scale. Corporate Marketing at Google, at Adobe, at Salesforce isn’t about getting the brand out there. Everyone that might buy has already heard of the brand, for the most part. Which means there’s a real brand to manage.

Sales Hiring 357

Sales Hiring Scale Marketing Branding 357

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2024

Leading him to some of his biggest mistakes when hiring: Not investing enough time. And for his marketing team, it didn’t just apply to marketing, demand gen, or brand, or PR. They didn’t hire a big branding agency or hire a research firm. Brand awareness does not equal throwing money at billboards.

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Leadership 306

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2020

Before Covid, it was required to meet investors face-to-face for any material sized investments. Since Covid, $1m-$10m, and sometimes much bigger, investments are routinely done without a face-to-face, or perhaps a quick walk-and-talk at the very end with masks on. There have been some exceptions, but they were rare.

Venture Capital 313

Venture Capital Investment Startup Branding 313

SaaStr

JANUARY 13, 2021

And a huge investment in R&D since inception. SEO and brand continue to work at scale. A vivid reminder that investment in content and brand pay dividends … forever. It’s partners just do a lot of the sales, and its brand and web traffic do a lot of the marketing.

VP of Engineering 317

VP of Engineering Scale Enterprise Branding 317

SaaStr

JANUARY 29, 2021

If you haven’t already made some good investments — it’s going to be tough to start your own fund. Go work at a fund first and make some good investments there. Start as an angel investor, make some good investments, and then, after proving yourself as an angel, raise a small fund. If you do mediocre investments it isn’t.

Venture Capital 313

Venture Capital Travel Compensation Investment 313

SaaStr

AUGUST 1, 2022

Because in the Best of Times, there’s always more money to invest in top performers — and even mid-pack performer s. That really leaves just $120m to invest. (Yes, Yes, there are ways to “recycle” to get the amount available to invest up, but that’s not super important for this analysis). checks on average ($2.5m

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital Startup Investment Pricing 334

Buffer Resources

AUGUST 21, 2024

You might not get the highest return-on-investment (ROI) from this course if you’ve already been at the social media marketing thing for a while. The course offers a 14-day money back guarantee if you don’t think the social media marketing course is worth your investment. It’s designed for beginners.

Social Media 114

Social Media Marketing AI Search Systems Review 114

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2021

Less and you under-invest. At $8m in ARR, if you have $2m of cash in the bank, you get real nervous investing much more than $500k-$750k, $1m max. It’s subtle, but in SaaS I’ve learned you under-invest if you have < 50% of your ARR in the bank. 10/ Investing aggressively in brand as you approach $10m ARR.

Part-Time VPE 293

Part-Time VPE Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 293

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2023

This year, many companies, including Gong, have been focused on how to optimize and drive value with existing tech stack investments, rather than adding new tools. What’s the number one top new app you’ve added the past year? One app we did add this year was Madkudu , to change the way we prioritize what leads Marketing sends to sales. #3.

Leadership 349

Leadership B2B Branding Startup 349

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2021

A Weak Investor or Syndicate, or group of investors: Is all tapped out and has little to no more money to invest in the company. This can, depends on scenarios, happen even if you have the best VC brands in your start-up. How did the investment happen? Invest even more time here. What does this mean? More on that here.

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Investment Cloud Branding 328

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

So two of the great leaders in SMB SaaS, Shopify for e-commerce, and HubSpot for sales, marketing and more, are going more upmarket: HubSpot 100+ seat deals are up 55% Shopify now gets 31% of its revenue from “Plus” or its bigger brands and more enterprise product And yet … they are also both going more SMB as well!

SMB 322

SMB Enterprise Scale Scaling 322

SaaStr

JANUARY 5, 2023

But I would tell every startup I invested in or worked with to move onto Salesforce — at least once they hire a real VP of Sales. The first time I personally saw it was when one of the top startups I’ve invested in, Gorgias (the #1 contact center for e-commerce) crossed 10,000 customers … and said they were sticking with HubSpot.

Startup 71

Startup Sales Hiring Scale Investment 71

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2020

So each start-up they invest in is a bet, and really, a product. Folks invest in who they know, if they can. Investing in start-ups is a bit scary. It’s just easier to invest in people you know and already trust. It’s just easier to invest in people you know and already trust. Get into YC if you can.

Investment 308

Investment Engineering Startup Software 308

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 22, 2020

All of this will help create value and return on investment capital. Brand includes your company values, Heritage/story, packaging, convenience, customer support, quality, segment focus, and positioning, all of which can differentiate your company from others with similar products. Building a Community.

Scale 322

Scale Scaling Technical Review Systems Review 322

SaaStr

APRIL 21, 2021

So you may underinvest overall, or invest, in fact, too much in Sales and Marketing — and not enough in Customer Success. But what you really want to do is figure out the perfect ratio of maximum possible investment in Sales, Marketing, and Client/Customer Success — as one cohesive investment, not two.

Revenue 350

Revenue Enterprise Customer Success Churn 350