The Angel VC

MARCH 22, 2012

If you have a SaaS startup with a higher-touch sales model where revenue growth is largely driven by sales headcount, the plan needs to be modified accordingly. Therefore the key drivers of my imaginary startup are organic growth rate, marketing budget and customer acquisition costs, conversion rate, ARPU and churn rate.

Startup 189

Startup SaaS Payments Payment Methods Payment Solutions 189

Intercom, Inc.

APRIL 4, 2019

The second thing was understanding the business model of people who were evaluating Stripe: Do you sell to businesses or do you sell to consumers? “This helped us create what we call ‘categories’, a hybrid which includes both a vertical and a business model, which we use to structure our sales team.”.

Scale 162

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Payment Services 162

Valuize Consulting

FEBRUARY 8, 2025

Establishing criteria for ideal partners, including business models, expertise, and competencies, is critical to long-term success. Define Your Ideal Partner Profile Not all partners are created equal.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Scale Technical Review Government 52

Practical Advice on SaaS marketing

OCTOBER 9, 2012

Because of the way the SaaS business model works, if you feed the customer acquisition process, you hurt profits and burn cash. Cut sales and marketing headcount and scale back spending on customer acquisition programs. But with a well-run SaaS business, over the long term, you actually do make it up in volume.

Acquisition 124

Acquisition Scale SaaS Headcount 124

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

In it's truest form, ARR is used by pure SaaS business models to describe the aggregate annual value of the entire customer set. Many laude the SaaS business model because ARR is inherently predictable - you know what you’re revenue will be over the coming 12 months, and sometimes even further out than that.

AI 190

AI Cloud Revenue Technical Advisors 190

Hitenism

JANUARY 16, 2017

In 2014, Mixpanel’s Series B pitch deck spelled out the company’s expansion plans over the next two years: 3x sales headcount and rapidly race towards distribution. Double headcount every 6-9 months. Innovate on the Business Model. Reduce sales ramp time by 30-50% via sales enablement.

Scale 147

Scale Venture Capital SaaS Headcount 147

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 31, 2023

How Will AI Effect Software Business Models? Like many, I’ve been thinking about how AI and foundation models will effect the world of software. In particular - how AI will effect software business models. There are two main topics I’ve been pondering lately: Margins. What do I mean by this?

Cloud 130

Cloud Sales Hiring AI Headcount 130

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

As a Customer Success leader, do you get anxious at the thought of asking your CFO or CEO for additional headcount? And by implementing the Customer Success capacity planning and budgeting models shared in this article , Kristen did just that. How to Build a Customer Success Budget for Headcount. Discovery Call. Monthly Meeting.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Hiring Headcount Benchmarks 98

Sales Enablement, SaaS and Growth

MARCH 23, 2020

Put simply, enduring companies have moats which defend their business model - they are a competitive advantage. There are many examples of businesses with moats and they’re characterised as being difficult to replicate (which is why they’re desirable) - below are several examples: Moat. Subscription business model.

Underperforming Technical Team 213

Underperforming Technical Team Scale Sales Hiring Marketplace as a Service 213

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 21, 2018

You need to build an efficient sales team…you can’t just throw money or headcount at things. When I started the business, there was enough momentum behind it for it to be interesting. You need to maximize everything you possibly can to beat the competition because you can’t just throw money or headcount at things.

Sales Hiring 183

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Technical Advisors 183

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 29, 2018

Traditional Sales Organizations – Growth of headcount in sales was structured around revenue per individual contributor (IC). The model used a waterfall-like model that ramps up over the course of a year, in which an individual contributor brings in $2M/IC per year. Use of PODs with Different Business Models.

Sales Recruiting 91

Sales Recruiting Scale Sales Hiring Sales 91

Andreessen Horowitz

MARCH 21, 2024

On a much smaller scale, we’ve also started to see some leaders deploying their genAI budget against headcount savings, particularly in customer service. While some leaders addressed this concern by hosting open source models themselves, others noted that they were prioritizing models with virtual private cloud (VPC) integrations.

Generative AI 145

Generative AI Enterprise AI Artificial Intelligence 145

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

If you’re building a horizontal business model (e.g., It divides the total financing proceeds into G&A functions (both headcount and categories like real estate), platform R&D, and program-specific R&D (often further subdivided by each stage of development, CMC, etc).

Development Team Review 125

Development Team Review Technical Review Finance Systems Review 125

OPEXEngine

DECEMBER 13, 2022

This scenario, played out every day in boardrooms and Zoom® meetings, is well intended to help the “playbook” be data-driven – but the benchmarks used are often pulled out of a blog or anecdotally collected from colleagues at companies with different business models. That relevance requires an intentional comparison to peer companies.

Benchmarks 52

Benchmarks Scale Headcount Software Review 52

Sales Hacker

JANUARY 7, 2025

Scott Barker: Do you think AI is going to reduce our overall headcounts on revenue teams? You know, if I look at our business, we were thinking, oh, the AI is going to be a headwind, you know, people are going to be replaced by AI. And what does it mean for business model?

Outsourcing Services 117

Outsourcing Services Scale Outsourced Development AWS 117

OPEXEngine

AUGUST 25, 2020

A well-formulated model lets you run unlimited scenarios across any program, department, or business unit, according to your fiscal calendar or other business milestones. In other words, dynamic financial models show you the probable results of pulling various levers (e.g., Properties of robust models.

Headcount 52

Headcount Forecasting Finance Business Model 52

OPEXEngine

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

In working with hundreds and hundreds of SaaS CFOs over the past 15 years, I’ve noticed that effective and strategic CFOs incorporate accurate benchmarking into the daily business of the company and especially into the budgeting and planning process. . And, our average comp per person in Sales is pretty high compared to comparable companies.

Benchmarks 52

Benchmarks Sales Hiring Headcount Customer Lifetime Value 52

User Pilot

MAY 11, 2022

Business Model. To start your trial period, you need to complete a short survey and tell them your occupation, business model, and company size. For instance, build different checklists for small and large companies as they probably try to solve different tasks. Job Titles. Annual Revenue or LTV (lifetime value).

SaaS 98

SaaS Underperforming Technical Team Onboarding Churn 98

OpenView Labs

MAY 20, 2021

The same was true when I ran the People function at a software development consultancy that doubled its headcount to ~100 while reducing attrition from 40% to 5% voluntary in 18 months. I saw this as a client partner and then regional managing director at an eBusiness firm that scaled from 0 to 2,000 people in three years, organically.

Scale 84

Scale Underperforming Technical Team Headcount Software Review 84

OPEXEngine

JULY 27, 2021

Remember that as you shift or evolve your business model, that you will need to also evolve and iterate on your reporting, even for smaller companies. . In the meeting, we also looked at the benchmarks for G&A spend for public and private companies, as well as at how Finance headcount grows as a SaaS company grows.

Finance 52

Finance Outsourcing Services Scaling SaaS 52

Baremetrics

JULY 25, 2019

Data science is beginning to replace spreadsheets for entrepreneurs wrestling with uncertainty in their business models. If you’re like most SaaS founders, you’ve googled for a saas financial template you can use to forecast your subscription business. How did we get here? What’s really new? Staring into the Void.

Forecasting 88

Forecasting Scale Sales Hiring SaaS 88

OPEXEngine

OCTOBER 31, 2019

SaaS companies tend to have more Finance headcount than traditional, non-Cloud companies. Median Finance headcount in private, growth SaaS companies averaging $25M is 7 Finance executives. SaaS success is increasingly defined by the business model and the balance between revenue growth and profitability.

Finance 40

Finance CTO Hire Headcount Sales Hiring 40

OPEXEngine

JANUARY 5, 2021

What it tells you about your company will depend on your goals, your business model and needs, and your customer lifecycle. The received wisdom is that reducing your CAC is one of the best ways to increase your company’s profitability and likelihood of success. However, this metric calls for discerning judgment. What is CAC?

Benchmarks 52

Benchmarks Acquisition Customer Lifetime Value Scale 52

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

Robust forecasts should focus on drivers that matter most to the business and should be flexible enough to accurately reflect the impact of changes in key assumptions. Supporting schedules including revenue build, headcount and payroll breakdown, and debt schedules are useful in understanding inputs to the projections. .

Forecasting 52

Forecasting Finance Headcount Communication 52

Outseta

JANUARY 20, 2020

To operate profitably, particularly in the early days, Buildium simply could not afford to offer top of the market salaries—this was a reality of the company’s business model. As a result, Buildium took many chances on up and coming talent—myself included. You read that right—two!

SaaS Payments 145

SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Payment Methods Payment Services 145

OPEXEngine

DECEMBER 17, 2019

My experience reinforces the fact that SaaS business model variants and approaches to measuring performance via metrics are still very much undefined. For example, you can access Sales headcount data for Account Executives, Sales Development Reps/Business Development Reps and Renewal Reps along with compensation data.

Benchmarks 40

Benchmarks Metrics Headcount SaaS 40

Chart Mogul

APRIL 2, 2021

Building from scratch may appear to be a good option because it allows you to create a tool that is the perfect fit for your specific business model. Based on some of the information we’ve been able to unearth, building a best-in-class solution can easily require northward of $100,000 per year ( excluding headcount costs!)

Payment Features 72

Payment Features Subscription Headcount Engineering 72

Totango

OCTOBER 8, 2020

Segmenting customers to closely follow circumstances among specific industries, business sizes, physical location, and business models will also help you narrow down your messaging. Listening to your customers and being able to iterate and pivot quickly is the key to retaining their business during uncertain times.

Retention 63

Retention Headcount Customer Success Engagement 63

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

And then, balancing that with people who have had longevity and are tenured CS leaders who’ve built out processes, specifically in hypergrowth, who understand CSM playbooks from different product lines or even different business models that can balance out our diversity of thought and make us a more creative and innovative team.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Sales Hiring Strategy 177

Valuize Consulting

AUGUST 19, 2024

This role is crucial for organizations that aim to scale their CS efforts without a proportional increase in headcount. By automating routine engagements, this role ensures that customers receive timely and relevant communications, enhancing the overall customer experience.

Technical Review 52

Technical Review Systems Review Headcount Customer Success 52

FastSpring

JULY 11, 2024

It fits your business model. They have the headcount. That’s tough to walk through, but it’s a really good one. Glad you asked it. And let’s just assume for a moment that’s the right strategy for any particular company. You want to offer both. And here’s why. They’re in our ICP.

B2B 167

B2B Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales 167

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2020

Adnan Chaudhry: And at first, I just want to acknowledge that we’re going to talk about the business models of some of our broader customers, some of the things Salesforce is going through. It’s a business crisis. What’s the impact of that to your business? But this is a public health crisis.

Sales Hiring 210

Sales Hiring Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services 210

OPEXEngine

FEBRUARY 2, 2021

Really robust forecasts rely on the drivers that matter most to the business. Supporting schedules including revenue build, headcount and payroll breakdown, and debt schedules are useful in understanding those drivers. But sometimes we need more granular detail, such as weekly cash flow forecasts.

Forecasting 40

Forecasting Underperforming Technical Team Headcount Scale 40

Valuize Consulting

MAY 4, 2022

Clearly state which one is the best solution for your business and your customers, supported by all the data you have gathered and analyzed, to present a strong business case. Your Finance team may not even be thinking about Net Dollar Retention or be able to create their own forecasts and modeling based on ARR.

Scale 52

Scale Customer Success Scaling Strategy 52

Chart Mogul

APRIL 2, 2021

Building from scratch may appear to be a good option because it allows you to create a tool that is the perfect fit for your specific business model. Based on some of the information we’ve been able to unearth, building a best-in-class solution can easily require northward of $100,000 per year ( excluding headcount costs!)

Payment Features 52

Payment Features Subscription Headcount Engineering 52

OpenView Labs

MAY 5, 2021

It produces a challenging messaging strategy because if your primary business model is selling support on an open-source project, you’re kind of incentivizing your team to build shitty software, and nobody ends up happy. A lot of your top-of-funnel is focused on converting open-source users to paying customers.

Business 52

Business SMB Scale DevOps as a Service 52

SmartKarrot

DECEMBER 18, 2020

For any business, scaling is the only way towards sustainable growth. But instead of spending money on increased headcount, companies are planning to spend heavily on technology. The core reason so far for the companies to consider it as a supplement was only because of the traditional business model of one-off purchase.

Marketplace as a Service 10

Marketplace as a Service Trends Customer Lifetime Value Headcount 10