SaaStr

FEBRUARY 18, 2021

There simply aren’t enough businesses in the entire country + Europe to get most products to a $100m freemium business in almost any business/SaaS/work segment. Even so, it’s still a lot of users you’ll need: So is freemium hopeless to build a $100,000,000+ business for most of us? The problem?

Business Model 293

Business Model Scale Business PayPal 293

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 16, 2019

The SaaS industry is constantly evolving, and for many companies in the space, that means having to evolve their business model. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean a “pivot”, but more often the evolution is a shifting business model as the company scales and the user base grows and changes. Purchase process.

Business Model 195

Business Model Scale Pricing Payment Methods 195

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2025

AI is already reshaping B2B SaaS, and its only going to accelerate. One Thing is Clear: AI Makes a Lot of Business Software Look Awfully Expensive Today. Gross Margins Will Improve for AI-Driven SaaS. AI is also transforming the economics of SaaS. AI is forcing every SaaS company to level up. Is Deflation Coming?

AI 147

AI Trends SaaS AWS 147

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 9, 2022

So things got a bit broken with SaaS sales exec comp in the run-up up until 2020 … and then it got really broken in the crazy times of late 2020 and 2021. SaaS companies and fintechs and pseudo-SaaS companies could end up paying out more than the entire year’s margin in the commission check. This wrecks the unit economics.

Scale 345

Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring Sales 345

SaaStr

DECEMBER 15, 2020

It took us 2 years just to figure out our ultimate business model. It seems like everyone wants to be a SaaS founder these days. Start their own SaaS company. There are three things I ask folks who want to start their own SaaS company: 1. That just doesn’t happen in paid SaaS apps. >>

Sales Recruiting 363

Sales Recruiting SaaS Interviewing Consulting 363

SaaStr

JUNE 5, 2020

Debt for SaaS companies done right is a gift. Few folks have more data than Nathan Latka and he offers up some insights on how to properly leverage up in SaaS. Geoffrey Moore calls this group the Late Majority and the Laggards in his book Crossing the Chasm , a secret bible for many SaaS CEO’s. . — ed.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital Technical Review Scale SaaS 297

SaaStr

OCTOBER 23, 2024

Jason starts with the meta-question we’ve been asking a lot of SaaS leaders lately ( Klaviyo , ZoomInfo ) — ‘are we in a downturn?’ ’ Bill is approaching half a million customers, so has a good pulse on small businesses. Going Long We’ve written before on the power of going long in SaaS.

SMB 307

SMB Payment Services Payments Payment Methods 307

SaaStr

JUNE 12, 2020

There are some questions in SaaS that are, at some level, almost a mystery: Why was Veeva able to burn only ~$10m net on its way to an IPO? Why are burn rates so divergent in SaaS? Market-dominant strategy does work in SaaS, at least muchly. A longer SaaStr post on Dominant Strategies in SaaS here. So it’s not that.

Scale 339

Scale SaaS Business Model Strategy 339

SaaStr

MAY 1, 2021

How does a SaaS company reach enterprise buyers? Zhao says, “Our business model is B2B SaaS, but our sales motion is similar to a consumer-like company…there’s a lot of B2C elements to it.”. Align your business goals with your user community. A Different Way to Approach Enterprise Leads . Always add value.

Enterprise 314

Enterprise Scale B2C SaaS 314

FastSpring

JANUARY 23, 2025

If you own a SaaS or other digital product business such as a Slack plugin, Chrome extension, online publishing business, mobile app, or even a blog and youre looking to exit, you may have a lot of questions about how best to go about it. How selling an investment business is very different from getting VC funding.

Scale 119

Scale Entrepreneurship Scaling Underperforming Technical Team 119

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2023

More here: If You’re Going to Do a SaaS Start-Up … You Have to Give it 24 Months – SaaStr Picking cofounders that aren’t as committed. More here: Planning to Do a SaaS Startup? SaaStr Trying to pursue a “Grass is Greener” business model. 8–12 months is almost never enough time. Related to the prior point.

SMB 274

SMB SaaS B2C Interviewing 274

The Angel VC

JANUARY 10, 2017

In less earth shattering news, the fact that it's 2017 also means that my "SaaS Funding in 2016" napkin needs an update. As a reminder, in the original post I tried to give a "back of a napkin" answer to this question: What does it take to raise capital, in SaaS, in 2016? So, what does it take to raise capital, in SaaS, in early 2017?

SaaS 262

SaaS Marketplace as a Service Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 262

TechEmpower SaaS

JULY 31, 2023

Proving your Business Model Works - Build, Define, and Review But how do you prove your numbers? Then use what you’ve learned in this blog post to decide if the numbers validate your business model, or if you need to rethink your approach. cto , infotech , innovation , product , project , saas

Metrics 390

Metrics Startup Scale New CTO 390

Incredo

JUNE 25, 2019

But when it comes to SaaS, freemium plans become a reality. SaaS freemium model: The What, The How and The Why. The concept of freemium is mainly typical for the SaaS world (yeah, SaaS means the world to us) and the video games industry. Note that freemium model ? Business life is not that simple.

SaaS 236

SaaS Pricing Software Review Acquisition 236

Tom Tunguz

JULY 11, 2024

The SaaS business model of the last 20 years for SaaS is a beautiful one. The now-classic seat based model disrupted the perpetual license model. Maybe we’ll see a No-SaaS rebel replicate Marc Benioff’s playbook. In a world where AI agents are 2.5-3x

AI 234

AI Pricing Software Compensation 234

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

Laiva Becoming the platform of choice for life science companies and research institutions by creating a two-sided marketplace with significant SaaS components. SaaS vs. AI: A Misleading Analogy Unlike SaaS, AI isn’t necessarily disruptive to the existing tech stack.

Technical Review 189

Technical Review Artificial Intelligence AI Marketplace as a Service 189

Predictable Revenue

APRIL 19, 2021

SaaS businesses also need to adopt a modified business model for surviving in this unprecedented time. The post How To Crisis Proof Your SaaS Business Right Now appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

Business 222

Business SaaS Business Model Revenue 222

SaaStr

JULY 16, 2022

Because I don’t think Initial Traction is at all nebulous in SaaS — and I think it occurs earlier than many think. Well it means two things: >> First, that your SaaS product’s customer base (and revenue) is compounding. And that’s where the power and leverage is in SaaS. >>

Scale 284

Scale Venture Capital SaaS Branding 284

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

The 5 Key Things You Need to Know About Modern Go-To-Market Adam Gross, former CEO of Vimeo and Heroku and and veteran of Salesforce and Dropbox joined SaaStr Annual for a deep dive on the evolution of SaaS go-to-market strategies. What he shared was pure gold for any SaaS founder trying to navigate the complex world of GTM motions.

Enterprise readiness 147

Enterprise readiness Enterprise compliance Acquisition 147

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2024

The reality is if you read the stories of a lot of SaaS successes, almost all of them had patches where, as meteoric as the growth seemed, they had patches when growth slowed, when things were harder, when they needed more money, or when they almost ran out. And that means that 99 percent of startups can’t even raise venture capital.

Venture Capital 312

Venture Capital Software Review Investment Startup 312

SaaStr

MAY 24, 2024

Dave decided to pivot his business model from solopreneurship to building a sellable asset, leading to the creation of Exit 5. Jason Lemkin shares his experience of hiring and investing in his business, which has revitalized his passion for work and brought him renewed purpose and excitement.

Sales Hiring 293

Sales Hiring Outsourcing Services Technical Review Scale 293

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2025

After nearly two decades building infrastructure companies from zero to IPO, Dave has distilled the repeatable patterns of successful scaling into a framework that works across any B2B SaaS business. This specific threshold serves as a critical signal that your business model has legs.

Scale 185

Scale Systems Review Scaling Leadership 185

Incredo

MARCH 20, 2019

Software as a service, also known as SaaS, is a highly cost-effective software solution that offers a lot of agility for businesses. More companies are increasingly adopting SaaS solutions as they realize what a reliable option it can be for numerous business models and industries.

Trends 177

Trends Enterprise SaaS Business Model 177

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 18, 2020

Wondering how your SaaS business got slapped with a multi-million dollar sales tax bill from one or multiple states? Probably because you, like so many other SaaS companies out there, didn’t even know you had to collect and remit sales tax. Some states consider SaaS a product, others consider it a service.

New CTO 227

New CTO SaaS Sales CTO 227

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

The current public market environment might look like a great SaaS crash for many people. As things appear to slow, how do we get back to the fundamentals, find the things that are great about SaaS that are measurable, and help people see the value in your business? In reality, it’s not a crash. Why does the rule of 40 matter?

Metrics 261

Metrics Marketing SaaS SMB 261

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 20, 2023

Underrated: How great of a business model SaaS is. 1,000+ Unicorns bloomed, hundreds of them in SaaS. . 1,000+ Unicorns bloomed, hundreds of them in SaaS. Well, there aren’t that many acquisitions in general in SaaS, no matter how it looks on TechCrunch. Ignored a bit was the cap table. What do I mean?

Acquisition 341

Acquisition Startup Business Model SaaS 341

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2023

Freshworks is a successful public SaaS company that has a humble beginning in the small town of Chennai, India. Big Bet #2: Find Tomorrow’s Great Anglers — Hire Talent With A Learning Mindset In 2010 and 2011, San Francisco was the place for SaaS talent. It helped them get funding in the first round.

Sales Hiring 284

Sales Hiring Scale SMB AI 284

SaaStr

DECEMBER 6, 2023

SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin chats with Box CEO and Co-Founder Aaron Levie to talk about what’s new at Box, SaaS fatigue, hiring a new COO, operating margins and efficiency, the future of AI, and what to expect for 2024. They get to talk to brand-new businesses in completely different industries all the time.

AI 286

AI Sales Hiring Scale Artificial Intelligence 286

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 24, 2024

First, the bar to get venture-funded in B2B / SaaS has basically always been the same my entire career. That’s always been the bar to get funded in SaaS. Which is the bar to IPO today and for VCs to make enough money for their business model to work. We’re confusing two things. T3D2 or better.

Social Media 311

Social Media Business Model B2B SaaS 311

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2021

Open Source is here to stay—and Open Source + SaaS is the future. Databricks started out in the Cloud; we never provided an on-prem offering, only a SaaS Cloud offering. Slowly, you’re going to find lots of companies like Databricks that offer open source technology as a SaaS service. It was difficult, but it was worth it.

Enterprise 246

Enterprise AI SaaS AWS 246

SaaStr

OCTOBER 11, 2024

Historically, the business model has been to sell radio ads, and the people running the ads are typically local businesses. The problem is that when a BDR called these businesses, the person on the other end didn’t have the budget or know-how to create an effective ad. Leaky buckets in SaaS are painful. Don’t wait.

Cloud 167

Cloud AI Artificial Intelligence Healthcare 167

SaaStr

APRIL 19, 2024

How do you reverse-engineer your first million as a SaaS startup founder? You Need A Business Model with Economies of Scale As you’re trying to reverse engineer whether your business model makes sense, you have to look at your business model. So, what does it take to get to a $100M outcome?

Engineering 300

Engineering Business Model Pricing Scaling 300

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2023

To expand using a bottom-up model, SaaS businesses need to create a more delightful experience for every user. Few SaaS brands have been able to hone in on this the way Scratchpad and OpenPhone have. The delightful experience should connect to a vital part of the business model.

Growth Hacking 246

Growth Hacking Social Media SaaS Business 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 26, 2024

With so much change in SaaS, Cloud, and AI the past few years, it’s albeit become much harder to predict so many things — including how events will go. They explore the unique challenges and opportunities presented by different approaches, from subscription-based models to enterprise solutions. The 10th Annual!!

Benchmarks 293

Benchmarks Finance Business Model Forecasting 293

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 15, 2022

Metrics are the key to evaluating success and setting goals, but not every SaaS business should orient itself around the same one-size-fits-all numbers. The Evolution of Language For SaaS Business. This flexible mindset creates just the right conditions for embracing evolving business models and new metrics.

Metrics 272

Metrics Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Technical Review 272

SaaStr

JULY 4, 2024

What’s wrong with our business model? In SaaS, this typically happens somewhere between $3m and $8m in ARR or so … finally, you have enough customers, enough of a mini-brand, enough going on to get the flywheel going … but all of a sudden, it’s too much for the team. We’ve all been there. Almost all of us, at least.

Business Model 298

Business Model Engineering Scaling Branding 298