SaaStr

JUNE 21, 2025

Veeva (+18.5%) ZoomInfo (+7.4%) Veeva continues to prove the vertical SaaS thesis: Deep pharma/life sciences expertise Regulatory compliance built-in Switching costs approaching infinity AI integration that actually matters The lesson : Horizontal is commoditized. Tier 3: Vertical Specialists Average Return: +15.3%

B2B 260

B2B Government Healthcare AI 260

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2025

When I look at the VP of Sales / CRO that didnt work out the past 12-18 months across the SaaStr Fund portfolio and my ecosystem, one thing stands out. And its an old SaaStr theme: #1: You have to hire folks in sales where their last job was harder. Security compliance? There may exceptions at rocketships. You often fly.

Sales Hiring 179

Sales Hiring Sales compliance Interviewing 179

SaaStr

JUNE 25, 2025

This committee evaluates AI tools and use cases for security and compliance before deployment. Go-to-Market : Use dedicated incubation teams before scaling to core sales 4. AI Adoption : Legal and compliance stakeholders should be partners, not obstacles 7.

Cybersecurity 195

Cybersecurity AI Scale CTO Hire 195

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

Here’s why domain data matters: Tighter accuracy gains : Domain-specific data allows you to optimize for specific use cases while maintaining general capabilities Vertical specialization : Different industries have different needs – Dialpad can tune their models for sales teams vs. support teams Competitive moat : While anyone can access (..)

AI 255

AI Scale Government compliance 255

SaaStr

JANUARY 23, 2025

You need: Sales leaders who understand complex, multi-stakeholder deals Customer success teams ready for high-touch support Legal expertise for enterprise contract negotiation Product leaders who can balance current needs with future vision Pro tip: Hire enterprise reps in pairs.

Enterprise 244

Enterprise Sales Hiring Scale Outsourced Development 244

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2025

Moving from AI pilots to production-grade implementations requires solving hard technical problems around data pipelines, security, compliance, and workflow integration. This favors companies with strong enterprise sales capabilities over those relying on viral adoption. Price pressure is coming.

AI 275

AI Payment Services Payments Scale 275

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2024

Probably the biggest challenge in vertical SaaS I see is scaling the sales team. It’s pretty easy to hire SaaS sales execs to sell … a SaaS sales product. At the same time, it’s very hard to turn a domain expert that doesn’t know sales into a great SaaS salesperson. Plan to be in founder-led sales mode longer.

Sales Hiring 311

Sales Hiring Scale Sales SaaS 311

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2025

Key areas to watch: Model Efficiency Innovations Enterprise Data Integration Tools Vertical-Specific AI Platforms Industry-Specific AI Applications Governance and Compliance Solutions As always in SaaS, the winners will be those who can move quickly while building sustainable, differentiated solutions.

AI 179

AI Scale SaaS Government 179

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2024

So you’re hiring your first few sales reps in the early days? Before you have a great VP of Sales? So you need a very certain type of sales rep. Not during founder-led sales. The #1 trick to making sure your first sales reps work out? But I’ve just never seen early sales rep execl that do this.

Sales Hiring 296

Sales Hiring Sales Interviewing compliance 296

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How You Deal With Long Sales Cycles, E.g. 7-8+ Months? You cannot force 9 month sales cycles into 9 days. This is why “pipeline” doesn’t make any sense to start-ups, not really, but makes total sense for BigCo sales executives. Crazy discounting and high pressure sales tactics don’t work on long sales cycle deals.

Sales Hiring 286

Sales Hiring Sales compliance Enterprise 286

SaaStr

JUNE 16, 2025

The B2B Reality : You’re no longer selling to innovation teams with small budgets—you’re competing for the same enterprise IT dollars as traditional software, which means enterprise sales cycles, security requirements, and procurement rigor are now table stakes.

Enterprise 211

Enterprise AI Benchmarks Innovation 211

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 5, 2024

Public & private company diligence, compliance analysis Marketing & PR 0.9 Sales Managers 0.4 Automated sales coaching, AI sales development Architects, Surveyors, & Cartographers 0.28 Public & private company diligence, compliance analysis Marketing & PR 0.9 Sales Managers 0.4

Software Review 239

Software Review Technical Review Scale Construction 239

Blulogix

NOVEMBER 18, 2024

By BluLogix Team Revenue Recognition: Ensuring Compliance and Accuracy What is RevRec and how does it impact accurate reporting for compliance and financial integrity? Regulatory Compliance : Compliance with accounting standards is crucial to avoid legal issues and penalties.

Payment Services 52

Payment Services Payments compliance SaaS Payments 52

SaaStr

JUNE 6, 2025

Align sales comp with net revenue retention, not initial ACV 3. Lead with integration capabilities and security compliance, not just business outcomes 5. Your real buyer is probably the VP of Marketing or Head of Sales who can approve a $75K annual spend without CFO sign-off 7. Buyers have already done their homework with AI 8.

AI Search 147

AI Search AI Technical Review Software Review 147

SaaStr

AUGUST 2, 2024

Canva Head of Sales and Success for EMEA, Jorge Bestard, and Head of Strategic Sales for EMEA, Daniela Nyarko, share Canva’s journey from PLG to Enterprise, strategies to navigate the PLG trap, and why it’s so attractive. You get traction in the market and raise a round to build a marketing and sales team.

Scale 277

Scale Sales Hiring Sales B2C 277

SaaStr

JULY 18, 2024

How can you bridge the gap between sales and tech to drive customer success? Sarah Polan, EMEA Field CTO at HashiCorp, and Louise Fellows, VP NEMEA at HashiCorp, explore the relationship between Field CTO and sales to help you understand why it exists and how you can leverage this relationship when you have a highly technical product.

CTO Coach 293

CTO Coach CTO Technical Review Customer Success 293

FastSpring

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

The companies have integrated FastSpring’s global localized payments and compliance platform with Nexus’ industry leading creator-powered web shops. A global payments & compliance orchestration platform that will allow your players to transact in the currencies and local payment methods that work best for them.

Payments 157

Payments Merchant Services Payment Methods Payment Services 157

FastSpring

OCTOBER 16, 2024

Further still, if you want redundancy in your ability to accept cross border payments — which everyone should have to ensure they never lose sales to payment system down time — this at least doubles your complexity in each region. You can’t get fast, meaningful revenue expansion with slow, piecemeal geographical expansion.

Merchant Services 158

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Methods Outsourcing Services 158

SaaStr

JUNE 20, 2025

billion valuation after 175M round Scale AI : $29 billion valuation / “sale” with Meta’s $14.3 Industry observers like Josh Bersin remain skeptical about replicating complex systems like Workday’s payroll and compliance frameworks. billion total funding, $157 billion valuation Anthropic : $8.4

AI Search 274

AI Search Artificial Intelligence AI CTO Hire 274

Stax

JUNE 18, 2025

Contact sales Some of the key characteristics of vertical SaaS include: Industry-specific solutions. Functionality Vertical solutions are built with industry-specific workflows and compliance needs in mind. With clearer value props, tailored pricing, and purpose-built features, your sales and marketing spend goes further.

Merchant Services 167

Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Services Payments 167

TechEmpower SaaS

MARCH 4, 2024

Key Functions with High Impact Generative AI is revolutionizing sales by enabling dynamic pricing and personalized customer interactions, boosting conversion rates and customer satisfaction. Post-sale, AI analyzes customer data to improve service and loyalty, making it a cornerstone of modern sales methodologies.

Generative AI 443

Generative AI CTO Hire AI Sales Recruiting 443

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2021

So how do you simplify and speed up your sales cycles? He started as the first sales hire at TripActions when the company was small and he helped scale the business to 5,000 customers, 1,200 employees and a $5 billion private valuation. Read on for Michael’s insightful advice for driving faster sales cycles. Sales Enablement.

Scale 286

Scale Sales Hiring Enterprise Sales 286

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

But here’s the real kicker: PLG isn’t just another sales motion. The “SaaS Era” – Online trials, SEM/SEO, inside sales GTM 3.0: The “SaaS Era” – Online trials, SEM/SEO, inside sales GTM 3.0: It’s not just product or sales – it’s operational excellence.

Enterprise readiness 147

Enterprise readiness Enterprise compliance Acquisition 147

Payrix

FEBRUARY 4, 2025

The master merchant establishes a relationship with a payment processor or acquiring bank and is responsible for ensuring compliance with payment regulations, handling transaction processing, and managing risks associated with payments on behalf of the sub-merchants. fraud prevention, and risk management.

Merchant Services 130

Merchant Services Payment Services Payments SaaS Payments 130

FastSpring

MARCH 27, 2025

FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great games!

Payment Methods 140

Payment Methods Payment Services Payments Payment Solutions 140

FastSpring

APRIL 29, 2025

Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great games: FastSpring is a payments partner you can trust for your players and which you can use to sell games or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your game with fully customizable and branded checkouts.

Payment Services 132

Payment Services Payments Payment Solutions Payment Methods 132

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2021

Avalara manages a big problem — tax and related compliance automation. It’s in many ways the hardest way to do it (direct sales to SMEs), but like HubSpot, Avalara has made it work well. They earn commissions and are offered dedicated sales, marketing and training support. And growth is strong. market cap.

Scale 328

Scale SMB compliance Churn 328

Subscription Flow

OCTOBER 22, 2024

It is already daunting to steer your company through the whirlwind of sales tax. So why is SaaS sales tax so challenging? The reason is, there doesn’t exist any single standardized system internationally to preside over SaaS sales tax. The SaaS businesses have to navigate through the world of tax compliance themselves.

SaaS Payments 52

SaaS Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions SaaS 52

SaaStr

JULY 17, 2023

A lot of customers really do need SOC-2, HIPAA and other compliances. Here’s the fundamental flaw in SaaS sales, that as founders and executives you need to try to address: SaaS sales is seen as way, way too transactional. SaaS sales reps see everything as a “deal” It’s not to customers.

Sales 246

Sales compliance Enterprise Pricing 246

Clouded Judgement

JANUARY 24, 2025

For many current large language models, once they are exposed to domain-specific challenges or niche inquiries—like in-depth product troubleshooting or compliance-related questions—they can stumble. That’s because their training data, while vast, may lack the level of granularity found in specialized enterprise environments.

Enterprise 157

Enterprise AI Cloud Artificial Intelligence 157

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2022

Replace manual GRC efforts, reduce costs, and save time preparing for audits and maintaining compliance. Drata is the world’s most advanced security and compliance automation platform with the mission to help companies earn and keep the trust of their users, customers, partners, and prospects.

Scale 53

Scale Onboarding Government compliance 53

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 10, 2023

What’s your top “undiscovered gem” — an app you love but others may not have heard of?

AWS 291

AWS compliance AI Startup 291

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

Stephanie Couzin, the VP of GTM Strategy and Ops, and Roderick De Greef, the VP of Sales and GM EMEA, share Lucid’s transition from a PLG company to a PLG and Sales-Led company. They talked to customers and peers in the industry to build an inside sales motion. This is where product-led sales comes in.

Scale 300

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Systems Review 300

SaaStr

JUNE 29, 2023

Many net-new purchases are for data security, compliance, risk management, and AI-powered tools. Compliance : The cost of GDPR compliance has totaled around $9B globally since its introduction. However, it’s not as simple as moving the money; since budgets are getting bigger, sales teams must support those budgets.

VP of Engineering 286

VP of Engineering Trends Sales Hiring Cybersecurity 286