SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2025

Here’s a deeper dive into SaaStr Annual and why it’s considered the top SaaS event: Core Elements: Takes place in the San Francisco Bay Area (usually Silicon Valley) Features over 300 speakers across multiple tracks Focuses exclusively on SaaS metrics, growth strategies, and operational excellence Typically runs for 3 days with pre and (..)

Software 245

Software Scale Venture Capital SaaS 245

SaaStr

DECEMBER 14, 2021

Kazuki Ohta, CEO & Founder at Treasure Data, shares his company’s story of how pivoting at the right time saved their business and accelerated their growth to $100 million ARR. When it launched in 2011, Treasure Data’s positioning was a Hadoop-based big data warehouse in the cloud. The Platform: $0 – $5 Million ARR.

Sales Hiring 310

Sales Hiring Data AWS Leadership 310

SaaStr

MARCH 23, 2025

Our best hires consistently came from our leadership team’s networks. Founder-led sales provides invaluable dat a When founders sell the first $2-3M, they generate critical insights on customers, conversion rates, and retention that inform the GTM strategy. We’ve corrected this now, but we lost some early momentum.”

Sales Recruiting 245

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale AI 245

SaaStr

MAY 26, 2023

Leadership needs to consider funding areas, not just a single feature, because more supplemental subfeatures and finetuning will be required every time. Leadership needs to find a way to keep a finger on the pulse of the hard realities of customers and internal teams. Leadership needs to delegate to the talent they have hired.

CTO Coach 242

CTO Coach CTO Hire CTO Leadership 242

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2025

People are not going to want to take recommendations around security and what’s happening within their data infrastructure from an AI agent unless they’re confident that what’s being told to them is going to help make their environment better and not worse. The biggest challenge in all of that has been around quality.

AI 263

AI Cybersecurity User Experience Scaling 263

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 5, 2025

Enterprise data is the differentiator: While public data dominates foundation models, enterprise-specific data represents less than 1% but delivers exponentially more value when properly leveraged. cost savings, 35% time savings The Partner Ecosystem Play IBM isn’t going it alone.

AI 188

AI Scale SaaS Government 188

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2024

.’ The twist this time is the data is very hard for startups to acquire or accumulate. So it’s not just the innovation piece, but you need a proprietary data set to do something more meaningful with AI. Brian believes incumbent players like HubSpot and Salesforce have some key advantages: 1.

AI 287

AI Marketing SaaS Interviewing 287

SaaStr

MARCH 11, 2022

How can company leadership retain these important experiences of collaboration in the workplace and pair them with the opportunity and flexibility we’ve discovered since working remotely? Staff must be surveyed over time, but be mindful to not make long-term decisions on short-term data. The dynamics are ever-evolving. .

Data 303

Data Leadership Development Technology 303

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 18, 2022

First-party data is the future of online engagement and customer experiences. This isn’t surprising given competitors such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla Firefox are cookieless by default – however there are already debates about how Google will collect and use data thereafter. What is first-party data?

Data 217

Data Scale Engagement Advertising 217

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 10, 2025

Strategic Transformation The company’s leadership, including CEO Tim Sang, recognized that their challenges extended beyond typical growing pains.

Scale 164

Scale Scaling Outsourced Development Sales 164

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 23, 2022

A tenant of leadership is not just building trust, but vulnerability. And while these conversations may be very data-driven, the people and projects you’re discussing aren’t just cells in a spreadsheet. Sometimes, it’s not about the data, it’s about the emotions and talking through it.” – Michelle Adams.

Underperforming Technical Team 315

Underperforming Technical Team Leadership Outsourced Development Finance 315

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 28, 2024

In reality, boards and executives are often reluctant to let go of leadership, recognizing the disruption and challenges that come with replacing key roles. But Jason reveals that these conversations often centre around confidence in your leadership rather than looking for reasons to replace you.

Technical Review 301

Technical Review Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Revenue 301

SaaStr

JULY 31, 2020

For us, that means including a clear understanding of the challenges and obstacles facing AEs, SDRs, CSMs and Revenue leadership. Chorus’s AI has reveled some interesting insights from the data. Leadership has gotten more involved on both the buying and selling side for several reasons,” said Benton. “On

Scale 359

Scale Artificial Intelligence Payments Payment Services 359

SaaStr

DECEMBER 10, 2023

As Chief Evangelist, Udi oversees Gong’s market leadership through new product launches and thought leadership. Udi Ledergor is a five-time Marketing leader at B2B start-ups and currently the Chief Evangelist at Gong.

Leadership 349

Leadership B2B Branding Startup 349

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

Bringing your leadership team to SaaStr Annual allows for compressed learning experiences that would otherwise take months to acquire. Benchmark Data and Performance Metrics SaaStr sessions typically feature transparent sharing of key metrics and benchmarks that are otherwise difficult to access.

Sales Recruiting 195

Sales Recruiting Scale CTO Hire Sales Hiring 195

TechEmpower SaaS

AUGUST 21, 2023

The explanation from software leadership is often unsatisfying or unclear. Getting Buy-in from Leadership Business leaders are often concerned about how their tech teams will react to an external technical review. Let’s assume that you’ve already expressed your frustrations with technical leadership.

Technical Review 390

Technical Review Software Review Development Team Review Systems Review 390

SaaStr

MARCH 12, 2025

About Dave Kellogg Dave Kellogg brings a rare combination of marketing and executive leadership experience to his analysis of SaaS businesses. In reality, effective marketing is deeply analytical and data-driven, with clear KPIs at every funnel stage.

Sales Hiring 205

Sales Hiring Marketing Technical Review Underperforming Technical Team 205

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

However, when Theory layered in the actual data to see how much more efficient they were year-over-year, the numbers were between -4% and 4%. There is a dominant belief that AI makes processes more efficient, but this belief has not yet been confirmed by the data. #8:

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 333

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2023

With over a decade of data from qualitative learnings and insights amassed through a network of leaders, ICONIQ deep dives into what it takes to succeed at GTM throughout the four stages of growth. According to ICONIQ’s data, many successful companies hit a growth plateau at around $15M ARR.

Scale 276

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Outsourced Development 276

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2021

Scaling your SaaS company isn’t just about hitting the right growth metrics –– it requires a thorough understanding of your business goals, company culture, and leadership dynamic. Says Mann, “It was important for us to own the data, to know exactly what was going on…when you have problems, you don’t have anywhere to hide.

Scale 290

Scale Scaling Leadership Company Culture 290

Sales Hacker

FEBRUARY 7, 2025

The Scaling Stage: Building Market Leadership The scaling stage is where a SaaS company seeks to solidify its position as a market leader. Market leadership requires not only a compelling product but also strong brand recognition, robust customer support, and a scalable infrastructure. Older pricing may not match new goals.

Pricing 113

Pricing Scale SaaS Technical Review 113

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2022

Step 1: Collect data. You can’t sell effectively if you don’t collect data. Investing in a robust CRM software is a must as it helps you consolidate data about customer interactions. Salesforce brings together all prospect and customer data across your business allowing you to win customers and grow your business.

Scale 263

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales 263

SaaStr

DECEMBER 17, 2023

Maybe the shift to the data warehouse as the source of truth (Snowflake for us) and AI change my opinion here though. #4. It allows us to deliver reminders, call summaries, suggested next steps, custom prompts and easy to follow workflows directly to our market facing teams and leadership.

Scale 296

Scale Leadership AI Innovation 296

SaaStr

APRIL 1, 2023

This data from Carta helps illustrate it: So we cut corners. We hired job hoppers that never stayed anywhere for more than 18 months for leadership roles. While layoffs are all across the news today, looking back, July 2021 was the nadir for layoffs. Everyone was hiring everyone, anyone, back in mid-2021.

Sales Hiring 315

Sales Hiring Investment Leadership Startup 315

SaaStr

OCTOBER 12, 2022

Be sure your PMF is backed up by your data, feedback, and experiments from phase one. Your leadership team will focus on creating these systems with the goal-system-outcome framework, but it’s essential that as the company grows, the systems shift as well. Leadership Team: 18-month horizon. Phase 2: $30M. Product-Market Fit.

Scaling 246

Scaling Leadership Startup Product Marketing 246

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2022

Khusid explains the company’s ability to perfect the user experience to such a horizontal group with its attention to data and feedback: “From the very beginning, we were focused on data points that were coming from our users and customers…we look at data points at scale. Learning Through Changes.

Sales Hiring 246

Sales Hiring Scale Company Culture B2C 246

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

You Mon Tsang, CEO and co-founder of ChurnZero, Colleen O’Sullivan, VP of Integrated Customer Experience at Hubspot, and Jason Lemkin, SaaStr founder and CEO, give their take on where the customer success industry is headed and shares data from the Customer Success Leadership Study done by ChurnZero at the close of 2023.

Customer Success 302

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Headcount 302

SaaStr

JUNE 27, 2024

The Difference Between Kind and Nice Hannah asks how you balance a culture of hiring for kindness with the leadership team’s intensity for hard work, ambition, and getting things done. As you grow, you hire specialists, GTM leadership, sales leadership, and others who have done this at a similar scale or in a similar market.

Scale 262

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 262

SaaStr

DECEMBER 1, 2024

More on that data here: It’s Taking Longer and Longer to IPO. Some clearly could have IPO’d much earlier. Cavna, Databricks, Stripe and more are waiting until billions in ARR to IPO. But a useful metric to understand nevertheless. Years Or More For The Next Batch.

Startup 263

Startup Finance Software Metrics 263

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2024

So you need context from leadership to what you ultimately need to deliver on in your function to be successful. When you get everyone on the leadership team in a room to come up with the best ideas, those people take ownership of the ideas. Build the right leadership team based on your company’s core values and hiring principles.

Sales Hiring 309

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Leadership 309

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2024

She was able to get into a leadership position immediately and coach people who were hungry for it in a slightly safer space than more tenured folks. Shifting from an operator and loving operations and data to a sales and revenue leadership role felt like a big jump. Automation and AI could solve for that.

Scale 303

Scale Underperforming Technical Team SMB Finance 303

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 12, 2023

Other than your own, what app would you never let anyone take away from you no matter what: Metabase – can’t do anything without data! #4. With a career focused on the intersection of storytelling, media, technology, and advertising, Sarah also previously held leadership roles at Ooyala, Discovery, and Viacom.

Advertising 286

Advertising Leadership AI Technology 286

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Someone could present the data here, stand up, and say we had a good quarter. Feel like you’ve been in the same board or leadership meeting over and over again? This is someone selecting and twisting the data to justify prior conclusions. The data will eventually confess anything if we’re determined enough.

Metrics 340

Metrics Sales Hiring Benchmarks SaaS 340

SaaStr

JUNE 7, 2024

Today, we have more access to data than ever, and we need to use that to our advantage. Steve Jobs did something we can all be capable of doing: making better decisions with better data. Don’t be afraid to have candid conversations with your leadership teams. That’s the goal of product. Rally and excite the organization.

Scale 294

Scale Innovation Revenue Leadership 294

SaaStr

OCTOBER 22, 2023

In 2017, he was named by LinkedIn as one of the top 5 CMOs in the world to follow for thought-leadership in the digital marketing domain. Chandar also spent years at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) as a strategic advisor to Fortune 500 companies. He is a Strategic Advisor to the CEO of Freshworks. He is on the Board of Directors for R.R.

AI Search 287

AI Search Consulting Leadership AI 287

User Pilot

OCTOBER 31, 2024

While “use data to drive decision-making” sounds obvious, there’s a HUGE gap between saying it and doing it well. Product analytics refers to the process of gathering and analyzing data on how users interact with a product. This process may reveal gaps such as: Insufficient raw data. What is product analytics?

Strategy 105

Strategy Underperforming Technical Team Government Customer Lifetime Value 105