2024

article thumbnail

Using Generative AI to Drive Corporate Impact

TechEmpower SaaS

Generative AI is revolutionizing how corporations operate by enhancing efficiency and innovation across various functions. Focusing on generative AI applications in a select few corporate functions can contribute to a significant portion of the technology's overall impact. Key Functions with High Impact Generative AI is revolutionizing sales by enabling dynamic pricing and personalized customer interactions, boosting conversion rates and customer satisfaction.

article thumbnail

83% Percent of You Haven’t Gotten AI SDRs to Work … Yet

SaaStr

So clearly AI is rapidly changing the way we do sales, but how will it all shake out? Over in the contact center and post-sales space, we can already see 20%+ of customer support execs been routinely replaced by AI. But what about the more personal sales side? AI SDRs have taken off more quickly than AI AEs (although personally, I suspect more value will be in AI SEs and AEs that can answer my deep product and pricing questions instantly, without games).

AI 326
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

This Message Will Self-Destruct in 33 Seconds

Tom Tunguz

The average American attention span has fallen from 150 seconds in 2004 to 75 seconds in 2012 to 47 seconds in 2023 - a 5-6% annual rate of decline. Year Avg American Attention Span (sec) CAGR 2004 150 - 2012 75 -6% 2023 47 -5% How does this compare to these blog posts? In 2013, the average reader dwelled on this site for 47 seconds. Today, it’s 33 seconds, a 3.6% decline - which is a bit better !

Metrics 334
article thumbnail

Clouded Judgement 6.14.24 - Is Seat Based Pricing Dead?

Clouded Judgement

Every week I’ll provide updates on the latest trends in cloud software companies. Follow along to stay up to date! Subscribe now Is Seat Based Pricing Dead? If AI delivers on its promise, it may spell the end of the SaaS business model as we know it. Historically, cloud software businesses charged a recurring fee based on the number of users of their software - the SaaS model.

Pricing 344
article thumbnail

Struggling to Scale Test Coverage Under Pressure?

When test coverage falls behind release velocity, quality suffers, and your team feels the consequences. This guide outlines when it makes sense to outsource quality assurance (QA), the risks to watch for, and how to scale testing without increasing headcount or slowing down engineering. You will learn how leading teams are leveraging external QA partners to expand coverage, enhance defect detection, and remain aligned with CI/CD timelines.

article thumbnail

Most SaaS Apps Are Just Getting Starting With AI. 2025 Will Be Radically Different.

SaaStr

So I caught up the other day with the CTO of a leading SaaS company with tens of thousands of customers, growing quickly. AI is all over their homepage and website and comms. I asked him about a particular use case for AI, and his answer shocked me a bit: Honestly, our AI is basically still in beta. Its rolled out to about a tenth of the customers we plan to, and the uses cases are pretty simple today.

AI 329

More Trending

article thumbnail

Three Ways SaaS Organizations Can Create Recurring Revenue Without Spending a Dime

USIO

In the competitive world of Software as a Service (SaaS), generating recurring revenue is essential for sustainable growth. While many strategies involve significant investments in marketing, sales, and technology, there are also effective methods to boost recurring revenue that require minimal financial outlay. Here are three ways SaaS organizations can create recurring revenue without spending a dime. 1.

Payments 306
article thumbnail

5 More Interesting Learnings From HubSpot at $2.4 Billion in ARR

SaaStr

So we’ve covered HubSpot more than any other SaaS leader on this 5 Interesting Learnings series, in part because so many of us use HubSpot ourselves, and in part because its metrics and use cases are so like many of the apps we build and sell ourselves. They recently did an Analyst day though that had some more great data that I thought was super interesting, and worth a deep dive. 5 More Interesting Learnings then: #1. 75% of Customers Are Onboarded By Partners Partners don’t just

SMB 312
article thumbnail

Approaching Half a Million Customers: How to Win in SMB with BILL CEO and Founder René Lacerte

SaaStr

In 2006, BILL CEO and Founder René Lacerte set out to define a category around financial operations for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). Needless to say, he succeeded. At SaaStr’s AI Summit during the SaaStr Annual , René chatted with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin about how BILL has reached half a million customers and $1.3B in revenue.

SMB 307
article thumbnail

A Look Back at Q1 '24 Public Cloud Software Earnings

Clouded Judgement

Q1 earnings season for cloud businesses is now behind us. The 62 companies that I’ll discuss here (which is not an exhaustive list, but is still comprehensive) all reported quarterly earnings sometime between April 24th – June 10th. In this post, I’ll take a data-driven approach in evaluating the overall group’s performance, and highlight individual standouts along the way.

Cloud 320
article thumbnail

What’s New in Apache Airflow® 3.0—And How Will It Reshape Your Data Workflows?

Speaker: Tamara Fingerlin, Developer Advocate

Apache Airflow® 3.0, the most anticipated Airflow release yet, officially launched this April. As the de facto standard for data orchestration, Airflow is trusted by over 77,000 organizations to power everything from advanced analytics to production AI and MLOps. With the 3.0 release, the top-requested features from the community were delivered, including a revamped UI for easier navigation, stronger security, and greater flexibility to run tasks anywhere at any time.

article thumbnail

Going Global: Why a Localized Checkout Is Key to SaaS Success

FastSpring

In the SaaS industry, the checkout experience can make or break a sale. A seamless, localized checkout process is crucial for converting potential customers, especially in global markets. Focusing on these three key areas can help your SaaS business win more customers: Language. Payment methods. Currency display. FastSpring is a merchant of record that can help you easily grow your business internationally.

article thumbnail

How to Find Unlimited Content Ideas for Social Media in 2024

Buffer Resources

Your social media success hinges on creating content that makes your audience tick. But.how do you even find content ideas that resonate? And how do you ensure you never run out of them? This article will share nine places to find content ideas — ensuring you never have to stare at an empty content calendar (wondering ‘what should I create?

article thumbnail

Embedded Payments in 2024: A year in review for platforms | Episode 44

Payrix

The world of Embedded Payments saw remarkable developments in 2024, shaping strategies and innovations across the industry. In a compelling discussion on PayFAQ: The Embedded Payments podcast, Ian Hillis hosted payments veterans Ella Aguirre and Michael Veatch to reflect on the past year. The conversation unpacked notable trends, challenges, and opportunities for software companies navigating this dynamic landscape. 4 key takeaways from Embedded Payments in 2024 Takeaway #1: Maturity in Embedded

Payments 130
article thumbnail

My Little Library

Tom Tunguz

I didn’t notice it at first but there in the back corner of my laptop, I’ve been assembling a little library. The library doesn’t contain books, but scraps of text that explain what an AI should do. Visit Anthropic’s home page & you’ll find their collection : Each of us will assemble these little libraries with tracts like : write a blog post in my voice about this topic collect action items to send to the team from team notes & format them in this particula

article thumbnail

Agent Tooling: Connecting AI to Your Tools, Systems & Data

Speaker: Alex Salazar, CEO & Co-Founder @ Arcade | Nate Barbettini, Founding Engineer @ Arcade | Tony Karrer, Founder & CTO @ Aggregage

There’s a lot of noise surrounding the ability of AI agents to connect to your tools, systems and data. But building an AI application into a reliable, secure workflow agent isn’t as simple as plugging in an API. As an engineering leader, it can be challenging to make sense of this evolving landscape, but agent tooling provides such high value that it’s critical we figure out how to move forward.

article thumbnail

8 SaaS Customer Onboarding Examples to Learn From

User Pilot

Can you imagine what the ideal SaaS customer onboarding process looks like? When done well, it can be the difference between a user becoming a loyal customer or churning after the first week. That’s why we’ll go over what onboarding is in SaaS and analyze 8 onboarding examples from reputable SaaS companies to learn what they’re doing right (or wrong).

article thumbnail

Should Marketers Say “Business Outcomes”?

Kellblog

Sometimes. But make sure it’s not out of laziness or ignorance. Increasingly, you’ll hear the term “business outcomes” popping up in software marketing. While I initially loathed the phrase for its vagueness, over time I’ve come to believe that, much like the frequently abused word “ solutions ,” there is a right and a wrong way to use “business outcomes.” Let’s start with two examples.

Marketing 144
article thumbnail

GTM 126: Reverse Engineering the Founder Journey: From Scaling Twitter Ads to $650M, 20 Years Operating, and a Webflow Acquisition | Guy Yalif

Sales Hacker

The GTM Podcast is available on any major directory, including: Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube Guy Yalif is a seasoned B2B SaaS executive with over 20 years of go-to-market experience. As the co-founder and CEO of Intellimize (acquired by Webflow), Guy brings a unique perspective from his journey through iconic companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and Twitter, as well as his background in aerospace engineering.

Scale 97
article thumbnail

Why Medical, SaaS, EHR, and CRM Solutions Need PayFac-as-a-Service

USIO

Medical practices, Software as a Service (SaaS) providers, Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions are constantly seeking ways to streamline their processes and enhance their offerings. One area that’s gaining significant traction is the integration of Payment Facilitation as a Service (PayFac-as-a-Service) and integrated payment solutions.

article thumbnail

State of AI in Sales & Marketing 2025

AI adoption is reshaping sales and marketing. But is it delivering real results? We surveyed 1,000+ GTM professionals to find out. The data is clear: AI users report 47% higher productivity and an average of 12 hours saved per week. But leaders say mainstream AI tools still fall short on accuracy and business impact. Download the full report today to see how AI is being used — and where go-to-market professionals think there are gaps and opportunities.

article thumbnail

6 Of The Most Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make Pitching VCs

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: What Are Some of the Most Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make Pitching VCs? I’ve invested almost $200m as part of SaaStr Fund / 2024. A few top mistakes founders make: #1. Not making cold email truly great. Don’t ask to pick someone’s brain, or coffee. Make the cold email so great, you’d want to invest based on just it alone. 2 Cold Emails I Funded For Millions #2.

CTO 316
article thumbnail

The 30-Day Test: How to Know if Your VP of Sales Will Succeed

SaaStr

Here’s an uncomfortable truth about SaaS companies: the majority of first-time VPs of Sales don’t make it past 12 months. As someone who has both succeeded and failed at making this critical hire, I can tell you that when it works, it’s transformative. When it doesn’t, it’s potentially catastrophic. A failed VP of Sales hire doesn’t just cost you immediate revenue—it creates a devastating ripple effect: You lose the second-order revenue (up to 6x the initial l

article thumbnail

HubSpot Co-Founder and Chairman Brian Halligan on SaaS Markets, Board Meetings, and AI’s Impact

SaaStr

SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin recently sat down with HubSpot Chairman and co-founder Brian Halligan , who shared valuable insights on the current state of SaaS, evolving board meeting formats, and how AI is reshaping the industry. Here are the key takeaways from part 1 of this interview. Reflecting on Company Outcomes as a Founding CEO We started with Brian flipping the tables a bit and asking Jason a question to kick off the interview: “I know this is a podcast supposed to be interv

AI 284
article thumbnail

5 Interesting Learnings from Klaviyo at Almost $1 Billion in ARR

SaaStr

So the latest SaaS leader to cross $1B ARR is Klaviyo. Klaviyo dominates marketing in the Shopify ecosystem and in ecommerce, and just keeps on scaling. It was the only SaaS IPO on 2023. The only one! And at almost $1B ARR, it’s still growing a stunning 34% (!). In the words of founder CEO Andrew Bialecki: “There’s no downturn at Klaviyo.” 5 Interesting Learnings: #1. 110% NRR from 157,000 SMBs Yes, it can be done, 110% NRR from SMBs.

Scale 301
article thumbnail

5 Ways to Improve Revenue from Integrated Payments

Speaker: Pete Uselman, Director of Partner Experience at Wind River Payments

Most integrated payments providers share a percent of the payment revenue with their software partners. But, oftentimes, that revenue share is only a fraction of the true income potential software providers can realize. If you want to maximize income opportunities from your payments program, check out Wind River Payments’ webinar-on-demand.

article thumbnail

The State of SaaS Go-to-Market with Theory Ventures General Partner Tomasz Tunguz

SaaStr

When Marc Benioff started Salesforce, he codified the sales playbook. Then Mark Roberge , former Hubspot CRO, wrote The Sales Acceleration Formula with deep insights into quota structures. For the subsequent ten years in software, we’ve optimized every little bit of how we sell it. But today, it’s different because the kinds of software we sell aren’t the same.

article thumbnail

Carta: Pre-Seed to Series A Funding is Down -9% in 2024

SaaStr

So it’s interesting how folks craft headlines from data. Carta release its latest funding data the other data for 2024 Year-To-Date here : What you can see is that large, hot AI later stage deals overall are indeed driving venture capital deployments up ~ +17% the year. But that’s for late-stage capital. Most of it AI driven. For early stage VC, it’s actually down -9% in 2024 over 2023.

article thumbnail

6 Of The Most Common Mistakes I See First Time SaaS Founders Make

SaaStr

What are the most common mistakes I see first time SaaS founders make? Second-time SaaS founders make other mistakes. They think they know more than they do. They spend too much. They often struggle to do things a new way. First-time founders have many positives. But they also make mistakes we tend not to make with experience. Here’s what I see most often, the Top 6 Mistakes First Time SaaS Founders Make: Incomplete understanding of business model, and how it will scale.

Scale 307
article thumbnail

How to Avoid a Bad VC Investor with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

SaaStr

We’re obviously written up a lot about Fundraising and Investing here on SaaStr.com, but time and time again, SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin has seen so many Founders sign a bad term sheet based on gut instinct, VC celebrity or vibes, and while that may be fine, it’s not enough. It’s not enough because if nothing else you’re stuck with your investors for decades — for better or worse.

article thumbnail

SaaS Essentials: Failed Payment Solution Guide

For SaaS businesses, improving retention is one of the easiest and most effective ways to drive revenue and profits. With a clear link between failed payments and customer churn, having a robust failed payment recovery solution isn’t optional—it’s essential. Achieving your retention goals starts with the right solution.

article thumbnail

Dear SaaStr: How Much Should a SaaS Company Invest in Professional Services?

SaaStr

Dear SaaStr: How Much Should a SaaS Company Invest in Professional Services? A rough yardstick is that most enterprise-focused SaaS companies tend to get about 8%-10% of their revenues from professional services. A few data points: At $800m ARR, Qualtrics was still getting 25% of revenue from professional services. More here. At $500m ARR, OneStream gets about 8% of its revenue from professional services.

article thumbnail

The Quiet Liquidity Crisis in SaaS

SaaStr

So Thomasz Tunguz put together a great chart summarizing one of my top worries over the past 24+ months in SaaS. He summarized the M&A (acquisitions) of The Top 10 Software Acquirers. And what you can see is there is really almost no liquidity for startups and scale-ups in SaaS and Cloud at the moment. And there hasn’t been for a while: It was great times for SaaS liquidity in late 2020 through the end of 2021.

SaaS 312
article thumbnail

How to Leverage Pricing and Packaging to Drive Growth, Revenue, and Profit with Miro, Loom, OpenAI, and Splunk 

SaaStr

Pricing is more than just a number on a contract — when used thoughtfully, it can become a strategic tool for your SaaS product that can drive product adoption, customer satisfaction, and business growth. At this year’s SaaStr Annual AI Summit, Akshay Sharma, Head of Pricing and Monetization at Miro , chats with a panel of experts, including Janie Lee, Head of Product at Loom , Alison Harmon, Head of Growth at OpenAI , and Carsten Holm, VP of Pricing and Monetization at Splunk, about their nuanc

Payments 284