TechEmpower SaaS

MARCH 4, 2024

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.

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Generative AI AI CTO Hire Sales Recruiting 443

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 8, 2024

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).

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AI B2B Engineering Customer Support 294

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 14, 2024

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.

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Cloud Pricing AI Software 343

Tom Tunguz

APRIL 3, 2024

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 !

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Metrics Data 317

Advertiser: ZoomInfo

Savvy B2B marketers know that a great account-based marketing (ABM) strategy leads to higher ROI and sustainable growth. In this guide, we’ll cover: What makes for a successful ABM strategy? What are the key elements and capabilities of ABM that can make a real difference? How is AI changing workflows and driving functionality? This Martech Intelligence Report on Enterprise Account-Based Marketing examines the state of ABM in 2024 and what to consider when implementing ABM software.

Enterprise

The Daily Egg

NOVEMBER 30, 2024

Direct response copywriting is a marketing technique where you speak directly to your customers, encouraging them to take action now instead of. The post Direct Response Copywriting: Classic Examples + Tips appeared first on The Daily Egg.

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Marketing 289

Predictable Revenue

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

As we finish 2024, the landscape of AI sales tools has evolved dramatically, offering unprecedented opportunities to boost your ROI. The post 10 AI Tools for Sales to Maximize Your ROI in 2024 appeared first on Predictable Revenue.

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AI Sales Revenue Development 246

SaaStr

DECEMBER 31, 2024

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.

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AI CTO Hire Sales Hiring CTO 287

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 30, 2024

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

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Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Sales Headcount 271

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

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.

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Scale SMB Scaling Enterprise 263

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Payment Solutions

SaaStr

OCTOBER 30, 2024

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

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SMB CTO Onboarding Scale 257

SaaStr

DECEMBER 27, 2024

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

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AI Marketing SaaS Interviewing 222

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2024

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.

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CTO Investment Revenue Marketing 250

SaaStr

OCTOBER 25, 2024

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.

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Venture Capital Marketing AI SaaS 275

Advertiser: ZoomInfo

Over the last two years, there’s been a 76 percent increase in AI adoption across sales organizations. The reason for its rise? AI increases teams’ productivity by predicting and automating actions that require manual effort. In other words, the research that takes reps hours, AI can do in seconds. For sales teams, AI opens up a world of new possibilities, including automating outreach, identifying best-fit buyers, and keeping CRMs flush with fresh data.

AI

SaaStr

OCTOBER 16, 2024

The era of hyper-functional SaaS is here, and it’s reshaping the landscape of SaaS companies. At a recent SaaStr Workshop Wednesday , held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST, SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin lays out how SaaS companies are now faced with the challenge of delivering more comprehensive, automated, and efficient solutions than ever before.

Sales Hiring 265

Sales Hiring Scale AI SaaS 265

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2024

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.

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Scale Social Media SaaS Business Model 267

SaaStr

DECEMBER 4, 2024

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

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Payments Pricing Scale Revenue 252

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

So who’s doing well in SaaS today? Well, one of those hero companies is Samsara. Few companies have achieved the level of impact and growth as Samsara. Powered by the overall strength of the U.S. economy, by shipping, by trucking, by industrial applications, and more … there’s no downturn at Samsara. It’s currently at $1.26B in ARR and growing 36%!

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Scale CTO Coach AI New CTO 262

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Payment Solutions

SaaStr

DECEMBER 5, 2024

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.

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Venture Capital AI Data 247

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 8, 2024

So just as supply chain logistics juggernaut Flexport was beginning to scale, founder CEO Ryan Petersen came to SaaStr Annual to share his top lessons — and mistakes. And we’ll have 200+ sessions like this at 2024 SaaStr Annual, Sep 10-12 in SF Bay!! If you are not familiar with Flexport, they are a licensed customs brokerage and freight forwarder built around a modern web application that helps brands move products around the world.

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Sales Recruiting Scale Venture Capital Sales Hiring 316

SaaStr

DECEMBER 11, 2024

So one of the quiet SaaS leaders that has just crushed it in 2024 is Doximity: At $550m in ARR, it’s worth a cool $10.4 Billion (!) — or 20x ARR. And its stock it up a stunning +90% this year. What’s going on? A combination of: Growth re-accelerating. Doximity is growing 20% now, vs. 18% at $450m ARR. Insane profitability. 53% EBITDA.

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Business Model SaaS Revenue Marketing 235

SaaStr

OCTOBER 23, 2024

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.

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SMB Payment Services Payments Payment Methods 266

Advertiser: ZoomInfo

Modern go-to-market teams know it takes more than one email to break through the noise. Multiple touchpoints means more ways to get your pitch right — and, potentially, more ways to be wrong. The good news? Once you know how to write compelling, one-off emails to entice prospective customers, you can easily do the same across a short sequence of emails.

Sales

SaaStr

DECEMBER 2, 2024

Does SaaStr still matter? I do think so, but it’s been 12 years of blogging and 10+ year of events and more. So you gotta ask yourself that question as the year winds down. It’s a tough question I think all of us should ask going into a New Year. Do you still matter? Does your app still matter? Is it still solving a problem, or problems, the market is truly demanding solutions to?

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B2B AI Cloud Scaling 287

Clouded Judgement

JUNE 19, 2024

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.

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Cloud GCP(Google Cloud Platform) Software Azure 315

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2024

There’s so much debate on social media and elsewhere on bootstrapped vs VC. Bootstrapped you maintain control, and the unit economics. But many see it as so much harder. And it’s almost always longer. VC can let you go faster, but it can become an addiction. And the dilution all-in generally ends up being 60%-70% by the time you approach an IPO.

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Venture Capital Social Media Startup Strategy 322

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 17, 2024

So the other day on Workshop Wednesday Andy Wilson, founder CEO of Logikull , and I did a deep dive on what it’s really like selling your company to Private Equity for almost $300,000,000! I was the first and largest investor in Logikcull as they “de-bootstrapped” in 2015, and at first it grew very quickly, double digits every month.

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Sales Hiring Banking Sales SaaS 256

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ClinicSense is a SaaS platform that supports over 7,000 massage therapists who use it for appointment management, payments, scheduling, marketing activities and more. Despite having a relatively low payment failure rate, the company discovered that the failures disrupted the customer experience. This often led to churn as customers decided to cancel or abandon their account, preventing ClinicSense from realizing the full lifetime value (LTV) of its users.

Payments

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2024

Gong has its 2025 State of Revenue out. You can grab it here. In general, the report ties to what were seeing everywhere in SaaS. Were ending the year in general with stronger growth that the prior year. Gong also looked across its entire customer base to measure deal velocity. The findings arent much different from what weve discussed before at SaaStr, but still very helpful to see, given how much data they are pulling from: On average, $100k deals take about 70 days to close.

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Scale Benchmarks B2B Enterprise 232

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 20, 2024

GitHub, founded in 2008, is a leading platform for software development and version control that has made waves since 2018 with its AI Copilot. Microsoft acquired GitHub also in 2018 and it has since grown to over 100 million developers and more than 420 million repositories, including at least 28 million public repositories, making it the world’s largest source code host.

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Scale AI Scaling Marketing 260

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 14, 2024

Dear SaaStr: I Just Got My First SaaS Job 6 Months Ago and Now I Want to Quit. How Do I Tell My Boss? Almost everyone quits these days without giving a cr*p about the company: Zero notice. Instead, give 30 days if you can. No help finding a replacement. Instead, if you know someone else for the role, make the intro. No transition memo. Instead, write up everything you know, for real.

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