SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2024

Many Vertical SaaS leaders do payroll, finance, accounting, and much more — not just the core software. Toast and Shopify and Bill are really more payments companies today than SaaS companies. You probably have to go multi-product much earlier. Churn is all over the place with SMBs. So be honest.

Payment Solutions 261

Payment Solutions Inbound Sales Team Marketing Scale 261

SaaStr

APRIL 13, 2020

Gartner recently did a survey of 317 CFOs and finance professionals, and found the vast majority plan to permanently shift to more remote work going forward. Only 8% of sales leadership planned to make related changes here. This doesn’t mean letting their loffice eases expire. The one exception seems to be sales teams.

Finance 322

Finance Leadership Sales Company Culture 322

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 23, 2022

For example, over the years, Angolia’s go-to-market strategy has tied together every part of its company, from finance to legal. . A tenant of leadership is not just building trust, but vulnerability. That vulnerability can be a building block for team trust and solid leadership. The life of a CRO is all about results.

Underperforming Technical Team 313

Underperforming Technical Team Leadership Outsourced Development Finance 313

SaaStr

OCTOBER 23, 2024

Before BILL, around 2004, he started thinking more about this problem of doing finances with filing cabinets and a lot of pain, the same way it was done 60 years prior. Creating a Moat ”I definitely believe it’s a moat, and it’s the thing that got me most excited about the business,” René shares.

SMB 307

SMB Payment Services Payments Payment Methods 307

SaaStr

MARCH 22, 2024

Different Pathways to CRO For Jane Kim, former CRO of CircleCl,, she used to work in finance before transitioning to SaaS. During her time in finance, she did multi-million dollar deals with 12 to 18-month deal cycles. After switching to SaaS, she started as an SMB sales leader with no prior management or SMB sales experience.

Scale 300

Scale Underperforming Technical Team SMB Finance 300

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.

Pricing 112

Pricing Scale SaaS Technical Review 112

Andreessen Horowitz

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

But how can biotech teams effectively communicate to investors and partners how they will, with each round of financing, incrementally reduce the risks of discovering and developing successful new drugs? How much of the total financing is allocated towards the lead program?

Development Team Review 125

Development Team Review Technical Review Finance Systems Review 125

SaaStr

MAY 19, 2022

1Password raised capital after running bootstrapped for a decade because they felt like they were leaving money on the table by not having a marketing and finance team. Organize AMA sessions with the leadership. It’s the people working together who make a company, not just the leadership.”. Look after your people .

Development Team Review 292

Development Team Review B2C Compensation Technical Review 292

SaaStr

MARCH 3, 2022

With over 70 million users worldwide, Zoho’s 50+ products aid your sales and marketing, support and collaboration, finance and recruitment needs—letting you focus only on your business. That’s why we give boards and leadership teams an elegant solution that simplifies governance. Grab tickets here.

Payments 49

Payments Payment Solutions Sales Recruiting Onboarding 49

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 261

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Sales Recruiting 261

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 6, 2018

You’ve just raised a round of financing. Second, there’s no leadership/relationship risk. Your next step is to build your management team. There are several criteria for finding the right executive. Competency in the field, cultural fit, communication skills, management experience. All of those should be obvious.

Scale 242

Scale Interviewing Finance Leadership 242

SaaStr

JANUARY 21, 2020

Human Resource systems connect with Finance. Previously Avanish held leadership positions with ServiceNow, Demandbase and other VC-funded startups, and Salesforce. Most enterprise processes are deeply connected. Marketing systems connect tightly with sales systems. Manufacturing systems connect with customer service.

Enterprise 288

Enterprise SaaS Scale Cloud 288

SaaStr

OCTOBER 27, 2020

One thing I see most SaaS companies do a pretty poor job of until they have a great finance team is a go-forward model. Even once start-ups have a strong finance team, the models they do make are often still … too rosy. Build One Now. SaaStr [link]. — Jason BeKind Lemkin (@jasonlk) October 27, 2020. An L4M Model?

Finance 353

Finance Scaling SaaS Data 353

Payrix

JANUARY 28, 2025

With decades of experience in payments, Matt provided invaluable insights on emerging trends, regulatory changes, and the future of Embedded Finance. Technological evolution : The foundations laid in recent years are expected to yield transformative advancements in Embedded Finance and platform regulation. Matt Downs Yeah.

Payments 130

Payments Payment Solutions Merchant Services Payment Methods 130

SaaStr

JANUARY 6, 2021

How do you scale a company based that can be collaborative for everyone in your org — from finance to marketing? It’s partly hiring the right leadership team specifically to create the right cultural practices and standards in order to define the culture of the company to be a performance-oriented culture or not.

Scale 276

Scale Software Review Scaling Sales Hiring 276

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

For smaller companies, go after the founders because they likely won’t have finance people yet. For Mid-Market companies, you might connect with people in finance or accounting. Generally, you want to start with the higher level title, a CFO over a VP of Finance over a Director of Finance.

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 300

SaaStr

JUNE 18, 2021

The next dilution you hopefully won’t lament, but may, is Equity Financing (i.e., On VC financing, here are my 3 suggestions (and 1 framework) on how to think about Dilution: First, raise 125% of what you need in VC capital. It won’t eliminate these issues, but it will at least align you on them. Angel and VC Dilution).

Sales Hiring 332

Sales Hiring Scale Venture Capital Finance 332

SaaStr

JANUARY 10, 2024

“Typically that was the marketing hat in my case, but sometimes it was the sales hat or thinking about finance or other areas of the business. So you need context from leadership to what you ultimately need to deliver on in your function to be successful. And without that context, you lose out.” What do we value?”

Sales Hiring 306

Sales Hiring Scale Technical Review Leadership 306

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Lack of clear leadership. The easiest way to finance a new business is to invest your personal savings, which comes with risks. Consider self-financing options if you have the funds available. It’s even harder in a recessionary environment simply because funding options are limited. Inexperienced team. Growing too slowly.

Finance 259

Finance Business Model Investment Leadership 259

SaaStr

JULY 7, 2021

And forget about most bank-style debt financing if your VCs aren’t 100% supportive. Even if they don’t, the acquirer will generally require close to 100% shareholder support to close a deal no matter what the financing documents or law say. It’s at least a huge negative. This is more common.

Venture Capital 353

Venture Capital Banking Finance Investment 353

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 4, 2021

An overall pattern emerges from the data: As years go by, each financing round appears to increase notably from 2016 to 2021. The answer varies depending on the financing round. Enter your email below for the latest SaaStr updates. Email * The latest SaaStr updates straight to your inbox. What Are Investors Looking For?

Finance 326

Finance Product Marketing Investment SaaS 326

SaaStr

MAY 23, 2024

With leadership stemming from a strong operating pedigree, we have built an organization that functions more like an operating company than perhaps a typical fund. Karl was also the Co-founder + CEO of China Export Finance which grew to $140M in revenue and was the Co-founder + CEO of Clearview Networks: both of which had exits.

Technical Review 293

Technical Review Management Investment AI 293

SaaStr

DECEMBER 13, 2023

Feel like you’ve been in the same board or leadership meeting over and over again? They’re only a financing tool, not linked to OKRs and no leading indicators. If you go to a meeting and only two people are allowed to answer numbers questions, you have a problem. Everyone needs to understand the metrics to help drive results. #10:

Metrics 339

Metrics Sales Hiring Benchmarks SaaS 339

SaaStr

MARCH 24, 2021

Even better if it helps you skip a round of financing. But it’s way, way, way too much for one person to do one day longer than necessary. That can be great in the very early days if it gets you to your first $1m in ARR. In every single function. Engineering. Customer Success and Support.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Finance 318

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 25, 2024

Now, if you are in finance, report it to the Board. A few nickels don’t matter. But if it’s true, it’s someone you probably don’t want to work for. Just move on and go find something new. That’s your job. And if the fraud is large, report it to the Board too, no matter what your position.

Startup 292

Startup Finance Company Culture Compensation 292

SaaStr

APRIL 14, 2020

Executive Leadership – 43%. Finance – 38%. In case you were curious, here are the teams most involved when making a purchase decision for technology or software: Technical Specialists – 47%. Operations – 36%. Legal – 23%. Client services – 22%. Marketing – 21%. Procurement – 18%.

Technical Review 315

Technical Review Marketplace as a Service Construction Software Review 315

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

It includes leadership development courses, and responsibilities of managing and hiring one or two reps to get experience. . Pothole #6 – Massive Hiring of Salespeople Immediately After a Financing Round. However, Roberge doesn’t recommend you automatically disqualify your top reps. Instead, establish a scaling pace.

Sales Hiring 257

Sales Hiring Scale Compensation Sales 257

SaaStr

JULY 9, 2022

The role of a VP is to own everything required to hit the goals for a functional area – Sales, Marketing, Product, Engineering, Finance, or Customer Success. While the answer may sound obvious, I’m not sure it always is in early-ish stage start-ups. This includes: Recruiting the team. This can be hard. Hitting the number.

Sales Recruiting 293

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Finance Engineering 293

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2021

More here: 5 Things To Be Wary of In VC Financings. If you don’t ask for any more money — the CEO’s job is a lot safer. Do those 6 things and your odds of ever being “fired” or replaced as CEO without your consent are very low. The post How to Avoid Being Replaced as CEO by Your VCs appeared first on SaaStr.

Finance 349

Finance Investment Marketing Leadership 349

SaaStr

AUGUST 12, 2020

The first system is what I call the sales finance system. So, the first system is a sales finance system, so let’s start with sales. So, the first part of the sales finance system is to recognize that sales must be on a quarterly plan, and then that allows you to create a series of milestones within each quarter.

Startup 293

Startup Software Review Scale Systems Review 293

SaaStr

JULY 3, 2020

The first system is what I call the sales finance system. So, the first system is a sales finance system, so let’s start with sales. So, the first part of the sales finance system is to recognize that sales must be on a quarterly plan, and then that allows you to create a series of milestones within each quarter.

Software Review 265

Software Review Scale Systems Review Startup 265

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 30, 2024

In a world without venture capital (or other sources of external financing for startups), each company would have to grow solely based on the merits of their product and sales. Subscribe now Incrementalism vs Transformative Leaps Over the last 5-10 years, software markets have become increasingly crowded.

Cloud 274

Cloud Venture Capital AI Startup 274

SaaStr

MAY 5, 2020

There were 2 natural finance reactions to Covid-19: Cut. Another natural reaction in finance is to stop paying people. Supporting Struggling Partners & Vendors. Cut everything you can. Stretch out payments as long as you can. Both strategies pursue cash. But both have flaws. Because you can’t cut your way to growth.

Payment Methods 280

Payment Methods Finance Strategy Enterprise 280

SaaStr

JUNE 22, 2020

5 Things To Be Wary of In VC Financings. If it can destress your life, and help you go long — well that’s a win-win-win. But the best founders never want to sell cheap. They know those shares are precious. View original question on quora. The post How Common Is It For Founders To Get Some Liquidity in A Venture Round?

Finance 325

Finance Pricing Marketing Leadership 325

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 16, 2021

Director of Finance. VP Finance (13 Employees). Positions Needed: Demand Gen, Product Marketing, Sales Enablement, Events/Community. Director of CSM. Team Size: 4 – 8. Positions Needed: Enterprise CSM, Mid-Market & SMB CSM, Customer Support Reps, Implementation/Solutions Engineer. Team Size: 6 – 7. Founder/CEO.

CTO Hire 284

CTO Hire Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting CTO 284

Sales Hacker

JUNE 9, 2020

The finance world wasn’t scratching the itch, though, so he decided that he just had to be in sales. He and I talk about his background in sales, but also about how he started off in the finance world as a private equity analyst at Merrill Lynch Capital Partners before deciding that he just had to be in sales. Incredible company.

Leadership 105

Leadership Scale Sales Recruiting VP of Engineering 105

SaaStr

JULY 6, 2020

This isn’t bridge financing. I needed just a little more money, but not a ton. Now, I just tell the founders I invested in they can have what I have reserved for later whenever they want ( if they’ve earned it). No need to wait. It’s throwing in a few nickels from the next round now if it will help the CEO scale faster with less stress.

Part-Time VPE 328

Part-Time VPE Scale Finance Market Segmentation 328