Tom Tunguz

JUNE 20, 2020

We can derive the table above if we look over the entire respondent base and bucket headcount by ARR. Software companies invest in engineering early and then the product matures, complement that engineering and product investment with go to market teams to commercialize the product.

Scale 363

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Software Review 363

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 6, 2022

PLG companies R&D spend hasn’t produced new business at the same rate as a dollar invested in sales & marketing post-Covid. Some about the data: PLG companies R&D spend hasn’t produced new business at the same rate as a dollar invested in sales & marketing post-Covid.

Headcount 344

Headcount Market Research Acquisition Education 344

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2023

Some of the changes we’ve seen in the last year or two include: CAC reduction Headcount optimization Price complexity Quality of revenue A different environment means a different strategy, and Notion Capital lays out four business model changes that could be helpful based on what peers are doing. You don’t want to be there.

Business Model 300

Business Model SaaS Payments Payments Headcount 300

SaaStr

AUGUST 18, 2023

Yes many public SaaS companies have done some sort of layoffs the past 12 months, they were often more really reorgs, though, without any net decrease in headcount. Monday has always been a break-out leader but has invested heavily in sales and marketing to SMBs. The key was “simply” keeping headcount flat. #3.

Scale 245

Scale Headcount Point of Sale SaaS 245

SaaStr

MAY 9, 2024

What’s your most recent disclosed investment? My most recent investment was Owner.com. Activant Capital is thrilled to have invested in Owner multiple times already. #2. What’s your sweet spot for investing — check size, stage, type of deal? What’s different about your fund / how you invest and support founders?

Scale 271

Scale Headcount Travel B2B 271

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 30, 2024

What I do know is many of the billion+ SaaS companies I invested in a decade ago would not be remotely competitive today. But it’s already starting in the contact center, where leaders from Zendesk to Gorgias to Intercom to Talkdesk are automating away 30%-50% of contact center headcount. And that’s how it should be.

AI Search 300

AI Search SaaS Headcount AI 300

Clouded Judgement

AUGUST 16, 2024

Today, IT budgets are roughly broken down into: ~50% headcount / personnel, ~25% software, ~15% hardware, and ~10% outsourcing / consultants. As software grows as a percentage, I think we see headcount / outsourcing shrinking. This is for information purposes and should not be construed as an investment recommendation.

Outsourcing Services 274

Outsourcing Services Cloud Software Outsourced Development 274

SaaStr

JUNE 6, 2021

A third review around Year 2 or s o: when the acquirer decides how much to invest going forwar d. This can result in shrinking the team down if it’s underperformed, or investing more if it’s performed well. Even if the decision is made to invest more, future headcount is often sourced from internal team members and processes.

Acquisition 254

Acquisition Technical Review Headcount Finance 254

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2024

The quicker you can be smart and make early investments that pay off, the better off you’ll be. Headcount isn’t the right story for them, though. Braze invested in this, and the leadership team agreed to do so. Eventually, this team moved out of growth, so their success wasn’t dependent on budget or headcount.

Scale 291

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 291

SaaStr

AUGUST 21, 2024

Only Grew Sales & Marketing Expense 12%, and Cut R&D (Product + Engineering) and G&A Expenses Toast has gotten to profitability by truly holding the line on headcount and revenue expenses. Customer Referrals Now Responsible for 14% of New Locations Invest in true customer happiness, folks. #10.

Scale 301

Scale Payment Methods SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 301

Tom Tunguz

JUNE 26, 2022

The difference is starkest in headcount: Coinbase employs more than 5,000 people while Uniswap counts fewer than 100. We need standardized reporting for tokens and equivalent shareholder rights to compare equities to tokens: an essential step to enticing more investment in web3. Centralized exchanges hold or custody user accounts.

Benchmarks 299

Benchmarks Headcount Government Business Model 299

SaaStr

APRIL 20, 2022

Invest here if that’s you. #7. But they need the headcount to grow this quickly. #8. Confluent is still investing in hyper-growth, and may like Snowflake not end up generating significant free cash-flow until $1B in ARR or so. but whose products can easily be used by businesses everywhere. Not free-cash positive yet.

Scale 61

Scale Cloud Headcount Scaling 61

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 3, 2023

By freezing headcount for a year. Mathematically, if you keep the headcount flat and continue growing 50% like Monday or 30% at $2B like Hubspot, you get wildly more efficient. How An Investor Chooses To Invest and What Makes An Epic Founder As an investor, Lemkin is highly concentrated. How did they do that?

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring Headcount Finance Technical Review 274

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

Overcoming challenges by optimizing for success In the early stages of setting up your SaaS business, it’s always a good idea to invest time thinking about the direction you want to take. Without headcount planning for the support team, the company’s response time and customer satisfaction scores dipped.

Sales Hiring 274

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 274

SaaStr

AUGUST 10, 2022

Atlassian plans to double its headcount over the coming few years. Atlassian turns around and invests some of that savings in engineering and product. And half of Atlassian’s employees now live 2 or more hours from the office. This is the secret sauce to Atlassian’s business model. The end state goal for software is 20%+.

Scale 283

Scale Headcount Cloud Forecasting 283

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2022

Fairly low revenue per headcount, although being headquartered in Utah with a large presence in India does seem to bring costs down. #7. A reminder growth investing isn’t a space you automatically make money at. A reminder growth investing isn’t a space you automatically make money at. Series C ($5.35

SaaS Payments 284

SaaS Payments Scale Payment Methods SMB 284

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

We all become new customer-oriented, so we say we’re focused on the existing base, but once the sales team becomes 30-40% of headcount, it tends to dominate every conversation. Long-term marketing spend Holding customer success spend flat The study found that 62% of CS teams are maintaining or decreasing their non-headcount budget.

Customer Success 299

Customer Success Sales Hiring Scale Headcount 299

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2024

You will need to hire headcount infinitely and linearly with revenue. 80% of the VP of Sales candidates founders invest in and work with won’t do sales themselves. Whatever it’s growing, you have to grow your headcount in sales roughly. Too much human capital is required, and sales have no efficiencies whatsoever.

Sales Hiring 304

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Technical Review 304

The Angel VC

MARCH 23, 2016

If you have a SaaS startup with a higher-touch sales model where revenue growth is largely driven by sales headcount, the plan needs to be modified accordingly. With the exception of the VP of Sales role, sales staff headcount planning is done on the separate "Sales Team Hiring Plan" tab (re-using a model that I've built for this post ).

SaaS Payments 217

SaaS Payments Headcount SaaS Payment Methods 217

SaaStr

MARCH 5, 2021

Also, pivot from Garrett’s initial idea and focus on revenue targets, not a specific headcount. #2 3 – Invest in your onboarding process. Investing in your CRM and database is key. It’s easy to over-invest in sales and underinvest elsewhere. Make a repeatable process that’s consistent.

Sales Recruiting 255

Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale Sales 255

SaaStr

MARCH 20, 2024

For instance, Founders Fund doesn’t really invest in AI, health tech, or edtech, even if you’re growing 5x. Do you have to double your headcount to make it from $10M to $20M or even $2M to $5M? When those outcomes are achieved, the hire gets their headcount. Each VC has a different “flavor.”

Sales Hiring 300

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 300

SaaStr

DECEMBER 16, 2022

Brokers and accountants were two of the channels that Rippling identified would help them scale quickly, so they invested in them from early on. You have to invest a lot of time to get a channel going, to get referrals, to acquire customers…and then work on customer satisfaction. Unconventional scaling ideas to accelerate growth.

Outsourcing Services 282

Outsourcing Services Scale Sales Hiring Outsourced Development 282

Sales Hacker

JULY 24, 2018

Decreased revenue per rep, High turnover as you scale headcount. We made our machine more efficient even as we scaled, grew headcount, and skyrocketed our revenue. In the first six months of the year, our team’s headcount grew by almost 60%, yet our revenue outpaced that, growing by 142%.

Scale 76

Scale Headcount Sales Hiring Scaling 76

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

Having a predictable pipeline enables more effective decision-making, from headcount planning to strategic investments in technology and beyond. ​Accurate sales forecasting is more critical to business success than most realize.

Forecasting 284

Forecasting SMB Technical Review Sales 284

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 23, 2022

With increasing business costs and reduced headcount, companies are feeling the squeeze as they also grapple with rising consumer expectations. This means customers are far less likely to churn – resulting in a continuous rich source of revenue for your business, all without burning out your team or investing in extra headcount.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Retention Headcount Customer Lifetime Value 211

Tom Tunguz

DECEMBER 31, 2023

US VC investment falls from $275b in 2022 to $200b in 2023 & sustains at about $200-220b in 2024 as LP interest in venture attenuates after the euphoria in 2020 & 2021. We also see more ARR-based web3 businesses achieving scale. ARR per employee increases 10%, twice the decade long average.

AI Search 231

AI Search Headcount Scale AI 231

SaaStr

APRIL 3, 2024

We can take higher risks in a less regulated industry than a peer in an investment bank or healthcare business. CIOs and CFOs who have done the work to centralize decision-making around technology investments won’t redistribute that authority anytime soon because that control gives them margin leverage.

Generative AI 299

Generative AI AI Technical Review Software Review 299

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

of Customer Success teams have fewer than 50 team members, and most teams surveyed fall well below industry benchmarks on CS team headcount. That number gets higher in larger companies, companies with larger Customer Success teams, and companies who have invested in a Customer Success platform. However, 76.5% of companies.

Leadership 98

Leadership Trends Customer Success Investment 98

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 3, 2021

Where should you invest your resources? If you’re short on time, here are a few quick takeaways: You can’t balance short-term and long-term investments without considering the existing product strategy. Choosing the right investment is a balancing act of art and science. And yet, now might be a good time to hit the accelerator.

Strategy 228

Strategy Software Review Development Team Review Sales Recruiting 228

SaaStr

OCTOBER 6, 2019

Specialization works — but it’s an up-front investment. But specializing across the sales process will take more headcount. You’ll need a couple of folks in sales ops just to keep up with the team and growth. You’ll need more consistent collateral for the sales team. More SDR: AE pairing.

Sales Hiring 270

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Venture Capital 270

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 1, 2024

Knowing where to you invest time and resources as everything seems to get more complicated creates complexity as well. Some of these motions are much larger investments, especially in sales-led — hiring people, commission planning, etc. You can also get a halo effect out of that investment in a market. Kady said no.

Scale 274

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Marketing 274

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 28, 2021

Support leaders looking to expand their support offering will often seek to answer questions like “How can I scale my support without increasing headcount or budget?” Saving valuable time with automatic answers. or “Phone and email support are inefficient and causing my team to get swamped with inbound conversation volume, how can I fix this?”

Headcount 239

Headcount Scaling Customer Support Mobile 239

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 10, 2021

What to do: Increase your efficiency without increasing headcount using bots and automation. Secondly, you need to leverage bots, automated workflows, and smart AI so you can engage with customers and resolve queries in the moment, without needing to add headcount. Read more: The custom bot that saved logistics platform Stuart over 2.5k

Headcount 195

Headcount Customer Support Scale AI 195

Intercom, Inc.

SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

Ryan Johnston, Head of Customer Success at Tanda, explains that as their customer base has grown in recent years, the team has been able to scale their support without dramatically increasing headcount, which has been a big benefit to the team. Here’s how they’re doing it.

Scale 237

Scale Headcount Mobile Communication 237

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin also wrote how Customer Success has now morphed into part of the sales team and that the 2024 trends in CS include everyone wanting to eliminate humans from support to replace that headcount with AI and bots. This chart says never stop investing in customer success for real. The world has changed.

Sales Hiring 320

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 320

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 26, 2020

The majority (78%) want to move to a proactive approach, and 50% are deepening their investment in automation. With more than half (52%) of companies planning to reduce the size of their team as a result of the current economic downturn, support leaders are turning to technology, not headcount, to scale their efforts.

Trends 233

Trends Scale Headcount Technology 233

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2022

Often, founders are unsure about the headcount split between India and the US. b) Some folks like to invest in the company they advise. One can’t start investing in a brand early enough. That means showing up in every quadrant of your category, hiring A players, putting yourself out there. Platforms, however, can scale.

Scale 293

Scale Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team Cybersecurity 293