SaaStr

MAY 25, 2024

Cloudinary VP of Developer Experience Sanjay Sarathy shares his journey to more than $100M and the lessons he learned along the way for building a PLG motion and an Enterprise sales motion. They didn’t initially envision being a large Enterprise sales organization. Let’s first start with how Cloudinary came to be. The takeaway?

Scale 316

Scale Sales Hiring SaaS Payments Development 316

Payrix

APRIL 17, 2025

What is a payment facilitator? A payment facilitator (or PayFac) is a software platforms all-in-one payment processing solution. Instead of your customers needing to create their own merchant account to process payments, you as the PayFac developer handle all the payments setup and complexity for them.

Payment Services 100

Payment Services SaaS Payments Merchant Services Payment Facilitation 100

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 11, 2021

In SaaS, #1 most common misfire, with a bullet, is the VP/head of sales. It goes something like “You’ve Got to Get Past the Carcass of Your First VP of Sales” or “It’s The Second VP of Sales When You Really Start Selling” or variants thereof. Because in SaaS start-ups, it seems like the majority of first VP Sales fail.

Sales Hiring 363

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Recruiting Sales 363

FastSpring

OCTOBER 16, 2024

Selling internationally can get complicated very quickly if you’re trying to manage cross border payments yourself. And typical payment service providers won’t help you with most of those concerns. Read on to learn: Why cross border payments are key to taking your business global.

Merchant Services 158

Merchant Services Payment Services Payment Methods Outsourcing Services 158

SaaStr

JULY 22, 2020

I’m not ashamed to admit that when I set up our first SaaS sales comp plan, I had no idea what I was doing. But I did all the sales myself, and stupidly, had no sales comp plan at all ??. Then, as we first scaled up a sales team, we ended up literally copying Salesforce’s comp plan. A boiler room.

Scale 363

Scale Sales Hiring Sales SaaS 363

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 19, 2020

But, there are still many interesting things we can learn from Shopify, especially since it sells to so many SMBs, has been late to go upmarket, and combines a payments/fintech element with pure SaaS. Sales might want a tighter “gate” to convert to paid. Subscriptions can fuel payments and merchant revenue.

Payments 363

Payments Merchant Services Payment Solutions Scale 363

SaaStr

JULY 30, 2024

Okta’s VP of Engineering, Monica Bajaj, and Senior Director of Platform Product Marketing, Priya Ramamurthi, share Okta’s playbook to PLG, developer experience, and Enterprise ARR. Product-led outperformers generate ten percentage points higher in ARR and 50% higher in valuations than sales-led growth outperformers.

Underperforming Technical Team 288

Underperforming Technical Team Enterprise Scale Payments 288

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 29, 2019

In this week’s episode we’ve dug down into the podcast vaults to bring you some of the best insights shared by our guests about scaling sales. It’s no surprise that one of the key levers for growth as you go from startup to scale-up is your sales team. Hiring for sales with John Barrows.

Scale 172

Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Payment Services 172

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 15, 2020

And, when you do, do you even think about sale tax compliance? vary on how they handle sales tax and SaaS. It can be confusing to understand how and where you should charge sales tax. Let’s explore a few more ways in which sales tax compliance could impact your growing business. It’s part of doing business!

Payment Services 335

Payment Services compliance SaaS Payments Scale 335

Stax

APRIL 15, 2025

For subscription-based businesses achieving consistent and predictable revenue growth is the holy grail. In fact, monthly recurring revenue (MRR) is one of the most important metrics subscription businesses should be aware of. TL;DR MRR is the average revenue that a company expects to receive each month.

Payments 88

Payments SaaS Payments Revenue Payment Services 88

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2020

We put together a basic 50/50/25 VP of Sales comp plan early on at SaaStr, and it seemed time for an update. Incentives are critical, and the VP Sales will likely be the Seemingly Most Expensive hire you ever make. A few basic ground rules so your VP of Sales is a guaranteed win-win hire – not a stressor: No best efforts cr*p.

Sales Hiring 355

Sales Hiring Scale Sales Payments 355

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 5, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Should I Pay Sales Reps When Our Customers Pay Monthly? You’ll find it won’t matter much as you scale, as you’ll get good as estimating the total deal size from each customer segment. But it can be a pain to administer — and more importantly, is not fun for the sales rep. Later, you’ll want to flip that around.

Scale 299

Scale Sales Payments Compensation 299

SaaStr

MAY 12, 2022

CircleCI is a cloud-based continuous delivery platform that helps software delivery teams build, test, and ship changes to their applications. Jim Rose, CEO of CircleCI, leverages his experience marketing to software developers to discuss the merits of moving from a subscription-based to a usage-based business model.

Scale 264

Scale Payments SaaS Payments Payment Services 264

SaaStr

OCTOBER 20, 2023

OpenAI’s Head of Sales, Aliisa Rosenthal, joined OpenAI a year and a half ago — before ChatGPT launched. After the launch of ChatGPT, they went from 30 leads a week to 10,000. A friend joined Jasper as president and asked her to run the sales team. She went from managing a huge sales organization to being one of two people.

ChatGPT 298

ChatGPT Scale AI Search Sales Hiring 298

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 21, 2022

Wherever you are in your revenue journey, adopting certain growth strategies can help you keep growing fast. Joined by Katie Wickham, Payrix’s Director of Marketing, Butler shares essential tips on accelerating your business to $100 million ARR and beyond. . Brex then scaled its payments business quickly.

Payments 243

Payments Payment Methods Embedded Payments Scale 243

SaaStr

JULY 31, 2020

Founded in 2015, Chorus operates a SaaS platform that provides valuable insights from conversations – say with calls, video conferences and emails — for revenue teams. Last year, the company doubled its headcount, tripled revenue and landed on G2’s Top 100 Global Software list. . No doubt, Chorus provides this at scale.

Scale 359

Scale Artificial Intelligence Payments Payment Services 359

SaaStr

MARCH 31, 2022

This episode is an excerpt from a session at SaaStr Scale. So for the audience, cloud giants are turbocharging startup sales, and the predominant reason for this is because they’re fundamentally changing IT budgets at the customers that we’re all selling to. Jabari Norton, VP WW Partner and Alliances, Sumo Logic.

Scale 262

Scale Marketplace as a Service Cloud SaaS Payments 262

SaaStr

JUNE 1, 2023

At SaaStr, our partners are an integral part of our events. Carta is a platform that helps people manage equity, build businesses, and invest in the companies of tomorrow. Make enables individuals, teams, and enterprises across all verticals to create powerful custom solutions that scale their businesses faster than ever.

Scale 245

Scale Payments Payment Solutions Artificial Intelligence 245

SaaStr

JULY 20, 2021

Secrets to Aligning Marketing and Revenue Strategies with Marqeta’s CMO. How to Move Upmarket and Serve Multiple Customer Segments at the Same Time with Square’s Global Head of Sales. Ashley Grech, Global Head of Sales @ Square. The Hidden Costs of Scaling with Guru’s CEO and Airtable’s CMO.

Payments 279

Payments Payment Services SaaS Payments Banking 279

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

It still loses money on the hardware, and the payments side is fairly low margin (28% or less). The software license is high margin, but it’s only 20% of the total revenue. It forced reps to close 13% more locations per sales rep. At least for now: Sales continues to grow at an epic 29% at $1.5 So what did it do?

Scale 311

Scale Payment Solutions Payments Sales 311

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

Want more leads, pipeline, influence, and awareness in 2024? Leading Public Cloud Company: “We got 110 qualified opportunities and converted 40 to sign-up for our offer. ” Public Fintech #2: “Our sales team walked away with over 100 qualified leads. .” Our prospects were there.

Scale 278

Scale Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions 278

Tom Tunguz

NOVEMBER 6, 2021

The contracts are identical twelve month contracts except for the payment terms. Contract B relaxes payment terms to monthly payment, 12 monthly installments for the next year. All of the sales and marketing dollars invested to obtain persuade the buyer to put digital ink to pdf have been recouped immediately.

Sales Hiring 352

Sales Hiring Scale Payments Payment Solutions 352

Stax

MARCH 18, 2025

Join the payments-led growth movement Sign up to keep up-to-date with the latest trends in payments, vertical SaaS, and technology from industry experts. Part of this can be attributed to the SaaS model’s unique aspect of relying primarily on future revenue. Take a traditional business, like a furniture store.

Scale 117

Scale Payment Services Payments SaaS Payments 117

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

SVB collapsed, market multiples are down, yet the IPO window is re-opening, and we have a platform shift to AI that’s exciting everybody. Announcements of several blockbuster acquisitions, most notably from Adobe acquiring Figma, which was the highest valuation multiple offered in an acquisition for any software company at scale.

Cloud 311

Cloud Payments Software Review Payment Solutions 311

SaaStr

OCTOBER 22, 2021

As part of that, they learned to outsource anything they could, and maximize the PLG playbook … leading to a stunning $1m in ARR per employee. Sometimes, the self-serve / PLG engine stalls out at a certain scale. Fintech is the engine of growth at scale. Not sure we’ve ever seen that at scale before.

Scale 328

Scale SaaS Payments SMB Payment Solutions 328

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

Bill.com had to develop a network that today has millions on vendors processing bills and payments on it. So they let folks use the platform the way they wanted, from paper checks to fax and more. #2. The payments / fintech side of Bill took a decade to come together. Bill.com has a direct sales force, even at $2k ACV.

SaaS Payments 64

SaaS Payments Payments Payment Services Scale 64

Payrix

FEBRUARY 4, 2025

What are integrated payments? Integrated payments are payment processing capabilities that are incorporated into a software companys platform to provide their user base with the ability to accept and manage payments for their businesses. Learn more about Embedded Finance.

Payments 100

Payments Payment Services Merchant Services Payment Methods 100

SaaStr

AUGUST 21, 2024

Grew Restaurant Locations 29% Year-Over-Year to 120,000 Perhaps the most important metric at scale. Only 18% of Revenue From SaaS. Shopify and Bill both also get the majority of their revenue from financial fees and transaction fees, not software subscriptions. But Toast even more so, at 18% of revenue.

Scale 306

Scale Payment Methods SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 306

SaaStr

JULY 10, 2024

Instructure is one of the leading learning management systems for education with its Canvas product. It was founded in 2008 but took a while to get going, hitting $1m in revenue in 2011 selling to Utah schools — and then scaled from there. That’s the power of compounding revenue in SaaS!

Scale 303

Scale SaaS Payments Payment Services Payments 303

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 27, 2019

But those three things are what got Starbucks its first profitable coffee shop in Seattle, not what allowed that shop to morph into an $80 billion business with 30,000 cafes around the world. It requires thinking at a different scale. This is Season Two of Scale , Intercom’s podcast series on moving from startup to scale-up.

Payments 186

Payments Scale Revenue SaaS Payments 186

SaaStr

AUGUST 29, 2022

SMB SaaS has a lot going for it: – Millions of them – Short sales cycles – Easier compete. ACVs are so much lower that there’s a lot of pressure on sales productivity. So I was wondering, how much of the market cap of the leading SaaS companies is all or primarily SMB focused? What does that leave?

SaaS Payments 347

SaaS Payments Scale SMB PayPal 347

SaaStr

JANUARY 30, 2023

They focused on building a payment platform that empowers international talent and independent contractors to get paid on time in a compliant way while also ensuring that companies can hire international talent and make payments efficiently. This insight led Deel to focus on solving payments and compliance.

Sales Hiring 278

Sales Hiring Payment Services SaaS Payments Scale 278

Payrix

MAY 14, 2024

No one knows this better (or more intimately) than a software company Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). Adam Tesan, CRO at Worldpay for Platforms, is a seasoned executive leader with decades of experience in sales, marketing, and revenue in the software space. It was an Embedded Finance play starting with payments. [It

Payments 147

Payments Payment Services Payment Solutions SaaS Payments 147

SaaStr

AUGUST 3, 2022

Payments still materially accelerating overall growth to 16%, and predicting revenue growth from payments and merchant solutions to more than double that of subscriptions and SaaS. Expecting a bit of a rebound later in the year, with more merchants joining the platform in 2H’22 than 1H’22. #4.

Payment Methods 288

Payment Methods Merchant Services SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 288

Intercom, Inc.

JUNE 15, 2021

Agile principles can be a North Star for time-strapped support teams, helping them to keep the customer’s needs at the heart of their decisions so they can provide fast, personal support at scale. At WeTravel, we’ve implemented custom bots to capture leads and triage conversations for 24/7 support ”.

Scale 235

Scale Payment Methods Payment Services Scaling 235

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 1, 2023

Both Bill and Shopifty have morphed over the years from almost pure SaaS companies to payments platforms built on top of a SaaS core. The rest of the growth is from its Divvy platform, which is bought in 2021 for $2.5 But payments and transaction are far bigger at $800m run rate — and growing faster at 38%. #2.

Payment Services 340

Payment Services Payments SaaS Payments Payment Solutions 340

USIO

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Two prominent solutions that have emerged in recent years are integrated payments and Payfac-as-a-Service. While both aim to simplify payment processes, understanding the nuances between the two is crucial for businesses to make informed decisions about which solution best suits their needs.

Merchant Services 130

Merchant Services PayFac as a Service Payment Services Marketplace as a Service 130