SaaStr

OCTOBER 16, 2024

The era of hyper-functional SaaS is here, and it’s reshaping the landscape of SaaS companies. 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. AI in SaaS is automation in many cases.

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Sales Hiring Scale AI SaaS 320

SaaStr

MARCH 29, 2025

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Best Ways to Transition From The Founder-Led Sales Stage? Transitioning from founder-led sales to a commissioned sales team is one of the most criticaland trickysteps in scaling a SaaS business. You Never Get to Leave Sales. This is non-negotiableeven if you hate sales.

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Scale Sales Hiring Sales Compensation 202

SaaStr

MARCH 18, 2025

” – Colin Jones, CRO Emeritus at Wiz You may have seen the news that Google is making its biggest acquisition — by far — of Cloud and SaaS security leader Wiz for a stunning $32 Billion (!). It’s an incredible look back on scaling and more: Colin Jones, first Chief Revenue Officer at Wiz.

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SaaStr

DECEMBER 25, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How far in the SaaS can a 10 or 20 person team go? But maybe not so much in SaaS. Today, the most efficient public SaaS company is probably Doximity, at about $700,000 in revenue per employee. Theres just physics here to get to $10m in ARR in a sales-led model, even a partially sales-led model: After $1.5m

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Sales Hiring Scale SaaS AI 263

SaaStr

MARCH 1, 2025

And CEO David McJannet came to SaaStr Annual a little ways back to share his top scaling learnings. CEO Dave McJannet shared his systemic approach to scaling companies through distinct growth phases. The best leaders have experience with both startups and scale to navigate the in-between. 30-100M: Scaling phase.

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Scale Systems Review Scaling Leadership 188

Tom Tunguz

FEBRUARY 26, 2025

The very best companies lead their customers in that dance. Many mid-market software companies price with the goal of revenue maximization, negotiating for the highest possible price in each sale. Penetration pricing leads to land-and-expand sales tactics. Most startups play defense when discussing pricing with customers.

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SaaS Payments Pricing Strategy Scale 276

SaaStr

OCTOBER 31, 2024

What are the most common mistakes I see first time SaaS founders make? Second-time SaaS founders make other mistakes. 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. They think they know more than they do.

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Scale SaaS Social Media Business Model 310

SaaStr

DECEMBER 20, 2024

Former Head of Revenue at BILL and HubSpot Americas leader Michelle Benfer recently joined us on a SaaStr Workshop Wednesday share her insights on one of the most critical roles in any SaaS organization: the frontline sales manager. “At HubSpot, I had over 100 frontline sales managers reporting to me.

Sales Hiring 262

Sales Hiring Scale Underperforming Technical Team Sales 262

SaaStr

JANUARY 19, 2025

So one big theme of 2025 SaaStr Annual (May 13-15 in SF Bay) will be going deep on Vertical SaaS. We’ll hear from the CRO of $3B Clio (legal SaaS), the CEO and CRO of Flock Safety (police and safety SaaS), and dozens of others on how to scale their vertical SaaS industries and platforms. See you there!

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Scale Sales Hiring Scaling SMB 189

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

So who’s doing well in SaaS today? ” Samsara’s Rise to Vertical SaaS Leader Samsara is now hailed as a vertical SaaS leader, growing at a remarkable pace—36% at an astounding $1.26 They stayed on at Cisco for some time to scale Meraki within Cisco, but at some point, Cisco wasn’t for them.

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Scale CTO Coach New CTO Technical Review 276

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 29, 2024

Start-ups, scale-ups and public companies in 2021 would hire a lot of folks they just wouldn’t hire today. And most bigger SaaS and Cloud companies are still hiring, but not at the same pace. The post 5 Tips to Getting a Job in SaaS in a Tougher Market appeared first on SaaStr. If not, take a pause and write it again.

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Sales Hiring Scale Marketing SaaS 287

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 12, 2025

Meet Wyatt Jenkins: From Construction Sites to Chief Product Officer If you want to understand how vertical SaaS companies scale to $1B+ in revenue while staying true to their customers, there’s no better person to learn from than Wyatt Jenkins, Chief Product Officer at Procore Technologies.

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Construction Scale SaaS Travel 253

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. But it’s clear that it’s still in the investing phase, and increasing spend in sales & marketing. The only one!

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Scale SMB Scaling Enterprise 304

SaaStr

OCTOBER 14, 2024

A few bits of advice you hear a lot in SaaS that I think often don’t really work in practice: Move to annual contracts to generate more cash. Force them to go annual, and you are just adding friction to the sales process. Yes, as you scale you do need to maintain efficiency in sales and marketing. You’ll see.

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Scale Social Media SaaS Acquisition 300

SaaStr

JANUARY 17, 2025

So what gets you more high-quality leads and ultimately business — smaller, more “intimate” industry events? And your top prospects? There is no question the ideal event in theory is just you and you alone … and 50-100 of the very top prospects in the world. But — it’s the wrong question.

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Scale Marketing Travel B2B 296

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2025

The Traditional “Triple, Triple, Double, Double, Double” Rule is Dead for AI Startups If you’ve been in SaaS for a while, you know the classic growth rule of thumb: “Triple, Triple, Double, Double, Double.” ” It was the gold standard for B2B software companies scaling from $1M to $100M ARR.

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AI Scale Artificial Intelligence Startup 275

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 3, 2025

But watch out – this is a major undertaking that touches product, engineering, sales, and finance. In 2019, top SaaS companies spent 50-55% of revenue on sales and marketing. You Need Real Signals – Not Just Board Pressure Most founders get the timing wrong on moving upmarket. You have to go all in.”

Scale 275

Scale SMB Enterprise Enterprise readiness 275

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2024

SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin chats with Mangomint CEO Daniel Lang about why vertical SaaS is booming and how Mangomint got to 110% NRR. What was once considered too small or too niche, vertical SaaS has recently emerged as a hotbed of innovation and profitability. Full-Stack SaaS for SMBs Toast today is worth $14B at $1.5B

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SaaS Payments Payments Payment Solutions Payment Services 259

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 21, 2025

Per OpenAI: The #1 event in SaaS is widely considered to be SaaStr Annual. Its the largest community-driven SaaS event, bringing together 12,500+ founders, executives, and VCs. Features 300+ speakers from top SaaS companies like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Snowflake. Why SaaStr Annual?

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Software Scale Venture Capital SaaS 245

SaaStr

JANUARY 2, 2025

Have we lost interest in investing in the human side of sales? Not in hiring sales execs themselves, but in giving them more tools to be more efficient. AI has hardly rendered the sales professional obsolete. Salesforce itself is hiring 2,000 sales execs this year to sell its AI platform, AgentForce. Not yet, at least.

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Sales Hiring Scale Headcount AI 330

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 25, 2025

That playbook was fueled by a desire to load up on 100s of new SaaS apps to fuel a pandemic-inspired buying spree. Today, SaaS and Cloud is back. In the end, this is where the majority of everyones leads come from once you have a mini-brand. But you cant waste an email open by a top prospect. And competition has exploded.

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AI Scale Social Media Generative AI 271

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. Scaling stage: Reduced to single-user plans to maximize accessibility.

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Payments Pricing Scale Revenue 287

SaaStr

MARCH 15, 2025

It’s live on SaaStr.com itself and you can also access it here and talk to AI Jason about any of 1000s and 1000s of B2B, sales, SaaS, VC, etc. Here are some of the top ones: “How My VP, Sales Doubled Our Sales in 90 Days. Here are some of the top ones: “How My VP, Sales Doubled Our Sales in 90 Days.

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Sales Hiring AI Scale Compensation 259

SaaStr

JANUARY 3, 2025

The success rate for executive hires at high-growth SaaS companies can be surprisingly low – you’re often lucky if 50-60% of your management team works out long-term. ” If you have a SaaS company above 2 million in revenue, both Brian and Jason agree that at that point, all that matters is the management team.

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Sales Hiring Scale Systems Review Interviewing 287

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 8, 2025

You get a masterclass in how modern SaaS businesses are transforming CS from a cost center into their secret weapon for hypergrowth. The Hidden Math Behind CS Evolution Perhaps the most fascinating revelation from the panel was how CS needs to transform at different revenue scales. Forget everything you know about SMB customer success.

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Customer Success Scale Government Systems Review 272

SaaStr

DECEMBER 22, 2023

For any Cloud and SaaS Founders or execs seeking practical strategies and inspiration to stay ahead of the curve, this session’s for you. At the SaaStr Annual, Kiren Sekar, Samsara’s Chief Strategy Officer and founding chief Product Officer shared five lessons he learned along the way from scaling six products to $100M+.

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Scale Scaling Strategy Sales Hiring 309

SaaStr

JANUARY 16, 2025

Workato’s SVP of Embedded Sales and Director of Solutions Marketing joined us at SaaStr Annual to talk about how to nurture customers — a great topic in general, but especially for embedded sales and APIs that can take a while to scale. The Second Most Important SaaS Hire? Customer Success. But the results?

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Sales Hiring Scale Sales Churn 246

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 28, 2024

Dear SaaStr: How Big Should The Addressable Market Be to Go into Vertical SaaS? I try to look at two things in Vertical SaaS startups, at least when investing : Will everyone in the vertical / industry use it? It’s just hard to get most vertical SaaS start-ups to scale if they can’t get to a $10k ACV.

Payment Solutions 263

Payment Solutions Inbound Sales Team Marketing Scale 263

SaaStr

DECEMBER 26, 2024

In general, the report ties to what were seeing everywhere in SaaS. That ties to our overall rough sales cycle data here: Dear SaaStr: What’s a Good Benchmark for B2B Sales Cycles? Is usually see 15%-20% as start-ups scale, but 25% is probably the right target as you scale. You can grab it here.

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Scale Benchmarks B2B Enterprise 287

SaaStr

MARCH 13, 2025

So leading SaaS growth stage VC fund Insight Partners surveyed 100+ of its top later-stage B2B companies to see how they did marketing and demand gen and pipeline creation in particular. Sales drives 33%. Not a shocker but useful to see this across 100+ leading B2B scale-ups. And Partners and Channel 15%.

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Scale Marketing B2B Scaling 291

SaaStr

MARCH 7, 2025

The right person to lead finance at a Series A company looks very different than the right person to lead finance at a true pre-IPO company (that is near an IPO). But if you have a very inexperienced leadership team (young founders, lack of SaaS experience, etc) then maybe bringing on a strong finance leader earlier makes sense.

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Scale Finance Headcount Leadership 317

SaaStr

AUGUST 15, 2024

There’s always someone a few years ahead of you on the scaling journey who can share their lessons learned. Robbie O’Connor, the GM EMEA at Notion and the first European hire at Asana and Dropbox takes the stage at SaaStr Europa to talk about the building blocks required to scale GTM teams and operations. Timing is also essential.

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Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Innovation 312

SaaStr

JANUARY 8, 2025

When Lindsey joined, she inherited an already built-out self-serve/PLG model for small businesses and a mid-market and enterprise sales, customer success, and post-sales team. But at the start of its expansion play, Checkr’s enterprise motion failed, and sales cycles were slow, taking up to a year for $100k & up deals.

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Revenue Scale Sales Hiring Compensation 296

SaaStr

DECEMBER 19, 2023

Dear SaaStr: What are the signs that an enterprise SaaS startup is ready to scale by hiring more sales people? In the early days, it’s simply that you have a few more leads than you can currently handle. Plus — following up on the 50 qualified leads from the month before. To a point. appeared first on SaaStr.

Sales Hiring 304

Sales Hiring Scale Scaling Sales 304

SaaStr

OCTOBER 16, 2024

So RingCental is both an incredibly impressive SaaS and Cloud company — but also a bit of a cautionary tale. SBC has become a much bigger issue in SaaS and Cloud the past 2+ years as the markets have focused on true efficiency and profitability. A reminder to not stay too reliant on direct sales as you scale.

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Scale SMB Compensation Cloud 287

SaaStr

AUGUST 9, 2024

From startup to $500M CARR, Spencer Burke, SVP of Growth at Braze, shares how Braze scaled a growth and customer success team. In this AI moment we’re in, there are still many moments in scaling a company where intuition still matters. If you were building a career in SaaS, you were likely in Silicon Valley. This isn’t new.

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Scale Sales Hiring Scaling Startup 294