Four Ways a CFO Can Be a Champion for Growth
By: Lynne Sampson, Product Marketing, Oracle As the CFO at a high-growth company, you have to wear many hats. You (of course) need to have the financial know-how and accounting skills, but you also must juggle several other roles, including that of mediator,...
How prevalent is it among B2B SaaS startups to offer self service signup plans, e.g. no sales touch, but sign up via credit card. What percentage of B2B SaaS startups do this?
I think every SaaS company that can do a self-service plan well, does it. Even if it’s a minority of your revenue, at least it’s a way to bring more revenue in and expand your brand and long-tail. But should you? Self-service only works if: You can offer an...
The Secrets of Net Negative Churn: Customer Advocacy (Video + Transcript)
Nick Mehta, CEO at Gainsight, moderates this panel with who he calls three of the sharpest people in customer success: Catherine Blackmore, GVP Customer Success at Oracle Marketing Cloud; Maria Pergolino, Senior VP Marketing at Apttus; and Emilia D’Anzica, VP...
Why would Meg Whitman want to work at Uber as their CEO?
There’s no rational economic reason. She is as wealthy as any human being could ever reasonably dream to be, and has already held plenty of very prestigious CEO roles. But what if you want a chance not just to have been CEO of a few pretty big companies … that are...
How can a SaaS company test pricing without ending up with a large group of customers that are on strange plans?
Don’t worry about it. Assuming you are growing very quickly on a percentage basis (i.e., it’s fairly early) … your pricing today really doesn’t matter much. A few years out, these customers will only account for a tiny % of your revenue. But you do want to improve...
What are the most effective types of marketing collateral for selling an enterprise SaaS product? Brochures? Datasheets? Case Studies?
The bottom line: you need to do it all. Let’s look at Slack Enterprise (i.e., Grid). Logos? Check. Even Slack needs them. Testimonials and Case Studies? Check. Whitepapers and Security Backgrounders? Check. Compliance certifications? Check. If Slack felt the need to...
In Enterprise SaaS, who should send the recurring invoices, accounting or account managers?
If: your customer are happy — i.e., your NPS/CSAT is high — and your app is mission critical and used often (every day or more), then I like accounting to own renewals and invoices. Most SaaS companies approach renewals as something they have to “re-sell”....
SaaStr Podcast #139: Mike Dauber, General Partner @ Amplify Partners Discusses Why Hiring Sales People Is Like Being Thirsty
Welcome to Episode 139! Mike Dauber is a General Partner at Amplify Partners, the fund that backs technical founders building technical products for technical buyers. Their portfolio consists of the likes of DataDog, Fastly, Engagio, and many more incredible...
How would Jason Lemkin spread a mid-five figure annual deal SaaS per division to say a dozen divisions within a Fortune 500?
“Spreading” from one silo to another in Big Customers is usually much harder than you’d think. Why? Two reasons: First, different VPs and different divisions really don’t have much in common. I was a VP at a Fortune 500 company. There were about 60 of us Senior VPs....
How do I pitch my start-up to Jason M. Lemkin?
Warm intros are great, but not necessary. Just email over the pitch and the deck. Send as much detail as possible, including metrics. Make the email + deck stand on its own. And if you have less than 10 Unaffiliated Customers — it’s too early. It’s also probably...
How do you respond to an enterprise sales prospect that doesn’t want to work with your software start-up because of “acquisition risk”?
“Acquisition risk” is a subset of a whole category of “vendor risk”. Until you IPO, or are the de facto leader over many years, Big Cos are always going to look at “vendor risk.” My #1 answer in Vendor Risk: be transparent. Big Companies know how to take this risk...
Zendesk: From Day 0 to Today: The Lessons Learned with Co-Founder & CEO Mikkel Svane (Video + Transcript)
From 0 to 1 million, 1 to 10 million, 10 to 100 million, and 100 million to now. Zendesk, a company with the lofty goal of making customer service and engagement enjoyable, has gone through many transformations to become the company it is today. Devdutt Yellurkar,...
Three Non Obvious Lessons Learned Selling to SMBs with Xero and Friends (Video + Transcript)
At SaaStr, we love talking about how to sell to SMBs because things are always changing and there’s always something new to learn. Keri Gohman, President at Xero Americas, takes the Main Stage with Alex Fala, CEO at Vend; Amit Mathradas, GM & Head of Small...
Should an entrepreneur go ‘All in’ and risk everything on a venture or play it safe?
I think this is a false choice. Every successful founder I know thought his or her venture was not that risky — at least when she started it. Sometimes, oftentimes, 6–9–12–24 months in, you see just how risky it is. But great entrepreneurs see...
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