Lately I’ve been working with 5+ SaaS companies all hiring their first VP of Product. Most around $6m-$10m ARR, although one just past $2m ARR. And critically, most have a really strong CEO-CTO partnership. Both are great leaders, and both are great at...
Are layoffs now just institutionalized in Silicon Valley? And if so, what does that mean? Instacart was one of the 3 Tech IPOs to go out late last year, along with Klaviyo and ARM. And then crushed the last quarter, with $800m of revenue and a stunning $200m of...
Dear SaaStr: What Is The Best Indicators of Product Market Fit at an Early Stage SaaS B2B Startup? This is a rough metric, but I’d say from experience working closely with 25+ SaaS companies … if you aren’t growing > 10% a month after $10k in MRR or so … then you...
So this is a simple post, in many ways, but I think an important one for leaders. These days, it seems like even more folks are quitting, not working out, etc. etc. We all saw the Cloudflare sales rep on social media not work out. And there were so many comments,...
Dear SaaStr: How much money do the best SaaS inside sales AEs make? You can back into it. Ultimately, in most SaaS startups, the sales reps will take home about 20% of the total deal value they close. Maybe 25% if SMB sales and/or a startup is very well funded. At...
Sign you are going upmarket the right way: Every quarter you have a new largest customer — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin 🇮🇱 (@jasonlk) February 24, 2024 There’s a fun — and very lucrative and rewarding — exercise I like to go through with most of...
So 2023 was a strange year, with many of the biggest, public Cloud and SaaS leaders on a tear, from Microsoft to Cloudflare to Palantir — but at the same time, so many startups and especially those in traditional B2B struggled to grow. The best of the best...
So in the era of 2021, the time of 1,000 unicorns, it seemed like everyone and anyone someday, just might be a decacorn someday. And then in 2022, the markets crashed hard in SaaS. Since then, overall, SaaS multiples have stayed relatively low, at 6x ARR on average...
So there’s kind of a mean exercise I do at board meetings. It doesn’t sound mean, I do it very kindly. But I’ll be honest, it’s a bit of a trick question. A VP of Sales will do a deal review and talk about how they closed a new epic logo for a small initial deal that...
“Doubling Down” is a new series where we hear from top B2B SaaS investors on their most recent activities and takes on the current market. We had a great one last time with Hilarie Koplow-McAdams, Venture Partner at NEA. Check that out here. This week...
When you ask customers to switch from an existing vendor to you … Do you offer to do ALL the work? The migration?The implementation?The integrations?The data mapping? If not, imagine all the friction you could remove if you did — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin 🇮🇱...
The advice that stings is the advice you need to hear. Many folks are saying everyone from our kids to our SVPs and CEOs can’t take criticism anymore. It does seem to be more true, in my experience. VCs are reluctant to be critical of founders, even as they run out of...
So I’ve been investing since 2013. Some of my top investments at seed stage include Pipedrive, Salesloft, Talkdesk, Algolia, Gorgias, Greenhouse, RevenueCat, Owner, Treasury Prime and more: The goal for SaaStr Fund is to invest in 2-4 of the very top seed / late seed...
One of the most powerful things in SaaS is having a visionary founder-CEO. Nothing against an outside CEO. Sometimes, the time comes to hand the baton to someone else. But, but — only a founder CEO can execute a vision over 20+ years. Only a founder CEO knows...
Dear SaaStr: Did it ever take you a year to close a sale? Absolutely. This is pretty common in the enterprise. It took me about 18 months to close Google, for example. And that was just for the initial group of users: Need identification and discussions with...