So of the beloved leaders in Cloud and SaaS, few have been hit harder than Hashicorp by the “downturn”. At $400m ARR, they were growing 50%. Now at $600m, ARR, growth has radically slowed to 17%. Some of it may well be some of the challenges in...
Dear SaaStr: What Happens to the Management Team When a New CEO is Hired? You never know exactly what will happen. However, at a practical level, I think you should plan on maybe 50% of the management team turning over if your company brings in a new CEO. Maybe more....
So Carta put out some recent data I found very useful on how many startups raise another round, and how many sort of quietly wind down, in the first 5 years or so after being founded (from 2018 to early 2024): Almost none IPO’d in the first 5 years, but that...
I respond to a lot of outbound emails with questions: "OK, but how can your app really solve my problem?""OK, but what does it truly do better, for my use case?""OK, but …" 98% of time, the AE or SDR can't give me a decent...
So Jamin Ball of Altimeter had a great summary of public company NRR here: The median net retention for the software universe has been steadily declining the last few quarters. More pressure on churn (as companies look to reduce point solutions in favor of platforms)...
Dear SaaStr: I Have Some Shares in a Successful Start-Up I Worked At, But the Company Won’t Let Me Sell Them. Why Not?? It’s a real issue that isn’t discussed enough. And while it mainly impacts ex-employees, it also impacts angel and seed investors who are...
Dear SaaStr: Should I Hire a Sales Rep First, Or a Sales Manager First? The ideal flow is: You (founder-CEO) close the first batch of customers, say the first 10 or 20. If you don’t, you’ll never really know how it’s done. Or be able to help anyone else, really. Then,...
Going though a slow patch is one thing We almost all go through one or two Settling for slow growth is another You never really come back from that one — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin 🇮🇱 (@jasonlk) December 31, 2022 When I was CEO at Adobe Sign / EchoSign, I made a...
Dear SaaStr: How Do You Take Care of Yourself As a Founder? Quiet quitting, feeling sorry for yourself, working 30 hours a week, etc. — that doesn’t really work for a founder. It may feel good in the short term, but it doesn’t work. It doesn’t get you to success. But...
So RevenueCat (where I was fortunate enough to be the first investor) now is the embedded mobile subscription API for 30,000 (!) mobile apps, across 290,000,000 subscribers and $6.7 Billion in tracked revenue. So they do have interesting data. Their 2024 State of...
“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 Peter Specht, Partner at Creandum. Check that out here. This week we’re...
Dear SaaStr: How Can You Land Big Customers If You’re a New Startup No One Has Heard Of? Solve one of their top pain points, for real — that no other vendor is solving. If you haven’t sold to the F500 / Global 2000 before, you’ll be somewhat surprised to learn...
So at $3.1 Billion in ARR, Snowflake finally feels a bit … human. Like a truly epic, incredible, generational tech leader. But perhaps, no longer like it’s from another planet altogether 🙂 After years of metrics (170%+ NRR) and growth (110% at ~$1B ARR)...
Dear SaaStr: How Do I Increase Pricing Again Without Angering Customers? One simple thought: earn it. First, plan to increase pricing in general once a year, each year for new customers. But earn it. And generally for new customers, not existing customers. How...
So we recently did a SaaStr survey on if folks would pick the same VCs if they have to do it all over again. The learnings aren’t surprising, but they are interesting: only 23% would pick the same VCs for sure. Now there is a lot of nuance beyond this poll. The...