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Blog Posts, Marketing, SalesBeware of the Confidence of High Win Rates
Probably once a week I’ll meet with a founder of a great early-ish stage SaaS start-up. Great logo customers, great early traction, at least some capital in the bank, in…
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Blog Posts, Q&A, ScaleThe Average SaaS Unicorn Raises $370,000,000. And Bootstrapping is Rare.
We were recently asked: Q: Are there any examples of a unicorn startup that was bootstrapped? Of course the answer. But I didn’t have a sense of how many, and…
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Blog Posts, Q&A, Sales, SalesWhy SMB Reps Struggle in the Enterprise. And Vice-Versa.
Q: How is low/mid-ticket sales different from enterprise sales? They are very, very different. If I had to boil down how to filter potential sales professionals based on just 1…
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Blog Posts, GrowthOf the SaaS Class of ’06, Everyone Great Got to $100,000,000 in ARR Eventually. Everyone.
So a little while back, the last of our little class of SaaS 2.0 apps of 2006 got to $100,000,000 in ARR: Conga is a pioneer in the document creation…
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Blog Posts, Customer Success, Growth, MarketingAfter $2m-$3m in ARR, Your Leads Should Always Be Growing. Here’s Why.
Progress in SaaS is never as linear as it looks years down the road. Everyone has rough quarters (often at least 1 in 5). And we almost had a full…
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Blog Posts, Career Growth & Advice, Company Culture, Hiring, Leadership, Marketing, Marketing, Metrics, Product, SaaStr Events, Videos7 Lessons Helping Start Pardot, SalesLoft and Calendly (Video + Transcript)
David Cummings is the co-founder of the Atlanta Tech Village, Pardot which sold to ExactTarget/Salesforce.com, Hannon Hill, Rigor, SalesLoft (raised over $75M in capital), Terminus (raised over $25M in capital),…
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Blog PostsVeterans Come As Our Guests to 2020 SaaStr Annual
A quick reminder on Veteran’s Day: All U.S. veterans come as our guest to 2020 SaaStr Annual as part of our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion program, at no cost. Just…
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Blog Posts, SaaStr EventsHear From These Speakers at SaaStr Annual 2020
We can’t believe it’s already November and there are only four months until SaaStr Annual 2020, we’re already looking at an awesome speaker line-up this year. Here are the sessions…
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Blog Posts, Featured Posts, SaaStr EventsGet Funded in 2020: Upgrading VC Matchmaking at SaaStr Annual 2020 With 1000+ VCs (!!)
Over the past 6+ years, the SaaS community has blown us away with your energy and passion, and have been the driving force in helping us expand from our humble…
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Blog Posts, Career Growth & Advice, Hiring, LeadershipHow to Prepare Yourself to Be a Great CEO
Being a founder is easy. You just start something. Grab a smart friend, hop on over to WeWork, hit 99 Designs for the logo, and you’re off to the races….
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Blog Posts, Engineering, Exit, Leadership, Metrics, SaaStr Events, Videos5 Key Steps to Evolving Your Offering Into a Platform with Eventbrite and Stripe (Video + Transcript)
How can a simple offering be transformed into its own platform? Renaud Visage, Co-Founder of Eventbrite, and Romain Huet, Head of Developer Relations at Stripe, know what it takes to…
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Blog Posts, Career Growth & Advice, Leadership, Marketing, MarketingSix Reasons You Should NOT Create a Category
By Anthony Kennada, Founding CMO at Gainsight If you talk to enough founders and marketers who have attempted to create a category, typically they’ll all say the same thing —…
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Blog Posts, Growth, Product, SalesIt’s Never Too Late to Go Upmarket
The other day put out a post on SaaStr about “How to Build a $100 Billion SaaS Company”. While Salesforce is the only $100b+ SaaS company today, there are ~15…
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Blog Posts, Sales, Sales10 Of My Favorite SaaStr Posts on Building Your First Great Sales Team
Boy, over the years at SaaStr we’ve done a lot of posts (and videos and sessions) on hiring your first great sales team. I recently re-read a bunch using our…
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Blog Posts, SaaStr Events5 Can’t Miss Sessions from SaaStr Annual 2020: Okta CEO, Workday CDO, Service Now + Procore CROs, Sprinklr VPM
It officially feels like fall to us. The leaves are changing colors, summer clothes are going back in our closets and we’re starting to figure out what sessions we can’t…
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Popular Q&A
Why do all the tech giants rely on “shadow forces” of temporary employees?
Why do all the tech giants rely on “shadow forces” of temporary employees? There are probably a multitude of reasons. But let me suggest one reason I learned when I was an exec in a F500 tech company: Headcount was mostly fixed for a year. But, Budgets were more...
When Not to Offer a Free Trial. Answer: When Your App Simply Can’t Pull it Off.
Are there SaaS companies that don't offer free trials? Lots of SaaS companies don’t offer a free trial — intentionally. A free trial is a bad idea if: Your product has a lengthy and/or complex deployment process. If it’s going to take 30–60 days to go live, a Free...
What is the hardest rejection you’ve ever had in sales?
What is the hardest rejection you've ever had in sales? The hardest rejection I’ve had in sales was around renewals. Especially ones I thought we really had earned. But still lost. In particular, in the early days of EchoSign / Adobe Sign, we had a particular manager...
What are the qualities of a good co-founder?
What are the qualities of a good co-founder? My list: Same values and commitment as you. No matter how smart you both are, you also have to share the same values and commitment. Are you both 100% all-in? Are you both willing to go 18–24 months before initial product...
What skills do you look for in an entry level sales person?
What skills do you look for in an entry level sales person? If you are a founder hiring salespeople to manage yourself (i.e., you don’t have a VP of Sales or other sales leader yet) … your #1 criteria should be trust. Specifically, does your gut and time with him/her...
How difficult is to become a venture capitalist after 45?
It can be harder than you might think. The further you are along in your career, the easier it is to have the time, networks and personal capital to be an investor. No question. And it can take a decade or more to make any real money from investing. It’s hard to have...
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