This is almost unprecedented in B2B software Databricks just announced it crossed a $7 billion revenue run-rate in Q2, growing more than 80% year over year, and closed a $5 billion strategic round at a $190 billion valuation led by Coatue. Today, we announced that we crossed $7B in revenue run-rate, growing over 80% year…
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The week the “AI is just a feature we’ll add” argument stopped working, and three pay bands replaced two. This week on 20VC x SaaStr with Harry Stebbings, Jason Lemkin and Rory O’Driscoll, we started somewhere other than OpenAI and Anthropic for once: Canva cutting its 2026 growth forecast by a third as AI serving…
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AI is beating down many public software companies. But not many of the leaders servicing the physical world. Some is that they don’t tie pricing models primarily to seats. But it isn’t only the pricing model. Their customers’ end products aren’t the ones AI is eating. Shopify reported strong and accelerated earnings this past quarter….
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Dear SaaStr: At What ACV Size Do I Need an Account Manager in B2B? There’s no hard rule, but here’s what the data shows: Below $8K-$10K ACV: You can’t afford dedicated account managers. You need to systematize onboarding and support instead—self-serve + a lean support team. The unit economics don’t work with humans doing 30+…
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So I wrote a version of this post a while back, and it struck a chord. A lot of founders reached out and said some version of “I just hired one of these.” Or worse, “I’ve hired three.” But I’m updating it now because I’m watching this trend actually accelerate in the Age of AI….
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Never hire anyone in sales that doesn't care about money You'll see — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) June 24, 2025 So you’re hiring your first few sales reps in the early days? Before you have a great VP of Sales? It’s an interesting time. Leads are precious, everyone is a team. So you need a…
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Palo Alto Networks is now a ~$265B market cap company. The stock is up roughly 100% over the past twelve months and hit an all-time high of $368.80 in July. What makes it interesting isn’t the run. It’s how they got it. They spent about $29B on acquisitions in twelve months, took a GAAP loss,…
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Most salespeople will succeed somewhere … but fail at >your< specific startup Earlier stage startups: – Have no brand – Have no/little training– Have very few resources Most important is making sure they will thrive at your startup Not that they are just "great at sales" — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) January 12, 2023 So…
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Marty Kausas and Advith Chelikani on why deflection rate is the wrong numberin CX. And what they’re replacing it with, and what you should, too. Pylon closed out the latest SaaStr AI Day with the two co-founders walking through the launch they shipped the week before, which they’re calling agentic customer support. Marty Kausas is…
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A product that won by doing one thing perfectly spent seven years becoming several. Now its parent publishes growth figures with it removed, and the platforms where new apps get built don’t list it at all. Prompted by a read of Doug Dennison’s “The Fall of Mailchimp.” Dennison founded MailNinja in 2005 and spent years…
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"When you go to hire your first few sales reps — they have to be folks you'd buy from. They have to be. Or they never work out. And once you have a VP of Sales, they can hire folks … you wouldn't." pic.twitter.com/BZUExzX4LQ — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) March 8, 2025 “When You Hire…
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It wasn’t even 30 days after I left Adobe after their acquisition of my last start-up EchoSign / Adobe Sign when … they ripped out the Free edition. It had millions of users over time, was cheap to provide and simple to use, and materially helped with top-of-funnel, at least for smaller prosumer customers. But…
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Dear SaaStr: What Is A Good Demo Conversion Rate for a SaaS Startup? 10%-20%. If fewer than 8%-10% or so of your demos convert to paid customers, you’ll start to burn out your sales team. Because they generally need to close 10-15 deals a month to eat (more for SMB, less for enterprise, but 10-15…
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One of the questions I get asked most often by new VCs is deceptively simple: “How do I actually return a 3x fund?” In theory there are a lot of ways to get there. Especially with smaller funds. You can have a bunch of 5x winners. You can get lucky with timing. You can ride…
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Haya Kamal on running an account tiering analysis with connectors, custom signals, and four rounds of iteration, live at SaaStr AI Day Haya Kamal leads customer success at Backstory and spent her career in sales and sales leadership before that. The project she walked through at SaaStr AI Day is one most go-to-market leaders have…
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