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Blog Posts, Early, Q&A, Sales
Why Customers Hate So Many Salespeople. And Why They Love Some. And How to Do Better Here.
Dear SaaStr: Why do customers hate salespeople? Disalignment. A truly great salesperson is a resource. They help you: They educate you on the product. They honestly answer your questions. They address your concerns, seemingly patiently. They help you pilot / test the product first, in a way that drives things forward without too much pressure….
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Blog Posts, Early, Marketing, Sales, Sales
In The Early Days, What You Think is a “Sales” Problem is More Likely a Marketing Problem (Updated)
"You probably don't need as many reps as you think you do" @kylecnorton CRO @owner. "More likely you have a pipeline problem. Spend the money there until your reps' calendars are truly full." cc @samdblond pic.twitter.com/XqfgZOlafj — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin 🇮🇱 (@jasonlk) April 17, 2024 The other day I met with a great…
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5 Interesting Things, Blog Posts, Scale
5 Interesting Learnings from Rubrik at $784,000,000 in ARR
So it’s been a long IPO drought since HashiCorp was the last IPO of the Boom Times in December 2021. Since then, we’ve had just one — Klaviyo. But now a second SaaS security leader has filed to IPO, Rubrik. They’re still transitioning from onprem / appliciance model to cloud, which makes some of the…
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Blog Posts, Early, Exit Strategy, Featured Podcasts, Featured Posts, Featured Videos, Leadership, Videos, Workshop Wednesdays
What I Learned Selling My Company for $130M with Harry Glaser Founder of Periscope Data and ModelBit
Harry Glaser of Periscope Data and ModelBit shares his experience of selling his SaaS company for $130M and the challenges he faced during the process.
Blog Posts, Compensation
How Much Equity Should a CEO Ultimately Have? Answer: 8%-10% On Average At IPO
Dear SaaStr: How Much Equity Should a CEO Have in a Startup? There’s no magical answer, but for venture-backed start-ups, for years VCs have aligned on around 6%-8% equity for a non-founder / outside CEO. As you approach IPO and very late stage, that often goes down. And as a rough rule, all the founders…
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Blog Posts, Hiring
The 20 Minute Test in VP Hiring. Maybe All Hiring.
Investments rarely work out if you don't believe within the first 20 minutes I think I'm there on hiring, too now If you don't believe at least by minute 20 of the first Zoom that they're the VP for you … I'd pass — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin 🇮🇱 (@jasonlk) April 3, 2024 So…
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Blog Posts, Customer Success, Early, Marketing, Q&A
Dear SaaStr: What Do You Do When Your Startup is Not Growing Anymore?
Dear SaaStr: What Do You Do When Your Startup is Not Growing Anymore? First, be honest about why. You can blame it on macro issues if you want, but if growth has radically decelerated, it’s likely because you are less competitive than you were before. You probably have fallen out of product-market fit, partially or…
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Blog Posts
200+ Top VCs Already Coming to 2024 SaaStr Europa on June 4-5 in London!
SaaStr Europa 2024 is June 4-5 in London and it will be full of VCs! Just a sampling of who’s already coming: 20VC Accel Partners Activum SG Ventures Albion VC Altair Capital Atomico B Capital Backbone Ventures Beacon Capital Beringea BlackRock Caixa Capital Carbide Ventures Cipio Partners Columbia Lake Partners Credit Mutuel Innovation Dawn Capital…
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Blog Posts
Is SaaS Dead?
There’s a bit of a malaise hanging over the SaaS world today. AI excitement obscures it a bit, but it’s there. A feeling that: Growth has slowed everywhere (true overall. The average public SaaS company is now growing less than 20% a year!) Sales is so much harder, and the old playbooks aren’t working well…
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Blog Posts, Early, Marketing, Marketing, Q&A
Dear SaaStr: A Big Tech Co Launched a Competitive Product. How Can I Tell How Serious They Are About It?
Dear SaaStr: A Big Tech Co Launched a Competitive Product. How Can I Tell How Serious They Are About It? In SaaS at least, I’ll give you one metric that is fairly reliable: How many dedicated sales professional do they have, just 100% selling the competitive product? If it’s none yet, it’s an experiment. If…
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Blog Posts, Early
SaaStr Fund: Looking to Fund 2 More Great SaaS Companies in 2024
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 startups from $10k-$150k in MRR. Earlier than that is too…
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Blog Posts, Early, Marketing
Should You Get a Booth At a Top Industry Event — Or Just Hack The Event?
So we’ve been doing SaaStr Annual’s since 2015, and we’re excited for the biggest and best SaaStr Annual 2024 ever, Sep 8-10 in SF Bay Area, as well as 5,000+ at SaaStr Europa 2023 in London in June. Now we sell a lot of sponsorships to these events — over 200 top-tier sponsors. So we’re…
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Blog Posts, Career Growth & Advice, Company Culture, Hiring, Leadership, Product, SaaStr Events, Sales, Scale, Videos
Just Between Two CEOs: Dev Ittycheria of MongoDB and Jyoti Bansal of Harness.io and AppDynamics
Two successful SaaS leaders talk about product alignment, freemium models, having an open-source product and other topics in SaaS we all want answers to.
Blog Posts
Want To Win This Time? Don’t Dwell On The Last One
The best thing I’ve read in some time was the advice Nick Saban, the winning college football coach in history, gave to Alabama’s basketball coach who kept getting … close. Almost there. Alabama basketball kept getting upset, and the call went to Coach Saban. “What have we got to do to go all the way?”…
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Blog Posts, Exit, Exit Strategy, Leadership, Q&A
Dear SaaStr: How Do You Build a Real Exit Strategy?
Dear SaaStr: How Do You Build a Real Exit Strategy? First, bear in mind acquisitions are relatively rare. The vast majority of startups will never get one acquisition offer, let alone a good one. Still, it’s not random. I’ve been through it twice as a founder and about ten times as an investor. At a…
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Popular Q&A
Dear SaaStr: What Was the Toughest Rejection You Ever Had in Sales?
Dear SaaStr: What Was the Toughest Rejection You 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...
Why the Future of Customer Success, Sales and Marketing Has Changed For Good: Ask-Me-Anything Part 2 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
In part one of this week’s Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) with SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin, he answered the community’s questions about whether all anyone cares about is AI anymore, investor appetites going into 2024, vertical SaaS, and thriving as a solo founder....
Is AI the Only Thing in SaaS that Anyone Cares About Anymore? Ask-Me-Anything Part 1 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
In the first part of this open Ask-Me-Anything (AMA), Jason shares his thoughts on the current state of sales and marketing, if anyone really cares about anything other than AI anymore, how to hire great partners, and breaking out of a crowded ecosystem.
Doubling Down: Jay Levy Managing Partner at Zelkova Ventures
"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. Kicking us off is Jay Levy, Managing Partner at Zelkova Ventures. #1. What’s your most recent disclosed investment? Why did you...
Dear SaaStr: Can an Entrepreneur Back Out of a Signed Term Sheet Without Damaging Their Reputation?
Dear SaaStr: Can an entrepreneur back out of a signed term sheet without damaging their reputation? In my experience — Yes, probably. As a founder, you can back out of a term sheet if something is off, or even if you just get another offer you prefer. There is a lot...
Why You’re Unfundable in 2023: The Cold, Hard Truths About SaaS AMA Part 2 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder of SaaStr, recently answered our audience’s most pressing questions about the present and future of startups. Here is part 2 of the cold truth about SaaS in 2023.
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