The Lead Plateau You May Hit Just As It Gets Good. How to Plan Around It.
This original version of the post came out a while back, but it’s such an important one, I wanted to update it again. Because just when it starts to get good in SaaS, again and again, I see the same thing: the number of leads each month stalls out. Many SaaS...
Why Competition Is So Bitter in SaaS: Oligopolies and Dominant Strategy Equilibriums
In many segments, competition-to-the-almost-death seems the norm in SaaS. Just look at Larry Ellison or Marc Benioff. While both seemed to have mellowed a bit recently, you can still see it in their eyes, their press releases, their ads in the Wall Street Journal. ...
10 Things That Make Your Investors Lose Confidence
"What destoys confidence with your board and VCs? Unexpected bad news. VCs are wired for bad news. But you know it's coming well ahead of time in SaaS." with @kylecnorton pic.twitter.com/kvVVbKBVC4 — Jason ✨👾SaaStr 2025 is May 13-15✨ Lemkin...
5 Tips To Improve the Odds When You Hire VPs Who Were Fired or Quit
As you scale up in SaaS, one thing I can almost guarantee is that you are going to hire some VPs who were either fired or quit their last role. Especially in Bay Area-centric startups. There’s so much change and turn-over in the Bay Area, especially, that many...
Dear SaaStr: What’s The Best Way to Set Targets for the Sales Team?
Dear SaaStr: What’s The Best Way to Set Targets for the Sales Team? First, I try to model 3 overall plans for the year: C-90, C-60, and C-10, not just for the sales team, but the whole company. The C is for “Confidence”. The odds you think you can...
High NRR Can Mask a Lot of Problems
Having high net revenue / dollar retention is the magic of SaaS. If you have 120% NRR, you double in less than 5 years, even with no new customers! Above that, and you really get into magical compounding growth. But … high NRR can also mask issues. I see this so...
95% of VPs of Sales Won’t Thrive at Your Startup
So we’ve talked so much over the years on SaaStr on how to hire a great VP of Sales, the difference they’ll make, and how the level-up comes quickly. And about when to know it isn’t working out. And importantly, we talked about how there are 48...
Sometimes, A Small “Layoff” Is a Good Idea
This may sound harsh, But any "layoff" of a single digit % of employees is usually just a reshuffling The bottom 5%-7% are moved out, to replace them with better performers Net headcount rarely declines — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin ???????? (@jasonlk)...
Sales Often Really Doesn’t Understand Customer Success
A little ways back, I asked one of the very best VPs of Sales I know to help me find a VP of Customer Success. This VP of Sales has built legendary teams, and his Directors and Managers have gone on to run many of the top SaaS companies out there. And this great,...
Cloud Stocks May Be Down. But the Cloud Remains on Fire. That Matters More.
So much going on in economy right now, from inflation to interest rates But at end of the day, in Cloud, the question is if CIO and related spend will slow down So follow AWS, Azure and Google Cloud If they stumble, we’re in for a rough patch For now, they are still...
If Your Numbers Are Good — Now Might Be a Great Time to Raise a Little Extra Capital From Your Existing Investors
Agreed – a very good option. Starting to see that a lot right now. — Doug Pepper (@dougpepper) May 14, 2022 So there’s a lot of panic from VCs now. The markets, at least for now, for SaaS and Cloud stocks have fallen dramatically from their...
Dear SaaStr: How Hard is it for SDRs to Move into AE roles?
Dear SaaStr: How Hard is it for SDRs to Move into AE roles? It’s a well-proven path. If you want to get into SaaS sales, start at SDR and knock it out of the park. The only real issue is if the SDR team is large enough, there aren’t enough promotion...
When to Go Multi-Product in SaaS
Roughly — very roughly — you want to be multiproduct in SaaS by the time you have 10,000 customers For enterprise, this could be $300m-500m in ARR For multi-market, this could be $100m in ARR For SMB, it could be $20m-$30m in ARR — Jason ✨????????SaaStr LDN June...
The Only 2 Things That Really Motivate a Salesteam
Culture matters. Growth matters. Mission matters. They all matter. You have to do this. And that may be enough for most of your early employees. They may even be OK with low salaries, and not even care that much about money, or where it is all going, or who...
Founder SaaStr
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