SaaStr Vids + Sessions!
The Latest
The Playbook to Hiring Your First VP of Sales and Not Screwing it Up with Brendon Cassidy (Video + Transcript)
So a ways back we did our first SaaStr Scale event in SF, a 1000 person event just on scaling revenue with top CROs, CMOs, and more. It’s since morphed into digital events and this year, the first SaaStr AI Day on March 27. Sign up for FREE here. Brendon introduced his playbook to hiring…
Continue Reading
What It’s Like Running a Profitable $400M Public SaaS Company with Vimeo CEO Adam Gross
Vimeo CEO and SaaS veteran Adam Gross and Jason Lemkin, SaaStr founder and CEO talking about running a profitable public company with $400M in revenue.
9 Things Founders Should Know About Getting Acquired with Brett Goldstein, Former M&A at Google
Former member of the M&A team at Google, Brett Goldstein, now Founder at Micro and Co-Founder & CEO of Launch House Ventures, shares the nine things founders should know about getting acquired. It’s a common dream for founders to hope their startup be acquired one day, but what is a company, like Google, really looking for in their acquisitions? And what should all founders know about the process if the time comes?
A Look Back: Learning to Love the Art of Sales (As a Technical Founder) with Harry Stebbings and Ross Mason, Founder of MuleSoft
At the first SaaStr Europa, Harry Stebbings sat down with MuleSoft Founder and CTO Ross Mason to discuss the organization’s sales strategy, building a strong company culture, how to think about international expansion, and much more. Unsurprisingly, it was one of the event’s most popular sessions — and now, even if you weren’t with us…
Continue Reading
How to Price and Package AI SaaS Products with Unusual Ventures
With everything in AI moving so rapidly, what’s the best way to price Artificial Intelligence products or SaaS tools with custom AI features and integrations? Should it be subscriptions, usage, solutions, or something entirely different? Sandhya Hegde, General Partner at Unusual Ventures to share her best practices and trends for pricing and packaging AI SaaS products.
6 Questions Founders Should Ask Themselves to Drive Value from Generative AI with Base10 Partners
Generative AI is a platform shift where models can take inputs such as text, image, audio, video, and code and generate new content into any of the modalities mentioned. TJ Nahigian, co-founder and Managing Partner of Base10 Partners, and Luci Fonseca, Partner, deep dive into the current GenAI landscape, incumbents vs. startups, and the six…
Continue Reading
What Venture Capitalists Look For in Leaders: Tips from a Founder-Turned VC with Ridge Ventures
As a founder, you may wonder what VCs are looking for these days. Akriti Dokania, Partner at Ridge Ventures shares traits they look for in founders.
How to Double Your Magic Number and Increase Your Go-to-Market Efficiency with Sapphire Ventures
Rajeev Dham and Karan Singh, Partners at Sapphire Ventures, and Jane Lee, Vice President at Sapphire walk us through how to double your “Magic Number,” a shorthand for your SaaS sales and marketing efficiency. In recent years, the average Magic Number and benchmark for go-to-market efficiency has dropped from .7x to just .3x. How has the happened? And what can founders and revenue leaders do to turn around their budgets for efficient growth?
Mastering Partner Marketing: What NOT to Do and How to Excel with Drata CMO Sydney Sloan
Welcome to the latest installment of our “What’s New” series where SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin sits down with some of the top leaders and founders in SaaS and Cloud to discuss What’s New and what should be top of mind for fellow founders. In the new episode, Jason sits down with Drata CMO Sydney Sloan to talk about what’s new at Drata, the role of CMO at Drata vs. Salesloft, partner marketing, customer marketing, and more.
High-Velocity Techniques to Maximize Sales with Gusto’s CRO and Head of Go-to-Market
Tolithia (Gusto’s CRO and Head of Go-To-Market Ops, or GTM Ops) and Jamie (Gusto’s Principal, GTM Strategy & Operations) about their high-velocity techniques for maximizing sales. They first discuss their aim of helping other professionals grow their businesses, the importance of proper territory management, especially in high-velocity, high-scale operations, and the difficulties of geographic territories. Following that, they discuss dynamic territory management, the problems of static sales books, and how industry does not necessarily dictate business models. They also touch upon tools and strategies they implemented at Gusto, such as the Next Best Action tool and dynamic books, to decide which leads to work and how. At the end of the discussion, they answer several questions from the audience.
A Look Back: Slack at The First $30,000,000 in ARR
As we gear up for SaaStr Europa 2024 in London on 4-5 June and SaaStr Annual 2024 in the SF Bay Area on September 10-12, we wanted to take a look back at some of our most iconic speakers and sessions from over the year, that we can still learn from today. Back at the first SaaStr Annual, in…
Continue Reading
An AI Deep Dive with Lightspeed and Typeface: Embracing the Potential, Addressing the Challenges
Alex Kayyal and Julie Kainz, Partners at Lightspeed, shared at SaaStr Annual a framework they developed around how to think about this new era of Artificial Intelligence in SaaS, what opportunities are out there for startups, and how to think about incumbents. Together with Abhay Parasnis, founder and CEO of Typeface, they chat about what it looks like to be a builder at the forefront of Generative AI.
Customer Success In The Era Of Efficiency: A Deep Dive With HubSpot, ChurnZero and SaaStr
Today we’re focusing on actionable insights you can use to drive down churn with customer success in today’s new era of SaaS efficiency. You Mon Tsang, CEO and co-founder of ChurnZero, Colleen O’Sullivan, VP of Integrated Customer Experience at Hubspot, and Jason Lemkin, SaaStr founder and CEO, give their take on where the customer success industry is headed and shares data from the Customer Success Leadership Study done by ChurnZero at the close of 2023.
CRO Confidential: Bringing Product-Led and Sales-Led Growth Together For Go-To-Market Success with Giancarlo Lionetti, CRO of Zapier
In this latest episode of CRO Confidential, Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with the CRO of Zapier, Giancarlo Lionetti (GC), to chat about Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Go-To-Market (GTM). Everything from hiring on the GTM side to layering in a sales-led motion into PLG.
Mastering High-Volume, Low-CAC Marketing: Strategies from Gorgias, Vercel, and Hypergrowth
Guillaume Cabane and Martin Gontovnikas, co-founders of HyperGrowth Partners, Axelle Heems, Senior Director of Growth Operations at Gorgias, and Morgane Palomares, VP of Marketing at Vercel come together to share their scalable, low-CAC (customer-acquisition cost) growth strategies.
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.