How Gamma Hit $100M ARR With a Team of 50: CEO Grant Lee’s Top 4 Lessons. And Top 5 Mistakes
Gamma is the anti-PowerPoint. Grant Lee and two former Optimizely colleagues set out to kill the blank page problem, and five years later they’re at $100M ARR, 50 million users, and 600,000 paying subscribers. Profitably. With a team of 50. They did the bulk of...
Dear SaaStr: Our VC Is Encouraging Us to Hire Aggressively and Increase the Burn Rate. Should We Listen to Them?
Dear SaaStr: Our VC Is Encouraging Us to Hire Aggressively and Increase the Burn Rate. Should We Listen to Them? In my experience, about 66-70% of the time this is bad advice, especially if it is coming from a Very Large VC. Not always. But more often than not. Why?...
Your Agents Should Beat Your Best Reps, Not Match Them. And 14 Other Hard Truths About B2B + AI Today, From Our SaaStr AI Annual AMA
We closed out SaaStr AI 2026 with our deep dive AMA, and the theme this year: software is the least static it has ever been. The products we run change more in a month now than they used to in years. The old playbooks work but they are just … too slow. Planning...
Should You Discount to Save a Renewal? The NRR Trap Says No. You Probably Should Anyway.
The Discount That Would’ve Kept Us So we’re going to churn off Adobe Marketo. The irony: I was one of the first 10 Marketo customers. Ever. I’ve been a customer (with a break) for goodness, the better part of two decades. And a reference account for...
Dear SaaStr: What Happens if One Founder Wants to Quit When the Startup Has Just Raised VC Funding?
Dear SaaStr: What Happens if One Founder Wants to Quit When the Startup Has Just Raised VC Funding? This, unfortunately, is more common that you might think. First, be completely upfront with your investors immediately. As tough as this may be, it’s not the...
5 Simple Reasons We Won’t All Vibe Code Our Own HubSpot or Salesforce
Someone on X this week made a claim that has truth in, but also radically overstates things: “I’ve built AI agents that do everything HubSpot would have done for me and more. And I’m not technically inclined.” I believe him. Because we’ve...
Dear SaaStr: From 0 to $10m ARR, At What Point Do We Start Hiring and Whom?
Dear SaaStr: From 0 to $10m ARR, At What Point Do We Start Hiring and Whom? From $0 to $10M ARR, every hire has an outsized impact, and there’s little to no redundancy. So timing and prioritization are critical. Here’s how I’d break it down: $0 to $1M ARR:...
By Year-End, Anthropic Will Out-Earn Every Public Software Company Except Microsoft
Our jaws drop at Anthropic’s growth rate, and its valuation. But sometimes we can lose sight of just how big it already is … versus everyone else in software. Anthropic exited 2025 at roughly $9 billion in run-rate revenue. By February 2026 it was $14...
What Happens When You Hire the Wrong VP
A lot of classic SaaStr content has been how to spot the best potential VPs. When to hire them. How to interview them and qualify them. What they really do. Etc. etc. Some classics here: How My VP, Sales Doubled Our Sales in 90 Days. And No, It Wasn’t Magic. If...
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...
Tired vs. Wired: Our Deep Dive on Why Software Spend Is Up Record Amounts … Yet Half of SaaS Is Still Dying
Two things are true in B2B right now, and they look like they can’t both be true. Total software spend is growing 15% this year, the fastest in a decade, up from 12.8% last year. Gartner has it going from $1.2T to $1.4T. At the same time, public software is...
Google Cloud’s VP of Growth on Building an AI-Native Marketing Team: 8 Takeaways from SaaStr AI 2026
Google Cloud’s VP of Global Demand & Growth, Sarah Kennedy Ellis, joined us for a day-three session at SaaStr AI 2026. She ran marketing at Marketo (sold to Adobe for $4.75B) and led marketing for Adobe’s enterprise software division before Google, so...
Events Work. Events Are Back. But Are They Worth the Big Expense?
Just got an email from a CEO yesterday that they closed a $450,000 TCV deal from a buyer they met at SaaStr Annual in September Don’t say events don’t work Be where your customers are. Even in the age of AI. — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) December 21,...
Dear SaaStr: How Much Do B2B Sales People Make in Commission?
Dear SaaStr: How Much Do B2B Sales People Make in Commission? "How to Build a Successful Sales Team Where Everyone Makes Good Money" @lennysan + @jasonlk More here -> https://t.co/XTFG4gqi0v pic.twitter.com/yD3Ub0VROa — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin...
Founder SaaStr
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