Atlassian Just Deleted Loom’s Free Creator Seats. They Were Also Loom’s Distribution.
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...
Dear SaaStr: What Is A Good Demo Conversion Rate for a SaaS Startup?
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,...
The Simple Math Behind a 3x Venture Fund: Why Your Best Investment Needs to Return the Whole Thing
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...
Backstory Retiered Its Entire Customer Base in 3 Days. The Same Exercise Used to Take Five Teams a Quarter.
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...
5 Interesting Learnings from Shopify at $14B in Revenue: 34% Growth, 18% Free Cash Flow Margins, and AI Orders Up 3x
Shopify reported Q2 2026 this week and the stock jumped roughly 18% on the news, erasing most of a 25% year-to-date decline in a single session. The headline numbers: $3.58 billion in quarterly revenue, up 34% year-over-year $115.6 billion in GMV, up 32%, the fifth...
If You Don’t Think You Need a VP of Product, VP of Marketing, Etc. — Then You Haven’t Worked With a Great One
If you are between $1m and $20m ARR, and maybe even a bit later, this might be the #1 most important post and piece of advice I can give you: That yes, a truly great VP for any role will move the needle. A truly great one. And if you don’t think so —...
I Bought 30+ APIs This Year. Only Exa Asked How It Went. Copy Them.
Four sentences, from a real PM, timed off actual usage. It got a 400-word product spec back. We run 21+ AI agents in production at SaaStr, and we’re building SaaStr AI Connect on top of them. That means a lot of API signups: search, enrichment, structured data,...
10 Things That Always Work in B2B Marketing
We’d all love to run 100% PLG companies that magically self-replicate customers. And it does happen, sometimes. At least for a while. Especially in the Age of AI. If only 100 people listen to your podcast, but it’s really good and provides a ton of true...
Hire the Right Type of VP Marketing — Or You’ll Just End Up With a Bunch of Blue Pens with Your Logo On Them (Updated)
"When you go to hire your first marketer, there's just one criterion they have to meet. They have to have help a commit. They have to have owned a number in the pipeline. They aren't a fit for startups if they haven't." pic.twitter.com/y3z40fTkxW...
“Our AI Agent Rewrote Our App Without Telling Us” The Agents #12 is Here!
The Agents, Episode 12, with Jason Lemkin and Amelia Lerutte A year ago this week we added our third agent. Running all three took Amelia and me about 30 minutes a day, combined. This week it was eight hours a day. Each. Three humans. 20+ agents. And we are busier...
Airtable Just Sold for $2.25B at 2.7x ARR. It Raised $1.4B and Was Once Worth $11.7B. This Was … Market
Bending Spoons is acquiring Airtable in an all-cash deal at a $1.285B enterprise value. With Airtable’s net cash, that’s roughly $2.25B of equity value. Expected to close by year end, subject to regulatory approval. What they’re buying: approximately...
Dear SaaStr: How Do You Compensate Reps on Multi-Year Deals?
Dear SaaStr: How Do You Compensate Reps on Multi-Year Deals? In the early days, when Cash is King, pay the sales reps a full commission on all cash paid up-front. It’s what I did. 95% of the time, this is what you want to do. As as a SaaS founder, I paid...
5 Interesting Learnings from Palantir at $7.7 Billion ARR: 93% Growth (!), 157% NRR, and a Rule of 40 Score of 155%
Almost everyone's growth rate decays at scale Not Palantir. It just pulled off a quarter (and a year) like we've never seen: – Revenue grew 93% year-over-year to $1.935 billion– The twelfth consecutive quarter of accelerating growth– 47% GAAP...
12 of the Most Common Mistakes Scaling Your First Sales Team
Dear SaaStr: What are the most common mistakes founders make hiring their first real sales teams? A few key mistakes I see start-ups making > 50% of the time: Hiring Early Reps (#1 – #3) That You Personally Wouldn’t Buy From. Don’t hire someone with the...
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