Q&AHaving invested in 22 Europe->U.S. companies, I am not sure the differences are all that huge, absent cases where there are regulatory differences. But in SaaS, there are fewer veterans…
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Q&ASolve one of their top pain points, for real — that no other vendor is solving. If you haven’t sold to the F500 / Global 2000 before, you’ll be somewhat…
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Q&AIt’s very tough, but it can be done. Just not in San Francisco using traditional SaaS employees and processes. Assume in the end, sales takes home 20% of a deal…
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Q&AI’m not sure I have any magic insights. After maybe $8m-$10m ARR, you probably should segment into 3–4 categories, assuming you have customers in all segments: “Commercial”. This often means…
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Q&AThe most horrible part is the feeling of failing and being 100% on the hook for it. And almost everyone goes through this. Even if it’s not 100% failing, it’s…
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Q&AA 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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Q&ATreat them the way you’d like to be treated. It’s over. If you truly have to fire (vs. demote in some fashion) your co-founder, the relationship is broken. If not…
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Q&APossibly more than ever. On the one hand, in SaaS these days, we hopefully are all selling solutions. Not random widgets. So used car techniques and such have little place…
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Q&AIt’s a real issue with VP/SVP-led acquisitions. It’s not so much an issue for founder or CEO-led acquisitions. Microsoft just bought Github for $7.5b and made each of the co-founders…
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Q&AThe odds you get sued from walking away from an auto-renewal are low. The claims, even if valid, are almost certainly not worth the legal fees and expenses. The odds…
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Q&AWhile at first I bristled a bit at the idea of “founding employees”, I’ve come around to thinking giving them this extra title is sometimes a great idea. Single digit…
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Q&AIf you squint at “generational change” in venture, you can see it is fairly common that the super successful VCs transition out well before retirement age: John Doerr semi-retired at…
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Blog Posts, Growth, Product, Q&A, SalesOne simple thought: earn it. First, plan to increase pricing in general once a year, each year. How much? Well, that will depend on how much additional value you’ve added…
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Q&AThey do, and they shouldn’t. They look down on them because they aren’t collecting the Funding Trophies. (We’re all impressed by a funding round. We can’t help it.) They look…
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Q&AI wish I could remember specific questions, but the most “ridiculous” ones are the ones that clearly only one vendor in the space could possibly win. For example, in the…
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