At SaaStr Miami, former Founder’s Fund Partner and CRO of Brex Sam Blond — host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential Podcast — sat down with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin for a fireside chat about finding success as a SaaS company in 2024. They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions.
Dear SaaStr: What Happens to the Management Team When a New CEO is Hired? You never know exactly what will happen. However, at a practical level, I think you should plan on maybe 50% of the management team turning over if your company brings in a new CEO. Maybe more....
Dear SaaStr: Does the fund make the VC or VC make the fund? The VC makes the fund — but it’s a little more nuanced than that. Only 2 things matters for VC until it’s late stage, and maybe even then: Getting the best founders to pick you; and Picking...
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 in March 2024. Brendon introduced his playbook to...
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.
Going though a slow patch is one thing We almost all go through one or two Settling for slow growth is another You never really come back from that one — Jason ✨Be Kind✨ Lemkin ???????? (@jasonlk) December 31, 2022 When I was CEO at Adobe Sign / EchoSign, I...
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...
Dear SaaStr: What Would Be The Single Most Important Advice You Would Give Other Entrepreneurs? Quit today if you don’t want it bad enough. But … never quit if you truly do. … Now, by “quit” I don’t literally mean leave the keys on your...
Lately I’ve been working with 5+ SaaS companies all hiring their first VP of Product. Most around $6m-$10m ARR, although one just past $2m ARR. And critically, most have a really strong CEO-CTO partnership. Both are great leaders, and both are great at...
Dear SaaStr: What does “old-school” series A funding mean? Most likely: trying to buy 15-20%+ of a company, that is reasonably capital-efficient, and has at least product-market fit and some early traction, that hasn’t done endless seed rounds before...
Dear SaaStr: What Is The Average Time it Takes a VC to Make an Investment Decision? For hot seed and even Series A investments? 20 minutes into the first face-to-face meeting. The average VC basically makes the initial decision to tentatively invest very quickly —...
Dear SaaStr: What Kind of Background Checks Do VCs Do on Entrepreneurs They Fund? It varies. Everyone does some background checks, or least they did outside of the Boom Times of late 2020 through late 2021. And some do very in-depth ones with lots of “off sheet”...
Dear SaaStr: Is It Normal for a Founder CEO to End Up With Just 10% Equity? Yes — if you are venture-backed. Roughly speaking, this is what generally will happen after 3 rounds of traditional venture capital. Expect it and plan for it. If the company sells...
Dear SaaStr: What Should Happen When a Co-founder Wants to Quit? This is one of the toughest situations to be in. First, figure out if it’s just anxiety. Starting something is hard. Getting to the first $1m in ARR is borderline impossible. If it’s “just” anxiety, and...
We’ve talked a ton on SaaStr over the years on how to make sure your VP of Sales and top hires really work out. That they are the right ones. We can pretty much summarize a lot of it into the following: Your VP of Sales should have lots of experience selling at...
