Dear SaaStr: What Do You Do When Your Startup is Not Growing Anymore?
Dear SaaStr: What Do You Do When Your Startup is Not Growing Anymore? First, be honest about why. You can blame it on macro issues if you want, but if growth has radically decelerated, it’s likely because you are less competitive than you were before. You...Dear SaaStr: A Big Tech Co Launched a Competitive Product. How Can I Tell How Serious They Are About It?
Dear SaaStr: A Big Tech Co Launched a Competitive Product. How Can I Tell How Serious They Are About It? In SaaS at least, I’ll give you one metric that is fairly reliable: How many dedicated sales professional do they have, just 100% selling the competitive product?...Dear SaaStr: Why Do VC Backed Startups Seem To Almost Always Be Running Out of Money?
Dear SaaStr: Why Do VC Backed Startups Seem To Almost Always Be Running Out of Money? The #1 issue I see is not understanding what investments really are accretive — and which aren’t. And so the money goes far, far faster than anticipated. Venture capital, if you...Dear SaaStr: How Can an Early Stage SaaS Startup Get its First 1-3 Pilot Fortune 500 Paying Customers?
Dear SaaStr: How Can an Early Stage SaaS Startup Get its First 1-3 Pilot Fortune 500 Paying Customers? It’s not magic. And it’s not a mystery. Even though it can seem like it, until you’ve done it yourself. There are basically two paths, and one...Dear SaaStr: How Do You Handle Customers That Want to Build It In-House?
Dear SaaStr: How Do You Handle Customers That Want to Build It In-House? Be “Cool”. What I mean is, we all go through this, at least, a lot of us. When you first build a start-up, it’s often feature-poor, with little-to-no brand. Internal IT teams sometimes think they...The Difference Between a VP of Marketing and a VP of Demand Gen
Dear SaaStr: What’s the difference between a VP of Marketing and a VP of Demand Gen? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps. A lot of demand gen leaders want to be a “VP of Marketing” next, and that can be a great hire, and a great title to give them. But in...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.
We’re All Expecting Too Much From Marketing These Days
So times aren’t tougher for everyone in B2B and SaaS, but they’re tougher for many. And the playbook has mostly been as follows for those with tougher times: Cut the burn Freeze hiring If growth is really slow, look at layoffs if necessary and Cut...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.
A Look Back: Zoom At $100m ARR, Burning Almost Nothing (Video + Pod)
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. Today, Zoom...10 Things in Marketing that Change as You Scale: Lessons from Dropbox, Klaviyo, Lightspeed Commerce with Kady Srinivasan, CMO of Lightspeed Commerce
In the ever-evolving world of SaaS, the role of marketing continually adapts and transforms, especially as companies transition through different stages of growth. Kady Srinivasan, the Chief Marketing Officer of Lightspeed Commerce and a veteran in the field with rich experience from companies like Dropbox, Owlet, and Klaviyo, recently shared her invaluable insights on this topic. In this workshop, we delve into the ten pivotal changes in marketing strategies as companies scale, based on Srinivasan’s expertise.