Building off the popularity of our AI Day at last September’s SaaStr Annual, we’re bringing it back online this March on Wednesday, March 27th for a completely live, digital event that will bring the global SaaStr community together with the brightest innovators in Artificial Intelligence for a day of digital content. (And don’t worry we’ll be bringing it back to the Annual this September too.)
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...
So when I started writing venture checks in 2013, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I had a strong start: First was Pipedrive co-leading seed, then acquired for $1.5B cash Second was Algolia leading U.S. seed, now at $200m+ ARR and an IPO candidate Third was...
SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin covers the SaaS community’s most pressing questions about Artificial Intelligence, pricing, efficiency, and funding in SaaS.
One of our top vendors just got a new CRO He got on the phone with us and said he was doubling pricing because "their costs are up". No heads up, just to make his plan. Now, we are looking at their competitor. Before … we weren't. Worth it for...
Dear SaaStr: How Would You Invest a 5 Million Dollar Payout From an Acquisition? Bear in mind I’m not a CFA, CPA, or professional financial advisor. But I have been through it. And so I know this is a more difficult question to answer than you might think. The...
Dear SaaStr: How Do You Deal With an Unreliable Co-Founder? You first try to move them into an individual contributor role. If that doesn’t work, then move them out. This is one of the most frustrating outcomes, when a very talented co-founder becomes “unrealiable”....
Are we through the endless price increases we saw in 2023? Apparently not. A stunning 73% of you are raising prices in 2024. That’s up from 54% in 2023. Personally, I’m a fan of only raising prices if you’ve earned it, and focusing on raising prices...
So Redpoint Ventures published some of the slides they recently presented to their Limited Partners (their own investors) here. There’s a ton of good data there, but this one slide stood out to me, because it was put together in a really clear fashion, better...
The path to Cheif Revenue Officer (CRO) is different for many people. Tracy Young, CEO and co-founder at TigerEye, sits down with three CROs to talk about how they navigated the journey to revenue leader. Jane Kim, former CRO of CircleCl, Laurabeth Harvey, President of Field Operations at Lattice, and Erica Anderson, Notion’s CRO, all share the key decisions or events that shaped their careers.
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...
Dear SaaStr: Should you offer to give the money back to your VCs if your startup just isn’t going to make it? It’s an interesting question. Many of us have been there — or at least close. I’ve been there. When in the earlier days at Adobe Sign / EchoSign, my...
So Carta put out some recent data I found very useful on how many startups raise another round, and how many sort of quietly wind down, in the first 5 years or so after being founded (from 2018 to early 2024): Almost none IPO’d in the first 5 years, but that...
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...
Dear SaaStr: If you were hiring a head of sales for a high-priced, niche B2B SaaS product, would you focus on general B2B SaaS sales experience or on market/customer knowledge, assuming it will be very difficult to find a candidate with both? This is the scenario when...