All About SaaStr
Built by SaaS enthusiasts for SaaS enthusiasts.
What is SaaStr and how did it begin?
SaaStr is the world’s largest community of SaaS executives, founders, and entrepreneurs.
Our goal is to help everyone get from $0 to $100m ARR with less stress and more success. We do that with a combination of industry-leading content and community connections.
The SaaStr Annual is the largest non-vendor event in the industry, with 12,000+ attendees from all across the world coming together each February in the SF Bay Area. And SaaStr Europa brings 2,500+ SaaS execs, founders and VCs together to Paris every June.
SaaStr began in 2012 as a simple WordPress blog and a few answers on Quora sharing Jason Lemkin’s learnings of going from $0 to $100m ARR at EchoSign. This led to our first meet-ups in 2013 and 2014, the first SaaStr Annual in 2015, the industry’s leading podcast in 2016, the first SaaS founder coworking space in 2017, and SaaStr Pro, the first learning management system for SaaS founders, 2018. We also have an affiliated $90m venture fund.
SaaStr has been named one of the Top 100 Blogs for Entrepreneurs by Forbes and one of the 50 Best Websites for Entrepreneurs by Inc. Magazine, and a Top Writer on Quora six times. Jason has been named by Business Insider to the 32 Most Powerful People in Business Technology.
The Team
The people that make it happen.
Jason M. Lemkin
Champion for SaaS Founders
Jason M. Lemkin is a 3x founder, 1x VC, and constant SaaS enthusiast. He was named by BusinessInsider to “The 32 Most Powerful People in Business Technology.”
He has made the first or very early investments in many leading SaaS start-ups through the $90m SaaStr Fund, including Algolia, Talkdesk, Teamable, Mixmax, Gorgias, RainforestQA, Salesloft, PlatoHQ, Logikcull, Automile, Pipedrive, and more.
Before SaaStr and investing, he was CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, then the web’s most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc. He then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where he oversaw the growth of EchoSign and Adobe Document Services to $50,000,000 in ARR in 2012 and $100,000,000+ ARR in 2013.
Prior to EchoSign and Adobe, he co-founded one of the only successes in nanotechnology, NanoGram Devices, which was acquired for $50m just 13 months after founding. The technology, built into implantable power cells, has gone on to help extend the lives of thousands.
He has no known hobbies.
Faith Storey
Senior Growth Marketing Manager
Tyler Hogge
Manager, SaaStr Pro
Tyler is the manager and magician behind SaaStrPro.com, our paid learning system that teaches your team how to put SaaStr learnings into practice. He serves as a senior product leader at Wealthfront, and previously at Andreesen Horowitz.
Birgit Haag
Controller
Birgit heads up the company’s finances and collaborates to ensure daily operations run smoothly. She is a seasoned finance and operations professional with over 15 years of experience in the SaaS industry. Prior to SaaStr Birgit worked at several start-ups helping them get organized and scale. Birgit is originally from Austria and loves spending her free time doing any type of sport, traveling, checking out new restaurants, or taking a Harley for a ride.
Deborah Findling
Head of Content
Deborah brings a decade of innovation in media and content to SaaStr. Prior to joining SaaStr Deborah was a producer on “Squawk on the Street” and “Squawk Alley” as well as a frequent contributor to CNBC.com. She co-created Squawk Alley and collaborated with hundreds of leading speakers and create thousands of hours of award-winning content. While Deborah is a born and raised Parisian, she and her husband have settled down in the San Francisco Bay Area. She loves to travel and drink large amounts of coffee while poring over her morning newspaper.
Jessi Sanfilippo
Senior Event Marketing Manager
Amelia Ibarra
VP of Marketing
Amelia runs SaaStr’s community and events initiatives. She is a data-driven marketer with 9+ years of experience helping leading B2B and B2C businesses execute innovative marketing campaigns. Prior to joining SaaStr, Amelia led demand gen at BrightFunnel and was the social media manager for EverString. One of her favorite marketing campaigns ever was creating a proprietary social media tool for Arbonne International, which is still being used to this day. Amelia is originally from Los Angeles andwhen she’s not running marketing campaigns, enjoys spending time with her husband and their rescue pup, Nova, a formosan mountain dog.
Mallun Yen
COO Emeritus
Mallun is a repeat founder who has launched and scaled businesses, transformed markets by disrupting industry conventions, and created vibrant worldwide communities.
While Cisco’s VP of global intellectual property, Mallun and fellow innovators launched RPX to counter the spread of so-called patent trolls using a novel data-driven, market-based approach. As RPX’s chief business and product officer, she guided the venture-backed startup to IPO in 2011 (less than 3 years from inception) and over $300 million in annual revenue.
Mallun is also a board director of KQED, Northern California’s public media organization, and ChIPsNetwork.org, a global community for women in tech, law and policy she co-founded in 2005 with its own 1,000 person annual summit and free institute to inspire teen girls to become advocates, leaders and innovators.
Kyle Baldinger
Creative Brand Manager
Harry Stebbings
SVP, Worldwide Podcasting
Harry is the voice behind both the 200+ episodes of the SaaStr podcast (#1 in the industry), as well as the wildly popular 20 Minute VC. He’s a key part of the SaaStr team as well as a general partner in his own VC fund, Stride.VC. He’s also host to Drinks with Harry each year at the SaaStr Annual.
Jason M. Lemkin
Founder & CEO
Jason M. Lemkin is a 3x founder, 1x VC, and constant SaaS enthusiast. He was named by BusinessInsider to “The 32 Most Powerful People in Business Technology.”
He led or sourced the first VC investments in many leading enterprise/SaaS start-ups,Algolia, Talkdesk, Teamable, Parklet.co, Mixmax, RainforestQA, Salesloft, PlatoHQ, Logikcull, Automile, Guidespark, Greenhouse.io, Pipedrive, and more. Collectively, these start-ups are worth almost two billion dollars. He is also an advisor or smaller investor in Showpad, FrontApp, Greenhouse and other SaaS leaders.
Jason has co-founded two successful start-ups selling to the enterprise. Before SaaStr and VC investing, he was CEO and co-founder of EchoSign, the web’s most popular electronic signature service, from inception through its acquisition by Adobe Systems Inc.
He then served as Vice President, Web Services at Adobe, where he oversaw the growth of EchoSign and Adobe Document Services to $50,000,000 in ARR in 2012 and $100,000,000+ ARR in 2013.
Prior to EchoSign and Adobe, he co-founded one of the only successes in nanotechnology, NanoGram Devices, which was acquired for $50m just 13 months after founding. The technology, built into implantable power cells, has gone on to help extend the lives of thousands.
He has no known hobbies. Head shots here.
Mallun Yen
COO & Co-Founder
Mallun is a repeat founder who has launched and scaled businesses, transformed markets by disrupting industry conventions, and created vibrant worldwide communities.
While Cisco’s VP of global intellectual property, Mallun and fellow innovators launched RPX to counter the spread of so-called patent trolls using a novel data-driven, market-based approach. As RPX’s chief business and product officer, she guided the venture-backed startup to IPO in 2011 (less than 3 years from inception) and over $300 million in annual revenue. She served on the board of directors until its acquisition.
Mallun is also a board director of KQED, Northern California’s public media organization, and ChIPsNetwork.org, a global community for women in tech, law and policy she co-founded in 2005 with its own 1,000 person annual summit and free institute to inspire teen girls to become advocates, leaders and innovators.
She also serves as operating partner for SaaStr Fund, advises multiple fast-growing startups, including Logikcull and Textio, and has taught at Stanford. Many thousands have read and shared her articles, and her SaaStr sessions are among the most popular.
Amelia Ibarra
VP of Marketing
Amelia is a data-driven marketer with 8 years of experience helping leading B2B and B2C businesses execute innovative marketing campaigns. Prior to joining SaaStr, Amelia led demand gen at BrightFunnel and was the social media manager for EverString. One of her favorite marketing campaigns ever was creating a proprietary social media tool for Arbonne International, which is still being used to this day. Amelia is originally from Los Angeles andwhen she’s not running marketing campaigns, enjoys spending time with her husband and their rescue pup, Nova, a formosan mountain dog.
Deborah Findling
Head of Content
Deborah brings a decade of innovation in media and content to SaaStr. As part of the CNBC production team, she co-created Squak Alley and collaborated with hundreds of leading speakers and create thousands of hours of award-winning content.
Spencer Christeck
Account Executive - Global Sales
Helping SaaStr scale faster, with less stress and more success.
Birgit Haag
Controller
Birgit heads up the company’s finances and collaborates to ensure daily operations run smoothly. She is a seasoned finance and operations professional with over 15 years of experience in the SaaS industry. Prior to SaaStr Birgit worked at several start-ups helping them get organized and scale. Birgit is originally from Austria and loves spending her free time doing any type of sport, traveling, checking out new restaurants, or taking a Harley for a ride.
Tyler Hogge
Manager, SaaStr Pro
Tyler is the manager and magician behind SaaStrPro.com, our paid learning system that teaches your team how to put SaaStr learnings into practice. He serves as a senior product leader at Wealthfront, and previously at Andreesen Horowitz.
Harry Stebbings
SVP, Worldwide Podcasting
Harry is the voice behind both the 200+ episodes of the SaaStr podcast (#1 in the industry), as well as the wildly popular 20 Minute VC. He’s a key part of the SaaStr team as well as a general partner in his own VC fund, Stride.VC. He’s also host to Drinks with Harry each year at the SaaStr Annual.