by Jason Lemkin | Nov 18, 2025 | Blog Posts, Exit Strategy
The year started off exciting. IPOs were back, and way up! But the data tells a more nuanced story as we close out the year. The HOT IPO'S of 2025 ATH Peak to today's trough:$CRCL -75%$FIG -75%$BLSH -70%$CRWV -62% — Heisenberg (@Mr_Derivatives)...
by Jason Lemkin | Nov 18, 2025 | Blog Posts, Customer Success, Early, Leadership, Marketing, Q&A |
Dear SaaStr: How Did You Get Your First Major Customers? Secret here: every story is different. In my first start-up, it was pure hustle. We had a concentrated number of high dollar customers, so I did “outbound”. I found the right decision makers, got on the phone,...
by Jason Lemkin | Nov 17, 2025 | Blog Posts, Leadership, Metrics
I see this pattern every single financial planning season. I’m seeing it right now. And honestly, it drives me absolutely crazy. A founder shows me their plan for next year. It looks reasonable at first glance. Growth targets seem achievable, albeit a bit aggressive....
by Jason Lemkin | Nov 17, 2025 | Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blog Posts, SaaStr.Ai
We added Salesforce Agentforce to our AI stack just over a month ago. We’d already added 10+ AI Agents at SaaStr and we didn’t know for sure how it would go. Not because we doubted the technology, but because we had some worries we’d need a...
by Jason Lemkin | Nov 17, 2025 | Blog Posts, Compensation, Early, Hiring, Leadership, Q&A |
Dear SaaStr: How Many Options Should I Give to the First Non-Founder Employees of they are making below market but non-zero salaries? Here’s the tough part. It’s really hard. What you should do is give them say 3x their forgone salary in stock — 3x to account for...
by Jason Lemkin | Nov 17, 2025 | Blog Posts, Career Growth & Advice, Early, Fundraising, Leadership, Q&A |
Dear SaaStr: Our VC Is Encouraging Us to Hire Aggressively and Increase the Burn Rate. Should We Listen to Them? In my experience, about 66-70% of the time this is bad advice, especially if it is coming from a Very Large VC. Not always — but more often than...
by Jason Lemkin | Nov 16, 2025 | Blog Posts, Fundraising
61% of Founders Think They’re Fundable. The Data Says Otherwise. We’ve now processed over 2,000 pitch decks through SaaStr.ai VC’s FREE AI-powered analysis engine. Try it here. And the data tells a story that every founder needs to hear. Only 12.1%...
by Jason Lemkin | Nov 16, 2025 | Blog Posts, Career Growth & Advice, Early, Leadership, Q&A |
Dear SaaStr: What Were the Biggest Mistakes You Made Getting Your Startups Going? The biggest two mistakes I made, I made twice, maybe thrice. They were: One, starting with too incomplete a management team. In my first start-up, while the core 3 co-founders were...
by Jason Lemkin | Nov 15, 2025 | Artificial Intelligence (AI), Blog Posts, SaaStr.Ai, Vibe Coding
The other day I presented at Replit on 125 days of building 10+ production apps through vibe coding. Apps that have now been used over 750,000 times. I went in thinking I’d share what I’d learned. I came out with something bigger. The Replit AI agent...
by Jason Lemkin | Nov 15, 2025 | AI App of Week, Blog Posts
HappyFox is an AI-powered support platform that serves over 12,000 companies globally – all without raising a single dollar of venture capital. And come meet them live, in person at SaaStr AI London on Dec 1-2!! If you’re running a B2B SaaS company and still...
