I think it doesn’t matter for a $350k round. Debt vs equity in 2018 for smaller rounds — who cares. We have bigger fish to fry. Debt with a “cap” of $2m pre is probably a slightly worse deal for both founders and investors than a “priced” equity round at $2m pre...
In the medium term, it’s tough to bet against Salesforce. At $10b+ in ARR, Salesforce has conquered its biggest short-term challenge: the maturity of its original, core CRM market. It tackled that by very successful expanding into service, marketing, e-commerce and...
Generally speaking, you need a sales rep to bring in 4x-5x what they take home in total compensation (base + commission). To make your business model work. You can pay more in the early days, to get the engine going — that’s fine. I paid just 1x with my first...
My rough rule is it’s OK to ask once politely. If you aren’t feeling right about the comp, it’s generally better for your prospective employer to know now. Bring it up politely, explain your reasoning. If the reasoning makes sense, and the overall comp is within...
I vote to do anything that brings together your partners, customers and prospects, as long enough folks will come. Sometimes even 10 is enough. If you can get 5 customers and 5 prospects to come to a customer dinner — do it! Those 5 customers will feel...
I’m an investor in Algolia so take my comments with a grain of salt. But also, we deployed Algolia to SaaStr fairly early in their WordPress development (David Skok also did the same on his For Entrepreneurs blog which serves a similar audience), and we are a...
Dear SaaStr: What is your method for evaluating a potential co-founder? I’d start with 3 (loaded) questions first: Can she and I together get this start-up to initial traction and beyond in 2–3 years? For real? Do the two of us have the right combination of skills and...
Yes, you can. Especially if it’s writing, even an informal email. It happens all the time. You can even see a variant of this (I know, not the same thing, but a variant) in the Winkelvii-Zuck drama at the heart of The Social Network. The risk with a prospective hire...
SaaS has been global from the earliest days, although how and when you go global can vary. Salesforce went very early into Japan (it takes a lot longer to add a lot of Japanese customers for most of us), which quickly accounted for almost 10% of their revenue in the...
Generally, each round should be at least 2x the size of the last one, or larger. The simple reason is you want each round to be at least 2x the share price and valuation of the last one. Hence, for the same amount of shares, you should raise double the amount in each...
