SaaStr Podcast #106: Alex Rosen, Managing Director @ IDG Ventures On Why Early Stage SaaS Metrics Don’t Matter

Welcome to Episode 106! Alex Rosen is a Managing Director with IDG Ventures where he focuses on investments in cloud infrastructure, SaaS applications, ad tech, and consumer marketplaces. Alex currently serves as board director at Chubbies, Krux, MindMeld, Minted, Smartling, Tempered Networks, and Uplift. He also led IDG Ventures’ investments in multiple companies including Appboy, Datanyze, Indiegogo, Nuzzel, The League, and many more incredible companies. Previously, he was a General Partner at Sprout Group, where he was head of the Internet and Software group. Huge thanks to the team @ Sapphire Ventures for the intro to Alex today.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

• How did Alex make his way into the world of SaaS investing and come to be Managing Director @ IDG?
• SaaS businesses can be massively affected by changes in a few very small data points. So what would Alex say is one of the single most important metric points?
• What is a booking?  How should we break it down into the 3 different MRRs? What element of those metrics do you want to see growing?
• How important a role does unit economics play? What are the couple of forms: customer + sales person? How much ARR should a good sales rep add to in ARR in relation to comp?
• What is negative churn? How can you take a customer you have already sold and make more money from them? Upsell or cross-sell? What does this do to the pricing axis? Why do you want more than one axis?

60 Second SaaStr:

1. What does Alex know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning?
2. What are the greenfield opportunities in SaaS for Alex?
3. What is Alex’s fave SaaS reading material?

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Jason Lemkin

Harry Stebbings

SaaStr

Alex Rosen