So competition is so visceral in most of SaaS, and especially in start-ups, where every lead is often precious. Especially every bigger one.
But one thing I find a lot of start-ups get wrong is re: how their much bigger competitors think about them. In most cases, they just don’t care.
The other day I was catching up with a founder of a SaaS leader at $2B+ ARR and talked about the space in general, and mentioned an adjacent competitor at $80m ARR, growing quickly. Not a direct competitor, but an adjacent one.
This A+ founder had never heard of the competitor at $80m ARR. I’m sure he would have it was a direct competitor vs. an adjacent one, but it’s in the same overall space.
But the vendor at $80m? They constantly talk about the $2B+ ARR competitor.
Similarly, when I was a VP at Fortune 500 Tech Company, the list of top competitors in many categories was often one that looked much more at today than the future. It makes sense. VPs have to hit the plan for this year, not the one for 5+ years out there. So the competitors we looked at when I was in a Big Tech Co were actually a materially different group than when I was running my own SaaS start-up.
A tiny example is SaaStr itself. When we moved SaaStr Annual post-2020 to September for 3 years (SaaStr Annual 2025 is May 13-15), it ended up conflicting with Dreamforce and we had to move it. The conflict created huge issues for vendors, for venues, and more. A big deal to us. To Salesforce? They sort of knew, but didn’t care. It didn’t matter to them.
Look this isn’t the most profound post in the world, but an important one.
Whatever you think about the competition — just realize they likely see the world differently. Especially if they are either smaller or larger than you are.
We all have different realities. Especially when it comes to competition.
(Image from here)
