So this is a seemingly simple post, and one with a title that is purposefully a bit binary. Yes, sometimes it’s OK to hire a VP of Sales that everyone loves. But not usually. At least 9 times out of 10, if everyone on the team loves a VP of Sales, it’s the wrong hire….
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Ok we’ve never done a SaaStr Fund news update but thought it might be time to try one! SaaStr Fund manages almost $200,000,000 to invest in Seed and Late Seed B2B startups, from $10k-$200k in MRR. Much more here. Current and past investments include Talkdesk, Algolia, Salesloft (acquired $2.5B), Pipedrive (acquired $1.5B), Greenhouse, Gorgias, RevenueCat,…
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YCombinator recently put out its list of its Top 50 YC companies of all time based on revenues. We’re fortunate that over the years so many of their founders and CEOs have spoken at SaaStr Annual and Europa! More than half of them, in fact! Let’s take a look at their top sessions: #1. Algolia’s CEO…
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What are the three most under-discussed metrics on social media, with VCs, and especially with founders? SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin shares his top three SaaS metrics that matter in 2024:

Net new customer count
Growth vs. efficiency
The bar to IPO

Do you really need quotas in sales? To some that have been raised with a quota, the answer may be of course “Yes”. But to others, quotas seem almost dated, and a bit draconian. Quota or not — won’t reps just close as much as they can — since they want to make their commissions?…
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Dear SaaStr: Are there different types of angel investors that should be sold differently when trying to raise money to start a business? There are several key types. Let’s break them into several categories: Professional vs. non-professional. Professional angels generally have very specific criteria in terms of valuations, team make-up, check size, etc. You do…
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So Zoom is just that crazy outlier in SaaS. Covid fueled it to insane growth like we’d never seen before, going from $1B ARR to ~$4B ARR … in one year. Yes, one year. But it wasn’t a gift. As the world reopened, we didn’t need quite as much Zoom. And the enterprise business, while…
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Dear SaaStr: What Was Your #1 Hack to Increase Trial Conversions to Paid? The quickest hack I did was answer all calls and chats immediately. I opened up a remote phone bank / set of agents just to answer trial users’ questions; and I made sure every chat that was in a trial was answered…
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So we’re almost there!! 2024 SaaStrEuropa.com is June 4-5 in London! Join us for 2+ fun-filled days, great parties, 100s of braindates and workshops, 1000s of connections, and so much more! And meet everyone from Harry Stebbings to the CEO of Gong! Ok with that, what are the Top 5 Trending Sessions … So far?01…
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So averages can be a bit misleading, especially once you are looking at the Best of the Best. The SaaS companies that actually IPO’d. But those ones are the ones we have great data on. And how old is the average SaaS CEO at … founding? The answer is 33: Some were younger, some older,…
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How do you build GTM efficiency in SMB sales? The CRO at Owner, Kyle Norton, shares his learnings and strategies for building better efficiency into your GTM motion.

While this title is SMB-oriented, the advice applies to Mid-Market and Enterprise, too. The three topics we’ll focus on are:

The importance of staying focused and how to say no.
Ways to scale that don’t include rampant inefficiency and burn.
How to build operational excellence into your organization at different stages of the growth curve.

Assume you can’t kick out investors. And plan accordingly. There are some limited exceptions, especially if you do nonstandard types of convertible debt or only raise a very small amount of capital. But for the most part, you are stuck with your investors forever. In the U.S. and Delaware and California, and under standard VC…
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Dear SaaStr: What Are Some Common Mistakes Made by Less Successful Entrepreneurs? Mistakes less successful (but not total failure) entrepreneurs make: They can’t control the burn rate. You can slow down time if you raise a bunch of VC money, but you can’t stop it. They hide from tougher metrics. High churn, lower-than-hoped margins, low NRR,…
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Dear SaaStr: How Much Should I Talk About the Competition in a Pitch Deck? The best startup pitch decks almost all have great competition slides. Why? Because the best CEOs: Respect the competition. Even if they plan to destroy them. Know the space cold. Even in the early-ish days. See and can explain the whitespace they…
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So last month, two companies I’ve invested in: both crossed $5m in ARR both also grew at the exact same rate last month MoM both also basically have the same ACV (~$50k) both have about the same number of folks on the sales and marketing teams, respectively both have a somewhat complex sale one difference:…
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