ICONIQ just published The Pacesetter Index. It replaces their Enterprise Five Scorecard, and shows the real growth rates and metrics for the top venture-backed startups. Not the average. But to be clear, what most VCs want to fund, The pool: the top public software companies plus ICONIQ’s own private venture and growth portfolio companies. Quarterly…
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A little ways back on LinkedIn and Twitter, I put together a list of things that later, once you are successful, even very successful, you’ll regret. It got a lot of engagement from the B2B veterans out there, so I thought it would be worth digging in more on each point: Regrets are different than…
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Dear SaaStr: How do VCs Really Feel About Founder Salaries? I Was Told That a General Rule of Thumb is 75% of Market The 75% Rule once you are VC Funded for more than a few million dollars is a good one. But if you raise less than that — 75% may well be too…
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“Vertical SaaS for The Traders” leader ServiceTitan reported its fiscal Q2 2027 on September 8 (quarter ended July 31, 2026), and on paper it was a good quarter. Revenue of $292.8M, up 21%, ahead of their own 18% guide and ahead of consensus. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.40 against $0.36 expected. Operating margin up 310 basis…
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.@samdblond CRO @brexHQ "Always start with monthly sales targets in the early days. You just don't have visibility beyond that in the beginning." pic.twitter.com/8gYGnlm7Tk — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) March 3, 2022 In SaaS companies in the very wide band from ~$1m to $40m ARR or so, the debate over Quarterly vs. Monthly Quotas comes…
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Dear SaaStr: How Do I Price My SaaS Product in The Early Days, Before Product-Market Fit? Just start with comps. With comparables. Software is very expensive to build, but for the most part, costs almost nothing to ship. It might cost you $0.10 a month in hosting charges per user for an app that isn’t…
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Here is what SaaStr AI did for Replit over the past 12 months, without being asked, without being an investor at SaaStr Fund (oh well): Mentioned them in 214 articles Mentioned them in 40+ podcasts reaching hundreds of thousands Generated 5,901,900+ page views and impressions for them, across an audience of roughly 450,000 of the…
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I was catching up with a VC friend the other day and asked him about a company I’d referred to him. They’d passed on the investment (which is of course fine), despite the company meeting basically every investment criteria I knew about the firm. I asked the partner why. His answer was simply — timing…
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Dear SaaStr: Should I Cap Commissions of My Top Salespeople? They Make So Much Not until the company is very big — if even then. It’s often the case that top sales reps close 2x to as much as 5x as much as an average rep. With the exact same / equal leads. And you…
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Julian Lehr asked a good question the other day on X: what if Slack had never sold to Salesforce, stayed in founder mode, and went hard at AI? What would the product look like, and what would it be trading at? What would an independent Slack look like today? Probably $2.5B ARR growing 25%, trading…
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Great VP of Sales, first week: – brings 2-4 great sales execs in ASAP. often week 1– identifies top existing talent, does what it takes to keep them– begins to move out underperformers– jumps into all critical deals Mediocre VP of Sales, first month: – has no one to bring… — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk)…
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"The #1 mistake founders make when they hire their first VP of Sales? Or even just their first sales rep? They step back from sales. No. You don't get that time back. It's just what you do in sales, changes." pic.twitter.com/wwUzRvrbt0 — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) July 29, 2026 Dear SaaStr: When Should The CEO…
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We run 21 AI agents in production at SaaStr. They have closed millions in revenue. They book meetings on Saturday nights, resurrect leads nobody had touched in six months, run the invoice and the collections follow-up, and write to Salesforce all day without asking anyone for permission. It’s so great and so disruptive, and now…
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"How do you kill your competition? You have to think about this if you really want to win. At Elevenlabs, we did a grants program, 10,000+. Then we upsold them — later. And it helped crush the competition." with @samdblond https://t.co/ktEXlxMQJV pic.twitter.com/CglTU9LMqm — Jason ✨👾SaaStr.Ai✨ Lemkin (@jasonlk) September 13, 2026 IMHO and experience, most B2B…
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Dear SaaStr: When Should a Startup Hire its First Sales Person, and What Should Their Profile Look Like? We’ve talked a lot about this on SaaStr, let me summarize my top learnings from 15+ years Try to close at least 10–20 customers yourself first, before you hire a sales rep. You can’t teach them how…
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