What’s the toughest part of running a startup? A partial list: Recruiting. This is always hard, forever. Co-founder Conflict. Hopefully, you don’t have this. If you do, boy it’s hard. Almost running out of money. Happens to almost all of us. Not fun. Loneliness at the top. Tough indeed. Having to rebuild the team every…
Continue Reading

Mike Tamir, Head of AI at Shopify, and Rudina Seseri, founder and Managing Partner at Glasswing Ventures, level-set about where we are in the cycle for Enterprises adopting AI and the critical work being done at Shopify to leverage AI and solve real problems.

Dear SaaStr: How Do I Start a Successful SaaS Company? I think there are approximately 2 ways to get a new SaaS app off the ground: Option 1: Hustle into The Enterprise. In almost every category of software, there are gaps. Painful gaps. Generally, several gaps that any buyer has and would pay, say, $5k…
Continue Reading

We’re gearing up for 2024 SaaStrEuropa.com in London on June 4-5, which will be awesome. 3,500+ of the best in SaaS and Cloud together in London! See You There! But then comes The Biggest Non-Vendor SaaS Event of the Year! SaaStrAnnual.com 2024 on Sep 10-12 in SF Bay!! 12,000+ of the best founders, CEOs, CTOs,…
Continue Reading

So there’s one topic you have to be ruthlessly honest about as a founder: are you falling out of product-market fit? The reason you have to be ruthless is while sometimes falling into product-market fit can happen relatively fast, e.g. with a magic feature … falling out takes time. It takes time for customers to churn,…
Continue Reading

Dear SaaStr: When Do VCs Try To Replace Founders as CEOs? You’re worried about a bunch of VCs replacing you. That’s fair. You should be. It happens. Regularly — but not usually. A few high-level things to think about. First, if you really screw up, shouldn’t you be replaced? Second, if you don’t end up…
Continue Reading

So the #1 OG vertical SaaS leader is Veeva. A core CRM, data and Cloud platform for the life sciences industry, it started off as a “Salesforce for Pharma” and expanded from there. It raised less than $10m before it IPO’d, and fast forward to day, it’s at $2.5 Billion in ARR, and is very…
Continue Reading

Dear SaaStr: What Happens if a VC Loses All Their Money on an Investment? It’s OK — if it’s not too much. As long as the founders did everything they possibly could to make it work. Everything. And were honest. There are two types of losses for VCs and professional investors: losses than fit into…
Continue Reading

A little while back on LinkedIn and Twitter we 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 SaaS veterans out there, so I thought it would be worth digging in more on each point: Regrets are different than…
Continue Reading

Databricks had an incredible scale-up from $400M to $1.5B+ during former VP of Product Nadim Hossain’s time there. The company has gone from 1600 employees to over 5500 and most recently crossed the $2B ARR mark. Nadim shares the principles behind the SaaS company’s massive growth.

Dear SaaStr: How Can I Get Better at Closing Deals? If it’s very early, hire 1 or ideally 2 sales reps who you’d personally buy from. You’ll all learn from each other how to close better, and faster. The #1 trick to making sure your first sales reps work out? Only hire sales reps you'd…
Continue Reading

So this is the time of the year when founders step down. Often quietly. Folks recover a bit from the end-of-year push, reflect, and sometimes … decide it’s time to bring in someone new. A CEO to take things to the next level. Etc. And even more of us think about it. Heck, I’ve thought…
Continue Reading

Dear SaaStr: How Do I Craft a Winning Investor Deck for an Early-Stage Startup? Here’s my #1 piece of advice: Get it all down to One Slide. "How to Create a Compelling Investor Deck: The Power of the First Slide" pic.twitter.com/AyyS7lHATz — SaaStr (@saastr) March 22, 2024 With 6-7 points on that slide. Not more. …
Continue Reading

Todd McKinnon, CEO of Okta, a ways back joined us for the first time joined us at our first big digital event, SaaStr Scale. It was a great deep dive on what it’s really like scaling an emerging leader in a category everyone previously thought was small. Through the magic of AI, we edited down…
Continue Reading

Dear SaaStr: What Are The Top 5 Things I Should Know Before Starting a SaaS Startup? My Top 5: It will take you at least 24 months to really get anywhere. Everyone mentally budgets 10–12 months. It’s never enough. At least, not to get enough paying customers from Code Zero. A little more here: https://www.saastr.com/if-youre-……
Continue Reading