SaaStr Academy
SaaStr Blog
The Latest
You Can Do Your Own Customer Event at SaaStr Annual 2024!
Now that we have 40+ acres for the SaaStr Annual 2024 in SF Bay Area, Sep 10-12, we’ve been able to run a new initiative: building an Executive Briefing Center, and letting our top sponsors do their own meet-ups and even mini-events in our Executive Briefing Center. The benefit was getting all of the vibe…
Continue Reading
5 Interesting Learnings from Datadog at ~$2.5 Billion in ARR
So Datadog remains one of the most iconic Cloud and SaaS leaders of this generation. Growth is still epic at almost $2.5 Billion — it’s still growing 27% a year (!). But like Snowflake, it’s a bit less of a mind-bending rocketship that it used to be, and has focused on efficiency as well. Today…
Continue Reading
AMA: Hot Takes on SaaS Metrics with SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin
SaaStr Founder, Jason Lemkin, answers community questions and shares hot takes on SaaS metrics, growth, and efficiency.
Does Outbound Still Work? 49% Of You Say No
Does outbound still work? It’s one of the questions so many sales leaders are asking out loud these days. The outbound playbook from the past 5-10 years in SaaS clearly … isn’t. Hiring 10, 20, 50 SDRs straight out of school to send the exact same email sequences to try to get meetings for an…
Continue Reading
Dear SaaStr: What’s a Resonable Discount for an Annual Contract? How About a 3 Year Contract?
Dear SaaStr: What’s a Resonable Discount for an Annual Contract? How About a 3 Year Contract? First — you don’t want a true net discount at all. What I mean what you want is a pricing structure that anticipates discounts so the net effect is revenue positive. Later, when you implement a CPQ and other…
Continue Reading
Why Every Role Is a Prompt Engineering Role and No-Code AI Tips with Runway’s CEO Siqi Chen
AI is a force multiplier for human capital. Here’s how Runway CEO Siqi Chen uses no-code prompt engineering to improve sales, email copy and finance.
Free Upcoming SaaStr Workshop Wednesdays with Salesloft CRO, Guru CEO, HyperGrowth Partners, RevenueCat CEO, and Redpoint Ventures!!
So every week, Wednesday at 10am PST, we do an amazing, free, live Workshop Wednesday with the top SaaStr speakers, from CEOs to CROs to CMOs and more. And we do live, open Q+A at the end! Sign up here. Some of the great upcoming ones include the CRO of Salesloft, G Cabane, ex-VPM at…
Continue Reading
There Are Only ~58 Acquisitions of $50m+ or More in Software a Year per Theory Ventures
So long time friend of SaaStr Tomasz Tunguz, now heading his own VC fund Theory Ventures, has again summarized a lot of data into a few great charts. This time, on Mergers & Acquisitions. My biggest take-away: there are barely more than 50 acquisitions of $50,000,000 or more, at least disclosed one, in software of…
Continue Reading
Dear SaaStr: What Should Founders Do To Get Noticed By An Established Company’s M&A Team?
Dear SaaStr: What Should Founders Do To Get Noticed By An Established Company’s M&A Team? Don’t bother too much with trying to get “corporate development” or the M&A team’s attention. That’s not their job. Probably the most important thing to understand is that in 95%+ of tech companies, the “M&A team” does not drive M&A….
Continue Reading
Why You Usually Don’t Want Your Sales Team Handling Renewals
Dear SaaStr: what are your thoughts on incentivizing reps to handle repeat business vs focusing solely on new business with an account management team for repeats (when you are still under $10m)? At the end of the day if your product is SUPER sticky and doesn’t need a big procurement battle to renew, then just…
Continue Reading
Top SaaStr Content for the Week: 12 Things You’ll Look Back On In SaaS And Regret Plus the Top Videos and Blog Posts
The top SaaStr content you might have missed for the week of April 1st, 2024.
Dear SaaStr: How Do I Motivate a Sales Team Working Commission Only?
Dear SaaStr: How Do I Motivate a Sales Team Working Commission Only? It is really, really tough. While I am sure there are examples of “1099 reps” that have done extremely well, I haven’t seen it work in SaaS. Pay the reps at least a small base salary, with a large commission. It’s what folks…
Continue Reading
Don’t Hire a VP of Sales Everybody Loves
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….
Continue Reading
The Latest at SaaStr Fund: RevenueCat Series B, Gorgias Makes AI Really Work, a Top COO for Owner, and More
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,…
Continue Reading
The Top Learnings From 15 CEOs of YCombinator’s Top Companies
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…
Continue Reading
Popular Q&A
How To Reverse-Engineer a $100M Exit: SaaStr on My First Million Pod
How do you reverse-engineer your first million as a SaaS startup founder? SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin chats with Sam Parr on the popular YouTube channel and podcast My First Million about what’s required to make it on the map for a $100M exit and then reverse engineers the steps to get there.
Rule 1: New minimum is $400K per employee
Rule 2: Go multi-product
Rule 3: Your second product must be bigger than your first product
Cheat code: Double your prices
Rule 4: 30% of your revenue is international
Rule 5: Localize your product
Cheat code: Remove friction
Rule 6: 100% net revenue retention
Rule 7: Don’t raise double digit millions
Dear SaaStr: What Was the Toughest Rejection You Ever Had in Sales?
Dear SaaStr: What Was the Toughest Rejection You Ever Had in Sales? The hardest rejection I’ve had in sales was around renewals. Especially ones I thought we really had earned. But still lost. In particular, in the early days of EchoSign / Adobe Sign, we had a...
Why the Future of Customer Success, Sales and Marketing Has Changed For Good: Ask-Me-Anything Part 2 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
In part one of this week’s Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) with SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin, he answered the community’s questions about whether all anyone cares about is AI anymore, investor appetites going into 2024, vertical SaaS, and thriving as a solo founder....
Is AI the Only Thing in SaaS that Anyone Cares About Anymore? Ask-Me-Anything Part 1 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
In the first part of this open Ask-Me-Anything (AMA), Jason shares his thoughts on the current state of sales and marketing, if anyone really cares about anything other than AI anymore, how to hire great partners, and breaking out of a crowded ecosystem.
Doubling Down: Jay Levy Managing Partner at Zelkova Ventures
"Doubling Down" is a new series where we hear from top B2B SaaS investors on their most recent activities and takes on the current market. Kicking us off is Jay Levy, Managing Partner at Zelkova Ventures. #1. What’s your most recent disclosed investment? Why did you...
Dear SaaStr: Can an Entrepreneur Back Out of a Signed Term Sheet Without Damaging Their Reputation?
Dear SaaStr: Can an entrepreneur back out of a signed term sheet without damaging their reputation? In my experience — Yes, probably. As a founder, you can back out of a term sheet if something is off, or even if you just get another offer you prefer. There is a lot...