The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

SaaStr 737: How to Build Go-to-Market Efficiency in SMB Sales with Owner.com CRO Kyle Norton

How do you build GTM efficiency in SMB sales? The CRO at Owner.com, 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 cover in today's podcast are: 

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

Full playbook, video and recap of this session here on saastr.com. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on final Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20

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This episode is sponsored by Pendo, the all-in-one product experience platform.

Pendo helps your users do the things you really want them to do. You can try Pendo for free at Pendo.io/saastr and check out Mind The Product, the community for product people like… us.

This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com

Are international payroll regulations giving you a headache? Remote.com is your solution. With our best-in-class interface and expertise, we consolidate payroll for your employees, whether in one country or a hundred. Trust us with swift, secure payments for your team while you focus on scaling markets and driving business growth.

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

Get more when Northwest Registered Agent starts your business. They'll form your company fast and stand up your entire business identity in minutes. That means business free domain, business email, website, hosting, address, mail scanning, business phone app, all within minutes. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

Harry Glaser was the co-founder and CEO of Periscope Data, which raised a seed round before finding customers, yet didn’t run out of money before becoming an overnight success 3-4 years later. They grew like crazy when they found product-market-fit and raised a big Series A and B. 

When you’re growing fast, everything can feel like it’s breaking constantly, and you’re hiring and rehiring people fast. During those rapid growth years, someone would reach out every once in a while and ask if Harry would consider selling. He always said no.

But then growth flatlined for a couple of years, and it was time to talk about selling. From the start of the company to a couple of years after being acquired, it was about a ten-year journey altogether. 

In today's episode, Harry shares the honest truth and lessons learned from selling Periscope Data for $130M. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com

Are you overwhelmed with paperwork managing overseas contractors? Say hello to efficiency with Remote’s Contractor Management solution! Seamlessly handle invoicing, fixed payments, and compliant, localized contracts. Kickstart your free trial today at Remote.com

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

Get more when Northwest Registered Agent starts your business.

They'll form your company fast and stand up your entire business identity in minutes.

That means business free domain, business email, website, hosting, address, mail scanning, business phone app, all within minutes. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, discusses the influence of AI on business workflows, focusing on automating operations, maintaining customer trust, and navigating generative AI challenges. Together with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin, they addresses the role of AI in managing incidents, improving efficiency, and changing decision-making in enterprises. Lastly, we delve into how AI and human roles can coexist, foreseeing a shift towards high-value work as automation increases, with a call for leaders to embrace AI's potential while adapting to technological advancements.

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com

Are you overwhelmed with paperwork managing overseas contractors? Say hello to efficiency with Remote’s Contractor Management solution! Seamlessly handle invoicing, fixed payments, and compliant, localized contracts. Kickstart your free trial today at Remote.com

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

Get more when Northwest Registered Agent starts your business.

They'll form your company fast and stand up your entire business identity in minutes.

That means business free domain, business email, website, hosting, address, mail scanning, business phone app, all within minutes. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 734: The Latest in Series A Rounds, AI Growth Rates and More with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin 

So Redpoint Ventures published some of the slides they recently presented to their Limited Partners (their own investors) here.

There’s a ton of good data there, but this one slide stood out to me, because it was put together in a really clear fashion, better than other data sources I’ve seen.

And what it says is that even though Seed stage investing remains arguably as strong as ever … Series A hasn’t bounced back.  Not at all.

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com

Feeling stuck in your talent search? Remote Talent is the leading job board for remote-first companies and startups. Visit Remote.com/jobs today to start building your dream team, anywhere in the world.

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

Get more when Northwest Registered Agent starts your business.

They'll form your company fast and stand up your entire business identity in minutes.

That means business free domain, business email, website, hosting, address, mail scanning, business phone app, all within minutes. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 733: Advice Every SaaS Founder Needs to Know in 2024 with Sam Blond and Jason Lemkin

At SaaStr Miami, former Founder’s Fund Partner and CRO of Brex Sam Blond — host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential Podcast — sat down with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin for a fireside chat about finding success as a SaaS company in 2024. They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions. 

Sam just finished 18 months at Founders Fund after joining in mid-to-late 2022. We were coming off an environment where startup funding was as fruitful as ever. With personal experience from EchoSign and other high-growth companies, he was spoiled when it came to those companies raising money from exceptional VCs. 

What he’s learned on both sides of the VC table is that the bar is really high for most VCs. Higher than he imagined in terms of the founder quality bar and, the stage of the business, and growth and efficiency metrics. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

Get more when Northwest Registered Agent starts your business.

They'll form your company fast and stand up your entire business identity in minutes.

That means business free domain, business email, website, hosting, address, mail scanning, business phone app, all within minutes. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 732: What It’s Like Running a Profitable $400M Public SaaS Company with Vimeo CEO Adam Gross and SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

Vimeo CEO and SaaS veteran Adam Gross and Jason Lemkin, SaaStr founder and CEO, recently hosted a fireside chat at SaaStr Miami, talking about running a profitable public company with $400M in revenue, including themes around: 

• Using a combination of self-serve and sales-led motions
• How to juggle and manage several different ICPs 
• How to avoid over-monetization during tough times
• Who owns “free”
• What to expect from AI in the near future

Adam is an OG in Cloud and SaaS. His first company was Personify and he went on to be a VP of Developer Relations at Salesforce, then hire number 11 at Dropbox, CEO at Heroku, and an investor and on many boards before landing as the current CEO at Vimeo. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

Get more when Northwest Registered Agent starts your business.

They'll form your company fast and stand up your entire business identity in minutes.

That means business free domain, business email, website, hosting, address, mail scanning, business phone app, all within minutes. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 731: 10 Things Founders Should Know About Getting Acquired with Brett Goldstein, Former M&A at Google

Former member of the M&A team at Google, Brett Goldstein, now Founder at Micro and Co-Founder & CEO of Launch House Ventures, shares the nine things founders should know about getting acquired. It’s a common dream for founders to hope their startup be acquired one day, but what is a company, like Google, really looking for in their acquisitions? And what should all founders know about the process if the time comes? 

First, there are three types of acquisition deals: 

1. Talent — To get the expertise on your team and more firepower. 
2. Asset — To gain certain assets like code, patents, data sets, etc, while leaving the team and often the company behind. 
3. Talent + Asset — Taking everything to expand the business or some core piece of the product. Or integrate the features into an existing product, which is an acquisition of the product. 

Now, we'll dive into what founders should know before, during, and after the M&A process. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

Get more when Northwest Registered Agent starts your business.

They'll form your company fast and stand up your entire business identity in minutes.

That means business free domain, business email, website, hosting, address, mail scanning, business phone app, all within minutes. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 730: How to Price and Package AI SaaS Products with Sandhya Hegde, General Partner at Unusual Ventures

With everything in AI moving so rapidly, what’s the best way to price Artificial Intelligence products or SaaS tools with custom AI features and integrations? Should it be subscriptions, usage, solutions, or something entirely different? While companies are scrambling to roll out these new tools, they also want reliability and predictability in the value they’re getting from your products, which can make pricing extremely difficult. 

So we asked the expert, Sandhya Hegde, General Partner at Unusual Ventures to share her best practices and trends for pricing and packaging AI products.  Sandhya has been in the startup ecosystem for about 15 years, with the last two years heavily focused on investing in AI-native startups, primarily on the application and Enterprise software side. Over the past year, people have started to recognize how challenging pricing and packaging are for AI products, as well as the competitive pressure. Why is pricing so tricky? 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

Get more when Northwest Registered Agent starts your business.

They'll form your company fast and stand up your entire business identity in minutes.

That means business free domain, business email, website, hosting, address, mail scanning, business phone app, all within minutes. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 729: 6 Questions Founders Should Ask Themselves to Drive Value from Generative AI with Base10 Partners

Generative AI is a platform shift where models can take inputs such as text, image, audio, video, and code and generate new content into any of the modalities mentioned. TJ Nahigian, co-founder and Managing Partner of Base10 Partners, and Luci Fonseca, Partner, deep dive into the current GenAI landscape, incumbents vs. startups, and the six questions founders should ask themselves to drive value from GenAI.

For some context, Base10 is a research-driven investment firm focusing on companies automating the largest sectors of the real economy. They’re trying to figure out what will happen with GenAI and share what they’re observing today so startups and incumbents can take advantage of it to build significant value.

Base10 is interested in mega-trends that change how people live and work in the next ten years. We’re at the beginning of a platform shift, and for the first time, GenAI has become accessible to more than just the mega businesses of the world.

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

Get more when Northwest Registered Agent starts your business.

They'll form your company fast and stand up your entire business identity in minutes.

That means business free domain, business email, website, hosting, address, mail scanning, business phone app, all within minutes. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 728: How to Double Your Magic Number and Increase Your Go-to-Market Efficiency with Sapphire Ventures

Go-to-market (GTM) design and efficiency are sometimes overlooked, but they’re a critical driver of any SaaS business. Rajeev Dham and Karan Singh, Partners at Sapphire Ventures, and Jane Lee, Vice President at Sapphire walk us through how to double your “Magic Number,” a shorthand for your sales and marketing efficiency.

Magic Number is your growth in ARR over a quarter divided by the sales and marketing spend in the prior quarter.  Previously in SaaS, it was widely seen that anything > 1 was healthy if you were venture-backed, and anything > 1.5 is was seen as perhaps too capital-efficient.  If you were well-funded, 0.7 was fine.

But as Rajeev, Karan, and Jane point out to set the stage for this discussion, Go-to-market efficiency in recent years has suffered a significant drop across both public and private SaaS companies. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

Get more when Northwest Registered Agent starts your business.

They'll form your company fast and stand up your entire business identity in minutes.

That means business free domain, business email, website, hosting, address, mail scanning, business phone app, all within minutes. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 727: High-Velocity Techniques to Maximize Sales with Gusto’s CRO and Head of Go-to-Market

Tolithia Kornweibel, CRO, and Jamie Edwards, Head of Go-to-Market Operations and Tools, share how Gusto maximizes revenue so that you can do the same. 

Together they share the high-velocity techniques they use to maximize sales, including:

1. Sell to SMBs
2. Use round-robin to assign accounts, but you’re not sure if it’s optimal
3. Are stuck in a world of geographic territories
4. Spend a lot of time manually building territories

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

Get more when Northwest Registered Agent starts your business.

They'll form your company fast and stand up your entire business identity in minutes.

That means business free domain, business email, website, hosting, address, mail scanning, business phone app, all within minutes. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 726: How to Build Out Your SDR Function in 2024 with Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and Host of SaaStr CRO Confidential

How do you build out a Sales Development (SDR) function at your SaaS company? Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and host of SaaStr’s CRO Confidential shares his advice for building an SDR function in 2024 based on his experience as CRO at Brex. 

We’ll cover everything from setup to efficiencies in setting up an SDR function, including:

• The benefits of SDR
• When to hire your first SDR
• Who to hire
• How to measure performance
• Scaling the team 
• Trends in outbound

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 725: Mastering High-Volume, Low-CAC Marketing: Strategies from Gorgias, Vercel, and Hypergrowth Partners

In today’s world, there’s a clear shift in what founders, boards, and investors are all after — scalable, low-CAC (customer-acquisition cost) growth strategies. 

In a panel, Guillaume Cabane (G) and Martin Gontovnikas (Gonto), co-founders of HyperGrowth Partners, Axelle Heems, Senior Director of Growth Operations at Gorgias, and Morgane Palomares, VP of Marketing at Vercel, share real-life examples of how demand generation, growth, and marketing strategies have been executed to scale beyond 2x ARR each year, even on a low budget. 

Let’s deep dive into how combining innovative demand gen strategies with a modern tech stack and specific team setup can provide a winning formula for scaling B2B growth, even with low budgets of greater than a 2x burn multiple. 

In this episode we’ll share: 

• Automated outbound at-scale strategies. 
• Sales-assisted, product-led growth strategies that close Enterprise leads. 
• How to use community as a driver of product-led growth. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 724: CRO Confidential: Bringing Product-Led and Sales-Led Growth Together For Go-To-Market Success with Giancarlo Lionetti, CRO of Zapier. Hosted by Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund

In this latest episode of CRO Confidential, Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with the CRO of Zapier, Giancarlo Lionetti (GC), to chat about Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Go-To-Market (GTM). Everything from hiring on the GTM side to layering in a sales-led motion into PLG. 

Before joining Zapier, Giancarlo was at Atlassian as a technical sales lead before moving to DropBox as a Senior Director of Growth and Monetization, and was CMO at Confluent – so he has a wealth of knowledge from Zapier’s Go-To-Market history as well as these successful SaaS companies to pull from. 

From a Go-To-Market perspective, Zapier uses a hybrid model that involves a combination of freemium offerings, subscription plans, and partnerships. Let’s dive into what’s making that hybrid model successful. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 723: Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, and Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder of SaaStr: Answer Your Top 10 2024 Customer Success Questions

In 2024, for customer success in SaaS, what’s “good” NRR? What’s a “good” NPS? Who should Customer Success report into?

Questions like this and many others are the most common questions asked of SaaStr Fan Fave and expert on Customer Success, Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta, and SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin. 

While we recently published an episode on what will change for Customer Success in SaaS in 2024 with Jason and Nick, we ran out of time to answer some of the top questions both get and what their answers would be now in 2024. So in the latest installment of the official SaaStr Podcast, we did exactly that.

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 722: 2024 State of SaaS: Trends and Predictions with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin

At Pavilion's CEO Summit, SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin, took the stage to do something .. a little bit different. Typically on SaaStr.com, we try to focus our content on mistakes to avoid, lessons learned and how to scale faster, but for the CEO Summit, Jason addressed the audience with what's most top of mind for him at the start of 2024.

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 721: How Revenue Leaders at Box, Calendly, and Lattice Scaled From $0 to $100M+ and Beyond

Mark Roberge, SaaStr fan-favorite and Co-Founder and Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital brought together some of the top CROs in SaaS during the SaaStr Annual to share some of their greatest learnings and pivotal moments leading some of the Cloud 100 SaaS companies. 

Dini Mehta, former CRO at Lattice, Kate Ahlering, CRO at Calendly, and Mark Wayland, CRO at Box, share their stories and offer advice to founders on:

• How do you define and refine an ICP?
• Can you start and stop a PLG motion? 
• What should you look for in an Enterprise rep vs. a Mid-Market rep? 
• How do you diagnose and solve churn? 
• How should you handle presenting challenges to your C-suite team when you’ve just joined the company? 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 720: CRO Confidential: What It Really Takes to Be Successful in Enterprise SaaS Sales with Christian Smith, CRO of Splunk. Hosted by Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund

In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with the CRO of Splunk, Christian Smith. Splunk is a 20-year-old Enterprise software giant that has accomplished many things — a 2012 IPO, a $28B+ Cisco acquisition in 2023, and $3.7 billion of ARR last year, with a market cap of $25.7 Billion.  

Splunk’s core product is a platform for collecting and analyzing high volumes of machine-generated data. Over the years, Splunk has expanded its offerings through acquisitions and product development. As Christian shares on the pod,  the company’s current customer list includes many notable companies, with 92 of them being on the Fortune 100. A feat!

As Christian’s been the CRO of Splunk for over seven years now, he’s a wealth of knowledge on what it really takes to be successful in Enterprise SaaS Sales.

Together with Sam, in today’s episode, they discuss everything Enterprise SaaS sales including:

• Pipeline health
• Enterprise pipeline generation
• How to create demand in the Enterprise when new business slows
• The pros and cons of a product-led pipeline
• And of course, Customer Success with Enterprise-level customers

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

This is SaaStr's What's New series where our very own CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, sits down with the top CEOs and leaders in SaaS to discuss What's New, what's top of mind, and what every SaaS founder should be thinking about.

In today's episode, Jason sits down with Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automatic and Co-Founder of WordPress on what's new at WordPress. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 718: Predictions for Venture, IPOs, and the State of SaaS in 2024 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin and Harry Stebbings, Founder and Host of the 20 Minute VC

Harry Stebbings, Host of the 20VC, recently hosted SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin for one of the first podcasts of the year. Together, they talk about the best of SaaS from 2023, the state of SaaS in 2024, and their predictions for Venture and IPOs for the year ahead. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 717: How Enterprise SaaS Companies are Buying AI (or Not) with ContextualAI, Anthropic, and Glean

While AI seems to have gone mainstream for consumers and smaller SaaS companies, but what about the big guys?

While the first generation of Generative AI is great, it’s not quite ready to solve Enterprise problems. So, where are we now in the adoption cycle for the Enterprise world? 

We brought together an Enterprise SaaS panel with:

• Douwe Kiela, CEO of ContextualAI
• Benjamin Mann, co-founder of Anthropic
• Arvind Jain, CEO of Glean
• and Sandhya Hedge, General Partner at Unusual VC

To help us figure out how to sell GenAI software to some of the biggest organizations in the world. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 716: The Future of Customer Success in 2024: Insights and Predictions from Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta and SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

Is it the end of an era in SaaS customer success?

It seems like some of the biggest changes to the human side of SaaS are happening right now. What does the AI revolution and SaaS spending cuts mean for the future of Customer Success and support?

In this episode, SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, and SaaStr fan-favorite, Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight share their insights and predictions on what the future of customer success will hold in 2024 and beyond. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 715: The 7 Biggest Mistakes CMOs Make (And How to Avoid Them) with the CMOs of Databricks, Zoom, and Okta

In this CMO panel, Rick Schultz, CMO at Databricks, Janine Pelosi, Former CMO at Zoom, and Ryan Carlson, Former CMO at Okta, joined Carilu Dietrich, Advisor at Hypergrowth B2B Startups to talk about the seven biggest mistakes CMOs make. These CMOs have all taken their companies from the early stages through IPOs and have been apart of multi-billion dollar organizations. Here are the 7 big mistakes they made, so you can avoid them. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 714: From Zero to Hero: How to Dominate Outbound SaaS Sales with Rippling and Founders Fund on CRO Confidential. Hosted by Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund. With Ashley Kelly, VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling.

In the latest episode of SaaStr's CRO Confidential series, host Sam Blond, partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with Ashley Kelly, VP of Global Sales Development at Rippling. For context - Ashley had previously helped Sam scale Brex's outbound sales from $2M to over $300M in ARR as Senior Director of SDR. 

Together they discuss:

• Scaling outbound sales and SDRS (sales development representatives) from 0 to $100M and beyond
• How to hire the right outbound sales team
• The SDR interview checklist
• How to create an environment to set up outbound sales reps for success
• Which KPIs to measure and matter most in outbound SaaS sales
• Increasing the quality and closed-won revenue with your outbound sales team 

Listen now!

--------------

SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 713: Why the Future of Customer Success, Sales and Marketing Has Changed: Ask-Me-Anything Part 2 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

In part one of this 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.

In part two we head into IPO waters, how to incorporate AI into your products, the best way to drive employee performance, pricing models, and why the future of roles in customer success, sales and marketing have forever changed in SaaS. 

--------------

SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 712: Is AI the Only Thing in SaaS that Anyone Cares About Anymore? Ask-Me-Anything Part 1 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

Ask Me Anything with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin Part One.

In the first part of this open 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.

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 711: 5 Lessons from Scaling Six Products to $100M+ with Samsara's Chief Strategy Officer Kiren Sekar

For any Cloud and SaaS Founders or execs seeking practical strategies and inspiration to stay ahead of the curve, this episode's for you. At the SaaStr Annual, Kiren Sekar, Samsara’s Chief Strategy Officer and founding chief Product Officer shared five lessons he learned along the way from scaling six products to $100M+.

The six products/companies Kiren helped scale to $100M that he'll reference in this playbook include: Bill, Cloudflare, Crowdstrike, Samsara, Snowflake, and Zscaler. 

His five lessons are:

• A single metric that helps guide decisions of when to pivot, when to iterate, and when to pivot.  
• Discovering the entire market and mapping out all potential verticals early in the process.
• The incredible power and value of the mid-market segment.
• Building customer feedback into the DNA of your product team and products.
• Going multi-product early. 

Listen to the full episode now. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

Welcome to the Official SaaStr Podcast Episode 710:

Running a PLG and Sales-Led Motion at the Same Time: What’s New at ZoomInfo with CEO Henry Schuck and SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

In the latest installment of SaaStr’s What’s New series – where we sit down with the leaders in SaaS and Cloud for the inside scoop on what’s top of mind and what’s new, SaaStr CEO and Jason Lemkin chats with the CEO of ZoomInfo, Henry Schuck.

So, what’s new at ZoomInfo?

In this episode, Jason and Henry discuss:

*PLG vs. a sales-led motion, and which is more efficient

*The macro-environment and what to expect next year

*What’s new at ZoomInfo

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 709: 15 Signs You Have A SaaS Metrics Problem (and How to Fix it) with Dave Kellogg, EIR at Balderton Capital

In this episode of the SaaStr Podcast, SaaStr OG and fan fave, Dave Kellogg, EIR at Balderton Capital, walks you through the complexities of SaaS metrics.

With a wealth of experience leading major SaaS and enterprise software firms, Dave delves into the art of leveraging metrics for strategic advantage and the potential pitfalls of their misinterpretation. This episode will equip you with a nuanced understanding of how SaaS metrics can shape success and why careful interpretation is paramount.

SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

The Top 10 Mistakes People Make When Hiring a VP of Sales with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

Hiring a VP of Sales isn’t new, but the conversations have evolved as the world has. SaaStr’s own Jason Lemkin shares the top 10 mistakes he sees during the hiring process during Workshop Wednesday, held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST. 

Jason has written about the cheat codes for hiring VPs of Sales since 2012 and realized it was worth a deeper dive. The last 18 months have seen the biggest changes in the VP of Sales in his SaaS career. We’re still learning what world we’re in — some people interview over Zoom, some are focused on how to build teams in the current age, and many are dealing with a weird overhang from the SaaS explosion of 2021, quiet quitting, layoffs, and team turnover.  While this topic isn’t new, you want to avoid getting this hire wrong. So, let’s look at the top 10 mistakes Jason sees in the VP of Sales hiring process. 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

SaaStr 707: The Where, When, and How of AI with Theory Ventures, Open AI, MotherDuck and Lamini

Hear the latest insights on AI from leading VC Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures Theory Ventures, joined by Jordan Tigani, Founder and CEO of Mother Duck Maggie Hott, GTM at OpenAI, and Sharon Zhou, Co-Founder and CEO of Lamini. Together they discuss the new architecture for building Software as a Service (SaaS) applications with data & machine learning at their core, moderated by Tomasz.

The focus of the episode centers around the transformative role of data, which has become an integral part of the production stack. The speakers also delve into the implications of this shift and explore how leveraging data within the architecture empowers developers to create more robust, intelligent, and scalable SaaS solutions.

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

--------------

This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

In our 'What's New' series, SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin sits down with the top CEOs from leading SaaS companies to discuss What's New and what's top of mind.

In this episode, Jason sits down with Aaron Levie, CEO and Co-Founder of Box, and also a SaaStr-fan fave from speaking at various SaaStr events in-person and digitally.

Together they discuss:

• How to go long as a CEO and Founder in SaaS
• Overhauling operating margins at Box to a top-tier 25%
• Implementing AI at BOX
• Macro issues on the horizon for 2024
• What's new at Box

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

A holistic and well-executed go-to-market strategy is one of the key pillars that drives sustainable, long-term growth for software companies. But there is a dearth of data that leaders can leverage to inform building out the best team, strategies, and tactics to scale their go-to-market organization.

Leveraging proprietary data from over 200 leading GTM executives and tens of thousands of data points related to executive profiles across Sales and Marketing leaders, Doug Pepper, General Partner, and Christine Edmonds, General Partner and Head of Analytics at ICONIQ Growth will share detailed answers to the key go-to-market questions from B2B SaaS leaders including:

• The latest insights on what “effective” scaling means in today’s environment
• Best practices for building out GTM teams and processes
• Learnings related to what profiles make the most successful IPO-ready executive hires
• How top companies are tweaking tactics in today’s environment to drive efficient selling

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave50
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

We had a party in 2020 and 2021 where valuations and growth were crazy. Then, we had a hangover in 2022 and the first half of this year. Now, investing is coming back, public markets have returned, and we’re almost back to normal.  Jameson Yung, SVP of Sales at Gong, and Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and previous CRO at Brex, share five tactical ways to get back to growing and hitting revenue targets.  The days of working a little for big returns are behind us in the Boom of ‘21, so what can you do to start hitting revenue targets? 

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave50
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

As AI continues to reshape the way businesses operate, it has become a critical differentiator in gaining a competitive edge. Stage 2 Capital Co-founder and Managing Director Mark Roberge dissects the advantages and challenges faced by both startups and incumbents in leveraging AI for Go-to-Market strategies. Uncover the unique capabilities that startups bring to the table and how they disrupt established players with their agility, innovation, and ability to adapt to changing market dynamics.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave50
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

From seed funding to reaching $100M ARR to going public in 2021, Spenser Skates knows about growing and scaling a business. But for many founders, the question becomes: how do you maintain hypergrowth? In this podcast, Spenser will share key lessons around maintaining long-term, sustainable growth, including when to expand your product suite, why iteration matters more than perfection, where AI fits (and doesn't!) fit into growth strategy, and how to ensure your exec team is the right group for your next stage of growth.

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave50
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

Scott Belsky, CSO, and EVP at Adobe, does a deep dive on the profound transformations taking place in the creative world. As technology continues to reshape the landscape, Cloud and SaaS Founders, VCs, and Executives must adapt and evolve to stay ahead. Discover the playbook to thrive in this dynamic environment and unlock unprecedented opportunities. Belsky will share his deep insights into the rapidly changing creative industry, drawing from his vast experience at the forefront of innovation.

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave50
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

In this episode, Nick Mehta will share ten significant mistakes he made during his career, and how these failures shaped his journey as CEO of Gainsight. Mehta will impart valuable lessons on resilience and growth, offering attendees actionable takeaways for their own entrepreneurial ventures. This is a must-listen for anyone seeking to learn from real-life experiences and turn failures into opportunities for success in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) world.

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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.

Join us in 2024 at:

• SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave50
• SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

In this new episode of CRO Confidential, we take a look at the proven customer acquisition strategies behind Toast's explosive growth to over $1.1B ARR. Hosted by Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond, this episode features the CRO of Toast Jonathan Vassil, who walks us through Toast's go-to-market and customer acquisition strategies.

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

Welcome to Part Two of SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin’s Ask Me Anything session at this year’s SaaStr Annual.

Jason re-takes the stage in Part 2 of the series to answer questions about the right time is to invest in a new product line, building vertical vs. horizontal, multiples in 2024, and much more. 

Building and scaling a startup isn’t for the faint of heart and often comes with many ups and downs that SaaS veterans have experience in. 

So, let’s jump right into Part Two. 

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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent

When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

Each year, tens of thousands of SaaS fans attend SaaStr Annual. And every year, Jason Lemkin, the founder of SaaStr, takes the stage to answer the audience's most pressing questions. For part one of this Ask Me Anything session, Jason covers everything you need to know about hiring your first VP of Sales, when to use AI at early-stage companies, and when the right time is to invest in a new product line. Building and scaling a startup isn’t for the faint of heart and often comes with many ups and downs that SaaS veterans have experience in. Let's dive into the questions and answers!

As industry leaders, understanding the transformative power of AI and how it can be harnessed to drive innovation and growth is essential for staying ahead in today's rapidly evolving business landscape.

In this episode, Aliisa Rosenthal, Head of Sales at OpenAI, will delve into the ways in which AI is reshaping the way we work. With her extensive experience and deep knowledge of AI technologies, Aliisa will share insights, trends, and practical examples of how AI is being applied across various sectors.

As SaaS companies slash campaign budgets, marketing leaders need to find other ways to augment customer wins from their remaining campaigns. Increasing down-funnel conversions by having marketing enable sellers to “all-star” levels along the funnel can help make up the difference.

In this episode, Datadog's CMO Alex Rosemblat will explore the tactics, personas, best practices, and tracking metrics to significantly up-level product and campaign-level sales enablement.

In the dynamic landscape of SaaS startups, pursuing rapid customer growth while achieving and maintaining profitability is an art that requires flexible strategies and, more importantly, employees that are eager for the challenge.

In this episode, Expensify COO Anu Muralidharan will share how Expensify became profitable on its way to securing millions of users in less than 15 years.

You'll hear real-world examples and walk away with specific tactics they can immediately deploy at their own companies, including:

 a.) when, where, and why to outsource

b.) a new, more bullish approach to testing and launching products with confidence

 c.) how to leverage automation to reduce expenses while simultaneously supporting growth.

Monday has gone from $7m in 2017 to over $700m in revenue today, showcasing the sheer power of compounding revenue. Did Monday’s founders feel like they’d be 100x bigger in just six years since that first SaaStr conference they attended? Eran Zimman, Monday’s co-founder and co-CEO, shares his secrets to scaling and growth in an unpredictable market. Monday hasn’t missed a bit, but before we dive into their secrets, let’s first learn where it all started and what they do today.

Discover the best ways for a seed-stage startup to pitch to investors and successfully fundraise from Y Combinator’s Michael Seibel. Any founder you talk to likely remembers every investor who said no to them. Those founders hold a special kind of “not hatred,” says Michael Seibel, Managing Director and Group Partner at Y Combinator, but a special kind of something for those investors and a desire to prove them wrong. If you’re a seed-stage startup, Michael shares the best ways for you to present your company to startup investors.

SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin deep dives into the current state of SaaS and the Cloud and what to expect over the next year.

One of the open secrets behind a lot of great companies is going multi-product. Jack Altman, CEO and co-founder of Lattice, firmly believes that many more companies should be multi-product, and many should go multi-product earlier than they think. Lattice has launched four product suites in the last eight years, and the ideas that drove their growth apply to most companies today.

Given the massive downturn that started 18 months ago, many SaaS founders are nervous about what it takes to raise capital in SaaS in 2023. Christoph Janz, General Partner of Point Nine Capital, shares some answers about what it takes to raise capital in SaaS, overall investment activity in 2023, and how to develop a convincing AI strategy.

Discover Bessemer Venture Partners’s annual State of the Cloud report, going through trends, benchmarks, and metrics that underpin the Cloud economy. 

Presented by:

• Mary D'Onofrio, Partner @ Bessemer Venture Partners
• Janelle Teng, VP @ Bessemer Venture Partners
• Caty Rea, VP @ Bessemer Venture Partners

The past twelve months have been relatively turbulent for Cloud founders. SVB collapsed, market multiples are down, yet the IPO window is re-opening, and we have a platform shift to AI that’s exciting everybody. 

What does this mean for Cloud companies? 

Let’s find out.

Freshworks is a successful public SaaS company that has a humble beginning in the small town of Chennai, India. Founder and CEO Girish Mathrubootham shares five big bets that paid off as he scaled this multi-product company.

 Listen to discover Mathrubootham’s key decisions in launching and scaling a company, which include:

*Betting on inbound while going global

*Hiring talent when talent is hard to find

*Going multi-product early on

*Layering a sales-led motion on top of a product-led motion

*Betting on AI and the future before it arrives

Are you curious to learn what the future of SaaS will look like in 2024? Well, look no further. In this informative interview, two of the biggest pioneers of SaaS, David Sacks, Founder and General Partner of Craft Ventures and Jason Lemkin, SaaStr Founder and CEO, team up to discuss the potential landscape for AI-focused SaaS over the next five years. From understanding what it takes to raise a Series A these days to discovering how AI will shape the industry, get a unique insight into the world of SaaS as two leading experts share their predictions and experience. Don’t miss your chance to keep ahead of the competition – listen now!

SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin and Partner at QED Investors Amias Gerety chat on the Fintech Beat podstream about all things SaaS, money, and what makes a great founder. 

Some topics covered include: 

• What makes SaaS so great
• How SaaS is fairing in the “macro” economy
• Perspectives on fintech and SaaS and how they overlap
• How an investor chooses what to invest in and when it’s time to walk away

Fintech Beat is all about the intersection of finance, tech, and policy, and now they’re touring outside the neighborhood of fintech and into the great big world of SaaS. 

While the world of public tech stocks is defined by consumer-facing juggernauts like Facebook, Amazon, and Google, the world of venture capital is defined by the North Star of SaaS. 

Let’s dive right in. 

G2 is a unicorn startup that’s stayed in the game for over a decade. G2 CEO Godard Abel deep dives into his original vision for G2, going multi-product, selling with multiple sales teams, demand gen spend, and why AI is the most important thing right now. 

Discover how three breakout SaaS companies scaled from an idea to hundreds of employees and $1B+ valuations, all while living their values along the way. 

Notion COO Akshay Kothari, Motive CEO and Founder Shoaib Makani, and CEO and Co-Founder of Incredible Health Iman Abuzeid share the secrets of ensuring their company-centered values and purpose remained an anchor amidst hypergrowth.  Moderated by Laura Weidman Powers, Operating Partner at Base10 Partners.

As we dive into these three highly successful companies, we’ll talk about their values, the process of creating them, and the right time for founders to create their own values. 

10 Terrible Pieces Of SaaS Advice To Avoid If You Want To Succeed with SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin

Bad advice is everywhere these days. Hundreds of thousands of experts are telling you how to succeed in SaaS. Many of those voices are incredible, yet terrible bits of advice pops up again and again.

On top of that, founders are full of excuses preventing them from scaling. 

SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin shares the 10 worst pieces of SaaS advice, excuses, and mistakes founders make, and what to do instead. 

Whether you’re going from nothing to something or already scaling and thriving beyond $10-100M, healthy, sustainable growth in SaaS is on every founder’s mind. 

Cockroach Labs’ CEO Spencer Kimball shares hard-won lessons from scaling from $0 to $5B and his time as an angel investor for more than 80 different startups. 

He’ll walk you through the three stages of growth: 

0-$1M — From nothing to something

$1M-$10M — Building, innovation, and customers

$10M-$100M+ — Scaling and thriving And what sustainable growth strategies you can implement (and pitfalls to avoid) wherever you’re at in your SaaS journey.

This edition of the SaaStr podcast is brought to you by:

Prescient Security & Assurance. Your trusted partner in cybersecurity and compliance. Automated solutions, expert protection, regulatory compliance. Secure your future at prescientsecurity.com

Can’t afford an engineer in Silicon Valley? Tap the talent pool in Eastern Europe. Working with a global expansion partner, like Atlas, is a quick, cost-effective, and compliant solution. Visit www.atlashxm.com for a strategy call.

Learn about the most important SaaS metrics for founders in 2023 with the CEOs of the most metric-oriented company, monday, and the founder of SaaStr. The godfather of SaaS and founder of the world’s largest community for business software sits down with one of the most metric-oriented companies today to discuss the most important SaaS metrics for founders in 2023. Jason Lemkin, Founder of SaaStr, and co-founders and CEOs, Eran Zinman and Roy Mann of the wildly successful monday.com chat with Startup For Startup about ARR, NRR, CAC, and what it takes to beat the odds in a tougher environment.

Are you trying to unlock sustainable low customer acquisition costs (CAC) growth for your SaaS company?

Then you need to hear what Guillaume Cabane, Co-Founder and President of HyperGrowth Partners, has to say on the subject. In this podcast, Guillaume shares the formula he used at Ramp, Gorgias, and Drift to reach explosive saas growth - showing you the secrets of smart scaling.

 Don't miss out - listen now now for groundbreaking advice on generating fast CAC growth success!

Founders of 2023 ask themselves, “What does it take to raise money right now in this uncertain market environment?” Peter Specht, Partner at Creandum, shares a data-driven perspective and real-time insights into the market of very recent rounds and current VC expectations. 

Unfortunately, raising money isn’t the same as raising in 2021. Specht walks you through what has happened in the last 12 months and the best practices for today. 

Some SaaS and Cloud leaders have seen big impacts from the post-Covid hangover, but others keep accelerating. MongoDB is one of those that has never stopped. 

Instead of looking at those who are struggling, let’s take a look at the epic growth story of MongoDB, a company crushing it in 2023. 

MongoDB is at a stunning $1.5B in ARR, 29% overall growth, and is worth $29B. That’s about as good as it gets in SaaS and Cloud! 

While many less efficient public SaaS companies are trading at tough multiples of 3-4x ARR, and the average is about 6x ARR, MongoDB is almost 20x ARR. 

Let’s look at nine interesting learnings about this leading company.

2023 has been a difficult year for many tech companies. Markets have been all over the place, layoffs occurred, and investors weren’t funding as much as usual. However, Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund & Host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential Podcast, believes there are reasons to be optimistic for the rest of 2023. In a special workshop, Sam shares advice on how to spot bottlenecks, reallocate the right resources, and grow revenue in 2023.  SaaStr Workshop Wednesdays are LIVE every Wednesday. Sign up for free. 

Many people at this year’s SaaStr Europa wondered about the future of customer success, motivation during hard times, and how to grow in this new era of efficiency. 

SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin sat down with the audience for an Ask Me Anything session to answer some of the most pressing questions from the audience. 

If you missed part 1, catch that here.

First up is a bootstrapped founder looking for advice in today’s market. 

Startups come in all shapes and sizes on various stages of a timeline, yet it’s not surprising how many have the same questions and concerns about how to scale from x to y to z, the right time to hire and fire, and how to keep a team motivated during hard times. 

At this year’s SaaStr Europa, Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder of SaaStr, took the stage to answer the audience's most pressing questions about the present and future of startups. 

His answers didn’t disappoint.

Retention is the new acquisition.

This paradigm shift has placed Customer Marketing in the spotlight as a pivotal function that helps companies achieve robust NRR metrics. Despite the revenue impact, Customer Marketing teams remain relatively lean and often struggle to secure the necessary support from cross-functional teams. Companies that have successfully unlocked the potential of Customer Marketing have seen a substantial increase in revenue.

Join Insider's Co-founder and CEO, Hande Cilingir, and CMO, Merve Nazlioglu, as they unveil ten game-changing tactics to accelerate your customer marketing programs on the path to achieving an outstanding 140% NRR.

Struggling to find product market-fit?

Join former Divvy CRO, Sterling Snow, and learn how the company went from 0 to a $2.5B exit in just four years using effective go-to-market strategies. Find out what the team did differently that set them apart from their competition and get your product off the ground in no time!

 There are 6 primary operating models Divvy used to fuel incredible growth, culture, and results. The best part is they're dead simple and every team should be using them. Don't miss this session where Sterling will talk through the tactics, mistakes, and lessons learned.

It’s not an easy time to be a startup entrepreneur. Even as generative AI and LLMs present the potential for a technical paradigm shift, startups today must also grapple with the realities of financial market upheaval, ominous global power shifts, uncertain economic indicators, and disruption up and down the supply chain: It may feel as though “hunkering down” is the best that a founder can do.

Bill Magnuson, Co-founder and CEO of Braze, has a different take, in which there’s no time like the present era of change to uncover opportunities that can distinguish your business from competitors’ as the skies clear. Having navigated through the early days of mobile and the multiple macro disruptions since to take Braze public and scale to a revenue run rate of $400+ million, Bill has put this strategy to the test.

Seeing opportunity in today’s times requires a longitudinal perspective on the underlying forces of change that create growth opportunities and strategy that anticipates the evolution of those forces while positioning your business to best take advantage of the resulting changes over time..

Timing around disruptions is key, and they provide a key opportunity for innovators to build in response to the evolution of new skillsets, team structures, and business models, all of which create new buyer personas, and can be cultivated even while headwinds stall growth. Those who lean into disruptions with curiosity and optimism can emerge as stronger innovators with deeper competitive moats because they were out building with a growth mindset while everyone else was hunkered down.

Key takeaways from this talk include:

*How to think about second-order effects of disruption, and when their evolution may ultimately reward patience, creating room for the slower growth that is often forced by a difficult macro. *What to watch for in areas of macro disruption in order to identify differentiating opportunities in unexpected places. 

*How evolving skillsets, team compositions, and ways of working can transform business, and why its absence can lead to obsolescence.

The First Rule You Know About Building Software is Wrong.

Discover why with Rippling CEO and Co-Founder, Parker Conrad, and Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund. In this session, Parker will explain step-by-step his theory of the compound startup and how it can help you scale your SaaS company.

*****

Shipping projects doesn’t have to be a mess. Notion combines project management with your docs, knowledge base, and AI. So you can stop jumping between tools, and stop paying too much for them too. Get Notion Projects for free at Notion.com/SAASTR.

Vention provides technology leaders with the top engineering talent they need to accelerate their roadmap, innovate faster and more efficiently, and ultimately catapult their operation to new heights. Vention developers sync with clients’ in-house teams, helping them get to market 30 percent faster and saving them more than $600,000 on average. Looking for the edge to outpace your competition? Vention is your partner. Learn more at ventionteams.com.

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

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Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

June 2016: Loom was on its last legs. With more than one failed launch + fundraising attempt behind them, the co-founders were maxing out credit cards and had about two weeks of runway left before calling it quits. One idea changed everything: they took a chance on a single piece of their product — the video recorder. They decoupled it from the broader platform they’d been developing, launched it as a standalone offering on Product Hunt, and saw more signups in one day than the past six months combined. Today, the company has raised over $203M and counts 20M users in over 230 countries.

Those first months of tumult aren’t the only ups and downs CEO Joe Thomas and his co-founders have encountered in Loom’s journey. And they’re not alone; today’s tech founders are navigating an increasingly difficult economic climate, shifting expectations from investors + employees, and the need to continue to innovate faster — all with fewer resources. 

In this session, Thomas will share some of the lessons he’s learned throughout the past year and beyond, including the need to make agility your superpower. He’ll talk about the need to balance long-term planning with strategic short-term adjustments for when the curveballs come (because they will). Thomas will also share insight into how other founders — including customers/partners of Loom — are adopting new processes, emerging tools, and shifting workplace norms to adapt. With so much uncertainty still ahead in 2023, it’s important for founders to learn how to take a half step back, reevaluate their game plan, and orient their short-term priorities around customers’ needs.

***

Slides for this session: https://www.slideshare.net/saastr/from-2-weeks-of-runway-to-a-15b-valuation-the-founder-playbook-with-looms-ceo-joe-thomas-cofounder-and-ceo-loom-492

Joe's 2021 Flywheel session on YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/rbOoikTMfyI

The podcast version: SaaStr 445: Loom CEO Joe Thomas On How Speed & Simplicity Can Fuel Your Flywheel https://sites.libsyn.com/77527/saastr-445-loom-ceo-joe-thomas-on-how-speed-simplicity-can-fuel-your-flywheel

*****

Shipping projects doesn’t have to be a mess. Notion combines project management with your docs, knowledge base, and AI. So you can stop jumping between tools, and stop paying too much for them too. Get Notion Projects for free at Notion.com/SAASTR.

Vention provides technology leaders with the top engineering talent they need to accelerate their roadmap, innovate faster and more efficiently, and ultimately catapult their operation to new heights. Vention developers sync with clients’ in-house teams, helping them get to market 30 percent faster and saving them more than $600,000 on average. Looking for the edge to outpace your competition? Vention is your partner. Learn more at ventionteams.com.

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Learn directly from Edith Harbaugh, Co-founder and Executive Chair of LaunchDarkly, about the top 10 mistakes to avoid when scaling your SaaS company. Edith is an experienced startup executive and has firsthand insights into how to grow any SaaS business quickly and successfully. Don't miss this opportunity to get valuable guidance for scaling to 100 million in ARR!

We'll cover how:

*Everything is up & to the right if you zoom out

• Big changes every 6-18 months
• Revenue is it’s own funding
• Hiring changes over time
• Value your time and get leverage
• A good Exec Recruiter is worth it
• Pricing - no right answer
• Creating category takes constant effort
• Refresh Values
• No playbook, just play pages

Watch the video, including Q&A: https://youtu.be/5ccWUwinkJg

******

Shipping projects doesn’t have to be a mess. Notion combines project management with your docs, knowledge base, and AI. So you can stop jumping between tools, and stop paying too much for them too. Get Notion Projects for free at Notion.com/SAASTR.

Vention provides technology leaders with the top engineering talent they need to accelerate their roadmap, innovate faster and more efficiently, and ultimately catapult their operation to new heights. Vention developers sync with clients’ in-house teams, helping them get to market 30 percent faster and saving them more than $600,000 on average. Looking for the edge to outpace your competition? Vention is your partner. Learn more at ventionteams.com.

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Why are things in SaaS so different in 2023 than in 2022?

And extremely different than 2021?

“I think for most of us during the crazy lockdown era, it was just nuts,” Lemkin explains. “And this is, I know this sounds obvious, or maybe it doesn’t, but as someone’s been doing SaaS since 2005, this is the first time in the last 10 years that SaaS has gotten harder.”

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/h1Hpag6gnOI

******

Shipping projects doesn’t have to be a mess. Notion combines project management with your docs, knowledge base, and AI. So you can stop jumping between tools, and stop paying too much for them too. Get Notion Projects for free at Notion.com/SAASTR.

Vention provides technology leaders with the top engineering talent they need to accelerate their roadmap, innovate faster and more efficiently, and ultimately catapult their operation to new heights. Vention developers sync with clients’ in-house teams, helping them get to market 30 percent faster and saving them more than $600,000 on average. Looking for the edge to outpace your competition? Vention is your partner. Learn more at ventionteams.com.

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Discover the secrets to scaling a SaaS business with UiPath's CEO & Founder Daniel Dines, and Philippe Botteri, Partner at Accel.

Learn 10 interesting lessons for driving a new category in SaaS to over a billion dollars in annual revenue and beyond. Sharing the learnings from the founding of UiPath in 2005 to its present-day success with over a billion dollars in revenue, watch to learn insights into how UiPath has achieved its monumental growth, and how you can apply these strategies to your own SaaS business.

*****

Shipping projects doesn’t have to be a mess. Notion combines project management with your docs, knowledge base, and AI. So you can stop jumping between tools, and stop paying too much for them too. Get Notion Projects for free at Notion.com/SAASTR.

Vention provides technology leaders with the top engineering talent they need to accelerate their roadmap, innovate faster and more efficiently, and ultimately catapult their operation to new heights. Vention developers sync with clients’ in-house teams, helping them get to market 30 percent faster and saving them more than $600,000 on average. Looking for the edge to outpace your competition? Vention is your partner. Learn more at ventionteams.com.

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

In 2020-2021, many SaaS startups faced a unique challenge. With teams spread across the globe, they had to find new working patterns to scale their businesses in a distributed environment. Wiz, one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies focused on security solutions, was one of them. The company helps enterprises internationally with contextual and actionable insights to secure their cloud infrastructure. 

Today, Wiz is one of the highest-valued private tech companies, at $10 billion, as announced in Feb 2023. Wiz CRO Colin Jones shared with host Sam Blond how this traditional startup evolved, thrived and grew from 0 to $100 million in just two years. 

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/yDS8xKlAeXw

*****

Vention provides technology leaders with the top engineering talent they need to accelerate their roadmap, innovate faster and more efficiently, and ultimately catapult their operation to new heights. Vention developers sync with clients’ in-house teams, helping them get to market 30 percent faster and saving them more than $600,000 on average. Looking for the edge to outpace your competition? Vention is your partner. Learn more at ventionteams.com.

SaaStr Annual will officially be back in 2023. Join 12,500 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue leaders, and investors. Annual 2023 will take place September 6-8, 2023 in the SF Bay Area. Podcast listeners can use code FAVE100 to save 100 off tickets. Use FAVE100 when you buy your tickets at saastrannual2023.com

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Building a company for $0-$1M in revenue differs wildly from $1-10M ARR. And scaling from $10M to $100M is wildly different still. 

Sameer Dholakia, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners with decades of operational experience, shares what you need to change as you scale from $10M to $100M ARR. 

The short answer is almost everything. 

Keep an open mind as you move into the next chapter of your company. 

“Everything that got you to where you are isn’t going to get you where you want to be,” says Dholakia. 

Watch the full video, including Q&A: https://youtu.be/ucgtUQiyEJE

Sameer's slides: https://www.slideshare.net/saastr/sameer-dholakia-saastr-workshop-wednesdays

*****

SaaStr Europa is back! And this time, we’re heading to London for 2 fun-filled days of content, networking, and SaaS. Join us June 6th and 7th for SaaStr Europa 2023. Use code FAVE100 for $100 off tickets at saastrlondon.com.

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

You’ll never truly understand how to lead a SaaS company until you’ve done it firsthand. But it always helps to get advice from someone with experience. 

Dan Robinson, current Advisor and former CTO at Heap, shares nine essential learnings from nearly a decade of building a SaaS business.

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/FXdPe6tGE3A

*****

SaaStr Annual will officially be back in 2023. Join 12,500 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue leaders, and investors. Annual 2023 will take place September 6-8, 2023 in the SF Bay Area. Podcast listeners can use code FAVE100 to save 100 off tickets. Use FAVE100 when you buy your tickets at saastrannual2023.com

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

At nine figures in revenue and 550 people, the CEO of Lattice, Jack Altman, has seen every stage of building a startup. 

In this week’s Workshop Wednesday — held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST — Altman talks more in-depth about his viral tweet storm, sharing the eight things you think as a first-time founder that usually aren’t true.

This episode is an excerpt of Jack and Jason's conversation. Watch the full video, including Q&A: https://youtube.com/live/2sNsZdFjWOE?feature=share

*****

SaaStr Europa is back! And this time, we’re heading to London for 2 fun-filled days of content, networking, and SaaS. Join us June 6th and 7th for SaaStr Europa 2023. Use code FAVE100 for $100 off tickets at saastrlondon.com.

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

People keep asking when we’ll get out of this downturn in venture. The truth is: It’s not a downturn—only a reset. For the people who haven’t been raising capital or haven’t seen this side of things since, say, 2018, they’ll probably think this is a terrible time. 

Black Mangroves Founder and Managing Director Arnaud Bonzom, and SaaStr Founder and CEO, Jason Lemkin answer some of the bigger questions about venture investing in 2023.  

This episode is an excerpt of Jason and Arnaud's AMA at SaaStr APAC 2023. You can watch the full session on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JPEo8r2d3Oc

*****

SaaStr Annual will officially be back in 2023. Join 12,500 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue leaders, and investors. Annual 2023 will take place September 6-8, 2023 in the SF Bay Area. Podcast listeners can use code FAVE100 to save 100 off tickets. Use FAVE100 when you buy your tickets at saastrannual2023.com

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond wraps up the founder-led sales series with one of the most accomplished sales leaders in the world, Ben Cassidy. 

Cassidy was Blond’s VP of Sales at Echosign and, before that, was one of the first sales leaders at LinkedIn. Post-Echosign, he was the first sales leader at Talkdesk, valued at $10+B. Cassidy is now a co-founder at CoSell, a.k.a. the relationship platform designed to organize your intro efforts. 

The point of CRO Confidential is to help startups acquire customers, and Cassidy provides a unique perspective on founder-led sales as a current founder and highly talented sales leader. 

So what secrets has Cassidy learned over the past decades of building businesses and acquiring customers? 

Let’s find out. 

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/3m5s7tskuB4

*****

SaaStr Europa is back! And this time, we’re heading to London for 2 fun-filled days of content, networking, and SaaS. Join us June 6th and 7th for SaaStr Europa 2023. Use code FAVE100 for $100 off tickets at saastrlondon.com.

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

We exist in a market where things are tougher. It’s year two of the venture downtown, meaning it’s flat, and the value of each dollar in the public market is at 5-6-year lows, making it hard for VCs to invest. 

Jason Lemkin, SaaStr Founder and CEO, shares nine types of CEOs that are hard for VCs to work with. Why does it matter what VCs think? They play a small role, but it’s an important one. It matters today because happy VCs mean it’s easier to get that next check. 

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/edPw60dHU5I

*****

SaaStr Annual will officially be back in 2023. Join 12,500 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue leaders, and investors. Annual 2023 will take place September 6-8, 2023 in the SF Bay Area. Podcast listeners can use code FAVE100 to save 100 off tickets. Use FAVE100 when you buy your tickets at saastrannual2023.com

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Omni Co-Founder and CEO Colin Zima and CRO Confidential host Sam Blond discuss how leveraging your network can supercharge sales and recruiting in the early days. You don't have to be a former founder or be part of YC to have a great network. Everyone will have friends, family, former college classmates, former work colleagues, or other sources. Colin encourages founders to find your particular "cheat code," whether that's your network or an amazing skill, and lean into it.

Watch the video: https://youtu.be/9kQIke7x7F4

*****

SaaStr Europa is back! And this time, we’re heading to London for 2 fun-filled days of content, networking, and SaaS. Join us June 6th and 7th for SaaStr Europa 2023. Use code FAVE100 for $100 off tickets at saastrlondon.com.

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta shares his top 10 mistakes in 10 years of running Gainsight.

This is the second half of a Workshop Wednesday session in which SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin chats with Nick about his top mistakes as a CEO. You can hear the first half in episode 656.

You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/dtdh2Dkhpig

*****

SaaStr Annual will officially be back in 2023. Join 12,500 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue leaders, and investors. Annual 2023 will take place September 6-8, 2023 in the SF Bay Area. Podcast listeners can use code FAVE100 to save 100 off tickets. Use FAVE100 when you buy your tickets at saastrannual2023.com

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta shares his top 10 mistakes in 10 years of running Gainsight.

This is the first half of a Workshop Wednesday session in which SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin chats with Nick about his top mistakes as a CEO. You can hear the second half in episode 657, which will air on May 5.

You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/dtdh2Dkhpig

*****

SaaStr Europa is back! And this time, we’re heading to London for 2 fun-filled days of content, networking, and SaaS. Join us June 6th and 7th for SaaStr Europa 2023. Use code FAVE100 for $100 off tickets at saastrlondon.com.

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

In this episode of CRO Confidential, Roam Founder & CEO Howard Lerman sits down with Sam Blond to talk about Roam's unconventional approach to acquiring its first customers.

Full video: https://youtu.be/dGj6VZoi0Kw

*****

What if you could prospect in a single click?And what if that click came with accurate, intent data you need to meet your goals? Meet Klarity with One-Click Prospecting by DemandScience. Let’s make your job easier. Visit demandscience.com

Sage Intacct is a powerful cloud-based financial management system that delivers automation around billing, accounting, and reporting. Voted market leaders by G2, Sage Intacct is the ideal Finance Solution to scale your business. Visit us at sage.com/uk/intacct.

SaaStr Annual will officially be back in 2023. Join 12,500 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue leaders, and investors. Annual 2023 will take place September 6-8, 2023 in the SF Bay Area. Podcast listeners can use code FAVE100 to save 100 off tickets. Use FAVE100 when you buy your tickets at saastrannual2023.com

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Growing and scaling your customer base requires robust systems, teams, and playbooks that work in lockstep with one another. One of the most impactful teams, yet often least invested in, is customer marketing. From determining the ideal org structure to understanding clear KPIs, the playbook for customer marketing is still being written and is often misunderstood. In this session, we’ll discuss key strategies that can be leveraged to build and scale a high-performing customer marketing team. You’ll walk away with actionable insights and a clear understanding of how you can improve net dollar retention and unlock growth, regardless of your stage or size.

Full video: https://youtu.be/8zgkk0DFQs8

*****

Sage Intacct is a powerful cloud-based financial management system that delivers automation around billing, accounting, and reporting. Voted market leaders by G2, Sage Intacct is the ideal Finance Solution to scale your business. Visit us at sage.com/uk/intacct.

What if you could prospect in a single click? And what if that click came with accurate, intent data you need to meet your goals? Meet Klarity with One-Click Prospecting by DemandScience. Let’s make your job easier. Visit demandscience.com.

SaaStr Europa is back! And this time, we’re heading to London for 2 fun-filled days of content, networking, and SaaS. Join us June 6th and 7th for SaaStr Europa 2023. Use code FAVE100 for $100 off tickets at saastrlondon.com.

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

If you’re looking for a marketing strategy to grow your SaaS business, SaaStr’s very own Jason Lemkin has five things you can do today, this week, or this month that always work.  

And the great news is that almost everything costs little to no money. 

Most SaaS companies need to spend more on marketing. To save money, many freeze marketing spend, which is cool for a few months, but if it becomes the norm, they won’t have enough pipeline for the rest of the year. 

No matter what, you need to do more marketing in the back half of this year. If you don’t, your teams are going to starve. As the saying goes, “You can’t cut your way to growth.” 

While many of these ideas seem basic, they aren’t done enough. Instead of tackling all five strategies simultaneously, do just one thing better, and you’ll get more leads. 

This episode is the second half of Jason's Workshop Wednesday session. You can listen to the first half in Episode 652. You can watch the full session here: https://www.youtube.com/live/vc0nITbOlos?feature=share

*****

What if you could prospect in a single click?And what if that click came with accurate, intent data you need to meet your goals? Meet Klarity with One-Click Prospecting by DemandScience. Let’s make your job easier. Visit demandscience.com

Sage Intacct is a powerful cloud-based financial management system that delivers automation around billing, accounting, and reporting. Voted market leaders by G2, Sage Intacct is the ideal Finance Solution to scale your business. Visit us at sage.com/uk/intacct.

SaaStr Annual will officially be back in 2023. Join 12,500 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue leaders, and investors. Annual 2023 will take place September 6-8, 2023 in the SF Bay Area. Podcast listeners can use code FAVE100 to save 100 off tickets. Use FAVE100 when you buy your tickets at saastrannual2023.com

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh

Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

If you’re looking for a marketing strategy to grow your SaaS business, SaaStr’s very own Jason Lemkin has five things you can do today, this week, or this month that always work.  

And the great news is that almost everything costs little to no money. 

Most SaaS companies need to spend more on marketing. To save money, many freeze marketing spend, which is cool for a few months, but if it becomes the norm, they won’t have enough pipeline for the rest of the year. 

No matter what, you need to do more marketing in the back half of this year. If you don’t, your teams are going to starve. As the saying goes, “You can’t cut your way to growth.” 

While many of these ideas seem basic, they aren’t done enough. Instead of tackling all five strategies simultaneously, do just one thing better, and you’ll get more leads. 

This episode is the first half of Jason's Workshop Wednesday session. We'll share the second half in Episode 653. You can watch the full session here: https://www.youtube.com/live/vc0nITbOlos?feature=share

*****

Sage Intacct is a powerful cloud-based financial management system that delivers automation around billing, accounting, and reporting. Voted market leaders by G2, Sage Intacct is the ideal Finance Solution to scale your business. Visit us at sage.com/uk/intacct.

What if you could prospect in a single click? And what if that click came with accurate, intent data you need to meet your goals? Meet Klarity with One-Click Prospecting by DemandScience. Let’s make your job easier. Visit demandscience.com.

SaaStr Europa is back! And this time, we’re heading to London for 2 fun-filled days of content, networking, and SaaS. Join us June 6th and 7th for SaaStr Europa 2023. Use code FAVE100 for $100 off tickets at saastrlondon.com.

*****

Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.

Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976

Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/

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Arnaud Bonzom, Founder and Managing Director @ Black Mangroves moderates a panel with Carmen Yuen, General Partner @ Vertex, Jenny Lee, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital, and Piruze Sabuncu, Partner @ Square Peg Capital on what founders should look out for when raising a Series A.

In this panel, Carmen, Jenny, and Piruze will discuss the lessons learned at Vertex, GGV, and Square Peg on the common pitfalls to look out for when you are raising your Series A. For each pitfall, they will provide tips and tactics on how to overcome them.

This episode is an excerpt of the VC session. You can watch the full video: https://youtu.be/nFUUTXlnaa0

*****

What if you could prospect in a single click?And what if that click came with accurate, intent data you need to meet your goals? Meet Klarity with One-Click Prospecting by DemandScience. Let’s make your job easier. Visit demandscience.com

Sage Intacct is a powerful cloud-based financial management system that delivers automation around billing, accounting, and reporting. Voted market leaders by G2, Sage Intacct is the ideal Finance Solution to scale your business. Visit us at sage.com/uk/intacct.

SaaStr Annual will officially be back in 2023. Join 12,500 SaaS CEOs, Founders, Revenue leaders, and investors. Annual 2023 will take place September 6-8, 2023 in the SF Bay Area. Podcast listeners can use code FAVE100 to save 100 off tickets. Use FAVE100 when you buy your tickets at saastrannual2023.com

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Generative AI has taken the world by storm, and VCs and SaaS founders are looking at new opportunities it can bring. Even considering the more conservative fundraising market in 2023, there are opportunities for startups to get investor attention with AI.

Tomasz Tunguz, Founder & General Partner at Theory Ventures, believes that with the right GTM plan and capital efficiency, it is still possible to get funding. It’s simply a matter of watching your burn: “The main difference in the market between 2021 and today is that efficiency matters more than growth.”

Full video with Q&A: https://youtube.com/live/xiYzzLe9BAs

*****

Sage Intacct is a powerful cloud-based financial management system that delivers automation around billing, accounting, and reporting. Voted market leaders by G2, Sage Intacct is the ideal Finance Solution to scale your business. Visit us at sage.com/uk/intacct.

What if you could prospect in a single click? And what if that click came with accurate, intent data you need to meet your goals? Meet Klarity with One-Click Prospecting by DemandScience. Let’s make your job easier. Visit demandscience.com.

SaaStr Europa is back! And this time, we’re heading to London for 2 fun-filled days of content, networking, and SaaS. Join us June 6th and 7th for SaaStr Europa 2023. Use code FAVE100 for $100 off tickets at saastrlondon.com.

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In a crowded and distracted world, it can be hard to break through with customers, the media, recruiting and investors. Capturing the zeitgeist is more important than ever in making you stand out. In this session Josh will share his story building DoNotPay and how building a movement has given his company an advantage and the non-traditional lessons that he has learned.

Video: https://youtu.be/kORBMIxRLs4

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Not every leader is created equally. A bad experience with a revenue operations leader might taint your view of the position at all future companies, but that would be a mistake, as CRO Confidential podcast host Sam Blond learned first-hand. 

In this week’s CRO Confidential episode, Blond talks to one of the best revenue operations leaders on the planet, Cherishma Shah, where she shares insights into the Rev Ops role, why your startup might need one, and how to maximize impact with this powerhouse position. 

Shah is the Senior Vice President of Go-To-Market Strategy, Operations, and Enablement at Guild Education and formerly held the same role at Brex, working alongside Blond. 

1:40 Intro 

2:57 How Rev Ops fills critical gaps in the sales org  

4:35 Cherishma's background, how that led to Rev Ops, and what a great Rev Ops candidate looks like 

8:45 How to define Rev Ops 

12:43 When is the right time to hire dedicated Rev Ops 

20:47 More on the ideal candidate profile 

24:11 Mistakes Cherisma has seen startups make as they make the first Rev Ops hires or build out the function 

28:26 Where should Rev Ops sit within the org 

35:07 Biggest opportunities for impact on the business for first hires 

38:33 Scaling the Rev Ops org 

40:35 How to structure the Rev Ops team and how to measure impact 

47:00 Tactical examples of success Cherishma and Sam have seen 

Video: https://youtu.be/S5JpOvgNtSY

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The SMBTech economy is very different from enterprise software, and there is massive opportunity to capture it. There are over 400M small businesses worldwide. That’s more than 90% of companies and 40-50% of GDP. 

In this episode, Jeff Richards and Tiffany Luck, Managing Director and Partner at GGVCapital, share what it takes to win as a SMBTech startup in today’s economy. 

Full video with Q&A: https://youtube.com/live/pcgXYRMX2XU

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There is plenty you could go deep on when talking about what it takes to scale a business from 1m to 1bn+, but in this session you'll hear 30 years of experience doing exactly that - compressed into a handful of key focus areas that really matter - principles that have proven to make the difference when surrounded by options and chaos.

Video: https://youtu.be/CQdAzSfhz54

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Significant strides in digital technology combined with the COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted the world of corporate summits, events, and tradeshows. Many businesses changed their strategy to incorporate virtual or hybrid events recently. Before the pandemic, hybrid and virtual gatherings accounted for only 18.9% of all events. But after the pandemic, the number shifted, with 59.5% of event planners stating that they will focus more on hybrid events.

Is there still room for in-person events in 2023 and beyond? Further, can it drive value for your business? For Todd White, Co-Founder of GUIDEcx, the answer to both questions is a resounding yes. In this episode, Todd shares with SaaStr's Poya Osgouei why GUIDEcx finds live events so valuable, even beyond sales, and the playbook he uses to ensure his team gets the most out of events.

Watch the full webinar for even more about GUIDEcx and tips for successful events. 

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Back in the early 2000s, people didn’t entirely accept that a virtual machine could be as good as a physical one. Of course, we all know how that turned out. 

Ed Lenta, the SVP and GM of Databricks, had the rare opportunity of scaling three hypergrowth companies — VMware, AWS, and Databricks. All of which were disruptors when they first came on the scene. 

Is there a recipe or formula that will predict the success of a pre-growth, high-potential company? Lenta shares his lessons learned through scaling these early-stage companies. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/FvYovHfm7rs

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Buying software has changed significantly over the past 27 years. Despite the economic headwinds we’ve seen, buyers still buy a lot. The average mid-size company has 111 SaaS applications. By next quarter, that’s estimated to rise to 119. 

Of course, companies are experiencing some economic impact, and average spend is coming down slightly. Chris Perrine, the Vice President of G2, Asia Pacific, shares what’s holding up buyers in today’s economy and how you can meet them where they are.

Video with Q&A: https://youtu.be/S9yQ1Oe30zU

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If you’re on the path to building a startup, you know what it means to fail. In this week’s Workshop Wednesday, Tracy Young, CEO and Co-Founder of TigerEye and PlanGrid, says that “everything is going to fail.” Young took PlanGrid from nothing to $100M ARR before passing the baton and shares the biggest lessons learned, the biggest failures, and how to navigate them.

Full video with Q&A: https://youtube.com/live/w9-lMhAyJeo

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With product-led growth, your product is the main driver of revenue growth; companies can scale up faster while keeping sales and marketing costs low. Conversely, sales-led growth puts human interaction at the center of sales processes. But sometimes, choosing a single path when it comes to a sales-led or a product-led growth model isn’t enough. In this session, Amplitude's Mark Velthuis will share how companies can embrace a mix of the two strategies, how it will affect our traditional understanding of sales, marketing, and product, and how leaders can get everyone on board.

Video: https://youtu.be/7DQPNB6AU2o

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How did the largest product-led growth enterprise company in the world find success? In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, Cameron Deatsch, CRO of Atlassian, shares his wisdom with Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond. Atlassian is trading at over $40B with revenue north of $3B. When the company started 20 years ago, it didn’t hire salespeople. Not because they planned to start as a product-led company but because they couldn’t afford to. So what should earlier-stage companies do: immediately build out a big sales team or focus on product-led growth?

Video: https://youtu.be/s897t3MSAxM

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Having scaled the APAC region for 3 US companies, with a big emphasis on building culture as a foundation for success, Scott will speak of his learnings and lead a discussion for:

• Recruiting
• Enabling 
• Creating Culture

Video: https://youtu.be/CfW0W0E3F4A

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Chris Merritt, Chief Revenue Officer of Cloudflare joined Cloudflare nearly a decade ago when annual revenue was around $1M with one sales person — and has since been scaling the sales organization and helping grow Cloudflare into the multi-billion dollar business it is today. When building a sales team and business at scale, organizations go through various stages of growth with key milestones along the way—from 1-10 million in revenue, to 50-100 million, to 100 million, and onward. While no two businesses are the same, we’ll dive into a few areas that are most likely to change, with Chris sharing some findings along the way to help others effectively scale their organizations.

Full video with Q&A: https://youtu.be/YkmDl59sDkg

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In this illuminating session, ICONIQ Growth general partner Doug Pepper and head of analytics Christine Edmonds will share some of the latest insights from ICONIQ's annual “Growth and Efficiency Study” which utilizes aggregated operating data from a large set of enterprise SaaS companies, about half of which have gone on to IPO and/or been named to the Cloud 100 list. From the metrics most indicative of healthy business fundamentals and what top quartile performance looks like across these KPIs, to how those core metrics may be impacted in the current environment and where leaders are focusing in response to the macroeconomic uncertainty of today, Doug and Christine will share what strength looks like at all stages of company growth.

Updated slides: https://www.slideshare.net/saastr/unveiling-the-data-behind-effective-scaling-with-iconiq-growth-253098692

Video: https://youtube.com/live/oRtla9psS_8

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Stripe CTO David Singleton shares insights from the company's focus on going the extra mile to obtain user feedback and even more extreme lengths to turn that feedback into successful products. He’ll show how one simple rule helped the company grow from a single API to a sophisticated platform, and discuss the challenges of managing change, defining product-market fit, and designing infrastructure that can scale.

Video: https://youtube.com/live/N2BPdAk_riU

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While the allure of customer acquisition can pull a founder’s attention, it’s equally important to dedicate resources to fighting churn and expanding revenue from existing customers. One company that has unlocked the secret to solid retention and revenue expansion is Brex, an easy-to-use corporate cards and spend management software in an integrated global solution.  

In this edition of CRO Confidential, Sam Blond (former CRO at Brex and current Partner at Founders Fund) hosts his former colleague Lucas Fox (GM of Brex for Startups). They discuss how Fox helped build a churn-fighting, upselling, and cross-selling machine that continues to generate revenue.

Video: https://youtu.be/_dfDqPJqqFU

Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/cro-confidential-how-customer-first-focus-drives-retention-and-revenue-with-brex-gm-of-startups-lucas-fox-pod-635-video/

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What do some of the most successful PLG companies have in common? How do you build a best-in-class go-to-market model to get to 100mn ARR and beyond?

Iconic PLG companies share how they integrated GTM into their growth strategy to go from single digits to over a billion in ARR. Lightspeed Partner, Anoushka Vaswani, is joined by Raj Sarkar, CMO at 1Password, Kim Walsh, SVP, Sales, Partnerships and Customer Success at Apollo.io, and Chris De Vylder, CRO at Sentry, to pass along key lessons from their growth journey. 

Video: https://www.youtube.com/live/4mzgUHp2Dtc?feature=share

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As Chief Product Officer at DigitalOcean and a developer-turned-entrepreneur himself, Gabe Monroy is deeply familiar with some of the pitfalls that founders encounter on the road of product development. In this session, Gabe will discuss how founders can avoid the trap of over-engineering products, as well as why focusing on the must-haves (developing “painkillers” for your customer’s problem) will better serve your business versus focusing on the nice-to-haves (developing “vitamins”).

Video: https://youtu.be/KwWxIURQVRg

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Every week, more and more companies are doing big layoffs. As news of layoffs continues, many are left wondering what happened and how to shift course. Many startups missed 2022 revenue goals and are forecasting slower growth for 2023, especially compared to the explosive growth of teams and revenue during the Boom of 2021 and early 2022.

In this week’s episode of CRO Confidential, Founders Fund Investor Sam Blond sits down with the SVP of Sales at Modern Health, Hannah Willson, to discuss how companies can adapt to the current sales environment and how to correct course when you don’t have a right-sized sales team.

Video: https://youtu.be/24tKS8g_QJg

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Jason recently joined Harry Stebbings on 20VC to discuss VC in 2023. Hear why you shouldn't wait to raise (if you're fundable), even though the venture landscape will look better by the end of 2023.

This episode is an excerpt of Jason and Harry's discussion. You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/dHIWdwljt7Q

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What is the right Go-To-Market strategy for a startup getting out of the gate? Sales-led vs. product-led is a hot topic right now, and Jason Eubanks, Chief Revenue Officer of Harness, shares the answer. 

At Harness, Eubanks leads go-to-market. Everything is defined by customer interactions, from how they find Harness to becoming a customer. What’s his response to startups figuring out which strategy to begin with, product-led or sales-led? “It doesn’t really matter where you start because you’ll need to do both,” Eubanks said. 

Full video with Q&A: https://youtu.be/aJqNJfph4Mw

Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/sales-led-vs-product-led-todays-startups-need-both-with-jason-eubanks-cro-at-harness-video/

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As the past few years have demonstrated, it’s wise to expect the unexpected, especially when it comes to hiring. In particular, hiring for your sales team is critical in an uncertain economic outlook. Additionally, sales professionals looking for a new role should choose their next company wisely.

In this edition of CRO Confidential, Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, discusses the current SaaS sales landscape and tips for hiring in 2023 with guest Ben Braverman, Head of Flexport Fund and former Flexport CRO and CCO. 

Video: https://youtu.be/oONsrUYsQtw

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In many companies, the longtime dispute between sales and marketing prevents them from collaborating or agreeing on a goal. Divvy’s CRO, Sterling Snow, created a structure aligning these two teams with others to create a formidable revenue team. This structure drove the company to a $2.5 billion-dollar acquisition by Bill within five years.

In this episode, Snow shares the journey to realizing the strength of revenue alignment through sales, marketing, and customer success and the principles for implementing this structure to yield tremendous results.

Video: https://youtu.be/1L2P-fi6gfM

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Sure, strong collaboration between Sales and Marketing is critical - but this CPO and CMO contend that the Product to Marketing connection might just be the most critical dynamic within your executive team. Learn how Meron Colbeci (CPO) and Leela Srinivasan (CMO) are driving the right outcomes through close collaboration.

Full video with Q&A: https://youtu.be/gWub2D4XZCQ

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Reaching unicorn status is nice validation, but the luster fades when founders can’t navigate the hidden challenges that come with uncharted territory. David Cancel and Elias Torres, co-founders of Drift, share their insight on steering a company to a $1B valuation with both the tenacity to problem-solve and a fearlessness to fail. They’ll take you through their own personal experiences, from creating a scalable product strategy to building an enduring company that puts people and purpose before profit. Find out how the steps they took not only helped nurture a company’s success, but also allowed its leaders to retain a growth mindset long after they hit the $1B milestone.

Full video: https://youtu.be/gGVSaRcZkOs

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Join Colin Jones, CRO at Wiz, as he shares key takeaways from building and scaling a sales organization that went from $0 to $100 million ARR in less than two years, making Wiz the fastest company to reach the $100M ARR. Colin will share key lessons he learned along the way, along with real-life examples of things that break when you grow at such unprecedented speeds, how to fix them, and how to build a team that consistently performs with grace under pressure.

Full video with Q&A: https://youtu.be/setOmORB76g

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Jason and Pete chat about SaaStr Fund, the state of VC funding in Q1 2023, and whether LPs play a role in the former "grow at all costs" mindset that prevailed in 2021 and early 2022.

Video: https://youtu.be/cvYe2jf2gOE

This conversation is an excerpt from a Modern Sales Pros fireside chat. You can find that video on their channel: https://youtu.be/fVckRPSUG-U

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In any given day, the enterprise buyer has many priorities that will come before your product. How do you ensure your solution gets implemented and retained?

In this session, we walk through some of the lessons learned at Attentive on their path to over 5,000 customers in 5 years. We will dig into real world examples for reducing friction in sales, product and customer success.

Full video: https://youtu.be/47ReBgKEgEY

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It may seem counterintuitive to seek out a sales leadership hire during this time of slowed hiring, but it’s the number one topic that many founders talk about and many SDRs, AEs, and sales managers ask about. 

Founders may ask, “how do I find the right sales leadership hire?” While someone in sales may ask, “how do I become a CRO someday?”

In today’s episode of CRO Confidential, Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund, discusses these very questions with the previous CRO of Lattice, Dini Mehta.

Video: https://youtu.be/6eyB4G8y214

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Join Cliff Bockard, Senior Vice President of Revenue at DigitalOcean, as he discusses how DigitalOcean has won “big numbers” from “small customers” by tapping the underserved market of startups and SMBs. Cliff will discuss how companies can prioritize the success of their customers and benefit in turn, as well as why customer-centric and responsible, profitable growth matters more than ever.

Full video: https://youtu.be/vbj20ekVKsE

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Ready to kick-start 2023? Worried about team morale after a less-than-stellar Q4 (and Q3)? Jason shares 8 ideas that you can use right now to keep your sales team motivated and have a better Q1.

Full video: https://youtu.be/ji8mYoAGGjU

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Join Sarah Patterson as she shares key lessons on scaling marketing engines from her experience as a Marketing EVP at Salesforce and now the CMO at Samsara. Sarah will share three key lessons she has learned along the way, from building successful feedback loops to knowing when to invest for the long term or push for rapid growth.

Video: https://youtu.be/z7qITAzT5wc

Blog: https://www.saastr.com/3-lessons-from-building-a-marketing-engine-to-grow-pipeline-from-millions-to-billions-with-samsara-cmo-sarah-patterson-pod-619-video/

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For many SaaS companies, serving the world’s largest businesses requires evolving some of its most critical business strategies and operations. In this session, Airtable’s Howie Liu sits down with Coatue’s Caryn Marooney to share the lessons he’s learned from scaling Airtable. From how to think about competitors and categories, to the importance of building the right organizational culture, Howie and Caryn reveal what SaaS leaders need to consider as they move upmarket.

Video: https://youtu.be/if4nKnNMl4s

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In today's CRO Confidential, Sam chats with Rippling VP of Sales Matt Plank. Matt was employee #5 and the first sales hire at Rippling. In this episode, he shares how he built and scaled Rippling's sales team.

Video: https://youtu.be/yAloXeNI1Qw

Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-cro-confidential-founders-fund-partner-sam-blond-rippling-vp-sales-matt-plank-pod-617-video/

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There are so many interesting things everyone selling to SMBs can learn from HubSpot. Don't miss this talk with Hubspot's and SaaStr's CEOs Yamini Rangan and Jason Lemkin where they'll dig into how HubSpot is growing a stunning 41% year-over-year at $1.7 Billion in ARR. 

Yamini and Jason discuss:

-why Hubspot chose to "take a step backward" by moving from sales-led to product-led -why focusing on free makes your product better -the importance of having multiple products -why NRR should be a North Star metric for SaaS businesses -working with partners -international expansion and localization: why less is more

Full video: https://youtu.be/sNU4h7LpHOI

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SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin recently moderated a session with 3 of the best investing in SaaS:  Doug Pepper, GP at Iconiq, Arun Mathew, GP at Accel, and Alex Kayyal, VP and head of all of Salesforce Ventures. The four deep-dive on the real state of venture capital today and into 2023.

This podcast was recorded live during G2's digital reach event. Check out the rest of the sessions over at Reach.G2.com

This episode is an excerpt from the session. Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/hTvNqr395nY

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Sam, Jason, and Jameson discuss:

• Category creation: what Gong did well and what didn't go so well
• The importance of content marketing, especially in very early stages
• maintaining team morale in the current economy
• the importance of messaging and customer relationships

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To scale your business customers need to be at the center of all you do. The reason for your business is to solve their largest problems and be mission-critical to their success. If your customers succeed your business will too. However, what if you can’t find or engage your target buyers? The way technology is bought and sold today has dramatically changed. The buyer’s journey is not linear but something they want to control. According to Bain and Co study, 94% of prospective buyers are well informed about a product before ever engaging with a sales team. From our research at TrustRadius, virtually 100% of buyers want to self-serve, 58% of buyers say word-of-mouth is a top source for discovery and evaluation. We’ll evaluate these buyer trends and provide strategies to find and win these new-age customers now and in the future.

Full video: https://youtu.be/eGL9ndS3Kmk

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SDRs are the most efficient channel for predictable B2B pipeline generation, but successfully scaling a team isn't easy. This session will cover the pillars of effectively recruiting, training, aligning, and empowering SDRs from the early stages of revenue through a global operation. Lars Nilsson has designed and built 25+ SDR operations at B2B SaaS software companies, and currently leads Snowflake's 200+ SDRs. Come have a listen to what all the buzz in SDR-Land is about!

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Building a flexible platform for your products and a strategic ecosystem around them is the key to fueling sustained growth. But when you’re in the throes of putting it together, it’s challenging to track the countless workstreams, investments, and partnerships involved – not to mention bringing all these pieces into alignment. Join Atlassian’s Chief Revenue Officer, Cameron Deatsch, to learn how to invest in an ecosystem, how to optimize your platform for innovation, and why long-term thinking is crucial to becoming a $10 billion company.

Full video: https://youtu.be/eVDucwrUgq8

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Keeping a Saas unicorn on the track of profitable, responsible growth requires clear alignment across the leadership team, and a purposeful approach to making decisions that drive the corporate mission. In this session, Algolia's Bernadette Nixon and Michelle Adams will discuss the dynamics of building a highly effective, open, direct and empathetic relationship between the critical CEO and CRO roles on the leadership team.

Full video: https://youtu.be/tJAPaW5GoxU

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The two biggest mistakes business leaders can make in a competitive space are thinking their competitors are too smart or, alternately, too dumb. The game on the field has shifted dramatically over the past 12 months, and what matters to a startup today is much different from a couple of years ago. 

In the second installment of CRO Confidential, Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond, previous CRO at Brex, goes head-to-head with the CRO at Divvy, Sterling Snow, previously bitter rivals turned curious comrades. Snow and Blond dive deep into competition — how to position yourself against competitors and make the most of that competition. 

Brex and Divvy are adversaries in the corporate card space, with many deals going up against each other. There has always been a ton of respect there and a bit of animosity, too, because of how competitive the businesses were. 

This poses the question: Does staunch competition lend itself to better business? Psst… the answer is yes! Let’s see what Snow and Blond have to say about competition. 

Full video: https://youtu.be/7LTyMpxy9LQ

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At the end of Day 3 of SaaStr Annual 2022, Jason opened up the mic for an AMA. This episode is the second half of the session.

In this episode, Jason discusses:

• Advice for very early-stage founders
• Why real customer support is critical
• Bootstrapping
• What's next for SaaStr

The first half of the session was published in Episode 607.

You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/apc5GwLlaDI

At the end of Day 3 of SaaStr Annual 2022, Jason opened up the mic for an AMA. This episode is the first half of the session.

In this episode, Jason discusses:

• Breaking rules
• Setting goals
• Technical debt
• Black Swan events
• Y Combinator

The second half of the session will be published in Episode 608. You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/apc5GwLlaDI

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The foremost topic on every founder's mind right now: how to weather the ups-and-downs of an unpredictable economy. Gusto, has swerved with every economic curve since its founding 10 years ago. But throughout it all, Gusto has defined valuation differently—in terms of the value it provides to customers vs the value it extracts.

In this talk, Gusto CEO and founder Josh Reeves can speak to how Gusto has weathered the ups-and-downs of the economy—and why aligned success models (what's good for the customer = what's good for society = what's good for your business) are so important, especially now. Josh can share the specific business decisions Gusto has had to make with this approach, particularly over the past few years and today.

Full video: https://youtu.be/TuJnbPG3Tmk

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Top of mind for many startups during a downturn is the question, “How do we balance investment in growing our business while maintaining a modest burn to extend our time to next funding?” In this session we will explore some creative techniques to grow your business with efficiency. Hear from three VC partners with experience successfully co-founding, leading, and growing startups during previous market downturns

Full video: https://youtu.be/hQ-lDnEMCgo

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Founders Fund Partner and former Brex CRO Sam Blond joins the SaaStr podcast to host this series with SaaS CROs.

But first, to kick off the CRO Confidential series, Sam chats with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin about whether tech founders still need to be based in SF, the current correction of the VC market, and what to look for in an investor.

Full video: https://youtu.be/rwHdE318dqA

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Founders Fund Partner and former Brex CRO Sam Blond joins the SaaStr podcast to host this series with SaaS CROs.

But first, to kick off the CRO Confidential series, Sam chats with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin about gross margins, macro impact on 2022 revenue, and sales leadership recruiting.

Video: https://youtu.be/yAyym4uJMcs

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The rapid proliferation of cloud services has added to overwhelm among enterprise workers. Over the years, Grammarly has learned effective strategies to stand apart with users and business decision-makers while channeling customers’ needs, whether in customer support, sales, HR, and marketing. CEO Brad Hoover shares the customer-centric principles and lessons that he has learned in growing their user base to tens of millions of enterprise and individual customers, with teams from Accenture to Zoom.

Full video: https://youtu.be/zoyxXSYeZhM

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“Find a need and fill it” is a well-known maxim. After identifying the white space, though,  understanding how to navigate category creation is key in order to grow and scale a company for the long term. For many SaaS businesses, the first category others consign you to may not match your ambitions as a founder. Entrenched forces have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and it takes courage to stick to your convictions about the future. As industries expand and mature, new strategies are needed to further deepen the competitive moat to secure and retain category leadership. Product is just the beginning: Ongoing success hinges on the growth and cultivation of the team, the company culture, and the larger stakeholder community—the work is never done. 

When Braze was founded in 2011 with Bill Magnuson as CTO, smartphones were just becoming mainstream and mobile marketing was in its infancy. At that time, the category term ‘customer engagement platform’ did not exist yet, but the cofounders believed that technology which enabled brands to better understand and serve customers across mobile and beyond was the future for Braze. Fast forward 10+ years, and the founding team’s conviction has enabled Braze to become a leader in the nascent customer engagement category, reaching $100M in ARR in eight years, then doubling that to $200M less than 18 months later, to then making its public company debut at the end of 2021. In this session, Braze Cofounder and CEO Bill Magnuson will share best practices and lessons learned from his experience scaling Braze and establishing the company as a leader in the recently formed customer engagement category, including: 

• Having conviction for your vision will help you navigate the changing SaaS landscape as you grow your business. Staying true to your initial vision is critical to category creation and for long-term company success. 
• Determine when and whether to pivot, or to adapt to shifting circumstances. Founders must be adept at identifying and articulating the unique value the business delivers, refining the message over time without deviating from foundational beliefs. 
• Category leadership results from a community effort: customers, end users, partners, investors, analysts, and team members collaborate to build on the founders’ vision.
• How and why a CTO founder might transition to CEO: Technical founders deeply understand product value and can take on the wider leadership role as they navigate the nuance of category creation.

Full video: https://youtu.be/T5r6ajAHyvI

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Tune into Founder Confidential with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and Hubspot Founders Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan to hear their key learnings and considerations of what it takes to be a Founder in today's SaaS landscape.

Full video: https://youtu.be/gn01HIUyE9M

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It’s no secret that 2022 has brought market shifts that even the previous two years lacked. While previously, investors were a bit more open and hyper-focused on growth, now SaaS VCs are more interested in proving efficiency alongside growth. As always, investors still have high-growth expectations, which have not changed. But in 2022, there is a new focus on efficiency. In fact, 82% of investors in a recent survey said that efficiency is more critical this year.

During this year’s SaaStr Annual event, Christophe Janz, Partner at Point Nine Capital, shares the secret to attracting investors in the new landscape.

Full video: https://youtu.be/nBYHFm-H8pA

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Leading a scaling business requires systems and plans for various stages of growth. Dave McJannet shares lessons learned from scaling HashiCorp, including: how to implement overlapping systems for the business (finance, people, product, go-to-market); how to manage the layered time horizons of various teams (36 months for a CEO, 90 days for sales); and how to reinvent these systems as the company enters new phases of growth.

Full video: https://youtu.be/KJk5B3R9rBw

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The number of global venture capital (VC) investments dipped in 2022, thanks to ongoing geopolitical tensions, turbulence in global capital markets, supply chain issues, and increasing interest rates. This has caused VC investors to be increasingly wary. With no end in sight to the economic uncertainty, VC investment could remain soft, with downward pressure on valuations resulting in decreasing levels of investment.

Founder and Managing Partner at Cowboy Ventures, Aileen Lee, discusses the state of the VC market in 2022 with Founder and CEO of SaaStr Jason Lemkin—the change in VC activities and seed deals, the importance of the board in the success of a startup, profitability and much more.

Full video: https://youtu.be/R3G6P19qHY4

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Amidst the volatility of today’s economic climate and market, GTM leaders need to be especially savvy when it comes to their company growth strategies and earning their customers’ love. A renowned enterprise software leader that has led revenue organizations and spearheaded the cloud GTM strategies at companies such as Oracle, New Relic and now Confluent, Erica Schultz is Confluent’s President of Field Operations and will share what she has seen evolve in enterprise GTM and tips on how to thrive in the current environment. From PLG and consumption-based pricing, to value-based selling and driving efficient growth, Erica will share veteran insights that will help you develop your own successful GTM strategy.

Full video: https://youtu.be/j293NArWW38

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Anu Hariharan works with hundreds of startups annually as Managing Director at Y Combinator. Through experience, she explains five company-altering learnings from B2B startups that founders should consider at the earliest stages of their businesses.

Full video: https://youtu.be/pPgtmFaxkrc

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Product-led growth (PLG) is the consumerization of software—a strategy B2B software companies can learn from growth teams at successful consumer tech companies. 

Stage 2 Capital’s Co-Founder and Managing Director, Mark Roberge, breaks down what a consumer tech growth team looks like and how they operate. He advises bringing these features to a B2B growth team and then shares mistakes that B2B companies make while adding go-to-market (GTM) to PLG.

Full video: https://youtu.be/prLzBINL4tI

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Bessemer Venture Partners unpacks the most important trends of the cloud economy, and explores the new milestone entrepreneurs need to value above all else—reaching Centaur status, or $100M in ARR—and the paths to get there. Releasing insights for founders with big ambitions, Sameer Dholakia, Elliott Robinson, and Mary D’Onofrio share the insights from cloud benchmark data and dive into the strategies that three Centaur companies took to scale their cloud businesses to $100M ARR.

Full video: https://youtu.be/pUKwyAxwAqI

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Join Mailchimp Co-Founder Ben Chestnut and SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin in a follow-up to their popular fireside chat held during SaaStr @ Home 2020. Ben and Jason will chat about the highlights–and the challenges–of scaling a company like Mailchimp to $1B ARR.

Full video: https://youtu.be/5fx3qFD62ak

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This session will explore the approaches and measures that founders and leadership teams can take to successfully scale their business and expand into new markets. It will be led by Harry Briggs, a founder turned VC with experience both in building his own business with customers in over 35 countries and supporting his portfolio founders in executing their international expansion plans. OMERS Venture Managing Partner Jambu Palaniappan led Uber's EMEA expansion and Harry also shares some of Jambu's learnings from Uber.

Full video: https://youtu.be/I56lkBqi5yI

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As reaching $100 million in ARR continues to be a critical milestone for SaaS players, UserZoom CEO Alfonso de la Nuez and CMO Sophie Chesters will explain how they have taken UserZoom's business to the next level since its founding in 2007 and share ten relevant lessons learned during UserZoom's journey to $100 million in ARR in the user experience management space.

Full video: https://youtu.be/ldf7eOfuDkg

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Fundraising with a successful VC firm is a huge goal for entrepreneurs, especially in the early stages of the business. But the path to a deal isn’t always as straightforward as it may seem. During an enlightening session at SaaStr Europa 2022, Zach Coelius (Managing Partner at Coelius Capital) and Tiffany Luck (Investor at GGV Capital) share the secrets and lesser-known players in the world of venture capital. As Luck says, “There are many players in the VC ecosystem, and so your entry point to fundraising might be with any one of these players.”

Full video: https://youtu.be/xKb4ORuFDSc

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How do you build a sales organization from scratch? How do you go from $0 to $1M ARR and beyond? What about moving from founder-led sales to building a sales team and scaling your revenue growth?Demodesk’s CEO, Veronika Riederle, and VP of Revenue, Lauren Wright, answer the most pertinent questions on scaling a SaaS start-up as they take us through lessons learned from the three stages of growth.

Full video: https://youtu.be/sAXI0nP2YW4

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As a founder, there are different ways you can set your start-up apart from other companies at the venture and growth stages. Investors look for specific metrics to see whether you stand out from the crowd, ranging from your market expansion potential to your product vision and product-market fit.

Atomico Partner, Irina Haivas, and Principal, Hillary Ball, explore what investors are looking for from the early stage through growth.

Full video: https://youtu.be/gP87MIf7Vbk

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As Showpad is close to crossing $100 in ARR PJ will share his most important learnings from scaling Showpad as its CEO. 

He'll cover the hard lessons learned, the highs and the lows on hiring, board dynamics, raising money, internationalization and personal growth.

Full video: https://youtu.be/YGfjHVAMFQ0

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As SaaStr Europa 2022 drew to a close, attendees took one more opportunity to ask Jason questions about topics like how to navigate the current market, the future of work, playing in a crowded space, and hiring your first VP of Sales.

Podcast episode 585 is an excerpt from the AMA. You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/AGHRqE54hTg

Transcript of full AMA here: https://www.saastr.com/the-answers-to-scaling-hiring-and-everything-else-a-saastr-europa-ama-with-saastr-ceo-jason-lemkin-pod-585-video/

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Most software startups rely on ARR as the first indicator of success. However, not every company understands the power of trust and credibility your first customers bring. Eleonore will speak about Pigment’s customer growth strategy and the approach to build a raving ambassador community. She will also share insight into bringing the trust philosophy into early product development.

Full video: https://youtu.be/GpRBa7e6IKs

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Jason recently opened up an AMA on Twitter Spaces to answer questions about scaling faster. This episode is an excerpt of that AMA.

Jason answers questions about

• marketing and customer acquisition
• customer onboarding
• M&A as a growth strategy
• sales comp plans
• sustainable scaling
• sales cycles 
• the fake question that won't go away: "build vs buy"

Transcript of the full AMA: https://www.saastr.com/scaling-faster-part-2-an-ama-with-saastr-founder-ceo-jason-lemkin-pod-583/

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We’ve learned Saas companies strive to achieve the T2D3 model. Join Bill Binch, Former EVP Sales, Marketo (currently Operating Partner at Battery Ventures) as he discusses Marketo’s success and why the same old playbook needs to be adapted for today. Learn from Bill on how the CEO & CRO relationship shapes this and what new ideas founders need to think through.

Full video: https://youtu.be/MS3e6_T5RYs

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Jason recently opened up an AMA on Twitter Spaces to answer questions about VC funding and scaling in SaaS. This episode is an excerpt of that AMA.

Transcript: https://www.saastr.com/vc-funding-scaling-saas-an-ama-with-saastr-ceo-jason-lemkin-pod-581/

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In conversation with Matthew Jacobson, Partner at ICONIQ Growth, Miro Founder and CEO Andrey Khusid will share his real-time revelations from growing Miro— which he likens to “building a plane while flying"—and what it takes to create a company that will endure for the longterm.

Full video: https://youtu.be/s1Wz1nwASGM

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SaaStr’s own Poya Osgouei has a great Uncharted podcast that does a deeper dive with many SaaS execs. 

Up this week is our own Jason Lemkin, Founder and CEO of SaaStr. 

We're cross-posting this great deep dive episode where they discuss how SaaStr has evolved over the last 10 years, and discuss the importance of focusing on field marketing now that folks are eager to get back together.

Which metrics matter and which can distract you when building a fast growth SaaS startup? Index Ventures Partner Molly Alter shares benchmarks for the most important metrics that will accelerate your growth and attract investors in your next round. She will explain how these differ by stages of the business, from Seed to Growth, and for different types of SaaS businesses.

Full video: https://youtu.be/UtfXQx4zc7o

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Jason recently opened up an AMA on Twitter Spaces to answer questions about scaling faster. This episode is an excerpt of that AMA.

Read the full transcript of the AMA: https://www.saastr.com/scaling-faster-an-ama-with-saastr-founder-ceo-jason-lemkin-pod-577

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Although core to the European economy, accounting for around 11M companies and 99.8% of businesses in Western Europe, the SMB market has largely been underserved by software providers. Now, companies like PayFit are on a mission to meet this underserved audience’s needs. With its unique and flexible cloud architecture, PayFit has already met the payroll and HR management demands of 7,000+ SMBs across four countries and grown to 900+ employees. Getting to this point from just 40 team members and 200 customers back in 2017 takes more than just grit, vision and a great product. It takes a solid GTM strategy focused on launching and growing the company’s competitive advantage in each core market, an in-depth knowledge of your target audience and the ability to hire exceptional team members along the way. In this session, Philippe Botteri, Partner at Accel, and Firmin Zocchetto, co-founder and CEO at PayFit, discuss the seven secrets behind the company’s SMB GTM strategy.

Full video: https://youtu.be/HZDBNg8JQ8w

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The last few years have certainly tested marketers, but 2022 serves up a brand new array of challenges. Uncharted territory stretches ahead, but the unknown can also present opportunities for growth and greatness. 

At Mutiny's The Second Lever digital conference, SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin hosted a star-studded CMO panel featuring Salesforce President & CMO Sarah Franklin, Box CMO Chris Koehler, and Attentive CMO Sara Varni. In the eye-opening session, these marketing leaders discuss the market pulse, impactful branding, and strategies for the future.

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