TAM is Great. But What Really Matters is That You Believe You Can Hit $100m ARR in 7 Years.
I have a strong, semi-proven thesis that in SaaS, market size doesn’t matter that much … at least in the traditional tops-down sense. If you can get to $2m in ARR in 2 years, you can get to $4m the next. From there, it’s on to $10m in ARR. And if you can get to [...]
If You Get Acquired, You’ll Need to Learn to Move from Persuasion to Alignment
I’ve had a chance to semi-objectively watch a number of folks go through the M&A process over the past 18 months, and compare and contrast their experiences with mine. Some acquisitions thrive. YouTube, PayPal, Android. Others of course die. GeoCities, Broadcast.com. Perhaps most actually meander in the middle. Flickr. Take a look at this interesting [...]
By The Time You Give Them a Raise, They’re Already Out The Door
There’s an endless amount written on the ‘net about hiring Rockstars. Finding them, not settling, and all that. That you need to spend 20%+ of time recruiting (I said that myself here). That the #1 most important thing you can do is put together a great team. Which is absolutely true. But the #2 most [...]
In The Early Days, Don’t Forget To Pay Yourself, Too
When I co-founded my first company, way back in the dark stretch between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, we got a terrible deal, from a dilution and valuation perspective. Yes, we raised $9m to get the company off the ground, but we had to sell just about everything to pull it off. The trade-off from [...]
Great Free Tool from SalesLoft: Daily Job Change Alerts (via LinkedIn API)
Kyle Porter, CEO and co-founder of SalesLoft, recently did a great in-depth interview with SaaStr. We’ll repost some of that and you can see it now here. While doing the interview, I had a chance to check out a great free tool SalesLoft has. It connects with your LinkedIn account and then sends you a [...]
The SaaS Year of Hell. And Then – Reignition.
I was recently at an event with a SaaS-ish CEO who was, clearly, miserable. His business was doing $30m+ and growing nicely. He was about to introduce a new product that he thought could be game-changing. And, he had a strong team (according to him) that he truly enjoyed working with. What was so bad? [...]
Why Hiring From Your Direct Competitors Usually Doesn’t Work Out
The time will come when you are first tempted to hire someone from your competitor. They must know so many things we don’t. Have so many skills. It’s pretty tempting. People will tell you about the risks in litigation, trade secrets, etc. I don’t think any of those are necessarily a big deal or a [...]
5 Non-Obvious Things To Know About VCs
I was catching up with a VC friend the other day and asked him about a company I’d referred to him. They’d passed on the investment (which is of course fine), despite the company meeting basically every investment criteria I knew about the firm. I asked the partner why. His answer was simply — timing [...]
In SaaS, You Have to Love the One You’re With
Recurring revenue businesses are hard. You need so many different types of people (sales, support, client success, demand gen, product, engagement, dev). The customers complain, especially your most loyal ones. You have to get on planes. You have to grovel. It’s tough. And for a lot of us … well … it just turns out [...]
Why You’ll Want to Raise $100,000,000 for Your SaaS Start-Up: The Incremental Customer
With all the SaaS companies raising big, later-stage rounds these days you may wonder … why? I mean, just because you can raise $100m or whatever epic number … should you? Today, I think the answer is yes. Though perhaps not for the reasons you might think. There are a couple of standard reasons companies [...]
