To Be Funded or Not to Be Funded with Medallia (Video + Transcript)
One company, two sides of the funding debate. Medallia, #7 on Forbes’ 2017 top 100 private SaaS companies, bootstrapped for 10 years, then took $255M in investment from Sequoia Capital over the past 6+ years. Company co-founder Amy Pressman talks about the pros and cons of being bootstrapped vs investor-backed and provides tips for entrepreneurs […]
Tales of a Modern CEO with Atlassian and Trello (Video + Transcript)
What keeps CEOs up at night? Shareholders, competition, the next big thing? Sure, but there are many other challenges. Modern CEOs are also thinking about how to build inclusive workforces, how their companies will positively impact the world, or what societal issues to advocate for. In this session, Atlassian co-CEO and co-Founder, Mike Cannon-Brookes, and […]
We’re Setting Aside 1,000 Diversity + Inclusion Tickets for 2019 SaaStr Annual. APPLY NOW!
We’re proud to have > 60% women and multicultural speakers at the 2018 SaaStr Annual, and we hope to meet or exceed that in 2019. But our bigger goal is to drive our attendees to similar levels of inclusion and diversity. Our 2018 attendee Diversity and Inclusion program was fully subscribed and worked well, so […]
Founder to Founder: 10 Toughest Lessons Getting to the First $100m ARR (Video + Transcript)
What’s it really like to scale a business from a few users to $100m ARR and 7 million users? Michelle Zatlyn, co‑founder and COO of Cloudflare, sits down with Laura Bilazarian, CEO, co‑founder of Teamable, to share her 10 toughest lessons that she learned while scaling Cloudflare into the business it is today. Cloudflare provides a content […]
The Question that CEOs Too Often Don’t Discuss with the Board
Startup boards are complex. While all board members own stock in the company their interests are not necessarily aligned. Founders may be motivated by a vision to change the world, to hit a certain net worth target, to see their name in an S-1, to make the Forbes 500, or — and I’ve seen crazier […]
Peter Thiel’s leaving. Should we care?
Famous investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel says he’s leaving Silicon Valley and taking his investment company with him. He’s decamping for LA and told the New York Times that Silicon Valley is over, which the Times points out is a popular trope among those who’ve had enough—enough wealth creation, invention and creativity, and fun. Stuff […]
Can You Scale Sales in the Bay Area? $30k ACV is Probably The Cut-Off
Silicon Valley / SF has gotten incredibly expensive. Rents, salaries, and perhaps most importantly, turnover. I’ve invested in 5 French start-ups. SF costs 2x Paris, fully burdened. It’s crazy. And sales teams have gotten particularly expensive, because they don’t quite scale the same way engineers do. You can pay great engineers a ton, eventually, because […]
When to Add a European (or Other International) Office
SaaS has been global from the earliest days, although how and when you go global can vary. Salesforce went very early into Japan (it takes a lot longer to add a lot of Japanese customers for most of us), which quickly accounted for almost 10% of their revenue in the early days. I had 15% […]
15+ of The Top Sales & Marketing Mistakes SaaS Startups Make
Recently I assembled my “Top 15” list of Sales & Marketing mistakes SaaS startups make as things start to take-off. We’ve touched on quite a few of these before on SaaStr (will link to them), but I thought this might be a helpful checklist to challenge your thinking at a minimum. We’ve all made many […]
Moneyball for movies: Data science and AI in Hollywood
The Chief Analytics Officer of movie and television studio Legendary Entertainment shares the predictive analytics, AI, and tools that bring box office success to films such as Jurassic World and Straight Outta Compton. This in-depth, exclusive discussion is Episode 276 of the CXOTalk series of conversations with innovators.
