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 […]
How to Know if a Key Hire is an A or a B (or even a C)
The biggest mistake you are probably going to make is hiring B or even C players for key director and VP positions when you get your startup going. This will set you back many, many months. Time and money lost investing in a key individual who simply doesn’t deliver in a critical position. As a […]
Aaref Hilaly, Sequoia Capital: How to Manage Up Have Happy a Board, Even When You Miss a Quarter (Video + Transcript)
No matter how great of a company you have, no matter how successful you could potentially become, you will miss a quarter or two…or more. Aaref Hilaly, Partner at Sequoia Capital, knows the gut-wrenching feeling of missing quarters, sometimes even horribly. That being said, he’s been able to come out of it on top and […]
David Barrett (CEO of Expensify): Good Intentions, Bad Advice: How to Keep Your Board Aligned with Your Vision (Video + Transcript)
If you want to know about dynamics between members on your board and how to get through the “valley of death,” aka getting from 0 to $1 million in ARR, then you should hear what David Barrett, CEO of Expensify, has to say. Expensify started as what was viewed as a horrible idea and turned […]
7 “Easy” Ways to Increase Sales
7 top tips: Hire a great VP of Sales. Yes, I am a broken record here. But I’ve seen it 100+ times. Hire a great VP of Sales, and even if nothing else changes … she’ll increase the revenue per lead by 20–100%+. In one sales cycle or less. More here: How My VP, Sales […]
After Marketo: 10 Things I’m Doing Even Better The Second Time (Video + Transcript)
What can we learn from the person who ran the company that helped establish marketing automation as a category? Evidently, a whole lot. Now, Jon Miller, former CMO at Marketo, is doing it again as the CEO of Engagio. This time around, he’s using everything he’s learned the first time to help establish the account-based […]
Anthony Kennada (Gainsight), Menaka Shroff (Betterworks), Aaron Levie (Box): Running The Box Playbook – Even Better The Second Time (Video + Transcript)
(TWO DAYS to SaaStr Annual 2017. Do you have your tix yet?!?!) Having worked at Box in its early days before branching off into new startups, Anthony Kennada and Menaka Shroff took the lessons they learned there to Gainsight and BetterWorks, respectively. Along with Jason Lemkin, they’re joined by their former boss, Box CEO Aaron Levie, […]
Josh Stein, Partner @ DFJ: What Makes a Great SaaS CEO (Video + Transcript)
As a partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Josh Stein has invested in some of the most well-known SaaS companies in the world like Box and Yammer and spent plenty of time with truly remarkable SaaS CEOs. In this session he and Jason Lemkin sit down and dive into what really makes a great CEO, and how that […]
New!! The SaaStr Co-Selling Space. 15,000 Square Ft in SF to Sell and Scale Together.
Great news! We’ve been working on this for some time, and finally, we’ve closed on an amazing new “co-selling” office in SF, in the Design District (near Zynga and Adobe) for The SaaStr CoSelling Space. We’ll have 15,000 square feet of high-end, conference room-filled space on approximately October 1 for 15-20 of the best next-generation, post-revenue […]
What You Have to Get Right in a Start-Up
So many folks I meet want to start a start-up. They have an idea they are passionate about. They’ve worked under a great CEO and they’re ready — they think — to do it on their own this time. What does it take? Well … Let’s talk about what you don’t have to get right: […]
