Squeezing Out That Last 10%-20% Growth
Once you have something in SaaS, somewhere on the path from $1m to $10m where you’re either on your way to Initial Scale or getting past it, you’ll often end up with a subtle choice: Should you go for the extra 10%-20% of growth a year? After a few years, a few management team mistakes, […]
What You Want to Hit: 50 and 20 at 10 (million in ARR)
The first SaaStr post that got widespread distribution was this one — “Want to Understand SaaS? If Nothing Else — Understand That It Compounds.” The excerpt here: “What does this mean, that SaaS compounds? It means it’s really, really hard to get revenues going. You close a customer for $120 in annualized revenue, you only […]
6 Things in SaaS That Are Only Obvious At Scale
Some thoughts: Churn Lurks. Churn doesn’t happen overnight, especially with annual contracts. It lurks. Use customer visits, NPS surveys, and more to root it out before it happens. Oftentimes, you don’t even lose customers until Year 3. So it really only hits you just when things are getting good. More on that here: Why It’s […]
Why The Law of Large Numbers is Just an Excuse
Everyone has tough quarters, and usually, at least one tough year (more on that here). As we approach $10m, and then again as we approach $20m, and then again as we approach $X0m … we often blame a factor that I believe rarely is really real — The Law of Large Numbers. The Law of […]
The Easiest Ways to Get From $1M ARR to $10M ARR
The most important thing is not to chase the shiny penny, assuming you are growing at least 60% Year-over-Year. You’ve done the Impossible. You’ve gotten 50, 100, whatever # of businesses to pay you $1,000,000 a year. There are 10,000 new apps out there. It’s “impossible” to get to $1m. You did it. Now, the […]
So Your App Is Just a “Nice to Have”
In the old days, folks would criticize start-ups as “just a feature”. Oh Google/Salesforce/Microsoft will just build that. Back in the day when the world was a desktop OS, there was a lot of truth to that. When the web became our OS, that started to fade. The explosion of mobile changed it up once […]
The Lead Plateau You May Hit Just As It Gets Good. How to Plan Around It.
Many SaaS companies hit an “organic lead plateau” at several phases: When you get Really Big, at some point, every company in the world is an Opportunity. Box, Salesforce, etc. really don’t have many new opportunies to hit up. Instead, they have to work them better. This can hit you around $50-$80m-$100m ARR or so. […]
When the Player-Coach is Just That. And No More.
We’ve talked a lot on SaaStr about not screwing up that VP of Sales hire. Done right, it will accelerate your company to the next level. Done wrong — you can lose the better part of a year, and half of your last round of capital. And we’ve talked a lot about the trade-offs in […]
SaaS Financial Plan 2.0 (from Christoph Janz)
Recently on SaaStr, we did an important post on a simple Trailing Four Month Financial Model. This is one of my best hacks. If you average the growth rate over your last four months, and keep updating it — you’ll have a real-time model that keeps you honest. More on that here. But what about just […]
I Was Wrong. NPS is A Great Core Metric.
When I was a founder, I thought Net Promoter Score (“NPS”) was a pretty dumb, Big Company metric. There were a bunch of things I didn’t like about it: NPS is backwards looking. It doesn’t tell you much about your prospects, the future, or your most recent customers. I wanted to see the future. […]
