After $2m-$3m in ARR, Your Leads Should Always Grow. Here’s Why.
Progress in SaaS is never as linear as it looks years down the road. Everyone has rough quarters (often at least 1 in 5). And we almost had a full Year of Hell, often during a tough transition. I certainly did (twice). More on that here: The SaaS Year of Hell. And Then – Reignition. […]
It’s Never Too Late to Go Upmarket
The other day put out a post on SaaStr about “How to Build a $100 Billion SaaS Company”. While Salesforce is the only $100b+ SaaS company today, there are ~15 more gunning for $100b in valuation, which means $100b isn’t “outlier” status anymore. It’s achievable. Check it out here: How to Build a $100 Billion […]
The Lead Plateau You May Hit Just As It Gets Good. How to Plan Around It.
This post is such an important one, I took a moment update it for 2019. Just when it sarts to get good, again and again, I see the same thing: the number of leads each month stalls out. Many SaaS companies hit an “organic lead plateau” at several phases: When you get Really Big, at […]
Heading Off PTSD-Esque Stress, and Taking Care Of Yourself
I hope you just had an incredible October. Hit 125%+ of the plan. Little old team SaaStr did!! And that’s what we’re all about. But there will be a lot of Octobers if you want to go long. And if you literally left nothing on the table, were here last night until midnight — that’s great. Sometimes. […]
Maybe 80% of Public SaaS Companies Are in the SF Bay Area
In 2019, you clearly can build a successful SaaS and Cloud company outside the Bay Area. And it is just sooo expensive here in the Bay Area. Like crazy expensive. And aren’t we all moving to distributed teams? Still, networks matter. And finding veterans that have done it before really helps, especially as you scale. […]
What The Downturn Will Probably Look Like in SaaS
So, despite SaaS multiple and the public markets being at near record highs, we’ve seen things start to … wobble a bit overall in tech: The WeWork IPO simply failed, and the Peloton and Direct Smile IPOs were broken. No one really expected this. Having a high profile IPO like this fail is a bit […]
All Platforms Have Their Favorite Partners. Be One Of Them If You Can.
Recently I was catching up with an exec from a SaaS company well in excess of $100m ARR. One of the key platforms their app integrates with has started to … slow down their access. Slow down access to new features, to semi-documented APIs. Slow down access to their team. In fact, the partner’s sales […]
Big Idea: Extreme Capitalism And The Dawn Of Digital Duopolies
Organizations Move Beyond The Post-Digital Era I am consciously scaring you into existence. The disruption ahead is not a fantasy. When I founded Constellation Research and then wrote the best-selling book, Disrupting Digital Business, we stood at the dawn of a major shift in business models and disruptive technologies that powered what we coined digital […]
Event Report: Apple Formally Launches Services Strategy #AppleEvent
Services Revenue Mix Could Reach 20% By 2020 Photo: @rwang0 On March 25, 2019, Apple held its special event on services at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, CA to launch and/or revamp 4 key services including: Apple News+. New service adds 300 magazines, the Wall Street Journal and more publications to 875 million iPhone […]
An Update on the SaaS Rule of 40
Thanks to the folks at Piper Jaffray and their recently published 2018 Software Market Review, we can take a look at a recent chart that plots public software company enterprise value (EV) vs. Rule of 40 (R40) score = free cash-flow margin + revenue growth rate. As a reminder, the Rule of 40 is an […]
