Champion Change: You Gotta Jump On It
One of the most subtly stressful parts of running a SaaS company, or any company with larger customers, is Champion Change. When the key stakeholder at your customer who brought you in, shepparded the deal, baked you into their business process … leaves. Your champions may on average stay ~24 months (I’m making this average […]
Growing and Scaling SaaS Businesses from $1M to $500M in ARR with Intercom (Video + Transcript)
In this session from Annual 2018, Intercom COO Karen Peacock shares success stories, battle scars and practical advice she’s learned from growing scaling SaaS businesses from $1M to $500M in annual recurring revenue. In case you haven’t heard, we’re building a completely immersive experience for SaaStr Annual 2019! With 3 full days of sessions, featuring over 300 speakers […]
5 Tips To Improve the Odds When You Hire VPs Who Were Fired or Quit
As you scale up in SaaS, one thing I can almost guarantee is that you are going to hire some VPs who were either fired or quit their last role. Especially in the Bay Area. There are lots of reasons for this: All your hires can’t either be (x) folks you magically poach from other […]
Growth and Burn Rates at $1m ARR for 20+ Fast Growing SaaS Companies
The other day, for the first time ever, I put together a little bit of analysis on the 24 SaaS companies I’ve invested in since late 2013. 20 have crossed $1m ARR now, a bunch have crossed $10m ARR since, and a handful $50m ARR. I wanted to go back in time and look at […]
More Catfished By A Candidate: Why Not Hire Him Anyway? And Answers To Other Burning Questions
Since I published my Catfished by a Candidate blog post a couple of weeks ago, our website traffic has increased by 250% and it has become the number one most viewed post on our site from the last 12 months. Plus, it has a 700 comment thread on Hacker News and a podcast on Hacker […]
News Analysis: Adobe Completes Campaign To Commerce With $1.68B Magento Acquisition
Commerce Finally Comes To Adobe On May 21st, 2018, Adobe announced a $1.68 billion acquisition to acquire Magento for commerce capabilities and the developer ecosystem. When the transaction closes, the Campbell, Ca based company will be part of the Adobe Digital Experience team with Magento’s CEO Mark Lavelle reporting to Adobe’s executive vice president and […]
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, […]
Seven Common Failures Plague Board Room Strategy In Digital Transformation
Boardroom Failures Reflect Years Of Focus On EBIDTA and Return On Capital Faced with massive pressure to embark on their digital journey, boards and CEOs have sought case studies and examples of success to avail without realizing that each journey remains unique. While there are many proof of concepts in play, much of the innovation […]
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% […]
