5 Things I Wished I Asked Before Switching from Employee to Founder (Video + Transcript)
Co-Founder and CEO at GoCardless, Hiroki Takeuchi and CEO and Founder at Shipamax, Jenna Brown on their switch from the employee role to the founder role and what they learned along the way. If you’re a current founder, do you agree? What lessons did you learn along the way? Also, if you didn’t join SaaStr […]
10 Secrets to Putting on a Great Event
So we’ve been putting on events for a while at SaaStr. It started off by accident — we did a meet-up in 2013 as an experiment, with no content. And almost 400 folks came! Then we did a second meet-up in 2014 with a little content, and it went well. Then 2015 was the first […]
Assume Your Top Partners Compete With You By Year 4
I note a whole bunch of recent announcements: Salesforce is now competing with a whole ‘nother bunch of its top partners with its new High Velocity Sales Cloud. It adds better dialer and cadence functionalities, among others, competing at least in part with a dozen or more of its top partners. While a lot of […]
10 Non-Obvious Things About Scaling SaaS with David Kellogg (Annual Video + Transcript)
Filled with actionable insights and pro tips on how deliver better business metrics to the board, David Kellogg’s session on 10 non-obvious things about scaling SaaS was one of the most anticipated during Annual 2018. Want in on this awesome SaaStr content? Check out the full video and transcript below! And in case you […]
As Soon As You Have Your First Real Management Team — It’s Time to Add Redundancy
A year or two ago, I was walking on the streets of San Francisco and bumped into a terrific Unicorn CEO. A beloved CEO of a beloved startup. We caught up briefly, and I asked if there was any way I could help. He said, “I’m looking for a great VP of Marketing.” Oh goodness, […]
10 Things That Would Have Helped Me Go From $1m to $10m Faster with Less Stress
Recently I put together a quick list on twitter of the Top 10 things that with hindsight, I could and should have done to get from $1m to $10m ARR faster — and with less stress. I thought it would be worth drilling down deeper into each of them, and sharing the learnings and mistakes: […]
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 […]
