Whether you’re going from nothing to something or already scaling and thriving beyond $10-100M, healthy, sustainable growth in SaaS is on every founder’s mind.
Cockroach Labs’ CEO Spencer Kimball shares hard-won lessons from scaling from $0 to $5B and his time as an angel investor for more than 80 different startups.
He’ll walk you through the three stages of growth:
0-$1M — From nothing to something
$1M-$10M — Building, innovation, and customers
$10M-$100M+ — Scaling and thriving And what sustainable growth strategies you can implement (and pitfalls to avoid) wherever you’re at in your SaaS journey.
This edition of the SaaStr podcast is brought to you by:
Learn about the most important SaaS metrics for founders in 2023 with the CEOs of the most metric-oriented company, monday, and the founder of SaaStr. The godfather of SaaS and founder of the world’s largest community for business software sits down with one of the most metric-oriented companies today to discuss the most important SaaS metrics for founders in 2023. Jason Lemkin, Founder of SaaStr, and co-founders and CEOs, Eran Zinman and Roy Mann of the wildly successful monday.com chat with Startup For Startup about ARR, NRR, CAC, and what it takes to beat the odds in a tougher environment.
It’s not an easy time to be a startup entrepreneur. Even as generative AI and LLMs present the potential for a technical paradigm shift, startups today must also grapple with the realities of financial market upheaval, ominous global power shifts, uncertain economic indicators, and disruption up and down the supply chain: It may feel as though “hunkering down” is the best that a founder can do.
Bill Magnuson, Co-founder and CEO of Braze, has a different take, in which there’s no time like the present era of change to uncover opportunities that can distinguish your business from competitors’ as the skies clear. Having navigated through the early days of mobile and the multiple macro disruptions since to take Braze public and scale to a revenue run rate of $400+ million, Bill has put this strategy to the test.
Seeing opportunity in today’s times requires a longitudinal perspective on the underlying forces of change that create growth opportunities and strategy that anticipates the evolution of those forces while positioning your business to best take advantage of the resulting changes over time..
Timing around disruptions is key, and they provide a key opportunity for innovators to build in response to the evolution of new skillsets, team structures, and business models, all of which create new buyer personas, and can be cultivated even while headwinds stall growth. Those who lean into disruptions with curiosity and optimism can emerge as stronger innovators with deeper competitive moats because they were out building with a growth mindset while everyone else was hunkered down.
Key takeaways from this talk include:
*How to think about second-order effects of disruption, and when their evolution may ultimately reward patience, creating room for the slower growth that is often forced by a difficult macro. *What to watch for in areas of macro disruption in order to identify differentiating opportunities in unexpected places.
*How evolving skillsets, team compositions, and ways of working can transform business, and why its absence can lead to obsolescence.
The First Rule You Know About Building Software is Wrong.
Discover why with Rippling CEO and Co-Founder, Parker Conrad, and Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund. In this session, Parker will explain step-by-step his theory of the compound startup and how it can help you scale your SaaS company.
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Shipping projects doesn’t have to be a mess. Notion combines project management with your docs, knowledge base, and AI. So you can stop jumping between tools, and stop paying too much for them too. Get Notion Projects for free at Notion.com/SAASTR.
Vention provides technology leaders with the top engineering talent they need to accelerate their roadmap, innovate faster and more efficiently, and ultimately catapult their operation to new heights. Vention developers sync with clients’ in-house teams, helping them get to market 30 percent faster and saving them more than $600,000 on average. Looking for the edge to outpace your competition? Vention is your partner. Learn more at ventionteams.com.
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Generative AI has taken the world by storm, and VCs and SaaS founders are looking at new opportunities it can bring. Even considering the more conservative fundraising market in 2023, there are opportunities for startups to get investor attention with AI.
Tomasz Tunguz, Founder & General Partner at Theory Ventures, believes that with the right GTM plan and capital efficiency, it is still possible to get funding. It’s simply a matter of watching your burn: “The main difference in the market between 2021 and today is that efficiency matters more than growth.”
Full video with Q&A: https://youtube.com/live/xiYzzLe9BAs
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Sage Intacct is a powerful cloud-based financial management system that delivers automation around billing, accounting, and reporting. Voted market leaders by G2, Sage Intacct is the ideal Finance Solution to scale your business. Visit us at sage.com/uk/intacct.
What if you could prospect in a single click? And what if that click came with accurate, intent data you need to meet your goals? Meet Klarity with One-Click Prospecting by DemandScience. Let’s make your job easier. Visit demandscience.com.
SaaStr Europa is back! And this time, we’re heading to London for 2 fun-filled days of content, networking, and SaaS. Join us June 6th and 7th for SaaStr Europa 2023. Use code FAVE100 for $100 off tickets at saastrlondon.com.
Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.
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SaaStr’s own Poya Osgouei has a great Uncharted podcast that does a deeper dive with many SaaS execs.
Up this week is our own Jason Lemkin, Founder and CEO of SaaStr.
We're cross-posting this great deep dive episode where they discuss how SaaStr has evolved over the last 10 years, and discuss the importance of focusing on field marketing now that folks are eager to get back together.
In this episode of the SaaStr Podcast, Insider Co-Founder and CEO Hande Cilinger will dive into 10 mistakes to avoid in building out a revenue organization. Tune in to this week's episode for Hande’s take on how to best hire, enable, sell, and grow.
Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/tnBklWSZJ-g
Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.
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RevenueCat's API handles subscriptions for more than 8 million mobile subscribers and is the subscription infrastructure for more than 4000 apps. Join Miguel Carranza, Co-founder and CTO to hear his top learnings on designing and scaling a high throughput API.
Full video: https://youtu.be/LOkTz0cvwS8
Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.
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Raise.Work is a leader in planning, leasing, and sourcing tech real estate spaces.
Full video: https://youtu.be/0MnlhVXUo3Q
Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.
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The SaaS world is competitive, and standing out in a highly saturated market takes remarkable hard work and skill. However, the companies that adapt and create transformational change tend to survive. COO Anu Bharadwaj’s years of experience at Atlassian have shaped her outlook on how to thrive in the market.
In this session, Boast.AI Co-Founder Lloyed Lobo interviews Bharadwaj as she shares Atlassian’s five building blocks to win.
This podcast is an excerpt of the full interview, which you can find here: https://youtu.be/zQCdwoT7Kak
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OpenPhone and AgentSync are two SaaS businesses with very different growth strategies, but the same ultimate goal: to continue selling while simultaneously problem-solving for current customers. They are a perfect example of implementing a growth model, mastering it, and then expanding horizons into other growth strategies with strategic testing and experimenting. Contrary to the title of this article, the two brands prove that product-led growth is neither panacea nor boondoggle, but rather a winning strategy for the appropriate product when thoughtfully implemented. OpenPhone and AgentSync are two SaaS businesses with very different growth strategies, but the same ultimate goal: to continue selling while simultaneously problem-solving for current customers. They are a perfect example of implementing a growth model, mastering it, and then expanding horizons into other growth strategies with strategic testing and experimenting. Contrary to the title of this article, the two brands prove that product-led growth is neither panacea nor boondoggle, but rather a winning strategy for the appropriate product when thoughtfully implemented. Jenn Knight, Co-founder and CTO of AgentSync, and Daryna Kulya, Co-founder of OpenPhone, discuss how different approaches have helped each brand reach its target audience and accomplish its goals, the potential of product-led growth, and how to scale growth strategies to yield desirable results. Session moderated by Craft Ventures Partner & COO Brian Murray, discuss how different approaches have helped each brand reach its target audience and accomplish its goals, the potential of product-led growth, and how to scale growth strategies to yield desirable results. Session moderated by Craft Ventures Partner & COO Brian Murray.
Full video: https://youtu.be/L4oRfut9ufI
Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.
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What do you remember about your experience in the workplace prior to 2020? Is it the moments of collaborative synergy and collective achievements? Is it the feeling of solving complex problems and hitting milestones with your team? Perhaps it’s the joy of closing deals and celebrating with your colleagues?
It’s been more than two years since the pandemic interrupted our daily work life, and companies are taking stock and preparing for a return to the workplace. How can company leadership retain these important experiences of collaboration in the workplace and pair them with the opportunity and flexibility we’ve discovered since working remotely?
Raise CEO and co-founder, Justin Bedecarre, and president, Felipe Gomez-Kraus, discuss how SaaS companies can build successful hybrid workplaces that are empathetic while incentivizing their team to return to the office.
Full video: https://youtu.be/ohe10zViLdw
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In this episode, Marilee Bear, SVP North America Enterprise Sales at Zendesk sits down with SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser, to talk about the best practices to deploy in motivating and organizing your sales team in Q1.
When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. But what are the essentials of scaling up, and how do you navigate obstacles along the way to function as a high-impact organization?
Cathy Gao, Partner at Sapphire Ventures, and Anoushka Vaswani, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, moderated a panel with Carlos Delatorre, CRO at TripActions, and Latané Conant, CMO at 6sense to discuss how you can scale your startup from $20 million ARR to $200 million ARR through go-to-market execution, talent, and culture.
Driving peak sales performance is a mission most SaaS companies strive to accomplish. Yet, sales team targets are often set extremely high, with management expecting their teams to miss. This might bring success for the company, but it leads to negative experiences for the sales rep, and your teams may ultimately fail to perform to their fullest potential.
Hootsuite CRO Melissa Murray Bailey shares secrets to running a successful SaaS sales team and reducing employee turnover.
Video: https://youtu.be/wl1Qx4KHqMo
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Every high-growth organization inevitably reaches the point of pivoting its strategy and offerings to capture new audiences—a journey made more complex with the new demands emerging this past year. In this session, Dorian Stone will share lessons learned from Grammarly’s evolution from consumer to SMB to enterprise, address common assumptions and pitfalls in the process of scaling, and reveal must-know strategies to drive efficient growth this year and beyond.
Vimeo went public in May as an $8 billion powerhouse in video software. Better known as the indie version of YouTube for more than a decade, the company has redefined itself from a B2C destination to the B2B solution that empowers any business to create, collaborate and connect with professional-quality video. Join Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud for a conversation with Brent Thill, Financial Analyst @ Jefferies about spotting potential in what is now a $70 billion market, and how operating as a founder within a 16-year old company helped her take bets on a strategy that’s paying off.
Full video: https://youtu.be/9JgkbS4FgjQ
Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/from-b2c-to-billions-how-vimeo-executed-a-b2b-pivot-that-redefined-their-future-with-vimeo-ceo-anjali-sud/
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Building out a marketing channel is like building product. It takes countless iterations and constant market feedback to get right. This session will introduce tactics on how to slowly and methodically test, assess success, and eventually scale a marketing channel until it hits a ceiling and it's time to move to the next one.
When sales teams succeed, the company succeeds. Revenue goes up, productivity increases, and ideally, the team continues to grow. But running a high-performing sales team isn’t an easy task. How can you ensure success within your sales organization in a way that scales with you?
Heather Akuiyibo, VP of Sales at Databricks, shares her four adaptable frameworks for high-performing sales teams and how those frameworks helped Databricks’ sales teams succeed.
Full video: https://youtu.be/9tn-I4f9Va4
Zach joined Canva in 2013 as one of Canva’s earliest employees and has worked across product management, communications and human resources before establishing the global marketing function. Eight years later 50 million people are now using Canva every month and the company recently approached $1 Billion in Revenue. In this podcast, Zach and Jason dive into the initial growth marketing strategies and framework behind Canva’s exponential growth as a start-up, the strategies for targeting and growing into the enterprise, and how to build out a global marketing function.
Full video: https://youtu.be/CEoam_9sHt0
Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/lessons-learned-scaling-canva-to-1-billion-with-zach-kitschke/
No one word strikes more terror in the heart of product-, engineering-, or even sales-oriented founders and CEOs than "marketing." How to understand marketing? How to drive marketing? How to measure marketing? What to look for in a marketing leader? In this session, we'll talk about how CEOs (and other startup execs) should think about, charter, direct, and support marketing.
Full video: https://youtu.be/ggUwcE600xU
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Learn more about Box's journey to reaccelerate growth and march toward $1B in SaaS ARR, and their CRO's lessons learned along the way.
Full video: https://youtu.be/RQ6gom-lLxE
Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/reaccelerating-growth-at-scale-with-boxs-cro-mark-wayland-podcast-514-video/
Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.
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Amy Appleyard, SVP Global Sales @ Malwarebytes, Michelle Benfer, VP, Head of North America Sales @ HubSpot Tony Benvenuto, SVP of Sales West @ Seismic, and Anna Baird, CRO @ Outreach share lessons learned when scaling their sales teams, the importance of BDRs, key hires and when to prioritize them, and more.
GitLab started as an open-source project that expanded into a public company with a buyer-based open-core business model. With over 300+ code contributions per month, innovating with the wider community is key to accelerating development efforts. Join GitLab CEO, Sid Sijbrandij, as he discusses GitLab’s journey, choosing the right business model that balances high revenue potential and community contributions, and co-creating the product with the wider community to deliver safer software faster.