SaaStr 747: Top 10 GTM Mistakes Founders Make Again … and Again with SaaStr’s CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
What are the biggest GTM mistakes founders make? SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin shares The Top 10 Mistakes Founders Make Again and Again. Some are decades-old problems, while others have emerged from this new world we’re in. Let’s jump right in.
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SaaStr 746: What’s Really Happening in Venture Capital Today with Redpoint Ventures Managing Director Logan Bartlett
There are a lot of haves and have-nots in the software industry today. Some companies have more people throwing money at them than they know what to do with, and others are struggling to raise any money at all.
Logan Bartlett, Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures, shares their yearly “State of the Market” report to understand what is and isn’t happening in venture capital today. 2024 is the tale of two markets, so let’s get into some of the data on today's episode.
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SaaStr 745: Mastering SaaS Sales Hiring, Customer Retention, and Growth with OpenAI, Retool, and 20VC
Dominic Grill, Head of Technical Success at OpenAI, and Eleanor Dorfman, Head of Sales at Retool, answer some of the most pressing questions from Harry Stebbings, Founder at 20VC, about mastering the customer lifecycle, how roles and motions in sales and post-sales have changed, the role of AI in sales, and some of the biggest lessons learned at these hyper-growth companies.
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This episode is sponsored by Pendo, the all-in-one product experience platform.
Pendo helps your users do the things you really want them to do. You can try Pendo for free at Pendo.io/saastr and check out Mind The Product, the community for product people like… us.
This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com
Are international payroll regulations giving you a headache? Remote.com is your solution. With our best-in-class interface and expertise, we consolidate payroll for your employees, whether in one country or a hundred. Trust us with swift, secure payments for your team while you focus on scaling markets and driving business growth.
This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent
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SaaStr 744: A Tale of 3 Worlds: Where SaaS, Cloud, and AI are in 2024 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
What's the theme and current trends in SaaS, Cloud and AI now that we're midway through 2024?
SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin reflects on the SaaS industry's journey over the past several years, particularly focusing on the challenges and growth seen in 2022 and 2023. Despite economic ups and downs and the gloom and doom on social media, companies like Canva and Netskope are thriving today.
Jason's best advice?
"Just build."
In this episode, he emphasizes the importance of SaaS startups and companies continuing to build amidst macroeconomic fluctuations and the inevitable rise and fall of markets. Additionally, he addresses head-on how AI is reshaping the landscape and driving venture capital investments. For aspiring and current SaaS founders, this episode offers practical advice on staying competitive and resilient in an unpredictable market.
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Pendo helps your users do the things you really want them to do. You can try Pendo for free at Pendo.io/saastr and check out Mind The Product, the community for product people like… us.
This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com
Are international payroll regulations giving you a headache? Remote.com is your solution. With our best-in-class interface and expertise, we consolidate payroll for your employees, whether in one country or a hundred. Trust us with swift, secure payments for your team while you focus on scaling markets and driving business growth.
This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent
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SaaStr 743: 9 Easy Sales Concepts So Many Get Wrong with Sam Blond, Former CRO Brex
Sam Blond, the former CRO at Brex with 15 years in tech sales, took the stage at SaaStr Europa 2024 to share nine easy sales concepts that so many get wrong. Sam got his first job in tech sales as an SDR for Jason Lemkin’s company, EchoSign, which later sold to Adobe and launched his career.
These nine sales concepts, when done correctly, will greatly improve your sales and sales teams:
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This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com
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This episode is sponsored by Pendo, the all-in-one product experience platform.
Pendo helps your users do the things you really want them to do. You can try Pendo for free at Pendo.io/saastr and check out Mind The Product, the community for product people like… us.
SaaStr 742: The Top 5 Secrets for Building Great Products with Leaders at Slack, Rubrik, and Grammarly
As Product leaders, you have to build trust with CEOs and founders, align on vision and strategy, stay focused on the customer’s problem, and effectively navigate misalignment to ensure your product has the greatest chances of success right out of the gate.
But how do you tactically achieve all of that? Tamar Yehoshua, former CPO at Slack and Partner at IVP, Anneka Gupta, CPO of Rubrik, and Noam Lovinsky, CPO of Grammarly, shared practical advice at SaaStr Annual from the trenches so you can build great products and great teams all at once.
Follow along with the full write-up of this podcast here.
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This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com
Feeling stuck in your talent search? Remote Talent is the leading job board for remote-first companies and startups. Visit Remote.com/jobs today to start building your dream team, anywhere in the world.
This episode is sponsored by Pendo, the all-in-one product experience platform.
Pendo helps your users do the things you really want them to do. You can try Pendo for free at Pendo.io/saastr and check out Mind The Product, the community for product people like… us.
Gong’s CEO and Co-Founder Amit Bendov sat down with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin at SaaStr Europa 2024 last week to talk about all things AI in Sales and the lessons learned while scaling to billions.
Back in 2015, Google AI beat the world chess champion easily. AI was starting to diagnose diseases better than doctors. Amit asked himself, “How hard would it be to understand customers better than salespeople?” That was the idea for Gong, an early vision of an autonomous customer management system that could capture customer conversations, understand them, and turn insights into action. Believe it or not, Gong struggled to raise money because people didn’t believe that AI would be big one day.
In this episode, you’ll learn what Gong’s CEO thinks about:
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This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com
Are international payroll regulations giving you a headache? Remote.com is your solution. With our best-in-class interface and expertise, we consolidate payroll for your employees, whether in one country or a hundred. Trust us with swift, secure payments for your team while you focus on scaling markets and driving business growth.
This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent
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SaaStr 740: The Top 10 GTM Mistakes I See Founders Making Today with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
If you’ve read SaaStr or have been around for the last decade, you might be familiar with some of the repeated GTM mistakes founders tend to make, but the world of hiring, people, scaling, and workplace expectations are significantly different today than they were before March 2020.
SaaStr Founder and CEO, Jason Lemkin, shares the top GTM mistakes founders make today and some cheat codes to avoid them. Some are mistakes we make again and again, and others are newer territory as we evolve.
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This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com
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SaaStr 739: The Three SaaS Metrics That Matter in 2024 and Will IPOs Be Back? with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin
What are the three most under-discussed metrics on social media, with VCs, and especially with founders? SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin shares his top three SaaS metrics that matter in 2024:
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This episode is sponsored by Pendo, the all-in-one product experience platform.
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This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com
Are you overwhelmed with paperwork managing overseas contractors? Say hello to efficiency with Remote’s Contractor Management solution! Seamlessly handle invoicing, fixed payments, and compliant, localized contracts. Kickstart your free trial today at Remote.com.
This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent
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SaaStr 738: How Shopify Implements AI Across Sales and Product with Mike Tamir, Head of AI at Shopify, and Rudina Seseri, Managing Partner at Glasswing Ventures
At SaaStr AI Day, Mike Tamir, Head of AI at Shopify, and Rudina Seseri, founder and Managing Partner at Glasswing Ventures, level-set about where we are in the cycle for Enterprises adopting AI and the critical work being done at Shopify to leverage AI and solve real problems.
Mike and Rudina do a great job of explaining the complex AI terminology for everyday non-technical founders and leaders to understand and apply to their businesses.
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This episode is sponsored by Pendo, the all-in-one product experience platform.
Pendo helps your users do the things you really want them to do. You can try Pendo for free at Pendo.io/saastr and check out Mind The Product, the community for product people like… us.
This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com
Are international payroll regulations giving you a headache? Remote.com is your solution. With our best-in-class interface and expertise, we consolidate payroll for your employees, whether in one country or a hundred. Trust us with swift, secure payments for your team while you focus on scaling markets and driving business growth.
This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent
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SaaStr 737: How to Build Go-to-Market Efficiency in SMB Sales with Owner.com CRO Kyle Norton
How do you build GTM efficiency in SMB sales? The CRO at Owner.com, Kyle Norton, shares his learnings and strategies for building better efficiency into your GTM motion.
While this title is SMB-oriented, the advice applies to Mid-Market and Enterprise, too. The three topics we’ll cover in today's podcast are:
Full playbook, video and recap of this session here on saastr.com.
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This episode is sponsored by Pendo, the all-in-one product experience platform.
Pendo helps your users do the things you really want them to do. You can try Pendo for free at Pendo.io/saastr and check out Mind The Product, the community for product people like… us.
This episode is sponsored by: Remote.com
Are international payroll regulations giving you a headache? Remote.com is your solution. With our best-in-class interface and expertise, we consolidate payroll for your employees, whether in one country or a hundred. Trust us with swift, secure payments for your team while you focus on scaling markets and driving business growth.
This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent
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Harry Glaser was the co-founder and CEO of Periscope Data, which raised a seed round before finding customers, yet didn’t run out of money before becoming an overnight success 3-4 years later. They grew like crazy when they found product-market-fit and raised a big Series A and B.
When you’re growing fast, everything can feel like it’s breaking constantly, and you’re hiring and rehiring people fast. During those rapid growth years, someone would reach out every once in a while and ask if Harry would consider selling. He always said no.
But then growth flatlined for a couple of years, and it was time to talk about selling. From the start of the company to a couple of years after being acquired, it was about a ten-year journey altogether.
In today's episode, Harry shares the honest truth and lessons learned from selling Periscope Data for $130M.
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Jennifer Tejada, CEO of PagerDuty, discusses the influence of AI on business workflows, focusing on automating operations, maintaining customer trust, and navigating generative AI challenges. Together with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin, they addresses the role of AI in managing incidents, improving efficiency, and changing decision-making in enterprises. Lastly, we delve into how AI and human roles can coexist, foreseeing a shift towards high-value work as automation increases, with a call for leaders to embrace AI's potential while adapting to technological advancements.
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SaaStr 734: The Latest in Series A Rounds, AI Growth Rates and More with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
So Redpoint Ventures published some of the slides they recently presented to their Limited Partners (their own investors) here.
There’s a ton of good data there, but this one slide stood out to me, because it was put together in a really clear fashion, better than other data sources I’ve seen.
And what it says is that even though Seed stage investing remains arguably as strong as ever … Series A hasn’t bounced back. Not at all.
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SaaStr 733: Advice Every SaaS Founder Needs to Know in 2024 with Sam Blond and Jason Lemkin
At SaaStr Miami, former Founder’s Fund Partner and CRO of Brex Sam Blond — host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential Podcast — sat down with SaaStr CEO and founder Jason Lemkin for a fireside chat about finding success as a SaaS company in 2024. They discuss Sam’s learnings at Founders Fund, what the 2024 playbook looks like, hiring and motivating sales teams, and a handful of audience questions.
Sam just finished 18 months at Founders Fund after joining in mid-to-late 2022. We were coming off an environment where startup funding was as fruitful as ever. With personal experience from EchoSign and other high-growth companies, he was spoiled when it came to those companies raising money from exceptional VCs.
What he’s learned on both sides of the VC table is that the bar is really high for most VCs. Higher than he imagined in terms of the founder quality bar and, the stage of the business, and growth and efficiency metrics.
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SaaStr 732: What It’s Like Running a Profitable $400M Public SaaS Company with Vimeo CEO Adam Gross and SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
Vimeo CEO and SaaS veteran Adam Gross and Jason Lemkin, SaaStr founder and CEO, recently hosted a fireside chat at SaaStr Miami, talking about running a profitable public company with $400M in revenue, including themes around:
Adam is an OG in Cloud and SaaS. His first company was Personify and he went on to be a VP of Developer Relations at Salesforce, then hire number 11 at Dropbox, CEO at Heroku, and an investor and on many boards before landing as the current CEO at Vimeo.
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SaaStr 731: 10 Things Founders Should Know About Getting Acquired with Brett Goldstein, Former M&A at Google
Former member of the M&A team at Google, Brett Goldstein, now Founder at Micro and Co-Founder & CEO of Launch House Ventures, shares the nine things founders should know about getting acquired. It’s a common dream for founders to hope their startup be acquired one day, but what is a company, like Google, really looking for in their acquisitions? And what should all founders know about the process if the time comes?
First, there are three types of acquisition deals:
Now, we'll dive into what founders should know before, during, and after the M&A process.
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SaaStr 730: How to Price and Package AI SaaS Products with Sandhya Hegde, General Partner at Unusual Ventures
With everything in AI moving so rapidly, what’s the best way to price Artificial Intelligence products or SaaS tools with custom AI features and integrations? Should it be subscriptions, usage, solutions, or something entirely different? While companies are scrambling to roll out these new tools, they also want reliability and predictability in the value they’re getting from your products, which can make pricing extremely difficult.
So we asked the expert, Sandhya Hegde, General Partner at Unusual Ventures to share her best practices and trends for pricing and packaging AI products. Sandhya has been in the startup ecosystem for about 15 years, with the last two years heavily focused on investing in AI-native startups, primarily on the application and Enterprise software side. Over the past year, people have started to recognize how challenging pricing and packaging are for AI products, as well as the competitive pressure. Why is pricing so tricky?
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SaaStr 729: 6 Questions Founders Should Ask Themselves to Drive Value from Generative AI with Base10 Partners
Generative AI is a platform shift where models can take inputs such as text, image, audio, video, and code and generate new content into any of the modalities mentioned. TJ Nahigian, co-founder and Managing Partner of Base10 Partners, and Luci Fonseca, Partner, deep dive into the current GenAI landscape, incumbents vs. startups, and the six questions founders should ask themselves to drive value from GenAI.
For some context, Base10 is a research-driven investment firm focusing on companies automating the largest sectors of the real economy. They’re trying to figure out what will happen with GenAI and share what they’re observing today so startups and incumbents can take advantage of it to build significant value.
Base10 is interested in mega-trends that change how people live and work in the next ten years. We’re at the beginning of a platform shift, and for the first time, GenAI has become accessible to more than just the mega businesses of the world.
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SaaStr 728: How to Double Your Magic Number and Increase Your Go-to-Market Efficiency with Sapphire Ventures
Go-to-market (GTM) design and efficiency are sometimes overlooked, but they’re a critical driver of any SaaS business. Rajeev Dham and Karan Singh, Partners at Sapphire Ventures, and Jane Lee, Vice President at Sapphire walk us through how to double your “Magic Number,” a shorthand for your sales and marketing efficiency.
Magic Number is your growth in ARR over a quarter divided by the sales and marketing spend in the prior quarter. Previously in SaaS, it was widely seen that anything > 1 was healthy if you were venture-backed, and anything > 1.5 is was seen as perhaps too capital-efficient. If you were well-funded, 0.7 was fine.
But as Rajeev, Karan, and Jane point out to set the stage for this discussion, Go-to-market efficiency in recent years has suffered a significant drop across both public and private SaaS companies.
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SaaStr 727: High-Velocity Techniques to Maximize Sales with Gusto’s CRO and Head of Go-to-Market
Tolithia Kornweibel, CRO, and Jamie Edwards, Head of Go-to-Market Operations and Tools, share how Gusto maximizes revenue so that you can do the same.
Together they share the high-velocity techniques they use to maximize sales, including:
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SaaStr 726: How to Build Out Your SDR Function in 2024 with Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and Host of SaaStr CRO Confidential
How do you build out a Sales Development (SDR) function at your SaaS company? Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and host of SaaStr’s CRO Confidential shares his advice for building an SDR function in 2024 based on his experience as CRO at Brex.
We’ll cover everything from setup to efficiencies in setting up an SDR function, including:
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SaaStr 725: Mastering High-Volume, Low-CAC Marketing: Strategies from Gorgias, Vercel, and Hypergrowth Partners
In today’s world, there’s a clear shift in what founders, boards, and investors are all after — scalable, low-CAC (customer-acquisition cost) growth strategies.
In a panel, Guillaume Cabane (G) and Martin Gontovnikas (Gonto), co-founders of HyperGrowth Partners, Axelle Heems, Senior Director of Growth Operations at Gorgias, and Morgane Palomares, VP of Marketing at Vercel, share real-life examples of how demand generation, growth, and marketing strategies have been executed to scale beyond 2x ARR each year, even on a low budget.
Let’s deep dive into how combining innovative demand gen strategies with a modern tech stack and specific team setup can provide a winning formula for scaling B2B growth, even with low budgets of greater than a 2x burn multiple.
In this episode we’ll share:
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When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.
SaaStr 724: CRO Confidential: Bringing Product-Led and Sales-Led Growth Together For Go-To-Market Success with Giancarlo Lionetti, CRO of Zapier. Hosted by Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund
In this latest episode of CRO Confidential, Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, sits down with the CRO of Zapier, Giancarlo Lionetti (GC), to chat about Product-Led Growth (PLG) and Go-To-Market (GTM). Everything from hiring on the GTM side to layering in a sales-led motion into PLG.
Before joining Zapier, Giancarlo was at Atlassian as a technical sales lead before moving to DropBox as a Senior Director of Growth and Monetization, and was CMO at Confluent – so he has a wealth of knowledge from Zapier’s Go-To-Market history as well as these successful SaaS companies to pull from.
From a Go-To-Market perspective, Zapier uses a hybrid model that involves a combination of freemium offerings, subscription plans, and partnerships. Let’s dive into what’s making that hybrid model successful.
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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.
Join us in 2024 at:
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This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent
When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.
SaaStr 723: Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, and Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder of SaaStr: Answer Your Top 10 2024 Customer Success Questions
In 2024, for customer success in SaaS, what’s “good” NRR? What’s a “good” NPS? Who should Customer Success report into?
Questions like this and many others are the most common questions asked of SaaStr Fan Fave and expert on Customer Success, Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta, and SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin.
While we recently published an episode on what will change for Customer Success in SaaS in 2024 with Jason and Nick, we ran out of time to answer some of the top questions both get and what their answers would be now in 2024. So in the latest installment of the official SaaStr Podcast, we did exactly that.
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SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet.
Join us in 2024 at:
--------------
This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent
When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.