The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Arnaud Bonzom, Founder and Managing Director @ Black Mangroves moderates a panel with Carmen Yuen, General Partner @ Vertex, Jenny Lee, Managing Partner @ GGV Capital, and Piruze Sabuncu, Partner @ Square Peg Capital on what founders should look out for when raising a Series A.   In this panel, Carmen, Jenny, and Piruze will discuss the lessons learned at Vertex, GGV, and Square Peg on the common...

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...

In a crowded and distracted world, it can be hard to break through with customers, the media, recruiting and investors. Capturing the zeitgeist is more important than ever in making you stand out. In this session Josh will share his story building DoNotPay and how building a movement has given his company an advantage and the non-traditional lessons that he has learned.   Video: https://youtu.be/k...

Not every leader is created equally. A bad experience with a revenue operations leader might taint your view of the position at all future companies, but that would be a mistake, as CRO Confidential podcast host Sam Blond learned first-hand.  In this week's CRO Confidential episode, Blond talks to one of the best revenue operations leaders on the planet, Cherishma Shah, where she shares insights i...

The SMBTech economy is very different from enterprise software, and there is massive opportunity to capture it. There are over 400M small businesses worldwide. That's more than 90% of companies and 40-50% of GDP.    In this episode, Jeff Richards and Tiffany Luck, Managing Director and Partner at GGVCapital, share what it takes to win as a SMBTech startup in today's economy.    Full video with Q&A...

There is plenty you could go deep on when talking about what it takes to scale a business from 1m to 1bn+, but in this session you'll hear 30 years of experience doing exactly that - compressed into a handful of key focus areas that really matter - principles that have proven to make the difference when surrounded by options and chaos.   Video: https://youtu.be/CQdAzSfhz54   Want to join the SaaSt...

Significant strides in digital technology combined with the COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted the world of corporate summits, events, and tradeshows. Many businesses changed their strategy to incorporate virtual or hybrid events recently. Before the pandemic, hybrid and virtual gatherings accounted for only 18.9% of all events . But after the pandemic, the number shifted, with 59.5% of event plan...

Back in the early 2000s, people didn't entirely accept that a virtual machine could be as good as a physical one. Of course, we all know how that turned out.  Ed Lenta, the SVP and GM of Databricks, had the rare opportunity of scaling three hypergrowth companies — VMware, AWS, and Databricks. All of which were disruptors when they first came on the scene.  Is there a recipe or formula that will pr...

Buying software has changed significantly over the past 27 years. Despite the economic headwinds we've seen, buyers still buy a lot. The average mid-size company has 111 SaaS applications. By next quarter, that's estimated to rise to 119.    Of course, companies are experiencing some economic impact, and average spend is coming down slightly. Chris Perrine, the Vice President of G2, Asia Pacific,...

If you're on the path to building a startup, you know what it means to fail. In this week's Workshop Wednesday, Tracy Young, CEO and Co-Founder of TigerEye and PlanGrid, says that "everything is going to fail." Young took PlanGrid from nothing to $100M ARR before passing the baton and shares the biggest lessons learned, the biggest failures, and how to navigate them.   Full video with Q&A: https:/...

With product-led growth, your product is the main driver of revenue growth; companies can scale up faster while keeping sales and marketing costs low. Conversely, sales-led growth puts human interaction at the center of sales processes. But sometimes, choosing a single path when it comes to a sales-led or a product-led growth model isn't enough. In this session, Amplitude's Mark Velthuis will shar...

How did the largest product-led growth enterprise company in the world find success? In this week's episode of CRO Confidential, Cameron Deatsch, CRO of Atlassian, shares his wisdom with Founders Fund Partner Sam Blond. Atlassian is trading at over $40B with revenue north of $3B. When the company started 20 years ago, it didn't hire salespeople. Not because they planned to start as a product-led c...

Having scaled the APAC region for 3 US companies, with a big emphasis on building culture as a foundation for success, Scott will speak of his learnings and lead a discussion for: Recruiting Enabling  Creating Culture Video: https://youtu.be/CfW0W0E3F4A   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscrib...

Chris Merritt, Chief Revenue Officer of Cloudflare joined Cloudflare nearly a decade ago when annual revenue was around $1M with one sales person — and has since been scaling the sales organization and helping grow Cloudflare into the multi-billion dollar business it is today. When building a sales team and business at scale, organizations go through various stages of growth with key milestones al...

In this illuminating session, ICONIQ Growth general partner Doug Pepper and head of analytics Christine Edmonds will share some of the latest insights from ICONIQ's annual "Growth and Efficiency Study" which utilizes aggregated operating data from a large set of enterprise SaaS companies, about half of which have gone on to IPO and/or been named to the Cloud 100 list. From the metrics most indicat...

Stripe CTO David Singleton shares insights from the company's focus on going the extra mile to obtain user feedback and even more extreme lengths to turn that feedback into successful products. He'll show how one simple rule helped the company grow from a single API to a sophisticated platform, and discuss the challenges of managing change, defining product-market fit, and designing infrastructure...

While the allure of customer acquisition can pull a founder's attention, it's equally important to dedicate resources to fighting churn and expanding revenue from existing customers. One company that has unlocked the secret to solid retention and revenue expansion is Brex , an easy-to-use corporate cards and spend management software in an integrated global solution.   In this edition of CRO Confi...

What do some of the most successful PLG companies have in common? How do you build a best-in-class go-to-market model to get to 100mn ARR and beyond? Iconic PLG companies share how they integrated GTM into their growth strategy to go from single digits to over a billion in ARR. Lightspeed Partner, Anoushka Vaswani, is joined by Raj Sarkar, CMO at 1Password, Kim Walsh, SVP, Sales, Partnerships and...

As Chief Product Officer at DigitalOcean and a developer-turned-entrepreneur himself, Gabe Monroy is deeply familiar with some of the pitfalls that founders encounter on the road of product development. In this session, Gabe will discuss how founders can avoid the trap of over-engineering products, as well as why focusing on the must-haves (developing "painkillers" for your customer's problem) wil...

Every week, more and more companies are doing big layoffs. As news of layoffs continues, many are left wondering what happened and how to shift course. Many startups missed 2022 revenue goals and are forecasting slower growth for 2023, especially compared to the explosive growth of teams and revenue during the Boom of 2021 and early 2022.   In this week's episode of CRO Confidential, Founders Fund...

Jason recently joined Harry Stebbings on 20VC to discuss VC in 2023. Hear why you shouldn't wait to raise (if you're fundable), even though the venture landscape will look better by the end of 2023.   This episode is an excerpt of Jason and Harry's discussion. You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/dHIWdwljt7Q   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B...

What is the right Go-To-Market strategy for a startup getting out of the gate? Sales-led vs. product-led is a hot topic right now, and Jason Eubanks, Chief Revenue Officer of Harness, shares the answer.    At Harness, Eubanks leads go-to-market. Everything is defined by customer interactions, from how they find Harness to becoming a customer. What's his response to startups figuring out which stra...

As the past few years have demonstrated, it's wise to expect the unexpected, especially when it comes to hiring. In particular, hiring for your sales team is critical in an uncertain economic outlook. Additionally, sales professionals looking for a new role should choose their next company wisely.   In this edition of CRO Confidential, Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex, di...

In many companies, the longtime dispute between sales and marketing prevents them from collaborating or agreeing on a goal. Divvy's CRO, Sterling Snow, created a structure aligning these two teams with others to create a formidable revenue team. This structure drove the company to a $2.5 billion-dollar acquisition by Bill within five years. In this episode, Snow shares the journey to realizing the...

Sure, strong collaboration between Sales and Marketing is critical - but this CPO and CMO contend that the Product to Marketing connection might just be the most critical dynamic within your executive team. Learn how Meron Colbeci (CPO) and Leela Srinivasan (CMO) are driving the right outcomes through close collaboration.   Full video with Q&A: https://youtu.be/gWub2D4XZCQ   Want to join the SaaSt...