The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

2023 has been a difficult year for many tech companies. Markets have been all over the place, layoffs occurred, and investors weren't funding as much as usual. However, Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund & Host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential Podcast, believes there are reasons to be optimistic for the rest of 2023. In a special workshop, Sam shares advice on how to spot bottlenecks, reallocate th...

Many people at this year's SaaStr Europa wondered about the future of customer success, motivation during hard times, and how to grow in this new era of efficiency.  SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin sat down with the audience for an Ask Me Anything session to answer some of the most pressing questions from the audience.  If you missed part 1, catch that here . First up is a bootstrapped founder...

Startups come in all shapes and sizes on various stages of a timeline, yet it's not surprising how many have the same questions and concerns about how to scale from x to y to z, the right time to hire and fire, and how to keep a team motivated during hard times.    At this year's SaaStr Europa, Jason Lemkin, CEO and Founder of SaaStr, took the stage to answer the audience's most pressing questions...

Retention is the new acquisition.   This paradigm shift has placed Customer Marketing in the spotlight as a pivotal function that helps companies achieve robust NRR metrics. Despite the revenue impact, Customer Marketing teams remain relatively lean and often struggle to secure the necessary support from cross-functional teams. Companies that have successfully unlocked the potential of Customer Ma...

Struggling to find product market-fit?   Join former Divvy CRO, Sterling Snow, and learn how the company went from 0 to a $2.5B exit in just four years using effective go-to-market strategies. Find out what the team did differently that set them apart from their competition and get your product off the ground in no time!  There are 6 primary operating models Divvy used to fuel incredible growth, c...

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. Bi...

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.   *****   Shipping projects doesn't have to be a mess. Notion combines project management with your doc...

June 2016: Loom was on its last legs. With more than one failed launch + fundraising attempt behind them, the co-founders were maxing out credit cards and had about two weeks of runway left before calling it quits. One idea changed everything: they took a chance on a single piece of their product — the video recorder. They decoupled it from the broader platform they'd been developing, launched it...

Learn directly from Edith Harbaugh, Co-founder and Executive Chair of LaunchDarkly, about the top 10 mistakes to avoid when scaling your SaaS company. Edith is an experienced startup executive and has firsthand insights into how to grow any SaaS business quickly and successfully. Don't miss this opportunity to get valuable guidance for scaling to 100 million in ARR! We'll cover how: *Everything is...

Why are things in SaaS so different in 2023 than in 2022? And extremely different than 2021? "I think for most of us during the crazy lockdown era, it was just nuts," Lemkin explains. "And this is, I know this sounds obvious, or maybe it doesn't, but as someone's been doing SaaS since 2005, this is the first time in the last 10 years that SaaS has gotten harder."   Watch the video: https://youtu.b...

Discover the secrets to scaling a SaaS business with UiPath's CEO & Founder Daniel Dines, and Philippe Botteri, Partner at Accel.   Learn 10 interesting lessons for driving a new category in SaaS to over a billion dollars in annual revenue and beyond. Sharing the learnings from the founding of UiPath in 2005 to its present-day success with over a billion dollars in revenue, watch to learn insights...

In 2020-2021, many SaaS startups faced a unique challenge. With teams spread across the globe, they had to find new working patterns to scale their businesses in a distributed environment. Wiz, one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies focused on security solutions, was one of them. The company helps enterprises internationally with contextual and actionable insights to secure their cloud infrastr...

Building a company for $0-$1M in revenue differs wildly from $1-10M ARR. And scaling from $10M to $100M is wildly different still.  Sameer Dholakia, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners with decades of operational experience, shares what you need to change as you scale from $10M to $100M ARR.  The short answer is almost everything.  Keep an open mind as you move into the next chapter of your compa...

You'll never truly understand how to lead a SaaS company until you've done it firsthand. But it always helps to get advice from someone with experience.  Dan Robinson, current Advisor and former CTO at Heap , shares nine essential learnings from nearly a decade of building a SaaS business. Watch the video: https://youtu.be/FXdPe6tGE3A   ***** SaaStr Annual will officially be back in 2023. Join 12,...

At nine figures in revenue and 550 people, the CEO of Lattice, Jack Altman, has seen every stage of building a startup.    In this week's Workshop Wednesday — held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST — Altman talks more in-depth about his viral tweet storm, sharing the eight things you think as a first-time founder that usually aren't true.   This episode is an excerpt of Jack and Jason's conversation....

People keep asking when we'll get out of this downturn in venture. The truth is: It's not a downturn—only a reset. For the people who haven't been raising capital or haven't seen this side of things since, say, 2018, they'll probably think this is a terrible time.    Black Mangroves Founder and Managing Director Arnaud Bonzom, and SaaStr Founder and CEO, Jason Lemkin answer some of the bigger ques...

In this week's episode of CRO Confidential, host Sam Blond wraps up the founder-led sales series with one of the most accomplished sales leaders in the world, Ben Cassidy.  Cassidy was Blond's VP of Sales at Echosign and, before that, was one of the first sales leaders at LinkedIn. Post-Echosign, he was the first sales leader at Talkdesk, valued at $10+B. Cassidy is now a co-founder at CoSell, a.k...

We exist in a market where things are tougher. It's year two of the venture downtown, meaning it's flat, and the value of each dollar in the public market is at 5-6-year lows, making it hard for VCs to invest.    Jason Lemkin, SaaStr Founder and CEO, shares nine types of CEOs that are hard for VCs to work with. Why does it matter what VCs think? They play a small role, but it's an important one. I...

Omni Co-Founder and CEO Colin Zima and CRO Confidential host Sam Blond discuss how leveraging your network can supercharge sales and recruiting in the early days. You don't have to be a former founder or be part of YC to have a great network. Everyone will have friends, family, former college classmates, former work colleagues, or other sources. Colin encourages founders to find your particular "c...

Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta shares his top 10 mistakes in 10 years of running Gainsight. This is the second half of a Workshop Wednesday session in which SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin chats with Nick about his top mistakes as a CEO. You can hear the first half in episode 656.   You can watch the full video here:  https://youtu.be/dtdh2Dkhpig   ***** SaaStr Annual will officially be back in 2023. Join 12,50...

Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta shares his top 10 mistakes in 10 years of running Gainsight. This is the first half of a Workshop Wednesday session in which SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin chats with Nick about his top mistakes as a CEO. You can hear the second half in episode 657, which will air on May 5.   You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/dtdh2Dkhpig   ***** SaaStr Europa is back! And this t...

In this episode of CRO Confidential, Roam Founder & CEO Howard Lerman sits down with Sam Blond to talk about Roam's unconventional approach to acquiring its first customers.   Full video: https://youtu.be/dGj6VZoi0Kw   ***** 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 De...

Growing and scaling your customer base requires robust systems, teams, and playbooks that work in lockstep with one another. One of the most impactful teams, yet often least invested in, is customer marketing. From determining the ideal org structure to understanding clear KPIs, the playbook for customer marketing is still being written and is often misunderstood. In this session, we'll discuss ke...

If you're looking for a marketing strategy to grow your SaaS business, SaaStr's very own Jason Lemkin has five things you can do today, this week, or this month that always work.     And the great news is that almost everything costs little to no money.    Most SaaS companies need to spend more on marketing. To save money, many freeze marketing spend, which is cool for a few months, but if it beco...

If you're looking for a marketing strategy to grow your SaaS business, SaaStr's very own Jason Lemkin has five things you can do today, this week, or this month that always work.     And the great news is that almost everything costs little to no money.    Most SaaS companies need to spend more on marketing. To save money, many freeze marketing spend, which is cool for a few months, but if it beco...