5 Interesting Learnings From Zscaler; Plus Weekly SaaS News and Updates

Hey SaaStr Community,

So now is an odd time for SaaS startups:

• The best are growing faster than ever.
• It looks like unicorn rounds are still being announced almost every day.
• VC funds are flush with more cash than ever before.

but

It seems like half the VCs in the world are saying the sky is falling.

So what’s going on?

It’s Basically a Quiet Series A, Series B, C and D Crunch Now

So Zscaler is the quiet SaaS and Cloud leader that just … delivers.  Even in a challenging time for public stocks.

Zscaler is worth a breathtaking $30B at $1B in ARR, growing a stunning 63%.

With a seasoned solo founder that knew security cold, Zscaler has been a quiet winner in Zero Trust and more.  Zscaler leaned early into security in a cloud-first model, and it worked.  With CEO Jay Chandhry still owning 25% of a $30B market cap, it’s also an epic model in managing dilution.

This edition of the SaaStr weekly is sponsored in part by DuploCloud

The $1K Project Ukraine is a volunteer-based effort to directly connect sponsors in USA and around the world to help Ukrainian families impacted by the senseless and inhumane war.

So the story of the past few years has been the explosion of SaaS and Cloud unicorns.  With upwards of 400 SaaS and Cloud startups now valued at $1B+ now (out of 1,200+ total Unicorns), times are good.

But … but … it’s not that simple.  VCs and investors in unicorns need to make money.  They need them to become … decacorns.  Especially the later stage investors do.

This edition of the SaaStr weekly is sponsored in part by Reachdesk

What should you expect from your SDRs?

How do you ensure growth is good growth? How do you build a durable business that can withstand the challenges that come up? Tolithia Kornweibel, CRO (previously CMO) of Gusto, discusses a CMO-CRO working model that works for long-term, durable growth.

• SaaStr is seeking a Director of Digital Events to to own executing our global, digital events from end-to-end, including: acting as the lead producer for our digital events, driving attendees, meeting or exceeding ticket sales, leveling up communications to build awareness, community-building, and anything that will drive our digital events to the forefront of SaaS and Cloud. 

• ActiveCampaign is looking for a ambitious Customer Onboarding Specialist to provide onboarding support to their mid-market customers.

549

From 0 to $500 Million ARR in 6 years: Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar

550

SaaStr 550: How to Reinvent a Category that’s Already Been Won with Mark Ghermezian, Co-Founder @ Braze, and Founder and General Partner @ m]x[v capital

551

SaaStr 551: Top 5 Mistakes While Building & Scaling Global Product Teams from Microsoft to Salesforce to Hubspot with Hubspot GM & VP, Products, Poorvi Shrivastav

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

Top advantages to being a first mover:

- No roadmap

- Tiny market

- Customers aren’t sure

- Limited legitimacy

- Never budgeted

- VCs don’t get it

- Many VPs don’t get it

- Tiny TAM at first

- Seems minor to many

- Why wasn’t it already done if it’s so important

It’s great

Seed investment isn’t slowing down

But the momentum game into a quick 3x-5x Series A (and beyond) is

Will see how it plays out

There’s an argument to be made that all that matters if how fast you are growing after $100m ARR

The rest is just a warm up

I'm increasingly thinking NRR is the wrong metric for your CS team

Huh? How could that be?

It's the wrong incentive structure

High NRR is often mostly "in the bag" for many SaaS leaders

It leads to laziness in CS. Just Everywhere.

Not at the VP level. But at the IC level.

© SaaStr 2022

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