Most Likely, It’s Not The Market. It’s You; Plus Weekly SaaS News and Updates

Hey SaaStr Community,

So Hunter Walk of Homebrew aptly summarized what I’ve been trying to say less eloquently for about 2-3 months.

For 90% of startups, if you’re struggling right now … sure, blame the market.  But it’s not that, if your market is huge. It’s You.

This isn’t to say maybe things haven’t gotten a bit harder.  If you’re selling to struggling startups, that’s a challenge today.  And enterprises, for now, seem more immune to all the tumult than SMBs in some cases.

But don’t give yourself an “excuse” that the economy has stopped you from getting to 0.1% or even 1% market share.  Especially when the leaders in SaaS are growing faster than ever.  Even accelerating.

So more of our 5 Interesting Learnings series has been on the iconic SaaS companies we all know.  From how Asana got to its first $250m in ARR, to how Slack got to $1B ARR, to how Zoom got to $3.5B ARR, and more.

But there are a bunch of quieter SaaS and B2B public companies under the radar. One of those companies is Model N, which was founded waaay back in 1999 (!) as a contract management solution for life sciences, and its built modules and more features on top of that, into a true revenue management solution for the industry. 

Today it’s valued at almost $1 Billion, at $200m in revenue growing … 11%.  A very long and slow burn to a billion-dollar market cap.But one we can learn from.

So generally, as an investor, you don’t want to worry too much about TAM — Total Addressable Market.  At least, not after a certain point.  If a SaaS company can double or even triple at $1m ARR, it’s on to something good.  Something big.  Even if the initial market sweet spot is small.

But what I’ve learned over the past years is some founders get more ahead of a small-ish TAM than others.  And most of us start with small TAMs, even if in theory they can be large.

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

SaaStr is turning 10!

What started as a simple WordPress blog in 2012 has now become the world’s largest community of SaaS executives, founders, and entrepreneurs.

Our goal is (and remains) to help everyone get from $0 to $100m+ ARR with less stress and more success.  We do that with a combination of industry-leading content and community connections.

SaaStr Annual 2022 will be a huge celebration that brings together 10,000+ of the best in SaaS, the best speakers, the best mentors, the best CEOs, CROs, CMOs, and more.  And with Dreamforce and Inbound now smaller gatherings for now — it's the clear #1 place to be this year in SaaS.

My first 5 hires at Adobe Sign / EchoSign, beyond the core founding+ team, once we had paying customers and first, if early, product-marketing fit:

#1:  Full-time sales rep at $8k-ish MRR.  I Should have hired two.  Should have hired him even early.  Hired once we were closing > 1 new, non self-service customer a week.

#2.  A great, paid, full-time-ish intern.  A great one is a terrific force multiplier.

Co-founder and CEO of Insider, Hande Cilingir, talks about what it takes to write a successful revenue growth story. She draws from personal experience scaling a global product company to $1B and shares common mistakes.

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

• TravelPerk is looking for a Partner Marketing Manager to join their team in London to help market their partner ecosystem, support the onboarding of new partners, help enable internal and external teams and, develop long-term partnership success. 

• DemandWell is seeking a Product Designer to work alongside their team focused on design for their SaaS platform, built by & for B2B Marketers. As a Product Designer, you’ll collaborate cross-functionally with our Engineering, SEO Consulting, Sales, and Success teams to discover, create, and launch new software.

• SaaStr 571: 5 More Mistakes the CEO/Founder of ZoomInfo Made on His Journey to IPO (and Beyond) Part 2

• SaaStr 572: 10 Mistakes in Building Out Your Revenue Organization: A CEO's Perspective with Insider CEO Hande Çilingir
• SaaStr 573: Scaling from $1 to $10M, an AMA with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

Gartner: businesses will spend $100,000,000,000 more on software in 2023 than 2022

Yes, $100B more in 2023

Startups: THIS IS THE WORSE RECESSION SINCE THAT TULIP THING I READ ABOUT IN SCHOOL

Raise venture capital if you can commit to years of insane growth

Don't if you can't

The average public SaaS company spends about 50% of its revenue on sales and marketing

and 20% on engineering and product

I know you want that to be the other way around

It just doesn't work that way

When you push the mediocre, they quit

When you push the great ones, they step up

Tough to get just right

© SaaStr 2022

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