The Latest from SaaStr: The Early Hire that Almost Next Works

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THE LATEST FROM SAASTR

The Early Hire That Almost Never Works: Director of Outbound

By Jason Lemkin · Friday, September 30, 2022 | Early, Sales

Want to get outbound going, for the first time?

What almost never works, somewhat surprisingly, is hiring a Director of Outbound as your first outbound hire.

Why does this seemingly logical hire fail?

LET'S TAKE A LOOK

DEAR SAASTR

What are Some Red Flags That Signal You Shouldn’t Take a Start-up Job?

By Jason Lemkin · Friday, September 30, 2022 | Career Growth & Advice, Early

Number One is: Don’t join a B2B/SaaS start-up that won’t share its revenue and current growth rate with you — and its Zero Cash Date. It’s fine if it’s pre-revenue if that’s when you want to join, or super-early, or mid-stage. But SaaS and B2B are about scaling revenue. If they won’t share this — there’s a good chance it’s a dog. And they also have to share how long their cash will last. Startup folks are OK taking some risk there. They just need to know how much.

3 MORE RED FLAGS

NEW PODCAST + VIDEO

5 Critical and Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups with Y Combinator Managing Director of YC Continuity Anu Hariharan

By Amanda Beaty · Friday, September 30, 2022 | Marketing, SaaS Product Pricing

Anu Hariharan works with hundreds of startups annually as Managing Director at Y Combinator. Through experience, she explains five company-altering learnings from B2B startups that founders should consider at the earliest stages of their businesses.

THE 5 LEARNINGS

FUNDRAISING

Let’s Be Clear, 2021 Was Insane

By Jason Lemkin · Thursday, September 29, 2022 | Blog Posts

So as we’ve talked about before, these are Strange Days in SaaS. The best in SaaS and Cloud are growing faster than ever … yet are worth less than half of what they were not all that long ago.

Where will be when we come out of this? Will we come out of it at all? Or is this The New Normal?

I don’t know. You don’t know. And certainly, 90% of the VCs on Twitter don’t know.

THERE ARE A FEW THINGS WE DO KNOW

DEAR SAASTR

How Do Startups Really Sell to Big Enterprises Before They’re Proven?

By Jason Lemkin · Thursday, September 29, 2022 | Q&A, Sales

You solve their problems. And you solve a specific problem that is important to your buyer — that the existing, current, proven vendors don’t solve well.

Large enterprises use lots of tools, widgets, and software in their businesses, but they tend to use the obvious, trusted solutions. At least 90% of the time. They aren’t looking for a cheaper version of ServiceNow or a slicker version of Salesforce, for example.

THEY'RE LOOKING FOR 2 THINGS

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Zip

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This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Brex

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