The Latest from SaaStr: Freemium is Back! But You’ll Probably Need 50 Million Active Users

THE LATEST FROM SAASTR

By Jason Lemkin  · Friday, October 14, 2022 | Early, Scale

Does “age” even matter anymore for SaaS founders, if it ever did? 

On the one hand, the Stripe founders became billionaires in their teens.  On the other hand, many SaaS founders are on to their 3d or 4th success.  SaaS has just been around for a while. 

The vast size of the Cloud is attracting more and more founders of all ages, backgrounds, nationalities, and more.  And many CEOs and founders … just want to keep going. Will many of us founders just do SaaS … forever?

DEAR SAASTR

By Jason Lemkin  · Friday, October 14, 2022 | Early, Fundraising

It varies based on the stage:

Many pre-seed investors sort of take the founders’ word for it that their financials are accurate.

At SaaStr Fund, we also generally do a bank account cash flow test. We make sure the bank statements tie to the financial statements given to us. If they do, the financials and revenue are likely at least 90% accurate, which is good enough for seed stage.

NEW PODCAST + VIDEO

By Amelia Ibarra  · Friday, October 14, 2022 | Leadership, Metrics

It’s no secret that 2022 has brought market shifts that even the previous two years lacked. While previously, investors were a bit more open and hyper-focused on growth, now SaaS VCs are more interested in proving efficiency alongside growth.

Christoph Janz, Partner at Point Nine Capital, shares the secret to attracting investors in the new landscape.

SAASTR EUROPA 2023

That's right everyone,

London's calling and SaaStr Europa is heading for the Tobacco Docks in London, 6-7 June, 2023. 

We'll be bringing the best in SaaS to London, for two epic days of networking, content, 1:1s, workshops, braindates and more.

Early bird team packs start at just $299 - but only till October 31st!

MARKETING

By Jason Lemkin  · Thursday, October 13, 2022 | Marketing

Freemium is great.  Freemium forces you to have better onboarding and a slicker, easier-to-use product.  Freemium is the way you and I like to try and often buy. 

But 9 times out of 10, Freemium alone isn’t enough alone to power you to $100m+ ARR.  The problem?  There simply aren’t enough businesses in the entire country + Europe to get most products to a $100m freemium business in almost any business/SaaS/work segment.

DEAR SAASTR

By Jason Lemkin · Thursday, October 13, 2022 | Q&A, Sales

Few things are harder than being a CEO, once you have something. It’s so hard, it weighs on you all the time.

But the benefits are also unique.

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

Hear from Procurement Leaders at Gong and Zip about how they've optimized the B2B buying experience to help their business move with velocity while controlling rouge spent.

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

Get corporate cards and spend management software in a single integrated solution that enables 100% compliance and 0 receipt chasing in 100+ countries.

© SaaStr 2022

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