The Latest from SaaStr: Figma Was Talking to Adobe For A Decade

THE LATEST FROM SAASTR

By Jason Lemkin  · Monday, October 31, 2022 | Fundraising, Scale

CNBC had a good write-up of how the Figma acquisition got done.  How you really need a lot of both CEO and President/SVP level support to get a big “Bet The Farm” deal like this done, and more.

One of the many things that stuck out to me was just how long the $20B acquisition was in the making.

A decade.

Q&A

By Jason Lemkin  · Monday, October 31, 2022 | Early, Q&A

You can help them actually deploy your app. To actually, truly get the value out of it. Not just buy it. Buying a product is just Step 1, at best.  

Most sales reps focus way too much on the buying, and not enough on the deploying. That’s what customers care about.  The cost itself often isn’t even that important vs the overall scope and impact of the project.

The best reps create so much value, that, in the end, customers do them a favor back and buy on time.

DEAR SAASTR

By Jason Lemkin  · Sunday, October 30 , 2022 | Leadership, Q&A

A founder-CEO has 4 big advantages:

She/he can make big bets. Mark Zuckerberg spent 10% of Facebook’s shares to buy WhatsApp. Without even allowing much board-level discussion. $20b at the time — far more now. And $1b to buy Instagram when it had a handful of employees. Crazy!

These are bets a Non-Founder CEO almost never can make.

Too risky, too much from the gut / hip, too dilutive. The Hired/Non-Founder CEO loses her job when these don’t work out. Zuck doesn’t. And the non-founder CEO has to socialize the idea, convince everyone. It takes months or even years. Zuck can move in a day.

NEW VIDEO

By Amelia Ibarra  · Monday, October 31, 2022 | Leadership

As the world becomes increasingly digital, cybersecurity becomes increasingly critical. After serving as the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for the New York Stock Exchange for twenty years, Jerry Perullo of Adversarial Risk Management has learned how to protect a company’s digital assets and infrastructure. Alongside SafeBase Director of Strategy and Operations Macy Mody, they share how to know when it’s time to hire a CISO and what you should be doing even before you hire one.

SAASTR EVENTS

We're kicking off our Workshop Wednesday series, tomorrow at 10am with Snowflake.

Guan Wang, Global Director of Marketing Intelligence at Snowflake will be sharing The Playbook to Building a High-Performing Team and Retaining Top Talent.

This 30-minute, interactive format will be all online, and allow for audience participation throughout the session, as well as dedicated Q&A.

FUNDRAIDING

By Jason Lemkin · Saturday, October 29, 2022 | Early, Fundraising

So I’ve seen a trend among many startups these days which is to have a VP or Director of Business Ops instead of a VP / Director of Finance.

They handle the cash too, but also go deep on the business in a way a “finance person” usually simply can’t.

These folks often come from strategy consulting or banking backgrounds. And they are often great hires, often very smart.

But here’s the thing: they build GIGO financial plans.  Garbage In, Garbage Out.

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

Tip the payment scales in your favor by being one of the first to unlock exclusive early access to BlueSnap's 2023 Payment Predictions eBook.

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

Your sales and customer success teams are losing deals and customers due to backlogged integration requests.

But can you really justify spending months of development on each integration, when an embedded iPaaS can help offload 70% of the work?

There are a lot of factors to consider in this build vs. buy decision, and it's all outlined in this guide.

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