The Latest from SaaStr: When You Fall Out of Product-Market Fit

THE LATEST FROM SAASTR

By Jason Lemkin  · Friday, November 4, 2022 | Growth, Product

I’ve been investing just long enough now to see start-ups fall out of product-market fit.  When I started blogging on SaaStr.com a decade back (!), I didn’t really think this happened.  I thought folks got out-sold, lost to the competition, and even failed to evolve. 

But I didn’t get that apps with happy customers, and some real traction, could fall out of product-market fit.

But they do.

Start-ups growing at fast rates at $1m slow down at $5m or $10m. One reason is low NPS and a poor product.  That’s the #1 cause I’ve seen. 

VENTURE

By Jason Lemkin  · Thursday, November 3, 2022 | Career Growth & Advice, Early

So we’ve talked about it often here at SaaStr, but things are just so … odd right now in SaaS.  The best are still growing, if not faster than ever, then still close to it. 

And while AWS’s growth is down a bit, it’s still at epic levels, Azure isn’t even really down, and Google Cloud is growing faster than ever.  It’s still close to the best times ever in SaaS for growth and customers, even with mixed signals in the economy.

And yet … the stock markets have plummeted.  Cloud stocks are down 50%, and multiples are down 75% from their peaks.

NEW PODCAST + VIDEO

By Amelia Ibarra  · Friday, November 4, 2022 | Leadership, Metrics

Since the start of 2022, the focus of SaaS leaders has changed from growth at all costs to sustainable growth and being default alive. Often, leaders struggle to choose between increasing the runway for their companies and pursuing growth.

But why not both?

Kristina Shen, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, joins Sean Jacobsohn and Scott Beechuk, Partners at Norwest Ventures, to discuss how to prioritize both successfully. Kristina shares how to manage your capital via burn management, and Sean and Scott provide their insights into alternative ways of achieving growth.

Q&A

By Jason Lemkin  · Friday, November 4, 2022 | Early, Fundraising

My top list:

Slow down big decisions — when you aren’t sure. You have to move fast and break things, but if the pit in your stomach says, “Maybe don’t do that,” — slow that decision down. At least, sleep on it. My biggest mistakes were when I said roll the dice, but my gut wasn’t sure the downside risk was worth it.

SAASTR EVENTS

Workshop Wednesdays is new series where we’ll be bringing some of the best SaaStr speakers to you LIVE, every Wednesday. 

Each workshop will be hosted in a live, interactive 30-minute format at 10am Pacific each and every Wednesday. This workshop will be 100% LIVE, not pre-recorded, and will be hosted in an, interactive 30-minute format, including Q&A.

This coming Wednesday, Brandon Gleklen, VP at Battery Ventures will be hosting, The Fall of the “Metric Monolith”: Are Traditional SaaS Metrics Outdated?

SAASTR ANNUAL 2023

SaaStr events couldn’t happen without our partners, and we wanted to give a special shout-out to some of our newest sponsors for SaaStr Annual 2023. At the 9th ever SaaStr Annual, ~200 of the best and hottest companies on earth will go BIG as partners/sponsors. Join these incredible companies to experience all the value of SaaStr!

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.

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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