Hey SaaStr Community,

Happy New Year from all of us at Team SaaStr! And thank all for continuing to be apart of this incredible global community. 

This will be our most ambitious year yet - with more global events and content than we've ever had before. Whoa. 

We've be adding our 3rd major global event in Q1 this year with the very first SaaStr APAC in Singapore. 

Here's our lineup of in-person events for 2023:

So this was a Truly Terrible, Very Bad, Just Plain Awful year for SaaS IPOs — and IPOs in general.  The IPO window is closed.  Shut, mostly. 

In fact, IPOs had their biggest slump since 2008.

IPO listing volume is down a stunning 93%(!) since 2021. 

Last year, it seemed like everyone at $100m+ ARR could IPO.  Today, it looks like almost no one will.  At least, not. for a while.  The downstream effects on venture capital and more are still to come.

And SPACs?  Well, they ended the year in a total disaster.

So we have a classic set of New Year’s Resolutions in SaaS that we update every year.  

But 2023 is so … unique.  

The Best in SaaS are still growing at incredible rates, but the overhang from the crazy multiples and VC funding run of late 2020-early 2022 will hang over our heads for the rest of the year.  

And the combo of inflation and CFO-level scrutiny for deals is wreaking havoc with all our plans.

So with that … here are Your Top 10 New Year’s SaaS Resolutions for 2023.

Too many of you, “CMO” will seem like an almost silly title. 

At, say, $2m in ARR, when you’re just figuring out demand gen, SDRs and BDRs, and all that … why would you need a CMO?  You need a VP of Demand Gen!  Maybe a VP of Marketing.  But the last thing you probably need is a fancy title running around, spouting marketing-ism. 

But over time, things will change.

Roughly, once you (x) have an established brand, and (y) have a marketing engine that is working, and (z) most importantly, once demand gen has finally become somewhat routine … you’ll need a CMO.  Because you’ll need a marketing quarterback.

Hiring a VP of Sales in a startup is an incredibly hard thing. It requires good instincts, luck, timing, and plenty of other things to work.  

Even if you hire the right person there is no guarantee your startup is going to make it.

That said, it is gotten wrong a TON.

And part of the problem is VP of Sales searches center too much around statements like “They were most recently the VP of Enterprise Sales at IBM” or “I want to introduce you to this candidate who was the RVP at Salesforce and…). And just stop. Pause. And rethink this. There is another way to go about this.

If I were running a VP of Sales search, this is what my utopian criteria would be.

RevenueCat (where I was lucky enough to be the first investor) automates subscription management for mobile apps.  It recently published its annual review of data from the 10,000+ mobile apps it powers subscription management for and I learned a few interesting things. 

Longer Trials Are Better.

This is always a debate, and RevenueCat is more focused on mobile apps that traditional browser / desktop apps.  But I still found the data very compelling.

They found that apps with longer trial periods converted better.

Some of the toughest lessons I’ve learned … and continue to re-learn:

Even very talented co-founders may leave. You need to also make sure they are 110% committed. 

Very mediocre VPs are often very good at talking the talk. Mediocre execs often talk the talk even better than the best up-and-coming ones. You have to make sure they can actually do it. Especially at your stage.

Your first and even second release likely won’t be good enough. It just takes longer to get a true sellable product to market than most budget for.

DigitalOcean has been the “just right tool for SMBs and startups” and have avoided diluting their efforts by going upmarket to achieve growth. Instead, their growth has been fueled by continuously serving its customers—SMBs and Startups—by adding the products they want and need.

As a result, they achieved $640M+ in ARR, a staggering 41% increase in ARR YoY, and a 7% increase in revenue YoY.  And as of December 2022, DigitalOcean now serves over 620,000 customers in over 185 countries.

Cliff Bockard, Senior Vice President of Revenue at DigitalOcean, joined us at SaaStr Scale to discuss how businesses can serve SMBs and still bring in large numbers of revenue.

Vonage is looking for a Senior Account Executive to manage all steps of the selling process and coordinate complex decision-making in order to overcome objections to closure.

Everstage is seeking an Account Executive who can help

manage the entire sales cycles, from establishing a customer contact, stakeholder mapping, prospecting, qualifying, demo/POC, negotiation and closure.

• SaaStr 619: 3 Lessons from Building a Marketing Engine to Grow Pipeline from Millions to Billions with Samsara CMO Sarah Patterson

• SaaStr 620: 8 Ideas on How to Motivate the Sales Team After a Rough Patch with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin
  
• SaaStr 621: Big Numbers from Small Customers: How DigitalOcean Accelerated at Scale with DigitalOcean Senior Vice President of Revenue Cliff Bockard

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

Probably the biggest career limiting move I see is:

- CMOs challenging CEO on Marketing Strategy

- VP Sales challenging CEO on How to Sell You may be right. Bring up your objections, respectfully. Quietly do it your way as much as you can.

And then … you gotta fall into line

            The best sales teams closed plenty this past week, 

and will close more this coming week

The rest close nothing this time of year,

and tell you everything has pushed to next year

Which type do you have?

To many of you, it may feel like tougher times in SaaS

One thing I can tell you:

Things don't bounce back overnight

But they do bounce back fast

© SaaStr 2023

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