The Latest from SaaStr: Investing and Venture Capital in 2023

So there’s a quiet SaaS success story you probably don’t know much about, but can learn a lot from.

It’s Docebo.

It’s a leader in a pretty crowded space (Learning Management Systems) with dozens of top vendors. 

And yet …

It’s worth $1.1 Billion today, doing $145,000,000 in ARR.  It’s growing 40%+ on a constant currency basis.  It’s cash-flow positive, and … it only burned $14,000,000 to get there.

The new year has officially begun, and since the markets have become more unpredictable over the past few years, SaaS founders are likely wondering what the VC landscape will look like in 2023. What sort of funding environment can founders expect?

SaaS Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin and Atrium Founder and CRO Pete Kazanjy sit down to discuss the state of investing in 2023 and what founders should keep in mind for the year ahead. 

Our very first SaaStr APAC event taking place in Singapore just got a major upgrade!

With demand over the past two weeks doubling our initial set of attendees- we’re now tracking to 750-1,000 attendees for SaaStr APAC 2023. (Final numbers may be even higher as we get closer!)

WOW. An incredible response from our global community for the very first SaaStr event of its kind in Asia-Pacific. And with this boost of attendees, we’re upgrading to a much larger venue so that we can host as many of our SaaStr Community in person for SaaStr APAC.

Calcalist summarized a report from Viola Capital in Israel on the state of Israeli unicorns. Their analysis? Half aren’t unicorns anymore.

This sounds about right to me, and the data they looked at is interesting:

• 40% of unicorn rounds were led by “one-off” investors, tourists.  This makes the valuations suspect.
• Israeli startup funding in 2H’22 was back to the pace of 2019.  This is probably what we’re all really seeing, or going to see.  The Covid Boom is now well in the rear view mirror.

I wrote a version of this post some time ago, and I think it’s really one of the most important posts on SaaStr of all time, so I wanted to update it, especially in these times of more scrutiny and less capital.  Because many of you are wondering … should I let my VP of Sales go?

A debate so many start-ups go through is what to do about a “Just OK” VP of Sales they’ve hired. 

The VP of Sales turns out to be OK, but not great.  He or she doesn’t change the game.  But they’re not failing either.  Things are better than before — just not nearly as good as they could or should be.

How do we define this?

Going from a business of 50 people to 150 people, growing revenue 5x, and completing two major rounds of funding will teach a person a lot about the startup world. Sarah Breathnach, Head of Demand Gen and Field Marketing at Hunters and 3x startup marketing leader, did just that. 

In the first SaaStr workshop Wednesday of the new year — held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. — Breathnach shares why hiring a marketing team to do lead generation is a big mistake. 

Slow it down.

Email is amazing. CEO, CXOs, VPs and more read their email. Including cold emails. They don’t pick up the phone anymore. They don’t listen to voicemail much anymore. They don’t care about your tweet.

But they do read email everyday.

All day long, in fact.

But:

• There is way too much spam & promotional email.
• Stuff that goes into your Promotions tab is also never read.
• So what about your email in particular.

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

Brex is reimagining corporate cards and spend management to help founders get fast access to 10-20 times higher credit limits, unlimited virtual cards, a no-fee business account, and built-in software. 

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