The Latest from SaaStr: Why VCs Love Founders That Respond to Email Almost Instantly

So somewhat frequently I’ll see a VC just get burned and hazed on social media for saying something like, “The best founders respond almost instantly.” 

Or, “The best founders get back to you ASAP.” 

Or, “The best founders get their investor updates at midnight on the last day of the month.”

Founders get upset that VCs seem to be putting themselves up on a pedestal, and seem insensitive to how busy and overloaded a founder’s life is.

The concern is right, but here’s the thing.  It’s true.

On anything important, truly important — I hear back from the best founders somewhere between 5 minutes and 24 hours.  If it’s truly important.

The relationship between product and marketing has always been a part of the C-suite’s success mantra but has historically not been discussed enough.

With the collaboration of ideas and goals between marketing and the product team, startups can drive more growth, get better feedback, and achieve revenue goals using in-hand promotion tools.

Checkout.com’s CMO, Leela Srinivasan, and CPO, Meron Colbeci, discuss four ways they collaborate on critical stages to ensure the satisfaction and conversion of clients. 

So the other day Collin Cadmus, who was VP of Sales at Aircall, summarized a career question I’ve thought about many times over the past 10+ years. 

If you are a great AE, a great individual contributor sales exec … I know you might want “more” than that, more from your career … but is it really better to be a VP of Sales?

I’ve met with so many ambitious AEs over the years who wanted to make the jump straight to VP or “Head of” Sales.  I often counsel at least some patience.  Patience to yes, still make the jump.  But once you have at least the base skills.  And once you know it’s actually … better.

There are quite a few:

• No one good wants to join them
• Don’t move out any weak performers they inherit
• They struggle to truly understand the product
• They don’t really partner with the other executives
• They don’t immediate start talking to customers

But … the #1 top one for me is when they don’t embrace the goals given to them.  That’s disalignment on Day 1, and it just never works out in that case.

Yes, cold emailing VCs does work, especially with earlier-stage investors — if the email “pitch” is perfect.

It has to be the full package, because you’re lacking the social proof of a warm intro.

And there are just so, so, so many start-ups. So many 1000s of them.

Make sure:

• The metrics are just super solid.
• The value prop is 100% clear.
• You’d want to invest simply based on the email, no questions asked, no pitch or demo required.
• It’s perfectly tailored to the VC, so it looks like you have a very strong reason to want that VC in the deal.

For startups, a successful business partnership could mean access to new products, the opportunity to reach new markets, or increase customer loyalty. In this session, Kange Kaneene, VP at SAP.iO Foundries (North & Latin America and Caribbean), and Alok Kapur, Global VP of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development, share some essential tips on how growth companies can partner with large software companies to create powerful partnerships. 

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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