Hey SaaStr Community,

So we’ve looked at a lot of great sources of data on how much tougher the late stage venture markets are now, and yeah they all point the same way. 

It’s a lot, lot, lot harder than 12 months ago to raise a Series A or late round.  And growth rounds are down 80%+ or more.

But this latest chart from Carta visualizes it in perhaps the most helpful way — around $100m rounds.  Forget about valuations and letters, let’s talk about money. 

How much money is coming into startups.

And Q4’22 was … terrible.  Not just worse than 2021, of course.  Not even just down 80% year-over-year.  But worse than any quarter in 2020, and worse than any quarter in 2019.

So a while back we did a deep dive on why 95% of the VPs of Sales candidates just won’t thrive at your start-up.  That doesn’t mean they are “bad”. 

Many, in fact, will thrive as a VP or Director somewhere else. 

It’s just they won’t make it at your particular, early-stage, quirky, pre-brand startup.

I think it’s important to repeat that analysis, but for your first few sales reps.  The ones you hire before your first great VP of Sales.  The ones you hire yourself.  Most of the ones you meet that seem good or even great may well be … but they won’t make it at your start-up.

Let’s list the reasons why a successful sales rep might still fail at your startup, even one with a great product.

So there are Cloud and SaaS companies growing quickly.  And then there are just a handful growing like SentinelOne. 

At almost $500m in ARR, it’s still growing a stunning … 106% (!).  Wow.

Yes, cybersecurity remains hot, even in these more challenging times.  And for the very best?  Red hot.  The buyers are still there in droves.

 $100k+ customers are the key to hypergrowth.  SentinelOne’s customer count is up 55% overall to 9,250, but $100k+ customers are up 99%.  A story we see again and again of gradually going upmarket and doing bigger and bigger deals.  But they didn’t rush there overnight.

It's here! The full agenda has just launched for SaaStr APAC 2023!

Get ready for 50+ speakers for the very first SaaStr APAC event in Singapore, including:

• APAC Update: State of the Cloud with Bessemer Venture Partners, Anant Vidur Puri, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners
• Lessons Learned in Scaling to $1B ARR: From VMware, AWS and Databricks with Databrick's SVP and GM Ed Lenta
• The Secrets to Building a Global Platform and Ecosystem with Xero's Global Chief Strategy Officer, Damien Tampling
• The Playbook to Building Cross-Border SaaS Teams: Challenges and Best Practices with Vymo, Multiplier, WATI and Sequoia with Bianca Ho, Co-Founder & COO @ WATI, Yamini Bhat, Co-founder & CEO @ Vymo, Sagar Khatri, Co-Founder and CEO @ Multiplier, Abheek Anand, Managing Director @ Sequoia SEA
• Top 5 Trends of APAC's Unicorns: Deep Insights from 100+ SaaS (and Cloud) Startups with Stripe's Head of Product Valerie Wagoner

And many, many more!

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.

“Thanks for the discussion, but we’ve have 4 years more on our contract with your competitor.  Talk to you in a few years.”

— email forwarded from SaaStr community CEO a little ways back

Once you’ve been selling for even a little while, you’ll start to assemble a list of the common “objections” to buying your app.

These so-called objections will bother you, not because they are wrong per se — but because they are coming from leads.  Truly qualified leads and prospects. Especially, in-bound leads.  I mean — why did the prospect even bother to in-bound if they aren’t interested in buying?

It’s the most common objection you’ll get in SaaS sales …

Not Right Now. I Don’t Have Budget. It’s Great, But Not This Quarter.

There’s a slide I see again and again from start-ups: 

2 of the early sales reps are at 100% of quota, sometimes 150%-200%. 

And 8 others? 10%-40%.

What’s happening here?

Are 2 of the first 10 reps really so much better as the rest?  Well yes, probably.  You’ll continue to see that over time to some extent.  The top reps will way outperform the average reps.  But not this much. 

So why so often, do only 2 of the first 8-10 sales reps perform?  And the others perform so poorly vs. the 2 that are doing well?

Almost always there is a strong correlation to No Training.

Attaining unicorn status can be incredibly difficult. While many startups aspire toward unicorn status, only a few achieve it. Unicorn companies often need to scale quickly to meet the demands of their rapidly growing customer base. But it requires a lot of resources and infrastructure to support the growth.

To achieve this level of success, startups need a combination of strong financial performance, innovative products or services, and a favorable market environment. Drift co-founders David Cancel and Elias Torres share their insights on steering a company to a $1 billion valuation.

Trustero is looking for a Sales Representative to join their growing sales team who can generate quality leads as well as follow up on inbound email and telephone inquiries.

Orum is seeking an Enterprise Account Executive who can 

lead the enterprise sales cycle end to end with late-stage-private and public fintechs, banks, and other financial institutions.

• SaaStr 627: Move Over, Sales: Why Product & Marketing are the C-Suite's New Power Partnership with Checkout.com CMO Leela Srinivasan and CPO Meron Colbeci

• SaaStr 626: 10 Lessons Learned Scaling to $1B Valuation with Drift Co-founders David Cancel and Elias Torres
  
• SaaStr 625: True Story: What Breaks Going from $0-$100M ARR in Less Than 2 Years with Wiz CRO Colin Jones

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

People stopped wanting to work hard somewhere around 2019 or so

It only accelerated in 2020 and 2021

But we brute forced it with tons of capital

How are we going to deal with this in 2023?

Still murky

You can steal a lot more customers from the competition than you think

But you need a dedicated Steal Team

Standard sales motions and normal marketing only land the perfectly timed steals

A few super powers you can have as a founder for your team:

1/ Being intensely loyal

2/ Cutting out politics

3/ Enabling fast career advancement

4/ Quietly backfilling weaknesses

5/ Being truly grateful

© SaaStr 2023

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