The Latest from SaaStr: 5 Interesting Learnings from Lightspeed Commerce at $750M

So one large category of software spend is on Point of Sale systems. 

The one most of us know best in Toast, because we all use Toast so often when we go out to dinner.  And it indeed has strong market share there.  And perhaps the one we know second-best is Square. 

But “POS” systems and software are everywhere, and are a lot more than just Toast and Square.

One leader in SMB commerce is Lightspeed Commerce, founded way back in 2005.

They are strongest in retail, but also have a presence in restaurants as well.  And their mix of software, payments and hardware revenue drives up the total deal size — but puts a lot of pressure on margins. 

They’re at a $750,000,000 run rate, not that much smalelr than Toast, and are still growing a very healthy 24% (!). 

The other day I had a whiplash moment as a customer of a Unicorn SaaS company. 

I had a large problem with a piece of software with a lot of integrations in it, and it really wasn’t clear whose problem it was.  But one of the vendors stepped up and said they’d solve the problem.  They worked over the weekend and fixed it!  Beyond above and beyond.

I became the world’s biggest super fan of this vendor.  I said put me on the website, make me a reference account, anything.  I became Mr NPS 100.

And then something happened.

The fix … broke.  And things were sort of bad again.

I went back to the vendor that did the fix and told them the fix didn’t work anymore.  After some research, they said I’d have to go to a third party to fix the problem.  That it wasn’t their problem, it was another vendor, and that they would no longer be able to help me.

Perhaps that was all it was fair to ask of them.  Still, I then became NPS 0.  I no longer had a solution.  After an initial heroic effort.

Great support is far more than solving a problem here or there.  And importantly, even if you do a lot of things well — one bad piece of the customer experience can ruin even the best elements of support.

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

Your business can thrive with agile and innovative solutions to help automate business processes to scale your business. SAP Cloud ERP is at the core of making these capabilities come to life and helping your business grow.

If you’re looking for a marketing strategy to grow your SaaS business, SaaStr’s very own Jason Lemkin has five things you can do today, this week, or this month that always work.

And the great news is that almost everything costs little to no money.

Most SaaS companies need to spend more on marketing. To save money, many freeze marketing spend, which is cool for a few months, but if it becomes the norm, they won’t have enough pipeline for the rest of the year.

No matter what, you need to do more marketing in the back half of this year.

If you don’t, your teams are going to starve. As the saying goes, “You can’t cut your way to growth.” 

While many of these ideas seem basic, they aren’t done enough. Instead of tackling all five strategies simultaneously, do just one thing better, and you’ll get more leads. 

Even today, in tougher times, sales rep turn-over is far higher than it used to be. You can’t completely stop it.

But you can mitigate it. 

The key is a great VP of Sales combined with a very fair comp plan — and a promotion path for those that want it.

First, you need a VP of Sales that great reps want to work for. If you cut corners here, it will be very hard to hire and especially retain great reps. You’ll often in fact see your top reps almost immediately leave if you’ve made a mishire at VP of Sales.

Second, you need a comp plan where the top reps make a lot of money. Not necessarily everyone. The “average” rep just needs to be paid market. But if the top 10% of reps make a lot of money — by closing a lot — everyone will see it’s possible.

Third, successful reps making lots of money don’t want to leave a great boss unless they have to, or for a promotion. If you are doing very well as an Account Exec, have it dialed in, and have a great boss that has your back with a product you believe in — it doesn’t get much better. They tend to stay until the VP of Sales leaves, or some other big change comes. Or they want a promotion … which is the next point...

Let’s break it down.

Let’s talk about what you don’t have to get right:

• Rockstar Founders? Not required. Yes, to build the next Slack, the next Amazon, the next Tesla, whatever, perhaps you need one of the greatest founders of all time. But many founders at very successful start-ups are smart and incredibly driven, but no Elon Musk. I’m not / wasn’t.  Many founders with nine-figure exits I’d describe as merely “fairly smart” and sometimes, not even insanley insightful.  They are just all-in, 100% committed, and work harder, sell harder, and importantly, hire better than the rest.
• Amazing Technology? Nope. See Airbnb and 100s of others.  Many startups don’t start off with particularly amazing software.
• First to Market? Of course not. Very few SaaS leaders were the first in their space.
• 10x Better than Incumbents. Only sort of required. Yes, your new product does have to better than the existing guys. But sometimes only in just 1 small, but important, way. And sometimes just Cheaper and Best Service also work without any real different features.
• Domain expertise. Not required. Helps, yes. But you can learn a lot if you are 100% committed.  After 12, 18, 24 months of the job, if you talk to 500 customers, you’ll learn the space. It helps, but it’s not required.
• Work 100 Hours a Week? It helps. But it doesn’t make the business. But time in the office is not as important as time spent thinking about the business.

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

Secureframe makes it easy to get SOC 2 compliant. With guided workflows and one-click integrations, the entire process is automated.

Since 2015, SaaStr has been the world’s largest community for Founders, Executives, Entrepreneurs, and Investors. Our goal first and foremost has always been to help everyone scale from $0 to $100 million and beyond with less stress and more success.

At SaaStr Annual 2017, we hosted the first SaaStr Meet a VC Program, in-person, to help connect founders and executives seeking investment with some of Silicon Valley’s top investment firms and investors.

Since then, we’ve hosted 10+ successful iterations of our Meet a VC Program across the SaaStr Annual (10,000+ in SF Bay Area), SaaStr Europa events (3,000), international events, as well as digitally.

And more importantly, we’ve connected thousands of investors with founders with numerous successful fundraises as a result.

Now in 2023, we’re turning into this program into a year-round SaaStr Meet a VC Program.

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