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The biggest SaaS event of the year, SaaStr Annual is coming up this September 6-8. 

And our Summer of SaaS event ends tomorrow, so this is your last chance to spin the wheel to reveal your exclusive deal on tickets. 

Join 12,500 Cloud and SaaS Founders, VCs, and Execs. Indoors/ Outdoors, festival style! The 9th SaaStr Annual: 3 full days, 100’s of workshops, and 1000s of Mentoring sessions— all to help you scale faster.

Almost everyone in sales seems to be into real estate, either “multi-family” real-estate or getting their broker’s license. Or other so-called “passive” income streams that really often take many hours to manage.

And so many folks are coaches, selling courses, and more.  Others are very hands-on advisors, spending many hours per month at startups other than the one they work at.

And many founders and CEOs don’t like it.

They may tacitly support it, but I don’t know too many that like it. 

Aren’t they already being paid to do a full-time job?  Isn’t it inherently a distraction, if it’s anything more than an hour or two here?  Don’t they seem to be working on their side hustle on LinkedIn with even more enthusiasm than their day job? 

Well, maybe. 

But the new generation in tech seems to have normalized the side hustle.  I don’t see things going back to the way they were. 

Everyone wants “multiple revenue streams”, even if that means doing none of them as well as they could if they focused.  And really, side hustles got even easier once we all became distributed and worked on Zoom.

Who will really know? You don’t have to constantly duck into a conference room or phone booth to take a call for your other gig anymore

And with anxiety over job losses at a recent high, many will get some comfort in having a second income stream.

In my first start-up, I had some rough experiences with VC collusion.

I remember I went to one top VC’s Monday partner meeting (which went well) in the morning, and then in the afternoon, visited another.  The two firms had not only talked between the meetings, but shared feedback and notes!! 

I didn’t even know they knew each other, let alone “authorized” them sharing notes between partner pitches.  Both ended up passing.  I’m not sure they would have without the collusion.

Later, when we finally got two term sheets (from different firms), each lead VC talked to the other without telling us to dictate and manage terms.  It was kind of rough.  Those 2 term sheets became 1 worst term sheet.  Not cool.

So I became a bit jaded on how VCs colluded.

But … that was long time ago, folks.

Today there are 1000+ seed VC firms and much, much more money in venture capital.  Today, I see the opposite risks as bigger risks.  When I look across the 25+ companies I’ve invested in, I see the most VCs problems now when the VCs aren’t friends.

Why?  Because if your VCs have already worked together before, successfully, simply put, they are much more likely to collaborate and cooperate.  And much less likely to play games and create drama.

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

Notion combines project management with your docs and knowledge base, so you can stop jumping between tools, and stop paying too much for them too.

$100M ARR doesn’t happen overnight. Founders are responsible for ensuring a startup always has enough money, setting the vision for the company, and driving things forward. 

It seems simple enough, but it’s not always easy, as founding CEO and co-founder of LaunchDarkly, Edith Harbaugh, learned firsthand as she took the company from zero to over $100M. 

Harbaugh shares the top 10 lessons she learned going from $1M to $100M (0-$1M is an entirely different phase) in the hopes that founders will be able to recognize pitfalls they’re about to make or for those who have already made them to know they aren’t alone. 

The other day I was at a demo day and talked to a bunch of smart, young founders.  A bunch of them were building products in categories I knew well, and was very interested in what their new take was on existing categories.

I asked them why they would win.  They often gave somewhat rambly, strategic answers about The Future of AI and How the Old Apps Were So Date. 

OK. 

But then I pushed them. 

“What’s your 10x Feature? What’s the one thing that matters that you do 10x better than the top incumbent?”

Almost none could answer that question.  But you have to.  You have to know your 10x Features, especially as a new entrant.  The one where you win.  Without a 10x feature, it’s almost impossible to break-in.

What’s a 10x Feature? It’s a feature that, for a material number of customers and prospects, wins the deal vs. the competition.  Period. Not always, but often. 

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

Free trials and freemiums can be a powerful sales strategy. But it’s not a one-size fits all! Learn how to increase conversion by leveraging other PLG modules, such as sandbox product experiences, and show prospects how your product can solve their challenges. 

A quick list here:

“You are wasting my time”. I don’t think this was meant to be said aloud, but many B-tier reps say and think this all the time. No. A prospect’s time is always valuable.

Sales is there to serve.

If sales was routed the wrong lead, that’s the company’s fault, not the prospect’s.

“Our product does [key feature]” — when it doesn’t. If I’m buying a product I haven’t used before, the AE is my guide.

If he/she tells me things that aren’t true to close the deal, I’m out. I’m buying a solution. I need to know for real if it solves my problem — or not.

Constant bashing of competitor. Not only does that make the company look insecure — it makes me want to go test the competitor instead. Even worse (see prior point) is when they say something about a competitor that isn’t true.

Forcing me to talk to an SDR first. I don’t want to be qualified. I want to try, use, and buy. I lose patience here and move to a vendor I can just deploy without being forced to talk to an SDR that just wants to force me to get on the phone and screen me but doesn’t get me going now.

Everyone talks about hitting 120%+ NRR these days But the truth is, single-seat users & very small businesses churn at a high rate.

Often 3% a month.

Squarespace has 85% NRR, for example. That sort of churn hurts.

But because it’s so high, just doing >better< can have a huge impact.  Even modestly decreasing churn in Very Small Business and single seat accounts can have a big impact.

Here are some ideas — a few of them fairly basic — on what to do about churn in single-seat accounts.

1.  Add Team Accounts if you haven’t already

Most of you do this, but multi-user Team accounts, done right, usually have 100%+ NRR.  The account has to provide some real functionality that merits having a mutl-user account.  But do it right, and NRR can soar to 100% or higher quickly. 

2. Make Your Product More Important.  This is a subtle point, but it really works

Make your product more of the nervous system of your smallest customers.  Squarespace and Wix added full e-commerce capabilities, making them more than just websites.  Bill added more and more payments functionality (mission-critical), and grew NRR to 110% and then 120%, even from SMBs.

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