Hey everyone -

Happy August.

This means we're even closer now to the biggest SaaS event of the year -

SaaStr Annual 2023 on Sept. 6, 7, 8 in the Bay Area. 

With an anticipated attendance of over 12,000 SaaS CEOs, founders, and investors, this is the perfect opportunity to network, learn, and grow your business.

If you're considering attending SaaStr, now's the time to act as we welcomed so many new ticket holders in July that this will be another SELL OUT event. 

So don't wait any longer to secure your spot to this year's SaaStr and guarantees you full access to three days of keynote sessions, workshops, roundtables, and networking opportunities.

So there’s a critical but subtle mistakes I see founders all the time when times get more challenging, especially the past year or so:

They don’t just reset the plan.  They lower the bar.

What’s the difference?

 In practice, it can be a bit subtle, but let me give a recent real-world example.

A startup at $10m ARR hitting tough headwinds might want to reset the plan to say 30% annual growth from 100% in a really tough year.  Hopefully, a reset like that only happens once in your journey, but it’s happened to many the past 12-18 months.

OK so you reset the plan, and now instead of going from $10m to $20m in a year, you plan to hit $13m.  That’s adding $250k a month instead of $800k.

But for how long do you reset to a lower bar, not just a lower plan?  Forever?  If it’s forever … the team sort of settles into that lower goal.  

And in fact, here’s the thing: it doesn’t really help.  Morale still suffers.  Folks are still grouchy.  They aren’t any happier ultimately struggling to hit a newly reset plan.

What’s critical sometimes is a reset of the current plan, and a reset to a New Normal.  But you do have to get back to growth.

Here are my learnings so far:

#1. The biggest challenge for 70% of VCs is Raising Money.

VCs have their own investors, the LPs (Limited Partners). Until about 2018, the biggest funds tending to gobble up most of the available capital.

In the boom years of ‘19-’21, more money was available to newer funds … but in ’22 that’s retreated again.

Established funds are sucking up the vast majority of available capital.

If you don’t either:

(x) have a very strong, successful brand

(y) top 20% returns over multiple funds,

or (z) a new small/microfund with a truly exciting thesis …

then raising new VC funds are very difficult today.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Mission Cloud

Whether you're getting started on your generative AI journey, or you're scaling your LLMs for business growth, Mission Cloud is here to help.

Ah, the most common mistakes we make in early stage sales.

The list could be endless.  

And it can vary a lot based on type of customer, type of sale, etc. And some of these mistakes are seen by some as best practices, or at least OK practices.

But let me outline some common mistakes that mean you are leaving money on the table, either now or in the long run:

Not training reps 3–300.

The first couple of reps you often can train by osmosis. But after that, you have to build systems and processes to train them. It doesn’t take too long for a product to get so nuanced, so complex, and with so much competition, that a rep can’t wing it. And can’t just learn by sitting next to the CEO.

“Firing” prospects. Do not fire a prospect.

Do not break up with them. No prospect enjoys going through a sales process for fun. If a rep can’t get engagement, but a prospect has registered some interest, marketing can at least drop them into a long-term engagement campaign. No one likes to be broken up with, folks. This does nothing for your brand.  

Too many cadences and automations.

Yes, use Mixmax, Salesloft, etc. to automate outreach for sure. Especially thoughtful, follow-up, to a point.  They give you scale. But — do not do this for larger prospects. Larger customers deserve personalized outreach. No one is going to make a $100k purchase without personalized discovery and a solution sale. 

What is one thing all hyper-growth SaaS companies have in common? 

“A growth team that takes risks and looks for outlier effects,” says Guillaume “G” Cabane, Co-Founder at Hypergrowth Partners, a collective of advisors, VPs, and others working on an equity basis with companies like Maze, ramp, and Honeycomb.io. 

In our latest Workshop Wednesday, held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST, G shares low CAC, scalable tactics for earlier growth-stage startups. 

The time will come when you are first tempted to hire someone from your competitor.  

They must know so many things we don’t.  Have so many skills.  

It’s pretty tempting.  

People will tell you about the risks in litigation, trade secrets, etc.  I don’t think any of those are necessarily a big deal or a showstopper if you do it right — and if the ROI is there.  But let me tell you – it usually isn’t.

Hiring from your Competitor.  

It may sound great.  But it’s usually not really worth it.

At least not from one direct competitor SaaS start-up to another.

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

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A lot of folks are chiming in on the change from Twitter to “X”.  I’m not going to be one of them, per se.  We’re about Scaling SaaS here at SaaStr, after all.

But the larger topic of when to change your name as a startup is an interesting niche topic.

I’m not a branding expert but when I met with some true experts a ways back, their advice always stuck in my head.  It was when I was working at a place with some damaged / negative brand, but still a brand folks had heard of.  My instinct was to change the name.  That instinct was likely wrong.

Their advice?

You may not have product-market fit.  You may not have built a product people will actually pay for.

But assuming you have … well — are you doing any marketing?

There are 100,000+ SaaS apps out there. It may well be no one needs your product.

• But what are you doing to get attention?
• Are you doing strong content marketing? This takes time, but it can work.  Build a few pieces of truly epic, helpful content.
• Do you have a truly elegant free edition or free trial?  This doesn’t get you customers on its own, but it helps get folks who do come to your site to try it.
• Are you trying very high-quality cold outreach to prospects, with a great value-oriented pitch?
• Are you getting PR? In TechCrunch, or wherever?
• Are you listed in all marketplaces you could be?
• Do you go to all the events in your industry? Are you hustling to meet folks there?
• Is there anyone you can partner with, even just to get a few customers?  What other products do you add insane value to?
• Are you on Producthunt?
• Are you truly, truly husting to get customers?
• Keep at it!

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