So we have a rule at SaaStr Annual — No Repeats.

We don’t want speakers back at least for 2 years, ideally longer, and we want content that is fresh and unique to us.

But then over the years, we’ve made some specific and intentional exceptions for “Fan Favorites”. 

For folks that the SaaStr community really, really wants to hear from live again.  The ones with the highest NPS.  We still require them to do new and novel content, but we bring the best back with new learnings, new inspirations, new ideas and new content.

So a partial list here of Fan Favorites coming back to 2023 SaaStr Annual, Sep 6-8 in SF Bay Area.

Hey SaaStr Community,

Our top post this week was on how you can reset the plan,

But Under No Circumstances Should You Lower the Bar.

It's a critical but subtle mistake I see founders make 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.

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. 

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So Sprinklr is one big Social Media and More management tool you might not have heard of — because it’s pretty darn enterprise.

And yes today, it does a lot more than social media management, but that’s its original core. And managing content and the overall customer experience at scale in big companies is a big endeavor.

Sprinklr is good at it.

At $700m in ARR, it’s still growing 20%, and it’s getting better and better at closing big, $1m+ deals. And it’s worth an impressive $3.7 Billion.

Although a 5x ARR multiple is still pretty modest compared to the Go-Go Days of 2019-2021. Here are 5 interesting learnings. 

We all screw a lot of things up. But I think the biggest, #1, mistake successful first-time entrepreneurs in SaaS make time and time again these days is

They own a key function area or two too long.

They stay the VP of Sales, Marketing, Product, etc. for far longer than they should.

I I see this again and again, and in SaaS, it’s a real lost opportunity.  I think it’s a byproduct, in part, of two things.

First, the fact that founders are just so much better these days.  Or at least, better at able to do many functions.

So an amazing founder CEO often can also be the VP of Sales, VP of Product, hack Marketing, fly across the globe as the VP of Customer Success, and sometimes, even continue to write some code.  

That’s great. 

But it’s way, way, way too much for one person to do one day longer than necessary.

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So one of our recent themes on SaaStr is that while things are still tougher for almost everyone that the go-go days of 2021, in at least some ways, they seem to have bounced off the bottom and are at least getting easier than before:

• Top Cloud and SaaS stocks are up 31% this year.  Now they still are way down from their 2021 highs.  But +31% is real.
• Top Cloud and SaaS stocks are trading at 15x ARR or more.  And top quartile is approaching 10x ARR.  Now this is nothing like the 2021 days.  Nothing.  But it’s way off the lows of earlier in the year.
• Inflation appears to be down, and interest rates have mostly peaked. We’re all macro experts in SaaS now!  But inflation does seem to be way down in the U.S. at least, and interest rates appear close to the maximum.
• We’ll start to lap tougher times.  Growth has slowed for almost all Cloud and SaaS leaders this year, but that also makes maintaining and even beating that growth next year much easier.
• Almost everyone has gotten much more efficient.  The top startups all are more efficient and in many cases break-even.  This will make them much more attractive in the current markets.  Everyone got into better shape, with better unit economics, the past 12 months.

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. 

Learn about the most important SaaS metrics for founders in 2023 with the CEOs of the most metric-oriented company, monday, and the founder of SaaStr.

The godfather of SaaS and founder of the world’s largest community for business software sits down with one of the most metric-oriented companies today to discuss the most important SaaS metrics for founders in 2023.

Jason Lemkin, Founder of SaaStr, and co-founders and CEOs, Eran Zinman and Roy Mann of the wildly successful monday.com chat with Startup For Startup about ARR, NRR, CAC, and what it takes to beat the odds in a tougher environment. 

• SaaStr 680: Scalable, Low CAC Growth Tactics with Hypergrowth Partners Co-Founder Guillaume Cabane    

• SaaStr 679: Scalable, Low CAC Growth Tactics with Hypergrowth Partners Co-Founder Guillaume Cabane         

• SaaStr 678: Raising Capital in 2023: What You Really Need To Know with Creandum Partner Peter Specht

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

One issue we're still grappling with in SaaS:

Enterprise folks wanting to work from home

Some of this is OK

But you gotta visit your customers in person to close, maintain and expand Big Deals -- at least in most cases

And especially outside of early adopters and "tech"

2024 should be the year of The Endless SaaS IPO

So many leaders now at $200m+ ARR that will be waiting

I would expect at least one good one a week, on average

© SaaStr 2023

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