One of the many new additions to 2023 SaaStr Annual is 10x’ing our Q+A and AMA Sessions!
This year, we’ll have almost 60 Q+A and AMA sessions
across 7 stages! A ton of our top speakers will do Q+A after their sessions, and we’ll have a ton of AMAs, all day long on Sep 7-8!
We’ll also have over 500 Group Braindates where you can ask deep-dive questions with top CEOs, CROs, marketers, sales leaders, and so much more! 45 have already been scheduled and slotted!
This is fun stuff. Join us, and share, scale and learn together!
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My general advice here has stayed the same for 15+ years — but my specific learnings have evolved.
Advice: Just let your VP of Sales pick their CRM. Let Your Top Execs Pick Their Tools.
Until a few years back, they’d probably want Salesforce 95% of the time. You might not. But whatever tool they want, I think you have to let your VPs pick their tools. The ones they know and trust. Otherwise, the amount of pain and new learnings aren’t worth it.
But: far, far more startups are using HubSpot for CRM than just a few years ago. It’s dramatic. Almost half of SaaStr Annual attendees use HubSpot, not Salesforce, for CRM now. A related recent survey we did here, with similar results.
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This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Infinicept
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Start earning payments revenue today, get straightforward and transparent pricing, chart a clear path for growth, and your merchants will love you. What are you waiting for?
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You probably can’t make it in a large, crowded market if you have “no new innovative product offering.”
But take a pause.
Crowded large markets are good. That means you can scale quickly — if, if, you hit it.
But, in a crowded market, you probably have to be 10x better than the current market leaders. Not 10x better than the past. How do you do that? The market already has great products.
So, redefine the 10x:
- Can you be 10x better just for one vertical or segment? For sales? For finance? For procurement? For small businesses? For very large businesses? Can you be 10x more “secure” than the competition? E.g., you don’t have to be 10x better than Salesforce in every way to build a $100m ARR businesses. You just have to be 10x better at some small part of CRM.
- Can you be 10x better for where the market is going, not where it is today? Can you be 10x better on tablets? 10x better on phablets? 10x better on Bitcoin? 10x better outside the U.S.?
- Can you put together 10x better of a team? This is very hard, but if you can do it — it does work. An epic team can outsell, outclose, and ultimately, outinnovate the competition.
- Can you be 10x better if you are 10x narrower? Or 2.5x broader? Maybe just do one piece of what the competition does, but do that piece 10x better. Or do it all, but only one piece really well, a piece the competition doesn’t highlight. And highlight that piece like crazy. Or maybe, the market might want a product that does more than the competition. Not just CRM, but CRM+Billing. Not just invoicing, but expense reports+invoicing. I dunno. But as markets get bigger, and more established, there’s more room for players that also do more.
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Some habits of unsuccessful entrepreneurs:
- They complain. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, you don’t have enough money. Yes, it might seem impossible. Complaining does not help.
- They let the company run out of money. No, this isn’t “no one’s fault”. The best founders always make sure the company does not run out of money. Even if it comes pretty darn close one or two times.
- They don’t iterate and innovate fast enough. Almost all of us have competition. If you just plain move more slowly than they do, you often get left behind. Even if you have some early traction.
- They feel too sorry for themselves. A tiny bit of this, from time to time, is OK. We’ll all human, after all. But less successful founders often pity themselves. Related to first point.
- They can’t recruit great talent. You can’t scale if you can only recruit “pretty good” but not great folks to a startup.
- They don’t visit enough customers (or any). You aren’t always right about what to build.
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This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Hubilo
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Webinars are a lot of work, and repurposing that content takes hours, and no one seems to want to own it. Using gen AI, Hubilo Webinar+ with it’s new Snacakble Content Hub can create 40+ assets in minutes, including video snippets and video shorts, blogs, social posts, and even ebooks.
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So two discussions this week were reminders to me of how much marketing has changed in the early and “pre-brand” stages:
- Two very successful founders ($1B+ exits) with new startups pushed me really hard to promote their new startup you’ve never heard of our our podcast + at SaaStr Annual. I tried to explain to both how to make content here that would matter more to listeners, but the conversations fell on quiet ears.
- I read a pretty interesting thread on LinkedIn on how folks overrate how important getting on ProductHunt and TechCrunch and the like is to getting your start-up off the ground. Both are great, but again, rarely on their own will make your startup.
Here’s the thing: in a world of 100,000 startups, and likely 100-1000 just in your segment alone, no one cares.
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I’ll answer this from a start-up perspective, and assume you mean bringing in an outside CEO to run your start-up.
Most “outside” CEOs, that are brought in to run a start-up, will be looking for 6-8% equity in the company. Maybe 4-5% if it’s mid-stage.
How that range became the magic number I have no clear idea, but it is the range.
In some cases, they’ll also seek partial anti-dilution protection if a fundraising is imminent (or even if it isn’t). I.e., 7% … but after the next round. This may sound greedy or selfish to an outsider, but from the CEO’s perspective, the fact that substantial dilution is coming and already necessary isn’t her “fault” … so why pay for it? If the company is almost out of money and I have to go sell 30% of the company to keep it afloat, why should I be diluted by that raise?
In terms of cash, it varies. But they’ll be looking for more than anyone else in the company makes. Assume $250k per year as a straw-man, plus bonus. Most outside CEOs that join after a big round, or $15m-$20m, will b expecting at least a $350k-$400k, plus in many cases a significant bonus. Up to a $500k OTE.
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So for some reason, there is a lot of turnover right around now. Not layoffs, but turnover.
This week I’ve talked to both a VP of Sales and a #1 ranked AE, each at $200m+ ARR startups, that are planning to move on from pretty darn good jobs where they are paid pretty fairly, if not as much as in the peak of 2021. I’ve known both a least a little bit for years, so I was surprised.
And I asked them how they were planning to leave, and neither had really thought about it. Even after years of doing good work at their SaaS companies. They’d just “had it” and were ready to move on, in both cases, without a clear idea of to where or why. Fair enough.
So I shared a new simple suggestion I’ve been using:
When You’re Ready to Quit, Before You Do — First Imagine Your Last Day Lunch and Email.
At first this may sound a bit silly, but I find just doing this with someone (or on your own) quickly changes your state-of-mind:
- First, it calms folks down and changes their state of mind. Instead of fuming about bring topped, or having their quota increased, or their territory change, or whatever folks are upset about … they get to calmly think about the time when an imagined peace that will come from moving on.
- And secondly, it helps highlight to them in a way it’s tough to do directly if they’re doing it … wrong. If they can’t imagine their boss or org even writing a nice email about them leaving, let alone putting together a lunch for them, it helps them see that maybe it’s better to leave in just a bit more calm and supportive of a fashion.
- And once in a while, they choose to stay. Not too often, but once in a while this reminds folks that the reality is, it’s not about them. They usually leave anyway. But sometimes, it helps them see it’s not quite as bad as they thought.
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