Hey everyone -
We’re less than 13 days away from the biggest SaaS event of the year and tickets are selling fast!
With just over 12,000 SaaS founders and execs set to join us in-person, in just a few weeks on our massive 40+ acre campus - SaaStr Annual 2023 is one event you won't want to miss.
What you can expect at this year's SaaStr Annual:
- 3 Full Days: Sept. 6,7,8 at the San Mateo County Events Center
- 12,000+ SaaS founders, execs, revenue leaders and VCs will attend
- 271+ of the Best speakers in SaaS and Cloud
- 1,000+ Braindates and Workshops
- SaaStr Fan Favorites
- From Tunguz to Kellogg, from Mehta to Janz, From Sacks to Belsky. Fan Favorites are Back
- Indoor + outdoor sprawling campus, festival style
- The Big Party with Cheat Codes!
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So a niche question but one we get often enough that I though worth going into my depth on is:
Hey, Why Are SaaStr Annual, Inbound, Dreamforce (and More) All At Almost The Same Time?
First, FYI, for SaaStr it’s not our goal but that global pandemic did change things!
The simple answer is that traditionally, most B2B companies that did a big event wanted it in Q3 to help influence pipeline and close the year strong.
This was certainly true of Salesforce and Dreamforce, where bringing top prospects out to SF was a key part of the sales cycle. I’m not 100% sure this is/was true at HubSpot and Inbound, but it was true of many, many other SaaS companies. September is the ideal month, but Dreamforce would float around a bit given how complex logistics are taking over the whole city of SF (back when Dreamforce was bigger). Zoom’s Zoomtopia is in early October, for the same reason.
There actually were far more SaaS and B2B vendor events before that global pandemic. Twilio’s Signal for example used to be a huge, API festival in SF. Now, it’s digital-only. In fact, going into 2020, it seemed almost every CMO at a B2B company was focused on having a big in-person event. IRL vendor events were one of the top growth areas in marketing. That seems to have fallen by the wayside for now, with only the “biggies” for the most part still standing.
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My time as an investor is really the first time I’ve ever worked with CEOs who weren’t formally (or at least, informally) trained as managers. My bosses all came up through the ranks.
I went from Director to VP to Founder to CEO. Most of my SaaS CEO peers, back in the day, had management experience under their belt.
It’s fine. You can learn this stuff, and all that really matters is attracting a great team under you. Really, that’s all that matters post-Initial Traction.
But if you come up through the ranks — you at least get to observe how others do it. If you skip past all this, you may have missed seeing some basic stuff in practice that just helps.
So if you haven’t hired and managed managers before, my learning is that a few simple-ish processes can make being a Better Manager as simple as pie.
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This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by SAP
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Win customers by creating compelling offers with flexible pricing, billing, and bundling options with end-to-end automation. Learn more at the SAP booth in the Sponsor Hall, Hanger West!
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The simplest answer is usually to copy the pricing from the closest public company or other break-out leader you can find that is vaguely similar.
It’s OK you are doing something different. But someone else out there is selling a product to at least similar buyers.
Or at least, that is providing a similar amount of value. We did a podcast with Godard Abel, CEO of G2 the other day, and talked about their new data product.
I guessed the pricing almost immediately.
How did I know?
I just guessed based on what vaguely similar product sell for.
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My Top 5 Things to Remember When Starting a Company:
#1. Fixing the Founding Team is Very, Very Painful. Take the time to get it right.
I was unstoppable when I had aligned, great co-founders. I also almost died when I had great — but dis-aligned — co-founders.
#2. Your market research is probably wrong, or at least off. Do more of it.
If you don’t have true, deep domain expertise in your space — you are probably dealing with surface and superficial insights. If you want to understand if your initial market really needs your product, don’t shoot from the hip. Take the extra meeting. Do the extra mock-up and get feedback. If time and money don’t matter, sure, just push a product out to market. But if they do matter. Double-down on your market understanding, research, and customer interviews.
#3. Give yourself 24 months to get to a Minimum Sellable Product.
I’ve said this before, but I can’t say it enough. 12 months is almost never enough in SaaS to get to a great product “enough” customers pay for. 18 is rarely enough, either. You have to budget 24 months to get to first base, to an MSP and any material revenue. If you can’t “afford it” — too bad. Find a way.
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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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These truly are the Days of Change in SaaS. In 2021, it seemed like everyone is raising 3 big VC rounds a year, effortlesslyBut for most of you, for most of us, it wasn’t any easier to raise VC capital. And now, it’s even harder. Why? The bar has gone up. And there are just so, so many startups today.
But you can bend the odds. You can make it easier. Easier on the VCs to fund you.
What do I mean? Well, think about the average early-stage VC for a minute. You think all they do is look for startups like yours? No. It’s just a small part of what they do (albeit, I think, the most important part). They also have to spend a ton of time fundraising themselves. They spend a ton of time working with their existing portfolio companies. They have to do their own customer, er, LP meetings. They do speaking engagements, and are constantly trying to network — just like you. They have to debate and argue amongst themselves — entire Mondays can be completely shot here. And most importantly, now that initial pitches are all over Zoom, VCs are meeting with 2x-5x more startups than they used to. There just isn’t time anymore to dig in when it doesn’t immediately click.
A slick deck and a thoughtful demo are a good start. But you can do more.
You gotta make it Easy.
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A few of the most talented I’ve ever met. Ok, let me qualify this by saying earlier in my career. As part of SaaStr, I meet so many incredible founders from HubSpot to Monday to Slack and more that I can’t count those, for the most part. So I’m excluded the CEOs and founders, for the most part, that I’ve met though SaaStr itself as there are too many great ones.
But here are a few that stood out so much, that I truly learned something profound from them:
#1. Peter Gassner, CEO of Veeva.
This was an eye-opener to me. Peter was part of an amazing batch of CEOs that Emergence Capital invested in, including me. The batch included tons of Unicorns: Yammer, Intacct, etc. But Peter was the best of the best. That fund (Emergence II) is one of the best venture funds of all time. It was just when SaaS was taking off, but before everyone could see it.
How was Peter the best? He could see the future. Not just of Veeva even at say $2m in ARR when we met, but even of my own little start-up. That clarity into the future of my own company — not 100% accuracy, but clarity — stunned me. And the ability to share it with me in a way I could process and understand. (Elon Musk, for all his quirks, has a similar superpower).
Today, Veeva is worth $15 billion. The CEO that could see the future the best — and figure out how to get there — did the best. Even in a class of unicorns.
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Year after year, VCs show up to SaaStr Annual locked and loaded, term sheets in hands, on the hunt for soon-to-be Unicorns to add to their portfolios.
From the Founding Partners, Managing Directors and big name SaaS VCs who grace the stage. To the firms that send over a dozen of their Partners and Associates — everyone who invests in SaaS has a presence at SaaStr Annual.
We also see the top private equity firms registering early, and the list of publicly traded companies sending Corporate Development teams is at least 2Xing year over year.
Whether you’re in it for the long haul and need cash to scale, or you’re looking for a speedy exit — or even if your dream is to become part of something bigger, where you can watch your product live on as part of a legacy brand — the folks who can make it happen will be here. And they want to meet YOU.
So take the time to update your LinkedIn, spruce up your pitch deck, and ask your mentors to help you perfect your pitch.
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