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THIS IS IT.

There's just 2.5 days now from SaaStr Annual 2023 and the very last tickets are going fast!

It's also the most high-profile content and speakers we've ever had a single SaaStr Annual, including:

CEO Amplitude

CEO Monday

CEO Lattice

CEO JFrog

CEO Freshworks

CEO Workiva

CPO Adobe

CRO Gong

CMO Datadog

CMO Databricks

CRO OpenAI

CMO Harness

VPE Okta

COO Docebo

CMO Lightspeed Commerce

CEO Bitly

CRO Miro

SVP PagerDuty

CCO Asana

And 12,000 more!!

Don't miss 3 epic days of all things SaaS. You'll want to be front row & center to take notes from all these epic SaaS leaders. 

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Hey SaaStr Community,

So I get a lot of podcast requests, and I think podcasts are great.  They are an incredible way to communicate with your customers and prospects.  Even if the absolute number of listeners and viewers is low, the quality is often high.

Yet, folks tend to do the ask … wrong.

• Let me tell you what folks do wrong (and folks like Harry Stebbings never do):
• Don’t drop me on an EA to schedule.  Harry doesn’t do it, I don’t do it.  It always ends up being a headache and a hassle.  The EA can do the links, the Zoom, etc. but don’t make it hard on the guest.  Make it seem like you’ll make almost any time work.  Usually the EA is pretty mediocre and often drops the ball.  I basically give up in a headache of un-schedulable-ness.  Instead, just ask what works best for them, and give a few ideal times.
• Don’t ask me to rehearse or do a prep call.  I don’t have time.  Harry doesn’t ask you to rehearse, either.
• Don’t ask me to send over a headshot and a bio. Don’t you have Google?  This is a sign to me it’s all going to be a hassle.

So times haven’t been tough for everyone in SaaS the past 12-18 months.  If you were in AI, if you were in hospitality, if you were in parts of e-commerce, if you were in mobile … things mostly have been Pretty Normal.

But other segments have been hit with a sledgehammer.

In particular, folks impacted by The Great App Layoff, where 10% or more of many orgs’ app stack was cut.

Many SaaS leaders in sales and marketing spaces saw growth go from 100% to 10%, from 50% to 0%. I do think we’re mostly over it, although Godard Abel, CEO of G2, and I had a deep dive on the topic the other day, and they aren’t quite seeing an end to the marketing slowdown yet on their side.

This edition of the SaaStr Weekly is sponsored in part by New Zealand Trade & Enterprise 

We think globally from day one and understand how to partner internationally, scale at speed, and deliver localized solutions to meet the needs of markets worldwide. There’s a reason why our companies are trusted by some of the biggest brands in the world.

So there’s a situation I see happening with many (not most, but many) SaaS companies as they build out the first management team:

They hire a VP of Sales that doesn’t think much of the VP of Marketing.  And doesn’t work with them.

So they bypass marketing, do their own thing, rebuild some of that function themselves, and sort of just have … a ton of distance from marketing.

Does this always fail, when sales and marketing don’t really talk, and aren’t a team?  Not exactly.  Sometimes, the VP of Marketing really just isn’t very good, and a replacement comes in that works better with sales.  And the situation is fixed.  Sometimes.  And sometimes a VP of Sales just brute forces it on their own.

Just as often though, I see it as a sign the VP of Sales isn’t going to make it.

So what do I do?  I do two simple things:

• First when I interview VPs of Sales candidates, if there’s already a marketer in place, I asked the candidate what they think.  If they have no idea at all, and/or don’t want to meet the VP of Marketing before joining — that’s a flag.  A real flag.
• Second, when I interview VPs of Marketing candidates, I always ask how they like to work with the sales team.  If they don’t have a terrific answer — I say pass if you have a sales-led motion.  What you want to hear is how closely they work with sales, and how they enjoy it, some frictions aside.
• Third, when I attend a board meeting or team meeting and see a VP of Sales ignoring the VP of Marketing — it’s always a sign of a problem that has to be fixed.  You can’t ignore this.  The passive aggressiveness, the mocking of marketing, etc.  It’s a sign you don’t have a true GTM team.

So I was on a group Zoom with a number of CROs and VPs of Sales the other day and a consistent theme came up:  everyone was surprised how high OTEs (On Target Earnings) had held up in the current environment.

Why?

Well, one would think OTEs would have to come down as every SaaS leader has gotten much more efficient over the past 12+ months, as growth venture capital has dried up, and in some cases, as times have gotten a bit tougher.

But OTEs really haven’t come down much.  In fact, in some cases, base salaries have gone up as a reaction to market conditions. 

What has come way down is attainment.

You can see this in third party data, in RepVue and other places, but some of the root cause is less well understood. Some of the root cause is in fact … the need to still market “High OTEs” to attract talent.

Ah, hiring those first 1 or 2 sales reps.  So often, they are mis-hires.  But when you get that Sales Magician — they really can be a game changer.

If that’s you, hiring your first few sales reps, here are our Top 10 SaaStr Posts on Hiring Your First Few Sales Reps:

#1. When You Hire Your First Sales Rep — Just Make Sure You Hire Two.

A classic but updated post that now has become part of the SaaS playbook.  You can’t just hire one rep to start, or you’ll never know why they failed — or succeeded.

#2. How To (Successfully) Source Your First 2 Sales Reps 

Ok, you’ve closed 10+ customers yourself, and you’re ready to hire your first 2 reps.  But where do you find them?

So we’ve been saying for a while that the back half of 2024 could be good for SaaS IPOs, we just needed a few of the break-out winners to IPO to get the engine rolling again.  The SaaS IPO window really closed in late 2021 with HashiCorp as the last great one to IPO in December 2021.

And now we have that first great IPO filing since 2021 — Klaviyo.

You may not have heard of Klaviyo if you are outside of e-commerce, but in the e-comm world, it’s the #1 B2B player.  It dominates the Shopify marketing ecosystem and others as well.

And it’s got the full package:

• True Scale:  Almost $600m ARR
• Epic Growth:  Still growing 57% at $600m ARR — wow!
• Top Tier NRR: 119%
• Profitable:  Klaviyo has gotten leaner, and has been profitable the past 6+ months.

There’s nothing to knock here, folks.   And … it was essentially incredibly capital-efficient as well.  Borderline bootstrapped (more to come here on SaaStr).  They only burned $15 million to get to $585m in ARR and an IPO filing!

G2 is a unicorn startup that’s stayed in the game for over a decade. G2 CEO Godard Abel deep dives into his original vision for G2, going multi-product, selling with multiple sales teams, demand gen spend, and why AI is the most important thing right now. 

Keep reading to learn how this $1B+ valuation SaaS company stuck it out through a long, slow slog in the beginning and has become the largest software marketplace today. 

• SaaStr 685: Why Investors Love SaaS with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin and QED Partner Amias Gerety on Fintech Beat         

• SaaStr 684: A Deep Dive Into G2, The Power Of AI, Going Multi-Product, And The 2023 Ecosystem                        

• SaaStr 683: How To Live Your Values While Building A Unicorn with Notion, Motive, and Incredible Health          

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

I'm not so silly in 2023 to tell folks they need to move to SF Bay Area

Klaviyo, GitLab, Atlassian, Canva,

so many others have shown you don't have to

But I do think you should if you >can< Meeting IRL every week with other founders, founders ahead of you, and top VPs is magic

Folks that complain consume about

20x the energy of those that just get sh*t done

Simplify the team for 2023

Lots of companies at $10m ARR never hit $100m ARR

But I don't personally know any with 80%+ growth and 100%+ NRR at $10m that didn't get there eventually

If that's you at $10m ARR .. Go Long

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