Hey SaaStr Community,

It's official!

SaaStr Europa will officially be back in London for 2024 on 4-5 June at the Tobacco Docks.

The fifth edition of SaaStr Europa will feature 2.5 days, and 3,500 B2B/ SaaS Founders, Executives and Investors, coming together to share their learning in the heart of London. 

• In 2018, we brought SaaStr overseas to Paris for our inaugural SaaStr Europa. 
• In 2019, we expanded to 2+ days, 200+ VCs and 500+ mentoring sessions.
• In 2020-2021 we went digital, attracting over 50,000 SaaS execs, VCs and founders.
• In 2022, SaaStr Europa returned to Europe in Barcelona for a great, open air event.
• In 2023, we brought the biggest European SaaS event of the year to London

And now, for 2024 London is calling us back and we'll once again be taking over the entire Tobacco Docks for SaaStr Europa 2024, 6-7 of June and bringing the best in SaaS with us. 

So tougher times aren’t over for everyone that has had them. But we’re lapping tougher times for many, and for many others, it’s just plain time to hire again.

So many Cloud and SaaS leaders kept hiring flat for the past 12-18 months, and yet still grew.

That works for a while, but you end up with not enough headcount if you do freeze hiring but still want to grow.

The latest examples?  Salesforce, Samsara and Monday:

Salesforce, after laying off 6,000+ recently … is now hiring 3,300+ plus. 

And in fact, it’s prioritizing “boomerang hires” that it laid off … but wished it hadn’t.  There’s some irony here, as Marc Benioff said in ’08-’09 his biggest mistake was pausing hiring in sales. 

But Salesforce, and everyone else, had to get more efficient.  With operating margins crossing 30%, they’re ready to hire again.

Recently, I was talking to the CEO of a pretty successful SaaS company doing ~$3m in ARR, growing nicely, in a good space. Doing just fine.

And he was proud he’d just hired a VP of Sales at a below-market rate.

Dude.  I told him.  That’s a negative.  

Because at your size and growth rate, It Just Doesn’t Matter.

If they are any good. You don’t want to save money on a great hire. You want to instead, make sure they are accretive.

Because it turns out, once you hit just $2m in ARR, and maybe even much earlier — every great hire will be accretive.

If they are truly great, they will make you more money than you pay them in cash. I guarantee it, in fact.  (The mediocre, however, will burn your cash fast at this stage).

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 this post is, in some ways, a repeat. I’ve made this point before. But never in its own post. And I’m making it again because it’s something between all these Calendly invites, and side hustles, and more that everyone has gotten worse at.

We’ve all gotten worse at getting back to prospects and customers — fast.

Contact Me has its place, perhaps. But why does a prospect have to wait days to just set up a Zoom? Or to get a demo?

As a sales exec, you may not know actually the product well. You may not know how to create urgency. You may not know the competitors perfectly.  But one thing is in your control today — you can be more responsive.  In fact, you can be hyper-responsive.

A few recent examples:

Example #1: I was recently chatting with a VP of Sales about a job position, which I get he wasn’t 100% sure he wanted. But he took 4 days to get back to the startup on it. And then said he was in no rush, and could talk about in 2 weeks.

Don’t hire that one.

Example #2:  A little while ago, I reached out to 3 top support vendors. None allowed a free trial anymore. And when I hit Contact Me?  No human even got back to me the same day. Sigh.

So Harry Stebbings was kind enough to have us back in the new group format on 20VC with 2 of the legends in seed investing, Eric Paley of Founder Collective and Mike Maples of Floodgate.

While both aren’t pure SaaS investors, they’re both in the top 1% (!), with investments in The Trade Desk, Okta, Airtable, Slack and much more!

Eric Paley is the Managing Partner at Founder Collective, one of the world’s most successful seed funds with investments in the likes of Uber, The Trade Desk, Coupang and Airtable.

Mike Maples is one of the OGs of seed investing. As the Co-Founder of Floodgate, he has backed the likes of Twitch, Okta, Lyft, Twitter and more.

Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr one of the best-performing early-stage venture funds with a portfolio including Algolia, Pipedrive, Salesloft, TalkDesk, and RevenueCat to name a few.

Missed our biggest, best SaaStr Annual ever?  No problem!  We’ll start transcribing, publishing, Youtube-ing, and podcast-ing all the top sessions.  Some are already up, and you can watch at ton of them here on the Live tab on YouTube.

But if you want to catch up on the 7 Most Popular Sessions from 2023 Annual, here they are!

Discover Bessemer Venture Partners’s annual State of the Cloud report, going through trends, benchmarks, and metrics that underpin the Cloud economy. 

The past twelve months have been relatively turbulent for Cloud founders. SVB collapsed, market multiples are down, yet the IPO window is re-opening, and we have a platform shift to AI that’s exciting everybody. 

What does this mean for Cloud companies?

Let’s find out.

• SaaStr 687: Building a Global SaaS Empire: Freshworks Founder & CEO Girish Mathrubootham on His Biggest Bets                       

• SaaStr 686: What the Future of SaaS Holds for 2024 with David Sacks, Founder & General Partner, Craft Ventures, and Jason Lemkin, Founder & CEO, SaaStr                          

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

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

Startups are hard

Personally:

- My cofounder walked out the door

- I spent all the money

- I had to sign at $750k note

- Our product failed at our top customer

- My VPS told my board I was incompetent

- My family didn't understand

- I went through recessions

Could have quit

Klaviyo's IPO tomorrow will be an ultimate yardstick for SaaS in 2023/2024 Top growth, top margins, top founders, will cruise past $1B in ARR

Whatever multiple they end up trading at ...

You are almost certainly worth less

The good news about joining a tiny startup is you will

interface directly with the CEO on a regular basis

Sometimes even as a peer

The "bad" news is that CEO will hold you to a pretty darn high standard

© SaaStr 2023

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