So according to Pitchbook, which collects a massive amount of VC data, VC funds themselves hit a 10+ year low in paper returns this past quarter. In fact, returns plummeted to -20% (!)

Yes, that’s as bad as it sounds.

And this is a big deal, because VC’s own investors, “Limited Partners” or LPs, are under pressure here as a result.  That means they are giving less money to VCs to invest further.  It’s led in part a big overall slowdown in venture. Not just because of the Unicorn Crash, or falling valuations, but simply because returns have fallen so far, so fast, that LPs are taking a big pause or way slowing things down in many cases.

Having said that, you have to be careful viewing venture in too short a timeframe, and in looking at paper returns.

As rough as 2023 is for LPs, 2021 was insane the other way.  Top LPs had 95%+ returns!!

So a question for the ages of marketers — is a bigger booth worth it?

I had my doubts after 9 years of SaaStr Annuals. I assumed they’d all perform kind of the same.

But, I was wrong.

The data:

• Qualified Leads this year ranged from 95 at lowest-yielding of almost 200 sponsors, to 1597 at the top — a wide range
• But on average, each Gold got 207 Qualified Leads
• Next up? Super Gold at 249 Qualified Leads
• Next up? Platinum at 481 Qualified Leads
• Next up? Diamond at 661 Qualified Leads
• Next up? Mega and Unicorn?  Over 1,000 Qualified Leads
• Now of course, there’s a causation vs correlation debate.

Do bigger sponsors just put more work in, because they are paying more? Perhaps.

We certainly see that in the case of competitors who have widely differing outcomes.

But I’m skeptical.

Some smaller folks work the hardest.  After all, it’s a bigger, and more important, investment for them in many cases.

You may have seen our recent announcement that SaaStr Europa will be back in London next year, June 4-5 at Tobacco Docks.

Anywho - we know next June is a bit of a ways off, but Early Attendance for Europa is already tracking ahead of goal, meaning you'll be able to meet, learn, and grow with 4,000 fellow SaaS Founders, Execs, and VCs all at once by the time the event takes place.

If you haven't had the chance to attend SaaStr Europa (yet), it's the place where you'll hear from world-renowned founders across 75+ tactical sessions, and enjoy access to the 1,000+ networking sessions. 

Plus - no commercials or boring panels! 

Every session is hand-screened and vetted to help you scale faster with less stress and more success. 

Save $30 on early bird tickets when you purchase them by 31 October.

To many of you, “CMO” will seem like an almost silly title.  At, say, $2m in ARR, when you’re just figuring out demand gen, SDRs and BDRs, and all that … why would you need a CMO? 

You need a VP of Demand Gen!  Maybe a VP of Marketing.  But the last thing you probably need is a fancy title running around, spouting marketing-ism.

Roughly, once you (x) have an established brand, and (y) have a marketing engine that is working, and (z) most importantly, once demand gen has finally become somewhat routine … you’ll need a CMO. 

Because you’ll need a marketing quarterback.

And this is where, once you finally are ready for a CMO, and make the hire, I see so many CMOs crash and burn. 

Especially stretch CMOs.

Why? 

They want to execute their own vision for how to scale.  

Sometimes, if the CEO hasn’t been involved in being a public face or strategist for the company externally, that’s OK.  But that’s rare in SaaS. 

Much more often, by $10m ARR or so, most CEOs have a strong vision of what they think works in marketing.

I’m not sure I’m a great giver of golden advice, but here’s my list of the best golden advice I’ve been given over the years.

And the advice holds as well today as when it was given:

Manage People — In General, and Earlier.

The earlier in your career you can learn how to manage people, the faster you can excel in learning to scale. Managing people isn’t always fun. But embrace it if you want to be a CEO, a founder, and/or be a part of something bigger.

Listen to “Audibles” and Act on Them.

Your best bosses, VPs, mentors, and others will give you “audibles” — quick bits of micro-advice during pitches, customer meetings, interviews, etc. While you are in the process of working. They’ll see where you could improve in real-time. Take this real-time feedback and leverage it and act on it immediately. If someone else great is in the room with you, these audibles can make the difference between a positive outcome and a negative one.

Celebrate Your Wins.

This is tough to do right for most of us. There’s always the next quarter, the next milestone. But you have to truly celebrate the wins. Especially as founders, we tend to go heads-down after a win, because it’s just one step in a bigger plan. But the team needs to celebrate the wins, and maybe you do, too.

Spend 20%+ of Your Time Recruiting.

Recruiting isn’t fun. But nothing is more important once you have something. Force yourself to spend 20% of your time doing it. If you aren’t investing 20% of your time, you’re doing less important things with that time.

Go Visit Your Customers In-Person. Often.

Go visit your customers, partners, and prospects. Relationships aren’t built on the phone or a Zoom.  If you are going long, you gotta show up for the important ones.  And while Zooms aren’t the same, do more of them.  Do 5-6 customer Zooms a week.  And then somehow, really meet all your top customers.

Slow Down the Biggest Decisions. Speed Up All Other Decisions. 

Actually, I never got this golden advice but needed it. Big decisions — slow them down. If you are risking the company, it almost always can wait a week. Get more advice. Sleep on it. Mull it over. But everything else? Push those decisions down and move faster. As long as you can fix any mistakes later.

There Are Only a Handful Of Great Co-Founders and VPs. Go All-In on Them.

You will interview 100s and then 1000s of folks over your career, and hire many very good, pretty good, OK, and less-than-great folks. But just a handful will truly be able to move the needle for you. Go all-in. Let their weakness go, and backfill them. Support them when they make mistakes. Let them grow and hire and scale as far as humanly possible. Only a few will truly make a difference. Hire them immediately, over-compensate them with equity, appreciate them … and get out of their way. Let them run.

This edition of the SaaStr Weekly is sponsored in part by Secureframe

Secureframe makes it easy to get SOC 2 compliant. With guided workflows and one-click integrations, the entire process is automated.

We’ve all been there. The fairly crappy, “my product is so great”, outbound random email to 30–100 folks when you are trying to get your start-up off the ground.

That never really works, absent extreme luck:

• No one has ever heard of you;
• You don’t yet know how to describe your value proposition compellingly in 1 line properly; and
• You likely are in a crowded space and there are already other solutions people have heard of; and
• Why would someone respond, anyway?

But the thing is, outbound always works. At least a little, at least to some extent. At least a little bit.  If … if … you do it right.

Monday has gone from $7m in 2017 to over $700m in revenue today, showcasing the sheer power of compounding revenue. Did monday.com’s founders feel like they’d be 100x bigger in just six years since that first SaaStr conference they attended?

Eran Zimman, monday.com’s co-founder and co-CEO, shares his secrets to scaling and growth in an unpredictable market.

monday hasn’t missed a beat, but before we dive into their secrets, let’s first learn where it all started and what they do today.

• SaaStr 693: The Secrets to Scaling and Growth in an Unpredictable Market with monday.com’s Co-founder and Co-CEO, Eran Zimman, and SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin                 

• SaaStr 692: How To Perfectly Pitch Your Seed Stage Startup With Y Combinator's Managing Director Michael Seibel                                     

• SaaStr 691: The 2024 SaaS Landscape: Why 2024 Could be Pretty Darn Good for SaaS IPOs with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin  

             

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

Your greatest enemy after Years 3-4 or so is getting tired … too tired

The only solution is hiring incredible managers and

leaders to carry more of the load

Even if you think it's too late here -- it isn't

Sales execs can screw up so many things and

still close a lot if they just get 1 thing right

If they just are a true subject matter expert in the product they sell

Yet so many aren't

Freemium generally requires about 10x-100x more users to work as a model than most founders expect

And it takes longer to take off than almost all of us expect

© SaaStr 2023

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