So it can seem sometimes like SaaS spending has crashed recently, but really that’s not right. 

Every single year, SaaS spend goes up. 

A lot, in fact.

Gartner is even predicting enterprise IT spend will accelerate in 2024.

But different years and different times benefit different vendors.

The past 18 months, it’s seemed like price increases and consolidation on core vendors has consumed more and more of SaaS IT budgets.

And the latest Vendr data confirms this.

In 2022, 30% of their platform spend went to New vendors.  That plummeted to 19% in 2023.

That’s a huge drop.

Let me simplify it all to 4 simple pieces of advice:

For most U.S. companies:

• Start marketing, supporting and talking to European customers as a distinct segment once you have 10 of them. If you can get 10, you can (of course) get 100. It’s OK to let the first 10 find you, though.
• Consider opening a full European office, even just 1–2 folks, once you have $1m-$2m in revenue in Europe. That’s enough to justify the hire. Wait past $1m-$2m in ARR, and you are wasting a chance to be closer to customers.   As the CEO of Braze put it at SaaStr Europa this year, they could close tech startups as customers without a local office.  But to close more traditional customers, and non-tech ones?  They had to be there, on the ground.
• Expect it to happen, and plan for it. Europe and the U.S. are different markets of course, but most of the best SaaS apps organically cross borders. I’ve invested in 20+ European SaaS companies, and almost all of them organically acquired U.S. customers even without a full U.S. presence. Likewise, most top U.S. SaaS vendors are pulled a bit into Europe. At least the U.K. Even in my first year at Adobe Sign / EchoSign, we had 10%+ of our revenue in Europe.
• Vertical SaaS and regulated SaaS do take much longer, in general, to go global.  Those apps don’t cross borders nearly as easily.  See, e.g., Toast, Bill, etc.

Plan for it.

Secure your spot for the most anticipated SaaS event of the year: 

We’ll be hosting the biggest SaaS Community event of the year, and the 10th! SaaStr Annual at San Mateo County Events Center on September 10-12th.

3 full days with 100+ tactical sessions from world-known founders, new voices, and up & comers

• 200+ speakers from the best SaaS companies across the world
• 1000+ Networking meetings, AMAs, mentoring sessions, 1-on-1s and roundtables
• 750+ VCs in attendance, with 1:1 Meet a VC matchmaking
• 150+ of the best sponsors who are driving innovation in Cloud
• Get ready for specific, SaaStr-style actionable advice and learnings to help grow your business from $0 to $100M ARR. 

 Use our exclusive newsletter code for a discount on early bird tickets.

So we’ve been fans of Bill.com for many years at SaaStr, and covered them from the very early days, as a niche product most hadn’t heard of.

Well, fast forward to today and it’s truly an SMB powerhouse.

At $1.2 Billion in ARR, it’s still growing 48% year-over-year.  Yes, 48% at $1.2 Billion in ARR.

Learn six GTM models Divvy used on their incredible journey from 0 to a $2.5B exit in just four years with the former CRO of Divvy, and SaaStr fan favorite, Sterling Snow.

As former CRO at Divvy and current Partner at Pelion Venture, Sterling Snow knows what’s required to build and motivate a high-performing team.

Sterling walked us through their step-by-step process during last week’s Workshop Wednesday, a weekly series we hold ongoing each and every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST to bring you some of the best SaaStr speakers in a completely free, live and interactive format. 

We just did one of our many reviews with our top partners and sponsors for SaaStr Annual and Europa and here’s some of the feedback we got.

It’s pretty strong. Want more leads, pipeline, influence, and awareness in 2024? Sponsor SaaStr Annual and Europa 2024!

Leading Public Cloud Company:

“We got 110 qualified opportunities and converted 40 to sign-up for our offer.  Now, 6 are set to close in the next 30 days with 24 more in active pipeline for early Q1”

Breakout Data Start-Up:

“SaaStr has a Great ICP (Seed, Series A and Series B accounts).  Compared to another leading tech event 2 weeks later, it was night and day in favor of SaaStr Annual”

Public Fintech:

“Our team buzzed about the event and the people they were able to meet in a short amount of time. They asked for larger exposure for next year and are going to upgrade.”

So we’ve spent a ton of time over the years on SaaS talking about hiring a great VP of Sales. Not only because it really matters, but because hiring the wrong VP of Sales can set you back a year — or longer.

So I thought I’d come back to the classic topic and make a list of the Top 10 Mistakes I See Founders Make When Hiring a VP of Sales.

#1.  Hiring a VP of Sales Who Never Really Understands Your Product During The Interview Process

Ok I know some even many will disagree, but I’m right here :).

I can tell you as a pretty good investor across many leading SaaS companies, I’ve never seen a VP of Sales thrive that didn’t really understand the product during the interviewing process.   

Never. 

I see so many SaaS startups hire someone likeable, who can talk the talk on sales hiring and processes — but never really understands what you do.  Or puts in the effort to do so.  Don’t make this hire.  They never invest the time after they start, either.  Or they are never able to.

This has almost become my #1 flag now.  Way too many folks give managers a pass here that never understand the product.  You gotta watch the YouTube videos.  Do a demo.  Listen to some Gong calls.  At least get close. 

Or you just plain never do once you start.  So many VPs of Sales disagree with me here — at least at first when I make the point.  But later, they agree.

As one of the most successful, slightly under the radar, pre-IPO “trueicorns” (not fake-icorns), the CEO of Navan, Ariel Cohen, disrupts an old space of expense and travel management and remakes things. 

With nine figures in revenue, Ariel and SaaStr founder and CEO Jason Lemkin talk about all things Navan, rebranding when you have brand equity, building B2B software for people, pricing and business models, and much more.

When Ariel started in 2015, he and his co-founder came to SaaStr as early-stage founders and found hope and some direction for their startup. 

They learned from some of the biggest in SaaS — Aaron Levie and Jeff Lawson. Founders in other stages talked about successful mistakes, giving new founders permission to mess up. 

We’ve talked about Toast a bit here on SaaStr – most recently we wrote up the 5 Interesting Learnings from Toast at $1.1B in ARR! Stunning.

Toast is the latest SaaS leader to get much more efficient in the past 12-18 months, along with monday.com, HubSpot, MongoDB, and many others. They’re still cruising — growing a stunning 45% YOY – which led us to the question:

How?

We’ll share the answers in today’s brand new episode of CRO Confidential, where our host Sam Blond, partner at Founders Fund, sits down with Toast CRO, Jonathan Vassil to talk about their proven customer acquisition strategies that led to its record-breaking growth. 

• SaaStr 697: What SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin Really Thinks About AI, Sales & Lead Gen In 2024                               

• SaaStr 696: The Chat GPT Growth Story: How AI is Changing the Way We Work with OpenAI’s Head of Sales, Aliisa Rosenthal                        

• SaaStr 695: How to Close More Deals with Less Budget with Datadog's CMO Alex Rosemblat

Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts or Spotify

When a sales candidate sends a follow-up email 2-3 days later,

I just assume that’s about as quickly as they follow up with most leads

Salesforce did everything it could to buy LinkedIn,

it just couldn’t quite afford it.

Benioff said it was the most strategic thing they could buy.

HubSpot now buys Clearbit

Not exactly the same, but somewhat similar

Smart way to turbocharge a $500m+ CRM business

In many ways, after just a few million in ARR, your job as CEO is to maintain momentum

With:

- better management

- fuel (capital)

- innovation (features)

- more awareness (marketing)

And so you should obsess about any early signs of losing it

You’ll see it before others do

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