Does It Seem Like Everyone in Tech is Unhappier?

So the Wall Street Journal and Bamboo HR put out a great eNPS survey of 1,600 companies, a large part of them in tech.

They found:

• Comp is higher
• Work-life balance is better
• Benefits spending has gone up 20%
• More freedom

And yet:

• Employees are the unhappiest they’d been at least since 2020, and probably longer
• 34% of employees now dread the start to the workday — up from 11% from 2020 (!)

This is what I’ve certainly observed. Paying less hasn’t really even helped much. And work from home and hybrid may be valued, but it doesn’t seem to make folks happier than we used to be.

The OpenAI board coup.  Elon yelling at his advertisers.  Is anyone happy these days?

Perhaps it’s all just part of the 3+ year rollercoaster of change we’ve all been on. One thing the WSJ points out is that many employees now see their roles as increasingly transactional.  That seems to be my experience.  

You’ve got to hunt for the Pirates & Romantics. 

Hiring a VP of Sales isn’t new, but the conversations have evolved as the world has. SaaStr’s own Jason Lemkin shares the top 10 mistakes he sees during the hiring process during Workshop Wednesday, held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST. 

Jason has written about the cheat codes for hiring VPs of Sales since 2012 and realized it was worth a deeper dive. 

Read the Ultimate Guide to Hiring a Great VP of Sales ebook or What Makes a Great VP of Sales and How to Hire One blog post. 

The last 18 months have seen the biggest changes in the VP of Sales in his SaaS career. We’re still learning what world we’re in — some people interview over Zoom, some are focused on how to build teams in the current age, and many are dealing with a weird overhang from the SaaS explosion of 2021, quiet quitting, layoffs, and team turnover.  While this topic isn’t new, you want to avoid getting this hire wrong. So, let’s look at the top 10 mistakes Jason sees in the VP of Sales hiring process. 

The fifth SaaStr Europa in London will attract 3,500+ SaaS executives and investors, a superb selection of speakers, and endless opportunities to network in June of 2024.

As part of the SaaStr community, our partners are an integral part of what makes SaaStr the top resource to help companies of all sizes scale and grow their businesses. We would love for you to join us in London!'

For Europa, we are offering a wide range of exciting opportunities for our partners. Download our prospectus today to learn more about our exciting sponsor opportunities. 

#1: Put the company right back into your drip market campaign. But a special one for Lost Deals You Want to Win Back Later.

Because you’ll have at least 3 more chances to close them — if you go long:

• 10 months out (Renewal #1). If your competitor really screwed it up.
• 20 months out (Renewal #2). If your competitor doesn’t remain competitive and deliver enough value.
• 30 months out (Renewal #3). If your competitor did an OK job but isn’t loved and you now are doing something much better (one thing) than them.
• Anytime — if there’s champion change. I.e., if someone that loves you instead moves over to run the company / division / org you lost the deal at.

Lost deals are just deals you’re going to have to win later.

It’s harder to win them later.  But hardly impossible.  At least some of them, at least a material percent, you’ll get another shot if you stay close, and you stay in the game, and you keep adding value.

It just for sure takes longer.

But it takes 7–10 years to get anywhere in SaaS. You’ll likely have another shot at the deal. And it likely will be a much bigger deal then.

It depends on if they own the place.

A true “Managing General Partner” usually doesn’t so much leave as wind down, step down, slowly retire, etc.

Why not? Because VC funds typically last 13–14 years each, and often 20 years to full distribution. And a Managing General Partner will often be running 2–5 of these at the same time. So they often are still making a ton of money, and are somewhat involved, for many years after “leaving”.

Now, the more junior you are, and the less of a true Managing General Partner you are, the less it is true. And the more it’s just a job.

Where do they go?

• To another VC firm (pretty common)
• To work at a portfolio company
• To start their own company
• To a corporate VC fund

Are some of the most common landing spots.

Now sometimes this works out really well.  And sometimes, great folks just don’t want to be VCs anymore.

Dev Ittycheria, CEO of MongoDB, was a successful VC Managing Director and more.  But it wasn’t enough to just “invest”.  He’d been President at BMC Software before, and wanted to be a CEO of a world changer.  He joined Mongo as CEO.

That worked out well.

A great product, while necessary, isn’t sufficient to build a market leader and eventually a public company. Companies that win a market are just as good at Go-to-Market as they are at building great products. 

General Partner Doug Pepper and General Partner and Head of Analytics at ICONIQ Growth, Christine Edmonds, share the art and science of scaling GTM at this year’s SaaStr Annual. With over a decade of data from qualitative learnings and insights amassed through a network of leaders, ICONIQ deep dives into what it takes to succeed at GTM throughout the four stages of growth. 

The four stages of growth are: 

• Early stage
• Early growth
• Growth
• Pre-IPO

Each of those stages has key GTM milestones, benchmarks, and team-building strategies that allow you to grow effectively. Go-to-Market matters because sales and marketing spend remain the biggest proportion of SaaS spend, so honing in on that spend to build an engine and drive growth is paramount. 

Despite economic headwinds, optimism remains for the future of B2B SaaS. Klaviyo’s IPO was one recent bright spot, but what will it take for this type of activity to become a trend?

SaaStr's very own CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin, will lead a panel of investors, exploring the current state of investments, the trends fueling growth, and what they anticipate for the years to come.

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