We’re All Tempted at Times. But Don’t Quit.

Let me explain, as this is one of the most disappointing changes in my opinion in “tech” and startups over the last 12-18 months.

Two things together have done many a disservice: the combination of a tougher year for many >>and<< the constant celebration of … quitting.

It’s all over LinkedIn and TikTok. I Quit!

There are times when it makes sense to quit. If literally, you’ve given it 100% and have zero traction. If your boss is terrible. Or, on the flip side, if you are presented with such an amazing opportunity, you just have to take it. And look, no one needs to stay in a soulless entry level job longer than necessary.

Those are the times to quit.

But now, people seem to quit far, far earlier:

• Founders with millions in revenue quitting just because it’s harder
• Founders with any happy customers quitting because they’ve “given it a shot”
• Founders phoning it in because it’s harder, rather than doubling down and figuring it out
• VPs quitting because the job was harder than they thought
• Top ICs quitting because their job was a lot harder than last year

So I hope you had a great December, added a great VP or two this year, won some bigger deals, and in general — you’re feeling good. And that you’ve even got a decent financial plan for next year already put in place. Even better!

I hope so. 

After a challenging year for many, that’s better than most ;). But in any event, hopefully you’ve put together a 2024 plan, both a Stretch and a Base. And back-up plan so you don’t burn all the cash.

With all that behind you … let me challenge you to 10 SaaS New Year’s Resolutions. Pick a few that work for you.

For any Cloud and SaaS Founders or execs seeking practical strategies and inspiration to stay ahead of the curve, this session’s for you.

Kiren Sekar, Samsara’s Chief Strategy Officer and founding chief Product Officer shared five lessons he learned along the way from scaling six products to $100M+.

The six products/companies Kiren helped scale to $100M that he’ll reference in this playbook include: Bill, Cloudflare, Crowdstrike, Samsara, Snowflake, and Zscaler. 

His five lessons are:

• A single metric that helps guide decisions of when to pivot, when to iterate, and when to pivot. 
• Discovering the entire market and mapping out all potential verticals early in the process. 
• The incredible power and value of the mid-market segment.
• Building customer feedback into the DNA of your product team and products. 
• Going multi-product early. 

Let’s take a closer look at these learnings. 

“Doubling Down” is a new series where we hear from top B2B SaaS investors on their most recent activities and takes on the current market. We had a great one last week with Mary D’Onofrio, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners.

This week we’re focusing on Rebecca Lynn, Co-Founder & General Partner at Canvas Ventures!

#1.  What’s your most recent disclosed investment?  Why did you do the deal?

XP Health, an end-to-end vision care solution for employers and insurance carriers. Their product increases enrollment and utilization while reducing employee costs and providing a substantially better experience.

So there were barely any SaaS IPOs in 2022 or 2023.  The last big SaaS IPO of the Boom Era was Hashicorp in December 2021, and after that, multiples fell off a cliff and the SaaS and Cloud IPOs … stopped. 

There were no significant SaaS IPOs for almost 2 years, until Klaviyo (+ Instacast + ARM) all tried to reopen the market in September 2023. All incredible companies, but the IPOs were only modestly successful in terms of valuations and market reactions, and it became crickets again with no SaaS IPOs for the rest of the year.

For all intents and purposes, $7.5 Billion+ Klaviyo was the only SaaS IPO of the past 2 years.  And it took a really, really great SaaS company to pull it off.

But many more are looking at going public in 2024, even if the markets aren’t much better than they were. At least Nasdaq itself had a record year in 2023.

First up by many reports may be ServiceTitan. Reuters and others are reporting ServiceTitan has already filed to IPO in the first half of 2024.  It actually confidentially filed to IPO during the tail end of the 2021 Boom, but the boom ended just months later, so the filing was quietly shelved.

What’s really going on in the world of SaaS right now, from software valuations to business performance to interest rates?

At Workshop Wednesday, held every Wednesday at 10 a.m. PST, Jamin Ball, Partner at Altimeter Capital and author of Clouded Judgement, took us through the current state of SaaS and what we should expect in 2024. 

© SaaStr 2023

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