Hey SaaStr Community,

So I have a ton of empathy overall, but burnout?

Sort of. I do have empathy for founders, execs and ICs that truly left nothing on the field for 3, 4, 5 years. That truly burns you out. But even there, my empathy has limits.  Because while it’s real, you gotta get help as a founder, exec or leader. You have to recruit a few great VPs and folks under you. 

That’s the only way to avoid true burnout.

Still, that burnout I get.

But the fact that these days, everyone seems burnt out? Even folks in many cases with relatively low stress jobs, often that honestly take 20 hours or less a week to do?  I’m not sure I have total empathy here. But it doesn’t matter.

It’s time to recognize it — as a fact.

64% of you say you are burnt out, and in fact, 50% of you are more burnt out than last year.

Here’s the thing.  I’ve tried certain tactics myself that I thought would help. I suspect one reason these “fixes” don’t really seem to help is burn-out is also combined with some ennui among many in tech.  A feeling of discouragement, that they aren’t getting what they wanted, the title, the comp, the lifestyle, etc.  That may be the root cause of a lot of this burnout.  Not really the hours or pressure.

There’s so much debate on social media and elsewhere on bootstrapped vs VC.  Bootstrapped you maintain control, and the unit economics.  But many see it as so much harder.  And it’s almost always longer. VC can let you go faster, but it can become an addiction.  And the dilution all-in generally ends up being 60%-70% by the time you approach an IPO.

The debate misses a simple, clear Third Way: Just Raise One Round.

A few folks that have done this, more or less:

• Klaviyo.  Now worth $8 Billion, they mainly just raised a seed fund and didn’t raise material additional capital until the pre-IPO phase.
• The Trade Desk.  Now worth $34 Billion, they weren’t sure how big it would get, so they raised just one core VC round.
• Zapier.  Raised one core seed round, and then got to nine figures of ARR.
• Veeva.  Raised single digit millions, worth $35 Billion today.

So there’s a quiet leader in the work management space that’s quietly … blowing the doors off.

Everyone knows Atlassian, Asana, Notion, probably Monday.  But Smartsheet?

You should know them. They’re at $1 Billion in ARR now, growing an impressive 23%. The public markets aren’t completely in love with the space — it trades at an average $6.3 Billion, or just 6.3x ARR.  Asana similarly trades at just $4 Billion today on ~$700m in ARR, so about the same.

But Smartsheet is a good one. Undervalued?  Yeah, maybe so.

Can't keep up with your customers' requests for integrations? Read this Build vs. Buy: Native Integrations Guide

So Gartner is cutting back its growth projections for 2024 a bit.  It was previously projecting a 13.8% spend in software spend in 2024 to over $1 Trillion.

It’s now cutting that back a bit to 12.7% growth in 2024, basically flat with 2023.

But that’s still a lot of growth. 

To over $1 Trillion in software spend worldwide — for the first time ever.

This is the time of year when I have a few “Woe is Me” conversations with founders:

• “It’s so hard”
• “It’s not our fault”
• “Well, we’ll try”
• “No one wants our product”'

There’s always some truth in this, especially how hard it is.  Every founder that is successful knows how hard it is.   Heck, the CEO of $1 Trillion+ Nvidia recently said he wouldn’t be a founder if he had it to do all over again!  Yes, it’s hard.

It’s just, the ones that feel sorry for themselves — those ones never make it. 

Not in my experience at least.

If that’s you, first, sort of keep it to yourself.  At least for the most part.

Being vulnerable has its place, but not if it demotivates the team.  I’ve been there myself, and felt it was almost hopeless — with both my startups.  I shared those feelings with my cofounders, and a very old friend.  But that was about it.

Second, pick yourself up off the ground and — Stop.  Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself.

It’s OK for a week or two, but it doesn’t help after that.  Even if you have to act a bit — and CEOs always have to act a bit — act more confident.  Show everyone the way.  If you do, you might just be surprised that not only do they follow.  But they find a way to make it happen.

And third, stretch your cash.  Find a way.

You can’t make radical changes in just a few months.  You always need 14-18 months to fully execute a plan in SaaS.  Find a way.  I had to go a year without salary after we were venture funded to make this happen.  It was hard.

It was worth it.

So Auren Hoffman did a SaaStr workshop a few years back that was one of my favorites, I’ve embedded it below.

He made many great leadership points, but one in particular rattles around my head a lot and I think deserves its own post:

You usually won’t know if you’ve made a 10x hire … when you make the hire.  They more often rise up.

This has been my experience as well.  A good / great employee can become 10x in a new environment was part of Auren’s point.

I saw this live in my first start-up.  My co-founder and our CTO were both wicked smart.  But neither had worked on the right projects at their last company.  I was able to get them into their zone and lane, and they didn’t just excel.  They truly did the impossible.  We took a technology that was worthless, bought it, and sold it for $50 million just 12.5 months later.

Since them, I’ve seen it again and again. 

At Saastr Annual, we hosted an Enterprise panel of AI leaders to share their experience and knowledge to help others understand how big companies think about and leverage AI. Sure – the rise of ChatGPT has gone mainstream for consumers and smaller companies, but what about the big guys?

While the first generation of Generative AI is great, it’s not quite ready to solve Enterprise problems.

So, where are we now in the adoption cycle for the Enterprise world? 

In this session, we brought together:

• Douwe Kiela, CEO of ContextualAI
• Benjamin Mann, co-founder of Anthropic
• Arvind Jain, CEO of Glean
• and Sandhya Hedge, General Partner at Unusual VC, 

To help us figure out how to sell GenAI software to some of the biggest organizations in the world. 

• SaaStr 717: How Enterprise Companies are Buying AI (or Not) with ContextualAI, Anthropic, Glean, and Unusual Ventures

• SaaStr 716: The Future of Customer Success in 2024: Insights and Predictions from Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta and SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin         

• SaaStr 715: The 7 Biggest Mistakes CMOs Make (And How to Avoid Them) with the CMOs of Databricks, Zoom, and Okta       

Listen on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Podcasts

The only thing in B2B marketing with great ROI is word-of-mouth 

Everything else, if you break even, it's a win.

Keep investing there, even now.

Did an interview with a highly recommended exec, from a trusted connected Once again, exec had done literally not even 60 seconds of research before the call

Said was "really interested" -- but hadn't even done a hint of research.

Not 10 seconds.

 This, is 2024

The #1 mistake SDRs make: 

They don’t tell me how their app will solve my top problem

They talk about:

- Features

- Who is #1

- Buying me a coffee

Don’t care

But everyone cares about solving their Top 3 problems

© SaaStr 2024

644 Emerson St. Suite 200, Palo Alto, CA 94301

If you'd like to stop receiving the SaaStr Weekly, click here