Yes, Everyone Has To be 2x as Efficient As They Used to Be

I know a lot of folks in tech are still frustrated in 2024 — and feel they’re being asked to do more with less. But is it really true?

Actually, yes, it’s true. You are being asked to do more than in years past.  And it’s going to likely be permanent.

Because beyond WFH, RTO, and all the tactical changes of the past few years, the biggest structural one really is — The March To $400,000 in Revenue Per Employee.

Many SaaS and Cloud leaders are already there — especially the highest performers, from Cloudflare to Canva to ServiceNow.  The rest are marching there.  Even SMB leaders like Monday are there.  Monday just crossed $800,000,000 in ARR with less than 2,000 employees.

In fact, almost every SaaS leader at scale is hitting $300,000 in Revenue Per Employee at the pre-IPO phase. In 2021? It was half that or less. $100k in Revenue Per Employee was pretty common for Unicorns, or even far less.

So you’re hiring your first few sales reps in the early days?  Before you have a great VP of Sales?  It’s an interesting time.  Leads are precious, everyone is a team.  So you need a very certain type of sales rep.

Let me give you a checklist of a few signs they won’t work out:

#1. They’re Late

Many will challenge me here, but if they’re late to the interview, they’ll be late to customer calls, too.  Don’t make the hire.  If they send you a professional message ahead of time, that they need to push?  That’s fine.  If they just show up at 2:05 onto the Zoom though, don’t make the hire.

#2. You Wouldn’t Buy From Them

A classic SaaStr theme, as true today as it ever was.  If you honestly wouldn’t buy from them — well neither will your prospects.  At least not in the early days.  Not during founder-led sales.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Cisco

Secure while you scale with Panoptica.

Cloud security may not be top of mind, growth is. Customers who love your product is. And we get it! But you can't neglect security, it's in service of your customers (just ask any company that's had a security breach).

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Listen.

It usually means something is wrong. Or at least, off:

• If you got the equity splits right at first, usually, big issues don’t come up later. This may be a sign you need to fix things here.
• If your co-founder isn’t willing to take the dilution that comes with raising capital and you are— that could be a sign you are misaligned here on how — and if — to Go Big. This is much harder to fix.  Still, it’s better to know now.

In any event, it’s not the right time to bring the topic up if you guys are communicating well. So I suspect you aren’t. You aren’t aligned and “thinking as one” co-founding entity. And it’s on a super important issue.

At the first SaaStr Europa, Harry Stebbings sat down with MuleSoft Founder and CTO Ross Mason to discuss the organization’s sales strategy, building a strong company culture, how to think about international expansion, and much more. Unsurprisingly, it was one of the event’s most popular sessions — and now, even if you weren’t with us in Paris, you can experience it all for yourself!

See everyone at SaaStr Europa 2024 on June 4-5 in LONDON!!

Check out the full video and transcript here.

Up Next: Wednesday, March 13th @ 10AM

Topic: From Operator to Founder: What I'm Learning as a 1st Time Founder after 20+ Years of Operating

Speaker: Jeffrey Yoshimura, Former CMO @ Synk

Workshop Wednesdays is new series where we’ll be bringing some of the best SaaStr speakers to you LIVE, every Wednesday. 

Each workshop will be hosted in a live, interactive 30-minute format at 10am Pacific each and every Wednesday. This workshop will be 100% LIVE, not pre-recorded, and will be hosted in an, interactive 30-minute format, including Q&A.

This edition of the SaaStr Daily is sponsored in part by Cisco

Busra is a security expert and she recently took on all of the security work at SaaS startup, NeonTech.

Day 3 on the job, the CEO tells her "We need to get SOC 2 Type II Certified ASAP. Make it happen."

Well, needless to say, that's a big task. Thankfully Busra had the help of Panoptica to cover all of the TSCs (Technical Services Criteria) that are related to continuous cloud security coverage.

Join Busra and get started for free today (click here to see other special perks for SaaStr fans)

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