Does SEO Still Work? Our Data Says Yes But

Does SEO still work? As someone who has written relatively highly cited, highly linked, highly read, etc. content since 2011 … I’ll say … “Yes But”

Yes But...

What do I mean? Well yes content marketing and SEO still clearly are the magic and miracles of the internet. Google and now other GPT-related engines will find your content on their own, and if it’s truly high value, ultimately promote it for you. For free. And to potential customers! Boom.

That’s a gift. At a high level, as big a gift in 2024 as 2011.

Organic Search remains our #1 source of SaaStr readers for 13 years straight.

We’re getting so close now to SaaStr Annual 2024 – the 10th-ever SaaStr Annual event! We’ll be back in the SF Bay Area at the San Mateo County Events Center, this September 10-12.

We’re looking forward to hosting 12,000+ SaaS founders, execs, and VCs across 3 days and our massive 40+ acre indoor/ outdoor campus.

About 92% of our sponsorships are sold out, but we have a few good opportunities left!

• 3 Super Golds
• 2 Golds
• 1 Platinum

Of note – the Super Golds and Platinum are strictly scarce as they do include partner stage speaking opportunities, which are now the only way into our super, jam-packed Agenda for speaking at Annual 2024. (as we’re not slotting any more earned speaker opportunities)

We’ve also completely optimized this year’s Expo Hall and there are no bad booths, with sponsors in between our two largest stages and surrounding our main attendee Hangout area, the SaaStr Cantina. We’ve also upgraded this year’s agenda to give attendees more time to network and meet with sponsors on the kickoff day, Sept. 10th. Notably, we also know it’s one of your favorite days of the week, which we wouldn’t want you to miss – so we’re bringing Taco Tuesday to you on the kick-off day of Annual.

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

Abstract the complexities of sharing data with customers. Save time for your developers, data, product, and customer success teams by giving end-users dashboards, self-serve reporting, and AI enabled reporting.  

So lately I’ve watched a lot of new VPs of Sales crash and burn when they start.  Is it their fault?  The CEO’s?  The VCs?  It really doesn’t matter in the end.

One thing I do know is a lot of mistakes are avoidable.

You’re going to possibly laugh at a few, but here are the Top 10 Mistakes I’ve Seen New VPs of Sales Make The First Week on the Job.  The ones I’ve seen recently:

#1. Not Knowing the Product Cold Before They Start

Many founders won’t push here.  They’ll be charmed by a VP of Sales talking about process (lots of process talk), team building, and talking about how they’ll level things up.  But so many VPs of Sales start far, far behind the eight ball when they think they can learn the product on the fly.

#2. Not Starting … Before They Start

VPs — start the week before you start.  Get going on email, on Slack.  Listen to more calls.  Quietly be added to cc lists.  Watch recordings of team calls.  You don’t have to literally be on Zooms before you start.  But on Day 1, don’t be spending all your time setting your G Suite and figuring out the tech stack.  The best start before they start. I recently watched a VP of Sales show up at 10am their first day, having not even logged into email first.  No chance.

If it “failed” after < 12-24 months or so, and you didn’t raise any or too much money — it doesn’t matter too much. No one will care. And there’s no need to explain yourself, apologize, or feel like a failure. No need.

Dust yourself off, and decide if you want to do another one.

And if you do — the key is, just consider that one-year start-up an experience. That’s it. The key is:

• Be matter-of-fact about the experience. I know it wasn’t just “a job”. But sort of act almost as if it was. You tried. You gave it your all. You learned. And. It’s done. You’re ready for the next challenge.
• Don’t act like it was Such a Big Deal. It wasn’t (in good and bad ways). I don’t want to hear 20 minutes about your failed start-up. I want to hear 120 seconds.
• Don’t act like you learned that much or are a big expert now. You learned a lot, don’t get me wrong. You took a risk. You worked for nothing. You tied. I respect that. But if you never got to at least $100k in ARR, you didn’t build a business. You started a start-up, but you didn’t build a >business<. Don’t act like you did.
• Be humble, but not bitter. Be humble about the experience. We’re all human. But don’t be bitter. We don’t like to see that.

Does “age” even matter anymore for SaaS founders, if it ever did? 

• On the one hand, the Stripe founders became billionaires in their teens. So you can build something epic in SaaS without 20 years of domain expertise.  Henry Schuck started ZoomInfo at 23, Andrew Bialecki started Klaviyo at 25.
• On the other hand, many SaaS founders are on to their 3rd or 4th success. The founders of Zscaler, OneStream, Samsara, Zoom and more are all second-timers.  SaaS has just been around for a while.

The vast size of the Cloud is attracting more and more founders of all ages, backgrounds, nationalities, and more. And many CEOs and founders … just want to keep going. Frank Slootman ran Snowflake after having already been CEO of ServiceNow. Jyoti Bansal founded Harness and more … after already selling AppDynamics for $3.7B. And so on. Will many of us founders just do SaaS … forever?

I’ve learned that 90% of warm intros are the biggest waste of time of all, unless they are “double qualified”.

Why? Well who makes warm intros?

• Founders you know that just want to help other founders get funded. This sounds great except many founders have no idea what makes for a good venture investment. Really, no idea at all.
• VCs that want to get you to fund the next round. OK, but often times, it’s their mediocre / B+ investments. They don’t send you their crappy investments, but their very best investments — already have term sheets. These founders don’t need any help from their earlier VCs.
• Industry People. Lawyers, bankers, consultants, etc. Same as point one. They know the companies they like, but often don’t know how to filter it.

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