Inc - The #1 Thing To Do In Tougher Times

So many folks are doing well today, fueled by AI spend and in some cases, the overall health of the consumer economy,  Microsoft, Cloudflare, GitLab (and GitHub for that matter), CrowdStrike (before that small little outage), Wiz, Plantir and so many others are in The Best of Times.

But for many others, it’s often Year 3 of a “downturn”, or at the very least, Year 3 of Tougher Times. Of growth that has slowed not just briefly, but over a very extended period.

So what do you do? We’ve gone through a long list of advice in tougher times at SaaStr, some great advice:

• Use Micromilestones to get the team though (grow something at a higher rate, even if it’s not MRR)
• Drive up NPS and Retention (which you can control)
• Get out and visit your prospects and customers in person (too many do the opposite in tougher times)

But now we’re seeing many startups and scale-ups go through not just a rough patch, but a long extended period of tough growth.

And watching dozens of them, it’s clear to me what matters most in an extended tough period.

Bringing new, strong, energized DNA onto the team. Go hire one great VP, now. Or even a super strong IC. They will help pull the team out of … its malaise.

So “SaaStr Inc” will cross $100,000,000 in cumulative revenue a little later this year. Not ARR, and not in 1 year. But since our beginning.  

It wasn’t originally intended to make any money, and didn’t have any revenue for years, but it’s been 10 years, and we’ll soon cross that milestone.

#1.  Non-recurring revenue doesn’t really scale.  

It can look like it repeats, and it sort of repeats, but it’s not remotely the same as 100% NRR.   This is why so many media companies do struggle to maintain growth as they get bigger.

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No. Not 9+ times out of 10.

In fact, the #1 sign your VP of Sales is really struggling is when their best answer to slowing sales is to hire even more sales reps.

It’s a sign they don’t know what else to do, and want to try to magically brute force it with more humans. As if more humans, on their own, magically equal more sales.

Of course you need enough reps to hit the plan, and enough capacity to hit the plan. But when grow slows, when you miss the plan, more bodies does not solve the problem.

In fact, fewer sales reps often in the short term solves the problem. You focus leads and opportunities on the best reps, and then rebuild the sales team from there.

Once a VP of Sales that is struggling starts pushing for a lot more sales headcount … it’s time to realize it’s not working.

It’s a hail mary than on paper might work, but in reality, doesn’t.

So we’re scaling up the final speakers for 2024 SaaStr Annual, Sep 10-12 in SF Bay!

We’re also starting to roll out sign up for 100s and 100s Braindates and Mentorship Sessions now, look for an email in your inbox soon if you are signed up for Annual!  We’ll post the top ones soon!

A look at the speaker line-up as of now.

The best advice I ever got from one of my angel investors: Stop feeling sorry for yourself.

I went to meet with one of my angels and mentors when things were probably toughest at my last start-up.

My co-founder had walked out the door. We had about 4 months left of cash. I was out of ideas. Yes, we had customers — hundreds — but not nearly enough. It simply “wasn’t working”, at least as I saw it narrowly at the time.

Enough, he said. I’ve heard enough, this mentor/angel said.

Go get on some jets, he said. Go get out of the office and meet more customers, he said, and close bigger deals. I did. I didn’t want to, but I did. (I closed GE, Dell and Comcast after that).

Go hire some better people, now, he said. Just find a way. (I did. I found and hired my VP of Marketing).

Go find a way to increase your runway, he said. No excuses. (I stopped taking a salary, and raised an extra $500k at the last round price. That got us a full year more of runway, with some other tweaks).

He was right.

When you have something, some customers, something … but not enough … stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Instead, find a way to do more.

Yes, that is hard. And painful.

And yes, you can almost always do more. If you have 10 customers, you can get 20. If you have 100, you can get 200. And if you do more, you will get there faster. Maybe not overnight, but a bit faster. And that compounds.

© SaaStr 2024

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