Inc - So is it a downturn in SaaS or Cloud

So is it a downturn in SaaS or Cloud — or not?

There are so many mixed signals:

• Unicorn product is up 2x over last year, but layoffs continue
• AI spend is fast and furious, with Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc. seeing record acceleration in growth.
• The U.S. economy overall still has record-low unemployment and strong growth
• Gartner is seeing overall Cloud spend up 20% this year

But:

• Overall, SaaS leaders are seeing their lowest growth ever.  Salesforce has now slid to < 10% growth
• NRR is down at many SaaS leaders
• ARR multiples at public SaaS companies remain stuck at some of the lowest multiples in a decade

So it’s … mixed. Overall, SaaS leaders tied to non-tech buyers or tied to AI are still growing at epic rates. The rest in many cases are struggling.

We’re T-Minus 7 Days Away from the Biggest SaaS Event of the Year

Can you believe how quickly SaaStr quickly is coming up? Don’t miss this opportunity to rub elbows with some of the most influential leaders in SaaS!

So many founders go through a process where they finally realize a VP isn’t working out, but they still want to keep them while they find their replacement.

They want to do a Stealth Search.

All I can tell you is this is really, really hard, and rarely done right.

Having said that, it’s interesting Starbucks recently did it for its new CEO search.  And how they pulled it off is telling.

You can do it, it happens all the time. But you gotta put in the work. 95% of 

As we gear up for SaaStr Annual 2024 in the SF Bay Area (Sep 10-12), we wanted to take a look back at some of our most iconic speakers and sessions from over the year, that we can still learn from today.

Today, Veeva is at $35B Cloud juggernaut dominating pharma and life science Cloud applications.  But back in 2017, CEO and co-founder Peter Gassner joined us after Veeva had recently IPO’d with a market cap less than a tenth of that size.  Peter sat down with Jason Lemkin to share the story of Veeva and his journey as CEO. From how the seed of an idea got planted to 1,700 employees 10 years later, there are many lessons to be learned.

Peter is a huge fan of going against the grain and refusing to follow the herd. While it can be frightening to think differently, doing so has helped him make Veeva the biggest vertical SaaS success story of all time. One such example would be his insistence on thinking about the very near future, 90 days, for the first year and a half of the company. As Veeva grew, that’s when the long-term vision came into play.

While this talk really shows his love of thinking about the bigger picture – this is the Strategy stage after all – Peter actually spends 90% of his time on execution. Anyone can copy a good idea; execution, however, is enduring.

And if you haven’t gotten one of the very last tickets: SaaStr Annual is back in 2024 in SF Bay Area, Sep 10-12, better than ever! Join 10,000 fellow founders, investors and execs for 3 days of unparalleled networking and epic learnings from SaaS legends including the CEOs and CXOs of Klaviyo, Bill, Plaid, GitHub, Snowflake, Brex, Procore, Zoom, Rippling and much much more!!  Get tickets here.

My first 5 hires at Adobe Sign / EchoSign, beyond the core founding+ team, once we had paying customers and first, if early, product-marketing fit:

#1:  Full-time sales rep at $8k-ish MRR. I Should have hired two.  Should have hired him even earlier.  Hired once we were closing > 1 new, non self-service customer a week.  More here:

#2.  A great, paid, full-time-ish intern. A great one is a terrific force multiplier.  For me, a smart generalist that could be a force multiplier to get the things done I wanted to do myself but ran out of time for.  A mini-me, I guess.  If you can find one — hire them!

#3:  VP of Marketing. I hired at $20k MRR.  Should have hired even earlier.  Because “all” she had to do was improve our process and get us a few other good leads to pay for herself.

#4:  Head of Customer Support — a veteran. I can’t believe I waited so long.  This made our customers 50x happier, and I didn’t have to force everyone in the company to take so many shifts in support to help out the untrained resource(s) I had staffing it before. 

#5:  VP of Sales at $1.5m ARR-ish. I should have had 2 fully scaled reps first, not just 1.  But in the end, it was the right time, I just needed someone that was a better fit for my product, ACV, and stage.  A bit more here:

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

It’s a pivotal moment for the customer service industry. Join 1,000+ CX professionals at Frontlines on October 8th to learn how to foster a customer-first company culture and leverage AI to grow your business.

No. Especially if they haven’t really made any money yet, and you have more.

In both my start-ups, I was the only founder to contribute cash. It didn’t matter.

Yes, you need money one way or another to startup. But writing code, bringing in the first customers, raising seed funding, recruiting the team, and almost anything else is more important than money.

And many times even a small investment will be very stressful for some co-founders. If your cofounder has no savings at all, don’t add to her woes if you don’t have to.

However, whoever contributes cash should usually either be repaid, at least partially, or get extra equity for that investment.

The first time I did this, I was repaid fully when we raised outside capital.

The second time, I was repaid in part when we raised outside capital.

The third time, I converted that money into more equity. I made 12x on that investment. That was the best one of all.

We are getting CLOSE!!  We’re back for the 10th SaaStr Annual, Sep 10-12, at the outdoor / open air San Mateo country fairgrounds between SF and Palo Alto.

Whether you’ve been to Annual before or not, here are 22 Reasons to Go This Year.

#1. 500+ Braindates and Mentoring Sessions, including 100s of Top VCs, CROs, CMOs and More.

We’ve made mentoring and Braindates central to SaaStr Annual and Europa, and we’re going to keep refining that for Annual 2024. We’ll have 1000+ 1:1, 1:2, 1:4, 1:16, and 1:24 sessions with top revenue, sales, and product leaders, and subject matter experts. They’ll run all day, every day, and you can join as many as you want.

At SaaStr Europa, 20VC founder Harry Stebbings and Visionaries Club Founding Partner Robert Lacher share the ins and outs of fundraising and the VC landscape in 2024. Keep reading to hear their perspectives on:

• Multi-stage investing
• Platform partner or not
• Investor incentive mechanisms driving decisions for who to invest in
• When is pricing too high or low for investors, and much more

© SaaStr 2024

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

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