So if you’ve been around startups for a while, and especially sat on any boards, you’ll see a VP of Sales answer a slow Q1 and even Q2 with this:

“We’ll make up for it in Q4.”

And many variations thereof.  In fact, in so many sales plans, you often see Q4 bookings at 2x-3x or more Q1!   Even when growth overall is slow.

Q1 was supposed to be $1m in bookings, but we only hit $300k?  Just add the delta to Q4!

It may look possible on a spreadsheet, but I’ve almost never seen a sales team magically make up for a weak Q1 or 1H with an insane Q4.  In fact, maybe never.  It just doesn’t work that way.

The other day in fact we looked at a decade of SaaStr Annual ticket selling data.  We’ve literally been selling tickets to SaaStr Annual for 500+ weeks, almost every week, for a decade.  Phew.

And that gives us a massive dataset across $30,000,000+ of ticket sales and much more.

And one thing is clear, and many counter-intuitive: we — and you– can’t make for a missed campaign, for a missed week, for a missed quarter.  It’s just too late.  

THANK YOU! to the 10,000+ that attended SaaStr Annual 2024 with some of the very best speakers in SaaS and AI. We had so many great interactions & fun across the 3 days with 

We'll be back in MAY of 2025!! 

So you may have noticed there are now a ton of events in September. 

It was great for 3 years, but we’re going back to out roots, and Annual 2025 will again be earlier in the year, now May 13-15 at our 40 acre campus at the San Mateo County Events Center. 

LOCK IN THE LOWEST RATE EVER

Book your early bird tickets now to lock in your attendance at our best rates possible!

So many on social media are lamenting how much harder it is to raise venture funding today than it used to be. And the data nominally suports it.  Statistically, raising a Series A is 2x as hard or harder than it was in 2021.

But that doesn’t really mean it’s harder.

We’re confusing two things.

First, the bar to get venture-funded in B2B / SaaS has basically always been the same my entire career. T3D2 or better. Or if you are < $1m ARR, some reasons to believe you are on that track.

Triple, Triple, Double, Double. Or Better. That’s always been the bar to get funded in SaaS.

I.e., going at least from:

• $1m to $3m ARR one year
• $3m to $9m ARR the next (hard)
• $9m to $18m ARR the year after
• $18m to $36m ARR the year after that

So, for many of us in SaaS, these are still some of the best of times.  The Cloud is bigger than ever, CIOs are buying more than ever, and SaaS is still on a roll.

But public stock prices are way down, and venture capital is much tighter than it was outside of AI Mania.  So many of you will want to manage the burn more carefully.

But you can’t cut your way to growth. So what should a CEO do?

A few simple thoughts:

1. Let go of your bottom 10%-15% of sales reps, concentrate leads in the best reps. This always gives you both a top-line boost (the top reps close more per lead), and gives you room to hire more reps at the same budget.

2. Have a firm, management-team wide burn rate budget. And stick to it. Pick a fixed amount of cash you can burn each month, period. And make all your VPs accountable to it. They can negotiate themselves on where to spend incremental revenue and dollars.

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.

So I’ve made the decision this year to no longer provide any feedback, with a very few narrow exceptions.

• Tell a sales rep you wished they’d made the interview on time? They go on blast.
• Tell a contractor they didn’t actually finish the project? At all? They quit.
• Tell most VPs they need to step it up? They blame you. You didn’t give them enough resources.
• Tell a VC their founder just isn’t followed enough for a session at SaaStr Annual?  You’re wrong.
• Tell all but the best founders they are falling behind? They lash out.
• It’s 2024.

All but the best want participation points.

Even on the revenue side. It is what it is. Everyone is “doing their best”.

I’ll keep keeping it real with the very, very, very best founders and VPs. The very, very, very best.

The rest? I’ve moved on to saying nothing, or telling them “good stuff.”

We’ve crossed over 10,000 posts, podcasts, sessions, braindates, and answers on SaaStr, and we held off for a long time on writing on most other VC tropes. But I thought it might, in these times when valuations have taken a hit, and VC is under stress, to update our “Top 10” list of things that are relatively easy to do, now, that will make your investors and board happier.

If your investors never help … or even if they are driving you nuts … your life will still be better and easier if they are happier.

The 9th All Star SaaS Conference is November 20 in Tokyo and we’ve been meaning to go for a while.  The stars aligned this year and I’ll be there speaking, including an AMA, along with several other top SaaStr speakers:

• Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa, and now GP at Iconiq Capital
• Claire Hughes Johnson, former COO of Stripe
• Jay Simons, former President of Atlassian, now GP at Bond Capital

At this year’s SaaStr Annual, Rippling’s CRO, Matt Plank, chats with Sam Blond, host of the SaaStr CRO Confidential and former CRO at Brex, about Rippling’s top 3 growth tactics, which have led to the Rippling becoming a $14B company with several hundred million of ARR.

A few years ago, Matt was making cold calls from CEO Parker Conrad’s basement … and he’s helped bring Rippling to where it is today. All the way to CRO today.

The three growth tactics that worked for Rippling can be categorized into three different stages:

1. Outbound
2. Increasing closed-won revenue rates
3. Serving customers and expanding revenue in the base

Let’s start with outbound, where most of Rippling’s revenue comes from attribution-wise.

• SaaStr 760: CRO Confidential: Rippling’s Top 3 Growth Tactics for Driving Revenue at Scale with Rippling CRO Matt Plank and Former CRO at Brex Sam Blond 

• SaaStr 759: 5 Metrics that Matter When Raising Your SaaS Series A and Series B Round with Christoph Janz, Partner at Point Nine Capital 

• SaaStr 758: Avoid These Common Founder Mistakes to Hire a Great VP of Sales in 2024 with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin

Listen on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Podcasts

As a rough rule, if you sell your company for $100m or less, there's > 50% chance the acquirer shuts it down later

It's just a bet for them, nothing more

The more customers you visit in person,

The more customers you close.

The more revenue you retain.

And the more they buy from you.

As true for 2024 as it ever was.

© SaaStr 2024

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