So is AI taking over everything? Will $1B SaaS companies be run by 1 person teams?

I mean … maybe. Across the SaaStr Fund portfolio, I’ve seen multiple portfolio companies lose $1m customers to new, in-house AI initiatives.  But I’ve also seen others grow even faster as AI rebooted and enhanced their products.

What I do know is many of the billion+ SaaS companies I invested in a decade ago would not be remotely competitive today. And that’s how it should be. Software, innovation and time marches on. And if you can’t keep up, you’ll get left behind.

Many today have been unable to keep up, and have fallen behind, and seen growth slow to 20%, 10%, even 0%.

What I really think is happening is customer expectations have gone way up.  AI is part of it, platforms are part of it. And promises are part of it.

So we’re already off to the races for planning for SaaStr Annual 2025, especially because we’ve moved it back to earlier in the year (where it always was pre-2020), to May 13-15 on our 40+ acre campus in SF Bay!

Tickets aren’t inexpensive, but compared to any other 2.5+ day for SaaS execs in the SF Bay, with food and entertainment and parties included, it’s the cheapest event of its peer group. We try.

Still, it’s not dirt cheap. So if you want to go for the least possible — now is the time. You can bring the team for as low as $549 each now! That will double by the time we get to May 2025.

So we decided to do some folks a solid this year for SaaStr Annual.

It’s tougher times for many, job hunting is tougher, and in general meeting the best of the best in SaaS and Cloud IRL is more valuable than ever.

And when we polled the 400+ CROs, CMOs and CCOs attending SaaStr Annual, almost 100% of them said they were hiring.

So we did something we’ve never done before:

We offered all 840+ of the past SDRs, AEs and more than had done booth duty at SaaStr Annual based in the SF Bay Area a chance to come this year for a 1 day pass — completely free. On us.

To actually experience Annual for real, not to just be stuck in a booth. To network, meet hundreds of great VPs of Sales, CROs, founders, and more. A gift, IMHO.

Literally, every single CRO at SaaStr Annual I talked to was hiring. 100% of them.

SaaStr Annual may be relatively low cost compared to peer events (which today usually are priced 2x-3x higher), and we also offer 50% off if you just buy early … that price of course may be out of reach to many junior sales execs.

So we quietly reached out to about 840 of our past Booth Heroes and Booth Professionals.

Admittedly, many might not still be in the SF Bay Area, making travel tough. But if there’s a will, there’s a way. These are sales execs after all!

And how many took us up on this unprecedented offer? That no one ever does? To learn, to hobnob, to network at an elite level?

4

Yes, Four.

You can read what you want into it, but I view it at least as one quantitative data point on the state of ennui in SaaS today. Only 4 out of 840 sales execs wanted to put in the energy to click on bettering themselves and their careers — for free.

There’s a mistake I see a ton of startups making today, in the of age of new efficiency in SaaS and pressure around making capital last:

They are treating every customer the same for CAC purposes. And you just can’t if you are scaling.

What do I mean? Well of course the burn is the burn, and the budget in the end is the budget. If you have $2m to spend this year on marketing and growth, then that’s all you have.

But what I see more and more these days is a lack of segmentation in CAC as you scale.

For example, I’ll see a startup just starting to take off at $2m, $5m, $10m., $20m ARR … and then start to cut back certain marketing initiatives, certain sales initiatives, campaigns, even markets because the CAC is higher than average there.

But here’s the simple thing, that still many miss: as you expand into new market segments, new verticals, new buyers … your CAC will be higher there.

In the latest edition of SaaStr’s Workshop Wednesday, Sara Varni, Datadog‘s CMO, shares how to build pipeline and create alignment across sales and marketing. The CMO role at Datadog covers the usual aspects of marketing, including product marketing, corporate communications, events, partnership marketing, and solutions marketing.

So I’m back full time-ish to the SF Bay Area. As, often quietly, are so many leaders and execs I’ve known for years.

I spent about 60% of my time since lockdown in SoCal, 30% in Palo Alto, and the rest in Misc. It wasn’t to work at the beach, it was for family reasons. But still, I like many of us went from someone who never felt they could leave the SF Bay, to someone who well, did.

The SF Bay Area is back.

It’s clearly the center of the AI Boom, even if many are based outside of it, in Paris and elsewhere. YCombinator is having a renaissance, with 4 batches of 100s of top tier startups being hatched in Dogpatch in SF. Most will stay. Even top European accelerators like EF have come to SF. Many VCs that for whatever reason left, have returned.

New York is great, SoCal and Miami are great places to live and OK for tech, and certainly there are segments of SaaS and B2B where SF isn’t as compelling. Vertical SaaS and parts of eCommerce may well be so focused on other geos, for example, it’s not worth it to be in SF Bay.

But we’re all kind of back. At least most of us.

We’re excited to have Rippling as a first-time Diamond Sponsor for 2025 SaaStr Annual, May 13-15 in SF Bay!!

We’ve had so many great times with Rippling execs over the years, from CEO Parker Conrad joining us for the first SaaStr Annual waaay back in 2015 (!), to helping kick off SaaStr Europa 2023. And for CRO Matt Plank supporting us on our #1 ranked CRO Confidential podcast, and Live at SaaStr Annual 2024!

In today’s dynamic SaaS landscape of hyperfuncational SaaS, the journey of building a product that customers adore, while simultaneously scaling revenue to nearly $1B, is still quite a feat. During a conversation at SaaStr Annual with Jason Lemkin, founder, and CEO of SaaStr, Andrew Bialecki, co-founder and CEO of Klaviyo, shares his insights and lessons in achieving this milestone.

Klaviyo is the most awesome SaaS company you probably don’t know enough about but they’re a huge player in the e-commerce and SaaS space.  They’re bigger than HubSpot in marketing by ARR, period. By having huge market share, and owning a specific space.

Not only is Klaviyo a rocketship but it was also the first SaaS company to IPO in almost 2 years when it went public in September of 2023. It was a big milestone for the company and the markets as it had everything you’d want in a company going public: 39% annual revenue growth, 16% free cash margins, and 117% NRR. More on that here.

• SaaStr 762: How to Build a Product Customers Love and Drive Nearly $1B in Revenue Along the Way with Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki and SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin

• SaaStr 761: How to Build Pipeline and GTM Alignment with Datadog’s CMO Sara Varni

• 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 

Listen on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Podcasts

Two types of struggling SaaS companies:

The ones where the CEO is out there

fighting tooth and nail, for real, to reaccelerate growth.

And

getting even more driven and aggressive.

And The ones where you hear about how we are in a downturn.

I'm there forever for the former.

If the CEO doesn't seem at least a little bit intense,

Join a different start-up

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